Within an hour of receiving Lippincott’s telegram, Chilton had bicycled over to the Cooke estate to borrow their telephone. ‘Every inch of England scoured, as if the Queen herself were missing,’ said Lippincott, his voice crackling through the wires. The words were scornful but his tone was jolly. Chilton’s old police chief was happy to have an excuse to summon his friend back to Yorkshire so soon. ‘Out of retirement with you. You can pass the lady’s photograph around and take a motor through the countryside. You’ll never have an easier job than searching for someone who’s surely someplace else.’
‘Nor a more frustrating one.’ But Chilton had already decided to join in the probably fruitless search. Busy work was better than no work at all. He’d left his position with the Leeds police three weeks earlier, to be closer to his mother. He hadn’t yet found new employment and his old outfit was short of inspectors. Now this lady author was missing – famous enough for every police force in England to be in on the hunt, spread out over the entire country – but not so famous that Chilton had ever heard of her. Yorkshire headquarters already had men searching Huddersfield and Leeds. They didn’t have a man to spare for Harrogate and Ripley. Except the one who’d only just left.
‘We’ll put you up at the Bellefort,’ Lippincott had said. ‘My cousin and his wife own the place, you know. They say they’ll be glad to give you a room free of charge.’
Chilton certainly did know about Lippincott’s cousin. Simon Leech had married a girl from Antigua. Isabelle Leech was a lovely person, possessed of the rare combination of flawless manners and her own strong mind. But the marriage had scandalized the family and also jeopardized Simon’s hotel and spa. It was one thing to have a dark-skinned woman working the front desk, another to discover she was married to the hotel’s English owner. No doubt in addition to needing an extra man searching for Mrs Christie, Lippincott’s cousin needed more guests. Empty rooms tended to breed empty rooms. The cousins were as close as brothers and this was a chance to help both the hotel and Chilton. As for the missing lady, nobody really expected her to turn up in Yorkshire. But Chilton would search all the same. He wasn’t the sort to shirk, even when assigned a hopeless task.
‘It can be a working holiday for you,’ Lippincott said, clearly pleased to be able to offer such a thing. ‘Won’t get a better offer than that any time soon, will you?’ Chilton and Lippincott had been in the same regiment during the war and fought together all the way to the end. Lippincott was one of the ones who had come out all right. Not too all right – any man with a heart would be altered by battle in some way – but fine enough to do his job, love his family, hear a door slam without jumping through the roof.
On the train north, Chilton stared out the window at the passing wych elms and hedgerows, the landscape nearly empty of people, wind whipping, everyone hunkering indoors. He was as likely to find Agatha Christie wandering beside the train tracks as anywhere.
Chilton’s left arm had gone limp since taking shrapnel in the shoulder. His good hand shook as he lit his cigarette. You might think detective work wouldn’t suit a man whose one working arm still trembled from war memories. You’d be right. Which is why Lippincott calling him out of retirement after less than a month was likely a way of giving him a parting gift, rather than expecting a crime to be solved.
‘Have a soak while you’re at it,’ Lippincott had said, once all was agreed upon, proving Chilton’s suspicions. Harrogate was famous for its natural hot baths, a luxury Chilton hadn’t even considered partaking in when he lived nearby. ‘It’ll do you good.’
Smoke from Chilton’s exhale rose to mingle with the other passengers’。 If a fool’s errand was all he was good for, at least it was something more than wandering the beach by his mother’s house, an old man at forty. For much of his life Chilton had two brothers. Now he had none. The youngest, Malcolm, had died at Gallipoli. The second youngest, Michael, died in the labyrinth at the Battle of Arras, where Chilton had fought beside him. From that day forward, for the sake of their mother, Chilton had committed to staying alive, even as the stench of rotting bodies followed him from the trenches and refused to ever leave.