She saw Chilton look past her, to where she’d stationed herself at the long farm table, notebooks piled on it, and her typewriter. She closed the door against herself, blocking his view.
‘And your name, then?’ He kept his tone kindly, but firm enough to remind her he was a police inspector.
‘I don’t suppose that’s any of your business. My husband will be along shortly. Ah. There he is now.’
She felt herself smile as Finbarr came up the walk, hands in his pockets and colour in his cheeks. An entirely involuntary reaction. They’d been apart very little these last four days. She found herself wanting Chilton to believe she could be married to someone so young and handsome.
‘What’s this?’ Finbarr said, reaching the front stoop. The burlap bag over his shoulder bulged with what she felt sure were apples. Only this morning she’d said how she loved apples, and now here they were. Orange Pippin, she supposed, from the time of year. How she looked forward to biting into the crisp fruit.
‘Darling,’ she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that. He had nightmares. When she was wakened by his cries, she would go to him and calm him. There, there, darling, she would say, you’re perfectly safe.
Finbarr started a little, to hear her use the endearment in daylight, and in front of a stranger. Agatha said, ‘This is Inspector Chilton. He seems to have mistaken me for a lady who’s gone missing. What did you say her name was? This poor lost lady?’
‘Mrs Agatha Christie.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Poor thing. I do hope she’ll be all right. And I do wish you luck in finding her.’ Good manners may have forced her to open the door, but they also made it frightfully easy to manage prying strangers. Follow the script, that was all she had to do.
‘So that’ll be all, then,’ Finbarr said, with a brusque nod at the inspector. He slipped by the man, nodding to Agatha in a polite, deferential manner that no man on earth would use with his wife. He started to close the door but Chilton raised his hand and stopped it.
Finbarr draped an arm around Agatha’s shoulder. She smiled again. In the course of a few days they’d discovered a surprising amount in common. Their love of dogs, for instance. I much prefer them to people, don’t you? And he had agreed before adding, Most people, anyway. Last night when she’d woken him from one of his terrible dreams, to comfort him, she’d thought about kissing him. That would serve Nan right, wouldn’t it?
Now, looking at Chilton, she was shocked to find herself thinking about kissing him as well. Despite what threat he posed to her continued hideout, he had such a nice, kind way about him. He reminded her of Tommy, the fiancé she’d thrown over for Archie’s sake. She refused to blush. Perhaps that was what women did, when they found themselves abandoned by their husbands. Perhaps they thought about kissing new men. She wondered how this impulse jibed with her assurances to Finbarr that they had the same mission, convincing Nan to release Archie from her clutches. Part of her felt nothing would assuage the pain of Archie being with another woman as effectively as being with another man.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Chilton said. ‘But considering the resemblance, I’m afraid I have to insist you tell me your name.’
‘Her name’s Nan Mahoney,’ Finbarr said. How annoying and predictable, for him to supply that name. Agatha’s smile disappeared.
‘So if I go to the town registry,’ Chilton said, ‘I’ll see this house belongs to the Mahoneys.’
‘Of course you will,’ Agatha said. At the same time Finbarr said, ‘We’re renting it.’
They looked at each other. Caught. But what did it matter? She hadn’t committed any crime, other than squatting in someone else’s house, which didn’t seem so very grave.
‘Listen,’ Chilton said. ‘Mrs Christie, I know it’s you. But I can give you another day to think things over and prepare yourself. I’ll come back in the morning and we can decide together what you’d like to tell your husband. He’s very worried, you know.’