Once we’d turned up the drive of the house Chilton had secured our destination, so he began to take greater heed lest we discover him. He waited by the gate that Finbarr – country boy, mindful of fences – had closed and latched behind us. When we were far enough in the distance for him to be sure we wouldn’t hear it creak, Chilton opened the gate and walked down the road, noting, as I had, the bare branch canopy, and thinking how lovely it must be in spring and summer, when everything was in bloom. He breathed in the night air to calm himself – anxiety taking him unawares as it so often did; the feeling that someone might be watching him, might be lurking, behind any shadow. Yorkshire was fine but Chilton had grown up by the sea. That was the thing, the only thing: to hear the waves upon the shore. To walk upon the rocks at Churston Cove and see the seals sunning there. To thrust your head into the salt water, even in the coldest months, and let its chilling shock clear your mind.
He stood before the house, a lovely old building, a great stone box, shimmering with windows under the low light of stars. From behind one upstairs window a flicker of light grew; that would be the Irish fellow, stoking the fire for an evening with Mrs O’Dea, if that were indeed her name. Whatever had separated us, Chilton hoped it could be sorted out, that we could be together. He had lost his own sweetheart because of the war. Katherine had waited for him patiently, praying for his return, but her prayers hadn’t been complete enough, because a different man had returned in his place from the one she loved. I scarcely recognize you, Frank, she’d wept. Not long after she broke things off, she married the florist’s son, who was set to inherit the business and hadn’t been to war on account of blindness in one eye. It was one of the reasons Chilton had left Brixham for Leeds, years ago. One day he’d walked by the flower shop and had seen Katherine arranging a vase full of peonies, round with expecting a child. He’d decided to take himself away as if not seeing something spared you from its sorrow.
Torquay was close enough to Brixham for Agatha Christie to have bought flowers from that shop, even from Katherine herself. Or likely not. Likely it was a servant’s job – to buy flowers.
Once over the threshold of the manor, the door shut quietly behind him. Inside it was draughty and cold. There were so few furnishings – there was so little sign of life – Chilton thought it might be waiting for sale, or to be leased. It didn’t have any air of waiting for its own family to return. He adjusted his scarf, then set about searching. It was a large house but not prohibitively so. He could make a quick turn downstairs to the kitchen, wine cellar （amply stocked for a house that seemed so deserted） and housekeeper’s office. Then through the main floor into the parlour and library. He peered into every room except for the one the couple occupied, marked by the flicker from underneath the doorway. Light voices carried into the hall, including a soft laugh that gladdened him. It was difficult to imagine either of those two laughing, both so haunted and earnest.
In the attic there was a modest servants’ quarters, with a row of closed doors. Beneath one of them, some movement, faint light, as though from a single candle. He knocked quietly, using only two of his knuckles.
‘Yes, darling,’ came the voice, weary and slightly worried, like a mother addressing a child out of bed in the middle of the night. In his own family it had not been he but his youngest brother who woke their mother after dark. She was always sweet about it. How she loved all three of her boys.
Chilton knew Agatha’s endearment, and its implied invitation to enter wasn’t for him. Still, he pushed the door open. And there she sat, in a hard wooden chair – wearing a man’s pyjamas, hair loose and curling, lovely in the poorly lit room. There were two single beds, only one of them made up. On the dressing table, which she was using as a desk, sat a typewriter and two lit, dripping candlesticks in tarnished silver holders. Stacks of paper were piled on a chest of drawers. More stacks of paper sat on the bare bed. Agatha stared at Chilton, fountain pen in hand, poised as if in mid-sentence.
‘Oh drat,’ she said. She did not put down her pen.
He walked into the room and sat down at the foot of the bare bed, careful not to disturb her papers. He did not remove his coat. There was a small stove in the corner, alight with coal, but he suspected it would be out by morning. He imagined her waking with a shiver, breath visible. Would she rekindle the fire herself or call for the Irishman, the geography of the house revised but not their roles?