‘Mr Chilton,’ she said.
He heard her, and was struck again at the lack of ploy. A beautiful rawness exhibited either her character or what her character had been reduced – or elevated – to, thanks to whatever trauma it was that drove her.
One of the difficulties of having been to war: the impossibility of appreciating someone else’s trauma at first glance. It all seems so insignificant. Now, though, faced with her lovely furrowed brow, sympathy began to stir.
‘Is there anyone else here,’ she said, ‘in Harrogate, looking for me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘This area is my purview. And you might imagine the bulk of the search is closer to home. Your home. Dragging ponds and so forth.’
‘They haven’t told Teddy, have they? My daughter. They haven’t passed that worry on to her?’ She stood up, the space where she sat no longer enough to contain the flood of concern.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said, and then, because placation was useful under these circumstances （even if he hadn’t precisely identified how to characterize these circumstances）， he added, ‘I imagine not.’ He had never seen the child but could picture her, cossetted, protected from every bit of news or information that might cause distress, for the sake of the parents perhaps more than the child. What’s more inconvenient than another person’s distress?
He wondered if Agatha Christie had ever in her life been as willing to wear her emotions so plainly on her face.
She made an effort to collect these emotions back to invisibility. ‘Let’s not play games, Mr Chilton.’ Her voice sounded like she wanted to infuse it with accustomed authority, and yet it shook. The candle on her desk fluttered. The stove needed more coal.
‘That’s the second time you’ve said that. You needn’t say it again. I’ve no fondness for games. I only want to deliver you safely home.’ When she didn’t reply he added, ‘Mrs Christie. Isn’t that enough of all this? You’ve given your husband a fright. He’s longing to see you. Surely it’s time to put an end to it all and go home.’
‘Did you see that girl?’ Agatha said. ‘The one you said came in with Mr Mahoney?’
Now, they were getting somewhere. A mystery about to be solved.
‘She happens to be my husband’s mistress. My actual husband, Colonel Christie. She imagines she’s shortly to be his wife.’
The situation began to take a shape, albeit an unreasonable one. Chilton said, ‘She seems to have hit upon a hiccup, in that regard.’
The house was still but also electric, with an awareness of the floor beneath them and all it held. Those two young lovers, at last reunited （this much was clear）。 Not only what took place physically but the emotion swirling around them, oozing out from under the door, floating through the house like a new and intoxicating form of oxygen. He’d scarcely noticed that he had shifted to thinking of her as Agatha rather than Mrs Christie. In that moment the mist surrounded them, intimate in its proximity.
（The Timeless Manor, Agatha and I named it later. I’ve never been back to Harrogate, or to this manor house. But sometimes I think if I did, if I tracked the coordinates precisely, I would find an empty stretch of moor and heather and bramble, the house itself having secreted itself into the mist for another hundred years.）
‘Do you think she’s beautiful?’ Agatha asked. ‘That – girl.’
She’d been on the brink of using a different word, Chilton could tell. He answered with a lack of propriety and a wealth of honesty, because both seemed to be what she needed.
‘Not as beautiful as you.’
For a moment, based on the fervency that held every one of Agatha’s features absolutely quiet, he thought she might lean over and kiss him.