Bess and her American were married before travelling across the Atlantic, by an Anglican priest in London. They settled in Philadelphia. Did her parents back in Doolin weep when she never returned? Or did they rejoice at being done with her sin and shame?
She didn’t care about that anymore. She missed her brothers and would always love her little sister, but the only sins she still believed in were the ones that had been committed against her. She’d never set foot in any church again as long as she lived.
At night she clung to her new husband. She never blamed him for arriving too late. They were a single unit in this, their loss, and the crimes that had been done to them both. But one crime done to Bess she bore entirely alone. She bore it daily, and nightly, unable to expel the memory of the priest’s invasion.
And then there were her arms that ached the way only a mother’s can, when they’re empty of her child and always will be.
‘Ronan,’ she said, throughout the day, mostly when no one could hear her. In different tones. Fondly. Scolding. Laughing. Proud. As if his ghost accompanied her, the way he himself would have, had he been there, beside her, the reflection of all the emotions she should have experienced, rather than the ones she did.
The Disappearance
Day Seven
Friday, 10 December 1926
IT RAINED IN Sunningdale on Friday morning. The temperature had warmed. Teddy stood in the window of the nursery, holding a stuffed rabbit Agatha had named Touchstone. She’d given it to Teddy before she and Archie left to travel around the world. ‘Some of my love is stored inside him,’ she’d told Teddy, tying a blue ribbon around its neck. ‘As long as you hold him, my love is always with you. Whenever you hug him, I’m hugging you back.’
‘Touchstone is a girl, not a boy,’ Teddy insisted. She didn’t much care for men. It was women who took care of her. Every toy with a face was a she. Sonny, the little whittled dog, was a she.
Despite the rain, Sunningdale crawled with people. Teddy watched the pelting rain clutter her window. She saw scattered people in raincoats but didn’t find them alarming; she was used to fusses on the property that had nothing to do with her. She put Touchstone down. Her mother’s dog stood at her ankle and she lifted him up so he could look out the window, too. Peter yapped twice at the sight of strangers then settled into a resigned cuddle. Usually, when Agatha travelled, she took the dog with her. Teddy was glad she’d left him behind this time, it was fun to have him all to herself, always right beside her. He barked, his funny little arf, as someone new trudged up the drive.
‘There, there,’ Teddy said to Peter. ‘There’s no need to bother about all that.’ She turned from the window and set to dressing for school. Likely, she and Honoria would drive instead of walk, considering the weather.
The press had dubbed the search for Agatha The Great Hunt. As if it were a novel or a film. A sporting event, a national pastime. Or a war. Police officers and civic-minded citizens spread out all over England, doing their part.
‘Rather grand of you to dub this hunt great,’ Archie raged at Thompson, holding up a newspaper with the phrase emblazoned in a giant headline. ‘You haven’t turned up so much as a thumbprint.’
Thompson crossed his arms and regarded Archie, who had marched into his office at Berkshire Police Headquarters as if to scold an underling. Thompson certainly hoped Agatha Christie was found alive but that seemed more unlikely with every passing day. Living people turned up quickly. Dead people took their time, especially if a murderer had taken pains to hide them.
‘You’re finding every dead woman in England,’ Archie went on, unfairly. Only one dead woman had been found, poor Miss Annabelle Oliver. ‘Except the one you’re actually searching for.’
Thompson attempted to raise an eyebrow and failed. A gesture Archie had in his repertoire and it galled the officer to realize he’d tried to imitate it.