‘Why, Mr Chilton,’ she said, and turned wonderfully, beautifully red. As if surprised by the way her face warmed, she touched her cheek, then removed her hand quickly, further embarrassed at being so transparent.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Call me Frank.’
With no spoken agreement, the two stood. Agatha put on a long woollen coat, rather the wrong size for her, too wide and too short. Chilton helped her to gather up her stack of books and they went together to the desk. Chilton started with surprise to hear Agatha give her name as Mrs O’Dea.
Miss Barnard looked up with a smile. Then something in her face changed. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘You look just like the missing authoress. The one he was asking after.’ She pointed to Chilton, then turned the newspaper towards them, again showing the picture.
This was Chilton’s fault. He should have warned her, kept her from showing herself to the librarian. He watched as Agatha brought her hands to her pearl necklace, paling almost as dramatically as she had coloured earlier. By way of coming to her rescue, he put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Darling, there is a bit of a resemblance, isn’t there?’ To the librarian he said, ‘My wife hates being told she looks like anyone else. Wants to be an original.’
Dubious, Miss Barnard returned her eyes to the picture, then back to Agatha. ‘Well,’ she said, half convinced, ‘I do hope they find the poor lady alive. Seems unlikely at this point, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes indeed,’ Chilton said.
Agatha, absent her stack of books, had already turned and headed for the door. Chilton gathered everything – including my Galsworthy – and bade goodbye to the librarian.
‘You’re certainly not cut out for this,’ he scolded, when he caught up with Agatha outside. ‘Not much of a poker player either, I would suppose.’
‘Did you see that headline? My photograph? The Great Hunt? How can I ever go back? How can I ever face the world again?’ She covered her face with gloved hands, then stepped forwards and pressed the crown of her head against Chilton’s chest. He wasn’t much taller than she so she had to stoop to do so. Chilton lifted his arm to hold her and the books clattered to the ground. From where they stood, he could see the librarian, standing in the window, watching them.
‘Agatha,’ he said.
She stepped back and they kneeled together to pick up the books.
‘Will you drive me back to the manor?’ she said. ‘I don’t feel fit to do it myself.’
Chilton cranked up the Bentley while Agatha settled in the passenger seat. Miss Oliver’s coat smelled like rosewater. The Bentley was too large for Agatha’s taste. How she missed her own little car. She thought of it left in so precarious a spot and hoped it was all right. She hoped that some good soul – Archie, even – had pushed it back onto the road and driven it home where it belonged. When she was a girl, in the tidal wave of financial wreckage following her father’s death – and the other times in her life, early in her marriage, for example, when the spectre of money troubles loomed, her mother-in-law’s warnings bearing out, numbers not properly arranging themselves in the ledger – what if someone had told her then that one day, she herself would make enough money, by her own hands, to purchase such a thing: her dear Morris Cowley? Would she ever see it again? Was it worth leaving it behind, along with everything else – Teddy – to never have to face the questions the whole world would ask if she reappeared?
When Chilton got behind the wheel she said, ‘I can’t bear going home and facing the world. But how can I do anything else? The more time they spend looking for me, the worse it will be. You should drive me to police headquarters straight away. Just end this whole thing here and now.’
‘I don’t find myself able to do that. Not yet.’
So many police, so many people, discharged in the search for her. What luck, that such a lovely one had been successful. She reached over and grabbed Chilton’s hand. ‘I don’t like romances,’ she said. ‘They ring false to me. Especially when people meet and fall in love at a glance.’