Day Six after the Disappearance
Thursday, December 9, 1926
Styles, Sunningdale, England
“Why did you do it, Archie?” his mother asks when he picks up the telephone after dinner. Her voice is tight and small, almost unrecognizable from the demanding, certain tone that echoes throughout his memories of his childhood and early adult years.
It isn’t the question he expected. Not from her at least. From the police perhaps, but not his own mother. And he is unprepared to answer.
“Are you there, Archie? I heard you pick up the phone.”
“Yes, Mother, I’m here.”
“Then why don’t you answer me? Why did you agree to this terrible interview with the Daily Mail?”
His body, which had been frozen into place by her query, relaxes. She’s only referencing the article, he thinks. Nothing more, certainly not Nancy. At the thought of her name, he wonders how his beloved is bearing up. “I wanted to give my side of the story, Mother. The press had been painting me in an unfavorable light, and I hoped to correct that depiction.”
“Oh really? That was your goal? Well, you certainly went about it in a very peculiar way.” His mother’s familiar tone returns.
“What do you mean?” Why is his mother talking in circles? His head is already spinning from his exchange with Rosalind, and he’s not certain he can take much more today.
“Did you think that telling people that you and your wife routinely spend the weekend apart would paint a pretty picture of your marriage, Archie?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer before continuing. “And did you think that announcing you didn’t want to bother with the press and all the—I quote—‘relentless’ phone calls you receive would endear you to readers?”
“Yes?” he answers quizzically. Hopefully.
“Can’t you see that makes you sound heartless and unfeeling? A man who cares about the whereabouts of his missing wife would take every phone call and every tip and be grateful for it. Don’t you understand?” He hears his mother inhale deeply, as if forestalling tears. “And to raise the newspaper gossip about possible arguments between you and Agatha is damnably foolish. It gives credence to the rumors about the state of your marriage where no credence should be due. If you weren’t worried about that gossip, you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Has he ever heard his mother swear before? He doesn’t know what to do—apologize, rationalize his behavior, yell—so he says, “That wasn’t what I intended.”
She is quiet, an unnatural state for a woman brimming with opinions. After a long, silent pause, she says, “If anyone was considering whether or not you were guilty of your wife’s disappearance and unsure, Archie, you went and convinced them in the Daily Mail.”
Those scathing words are the last thing he remembers. He must have signed off on his conversation with his mother at some point, because when Kenward and Goddard seek him out, he’s sitting at the telephone table with the receiver in his hand and the line is dead. But when he checks the clock, an hour has passed, and he has no recollection of what he did with that time.
“Colonel Christie?” Goddard says with a note of concern in his voice.
“Yes?”
Kenward answers; no such worry is evident in his tone. “We have some questions for you.”
“We can retire to my study,” Archie offers, rising from the chair. He is weary.
“No, I think we will have this discussion in the kitchen,” Kenward says.
Why the kitchen? Archie thinks but does not ask. From Kenward’s demeanor, he knows better than to critique or argue.
As they walk toward the kitchen, they pass Charlotte and her sister Mary in the hallway. The women—so alike with their unattractive bobs but so different in the appearance of their eyes, Charlotte’s inclined toward merriment and Mary’s naturally downcast—are whispering. Although they stop talking upon spotting him, Archie catches the tail end of a phrase: “tell them.” What are they discussing?
The officers must have instructed the staff to vacate the kitchen, because it is empty when they arrive. After they settle into three of the four mismatched chairs that surround the simple wooden table where the staff eats their meals, Kenward says, “Your Daily News article was certainly a surprise.”
“So I hear,” Archie says with a sigh.
Goddard raises an eyebrow, but Kenward plows forward. “You do realize how you appear in that piece, don’t you?” He can’t resist a nasty smile.
Archie doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to dignify Kenward’s query and certainly doesn’t want to encourage questions along those lines. He’s had quite enough on that topic from his mother and realizes now that he has made a major misstep.
“You galvanized otherwise silent players with that article, Colonel Christie. Good for us, of course, though I’m certain that wasn’t your intention,” Goddard says, much to Archie’s surprise. He’d assumed that this particular interrogation was Kenward’s idea and, as such, his to control. But Goddard seems to be in the thick of it as well.
“No, it wasn’t.”
Goddard pulls a pad of paper from his pocket and consults it for a moment. “After reading your Daily Mail interview, a maid in the employ of the James family of Hurtmore Cottage has stepped forward. She says—and I quote—she felt compelled to divulge the truth in the face of your lies.” He glances at Archie, who is stunned. What had he said or done at the Jameses’ home for which he’ll now be accountable? Rifling through his memories of the weekend, he wonders what was overheard or seen. He has no particular memory of a maid, but then, why would he? The servant’s role was to avoid notice.
Kenward leaps into the fray. He’s almost giddy. “Do you know what she told us?”
Archie says nothing. He’s too terrified to speak.
“No? It’s a fact that we’ve long suspected but did not have any confirmation. Until now. And boy, what confirmation we received!” He exchanges a glance with Goddard, which to Archie seems to say Should you tell him or shall I?
In the end, Kenward can’t restrain himself, and he blurts out, “The maid told us your weekend at Hurtmore Cottage was no ordinary golf weekend. Its main purpose was to celebrate your engagement to your mistress, Miss Nancy Neele.”
A surge of vertigo overtakes Archie, and he feels as though he’s fallen backward from a great height, when in fact, he is still sitting on the kitchen chair. Details from his evening at Hurtmore Cottage take hold of his mind—whispered conversations between him and Nancy, the toast given by Sam James, and the late-night visit to Nancy’s room—and he knows it would be futile to deny the maid’s assertions outright. But he’ll be damned if he’ll admit anything beyond the maid’s claims. Nancy Neele is the woman he loves, the one he plans on marrying, and he will do whatever it takes to protect her good name.
Goddard takes a turn, looking at Kenward as if this exchange is rehearsed. “But what we can’t help but wonder, Colonel Christie, is this. How can you be engaged to Miss Neele when you are still very much married to Mrs. Christie?”
Kenward answers, “Unless, of course, you know that Mrs. Christie is dead.”