Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Crispin spent the night in my bed, not for the first time.
Christopher initially offered him the use of the Chesterfield, and Crispin seemed inclined to accept, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around inviting the Duke of Sutherland, no matter how illegitimate, to kip on the sofa in the sitting room.
So I offered him my bed instead—without me in it, naturally; I’m sure that doesn’t need to be said—and I spent the night on the Chesterfield instead.
It’s a comfortable piece of furniture, and I’m smaller than Crispin, so it worked out reasonably well for both of us.
In the morning, they both outfitted themselves in tweed and plus-fours from Christopher’s closet, while I pulled on a heavy skirt and wool stockings and dug out a pair of galoshes (for tramping through the underbrush) before going to the kitchenette and putting together a picnic basket (for lunching in the bracken).
We said goodbye to Evans, I crawled into the back seat with the basket, Christopher climbed into the passenger seat next to Crispin, and off we went through the foggy streets of Bloomsbury.
The distance from London to Newlands Corner is somewhere around forty miles.
It took us several hours to get there, partly because of the London traffic for the first part of the journey, partly because of the fog—which made traffic slower everywhere—and partly because Crispin didn’t put the Hispano-Suiza through its paces the way he normally did.
Most likely this was because he had Christopher and me onboard.
I suppose he didn’t care whether he himself met a sticky end—as evidenced by the accident in which the H6’s predecessor, the Ballot, bit the dust—but he was less sanguine about risking Christopher’s life.
Mine too, perhaps, but when it came right down to it, Christopher’s assurance that Crispin loved me aside, I was pretty certain that if it came down to rescuing one of us from a burning building, he’d go back for Christopher before he went back for me.
At any rate, progress was slow and stately. We made it to our destination in time for lunch.
“Here’s Newlands Corner,” Crispin said, gesturing out the front window.
I peered past him. “Where?”
He flicked a glance at me. “You’re looking at it.”
“There’s no corner here.” There were fields bisected by lines of naked trees and ribbons of roads, all against the backdrop of rolling hills and the gloomy gray of the sky.
His lips twitched. “No. But this is still Newlands Corner. That’s the chalk quarry, behind there.”
He gestured to a stand of trees. “And up ahead, if I’m not mistaken, the bushes look impacted. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where the motorcar went off the road.”
I wouldn’t be surprised, either, as I stared greedily at the broken twigs and bent branches.
The Morris Cowley was long gone, of course. I’m sure the local police had towed it somewhere to go through it with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. I superimposed it—small and black—on the scene and gazed at it even more avidly.
“The Silent Pool is down this way,” Crispin said, and the Hispano-Suiza picked up speed again—albeit not too much of it—as we passed the crash site and kept going. “I assume you want to see that, too?”
His eyes met mine in the mirror.
“The Silent Pool? I wouldn’t mind.” It had been dredged and Mrs. Christie’s body hadn’t been found, but we were here, and how could I allow the opportunity to pass when we were so close?
“We’ll have to hike to it,” Crispin warned. “I hope you brought suitable shoes.”
He flicked a glance into the well between his seat and mine. I scoffed. He was one to talk, in his elegant tweed and argyle socks and hand-stitched brogues.
“I did. How do you know so much about this place, anyway?”
I expected some glib explanation about a girl who lived nearby—which was the explanation I always expected, to be fair. Instead, he said, “I’ve been following the story. Who hasn’t, these days?”
“I’m surprised it’s as empty as it is,” Christopher commented, as he looked out the window upon the deserted downs. “I know the weather isn’t good, but I would have expected people to be traipsing up and down, looking for clues.”
“It’s been five days since the disappearance,” I said. “I suppose they’ve moved farther afield. They’ve already searched this area as well as they can have, I’m sure.”
If they’d gone to the lengths of dredging ponds, they hadn’t left any stone unturned, pun totally intended. They would have opened every door and combed every copse of trees between here and Berkshire, no doubt.
“If it were me,” Crispin said, “I would have headed for London.”
Christopher squinted at him. “If you were Mrs. Christie and you were running away from home, do you mean?”
Crispin nodded. “Even if I weren’t Mrs. Christie. If I wanted to run away from home—and don’t think the possibility didn’t cross my mind when I was six or so; in fact, I made it all the way to the village once, before one of the shopkeepers figured out what I was doing and brought me home.”
“How did His Grace handle that?” I hadn’t arrived on English shores until the Great War broke out in August of 1914, when we were all eleven. Crispin at six had been well before my time.
He shot me a look in the mirror. “Grandfather, do you mean? My father—” He made a face, but carried on, “wasn’t Duke of Sutherland then.”
“Of course not.” Duke Henry hadn’t breathed his last until April. “I meant your… Uncle Harold. Although I suppose your grandfather found out, too?”
Crispin nodded. “He got a good laugh out of it. Father was less amused. I had to eat supper standing up for the next two days.”
“Bastard,” I said. Bad enough that he’d knocked his adult son about in recent years, but to lay hands on a small child?
He flicked me a look. “There’s no need to be disparaging, Darling.”
I huffed. “I’m not. You know very well that it wasn’t a comment on your parentage. Your parents were married when you were born. To other people, admittedly, but it’s not as if your mother wasn’t legally the Viscountess St George when she gave birth.”
He shrugged. “I don’t suppose it matters anymore anyway.”
No, it didn’t. “So if you wanted to run away from home—from an unwanted marriage to a woman you don’t love, for instance…”
The look he shot me this time was sardonic, but he answered the question. “I wouldn’t be coming here, for certain.”
“Maybe she was passing through,” Christopher suggested. “On her way to the coast, perhaps. Bournemouth or Southampton. A boat to New York.”
“Still on about eloping to America, Kit?”
Christopher didn’t respond beyond a shrug, and Crispin added, “I’d be making for London, if it were me. It’s much easier to lose oneself in a crowd. And much easier to get somewhere else from there, too. One can board a train to practically anywhere from somewhere in London.”
So one could. “The idea is that she was distraught by Archie’s affair and wasn’t thinking,” I said, eyeing the landscape outside the window critically.
“That she got in the motorcar and went off without knowing where she was going. Although you’re right.
Barring motoring without thinking, there’s no logical reason why anyone would come this way.
Even if she were going to Bournemouth, there are easier roads one could take. ”
“Godalming, too,” Crispin agreed.
I stared at the back of his head. “Pardon me?”
“I said, there are easier ways to get to Godalming, as well. She would have been better off turning off farther north, and going through Woking and Mayford to Jacob’s Well—”
It must have registered on him that I wasn’t following the conversation, that I was, in fact, staring at him with my mouth open, because he stopped. “Archie and his girlfriend were spending the weekend at Hurstmore Cottage, correct?”
I nodded, still staring.
“Hurstmore Cottage is in Godalming. Which is located due south of Sunningdale, where Agatha Christie lived. This—” he gestured beyond the windshield, “—is southeast from Sunningdale, and rather a long way from Godalming.”
I closed my mouth. And opened it again. “You think she was going to Hurstmore Cottage and got turned around?”
“I think it’s possible,” Crispin said. “If you discovered that your husband was spending the weekend with his mistress, wouldn’t you be tempted to follow him there and cause a scene?”
I absolutely would be. I’d want to see them together, for one thing—to see this woman he was leaving me for—and I would also want her to hear exactly what I thought of her.
If I didn’t do that, I would stay at home with my head held high. I wasn’t the one in the wrong, after all. What I would absolutely not do, was run off with my tail between my legs.
Unless, of course, I wanted to make it look like my husband was guilty of murder.
“So your idea is that she was going to Godalming but took a wrong turn and ended up east of Guildford instead.”
“Guildford is on the way to Godalming,” Crispin said. “Newlands Corner is on the wrong side of it, admittedly. But I think it bears considering.”
I thought it did, too, and so did Christopher, since he was nodding spiritedly. “You’re a genius, Crispin.”
“Hardly that,” Crispin demurred, but he looked gratified anyway, the small part of him I could see in the mirror.
“That doesn’t explain what happened after she arrived here,” I said, “of course. But at least it makes for a good reason for why she might have been coming this way. There’s nothing else of interest around here.”
Crispin shook his head and turned the Hispano-Suiza off the road. “We’ll have to walk from here. Get your galoshes out, Darling.”
I sighed and reached for them.