Archie feels sick. He knows, or thinks he knows, why the police wait at the Jameses’ front door.
“What?” Sam couldn’t have looked more astonished if his maid had informed him that his beloved foxhound had spontaneously turned into a poodle. Police officers were for dealing with scrapes among petty laborers, not for knocking on the front door of country houses.
“Yes, sir, a police officer, sir. He’s asking for the colonel.”
“Whatever for?”
“He won’t say. Just keeps asking for the colonel.”
The humiliation of being summoned by a police officer—giving the lie to his concoction about his mother’s condition—almost overshadows his concern about the summoning itself. What must Madge and Sam think of him? How will he explain this to them? To Nancy?
As he proceeds down the road, a rock causes his Delage to spin out, and he nearly loses sight of the police car he’s meant to be following. The momentary separation from the vehicle plants a seed of recklessness in him. What if he just drove off, evading the situation at Styles? Would the police car be able to catch him?
No, he will face his comeuppance like a man. No matter how his actions will be judged, he never wants it said that he’s a man who shirks his duties, who runs from his mistakes.
Following the police car, he turns down the familiar lane leading to his home. The dust from the official vehicle blinds his vision for a second, and when his sight clears, the Tudor peaks of Styles materialize, nearly as impressive as the first time he saw them. How much has changed since that day, he thinks, forcing that memory from his mind.
Archie knows that he must somehow grasp the upper hand of this situation. Perhaps it will help if he sets the tone by assuming his rightful role as master of Styles? Accordingly, he does not wait for the policeman to alight from his car. Instead, he marches past the other police cars parked in Styles’s governor’s drive and heads directly to the slightly ajar front door. When he pushes it wide open, he is surprised to note that not one of the black-uniformed officers gathered in the kitchen like a swarm of deadly bees gathered around their queen takes notice of him. Archie realizes that he has been given a singular chance to assess the situation before he speaks.
He scans the long mahogany table lining the foyer’s right wall to see if any calling cards lie on the silver receiving tray. The tray is bare, but he notices something unusual. Peeking out from underneath the tray is the corner of an envelope, his wife’s distinctive ivory stationary.
Glancing at the police officers absorbed in the loud yet strangely muffled voice of a man he can’t see, undoubtedly their supervisor, Archie slides the envelope out from under the silver tray. Then, keeping his footsteps light, he creeps into his study and quietly closes the door behind him.
Grabbing the ivory-handled letter opener from his desk, he slices open the envelope. The sprawling, spiky handwriting of his wife stares out at him from the notepaper within. Time presses upon him urgently, but he needs little more than several seconds to scan her words. As he finishes, he looks up, feeling as if he’s awoken from a deep slumber into a nightmare. When on earth did she have the time—nay, the prescience, the shrewdness, the patient calculation—to write these words? Had he ever really known his wife?
The narrow walls of his study seem to constrict, and he feels like he cannot breathe. But he knows he must take action. The letter has made clear that he’s no longer the executor of a plan but merely its subject—one trapped in a labyrinth at that—and he must find a way out. Tossing the letter down on the desk, he begins pacing the room, which grows gloomier by the second with an impending storm. What in the name of god should he do?
He is certain of only one thing. While he is prepared to pay his penance, he doesn’t plan on handing over the keys to the jailor. No one can be allowed to see this letter. Walking over to the hearth, he drops the letter and envelope into the flames and watches Agatha’s words burn.
Chapter Five
The Manuscript
October 19, 1912
Ashfield, Torquay, England
I raced across the lane from the Mellors’ estate back home to Ashfield. I’d been quite happily playing badminton with my friend Max Mellor when his maid summoned me to the telephone. Mummy, quite cross, was on the line, ordering me home because an unknown young man was there, “waiting endlessly” for me. She’d told him that she expected me within a quarter of an hour, and when I didn’t appear within the anticipated time—and when he didn’t leave as the minutes passed and I failed to appear—she felt compelled to phone. The poor fellow, whoever he was, obviously hadn’t registered any number of cues my mother sent his way that he should take his leave.
Other than Mummy’s pressure, I had felt no compulsion to return home, especially since Max and I were having a grand time. Life in Torquay was chock-full of these lazy days. Impromptu picnics and sailing and sports engagements and riding outings and musical afternoons by day. Carefully orchestrated garden parties and evening dances and house parties by night. Weeks and months floated by in a pleasant, carefree dream—with a girl’s only goal being the landing of a husband—and I had no wish to wake up.
I guessed that the caller was the stuffy naval officer from the previous night’s dinner party, who’d begged me to read his heavy-handed poems aloud to the other guests. Even so, while I had no desire to resume our stultifying conversation, I didn’t wish for him to irritate Mummy for too long a time. While Mummy was patient and sweet-natured, particularly with me, she could become crotchety in the presence of a bore or someone who set her off schedule. Since my father’s death nearly ten years ago, I’d become my mother’s focus and companion, particularly since my elder siblings Madge and Monty had long since moved on with their own lives, and I relished it. Mummy and I had a lovely relationship—no one in the world understood me as she did—and I felt quite protective of her, even though she was much stronger than she appeared on first glance. The shock of my father’s death and the challenge of the financial circumstances in which he left us had knitted us together tightly, the two of us against the world and all that.
My cheeks flushed and warm from hurrying down the lane, I wiggled out of my cardigan and handed it to Jane, our housemaid. Before I walked from the entryway to the drawing room, I glanced at myself in the mirror to make certain I looked presentable. My dun-colored hair, kissed by the sun into a dark, glimmering blond, looked rather fetching despite—or maybe because of—the tendrils that had escaped my braid. I decided not to tuck the loose pieces back into my hairpins, but I did smooth my hair. Even though I didn’t care much for the opinion of the fellow I suspected sat in the parlor, I always liked to meet Mummy’s expectation that I was a “lovely girl.”
I entered the drawing room, where my mother looked over at me from her usual spot in an armchair near the fireplace. Putting aside her embroidery in order to flee the room at the first polite opportunity, she rose, as did the man sitting opposite her. I could only see the back of his head, which was a sandy blond shade quite a bit lighter than I remembered the naval officer’s hair being.