Christietown (29 page)

“Bull’s-eye!” roared the crowd. “A pint for our man Ian!”

Sunday night. The darts championship at Ye Olde King’s Head. The game was 501 up. Each player starts with a score of 501 and takes turns throwing three darts. The score is cal
culated and deducted from the player’s total. Bull’s-eye scores fifty, the outer ring scores twenty-five, a dart in the double or treble ring counts double or treble the segment score. The object is to be the first player to reduce the score to exactly zero, the only caveat being that the last dart thrown must land in a double or the bull’s-eye.

A woman in a tan gabardine business suit erased the number on the chalkboard and changed it to the number 2. She swiv
eled around, a look of glee transforming her plain face. “Double

one, people. This is it!”

“Piece of cake,” said someone.

“For Ian, maybe,” said a portly man in blue coveralls, and everyone laughed.

I sat in a corner booth, nursing a pint of bitters. It was warm and flat but I didn’t much care. I had my eye on Ian.

His aim was unerring, which hardly surprised me.

Ian, poised for the second dart, spun around to address a beautiful young woman sitting on a bar stool. “You watch out,” he said with a wink. “If I make it to Purfleet’s Circus Tavern in Essex, you’re coming with me.” She blew him a kiss.

That was when he saw me.

I hadn’t been avoiding him, but still, he’d been unaware, wrapped up in the game. He flinched ever so slightly, then, turning to face the board, let the dart fly. It landed on the black next to the number 1.

A hush fell over the room. The bartender stopped pulling drafts. Patrons stopped chewing on pretzels.

“Too bad,” the scorekeeper said, taking off her jacket and hanging it by the side of the bar. “A single.” She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse.

“You playing, Sheila?” someone asked.

“No. I’m just warm,” she replied.

Ian approached the portly man the way a courtier approaches a king. “What do you say, friend?” he asked. “I find myself in the awkward position of being at one.”

The man finished off his beer and perched his empty glass on the bar rail. Studying Ian, he asked, “You really think you can split the eleven?”

“I do,” said Ian.

He waved his hand, a benevolent ruler granting a subject’s request. “Then have at it, man.”

Now the room was silent, the air thick with expectation.

Ian wiped the sweat from his brow, squinted, blew on the dart, rubbed it between his hands. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it on its way.

It landed directly in the middle of the eleven.

The pub broke out in cheers. Ian took a lap around the room, like a prize-winning horse, accepting congratulations, slaps on the back, free drinks.

I looked at the dart trapped between the vertical lines of the eleven.

I saw Ian, behind bars.

He slowed to a stop in front of my booth. “May I?”

“Please,” I said, scooting over.

“Death in the Clouds
,” he said. “Do you remember that one, Cece?”

I shook my head. “Not in any detail.”

He took a hankie out of his pocket and wiped his face, still slick with perspiration. “The murder weapon is a poisoned dart, with orange and black silk thread knotted around it.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding.

“The story is set on an aircraft, which is, of course, a clever variant on the isolated country house. All the players are trapped inside. Hercule Poirot, the occupant of seat number nine, is one of the suspects, but we know from the beginning that he’s innocent.”

“He’s the detective,” I said. “Despite rumors to the con
trary, Agatha always played fair.”

But then I remembered that two of the passengers, the Messrs. Dupont, were archaeologists, like Agatha’s second hus
band, Max. At some point in the story, they recount in horri
fied tones the tale of an Englishman who left his sick wife alone in a small hotel in Syria. Max had once done the same thing to Agatha. Was she getting back at him? Was that fair play?

“What are you doing here, Cece?” asked Ian.

“I’ve been worried about you.”

“No need.” He studied my face. “Was it you who brought me the comforter?”

I nodded.

“That was very kind of you,” he said, sidestepping the ques
tion of why he had needed one in the first place.

“Don’t thank me,” I said abruptly, pulling something out of my purse. It’d come in the mail yesterday from England.

They Fly Through the Air.

A history of the circus.

I flipped through the book until I came to the page I wanted. A photograph of Deadeye Ian, with a trick rifle in his hand.

“‘At one time, he was famed around the country,’” I read out loud. “‘Shooting five balloons off an assistant in under a second, hitting two targets so fast it sounded like one shot, blasting a target behind him using the sole of his boot to cock and fire the gun, a dime tossed in the air, an apple once off a tree and again before it hit the ground, and his
pìece de résis
tance
, the famous bullet catch.’”

Ian’s eyes darted furtively around the room. His breath was coming quickly. I thought for a minute he was going to vault over me to escape into the night, but then, all at once, he set
tled back into his seat. Most criminals are relieved when they’re caught. First there’s panic, then resignation, and finally, relief. Agatha Christie had taught me that.

“Everybody’s got a secret,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“It’s all in the stance,” he said. “You mount the rifle to your shoulder, balancing the front end on either the palm or the web of the off hand. Then you stand, so your bones support the weight of the rifle. Bones don’t get tired. Muscles do.”

Ian looked so very tired—muscles, bones, heart, mind.

“The trick of the bullet catch,” he said, “is wax. You shape the wax just so, then give it a candy coating the color of lead. Nobody ever knows it’s not real. They watch you load the rifle and they’re never the wiser. The explosion of the charge and the propulsive motion vaporizes the wax. Ta-dah!” He smiled wistfully. “Even then, I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”

I took a deep breath. “What went wrong with Silvana?”

He closed his eyes. “Damn mirrors.”

The mirrored tiles on her fireplace. The pink bulbs. Silvana wanted to see herself bathed in the soft light.

“She broke the house rules!” he exclaimed. “She knew them inside out and
still
she broke them. You know how thorough I am, Cece, how attentive to details. I go to great lengths to ensure that each and every Christietown resident understands the importance of the bylaws. We sit down together and go over them point by point. But Silvana disregarded me. She and Dov were old friends. She thought that entitled her to special privileges.” He lowered his head, dropped his voice. “I just wanted to keep the commotion going, keep the sales fig
ures up. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt, I swear it. I am truly sorry.”

When he looked through Silvana’s window, the rifle poised on his shoulder, Ian didn’t see what he expected to see. The room looked like a patchwork quilt. Everything in it was frag
mented, reflected, doubled, redoubled. He didn’t shoot straight because he couldn’t see straight.

They Do It with Mirrors
.

That book I remembered.

You always believe the worst, Ruth Van Rydock says to Miss Marple, whose china blue eyes don’t so much as blink.

Miss Marple replies: That’s because the worst is so often true.

Miss Marple was a pessimist. Agatha was an optimist. Still, the point is not what you think—about the world, about your
self. The point is how you act on it.

“Ian, my boy!” The portly man in the blue coveralls stood before us. “Will we be seeing you next Sunday? My nephew will be here. He once played a game with the great Phil Taylor, or so he says.”

Ian looked at me, then said, “I don’t think so. I’m going away for a while.”

I used his phone to call Mariposa and McAllister. I told them where we were, and that the gun was on the eleventh floor of the Clock Tower Building, among Ian’s things. They said to not so much as move, that they were on their way.

“Will they arrest me here, Cece, in front of everyone?” Ian smoothed down his guayabera.

I didn’t know.

What I did know was that he was going to jail for an acci
dent.

And Dov Pick and Avi Semel were getting off scot-free, despite poisoning the water supply and looting the aquifer and god knows what else.

Business as usual.

That’s Chinatown, Jake.

As it turns out, no place else is any different—not Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, not Christietown either.

“Ian?”

He looked up.

“You aren’t related to Agatha Christie, are you?”

Before he could answer, Mariposa and McAllister had mate
rialized in front of us.

Ian was terrified.

I squeezed his hand and promised him we’d see each other again.

C
HAPTER
4
9

etrayal by Chambermaid.
In other circumstances, thought Agatha, it might have made for a fine title. Ah, well. So Rosie with the overbite was more astute than she appeared. Agatha couldn’t help but berate herself. For a novelist, she’d turned out to be a poor judge of character indeed.

Tipped off by Rosie and then the local police, Archie was in the lobby of the Harrogate, determined to move slowly, as if his wife were a forest creature likely to bolt at the slightest rustling.

He was seated in a wingback chair, his face buried in a news
paper.

But he wasn’t reading.

Not about how a medium in Guildford, channeling a twelve
year-old African girl named Maisie, had contacted Agatha through a used powder-puff.

Nor about the hypothesis that she’d driven off in a dark red four-seater with a mystery lover, with whom she was ensconced near Pyrford.

Nor about the most absurd of the theories, that she was living in London disguised as a man.

He knew better than that.

No, Archie wasn’t reading.

He was lying in wait.

Superintendent McDowall of the Claro Division was hovering nearby, wondering how this was going to play to his superiors. The twitchy manageress of the hotel, Mrs. Taylor, was pacing the floor of her office, anticipating with no great pleasure the theatrics to come. The esteemed members of the press were massing outside, the chill air biting at their ink-stained fingers.

It was then that an unsuspecting Agatha came downstairs and seated herself in the lounge.

Seeing all he needed to see, Archie signaled Superintendent Mc-Dowall.

Yes, the woman in the pink georgette dress with the silk camel
lia at her shoulder was in fact his wife.

He’d expected a scene. But when Archie approached Agatha, she acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. They sat together quietly by the fire. Later, they took a corner table in the restaurant.

She talked. He listened.

She confessed everything.

Afterward, she told him she was deeply sorry.

She whispered the words over and over again until they were just hollow sounds in her ears.

After leaving Agatha in her hotel bedroom, Archie rang Styles to tell his wife’s secretary that she’d been found, and that she’d been suffering from amnesia.

That evening, husband and wife slept in separate rooms.

When it was time to leave the following morning, the cameras
were poised to strike. Agatha held her head high as the bellboy opened the door of the waiting taxicab, which whisked them to the station.

The railway staff had placed an Out of Order sign on the ma
chine that sold penny tickets, hoping to keep the crowds at bay.