While the Light Lasts (18 page)

He lifted first one hand, then the other to his lips. Then she was alone, staring at the untasted tea. And, strangely enough, it was only one thing that she saw–a gaudily illuminated text hanging on a whitewashed
wall. The words seemed to spring out from it and hurl themselves at her. ‘What shall it profit a man–' She got up, paid for her tea and went out.

On his return George Crozier was met by a request that his wife might not be disturbed. Her headache, the maid said, was very bad.

It was nine o'clock the next morning when he entered her bedroom, his face rather grave. Deirdre was sitting up in bed. She looked white and haggard, but her eyes shone.

‘George, I've got something to tell you, something rather terrible–'

He interrupted her brusquely.

‘So you've heard. I was afraid it might upset you.'

‘
Upset
me?'

‘Yes. You talked to the poor young fellow that day.'

He saw her hand steal to her heart, her eyelids flicker, then she said in a low, quick voice that somehow frightened him:

‘I've heard nothing. Tell me quickly.'

‘I thought–'

‘Tell me!'

‘Out at that tobacco estate. Chap shot himself. Badly broken up in the War, nerves all to pieces, I suppose. There's no other reason to account for it.'

‘He shot himself–in that dark shed where the
tobacco was hanging.' She spoke with certainty, her eyes like a sleep-walker's as she saw before her in the odorous darkness a figure lying there, revolver in hand.

‘Why, to be sure; that's where you were taken queer yesterday. Odd thing, that!'

Deirdre did not answer. She saw another picture–a table with tea things on it, and a woman bowing her head in acceptance of a lie.

‘Well, well, the War has a lot to answer for,' said Crozier, and stretched out his hand for a match, lighting his pipe with careful puffs.

His wife's cry startled him.

‘Ah! don't, don't! I can't bear the smell!'

He stared at her in kindly astonishment.

‘My dear girl, you mustn't be nervy. After all, you can't escape from the smell of tobacco. You'll meet it everywhere.'

‘Yes, everywhere!' She smiled a slow, twisted smile, and murmured some words that he did not catch, words that she had chosen for the original obituary notice of Tim Nugent's death. ‘While the light lasts I shall remember, and in the darkness I shall not forget.'

Her eyes widened as they followed the ascending spiral of smoke, and she repeated in a low, monotonous voice: ‘Everywhere, everywhere.'

‘While the Light Lasts' was first published in the
Novel Magazine
in April 1924. To those familiar with the works of Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson, Arden's true identity will not have come as a surprise.

Tennyson was among Christie's favourite poets, together with Yeats and T. S. Eliot, and his
Enoch Arden
also inspired the Poirot novel
Taken at the Flood
(1948). The plot of ‘While the Light Lasts' was later used to greater effect as part of
Giant's Bread
(1930), the first of her six novels written under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott. Although of less interest to many than her detective fiction, the Westmacott novels are generally considered to provide a commentary of sorts on some of the events of Christie's own life, a sort of parallel autobiography. In any event, they gave Christie an important means of escape from the world of the detective story, much to the chagrin of her
publishers who were understandably less than keen on anything that distracted her from the business of writing detective stories. The most interesting of the six is the aptly titled
Unfinished Portrait
(1934), which Christie's second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, described as being ‘a blend of real people and events with imagination…more nearly than anywhere else a portrait of Agatha.'

Her own favourite was the third Westmacott novel,
Absent in the Spring
(1944), which she described in her autobiography as, ‘the one book that has satisfied me completely…I wrote that book in three days flat.' She commented, ‘It was written with integrity, with sincerity, it was written as I meant to write it, and that is the proudest joy an author can have.'

ALSO BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

The Mousetrap and Selected Plays

The first-ever publication in book form of The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of London's West End, plus three other Christie thrillers.

 

The Mousetrap

A homicidal maniac terrorizes a group of snowbound guests to the refrain of ‘Three Blind Mice'…

 

And Then There Were None

Ten guilty people, brought together on an island in mysterious circumstances, await their sentence…

 

Appointment With Death

The suffocating heat of an exotic Middle-Eastern setting provides a backdrop for murder…

 

The Hollow

A set of friends convene at a country home where their convoluted relationships mean that any one of them could be a murderer…

 

Christie's plays are as compulsive as her novels. Their colourful characters and ingenious plots provide yet more evidence of her mastery of the detective thriller.

 

ISBN: 0 00 649618 0

ALSO BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays

The first-ever publication in book form of
Witness for the Prosecution
, Christie's highly successful stage thriller which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best foreign play, plus three of her classic mysteries.

 

Witness for the Prosecution

A stunning courtroom drama in which a scheming wife testifies against her husband in a shocking murder trial…

 

Towards Zero

A psychopathic murderer homes in on unsuspecting victims in a seaside house, perched high on a cliff…

 

Go Back For Murder

When the young feity Carla, orphaned at the tender age of five, discovers 16 years later that her mother was imprisoned for murdering her father, she determines to prove her dead mother's innocence…

 

Verdict

Passion, murder and love are the deadly ingredients which combine to make this one of Christie's more unusual thrillers, which she described as ‘the best play I have written with the exception of
Witness for the Prosecution
.'

 

ISBN: 0 00 649045 X

ALSO BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Come, Tell Me How You Live

Agatha Christie was already well known as a crime writer when she accompanied her husband, Max Mallowan, to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s. She took enormous interest in all his excavations, and when friends asked what her strange life was like, she decided to answer their questions in this delightful book.

 

First published in 1946,
Come, Tell Me How You Live
gives a charming picture of Agatha Christie herself, while also giving insight into some of her most popular novels, including
Murder in Mesopotamia
and
Appointment with Death
. It is, as Jacquetta Hawkes concludes in her introduction, ‘a pure pleasure to read'.

 

‘Perfectly delightful…colourful, lively and occasionally touching and thought-provoking.'

CHARLES OSBORNE
,
Books & Bookmen

 

‘Good and enjoyable…she has a delightfully light touch.'

MARGHANITA LASKI
,
Country Life

 

ISBN: 0 00 653114 8