The London Blitz Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,21

psychology and half the winter weather.

The two-floor apartment that was the Mallowan portion of the connected Bauhaus flats had come furnished—just as well, as after the bombing at Sheffield Terrace, all their furniture had been stored in the new Winterbrook squash court in Wallingford. These accommodations pleased her—the neighbors were friendly but unobtrusive (nary a question about “Agatha Christie” since she’d moved in)—and the building included a small unpretentious restaurant where she took many of her meals. She loved to cook, but when provisions were so hard to come by, a decent close-at-hand restaurant like this one was a godsend.

In the summer the Lawn Road Flats were most pleasant, with a garden ideal for little picnics; she was particularly taken with the bank of trees and shrubs behind the building, and in the spring, a big white cherry tree that rose to a pyramidal point presented itself, in all its blooming glory, just outside her second-floor bedroom window, encouraging her to rise with a smile even in wartime.

The only furniture she’d imported were her basic office accoutrements: large firm table and typewriter and hard upright chair for writing, and her comfy old easy chair for thinking. She set herself up in the library-style study—whose empty shelves stared accusingly at her until, some months later, she’d half-filled them with reference works, mostly medical and chemistry tomes—where (as was her habit) she removed the phone.

Oh, and one other thing: a spinet piano. She could not exist without a piano; life would not have been worth living. This she kept in the library as well, because intermissions of music between bouts of writing and thinking she found frankly therapeutic.

Her only company—outside of Stephen Glanville popping in twice or thrice a week, from a few doors down—was the Sealyham terrier, James. He was a playful pup, beautifully housebroken (James, not Stephen), and excellent company when she walked to Hampstead Heath, four hundred and twenty acres of delightful grassy common, perfect for picnics and walks among the wooded groves and open spaces. What heaven it was to sit nibbling an apple, gazing out at rippling glassy lakes where young lovers rowed.

But it was winter now, with snow on the common, and that left only work—work at the hospital by day (and occasional evenings), work by night in the library on her novels and stories and plays. Few would have guessed that for Agatha writing was a chore, as tedious as doing the dishes, as hard as chopping wood… harder—or that she would much rather have spent her time cooking or gardening or going on outings with (the absent) Max.

Or better still, being out on a dig with Max, lovely sun beating down, pearls of well-earned perspiration gliding decoratively over her cheeks, as she assisted the man she loved in his truly important efforts (as opposed to the trivialities of her own “career”).

And yet still, somehow, if not by nature then through the accumulation of time and effort, she had become a writer; and writing never left her. Even now, as she sat in the cheery, informal little Lawn Road Flats restaurant—Tuesday morning, a respectable-looking matron (A matron already! What a horror!) in sensible brown tweed and a cream silk blouse, remindful of a femininity she had not (yet) abandoned—she noodled on the plotting and characters of the next Poirot in a small black spiral notebook…

… not unlike the notebooks in which Sir Bernard Spilsbury recorded the clues relating to his very real crimes.

And that gave her a shudder of revulsive self-recognition, a shameful shiver of senselessness. Like Max, Sir Bernard did important work. His notebook entries dealt with real mysteries, not fanciful ones. Whatever useful purpose in this war-torn world might her work serve?

The only response she could come up with was, perhaps, a self-serving rationalization; recalling that RAF cadet she’d met yesterday, that brave lad whose life would soon be on the line for his country, Agatha knew that her silly little novels gave that hero-to-be solace, distracted him briefly from the problems of his real, very unpleasant world.

She wondered if that were justification enough.

Sipping her coffee (that she preferred the brew to tea seemed somehow unpatriotic), Agatha had another mental flash, suddenly remembering a dream she’d had last night. Usually her dreams left her within seconds of rising; other times she could vividly recall them long enough for her to record them in one of her notebooks… you never knew what mental trifle might prove useful in the writing game.

The reason this dream