Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Heinemann 1952

Copyright © 1952 Rosalind Hicks Charitable Trust. All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Cover by ninataradesign.com © HarperCollins 2017

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008131425

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780007534975

Version: 2018-04-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

BOOK I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

BOOK II

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

BOOK III

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Also by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

BOOK I

CHAPTER 1
I

Ann Prentice stood on the platform at Victoria, waving.

The boat train drew out in a series of purposeful jerks, Sarah’s dark head disappeared, and Ann Prentice turned to walk slowly down the platform towards the exit.

She experienced the strangely mixed sensations that seeing a loved one off may occasionally engender.

Darling Sarah—how she would miss her … Of course it was only for three weeks … But the flat would seem so empty … Just herself and Edith—two dull middle-aged women …

Sarah was so alive, so vital, so positive about everything … And yet still such a darling black-haired baby—

How awful! What a way to think! How frightfully annoyed Sarah would be! The one thing that Sarah—and all the other girls of her age—seemed to insist upon was an attitude of casual indifference on the part of their parents. ‘No fuss, Mother,’ they said urgently.

They accepted, of course, tribute in kind. Taking their clothes to the cleaners and fetching them and usually paying for them. Difficult telephone calls (‘If you just ring Carol up, it will be so much easier, Mother.’) Clearing up the incessant untidiness. (‘Darling, I did mean to take away my messes. But I have simply got to rush.’)

‘Now when I was young,’ reflected Ann …

Her thoughts went back. Hers had been an old-fashioned home. Her mother had been a woman of over forty when she was born, her father older still, fifteen or sixteen years older than her mother. The house had been run in the way her father liked.

Affection had not been taken for granted, it had been expressed on both sides.

‘There’s my dear little girl.’ ‘Father’s pet!’ ‘Is there anything I can get you, Mother darling?’

Tidying up the house, odd errands, tradesmen’s books, invitations and social notes, all these Ann had attended to as a matter of course. Daughters existed to serve their parents—not the other way about.

As she passed near the bookstall, Ann asked herself suddenly, ‘Which was the best?’

Surprisingly enough, it didn’t seem an easy question to answer.

Running her eyes along the publications on the bookstall (something to read this evening in front of the fire) she came to the unexpected decision that it didn’t really matter. The whole thing was a convention, nothing more. Like using slang. At one period one said things were ‘topping’, and then that they were ‘too divine’, and then that they were ‘marvellous’, and that one ‘couldn’t agree with you more’, and that you were ‘madly’ fond of this, that and the other.

Children waited on parents, or parents waited on children—it made no difference to the underlying vital relationship of person to person. Between Sarah and herself there was, Ann believed, a deep and genuine love. Between her and her own mother? Looking back she thought that under the surface fondness and affection there had been, actually, that casual and kindly indifference which it was the fashion to assume nowadays.

Smiling to herself, Ann bought a Penguin, a book that she remembered reading some years ago and enjoying. Perhaps it might seem a little sentimental now, but that wouldn’t matter, as Sarah was not going to be there …

Ann thought: ‘I shall miss her—of course I shall miss her—but it will be rather peaceful …’

And she thought: ‘It will be a rest for Edith, too. She gets upset when plans are always being changed and meals altered.’

For Sarah and her friends were always in a flux of coming and going and ringing up and changing plans. ‘Mother darling, can we have a meal early? We want to go to a movie.’ ‘Is that you, Mother? I rang up to say I shan’t be in to lunch after all.’

To Edith, that faithful retainer of over twenty years’ service, now doing three times the work she was once expected to undertake, such interruptions to normal life were very irritating.

Edith, in Sarah’s phrase, often turned sour.

Not that Sarah couldn’t get round Edith any time she liked. Edith might scold and grumble, but she adored Sarah.

It would be very quiet alone with Edith. Peaceful—but very quiet … A queer cold feeling made Ann give a little shiver … She thought: ‘Nothing but quietness now—’ Quietness stretching forward vaguely down the slopes of old age into death. Nothing, any more, to look forward to.

‘But what do I want?’ she asked herself. ‘I’ve had everything. Love and happiness with Patrick. A child. I’ve had all I wanted from life. Now—it’s over. Now Sarah will go on where I leave off. She will marry, have children. I shall be a grandmother.’

She smiled to herself. She would enjoy being a grandmother. She pictured handsome spirited children, Sarah’s children. Naughty little boys with Sarah’s unruly black hair, plump little girls. She would read to them—tell them stories …

She smiled at the prospect—but the cold feeling was still there. If only Patrick had lived. The old rebellious sorrow rose up. It was so long ago now—when Sarah was only three—so long ago that the loss and the agony were healed. She could think of Patrick gently, without a pang. The impetuous young husband that she had loved so much. So far away now—far away in the past.

But today rebellion rose up anew. If Patrick was still alive, Sarah would go from them—to Switzerland for winter sports, to a husband and a home in due course—and she and Patrick would be there together, older, quieter, but sharing life and its ups and downs together. She would not be alone …

Ann Prentice came out into the crowded life of the station yard. She thought to herself: ‘How sinister all those red buses look—drawn up in line like monsters waiting to be fed.’ They seemed fantastically to have a sentient life of their own—a life that was, perhaps, inimical to their maker, Man.

What a busy, noisy, crowded world it was, everyone coming and going, hurrying, rushing, talking, laughing, complaining, full of greetings and partings.

And suddenly, once again, she felt that cold pang—of aloneness.

She thought: ‘It’s time Sarah went away—I’m getting too dependent on her. I’m making her, perhaps, too dependent on me. I mustn’t do that. One mustn’t hold on to the young—stop them leading their own lives. That would be wicked—really wicked …’

She must efface herself, keep well in the background, encourage Sarah to make her own plans—her own friends.

And then she smiled, because there was really no need to encourage Sarah at all. Sarah had quantities of friends and was always making plans, rushing about here and there with the utmost confidence and enjoyment. She adored her mother, but treated her with a kindly patronage, as one excluded from all understanding and participation, owing to her advanced years.

How old to Sarah seemed the age of forty-one—whilst to Ann it was quite a struggle to call herself in her own mind middle-aged. Not that she attempted to keep time at bay. She used hardly any make-up, and her clothes still had the faintly countrified air of a young matron come to town—neat coats and skirts and a small string of real pearls.

Ann sighed. ‘I can’t think why I’m so silly,’ she said to herself aloud. ‘I suppose it’s just seeing Sarah off.’

What did the French say? Partir, c’est mourir un peu …

Yes, that was true … Sarah, swept away by that important puffing train, was, for the moment, dead to her mother. And ‘I to her,’ thought Ann. ‘A curious thing—distance. Separation in space …’

Sarah, living one life. She, Ann, living another … A life of her own.

Some faintly pleasurable sensation replaced the inner chill of which she had previously been conscious. She could choose now when she would get up, what she should do—she could plan her day. She could go to bed early with a meal on a tray—or go out to a theatre or a cinema. Or she could take a train into the country and wander about … walking through bare woods with the blue sky showing between the intricate sharp pattern of the branches …

Of course, actually she could do all these things at any time she liked. But when two people lived together, there was a tendency for one life to set the pattern. Ann had enjoyed a good deal, at second hand, Sarah’s vivid comings and goings.

No doubt about it, it was great fun being a mother. It was like having your own life over again—with a great deal of the agonies of youth left out. Since you knew now how little some things mattered, you could smile indulgently over the crises that arose.

‘But really, Mother,’ Sarah would say intensely, ‘it’s frightfully serious. You mustn’t smile. Nadia feels that the whole of her future is at stake!’

But at forty-one, one had learned that one’s whole future was very seldom at stake. Life was far more elastic and resilient than one had once chosen to think.

During her service with an ambulance during the war, Ann had realized for the first time how much the small things of life mattered. The small envies and jealousies, the small pleasures, the chafing of a collar, a chilblain inside a tight shoe—all these ranked as far more immediately important than the great fact that you might be killed at any moment. That should have been a solemn, an overwhelming thought, but actually one became used to it very quickly—and the small things asserted their sway—perhaps heightened in their insistence just because, in the background, was the idea of there being very little time. She had learnt something, too, of the curious inconsistencies of human nature, of how difficult it was to assess people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as she had been inclined to do in her days of youthful dogmatism. She had seen unbelievable courage spent in rescuing a victim—and then that same individual who had risked his life would stoop to some mean petty theft from the rescued individual he had just saved.

People, in fact, were not all of a piece.

Standing irresolutely on the kerb, the sharp hooting of a taxi recalled Ann from abstract speculations to more practical considerations. What should she do now, at this moment?

Getting Sarah off to Switzerland had been so far as her mind had looked that morning. That evening she was going out to dine with James Grant. Dear James, always so kind and thoughtful. ‘You’ll feel a bit flat with Sarah gone. Come out and have a little celebration.’ Really, it was very sweet of James. All very well for Sarah to laugh and call James ‘your pukka Sahib boy friend, darling’. James was a very dear person. Sometimes it might be a little difficult to keep one’s attention fixed when he was telling one of his very long and rambling stories, but he enjoyed telling them so much, and after all if one had known someone for twenty-five years, to listen kindly was the least one could do.

Ann glanced at her watch. She might go to the Army and Navy Stores. There were some kitchen things Edith had been wanting. This decision solved her immediate problem. But all the time that she was examining saucepans and asking prices (really fantastic now!) she was conscious of that queer cold panic at the back of her mind.

Finally, on an impulse, she went into a telephone box and dialled a number.

‘Can I speak to Dame Laura Whitstable, please?’

‘Who is speaking?’

‘Mrs Prentice.’

‘Just a moment, Mrs Prentice.’

There was a pause and then a deep resonant voice said: ‘Ann?’

‘Oh, Laura, I knew I oughtn’t to ring you up at this time of day, but I’ve just seen Sarah off, and I wondered if you were terribly busy today—’

The voice said with decision:

‘Better lunch with me. Rye bread and buttermilk. That suit you?’

‘Anything will suit me. It’s angelic of you.’

‘Be expecting you. Quarter-past one.’

II

It was one minute to the quarter-past when Ann paid off her taxi in Harley Street and rang the bell.

The competent Harkness opened the door, smiled a welcome, said: ‘Go straight on up, will you, Mrs Prentice? Dame Laura may be a few minutes still.’

Ann ran lightly up the stairs. The dining-room of the house was now a waiting-room and the top floor of the tall house was converted into a comfortable flat. In the sitting-room a small table was laid for a meal. The room itself was more like a man’s room than a woman’s. Large sagging comfortable chairs, a wealth of books, some of them piled on the chairs, and rich-coloured good-quality velvet curtains.

Ann had not long to wait. Dame Laura, her voice preceding her up the stairs like a triumphant bassoon, entered the room and kissed her guest affectionately.

Dame Laura Whitstable was a woman of sixty-four. She carried with her the atmosphere that is exuded by royalty, or well-known public characters. Everything about her was a little more than life-size, her voice, her uncompromising shelf-like bust, the piled masses of her iron-grey hair, her beak-like nose.

‘Delighted to see you, my dear child,’ she boomed. ‘You look very pretty, Ann. I see you’ve bought yourself a bunch of violets. Very discerning of you. It’s the flower you most resemble.’

‘The shrinking violet? Really, Laura.’

‘Autumn sweetness, well concealed by leaves.’

‘This is most unlike you, Laura. You are usually so rude!’

‘I find it pays, but it’s rather an effort sometimes. Let us eat immediately. Bassett, where is Bassett? Ah, there you are. There is a sole for you, Ann, you will be glad to hear. And a glass of hock.’

‘Oh, Laura, you shouldn’t. Buttermilk and rye bread would have done quite well.’

‘There’s only just enough buttermilk for me. Come on, sit down. So Sarah’s gone off to Switzerland? For how long?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Very nice.’

The angular Bassett had left the room. Sipping her glass of buttermilk with every appearance of enjoyment, Dame Laura said shrewdly:

‘And you’re going to miss her. But you didn’t ring me up and come here to tell me that. Come on now, Ann. Tell me. We haven’t got much time. I know you’re fond of me, but when people ring up, and want my company at a moment’s notice, it’s usually my superior wisdom that’s the attraction.’

‘I feel horribly guilty,’ said Ann apologetically.

‘Nonsense, my dear. Actually, it’s rather a compliment.’

Ann said with a rush:

‘Oh, Laura, I’m a complete fool, I know! But I got in a sort of panic. There in Victoria Station with all the buses! I felt—I felt so terribly alone.’

‘Ye-es, I see …’

‘It wasn’t just Sarah going away and missing her. It was more than that …’

Laura Whitstable nodded, her shrewd grey eyes watching Ann dispassionately.

Ann said slowly:

‘Because, after all, one is always alone … really—’

‘Ah, so you’ve found that out? One does, of course, sooner or later. Curiously enough, it’s usually a shock. How old are you, Ann? Forty-one? A very good age to make your discovery. Leave it until too late and it can be devastating. Discover it too young—and it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge it.’

‘Have you ever felt really alone, Laura?’ Ann asked with curiosity.

‘Oh, yes. It came to me when I was twenty-six—actually in the middle of a family gathering of the most affectionate nature. It startled me and frightened me—but I accepted it. Never deny the truth. One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave—our own self. Get on good terms with that companion—learn to live with yourself. That’s the answer. It’s not always easy.’

Ann sighed.

‘Life felt absolutely pointless—I’m telling you everything, Laura—just years stretching ahead with nothing to fill them. Oh, I suppose I’m just a silly useless woman …’

‘Now, now, keep your common sense. You did a very good efficient unspectacular job in the war, you’ve brought up Sarah to have nice manners and to enjoy life, and in your quiet way you enjoy life yourself. That’s all very satisfactory. In fact, if you came to my consulting room I’d send you away without even collecting a fee—and I’m a money-grubbing old woman.’

‘Laura dear, you are very comforting. But I suppose, really—I do care for Sarah too much.’

‘Fiddle!’

‘I am always so afraid of becoming one of those possessive mothers who positively eat their young.’

Laura Whitstable said dryly:

‘There’s so much talk about possessive mothers that some women are afraid to show a normal affection for their young!’

‘But possessiveness is a bad thing!’

‘Of course it is. I come across it every day. Mothers who keep their sons tied to their apron strings, fathers who monopolize their daughters. But it’s not always entirely their doing. I had a nest of birds in my room once, Ann. In due course the fledglings left the nest, but there was one who wouldn’t go. Wanted to stay in the nest, wanted to be fed, refused to face the ordeal of tumbling over the edge. It disturbed the mother bird very much. She showed him, flew down again and again from the edge of the nest, chirruped to him, fluttered her wings. Finally she wouldn’t feed him. Brought food in her beak, but stayed the other side of the room calling him. Well, there are human beings like that. Children who don’t want to grow up, who don’t want to face the difficulties of adult life. It isn’t their upbringing. It’s themselves.’

She paused before going on.

‘There’s the wish to be possessed as well as the wish to possess. Is it a case of maturing late? Or is it some inherent lack of the adult quality? One knows very little still of the human personality.’

‘Anyway,’ said Ann, uninterested in generalities, ‘you don’t think I’m a possessive mother?’

‘I’ve always thought that you and Sarah had a very satisfactory relationship. I should say there was a deep natural love between you.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘Of course Sarah’s young for her age.’

‘I’ve always thought she was old for her age.’

‘I shouldn’t say so. She strikes me as younger than nineteen in mentality.’

‘But she’s very positive, very assured. And quite sophisticated. Full of her own ideas.’

‘Full of the current ideas, you mean. It will be a very long time before she has any ideas that are really her own. And all these young creatures nowadays seem positive. They need reassurance, that’s why. We live in an uncertain age and everything is unstable and the young feel it. That’s where half the trouble starts nowadays. Lack of stability. Broken homes. Lack of moral standards. A young plant, you know, needs tying up to a good firm stake.’

She grinned suddenly.

‘Like all old women, even if I am a distinguished one, I preach.’ She drained her glass of buttermilk. ‘Do you know why I drink this?’

‘Because it’s healthy?’

‘Bah! I like it. Always have since I went for holidays to a farm in the country. The other reason is so as to be different. One poses. We all pose. Have to. I do it more than most. But, thank God, I know I’m doing it. But now about you, Ann. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just getting your second wind, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean by my second wind, Laura? You don’t mean—’ She hesitated.

‘I don’t mean anything physical. I’m talking in mental terms. Women are lucky, although ninety-nine out of a hundred don’t know it. At what age did St Teresa set out to reform the monasteries? At fifty. And I could quote you a score of other cases. From twenty to forty women are biologically absorbed—and rightly so. Their concern is with children, with husbands, with lovers—with personal relations. Or they sublimate these things and fling themselves into a career in a female emotional way. But the natural second blooming is of the mind and spirit and it takes place at middle age. Women take more interest in impersonal things as they grow older. Men’s interests grow narrower, women’s grow wider. A man of sixty is usually repeating himself like a gramophone record. A woman of sixty, if she’s got any individuality at all—is an interesting person.’

Ann thought of James Grant and smiled.

‘Women stretch out to something new. Oh, they make fools of themselves too at that age. Sometimes they’re sex bound. But middle age is an age of great possibilities.’

‘How comforting you are, Laura! Do you think I ought to take up something? Social work of some kind?’

‘How much do you love your fellow beings?’ said Laura Whitstable gravely. ‘The deed is no good without the inner fire. Don’t do things you don’t want to do, and then pat yourself on the back for doing them! Nothing, if I may say so, produces a more odious result. If you enjoy visiting the sick old women, or taking unattractive mannerless brats to the seaside, by all means do it. Quite a lot of people do enjoy it. No, Ann, don’t force yourself into activities. Remember all ground has sometimes to lie fallow. Motherhood has been your crop up to now. I don’t see you becoming a reformer, or an artist, or an exponent of the Social Services. You’re quite an ordinary woman, Ann, but a very nice one. Wait. Just wait quietly, with faith and hope, and you’ll see. Something worth while will come to fill your life.’

She hesitated and then said:

‘You’ve never had an affair, have you?’

Ann flushed.

‘No.’ She braced herself. ‘Do you—do you think I ought to?’

Dame Laura gave a terrific snort, a vast explosive sound that shook the glasses on the table.

‘All this modern cant! In Victorian days we were afraid of sex, draped the legs of the furniture, even! Hid sex away, shoved it out of sight. All very bad. But nowadays we’ve gone to the opposite extreme. We treat sex like something you order from the chemist. It’s on a par with sulphur drugs and penicillin. Young women come and ask me, “Had I better take a lover?” “Do you think I ought to have a child?” You’d think it was a sacred duty to go to bed with a man instead of a pleasure. You’re not a passionate woman, Ann. You’re a woman with a very deep store of affection and tenderness. That can include sex, but sex doesn’t come first with you. If you ask me to prophesy, I’ll say that in due course you’ll marry again.’

‘Oh no. I don’t believe I could ever do that.’

‘Why did you buy a bunch of violets today and pin them in your coat? You buy flowers for your rooms but you don’t usually wear them. Those violets are a symbol, Ann. You bought them because, deep down, you feel spring—your second spring is near.’

‘St Martin’s summer, you mean,’ said Ann ruefully.

‘Yes, if you like to call it that.’

‘But really, Laura, I daresay it’s a very pretty idea, but I only bought these violets because the woman who was selling them looked so cold and miserable.’

‘That’s what you think. But that’s only the superficial reason. Look down to the real motive, Ann. Learn to know yourself. That’s the most important thing in life—to try and know yourself. Heavens—it’s past two. I must fly. What are you doing this evening?’

‘I’m going out to dinner with James Grant.’

‘Colonel Grant? Yes, of course. A nice fellow.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘He’s been after you for a long time, Ann.’

Ann Prentice laughed and blushed.

‘Oh, it’s just a habit.’

‘He’s asked you to marry him several times, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but it’s all nonsense really. Oh, Laura, do you think perhaps—I ought to? If we’re both lonely—’

‘There’s no ought about marriage, Ann! And the wrong companion is worse than none. Poor Colonel Grant—not that I pity him really. A man who continually asks a woman to marry him and can’t make her change her mind, is a man who secretly enjoys devotion to lost causes. If he was at Dunkirk, he would have enjoyed it—but I daresay the Charge of the Light Brigade would have suited him far better! How fond we are in this country of our defeats and our blunders—and how ashamed we always seem to be of our victories!’

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