Free Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade Page A

with bronchitis at Ashfield a few weeks later. In her memoirs Agatha reveals that Madge had removed their mother to Abney Hall in Cheadle. In fact Madge and Jimmy were living at Cheadle Hall next to the village church. The 72-year-old Clarissa appeared to get better, then took an unexpected turn for the worse. Agatha was sent a telegram but could not get to Cheadle Hall in time. Clarissa died on 5 April with Madge by her side. At the moment of death Agatha was travelling by train to Manchester when she was suddenly overcome by a feeling of cold desolation, and her strong sense that her mother had died was soon to be confirmed.
    Agatha attended Clarissa’s funeral without Archie, who was away in Spain on a business trip for Austral Ltd. Clarissa was laid to rest in the same burial plot in Ealing Cemetery as her husband. Agatha needed Archie more than ever before and longed to be comforted by him. When he returned to Styles a week later he was ill-equipped to console her. Agatha felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her world, for Clarissa had always made her feel loved and able to deal with things, no matter what she said or did, and the certainty of her mother’s unconditional affection had enabled her to cope better with being the sensible, independent wife Archie required her to be.
    ‘My grandmother was a dangerous woman,’ Agatha’s daughter Rosalind said decades later about Clarissa. ‘Strong and dangerous. My mother never thought she was wrong.’ The statement was not without irony since Rosalind had inherited her father’s ruthlessness and sided with Archie over her parents’ ensuing marital problems.
    Archie handled his reunion with Agatha badly. He attempted to console his wife by appearing bright and cheerful, but his jollity had the opposite effect to that intended. Agatha was horrified by his apparent callousness and proceeded to berate him. Archie had further business to transact in Spain, and in her desire to come to terms with her grief Agatha turned down his suggestion that she should accompany him.
    She was feeling no better by the time he returned, and she fell in with his suggestion of renting out Styles for the summer while she sorted out Ashfield. She needed time to mourn her mother, and she believed that Archie would find it hard to be around while she did. Archie escaped the pall of her grief by spending the summer months at his club in London, which made it easier for him to see Nancy, frequently taking her out to dinner and to the theatre.
    Under the terms of Clarissa’s will, Agatha inherited Ashfield, and she stayed there with Rosalind. Charlotte Fisher, the secretary-cum-governess whom Agatha had hired to help her take care of Rosalind, did not accompany them because she had been recalled home to Scotland since her father was thought to be seriously ill. Agatha asked her sister to help her clear out Ashfield, but Madge was too busy. The future of Ashfield was uncertain. Agatha was faced with the option of either renovating the house and renting it out or selling it off.
    Agatha came across a letter her father had written to her mother shortly before he died, telling Clarissa how much he loved her and how she had made all the difference to his life. Agatha kept it, still convinced that her own marriage was as loving and as durable as her parents. Yet going over the past led her to contemplate her future. While she loved Archie and Rosalind unreservedly, Agatha felt that neither of them gave her the love she required. Archie’s short emotional tether made it impossible for him to be as intimate with Agatha as his late mother-in-law.
    Agatha felt stifled and misunderstood, her life dictated by the routine of Archie’s work, and she longed to travel. But she still felt her future lay with her family. Archie contributed to Agatha’s loneliness by making excuses about being too busy at work to come down from London to Torquay at weekends. He used the General Strike, during which he drove a