Free The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont Page A

was not especially worried about Agatha, not yet. I sympathized with her impulse to run away, and I also believed that, one way or another, the world protected people like her. I drove slowly and arrived to see the young police officer from Godalming heading home, no doubt relieved to be rid of Archie from his passenger seat.
    By the time I arrived at Styles, the local constable’s car was parked in front of the house, so I drove around the back and walked inside through the servants’ entrance. In those days, doors were seldom locked anywhere outside London. Since the war had ended there was very little to fear. I tiptoed through the house into the front hall where I saw the new parlourmaid, Anna, her ear pressed to the sitting-room door. Archie must have been in there with the police. The book I’d bought Teddy lay on a little table by the stairs, still wrapped in its package. I retrieved it and tucked it under my arm.
    Anna turned towards me. She was a plump, pretty, freckled girl who blushed easily. Archie claimed she flirted with him, and I had no patience for such girls, who preyed on husbands – or even available men – simply to better their own circumstances. I regarded her sternly as she stepped back from the door, blushing at being caught eavesdropping.
    ‘Oh, Miss O’Dea,’ she said. There were people, at the time, who regularly came and went from Styles and I was one of them. ‘I didn’t know you’d come round. Is there anything I can get you?’
    ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I have a gift for Teddy. Is she nearby?’
    ‘I believe Teddy’s upstairs in the nursery. Would you like me to take it to her?’
    ‘May I take it myself? You do look busy.’ I said this in a way that promised I wouldn’t say a word about her eavesdropping, so long as she didn’t stand between me and the nursery.
    ‘Yes, that would be fine.’ Anna gestured towards the stairs.
    I made my quick detour into Archie’s and Agatha’s room and observed her dress still on the floor. Then I went to the nursery. The door was slightly ajar. Teddy sat cross-legged, playing with toy soldiers and a little wooden dog. At the sight of me shejumped to her feet, ran to the doorway and threw her arms round my waist.
    ‘Miss O’Dea!’ she said, the delighted sort of greeting only a child can perform.
    I returned the hug, happy to find her alone, without Honoria hovering. Teddy was small for her age, with delicate bones. She raised her little face up towards me. Her cheeks were pale and she had violet marks under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well.
    ‘Look at you, you little beauty.’ I took her chin in my thumb and forefinger, the way Agatha had mine the other day. ‘Everything all right?’
    ‘Everything’s fine.’ Teddy sighed in the tentative way of a child who knows things are amiss but doesn’t want to say so.
    ‘I brought you a present.’
    She stepped back to expend some effort untwining the string. When she’d managed to unwrap the book she tossed the brown paper to the floor. At her age I would have found a proper place to discard the wrappings but this was the life Teddy lived. Not aristocratic, but posh enough that clothes and rubbish were simply flung aside for someone else to clear away. Once I became her stepmother I’d encourage her to be the sort of person who folded her clothes and put them away, who attended to her own discarded wrappings. But for now it wasn’t my place to say a word.
    ‘Oh,’ Teddy said, smiling at the cheerful pink cover. ‘What a funny little bear.’
    I sat myself down on the round woven rug and leaned against the wall. Teddy climbed into my lap. Her hair tickled my chin and I leaned my cheek against the crown of her head as I read. It was a lovely book, inexplicably touching, Christopher Robin wandering off to find the Hundred Acre Wood.
    ‘But don’t you ever wander off like that,’ I said to Teddy. ‘Your mum and dad would miss you terribly.’
    ‘I won’t.’ Her mouth