Problem at Pollensa Bay - Agatha Christie [68]
Richard made an inarticulate sound. She held out a hand to stop him.
‘Wait. We were at Dover. I saw a paper–I realized what had happened. Then, as you know, I came back.’
She paused.
Richard caught her by the wrist. His eyes burnt into hers.
‘You came back–in time?’
Theo gave a short, bitter laugh.
‘Yes, I came back, as you say, “in time”, Richard.’
Her husband relinquished his hold on her arm. He stood by the mantelpiece, his head thrown back. He looked handsome and rather noble.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I can forgive.’
‘I cannot.’
The two words came crisply. They had the semblance and the effect of a bomb in the quiet room. Richard started forward, staring, his jaw dropped with an almost ludicrous effect.
‘You–er–what did you say, Theo?’
‘I said I cannot forgive! In leaving you for another man. I sinned–not technically, perhaps, but in intention, which is the same thing. But if I sinned, I sinned through love. You, too, have not been faithful to me since our marriage. Oh, yes, I know. That I forgave, because I really believed in your love for me. But the thing you have done tonight is different. It is an ugly thing, Richard–a thing no woman should forgive. You sold me, your own wife, to purchase safety!’
She picked up her wrap and turned towards the door.
‘Theo,’ he stammered out, ‘where are you going?’
She looked back over her shoulder at him.
‘We all have to pay in this life, Richard. For my sin I must pay in loneliness. For yours–well, you gambled with the thing you love, and you have lost it!’
‘You are going?’
She drew a long breath.
‘To freedom. There is nothing to bind me here.’
He heard the door shut. Ages passed, or was it a few, minutes? Something fluttered down outside the window–the last of the magnolia petals, soft, fragrant.
About the Author
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in 100 foreign countries. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of the First World War, in which she served as a VAD. In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. It was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, after averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and well over 70 books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s books to be dramatised–under the name Alibi–and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of books have been published posthumously: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared later that year, followed by her autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases, Problem at Pollensa Bay and While the Light Lasts. In 1998 Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by another author, Charles Osborne.
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The Agatha Christie Collection
The Man In The Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne