The Christie Affair

This section takes us back to Nan being brought to the convent. We finally understand the events that led up to that moment. In the nearer past, Nan meets Chilton for the first time just before she gets the revenge she planned on Mr. and Mrs. Marston. Any reader familiar with murder mysteries will make the connection between the Races’ outbursts and Mr. Marston’s sudden demise; the setup could have come from any Agatha Christie novel. Even with this knowledge, however, the connection between them is still unclear. The author intersperses hints of the truth through the narrative. Mr. Marston is seen to recognize Lizzie and immediately withdraws. Mrs. Marston’s anguish at her husband’s death is described as “altogether unholy” (137), a tongue-in-cheek double meaning describing the lady’s character.

The character of Cornelia Armstrong (who shares a name with the Armstrong family of Murder on the Orient Express) serves as a red herring. She is the only one of the girls not connected with the murders, although her actions in this section, overly loud and affectionate, seem suspicious. This suspicion causes the reader to examine her place in the broader story, making it easy to overlook the other clues that have been laid in the narrative. The story then moves to Chilton—his experiences again told through Nan’s eyes. She would have gained this knowledge through their discussions much later on. Chilton arrives at the house where Agatha and Finbarr are staying and is drawn in by one of the book’s most prevalent motifs: the sound of Agatha’s typewriter.

In Part 2, the narrative moves back slightly into the true account of Agatha’s disappearance (truth here being a fluid construct) and explores her meeting with Finbarr. When the reader considers the source of the narrative, this becomes an interesting study in what Nan knows about these two looming figures in her life; over time, she has come to know their psychology intimately, as is apparent in her description of the way they interact in this scene.