The Christie Affair

“Sometimes you fall in love with a place, as dramatic and urgent as falling in love with any person.”

At many points in the text, the narrator considers the nature of love and connection. Although they remain the same at their core, their appearance and circumstance can change. Here we see Nan’s blossoming love for Ireland and how that love will become the root of everything that happens throughout her story.

“You may well wonder if you can believe what I tell you about things that occurred when I myself was not present. But this is as reliable an account as you can ever hope to receive. […] There’s plenty we remember that we never saw with our own eyes, or lived with our own bodies. It’s a simple matter of weaving together what we know, what we’ve been told and what we imagine.”

This quote serves an important purpose in justifying the author’s unusual narrative choice: a constant yet fluid first-person perspective. Although the novel often veers away from the protagonist and takes on a third-person texture, it never truly leaves the first-person; we are meant to understand that the entire story is in one person’s voice and that any blanks she may have are filled in by her imagination.

“I had no patience for such girls, who preyed on husbands—or even available men—simply to better their own circumstances.”

At this point, we understand that Nan is not pursuing Archie for love but for some hidden purpose. This line serves the clever function of rejecting the most obvious second possibility for her attempts to break up the Christies. She does not love him, nor is she using him to better her social standing. What, then, remains? The reader is left to wonder.

“In any moment during that afternoon did I recall my sister Colleen as a cautionary tale? I did not. There was no comparing her disappeared man to the one present and before my eyes. This was Finbarr. I knew he would never forsake or abandon me. He would never break a promise, or say an untrue word.”

At this life-changing moment, Nan becomes pregnant with Finbarr’s child, launching the events of the later story into action. Her youthful naivete is apparent here—how many girls have thought this about the men they loved? The irony is that her assessment turns out to be true, which causes her difficult complications as she fights for her goal later on.

“The Christies were of the breed who had enough people to look after the child so that she might not even notice her mother was gone. Chilton’s mother had been there for her sons every bedtime, every meal, every skinned knee of their childhood.”

Motherhood, in its many iterations, is a constant undercurrent of the novel. Here we see how Teddy’s upbringing has been affected by the social status of the Christie family; as we later learn, there may be more behind this lack of intimacy between her and her parents. By contrast, Chilton’s childhood represents the warm, traditional family that Nan craves.

“[Mrs. Marston] observed Lizzie and me cheerily through the stream. We stared frankly back at her, but she wasn’t the sort to examine others. I supposed that if she were asked about Lizzie and me later, she wouldn’t be able to name a single trait—hair colour, eye colour, nothing.”

Here we see hints of the one-sided relationship between Mrs. Marston and the two women; their gaze almost dares her to recognize them. The reference to the unspoken question of naming the girls’ distinguishing features serves as a foreshadowing of the events to come.

“It was bad luck to have a police inspector at the hotel, but I saw at once it was good luck that it happened to be this one.”

Little has been revealed about Nan’s true purpose at the hotel, although we know there is some deeper goal than simply a week’s holiday. Here we see that it may be something she is hoping to hide. The statement also takes on a certain irony when we learn about how deeply involved Chilton becomes in Nan’s life later.

“From inside he heard a clattering. It took a moment to identify it as typewriter keys.”

Agatha’s typewriter is not her most prized possession, but it is the one most intimately associated with her character. Later, visions of Agatha typing will fill Chilton’s imaginings of their future together. At this moment, he meets Agatha’s typewriter before meeting her.

“Marriage has a hold not often acknowledged on the popular imagination. I never understood it fully until I was married myself. Whether a marriage begins in duty to convenience, or whether it begins in secret, whispered words and irresistible passion. Even when it begins in resentment or drizzles into nothing over the years, there’s a bond formed that’s not easily broken.”

Agatha and Archie Christie’s marriage has fallen apart, and yet here we see how they still have a connection. Now that Archie has lost control of the situation quite drastically, he feels himself as tethered to that connection as Agatha was until very recently. Nan admits that she did not quite understand this connection at the time, allowing that there was an overlooked flaw in her plan.

“We allowed ourselves to believe evil had been defeated, as evil never did rise twice.”

Here the narrator is speaking about the First World War and its aftermath; however, the story draws an obvious parallel between the evils of war and the evil that Nan has committed in Harrogate. Mary Clare and Father Joseph appear in her life twice, giving this line a dramatic irony.

“How I wish she had told me but it was kindness that prevented her. She wanted me to hold on to whatever comforts I’d managed to find. Instead, she said, ‘And what can Sister Mary Clare do? She’s only another woman.’”

There are two meanings to this moment. Nan still believes that Mary Clare is an ally, a pinprick of kindness in the darkness of Sunday’s Corner. Later, it is that belief that will cause her downfall. However, the line “She’s only another woman” is important because these two women together will finally take down their enemy for good.

“There’s a Chinese legend called Yue Lao, have you heard it? When we’re born, the gods tie an invisible thread around our little finger, which connects us to our one true love, no matter what forces try to keep us apart.”

This legend is visited later in the novel too, as Nan considers the thread that links her to her daughter. While this legend speaks of one person fated to another, ironically this story is largely about sidestepping fate and making your path. Nan acknowledges the love binding her to Finbarr, but she makes a choice that is bigger than that. Likewise, Agatha loves Archie but ends up choosing another path for herself.

“When I left the convent, all I’d wanted to do was walk. I would have walked the length of Ireland, and then England; I would have walked from Land’s End to Thurso. Not knowing where to look but only that there was nothing in this world for me to do but search and search and search.”

Here we see the determined single-mindedness of Nan’s character. This devotion is not a fleeting moment of anger but the objective that will drive her in everything she does. She does end up walking across Ireland and back to England searching and, from there, her journey continues in pursuit of the same goal.

“A sad look crossed her face. Chilton did not mean to make her cry. At least, as a man, he did not. As an inspector, he recognized emotional frailty might lead to an outpouring of information.”

This contrast reveals a lot about Chilton’s character; in his kindness and easy-going nature, it is sometimes easy to forget that he is also well-trained in his work. Although he is officially in retirement during the story, he falls back on his old habits of effectively excavating the truth.

“The Timeless Manor, Agatha and I named it later. I’ve never been back to Harrogate, or to this manor house. But sometimes I think if I did, if I tracked the coordinates perfectly, I would find an empty stretch of moor and heather and bramble, the house itself having secreted itself into the mist for another hundred years.”

Here we see how the empty house Agatha and Finbarr commandeered takes on a mythical quality of time out of time, how it is a place where the regular rules do not apply. We see this both emotionally and practically, in how Chilton handles the two situations he has been thrust into and how the two parallel love stories unfold.

“Thompson, like so many men in positions of power who nonetheless found themselves tacitly subordinate to the Archies of the world, enjoyed imagining his downfall. He did not wish to feel a drop of kindness towards him, so it was most inconvenient that Archie Christie’s tears appeared to spring from genuine, uncontrollable agony.”

Archie has been the primary suspect in his wife’s disappearance, due not only to his circumstance but also to his arrogance and attitude. As a powerful man, he is not used to losing control so rapidly, and this experience created tension between him and the police chief. However, at this moment we see how he is giving way to despair and fear for his lost wife through the eyes of the person who least wants to admit his innocence.

“She acknowledged what she ought to be feeling—the rekindled romance between Finbarr and me could represent her road back to Archie. Instead, she felt something different and altogether more liberating.”

At the start of the novel, Agatha’s primary objective is to separate Nan and her husband so that she can be with the man she loves. It is clear to the reader that this is not a healthy goal and that, even if she were to obtain it, it would not be what she truly needs. At this moment, her objective is within reach; however, Agatha is growing and learning how to put her needs above her wants.

“Wherever she is, you know she’s waking too, blue eyes opening in the dark, searching for the one person in the world who answers to the name. Mother. Not a pretender. Her own real, true mother. The body knows, even when the mind does not.”

This moment revisits the idea of the thread connecting to the person you are meant to be with, except rather than two lovers, it connects a mother and a child. The physical relationship between mother and child is often touched upon in the novel: the contact of skin on skin and the way the mother’s body reacts independently of the mind in response to a child’s cry. Here we see how Nan’s connection with her daughter is deeper and more visceral than simple love.

“The age of disappearing women did not begin with Agatha Christie. It had begun long before Agatha hopped into a car and motored away from Newlands Corner with Finbarr. And it would continue for quite a bit longer.”

This line represents the lack of power that many women have over their circumstances and the contrast between Agatha’s choice to leave and the choices women like Nan had taken from them. The convent where she went while she was pregnant was full of women who disappeared without explanation, many of whom would stay disappeared or come back differently. Though it is unclear from exactly what point in time Nan is speaking, she likely saw little change in these traditions throughout her lifetime.

“Mrs. Marston had the precise sort of holiness he’d never believed in. The sort that masked something, or else the lack of something.”

The keyword “holiness” here is intentionally double-edged, alluding of course to Mrs. Marston’s past but also to her personality. At the convent, Mary Clare displayed more true holiness in her kindness and compassion than anyone else in positions of power there; however, those small holy acts became a front for her true emptiness.

“Chilton and Agatha were dancing, her face aglow from the firelight and the day in the baths, looking as lovely in her trousers and jumper as she ever had wearing any gown in any ballroom.”

Here in the Timeless Manor, we see how Agatha has come into her full potential, her happiness stemming not from wealth or position but from the simple pleasures of being loved. The clothing here provides a powerful contrast to an earlier scene where Agatha attempts to win Archie back by wearing her best dress. The attempt fails, but here she needs only to be herself to be appreciated for who she is.

“Chilton, as it turned out, was no Hercule Poirot—he had forgotten all about hearing their Irish accents.”

This tongue-in-cheek reference to Agatha Christie’s most famous detective creates an effective juxtaposition between the fanciful and realistic. While we love to read about Poirot’s adventures, we understand that most of us would not see the world in the same way. This line gives Chilton an endearing humanity and makes the story feel closer to the world we know.

“But no matter how lovely the other world turned out to be, I’d do anything to claw my way back into this one, because my child still lived here, and I must never be far from her, not in this lifetime.”

This mention of the otherworld brings to mind the ethereal fluidity of the Timeless Manor and the way the four unlikely friends existed seemingly outside of time. However, Nan’s goal, which has driven the story, is always at the forefront, and she cannot stray from it for long. This moment shows us how she may enjoy these times away from reality, but they will only be temporary as long as she is separated from her daughter.