Max Collins: The London Blitz Murders

For that reason she became the last of the celebrity guests who would be chauffeured by Rolls Royce to the Savoy. Even the actors were able to remove their makeup and trade their costumes for evening wear before Agatha had finished tending to her adoring public (“Best you’ve written, dearie!” “First class-thumbs up, I’d say!” “V-signs for this one!” “Loved every minute!”).

The caravan of Rolls Royces had to make several trips, and Agatha waited in the theater lobby, away from the glass doors, for her ride to come. The fuss, thankfully, was over. The street outside the theater was empty but for Janet Cummins and her cadet; Janet had been assigned to look after Agatha, as the rest went on, Rolls by Rolls, to the party in a private room at the Savoy.

Only a handful of theater employees remained-even the ushers were gone; an assistant manager was tending to matters in the box-office booth. While she waited for her ride, she strolled back into the theater. The curtain was up, revealing the set of a lavish modern living room with balcony windows looking out on a painted sea.

A question had been answered for her tonight.

She had witnessed and heard the response of a wartime audience to her play, which was one of her most particularly bloodthirsty-seven murders and a suicide. And they had loved it-every blessed ghoulish minute of it.

These were terrible times indeed-from the atrocities of the war itself to the current spate of West End sex murders in which she’d allowed herself to become embroiled.

And never had the escapist fare she served up been more gratefully received, like much-needed nourishment. When the post-war world came, she would fit in just fine. She might make the books a little deeper, psychologically, to cater to a public not so innocent, as in golden days; and, thanks to her experiences with Inspector Greeno and Sir Bernard, she would take pains to make the police and legal procedures more accurate and realistic.

But other than that, the “sausage factory” (as she thought of herself) would stay in business, thank you very much.

Feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, she walked back into the lobby and the explosion shook the building like a giant cannonball and threw her to the slanting floor, where she in her furs and finery went rolling into a corner between the box office and the stairwell, as the entire lobby caved in, the sounds of it beyond deafening, an avalanche of building materials raining down, sending up clouds of dust and powder.

Someone screamed-not Agatha; a woman on the street, probably Janet Cummins. Dazed, ears ringing, Agatha pulled into the corner even more, as the ceiling continued to pour down in unceremonious chunks, stirring pulverized brick and stone and mortar into cloud upon filthy cloud.

Then-a settling….

She took stock of herself, and her situation.

She could not stand-a portion of the ceiling slanted across, caught against the side of the box office, forming a little room four feet by five. She was covered in the filthy aftermath of the explosion, but did not seem to be injured. Using her nurse’s knowledge, she checked herself carefully, as the caved-in lobby continued to settle itself with groans and grating.

Perhaps her ankle was sprained.

Nothing more seemed wrong. She’d been flung to the floor and she’d rolled to a stop, but no bones were broken and she had suffered no concussion. Breathing was difficult, with the dust-filled air, and she covered her face with a handkerchief from the pocket of her fur coat, which had itself helped cushion her fall.

So in that sense she’d been lucky.

She could hear voices beyond the fallen slabs and wreckage of the former lobby, but could not make them out. No air-raid siren had preceded the blast, nor was one now cutting the night- that she would hear, despite the blockage.

If not an air raid, what could have happened?

And then, as she knotted the handkerchief around her face like a bandit, she remembered the rubble next door that had been the lavish Willis Sale Rooms, a favorite spot of scavengers and looters. Perhaps they had made an unintended discovery: an unexploded bomb.

That would explain her current situation.

She glanced overhead and saw that slanting slab, the remnant of the former roof that was her current ceiling, and it seemed to be shifting, ever so slightly, creaking like the ancient hinges of a door in a haunted-house film, spitting pebbles and grit.

Beneath the handkerchief, she smiled bitterly.

And so it had come to this: Agatha Christie (not Mallowan), the originator of so much mayhem, caught like a mouse in a trap, waiting for the ceiling to fall in and kill her.

What a terrible thing it was, possessing a heightened sense of irony: the only thing in all the world that truly frightened her was the thought of being buried alive. She had avoided the air-raid shelters for this very reason, staying in bed with a pillow over her face.

Well, she had no pillow here, did she? But she would remain calm. She would not give in to this phobia. She would not become a silly hysterical old woman.

Examining the pile of rubble before her, roughly parallel to where the street would be, she got on her hands and knees and, still in her fur coat, began to dig her way out. She had no trouble for a while, feeling good about the effort.

But then that slab ceiling shifted and dropped and she let out a little scream.

The wall and other debris caught the slab, preventing it from squashing her, but that “ceiling” was only a few angled inches above her head, now. She was in a coffin. Buried alive. A Poe-like death for Agatha Christie…

Praying (not for herself, for Max and Rosalind and any grandchildren who might one day be born), she kept at it, pawing at the rubble, clearing the way of little pieces, bigger pieces, and was making progress until she reached a larger block of sideways ceiling, not unlike the slab overhead. She could not get a grip on it; and had she been able to have done, she would not have had the strength to move the thing….

Breathing heavily under the handkerchief now, she slumped and exhaustion seductively whispered in her ear, fatigue stroking her every muscle, bone and sinew: rest. Sleep. Wait. Someone will come…

… death, perhaps.

And the impasse before her, the slab of ceiling, moved, as if of its own accord.

She could hear the grunt of a manful effort being made, and then that slab slid away, and for just a moment she had a glimpse of a face-the young cadet! — and the street…

… and then more detritus rained down and filled the opening.

But between the two of them, Agatha and her cadet savior, the way was cleared; another slab of ceiling provided shelter from the fragments above, making a passageway, and she reached out her arms to the boy and he grasped her hands and pulled her, ever so gently and yet firmly, through the aperture.

He helped her to her feet, saying, “Mrs. Mallowan, dear God, are you all right?”

She hugged the cadet and smiled into those boyish handsome features and said, “I have never been better… thanks to you, young man.”

A sudden lurching sound behind them, a crunching and crashing of shifting wreckage, drew their immediate startled attention: the passageway through which Agatha had escaped no longer existed.

But she did.

She touched the boy’s cheek and whispered, “Thank you, my dear.”

He lowered his eyes, chagrined. “My motive was selfish-I couldn’t abide the thought of this world without your books.”

The street was filled now, with spectators and constables and a banshee scream that was not an air-raid siren, rather the announcement of the impending arrival of firemen.

Janet Cummins was fussing over the rescued writer, and helping Agatha brush herself off; there was something comical, farcical about standing in a fur coat and evening gown, layered with powdery filth. The air out here was breathable, but also suffused with a dirty haze; the voices of the constables were raised, attempting to secure order.