Max Collins: The London Blitz Murders

Ironically, the boring if sociable dispensary (she’d worked there with two good friends) set her mind to wandering, looking for escape from the anxiety of wartime in the form of daydreams that led to the notion of writing a mystery based upon a notably ingenious way to slip poison to a victim….

And now Agatha Christie Mallowan found herself back in a dispensary, with her mind running down a similar and yet distinctively different course. She was well aware that her mystery novels were of a polite, even cozy nature-superficially, at least-and even reflective of another era.

She did not like to think of herself as old-fashioned; and she had tried, in her work, to do things no writer of mysteries had ever dared-the narrator is the killer, all the suspects did it, a child, the love interest, even the detective himself might be the murderer. Puzzles, they called her stories, and she would smile and nod; but Agatha knew her tales of good and evil hinged on character.

In her way, Agatha was an innovator, and she had of late begun to wonder if the cataclysm of this war would result in a post-war world whose innocence was so lost that bodies in libraries and detectives exercising little gray cells would seem quaintly out of step and, well, just too ridiculous.

Her morning’s last customer (was it terrible to think of them that way?) was a tiny old Irish lady, remindful of Mother Riley from the music hall, who handed over her prescription with one hand and pressed half a crown into Agatha’s palm with the other.

In a wrinkled leprechaun face, blue eyes twinkled, and then one of them winked. “Make it double strong, dearie, will you now? Plenty of peppermint, my darling girl-double strong!”

“We don’t accept bribes,” Agatha said priggishly, returning the half-crown.

A frown wrinkled the wizened face further. “I would never insult you that way, dearie. T’ink of it as a gratuity. A gift.”

“You will receive exactly the dosage your doctor prescribed,” Agatha said stiffly, but when she turned her back, the dispenser allowed the smile she’d been stifling to blossom. She mixed in an extra dollop of peppermint water for the old girl-it could not possibly do her any harm-and then pretended to be stern when she handed it over.

Her half-day ended at noon, at which time she hung up her lab coat, to reveal her off-white blouse and the dark gray skirt of her well-made, respectable Debenham and Freebody suit. Her stockings were black and warm, her shoes heavy and sensible. She slipped into the gray suitjacket, slung her well-lined Burberry over an arm, attached the leash to James’s collar, and she and the terrier made their familiar way to the small laboratory just down the hall from the dispensary.

Within this glorified cubbyhole-workbench beneath a window overlooking the courtyard, sink and rack of test tubes nearby, counter with bunsen burners beneath specimen-lined shelves-the greatest forensics scientist of the twentieth century kept solitary company with his investigations.

When Agatha had first heard that Sir Bernard Spilsbury was her neighbor at University College Hospital, a schoolgirl giddiness ran through her. She had read and heard much about Sir Bernard, and the idea of meeting him, of discussing with him crime and murder and poisons and causes of death, frankly thrilled her.

But she had never made the journey down the hall to introduce herself. Agatha was not outgoing, at least not until she got to know a person; this reticence prevented her from making the immediate acquaintance of someone she had much admired, from afar.

She understood that Sir Bernard, too, was shy and unassuming, amazingly so for so well-known a public figure; like her, he was said to abhor attention, and despised having his picture taken. In the hallways of the hospital, she had observed him discreetly-he seemed distracted though never rude, preoccupied but nonetheless likable, displaying charm and even warmth when someone on the staff stopped to make conversation with him.

Certainly she needn’t fear offending him; and yet she could not bring herself to make an introduction-how silly she would feel, the author of homicidal confections presenting herself to the man who put Crippen away.

And yet she had longed to meet him. It was almost-but not quite-as if she were a schoolgirl with a crush. Certainly, even in his mid-sixties, Sir Bernard cut a handsome figure-always in a dark well-tailored suit with a fresh carnation, a tall figure understandably thickened at the middle, with the sharply chiseled features of a matinee idol, and eyes as gray as Poirot’s little brain cells.

Perhaps, with Max away, there was an element of propriety afoot as well. Agatha had not known how to approach this handsome, older man she so admired without fawning, even gushing, and perhaps giving him… the wrong idea.

Then, finally, he had introduced himself-not at the hospital, but inside Euston Station.

Euston Station, of course, was an undeniably shabby affair, inconvenient, shambling, with a cavernous entrance hall cutting the station in two and encouraging bedlam. She disliked crowds, hated being jammed up against people, and the loud sounds and the cigarette and cigar smoke all annoyed her; but wartime was wartime, wasn’t it? One did what one had to do.

And so Agatha-who so loved to eat, who so adored fine cooking, by herself and others-had been reduced to taking bangers and mash at a stall, sitting at a little wooden table whose secondary function seemed to be providing irony that a hospital worker should eat at so unsanitary a spot. James the terrier would curl up on the floor beside her, waiting for an occasional bite of banger to reward his good behavior.

She had noticed Sir Bernard taking an occasional lunch here, sitting engrossed in a book or writing in a journal; so it was not a surprise to see him approaching, typically natty in a dark suit, set off by a red carnation in the buttonhole, raincoat over his arm.

It was, however, a shock for him to stop and half-bow before her, even as she did her best to swallow a rather too-large bite of mashed potatoes.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Mallowan,” he had said, his voice a rich baritone, “I’m Bernard Spilsbury. Might I sit down for a moment?”

“Please! Please do.”

He did. “Forgive my forwardness. I just recently learned that you were assisting in the University pharmacy, and I very much wanted to meet you.”

Suddenly Agatha felt a wave of disappointment: could the great forensics expert really just be another enthusiast? Another fan eager to meet “the mistress of mystery?”

Where most authors might be flattered, this was an embarrassment to Agatha, and caused in her an immediate diminishment of respect for Sir Bernard.

From the day she’d taken her post at the pharmacy, she had made it clear to all and sundry that she was “Mrs. Mallowan,” not “Agatha Christie,” not on those premises. That she was not to be bragged about or paraded around for the amusement of patients and/or doctors. She would be happy to sign a book for anyone in the pharmacy, should they so desire. But after that she preferred to disappear into her role: Mrs. Mallowan, assistant dispenser.

Sir Bernard was gazing over his wire-framed glasses at her; he seemed a little embarrassed himself as he worked his soft voice above the clangs of the trains and the clamor of the crowd. “You see, Mrs. Mallowan… I’m a great admirer…”

Here it comes , she thought, with the endless questions about where one gets one’s ideas, and how could a kind-looking woman like you devise such diabolical…

“… of your husband,” Sir Bernard was saying.

She rocked back, flushed with surprise and pleasure. “Really? Of Max?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Mallowan.” The chiseled features were softened with admiration as he shook his head. “Archaeology is a hobby for which, necessarily, I’ve had less and less time as I’ve gotten older.”