Max Collins: The London Blitz Murders

“Archaeology,” Agatha said, beaming. “Oh yes. Isn’t it simply wonderful?”

He nodded. “My son Peter used to point out that archaeology rallied my detective’s instincts.”

“Ah.” She too nodded. “In pathology you must answer the same question posed in archaeology: ‘What happened in the past to leave evidence in the present?’ ”

Now Sir Bernard beamed. “Almost Peter’s words exactly.”

She wondered if Peter was the son she had heard Sir Bernard had lost, in the air raids of 1940.

“Mr. Mallowan’s excavations at Ur with Leonard Woolley,” Sir Bernard was saying, “are legendary. And then his digs in Ninevah, Iraq, Syria… how exciting. How terribly romantic.”

She smiled. “I don’t know that sorting and listing artifacts, and cleaning arrowheads and pottery shards with face cream, is ‘terribly romantic,’ nor exciting, exactly… but I did love it.”

The gray eyes flared with interest. “I understood you accompanied your husband from time to time! You’re to be commended.”

“I shouldn’t be commended for doing something I so enjoy. Away from our so-called civilization… blessedly free from the press and the public. I do some of my best writing in the desert.”

“Yes, I understand you’re a writer.”

Her pleasure waned, suddenly; it was wonderful for Sir Bernard to be an admirer of Max’s, and a relief not to be dealing with a fawning fan.

And yet this was, somehow, a disappointment… that Sir Bernard knew so little of her, and what she did, and who she was.

She touched the side of her head, fingers in the curls. “I must say Max’s work resembles mine, as well. Stories of crime and murder can be uncovered in the ancient sands.”

“I must apologize for not being acquainted with your work,” Sir Bernard said. Perhaps he had sensed her bruised pride. “I understand your reputation is considerable… and many of my colleagues read mystery and detective stories. For my part, I have no interest in fictional crime…. I hope I haven’t offended you.”

“Not at all,” she said, and her hurt had vanished. “It would be a busman’s holiday for you, wouldn’t it?”

“As I’m afraid I’ve revealed, I’m secretly a romantic-Tennyson, Wordsworth, Kipling, those are my literary heroes.”

“You display impeccable taste, Sir Bernard.”

“Please, Mrs. Mallowan. I’d be honored if you’d call me Bernard.”

“Only if you’ll call me Agatha.”

He shifted in his seat. “If you want me to… Agatha… I’ll read one of your books….”

She laughed, a rather raucous laugh that gave her a twinge of chagrin. “That’s not necessary… Bernard. Have you had lunch? Would you care to join me?”

“That’s very kind of you.”

And he did, ordering up his own plate of bangers and mash.

Thereafter they had lunch together almost every weekday, as her schedule and his work allowed. His wife Edith was living out of London, and Sir Bernard saw her only on occasional weekends. Agatha-lonely herself, without Max-could sense the man’s need for companionship.

This was no love affair-far from it. This was simply two older people whose spouses were away, two professionals pursuing their careers during wartime, as best they could, who found pleasure in each other’s company. Now and then they ate at the stall in Euston Station, but more often at the Holborn.

Sir Bernard asked endless questions about Max’s archaeological digs, and seemed far more impressed with Agatha’s role as expedition photographer, complete with darkroom tent, than her status as an author of best-selling mystery novels.

“It’s wonderful to be married to an archaeologist,” she told Sir Bernard. “The older you get, the more interested he is in you.”

People who knew them both as painfully shy individuals probably wondered if the pair of them had lost their minds, these two reticent types sitting chattering like magpies. But they had much in common, including a love of music; she revealed to Sir Bernard her failed ambition to be an opera singer (her voice had proved too thin, and incipient stage fright had been no help, either) and he told her almost misty-eyed of his days as a medical student attending Henry Wood’s promenade concerts.

They had become good enough friends to allow the other silence-there were days when she was troubled by difficulties with her writing (she had plenty of time for that in the evenings-one didn’t want to go out in the Blitz!). And she would sit and quietly think and their conversation would be politely minimal.

When he was preoccupied with a case, Sir Bernard could lapse into intense silence, often checking a small black spiral notebook filled with file-size note cards, as if life were an exam for which he was studying.

As she (and James on his leash) entered the little lab down the hall at the hospital, Sir Bernard sat at a counter in his white lab coat, his brow furrowed as he went over those ubiquitous file cards in his little black notebook.

“Good afternoon, Bernard,” she said, as was her habit.

He looked up, his smile a barely noticeable crease under the intense gray eyes and finely carved nose. “Is it afternoon already?” he replied, as was his wont.

And soon they had walked, quietly, to nearby Holborn Empire, once known as the Royal Theater of Varieties (and badly damaged by a bomb in 1941). At the west corner of Kingsway, the Holborn restaurant welcomed them; in the last century it was the largest dance hall in London. Now it was a largely male bastion of dark luxuriant wood and waiters who spoiled Sir Bernard with special dishes despite wartime rationing. Agatha doubted Sir Bernard-whose egalitarian treatment of these waiters over the years had no doubt inspired this uninvited loyalty-was at all aware of this favoritism.

The steak-and-kidney pie luncheon was as wordless as it was delicious, and-as they both took coffee afterward-Agatha said, “You must be on a case. You seem terribly preoccupied.”

“Yes. Nasty bit of business.”

“We’ve never discussed any of your cases.”

“No. I suppose we haven’t.”

“Some people might find that… odd.”

“Really, Agatha. And why is that?”

She cocked her head, raised an eyebrow. “You are, after all, the foremost forensics expert in Great Britain.”

He just looked at her; no false modesty prompted any need to comment.

“And I,” she said, and trailed off.

But he said nothing.

She sighed. “And I am the foremost author of crime novels in Great Britain.”

“I should say the world,” he said casually.

This caught her off-guard. “You would? You really would?”

“I believe,” he said, sipping his coffee through the parted lips of the faintest smile, “I just did.”

A warm glow coursed through her, though she was a little ashamed that it had.

“At any rate,” she said, “we have never discussed crime, have we? Or murder, or mystery.”

“We have not. What did you call it? Busman’s holiday?”

“Are you aware that I frequently use poison for my murders?”

His eyes opened wide. “Fictional murders, I trust.”

“Fictional murders, yes. And you are one of the world’s most renowned experts on poison as used in murder cases.”

“One of…?”

She laughed gently. “ The most renowned…. There’s a wonderful story about you. I wonder if it’s true.”

“You might ask.”

“I have heard,” she said, “that at the time of the Croydon poisonings, you arrived at the graveside dressed in your typically immaculate manner-right down to a top hat.”

“That does sound like me.”

“And when the coffin was raised, you leaned in, ran your nose along the side of the box, stood up straight, and said, ‘Arsenic, gentlemen.’ ”