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this meant that Agatha was obliged to attend a number of business dinners, every minute of which she hated. When he came home from work in the evening he often immersed himself in a book or in business matters after dinner. By working so hard through the week Archie was deliberately contriving to ensure his weekends were free to spend with Nancy.
    Agatha loved him too much to displease him by complaining and looked forward instead to the weekends when she could reclaim him from his work. But the country walks and picnics Agatha and Archie had enjoyed earlier in their marriage had become things of the past. The strain of Archie’s double life took its toll: he became tired and listless, the routine of City life dragged him down, and his work-day often began with him arriving at Sunningdale Station so late that he had to run across the tracks in front of the approaching train to reach the far platform in order to catch it.
    Increasingly the most vital link between the Christies was their daughter Rosalind. Archie’s indifference to fatherhood before she had been born had been transformed into a special kind of mutual love, based on a shared practical outlook and sense of humour; this often left Agatha feeling excluded. Archie spoke to Rosalind as if she were an adult and expected her to respond in kind. When he gave her a task to perform, such as cleaning his golf clubs, he expected her to do the job properly, and Rosalind appeared to enjoy the challenge far more than her mother’s imaginary games. Archie had developed into a wonderful father, happily playing games with pennies on the floor for the amusement of Rosalind and Nan’s daughter Judith. The two young girls were virtually raised together since their mothers were such good friends, and Judith, a quiet, introverted child, developed quite a ‘pash’ on Archie and thought he had the most ‘lovely blue eyes’.
    Agatha’s feelings for her daughter ran deep, and she was saddened to find that she had not been able to reproduce the same mother–daughter relationship that she, as a child, had enjoyed with Clarissa. Agatha’s attempts to play make-believe games with Rosalind were undermined by the latter’s practical nature, and she was disappointed to find that her daughter did not share her enthusiasm for the activities and fairy books that Agatha had enjoyed as a child. Agatha found in Rosalind the same cool, judgemental qualities apparent in Archie and was secretly rather alarmed by her child.
    June 1925 saw the publication of Agatha’s last book for the Bodley Head. The Secret of Chimneys was dedicated to Agatha’s and Nan’s 22-year-old nephew Jack Watts (Madge’s and Jimmy’s son) ‘in memory of an inscription at Compton Castle and a day at the zoo’. It was a light-hearted thriller involving the murder of a prince in the council chamber of an English stately home. The novel included a crack at the Bodley Head’s failure to adhere to its publishing schedules when she makes one of her characters observe of a book written by another character that it would be at least a year before it was brought out, as publishers sat on manuscripts and hatched them like eggs.
    The publication of The Secret of Chimneys was eclipsed that same year by a more significant literary event. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , the plot of which had been partly inspired by two similar suggestions put to her by Nan’s brother, Jimmy Watts, and a young fan, Lord Louis Mountbatten, first appeared in the London Evening News as a serial that ran from July to September under the title Who Killed Ackroyd?
    The unsuspecting public was taken aback by the unexpected identity of the killer: what Agatha had done amounted to colossal cheek or nerve, depending on whether or not one approved of her audacity. Agatha had reached a significant artistic plateau in her career, for she now had the satisfaction of knowing she could write detective stories and that she could make money out of them.
    But