In July 1915 Archie had three days’ leave. He had been promoted to Captain in the Royal Field Artillery, to which he had been seconded, since trouble with his sinus made it impossible for him to fly. Agatha was relieved but still tense. They spent the time together in London, trying to forget the War, but it passed in a flash. Agatha then arranged to get herself to Paris, to be nearer him, only to find on arrival that further leave had been indefinitely postponed. Though Miss Dryden offered her a temporary job, Agatha felt she should return to England and the hospital, even though it was unlikely that she would obtain another permit to travel to France. Frustrated, lonely, tired by her two o’clock hospital shift and the chilly walk home, she succumbed to influenza and bronchitis and had to leave the hospital for three or four weeks. She returned to find that a dispensary had been opened, with Mrs Ellis, a local doctor’s wife, and Eileen Morris in charge. Agatha joined them as assistant and began to study for the examinations at Apothecaries’ Hall which would qualify her to dispense medicine for a medical officer or a chemist. The hours were better, alternate mornings and afternoons, ending at six o’clock, which made it easier to fit in her duties at Ashfield. There was now a good deal of housework, since the two strong girls who had acted as cook and parlourmaid had been replaced by two elderly maid-servants. Auntie-Grannie also needed encouragement and attention, especially when she dropped stitches in her knitting and sat despairing at her failing sight. (A ‘List of shawls and scarves she has crocheted during the Great War’ nonetheless had 144 entries.)
Though Agatha eventually found dispensing monotonous, it was calm and orderly and the dispensary an oasis in the chaos that otherwise engulfed her. Mrs Ellis taught Agatha the practical side, while Eileen instructed her in the theory of physics and chemistry. She found it difficult at first but she was helped by her talent for mathematics, especially algebra, and her liking for codifying and classifying, symbols and signs, lists and measuring. In carefully ruled notebooks she described in alphabetical order the appearance and properties of various substances, the sources from which they may be derived, their active principles and the substances with which they are incompatible – aconitine, cascara, cannabis indica, quinine, gentiana (‘looks like Russian chocolate’).… She made lists of substances to be recognised: ‘Extract of Ergot liquid: smells of bad meat extract; Collodium: smells of ether – white deposit round cork.’ There were notes on alkaloids, tables summarising the preparation of antimony, belladonna, digitalis, morphine, etc., with recommended doses. The most endearing entry had nothing to do with pharmacy. It was a pencilled list of names – Archibald Christie, Reggie Lucy and Amyas Boston (a former beau, who had acted in The Blue Beard of Unhappiness and whose name Agatha was later to give the victim in Five Little Pigs). Each name was paired with Agatha’s own married name, and the letters common to each pair were crossed out. It was the game girls play, counting up the remaining letters and chanting formulas which show which man they should marry. Most interesting and touching is the last pair, coupling Clara Miller and Agatha Christie, in an attempt, presumably, to discover what, now Agatha was married, their relationship would be.
Archie’s next leave was in October 1915 and they spent it in the New Forest. They celebrated their wedding anniversary, and Christmas, by post. Archie wrote:
Many happy returns of the 24th (and incidentally Christmas). You were really rather a dear last year, entrusting yourself boldly to me, but you will never really regret it and I shall love you as much as then – more I think. I wish I could get home for the anniversary celebrations but alas my 3 months hard labour is not up till nearly the end of January. Still then when I come home as a temporary major with about £700 a year pay we will revel in the flesh pots.… Blast the War, which keeps me here.…
His promotion to Squadron Commander and Temporary Major was gazetted on January 27th; on New Year’s Day he had again been mentioned in despatches for especial bravery. In his letters to Agatha, he still tried to be frivolous. One, sent in July 1916, was an official paper stamped in large red letters ‘Secret’:
Dear Miss, in response to your request I forward herewith your character and trust you will find it to your satisfaction. We are never wrong. Our fee is only £1. 1s.
Yours faithfully, The OMNISCIENT ONE.
Character of Miss A. M. C. Miller
A kindly and affectionate disposition; fond of animals except worms and cockchafers; fond of human beings except husbands (on principle). Normally lazy but can develop and maintain great energy. Sound in limb and eye, wind not good up hill. Full of intelligence and artistic taste. Unconventional and inquisitive.
Face good especially hair; figure good and skin still excellent. Can wheedle well. Wild but if once captured would make a loving and affectionate wife.
Archie was again mentioned in despatches in January 1917 and the following month promoted to Depot Commander and Lieutenant Colonel. To Agatha’s delight he was also awarded – she never knew why – the Order of St Stanislaus Third Class, with swords, a medal so pretty that she always longed to wear it as a brooch. Altogether 1917 was more bearable for Agatha, although the War seemed never-ending. Archie had three periods of leave and in between she worked for the Apothecaries’ examination. She had no trouble in passing two out of the three parts, chemistry and materia medica (the composition of medicines, doses and so on). The practical part, however, reduced her to the same ham-handed state she had displayed when asked to play the piano in public at Miss Dryden’s, but at her second attempt she passed, largely, she believed, because, rather than rolling pills or making suppositories, she had only to mix medicine and wait for the appropriate reactions to occur.
It was during this practical training that Agatha encountered a person of memorably strange demeanour, the more creepy because he was so ordinary. This was one of the principal pharmacists of Torquay, to whom she had been sent for coaching. Having demonstrated the making of some sort of suppositories and shown Agatha how to turn them out of the mould, he left her to box them, telling her to prepare labels stating that the dose contained a drug in the proportion of one part to a hundred. Agatha, however, was certain that the pharmacist had miscalculated, his actual mixture being ten times as strong. Sure enough, the decimal point in his calculations was in the wrong place. Agatha knew how easily such errors could be made. (She had once awoken at three o’clock in the morning with the vague recollection of putting a carbolic-contaminated lid on a pot of ointment and had immediately got up and gone to the dispensary to check.) She had been horrified by the casual manner in which an experienced pharmacist mixed this and that with the utmost confidence, compared with the prudence of the amateurs in her dispensary. This time she knew the pharmacist had been dangerously careless. Agatha’s reaction is interesting. She did not think it wise to point out the mistake; this man was not, she thought, the sort of person who would admit to having made an error, especially to a student. She deliberately tripped, upset the tray on which