An Autobiography. Agatha Christie

      Ronald looked at her, whistled to his brother, and departed immediately.

      ‘You see, dear,’ said my mother, ‘it’s quite simple.’

      It certainly was for her. I really believe that my mother would have been able to manage a class of juvenile delinquents without the least difficulty.

      There was an older girl at the hotel in Cauterets, Sybil Patterson, whose mother was a friend of the Selwyns. Sybil was the object of my adoration. I thought her beautiful, and the thing I admired about her most was her budding figure. Bosoms were much in fashion at that time. Everyone more or less had one. My grandmother and great-aunt had enormous jutting shelves, and it was difficult for them to greet each other with a sisterly kiss without their chests colliding first. Though I took the bosoms of grown-up people for granted, Sybil’s possession of one aroused all my most envious instincts. Sybil was fourteen. How long should I have to wait until I, too, could have that splendid development? Eight years? Eight years of skinniness? I longed for these signs of female maturity. Ah well, patience was the only thing. I must be patient. And in eight years’ time, or seven perhaps, if I was lucky, two large rounds would miraculously spurt forth on my skinny frame. I only had to wait.

      The Selwyns were not at Cauterets as long as we were. They went away, and I then had the choice of two other friends: a little American girl, Marguerite Prestley, and another, Margaret Home, an English girl. My father and mother were great friends by now with Margaret’s parents, and naturally they hoped that Margaret and I would go about and do things together. As is usual in these cases, however, I had an enormous preference for the company of Marguerite Prestley, who used what were to me extraordinary phrases and odd words that I had never heard before. We told each other stories a good deal, and there was one story of Marguerite’s which entailed the dangers encountered on meeting a scarrapin which thrilled me.

      ‘But what is a scarrapin?’ I kept asking.

      Marguerite, who had a nurse called Fanny whose southern American drawl was such that I could seldom understand what she said, gave me a brief description of this horrifying creature. I applied to Marie but Marie had never heard of scarrapins. Finally I tackled my father. He had a little difficulty, too, at first, but at last realisation dawned on him and he said, ‘I expect what you mean is a scorpion.’

      Somehow the magic then departed. A scorpion did not seem nearly so horrifying as the imagined scarrapin.

      Marguerite and I had quite a serious dispute on one subject, which was the way babies arrived. I assured Marguerite that babies were brought by the angels. This had been Nursie’s information. Marguerite, on the other hand, assured me that they were part of a doctor’s stock-in-trade, and were brought along by him in a black bag. When our dispute on this subject had got really heated, the tactful Fanny settled it once and for all.

      ‘Why, that’s just the way it is, honey,’ she said. ‘American babies come in a doctor’s black bag and English babies are brought by the angels. It’s as simple as that.’

      Satisfied, we ceased hostilities.

      Father and Madge made a good many excursions on horseback, and in answer to my entreaties one day I was told that on the morrow I should be allowed to accompany them. I was thrilled. My mother had a few misgivings, but my father soon overruled them.

      ‘We have a Guide with us,’ he said, ‘and he’s quite used to children and will see to it that they don’t fall off.’

      The next morning the three horses arrived, and off we went. We zigzagged along up the precipitous paths, and I enjoyed myself enormously perched on top of what seemed to me an immense horse. The Guide led it up, and occasionally picking little bunches of flowers, handed them to me to stick in my hatband. So far all was well, but when we arrived at the top and prepared to have lunch, the Guide excelled himself. He came running back to us bringing with him a magnificent butterfly he had trapped. ‘Pour la petite mademoiselle,’ he cried. Taking a pin from his lapel he transfixed the butterfly and stuck it in my hat! Oh the horror of that moment! The feeling of the poor butterfly fluttering, struggling against the pin. The agony I felt as the butterfly fluttered there. And of course I couldn’t say anything. There were too many conflicting loyalties in my mind. This was a kindness on the part of the Guide. He had brought it to me. It was a special kind of present. How could I hurt his feelings by saying I didn’t like it? How I wanted him to take it off! And all the time, there was the butterfly, fluttering, dying. That horrible flapping against my hat. There is only one thing a child can do in these circumstances. I cried.

      The more anyone asked me questions the more I was unable to reply. ‘What’s the matter?’ demanded my father. ‘Have you got a pain?’ My sister said, ‘Perhaps she’s frightened at riding on the horse.’ I said No and No. I wasn’t frightened and I hadn’t got a pain. ‘Tired,’ said my father.

      ‘No,’ I said.

      ‘Well, then, what is the matter?’

      But I couldn’t say. Of course I couldn’t say. The Guide was standing there, watching me with an attentive and puzzled face. My father said rather crossly:

      ‘She’s too young a child. We shouldn’t have brought her on this expedition.’

      I redoubled my weeping. I must have ruined the day for both him and my sister, and I knew I was doing so, but I couldn’t stop. All I hoped and prayed was that presently he, or even my sister, would guess what was the matter. Surely they would look at that butterfly, they would see it, they would say, ‘Perhaps she doesn’t like the butterfly on her hat.’ If they said it, it would be all right. But I couldn’t tell them. It was a terrible day. I refused to eat any lunch. I sat there and cried, and the butterfly flapped. It stopped flapping in the end. That ought to have made me feel better. But by that time I had got into such a state of misery that nothing could have made me feel better.

      We rode down again, my father definitely out of temper, my sister annoyed, the Guide still sweet, kindly and puzzled, Fortunately, he did not think of getting me a second butterfly to cheer me up. We arrived back, a most woeful party, and went into our sitting-room where mother was.

      ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter? Has Agatha hurt herself?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said my father crossly. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with the child. I suppose she’s got a pain or something. She’s been crying ever since lunch-time, and she wouldn’t eat a thing.’

      ‘What is the matter, Agatha?’ asked my mother.

      I couldn’t tell her. I only looked at her dumbly while tears still rolled down my cheeks. She looked at me thoughtfully for some minutes, then said, ‘Who put that butterfly in her hat?’

      My sister explained that it had been the Guide.

      ‘I see,’ said mother. Then she said to me, ‘You didn’t like it, did you? It was alive and you thought it was being hurt?’

      Oh, the glorious relief, the wonderful relief when somebody knows what’s in your mind and tells it to you so that you are at last released from that long bondage of silence. I flung myself at her in a kind of frenzy, thrust my arms round her neck and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes. It’s been flapping. It’s been flapping. But he was so kind and he meant to be kind. I couldn’t say.’

      She understood it all and patted me gently. Suddenly the whole thing seemed to recede in the distance.

      ‘I quite see what you felt,’ she said. ‘I know. But it’s over now, and so we won’t talk about it any more.’

      It was about this time that I became aware that my sister had an extraordinary fascination for the young men in her vicinity. She was a most attractive young woman, pretty without being strictly beautiful, and she had inherited from my father a quick wit and was extremely amusing to talk to. She had, moreover, a great deal of sexual magnetism. Young men went down before her like ninepins. It was not long before Marie and I had made what might in racing parlance be called a book on the various admirers. We discussed their chances.

      ‘I