Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "They often do have fancy dress shows at the Hotels, I suppose?"

  "Oh! Quite," said Mr Satterthwaite. "Quite, quite, quite."

  He paused breathlessly, then added, "You must excuse my excitement. Do you happen to know anything about catalysis?"

  The young man stared at him.

  "Never heard of it. What is it?"

  Mr Satterthwaite quoted gravely, "A chemical reaction depending for its success on the presence of a certain substance which itself remains unchanged."

  "Oh," said the young man uncertainly.

  "I have a certain friend - his name is Mr Quin, and he can best be described in the terms of catalysis. His presence is a sign that things are going to happen, because he is there strange revelations come to light, discoveries are made. And yet - he himself takes no part in the proceedings. I have a feeling that it was my friend you met here last night."

  "He's a very sudden sort of chap then. He gave me quite a shock.

  One minute he wasn't there and the next minute he was! Almost as though he came up out of the sea."

  Mr Satterthwaite looked along the little platkau and down the sheer drop below.

  "That's nonsense, of course," said the other. "But it's the feeling he gave me. Of course, really, there isn't the foothold for a fly." He looked over the edge. "A straight clear drop. If you went over - well, that would be the end right enough."

  "An ideal spot for a murder, in fact," said Mr Satterthwaite pleasantly.

  The other stared at him, almost as though for the moment he did not follow. Then he said vaguely - "Oh! Yes - of course..."

  He sat there, making little dabs at the ground with his stick and frowning. Suddenly Mr Satterthwaite got the resemblance he had been seeking. That dumb bewildered questioning. So had the dog looked who was run over. His eyes and this young man's eyes asked the same pathetic question with the same reproach. "Oh! World that I have trusted - what have you done to me?"

  He saw other points of resemblance between the two, the same pleasure-loving easy-going existence, the same joyous abandon to the delights of life, the same absence of intellectual questioning.

  Enough for both to live in the moment - the world was a good place, a place of carnal delights - sun, sea, sky - a discreet garbage heap.

  And then - what? A car had hit the dog. What had hit the man?

  The subject of these cogitations broke in at this point, speaking, however, more to himself than to Mr Satterthwaite.

  "One wonders," he said, "what it's all for?

  Familiar words - words that usually brought a smile to Mr Satterthwaite's lips, with their unconscious betrayal of the innate egoism of humanity which insists on regarding every manifestation of life as directly designed for its delight or its torment. He did not answer and presently the stranger said with a slight, rather apologetic laugh -

  "I've heard it said that every man should build a house, plant a tree and have a son." He paused and then added, "I believe I planted an acorn once..."

  Mr Satterthwaite stirred slightly. His curiosity was aroused - that ever-present interest in the affairs of other people of which the Duchess had accused him was roused. It was not difficult. Mr Satterthwaite had a very feminine side to his nature, he was as good a listener as any woman, and he knew the right moment to put in a prompting word. Presently he was hearing the whole story.

  Anthony Cosden, that was the stranger's name, and his life had been much as Mr Satterthwaite had imagined it. He was a bad hand at telling a story but his listener supplied the gaps easily enough. A very ordinary life - an average income, a little soldiering, a good deal of sport whenever sport offered, plenty of friends, plenty of pleasant things to do, a sufficiency of women. The kind of life that practically inhabits thought of any description and substitutes sensation. To speak frankly, an animal's life. "But there are worse things than that," thought Mr Satterthwaite from the depths of his experience.

  "Oh! many worse things than that..." This world had seemed a very good place to Anthony Cosden. He had grumbled because everyone always grumbled but it had never been a serious grumble. And then this.

  He came to it at last - rather vaguely and incoherently. Hadn't felt quite the thing - nothing much. Saw his doctor, and the doctor had persuaded him to go to a Harley Street man. And then - the incredible truth. They'd tried to hedge about it - spoke of great care a quiet life, but they hadn't been able to disguise that that was all eyewash - letting him down lightly. It boiled down to this - six months.

  That's what they gave him. Six months.

  He turned those bewildered brown eyes on Mr Satterthwaite. It was, of course, rather a shock to a fellow. One didn't - one didn't somehow, know what to do.

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded gravely and understandingly.

  It was a bit difficult to take in all at once, Anthony Cosden went on.

  How to put in the time. Rather a rotten business waiting about to get pipped He didn't feel really ill - not yet. Though that might come later, so the specialist had said - in fact, it was bound to. It seemed such nonsense to be going to die when one didn't in the least want to. The best thing, he had thought, would be to carry on as usual. But somehow that hadn't worked.

  Here Mr Satterthwaite interrupted him. Wasn't there, he hinted delicately, any woman?

  But apparently there wasn't. There were women, of course, but not that kind. His crowd was a very cheery crowd. They didn't, so he implied, like corpses. He didn't wish to make a kind of walking funeral of himself. It would have been embarrassing for everybody.

  So he had come abroad.

  "You came to see these islands? But why?" Mr Satterthwaite was hunting for something, something intangible but delicate that eluded him and yet which he was sure was there. "You've been here before, perhaps?"

  "Yes." he admitted it almost unwillingly. "Years ago when I was a youngster."

  And suddenly, almost unconsciously so it seemed, he shot a quick glance backward over his shoulder in the direction of the villa.

  "I remembered this place," he said, nodding at the sea.

  "One step to eternity!"

  "And that is why you came up here last night," finished Mr Satterthwaite calmly.

  Anthony Cosden shot him a dismayed glance.

  "Oh! I say - really -" he protested.

  "Last night you found someone here. This afternoon you have found me. Your life has been saved - twice."

  "You may put it that way if you like - but damn it all, it's my life. I've a right to do what I like with it."

  "That is a clichû," said Mr Satterthwaite wearily.

  "Of course I see your point," said Anthony Cosden generously.

  "Naturally you've got to say what you can. I'd try to dissuade a fellow myself, even though I knew deep down that he was right. And you know that I'm right. A clean quick end is better than a lingering one causing trouble and expense and bother to all. In any case it's not as though I had anyone in the world belonging to me..."

  "If you had -?" said Mr Satterthwaite sharply.

  Cosden drew a deep breath.

  "I don't know. Even then, I think, this way would be best But anyway -

  I haven't..."

  He stopped abruptly. Mr Satterthwaite eyed him curiously. Incurably romantic, he suggested again that there was, somewhere, some woman. But Cosden negatived it. He oughtn't, he said, to complain.

  He had had, on the whole, a very good life. It was a pity it was going to be over so soon, that was all. But at any rate he had had, he supposed, everything worth having. Except a son. He would have liked a son. He would like to know now that he had a son living after him. Still, he reiterated the fact, he had had a very good life -

  It was at this point that Mr Satterthwaite lost patience. Nobody, he pointed out, who was still in the larval stage, could claim to know anything of life at all. Since the words larval stage clearly meant nothing at all to Cosden, he proceeded to make his meaning clearer.

  "You have not begun to live yet. You
are still at the beginning of life."

  Cosden laughed.

  "Why, my hair's grey. I'm forty -"

  Mr Satterthwaite interrupted him.

  "That has nothing to do with it. Life is a compound of physical and mental experiences. I, for instance, am sixty-nine, and I am really sixty-nine. I have known, either at first or second hand, nearly all the experiences life has to offer. You are like a man who talks of a full year and has seen nothing but snow and ice! The flowers of Spring, the languorous days of Summer, the falling leaves of Autumn - he knows nothing of them - not even that there are such things. And you are going to turn your back on even this opportunity of knowing them."

  "You seem to forget," said Anthony Cosden dryly, "that, in any case, I have only six months."

  "Time, like everything else, is relative," said Mr Satterthwaite. "That six months might be the longest and most varied experience of your whole life."

  Cosden looked unconvinced.

  "In my place," he said, "you would do the same."

  Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.

  "No," he said simply. "In the first place, I doubt if I should have the courage. It needs courage and I am not at all a brave individual And in the second place -"

  "Well?"

  "I always want to know what is going to happen tomorrow."

  Cosden rose suddenly with a laugh.

  "Well, sir, you've been very good in letting me talk to you. I hardly know why - anyway, there it is. I've said a lot too much. Forget it."

  "And tomorrow, when an accident is reported, I am to leave it at that? To make no suggestion of suicide?"

  "That's as you like. I'm glad you realise one thing - that you can't prevent me."

  "My dear young man," said Mr Satterthwaite placidly, "I can hardly attach myself to you like the proverbial limpet. Sooner or later you would give me the slip and accomplish your purpose. But you are frustrated at any rate for this afternoon. You would hardly like to go to your death leaving me under the possible imputation of having pushed you over."

  "That is true," said Cosden. "If you insist on remaining here -"

  "I do," said Mr Satterthwaite firmly.

  Cosden laughed good-humouredly.

  "Then the plan must be deferred for the moment. In which case I will go back to the hotel See you later perhaps."

  Mr Satterthwaite was left looking at the sea.

  "And now," he said to himself softly, "what next? There must be a next. I wonder..."

  He got up. For a while he stood at the edge of the platkau looking down on the dancing water beneath. But he found no inspiration there, and turning slowly he walked back along the path between the cypresses and into the quiet garden. He looked at the shuttered, peaceful house and he wondered, as he had often wondered before, who had lived there and what had taken place within those placid walk. On a sudden impulse he walked up some crumbling stone steps and laid a hand on one of the faded green shutters.

  To his surprise it swung back at his touch. He hesitated a moment, then pushed it boldly open. The next minute he stepped back with a little exclamation of dismay. A woman stood in the window facing him. She wore black and had a black lace mantilla draped over her head.

  Mr Satterthwaite floundered wildly in Italian interspersed with German - the nearest he could get in the hurry of the moment to Spanish - He was desolated and ashamed, he explained haltingly.

  The Signora must forgive. He thereupon retreated hastily, the woman not having spoken one word.

  He was halfway across the courtyard when she spoke - two sharp words like a pistol crack.

  "Come back!"

  It was a barked-out command such as might have been addressed to a dog, yet so absolute was the authority it conveyed, that Mr Satterthwaite had swung round hurriedly and trotted back to the window almost automatically before it occurred to him to feel any resentment. He obeyed like a dog. The woman was still standing motionless at the window. She looked him up and down appraising him with perfect calmness.

  "You are English," she said. "I thought so."

  Mr Satterthwaite started off on a second apology.

  "If I had known you were English," he said, "I could have expressed myself better just now. I offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness in trying the shutter. I am afraid I can plead no excuse save curiosity. I had a great wish to see what the inside of this charming house was like."

  She laughed suddenly, a deep, rich laugh.

  "If you really want to see it," she said, "you had better come in."

  She stood aside, and Mr Satterthwaite, feeling pleasurably excited, stepped into the room. It was dark, since the shutters of the other windows were closed, but he could see that it was scantily and rather shabbily furnished and that the dust lay thick everywhere.

  "Not here," she said. "I do not use this room."

  She led the way and he followed her, out of the room across a passage and into a room the other side. Here the windows gave on the sea and the sun streamed in. The furniture, like that of the other room, was poor in quality, but there were some worn rugs that had been good in their time, a large screen of Spanish leather and bowls of fresh flowers.

  "You will have tea with me," said Mr Satterthwaite's hostess. She added reassuringly. "It is perfectly good tea and will be made with boiling water."

  She went out of the door and called out something in Spanish, then she returned and sat down on a sofa opposite her guest. For the first time, Mr Satterthwaite was able to study her appearance.

  The first effect she had upon him was to make him feel even more grey and shrivelled and elderly than usual by contrast with her own forceful personality. She was a ta ll woman, very sunburnt, dark and handsome though no longer young. When she was in the room the sun seemed to be shining twice as brightly as when she was out of it, and presently a curious feeling of warmth and aliveness began to steal over Mr Satterthwaite. It was as though he stretched out thin, shrivelled hands to a reassuring flame. He thought, "She's so much vitality herself that she's got a lot left over for other people."

  He recalled the command in her voice when she had stopped him, and wished that his protegûe, Olga, could be imbued with a little of that force. He thought - "What an Isolde she'd make! And yet she probably hasn't got the ghost of a singing voice. Life is badly arranged." he was, all the same, a little afraid of her. He did not like domineering women.

  She had clearly been considering him as she sat with her chin in her hands, making no pretence about it. At last she nodded as though she had made up her mind.

  "I am glad you came," she said at last. "I needed someone very badly to talk to this afternoon. And you are used to that, aren't you?"

  "I don't quite understand"

  "I meant people tell you things. You knew what I meant! Why pretend?"

  "Well - perhaps -"

  She swept on, regardless of anything he had been going to say.

  "One could say anything to you. That is because you are half a woman. You know what we feel - what we think - the queer, queer things we do."

  Her voice died away. Tea was brought by a large, smiling Spanish girl. It was good tea - China - Mr Satterthwaite sipped it appreciatively.

  "You live here?" he inquired conversationally.

  "Yes"

  "But not altogether. The house is usually shut up, is it not? At least so I have been told."

  "I am here a good deal, more than anyone knows. I only use these rooms."

  "You have had the house long?"

  "It has belonged to me for twenty-two years - and I lived here for a year before that."

  Mr Satterthwaite said rather inanely (or so he felt), "That is a very long time."

  "The year? Or the twenty-two years?"

  His interest stirred, Mr Satterthwaite said gravely - "That depends."

  She nodded.

  "Yes, it depends. They are two separate periods. They have nothing to do with each other. Which is long? Which is short? Even now I cannot say."r />
  She was silent for a minute, brooding. Then she said with a little smile, "It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone - such a long time! I do not apologise. You came to my shutter. You wished to look through my window. And that is what you are always doing, is it not? Pushing aside the shutter and looking through the window into the truth of people's lives. If they will let you. And often if they will not let you! It would be difficult to hide anything from you. You would guess - and guess right."

  Mr Satterthwaite had an odd impulse to be perfectly sincere.

  "I am sixty-nine," he said. "Everything I know of life I know at second hand. Sometimes that is very bitter to me. And yet, because of it, I know a good deal."

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  "I know. Life is very strange. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be that - always a looker-on."

  Her tone was wondering. Mr Satterthwaite smiled.

  "No, you would not know. Your place is in the centre of the stage.

  You will always be the Prima Donna."

  "What a curious thing to say."

  "But I am right. Things have happened to you - will always happen to you. Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?"

  Her eyes narrowed. She looked across at him.

  "If you are here long, somebody will tell you of the English swimmer who was drowned at the foot of this cliff. They will tell you how young and strong he was, how handsome, and they will tell you that his young wife looked down from the top of the cliff and saw him drowning."

  "Yes, I have already heard that story."

  "That man was my husband. This was his villa. He brought me out here with him when I was eighteen, and a year later he died - driven by the surf on the black rocks, cut and bruised and mutilated, battered to death."

  Mr Satterthwaite gave a shocked exclamation. She leant forward, her burning eyes focused on his face.

  "You spoke of a tragedy. Can you imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his life - and lost it - horribly."

  "Terrible," said Mr Satterthwaite. He spoke with real emotion.