"Mr Vavasour told us that it would be quite all right. It was really his idea that I should bring down Mrs Lloyd with me."
She indicated her companion with a slight gesture of the hand.
"This is Mrs Lloyd," she said in a tone of triumph. "Simply the most wonderful medium that ever existed."
Mrs Lloyd uttered no modest protest, she bowed and remained with her hands crossed in front of her. She was a highly-coloured young woman of commonplace appearance. Her clothes were unfashionable but rather ornate. She wore a chain of moonstones and several rings.
Margery Gale, as Mr Satterthwaite could see, was not too pleased at this intrusion. She threw an angry look at Roley Vavasour, who seemed quite unconscious of the offence he had caused.
"Lunch is ready, I think," said Margery.
"Good," said Mrs Casson.
"We will hold a sûance immediately afterwards. Have you got some fruit for Mrs Lloyd? She never eats a solid meal before a sûance."
They all went into the dining-room. The medium ate two bananas and an apple, and replied cautiously and briefly to the various polite remarks which Margery addressed to her from time to time. Just before they rose from the table, she flung back her head suddenly and sniffed the air.
"There is something very wrong in this house. I feel it."
"Isn't she wonderful?" said Mrs Casson in a low delighted voice.
"Oh! undoubtedly," said Mr Satterthwaite dryly.
The sûance was held in the library. The hostess was, as Mr Satterthwaite could see, very unwilling, only the obvious delight of her guests in the proceedings reconciled her to the ordeal The arrangements were made with a good deal of care by Mrs Casson, who was evidently well up in those matters, the chairs were set round in a circle, the curtains were drawn, and presently the medium announced herself ready to begin.
"Six people," she said, looking round the room." That is bad. We must have an uneven number. Seven is ideal. I get my best results out of a circle of seven."
"One of the servants," suggested Roley. He rose. "I will rout out the butler."
"Let's have Clayton," said Margery. Mr Satterthwaite saw a look of annoyance pass over Roley Vavasour's good-looking face.
"But why Clayton?" he demanded.
"You don't like Clayton," said Margery slowly. Roley shrugged his shoulders.
"Clayton doesn't like me," he said whimsically. "In fact she hates me like poison." He waited a minute or two, but Margery did not give way.
"All right," he said, "have her down."
The circle was formed.
There was a period of silence broken by the usual coughs and fidgetings. Presently a succession of raps were heard and then the voice of the medium's control, a Red Indian called Cherokee.
"Indian Brave says you Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
Someone here very anxious speak. Someone here very anxious give message to young lady. I go now. The spirit say what she come to say."
A pause and then a new voice, that of a woman, said softly, "Is Margery here?"
Roley Vavasour took it upon himself to answer.
"Yes," he said, "she is. Who is that speaking?"
"I am Beatrice."
"Beatrice? Who is Beatrice?"
To everyone's annoyance the voice of the Red Indian Cherokee was heard once more.
"I have message for all of you people. Life here very bright and beautiful. We all work very hard. Help those who have not yet passed over."
Again a silence and then the woman's voice was heard once more.
"This is Beatrice speaking."
"Beatrice who?"
"Beatrice Barren."
Mr Satterthwaite leant forward. He was very excited, "Beatrice Barton who was drowned in the Uralia?"
"Yes, that is right. I remember the Uralia. I have a message - for this house - Give back what is not yours."
"I don't understand," said Margery helplessly. "I - oh, are you really Aunt Beatrice?"
"Yes, I am your aunt."
"Of course she is," said Mrs Casson reproachfully. "How can you be so suspicious? The spirits don't like it."
And suddenly Mr Satterthwaite thought of a very simple test. His voice quivered as he spoke.
"Do you remember Mr Bottacetti?" he asked.
Immediately there came a ripple of laughter.
"Poor, old Boatsupsetty. Of course."
Mr Satterthwaite was dumbfounded. The test had succeeded. It was an incident of over forty years ago which had happened when he and the Barren girls had found themselves at the same seaside resort. A young Italian acquaintance of theirs had gone out in a boat and capsized, and Beatrice Barren had jestingly named him Boatsupsetty. It seemed impossible that anyone in the room could know of this incident except himself. The medium stirred and groaned.
"She is coming out," said Mrs Casson. "That is all we will get out of her today, I am afraid."
The daylight shone once more on the room full of people, two of whom at least were badly scared.
Mr Satterthwaite saw by Margery's white face that she was deeply perturbed. When they had got rid of Mrs Casson and the medium, he sought a private interview with his hostess. "I want to ask you one or two questions, Miss Margery. If you and your mother were to die who succeeds to the title and estates?"
"Roley Vavasour, I suppose. His mother was Mother's first cousin."
Mr Satterthwaite nodded.
"He seems to have been here a lot this winter," he said gently. "You will forgive me asking - but is he - fond of you?"
"He asked me to marry him three weeks ago," said Margery quietly.
"I said no."
"Please forgive me, but are you engaged to anyone else?" He saw the colour sweep over her face.
"I am," she said emphatically. "I am going to marry Noel Barton.
Mother laughs and says it is absurd. She seems to think it is ridiculous to be engaged to a curate. Why, I should like to know!
There are curates and curates! You should see Noel on a horse."
"Oh, quite so," said Mr Satterthwaite. "Oh, undoubtedly."
A footman entered with a telegram on a salver. Margery tore it open.
"Mother is arriving home tomorrow," she said. "Bother. I wish to goodness she would stay away."
Mr Satterthwaite made no comment on this filial sentiment. Perhaps he thought it justified.
"In that case," he murmured, "I think I am returning to London."
IV
Mr Satterthwaite was not quite pleased with himself. He felt that he had left this particular problem in an unfinished state. True that, on
Lady Stranleigh's return, his responsibility was ended, yet he felt assured that he had not heard the last of the Abbot's Mede mystery.
But the next development when it came was so serious in its character that it found him totally unprepared. He learnt of it in the pages of his morning paper. "Baroness Dies in her Bath," as the Daily Megaphone had it. The other papers were more restrained and delicate in their language, but the fact was the same. Lady Stranleigh had been found dead in her bath and her death was due to drowning. She had, it was assumed, lost consciousness, and whilst in that state her head had slipped below the water.
But Mr Satterthwaite was not satisfied with that explanation. Calling for his valet, he made his toilet with less than his usual care, and ten minutes later his big Rolls-Royce was carrying him out of London as fast as it could travel.
But strangely enough it was not for Abbot's Mede he was bound, but for a small inn some fifteen miles distant which bore the rather unusual name of "The Bells and Motley." It was with great relief that he heard that Mr Harley Quin was still staying there. In another minute he was face to face with his friend.
Mr Satterthwaite clasped him by the hand and began to speak at once in an agitated manner.
"I am terribly upset. You must help me. Already I have a dreadful feeling that it may be too late - that that nice girl may be the next to go, for she is a nice girl, nice thr
ough and through."
"If you will tell me," said Mr Quin, smiling, "what it is all about?"
Mr Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully.
"You know. I am perfectly certain that you know. But I will tell you."
He poured out the story of his stay at Abbot's Mede and, as always with Mr Quin, he found himself taking pleasure in his narrative. He was eloquent and subtle and meticulous as to detail.
"So you see," he ended, "there must be an explanation."
He looked hopefully at Mr Quin as a dog looks at his master.
"But it is you who must solve the problem, not I," said Mr Quin. "I do not know these people. You do."
"I knew the Barron girls forty years ago," said Mr Satterthwaite with pride.
Mr Quin nodded and looked sympathetic, so much so that the other went on dreamily.
"That time at Brighton now, Botticetti-Boatsupsetty, quite a silly joke but how we laughed. Dear, dear, I was young then. Did a lot of foolish things. I remember the maid they had with them. Alice, her name was, a little bit of a thing - very ingenuous. I kissed her in the passage of the hotel, I remember, and one of the girls nearly caught me doing it. Dear, dear, how long ago that all was."
He shook his head again and sighed. Then he looked at Mr Quin.
"So you can't help me?" he said wistfully. "On other occasions -"
"On other occasions you have proved successful owing entirely to your own efforts," said Mr Quin gravely. "I think it will be the same this time. If I were you, I should go to Abbot's Mede now."
"Quite so, quite so," said Mr Satterthwaite, "as a matter of fact that is what I thought of doing. I can't persuade you to come with me?"
Mr Quin shook his head.
"No," he said, "my work here is done. I am leaving almost immediately."
At Abbot's Mede, Mr Satterthwaite was taken at once to Margery Gale. She was sitting dry-eyed at a desk in the morning-room on which was strewn various papers. Something in her greeting touched him. She seemed so very pleased to see him.
"Roley and Marcia have just left. Mr Satterthwaite, it is not as the doctors think. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that Mother was pushed under the water and held there. She was murdered, and whoever murdered her wants to murder me too. I am sure of that.
That is why -" she indicated the document in front of her.
"I have been making my will," she explained. "A lot of the money and some of the property does not go with the title, and there is my father's money as well. I am leaving everything I can to Noel. I know he will make a good use of it and I do not trust Roley, he has always been out for what he can get. Will you sign it as a witness?"
"My dear young lady," said Mr Satterthwaite, "you should sign a will in the presence of two witnesses and they should then sign themselves at the same time." Margery brushed aside this legal pronouncement.
"I don't see that it matters in the least," she declared. "Clayton saw me sign and then she signed her name. I was going to ring for the butler, but you will do instead."
Mr Satterthwaite uttered no fresh protest, he unscrewed his fountain pen and then, as he was about to append his signature, he paused suddenly. The name, written just above his own, recalled a flow of memories. Alice Clayton.
Something seemed to be struggling very hard to get through to him.
Alice Clayton, there was some significance about that. Something to do with Mr Quin was mixed up with it. Something he had said to Mr Quin only a very short time ago.
Ah, he had it now. Alice Clayton, that was her name. The little bit of a thing. People changed - yes, but not like that. And the Alice Clayton he knew had had brown eyes. The room seemed whirling round him.
He felt for a chair and presently, as though from a great distance, he heard Margery's voice speaking to him anxiously. "Are you ill? Oh, what is it? I am sure you are ill." He was himself again. He took her hand.
"My dear, I see it all now. You must prepare yourself for a great shock. The woman upstairs whom you call Clayton is not Clayton at all. The real Alice Clayton was drowned on the Uralia."
Margery was staring at him.
"Who - who is she then?"
"I am not mistaken, I cannot be mistaken. The woman you call Clayton is your mother's sister, Beatrice Barren. You remember telling me that she was struck on the head by a spar? I should imagine that that blow destroyed her memory, and that being the case, your mother saw the chance -"
"Of pinching the title, you mean?" asked Margery bitterly. "Yes, she would do that. It seems dreadful to say that now she is dead, but she was like that."
"Beatrice was the elder sister," said Mr Satterthwaite. "By your uncle's death she would inherit everything and your mother would get nothing. Your mother claimed the wounded girl as her maid, not as her sister. The girl recovered from the blow and believed, of course, what was told her, that she was Alice Clayton, your mother's maid. I should imagine that just lately her memory had begun to return, but that the blow on the head, given all these years ago, has at last caused mischief on the brain."
Margery was looking at him with eyes of horror.
"She killed Mother and she wanted to kill me," she breathed.
"It seems so," said Mr Satterthwaite. "In her brain there was just one muddled idea - that her inheritance had been stolen and was being kept from her by you and your mother."
"But - but Clayton is so old."
Mr Satterthwaite was silent for a minute as a vision rose up before him - the faded old woman with grey hair, and the radiant goldenhaired creature sitting in the sunshine at Cannes. Sisters! Could it really be so? He remembered the Barren girls and their likeness to each other. Just because two lives had developed on different tracks...
He shook his head sharply, obsessed by the wonder and pity of life...
He turned to Margery and said gently, "We had better go upstairs and see her."
They found Clayton sitting in the little workroom where she sewed.
She did not turn her head as they came in for a reason that Mr Satterthwaite soon found out.
"Heart failure," he murmured, as he touched the cold rigid shoulder.
"Perhaps it is best that way."
Chapter 8
THE FACE OF HELEN
II
The following Sunday afternoon Mr Satterthwaite went to Kew
Gardens to admire the rhododendrons. Very long ago (incredibly long ago, it seemed to Mr Satterthwaite) he had driven down to Kew Gardens with a certain young lady to see the bluebells. Mr Satterthwaite had arranged very carefully beforehand in his own mind exactly what he was going to say, and the precise words he would use in asking the young lady for her hand in marriage. He was just conning them over in his min d, and responding to her raptures about the bluebells a little absent-mindedly, when the shock came.
The young lady stopped exclaiming at the bluebells and suddenly confided in Mr Satterthwaite (as a true friend) her love for another.
Mr Satterthwaite put away the little set speech he had prepared, and hastily rummaged for sympathy and friendship in the bottom drawer of his mind.
Such was Mr Satterthwaite's romance - a rather tepid early Victorian one, but it had left him with a romantic attachment to Kew Gardens, and he would often go there to see the bluebells, or, if he had been abroad later than usual, the rhododendrons, and would sigh to himself, and feel rather sentimental, and really enjoy himself very much indeed in an old-fashioned, romantic way.
This particular afternoon he was strolling back past the tea houses when he recognised a couple sitting at one of the small tables on the grass. They were Gillian West and the fair young man, and at that same moment they recognised him. He saw the girl flush and speak eagerly to her companion. In another minute he was shaking hands with them both in his correct, rather prim fashion, and had accepted the shy invitation proffered him to have tea with them. "I can't tell you, sir," said Mr Burns, "how grateful I am to you for looking after Gillian the other night. She told me all
about it."
"Yes, indeed," said the girl. "It was ever so kind of you."
Mr Satterthwaite felt pleased and interested in the pair.
Their nañvete and sincerity touched him. Also, it was to him a peep into a world with which he was not well acquainted.
These people were of a class unknown to him.
In his little dried-up way, Mr Satterthwaite could be very sympathetic. Very soon he was hearing all about his new friends. He noted that Mr Burns had become Charlie, and he was not unprepared for the statement that the two were engaged.
"As a matter of fact," said Mr Burns with refreshing candour, "it just happened this afternoon, didn't it, Gil?"
Burns was a clerk in a shipping firm. He was making a fair salary, had a little money of his own, and the two proposed to be married quite soon.
Mr Satterthwaite listened, and nodded, and congratulated.
"An ordinary young man," he thought to himself, "a very ordinary young man. Nice, straightforward young chap, plenty to say for himself, good opinion of himself without being conceited, nicelooking without being unduly handsome. Nothing remarkable about him and will never set the Thames on fire. And the girl loves him..."
Aloud he said, "And Mr Eastney -"
He purposely broke off, but he had said enough to produce an effect for which he was not unprepared. Charlie Burns's face darkened, and Gillian looked troubled. More than troubled, he thought. She looked afraid.
"I don't like it," she said in a low voice. Her words were addressed to Mr Satterthwaite, as though she knew by instinct that he would understand a feeling incomprehensible to her lover. "You see - he's done a lot for me. He's encouraged me to take up singing, and - and helped me with it. But I've known all the time that my voice wasn't really good - not first-class. Of course, I've had engagements -"
She stopped.
"You've had a bit of trouble too," said Burns. "A girl wants someone to look after her. Gillian's had a lot of unpleasantness, Mr Satterthwaite. Altogether she's had a lot of unpleasantness. She's a good-looker, as you can see, and - well, that often leads to trouble for a girl."
Between them, Mr Satterthwaite became enlightened as to various happenings which were vaguely classed by Burns under the heading of unpleasantness. A young man who had shot himself, the extraordinary conduct of a Bank Manager (who was a married man!) a violent stranger (who must have been balmy!) the wild behaviour of an elderly artist. A trail of violence and tragedy that Gillian West had left in her wake, recited in the commonplace tones of Charles Burns.
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