Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

"You mean?"

  "I mean the girl in league with Hugo Charnley," said Mr Satterthwaite.

  "You know, Monckton, everyone knows, that that man was a blackguard. He thought that he was certain to come into the title."

  He turned sharply to Lady Charnley.

  "What was the name of the girl who wrote that letter?"

  "Monica Ford," said Lady Charnley.

  "Was it Monica Ford Monckton, who called out to Lord Charnley from the top of the stairs?"

  "Yes, now you come to speak of it, I believe it was."

  "Oh, that's impossible," said Lady Charnley. "I - I went to her about it.

  She told me it was all true. I only saw her once afterwards, but surely she couldn't have been acting the whole time."

  Mr Satterthwaite looked across the room at Aspasia Glen.

  "I think she could," he said quietly. "I think she had in her the makings of a very accomplished actress."

  "There is one thing you haven't got over," said Frank Bristow, "there would be blood on the floor of the Terrace Room. Bound to be. They couldn't clear that up in a hurry."

  "No," admitted Mr Satterthwaite, "but there is one thing - the Bokhara rug. Nobody ever saw the Bokhara rug in the Terrace Room before that night."

  "I believe you are right," said Monckton, "but all the same those bloodstains would have to be cleared up some time?"

  "Yes," said Mr Satterthwaite, "in the middle of the night. A woman with a jug and basin could go down the stairs and clear up the bloodstains quite easily."

  "But supposing someone saw her?"

  "It wouldn't matter," said Mr Satterthwaite. "I am speaking now of things as they are. I said a woman with a jug and basin. But if I had said a Weeping Lady with a Silver Ewer that is what they would have appeared, to be."

  He got up and went across to Aspasia Glen.

  "That is what you did, wasn't it?" He said.

  "They call you the 'Woman with the Scarf' now, but it was that night you played your first part, the 'Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer.'

  That is why you knocked the coffee cup off that table just now. You were afraid when you saw that picture. You thought someone knew."

  Lady Charnley stretched out a white accusing hand.

  "Monica Ford," she breathed. "I recognise you now."

  Aspasia Glen sprang to her feet with a cry. She pushed little Mr Satterthwaite aside with a shove of the hand and stood shaking in front of Mr Quin.

  "So I was right. Someone did know! Oh, I haven't been deceived by this tomfoolery. This pretence of working things out."

  She pointed at Mr Quin.

  "You were there. You were there outside the window looking in. You saw what we did, Hugo and I. I knew there was someone looking in, I felt it all the time. And yet when I looked up, there was nobody there.

  I knew someone was watching us. I thought once I caught a glimpse of a face at the window. It has frightened me all these years. And then I saw that picture with you standing at the window and I recognised your face. You have known all these years. Why did you break silence now? That is what I want to know?"

  "Perhaps so that the dead may rest in peace," said Mr Quin.

  Suddenly Aspasia Glen made a rush for the door and stood there flinging a few defiant wo rds over her shoulder.

  "Do what you like. God knows there are witnesses enough to what I have been saying. I don't care, I don't care. I loved Hugo and I helped him with the ghastly business and he chucked me afterwards. He died last year. You can set the police on my tracks if you like, but as that little dried-up fellow there said, I am a pretty good actress. They will find it hard to find me." She crashed the door behind her, and a moment later they heard the slam of the front door also.

  "Reggie," cried Lady Charnley, "Reggie." The tears were streaming down her face. "Oh, my dear, my dear, I can go back to Charnley now. I can live there with Dickie. I can tell him what his father was, the finest, the most splendid man in all the world."

  "We must consult very seriously as to what must be done in the matter," said Colonel Monckton. "Alix, my dear, if you will let me take you home I shall be glad to have a few words with you on the subject."

  Lady Charnley rose. She came across to Mr Satterthwaite, and laying both hands on his shoulders, she kissed him very gently.

  "It is so wonderful to be alive again after being so long dead," she said. "It was like being dead, you know. Thank you, dear Mr Satterthwaite."

  She went out of the room with Colonel Monckton. Mr Satterthwaite gazed after them. A grunt from Frank Bristow whom he had forgotten made him turn sharply round.

  "She is a lovely creature," said Bristow moodily. "But she's not nearly so interesting as she was," he said gloomily.

  "There speaks the artist," said Mr Satterthwaite.

  "Well, she isn't," said Mr Bristow. "I suppose I should only get the cold shoulder if I ever went butting in at Charnley. I don't want to go where I am not wanted."

  "My dear young man," said Mr Satterthwaite, "if you will think a little less of the impression you are making on other people, you will, I think, be wiser and happier. You would also do well to disabuse your mind of some very old-fashioned notions, one of which is that birth has any significance at all in our modern conditions. You are one of those large proportioned young men whom women always consider good-looking, and you have possibly, if not certainly, genius. Just say that over to yourself ten times before you go to bed every night and in three months time go and call on Lady Charnley at Charnley.

  That is my advice to you, and I am an old man with considerable experience of the world."

  A very charming smile suddenly spread over the artist's face.

  "You have been thunderingly good to me," he said suddenly. He seized Mr Satterthwaite's hand and wrung it in a powerful grip.

  "I am no end grateful. I must be off now. Thanks very much for one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever spent."

  He looked round as though to say good-bye to someone else and then started.

  "I say, sir, your friend has gone. I never saw him go. He is rather a queer bird, isn't he?"

  "He goes and comes very suddenly," said Mr Satterthwaite. "That is one of his characteristics. One doesn't always see him come and go."

  "Like Harlequin," said Frank Bristow, "he is invisible," and laughed heartily at his own joke.

  Chapter 10

  THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN WING

  Mr Satterthwaite looked out of the window. It was raining steadily.

  He shivered. Very few country houses, he reflected, were really properly heated. It cheered him to think that in a few hours time he would be speeding towards London. Once one had passed sixty years of age, London was really much the best place.

  He was feeling a little old and pathetic. Most of the members of the house party were so young. Four of them had just gone off into the library to do table turning. They had invited him to accompany them, but he had declined. He failed to derive any amusement from the monotonous counting of the letters of the alphabet and the usual meaningless jumble of letters that resulted.

  Yes, London was the best place for him. He was glad that he had declined Madge Keeley's invitation when she had rung up to invite him over to Laidell half an hour ago. An adorable young person, certainly, but London was best.

  Mr Satterthwaite shivered again and remembered that the fire in the library was usually a good one. He opened the door and adventured cautiously into the darkened room.

  "If I'm not in the way -"

  "Was that N or M? We shall have to count again. No, of course not, Mr Satterthwaite. Do you know, the most exciting things have been happening. The spirit says her name is Ada Spiers, and John here is going to marry someone called Gladys Bun almost immediately."

  Mr Satterthwaite sat down in a big easy chair in front of the fire. His eyelids drooped over his eyes and he dozed. From time to time he returned to consciousness, hearing fragments of speech.

  "It can't be P-A-B-Z-L - no
t unless he's a Russian. John, you're shoving. I saw you. I believe it's a new spirit come."

  Another interval of dozing. Then a name jerked him wide awake.

  "Q-U-I-N. Is that right?"

  "Yes, it's rapped once for 'Yes.'"

  "Quin. Have you a message for someone here? Yes. For me? For John? For Sarah? For Evelyn? No - but there's no one else. Oh! It's for Mr Satterthwaite, perhaps? It says 'Yes.' Mr Satterthwaite, it's a message for you."

  "What does it say?"

  Mr Satterthwaite was broad awake now, sitting taut and erect in his chair, his eyes shining.

  The table rocked and one of the girls counted.

  "L A I - it can't be - that doesn't make sense. No word begins LAI."

  "Go on," said Mr Satterthwaite, and the command in his voice was so sharp that he was obeyed without question.

  "LAIDEL and another L - Oh! that seems to be all."

  "Go on."

  "Tell us some more, please."

  A pause.

  "There doesn't seem to be any more. The table's gone quite dead.

  How silly."

  "No," said Mr Satterthwaite thoughtfully. "I don't think it's silly."

  He rose and left the room. He went straight to the telephone.

  Presently he was through.

  "Can I speak to Miss Keeley? Is that you, Madge, my dear? I want to change my mind, if I may, and accept your kind invitation. It is not so urgent as I thought that I should get back to town. Yes - yes - I will arrive in time for dinner."

  He hung up the receiver, a strange flush on his withered cheeks. Mr Quin - the mysterious Mr Harley Quin. Mr Satterthwaite counted over on his fingers the times he had been brought into contact with that man of mystery. Where Mr Quin was concerned - things happened!

  What had happened or was going to happen - at Laidell?

  Whatever it was, there was work for him, Mr Satterthwaite, to do. In some way or other, he would have an active part to play. He was sure of that.

  Laidell was a large house. Its owner, David Keeley, was one of those quiet men with indeterminate personalities who seem to count as part of the furniture. Their inconspicuousness has nothing to do with brain power - David Keeley was a most brilliant mathematician, and had written a book totally incomprehensible to ninety-nine hundreths of humanity. But like so many men of brilliant intellect, he radiated no bodily vigour or magnetism. It was a standing joke that David Keeley was a real "invisible man." Footmen passed him by with the vegetables, and guests forgot to say how do you do or good-bye.

  His daughter Madge was very different. A fine upstanding young woman, bursting with energy and life. Thorough, healthy and normal, and extremely pretty.

  It was she who received Mr Satterthwaite when he arrived.

  "How nice of you to come - after all."

  "Very delightful of you to let me change my mind. Madge, my dear, you're looking very well."

  "Oh! I'm always well."

  "Yes, I know. But it's more than that. You look - well, blooming is the word I have in mind. Has anything happened my dear? Anything well - special?"

  She laughed - blushed a little.

  "It's too bad, Mr Satterthwaite. You always guess things."

  He took her hand.

  "So it's that, is it? Mr Right has come along?"

  It was an old-fashioned term, but Madge did not object to it. She rather liked Mr Satterthwaite's old-fashioned ways.

  "I suppose so - yes. But nobody's supposed to know. It's a secret.

  But I don't really mind your knowing, Mr Satterthwaite. You're always so nice and sympathetic."

  Mr Satterthwaite thoroughly enjoyed romance at second hand. He was sentimental and Victorian.

  "I mustn't ask who the lucky man is? Well, then all I can say is that I hope he is worthy of the honour you are conferring on him."

  Rather a duck, old Mr Satterthwaite, thought Madge.

  "Oh! we shall get on awfully well together, I think," she said. "You see, we like doing the same things, and that's so awfully important, isn't it? We've really got a lot in common - and we know all about each other and all that. It's really been coming on for a long time.

  That gives one such a nice safe feeling, doesn't it?"

  "Undoubtedly," said Mr Satterthwaite. "But in my experience one can never really know all about anyone else. That is part of the interest and charm of life."

  "Oh! I'll risk it," said Madge, laughing, and they went up to dress for dinner.

  Mr Satterthwaite was late. He had not brought a valet, and having his things unpacked for him by a stranger always flurried him a little. He came down to find everyone assembled, and in the modern style Madge merely said, "Oh! Here's Mr Satterthwaite. I'm starving. Let's go in."

  She led the way with a tall grey-haired woman - a woman of striking personality. She had a very clear rather incisive voice, and her face was clear cut and rather beautiful.

  "How d'you do, Satterthwaite," said Mr Keeley.

  Mr Satterthwaite jumped.

  "How do you do," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't see you."

  "Nobody does," said Mr Keeley sadly.

  They went in. The table was a low oval of mahogany. Mr Satterthwaite was placed between his young hostess and a short dark girl - a very hearty girl with a loud voice and a ringing determined laugh that expressed more the determination to be cheerful at all costs than any real mirth. Her name seemed to be Doris, and she was the type of young woman Mr Satterthwaite most disliked. She had, he considered, no artistic justification for existence.

  On Madge's other side was a man of about thirty, whose likeness to the grey-haired woman proclaimed them mother and son.

  Next to him -

  Mr Satterthwaite caught his breath.

  He didn't know what it was exactly. It was not beauty. It was something else - something much more elusive and intangible than beauty.

  She was listening to Mr Keeley's rather ponderous dinner-table conversation, her head bent a little sideways. She was there, it seemed to Mr Satterthwaite - and yet she was not there! She was somehow a great deal less substantial than anyone else seated round the oval table. Something in the droop of her body sideways was beautiful - was more than beautiful. She looked up - her eyes met Mr Satterthwaite's for a moment across the table - and the word he wanted leapt to his mind.

  Enchantment - that was it. She had the quality of enchantment. She might have been one of those creatures who are only half-human one of the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills. She made everyone else look rather too real...

  But at the same time, in a queer way, she stirred his pity. It was as though semi-humanity handicapped her. He sought for a phrase and found it.

  "A bird with a broken wing," said Mr Satterthwaite.

  Satisfied, he turned his mind back to the subject of Girl Guides and hoped that the girl Doris had not noticed his abstraction. When she turned to the man on the other side of her - a man Mr Satterthwaite had hardly noticed, he himself turned to Madge.

  "Who is the lady sitting next to your father?" he asked in a low voice.

  "Mrs Graham? Oh, no! You mean Mabelle. Don't you know her?

  Mabelle Annesley. She was a Clydesley - one of the ill-fated Clydesleys."

  He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an earthquake. A queer doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of them.

  His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge's hand touched his under the table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her head to her left.

  "That's him," she murmured ungrammatically.

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young Graham was the man of Madge's choice. Well, she could hardly have done better as far as appearances went - and Mr Satterthwaite was a shrewd observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow. They'd make a nice pair - no nonsense about either of them good healthy sociable young folk.


  Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the diningroom first. Mr Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced the glass on the table.

  "He's got something on his mind," thought Mr Satterthwaite acutely.

  "Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I dare say. All the same, I wonder what it is."

  Mr Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he went up to his room to fetch them.

  On his way down to the drawing-room, he passed along the long corridor on the ground floor. About half-way along it was a room known as the terrace room. As Mr Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in passing, he stopped short Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low window sill, drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the string of a ukelele not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of fairy horses riding on fairy hills.

  Mr Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue chiffon, pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a bird. She bent over the instrument, crooning to it He came into the room - slowly, step by step. He was close to her when she looked up and saw him. She didn't start, he noticed, or seem surprised.

  "I hope I'm not intruding," he began.

  "Please - sit down."

  He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her breath.

  "There's a lot of magic about tonight," she said. "Don't you think so?"

  "Yes, there was a lot of magic about."

  "They wanted me to fetch my uke," she explained. "And as I passed here, I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here - in the dark and the moon."

  "Then I -" Mr Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.

  "Don't go. You - you fit in, somehow. It's queer, but you do."

  He sat down again.

  "It's been a queer sort of evening," she said. "I was out in the woods late this afternoon, and I met a man - such a strange sort of man - tall and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin."