The Mysterious Mr Quin (25 page)

‘They were insured,’ said Miss Nunn dreamily. ‘Not like my opal.’

A spasm of exquisite heartrending grief flitted across her face.

Several times, when in the company of Mr Quin, Mr Satterthwaite had had the feeling of taking part in a play. The illusion was with him very strongly now. This was a dream. Everyone had his part. The words ‘my opal’ were his own cue. He leant forward.

‘Your opal, Miss Nunn?’

‘Have you got the butter, Henry? Thank you. Yes, my opal. It was stolen, you know. And I never got it back.’

‘Do tell us,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Well–I was born in October–so it was lucky for me to wear opals, and because of that I wanted a real beauty. I waited a long time for it. They said it was one of the most perfect ones known. Not very large–about the size of a two-shilling piece–but oh! the colour and the fire.’

She sighed. Mr Satterthwaite observed that the Duchess was fidgeting and seemed uncomfortable, but nothing could stop Miss Nunn now. She went
on, and the exquisite inflections of her voice made the story sound like some mournful Saga of old.

‘It was stolen by a young man called Alec Gerard. He wrote plays.’

‘Very good plays,’ put in Mr Vyse professionally. ‘Why, I once kept one of his plays for six months.’

‘Did you produce it?’ asked Mr Tomlinson.

‘Oh,
no
,’ said Mr Vyse, shocked at the idea. ‘But do you know, at one time I actually thought of doing so?’

‘It had a wonderful part in it for me,’ said Miss Nunn. ‘Rachel’s Children, it was called–though there wasn’t anyone called Rachel in the play. He came to talk to me about it–at the theatre. I liked him. He was a nice-looking–and very shy, poor boy. I remember’–a beautiful far-away look stole over her face–‘he bought me some peppermint creams. The opal was lying on the dressing-table. He’d been out in Australia, and he knew something about opals. He took it over to the light to look at it. I suppose he must have slipped it into his pocket then. I missed it as soon as he’d gone. There
was
a to-do. You remember?’

She turned to Mr Vyse.

‘Oh, I remember,’ said Mr Vyse with a groan.

‘They found the empty case in his rooms,’ continued the actress. ‘He’d been terribly hard up, but the very next day he was able to pay large sums into his bank.
He pretended to account for it by saying that a friend of his had put some money on a horse for him, but he couldn’t produce the friend. He said he must have put the case in his pocket by mistake. I think that was a terribly weak thing to say, don’t you? He might have thought of something better than that…I had to go and give evidence. There were pictures of me in all the papers. My press agent said it was very good publicity–but I’d much rather have had my opal back.’

She shook her head sadly.

‘Have some preserved pineapple?’ said Mr Judd.

Miss Nunn brightened up.

‘Where is it?’

‘I gave it to you just now.’

Miss Nunn looked behind her and in front of her, eyed her grey silk pochette, and then slowly drew up a large purple silk bag that was reposing on the ground beside her. She began to turn the contents out slowly on the table, much to Mr Satterthwaite’s interest.

There was a powder puff, a lip-stick, a small jewel case, a skein of wool, another powder puff, two handkerchiefs, a box of chocolate creams, an enamelled paper knife, a mirror, a little dark brown wooden box, five letters, a walnut, a small square of mauve crêpe de chine, a piece of ribbon and the end of a
croissant
. Last of all came the preserved pineapple.

‘
Eureka
,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite softly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite hastily. ‘What a charming paper knife.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? Somebody gave it to me. I can’t remember who.’

‘That’s an Indian box,’ remarked Mr Tomlinson. ‘Ingenious little things, aren’t they?’

‘Somebody gave me that too,’ said Miss Nunn. ‘I’ve had it a long time. It used always to stand on my dressing-table at the theatre. I don’t think it’s very pretty, though, do you?’

The box was of plain dark brown wood. It pushed open from the side. On the top of it were two plain flaps of wood that could be turned round and round.

‘Not pretty, perhaps,’ said Mr Tomlinson with a chuckle. ‘But I’ll bet you’ve never seen one like it.’

Mr Satterthwaite leaned forward. He had an excited feeling.

‘Why did you say it was ingenious?’ he demanded.

‘Well, isn’t it?’

The judge appealed to Miss Nunn. She looked at him blankly.

‘I suppose I mustn’t show them the trick of it–eh?’ Miss Nunn still looked blank.

‘What trick?’ asked Mr Judd.

‘God bless my soul, don’t you know?’

He looked round the inquiring faces.

‘Fancy that now. May I take the box a minute? Thank you.’

He pushed it open.

‘Now then, can anyone give me something to put in it–not too big. Here’s a small piece of Gruyère cheese. That will do capitally. I place it inside, shut the box.’

He fumbled for a minute or two with his hands.

‘Now see–’

He opened the box again. It was empty.

‘Well, I never,’ said Mr Judd. ‘How do you do it?’

‘It’s quite simple. Turn the box upside down, and move the left hand flap half-way round, then shut the right hand flap. Now to bring our piece of cheese back again we must reverse that. The right hand flap half-way round, and the left one closed, still keeping the box upside down. And now–Hey Presto!’

The box slid open. A gasp went round the table. The cheese was there–but so was something else. A round thing that blinked forth every colour of the rainbow.

‘
My opal!
’

It was a clarion note. Rosina Nunn stood upright, her hands clasped to her breast.

‘My opal! How did it get there?’

Henry Judd cleared his throat.

‘I–er–I rather think, Rosy, my girl, you must have put it there yourself.’

Someone got up from the table and blundered out
into the air. It was Naomi Carlton Smith. Mr Quin followed her.

‘But when? Do you mean–?’

Mr Satterthwaite watched her while the truth dawned on her. It took over two minutes before she got it.

‘You mean last year–at the theatre.’

‘You know,’ said Henry apologetically. ‘You
do
fiddle with things, Rosy. Look at you with the caviare today.’

Miss Nunn was painfully following out her mental processes.

‘I just slipped it in without thinking, and then I suppose I turned the box about and did the thing by accident, but then–but then–’ At last it came. ‘But then Alec Gerard didn’t steal it after all. Oh!’–a full-throated cry, poignant, moving–‘How dreadful!’

‘Well,’ said Mr Vyse, ‘that can be put right now.’

‘Yes, but he’s been in prison a year.’ And then she startled them. She turned sharp on the Duchess. ‘Who is that girl–that girl who has just gone out?’

‘Miss Carlton Smith,’ said the Duchess, ‘was engaged to Mr Gerard. She–took the thing very hard.’

Mr Satterthwaite stole softly away. The snow had stopped, Naomi was sitting on the stone wall. She had a sketch book in her hand, some coloured crayons were scattered around. Mr Quin was standing beside her.

She held out the sketch book to Mr Satterthwaite. It
was a very rough affair–but it had genius. A kaleidoscopic whirl of snowflakes with a figure in the centre.

‘Very good,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

Mr Quin looked up at the sky.

‘The storm is over,’ he said. ‘The roads will be slippery, but I do not think there will be any accident–now.’

‘There will be no accident,’ said Naomi. Her voice was charged with some meaning that Mr Satterthwaite did not understand. She turned and smiled at him–a sudden dazzling smile. ‘Mr Satterthwaite can drive back with me if he likes.’

He knew then to what length desperation had driven her.

‘Well,’ said Mr Quin, ‘I must bid you goodbye.’

He moved away.

‘Where is he going?’ said Mr Satterthwaite, staring after him.

‘Back where he came from, I suppose,’ said Naomi in an odd voice.

‘But–but there isn’t anything there,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, for Mr Quin was making for that spot on the edge of the cliff where they had first seen him. ‘You know you said yourself it was the World’s End.’

He handed back the sketch book.

‘It’s very good,’ he said. ‘A very good likeness. But why–er–why did you put him in Fancy Dress?’

Her eyes met his for a brief second. ‘I see him like that,’ said Naomi Carlton Smith.

Mr Satterthwaite was never quite sure what took him to stay with the Denmans. They were not of his kind–that is to say, they belonged neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic circles. They were Philistines, and dull Philistines at that. Mr Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet strangely enough had come again and yet again.

Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June, as he sped out of London in his Rolls Royce.

John Denman was a man of forty, a solid well-established figure respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr Satterthwaite’s friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.

Why am I doing this thing? Mr Satterthwaite asked
himself once more–and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only reason that presented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the house (a comfortable well-appointed house), stirred his curiosity. That room was Mrs Denman’s own sitting-room.

It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality. He had never met a woman so completely expressionless. She was, he knew, a Russian by birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European war, he had fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped with his life on the outbreak of the Revolution, and had brought this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong disapproval from his parents he had married her.

Mrs Denman’s room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture–a trifle more masculine than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item: a Chinese lacquer screen–a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector’s piece, rare and beautiful.

It was out of place against that solid English background. It should have been the key-note of the room with everything arranged to harmonize subtly with
it. And yet Mr Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended accord.

He shook his head. The thing–trivial though it was–puzzled him. Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house. It was, perhaps, a woman’s fantasy–but that solution did not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs Denman–a quiet hard-featured woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have guessed her a foreigner.

The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denman’s house was ‘Ashmead’, and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath, which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred feet above sea level and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample incomes.

The butler received Mr Satterthwaite suavely. Mr and Mrs Denman were both out–at a rehearsal–they hoped Mr Satterthwaite would make himself at home until they returned.

Mr Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a narrow lane.

Mr Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane, shady and green, with high hedges–a rural lane that twisted and turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address: ASHMEAD, HARLEQUIN’S LANE–remembered too, a local name for it that Mrs Denman had once told him.

‘Harlequin’s Lane,’ he murmured to himself softly. ‘I wonder–’

He turned a corner.

Not at the time, but afterwards, he wondered why this time he felt no surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his: Mr Harley Quin. The two men clasped hands.

‘So
you’re
down here,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I’m staying in the same house as you are.’

‘Staying there?’

‘Yes. Does it surprise you?’

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite slowly. ‘Only–well, you never stay anywhere for long, do you?’

‘Only as long as is necessary,’ said Mr Quin gravely.

‘I see,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

They walked on in silence for some minutes.

‘This lane,’ began Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped.

‘Belongs to me,’ said Mr Quin.

‘I thought it did,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Somehow, I thought it must. There’s the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the “Lovers’ Lane”. You know that?’

Mr Quin nodded.

‘But surely,’ he said gently, ‘there is a “Lovers’ Lane” in every village?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.

He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive.

‘Where does this lane end, I wonder?’ he asked suddenly.

‘It ends–
here
,’ said Mr Quin.

They came round the last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground, and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and ends that were no longer of account to anybody.

‘A rubbish heap,’ exclaimed Mr Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and indignantly.

‘Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap,’ said Mr Quin.

‘I know, I know,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, and quoted
with just a trace of self-consciousness: ‘
Bring me the two most beautiful things in the city, said God
. You know how it goes, eh?’

Mr Quin nodded.

Mr Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on the brink of the wall of the cliff.

‘Hardly a pretty view for a house,’ he remarked.

‘I fancy this wasn’t a rubbish heap in those days,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here–but nothing much was done, as you can see.’

They turned and began retracing their steps.

‘I suppose,’ said Mr Sattertwaite, smiling, ‘that many couples come wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings.’

‘Probably.’

‘Lovers,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr Quin had that effect upon him. ‘Lovers…You have done a lot for lovers, Mr Quin.’

The other bowed his head without replying.

‘You have saved them from sorrow–from worse than sorrow, from death. You have been an advocate for the dead themselves.’

‘You are speaking of yourself–of what
you
have done–not of me.’

‘It is the same thing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘You know it is,’ he urged, as the other did not speak. ‘You have acted–through me. For some reason or other you do not act directly–yourself.’

‘Sometimes I do,’ said Mr Quin.

His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr Satterthwaite shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly. And yet the sun seemed as bright as ever.

At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a pink cotton frock. Mr Satterthwaite recognized her as Molly Stanwell, whom he had met down here before.

She waved a hand to welcome him.

‘John and Anna have just gone back,’ she cried. ‘They thought you must have come, but they simply had to be at the rehearsal.’

‘Rehearsal of what?’ inquired Mr Satterthwaite.

‘This masquerade thing–I don’t quite know what you’ll call it. There is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr Manly, do you remember him down here? He had quite a good tenor voice, is to be Pierrot, and I am Pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for the dancing–Harlequin and
Columbine, you know. And then there is a big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village girls to sing. She’s really getting the thing up for that. The music is rather lovely–but very modern–next to no tune anywhere. Claude Wickam. Perhaps you know him?’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his
métier
to know everybody. He knew all about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer who was a fat Jewess with a
penchant
for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir Leopold Roscheimer who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.

They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.

John Denman, upright, slightly florid, with the faintest possible tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the appearance of Mr Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks to him. Anna Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless as usual.

Mr Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over
high cheek bones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weather-beaten. An out of door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless–and yet…

He thought: ‘There
should
be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn’t. That’s what’s all wrong. Yes, all wrong.’ And to Claude Wickam he said: ‘I beg your pardon? You were saying?’

Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. ‘Russia,’ he said, ‘that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. Magnificent!’ He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate éclair he was waving about in the other. ‘Take,’ he said (with his mouth full), ‘the Russian Ballet.’ Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did
she
think of the Russian Ballet?

The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point–what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet, but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride.

‘I have never seen it.’

‘What?’ He gazed at her open-mouthed. ‘But–surely–’

Her voice went on, level and emotionless.

‘Before my marriage, I was a dancer. So now–’

‘A busman’s holiday,’ said her husband.

‘Dancing.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me.’

‘Oh!’

It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb. His voice went on.

‘Talking of lives,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘and experimenting in them. The Russian nation made one costly experiment.’

Claude Wickam swung round on him.

‘I know what you are going to say,’ he cried. ‘Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?’

‘Three times,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall–not forget it.’

He spoke in an almost reverent voice.

‘I saw her, too,’ said Claude Wickam. ‘I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it.’

He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.

‘There is a statuette of her in a Museum in Berlin,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It is marvellous. That impression of fragility–as though you could break her with a flip of the thumb nail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph.’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was
young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution.’

‘Fools! Madmen! Apes!’ said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.

‘I studied with Kharsanova,’ said Mrs Denman. ‘I remember her well.’

‘She was wonderful?’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Denman quietly. ‘She was wonderful.’

Claude Wickam departed and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief at which his wife laughed.

Mr Satterthwaite nodded. ‘I know what you think. But in spite of everything, the music that that boy writes
is
music.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Denman.

‘Oh, undoubtedly. How long it will be–well, that is different.’

John Denman looked at him curiously.

‘You mean?’

‘I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous.’ He looked across at Mr Quin. ‘You agree with me?’

‘You are always right,’ said Mr Quin.

‘We will come upstairs to my room,’ said Mrs Denman. ‘It is pleasant there.’

She led the way, and they followed her. Mr Satterthwaite drew a deep breath as he caught sight of the
Chinese screen. He looked up to find Mrs Denman watching him.

‘You are the man who is always right,’ she said, nodding her head slowly at him. ‘What do you make of my screen?’

He felt that in some way the words were a challenge to him, and he answered almost haltingly, stumbling over the words a little.

‘Why, it’s–it’s beautiful. More, it’s unique.’

‘You’re right.’ Denman had come up behind him. ‘We bought it early in our married life. Got it for about a tenth of its value, but even then–well, it crippled us for over a year. You remember, Anna?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Denman, ‘I remember.’

‘In fact, we’d no business to buy it at all–not then. Now, of course, it’s different. There was some very good lacquer going at Christie’s the other day. Just what we need to make this room perfect. All Chinese together. Clear out the other stuff. Would you believe it, Satterthwaite, my wife wouldn’t hear of it?’

‘I like this room as it is,’ said Mrs Denman.