The Mysterious Mr Quin (3 page)

‘What?’

Mr Quin went on.

‘Derek Capel goes up to his room, and there he sees something out of the window. Sir Richard Conway has told us that the curtain was not drawn across it and further that it gave on to the drive. What did he see? What could he have seen that forced him to take his life?’

‘What do you mean? What did he see?’

‘I think,’ said Mr Quin, ‘that he saw a policeman. A policeman who had come about a dog–But Derek Capel didn’t know that–he just saw–a policeman.’

There was a long silence–as though it took some time to drive the inference home.

‘My God!’ whispered Evesham at last. ‘You can’t
mean that? Appleton? But he wasn’t there at the time Appleton died. The old man was alone with his wife–’

‘But he may have been there a week earlier. Strychnine is not very soluble unless it is in the form of hydrochloride. The greater part of it, put into the port, would be taken in the last glass, perhaps a week after he left.’

Portal sprung forward. His voice was hoarse, his eyes bloodshot.

‘Why did she break the decanter?’ he cried. ‘Why did she break the decanter? Tell me that!’

For the first time that evening, Mr Quin addressed himself to Mr Satterthwaite.

‘You have a wide experience of life, Mr Satterthwaite. Perhaps you can tell us that.’

Mr Satterthwaite’s voice trembled a little. His cue had come at last. He was to speak some of the most important lines in the play. He was an actor now–not a looker-on.

‘As I see it,’ he murmured modestly, ‘she–cared for Derek Capel. She was, I think, a good woman–and she had sent him away. When her husband–died, she suspected the truth. And so, to save the man she loved, she tried to destroy the evidence against him. Later, I think, he persuaded her that her suspicions were unfounded, and she consented to marry him. But
even then, she hung back–women, I fancy, have a lot of instinct.’

Mr Sattherthwaite had spoken his part.

Suddenly a long trembling sigh filled the air.

‘My God!’ cried Evesham, starting, ‘what was that?’

Mr Satterthwaite could have told him that it was Eleanor Portal in the gallery above, but he was too artistic to spoil a good effect.

Mr Quin was smiling.

‘My car will be ready by now. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr Evesham. I have, I hope, done something for my friend.’

They stared at him in blank amazement.

‘That aspect of the matter has not struck you? He loved this woman, you know. Loved her enough to commit murder for her sake. When retribution overtook him, as he mistakenly thought, he took his own life. But unwittingly, he left her to face the music.’

‘She was acquitted,’ muttered Evesham.

‘Because the case against her could not be proved. I fancy–it may be only a fancy–that she is still–facing the music.’

Portal had sunk into a chair, his face buried in his hands.

Quin turned to Satterthwaite.

‘Goodbye, Mr Satterthwaite. You are interested in the drama, are you not?’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded–surprised.

‘I must recommend the Harlequinade to your attention. It is dying out nowadays–but it repays attention, I assure you. Its symbolism is a little difficult to follow–but the immortals are always immortal, you know. I wish you all goodnight.’

They saw him stride out into the dark. As before, the coloured glass gave the effect of motley…

Mr Satterthwaite went upstairs. He went to draw down his window, for the air was cold. The figure of Mr Quin moved down the drive, and from a side door came a woman’s figure, running. For a moment they spoke together, then she retraced her steps to the house. She passed just below the window, and Mr Satterthwaite was struck anew by the vitality of her face. She moved now like a woman in a happy dream.

‘Eleanor!’

Alex Portal had joined her.

‘Eleanor, forgive me–forgive me–You told me the truth, but God forgive me–I did not quite believe…’

Mr Satterthwaite was intensely interested in other people’s affairs, but he was also a gentleman. It was borne in upon him that he must shut the window. He did so.

But he shut it very slowly.

He heard her voice, exquisite and indescribable.

‘I know–I know. You have been in hell. So was I
once. Loving–yet alternately believing and suspecting–thrusting aside one’s doubts and having them spring up again with leering faces…I know, Alex, I know…But there is a worse hell than that, the hell I have lived in with you. I have seen your doubt–your fear of me…poisoning all our love. That man–that chance passer by, saved me. I could bear it no longer, you understand. Tonight–tonight I was going to kill myself…Alex…Alex…’

I

‘Listen to this,’ said Lady Cynthia Drage.

She read aloud from the journal she held in her hand.

‘Mr and Mrs Unkerton are entertaining a party at Greenways House this week. Amongst the guests are Lady Cynthia Drage, Mr and Mrs Richard Scott, Major Porter, D.S.O., Mrs Staverton, Captain Allenson and Mr Satterthwaite.’

‘It’s as well,’ remarked Lady Cynthia, casting away the paper, ‘to know what we’re in for. But they
have
made a mess of things!’

Her companion, that same Mr Satterthwaite whose name figured at the end of the list of guests, looked at her interrogatively. It had been said that if Mr Satterthwaite were found at the houses of those rich who had newly arrived, it was a sign either that the cooking was unusually good, or that a drama of human
life was to be enacted there. Mr Satterthwaite was abnormally interested in the comedies and tragedies of his fellow men.

Lady Cynthia, who was a middle-aged woman, with a hard face and a liberal allowance of make-up, tapped him smartly with the newest thing in parasols which lay rakishly across her knee.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t understand me. You do perfectly. What’s more I believe you’re here on purpose to see the fur fly!’

Mr Satterthwaite protested vigorously. He didn’t know what she was talking about.

‘I’m talking about Richard Scott. Do you pretend you’ve never heard of him?’

‘No, of course not. He’s the Big Game man, isn’t he?’

‘That’s it–“Great big bears and tigers, etc.” as the song says. Of course, he’s a great lion himself just now–the Unkertons would naturally be mad to get hold of him–
and
the bride! A charming child–oh! quite a charming child–but so naïve, only twenty, you know, and he must be at least forty-five.’

‘Mrs Scott seems to be very charming,’ said Mr Satterthwaite sedately.

‘Yes, poor child.’

‘Why poor child?’

Lady Cynthia cast him a look of reproach, and went on approaching the point at issue in her own manner.

‘Porter’s all right–a dull dog, though–another of these African hunters, all sunburnt and silent. Second fiddle to Richard Scott and always has been–life-long friends and all that sort of thing. When I come to think of it, I believe they were together on that trip–’

‘Which trip?’

‘
The
trip. The Mrs Staverton trip. You’ll be saying next you’ve never heard of Mrs Staverton.’

‘I
have
heard of Mrs Staverton,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, almost with unwillingness.

And he and Lady Cynthia exchanged glances.

‘It’s so exactly like the Unkertons,’ wailed the latter, ‘they are absolutely hopeless–socially, I mean. The idea of asking those two together! Of course they’d heard that Mrs Staverton was a sportswoman and a traveller and all that, and about her book. People like the Unkertons don’t even begin to realize what pitfalls there are! I’ve been running them, myself, for the last year, and what I’ve gone through nobody knows. One has to be constantly at their elbow. “Don’t do that! You can’t do this!” Thank goodness, I’m through with it now. Not that we’ve quarrelled–oh! no, I never quarrel, but somebody else can take on the job. As
I’ve always said, I can put up with vulgarity, but I can’t stand meanness!’

After this somewhat cryptic utterance, Lady Cynthia was silent for a moment, ruminating on the Unkertons’ meanness as displayed to herself.

‘If I’d still been running the show for them,’ she went on presently, ‘I should have said quite firmly and plainly: “You can’t ask Mrs Staverton with the Richard Scotts. She and he were once–”’

She stopped eloquently.

‘But were they once?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.

‘My dear man! It’s well known. That trip into the Interior! I’m surprised the woman had the face to accept the invitation.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t know the others were coming?’ suggested Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Perhaps she did. That’s far more likely.’

‘You think–?’

‘She’s what I call a dangerous woman–the sort of woman who’d stick at nothing. I wouldn’t be in Richard Scott’s shoes this week-end.’

‘And his wife knows nothing, you think?’

‘I’m certain of it. But I suppose some kind friend will enlighten her sooner or later. Here’s Jimmy Allenson. Such a nice boy. He saved my life in Egypt last winter–I was so bored, you know. Hullo, Jimmy, come here at once.’

Captain Allenson obeyed, dropping down on the turf beside her. He was a handsome young fellow of thirty, with white teeth and an infectious smile.

‘I’m glad somebody wants me,’ he observed. ‘The Scotts are doing the turtle dove stunt, two required, not three, Porter’s devouring the
Field
, and I’ve been in mortal danger of being entertained by my hostess.’

He laughed. Lady Cynthia laughed with him. Mr Satterthwaite, who was in some ways a little old-fashioned, so much so that he seldom made fun of his host and hostess until after he had left their house, remained grave.

‘Poor Jimmy,’ said Lady Cynthia.

‘Mine not to reason why, mine but to swiftly fly. I had a narrow escape of being told the family ghost story.’

‘An Unkerton ghost,’ said Lady Cynthia. ‘How screaming.’

‘Not an Unkerton ghost,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘A Greenways ghost. They bought it with the house.’

‘Of course,’ said Lady Cynthia. ‘I remember now. But it doesn’t clank chains, does it? It’s only something to do with a window.’

Jimmy Allenson looked up quickly.

‘A window?’

But for the moment Mr Satterthwaite did not answer. He was looking over Jimmy’s head at three figures
approaching from the direction of the house–a slim girl between two men. There was a superficial resemblance between the men, both were tall and dark with bronzed faces and quick eyes, but looked at more closely the resemblance vanished. Richard Scott, hunter and explorer, was a man of extraordinarily vivid personality. He had a manner that radiated magnetism. John Porter, his friend and fellow hunter, was a man of squarer build with an impassive, rather wooden face, and very thoughtful grey eyes. He was a quiet man, content always to play second fiddle to his friend.

And between these two walked Moira Scott who, until three months ago, had been Moira O’Connell. A slender figure, big wistful brown eyes, and golden red hair that stood out round her small face like a saint’s halo.

‘That child mustn’t be hurt,’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘It would be abominable that a child like that should be hurt.’

Lady Cynthia greeted the newcomers with a wave of the latest thing in parasols.

‘Sit down, and don’t interrupt,’ she said. ‘Mr Satterthwaite is telling us a ghost story.’

‘I love ghost stories,’ said Moira Scott. She dropped down on the grass.

‘The ghost of Greenways House?’ asked Richard Scott.

‘Yes. You know about it?’

Scott nodded.

‘I used to stay here in the old days,’ he explained. ‘Before the Elliots had to sell up. The Watching Cavalier, that’s it, isn’t it?’

‘The Watching Cavalier,’ said his wife softly. ‘I like that. It sounds interesting. Please go on.’

But Mr Satterthwaite seemed somewhat loath to do so. He assured her that it was not really interesting at all.

‘Now you’ve done it, Satterthwaite,’ said Richard Scott sardonically. ‘That hint of reluctance clinches it.’

In response to popular clamour, Mr Satterthwaite was forced to speak.

‘It’s really very uninteresting,’ he said apologetically. ‘I believe the original story centres round a Cavalier ancestor of the Elliot family. His wife had a Roundhead lover. The husband was killed by the lover in an upstairs room, and the guilty pair fled, but as they fled, they looked back at the house, and saw the face of the dead husband at the window, watching them. That is the legend, but the ghost story is only concerned with a pane of glass in the window of that particular room on which is an irregular stain, almost imperceptible from near at hand, but which from far away certainly gives the effect of a man’s face looking out.’

‘Which window is it?’ asked Mrs Scott, looking up at the house.

‘You can’t see it from here,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It is round the other side but was boarded up from the inside some years ago–forty years ago, I think, to be accurate.’

‘What did they do that for? I thought you said the ghost didn’t walk.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Mr Satterthwaite assured her. ‘I suppose–well, I suppose there grew to be a superstitious feeling about it, that’s all.’

Then, deftly enough, he succeeded in turning the conversation. Jimmy Allenson was perfectly ready to hold forth upon Egyptian sand diviners.

‘Frauds, most of them. Ready enough to tell you vague things about the past, but won’t commit themselves as to the future.’

‘I should have thought it was usually the other way about,’ remarked John Porter.

‘It’s illegal to tell the future in this country, isn’t it?’ said Richard Scott. ‘Moira persuaded a gypsy into telling her fortune, but the woman gave her her shilling back, and said there was nothing doing, or words to that effect.’

‘Perhaps she saw something so frightful that she didn’t like to tell it me,’ said Moira.

‘Don’t pile on the agony, Mrs Scott,’ said Allenson
lightly. ‘I, for one, refuse to believe that an unlucky fate is hanging over you.’

‘I wonder,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘I wonder…’

Then he looked up sharply. Two women were coming from the house, a short stout woman with black hair, inappropriately dressed in jade green, and a tall slim figure in creamy white. The first woman was his hostess, Mrs Unkerton, the second was a woman he had often heard of, but never met.

‘Here’s Mrs Staverton,’ announced Mrs Unkerton, in a tone of great satisfaction. ‘All friends here, I think.’

‘These people have an uncanny gift for saying just the most awful things they can,’ murmured Lady Cynthia, but Mr Satterthwaite was not listening. He was watching Mrs Staverton.

Very easy–very natural. Her careless ‘Hullo! Richard, ages since we met. Sorry I couldn’t come to the wedding. Is this your wife? You must be tired of meeting all your husband’s weather-beaten old friends.’ Moira’s response–suitable, rather shy. The elder woman’s swift appraising glance that went on lightly to another old friend.

‘Hullo, John!’ The same easy tone, but with a subtle difference in it–a warming quality that had been absent before.

And then that sudden smile. It transformed her. Lady Cynthia had been quite right. A dangerous woman! Very fair–deep blue eyes–not the traditional colouring of the siren–a face almost haggard in repose. A woman with a slow dragging voice and a sudden dazzling smile.

Iris Staverton sat down. She became naturally and inevitably the centre of the group. So you felt it would always be.

Mr Satterthwaite was recalled from his thoughts by Major Porter’s suggesting a stroll. Mr Satterthwaite, who was not as a general rule much given to strolling, acquiesced. The two men sauntered off together across the lawn.

‘Very interesting story of yours just now,’ said the Major.

‘I will show you the window,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

He led the way round to the west side of the house. Here there was a small formal garden–the Privy Garden, it was always called, and there was some point in the name, for it was surrounded by high holly hedges, and even the entrance to it ran zigzag between the same high prickly hedges.

Once inside, it was very charming with an old-world charm of formal flower beds, flagged paths and a low stone seat, exquisitely carved. When they had reached the centre of the garden, Mr Satterthwaite turned and
pointed up at the house. The length of Greenways House ran north and south. In this narrow west wall there was only one window, a window on the first floor, almost overgrown by ivy, with grimy panes, and which you could just see was boarded up on the inside.

‘There you are,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

Craning his neck a little, Porter looked up.

‘H’m I can see a kind of discolouration on one of the panes, nothing more.’

‘We’re too near,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘There’s a clearing higher up in the woods where you get a really good view.’

He led the way out of the Privy Garden, and turning sharply to the left, struck into the woods. A certain enthusiasm of showmanship possessed him, and he hardly noticed that the man at his side was absent and inattentive.

‘They had, of course, to make another window, when they boarded up this one,’ he explained. ‘The new one faces south overlooking the lawn where we were sitting just now. I rather fancy the Scotts have the room in question. That is why I didn’t want to pursue the subject. Mrs Scott might have felt nervous if she had realized that she was sleeping in what might be called the haunted room.’

‘Yes. I see,’ said Porter.

Mr Satterthwaite looked at him sharply, and realized that the other had not heard a word of what he was saying.

‘Very interesting,’ said Porter. He slashed with his stick at some tall foxgloves, and, frowning, he said: ‘She ought not to have come. She ought never to have come.’

People often spoke after this fashion to Mr Satterthwaite. He seemed to matter so little, to have so negative a personality. He was merely a glorified listener.

‘No,’ said Porter, ‘she ought never to have come.’

Mr Satterthwaite knew instinctively that it was not of Mrs Scott he spoke.

‘You think not?’ he asked.

Porter shook his head as though in foreboding.

‘I was on that trip,’ he said abruptly. ‘The three of us went. Scott and I and Iris. She’s a wonderful woman–and a damned fine shot.’ He paused. ‘What made them ask her?’ he finished abruptly.

Mr Satterthwaite shrugged his shoulders.

‘Ignorance,’ he said.

‘There’s going to be trouble,’ said the other. ‘We must stand by–and do what we can.’

‘But surely Mrs Staverton–?’

‘I’m talking of Scott.’ He paused. ‘You see–there’s Mrs Scott to consider.’

Mr Satterthwaite had been considering her all along,
but he did not think it necessary to say so, since the other man had so clearly forgotten her until this minute.