The Mysterious Mr Quin (14 page)

She stared at him.

‘You are a strange man. These things you say–I have never thought of them…’

‘You say your life is your own,’ went on Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But can you dare to ignore the chance
that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play–it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.’

She sat down, still staring.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said simply.

It was Mr Satterthwaite’s moment of triumph. He issued orders.

‘I want you at least to promise me one thing–to do nothing rash for twenty-four hours.’

She was silent for a moment or two and then she said: ‘I promise.’

‘There is one other thing–a favour.’

‘Yes?’

‘Leave the shutter of the room I came in by unfastened, and keep vigil there tonight.’

She looked at him curiously, but nodded assent.

‘And now,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, slightly conscious of anticlimax, ‘I really must be going. God bless you, my dear.’

He made a rather embarrassed exit. The stalwart Spanish girl met him in the passage and opened a side door for him, staring curiously at him the while.

It was just growing dark as he reached the hotel. There was a solitary figure sitting on the terrace. Mr Satterthwaite made straight for it. He was excited and his heart was beating quite fast. He felt that tremendous issues lay in his hands. One false move–

But he tried to conceal his agitation and to speak naturally and casually to Anthony Cosden.

‘A warm evening,’ he observed. ‘I quite lost count of time sitting up there on the cliff.’

‘Have you been up there all this time?’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded. The swing door into the hotel opened to let someone through, and a beam of light fell suddenly on the other’s face, illuminating its look of dull suffering, of uncomprehending dumb endurance.

Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘It’s worse for him than it would be for me. Imagination, conjecture, speculation–they can do a lot for you. You can, as it were, ring the changes upon pain. The uncomprehending blind suffering of an animal–that’s terrible…’

Cosden spoke suddenly in a harsh voice.

‘I’m going for a stroll after dinner. You–you understand? The third time’s lucky. For God’s sake don’t interfere. I know your interference will be well-meaning and all that–but take it from me, it’s useless.’

Mr Satterthwaite drew himself up.

‘I never interfere,’ he said, thereby giving the lie to the whole purpose and object of his existence.

‘I know what you think–’ went on Cosden, but he was interrupted.

‘You must excuse me, but there I beg to differ from you,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.’

‘Well, perhaps that’s so.’ Cosden was doubtful, slightly taken aback.

‘Thought is yours only,’ said his companion. ‘Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it. Let us talk of a less painful subject. That old villa, for instance. It has a curious charm, withdrawn, sheltered from the world, shielding heaven knows what mystery. It tempted me to do a doubtful action. I tried one of the shutters.’

‘You did?’ Cosden turned his head sharply. ‘But it was fastened, of course?’

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It was open.’ He added gently: ‘The third shutter from the end.’

‘Why,’ Cosden burst out, ‘that was the one–’

He broke off suddenly, but Mr Satterthwaite had seen the light that had sprung up in his eyes. He rose–satisfied.

Some slight tinge of anxiety still remained with him. Using his favourite metaphor of a drama, he hoped
that he had spoken his few lines correctly. For they were very important lines.

But thinking it over, his artistic judgment was satisfied. On his way up to the cliff, Cosden would try that shutter. It was not in human nature to resist. A memory of twenty odd years ago had brought him to this spot, the same memory would take him to the shutter. And afterwards?

‘I shall know in the morning,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and proceeded to change methodically for his evening meal.

It was somewhere round ten o’clock that Mr Satterthwaite set foot once more in the garden of La Paz. Manuel bade him a smiling ‘Good morning,’ and handed him a single rosebud which Mr Satterthwaite put carefully into his buttonhole. Then he went on to the house. He stood there for some minutes looking up at the peaceful white walls, the trailing orange creeper, and the faded green shutters. So silent, so peaceful. Had the whole thing been a dream?

But at that moment one of the windows opened and the lady who occupied Mr Satterthwaite’s thoughts came out. She came straight to him with a buoyant swaying walk, like someone carried on a great wave of exultation. Her eyes were shining, her colour high. She looked like a figure of joy on a frieze. There was no hesitation about her, no doubts or tremors. Straight
to Mr Satterthwaite she came, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him–not once but many times. Large, dark, red roses, very velvety–that is how he thought of it afterwards. Sunshine, summer, birds singing–that was the atmosphere into which he felt himself caught up. Warmth, joy and tremendous vigour.

‘I’m so happy,’ she said. ‘You darling! How did you know? How
could
you know? You’re like the good magician in the fairy tales.’

She paused, a sort of breathlessness of happiness upon her.

‘We’re going over today–to the Consul–to get married. When John comes, his father will be there. We’ll tell him there was some misunderstanding in the past. Oh! he won’t ask questions. Oh! I’m so happy–so happy–so happy.’

Happiness did indeed surge from her like a tide. It lapped round Mr Satterthwaite in a warm exhilarating flood.

‘It’s so wonderful to Anthony to find he has a son. I never dreamt he’d mind or care.’ She looked confidently into Mr Satterthwaite’s eyes. ‘Isn’t it strange how things come right and end all beautifully?’

He had his clearest vision of her yet. A child–still a child–with her love of make believe–her fairy tales that ended beautifully with two people ‘living happily ever afterwards’.

He said gently:

‘If you bring this man of yours happiness in these last months, you will indeed have done a very beautiful thing.’

Her eyes opened wide–surprised.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You don’t think I’d let him die, do you? After all these years–when he’s come to me. I’ve known lots of people whom doctors have given up and who are alive today. Die? Of course he’s not going to die!’

He looked at her–her strength, her beauty, her vitality–her indomitable courage and will. He, too, had known doctors to be mistaken…The personal factor–you never knew how much and how little it counted.

She said again, with scorn and amusement in her voice:

‘You don’t think I’d let him die, do you?’

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite at last very gently. ‘Somehow, my dear, I don’t think you will…’

Then at last he walked down the cypress path to the bench overlooking the sea and found there the person he was expecting to see. Mr Quin rose and greeted him–the same as ever, dark, saturnine, smiling and sad.

‘You expected me?’ he asked.

And Mr Satterthwaite answered: ‘Yes, I expected you.’

They sat together on the bench.

‘I have an idea that you have been playing Providence once more, to judge by your expression,’ said Mr Quin presently.

Mr Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully.

‘As if you didn’t know all about it.’

‘You always accuse me of omniscience,’ said Mr Quin, smiling.

‘If you know nothing, why were you here the night before last–waiting?’ countered Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Oh, that–?’

‘Yes, that.’

‘I had a–commission to perform.’

‘For whom?’

‘You have sometimes fancifully named me an advocate for the dead.’

‘The dead?’ said Mr Satterthwaite, a little puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

Mr Quin pointed a long, lean finger down at the blue depths below.

‘A man was drowned down there twenty-two years ago.’

‘I know–but I don’t see–’

‘Supposing that, after all, that man loved his young wife. Love can make devils of men as well as angels. She had a girlish adoration for him, but he could never touch the womanhood in her–and that drove him
mad. He tortured her because he loved her. Such things happen. You know that as well as I do.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Mr Satterthwaite, ‘I have seen such things–but rarely–very rarely…’

‘And you have also seen, more commonly, that there is such a thing as remorse–the desire to make amends–at all costs to make amends.’

‘Yes, but death came too soon…’

‘Death!’ There was contempt in Mr Quin’s voice. ‘You believe in a life after death, do you not? And who are you to say that the same wishes, the same desires, may not operate in that other life? If the desire is strong enough–a messenger may be found.’

His voice tailed away.

Mr Satterthwaite got up, trembling a little.

‘I must get back to the hotel,’ he said. ‘If you are going that way.’

But Mr Quin shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I shall go back the way I came.’

When Mr Satterthwaite looked back over his shoulder, he saw his friend walking towards the edge of the cliff.

I

‘I am a little worried about Margery,’ said Lady Stranleigh.

‘My girl, you know,’ she added.

She sighed pensively.

‘It makes one feel terribly old to have a grown-up daughter.’

Mr Satterthwaite, who was the recipient of these confidences, rose to the occasion gallantly.

‘No one could believe it possible,’ he declared with a little bow.

‘Flatterer,’ said Lady Stranleigh, but she said it vaguely and it was clear that her mind was elsewhere.

Mr Satterthwaite looked at the slender white-clad figure in some admiration. The Cannes sunshine was searching, but Lady Stranleigh came through the test very well. At a distance the youthful effect was really
extraordinary. One almost wondered if she were grownup or not. Mr Satterthwaite, who knew everything, knew that it was perfectly possible for Lady Stranleigh to have grown-up grandchildren. She represented the extreme triumph of art over nature. Her figure was marvellous, her complexion was marvellous. She had enriched many beauty parlours and certainly the results were astounding.

Lady Stranleigh lit a cigarette, crossed her beautiful legs encased in the finest of nude silk stockings and murmured: ‘Yes, I really am rather worried about Margery.’

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘what is the trouble?’

Lady Stranleigh turned her beautiful blue eyes upon him

‘You have never met her, have you? She is Charles’ daughter,’ she added helpfully.

If entries in ‘Who’s Who’ were strictly truthful, the entries concerning Lady Stranleigh might have ended as follows:
hobbies: getting married
. She had floated through life shedding husbands as she went. She had lost three by divorce and one by death.

‘If she had been Rudolph’s child I could have understood it,’ mused Lady Stranleigh. ‘You remember Rudolf? He was always temperamental. Six months after we married I had to apply for those queer things–what do they call them? Conjugal what nots, you
know what I mean. Thank goodness it is all much simpler nowadays. I remember I had to write him the silliest kind of letter–my lawyer practically dictated it to me. Asking him to come back, you know, and that I would do all I could, etc., etc., but you never could count on Rudolf, he was so temperamental. He came rushing home at once, which was quite the wrong thing to do, and not at all what the lawyers meant.’

She sighed.

‘About Margery?’ suggested Mr Satterthwaite, tactfully leading her back to the subject under discussion.

‘Of course. I was just going to tell you, wasn’t I? Margery has been seeing things, or hearing them. Ghosts, you know, and all that. I should never have thought that Margery could be so imaginative. She is a dear good girl, always has been, but just a shade–dull.’

‘Impossible,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite with a confused idea of being complimentary.

‘In fact, very dull,’ said Lady Stranleigh. ‘Doesn’t care for dancing, or cocktails or any of the things a young girl ought to care about. She much prefers staying at home to hunt instead of coming out here with me.’

‘Dear, dear,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘she wouldn’t come out with you, you say?’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly press her. Daughters have a depressing effect upon one, I find.’

Mr Satterthwaite tried to think of Lady Stranleigh accompanied by a serious-minded daughter and failed.

‘I can’t help wondering if Margery is going off her head,’ continued Margery’s mother in a cheerful voice. ‘Hearing voices is a very bad sign, so they tell me. It is not as though Abbot’s Mede were haunted. The old building was burnt to the ground in 1836, and they put up a kind of early Victorian château which simply cannot be haunted. It is much too ugly and commonplace.’

Mr Satterthwaite coughed. He was wondering why he was being told all this.

‘I thought perhaps,’ said Lady Stranleigh, smiling brilliantly upon him, ‘that
you
might be able to help me.’ ‘I?’

‘Yes. You are going back to England tomorrow, aren’t you?’ ‘I am. Yes, that is so,’ admitted Mr Satterthwaite cautiously.

‘And you know all these psychical research people. Of course you do, you know everybody.’

Mr Satterthwaite smiled a little. It was one of his weaknesses to know everybody.

‘So what can be simpler?’ continued Lady Stranleigh. ‘I never get on with that sort of person. You know–earnest men with beards and usually spectacles.
They bore me terribly and I am quite at my worst with them.’

Mr Satterthwaite was rather taken aback. Lady Stranleigh continued to smile at him brilliantly.

‘So that is all settled, isn’t it?’ she said brightly. ‘You will go down to Abbot’s Mede and see Margery, and make all the arrangements. I shall be terribly grateful to you. Of course if Margery is
really
going off her head, I will come home. Ah! here is Bimbo.’

Her smile from being brilliant became dazzling.

A young man in white tennis flannels was approaching them. He was about twenty-five years of age and extremely good-looking.

The young man said simply:

‘I have been looking for you everywhere, Babs.’

‘What has the tennis been like?’

‘Septic.’

Lady Stranleigh rose. She turned her head over her shoulder and murmured in dulcet tones to Mr Satterthwaite: ‘It is simply marvellous of you to help me. I shall never forget it.’

Mr Satterthwaite looked after the retreating couple.

‘I wonder,’ he mused to himself, ‘If Bimbo is going to be No. 5.’

II

The conductor of the Train de Luxe was pointing out to Mr Satterthwaite where an accident on the line had occurred a few years previously. As he finished his spirited narrative, the other looked up and saw a well-known face smiling at him over the conductor’s shoulder.

‘My dear Mr Quin,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

His little withered face broke into smiles.

‘What a coincidence! That we should both be returning to England on the same train. You are going there, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I have business there of rather an important nature. Are you taking the first service of dinner?’

‘I always do so. Of course, it is an absurd time–half-past six, but one runs less risk with the cooking.’

Mr Quin nodded comprehendingly.

‘I also,’ he said. ‘We might perhaps arrange to sit together.’

Half-past six found Mr Quin and Mr Satterthwaite established opposite each other at a small table in the dining-car. Mr Satterthwaite gave due attention to the wine list and then turned to his companion.

‘I have not seen you since–ah, yes not since Corsica. You left very suddenly that day.’

Mr Quin shrugged his shoulders.

‘Not more so than usual. I come and go, you know. I come and go.’

The words seemed to a wake some echo of remembrance in Mr Satterthwaite’s mind. A little shiver passed down his spine–not a disagreeable sensation, quite the contrary. He was conscious of a pleasurable sense of anticipation.

Mr Quin was holding up a bottle of red wine, examining the label on it. The bottle was between him and the light but for a minute or two a red glow enveloped his person.

Mr Satterthwaite felt again that sudden stir of excitement.

‘I too have a kind of mission in England,’ he remarked, smiling broadly at the remembrance. ‘You know Lady Stranleigh perhaps?’

Mr Quin shook his head.

‘It is an old title,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘a very old title. One of the few that can descend in the female line. She is a Baroness in her own right. Rather a romantic history really.’

Mr Quin settled himself more comfortably in his chair. A waiter, flying down the swinging car, deposited cups of soup before them as if by a miracle. Mr Quin sipped it cautiously.

‘You are about to give me one of those wonderful
descriptive portraits of yours,’ he murmured, ‘that is so, is it not?’

Mr Satterthwaite beamed on him.

‘She is really a marvellous woman,’ he said. ‘Sixty, you know–yes, I should say at least sixty. I knew them as girls, she and her sister. Beatrice, that was the name of the elder one. Beatrice and Barbara. I remember them as the Barron girls. Both good-looking and in those days very hard up. But that was a great many years ago–why, dear me, I was a young man myself then.’ Mr Satterthwaite sighed. ‘There were several lives then between them and the title. Old Lord Stranleigh was a first cousin once removed, I think. Lady Stranleigh’s life has been quite a romantic affair. Three unexpected deaths–two of the old man’s brothers and a nephew. Then there was the “Uralia”. You remember the wreck of the “Uralia”? She went down off the coast of New Zealand. The Barron girls were on board. Beatrice was drowned. This one, Barbara, was amongst the few survivors. Six months later, old Stranleigh died and she succeeded to the title and came into a considerable fortune. Since then she has lived for one thing only–herself! She has always been the same, beautiful, unscrupulous, completely callous, interested solely in herself. She has had four husbands, and I have no doubt could get a fifth in a minute.’

He went on to describe the mission with which he had been entrusted by Lady Stranleigh.

‘I thought of running down to Abbot’s Mede to see the young lady,’ he explained. ‘I–I feel that something ought to be done about the matter. It is impossible to think of Lady Stranleigh as an ordinary mother.’ He stopped, looking across the table at Mr Quin.

‘I wish you would come with me,’ he said wistfully. ‘Would it not be possible?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Mr Quin. ‘But let me see, Abbot’s Mede is in Wiltshire, is it not?’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded.

‘I thought as much. As it happens, I shall be staying not far from Abbot’s Mede, at a place you and I both know.’ He smiled. ‘You remember that little inn, the “Bells and Motley”?’

‘Of course,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite; ‘you will be there?’

Mr Quin nodded. ‘For a week or ten days. Possibly longer. If you will come and look me up one day, I shall be delighted to see you.’

And somehow or other Mr Satterthwaite felt strangely comforted by the assurance.

III

‘My dear Miss–er–Margery,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘I assure you that I should not dream of laughing at you.’

Margery Gale frowned a little. They were sitting in the large comfortable hall of Abbot’s Mede. Margery Gale was a big squarely built girl. She bore no resemblance to her mother, but took entirely after her father’s side of the family, a line of hard-riding country squires. She looked fresh and wholesome and the picture of sanity. Nevertheless, Mr Satterthwaite was reflecting to himself that the Barrons as a family were all inclined to mental instability. Margery might have inherited her physical appearance from her father and at the same time have inherited some mental kink from her mother’s side of the family.

‘I wish,’ said Margery, ‘that I could get rid of that Casson woman. I don’t believe in spiritualism, and I don’t like it. She is one of these silly women that run a craze to death. She is always bothering me to have a medium down here.’

Mr Satterthwaite coughed, fidgeted a little in his chair and then said in a judicial manner:

‘Let me be quite sure that I have all the facts. The first of the–er–phenomena occurred two months ago, I understand?’

‘About that,’ agreed the girl. ‘Sometimes it was a whisper and sometimes it was quite a clear voice but it always said much the same thing.’

‘Which was?’

‘
Give back what is not yours. Give back what you have stolen
. On each occasion I switched on the light, but the room was quite empty and there was no one there. In the end I got so nervous that I got Clayton, mother’s maid, to sleep on the sofa in my room.’

‘And the voice came just the same?’

‘Yes–and this is what frightens me–Clayton did not hear it.’

Mr Satterthwaite reflected for a minute or two.

‘Did it come loudly or softly that evening?’

‘It was almost a whisper,’ admitted Margery. ‘If Clayton was sound asleep I suppose she would not really have heard it. She wanted me to see a doctor.’ The girl laughed bitterly.

‘But since last night even Clayton believes,’ she continued.

‘What happened last night?’

‘I am just going to tell you. I have told no one as yet. I had been out hunting yesterday and we had had a long run. I was dead tired, and slept very heavily. I dreamt–a horrible dream–that I had fallen over some iron railings and that one of the spikes was entering slowly into my throat. I woke to find that it was true
–there was some sharp point pressing into the side of my neck, and at the same time a voice was murmuring softly: “
You have stolen what is mine. This is death.
”

‘I screamed,’ continued Margery, ‘and clutched at the air, but there was nothing there. Clayton heard me scream from the room next door where she was sleeping. She came rushing in, and she distinctly felt something brushing past her in the darkness, but she says that whatever that something was, it was not anything human.’

Mr Satterthwaite stared at her. The girl was obviously very shaken and upset. He noticed on the left side of her throat a small square of sticking plaster. She caught the direction of his gaze and nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was not imagination, you see.’

Mr Satterthwaite put a question almost apologetically, it sounded so melodramatic.

‘You don’t know of anyone–er–who has a grudge against you?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Margery. ‘What an idea!’

Mr Satterthwaite started on another line of attack.

‘What visitors have you had during the last two months?’

‘You don’t mean just people for week-ends, I suppose? Marcia Keane has been with me all along. She is my best friend, and just as keen on horses as I am. Then my cousin Roley Vavasour has been here a good deal.’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded. He suggested that he should see Clayton, the maid.

‘She has been with you a long time, I suppose?’ he asked.

‘Donkey’s years,’ said Margery. ‘She was Mother’s and Aunt Beatrice’s maid when they were girls. That is why Mother has kept her on, I suppose, although she has got a French maid for herself. Clayton does sewing and pottering little odd jobs.’