The Mysterious Mr Quin (18 page)

He caught his breath. Glasses ringing! Caruso, singing to a wine-glass and the wine-glass breaking. Yoachbim singing in the London studio and in a room over a mile away the crash and tinkle of glass–not a wine-glass, a thin, green, glass beaker. A crystal soap bubble falling, a soap bubble that perhaps was not empty…

It was at that moment that Mr Satterthwaite, as judged by passers-by, suddenly went mad. He tore open the newspaper once more, took a brief glance at the wireless announcements and then began to run for his life down the quiet street. At the end of it he found a crawling taxi, and jumping into it, he yelled an address to the driver and the information that it was life or death to get there quickly. The driver, judging him mentally afflicted but rich, did his utmost.

Mr Satterthwaite lay back, his head a jumble of fragmentary thoughts, forgotten bits of science learned at school, phrases used by Eastney that night. Resonance–natural periods–if the period of the force coincides with the natural period–there was something about a suspension bridge, soldiers marching over it and the swing of their stride being the same as the period of
the bridge. Eastney had studied the subject. Eastney knew. And Eastney was a genius.

At 10.45 Yoaschbim was to broadcast. It was that now. Yes, but the Faust had to come first. It was the ‘Shepherd’s Song’, with the great shout after the refrain that would–that would–do what?

His mind went whirling round again. Tones, overtones, half-tones. He didn’t know much about these things–but Eastney knew. Pray heaven he would be in time!

The taxi stopped. Mr Satterthwaite flung himself out and raced up the stone stairs to a second floor like a young athlete. The door of the flat was ajar. He pushed it open and the great tenor voice welcomed him. The words of the ‘Shepherd’s Song’ were familiar to him in a less unconventional setting.

He was in time then. He burst open the sitting-room door. Gillian was sitting there in a tall chair by the fireplace.

She must have thought him mad. He clutched at
her, crying out something incomprehensible, and half pulled, half dragged her out till they stood upon the stairway.

A wonderful high note, full-throated, powerful, hit full in the middle, a note any singer might be proud of. And with it another sound, the faint tinkle of broken glass.

A stray cat darted past them and in through the flat door. Gillian made a movement, but Mr Satterthwaite held her back, speaking incoherently.

‘No, no–it’s deadly: no smell, nothing to warn you. A mere whiff, and it’s all over. Nobody knows quite how deadly it would be. It’s unlike anything that’s ever been tried before.’

He was repeating the things that Philip Eastney had told him over the table at dinner.

Gillian stared at him uncomprehendingly.

III

Philip Eastney drew out his watch and looked at it. It was just half-past eleven. For the past three-quarters of an hour he had been pacing up and down the Embankment. He looked out over the Thames and then turned–to look into the face of his dinner companion.

‘That’s odd,’ he said, and laughed. ‘We seem fated to run into each other tonight.’

‘If you call it Fate,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

Philip Eastney looked at him more attentively and his own expression changed.

‘Yes?’ he said quietly.

Mr Satterthwaite went straight to the point.

‘I have just come from Miss West’s flat.’

‘Yes?’

The same voice, with the same deadly quiet.

‘We have–taken a dead cat out of it.’

There was silence, then Eastney said:

‘Who are you?’

Mr Satterthwaite spoke for some time. He recited the whole history of events.

‘So you see, I was in time,’ he ended up. He paused and added quite gently:

‘Have you anything–to say?’

He expected something, some outburst, some wild justification. But nothing came.

‘No,’ said Philip Eastney quietly, and turned on his heel and walked away,

Mr Satterthwaite looked after him till his figure was swallowed up in the gloom. In spite of himself, he had a strange fellow-feeling for Eastney, the feeling of an artist for another artist, of a sentimentalist for a real lover, of a plain man for a genius.

At last he roused himself with a start and began to walk in the same direction as Eastney. A fog was beginning to come up. Presently he met a policeman who looked at him suspiciously.

‘Did you hear a kind of splash just now?’ asked the policeman.

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

The policeman was peering out over the river.

‘Another of these suicides, I expect,’ he grunted disconsolately. ‘They will do it.’

‘I suppose,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘that they have their reasons.’

‘Money, mostly,’ said the policeman. ‘Sometimes it’s a woman,’ he said, as he prepared to move away. ‘It’s not always their fault, but some women cause a lot of trouble.’

‘Some women,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite softly.

When the policeman had gone on, he sat down on
a seat with the fog coming up all around him, and thought about Helen of Troy, and wondered if she were a nice, ordinary woman, blessed or cursed with a wonderful face.

Mr Satterthwaite walked slowly up Bond Street enjoying the sunshine. He was, as usual, carefully and beautifully dressed, and was bound for the Harchester Galleries where there was an exhibition of the paintings of one Frank Bristow, a new and hitherto unknown artist who showed signs of suddenly becoming the rage. Mr Satterthwaite was a patron of the arts.

As Mr Satterthwaite entered the Harchester Galleries, he was greeted at once with a smile of pleased recognition.

‘Good morning, Mr Satterthwaite, I thought we should see you before long. You know Bristow’s work? Fine–very fine indeed. Quite unique of its kind.’

Mr Satterthwaite purchased a catalogue and stepped through the open archway into the long room where the artist’s works were displayed. They were water colours, executed with such extraordinary technique
and finish that they resembled coloured etchings. Mr Satterthwaite walked slowly round the walls scrutinizing and, on the whole, approving. He thought that this young man deserved to arrive. Here was originality, vision, and a most severe and exacting technique. There were crudities, of course. That was only to be expected–but there was also something closely allied to genius. Mr Satterthwaite paused before a little masterpiece representing Westminster Bridge with its crowd of buses, trams and hurrying pedestrians. A tiny thing and wonderfully perfect. It was called, he noted, The Ant Heap. He passed on and quite suddenly drew in his breath with a gasp, his imagination held and riveted.

The picture was called The Dead Harlequin. The forefront of it represented a floor of inlaid squares of black and white marble. In the middle of the floor lay Harlequin on his back with his arms outstretched, in his motley of black and red. Behind him was a window and outside that window, gazing in at the figure on the floor, was what appeared to be the same man silhouetted against the red glow of the setting sun.

The picture excited Mr Satterthwaite for two reasons, the first was that he recognized, or thought that he recognized, the face of the man in the picture. It bore a distinct resemblance to a certain Mr Quin, an acquaintance whom Mr Satterthwaite had
encountered once or twice under somewhat mystifying circumstances.

‘Surely I can’t be mistaken,’ he murmured. ‘If it
is
so–what does it mean?’

For it had been Mr Satterthwaite’s experience that every appearance of Mr Quin had some distinct significance attaching to it.

There was, as already mentioned, a second reason for Mr Satterthwaite’s interest. He recognized the scene of the picture.

‘The Terrace Room at Charnley,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Curious–and very interesting.’

He looked with more attention at the picture, wondering what exactly had been in the artist’s mind. One Harlequin dead on the floor, another Harlequin looking through the window–or was it the same Harlequin? He moved slowly along the walls gazing at other pictures with unseeing eyes, with his mind always busy on the same subject. He was excited. Life, which had seemed a little drab this morning, was drab no longer. He knew quite certainly that he was on the threshold of exciting and interesting events. He crossed to the table where sat Mr Cobb, a dignitary of the Harchester Galleries, whom he had known for many years.

‘I have a fancy for buying no. 39,’ he said, ‘if it is not already sold.’

Mr Cobb consulted a ledger.

‘The pick of the bunch,’ he murmured, ‘quite a little gem, isn’t it? No, it is not sold.’ He quoted a price. ‘It is a good investment, Mr Satterthwaite. You will have to pay three times as much for it this time next year.’

‘That is always said on these occasions,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, smiling.

‘Well, and haven’t I been right?’ demanded Mr Cobb. ‘I don’t believe if you were to sell your collection, Mr Satterthwaite, that a single picture would fetch less than you gave for it.’

‘I will buy this picture,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I will give you a cheque now.’

‘You won’t regret it. We believe in Bristow.’

‘He is a young man?’

‘Twenty-seven or-eight, I should say.’

‘I should like to meet him,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Perhaps he will come and dine with me one night?’

‘I can give you his address. I am sure he would leap at the chance. Your name stands for a good deal in the artistic world.’

‘You flatter me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and was going on when Mr Cobb interrupted:

‘Here he is now. I will introduce you to him right away.’

He rose from behind his table. Mr Satterthwaite accompanied him to where a big, clumsy young man
was leaning against the wall surveying the world at large from behind the barricade of a ferocious scowl.

Mr Cobb made the necessary introductions and Mr Satterthwaite made a formal and gracious little speech.

‘I have just had the pleasure of acquiring one of your pictures–The Dead Harlequin.’

‘Oh! Well, you won’t lose by it,’ said Mr Bristow ungraciously. ‘It’s a bit of damned good work, although I say it.’

‘I can see that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Your work interests me very much, Mr Bristow. It is extraordinarily mature for so young a man. I wonder if you would give me the pleasure of dining with me one night? Are you engaged this evening?’

‘As a matter of fact, I am not,’ said Mr Bristow, still with no overdone appearance of graciousness.

‘Then shall we say eight o’clock?’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Here is my card with the address on it.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Mr Bristow. ‘Thanks,’ he added as a somewhat obvious afterthought.

‘A young man who has a poor opinion of himself and is afraid that the world should share it.’

Such was Mr Satterthwaite’s summing up as he stepped out into the sunshine of Bond Street, and Mr Satterthwaite’s judgment of his fellow men was seldom far astray.

Frank Bristow arrived about five minutes past eight to find his host and a third guest awaiting him. The other guest was introduced as a Colonel Monckton. They went in to dinner almost immediately. There was a fourth place laid at the oval mahogany table and Mr Satterthwaite uttered a word of explanation.

‘I half expected my friend, Mr Quin, might drop in,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you have ever met him. Mr Harley Quin?’

‘I never meet people,’ growled Bristow.

Colonel Monckton stared at the artist with the detached interest he might have accorded to a new species of jelly fish. Mr Satterthwaite exerted himself to keep the ball of conversation rolling amicably.

‘I took a special interest in that picture of yours because I thought I recognized the scene of it as being the Terrace Room at Charnley. Was I right?’ As the artist nodded, he went on. ‘That is very interesting. I have stayed at Charnley several times myself in the past. Perhaps you know some of the family?’

‘No, I don’t!’ said Bristow. ‘That sort of family wouldn’t care to know me. I went there in a charabanc.’

‘Dear me,’ said Colonel Monckton for the sake of saying something. ‘In a charabanc! Dear me.’

Frank Bristow scowled at him.

‘Why not?’ he demanded ferociously.

Poor Colonel Monckton was taken aback. He looked reproachfully at Mr Satterthwaite as though to say:

‘These primitive forms of life may be interesting to you as a naturalist, but why drag
me
in?’

‘Oh, beastly things, charabancs!’ he said. ‘They jolt you so going over the bumps.’

‘If you can’t afford a Rolls Royce you have got to go in charabancs,’ said Bristow fiercely.

Colonel Monckton stared at him. Mr Satterthwaite thought:

‘Unless I can manage to put this young man at his ease we are going to have a very distressing evening.’

‘Charnley aways fascinated me,’ he said. ‘I have been there only once since the tragedy. A grim house–and a ghostly one.’

‘That’s true,’ said Bristow.

‘There are actually two authentic ghosts,’ said Monckton. ‘They say that Charles I walks up and down the terrace with his head under his arm–I have forgotten why, I’m sure. Then there is the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer, who is always seen after one of the Charnleys dies.’

‘Tosh,’ said Bristow scornfully.

‘They have certainly been a very ill-fated family,’ said Mr Satterthwaite hurriedly. ‘Four holders of the title have died a violent death and the late Lord Charnley committed suicide.’

‘A ghastly business,’ said Monckton gravely. ‘I was there when it happened.’

‘Let me see, that must be fourteen years ago,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘the house has been shut up ever since.’

‘I don’t wonder at that,’ said Monckton. ‘It must have been a terrible shock for a young girl. They had been married a month, just home from their honeymoon. Big fancy dress ball to celebrate their home-coming. Just as the guests were starting to arrive Charnley locked himself into the Oak Parlour and shot himself. That sort of thing isn’t done. I beg your pardon?’

He turned his head sharply to the left and looked across at Mr Satterthwaite with an apologetic laugh.

‘I am beginning to get the jimjams, Satterthwaite. I thought for a moment there was someone sitting in that empty chair and that he said something to me.

‘Yes,’ he went on after a minute or two, ‘it was a pretty ghastly shock to Alix Charnley. She was one of the prettiest girls you could see anywhere and cram full of what people call the joy of living, and now they say she is like a ghost herself. Not that I have seen her for years. I believe she lives abroad most of the time.’

‘And the boy?’

‘The boy is at Eton. What he will do when he comes of age I don’t know. I don’t think, somehow, that he will reopen the old place.’

‘It would make a good People’s Pleasure Park,’ said Bristow.

Colonel Monckton looked at him with cold abhorrence.

‘No, no, you don’t really mean that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘You wouldn’t have painted that picture if you did. Tradition and atmosphere are intangible things. They take centuries to build up and if you destroyed them you couldn’t rebuild them again in twenty-four hours.’

He rose. ‘Let us go into the smoking-room. I have some photographs there of Charnley which I should like to show you.’

One of Mr Satterthwaite’s hobbies was amateur photography. He was also the proud author of a book, ‘Homes of My Friends’. The friends in question were all rather exalted and the book itself showed Mr Satterthwaite forth in rather a more snobbish light than was really fair to him.

‘That is a photograph I took of the Terrace Room last year,’ he said. He handed it to Bristow. ‘You see it is taken at almost the same angle as is shown in your picture. That is rather a wonderful rug–it is a pity that photographs can’t show colouring.’

‘I remember it,’ said Bristow, ‘a marvellous bit of colour. It glowed like a flame. All the same it looked a bit incongruous there. The wrong size for that big
room with its black and white squares. There is no rug anywhere else in the room. It spoils the whole effect–it was like a gigantic blood stain.’

‘Perhaps that gave you your idea for your picture?’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Perhaps it did,’ said Bristow thoughtfully. ‘On the face of it, one would naturally stage a tragedy in the little panelled room leading out of it.’

‘The Oak Parlour,’ said Monckton. ‘Yes, that is the haunted room right enough. There is a Priests’ hiding hole there–a movable panel by the fireplace. Tradition has it that Charles I was concealed there once. There were two deaths from duelling in that room. And it was there, as I say, that Reggie Charnley shot himself.’

He took the photograph from Bristow’s hand.

‘Why, that is the Bokhara rug,’ he said, ‘worth a couple of thousand pounds, I believe. When I was there it was in the Oak Parlour–the right place for it. It looks silly on that great expanse of marble flags.’

Mr Satterthwaite was looking at the empty chair which he had drawn up beside his. Then he said thoughtfully: ‘I wonder when it was moved?’

‘It must have been recently. Why, I remember having a conversation about it on the very day of the tragedy. Charnley was saying it really ought to be kept under glass.’

Mr Satterthwaite shook his head. ‘The house was
shut up immediately after the tragedy and everything was left exactly as it was.’

Bristow broke in with a question. He had laid aside his aggressive manner.

‘Why did Lord Charnley shoot himself?’ he asked.

Colonel Monckton shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

‘No one ever knew,’ he said vaguely.

‘I suppose,’ said Mr Satterthwaite slowly, ‘that it
was
suicide.’

The Colonel looked at him in blank astonishment.

‘Suicide,’ he said, ‘why, of course it was suicide. My dear fellow, I was there in the house myself.’

Mr Satterthwaite looked towards the empty chair at his side and, smiling to himself as though at some hidden joke the others could not see, he said quietly:

‘Sometimes one sees things more clearly years afterwards than one could possibly at the time.’

‘Nonsense,’ spluttered Monckton, ‘arrant nonsense! How can you possibly see things better when they are vague in your memory instead of clear and sharp?’

But Mr Satterthwaite was reinforced from an unexpected quarter.

‘I know what you mean,’ said the artist. ‘I should say that possibly you were right. It is a question of proportion, isn’t it? And more than proportion probably. Relativity and all that sort of thing.’

‘If you ask me,’ said the Colonel, ‘all this Einstein business is a lot of dashed nonsense. So are spiritualists and the spook of one’s grandmother!’ He glared round fiercely.

‘Of course it was suicide,’ he went on. ‘Didn’t I practically see the thing happen with my own eyes?’

‘Tell us about it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘so that we shall see it with our eyes also.’

With a somewhat mollified grunt the Colonel settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

‘The whole thing was extraordinarily unexpected,’ he began. ‘Charnley had been his usual normal self. There was a big party staying in the house for this ball. No one could ever have guessed he would go and shoot himself just as the guests began arriving.’

‘It would have been better taste if he had waited until they had gone,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.