Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "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 Egyptians and 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 realised that she was sleeping in what might be called the haunted room."

  "Yes, I see," said Porter.

  Mr Satterthwaite looked at him sharply, and realised 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."

  Peop
le 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.

  "How did Scott meet his wife?" he asked.

  "Last winter, in Cairo. A quick business. They were engaged in three weeks, and married in six."

  "She seems to me very charming."

  "She is, no doubt about it. And he adores her - but that will make no difference. "And again Major Porter repeated to himself, using the pronoun that meant to him one person only: "Hang it all, she shouldn't have come..."

  Just then they stepped out upon a high grassy knoll at some little distance from the house. With again something of the pride of the showman, Mr Satterthwaite stretched out his arm.

  "Look," he said.

  It was fast growing dusk. The window could still be plainly observed, and apparently pressed against one of the panes was a man's face surmounted by a plumed cavalier's hat.

  "Very curious," said Porter. "Really very curious. What will happen when that pane of glass gets smashed some day?"

  Mr Satterthwaite smiled.

  "That is one of the most interesting parts of the story. That pane of glass has been replaced to my certain knowledge at least eleven times, perhaps oftener. The last time was twelve years ago when the then owner of the house determined to destroy the myth. But it's always the same. The stain reappears - not all at once, the discolouration spreads gradually. It takes a month or two as a rule."

  For the first time, Porter showed signs of real interest. He gave a sudden quick shiver.

  "Damned odd, these things. No accounting for them. What's the real reason of having the room boarded up inside?"

  "Well, an idea got about that the room was - unlucky. The Eveshams were in it just before the divorce. Then Stanley and his wife were staying here, and had that room when he ran off with his chorus girl"

  Porter raised his eyebrows.

  "I see. Danger, not to life, but to morals."

  "And now," thought Mr Satterthwaite to himself, "the Scotts have it...

  I wonder..."

  They retraced their steps in silence to the house. Walking almost noiselessly on the soft turf, each absorbed in his own thoughts, they became unwittingly eavesdroppers.

  They were rounding the corner of the holly hedge when they heard Iris Staverton's voice raised fierce and clear from the depths of the Privy Garden.

  "You shall be sorry - sorry - for this!"

  Scott's voice answered low and uncertain, so that the words could not be distinguished, and then the woman's voice rose again, speaking words that they were to remember later.

  "Jealousy - it drives one to the Devil - it is the Devil! It can drive one to black murder. Be careful, Richard, for God's sake, be careful!"

  And then on that she had come out of the Privy Garden ahead of them, and on round the corner of the house without seeing them, walking swiftly, almost running, like a woman hag-ridden and pursued.

  Mr Satterthwaite thought again of Lady Cynthia's words. A dangerous woman. For the first time, he had a premonition of tragedy, coming swift and inexorable, not to be gainsaid.

  Yet that evening he felt ashamed of his fears. Everything seemed normal and pleasant. Mrs Staverton, with her easy insouciance, showed no sign of strain. Moira Scott was her charming, unaffected self. The two women appeared to be getting on very well. Richard Scott himself seemed to be in boisterous spirits.

  The most worried looking person was stout Mrs Unkerton. She confided at length in Mr Satterthwaite.

  "Think it silly or not, as you like, there's something giving me the creeps. And I'll tell you frankly, I've sent for the glazier unbeknown to Ned."

  "The glazier?"

  "To put a new pane of glass in that window. It's all very well. Ned's proud of it - says it gives the house a tone I don't like it. I tell you flat.

  We'll have a nice plain modern pane of glass, with no nasty stories attached to it."

  "You forget," said Mr Satterthwaite, "or perhaps you don't know. The stain comes back."

  "That's as it may be," said Mrs Unkerton. "All I can say is if it does, it's against nature!"

  Mr Satterthwaite raised his eyebrows, but did not reply.

  "And what if it does?" pursued Mrs Unkerton defiantly. "We're not so bankrupt, Ned and I, that we can't afford a new pane of glass every month - or every week if need be for the matter of that."

  Mr Satterthwaite did not meet the challenge. He had seen too many things crumple and fall before the power of money to believe that even a Cavalier ghost could put up a successful fight. Nevertheless, he was interested by Mrs Unkerton's manifest uneasiness. Even she was not exempt from the tension in the atmosphere - only she attributed it to an attenuated ghost story, not to the clash of personalities amongst her guests.

  Mr Satterthwaite was fated to hear yet another scrap of conversation which threw light upon the situation. He was going up the wide staircase to bed, John Porter and Mrs Staverton were sitting together in an alcove of the big hall. She was speaking with a faint irritation in her golden voice.

  "I hadn't the least idea the Scotts were going to be here. I daresay, if I had known, I shouldn't have come, but I can assure you, my dear John, that now I am here, I'm not going to run away -"

  Mr Satterthwaite passed on up the staircase out of earshot. He thought to himself - "I wonder now - How much of that is true? Did she know? I wonder - what's going to come of it?"

  He shook his head.

  In the clear light of the morning he felt that he had perhaps been a little melodramatic in his imaginings of the evening before. A moment of strain - yes, certainly - inevitable under the circumstances - but nothing more. People adjusted themselves. His fancy that some great catastrophe was pending was nerves - pure nerves - or possibly liver.

  Yes, that was it, liver. He was due at Carlsbad in another fortnight.

  On his own account he proposed a little stroll that evening just as it was growing dusk. He suggested to Major Porter that they should go up to the clearing and see if Mrs Unkerton had been as good as her word, and had a new pane of glass put in. To himself, he said -

  "Exercise, that's what I need. Exercise."

  The two men walked slowly through the woods. Porter, as usual, was taciturn.

  "I can't help feeling," said Mr Satterthwaite loquaciously, "that we were a little foolish in our imaginings yesterday. Expecting - er trouble, you know. After all, people have to behave themselves swallow their feelings and that sort of thing."

  "Perhaps," said Porter. After a minute or two he added, "Civilised people."

  "You mean -?"

  "People who've lived outside civilisation a good deal sometimes go back. Revert. Whatever you call it."

  They emerged on to the grassy knoll. Mr Satterthwaite was breathing rather fast. He never enjoyed going up hill.

  He looked towards the window. The face was still there, more lifelike than ever.

  "Our hostess has repented, I see." Porter threw it only a cursory glance.

  "Unkerton cut up rough, I expect," he sai
d indifferently. "He's the sort of man who is willing to be proud of another family's ghost, and who isn't going to run the risk of having it driven away when he's paid spot cash for it."

  He was silent a minute or two, staring, not at the house, but at the thick undergrowth by which they were surrounded.

  "Has it ever struck you," he said, "that civilisation's damned dangerous?"

  "Dangerous?" Such a revolutionary remark shocked Mr Satterthwaite to the core.

  "Yes. There are no safety valves, you see."

  He turned abruptly, and they descended the path by which they had come.

  "I really am quite at a loss to understand you," said Mr Satterthwaite, pattering along with nimble steps to keep up with the other's strides.

  "Reasonable people -"

  Porter laughed. A short disconcerting laugh. Then he looked at the correct little gentleman by his side.

  "You think it's all bunkum on my part, Mr Satterthwaite? But there are people, you know, who can tell you when a storm's coming. They feel it beforehand in the air. And other people can foretell trouble.

  There's trouble coming now, Mr Satterthwaite, big trouble. It may come any minute. It may -"

  He stopped dead, clutching Mr Satterthwaite's arm. And in that tense minute of silence it came - the sound of two shots and following them a cry - a cry in a woman's voice.

  "My God!" cried Porter, "it's come."

  He raced down the path, Mr Satterthwaite panting behind him. In a minute they came out on to the lawn, close by the hedge of the Privy Garden. At the same time, Richard Scott and Mr Unkerton came round the opposite corner of the house. They halted, facing each other, to left and right of the entrance to the Privy Garden.

  "It - it came from in there," said Unkerton, pointing with a flabby hand.

  "We must see," said Porter. He led the way into the enclosure. As he rounded the last bend of the holly hedge, he stopped dead. Mr Satterthwaite peered over his shoulder. A loud cry burst from Richard Scott.

  There were three people in the Privy Garden. Two of them lay on the grass near the stone seat, a man and a woman. The third was Mrs Staverton. She was standing quite close to them by the holly hedge, gazing with horror-stricken eyes, and holding something in her right hand.