Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "And then one day he came into the shop to find her sitting there.

  She was beautifully dressed. She had rings on her hands. He stood considering her. His heart was beating - but beating! He was at a loss what to do. He would have liked to have beaten her, to have clasped her in his arms, to have thrown her down on the floor and trampled on her, to have thrown himself at her feet. He did none of those things. He took up his pincers and went on with his work.

  "'Madame desires?' he asked formally.

  "That upset her. She did not look for that, you see.

  "'Pierre,' she said. 'I have come back.'

  "He laid aside his pincers and looked at her.

  "'You wish to be forgiven?' he said. 'You want me to take you back?

  You are sincerely repentant?'

  "'Do you want me back?' she murmured. Oh! Very softly she said it.

  "He knew she was laying a trap for him. He longed to seize her in his arms, but he was too clever for that. He pretended indifference.

  "'I am a Christian man,' he said. 'I try to do what the Church directs.'

  "'Ah!' he thought, 'I will humble her, humble her to her knees.'

  "But Jeanne, that is what I will call her, flung back her head and laughed. Evil laughter it was. 'I mock myself at you, little Pierre,' she said. 'Look at these rich clothes, these rings and bracelets. I came to show myself to you. I thought I would make you take me in your arms and when you did so, then - then I would spit in your face and tell you how I hated you!'

  "And on that she went out of the shop. Can you believe, messieurs, that a woman could be as evil as all that - to come back only to torment me?"

  "No," said the Countess. "I would not believe it, and any man who was not a fool would not believe it either. But all men are blind fools."

  Pierre Vaucher took no notice of her. He went on.

  "And so that young man of whom I tell you sank lower and lower. He drank more absinthe. The little shop was sold over his head. He became of the dregs, of the gutter. Then came the war. Ah! It was good, the war. It took that man out of the gutter and taught him to be a brute beast no longer. It drilled him - and sobered him. He endured cold and pain and the fear of death - but he did not die and when the war ended, he was a man again.

  "It was then, messieurs, that he came South. His lungs had been affected by the gas, they said he must find work in the South. I will not weary you with all the things he did. Suffice it to say that he ended up as a croupier, and there - there in the Casino one evening, he saw her again - the woman who had ruined his life. She did not recognise him, but he recognised her. She appeared to be rich and to lack for nothing - but, messieurs, the eyes of a croupier are sharp.

  There came an evening when she placed her last stake in the world on the table. Ask me not how I know - I do know - one feels these things. Others might not believe. She still had rich clothes - why not pawn them, one would say? But to do that - pah! your credit is gone at once. Her jewels? Ah no! Was I not a jeweller in my time? Long ago the real jewels have gone. The pearls of a King are sold one by one, are replaced with false. And meantime one must eat and pay one's hotel bill. Yes, and the rich men - well, they have seen one about for many years. Bah! they say - she is over fifty. A younger chicken for my money."

  A long shuddering sigh came out of the windows where the Countess leant back "Yes. It was a great moment, that. Two nights I have watched her.

  Lose, lose, and lose again. And now the end. She put all on one number. Beside her, an English milord stakes the maximum also - on the next number. The ball rolls... The moment has come, she has lost...

  "Her eyes meet mine. What do I do? I jeopardise my place in the Casino. I rob the English milord. 'A Madame' I say, and pay over the money."

  "Ah!" There was a crash, as the Countess sprang to her feet and leant across the table, sweeping her glass on to the floor.

  "Why?" she cried. "That's what I want to know, why did you do it?"

  There was a long pause, a pause that seemed interminable, and still those two facing each other across the table looked and looked... It was like a duel.

  A mean little smile crept across Pierre Vaucher's face. He raised his hands.

  "Madame," he said, "there is such a thing as pity..."

  "Ah!"

  She sank down again.

  "I see."

  She was calm, smiling, herself again.

  "An interesting story, M. Vaucher, is it not? Permit me to give you a light for your cigarette."

  She deftly rolled up a spill, and lighted it at the candle and held it towards him. He leaned forward till the flame caught the tip of the cigarette he held between his lips. Then she rose unexpectedly to her feet. "And now I must leave you all. Please - I need no one to escort me."

  Before one could realise it she was gone. Mr Satterthwaite would have hurried out after her, but he was arrested by a startled oath from the Frenchman.

  "A thousand thunders?"

  He was staring at the half-burned spill which the Countess had dropped on the table. He unrolled it.

  "Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "A fifty thousand franc bank note. You understand? Her winnings tonight. All that she had in the world. And she lighted my cigarette with it! Because she was too proud to accept - pity. Ah! proud, she was always proud as the Devil. She is unique - wonderful."

  He sprang up from his seat and darted out. Mr Satterthwaite and Mr Quin had also risen. The waiter approached Franklin Rudge.

  "La note, monsieur," he observed unemotionally.

  Mr Quin rescued it from him quickly.

  "I feel kind of lonesome, Elizabeth," remarked Franklin Rudge.

  "These foreigners - they beat the band! I don't understand them.

  What's it all mean, anyhow?"

  He looked across at her.

  "Gee, it's good to look at anything so hundred per cent American as you." His voice took on the plaintive note of a small child. "These foreigners are so odd."

  They thanked Mr Quin and went out into the night together. Mr Quin picked up his change and smiled across at Mr Satterthwaite, who was preening himself like a contented bird.

  "Well," said the latter. "That's all gone off splendidly. Our pair of love birds will be all right now."

  "Which ones?" asked Mr Quin.

  "Oh!" said Mr Satterthwaite, taken aback.

  "Oh! Yes, I suppose you are right, allowing for the Latin point of view and all that -"

  He looked dubious.

  Mr Quin smiled, and a stained glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of coloured light.

  Chapter 6

  THE MAN FROM THE SEA

  Mr Satterthwaite was feeling old. That might not have been surprising since in the estimation of many people he was old.

  Careless youths said to their partners - "Old Satterthwaite? Oh! he must be a hundred - or at any rate about eighty." And even the kindest of girls said indulgently, "Oh! Satterthwaite. Yes, he's quite old. He must be sixty." Which was almost worse, since he was sixtynine.

  In his own view, however, he was not old. Sixty-nine was an interesting age - an age of infinite possibilities - an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old - that was different, a tired discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all?

  A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died...

  At this point in his meditations Mr Satterthwaite pulled himself up short. What he was thinking was morbid and unprofitable. He knew well enough, who better, that the chances were that a wife would have hated him or alternatively that he would have hated her, that children would have been a constant source of worry and anxiety, and that demands upon his time and affection would have worried him considerably.

  "To be safe and comfortable," sai
d Mr Satterthwaite firmly - that was the thing.

  The last thought reminded him of a letter he had received that morning. He drew it from his pocket and re-read it, savouring its contents pleasurably. To begin with, it was from a Duchess, and Mr Satterthwaite liked hearing from Duchesses. It is true that the letter began by demanding a large subscription for charity and but for that would probably never have been written, but the terms in which it was couched were so agreeable that Mr Satterthwaite was able to gloss over the first fact.

  So you've deserted the Riviera, wrote the Duchess. What is this island of yours like? Cheap? Cannotti put up his prices shamefully this year, and I shan't go to the Riviera again. I might try your island next year if you report favourably, though I should hate five days on a boat. Still anywhere you recommend is sure to be pretty comfortable - too much so. You'll get to be one of those people who do nothing but coddle themselves and think of their comfort. There's only one thing that will save you. Satterthwaite, and that is your inordinate interest in other people's affairs...

  As Mr Satterthwaite folded the letter, a vision came up vividly before him of the Duchess. Her meanness, her unexpected and alarming kindness, her caustic tongue, her indomitable spirit.

  Spirit! Everyone needed spirit. He drew out another letter with a German stamp upon it - written by a young singer in whom he had interested himself. It was a grateful affectionate letter.

  'How can I thank you, dear Mr Satterthwaite? It seems too wonderful to think that in a few days I shall be singing Isolde...'

  A pity that she had to make her debut as Isolde. A charming, hardworking child, Olga, with a beautiful voice but no temperament. He hummed to himself. "Nay order him! Pray understand it! I command it. I, Isolde." No, the child hadn't got it in her - the spirit - the indomitable will - all expressed in that final "Ich Isolde!"

  Well, at any rate he had done something for somebody. This island depressed him - why, oh! why had he deserted the Riviera which he knew so well and where he was so well known? Nobody here took any interest in him. Nobody seemed to realise that here was the Mr Satterthwaite - the friend of Duchesses and Countesses and singers and writers. No one in the island was of any social importance or of any artistic importance either. Most people had been there seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years running and valued themselves and were valued accordingly.

  With a deep sigh Mr Satterthwaite proceeded down from the Hotel to the small straggling harbour below. His way lay between an avenue of bougainvillaea - a vivid mass of flaunting scarlet, that made him feel older and greyer than ever.

  "I'm getting old," he murmured. "I'm getting old and tired."

  He was glad when he had passed the bougainvillaea and was walking down the white street with the blue sea at the end of it. A disreputable dog was standing in the middle of the road, yawning and stretching himself in the sun. Having prolonged his stretch to the utmost limits of ecstasy, he sat down and treated himself to a really good scratch. He then rose, shook himself, and looked round for any other good thing that life might have to offer.

  There was a dump of rubbish by the side of the road and to this he went sniffing in pleasurable anticipation. True enough, his nose had not deceived him! A smell of such rich putrescence that surpassed even his anticipations! He sniffed with growing appreciation, then suddenly abandoning himself, he lay on his back and rolled frenziedly on the delicious dump. Clearly the world this morning was a dog paradise!

  Tiring at last, he regained his feet and strolled out once more into the middle of the road. And then, without the least warning, a ramshackle car careered wildly round the corner, caught him full square and passed on unheeding.

  The dog rose to his feet, stood a minute regarding Mr Satterthwaite, a vague dumb reproach in his eyes, then fell over. Mr Satterthwaite went up to him and bent down. The dog was dead. He went on his way, wondering at the sadness and cruelty of life. What a queer dumb look of reproach had been in the dog's eyes. "Oh! world," they seemed to say. "Oh! wonderful world in which I have trusted. Why have you done this to me?"

  Mr Satterthwaite went on, past the palm trees and the straggling white houses, past the black lava beach where the surf thundered and where once, long ago, a well-known English swimmer had been carried out to sea and drowned, past the rock pools where children and elderly ladies bobbed up and down and called it bathing, along the steep road that winds upwards to the top of the cliff. For there on the edge of the cliff was a house, appropriately named La Paz. A white house with faded green shutters tightly closed, a tangled beautiful garden, and a walk between cypress trees that led to a platkau on the edge of the cliff where you looked down - down - down - to the deep blue sea below.

  It was to this spot that Mr Satterthwaite was bound. He had developed a great love for the garden of La Paz. He had never entered the villa. It seemed always to be empty. Manuel, the Spanish gardener, wished one good-morning with a flourish and gallantly presented ladies with a bouquet and gentlemen with a single flower as a button-hole, his dark face wreathed in smiles.

  Sometimes Mr Satterthwaite made up stories in his own mind about the owner of the villa. His favourite was a Spanish dancer, once world-famed for her beauty, who hid herself here so that the world should never know that she was no longer beautiful.

  He pictured her coming out of the house at dusk and walking through the garden. Sometimes he was tempted to ask Manuel for the truth, but he resisted the temptation. He preferred his fancies.

  After exchanging a few words with Manuel and graciously accepting an orange rosebud, Mr Satterthwaite passed on down the cypress walk to the sea. It was rather wonderful sitting there - on the edge of nothing - with that sheer drop below one. It made him think of Tristan and Isolde, of the beginning of the third act with Tristan and Kurwenal - that lonely waiting and of Isolde rushing up from the sea and Tristan dying in her arms. (No, little Olga would never make an Isolde. Isolde of Cornwall, that Royal hater and Royal lover...) He shivered. He felt old, chilly, alone... What had he had out of life?

  Nothing - nothing. Not as much as that dog in the street...

  It was an unexpected sound that roused him from his revkrie.

  Footsteps coming along the cypress walk were inaudible, the first he knew of somebody's presence was the English monosyllable "Damn."

  He looked round to find a young man staring at him in obvious surprise and disappointment. Mr Satterthwaite recognised him at once as an arrival of the day before who had more or less intrigued him. Mr Satterthwaite called him a young man because in comparison to most of the die-hards in the Hotel he was a young man, but he would certainly never see forty again and was probably drawing appreciably near to his half century. Yet in spite of that, the term young man fitted him - Mr Satterthwaite was usually right about such things - there was an impression of immaturity about him. As there is a touch of puppyhood about many a full grown dog so it was with the stranger.

  Mr Satterthwaite thought, "This chap has really never grown up - not properly, that is."

  And yet there was nothing Peter Pannish about him. He was sleek almost plump, he had the air of one who has always done himself exceedingly well in the material sense and denied himself no pleasure or satisfaction. He had brown eyes - rather round - fair hair turning grey - a little moustache and rather florid face.

  The thing that puzzled Mr Satterthwaite was what had brought him to the island. He could imagine him shooting things, hunting things, playing polo or golf or tennis, making love to pretty women. But on the island there was nothing to hunt or shoot, no games except Golf -

  Croquet, and the nearest approach to a pretty woman was represented by elderly Miss Baba Kindersley. There were, of course, artists, to whom the beauty of the scenery made appeal, but Mr Satterthwaite was quite certain that the young man was not an artist.

  He was clearly marked with the stamp of the Philistine.

  While he was resolving these things in his mind, the other spoke, realising somewhat belatedly that his single
ejaculation so far might be open to criticism.

  "I beg your pardon," he said with some embarrassment. "As a matter of fact, I was - well, startled. I didn't expect anyone to be here."

  He smiled disarmingly. He had a charming smile - friendly appealing.

  "It is rather a lonely spot," agreed Mr Satterthwaite, as he moved politely a little further up the bench. The other accepted the mute invitation and sat down.

  "I don't know about lonely," he said. "There always seems to be someone here."

  There was a tinge of latent resentment in his voice. Mr Satterthwaite wondered why. He read the other as a friendly soul. Why this insistence on solitude? - A rendezvous, perhaps? No - not that. He looked again with carefully veiled scrutiny at his companion. Where had he seen that particular expression before quite lately? That look of dumb bewildered resentment.

  "You've been up here before then?" said Mr Satterthwaite, more for the sake of saying something than for anything else.

  "I was up here last night - after dinner."

  "Really? I thought the gates were always locked."

  There was a moment's pause and then, almost sullenly, the young man said -

  "I climbed over the wall."

  Mr Satterthwaite looked at him with real attention now.

  He had a sleuth-like habit of mind and he was aware that his companion had only arrived on the preceding afternoon. He had had little time to discover the beauty of the villa by daylight and he had so far spoken to nobody. Yet after dark he had made straight for La Paz.

  Why? Almost involuntarily Mr Satterthwaite turned his head to look at the green-shuttered villa, but it was as ever serenely lifeless, close shuttered. No, the solution of the mystery was not there.

  "And you actually found someone here then?"

  The other nodded.

  "Yes. Must have been from the other Hotel. He had on fancy dress."

  "Fancy dress?"

  "Yes. A kind of Harlequin rig."

  "What?"

  The query fairly burst from Mr Satterthwaite's lips. His companion turned to stare at him in surprise.