Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "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.

  Chapter 7

  THE VOICE IN THE DARK

  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 awake 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 the 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 la
dy," 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 weekends, 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."

  She took him upstairs and presently Clayton came to them. She was a tall, thin, old woman, with grey hair neatly parted, and she looked the acme of respectability.

  "No, sir," she said in answer to Mr Satterthwaite's inquiries. "I have never heard anything of the house being haunted. To tell you the truth, sir, I thought it was all Miss Margery's imagination until last night. But I actually felt something - brushing by me in the darkness.

  And I can tell you this, sir, it was not anything human. And then there is that wound in Miss Margery's neck. She didn't do that herself, poor lamb."

  But her words were suggestive to Mr Satterthwaite. Was it possible that Margery could have inflicted that wound herself? He had heard of strange cases where girls apparently just as sane and wellbalanced as Margery had done the most amazing things.

  "It will soon heal up," said Clayton. "It's not like this scar of mine."

  She pointed to a mark on her own forehead.

  "That was done forty years ago, sir- I still bear the mark of it."

  "It was the time the Uralia went down," put in Margery. "Clayton was hit on the head by a spar, weren't you, Clayton?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  "What do you think yourself, Clayton," asked Mr Satterthwaite, "what do you think was the meaning of this attack on Miss Margery?"

  "I really should not like to say, sir." Mr Satterthwaite read this correctly as the reserve of the well-trained servant.

  "What do you really think, Clayton?" he said persuasively.

  "I think, sir, that something very wicked must have been done in this house, and that until that is wiped out there won't be any peace."

  The woman spoke gravely, and her faded blue eyes met his steadily.

  Mr Satterthwaite went downstairs rather disappointed. Clayton evidently held the orthodox view, a deliberate "haunting" as a consequence of some evil deed in the past. Mr Satterthwaite himself was not so easily satisfied. The phenomena had only taken place in the last two months. Had only taken place since Marcia Keane and Roley Vavasour had been there. He must find out something about these two. It was possible that the whole thing was a practical joke.

  But he shook his head, dissatisfied with that solution. The thing was more sinister than that. The post had just come in and Margery was opening and reading her letters. Suddenly she gave an exclamation.

  "Mother is too absurd," she said. "Do read this." She handed the letter to Mr Satterthwaite.

  It was an epistle typical of Lady Stranleigh.

  "Darling Margery (she wrote), "I am so glad you have that nice little Mr Satterthwaite there. He is awfully clever and knows all the big-wig spook people. You must have them all down and investigate things thoroughly. I am sure you will have a perfectly marvellous time, and I only wish I could be there, but I have really been quite ill the last few days. The hotels are so careless about the food they give one. The doctor says it is some kind of food poisoning. I was really very ill.

  "Sweet of you to send me the chocolates, darling, but surely just a wee bit silly, wasn't
it? I mean, there's such wonderful confectionery out here.

  "Bye-bye, darling, and have a lovely time laying the family ghosts.

  Bimbo says my tennis is coming on marvellously. Oceans of love.

  "Yours, "Barbara."

  "Mother always wants me to call her Barbara," said Margery.

  "Simply silly, I think."

  Mr Satterthwaite smiled a little. He realised that the stolid conservatism of her daughter must on occasions be very trying to Lady Stranleigh. The contents of her letter struck him in a way in which obviously they did not strike Margery.

  "Did you send your mother a box of chocolates?" he asked.

  Margery shook her head. "No, I didn't, It must have been someone else."

  Mr Satterthwaite looked grave. Two things struck him as of significance. Lady Stranleigh had received a gift of a box of chocolates and she was suffering from a severe attack of poisoning.

  Apparently she had not connected these two things. Was there a connection? He himself was inclined to think there was.

  A tall dark girl lounged out of the morning-room and joined them.

  She was introduced to Mr Satterthwaite as Marcia Keane. She smiled on the little man in an easy good-humoured fashion.

  "Have you come down to hunt Margery's pet ghost?" she asked in a drawling voice. "We all rot her about that ghost. Hello, here's Roley."

  A car had just drawn up at the front door. Out of it tumbled a tall young man with fair hair and an eager boyish manner.

  "Hello, Margery," he cried, "hello, Marcia! I have brought down reinforcements." He turned to the two women who were just entering the hall. Mr Satterthwaite recognised in the first one of the two the Mrs Casson of whom Margery had spoken just now.

  "You must forgive me, Margery, dear," she drawled, smiling broadly.