Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  Mr Satterthwaite came out of his dreams. He was alert once more, the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web - yet with nothing of the pretty pretty about it.

  The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protegû's. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality.

  Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face... A white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream...

  Mr Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely...

  Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer's drawing-room.

  It was in a Berlin Museum at a statuette of an immortal Columbine.

  Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in...

  Moonlight - and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The Immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart Pierrot wandering on through the wood... darkness... his voice dies away in the distance...

  The village green - dancing of village girls - Pierrots and Pierrettes.

  Molly as Pierrette. No dancer - Anna Denman was right there - but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song "Pierrette dancing on the Green."

  A good tune - Mr Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickham wasn't above writing a tune when there was a need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realised that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical.

  They press Pierrot to join the dance. He refuses. With white face he wanders on - the eternal lover seeking his ideal. Evening falls.

  Harlequin and Columbine, invisible, dance in and out of the unconscious throng. The place is deserted, only Pierrot, weary, falls asleep on a grassy bank. Harlequin and Columbine dance round him.

  He wakes and sees Columbine. He woos her in vain, pleads, beseeches...

  She stands uncertain. Harlequin beckons to her to begone. But she sees him no longer, She is listening to Pierrot, to his song of love outpoured once more. She falls into his arms, and the curtain comes down.

  The second Act is Pierrot's cottage. Columbine sits on her hearth.

  She is pale, weary. She listens - for what? Pierrot sings to her - woos her back to thoughts of him once more. The evening darkens.

  Thunder is heard... Columbine puts aside her spinning wheel. She is eager, stirred... She listens no longer to Pierrot. It is her own music that is in the air, the music of Harlequin and Columbine... She is awake. She remembers.

  A crash of thunder! Harlequin stands in the doorway. Pierrot cannot see him, but Columbine springs up with a glad laugh. Children come running, but she pushes them aside. With another crash of thunder the walls fall, and Columbine dances out into the wild night with Harlequin.

  Darkness, and through it the tune that Pierrette has sung. Light comes slowly. The cottage once more. Pierrot and Pierrette grown old and grey sit in front of the fire in two arm-chairs. The music is happy, but subdued. Pierrette nods in her chair. Through the window comes a shaft of moonlight, and with it the motif of Pierrot's longforgotten song. He stirs in his chair.

  Faint music - fairy music... Harlequin and Columbine outside. The door swings open and Columbine dances in. She leans over the sleeping Pierrot, kisses him on the lips...

  Crash! A peal of thunder. She is outside again. In the centre of the stage is the lighted window and through it are seen the two figures of Harlequin and Columbine dancing slowly away, growing fainter and fainter...

  A log falls. Pierrette jumps up angrily, rushes across to the window and pulls the blind. So it ends, on a sudden discord...

  Mr Satterthwaite sat very still among the applause and vociferations.

  At last he got up and made his way outside. He came upon Molly Stanwell, flushed and eager, receiving compliments. He saw John Denman, pushing and elbowing his way through the throng, his eyes alight with a new flame. Molly came towards him, but, almost unconsciously, he put her aside. It was not her he was seeking.

  "My wife? Where is she?"

  "I think she went out in the garden."

  It was, however, Mr Satterthwaite who found her, sitting on a stone seat under a cypress tree. When he came up to her, he did an odd thing. He knelt down and raised her hand to his lips.

  "Ah!" she said. "You think I danced well?"

  "You danced - as you always danced, Madame Kharsanova."

  She drew in her breath sharply.

  "So - you have guessed."

  "There is only one Kharsanova. No one could see you dance and forget. But why - why?"

  "What else is possible?"

  "You mean?"

  She had spoken very simply. She was just as simple now.

  "Oh! but you understand. You are of the world. A great dancer - she can have lovers, yes - but a husband, that is different. And he - he did not want the other. He wanted me to belong to him as - as Kharsanova could never have belonged."

  "I see," said Mr Satterthwaite. "I see. So you gave it up?"

  She nodded.

  "You must have loved him very much," said Mr Satterthwaite gently.

  "To make such a sacrifice?" She laughed.

  "Not quite that. To make it so light-heartedly."

  "Ah, yes - perhaps - you are right."

  "And now?" asked Mr Satterthwaite.

  Her face grew grave.

  "Now?" She paused, then raised her voice and spoke into the shadows. "Is that you, Sergius Ivanovitch?"

  Prince Oranoff came out into the moonlight. He took her hand and smiled at Mr Satterthwaite without self-consciousness.

  "Ten years ago I mourned the death of Anna Kharsanova," he said simply. "She was to me as my other self. Today I have found her again. We shall part no more."

  "At the end of the lane in ten minutes," said Anna, "I shall not fail you."

  Oranoff nodded and went off again. The dancer turned to Mr Satterthwaite. A smile played about her lips.

  "Well - you are not satisfied, my friend?"

  "Do you know," said Mr Satterthwaite abruptly, "that your husband is looking for you?"

  He saw the tremor that passed over her face, but her voice was steady enough.

  "Yes," she said gravely. "That may well be."

  "I saw his eyes. They -" he stopped abruptly.

  She was still calm.

  "Yes, perhaps. For an hour. An hour's magic, born of past memories, of music, of moonlight... That is all."

  "Then there is nothing that I can say?"

  He felt old, dispirited.

  "For ten years I have lived with the man I love," said Anna Kharsanova. "Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me."

  Mr Satterthwaite said nothing. He had no arguments left. Besides it really seemed the simplest solution. Only - only, somehow, it was not the solution he wanted. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

  "I know, my friend, I know. But there is no third way. Always one looks for one thing - the lover, the perfect, the eternal lover... It is the music of Harlequin one hears. No lover ever satisfies one, for all lovers are mortal. And Harlequin is only a myth, an invisible presence... unless -"

  "Yes," said Mr Satterthwaite. "Yes?"

  "Unless - his name is - Death!"

  Mr Satterthwaite shivered. She moved away from him, was swallowed up in the shadows...

  He never knew quite how long he sat on there, but suddenly he started up with the feeling that he had been wasting valuable time.

  He hurried away, impelled in a certain direction almost in spite of himself.

  As he came out into the lane he had a strange feeling of unreality.

  Magic - magic and moonlight! And two figures coming towards him...

  Oranoff in his Harlequin dress. So he thought at first. Then, as they passed him,
he knew his mistake. That lithe swaying figure belonged to one person only - Mr Quin...

  They went on down the lane - their feet light as though they were treading on air. Mr Quin turned his head and looked back, and Mr Satterthwaite had a shock, for it was not the face of Mr Quin as he had ever seen it before. It was the face of a stranger - no, not quite a stranger. Ah! he had it now, it was the face of John Denman as it might have looked before life went too well with him. Eager, adventurous, the face at once of a boy and a lover...

  Her laugh floated down to him, clear and happy..." he looked after them and saw in the distance the lights of a little cottage. He gazed after them like a man in a dream.

  He was rudely awakened by a hand that fell on his shoulder and he was jerked round to face Sergius Oranoff. The man looked white and distracted.

  "Where is she? Where is she? She promised - and she has not come."

  "Madam has just gone up the lane - alone."

  It was Mrs Denman's maid who spoke from the shadow of the door behind them. She had been waiting with her mistress's wraps.

  "I was standing here and saw her pass," she added.

  Mr Satterthwaite threw one harsh word at her.

  "Alone? Alone, did you say?"

  The maid's eyes widened in surprise.

  "Yes, sir. Didn't you see her off?"

  Mr Satterthwaite clutched at Oranoff.

  "Quickly," he muttered. "I'm - I'm afraid."

  They hurried down the lane together, the Russian talking in quick disjointed sentences.

  "She is a wonderful creature. Ah! how she danced tonight. And that friend of yours. Who is he? Ah! but he is wonderful - unique. In the old days, when she danced the Columbine of Rimsky Korsakoff, she never found the perfect Harlequin. Mordoff, Kassnine - none of them were quite perfect. She had her own little fancy. She told me of it once. Always she danced with a dream Harlequin - a man who was not really there. It was Harlequin himself, she said, who came to dance with her. It was that fancy of hers that made her Columbine so wonderful."

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded. There was only one thought in his head.

  "Hurry," he said. "We must be in time. Oh! We must be in time."

  They came round the last corner - came to the deep pit and to something lying in it that had not been there before, the body of a woman lying in a wonderful pose, arms flung wide and head thrown back. A dead face and body that were triumphant and beautiful in the moonlight.

  Words came back to Mr Satterthwaite dimly - Mr Quin's words -

  "wonderful things on a rubbish heap..." He understood them now.

  Oranoff was murmuring broken phrases. The tears were streaming down his face.

  "I loved her. Always I loved her." He used almost the same words that had occurred to Mr Satterthwaite earlier in the day. "We were of the same world, she and I. We had the same thoughts, the same dreams. I would have loved her always..."

  "How do you know?"

  The Russian stared at him - at the fretful peevishness of the tone.

  "How do you know?" went on Mr Satterthwaite. "It is what all lovers think - what all lovers say... There is one, one lover -"

  He turned and almost ran into Mr Quin. In an agitated manner, Mr Satterthwaite caught him by the arm and drew him aside.

  "It was you," he said. "It was you who were with her just now?"'

  Mr Quin waited a minute and then said gently, "You can put it that way, if you like."

  "And the maid didn't see you?"

  "The maid didn't see me."

  "But I did. Why was that?"

  "Perhaps, as a result of the price you have paid, you see things that other people - do not."

  Mr Satterthwaite looked at him uncomprehendingly for a minute or two. Then he began suddenly to quiver all over like an aspen leaf.

  "What is this place?" he whispered. "What is this place?"

  "I told you earlier today. It is my lane."

  "A Lovers Lane," murmured Mr Satterthwaite. "And people pass along it."

  "Most people, sooner or later."

  "And at the end of it - what do they find?"

  Mr Quin smiled. His voice was very gentle. He pointed at the ruined cottage above them.

  "The house of their dreams - or a rubbish heap - who shall say?"

  Mr Satterthwaite looked up at him suddenly. A wild rebellion surged over him. He felt cheated, defrauded.

  "But I -" His voice shook. "I have never passed down your lane..."

  "And do you regret?"

  Mr Satterthwaite quailed. Mr Quin seemed to have loomed to enormous proportions... Mr Satterthwaite had a vista of something at once menacing and terrifying... Joy, Sorrow, Despair.

  And his comfortable little soul shrank back appalled.

  "Do you regret?" Mr Quin repeated his question. There was something terrible about him.

  "No," Mr Satterthwaite stammered. "N-no."

  And then suddenly he rallied.

  "But I see things," He cried. "I may have been only a looker-on at life - but I see things that other people do not. You said so yourself, Mr Quin..."

  But Mr Quin had vanished.

  The Thirteen Problems (The Tuesday Club Murders) *1932 *

  The Tuesday Night Club

  'Unsolved mysteries.' Raymond West blew out a cloud of smoke and repeated the words with a kind of deliberate self-conscious pleasure. 'Unsolved mysteries.' He looked round him with satisfaction. The room was an old one with broad black beams across the ceiling and it was furnished with good old furniture that belonged to it. Hence Raymond

  West's approving glance. By profession he was a writer and he liked the atmosphere to be flawless. His Aunt Jane's house always pleased him as the right setting for her personality. He looked across the hearth to where she sat erect in the big grandfather chair. Miss Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched in round the waist. Mechlin lace was arranged in a cascade down the front of the bodice. She had on black lace mittens, and a black lace cap surmounted the piled-up masses of her snowy hair. She was knitting - something white and soft and fleecy. Her faded blue eyes, benignant and kindly, surveyed her nephew and her nephew's guests with gentle pleasure. They rested first on Raymond himself, self-consciously debonair, then on Joyce Lemprière, the artist, with her close-cropped black head and queer hazel-green eyes, then on that well-groomed man of the world, Sir Henry Clithering. There were two other people in the room, Dr Pender, the elderly clergyman of the parish, and Mr Petherick, the solicitor, a dried-up little man with eyeglasses which he looked over and not through. Miss Marple gave a brief moment of attention to all these people and returned to her knitting with a gentle smile upon her lips.

  Mr Petherick gave the dry little cough with which he usually prefaced his remarks.

  'What is that you say, Raymond? Unsolved mysteries? Ha - and what about them?'

  'Nothing about them,' said Joyce Lemprière. 'Raymond just likes the sound of himself saying them.'

  Raymond West threw her a glance of reproach at which she threw back her head and laughed.

  'He is a humbug, isn't he, Miss Marple?' she demanded. 'You know that, I am sure.'

  Miss Marple smiled gently at her but made no reply.

  'Life itself is an unsolved mystery,' said the clergyman gravely.

  Raymond sat up in his chair and flung away his cigarette with an impulsive gesture.

  'That's not what I mean. I was not talking philosophy,' he said. 'I was thinking of actual bare prosaic facts, things that have happened and that no one has ever explained.'

  'I know just the sort of thing you mean, dear,' said Miss Marple.

  'For instance Mrs Carruthers had a very strange experience yesterday morning. She bought two gills of picked shrimps at Elliot's. She called at two other shops and when she got home she found she had not got the shrimps with her. She went back to the two shops she had visited but these shrimps had completely disappeared. Now that seems to me very remarkable.'

  'A very fishy story,' said Sir H
enry Clithering gravely.

  'There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations,' said Miss Marple, her cheeks growing slightly pinker with excitement.

  'For instance, somebody else - '

  'My dear Aunt,' said Raymond West with some amusement, 'I didn't mean that sort of village incident. I was thinking of murders and disappearances - the kind of thing that Sir Henry could tell us about by the hour if he liked.'

  'But I never talk shop,' said Sir Henry modestly. 'No, I never talk shop.'

  Sir Henry Clithering had been until lately Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

  'I suppose there are a lot of murders and things that never are solved by the police,' said Joyce Lemprière.

  'That is an admitted fact, I believe,' said Mr Petherick.

  'I wonder,' said Raymond West, 'what class of brain really succeeds best in unravelling a mystery? One always feels that the average police detective must be hampered by lack of imagination.'

  'That is the layman's point of view,' said Sir Henry dryly.

  'You really want a committee,' said Joyce, smiling. 'For psychology and imagination go to the writer - '

  She made an ironical bow to Raymond but he remained serious.

  'The art of writing gives one an insight into human nature,' he said gravely. 'One sees, perhaps, motives that the ordinary person would pass by.'

  'I know, dear,' said Miss Marple, 'that your books are very clever.

  But do you think that people are really so unpleasant as you make them out to be?'

  'My dear Aunt,' said Raymond gently, 'keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid that I should in any way shatter them.'

  'I mean,' said Miss Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted the stitches in her knitting, 'that so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly.'

  Mr Petherick gave his dry little cough again.

  'Don't you think, Raymond,' he said, 'that you attach too much weight to imagination? Imagination is a very dangerous thing, as we lawyers know only too well. To be able to sift evidence impartially, to take the facts and look at them as facts - that seems to me the only logical method of arriving at the truth. I may add that in my experience it is the only one that succeeds.'