Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

"What do you want with all this trash? You've plenty of taste if you care to use it. Mixing things up!"

  "I know, Alan. It isn't that I don't know. But people give me things. That vase - Miss Bates brought it back from Margate - and she's so poor, and has to scrape, and it must have cost her quite a lot - for her, you know, and she thought I'd be so pleased. I simply had to put it in a good place."

  Everard said nothing. He went on looking around the room. There were one or two etchings on the walls - there were also a number of photographs of babies. Babies, whatever their mothers may think, do not always photograph well. Any of Jane's friends who acquired babies hurried to send photographs of them to her, expecting these tokens to be cherished. Jane had duly cherished them.

  "Who's this little horror?" asked Everard, inspecting a pudgy addition with a squint. "I've not seen him before."

  "It's a her," said Jane. "Mary Carrington's new baby."

  "Poor Mary Carrington," said Everard. "I suppose you'll pretend that you like having that atrocious infant squinting at you all day?"

  Jane's chin shot out.

  "She's a lovely baby. Mary is a very old friend of mine."

  "Loyal Jane," said Everard smiling at her. "So Isobel landed you with Winnie, did she?"

  "Well, she did say you wanted to go to Scotland, and I jumped at it. You will let me have Winnie, won't you? I've been wondering if you would let her come to me for ages, but I haven't liked to ask."

  "Oh, you can have her - but it's awfully good of you."

  "Then that's all right," said Jane happily.

  Everard lit a cigarette.

  "Isobel show you the new portrait?" he asked rather indistinctly.

  "She did."

  "What did you think of it?"

  Jane's answer came quickly - too quickly:

  "It's perfectly splendid. Absolutely splendid."

  Alan sprang suddenly to his feet. The hand that held the cigarette shook.

  "Damn you, Jane, don't lie to me!"

  "But, Alan, I'm sure, it is perfectly splendid."

  "Haven't you learned by now, Jane, that I know every tone of your voice? You lie to me like a hatter so as not to hurt my feelings, I suppose. Why can't you be honest? Do you think I want you to tell me a thing is splendid when I know as well as you do that it's not? The damned thing's dead - dead. There's no life in it - nothing behind, nothing but surface, damned smooth surface. I've cheated myself all along - yes, even this afternoon. I came along to you to find out. Isobel doesn't know. But you know, you always do know. I knew you'd tell me it was good - you've no moral sense about that sort of thing. But I can tell by the tone of your voice. When I showed you Romance you didn't say anything at all - you held your breath and gave a sort of gasp."

  "Alan -"

  Everard gave her no chance to speak. Jane was producing the effect upon him he knew so well. Strange that so gentle a creature could stir him to such furious anger.

  "You think I've lost the power, perhaps," he said angrily, "but I haven't.

  I can do work every bit as good as Romance - better, perhaps. I'll show you, Jane Haworth."

  He fairly rushed out of the flat. Walking rapidly, he crossed through the Park and over Albert Bridge. He was still tingling all over with irritation and baffled rage. Jane, indeed! What did she know about painting?

  What was her opinion worth? Why should he care? But he did care. He wanted to paint something that would make Jane gasp. Her mouth would open just a little, and her cheeks would flush red. She would look first at the picture and then at him. She wouldn't say anything at all probably.

  In the middle of the bridge he saw the picture he was going to paint. It came to him from nowhere at all, out of the blue. He saw it, there in the air, or was it in his head?

  A little, dingy curio shop, rather dark and musty looking. Behind the counter a Jew - a small Jew with cunning eyes. In front of him the customer, a big man, sleek, well fed, opulent, bloated, a great jowl on him. Above them, on a shelf, a bust of white marble. The light there, on the boy's marble face, the deathless beauty of old Greece, scornful, unheeding of sale and barter. The Jew, the rich collector, the Greek boy's head. He saw them all.

  "The Connoisseur, that's what I'll call it," muttered Alan Everard, stepping off the curb and just missing being annihilated by a passing bus. "Yes, The Connoisseur. I'll show Jane."

  When he arrived home, he passed straight into the studio. Isobel found him there, sorting out canvases.

  "Alan, don't forget we're dining with the Marches -"

  Everard shook his head impatiently.

  "Damn the Marches. I'm going to work. I've got hold of something, but I must get it fixed - fixed at once on the canvas before it goes. Ring them up. Tell them I'm dead."

  Isobel looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two, and then went out. She understood the art of living with a genius very thoroughly. She went to the telephone and made some plausible excuse.

  She looked round her, yawning a little. Then she sat down at her desk and began to write.

  Many thanks for your cheque received today. You are good to your godchild A hundred pounds will do all sorts of things. Children are a terrible expense. You are so fond of Winnie that I felt I was not doing wrong in coming to you for help. Alan, like all geniuses, can only work at what he wants to work at - and unfortunately that doesn't always keep the pot boiling. Hope to see you soon.

  Yours, Isobel When The Connoisseur was finished, some months later, Alan invited Jane to come and see it. The thing was not quite as he had conceived it - that was impossible to hope for - but it was near enough. He felt the glow of the creator. He had made this thing and it was good.

  Jane did not this time tell him it was splendid. The color crept into her cheeks and her lips parted. She looked at Alan, and he saw in her eyes that which he wished to see. Jane knew.

  He walked on air. He had shown Jane!

  The picture off his mind, he began to notice his immediate surroundings once more.

  Winnie had benefited enormously from her fortnight at the seaside, but it struck him that her clothes were very shabby. He said so to Isobel.

  "Alan! You who never notice anything! But I like children to be simply dressed - I hate them all fussed up."

  "There's a difference between simplicity and darns and patches."

  Isobel said nothing, but she got Winnie a new frock. Two days later Alan was struggling with income-tax returns. His own passbook lay in front of him. He was hunting through Isobel's desk for hers when Winnie danced into the room with a disreputable doll.

  "Daddy, I've got a riddle. Can you guess it? 'Within a wall as white as milk, within a curtain soft as silk, bathed in a sea of crystal clear, a golden apple doth appear.' Guess what that is?"

  "Your mother," said Alan absently. He was still bunting.

  "Daddy!" Winnie gave a scream of laughter. "It's an egg. Why did you think it was Mummy?"

  Alan smiled too.

  "I wasn't really listening," he said. "And the words sounded like Mummy, somehow."

  A wall as white as milk. A curtain. Crystal. The golden apple. Yes, it did suggest Isobel to him. Curious things, words.

  He had found the passbook now. He ordered Winnie peremptorily from the room. Ten minutes later he looked up, startled by a sharp ejaculation.

  "Alan!"

  "Hullo, Isobel. I didn't hear you come in. Look here, I can't make out these items in your passbook."

  "What business had you to touch my passbook?"

  He stared at her, astonished. She was angry. He had never seen her angry before.

  "I had no idea you would mind."

  "I do mind - very much indeed. You have no business to touch my things."

  Alan suddenly became angry too.

  "I apologize. But since I have touched your things, perhaps you will explain one or two entries that puzzle me. As far as I can see, nearly five hundred pounds has been paid into your account this year which I cannot check. Where does i
t come from?"

  Isobel had recovered her temper. She sank into a chair.

  "You needn't be so solemn about it, Alan," she said lightly. "It isn't the wages of sin, or anything like that."

  "Where did this money come from?"

  "From a woman. A friend of yours. It's not mine at all. It's for Winnie."

  "Winnie? Do you mean - this money came from Jane?"

  Isobel nodded.

  "She's devoted to the child - can't do enough for her."

  "Yes, but - surely the money ought to have been invested for Winnie."

  "Oh! it isn't that sort of thing at all. It's for current expenses, clothes and all that."

  Alan said nothing. He was thinking of Winnie's frocks - all darns and patches.

  "Your account's overdrawn, too, Isobel?"

  "Is it? That's always happening to me."

  "Yes, but that five hundred -"

  "My dear Alan. I've spent it on Winnie in the way that seemed best to me. I can assure you Jane is quite satisfied."

  Alan was not satisfied. Yet such was the power of Isobel's calm that he said nothing more. After all, Isobel was careless in money matters. She hadn't meant to use for herself money given to her for the child. A receipted bill came that day addressed by a mistake to Mr. Everard. It was from a dressmaker in Hanover Square and was for two hundred odd pounds. He gave it to Isobel without a word. She glanced over it, smiled, and said: "Poor boy, I suppose it seems an awful lot to you, but one really must be more or less clothed."

  The next day he went to see Jane.

  Jane was irritating and elusive as usual. He wasn't to bother. Winnie was her godchild. Women understood these things, men didn't. Of course she didn't want Winnie to have five hundred pounds' worth of frocks. Would he please leave it to her and Isobel? They understood each other perfectly.

  Alan went away in a state of growing dissatisfaction. He knew perfectly well that he had shirked the one question he really wished to ask. He wanted to say: "Has Isobel ever asked you for money for Winnie?" He didn't say it because he was afraid that Jane might not lie well enough to deceive him.

  But he was worried. Jane was poor. He knew she was poor. She mustn't - mustn't denude herself. He made up his mind to speak to Isobel. Isobel was calm and reassuring. Of course she wouldn't let Jane spend more than she could afford.

  A month later Jane died.

  It was influenza, followed by pneumonia. She made Alan Everard her executor and left all she had to Winnie. But it wasn't very much.

  It was Alan's task to go through Jane's papers. She left a record there that was clear to follow - numerous evidences of acts of kindness, begging letters, grateful letters.

  And lastly, he found her diary. With it was a scrap of paper: "To be read after my death by Alan Everard. He has often reproached me with not speaking the truth. The truth is all here."

  So he came to know at last, finding the one place where Jane had dared to be honest. It was a record, very simple and unforced, of her love for him.

  There was very little sentiment about it - no fine language. But there was no blinking of facts.

  "I know you are often irritated by me," she had written. "Everything I do or say seems to make you angry sometimes. I do not know why this should be, for I try so hard to please you; but I do believe, all the same, that I mean something real to you. One isn't angry with the people who don't count."

  It was not Jane's fault that Alan found other matters. Jane was loyal but she was also untidy; she filled her drawers too full. She had, shortly before her death, burned carefully all Isobel's letters. The one Alan found was wedged behind a drawer. When he had read it, the meaning of certain cabalistic signs on the counterfoils of Jane's cheque book became clear to him. In this particular letter Isobel had hardly troubled to keep up the pretence of the money being required for Winnie.

  Alan sat in front of the desk staring with unseeing eyes out of the window for a long time. Finally he slipped the cheque book into his pocket and left the flat. He walked back to Chelsea, conscious of an anger that grew rapidly stronger.

  Isobel was out when he got back, and he was sorry. He had so clearly in his mind what he wanted to say. Instead, he went up to the studio and pulled out the unfinished portrait of Jane. He set it on an easel near the portrait of Isobel in pink satin.

  The Lemprière woman had been right: there was life in Jane's portrait.

  He looked at her, the eager eyes, the beauty that he had tried so unsuccessfully to deny her. That was Jane - the aliveness, more than anything else, was Jane. She was, he thought, the most alive person he had ever met, so much so, that even now he could not think of her as dead.

  And he thought of his other pictures - Color, Romance, Sir Rufus Herschman. They had all, in a way, been pictures of Jane. She had kindled the spark for each one of them - had sent him away fuming and fretting - to show her! And now? Jane was dead. Would he ever paint a picture - a real picture - again? He looked again at the eager face on the canvas. Perhaps. Jane wasn't very far away.

  A sound made him wheel round. Isobel had come into the studio. She was dressed for dinner in a straight white gown that showed up the pure gold of her hair.

  She stopped dead and checked the words on her lips. Eyeing him warily, she went over to the divan and sat down. She had every appearance of calm.

  Alan took the cheque book from his pocket.

  "I've been going through Jane's papers."

  "Yes?"

  He tried to imitate her calm, to keep his voice from shaking.

  "For the last four years she's been supplying you with money."

  "Yes. For Winnie."

  "No, not for Winnie," shouted Everard. "You pretended, both of you, that it was for Winnie, but you both knew that that wasn't so. Do you realize that Jane has been selling her securities, living from hand to mouth, to supply you with clothes - clothes that you didn't really need?"

  Isobel never took her eyes from his face. She settled her body more comfortably on the cushions as a white Persian cat might do.

  "I can't help it if Jane denuded herself more than she should have done," she said. "I supposed she could afford the money. She was always crazy about you - I could see that, of course. Some wives would have kicked up a fuss about the way you were always rushing off to see her, and spending hours there. I didn't."

  "No," said Alan, very white in the face. "You made her pay instead."

  "You are saying very offensive things, Alan. Be careful."

  "Aren't they true? Why did you find it so easy to get money out of Jane?"

  "Not for love of me, certainly. It must have been for love of you."

  "That's just what it was," said Alan simply. "She paid for my freedom freedom to work in my own way. So long as you had a sufficiency of money, you'd leave me alone - not badger me to paint a crowd of awful women."

  Isobel said nothing.

  "Well?" cried Alan angrily.

  Her quiescence infuriated him.

  Isobel was looking at the floor. Presently she raised her head and said quietly:

  "Come here, Alan."

  She touched the divan at her side. Uneasily, unwillingly, he came and sat there, not looking at her. But he knew that he was afraid.

  "Alan," said Isobel presently.

  "Well?"

  He was irritable, nervous.

  "All that you say may be true. It doesn't matter. I'm like that. I want things - clothes, money, you. Jane's dead, Alan."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Jane's dead. You belong to me altogether now. You never did before not quite."

  He looked at her - saw the light in her eyes, acquisitive, possessive was revolted yet fascinated.

  "Now you shall be all mine."

  He understood Isobel then as he had never understood her before.

  "You want me as a slave? I'm to paint what you tell me to paint, live as you tell me to live, be dragged at your chariot wheels."

  "Put it like that if you please.
What are words?"

  He felt her arms round his neck, white, smooth, firm as a wall. Words danced through his brain. "A wall as white as milk." Already he was inside the wall. Could he still escape? Did he want to escape?

  He heard her voice close against his ear - poppy and mandragora.

  "What else is there to live for? Isn't this enough? Love - happiness success - love -"

  The wall was growing up all around him now - "the curtain soft as silk," the curtain wrapping him round, stifling him a little, but so soft, so sweet! Now they were drifting together, at peace, out on the crystal sea. The wall was very high now, shutting out all those other things those dangerous, disturbing things that hurt - that always hurt. Out on the sea of crystal, the golden apple between their hands.

  The light faded from Jane's picture. THE MYSTERY OF THE BAGHDAD CHEST

  The words made a catchy headline, and I said as much to my friend, Hercule Poirot. I knew none of the parties. My interest was merely the dispassionate one of the man in the street. Poirot agreed.

  "Yes, it has a flavor of the Oriental, of the mysterious. The chest may very well have been a sham Jacobean one from the Tottenham Court Road; none the less the reporter who thought of naming it the Baghdad Chest was happily inspired. The word 'mystery' is also thoughtfully placed in juxtaposition, though I understand there is very little mystery about the case."

  "Exactly. It is all rather horrible and macabre, but it is not mysterious."

  "Horrible and macabre," repeated Poirot thoughtfully.

  "The whole idea is revolting," I said, rising to my feet and pacing up and down the room. "The murderer kills this man - his friend - shoves him into the chest, and half an hour later is dancing in that same room with the wife of his victim. Think! If she had imagined for one moment -"

  "True," said Poirot thoughtfully. "That much-vaunted possession, a woman's intuition - it does not seem to have been working."

  "The party seems to have gone off very merrily,'' I said with a slight shiver. "And all that time, as they danced and played poker, there was a dead man in the room with them. One could write a play about such an idea."

  "It has been done," said Poirot. "But console yourself, Hastings," he added kindly. "Because a theme has been used once, there is no reason why it should not be used again. Compose your drama."