Agatha Christie - Mysterious Mr Quin

by [Novels 11] -The Mysterious Mr Quin (lit)

  "Rehearsal of what?" inquired Mr. Satterthwaite.

  "This masquerade thing--I don't quite know what you'll call it. There is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr. Manly, do you remember him down here? He had quite a good tenor voice, is to be pierrot, and I am pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for the dancing--Harlequin and Columbine, you know. And then there is a big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village girls to sing. She's really getting the thing up for that. The music is rather lovely--but very modern--next to no tune anywhere. Claude Wickam. Perhaps you know him?"

  Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his manner to know everybody. He knew all about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer who was a fat Jewess with a penchant for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir Leopold Roscheimer who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.

  They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.

  John Denman, upright, slightly florid, with the faintest possible tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the appearance of Mr. Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks to him. Anne Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless as usual.

  Mr. Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over high cheek bones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weatherbeaten. An out of door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless--and yet...

  He thought-- "There should be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn't That's what's all wrong. Yes, all wrong." And to Claude Wickam he said--"I beg your pardon? You were saying?"

  Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. "Russia," he said, "that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. Magnificent!" He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate eclair he was waving about in the other. "Take," he said (with his mouth full),"the Russian Ballet." Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did she think of the Russian Ballet?

  The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point--what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet, but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride. "I have never seen It." "What?" He gazed at her open-mouthed, "But-- surely------"

  Her voice went on, level and emotionless.

  "Before my marriage, I was a dancer So now------"

  "A busman's holiday," said her husband. "Dancing." She shrugged her shoulders." I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me."

  "Oh!"

  It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb. His voice went on.

  "Talking of lives," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "and experimenting in them. The Russian nation made one costly experiment."

  Claude Wickam swung round on him. "I know what you are going to say," he cried. "Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?"

  "Three times," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall--not forget it."

  He spoke in an almost reverent voice.

  "I saw her, too," said Claude Wickam. "I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it."

  He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.

  "There is a statuette of her in a Museum in Berlin," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is marvellous. That impression of fragility--as though you could break her with a flip of the thumb nail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph." He paused, shaking his head. "There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution."

  "Fools! Madmen! Apes!" said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.

  "I studied with Kharsanova," said Mrs. Denman. "I remember her well."

  "She was wonderful?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.

  "Yes," said Mrs. Denman quietly. "She was wonderful."

  Claude Wickam departed and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief at which his wife laughed.

  Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. "I know what you think. But in spite of everything, the music that that boy writes is music."

  "I suppose It is," said Denman.

  "Oh, undoubtedly. How long it will be--well, that is different."

  John Denman looked at him curiously.

  "You mean?"

  "I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous." he looked across at Mr. Quin. "You agree with me?"

  "You are always right," said Mr. Quin.

  "We will come upstairs to my room," said Mrs. Denman. "It is pleasant there."

  She led the way, and they followed her. Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath as he caught sight of the Chinese screen. He looked up to find Mrs. Denman watching him.

  "You are the man who is always right," she said, nodding her head slowly at him. "What do you make of my screen?"

  He felt that in some way the words were a challenge to him, and he answered almost haltingly, stumbling over the words a little.

  "Why, it's--it's beautiful. More, it's unique." "You're right." Denman had come up behind him. "We bought it early in our married life. Got it for about a tenth of its value, but even then--well, it crippled us for over a year. You remember, Anna?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Denman, "I remember." "In fact, we'd no business to buy it at all--not then. Now, of course, it's different. There was some very good lacquer going at Christie's the other day. Just what we need to make this room perfect. All Chinese together. Clear out the other stuff. Would you believe it, Satterthwaite, my wife wouldn't hear of it?"

  "I like this room as it is," said Mrs. Denman. There was a curious look on her face. Again Mr. Satterthwaite felt challenged and defeated. He looked round him, and for the first time he noticed the absence of all personal touch. There were no photographs, no flowers, no knick-knacks. It was not like a woman's room at all. Save for that one incongruous factor of the Chinese screen, it might have been a sample room shown at some big furnishing house.

  He found her smiling at him.

  "Listen," she said. She bent forward, and for a moment she seemed less English, more definitely foreign. "I speak to you for you will understand. We bought that screen with more than money--with love. For love of it, because it was beautiful and unique, we went without other things, things we needed and missed. These other Chinese pieces my husband speaks of, those we should buy with money only, we should not pay away anything of ourselves."

  Her husband laughed.

  "Oh, have it your own way," he said, but with a trace of irritation in his voice. "But it's all wrong against this English background. This other stuff, it's good enough of its kind, genuine solid, no fake about it--but mediocre. Good plain late Hepplewhite."

  She nodded.

  "Good, solid, genuine English," she murmured softly.

  Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her. He caught a meaning behind these words. The English room--the flaming beauty of the Chinese screen... No, it was gone again.

  "I met Miss Stanwell in the lane," he said conversationally. "She tells me she is going to be pierrette in this show Tonight."

  "Yes," said Denman. "And she's awfully good, too."

  "She has clumsy feet," said Anna.

  "Nonsense," said her husband. "All women are alike, Satterthwaite. Can't bear to hear another woman praised. Molly is a very good-looking girl, and so of course every woman has to have their knife into her."

  "I spoke of dancing," said Anna Denman. She sounded faintly surprised. "She is very pretty, yes, but her feet
move clumsily. You cannot tell me anything else because I know about dancing."

  Mr. Satterthwaite intervened tactfully.

  "You have two professional dancers coming down, I understand?"

  "Yes. For the ballet proper. Prince Oranoff is bringing them down in his car."

  "Sergius Oranoff?"

  The question came from Anna Denman. Her husband turned and looked at her.

  "You know him?"

  "I used to know him--In Russia."

  Mr. Satterthwaite thought that John Denman looked disturbed. -"Will he know you?"

  "Yes. He will know me."

  She laughed--a low, almost triumphant laugh. There was nothing of the Dutch Doll about her face now. She nodded reassuringly at her husband.

  "Sergius. So he is bringing down the two dancers. He was always interested in dancing."

  "I remember."

  John Denman spoke abruptly, then turned and left the room. Mr. Quin followed him. Anna Denman crossed to the telephone and asked for a number. She arrested Mr. Satterthwaite with a gesture as he was about to follow the example of the other two men.

  "Can I speak to Lady Roscheimer. Oh! it is you. This is Anna Denman speaking. Has Prince Oranoff arrived yet? What? What? Oh, my dear! But how ghastly."

  She listened for a few moments longer, then replaced the receiver. She turned to Mr. Satterthwaite.

  "There has been an accident. There would be with Sergius Ivanovitch driving. Oh, he has not altered in all these years. The girl was not badly hurt, but bruised and shaken, too much to dance tonight. The man's arm is broken. Sergius Ivanovitch himself is unhurt. The devil looks after his own, perhaps."

  "And what-about Tonight's performance?"

  "Exactly, my friend. Something must be done about it."

  She sat thinking. Presently she looked at him.

  "I am a bad hostess, Mr. Satterthwaite. I do not entertain you."

  "I assure you that it is not necessary. There's one thing though, Mrs. Denman, that I would very much like to know."

  "Yes?"

  "How did you come across Mr. Quin?"

  "He is often down here," she said slowly. "I think he owns land in this part of the world."

  "He does, he does. He told me so this afternoon," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

  "He is---." She paused Her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite's. "I think you know what he is better than I do," she finished.

  "I?"

  "Is it not so?"

  He was troubled. His neat little soul found her disturbing. He felt that she wished to force him further than he was prepared to go, that she wanted him to put into words that which he was not prepared to admit to himself.

  "You know!" she said. "I think you know most things, Mr. Satterthwaite."

  Here was incense, yet for once it failed to intoxicate him. He shook his head in unwonted humility.

  "What can anyone know?" he asked. "So little--so very little."

  She nodded in assent. Presently she spoke again, in a queer brooding voice, without looking at him.

  "Supposing I were to tell you something--you would not laugh? No, I do not think you would laugh. Supposing, then, that to carry on one's"--she paused--"one's trade, one's profession, one were to make use of a phantasy--one were to pretend to oneself something that did not exist-- that one were to imagine a certain person... It is a pretence, you understand, a make believe--nothing more. But one day------"

  "Yes?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.

  He was keenly interested.

  "The phantasy came true! The thing one imagined--the impossible thing, the thing that could not be--was real! Is that madness? Tell me, Mr. Satterthwaite. Is that madness-- or do you believe it too?"

  "I------"Queer how he could not get the words out.

  How they seemed to stick somewhere at the back of his throat.

  "Folly," said Anna Denman.

  "Folly."

  She swept out of the room and left Mr. Satterthwaite with his confession of faith unspoken.

  He came down to dinner to find Mrs. Denman entertaining a guest, a tall dark man approaching middle age.

  "Prince Oranoff--Mr. Satterthwaite."

  The two men bowed. Mr. Satterthwaite had the feeling that some conversation had been broken off on his entry which would not be resumed. But there was no sense of strain. The Russian conversed easily and naturally on those objects which were nearest to Mr. Satterthwaite's heart. He was a man of very fine artistic taste, and they soon found that they had many friends in common. John Denman joined them, and the talk became localised. Oranoff expressed regret for the accident.

  "It was not my fault. I like to drive fast--yes, but I am a good driver. It was Fate--chance"--he shrugged his shoulders--"the masters of all of us."

  "There speaks the Russian in you, Sergius Ivanovitch," said Mrs. Denman.

  "And finds an echo in you, Anna Mikalovna," he threw back quickly.

  Mr. Satterthwaite looked from one to the other of the three of them. John Denman, fair, aloof, English, and the other two, dark, thin, strangely alike. Something rose in his mind--what was it? Ah! he had it now. The first Act of the Walk�re. Siegmund and Sieglinde--so alike--and the alien Hunding. Conjectures began to stir in his brain. Was this the meaning of the presence of Mr. Quin? One thing he believed in firmly--wherever Mr. Quin showed himself--there lay drama. Was this it here--the old hackneyed three cornered tragedy?

  He was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped for better things.

  "What has been arranged, Anna?" asked Denman." The thing will have to be put off, I suppose. I heard you ringing the Roscheimers up."

  She shook her head.

  "No--there is no need to put it off."

  "But you can't do it without the ballet?"

  "You certainly couldn't have a Harlequinade without Harlequin and Columbine," agreed Anna Denman dryly. "I'm going to be Columbine, John."

  "You?" he was astonished--disturbed, Mr. Satterthwaite thought.

  She nodded composedly.

  "You need not be afraid, John. I shall not disgrace you. You forget--it was my profession once."

  Mr. Satterthwaite thought--"What an extraordinary thing a voice is. The things it says--and the things it leaves unsaid and means! I wish I knew..."

  "Well," said John Denman grudgingly, "that solves one half of the problem. What about the other? Where will you find Harlequin?"

  "I have found him--there!"

  She gestured towards the open doorway where Mr. Quin had just appeared. He smiled back at her.

  "Good lord, Quin," said John Denman. "Do you know anything of this- game? 1 should never have imagined it."

  "Mr. Quin is vouched for by an expert," said his wife. "Mr. Satterthwaite will answer for him."

  She smiled at Mr. Satterthwaite, and the little man found himself murmuring--

  "Oh, yes--I answer for Mr. Quin."

  Denman turned his attention elsewhere.

  "You know there's to be a fancy dress dance business afterwards. Great nuisance. We'll have to rig you up, Satterthwaite."

  Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head very decidedly.

  "My years will excuse me. "A brilliant idea struck him. A table napkin under his arm. "There I am, an elderly waiter who has seen better days."

  He laughed.

  "An interesting profession," said Mr. Quin. "One sees so much."

  "I've got to put on some fool pierrot thing," said Denman gloomily. "It's cool anyway, that's one thing. What about you?" he looked at Oranoff.

  "I have a Harlequin costume," said the Russian. His eyes wandered for a minute to his hostess's face.

  Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if he was mistaken in fancying that there was just a moment of constraint.

  "There might have been three of us," said Denman, with a laugh. "I've got an old Harlequin costume my wife made me when we were first married for some show or other." He paused, looking down on his broad shirt front. "I don't suppose I could get into it now."

  "No," said his wife
, "you couldn't get into it now."

  And again her voice said something more than mere words.

  She glanced up at the clock

  "If Molly doesn't turn up soon, we won't wait for her."

  But at that moment the girl was announced. She was already wearing her Pierrette dress of white and green, and very charming she looked in it, so Mr. Satterthwaite reflected.