Problem at Pollensa Bay

by Agatha Christie

  ‘I don’t think I’d have known them now,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  Indeed, the last time he had seen the two boys was on a day when he had taken them out from their prep school. Although there was no relationship between them—they had had different fathers and mothers—yet the boys could have been, and often were, taken for brothers. They were about the same height and they both had red hair. Roland, presumably, having inherited it from his father and Timothy from his auburn-haired mother. There seemed also to be a kind of comradeship between them. Yet really, Mr Satterthwaite thought, they were very different. The difference was clearer now when they were, he supposed, between twenty-two and twenty-five years old. He could see no resemblance in Roland to his grandfather. Nor apart from his red hair did he look like his father.

  Mr Satterthwaite had wondered sometimes whether the boy would look like Lily, his dead mother. But there again he could see little resemblance. If anything, Timothy looked more as a son of Lily’s might have looked. The fair skin and the high forehead and a delicacy of bone structure. At his elbow, a soft deep voice said,

  ‘I’m Inez. I don’t expect you remember me. It was quite a long time ago when I saw you.’

  A beautiful girl, Mr Satterthwaite thought at once. A dark type. He cast his mind back a long way to the days when he had come to be best man at Tom Addison’s wedding to Pilar. She showed her Spanish blood, he thought, the carriage of her head and the dark aristocratic beauty. Her father, Dr Horton, was standing just behind her. He looked much older than when Mr Satterthwaite had seen him last. A nice man and kindly. A good general practitioner, unambitious but reliable and devoted, Mr Satterthwaite thought, to his daughter. He was obviously immensely proud of her.

  Mr Satterthwaite felt an enormous happiness creeping over him. All these people, he thought, although some of them strange to him, it seemed like friends he had already known. The dark beautiful girl, the two red-haired boys, Beryl Gilliatt, fussing over the tea tray, arranging cups and saucers, beckoning to a maid from the house to bring out cakes and plates of sandwiches. A splendid tea. There were chairs that pulled up to the tables so that you could sit comfortably eating all you wanted to eat. The boys settled themselves, inviting Mr Satterthwaite to sit between them.

  He was pleased at that. He had already planned in his own mind that it was the boys he wanted to talk to first, to see how much they recalled to him Tom Addison in the old days, and he thought, ‘Lily. How I wish Lily could be here now.’ Here he was, thought Mr Satterthwaite, here he was back in his boyhood. Here where he had come and been welcomed by Tom’s father and mother, an aunt or so, too, there had been and a great-uncle and cousins. And now, well, there were not so many in this family, but it was a family. Tom in his bedroom slippers, one red, one green, old but still merry and happy. Happy in those who were spread round him. And here was Doverton just, or almost just, as it had been. Not quite so well kept up, perhaps, but the lawn was in good condition. And down there he could see the gleam of the river through the trees and the trees, too. More trees than there had been. And the house needing, perhaps, another coat of paint but not too badly. After all, Tom Addison was a rich man. Well provided for, owning a large quantity of land. A man with simple tastes who spent enough to keep his place up but was not a spendthrift in other ways. He seldom travelled or went abroad nowadays, but he entertained. Not big parties, just friends. Friends who came to stay, friends who usually had some connection going back into the past. A friendly house.

  He turned a little in his chair, drawing it away from the table and turning it sideways so that he could see better the view down to the river. Down there was the mill, of course, and beyond the other side there were fields. And in one of the fields, it amused him to see a kind of scarecrow, a dark figure on which birds were settling on the straw. Just for a moment he thought it looked like Mr Harley Quin. Perhaps, thought Mr Satterthwaite, it is my friend Mr Quin. It was an absurd idea and yet if someone had piled up the scarecrow and tried to make it look like Mr Quin, it could have had the sort of slender elegance that was foreign to most scarecrows one saw.

  ‘Are you looking at our scarecrow?’ said Timothy. ‘We’ve got a name for him, you know. We call him Mister Harley Barley.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Dear me, I find that very interesting.’

  ‘Why do you find it interesting?’ said Roly, with some curiosity.

  ‘Well, because it rather resembles someone that I know, whose name happens to be Harley. His first name, that is.’

  The boys began singing, ‘Harley Barley, stands on guard, Harley Barley takes things hard. Guards the ricks and guards the hay, Keeps the trespassers away.’

  ‘Cucumber sandwich, Mr Satterthwaite?’ said Beryl Gilliatt, ‘or do you prefer a home-made pâté one?’

  Mr Satterthwaite accepted the home-made pâté. She deposited by his side a puce cup, the same colour as he had admired in the shop. How gay it looked, all that tea set on the table. Yellow, red, blue, green and all the rest of it. He wondered if each one had their favourite colour. Timothy, he noticed, had a red cup, Roland had a yellow one. Beside Timothy’s cup was an object Mr Satterthwaite could not at first identify. Then he saw it was a meerschaum pipe. It was years since Mr Satterthwaite had thought of or seen a meerschaum pipe. Roland, noticing what he was looking at, said, ‘Tim brought that back from Germany when he went. He’s killing himself with cancer smoking his pipe all the time.’

  ‘Don’t you smoke, Roland?’

  ‘No. I’m not one for smoking. I don’t smoke cigarettes and I don’t smoke pot either.’

  Inez came to the table and sat down the other side of him. Both the young men pressed food upon her. They started a laughing conversation together.

  Mr Satterthwaite felt very happy among these young people. Not that they took very much notice of him apart from their natural politeness. But he liked hearing them. He liked, too, making up his judgement about them. He thought, he was almost sure, that both the young men were in love with Inez. Well, it was not surprising. Propinquity brings these things about. They had come to live here with their grandfather. A beautiful girl, Roland’s first cousin, was living almost next door. Mr Satterthwaite turned his head. He could just see the house through the trees where it poked up from the road just beyond the front gate. That was the same house that Dr Horton had lived in last time he came here, seven or eight years ago.

  He looked at Inez. He wondered which of the two young men she preferred or whether her affections were already engaged elsewhere. There was no reason why she should fall in love with one of these two attractive young specimens of the male race.

  Having eaten as much as he wanted, it was not very much, Mr Satterthwaite drew his chair back altering its angle a little so that he could look all round him.

  Mrs Gilliatt was still busy. Very much the housewife, he thought, making perhaps rather more of a fuss than she need of domesticity. Continually offering people cakes, taking their cups away and replenishing them, handing things round. Somehow, he thought, it would be more pleasant and more informal if she let people help themselves. He wished she was not so busy a hostess.

  He looked up to the place where Tom Addison lay stretched out in his chair. Tom Addison was also watching Beryl Gilliatt. Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘He doesn’t like her. No. Tom doesn’t like her. Well, perhaps that’s to be expected.’ After all, Beryl had taken the place of his own daughter, of Simon Gilliatt’s first wife, Lily. ‘My beautiful Lily,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite again, and wondered why for some reason he felt that although he could not see anyone like her, yet Lily in some strange way was here. She was here at this tea party.

  ‘I suppose one begins to imagine these things as one gets old,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘After all, why shouldn’t Lily be here to see her son.’

  He looked affectionately at Timothy and then suddenly realized that he was not looking at Lily’s son. Roland was Lily’s son. Timothy was Beryl’s s
on.

  ‘I believe Lily knows I’m here. I believe she’d like to speak to me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I mustn’t start imagining foolish things.’

  For some reason he looked again at the scarecrow. It didn’t look like a scarecrow now. It looked like Mr Harley Quin. Some tricks of the light, of the sunset, were providing it with colour, and there was a black dog like Hermes chasing the birds.

  ‘Colour,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and looked again at the table and the tea set and the people having tea. ‘Why am I here?’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘Why am I here and what ought I to be doing? There’s a reason …’

  Now he knew, he felt, there was something, some crisis, something affecting—affecting all these people or only some of them? Beryl Gilliatt, Mrs Gilliatt. She was nervous about something. On edge. Tom? Nothing wrong with Tom. He wasn’t affected. A lucky man to own this beauty, to own Doverton and to have a grandson so that when he died all this would come to Roland. All this would be Roland’s. Was Tom hoping that Roland would marry Inez? Or would he have a fear of first cousins marrying? Though throughout history, Mr Satterthwaite thought, brothers had married sisters with no ill result. ‘Nothing must happen,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘nothing must happen. I must prevent it.’

  Really, his thoughts were the thoughts of a madman. A peaceful scene. A tea set. The varying colours of the Harlequin cups. He looked at the white meerschaum pipe lying against the red of the cup. Beryl Gilliatt said something to Timothy. Timothy nodded, got up and went off towards the house. Beryl removed some empty plates from the table, adjusted a chair or two, murmured something to Roland, who went across and offered a frosted cake to Dr Horton.

  Mr Satterthwaite watched her. He had to watch her. The sweep of her sleeve as she passed the table. He saw a red cup get pushed off the table. It broke on the iron feet of a chair. He heard her little exclamation as she picked up the bits. She went to the tea tray, came back and placed on the table a pale blue cup and saucer. She replaced the meerschaum pipe, putting it close against it. She brought the teapot and poured tea, then she moved away.

  The table was untenanted now. Inez also had got up and left it. Gone to speak to her grandfather. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘Something’s going to happen. What’s going to happen?’

  A table with different coloured cups round, and—yes, Timothy, his red hair glowing in the sun. Red hair glowing with that same tint, that attractive sideways wave that Simon Gilliatt’s hair had always had. Timothy, coming back, standing a moment, looking at the table with a slightly puzzled eye, then going to where the meerschaum pipe rested against the pale blue cup.

  Inez came back then. She laughed suddenly and she said, ‘Timothy, you’re drinking your tea out of the wrong cup. The blue cup’s mine. Yours is the red one.’

  And Timothy said, ‘Don’t be silly, Inez, I know my own cup. It’s got sugar in it and you won’t like it. Nonsense. This is my cup. The meerschaum’s up against it.’

  It came to Mr Satterthwaite then. A shock. Was he mad? Was he imagining things? Was any of this real?

  He got up. He walked quickly towards the table, and as Timothy raised the blue cup to his lips, he shouted.

  ‘Don’t drink that!’ he called. ‘Don’t drink it, I say.’

  Timothy turned a surprised face. Mr Satterthwaite turned his head. Dr Horton, rather startled, got up from his seat and was coming near.

  ‘What’s the matter, Satterthwaite?’

  ‘That cup. There’s something wrong about it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Don’t let the boy drink from it.’

  Horton stared at it. ‘My dear fellow—’

  ‘I know what I’m saying. The red cup was his,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘and the red cup’s broken. It’s been replaced with a blue one. He doesn’t know the red from blue, does he?’

  Dr Horton looked puzzled. ‘D’you mean—d’you mean—like Tom?’

  ‘Tom Addison. He’s colour blind. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. We all know that. That’s why he’s got odd shoes on today. He never knew red from green.’

  ‘This boy is the same.’

  ‘But—but surely not. Anyway, there’s never been any sign of it in—in Roland.’

  ‘There might be, though, mightn’t there?’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I’m right in thinking—Daltonism. That’s what they call it, don’t they?’

  ‘It was a name they used to call it by, yes.’

  ‘It’s not inherited by a female, but it passes through the female. Lily wasn’t colour blind, but Lily’s son might easily be colour blind.’

  ‘But my dear Satterthwaite, Timothy isn’t Lily’s son. Roly is Lily’s son. I know they’re rather alike. Same age, same coloured hair and things, but—well, perhaps you don’t remember.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘I shouldn’t have remembered. But I know now. I can see the resemblance too. Roland’s Beryl’s son. They were both babies, weren’t they, when Simon re-married. It is very easy for a woman looking after two babies, especially if both of them were going to have red hair. Timothy’s Lily’s son and Roland is Beryl’s son. Beryl’s and Christopher Eden’s. There is no reason why he should be colour blind. I know it, I tell you. I know it!’

  He saw Dr Horton’s eyes go from one to the other. Timothy, not catching what they said but standing holding the blue cup and looking puzzled.

  ‘I saw her buy it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Listen to me, man. You must listen to me. You’ve known me for some years. You know that I don’t make mistakes if I say a thing positively.’

  ‘Quite true. I’ve never known you make a mistake.’

  ‘Take that cup away from him,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Take it back to your surgery or take it to an analytic chemist and find out what’s in it. I saw that woman buy that cup. She bought it in the village shop. She knew then that she was going to break a red cup, replace it by a blue and that Timothy would never know that the colours were different.’

  ‘I think you’re mad, Satterthwaite. But all the same I’m going to do what you say.’

  He advanced on the table, stretched out a hand to the blue cup.

  ‘Do you mind letting me have a look at that?’ said Dr Horton.

  ‘Of course,’ said Timothy. He looked slightly surprised.

  ‘I think there’s a flaw in the china, here, you know. Rather interesting.’

  Beryl came across the lawn. She came quickly and sharply.

  ‘What are you doing? What’s the matter? What is happening?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ said Dr Horton, cheerfully. ‘I just want to show the boys a little experiment I’m going to make with a cup of tea.’

  He was looking at her very closely and he saw the expression of fear, of terror. Mr Satterthwaite saw the entire change of countenance.

  ‘Would you like to come with me, Satterthwaite? Just a little experiment, you know. A matter of testing porcelain and different qualities in it nowadays. A very interesting discovery was made lately.’

  Chatting, he walked along the grass. Mr Satterthwaite followed him and the two young men, chatting to each other, followed him.

  ‘What’s the Doc up to now, Roly?’ said Timothy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Roland. ‘He seems to have got some very extraordinary ideas. Oh well, we shall hear about it later, I expect. Let’s go and get our bikes.’

  Beryl Gilliatt turned abruptly. She retraced her steps rapidly up the lawn towards the house. Tom Addison called to her:

  ‘Anything the matter, Beryl?’

  ‘Something I’d forgotten,’ said Beryl Gilliatt. ‘That’s all.’

  Tom Addison looked inquiringly towards Simon Gilliatt.

  ‘Anything wrong with your wife?’ he said.

  ‘Beryl? Oh no, not that I know of. I expect it’s some little thing or other that she’s forgotten. Nothing I can do for you, Beryl?’ he called.

  ‘No. N
o, I’ll be back later.’ She turned her head half sideways, looking at the old man lying back in the chair. She spoke suddenly and vehemently. ‘You silly old fool. You’ve got the wrong shoes on again today. They don’t match. Do you know you’ve got one shoe that’s red and one shoe that’s green?’

  ‘Ah, done it again, have I?’ said Tom Addison. ‘They look exactly the same colour to me, you know. It’s odd, isn’t it, but there it is.’

  She went past him, her steps quickening.

  Presently Mr Satterthwaite and Dr Horton reached the gate that led out into the roadway. They heard a motor bicycle speeding along.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said Dr Horton. ‘She’s run for it. We ought to have stopped her, I suppose. Do you think she’ll come back?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘I don’t think she’ll come back. Perhaps,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s best left that way.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘It’s an old house,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘And old family. A good family. A lot of good people in it. One doesn’t want trouble, scandal, everything brought upon it. Best to let her go, I think.’

  ‘Tom Addison never liked her,’ said Dr Horton. ‘Never. He was always polite and kind but he didn’t like her.’

  ‘And there’s the boy to think of,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘The boy. You mean?’

  ‘The other boy. Roland. This way he needn’t know about what his mother was trying to do.’

  ‘Why did she do it? Why on earth did she do it?’

  ‘You’ve no doubt now that she did,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘No. I’ve no doubt now. I saw her face, Satterthwaite, when she looked at me. I knew then that what you’d said was truth. But why?’

  ‘Greed, I suppose,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘She hadn’t any money of her own, I believe. Her husband, Christopher Eden, was a nice chap by all accounts but he hadn’t anything in the way of means. But Tom Addison’s grandchild has got big money coming to him. A lot of money. Property all around here has appreciated enormously. I’ve no doubt that Tom Addison will leave the bulk of what he has to his grandson. She wanted it for her own son and through her own son, of course, for herself. She is a greedy woman.’