The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories Read online

  "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 it 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 SPANISH CHEST

  Punctual to the moment, as always, Hercule Poirot entered the small room Where Miss Lemon, his efficient secretary, awaited her instructions for the day.

  At first sight Miss Lemon seemed to be composed entirely of angles - thus satisfying Poirot's demand for symmetry.

  Not that where women were concerned Hercule Poirot carried his passion for geometrical precision so far. He was, on the contrary, old-fashioned. He had a continental prejudice for curves - it might he said for voluptuous curves. He liked women to be women. He liked them lush, highly colored, exotic. There had been a certain Russian countess - but that was long ago now. A folly of earlier days.

  But Miss Lemon he had never considered as a woman. She was a human machine - an instrument of precision. Her efficiency was terrific. She was forty-eight years of age, and was fortunate enough to have no imagination whatever.

  "Good morning, Miss Lemon."

  "Good morning, M. Poirot."

  Poirot sat down and Miss Lemon placed before him the morning's mail, neatly arranged in categories.

  She resumed her seat and sat with pad and pencil at the ready.

  But there was to be this morning a slight change in routine. Poirot had brought in with him the morning newspaper, and his eyes were scanning it with interest. The headlines were big and bold.

  "SPANISH CHEST MYSTERY. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS."

  "You have read the morning papers, I presume, Miss Lemon?"

  "Yes, M. Poirot. The news from Geneva is not very good."

  Poirot waved away the news from Geneva in a comprehensive sweep of the arm.

  "A Spanish chest," he mused. "Can you tell me, Miss Lemon, what exactly is a Spanish chest?"

  "I suppose, M. Poirot, that it is a chest that came originally from Spain."

  "One might reasonably suppose so. You have then, no expert knowledge?"

  "They are usually of the Elizabethan period, I believe. Large, and with a good deal of brass decoration on them. They look very nice when well kept and polished. My sister bought one at a sale. She keeps household linen in it. It looks very nice."

  "I am sure that in the house of any sister of yours, all the furniture would be well kept," said Poirot, bowing gracefully.

  Miss Lemon replied sadly that servants did not seem to know what elbow grease was nowadays.

  Poirot looked a little puzzled, but decided not to inquire into the inward meaning of the mysterious phrase "elbow grease."

  He looked down again at the newspaper, conning over the names: Major Rich, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, Commander McLaren, Mr. and Mrs. Spence. Names, nothing but names to him; yet all possessed of human personalities, hating, loving, fearing. A drama, this, in which he, Hercule Poirot, had no part. And he would have liked to have a part in it! Six people at an evening party, in a room with a big Spanish chest against the wall, six people, five of them talking, eating a buffet supper, putting records on the gramophone, dancing, and the sixth dead, in the Spanish chest...

  Ah, thought Poirot. How my dear friend Hastings would have enjoyed this! What romantic flights of imagination he would have had. What ineptitudes he would have uttered! Ah, ce cher Hastings, at this moment, today, I miss him. Instead -

  He sighed and looked at Miss Lemon. Miss Lemon, intelligently perceiving that Poirot was in no mood to dictate letters, had uncovered her typewriter and was awaiting her moment to get on with certain arrears of work. Nothing could have interested her less than sinister Spanish chests containing dead bodies.

  Poirot sighed and looked down at a photographed face. Reproductions in newsprint were never very good, and this was decidedly smudgy - but what a face! Mrs. Clayton, the wife of the murdered man...

  On an impulse, he thrust the paper at Miss Lemon.

  "Look," he demanded. "Look at that face."

  Miss Lemon looked at it obediently, without emotion.

  "What do you think of her, Miss Lemon? That is Mrs. Clayton."

  Miss Lemon took the paper, glanced casually at the picture, and remarked:

  "She's a little like the wife of our bank manager when we lived at Croydon Heath."

  "Interesting," said Poirot. "Recount to me, if you will be so kind, the history of your bank manager's wife."

  "Well, it's not really a very pleasant story, M. Poirot."

  "It was in my mind that it might not be. Continue."

  "There was a good deal of talk - about Mrs. Adams and a young artist. Then Mr. Adams shot himself. But Mrs. Adams wouldn't marry the other man and he took some kind of poison - but they pulled him through all right; and finally Mrs. Adams married a young solicitor. I believe there was more trouble after that, only of course we'd left Croydon Heath by then so I didn't hear very much more about it."

  Hercule Poirot nodded gravely.

  "She was beautiful?"

  "Well - not really what you'd call beautiful - But there seemed to be something about her -"

  "Exactly. What is that something that they possess - the sirens of this world! The Helens of Troy, the Cleopatras -?"

  Miss Lemon inserted a piece of paper vigorously into her typewriter.

  "Really, M. Poirot, I've never thought about it. It seems all very silly to me. If people would just go on with their jobs and didn't think about such things it would be much better."

  Having thus disposed of human frailty and passion, Miss Lemon let her fingers hover over the keys of the typewriter, waiting impatiently to be allowed to begin her work.

  "That is your view," said Poirot. "And at this moment it is your desire that you should be allowed to get on with your job. But your job, Miss Lemon, is not only to take down my letters, to file my papers, to deal with my telephone calls, to typewrite my letters - All these things you do a
dmirably. But me, I deal not only with documents but with human beings. And there, too, I need assistance."

  "Certainly, M. Poirot," said Miss Lemon patiently. "What is it you want me to do?"

  "This case interests me. I should be glad if you would make a study of this morning's report of it in all the papers and also of any additional reports in the evening papers - Make me a précis of the facts."

  "Very good, M. Poirot."

  Poirot withdrew to his sitting room, a rueful smile on his face.

  "It is indeed the irony," he said to himself, "that after my dear friend Hastings I should have Miss Lemon. What greater contrast can one imagine? Ce cher Hastings - how he would have enjoyed himself. How he would have walked up and down talking about it, putting the most romantic construction on every incident, believing as gospel truth every word the papers have printed about it. And my poor Miss Lemon, what I have asked her to do, she will not enjoy at all!"

  Miss Lemon came to him in due course with a typewritten sheet.

  "I've got the information you wanted, M. Poirot. I'm afraid though, it can't be regarded as reliable. The papers vary a good deal in their accounts. I shouldn't like to guarantee that the facts as stated are more than sixty per cent accurate."

  "That is probably a conservative estimate," murmured Poirot. "Thank you, Miss Lemon, for the trouble you have taken."

  The facts were sensational but clear enough. Major Charles Rich, a well-to-do-bachelor, had given an evening party to a few of his friends, at his apartment. These friends consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, Mr. and Mrs. Spence, and a Commander McLaren. Commander McLaren was a very old friend of both Rich and the Claytons, Mr. and Mrs. Spence, a younger couple, were fairly recent acquaintances. Arnold Clayton was in the Treasury. Jeremy Spence was a junior civil servant. Major Rich was forty-eight, Arnold Clayton was fifty-five, Commander McLaren was forty-six, Jeremy Spence was thirty-seven. Mrs. Clayton was said to be "some years younger than her husband." One person was unable to attend the party. At the last moment, Mr. Clayton was called away to Scotland on urgent business, and was supposed to have left King's Cross by the 8:15 train.