The Mysterious Mr. Quin Read online

  ‘Beatrice? Who is Beatrice?’

  To everyone’s annoyance the voice of the Red Indian Cherokee was heard once more.

  ‘I have message for all of you people. Life here very bright and beautiful. We all work very hard. Help those who have not yet passed over.’

  Again a silence and then the woman’s voice was heard once more.

  ‘This is Beatrice speaking.’

  ‘Beatrice who?’

  ‘Beatrice Barron.’

  Mr Sattherwaite leaned forward. He was very excited.

  ‘Beatrice Barron who was drowned in the “Uralia”?’

  ‘Yes, that is right. I remember the “Uralia”. I have a message–for this house–Give back what is not yours.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Margery helplessly. ‘I–oh, are you really Aunt Beatrice?’

  ‘Yes, I am your aunt.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Mrs Casson reproachfully. ‘How can you be so suspicious? The spirits don’t like it.’

  And suddenly Mr Satterthwaite thought of a very simple test. His voice quivered as he spoke.

  ‘Do you remember Mr Bottacetti?’ he asked.

  Immediately there came a ripple of laughter.

  ‘Poor old Boatsupsetty. Of course.’

  Mr Sattherwaite was dumbfounded. The test had succeeded. It was an incident of over forty years ago which had happened when he and the Barron girls had found themselves at the same seaside resort. A young Italian acquaintance of theirs had gone out in a boat and capsized, and Beatrice Barron had jestingly named him Boatsupsetty. It seemed impossible that anyone in the room could know of this incident except himself.

  The medium stirred and groaned.

  ‘She is coming out,’ said Mrs Casson. ‘That is all we will get out of her today, I am afraid.’

  The daylight shone once more on the room full of people, two of whom at least were badly scared.

  Mr Satterthwaite saw by Margery’s white face that she was deeply perturbed. When they had got rid of Mrs Casson and the medium, he sought a private interview with his hostess.

  ‘I want to ask you one or two questions, Miss Margery. If you and your mother were to die who succeeds to the title and estates?’

  ‘Roley Vavasour, I suppose. His mother was Mother’s first cousin.’

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded.

  ‘He seems to have been here a lot this winter,’ he said gently. ‘You will forgive me asking–but is he–fond of you?’

  ‘He asked me to marry him three weeks ago,’ said Margery quietly. ‘I said No.’

  ‘Please forgive me, but are you engaged to anyone else?’

  He saw the colour sweep over her face.

  ‘I am,’ she said emphatically. ‘I am going to marry Noel Barton. Mother laughs and says it is absurd. She seems to think it is ridiculous to be engaged to a curate. Why, I should like to know! There are curates and curates! You should see Noel on a horse.’

  ‘Oh, quite so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Oh, undoubtedly.’

  A footman entered with a telegram on a salver. Margery tore it open. ‘Mother is arriving home tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Bother. I wish to goodness she would stay away.’

  Mr Satterthwaite made no comment on this filial sentiment. Perhaps he thought it justified. ‘In that case,’ he murmured, ‘I think I am returning to London.’

  IV

  Mr Satterthwaite was not quite pleased with himself. He felt that he had left this particular problem in an unfinished state. True that, on Lady Stranleigh’s return, his responsibility was ended, yet he felt assured that he had not heard the last of the Abbot’s Mede mystery.

  But the next development when it came was so serious in its character that it found him totally unprepared. He learnt of it in the pages of his morning paper. ‘Baroness Dies in her Bath,’ as the Daily Megaphone had it. The other papers were more restrained and delicate in their language, but the fact was the same. Lady Stranleigh had been found dead in her bath and her death was due to drowning. She had, it was assumed, lost consciousness, and whilst in that state her head had slipped below the water.

  But Mr Satterthwaite was not satisfied with that explanation. Calling for his valet he made his toilet with less than his usual care, and ten minutes later his big Rolls-Royce was carrying him out of London as fast as it could travel.

  But strangely enough it was not for Abbot’s Mede he was bound, but for a small inn some fifteen miles distant which bore the rather unusual name of the ‘Bells and Motley’. It was with great relief that he heard that Mr Harley Quin was still staying there. In another minute he was face to face with his friend.

  Mr Satterthwaite clasped him by the hand and began to speak at once in an agitated manner.

  ‘I am terribly upset. You must help me. Already I have a dreadful feeling that it may be too late–that that nice girl may be the next to go, for she is a nice girl, nice through and through.’

  ‘If you will tell me,’ said Mr Quin, smiling, ‘what it is all about?’

  Mr Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully.

  ‘You know. I am perfectly certain that you know. But I will tell you.’

  He poured out the story of his stay at Abbot’s Mede and, as always with Mr Quin, he found himself taking pleasure in his narrative. He was eloquent and subtle and meticulous as to detail.

  ‘So you see,’ he ended, ‘there must be an explanation.’

  He looked hopefully at Mr Quin as a dog looks at his master.

  ‘But it is you who must solve the problem, not I,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I do not know these people. You do.’

  ‘I knew the Barron girls forty years ago,’ said Mr Satterthwaite with pride.

  Mr Quin nodded and looked sympathetic, so much so that the other went on dreamily.

  ‘That time at Brighton now, Bottacetti-Boatsupsetty, quite a silly joke but how we laughed. Dear, dear, I was young then. Did a lot of foolish things. I remember the maid they had with them. Alice, her name was, a little bit of a thing–very ingenuous. I kissed her in the passage of the hotel, I remember, and one of the girls nearly caught me doing it. Dear, dear, how long ago that all was.’

  He shook his head again and sighed. Then he looked at Mr Quin.

  ‘So you can’t help me?’ he said wistfully. ‘On other occasions–’

  ‘On other occasions you have proved successful owing entirely to your own efforts,’ said Mr Quin gravely. ‘I think it will be the same this time. If I were you, I should go to Abbot’s Mede now.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘as a matter of fact that is what I thought of doing. I can’t persuade you to come with me?’

  Mr Quin shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘my work here is done. I am leaving almost immediately.’

  At Abbot’s Mede, Mr Satterthwaite was taken at once to Margery Gale. She was sitting dry-eyed at a desk in the morning-room on which were strewn various papers. Something in her greeting touched him. She seemed so very pleased to see him.

  ‘Roley and Maria have just left. Mr Satterthwaite, it is not as the doctors think. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that Mother was pushed under the water and held there. She was murdered, and whoever murdered her wants to murder me too. I am sure of that. That is why–’ she indicated the document in front of her.

  ‘I have been making my will,’ she explained. ‘A lot of the money and some of the property does not go with the title, and there is my father’s money as well. I am leaving everything I can to Noel. I know he will make a good use of it and I do not trust Roley, he has always been out for what he can get. Will you sign it as a witness?’

  ‘My dear young lady,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘you should sign a will in the presence of two witnesses and they should then sign themselves at the same time.’

  Margery brushed aside this legal pronouncement.

  ‘I don’t see that it matters in the least,’ she declared. ‘Clayton saw me sign and then she signed her name. I was
going to ring for the butler, but you will do instead.’

  Mr Satterthwaite uttered no fresh protest, he unscrewed his fountain pen and then, as he was about to append his signature, he paused suddenly. The name, written just above his own, recalled a flow of memories. Alice Clayton.

  Something seemed to be struggling very hard to get through to him. Alice Clayton, there was some significance about that. Something to do with Mr Quin was mixed up with it. Something he had said to Mr Quin only a very short time ago.

  Ah, he had it now. Alice Clayton, that was her name. The little bit of a thing. People changed–yes, but not like that. And the Alice Clayton he knew had had brown eyes. The room seemed whirling round him. He felt for a chair and presently, as though from a great distance, he heard Margery’s voice speaking to him anxiously. ‘Are you ill? Oh, what is it? I am sure you are ill.’

  He was himself again. He took her hand.

  ‘My dear, I see it all now. You must prepare yourself for a great shock. The woman upstairs whom you call Clayton is not Clayton at all. The real Alice Clayton was drowned on the “Uralia”.’

  Margery was staring at him. ‘Who–who is she then?’

  ‘I am not mistaken, I cannot be mistaken. The woman you call Clayton is your mother’s sister, Beatrice Barron. You remember telling me that she was struck on the head by a spar? I should imagine that that blow destroyed her memory, and that being the case, your mother saw the chance–’

  ‘Of pinching the title, you mean?’ asked Margery bitterly. ‘Yes, she would do that. It seems dreadful to say that now she is dead, but she was like that.’

  ‘Beatrice was the elder sister,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘By your uncle’s death she would inherit everything and your mother would get nothing. Your mother claimed the wounded girl as her maid, not as her sister. The girl recovered from the blow and believed, of course, what was told her, that she was Alice Clayton, your mother’s maid. I should imagine that just lately her memory had begun to return, but that the blow on the head, given all these years ago, has at last caused mischief on the brain.’

  Margery was looking at him with eyes of horror.

  ‘She killed Mother and she wanted to kill me,’ she breathed.

  ‘It seems so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘In her brain there was just one muddled idea–that her inheritance had been stolen and was being kept from her by you and your mother.’

  ‘But–but Clayton is so old.’

  Mr Satterthwaite was silent for a minute as a vision rose up before him–the faded old woman with grey hair, and the radiant golden-haired creature sitting in the sunshine at Cannes. Sisters! Could it really be so? He remembered the Barron girls and their likeness to each other. Just because two lives had developed on different tracks–

  He shook his head sharply, obsessed by the wonder and pity of life…

  He turned to Margery and said gently: ‘We had better go upstairs and see her.’

  They found Clayton sitting in the little workroom where she sewed. She did not turn her head as they came in for a reason that Mr Satterthwaite soon found out.

  ‘Heart failure,’ he murmured, as he touched the cold rigid shoulder. ‘Perhaps it is best that way.’

  Chapter 8

  The Face of Helen

  I

  Mr Satterthwaite was at the Opera and sat alone in his big box on the first tier. Outside the door was a printed card bearing his name. An appreciator and a connoisseur of all the arts, Mr Satterthwaite was especially fond of good music, and was a regular subscriber to Covent Garden every year, reserving a box for Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the season.

  But it was not often that he sat in it alone. He was a gregarious little gentleman, and he liked filling his box with the élite of the great world to which he belonged, and also with the aristocracy of the artistic world in which he was equally at home. He was alone tonight because a Countess had disappointed him. The Countess, besides being a beautiful and celebrated woman, was also a good mother. Her children had been attacked by that common and distressing disease, the mumps, and the Countess remained at home in tearful confabulation with exquisitely starched nurses. Her husband, who had supplied her with the aforementioned children and a title, but who was otherwise a complete nonentity, had seized at the chance to escape. Nothing bored him more than music.

  So Mr Satterthwaite sat alone. Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci were being given that night, and since the first had never appealed to him, he arrived just after the curtain went down, on Santuzza’s death agony, in time to glance round the house with practised eyes, before everyone streamed out, bent on paying visits or fighting for coffee or lemonade. Mr Satterthwaite adjusted his opera glasses, looked round the house, marked down his prey and sallied forth with a well mapped out plan of campaign ahead of him. A plan, however, which he did not put into execution, for just outside his box he cannoned into a tall dark man, and recognized him with a pleasurable thrill of excitement.

  ‘Mr Quin,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite.

  He seized his friend warmly by the hand, clutching him as though he feared any minute to see him vanish into thin air.

  ‘You must share my box,’ said Mr Satterthwaite determinedly. ‘You are not with a party?’

  ‘No, I am sitting by myself in the stalls,’ responded Mr Quin with a smile.

  ‘Then, that is settled,’ said Mr Satterthwaite with a sigh of relief.

  His manner was almost comic, had there been anyone to observe it.

  ‘You are very kind,’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘Not at all. It is a pleasure. I didn’t know you were fond of music?’

  ‘There are reasons why I am attracted to–Pagliacci.’

  ‘Ah! of course,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, nodding sapiently, though, if put to it, he would have found it hard to explain just why he had used that expression. ‘Of course, you would be.’

  They went back to the box at the first summons of the bell, and leaning over the front of it, they watched the people returning to the stalls.

  ‘That’s a beautiful head,’ observed Mr Satterthwaite suddenly.

  He indicated with his glasses a spot immediately beneath them in the stalls circle. A girl sat there whose face they could not see–only the pure gold of her hair that fitted with the closeness of a cap till it merged into the white neck.

  ‘A Greek head,’ said Mr Satterthwaite reverently. ‘Pure Greek.’ He sighed happily. ‘It’s a remarkable thing when you come to think of it–how very few people have hair that fits them. It’s more noticeable now that everyone is shingled.’

  ‘You are so observant,’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘I see things,’ admitted Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I do see things. For instance, I picked out that head at once. We must have a look at her face sooner or later. But it won’t match, I’m sure. That would be a chance in a thousand.’

  Almost as the words left his lips, the lights flickered and went down, the sharp rap of the conductor’s baton was heard, and the opera began. A new tenor, said to be a second Caruso, was singing that night. He had been referred to by the newspapers as a Jugo Slav, a Czech, an Albanian, a Magyar, and a Bulgarian, with a beautiful impartiality. He had given an extraordinary concert at the Albert Hall, a programme of the folk songs of his native hills, with a specially tuned orchestra. They were in strange half-tones and the would-be musical had pronounced them ‘too marvellous’. Real musicians had reserved judgment, realizing that the ear had to be specially trained and attuned before any criticism was possible. It was quite a relief to some people to find this evening that Yoaschbim could sing in ordinary Italian with all the traditional sobs and quivers.

  The curtain went down on the first act and applause burst out vociferously. Mr Satterthwaite turned to Mr Quin. He realized that the latter was waiting for him to pronounce judgment, and plumed himself a little. After all, he knew. As a critic he was well-nigh infallible.

  Very slowly he nodded his head.

  ‘It is the real thing,’ he said
.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘As fine a voice as Caruso’s. People will not recognize that it is so at first, for his technique is not yet perfect. There are ragged edges, a lack of certainty in the attack. But the voice is there–magnificent.’

  ‘I went to his concert at the Albert Hall,’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘Did you? I could not go.’

  ‘He made a wonderful hit with a Shepherd’s Song.’

  ‘I read about it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘The refrain ends each time with a high note–a kind of cry. A note midway between A and B flat. Very curious.’

  Yoaschbim had taken three calls, bowing and smiling. The lights went up and the people began to file out. Mr Satterthwaite leant over to watch the girl with the golden head. She rose, adjusted her scarf, and turned.

  Mr Satterthwaite caught his breath. There were, he knew, such faces in the world–faces that made history.

  The girl moved to the gangway, her companion, a young man, beside her. And Mr Satterthwaite noticed how every man in the vicinity looked–and continued to look covertly.

  ‘Beauty!’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘There is such a thing. Not charm, nor attraction, nor magnetism, nor any of the things we talk about so glibly –just sheer beauty. The shape of a face, the line of an eyebrow, the curve of a jaw. He quoted softly under his breath: ‘The face that launched a thousand ships.’ And for the first time he realized the meaning of those words.

  He glanced across at Mr Quin, who was watching him in what seemed such perfect comprehension that Mr Satterthwaite felt there was no need for words.

  ‘I’ve always wondered,’ he said simply, ‘what such women were really like.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘The Helens, the Cleopatras, the Mary Stuarts.’

  Mr Quin nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘If we go out,’ he suggested, ‘we may–see.’

  They went out together, and their quest was successful. The pair they were in search of were seated on a lounge half-way up the staircase. For the first time, Mr Satterthwaite noted the girl’s companion, a dark young man, not handsome, but with a suggestion of restless fire about him. A face full of strange angles; jutting cheek-bones, a forceful, slightly crooked jaw, deep-set eyes that were curiously light under the dark, overhanging brows.