Midsummer Mysteries Read online

  Mr Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane, shady and green, with high hedges—a rural lane that twisted and turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address: ASHMEAD, HARLEQUIN’S LANE—remembered too, a local name for it that Mrs Denman had once told him.

  ‘Harlequin’s Lane,’ he murmured to himself softly. ‘I wonder—’

  He turned a corner.

  Not at the time, but afterwards, he wondered why this time he felt no surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his: Mr Harley Quin. The two men clasped hands.

  ‘So you’re down here,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I’m staying in the same house as you are.’

  ‘Staying there?’

  ‘Yes. Does it surprise you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite slowly. ‘Only—well, you never stay anywhere for long, do you?’

  ‘Only as long as is necessary,’ said Mr Quin gravely.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

  They walked on in silence for some minutes.

  ‘This lane,’ began Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped.

  ‘Belongs to me,’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘I thought it did,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Somehow, I thought it must. There’s the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the “Lovers’ Lane”. You know that?’

  Mr Quin nodded.

  ‘But surely,’ he said gently, ‘there is a “Lovers’ Lane” in every village?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.

  He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive.

  ‘Where does this lane end, I wonder?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘It ends—here,’ said Mr Quin.

  They came round the last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground, and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and ends that were no longer of account to anybody.

  ‘A rubbish heap,’ exclaimed Mr Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and indignantly.

  ‘Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap,’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘I know, I know,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, and quoted with just a trace of self-consciousness: ‘Bring me the two most beautiful things in the city, said God. You know how it goes, eh?’

  Mr Quin nodded.

  Mr Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on the brink of the wall of the cliff.

  ‘Hardly a pretty view for a house,’ he remarked.

  ‘I fancy this wasn’t a rubbish heap in those days,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here—but nothing much was done, as you can see.’

  They turned and began retracing their steps.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, smiling, ‘that many couples come wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Lovers,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr Quin had that effect upon him. ‘Lovers … You have done a lot for lovers, Mr Quin.’

  The other bowed his head without replying.

  ‘You have saved them from sorrow—from worse than sorrow, from death. You have been an advocate for the dead themselves.’

  ‘You are speaking of yourself—of what you have done—not of me.’

  ‘It is the same thing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘You know it is,’ he urged, as the other did not speak. ‘You have acted—through me. For some reason or other you do not act directly—yourself.’

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ said Mr Quin.

  His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr Satterthwaite shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly. And yet the sun seemed as bright as ever.

  At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a pink cotton frock. Mr Satterthwaite recognized her as Molly Stanwell, whom he had met down here before.

  She waved a hand to welcome him.

  ‘John and Anna have just gone back,’ she cried. ‘They thought you must have come, but they simply had to be at the rehearsal.’

  ‘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 métier to know everybody. He knew all about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer, who was a fat Jewish woman 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 hornrimmed 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. Anna 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 weather-beaten. 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 éclair 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. ‘Kh
arsanova! 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 fantasy—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 fantasy 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 localized. 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 Walküre. 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?