Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [102]
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