Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [73]
‘There are actually two authentic ghosts,’ said Monckton. ‘They say that Charles I walks up and down the terrace with his head under his arm–I have forgotten why, I’m sure. Then there is the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer, who is always seen after one of the Charnleys dies.’
‘Tosh,’ said Bristow scornfully.
‘They have certainly been a very ill-fated family,’ said Mr Satterthwaite hurriedly. ‘Four holders of the title have died a violent death and the late Lord Charnley committed suicide.’
‘A ghastly business,’ said Monckton gravely. ‘I was there when it happened.’
‘Let me see, that must be fourteen years ago,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘the house has been shut up ever since.’
‘I don’t wonder at that,’ said Monckton. ‘It must have been a terrible shock for a young girl. They had been married a month, just home from their honeymoon. Big fancy dress ball to celebrate their home-coming. Just as the guests were starting to arrive Charnley locked himself into the Oak Parlour and shot himself. That sort of thing isn’t done. I beg your pardon?’
He turned his head sharply to the left and looked across at Mr Satterthwaite with an apologetic laugh.
‘I am beginning to get the jimjams, Satterthwaite. I thought for a moment there was someone sitting in that empty chair and that he said something to me.
‘Yes,’ he went on after a minute or two, ‘it was a pretty ghastly shock to Alix Charnley. She was one of the prettiest girls you could see anywhere and cram full of what people call the joy of living, and now they say she is like a ghost herself. Not that I have seen her for years. I believe she lives abroad most of the time.’
‘And the boy?’
‘The boy is at Eton. What he will do when he comes of age I don’t know. I don’t think, somehow, that he will reopen the old place.’
‘It would make a good People’s Pleasure Park,’ said Bristow.
Colonel Monckton looked at him with cold abhorrence.
‘No, no, you don’t really mean that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘You wouldn’t have painted that picture if you did. Tradition and atmosphere are intangible things. They take centuries to build up and if you destroyed them you couldn’t rebuild them again in twenty-four hours.’
He rose. ‘Let us go into the smoking-room. I have some photographs there of Charnley which I should like to show you.’
One of Mr Satterthwaite’s hobbies was amateur photography. He was also the proud author of a book, ‘Homes of My Friends’. The friends in question were all rather exalted and the book itself showed Mr Satterthwaite forth in rather a more snobbish light than was really fair to him.
‘That is a photograph I took of the Terrace Room last year,’ he said. He handed it to Bristow. ‘You see it is taken at almost the same angle as is shown in your picture. That is rather a wonderful rug–it is a pity that photographs can’t show colouring.’
‘I remember it,’ said Bristow, ‘a marvellous bit of colour. It glowed like a flame. All the same it looked a bit incongruous there. The wrong size for that big room with its black and white squares. There is no rug anywhere else in the room. It spoils the whole effect–it was like a gigantic blood stain.’
‘Perhaps that gave you your idea for your picture?’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Perhaps it did,’ said Bristow thoughtfully. ‘On the face of it, one would naturally stage a tragedy in the little panelled room leading out of it.’
‘The Oak Parlour,’ said Monckton. ‘Yes, that is the haunted room right enough. There is a Priests’ hiding hole there–a movable panel by the fireplace. Tradition has it that Charles I was concealed there once. There were two deaths from duelling in that room. And it was there, as I say, that Reggie Charnley shot himself.’
He took the photograph from Bristow’s hand.
‘Why, that is the Bokhara rug,’ he said, ‘worth a couple of thousand pounds, I believe. When I was there it was in the Oak Parlour–the right place for it. It looks silly on that great expanse of marble flags.’
Mr Satterthwaite was looking at the empty chair which he had drawn up beside his. Then he said thoughtfully: ‘I wonder when