Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [81]
‘Perhaps so that the dead may rest in peace,’ said Mr Quin.
Suddenly Aspasia Glen made a rush for the door and stood there flinging a few defiant words over her shoulder.
‘Do what you like. God knows there are witnesses enough to what I have been saying. I don’t care, I don’t care. I loved Hugo and I helped him with the ghastly business and he chucked me afterwards. He died last year. You can set the police on my tracks if you like, but as that little dried-up fellow there said, I am a pretty good actress. They will find it hard to find me.’ She crashed the door behind her, and a moment later they heard the slam of the front door, also.
‘Reggie,’ cried Lady Charnley, ‘Reggie.’ The tears were streaming down her face. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear, I can go back to Charnley now. I can live there with Dickie. I can tell him what his father was, the finest, the most splendid man in all the world.’
‘We must consult very seriously as to what must be done in the matter,’ said Colonel Monckton. ‘Alix, my dear, if you will let me take you home I shall be glad to have a few words with you on the subject.’
Lady Charnley rose. She came across to Mr Satterthwaite, and laying both hands on his shoulders, she kissed him very gently.
‘It is so wonderful to be alive again after being so long dead,’ she said. ‘It was like being dead, you know. Thank you, dear Mr Satterthwaite.’ She went out of the room with Colonel Monckton. Mr Satterthwaite gazed after them. A grunt from Frank Bristow whom he had forgotten made him turn sharply round.
‘She is a lovely creature,’ said Bristow moodily. ‘But she’s not nearly so interesting as she was,’ he said gloomily.
‘There speaks the artist,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Well, she isn’t,’ said Mr Bristow. ‘I suppose I should only get the cold shoulder if I ever went butting in at Charnley. I don’t want to go where I am not wanted.’
‘My dear young man,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘if you will think a little less of the impression you are making on other people, you will, I think, be wiser and happier. You would also do well to disabuse your mind of some very old-fashioned notions, one of which is that birth has any significance at all in our modern conditions. You are one of those large proportioned young men whom women always consider good-looking, and you have possibly, if not certainly, genius. Just say that over to yourself ten times before you go to bed every night and in three months’ time go and call on Lady Charnley at Charnley. That is my advice to you, and I am an old man with considerable experience of the world.’
A very charming smile suddenly spread over the artist’s face.
‘You have been thunderingly good to me,’ he said suddenly. He seized Mr Sattherthwaite’s hand and wrung it in a powerful grip. ‘I am no end grateful. I must be off now. Thanks very much for one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever spent.’
He looked round as though to say goodbye to someone else and then started.
‘I say, sir, your friend has gone. I never saw him go. He is rather a queer bird, isn’t he?’
‘He goes and comes very suddenly,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That is one of his characteristics. One doesn’t always see him come and go.’
‘Like Harlequin,’ said Frank Bristow, ‘he is invisible,’ and laughed heartily at his own joke.
Chapter 10
The Bird with the Broken Wing
I
Mr Satterthwaite looked out of the window. It was raining steadily. He shivered. Very few country houses, he reflected, were really properly heated. It cheered him to think that in a few hours’ time he would be speeding towards London. Once one had passed sixty years of age, London was really much the best place.
He was feeling a