Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [84]
He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an earthquake. A queer doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of them.
His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge’s hand touched his under the table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her head to her left.
‘That’s him,’ she murmured ungrammatically.
Mr Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young Graham was the man of Madge’s choice. Well, she could hardly have done better as far as appearances went–and Mr Satterthwaite was a shrewd observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow. They’d make a nice pair–no nonsense about either of them–good healthy sociable young folk.
Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the dining-room first. Mr Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced the glass on the table.
‘He’s got something on his mind,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite acutely. ‘Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I dare say. All the same, I wonder what it is.’
Mr Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he went up to his room to fetch them.
On his way down to the drawing-room, he passed along the long corridor on the ground floor. About half-way along it was a room known as the terrace room. As Mr Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in passing, he stopped short.
Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low window sill, drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the string of a ukelele–not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of fairy horses riding on fairy hills.
Mr Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue chiffon, ruched and pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a bird. She bent over the instrument crooning to it.
He came into the room–slowly, step by step. He was close to her when she looked up and saw him. She didn’t start, he noticed, or seem surprised.
‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he began.
‘Please–sit down.’
He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her breath.
‘There’s a lot of magic about tonight,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Yes, there was a lot of magic about.’
‘They wanted me to fetch my uke,’ she explained. ‘And as I passed here, I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here–in the dark and the moon.’
‘Then I–’ Mr Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.
‘Don’t go. You–you fit in, somehow. It’s queer, but you do.’
He sat down again.
‘It’s been a queer sort of evening,’ she said. ‘I was out in the woods late this afternoon, and I met a man –such a strange sort of man–tall and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin.’
‘Ah!’ Mr Satterthwaite leant forward–his interest quickened.
‘I wanted to speak to him–he–he looked so like somebody I know. But I lost him in the trees.’
‘I think I know him,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Do you? He is–interesting, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is interesting.’
There was a pause. Mr Satterthwaite was perplexed. There was something, he felt, that he ought to do–and he didn’t know what it was. But surely–surely, it had to do with this girl. He said rather clumsily:
‘Sometimes–when one is unhappy–one wants to get away–’
‘Yes. That’s true.’ She broke off suddenly. ‘Oh! I see what you mean. But you’re wrong. It’s just the other way round. I wanted to be alone because I’m happy.’
‘Happy?’
‘Terribly happy.’
She spoke quite quietly, but Mr Satterthwaite had a sudden sense of shock. What this strange girl meant by being happy wasn’t the same as Madge Keeley would have meant by the same words.