Problem at Pollensa Bay - Agatha Christie [29]
‘Is he married?’
‘No. Well, not yet.’
‘Ah. Prospects of marriage?’
‘Well, I wondered from something Tom Addison said in his letter. There is a girl cousin. The younger daughter Maria married the local doctor. I never knew her very well. It was rather sad. She died in childbirth. Her little girl was called Inez, a family name chosen by her Spanish grandmother. As it happens I have only seen Inez once since she grew up. A dark, Spanish type very much like her grandmother. But I am boring you with all this.’
‘No. I want to hear it. It is very interesting to me.’
‘I wonder why,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
He looked at Mr Quin with that slight air of suspicion which sometimes came to him.
‘You want to know all about this family. Why?’
‘So that I can picture it, perhaps, in my mind.’
‘Well, this house I am going to, Doverton Kingsbourne it is called. It is quite a beautiful old house. Not so spectacular as to invite tourists or to be open to visitors on special days. Just a quiet country house to live in by an Englishman who has served his country and comes back to enjoy a mellow life when the age of retirement comes. Tom was always fond of country life. He enjoyed fishing. He was a good shot and we had very happy days together in his family home of his boyhood. I spent many of my own holidays as a boy at Doverton Kingsbourne. And all through my life I have had that image in my mind. No place like Doverton Kingsbourne. No other house to touch it. Every time I drove near it I would make a detour perhaps and just pass to see the view through a gap in the trees of the long lane that runs in front of the house, glimpses of the river where we used to fish, and of the house itself. And I would remember all the things that Tom and I did together. He has been a man of action. A man who has done things. And I–I have just been an old bachelor.’
‘You have been more than that,’ said Mr Quin. ‘You have been a man who made friends, who had many friends and who has served his friends well.’
‘Well, if I can think that. Perhaps you are being too kind.’
‘Not at all. You are very good company besides. The stories you can tell, the things you’ve seen, the places you have visited. The curious things that have happened in your life. You could write a whole book on them,’ said Mr Quin.
‘I should make you the main character in it if I did.’
‘No, you would not,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I am the one who passes by. That is all. But go on. Tell me more.’
‘Well, this is just a family chronicle that I’m telling you. As I say, there were long periods, years of time when I did not see any of them. But they have been always my old friends. I saw Tom and Pilar until the time when Pilar died–she died rather young, unfortunately–Lily, my godchild, Inez, the quiet doctor’s daughter who lives in the village with her father…’
‘How old is the daughter?’
‘Inez is nineteen or twenty, I think. I shall be glad to make friends with her.’
‘So it is on the whole a happy chronicle?’
‘Not entirely. Lily, my godchild–the one who went to Kenya with her husband–was killed there in an automobile accident. She was killed outright, leaving behind her a baby of barely a year old, little Roland. Simon, her husband, was quite broken-hearted. They were an unusually happy couple. However, the best thing happened to him that could happen, I suppose. He married again, a young widow who was the widow of a Squadron Leader, a friend of his and who also had been left with a baby the same age. Little Timothy and little Roland had only two or three months in age between them. Simon’s marriage, I believe, has been quite happy though I’ve not seen them, of course, because they continued to live in Kenya. The boys were brought up like brothers. They went to the same school in England and spent their holidays usually in Kenya. I have not seen them, of course, for many years. Well, you