Problem at Pollensa Bay - Agatha Christie [34]
He turned a little in his chair, drawing it away from the table and turning it sideways so that he could see better the view down to the river. Down there was the mill, of course, and beyond the other side there were fields. And in one of the fields, it amused him to see a kind of scarecrow, a dark figure on which birds were settling on the straw. Just for a moment he thought it looked like Mr Harley Quin. Perhaps, thought Mr Satterthwaite, it is my friend Mr Quin. It was an absurd idea and yet if someone had piled up the scarecrow and tried to make it look like Mr Quin, it could have had the sort of slender elegance that was foreign to most scarecrows one saw.
‘Are you looking at our scarecrow?’ said Timothy. ‘We’ve got a name for him, you know. We call him Mister Harley Barley.’
‘Do you indeed’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Dear me, I find that very interesting.’
‘Why do you find it interesting?’ said Roly, with some curiosity.
‘Well, because it rather resembles someone that I know, whose name happens to be Harley. His first name, that is.’
The boys began singing, ‘Harley Barley, stands on guard, Harley Barley takes things hard. Guards the ricks and guards the hay, Keeps the trespassers away.’
‘Cucumber sandwich, Mr Satterthwaite?’ said Beryl Gilliatt, ‘or do you prefer a home-made pâté one?’
Mr Satterthwaite accepted the home-made pâté. She deposited by his side a puce cup, the same colour as he had admired in the shop. How gay it looked, all that tea set on the table. Yellow, red, blue, green and all the rest of it. He wondered if each one had their favourite colour. Timothy, he noticed, had a red cup, Roland had a yellow one. Beside Timothy’s cup was an object Mr Satterthwaite could not at first identify. Then he saw it was a meerschaum pipe. It was years since Mr Satterthwaite had thought of or seen a meerschaum pipe. Roland, noticing what he was looking at, said, ‘Tim brought that back from Germany when he went. He’s killing himself with cancer smoking his pipe all the time.’
‘Don’t you smoke, Roland?’
‘No. I’m not one for smoking. I don’t smoke cigarettes and I don’t smoke pot either.’
Inez came to the table and sat down the other side of him. Both the young men pressed food upon her. They started a laughing conversation together.
Mr Satterthwaite felt very happy among these young people. Not that they took very much notice of him apart from their natural politeness. But he liked hearing them. He liked, too, making up his judgement about them. He thought, he was almost sure, that both the young men were in love with Inez. Well, it was not surprising. Propinquity brings these things about. They had come to live here with their grandfather. A beautiful girl, Roland’s first cousin, was living almost next door. Mr Satterthwaite turned his head. He could just see the house through the trees where it poked up from the road just beyond the front gate. That was the same house that Dr Horton had lived in last time he came here, seven or eight years ago.
He looked at Inez. He wondered which of the two young men she preferred or whether her affections were already engaged elsewhere. There was no reason why she should fall in love with one of these two attractive young specimens of the male race.
Having eaten as much as he wanted, it was not very much, Mr Satterthwaite drew his chair back altering its angle a little so that he could look all round him.
Mrs Gilliatt was still busy. Very much the housewife, he thought, making perhaps rather more of a fuss than she need of domesticity. Continually offering people cakes, taking their cups away and replenishing them, handing things round. Somehow, he thought, it would be more pleasant and more informal if she let people help themselves. He wished she was not so busy a hostess.
He looked up to the place where Tom Addison lay stretched out in his chair. Tom Addison was also watching Beryl Gilliatt. Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘He doesn’t like her. No. Tom doesn’t like her. Well, perhaps that’s to be expected.’ After all, Beryl had taken the place of his own