Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie [42]
She paused and then went on:
‘I always felt sorry for him. I still do. I think that terribly conceited manner of his is a good deal put on.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It’s a very common phenomenon. If I ever see anyone who appears to think a lot of themselves and boasts unceasingly, I always know that there’s a secret sense of inferiority somewhere.’
‘It seems very odd.’
‘An inferiority complex is a very peculiar thing. Crippen, for instance, undoubtedly suffered from it. It’s at the back of a lot of crimes. The desire to assert one’s personality.’
‘It seems very strange to me,’ murmured Lady Mary.
She seemed to shrink a little. Mr Satterthwaite looked at her with an almost sentimental eye. He liked her graceful figure with the sloping shoulders, the soft brown of her eyes, her complete absence of make-up. He thought:
‘She must have been a beauty when she was young…’
Not a flaunting beauty, not a rose—no, a modest, charming violet, hiding its sweetness…
His thoughts ran serenely in the idiom of his young days…
He remembered incidents in his own youth.
Presently he found himself telling Lady Mary about his own love affair—the only love affair he had ever had. Rather a poor love affair by the standards of today, but very dear to Mr Satterthwaite.
He told her about the Girl, and how pretty she was, and of how they had gone together to see the bluebells at Kew. He had meant to propose to her that day. He had imagined (so he put it) that she reciprocated his sentiments. And then, as they were standing looking at the bluebells, she had confided in him…He had discovered that she loved another. And he had hidden the thoughts surging in his breast and had taken up the rôle of the faithful Friend.
It was not, perhaps, a very full-blooded romance, but it sounded well in the dim-faded chintz and egg-shell china atmosphere of Lady Mary’s drawing-room.
Afterwards Lady Mary spoke of her own life, of her married life, which had not been very happy.
‘I was such a foolish girl—girls are foolish, Mr Satterthwaite. They are so sure of themselves, so convinced they know best. People write and talk a lot of a “woman’s instinct”. I don’t believe, Mr Satterthwaite, that there is any such thing. There doesn’t seem to be anything that warns girls against a certain type of man. Nothing in themselves, I mean. Their parents warn them, but that’s no good—one doesn’t believe. It seems dreadful to say so, but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man. She thinks at once that her love will reform him.’
Mr Satterthwaite nodded gently.
‘One knows so little. When one knows more, it is too late.’
She sighed.
‘It was all my own fault. My people didn’t want me to marry Ronald. He was well born, but he had a bad reputation. My father told me straight out that he was a wrong ’un. I didn’t believe it. I believed that, for my sake, he would turn over a new leaf…’
She was silent a moment or two, dwelling on the past.
‘Ronald was a very fascinating man. My father was quite right about him. I soon found that out. It’s an old-fashioned thing to say—but he broke my heart. Yes, he broke my heart. I was always afraid—of what might come out next.’
Mr Satterthwaite, always intensely interested in other people’s lives, made a cautious sympathetic noise.
‘It may seem a very wicked thing to say, Mr Satterthwaite, but it was a relief when he got pneumonia and died…Not that I didn’t care for him—I loved him up to the end—but I had no illusions about him any longer. And there was Egg—’
Her voice softened.
Such a funny little thing she was. A regular little rolypoly, trying to stand up and falling over—just like an egg; that’s how that ridiculous nickname started…’
She paused again.
‘Some books that I’ve read these last few years have brought a lot of comfort to me. Books on psychology. It seems to show that in many ways people can’t help themselves.