The Mysterious Mr Quin. Agatha Christie
‘You were very thoughtful when I came into this room. I should like to know exactly what thought it was that obsessed you. Never mind if it has nothing to do with the tragedy. Never mind if it seems to you–superstitious–’ Mr Unkerton started, ever so slightly. ‘Tell us.’
‘I don’t mind telling you,’ said Unkerton. ‘Though it’s nothing to do with the business, and you’ll probably laugh at me into the bargain. I was wishing that my Missus had left well alone and not replaced that pane of glass in the haunted window. I feel as though doing that has maybe brought a curse upon us.’
He was unable to understand why the two men opposite him stared so.
‘But she hasn’t replaced it yet,’ said Mr Satterthwaite at last.
‘Yes, she has. Man came first thing this morning.’
‘My God!’ said Porter, ‘I begin to understand. That room, it’s panelled, I supposed, not papered?’
‘Yes, but what does that–?’
But Porter had swung out of the room. The others followed him. He went straight upstairs to the Scotts’ bedroom. It was a charming room, panelled in cream with two windows facing south. Porter felt with his hands along the panels on the western wall.
‘There’s a spring somewhere–must be. Ah!’ There was a click, and a section of the panelling rolled back. It disclosed the grimy panes of the haunted window. One pane of glass was clean and new. Porter stooped quickly and picked up something. He held it out on the palm of his hand. It was a fragment of ostrich feather. Then he looked at Mr Quin. Mr Quin nodded.
He went across to the hat cupboard in the bedroom. There were several hats in it–the dead woman’s hats. He took out one with a large brim and curling feathers–an elaborate Ascot hat.
Mr Quin began speaking in a gentle, reflective voice.
‘Let us suppose,’ said Mr Quin, ‘a man who is by nature intensely jealous. A man who has stayed here in bygone years and knows the secret of the spring in the panelling. To amuse himself he opens it one day, and looks out over the Privy Garden. There, secure as they think from being overlooked, he sees his wife and another man. There can be no possible doubt in his mind as to the relations between them. He is mad with rage. What shall he do? An idea comes to him. He goes to the cupboard and puts on the hat with the brim and feathers. It is growing dusk, and he remembers the story of the stain on the glass. Anyone looking up at the window will see as they think the Watching Cavalier. Thus secure he watches them, and at the moment they are clasped in each other’s arms, he shoots. He is a good shot–a wonderful shot. As they fall, he fires once more–that shot carries away the ear-ring. He flings the pistol out of the window into the Privy Garden, rushes downstairs and out through the billiard room.’
Porter took a step towards him.
‘But he let her be accused!’ he cried. ‘He stood by and let her be accused. Why? Why?’
‘I think I know why,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I should guess–it’s only guess-work on my part, mind–that Richard Scott was once madly in love with Iris Staverton–so madly that even meeting her years afterwards stirred up the embers of jealousy again. I should say that Iris Staverton once fancied that she might love him, that she went on a hunting trip with him and another–and that she came back in love with the better man.’
‘The better man,’ muttered Porter, dazed. ‘You mean–?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin, with a faint smile. ‘I mean you.’ He paused a minute, and then said: ‘If I were you–I should go to her now.’
‘I will,’ said Porter.
He turned and left the room.
Chapter 3
At the ‘Bells and Motley’
Mr Satterthwaite was annoyed. Altogether it had been an unfortunate day. They had started late, there had been two punctures already, finally they had taken the wrong turning and lost themselves amidst the wilds of Salisbury Plain. Now it was close on eight o’clock, they were still a matter of forty miles from Marswick Manor whither they were bound, and a third puncture had supervened to render matters still more trying.
Mr Satterthwaite, looking like some small bird whose plumage had been ruffled, walked up and down in front of the village garage whilst his chauffeur conversed in hoarse undertones with the local expert.
‘Half an hour at least,’ said that worthy pronouncing judgment.
‘And lucky at that,’ supplemented Masters, the chauffeur. ‘More like three quarters if you ask me.’
‘What is this–place, anyway?’ demanded Mr Satterthwaite fretfully. Being a little gentleman considerate of the feelings of others, he substituted the word ‘place’ for ‘God-forsaken hole’ which had first risen to his lips.
‘Kirtlington Mallet.’
Mr Satterthwaite was not much wiser, and yet a faint familiarity seemed to linger round the name. He looked round him disparagingly. Kirtlington Mallet seemed to consist of one straggling street, the garage and the post office on one side of it balanced by three indeterminate shops on the other side. Farther down the road, however, Mr Satterthwaite perceived something that creaked and swung in the wind, and his spirits rose ever so slightly.
‘There’s an Inn here, I see,’ he remarked.
‘“Bells and Motley”,’ said the garage man. ‘That’s it–yonder.’
‘If I might make a suggestion, sir,’ said Masters, ‘why not try it? They would be able to give you some sort of a meal, no doubt–not, of course, what you are accustomed to.’ He paused apologetically, for Mr Satterthwaite was accustomed to the best cooking of continental chefs, and had in his own service a cordon bleu to whom he paid a fabulous salary.
‘We shan’t be able to take the road again for another three quarters of an hour, sir. I’m sure of that. And it’s already past eight o’clock. You could ring up Sir George Foster, sir, from the Inn, and acquaint him with the cause of our delay.’
‘You seem to think you can arrange everything, Masters,’ said Mr Satterthwaite snappily.
Masters, who did think so, maintained a respectful silence.
Mr Satterthwaite, in spite of his earnest wish to discountenance any suggestion that might possibly be made to him–he was in that mood–nevertheless looked down the road towards the creaking Inn sign with faint inward approval. He was a man of birdlike appetite, an epicure, but even such men can be hungry.
‘The “Bells and Motley”,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s an odd name for an Inn. I don’t know that I ever heard it before.’
‘There’s odd folks come to it by all account,’ said the local man.
He was bending over the wheel, and his voice came muffled and indistinct.
‘Odd folks?’ queried Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Now what do you mean by that?’
The other hardly seemed to know what he meant.
‘Folks that come and go. That kind,’ he said vaguely.
Mr Satterthwaite reflected that people who come to an Inn are almost of necessity those who ‘come and go’. The definition seemed to him to lack precision. But nevertheless his curiosity was stimulated. Somehow or other he had got to put in three quarters of an hour. The ‘Bells and Motley’ would be as good as anywhere else.
With his usual small mincing steps he walked away down the road. From afar there came a rumble of thunder. The mechanic looked up and spoke to Masters.
‘There’s a storm coming over. Thought I could feel it in the air.’
‘Crikey,’ said Masters. ‘And forty miles to go.’
‘Ah!’