The mysterious Mr. Quin · OmniClassics

The Mysterious Mr. Quin Agatha Christie _Copyright 1930 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc._ _Copyright © renewed 1958 by Agatha Christie Mallowan._ CONTENTS THE COMING OF MR. QUIN THE SHADOW ON THE GLASS AT THE BELLS AND MOTLEY THE SIGN IN THE SKY THE SOUL OF THE CROUPIER THE WORLD'S END THE VOICE IN THE DARK THE FACE OF HELEN THE DEAD HARLEQUIN THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN WING THE MAN FROM THE SEA HARLEQUIN'S LANE THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN THE COMING OF MR. QUIN It was New Year's Eve. The elder members of the house party at Royston were assembled in the big hall. Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that the young people had gone to bed. He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude. They lacked subtlety and as life went on he had become increasingly fond of subtleties. Mr. Satterthwaite was sixty-two--a little bent, dried-up man with a peering face oddly elflike, and an intense and inordinate interest in other people's lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now, with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common. There was no doubt that he had a flair for these things. He knew instinctively when the elements of drama were at hand. Like a war horse, he sniffed the scent. Since his arrival at Royston this afternoon, that strange inner sense of his had stirred and bid him be ready. Something interesting was happening or going to happen. The house party was not a large one. There was Tom Evesham, their genial good-humored host, and his serious political wife, who had been before her marriage Lady Laura Keene. There was Sir Richard Conway, soldier, traveler, and sportsman, there were six or seven young people whose names Mr. Satterthwaite had not grasped, and there were the Portals. It was the Portals who interested Mr. Satterthwaite. He had never met Alec Portal before but he knew all about him, had known his father and his grandfather. Alec Portal ran pretty true to type. He was a man of close on forty, fair-haired, and blue-eyed like all the Portals, fond of sport, good at games, devoid of imagination. Nothing unusual about Alec Portal. The usual good, sound English stock. But his wife was different. She was, Mr. Satterthwaite knew, an Australian. Portal had been out in Australia two years ago, had met her out there, and had married her and brought her home. She had never been to England previous to her marriage. All the same, she wasn't at all like any other Australian woman Mr. Satterthwaite had met. He observed her now covertly. Interesting woman--very. So still, and yet so--alive. Alive! That was just it! Not exactly beautiful--no, you wouldn't call her beautiful, but there was a kind of calamitous magic about her that you couldn't miss--that no man could miss. The masculine side of Mr. Satterthwaite spoke there, but the feminine side (for Mr. Satterthwaite had a large share of femininity), was equally interested in another question: Why did Mrs. Portal dye her hair? No other man would probably have known that she dyed her hair, but Mr. Satterthwaite knew. He knew all those things. And it puzzled him. Many dark women dye their hair blond; he had never before come across a fair woman who dyed her hair black. Everything about her intrigued him. In a queer intuitive way, he felt certain that she was either very happy or very unhappy--but he didn't know which, and it annoyed him not to know. Furthermore, there was the curious effect she had upon her husband. _He adores her_, said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself, _but sometimes he's--yes, afraid of her! That's very interesting. That's uncommonly interesting._ Portal drank too much. That was certain. And he had a curious way of watching his wife when she wasn't looking. _Nerves_, said Mr. Satterthwaite. _The fellow's all nerves. She knows it too, but she won't do anything about it._ He felt very curious about the pair of them. Something was going on that he couldn't fathom. He was roused from his meditations on the subject by the solemn chiming of a big clock. "Twelve o'clock," said Evesham. "New Year's Day. Happy New Year--everybody. As a matter of fact, that clock's five minutes fast. I don't know why the children wouldn't wait up and see the New Year in." "I don't suppose for a minute they've really gone to bed," said his wife placidly. "They're probably putting hairbrushes or something in our beds. That sort of thing does so amuse them. I can't think why. We should never have been allowed to do such a thing in my young day." "_Autre temps, autre moeurs_," said Conway, smiling. He was a tall soldierly-looking man. Both he and Evesham were much of the same type--honest, upright, kindly men with no great pretensions to brains. "In my young days we all joined hands in a circle and sang 'Auld Lang Syne,'" continued Lady Laura. "'Should auld acquaintance be forgot'--so touching, I always think the words are." Evesham moved uneasily. "Oh! drop it, Laura," he muttered. "_Not here!_" He strode across the wide hall where they were sitting, and switched on an extra light. "Very stupid of me," said Lady Laura, _sotto voce_. "Reminds him of poor Mr. Capel, of course. My dear, is the fire too hot for you?" Eleanor Portal had made a brusque movement. "Thank you. I'll move my chair back a little." What a lovely voice she had--one of those low, murmuring, echoing voices that stay in your memory, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. Her face was in shadow now. What a pity. From her place in the shadow she spoke again. "Mr.--Capel?" "Yes. The man who originally owned this house. He shot himself, you know. Oh! very well, Tom dear, I won't speak of it unless you like. It was a great shock for Tom, of course, because he was here when it happened. So were you, weren't you, Sir Richard?" "Yes, Lady Laura." An old grandfather clock in the corner groaned, wheezed, snorted asthmatically, and then struck twelve. "Happy New Year," grunted Evesham perfunctorily. Lady Laura wound up her knitting with some deliberation. "Well, we've seen the New Year in," she observed, and added, looking toward Mrs. Portal, "What do you think, my dear?" Eleanor Portal rose quickly to her feet. "Bed, by all means," she said lightly. _She's very pale_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, as he too rose, and began busying himself with candlesticks. _She's not usually as pale as that._ He lighted her candle and handed it to her with a funny little old-fashioned bow. She took it from him with a word of acknowledgment, and went slowly up the stairs. Suddenly a very odd impulse swept over Mr. Satterthwaite. He wanted to go after her--to reassure her--he had the strangest feeling that she was in danger of some kind. The impulse died down, and he felt ashamed. _He_ was getting nervy too. She hadn't looked at her husband as she went up the stairs, but now she turned her head over her shoulder and gave him a long, searching glance which had a queer intensity in it. It affected Mr. Satterthwaite very oddly. He found himself saying good night to his hostess in quite a flustered manner. "I'm sure I hope it _will_ be a happy New Year," Lady Laura was saying. "But the political situation seems to me to be fraught with grave uncertainty." "I'm sure it is," said Mr. Satterthwaite earnestly. "I'm sure it is." "I only hope," continued Lady Laura, without the least change of manner, "that it will be a dark man who first crosses the threshold. You know that superstition, I suppose, Mr. Satterthwaite? No? You surprise me. To bring luck to the house it must be a dark man who first steps over the door step on New Year's Day. Dear me, I hope I shan't find anything _very_ unpleasant in my bed. I never trust the children. They have such very high spirits." Shaking her head in sad foreboding, Lady Laura moved majestically up the staircase. With the departure of the women, chairs were pulled in closer round the blazing logs on the big open hearth. "Say when," said Evesham, hospitably, as he held up the whisky decanter. When everybody had said when, the talk reverted to the subject which had been tabooed before. "You knew Derek Capel, didn't you, Satterthwaite?" asked Conway. "Slightly--yes." "And you, Portal?" "No, I never met him." So fiercely and defensively did he say it that Mr. Satterthwaite looked up in surprise. "I always hate it when Laura brings up the subject," said Evesham slowly. "After the tragedy, you know, this place was sold to a big manufacturer fellow. He cleared out after a year--didn't suit him or something. A lot of tommyrot was talked about the place being haunted, of course, and it gave the house a bad name. Then, when Laura got me to stand for West Kidleby, of course it meant living up in these parts, and it wasn't so easy to find a suitable house. Royston was going cheap, and--well, in the end I bought it. Ghosts are all tommyrot, but all the same one doesn't exactly care to be reminded that you're living in a house where one of your own friends shot himself. Poor old Derek--we shall never know why he did it." "He won't be the first or the last fellow who's shot himself without being able to give a reason," said Alec Portal heavily. He rose and poured himself out another drink, splashing the whisky in with a liberal hand. _There's something very wrong with him_, said Mr. Satterthwaite, to himself. _Very wrong indeed. I wish I knew what it was all about._ "Gad!" said Conway. "Listen to the wind. It's a wild night." "A good night for ghosts to walk," said Portal with a reckless laugh. "All the devils in hell are abroad tonight." "According to Lady Laura, even the blackest of them would bring us luck," observed Conway, with a laugh. "Hark to that!" The wind rose in another terrific wail, and as it died away there came three loud knocks on the big nailed doorway. Everyone started. "Who on earth can that be at this time of night?" cried Evesham. They stared at each other. "I will open it," said Evesham. "The servants have gone to bed." He strode across to the door, fumbled a little over the heavy bars, and finally flung it open. An icy blast of wind came sweeping into the hall. Framed in the doorway stood a man's figure, tall and slender. To Mr. Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared, by some curious effect of the stained glass above the door, to be dressed in every color of the rainbow. Then, as he stepped forward, he showed himself to be a thin dark man. "I must really apologize for this intrusion," said the stranger, in a pleasant, level voice. "But my car broke down. Nothing much, my chauffeur is putting it to rights, but it will take half an hour or so, and it is so confoundedly cold outside--" He broke off, and Evesham took up the thread quickly. "I should think it was. Come in and have a drink. We can't give you any assistance about the car, can we?" "No, thanks. My man knows what to do. By the way, my name is Quin--Harley Quin." "Sit down, Mr. Quin," said Evesham. "Sir Richard Conway, Mr.