Читать книгу The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie - Страница 13

‘The Man from the Sea’ was first published in Britannia & Eve, October 1929.

Mr Satterthwaite was feeling old. That might not have been surprising since in the estimation of many people he was old. Careless youths said to their partners: ‘Old Satterthwaite? Oh! he must be a hundred – or at any rate about eighty.’ And even the kindest of girls said indulgently, ‘Oh! Satterthwaite. Yes, he’s quite old. He must be sixty.’ Which was almost worse, since he was sixty-nine.

In his own view, however, he was not old. Sixty-nine was an interesting age – an age of infinite possibilities – an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old – that was different, a tired discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all? A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died …

At this point in his meditations Mr Satterthwaite pulled himself up short. What he was thinking was morbid and unprofitable. He knew well enough, who better, that the chances were that a wife would have hated him or alternatively that he would have hated her, that children would have been a constant source of worry and anxiety, and that demands upon his time and affection would have worried him considerably.

‘To be safe and comfortable,’ said Mr Satterthwaite firmly – that was the thing.

The last thought reminded him of a letter he had received that morning. He drew it from his pocket and re-read it, savouring its contents pleasurably. To begin with, it was from a Duchess, and Mr Satterthwaite liked hearing from Duchesses. It is true that the letter began by demanding a large subscription for charity and but for that would probably never have been written, but the terms in which it was couched were so agreeable that Mr Satterthwaite was able to gloss over the first fact.

So you’ve deserted the Riviera, wrote the Duchess. What is this island of yours like? Cheap? Cannotti put up his prices shamefully this year, and I shan’t go to the Riviera again. I might try your island next year if you report favourably, though I should hate five days on a boat. Still anywhere you recommend is sure to be pretty comfortable – too much so. You’ll get to be one of those people who do nothing but coddle themselves and think of their comfort. There’s only one thing that will save you, Satterthwaite, and that is your inordinate interest in other people’s affairs …

As Mr Satterthwaite folded the letter, a vision came up vividly before him of the Duchess. Her meanness, her unexpected and alarming kindness, her caustic tongue, her indomitable spirit.

Spirit! Everyone needed spirit. He drew out another letter with a German stamp upon it – written by a young singer in whom he had interested himself. It was a grateful affectionate letter.

‘How can I thank you, dear Mr Satterthwaite? It seems too wonderful to think that in a few days I shall be singing Isolde …’

A pity that she had to make her début as Isolde. A charming, hardworking child, Olga, with a beautiful voice but no temperament. He hummed to himself. ‘Nay order him! Pray understand it! I command it. I, Isolde.’ No, the child hadn’t got it in her – the spirit – the indomitable will – all expressed in that final ‘Ich Isoldé!’

Well, at any rate he had done something for somebody. This island depressed him – why, oh! why had he deserted the Riviera which he knew so well and where he was so well known? Nobody here took any interest in him. Nobody seemed to realize that here was the Mr Satterthwaite – the friend of Duchesses and Countesses and singers and writers. No one in the island was of any social importance or of any artistic importance either. Most people had been there seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years running and valued themselves and were valued accordingly.

With a deep sigh Mr Satterthwaite proceeded down from the Hotel to the small straggling harbour below. His way lay between an avenue of bougainvillaea – a vivid mass of flaunting scarlet, that made him feel older and greyer than ever.

‘I’m getting old,’ he murmured. ‘I’m getting old and tired.’

He was glad when he had passed the bougainvillaea and was walking down the white street with the blue sea at the end of it. A disreputable dog was standing in the middle of the road, yawning and stretching himself in the sun. Having prolonged his stretch to the utmost limits of ecstasy, he sat down and treated himself to a really good scratch. He then rose, shook himself, and looked round for any other good things that life might have to offer.

There was a dump of rubbish by the side of the road and to this he went sniffing in pleasurable anticipation. True enough, his nose had not deceived him! A smell of such rich putrescence that surpassed even his anticipations! He sniffed with growing appreciation, then suddenly abandoning himself, he lay on his back and rolled frenziedly on the delicious dump. Clearly the world this morning was a dog paradise!

Tiring at last, he regained his feet and strolled out once more into the middle of the road. And then, without the least warning, a ramshackle car careered wildly round the corner, caught him full square and passed on unheeding.

The dog rose to his feet, stood a minute regarding Mr Satterthwaite, a vague dumb reproach in his eyes, then fell over. Mr Satterthwaite went up to him and bent down. The dog was dead. He went on his way, wondering at the sadness and cruelty of life. What a queer dumb look of reproach had been in the dog’s eyes. ‘Oh! World,’ they seemed to say. ‘Oh! Wonderful World in which I have trusted. Why have you done this to me?’

Mr Satterthwaite went on, past the palm trees and the straggling white houses, past the black lava beach where the surf thundered and where once, long ago, a well-known English swimmer had been carried out to sea and drowned, past the rock pools were children and elderly ladies bobbed up and down and called it bathing, along the steep road that winds upwards to the top of the cliff. For there on the edge of the cliff was a house, appropriately named La Paz. A white house with faded green shutters tightly closed, a tangled beautiful garden, and a walk between cypress trees that led to a plateau on the edge of the cliff where you looked down – down – down – to the deep blue sea below.

It was to this spot that Mr Satterthwaite was bound. He had developed a great love for the garden of La Paz. He had never entered the villa. It seemed always to be empty. Manuel, the Spanish gardener, wished one good-morning with a flourish and gallantly presented ladies with a bouquet and gentlemen with a single flower as a buttonhole, his dark face wreathed in smiles.

Sometimes Mr Satterthwaite made up stories in his own mind about the owner of the villa. His favourite was a Spanish dancer, once world-famed for her beauty, who hid herself here so that the world should never know that she was no longer beautiful.

He pictured her coming out of the house at dusk and walking through the garden. Sometimes he was tempted to ask Manuel for the truth, but he resisted the temptation. He preferred his fancies.

After exchanging a few words with Manuel and graciously accepting an orange rosebud, Mr Satterthwaite passed on down the cypress walk to the sea. It was rather wonderful sitting there – on the edge of nothing – with that sheer drop below one. It made him think of Tristan and Isolde, of the beginning of the third act with Tristan and Kurwenal – that lonely waiting and of Isolde rushing up from the sea and Tristan dying in her arms. (No, little Olga would never make an Isolde. Isolde of Cornwall, that Royal hater and Royal lover …) He shivered. He felt old, chilly, alone … What had he had out of life? Nothing – nothing. Not as much as that dog in the street …

It was an unexpected sound that roused him from his reverie. Footsteps coming along the cypress walk were inaudible, the first he knew of somebody’s presence was the English monosyllable ‘Damn.’

He looked round to find a young man staring at him in obvious surprise and disappointment. Mr Satterthwaite recognized him at once as an arrival of the day before who had more or less intrigued him. Mr Satterthwaite called him a young man – because in comparison to most of the diehards in the Hotel he was a young man, but he would certainly never see forty again and was probably drawing appreciably near to his half century. Yet in spite of that, the term young man fitted him – Mr Satterthwaite was usually right about such things – there was an impression of immaturity about him. As there is a touch of puppyhood about many a full grown dog so it was with the stranger.

Mr Satterthwaite thought: ‘This chap has really never grown up – not properly, that is.’

And yet there was nothing Peter Pannish about him. He was sleek – almost plump, he had the air of one who has always done himself exceedingly well in the material sense and denied himself no pleasure or satisfaction. He had brown eyes – rather round – fair hair turning grey – a little moustache and rather florid face.

The thing that puzzled Mr Satterthwaite was what had brought him to the island. He could imagine him shooting things, hunting things, playing polo or golf or tennis, making love to pretty women. But in the Island there was nothing to hunt or shoot, no games except Golf-Croquet, and the nearest approach to a pretty woman was represented by elderly Miss Baba Kindersley. There were, of course, artists, to whom the beauty of the scenery made appeal, but Mr Satterthwaite was quite certain that the young man was not an artist. He was clearly marked with the stamp of the Philistine.

While he was resolving these things in his mind, the other spoke, realizing somewhat belatedly that his single ejaculation so far might be open to criticism.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with some embarrassment. ‘As a matter of fact, I was – well, startled. I didn’t expect anyone to be here.’

He smiled disarmingly. He had a charming smile – friendly – appealing.

‘It is rather a lonely spot,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite, as he moved politely a little further up the bench. The other accepted the mute invitation and sat down.

‘I don’t know about lonely,’ he said. ‘There always seems to be someone here.’

There was a tinge of latent resentment in his voice. Mr Satterthwaite wondered why. He read the other as a friendly soul. Why this insistence on solitude? A rendezvous, perhaps? No – not that. He looked again with carefully veiled scrutiny at his companion. Where had he seen that particular expression before quite lately? That look of dumb bewildered resentment.

‘You’ve been up here before then?’ said Mr Satterthwaite, more for the sake of saying something than for anything else.

‘I was up here last night – after dinner.’

‘Really? I thought the gates were always locked.’

There was a moment’s pause and then, almost sullenly, the young man said:

‘I climbed over the wall.’

Mr Satterthwaite looked at him with real attention now. He had a sleuthlike habit of mind and he was aware that his companion had only arrived on the preceding afternoon. He had had little time to discover the beauty of the villa by daylight and he had so far spoken to nobody. Yet after dark he had made straight for La Paz. Why? Almost involuntarily Mr Satterthwaite turned his head to look at the green-shuttered villa, but it was as ever serenely lifeless, close shuttered. No, the solution of the mystery was not there.

‘And you actually found someone here then?’

The other nodded.

‘Yes. Must have been from the other Hotel. He had on fancy dress.’

‘Fancy dress?’

‘Yes. A kind of Harlequin rig.’

‘What?’

The query fairly burst from Mr Satterthwaite’s lips. His companion turned to stare at him in surprise.

‘They often do have fancy dress shows at the Hotels, I suppose?’

‘Oh! quite,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Quite, quite, quite.’

He paused breathlessly, then added:

‘You must excuse my excitement. Do you happen to know anything about catalysis?’

The young man stared at him.

‘Never heard of it. What is it?’

Mr Satterthwaite quoted gravely: ‘A chemical reaction depending for its success on the presence of a certain substance which itself remains unchanged.’

‘Oh,’ said the young man uncertainly.

‘I have a certain friend – his name is Mr Quin, and he can best be described in the terms of catalysis. His presence is a sign that things are going to happen, because when he is there strange revelations come to light, discoveries are made. And yet – he himself takes no part in the proceedings. I have a feeling that it was my friend you met here last night.’

‘He’s a very sudden sort of chap then. He gave me quite a shock. One minute he wasn’t there and the next minute he was! Almost as though he came up out of the sea.’

Mr Satterthwaite looked along the little plateau and down the sheer drop below.

‘That’s nonsense, of course,’ said the other. ‘But it’s the feeling he gave me. Of course, really, there isn’t the foothold for a fly.’ He looked over the edge. ‘A straight clear drop. If you went over – well, that would be the end right enough.’

‘An ideal spot for a murder, in fact,’ said Mr Satterthwaite pleasantly. The other stared at him, almost as though for the moment he did not follow. Then he said vaguely: ‘Oh! yes – of course …’

He sat there, making little dabs at the ground with his stick and frowning. Suddenly Mr Satterthwaite got the resemblance he had been seeking. That dumb bewildered questioning. So had the dog looked who was run over. His eyes and this young man’s eyes asked the same pathetic question with the same reproach. ‘Oh! world that I have trusted – what have you done to me?’

He saw other points of resemblance between the two, the same pleasure-loving easy-going existence, the same joyous abandon to the delights of life, the same absence of intellectual questioning. Enough for both to live in the moment – the world was a good place, a place of carnal delights – sun, sea, sky – a discreet garbage heap. And then – what? A car had hit the dog. What had hit the man?

The subject of these cogitations broke in at this point, speaking, however, more to himself than to Mr Satterthwaite.

‘One wonders,’ he said, ‘what it’s All For?’

Familiar words – words that usually brought a smile to Mr Satterthwaite’s lips, with their unconscious betrayal of the innate egoism of humanity which insists on regarding every manifestation of life as directly designed for its delight or its torment. He did not answer and presently the stranger said with a slight, rather apologetic laugh:

‘I’ve heard it said that every man should build a house, plant a tree and have a son.’ He paused and then added: ‘I believe I planted an acorn once …’

Mr Satterthwaite stirred slightly. His curiosity was aroused – that ever-present interest in the affairs of other people of which the Duchess had accused him was roused. It was not difficult. Mr Satterthwaite had a very feminine side to his nature, he was as good a listener as any woman, and he knew the right moment to put in a prompting word. Presently he was hearing the whole story.

Anthony Cosden, that was the stranger’s name, and his life had been much as Mr Satterthwaite had imagined it. He was a bad hand at telling a story but his listener supplied the gaps easily enough. A very ordinary life – an average income, a little soldiering, a good deal of sport whenever sport offered, plenty of friends, plenty of pleasant things to do, a sufficiency of women. The kind of life that practically inhibits thought of any description and substitutes sensation. To speak frankly, an animal’s life. ‘But there are worse things than that,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite from the depths of his experience. ‘Oh! many worse things than that …’ This world had seemed a very good place to Anthony Cosden. He had grumbled because everyone always grumbled but it had never been a serious grumble. And then – this.

He came to it at last – rather vaguely and incoherently. Hadn’t felt quite the thing – nothing much. Saw his doctor, and the doctor had persuaded him to go to a Harley Street man. And then – the incredible truth. They’d tried to hedge about it – spoke of great care – a quiet life, but they hadn’t been able to disguise that that was all eyewash – letting him down lightly. It boiled down to this – six months. That’s what they gave him. Six months.

He turned those bewildered brown eyes on Mr Satterthwaite. It was, of course, rather a shock to a fellow. One didn’t – one didn’t somehow, know what do do.

Mr Satterthwaite nodded gravely and understandingly.

It was a bit difficult to take in all at once, Anthony Cosden went on. How to put in the time. Rather a rotten business waiting about to get pipped. He didn’t feel really ill – not yet. Though that might come later, so the specialist had said – in fact, it was bound to. It seemed such nonsense to be going to die when one didn’t in the least want to. The best thing, he had thought, would be to carry on as usual. But somehow that hadn’t worked.

Here Mr Satterthwaite interrupted him. Wasn’t there, he hinted delicately, any woman?

But apparently there wasn’t. There were women, of course, but not that kind. His crowd was a very cheery crowd. They didn’t, so he implied, like corpses. He didn’t wish to make a kind of walking funeral of himself. It would have been embarrassing for everybody. So he had come abroad.

‘You came to see these islands? But why?’ Mr Satterthwaite was hunting for something, something intangible but delicate that eluded him and yet which he was sure was there. ‘You’ve been here before, perhaps?’

‘Yes.’ He admitted it almost unwillingly. ‘Years ago when I was a youngster.’

And suddenly, almost unconsciously so it seemed, he shot a quick glance backward over his shoulder in the direction of the villa.

‘I remembered this place,’ he said, nodding at the sea. ‘One step to eternity!’

‘And that is why you came up here last night,’ finished Mr Satterthwaite calmly.

Anthony Cosden shot him a dismayed glance.

‘Oh! I say – really –’ he protested.

‘Last night you found someone here. This afternoon you have found me. Your life has been saved – twice.’

‘You may put it that way if you like – but damn it all, it’s my life. I’ve a right to do what I like with it.’

‘That is a cliché,’ said Mr Satterthwaite wearily.

‘Of course I see your point, said Anthony Cosden generously. ‘Naturally you’ve got to say what you can. I’d try to dissuade a fellow myself, even though I knew deep down that he was right. And you know that I’m right. A clean quick end is better than a lingering one – causing trouble and expense and bother to all. In any case it’s not as though I had anyone in the world belonging to me …’

‘If you had –?’ said Mr Satterthwaite sharply.

Cosden drew a deep breath.

‘I don’t know. Even then, I think, this way would be best. But anyway – I haven’t …’

He stopped abruptly. Mr Satterthwaite eyed him curiously. Incurably romantic, he suggested again that there was, somewhere, some woman. But Cosden negatived it. He oughtn’t, he said, to complain. He had had, on the whole, a very good life. It was a pity it was going to be over so soon, that was all. But at any rate he had had, he supposed, everything worth having. Except a son. He would have liked a son. He would like to know now that he had a son living after him. Still, he reiterated the fact, he had had a very good life –

It was at this point that Mr Satterthwaite lost patience. Nobody, he pointed out, who was still in the larval stage, could claim to know anything of life at all. Since the words larval stage clearly meant nothing at all to Cosden, he proceeded to make his meaning clearer.

‘You have not begun to live yet. You are still at the beginning of life.’

Cosden laughed.

‘Why, my hair’s grey. I’m forty –’

Mr Satterthwaite interrupted him.

‘That has nothing to do with it. Life is a compound of physical and mental experiences. I, for instance, am sixty-nine, and I am really sixty-nine. I have known, either at first or second hand, nearly all the experiences life has to offer. You are like a man who talks of a full year and has seen nothing but snow and ice! The flowers of Spring, the languorous days of Summer, the falling leaves of Autumn – he knows nothing of them – not even that there are such things. And you are going to turn your back on even this opportunity of knowing them.’

‘You seem to forget,’ said Anthony Cosden dryly, ‘that, in any case, I have only six months.’

‘Time, like everything else, is relative,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That six months might be the longest and most varied experience of your whole life.’

Cosden looked unconvinced.

‘In my place,’ he said, ‘you would do the same.’

Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.

‘No,’ he said simply. ‘In the first place, I doubt if I should have the courage. It needs courage and I am not at all a brave individual. And in the second place –’

‘Well?’

‘I always want to know what is going to happen tomorrow.’

Cosden rose suddenly with a laugh.

‘Well, sir, you’ve been very good in letting me talk to you. I hardly know why – anyway, there it is. I’ve said a lot too much. Forget it.’

‘And tomorrow, when an accident is reported, I am to leave it at that? To make no suggestion of suicide?’

‘That’s as you like. I’m glad you realize one thing – that you can’t prevent me.’

‘My dear young man,’ said Mr Satterthwaite placidly, ‘I can hardly attach myself to you like the proverbial limpet. Sooner or later you would give me the slip and accomplish your purpose. But you are frustrated at any rate for this afternoon. You would hardly like to go to your death leaving me under the possible imputation of having pushed you over.’

‘That is true,’ said Cosden. ‘If you insist on remaining here –’

‘I do,’ said Mr Satterthwaite firmly.

Cosden laughed good-humouredly.

‘Then the plan must be deferred for the moment. In which case I will go back to the hotel. See you later perhaps.’

Mr Satterthwaite was left looking at the sea.

‘And now,’ he said to himself softly, ‘what next? There must be a next. I wonder …’

He got up. For a while he stood at the edge of the plateau looking down on the dancing water beneath. But he found no inspiration there, and turning slowly he walked back along the path between the cypresses and into the quiet garden. He looked at the shuttered, peaceful house and he wondered, as he had often wondered before, who had lived there and what had taken place within those placid walls. On a sudden impulse he walked up some crumbling stone steps and laid a hand on one of the faded green shutters.

To his surprise it swung back at his touch. He hesitated a moment, then pushed it boldly open. The next minute he stepped back with a little exclamation of dismay. A woman stood in the window facing him. She wore black and had a black lace mantilla draped over her head.

Mr Satterthwaite floundered wildly in Italian interspersed with German – the nearest he could get in the hurry of the moment to Spanish. He was desolated and ashamed, he explained haltingly. The Signora must forgive. He thereupon retreated hastily, the woman not having spoken one word.

He was halfway across the courtyard when she spoke – two sharp words like a pistol crack.

‘Come back!’

It was a barked-out command such as might have been addressed to a dog, yet so absolute was the authority it conveyed, that Mr Satterthwaite had swung round hurriedly and trotted back to the window almost automatically before it occurred to him to feel any resentment. He obeyed like a dog. The woman was still standing motionless at the window. She looked him up and down appraising him with perfect calmness.

‘You are English,’ she said. ‘I thought so.’

Mr Satterthwaite started off on a second apology.

‘If I had known you were English,’ he said, ‘I could have expressed myself better just now. I offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness in trying the shutter. I am afraid I can plead no excuse save curiosity. I had a great wish to see what the inside of this charming house was like.’

She laughed suddenly, a deep, rich laugh.

‘If you really want to see it,’ she said, ‘you had better come in.’

She stood aside, and Mr Satterthwaite, feeling pleasurably excited, stepped into the room. It was dark, since the shutters of the other windows were closed, but he could see that it was scantily and rather shabbily furnished and that the dust lay thick everywhere.

‘Not here,’ she said. ‘I do not use this room.’

She led the way and he followed her, out of the room across a passage and into a room the other side. Here the windows gave on the sea and the sun streamed in. The furniture, like that of the other room, was poor in quality, but there were some worn rugs that had been good in their time, a large screen of Spanish leather and bowls of fresh flowers.

‘You will have tea with me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite’s hostess. She added reassuringly: ‘It is perfectly good tea and will be made with boiling water.’

She went out of the door and called out something in Spanish, then she returned and sat down on a sofa opposite her guest. For the first time, Mr Satterthwaite was able to study her appearance.

The first effect she had upon him was to make him feel even more grey and shrivelled and elderly than usual by contrast with her own forceful personality. She was a tall woman, very sunburnt, dark and handsome though no longer young. When she was in the room the sun seemed to be shining twice as brightly as when she was out of it, and presently a curious feeling of warmth and aliveness began to steal over Mr Satterthwaite. It was as though he stretched out thin, shrivelled hands to a reassuring flame. He thought, ‘She’s so much vitality herself that she’s got a lot left over for other people.’

He recalled the command in her voice when she had stopped him, and wished that his protégée, Olga, could be imbued with a little of that force. He thought: ‘What an Isolde she’d make! And yet she probably hasn’t got the ghost of a singing voice. Life is badly arranged.’ He was, all the same, a little afraid of her. He did not like domineering women.

She had clearly been considering him as she sat with her chin in her hands, making no pretence about it. At last she nodded as though she had made up her mind.

‘I am glad you came,’ she said at last. ‘I needed someone very badly to talk to this afternoon. And you are used to that, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t quite understand.’

‘I meant people tell you things. You knew what I meant! Why pretend?’

‘Well – perhaps –’

She swept on, regardless of anything he had been going to say.

‘One could say anything to you. That is because you are half a woman. You know what we feel – what we think – the queer, queer things we do.’

Her voice died away. Tea was brought by a large, smiling Spanish girl. It was good tea – China – Mr Satterthwaite sipped it appreciatively.

‘You live here?’ he inquired conversationally.

‘Yes.’

‘But not altogether. The house is usually shut up, is it not? At least so I have been told.’

‘I am here a good deal, more than anyone knows. I only use these rooms.’

‘You have had the house long?’

‘It has belonged to me for twenty-two years – and I lived here for a year before that.’

Mr Satterthwaite said rather inanely (or so he felt): ‘That is a very long time.’

‘The year? Or the twenty-two years?’

His interest stirred, Mr Satterthwaite said gravely: ‘That depends.’

She nodded.

‘Yes, it depends. They are two separate periods. They have nothing to do with each other. Which is long? Which is short? Even now I cannot say.’

She was silent for a minute, brooding. Then she said with a little smile:

‘It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone – such a long time! I do not apologize. You came to my shutter. You wished to look through my window. And that is what you are always doing, is it not? Pushing aside the shutter and looking through the window into the truth of people’s lives. If they will let you. And often if they will not let you! It would be difficult to hide anything from you. You would guess – and guess right.’

Mr Satterthwaite had an odd impulse to be perfectly sincere.

‘I am sixty-nine,’ he said. ‘Everything I know of life I know at second hand. Sometimes that is very bitter to me. And yet, because of it, I know a good deal.’

She nodded thoughtfully.

‘I know. Life is very strange. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be that – always a looker-on.’

Her tone was wondering. Mr Satterthwaite smiled.

‘No, you would not know. Your place is in the centre of the stage. You will always be the Prima Donna.’

‘What a curious thing to say.’

‘But I am right. Things have happened to you – will always happen to you. Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?’

Her eyes narrowed. She looked across at him.

‘If you are here long, somebody will tell you of the English swimmer who was drowned at the foot of this cliff. They will tell you how young and strong he was, how handsome, and they will tell you that his young wife looked down from the top of the cliff and saw him drowning.’

‘Yes, I have already heard that story.’

‘That man was my husband. This was his villa. He brought me out here with him when I was eighteen, and a year later he died – driven by the surf on the black rocks, cut and bruised and mutilated, battered to death.’

Mr Satterthwaite gave a shocked exclamation. She leant forward, her burning eyes focused on his face.

‘You spoke of tragedy. Can you imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his life – and lost it – horribly.’

‘Terrible,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He spoke with real emotion. ‘Terrible. I agree with you. Nothing in life could be so dreadful.’

Suddenly she laughed. Her head went back.

‘You are wrong,’ she said. ‘There is something more terrible. And that is for a young wife to stand there and hope and long for her husband to drown …’

‘But good God,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, ‘you don’t mean –?’

‘Yes, I do. That’s what it was really. I knelt there – knelt down on the cliff and prayed. The Spanish servants thought I was praying for his life to be saved. I wasn’t. I was praying that I might wish him to be spared. I was saying one thing over and over again, “God, help me not to wish him dead. God, help me not to wish him dead.” But it wasn’t any good. All the time I hoped – hoped – and my hope came true.’

She was silent for a minute or two and then she said very gently in quite a different voice:

‘That is a terrible thing, isn’t it? It’s the sort of thing one can’t forget. I was terribly happy when I knew he was really dead and couldn’t come back to torture me any more.’

‘My child,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, shocked.

‘I know. I was too young to have that happen to me. Those things should happen to one when one is older – when one is more prepared for – for beastliness. Nobody knew, you know, what he was really like. I thought he was wonderful when I first met him and was so happy and proud when he asked me to marry him. But things went wrong almost at once. He was angry with me – nothing I could do pleased him – and yet I tried so hard. And then he began to like hurting me. And above all to terrify me. That’s what he enjoyed most. He thought out all sorts of things … dreadful things. I won’t tell you. I suppose, really, he must have been a little mad. I was alone here, in his power, and cruelty began to be his hobby.’ Her eyes widened and darkened. ‘The worst was my baby. I was going to have a baby. Because of some of the things he did to me – it was born dead. My little baby. I nearly died, too – but I didn’t. I wish I had.’

Mr Satterthwaite made an inarticulate sound.

‘And then I was delivered – in the way I’ve told you. Some girls who were staying at the hotel dared him. That’s how it happened. All the Spaniards told him it was madness to risk the sea just there. But he was very vain – he wanted to show off. And I – I saw him drown – and was glad. God oughtn’t to let such things happen.’

Mr Satterthwaite stretched out his little dry hand and took hers. She squeezed it hard as a child might have done. The maturity had fallen away from her face. He saw her without difficulty as she had been at nineteen.

‘At first it seemed too good to be true. The house was mine and I could live in it. And no one could hurt me any more! I was an orphan, you know, I had no near relations, no one to care what became of me. That simplified things. I lived on here – in this villa – and it seemed like Heaven. Yes, like Heaven. I’ve never been so happy since, and never shall again. Just to wake up and know that everything was all right – no pain, no terror, no wondering what he was going to do to me next. Yes, it was Heaven.’

She paused a long time, and Mr Satterthwaite said at last:

‘And then?’

‘I suppose human beings aren’t ever satisfied. At first, just being free was enough. But after a while I began to get – well, lonely, I suppose. I began to think about my baby that died. If only I had had my baby! I wanted it as a baby, and also as a plaything. I wanted dreadfully something or someone to play with. It sounds silly and childish, but there it was.’

‘I understand,’ said Mr Satterthwaite gravely.

‘It’s difficult to explain the next bit. It just – well, happened, you see. There was a young Englishman staying at the hotel. He strayed in the garden by mistake. I was wearing Spanish dress and he took me for a Spanish girl. I thought it would be rather fun to pretend I was one, so I played up. His Spanish was very bad but he could just manage a little. I told him the villa belonged to an English lady who was away. I said she had taught me a little English and I pretended to speak broken English. It was such fun – such fun – even now I can remember what fun it was. He began to make love to me. We agreed to pretend that the villa was our home, that we were just married and coming to live there. I suggested that we should try one of the shutters – the one you tried this evening. It was open and inside the room was dusty and uncared for. We crept in. It was exciting and wonderful. We pretended it was our own house.’

She broke off suddenly, looked appealingly at Mr Satterthwaite.

‘It all seemed lovely – like a fairy tale. And the lovely thing about it, to me, was that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t real.’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded. He saw her, perhaps more clearly than she saw herself – that frightened, lonely child entranced with her make believe that was so safe because it wasn’t real.

‘He was, I suppose, a very ordinary young man. Out for adventure, but quite sweet about it. We went on pretending.’

She stopped, looked at Mr Satterthwaite and said again:

‘You understand? We went on pretending …’

She went on again in a minute.

‘He came up again the next morning to the villa. I saw him from my bedroom through the shutter. Of course he didn’t dream I was inside. He still thought I was a little Spanish peasant girl. He stood there looking about him. He’d asked me to meet him. I’d said I would but I never meant to.

‘He just stood there looking worried. I think he was worried about me. It was nice of him to be worried about me. He was nice …’

She paused again.

‘The next day he left. I’ve never seen him again.

‘My baby was born nine months later. I was wonderfully happy all the time. To be able to have a baby so peacefully, with no one to hurt you or make you miserable. I wished I’d remembered to ask my English boy his Christian name. I would have called the baby after him. It seemed unkind not to. It seemed rather unfair. He’d given me the thing I wanted most in the world, and he would never even know about it! But of course I told myself that he wouldn’t look at it that way – that to know would probably only worry and annoy him. I had been just a passing amusement for him, that was all.’

‘And the baby?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.

‘He was splendid. I called him John. Splendid. I wish you could see him now. He’s twenty. He’s going to be a mining engineer. He’s been the best and dearest son in the world to me. I told him his father had died before he was born.’

Mr Satterthwaite stared at her. A curious story. And somehow, a story that was not completely told. There was, he felt sure, something else.

‘Twenty years is a long time,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve never contemplated marrying again?’

She shook her head. A slow, burning blush spread over her tanned cheeks.

‘The child was enough for you – always?’

She looked at him. Her eyes were softer than he had yet seen them.

‘Such queer things happen!’ she murmured. ‘Such queer things … You wouldn’t believe them – no, I’m wrong, you might, perhaps. I didn’t love John’s father, not at the time. I don’t think I even knew what love was. I assumed, as a matter of course, that the child would be like me. But he wasn’t. He mightn’t have been my child at all. He was like his father – he was like no one but his father. I learnt to know that man – through his child. Through the child, I learnt to love him. I love him now. I always shall love him. You may say that it’s imagination, that I’ve built up an ideal, but it isn’t so. I love the man, the real, human man. I’d know him if I saw him tomorrow – even though it’s over twenty years since we met. Loving him has made me into a woman. I love him as a woman loves a man. For twenty years I’ve lived loving him. I shall die loving him.’

She stopped abruptly – then challenged her listener.

‘Do you think I’m mad – to say these strange things?’

‘Oh! my dear,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He took her hand again.

‘You do understand?’

‘I think I do. But there’s something more, isn’t there? Something that you haven’t yet told me?’

Her brow clouded over.

‘Yes, there’s something. It was clever of you to guess. I knew at once you weren’t the sort one can hide things from. But I don’t want to tell you – and the reason I don’t want to tell you is because it’s best for you not to know.’

He looked at her. Her eyes met his bravely and defiantly.

He said to himself: ‘This is the test. All the clues are in my hand. I ought to be able to know. If I reason rightly I shall know.’

There was a pause, then he said slowly:

‘Something’s gone wrong.’ He saw her eyelids give the faintest quiver and knew himself to be on the right track.

‘Something’s gone wrong – suddenly – after all these years.’ He felt himself groping – groping – in the dark recesses of her mind where she was trying to hide her secret from him.

‘The boy – it’s got to do with him. You wouldn’t mind about anything else.’

He heard the very faint gasp she gave and knew he had probed correctly. A cruel business but necessary. It was her will against his. She had got a dominant, ruthless will, but he too had a will hidden beneath his meek manners. And he had behind him the Heaven-sent assurance of a man who is doing his proper job. He felt a passing contemptuous pity for men whose business it was to track down such crudities as crime. This detective business of the mind, this assembling of clues, this delving for the truth, this wild joy as one drew nearer to the goal … Her very passion to keep the truth from him helped her. He felt her stiffen defiantly as he drew nearer and nearer.

‘It is better for me not to know, you say. Better for me? But you are not a very considerate woman. You would not shrink from putting a stranger to a little temporary inconvenience. It is more than that, then? If you tell me you make me an accomplice before the fact. That sounds like crime. Fantastic! I could not associate crime with you. Or only one sort of crime. A crime against yourself.’

Her lids drooped in spite of herself, veiled her eyes. He leaned forward and caught her wrist.

‘It is that, then! You are thinking of taking your life.’

She gave a low cry.

‘How did you know? How did you know?’

‘But why? You are not tired of life. I never saw a woman less tired of it – more radiantly alive.’

She got up, went to the window, pushing back a strand of her dark hair as she did so.

‘Since you have guessed so much I might as well tell you the truth. I should not have let you in this evening. I might have known that you would see too much. You are that kind of man. You were right about the cause. It’s the boy. He knows nothing. But last time he was home, he spoke tragically of a friend of his, and I discovered something. If he finds out that he is illegitimate it will break his heart. He is proud – horribly proud! There is a girl. Oh! I won’t go into details. But he is coming very soon – and he wants to know all about his father – he wants details. The girl’s parents, naturally, want to know. When he discovers the truth, he will break with her, exile himself, ruin his life. Oh! I know the things you would say. He is young, foolish, wrong-headed to take it like that! All true, perhaps. But does it matter what people ought to be? They are what they are. It will break his heart … But if, before he comes, there has been an accident, everything will be swallowed up in grief for me. He will look through my papers, find nothing, and be annoyed that I told him so little. But he will not suspect the truth. It is the best way. One must pay for happiness, and I have had so much – oh! so much happiness. And in reality the price will be easy, too. A little courage – to take the leap – perhaps a moment or so of anguish.’

‘But, my dear child –’

‘Don’t argue with me.’ She flared round on him. ‘I won’t listen to conventional arguments. My life is my own. Up to now, it has been needed – for John. But he needs it no longer. He wants a mate – a companion – he will turn to her all the more willingly because I am no longer there. My life is useless, but my death will be of use. And I have the right to do what I like with my own life.’

‘Are you sure?’

The sternness of his tone surprised her. She stammered slightly.

‘If it is no good to anyone – and I am the best judge of that –’

He interrupted her again. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Listen. I will put a case to you. A man comes to a certain place – to commit suicide, shall we say? But by chance he finds another man there, so he fails in his purpose and goes away – to live. The second man has saved the first man’s life, not by being necessary to him or prominent in his life, but just by the mere physical fact of having been in a certain place at a certain moment. You take your life today and perhaps, some five, six, seven years hence, someone will go to death or disaster simply for lack of your presence in a given spot or place. It may be a runaway horse coming down a street that swerved aside at sight of you and so fails to trample a child that is playing in the gutter. That child may live to grow up and be a great musician, or discover a cure for cancer. Or it may be less melodramatic than that. He may just grow up to ordinary everyday happiness …’

She stared at him.

‘You are a strange man. These things you say – I have never thought of them …’

‘You say your life is your own,’ went on Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play – it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.’

She sat down, still staring.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said simply.

It was Mr Satterthwaite’s moment of triumph. He issued orders.

‘I want you at least to promise me one thing – to do nothing rash for twenty-four hours.’

She was silent for a moment or two and then she said: ‘I promise.’

‘There is one other thing – a favour.’

‘Yes?’

‘Leave the shutter of the room I came in by unfastened, and keep vigil there tonight.’

She looked at him curiously, but nodded assent.

‘And now,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, slightly conscious of anticlimax, ‘I really must be going. God bless you, my dear.’

He made a rather embarrassed exit. The stalwart Spanish girl met him in the passage and opened a side door for him, staring curiously at him the while.

It was just growing dark as he reached the hotel. There was a solitary figure sitting on the terrace. Mr Satterthwaite made straight for it. He was excited and his heart was beating quite fast. He felt that tremendous issues lay in his hands. One false move –

But he tried to conceal his agitation and to speak naturally and casually to Anthony Cosden.

‘A warm evening,’ he observed. ‘I quite lost count of time sitting up there on the cliff.’

‘Have you been up there all this time?’

Mr Satterthwaite nodded. The swing door into the hotel opened to let someone through, and a beam of light fell suddenly on the other’s face, illuminating its look of dull suffering, of uncomprehending dumb endurance.

Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘It’s worse for him than it would be for me. Imagination, conjecture, speculation – they can do a lot for you. You can, as it were, ring the changes upon pain. The uncomprehending blind suffering of an animal – that’s terrible …’

Cosden spoke suddenly in a harsh voice.

‘I’m going for a stroll after dinner. You – you understand? The third time’s lucky. For God’s sake don’t interfere. I know your interference will be well-meaning and all that – but take it from me, it’s useless.’

Mr Satterthwaite drew himself up.

‘I never interfere,’ he said, thereby giving the lie to the whole purpose and object of his existence.

‘I know what you think –’ went on Cosden, but he was interrupted.

‘You must excuse me, but there I beg to differ from you,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.’

‘Well, perhaps that’s so.’ Cosden was doubtful, slightly taken aback.

‘Thought is yours only,’ said his companion. ‘Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it. Let us talk of a less painful subject. That old villa, for instance. It has a curious charm, withdrawn, sheltered from the world, shielding heaven knows what mystery. It tempted me to do a doubtful action. I tried one of the shutters.’

‘You did?’ Cosden turned his head sharply. ‘But it was fastened, of course?’

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It was open.’ He added gently: ‘The third shutter from the end.’

‘Why,’ Cosden burst out, ‘that was the one –’

He broke off suddenly, but Mr Satterthwaite had seen the light that had sprung up in his eyes. He rose – satisfied.

Some slight tinge of anxiety still remained with him. Using his favourite metaphor of a drama, he hoped that he had spoken his few lines correctly. For they were very important lines.

But thinking it over, his artistic judgment was satisfied. On his way up to the cliff, Cosden would try that shutter. It was not in human nature to resist. A memory of twenty odd years ago had brought him to this spot, the same memory would take him to the shutter. And afterwards?

‘I shall know in the morning,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and proceeded to change methodically for his evening meal.

It was somewhere round ten o’clock that Mr Satterthwaite set foot once more in the garden of La Paz. Manuel bade him a smiling ‘Good morning,’ and handed him a single rosebud which Mr Satterthwaite put carefully into his buttonhole. Then he went on to the house. He stood there for some minutes looking up at the peaceful white walls, the trailing orange creeper, and the faded green shutters. So silent, so peaceful. Had the whole thing been a dream?

But at that moment one of the windows opened and the lady who occupied Mr Satterthwaite’s thoughts came out. She came straight to him with a buoyant swaying walk, like someone carried on a great wave of exultation. Her eyes were shining, her colour high. She looked like a figure of joy on a frieze. There was no hesitation about her, no doubts or tremors. Straight to Mr Satterthwaite she came, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him – not once but many times. Large, dark, red roses, very velvety – that is how he thought of it afterwards. Sunshine, summer, birds singing – that was the atmosphere into which he felt himself caught up. Warmth, joy and tremendous vigour.

‘I’m so happy,’ she said. ‘You darling! How did you know? How could you know? You’re like the good magician in the fairy tales.’

She paused, a sort of breathlessness of happiness upon her.

‘We’re going over today – to the Consul – to get married. When John comes, his father will be there. We’ll tell him there was some misunderstanding in the past. Oh! he won’t ask questions. Oh! I’m so happy – so happy – so happy.’

Happiness did indeed surge from her like a tide. It lapped round Mr Satterthwaite in a warm exhilarating flood.

‘It’s so wonderful to Anthony to find he has a son. I never dreamt he’d mind or care.’ She looked confidently into Mr Satterthwaite’s eyes. ‘Isn’t it strange how things come right and end all beautifully?’

He had his clearest vision of her yet. A child – still a child – with her love of make believe – her fairy tales that ended beautifully with two people ‘living happily ever afterwards’.

He said gently:

‘If you bring this man of yours happiness in these last months, you will indeed have done a very beautiful thing.’

Her eyes opened wide – surprised.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You don’t think I’d let him die, do you? After all these years – when he’s come to me. I’ve known lots of people whom doctors have given up and who are alive today. Die? Of course he’s not going to die!’

He looked at her – her strength, her beauty, her vitality – her indomitable courage and will. He, too, had known doctors to be mistaken … The personal factor – you never knew how much and how little it counted.

She said again, with scorn and amusement in her voice:

‘You don’t think I’d let him die, do you?’

‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite at last very gently. ‘Somehow, my dear, I don’t think you will …’

Then at last he walked down the cypress path to the bench overlooking the sea and found there the person he was expecting to see. Mr Quin rose and greeted him – the same as ever, dark, saturnine, smiling and sad.

‘You expected me?’ he asked.

And Mr Satterthwaite answered: ‘Yes, I expected you.’

They sat together on the bench.

‘I have an idea that you have been playing Providence once more, to judge by your expression,’ said Mr Quin presently.

Mr Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully.

‘As if you didn’t know all about it.’

‘You always accuse me of omniscience,’ said Mr Quin, smiling.

‘If you know nothing, why were you here the night before last – waiting?’ countered Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Oh, that –?’

‘Yes, that.’

‘I had a – commission to perform.’

‘For whom?’

‘You have sometimes fancifully named me an advocate for the dead.’

‘The dead?’ said Mr Satterthwaite, a little puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

Mr Quin pointed a long, lean finger down at the blue depths below.

‘A man was drowned down there twenty-two years ago.’

‘I know – but I don’t see –’

‘Supposing that, after all, that man loved his young wife. Love can make devils of men as well as angels. She had a girlish adoration for him, but he could never touch the womanhood in her – and that drove him mad. He tortured her because he loved her. Such things happen. You know that as well as I do.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Mr Satterthwaite, ‘I have seen such things – but rarely – very rarely …’

‘And you have also seen, more commonly, that there is such a thing as remorse – the desire to make amends – at all costs to make amends.’

‘Yes, but death came too soon …’

‘Death!’ There was contempt in Mr Quin’s voice. ‘You believe in a life after death, do you not? And who are you to say that the same wishes, the same desires, may not operate in that other life? If the desire is strong enough – a messenger may be found.’

His voice tailed away.

Mr Satterthwaite got up, trembling a little.

‘I must get back to the hotel,’ he said. ‘If you are going that way.’

But Mr Quin shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I shall go back the way I came.’

When Mr Satterthwaite looked back over his shoulder, he saw his friend walking towards the edge of the cliff.