Agatha Christie (3 page)

‘The valet,' cried Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That girl just now – I wasn't paying any attention at the time.' He paused, striving for coherence. ‘She was afraid of our suspecting him. There must be some motive that he had and which we don't know, but she does.'

Colonel Melrose frowned, then he rang the bell. When it was answered, he said, ‘Please ask Lady Dwighton if she will be good enough to come down again.'

They waited in silence until she came. At sight of Delangua she started and stretched out a hand to save herself from falling. Colonel Melrose came quickly to the rescue.

‘It's quite all right, Lady Dwighton. Please don't be alarmed.'

‘I don't understand. What is Mr Delangua doing here?'

Delangua came over to her, ‘Laura – Laura – why did you do it?'

‘Do it?'

‘I know. It was for me – because you thought that – After all, it was natural, I suppose. But, oh! You angel!'

Colonel Melrose cleared his throat. He was a man who disliked emotion and had a horror of anything approaching a ‘scene'.

‘If you'll allow me to say so, Lady Dwighton, both you and Mr Delangua have had a lucky escape. He had just arrived in his turn to “confess” to the murder – oh, it's quite all right, he didn't do it! But what we want to know is the truth. No more shillyshallying. The butler says you went into the library at half past six – is that so?'

Laura looked at Delangua. He nodded.

‘The truth, Laura,' he said. ‘That is what we want now.'

She breathed a deep sigh. ‘I will tell you.'

She sank down on a chair that Mr Satterthwaite had hurriedly pushed forward.

‘I did come down. I opened the library door and I saw –'

She stopped and swallowed. Mr Satterthwaite leaned forward and patted her hand encouragingly.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes. You saw?'

‘My husband was lying across the writing table. I saw his head – the blood – oh!'

She put her hands to her face. The chief constable leaned forward.

‘Excuse me, Lady Dwighton. You thought Mr Delangua had shot him?'

She nodded. ‘Forgive me, Paul,' she pleaded. ‘But you said – you said –'

‘That I'd shoot him like a dog,' said Delangua grimly. ‘I remember. That was the day I discovered he'd been ill-treating you.'

The chief constable kept sternly to the matter in hand.

‘Then I am to understand, Lady Dwighton, that you went upstairs again and – er – said nothing. We needn't go into your reason. You didn't touch the body or go near the writing table?'

She shuddered.

‘No, no. I ran straight out of the room.'

‘I see, I see. And what time was this exactly? Do you know?'

‘It was just half past six when I got back to my bedroom.'

‘Then at – say five-and-twenty past six, Sir James was already dead.' The chief constable looked at the others. ‘That clock – it was faked, eh? We suspected that all along. Nothing easier than to move the hands to whatever time you wished, but they made a mistake to lay it down on its side like that. Well, that seems to narrow it down to the butler or the valet, and I can't believe it's the butler. Tell me, Lady Dwighton, did this man Jennings have any grudge against your husband?'

Laura lifted her face from her hands. ‘Not exactly a grudge, but – well, James told me only this morning that he'd dismissed him. He'd found him pilfering.'

‘Ah! Now we're getting at it. Jennings would have been dismissed without a character. A serious matter for him.'

‘You said something about a clock,' said Laura Dwighton. ‘There's just a chance – if you want to fix the time – James would have been sure to have his little golf watch on him. Mightn't that have been smashed, too, when he fell forward?'

‘It's an idea,' said the colonel slowly. ‘But I'm afraid – Curtis!'

The inspector nodded in quick comprehension and left the room. He returned a minute later. On the palm of his hand was a silver watch marked like a golf ball, the kind that are sold for golfers to carry loose in a pocket with balls.

‘Here it is, sir,' he said, ‘but I doubt if it will be any good. They're tough, these watches.'

The colonel took it from him and held it to his ear.

‘It seems to have stopped, anyway,' he observed.

He pressed with his thumb, and the lid of the watch flew open. Inside the glass was cracked across.

‘Ah!' he said exultantly.

The hand pointed to exactly a quarter past six.

‘A very good glass of port, Colonel Melrose,' said Mr Quin.

It was half past nine, and the three men had just finished a belated dinner at Colonel Melrose's house. Mr Satterthwaite was particularly jubilant.

‘I was quite right,' he chuckled. ‘You can't deny it, Mr Quin. You turned up tonight to save two absurd young people who were both bent on putting their heads into a noose.'

‘Did I?' said Mr Quin. ‘Surely not. I did nothing at all.'

‘As it turned out, it was not necessary,' agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But it might have been. It was touch and go, you know. I shall never forget the moment when Lady Dwighton said, “I killed him.” I've never seen anything on the stage half as dramatic.'

‘I'm inclined to agree with you,' said Mr Quin.

‘Wouldn't have believed such a thing could happen outside a novel,' declared the colonel, for perhaps the twentieth time that night.

‘Does it?' asked Mr Quin.

The colonel stared at him, ‘Damn it, it happened tonight.'

‘Mind you,' interposed Mr Satterthwaite, leaning back and sipping his port, ‘Lady Dwighton was magnificent, quite magnificent, but she made one mistake. She shouldn't have leaped to the conclusion that her husband had been shot. In the same way Delangua was a fool to assume that he had been stabbed just because the dagger happened to be lying on the table in front of us. It was a mere coincidence that Lady Dwighton should have brought it down with her.'

‘Was it?' asked Mr Quin.

‘Now if they'd only confined themselves to saying that they'd killed Sir James, without particularizing how –' went on Mr Satterthwaite – ‘what would have been the result?'

‘They might have been believed,' said Mr Quin with an odd smile.

‘The whole thing was exactly like a novel,' said the colonel.

‘That's where they got the idea from, I daresay,' said Mr Quin.

‘Possibly,' agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Things one has read do come back to one in the oddest way.' He looked across at Mr Quin. ‘Of course,' he said, ‘the clock really looked suspicious from the first. One ought never to forget how easy it is to put the hands of a clock or watch forward or back.'

Mr Quin nodded and repeated the words. ‘Forward,' he said, and paused. ‘Or back.'

There was something encouraging in his voice. His bright, dark eyes were fixed on Mr Satterthwaite.

‘The hands of the clock were put forward,' said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘We know that.'

‘Were they?' asked Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite stared at him. ‘Do you mean,' he said slowly, ‘that it was the watch which was put back? But that doesn't make sense. It's impossible.'

‘Not impossible,' murmured Mr Quin.

‘Well – absurd. To whose advantage could that be?'

‘Only, I suppose, to someone who had an
alibi
for that time.'

‘By gad!' cried the colonel. ‘That's the time young Delangua said he was talking to the keeper.'

‘He told us that very particularly,' said Mr Satterthwaite.

They looked at each other. They had an uneasy feeling as of solid ground failing beneath their feet. Facts went spinning round, turning new and unexpected faces. And in the centre of the kaleidoscope was the dark, smiling face of Mr Quin.

‘But in that case –' began Melrose ‘– in that case –'

Mr Satterthwaite, nimble-witted, finished his sentence for him. ‘It's all the other way round. A plant just the same – but a plant against the valet. Oh, but it can't be! It's impossible. Why each of them accused themselves of the crime.'

‘Yes,' said Mr Quin. ‘Up till then you suspected them, didn't you?' His voice went on, placid and dreamy. ‘Just like something out of a book, you said, colonel. They got the idea there. It's what the innocent hero and heroine do. Of course it made you think them innocent – there was the force of tradition behind them. Mr Satterthwaite has been saying all along it was like something on the stage. You were both right. It wasn't real. You've been saying so all along without knowing what you were saying. They'd have told a much better story than that if they'd wanted to be believed.'

The two men looked at him helplessly.

‘It would be clever,' said Mr Satterthwaite slowly. ‘It would be diabolically clever. And I've thought of something else. The butler said he went in at seven to shut the windows – so he must have expected them to be open.'

‘That's the way Delangua came in,' said Mr Quin. ‘He killed Sir James with one blow, and he and she together did what they had to do –'

He looked at Mr Satterthwaite, encouraging him to reconstruct the scene. He did so, hesitatingly.

‘They smashed the clock and put it on its side. Yes. They altered the watch and smashed it. Then he went out of the window, and she fastened it after him. But there's one thing I don't see. Why bother with the watch at all? Why not simply put back the hands of the clock?'

‘The clock was always a little obvious,' said Mr Quin.

‘Anyone might have seen through a rather transparent device like that.'

‘But surely the watch was too far-fetched. Why, it was pure chance that we ever thought of the watch.'

‘Oh, no,' said Mr Quin. ‘It was the lady's suggestion, remember.'

Mr Satterthwaite stared at him, fascinated.

‘And yet, you know,' said Mr Quin dreamily, ‘the one person who wouldn't be likely to overlook the watch would be the valet. Valets know better than anyone what their masters carry in their pockets. If he altered the clock, the valet would have altered the watch, too. They don't understand human nature, those two. They are not like Mr Satterthwaite.'

Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.

‘I was all wrong,' he murmured humbly. ‘I thought that you had come to save them.'

‘So I did,' said Mr Quin. ‘Oh! Not those two – the others. Perhaps you didn't notice the lady's maid? She wasn't wearing blue brocade, or acting a dramatic part. But she's really a very pretty girl, and I think she loves that man Jennings very much. I think that between you you'll be able to save her man from getting hanged.'

‘We've no proof of any kind,' said Colonel Melrose heavily.

Mr Quin smiled. ‘Mr Satterthwaite has.'

‘I?' Mr Satterthwaite was astonished.

Mr Quin went on. ‘You've got a proof that that watch wasn't smashed in Sir James's pocket. You can't smash a watch like that without opening the case. Just try it and see. Someone took the watch out and opened it, set back the hands, smashed the glass, and then shut it and put it back. They never noticed that a fragment of glass was missing.'

‘Oh!' cried Mr Satterthwaite. His hand flew to his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a fragment of curved glass.

It was his moment.

‘With this,' said Mr Satterthwaite importantly, ‘I shall save a man from death.'