Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Mr. Quin

Mr. Satterthwaite coughed, fidgeted a little In his chair and then said in a judicial manner―

"Let me be quite sure that I have all the facts. The first

of the―er―phenomena occurred two months ago, I understand?"

"About that," agreed the girl. "Sometimes It was a whisper and sometimes it was quite a clear voice but it always said much the same thing." "Which was?"

"Give back what is not yours. Give back what you have stolen. On each occasion I switched on the light, but the room was quite empty and there was no one there. In the end I got so nervous that I got Clayton, mother's maid, to sleep on the sofa in my room."

"And the voice came just the same?"

"Yes―and this is what frightens me―Clayton did not hear it."

Mr. Satterthwaite reflected for a minute or two. "Did it come loudly or softly that evening?" "It was almost a whisper," admitted Margery. "If Clayton was sound asleep I suppose she would not really have heard it. She wanted me to see a doctor. "The girl laughed bitterly.

"But since last night even Clayton believes," she continued.

"What happened last night?"

"I am just going to tell you. I have told no one as yet. I had been out hunting yesterday and we had had a long run. I was dead tired, and slept very heavily. I dreamt―a horrible dream―that I had fallen over some iron railings and that one of the spikes was entering slowly into my throat. I woke to find that it was true―there was some sharp point pressing into the side of my neck, and at the same time a voice was murmuring softly―"Yon have stolen what is mine. This is death!

"I screamed," continued Margery, "and clutched at the air, but there was nothing there. Clayton heard me scream from the room next door where she was sleeping. She came rushing in, and she distinctly felt something brushing past her in the darkness, but she says that whatever that something was, it was not anything human."

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her. The girl was obviously very shaken and upset. He noticed on the left side of her throat a small square of sticking plaster. She caught the direction of his gaze and nodded.

"Yes," she said, "it was not imagination, you see."

Mr. Satterthwaite put a question almost apologetically, it sounded so melodramatic.

"You don't know of anyone―-er―who has a grudge against you?" he asked.

"Of course not," said Margery. "What an idea!"

Mr. Satterthwaite started on another line of attack.

"What visitors have you had during the last two months?"

"You don't mean just people for week-ends, I suppose? Marcia Keane has 'been with me all along. She is my best friend, and just as keen on horses as I am. Then my cousin Roley Vavasour has been here a good deal."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. He suggested that he should see Clayton, the maid.

"She has been with you a long time, I suppose?" he asked.

"Donkey's years," said Margery." She was Mother's and Aunt Beatrice's maid when they were girls. That is why Mother has kept her on, I suppose, although she has got a French maid for herself. Clayton does sewing and pottering little odd jobs."

She took him upstairs and presently Clayton came to them. She was a tall, thin, old woman, with grey hair neatly parted, and she looked the acme of respectability.

"No, sir," she said in answer to Mr. Satterthwaite's inquiries. "I have never heard anything of the house being haunted. To tell you the truth, sir, I thought it was all Miss Margery's imagination until last night. But I actually felt something―brushing by me in the darkness. And I can tell you this, sir, it was not anything human. And then there is that wound in Miss Margery's neck. She didn't do that herself, poor lamb."

But her words were suggestive to Mr. Satterthwaite. Was it possible that Margery could have inflicted that wound herself? He had heard of strange cases where girls apparently just as sane and well-balanced as Margery had done the most amazing things.

"It will soon heal up," said Clayton. "It's not like this scar of mine."

She pointed to a mark on her own forehead.

"That was done forty years ago, sir― I still bear the mark of it."

"It was the time the Uralia went down," put in Margery. "Clayton was hit on the head by a spar, weren't you, Clayton?"

"Yes, Miss."

"What do you think yourself, Clayton," asked Mr. Satterthwaite, "what do you think was the meaning of this attack on Miss Margery?"

"I really should not like to say, sir." Mr. Satterthwaite read this correctly as the reserve of the well-trained servant.

"What do you really think, Clayton?" he said persuasively. "I think, sir, that something very wicked must have been done in this house, and that until that is wiped out there won't be any peace."

The woman spoke gravely, and her faded blue eyes met his steadily.

Mr. Satterthwaite went downstairs rather disappointed. Clayton evidently held the orthodox view, a deliberate "haunting" as a consequence of some evil deed in the past. Mr., Satterthwaite himself was not so easily satisfied. The phenomena had only taken place in the last two months. Had only taken place since Marcia Keane and Roley Vavasour had been there. He must find out something about these two. It was possible that the whole thing was a practical joke. But he shook his head, dissatisfied with that solution. The thing was more sinister than that. The post had just come in and Margery was opening and reading her letters. Suddenly she gave an exclamation.

"Mother is too absurd," she said. "Do read this." She handed the letter to Mr. Satterthwaite.

It was an epistle typical of Lady Stranleigh.

"DARLING MARGERY (she wrote),

"I am so glad you have that nice little Mr. Satterthwaite there. He is awfully clever and knows all the big-wig spook people. You must have them all down and investigate things thoroughly. I am sure you will have a perfectly marvellous time, and I only wish I could be there, but I have really been quite ill the last few days. The hotels are so careless about the

"Sweet of you to send me the chocolates, darling, but surely just a Well bit silly, wasn't it? I mean, there's such wonderful confectionery out here.

"Bye-bye, darling, and have a lovely time laying the family ghosts. Bimbo says my tennis is coming on marvellously. Oceans of love.

"Yours,

BARBARA."

"Mother always wants me to call her Barbara," said Margery. "Simply silly, I think."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled a little. He realised that the stolid conservatism of her daughter must on occasions be very trying to Lady Stranleigh. The contents of her letter struck him in a way in which obviously they did not strike Margery.

"Did you send your mother a box of chocolates?" he asked.

Margery shook her head. "No, I didn't, It must have been someone else."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked grave. Two things struck him as of significance. Lady Stranleigh had received a gift of a box of chocolates and she was suffering from a severe attack of poisoning. Apparently she had not connected these two things. Was there a connection? He himself was inclined to think there was.

A tall dark girl lounged out of the morning-room and joined them.

She was introduced to Mr. Satterthwaite as Marcia Keane. She smiled on the little man in an easy good-humoured fashion.

"Have you come down to hunt Margery's pet ghost?" she asked in a drawling voice. "We all rot her about that ghost. Hello, here's Roley."

A car had just drawn up at the front door. Out of it tumbled a tall young man with fair hair and an eager boyish manner.

"Hello, Margery," he cried, "hello, Marcia! I have brought down reinforcements." He turned to the two women who were just entering the hall. Mr. Satterthwaite recognised in the first one of the two the Mrs. Casson of whom Margery had spoken just now.