Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Mr. Quin

At dejeuner the Duchess was in great spirits. "This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite," she said. "Get you out of all those dusty little old-maidish ways of yours." She swept a lorgnette round the room. "Upon my word, there's Naomi Carlton Smith."

She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window. A round-shouldered girl, who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.

"An artist?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was always good at placing people.

"Quite right," said the Duchess. "Calls herself one anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin."

"She's one of the Knowlton lot then?"

The Duchess nodded.

"Been her own worst enemy," she volunteered. "Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took 'em, of course. Then he stole somebody's jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter."

"Last winter I was in Egypt," he explained Mr. Satterthwaite. "I had flu very badly the end of January, and the doctors insisted on Egypt afterwards. I missed a lot."

His voice rang with a note of real regret.

"That girl seems to me to be moping," said the Duchess, raising her lorgnette once more. "I can't allow that."

On her way out, she stopped by Miss Carlton Smith's table and tapped the girl on the shoulder.

"Well, Naomi, you don't seem to remember me?"

Naomi rose rather unwillingly to her feet.

"Yes, I do, Duchess. I saw you come in. I thought it was quite likely you mightn't recognise me."

She drawled the words lazily, with a complete indifference of manner.

"When you've finished your lunch, come and talk to me on the terrace," ordered the Duchess. "Very well." Naomi yawned.

"Shocking manners," said the Duchess, to Mr. Satterthwaite, as she resumed her progress. "All the Carlton Smiths have."

They had their coffee outside in the sunshine. They had been there about six minutes when Naomi Carlton Smith lounged out from the hotel and joined them. She let herself fall slackly on to a chair with her legs stretched out ungracefully in front of her.

An odd face, with its jutting chin and deep-set grey eyes. A clever, unhappy face―a face that only just missed being beautiful.

"Well, Naomi," said the Duchess briskly. "And what are you doing with yourself?"

"Oh, I dunno. Just marking time."

"Been painting?"

"A bit."

"Show me your things."

Naomi grinned. She was not cowed by the autocrat. She was amused. She went into the hotel and came out again with a portfolio.

"You won't like 'em, Duchess," she said warningly. "Say what you like. You won't hurt my feelings."

Mr. Satterthwaite moved his chair a little nearer. He was interested. In another minute he was more interested still The Duchess was frankly unsympathetic.

"I can't even see which way the things ought to be," she complained. "Good gracious, child, there was never a sky that colour―or a sea either."

"That's the way I see 'em," said Naomi placidly. "Ugh!" said the Duchess, inspecting another. "This gives me the creeps."

"It's meant to," said Naomi. "You're paying me a compliment without knowing it."

It was a queer vorticist study of a prickly pear―just recognisable as such. Grey-green with slodges of violent colour where the fruit glittered like jewels. A swirling mass of evil, fleshy―festering. Mr. Satterthwaite shuddered and turned his head aside.

He found Naomi looking at him and nodding her head in comprehension.

"I know," she said. "But it if beastly."

The Duchess cleared her throat.

"It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays, "she observed witheringly. "There's no attempt to copy things. You just shovel on some paint―I don't know what with, not a brush, I'm sure―――"

"Palette knife," interposed Naomi, smiling broadly once more.

"A good deal at a time," continued the Duchess. "In lumps. And there you are! Everyone says―" How clever. "Well, I've no patience with that sort of thing. Give me a nice picture of a dog or a horse, by Edwin Landseer."

"And why not?" demanded the Duchess. "What's wrong with Landseer?"

"Nothing," said Naomi. "He's all right. And you're all right. The tops of things are always nice and shiny and smooth. I respect you, Duchess, you've got force. You've met life fair and square and you've come out on top. But the people who are underneath see the under side of things. And that's interesting in a way."

The Duchess stared at her.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she declared.

Mr., Satterthwaite was still examining the sketches. He realised, as the Duchess could not, the perfection of technique behind them. He was startled and delighted. He looked up at the girl.

"Will you sell me one of these, Miss Carlton Smith?" he asked.

"You can have any one you like for five guineas," said the girl indifferently.

Mr. Satterthwaite hesitated a minute or two and then he selected a study of prickly pear and aloe. In the foreground was a vivid blur of yellow mimosa, the scarlet of the aloe flower danced in and out of the picture, and inexorable, mathematically underlying the whole, was the oblong pattern of the prickly pear and the sword motif of the aloe.

He made a little bow to the girl.

"I am very happy to have secured this, and I think I have made a bargain. Some day Miss Carlton Smith, I shall be able to sell this sketch at a very good profit―if I want to!"

The girl leant forward to see which one he had taken. He saw a new look come into her eyes. For the first time she was really aware of his existence, and there was respect in the quick glance she gave him.

"You have chosen the best," she said. "I―I am glad."

"Well, I suppose you know what you're doing," said the Duchess. "And I daresay you're right. I've heard that you are quite a connoisseur. But you can't tell me that all this new stuff is art, because it isn't. Still, we needn't go into that. Now I'm only going to be here a few days and I want to see something of the island. You've got a car, I suppose, Naomi?"

The girl nodded.

"Excellent," said the Duchess. "We'll make a trip somewhere tomorrow."

"It's only a two-seater."

"Nonsense, there's a dickey, I suppose, that will do for Mr. Satterthwaite?"

A shuddering sigh went through Mr. Satterthwaite. He had observed the Corsican roads that morning. Naomi was regarding him thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid my car would be no good to you," she said. "It's a terribly battered old bus. I bought it second-hand for a mere song. It will just get me up the hills―with coaxing.

But I can't take passengers. There's quite a good garage, though, in the town. You can hire a car there."

" ire a car?" said the Duchess, scandalised. "What an idea. Who's that nice-looking man, rather yellow, who drove up in a four-seater just before lunch?"

"I expect you mean Mr. Tomlinson. He's a retired Indian judge."

"That accounts for the yellowness," said the Duchess." I was afraid it might be jaundice. He seems quite a decent sort of man. I shall talk to him."

That evening, on coming down to dinner, Mr. Satterthwaite found the Duchess resplendent in black velvet and diamonds, talking earnestly to the owner of the four-seater car. She beckoned authoritatively.

"Come here, Mr. Satterthwaite, Mr. Tomlinson is telling me the most interesting things, and what do you think? He is actually going to take us an expedition tomorrow in his car."