Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Mr. Quin

She waved a hand to welcome him.

"John and Anna have just gone back," she cried. "They thought you must have come, but they simply had to be at the rehearsal."

"Rehearsal of what?" inquired Mr. Satterthwaite.

"This masquerade thing―I don't quite know what you'll call it. There is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr. Manly, do you remember him down here? He had quite a good tenor voice, is to be pierrot, and I am pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for the dancing―Harlequin and Columbine, you know. And then there is a big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village girls to sing. She's really getting the thing up for that. The music is rather lovely―but very modern―next to no tune anywhere. Claude Wickam. Perhaps you know him?"

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his manner to know everybody. He knew all about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer who was a fat Jewess with a penchant for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir Leopold Roscheimer who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.

They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.

John Denman, upright, slightly florid, with the faintest possible tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the appearance of Mr. Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks to him. Anne Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless as usual.

Mr. Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over high cheek bones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weatherbeaten. An out of door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless―and yet...

He thought― "There should be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn't That's what's all wrong. Yes, all wrong." And to Claude Wickam he said―"I beg your pardon? You were saying?"

Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. "Russia," he said, "that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. Magnificent!" He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate eclair he was waving about in the other. "Take," he said (with his mouth full),"the Russian Ballet." Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did she think of the Russian Ballet?

The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point―what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet, but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride. "I have never seen It." "What?" He gazed at her open-mouthed, "But― surely―――"

Her voice went on, level and emotionless.

"Before my marriage, I was a dancer So now―――"

"A busman's holiday," said her husband. "Dancing." She shrugged her shoulders." I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me."

"Oh!"

It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb. His voice went on.

"Talking of lives," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "and experimenting in them. The Russian nation made one costly experiment."

Claude Wickam swung round on him. "I know what you are going to say," he cried. "Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?"

"Three times," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall―not forget it."

He spoke in an almost reverent voice.

"I saw her, too," said Claude Wickam. "I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it."

He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.

"There is a statuette of her in a Museum in Berlin," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is marvellous. That impression of fragility―as though you could break her with a flip of the thumb nail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph." He paused, shaking his head. "There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution."

"Fools! Madmen! Apes!" said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.

"I studied with Kharsanova," said Mrs. Denman. "I remember her well."

"She was wonderful?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Yes," said Mrs. Denman quietly. "She was wonderful."

Claude Wickam departed and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief at which his wife laughed.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. "I know what you think. But in spite of everything, the music that that boy writes is music."

"I suppose It is," said Denman.

"Oh, undoubtedly. How long it will be―well, that is different."

John Denman looked at him curiously.

"You mean?"

"I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous." he looked across at Mr. Quin. "You agree with me?"

"You are always right," said Mr. Quin.

"We will come upstairs to my room," said Mrs. Denman. "It is pleasant there."

She led the way, and they followed her. Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath as he caught sight of the Chinese screen. He looked up to find Mrs. Denman watching him.

"You are the man who is always right," she said, nodding her head slowly at him. "What do you make of my screen?"

He felt that in some way the words were a challenge to him, and he answered almost haltingly, stumbling over the words a little.

"Why, it's―it's beautiful. More, it's unique." "You're right." Denman had come up behind him. "We bought it early in our married life. Got it for about a tenth of its value, but even then―well, it crippled us for over a year. You remember, Anna?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Denman, "I remember." "In fact, we'd no business to buy it at all―not then. Now, of course, it's different. There was some very good lacquer going at Christie's the other day. Just what we need to make this room perfect. All Chinese together. Clear out the other stuff. Would you believe it, Satterthwaite, my wife wouldn't hear of it?"

"I like this room as it is," said Mrs. Denman. There was a curious look on her face. Again Mr. Satterthwaite felt challenged and defeated. He looked round him, and for the first time he noticed the absence of all personal touch. There were no photographs, no flowers, no knick-knacks. It was not like a woman's room at all. Save for that one incongruous factor of the Chinese screen, it might have been a sample room shown at some big furnishing house.

He found her smiling at him.

"Listen," she said. She bent forward, and for a moment she seemed less English, more definitely foreign. "I speak to you for you will understand. We bought that screen with more than money―with love. For love of it, because it was beautiful and unique, we went without other things, things we needed and missed. These other Chinese pieces my husband speaks of, those we should buy with money only, we should not pay away anything of ourselves."

Her husband laughed.

"Oh, have it your own way," he said, but with a trace of irritation in his voice. "But it's all wrong against this English background. This other stuff, it's good enough of its kind, genuine solid, no fake about it―but mediocre. Good plain late Hepplewhite."

She nodded.

"Good, solid, genuine English," she murmured softly.

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her. He caught a meaning behind these words. The English room―the flaming beauty of the Chinese screen... No, it was gone again.

"I met Miss Stanwell in the lane," he said conversationally. "She tells me she is going to be pierrette in this show Tonight."