Agatha Christie - The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite

Mr Quin listened attentively.

‘The train service is bad, I have heard,’ he remarked.

‘Oh! I don’t know about that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, warming to his subject. ‘I was down there for a bit last summer. I found it quite convenient for town. Of course the trains only go every hour. Forty-eight minutes past the hour from Waterloo – up to 10.48.’

‘And how long does it take to Deering Vale?’

‘Just about three-quarters of an hour. Twenty-eight minutes past the hour at Deering Vale.’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Quin with a gesture of vexation. ‘I should have remembered. Miss Dale saw someone off by the 6.28 that evening, didn’t she?’

Mr Satterthwaite did not reply for a minute or two. His mind had gone back with a rush to his unsolved problem. Presently he said:

‘I wish you would tell me what you meant just now when you asked me if I was sure I had not got what I wanted?’

It sounded rather complicated, put that way, but Mr Quin made no pretence of not understanding.

‘I just wondered if you weren’t being a little too exacting. After all, you found out that Louisa Bullard was deliberately got out of the country. That being so, there must be a reason. And the reason must lie in what she said to you.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Satterthwaite argumentatively. ‘What did she say? If she’d given evidence at the trial, what could she have said?’

‘She might have told what she saw,’ said Mr Quin.

‘What did she see?’

‘A sign in the sky.’

Mr Satterthwaite stared at him.

‘Are you thinking of that nonsense? That superstitious notion of its being the hand of God?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Quin, ‘for all you and I know it may have been the hand of God, you know.’

The other was clearly puzzled at the gravity of his manner.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘She said herself it was the smoke of the train.’

‘An up train or a down train, I wonder?’ murmured Mr Quin.

‘Hardly an up train. They go at ten minutes to the hour. It must have been a down train – the 6.28 – no, that won’t do. She said the shot came immediately afterwards, and we know the shot was fired at twenty minutes past six. The train couldn’t have been ten minutes early.’

‘Hardly, on that line,’ agreed Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite was staring ahead of him.

‘Perhaps a goods train,’ he murmured. ‘But surely, if so –’

‘There would have been no need to get her out of England. I agree,’ said Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite gazed at him, fascinated.

‘The 6.28,’ he said slowly. ‘But if so, if the shot was fired then, why did everyone say it was earlier?’

‘Obvious,’ said Mr Quin. ‘The clocks must have been wrong.’

‘All of them?’ said Mr Satterthwaite doubtfully. ‘That’s a pretty tall coincidence, you know.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of it as a coincidence,’ said the other. ‘I was thinking it was Friday.’

‘Friday?’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘You did tell me, you know, that Sir George always wound the clocks on a Friday afternoon,’ said Mr Quin apologetically.

‘He put them back ten minutes,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, almost in a whisper, so awed was he by the discoveries he was making. ‘Then he went out to bridge. I think he must have opened the note from his wife to Martin Wylde that morning – yes, decidedly he opened it. He left his bridge party at 6.30, found Martin’s gun standing by the side door, and went in and shot her from behind. Then he went out again, threw the gun into the bushes where it was found later, and was apparently just coming out of the neighbour’s gate when someone came running to fetch him. But the telephone – what about the telephone? Ah! yes, I see. He disconnected it so that a summons could not be sent to the police that way – they might have noted the time it was received. And Wylde’s story works out now. The real time he left was five and twenty minutes past six. Walking slowly, he would reach home about a quarter to seven. Yes, I see it all. Louisa was the only danger with her endless talk about her superstitious fancies. Someone might realize the significance of the train and then – goodbye to that excellent alibi .’

‘Wonderful,’ commented Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite turned to him, flushed with success.

‘The only thing is – how to proceed now?’

‘I should suggest Sylvia Dale,’ said Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite looked doubtful.

‘I mentioned to you,’ he said, ‘she seemed to me a little – er – stupid.’

‘She has a father and brothers who will take the necessary steps.’

‘That is true,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, relieved.

A very short time afterwards he was sitting with the girl telling her the story. She listened attentively. She put no questions to him but when he had done she rose.

‘I must have a taxi – at once.’

‘My dear child, what are you going to do?’

‘I am going to Sir George Barnaby.’

‘Impossible. Absolutely the wrong procedure. Allow me to –’

He twittered on by her side. But he produced no impression. Sylvia Dale was intent on her own plans. She allowed him to go with her in the taxi, but to all his remonstrances she addressed a deaf ear. She left him in the taxi while she went into Sir George’s city office.

It was half an hour later when she came out. She looked exhausted, her fair beauty drooping like a waterless flower. Mr Satterthwaite received her with concern.

‘I’ve won,’ she murmured, as she leant back with half-closed eyes.

‘What?’ He was startled. ‘What did you do? What did you say?’

She sat up a little.

‘I told him that Louisa Bullard had been to the police with her story. I told him that the police had made inquiries and that he had been seen going into his own grounds and out again a few minutes after half-past six. I told him that the game was up. He – he went to pieces. I told him that there was still time for him to get away, that the police weren’t coming for another hour to arrest him. I told him that if he’d sign a confession that he’d killed Vivien I’d do nothing, but that if he didn’t I’d scream and tell the whole building the truth. He was so panicky that he didn’t know what he was doing. He signed the paper without realizing what he was doing.’

She thrust it into his hands.

‘Take it – take it. You know what to do with it so that they’ll set Martin free.’

‘He actually signed it,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, amazed.

‘He is a little stupid, you know,’ said Sylvia Dale. ‘So am I,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘That’s why I know how stupid people behave. We get rattled, you know, and then we do the wrong thing and are sorry afterwards.’

She shivered and Mr Satterthwaite patted her hand.

‘You need something to pull you together,’ he said. ‘Come, we are close to a very favourite resort of mine – the Arlecchino . Have you ever been there?’

She shook her head.

Mr Satterthwaite stopped the taxi and took the girl into the little restaurant. He made his way to the table in the recess, his heart beating hopefully. But the table was empty.

Sylvia Dale saw the disappointment in his face.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That is, I half expected to see a friend of mine here. It doesn’t matter. Some day, I expect, I shall see him again …’

‘The Soul of the Croupier’ was first published in the USA in Flynn’s Weekly, 13 November 1926, and then as ‘The Magic of Mr Quin No. 2: The Soul of the Croupier’ in Storyteller magazine, January 1927.