A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
A very good stroke of business! That was the burden of them. Nobody, least of all his dead aunt, had known in what perilous straits Charles stood. His activities, carefully concealed from the world, had landed him where the shadow of a prison loomed ahead.
Exposure and ruin had stared him in the face unless he could in a few short months raise a considerable sum of money. Well – that was all right now. Charles smiled to himself. Thanks to – yes, call it a practical joke – nothing criminal about that – he was saved. He was now a very rich man. He had no anxieties on the subject, for Mrs Harter had never made any secret of her intentions.
Chiming in very appositely with these thoughts, Elizabeth put her head round the door and informed him that Mr Hopkinson was here and would like to see him.
About time, too, Charles thought. Repressing a tendency to whistle, he composed his face to one of suitable gravity and repaired to the library. There he greeted the precise old gentleman who had been for over a quarter of a century the late Mrs Harter’s legal adviser.
The lawyer seated himself at Charles’ invitation and with a dry cough entered upon business matters.
‘I did not quite understand your letter to me, Mr Ridgeway. You seemed to be under the impression that the late Mrs Harter’s will was in our keeping?’
Charles stared at him.
‘But surely – I’ve heard my aunt say as much.’
‘Oh! quite so, quite so. It was in our keeping.’
‘Was?’
‘That is what I said. Mrs Harter wrote to us, asking that it might be forwarded to her on Tuesday last.’
An uneasy feeling crept over Charles. He felt a far-off premonition of unpleasantness.
‘Doubtless it will come to light amonst her papers,’ continued the lawyer smoothly.
Charles said nothing. He was afraid to trust his tongue. He had already been through Mrs Harter’s papers pretty thoroughly, well enough to be quite certain that no will was amongst them. In a minute or two, when he had regained control of himself, he said so. His voice sounded unreal to himself, and he had a sensation as of cold water trickling down his back.
‘Has anyone been through her personal effects?’ asked the lawyer.
Charles replied that her own maid, Elizabeth, had done so. At Mr Hopkinson’s suggestion, Elizabeth was sent for. She came promptly, grim and upright, and answered the questions put to her.
She had been through all her mistress’s clothes and personal belongings. She was quite sure that there had been no legal document such as a will amongst them. She knew what the will looked like – her mistress had had it in her hand only the morning of her death.
‘You are sure of that?’ asked the lawyer sharply.
‘Yes, sir. She told me so, and she made me take fifty pounds in notes. The will was in a long blue envelope.’
‘Quite right,’ said Mr Hopkinson.
‘Now I come to think of it,’ continued Elizabeth, ‘that same blue envelope was lying on this table the morning after – but empty. I laid it on the desk.’
‘I remember seeing it there,’ said Charles.
He got up and went over to the desk. In a minute or two he turned round with an envelope in his hand which he handed to Mr Hopkinson. The latter examined it and nodded his head.
‘That is the envelope in which I despatched the will on Tuesday last.’
Both men looked hard at Elizabeth.
‘Is there anything more, sir?’ she inquired respectfully.
‘Not at present, thank you.’
Elizabeth went towards the door.
‘One minute,’ said the lawyer. ‘Was there a fire in the grate that evening?’
‘Yes, sir, there was always a fire.’
‘Thank you, that will do.’
Elizabeth went out. Charles leaned forward, resting a shaking hand on the table.
‘What do you think? What are you driving at?’
Mr Hopkinson shook his head.
‘We must still hope the will may turn up. If it does not –’
‘Well, if it does not?’
‘I am afraid there is only one conclusion possible. Your aunt sent for that will in order to destroy it. Not wishing Elizabeth to lose by that, she gave her the amount of her legacy in cash.’
‘But why?’ cried Charles wildly. ‘Why?’
Mr Hopkinson coughed. A dry cough.
‘You have had no – er – disagreement with your aunt, Mr Ridgeway?’ he murmured.
Charles gasped.
‘No, indeed,’ he cried warmly. ‘We were on the kindest, most affectionate terms, right up to the end.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Hopkinson, not looking at him.
It came to Charles with a shock that the lawyer did not believe him. Who knew what this dry old stick might not have heard? Rumours of Charles’ doings might have come round to him. What more natural than that he should suppose that these same rumours had come to Mrs Harter, and the aunt and nephew should have had an altercation on the subject?
But it wasn’t so! Charles knew one of the bitterest moments of his career. His lies had been believed. Now that he spoke the truth, belief was withheld. The irony of it!
Of course his aunt had never burnt the will! Of course –
His thoughts came to a sudden check. What was that picture rising before his eyes? An old lady with one hand clasped to her heart . . . something slipping . . . a paper . . . falling on the red-hot embers . . .
Charles’ face grew livid. He heard a hoarse voice – his own – asking:
‘If that will’s never found –?’
‘There is a former will of Mrs Harter’s still extant. Dated September 1920. By it Mrs Harter leaves everything to her niece, Miriam Harter, now Miriam Robinson.’
What was the old fool saying? Miriam? Miriam with her nondescript husband, and her four whining brats. All his cleverness – for Miriam!
The telephone rang sharply at his elbow. He took up the receiver. It was the doctor’s voice, hearty and kindly.
‘That you Ridgeway? Thought you’d like to know. The autopsy’s just concluded. Cause of death as I surmised. But as a matter of fact the cardiac trouble was much more serious than I suspected when she was alive. With the utmost care, she couldn’t have lived longer than two months at the outside. Thought you’d like to know. Might console you more or less.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Charles, ‘would you mind saying that again?’
‘She couldn’t have lived longer than two months,’ said the doctor in a slightly louder tone. ‘All things work out for the best, you know, my dear fellow –’
But Charles had slammed back the receiver on its hook. He was conscious of the lawyer’s voice speaking from a long way off.
‘Dear me, Mr Ridgeway, are you ill?’
Damn them all! The smug-faced lawyer. That poisonous old ass Meynell. No hope in front of him – only the shadow of the prison wall . . .
He felt that Somebody had been playing with him – playing with him like a cat with a mouse. Somebody must be laughing . . .
Chapter 12
Within a Wall
‘Within a Wall’ was first published in Royal Magazine, October 1925.
It was Mrs Lemprière who discovered the existence of Jane Haworth. It would be, of course. Somebody once said that Mrs Lemprière was easily the most hated woman in London, but that, I think, is an exaggeration. She has certainly a knack of tumbling on the one thing you wish to keep quiet about, and she does it with real genius. It is always an accident.
In this case we had been having tea in Alan Everard’s studio. He gave these teas occasionally, and used to stand about in corners, wearing very old clothes, rattling the coppers in his trouser pockets and looking profoundly miserable.
I do not suppose anyone will dispute Everard’s claim to genius at this date. His two most famous pictures, Colour, and The Connoisseur, which belong to his early period, before he became a fashionable portrait painter, were purchased by the nation last ye
It was his wife who organized these parties. Everard’s attitude to her was a peculiar one. That he adored her was evident, and only to be expected. Adoration was Isobel’s due. But he seemed always to feel himself slightly in her debt. He assented to anything she wished, not so much through tenderness as through an unalterable conviction that she had a right to her own way. I suppose that was natural enough, too, when one comes to think of it.
For Isobel Loring had been really very celebrated. When she came out she had been the débutante of the season. She had everything except money; beauty, position, breeding, brains. Nobody expected her to marry for love. She wasn’t that kind of girl. In her second season she had three strings to her bow, the heir to a dukedom, a rising politician, and a South African millionaire. And then, to everyone’s surprise, she married Alan Everard – a struggling young painter whom no one had ever heard of.
It is a tribute to her personality, I think, that everyone went on calling her Isobel Loring. Nobody ever alluded to her as Isobel Everard. It would be: ‘I saw Isobel Loring this morning. Yes – with her husband, young Everard, the painter fellow.’
People said Isobel had ‘done for herself’. It would, I think, have ‘done’ for most men to be known as ‘Isobel Loring’s husband’. But Everard was different. Isobel’s talent for success hadn’t failed her after all. Alan Everard painted Colour.
I suppose everyone knows the picture: a stretch of road with a trench dug down it, the turned earth, reddish in colour, a shining length of brown glazed drainpipe and the huge navvy, resting for a minute on his spade – a Herculean figure in stained corduroys with a scarlet necker-chief. His eyes look out at you from the canvas, without intelligence, without hope, but with a dumb unconscious pleading, the eyes of a magnificent brute beast. It is a flaming thing – a symphony of orange and red. A lot has been written about its symbolism, about what it is meant to express. Alan Everard himself says he didn’t mean it to express anything. He was, he said, nauseated by having had to look at a lot of pictures of Venetian sunsets, and a sudden longing for a riot of purely English colour assailed him.
After that, Everard gave the world that epic painting of a public house – Romance; the black street with rain falling – the half-open door, the lights and shining glasses, the little foxy-faced man passing through the doorway, small, mean, insignificant, with lips parted and eyes eager, passing in to forget.
On the strength of these two pictures Everard was acclaimed as a painter of ‘working men’. He had his niche. But he refused to stay in it. His third and most brilliant work, a full-length portrait of Sir Rufus Herschman. The famous scientist is painted against a background of retorts and crucibles and laboratory shelves. The whole has what may be called a Cubist effect, but the lines of perspective run strangely.
And now he had completed his fourth work – a portrait of his wife. We had been invited to see and criticize. Everard himself scowled and looked out of the window; Isobel Loring moved amongst the guests, talking technique with unerring accuracy.
We made comments. We had to. We praised the painting of the pink satin. The treatment of that, we said, was really marvellous. Nobody had painted satin in quite that way before.
Mrs Lemprière, who is one of the most intelligent art critics I know, took me aside almost at once.
‘Georgie,’ she said, ‘what has he done to himself? The thing’s dead. It’s smooth. It’s – oh! it’s damnable.’
‘Portrait of a Lady in Pink Satin?’ I suggested.
‘Exactly. And yet the technique’s perfect. And the care! There’s enough work there for sixteen pictures.’
‘Too much work?’ I suggested.
‘Perhaps that’s it. If there ever was anything there, he’s killed it. An extremely beautiful woman in a pink satin dress. Why not a coloured photograph?’
‘Why not?’ I agreed. ‘Do you suppose he knows?’ ‘Don’t you see the man’s on edge? It comes, I daresay, of mixing up sentiment and business. He’s put his whole soul into painting Isobel, because she is Isobel, and in sparing her, he’s lost her. He’s been too kind. You’ve got to – to destroy the flesh before you can get at the soul sometimes.’
I nodded reflectively. Sir Rufus Herschman had not been flattered physically, but Everard had succeeded in putting on the canvas a personality that was unforgettable.
‘And Isobel’s got such a very forceful personality,’ continued Mrs Lemprière.
‘Perhaps Everard can’t paint women,’ I said.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mrs Lemprière thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that may be the explanation.’
And it was then, with her usual genius for accuracy, that she pulled out a canvas that was leaning with its face to the wall. There were about eight of them, stacked carelessly. It was pure chance that Mrs Lemprière selected the one she did – but as I said before, these things happen with Mrs Lemprière.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Lemprière as she turned it to the light.
It was unfinished, a mere rough sketch. The woman, or girl – she was not, I thought, more than twenty-five or six – was leaning forward, her chin on her hand. Two things struck me at once: the extraordinary vitality of the picture and the amazing cruelty of it. Everard had painted with a vindictive brush. The attitude even was a cruel one – it had brought out every awkwardness, every sharp angle, every crudity. It was a study in brown – brown dress, brown background, brown eyes – wistful, eager eyes. Eagerness was, indeed, the prevailing note of it.
Mrs Lemprière looked at it for some minutes in silence. Then she called to Everard.
‘Alan,’ she said. ‘Come here. Who’s this?’
Everard came over obediently. I saw the sudden flash of annoyance that he could not quite hide.
‘That’s only a daub,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I shall ever finish it.’
‘Who is she?’ said Mrs Lemprière.
Everard was clearly unwilling to answer, and his unwillingness was as meat and drink to Mrs Lemprière, who always believes the worst on principle.
‘A friend of mine. A Miss Jane Haworth.’
‘I’ve never met her here,’ said Mrs Lemprière.
‘She doesn’t come to these shows.’ He paused a minute, then added: ‘She’s Winnie’s godmother.’
Winnie was his little daughter, aged five.
‘Really?’ said Mrs Lemprière. ‘Where does she live?’
‘Battersea. A flat.’
‘Really,’ said Mrs Lemprière again, and then added: ‘And what has she ever done to you?’
‘To me?’
‘To you. To make you so – ruthless.’
‘Oh, that!’ he laughed. ‘Well, you know, she’s not a beauty. I can’t make her one out of friendship, can I?’
‘You’ve done the opposite,’ said Mrs Lemprière. ‘You’ve caught hold of every defect of hers and exaggerated it and twisted it. You’ve tried to make her ridiculous – but you haven’t succeeded, my child. That portrait, if you finish it, will live.’
Everard looked annoyed.
‘It’s not bad,’ he said lightly, ‘for a sketch, that is. But, of course, it’s not a patch on Isobel’s portrait. That’s far and away the best thing I’ve ever done.’
He said the last words defiantly and aggressively. Neither of us answered.
‘Far and away the best thing,’ he repeated.
Some of the others had drawn near us. They, too, caught sight of the sketch. There were exclamations, comments. The atmosphere began to brighten up.
It was in this way that I first heard of Jane Haworth. Later, I was to meet her – twice. I was to hear details of her life from one of her most intimate friends. I was to learn much from Alan Everard himself. Now that they are both dead, I think it is time to contradict some of the stories Mrs Lemprière is busily spreading abroad. Call s
When the guests had left, Alan Everard turned the portrait of Jane Haworth with its face to the wall again. Isobel came down the room and stood beside him.
‘A success, do you think?’ she asked thoughtfully. ‘Or – not quite a success?’
‘The portrait?’ he asked quickly.
‘No, silly, the party. Of course the portrait’s a success.’
‘It’s the best thing I’ve done,’ Everard declared aggressively.
‘We’re getting on,’ said Isobel. ‘Lady Charmington wants you to paint her.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ He frowned. ‘I’m not a fashionable portrait painter, you know.’
‘You will be. You’ll get to the top of the tree.’
‘That’s not the tree I want to get to the top of.’
‘But, Alan dear, that’s the way to make mints of money.’
‘Who wants mints of money?’
‘Perhaps I do,’ she said smiling.
At once he felt apologetic, ashamed. If she had not married him she could have had her mints of money. And she needed it. A certain amount of luxury was her proper setting.
‘We’ve not done so badly just lately,’ he said wistfully.
‘No, indeed; but the bills are coming in rather fast.’
Bills – always bills!
He walked up and down.
‘Oh, hang it! I don’t want to paint Lady Charmington,’ he burst out, rather like a petulant child.
Isobel smiled a little. She stood by the fire without moving. Alan stopped his restless pacing and came nearer to her. What was there in her, in her stillness, her inertia, that drew him – drew him like a magnet? How beautiful she was – her arms like sculptured white marble, the pure gold of her hair, her lips – red full lips.
He kissed them – felt them fasten on his own. Did anything else matter? What was there in Isobel that soothed you, that took all your cares from you? She drew you into her own beautiful inertia and held you there, quiet and content. Poppy and mandragora; you drifted there, on a dark lake, asleep.