The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie
Faint music–fairy music…Harlequin and Columbine outside. The door swings open and Columbine dances in. She leans over the sleeping Pierrot, kisses him on the lips…
Crash! A peal of thunder. She is outside again. In the centre of the stage is the lighted window and through it are seen the two figures of Harlequin and Columbine dancing slowly away, growing fainter and fainter…
A log falls. Pierrette jumps up angrily, rushes across to the window and pulls the blind. So it ends, on a sudden discord…
Mr Satterthwaite sat very still among the applause and vociferations. At last he got up and made his way outside. He came upon Molly Stanwell, flushed and eager, receiving compliments. He saw John Denman, pushing and elbowing his way through the throng, his eyes alight with a new flame. Molly came towards him, but, almost unconsciously, he put her aside. It was not her he was seeking.
‘My wife? Where is she?’
‘I think she went out in the garden.’
It was, however, Mr Satterthwaite who found her, sitting on a stone seat under a cypress tree. When he came up to her, he did an odd thing. He knelt down and raised her hand to his lips.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You think I danced well?’
‘You danced–as you always danced, Madame Kharsanova.’
She drew in her breath sharply.
‘So–you have guessed.’
‘There is only one Kharsanova. No one could see you dance and forget. But why–why?’
‘What else is possible?’
‘You mean?’
She had spoken very simply. She was just as simple now. ‘Oh! but you understand. You are of the world. A great dancer–she can have lovers, yes–but a husband, that is different. And he–he did not want the other. He wanted me to belong to him as–as Kharsanova could never have belonged.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I see. So you gave it up?’
She nodded.
‘You must have loved him very much,’ said Mr Satterthwaite gently.
‘To make such a sacrifice?’ She laughed.
‘Not quite that. To make it so light-heartedly.’
‘Ah, yes–perhaps–you are right.’
‘And now?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.
Her face grew grave.
‘Now?’ She paused, then raised her voice and spoke into the shadows.
‘Is that you, Sergius Ivanovitch?’
Prince Oranoff came out into the moonlight. He took her hand and smiled at Mr Satterthwaite without self-consciousness.
‘Ten years ago I mourned the death of Anna Kharsanova,’ he said simply. ‘She was to me as my other self. Today I have found her again. We shall part no more.’
‘At the end of the lane in ten minutes,’ said Anna. ‘I shall not fail you.’
Oranoff nodded and went off again. The dancer turned to Mr Satterthwaite. A smile played about her lips.
‘Well–you are not satisfied, my friend?’
‘Do you know,’ said Mr Satterthwaite abruptly, ‘that your husband is looking for you?’
He saw the tremor that passed over her face, but her voice was steady enough.
‘Yes,’ she said gravely. ‘That may well be.’
‘I saw his eyes. They–’ he stopped abruptly.
She was still calm.
‘Yes, perhaps. For an hour. An hour’s magic, born of past memories, of music, of moonlight–That is all.’
‘Then there is nothing that I can say?’ He felt old, dispirited.
‘For ten years I have lived with the man I love,’ said Anna Kharsanova. ‘Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me.’
Mr Satterthwaite said nothing. He had no arguments left. Besides it really seemed the simplest solution. Only–only, somehow, it was not the solution he wanted. He felt her hand on his shoulder.
‘I know, my friend, I know. But there is no third way. Always one looks for one thing–the lover, the perfect, the eternal lover…It is the music of Harlequin one hears. No lover ever satisfies one, for all lovers are mortal. And Harlequin is only a myth, an invisible presence…unless–’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Yes?’
‘Unless–his name is–Death!’
Mr Satterthwaite shivered. She moved away from him, was swallowed up in the shadows…
He never knew quite how long he sat on there, but suddenly he started up with the feeling that he had been wasting valuable time. He hurried away, impelled in a certain direction almost in spite of himself.
As he came out into the lane he had a strange feeling of unreality. Magic–magic and moonlight! And two figures coming towards him…
Oranoff in his Harlequin dress. So he thought at first. Then, as they passed him, he knew his mistake. That lithe swaying figure belonged to one person only–Mr Quin…
They went on down the lane–their feet light as though they were treading on air. Mr Quin turned his head and looked back, and Mr Satterthwaite had a shock, for it was not the face of Mr Quin as he had ever seen it before. It was the face of a stranger–no, not quite a stranger. Ah! he had it now, it was the face of John Denman as it might have looked before life went too well with him. Eager, adventurous, the face at once of a boy and a lover…
Her laugh floated down to him, clear and happy…He looked after them and saw in the distance the lights of a little cottage. He gazed after them like a man in a dream.
He was rudely awakened by a hand that fell on his shoulder and he was jerked round to face Sergius Oranoff. The man looked white and distracted.
‘Where is she? Where is she? She promised–and she has not come.’
‘Madam has just gone up the lane–alone.’
It was Mrs Denman’s maid who spoke from the shadow of the door behind them. She had been waiting with her mistress’s wraps.
‘I was standing here and saw her pass,’ she added.
Mr Satterthwaite threw one harsh word at her.
‘Alone? Alone, did you say?’
The maid’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘Yes, sir. Didn’t you see her off?’
Mr Satterthwaite clutched at Oranoff.
‘Quickly,’ he muttered. ‘I’m–I’m afraid.’
They hurried down the lane together, the Russian talking in quick disjointed sentences.
‘She is a wonderful creature. Ah! how she danced tonight. And that friend of yours. Who is he? Ah! but he is wonderful–unique. In the old days, when she danced the Columbine of Rimsky Korsakoff, she never found the perfect Harlequin. Mordoff, Kassnine–none of them were quite perfect. She had her own little fancy. She told me of it once. Always she danced with a dream Harlequin–a man who was not really there. It was Harlequin himself, she said, who came to dance with her. It was that fancy of hers that made her Columbine so wonderful.’
Mr Satterthwaite nodded. There was only one thought in his head.
‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘We must be in time. Oh! we must be in time.’
They came round the last corner–came to the deep pit and to something lying in it that had not been there before, the body of a woman lying in a wonderful pose, arms flung wide and head thrown back. A dead face and body that were triumphant and beautiful in the moonlight.
Words came back to Mr Satterthwaite dimly–Mr Quin’s words: ‘wonderful things on a rubbish heap’…He understood them now.
Oranoff was murmuring broken phrases. The tears were streaming down his face.
‘I loved her. Always I loved her.’ He used almost the same words that had occurred to Mr Satterthwaite earlier in the day. ‘We were of the same world, she and I. We had the same thoughts, the same dreams. I would have loved her always…’
‘How do you know?’
The Russian stared at him–at the fretful peevishness of the tone.
‘How do you know?’ went on Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It is what all lovers think–what all lovers say…There is only one lover–’
He turned and almost ran into Mr Quin. In an agitated mann
‘It was you,’ he said. ‘It was you who were with her just now?’
Mr Quin waited a minute and then said gently:
‘You can put it that way, if you like.’
‘And the maid didn’t see you?’
‘The maid didn’t see me.’
‘But I did. Why was that?’
‘Perhaps, as a result of the price you have paid, you see things that other people–do not.’
Mr Satterthwaite looked at him uncomprehendingly for a minute or two. Then he began suddenly to quiver all over like an aspen leaf.
‘What is this place?’ he whispered. ‘What is this place?’
‘I told you earlier today. It is My lane.’
‘A Lovers’ Lane,’ murmured Mr Satterthwaite. ‘And people pass along it.’
‘Most people, sooner or later.’
‘And at the end of it–what do they find?’
Mr Quin smiled. His voice was very gentle. He pointed at the ruined cottage above them.
‘The house of their dreams–or a rubbish heap–who shall say?’
Mr Satterthwaite looked up at him suddenly. A wild rebellion surged over him. He felt cheated, defrauded.
‘But I–’ His voice shook. ‘I have never passed down your lane…’
‘And do you regret?’
Mr Satterthwaite quailed. Mr Quin seemed to have loomed to enormous proportions…Mr Satterthwaite had a vista of something at once menacing and terrifying…Joy, Sorrow, Despair.
And his comfortable little soul shrank back appalled.
‘Do you regret?’ Mr Quin repeated his question. There was something terrible about him.
‘No,’ Mr Satterthwaite stammered. ‘N-no.’
And then suddenly he rallied.
‘But I see things,’ he cried. ‘I may have been only a looker-on at Life–but I see things that other people do not. You said so yourself, Mr Quin…’
But Mr Quin had vanished.
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie
THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING MYSTERY, OVER 100 MILLION COPIES SOLD
‘Ten…’
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious ‘U.N.Owen’.
‘Nine…’
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.
‘Eight…’
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by an ancient nursery rhyme counting down one by one…as one by one…they begin to die.
‘Seven…’
Which amongst them is the killer and will any of them survive?
‘One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.’
Observer
‘Agatha Christie’s masterpiece.’
Spectator
ISBN-13 978-0-00-713683-4
Endless Night
Agatha Christie
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night
When penniless Michael Rogers discovered the beautiful house at Gypsy’s Acre and then meets the heiress Ellie, it seems that all his dreams have come true at once. But he ignores an old woman warning of an ancient curse, and evil begins to stir in paradise.
As Michael soon learns: Gypsy’s Acre is the place where fatal ‘accidents’ happen…
‘One of the best things Agatha Christie has ever done.’
Sunday Times
ISBN-13 978-0-00-715167-7
About the Author
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in 100 foreign countries. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of the First World War, in which she served as a VAD. In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. It was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, after averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and well over 70 books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s books to be dramatised–under the name Alibi–and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of books have been published posthumously: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared later that year, followed by her autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases, Problem at Pollensa Bay and While the Light Lasts. In 1998 Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by another author, Charles Osborne.
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The Agatha Christie Collection
The Man In The Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Spider’s Web *
The Unexpected Guest *
Ordeal by Innocence
The Pale Horse
Endless Night
Passenger To Frankfurt
Problem at Pollensa Bay
While the Light Lasts
Poirot
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Black Coffee *
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three-Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The ABC Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment With Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labours of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Poirot’s Early Cases
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Marple
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Thirteen Problems
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder is Announced
They Do It With Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
The 4.50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple’s Final Cases
Tommy & Tuppence
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Published as Mary Westmacott
Giant’s Bread
Unfinished Portrait
Absent in the Spring
The Rose and the Yew Tree
A Daughter’s a Daughter
The Burden
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Play Collections
The Mousetrap and Selected Plays
Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays
Copyright
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN. Copyright © 1930 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200725-4
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