AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Except,” thought Mr. Satterthwaite, “her youth….”
Girls were always attracted to middle-aged men with interesting pasts. Egg seemed to be no exception to this rule.
“Why hasn’t he ever married?” she asked abruptly.
“Well…” Mr. Satterthwaite paused. His own answer, put bluntly, would have been, “Caution,” but he realized that such a word would be unacceptable to Egg Lytton Gore.
Sir Charles Cartwright had had plenty of affairs with women, actresses and others, but he had always managed to steer clear of matrimony. Egg was clearly seeking for a more romantic explanation.
“That girl who died of consumption—some actress, name began with an M—wasn’t he supposed to be very fond of her?”
Mr. Satterthwaite remembered the lady in question. Rumour had coupled Charles Cartwright’s name with hers, but only very slightly, and Mr. Satterthwaite did not for a moment believe that Sir Charles had remained unmarried in order to be faithful to her memory. He conveyed as much tactfully.
“I suppose he’s had lots of affairs,” said Egg.
“Er—h’m—probably,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, feeling Victorian.
“I like men to have affairs,” said Egg. “It shows they’re not queer or anything.”
Mr. Satterthwaite’s Victorianism suffered a further pang. He was at a loss for a reply. Egg did not notice his discomfiture. She went on musingly.
“You know, Sir Charles is really cleverer than you’d think. He poses a lot, of course, dramatises himself; but behind all that he’s got brains. He’s far better sailing a boat than you’d ever think, to hear him talk. You’d think, to listen to him, that it was all pose, but it isn’t. It’s the same about this business. You think it’s all done for effect—that he wants to play the part of the great detective. All I say is: I think he’d play it rather well.”
“Possibly,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite.
The inflection of his voice showed his feelings clearly enough. Egg pounced on them and expressed them in words.
“But your view is that ‘Death of a Clergyman’ isn’t a thriller. It’s merely ‘Regrettable Incident at a Dinner Party.’ Purely a social catastrophe. What did M. Poirot think? He ought to know.”
“M. Poirot advised us to wait for the analysis of the cocktail; but in his opinion everything was quite all right.”
“Oh, well,” said Egg, “he’s getting old. He’s a back number.” Mr. Satterthwaite winced. Egg went on, unconscious of brutality: “Come home and have tea with Mother. She likes you. She said so.”
Delicately flattered, Mr. Satterthwaite accepted the invitation.
On arrival Egg volunteered to ring up Sir Charles and explain the nonappearance of his guest.
Mr. Satterthwaite sat down in the tiny sitting room with its faded chintzes and its well-polished pieces of old furniture. It was a Victorian room, what Mr. Satterthwaite called in his own mind a lady’s room, and he approved of it.
His conversation with Lady Mary was agreeable, nothing brilliant, but pleasantly chatty. They spoke of Sir Charles. Did Mr. Satterthwaite know him well? Not intimately, Mr. Satterthwaite said. He had a financial interest in one of Sir Charles’s plays some years ago. They had been friends ever since.
“He has great charm,” said Lady Mary, smiling. “I feel it as well as Egg. I suppose you’ve discovered that Egg is suffering badly from hero-worship?”
Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if, as a mother, Lady Mary was not made slightly uneasy by that hero-worship. But it did not seem so.
“Egg sees so little of the world,” she said, sighing. “We are so badly off. One of my cousins presented her and took her to a few things in town, but since then she has hardly been away from here, except for an occasional visit. Young people, I feel, should see plenty of people and places—especially people. Otherwise—well, propinquity is sometimes a dangerous thing.”
Mr. Satterthwaite agreed, thinking of Sir Charles and the sailing, but that this was not what was in Lady Mary’s mind, she showed a moment or two later.
“Sir Charles’s coming has done a lot for Egg. It has widened her horizon. You see, there are very few young people down here—especially men. I’ve always been afraid that Egg might marry someone simply from being thrown with one person only and seeing no one else.”
Mr. Satterthwaite had a quick intuition.
“Are you thinking of young Oliver Manders?”
Lady Mary blushed in ingenuous surprise.
“Oh, Mr. Satterthwaite, I don’t know how you knew! I was thinking of him. He and Egg were together a lot at one time, and I know I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t like some of his ideas.”
