Harlequin's Lane: A Harley Quin Short Story
Author: Agatha Christie
Date: 1927-08-27 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Crime
Description: While visiting the rather dull, conventional, country home of John and Anna Denman, Mr. Satterthwaite unexpectedly meets Mr. Quin on a narrow road called Harlequin's Lane behind the house. Locally, it's known as Lover's Lane. While exploring the lane, Satterthwaite meets Molly Stanwell and learns that there's to be an entertainment, a masquerade, that evening. Even Satterthwaite can't foresee the impact that Quin will have on the Denmans, and indeed, on himself and everyone present. The short story was previously published in the print anthology 'The Mysterious Mr. Quin'.
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rights: All rights reserved

Contents

Harlequin’s Lane

About the Author

The Agatha Christie Collection

Copyright

About the Publisher

HARLEQUIN’S LANE

Mr. Satterthwaite was never quite sure what took him to stay with the Denmans. They were not of his kind—that is to say, they belonged neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic circles. They were Philistines, and dull Philistines at that. Mr. Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet strangely enough had come again and yet again.

Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June, as he sped out of London in his Rolls-Royce.

John Denman was a man of forty, a solid well-established figure respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr. Satterthwaite’s friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.

Why am I doing this thing? Mr. Satterthwaite asked himself once more—and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only reason that presented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the house (a comfortable well-appointed house), stirred his curiosity. That room was Mrs. Denman’s own sitting room.

It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr. Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality. He had never met a woman so completely expressionless. She was, he knew, a Russian by birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European war, he had fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped with his life on the outbreak of the Revolution, and had brought this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong disapproval from his parents he had married her.

Mrs. Denman’s room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture—a trifle more masculine than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item: a Chinese lacquer screen—a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector’s piece, rare and beautiful.

It was out of place against that solid English background. It should have been the keynote of the room with everything arranged to harmonize subtly with it. And yet Mr. Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended accord.

He shook his head. The thing—trivial though it was—puzzled him. Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house. It was, perhaps, a woman’s fantasy—but that solution did not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs. Denman—a quiet hard-featured woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have guessed her a foreigner.

The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denman’s house was “Ashmead,” and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath, which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred feet above sea level and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample incomes.

The butler received Mr. Satterthwaite suavely. Mr. and Mrs. Denman were both out—at a rehearsal—they hoped Mr. Satterthwaite would make himself at home until they returned.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a narrow lane.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane, shady and green, with high hedges—a rural lane that twisted and turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address: ASHMEAD, HARLEQUIN’S LANE—remembered too, a local name for it that Mrs. Denman had once told him.

“Harlequin’s Lane,” he murmured to himself softly. “I wonder—”

He turned a corner.

Not at the time, but afterwards, he wondered why this time he felt no surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his: Mr. Harley Quin. The two men clasped hands.

“So you’re down here,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Yes,” said Mr. Quin. “I’m staying in the same house as you are.”

“Staying there?”

“Yes. Does it surprise you?”

“No,” said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. “Only—well, you never stay anywhere for long, do you?”

“Only as long as is necessary,” said Mr. Quin gravely.

“I see,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

They walked on in silence for some minutes.

“This lane,” began Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.

“Belongs to me,” said Mr. Quin.

“I thought it did,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “Somehow, I thought it must. There’s the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the ‘Lovers’ Lane.’ You know that?”

Mr. Quin nodded.

“But surely,” he said gently, “there is a ‘Lovers’ Lane’ in every village?”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.

He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive.

“Where does this lane end, I wonder?” he asked suddenly.

“It ends—here,” said Mr. Quin.

They came round the last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground, and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and ends that were no longer of account to anybody.

“A rubbish heap,” exclaimed Mr. Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and indignantly.

“Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap,” said Mr. Quin.

“I know, I know,” cried Mr. Satterthwaite, and quoted with just a trace of self-consciousness: “Bring me the two most beautiful things in the city, said God. You know how it goes, eh?”

Mr. Quin nodded.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on the brink of the wall of the cliff.

“Hardly a pretty view for a house,” he remarked.

“I fancy this wasn’t a rubbish heap in those days,” said Mr. Quin. “I believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here—but nothing much was done, as you can see.”

They turned and began retracing their steps.

“I suppose,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling, “that many couples come wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings.”

“Probably.”

“Lovers,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr. Quin had that effect upon him. “Lovers . . . You have done a lot for lovers, Mr. Quin.”

The other bowed his head without replying.

“You have saved them from sorrow—from worse than sorrow, from death. You have been an advocate for the dead themselves.”

“You are speaking of yourself—of what you have done—not of me.”

“It is the same thing,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “You know it is,” he urged, as the other did not speak. “You have acted—through me. For some reason or other you do not act directly—yourself.”

“Sometimes I do,” said Mr. Quin.

His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr. Satterthwaite shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly. And yet the sun seemed as bright as ever.

At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a pink cotton frock. Mr. Satterthwaite recognized her as Molly Stanwell, whom he had met down here before.

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 métier 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 shortsighted eyes peered through large hornrimmed 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. Anna 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 weather-beaten. 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 éclair 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 openmouthed. “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 knickknacks. 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.”

“Yes,” said Denman. “And she’s awfully good, too.”

“She has clumsy feet,” said Anna.

“Nonsense,” said her husband. “All women are alike, Satterthwaite. Can’t bear to hear another woman praised. Molly is a very good-looking girl, and so of course every woman has to have their knife into her.”

“I spoke of dancing,” said Anna Denman. She sounded faintly surprised. “She is very pretty, yes, but her feet move clumsily. You cannot tell me anything else because I know about dancing.”

Mr. Satterthwaite intervened tactfully.

“You have two professional dancers coming down, I understand?”

“Yes. For the ballet proper. Prince Oranoff is bringing them down in his car.”

“Sergius Oranoff?”

The question came from Anna Denman. Her husband turned and looked at her.

“You know him?”

“I used to know him—in Russia.”

Mr. Satterthwaite thought that John Denman looked disturbed.

“Will he know you?”

“Yes. He will know me.”

She laughed—a low, almost triumphant laugh. There was nothing of the Dutch Doll about her face now. She nodded reassuringly at her husband.

“Sergius. So he is bringing down the two dancers. He was always interested in dancing.”

“I remember.”

John Denman spoke abruptly, then turned and left the room. Mr. Quin followed him. Anna Denman crossed to the telephone and asked for a number. She arrested Mr. Satterthwaite with a gesture as he was about to follow the example of the other two men.

“Can I speak to Lady Roscheimer. Oh! it is you. This is Anna Denman speaking. Has Prince Oranoff arrived yet? What? What? Oh, my dear! But how ghastly.”

She listened for a few moments longer, then replaced the receiver. She turned to Mr. Satterthwaite.

“There has been an accident. There would be with Sergius Ivanovitch driving. Oh, he has not altered in all these years. The girl was not badly hurt, but bruised and shaken, too much to dance tonight. The man’s arm is broken. Sergius Ivanovitch himself is unhurt. The devil looks after his own, perhaps.”

“And what about tonight’s performance?”

“Exactly, my friend. Something must be done about it.”

She sat thinking. Presently she looked at him.

“I am a bad hostess, Mr. Satterthwaite. I do not entertain you.”

“I assure you that it is not necessary. There’s one thing though, Mrs. Denman, that I would very much like to know.”

“Yes?”

“How did you come across Mr. Quin?”

“He is often down here,” she said slowly. “I think he owns land in this part of the world.”

“He does, he does. He told me so this afternoon,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

“He is—” She paused. Her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite’s. “I think you know what he is better than I do,” she finished.

“I?”

“Is it not so?”

He was troubled. His neat little soul found her disturbing. He felt that she wished to force him further than he was prepared to go, that she wanted him to put into words that which he was not prepared to admit to himself.

“You know!” she said. “I think you know most things, Mr. Satterthwaite.”

Here was incense, yet for once it failed to intoxicate him. He shook his head in unwonted humility.

“What can anyone know?” he asked. “So little—so very little.”

She nodded in assent. Presently she spoke again, in a queer brooding voice, without looking at him.

“Supposing I were to tell you something—you would not laugh? No, I do not think you would laugh. Supposing, then, that to carry on one’s”—she paused—“one’s trade, one’s profession, one were to make use of a fantasy—one were to pretend to oneself something that did not exist—that one were to imagine a certain person . . . It is a pretence, you understand, a make believe—nothing more. But one day—”

“Yes?” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was keenly interested.

“The fantasy came true! The thing one imagined—the impossible thing, the thing that could not be—was real! Is that madness? Tell me, Mr. Satterthwaite. Is that madness—or do you believe it too?”

“I—” Queer how he could not get the words out. How they seemed to stick somewhere at the back of his throat.

“Folly,” said Anna Denman. “Folly.”

She swept out of the room and left Mr. Satterthwaite with his confession of faith unspoken.

He came down to dinner to find Mrs. Denman entertaining a guest, a tall dark man approaching middle age.

“Prince Oranoff—Mr. Satterthwaite.”

The two men bowed. Mr. Satterthwaite had the feeling that some conversation had been broken off on his entry which would not be resumed. But there was no sense of strain. The Russian conversed easily and naturally on those objects which were nearest to Mr. Satterthwaite’s heart. He was a man of very fine artistic taste, and they soon found that they had many friends in common. John Denman joined them, and the talk became localized. Oranoff expressed regret for the accident.

“It was not my fault. I like to drive fast—yes, but I am a good driver. It was Fate—chance”—he shrugged his shoulders—“the masters of all of us.”

“There speaks the Russian in you, Sergius Ivanovitch,” said Mrs. Denman.

“And finds an echo in you, Anna Mikalovna,” he threw back quickly.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked from one to the other of the three of them. John Denman, fair, aloof, English, and the other two, dark, thin, strangely alike. Something rose in his mind—what was it? Ah! he had it now. The first Act of the Walküre. Siegmund and Sieglinde—so alike—and the alien Hunding. Conjectures began to stir in his brain. Was this the meaning of the presence of Mr. Quin? One thing he believed in firmly—wherever Mr. Quin showed himself—there lay drama. Was this it here—the old hackneyed three-cornered tragedy?

He was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped for better things.

“What has been arranged, Anna?” asked Denman. “The thing will have to be put off, I suppose. I heard you ringing the Roscheimers up.”

She shook her head.

“No—there is no need to put it off.”

“But you can’t do it without the ballet?”

“You certainly couldn’t have a Harlequinade without Harlequin and Columbine,” agreed Anna Denman drily. “I’m going to be Columbine, John.”

“You?” He was astonished—disturbed, Mr. Satterthwaite thought.

She nodded composedly.

“You need not be afraid, John. I shall not disgrace you. You forget—it was my profession once.”

Mr. Satterthwaite thought: “What an extraordinary thing a voice is. The things it says—and the things it leaves unsaid and means! I wish I knew. . . .”

“Well,” said John Denman grudgingly, “that solves one half of the problem. What about the other? Where will you find Harlequin?”

“I have found him—there!”

She gestured towards the open doorway where Mr. Quin had just appeared. He smiled back at her.

“Good lord, Quin,” said John Denman. “Do you know anything of this game? I should never have imagined it.”

“Mr. Quin is vouched for by an expert,” said his wife. “Mr. Satterthwaite will answer for him.”

She smiled at Mr. Satterthwaite, and the little man found himself murmuring:

“Oh, yes—I answer for Mr. Quin.”

Denman turned his attention elsewhere.

“You know there’s to be a fancy-dress dance business afterwards. Great nuisance. We’ll have to rig you up, Satterthwaite.”

Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head very decidedly.

“My years will excuse me.” A brilliant idea struck him. A table napkin under his arm. “There I am, an elderly waiter who has seen better days.”

He laughed.

“An interesting profession,” said Mr. Quin. “One sees so much.”

“I’ve got to put on some fool pierrot thing,” said Denman gloomily. “It’s cool anyway, that’s one thing. What about you?” He looked at Oranoff.

“I have a Harlequin costume,” said the Russian. His eyes wandered for a minute to his hostess’s face.

Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if he was mistaken in fancying that there was just a moment of constraint.

“There might have been three of us,” said Denman, with a laugh. “I’ve got an old Harlequin costume my wife made me when we were first married for some show or other.” He paused, looking down on his broad shirt front. “I don’t suppose I could get into it now.”

“No,” said his wife. “You couldn’t get into it now.”

And again her voice said something more than mere words.

She glanced up at the clock.

“If Molly doesn’t turn up soon, we won’t wait for her.”

But at that moment the girl was announced. She was already wearing her Pierrette dress of white and green, and very charming she looked in it, so Mr. Satterthwaite reflected.

She was full of excitement and enthusiasm over the forthcoming performance.

“I’m getting awfully nervous, though,” she announced, as they drank coffee after dinner. “I know my voice will wobble, and I shall forget the words.”

“Your voice is very charming,” said Anna. “I should not worry about it if I were you.”

“Oh, but I do. The other I don’t mind about—the dancing, I mean. That’s sure to go all right. I mean, you can’t go very far wrong with your feet, can you?”

She appealed to Anna, but the older woman did not respond. Instead she said:

“Sing something now to Mr. Satterthwaite. You will find that he will reassure you.”

Molly went over to the piano. Her voice rang out, fresh and tuneful, in an old Irish ballad.

“Shiela, dark Shiela, what is it that you’re seeing?

What is it that you’re seeing, that you’re seeing in the fire?”

“I see a lad that loves me—and I see a lad that leaves me,

And a third lad, a Shadow Lad—and he’s the lad that grieves me.”

The song went on. At the end, Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorous approval.

“Mrs. Denman is right. Your voice is charming. Not, perhaps, very fully trained, but delightfully natural, and with that unstudied quality of youth in it.”

“That’s right,” agreed John Denman. “You go ahead, Molly, and don’t be downed by stage fright. We’d better be getting over to the Roscheimers now.”

The party separated to don cloaks. It was a glorious night and they proposed to walk over, the house being only a few hundred yards down the road.

Mr. Satterthwaite found himself by his friend.

“It’s an odd thing,” he said, “but that song made me think of you. A third lad—a Shadow Lad—there’s mystery there, and wherever there’s mystery I—well, think of you.”

“Am I so mysterious?” smiled Mr. Quin.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorously.

“Yes, indeed. Do you know, until tonight, I had no idea that you were a professional dancer.”

“Really?” said Mr. Quin.

“Listen,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the Walküre. “That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two.”

“Which two?”

“Prince Oranoff and Mrs. Denman. Don’t you see the difference in her tonight? It’s as though—as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Quin. “Perhaps so.”

“The same old drama,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams . . . One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now—what is he, after all? A good fellow—prosperous, successful—but—well, mediocre, Good honest English stuff—very much like that Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English—and as ordinary—as that pretty English girl with her fresh untrained voice. Oh, you may smile, Mr. Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying.”

“I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet—”

“Yet what?”

Mr. Quin leaned forward. His dark melancholy eyes searched for those of Mr. Satterthwaite.

“Have you learned so little of life?” he breathed.

He left Mr. Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway he saw a couple enlaced in each other’s arms.

For a moment he thought—

And then he saw. John Denman and Molly Stanwell. Denman’s voice came to him, hoarse and anguished.

“I can’t live without you. What are we to do?”

Mr. Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen.

Mr. Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been.

Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight. He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once.

“Please,” she said, “don’t leave me.”

He found that oddly touching. He was, then, of use to someone. And he went on saying those things that meant nothing at all, but which were, somehow, better than silence. They went that way to the Roscheimers. Now and then her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he understood that she was glad of his company. She only took it away when they finally came to their destination. She stood very erect, her head held high.

“Now,” she said, “I shall dance! Do not be afraid for me, my friend. I shall dance.”

She left him abruptly. He was seized upon by Lady Roscheimer, much bediamonded and very full of lamentations. By her he was passed on to Claude Wickam.

“Ruined! Completely ruined. The sort of thing that always happens to me. All these country bumpkins think they can dance. I was never even consulted—” His voice went on—went on interminably. He had found a sympathetic listener, a man who knew. He gave himself up to an orgy of self-pity. It only ended when the first strains of music began.

Mr. Satterthwaite came out of his dreams. He was alert, once more the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music—delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web—yet with nothing of the pretty pretty about it.

The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protégés. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality.

Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face . . . A white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream. . . .

Mr. Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely . . .

Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer’s drawingroom. It was in a Berlin Museum at a statuette of an immortal Columbine.

Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in. . . .

Moonlight—and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon. Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The Immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart.

Pierrot wandering on through the wood . . . darkness . . . his voice dies away in the distance. . . .

The village green—dancing of village girls—pierrots and pierrettes. Molly as Pierrette. No dancer—Anna Denman was right there—but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song “Pierrette dancing on the Green.”

A good tune—Mr. Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickham wasn’t above writing a tune when there was a need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realized that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical.

They press Pierrot to join the dance. He refuses. With white face he wanders on—the eternal lover seeking his ideal. Evening falls. Harlequin and Columbine, invisible, dance in and out of the unconscious throng. The place is deserted, only Pierrot, weary, falls asleep on a grassy bank. Harlequin and Columbine dance round him. He wakes and sees Columbine. He woos her in vain, pleads, beseeches. . . .

She stands uncertain. Harlequin beckons to her to be gone. But she sees him no longer. She is listening to Pierrot, to his song of love outpoured once more. She falls into his arms, and the curtain comes down.

The second Act is Pierrot’s cottage. Columbine sits on her hearth. She is pale, weary. She listens—for what? Pierrot sings to her—woos her back to thoughts of him once more. The evening darkens. Thunder is heard . . . Columbine puts aside her spinning wheel. She is eager, stirred . . . She listens no longer to Pierrot. It is her own music that is in the air, the music of Harlequin and Columbine . . . She is awake. She remembers.

A crash of thunder! Harlequin stands in the doorway. Pierrot cannot see him, but Columbine springs up with a glad laugh. Children come running, but she pushes them aside. With another crash of thunder the walls fall, and Columbine dances out into the wild night with Harlequin.

Darkness, and through it the tune that Pierrette has sung. Light comes slowly. The cottage once more. Pierrot and Pierrette grown old and grey sit in front of the fire in two armchairs. The music is happy, but subdued. Pierrette nods in her chair. Through the window comes a shaft of moonlight, and with it the motif of Pierrot’s long-forgotten song. He stirs in his chair.

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 lightheartedly.”

“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 manner, Mr. Satterthwaite caught him by the arm and drew him aside.

“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.

About the Author

AGATHA CHRISTIE is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976.

www.AgathaChristie.com

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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

Parker Pyne Investigates

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

Murder Is Easy

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

And Then There Were None

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Crooked House

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

They Came to Baghdad

Destination Unknown

Ordeal by Innocence

Double Sin and Other Stories

The Pale Horse

Star Over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

Endless Night

Passenger to Frankfurt

The Golden Ball and Other Stories

The Mousetrap and Other Plays

The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories

The Hercule Poirot Mysteries

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

Peril at End House

Lord Edgware Dies

Murder on the Orient Express

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The A.B.C. 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 Labors of Hercules

Taken at the Flood

The Under Dog and Other Stories

Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

After the Funeral

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man’s Folly

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Clocks

Third Girl

Hallowe’en Party

Elephants Can Remember

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

The Miss Marple Mysteries

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Body in the Library

The Moving Finger

A Murder Is Announced

They Do It with Mirrors

A Pocket Full of Rye

4:50 from Paddington

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram’s Hotel

Nemesis

Sleeping Murder

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories

The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries

The Secret Adversary

Partners in Crime

N or M?

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Postern of Fate

Memoirs

An Autobiography

Come, Tell Me How You Live

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

AGATHA CHRISTIE® THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN™ are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. All rights reserved.

“Harlequin’s Lane” was previously published as part of The Mysterious Mr. Quin short story collection, copyright © 1930 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, 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 OCTOBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062302366

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