The Love Detectives: An Agatha Christie Short Story

‘Don’t talk like a damned detective story, Satterthwaite. He was hit on the head with a bronze figure.’

‘Oh,’ said Satterthwaite, and relapsed into silence.

‘Know anything of a chap called Paul Delangua?’ asked Melrose after a minute or two.

‘Yes. Good-looking young fellow.’

‘I daresay women would call him so,’ growled the colonel.

‘You don’t like him?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘I should have thought you would have. He rides very well.’

‘Like a foreigner at the horse show. Full of monkey tricks.’

Mr Satterthwaite suppressed a smile. Poor old Melrose was so very British in his outlook. Agreeably conscious himself of a cosmopolitan point of view, Mr Satterthwaite was able to deplore the insular attitude toward life.

‘Has he been down in this part of the world?’ he asked.

‘He’s been staying at Alderway with the Dwightons. The rumour goes that Sir James kicked him out a week ago.’

‘Why?’

‘Found him making love to his wife, I suppose. What the hell –’

There was a violent swerve, and a jarring impact.

‘Most dangerous crossroads in England,’ said Melrose. ‘All the same, the other fellow should have sounded his horn. We’re on the main road. I fancy we’ve damaged him rather more than he has damaged us.’

He sprang out. A figure alighted from the other car and joined him. Fragments of speech reached Satterthwaite.

‘Entirely my fault, I’m afraid,’ the stranger was saying. ‘But I do not know this part of the country very well, and there’s absolutely no sign of any kind to show you’re coming onto the main road.’

The colonel, mollified, rejoined suitably. The two men bent together over the stranger’s car, which a chauffeur was already examining. The conversation became highly technical.

‘A matter of half an hour, I’m afraid,’ said the stranger. ‘But don’t let me detain you. I’m glad your car escaped injury as well as it did.’

‘As a matter of fact –’ the colonel was beginning, but he was interrupted.

Mr Satterthwaite, seething with excitement, hopped out of the car with a birdlike action, and seized the stranger warmly by the hand.

‘It is! I thought I recognized the voice,’ he declared excitedly. ‘What an extraordinary thing. What a very extraordinary thing.’

‘Eh?’ said Colonel Melrose.

‘Mr Harley Quin. Melrose, I’m sure you’ve heard me speak many times of Mr Quin?’

Colonel Melrose did not seem to remember the fact, but he assisted politely at the scene while Mr Satterthwaite was chirruping gaily on. ‘I haven’t seen you – let me see –’

‘Since the night at the Bells and Motley,’ said the other quietly.

‘The Bells and Motley, eh?’ said the colonel.

‘An inn,’ explained Mr Satterthwaite.

‘What an odd name for an inn.’

‘Only an old one,’ said Mr Quin. ‘There was a time, remember, when bells and motley were more common in England than they are nowadays.’

‘I suppose so, yes, no doubt you are right,’ said Melrose vaguely. He blinked. By a curious effect of light – the headlights of one car and the red tail-light of the other – Mr Quin seemed for a moment to be dressed in motley himself. But it was only the light.

‘We can’t leave you here stranded on the road,’ continued Mr Satterthwaite. ‘You must come along with us. There’s plenty of room for three, isn’t there, Melrose?’

‘Oh rather.’ But the colonel’s voice was a little doubtful. ‘The only thing is,’ he remarked, ‘the job we’re on. Eh, Satterthwaite?’

Mr Satterthwaite stood stock-still. Ideas leaped and flashed over him. He positively shook with excitement.