The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite

‘And that is why you came up here last night,’ finished Mr Satterthwaite calmly.

Anthony Cosden shot him a dismayed glance.

‘Oh! I say – really –’ he protested.

‘Last night you found someone here. This afternoon you have found me. Your life has been saved – twice.’

‘You may put it that way if you like – but damn it all, it’s my life. I’ve a right to do what I like with it.’

‘That is a cliché,’ said Mr Satterthwaite wearily.

‘Of course I see your point, said Anthony Cosden generously. ‘Naturally you’ve got to say what you can. I’d try to dissuade a fellow myself, even though I knew deep down that he was right. And you know that I’m right. A clean quick end is better than a lingering one – causing trouble and expense and bother to all. In any case it’s not as though I had anyone in the world belonging to me …’

‘If you had –?’ said Mr Satterthwaite sharply.

Cosden drew a deep breath.

‘I don’t know. Even then, I think, this way would be best. But anyway – I haven’t …’

He stopped abruptly. Mr Satterthwaite eyed him curiously. Incurably romantic, he suggested again that there was, somewhere, some woman. But Cosden negatived it. He oughtn’t, he said, to complain. He had had, on the whole, a very good life. It was a pity it was going to be over so soon, that was all. But at any rate he had had, he supposed, everything worth having. Except a son. He would have liked a son. He would like to know now that he had a son living after him. Still, he reiterated the fact, he had had a very good life –

It was at this point that Mr Satterthwaite lost patience. Nobody, he pointed out, who was still in the larval stage, could claim to know anything of life at all. Since the words larval stage clearly meant nothing at all to Cosden, he proceeded to make his meaning clearer.

‘You have not begun to live yet. You are still at the beginning of life.’

Cosden laughed.

‘Why, my hair’s grey. I’m forty –’

Mr Satterthwaite interrupted him.

‘That has nothing to do with it. Life is a compound of physical and mental experiences. I, for instance, am sixty-nine, and I am really sixty-nine. I have known, either at first or second hand, nearly all the experiences life has to offer. You are like a man who talks of a full year and has seen nothing but snow and ice! The flowers of Spring, the languorous days of Summer, the falling leaves of Autumn – he knows nothing of them – not even that there are such things. And you are going to turn your back on even this opportunity of knowing them.’

‘You seem to forget,’ said Anthony Cosden dryly, ‘that, in any case, I have only six months.’

‘Time, like everything else, is relative,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That six months might be the longest and most varied experience of your whole life.’

Cosden looked unconvinced.

‘In my place,’ he said, ‘you would do the same.’

Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.

‘No,’ he said simply. ‘In the first place, I doubt if I should have the courage. It needs courage and I am not at all a brave individual. And in the second place –’

‘Well?’

‘I always want to know what is going to happen tomorrow.’

Cosden rose suddenly with a laugh.

‘Well, sir, you’ve been very good in letting me talk to you. I hardly know why – anyway, there it is. I’ve said a lot too much. Forget it.’

‘And tomorrow, when an accident is reported, I am to leave it at that? To make no suggestion of suicide?’

‘That’s as you like. I’m glad you realize one thing – that you can’t prevent me.’

‘My dear young man,’ said Mr Satterthwaite placidly, ‘I can hardly attach myself to you like the proverbial limpet. Sooner or later you would give me the slip and accomplish your purpose. But you are frustrated at any rate for this afternoon. You would hardly like to go to your death leaving me under the possible imputation of having pushed you over.’

‘That is true,’ said Cosden. ‘If you insist on remaining here –’

‘I do,’ said Mr Satterthwaite firmly.

Cosden laughed good-humouredly.

‘Then the plan must be deferred for the moment. In which case I will go back to the hotel. See you later perhaps.’

Mr Satterthwaite was left looking at the sea.

‘And now,’ he said to himself softly, ‘what next? There must be a next. I wonder …’

He got up. For a while he stood at the edge of the plateau looking down on the dancing water beneath. But he found no inspiration there, and turning slowly he walked back along the path between the cypresses and into the quiet garden. He looked at the shuttered, peaceful house and he wondered, as he had often wondered before, who had lived there and what had taken place within those placid walls. On a sudden impulse he walked up some crumbling stone steps and laid a hand on one of the faded green shutters.

To his surprise it swung back at his touch. He hesitated a moment, then pushed it boldly open. The next minute he stepped back with a little exclamation of dismay. A woman stood in the window facing him. She wore black and had a black lace mantilla draped over her head.

Mr Satterthwaite floundered wildly in Italian interspersed with German – the nearest he could get in the hurry of the moment to Spanish. He was desolated and ashamed, he explained haltingly. The Signora must forgive. He thereupon retreated hastily, the woman not having spoken one word.

He was halfway across the courtyard when she spoke – two sharp words like a pistol crack.

‘Come back!’

It was a barked-out command such as might have been addressed to a dog, yet so absolute was the authority it conveyed, that Mr Satterthwaite had swung round hurriedly and trotted back to the window almost automatically before it occurred to him to feel any resentment. He obeyed like a dog. The woman was still standing motionless at the window. She looked him up and down appraising him with perfect calmness.

‘You are English,’ she said. ‘I thought so.’

Mr Satterthwaite started off on a second apology.

‘If I had known you were English,’ he said, ‘I could have expressed myself better just now. I offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness in trying the shutter. I am afraid I can plead no excuse save curiosity. I had a great wish to see what the inside of this charming house was like.’

She laughed suddenly, a deep, rich laugh.

‘If you really want to see it,’ she said, ‘you had better come in.’

She stood aside, and Mr Satterthwaite, feeling pleasurably excited, stepped into the room. It was dark, since the shutters of the other windows were closed, but he could see that it was scantily and rather shabbily furnished and that the dust lay thick everywhere.

‘Not here,’ she said. ‘I do not use this room.’

She led the way and he followed her, out of the room across a passage and into a room the other side. Here the windows gave on the sea and the sun streamed in. The furniture, like that of the other room, was poor in quality, but there were some worn rugs that had been good in their time, a large screen of Spanish leather and bowls of fresh flowers.