The Face of Helen by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Witness Impulse
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Bayra Mischa’s daughter is to wed today:

To the wedding I must haste away.”

She must have thought him mad. He clutched at her, crying out something incomprehensible, and half pulled, half dragged her out till they stood upon the stairway.

“To the wedding I must haste away—

Ya-ha!”

A wonderful high note, full-throated, powerful, hit full in the middle, a note any singer might be proud of. And with it another sound, the faint tinkle of broken glass.

A stray cat darted past them and in through the flat door. Gillian made a movement, but Mr. Satterthwaite held her back, speaking incoherently.

“No, no—it’s deadly: no smell, nothing to warn you. A mere whiff, and it’s all over. Nobody knows quite how deadly it would be. It’s unlike anything that’s ever been tried before.”

He was repeating the things that Philip Eastney had told him over the table at dinner.

Gillian stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Philip Eastney drew out his watch and looked at it. It was just half-past eleven. For the past three-quarters of an hour he had been pacing up and down the Embankment. He looked out over the Thames and then turned—to look into the face of his dinner companion.

“That’s odd,” he said, and laughed. “We seem fated to run into each other tonight.”

“If you call it Fate,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Philip Eastney looked at him more attentively and his own expression changed.

“Yes?” he said quietly.

Mr. Satterthwaite went straight to the point.

“I have just come from Miss West’s flat.”

“Yes?”

The same voice, with the same deadly quiet.

“We have—taken a dead cat out of it.”

There was silence, then Eastney said:

“Who are you?”

Mr. Satterthwaite spoke for some time. He recited the whole history of events.

“So you see, I was in time,” he ended up. He paused and added quite gently:

“Have you anything—to say?”

He expected something, some outburst, some wild justification. But nothing came.

“No,” said Philip Eastney quietly, and turned on his heel and walked away, Mr. Satterthwaite looked after him till his figure was swallowed up in the gloom. In spite of himself, he had a strange fellow feeling for Eastney, the feeling of an artist for another artist, of a sentimentalist for a real lover, of a plain man for a genius.

At last he roused himself with a start and began to walk in the same direction as Eastney. A fog was beginning to come up. Presently he met a policeman who looked at him suspiciously.

“Did you hear a kind of splash just now?” asked the policeman.

“No,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.

The policeman was peering out over the river.

“Another of these suicides, I expect,” he grunted disconsolately. “They will do it.”

“I suppose,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “that they have their reasons.”

“Money, mostly,” said the policeman. “Sometimes it’s a woman,” he said, as he prepared to move away. “It’s not always their fault, but some women cause a lot of trouble.”

“Some women,” agreed Mr. Satterthwaite softly.

When the policeman had gone on, he sat down on a seat with the fog coming up all around him, and thought about Helen of Troy, and wondered if she were a nice, ordinary woman, blessed or cursed with a wonderful face.

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