The Love Detectives by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007171156
Amazon: 0007171153
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

‘A very good glass of port, Colonel Melrose,’ said Mr Quin.

It was half past nine, and the three men had just finished a belated dinner at Colonel Melrose’s house. Mr Satterthwaite was particularly jubilant.

‘I was quite right,’ he chuckled. ‘You can’t deny it, Mr Quin. You turned up tonight to save two absurd young people who were both bent on putting their heads into a noose.’

‘Did I?’ said Mr Quin. ‘Surely not. I did nothing at all.’

‘As it turned out, it was not necessary,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But it might have been. It was touch and go, you know. I shall never forget the moment when Lady Dwighton said, “I killed him.” I’ve never seen anything on the stage half as dramatic.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Mr Quin.

‘Wouldn’t have believed such a thing could happen outside a novel,’ declared the colonel, for perhaps the twentieth time that night.

‘Does it?’ asked Mr Quin.

The colonel stared at him, ‘Damn it, it happened tonight.’

‘Mind you,’ interposed Mr Satterthwaite, leaning back and sipping his port, ‘Lady Dwighton was magnificent, quite magnificent, but she made one mistake. She shouldn’t have leaped to the conclusion that her husband had been shot. In the same way Delangua was a fool to assume that he had been stabbed just because the dagger happened to be lying on the table in front of us. It was a mere coincidence that Lady Dwighton should have brought it down with her.’

‘Was it?’ asked Mr Quin.

‘Now if they’d only confined themselves to saying that they’d killed Sir James, without particularizing how –’ went on Mr Satterthwaite – ‘what would have been the result?’

‘They might have been believed,’ said Mr Quin with an odd smile.

‘The whole thing was exactly like a novel,’ said the colonel.

‘That’s where they got the idea from, I daresay,’ said Mr Quin.

‘Possibly,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Things one has read do come back to one in the oddest way.’ He looked across at Mr Quin. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘the clock really looked suspicious from the first. One ought never to forget how easy it is to put the hands of a clock or watch forward or back.’

Mr Quin nodded and repeated the words. ‘Forward,’ he said, and paused. ‘Or back.’

There was something encouraging in his voice. His bright, dark eyes were fixed on Mr Satterthwaite.

‘The hands of the clock were put forward,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘We know that.’

‘Were they?’ asked Mr Quin.

Mr Satterthwaite stared at him. ‘Do you mean,’ he said slowly, ‘that it was the watch which was put back? But that doesn’t make sense. It’s impossible.’

‘Not impossible,’ murmured Mr Quin.

‘Well – absurd. To whose advantage could that be?’

‘Only, I suppose, to someone who had an alibi for that time.’

‘By gad!’ cried the colonel. ‘That’s the time young Delangua said he was talking to the keeper.’

‘He told us that very particularly,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

They looked at each other. They had an uneasy feeling as of solid ground failing beneath their feet. Facts went spinning round, turning new and unexpected faces.

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