The fellow is the most conceited little devil I ever met.”
Mr. Satterthwaite’s eyes twinkled.
He had always been of the opinion that the vainest men in creation were actors. He did not exempt Sir Charles Cartwright.
This instance of the pot calling the kettle black amused him.
“Who is the egoist?” he asked.
“Rum little beggar,” said Sir Charles. “Rather a celebrated little beggar, though. You may have heard of him.
Hercule Poirot.
He’s a Belgian.”
“The detective,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “I have met him.
Rather a remarkable personage.”
“I’ve never met him,” said Sir Bartholomew, “but I’ve heard a good deal about him.
He retired some time ago, though, didn’t he?
Probably most of what I’ve heard is legend.
Well, Charles, I hope we shan’t have a crime this weekend.”
“Why?
Because we’ve got a detective in the house?
Rather putting the cart before the horse, aren’t you, Tollie?”
“Well, it’s by way of being a theory of mine.”
“What is your theory, doctor?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite.
“That events come to people - not people to events.
Why do some people have exciting lives and other people dull ones?
Because of their surroundings?
Not at all.
One man may travel to the ends of the earth and nothing will happen to him.
There will be a massacre a week before he arrives, and an earthquake the day after he leaves, and the boat that he nearly took will be shipwrecked.
And another man may live at Balham and travel to the City everyday, and things will happen to him.
He will be mixed up with blackmailing gangs and beautiful girls and motor bandits.
There are people with a tendency to shipwrecks - even if they go on a boat on an ornamental lake something will happen to it.
In the same way men like your Hercule Poirot don’t have to look for crime - it comes to them.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “perhaps it is as well that Miss Milray is joining us, and that we are not sitting down thirteen to dinner.”
“Well,” said Sir Charles handsomely, “you can have your murder, Tollie, if you’re so keen on it. I make only one stipulation - that I shan’t be the corpse.”
And, laughing, the three men went into the house.
2
The principal interest of Mr. Satterthwaite’s life was people. He was on the whole more interested in women than men.
For a manly man, Mr. Satterthwaite knew far too much about women.
There was a womanish strain in his character which lent him insight into the feminine mind.
Women all his life had confided in him, but they had never taken him seriously.
Sometimes he felt a little bitter about this.
He was, he felt, always in the stalls watching the play, never on the stage taking part in the drama.
But in truth the role of onlooker suited him very well.
This evening, sitting in the large room giving on to the terrace, cleverly decorated by a modern form to resemble a ship’s cabin de luxe, he was principally interested in the exact shade of hair dye attained by Cynthia Dacres.
It was an entirely new tone - straight from Paris, he suspected - a curious and rather pleasing effect of greenish bronze.
What Mrs. Dacres really looked like it was impossible to tell.
She was a tall woman with a figure perfectly disciplined to the demands of the moment.
Her neck and arms were her usual shade of summer tan for the country - whether naturally or artificially produced it was impossible to tell.
The greenish bronze hair was set in a clever and novel style that only London’s best hairdresser could achieve.
Her plucked eyebrows, darkened lashes, exquisitely made-up face, and mouth lip-sticked to a curve that its naturally straight line did not possess, seemed all adjuncts to the perfection of her evening gown of a deed and unusual blue, cut very simply it seemed (though this was ludicrously far from the case) and of an unusual material - dull, but with hidden lights in it.
“That’s a clever woman,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, eyeing her with approval. “I wonder what she’s really like.”
But this time he meant in mind, not in body.
Her words came drawlingly, in the mode of the moment.