by Agatha Christie, 1930, 1958
I adored this book. I got it from a little free library in the neighborhood. I took it to Montana December 2024 when I went there to help Adam and Danette after Eliya was born. It’s a little book so was easy to stuff in my carry-on. Twelve mysteries set in England, the Riviera, and a Greek Isle, all involving an elderly man, Mr. Satterthwaite, and a mysterious Mr. Harley Quin, who shows up unexpectedly whenever humans need a little help, or a death needs to be solved. Each story took me away to a wonderful, rich world.
The last story, though, ends with Mr. Satterthwaite in Mr. Harley Quin’s Lovers Lane, a beautiful lane that ends in a dump. I am not sure about it:
“It was you,” he said. “It was you who were with her just now?”
“Mr. Quin waited a minute and then said gently, “You can put it that way, if you like.
“And the maid didn’t see you?”
“The maid didn’t see me.”
“But I did. Why was that?”
“Perhaps, as a result of the price you have paid, you see things that other people–do not.”
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him uncomprehendingly for a minute or two. Then he began suddenly to quiver all over like an Aspen leaf. “What is this place?” he whispered. “What is this place?”
“I told you earlier today. It is My lane.”
“A Lovers’ Lane,” murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. “And people pass along it.”
“Most people, sooner or later.”
“And at the end of it–what do they find?”
Mr. Quin smiled. His voice was very gentle. He pointed at the ruined cottage above them. “The house of their dreams –or a rubbish heap–who shall say?”
Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at him suddenly. A wild rebellion surged over him. He felt cheated, defrauded.
“But I–” his voice shook. “I have never passed down your lane.”
“And do you regret?”
Mr. Satterthwaite quailed. Mr. Quin seemed to have loomed to enormous proportions. Mr. Satterthwaite had a vista of something at once menacing and terrifying. Joy, Sorrow, Despair.
And his comfortable little soul shrank back appalled.
“Do you regret?” Mr. Quin repeated his question. There was something terrible about him.
“No,” Mr. Satterthwaite stammered. “N-No.”
And then suddenly he rallied.
“But I see things,” he cried. “I may have been only a looker on at Life–but I see things that other people do not. You said so yourself, Mr. Quin.”
But Mr. Quin had vanished.