You can’t forget to order. You can thrust a thing down out of sight – but it’s there still – growing in the dark.28
On a lighter note the artist Frank, who is endearingly described as ‘a big simple looking likeable young man – rather like a friendly dog that hopes it is welcome but is not quite sure about it’, regrets the passing of the Victorian age: ‘I’d love to have lived in the days of good old Victorian melodrama with the heroine turned out into the snow, and a thorough-paced villain with a black moustache. It must have been fun. They did have fun – the Victorians. They had something we haven’t got nowadays – gusto – enjoyment of life.’
The play is brimming with witty banter and social commentary about inter-war Britain, courtesy largely of a pair of society grandes dames who we meet when we go back in time to Carnforth Castle. Mrs Quantock, who is married to a colonel, and her friend Lady Emily, delight in making candid observations about relations between the sexes:
MRS QUANTOCK: My experience of life has taught me that you can trust nothing and no one. Always expect the worst and you’ll be surprised how often you’re right … Take Arthur now – in the regiment he was considered a perfect martinet – but if any woman were to come to him with a hard luck story – why he’d be as soft as butter. He’s much too soft-hearted.
LADY EMILY: It is a good thing he has you to look after him.
MRS QUANTOCK: It takes a woman to see through women. Men say ‘Poor little woman, all the others are so down on her.’
The bitter governess, here in conversation with the seventeen-year-old lady of the house, is similarly cynical on the subject:
MISS GREY: You’ve been living in a fairy tale all your life. (She speaks with real bitterness) You’ve been sheltered and protected. You’ve gone about believing fine things about men and women. Now your eyes are opened and you can see what life is really like. Ugly – ugly. It’s everyone for himself and the devil take the hindermost. Love a man and believe in him – he’ll let you down every time. You’ve got to use the whip. Treat him like dirt, trample on him, don’t ever let him think he’s got you. Life’s a dirty business – a sordid ugly business. You can’t afford to play fair if you want to win. It’s cheat or go under – down into darkness …
SYLVIA: Don’t – don’t … I feel as though you were thrusting me into a prison – away from the sun and the air.
MISS GREY: Not at all. I’m introducing you to real life.
The final, two-scene act brings us back to 1934 and is set in an art gallery and at the house of an art collector, the locations of the short story. Art is a major theme of the piece, and Christie’s observations on the art world are perceptive and informed. It was the impresario C.B. Cochran who nurtured her own interest in art in her late teens, after a childhood being dragged reluctantly around galleries: ‘Charles Cochran had a great love of painting. When I first saw his Degas picture of ballet girls it stirred something in me that I had not known existed.’29 In the following extract, Mrs Quantock and Lady Emily gossip about life as they inspect an exhibition of modern paintings. I include it for no other reason than that it is a wonderfully well-written and witty piece of theatrical dialogue and, as nobody has ever seen it performed on a stage, it seems a shame not to share it …
MRS QUANTOCK: I hope Arthur won’t keep us waiting. I’m surprised he’s not here. There’s one thing to be said for military men – they do know the meaning of punctuality. These young people are past anything … No manners … No consideration for others. They come down to breakfast at all times of the morning.
LADY EMILY: And the girls’ nails! Too terrible! Just like blood!
MRS QUANTOCK: (inspecting a picture severely through a lorgnette) ‘The Cafe Beauvier’. All these modern pictures are exactly alike.
LADY EMILY: What I say is, there is so much that is depressing in the world. Why paint it? These very peculiar looking men and women sitting at curious angles – where is there any beauty? That’s what I want to know.
MRS QUANTOCK: You heard about the Logans’ butler?
LADY EMILY: Yes, most distressing. Why, they trusted the man completely. (Consults catalogue) ‘Meadow in Dorset’. What a very odd looking cow. They came back unexpectedly, I suppose?
MRS QUANTOCK: Yes, and found his wife and six children occupying the best bedroom, and the wife wearing one of Mary Logan’s tea gowns.
LADY EMILY: No!
MRS QUANTOCK: A fact I assure you. ‘Spring in Provence’. Nonsense – not in the least like it. I’ve been to Provence.
LADY EMILY: What people suffer through their servants.
MRS QUANTOCK: Did I tell you about the housemaid that came to see me? Quite a nice respectable looking young woman. She asked me how many there were in family and if there were any young gentlemen. I said there was the general and myself and our two young nephews. And do you know what she had the impertinence to say?
LADY EMILY: No, dear.
MRS QUANTOCK: She said. Very well, I’ll come on Tuesday. But seeing there are young gentlemen, I’ll have a bolt on my bedroom door, please. I said, you’ll have no such thing for you won’t have a bedroom in my house. The impudence of the girl.
LADY EMILY: ‘La Nuit Blanche’. Dear, dear the bed looks very comfortable. Mrs. Lewis has had to get rid of her nurse. The woman simply wouldn’t allow her to come into her own nursery. Said she had entire charge and wouldn’t brook interference. Interference from the child’s own mother!
MRS QUANTOCK: Amy Lewis is a fool – always was. Look how she’s mismanaged that husband of hers.
LADY EMILY: He behaved very badly.
MRS QUANTOCK: I’ve no patience with women whose husbands behave badly. It’s a woman’s job to see that a man behaves properly. Do you think I would have stood any nonsense from Arthur?
LADY EMILY: But, we can’t all be like you, Maud. You’ve such a force of character.
MRS QUANTOCK: Men have got to be looked after. Left to himself a man always behaves badly. It’s only natural.
LADY EMILY: Everything seems very odd nowadays. Midge tells me that young people – people of different sexes – can go away and stay at hotels and positively nothing happens.
MRS QUANTOCK: I can well believe it. This generation has no virility.
LADY EMILY: It seems so unnatural.
MRS QUANTOCK: Of course it’s unnatural. Why, when I was a girl, if I had gone away for a week-end with a young man – Not that my parents would have permitted it for a minute – I repeat if I had gone away with a young man – everything would have happened.
(Examines wall)
This young man can’t paint a horse. I expect he lives in a nasty unhealthy studio and never goes into the country.
LADY EMILY: I expect you’re right, dear. That cow over there was most peculiar. I couldn’t even be sure if it was a cow or a bull.
MRS QUANTOCK: People shouldn’t try and paint nature when
