Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

Remember Madame Clementine by Anthony Gilbert

When Cynthia was seventeen, the fortune teller promised her a lot of money — and something else that Cynthia and her two best friends, Agatha and Anne, would never forget...

I only saw Madame Clementine once, and that was nearly 30 years ago. She was telling fortunes at a fete for Destitute Children, and Miss Bennett gave the seniors the afternoon off “in a good cause.” I went with my friends, Agatha and Cynthia. We were all seventeen at the time.

It was Agatha who said we must all have half-a-crown’s-worth. Cynthia hung back.

“She might tell me something horrible,” she demurred.

“They aren’t allowed to,” Agatha assured her. She was the obviously successful member of the trio — you couldn’t imagine life daring to cheat Agatha — while Cynthia was the beauty. And how, as my sons say! I was what is still called the Plain Jane.

“You’ll come, Anne,” Agatha continued, swinging round to me.

“Just for a joke,” I said.

Agatha went first and came back saying Madame Clementine was really quite reliable. She’d told her she would have a successful life, with fame and fortune.

“Which is just what I intend,” nodded Agatha. “I only wanted to see how much she really knew.”

Then it was my turn. Madame Clementine took my hand, glanced at it, and returned it to me.

“That’s the kind of hand I like best,” she said. “My dear, you will have a very happy life.”

“Is that all you’re going to tell me?” I asked, thinking, I suppose, it wasn’t very much for half-a-crown.

Madame stared. “All? What more could you desire? Yours is the best of fortunes. Money loses its value and beauty dies, but happiness is immortal.”

We had to coax Cynthia to go in. In my heart I didn’t believe any harm could come to anyone so lovely. I used to wonder what it must feel like to know that heads were turning wherever you went. I must say for Cynthia she hardly seemed aware of it.

She was away longer than either of us, and when she returned she was chalk-white and walking like a blind person.

We were horrified. “Pull yourself together, Cynnie,” exclaimed Agatha. “What on earth’s the matter?”

It was quite a minute before she could speak. Then she said with a pitiful attempt at sangfroid, “Oh, I’m coming into money. A lot of money. Think of that. Only of course I shan’t. We’ve no fabulous uncle in Australia, and I’m not clever like Agatha.”

“You’ll marry a millionaire, of course,” I said.

I thought she would faint. “No, Anne, that’s the awful thing she told me. If I marry it will end in violent death.”

After that summer I didn’t see either of them for years, though I heard of Agatha, of course. Even a person as unfashionable as myself couldn’t miss the success she’d made, with a salon in London and a flat in Paris and dress shows to which everybody came who could beg, borrow, or steal an admission ticket. Madame Clementine had proved right about me, too. I had eight happy years at home with my mother and when she died all the lights of the world seemed to go out. Then Barry Frost fell in love with me — me, the plain, ordinary Anne Gardner — and we were married and my happiness flowered like an orchard in spring.

Of Cynthia I heard nothing; we moved in different worlds.

One day when the twins were fifteen I came up to London to renew their school outfits, and later, while window-shopping on Bond Street, I heard someone call my name.

“Anne! Anne!”

I turned; a taxi-door flashed open and a hand caught my wrist.

“Get in quick! You’re holding up the traffic.”

It was Agatha. I couldn’t mistake her voice and manner, though I stared in amazement at the elegant sophisticated woman at my side, trying to reconcile her with sturdy opinionated Agatha Page of Miss Bennett’s school.

We talked as women do who haven’t met for years and she took me back to her Club for tea. She didn’t seem to notice I was wearing last year’s reach-me-down and did my own hair.

“Do you ever hear anything of Cynthia Maxwell?” I asked presently.

“Good old Madame Clementine!” murmured Agatha. “Wake up, Anne. You must remember Madame Clementine.”

I hadn’t thought of her for years, but now I remembered her and her prophecy for Cynthia — a lot of money and marriage ending in violent death. I shivered.

“Did any of it come true?”

“The money did. She was left a fortune from a most unexpected source. As for the other — well.” She shrugged narrow elegant shoulders. “She has too much sense to test it.”

“You mean, she’s not married? That lovely girl. She... she didn’t lose her looks, did she?”

“Oh, no. If possible, she’s lovelier than ever. She comes to me for her clothes. It would almost pay me to dress her for nothing.”

“And yet she didn’t marry?” It seemed to me tragic.

“Being beautiful doesn’t help you much if you’re dead,” retorted Agatha. “And everything else Madame prophesied has come true. In Cynthia’s shoes I wouldn’t have married either. And you can stop looking sorry for her, Anne. She has a wonderful time. Her country house is a show-place; she has a flat in town and the sort of car that must be seen to be believed — she’s gone all mechanical-minded, if you can believe it. She knows everyone...”

But I was thinking — no Barry, no twins, no nine-year-old Simon — and my heart bled for Cynthia.

In the strange way things happen in life I was to hear of Cynthia again within the month and this time, to cap all, it was the announcement of her engagement and forthcoming marriage to a man named Raymond Martin. On impulse I wrote to congratulate her, and to my delighted amazement she not only remembered who I was, but invited me to come to London and meet her fiancé. I cancelled a W.I. meeting and a whist drive and came up on an excursion ticket.

Cynthia’s flat was like something in the movies, and Cynthia herself was so radiantly beautiful she almost bowled me over. She looked at least ten years younger than I did, though we were the same age.

“Anne, darling, you haven’t changed a scrap! You always looked as though life had just handed you the world on a plate. Tell me, do you remember Madame Clementine?”

I said Agatha had reminded me of her a few weeks before. She looked surprised.

“But until then you had forgotten? How could you, Anne? I never did. She actually stopped me getting married more than once, but now I’m so grateful because it means I’m free for Raymond.”

We talked for a bit and then Raymond came in, and I had a second shock. Because he must have been five years younger than Cynthia looked, and was as unforgettable in his way as she in hers. Only — I didn’t like his way. Perhaps living for nearly twenty years with an honest man has prejudiced me against charm, Raymond’s kind at all events. For in him, you see, charm wasn’t simply an incidental — it was a profession. It was his bread-and-butter, it kept working hours. When there was nothing to be gained by it he switched it off, as you switch off a light when you leave a room; and just as a flick of your finger makes everything dark, so, when his charm was turned off, there was nothing but darkness left. Naturally, Cynthia didn’t see that, but then, for her, the light never went out.

“He’s only marrying her for her money,” I told Barry when I got back. “What can we do about it?”

“Nothing,” said Barry sensibly. “She’s a grown woman and she must be allowed to make a mess of her life if she chooses. And it may not be a mess.”

I shrank from telling him about Madame Clementine. He’d have thought I was going out of my mind.

“If she chooses to invest — oh, speculate, if you like — in a husband instead of stocks and shares, it’s her funeral,” he insisted.

Which was precisely what I feared it was going to be.

I wrote to Agatha, but she was in New York and by the time she got back it was too late. The marriage had taken place, and bride and bridegroom had flown to Italy for their honeymoon. Barry would say I was morbid but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that somehow Cynthia had vanished from the plane en route.

But she sent me postcards from Rome and Naples — Deliriously happy — and when they came back they settled in her house in Devonshire. She even invited me to stay, but one of the twins had measles, so I had to refuse and the chance didn’t come again.

They’d been married about six months, when I got an agitated letter from Agatha.

And then in big sprawling letters: Remember Madame Clementine!

Barry said it was ridiculous, but I felt the same as Agatha. I wrote to Cynthia that I’d had ’flu and the doctors wanted me to get away and would she like to revive her original invitation, and I got a letter by return mail, saying I was to come immediately and stay as long as I could.

Raymond met me at the station, driving a magnificent green Broad-bent.

“Cynthia’s wedding present,” he told me. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

He patted the side of the hood as if it were the flanks of a mare.

“Do you drive, Anne? I can call you Anne, can’t I?”

“I wouldn’t dare drive that,” I told him frankly, remembering our ancient Morris.

His hand touched mine for an instant. “To tell you the truth, she scares me, too,” he acknowledged. “It’s a comfort to remember that Broadbents are foolproof. Speaking for myself, I drive by guess and by God.” He did, too; I had ample proof of that in the next twenty minutes.

“Cynthia doesn’t trust me a yard,” he went on comfortably, as the car dashed along at what seemed to me a reckless pace. “She won’t come out with me unless we’re just driving on the flat. There’s a place near here called Dead Man’s Hill.” He chuckled. “I’ll take you there one day, if you’ll come. The authorities have put up a skull-and-cross-bones on the hairpin bend. If you lost control of the car there for even 30 seconds you’d have had it. I suppose,” he wound up meditatively, “that skull grinning at you would be the last thing you’d see before you plunged into eternity.”

I felt my scalp prickle. I was sure then how and where it would happen, that violent death foreseen by Madame so many years ago.

“Why take the car down that hill?” I murmured, and he laughed.

“Oh, it’s quite a favorite trip of mine,” he said.

He didn’t have to tell me why he went that way so often. Agatha had done that in her letter. I wondered if Cynthia had any inkling of the truth. Even before we reached the house I’d have given anything to be back in the shabby rectory with Barry and the children.

I had expected Cynthia to look haggard and wan, but, on the contrary, she looked wonderful. She sparkled like the sea when the sun’s on it. But I couldn’t understand how it was she couldn’t see through Raymond’s veneer of charm to the falsity that lay just under the surface.

I remember Agatha’s The wife’s always the last to know.

I must admit Raymond played up wonderfully. He was as attentive to Cynthia as if they were still honey-mooners, and the perfect host to me. But nothing dulled my conviction that he was only marking time.

Madame’s prophecy was fulfilled the night before I was due to go home. At lunch-time Cynthia asked how I’d like to spend my last afternoon with them — how about a drive? I said I thought I’d walk down to the village and buy a few souvenirs for the people at home, and then pack quietly.

“You come out with me, Cynnie,” Raymond suggested.

“No, no,” cried my heart, but Cynthia agreed placidly. I wished I had the courage to say I’d changed my mind, but I hadn’t. As I left the house Raymond brought the car round to the front and went in to tell Cynthia he’d be ready in five minutes. Cynthia came down to the gate and waved me off.

“Ask Mrs. Rose for tea if we’re not back,” she said.

Not back! Well I knew the two of them would never come back — I knew it as certainly as I knew my own name.

I did my shopping and lingered over tea in the village; I wanted to put off my return as long as I could, but sooner or later I had to go back. The instant Mrs. Rose opened the door for me I knew it had happened.

“Oh, Mrs. Frost,” she whispered, “there’s been a terrible accident.”

I felt my heart freeze. “The car?” But I knew the answer.

“Yes, madam. That dreadful hill. Cars shouldn’t be allowed to go down there. I always knew there’d be a crash sooner or later.”

“Dead?” I whispered.

She nodded. “Oh, yes, madam. No one would have a chance. The car’s smashed to pieces, that lovely car. There was a witness, a gentleman; he said it seemed to go out of control.”

“So much for Broadbents being foolproof,” I said bitterly.

“He said something about a nut working loose, they didn’t know how,” she amplified.

I could tell you, I thought. In my mind’s eye I saw a murderous finger and thumb deliberately turning the nut, insuring catastrophe.

Mrs. Rose was speaking again. “Thank goodness, she wasn’t in it,” she said.

“She — wasn’t—?” I didn’t think I’d heard right.

“No, Mrs. Frost. At the last minute Madam had a headache and decided to stay at home. I daresay if she’d gone with him it wouldn’t have happened. Mrs. Martin would never go with her husband on that hill.”

Her voice said it was a judgment on him.

Cynthia came down later, very pale, very remote.

“Oh, Cynnie,” I whispered, “Mrs. Rose told me.” But that’s all I could say; the words stuck in my throat.

Cynthia came over to the mantelpiece. “It had to happen some time,” she said calmly. “I suppose this is what Madame Clementine foresaw.” And then, unbelievably, she laughed. That laughter rang through the house. “It’s all right, Anne,” she said between gasps, “I’m not hysterical. I’m just thinking how funny it is to realize we all took it for granted the violent death would be mine! And yet, there are two parties to every marriage.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes. I longed only to leave the house and never see her again. Because I knew now with shattering certainty whose finger and thumb had turned that nut so that, on the hill, the car would go out of control.

“Cynthia’s a mechanic,” Agatha had said.

And — “I drive by guess and by God,” confessed Raymond.

I remembered again what Agatha had said. The wife’s always the last to know.

The last? I wonder!