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

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.