S.O.S.
A Short Story
by Agatha Christie
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Copyright © 2008 Agatha Christie Ltd.
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Ebook Edition © MAY 2013 ISBN: 9780007526543
Version: 2017-04-13
Contents
Copyright
S.O.S.
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‘S.O.S.’ was first published in Grand Magazine, February 1926.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead appreciatively.
He stepped back and surveyed the round table with approval. The firelight gleamed on the coarse white tablecloth, the knives and forks, and the other table appointments.
‘Is – is everything ready?’ asked Mrs Dinsmead hesitatingly. She was a little faded woman, with a colourless face, meagre hair scraped back from her forehead, and a perpetually nervous manner.
‘Everything’s ready,’ said her husband with a kind of ferocious geniality.
He was a big man, with stooping shoulders, and a broad red face. He had little pig’s eyes that twinkled under his bushy brows, and a big jowl devoid of hair.
‘Lemonade?’ suggested Mrs Dinsmead, almost in a whisper.
Her husband shook his head.
‘Tea. Much better in every way. Look at the weather, streaming and blowing. A nice cup of hot tea is what’s needed for supper on an evening like this.’
He winked facetiously, then fell to surveying the table again.
‘A good dish of eggs, cold corned beef, and bread and cheese. That’s my order for supper. So come along and get it ready, Mother. Charlotte’s in the kitchen waiting to give you a hand.’
Mrs Dinsmead rose, carefully winding up the ball of her knitting.
‘She’s grown a very good-looking girl,’ she murmured. ‘Sweetly pretty, I say.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘The mortal image of her Ma! So go along with you, and don’t let’s waste any more time.’
He strolled about the room humming to himself for a minute or two. Once he approached the window and looked out.
‘Wild weather,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not much likelihood of our having visitors tonight.’
Then he too left the room.
About ten minutes later Mrs Dinsmead entered bearing a dish of fried eggs. Her two daughters followed, bringing in the rest of the provisions. Mr Dinsmead and his son Johnnie brought up the rear. The former seated himself at the head of the table.
‘And for what we are to receive, etcetera,’ he remarked humorously. ‘And blessings on the man who first thought of tinned foods. What would we do, I should like to know, miles from anywhere, if we hadn’t a tin now and then to fall back upon when the butcher forgets his weekly call?’
He proceeded to carve corned beef dexterously.
‘I wonder who ever thought of building a house like this, miles from anywhere,’ said his daughter Magdalen pettishly. ‘We never see a soul.’
‘No,’ said her father. ‘Never a soul.’
‘I can’t think what made you take it, Father,’ said Charlotte.
‘Can’t you, my girl? Well, I had my reasons – I had my reasons.’
His eyes sought his wife’s furtively, but she frowned.
‘And haunted too,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wouldn’t sleep alone here for anything.’
‘Pack of nonsense,’ said her father. ‘Never seen anything, have you? Come now.’
‘Not seen anything perhaps, but –’
‘But what?’
Charlotte did not reply, but she shivered a little. A great surge of rain came driving against the window-pane, and Mrs Dinsmead dropped a spoon with a tinkle on the tray.
‘Not nervous are you, Mother?’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘It’s a wild night, that’s all. Don’t you worry, we’re safe here by our fireside, and not a soul from outside likely to disturb us. Why, it would be a miracle if anyone did. And miracles don’t happen. No,’ he added as though to himself, with a kind of peculiar satisfaction. ‘Miracles don’t happen.’
As the words left his lips there came a sudden knocking at the door. Mr Dinsmead stayed as though petrified.
‘Whatever’s that?’ he muttered. His jaw fell.
Mrs Dinsmead gave a little whimpering cry and pulled her shawl up round her. The colour came into Magdalen’s face and she leant forward and spoke to her father.
‘The miracle has happened,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and let whoever it is in.’
Twenty minutes earlier Mortimer Cleveland had stood in the driving rain and mist surveying his car. It was really cursed bad luck. Two punctures within ten minutes of each other, and here he was, stranded miles from anywhere, in the midst of these bare Wiltshire downs with night coming on, and no prospect of shelter. Serve him right for trying to take a shortcut. If only he had stuck to the main road! Now he was lost on what seemed a mere cart-track, and no idea if there were even a village anywhere near.
He looked round him perplexedly, and his eye was caught by a gleam of light on the hillside above him. A second later the mist obscured it once more, but, waiting patiently, he presently got a second glimpse of it. After a moment’s cogitation, he left the car and struck up the side of the hill.
Soon he was out of the mist, and he recognized the light as shining from the lighted window of a small cottage. Here, at any rate, was shelter. Mortimer Cleveland quickened his pace, bending his head to meet the furious onslaught of wind and rain which seemed to be trying its