The Passing of Mr Quinn

There was a pregnant pause, filled with the gasps of those in the room. The servants, for the most part, were petrified with fear. The old cook could not even wail. She was sucking in breath like a fish out of water, her ample bosom heaving spasmodically. Amongst the servants only Vera, the parlourmaid, remained calm, and there was a contemptuous curl to her lips that could hardly be deemed respectful in the presence of death.

Eleanor was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful.

‘Derek—hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I—I feel I’m going to faint.’

There were tiny beads of perspiration on Derek Capel’s brow. His face was pale beneath his tan, and quivering as he put an arm round her. He was hardly more collected than she, but he appeared to make a great effort.

‘It’s a great shock,’ he said in a low tone. ‘Er—if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a spot of something to pull me together.’

He made a movement towards the round mahogany table, and took up the port decanter. But as he did so his hand shook violently, and in his eyes—studiously averted from the decanter he had picked up—there was a look of stark fear.

Eleanor bit her white lips. She could have cried out as she saw him take out the stopper. He was pouring the liquid in a glass with a shaking hand that spilled a little of it on the carpet. And Vera, the house parlourmaid, was watching the procedure through narrowed lids.

Suddenly Eleanor Appleby’s body springs were released. With a little cry, half moan, she darted forward and took the decanter from him. He yielded it to her grasp like a child, and looked at her stupidly as she tried to smile at him—a twisted, agonised little smile that struggled like the sun against the clouds.

‘Don’t, Derek,’ she whispered. ‘Not that. You—I’m going to play the game through to the end.’

She seemed on the verge of fainting. And then all of a sudden she gave a little gasp.

‘Oh!’

There was a sound of a crash. The decanter had slipped from her nerveless fingers, and now it lay on the floor, its glass shattered in pieces, and the red port streamed over the carpet in a blood-like pool.

A silence fell.

Eleanor moved across the room with faltering steps, and then suddenly threw up her arms like a baffled swimmer and nearly collapsed on the floor. Just in time, however, the old gardener, George—he who had taken her message to Derek Capel that night—dashed forward from the curtained doorway and caught her, leading her to a chair.

There she lay inertly, her hands covering her face and short dry gasps coming from her lips. Her fair hair had become loose and flowed over her shoulders, enveloping her like a cloud.

Derek Capel had made no move to help her. He stared down at the red pool on the floor, and something like a sigh was forced from his lips. He set down the glass at length, which contained merely enough dregs to cover the bottom.

‘Well, we’d better ’phone the police, I suppose,’ he said, with a dry rattle in his throat.

His dark, strangely handsome face working convulsively he crossed to the telephone in the hall. In a few moments he was in communication with the local police station and giving them particulars of what had happened.

All this time, Vera, the house parlourmaid, was regarding her mistress with a curious intentness. A tiny smile twitched scornfully on her lips, and once or twice she nodded slightly as one who should say: ‘I know something about this, and I mean to tell it.’

Vera, indeed, was amazingly self-possessed for one who saw her illicit lover lying huddled in a chair with death’s cold touch upon his face. A lover, moreover, from whom she had expected certain things, and who had betrayed and spurned her. She might scarce have been expected to weep, yet a little natural agitation would not have been incongruous to the occasion.

And so the police found them when they arrived scarcely more than five minutes later at the Lodge. Chief Inspector Brent of the C.I.D. of Scotland Yard, whose home happened to be in this quiet Sussex village, had been at the local police station when the late night call came through, and so the case had the attention of one of the most alert and keenly analytical criminal brains in the country right from the commencement.

Chief Inspector Brent was one who never placed too great a discount on first impressions. As he strode into the study his narrowed eyes took in every detail of the tableau, and noted all the persons in it, their position and demeanour.

The two maidservants, exhausted from hysterical weeping, but still too frightened to come directly into the study, were hanging back with the old housekeeper behind the curtains that, half-drawn, separated the study from the hall. The old gardener, George, was with them, stolid as ever, but with a hint of defiance in his seamed face.

Chief Inspector Brent glanced at them, then at Vera, whose general air was one of suppressed excitement, triumph and malice. Her eyes were very bright, and malice was very apparent in them as she looked from the detective to her mistress.

Inspector Brent ruled out all the servants as being of little consequence in the matter, except Vera.

His swift survey of the scene stopped at Derek Capel, who had now assumed a nonchalant attitude, and was smoking a cigarette. ‘You rang up the station, sir,’ he said, rather as if stating a fact than asking a question.

Derek Capel nodded. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘As you see, Professor Appleby has died—suddenly. It seemed to me to be a matter for the police.’

‘Quite right,’ said the inspector, smiling ironically and twisting his heavy moustache. ‘Ah, what’s that?’ he exclaimed. And as if noticing it for the first time, he crossed to the broken decanter and knelt beside the pool of wine on the carpet.

There was a queer tension—a silence. Every one except Eleanor Appleby craned forward as if noticing it, too, for the first time. That tell-tale decanter quite obviously contained the key to the riddle of Professor Appleby’s death.

‘I imagine that the professor was taking his nightcap of port when he—er—collapsed,’ Derek Capel said in a voice that sounded ragged somehow.

Inspector Brent slewed his head round to look at him, his face very keen.

‘The assumption being that he had some kind of fit, eh?’ he drawled, jerking erect. ‘Yes; that seems to fit the case.’ He took out his notebook, making entries and glancing at the professor, whose disordered hair and collar torn from the stud were eloquent of his death agonies; from the professor he looked repeatedly down at the broken decanter and the pool of wine that stained the carpet. Whatever his deductions may have been—and we can assume that Chief Inspector Brent was no fool—there was one in the room who was determined that he should not for a moment form a wrong impression as to how the decanter had been broken.

Vera plucked at his sleeve. The flags of colour had mounted to her cheeks, and her bosom was heaving madly. Her voice had acquired a shrill breathlessness.

‘He didn’t drop it himself—the professor. It was she that done it’—her finger flung out like a taunt, pointing at Eleanor, who looked like a weeping goddess in the arm-chair. ‘Yes, she broke the decanter and spilt the wine,’ concluded Vera with intense malice.

Chief Inspector Brent twirled his moustache and looked across at Professor Appleby’s wife. And a painful silence fell.

CHAPTER III

IT was broken by the arrival of Doctor Alec Portal—for Capel had rung him up immediately after concluding his message to the police station. Doctor Portal came into the study with his bag, which he immediately set down on the table. As he drew off his gloves he looked round upon the study and its occupants, but without saying a word.

His brows were drawn, however, giving his face a hawk-like expression. He crossed over to the chair, and but a momentary examination of the dead man sufficed. He dropped a limp hand into Professor Appleby’s lap as he straightened himself.

‘There’s nothing we can do, of course,’ he said quietly as he looked over at Inspector Brent. ‘The cause of the death will have to be decided by post-mortem examination. His own doctor will attend to say whether he was subject to fits or not.’

‘Fits be hanged!’ exclaimed Inspector Brent in a quite unprofessional outburst. ‘He died when he was taking his drink before retiring. There appear to be strange circumstances in this case, and I am afraid I must detain the company present while I ask questions of each.’

Chief Inspector Brent himself could not have explained what had jolted him out of his usual suave manner. But he almost glared at the doctor, who for his part confronted him with clean-cut face, very set, and eyes narrowed to shining slits. No doubt the atmosphere in the room was very tense—electric with excitement—and in such an atmosphere mental telepathy exercises its uncanny workings. Chief Inspector Brent had already decided that he had a line of investigation to follow, and it would entail a rather lengthy and no doubt painful interrogation of Eleanor Appleby.

Doctor Alec Portal guessed all this. He knew what was in the Yard man’s thoughts, and he was aflame with anger. He happened to know more of the affairs of this strange house than did Inspector Brent—he knew, for instance, that Professor Appleby had been very, very near the borderline of insanity, and that he was just the man to kill himself. But murder! That was a terrible word to use in connection with the beautiful girl-wife who sat tortured in the chair.

With her fair hair loose, and her dressing-gown scarce concealing her beautifully moulded figure under the frothy, lacy night-gown, she stirred his senses oddly even then.

‘I don’t think it would be wise to detain Mrs Appleby tonight,’ the doctor said stiffly. ‘As her medical adviser I have been in attendance upon her, and I know that she is in a considerably overwrought state. Tonight’s events may bring a climax unless she has rest. She can make a statement if she cares, but I must object to any form of Third Degree.’

The distinguished Yard chief looked at him sharply and resentfully.

‘A very ill-considered remark, doctor,’ he said sternly. ‘You may, on reflection, care to withdraw it.’

Doctor Portal bowed.

‘I withdraw and apologise,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Nevertheless this lady has been near to a nervous breakdown for some time, and I must beg of you to consider her feelings as much as possible. She has suffered a great deal.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.