Mark Aldridge - The Passing of Mr Quinn

For a moment Professor Appleby was a different man. He was genuinely pleased with the volume Derek Capel had brought him, and he turned its leaves with the delicacy and care of the true bibliophile. It was a rare old volume.

All at once, however, Professor Appleby looked across at his visitor with hooded eyes.

‘But Eleanor would be charmed to see you,’ he said, with a vague note of mockery. ‘I believe she has retired to her room, but I am sure not yet to bed. We will ring and see whether she is disposed to grace our company with her presence.’

And with that twitching smile on his lips he crossed to the bell-push.

Vera, the house parlourmaid, answered the ring, her eyes red from crying. She scowled at her master’s urbane request, but vanished without a word. And in a few minutes Eleanor Appleby entered the study.

She came forward, smiling through her fear, and put out a cool little hand to Derek, looking entirely adorable and desirable in her gown of cream ninon and lace. The sight of her set Derek Capel afire, and in his smile and greeting as he took her hand there was a wealth of significance which did not escape the basilisk eyes of Professor Appleby.

Eleanor’s heart beat quicker with fear as she looked at her husband. Nothing escaped him. He was smiling now with that twitching of his lips as he looked down at the book, and there was something about his pretence at preoccupation that was very sinister.

‘Here it is,’ he said suddenly, in his slightly shrill voice. And his interest in the book was now very real. ‘It is, as I suspected, made up to my own formula. A poison that leaves no trace. I have it there,’ he went on in some excitement, pointing to the chemical cabinet. ‘You see!—In that little blue bottle! I have not experimented with it yet, but I am almost assured that it will prove to be what I claim.’

Involuntarily Eleanor Portal and Derek Capel exchanged glances.

Impelled by a fascination she could not understand or resist, Eleanor crossed to the medicine chest and reached out a delicate hand for the little blue-black bottle labelled ‘Poison,’ which stood there, and at which the professor had pointed.

Revulsion and attraction were pulling different ways with her. She had a shuddering impulse to throw up her arm across her forehead, to shield her gaze from that impish black bottle. And yet another thought came into her brain. If the worst came to the worst it would be—useful!

Professor Appleby was watching the play of emotion on her face closely, and suddenly as she was about to take the bottle he shot out an arm and grasped her wrist.

‘I don’t think,’ he said curtly, ‘that we’ll allow you to try any experiments with that bottle. They might have unfortunate results.’

She dropped her gaze, trembling violently.

Professor Appleby was, indeed, in one of his queer moods tonight, and electric tension hung in the air. But he was all urbanity as he turned once more to Derek Capel.

‘You must have a spot of something, old fellow, after your drive. What is it to be? Whisky, eh?’

‘Just a finger,’ agreed Derek nonchalantly.

But directly the professor’s back was turned to go for the drinks, Derek’s dark, handsome eyes sought and met Eleanor’s. He asked questions barely in a whisper. What happened? Had he ill-treated her? How could he help?

Impulsively Derek’s hand went out and found that of the woman he loved. She did not resist. Indeed, she clung to it. She was scarcely conscious of what she did; only knew that her heart was breaking with sorrow—and that Derek Capel was a very dear and old friend.

It was then, as they stood intimately near to one another, that Professor Appleby glanced in the mirror hanging against the wall—a mirror that reflected them both. A terrible savagery fleeted across his features, and there was a flash like summer lightning in his eyes.

He had suspected it. But the actual proof roused the raging beast in him.

He turned, and like a hawk from the wrist of the hunter, struck across the room, and seized his wife’s wrist in a grip of iron. She cried out at the pain of his grip, but he was brutally savage now, his thick underlip protruding as he thrust her towards the door.

‘Another lover, eh?’ he hissed as he pushed her past the curtains. ‘I’ll attend to him. Get up to your room.’

He watched her as she staggered rather than walked up the staircase, her slim shoulders shaking. At length, moistening his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, he strode back to the study.

Derek Capel was still there, standing near the shaded lamp. His arms were folded, and he appeared to be quite dispassionate. Professor Appleby, a monstrous glowering figure, came forward to the desk, and peered at him for a long moment as a mastiff might peer at a pup.

Derek Capel, faintly amused, returned his glance steadily and disdainfully.

At last Professor Appleby took up his wine glass, but paused to make remark.

‘Generally I would feel inclined to snap a man’s spine if he paid too much attention to my wife. But in this case it’s Eleanor who will pay.’ He rocked back on his heels with a tinny cackle. ‘You fool, Capel, you love her—but she’s mine. And tonight she’ll pay—pay—pay!’

Derek Capel snapped open his cigarette case, and lit one of the white tubes with a hand that was a trifle unsteady. The blue smoke streamed from his nostrils as he silently consumed the cigarette. He evidently badly needed the sedative. But he would not touch the whisky that had been poured out for him.

At last with his upper lip lifting in what was almost a silent snarl, he reached for his coat and hat, and slung the former over his arm, strolling towards the door. On the threshold he turned. ‘You cur, Appleby,’ he said, very quietly and contemptuously. ‘You cur! You’re not fit to have the care of a woman. I feel that you’re vile—one of the vilest things God made. Be very careful that it is not you who pays!’

He turned and strode from the room and the house, while Professor Appleby stared after him in gibbering rage.

‘My God!’ burst from the professor’s lips.

He seemed on the verge of apoplexy, and staggered towards a chair, sinking into it heavily. But after a time he became more calm, though it was a sinister calm.

A silence fell on the house, save for the ticking of the clock.

If Derek Capel wished to incite the professor to murder he could scarcely have gone about it in a more efficacious manner. With his heavy-lidded eyes bent on the ground Professor Appleby sat brooding.

His thoughts were all of the white, soft woman lying upstairs in bed, with the heart of her beating madly. He clenched and unclenched his hands, and at last got up and paced up and down the study. He saw the glass of port he had poured out, and lifting it, drained it off at a gulp.

A minute ticked away.

Heavens, what was it? He felt queer—bad! All at once he commenced panting hoarsely—breathing with difficulty. His head felt as if it were charged with cotton-wool on fire, and in his stomach was an awful pain.

Madly he tore at his collar, wrenched it from his neck. He could not breathe. Like a drunkard lurching towards an objective, he lurched towards an arm-chair. He wanted to cry out—to call for help, but he could not. His agony was immense, but mercifully it was short-lived. The death-rattle was already in his throat, and all was going black before him.

He fell heavily into the chair, and in doing so knocked a costly old Chinese vase from a pedestal nearby. It crashed just outside the fringe of the carpet in a thousand pieces—and the sound of it was like the last trump in that expectant house of dread. From the bedroom above came cries of alarm, and mingling with them were the terrible sobs that tore the throat of Professor Appleby in his last, short death agonies.