Mark Aldridge - The Passing of Mr Quinn

‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT’S LAST CASE

E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT INTERVENES

E. C. BENTLEY & H. WARNER ALLEN • TRENT’S OWN CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE WYCHFORD POISONING CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE SILK STOCKING MURDERS

LYNN BROCK • NIGHTMARE

BERNARD CAPES • THE MYSTERY OF THE SKELETON KEY

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE BIG FOUR

HUGH CONWAY • CALLED BACK

HUGH CONWAY • DARK DAYS

EDMUND CRISPIN • THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE CASK

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE PONSON CASE

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE GROOTE PARK MURDER

FRANCIS DURBRIDGE • BEWARE OF JOHNNY WASHINGTON

J. JEFFERSON FARJEON • THE HOUSE OPPOSITE

RUDOLPH FISHER • THE CONJURE-MAN DIES

FRANK FROËST • THE GRELL MYSTERY

FRANK FROËST & GEORGE DILNOT • THE CRIME CLUB

ÉMILE GABORIAU • THE BLACKMAILERS

ANNA K. GREEN • THE LEAVENWORTH CASE

VERNON LODER • THE MYSTERY AT STOWE

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE RASP

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE NOOSE

PHILIP MACDONALD • MURDER GONE MAD

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE MAZE

NGAIO MARSH • THE NURSING HOME MURDER

R. A. V. MORRIS • THE LYTTLETON CASE

ARTHUR B. REEVE • THE ADVENTURESS

FRANK RICHARDSON • THE MAYFAIR MYSTERY

R. L. STEVENSON • DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

EDGAR WALLACE • THE TERROR

ISRAEL ZANGWILL • THE PERFECT CRIME

FURTHER TITLES IN PREPARATION

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in The Novel Library by The London Book Co., an imprint of Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1928

Novelisation © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1928

Introduction © Mark Aldridge 2017

Jacket design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1928, 2017

The publishers would like to thank Agatha Christie Ltd for their co-operation in the publication of this edition.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008243968

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008243975

Version: 2017-08-08

Table of Contents

Cover

The Detective Story Club

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

The Passing of Mr Quinn

Note

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Appendix

Also Available

About the Publisher

OF the many publications that have been associated with (but not written by) Agatha Christie, The Passing of Mr Quinn is certainly one of the most curious—and, until now, one of the rarest. Originally published in 1928, the book is actually a novelisation of the silent film of the same title, which had been released the same year and was the very first screen adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. The film itself is now lost, along with its script, meaning that this tie-in publication is our best insight into this filmmaking first. The movie was publicised as an adaptation of Christie’s short story ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’, which had introduced the charming but mysterious stranger Harley Quinn, a man whose sudden appearance motivates characters to untangle a mystery that has been hanging over them for many years.

The timeline for the story might initially seem to be reasonably straightforward: Agatha Christie’s original short mystery ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’ was published in the March 1924 edition of The Grand Magazine before being adapted into the July 1928 film that used the same title. The film’s new interpretation of the mystery was then novelised as this book, The Passing of Mr Quinn , and Christie’s original short story was later published in April 1930 as the opening part of the short story collection The Mysterious Mr Quin , where it was renamed ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’, perhaps to differentiate it from the film and this novelisation. However, the development of this story is a little more complicated than this timeline may indicate.

One point is immediately obvious to those familiar with the original short story—the film and its novelisation diverge significantly from Christie’s narrative. In her original story, a mysterious death in the past is raised in a discussion amongst friends, who are spurred on by Quinn to make sense of the events. The film takes the same death as its starting point of the dramatisation, but after the main suspect is cleared it moves off in a wildly different direction as it emphasises the romantic relationship between two key characters and the appearance of a mysterious stranger.

In order to make sense of The Passing of Mr Quinn ’s journey between media we need to begin by looking at its original magazine appearance in 1924. The first thing to note about this version is the title, which spells the titular character with two ‘n’s. This is consistent with the later film, but not with Christie’s book of the short stories, which established ‘Quin’ as the definitive spelling. The title of both the film (which is often misspelled in articles) and this novelisation is not an aberration, then, but a reproduction of the original character’s name as it had appeared in the first four stories in The Grand Magazine . In fact, it was only when The Story-teller magazine published the next six stories that the spelling changed from Mr Quinn. Debuting in the Christmas 1926 issue and appearing monthly under the general headline ‘The Magic of Mr Quin’, this ‘New series of brilliant mystery stories’ established Quin as Christie’s third serial character after Hercule Poirot and Tommy & Tuppence. (Miss Marple did not appear anywhere until December 1927.)