by G. Roy McRae
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.’
Thus did the two men range themselves on opposite sides. Alec Portal, deeply chivalrous and in love, scorned the very idea of foul play in connection with the professor’s death. And that the breath of suspicion should
for an instant be directed against the fair and gracious girl, who had suffered so much during Professor Appleby’s lifetime, and had borne it with quiet dignity and womanly resignation, was unbelievable, monstrous!
For two years she had been chained by the marriage tie to this human fiend. She had endeavoured to preserve a brave front to the world, and to bolster up the illusion that she was happily married to a sane and normal man, who cherished and loved her as a man should cherish and love the woman he takes for a wife. All that Eleanor Appleby had done, as much for the professor’s sake as her own. But he had openly flouted her and insulted her in public. He had shown that he regarded her as one of the smallest and meanest of his goods and chattels, and he had shown, too, on more than one occasion the subtle, hideous cruelty to which he constantly subjected this beautiful girl wife of his.
… There had been the occasion of the local flower show, when Eleanor had appeared at Professor Appleby’s side, a fairylike breathless creature in a white, girlish frock with short sleeves. The villagers had openly admired Professor Appleby’s girl bride, her beauty and sweet modesty. Perhaps, as locals will, they gaped too much. But it was more likely that Professor Appleby, with his subtle, fiendish cruelty, had deliberately intended to humiliate his wife when, before the officials of the flower show, he icily informed Eleanor that she was not modestly dressed and ordered, her to go home.
The frock had been ravishingly perfect in its white modesty and sweet simplicity. Doctor Alec Portal recalled the incident vividly, and also his own indignation at the slight that had been put upon one who had appeared so gracious and ideal a wife for any man. Perhaps that had been the beginning of his interest in Eleanor Appleby.
It had grown unconsciously since he had attended her as medical adviser. His heart had ached to see the brave way she had tried to bear up under her husband’s persistent cruelty. And he had grown more and more alarmed to find that Eleanor was being tortured beyond all endurance, that she was becoming listless, pale, but a shadow of her former radiant self.
Finally had come the alarming discovery that she was very near to nervous prostration. Then Doctor Alec Portal’s protective instincts had reared up, and he had become emboldened to speak candidly and straightforwardly to her husband.
With the result that he had been ordered from the house. And on going he had made the great discovery that he loved Eleanor Appleby—another man’s wife!
And now this! The dead man lying there huddled in the chair, with his head hanging curiously to one side. And Eleanor Appleby was free! Doctor Alec Portal hardly understood the chaos of his own emotions, yet he knew as he looked into the hard, sardonic eyes of Chief Inspector Brent, of Scotland Yard, that, come what might, he would fight for the woman he loved, protect her from the harshness and injustice of the world, and, if he were allowed to do so, make up to her a little of what she had lost.
Chief Inspector Brent, for his part, was in his most judicial mood. He had seen too many women in distress to be affected by the sight of this beautiful, overwrought and forlorn girl now. As he often maintained, he merely wished to get at the truth.
He approached Eleanor now, tapping his notebook with his pencil.
‘Madam,’ he asked in hard, even tones, ‘can you throw any light upon this matter? If so, I should be glad if you would assist me as much as possible. Kindly look at the deceased. Was he, in life, your husband. Professor Appleby?’
Eleanor started up. Cold horror transfigured her beautiful oval face. She hardly knew what she was saying. She had been through so much, and now the snapping point was almost reached.
‘No, no! I can’t look! It is too terrible! He was a monster—a fiend! Oh, he deserved to die!’
‘There is a latin tag, moriotorium nil nisi bonum,’ said the inspector gravely, compressing his lips. ‘No doubt you know it. It means “of the dead let nothing but good be spoken”. You were afraid of your husband then—’
‘He—he had been so cruel!’ gasped Eleanor. ‘He was in one of his worst moods tonight—’
At this stage Doctor Alec Portal stepped forward determinedly, his blue eyes holding a savage gleam.
‘I can’t allow any more of this, inspector,’ he said harshly. ‘My patient must have rest and care and attention at once, otherwise I shall not answer for the consequences. Besides, this cross-examination is irregular. If I were Mrs Appleby, I should insist that my lawyer were present before answering any more questions.’
Their eyes met in an angry rapier play duel once again.
‘It is within my province to ask Mrs Appleby what she knows of this affair,’ the detective said coldly. ‘Of course, if she prefers not to make any voluntary statement—’
Once again he looked directly at Eleanor, who was supported in Alec Portal’s arms, her whole body shaken with silent, tearless sobs. She wanted to run away somewhere and sob, sob, until her heart broke. She turned to Inspector Brent, eyes asking for compassion, lashes tremulous, lips a-quiver. But in his cold gray eyes was only a relentless inquiry and suspicion.
The blood mantled her face like a flame, and she made a clutch at her reeling senses.
‘What is it you want to know?’ she asked in a low, proud voice.
‘I have only one or two questions,’ answered the detective. ‘Firstly, how did you discover your husband’s death?’
‘I—I heard the vase smash,’ she answered, ‘It must have wakened me, for I was in bed. Then I heard groans and cries and I came rushing downstairs, to discover—this.’
‘Thank you.’ The detective bowed slightly. ‘The vase was broken when you arrived on the scene then. And the port decanter?’—he raised his eyebrows slightly as he said this.
Involuntarily Eleanor’s beautiful brown eyes took a startled look, a gasp left her white lips, and she looked quickly across at Derek Capel, who smiled and nodded reassurance.
‘I—I don’t know,’ she made answer, ‘Everything is so confused. I—I moved near him to look, and—I think there was another crash.’ She threw up her white arm across her temples, a sickening horror upon her all of a sudden. ‘Oh, I must get away from this room—I can’t stay here any longer.’
Inspector Brent nodded his gray head. ‘Very well. That will be all for tonight, Mrs Appleby, thank you. Doubtless at a later date you will remember exactly what happened—whether you brushed against the table in your agitation and knocked over the wine decanter. In any case the spilt wine will be analysed.’—he looked keenly at her as he said this.
But if she heard the words and understood their hidden imputation, she showed only vast relief at being dismissed, and turned away, a pathetic, forlorn figure, with Alec Portal’s arm around her shoulder.
As she went up the stairs, with the old housekeeper following eagerly to render her youug mistress any attention she might require, Chief Inspector Brent turned and looked with a significant expression on his grizzled face through the open doorway into the hall, where, with two policemen, stood a plain-clothes officer making notes.
It was evident that Chief Inspector Brent had made up his mind already as to the facts of the case. He was noted for these quick decisions, on which he based his lines of investigation. And almost invariably his first considered opinion on a case proved to be the right one.
In this case he took the strong view that Professor Appleby had been poisoned, and that his wife, Eleanor Appleby, should answer to the charge of having caused his death. When he made up his mind as to who was the culprit Inspector Brent always pursued the case with a relentless vigour and tenacity of purpose that, in most cases, earned him success and proved the guilt of the person suspected.
After Eleanor Appleby had retired to her room, the police investigations assumed a brisk and more normal form. There was a touch of the gruesome when an ambulance arrived, and the mortal remains of Professor Appleby, brilliant and eccentric scientist, were removed. The newspaper reporters by now had arrived, and were flocking round the house like vultures on a stricken field. There
would be a sensational tit-bit of news to place on the breakfast table of the great British public on the morrow.
SUDDEN DEATH OF BRILLIANT SCIENTIST!
PROFESSOR APPLEBY DIES IN A FIT.
STRONG SUSPICION OF FOUL PLAY.
Doctor Alec Portal visualised all this and his face was grave as he waited in the ante-room with the servants, each of whom was to be questioned in turn by Inspector Brent, who was even then in the drawing-room interrogating Derek Capel.
Doctor Portal was determined to give his evidence with decision at the inquest, and he felt sure that it would carry weight. He scorned the idea of foul play. Such things only happened as a rule in sensational plays. He fully concurred in the view that Professor Appleby had met a violent end, but it was violence that was engendered by his own uneasy brain and turbulent nature. In a word, he had died from an apoplectic fit, and medical examination would no doubt bear out this view.
What then was the police inspector from Scotland Yard making all this ridiculous fuss about?
In the drawing-room Inspector Brent sat at a table with his plain-clothes sergeant at a smaller table behind him to take notes, and facing them, lounging in an easy chair, was Derek Capel.
He was superbly at his ease now. The dark, handsome eyes were mocking, the tips of his tiny black moustache were curled, and his face was as fresh and debonair as if he had just risen in the morning.
‘You say you did not see Mrs Appleby drop the decanter?’ Inspector Brent asked gravely.
‘Not a bit of it,’ answered Derek Capel, crossing his legs easily. ‘What would she be wanting with a decanter when she’d just seen her husband dead?’
Chief Inspector Brent leant over his desk. ‘You are not shielding anyone, Mr Capel?’ he asked, his shaggy brows knit.
Derek Capel laughed. But there was a haunted look deep in his eyes. ‘I see you disdain finesse, inspector,’ he said. ‘No; I am not shielding Mrs Appleby.’
‘Yet you were very good friends,’ pursued the inspector. ‘You say you came here tonight to lend Professor Appleby a book? You saw Mrs Appleby, who retired to her room ten minutes or quarter of an hour before you left. Did you part or good terms with the professor?’
