by G. Roy McRae
‘Most certainly,’ exclaimed Derek Capel, raising his eyebrows. ‘Were there any signs of a quarrel of anything like that then?’
‘I don’t suggest there was a struggle,’ the detective said, tapping his pencil on the desk, ‘but you may have left rather hurriedly. For you see, Mr Capel, there was a glass of whisky left on the desk, evidently poured out for someone.’
Derek Capel smiled.
‘It was poured out for Mrs Appleby,’ he said easily. ‘She left it, pleading a headache, and retired to her room. I myself drank port. You will no doubt find two glasses with traces of port in them if you search diligently.’
‘But Mrs Appleby never drinks whisky,’ the inspector said, leaning forward again. ‘I have ascertained that from the house parlourmaid, who persists in her statement that she saw Mrs Appleby drop the port decanter.’
Derek Capel laughed contemptuously. ‘I cannot answer for the testimony that Vera, the parlourmaid, gives,’ he rejoined. ‘Probably Mrs Appleby does not drink whisky, and that was why she refused it. I see no mystery in that.’
‘You are shielding her, Mr Capel,’ the detective said sharply. ‘Now tell me this: why did you return to the house at all?’
‘I heard screams and cries, I—’
‘But you should have driven well away by then,’ pursued the detective relentlessly. ‘Is it not the truth, Mr Capel, that you are often to be seen in the vicinity of the Lodge. You hang about here in your car. You are, in fact, in love with Mrs Appleby, and even after you had left the house you could not tear yourself away.’
Derek Capel threw back his head with a joyous chuckle.
‘So that’s the gossip of the village, eh? You have been talking to the servants, inspector—especially Vera, I suppose. Take it from me it is all a pack of lies. If I suffer from insomnia and do ride round o’ nights, am I to be accused of haunting the house of another man’s wife?’
Chief Inspector Brent rose impatiently. He was evidently finished with Derek Capel, and was more convinced than ever that Mrs Appleby had poisoned her husband.
‘One last question, and you may go,’ he said harshly. ‘You finished your port, and Professor Appleby finished his, and he saw you to the door, eh?’
‘That is so,’ answered the other with a mocking light in his eyes.
‘Then, in your opinion would Mrs Appleby have had time to reach the decanter whilst the professor was seeing you off at the door?’ He thumped on the table emphatically as he saw a startled look jump to Derek Capel’s eyes. ‘Ah, I thought so! That is your opinion of what happened. The professor came back, had another glass of port—and died!’
‘It is all rubbish,’ said Derek Capel harshly, and he had gone pale as death now. ‘She is good and pure. She would not do such a thing, though God knows she had enough provocation. Poisoning is an art of foreigners, and—’
‘I think that is all, Mr Capel,’ the inspector said, suddenly suave and calm. ‘Go out by that door, if you please.’
After he had gone the inspector had the servants in one by one, except Vera, whom he had already questioned. The two servants declared positively that they had not seen Mrs Appleby drop the decanter and break it, but then they had been standing all the time outside the door, and the curtain had screened their mistress from their view. They had heard a crash.
George, the aged gardener at the Lodge, yielded a complete blank. His stupid answers to every question confirmed the inspector in the opinion that he was half-witted. If only he had known! George, the gardener, could have told a strange story of what had taken place at the Lodge that night. He could have told terrible stories of Professor Appleby’s cruelty, his fits of insanity, for George, the oldest retainer of the house, had suffered more during the years through the mad genius of his master than anyone. Perhaps that was why he had the silence of the sphinx in his tongue.
Mary, the old housekeeper, too, was incoherent and babbling. Her tale was not worth a fig to the inspector. She seemed more concerned about having ‘a beautiful funeral for the pore master’ now than anything else.
It was the inspector’s view that the testimony of servants was never worth much. They were generally illiterate and of a low order of intelligence, and could be made to believe and corroborate anything so long as it was impressed strongly enough upon them that it had happened. And this is a view that both the bar and the bench generally recognise as having a very sound basis.
But Vera! She was not of the ordinary type. A voluptuous, wanton creature of unbridled passions, she played some strange part in this drama which the man from Scotland Yard could not quite fathom. Her intelligence was quite up to standard. And it was commensurate with her malicious hatred of her beautiful mistress.
A lingering doubt remained in Inspector Brent’s mind as he prepared his notes in the early hours of that morning.
Why did one woman ever hate another? Was it not often because of rivalry for the affections of a man? Then—
With an impatient gesture Chief Inspector Brent of Scotland Yard dismissed that line of thought as likely to lead nowhere. He rose from the desk and crossed over to the medicine cabinet in Professor Appleby’s study. It was the small blue-black bottle marked poison that immediately riveted his attention.
Inspector Brent did not touch it. But he decided to have it examined for finger marks. In the pursuance of his duty the Yard chief was a conscientious and thoroughgoing man. That was how he got his results.
Upstairs in her little pink and white bedroom Eleanor Appleby lay very still, with the heart of her beating madly in the big downy bed. Once she started up wildly with a great fear upon her. In the darkness she had envisioned her husband’s white, gross face, with the glittering eyes of insanity, the gleaming monocle in the right eye, and the tight, red mouth twisted in a crooked smile.
‘Oh … Oh … Goodness!’
The words came from her in a gasp. That red mouth twisted in a more crooked smile upon her—it was like a red wound in his white face! The eyes gleamed malevolently; the white face seemed to loom nearer her.
She beat at the vision with little fluttering hands, gasping and crying. ‘I didn’t do it—I didn’t do it!’ she cried huskily. ‘I—oh, I don’t know who did it! Don’t ask me!’
And then the vision was gone.
She sank down on the pillow again, palpitant, overwhelmed with horror, and it was a long time before the mad beating of her heart commenced to subside. He was haunting her! Her whole being was racked by pain and anguish and half-stifled sobs.
She had seen him! He was haunting her! What did he want from her—the truth? Dear Heaven bear witness that she had not poisoned him. She had not taken any part in it.
Then all at once the kaleidoscopic images in her reeling brain—images of her husband, smiling crookedly at her, of Derek, with his haunting, dark eyes; the detective, threatening and stern—all these vanished, and into her brain came one awful thought. With her own hands she had touched the poison bottle in the cabinet! She remembered that, remembered the dreadful thoughts that had been in her mind at the time.
What else had she done? Surely there was no hiatus in her brain, no blank in her living memory of that evening! Dear Heaven! Surely she had not done this thing! She started up in a frenzy, her eyes full of horror, staring into the opaque blackness of the room. No, God!—oh, no, it was not true! No—no!
For answer she seemed to hear her husband’s jeering laugh; Professor Appleby’s voice through the darkness, like the croaking of Stygian frogs, telling her that it was so—that she was the murderess.
She could stand it no longer. She must escape somehow—somewhere from this house of horror and dread. She slipped out of bed, an ethereal figure in her nightgown, and crammed her feet into a pair of satin slippers, then hastily crossed over to her wardrobe.
From it she flung everything—Paris gowns and frocks that billowed on the floor in a frothy mass of delicate colours. With her large brown eyes dilated unnaturally in her delicately moulde
d face, her fair hair tumbled in a gossamer cloud around her shoulders, she presented a wonderful phantasy for an artist—a phantasy of fear. Often she glanced behind her in childish fear, but there was no one now save herself in the room; the visions no longer haunted her.
At length she found what she sought, a tweed costume for golfing or walking. She dressed hastily, feverishly, and then, a slim, girlish figure in the tweed suit, she crossed to the bed and pulling off the bedclothes commenced to knot them together to form an improvised rope.
She had done this years before when as a girl at a boarding-school she had planned with other girls to escape from the dormitory on some madcap prank. It had worked successfully then; the rope sheet tied to the bed post. She prayed that it might do so now.
At length her work was done, and she pushed the bed on its castors over to the window. The first pale streaks of dawn were appearing in the sky, and in the leaden, cold half-light of the heavens there seemed to Eleanor Appleby to hover a brooding threat.
Yet she must escape. To stay here any longer would be intolerable. Giving herself no time to think of the madness of her act, she tied the bed sheet securely to the bed, and furling the rest out of the window she climbed on to the window sill.
She commenced to lower herself inch by inch. It was nearly twenty feet to the ground. All at once she felt faint, dizzy. Her heart was beating as if to stifle her. She had a wild impulse to let go, to fall to the ground and so end it all. But even in the most desperate of God’s creatures there is a tenacious clinging to life, and though she dared not look down, she continued to lower herself to the ground, mastering her giddiness and faintness with a great effort.
At long last she touched terra firma, and like a startled fawn, she darted away, leaving the tell-tale white sheet hanging from the window. She was keeping close to the ivy and lichen-covered wall, in the shadows, hoping against hope that her wild ruse would avail her, and that she would succeed in escaping from this house where she had spent so many months of misery and terror which had culminated at last in tragedy.
She knew her way well, and was making for the tree-shadowed drive, the gates and liberty, when all at once she almost collided with the figure of a man that appeared from the bushes right in her path.
‘Eleanor! Oh, my dear!’
She started violently and stopped dead. She could only stare at him, trembling as a child would do on the sudden break of a storm.
At last she found her voice.
‘Derek!’ she whispered. ‘Oh, you gave me such a fright! I—I thought— Is it really you.’
It was Derek Capel smiling at her through the darkness, and in his most devil-may-care and reckless mood. It seemed to Eleanor all at once that he was the only real person in all this nightmare world of horror. Yes, it was the same handsome, dissolute face, with the tiny pointed moustache on the curved upper lip, the same clear-cut features, with the fine chin dimpled in the centre, denoting the violent, passionate nature of the man; and the same dark, smiling eyes that could speak more eloquently of the things this man desired to tell this woman than could Derek Capel with his own lips.
‘Eleanor! Little woman,’ he said huskily, approaching a step nearer. ‘I’ve been watching your window. I saw you escape. I—I’ve been making the same plans as a matter of fact. Let’s steal away together, little one. Just you and I, to a new world where no one knows us, where no one will ever guess. I’ve made all the plans. I’ve arranged false passports, and with a swift dash to the coast we can get away before dawn.’
Eleanor’s heart was beating to suffocation. Here was a way of escape. She could not deny to herself the truth: Derek Capel worshipped her, adored her. He would commit any mad, reckless act for her sake.
Yet if she took this love he offered her now—this protection and help, what would happen? Sooner or later—very soon, perhaps—the police would find her. Their suspicions would be strengthened by the fact that she had run away from this horror that had come into her life.
As she stood there, swaying on her decision, her mind in a whirl, Eleanor Appleby had a sudden tingling of fear, all her instincts rearing in warning. And she looked around her fearfully.
She could perceive nothing in the darkness, and she returned her gaze with half-parted lips to handsome, reckless Derek whom she had known as a boy, and who now offered to become her lover.
He was so preoccupied that no sixth sense served to warn him. Yet, actually, Chief Inspector Brent of Scotland Yard with three of his men had crept up very close behind the bushes, and the Yard chief was only waiting before pouncing and making his coup, to see if the woman he was convinced had killed Professor Appleby would yet convict herself from her own lips.
‘I can’t go with you, Derek,’ she whispered with trembling lips. ‘I—I can’t let you share this trouble. It is good of you—noble. But—’
With a sudden exclamation Derek Capel slipped an arm round her shoulders and drew her to him. His arms tightened, and he held her close. She felt the mad beating of his heart, and curiously enough her own became numbed by an icy feeling of despair.
She shivered a little in his arms. ‘Eleanor,’ he whispered, ‘you are mine—mine! I won you, d’you hear? Don’t be afraid,’ he went on, as though speaking to a child. ‘I’ll take you away from all this—where we shall be safe. Eleanor, you know I love you—you beautiful, tantalising little thing. I’d go through hell for you. Kiss me, sweetheart—kiss me, and make me the happiest man in the world, before we go away and leave it all—’
He broke off suddenly in utter consternation. ‘God!’ he jerked out. He was looking around him like a hunted animal.
In an access of panic Eleanor freed herself from his grasp. For she had seen, too, now. In ungovernable alarm and fear she found herself staring at Chief Inspector Brent of Scotland Yard, who stood before her grimly, with three uniformed police constables behind him.
‘I am sorry you should resort to the expedient of climbing out of the window of your bedroom, madam,’ said the Yard man gruffly. ‘It makes it necessary for me to take a certain course.’
He was evidently ill at ease, and for a moment there was a tense silence.
‘You know me,’ he went on. ‘I am Chief Inspector Brent of New Scotland Yard. You are Eleanor Appleby. And I am afraid I must detain you in custody on suspicion of being concerned in the death of Professor Appleby, your husband. I should like to deal with you as gently as possible. Better come quietly with me to the station, and I must warn you that anything you say may be used in weight of evidence against you.’
There was a hoarse, enraged shout from Derek, who moved galvanically, like a madman. He was quickly pinioned, however, by a burly police sergeant.
And in that moment Eleanor’s terror-stricken eyes swept wildly round. The full horror of the situation was breaking on her. She was to be arrested—accused of murder!
A cry of sheer terror broke from her lips, and she swayed dizzily.
Two policemen moved forward quickly, and caught her as she collapsed in a dead faint.
CHAPTER IV
WHEN Eleanor came back to consciousness it was to find herself in almost complete darkness.
She sat up with a start, her heart beating wildly. She was fully dressed, and she had been lying on a plank bed, her head pillowed on a rough cushion.
Where was she? What had happened? She asked herself these questions in trembling agitation.
And then in a flood memory came back; and she struggled to her feet with a sharp little cry.
That night … when her husband had died, and she had tried to escape with Derek Capel.
Then the police had come, and—
An agonised cry came from her stiff lips, and she looked wildly around her. Where was she?
Her eyes made out a small, cell-like apartment, with a stout door, at the top of which was a grating. The electric light from a corridor filtered through, casting thin shafts of light. More by instinct than anything else the gently nurtured wife o
f Professor Appleby guessed the truth.
She was in a prison cell!
As the full realisation of this broke upon her, Eleanor with a little gasp rushed to the door and hammered upon it with her clenched hands. Short, gasping cries came from her lips; for the awful fear of four closed walls was upon her. She felt that she must get out or die.
Frenziedly she beat with her hands against the door. A sickening horror seized and almost paralysed her, blanching her face and turning her whole palpitant form icy cold. She was like a child that is lost and finds itself in the dark, and indeed, in that moment of her anguish and sorrow Eleanor looked more than ever like a beautiful child-woman. Presently a wardress came along.
‘Oh, let me out! Let me out!’ she cried with streaming eyes. The wardress tried to comfort her, for she was no hard woman—indeed, she was exceedingly kind-hearted—and she was moved to pity and compassion by Eleanor’s captivating beauty, her youth and evident gentle breeding which had never known the degradation of prison cell.
‘Why am I here? I have done nothing. I am innocent!’ cried Eleanor again and again.
The wardress sighed. She was a buxom, ruddy-cheeked woman from Devonshire, and luckily for her her duties were mainly to comfort those in despair, for she could not be stern. She knew the facts of this case, and a sordid enough affair it seemed to be, yet she could not believe that a girl so young and innocent could be guilty of such a crime.
She did her best to soothe Eleanor and to explain.
‘It is only for a time, my dear. Oh, my poor lamb! Why did you try to escape the police? Then this would never have come to you. But it is only for a time. The coroner’s inquest is tomorrow, or the day after, and then you will be proved to be innocent and go free. Come, don’t fret yourself. Now let me get you a little of something nice to eat.’
But her words, meant to soothe, only caused the wildest alarm to Chief Inspector Brent’s latest captive. It drove the realisation of her awful plight home to her. The world rocked and reeled for Eleanor Appleby. The wardress’s concern changed to alarm as she watched her, for she saw the blood ebb from cheeks and lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded and the strange motion of her hands. Eleanor staggered, fell against the door of her cell, and as the wardress groped frantically for her keys, the girl slid to the stone floor of her cell in a dead swoon.
