The mysterious Mr. Quin
Satterthwaite, Mr. Portal. My name is Evesham."
Mr. Quin acknowledged the introductions, and dropped into the chair
that Evesham had hospitably pulled forward. As he sat, some effect of
the firelight threw a bar of shadow across his face which gave almost
the impression of a mask.
Evesham threw a couple more logs on the fire. "A drink?"
"Thanks."
Evesham brought it to him and asked as he did so, "Do you know this
part of the world well, Mr. Quin?"
"I passed through it some years ago."
"Really?"
"Yes. This house belonged then to a man called Capel."
"Ah! yes," said Evesham. "Poor Derek Capel. You knew him?"
"Yes, I knew him."
Evesham's manner underwent a faint change, almost imperceptible to one
who had not studied the English character. Before, it had contained
a subtle reserve; now this was laid aside. Mr. Quin had known Derek
Capel. He was the friend of a friend, and as such, was vouched for and
fully accredited.
"Astounding affair, that," he said confidentially. "We were just
talking about it. I can tell you, it went against the grain, buying
this place. If there had been anything else suitable, but there
wasn't. You see, I was in the house the night he shot himself--so was
Conway--and upon my word, I've always expected his ghost to walk."
"A very inexplicable business," said Mr. Quin, slowly and deliberately,
and he paused with the air of an actor who has just spoken an important
cue.
"You may well say inexplicable," burst in Conway. "The thing's a black
mystery--always will be."
"I wonder," said Mr. Quin, noncommittally. "Yes, Sir Richard, you were
saying?"
"Astounding--that's what it was. Here's a man in the prime of life,
gay, lighthearted, without a care in the world. Five or six old pals
staying with him. Top of his spirits at dinner, full of plans for the
future. And from the dinner table he goes straight upstairs to his
room, takes a revolver from a drawer, and shoots himself. Why? Nobody
ever knew. Nobody ever will know."
"Isn't that rather a sweeping statement, Sir Richard?" asked Mr. Quin,
smiling.
Conway stared at him. "What d'you mean? I don't understand."
"A problem is not necessarily unsolvable because it has remained
unsolved."
"Oh! Come, man, if nothing came out at the time, it's not likely to
come out now--ten years afterward?"
Mr. Quin shook his head gently. "I disagree with you. The evidence of
history is against you. The contemporary historian never writes such a
true history as the historian of a later generation. It is a question
of getting the true perspective, of seeing things in proportion. If
you like to call it so, it is, like everything else, a question of
relativity."
Alec Portal leaned forward, his face twitching painfully.
"You are right, Mr. Quin," he cried, "you are right. Time does not
dispose of a question--it only presents it anew in a different guise."
Evesham was smiling tolerantly. "Then you mean to say, Mr. Quin, that
if we were to hold, let us say, a court of inquiry, tonight, into the
circumstances of Derek Capel's death, we are as likely to arrive at the
truth as we should have been at the time?"
"_More_ likely, Mr. Evesham. The personal equation has largely dropped
out, and you will remember facts as facts without seeking to put your
own interpretation upon them."
Evesham frowned doubtfully.
"One must have a starting point, of course," said Mr. Quin in his quiet
level voice. "A starting point is usually a theory. One of you must
have a theory, I am sure. How about you, Sir Richard?"
Conway frowned thoughtfully. "Well, of course," he said apologetically,
"we thought--naturally we all thought--that there must be a woman in
it somewhere. It's usually either that or money, isn't it? And it
certainly wasn't money. No trouble of that description. So--what else
could it have been?"
Mr. Satterthwaite started. He had leaned forward to contribute a small
remark of his own and, in the act of doing so, he had caught sight of
a woman's figure crouched against the balustrade of the gallery above.
She was huddled down against it, invisible from everywhere but where he
himself sat, and she was evidently listening with strained attention to
what was going on below. So immovable was she that he hardly believed
the evidence of his own eyes.
But he recognized the pattern of the dress easily enough--an old-world
brocade. It was Eleanor Portal.
And suddenly all the events of the night seemed to fall into
pattern--Mr. Quin's arrival, no fortuitous chance, but the appearing of
an actor when his cue was given. There was a drama being played in the
big hall at Royston tonight--a drama none the less real in that one of
the actors was dead. Oh! yes, Derek Capel had a part in the play. Mr.
Satterthwaite was sure of that.
And, again suddenly, a new illumination came to him. This was Mr.
Quin's doing. It was he who was staging the play--was giving the actors
their cues. He was at the heart of the mystery pulling the strings,
making the puppets work. He knew everything, even to the presence of
the woman crouched against the woodwork upstairs. Yes, he knew.
Sitting well back in his chair, secure in his role of audience, Mr.
Satterthwaite watched the drama unfold before his eyes. Quietly and
naturally, Mr. Quin was pulling the strings, setting his puppets in
motion.
"A woman--yes," he murmured thoughtfully. "There was no mention of any
woman at dinner?"
"Why, of course," cried Evesham. "He announced his engagement. That's
just what made it seem so absolutely mad. Very bucked about it he was.
Said it wasn't to be announced just yet--but gave us the hint that he
was in the running for the Benedick stakes."
"Of course we all guessed who the lady was," said Conway. "Marjorie
Dilke. Nice girl."
It seemed to be Mr. Quin's turn to speak, but he did not do so, and
something about his silence seemed oddly provocative. It was as though
he challenged the last statement. It had the effect of putting Conway
in a defensive position.
"Who else could it have been? Eh, Evesham?"
"I don't know," said Tom Evesham slowly. "What did he say exactly now?
Something about being in the running for the Benedick stakes--that he
couldn't tell us the lady's name till he had her permission--it wasn't
to be announced yet. He said, I remember, that he was a damned lucky
fellow. That he wanted his two old friends to know that by that time
next year he'd be a happy married man. Of course, we assumed it was
Marjorie. They were great friends and he'd been about with her a lot."
"The only thing--" began Conway and stopped.
"What were you going to say, Dick?"
"Well, I mean, it was odd in a way, if it was Marjorie, that the
engagement shouldn't be announced at once. I mean, why the secrecy?
Sounds more as though it were a married woman--you know, someone whose
husband had just died, or who was divorcing him."
"That's true," said Evesham. "If that were the case, of course the
engagement couldn't be announced at once. And you know, thinking back
about it, I don't believe he had been seeing much of Marjorie. All that
was the year before. I remember thinking things seemed to have cooled
off between them."
"Curious," said Mr. Quin.
"Yes--looked almost as though someone had come between them."
"Another woman," said Conway thoughtfully.
"By Jove," said Evesham. "You know, there was something almost
indecently hilarious about old Derek that night. He looked almost drunk
with happiness. And yet--I can't quite explain what I mean--but he
looked oddly defiant too."
"Like a man defying Fate," said Alec Portal heavily.
Was it of Derek Capel he was speaking--or was it of himself? Mr.
Satterthwaite, looking at him, inclined to the latter view. Yes, that
was what Alec Portal represented--a man defying Fate. His imagination,
muddled by drink, responded suddenly to that note in the story which
recalled his own secret preoccupation.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked up. She was still there. Watching,
listening--still motionless, frozen--like a dead woman.
"Perfectly true," said Conway. "Capel _was_ excited--curiously so. I'd
describe him as a man who has staked heavily and won against well-nigh
overwhelming odds."
"Getting up courage, perhaps, for what he's made up his mind to do?"
suggested Portal. And as though moved by an association of ideas, he
got up and helped himself to another drink.
"Not a bit of it," said Evesham sharply. "I'd almost swear nothing of
that kind was in his mind. Conway's right. A successful gambler who
has brought off a long shot and can hardly believe in his own good
fortune. That was the attitude."
Conway gave a gesture of discouragement. "And yet," he said, "ten
minutes later--"
They sat in silence. Evesham brought his hand down with a bang on the
table. "Something must have happened in that ten minutes," he cried.
"It must! But what? Let's go over it carefully. We were all talking. In
the middle of it Capel got up suddenly and left the room--"
"Why?" said Mr. Quin.
The interruption seemed to disconcert Evesham. "I beg your pardon?"
"I only said, 'Why?'" said Mr. Quin.
Evesham frowned in an effort of memory. "It didn't seem vital--at the
time. Oh! of course--the post. Don't you remember that jangling bell,
and how excited we were? We'd been snowed up for three days, remember.
Biggest snowstorm for years and years. All the roads were impassable.
No newspapers, no letters. Capel went out to see if something had
come through at last, and got a great pile of things, newspapers and
letters. He opened the paper to see if there was any news, and then
went upstairs with his letters. Three minutes afterward, we heard a
shot. Inexplicable--absolutely inexplicable."
"That's not inexplicable," said Portal. "Of course the fellow got some
unexpected news in a letter. Obvious, I should have said."
"Oh! Don't think we missed anything so obvious as that. It was one
of the Coroner's first questions. _But Capel never opened one of his
letters._ The whole pile lay unopened on his dressing-table."
Portal looked crestfallen. "You're sure he didn't open just one of
them? He might have destroyed it after reading it?"
"No, I'm quite positive. Of course, that would have been the natural
solution. No, every one of the letters was unopened. Nothing
burned--nothing torn up. There was no fire in the room."
Portal shook his head. "Extraordinary."
"It was a ghastly business altogether," said Evesham in a low voice.
"Conway and I went up when we heard the shot, and found him. It gave me
a shock, I can tell you."
"Nothing to be done but telephone for the police, I suppose?" said Mr.
Quin.
"No, luckily enough, the local constable happened to be in the kitchen
at the time. One of the dogs--you remember poor old Rover, Conway?--had
strayed the day before. A passing carter had found it half-buried in a
snowdrift and had taken it to the police station. They recognized it as
Capel's, and a dog he was particularly fond of, and the constable came
up with it. He'd just arrived a minute before the shot was fired. It
saved us some trouble."
"Gad, that was a snowstorm," said Conway reminiscently. "About this
time of year, wasn't it? Early January."
"February, I think. Let me see, we went abroad soon afterward."
"I'm pretty sure it was January. My hunter Ned--you remember
Ned?--lamed himself the end of January. That was just after this
business."
"It must have been quite the end of January then. Funny how difficult
it is to recall dates after a lapse of years."
"One of the most difficult things in the world," said Mr. Quin,
conversationally. "Unless you can find a landmark in some big public
event--an assassination of a crowned head, or a big murder trial."