‘Like a man defying Fate,’ said Alex 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 Alex 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 had 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 afterwards, 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 burnt–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.
‘Royston wasn’t on the telephone then. I had it put in when I bought the place. 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 afterwards.’
‘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.’
‘Why, of course,’ cried Conway, ‘it was just before the Appleton case.’
‘Just after, wasn’t it?’
‘No, no, don’t you remember–Capel knew the Appletons–he’d stayed with the old man the previous Spring–just a week before he died. He was talking of him one night–what an old curmudgeon he was, and how awful it must have been for a young and beautiful woman like Mrs Appleton to be tied to him. There was no suspicion then that she had done away with him.’
‘By jove, you’re right. I remember reading the paragraph in the paper saying an exhumation order had been granted. It would have been that same day–I remember only seeing it with half my mind, you know, the other half wondering about poor old Derek lying dead upstairs.’
‘A common, but very curious phenomenon, that,’ observed Mr Quin. ‘In moments of great stress, the mind focuses itself upon some quite unimportant matter which is remembered long afterwards with the utmost fidelity, driven in, as it were, by the mental stress of the moment. It may be some quite irrelevant detail, like the pattern of a wallpaper, but it will never be forgotten.’
‘Rather extraordinary, your saying that, Mr Quin,’ said Conway. ‘Just as you were speaking, I suddenly felt myself back in Derek Capel’s room–with Derek lying dead on the floor–I saw as plainly as possible the big tree outside the window, and the shadow it threw upon the snow outside. Yes, the moonlight, the snow, and the shadow of the tree–I can see them again this minute. By Gad, I believe I could draw them, and yet I never realized I was looking at them at the time.’
‘His room was the big one over the porch, was it not?’ asked Mr Quin.
‘Yes, and the tree was the big beech, just at the angle of the drive.’
Mr Quin nodded, as though satisfied. Mr Satterthwaite was curiously thrilled. He was convinced that every word, every inflection of Mr Quin’s voice, was pregnant with purpose. He was driving at something–exactly what Mr Satterthwaite did not know, but he was quite convinced as to whose was the master hand.
There was a momentary pause, and then Evesham reverted to the preceding topic.
‘That Appleton case, I remember it very well now. What a sensation it made. She got off, didn’t she? Pretty woman, very fair–remarkably fair.’
Almost against his will, Mr Satterthwaite’s eyes sought the kneeling figure up above. Was it his fancy, or did he see it shrink a little as though at a blow. Did he see a hand slide upwards to the table cloth–and then pause.
There was a crash of falling glass. Alex Portal, helping himself to whisky, had let the decanter slip.
‘I say–sir, damn’ sorry. Can’t think what came over me.’
Evesham cut short his apologies.
‘Quite all right. Quite all right, my dear fellow. Curious–That smash reminded me. That’s what she did, didn’t she? Mrs Appleton? Smashed the port decanter?’