Library, an inexpensive collection of small-format books consisting mainly of reprints of well-known titles by the likes of H.G. Wells, Jack London and A.E.W. Mason, plus lesser-known books that had been turned into films. In the event, Christie’s displeasure seemed hardly worth the effort as both book and film of The Passing of Mr Quinn sank without a trace, although the picture was seen as far away as Australia.
The novelisation itself often feels like an Agatha Christie mystery as reimagined by someone with no real affinity for the intricacies of the genre. Instead, it firmly leads with melodrama above all else. As for the person who performed this reworking, there is little to say, as the credited author of the book, G. Roy McRae, has no other publications to their name and is almost certainly a pseudonym for a freelancer or staff writer—although we cannot dismiss the possibility that it was Leslie Hiscott, the film’s director and adapter, changing his name to avoid bearing the brunt of Christie’s ire.
Whoever the author was, they were less interested in nuance and character than Christie was, but showed a keen emphasis on the more salacious elements of murder, relationships and the impact of crime. Indeed, some elements (including Quinn himself) are suitably macabre for the increasingly horror-tinged popular movies of the time; one could imagine Lon Chaney playing the part as described. However, as a mystery, there are some clumsily executed changes of scenario and loose ends that Christie herself would never have allowed, while the introduction of such elements as an untraceable poison break the code of conventions adhered to by the major mystery writers of the era. The Passing of Mr Quinn provides the reader with an unpredictable journey through various scenarios and locations, changing genre along the way, until we reach the final act of the story having little understanding of what mystery we are trying to solve, although it’s hard not to be swept up in the drama of piecing together the story that links some unusual characters. In the end, according to contemporary accounts, the story’s resolution works rather better on the page than it did on the screen, and while The Passing of Mr Quinn is a curiosity, it is certainly an interesting one.
MARK ALDRIDGE
March 2017
THE BOOK OF THE FILM BY G. ROY McRAE
This dramatic film thriller is adapted from a novel by Agatha Christie, the world’s greatest woman writer of detective stories. It provides a new and original type of thriller since three persons in the story could be reasonably suspected of a motive which would prompt them to poison the most hateful villain who ever crossed the pages of fiction. Who, then, poisoned the cruel and sinister Professor Appleby? Derek Capel, his neighbour, in love with the Professor’s wife, Eleanor? Vera, the house-parlourmaid, Appleby’s mistress? Or was it Eleanor Appleby herself? This is a story full of dramatic moments and thrilling suspense. It will keep you guessing until the final page.
READERS are requested to note that Mr Quinny of this book is the same person as the Mr Quinn of the film.
PROFESSOR APPLEBY listened.
He stood in the centre of his study, his hands in the pockets of his dinner jacket, and a curious half smile on his lips as he listened intently.
He heard nothing, for his house was silent as the grave.
If there had been any sound Professor Appleby would assuredly have heard it, for amongst the rows of valuable books that lined the walls of his study there were dummy books. Dummies that held microphones which could carry any sound made in any room of that house to its master in the centre study.
Professor Appleby alone had knowledge of this. His wife, Eleanor, was terrified of his omniscience of everything that went on in the house. She knew that she could not give an order to the servants without the professor knowing of it. It was one of Professor Appleby’s subtle means of cruelty, and it had contributed a great deal towards the state of nervous exhaustion to which she had become prostrated.
After listening for a moment or two Professor Appleby laughed softly. It was a precise, mirthless sound like the tinkle of ice in a glass.
Satisfied that, as yet, all was quiet in his house, he crossed the thick pile red carpet to the broad mahogany desk in the centre of his study. It was a study indicative of his tastes, for it was furnished with every luxury and refinement, yet it bristled with the bizzarre. The bookcases contained exquisite vellum-bound volumes, old editions, and strange works of foreign publishers. A glass-door cupboard on one side of the room held chemicals and test-tubes, giving the study the appearance of a laboratory, which was offset by the cushions which lay on chairs and settee, the soft-shaded lamp and the glowing radiator which gave the big room generous warmth.
On the carpet near the mahogany desk was a stout wickerwork basket. Professor Appleby, with a strange smile twitching his lips, bent over it, and untying a string lifted a lid. He straightened himself with a huge Haje snake coiling and wriggling in his arms and round his shoulders, and he laughed again softly.
It was a startling and repellant sight in that room of luxury and taste. The red curtains were drawn over the window to shut out the gathering dusk, and all was silent in the study save for the ticking of the clock and Professor Appleby’s long-repressed breath. It was a ticklish job he was doing.
After a few moments of manipulation with instruments from a case on the desk, Professor Appleby jerked erect, satisfied that his experiment was coming to a successful issue. The smile on his lips was scarcely pleasant.
Spite of his huge, elephantine figure there was a suggestion of pantherish power in Professor Appleby’s movements. Now once again he seized the snake with cruel, strong white fingers just below its head, and bent over it with an instrument in his other hand.
He had a gross white face that appeared to be carefully attended, and very finely pencilled eyebrows that had a satanic uplift; an extremely strong nose and jaw, and lips that were a red, twitching line. A monocle gleamed in his right eye, and those eyes were as bright as a snake’s themselves, holding the heavy-lidded droop of mastery.
Such was Professor Appleby, a monstrous figure of ebony and white in his dinner suit, as he wrestled under the soft-shaded lamp with the Haje spitting snake.
There sounded all at once a slight hiss. The Haje’s long body wriggled and coiled sinuously, so that its black and white diamond markings seemed to blur. A glass vessel fell to the carpet, knocked over by the snake in its struggles, and Professor Appleby’s monocle dropped on its black cord as he smiled grimly.
He had forgotten for a moment that Doctor Portal had arranged to call that evening on Eleanor, his wife—forgotten it in the fascination of the strange experiment he had been conducting.
The Haje, a fierce species of African cobra, had just exercised its remarkable and disconcerting habit of ejecting poison from its mouth to a considerable distance, and the professor had collected the discharge and had drawn the cobra’s fangs. It was now completely harmless, its poison-spitting propensities stopped for all time.
The professor dropped into a chair, watching the snake’s convulsions a moment, while he wiped his white hands fastidiously with a handkerchief.
There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. For all his coolness he had known the experiment to be a dangerous one.
It was such experiments as this that had gained for Professor Appleby a reputation entirely enviable in the world of science and research. He was a noted expert in poisons and a pathologist of world-wide repute. Such ability—in the eyes of the world, at least—condoned a personal reputation that was somewhat dubious.
If