if the engagement was to someone else, such as a married woman. All agree that Capel's manner that night was like a man who had won a large gamble and was defying the odds, yet ten minutes later he shot himself. A late post of letters and newspapers arrived, the first for several days in the snow-bound countryside, but Capel had not opened any of the letters. A policeman was at the house, returning one of Capel's dogs that had strayed. He was in the kitchen when the shot was fired. Quin asks them to place the exact date, possibly by reference to some event in the news, and the men remember it was the time of the Appleton murder trial. Mr Appleton was an old man who mistreated his far younger wife, and Capel was a friend of theirs. Appleton died by strychnine poisoning but the poison was only found after the body had been exhumed. His wife, who had smashed a decanter of port from which her husband had drunk – perhaps to destroy the evidence – had been put on trial and found not guilty, but had then left the country because of the scandal. Quin takes the men through the sequence of events: Capel saw the paragraph in the newspaper reporting that the exhumation order had been given; then he saw a policeman approaching his house. Not knowing that this visit was about the missing dog, he assumed that he was to be arrested, and so shot himself. His audience is stunned at the accusation that Capel was a murderer, objecting that he was not at the Appleton home on the day of the death; but Quin points out that strychnine is not soluble and would collect at the bottom of the decanter if placed there a week before. Why did Mrs Appleton smash the decanter? At Quin's prompting, Satterthwaite theorises it was to protect Capel, not to cover her own guilty tracks. Mr Quin leaves the house. Eleanor Portal follows him down the drive to say thank you, and then she and her husband are reconciled. Eleanor is the former Mrs Appleton. Capel's suicide left her unable to clear her name totally, until Quin's appearance. The Shadow on the Glass Mr Satterthwaite is a guest for a week at a house party held by Mr and Mrs Unkerton at their home, Greenway's House. Mr Richard