Lament for a Maker (24 page)

‘Mr Wedderburn, the man was a fiend!’

‘You barely exaggerate. And you see what actually happened. Summoned by Hardcastle, you came up the tower staircase just in time to meet that very angry young man face to face. He pushed past you unheeding – you remember that Hardcastle made a noticeably ineffective attempt to stop him – and suspecting nothing. Then he simply joined Miss Mathers and together they shook the dust of Erchany from their feet. And meantime – the moment, indeed, that Lindsay was through the study door – Guthrie had dashed through the little bedroom and over the battlements to his death.’

Gylby had got up and was pacing up and down the gallery. Now he stopped, the plainest excitement on his face. ‘It fits – yes, Mr Weddenburn, it all fits! Only I can’t just see how the times–’

‘An important point. We shall presently suggest with a stopwatch, I hope, that Lindsay could not have killed Guthrie; that between the moment of your hearing the cry and seeing Guthrie fall and of his appearing at the turn of the stair there was not sufficient time for him to have come all the way from the battlements. But Guthrie did not expect a matter of half a minute to be important there. He did not expect the witness on the stair to see his body fall. And, overestimating his own nerve, he did not expect to give that cry. It was to be enough that, hard upon Lindsay’s descending in a passion from the tower, Guthrie’s body should be found at the bottom of it.

‘Nevertheless we must return to the matter of timing in a moment. But meanwhile note this. Guthrie’s nerve failed him in that final cry. But it also failed him in a more vital particular. He was unable to lop himself of a finger or so before he fell.’

‘Mr Wedderburn, I can’t believe it all. It’s the most horrible thing I ever heard.’

‘But it is so. Guthrie sharpened a hatchet to deal, he told Mrs Hardcastle, with a great rat: it was undoubtedly his underlying thought that the rat was Lindsay and that the hatchet was to be used to incriminate him. Again, Hardcastle displayed a curious eagerness to get at the body; he declared that Lindsay had “mischieved” the body; as soon as the lad brought here by the constable got back to Kinkeig the rumour spread that the body had been mutilated. Only Hardcastle could have set that story going; he believed the thing had happened simply because he knew it was to be part of the plan; and if he has been in some puzzlement and uncertainty recently it is because he is bewildered at having heard no authentic news of it. If the thing had actually happened the point of evidence against Lindsay would have been, in the popular mind, overwhelming. And the popular mind is not to be disregarded when you are out for a criminal conviction. Macabre as Guthrie’s abortive plan was, it was by no means unintelligent.’

Gylby produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘Mr Wedderburn, I most frightfully admire your unruffled calm. Guthrie must have been horribly and obscenely mad.’

I shook my head gravely. ‘No! In all this there is nothing that is not perfectly logical and clear-headed, nothing that would incline a court for a moment to allow that Guthrie was insane. He knew what he wanted and how to achieve it. And he emerges from your own narrative clearly enough as one who knew right and wrong. Mad he was in the loosest sense. Strictly he was sane, wicked and fantastic, and even his fantasy was perfectly efficient – was all calculatingly directed to a rational if perverted end. Only once did he topple over into extravagance – a flourish of fantasy that positively told against his game.’

Gylby slapped his hand resoundingly upon the faded surface of Africa on an adjacent terrestrial globe. ‘The learned rats!’

‘The learned rats. His plan for getting the witness up the tower stair was upset by the non-appearance of the doctor, and before settling on the further perfectly rational plan which he finally employed he indulged the fantasy of luring you to the tower through the messages tied to the rats. I believe a court would accept that as fragmentary evidence of real craziness. But it was only a momentary aberration. And all the time the prosaic and efficient machinery for getting you to the tower on time was waiting to be set in motion.’

‘You said you would come back to the timing. And that was surely the difficult thing – getting me near the top of the tower staircase on the dot.’

‘Undoubtedly it was. And it was there that the conservative laird had recourse to the resources of modern technicology. That is why I have sent for an electrician. Notice that it was unimportant that you should be at this or that point at a given moment by the clock. What was important was that Guthrie should know just where you were at a given moment. He could then time his conversation with and dismissal of Lindsay. You remember saying that you had wondered if Hardcastle were drunk – because once or twice he stumbled against the wall of the staircase as you went up? And you have noticed that Guthrie had a little house telephone on his desk? No doubt there is no bell but merely a muted buzzer of the modern type. And no doubt Hardcastle could send signals of your progress by some such simple action as momentarily contacting two wires. He led you upstairs, you will recall, “deliberately”. The picture seems complete. Your visit to the laird was timing itself with all the accuracy of a royal procession.’

‘It all means that Hardcastle was privy to the whole unspeakable plot?’

‘I do not think you were mistaken, my dear Mr Gylby, in your estimate of the very great depravity of the man Hardcastle. I only wish that his neck, in our good Scots phrase, could feel the weight of his buttocks. But unfortunately he is not an accessory to actual murder.’

‘But he will be convicted? I mean you can put all this across the sheriff or whoever it is, and see that the man is tried?’

‘I haven’t a doubt of it. And now I wonder if there are any loose ends? Guthrie’s random efforts to break momentarily from his own extreme miserliness – the efforts that had the odd consequence of presenting you with a supper of caviare – were an attempt, no doubt, to make colourable his treacherous gift of gold to his departing niece. If she had reason to think his miserly habits were breaking up she would be the less likely to suspect that there was anything wrong. And the sudden interest in medical studies I am inclined to put down to a morbidity arising from the knowledge of what was in front of him. Indeed, here perhaps is another glimpse of real craziness in the man: Guthrie turning to medical science for companionable reading on amputation and broken necks. A poor preparation for eternity, Gylby. I fear he little heeded the last verse of Dunbar’s poem.’

Gylby rose. ‘What a comfort orthodoxy can be! It’s nice to think that the soul of Ranald Guthrie is fairly roasting.’

‘I fear that is very much the sentiment you justly censured in the man Gamley. And now–’

I was interrupted by the appearance of Inspector Speight in the demolished doorway. ‘Surely, inspector, that is not my electrician yet?’

‘No more it is: he’ll be a good hour more. But there’s a message up from Kinkeig I thought you’d like to have. They’ve found Lindsay and the young lady at Liverpool. The two are on their road back now, with a lad from Scotland Yard to help them find their way. They set off yesterday afternoon and will be in Kinkeig in time for the sheriff.’

‘Splendid, inspector. Their return is most timely. I think we can undertake to settle the matter of Mr Guthrie’s death quickly enough and leave them to their happiness. They will deserve it.’

Speight stared, shook his head dubiously and went away. I turned round and discovered Gylby gazing absently at the long line of cracked and browned Guthrie portraits, a curiously perplexed look on his face. He caught my glance. ‘Mr Wedderburn, Guthrie’s death is settled – but somehow I don’t feel there is any happiness for Christine Mathers. Something about her, some obscure awareness she can’t bring to consciousness… I don’t know.’

‘My dear Gylby – more mystery?’

‘I don’t know. Tragedy perhaps.’ He passed a hand through his hair. ‘Erchany must be getting me. I am not gay.’

This was Noel Gylby in an unsuspected character, and I was about to probe into the basis of his feeling when we were again interrupted. The Kinkeig constable, considerably out of breath, had appeared in the doorway. ‘Excuse me, sir, but would the inspector be here about?’

‘You have just missed him. Is anything the matter?’

‘By your leave, sir, it’s the coarse creature Hardcastle–’ I jumped up. ‘He’s bolted?’

‘No, sir. But he’s drinking like a fish.’

‘Is that all? Save your breath, man, and let him drink. It’s no business of yours.’ I turned to Gylby. ‘He’ll cut all the sorrier figure this afternoon.’

‘But Mr Wedderburn, sir, you don’t understand. And I don’t know what to do. The daft creature’s drinking water!’

For a moment I thought the man was attempting an unseasonable jest; then I saw that he was not only agitated but positively shaken. I said: ‘Explain yourself.’

‘Sir, it’s the most uncouthy sight. The gomeril chiel’s down by the cattle-trough in the back court, whiles roaring and scraiching like Judas Iscariot at the Judgement, and whiles fair wallowing in the sharrow sharny seip.’

‘God bless me! Gylby, come.’ And we all three hurried from the gallery and downstairs.

The spectacle with which we were confronted in the back court may justly be termed extraordinary. Hardcastle, his body hideously swollen and bloated, was lying by a low trough in a corner, screaming horribly and fighting for water amid a multitude of hideously swollen and bloated rats. A few seconds more and his screams died away. Even as we ran up he rolled over on his back in a final convulsion, his limbs twitching faintly in ghastly correspondence to the weakening reflexes of the already dead vermin about him. And he was not unattended in his agony. On one side stood his wife, crying out: ‘He took the poison for his porridge, ’twas the rat-nature lured him to it, woe the day!’ On the other side stood – or rather pranced – the daftie Tammas, clapping his hands and casting a wild laughter against the very face of death.

We did what we could but it was plain that Hardcastle had gone to his account. I suppose he had been drinking in verity: he could hardly otherwise have mistaken a mess of poisoned meal for his dinner. Mrs Hardcastle had been merely negligent – no more; I saw clearly enough after the event that so slender-witted an old person ought never to have been entrusted with large quantities of poison. Speight sent a message to Dr Noble – who could do no more than certify the cause of death – and then Erchany, with its two dead men, settled down to mark time. It was a dreich wait and I for one, taking a breath of chill air in the snow before the dark and mouldering castle, felt the fatality of the place heavy upon me. I thought with what must have been akin to pity and awe of the strange childhood and youth of the girl Christine Mathers, and for a moment I felt with Noel Gylby that no one could break through to happiness from such an environment. It was with positive relief that I saw the arrival of the motor hearse that was to take Guthrie’s body to Kinkeig. A few minutes behind it came my own hired car with a most respectable elderly electrician from Dunwinnie. Gylby and I had then work enough until it was time to return to the village.

I ought here to say that a sheriff’s inquiry, while it takes the place of a coroner’s inquest in England, is a less formal and at the same time a more restricted affair. The English coroner’s court has gradually come to usurp many of the functions that properly belong to the police court, and is in consequence frequently the scene of elaborate and prolonged investigation and argument. The Scottish sheriff, who has more varied duties than the coroner, confines himself to the investigation of accidental fatalities; when the appearance of criminal matter emerges the case passes at once to the Procurator Fiscal, who may then institute proceedings before the courts. I need not enlarge on the superiority of the Scottish practice: it is sufficient to indicate that in England a man may virtually be put on his trial before the coroner, and often without the safeguards of good criminal law. I venture on this note the more willingly in that I do not intend to embark upon an account of the afternoon’s proceedings in Kinkeig. The reader is now familiar with the facts educed, the opinion of the good Inspector Speight, and my own discoveries. It will be sufficient to say, with modesty, that I carried all before me. The case was clear: moreover, as both Guthrie and his accomplice Hardcastle were dead, it was virtually closed. The papers which recorded Guthrie’s highly criminal conduct would pass immediately to the Procurator Fiscal, but unless the weak-minded Mrs Hardcastle could be indicted as a second accomplice it seemed unlikely that any proceedings could be instituted. What actually followed, including the further clarification afforded by the young people who had now been brought back to Dunwinnie, I will therefore leave in what I may confidently term the capable hands of the next narrator.

JOHN APPLEBY

They were not yet married. Perhaps they were to have been married before sailing that afternoon: I made no inquiries for it wasn’t my business. It was in no sense – it never in any sense became – my case: I had simply found them and I was ordered to get them back to Kinkeig – tactfully and if possible without producing the warrant with which I had been provided for Neil Lindsay. If I became interested in them in the course of the journey, if I subsequently became more interested still in the events with which they were involved, that was matter of my own curiosity and not of official instructions. Until they were under the eye of my Scottish colleagues I was a watchdog; after that the merest busybody. This is my preface to what I have to say: I am afraid it is not so impressive as Mr Wedderburn’s.

‘May I speak to you for a few minutes in private? I am a detective-inspector from Scotland Yard.’

They looked at me with wonder but, I thought, without apprehension. They were anxious – an elopement in any circumstances must be an anxious business – but my announcement had not increased their anxiety more than by the expectation of some vexatious official delay in their affairs. It was Miss Mathers who responded first; if she had seen even less of the world than Lindsay she was nevertheless the more competent in dealing with it. I felt that even in his own environment he would be half lost, a creature brooding fixedly on some abstract, imperfectly understood purpose to be achieved. Miss Mathers said: ‘Please come in.’