The Key of the Chest (6 page)

‘I hope it's nothing serious at Sgeir, Doctor?' asked Kenneth Grant, as he took the pony's reins.

The doctor straightened himself. He was not used to riding. ‘A dead seaman,' he answered. ‘Apparently a ship went down last night off the Point.'

‘My God!' said Kenneth. ‘Any of them alive?'

‘Not at Sgeir. She piled up on the spit.'

‘Last night! On the outer spit!' Thought held Kenneth's breath. ‘Not much hope in that case.'

‘Afraid not. I must be off.'

His motor-cycle, in these early years of the century, was still new to Cruime. A high single-geared affair, it was not easy to start when the engine was cold. But presently he had made a final call and was roaring along the highway towards the next township, where he lived with his mother. A crofter took his horse and cart off the road when he heard the roar approaching. The horse danced and the crofter had difficulty in holding the beast and at the same time saluting the doctor.

About a couple of miles out of Cruime, he came on a church, with its cemetery and manse. The manse was a fairly tall building, with a plantation of old trees shutting it off from the church and cemetery. It stood at a little distance from the road.

The doctor stopped his motor-cycle on a slight declivity, so that he could waddle it off easily, and, entering at the iron side gate in the wall, went up through the trees to the manse. He hesitated before he knocked, looking in through the open door upon the small hall and the pitch-pine staircase. The house always gave him a feeling of polished bareness, as if it had never known the warmth of living which gathers odd gear and scatters it about. Clearly not so
much a case of frugal living, or even of austere living, as a reflection of some uncompromising attitude of mind to necessity.

The doctor had just given the first rap with the black iron knocker – there was a brass bell-pull but he had entered a pace by this time – when two women appeared simulta-neously, the daughter of the manse upon the stairs and the grey-haired old housekeeper from the kitchen.

The doctor, who appeared not to notice the housekeeper, turned with a smile to the young woman as she descended the last step and came towards him. The housekeeper slowly withdrew.

She was twenty-six years old, with dark-brown hair caught back into a knot behind her head. The simple sweep of the line of her hair was like all the lines of her body, in which there was an easy flowing movement. The clear skin of her face caught a slight flush and her blue eyes a light that glanced and shone.

The doctor held her hand firmly. It was rather a large hand.

‘Is your father in?'

‘Yes. He's in the study. Will you come in?'

‘Well, I thought I'd come and see him – about an unfortunate business.' As he said this, he turned and hung up his hat. But he did not move on. She stood waiting, anxiety slowly draining away the warm colour.

‘I have been out at Sgeir,' said the doctor. ‘It was very stormy last night. You would have felt it here?'

‘Yes.'

He regarded his hands, as if to make sure they were reasonably clean. Thought or feeling showed on her face so readily that she could do nothing about it.

‘It was a shipwreck,' he said in his easy voice. ‘None of our own people. Apparently she was a foreign boat.' He looked at her again.

‘Were they saved?'

‘Afraid not. There's one body. That's what I wanted to see your father about.'

She looked past him through the open door. ‘That's dreadful,' she murmured.

It was this deep note in her voice that was most characteristic. Not that it was really deep so much as rounded and warm. But he found it impossible to describe. It held for him an extraordinary attraction, and he now knew that he was making conversation in order to hear her speak, and at the same time to observe the responses of her face and even of her body. One could deliberately blow colour into her face.

‘Of course, we may yet hear something better from the other side, around Balcreggan. The gale was blowing in that direction, and she seems to have been carrying timber.'

‘Oh, I hope so. It's terrible. Poor men!'

And for the first time the loss of living seamen touched him imaginatively. Normally the expression ‘poor men' (as he would yet hear it so often in the district) showed a sympathy too facile to touch him. When accompanied by a mournful inflection, he disliked it.

He became aware that her eyes were on his face and had caught him looking at her objectively, feature by feature. At once he said, ‘Yes it is terrible,' as if he had been regarding her absentmindedly.

A door behind her opened.

‘Ah, it's you, Doctor.' The minister came forward and the doctor met him and shook hands.

The minister was tall and broad-shouldered, with a tendency to an unnatural stoop from listening to the troubles and petitions of his flock. His characteristic welcoming smile now held and lingered like a mask. He had a clipped moustache, bushy eyebrows, and a strong growth of grey-dark hair.

‘I hope it is nothing very serious that has brought you to see me,' he went on. ‘Though I suppose I can hardly expect it to be anything else.'

‘Well, I'm afraid—'

‘Won't you just come into the study,' continued the minister, and in no time the doctor found himself behind the closing door. No attention had been paid to the girl, whose footsteps he now heard ascending the stairs. Of course, it was all perfectly natural, but he had the momentary feeling that she was hardly a schoolgirl.

‘Now, you'll take this chair…'

When at last the minister sat down, the doctor proceeded to tell about the shipwreck at Sgeir.

‘Ah, just so. Very sad. Very sad indeed. I was afraid we would have bad tidings from the sea. It was very wild about one o'clock. I heard a great crash. I went out – but it was no more than a tree blown down. Fortunately it was no more than that. Ah yes. So the body, you say, is still in the shepherd's house?'

‘Yes. The policeman is making arrangements, but as he's busy at the moment I offered to let you know, seeing I was passing.'

‘Quite so. Quite so. Yes. The day is getting on.' His eyes almost disappeared as the eyebrows and lids closed thoughtfully.

Feeling the minister was contemplating an immediate visit to Sgeir, the doctor at once said, ‘Of course, they're not expecting you there. I merely wanted to let you know the position, so that when it came to the burial – I suppose he will be buried here – anyway, I thought I'd tell you.'

‘I know they will not expect me at Sgeir,' said the minister with his smile. ‘That does not mean I may not go.'

‘Of course,' said the doctor formally.

‘I suppose it must be many years since either of them entered at a church door, and I can hardly expect they will extend that active reverence to the dead which, as a people, we consider it our duty to do.'

The doctor remained silent – and suddenly in doubt. It was no concern of his what the minister did. That he himself did not go to church, any more than the two brothers, was an added thought in front of the minister's smooth tones. He got up. ‘Well, I'll have to think of my report for the Procurator-Fiscal. So I had better be getting along.'

‘The Procurator-Fiscal!' said the minister, who had also risen. He now looked directly at the doctor.‘You don't suspect… I hope there is nothing wrong?'

‘The Procurator-Fiscal would have to come in any case, I should say. This is a complicated matter, a shipwreck. There's a box – ship's papers. The body may be the
captain's. These matters will have to be looked into officially.'

‘Of course – if that's all it is?'

‘It's a fair amount,' said the doctor, with a small dry smile.

‘Oh, yes, indeed. But when we hear of the Fiscal being called in, we in our ignorance are inclined to think that there may be some doubt as to – the cause of death itself, or shipwreck, or whatever the occasion may be. I am glad to be assured by you that there is no such suggestion of criminal taint.'

The doctor knew he hadn't directly assured him of any such thing, and as it was almost certain, whatever conclusion should be reached by the Fiscal, that some version of the actual state of affairs would circulate among the people, it might be at least unneighbourly for the doctor not to give a hint to the minister who, after all, was the other leading professional man in the district.

Yet he found himself extremely reluctant to do so, and he knew, though no expression showed on his face, that the minister was already suspicious of his hesitation.

‘It's really no more than a professional matter. The cause of death – and I hope you understand that I give you this in all confidence – was not entirely due to drowning. A storm is a pretty violent affair. I am not suggesting anything of a suspicious nature. It's just simply that there is a formal method of procedure and it's not yet complete. That's all.'

‘Of course. I see,' said the minister. ‘And if that's all you can tell me, I quite understand. And they found, you say, the body on the shore?'

‘Yes. Charlie found it and carried it up to the house. Then Dougald came along for the policeman, who, of course, informed me. We are just back from their house.'

‘Thank you,' said the minister, ‘for calling and letting me know. It was very good of you, and you such a busy man.'

‘Not at all,' said the doctor, ‘and please don't trouble coming out.'

But the minister accompanied him to the outside gate and there shook hands.

As the doctor waddled off down the decline, he kept a
grip on the exhaust lever so long that when he at last dropped it, the machine shot forward and swerved. He straightened it up, aware of his irritation.

It is almost certain, he thought, that he will go to Sgeir this very evening. He would go alone, on his round-bellied pony, and he would see to it that both Dougald and Charlie were present while he held his service for the dead. A gathering of the elect!

But not before he had first probed every detail of what had happened out of them. A sudden and extreme dismay so gripped the doctor that he actually stopped his machine. ‘Damn it!' he muttered, and his skin paled. It was very unusual for him to use an oath of any kind. His grey eyes gathered a stormy look.

The one thing the doctor had not told the minister was that Charlie had said the seaman was alive when he took him out of the water. And, of course, it would be the very first thing that the minister would find out from Charlie himself!

Having found that out, the minister would at once remember what the doctor had told him about death being due not to drowning but to some other cause. What cause?

The doctor half turned his machine on the road, then stopped, astride it. He could not go back and forbid the minister to do his duty by the dead. That was quite impossible. The minister would rightly regard it as blasphemous presumption. All he could do would be to tell the minister everything and ask him not to question the brothers in any way. But would that stop him from putting his own kind of circuitous questions? Not it!

The doctor took out his silver cigarette case. His features resumed their characteristic still cast of thought, as he breathed out the tobacco smoke. Having turned the whole position over, he decided nothing could be done about it. At least he had not mentioned the word strangulation and that was a positive and favourable point.

Then the doctor remembered that the minister had trained in his early days to be a medical missionary. Many of the old and holy folk still preferred him to any doctor. This was the real reason why his predecessor in the practice
had left. In fact, his predecessor had warned him about the minister, and, being a hot-headed man, had been a trifle lurid over the ministerial ‘mumbo-jumbo' not to mention love of power. Apparently there had been one or two standup rows.

The minister would probably have sufficient knowledge to recognize strangulation – if he was curious enough!

The doctor threw the half-smoked cigarette from him. Nothing could be done. Not a thing. For the minister would want his triumph over Charlie. And what an utterly appalling triumph it might be!

The doctor pushed his cycle to a level stretch, then, running alongside, leapt on as the engine fired, and the manse fell rapidly behind.

Had it been anybody but Charlie!

Though he had not appeared to be looking at Flora when he had first referred to an ‘unfortunate business' at Sgeir, he had been completely aware of the momentary arrestment in the girl. He had felt a standing still, a waiting, in every cell of her body. She was too easy to read. It would have been brutal to have looked at her searchingly. So the old trouble was not all over and done with, at least not in the girl's mind!

She was naive. She was simple. That was the real fact. And a disturbing fact because the quality of her simplicity was in some absolute way feminine. He had felt it to-day, quite strongly. Not that she was ‘simple' in the silly sense. The very opposite. She had manners, a native grace, a living warmth. She could become powerfully attractive to a man, decided the doctor, and his mind for a moment grew somewhat vague about that region which lay beyond intellectual assessment, because it was already suggesting that he himself had called not altogether for the pleasure of seeing the minister!

The minister, who had come out to interrupt their talk! His daughter was, of course, all he had. So they said. The poor man had had a great concern for his wife. She had hardly ever left the house. At the time of the trouble between Flora and Charlie in Edinburgh, she had gone down with a chill, caught pneumonia, and died. As simple
as that. The doctor's smile caught a dry assessing quality.

He topped a slight rise and was at once aware of a horse and trap a short distance ahead. He lifted his exhaust valve and closed the throttle. But the figure in the trap was shouting and waving to him to come on. It was the young owner of Ros Lodge. The doctor, however, knowing his man, stopped dead. Michael Sandeman drove off the highway onto the road leading down to his house, whose roofs could be seen at some distance amid a plantation of pines. The horse was already restive and when at last Sandeman leapt out and got it by the head, the doctor thought: That's a bit better! Thereupon he started off, but with caution, and just before reaching the junction stopped again, but now managed to disengage the clutch and leave the engine roaring.