Lament for a Maker

by Michael Innes

  My approach in the snow had been quite unheard. I said pleasantly in his ear: ‘Bonny beasts, Mr Hardcastle.’

  He swung round and glared at me suspiciously – not, I fancy, merely because of the obvious irony of my remark. His villainy as sketched by Gylby was apparent enough. But it was not an assured villainy; he seemed, indeed, woefully lacking in confidence. He said now with a sort of surly uncertainty: ‘Maybe so.’

  ‘And this is Caesar? I should be inclined to give him a powder and follow it up with a little red meat. Now pray, Mr Hardcastle, which is Doctor?’

  Rather weakly, Hardcastle pointed at a recumbent animal. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Is it indeed? Let’s have a look at him. Doctor! Hey, Doctor! You know, Mr Hardcastle, I think Doctor must be deaf.’

  Hardcastle positively brightened. ‘He is deaf.’

  ‘Really now? That is a little unusual in so young a dog. I wonder, can you be mistaken? It should be easy to devise a test.’

  ‘Damn’t to hell!’ cried Hardcastle. ‘Will you leave the beast alone?’

  ‘Certainly if you wish it; I believe my interest in the animal is exhausted. A dumb – and deaf – witness, is he not? I am solicitor to Miss Guthrie, the incoming proprietor. I should be obliged if you would take me to her.’

  Gylby’s estimate of the factor, I reflected, had been remarkably accurate. A cunning ruffian, but one whose cunning was soon exhausted. I was not displeased to find him fitting neatly enough into the picture that was forming in my mind of the events of Christmas Eve. This picture was as yet far from complete; only the cardinal pieces – if I may use an image suggested by what I had heard of Ranald Guthrie’s jigsaws – were as yet in place. But these gave me – unless I was greatly mistaken – the first outlines of a very curious situation. Inevitably, there was a great deal that was still obscure and invited the most careful and cautious investigation. I pause on this word. I had come to Erchany in my professional character as a solicitor; it will be not without amusement that the reader perceives me, while yet standing but on the threshold of the castle, as lured into the undignified role of a private detective agent!

  As I entered the great hall of the castle a uniformed police officer stepped forward, introduced himself as Inspector Speight, and invited me into a small and bare room in which he had apparently established his headquarters. I might properly have insisted on being conducted to my client before assisting at any conference with the police; there seemed, however, to be no necessity for this and I accepted the invitation. I found Inspector Speight a civil and intelligent officer and judged it might be useful to show him I already had some grip of the situation. After a few preliminary remarks I therefore said: ‘I suppose you’ve found Gamley?’

  ‘Yes, there was no difficulty in that. We have a line on him for this afternoon.’

  ‘And you have no doubt traced the young people who were packed off by the late Mr Guthrie?’

  ‘Packed off? I don’t know about that.’

  ‘A point that will emerge, inspector. I think it will be found to be of some importance. And where had they got to?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘Strangely enough, Mr Wedderburn, we’ve had no word of them yet. But then they had good reason to lie pretty low.’

  ‘I wonder, inspector, I wonder. It is possible that now Mr Guthrie is dead the necessity for their departing unobtrusively is over. I venture to think it is very possible.’

  ‘If I may say so, Mr Wedderburn, that seems a singularly wrong-headed way of looking at it.’

  ‘That depends entirely on the point from which one looks, does it not? Perhaps you have grounds for believing that the young Mr Lindsay has committed some crime?’

  I had reckoned accurately in counting on a streak of irritation latent in Inspector Speight. My bland manner drew him at once. He said abruptly: ‘The lad pitched Guthrie to his death. I haven’t a doubt of it.’

  ‘Perhaps so, inspector. I would say myself it is a little early to cherish convictions. And I think there may be some evidence in direct rebuttal?’

  ‘To be sure, there’s Miss Guthrie.’

  So Miss Guthrie had already told the police her story. I rose. ‘I think, inspector, I must now seek my client.’

  Inspector Speight made a protesting gesture. ‘You mustn’t be taking it, sir, I think it necessary to discredit what the young lady has told us entirely. But she was scared and confused out there in the storm and she wanted to see as little ill in the business up there as might be.’ The inspector paused. ‘Perhaps she’ll come to a clearer recollection, though, on thinking it over.’

  I was again aware that Inspector Speight was an intelligent man. And for a moment I wondered if he might not be positively guileful. Miss Guthrie, who had been mysteriously on the very battlement from which the dead man had fallen, was, it appeared, that dead man’s heir. Of the delicacy of this position Speight had given no hint.

  ‘So you think, inspector, that it’s either Lindsay or nothing?’ Speight nodded emphatically. ‘An old feud, a new quarrel, a witness that he was in blazing passion, the gold broken into, him and the girl gone. One could hardly ask for more.’

  ‘Unless, perhaps, the chopping of the fingers from the corpse.’ The inspector stared. ‘You’ve heard that? It but shows the daft and dirty gossip that country folk will seize on. Never heed their foolish claik, Mr Wedderburn. You and I are concerned with facts.’

  ‘A healthy reminder, inspector. It frequently falls from my friend Lord Clanclacket on the bench. And you think there is no other direction in which the facts can point?’

  Almost happily, Speight smiled. ‘Mr Wedderburn, I’ll give you something away. The American lassie didn’t do it. There’s such a thing as experience in the ways of crime. And thirty years of that tells me not to waste time that way. The lassie’s real nice.’

  ‘I need hardly say that your impression is a most welcome one. Of course Neil Lindsay may prove real nice too.’

  Speight chuckled. ‘Time enough to decide that when we lay hands on him. I say it’s Lindsay or nothing. And I think you really agree with me, sir.’

  ‘No, inspector, I don’t agree. I cannot claim your experience of crime. But I have another opinion.’

  ‘Mr Wedderburn, it would be a real privilege to have it.’

  ‘If, as I hope, it turns to conviction you shall have it before the sheriff this afternoon. But – as I said – it’s early for convictions yet.’

  4

  I was received by Miss Guthrie in what is referred to throughout these narratives as the schoolroom. She struck me at once as possessing that blend of elegance and‚ élan which gives many of her cultivated countrywomen their slightly baffling charm; I was inclined to think that Inspector Speight, in finding her ‘nice’ had displayed at once an accurate and unexpectedly sophisticated taste. She was evidently determined to be businesslike. I judged her to be a person familiar with the elementary proprieties of legal business; nevertheless I thought it proper to say a few words on the relations generally presumed to exist between solicitor and clients in these Islands. She listened with a very becoming attention – the readers must not think me unaware of a slight tendency in myself to what might be unkindly termed pomposity on such occasions – and presently we were seated comfortably together on a sofa. Miss Guthrie, indeed, was so kind as to give me permission to smoke a pipe.

  ‘So far,’ I said, ‘I have interviewed only a certain Mr Bell, our friend Mr Gylby – from whom I have had a very full narrative both orally and in writing – and the Hardcastles. Gylby’s character-sketch of Hardcastle seems to me penetrating.’

  ‘Noel,’ said Miss Guthrie briskly, ‘is quite an able youth.’

  ‘No doubt. He has also given something of a character-sketch – writing, you will understand, to a most confidential correspondent – of yourself.’

  Perhaps a shade blankly, Miss Guthrie said: ‘Oh!’

  ‘He has recorded the opinion that you are not romantically disp
osed.’

  ‘I call that a mite unkind of Noel. All nice girls are romantic.’

  I smiled. ‘But some perhaps conceal it.’

  Sybil Guthrie lit a cigarette. ‘Mr Wedderburn,’ she said, ‘is this the right way about our business?’

  ‘I conceive it,’ I replied gravely, ‘to be a suitable approach.’

  ‘Very well. And I am a romantic girl and Noel was wrong. Will you tell me just why?’

  ‘Consider the manner of your coming to Erchany, Miss Guthrie. Mr Gylby, who was involved with your plan at the very closest quarters, is chiefly impressed by its ingenuity and efficiency. But to one like myself, at some distance from the affair, it is its aspect as a romantic prank that is most evident. You had eminent medical testimony, I gather, that Mr Guthrie was in no sense certifiably insane, and your own covert visit to him could be of no practical utility. But you liked the excitement – the romance and excitement – of besieging the castle, of carrying it not by storm but by a ruse. You even sent a slightly flamboyant telegram to your American lawyer in London. What were you fundamentally engaged in? Family business? Not a bit of it. You were simply after adventure – and adventure seasoned with at least an appreciable spice of danger, for Mr Guthrie was a very eccentric man. Noel Gylby has been so struck by what I may term your executive ability that he has quite missed what must be called the romanticism of the underlying motive.’

  Miss Guthrie manipulated a delicate veil of cigarette smoke between us. ‘And then, Mr Wedderburn, what?’

  ‘I am wondering whether this same impulse has not made you manipulate a little what you witnessed in the tower.’

  ‘You mean that Ranald Guthrie didn’t commit suicide at all?’

  ‘On the contrary, I am quite sure he committed suicide. Believe me that if I thought the account you gave to Mr Gylby a fundamental perversion I could not possibly consent to act for you. And now, Miss Guthrie, we had better hold the rest of our consultation on the site of the incidents involved.’

  ‘You mean the tower? Must we? I hate the place now.’

  ‘Nevertheless I think that if you will be so good, and if the police will permit us, it will be a useful move.’

  My friend Inspector Speight proved good enough simply to hand me the keys of the staircase and the dead man’s study; I rejoined Miss Guthrie and together we made the laborious ascent of the tower. Once entered, I looked about me with the liveliest curiosity. Flush with the door by which we stood, and but a few feet away, was what must be the door to the little bedroom. Half-way along the left-hand wall was the French window to the battlements. In the middle of the room was a square table serving as a desk. And everywhere were books.

  I was struck by the agelessness of the place: not a thing but might have held its place where it stood for generations. The late Mr Guthrie, it was to be concluded, had been of more than conservative temperament – in addition to which, of course, he had spent no penny that he could help. Half idly, I cast round for some sign of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, and found it abruptly in the form of a hand telephone on the desk. I glanced at Miss Guthrie in perplexity. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘Erchany isn’t on the telephone!’

  ‘Of course not, Mr Wedderburn; we weren’t as dumb as that. The machine here must be some sort of house-telephone to the offices. I haven’t seen another in the castle.’

  ‘An interesting innovation of the penurious laird’s. The police, I suppose, have been most efficiently over these rooms; nevertheless I suggest that before further talk we make a little inspection of our own. Let us begin with the rifled bureau.’

  The piece of furniture to which my client led me would have delighted a connoisseur, but it struck me as a most improperly fragile strong-box. Its single drawer had been broken open – a single powerful wrench would have sufficed – and in the bottom there still lay the few odd coins that had been noticed by Gylby. I stared at them, I suppose, in a sort of absent perplexity; Miss Guthrie seemed to follow my thought. ‘I reckon,’ she said, ‘the tower itself is a sufficient strong-room.’

  ‘Perhaps so. Nevertheless it was a deliberate establishing of temptation. Do you think Hardcastle, for instance, would be so faithful a retainer as to resist it?’

  Miss Guthrie wrinkled her forehead. ‘It is rather perplexing.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Mr Wedderburn!’ The sincerity of my client’s astonishment was a pleasure to mark.

  I gave a chuckle which oddly reminded me that I was Aeneas’ uncle. ‘No perplexity, my dear lady, was intended: and – what is much more – none exists. Though I am bound to say you have done your best.’

  ‘Mr Wedderburn, you are making quite unprofessional fun of me.’

  ‘Then let us be grave again and pursue our inspection. Among other things, I should much like to find the poems of William Dunbar.’

  I fear I was excelling in a rather childish species of mystification. I turned to the bookshelves without more ado and began very seriously to search for the publications of the Scottish Text Society. Guthrie’s books were most methodically arranged and I came upon them without difficulty. Taking down the three volumes of Dunbar, I found myself quite smothered in dust.

  ‘Our friend the poetical laird,’ I said, ‘knew his favourites. He had no need to refresh his memory on the poem he seems to have been so fond of.’ And I turned to the Lament for the Makaris.

  ‘He takis the knychtis in the feild,

  Anarmit under helme et scheild;

  Wictour he is at all melle;

  Timor Mortis conturbat me.

  ‘He takis the campion in the stour,

  The capitane closit in the tour,

  The lady in bour full of bewte;

  Timor Mortis conturbat me…

  ‘Well, Death has certainly taken the captain from his tower.’ I laid down the volume. ‘And there seems to be only one interpretation, does there not? But if Guthrie has not been reading Dunbar recently, let us see what he has been reading.’ And I moved over to a pile of books, still in their dust-covers, on the desk. Ewan Bell had omitted to tell me, at our interview a few hours earlier, of Guthrie’s sudden interest in medical studies as reported by Miss Mathers, and I was therefore surprised as well as puzzled by the pile of medical literature which I found confronting me. Letheby Tidy’s Synopsis of Medicine. Osler’s Principles and Practice of Medicine. Muir’s Text-book of Pathology – I turned them over one after another in some perplexity. ‘Now where,’ I said, ‘does the science of medicine come into the picture?’

  Miss Guthrie picked up Dunbar. ‘Well, it comes for that matter into the poem.’ And she read:

  ‘In medicyne the most practicianis,

  Lechis, surrigianis, et phisicianis,

  Thame self fra ded may not supple;

  Timor Mortis conturbat me.’

  ‘That is very interesting. And if I may make the remark, Miss Guthrie, you have considerable facility in Middle Scots. You studied it at college?’

  ‘Why yes, I did.’

  ‘May I ask if you have taken your Ph.D?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wedderburn, I have.’

  ‘Then you are quite sure that you are not the “doctor” for whom Hardcastle was on the look out?’

  Miss Guthrie flushed. ‘What an extraordinary piece of ingenuity! Of course I’m not. He knew nothing about me. And one doesn’t arrange to be called “Doctor Guthrie” all one’s days because of a roaring piece of pedantry in youth.’

  ‘I suppose not. Well, let us search further. I only wish that my own “youth” were as little behind me as yours.’

  I found little more to interest me in the study. Books apart, it carried only a few traces of the career and interests of Ranald Guthrie: a boomerang and a native food-carrier from his Australian days, a few sketches by Beardsley to mark his contacts with a past generation of writers, a case or two of Pictish and Roman remains in token of his interest in archaeology. I moved into the bedroom. Here too there seemed little of interest. Guthrie had
slept in a room immediately below. Except for a stretcher bed used perhaps for an occasional siesta this was little more than a lumber-room: a broken chair, a pile of old canvas, rope and sticks in a corner, a cracked mirror hung on the wall, a scrap of tattered curtain over the narrow windows. Much of Erchany, I gathered, was in just this state of dilapidation; I was turning away when my attention was caught by a book lying on the floor. I picked it up. ‘More medicine, Miss Guthrie. Experimental Radiology by Richard Flinders.’ I put it down again. ‘We are here by courtesy of the police and had better leave things as we find them. And now, perhaps, it is time to return to our discussion.’

  Back in the study, Miss Guthrie took up what I knew to be her characteristic position perched on the desk. It was uncommonly chilly and I so far consulted the halting circulation of age as to talk while pacing about. ‘Miss Guthrie, I dare say you have read stories in which all sorts of revelations are effected by what is called a reconstruction of the crime?’

  Obliquely but positively Miss Guthrie answered: ‘There was no crime. You’ve agreed to that yourself.’

  ‘I think you mistake me. But for the moment we will say “the events of Christmas Eve”. And I invite you, here in this room, to consider the probable results of the police attempting a reconstruction of those events.’

  ‘I don’t quite get what you mean.’

  ‘I mean simply that such a reconstruction would at once shake your testimony as it stands at present; and that it would shake it for a very good reason. The account you gave to Mr Gylby was as much coloured by your own desires as it was illuminated by the clear light of objective fact.’

  Miss Guthrie stood up. ‘If you believe that, Mr Wedderburn, I really don’t think–’

  ‘But what I can see that the police might not see is that you are placing yourself in a hazardous and disagreeable position to no purpose at all. I will not presume, as a man, to judge your attitude, though as a lawyer I must think it wrong. The relevant point is this: romantic perjury can only embarrass us. And all we need is the facts.’

  Miss Guthrie inspected the tips of her fingers. Then she said: ‘Please explain what you mean about a reconstruction.’