Lament for a Maker

by Michael Innes

  ‘Imagine this room lit by two or three candles. The French window is not quite shut, there is a gale outside and the light is not only dim but uncertain and flickering. You are outside the window, peering in. Just how much could you see?’

  ‘Quite a lot – in a flickering way. And no reconstruction could prove that I saw just so much, no more and no less.’

  ‘Very true. But it is much easier to demonstrate that neither you nor anyone else can see round a corner. And I put it to you that without thrusting your head into the room it is impossible from that French window to see those two contiguous doors – to staircase and bedroom – fully and clearly. If either were opened wide you would no doubt be able to see the movement. But if one – or both – were opened only slightly, so that a man might slip through, you would see nothing. In other words, Miss Guthrie, your testimony translates an impression quite illegitimately into a certainty. The staircase door opened wide and you saw no more of Lindsay. The bedroom door opened wide and you saw no more of Guthrie. But Lindsay might in the moments following have slipped through the two doors – from staircase to bedroom and back – without your being any the wiser.’

  Still perched on the desk, my client looked at the doors long and thoughtfully. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that is so.’

  ‘I think you liked Miss Mathers?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And this young Mr Lindsay, from what you saw of him?’ Miss Guthrie’s chin went up a decisive inch. ‘I thought him quite beautiful, Mr Wedderburn.’

  ‘And you had further formed the opinion that your kinsman was an almost wholly unbeautiful person?’

  ‘Very decidedly.’

  ‘Then we begin to see where we are. You were going to stick to these young people – whose circumstances are romantic, touching and beautiful – let the worst betide. All that stood between Lindsay and the gravest suspicion was your knowledge that he had gone out for good while Guthrie was alive. Therefore you have deliberately given your impression the status of knowledge… Miss Guthrie, have the police recorded your statement?’

  ‘No. Inspector Speight said he would take it formally later.’

  ‘Speight is a most circumspect officer. Now let me most earnestly tell you that you must go back to your mere and honest impression about the doors. You will lose credit if you don’t. And the one vital necessity is that your testimony should be seen to be reliable.’

  ‘Mr Wedderburn – I don’t understand. Vital to what?’

  ‘Vital to the safety of the quite beautiful young man Neil Lindsay.’

  My client jumped up and approached me in considerable agitation. ‘You must tell me more of what is in your mind, Mr Wedderburn. You must.’

  ‘Simply this. That you couldn’t really and truly see the doors clearly is a thousand pities – still, it is not fundamentally important. What is fundamentally important is what took place between Guthrie and Lindsay. And that is where you have actually lied.’

  Miss Guthrie was very pale and I thought I detected a rising tide of passion which might at any moment usher me from her presence for good and all. I therefore went on as hurriedly as was consonant with the impressiveness I knew to be necessary if I were to get my way with her. ‘You say Lindsay left quietly. Gylby says he left in a passion. And Gylby is speaking the truth. Now if Lindsay is to be vindicated we must have a clear picture of what actually happened. And that clear picture requires the truth – Gylby’s truth. Do you understand me?’

  Miss Guthrie passed a hand over her forehead and sat down rather limply on a chair. ‘I don’t understand you at all.’

  ‘Let me then assure you of this – and I speak with nearly fifty years’ experience of the law. Neil Lindsay is safe. I have a picture of the case now which no prosecution could break through. Guthrie committed suicide. But that is far from implying that there has been no crime. A few hours ago I thought your evidence about the doors might be vital to him. I know now that all he needs is your simple story of what happened in this room. Please give it to me.’

  Miss Guthrie rose, walked to the window and scanned the snow as if there might be counsel in it. ‘I find it,’ she said presently, ‘terribly hard to believe you.’ There was a silence. ‘But it is clear I must do as you say.’ And she turned and came back to her old position on the desk.

  ‘Of course you are right about the doors. I didn’t realize it, but I see it’s something they could demonstrate as a fact simply with a scale plan. I couldn’t be certain Lindsay hadn’t slipped back and through the bedroom to the battlements for the necessary half minute – though I knew he hadn’t.’ Miss Guthrie looked at me squarely. ‘I knew Lindsay hadn’t killed Guthrie. And everything followed from that.’

  ‘Inaccurate evidence never follows legitimately from anything, my dear.’

  With a sober nod Miss Guthrie acknowledged this final fatherly rebuke. Then she went on. ‘Everything I have said about the interview between Guthrie and Lindsay is true – except right at the end. They sat and had that formal parley. Guthrie never went and shouted to Hardcastle about asking Noel up. Neither of them could have gone near the bureau–’

  ‘Exactly. This is vital and they can’t shake you on it.’

  ‘But at the end they got up and walked about half-way to the door. I could still see them clearly and I thought they were going to part with formal civility – like I made up for Noel – when I suddenly saw that something had gone wrong. Guthrie was talking and though I couldn’t hear a word I could see just what he was doing. He was lashing the boy – the young man – Lindsay with words. It was as if he knew he had some hold on him – some hold that made it safe to be briefly and hideously cruel. I knew in that instant that I just hated my kinsman and I felt – horribly it now seems – a fierce longing that the boy should kill him there and then. That was why I felt afterwards that I must–’

  ‘I see. Had Lindsay actually killed Guthrie you would have been spiritually an accomplice.’

  ‘Something like that. It was a piece of obscene cruelty on Guthrie’s part, and it was over in a few seconds. I had just drawn breath from it when I saw that Lindsay was gone.’

  ‘And that is the whole story? Then you have nothing to do but come downstairs and repeat it formally to Inspector Speight.’

  Miss Guthrie gave a sigh of relief. Then she hesitated. ‘Mr Wedderburn – you are sure? It’s terribly hard to believe.’

  I smiled at the reiterated phrase. ‘You need have no doubts.’

  ‘You know, Noel said there was another thing. He said it would be thought very strange that I should guess on that cry that Guthrie had–’

  ‘My dear young lady, Mr Gylby’s experience is no doubt curious and extensive. Nevertheless I venture to assure you that you need have no apprehensions.’ I consulted my watch. ‘And now there will just be time to send post-haste to Dunwinnie for an electrician.’

  ‘An electrician!’

  ‘Precisely. And one, if possible, with an impressive and venerable exterior. Much depends on little matters of that sort. And now, Miss Guthrie, for Inspector Speight.’

  We went out and I locked the study door behind me. I felt, I believe, much as I feel when I lock up a family deed box with the knowledge that its affairs are comfortably settled for a generation. In silence we descended the long staircase and made our way to the police inspector’s room. We found Speight consuming ham sandwiches in meditative solitude.

  ‘May we interrupt you, inspector? My client Miss Guthrie would like to make a formal statement. And I don’t think we shall have much more trouble over the Erchany mystery.’

  ‘You think not, Mr Wedderburn? I’m real glad to hear it. Come away, Miss Guthrie, and we’ll have your bit story down on paper for the sheriff.’

  ‘There is one other matter before we begin. I propose to send my car into Dunwinnie to find a competent electrician. I believe he may be useful to us.’

  Inspector Speight put down his sandwich. ‘Mr Wedderburn, did you say an electrician?�
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  ‘Just that. And if they have a stopwatch at the police station I believe that would be useful too.’

  5

  When my client’s statement had been taken I excused myself and sought out Noel Gylby. I saw that I should presently need an assistant, and realizing that Miss Guthrie’s considered evidence on the doors had confirmed Speight in his suspicions of Lindsay I judged it imprudent to attempt taking him into my confidence at this point. Gylby, I thought, would be reliable as well as intelligent, and he would certainly relish the business of unravelling a mystery. Together we found Mrs Hardcastle, who was creeping somewhat eerily about the castle in furtherance of her fugitive warfare with the rats, and persuaded her to cut us some sandwiches for an early luncheon. I then suggested that we find a quiet spot for a talk and Gylby, after a moment’s thought, led the way up to the long winding room known as the gallery. I paused to view the demolished door in some astonishment – I had not yet heard little Isa Murdoch’s story – and then we passed inside. After a cursory view of the family portraits and the mouldering theology we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in an alcove.

  ‘Mr Gylby, you will have some idea of what the police have in mind about this affair?’

  ‘Hanging the elusive Lindsay.’

  ‘Quite so. And have you any opinion of your own?’

  ‘Nothing so clear-cut as an opinion. But I have one or two feelings – the principal one being that there are too many pieces. It’s as if a couple of the laird’s famous jigsaws had got mixed up and one found oneself, as the picture progressed, with an embarras de richesses.’

  ‘I find myself in agreement with you, Gylby. Pray go on.’

  ‘Too much villainy about. Active villainy in Hardcastle and a sort of lurking, prospective villainy in Guthrie himself. My idea rather is that Guthrie was up to some dirty game, that Lindsay was somehow too much for him and that in consequence he got what he more or less deserved. I have felt that Sybil has some suspicion or knowledge that it was that way – and that she has been trying to shield Lindsay as a result.’

  ‘A most interesting theory. Can you push it further?’

  ‘Well – it sounds fantastic and squalid and horrible – but what about this. Consider the apparently rifled bureau. Guthrie was proposing to plant a fake robbery on Lindsay at the very moment he was going off with his niece. Lindsay spotted the plot while up in the tower, slipped back without Sybil seeing him and sent Guthrie over the battlement. Then he simply made off with the girl.’

  ‘Excellent up to a point. But I think it has a psychological flaw. Such a plot against Lindsay implies a twisted mind of the perpetrator. We may grant that; it is evident that Guthrie was a most peculiar person. But what of Lindsay? Guthrie was in a sense his enemy, and that he should kill him in passion upon the discovery of such a plot is possible enough. But would he thereupon – as you put it – “simply make off with the girl”? I think that would almost imply another twisted mind in the case. The impulse of a normal man, killing his enemy in passion and upon the discovery of a dastardly plot, would be to face it out. Particularly, he would not make off as a fugitive with a girl he loved. Is that sentiment, Gylby? I am inclined to call it sound mental science.’

  ‘I rather agree.’

  Moreover we should still be left with far too many pieces – have fitted in, indeed, little more than the rifled bureau. So let us go back and glance at what appears to be Speight’s present case. Lindsay kills Guthrie, steals his gold and runs off with his niece. What do you think of that as a picture?’

  ‘First of all, that Christine Mathers isn’t the sort to fall for that kind of chap. And that it’s lurid and crazy.’

  ‘And if Lindsay could be shown to have paused in his flight, and in requital of some legendary injury to have chopped a few fingers off the corpse?’

  Gylby stared at me. ‘A madman’s dream.’

  ‘Exactly – a madman’s dream. And your first impression of Ranald Guthrie was that he was mad.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Your ejaculation is almost justified. It is a most horrid picture. Ranald Guthrie committed suicide – and in the same instant an abominable crime. Having got that we have got to the core of the mystery. It remains to work it out in detail.

  ‘Guthrie would not let Lindsay have his niece: we must begin, I think, with that as a fact of pathological intensity. And for some reason his hatred of the young man was so extreme that he plotted – having failed, perhaps, to achieve his end in other ways – to prevent the thing by Lindsay’s death – and his own. Remember he was of a more than melancholic temperament, with that deep will-to-death which is the ground of so many apparently unmotivated suicides. Actually, he once attempted suicide – I was fortunate enough to secure evidence of that yesterday – and we must imagine him contriving an act in which these dominant impulses would be telescoped. He would rob Lindsay of his niece by a method that meant nothing less than Lindsay’s ignominious death at the hands of the law; at the same time he would satisfy his own obscure and profound craving for self-destruction. You can see why he chanted Dunbar’s poem and why the fear of death was upon his face: he knew he was going to die. You can see why he gave signs of struggle; why, as Miss Mathers said, he seemed “in two minds”. No man could meditate such a deed without moments of terror and revulsion.

  ‘There was to be a crime – and a witness. There was to be the best sort of witness – a medical witness.’

  ‘Hardcastle’s doctor!’

  ‘I think so. The first thing that went wrong was that this doctor – whoever he be – failed to turn up. You and Miss Guthrie turned up instead. And Guthrie decided that you would serve. Hence his look of calculation as he considered you. Hence his significant remark that he was very glad you had come.

  ‘I believe there is another trace of the original plan in the circumstance that Guthrie feigned illness next day. That was somehow to be exploited to get the doctor to the right place at the right moment – everything was to turn on that – and it was a fragment of the plan which for some reason he adhered to even when the doctor – daunted, we may guess, by the snows – had to be replaced by yourself.

  ‘And now the plan. It was really very simple. Lindsay was to come on Christmas Eve and take Miss Mathers, together with her dowry, quietly and indeed secretly away. Guthrie’s eccentricity, his insistence that the marriage was disgraceful and so on, was enough to give a natural colour to this. Lindsay and Miss Mathers would see that he was determined to humiliate them by such an arrangement, but they would suspect nothing more. Nor should we at this moment have the least notion of what had been arranged but for the chance of Miss Mathers having managed to send a letter to an old friend in Kinkeig. Save for this circumstance, which Guthrie didn’t reckon on, there would only have been the word of the fugitive that Guthrie had ever sanctioned their departure, or that he had given Christine a sum of gold.

  ‘Lindsay was to be brought up to the tower for a final interview with Guthrie – and at a set moment he was to be dismissed. And dismissed in a particular mood. I suppose Guthrie knew the lad’s temperament, and knew how to lash him – Miss Guthrie’s word – into a flaming passion before telling him to go.’

  ‘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–�
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  ‘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.’