Lament for a Maker

by Michael Innes

  But it was after the available witness was apparently exhausted that Wedderburn played his single decisive card. For the guidance of the sheriff he begged leave to call a certain Murdo Mackay, who proved to be an elderly and impressive working electrician. This person swore that there had been installed – and unmistakably recently installed – an electrical contrivance for the sole purpose of sending signals to Guthrie’s study from various points on the tower staircase. The apparatus was perfectly simple, a matter of two wires that had only to be pressed together to activate the buzzer of a small desk telephone – a buzzer that had been so muffled that it would be audible only to a person actually sitting by the desk. The whole contrivance could have no other purpose than that which he had described; moreover it was so set up that it could have been removed without leaving a trace by anybody with five minutes leisure in the study and on the staircase. The existence of this device the police, whose attention had been called to it by Wedderburn at the last moment, had to confirm.

  After this Wedderburn’s road was clear. He built up an unshakable case. Guthrie, while affecting to give his niece away to Lindsay under eccentric and humiliating circumstances, had actually plotted that rarest of human achievements, a truly diabolical crime.

  I followed all this with sufficient interest – it was an anatomy of wickedness beyond my considerable experience – but nevertheless I believe I was still primarily interested in the young people with whom I had travelled. As the story grew Lindsay’s eyes darkened; he gave no other sign of whatever emotions possessed him. He was, I suppose, relieved – and yet I doubt if throughout he had ever thought of his neck. He was of the secret kind, with that almost maiden’s shyness which often marks in a man the union of simple breeding and sensibility, and the light that had come to beat on Christine Mathers and himself was a sort of death to him. There was a sense, I felt, in which Ranald Guthrie had triumphed. Though not lacking in manners, Lindsay had to be prompted by the girl into some expression of thanks to Wedderburn; after that it was clear he only wanted to get away.

  But it was in Christine Mathers that I was most interested. She had not the mask or shell of Lindsay, and wonder, horror and thankfulness were evident in her by turns: to have her lover cleared at the cost of her uncle and guardian’s infamy must have been a harrowing and bewildering experience. But her responses were far from being emotional merely; she followed the course of the inquiry syllable by syllable with her whole mind, as if she were preparing to fight every word if need be. And I noticed – what nobody else in court, I believe, troubled to notice – that as Wedderburn’s story grew so did a look of puzzlement on Christine Mathers’ face. Through all the interplay of her emotions – anxiety, abhorrence, relief – was this constant and growing thing: an intellectual doubt. Speight might have taken heart had he observed it, but Speight was fully occupied with the task of retreating in good order.

  Sybil Guthrie – felt by Speight to be ‘real nice’ – had also captured something of my attention. If Miss Mathers was relieved and puzzled Miss Guthrie was exultant and – indefinably – something else. When Wedderburn began to speak she had watched him much as I have seen women watch an unlikely fancy in a horse race; when he had finished and it was all over I thought I could discern some faint light of mockery or irony on her face. She was tasting, it occurred to me, some delicate flavour in the affair that others were unaware of – and a flavour, maybe, not without its astringency or even bitterness. But when the sheriff had pronounced his findings and withdrawn she was the first person to hurry to Miss Mathers. Standing at the back of the minister’s library in which the inquiry had been conducted, I saw her kiss Christine, shake hands awkwardly with Neil Lindsay and then turn and go briskly from the room. An interesting girl: I felt sorry I was unlikely to see more than a glimpse of her again.

  The transition from inquiry to funeral was a difficult business during which I felt a considerable admiration for the minister, Dr Jervie. He might have been moving among the relatives of the most beloved and pious of his parishioners; and his control of the situation was the more remarkable in that he was not, I thought, one to whom pastoral contacts came easily – rather he was a shy, scholarly, and it might be visionary man. Perhaps because I was attracted by his personality, I felt some desire to attend the funeral myself. But it seemed scarcely an occasion for curious strangers, and after some conversation with Speight I set off to find myself a room at the inn.

  The manse is some way from the village; I had to tramp about a quarter of a mile in the heavy and now melting snow. That day had seen a rapid change in the weather: a stiff, mild wind had blown the sky almost clear of clouds and there was every indication of a rapid thaw. Beside me as I walked was the splash and gurgle of a torrential little stream; at the tail of the village it went to swell the ice-green waters of the Drochet, a small river that was already risen high on the piers of an old stone bridge I presently crossed. In front of me, at a distance difficult to assess in the now failing light, was the shadowy whiteness of Ben Mervie, with the summit of Ben Cailie still clear-cut in brilliant sunlight beyond. Over the village the blue peat smoke was drifting on the wind, and already in some little shop there was the yellow light of a lamp. It was cold, peaceful, lonely, compelling; I walked for some time merely submerged in the spirit of the place. But presently the tug of the snow at my shoes brought me back to the fact that there was matter tugging too at my mind. I had just set myself to explore it when there came a hail behind me. It was Noel Gylby.

  I should explain that Gylby and I were old acquaintances, having met in a setting of some excitement a year before. He takes rather a glamorous view of criminal investigation and I believe he was sorry I hadn’t arrived in time to make spectacular gestures in the Erchany affair. He called out now: ‘Appleby – I say – I’ve got my journal back!’ I stopped. ‘You what?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? I wrote a whacking great account for Diana of what was going on at the castle. Old Wedders’ – he meant the eminent Writer to the Signet – ‘had it and now he’s returned it. Would you like to read it?’

  ‘Very much.’

  Gylby thrust a small sheaf of papers into my hand. ‘You may find it a bit literary’ – he said this with complacency – ‘but all the facts are there. Are you going to the pub? You know, I think you might do something about ordering a meal. The sheriff has told Wedders there’s a claret would go splendidly with a piping hot curry or a tart really stuffed with strawberry jam. I’m going back for the last act.’

  ‘The funeral baked meats shall be ordered. And thank you for your notes.’

  I went on to the inn, secured a room and sat down to Gylby’s journal. Perhaps it stands to the credit of his literary style that I quite forgot my promise about ordering a meal. When he returned with Wedderburn and Sybil Guthrie a little more than an hour later there were introductions and we sat down to a supper of cold roast mutton. It was singularly tasteless and I don’t doubt threw the execrable claret into the highest relief. I drank beer.

  Old Wedderburn seemed disposed to expand; indeed he beamed on me so cordially that I ventured to congratulate him on his conduct of the case.

  ‘My dear Mr – um – Appleby, it was my good fortune to listen patiently to the gossip of the hostess of this inn. Everything followed from that.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘The fantastic rumour about the mutilating of the corpse! Could such an extraordinary story start up unbidden, or as the result of some mere misapprehension? For a little time I was dull enough to think so. Then I saw that it must have its source in malice – malice that was either stupid or calculating. I tested the theory that it might be calculating – and what did I find? That the rumour, if it were to be really damaging, must be true. And to that I knit the remarkable fact of Hardcastle’s curiosity about the body and the statement he made – without having had the opportunity to investigate – that Lindsay had “mischieved” Guthrie. That took me straight to the heart of the plot.’

>   ‘A strange plot, Mr Wedderburn. I doubt if there is anything closely analogous on record. Men have killed themselves to incriminate others before this, but they were not men of what appears to have been Guthrie’s type. They may have had his melancholy verging on madness, but they have been lacking in his intellectual vigour.’

  ‘I am without your familiarity, Mr Appleby, with the archives of the criminal mind. But we must frame our psychologies to fit facts, and not vice versa.’

  I reminded myself that that afternoon Wedderburn had annihilated his adversaries, and that nothing was to be gained by setting myself up as a cock-shy for his very efficient forensic method. I said: ‘Very true. And the fact of the abominable plot against Lindsay is unshakable.’

  ‘You know–’ It was Gylby who spoke, and he looked rather warily at Wedderburn before continuing. ‘You know, Christine said a queer thing. I hung about a bit at the manse and made helpful noises. And suddenly she said quite out of the blue: “I can’t believe it; my uncle had a finer mind than that.” And then she looked at me as if I must have an alternative explanation in my hat.’

  Wedderburn peered severely at the sediment in the bottom of his glass. ‘I do not see it as a queer thing. Such a sentiment in the scoundrel’s niece and ward is a very proper and becoming one. But we are not concerned with family piety.’

  ‘I’m afraid, sir, she didn’t mean quite that. She wasn’t denying that Guthrie was capable of great wickedness. She meant that his mind was subtler – more ingenious – than the story shows.’

  ‘More ingenious? Bless my soul!’

  ‘And she said: “He had a level head really; he would pit extremes only against extremes.”’

  Sybil Guthrie crumbled bread, made a wry face over a mouthful of claret and broke in: ‘Will she brood over it? I suppose she will. Mr Appleby, how do people’s minds behave when they have been through a horrid thing like this?’

  I avoided generalization. ‘I think, Miss Guthrie, she will brood as long as she feels she hasn’t got the truth.’

  ‘She has the truth! We all have.’

  ‘It is scattered among us. But I don’t know that we have pooled it all yet.’

  Very deliberately, Wedderburn put down his glass and folded up his table napkin. ‘Mr Appleby, Gylby assures me that your opinion in matters of this sort has great weight. Will you be so good as to explain the statement you have just made?’

  ‘Miss Mathers herself has one piece of information which has not, I think, been pooled. Who was with her in the schoolroom, and who emerged from it and disappeared into the darkness, just before Gylby and Hardcastle went up the tower staircase?’

  ‘Dear me – an interesting point. She has no doubt told Stewart. I fear I rather took charge from him this afternoon; otherwise the explanation would no doubt have emerged.’

  ‘It is more than an interesting point. Here in Erchany on this isolated night is another man – and we are told nothing of him. Unless indeed it could have been the boy Tammas.’

  Gylby shook his head at this. ‘Not Tammas; he wasn’t let into the house till long after. And not, of course, Gamley either.’

  ‘Very well. And the matter gains much greater significance from the fact that there was in all probability – and despite Miss Guthrie’s impression to the contrary – another visitor to the tower. Somebody must know who it was that opened the trapdoor on the battlements, passed through it, and bolted it on the lower side. Gylby’s record tells us that the snow provided the most conclusive evidence on that point. The door had been opened not long before. By whom? Why?’

  They were silent for a moment and then Wedderburn said, with unexpected humour: ‘Mr Appleby, this is a slaughter of the innocents. And I fear they include both myself and your colleague Speight.’ He paused. ‘However clear the main features of the situation, there are undoubtedly factors that we have overlooked. And I will say that they call for investigation.’

  ‘I think they do – and that there is yet truth to come. Miss Guthrie, you agree?’

  She eyed me thoughtfully before replying. ‘If you find real evidence of another person in the tower I agree there is yet truth to come. Mr Appleby, come to Erchany.’

  Wedderburn rose. ‘Miss Guthrie and I intend to go up now. The dead man appears to have had no legal representative and in the circumstances we judge it proper, along with the young man Stewart, to search for what papers there may be. You will come along with us? But first, perhaps, we should go to the manse, where Miss Mathers is staying for the time being, and ask her to explain her nocturnal visitor.’

  ‘I will come up – though you will understand that I have no official standing. Anything we discover may have to go to Speight. As for Miss Mathers, I think it would be wise to wait until later. There is another question I am saving up for her.’

  Wedderburn turned from helping Miss Guthrie with her coat. ‘And that is?’

  ‘Whether her uncle ever went in for winter sports.’

  ‘A most enigmatic inquiry.’

  Noel Gylby looked up from stuffing his pockets providently with buttered biscuits. ‘You’ll find,’ he said, ‘that Appleby has questions like that for us all round. What’s mine?’

  ‘Just this. We’ve had the message of the Learned Rat. But what was the message of the Unfamiliar Owl?’

  2

  Stewart, we found, had been called urgently to Dunwinnie and had left with a promise to follow us presently to Erchany. During the drive through the darkness I got from Wedderburn most of that information embodied in his narrative that I did not already possess, and I believe my ideas were in tolerable order by the time we arrived at the castle. From fragmentary evidences of what had happened here on Christmas Eve Wedderburn had that afternoon built up a picture that was coherent and convincing. Only he had failed – in the image drawn so significantly from Ranald Guthrie’s jigsaws – to use all the pieces and his picture was therefore necessarily incomplete. Despite every appearance to the contrary, it was possible that the pieces yet to be fitted would confound or reverse the meaning of those outlines which were already clearly established – much as the figure, say, of an assassin, belatedly discovered in some shadowy corner, of a painting, will give sudden sinister significance to what may have appeared a merely sentimental or spectacular composition. The Erchany affair could scarcely become more sinister, but I was fairly sure that as more pieces were added the composition would deepen and complicate itself. What I could not tell was that the jigsaw metaphor was wholly inadequate; that we were confronted rather by a chemical mixture, complex and unstable, ready to take final and unexpected form only at the adding of the last ingredient of all. Perhaps it was because I had the jigsaw metaphor fatally in my head that in looking back on the Erchany mystery I have to remind myself of Ewan Bell’s words: there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance.

  Both Mrs Hardcastle and the lad Tammas had been taken in by kindly or curious folk in Kinkeig and the castle was deserted when we drove up to it. The moon had not risen but the sky was clear and starry; driving over the drawbridge and into the central court I could distinguish first the vague bulk of the main building, encircling and menacing us, and then, soaring into increasing definition where the sky grew more luminous towards its zenith, the strong sheer lines of the tower. From his boyhood, I reflected, Ranald Guthrie must have been familiar with that great drop to the moat; time and again, leaning over the parapet more or less venturesomely according to his temperament, he must have tested his nerve against the dizzying sense of it. And for how many years, perhaps, had he been fascinated by the thought of a body swaying, toppling, falling – finally hurtling with the velocity of a projectile to the hard stone below? I said to Wedderburn: ‘I should like to begin by visiting the moat.’

  Gylby got a lantern and together we climbed down by Gamley’s route. The snow was soft and watery in the thaw and we made a thoroughly uncomfortable progress. We found the little crater made by the body – it was still readily distinguishable, such h
ad been the force of the impact that created it – and we looked at it for a few moments in silence. Then I said: ‘All those pieces of the puzzle – there’s a missing piece we ought to find hereabouts. Could you get a spade?’

  Gylby went off and returned presently through the slush with two spades. ‘Here you are,’ he said happily. ‘And now for the skull of Yorick.’

  We prodded and dug about – the job would have been much better performed by daylight – and by mere good luck my spade eventually rang on something deep in the snow. A minute’s digging and I had uncovered a small, sharp axe. Gylby studied it carefully. ‘It will make a nice present,’ he said, ‘for Speight.’

  ‘It wasn’t Speight’s fault it wasn’t found. There was no occasion to suspect its existence till this afternoon. And of course it fell from that height clean and deep into the snow. But it will please Wedderburn: a suitable finger-lopping implement is a most desirable accessory to his case.’ I fingered the edge of the axe. ‘“To settle accounts with a great rat.” I cannot say that the character of friend Ranald grows on me. Let us go in.’

  We found Wedderburn and Miss Guthrie in a little island of candle-light amid the gloom of the great hall or chamber of the castle. I suppose that a few days before the place must have given some impression of a dwelling. Now, though it had been empty but a few hours, there hung heavily about it the atmosphere of an ancient monument. The tenancy of Ranald Guthrie had been a thread holding it to the present; that thread broken, it had slipped into the past as inevitably as a ripe apricot falls to the ground. We might have been idle tourists on some nocturnal sightseeing had we not carried with us our own heavy sense of fresh mortality. The clock of which Gylby had become so sharply aware still ticked, but with the sinister pulse of a watch in a dead man’s pocket.