Mrs Murchison did not laugh at this proposition, but she answered in the negative.
‘Did you ever hear of him raving or labouring under some hallucination or fantasy?’
‘I would not say that I saw him raving,’ she replied, ‘but, on occasion, when walking through the village or working in the fields he might mutter to himself.’
‘Were these mutterings audible?’
Mrs Murchison shook her head. ‘He would be tight-lipped,’ – she here imitated what she meant with a twitching of her mouth – ‘as if he did not want to be overheard. If you approached him, or he saw that he was being watched, he would cease.’
‘So he must have been conscious of what he was doing,’ I said more to myself than to the company. ‘Did you ever speak to any other person about this tendency of R——’s?’
‘My husband also noticed it and remarked on it to me.’
‘And what was the substance of these remarks?’
‘No more than to state what he had observed. We did not think it a matter of any consequence.’
‘Nevertheless, it was unusual enough to be worthy of comment.’
‘Clearly,’ said Mrs Murchison. She took a sip of the tea that she was holding daintily in her lap. ‘You must understand, Mr Thomson, the great unhappiness which has afflicted R——. Since the death of his mother, his whole family laboured under a cloak of grief which was painful to observe and quite immune to the good offices of their neighbours.’
‘So you believe that the death of Mrs M—— wrought some change of character in her son?’
‘In the whole family,’ she said.
I nodded.
‘You should also know that John M—— is a severe man, who ...’ – she now lowered her voice and cast her eyes towards the floor as if she was ashamed of what she was about to say – ‘... who did not show a great deal of affection to his children.’
She then added that she did not wish to speak ill of a neighbour and I assured her of my discretion.
‘You have been of great assistance,’ I told her. ‘As I have said, our motives in making these investigations are entirely professional.’ I paused for a moment before continuing. ‘As you are clearly a woman of some education, might I make one further enquiry, an enquiry of a somewhat delicate nature?’
Mrs Murchison indicated that I could.
‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but did you ever know R—— M—— to commit any indecent acts?’
A little colour rose to the woman’s cheeks, which she attempted to conceal by touching her hand to her face. My suspicion on seeing this was less that she was discomfited by what I alluded to, but rather that I had struck upon something she might have preferred not to discuss. She at first attempted to deflect my query by asking what kind of acts I meant.
‘It is clear,’ I said, ‘that if the answer to my question was in the negative, you would have no need to ask for such clarification. I ask you to remember that I am a man of science and set aside your natural reticence.’
Mrs Murchison set down her teacup and looked around to confirm that her daughters were not present. When she spoke, she kept her eyes all the time trained on the dirt floor between us.
‘Our daughters – the eldest is fifteen – sleep in a chamber at the back of the house.’ She here indicated a doorway which presumably led to this room. ‘On a number of occasions, my husband surprised R–– outside the window.’
‘At night?’ I said.
‘At night or early in the morning.’
‘He was observing your daughters?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you will excuse my indelicacy, did your husband find the boy in a state of arousal?’
The colour now rose more vividly to the good lady’s cheeks.
‘He was engaged in onanistic activity?’
Mrs Murchison nodded faintly, and then shyly directed her eyes towards me. In order to dispel her embarrassment, I adopted a breezy tone and asked what action her husband had taken. She replied that he had been strenuously warned off, which I took to mean that he had at the very least received a forceful boxing of his ears.
‘Did you inform anyone about these activities?’
Mrs Murchison shook her head. ‘We instructed our daughters not to associate with R––, and to inform us if he behaved improperly towards them.’
‘And did he?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Did he persist in these visitations?’ I asked.
‘For a time,’ she said, ‘but they seem to have ceased some months ago. I suppose he outgrew such things.’
I expressed my admiration for Mrs Murchison’s charitable characterisation of R—— M——’s behaviour, and again begged her pardon for obliging her to speak of such matters. We then thanked her for her hospitality and asked for the directions which had been the original motive for our call.
We left our ponies tethered outside the Murchison house and walked the remaining length of the village. The M–– dwelling was by some distance the most poorly constructed in the township, resembling less a house than a smoking dung-heap. The land to the fore was ill-kempt and overgrown. The door was open and we peered into the chamber. To the left was what appeared to be a dilapidated byre. The stalls were empty of livestock, but the stench was nevertheless rank and few would have considered this a place fit for human habitation. No fire was lit and the chamber was cold and almost in darkness.
Mr Sinclair called out a greeting, to which there was no reply. He stepped into the room and repeated his salutation in Gaelic. A pair of hens, which had been pecking at the dirt, scuttled past our legs. Something stirred to our right and our eyes were drawn to a figure seated in a chair by the tiny aperture in the wall.
‘Mr M––?’ my companion enquired.
The figure got to his feet with some difficulty and took one or two steps towards us, leaning heavily on a gnarled stick. He spoke a few words in the language in which he had been addressed.
Mr Sinclair replied and the man approached us. I have rarely seen such a dismal specimen of the human race. Bent over as he was, he could barely have stood more than five feet tall. His beard and hair were thick and dishevelled, his clothing ragged. At my suggestion, Mr Sinclair asked him if we might step outside to converse for a few minutes. The homunculus looked at us with some suspicion and shook his head. He indicated that if we wished to speak to him we could sit at the table in the centre of the room. We seated ourselves on the benches around the table, the surface of which was speckled with droppings. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I studied Mr M––. He had the same heavy brow and darting eyes as his son. His hands, which busied themselves filling his little pipe, were large, with long, crooked fingers, somewhat flattened at the ends. I wondered if perhaps he had been asleep when we entered, as now he appeared to have shaken off some of his initial confusion. Nonetheless, the expression on his face was one of distrust, if not outright hostility. He did not offer us any refreshments, not that I would have wished to consume the merest morsel in that filthy hovel.
Mr Sinclair asked if he was able to converse with us in English and we proceeded in that language. The advocate then explained the nature of our mission in elementary terms. I was struck by the fact that at no point did Mr M—— ask after the wellbeing of his son. Mr Sinclair began by enquiring about the welfare of the crofter’s youngest offspring. He replied that they had been taken in by his wife’s family in Toscaig.
Mr Sinclair then offered his condolences for the death of his daughter.
Mr M——’s eyes hardened. ‘I have no daughter,’ he said.
‘I meant your daughter, Jetta,’ Mr Sinclair said by way of explanation.
‘There is no such person,’ the crofter said through tight lips.
My associate’s remarks, well-intentioned though they were, had done
nothing to improve the atmosphere around the table.
‘So you are quite alone then?’ I said.
Mr M—— made no reply to this question, perhaps quite reasonably considering that the answer was self-evident. He lit his pipe and gave it a series of short puffs to get it going, his eyes flitting all the time between his two unwelcome guests.
‘Mr M——,’ I began, ‘we have travelled some distance to speak to you and I hope you will be good enough to answer a few questions about your son. It is of some importance that we try to understand his state of mind when he committed the acts of which he is accused.’
Mr M——’s expression did not alter and I wondered whether he had understood anything of what I had said. I resolved to put my enquiries in the simplest possible terms. My expectations of hearing anything of interest were not high, but I had, at least, learned something from observing the lamentable conditions in which R—— M—— had dwelt.
‘You recall, I am sure, the day the murders took place?’ I paused here in anticipation of some sign of affirmation, but receiving none, I continued. ‘Could you describe your son’s state of mind on that morning?’
Mr M—— sucked noisily on the stem of his pipe.
‘One man can no more see into the mind of another than he can see inside a stone,’ he said eventually.
I decided to frame my question in a more direct way: ‘Was your son generally of a happy disposition?’ I asked. ‘Was he a cheerful boy?’
The crofter shook his head, less, I construed, in disagreement, than to express that he had no opinion on the matter. Nevertheless, it did at least constitute some kind of response, and I took a little encouragement from it.
‘Did your son tell you of his intention to kill Lachlan Mackenzie?’ I said.
‘He did not.’
‘Did you have any inkling that he planned to do so?’
He shook his head.
‘Is it true that there had been some disputes between yourself and Mr Mackenzie,’ I persisted.
‘I would not call them “disputes”,’ he replied.
‘What would you call them?’
Mr M—— stared at me for a few moments. ‘I would not call them anything.’
‘But if you would not call them “disputes”, you must by necessity call them something else?’ I said.
‘Why must I?’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, in a most affable tone, ‘if you wish to speak of something, it is necessary that you give it a name.’
‘But I do not wish to speak of it. It is you who wishes to speak of it,’ he said.
I could not help but smile at his response. He was perhaps not as dim-witted as I had first supposed.
Mr Sinclair then made an attempt of his own to overcome the old man’s obduracy.
‘Would it be correct to say that Mr Mackenzie was waging some kind of vendetta against you?’
‘That is a question you would need to be putting to Mr Mackenzie,’ said the old man.
Mr Sinclair looked at me with a defeated expression.
Mr M—— then leant a little over the table towards us. ‘Whatever my son has done cannot be undone. Nothing you or I might have to say about it is of any consequence.’
‘But Mr M——, I’m afraid that you are quite mistaken,’ said Mr Sinclair earnestly. He explained that his son’s prospects of escaping the gallows depended to a very large degree on determining the state of his mind at the time he committed his crimes, and it was, accordingly, not out of idle curiosity that we had travelled from Inverness to put these questions to him.
The crofter looked at him for some moments. His pipe had gone out and he tapped the contents onto the table in front of him and began to fumble in his pouch for whatever dregs remained there. I took out my own pouch and pushed it into the middle of the table.
‘Please …’ I said with a gesture of invitation.
Mr M——’s eyes looked from me to the pouch and then back again, no doubt weighing the extent to which he would feel in my debt if he accepted the gift. He then placed his pipe on the table and said, ‘I do not think I can be of any help to you, sir.’
I told him he had already been of great assistance and requested that I put a few questions to him about his son. As he did not object, I asked in turn whether his son had suffered from epilepsy; was given to violent swings of temper, or to raving or hallucinations; whether he was eccentric in his habits or behaviour; or if there was history of mental disorder in the family. To all these questions the crofter answered in the negative. I did not place a great deal of faith in his responses however, as despite the abject conditions in which he lived, he would have likely thought it shameful to admit to the existence of such propensities in his family.
As I could see no purpose in prolonging the interview, I stood up and thanked him for his hospitality. Mr M–– stood up. He glanced down at the pouch of tobacco which remained on the table between us. His hand darted towards it and he secreted it in the pocket of his jacket. He then looked at us as if nothing had happened. We bade him good day and, with some relief, stepped out into the uncontaminated air of the village.
We neither of us spoke as we walked back towards our ponies. I was conscious that the route we were walking mimicked that of R—— M—— as he had set out two weeks before on his bloody project. And I wondered if there might have been some inadvertent truth in the crofter’s remark about the difficulty of determining the contents of another man’s mind. Naturally, if a man is in possession of his senses, one need merely ask him, and, assuming the truthfulness of his replies, accept his account of what he might have been thinking at such and such a moment. The problem begins when one is dealing with those who exist in the border-lands of lunacy, and who, by definition, do not have access to the contents of their own minds. It is in order to look inside the minds of such unfortunates that the discipline of psychiatry exists. I have no doubt that Mr Sinclair wished to know the contents of my mind, but not wishing to hasten to an injudicious opinion, for the time being I kept my counsel.
I reflected, as we walked the short distance to the junction of the village, that such a place would seem a kind of paradise to the denizens of our city slums, and, were it not for the sloth and ignorance of its inhabitants, it might be one.
When we reached our ponies, Mr Sinclair expressed the view that it might be beneficial to pay a visit to Mr Mackenzie’s home, which was situated at the other extremity of the village. I could see no purpose in questioning the surviving members of the victims’ family as I was concerned only with the perpetrator, but Mr Sinclair stated that it might aid him in the court-room to familiarise himself with the layout of the scene of the crime. The Mackenzie house was of reasonable construction and appeared well maintained. A stout woman was at the threshold, vigorously working a large churn. She looked up from her labour as we approached. She had a ruddy complexion and thick brown hair, tied up in a bun at the back of her head. Her forearms were rugged and muscular and her general gait and demeanour quite mannish. Nevertheless, she did not exhibit any discernible traits of low breeding and appeared to be a healthy, if unattractive, specimen of the race.
Mr Sinclair, having ascertained that she was the widow of the deceased, offered his condolences and I bowed my head to indicate that I endorsed these sentiments. He informed her that we were concerned with the investigation of her husband’s murder (prudently avoiding mention of his precise role) and asked her if he might step inside for a moment, to ‘acquaint himself with the geography of the house’. The lady indicated with a gesture of her hand that he was welcome to enter, but did not follow us inside. A fire burned at the far end of the room and the temperature was quite oppressive. I stood inside the doorway as Mr Sinclair made a cursory inspection of the premises. The house furnishings made no concession to fashion, but stood, nevertheless, in stark contrast to the hovel we had lately departed. Mr
Sinclair’s tour of the chamber took him around the large table where, no doubt, the family took their meals and I fancy he was attempting to reconstruct in his mind the gruesome events which had taken place there. It was only when he reached the far end of the table that his eyes were drawn to an old crone who, despite the heat, was bundled up in blankets in an armchair by the fire. The advocate at once excused himself for the intrusion, but the woman made no response. He repeated his apology in Gaelic, but her watery eyes remained fixed ahead of her and I concluded that she was in an advanced state of dementia.
I stepped outside the house and allowed my associate to complete his inspections in private. Mrs Mackenzie continued her churning, quite as if there was nothing remarkable about the appearance of two gentlemen in this remote shanty. I watched her for some minutes and reflected, as she went about her strenuous and repetitive labour, how little there was to distinguish her from a sheep at the cud. It is a shameful truth that the lower tribes of our country continue to exist in a state barely higher than livestock, deficient in the will to self-improvement which has brought progress to our southern regions.
Mr Sinclair emerged from the house, a light sweat having formed on his brow. He thanked the woman for allowing him to enter her home, then expressed his admiration for her ability to continue her toil in light of the events which had taken place. Mrs Mackenzie looked at him quite blankly.
‘There are still mouths to feed and crops to be taken from the ground, sir,’ she said.
Mr Sinclair nodded at the undeniable truth of this response and we took our leave, both from her and from Culduie, a place to which I shall be content never to return. The day being too far advanced to begin our journey back to Inverness, we returned to the inn at Applecross. I withdrew to my room to compile my notes and reflect on the findings of our excursion, while my associate took advantage of the hospitality below.
* * *
‡‡ As a point of interest for the future development of Criminal Anthropology, it might prove to be of great value for a study to be made of analogous structures in the physiology of criminals who have had no contact through interbreeding. [Footnote in original.]
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