“Gentlemen, I ask you now! When Mr Campbell went to bed that night, this window was closed and its catch locked as usual. Miss Campbell and Kirstie MacTavish admit that. Later the police found Mr Campbell’s fingerprints, and only Mr Campbell’s fingerprints, on the catch of that window.
“What he did is pretty clear. At some time after ten he undressed, put on his nightshirt, took down the blackout, and went to bed as usual.” Chapman pointed to the bed. “The bed is made now, but it was rumpled then.”
Alistair Duncan sniffed.
“That,” he said, “is Aunt Elspat’s doing. She said she thought it was only decent to redd up the room.”
Chapman’s gesture called for silence.
“At some time between then and one o’clock in the morning he got up, walked to the window, opened it, and deliberately threw himself out.
“Hang it all, I appeal to Mr Campbell’s brother! My firm wants to do the right thing. I want to do the right thing. As I was telling Mr Duncan, I knew the late Mr Campbell personally. He came in to see me at our Glasgow office, and took out his last policy. After all, you know, it’s not my money. I’m not paying it out. If I could see my way clear to advise my firm to honor this claim, I’d do it like a shot. But can you honestly say the evidence warrants that?”
There was silence.
Chapman finished almost on a note of eloquence. Then he picked up his briefcase and bowler hat from the desk.
“The dog carrier –” began Duncan.
Chapman’s color went up.
“Oh, damn the dog carrier!” he said, with unprofessional impatience. “Can you, sir – can any of you – suggest any reason for the dog carrier to figure in this business at all?”
Colin Campbell, bristling, went across to the bed. He reached underneath and fished out the object in question, which he regarded as though he were about to give it a swift kick.
It was about the size of a large suitcase, though somewhat wider, in box-shape. Made of dark-brown leather, it had a handle like a suitcase, but two metal clasps on the upper side. An oblong grating of wire at one end had been inset for the purpose of giving air to whatever pet might be carried.
To whatever pet might be carried . . .
In the mind of Alan Campbell there stirred a fancy so grotesque and ugly, even if unformed, as to come with a flavor of definite evil in the old tower room.
“You don’t suppose,” Alan heard himself saying, “he might have been frightened into doing what he did?”
His three companions whirled round.
“Frightened?” repeated the lawyer.
Alan stared at the leather box.
“I don’t know anything about this man Alec Forbes,” he went on, “but he seems to be a pretty ugly customer.”
“Well, my dear sir?”
“Suppose Alec Forbes brought that box along with him when he came here. It’d look like an ordinary suitcase. Suppose he came here deliberately, pretending to want to ‘have it out’ with Angus, but really to leave the box behind. He distracts Angus’s attention, and shoves the box under the bed. In the row Angus doesn’t remember the suitcase afterwards. But in the middle of the night something gets out of the box . . .”
Even Alistair Duncan had begun to look a trifle uncomfortable.
And Chapman was eyeing Alan with an interest which all his skeptical and smiling incredulity could not conceal.
“Oh, see here!” he protested. “What are you suggesting, exactly?”
Alan stuck it out.
“I don’t want you to laugh. But what I was actually thinking about was – well, a big spider or a poisonous snake of some kind. It would have been bright moonlight that night, remember.”
Again the silence stretched out interminably. It was now so dark that they could barely see.
“It is an extraordinary thing,” murmured the lawyer in his thin, dry voice. “Just one moment.”
He felt in the inside pocket of his coat. From this he took a worn leather notebook. Carrying it to the window, and adjusting his pince-nez, he cocked his head at an angle to examine one page of the notebook.
‘“Extracts from the statement of Kirstie MacTavish, maidservant,’” he read, and cleared his throat. “Translated from the Doric and rendered into English, listen to this:
“Mr Campbell said to me and Miss Campbell, “Go to bed and let’s have no more nonsense. I have got rid of the blellum. Did you see that suitcase he had with him, though?” We said we had not, as we did not arrive until Mr Campbell had put Mr Forbes out of the house. Mr Campbell said: “I will bet you he is leaving the country to get away from his creditors. But I wonder what he did with the suitcase? He was using two hands to try to hit me when he left.” ’ ”
Duncan peered over his pince-nez.
“Any comments on that, my dear sir?” he inquired.
The insurance agent was not amused.
“Aren’t you forgetting what you pointed out to me yourself? When Miss Campbell and the maid searched this room just before Mr Campbell retired, they saw no suitcase under the bed.”
Duncan rubbed his jaw. In that light he had a corpse-like, cadaverous pallor, and his grizzled hair looked like wire.
“True,” he admitted. “True. At the same time –”
He shook his head.
“Snakes!” snorted the insurance agent. “Spiders! Dr Fu Manchu! Look here! Do you know of any snake or spider that could climb out of its box, and then carefully close the clasps of the box afterwards? Both clasps on that thing were found fastened on the following morning.”
“That would certainly appear to be a stumbling block,” conceded Duncan. “At the same time –”
“And what happened to the thing afterwards?”
“It wouldn’t be very pleasant,” grinned Colin Campbell, “if the thing were still here in the room somewhere.”
Mr Walter Chapman hurriedly put on his bowler hat.
“I must go,” he said. “Sorry, gentlemen, but I’m very late as it is and I’ve got to get back to Dunoon. Can I give you a lift, Mr Duncan?”
“Nonsense,” roared Colin. “You’re staying to tea. Both of you.”
Chapman blinked at him.
“Tea? Great Scott, what time do you have your dinner?”
“You’ll get no dinner, my lad. But the tea will be bigger than most dinners you ever ate. And I’ve got some very potent whisky I’ve been aching to try out on somebody, beginning with a ruddy Englishman. What do you say?”
“Sorry. Decent of you, but I must go.” Chapman slapped at the sleeves of his coat. Exasperation radiated from him. “What with snakes and spiders – and the supernatural on top of it –”
If the scion of the MacHolsters could have chosen no more unfortunate word than “joke” in addressing Elspat Campbell, Chapman himself in addressing Colin could have chosen no more unfortunate word than “supernatural.”
Colin’s big head hunched down into his big shoulders.
“And who says this was supernatural?” he inquired in a soft voice.
Chapman laughed.
“I don’t, naturally. That’s a bit outside my firm’s line. But the people hereabouts seem to have an idea that this place is haunted; or at least that there’s something not quite right about it.”
“Oh?”
“And, if I may say so without offense” – the insurance agent’s eye twinkled – “they seem not to have a very high opinion of you people here. They mutter, ‘a bad lot,’ or something of the sort.”
“We are a bad lot. God’s wounds!” cried the atheistical doctor, not without pride. “Who’s ever denied it? Not me. But haunted! Of all the . . . look here. You don’t think Alec Forbes went about carrying a bogle in a dog box?”
“I don’t think, frankly,” retorted Chapman, “that anybody carried anything in any box.” His worried look returned. “All the same, I should feel better if we could have a word with this Mr Forbes.”
“Where is he, by the way?” asked Alan.
The law agent, who had shut up his notebook and was listening with a dry, quiet smile, struck in again.
“That, too, is an extraordinary thing. Even Mr Chapman would admit something suspicious – something just a trifle suspicious – about Alec Forbes’s conduct. For, you see, Alec Forbes can’t be found.”
8
“You mean,” asked Alan, “he did go away to escape his creditors?”
Duncan waved the pince-nez.
“Slander. No: I merely state the fact. Or he may be on a spree, which is possible. All the same, it is curious. Eh, my dear Chapman? It is curious.”
The insurance agent drew a deep breath.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t argue the matter any further now. I’m going to get out of here before I break my neck on those stairs in the dark.
“Here is all I am able to tell you now. I’ll have a word with the Fiscal tomorrow. He must have decided by now whether he thinks this is suicide, accident, or murder. On what he does must necessarily depend what we do. Can I say any fairer than that?”
“Thank you. No, that will suit us. All we ask is a little time.”
“But if you’re sure this is murder,” interposed Alan, “why doesn’t your Fiscal take some real steps about it? For instance, why doesn’t he call in Scotland Yard?”
Duncan regarded him with real horror.
“Summon Scotland Yard to Scotland?” he expostulated. “My dear sir!”
“I should have thought this would have been the very place for ’em,” said Alan. “Why not?”
“My dear sir, it is never done! Scots law has a procedure all its own.”
“By George, it has!” declared Chapman, slapping his brief case against his leg. “I’ve only been up here a couple of months, but I’ve found that out already.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“While all the rest of you,” observed Colin, throwing out his barrel chest, “have been doing nothing but fiddle-faddling about and talking, other people haven’t been idle. I won’t tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll tell you what I have done.” His eye dared them to say it wasn’t a good idea. “I’ve sent for Gideon Fell.”
Duncan clucked his tongue thoughtfully.
“That’s the man who –?”
“It is. And a good friend of mine.”
“Have you thought of the – ah – expense?”
“God’s wounds, can’t you stop thinking about money for five seconds? Just five seconds? Anyway, it won’t cost you a penny. He’s coming up here as my guest, that’s all. You offer him money and there’ll be trouble.”
The lawyer spoke stiffly.
“We all know, my dear Colin, that your own contempt for the monetary side has not failed to prove embarrassing to you at times.” His glance was charged with meaning. “You must allow me, however, to think of the pounds, shilling, and pence. Awhile ago this gentleman” – he nodded toward Alan – “asked why this ‘family conference’ had been summoned. I’ll tell you. If the insurance companies refuse to pay up, proceedings must be instituted. Those proceedings may be expensive.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Colin, his eyes starting out of their sockets, “that you brought those two kids clear up from London just in the hope they’d contribute to the basket? God’s wounds, do you want your ruddy neck wrung?”
Duncan was very white.
“I am not in the habit of being talked to like that, Colin Campbell.”
“Well, you’re being talked to like that, Alistair Duncan. What do you think of it?”
For the first time a personal note crept into the law-agent’s voice.
“Colin Campbell, for forty-two years I’ve been at the beck and call of your family –”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Colin Campbell –”
“Here! I say!” protested Chapman, so uncomfortable that he shifted from one foot to the other.
Alan also intervened by putting his hand on Colin’s shivering shoulder. In another moment, he was afraid, Colin might be running a second person out of the house by the collar and the slack of the trousers.
“Excuse me,” Alan said, “but my father left me pretty well off, and if there is anything I can do . . .”
“So? Your father left you pretty well off?” said Colin. “And well you knew it, didn’t you, Alistair Duncan?”
The lawyer sputtered. What he attempted to say, so far as Alan could gather, was “Do you wish me to wash my hands of this matter?” What he actually said was something like, “Do you wash me to wish my hands of this matter?” But both he and Colin were so angry that neither noticed it.
“Yes, I do,” said Colin. “That’s just what I smacking well do. Now shall we go downstairs?”
In silence, with aching dignity, the quartet stumbled and blundered and groped down some very treacherous stairs. Chapman attempted to lighten matters by asking Duncan if he would care for a lift in the former’s car, an offer which was accepted, and a few observations about the weather.
These fell flat.
Still in silence, they went through into the sitting-room on the ground floor, now deserted, and to the front door. As Colin and the law agent said good night, they could not have been more on their dignity had they been going to fight a duel in the morning. The door closed.
“Elspat and little Kate,” said Colin, moodily smoldering, “will be having their tea. Come on.”
Alan liked the dining-room, and would have liked it still more if he had not felt so ruffled.
Under a low-hanging lamp which threw bright light on the white tablecloth, with a roaring fire in the chimney, Aunt Elspat and Kathryn sat at a meal composed of sausages, Ulster fry, eggs, potatoes, tea, and enormous quantities of buttered toast.
“Elspat,” said Colin, moodily drawing out a chair, “Alistair Duncan’s given notice again.”
Aunt Elspat helped herself to butter.
“A’weel,” she said philosophically, “it’s no’ the fairst time, and it’ll no’ be the last. He gie’d me notice tu, a week syne.”
Alan’s intense discomfort began to lighten.
“Do you mean to say,” Alan demanded, “that the business wasn’t – wasn’t serious?”
“Oh, no. He’ll be all right in the morning,” said Colin. Stirring uncomfortably, he glowered at the well-filled table. “You know, Elspat, I’ve got a bloody temper. I wish I could control it.”
Aunt Elspat then flew out at him.
She said she would not have such profane language used in her house, and especially in front of the child: by which she presumably meant Kathryn. She further rated them for being late for tea, in terms which would have been violent had they missed two meals in a row and emptied the soup over her at the third.
Alan only half listened. He was beginning to understand Aunt Elspat a little better now, and to realize that her outbursts were almost perfunctory. Long ago Aunt Elspat had been compelled to fight and fight to get her own way in all things; and continued it, as a matter of habit, long after it had ceased to be necessary. It was not even bad temper: it was automatic.
The walls of the dining-room were ornamented with withered stags’ heads, and there were two crossed claymores over the chimneypiece. They attracted Alan. A sense of well-being stole into him as he devoured his food, washing it down with strong black tea.
“Ah!” said Colin, with an expiring sigh. He pushed back his chair, stretched, and patted his stomach. His face glowed out of the beard and shaggy hair. “Now that’s better. That’s very much better. Rot me if I don’t feel like ringing up the old weasel and apologizing to him!”
“Did you,” said Kathryn hesitantly, “did you find out anything? Up there in the tower? Or decide on anything?”
Colin inserted a toothpick into his beard.
“No, Kitty-kat, we didn’t.”
“And please don’t call me Kitty-kat! You all treat me as though I weren’t grown-up!”
“Hoots!” said Aunt E
lspat, giving her a withering look. “Ye’re not grown-up.”
“We didn’t decide on anything,” pursued Colin, continuing to pat his stomach. “But then we didn’t need to. Gideon Fell’ll be here tomorrow. In fact, I thought it was Fell coming when I saw your boat tonight. And when he gets here –”
“Did you say Fell?” cried Kathryn. “Not Dr Fell?”
“That’s the chap.”
“Not that horrible man who writes letters to the newspapers? You know, Alan!”
“He’s a very distinguished scholar, Kitty-kat,” said Colin, “and as such you ought to take off your wee bonnet to him. But his main claims to notoriety lie along the line of detecting crime.”
Aunt Elspat wanted to know what his religion was.
Colin said he didn’t know, but that it didn’t matter a damn what his religion was.
Aunt Elspat intimated, on the contrary, that it mattered very much indeed, adding remarks which left her listeners in no doubt about her views touching Colin’s destination in the after-life. This, to Alan, was the hardest part of Elspat’s discourse to put up with. Her notions of theology were childish. Her knowledge of Church history would have been considered inaccurate even by the late Bishop Burnet. But good manners kept him silent, until he could get in a relevant question.
“The only part I haven’t got quite clear,” he said, “is about the diary.”
Aunt Elspat stopped hurling damnation right and left, and applied herself to her tea.
“Diary?” repeated Colin.
“Yes. I’m not even sure if I heard properly; it might refer to something else. But, when Mr Duncan and the insurance fellow were talking in the next room, we heard Mr Duncan say something about a ‘missing diary.’ At least, that’s how I understood it.”
“And so did I,” agreed Kathryn.
Colin scowled.
“As far as I can gather” – he put a finger on his napkin ring, sending it spinning out on the table to roll back to him – “somebody pinched it, that’s all.”
“What diary?”
“Angus’s diary, dammit! He carefully kept one every year, and at the end of the year burned it so that nobody should ever find it and know what he was really thinking.”
The Case of the Constant Suicides Page 7