“Prudent habit.”
“Yes. Well, he wrote it up every night just before he went to bed. Never knew him to miss. It should have been on the desk next morning. But – at least, so they tell me – it wasn’t. Eh, Elspat?”
“Drink your tea and dinna be sae daft.”
Colin sat up.
“What the devil’s daft about that? The diary wasn’t there, was it?”
Carefully, with ladylike daintiness which showed she knew her manners, Elspat poured tea into the saucer, blew on it, and drank.
“The trouble is,” Colin continued, “that nobody even noticed the absence of the diary until a good many hours afterwards. So anybody who saw it lying there could have pinched it in the meantime. I mean, there’s no proof that the phantom murderer got it. It might have been anybody. Eh, Elspat?”
Aunt Elspat regarded the empty saucer for a moment, and then sighed.
“I suppause,” she said resignedly, “you’ll be wantin’ the whisky, noo?”
Colin’s face lit up.
“Now there,” he boomed with fervency, “there, in the midst of this mess, is the idea that the world’s been waiting for!” He turned to Alan. “Lad, would you like to taste some mountain dew that’ll take the top of your head off? Would you?”
The dining-room was snug and warm, though the wind rose outside. As always in the presence of Kathryn, Alan felt expansive and on his mettle.
“It would be very interesting,” he replied, settling back, “to find any whisky that could take the top of my head off.”
“Oho? You think so, do you?”
“You must remember,” said Alan, not without reason on his side, “that I spent three years in the United States during prohibition days. Anybody who can survive that experience has nothing to fear from any liquor that ever came out of a still – or didn’t.”
“You think so, eh?” mused Colin. “Do you now? Well, well, well! Elspat, this calls for heroic measures. Bring out the Doom of the Campbells.”
Elspat rose without protest.
“A’weel,” she said, “I’ve seen it happen befair. It’ll happen again when I’m gone. I caud du wi’ a wee nip masel’, the nicht bein’ cauld.”
She creaked out of the room, and returned bearing a decanter nearly full of a darkish brown liquid filled with gold where the light struck it. Colin placed it tenderly on the table. For Elspat and Kathryn he poured out an infinitesimal amount. For himself and Alan he poured out about a quarter of a tumblerful.
“How will you have it, lad?”
“American style. Neat, with water on the side.”
“Good! Damn good!” roared Colin. “You don’t want to spoil it. Now drink up. Go on. Drink it.”
They – or at least Colin and Elspat – were regarding him with intense interest. Kathryn sniffed suspiciously at the liquid in her glass, but evidently decided that she liked it. Colin’s face was red and of a violent eagerness, his eyes wide open and mirth lurking in his soul.
“To happier days,” said Alan.
He lifted the glass, drained it, and almost literally reeled.
It did not take the top of his head off; but for a second he thought it was going to. The stuff was strong enough to make a battleship alter its course. The veins of his temples felt bursting; his eyesight dimmed; and he decided that he must be strangling to death. Then, after innumerable seconds, he opened swimming eyes to find Colin regarding him with proud glee.
Next, something else happened.
Once that spiritous bomb had exploded, and he could recover breath and eyesight, a fey sense of exhilaration and well-being crawled along his veins. The original buzzing in the head was succeeded by a sense of crystal clearness, the feeling which Newton or Einstein must have felt at the approaching solution of a complex mathematical problem.
He had kept himself from coughing, and the moment passed.
“Well?” demanded Colin.
“Aaah!” said his guest.
“Here’s to happier days too!” thundered Colin, and drained his own glass. The effects here were marked as well, though Colin recovered himself a shade more quickly.
Then Colin beamed on him. “Like it?”
“I do!”
“Not too strong for you?”
“No.”
“Care for another?”
“Thanks. I don’t mind if I do.”
“A’weel!” said Elspat resignedly. “A’weel!”
9
Alan Campbell opened one eye.
From somewhere in remote distances, muffled beyond sight or sound, his soul crawled back painfully, through subterranean corridors, up into his body again. Toward the last it moved to a cacophony of hammers and lights.
Then he was awake.
The first eye was bad enough. But, when he opened the second eye, such a rush of anguish flowed through his brain that he hastily closed them again.
He observed – at first without curiosity – that he was lying in bed in a room he had never seen before; that he wore pajamas; and that there was sunlight in the room.
But his original concerns were purely physical. His head felt as though it were rising toward the ceiling with long, spiraling motions; his stomach was an inferno, his voice a croak out of a dry throat, his whole being composed of fine wriggling wires. Thus Alan Campbell, waking at twelve midday with the king of all hangovers, for the moment merely lay and suffered.
Presently he tried to climb out of bed. But dizziness overcame him, and he lay down again. It was here that his wits began to work, however. Feverishly he tried to remember what had happened last night.
And he could not remember a single thing.
Alan was galvanized.
Possible enormities stretched out behind him, whole vistas of enormities which he might have said or done, but which he could not remember now. There is perhaps not in the world any anguish to compare to this. He knew, or presumed, that he was still at the Castle of Shira; and that he had been lured into quaffing the Doom of the Campbells with Colin; but this was all he knew.
The door of the room opened, and Kathryn came in.
On a tray she carried a cup of black coffee and a revolting-looking mixture in a glass eggcup. She was fully dressed. But the wan expression on her face and eyes strangely comforted him.
Kathryn came over and put down the tray on the bedside table.
“Well, Dr Campbell,” were her first unencouraging words, “don’t you feel ashamed of yourself?”
All Alan’s emotion found vent in one lingering passionate groan.
“Heaven knows I’ve no right to blame you,” said Kathryn, putting her hands to her head. “I was almost as bad as you were. Oh, God, I feel awful!” she breathed, and tottered on her feet. “But at least I didn’t –”
“Didn’t what?” croaked Alan.
“Don’t you remember?”
He waited for enormity to sweep him like the sea.
“At the moment – no. Nothing.”
She pointed to the tray. “Drink that prairie oyster. I know it looks foul; but it’ll do you good.”
“No: tell me. What did I do? Was I very bad?”
Kathryn eyed him wanly.
“Not as bad as Colin, of course. But when I tried to leave the party, you and Colin were fencing with claymores.”
“Were what?”
“Fencing with real swords. All over the dining-room and out in the hall and up the stairs. You had kitchen tablecloths slung on for plaids. Colin was talking in Gaelic, and you were quoting Marmion, and The Lady of the Lake. Only you couldn’t seem to decide whether you were Roderick Dhu or Douglas Fairbanks.”
Alan shut his eyes tightly.
He breathed a prayer himself. Faint glimmers, like chinks of light in a blind, touched old-world scenes which swam at him and then receded in hopeless confusion. All lights splintered; all voices dimmed.
“Stop a bit!” he said, pressing his hands to his forehead. “There’s nothing about Elspat in this, is there?
I didn’t insult Elspat, did I? I seem to remember . . .”
Again he shut his eyes.
“My dear Alan, that’s the one good feature of the whole night. You’re Aunt Elspat’s white-haired boy. She thinks that you, next to the late Angus, are the finest member of the whole family.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember giving her a lecture at least half an hour long, about the Solemn League and Covenant and the history of the Church of Scotland?”
“Wait! I do seem vaguely to –”
“She didn’t understand it; but you had her spellbound. She said that anybody who knew the names of so many ministers couldn’t be as godless as she’d thought. Then you insisted on her having half a tumbler of that wretched stuff, and she walked off to bed like Lady Macbeth. This was before the fencing episode, of course. And then – don’t you remember what Colin did to that poor man Swan?”
“Swan? Not the MacHolster Swan?”
“Yes.”
“But what was he doing here?”
“Well, it was something like this: though it’s rather dim in my own mind. After you’d fenced all over the place, Colin wanted to go out. He said, ‘Alan Oig, there is dirty work to be done this night. Let us hence and look for Stewarts.’ You thought that would be a perfectly splendid idea.
“We went out the back, on the road. The first thing we saw, in the bright moonlight, was Mr Swan standing and looking at the house. Don’t ask me what he was doing there! Colin whooped out, ‘There’s a bluidy Stewart!’ and went for him with the claymore.
“Mr Swan took one look at him, and shot off down the road harder than I’ve ever seen any man run before. Colin went tearing after him, and you after Colin. I didn’t interfere. I’d reached the stage where all I could do was stand and giggle. Colin couldn’t quite manage to overtake Mr Swan, but he did manage to stick him several times in the – in the –”
“Yes.”
“– before Colin fell flat and Mr Swan got away. Then you two came back singing.”
There was obviously something on Kathryn’s mind. She kept her eyes on the floor.
“I suppose you don’t remember,” she added, “that I spent the night in here?”
“You spent the night in here?”
“Yes. Colin wouldn’t hear of anything else. He locked us in.”
“But we didn’t . . . I mean . . . ?”
“Didn’t what?”
“You know what I mean.”
Kathryn evidently did, to judge by her color.
“Well – no. We were both too far gone, anyway. I was so dizzy and weak that I didn’t even protest. You recited something about,
‘Here dies in my bosom
The secret of heather ale.’
“Then you courteously said, ‘Excuse me,’ and lay down on the floor and went to sleep.”
He became conscious of his pajamas. “But how did I get into these?”
“I don’t know. You must have woken up in the night and put them on. I woke up about six o’clock, feeling like death, and managed to push the key in the door out, so it fell on the outside and I dragged it under the sill on a piece of paper. I got off to my own room, and I don’t think Elspat knows anything about it. But when I woke up and found you there . . .”
Her voice rose almost to a wail.
“Alan Campbell, what on earth has come over us? Both of us? Don’t you think we’d better get out of Scotland before it corrupts us altogether?”
Alan reached out for the prairie oyster. How he managed to swallow it he does not now remember; but he did, and felt better. The hot black coffee helped.
“So help me,” he declared, “I will never touch another drop as long as I live! And Colin. I hope he’s suffering the tortures of the inferno. I hope he’s got such a hangover as will –”
“Well, he hasn’t.”
“No?”
“He’s as bright as a cricket. He says good whisky never gave any man a headache. That dreadful Dr Fell has arrived, too. Can you come downstairs and get some breakfast?”
Alan gritted his teeth.
“I’ll have a try,” he said, “if you can overcome your lack of decency and get out of here while I dress.”
Half an hour later, after shaving and bathing in the somewhat primitive bathroom, he was on his way downstairs feeling much better. From the partly open door of the sitting-room came the sound of two powerful voices, those of Colin and Dr Fell, which sent sharp pains through his skull. Toast was all he could manage in the way of breakfast. Afterwards he and Kathryn crept guiltily into the sitting-room.
Dr Fell, his hand folded over his crutch-handled stick, sat on the sofa. The broad black ribbon of his eyeglasses blew out as he chuckled. His big mop of gray-streaked hair lay over one eye, and many more chins appeared as his amusement increased. He seemed to fill the room: at first Alan could hardly believe him.
“Good morning!” he thundered.
“Good morning!” thundered Colin.
“Good morning,” murmured Alan. “Must you shout like that?”
“Nonsense. We weren’t shouting,” said Colin. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Terrible.”
Colin stared at him. “You haven’t got a head?”
“No?”
“Nonsense!” snorted Colin, fiercely and dogmatically. “Good whisky never gave any man a head.”
This fallacy, by the way, is held almost as a gospel in the North. Alan did not attempt to dispute it. Dr Fell hoisted himself ponderously to his feet and made something in the nature of a bow.
“Your servant, sir,” said Dr Fell. He bowed to Kathryn. “And yours, madam.” A twinkle appeared in his eye. “I trust that you have now managed to settle between you the vexed question of the Duchess of Cleveland’s hair? Or may I infer that at the moment you are more interested in the hair of the dog?”
“That’s not a bad idea, you know,” said Colin.
“No!” roared Alan, and made his own head ache. “I will never touch that damned stuff again under any circumstances. That is final.”
“That’s what you think now,” Colin grinned comfortably. “I’m going to give Fell here a nip of it tonight. I say, my boy: would you like to taste some mountain dew that’ll take the top of your head off?”
Dr Fell chuckled.
“It would be very interesting,” he replied, “to find any whisky that could take the top of my head off.”
“Don’t say that,” warned Alan. “Let me urge you in advance: don’t say it. I said it. It’s fatal.”
“And must we talk about this, anyway?” inquired Kathryn, who had been eyeing Dr Fell with a deep suspicion which he returned by beaming like the Ghost of Christmas Present.
Rather to their surprise, Dr Fell grew grave.
“Oddly enough, I think it would be advisable to talk of it. Archons of Athens! It’s quite possible the matter may have some bearing on –”
He hesitated.
“On what?”
“On Angus Campbell’s murder,” said Dr Fell.
Colin whistled, and then there was a silence. Muttering to himself, Dr Fell appeared to be trying to chew at the end of his bandit’s mustache.
“Perhaps,” he went on, “I had better explain. I was very happy to get my friend Colin Campbell’s invitation. I was much intrigued by the full details of the case as he wrote them. Putting in my pocket my Boswell and my toothbrush, I took a train for the North. I beguiled my time rereading the great Doctor Johnson’s views on this country. You are no doubt familiar with his stern reply when told that he should not be so hard on Scotland since, after all, God had made Scotland? ‘Sir, comparisons are invidious; but God made hell.’”
Colin gestured impatiently. “Never mind that. What were you saying?”
“I arrived in Dunoon,” said Dr Fell, “early yesterday evening. I tried to get a car at the tourist agency –”
“We know it,” said Kathryn.
“But was informed that th
e only car then available had already taken a batch of people to Shira. I asked when the car would be back. The clerk said it would not be back. He said he had just that moment received a telephone call from Inveraray from the driver, a man named Fleming –”
“Jock,” Colin explained to the others.
“The driver said that one of his passengers, a gentleman called Swan, had decided to stay the night in Inveraray, and wanted to keep car and driver to take him back to Dunoon in the morning. This, with suitable costs, was arranged.”
“Infernal snooper,” roared Colin.
“One moment. The clerk said, however, that if I would come to the agency at half past nine in the morning – this morning – the car would be back and would take me to Shira.
“I spent the night at the hotel, and was there on time. I then observed the somewhat unusual spectacle of a motorcar coming along the main street with its one passenger, a man in a gray hat and a very violent tartan necktie, standing up in the back seat.”
Colin Campbell glowered at the floor.
A vast, dreamy expression of pleasure went over Dr Fell’s face. His eye was on a corner of the ceiling. He cleared his throat.
“Intrigued as to why this man should be standing up, I made inquiries. He replied (somewhat curtly) that he found the sitting position painful. It required little subtlety to get the story out of him. Indeed, he was boiling with it. Harrumph.”
Alan groaned.
Dr Fell peered over his eyeglasses, first at Alan and then at Kathryn. He wheezed. His expression was one of gargantuan delicacy.
“May I inquire,” he said, “whether you two are engaged to be married?”
“Certainly not!” cried Kathryn.
“Then,” Dr Fell urged warmly, “in heaven’s name get married. Do it in a hurry. You both hold responsible positions. But what you are likely to read about yourselves in today’s Daily Floodlight, at risk of libel or no, is not likely to find favor with either Highgate University or the Harpenden College for Women. That thrilling story of the moonlight chase with claymores, with the lady shouting encouragement while the two cutthroats pursued him, really did put the tin hat on it.”
“I never shouted encouragement!” said Kathryn.
The Case of the Constant Suicides Page 8