Elspat got to her feet and went out of the room.
“By Jupiter,” breathed Colin, “she’s gone to get ’em! . . . What ails you, Kitty-kat?”
Kathryn regarded the door with uncertain, curiously shining eyes. She bit her lip. Her eyes moved over toward Alan.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m happy” – here she glared at Alan – “and yet I feel all sort of funny and mixed up.”
“Your English grammar,” said Alan, “is abominable. But your sentiments are correct. That’s what she believes now; and that’s what Elspat has got to go on believing. Because, of course, it’s true.”
“Of course,” agreed Kathryn quickly. “I wonder, Uncle Colin, whether you would do me a big favor?”
“Anything in the world, my dear.”
“Well,” said Kathryn, hesitantly extending the tumbler, “it isn’t very much, perhaps; but would you mind making my drink just a little stronger?”
“Now that’s my Kitty-kat!” roared Colin. “Here you are . . . Enough?”
“A little more, please.”
“A little more?”
“Yes, please.”
“Cripes,” muttered Swan, on whom the first smashing, shuddering effect of the Doom of the Campbells had now passed to a quickened speech and excitement, “you two professors are teamed up right. I don’t understand how you do it. Does anybody, maybe, now, feel like a song?”
Beatific with his head among the pillows, as though enthroned in state, Colin lifted the shotgun and waved it in the air as though conducting an orchestra. His bass voice beat against the windows.
“I love a lassie, a boh-ny, boh-ny las-sie –”
Swan, drawing his chin far into his collar, assumed an air of solemn portentousness. Finding the right pitch after a preliminary cough, he moved his glass gently in time and joined in.
“She’s as pure as the li-ly in the dell – !”
To Alan, lifting his glass in a toast to Kathryn, there came a feeling that all things happened for the best; and that tomorrow could take care of itself. The exhilaration of being in love, the exhilaration of merely watching Kathryn, joined with the exhilaration of the potent brew in his hand. He smiled at Kathryn; she smiled back; and they both joined in.
“She’s as sweet as the heath-er, the boh-ny pur-ple heather –”
He had a good loud baritone, and Kathryn a fairly audible soprano. Their quartet made the room ring. To Aunt Elspat, returning with a set of bagpipes – which she grimly handed to Colin, and which he eagerly seized without breaking off the song – it must have seemed that old days had returned.
“A’weel,” said Aunt Elspat resignedly. “A’weel!”
19
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 the conviction that he was looking at a family photograph album, from which there stared back at him a face he had seen, somewhere, only today . . .
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 knew what was wrong with him, and realized fairly that he had done it again.
He lay back and stared at the cracks on the ceiling. There was sunlight in the room.
He had a violent headache, and his throat was dry. But it occurred to him in a startled sort of way that he did not feel nearly as bad as he had felt the first time. This prompted an uneasy flash of doubt. Did the infernal stuff take hold of you? Was it (as the temperance tracts said) an insidious poison whose effects seemed to grow less day by day?
Then another feeling, heartening or disheartening according to how you viewed the stuff, took possession of him.
When he searched his memory he could recall nothing except blurred scenes which seemed to be dominated by the noise of bagpipes, and a vision of Elspat swinging back and forth beatifically in a rocking chair amidst it.
Yet no sense of sin oppressed him, no sense of guilt or enormity. He knew that his conduct had been such as becomes a gentleman even en pantoufles. It was a strange conviction, but a real one. He did not even quail when Kathryn opened the door.
On the contrary, this morning it was Kathryn who appeared guilty and hunted. On the tray she carried not one cup of black coffee, but two. She put the tray on the bedside table, and looked at him.
“It ought to be you,” she said, after clearing her throat, “who brought this to me this morning. But I knew you’d be disgusting and sleep past noon. I suppose you don’t remember anything about last night either?”
He tried to sit up, easing the throb in his head.
“Well, no. Er – I wasn’t – ?”
“No, you were not. Alan Campbell, there never was such a stuffed shirt as you who ever lived. You just sat and beamed as though you owned the earth. But you will quote poetry. When you began on Tennyson, I feared the worst. You recited the whole of ‘The Princess,’ and nearly all of ‘Maud.’ When you actually had the face to quote that bit about, ‘Put thy sweet hand in mine and trust in me,’ and patted my hand as you did it – well, really!”
Averting his eyes, he reached after the coffee.
“I wasn’t aware I knew so much Tennyson.”
“You didn’t, really. But when you couldn’t remember, you just thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Umble-bumble, umble-bumble,’ and went on.”
“Never mind. At least, we were all right?”
Kathryn lowered the cup she had raised to her lips. The cup rattled and clicked on its saucer.
“All right?” she repeated with widening eyes. “When that wretch Swan is probably in a hospital now?”
Alan’s head gave a violent throb.
“We didn’t – ?”
“No, not you. Uncle Colin.”
“My God, he didn’t assault Swan again? But they’re great pals! He couldn’t have assaulted Swan again! What happened?”
“Well, it was all right until Colin had about his fifteenth Doom; and Swan, who was also what he called ‘canned’ and a little too cocksure, brought out the newspaper article he wrote yesterday. He’d smuggled the paper in in case we didn’t like it.”
“Yes?”
“It wasn’t so bad, really. I admit that. Everything was all right until Swan described how Colin had decided to sleep in the tower-room.”
“Yes?”
“Swan’s version of the incident ran something like this. You remember, he was hanging about outside the sitting-room windows? His story said: ‘Dr Colin Campbell, a deeply religious man, placed his hand on the Bible and swore an oath that he would not enter the church again until the family ghost had ceased to walk in the melancholy Castle of Shira.’ For about ten seconds Colin just looked at him. Then he pointed to the door and said, ‘Out.’ Swan didn’t understand until Colin turned completely purple and said, ‘Out of this house and stay out.’ Colin grabbed his shotgun, and –”
“He didn’t – ?”
“Not just then. But when Swan leaped downstairs, Colin said, ‘Turn out the light and take down the blackout. I want to get him from the window as he goes up the road.’ His bed is by the window, you remember.”
“You don’t mean to say Colin shot Swan in the seat of the pants as he ran for Inveraray?”
“No,” answered Kathryn, “Colin didn’t. I did.”
Her voice became a wail.
“Alan darling, we’ve got to get out of this insidious country! First you, and now me. I don’t know what’s come over me; I honestly don’t!”
Alan’s head was aching still harder.
“But wait a minute! Where was I? Didn’t I interfere?”
“You didn’t even notice. You were reciting ‘Sir Galahad’ to Elspat. The rain had cleared off – it was four o’clock in the morning – and the moon was up. I was boiling angry with Swan, you see. And there he was in the road.
>
“He must have heard the window go up, and seen the moonlight on the shotgun. Because he gave one look, and never ran so fast even on the Monday night. I said, ‘Uncle Colin, let me have a go.’ He said, ‘All right; but let him get a sporting distance away; we don’t want to hurt him.’ Ordinarily I’m frightened of guns, and I couldn’t have hit the side of a barn door. But that wretched stuff made everything different. I loosed off blindly, and got a bull’s-eye with the second barrel.
“Alan, do you think he’ll have me arrested? And don’t you dare laugh, either!”
“‘Pompilia, will you let them murder me?’” murmured Alan. He finished his coffee, propped himself upright, and steadied a swimming world. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll go and smooth him down.”
“But suppose I – ?”
Alan studied the forlorn figure.
“You couldn’t have hurt him much. Not at a distance, with a twenty-bore and a light load. He didn’t fall down, did he?”
“No; he only ran harder.”
“Then it’s all right.”
“But what am I to do?”
“‘Put thy sweet hand in mine and trust in me.’”
“Alan Campbell!”
“Well, isn’t it the proper course?”
Kathryn sighed. She walked to the window, and looked down over the loch. Its waters were peaceful, agleam in sunshine.
“And that,” she told him, after a pause, “isn’t all.”
“Not more – !”
“No, no, no! Not more trouble of that kind, anyway. I got the letter this morning. Alan, I’ve been recalled.”
“Recalled?”
“From my holiday. By the college. A.R.P. I also saw this morning’s Scottish Daily Express. It looks as though the real bombing is going to begin.”
The sunlight was as fair, the hills as golden and purple, as ever. Alan took a packet of cigarettes from the bedside table. He lit one and inhaled smoke. Though it made his head swim, he sat contemplating the loch and smoking steadily.
“So our holiday,” he said, “is a kind of entr’acte.”
“Yes,” said Kathryn, without turning round. “Alan, do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then do we care?”
“No.”
There was a silence.
“When have you got to go?” he asked presently.
“Tonight, I’m afraid. That’s what the letter says.”
“Then,” he declared briskly, “we can’t waste any more time. The sooner I get my own things packed, the better. I hope we can get adjoining sleepers on the train. We’ve done all we can do here anyway, which wasn’t much to start with. The case, officially, is closed. All the same – I should have liked to see the real end of it, if there is an end.”
“You may see the end of it yet,” Kathryn told him, and turned round from the window.
“Meaning what?”
She wrinkled up her forehead, and her nervous manner was not entirely due to her apprehensions about the night before.
“You see,” she went on, “Dr Fell is here. When I told him I had to go back tonight, he said he had every reason to believe he would be going as well. I said, ‘But what about you-know?’ He said, ‘You-know will, I think, take care of itself .’ But he said it in a queer way that made me think there’s something going on. Something – rather terrible. He didn’t come back here until nearly dawn this morning. He wants to see you, by the way.”
“I’ll be dressed in half a tick. Where is everybody else this morning?”
“Colin’s still asleep. Elspat, even Kirstie, are out. There’s nobody here but you and me and Dr Fell. Alan, it isn’t hangover and it isn’t Swan and it isn’t nerves. But – I’m frightened. Please come downstairs as quick as you can.”
He told himself, when he nicked his face in shaving, that this was due to the brew of the night before. He told himself that his own apprehensions were caused by an upset stomach and the misadventures of Swan.
Shira was intensely quiet. Only the sun entered. When you turned on a tap, or turned it off, ghostly clankings went down through the house and shivered away. And, as Alan went down to get his breakfast, he saw Dr Fell in the sitting-room.
Dr Fell, in his old black alpaca suit and string tie, occupied the sofa. He was sitting in the warm, golden sunlight, the meerschaum pipe between his teeth, and his expression far away. He had the air of a man who meditates a dangerous business and is not quite sure of his course. The ridges of his waistcoat rose and fell with slow, gentle wheezings. His big mop of gray-streaked hair had fallen over one eye.
Alan and Kathryn shared buttered toast and more coffee. They did not speak much. Neither knew quite what to do. It was like the feeling of not knowing whether you had been summoned to the headmaster’s study or hadn’t.
But the question was solved for them.
“Good morning!” called a voice.
They hurried out into the hall.
Alistair Duncan, in an almost summery and skittish-looking brown suit, was standing at the open front door. He wore a soft hat and carried a briefcase. He raised his hand to the knocker of the open door as though by way of illustration.
“There did not seem to be anybody about,” he said. His voice, though meant to be pleasant, had a faint irritated undertone.
Alan glanced to the right. Through the open door of the sitting-room he could see Dr Fell stir, grunt, and lift his head as though roused out of sleep. Alan looked back to the tall, stoop-shouldered figure of the lawyer, framed against the shimmering loch outside.
“May I come in?” inquired Duncan politely.
“P-please do,” stammered Kathryn.
“Thank you.” Duncan stepped in gingerly, removing his hat. He went to the door of the sitting-room, glanced in, and uttered an exclamation which might have been satisfaction or annoyance.
“Please come in here,” rumbled Dr Fell. “All of you, if you will. And close the door.”
The usual odor as of damp oilcloth, of old wood and stone, was brought out by the sun in that stuffy room. Angus’s photograph, still draped in crepe, faced them from the overmantel. Sun made tawdry the dark, bad daubs of the pictures in their gilt frames, and picked out worn places in the carpet.
“My dear sir,” said the lawyer, putting down his hat and brief case on the table which held the Bible. He spoke the words as though he were beginning a letter.
“Sit down, please,” said Dr Fell.
A slight frown creased Duncan’s high, semi-bald skull.
“In response to your telephone call,” he replied, “here I am.” He made a humorous gesture. “But may I point out, sir, that I am a busy man? I have been at this house, for one cause or another, nearly every day for the past week. And, grave as the issue has been, since it is now settled –”
“It is not settled,” said Dr Fell.
“But – !”
“Sit down, all of you,” said Dr Fell.
Blowing a film of ash off his pipe, he settled back, returned the pipe to his mouth, and drew at it. The ash settled down across his waistcoat, but he did not brush it off. He eyed them for a long time, and Alan’s uneasiness had grown to something like a breath of fear.
“Gentlemen, and Miss Campbell,” continued Dr Fell, drawing a long sniff through his nose. “Yesterday afternoon, if you remember, I spoke of a million-to-one chance. I did not dare to hope for much from it. Still, it had come off in Angus’s case and I hoped it might come off in Forbes’s. It did.”
He paused, and added in the same ordinary tone:
“I now have the instrument with which, in a sense, Alec Forbes was murdered.”
The death-like stillness of the room, while tobacco smoke curled up past starched lace curtains in the sunlight, lasted only a few seconds.
“Murdered?” the lawyer exploded.
“Exactly.”
“You will pardon me if I suggest that –”
“Sir,” interrupted Dr Fell, taking the
pipe out of his mouth, “in your heart of hearts you know that Alec Forbes was murdered, just as you know that Angus Campbell committed suicide. Now don’t you?”
Duncan took a quick look around him.
“It’s quite all right,” the doctor assured him. “We four are all alone here – as yet. I have seen to that. You are at liberty to speak freely.”
“I have no intention of speaking, either freely or otherwise.” Duncan’s voice was curt. “Did you bring me all the way out here just to tell me that? Your suggestion is preposterous!”
Dr Fell sighed.
“I wonder whether you will think it is so preposterous,” he said, “if I tell you the proposal I mean to make.”
“Proposal?”
“Bargain. Deal, if you like.”
“There is no question of a bargain, my dear sir. You told me yourself that this is an open-and-shut case, a plain case. The police believe as much. I saw Mr MacIntyre, the Procurator Fiscal, this morning.”
“Yes. That is a part of my bargain.”
Duncan was almost on the edge of losing his temper.
“Will you kindly tell me, Doctor, what it is you wish of me: if anything? And particularly where you got this wicked and indeed dangerous notion that Alec Forbes was murdered?”
Dr Fell’s expression was vacant.
“I got it first,” he responded, puffing out his cheeks, “from a piece of blackout material – tar paper on a wooden frame – which should have been up at the window in Forbes’s cottage, and yet wasn’t.
“The blackout had been up at the window during the night, else the lantern-light would have been seen by the Home Guard. And the lantern (if you remember the evidence) had been burning. Yet for some reason it was necessary to extinguish the lantern and take down the blackout from the window.
“Why? That was the problem. As was suggested to me at the time, why didn’t the murderer simply leave the lantern burning, and leave the blackout in its place, when he made his exit? At first sight it seemed rather a formidable problem.
The Case of the Constant Suicides Page 17