Murder of a Lady

by Anthony Wynne

  “You must come back.”

  She shook her head.

  “Dr. Hailey is going to ask John MacCallien to put me up for the night.”

  “Oonagh—”

  Eoghan tried to grasp his wife’s arm. She shrank from him.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Surely, Doctor,” he cried, “you can’t approve of behaviour of this sort? We have sorrow enough at Duchlan…”

  He broke off. Dr. Hailey considered a moment and then turned to him.

  “I should like you both to come into the house with me,” he said, “I have something to tell you.” He glanced at Oonagh, whose face expressed a lively dissent. “I shall not try to persuade you against your will. All I want is to put you and your husband in possession of certain facts.”

  “I don’t wish to hear them.”

  He realized that she feared the discovery of her attempted suicide and pitched about in his mind for some means of avoiding that discovery. There were none. He weighed the danger and took his decision.

  “I have just rescued your wife from drowning,” he told Eoghan in matter-of-fact tones.

  “What!”

  “It’s as I say. The bank of the burn, under the castle, is very steep and it’s easy, as you know, to slip on that steep bank. There’s nothing to break the fall till the burn is reached and at high tide the water in the mouth of the burn is deep.”

  He spoke in challenging tones. He added: “Please don’t ask any questions just now; I shall not answer them.”

  He watched the young man and saw his expression change from melancholy to fear. Eoghan’s fists were clenched. Suddenly he caught his wife’s arm, holding it in a strong grip. This time she did not shrink from him. They walked to the door of the house in silence. It was ajar. Dr. Hailey led the way into the smoking-room and switched up the light. An exclamation of dismay broke from Eoghan’s lips when he saw his wife. He came to her and put his arm round her to help her to a chair. A fire was laid in the grate; he stooped and lit it. Oonagh’s eyes followed every movement, but her face remained expressionless.

  It was an interesting face in spite of its weakness. Even in her distress, the girl managed to convey a remarkable impression of vitality. Dr. Hailey glanced at Eoghan. There was vitality in his face too, but it was clouded by his melancholy. Oonagh, he thought, was one of those women who need to depend on a man’s direction. Was this man capable of giving her the support without which her vitality must constitute a danger?

  “As you know,” he said, “I had an opportunity of inspecting Miss Gregor’s body this evening. That inspection has convinced me that she was killed by someone possessed of great strength and using a weapon taken from a fishing-boat. That’s the first fact that I wish to make known to you.”

  He sat down and put his eyeglass in his eye. Although his clothes clung to him rather dismally he had not lost his kindliness of manner.

  “Why do you think the weapon was taken from a fishing boat?” Eoghan asked.

  “Because I found the scale of a herring near the edge of the wound.”

  Oonagh raised her head sharply.

  “That would mean that the scale had been on the blade of the weapon?”

  “I think so. I don’t see how it could have reached the place where I found it in any other way. There was only one scale, so I conclude that the weapon was wiped before being used.”

  The girl moved her chair nearer to the fire. He saw her knuckles whiten as she grasped its arms.

  “Queerly enough,” Eoghan said, “I bought some herring from a fishing boat on my way across the loch last night. They were pulling in the net when I passed them and I couldn’t resist the temptation. The launch is full of herring scales.”

  He spoke calmly but his words exerted a strong effect on his wife, who bent closer to the fire as if to hide her uneasiness. A lambent flame revealed the tense expression on her face.

  “Still, you didn’t visit your aunt, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I understand, from what your father said, that he called you early this morning to help to break into Miss Gregor’s room.”

  “Oh, yes. But I went to her room before I went to bed last night. Her door was locked.”

  Dr. Hailey waved his hand in a gesture which indicated that he would not at present concern himself with that aspect of the matter.

  “The second fact I wish you to know,” he said, “is that some time elapsed between the infliction of the wound and the death of Miss Gregor. During this time the murderer remained in the room. That is certain, because, had the weapon been withdrawn from the wound before death, a very much larger quantity of blood must have been spilt.”

  “Have you any idea,” Eoghan asked, “how the room was entered?”

  “Possibly by the door. The door was locked in the morning but…”

  “It was locked when I tried it at eleven o’clock last night.”

  “Even so, you don’t know when, exactly, the key was turned, do you?”

  “I know,” Oonagh said in quiet tones.

  “What?”

  She faced Dr. Hailey. He saw that excitement had returned to her eyes.

  “I went to Aunt Mary’s room just after ten o’clock,” she said. “I knocked and then opened the door. Christina was just going to leave the room. I took her candle from her and went towards the bed where Aunt Mary was lying. When Aunt Mary saw me she sat up and began to gasp. I was frightened and went out and shut the door. I heard her get out of bed and run to the door. She locked the door. Christina had gone away.”

  Oonagh’s voice had become louder but was still subdued. There was an assurance in her tones that carried conviction.

  “How do you know Miss Gregor locked the door?” Dr. Hailey asked.

  “Because I tried the handle. I thought that perhaps she was ill and that I ought to go into the room again.”

  “You are quite sure of that?”

  “Absolutely sure. I tried the handle several times.”

  “Did you call to Miss Gregor while you were trying the handle?”

  “Yes. She didn’t answer me.”

  Dr. Hailey turned to Eoghan.

  “Did you call to her when you tried the handle?”

  “I did, yes. I got no answer. I thought she had fallen asleep.”

  “Aunt Mary seemed to be terrified of me,” Oonagh stated. “I have never seen anyone look so terrified in my life.”

  “She wasn’t easily frightened, was she?”

  A smile flickered on the girl’s lips.

  “Oh, no.” She added: “Until that moment I had been frightened of her.”

  “Do you think she was calling for help?”

  “No, that’s the strange thing. I think she was just dreadfully afraid. Panic-stricken. Like a woman who sees a ghost. She didn’t try to call Christina back.”

  Dr. Hailey leaned forward.

  “How were you dressed?” he asked.

  “I was in my night-dress. I was wearing a blue silk dressing-gown.”

  Chapter VIII

  Husband and Wife

  The room grew silent. Oonagh pushed aside her heavy fringe, and revealed a high brow.

  “Why did you go to Miss Gregor’s room?” Dr. Hailey asked her.

  The girl glanced at her husband before she replied.

  “Aunt Mary and I had quarrelled before dinner. I wanted to talk to her.”

  “To make up your quarrel?”

  “Yes.”

  The monosyllable came firmly.

  Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “Duchlan told me,” he said, “that you had gone to bed before dinner because you weren’t feeling well.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well. But that was the result of my quarrel with Aunt Mary.”

  The doctor rose and
took out his snuff-box.

  “My position,” he said, “is a little difficult. I told Inspector Dundas that I wouldn’t try to double his work on the case. If I ask any more questions I’m afraid I shall be breaking that promise. My object in bringing you here, as you know, wasn’t to get information but to give it. I wanted you both to realize that this case presents very great difficulties which will certainly tax the resources of the police to the utmost.”

  He took a pinch of snuff. Eoghan asked.

  “Why did you want us to realize that?”

  “So that your wife might feel able to return with you to Duchlan.”

  “I confess I don’t follow.”

  Dr. Hailey glanced at Oonagh. She shook her head. He took more snuff to avoid making an immediate reply, and then said:

  “I fancy it is better to tell the truth. Your wife was trying to drown herself when I rescued her.”

  Eoghan jumped up.

  “What!” The blood ebbed out of his cheeks. “Is this true?” he demanded of Oonagh.

  “Yes.”

  “That you tried to—to drown yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned fearful eyes to Dr. Hailey.

  “I insist on knowing the whole truth. Why is my wife with you at this hour? How does my father know that she’s with you?”

  “I can’t answer the last question. The answer to the first is that I saw her jump from the jetty, and ran to her help. It’s possible your father may have observed us.”

  The young man strode to his wife and seized her hand.

  “Why did you do it?” he cried.

  There was anguish in his voice.

  Oonagh remained bending over the fire, unresponsive and limp. When he repeated his question, she bowed her head, but she did not answer. The doctor sat down.

  “I think I can supply the answer,” he said. “Your wife feared that you had played a part in the murder of your aunt.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Her suicide was sure to be interpreted as a confession of her own guilt. She was shielding you.”

  Eoghan started.

  “Oonagh, is that true?”

  There was no reply. The doctor waited a moment and then said to Eoghan:

  “It wasn’t an unreasonable fear, perhaps. No more unreasonable, certainly, than the fear under which you are labouring at this moment, namely, that your wife’s attempt to drown herself was a confession of guilt.” His voice became gentle: “What’s the use of pretence at a time such as this? The more deeply we love, the quicker must be our fear, seeing that each of us is liable, under provocation, to lose self-control. Why I told you about my examination of your aunt’s wound was that you might realize that it cannot have been inflicted by a woman. Your wife did not kill your aunt. Your fear that she may have done so proves, surely, that you, too, are guiltless.”

  He paused. A look of inexpressible relief had appeared on Oonagh’s face. She stretched out her hand to her husband, who grasped it.

  “You have reasons, presumably, both of you, for your fears,” Dr. Hailey added. “I can only speculate about these; I note, in passing, that you are no longer sharing a bedroom. Whatever your reasons may be, they do not invalidate my argument.”

  He turned to Eoghan:

  “Take John MacCallien’s car and drive your wife home. The door of the garage isn’t locked.”

  Chapter IX

  A Heat Wave

  Dr. Hailey heard nothing officially about the murder of Miss Gregor for several days after his visit to Duchlan. But news of the activity of Inspector Dundas was not lacking. That young man, in his own phrase, was leaving no stone unturned. He had surrounded the castle with policemen; he had forbidden the inhabitants to leave the grounds on any pretext whatever; and he had commandeered motor-cars and boats for his own service. The household staff, or so it was reported, was reduced to a state of panic. Nor were his activities confined to Duchlan; everyone of the two thousand villagers of Ardmore lay under the heavy cloud of his suspicion.

  “And yet,” Dr. McDonald of Ardmore told Dr. Hailey, “he hasn’t advanced a step. He has found no motive for the murder; suspicion attaches to nobody, and he possesses not even the remotest idea of how the murderer entered or left Miss Gregor’s bedroom.”

  Dr. McDonald made this statement with a degree of bitterness which indicated how grievously he himself had suffered at Dundas’s hands.

  “The man’s a fusser,” he added. “Nothing must escape him. And so everything escapes him. He’s always trying to hold a bunch of sparrows in one hand while he plucks them with the other.”

  The Ardmore doctor smiled at his metaphor.

  “Lowlanders such as Dundas,” he said, “always work on the assumption that we Highlanders are fools or knaves, or both. They invariably try to bamboozle us—to frighten us. Neither of these methods gets them anywhere because the Highlander is brave as well as subtle. Flora Campbell, the housemaid at Duchlan, asked Dundas if he was going to arrest all the herring in the Loch till he counted their scales. The fishermen call herring-scales ‘Dundases’ now.”

  “Sometimes that method succeeds, you know,” Dr. Hailey said gently.

  “Oh, one might forgive the method if it wasn’t for the man. Not that he’s a bad fellow really. One of the fishermen lost his temper with him and called him ‘a wee whipper-snapper’ to his face and he took that in good part. But you can’t help feeling that he’s waiting and watching all the time to get his teeth into you.”

  Dr. McDonald unscrewed his pipe and began to clean it with a spill of paper, an operation which promised badly from the outset.

  “I smoke too much,” he remarked, “but it keeps my nerves quiet. Dundas’s voice is hard to bear when your nerves aren’t as steady as they might be.”

  He withdrew the spill and tried to blow through the pipe. He looked rather uneasy but seemed to find comfort in his task.

  “It’s queer, isn’t it,” he said, “that however innocent you may be you aways feel uncomfortable when you know you’re under suspicion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dundas possesses none of the subtlety which can set a suspected man at his ease and so loosen his tongue. Everybody, even the most talkative, becomes an oyster in his presence, because it’s so obvious that anything you may say will be turned and twisted against you. Mrs. Eoghan, I believe, refused to answer his questions because he began by suggesting that she knew her husband was guilty. When he made the same suggestion to Duchlan the old man vowed he wouldn’t see him again, and wrote to Glasgow, to police headquarters, to get him recalled.”

  “He won’t be recalled because of that,” Dr. Hailey remarked grimly.

  “Possibly not. But complaints from lairds don’t do a detective any good in this country. Scotland’s supposed to be more democratic than England, but that’s an illusion. I don’t believe there’s any place in the world where a landed proprietor has more influence. If Dundas fails he’ll get short shrift. He knows that; his nerves are all on edge now and every day adds to his trouble.”

  Dr. Hailey took a pinch of snuff.

  “Frankly,” he said, “I rather liked him. If he was a trifle tactless, he was honest and good-natured.”

  “You’re an Englishman.”

  “Well?”

  “Highland people are the most difficult to handle in the world because they’re the most touchy in the world. What they cannot endure is to be laughed at, and Dundas began by laughing at them—jeering at them would be a truer description. They won’t forgive him, I can assure you.”

  Dr. McDonald nodded his head vigorously as he spoke. He was a big man, red of face and raw of bone, with a wooden leg which gave him much trouble, a man, as Dr. Hailey knew, reputed something of a dreamer but believed, too, to be very wise in the lore of his profession and in the knowledge of men. Hi
s blue eyes continued to sparkle.

  “I promised not to interfere,” Dr. Hailey said.

  “He told me that. He hasn’t much opinion of amateur methods of catching criminals.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Dr. McDonald’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward in his chair in order to move his leg to a more comfortable position.

  “Did you see the old scar on Miss Gregor’s chest?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you make of it?”

  Dr. Hailey shook his head. “You mustn’t ask me that, you know.”

  “Very well. But that’s the clue that Dundas has fastened on. Who wounded Miss Gregor ten years ago? He thinks if he can answer that question his troubles’ll be over. And the queer thing is that nobody can or nobody will tell him. He’s got it worked out that the poor woman was probably at home here when she was wounded. And yet neither Duchlan nor Angus nor Christina seem to know anything about the wound.”

  Dr. McDonald paused. It was obvious that he hoped to interest his colleague, but Dr. Hailey only shook his head.

  “You mustn’t ask me for my opinion.”

  “There’s another queer thing: Dundas, as I told you, has paid a lot of attention to the herring-scale you discovered. He found a second scale inside the wound. He argued that the weapon the wound was inflicted with must have come from the kitchen, and, as I said, he’d been giving the servants a fearful time. I believe he found an axe with fish scales on it, but the clue led him nowhere.

  “His next idea was that Duchlan himself might be the murderer. He tried to work out a scheme on these lines. Duchlan’s poor, like all the lairds, so it was possible that he wanted his sister’s money. The old man, I’m glad to say, didn’t guess what was in the wind. He’s a fine old man, is Duchlan, but his temper’s not very dependable nowadays.”

  A second spill achieved what the first had failed to achieve. McDonald screwed up his pipe and put it in his mouth. It emitted a gurgling sound which in no way disconcerted him. He began to charge it with tobacco.

  “Naturally,” he went on, “this inquisition has refreshed a lot of memories. And a doctor hears everything. There’s an old woman in the village who’s reputed to be a witch as her mother was before her. I believe her name’s MacLeod though they call her ‘Annie Nannie’. Goodness knows why. She remembers Duchlan’s wife, Eoghan’s mother, well, and she told me yesterday that once the poor woman came to consult her. ‘She looked at me,’ Annie Nannie said, ‘for a long time without speaking a word. Then she asked me if it was true I could tell what was going to happen to folk. I was a young woman then myself and I was frightened, seein’ the laird’s young wife in my cottage. So I told her it wasn’a true.’ However, in the end she was persuaded to tell Mrs. Gregor’s fortune. She says she prophesied evil.”