Dr. Hailey shrugged his shoulders.
“Married women go to fortune-tellers when they’re unhappy,” he said. “Possibly Dundas might make something of that.”
“Mrs. Gregor’s death took place soon after that. It’s a curious fact that nobody knows exactly what she died of. But her death was sudden. I’ve heard that it came as a great shock to the village because people didn’t know she was ill. Duchlan would never speak about it, and nobody dared to ask him.”
“Where was she buried?”
“In the family vault on the estate. So far as I know nobody was invited to attend the funeral. That doesn’t necessarily mean much, because it’s a tradition of the Gregor family to bury their dead secretly, at night. Duchlan’s father’s funeral, I believe, took place by torchlight.”
“I would like,” Dr. Hailey said, “to know whether or not Miss Gregor attended the funeral of her sister-in-law. If I were Dundas I should make a point of getting information about that.”
McDonald shook his head.
“You would find it very difficult to get information. One has only to mention Duchlan’s wife to produce an icy silence.”
“Did she discuss her sister-in-law with the Ardmore witch?”
“Oh, no. She discussed nothing. She blamed nobody. She merely said that being Irish she believed in fortune-telling. She was very much afraid that her husband might hear of her visit, but he never did.”
McDonald lit his pipe.
“Annie Nannie speaks very well of her client, and she’s not given to flattery. By all accounts Duchlan’s wife was a fine woman. ‘It fair broke my heart,’ she said, ‘to see her sitting crying in my cottage, and her that kind and good to everybody.’”
The doctor took a pinch of snuff.
“It’s curious that both father and son should have married Irish women,” he said.
“Yes. And women so like one another too. Those who remember Eoghan’s mother say she was the image of his wife. Mrs. Eoghan’s very popular in the village, far more so, really, than Miss Gregor was.”
“How about the servants at the castle?”
“They love her. Dundas has been going into that too; he’s got an idea that the Campbell girls didn’t like Miss Gregor and he’s been trying to find out if either of them went to her bedroom on the night she was killed. There’s nothing, as a matter of fact, to show that any of the servants went to Miss Gregor’s room after Christina, her maid, had left it for the night.”
“Is Dundas still hopeful of being able to solve the mystery?” Dr. Hailey asked.
“No.” Dr. McDonald moved his leg again. “In a sense,” he said, “I’m here in the capacity of an ambassador. Dundas wants your help; but he’s too proud to ask for it—after what he said to you. He suggested that, as one of your professional brethren, I might carry the olive branch.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I hope you won’t stand too much on ceremony…You have him at your mercy.”
“That’s not the way to look at it.” Dr. Hailey took a pinch of snuff. “If I go to Duchlan now I’ll be compelled to work along Inspector Dundas’s lines. I’ve no doubt they’re good lines, but they are not mine. I should only confuse his mind and my own.”
“I see. You insist on a free hand.”
“Not that exactly. What I’m really asking is a free mind. I don’t want to co-operate. You can tell Dundas that, if he likes, I’ll work at the problem independently of him. Any discoveries I may make will belong to him, of course.”
“He won’t consent to that. He’ll give you a free hand only so long as he’s with you in all you do.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Dr. Hailey made up his mind.
“Tell him,” he said, “that I can’t accept these terms. I’m an amateur, not a professional, and my studies of crime are undertaken only because they interest me. When I work alone my mind gropes about until it finds something which appeals to it. I follow a line of investigation often without knowing exactly why I’m following it—it would be intolerable to have to explain and justify every step. And Dundas would certainly insist on such explanations. The detection of crime, I think, is an art more than a science, like the practice of medicine.”
Dr. McDonald did not dispute this idea; indeed, he seemed to agree with it. He went away saying that he would come back if Dundas agreed to the terms. Dr. Hailey joined John MacCallien under the pine trees in front of the house and sat down in the deck chair which awaited him. The day was insufferably hot and close, so hot and so close that even Loch Fyne seemed to be destitute of a ripple.
“Well?”
“Dundas sent him. But I can’t work with Dundas.”
John MacCallien nodded.
“Of course not. I was talking to the postman while you were indoors. He says that Dundas has got the whole place by the ears. There’s a panic.”
“So McDonald suggested.”
“Dundas has found out that Eoghan Gregor is in debt. Eoghan’s his aunt’s heir, so you can guess what inference has been drawn. But there’s the shut room to be got over. The man has had an inventory made of every ladder in Argyll.”
“The windows were bolted. Nobody can have got into the room through the windows.”
“No, so I supposed. But you know what Dundas and his kind are: detail, detail, till you can’t see the forest for the trees.”
The haze which veiled the loch about Otter and which blotted out the rolling contours of the hills of Cowal seemed to be charged with fire and suffocation. Even in the shade of the trees, a hot vapour lay on the ground. The doctor took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
“I never realized that it could be so hot in the Highlands.”
He lay back and looked up at the clumps of dark green pine-needles above him.
“Did you know Miss Gregor well?” he asked his friend suddenly.
“Not very well. Since my return from India I’ve seen very little of her. My knowledge belongs chiefly to my youth. My father always spoke of her as a latter-day saint, and I suppose I adopted that opinion readymade.”
He remained thoughtful for a few minutes, during which the doctor observed his kindly face with satisfaction. John MacCallien, he reflected, was one of those men who do not change their opinions gladly and who are specially reluctant to revise the teachings of their parents.
“My father,” he added, “had the outlook of the nineteenth century on men and women. He demanded a standard of behaviour and made no allowances. Miss Gregor not only conformed to that standard, but exceeded it. Her horror of what was vaguely called ‘impropriety’ was known and admired all over Argyll. For example, I believe that she never herself spoke of a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’, but only of a ‘gentleman’ or a ‘lady’. Ladies and gentlemen were beings whose chief concern it was to prove by their lives and manners that they lacked the human appetites.”
“I know.”
John MacCallien sighed.
“I suppose there was something to be said for that point of view,” he declared. “But I’m afraid it was a fruitful begetter of cruelty and harshness. Anything was justified which could be shown to inflict shame or sorrow on the unregenerate. Besides, these good people lived within the ring-fence of a lie. They were not the disembodied spirits they pretended to be—far from it. Consequently their emotions and appetites were active in all kinds of hidden and even unsuspected ways.” He paused and added: ‘‘Cruelty, as I say, was one of these ways, the easiest and the most hateful.”
“Was Miss Gregor cruel?” Dr. Hailey asked.
“Do you know that’s an extraordinary difficult question to answer. Offhand, I should say, ‘Of course not’. But it depends, really, on what you mean by cruel. Her code was full, I’m sure, of unpardonable sins, sins that put people right outside the pale. On the other hand she could be extraordinarily kind and charitabl
e. I told you that even tinkers and gipsies used to bless her. She was always bothering herself about people of that sort. Once, I remember, a child got pneumonia in one of the tinker’s tents on the shore between here and the north lodge. She nursed it herself and paid for medical attendance. When the parish officer wanted to have it removed to the Poor’s House at Lochgilphead she resisted him with all her might because she believed that these people cannot live within four walls. She was told that if the child died, its death would be laid to her charge, but that kind of threat was the least likely to influence her in any way. The case aroused a lot of interest in Ardmore. When the child got well everybody felt that she had saved its life.”
Dr. Hailey nodded.
“I see. In that case her personal reputation was at stake, so to speak.”
“Yes. And there was no question of sin.” John MacCallien sighed. “She was merciless where sinners were concerned,” he added, “if their sins were of the flesh. I fancy she might have found excuses for a thief— these tinkers are all thieves, you know.”
“Provided he had not sinned?”
“Exactly. Mind you, that view wasn’t confined to her. It was my father’s also.”
“Your father’s view was shared by everybody else in this neighbourhood, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. By everybody.”
MacCallien sat up. He shook his head rather sadly. “When my brother and I were children,” he said, “we often met Miss Gregor out driving. Our nurse, on these occasions, always told us to take our hats off and that became a burden. One day, just as the carriage was passing, we put out our tongues instead. I can still see the horror on the dear woman’s face. She stopped the carriage, got out, and read us a lecture on good manners We didn’t mind that so much but she wrote as well to our father. I remember thinking, while we were being punished, that she wasn’t my idea of a saint.”
He smiled faintly and then looked surprised when he saw how attentive Dr. Hailey had become.
“How old was Miss Gregor at that time?”
“She must have been quite young. In her twenties or early thirties, I suppose.”
“What happened the next time you met her?”
“Oh, we took our hats off, of course.”
“And she?”
“I fancy she bowed to us as she had done formerly. Funnily enough, though, I can’t remember much about her after that.”
“Did you know Duchlan’s wife?”
“Oh, yes, rather.” MacCallien’s voice became suddenly enthusiastic. “She was an awfully good sort. We loved her. I remember my brother saying once that Mrs. Gregor would never have told our father if we had put our tongues out at her. She had a short married life, poor woman.”
“Eoghan Gregor’s wife is supposed to be like her in appearance, isn’t she?” Dr. Hailey asked.
“Yes. I think with reason too, though a child’s memory is always unreliable. I know that, when I saw Mrs. Eoghan for the first time, I wondered where I had met her before. And it’s certain that I had never met her before. There must be some quality in the characters of Duchlan and his son which draws them to Irish women.” He paused and then added: “Not a very robust quality perhaps.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m afraid neither of these marriages has been conspicuously successful. I suppose the qualities which Miss Gregor represents are the dominants in all the members of her family. Duchlan’s wife, like Mrs. Eoghan, was more concerned with men and women than with ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’.”
“It must have been very difficult for her to have her sister-in-law always beside her, don’t you think?”
Dr. Hailey frowned as he spoke. His companion nodded a vigorous assent.
“It must have been dreadful. No wife could hope to be happy in such circumstances. As a matter of fact, I believe Miss Gregor did all the housekeeping and management. Duchlan’s wife was treated, from beginning to end, like a visitor. Goodness knows how she endured it.”
“Was there much talk about the arrangement?”
“Any amount, of course. But nobody could interfere. People older than myself have told me that they saw the poor girl wilting before their eyes. I believe one woman, the wife of an old laird, did actually dare to suggest that it was high time a change was made. She was told to mind her own business. By all accounts Mrs. Gregor was splendidly loyal to her husband and wouldn’t listen to a syllable of criticism or even of sympathy. But I haven’t a doubt, all the same, that the strain undermined her constitution.”
Dr. Hailey passed his hand over his brow.
“What did she die of?” he asked.
“Diphtheria, I believe. She died very suddenly.”
Dr. Hailey spent the afternoon in a hammock, turning over the details of the mystery in his mind. He did not disguise from himself that he was disappointed at not having been allowed to attempt a solution; on the other hand such ideas as he had evolved offered no substantial basis of deduction. He discussed the subject again with his host after dinner but obtained no enlightenment.
“I’ve no doubt,” John MacCallien said, “that Dundas has exhausted all such probabilities as secret doors and chambers. He was prepared, I feel sure, to tear the castle to pieces to find one clue. My friend the postman had it from Angus, Duchlan’s piper, that he found nothing. There are no secret chambers, no passages, no trap-doors.”
“And no other means by which the murderer can have entered the bedroom or escaped out of it?”
John MacCallien raised his head.
“We know that he did enter the bedroom and did escape out of it.”
“Exactly. And miracles don’t happen.”
The doctor took a pinch of snuff. “This is the fourth time that I’ve encountered a case in which a murder was committed in what seemed like a closed room or a closed space. I imagine that the truth, in this instance, will not be more difficult to discover than in these others—”
A smile flickered on his lips.
“Most of the great murder mysteries of the past half-century,” he added, “have turned either on an alibi or on an apparently closed space. For practical purposes these conditions are identical, because you have to show, in face of obvious evidence to the contrary, that your murderer was at a given spot at a given moment. That, believe me, is a harder task than proving that a particular individual administered poison or that an apparent accident was, in fact, due to foul play.”
He broke off because they heard a car driving up to the door. A moment later Dr. McDonald came limping into the room.
“You’ve got your terms, Hailey,” he said as he shook the doctor’s hand. “Dundas owns himself beaten.” He shook hands with John MacCallien, and then turned back to Dr. Hailey. “Can you possibly come to Duchlan to-night?”
Chapter X
“Duchlan Will Be Honoured”
Inspector Dundas received the two doctors in his bedroom, a large room situated near that formerly occupied by Miss Gregor and directly overlooking the burn. He was seated on his bed, when they entered, writing notes, and wore only a shirt and trousers. But he did not seem to be feeling the heat.
“It’s good of you, Dr. Hailey,” he said in grateful tones, “because I wasn’t as polite as I might have been at our first meeting. Pride cometh before a fall, eh?”
“On the contrary, I thought your attitude entirely unexceptionable.”
The doctor sat down near the open window and mopped his brow. Dundas, he perceived, had lost his air of assurance. Even his sprightliness of manner had deserted him. The change was rather shocking, as indicating a fundamental lack of self-confidence. The man had put all his trust in cleverness and thoroughness and when these failed, had nothing to fall back on.
“Perhaps you would like me to give you an account of what I’ve done,” Dundas said. “A few facts have emerged.”
He sp
oke wearily, without enthusiasm. Dr. Hailey shook his head.
“I should prefer to ask you questions.”
“Very well.”
The doctor rose and pulled off his coat; before he sat down again he glanced out at the sea, white under the full moon. The exquisite clearness of the north had returned with the falling of night, and the long rampart of Cowal lay like the back of some monstrous creature rearing itself up out of the shining water. He listened to the soft babbling of the burn at his feet, in which chuckles and gurgles were mingled deliciously. The drought had tamed this fierce stream till only its laughter remained. He followed its course round the house to the loch, marking where its water became transformed to silver. The sails of fishing-boats stained the silver here and there and he saw that several of the boats were lying close in shore, at the mouth of the burn. The sound of the fishermen’s voices came softly on the still air. He turned to his companions:
“They seem to have shot a net out here.”
Dr. McDonald looked out and turned indifferently away.
“Yes.”
“I had no idea they fished so close inshore.”
“Oh, yes. The shoals of herring tend to come into the shallow water at night to feed. Ardmore has lived on that fact for more than a century. Lived well too. In the best days they used to get £2 or £3 a box and might take 200 boxes at one shot of the net. But not now. The old Loch Fyne herring that the whole country knew and enjoyed seems to have ceased to exist. It was blue and flat; the modern variety is much paler and much rounder.”
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