Murder of a Lady

by Anthony Wynne

  “So that Ardmore has fallen on bad days?”

  “Yes. And with Ardmore, Duchlan and his family. It isn’t easy to pay rent if you’re making no money.”

  “Has the depression produced any reactions?”

  “Reactions?”

  “Hard times tend to separate honest from dishonest men.”

  A faint smile flickered on Dundas’s lips.

  “You’re thinking of the possibility that one of those fishermen may have climbed in here?” he asked. “That idea was in my own mind. But I feel sure now that there’s nothing in it. Nobody could climb these walls.”

  Dr. Hailey sat down. He polished his eyeglass and put it in his eye.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t only thinking of that,” he confessed. “Boats, especially fishing-boats, have always attracted me. It used to be one of my boyish ambitions to spend a night with the herring fleet.” He leaned forward. “McDonald told me that you observed the scar on Miss Gregor’s chest.”

  “Yes. I tried to work on that clue but I got nothing. Nobody here knows anything about it.”

  “Isn’t that rather strange?”

  “Very strange. But truth to tell, doctor, the people here are impossible. They know nothing about anything. When I said to Duchlan that nobody could hide an injury of that sort, he met me with a shrug of his shoulders. What are you to do? The scar is very old. It may date back twenty years.”

  “Yes. But it represents what was once a severe wound. Long ago, somebody tried to kill Miss Gregor. Since I formed that opinion I’ve been trying to get information about the lady. I’ve made a discovery.”

  “Yes?” The detective’s voice rang out sharply.

  “Everybody seems to believe that she was a saint and nobody seems to know much about her.”

  “My dear sir,” Dr. McDonald interrupted, “I knew her well. The whole neighbourhood knew her well.”

  “As a figure, yes. Not as a woman.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who were her intimate friends?”

  The Ardmore doctor nursed his leg with both hands. He looked blank.

  “Oh, the lairds and their families.”

  “John MacCallien confesses that he used to see her out driving occasionally. He was taught to hold her in great respect. He knows next to nothing about her.”

  “He’s a bachelor.”

  “Yes. But he goes everywhere. One of his friends told me yesterday that Miss Gregor was looked on as a woman apart. She was full of good works, but she gave her confidence to nobody. She had no woman friend, no man friend. In such a place as this, gossip is passed on from father to son and mother to daughter. It’s quite clear that this woman lived her life in seclusion.”

  Dr. McDonald frowned. “She never impressed me in that way,” he declared stubbornly. “On the contrary, there was nothing she was not interested in. Her intrusions in local affairs, believe me, could be most troublesome. Doctors were her special concern and she supervised their work, my work mostly, with tireless zeal. She called it ‘taking a kindly interest’, but it was sheer interference.”

  He spoke hotly. Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “That’s not quite what I mean, you know,” he said. “That’s impersonal work. The relations between the landed class and their people in this country are so well-defined that there was no danger of familiarity. Miss Gregor helped her poorer neighbours, I imagine, as she cared for her pets. They were remote from her life. Your Lady Bountiful is always the same; she spoils her dependents and avoids her equals.”

  “There’s something in that,” McDonald agreed. “I often noticed that the more dependent the person was, the more fuss Miss Gregor made. She got a lot of flattery from her pensioners.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Her nephew’s upbringing had been the chief business of her life. I can still hear her clear voice saying: ‘Doctor McDonald, the knowledge that a young life had been committed to my care overwhelmed me. I felt that I must live and work and think and plan for no other object than Eoghan’s welfare in the very highest sense of that word!’”

  “Are you not confirming what I’ve suggested? Miss Gregor’s real life was here, in this house, between these walls.” Dr. Hailey allowed his eyeglass to drop. “I’ve been asking myself where her interest was centred before Eoghan was born,” he added. “Clever, active-minded women always, believe me, find something or somebody to absorb their attention.”

  Nobody answered him; Dundas’s interest was wholly extinguished. There was a knock at the door. Angus, the piper, entered with a tray on which glasses tinkled together. The gilded neck of a champagne bottle protruded from a small ice-pail, like a pheasant’s neck from a coop.

  “Duchlan will be honoured, gentlemen,” Angus announced, “if you’ll accept a little refreshment.”

  He stood in the doorway awaiting their decision. Dundas signed to him to put the tray down on the dressing-table.

  “Shall I open the bottle?”

  “Yes, do.”

  Angus performed this office with much dignity. He filled the glasses on the tray and presented them to the three men. Dr. Hailey took occasion to glance at his face but found it inscrutable. The piper knew how to keep his thoughts to himself. When he had left the room Dundas remarked that a similar courtesy had not been extended to himself.

  “I’m getting to know Duchlan,” he declared. “This is his way of telling me what he thinks of me. Champagne isn’t for a common policeman.”

  He laughed and flushed as he spoke. It was clear that, under his uncompromising manner, he was exceedingly sensitive.

  “This is the hottest night of the year, you know,” Dr. Hailey suggested amiably.

  “Oh, it’s been hot enough every night since I came here.”

  Dundas emptied his glass at a gulp, an offence, seeing that the wine was good. He made a joke about a farmer at a public dinner to whom champagne had been served, but failed to amuse his companions. Dr. Hailey sipped the liquor, watching the tiny clusters of bubbles on its surface, elfish pearls cunningly set in gold. The wine was excellently chilled and yielded its virtue generously.

  “What do you make of Duchlan?” the doctor asked after a prolonged interval of silence.

  “He’s a Highland laird. They’re all alike.”

  “Yes?”

  “Pride and poverty.”

  “I understood that Miss Gregor was a rich woman.”

  The policeman’s face brightened.

  “Ah,” he exclaimed, “you know that, do you?”

  “John MacCallien told me.”

  “It’s true. An uncle, who made money in business, left her a big sum about ten years ago; why, I don’t know. Duchlan got nothing.”

  Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “Has Duchlan helped you?”

  “No, he has not.”

  “What about Eoghan Gregor?”

  Dundas shrugged his shoulders.

  “Another of the same. But I didn’t expect help there after I found that the fellow had just gambled his money away.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Eoghan Gregor was ruined on the day of his aunt’s death. And his aunt has left him all her money.”

  He remained tensely expectant, watching the effect of his disclosure. Dr. Hailey denied him satisfaction.

  “After all, his aunt brought him up, you know.”

  “Exactly. He knew that she would leave him her money.”

  “Wouldn’t she have lent him money, if he had asked her?”

  “I don’t think so. Not to pay gambling debts at any rate. Miss Gregor, by all accounts, was a woman with most violent prejudices against gambling in any form.”

  Dundas glanced at Dr. McDonald for confirmation.

  “She looked on every kind of game of chance as the invention of the devil,” the Ardmore doctor declared. “I’ve hear
d her myself call playing-cards ‘the Devil’s Tools’. I’m sure that if she had suspected that her nephew indulged in gambling she would have disinherited him as a matter of principle.”

  Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “I see.”

  “It came to this,” Dundas declared. “Of the three questions that must be answered in every case of murder—Who? Why? How?—I may have found answers to two, namely Who? and Why?” He raised his right hand in a gesture which recalled a bandmaster. “But the third has remained obstinately unanswerable. There isn’t a shadow of doubt that the door was locked on the inside. As you know, a carpenter had to be fetched to cut out the lock. He told me that he examined the windows and saw for himself that they were bolted. Dr. McDonald here arrived before the carpenter had completed his work to confirm these statements. In other words that room, with its thick walls and heavy door, was completely sealed up. You couldn’t have broken into it without using great violence. And there’s not a sign of violence anywhere.”

  The policeman rubbed his brow uneasily.

  “Has the idea occurred to you,” McDonald asked, “that the murder may have been committed in some other room?”

  “What? But how was the body got into the bedroom in that case? I assure you that you can’t turn the key of the door from the outside. I’m an authority on skeleton keys of all sorts. No skeleton key that was ever invented could pick that lock. And the end of the key doesn’t protrude from the lock. The locks of this house are all astonishingly ingenious. I’m told they were the invention of Duchlan’s grandfather, who had a passion for lock-making.”

  “Like Louis XVI.”

  Dundas looked blank: “I didn’t know that Louis XVI. was interested in locks,” he said in tones which proclaimed his innocence of any knowledge about that monarch.

  “He was. And his interest set a fashion. I’ve little doubt that the Duchlan of those days acquired his taste for mechanics during a visit to London or Paris. Some years ago I made a study of these eighteenth-century locks. Many of them are extraordinarily clever.”

  “These here are, at any rate.” Dundas rose as he spoke and brought the lock which had been cut from Miss Gregor’s door for the doctor’s inspection. He pointed to the keyhole. “Observe how the key enters at a different level on each side of the door. That precludes the possibility of picking the lock with a skeleton, or of turning the key from the outside with pliers. You would think there were two locks, indeed, instead of only one, but they’re connected.”

  Dr. Hailey focussed his eyeglass on the piece of mechanism and then handed it back.

  “I agree with you,” he said. “It is absolutely certain that the door was neither locked nor unlocked from the outside.”

  “That means, remember, that Miss Gregor locked the door.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The detective shook his head.

  “How can you, or I, for that matter, suppose anything else? Seeing that the windows were bolted on the inside.” Again he rubbed his brow. “My brain seems to be going round in circles,” he cried. “What I’m really saying is that Miss Gregor inflicted that dreadful wound on herself, seeing that nobody was present in the room with her and that nobody can have escaped out of her room. And she certainly didn’t inflict the wound on herself.”

  “She did not.”

  Dundas’s face had become very solemn. This mystery, which had brought all his efforts to nothing, exerted, it seemed, a profoundly depressing effect on his spirits. He shook his head mournfully as the difficulties against which he had been contending presented themselves anew to his mind.

  “What I don’t understand,” Dr. Hailey said, “is why the windows were shut at all. It was an exceedingly hot night—as hot or hotter than it is now. Nobody in such conditions would sleep with closed windows.” He turned to Dr. McDonald: “Do you happen to know if Miss Gregor was afraid of open windows? I mean absurdly afraid?”

  “I don’t think so. I rather imagine that in summer she usually slept with her windows open.”

  “In that case she certainly meant to leave them open on the night of her death.”

  Dundas nodded.

  “I thought of that too,” he said. “No doubt you’re right; but you’ll have to supply an answer to the question why, in fact, the windows were shut. Why did she shut these windows on the hottest night of the year? If you can answer that question it seems to me that you’ll have gone a long way towards the truth.”

  “You know, I take it, that Mrs. Eoghan Gregor visited the room immediately after her aunt had gone to bed?” Dr. Hailey asked.

  “Yes, I know that. She told me herself. She said that Miss Gregor locked the door in her face.”

  “Isn’t it probable that Miss Gregor shut the windows at the same time?”

  “Why should she?”

  “Perhaps for the same reason that she locked the door.”

  “Can you name that reason?” Dundas raised his head sharply as he spoke.

  “Mrs. Eoghan Gregor thinks that her aunt was afraid of her.”

  “What, afraid she would climb in by the window?”

  “Panic never reasons, you know. It acts in advance of reason, according to instinct. Instinct’s only concern is to erect a barrier against the cause of the panic. A man who was in Russia during the Leninist Terror told me that when he escaped and returned to London he woke up one night and barricaded the door of his bedroom with every bit of furniture in the room. That was in his own home, among his own people.”

  Dundas looked troubled.

  “Do you think,” he asked, “that Miss Gregor had been living in expectation of an attack on her life?”

  “Yes, I do.” Dr. Hailey took a pinch of snuff. “Panic,” he stated, “consists of two separate elements, namely, an immediate fear and a remote dread. It’s not always conscience which makes cowards of us; sometimes it’s memory. Having dreaded some contingency for years, we lose our heads completely when it seems to be at hand.”

  “But how can this woman have dreaded assassination for years?”

  “She had been wounded, remember, years before.”

  The detective shook his head.

  “Time blots out such memories.”

  “You’re quite wrong. Time exaggerates them. One of the leaders of the French Revolution, who had known and feared Robespierre, lived till ninety years of age. On his death-bed, sixty years after the Revolution, he lay imploring his great-granddaughter not to let Robespierre enter his bedroom.”

  A knock on the door interrupted them. In answer to Dundas’s invitation to come in Eoghan Gregor entered the room.

  Chapter XI

  Family Magic

  Eoghan was pale and looked anxious. He addressed himself to Dr. McDonald.

  “Will you please come to Hamish,” he asked. “He’s had another slight fit, I think.”

  He stood in the doorway, apparently unaware of the others in the room. Dr. McDonald jumped up and hurried away.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Dundas remarked, in the tones of a man who resents any deflection of interest from his own concerns. He added: “A fit’s the same as a convulsion, isn’t it?”

  “Of the same nature.”

  “The child’s evidently subject to them. McDonald told me it had one a few days before Miss Gregor’s death. He doesn’t seem to think they’re very serious?”

  “No, not as a rule.”

  “Lots of children get them, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Hailey found himself listening and recognized that, strong as was his interest in detective work, his interest in the practice of medicine was much stronger. He wished that Eoghan Gregor had invited him to accompany McDonald and felt a sudden, sharp disinclination to continue the work which had brought him to the house. It was with a sense of lively annoyance that he heard Dundas ask further if fi
ts were a sign of nervous weakness.

  “I have an idea that both Duchlan and his son are very highly strung,” the detective suggested in those hushed tones which laymen always adopt when speaking to doctors about serious disease. “I don’t mind confessing that I’ve been working along these lines. Duchlan, as you’ve probably heard, is a good laird, though a bit queer. His sister, Miss Gregor, seems to have had notions—what they call hereabouts Highland second-sight. That’s the first generation. Eoghan Gregor’s the second generation and he’s a gambler with the temperament of a gambler. Then there’s the boy, the third generation.”

  He paused expectantly. The doctor was in the act of taking a pinch of snuff and completed that operation.

  “Fits in children,” he stated coldly, “are usually caused by indigestion.”

  “Is that so?” Dundas was abashed.

  “Yes. Probably the child has been eating berries or green apples.”

  “McDonald said he was afraid of brain fever.”

  Dr. Hailey did not reply. Listening, he fancied he heard a child’s crying, but could not be sure. He thought that, but for the fact that this mystery so greatly challenged his curiosity, he would have abandoned the attempt to solve it. The picture of Oonagh Gregor, bending anxiously over her child, a picture that came and remained stubbornly in his mind, did not invite to revelations which might possibly add new sorrows to her lot. For an instant the futility of criminal investigations assailed her mind. What did it matter who had killed Miss Gregor, seeing that Miss Gregor was dead and beyond help? Then he recognized the source of that idea in his feelings towards Dundas. The hound is always so much less lovable, so much less interesting, than its quarry.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “that I can go further to-night. I like to sleep on my ideas.”

  He rose as he spoke; but the expression in Dundas’s eyes made him hesitate. The detective, as he suddenly realized, was in great distress.

  “The truth is, doctor, that if I can’t reach some sort of conclusion within the next day or two, I’ll be recalled,” Dundas said. “And up till now I’ve been going ahead from case to case. I’ll never get another chance if somebody else succeeds where I’ve failed. I’m only speaking for myself, of course, but from that point of view there isn’t a moment to be lost. I know, because I had a letter to-day from headquarters.”