He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket as he spoke and unfolded it. He read:
“It’s obvious that somebody entered Miss Gregor’s bedroom, seeing that she didn’t kill herself. Your report suggests that you’re losing sight of this central fact in order to run after less important matters. Success can only be won by concentration. Ask yourself how the bedroom was entered; when you’ve found an answer to that question you’ll have little difficulty, probably, in answering the further question: Who entered it?”
“That is exactly the method I have always found to be useless in difficult cases,” Dr. Hailey said with warmth.
“But you see what the letter means: they’re growing restive. The papers are shouting for a solution and they’ve got nothing to offer.”
Dr. Hailey sat down again and leaned forward.
“My method is always to proceed from the people to the crime rather than from the crime to the people. And the person I take most interest in, as a rule, certainly in the present case, is the murdered man or woman. When you know everything there is to be known about a person who has been murdered, you know the identity of the murderer.”
Dundas shook his head: “I feel that I do know the identity of the murderer. But that knowledge hasn’t helped me.”
The doctor rubbed his brow as a tired man tries to banish the seductions of sleep.
“Did you notice,” he asked, “that Miss Gregor’s room was like an old curiosity shop?”
“It seemed to be pretty full of stuff. Those samplers on the wall…”
“Exactly. It was full of ornaments that most people would have preferred to get rid of. And every one of those ornaments bore some relation to Miss Gregor herself. Are you interested at all in folk lore?”
Dundas shook his head.
“I’m afraid not.”
“I am. I’ve studied it for years. One of the oldest and strongest beliefs among primitive peoples is that the virtue of a man or woman—his or her vital essence so to speak—is communicated in a subtle way to material things. For example, the sword a soldier has carried comes to possess something of his personality. We all make some use of the idea, I admit; but most of us stop short in that use at the point where the material thing serves as a symbol of the spiritual. A modern mother keeps and treasures her dead son’s sword; she does not suppose that the sword contains or holds part of her son’s personality. But there are still people, probably there always will be people, who do not stop short at that point. Things they or their relations have made or used acquire sacredness in their eyes so that they can’t endure the idea of parting with them. The material becomes transmuted by a process of magic into something other than it appears to be. Miss Gregor, clearly, attached such importance to her own handiwork and to the possessions of her ancestors, that she would not willingly allow any of them to be taken out of her sight. Unless I’m very much mistaken that was the dominant note of her character.”
He paused. The detective looked mystified though he tried to follow the reasoning to its conclusion.
“Well?” he asked.
“Her character was rooted in the past. It embraced the past, was nourished with it, as with food. But it reached out, also, to the future; because the future is the heir of all things. Her brother Duchlan was of her way of thinking. But could she feel sure that the next generation would hold by the tradition? What was to become of the precious and sacred possessions after her death? That thought, believe me, haunts the minds of men and women who have abandoned themselves to family magic. Duchlan’s son, Eoghan, is the next generation. What were Miss Gregor’s relations to her nephew?”
“She acted as his mother.”
“Yes. So that another question arises: what were her relations to his mother? Duchlan’s wife, don’t forget, was Irish. That is to say she stood outside of the Highland tradition. If she had lived, and brought her son up herself, would he have inherited the authentic doctrine of the family? In other words, what kind of woman was Duchlan’s wife? How did she fare in this place? What relations existed between her and her sister-in-law? I shall certainly try to obtain answers to all these questions.”
“You won’t obtain them. The old man is determined not to speak about his family. I told you that he professes to know nothing about the scar on his sister’s chest. And his servants are as uncommunicative as he is.”
“My dear sir, a laird is a laird. There are always people who know what is going on in big houses.”
Dundas shrugged his shoulders.
“I haven’t found any in Ardmore and I’ve spared no pains to find them.”
Dr. Hailey took a note-book from his pocket and unscrewed the cap of his fountain-pen. He wrote for a few minutes and then explained that he had found that, if he kept a record of his thoughts about a case as these occurred to him, knowledge of the case seemed to grow in his mind.
“The act of writing impresses my brain in some curious way. When I write, things assume a new and different proportion.”
He laid his pen down beside the champagne glasses and leaned back.
“Detective work is like looking at a puzzle. The solution is there before one’s eyes, only one can’t see it. And one can’t see it because some detail, more aggressive than the others, leads one’s eyes away from the essential detail. I have often thought that a painter could make a picture in which one particular face or one particular object would be invisible to the spectator until he had attained a certain degree of concentration or detachment. This room of Miss Gregor’s, for example, seems to us to be a closed box into which nobody can have entered and from which nobody can have emerged. The consequence of that idea is that we cannot conceive how the poor lady was murdered. Yet, believe me, the method of her murder is there, written plainly in the details we have both observed. When I write, I attain a new point of view that is not attainable when I speak. For example…” He leaned forward again and extended his note-book. “I’ve written here that you found Duchlan and his household exceedingly reticent about past events. When you told me that I merely wondered why it should be so. Now I can see that, in all their minds, a connection must exist between the present and the past. It follows, doesn’t it, that the scar on the dead woman’s chest is the clue to a great family upheaval, the effects of which are still being acutely felt, so acutely, indeed, that even murder is accepted as a possible or even probable outcome.”
“That’s possible, certainly.”
“I’m prepared to go farther and say that it must be so.”
Dundas plucked at his shirt with uneasy hands.
“It’s hard to believe,” he objected, “that anybody has been waiting for twenty years to murder that poor old woman, or that a man like Duchlan has sat with his hands folded during that time in face of such a danger.”
“That isn’t what I mean. The beginning of murder, like the beginning of any other human enterprise, lies deep down in somebody’s mind—not necessarily in the mind of the person who actually kills…”
“What?”
“We know very little of Miss Gregor’s character, but there’s no doubt that she was a self-centred woman with a highly developed faculty of domination. People, and especially women, of that type arouse strong opposition. That takes various forms. Weak natures tend to flatter and be subservient; stronger natures are exasperated; still stronger natures resist actively. But though these types of behaviour differ, they have the same first cause, namely, dislike. The subservient flatterer is an enemy at heart and understands perfectly the feelings of the violent opponent. In other words, everybody in this house hated Miss Gregor.”
“My dear sir!”
“I know, you’re thinking of Duchlan and Eoghan. I believe that both of them hated her.”
“Why?”
“Because she was hateful.”
Dundas shook his head.
“You’ll get no
support for that idea in Ardmore.”
“Possibly not. The point I was trying to make is that murder has been on the cards for years, so to speak. You get the idea exactly in the popular phrase, ‘It’s a wonder nobody has murdered him!’ which means: ‘I feel inclined to murder him myself.’ That inclination is the link between the old wound and the new, and the reason why nobody will talk. It’s a subject that doesn’t bear talking about.”
The detective shrugged his shoulders. He raised his hand to his mouth and yawned. Speculations of this kind struck him, evidently, as sheer waste of time. He repeated that he had cross-examined every member of the household about past events.
“Angus and Christina were my chief hope,” he complained, “but they seem to think it a deadly sin even to suggest that Duchlan’s sister may have possessed an enemy. I simply couldn’t get a word out of either of them.”
“What do you make of them?”
Dundas shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose,” he said with a bitter smile, “that they belong to a superior order of beings who mustn’t be judged by ordinary standards. I’m a Lowland Scot and we all think the same about these Highlanders. They struck me as dull, prejudiced people, without two ideas to rub together. Angus talks about Duchlan as if he was a god. As for Christina, her mind doesn’t seem to have grown since its earliest infancy.”
He passed his hand over his corn-coloured head. His eyes expressed irritation and perplexity, the immemorial trouble of the Saxon when faced by the Celt. Dr. Hailey thought that a less happy choice of a man to deal with this case could scarcely have been imagined.
“Did they deny all knowledge of the early wound?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“That only means, probably, that they had no direct knowledge of it.”
“Goodness knows what it means.”
“I think it should be possible to persuade them to refresh their memories.”
Dr. Hailey turned sharply as he spoke. Dr. McDonald had entered the room and was standing behind him. He rose to his feet.
“I’d like you to come and see this boy,” McDonald said. “It’s one of those puzzling cases that one finds it difficult to name.” He hesitated and then added: “It may be only a passing indigestion. On the other hand it may be brain. I’ve acted so far on the assumption that it’s brain.”
Dr. Hailey promised Dundas that he would come back in the morning. He took his hat and followed McDonald to the door. He shut the door. When they reached the foot of the stairs leading to the nursery, he remembered that he had left his fountain-pen behind him and told his companion.
“I’ll go back for it,” McDonald said.
McDonald ran back along the lighted corridor. Next moment Dr. Hailey heard his own name called in accents which proclaimed distress and horror. He strode to Dundas’s room.
The detective was lying huddled on the floor beside the bed. There was an ominous stain on his corn-coloured hair.
Chapter XII
The Second Murder
Dr. McDonald was on his knees beside the man, trying apparently to feel his pulse. He raised frightened eyes as his colleague came into the room.
“He’s dead!”
“What?”
“He’s dead!”
Dr. Hailey glanced round the room and, seeing nothing, looked again as though aware of a presence that defied human senses. Then he touched the stain on the yellow head. He started back.
“His skull’s broken,” he cried, “broken like an eggshell. Was the door of the room shut?”
“Yes.”
“We met nobody in the corridor. There’s no other door on the corridor. There’s nowhere anybody could hide.”
Dr. Hailey satisfied himself that Dundas was dead. Then he walked to the opened window. The night was very still. He listened, but could hear nothing except the gurgle of the burn below the window and the less sophisticated mirth of small waves on the shingle. The herring-boats were still lying at anchor near the shore. He looked down at the smooth wall which fell even farther here than under Miss Gregor’s window, because of the sharp fall of the ground towards the burn. Nobody had come this way.
McDonald had risen and was standing gazing at the detective’s body. His cheeks were white, his eyes rather staring. Every now and then he moistened his dry lips.
“There’s no sign of a struggle,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Dr. Hailey nodded. The champagne glasses stood where they had been placed and, though the bottle had descended somewhat into its pail, it had not been disturbed.
“You heard no cry?”
“I heard nothing.”
“How long do you suppose we were absent from the room?”
“Half a minute. Not more.”
“These oil lamps throw long and deep shadows, you know. And we weren’t looking for possible assassins…”
As he spoke Dr. Hailey stepped out into the corridor. He lit his electric lamp and directed the beam to right and left. The corridor ended at a window which looked out in the same direction as the windows of Dundas’s bedroom, and there was a space of about a yard between this window and the bedroom door—a space evidently big enough to serve as a hiding-place. He extinguished his lamp. The rays of the paraffin lamp near the stairhead, feeble as they were, effectively illuminated the space under the window. He called Dr. McDonald.
“You would have seen anybody there,” he said.
“Of course. Nobody could hide there.”
“He must have hidden somewhere!”
The doctor’s tones were peremptory, like the tones of a schoolmaster cross-examining a shifty pupil.
“Of course. We passed nobody.”
“Nobody.”
Their eyes met. Each read the growing horror in the other’s eyes. They glanced to right and left.
“It’s only a question of making a careful enough search,” McDonald said. “We’ve overlooked something of course. Our nerves…”
He broke off. He gazed about him. His mouth opened but no words came to his lips. He walked to the window, looked out, and came back again to his companion.
“Shall I shut the door?” he asked.
“There’s nobody here.”
“There must be. If we leave the door open he may get away.”
McDonald shut the door. He began to prowl round the room like a caged animal. His eyes, Dr. Hailey thought, held the expression which is characteristic of caged animals. He was waiting, expecting. But he was also without hope. He looked into the wardrobe and under the bed and again into the wardrobe. After that he locked the wardrobe door.
“I feel that we aren’t alone,” he declared in challenging tones.
He kept fidgeting with his necktie. Dr. Hailey shook his head.
“I’m afraid it’s useless,” he declared.
“Don’t you feel that there’s somebody beside us?”
“No.”
McDonald pressed his hand to his brow.
“It must be my nerves. One doesn’t see, though…It’s such a long fall to the ground, and I heard nothing.”
He continued to make rambling, disjointed comments. His face had lost its accustomed expression of cheerfulness; it revealed the deep agitation which fear and horror were arousing in his mind. “I think,” he cried suddenly, “that we ought to go down below and make sure that no ladder or rope was employed.”
“Very well.”
Dr. Hailey walked back to the dead man and examined his injury again. Then he accompanied his colleague. They found Duchlan and his son waiting for them at the head of the stairs.
“It’s good of you to come, Dr. Hailey,” Eoghan Gregor said. He noticed the pallor of Dr. McDonald’s face and stiffened. “Is anything wrong?”
“Dundas has just been murdered.”
Both father
and son recoiled.
“What?”
“His skull has been broken…” McDonald faltered over this medical detail and then added: “Hailey and I are going down to…to investigate the ground under the window.”
Duchlan seemed to wish to ask some further questions but desisted. He stood aside to allow the doctors to pass. He followed them downstairs and was followed in turn by Eoghan. Dr. Hailey asked them if they possessed an electric lamp and was told that they did not.
Eoghan led the way to the place immediately under Dundas’s window. Dr. Hailey lit his torch and swept the bank with the strong beam. The beam showed him nothing. He turned it to light the front of the house and saw that there was a french-window immediately under Dundas’s bedroom.
“What room is that?” he asked Duchlan.
“The writing-room.”
“You heard nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Duchlan put his hand on the doctor’s arm.
“I thought I saw something gleam out there just now, to the left of the boats,” he said.
“Really?”
The old man stood gazing seawards for a few minutes and then turned again.
“Moonlight is always deceptive,” he declared, “and never more so than when it shines on water.”
“Yes.”
“It seems impossible that anybody can have reached that poor young man’s bedroom. Eoghan and I must have seen anybody who tried to descend the staircase.”
The doctor nodded. “Nobody left the room,” he declared in positive tones.
“Nor entered it.”
“No.”
Duchlan drew a sharp breath.
“They say there are places in Loch Fyne,” he declared inconsequently, “where the sea has no bed. Bottomless deeps about which our local lore is prolific of uneasy tales.”
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