Murder of a Lady

by Anthony Wynne

  “I don’t think that a minute elapsed between our leaving him and his death.”

  Mr. McLeod’s big face grew pale. “You’re saying that Dundas was struck down, not that he was murdered,” he exclaimed in tones of awe.

  They had entered the study. The Procurator Fiscal sat down and bent his head. When he had remained in that posture of humility for a few minutes he stated that he had sent to Glasgow for help.

  “They’ll send their best, depend on it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Poor Dundas!” he moralized in unsteady tones. “This case was to have made his name. How little we know, Dr. Hailey, of the secret designs of Providence.” He paused and then added: “I have heard it said that there is a curse on this house.”

  A kind of paralysis seemed to have affected him, for he sank lower in his chair. He kept nodding his head and mumbling as if he was repeating chastening truths to himself and registering his acceptance of them. Dr. Hailey got the impression that he was greatly afraid lest his own life might be taken at any moment.

  “I spoke to Duchlan as I came in,” Mr. McLeod said. “He tells me he thought he saw some bright object on the water a few minutes after Dundas met his death.”

  “Yes.”

  “He told you that, too, did he?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Hailey’s tones were not encouraging.

  “It’s very strange if it’s true.” Again the worthy man wiped his face. “There’s queer stories about Loch Fyne as you may know. The fishermen tell very queer stories sometimes.”

  “So I believe.”

  Mr. McLeod roused himself.

  “Aye,” he exclaimed with warmth, “it’s easy to say you don’t believe in old wives’ tales. But these men are shrewd observers with highly developed and trained senses. Who knows but what they may be able to see and hear and feel more than you or I could see or hear or feel? All the time they are watching the face of the water, which is the mirror of the heavens.”

  The doctor assented. Mr. McLeod, he observed, was divided, in his fear, between his natural credulousness and his acquired ideas. These ideas were based on gloomy reflections about the trivial character and brief duration of human life derived from the minor Hebrew prophets. No wonder the man found whisky essential to his well-being!

  He left him and went up to Dundas’s bedroom. The body had not been moved. A shaft of sunlight touched the yellow hair. It was easy to discount the panic of McLeod and the others, but not so easy to escape from the influences which had wrought that panic. He picked up one of the notebooks which the detective had filled with details of his investigation. It made melancholy reading. The pages were crowded with negative observations; everything had been eliminated, door, windows, walls, ceiling, floor. The last note was not without pathos: “It will be necessary to begin again.”

  He put the book back in its place and polished his eyeglass. He held the glass above the dead man’s head where the skull was fractured and marvelled again at the strange, savage violence of the blow. The bedroom, assuredly, did not contain any weapon capable of inflicting this grievous injury. He had already examined such pieces of the movable furniture as might have been made use of. The murderer had carried his own weapon, or rather two weapons; an axe, perhaps, in the case of Miss Gregor, a bludgeon or a knuckle-duster in this case. The first weapon, had it been employed in the second case, must have split Dundas’s skull from vault to base. Again he turned to the window and again surveyed the bank between the house and the burn. Autumn was dressing herself in her scarlets and saffrons; already the air held that magical quality of light which belongs only to diminishing days and which seems to be of the same texture as the colours it illuminates. He marked the fans of the chestnuts across the burn, pale gold and pale green. The small coin of birch leaves a-jingle in the wind, light as the sequins on a girl’s dress, the beeches and oaks, wine-stained from the winds’ Bacchanal, the rowans, flushed with their fruiting. A man might easily from this place throw a tell-tale weapon into that fervent tangle or into the burn even. But no, he had searched diligently and knew that no weapon lay hidden in any of these places. He turned back to the room. He bent forward and then strode quickly to the dead man’s side.

  The light had revealed a gleam of silver among the golden hair. He recognized another herring scale.

  Chapter XIV

  A Queer Omission

  The discovery of the herring scale on Dundas’s head sent Dr. Hailey down to Ardmore to McDonald. The doctor’s house stood on a spur of rock overlooking the harbour. As he ascended the path, which mounted in zigzags to the house, he had a view of the whole extent of this singular natural basin with its islands and bays. The bulk of the fishing-fleet lay at anchor, far up, opposite the town, but skiffs, in pairs, were dotted over the whole expanse of water. He marked the clean, dainty lines of these vessels in excellent accord with their short, raked masts. They looked like young gulls in their first grey plumage, lively, eager. A small coaster was fussing in from the loch. He lingered to watch it enter the narrow mouth of the harbour. As it passed, the fringes of seaweed round the islands were lifted and small waves broke on the shores. The smell of boats and seaweed and fish rose to his nostrils. Soft voices reached him across the still, hot air. He ascended higher and turned again. From this point the drying poles, on which a few herring-nets hung like corpses on a gallows, had a macabre appearance, as of some great ship in irretrievable wreck. But the colour of the nets made very comfortable contrast with the pine-wood on Garvel point, across the bay.

  The house was built of red sandstone and had a red roof which stood up sharply against the hill behind it. The windows looked out on the harbour, but their longest view was limited everywhere by rocks and heather, a patchwork of purple and green and grey, very bare and desolate, even in sunlight. He rang the bell and was invited to enter by a young woman whose high colour and dark, shining hair were in the tradition of Highland beauty. She showed him into a big room and only then announced that her master had not yet returned from his morning round.

  “But I’m expecting him back at any moment now, so perhaps you’ll be able to wait.”

  She went away immediately, without hearing his answer. He walked to the bookshelf which filled one side of the room and glanced at its contents. McDonald, it seemed, was a reader of catholic taste, for here were most of the classics of European literature, especially of French literature: Balzac, Flaubert, de Maupassant, Montaigne, Voltaire, Saint Beuve. He pulled out one or two of the volumes. They looked distinctly the worse of wear. There were no medical books on any of the shelves. The owner of the library, clearly, was a romantic, though he had tempered his enthusiasm with other fare. Dr. Hailey found it difficult to reconcile his knowledge of the man with the man’s books. The room was comfortable as men understand that word; it was supplied with big chairs and the apparatus of reading and smoking. A shot-gun, of rather old-fashioned type, whose barrels were shining with oil, stood in one corner. A vase on the mantelpiece was piled high with cartridges. The walls bore pictures of boats, all of them, evidently, the work of the same artist, all equally undistinguished. Dr. Hailey examined one of them. It was signed by McDonald himself.

  He sat down and took a pinch of snuff. The medical profession, he reflected, is full of men who wish, all their lives, that they had never entered it. Yet very few of these doctors succeed in making their escape because, though they possess the temperaments of artists, they lack the necessary power of expression or perhaps the necessary craftsmanship. A practice makes too many demands on time and strength to be bedfellow with any enthusiasm. Since McDonald painted pictures, the odds were that he wrote novels or poetry. It was unlikely that his accomplishment in writing was better than his accomplishment in painting. Why had he not married?

  A second pinch of snuff went to the answering of this last question, but before it had been answered McDonald himself strod
e into the room.

  “Annie told me that a very tall man was waiting for me,” he exclaimed. “I thought it must be you.” He shook hands. “Well, anything new?”

  “Not much— There was a herring scale on Dundas’s head.”

  “Good heavens! So the same weapon was used in both cases?”

  Dr. Hailey shook his head.

  “I don’t think that’s probable,” he said, “though of course the head of an axe might cause such an injury.”

  McDonald’s tone became undecided. He stood in the middle of the floor frowning heavily and tugging at his chin. At last he shook his head.

  “These fish scales are mysterious enough,” he declared, “but the real mystery, it seems to me, isn’t going to be solved by them or by any question of weapons. Until you can explain how these two bedrooms were entered and how escape from them took place you are necessarily working in the dark.”

  Dr. Hailey considered for a moment.

  “It’s obvious,” he said, “that Duchlan has made up his mind that the murders are due to supernatural agency.”

  “He was certain to do that in any case.”

  “Quite. And consequently the temptation, from the murderer’s point of view, to supply evidence of such supernatural agency must have been strong. That evidence would tend to paralyse his pursuers.”

  “I don’t follow. What evidence of supernatural agency has he supplied?”

  “The fish scales.”

  McDonald stared.

  “What, herring scales on Loch Fyne side! How can they be evidence of supernatural agency?”

  “Duchlan thought he saw something which gleamed in the moonlight floating away from the mouth of the burn after Dundas was killed.”

  The Ardmore doctor whistled.

  “So that’s it, is it?”

  “That?”

  “The swimmers. Every time anything which can’t be explained happens on Loch Fyne side, it’s the ‘swimmers’ who are to blame. They disturb the shoals of herring and so produce bad catches or they call the fish out of the nets at the moment when the catch seems to be secure. You can point out that such losses are due to carelessness till you’re black in the face. Nobody believes you. What can mere men do against such beings?”

  Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “Ardmore lives by the chances of the sea,” he said.

  “Most superstitions, as you know, are embodiments of bad luck. In agricultural districts the demons blight the crops and dry up the wells…”

  “Exactly.”

  “The point for us is that these fish scales may have been introduced deliberately into the wounds with the object of suggesting that no human hand was concerned in these murders. If so, we may be able to find our man by a process of elimination. The use of superstition as a cloak for crime is evidence of a fairly high order of intelligence.”

  “I see what you mean. The servants, for example, would not think of doing that.”

  Dr. Hailey nodded. He leaned back in his chair. “How long have you attended the Duchlan family?” he asked.

  “More than ten years.”

  “And yet you were unaware that Miss Gregor had been wounded?”

  “I was. I’ve never examined Miss Gregor’s chest.” McDonald strode to the window and back again. “She often suffered from colds and two years ago had a severe attack of bronchitis, but she would never allow me to listen to her breathing. Duchlan told me, before I saw her the first time, that she had a great horror, amounting to an obsession, of medical examinations and that I must do my best to treat her without causing her distress.”

  “So he knew about the scar? Dundas said that he denied all knowledge of it.”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it, that she had made the same excuses to her brother that she made to her doctors. Duchlan may have believed that she really was averse from any examination.”

  Dr. Hailey nodded.

  “That’s true. But you’ll admit that it’s strange she should have sustained a wound of such severity without allowing anybody in the house to find out that she had sustained it.” He wrinkled his brows. “I still think that, when she locked her door, she was the victim of panic. Is there a portrait of Duchlan’s wife at the castle?”

  “I’ve never seen one.”

  “I looked for one in all the public rooms and in some of the bedrooms. I didn’t find it. For a man who clings to his possessions so tenaciously, that’s a queer omission. Every other event of Duchlan’s life is celebrated in some fashion on his walls.”

  McDonald sat down and drew his wooden leg forward with both hands.

  “What are you driving at?” he asked.

  “I’m beginning to think that Duchlan’s wife was concerned in the wounding of Miss Gregor. That would explain the absence of her portrait and the wish to hide the scar. It might explain Miss Gregor’s panic at sight of Eoghan’s wife. Both father and son, remember, married Irish girls. Mrs. Eoghan’s sudden appearance in her bedroom may conceivably have recalled to the old woman’s mind a terrible crisis of her life.”

  “Miss Gregor, believe me, was a level-headed woman.”

  “No doubt. But shocks of that sort, as you know, leave indelible scars on the mind, so that every reminder of them induces a condition of nervous prostration.”

  “Very well,” McDonald moved his leg again and leaned forward: “What happened after she locked her bedroom door?”

  “I think she shut and bolted her windows. It’s only reasonable to suppose that the windows were open on account of the heat.”

  “And then?”

  “Then she was murdered.”

  The country doctor sighed. He repeated: “Then she was murdered,” adding in weary tones: “How? Why? By whom?”

  He raised his kindly grey eyes to look his colleague in the face. Dr. Hailey dismissed his questions with a short, impatient gesture.

  “Never mind that. Come back to Mrs. Eoghan. She told me that she went to her aunt’s room in a blue silk dressing-gown, because, having quarrelled with her aunt before dinner, she now wished to make up her quarrel. A similar order of events may have occurred in the case of Duchlan’s wife.”

  McDonald’s face had become troubled.

  “You don’t suggest, do you,” he demanded in tones of impatience, “that that fearful wound was inflicted by a girl?”

  “No.” Dr. Hailey shook his head. “You go too fast, my friend. Leave the room out of the picture for a moment, entirely out of the picture. Here’s a more interesting question: was the quarrel between Mrs. Eoghan and Miss Gregor of the same nature as the quarrel between Duchlan’s wife and Miss Gregor? The answer depends, obviously on Miss Gregor. There are women, plenty of women, who cannot live at peace with the wives of their men-folk, women who resent these wives as interlopers, women whose chief object it becomes to estrange their husbands from them, sometimes even to alienate their children. Was Miss Gregor one of these women?”

  A prolonged silence followed this challenge. McDonald’s uneasiness appeared to grow from moment to moment. He kept shifting in his chair and moving his wooden leg about in accord with the movements of his body. A deep flush had spread over his face.

  “She was one of those women,” he said at last.

  Chapter XV

  The Real Enemy

  McDonald rose and stood in front of the empty fireplace.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have reason to know that Mrs. Eoghan’s life at Duchlan was made impossible by Miss Gregor’s jealousy. Almost from the moment when Eoghan went away to Malta, his aunt began to torment and persecute his wife. The burden of her complaint was that little Hamish, the heir of Duchlan, was not being properly brought up.”

  The doctor paused and turned to find his pipe on the mantelpiece behind him. He put the pipe in his mouth and opened a jar of tobacco.

&nbs
p; “My information comes from Mrs. Eoghan herself,” he stated. “I suppose I can count myself one of the only two friends she possessed in this neighbourhood.”

  He extracted a handful of tobacco from the jar and began to fill his pipe, proceeding with this task in a manner the deliberation of which was belied by his embarrassment. Dr. Hailey saw that his hands were shaking.

  “The whole atmosphere at Duchlan, believe me, was charged with reproof and every day brought its heavy burden of correction. Miss Gregor inflicted her wounds in soft tones that soon grew unendurable. She never ordered; she pleaded. But her pleas were so many back-handers. She possessed the most amazing ingenuity in discovering the weak points of her antagonist and a sleepless persistence in turning them to her advantage. Things came to a head a month ago.”

  His pipe was full. He lit it carefully.

  “A month ago, little Hamish had a fit. I was sent for. I haven’t had as much experience of nervous ailments as you have had and I confess that I was frightened. I suppose my fear communicated itself to the child’s mother. At any rate she told me that she felt sure the trouble had its origin in the state of her own nerves and that she had made up her mind to leave Duchlan. ‘Eoghan’s work in Ayrshire is nearly finished,’ she said, ‘and I’ve told him that, if he won’t make a home for me after that, I’ll leave him.’ I could see that she was at the end of her resources. I tried to calm her; but she was past being talked round. When I came downstairs from the nursery Miss Gregor was waiting for me. ‘It’s his mother, poor child,’ she lamented. ‘My dear Oonagh means well, of course, but she’s had no experience. No experience.’”

  He dropped his pipe and stooped to pick it up.

  “I can hear her voice still,” he declared. “She shook her head slowly as she spoke and tears came into her eyes. ‘We’ve done everything that love can do, doctor,’ she told me. ‘But I’m afraid it’s too true that our efforts have been resented. Eoghan’s father is deeply distressed. I cannot tell you what I feel. As you know I’ve looked on Eoghan and loved him as my own child.’ Then the suggestion for which I was waiting was offered: ‘Couldn’t you use your authority to insist that dear Oonagh must have a complete rest. She has sisters and brothers who will be so glad to see her, and she needn’t feel a moment’s anxiety about dear Hamish. Christina and I will devote ourselves to him.’ What could I say? I told her that such plans must wait till the child was better.”