Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

‘So far,’ I said, ‘I have interviewed only a certain Mr Bell, our friend Mr Gylby – from whom I have had a very full narrative both orally and in writing – and the Hardcastles. Gylby’s character-sketch of Hardcastle seems to me penetrating.’

‘Noel,’ said Miss Guthrie briskly, ‘is quite an able youth.’

‘No doubt. He has also given something of a character-sketch – writing, you will understand, to a most confidential correspondent – of yourself.’

Perhaps a shade blankly, Miss Guthrie said: ‘Oh!’

‘He has recorded the opinion that you are not romantically disposed.’

‘I call that a mite unkind of Noel. All nice girls are romantic.’

I smiled. ‘But some perhaps conceal it.’

Sybil Guthrie lit a cigarette. ‘Mr Wedderburn,’ she said, ‘is this the right way about our business?’

‘I conceive it,’ I replied gravely, ‘to be a suitable approach.’

‘Very well. And I am a romantic girl and Noel was wrong. Will you tell me just why?’

‘Consider the manner of your coming to Erchany, Miss Guthrie. Mr Gylby, who was involved with your plan at the very closest quarters, is chiefly impressed by its ingenuity and efficiency. But to one like myself, at some distance from the affair, it is its aspect as a romantic prank that is most evident. You had eminent medical testimony, I gather, that Mr Guthrie was in no sense certifiably insane, and your own covert visit to him could be of no practical utility. But you liked the excitement – the romance and excitement – of besieging the castle, of carrying it not by storm but by a ruse. You even sent a slightly flamboyant telegram to your American lawyer in London. What were you fundamentally engaged in? Family business? Not a bit of it. You were simply after adventure – and adventure seasoned with at least an appreciable spice of danger, for Mr Guthrie was a very eccentric man. Noel Gylby has been so struck by what I may term your executive ability that he has quite missed what must be called the romanticism of the underlying motive.’

Miss Guthrie manipulated a delicate veil of cigarette smoke between us. ‘And then, Mr Wedderburn, what?’

‘I am wondering whether this same impulse has not made you manipulate a little what you witnessed in the tower.’

‘You mean that Ranald Guthrie didn’t commit suicide at all?’

‘On the contrary, I am quite sure he committed suicide. Believe me that if I thought the account you gave to Mr Gylby a fundamental perversion I could not possibly consent to act for you. And now, Miss Guthrie, we had better hold the rest of our consultation on the site of the incidents involved.’

‘You mean the tower? Must we? I hate the place now.’

‘Nevertheless I think that if you will be so good, and if the police will permit us, it will be a useful move.’

My friend Inspector Speight proved good enough simply to hand me the keys of the staircase and the dead man’s study; I rejoined Miss Guthrie and together we made the laborious ascent of the tower. Once entered, I looked about me with the liveliest curiosity. Flush with the door by which we stood, and but a few feet away, was what must be the door to the little bedroom. Half-way along the left-hand wall was the French window to the battlements. In the middle of the room was a square table serving as a desk. And everywhere were books.

I was struck by the agelessness of the place: not a thing but might have held its place where it stood for generations. The late Mr Guthrie, it was to be concluded, had been of more than conservative temperament – in addition to which, of course, he had spent no penny that he could help. Half idly, I cast round for some sign of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, and found it abruptly in the form of a hand telephone on the desk. I glanced at Miss Guthrie in perplexity. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘Erchany isn’t on the telephone!’

‘Of course not, Mr Wedderburn; we weren’t as dumb as that. The machine here must be some sort of house-telephone to the offices. I haven’t seen another in the castle.’

‘An interesting innovation of the penurious laird’s. The police, I suppose, have been most efficiently over these rooms; nevertheless I suggest that before further talk we make a little inspection of our own. Let us begin with the rifled bureau.’

The piece of furniture to which my client led me would have delighted a connoisseur, but it struck me as a most improperly fragile strong-box. Its single drawer had been broken open – a single powerful wrench would have sufficed – and in the bottom there still lay the few odd coins that had been noticed by Gylby. I stared at them, I suppose, in a sort of absent perplexity; Miss Guthrie seemed to follow my thought. ‘I reckon,’ she said, ‘the tower itself is a sufficient strong-room.’

‘Perhaps so. Nevertheless it was a deliberate establishing of temptation. Do you think Hardcastle, for instance, would be so faithful a retainer as to resist it?’

Miss Guthrie wrinkled her forehead. ‘It is rather perplexing.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Mr Wedderburn!’ The sincerity of my client’s astonishment was a pleasure to mark.

I gave a chuckle which oddly reminded me that I was Aeneas’ uncle. ‘No perplexity, my dear lady, was intended: and – what is much more – none exists. Though I am bound to say you have done your best.’

‘Mr Wedderburn, you are making quite unprofessional fun of me.’

‘Then let us be grave again and pursue our inspection. Among other things, I should much like to find the poems of William Dunbar.’

I fear I was excelling in a rather childish species of mystification. I turned to the bookshelves without more ado and began very seriously to search for the publications of the Scottish Text Society. Guthrie’s books were most methodically arranged and I came upon them without difficulty. Taking down the three volumes of Dunbar, I found myself quite smothered in dust.

‘Our friend the poetical laird,’ I said, ‘knew his favourites. He had no need to refresh his memory on the poem he seems to have been so fond of.’ And I turned to the Lament for the Makaris .

‘He takis the knychtis in the feild,

Anarmit under helme et scheild;

Wictour he is at all melle;

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

‘He takis the campion in the stour,

The capitane closit in the tour,

The lady in bour full of bewte;

Timor Mortis conturbat me…

‘Well, Death has certainly taken the captain from his tower.’ I laid down the volume. ‘And there seems to be only one interpretation, does there not? But if Guthrie has not been reading Dunbar recently, let us see what he has been reading.’ And I moved over to a pile of books, still in their dust-covers, on the desk. Ewan Bell had omitted to tell me, at our interview a few hours earlier, of Guthrie’s sudden interest in medical studies as reported by Miss Mathers, and I was therefore surprised as well as puzzled by the pile of medical literature which I found confronting me. Letheby Tidy’s Synopsis of Medicine . Osler’s Principles and Practice of Medicine . Muir’s Text-book of Pathology – I turned them over one after another in some perplexity. ‘Now where,’ I said, ‘does the science of medicine come into the picture?’

Miss Guthrie picked up Dunbar. ‘Well, it comes for that matter into the poem.’ And she read:

‘In medicyne the most practicianis,

Lechis, surrigianis, et phisicianis,

Thame self fra ded may not supple;

Timor Mortis conturbat me.’

‘That is very interesting. And if I may make the remark, Miss Guthrie, you have considerable facility in Middle Scots. You studied it at college?’

‘Why yes, I did.’