Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

‘Indeed?’

‘The fantastic rumour about the mutilating of the corpse! Could such an extraordinary story start up unbidden, or as the result of some mere misapprehension? For a little time I was dull enough to think so. Then I saw that it must have its source in malice – malice that was either stupid or calculating. I tested the theory that it might be calculating – and what did I find? That the rumour, if it were to be really damaging, must be true. And to that I knit the remarkable fact of Hardcastle’s curiosity about the body and the statement he made – without having had the opportunity to investigate – that Lindsay had “mischieved” Guthrie. That took me straight to the heart of the plot.’

‘A strange plot, Mr Wedderburn. I doubt if there is anything closely analogous on record. Men have killed themselves to incriminate others before this, but they were not men of what appears to have been Guthrie’s type. They may have had his melancholy verging on madness, but they have been lacking in his intellectual vigour.’

‘I am without your familiarity, Mr Appleby, with the archives of the criminal mind. But we must frame our psychologies to fit facts, and not vice versa.’

I reminded myself that that afternoon Wedderburn had annihilated his adversaries, and that nothing was to be gained by setting myself up as a cock-shy for his very efficient forensic method. I said: ‘Very true. And the fact of the abominable plot against Lindsay is unshakable.’

‘You know–’ It was Gylby who spoke, and he looked rather warily at Wedderburn before continuing. ‘You know, Christine said a queer thing. I hung about a bit at the manse and made helpful noises. And suddenly she said quite out of the blue: “I can’t believe it; my uncle had a finer mind than that.” And then she looked at me as if I must have an alternative explanation in my hat.’

Wedderburn peered severely at the sediment in the bottom of his glass. ‘I do not see it as a queer thing. Such a sentiment in the scoundrel’s niece and ward is a very proper and becoming one. But we are not concerned with family piety.’

‘I’m afraid, sir, she didn’t mean quite that. She wasn’t denying that Guthrie was capable of great wickedness. She meant that his mind was subtler – more ingenious – than the story shows.’

‘ More ingenious? Bless my soul!’

‘And she said: “He had a level head really; he would pit extremes only against extremes.”’

Sybil Guthrie crumbled bread, made a wry face over a mouthful of claret and broke in: ‘Will she brood over it? I suppose she will. Mr Appleby, how do people’s minds behave when they have been through a horrid thing like this?’

I avoided generalization. ‘I think, Miss Guthrie, she will brood as long as she feels she hasn’t got the truth.’

‘She has the truth! We all have.’

‘It is scattered among us. But I don’t know that we have pooled it all yet.’

Very deliberately, Wedderburn put down his glass and folded up his table napkin. ‘Mr Appleby, Gylby assures me that your opinion in matters of this sort has great weight. Will you be so good as to explain the statement you have just made?’

‘Miss Mathers herself has one piece of information which has not, I think, been pooled. Who was with her in the schoolroom, and who emerged from it and disappeared into the darkness, just before Gylby and Hardcastle went up the tower staircase?’

‘Dear me – an interesting point. She has no doubt told Stewart. I fear I rather took charge from him this afternoon; otherwise the explanation would no doubt have emerged.’

‘It is more than an interesting point. Here in Erchany on this isolated night is another man – and we are told nothing of him. Unless indeed it could have been the boy Tammas.’

Gylby shook his head at this. ‘Not Tammas; he wasn’t let into the house till long after. And not, of course, Gamley either.’

‘Very well. And the matter gains much greater significance from the fact that there was in all probability – and despite Miss Guthrie’s impression to the contrary – another visitor to the tower. Somebody must know who it was that opened the trapdoor on the battlements, passed through it, and bolted it on the lower side. Gylby’s record tells us that the snow provided the most conclusive evidence on that point. The door had been opened not long before. By whom? Why?’

They were silent for a moment and then Wedderburn said, with unexpected humour: ‘Mr Appleby, this is a slaughter of the innocents. And I fear they include both myself and your colleague Speight.’ He paused. ‘However clear the main features of the situation, there are undoubtedly factors that we have overlooked. And I will say that they call for investigation.’

‘I think they do – and that there is yet truth to come. Miss Guthrie, you agree?’

She eyed me thoughtfully before replying. ‘If you find real evidence of another person in the tower I agree there is yet truth to come. Mr Appleby, come to Erchany.’

Wedderburn rose. ‘Miss Guthrie and I intend to go up now. The dead man appears to have had no legal representative and in the circumstances we judge it proper, along with the young man Stewart, to search for what papers there may be. You will come along with us? But first, perhaps, we should go to the manse, where Miss Mathers is staying for the time being, and ask her to explain her nocturnal visitor.’

‘I will come up – though you will understand that I have no official standing. Anything we discover may have to go to Speight. As for Miss Mathers, I think it would be wise to wait until later. There is another question I am saving up for her.’

Wedderburn turned from helping Miss Guthrie with her coat. ‘And that is?’

‘Whether her uncle ever went in for winter sports.’

‘A most enigmatic inquiry.’

Noel Gylby looked up from stuffing his pockets providently with buttered biscuits. ‘You’ll find,’ he said, ‘that Appleby has questions like that for us all round. What’s mine?’

‘Just this. We’ve had the message of the Learned Rat. But what was the message of the Unfamiliar Owl?’

2

Stewart, we found, had been called urgently to Dunwinnie and had left with a promise to follow us presently to Erchany. During the drive through the darkness I got from Wedderburn most of that information embodied in his narrative that I did not already possess, and I believe my ideas were in tolerable order by the time we arrived at the castle. From fragmentary evidences of what had happened here on Christmas Eve Wedderburn had that afternoon built up a picture that was coherent and convincing. Only he had failed – in the image drawn so significantly from Ranald Guthrie’s jigsaws – to use all the pieces and his picture was therefore necessarily incomplete. Despite every appearance to the contrary, it was possible that the pieces yet to be fitted would confound or reverse the meaning of those outlines which were already clearly established – much as the figure, say, of an assassin, belatedly discovered in some shadowy corner, of a painting, will give sudden sinister significance to what may have appeared a merely sentimental or spectacular composition. The Erchany affair could scarcely become more sinister, but I was fairly sure that as more pieces were added the composition would deepen and complicate itself. What I could not tell was that the jigsaw metaphor was wholly inadequate; that we were confronted rather by a chemical mixture, complex and unstable, ready to take final and unexpected form only at the adding of the last ingredient of all. Perhaps it was because I had the jigsaw metaphor fatally in my head that in looking back on the Erchany mystery I have to remind myself of Ewan Bell’s words: there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance.