Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

Wedderburn chuckled. ‘Including Doctor.’

‘In Ranald’s miserliness, then, lay the grand impediment to his plan. But does it not also point to a motive, perhaps the grand motive? His ruling passion was miserliness; was living, little Isa Murdoch told me, on other people’s threepenny bits found in the pockets of scarecrows. Which was just what he was planning to do. At last he was going to live not at his own but at other people’s expense – on Flinders’ pension.’

Sybil Guthrie foraged for biscuit crumbs in her lap, licked a buttery finger. ‘Mr Appleby, I can stand no more of this. I want action. Where is Ranald Guthrie now? For instance, is he likely to be lurking with a gun round that corner?’

‘I think not. A couple of nights ago he was in Kinkeig – we must discover why – and was observed–’

Wedderburn threw up despairing hands. ‘The ghost!’

‘Undoubtedly the ghost. And as to where Ranald is now, we can guess. He had to pick up the thread of Flinders’ life as quickly as possible. And the circumstances have been perfectly designed to facilitate his doing so – the beautiful economy of the jigsaw again! Flinders had come quietly to Scotland and was staying at a big hotel in Dunwinnie, a place full to overflowing with curlers and winter-sporters generally. If Dr Flinders went on a nocturnal expedition and came back with his hair gone slightly greyer or a wrinkle gone astray nobody was in the least likely to notice. There might be unknown elements which would make the whole thing a gamble, of course. But, that point at the hotel passed, Ranald was really in a tolerably strong position. He was Dr Flinders en route for California, with Dr Flinders’ vital papers in his possession. No doubt there would be a second critical point when he took over Dr Flinders’ financial affairs, but a little forgery would more likely than not see him through. And there is no reason to suppose that up to the moment he is at all alarmed. Provided our discoveries are kept dark he will be found without difficulty.’

There was a little silence, broken this time by Wedderburn taking a composed munch at a biscuit. He finished his mouthful and said: ‘And our next move?’

‘Is to listen to Miss Guthrie. I think there was a point at which she almost upset all Ranald’s plans.’

2

Sybil Guthrie began by turning to Wedderburn. ‘I’m afraid I’m chiefly worried at thinking how dense you must have thought me. When you said Lindsay had nothing to fear and that I had only to tell the truth you must have thought it strange that I didn’t in the least see what was in your mind – that I could only say I found it terribly hard to believe you. But you see your case – the case that Guthrie had killed himself to incriminate Lindsay – could never occur to me for the simple reason that it was ruled out by what I knew. On the parapet walk I had seen a man sent hurtling to his death. When you proved your case before the sheriff this afternoon I knew that my continued fibbing – my second line of downright lies – had enabled you to prove what wasn’t true. It was rather a creepy feeling. The evidence of the bogus telephone, of the bureau I knew Lindsay couldn’t have rifled, was conclusive. That is to say, Guthrie’s plot against Lindsay was conclusive. And yet I knew Ranald hadn’t committed suicide. I had seen the man I thought was Ranald killed . And I still believed Lindsay had killed him. Of course my conscience was now clearer still. For I had to believe that Lindsay, in really losing control of himself and killing Guthrie, had merely done what Guthrie was abominably plotting to suggest he had done. That was the only way I could make sense of your case and my knowledge. And though my private morality says a Neil Lindsay oughtn’t to be hanged for killing a degenerate nuisance like Ranald Guthrie under the outrageous provocation I had seen and sensed in those last moments in the tower – well, it was creepy, all the same. I wondered whether perhaps Lindsay hadn’t spotted Guthrie’s plot and killed him in the anger of discovering it. And whether that wouldn’t have been almost justifiable suicide. And whether perhaps Lindsay oughtn’t to have told the truth – what I thought was the truth – and faced it.’ Sybil Guthrie hesitated, seemed to cast about for further words. ‘I mean a court of law tremendously impresses one with the abstract importance of getting the whole truth into the light. I think I was rather shy of walking up to Lindsay and shaking hands with him at the end. I believed we were both less than honest.’

I don’t know if I have mentioned that Sybil Guthrie had great good looks. Noel Gylby said heartily: ‘Well, all’s well that ends well!’

I said – as the best means I could hit on for dissociating myself from this light-hearted point of view: ‘Miss Guthrie, previous to these improved perceptions of yours before the sheriff – you had no doubts or qualms?’

‘Mr Appleby, no. I’m not like you sworn to certain accepted canons of justice. I had only one qualm.’

Gylby made a gesture as if remembering something. ‘The bureau.’

‘Yes. For a moment the rifled bureau staggered me. If it were possible that Lindsay had touched the gold he was – whatever provocation he had suffered – outside my protection. But then I realized my own certainty that he had never been near it. I think I said or hinted to Noel that the bureau merely added to the puzzle – to the mystery of what had happened. It was irrelevant to my moral problem.’

Wedderburn leant forward and patted his client on the hand. ‘My dear, I am afraid you will one day have the practical problem of explaining your moral problem to a judge of the Supreme Court. At Ranald Guthrie’s trial.’

Sybil’s chin tilted. ‘If I can see cousin Ranald in the dock I won’t much worry about the figure I cut.’

Quite illogical, I thought – for why protect a nervously excitable young man like Lindsay only to pursue a nervously degenerated man like old Guthrie? Was not Guthrie just the sort of hospital case that Lindsay, granted a certain pressure at one critical point in life or another, might have become? I turned away from this – the riddle that modern neurology presents to the framers of penal law – to contemplate the more concrete problem of Miss Guthrie. As my colleague Speight had decided, a nice girl. Though Speight, for that matter, might now be inclined a little to modify his verdict. It was in downright echo of Wedderburn’s fatherly tones that I said: ‘And now we had better have in detail just what you did see.’

‘It won’t take long. I saw just what I’ve said I saw: the interview, Guthrie turning on Lindsay at the end and lashing him horribly, Lindsay going out by the staircase door and Guthrie by the bedroom door – the two doors that Mr Wedderburn discovered I just couldn’t command. It’s after that, and by way of omission, that the lying begins.’

Gylby said briskly: ‘I’ve found a bit of chocolate.’ And handed it to Miss Guthrie.

Miss Guthrie took a bite. ‘–that the lying begins. I stood peering into the empty study for I suppose about twenty seconds, wondering if I could dash through and make my get away. And then I heard something. There was still, as you know, a terrific wind up there: what I heard was a cry or shout – and it must have been pretty loud to reach me at all from round a corner of the parapet walk. For that was where it came from – from that side of the parapet walk upon which I now know the little bedroom opens.

‘I was all het up and ready for a bit of guess-work. Watching that sudden verbal attack of Guthrie’s on Lindsay I had felt for a moment, as you know, quite murderous; and my thought was that the two men were together again; that they had somehow got out on the battlements and were quarrelling there. The place was fearfully dangerous and I suddenly felt it was all a stupidity I wasn’t going to stand for. Castle Erchany craziness: I’d had enough of it. So I groped my way along the parapet walk to tell them to drop it.’