The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She was shaking her head; not in disapproval, but in sorrow, as at missed opportunities, potential unfulfilled.

  JAMIE RETURNED SHORTLY before seven that evening, bringing with him an overnight case. The glaziers had been that afternoon and the stained-glass panel in the inner hall door had now been replaced with a large sheet of plain glass. Isabel was in her study when he arrived and she asked him to wait for a few minutes in the drawing room while she finished off a letter she was drafting. She seemed to be in good spirits when she let him in, he thought, but when she came through, her expression was more sombre.

  “I had two calls from Minty,” she said. “Do you want to hear about them?”

  “Of course I do. I was thinking about it all day.”

  “Minty was really angry when Grace told her about last night. She said that she and Paul would go round immediately to have a word with Johnny Sanderson, which they did, apparently. And then she called back and said that I need not worry anymore about him, that he had been well and truly warned off. Apparently they have something else on him that they could threaten him with, and he backed down. So that’s it.”

  “And Mark Fraser? Was anything said about Mark’s death?”

  “No,” said Isabel. “Nothing. But if you ask me, I would say that there’s still a chance that Mark Fraser was pushed over the balcony by Johnny Sanderson, or by somebody acting on his behalf. But we shall never be able to prove it, and I assume that Johnny Sanderson knows it. So that’s the end of that. Everything has been tidied away. The financial community has tucked its dirty washing out of sight. A young man’s death has been tucked away too. And it’s business as usual, all round.”

  Jamie looked at the floor. “We’re not very brilliant investigators, are we?”

  Isabel smiled. “No,” she said. “We’re a couple of rather helpless amateurs. A bassoonist and a philosopher.” She paused. “But there is something to be cheerful about, I suppose, in the midst of all this moral failure.”

  Jamie was curious. “And what would that be?”

  Isabel rose to her feet. “I think we might just allow ourselves a glass of sherry on that one,” she said. “It would be indecent to open the champagne.” She moved over to the drinks cabinet and extracted two glasses.

  “What precisely are we celebrating?” asked Jamie.

  “Cat is no longer engaged,” said Isabel. “For a very brief period she was in grave danger of marriage to Toby. But she came round this afternoon and we had a good cry on each other’s shoulders. Toby is history, as you people so vividly put it.”

  Jamie knew that she was right, one should not celebrate the end of a relationship with champagne. But one could go out to dinner, which is what he proposed, and what she accepted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ISABEL DID NOT LIKE to leave things unfinished. She had engaged in the whole issue of Mark Fraser’s fall on the basis that she had become involved, whether she liked it or not. This moral involvement was almost over, except for one thing. She decided now to see Neil, and tell him the outcome of her enquiries. He was the one who had effectively asked her to act, and she felt that she should explain to him how matters had turned out. The knowledge that there was no connection between Mark’s apparent disquiet and the fall could help him, if he was feeling unhappy about his having done nothing himself.

  But there was something more that drew her to seek out Neil. Ever since her first meeting with him, on that awkward evening when she had seen him darting across the hall, she had felt puzzled by him. The circumstances of their meeting, of course, had not been easy; she had disturbed him in bed with Hen, and that was embarrassing, but it was more than that. At that first meeting, he had been suspicious of her and his answers to her questions had been unforthcoming. Of course, she was not entitled to expect a warm welcome—he could easily, and understandably, have resented anybody coming to ask about Mark—but it went beyond that.

  She decided to see him the following day. She tried to telephone him to arrange to go round to the flat, but there was no reply from the flat number and he was unavailable at his office. So she decided to risk an unannounced visit again.

  As she walked up the stairs she reflected on what had happened in the interval between her last visit and this. Only a few weeks had passed, but in that time it seemed that she had been put through a comprehensive and thoroughly efficient emotional wringer. Now here she was, back exactly where she had started. She rang the bell, and as last time, Hen let her in. This time, her welcome was warmer and she was immediately offered a glass of wine, which she accepted.

  “I’ve actually come to see Neil,” she said. “I wanted to talk to him again. I hope he won’t mind.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” said Hen. “He’s not back yet, but I don’t think he’ll be long.”

  Isabel found herself recalling the previous visit, when Hen had lied to her about Neil’s absence and she had seen him dash naked across the hallway. She wanted to smile, but did not.

  “I’m moving out,” said Hen, conversationally. “Flitting. I’ve found a job in London and I’m going down there. Challenges. Opportunities. You know.”

  “Of course,” said Isabel. “You must be very excited.”

  “I’ll miss this place, though,” said Hen. “And I’m sure I’ll come back to Scotland. People always do.”

  “I did,” said Isabel. “I was in Cambridge for some years, and America, and then I came back. Now I suppose I’m here for good.”

  “Well, give me a few years first,” said Hen. “Then we’ll see.”

  Isabel wondered about Neil. Would he stay, or was she going to take him with her? Somehow she thought that she would not. She asked.

  “Neil’s staying here,” said Hen. “He has his job.”

  “And the flat? He’ll keep it on?”

  “I think so.” Hen paused. “I think he’s a bit upset about it, actually, but he’ll get over things. Mark’s death was very hard for him. Hard for all of us. But Neil has taken it very badly.”

  “They were close?”

  Hen nodded. “Yes, they got on. Most of the time. I think I told you that before.”

  “Of course,” said Isabel. “Of course you did.”

  Hen reached for the wine bottle which she had placed on the table and from which she now topped up her glass. “You know,” she said, “I still find myself thinking about that evening. That evening when Mark fell. I can’t help it. It gets me at odd times of the day. I think of him sitting there, in his last hour or so, his last hour ever. I think of him sitting there listening to the McCunn. I know that music. My mother used to play it at home. I think of him sitting there and listening.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Isabel. “I can imagine how hard it must be for you.” The McCunn. Land of the Mountain and the Flood. Such a romantic piece. And then the thought occurred to her, and for a moment her heart stood still.

  “You knew what they played that night?” she asked. Her voice was small, and Hen looked at her in surprise.

  “Yes, I did. I forget what the rest was, but I noticed the McCunn.”

  “Noticed?”

  “On the programme,” said Hen, looking quizzically at Isabel. “I saw it on the programme. So what?”

  “But where did you get the programme? Did somebody give it to you?”

  Again Hen looked at Isabel as if she was asking pointless questions. “I think I found it here, in the flat. In fact, I could probably lay my hands on it right now. Do you want to see it?”

  Isabel nodded, and Hen rose to her feet and riffled through a pile of papers on a shelf. “Here we are. That’s the programme. Look, there’s the McCunn and the other stuff is listed here.”

  Isabel took the programme. Her hands were shaking.

  “Whose programme is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Hen. “Neil’s maybe. Everything in the flat is either his or mine or … Mark’s.”

  “It must be Neil’s,” said Isabel quietly.
“Mark didn’t come back from the concert, did he?”

  “I don’t see why the programme is so important,” said Hen. She gave the impression now of being slightly irritated, and Isabel took the opportunity to excuse herself.

  “I’ll go downstairs and wait for Neil,” she said. “I don’t want to hold you up.”

  “I was going to have a bath,” said Hen.

  “Well, you go ahead and do that,” said Isabel quickly. “Does he walk back from work?”

  “Yes,” said Hen, getting to her feet. “He comes up from Toll-cross. Over the golf links there.”

  “I’ll meet him,” said Isabel. “It’s a gorgeous evening and I’d like the walk.”

  * * *

  SHE WENT OUTSIDE, trying to keep calm, trying to control her breathing. Soapy Soutar, the boy downstairs, was dragging his reluctant dog to a patch of grass at the edge of the road. She walked past him, stopping to say something.

  “That’s a nice dog.”

  Soapy Soutar looked up at her. “He disnae like me. And he eats his heid off.”

  “Dogs are always hungry,” said Isabel. “That’s what they’re like.”

  “Aye, well this one has a hollow stomach, my mum says. Eats and disnae want to go for walks.”

  “I’m sure he likes you, though.”

  “No, he disnae.”

  The conversation came to a natural end, and she looked down over the links. There were two people making their separate ways up the diagonal path, and one of them, a tall figure in a lightweight khaki raincoat, looked as if he might be Neil. She began to walk forward.

  It was Neil. For a moment or two it seemed as if he did not recognise her, but then he smiled and greeted her politely.

  “I came to see you,” she said. “Hen said that you would be on your way home, so I thought I’d meet you out here. It’s such a wonderful evening.”

  “Yes, it’s grand, isn’t it?” He looked at her, waiting for her to say something else. He was uneasy, she thought, but then he would be.

  She took a deep breath. “Why did you come to me?” she asked. “Why did you come to talk about Mark’s worries?”

  He answered quickly, almost before she had finished her question. “Because I had not told you the whole truth.”

  “And you still haven’t.”

  He stared at her, and she saw his knuckle tighten about the handle of his briefcase. “You still haven’t told me that you were there. You were there in the Usher Hall, weren’t you?”

  She held his gaze, watching the passage of emotions. There was anger to begin with, but that soon passed, and was replaced by fear.

  “I know you were there,” she said. “And now I have proof of it.” This was only true to an extent, but she felt that it would be enough, at least for the purpose of this meeting.

  He opened his mouth to speak. “I—”

  “And did you have anything to do with his death, Neil? Did you? Were there just the two of you left up there after everybody else had gone downstairs? That’s true, isn’t it?”

  He could no longer hold her gaze. “I was there. I was.”

  “I see,” said Isabel. “And what happened?”

  “We had an argument,” he said.” I started it. I was jealous of him and Hen, you see. I couldn’t take it. We had an argument and I gave him a shove, sideways, to make my point. I had no intention of it being anything more than that. Just a shove, hardly anything. That’s all I did. But he overbalanced.”

  “Are you telling me the truth now, Neil?” Isabel studied his eyes as he looked up to reply, and she had her answer. But then there was the question of why he was jealous of Mark and Hen. But did that matter? She thought not; because love and jealousy may have many different wellsprings, but are as urgent and as strong whatever their source.

  “I am telling the truth,” he said slowly. “But I couldn’t tell anybody that, could I? They would have accused me of pushing him over the edge and I would have had no witnesses to say that it was anything but that. If I had, I would have been prosecuted. It’s culpable homicide, you know, if you assault somebody and they die, even if you had no intention of killing them and it’s only a shove. But it was an accident; it really was. I had no intention, none at all …” He paused. “And I was too scared to tell anybody about it. I was just scared. I imagined what it would be like if nobody believed me.”

  A man walked by, stepping onto the grass to avoid them, wondering (Isabel imagined) what they were doing, standing in earnest conversation under the evening sky. Settling a life, she thought; laying the dead to rest; allowing time and self-forgiveness to start.

  “I believe you,” said Isabel.

  Philosophers in their studies, Isabel reflected, grapple with problems of this sort. Forgiveness is a popular subject for them, as is punishment. We need to punish, not because it makes us feel any better—ultimately it does not—but because it establishes the moral balance: it makes a declaration about wrongdoing; it maintains our sense of a just world. But in a just world one punishes only those who mean wrong, who act from an ill will. This young man, whom she now understood, had never meant ill. He had never intended to harm Mark—anything but—and there was no reason, no conceivable justification, for holding him responsible for the awful consequences of what was no more than a gesture of irritation. If the criminal law of Scotland stipulated differently, then the law of Scotland was simply morally indefensible, and that was all there was to it.

  Neil was confused, Isabel thought. Ultimately it was all about sex, and not knowing what he wanted, and being immature. If he were punished now, for something that he had never meant to happen, what point would be served by that? One more life would be marred, and the world, in this case, would not be a more just place for it.

  “Yes, I believe you,” said Isabel. She paused. The decision was really quite simple, and she did not need to be a moral philosopher to take it. “And that’s the end of the matter. It was an accident. You’re sorry about it. We can leave it at that.”

  She looked at him, and saw that he was in tears. So she reached out and took his hand, which she held until they were ready to walk back up the path.

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2005

  Copyright © 2004 Alexander McCall Smith

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2005. Originally published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, an imprint of the Time Warner Book Group, UK, London. Published subsequently in Canada in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

  The Sunday Philosophy Club / Alexander McCall Smith.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37040-2

  I. Title.

  PR6063.C326S86 2005 823′.914 C2005-901308-7

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

&
nbsp; Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Copyright