Murder at the Open

by Angus MacVicar

  The College towers loomed high on my right. Hereabouts it was quieter, with fewer people abroad. Trees sprouting from the pavements rustled their leaves in the thin, cold breeze.

  My intention in a moment or two was to turn right and take the direct route to the hospital by way of Castle Street, Abbey Street and then Abbey Walk, near the end of which it was situated. As I entered that part of the Scores running between the Castle on the one side and the Younger Hall on the other, I knew the turning wasn’t far ahead. I began to walk faster, trying to inhibit my fears by concentrating on vaguely remembered snatches of history.

  My mind seemed to fix upon the Bottle Dungeon in the Castle — maybe only a psychiatrist could explain why. I had been to see it many times in the small vaulted chamber in the Sea-Tower. With other visitors I had leant on the safety parapet built around its yawning mouth and gaped in fascination as the guide lowered his lantern on a twenty-foot rope and swung it round to show us how the dark, rock-hewn place widened out at the bottom. Here the Reformers of old had been imprisoned, George Wishart amongst them.

  George Wishart. He had died almost exactly four hundred years ago, a cold March wind in front of the Castle fanning the fire in which he was burned, while Cardinal Beaton and his friends, reclining on rich cushions, looked down on his torments. But was there any satisfaction in the knowledge that three months later Beaton himself had been killed and his body ignominiously slung from the midwindow of the Fore-Tower to placate ‘the faithless multitude’?

  An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A savage doctrine, which could be a basis for the modern suspicion of the Church. Conrad Lingstrom had died by violence. What good would it do anybody if his murderer died by violence — a murderer whose name might soon be known to me and for whose subsequent legal killing I should be partly responsible?

  Of course, I wasn’t thinking straight. Ideas were riding on zig-zag currents of fear — fear caused by physical timidity and a shrinking from moral responsibility.

  Three young men came out of North Castle Street a few yards in front. They were singing a slightly drunken song, with the desperate flavour of youth in it. As they passed me, the one wearing a college scarf said good night and cheerfully patted me on the shoulder.

  I turned into the narrow darkness of North Castle Street, with the intricate pile of St Salvator’s Church on my right. I could hear nothing except my own footsteps and the voices of the three youngsters receding into the distance along the Scores.

  At first I was sure I was alone. Then a shadow appeared, coming towards me from the North Street end. Hugging the walls on the opposite pavement, it was moving delicately, with little tripping runs like a dancer; but the odd thing was that it made scarcely any sound. Some woman or girl, hurrying home because she was late? Or a man, crouching low in a furtive attempt to avoid attention?

  It reached a shop-front about fifteen yards away, diagonally across the street. I saw a hand move out from amongst dark folds. There was a muffled sound, like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. Instantaneously something struck the stone wall beside me and ricocheted off into the dark.

  I was petrified. This wasn’t the kind of crisis I had anticipated. Though the prospect of danger from an unknown source had been there for most of the day, it had never occurred to me that I might become the target for someone using a revolver with a silencer. But now it was happening; and the shock made my legs so useless that I stood statue-like, momentarily unable to move.

  The white hand among the folds began to stir again. An instinct of self-preservation shot adrenalin through my veins. I leapt to the side and went sprawling. Another bullet zing-ed from the pavement.

  My ageing muscles, stiff at times with incipient rheumatism, were suddenly toned to a supreme effort. I scrambled up and began to run for my life back towards the street intersection, zig-zagging like an African buck pursued by a tiger. As I reached the empty, shadowed brightness of the Scores, a third bullet zipped past close to my head, and I heard the phut of the gun behind me.

  The sound of the firing wasn’t loud enough — or definite enough — to startle anybody. People in the area could have heard it; but ten to one they’d think it was caused by a slow-starting motor-scooter or motor-bike. Had I begun shouting or yelling for help, then somebody might have taken notice. But I didn’t utter a word and remained alone with the shadow. Why I kept silent I don’t know. Maybe because all my energies were concentrated on trying to escape.

  Halfway across the Scores I glanced back. The shadow was following, skipping down the centre of North Castle Street, some garment like a black cloak fluttering about its head and body. Too late I realised that I was heading for the cul-de-sac of the Castle, with the cliffs and the sea behind it, and that I ought to have swerved sharp left for the brightness of the west end. Were I to turn now I should momentarily come within point-blank range of the killer’s gun.

  The whole situation was nightmarish.

  Thinking back, I can see a dozen more effective moves I could have made.

  For example, I could have done the brave thing — what Big Sam would probably have done — and rushed on my enemy, trusting to luck to avoid being shot before I got close. I could have done the shrewd thing — what Aidan would probably have done — and dodged into a dark close-mouth or alley, there to wait in shelter while the shadow either approached me at a disadvantage or retired in haste when people appeared in the street, as they were bound to do sooner or later. I could have done the ordinary human thing — what I myself would probably have done had the situation been repeated — and gone racing back down the Scores, shouting blue murder and causing the shadow to make itself scarce in the presence of a number of worthy citizens leaving their firesides to render me aid.

  But in a nightmare you are seldom brave, shrewd or even ordinarily human. I belted across the Scores into the shadowed grounds of the ancient Castle, intent on burying my ostrich head in the sands of darkness. It was a move which must have pleased the shadow; and here, amongst the crumbling stones and walls and iron-work railings, along the edges of the steep cliffs diving down towards the sea, there began a fantastic game of hide-and-seek, the prize being the death of one and the life of the other.

  Aidan and I had never openly discussed it — and Big Sam, with a show of gruff anger, would have officially denied that he had any inkling of our plan. But in the absence of any firm evidence as to the identity of the murderer — and because the clues we did possess all seemed to point in different directions — we had tacitly agreed that the best method of bringing the case to a swift conclusion was to make it clear that Debbie intended to reveal to me some secret of her past which would mirror the truth, so that then, in panic, the killer might commit an act of self betrayal. The killer had acted all right, but, in the first instance, not in the way we had expected. Debbie had been poisoned and her life saved only because of the quick and expert medical care immediately — and luckily — available. And now, in the second instance, the murderer had acted again, and my own terror and stupidity had caused the plan to sputter out in even more ignominious failure.

  Crouching behind a grey parapet of stone on the cliff-front, with the jagged towers of the Castle threatening me from above, I was able fleetingly to employ reason. I was aware at last that had I taken cover in North Castle Street or in the Scores, help would almost certainly have come at once, because surely our unacknowledged plan depended on policemen — or maybe even Aidan and Big Sam themselves — being in the vicinity when and if I were attacked.

  But reason is no consort of panic, and in these ghastly minutes panic reigned alone. I was sweating. My light-weight vest was sticking to my body, as if I’d been out golfing in a tropical downpour. Blood was hissing painfully in my head. I struggled with my breathing, fighting to gulp air when the muscles in my lungs seemed atrophied. My body was so tense I was shaking. Reason was ousted by the terrible thought that at any moment now I was going to die.

  Reason? I had become like a
hunted rabbit, rendered incapable of thought or logical action by the nearness of a stoat.

  I peered over the parapet and saw the shadow drifting among the ruins only a few yards away. This time, as the phut came, I actually saw the flash in the barrel of the revolver. I felt a tiny pain high up in my right shoulder. I ducked and rolled away, and it’s possible I screamed. I can’t be sure.

  The tiny pain didn’t worry me a lot, and the stickiness inside the arm of my shirt seemed to be the same stickiness of perspiration that was general over my whole body. In any case, another pain struck at my right hip as I rolled violently against a jutting stone in a remnant of ancient wall. Everything was pain, there in the darkness and confusion of the ruins.

  I glimpsed the shadow clambering across the parapet. With a desperate lunge I got to my feet and thrust myself over the wall, sprawling in grass on the other side. Momentarily, I was shielded from a revolver-shot.

  The Castle and its surrounding premises were known to me; but just then I had no firm idea where I was, though at the back of my mind I suspected I was on its dangerous seaward side. This scarcely worried me, however. The mainspring of all my actions was the desperate urge to get away from that lethal gun.

  The shadow loomed above the wall, only feet away. I started to crawl away on my hands and knees, panting and whimpering like an animal. I expected to hear the sound of the revolver again, and the skin on my back quivered taut in anticipation of a bullet.

  But no bullet came. Maybe the shadow hadn’t located me exactly in the dark, though indeed I must have been making plenty of noise. Maybe it was saving bullets. Four had already been fired. If the gun was a six-shooter, only two remained in the chamber, and my enemy might have decided to wait until a successful hit could be guaranteed.

  I found myself scrabbling against an iron railing. With blind strength — and ignoring pain both in my shoulder and hip — I pulled myself up and over. A rusty sliver of metal cut into the root of my right thumb, but at the time I didn’t pay much heed to it. I dropped on to a flat area of rubble, my shoes slipping and sliding amongst the loose stones.

  On my right, as I looked back through the railing, an outer wall of the Castle swept up massively into the clouded dark sky, though beyond the tower-top I saw a brighter patch, a-glitter with stars. Airs from the North Sea, eddying about the wall, fanned my hot face.

  I couldn’t see the shadow. Not then. Vaguely I wondered what had happened to it. Why had it so suddenly disappeared? Why had it not fired again?

  But my instinct was still to put solid stone between me and the killer. I turned. In the shadows behind me a buttress wall slanted up against the Castle. I ran towards it and began to climb.

  Halfway along its length, the buttress was ten feet above the ground. But in the medieval masonry I discovered plenty of hand-holds and foot-holds. I heaved myself up, thrusting with my legs and pulling with my arms, and sprawled on to the broad flat top, gripping the smooth stone with tension-powered hands.

  Two things I saw at once.

  Beyond me, the other side of the buttress formed the first ten feet of a jagged cliff swooping down into the darkness of what I knew to be a rocky shore, fifty feet below.

  As I stared, in horror, I thought I saw the glint of phosphorescence on small breaking waves. And as I stared I realised that behind me the buttress sloped down steeply into nothingness. Now, at last, I knew where I was — balanced in the heights like an acrobat on a sagging pole.

  I looked back the way I had come. There was movement near the railing. The shadow bulked huge and sinister, rising into the sky. It was climbing over, still following me.

  Now there was no escape. The Castle in front. Emptiness beyond and behind me. Death approaching on my left. I felt like screaming. I ought to have screamed, but no scream came.

  I tried to ease my position. My hands slipped and I began to slide back down the slope of the buttress. I pawed desperately at the stone-work, seeking a hold. My fingertips found one, and I lay there, insecurely anchored, almost weeping in distress.

  Far away, in the grounds of the Castle, I imagined I heard voices, though I couldn’t tell for certain if they were human or only ghost-whispers in my head. Anyway, I didn’t really care.

  Then I realised that the shadow must have heard something, too, because when it dropped from the railing it crouched down motionless on the rubble. I could see it there, a black mass from which issued the tenuous sound of quick breathing.

  The pause in my enemy’s progress — and the hint it gave of mental uncertainty — must have inspired me with a kind of hope. It began to burgeon in my mind that I might be able to climb down the other side of the buttress and then scramble even further down the cliff. I seemed to remember that the declivity wasn’t sheer rock but a mixture of protruding stones and tufts of grass and sea-pinks. It was a mad idea — one which in normal circumstances would never have occurred to me, for I have no head for heights. But terror was playing strange tricks with me.

  I had forgotten about the slope of the buttress and the danger of sliding down over its airy tip; but as soon as I tried to translate thought into action and ease myself over, I found myself beginning to slither back. I kicked hard with my feet, aiming to use them as brakes, and loose stones rattled away behind me.

  The shadow moved and reared up from the ground. The white hand appeared, the hand with the revolver. But before the flash came and the sparks flew up from the edge of the buttress where the bullet struck, I had pushed myself violently over the other edge and now clung to it, hanging down with my feet rasping frantically to find toeholds.

  What I expected at any moment was to see the shadow leaping up on to the buttress. There was at least one bullet left in the revolver. At point-blank range it would be enough.

  I could find no support for my feet. The strain on my hands and arms was almost unbearable; but a thought shimmered that if I let go I would bounce once at the root of the buttress and then fly out and down into dark space. So I held on in an agony of determination.

  Then, unmistakably, shouts were coming from fairly close — from the grounds of the Castle on the west side. My inhibitions finally vanished. I yelled for help.

  “Round the other side!” I screamed. “It’s still there!”

  I was trying to tell the unknown owners of the voices where the shadow was; but they couldn’t be expected to understand my feverish vagueness. Or could they?

  I thought I heard someone call out: “Stay where you are! We’re coming.” It sounded like Aidan.

  A second later a sound occurred on the other side of the buttress — a scuffling, retreating sound followed by a distant splash, far down. And no shadow appeared against the sky above me.

  But I was living in a maze of fear and pain and panic, sure of nothing. My gripping tingers were becoming numb; the muscles in my arms were racked by the sagging weight of my body. There was a salt taste in my mouth, a mixture of the saline-laden air rising from the sea and the blood that oozed from my lips as I bit against them in an extremity of strain.

  Like flashes of film, incongruous memories of golf came to me. Nicklaus’ chunky strength as he swung into the ball. Lema’s lissom grace and style. O’Connor’s flashing brilliance. Panton’s dour precision with an iron.

  Why these should have haunted me I can’t explain. Tattered wish-dreams, maybe — the result of a subconscious longing for the pleasures I had come to St Andrews to enjoy and which now seemed forever drowned in a spreading pool of evil.

  While George Wishart was burning beneath the Castle, he had screamed out his visions of heavenly glory. I may have been experiencing a similar psychological trauma.

  But my numb fingers were beginning to fail. My scraping feet could still find no cranny in the stone. No matter how frenziedly I used my will to hold on, the realisation was suddenly with me that I was going to fall.

  One hand — my right — slid away from the edge. But the fingers of my left, embedded in a tiny crack, retained their g
rip. On account of the shape of the buttress, this hand had been on a lower level than the other. The result was that my body now swung like a pendulum against the face of the wall. And as it swung my left foot miraculously encountered an inch of protruding stone.

  I steadied myself and re-established a hold on the edge with my right hand. I yelled again for help, my voice quavering hoarsely in the quiet night. Someone replied, and this time the call came from the other side of the buttress.

  Even with the added foot support, I knew I couldn’t last much longer. Patches of darkness darker than the night were passing in front of my eyes. A gull came close, squawking and flapping, and I panted in terror.

  Figures heaved into sight, above me on the buttress. At first I thought one of them was the shadow, come to kill me, and I waited for the bullet. But then I recognised them — Sergeant McCrimmon and Cliff O’Donnel- — and I knew they would save me.

  Behind me and to the right, in the angle the buttress made with the west wall of the Castle, Aidan and Big Sam were shouting encouragement.

  Hands gripped my wrists — capable hands with steel in their strength — and up I came on to the flat top of the buttress. For a second or two there was confusion and quick scrambling as we all began to teeter down the slope. Then McCrimmon jumped down on to the rubble near the railing, dragging me with him. O’Donnel leapt like a cat and landed beside us.

  “What the hell!” I heard the Sergeant say.

  Then I fainted. Clean out.

  I wasn’t a fictional hero. I was just an ordinary man who’d lived through a nightmare and had now to suffer ordinary reaction.

  6. Friday

  Fortunately they didn’t tell Jock in the Atholl, so he slept the night through. Next day, when he discovered what had happened, he was in a mood to blackguard his father for being a daft old man, gallivanting about in the dark — and on a cliff edge to boot. By then, however, the murderer was known and we were enjoying the final day’s play in the Open together, and I was able to laugh it off.