Lament for a Maker

by Michael Innes

  ‘It was quite mad, but I just cast about for somewhere to hide! There were two possibilities: that door near the staircase door, and that other one over there that is a sort of French window on the parapet walk. The first – the one we now know gives on the little bedroom – proved to be locked; I just had time to make for the other and get through. It wasn’t at all comfortable; I found myself out in the open, on a narrow platform, hundreds of feet in the air and buffeted by a howling hurricane.’

  ‘Between the Prince of the Air within and his attendant spirits without.’

  ‘Exactly. I dropped my candle in the snow – it will be there still – and stood clinging to the handle of the door. It was pitch dark and the wind simply caught at my wits and numbed them. Minutes must have passed before I realized that a door meant some sort of security beyond and that I was on something more than the merest ledge. I couldn’t quite get the door shut and I was frightened to risk my balance with a really stout tug. So there I was on one side of the thing and there was Guthrie, moving round lighting a few candles, on the other. I had either to recover my good sense and face him, or stay tucked away. I stayed tucked away.

  ‘Guthrie went over to the desk there in the middle of the room, sat down and buried his face in his hands. A couple of minutes later – no more – he straightened up and called out something I didn’t catch. The staircase door opened – it was just within my field of vision – and a young man came in, ushered I think by Hardcastle, though I didn’t see him. Guthrie rose, pointed to a chair, and this time I heard him speak quite distinctly. He said: “Mr Lindsay, sit down.”

  ‘Unfortunately – I suppose it must be said – those were the only words I made out. The wind was howling so that the rest of the interview was simply a dumb-show. They talked earnestly for some time–’

  I interrupted. ‘And angrily, Sybil?’

  Sybil shook her head. ‘Definitely not. It occurred to me they weren’t good friends – it had the appearance of rather a formal parley – but there wasn’t anything that looked like heat. They might simply have been settling something up.’

  ‘Like the buying-off business Hardcastle told us of?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Sybil had paused for a moment as if to inspect my question. Then she went on. ‘Presently they both stood up and Lindsay shook his head – a curiously gentle, curiously decisive action it seemed to me. They moved towards the door–’

  ‘They were in view all the time, Sybil? They hadn’t moved, for instance, to the other end of the room?’

  ‘They were in view all the time. They moved towards the door and there shook hands – formally, I should say, rather than cordially. Lindsay went out and Guthrie turned back. I got a shock when I saw his face. He looked – I don’t know how to put it – tragic and broken. I saw him only for a second. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the bedroom door and disappeared inside, shutting the door behind him. It seemed about a minute or half a minute later that I heard a faint cry. I waited another minute and then decided to make a dash for the staircase. I was in the middle of the room when you and Hardcastle came in upon me.’

  ‘And when I asked you about Guthrie you said “He has fallen from the tower.” Forgive me. Sybil, but this is what they will ask. How on earth did you know?’

  Sybil Guthrie looked at me in silence for a moment. Then she said: ‘Yes, I see.’ There was another silence. ‘Noel, it was a sort of intuition.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me once you weren’t psychic?’

  I ought not to have brought that in; I wasn’t a prosecuting barrister. But I felt it extraordinarily important that Sybil should realize certain dangers in her situation. And suddenly she blazed out. ‘I tell you I knew, Noel Gylby! That interview had somehow crushed the man. I saw imminent death in his face. And your rushing in on top of that cry just told me. Guthrie was next to mad anyway and when his plans went wrong he made an end of himself.’

  ‘He had failed, you mean, to buy Lindsay off, and couldn’t bear the thought of losing his niece?’

  ‘Something like that. And it should be lurid enough for you.’ We were sitting now perched side by side on Guthrie’s desk. After a time I said: ‘Well, that’s been a useful trial spin, Sybil.’

  She turned her head and gave me a quick glance. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean,’ I said gently, ‘that we must have a revised version.’

  ‘In other words, I’m lying?’

  ‘Not at all. What you have said may be gospel. But it’s just too awkward to be safe. Your piece of intuition is perfectly possible. But it’s the sort of possibility that looks perfectly awful in a court of law.’

  Again Sybil said: ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘You are lurking here, Guthrie goes into the bedroom, there is a cry, we rush in, and then your mind takes a great leap in the dark – a leap to the truth, maybe. But you see how strange it could be made to look? Only the fact that you have no real connection with Guthrie is between you and positive suspicion.’

  Sybil stood up and faced me. ‘Noel, shall I tell you the truth?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake do.’

  ‘Behold the chatelaine of Erchany!’

  I jumped up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’m Ranald Guthrie’s heir.’

  . . .

  The row of little dots, Diana, means that you are invited to be staggered. Perhaps you won’t be – if only because I wasn’t myself. That there were wheels within wheels in Sybil Guthrie’s relations with Erchany is something that I’ve had a dim sense of for some time, and that sense has probably got into my earlier narrative. If I was decidedly taken aback it was by the sudden vivid image of Sybil and myself sitting each on a wing of my car in the snow and my seeing the Erchany light and saying so importantly that we would make for that. For I had come upon her, in fact, in the middle of a more than ingenious plan to gate-crash on Erchany – a plan into which she had incorporated me magnificently and in her stride. Some refinements of the scheme – the artless requests for guidance south, the resolute driving of her car over a bank – I recall with positive awe. And did she not, in the very critical moment of her plot, stand idly making quiet fun out of the text of Coleridge’s Christabel? As I think I discerned – a formidable young woman.

  As yet I have got only the outline of what it is all about. The American Guthries – Sybil and her widowed mother – were served some dirty financial turn by Ranald Guthrie; they heard rumours that he was mad and irresponsible; and having an interest in his estate they have been trying in various ways to discover the true state of affairs. Sybil, being in England, decided to discover for herself. She explored the ground some weeks ago and when the snow came she saw her chance. What she didn’t see, poor child, was the awkward scrape into which her irresponsible jaunt was going to lead her. She really is a bit scared now – which only shows her common sense. It is a most extraordinary position.

  But if she’s scared she’s also full of fight. Standing before the empty fireplace in Guthrie’s study and looking down on her as she perched once more on the desk, I thought of the motto that I now knew was hers by right. Touch not the Tyger. It was not inappropriate: the beast was lurking there truly enough and I felt that I had neither touched nor scratched it – I knew, in other words, very little about Sybil. Only I guessed that she would leap at danger if she felt the call; and I knew that there were ways in which she could be quite, quite ruthless. Observe, Diana, that the attraction of Miss Sybil Guthrie is a lunar echo of the attraction of Miss Diana Sandys: observe this and hold your peace.

  She perched there full of fight, scarcely needing my prompting that her situation was awkward. I was puzzled, indeed, by an obscure feeling that she was planning ahead further than I could see – a feeling prompted, I knew, by some association in the recent past. A second later I got it: it was Sybil’s eye. She was looking at me, and about the study, with the very glance that Ranald Guthrie had bent upon his unexpected guests. I could scarcely hav
e had a more dramatic reminder that there was a Guthrie at Erchany still.

  ‘What is known,’ I asked, ‘of your earlier reconnoitring here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not much. I sent a telegram from the pub in Kinkeig saying I expected to get something soon.’

  ‘Whom to?’

  ‘Our lawyer. He was in London then but he’s sailed for home now. Noel, I think I’d better have a lawyer or someone.’

  ‘I think you better had. As a matter of fact, you have. I wired.’

  ‘Noel Gylby! Explain yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t like it at all: Guthrie dead and Hardcastle muttering murder and you being found up here. We must protect ourselves, mustn’t we? And I have an uncle in Edinburgh just now; he’s a soldier and has the Scottish Command. He’ll see the right sort of person is dispatched.’

  ‘I’ll say you have a neck.’

  ‘So have you, Sybil. That’s the point.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  So that was that. I didn’t think anyone would really want to hang Sybil; I rather hoped they would be able to hang Hardcastle, though I couldn’t see just how. The thought prompted a question. ‘Sybil, you say Guthrie and Lindsay were in view all the time? What about Guthrie’s ringing a bell and going to the door and shouting to Hardcastle to invite me up?’

  Sybil for the first time in our acquaintance looked really startled; I saw that I had brought forward a point that had escaped her. She said: ‘Where is the bell?’

  ‘Over here by the fireplace.’

  ‘Then Guthrie rang no bell. And he certainly didn’t go to the door and shout. Hardcastle lied.’

  ‘And Hardcastle was next to livid at finding you here. In fact Hardcastle had a game. Come over here.’

  I led her across the room to one of the bays into which I had been peering earlier. There was an old bureau in which a drawer had been violently broken open. It was empty save for a few scattered gold coins. ‘The miser’s toy cupboard,’ I said, ‘and the toys are gone.’

  I glanced at Sybil as I spoke and saw that she had turned pale. For a long moment she was silent; then she said, in odd antithesis to what had been her most familiar phrase hitherto: ‘No – no, I don’t see.’ She knit her brows. ‘And even if–’ She broke off and I could see that she was searching desperately in her mind, perhaps in her memory. ‘I couldn’t be mistaken on that.’ And she turned away from the rifled drawer. ‘Of course, Noel, it adds to the puzzle, but no further problem is involved.’

  I must have looked my bewilderment at this outburst of riddling speech, for Sybil laughed at me as she walked across the room and rather wearily threw her cigarette into the fireplace. ‘Noel, what will your lawyer be like? I’m rather wanting to see him.’ She stretched herself with an engaging affectation of laziness and added: ‘And I’m rather wanting to go to bed and sleep.’

  ‘Then off you go. You have some hours before the rumpus. I’ll see you to your room.’

  But Sybil gave a dismissive nod. ‘You needn’t come down, Noel Gylby. Ranald’s ghost won’t trouble me; as you know, I’m not really romantically inclined. But I’m glad you smashed my car. Good night.’

  And so I was left in possession of Ranald Guthrie’s tower. And here I have sat scribbling away like Pamela – who, you remember, wrote home thousands and thousands of words on every attempt of her master’s on her virtue. I always liked Pamela and now I know why: I have that itch – hers, I mean, not her master’s. As they said to the Historian of the Roman Empire: ‘Scribble, scribble, Mr Gibbon!’ The story’s a good one, but I forget it. I’m tired. Take it these last few lines are sleep-writing absolute.

  Very presently, I suppose, Tammas will bring back a few hardy representatives of order and sanity to this crazy castle. Crazycastle, Dampcastle, Coldcastle, Hardcastle. Hardcastle – grrr!

  Good night, lady, good night, sweet lady, good night, good night.

  Quoth

  NOEL YVON MERYON GYLBY.

  PART THREE

  THE INVESTIGATIONS OF ALJO WEDDERBURN

  1

  I must begin my contribution to this record of the curious events at Castle Erchany with a confession. From the very beginning I had the gravest doubts – doubts which I cannot conscientiously say subsequent events resolved – as to whether, in the large utterance of the young man Gylby, ‘the right sort of person had been dispatched’.

  It will doubtless be within the knowledge of readers familiar with the legal institutions of these Islands that the society of Writers to the Signet in Edinburgh is for the most part happily associated with the quieter, the more spacious, the truly learned aspects of the law. And I can modestly say that the firm of Wedderburn, Wedderburn and McTodd has amply contributed to this respectable tradition. Our clients are never harassed by importunate endeavours to bring their affairs to an issue, for the passions of today are the forgotten follies of tomorrow and procrastination in consequence is of the essence of soundly conservative legal practice. Again, they are seldom exposed to the uncertainties of litigation, for the harmonious and profitable commerce between solicitor and client can only be disturbed by the intrusion – not unaccompanied by heavy demands of a pecuniary nature – of our learned brethren of the Faculty of Advocates. The pleasures of conveyancing – a science often of the greatest antiquarian interest – together with the discreet superintendence of bankruptcies, alimonies, insanities and irresponsibilities among the best Scottish families has made the major part of our professional activities for some generations. Especially have we been reluctant to engage ourselves in the lurid limelight of the criminal law!

  With this preliminary observation – which I trust will obviate any misunderstanding that may arise – I will plunge, in the phrase already employed by my worthy friend Ewan Bell, in medias res. On the afternoon of the Christmas Day upon which this chronicle centres, having dispatched my family to the pantomime – a mode of entertainment which has for me, I fear, a very limited appeal – I walked up the Mound and let myself into the Signet Library, proposing a few hours’ quiet study: some of my readers at least may not be uninterested to know that I hope shortly to publish a monograph entitled Run-rig, In-field and Out-field in the Scottish Land Courts of the Eighteenth Century. I was in the act of consulting a valuable article by the learned Dr Macgonigle in the Scottish Historical Review when I was interrupted by the appearance of my chauffeur with the news that General Gylby had called at my home on a matter of considerable urgency and was now awaiting my return.

  Gylby and I had shot together in Morayshire and he had some claim upon my friendship; I was aware, moreover, that his wife’s sister was engaged to the young Earl of Inverallochy: I therefore commended my man’s intelligence in summoning me and drove home.

  It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader that General Gylby’s business concerned a telegram he had received from his nephew: this young man, together with a female friend, had become involved in an episode of a violent and mysterious sort – and in such a way as to make immediate legal advice desirable. The telegram was brief and necessarily obscure, and but for the risk of offending the General I believe I should simply have recommended him to some competent young solicitor unconnected with our firm. As the matter stood, however, I determined to turn to my nephew Aeneas. Aeneas has now been some years my junior partner, and it must be avowed that during this period he has shown a very considerable flair for just those over-colourful branches of the law which we have always been concerned to eschew. When Mrs Macrattle of Dunk poisoned her head keeper by injecting sheep-dip into a haggis with the local doctor’s hypodermic syringe it was by Aeneas that the matter was adjusted; when the Macqueady was sensationally arraigned for discharging an extensive land-mine under an entire house-party organized by his wife it was Aeneas who instructed counsel in the successful plea that nothing but a geological experiment of a purely scientific kind had been intended. Aeneas, in fact, seemed just the man for General Gylby’s nephew; and on the evening of Christmas Day he set out fo
r Dunwinnie. My perturbation may be imagined when I received a telegram early next morning to say that while hastily changing trains at Perth he had slipped on the ice and broken a leg. I need not detail the alternative arrangements I endeavoured to make. They failed; we were pledged to General Gylby; that afternoon I set out for Dunwinnie myself.

  It must not be concealed that I climbed into my carriage at the Caledonian station in a mood of considerable annoyance – nor indeed that this annoyance was increased rather than diminished by the discovery that I was to have as travelling companion my old schoolfellow Lord Clanclacket. With all proper deference to a Senator of the College of Justice it must be frankly said that Clanclacket is a bore. Not only a bore but a chilly bore: the last man one would choose to sit opposite to on a journey uncommonly dull and chilly in itself.

  We were on the Forth Bridge before Clanclacket spoke. He then said: ‘Well Wedderburn, you’re going north?’

  It is with questions of just this degree of perspicacity that Clanclacket is wont to entrap unwary young advocates from the bench. I briefly agreed that I was going north and ventured to suppose that he was in much the same case.

  ‘A week’s quiet in Perthshire,’ he said. ‘It is a holiday you are taking, Wedderburn?’

  ‘A professional journey – a little matter of family business. Notice, Clanclacket, that the fleet is in. I wonder, can that be Renown just opposite Rosyth?’

  My companion made what I fear was but a decent pretence of being diverted for a moment to these naval matters. We were still rattling through the cantilevers of the bridge when he resumed: ‘What’s your station?’

  ‘I change at Perth. Let me offer you Blackwood’s.’

  Clanclacket took the journal – an offering made, I may say, with considerable reluctance – and studied its cover much as if it had been an unfamiliar document put in evidence. Then he said heavily: ‘Ah, Blackwood’s. Thank you. Excellent. Very good.’ And at that he tucked it firmly away – so firmly, indeed, that it would not be seriously inaccurate to say he sat on it. ‘You were saying, Wedderburn, that you change at Perth for – ?’