by Neil M. Gunn
“I should say you would.”
“Yes.” With a musing smile on his face George lit the lighter and blew it out—twice.
“Don’t do that,” said Joyce as he lit it a third time.
“Why?”
“I just suddenly don’t like it.”
“Blowing out the dear old flame, what?”
“Oh, I think ghosts can be overdone.”
“They generally are cooked a bit.”
But she was attending to her own thought. “Where do you really stand re this absurd story about Harry being with Alick when he saw those ghosts? Really stand, I mean?”
“He may have had ’em, you know. I’ve known fellows who have had ’em.”
“What, ghosts?”
“Oh, the oddest things—complete with pink eyes and what-nots. And of course nothing there at all really. Very odd.”
“Oh, you mean the d. t.s?”
“That’s the technical term, I understand.”
“Don’t be funny. Alick wasn’t tight.”
“When you’re tight you’re all right. It’s afterwards. They climb up the wall and over the ceiling. Even wag their tails at you. It’s anything but a joke to the fellow who has ’em. Nasty.”
“Do you think there’s something brewing?”
“God knows. Wonder what’s happened to them all?”
“Seems an unnatural silence about, doesn’t there?”
“It’s certainly getting very dark. Will I ring?”
The door opened and Mairi entered. George followed her with his eyes as she turned to light the lamp by the bookcase. A very noiseless efficient maid.… But his thought was interrupted by the entry of Sir John, who saw Joyce’s arms extended.
“Not feeling bored are you?” Sir John asked her.
She got to her feet. “In this marvellous place!”
“We get days like these. Can’t do anything much. No use for the hill or fishing. Have you anything to read? There should be some detective stories about. Real good ones,” said Sir John.
“I do like a good one,” said Joyce. “I must confess.”
Mairi soon had the standard lamp at its full brilliance and withdrew, leaving them to turn up the other lamp if they wished.
Lady Marway came in as they were hunting for the detective stories: “If Marjory hasn’t got them upstairs, they may have gone to the kitchen. But I shouldn’t think so. I’ll get Marjory.”
“Oh don’t bother, please,” said Joyce.
Lady Marway met Marjory at the door.
“Let me think,” said Marjory. “You mean the green… yes—I think I know where they are.”
As she turned to go out, Sir John asked her, “Geoffrey all right?”
“Oh yes.” Marjory smiled. “Purely stomachic, I understand. One moment.” She went out.
“Nothing wrong with Geoffrey, is there?” Joyce asked.
“No. Not really,” Lady Marway replied. “I remember—you and George had just gone out. He jumped up quickly after tea and then had a moment’s giddiness. That was all.”
“Oh, that!” And Joyce recalled a girl who got it without jumping up. “Once or twice she passed clean out. Very alarming at the time—but nothing to it really. She had an interesting sequel.”
“Yes?” said Sir John, his smile waiting.
“She got married. For some reason he was quite poor. After that she never got it.”
“Here you are, children,” said Marjory, entering.
“Thanks, grandma,” replied Joyce.
Marjory handed the paper-backed novels to George. “Feel you need a bit of excitement?”
“You have no reason to talk,” Joyce intervened, obviously alluding to the recently strengthened relationship between Geoffrey and Marjory.
“One for you, old girl!” said George.
“Paying me back in your own coin,” said Marjory.
“Rate of exchange par and all that,” said George.
“That’s rather a good one.” Marjory indicated one of the books.
“Oh, I know this johnnie,” declared George. “He delivers the body early. I like that. I always like to know where I am with the body. Some of them keep the body too long before murdering it, if you see what I mean.”
“Yes,” agreed Marjory. “I always think that’s not fair. They try to work up an atmosphere first.”
“Yes, and that puts you off your stroke,” declared George with some animation. “If you are given the murdered body straight away—you know, see it before you on the floor, knife in back, or bullet hole in chest, or gash on head, as case may be, with one leg twisted up under the other thus, and one arm thrown out like that, and the other”—tying himself in a ludicrous knot—“here…then”—undoing himself—“you know where you are and you proceed quite coolly to work out the doings.”
He bowed before the applause. “No flowers by request.”
Sir John rather agreed with him on the need for a cool procedure.
“That’s really what I mean,” replied George, encouraged. “Murdered body: proceed coolly. But some writing johnnies clutter it up with stuff like emotion. I once read one—you won’t believe this I know—but it’s fact. The detective wept!… I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Incredible.”
“I remember,” said Joyce, amid the mirth. “It was quite true. He had some sort of crush or other on the murdered body. Frightful bad taste.”
“I agree,” said Sir John. “It shouldn’t be allowed.”
“That’s what I said at the time,” declared Joyce, with no little enthusiasm. “What is a censor for—if he passes a thing like that?… You may laugh, but it is more tiresome than any silly old bedroom scene.”
“I must say there is always something original in your point of view, Joyce.” Sir John smiled to her.
“Thank you very much.” Joyce bowed. “I have often wondered at the fuss over bedroom scenes. I mean, after you have been places.”
Sir John laughed.
“What places?” asked Marjory.
“Oh, you know you don’t need to go to a nudist colony. The other season we were at—what’s its name—along from Monte—you know? Frightfully stimulating.”
“What was?” asked Lady Marway.
“The sun,” replied Joyce with natural innocence.
Harry came into the fun, and Marjory explained to him: “George has been expounding the whole construction and esthetic of the detective novel. You’ve missed yourself!”
“Now now!” said George modestly. “Draw it mild.”
“If ever”, declared Marjory, “you want to know what to do with the murdered body—ask George.”
“Uhm,” said Harry, nodding with exaggerated thoughtfulness. “Very interesting. What’s your line of campaign?”
“Oh rot!” said George.
“Go on, George,” Joyce encouraged him. “Tell the gentleman.”
George laughed with the others.
“He deprecates”, Sir John explained, “the introduction of emotion.”
“Exactly,” said George. “The whole thing in a nutshell. You are given the body: after that the clues. That’s what I say. Any fuss—I mean emotional stuff—and it goes sticky and the real clue is oozed over. You must keep a cool head—and carry on. There’s the dead body. Quite O.K. It may have a gash: it may not. Though, personally, I think it should have a gash. In fairness, if you see what I mean?”
“What about poison?” Marjory asked.
“There’s poison of course.” George shrugged. “Though with poison, it’s usually some mysterious kind of poison with effects you were never properly told about. No, I must say I like the corpse with a jolly old gash right on the first page.”
“How gruesome!” Helen got up.
“What’s gruesome about it?” demanded Joyce, proud of the lead George had established in the conversation.
“The corpse—with the gash,” replied Helen. “I have tried to get used to corpses—but I can’t. The dead body still impress
es me.”
Joyce held up her palms, the case being hopeless. “Well, of course.…”
“I can’t see how people can really enjoy reading about murdered bodies and police and—and ugly motives that——”
“Ah, but then,” said Sir John, “you have never been a Cabinet Minister, or a scientist, or on the Stock Exchange——”
“Do you read them?” Helen interrupted him.
“I have read a good few and enjoyed them very much. As a means of relaxation, of taking your mind off its more important worries—in short, as an anodyne—it has its points.”
“A dead body—as an anodyne!” Helen’s eyes widened on her father.
“No one worries about a dead body,” observed Joyce. “That’s morbid.”
Harry smiled to Helen. “It’s a game, like crosswords.”
“But why play it with a dead body and a murderer? What makes them play it with those terrible—terrible——”
“Possibly, my dear,” Sir John explained gently, “because death, violent death, is the most terrible thing we know.”
“So there is something in what Helen says,” Harry suggested. “If it is the most terrible thing, then the curiosity underlying the detective story must be morbid.”
“To a certain degree, perhaps,” Sir John admitted. “But the motive is really one of human cleverness directed towards the ends of justice.”
“The ends of abstract qualities do not usually provide a thrill, do they?” Harry asked.
Joyce, who saw George’s leadership slipping away, intervened confidently. “What do you say, George?”
“I—I should say I—agree with Harry. You—you can hit a fellow with a marling spike, but you can’t jolly well crumple him up with anything abstract. I mean, can you?”
While they were enjoying this, the door opened and Geoffrey appeared, still limping slightly. He was received with cheers and bowed his acknowledgements.
“Feeling all right again?” Lady Marway asked him in the casual friendly tone obviously meant to change the topic of conversation.
“Never better, thank you.” Geoffrey smiled all round.
“I think it was the fruit cake,” Joyce declared. “Did you have two slabs?”
“I’m afraid I did,” Geoffrey admitted.
“So did George. That explains it.”
“Explains what?” asked Geoffrey.
“Why George didn’t go giddy. He belched.”
“Oh I say!” protested George.
“Yes. Right in the middle of a sentence. Oh terrific. And then instead of apologising for such disgusting behaviour, he roared with laughter.”
“I thought I heard his voice dominating the scene.” Geoffrey was enjoying the fun.
“Now, no more leg-pulls. I’ve had enough,” and George turned to Sir John.
But Joyce wasn’t letting him off as easily as that. “Have you ever heard George on dead bodies?” she asked Geoffrey.
“On what?”
“Dead bodies. You know, the dead body in a thriller.”
“No, I can’t say I have. But there’s nothing I should like better. At least George would have the practical realistic point of view, and that should be refreshing—these days.” He laughed loudly.
“Been pretty wet to-day, hasn’t it, sir?” said George to Sir John.
They were all amused except Helen who replied, “Yes, did you notice the glass?”
“It fell a bump, didn’t it?” said George.
“Yes. It’s still going down. I’ve just tapped it.”
“Have you,” said George. “Rotten, what?”
There was a distant rumble of thunder.
“Ah, after that it may go up again. Do you think there’s any chance?” Geoffrey asked Helen with mock seriousness.
She picked up a cushion.
“You don’t like dead bodies?” he inquired in a loud confidential whisper.
She threw the cushion at him. “No, I don’t. And I think you are all perfectly horrid and callous and disgusting.”
Geoffrey appealed to her: “But, Helen, surely you wouldn’t think me disgusting as a dead body?”
“Geoffrey!” she exclaimed, with a touch of fear.
“Hush, child,” said Lady Marway. “Though I must say I think this talk on dead bodies has gone far enough.”
“But surely it’s the case”, Geoffrey explained, “that the more one discusses a subject the more one gets rid of any fear of it? It’s the dumb fear, the unexpressed emotion, that’s so dreadful a burden. All the psychologists agree on that.”
“Possibly,” said Lady Marway. “But I am not quite sure that the psychologists understand everything.”
“Perhaps not everything,” Geoffrey admitted. “I had an interesting conversation with Maclean. I probed him about what happened when he was a boy. They used to gather in what he called a kailee-house or something like that. They would talk and gossip and sing and tell stories. Sometimes, he said, the ghost stories would be so terrifying that grown men would be afraid to go home in the dark. They believed in them.”
“Pure superstition, I suppose,” observed Harry.
Geoffrey met his eyes. “No. Just ghost stories.”
“The ceilidh-house was quite an institution in those days,” Sir John explained. “Their sort of school or college.”
“And a very good one, too,” said Lady Marway. “For work was done there, real work, like spinning and cloth-making—not all talk.” She put aside her tapestry frame. “I must see about dinner.”
“One up for you!” declared Marjory. “Perhaps I can help,” and she went out with Lady Marway.
“What was your point exactly?” Harry asked Geoffrey.
“That they believed in ghosts—but didn’t investigate them.”
“Naturally.” Harry nodded.
“Naturally?”
“Do you investigate everything you believe in?”
“For the most part, yes,” replied Geoffrey.
“Oh, I don’t.”
“You’re telling us,” said Joyce, picking up a detective novel, for George’s leadership would now be lost.
“I wonder how much of what we believe, we ever do investigate?” Helen asked. “All my education consisted in being told things. And——”
“Yes?” prompted her father.
“Well, the best, the most vivid things, I just happened on. I mean—like——”
“Alick’s fauna and flora,” suggested Geoffrey.
“Yes,” said Helen simply.
Geoffrey gave his short laugh. “You’re an impressionist. You can hear things in the wind.” He paused and they heard the wind whine as if an outside door had opened. “Maclean said there would be stories about the sounds of wood being sawn for a coffin, before ever there was any coffin, of course; ghostly wood and ghostly saws; and ghostly rappings, too, foretelling a death, until you would get so worked up that on the way home if you heard——” Three deliberate raps at the gunroom door interrupted him. There was a moment’s silence, before Geoffrey finished, “You would be so worked up that you would react like George.” For George involuntarily started for the door before Geoffrey with a mocking gesture pulled him up. Sir John said, “That’s Maclean’s knock,” and looked at his watch.
“Well, about to-morrow?” Geoffrey asked.
“Well?” said Sir John, pausing, with a smile, “Feel quite fit?”
“Oh, I think so.” Geoffrey turned it over in his mind. “Only not the far beat this time.”
“We can fix that in the morning, I think.”
Sir John turned the knob and opened the door, saying, “Well, Maclean.” Then he stopped dead and stared straight before him. “Maclean!” he called. He went into the gun-room, where the bracket lamp was lit. The others crowded to the door. There was obviously no one in the gun-room. Sir John traversed it rapidly, opened the outside door, stood on the doorstep and peered around. The darkness had fallen very early. “Maclean!” he called again. Then he stepped
back into the gun-room, and closed the door and wiped the rain from his hair. “That was rather remarkable. I could have sworn it was at that door.”
George was looking around at the walls, but there were neither full-length cupboards nor recesses.
As they re-entered the sitting-room, Geoffrey said, smiling, “I could have sworn it was at that door, too, but it just shows you you can’t always trust your ear. Sound can travel in the most elusive way. You know how difficult it is to spot where a new sound is in a motor-car.”
“Rather!” said George. “I once had the gear-box taken adrift because of a rattle from the fan.”
“Must have been the outside door,” murmured Sir John. “Probably gone round to the kitchen, whoever it was.” Lady Marway and Marjory entered from the hall door. “Did you see Maclean about?” Sir John asked his wife.
“No,” said Lady Marway, looking at him and then at the others. “Why?”
“Nothing. It’s all right. We thought we heard him knock.”
“I can see Helen is still doubtful.” Geoffrey laughed. “You see”, he explained to her, “that’s the way it happens. You’re all worked up to the sound of ghostly rappings, and then if a twig touches the window or an errand boy knocks at the wrong door!…”
