Lament for a Maker (19 page)

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 – ?’

‘Dunwinnie.’

‘Your business is there?’

‘
My
business, my dear Clanclacket, is there or thereabouts.’ For a few minutes the emphasis of my remark did hold him up, but we were scarcely through North Queensferry before he was employing another tactic.

‘Um, yes – Dunwinnie. A bonny spot. I don’t know, though, that I know many people in that neighbourhood. Do you know the Frasers of Mervie?’

‘No.’

‘The Grants of Kildoon?’

‘I believe I have met Colonel Grant. But we are not acquainted.’

‘The Guthries of Erchany?’

‘I have never, I think, met a member of that family.’

‘Old Lady Anderson of Dunwinnie Lodge?’

‘She was a friend of my father’s. But our firm has never done business for her and I do not know that we have met.’

Clanclacket relapsed for some minutes now into baffled silence. I had got past the danger-point, I congratulated myself, by a neat formula enough. Presently he tried another shot. ‘I wonder about the other families thereabout. Do you know who they are?’

With great satisfaction I replied: ‘I am acquainted with none of them.’

That – as Aeneas is accustomed to put it – really fixed him. And balked in his endeavours to acquire information he presently fell back on imparting it. ‘About the Frasers of Mervie,’ he said. ‘I could tell you of certain curious episodes–’

This is Clanclacket’s customary proem to extended dissertation; for over an hour we pursued the eccentricities of the Frasers of Mervie and all their kin about the globe. In these matters Clanclacket is notoriously encyclopaedic and as the Frasers began to show signs of exhaustion it occurred to me that this knowledgeableness, if tactfully exploited, might have its immediate utility for me. ‘Clanclacket,’ I said as if with sudden interest, ‘the Grants of Kildoon – do you know much about them?’

He looked at me suspiciously. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No! Nothing at all. But if you had happened to ask me about the Guthries of Erchany–’

I endeavoured to assume the identical expression with which I had listened to the vagaries of the Frasers, though with quite other feelings. My knowledge of Mr Guthrie of Erchany, the dead man to whose late seat I was now travelling, was confined to the intelligence, gleaned from a corner of that morning’s
Scotsman
, that he had fallen from a tower on the night of Christmas Eve in circumstances that awaited investigation. Any information that I could glean from the anecdotal habit of Clanclacket as to the character and connections of this unfortunate person was likely to be serviceable. I confess to stimulating a yawn as I asked indifferently: ‘They are interesting folk?’

‘They have been interesting folk for centuries! Take Andrew Guthrie, known as the Gory Guthrie, who was killed at Solway Moss–’

There was no doubt, I reflected as some forty minutes later my companion’s chronicle was approaching the fringes of the eighteenth century, that these Guthries of Erchany were interesting folk enough; it was doubtful whether one could find a more picturesque record among the minor families of Scotland. But my interests were on the present occasion contemporary and I possessed my soul in patience until Clanclacket should come down to the present generation and its immediate predecessors. As evening fell and we ran further north through a countryside submerged in snow I was not inclined to feel the mission on which I was engaged the less uncomfortable and wearisome; nevertheless, I almost regretted the speed at which we were travelling, being apprehensive lest we should arrive at Perth before we arrived at Mr Ranald Guthrie.

‘…And take Ranald Guthrie, the present laird. Once more, the same morbid constitution – I believe in an aggravated form. I believe’ – and here Clanclacket sank his voice and glanced into the corridor to make sure he was not overheard – ‘I believe he is artistically inclined.’

‘Dear me!’

‘But we must be accurate, Wedderburn; we must always be accurate. I hasten to add that this inclination may be a thing of the past.’

‘I am sure it is, Clanclacket.’

‘Eh – what’s that? You know nothing about it, man. I’m telling you that as a lad this Ranald ran away from home and went on the stage.’

‘Ah!’

‘Exactly. A thoroughly unstable stock. But we must be fair. He was then exceedingly young. And he was reclaimed. After some months – a year maybe – he was reclaimed and, of course, sent abroad. Colonial life was plainly the only thing. They chose Australia; it has the advantage over Canada in such cases of being three or four times as far away. But Ranald didn’t like it. On first seeing Fremantle harbour he endeavoured to commit suicide.’

‘Dear me! I suppose this is all ancient gossip now? It would be difficult to have that attempted suicide, for instance, sworn to?’

‘Really Wedderburn, you should know I never gossip. These are facts confidentially communicated. Long-past history though the incident be, and remote as is the site of it, I could as it happens put my finger on an eyewitness tomorrow. Ranald Guthrie, I say, attempted to drown himself and his life was fortunately saved by the bravery of his elder brother.’

‘So a brother went to Australia with him?’

‘Ian Guthrie. He too had given a little trouble. Not, I think, anything serious: I have no evidence of artistic temperament in Ian. Possibly merely a matter of young women; we must be fair. And I believe that no scandal circulated. Both these brothers were generally thought to have gone abroad because they were reluctant to enter the ministry. Of course when Ranald inherited he came home.’

‘Ian had died?’

‘Yes. There was some tragedy. I believe both went prospecting or exploring and that Ian got lost. His body was later recovered by a rescue party. Ranald, who is as I say an unstable person, was upset.’

‘Upset?’

‘
Greatly
upset. When he came home he lived in a very peculiar manner. I understand that he still does and that he is, in fact, a miser and a recluse.’

‘Was.’

‘I beg your pardon, Wedderburn?’

‘Ranald Guthrie has just died. And here is Perth. I am afraid I must hurry. Pray, Clanclacket, keep
Blackwood’s
. Goodbye.’

From Perth to Dunwinnie the railway line had as yet been but imperfectly cleared of snow and as a result my train ran over an hour late. Once arrived, moreover, I had the utmost difficulty in securing a conveyance the driver of which was willing to undertake the perils of a night drive to Kinkeig. I was told that Dr Noble had been through, as also the police and the sheriff, and that word had come back of the sheriff’s judging it necessary to hold an inquiry into the manner of Mr Guthrie’s death. I saw that it was necessary to push forward and, having secured some modification – though a mere
solacium
indeed – of the first exorbitant tariff proposed, I succeeded in reaching Kinkeig without notable hazard just short of eleven o’clock. It is the merest hamlet and I counted myself fortunate in securing simple but adequate accommodation at an inn laconically known as the Arms.

My client, whom I supposed to be the young Mr Gylby, was still at Erchany and thither I proposed to proceed – I had better, perhaps, say penetrate – on the following morning. Precise information would then be available. Meanwhile I did not think it wise altogether to neglect the voice of rumour. I proceeded to the parlour – the bar being of course closed – and rang the bell. The mistress of the house, a Mrs Roberts, answered, and to her I said: ‘Would you be so good as to bring me–’

‘What you’ll be in need of,’ interrupted Mrs Roberts firmly, ‘is a nice cup of malted milk.’

It is a maxim of sound forensic practice that to give play to the eccentricities of a witness’ character is the surest technique for landing fish. I said: ‘That is exactly what I was going to ask for. Please let me have a nice cup of – ah – malted milk.’

Mrs Roberts hurried away and it is proper to testify that the potation with which she returned was not unpalatable. Moreover she was disposed to be talkative, and for the next half-hour I listened to information about the affair at Erchany which in places made me open my eyes very wide indeed. Little more than twenty-four hours before I had been absorbed in the tranquil study of in-field and out-field in the eighteenth century. Now I was confronted with a story having all the characteristics of what students call the Senecan Drama: revenge, murder, mutilations and a ghost. Must I confess to a trick of my nephew Aeneas’ temper coming upon me as I listened, and to an unwonted quickening of the pulse of the senior partner of Wedderburn, Wedderburn and McTodd? I have always felt a curious attraction in romances of detection – a species of popular fiction which bears much the same relation to the world of actual crime as does pastoral poetry to the realities of rural economy – and now as I listened to the good Mrs Roberts I seemed to be faced with a rank confusion of kinds. Mr Guthrie’s death was actual enough, but it was set in just such a context of fantasy as might have been woven round it by the operation of a wayward and irresponsible literary mind. Or perhaps it was rather the folk-mind, with its instinct for bizarre elaboration, that I had to deal with. In listening to Mrs Roberts I was listening to the voice of rumour, perhaps to the lingering myth-making faculty of simple people. Revenge, murder, mutilations and a ghost – these, it might be, were but adding one more to the romantic legends of the Guthries with which Clanclacket had been entertaining me earlier that day.

Revenge and murder. A certain Neil Lindsay, a young man of loose principles and a cruel heart, had taken upon himself to revive and prosecute an immemorial family feud with the Guthries. This he had done by hurling Ranald Guthrie from a high tower at midnight on Christmas Eve, stealing a large sum of gold, and making off with a young woman variously reported as his enemy’s ward, niece, daughter and mistress.

Mutilations and a ghost. Not content with these abominable deeds the young man Lindsay had paused in his flight to inflict a most horrid outrage upon Guthrie’s dead body, chopping a number of fingers from the corpse in macabre requital of some savage incident between the families five hundred years ago. And this lurid and perverted deed was in its turn crying out for vengeance; at the midnight of Christmas Day Ranald Guthrie’s ghost had been abroad in Kinkeig, waving its maimed hands to the moon and crying out awfully of that hell from which it had been a few hours released to walk the earth.

I have here compressed the narrative of Mrs Roberts into a few sentences; rumour is invariably diffuse. But I was, as I have intimated, curiously compelled by her wandering recital; the story had a measure of imaginative coherence which evoked something like conviction; I found a positive effort was required to view it critically – to note, for instance, the interesting rapidity with which the legend had been enriched with supernatural accretions. As a humble student of folklore I thought this aspect of Kinkeig’s reactions to the death of its laird worth some further inquiry. ‘Mrs Roberts,’ I asked, ‘have many folk seen the ghost?’

‘Faith, yes.’

‘You yourself?’

‘No, faith!’ Mrs Roberts looked quite scared at the mere suggestion.

‘Then who?’

Mrs Roberts considered. ‘The first would be Mistress McLaren, the smith’s wife. The pump in her yard was frozen fast and she was going down the road for water when she saw the uncouthy thing right afore her in the moonlight. She gave a scraitch poor creature, that was heard by half Kinkeig. And you couldn’t have better proof than that.’ Mrs Roberts must have detected a sceptical temper in my inquiries, for she produced Mrs McLaren’s conclusive scream with a good deal of triumph.

‘No indeed, Mrs Roberts. And what happened then?’

‘The McLaren body was just outside Ewan Bell the sutor’s. She ran in to him fair terrified and he took her home.’

‘And did Mr Bell see the ghost?’

‘That he did not.’

‘Does Mrs McLaren often see ghosts?’

My hostess was much struck by this question. ‘Fancy your asking that, sir! A Highland body she is and second-sighted; it’s her that says she foresaw the Erchany daftie come louping through the snow with news of the Guthrie’s death. And it was her that knew the Guthrie had the evil eye.’