Murder of a Lady (2 page)

Chapter III

Brother and Sister

Dr. Hailey asked Mr. McLeod to confirm his opinion of the scale. The Procurator Fiscal did so without hesitation.

“Yes, it's a fish's scale, a herring's. There's no other scale of any fish that looks like that, as any man or woman on Loch Fyne-side will tell you.”

“If that is so we shall have to look for a weapon with a use in the herring fishery.”

He spoke with an undertone of excitement in his voice. Mr. McLeod agreed.

“It looks like it. It looks like it. The fishermen use an axe sometimes, I believe, though I've never had much to do with them. It's a wonder there's no more of these scales. You'll get hundreds of them on your fingers if you so much as handle a herring.”

“Still, the blade had probably been cleaned.”

“It's very difficult to clean away these scales. You're apt to miss them because they lie close to whatever they touch.”

Mr. McLeod's agitation was increasing. The discovery of the herring-scale seemed to have shaken him almost as much as the discovery of the murder itself, possibly because so many people in Argyllshire earn their living directly or indirectly from the Loch Fyne herring fishery. Dr. Hailey opened a penknife and very gently and carefully lifted the scale on its blade. He carried the scale to the dressing-table where the lamp was burning.

“There will be no objection, I take it,” he asked, “to my retaining possession of this? Happily, you saw it in position and can confirm the fact of its presence.”

He laid the knife down as he spoke and took his watch from his waistcoat pocket. He opened his watch. He was about to place the scale in the lid when Mr. McLeod objected that so important a piece of evidence ought to be shown to Inspector Dundas.

“I think, Doctor,” he protested, “that it will be well if you leave the scale in the room here, for Dundas to see. He's a pernickety body that doesn't thank you for giving him advice, and if we remove any piece of the evidence the chances are that he'll make himself disagreeable.”

“Very well.”

Dr. Hailey put the scale in one of the small drawers of the dressing-table. He closed the drawer.

“I should like,” he said, “to open the window again before we go downstairs. I saw a boat moored near the house.”

“The motor-launch. It belongs to Duchlan's son, Eoghan.”

When the curtain was drawn the moonlight made the lamp seem feeble and garish. Dr. Hailey threw up the window and looked out over the quiet waters of Loch Fyne, across which a silver streak that moved and shimmered below him led into the mouth of a burn. He could hear the gurgling of this stream as it ran round the side of the castle. He leaned out of the window. A wide flower-bed illuminated now by the light from the study window below, separated the carriage-way from the walls. The carriage-way ended at the front door, to the left of the window. Further still to the left, a steep bank fell to the burn.

The boat was anchored off the burn's mouth; its white hull gleamed dully in the moonlight and made sharp contrast with the black bulk of a jetty built just within the little estuary.

“Put the lamp out, will you?” he asked his companion.

He turned, when McLeod had obeyed him, from the loveliness without to the fear within. Miss Gregor's white hair shone in the moonlight with an added lustre that made her nightdress seem dull. In the dark setting of her chamber she looked remote, ghostly, pathetic. Mr. McLeod took the lamp, opened the door and went out into the corridor. He relighted the lamp.

When Dr. Hailey joined him he was holding the lamp in both hands. The glass funnel shook, making a small, rattling sound.

“I can't bear to look at yon poor woman,” he confessed. “Did you notice the moonlight on her hair? I believe she was praying in her last moments.”

He glanced about him. The doctor feared that the lamp would slip from his shaking hands.

“There's an awful eerie feeling about this house. I did hear once that it was haunted.”

He seemed reluctant to leave the scene of the murder, as if the horror he was experiencing gave him some macabre kind of enjoyment. The association in his mind of religious ideas and gross superstition was, perhaps, the explanation. After all, Dr. Hailey reflected, it has taken mankind all the centuries of its history to effect a separation between the spiritual and the demonic.

“I'm afraid,” he said, “that Miss Gregor had but little time after she suffered that blow.”

“Oh, sir, sir. ‘In the middle of life we are in death.'”

Mr. McLeod spoke the familiar words lovingly, nodding his head to give them emphasis. He belonged, apparently, to that considerable company of elderly men who find security and strength in accustomed phrases. But his fears were too lively to be dispersed for any length of time.

“It's an awful thought,” he exclaimed, “that the hand of death may be here, within these walls, at this moment.”

He began to gibber. He glanced about him like a dog watching shadows. His lively imagination made disturbing play with his features.

“Aye,” he repeated, “Mary Gregor was on her knees during that last awful moment. Her strength was ever in prayer.”

His voice fell. It had come to his mind apparently, that the dead woman's plea had not been granted, for he added in tones that carried a heavy burden of fear:

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.”

His head was shaking in the manner of a man possessed of information which he is in no mind to disclose. The lamp began to rattle again. Dr. Hailey took it from him.

They went downstairs to Duchlan's smoking-room. Dr. Hailey had a quick impression of an antique dealer's showroom. The place seemed to be full of stuffed animals and antlers and old oak. The old man rose to receive them and presented them to arm-chairs with a ceremonious wave of his hand. Either he was dazed by the calamity which had befallen him or he was so schooled in courtly manners as to be incapable of forgetting them.

“Well, Doctor?” he asked, in a clear, rather shrill voice.

“I'm afraid I can offer no enlightenment so far.”

Dr. Hailey shook his head. He was observing the room and its owner with an attention of which the vacant expression in his eyes gave no indication. Between the bedroom upstairs and this overcrowded apartment there was, he recognized, an affinity that deserved consideration. Both rooms revealed confusion of mind; in both the determination to cling to everything which the occupants had ever possessed was apparent. Duchlan kept the pelts and horns of the beasts and birds he had killed; his sister kept her samplers and good works. Both brother and sister seemed to set value on ugliness and discomfort. The chair in which he was sitting hurt the doctor's back; those he had seen in Miss Gregor's room were equally ungenerous as they were equally unlovely. But generations of Gregors had sat in them. Duchlan Castle, it seemed, contained the cast-off clothing of generations.

“My dear sister,” Duchlan said, “was without an enemy in this world. It is not conceivable that anyone can have borne a grudge against her.” He smoothed his kilt on his knees with a gesture that caressed that garment. “Believe me, her days were days of service.”

He spoke with the assurance of an officiating priest. His face was set in an expressionless mask. But a trickle of blood had come to his cheeks.

“Her ways were ways of blessedness,” he added. “And her paths were peace.”

Silence received this tribute. Dr. Hailey felt uncomfortable. No doubt the old man meant what he said but his pride of family was so unashamed that he gave the impression that in praising his sister he was also praising himself.

“Will you tell the doctor all that you know, Duchlan?” Mr. McLeod said.

“It isn't much, I fear. Our lives were not eventful.” Duchlan turned to his visitor and, at the same time, advanced his hands to grasp the ends of the carved arms of his chair. His hands were thin and white; and he raised and lowered his fingers in a way that recalled the movements of a spider's legs. “My dear sister and I,” he stated, “dined together as usual last night. I thought she looked rather tired, for she had been very busy all day.”

He paused to adjust the silver ornament which was attached to his waistbelt and which, Dr. Hailey saw, bore a coat of arms. This act, too, was caressing, as if a deep satisfaction resided in the possession of chieftainship. “My sister,” he went on, “told me that she had a headache. I suggested, before we went into dinner, that we might, for once, dispense with the services of our piper during the meal. But she rejected the idea. ‘My dear Hamish,' she said, ‘surely you remember that our father had the pipes played at dinner even on the night of his death.' Our Highland customs were dear to her both for themselves and by reason of their associations. I knew that she was suffering greatly, but she welcomed Angus, my piper, with perfect grace, and, when his playing finished, rose and handed him the loving cup. I'm sure he knew and appreciated her courage. That, Dr. Hailey, was my dear sister on the last night of her life, thoughtful and careful of others; true to the traditions and customs of our family.”

Tears gleamed in Duchlan's eyes. He wiped them away.

“We were alone at the meal, she and I, because my daughter-in-law was feeling unwell—and my son had not yet returned. Believe me, I felt my mind carried back to the days when my father, the late Duchlan, used to occupy my place and when he seemed to his children a being of supernatural goodness. Mary's thoughts had been moving in unison with mine, for she told me that she believed our father was the noblest man who ever trod this earth. ‘His house,' she said, ‘is full of his goodness.' Then she spoke about my little grandson. How earnestly she hoped that he would prove worthy of the traditions of which he is heir. ‘If only it can be impressed on him,' she said, ‘that there is no privilege except that of serving.' The coming of the little lad to stay with us a year ago, while his father was stationed in Malta, was a supreme joy to her, since it gave her an opportunity of influencing him.

“Believe me, she had made the very most of that opportunity. It was her sincere conviction that the basis of character must always be religion. ‘The fear of the Lord,' she used to say again and again, ‘is the beginning of wisdom.' She laboured to inculcate that fear in the child's heart. It was given to her, as to few others, to be able to penetrate the childish mind. I think the perfect simplicity of her own character was the explanation. She could suggest a whole world of ideas with a gesture. Her spirit delighted in love and beauty; but her thoughts were never suffered to escape from the control of conscience. If she believed in mercy, she never shut her eyes to justice. A child, she used to urge, must be able to count upon the divine attributes as upon the light and the air. He must learn to know all the loving-kindness of which the human heart is capable, but he must learn at the same time to recognize that even love is conditioned by righteousness. The texts which were most frequently on her lips were those in which testimony is borne to the holiness that limits and purifies even the most gracious of our human feelings.”

Duchlan's face became grave. He raised his hand in a gesture which was part benediction, part protest.

“I will not disguise from you,” he continued, “that these views of my dear sister were not welcome to all who had the duty of caring for the child laid upon them. In these modern times there is, everywhere, a relaxing of discipline. Sentimental ideas, corrupt in their essence, have too often replaced the old ideas of justice and responsibility. Children to-day hear too much about forgiveness, about mercy, about love, about kindness; they hear too little about the consequences which must issue from every breach of the moral law, however trivial. We are moving far away from the austere virtues of our fathers. It was Mary's task, her sacred mission, to do what lay in her power to correct that error.”

The gravity of his tones was unrelieved by any inflection so that what he said sounded like a recitation carefully committed to memory. So strong was this impression that Dr. Hailey ventured to suggest that modern ideas were not necessarily wrong because they were based on the good rather than on the evil which is in human nature. He watched the old man as he spoke and saw him recoil sharply.

“My dear sister had a boundless faith in the goodness of human nature.” Duchlan retorted. “But that faith was based on her deep religious conviction that man is born in sin. She hated evil too fervently to make terms with it, or to pretend that it was mere error. ‘I have no patience,' she often told me, ‘with the namby-pamby sentimentalism that excuses every fault in the name of love.' When she said that she always quoted the text: ‘Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth'.”

Duchlan's tones were passionate, as if the slight criticism he had encountered had awakened doubts in his own spirit that must, at all cost, be suppressed. He waved his skinny hand.

“Believe me,” he added, “Mary's faith was a tower of strength. Again and again I found help and comfort there when my own faith wavered. Her character was built on the rock. She was steadfast, immovable. My own nature had never approached the degree of resistance to evil which was her outstanding merit. But she gave me strength.”

The old man wiped his eyes again.

“You will forgive these small details,” he apologized. “Since you have been so very kind as to help me in this calamity, I feel that I owe it to you, and to her memory, that you should know a little of my dear Mary's character and life.” He bowed his head. “She went up to her room soon after dinner. Her maid, Christina, brought her a glass of milk about ten o'clock. She always drank a glass of milk just before going to sleep. Christina left her at a quarter past ten. She was then lying down and seemed, already, to have fallen asleep. Christina blew out the single candle with which the room was lighted.”