Murder of a Lady (23 page)

Chapter XXXIV

“Something Wrong”

The sweat gleamed on the old man's brow. He wiped it away with his hand. Eoghan rose and gave him more whisky.

“You were standing near the door of the small writing-room, were you not?” Dr. Hailey asked him.

“Yes, I was.”

“And the window of the writing-room was open?”

“Yes, it was open.”

“So that you were bound to hear everything that passed between Inspector Barley and his murderer?”

“I did not hear anything except the sound I have told you about.”

“What you call the death-rattle?”

“It was that, sir; I have heard it before.”

“The second splash followed?”

“Yes, sir. And when I heard it I knew that…”

“I don't want to hear what you knew, only what you heard and did. What did you do?”

“A young woman who was dressed like a policeman came running into the house.”

“I know that. Please answer my question: What did you do yourself?”

The piper shook his head.

“I went back into the kitchen.”

“Because you felt afraid?”

“Because I knew that the day…”

Again the doctor interrupted sharply. He rose and announced that he had no more questions to ask. He glanced at his watch.

“You had better go back to the kitchen. You can keep two or three candles burning till dawn,” he said.

He waited until they had gone. Then he turned to Eoghan.

“At least we know now why Barley went to the place where he was killed,” he said in eager tones. “The next step, clearly, is to discover the truth about this swimmer.”

“I suppose so.”

The young man rose and walked to the fireplace. He stood leaning with one elbow on the mantelpiece, a dejected figure.

“I understand your questions about my childhood now,” he said in low tones. “I understand everything now.”

“Your father was very much under your aunt's influence,” Dr. Hailey said in the accents of a man who feels it incumbent on him to be special pleader.

“Yes.”

“From what I could gather it was such another case as that of your wife and McDonald. The atmosphere of this place broke down your mother's nervous strength.”

“You mean it broke her heart?”

The words came with extraordinary vehemence.

“No, I don't mean that. I feel sure that your father loved your mother in his own, strange way. But he was held in a kind of bondage by your aunt. He could not prevent himself from seeing and feeling what his sister willed that he should see and feel…”

Eoghan started and took a step towards his companion. His face had flushed suddenly:

“Dundas told me,” he exclaimed, “that my aunt had a healed wound on her chest. A wound that must have been inflicted long ago by someone…”

His voice broke. He covered his face with his hands. But a moment later he recovered his self-control.

“You know that it was my mother who inflicted that wound?” he asked in level tones.

Dr. Hailey drew his hand across his brow. “My dear fellow,” he said gently, “your mother was no longer in her right mind.”

“They had driven her mad!”

“Perhaps not intentionally.”

He clutched at his brow with both hands.

“Horrible, horrible,” he cried. “And to think that I was taught to call my aunt ‘Mother'…that I called her ‘Mother'.”

A strong tremor passed over his body.

“That was why my father thought that Oonagh had killed her,” he added. “Because Oonagh is like my mother.”

Suddenly a cry broke from his lips. He seized Dr. Hailey's arm.

“Did he, did my father make the same suggestion to Oonagh as he made to my mother? That she should drown herself?”

“He believed her to be guilty, remember.”

“Oh, I might have guessed it.”

“My dear fellow, as you know the evidence was very strong.”

The rebuke was spoken gently but exerted its effect. Eoghan's eyes fell. He shook his head.

“Angus was right,” he said, “there's something wrong with this house.”

Chapter XXXV

The Chill of Death

A moment later both men started and remained tense, listening. Shuffling feet were approaching the open window of the room. Dr. Hailey walked to the window and reached it just as a tall figure in a black dressing-gown emerged from the darkness. It was Duchlan.

“Is Eoghan with you?” the old man asked.

“Yes.”

“I desire to speak to him. I'll come round by the writing-
room.”

He gathered his gown about him and disappeared. Then they heard him crossing the hall. As he stood in the doorway the colour of his dressing-gown made painful contrast with the faded whiteness of his cheeks. His features were haggard and his long eyelids had fallen over his eyes, as if he might no longer face a world that had overthrown him. His son rose at his coming.

“Sit down, Eoghan.”

The withered hand made a gesture that was a plea rather than a command. Duchlan sat down himself and leaned his head on the back of the chair exposing his stringy, vulture-like throat.

“Sleep has gone from me,” he said. “To-night I cannot rest.”

The slight affectation of his tone and language did not hide his agitation. Dr. Hailey glanced at Eoghan and saw that the son shared fully the distress of the father.

“You have no idea, I suppose,” Duchlan asked the doctor, “how this man Barley met his death?”

“None.”

“These murders are inexplicable, is it not so?”

“We have not yet discovered the explanation of them.”

The long eyelids closed.

“You will not discover any explanation. And if you go on seeking, sorrow will be added to sorrow.”

Duchlan's fingers began to beat on the arms of his chair. The muscles round his mouth were twitching.

“God is just,” he declared in tones of awe. He turned to his son. “I feel that my end is approaching; before it comes there is something that I must tell you.”

He raised himself in his chair as he spoke. Eoghan recoiled.

“I know it already,” he said.

“That's impossible.”

“Why and how my mother met her death.”

Silence filled the room. The song of the burn, now in the ebb became a deep crooning like a mother's song to her babe, came up to them.

“Your mother,” Duchlan said at last, “died of diphtheria.”

“You know, sir, that my mother drowned herself in the burn?”

The old man did not flinch.

“That is the other part of the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was an epidemic of diphtheria, during which many children died, Christina's son among them. Your mother insisted on helping with the nursing and contracted the disease herself. As you know, diphtheria sometimes attacks the brain…” Duchlan sighed deeply. “What followed, therefore, was due to the promptings of a disordered mind.”

He paused. His breathing had become laboured. Eoghan remained in a posture of tense expectancy.

“But that is not all. Far be it from me at such an hour as this to hide from you any longer the burden of guilt which lies upon my heart. If it was disease which finally wrought your mother's death, there were other causes, operating through weeks and months of sorrow, which led up to that tragedy. I am here to confess that my own weakness was the chief of these causes.”

“Please don't go on, father.”

Duchlan raised his hand.

“I beg of you to hear me.” He tugged at the neck of his gown, opening it wider. “From my childhood, I suffered a weakness of character which I found it impossible to overcome. I was timid when I would have been brave, fearful when resolution was required of me. It was my calamity that the qualities I lacked were possessed in fullest measure by my sister, your Aunt Mary. In consequence, she acquired, from the beginning, a dominion over me which I was unable to resist. She is dead; that dominion lives so that now I feel powerless to conduct my life without her. Your mother possessed an excellent strength of mind, but her strength was inferior to that of my sister; our marriage consequently was doomed.”

He paused. His fingers continued their ceaseless drum-
ming.

“When she was eighteen your aunt became engaged to be married to an Englishman and I felt myself suddenly and terribly alone. I went to stay with an old friend in Dublin and there I met your mother.”

The old man sighed deeply.

“She was a lovely girl, as lovely as Oonagh. Her people had a small place in the west, by the sea. A lonely, desolate place where the bogs stretched for miles like a desert under the wild skies. She had been brought up there and had lived free of all restraint with her dogs and horses. The sea was in her eyes, and the love of the sea was in her heart. I felt as I looked at her that she had discovered the secret which, all my life, I had been seeking, namely, release from spiritual bondage. If I could only capture this wild, wonderful creature, she would teach me the way of her strength and courage and deliver me from my fear. I tried to tell her what was in my heart and I saw that she pitied me. It seemed so easy, in that land of hers, to possess one's own soul and live out one's dream. We fell in love with each other…”

He broke off. They saw a shiver pass over his body.

“She called me her ‘dour Scotsman' and promised to make a wild Irishman of me. I stayed on at her home, week after week, forgetting everything but my love of her. This place and its associations became a dim memory, like the evening memory of a distressful dream. We needn't, I thought, spend very much of our time at Duchlan. I can let the place and we can come and live in Ireland.”

His voice had developed a rhythmic quality. As he bent and swayed in his chair he looked, Dr. Hailey thought, like some old bard singing of times long buried in the earth's womb. Tears had gathered in his eyes; they crept down his cheeks, going from wrinkle to wrinkle.

“That was treason; because my father had vowed that no stranger should ever dwell in Duchlan. But even my father had lost his power over me in that wilderness. I had fallen under the spell of your mother's folk, who cared nothing for the ideas which live in this place. Your grandfather and your grandmother, your uncles and aunts were all of the same way of thinking. They belonged to life, to the present, to the Nature which surrounded and nourished them, and to each other. They were as generous as they were brave and their hospitality had no end. It never occurred to one of them to ask questions and whatever I said about myself was accepted as the whole truth. I ceased to feel lonely. I began to be thankful that my sister had got engaged. In other words, I surrendered myself completely to your mother's influence.

“We were married a few months later. When we returned from our honeymoon your aunt's engagement had been broken off. She begged that she might be allowed to remain here for a few months until she was able to find a home elsewhere. I will not hide from you that, when I yielded to that request, I knew that I was making a sacrifice of your mother.”

He sighed again. “And so it proved. My sister had broken off her engagement, as she confessed to me, because she could neither endure to leave this place nor to enter another family. Naturally, your mother resented her intrusion on our married life and wished to be quit of her. A duel began between them, of which I was the helpless and unwilling spectator. Both appealed to me daily. Soon, very soon, the strongest character asserted itself.

“Your mother had a quick temper but with it a fatal generosity. Mary possessed neither the one nor the other. I used to marvel at the way in which she achieved her ends. She was as sleepless as a spider and as calculating. Everywhere, webs, webs, webs, until her victims were bound with gossamer that was stronger than steel. Violence could gain nothing against that subtlety.”

He leaned forward. His voice grew louder.

“For I was violent too; it is the way of the weak. I loved your mother and sometimes I dared to rebel. Sometimes I stormed and raged against the tyranny which threatened us; it was like the rage of a young child against the nurse who takes away its playthings. Then you were born.”

Duchlan's eyes closed again. He remained silent for a few minutes, motionless, like a figure carved out of old ivory. Then his fingers began to drum once more on the carved wood.

“Your birth,” he continued, “made everything much worse because you are the heir. Your mother felt that you belonged to her; your aunt that you belonged to the Gregors. Your aunt was determined to take you away from your mother and in addition she wanted you because she had no child of her own. Thus all the furies which dwell in the hearts of women were unleashed.” He made a despairing gesture. “The tide of hatred flowed and submerged me. I felt that my marriage was drifting to utter catastrophe and yet I possessed no power to save it. Your mother grew to hate and then to despise me. Her natural goodness was turned to a scorn that stung without stimulating. One day she threatened to leave me unless I ordered your aunt out of my house. Her anger and bitterness were terrible and for the moment they prevailed. I told my sister that a new arrangement was imperatively necessary. She took to her bed and became ill so that the doctor had to be summoned. He told me that she was very ill and that, if I persisted in my plan to make her leave her home, he would not be responsible for the consequences. By that time your mother's anger had cooled and her generosity had asserted itself. Your aunt stayed; our marriage was wrecked.”

He held up his hand, forbidding interruption.

“At the moment when my wife's body was carried into this room a chill of death struck my heart. I had heard the splash of her fall into the water. They laid her body on that couch.” He pointed to the piece of furniture and continued to keep his finger stretched towards it. “There were little pools of water on the floor and they grew bigger and became joined to each other. Water was running in thin streams from her hair and from her elbows, because they had crossed her arms on her breast. Angus and the men who had helped him to carry her up from the burn went away and left me here, alone with her. But I felt nothing…nothing but curiosity to watch the little streams and pools of water. I counted them; there were eleven streams and seven pools. Eleven and seven. Then I thought about the last moments we had spent together the night before, after the wounding of your aunt, and I repeated aloud what I had said to her: ‘You have killed my sister, you have ruined my life and my son's life. There is only one thing left for you to do. It will be high tide at…' Well, she had done it. But it seemed unreal and far away like something one has read about long ago and forgotten and remembered again. So I called to her to open her eyes…”

His head shook, nodding assent, perhaps, to some remote voice of his spirit.

“I thought: is she dead? And I kept repeating that word, ‘Dead', over and over again so as to recall the meaning of it. But it had no meaning. Then it occurred to me, suddenly, that all the difficulties and troubles of my life were ended. If Mary got well, and the doctor expected her to get well, because the knife had missed her heart, we should have the house to ourselves again, as in the old days. You see, I had given my mind and my will wholly to my sister. It was with her eyes that I was looking at my wife's dead face.” He plucked again at the neck of his gown. ‘‘Now I have no eyes but hers, for you, for this house, for our family. When I thought that Oonagh was a partner in Mary's death I spoke the same words to her as I had spoken to your mother: ‘You have killed my sister…It will be high tide…'”

“Stop, father!”

Eoghan had jumped to his feet. He stood with quivering features and clenched fists. The old man bowed his head.

“I ask your forgiveness.”

“Why should you tell me this? Why should you tell me this?”

Dr. Hailey saw a shudder pass over Duchlan's body. The old man faced his son.

“To give you back to your mother,” he said simply. “That is all that is left to me now; to give you back to your mother.”

Duchlan rose as he spoke. Again he pointed to the couch.

“I killed your mother; I would have killed your wife. What are these other crimes compared to my crime?”

He walked to the couch and stood gazing down at it as if he saw his wife once more as he had seen her with the water dripping from her hair and her elbows. But his face expressed nothing. He had spoken the truth when he said that the chill of death was entered into his spirit. Eoghan followed him with horrified eyes until he left the room.