Murder of a Lady (5 page)

Chapter VIII

Husband and Wife

The room grew silent. Oonagh pushed aside her heavy fringe, and revealed a high brow.

“Why did you go to Miss Gregor's room?” Dr. Hailey asked her.

The girl glanced at her husband before she replied.

“Aunt Mary and I had quarrelled before dinner. I wanted to talk to her.”

“To make up your quarrel?”

“Yes.”

The monosyllable came firmly.

Dr. Hailey nodded.

“Duchlan told me,” he said, “that you had gone to bed before dinner because you weren't feeling well.”

“I wasn't feeling well. But that was the result of my quarrel with Aunt Mary.”

The doctor rose and took out his snuff-box.

“My position,” he said, “is a little difficult. I told Inspector Dundas that I wouldn't try to double his work on the case. If I ask any more questions I'm afraid I shall be breaking that promise. My object in bringing you here, as you know, wasn't to get information but to give it. I wanted you both to realize that this case presents very great difficulties which will certainly tax the resources of the police to the utmost.”

He took a pinch of snuff. Eoghan asked.

“Why did you want us to realize that?”

“So that your wife might feel able to return with you to Duchlan.”

“I confess I don't follow.”

Dr. Hailey glanced at Oonagh. She shook her head. He took more snuff to avoid making an immediate reply, and then said:

“I fancy it is better to tell the truth. Your wife was trying to drown herself when I rescued her.”

Eoghan jumped up.

“What!” The blood ebbed out of his cheeks. “Is this true?” he demanded of Oonagh.

“Yes.”

“That you tried to—to drown yourself?”

“Yes.”

He turned fearful eyes to Dr. Hailey.

“I insist on knowing the whole truth. Why is my wife with you at this hour? How does my father know that she's with you?”

“I can't answer the last question. The answer to the first is that I saw her jump from the jetty, and ran to her help. It's possible your father may have observed us.”

The young man strode to his wife and seized her hand.

“Why did you do it?” he cried.

There was anguish in his voice.

Oonagh remained bending over the fire, unresponsive and limp. When he repeated his question, she bowed her head, but she did not answer. The doctor sat down.

“I think I can supply the answer,” he said. “Your wife feared that you had played a part in the murder of your aunt.”

“I don't understand you.”

“Her suicide was sure to be interpreted as a confession of her own guilt. She was shielding you.”

Eoghan started.

“Oonagh, is that true?”

There was no reply. The doctor waited a moment and then said to Eoghan:

“It wasn't an unreasonable fear, perhaps. No more unreasonable, certainly, than the fear under which you are labouring at this moment, namely, that your wife's attempt to drown herself was a confession of guilt.” His voice became gentle: “What's the use of pretence at a time such as this? The more deeply we love, the quicker must be our fear, seeing that each of us is liable, under provocation, to lose self-control. Why I told you about my examination of your aunt's wound was that you might realize that it cannot have been inflicted by a woman. Your wife did not kill your aunt. Your fear that she may have done so proves, surely, that you, too, are guiltless.”

He paused. A look of inexpressible relief had appeared on Oonagh's face. She stretched out her hand to her husband, who grasped it.

“You have reasons, presumably, both of you, for your fears,” Dr. Hailey added. “I can only speculate about these; I note, in passing, that you are no longer sharing a bedroom. Whatever your reasons may be, they do not invalidate my argument.”

He turned to Eoghan:

“Take John MacCallien's car and drive your wife home. The door of the garage isn't locked.”

Chapter IX

A Heat Wave

Dr. Hailey heard nothing officially about the murder of Miss Gregor for several days after his visit to Duchlan. But news of the activity of Inspector Dundas was not lacking. That young man, in his own phrase, was leaving no stone unturned. He had surrounded the castle with policemen; he had forbidden the inhabitants to leave the grounds on any pretext whatever; and he had commandeered motor-cars and boats for his own service. The household staff, or so it was reported, was reduced to a state of panic. Nor were his activities confined to Duchlan; everyone of the two thousand villagers of Ardmore lay under the heavy cloud of his suspicion.

“And yet,” Dr. McDonald of Ardmore told Dr. Hailey, “he hasn't advanced a step. He has found no motive for the murder; suspicion attaches to nobody, and he possesses not even the remotest idea of how the murderer entered or left Miss Gregor's bedroom.”

Dr. McDonald made this statement with a degree of bitterness which indicated how grievously he himself had suffered at Dundas's hands.

“The man's a fusser,” he added. “Nothing must escape him. And so everything escapes him. He's always trying to hold a bunch of sparrows in one hand while he plucks them with the other.”

The Ardmore doctor smiled at his metaphor.

“Lowlanders such as Dundas,” he said, “always work on the assumption that we Highlanders are fools or knaves, or both. They invariably try to bamboozle us—to frighten us. Neither of these methods gets them anywhere because the Highlander is brave as well as subtle. Flora Campbell, the housemaid at Duchlan, asked Dundas if he was going to arrest all the herring in the Loch till he counted their scales. The fishermen call herring-scales ‘Dundases' now.”

“Sometimes that method succeeds, you know,” Dr. Hailey said gently.

“Oh, one might forgive the method if it wasn't for the man. Not that he's a bad fellow really. One of the fishermen lost his temper with him and called him ‘a wee whipper-snapper' to his face and he took that in good part. But you can't help feeling that he's waiting and watching all the time to get his teeth into you.”

Dr. McDonald unscrewed his pipe and began to clean it with a spill of paper, an operation which promised badly from the outset.

“I smoke too much,” he remarked, “but it keeps my nerves quiet. Dundas's voice is hard to bear when your nerves aren't as steady as they might be.”

He withdrew the spill and tried to blow through the pipe. He looked rather uneasy but seemed to find comfort in his task.

“It's queer, isn't it,” he said, “that however innocent you may be you aways feel uncomfortable when you know you're under suspicion?”

“Yes.”

“Dundas possesses none of the subtlety which can set a suspected man at his ease and so loosen his tongue. Everybody, even the most talkative, becomes an oyster in his presence, because it's so obvious that anything you may say will be turned and twisted against you. Mrs. Eoghan, I believe, refused to answer his questions because he began by suggesting that she knew her husband was guilty. When he made the same suggestion to Duchlan the old man vowed he wouldn't see him again, and wrote to Glasgow, to police headquarters, to get him recalled.”

“He won't be recalled because of that,” Dr. Hailey remarked grimly.

“Possibly not. But complaints from lairds don't do a detective any good in this country. Scotland's supposed to be more democratic than England, but that's an illusion. I don't believe there's any place in the world where a landed proprietor has more influence. If Dundas fails he'll get short shrift. He knows that; his nerves are all on edge now and every day adds to his trouble.”

Dr. Hailey took a pinch of snuff.

“Frankly,” he said, “I rather liked him. If he was a trifle tactless, he was honest and good-natured.”

“You're an Englishman.”

“Well?”

“Highland people are the most difficult to handle in the world because they're the most touchy in the world. What they cannot endure is to be laughed at, and Dundas began by laughing at them—jeering at them would be a truer description. They won't forgive him, I can assure you.”

Dr. McDonald nodded his head vigorously as he spoke. He was a big man, red of face and raw of bone, with a wooden leg which gave him much trouble, a man, as Dr. Hailey knew, reputed something of a dreamer but believed, too, to be very wise in the lore of his profession and in the knowledge of men. His blue eyes continued to sparkle.

“I promised not to interfere,” Dr. Hailey said.

“He told me that. He hasn't much opinion of amateur methods of catching criminals.”

“So I gathered.”

Dr. McDonald's eyes narrowed. He leaned forward in his chair in order to move his leg to a more comfortable position.

“Did you see the old scar on Miss Gregor's chest?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What did you make of it?”

Dr. Hailey shook his head. “You mustn't ask me that, you know.”

“Very well. But that's the clue that Dundas has fastened on. Who wounded Miss Gregor ten years ago? He thinks if he can answer that question his troubles'll be over. And the queer thing is that nobody can or nobody will tell him. He's got it worked out that the poor woman was probably at home here when she was wounded. And yet neither Duchlan nor Angus nor Christina seem to know anything about the wound.”

Dr. McDonald paused. It was obvious that he hoped to interest his colleague, but Dr. Hailey only shook his head.

“You mustn't ask me for my opinion.”

“There's another queer thing: Dundas, as I told you, has paid a lot of attention to the herring-scale you discovered. He found a second scale inside the wound. He argued that the weapon the wound was inflicted with must have come from the kitchen, and, as I said, he'd been giving the servants a fearful time. I believe he found an axe with fish scales on it, but the clue led him nowhere.

“His next idea was that Duchlan himself might be the murderer. He tried to work out a scheme on these lines. Duchlan's poor, like all the lairds, so it was possible that he wanted his sister's money. The old man, I'm glad to say, didn't guess what was in the wind. He's a fine old man, is Duchlan, but his temper's not very dependable nowadays.”

A second spill achieved what the first had failed to achieve. McDonald screwed up his pipe and put it in his mouth. It emitted a gurgling sound which in no way disconcerted him. He began to charge it with tobacco.

“Naturally,” he went on, “this inquisition has refreshed a lot of memories. And a doctor hears everything. There's an old woman in the village who's reputed to be a witch as her mother was before her. I believe her name's MacLeod though they call her ‘Annie Nannie'. Goodness knows why. She remembers Duchlan's wife, Eoghan's mother, well, and she told me yesterday that once the poor woman came to consult her. ‘She looked at me,' Annie Nannie said, ‘for a long time without speaking a word. Then she asked me if it was true I could tell what was going to happen to folk. I was a young woman then myself and I was frightened, seein' the laird's young wife in my cottage. So I told her it wasn'a true.' However, in the end she was persuaded to tell Mrs. Gregor's fortune. She says she prophesied evil.”

Dr. Hailey shrugged his shoulders.

“Married women go to fortune-tellers when they're unhappy,” he said. “Possibly Dundas might make something of that.”

“Mrs. Gregor's death took place soon after that. It's a curious fact that nobody knows exactly what she died of. But her death was sudden. I've heard that it came as a great shock to the village because people didn't know she was ill. Duchlan would never speak about it, and nobody dared to ask him.”

“Where was she buried?”

“In the family vault on the estate. So far as I know nobody was invited to attend the funeral. That doesn't necessarily mean much, because it's a tradition of the Gregor family to bury their dead secretly, at night. Duchlan's father's funeral, I believe, took place by torchlight.”

“I would like,” Dr. Hailey said, “to know whether or not Miss Gregor attended the funeral of her sister-in-law. If I were Dundas I should make a point of getting information about that.”

McDonald shook his head.

“You would find it very difficult to get information. One has only to mention Duchlan's wife to produce an icy silence.”

“Did she discuss her sister-in-law with the Ardmore witch?”

“Oh, no. She discussed nothing. She blamed nobody. She merely said that being Irish she believed in fortune-telling. She was very much afraid that her husband might hear of her visit, but he never did.”

McDonald lit his pipe.

“Annie Nannie speaks very well of her client, and she's not given to flattery. By all accounts Duchlan's wife was a fine woman. ‘It fair broke my heart,' she said, ‘to see her sitting crying in my cottage, and her that kind and good to everybody.'”

The doctor took a pinch of snuff.

“It's curious that both father and son should have married Irish women,” he said.

“Yes. And women so like one another too. Those who remember Eoghan's mother say she was the image of his wife. Mrs. Eoghan's very popular in the village, far more so, really, than Miss Gregor was.”

“How about the servants at the castle?”

“They love her. Dundas has been going into that too; he's got an idea that the Campbell girls didn't like Miss Gregor and he's been trying to find out if either of them went to her bedroom on the night she was killed. There's nothing, as a matter of fact, to show that any of the servants went to Miss Gregor's room after Christina, her maid, had left it for the night.”

“Is Dundas still hopeful of being able to solve the mystery?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“No.” Dr. McDonald moved his leg again. “In a sense,” he said, “I'm here in the capacity of an ambassador. Dundas wants your help; but he's too proud to ask for it—after what he said to you. He suggested that, as one of your professional brethren, I might carry the olive branch.”

“I'm afraid not.”

“I hope you won't stand too much on ceremony…You have him at your mercy.”

“That's not the way to look at it.” Dr. Hailey took a pinch of snuff. “If I go to Duchlan now I'll be compelled to work along Inspector Dundas's lines. I've no doubt they're good lines, but they are not mine. I should only confuse his mind and my own.”

“I see. You insist on a free hand.”

“Not that exactly. What I'm really asking is a free mind. I don't want to co-operate. You can tell Dundas that, if he likes, I'll work at the problem independently of him. Any discoveries I may make will belong to him, of course.”

“He won't consent to that. He'll give you a free hand only so long as he's with you in all you do.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Dr. Hailey made up his mind.

“Tell him,” he said, “that I can't accept these terms. I'm an amateur, not a professional, and my studies of crime are undertaken only because they interest me. When I work alone my mind gropes about until it finds something which appeals to it. I follow a line of investigation often without knowing exactly why I'm following it—it would be intolerable to have to explain and justify every step. And Dundas would certainly insist on such explanations. The detection of crime, I think, is an art more than a science, like the practice of medicine.”

Dr. McDonald did not dispute this idea; indeed, he seemed to agree with it. He went away saying that he would come back if Dundas agreed to the terms. Dr. Hailey joined John MacCallien under the pine trees in front of the house and sat down in the deck chair which awaited him. The day was insufferably hot and close, so hot and so close that even Loch Fyne seemed to be destitute of a ripple.

“Well?”

“Dundas sent him. But I can't work with Dundas.”

John MacCallien nodded.

“Of course not. I was talking to the postman while you were indoors. He says that Dundas has got the whole place by the ears. There's a panic.”

“So McDonald suggested.”

“Dundas has found out that Eoghan Gregor is in debt. Eoghan's his aunt's heir, so you can guess what inference has been drawn. But there's the shut room to be got over. The man has had an inventory made of every ladder in Argyll.”

“The windows were bolted. Nobody can have got into the room through the windows.”

“No, so I supposed. But you know what Dundas and his kind are: detail, detail, till you can't see the forest for the trees.”

The haze which veiled the loch about Otter and which blotted out the rolling contours of the hills of Cowal seemed to be charged with fire and suffocation. Even in the shade of the trees, a hot vapour lay on the ground. The doctor took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.

“I never realized that it could be so hot in the Highlands.”

He lay back and looked up at the clumps of dark green pine-needles above him.

“Did you know Miss Gregor well?” he asked his friend suddenly.

“Not very well. Since my return from India I've seen very little of her. My knowledge belongs chiefly to my youth. My father always spoke of her as a latter-day saint, and I suppose I adopted that opinion readymade.”

He remained thoughtful for a few minutes, during which the doctor observed his kindly face with satisfaction. John MacCallien, he reflected, was one of those men who do not change their opinions gladly and who are specially reluctant to revise the teachings of their parents.

“My father,” he added, “had the outlook of the nineteenth century on men and women. He demanded a standard of behaviour and made no allowances. Miss Gregor not only conformed to that standard, but exceeded it. Her horror of what was vaguely called ‘impropriety' was known and admired all over Argyll. For example, I believe that she never herself spoke of a ‘man' or a ‘woman', but only of a ‘gentleman' or a ‘lady'. Ladies and gentlemen were beings whose chief concern it was to prove by their lives and manners that they lacked the human appetites.”