Murder of a Lady (6 page)

“I know.”

John MacCallien sighed.

“I suppose there was something to be said for that point of view,” he declared. “But I'm afraid it was a fruitful begetter of cruelty and harshness. Anything was justified which could be shown to inflict shame or sorrow on the unregenerate. Besides, these good people lived within the ring-fence of a lie. They were not the disembodied spirits they pretended to be—far from it. Consequently their emotions and appetites were active in all kinds of hidden and even unsuspected ways.” He paused and added: ‘‘Cruelty, as I say, was one of these ways, the easiest and the most hateful.”

“Was Miss Gregor cruel?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“Do you know that's an extraordinary difficult question to answer. Offhand, I should say, ‘Of course not'. But it depends, really, on what you mean by cruel. Her code was full, I'm sure, of unpardonable sins, sins that put people right outside the pale. On the other hand she could be extraordinarily kind and charitable. I told you that even tinkers and gipsies used to bless her. She was always bothering herself about people of that sort. Once, I remember, a child got pneumonia in one of the tinker's tents on the shore between here and the north lodge. She nursed it herself and paid for medical attendance. When the parish officer wanted to have it removed to the Poor's House at Lochgilphead she resisted him with all her might because she believed that these people cannot live within four walls. She was told that if the child died, its death would be laid to her charge, but that kind of threat was the least likely to influence her in any way. The case aroused a lot of interest in Ardmore. When the child got well everybody felt that she had saved its life.”

Dr. Hailey nodded.

“I see. In that case her personal reputation was at stake, so to speak.”

“Yes. And there was no question of sin.” John MacCallien sighed. “She was merciless where sinners were concerned,” he added, “if their sins were of the flesh. I fancy she might have found excuses for a thief— these tinkers are all thieves, you know.”

“Provided he had not sinned?”

“Exactly. Mind you, that view wasn't confined to her. It was my father's also.”

“Your father's view was shared by everybody else in this neighbourhood, wasn't it?”

“Yes. By everybody.”

MacCallien sat up. He shook his head rather sadly. “When my brother and I were children,” he said, “we often met Miss Gregor out driving. Our nurse, on these occasions, always told us to take our hats off and that became a burden. One day, just as the carriage was passing, we put out our tongues instead. I can still see the horror on the dear woman's face. She stopped the carriage, got out, and read us a lecture on good manners We didn't mind that so much but she wrote as well to our father. I remember thinking, while we were being punished, that she wasn't my idea of a saint.”

He smiled faintly and then looked surprised when he saw how attentive Dr. Hailey had become.

“How old was Miss Gregor at that time?”

“She must have been quite young. In her twenties or early thirties, I suppose.”

“What happened the next time you met her?”

“Oh, we took our hats off, of course.”

“And she?”

“I fancy she bowed to us as she had done formerly. Funnily enough, though, I can't remember much about her after that.”

“Did you know Duchlan's wife?”

“Oh, yes, rather.” MacCallien's voice became suddenly enthusiastic. “She was an awfully good sort. We loved her. I remember my brother saying once that Mrs. Gregor would never have told our father if we had put our tongues out at her. She had a short married life, poor woman.”

“Eoghan Gregor's wife is supposed to be like her in appearance, isn't she?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“Yes. I think with reason too, though a child's memory is always unreliable. I know that, when I saw Mrs. Eoghan for the first time, I wondered where I had met her before. And it's certain that I had never met her before. There must be some quality in the characters of Duchlan and his son which draws them to Irish women.” He paused and then added: “Not a very robust quality perhaps.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I'm afraid neither of these marriages has been conspicuously successful. I suppose the qualities which Miss Gregor represents are the dominants in all the members of her family. Duchlan's wife, like Mrs. Eoghan, was more concerned with men and women than with ‘ladies' and ‘gentlemen'.”

“It must have been very difficult for her to have her sister-in-law always beside her, don't you think?”

Dr. Hailey frowned as he spoke. His companion nodded a vigorous assent.

“It must have been dreadful. No wife could hope to be happy in such circumstances. As a matter of fact, I believe Miss Gregor did all the housekeeping and management. Duchlan's wife was treated, from beginning to end, like a visitor. Goodness knows how she endured it.”

“Was there much talk about the arrangement?”

“Any amount, of course. But nobody could interfere. People older than myself have told me that they saw the poor girl wilting before their eyes. I believe one woman, the wife of an old laird, did actually dare to suggest that it was high time a change was made. She was told to mind her own business. By all accounts Mrs. Gregor was splendidly loyal to her husband and wouldn't listen to a syllable of criticism or even of sympathy. But I haven't a doubt, all the same, that the strain undermined her constitution.”

Dr. Hailey passed his hand over his brow.

“What did she die of?” he asked.

“Diphtheria, I believe. She died very suddenly.”

Dr. Hailey spent the afternoon in a hammock, turning over the details of the mystery in his mind. He did not disguise from himself that he was disappointed at not having been allowed to attempt a solution; on the other hand such ideas as he had evolved offered no substantial basis of deduction. He discussed the subject again with his host after dinner but obtained no enlightenment.

“I've no doubt,” John MacCallien said, “that Dundas has exhausted all such probabilities as secret doors and chambers. He was prepared, I feel sure, to tear the castle to pieces to find one clue. My friend the postman had it from Angus, Duchlan's piper, that he found nothing. There are no secret chambers, no passages, no trap-doors.”

“And no other means by which the murderer can have entered the bedroom or escaped out of it?”

John MacCallien raised his head.

“We know that he did enter the bedroom and did escape out of it.”

“Exactly. And miracles don't happen.”

The doctor took a pinch of snuff. “This is the fourth time that I've encountered a case in which a murder was committed in what seemed like a closed room or a closed space. I imagine that the truth, in this instance, will not be more difficult to discover than in these others—”

A smile flickered on his lips.

“Most of the great murder mysteries of the past half-century,” he added, “have turned either on an alibi or on an apparently closed space. For practical purposes these conditions are identical, because you have to show, in face of obvious evidence to the contrary, that your murderer was at a given spot at a given moment. That, believe me, is a harder task than proving that a particular individual administered poison or that an apparent accident was, in fact, due to foul play.”

He broke off because they heard a car driving up to the door. A moment later Dr. McDonald came limping into the room.

“You've got your terms, Hailey,” he said as he shook the doctor's hand. “Dundas owns himself beaten.” He shook hands with John MacCallien, and then turned back to Dr. Hailey. “Can you possibly come to Duchlan to-night?”

Chapter X

“Duchlan Will Be Honoured”

Inspector Dundas received the two doctors in his bedroom, a large room situated near that formerly occupied by Miss Gregor and directly overlooking the burn. He was seated on his bed, when they entered, writing notes, and wore only a shirt and trousers. But he did not seem to be feeling the heat.

“It's good of you, Dr. Hailey,” he said in grateful tones, “because I wasn't as polite as I might have been at our first meeting. Pride cometh before a fall, eh?”

“On the contrary, I thought your attitude entirely unexceptionable.”

The doctor sat down near the open window and mopped his brow. Dundas, he perceived, had lost his air of assurance. Even his sprightliness of manner had deserted him. The change was rather shocking, as indicating a fundamental lack of self-confidence. The man had put all his trust in cleverness and thoroughness and when these failed, had nothing to fall back on.

“Perhaps you would like me to give you an account of what I've done,” Dundas said. “A few facts have emerged.”

He spoke wearily, without enthusiasm. Dr. Hailey shook his head.

“I should prefer to ask you questions.”

“Very well.”

The doctor rose and pulled off his coat; before he sat down again he glanced out at the sea, white under the full moon. The exquisite clearness of the north had returned with the falling of night, and the long rampart of Cowal lay like the back of some monstrous creature rearing itself up out of the shining water. He listened to the soft babbling of the burn at his feet, in which chuckles and gurgles were mingled deliciously. The drought had tamed this fierce stream till only its laughter remained. He followed its course round the house to the loch, marking where its water became transformed to silver. The sails of fishing-boats stained the silver here and there and he saw that several of the boats were lying close in shore, at the mouth of the burn. The sound of the fishermen's voices came softly on the still air. He turned to his companions:

“They seem to have shot a net out here.”

Dr. McDonald looked out and turned indifferently away.

“Yes.”

“I had no idea they fished so close inshore.”

“Oh, yes. The shoals of herring tend to come into the shallow water at night to feed. Ardmore has lived on that fact for more than a century. Lived well too. In the best days they used to get £2 or £3 a box and might take 200 boxes at one shot of the net. But not now. The old Loch Fyne herring that the whole country knew and enjoyed seems to have ceased to exist. It was blue and flat; the modern variety is much paler and much rounder.”

“So that Ardmore has fallen on bad days?”

“Yes. And with Ardmore, Duchlan and his family. It isn't easy to pay rent if you're making no money.”

“Has the depression produced any reactions?”

“Reactions?”

“Hard times tend to separate honest from dishonest men.”

A faint smile flickered on Dundas's lips.

“You're thinking of the possibility that one of those fishermen may have climbed in here?” he asked. “That idea was in my own mind. But I feel sure now that there's nothing in it. Nobody could climb these walls.”

Dr. Hailey sat down. He polished his eyeglass and put it in his eye.

“I'm afraid I wasn't only thinking of that,” he confessed. “Boats, especially fishing-boats, have always attracted me. It used to be one of my boyish ambitions to spend a night with the herring fleet.” He leaned forward. “McDonald told me that you observed the scar on Miss Gregor's chest.”

“Yes. I tried to work on that clue but I got nothing. Nobody here knows anything about it.”

“Isn't that rather strange?”

“Very strange. But truth to tell, doctor, the people here are impossible. They know nothing about anything. When I said to Duchlan that nobody could hide an injury of that sort, he met me with a shrug of his shoulders. What are you to do? The scar is very old. It may date back twenty years.”

“Yes. But it represents what was once a severe wound. Long ago, somebody tried to kill Miss Gregor. Since I formed that opinion I've been trying to get information about the lady. I've made a discovery.”

“Yes?” The detective's voice rang out sharply.

“Everybody seems to believe that she was a saint and nobody seems to know much about her.”

“My dear sir,” Dr. McDonald interrupted, “I knew her well. The whole neighbourhood knew her well.”

“As a figure, yes. Not as a woman.”

“What does that mean?”

“Who were her intimate friends?”

The Ardmore doctor nursed his leg with both hands. He looked blank.

“Oh, the lairds and their families.”

“John MacCallien confesses that he used to see her out driving occasionally. He was taught to hold her in great respect. He knows next to nothing about her.”

“He's a bachelor.”

“Yes. But he goes everywhere. One of his friends told me yesterday that Miss Gregor was looked on as a woman apart. She was full of good works, but she gave her confidence to nobody. She had no woman friend, no man friend. In such a place as this, gossip is passed on from father to son and mother to daughter. It's quite clear that this woman lived her life in seclusion.”

Dr. McDonald frowned. “She never impressed me in that way,” he declared stubbornly. “On the contrary, there was nothing she was not interested in. Her intrusions in local affairs, believe me, could be most troublesome. Doctors were her special concern and she supervised their work, my work mostly, with tireless zeal. She called it ‘taking a kindly interest', but it was sheer interference.”

He spoke hotly. Dr. Hailey nodded.

“That's not quite what I mean, you know,” he said. “That's impersonal work. The relations between the landed class and their people in this country are so well-defined that there was no danger of familiarity. Miss Gregor helped her poorer neighbours, I imagine, as she cared for her pets. They were remote from her life. Your Lady Bountiful is always the same; she spoils her dependents and avoids her equals.”

“There's something in that,” McDonald agreed. “I often noticed that the more dependent the person was, the more fuss Miss Gregor made. She got a lot of flattery from her pensioners.”

“Exactly.”

“Her nephew's upbringing had been the chief business of her life. I can still hear her clear voice saying: ‘Doctor McDonald, the knowledge that a young life had been committed to my care overwhelmed me. I felt that I must live and work and think and plan for no other object than Eoghan's welfare in the very highest sense of that word!'”

“Are you not confirming what I've suggested? Miss Gregor's real life was here, in this house, between these walls.” Dr. Hailey allowed his eyeglass to drop. “I've been asking myself where her interest was centred before Eoghan was born,” he added. “Clever, active-minded women always, believe me, find something or somebody to absorb their attention.”

Nobody answered him; Dundas's interest was wholly extinguished. There was a knock at the door. Angus, the piper, entered with a tray on which glasses tinkled together. The gilded neck of a champagne bottle protruded from a small ice-pail, like a pheasant's neck from a coop.

“Duchlan will be honoured, gentlemen,” Angus announced, “if you'll accept a little refreshment.”

He stood in the doorway awaiting their decision. Dundas signed to him to put the tray down on the dressing-table.

“Shall I open the bottle?”

“Yes, do.”

Angus performed this office with much dignity. He filled the glasses on the tray and presented them to the three men. Dr. Hailey took occasion to glance at his face but found it inscrutable. The piper knew how to keep his thoughts to himself. When he had left the room Dundas remarked that a similar courtesy had not been extended to himself.

“I'm getting to know Duchlan,” he declared. “This is his way of telling me what he thinks of me. Champagne isn't for a common policeman.”

He laughed and flushed as he spoke. It was clear that, under his uncompromising manner, he was exceedingly sensitive.

“This is the hottest night of the year, you know,” Dr. Hailey suggested amiably.

“Oh, it's been hot enough every night since I came here.”

Dundas emptied his glass at a gulp, an offence, seeing that the wine was good. He made a joke about a farmer at a public dinner to whom champagne had been served, but failed to amuse his companions. Dr. Hailey sipped the liquor, watching the tiny clusters of bubbles on its surface, elfish pearls cunningly set in gold. The wine was excellently chilled and yielded its virtue generously.

“What do you make of Duchlan?” the doctor asked after a prolonged interval of silence.

“He's a Highland laird. They're all alike.”

“Yes?”

“Pride and poverty.”

“I understood that Miss Gregor was a rich woman.”

The policeman's face brightened.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “you know that, do you?”

“John MacCallien told me.”

“It's true. An uncle, who made money in business, left her a big sum about ten years ago; why, I don't know. Duchlan got nothing.”

Dr. Hailey nodded.

“Has Duchlan helped you?”

“No, he has not.”

“What about Eoghan Gregor?”

Dundas shrugged his shoulders.

“Another of the same. But I didn't expect help there after I found that the fellow had just gambled his money away.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Eoghan Gregor was ruined on the day of his aunt's death. And his aunt has left him all her money.”

He remained tensely expectant, watching the effect of his disclosure. Dr. Hailey denied him satisfaction.

“After all, his aunt brought him up, you know.”

“Exactly. He knew that she would leave him her money.”

“Wouldn't she have lent him money, if he had asked her?”

“I don't think so. Not to pay gambling debts at any rate. Miss Gregor, by all accounts, was a woman with most violent prejudices against gambling in any form.”

Dundas glanced at Dr. McDonald for confirmation.

“She looked on every kind of game of chance as the invention of the devil,” the Ardmore doctor declared. “I've heard her myself call playing-cards ‘the Devil's Tools'. I'm sure that if she had suspected that her nephew indulged in gambling she would have disinherited him as a matter of principle.”

Dr. Hailey nodded.

“I see.”

“It came to this,” Dundas declared. “Of the three questions that must be answered in every case of murder—Who? Why? How?—I may have found answers to two, namely Who? and Why?” He raised his right hand in a gesture which recalled a bandmaster. “But the third has remained obstinately unanswerable. There isn't a shadow of doubt that the door was locked on the inside. As you know, a carpenter had to be fetched to cut out the lock. He told me that he examined the windows and saw for himself that they were bolted. Dr. McDonald here arrived before the carpenter had completed his work to confirm these statements. In other words that room, with its thick walls and heavy door, was completely sealed up. You couldn't have broken into it without using great violence. And there's not a sign of violence anywhere.”

The policeman rubbed his brow uneasily.

“Has the idea occurred to you,” McDonald asked, “that the murder may have been committed in some other room?”

“What? But how was the body got into the bedroom in that case? I assure you that you can't turn the key of the door from the outside. I'm an authority on skeleton keys of all sorts. No skeleton key that was ever invented could pick that lock. And the end of the key doesn't protrude from the lock. The locks of this house are all astonishingly ingenious. I'm told they were the invention of Duchlan's grandfather, who had a passion for lock-making.”

“Like Louis XVI.”

Dundas looked blank: “I didn't know that Louis XVI. was interested in locks,” he said in tones which proclaimed his innocence of any knowledge about that monarch.

“He was. And his interest set a fashion. I've little doubt that the Duchlan of those days acquired his taste for mechanics during a visit to London or Paris. Some years ago I made a study of these eighteenth-century locks. Many of them are extraordinarily clever.”

“These here are, at any rate.” Dundas rose as he spoke and brought the lock which had been cut from Miss Gregor's door for the doctor's inspection. He pointed to the keyhole. “Observe how the key enters at a different level on each side of the door. That precludes the possibility of picking the lock with a skeleton, or of turning the key from the outside with pliers. You would think there were two locks, indeed, instead of only one, but they're connected.”

Dr. Hailey focussed his eyeglass on the piece of mechanism and then handed it back.

“I agree with you,” he said. “It is absolutely certain that the door was neither locked nor unlocked from the outside.”

“That means, remember, that Miss Gregor locked the door.”

“I suppose so.”

The detective shook his head.

“How can you, or I, for that matter, suppose anything else? Seeing that the windows were bolted on the inside.” Again he rubbed his brow. “My brain seems to be going round in circles,” he cried. “What I'm really saying is that Miss Gregor inflicted that dreadful wound on herself, seeing that nobody was present in the room with her and that nobody can have escaped out of her room. And she certainly didn't inflict the wound on herself.”

“She did not.”

Dundas's face had become very solemn. This mystery, which had brought all his efforts to nothing, exerted, it seemed, a profoundly depressing effect on his spirits. He shook his head mournfully as the difficulties against which he had been contending presented themselves anew to his mind.