Lament for a Maker

suppose, in a sort of absent perplexity; Miss Guthrie seemed to follow my thought. ‘I reckon,’ she said, ‘the tower itself is a sufficient strong-room.’

‘Perhaps so. Nevertheless it was a deliberate establishing of temptation. Do you think Hardcastle, for instance, would be so faithful a retainer as to resist it?’

Miss Guthrie wrinkled her forehead. ‘It is rather perplexing.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Mr Wedderburn!’ The sincerity of my client’s astonishment was a pleasure to mark.

I gave a chuckle which oddly reminded me that I was Aeneas’ uncle. ‘No perplexity, my dear lady, was intended: and – what is much more – none exists. Though I am bound to say you have done your best.’

‘Mr Wedderburn, you are making quite unprofessional fun of me.’

‘Then let us be grave again and pursue our inspection. Among other things, I should much like to find the poems of William Dunbar.’

I fear I was excelling in a rather childish species of mystification. I turned to the bookshelves without more ado and began very seriously to search for the publications of the Scottish Text Society. Guthrie’s books were most methodically arranged and I came upon them without difficulty. Taking down the three volumes of Dunbar, I found myself quite smothered in dust.

‘Our friend the poetical laird,’ I said, ‘knew his favourites. He had no need to refresh his memory on the poem he seems to have been so fond of.’ And I turned to the Lament for the Makaris.

‘He takis the knychtis in the feild,

Anarmit under helme et scheild;

Wictour he is at all melle;

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

‘He takis the campion in the stour,

The capitane closit in the tour,

The lady in bour full of bewte;

Timor Mortis conturbat me…

‘Well, Death has certainly taken the captain from his tower.’ I laid down the volume. ‘And there seems to be only one interpretation, does there not? But if Guthrie has not been reading Dunbar recently, let us see what he has been reading.’ And I moved over to a pile of books, still in their dust-covers, on the desk. Ewan Bell had omitted to tell me, at our interview a few hours earlier, of Guthrie’s sudden interest in medical studies as reported by Miss Mathers, and I was therefore surprised as well as puzzled by the pile of medical literature which I found confronting me. Letheby Tidy’s Synopsis of Medicine. Osler’s Principles and Practice of Medicine. Muir’s Text-book of Pathology – I turned them over one after another in some perplexity. ‘Now where,’ I said, ‘does the science of medicine come into the picture?’

Miss Guthrie picked up Dunbar. ‘Well, it comes for that matter into the poem.’ And she read:

‘In medicyne the most practicianis,

Lechis, surrigianis, et phisicianis,

Thame self fra ded may not supple;

Timor Mortis conturbat me.’

‘That is very interesting. And if I may make the remark, Miss Guthrie, you have considerable facility in Middle Scots. You studied it at college?’

‘Why yes, I did.’

‘May I ask if you have taken your Ph.D?’

‘Yes, Mr Wedderburn, I have.’

‘Then you are quite sure that you are not the “doctor” for whom Hardcastle was on the look out?’

Miss Guthrie flushed. ‘What an extraordinary piece of ingenuity! Of course I’m not. He knew nothing about me. And one doesn’t arrange to be called “Doctor Guthrie” all one’s days because of a roaring piece of pedantry in youth.’

‘I suppose not. Well, let us search further. I only wish that my own “youth” were as little behind me as yours.’

I found little more to interest me in the study. Books apart, it carried only a few traces of the career and interests of Ranald Guthrie: a boomerang and a native food-carrier from his Australian days, a few sketches by Beardsley to mark his contacts with a past generation of writers, a case or two of Pictish and Roman remains in token of his interest in archaeology. I moved into the bedroom. Here too there seemed little of interest. Guthrie had slept in a room immediately below. Except for a stretcher bed used perhaps for an occasional siesta this was little more than a lumber-room: a broken chair, a pile of old canvas, rope and sticks in a corner, a cracked mirror hung on the wall, a scrap of tattered curtain over the narrow windows. Much of Erchany, I gathered, was in just this state of dilapidation; I was turning away when my attention was caught by a book lying on the floor. I picked it up. ‘More medicine, Miss Guthrie. Experimental Radiology by Richard Flinders.’ I put it down again. ‘We are here by courtesy of the police and had better leave things as we find them. And now, perhaps, it is time to return to our discussion.’

Back in the study, Miss Guthrie took up what I knew to be her characteristic position perched on the desk. It was uncommonly chilly and I so far consulted the halting circulation of age as to talk while pacing about. ‘Miss Guthrie, I dare say you have read stories in which all sorts of revelations are effected by what is called a reconstruction of the crime?’

Obliquely but positively Miss Guthrie answered: ‘There was no crime. You’ve agreed to that yourself.’

‘I think you mistake me. But for the moment we will say “the events of Christmas Eve”. And I invite you, here in this room, to consider the probable results of the police attempting a reconstruction of those events.’

‘I don’t quite get what you mean.’

‘I mean simply that such a reconstruction would at once shake your testimony as it stands at present; and that it would shake it for a very good reason. The account you gave to Mr Gylby was as much coloured by your own desires as it was illuminated by the clear light of objective fact.’

Miss Guthrie stood up. ‘If you believe that, Mr Wedderburn, I really don’t think–’

‘But what I can see that the police might not see is that you are placing yourself in a hazardous and disagreeable position to no purpose at all. I will not presume, as a man, to judge your attitude, though as a lawyer I must think it wrong. The relevant point is this: romantic perjury can only embarrass us. And all we need is the facts.’

Miss Guthrie inspected the tips of her fingers. Then she said: ‘Please explain what you mean about a reconstruction.’

‘Imagine this room lit by two or three candles. The French window is not quite shut, there is a gale outside and the light is not only dim but uncertain and flickering. You are outside the window, peering in. Just how much could you see?’

‘Quite a lot – in a flickering way. And no reconstruction could prove that I saw just so much, no more and no less.’

‘Very true. But it is much easier to demonstrate that neither you nor anyone else can see round a corner. And I put it to you that without thrusting your head into the room it is impossible from that French window to see those two contiguous doors – to staircase and bedroom – fully and clearly. If either were opened wide you would no doubt be able to see the movement. But if one – or both – were opened only slightly, so that a man might slip through, you would see nothing. In other words, Miss Guthrie, your testimony translates an impression quite illegitimately into a certainty. The staircase door opened wide and you saw no more of Lindsay. The bedroom door opened wide and you saw no more of Guthrie. But Lindsay might in the moments following have slipped through the two doors – from staircase to bedroom and back – without your being any the wiser.’

Still perched on the desk, my client looked at the doors long and thoughtfully. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that is so.’

‘I think you liked Miss Mathers?’

‘I did.’

‘And this young Mr Lindsay, from what you saw of him?’ Miss Guthrie’s chin went up a decisive inch. ‘I thought him quite beautiful, Mr Wedderburn.’