reasonably enough that the support of a friend might be desirable. Gamley had actually accompanied him to the castle for that purpose but had been refused admission by Hardcastle. He had waited, had seen Guthrie fall and hurried to help. Lindsay and Miss Mathers, finding him gone, had concluded that he had returned home and gone off without further waiting. Unless Lindsay and Gamley were in a conspiracy it was thus evident that Lindsay had at least not premeditated any violence.
But it was after the available witness was apparently exhausted that Wedderburn played his single decisive card. For the guidance of the sheriff he begged leave to call a certain Murdo Mackay, who proved to be an elderly and impressive working electrician. This person swore that there had been installed – and unmistakably recently installed – an electrical contrivance for the sole purpose of sending signals to Guthrie’s study from various points on the tower staircase. The apparatus was perfectly simple, a matter of two wires that had only to be pressed together to activate the buzzer of a small desk telephone – a buzzer that had been so muffled that it would be audible only to a person actually sitting by the desk. The whole contrivance could have no other purpose than that which he had described; moreover it was so set up that it could have been removed without leaving a trace by anybody with five minutes leisure in the study and on the staircase. The existence of this device the police, whose attention had been called to it by Wedderburn at the last moment, had to confirm.
After this Wedderburn’s road was clear. He built up an unshakable case. Guthrie, while affecting to give his niece away to Lindsay under eccentric and humiliating circumstances, had actually plotted that rarest of human achievements, a truly diabolical crime.
I followed all this with sufficient interest – it was an anatomy of wickedness beyond my considerable experience – but nevertheless I believe I was still primarily interested in the young people with whom I had travelled. As the story grew Lindsay’s eyes darkened; he gave no other sign of whatever emotions possessed him. He was, I suppose, relieved – and yet I doubt if throughout he had ever thought of his neck. He was of the secret kind, with that almost maiden’s shyness which often marks in a man the union of simple breeding and sensibility, and the light that had come to beat on Christine Mathers and himself was a sort of death to him. There was a sense, I felt, in which Ranald Guthrie had triumphed. Though not lacking in manners, Lindsay had to be prompted by the girl into some expression of thanks to Wedderburn; after that it was clear he only wanted to get away.
But it was in Christine Mathers that I was most interested. She had not the mask or shell of Lindsay, and wonder, horror and thankfulness were evident in her by turns: to have her lover cleared at the cost of her uncle and guardian’s infamy must have been a harrowing and bewildering experience. But her responses were far from being emotional merely; she followed the course of the inquiry syllable by syllable with her whole mind, as if she were preparing to fight every word if need be. And I noticed – what nobody else in court, I believe, troubled to notice – that as Wedderburn’s story grew so did a look of puzzlement on Christine Mathers’ face. Through all the interplay of her emotions – anxiety, abhorrence, relief – was this constant and growing thing: an intellectual doubt. Speight might have taken heart had he observed it, but Speight was fully occupied with the task of retreating in good order.
Sybil Guthrie – felt by Speight to be ‘real nice’ – had also captured something of my attention. If Miss Mathers was relieved and puzzled Miss Guthrie was exultant and – indefinably – something else. When Wedderburn began to speak she had watched him much as I have seen women watch an unlikely fancy in a horse race; when he had finished and it was all over I thought I could discern some faint light of mockery or irony on her face. She was tasting, it occurred to me, some delicate flavour in the affair that others were unaware of – and a flavour, maybe, not without its astringency or even bitterness. But when the sheriff had pronounced his findings and withdrawn she was the first person to hurry to Miss Mathers. Standing at the back of the minister’s library in which the inquiry had been conducted, I saw her kiss Christine, shake hands awkwardly with Neil Lindsay and then turn and go briskly from the room. An interesting girl: I felt sorry I was unlikely to see more than a glimpse of her again.
The transition from inquiry to funeral was a difficult business during which I felt a considerable admiration for the minister, Dr Jervie. He might have been moving among the relatives of the most beloved and pious of his parishioners; and his control of the situation was the more remarkable in that he was not, I thought, one to whom pastoral contacts came easily – rather he was a shy, scholarly, and it might be visionary man. Perhaps because I was attracted by his personality, I felt some desire to attend the funeral myself. But it seemed scarcely an occasion for curious strangers, and after some conversation with Speight I set off to find myself a room at the inn.
The manse is some way from the village; I had to tramp about a quarter of a mile in the heavy and now melting snow. That day had seen a rapid change in the weather: a stiff, mild wind had blown the sky almost clear of clouds and there was every indication of a rapid thaw. Beside me as I walked was the splash and gurgle of a torrential little stream; at the tail of the village it went to swell the ice-green waters of the Drochet, a small river that was already risen high on the piers of an old stone bridge I presently crossed. In front of me, at a distance difficult to assess in the now failing light, was the shadowy whiteness of Ben Mervie, with the summit of Ben Cailie still clear-cut in brilliant sunlight beyond. Over the village the blue peat smoke was drifting on the wind, and already in some little shop there was the yellow light of a lamp. It was cold, peaceful, lonely, compelling; I walked for some time merely submerged in the spirit of the place. But presently the tug of the snow at my shoes brought me back to the fact that there was matter tugging too at my mind. I had just set myself to explore it when there came a hail behind me. It was Noel Gylby.
I should explain that Gylby and I were old acquaintances, having met in a setting of some excitement a year before. He takes rather a glamorous view of criminal investigation and I believe he was sorry I hadn’t arrived in time to make spectacular gestures in the Erchany affair. He called out now: ‘Appleby – I say – I’ve got my journal back!’ I stopped. ‘You what?’
‘Didn’t you know? I wrote a whacking great account for Diana of what was going on at the castle. Old Wedders’ – he meant the eminent Writer to the Signet – ‘had it and now he’s returned it. Would you like to read it?’
‘Very much.’
Gylby thrust a small sheaf of papers into my hand. ‘You may find it a bit literary’ – he said this with complacency – ‘but all the facts are there. Are you going to the pub? You know, I think you might do something about ordering a meal. The sheriff has told Wedders there’s a claret would go splendidly with a piping hot curry or a tart really stuffed with strawberry jam. I’m going back for the last act.’
‘The funeral baked meats shall be ordered. And thank you for your notes.’
I went on to the inn, secured a room and sat down to Gylby’s journal. Perhaps it stands to the credit of his literary style that I quite forgot my promise about ordering a meal. When he returned with Wedderburn and Sybil Guthrie a little more than an hour later there were introductions and we sat down to a supper of cold roast mutton. It was singularly tasteless and I don’t doubt threw the execrable claret into the highest relief. I drank beer.
Old Wedderburn seemed disposed to expand; indeed he beamed on me so cordially that I ventured to congratulate him on his conduct of the case.
‘My dear Mr – um – Appleby, it was my good fortune to listen patiently to the gossip of the hostess of this inn. Everything followed from that.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The fantastic rumour about the mutilating of the corpse! Could such an extraordinary story start up unbidden, or as the result of some mere misapprehension? For a little time I was dull enough to think so. Then I saw that it must have its source in malice – malice that was either stupid or calculating. I tested the theory that it might be calculating – and what did I find? That the rumour, if it were to be really damaging, must be true. And to that I knit the remarkable fact of Hardcastle’s curiosity about the body and the statement he made – without having had the opportunity to investigate – that Lindsay had “mischieved” Guthrie. That took me straight to the heart of the plot.’
‘A strange plot, Mr Wedderburn. I doubt if there is anything closely analogous on record. Men have killed themselves to incriminate others before this, but they were not men of what appears to have been Guthrie’s type. They may have had his melancholy verging on madness, but they have been lacking in his intellectual vigour.’
‘I am without your familiarity, Mr Appleby, with the archives of the criminal mind. But we must frame our psychologies to fit facts, and not vice versa.’
I reminded myself that that afternoon Wedderburn had annihilated his adversaries, and that nothing was to be gained by setting myself up as a cock-shy for his very efficient forensic method. I said: ‘Very true. And the fact of the abominable plot against Lindsay is unshakable.’
‘You know–’ It was Gylby who spoke, and he looked rather warily at Wedderburn before continuing. ‘You
