know, Christine said a queer thing. I hung about a bit at the manse and made helpful noises. And suddenly she said quite out of the blue: “I can’t believe it; my uncle had a finer mind than that.” And then she looked at me as if I must have an alternative explanation in my hat.’
Wedderburn peered severely at the sediment in the bottom of his glass. ‘I do not see it as a queer thing. Such a sentiment in the scoundrel’s niece and ward is a very proper and becoming one. But we are not concerned with family piety.’
‘I’m afraid, sir, she didn’t mean quite that. She wasn’t denying that Guthrie was capable of great wickedness. She meant that his mind was subtler – more ingenious – than the story shows.’
‘
‘And she said: “He had a level head really; he would pit extremes only against extremes.”’
Sybil Guthrie crumbled bread, made a wry face over a mouthful of claret and broke in: ‘Will she brood over it? I suppose she will. Mr Appleby, how do people’s minds behave when they have been through a horrid thing like this?’
I avoided generalization. ‘I think, Miss Guthrie, she will brood as long as she feels she hasn’t got the truth.’
‘She has the truth! We all have.’
‘It is scattered among us. But I don’t know that we have pooled it all yet.’
Very deliberately, Wedderburn put down his glass and folded up his table napkin. ‘Mr Appleby, Gylby assures me that your opinion in matters of this sort has great weight. Will you be so good as to explain the statement you have just made?’
‘Miss Mathers herself has one piece of information which has not, I think, been pooled. Who was with her in the schoolroom, and who emerged from it and disappeared into the darkness, just before Gylby and Hardcastle went up the tower staircase?’
‘Dear me – an interesting point. She has no doubt told Stewart. I fear I rather took charge from him this afternoon; otherwise the explanation would no doubt have emerged.’
‘It is more than an interesting point. Here in Erchany on this isolated night is another man – and we are told nothing of him. Unless indeed it could have been the boy Tammas.’
Gylby shook his head at this. ‘Not Tammas; he wasn’t let into the house till long after. And not, of course, Gamley either.’
‘Very well. And the matter gains much greater significance from the fact that there was in all probability – and despite Miss Guthrie’s impression to the contrary – another visitor to the tower. Somebody must know who it was that opened the trapdoor on the battlements, passed through it, and bolted it on the lower side. Gylby’s record tells us that the snow provided the most conclusive evidence on that point. The door had been opened not long before. By whom? Why?’
They were silent for a moment and then Wedderburn said, with unexpected humour: ‘Mr Appleby, this is a slaughter of the innocents. And I fear they include both myself and your colleague Speight.’ He paused. ‘However clear the main features of the situation, there are undoubtedly factors that we have overlooked. And I will say that they call for investigation.’
‘I think they do – and that there is yet truth to come. Miss Guthrie, you agree?’
She eyed me thoughtfully before replying. ‘If you find real evidence of another person in the tower I agree there is yet truth to come. Mr Appleby, come to Erchany.’
Wedderburn rose. ‘Miss Guthrie and I intend to go up now. The dead man appears to have had no legal representative and in the circumstances we judge it proper, along with the young man Stewart, to search for what papers there may be. You will come along with us? But first, perhaps, we should go to the manse, where Miss Mathers is staying for the time being, and ask her to explain her nocturnal visitor.’
‘I will come up – though you will understand that I have no official standing. Anything we discover may have to go to Speight. As for Miss Mathers, I think it would be wise to wait until later. There is another question I am saving up for her.’
Wedderburn turned from helping Miss Guthrie with her coat. ‘And that is?’
‘Whether her uncle ever went in for winter sports.’
‘A most enigmatic inquiry.’
Noel Gylby looked up from stuffing his pockets providently with buttered biscuits. ‘You’ll find,’ he said, ‘that Appleby has questions like that for us all round. What’s mine?’
‘Just this. We’ve had the message of the Learned Rat. But what was the message of the Unfamiliar Owl?’
2
Stewart, we found, had been called urgently to Dunwinnie and had left with a promise to follow us presently to Erchany. During the drive through the darkness I got from Wedderburn most of that information embodied in his narrative that I did not already possess, and I believe my ideas were in tolerable order by the time we arrived at the castle. From fragmentary evidences of what had happened here on Christmas Eve Wedderburn had that afternoon built up a picture that was coherent and convincing. Only he had failed – in the image drawn so significantly from Ranald Guthrie’s jigsaws – to use all the pieces and his picture was therefore necessarily incomplete. Despite every appearance to the contrary, it was possible that the pieces yet to be fitted would confound or reverse the meaning of those outlines which were already clearly established – much as the figure, say, of an assassin, belatedly discovered in some shadowy corner, of a painting, will give sudden sinister significance to what may have appeared a merely sentimental or spectacular composition. The Erchany affair could scarcely become more sinister, but I was fairly sure that as more pieces were added the composition would deepen and complicate itself. What I could not tell was that the jigsaw metaphor was wholly inadequate; that we were confronted rather by a chemical mixture, complex and unstable, ready to take final and unexpected form only at the adding of the last ingredient of all. Perhaps it was because I had the jigsaw metaphor fatally in my head that in looking back on the Erchany mystery I have to remind myself of Ewan Bell’s words: there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance.
Both Mrs Hardcastle and the lad Tammas had been taken in by kindly or curious folk in Kinkeig and the castle was deserted when we drove up to it. The moon had not risen but the sky was clear and starry; driving over the drawbridge and into the central court I could distinguish first the vague bulk of the main building, encircling and menacing us, and then, soaring into increasing definition where the sky grew more luminous towards its zenith, the strong sheer lines of the tower. From his boyhood, I reflected, Ranald Guthrie must have been familiar with that great drop to the moat; time and again, leaning over the parapet more or less venturesomely according to his temperament, he must have tested his nerve against the dizzying sense of it. And for how many years, perhaps, had he been fascinated by the thought of a body swaying, toppling, falling – finally hurtling with the velocity of a projectile to the hard stone below? I said to Wedderburn: ‘I should like to begin by visiting the moat.’
Gylby got a lantern and together we climbed down by Gamley’s route. The snow was soft and watery in the thaw and we made a thoroughly uncomfortable progress. We found the little crater made by the body – it was still readily distinguishable, such had been the force of the impact that created it – and we looked at it for a few moments in silence. Then I said: ‘All those pieces of the puzzle – there’s a missing piece we ought to find hereabouts. Could you get a spade?’
Gylby went off and returned presently through the slush with two spades. ‘Here you are,’ he said happily. ‘And now for the skull of Yorick.’
We prodded and dug about – the job would have been much better performed by daylight – and by mere good luck my spade eventually rang on something deep in the snow. A minute’s digging and I had uncovered a small, sharp axe. Gylby studied it carefully. ‘It will make a nice present,’ he said, ‘for Speight.’
‘It wasn’t Speight’s fault it wasn’t found. There was no occasion to suspect its existence till this afternoon. And of course it fell from that height clean and deep into the snow. But it will please Wedderburn: a suitable finger- lopping implement is a most desirable accessory to his case.’ I fingered the edge of the axe. ‘“To settle accounts with a great rat.” I cannot say that the character of friend Ranald grows on me. Let us go in.’
We found Wedderburn and Miss Guthrie in a little island of candle-light amid the gloom of the great hall or chamber of the castle. I suppose that a few days before the place must have given some impression of a dwelling.
