Lament for a Maker (17 page)

On one of these questions Sybil was a witness. She had been – and quite mysteriously – in the room from which Guthrie had gone to his death. But so far she had been all but mum and I was reluctant in the presence of the Hardcastles to embark on what might appear an interrogation. Hardcastle himself, I could see, was consumed with curiosity about Sybil, and this alone would have inclined me to hold off. But in addition I thought I read an appeal or warning in Sybil’s eye, as if she would tell me that before pressing further a private conference would be best.

Another problem came into my head. I turned to Hardcastle and asked as abruptly as I could contrive: ‘Did your doctor ever come?’

It was a hit. Had I clapped on an executioner’s mask and incontinently invited him to lay his head on the block the horrid creature could not have been more taken aback. I have a fancy that a criminal lawyer could have got a lot from him in that moment – a moment in which he was floundering out of his depth. He didn’t know what it was I knew. And it must be confessed that, like a fool, I promptly told him.

‘You called out to ask if it was the doctor, you know, when you opened the door to Miss Guthrie and me.’

‘And didn’t you know, Mr Gylby, that one of the dogs is called Doctor, and that I was but thinking he’d got loose?’

I was rather taken aback myself this time by so neat, if evident, a lie. The fellow possesses the cunning that his face claims for him and for the moment I gave him best. It occurred to me to attempt some sort of communication with Tammas – who was to be our first link, it seemed, with the world.

‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘that you can get down to Kinkeig?’ Tammas, realizing that he was addressed, blushed in the uncertain lamplight like a girl. And then he murmured softly:

‘There’s nae luck aboot the hoose,

There’s nae luck at a’,

There’s nae luck aboot the hoose

When our goodman’s awa…’

In the Elizabethan drama, you will remember, fools and idiots constantly express themselves in snatches of obscure song. Tammas’ habit suggests that the convention has some basis in pathological fact. At any rate, experimental transmission had failed, and I may say I haven’t succeeded in getting across to him yet. Most irritatingly, Hardcastle is a necessary intermediary. I now had to listen to an unintelligible dialect conversation from which there finally emerged the report that Tammas was ready to set out for Kinkeig at once.

And presently set out he did, with instructions simply to announce the death of Guthrie and the need of a doctor and a policeman. I rather expected Hardcastle to be all for raising an immediate hue and cry after Lindsay and Christine, and I was surprised at his good sense in agreeing to reticence for the time being. I wrote out a telegram or two, including one that you will have had by this time. Then I watched him set off, ploughing powerfully through the drifts in the moonlight. In a few minutes he had disappeared; only in the stillness that had come with the drop in the wind I could hear him – uncannily again – singing to the moon. His progress would be dreadfully hard; with good luck he would make the village, I reckoned, about dawn.

It is two hours past dawn now and we may expect help soon. Through the small hours I have kept my lyke-wake in company with this narrative; it has grown to an unconscionable length and I don’t want to run on into embroidery. But there is one further matter on which to report. You will guess that it is an interview with Sybil Guthrie.

After Tammas’ departure there seemed little or nothing that could be done. Sybil and I had big cups of Mrs Hardcastle’s tea in the schoolroom – strangely desolate that pleasant, simple room now seems – and Mrs Hardcastle, standing respectfully by and snivelling, told us that until recently Guthrie had never allowed tea in the house – a beautiful trait in the good laird’s character, it seems, from which she is disposed to draw the comfort of pious contemplation.

When we got her out of the room there was a little silence. Sybil’s affairs, I felt, were no business of such a casually-met companion as myself, and remained essentially no business of mine even when they brushed against mystery. Still, I thought it fair to say nothing and look ever so faintly expectant. And sure enough, Sybil presently said: ‘I think I want to talk to you, Mr Gylby.’ And at the same time she nodded significantly towards the door.

Taking the hint, I strode over and opened it. There was Hardcastle in his favourite lurking role, a sort of adipose fox outside a hen-run. ‘Mr Gylby, sir,’ he said with a fantastic attempt at a solicitous air, ‘I’m thinking you might like a bit more fire in the grate?’

I saw that for the time being there was only one possible working arrangement between Hardcastle and myself – a couple of stout doors securely locked. So I said we didn’t want the fire stoked; we were just going up to the tower. And up we went, Hardcastle looking after us rather as if we were a couple of cockerels scrambling to safety on a tree. I imagine he is still guessing – goodness knows about what – and that this is making his unbeautiful personality somewhat ineffective. I turned round and called to him, perhaps with a spice of malice, that we should be down to breakfast and could Mrs Hardcastle manage boiled eggs? Then, silently and still by the light of a lantern, we climbed and climbed.

Ever since I so neatly demolished her car Sybil and I have been as matey as could be; we cannoned into each other – literally, need I laboriously point out? – from contexts thousands of miles apart and straightway trickled together into an environment almost equally unfamiliar to both of us, a process well calculated to the formation of a close alliance. But during the last couple of hours – ever since Sybil’s unexplained appearance in the study – we had rather drawn apart. Now as we climbed into the solitude of this dark tower, and quite apart from Sybil’s implied promise of explanations, our alliance reasserted itself. I don’t think I feel romantic about this quite unromantic young person but as we came to the locked door of the study I saw that she might have got herself into a fix in which I should have to stand by. ‘Sybil,’ I said, ‘hold the lantern while I find the key.’ She laid her hand on my arm and then on the lantern; in a minute we were standing once more in Ranald Guthrie’s study.

Rather idly I said: ‘The scene of the crime.’

‘But, Noel, there was no crime. I told you he simply fell.’

‘However did he manage that?’

I suppose I must have looked at Sybil doubtingly or doubtfully as I spoke. She flushed and repeated: ‘He simply fell.’

There was a little silence. Perhaps I rumpled my hair in perplexity; anyway, I became aware in that little silence of the ticking of my own wrist-watch. And powerfully there came back to me the slow tick of the clock as we had sat at supper the night before last, the slow tick of the clock upon which I had projected all the intolerable strain of waiting that had been about us. Had we been waiting only for Ranald Guthrie to tumble accidentally from his tower? At two o’clock in the morning one’s mind is not in its best logical trim: I was suddenly convinced that the atmosphere which had been about us was incompatible with Sybil’s assertion. It was a sheer mental failure; I was seeking quite unwarrantably for some simple melodramatic pattern to impose upon a most confused series of events; and Sybil caught me nicely by asking: ‘Do you insist on something more lurid?’

I said evasively: ‘There will be a tremendous number of questions asked, you know.’

‘I guess so.’

‘They’ll want to know all about everybody: where one was and why – all that.’

‘And I should practise my replies on you?’

I said soberly: ‘I should like you to.’

Sybil walked to the far end of the study and turned round. ‘Noel, you are a nice young man despite your airs. But I wish I knew something of your abstract principles.’

‘Take it that they are orthodox and severe.’

‘A pity.’ Sybil looked at me perfectly gravely as she spoke and I knew that somehow she meant what she said. She paused for a moment, knit her brows, from somewhere produced cigarettes. I struck a match, she gave two puffs and went on carefully. ‘Mr Gylby – Noel – you are entitled to the whole story as I can tell it. Listen.’ Again she strode to the end of the room and this time spoke before turning. ‘I was up here spying around.’

‘Enterprising of you.’

I’m afraid my tone of casual admiration wasn’t a success. When Sybil did turn round it was with a satirical smile for the outraged Englishman. ‘I said I was spying around. This household kind of got me curious and I just felt like hiding behind doors and listening. That’s why I was so quick on the draw with friend Hardcastle a few minutes ago in the schoolroom. I’ve got the instinct to prowl and hover.’

‘Very well, Sybil. You have been peering and listening about. Go ahead.’

Sybil glanced at me doubtfully and went ahead with an apparent struggle. ‘This tower has been intriguing me most. It’s so romantic–’

‘Cut out the ingenuous tourist, Sybil. Or keep it for the dumb Dicks.’

‘I thought I had to practise on you! Well, listen. When I went to my room I just lay on my bed and read – and the longer I lay the less I felt like getting my clothes off and trying to sleep. Once or twice I got up and peered out of the window. That was just restlessness, of course; there was nothing but blackness to be seen. Or nothing but blackness until some time round about half-past eleven: I became aware then of a moving light high up across the court I look out on. I guessed it must be Guthrie up in that gallery-place, and it occurred to me that while he was there this tower might be open to inspection. I thought, after all, there wouldn’t be much harm in exploring the – the other public rooms of the castle.’

‘Quite so. As a matter of fact, I set out for the tower myself just a little after you did.’

‘You mean when Hardcastle summoned you?’

‘No. I was going on my own initiative when Hardcastle happened upon me.’

For a moment Sybil seemed to concentrate on an attempt to get behind this statement. Then she continued. ‘I took a candle and matches and went downstairs. I had already given some thought to the plan of the castle and I reckoned with luck to find my way. All the same, I wasn’t awfully hopeful of a successful prowl; I thought it very likely that Guthrie kept his tower locked up. So I was pleased as well as a mite scared when I found I could get through and up the staircase.’

‘You didn’t meet anybody or hear anything? They’ll ask questions like that.’

‘Nobody and nothing. I tried one or two doors on the way up. They were all locked. So I just went on climbing till I came to the top and walked straight in on this.’

Sybil paused and we both looked about us. A sombre room, full of dark woodwork and simply crammed with books; Guthrie was presumably by way of being a learned man as well as a songster. I began to browse around, partly out of curiosity to see which way his tastes lay, partly because I didn’t want to seem impatient for Sybil’s confidences. At one end of the room the bookshelves ran out in bays; I went and peered into these; then I came back and asked Sybil: ‘You poked about?’

‘I didn’t. I hadn’t time. I wasn’t in the room a minute when I heard footsteps mounting the way I had come. It was Guthrie returning.’

‘A moment not without its embarrassment, Sybil.’

‘I’ll say. I knew I really hadn’t any business to penetrate to this remote study. It was frightfully ill-bred. And I was kind of scared of the old gentleman when it came to the point of facing him with grovelling apologies. I saw that in venturing into his den I’d done a silly thing. And I lost my head.’

Sybil’s head, I reflected, was now happily restored to her shoulders; she was as cool as could be.

‘It was quite mad, but I just cast about for somewhere to hide! There were two possibilities: that door near the staircase door, and that other one over there that is a sort of French window on the parapet walk. The first – the one we now know gives on the little bedroom – proved to be locked; I just had time to make for the other and get through. It wasn’t at all comfortable; I found myself out in the open, on a narrow platform, hundreds of feet in the air and buffeted by a howling hurricane.’

‘Between the Prince of the Air within and his attendant spirits without.’

‘Exactly. I dropped my candle in the snow – it will be there still – and stood clinging to the handle of the door. It was pitch dark and the wind simply caught at my wits and numbed them. Minutes must have passed before I realized that a door meant some sort of security beyond and that I was on something more than the merest ledge. I couldn’t quite get the door shut and I was frightened to risk my balance with a really stout tug. So there I was on one side of the thing and there was Guthrie, moving round lighting a few candles, on the other. I had either to recover my good sense and face him, or stay tucked away. I stayed tucked away.

‘Guthrie went over to the desk there in the middle of the room, sat down and buried his face in his hands. A couple of minutes later – no more – he straightened up and called out something I didn’t catch. The staircase door opened – it was just within my field of vision – and a young man came in, ushered I think by Hardcastle, though I didn’t see him. Guthrie rose, pointed to a chair, and this time I heard him speak quite distinctly. He said: “Mr Lindsay, sit down.”

‘Unfortunately – I suppose it must be said – those were the only words I made out. The wind was howling so that the rest of the interview was simply a dumb-show. They talked earnestly for some time–’

I interrupted. ‘And angrily, Sybil?’

Sybil shook her head. ‘Definitely not. It occurred to me they weren’t good friends – it had the appearance of rather a formal parley – but there wasn’t anything that looked like heat. They might simply have been settling something up.’

‘Like the buying-off business Hardcastle told us of?’

‘I suppose so.’ Sybil had paused for a moment as if to inspect my question. Then she went on. ‘Presently they both stood up and Lindsay shook his head – a curiously gentle, curiously decisive action it seemed to me. They moved towards the door–’