Murder of a Lady (8 page)

“I'll go back for it,” McDonald said.

McDonald ran back along the lighted corridor. Next moment Dr. Hailey heard his own name called in accents which proclaimed distress and horror. He strode to Dundas's room.

The detective was lying huddled on the floor beside the bed. There was an ominous stain on his corn-coloured hair.

Chapter XII

The Second Murder

Dr. McDonald was on his knees beside the man, trying apparently to feel his pulse. He raised frightened eyes as his colleague came into the room.

“He's dead!”

“What?”

“He's dead!”

Dr. Hailey glanced round the room and, seeing nothing, looked again as though aware of a presence that defied human senses. Then he touched the stain on the yellow head. He started back.

“His skull's broken,” he cried, “broken like an eggshell. Was the door of the room shut?”

“Yes.”

“We met nobody in the corridor. There's no other door on the corridor. There's nowhere anybody could hide.”

Dr. Hailey satisfied himself that Dundas was dead. Then he walked to the opened window. The night was very still. He listened, but could hear nothing except the gurgle of the burn below the window and the less sophisticated mirth of small waves on the shingle. The herring-boats were still lying at anchor near the shore. He looked down at the smooth wall which fell even farther here than under Miss Gregor's window, because of the sharp fall of the ground towards the burn. Nobody had come this way.

McDonald had risen and was standing gazing at the detective's body. His cheeks were white, his eyes rather staring. Every now and then he moistened his dry lips.

“There's no sign of a struggle,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Dr. Hailey nodded. The champagne glasses stood where they had been placed and, though the bottle had descended somewhat into its pail, it had not been disturbed.

“You heard no cry?”

“I heard nothing.”

“How long do you suppose we were absent from the room?”

“Half a minute. Not more.”

“These oil lamps throw long and deep shadows, you know. And we weren't looking for possible assassins…”

As he spoke Dr. Hailey stepped out into the corridor. He lit his electric lamp and directed the beam to right and left. The corridor ended at a window which looked out in the same direction as the windows of Dundas's bedroom, and there was a space of about a yard between this window and the bedroom door—a space evidently big enough to serve as a hiding-place. He extinguished his lamp. The rays of the paraffin lamp near the stairhead, feeble as they were, effectively illuminated the space under the window. He called Dr. McDonald.

“You would have seen anybody there,” he said.

“Of course. Nobody could hide there.”

“He must have hidden somewhere!”

The doctor's tones were peremptory, like the tones of a schoolmaster cross-examining a shifty pupil.

“Of course. We passed nobody.”

“Nobody.”

Their eyes met. Each read the growing horror in the other's eyes. They glanced to right and left.

“It's only a question of making a careful enough search,” McDonald said. “We've overlooked something of course. Our nerves…”

He broke off. He gazed about him. His mouth opened but no words came to his lips. He walked to the window, looked out, and came back again to his companion.

“Shall I shut the door?” he asked.

“There's nobody here.”

“There must be. If we leave the door open he may get away.”

McDonald shut the door. He began to prowl round the room like a caged animal. His eyes, Dr. Hailey thought, held the expression which is characteristic of caged animals. He was waiting, expecting. But he was also without hope. He looked into the wardrobe and under the bed and again into the wardrobe. After that he locked the wardrobe door.

“I feel that we aren't alone,” he declared in challenging tones.

He kept fidgeting with his necktie. Dr. Hailey shook his head.

“I'm afraid it's useless,” he declared.

“Don't you feel that there's somebody beside us?”

“No.”

McDonald pressed his hand to his brow.

“It must be my nerves. One doesn't see, though…It's such a long fall to the ground, and I heard nothing.”

He continued to make rambling, disjointed comments. His face had lost its accustomed expression of cheerfulness; it revealed the deep agitation which fear and horror were arousing in his mind. “I think,” he cried suddenly, “that we ought to go down below and make sure that no ladder or rope was employed.”

“Very well.”

Dr. Hailey walked back to the dead man and examined his injury again. Then he accompanied his colleague. They found Duchlan and his son waiting for them at the head of the stairs.

“It's good of you to come, Dr. Hailey,” Eoghan Gregor said. He noticed the pallor of Dr. McDonald's face and stiffened. “Is anything wrong?”

“Dundas has just been murdered.”

Both father and son recoiled.

“What?”

“His skull has been broken…” McDonald faltered over this medical detail and then added: “Hailey and I are going down to…to investigate the ground under the window.”

Duchlan seemed to wish to ask some further questions but desisted. He stood aside to allow the doctors to pass. He followed them downstairs and was followed in turn by Eoghan. Dr. Hailey asked them if they possessed an electric lamp and was told that they did not.

Eoghan led the way to the place immediately under Dundas's window. Dr. Hailey lit his torch and swept the bank with the strong beam. The beam showed him nothing. He turned it to light the front of the house and saw that there was a french-window immediately under Dundas's bedroom.

“What room is that?” he asked Duchlan.

“The writing-room.”

“You heard nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Duchlan put his hand on the doctor's arm.

“I thought I saw something gleam out there just now, to the left of the boats,” he said.

“Really?”

The old man stood gazing seawards for a few minutes and then turned again.

“Moonlight is always deceptive,” he declared, “and never more so than when it shines on water.”

“Yes.”

“It seems impossible that anybody can have reached that poor young man's bedroom. Eoghan and I must have seen anybody who tried to descend the staircase.”

The doctor nodded. “Nobody left the room,” he declared in positive tones.

“Nor entered it.”

“No.”

Duchlan drew a sharp breath.

“They say there are places in Loch Fyne,” he declared inconsequently, “where the sea has no bed. Bottomless deeps about which our local lore is prolific of uneasy tales.”

His voice fell to a whisper. “I've heard my father, the late Duchlan, speak of swimmers, half-man, half-fish, whose mission it was…”

He broke off. The awe in his tones sufficiently declared the nature of the fear which was compelling him. He gazed seaward again, expecting, apparently, a further glimpse of the shining object he had already seen.

“The Highland superstition is a byword in the Lowlands,” he added after a few minutes. “They mock and jeer at us. But so might blind men mock at those possessed of sight. If our scientists were blind they would, believe me, furnish indisputable proof that sight is no more than an illusion of the simple.”

“What was the object like which gleamed?” Dr. Hailey asked in impatient tones.

“Like a fish. A leaping salmon gleams in that way, in moonlight; but this was bigger than any salmon. And it did not leave the water.”

“You saw it once only?”

The old man nodded.

“Yes, only once. I've been watching to see if I could catch another glimpse of it, but it has disappeared.”

He spoke in tones which left no doubt that he believed that what he had witnessed was no mere reflection of the moon's light on the water. The doctor watched the play of emotion on his features, and realized that he had already reached his own conclusions about the murders. He turned to Eoghan and McDonald and asked them if they had observed anything.

“Nothing,” Eoghan said.

“And you, doctor?”

“I've seen nothing at all.”

McDonald's voice was unsteady. He stood gazing at the facade of the house as if he expected to gain enlightenment from it. Suddenly he turned and raised his hand to his eyes. He pointed to the herring-boats.

“If they're not all asleep they must have seen something,” he declared.

Dr. Hailey was busy with his lamp. He turned the beam on the wall.

There was no sign of any attempt to climb the wall. He walked for some distance to right and left and repeated his examination. The grass was innocent of any mark such as must have been imprinted on it had a ladder been used to reach the window. He turned to Duchlan who was standing beside him.

“The Procurator Fiscal told me that he examined the ground under your sister's window?” he said.

“He did, yes. I was with him. We had the advantage of bright sunlight on that occasion and also of the fact that there's a flower bed under the window. We found absolutely nothing. Neither footprint nor ladder-print.”

“There seems to be nothing here either.”

“Nothing.”

They stood facing each other in silence. The murmur of voices came softly to them from the herring-boats. Dr. Hailey turned and descended the bank to the shore. He hailed the nearest of the boats and was answered in the soft accents of the Highlands.

“Did you see anybody at that lighted window up there?”

“I did not. We've been sleeping. It was your voices that wakened us.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“No, sir.”

Dr. Hailey felt exasperated at the man's calmness and told him what had happened. The news was received with a stream of exclamations.

“I thought your look-out man might have seen something at the window.”

“We have no look-out man when we anchor in-shore. But we're light sleepers, all of us. As I told you, it was your voices wakened us. There was no cry from the bedroom. Not a sound at all whatever.”

They returned to the house and entered Duchlan's study. Dr. Hailey told Eoghan Gregor that he wished to see his little boy before they dealt further with the case of Dundas, and he and McDonald left father and son together and climbed the stairs to the top floor of the house. Oonagh met them at the top of the stairs.

“He's had another attack,” she cried in anxious tones.

She paused an instant before the word “attack”. Dr. Hailey realized that she had meant to say “fit”. That short word carried too great a burden of fear. She led the way into a big room, the walls of which were covered with texts from the Bible. The little boy was lying down; as he approached the bed an old woman in cap and apron, who had been bending over the child, stood up and moved aside to let him pass. Her broad, deeply-wrinkled face was streaked with tears. Dr. Hailey lifted the ice-bag from the child's brow and looked into the wide-open eyes. He lit his lamp and flashed it, suddenly, on the small face. When the patient winced, he nodded reassuringly.

“What about the signs?” he asked McDonald.

“They're all negative.”

“Kernig's?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Hailey patted the hand which lay, closed, on the coverlet beside him. He asked the child to tell him his name and got a clear answer: “Hamish Gregor of Duchlan”. Even the babes in Duchlan Castle were taught, it seemed, to set store on their territorial right.

“Who taught you your name?” he asked.

“Aunt Mary.”

He bent and drew his nail lightly across the child's forearm, a proceeding watched with careful eyes by the nurse. After a short interval a red wheal appeared on the skin where he had stroked it. The wheal became, rapidly, more marked and acquired a pallor in the middle, which suggested that the arm had been lashed with a whipcord. Both Oonagh and the nurse exclaimed in dismay.

“What does it mean?” Oonagh asked.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“It's a sign of a certain type of nervous temperament, that's all. The attacks belong to the same order. They'll soon pass off though they may return.” Dr. Hailey exchanged a smile with his patient, who was now viewing the wheal with astonishment. He added: “There's absolutely nothing to fear, now or later.”

Oonagh thanked him with a sincerity that admitted of no question. She seemed to have changed since the night on which he had rescued her but he did not fail to observe that she was strung up to a high pitch. He wondered if it was from her that the child had inherited its weakness, but decided that, in all probability, Dundas's view was the correct one. This girl was physically healthy even if her mind was being severely tried. She listened with an admirable self-control to his direction about the treatment of her boy and emphasized these directions for the guidance of the old nurse.

“You've noticed, I suppose,” Dr. Hailey said to the nurse, “that the child bruises easily, and sometimes more easily than at other times.”

“Yes, doctor, I have.” The old woman's grave, attractive face darkened. “I call him ‘Hamish hurt himself' whiles because he always seems to be covered with bruises. There's bruises that come of themselves, too, without his hurting himself. I didna know that it was his nerves.”

Her voice was soft and urgent like a deep stream in spate. Its tones suggested that she was only half convinced. Duchlan's descriptions of his servants as friends was evidently fully justified.

“He'll grow out of it.”

The nurse hesitated a moment. Then the blood darkened in her withered cheeks.

“I should tell you, doctor,” she said, “that Hamish has been losing ground lately. He seems that lifeless and depressed. I think whiles it's as if he was frightened of something or somebody. Children are mair sensitive like than old folk.”

She broke off and glanced at Oonagh as if she feared that she had exceeded her right. But the girl nodded.

‘‘I've noticed that too,” she said. “He seems what we call in Ireland ‘droopy'.”