Lindsay came shortly before half-past eleven, was admitted by Hardcastle and sent straight up to the tower. Shortly before midnight Guthrie rang a bell – he seems to have had both the Hardcastles at his beck and call – and when Hardcastle mounted the stair shouted down to him the message about the nightcap which eventually brought me on the scene.
It was at this point that I really had to interrupt. ‘But Mr Hardcastle, can you explain why I should be summoned to celebrate this painful business of buying off the young man Lindsay? Wasn’t it rather a private affair?’
‘By your leave, Mr Gylby, I’m thinking the business would maybe be over and the bit dram with a stranger a way of getting the unchancy loon quietly away.’
I need hardly tell you there was scarcely a word of this story that I was in the least anxious to believe. In estimating its credibility, however, I have to remind myself sharply that on Hardcastle’s lips the multiplication table would soon become, as far as I am concerned, suspect at once. And now he was a less prepossessing figure than ever: his surliness was uncomfortably laced with servility and I was aware that he was intensely uneasy. I had contrived to get part of the narrative from his wife and I think he may have been in terror lest she should say the wrong thing – let the wrong species of sinister cat out of the bag. Or he may simply have been scared of me. Or of Sybil.
One fact has emerged clearly. Lindsay and Christine – unless they have been conveyed to some hidden dungeon of the castle – really have gone away, singly or together. Mrs Hardcastle, whom I am increasingly inclined to believe an honest woman, professes to have seen Christine running down the schoolroom corridor with a suitcase, and a hunt by lantern light at the main door of the castle has revealed two half-obliterated tracks leading off into the darkness. The elopement, I believe, is a fact – and a strange season they chose and a hard trek they’ve had. Lindsay when we met him on the staircase must have been making straight for Christine; a few minutes later they must have departed. But what had happened in the few minutes preceding? What happened in the tower?
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.