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 Sybiclass="underline" ‘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.”