‘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–’
‘They were in view all the time, Sybil? They hadn’t moved, for instance, to the other end of the room?’
‘They were in view all the time. They moved towards the door and there shook hands – formally, I should say, rather than cordially. Lindsay went out and Guthrie turned back. I got a shock when I saw his face. He looked – I don’t know how to put it – tragic and broken. I saw him only for a second. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the bedroom door and disappeared inside, shutting the door behind him. It seemed about a minute or half a minute later that I heard a faint cry. I waited another minute and then decided to make a dash for the staircase. I was in the middle of the room when you and Hardcastle came in upon me.’
‘And when I asked you about Guthrie you said “He has fallen from the tower.” Forgive me. Sybil, but this is what they will ask. How on earth did you know?’
Sybil Guthrie looked at me in silence for a moment. Then she said: ‘Yes, I see.’ There was another silence. ‘Noel, it was a sort of intuition.’
‘Didn’t you tell me once you weren’t psychic?’
I ought not to have brought that in; I wasn’t a prosecuting barrister. But I felt it extraordinarily important that Sybil should realize certain dangers in her situation. And suddenly she blazed out. ‘I tell you I knew, Noel Gylby! That interview had somehow crushed the man. I saw imminent death in his face. And your rushing in on top of that cry just told me. Guthrie was next to mad anyway and when his plans went wrong he made an end of himself.’
‘He had failed, you mean, to buy Lindsay off, and couldn’t bear the thought of losing his niece?’
‘Something like that. And it should be lurid enough for you.’ We were sitting now perched side by side on Guthrie’s desk. After a time I said: ‘Well, that’s been a useful trial spin, Sybil.’
She turned her head and gave me a quick glance. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’
‘I mean,’ I said gently, ‘that we must have a revised version.’
‘In other words, I’m lying?’
‘Not at all. What you have said may be gospel. But it’s just too awkward to be safe. Your piece of intuition is perfectly possible. But it’s the sort of possibility that looks perfectly awful in a court of law.’
Again Sybil said: ‘Yes, I see.’
‘You are lurking here, Guthrie goes into the bedroom, there is a cry, we rush in, and then your mind takes a great leap in the dark – a leap to the truth, maybe. But you see how strange it could be made to look? Only the fact that you have no real connection with Guthrie is between you and positive suspicion.’
Sybil stood up and faced me. ‘Noel, shall I tell you the truth?’
‘For goodness’ sake do.’
‘Behold the chatelaine of Erchany!’
I jumped up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’m Ranald Guthrie’s heir.’
. . .
The row of little dots, Diana, means that you are invited to be staggered. Perhaps you won’t be – if only because I wasn’t myself. That there were wheels within wheels in Sybil Guthrie’s relations with Erchany is something that I’ve had a dim sense of for some time, and that sense has probably got into my earlier narrative. If I was decidedly taken aback it was by the sudden vivid image of Sybil and myself sitting each on a wing of my car in the snow and my seeing the Erchany light and saying so importantly that we would make for that. For I had come upon her, in fact, in the middle of a more than ingenious plan to gate-crash on Erchany – a plan into which she had incorporated me magnificently and in her stride. Some refinements of the scheme – the artless requests for guidance south, the resolute driving of her car over a bank – I recall with positive awe. And did she not, in the very critical moment of her plot, stand idly making quiet fun out of the text of Coleridge’s Christabel? As I think I discerned – a formidable young woman.
As yet I have got only the outline of what it is all about. The American Guthries – Sybil and her widowed mother – were served some dirty financial turn by Ranald Guthrie; they heard rumours that he was mad and irresponsible; and having an interest in his estate they have been trying in various ways to discover the true state of affairs. Sybil, being in England, decided to discover for herself. She explored the ground some weeks ago and when the snow came she saw her chance. What she didn’t see, poor child, was the awkward scrape into which her irresponsible jaunt was going to lead her. She really is a bit scared now – which only shows her common sense. It is a most extraordinary position.
But if she’s scared she’s also full of fight. Standing before the empty fireplace in Guthrie’s study and looking down on her as she perched once more on the desk, I thought of the motto that I now knew was hers by right. Touch not the Tyger. It was not inappropriate: the beast was lurking there truly enough and I felt that I had neither touched nor scratched it – I knew, in other words, very little about Sybil. Only I guessed that she would leap at danger if she felt the call; and I knew that there were ways in which she could be quite, quite ruthless. Observe, Diana, that the attraction of Miss Sybil Guthrie is a lunar echo of the attraction of Miss Diana Sandys: observe this and hold your peace.
She perched there full of fight, scarcely needing my prompting that her situation was awkward. I was puzzled, indeed, by an obscure feeling that she was planning ahead further than I could see – a feeling prompted, I knew, by some association in the recent past. A second later I got it: it was Sybil’s eye. She was looking at me, and about the study, with the very glance that Ranald Guthrie had bent upon his unexpected guests. I could scarcely have had a more dramatic reminder that there was a Guthrie at Erchany still.
‘What is known,’ I asked, ‘of your earlier reconnoitring here?’
‘I don’t know. Not much. I sent a telegram from the pub in Kinkeig saying I expected to get something soon.’
‘Whom to?’
‘Our lawyer. He was in London then but he’s sailed for home now. Noel, I think I’d better have a lawyer or someone.’
‘I think you better had. As a matter of fact, you have. I wired.’
‘Noel Gylby! Explain yourself.’
‘I didn’t like it at alclass="underline" Guthrie dead and Hardcastle muttering murder and you being found up here. We must protect ourselves, mustn’t we? And I have an uncle in Edinburgh just now; he’s a soldier and has the Scottish Command. He’ll see the right sort of person is dispatched.’
‘I’ll say you have a neck.’
‘So have you, Sybil. That’s the point.’
‘Yes, I see.’
So that was that. I didn’t think anyone would really want to hang Sybil; I rather hoped they would be able to hang Hardcastle, though I couldn’t see just how. The thought prompted a question. ‘Sybil, you say Guthrie and Lindsay were in view all the time? What about Guthrie’s ringing a bell and going to the door and shouting to Hardcastle to invite me up?’