The Key of the Chest Read online

  As Smeorach finished, Dougald gave a grunt. Smeorach swung round on him with a high sharp animosity. ‘But I tell you it’s the God’s truth. Wasn’t I there? Don’t I know? Didn’t I hear what I heard and see with my own eyes?’

  All the others looked at Dougald with the same gleam.

  Dougald’s mouth opened a little, saying ‘Uh?’ as he glanced back at them. ‘I was just thinking it’s time I was going home.’

  ‘Home!’ echoed Smeorach, taken aback, for now he knew that Dougald’s grunt had been no ironic comment. ‘Home? On a night like this?’

  ‘Yes, home,’ said Dougald. ‘It’s about time.’ He bent over and caught the neck of his sack.

  ‘Home?’ cried Smeorach. ‘Is it leave of your senses you’ve taken? Do you think you’ll find your track on the moor and it black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots? Eh?’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ said Dougald, getting up.

  ‘You’ll find no moon this night, if that’s what you’re thinking of,’ said William.

  ‘I’m no woman – to need the moon,’ said Dougald.

  So unexpected was the stroke that even the jovial William forgot to laugh.

  But Smeorach laughed. ‘And if you feel tired you can sit down and put your head under the sack, for the rain will have masked the tea and melted the sugar and turned the bread to brochan. You should fare well.’

  A terrific blast of wind tried to flatten the house, failed, and fled inland to the mountains carrying Smeorach’s high mirth in its hound’s throat.

  Dougald, who had got to his feet, looked down at the brown jute sack. So accustomed were they to the sounds of the sea that they rarely consciously heard them, but now into that moment of silence came the muffled thunder of waves breaking on the strand. A swirl of rain beat on the small window like a shower of gun pellets.

  Dougald turned his head slightly towards the blind wall as if better to see the night and his path. Then he looked down again at the bag.

  ‘It would be difficult to keep it dry,’ he admitted slowly. Then he sat down. ‘It may take off.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked William, in the innocent voice of polite irony.

  ‘It may be no more than the tail-end of the storm outside,’ said Dougald.

  ‘I have heard of the tail wagging the dog,’ said William.

  Faces brightened and smiled, with a quick glance at Dougald, but none laughed.

  Dougald looked at him.‘I have never seen a tail wagging a dog.’

  Everyone burst into laughter.

  Dougald’s eyes narrowed and his colour seemed to darken. But no one could say whether he was amused or angry, though they felt the presence of the state that lay between.

  Murdo said calmly that possibly Dougald was right. The centre of the storm lay to the nor’-ard in his opinion and was maybe passing them by as it drove on its course.

  Then they heard it coming, heard the earth being flattened. Their muscles grew taut and held on. Their faces turned to the blind window. The floor rumbled under their feet. But the house held and the pressure eased.

  Murdo lifted his eyes to the window again. ‘God help all those at sea this night,’ he said quietly with a seaman’s reverence. Then he got up.

  They all got up, for byre and barn roofs might suffer and women would be anxious. Smeorach got the door open. William called the two boys by name, Hamish and Norrie, and caught a grip of them. He was passing their homes. Smeorach got the door shut and shoved home the wooden bar.

  ‘What a night!’ he said, returning to the fire which he began banking up with peat. ‘It’s a good thing for you, Dougald, that you’re not on that moor this night.’

  ‘It may be as well,’ said Dougald.

  But Smeorach did not mock him now. Nor did he ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. Water he put in the kettle, lifting it with a tin jug from a zinc bucket in the dark passage, and swung the kettle on the crook.

  Smeorach did nearly all the talking, but he liked talking, and if Dougald had had easier manners, it would not have been difficult to entertain him. There was a time, indeed, when the core of the man must have gone soft and responsive; but as, suddenly realizing this, Smeorach looked at his guest, he felt that he had merely forgotten the man and been talking to himself. He grew suddenly tired, feeling his age. They sat in silence for a long time, gazing at the fire. The thunder of the sea-storm came about them and they were isolated.

  As Smeorach’s head drooped, the storm sounds went through it… flung bodies without shape or face, hunting the void of this world and the void beyond. A cry issued amid them and above the cry a gleam of two red eyes. The two red-streaming eyes shook his substance together and his head jerked up.

  There was a queer smile on Dougald’s face. ‘I’m keeping you from your bed,’ he repeated.

  Smeorach stared at him. ‘What’s that?’ he stuttered, like one lost. ‘Eh?… Dear me, was I nearly asleep?’

  ‘You were,’ said Dougald, and a simple humour stirred on his face.

  But Smeorach said, ‘Is it laughing at an old man you are?’

  Dougald looked at him and then settled back in his chair. ‘I wasn’t laughing,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t want to keep you out of your bed.’

  ‘Bed, is it? Well, well. You will excuse me for wandering. And it’s high time indeed that we were in bed. Come, and I’ll show you to the room. I’ll light the lamp.’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Dougald. ‘I’ll just sit where I am.’

  Smeorach gaped at him.

  ‘The storm will take off,’ said Dougald. ‘When it does, I’ll go.’

  And in the end Smeorach had to accept the position and get to his bed, which was a boxed wooden structure set against the wall opposite the fire. His legs were lean and he slept in his shirt. But he had been a seaman and everything in the house was tidy and shipshape. A niece did his washing and occasionally brought him soup and meat. The two short print curtains were fresh and the pillows white. He spoke for a little while, but wearily, and soon he fell asleep.

  When he awoke the storm was still raging. From the fire he knew he had been asleep less than two hours. Dougald was still sitting in his chair, but his head had fallen forward and plainly he was fast asleep. The flame had all but died from the peat, and the body was solid as a boulder in the reddish glow. Smeorach looked at it for a long time. It wakened him fully.

  Then his head fell back on the pillow and he sighed, staring unseeingly at that mystery of life of which a man could make so little, however long he lived.

  He awoke once or twice again, though in the following daylight hours he half-wondered if he really had awaked, so lost were the occasions in the hollow of the night.

  But in the end he was startled from sleep by the sounds of that figure moving in the kitchen. Dawn was in the window and a stillness on the world.

  ‘Is that you Dougald?… Are you going?’ Smeorach got up on his elbow, his round eyes peering from above his whiskers in solemn wonder. ‘It sounds a calm morning.’

  ‘It’s calm now,’ said Dougald. He swung the sack on to his back.

  ‘Wait, man, and I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ said Smeorach, and he threw the clothes back.

  ‘No need,’ said Dougald. ‘I’ll be going.’

  ‘What’s your hurry?’

  Dougald paused by the end of the bed, but he said nothing and went on and out. They had seen the last of him now for a few weeks.

  Smeorach’s head fell back. There was something graceless in the man that couldn’t be got over.

  CHAPTER THREE

  But in the forenoon, Smeorach, straightening his back from the cow’s tether and slowly looking around to take the autumn sun and bright air, saw a man and a dog coming from the cliffs. ‘Here,’ he called to the policeman who was passing on the road, ‘that’s not Dougald MacIan coming there?’

  The policeman turned to the moor. ‘It looks like it,’ he said.

  ‘I wonder what on earth he can have forgotten that wo
uld be taking him all this way back at once?’ Smeorach took a neighbourly step or two towards the policeman. Before Dougald would get home again he would have walked twenty miles in a morning, for it was six if not seven to his cottage.

  They waited together in silence until Dougald came up. Smeorach was about to cry a humoured greeting when he saw Dougald’s face.

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’ Dougald asked the policeman. They both walked away from Smeorach, of whom Dougald had taken no notice.

  Coming to a halt at a little distance, they stood talking together so earnestly that soon all eyes within sight were secretly watching them.

  Presently the policeman was seen clapping his hand to his breast pocket, but though he had on his blue trousers, he was wearing an old tweed jacket, and the notebook he had plainly reached for was not there. He took out his watch, put it back, and stood thoughtfully. Then all at once he started down the road, but stopped again, and, giving a shout to Dougald, overtook him.

  They walked up the road together until their ways parted, Dougald heading back for the moor and the policeman striding on to the house with the dark blue slates and the unobtrusive notice: Police Station.

  Within five minutes he was out again, properly dressed, with his wife calling to him a few final words from the door. He did not answer her, but strode steadily down the road to Kenneth Grant’s shop.

  Kenneth, who was serving an old woman, saw his head pass the window and heard him go into the small room that was the post office. Presently the communicating door opened and the policeman’s head looked round. ‘Can I see you a minute?’

  Kenneth dropped his scoop in the tea-chest and went into the post office, for which he was responsible.

  ‘I want to send a telegram,’ said the policeman.

  ‘I’ll give Sarah a shout. I hope there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘It’s a dead body.’

  Kenneth stared at him.

  ‘I want the doctor first,’ said the policeman.

  ‘The doctor?’ repeated Kenneth. ‘He’s not past yet. I’ve put a sign out for him – for Widow Macrae. The nurse was here a minute ago.’

  ‘Are you sure he’ll be passing? No time must be lost.’

  ‘Certain, I should say. But you’d be as well to say a word to the nurse. It’s not – anyone – we know?’

  ‘It’s a dead seaman. But I cannot say anything until I have investigated the case. I’ll see the nurse and you get hold of Sarah.’

  At that moment Sarah came in, a slim girl of twenty, with dark attractive eyes. ‘I’ll be back,’ said the policeman, and out he went, striding down to the nurse’s cottage, which lay some twenty yards below the road.

  As crime was almost unknown in this part of the world, the whole township was soon aware of the policeman’s activity. Folk did not approach him in any way, but stood back watching.

  Soon he was seen setting out for the moor, and in a few minutes everyone knew he could be heading only for Dougald’s cottage at Sgeir. A man here and there found he wanted an ounce of tobacco at Kenneth’s, and some of the women thought they might as well buy their messages early, for it was a fine morning.

  The moor was an extensive sweep of land, jutting broadly into the sea. At one time it had contained three small townships, one on the northern side, along which the policeman was now proceeding, and two on the southern. Some of the ruins of these townships could still be seen. Their inhabitants had been forcibly evicted from them over a century ago to make room for sheep. The cottage in which Dougald now lived had, in fact, been specially built for a shepherd from the Border country.

  As the policeman continued on his lonely way he was very full of his ‘case’. It was the first dead body he had ever had to deal with and he was anxious not to make a slip in his report or to omit from it any point of official importance. He was a tall dark man of thirty-two, broad-shouldered and fresh complexioned. ‘At 10.50 a.m. on Wednesday the—’ (he could not remember the day of the month with certainty, but the calendar would soon settle that) –‘I was approached by Dougald MacIan, shepherd, of Sgeir…’ The postal address, parish, county, what he said. He took out his notebook, and put it back. There was plenty of time. No good hurrying a thing of this sort.

  Though the sea sparkled under the sun it still pounded the cliffs. Obviously the wrecked vessel had come through heavy weather, perhaps been driven along with it. There might be other bodies, even survivors. It could easily be a very complicated and important case.

  The policeman looked about him. Now the rocks gave on a gully with sloping braes. There were cairns of stones and raised green rectangles where the grass had grown over the foundations of some of the ancient cottages. Sheep were nibbling on the other side of the small stream, which came from a loch set in broken land in the middle of this broad promontory. There were some marshes in there, too, good wild duck and snipe country.

  The policeman, however, had no thought for anything but his duty and when at last he drew near the cottage, he was feeling all keyed up and ready. Dougald appeared round the gable-end and stood against it, waiting.

  The strangeness of this remote dwelling rose suddenly upon the policeman. With no woman about the place, what a queer life these two men must lead. No wonder there was talk! However, that was no business of his, so after he had greeted Dougald he asked, ‘Where’s your brother?’

  ‘He’s inside,’ said Dougald, ‘with the body.’

  As they entered the living-room the policeman peered hither and thither through a yellow gloom of the dead that gripped him. The air, too, was heavily tainted. His eyes fastened on a figure that rose slowly from a chair near the fire.

  ‘Fine day, Charlie,’ said the policeman softly and solemnly.

  ‘Fine day,’ answered Charlie, and a thin smile spread over his pale face. It was a sensitive face, good looking, and the fair hair had a touch of yellow. Indeed there was something of Charlie’s college days in the face even at that moment. The tall body had straightened itself from the stool with a lazy grace, and as the eyes rested on the policeman they glistened against the dim light.

  After the bright freshness of the world outside, the policeman turned to the small window and found it mostly obscured by a piece of brown cloth. As he faced into the room again he discerned the hump of the body on the bed in the inner corner.

  He asked Dougald to take the blind from the window, and when the light flowed in he went over and removed the white sheet from the face, putting the flat of his hand at the same moment on the forehead. The hand drew back quickly, surprised by the cold, and the policeman began to stare at the face.

  It was a face with distinct cheek bones and a fair pointed beard. The bedclothes were drawn up under the chin so that the face, thus cut off, held a strangely isolated, suppressed power of personality. A slight furrowing between the eyebrows still caught the intolerance, the anger, of a final command. A small man, but a masterful spirit. Death had done no more than trap the spirit, had frozen its nobility in a darkly congested, even menacing way.

  The policeman gently removed the bedclothes and exposed the chest. The body was naked and the skin fair except for one or two discoloured patches that clearly spoke of the fight with the sea. As he replaced the clothes and turned from the bed, Charlie’s eyes shifted from him to the window and stared far out to sea.

  They were silent for a little and then the policeman said that it was a sad and a tragic business, for the dead man’s darkened face so affected him that he forgot for the moment the importance of his case.

  ‘It must have been wild here last night,’ he added, remembering the storm.

  ‘It was,’ said Charlie.

  Then the policeman stirred. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to tell me how it all happened from the beginning. In that way, we’ll get it in order.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Charlie. He found the policeman a seat at the table near the window, pushing back some crockery so that he would have a clear place for writing in hi
s notebook. He had the ready movement and ease of expression which his brother lacked.

  ‘You can sit down,’ said the policeman.

  Charlie sat down, and as he went on answering the policeman, Dougald, standing with his back to the fire, kept staring at his face. When Dougald’s eyes shifted for a moment to the policeman there was no movement of his head.

  ‘Now tell me, when did you have the first intimation of it?’

  ‘Just on midnight,’ Charlie answered. ‘A little before I saw the light I looked at my watch, wondering if Dougald was coming home. It was then ten minutes to twelve.’

  ‘Have you your watch on you?’

  Charlie took out a silver watch, and suddenly listened to it. ‘It’s still going,’ he said.‘I don’t remember winding it.’

  ‘You’re twelve minutes fast,’ said the policeman, replacing his own watch. ‘Very good. Now you said you saw a light?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, winding his watch automatically. ‘I was sitting by the fire and thought I saw a dull glare in the window.’

  The policeman looked out of the window and saw a series of low rocks beyond the Point. The sea was still breaking over them. As the blue heaved the sunlight was reflected radiantly. When the policeman had recorded how the rocks could be seen from the window, Charlie shifted his eyes from him and continued. ‘I knew it was not lightning, and when I got to the window and looked out I saw it was flares from a ship caught on the outer spit.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I went out. It was blowing very strong. But I managed down to the shore. I had been down in the first of the night making sure of my boat. At that time there was no sight of any vessel.’

  ‘Now what did you observe when you went down?’

  ‘I saw that a vessel was on the outer spit and that nothing could save her. I heard cries. They came through the noise of the storm. I felt from the high sound of them that she was going down fast.’