The Key of the Chest Read online

  For so heavy a man, the Fiscal very deftly reconstructed the scene, with the policeman on the floor gripping a stool which was just about the size of the chest. It took time, and Charlie who, in the beginning, showed reluctance, finally did as he was directed in a passive manner. But apparently he was not quite certain exactly how to grip the policeman’s clothes behind the neck. One or two holds were tried. This took a little time, but the Fiscal was in no hurry and appreciated certain choking sounds which the policeman made when he himself took a grip. But Charlie refused to have any opinion about the throat strangling. Clearly his natural urge was to deny it – and at this point, again, the doctor was invaded by his tantalizing feeling of uncertainty.

  In the end the Fiscal thanked him, saying he quite realized how Charlie must feel, particularly in view of his statement, which, indeed, his actions in this tragic business would seem to bear out, that what he had done, at grave risk to himself, was to attempt to save the seaman’s life. At the same time, Charlie on his part would understand that the law demands certain procedures which it was his duty, as Procurator-Fiscal, to carry out.

  The policeman led Charlie from the room and brought back Dougald.

  Dougald came shambling to the threshold and stood, his eyes going from one to the other in quick thrusts.

  ‘Come in,’ said the Fiscal, ‘and take a seat.’

  By the way Dougald came forward and sat down the room might have been strange to him and none too secure. The doctor turned his eyes away and looked through the window.

  ‘Well, Mr. MacIan, as you know I am holding an inquiry into the death of this seaman. All I want from you now is just exactly what you saw when you came back here in the morning from Cruime, what your brother told you, and any other circumstance attending the matter.’ The Fiscal’s voice was precise and friendly, but when it finished Dougald sat still and silent.

  ‘Let me see,’ said the Fiscal. ‘You stayed the night in Cruime with – with—’

  ‘Smeorach,’ said Dougald.

  ‘Good. Now you left there – about what time would it be?’

  In this way each simple fact had to be drawn out of Dougald. Sometimes he knew the answer, sometimes he didn’t. When pressed for an answer as to the hour, he told the height of the sun. The Fiscal was patient, and the picture grew.

  The first complete sentence uttered by Dougald came in answer to the question why his brother Charlie had not gone for the police before Dougald appeared in the morning.

  ‘He would not be wanting me likely to come home alone and find a dead body in the house.’

  Out of his harsh voice there came an extraordinary effect of satire, but whether this satire was directed against Charlie or against the question and those present, the doctor could not determine with certainty. Probably, therefore, against both. And that was interesting in the light of rumours that had gone around about the relations between the two brothers.

  Why precisely had Charlie, after smashing his career in Edinburgh and wandering heaven knew where for some years, come back to his brother in this miserable shepherd’s cottage? That folk were almost afraid to ask Dougald about his brother, told its story far more radically than would any mere theory of brotherly relations. In such cases, folk awareness was extraordinarily subtle. When, by a chance politeness, Dougald was asked how Charlie was keeping, he would grunt. That Charlie helped with the sheep occasionally was known, for the communal flock was growing under the long-sighted secretaryship of Kenneth Grant. But his real job was lobster-fishing. He worked the boat alone and usually brought his lobsters to Cruime, where he kept them in two floating but submerged fish boxes until he had a sufficient number to dispatch by bus to the distant railway station.

  This enigma of the brothers had naturally bred all kinds of rumours, and women, talking together, with the manse in the hinterland of their minds, would often wonder how they managed ‘in the house’. And something a trifle dark and distant and even unholy came through to childish ears. ‘I am Red Dougald MacIan,’ a boy would declare and try to look like the Devil as a roaring lion. His companions would laugh at the boast and run on.

  The doctor, quietly sitting in his chair while the Fiscal pursued his course with so simple and sure a touch, tried to read Dougald’s face, to resolve the man’s nature, to separate the basic primordial element from the uncouth super-ficialities, from the instinctive wariness, but found it very difficult. Quite impossible, in fact. There was a whole wood in one’s own mind, a sheer growth of the intellectualities, that had to be cut through in order to get at that place where response would be unconditional and immediate. Like trying to sheer through Dougald’s very face, with its thick growth of reddish whisker, its weathered skin and bushy eyebrows, its half-hidden eyes with the glint that glittered a moment as it was caught by the sunlight in the window.

  ‘I see. So Charlie did not mention to you that the body was alive in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know what he did.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said that he told you the body was alive?’

  ‘He said something like that.’

  ‘Did you gather that the body was alive in the house here?’

  ‘The body was dead when I saw it. I don’t know what he’d been doing.’ Impatience was growing in the bushy figure.

  And then the Fiscal came away with the intelligence that physical evidence suggested the seaman had been strangled.

  The effect on Dougald was in its silent way very dramatic. His eyes became round and fully visible. The lips, too, became visible as they separated, creating a curious, stupid gape in the beard. The act of thought could be seen struggling to birth, wrinkling the skin around the eyes, concentrating the eyes themselves on the Fiscal’s face.

  The doctor had been uncertain in Charlie’s case, but here clearly so consummate a piece of acting was utterly impossible.

  When the Fiscal spoke again, Dougald did not answer. He was still thinking, trying to realize the news.

  At last the doctor saw Dougald almost physically tuck away this startling piece of intelligence into some deep hole in his mind. Then he was ready again. The doctor was aware in himself of a slight physical sensation like a shudder.

  Dougald provided nothing new. What he said in the main confirmed Charlie’s account. After all, he could clearly have been only a short time in the house and equally clearly the seaman had died hours before he had appeared on the scene.

  When, at the Fiscal’s bidding, he got up and stumped out, the Fiscal, looking after that uncouth physical withdrawal, which momentarily gave the effect of emptying the room, laughed in his soundless way. And for one moment the doctor was aware that the withdrawal and the comment on it were of the same kind. He smiled in response, as did the policeman, but no word was spoken.

  ‘Well,’ said the Fiscal, the glimmer of humour still in his expression as he gathered his papers, ‘what do you make of it all?’

  ‘It’s very complicated,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Eh, Doctor?’ asked the Fiscal.

  ‘Complicated seems to be the word,’ agreed the doctor, ‘short of adopting a theory.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘That he was strangled unknowingly in the water.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the Fiscal, and the humour passed from his face. ‘But immediately we assume that as a possibility, and it plainly is a definite possibility, what other kind of assumption can we set up against it? In other words, supposing we were to accuse Charlie of having strangled this man in this house, what evidence could we adduce in support of our accusation? Charlie denies it. There were no witnesses. And, as far as we can see, there is no motive. Can I make out a case that the Crown could possibly sustain, or even wish to support, in view of the simple facts of the case? For let us consider them. Assuming Charlie is the kind of man who would strangle for strangling’s sake, then why go through all this labour of bringing the body up here, when he could simply ha
ve disposed of it by throwing it into the sea without anyone’s being a bit the wiser? His whole story of the rescue would be utterly pointless. That kind of criminal does not keep the evidence that would incriminate himself and then inform the police. Any such line of argument, in view of Charlie’s assessable character, is manifestly absurd. Assuming next that he strangled the man for some sort of gain which we cannot determine – and which we could hardly therefore put forward to proof – again, why keep the body? For if he is capable of murder, surely he is capable of slipping the dead body over a cliff? If the body were washed up thereafter even on his own little shore, nobody would think anything of it. We, in fact, expect a body or two to be washed up in various stages of decomposition. As it is, even this body has sufficient bruises upon it not to preclude entirely the possibility that it may have been choked by an unknowable agency – such as, for example, the chance crushing together of planks of timber in the wild welter of wreck and storm. Would you deny that?’

  The doctor thought for a moment. ‘I should say it is extremely unlikely – and besides, Charlie says the man was alive, and he heard him shout.’

  ‘Take your first point: you say “extremely unlikely”. Could you say“impossible”?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘The second point: Charlie says he heard cries before then. Now remember he would be in a highly worked-up condition. Someone might have cried who was going down directly behind this seaman and Charlie would naturally have thought the cry came from the seaman. It was dark. Remember also the set or flow of the water. It was a back eddy from the cliff. Once a seaman had swum or struggled far enough he would hit the cliff and then be carried inshore on the back eddy. That is, if he had something to hang on to, like a chest, or could still swim strongly enough not to get drowned in the smother at the cliff-foot. Do you see the picture?’

  ‘Yes. I admit even the possibility of deception in the matter of the cry,’ replied the doctor.‘But what is not quite so clear is how a body which had been strangled would then hang on to a chest.’

  ‘You think that would be quite impossible?’ asked the Fiscal.

  ‘Well, don’t you?’

  ‘I just don’t know enough,’ confessed the Fiscal. ‘You’re the expert there. I merely wondered if a man mightn’t hang on rigidly to his precious box when life was gone, particularly if the box had got lodged across his chest in a balanced buoyant position. However, all I wanted to suggest is this: we have no certain evidence at all that the body was alive when it was drawn from the water. From that moment, no positive movement of life is alleged – except for the supposed movement of the heart in the house. That’s about it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now about the movement of the heart – what’s your opinion, Doctor? Do you think Charlie could have been mistaken?’

  ‘The heart-beat must have been faint and fairly difficult to feel with an unpractised hand at that moment.’

  ‘But a layman might fancy he felt it. I know I have sometimes been in doubt when feeling for my own! Now think. Psychologically, why would he fancy he felt it move, if it didn’t? Remember, in the circumstances, as he gave them.’

  ‘Presumably because he wanted it to move.’

  ‘Precisely. It’s the most revealing point in the whole story.’

  ‘But I could imagine circumstances in which he would be so afraid that the body was not dead that sheer fear would make him fancy the heart moved.’

  ‘Certainly. But that could only be if he wished the body dead for some very strong reason. In this case, because he had strangled it. But if he had strangled it, then he had a very simple way of getting rid of the body. And in any case surely then the very last thing on earth he would do would be to insist in such a dogged way that the heart did beat? For so to insist would be to incriminate himself.’

  ‘I agree. Except for this point. Assuming he had overlooked the possibility that it could be discovered from medical examination that the body had been strangled?’

  ‘I admit the point. It is one among any number of possible assumptions. He has some education, but one may assume any degree of ignorance here. In the end the only thing we can do against assumption is to apply common sense and probability. And here we have the simple straightforward story of one man’s brave attempt at rescuing another. Take it absolutely as it stands. Take it that the seaman actually cries, and is alive and hanging on to his chest. Charlie dashes into that whirlpool. He grabs the man behind the neck. He gets swept off his feet and momentarily goes under. It’s very dark. But he hangs on and with his free hand strikes out blindly. They are bashed against the skerry. He still hangs on and tries to lift the man’s head out of the water. Remember, the wind is roaring, the sea smashing, the spray flying, and it’s black night. Think of the inferno it was; put yourself in Charlie’s position. He fights his way to shore and at last drags the seaman, now unconscious, after him. He is nearly unconscious himself. You saw the neckband of the seaman’s shirt and that sealskin waistcoat that buttons up to the throat. Charlie had a grip of them at the back of the neck… It would not take us long to dress the body again. We could then see how pressure could be applied from a grip.’

  The doctor, without dressing the body, quite simply tied the top button of shirt and of sealskin waistcoat round the throat and then turned the body over on its face. Each of the three men tried the grip and agreed that if Charlie had hauled the full weight of the seaman for one minute, the result could easily have been strangulation. Not to mention the final solid hauling up the beach.

  The doctor was meantime examining very closely the back of the neck. He fitted the knuckles of his right hand against certain discolorations.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the Fiscal. ‘Charlie’s knuckles where the hand, entering between neck and clothes, then gripped the clothes. And Charlie’s clothes are as salt as the seaman’s. Everything fits.’

  When they had got seated again, the Fiscal continued: ‘So far Charlie’s story could be reasonably established. But what happens next? Charlie comes fully to himself and realizes the man has passed out and may be dead. His natural instinct, if he was really anxious to save the man, would be to get him into a place of safety and warmth. The only place, of course, was his own home. And now starts that remarkable climb, in the storm and dark, up the rock face, with the dead man on his back. He comes in here. Strips the clothes off the body. Wraps a warm blanket round it. Feels for the heart, and is so anxious for the man to be alive that he imagines he feels the heart beat. So at once he brews some hot tea and tries to get the man to take it. Now, Doctor, there was tea in the mouth on your examination, which means, I take it, that the man was already dead when Charlie tried to force the tea into him. Had the man been breathing, he would have choked or shown some reaction. Charlie says he didn’t. But Charlie also says he felt the heart beat. Therefore, either the heart-beat was an illusion on Charlie’s part, or the man died naturally in bed in the minutes between Charlie’s having felt the heart beat and administering the tea. If you do not agree that the man died naturally in bed, then Charlie’s experience of the heart-beat was an illusion. We have seen the tea stains on the bed sheet, with a clean space, corresponding to the head, between them. All clear?’

  The policeman moved his whole body in a certain wonder. The doctor nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Next Charlie wonders what more he can do. There may still be others. He goes down to the shore again. He will naturally look into the whirlpool. He comes therefore against the chest. There is no one more to save. He brings the chest back. What more can he do? It’s so wild a storm that even his brother, who is clearly pretty tough, has been prevailed on not to face the walk from Cruime. Besides, the man being dead, there is no point in Charlie’s trying to reach Cruime. For all he knows, his brother may come staggering in at any moment. He waits for the dawn and then sets about searching the cliffs, like a sensible and responsible man. By that time he is so exhausted that his brother undertakes the journey. A
nd here we are.’

  There was silence for a few moments. The policeman stretched back in his chair, relieved and confident again in his own judgment now that the Fiscal had substantiated so clearly what he himself had felt to be the truth in the first instance.

  ‘Well, Doctor?’ asked the Fiscal.

  ‘I presume you have been putting forward the case for the defence. Frankly, I cannot see anything that would stand against it.’

  ‘And I have to look at it in that way. I am responsible to the Crown and shall, of course, report fully. But naturally the Crown hesitates to implicate any citizen unless the Crown can make out a reasonable case. In your opinion – and, I may say, in mine – the Crown cannot.’ He paused and his eyes twinkled. ‘Not even the Crown Agent in Edinburgh, who might call for a Public Inquiry just for the sake of being contrary—’ His smile lit up a private joke. Then seriously he continued: ‘Actually, to take the thing to its logical conclusion, it would hardly do to put a man on trial whose clear and unassailable story is that, at risk of death to himself, he strove almost superhumanly to save a foreign seaman’s life. Good men among the public would, not unnaturally, think it monstrous.’ The Fiscal turned to the policeman. ‘What do you think about it?’

  ‘I agree with you. It would be an awful thing. It would be enough to make decent men afraid to rescue anyone or report a dead body or anything.’

  ‘However,’ said the Fiscal, ‘that is for the Crown to decide, in view of all the facts as we three have them and shall report them. But it might be as well for us to be clear in our own minds, as to what we genuinely think about it. Supposing I were to put it to you like this, Doctor: do you really believe, in your own mind, that Charlie saw the flares, went down to the shore, rescued the seaman substantially as described, brought him back here, and tried to revive him?’

  ‘I do.’