The Key of the Chest Read online

  ‘Again taking all the circumstances of the case into account, together with any private assessment you may have made of his character and of his answers, do you believe that he strangled the man consciously?’

  The doctor sat quietly for a moment. ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘You hesitated?’

  ‘Not really,’ said the doctor. ‘For what other answer could I make, in all the circumstances? What touched my mind was your reference to flares. And I thought again of the lighthouses – and your sudden silence, in the boat.’

  The Fiscal looked at the doctor and just stopped short of his silent laugh. ‘You noticed that? Wreckers and wrecks? The notion that the brothers may have arranged by means of a light to lure the ship to her doom and then to steal her wealth?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No,’ said the Fiscal. ‘Too far fetched, and again no evidence. Though there is no reason why our friend here need not make very discreet inquiries along the coast. Assuming the man lying there was the skipper – and that can be established, so we might have a photograph of him—’

  ‘Very good,’ said the policeman, as the Fiscal paused.

  ‘Then his anxiety,’ proceeded the Fiscal, ‘to save the ship’s papers, and particularly the ship’s log-book, becomes understandable on the assumption that the log will tell its tale of a terrific storm and engine-trouble or other disabling factor. That would not only clear the master, but be very useful to his owners when they come to deal with the insurance brokers. If the master had merely let his vessel drive on a lee shore, with lighthouses flashing about, he presumably would not be so very anxious to save his log and hardly at the risk of his own life. It is my opinion that that box was made water-tight in a disabled ship some little time before she struck.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘Very neat,’ he murmured.

  ‘But with the log, yet to be translated, behind the neatness,’ said the Fiscal.

  Presently they got up and had a quiet, careful search through the two rooms of the cottage. In the second room, which was Charlie’s, the doctor came on a photograph in a tin trunk. It was a snapshot, slightly faded, of Flora, and though she seemed to stand back into student days, and though her features were anything but clearly etched, she came alive in the doctor’s hand in a way that sent a soft thresh of blood to his head, as if he had stooped too quickly. Very slightly his hand shook, and for a few moments he remained in his crouching attitude, unable to move.

  The search revealed nothing, and presently the Fiscal said he would like to have a few reassuring words with the two men alone; then they would get back, for he was starving.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Michael Sandeman stood in the library door. ‘Thought you weren’t coming!’ He was wearing a dinner jacket that looked extremely black against the lively pallor of his face. As the doctor passed in, he added,‘I have a guest. Hence the correct garb, which I hope you will overlook.’ Plainly Michael was subduing a condition of excitement.

  The guest was standing before the fire, with a mild smile on his face, at first glance a benevolent rather small figure in the fifties. He came forward to meet the doctor.

  ‘With gifts in his hands he came,’ declared Michael, holding out a box of cigars. The room was already drenched in the rich mild aroma and the doctor took a cigar.

  ‘You like a good one,’ said Mr. Gwynn, handing the doctor a matchbox.

  The doctor, who had been unaware of the way he had fingered the cigar, answered the smile with one of his own.

  ‘I suspect,’ said Michael to the doctor,‘that he has been sent here to spy on me, but you needn’t pay any attention to that.’

  ‘I have come to spy out the land,’ said Mr. Gwynn,

  ‘which is perhaps not quite the same thing.’ The man’s simplest words had overtones of meaning or humour out of an easy cultured background. There was more than mere manner to it, however, for the doctor now observed an intellectual quality so native to the face that it flickered with the smile in the match flame. His hair was grey and thin on top, but apt to the face as to a priest’s.

  ‘Arrived to-night?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Last night,’ answered Mr. Gwynn, ‘but enough has happened since then to make it feel much longer, very much.’

  ‘I had him out at Sgeir,’ said Michael.

  Without a word, the doctor turned his look full on Michael.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Michael. ‘Sit down. We’ve been longing for you to come.’ He laughed at the doctor’s expression. ‘Now! Tell us all about it.’ He stuck out his legs, an elbow on each arm of the chair, the cigar smouldering from his locked hands.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh, climb off it! We were there. Who’s been an’ done it?’

  The doctor blew out some smoke slowly, while his left eyelid quivered very faintly.

  ‘The trouble with Michael has always been,’ said Mr. Gwynn,‘that he has no very clear notion of what constitutes professional etiquette.’

  ‘Oh!’ Michael moved his head impatiently from side to side. ‘That’s Gwynn all over. Instead of being one of our most brilliant literary men, he is trying to become a philosopher. A philosopher!’

  ‘Merely the new fashion in reaction against the ’nineties. It doesn’t really mean much,’ explained Mr. Gwynn.

  The doctor smiled.

  ‘The Welsh league and the Highland covenant,’ cried Michael. ‘But to come to the burning point – how was the seaman throttled?’

  ‘It’s a matter,’ said the doctor,‘that is still sub judice.’

  ‘God!’ said Michael, probably at the Latin phrase.

  ‘There’s one thing,’ said Mr. Gwynn, who looked as if he might now enjoy the doctor’s company. ‘I don’t quite understand the procedure through this legal official with the magnificent title of Procurator-Fiscal.’

  ‘It’s different from your English system.’

  Michael suddenly laughed. ‘Please carry on. Gwynn merely has theories about his remote Welsh origin – dating all the way back to Charles the Second.’

  ‘In the English system,’ said the doctor, as if Michael hadn’t spoken and with an innocuous look at Mr. Gwynn, ‘you sit publicly on any dead body found lying about. In Scotland, we may refrain. We leave it to the Procurator-Fiscal, who is a servant of the Crown, to investigate all the circumstances. If the circumstances warrant a public inquiry, there is one; if not, not.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Mr. Gwynn. ‘But do you mean that a body might be found with evidence upon it of rough usage, and yet there could be no inquest, no jury?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had heard of differences between the Scotch and English. Seems to be fairly radical.’

  ‘Probably he means that the Scotch system is barbarous,’ said Michael.

  ‘I don’t know that it is,’ suggested the doctor. ‘What you probably want to know is whether a man who was discovered in the company of an alleged throttled seaman will be taken before a jury?’

  ‘Dropping the alleged, you’ve got it dead right.’ Michael sat up.

  ‘If the Procurator-Fiscal’s report and the Crown’s decision on it warrant such a procedure, he will. But if they don’t, he won’t. Inquest by a Coroner’s Court is not in Scots law. There’s no such thing.’

  ‘And do you find your system – efficient?’ asked Mr. Gwynn.

  ‘Very,’ replied the doctor. ‘The Procurator-Fiscal is a highly trained legal man of proven repute, acting for the Crown.’

  ‘But, good heavens,’ cried Michael ironically, ‘surely the principle of being brought for trial before your peers is sacrosanct to justice!’

  ‘Oh, you get tried by your peers all right,’ replied the doctor, ‘if any reason is established for such a trial. But not otherwise.’

  ‘Look here, do you mean that Charlie may not be tried at all?’ demanded Michael.

  ‘Possibly,’ said the doctor somewhat vaguely.

  ‘But—’ Michael stared at him.
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br />   ‘I think I have got it now,’ said Mr. Gwynn. ‘If your Procurator-Fiscal decides there is no case against – let us call him – Charlie, there simply will be no public inquest? And that’s the end of the matter?’

  ‘That’s about it,’ agreed the doctor. Then he added, ‘Apparently the idea is that if there is no case against a man, then the coupling of his name with a monstrous deed in any court is – unnecessary.’

  Mr. Gwynn had a quiet pleasant laugh. ‘The terrible logic of the Scot, that is so humane.’

  ‘I suppose it is another way of doing the thing, but it is efficient,’ said the doctor simply.

  ‘Efficient! Oh God!’ Michael got up. ‘What did you think of his face?’

  ‘Whose face?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘The seaman’s. The dead seaman’s.’

  Now all along the doctor had been just a trifle uncertain of how much all this apparent badinage was meant to convey. It was their way of conversing, so he was prepared to join in and do what he could to keep the talk going. Obviously one could not go altogether by the words that were spoken. But now a definite feeling of uneasiness touched him.

  ‘An interesting face,’ he answered, looking up at Michael.

  ‘Interesting! You positively babble information!’ Michael laughed, and his teeth gave their characteristic flash. Probably their white was specially noticeable because of the very black hair, which went back from the forehead in a wave. But the whole face was now alive, full of verve, with a glitter in the dark swiftly-glancing eyes. ‘Come on, and I’ll show you just how interesting it is.’

  The doctor automatically got up.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mr. Gwynn assured him.‘I think you will be astonished,’ and he politely waved the doctor on.

  The doctor had been many times in what Michael called his gallery. The house was lit by electric light, an engine, complete with accumulators, having been installed in an outhouse, whenever Michael had found this to be necessary for his photography.

  In the beginning, the doctor would have been willing to lay any bet that Michael’s interest in photography would evaporate fairly quickly. It just did not fit in with a character which he politely assessed as too dynamic for so static a pursuit. In this he had, so far, been completely confounded, and Michael now and then teased the doctor for having launched him on so desperate a hobby, particularly when he failed to get the precise effect he wanted. He would then storm up and down, but also swear that, by God, he would get it yet.

  It was through a bird that Michael had first introduced himself. The maid returned from answering the door and said in a low voice, ‘It’s Mr. Sandeman from the Lodge.’

  And there in the surgery he was waiting. He was extremely sorry to trouble the doctor, he said, but he felt that it was perhaps time he had introduced himself as a neighbour. When Michael was being polite, his manner could be very attractive. Indeed, behind the flash of his animation, there seemed to be a sensitive, engaging shyness. He stood there smiling, with his cap in one hand and a dead golden plover in the other.

  The doctor was on the point of inviting him into the sitting-room to meet his mother and have a cup of tea when Michael, with his smile, looked at the dead bird and thus silently presented it.

  The doctor turned the bird over in his hands, extending the wings and testing the articulation of the legs. ‘You’re wondering how it met its death?’

  ‘I am.’

  So this was why he had called. Interesting, thought the doctor, probing away. ‘Nothing outwardly wrong,’ he said. He smoothed the disturbed feathers; of a greyish black, spotted with bright yellow, white above the eyes, with the white running along the sides of the neck into a mottled dark and yellow; and then, right from the throat underneath, that distinguishing splash of black which could never be mistaken.

  ‘Death by natural causes?’

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor, and he smiled.

  ‘You don’t believe there is such a thing as a natural death?’

  ‘I suppose every death is natural to nature.’

  ‘You know all the same what I mean?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like me to have a look inside?’

  Michael hesitated, then stood utterly still as the doctor, with a surgical knife, cut the bird open and, isolating each organ, carefully examined it. There was no obvious evidence of disease, and the doctor was inclined to place the trouble in the crop, adding, ‘Probably because I don’t know much about crops, but it seems a too solid mass. It’s a known trouble among hens. There’s a woman here who cut open the crop of a dying hen the other week with a pair of scissors and sewed it up with a needle and thread. The hen is laying again.’

  Michael looked at him for a moment and did not quite laugh.

  ‘True,’ said the doctor. ‘Where did you find this bird? Seems rather an old sinewy fellow.’

  ‘On the Ros, near Loch Geal. I knew it would be an abuse of your time to trouble you, but – I was curious. It’s the first bird that ever got me into trouble. You know its note – a single rather haunting note?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was about fifteen, and one evening – not on the Ros but in the forest, up on the moor behind the slopes of Garuvben – I heard it. I had gone to meet some men and had just decided to turn back, for I could see no sign of them and the light was beginning to go. I thought first of all it was a peewit that couldn’t finish its cry. This affected me, so I thought I’d try and get near it and see what was wrong. At first I could not spot the bird at all. The cry came from here, and then from there, but always near – and always the same plaintive, sad, yet strangely penetrating cry. Are there any legends about it?’

  ‘None that I know.’

  ‘Odd. I should have thought there would have been.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Anyway, it drew me on. At last, of course, I spotted it. A low short flight, and then down, not directly away. And then, though the light was really going, I spotted this black under-body, just as if someone had tarred it, and I knew, of course, that it was no peewit. What was it? The cry was so like a lost cry, as if the bird had landed on the wrong planet. The cry sometimes, too, came from the wrong place, until I realized there were two birds. It was pure luck got me back before the search party actually started.’

  The doctor smiled (for Michael had spoken with an amusing animation) then turned to wash his hands. In the end, he introduced Michael to his mother, who had tea ready. She had been flattered by the young man’s polite attentions and his liveliness. Then the doctor had produced a periodical in which there were some interesting studies of birds in flight.

  Michael had gazed at these for a long time. ‘I see now,’ he said to himself. His face had that extraordinarily concentrated look which made the doctor’s mother regard him once or twice out of her woman’s eyes. She had almost forgotten the stories about him.

  He laid the periodical aside, saying conversationally, ‘The carefully painted studies – they lack movement and life.’

  No more was said about birds, and presently Michael took his leave, with the polite hope that the doctor and Mrs. Stewart would call on him.

  A couple of months after that, happening to meet the doctor on the road, Michael had invited him there and then to have a look at some photographs of wildlife which he had taken. He was still at the stage of sending his plates away to be developed, but clearly the three studies which he showed to the doctor had pleased him, for he had had them enlarged.

  The doctor regarded the photographs critically and in silence. Technically they were no doubt averagely good, but there was also an unusual angle of vision, an effort at composition which had a slightly startling effect.

  In his calm way the doctor expressed his praise. ‘I think you are getting at something here.’ He seemed both arrested and troubled a little.

  No method of criticism could have pleased Michael better.

  ‘You feel that?’

  ‘I do,’ said the doctor. There was somet
hing… and then it occurred to him. He smiled as he spoke the words. It was not really gross flattery. For why should the idea have flashed into his mind at all? ‘You’re hunting the cry of the golden plover,’ he said, looking into Michael’s eyes, with a certain detachment behind his smile. It was the detachment, the objective regard, of the medical man. Michael realized that the photographs had – as indeed they had – produced that unexpected exploring look, and was subtly flattered.

  But also into the doctor’s mind had come the thought that here, against all the chances, might be a source of interest for this wild spirit. It would not last, but it might see him through what might well be the most critical and decisive period in his life – the early months of his isolation.

  It had seen him through much more than that, and often to the doctor’s frank admiration, and even astonishment. There was one photograph of a common gull that had haunted him for quite a time before it became part of his mental life. There was nothing picturesque or ‘dramatic’ about the photograph. The gull was simply standing on its two legs – and a gull has a very solid stance – on the verge of a high cliff. Its head was turned a little sideways, its eye looking straight at the beholder. The doctor had tried to analyse the effect the picture produced. There were four main elements, he decided. First, the unexpected nearness of the bird. This produced the physical sensation of pause before the act – in this case, the act of flight. Second, this suggestion of arrested movement, of a spell, was also conveyed by the height of the cliff, the dizzying depth, and the presence of a current of wind against which the bird visibly leaned. Third, there was the whiteness of the plumage, an unearthly white, for ever without taint. And fourth, that round, wild, yet cold eye, to which the human eye always came back.

  This analysis exercised the doctor quite a lot in the more solitary wanderings which his profession laid upon him. It gave him odd moments of insight into the value of analysis itself, but more particularly it made him aware of that border line beyond which analysis is blind, and, being blind, destructive. There was something in the picture which no analysis could touch. At this point, analysis became a dodge, an effort at explaining away the ‘something’, in the interest of the mind’s comfort and ‘normality’. He decided that this was at least what his own mind had been attempting to do. And this, again, carried him on beyond the indefinable spell or magic, which presumably must constitute the moment of arrestment in art, to those anthropological considerations with which he was much more familiar, particularly as they affected the spells and magics of what were called primitive peoples.