The Key of the Chest Read online

  Thereafter he found himself looking at gulls, and Michael was paid his highest compliment when one day the doctor asked to see the photograph again. ‘I had wondered,’ he murmured, gazing critically at it, ‘if you had actually caught some of the cold yellow in the eye.’

  So that now in Ros Lodge, as he preceded Mr. Gwynn, and followed Michael, into the gallery, he was beset by a feeling of profound uneasiness, for he not only knew of Michael’s capacity absolutely to ignore convention but also of his sheer drive, almost his need to capture ‘the unlawful’.

  However, no matter what he might think of their talk or ways of behaviour, he was not now going to permit these two men to transgress beyond the proper limit in this affair which concerned him professionally. He felt his body grow cool, his mind take on a certain protective chill.

  The gallery was no more than a living-room which had had an extra long window let in on the north side. The curtains were drawn and the high-powered electric bulbs arranged. Michael had set his stage.

  There was nothing theatrical in the way he snapped on the lights; but if his aim had been to surprise, to astonish, the doctor, quite clearly he succeeded.

  The doctor stood very still, his face unnaturally pale in the flood of white light, a glitter in his eyes, with a slow constricting and hardening of the features visibly taking place.

  The picture was disposed on a painter’s easel. It seemed slightly larger than a life size of the dead seaman’s face and bare shoulders. But just as, in a sense, the doctor had never seen a gull until he had first seen Michael’s photographic study of one, so now it might have been that he had never really seen the dead seaman’s face until this moment. It was not that the face was ‘paraded’; it was simply and overpoweringly there. By some effect of the light, the brow gleamed dully as in a faint exudation of sweat or agony. The intolerance, again as if touched with agony, of the lines in which the eyebrows met, held still a native nobility. The straight nose, the cheeks, the pointed beard. And the whole was cunningly taken at an angle which told that the dead body was on its back, as it lay in death. The hair under the chin could be partly seen, as could the neck, and the light caught dull gleam-points on the bared shoulders.

  The doctor could not speak. Deep in him there was a movement of that sense of shock, which causes, at a still deeper level, a cold stirring of the elements of hostility.

  But Michael was now excited. For him the doctor’s response had been the highest tribute, and, from watching the doctor’s face, he strode forward into the full glow of the lights, at once emphasizing the black and white of his person in an extravagant way, which achieved the fantastic in a remoter movement of shadows.

  Pointing to the intolerant expression of the eyebrows, he cried, ‘Take that away!’ (sweeping away at the same moment his own hand and its shadow)‘and see in its place the smooth brows of the man who was crucified, and you would have – the Swedish Christ!’

  And to the doctor in that moment – of all hostile moments – there was no doubt about it.

  The doctor did not speak until he was quite sure of his voice. Then he asked, ‘How did you manage to get it?’

  They were both looking at him. Mr. Gwynn said, ‘He always did like his dramatic effects. You can’t consort with new movements in the theatre, really new, unless you have definite notions of this kind.’

  Michael seemed baffled by the doctor’s cool expressionless manner. He had had the ‘story’ all ready of how he had managed to get the remarkable photograph, but in the enthusiasm of the moment had forgotten it, and, like an artist, did not think it of any consequence compared with the ‘work’ on the easel.

  ‘Feel I have been poaching on your preserves?’

  ‘It’s not altogether a question of that,’ replied the doctor, again without any expression.

  ‘No?’ probed Michael. ‘What do you think of this one?’

  He removed the photograph from the easel and placed another in its place. Again of the dead seaman but now more obviously in a recumbent position, for one looked along the body at the face, seeing the throat, the pointed beard, the nostril holes, the eyebrows. It was solid as a carven figure on a tomb. The doctor found his eyes fixing on the throat.

  ‘Or this?’ Whipping away the second photograph, Michael replaced it by a third – where the sensitive lens had looked down upon the extended body completely naked.

  Almost it was too much even for the doctor who had dissected a few dead bodies in his time. For this exhibition had clearly nothing to do with a professional or scientific interest. It was palpably a mixture of gruesome curiosity and a reminiscence of medieval religious paintings of the Christ. There was an intimacy about it that was horrible.

  The doctor knew Michael was watching him, was waiting for the behaviour by which he would give himself away. All at once he had an extreme prescience of Michael’s mood, ruthlessly prepared to find its humour in the doctor’s professional or provincial reaction, now that the ‘work’ had not received the right kind of exclusive attention.

  And standing quietly between them both, but a little behind, was Mr. Gwynn, who could have eased the situation, but did not.

  ‘You haven’t missed a great deal,’ said the doctor evenly.

  It was a little too much for Mr. Gwynn, whose breath of appreciation could be heard softly in his nostrils.

  ‘But what I should like to know is how you managed to get them,’ the doctor added.

  ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ challenged Michael.

  ‘I would,’ said the doctor, turning his head slowly and looking at him.

  ‘By God, you’re deep!’ declared Michael, his mood changing in a moment. He laughed.

  ‘It’s a professional matter,’ said the doctor, his tone hardening. ‘I have my responsibility, as the medical witness. The case is still under consideration by the legal forces of the Crown – as I tried to explain to you.’

  ‘And you think I have rushed in?’

  ‘Well – haven’t you?’

  ‘No,’ answered Michael. ‘I, too, am acting for the Crown.’

  The doctor’s eyes half-closed, but Michael held them with a brilliant satire. He was now beginning to enjoy himself in quite another way.

  Suddenly the doctor remembered the Procurator-Fiscal’s words to the policeman.

  ‘You mean – the local policeman asked you to take them?’

  ‘Solved at last!’

  ‘In that case,’ said the doctor drily, ‘you would seem to have met all possible requirements.’

  Michael and Mr. Gwynn laughed outright, and the doctor knew that the hostility which he had felt, and must in some measure have shown, was recognized as a natural element of the moment even as it was being wiped out in laughter.

  ‘You see, I told you he had kept me on the run ever since I arrived,’ explained Mr. Gwynn. ‘First, round to the scene of the wreck by sea, then on to – to—’

  ‘Cruime,’ said Michael, ‘where we ran into the policeman. We were naturally wanting to hear all about it. After all, it’s my first shipwreck on my own land. But we hardly got a word out. The policeman was gaping at me as if I had risen from the wreck. “Excuse me,” he said. “Have you got your photographs?” ’

  They both enjoyed the memory. There had been some slight confusion until it was made clear that what the policeman had been hunting and could not find in Cruime was a man with a working camera. The policeman had known the schoolmaster possessed one, but had forgotten that he might not have plates. He was sweating with anxiety, for time, in its race against decay and the coffin, was running short ‘on him’.

  As Michael never went to sea without his camera, it was a simple matter to bundle the policeman into the boat there and then.

  ‘All out, she has over eight knots in her,’ said Michael, referring to his thirty-foot launch. ‘The light inside the cottage wasn’t good enough, of course, but the policeman carried that stiff body in his arms as if it was his child. An earnest officer. A sound man.�
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  His laughter was now growing hectic. He was full of the wildest detail, observed with a precision so vivid that it gathered attributes of the mythical. The policeman’s battle in bringing out the table, legs first. The stretched naked body, with its intimations of decay, under the vivid blue sky in that wild setting. The glimpse of a face. The humped back of the cottage.

  ‘Whose face?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Wait!’ said Michael, and with swift movements had in no time set a new photograph on the easel.

  It was the incredible illustration to a grotesque, uncouth folk fable. Round the corner of a wall a hairy face was peering and beyond it a lean cow was gaping with out-thrust neck. In the enlargement, the features of the human face had gathered a weird transparent vagueness, though the doctor instantly recognized Dougald.

  Perhaps had he not known Dougald and been aware of the present atmosphere surrounding the cottage, the photograph might not have had the same impact upon him. Now the grotesque scene held not only the comic but also the peril that is concealed somewhere in every fable.

  He was surprised to hear his own voice saying quite clearly, ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘You’re wondering what that blemish is there,’ said Michael, thrusting his hand and its shadow at a dark clawlike blur on the left margin. ‘I did not mean it to be there, of course. It’s the toes of the dead man’s near foot.’

  The talk went on. There was one more photograph. As Michael placed it in position, he said, ‘The principal in the case.’

  It was Charlie, cut off at the waist by the gunnel of his own boat. He was not looking at the camera, but towards the sea. His body was isolated in an extraordinary stillness, emphasized by the blackness of the skerry.

  ‘They don’t know I took these, of course,’ remarked Michael.

  ‘They’re not to be exhibits in the case,’ said the doctor, after a moment. ‘They are very good.’

  ‘Are you trying to damn them by faint praise or what?’

  ‘I thought you’d have known by this time, Doctor,’ said Mr. Gwynn,‘that the artistic temperament demands a certain kind of response.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the doctor, ‘I do. But when it is a very artistic temperament, the response must not be too obvious. Or perhaps I’m wrong?’

  ‘Perhaps you are,’ said Mr. Gwynn, as he glanced at Michael.

  Michael laughed, if a trifle erratically, and damned them both.

  In this mixed, laughing mood, Michael switched off the lights and they retired to the library.

  Mr. Gwynn talked of drinks. Affable and quietly courteous, suffusing an air of ease, he produced a bottle of whisky. ‘I got some of this particular brand in Inverness. I was assured it was the pure dew of the heather. Are you expert in the national drink?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ answered the doctor.

  ‘A nice distinction.’ Michael got the glasses out.

  ‘The truth is, I really must be going. I only looked in for a minute,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Do sit down,’ pleaded Mr. Gwynn, ‘and support me.

  After all, as you can see, I’ve had rather an exhausting day.’

  He poured a drink. ‘Soda?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Michael handed the doctor a jug of water. ‘He prefers to add the water himself.’

  Mr. Gwynn watched the doctor add a very few drops of water. ‘So!’ he said.

  When the doctor pronounced the whisky to be ‘fairly good’ Michael laughed.

  The doctor did not mind Michael’s erratic somewhat congested mood – it could hardly be called sulky – but he did wonder for a fraction of a moment if Mr. Gwynn was subtly aware that he needed the drink, that there was in him a weakening feeling of nausea. He did not want to sit down. He wanted to go away. And, in particular, he had a distinct dread of having to continue the recent conversation, lest he fail to maintain his normal calm.

  So he answered Mr. Gwynn’s questions about whiskies, about the brands he thought good and not so good, until at last the liquor began to have its reassuring effect and conversation was almost lively. Then he got up.

  ‘I suppose there’s no end to your day?’ said Mr. Gwynn.

  ‘No certain end,’ the doctor agreed. ‘The other night I was out all night.’

  ‘Bringing the living into the world.’

  ‘Or showing the dead out of it?’ suggested Michael.

  The doctor smiled. ‘Good night,’ he said.‘And thanks for showing me the photographs.’

  ‘You do think they are pretty good?’ asked Michael, bringing the inner forces to a last focus.

  ‘As photographs, they are marvellous,’ said the doctor, getting into his raincoat in the hall.

  From the library door, Mr. Gwynn laughed quietly. ‘That’s right, Doctor. Good night again.’

  ‘Good night.’

  And the doctor was out in the dark, with all that was suppressed, the images and the feelings, coming welling up in him, and the night itself reeling slightly, with dark words issuing from a struck mouth.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The joiner was an old grey man with a heavy limp. Time had developed in him the serious thoughtful expression that comes from looking at wood, and the grain in the wood, before deciding whether it can fulfil his purpose. His assistant, Jimmy, a sturdy fair lad of nineteen with a full flushed face, was standing at the foot of the coffin. The two fishermen, being tall straight men, could see the features of the dead seaman from where they stood by the fire. The entrance passage was darkened by the waiting figures of Dougald and Charlie.

  The joiner cast his eyes round the interior margins of the coffin. Satisfied, he stooped for the lid and Jimmy at once helped him to place it in position. The joiner, hissing slightly in his concentration, ran his fingers along the joint, then took some screwnails from his pocket.

  There was some congestion in the passageway, but hands were willing and the coffin was soon outside being roped firmly in the cart. Jimmy took hold of a rein, and the joiner, on the other side of the horse, grasped the cart shaft to help him along. Presently one of the fishermen called to the joiner to jump up. And this he did.

  ‘He’s not fit for it,’ said the fisherman calmly to Dougald.

  ‘No,’ muttered Dougald, who was dressed in a blue serge suit, rumpled and unbrushed, with an antique bowler hat above his hairy face. A red gleam shone dully from his cheek-bones.

  The second fisherman, Norman Macleod, who was walking behind them, with Charlie, referred to the recent storm. He had always noticed that a storm from that particular airt had stirred up the sea-bottom and set the lobsters on the move.

  ‘Were you out last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Charlie. ‘I set a few pots round the skerries. But I hadn’t much bait.’

  ‘Ay, there’s that,’ Norman agreed. Charlie wouldn’t have had much time to go out and fish for bait. ‘Did you get many?’

  ‘There was a lobster in each pot,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We were very well fished ourselves. And some need for it. The hot, close summer didn’t do us any good.’

  ‘No, we didn’t make much of it,’ Charlie agreed. ‘We’re a bit far from the market when it comes to hot weather.’

  Norman glanced at him. Charlie’s blue serge fitted him, and the black felt hat he wore, instead of the customary bowler, gave his clean-shaven face an air of distinction. Norman remembered that Charlie had been meant for the Church.

  ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘And it brings up Kenneth Grant again and the talk of the lobster pond and better transport.’ He smiled. ‘You always back him up in that.’

  ‘I do,’ said Charlie, smiling also. ‘And I thought you were of the same opinion.’

  ‘It’s right enough. If we’re doing a thing we might as well do it properly. But it’s difficult to change the old ways.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Charlie agreed. ‘But we’ll have to do it some day or fade out altogether. And there’s been a lot of fading
out.’

  Their talk was heard by those walking in front except when the cart wheels jolted in loud cracks. But the miles were long and presently a silence fell, relieved now and then by the difficulties of the track. The joiner and Jimmy, apart and free from any need for talk, were each wrapped in his own thought or lack of thought. William, who was walking beside Dougald, gradually gathered about him the sea’s calm silence. Charlie and Norman having spoken at some length could walk within themselves. At the bottom of this silence, so deep that no more than a wayward gleam penetrated it, lay the face of the seaman who – as they all knew, as every one in the district knew – had been strangled.

  A dark knot of men were seen in the distance. The cart drew near. It stopped. The black bier lay on the grass by the roadside. ‘Well, Dougald,’ or ‘Well, Charlie,’ said a man in unobtrusive friendly greeting, as they moved about and got the coffin on the bier.

  The procession started walking along the public road for the burial ground. A young lad, holding the horse, waited until he felt he could with respect jump up on the cart and slowly follow. To walk back to Cruime would be too much for the limping joiner.

  Turning off the main road, the procession came to a halt on the level sward before the cemetery wall. There the minister met them and prepared to hold the service that was normally held in the home of the dead.

  The mourners for this foreign seaman had the extra feeling of hospitality to the stranger to quicken their natural respect for the dead. He was here among them, far from his home and his kindred.

  From their own villages, wide-scattered, in all times folk had adventured forth or been driven forth into strange lands in the ends of the earth. As they would be done by, so would they do now. For it was the one earth, the one earth, and the one charity, the one respect from mind to mind, the one end.