At last he shut the ponderous tome,
With a fast and fervent clasp
He strain’d the dusky covers close,
And fixed the brazen hasp:
“Oh, God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!”
James Milne opened the door of his flat. ‘Ah,’ he said. It was not an expression of surprise, just an acknowledgement of information received. ‘Won’t you come in?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Malt?’
‘Thank you.’ It was exactly as before, both sitting in their comfortable chairs with their glasses of malt whisky, surrounded by books.
‘I heard you had arrived in Edinburgh from one of the Derby students.’
‘Yes. I know you knew I was here.’
The Laird understood. ‘You’ve been to Meadow Lane?’
‘Yes. As you see, the slab missed me. One of your little plans that didn’t work.’
‘Ah well.’ The man did not seem emotional, just tired. ‘After that, I’m surprised you came round here on your own.’
‘You mean the malt could be poisoned or you could have a gun hidden somewhere?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘No. That’s not your style. The method must be indirect, done without you present. Then you can just shut your mind to the fact that it ever happened, and go back to your books.’
‘You seem to understand me very well, Charles.’
‘I think I do. Various things you said. Something about envying a writer his ability to live by remote control.’
‘Yes. And you said writing wasn’t like that.’
‘It isn’t.’
The Laird chuckled, as if their old conviviality had been re-established. Then he was silent for a moment. ‘Right, how much do you know?’
‘Just about everything. As you see from my face and hands, I’ve been dismantling a wall.’
An expression of pain cut across Milne’s face. ‘So you’ve seen it?’
‘Just as Willy Mariello did.’
‘Yes. He came and told me on the morning before he died.’
‘And did he say he was going to the police?’
‘No, no, that wasn’t his idea at all. He suggested that I was a wealthy man and…’
‘Blackmail. That would fit everything I’ve heard of Willy. And sort out his mortgage arrears. He could live off you for the rest of his life.’
‘I don’t know. That’s what he suggested. Regular payments or.. ’
‘He’d go to the police.’ The Laird nodded. ‘And that was why you had to kill him.’
There was a slight hesitation before a muttered ‘Yes.’
‘Who was it, James?’
The man looked flustered and pathetic. ‘No one. It was… just someone I knew… a… no one…’
‘Who?’
‘A boy. From the school. From Kilbruce. A pupil of mine. He was called… Lockhart.’ The Laird put his words together with difficulty. ‘He was a good boy. I liked him. He seemed interested in my books and… He… used to come round for tea or… That was all, really. In spite of what they said, that was all.
‘Then one evening he came round… he wasn’t in school uniform
… and he said he was going to run away to London, and he’d left a note at school and sent one to his parents. I said I thought it was foolish, but I couldn’t stop him. And that… I’d miss him… Just that, nothing more.
‘But when I said it, he said something… vile… a comment on why I’d miss him. He said… it was just like all the others.. that I… It wasn’t true!’ His hands were kneading the arms of his chair rapaciously. ‘I don’t know what happened then. I… he was dead. Perhaps I strangled him, I don’t know. But suddenly he was dead.
‘Then I knew I had to get rid of the body. The men had just finished installing the central heating. I thought of the fireplace. There were no development plans for the area. The house wouldn’t be demolished, and no one was going to revert to open fires after central heating had been put in.’ (No one except an impulsive fool like Willy Mariello, Charles reflected wryly.) ‘It’d never be found out while I was alive, and there was nobody to mind when I was dead. So that’s what I did.’
‘And everyone assumed the boy had gone to London as he said, and disappeared?’
‘Yes. You keep reading of cases of kids doing that.’
There was a long pause. ‘And you managed to live in the house and forget it?’
‘Yes. It had been so quick. Sometimes I really thought it hadn’t happened, that I’d read about it in a book or… I didn’t think about it.’
‘Just as you wouldn’t have thought about me if Tam had drowned me or if that piece of masonry had crushed my skull.’
‘Exactly,’ he said with engaging honesty. ‘I’ve always found it difficult to believe in the reality of other people. You know, I like them, but if I don’t see them, it’s as if they’d never existed. Except my mother, she was real.’
His eyes glazed over and Charles pulled him roughly back on to the subject. ‘Right. So we know why you had to kill Willy Mariello.’
‘Yes. The dagger was just a trial run, really. I never thought it would work. But I saw them downstairs at lunch time on Tuesday and thought that’d do until I found a better way. There was a long chance it might work.’ A gleam of intellectual satisfaction came into his eye. ‘And it did. The perfect remote control crime.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles wryly. ‘And then I rather played into your hands by confiding in you as my Dr Watson.’
‘You did. At least it made me fairly certain that I wasn’t on your list of suspects. That is, until the middle of last week.’
‘Why? What happened then?’
‘You started getting evasive, which seemed odd. I felt you were holding something back. But what really scared me was when you said you were going to give the case up, because it involved someone you knew well. I thought you were on to me then.’
‘Good God. That wasn’t what I meant at all. I was talking about Anna. You know, I told you I was having an affair with her. Well, at that stage I was suspicious of her.’
‘Oh.’ The Laird sounded disappointed. ‘Then I needn’t have planted the bomb.’
‘It was you!’ Charles sat bolt upright in his chair.
‘Yes. I’d been building up your suspicions of Martin Warburton to keep the heat off me anyway. But I did follow him and I actually managed to break into the Nicholson Street flat. When I saw all the bomb-making equipment I knew it might be useful. Martin seemed in such a bad state that he wouldn’t be able to give a coherent account of his movements. So when I thought you were on to me, I picked up the bomb and waited my chance. Once it was planted, all I had to do was stay with you until it was discovered and you’d cease to be suspicious of me. The fact that it happened at Holyrood just added drama to the situation.’
‘So the break in the connection was deliberate? You knew the thing wouldn’t blow up?’
The Laird nodded smugly, pleased with his own cunning. Charles began to realise just how detached the man’s intellectual processes had become from his emotional reactions. For him life was an elaborate mental game, in which passion was an intruder. The Laird expanded on his plot. ‘And then of course Martin Warburton played into my hands completely. I knew he was in a confused state, but suicide was more than I could have hoped for. It made the whole thing cut and dried, a complete case with a problem and an unquestionable solution. And, from my point of view, a perfect sequence of crimes, which neither I nor anyone else need ever have thought about again.
‘And if you hadn’t worked it all out at Clachenmore, or even if Tam (who incidentally was my mother’s gamekeeper for years and would do anything for me) had made a clean job of dispatching you, it would have worked.’ Charles was again amazed by the detached way in which the man could talk to someone he had twice tried to murder. The Laird went on in the same level tone. ‘By the way, what was it made you sure it was me?’
‘Ah, well…’ Charles was damned if he was going to admit the circuitous route by which he had reached the solution. And then suddenly his mind joined two incidents whose significance he should have seen long before. ‘The Dream of Eugene Aram,’ he pronounced confidently.
‘What?’
‘Hood’s poem. When you returned my book, I asked if you had read it and you said “No”, quite vehemently. But then later you quoted from the poem…’
The Laird supplied the words as if in a trance.
‘“Much study had made him very lean
And pale and leaden-eyed.”’
Charles nodded, confident in his lies. ‘So that made me wonder why you wanted to divert my attention from Eugene A ram. I looked back at the poem and there it was-the story of a schoolmaster who committed a murder and was not found out for many years until the body was discovered. Obviously you didn’t want to set my mind on that track.’
The Laird agreed tonelessly. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘Ah,’ said Charles with what he hoped was subtle intonation. And then he quoted from The Dream of Eugene Aram.
‘“Then down I cast me on my face,
And first began to weep,
For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep:
Or land or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.
So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones!
Ay, though he’s buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
And years have rotted off his flesh, The world shall see his bones!”’
‘I see. And that’s what made you suspicious?’
Charles had not the hypocrisy to say yes; he let the silence stand. James Milne did not seem to mind. On the contrary, he looked serene, almost pleased at the literary resolution of his case.
There was a long silence, during which he refilled their glasses. Then he sat back in his chair and took a long swallow. ‘The question now is, Charles, what happens next?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose you feel bound to go to the police?’ There was a hint of pleading in his tone, but Charles ignored it.
‘Yes, James, I’m afraid I do. Not because I hate you or anything like that. As I said to you once, I have a stereotyped view of murderers as wicked people I dislike. You don’t fit that. I like you and I’m sorry to have to do this.
‘I’m not even particularly shocked by some of your crimes. I don’t know about the boy, what the rights and wrongs were, but that sounds like a moment of passion, a sudden burst of insanity that could happen to any of us given the right sort of provocation. I don’t even mind that much about Willy Mariello. He was a slob whom nobody seems to have mourned. And, as for your attacks on me, they were a logical consequence of your position and my actions.
‘But, James, I can’t ever forgive you for the crime you didn’t commit-Martin Warburton’s suicide. That boy was mixed up beyond belief. But he was very talented and at a difficult time in his life. He needed help. What you did by your elaborate framing of him was to put the boy under pressures that few people completely in control of their senses could manage. I know you didn’t think about him as a person; he was just a counter in your game of self-concealment. And it’s because you didn’t think of him as a person that I regard you as a dangerous man, who should probably be put away.’
There was another silence. James Milne did not look shattered, like a man whose life had just been ruined, but piqued, like a debater who had just lost a point. He rose with a sigh. ‘Perhaps we should go to the police then.’
‘I think we should.’
‘I’ll take a book.’ He turned round to the shelves and instinctively found a leather-bound copy of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis. ‘I dare say there’ll be a lot of sitting around at the police station.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I dare say there will.’