‘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.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
My temples throb, my pulses boil,
I’m sick of Song, and Ode, and Ballad So, Thyrsis, take the Midnight Oil
And pour it on a lobster salad.
Charles spent a lot of time with the police over the next couple of days and did not make it back to Clachenmore. Frances joined him in Edinburgh on the Sunday. They booked into the Aberdour Guest House, where Mrs Butt patently did not think they were married.
Frances wanted to get back to London to prepare for the new school term, but Charles persuaded her to stay till the Tuesday morning so that they could attend the first night of Mary, Queen of Sots. His stay at the Festival would not be complete without that. He also managed to fit in a visit to Lesley Petter, who was cheerful at the prospect of leaving the Infirmary in a couple of days.
On the Monday they arrived at the Masonic Hall at seven, half an hour before the show was due to start, to find Pam Northcliffe and others energetically piling up the chairs from the back part of the hall. They were watched by an unamused group of young men in track suits.
‘Pam, what’s going on?’
‘Oh Lord, Charles, hello. There’s been the most frightful cock-up, I’m afraid. This lot say they’re booked in here for badminton on Monday nights. Apparently it was only cancelled for the two weeks and they aren’t going to budge.’
‘Whose fault is it?’
‘Brian Cassells booked it.’
‘Say no more. Where is he? Surely he should be flashing his dinner jacket and sorting it out.’
‘Oh, he’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes, he got the Civil Service job he was after, so he’s gone to have a holiday in Italy before it starts.’
‘Tell me, which Ministry is the job in?’
‘Social Services, I think. He’ll be doing pensions.’