The Shadow (28 page)

“When you allow the emotions to interfere with work that has got to be done you merely create an unholy mess.”

“True.”

“So where are you?”

“We're just both sitting here—knowing there's something missing. That is our irreducible fact.”

“But it's illogical. And if we clearly saw the necessity for what has to be done, then we would no longer feel bothered about—about the something missing.”

“You mean we should be freed from it?”

“Well, shouldn't we?”

“You may now be begging the question. However, it is too deep a thing to be clever about. I am just not sure about all this, Nan. In history, at all times, there were those who thought they were eternally right. In every kind of religion, for example. And people were removed, often horribly. And we think now that those who removed them weren't so very right. At least we should know by this time that roasting an unbeliever was a poor way of proving or establishing anything.”

“I see your point. But surely we must first of all understand things with a scientific clearness. It's awful being muddled. And terribly dangerous. I admit I was getting to that stage when, if I heard any of our great war leaders talking loudly of ‘freedom', it used to make me feel utterly hopeless. I understood Ranald then. It drew me close to him.”

“Because Ranald knows what freedom really means?”

“Yes.”

“He told me about it,” said Aunt Phemie simply. “And theoretically I think I understood. But in reality, I doubt if we would ever agree.”

“Why?”

“Because you cannot—at least we cannot yet—treat the human mind as you do things on a glass slide in a laboratory. We just cannot test it in that scientific way. The real science subjects are based on mathematics. Psychology isn't.”

“But psychology is a science.”

“In the sense that we know some things about the mind, yes. But the laws of the mind are different in kind from the laws of matter or mathematics. That two and two make four will hold for all time possibly. But Ranald's idea of necessity in human affairs cannot be proved to hold like that.”

“But he thinks it can.”

“When a thing can be proved in that way, it is no longer denied by sane people. Anyway, all I know about psychoanalysis or anything psychic at all is that the experts themselves disagree on quite fundamental things or theories. And if they disagree, who is to tell me what necessity is for my mind? A consciousness of necessity! Whose consciousness? and whose necessity?”

“But surely it is clear that if you are conscious of necessity you are then free to make the best job you can of it, so that you can get the maximum freedom from it.”

“Of course. Hitler said to the German people: It is necessary for me to have supreme power in order that I may give you all you want and make you the greatest people in the world. They obviously believed him and were thus freed from the necessity of having anything to do with politics. Any who questioned his consciousness of necessity were disposed of in scientific ways which we now know.”

“But we knew Hitler was wrong from the beginning.”

“Yes. We had different ideas from him of what constituted necessity and freedom in human affairs. But we had exactly the same ideas concerning explosives and two and two making four.”

“Did you argue like that with Ranald?”

“No. But I have been haunted by it since.”

“I wish you had. He can explain everything. I do not say that lightly or foolishly. But there is a whole philosophy, covering history and necessity, covering every conceivable kind of argument, which—just—does have the answers.”

“I know. He could flatten me out. I was even nervous of talking to him. I felt his certainty in him. But that does not alter me. No dictator will ever convince me, for example, that it is desirable to attain freedom from freedom of discussion or criticism. Nor do I think that he will finally prove his point by shooting me for opening my mouth.”

Nan looked at her for a long moment, a smile dawning in her face. “Would you like your cigarette holder?”

“You're a young monkey,” said Aunt Phemie; “that's what you are.”

“You can have no idea of the amount of good this is doing me,” said Nan.

“Well, you have had enough good for one night. And it's time we both were in bed. I'll only add this, that it's not his philosophy I am questioning: it's the application of it. And that's what is so terribly important to us as women.”

“Why us as women?”

“Because when men get theories in the head, they go mad.”

Nan's smile sank deep. “And what happens when women get theories in the head?”

“They go doubly mad.”

Nan laughed softly. “This sounds so beautifully illogical—and true! It warms me.” She looked around the kitchen. “I feel we are like two women sitting at the bottom of the well of the world.”

“With the something that is missing in our hearts.”

“Yes!” said Nan with a brilliant flash from her eyes. “And we cannot climb up to give it.”

Aunt Phemie smiled. “Perhaps that's it. Perhaps,” she added with a deepening humour, “it may be that we are not illogical at all but quite scientific. For what can be complete—if something is missing?”

“Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum.” Nan swayed. “How we loved the important sound of it at school—and laughed, shutting the book with a slap!”

“And it isn't enough,” said Aunt Phemie, “to say: we'll leave the something out meantime. Emotion is part of us, by far the greater part indeed. That, anyhow, is how it seems to me.”

“And if you leave it out—leave out kindness and love, say—believing it's only for a little time, you may end by leaving it out altogether.”

“Something else, the opposite emotion, takes its place. Perhaps it's dialectical.”

“Lovely!” exclaimed Nan.

“Instead of kindness, malice. Instead of love, hate. But the awful thing seems to be that once folk like—like Know-all—I can't help thinking about him—once people like that say you have got to hate and destroy in order that you may create——”Aunt Phemie shook her head. “I may be a sentimental woman, my dear. And I am not now thinking of Christianity, or com-munism, or anarchism, or capitalism, or any system at all. But if I said to Know-all: All right, let us hate and destroy in order that we may create love and kindness and tolerance, what would he think?”

“He would think you had a smell,” said Nan, her face hardening.

Aunt Phemie nodded. “Hate feeds on itself. He now wants power, in order to show you how he would deal with the old virtues—that soft dangerous muck. Am I right?”

“About him—yes. But you terribly misunderstand, in other ways,” said Nan with a glisten of pain in her eyes. “Ranald is not like that. You don't know him. You only saw him for a little while. He must have seemed unreal to you. But he is very real. We had lovely times together. Gay and full of fun. There's something you have got to get through—to reach him. I can't explain it to you.”

“My dear, I wasn't thinking of Ranald,” said Aunt Phemie gently. “I was thinking of what has happened to the world—and may happen again even more terribly. Like a foolish woman I ask: How
could
it happen? What was the something that did it? And I know it could only have been something in the mind of man.”

“We're at the bottom of the well again,” said Nan with a twisted smile.

“It did happen,” repeated Aunt Phemie fatally. Then she stirred with a smile. “Your clever friends would think us not a little vague and sentimental. So let us be sensible and go to bed.”

Aunt Phemie was worried. If her idea had been, however indirectly, through whatever kind of talk, to lead Nan away from Ranald, or at least to set her on her own feet so that time and judgement would be given a chance, she now realised she had to dismiss it. It was clear that Nan had made up her mind. She was going back to London to be with Ranald, probably to live with him. And in some profound sort of way her mind had matured. For Aunt Phemie now definitely to go against her in this would not do any good, and it might do harm. It would do harm. In a lost moment Nan might again need someone with her in the well at the bottom of the world!

Aunt Phemie smiled a trifle grimly as she drove on. When she found out all there was to find out from the police, she would write Ranald. She parked her car in the station square and went down to the police station. A constable, writing at a desk, believed that the inspector was in. Presently he opened a door and Inspector Geddes, when he was informed by Mrs. Robertson that she wished to speak to him, asked her to sit down.

His face was curiously bare and expressionless, his waterblue eyes steady and without any feeling. Without his hat he looked like a church elder and spoke in a slow quiet voice.

“I have called to see you about my niece, Nan Gordon, who has been staying with me.” Aunt Phemie paused for a moment, but as he had nothing to say, she continued, “I understood that you might have wanted to see her. She had not been well, as I gather the doctor told you. She has really had a very bad time, following a nervous breakdown in London. I was wondering whether you needed anything from her?”

“To what exactly are you referring?” he asked without any stress, his eyes on her face.

“Well, it was in connection with the discovery of the body in the mountains. She had nothing to do with it, but I just wondered if—if anything more was needed?”

“Would she like to make a statement?”

“Oh no,” said Aunt Phemie. “That, frankly, is just what I was hoping she would not have to do. I should not like her to get troubled again. I was hoping the doctor had made that clear.”

“He did,” said the inspector.

“Then—then I hope that's all right. She is due to go back to London soon. I was in town and I thought I would just come and tell you.”

“I see.” He sat quite still. “She knows Mr. Adam McAlpine?”

“She met him, by chance, at the Altfey burn. That's really all.”

“She saw the body?”

“I think she saw something, but she was very confused about it. Earlier, she had overheard some of the farm workers giving gruesome details of the murder of old Farquhar. That upset her badly. She had been through the London blitz, and came home, as I say, in a very nervous condition, for a quiet rest. It was too much for her. You can understand that?”

He gave a small nod and remained thoughtful. “The body had been drowned. The doctor's report and the Procurator-Fiscal's investigation were satisfactory. As far as your niece is concerned I see no particular reason for further action. She is well enough now?”

“She is getting on, thank you. In fact I have had her out helping with the harvest.” Aunt Phemie's tone had lightened and she smiled.

“You know Adam McAlpine very well yourself?”

“No,” said Aunt Phemie at once. “I don't know him well. But I was talking to him in town one day.” She stirred and her brows gathered very slightly. “As you can understand, Inspector, I have been very troubled about my niece. I just felt it was too bad that she should have had that set-back. I wanted to find out all I could. I did not want any more trouble, if I could help it.” Her manner now was frank and forthright.

“Did you find out anything?”

“No. I admit he's a bit difficult to bring to the point, but I satisfied myself that his meeting with my niece had been accidental and that on the whole he did his best to help her. It was all clear enough.”

“You found him difficult?”

“I felt he didn't like to be questioned. I don't think he meant anything by it, but—well——” She smiled.

He nodded quite distinctly. “I had some difficulty with him—over another matter.” He looked at her.

“Had you? I ran him out to collect his painting materials which he had left at the shepherd's cottage. That helped our talk.”

“You know what happened out there?”

“I had heard about it—actually from our postman.”

“Only from the postman?”

“Yes.” She held his eyes.

“Mr. McAlpine didn't say anything about it?” he asked.

“Yes, he did. It was a bit of a shock to me. We had a young man staying with us, but he said nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

“Do you think Mr. Ranald Surrey was the man who—shoved McAlpine into the river?”

“I'll tell you all I know, Inspector. Mr. Surrey said nothing to us, but he was marked on the face. He said when he came in that he had simply had a fall. That was the day it happened. Now I don't know what Mr. McAlpine said to you. But I gathered from him that he and Mr. Surrey had had a difference of opinion at the falls pool. Mr. Surrey said nothing of that to us.”

“Why?”

“I suppose because he didn't want to upset my niece. He and she were—well, more than friends in London. In fact it was I who asked him to come up, thinking that his presence for a few days would help her. Now I had told him how my niece had had her set-back, about her meeting with Mr. McAlpine and the discovery of the body. So the conclusion I came to was that Mr. Surrey had met Mr. McAlpine at the falls pool and began to question him about his conduct. And that would have been enough to start anything!”

Inspector Geddes leaned back and nodded more than once, slowly. A smile made his face suddenly human. “That was just the final confirmation I wanted. As Mr. McAlpine has made no charge against anyone, we had nothing to act on. I suspected the girl in the case, but this makes it all clear. I see.”

“I am glad if I have been of any help.” She paused. “And I don't know if Mr. Surrey did actually knock Mr. McAlpine into the river.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Mr. McAlpine said to me that he fell in—that he stepped back over the ledge or something like that.”