The Taint and Other Novellas (44 page)

You the reader must therefore judge. My actual sanity—if indeed I am still sane—my very
being,
may well depend upon your findings…

• • •

I was in New York when the letter from my uncle’s solicitors reached me. Sent from an address in the Royal Mile, that great road which reaches steep and cobbled to the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle itself, the large, sealed manila envelope had all the hallmarks of officialdom, so that even before I opened it I feared the worst.

Not that I had been close to my uncle in recent years (my mother had brought me out of Scotland as a small child, on the death of my father, and I had never been back) but certainly I remembered Uncle Gavin. If anything I remembered him better than I did my father; for where Andrew McGilchrist had always been dry and introverted, Uncle Gavin had been just the opposite. Warm, outgoing and generous to a fault, he had spoilt me mercilessly.

Now, according to the letter, he was dead and I was named his sole heir and beneficiary; and the envelope contained a voucher which guaranteed me a flight to Edinburgh from anywhere in the world. And then of course there was the letter itself, the contents of which further guaranteed my use of that voucher; for only a fool could possibly refuse my uncle’s bequest, or fail to be interested in its attendant though at present unspecified conditions.

Quite simply, by presenting myself at the offices of Macdonald, Asquith and Lee in Edinburgh, I would already have fulfilled the first condition toward inheriting my uncle’s considerable fortune, his estate of over three hundred acres and his great house where it stood in wild and splendid solitude at the foot of the Pentlands in Lothian. All of which seemed a very far cry from New York…

As to what I was doing in New York in the first place:

Three months earlier, in mid-March of 1976—when I was living alone in Philadelphia in the home where my mother had raised me—my fiancée of two years had given me back my ring, run off and married a banker from Baltimore. The novel I was writing had immediately metamorphosed from a light-hearted love story into a doom-laden tragedy, became meaningless somewhere in the transformation, and ended up in my waste-paper basket. That was that. I sold up and moved to New York, where an artist friend had been willing to share his apartment until I could find a decent place of my own.

I had left no forwarding address, however, which explained the delayed delivery of the letter from my uncle’s solicitors; the letter itself was post-marked March 26th, and from the various marks, labels and redirections on the envelope, the US Mail had obviously gone to considerable trouble to find me. And they found me at a time when the lives of both myself and my artist friend, Carl Earlman, were at a very low ebb. I was not writing and Carl was not drawing, and despite the arrival of summer our spirits were on a rapid decline.

Which is probably why I jumped at the opportunity the letter presented, though, as I have said, certainly I would have been a fool to ignore or refuse the thing…Or so I thought at the time.

I invited Carl along if he so desired, and he too grasped at the chance with both hands. His funds were low and getting lower; he would soon be obliged to quit his apartment for something less ostentatious; and since he, too, had decided that he needed a change of locale—to put some life back into his artwork—the matter was soon decided and we packed our bags and headed for Edinburgh.

It was not until our journey was over, however—when we were settled in our hotel room in Princes Street—that I remembered my mother’s warning, delivered to me deliriously but persistently from her deathbed, that I should never return to Scotland, certainly not to the old house. And as I vainly attempted to adjust to the jet-lag and the fact that it was late evening while all my instincts told me it should now be day, so my mind went back over what little 1 knew of my family roots, of the McGilchrist line itself, of that old and rambling house in the Pentlands where I had been born, and especially of the peculiar reticence of Messrs Macdonald, Asquith and Lee, the Scottish solicitors.

Reticence, yes, because I could almost feel the hesitancy in their letter. It seemed to me that they would have preferred
not
to find me; and yet, if I were asked what it was that gave me this impression, then I would be at a loss for an answer. Something in the way it was phrased, perhaps—in the dry, professional idiom of solicitors—which too often seems to me to put aside all matters of emotion or sensibility; so that I felt like a small boy offered a candy…and warned simultaneously that it would ruin my teeth. Yes, it seemed to me that Messrs Macdonald, Asquith and Lee might actually be
apprehensive
about my acceptance of their conditions—or rather, of my uncle’s conditions—as if they were offering a cigar to an addict suffering from cancer of the lungs.

I fastened on that line of reasoning, seeing the conditions of the will as the root of the vague uneasiness which niggled at the back of my mind. The worst of it was that these conditions were not specified; other than to say that if I could not or would not meet them, still I would receive fifteen thousand pounds and my return ticket home, and that the residue of my uncle’s fortune would then be used to carry out his will in respect of “the property known as Temple House.”

Temple House, that rambling old seat of the McGilchrists where it stood locked in a steep re-entry; and the Pentland Hills a grey and green backdrop to its frowning, steep-gabled aspect; with something of the Gothic in its structure, something more of Renaissance Scotland, and an aura of antiquity all its own which, as a child, I could still remember loving dearly. But that had been almost twenty years ago and the place had been my home. A happy home, I had thought; at least until the death of my father, of which I could remember nothing at all.

But I did remember the pool—the deep, grey pool where it lapped at the raised, reinforced, east-facing garden wall—the pool and its ring of broken quartz pillars, the remains of the temple for which the house was named. Thinking back over the years to my infancy, I wondered if perhaps the pool had been the reason my mother had always hated the place. None of the McGilchrists had ever been swimmers, and yet water had always seemed to fascinate them. I would not have been the first of the line to be found floating face-down in that strange, pillar-encircled pool of deep and weedy water; and I had used to spend hours just sitting on the wall and staring across the breeze-rippled surface…

So my thoughts went as, tossing in my hotel bed late into the night, I turned matters over in my mind…And having retired late, so we rose late, Carl and I; and it was not until 2 P.M. that I presented myself at the office of Macdonald, Asquith and Lee on the Royal Mile.

II. The Will

Since Carl had climbed up to the esplanade to take in the view, I was alone when I reached my destination and entered MA and L’s offices through a door of yellow-tinted bull’s-eye panes, passing into the cool welcome of a dim and very
Olde Worlde
anteroom; and for all that this was the source of my enigmatic summons, still I found a reassuring air of charm and quiet sincerity about the place. A clerk led me into an inner chamber as much removed from my idea of a solicitor’s office as is Edinburgh from New York, and having been introduced to the firm’s Mr. Asquith I was offered a seat.

Asquith was tall, slender, high-browed and balding, with a mass of freckles which seemed oddly in contrast with his late middle years, and his handshake was firm and dry. While he busied himself getting various documents, I was given a minute or two to look about this large and bewilderingly cluttered room of shelves, filing cabinets, cupboards and three small desks. But for all that the place seemed grossly disordered, still Mr. Asquith quickly found what he was looking for and seated himself opposite me behind his desk. He was the only partner present and I the only client.

“Now, Mr. McGilchrist,” he began. “And so we managed to find you, did we? And doubtless you’re wondering what it’s all about, and you probably think there’s something of a mystery here? Well, so there is, and for me and my partners no less than for yourself.”

“I don’t quite follow,” I answered, searching his face for a clue.

“No, no of course you don’t. Well now, perhaps this will explain it better. It’s a copy of your uncle’s will. As you’ll see, he was rather short on words; hence the mystery. A more succinct document—which nevertheless hints at so much more—I’ve yet to see!”

• • •

“I Gavin McGilchrist,” (the will began) “of Temple House in Lothian, hereby revoke all Wills, Codicils or Testamentary Dispositions heretofore made by me, and I appoint my Nephew, John Hamish McGilchrist of Philadelphia in the United States of America, to be the Executor of this my Last Will and direct that all my Debts, Testamentary and Funeral Expenses shall be paid as soon as conveniently may be after my death.

“I give and bequeath unto the aforementioned John Hamish McGilchrist everything I possess, my Land and the Property standing thereon, with the following Condition: namely that he alone shall open and read the Deposition which shall accompany this Will into the hands of the Solicitors; and that furthermore he, being the Owner, shall destroy Temple House to its last stone within a Threemonth of accepting this Condition. In the event that he shall refuse this undertaking, then shall my Solicitors, Macdonald, Asquith and Lee of Edinburgh, become sole Executors of my Estate, who shall follow to the letter the Instructions simultaneously deposited with them.”

The will was dated and signed in my uncle’s scratchy scrawl.

I read it through a second time and looked up to find Mr. Asquith’s gaze fixed intently upon me. “Well,” he said, “and didn’t I say it was a mystery? Almost as strange as his death…” He saw the immediate change in my expression, the frown and the question my lips were beginning to frame, and held up his hands in apology. “I’m sorry,” he said, “so very sorry—for of course you know nothing of the circumstances of his death, do you? I had better explain:

“A year ago,” Asquith continued, “your uncle was one of the most hale and hearty men you could wish to meet. He was a man of independent means, as you know, and for a good many years he had been collecting data for a book. Ah! I see you’re surprised. Well, you shouldn’t be. Your great-grandfather wrote
Notes on Nessie: the Secrets of Loch Ness;
and your grandmother, under a pseudonym, was a fairly successful romanticist around the turn of the century. You, too, I believe, have published several romances? Indeed,” and he smiled and nodded, “it appears to be in the blood, you see?

“Like your great-grandfather, however, your Uncle Gavin McGilchrist had no romantic aspirations. He was a researcher, you see, and couldn’t abide a mystery to remain unsolved. And there he was at Temple House, a bachelor and time on his hands, and a marvellous family tree to explore and a great mystery to unravel.”

“Family tree?” I said. “He was researching the biography of a family? But which fam—” And I paused.

Asquith smiled. “You’ve guessed it, of course,” he said. “Yes, he was planning a book on the McGilchrists, with special reference to the curse…” And his smile quickly vanished.

It was as if a cold draught, coming from nowhere, fanned my cheek. “The curse? My family had…a curse?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. Not the classical sort of curse, by any means, but a curse nevertheless—or at least your uncle thought so. Perhaps he wasn’t really serious about it at first, but towards the end—”

“I think I know what you mean,” I said. “I remember now: the deaths by stroke, by drowning, by thrombosis. My mother mentioned them on her own deathbed. A curse on the McGilchrists, she said, on the old house.”

Again Asquith nodded, and finally he continued. “Well, your uncle had been collecting material for many years, I suspect since the death of your father; from local archives, historical annals, various chronicles, church records, military museums, and so on. He had even enlisted our aid, on occasion, in finding this or that old document. Our firm was founded one hundred and sixty years ago, you see, and we’ve had many McGilchrists as clients.

“As I’ve said, up to a time roughly a year ago, he was as hale and hearty a man as you could wish to meet. Then he travelled abroad; Hungary, Romania, all the old countries of antique myth and legend. He brought back many books with him, and on his return he was a changed man. He had become, in a matter of weeks, the merest shadow of his former self. Finally, nine weeks ago on March 22nd, he left his will in our hands, an additional set of instructions for us to follow in the event you couldn’t be found, and the sealed envelope which he mentions in his will. I shall give that to you in a moment. Two days later, when his gillie returned to Temple House from a short holiday—”

”He found my uncle dead,” I finished it for him. “I see…And the strange circumstances?”

“For a man of his years to die of a heart attack…” Asquith shook his head. “He wasn’t old. What?—an outdoors man, like him? And what of the shotgun, with both barrels discharged, and the spent cartridges lying at his feet just outside the porch? What had he fired at, eh, in the dead of night? And the look on his face—monstrous !”

“You saw him?”

“Oh, yes. That was part of our instructions; I was to see him. And not just myself but Mr. Lee also. And the doctor, of course, who declared it could only have been a heart attack. But then there was the post-mortem. That was also part of your uncle’s instructions…”

“And its findings?” I quietly asked.

“Why, that was the reason he wanted the autopsy, do you see? So that we should know he was in good health.”

“No heart attack?”

“No,” he shook his head, “not him. But dead, certainly. And that look on his face, Mr. McGilchrist—that terrible, pleading look in his wide, wide eyes…”

3. The House

Half an hour later I left Mr. Asquith in his office and saw myself out through the anteroom and into the hot, cobbled road that climbed to the great grey castle. In the interim I had opened the envelope left for me by my uncle and had given its contents a cursory scrutiny, but I intended to study them minutely at my earliest convenience.