Dead Men Making Trouble

And this our life, exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks
- As You Like It

Forres is a small town in northern Scotland distinguished in literary history by Banquo's first words, 'How far is't called to Forres'? Shakespeare, who didn't get out much, thought that Cawdor Castle - Macbeth's brief home between murder and death - was in Forres, while it is in fact closer to Nairn, the next town to the west. Literature, however, has triumphed over geography and some hundred and sixty-eight years later during his travels through Scotland Dr. Johnson was able to observe: 'We went forwards the same day to Forres, the town to which Macbeth was travelling, when he met the weird sisters in his way. This to an Englishman is classic ground. Our imaginations were heated, and our thoughts recalled to their old amusements.' Boswell noted that while he and the doctor found an 'admirable inn' in Forres, Nairn was 'a miserable place.' To the east of Forres is Elgin. This town boasts a large plinth upon which Lord Elgin stands looking quite pleased with his acquisitions from Greece - 'Blush, Caledonia, such thy son could be!' Lord Byron would write. Though Nairn and Elgin have suffered in the shadow of the Bard, it is these two beleaguered towns that are named as 'Napthali Nairn' and 'Joseph Elgin' - those well known sons of Jacob - in Blake's Jerusalem, and for once, Forres has been overlooked. However, as these pages must show, to be associated with the most famous of literary murderers, to have the blood of Duncan and the ghost of Banquo on one's civic hands, was a literary heritage just looking for trouble.

It is perhaps not surprising that Dr. Johnson and Boswell discussed 'the origin of evil' on the 27th of August 1773 as they spent their one and only night in Forres. It was some two hundred and twenty seven years later that Detective Mckenzie was called to the house of Henry Morton of St. Leonard's road. Morton, a reasonably well-known local author, had been murdered.

Morton's home on St. Leonard's road was often, especially after the successful BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1995, referred to the 'Jane Austen house.' Surrounded by great sandstone buildings from the 1890s with gothic turrets, Morton's house, built in 1816, was a modest regency home that might have housed the Dashwood sisters after the untimely death of their farther. Detective Mckenzie parked his car some way down the tree lined road and slowly walked to Morton's house. It was early spring, grey and cold. The daffodils in the front yard were frozen. Mckenzie opened the ornate gates and made his way across the short gravel drive to the house.

Sergeant Duncan was standing at the door. 'They've brought in the big manny from Elgin.' As he stepped over the threshold Mckenzie found himself face to face with Morton. An old man sitting on the hallway stairs, slouched against the balustrade. He was wearing a dark green dressing gown. His arms were stretched up in front of him handcuffed to the balustrade. His eyes were closed.

A stocky man was looking at the body.
'Superintendent McWilliams'.
'Mckenzie. See what you can find out on Morton. There's no sign of a struggle and nothing's been taken, as far as I can tell.'

The living room was sparse with bare polished floorboards, a Rennie Mackintosh chair in one corner and a small calico settee in the middle of the room. One wall was lined with books. As he walked by the shelves, Mckenzie's eye was drawn to one shelf with a row of books with blue covers and gold lettering. They were multiple copies of Morton's own books. All published by Methuen in the1940s and 1950s. All with discoloured, rough-cut pages and mildew spots. At the end of the shelf was a video of Braveheart. Mckenzie was probably the only person in Scotland who had not watched Mel Gibson's film. Seeing the trailers in Inverness, he'd taken one look at Mel Gibson's hair and known that he would be unable to watch the film. He still shuddered at the thought of Kevin Costner's hair in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. He remembered that Morton had had some connection with the film. It had been in the Forres Gazette. He took one of Morton's books off the shelf and turning to the middle read: 'After they had left Aberdeen, Montrose watched his son carefully, fearing some breakdown. But it was he himself and not Lord Graham who fell ill, and that so seriously that his life was despaired of, and his enemies eagerly gave out the news of his death'. He put the book back on the shelf.

Across from the kitchen, he found what must have been Morton's study. It was dark room with a desk and a large green leather chair. No computer, no typewriter. There was a grey filing cabinet in the corner. Mckenzie opened the top drawer: bank statements, home insurance. He tried the second and third drawers. There were no letters, no manuscripts. Not even a pen or a pencil. He went up the stairs, gently pushing Morton's body aside. On the landing there was a small table with the telephone and an open engagement diary. Two days earlier, written in green ink, were the words 'Stavrogin. Alltyre.'

Mckenzie left his car and walked across the empty expanse of Grant Park to the police station. After checking the database and making a few calls, Mckenzie discovered that Morton had not always been Henry Morton. He had changed his name in 1946. He had been born Timothy Stephen Elliot in 1925 in Birmingham.

Mckenzie sat on a bench in his front garden, eating his lunch, believing it was warmer than it actually was. The crows were gathering sticks for their nests in the still naked trees. Ezra Mckenzie had not changed a name, but he had lost one. Somewhere in the rush, his name had been misplaced, or so his adopted parents John and Eileen Mckenzie had said. In early 1939 as part of the Kindertransport he had arrived as a baby in England with only the name Ezra. He had lived in Scotland all his life. No one had contacted him since the war and he had made no enquires. There didn't seem much point.

The phone rang in the house.

'Sergeant Duncan here. About this Stavrogin in Alltyre. There are no Russian's living in Alltyre, but in his will Morton left his all books to a Miss Brodie, who lives on the Alltyre estate.'

Later that afternoon, when the grey day had already gone dark, Mckenzie drove out on the Grantown road and turned off at the Alltyre Estate. Except for the Edwardian manor house, hidden from the road, the large estate was well known for its many crumbling, ornate buildings and its large artificial lake. The Earl had married an Italian countess in the1880s and brought her back to Scotland and spent the next ten years building a little Italy in the woods of Alltyre, before she had left him and returned to the shores of Lake Como.

Parking outside a small picturesque cottage, Mckenzie rang the doorbell. A tall, vigorous woman in her early sixties opened the door.
'Miss Brodie?'
'You better come in Dectective Mckenzie.'
She led him into her sitting room. The cottage was very English, very Laura Ashley. Bookcases lined most of the walls.
'Would you like some tea, Detective Mckenzie?'
'Yes, thank you.'
She served oat cakes with the tea.
'Miss Brodie, did you know Henry Morton well?'
'Yes, quite well'
'Do you know if he had any family?'
'No, he has no family. A few ex-wives.'
'Did you know that he had changed his name?'
'Yes, T. S. Eliot from Birmingham, poor man!'
'Why 'Henry Morton'?
'Detective Mckenzie, you mean to tell me you haven't read your Sir Walter Scott?'
He shook his head. She must have been a teacher.
'Henry Morton of Milnewood is the hero of Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality. She got up and pulled out a leather bound copy of Scott's work. 'It is set in that unhappy period of the 1680s. Morton is a Covenater, but he rejects the wild cast of enthusiasm which blights the Presbyterian cause. He is the epitome of the rational, disinterested and honourable Scottish hero.'
'But Eliiot was not Scottish?'
'Not in the least, but when he began to publish in the 1950s it was the time of the Angry Young Men, you know, John Osborne and all that. He tried to become the young angry Walter Scott ... You may smile Detective Mckenzie, but he was very successful, in his day. Things changed, as you know, in the 1960s. Surely you've read Deep Sea, The Little World or The Proud Servant?
'No, I'm afraid I haven't, but didn't he have something to do with Braveheart?'
'Henry always said that it will be his fate to be remembered only for his small contribution to the script of that appalling film.'
Mckenzie became aware of the smell of cat litter. It was hot in the cottage.
'Miss Brodie, I'm sorry, just one last question. We found this entry in his dairy: 'Stavrogin. AlItyre.' Do you know what this means?
'Stavrogin? Yes, of course, Henry was fascinated by the character of Stavrogin from Dostoyevksy's The Devils. When we met last week we were talking about Stavrogin, who seduces a young girl who then kills herself. Stavrogin sees "no distinction in beauty between some voluptuous and brutish act and any heroic exploit." But he kills himself in the end. Henry felt that the new association of evil with beauty from the 1860s led to the catastrophes of the twentieth century.

The next morning Mckenzie received a call at the Forres Station from Miss Brodie. A letter had arrived in the mail from Henry Morton. It was dated two days earlier and was clearly a suicide note. Ezra drove out to the Alltyre estate. It was snowing. Morton's letter read:

Dear Betty,

I am sorry, but I keep thinking of that passage from Marquez's The General in his Labyrinth. Bolivar is playing chess and in the middle of the game a Friar asks him if he planned to write his memoirs. 'Never,' Bolivar replies, 'they're nothing but dead men making trouble.'

Warm regards and enjoy the books,

Henry

'Do you understand this letter, Miss Brodie? Or why he staged his death to look like a murder?'
'I haven't a clue. Though all this business has done wonders for his reputation. The phone has been ringing all morning. Do you know, I even got a call from The South Bank Show. They want to do a programme on Henry. They called him 'an authentic voice of Scotland.'

Sean Gaston