MURDER - The Lighthouse - page 106

the sea shortly afterwards. Cleaning up a murder scene to make it look as if nothing
had happened is often the act of a cold and calculating murderer, but an act such as this
would not be premeditated or calculated.
LeadingonfromMacLeod'stheoryofonemanbecomingunhinged,thereisthepos-
sibility that one man ran out of the lighthouse in a highly agitated state, in this case
possiblyDonaldMacarthurashewasinhisshirtsleeves. Theothertwomen,Ducatand
Marshall, could have put on their outside clothing to protect themselves against the bad
weather to go out and try and bring him back. Once outside they may have found him
on the edge of a cliff or down at the west landing and in the struggle to try and restrain
or calm the distraught Macarthur, they all may have fallen off the edge of the cliff into
the turbulent sea or have been swept away at the west landing by a wave.
Overall, though, the theory of murder by one of the men going mad does not appear
to stand up to scrutiny. A variation on this theory is that the three lightkeepers were
possibly attacked by pirates or a party with murderous intentions who had landed from
a passing ship. Again this is a rather far-fetched possibility. While pirates have nev-
er really gone away over the centuries, the North Atlantic area between Iceland and
Scotland and Northern Ireland was not known for being an area where pirates oper-
ated. Equally, even if a passing ship had landed a party to abduct the lightkeepers,
there seemed little point in doing so. There was nothing of any really value to steal
andeverythingwasinplace.Evenconsideringtheveryremotepossibilitythatthethree
lightkeepershadbeenabductedforaransom,noransomdemandwaseverforthcoming.
Finally, the one thing that argues against the possibility of a landing by pirates or any
other malevolent party was the weather on the afternoon of 15 December 1900. From
the morning the weather worsened considerably so that by the afternoon there was a
strongforce9galeblowing.Therewouldhavebeen47-54mphwindsandwaveheights
of between 23-32ft. 15 It would have been virtually impossible for a boat to have at-
tempted to land in those conditions even if they had tried to land on the east landing.
Another possibility has been put forward 16 - that the men, or at least one or two of
them,hadeatencontaminatedbreadcontainingergot.Humanpoisoningfromeatingrye
bread made from ergot-contaminated grain was common in the Middle Ages. Ergot it-
selfisagroupoffungiofwhichthemostprominentmemberisryeergotfungus( Clavi-
ceps purpurea ). It grows on rye and plants related to rye and produces alkaloids that
cause ergotism in humans and mammals that eat grains which have been contaminated
withitsfruitingstructure.Althoughryeisthemostcommonhostandthereforethemost
affected, the contamination can also take place in wheat barley and triticale (a hybrid
of wheat and rye that was first developed in laboratories in the late nineteenth century),
although oats are rarely affected.