In 1869 in the remote northern Scottish village of Culduie,
teenager Roderick (Roddy) Macrae brutally murders his neighbor, Lachlan “Broad’
Mackenzie, and two others. He readily admits to his crime, motivated, he says, by
a desire to end the dreadful vendetta that Broad waged against his widowed father.
The sympathetic defence lawyer, Andrew Simpson, urges him to write an account
of the events leading up to the tragedy.
Roddy agrees. In a surprisingly articulate essay, the young
crofter describes his motive, originating with his birth and escalating through
the lad’s mercy killing of an injured sheep belonging to Broad (interpreted as
wanton), Broad’s sexual torment of his sister and mother, and his abuse of
power as a constable that strips the family of land, crops, and finally their home.
Given Roddy’s passivity, intelligence, and previously clean
record, Simpson prepares a defence of temporary insanity and brings two
physicians to assess his client, one a purported expert in the new field of
medical criminology. The jury trial proceeds with an almost verbatim transcript derived
from newspaper sources. The reader is able to juxtapose Roderick’s account with
that presented in court. To report the outcome here would reveal too much.
