It was all very odd.
When he got back to the beach he found that someone else had joined Mark and Janet since his departure. There was another chair placed on the far side of Janet’s and a man was sitting there.
His age was indeterminate. His face was alert and intelligent, but his hands were wrinkled, betraying that he was older than his features suggested.
He was clean-shaven but his chin had the dark, stubborn look that goes with a constant struggle to keep down a beard. Blue eyes twinkled behind thick-rimmed spectacles as he glanced up at Tremaine.
‘This is another of our neighbours,’ Mark explained. ‘Ralph Exenley. Ralph, this is Mordecai Tremaine.’
They shook hands. Exenley’s grip was firm and friendly, and Tremaine felt an instinctive liking for him.
‘I’m afraid you won’t find much excitement here,’ Exenley said. ‘We’re a disgustingly law-abiding community.’
Tremaine looked enquiringly at Mark and that gentleman grinned.
‘I’ve been giving the game away. Telling Ralph all about your excursions into crime.’
‘I hope he hasn’t been spinning too many fairy tales,’ Tremaine remarked to the newcomer. ‘It makes people expect to see a lean and hungry man-hunter, and when I come along it takes them a long time to get over their disappointment.’
‘He’s been very complimentary. Anyway, I’ve read about your exploits already.’
‘You’re interested in crime?’
‘Well, I like reading criminology when I get bored with looking at tomatoes.’
‘Ralph’s a grower,’ Mark elucidated.
‘You must come over to my place,’ Exenley said, ‘and I’ll take you through the greenhouses.’
‘Be careful!’ Janet put in, smiling. ‘Ralph’s an enthusiast. Especially where tomatoes are concerned!’
‘I like meeting enthusiasts,’ Tremaine said. ‘After all, there are so many people in these days who don’t seem to be able to raise any feeling about anything.’
‘You’ve been warned, anyway,’ Exenley remarked. ‘If you’d like to take the risk, what about tomorrow? After lunch, though, if you don’t mind. I’m usually busy in the mornings although the peak of the season’s over now.’
Belmore made a gesture of regret.
‘I’m afraid it can’t be tomorrow, old man. We’ve arranged to go to the sand racing over at Firon. We’re joining a party Latinam’s taking from the Rohane.’
‘I’d forgotten about the sand racing,’ Exenley returned. ‘Might look over myself. Let’s make it the day after. Any time after lunch will do.’
‘I’d certainly like to take advantage of your offer,’ Tremaine said. He glanced enquiringly at Exenley. ‘You know Mr. Latinam, of course?’
‘By name. And I think everybody on the island must know the Rohane hotel. But I’ve never actually met Latinam. I must be the only person in Moulin d’Or who hasn’t as far as I can make out! Just happened that way, I suppose.’
‘And Mr. Creed?’ Tremaine said, unable to resist the search for information.
Ralph Exenley’s eyes were twinkling behind his prominent spectacles.
‘Yes, I know Alan. His wife, too. Nice couple. They’ve been over to my place a couple of times. Trouble is that as a bachelor I’m not too well placed to offer hospitality. My entertaining is strictly limited.’
Exenley was a pleasant companion and Tremaine was sorry when the other rose from his deck-chair.
‘Time I went back to croon over my tomatoes. They provide my daily bread and if I don’t water them they’ll be taking their revenge by dying on my hands.’
‘You two ought to get on together,’ Belmore said, as Exenley went off up the beach, towards the path leading up the cliff. ‘You certainly start with the advantage of a mutual set of interests. Tomatoes and crime! They make an odd pair.’
‘Anything goes with crime,’ Tremaine said, a little sententiously. ‘Crime is universal.’
‘I was saying to Ralph,’ Mark went on, ‘that there’s something right in your line of country in today’s newspapers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The prison break from Parkhurst. Surely you saw it? Fellow called Marfield, doing ten years for forgery.’
‘Yes, I did see the account.’
‘Needed a cool nerve. Squeezing through a ventilator shaft in the dark isn’t my idea of a pleasant occupation.’
‘There was freedom on the end of it.’
‘For how long? I know something about living on an island. You can bet that the moment the escape was discovered every exit was put under guard.’
‘A man desperate enough to make that kind of getaway isn’t going to give up easily,’ Tremaine said. ‘And they don’t seem to have caught him yet.’
Belmore stared thoughtfully out to sea.
‘I wonder what’s in his mind? This is one occasion when I can understand what made you take up crime detection. It must be fascinating to find out the reasoning of people like Marfield, really desperate criminals who know that the odds are all against them. Is the desire for freedom alone strong enough to drive them to take the risk of trying to escape? Surely they must know that if they’re caught freedom will be further off than ever!’
‘They don’t think of that when they’re eating their hearts out behind walls,’ Tremaine observed soberly. ‘They only see the prize and don’t look at the penalty. Besides, they delude themselves that once they’re out they’ll stay out. They don’t appreciate the odds against them. And it may not be the prospect of freedom that attracts them as much as the thought of revenge.’
‘Revenge? Meaning Marfield in particular?’
‘Meaning Marfield in particular,’ Tremaine agreed. ‘I read a good deal about the Armitage case at the time and I can imagine that with Marfield walking about somewhere a free man, even though the police are after him, one or two people are going to feel very nervous.’
‘But it won’t be as simple as that,’ Belmore objected. ‘Surely the police will be aware that Marfield’s likely to try and get his revenge? They’ll have warned Armitage and they’ll be watching everybody who goes near him until Marfield’s safely back in jail.’
‘Perhaps. If they know where to find him. This morning’s report said that Armitage disappeared shortly after he was released. It doesn’t necessarily follow, of course, that he’s disappeared as far as the police are concerned, but they aren’t going to be able to do much protecting until they’ve located him.’
Janet looked at them both in mock irritation.
‘Will you two stop talking in riddles? What is all this about someone breaking out of prison and wanting revenge on a man called Armitage?’
‘It’s connected with a case that was in the news a couple of years ago, my dear,’ her husband told her. ‘A big forgery gang was rounded up by the police and this chap Marfield who’s just escaped—he seems to have been the ringleader and a pretty desperate character—was given a sentence of ten years. He might have got away with it if another member of the gang hadn’t given evidence against him. Naturally enough Marfield took a poor view of it and threatened from the dock that some day he’d get his revenge.’
‘It was Armitage who gave him away?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But why? I thought there was supposed to be honour among thieves.’
‘Only in books,’ Tremaine said. ‘You need only read the reports of trials like that of Browne and Kennedy, who were responsible for the murder of a policeman, to see what happens in reality. Once the police have caught up with them these fellows try to put all the blame on their accomplices. Not a very edifying spectacle, I’m afraid.’
‘When it comes to murder,’ Mark observed, ‘it’s a case of each trying to save his neck at the other’s expense. In lesser crimes I suppose they do it to get off with a lighter sentence. The police do make certain allowances, don’t they?’
‘Well, it’s taken into account. Armitage, the chap in
this instance, was given something like twelve or eighteen months. But in his case I think there were other extenuating circumstances. He didn’t realize what was going on at first and when he did find out he was in too deep to draw back.’
‘We’ll hope for his sake that Marfield doesn’t catch up with him.’
‘I don’t suppose he will,’ Tremaine said. ‘The police don’t let much slip past them. They’ll have Marfield back in his cell before long.’
He wasn’t especially interested in the Armitage case or in Marfield, either. Not on this pleasant, sunlit beach.
He was on holiday and he wanted to forget that such a thing as crime existed. He should have been wiser, of course. He should have known that he was attempting the impossible.
4
PLAN FOR EASY LIVING
SAND FLURRIED FROM racing wheels; noise boomed wavelike across the beach. Sitting on the pebbles, a few yards from the limits of the track, Tremaine found both the noise and the movement stimulating.
The young men who were providing the afternoon’s excitement had obviously—in most cases at least—built their own cars from a miscellaneous collection of parts. But interest had been sharpened by the fact that the two motor-cycle and light-car clubs the island possessed were competing against each other in all the events.
So far North and South appeared evenly matched. South had produced some skilful cornering in the motor-cycle events, bringing them useful points; whilst North had retaliated by gaining two firsts, a second, and two thirds in the light-car section. Their outstanding performer was a helmeted and goggled young man in a blue machine which was higher in the body than those of his competitors and which bore the number 42.
Nicola Paston gave a gasp of excitement as the blue car shot once more past the finishing flag. She was sitting close to Tremaine and he could see the flush in her eager features.
She turned to Ivan Holt, just behind her.
‘Who is Number 42, Ivan? You know most of them, don’t you?’
‘Well, I know Number 42,’ he told her. ‘That’s Descamps, the club secretary. He spends practically all his spare time on that car.’
‘Foolish young man,’ observed Hedley Latinam.
They were all sitting so close together on the shingle that edged the sand upon which the track had been marked out that the conversation was general.
‘Why so?’ Holt asked.
‘Why lavish so much affection on a mere piece of machinery when there’s so much beauty to be appreciated on the island!’ Latinam glanced at his sister. ‘A very short-sighted policy. Don’t you agree, Ruth?’
‘If it satisfies Mr. Descamps,’ she returned calmly, ‘that’s the important thing. After all, he may not be interested in the island’s—beauty.’
‘A man who can give so much to machinery should be capable of great things in other directions—when the right moment comes,’ said Geoffrey Bendall’s cynical voice. ‘I think Mr. Descamps has something. If he can put up with the vagaries of the internal combusion engine he’ll be able to take the vagaries of the feminine temperament in his stride.’
Mordecai Tremaine’s antagonism was instinctively aroused. His bruised idealism prepared to leap metaphorically into the breach.
But he restrained himself. It was only Bendall’s manner. He didn’t really mean it. He only said things like that in order to create an impression.
‘You’re not a racing-car enthusiast, Mr. Bendall?’
‘Did I sound so plain?’ Bendall said, faintly amused. ‘Well, it seems a silly business to me to go tearing around a race-track risking one’s neck.’
‘There’s money in racing,’ Latinam said.
Bendall grinned at him lazily.
‘I’ll take your word for it. You’ve obviously got the Midas touch so you can speak with authority.’
Tremaine looked at him. Bendall’s smile had robbed the words of any direct offence but he did not think that Latinam was altogether pleased. There was a fixed quality in the plump man’s jovial expression, and his voice seemed to hold a questioning note that was more in earnest than the conversation merited.
‘Are you looking for an easy way of striking it rich?’
‘Gold is where you find it,’ Bendall said. ‘I’m looking for a rich old man without too many troublesome relatives who doesn’t know where to leave his money.’
Nicola Paston drew in her breath as though she had been startled. The flush had left her face; she was sitting quite still, staring intently at Geoffrey Bendall.
Latinam took out a cigarette and lit it with an ornate silver lighter. It possessed an elaborate cap shaped like a lion. It was, Tremaine thought, somewhat pretentious, rather like the man himself.
‘It sounds original. How do you propose to set about it?’
‘I haven’t got down to the details yet.’ Bendall shrugged amiably. ‘The ideas come easily enough, but I never could care much for the donkey work of planning.’
Latinam shook his head deprecatingly.
‘That’s a pity. Can’t get along without planning. What line were you thinking of following with this rich old man with no relatives to come asking awkward questions?’
‘Oh, I thought about striking up an acquaintance with him somehow—after I’d watched him for a while without his suspecting me so that I’d know his habits. I could save him from drowning, or haul him from underneath the wheel of a bus in the nick of time. There are plenty of possibilities; it’s just a matter of deciding on the right one and preparing the setting.’
Latinam gave a burst of laughter and brought a podgy palm down upon his thigh.
‘Capital! All you’ve got to do now is to find a rich old man and persuade him to go for a swim or take a bus ride. Of course, after that you’ll have to get him to make a will leaving you all his money and then see that he dies, but that ought to be simple enough for anybody with your imagination.’
Bendall’s face was perfectly sober.
‘Yes, I think so,’ he returned gravely. ‘A rich old man who’d been living on his own for years would probably have some kind of bee in his bonnet and he’d fall for the right story. If I made sure beforehand that he had a weak heart it might not even be necessary for me to help him into the next life after he’d made his will.’
Nicola Paston’s blue eyes were wide and there was an expression in them Tremaine could not read. He could not believe that it was fear, and yet it was fear of which it reminded him.
‘Don’t take any notice of Geoffrey,’ she said hastily. ‘When he’s in one of these moods he says all kinds of ridiculous things.’
‘My dear Mrs. Paston,’ Latinam said, a chuckle rumbling up from his plump being, ‘please let him go on. He’s amusing me and I like to be amused. I know he doesn’t mean a word he says but it’s still entertaining.’
‘Hang it all,’ Bendall said, aggrieved, ‘I do mean it.’ He raised his eyes in an imploring manner. ‘Will no one take the jester seriously?’
‘They certainly won’t,’ Nicola Paston said firmly. ‘If you keep on like this, Geoffrey, people will expect to see you going about wearing a cap and bells!’
‘And why not?’ Bendall demanded. ‘It would bring a little colour into this drab mechanical age if we appointed a few official jesters to cheer us all up. If we don’t treat life as a comedy we’re compelled to admit what a damned tragic mess it all is.’
‘Come now, you’re exaggerating,’ Tremaine said protestingly. ‘Unpleasant things do go on in the world, but there are plenty of pleasant ones, too. We’ve moved forward, even if not as much as we’d like.’
‘True enough,’ Bendall said, momentarily without cynicism. ‘The Middle Ages had jesters and colour, but they had other things as well. Poor drains, for instance,’ he added, with a return to his former manner. ‘Although I dare say we could uncover a few smells just as bad if we started digging in the right places. Don’t you agree?’ he finished, turning to Latinam.
‘You’re doing the talking,’ Lat
inam countered, his broad face still crinkled good-humouredly. ‘But let’s get back to this rich old man who’s going to keep you in luxury by dying so conveniently. You said something about choosing one with a bee in his bonnet. Have you any particular preference in bees?’
‘My goodness, yes!’ Bendall returned. ‘I’ve given a lot of thought to that. I’m going to pick a woman-hater.’
To Tremaine’s disappointment, his romanticism badly ruffled by this further display of cynicism, no reply came from Latinam. It was Nicola Paston who spoke, a faint shrillness in her voice.
‘I think the next race is going to start. What is it this time, Ivan?’
Ivan Holt flicked over the pages of his programme.
‘Five-lap Scratch race for motor-cycles. 351 c.c. to 500 c.c. Half-a-dozen riders from each club.’
‘Oh, dear,’ came Janet’s voice from somewhere on the fringe of the gathering. ‘I wish I’d brought some cotton wool with me. They’re such noisy things.’
‘They do rather let people know they’re coming,’ Holt admitted. ‘But they’re not as dangerous as they sound. It isn’t often a good rider does himself any damage whereas it’s fairly easy to overturn a car on the bends.’
‘I love to hear them all coming round together,’ Nicola said quickly.
She sounded a little feverish, as though she was talking not because she really wanted to say anything but because she wanted to keep the conversation going somehow.
Geoffrey Bendall leaned towards her.
‘It’s all right, Nicola,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll be a good boy.’
The line of motor-cycles roared forward as the starter’s flag went down, held together for a few seconds, and then began to thin out as the leaders went ahead. The conversation died away as all eyes began to concentrate on the race.
Behold a Fair Woman Page 4