11
INTERVIEW WITH THE CHIEF OFFICER
DISCONSOLATELY MORDECAI TREMAINE scooped up a pebble and lobbed it into a nearby rock pool. He had wanted to enjoy his holiday. And now there were policemen swarming all over Moulin d’Or and there was a corpse about to make the headlines.
Things had moved swiftly since that dreadful moment a few hours earlier when he had stood looking down into Ralph Exenley’s water tank at the distorted, dead face of Hedley Latinam. The local constable, informed of the tragedy, had communicated at once with his superiors at St. Julian Harbour; police cars had brought the island’s senior officers hurrying to the bungalow.
It was a long time since the authorities had had to deal with murder; the constable’s message, Tremaine reflected, must have stirred up a hornets’ nest judging by the fury of activity which had been going on ever since.
No doubt the sightseers would be arriving soon; the peace of Moulin d’Or would be shattered by an avalanche of curious humanity with time to spare coming in the wake of the policemen and the reporters. Murder was a magnet that could be depended upon to draw everything towards it.
He sighed, and, slipping down from the rock upon which he had been sitting, walked over the soft, clogging sand towards the dunes.
The constable who had been sent in search of him watched him speculatively from twenty yards off, comparing what he could see with his own eyes with what had been imparted to him by others, and, judging by his slightly puzzled expression, finding it difficult to reconcile the two.
He saw the slight, stooping figure of an elderly man with whom it seemed incongruous to associate violence. His air of harmless benevolence was accentuated by the pince-nez which had slipped to the end of his nose and were apparently on the point of sliding off completely.
So this was the Mordecai Tremaine he’d heard so much about. This was the chap who solved murder mysteries and got himself in the headlines.
Well, you never could tell.
As Tremaine clambered up to the grass bordering the dunes the constable moved towards him.
‘Excuse me, sir. You’re Mr. Tremaine?’
‘That’s right, Constable. What can I do for you?’
‘The Chief Officer wants to know if you can spare him a few minutes, Mr. Tremaine.’
‘Of course.’ Tremaine nodded. ‘Is he still at the hotel?’
‘Yes, he’s still there, sir.’
The police had made the Rohane hotel their headquarters. It had been the dead man’s home, so that extensive enquiries had been necessary there; and it was in any case much more convenient as a centre of local operations than the bungalow where the body had been found.
Geoffrey Bendall and Nicola Paston came down the short roadway over the headland as Tremaine and the constable approached the hotel. They nodded briefly. Bendall’s grey eyes rested curiously upon the policeman and his thin eyebrows rose slightly.
Tremaine was annoyed with himself for feeling suddenly uncomfortable. It wasn’t as though there was anything especially significant about his being sent for by the police. Everybody had been interviewed, Bendall included; it was just routine.
He noted, however, that Nicola did not share her companion’s air of flippant aggressiveness. She was tense, as though she was struggling to keep up an appearance of unconcern which she did not feel. He thought that she was a little afraid.
He glanced after them when they had passed. Their heads were in close proximity. He had a brief impression of something conspiratorial.
It disturbed him. It made him recall the remark Bendall had made a day or two earlier on the cliffs near Mortelet. It was a remark which had troubled him with its elusive familiarity.
But because Nicola Paston was still young, although she was a widow, and because her fair hair framed a face of appealing beauty, he hadn’t wanted to think about it.
He knew how unwise it was. Because a woman was fair to look upon it didn’t mean that all was well within.
The constable on duty at the door of the hotel stood aside to allow his colleague to enter, giving Mordecai Tremaine a salute as he did so. Tremaine began to suspect why he had been sent for, and he wondered whether the same thought had occurred to Geoffrey Bendall a few minutes earlier.
Chief Officer Colinet, responsible for the efficient running of the island’s police force, was a big man whose bulk dwarfed the desk at which he was seated. He heaved himself upright and held out his hand.
‘They didn’t take long to find you, Mr. Tremaine.’
‘I was on the beach. Not very far away.’
The Chief Officer pushed forward a chair. Tremaine sat down. He waited expectantly.
‘As the person who found the body you’re our most important witness so far,’ the Chief Officer remarked conversationally, returning to the desk. ‘I’d like to talk things over with you as fully as possible.’
‘I’m ready to give you all the information I can, of course.’
‘Superintendent Boyce assured me of that,’ the Chief Officer said, and Tremaine gave him a thoughtful glance.
‘Superintendent Boyce?’
‘I’ve been speaking to him on the telephone. I believe you and the superintendent are on very good terms?’
‘You might put it like that,’ Tremaine agreed. ‘Jonathan Boyce and I have been friends for a long time.’
The Chief Officer’s manner was affable. It was clear that the impression he wanted to give, although without using words, was that a witness who enjoyed the close friendship of Superintendent Boyce, of Scotland Yard, was in a very different category to a witness who was of purely civilian status.
Tremaine wondered what Jonathan had said. He could imagine what his friend’s reaction had been when the Chief Officer had told him who had found the body.
But it wasn’t his fault that he seemed to have a remarkable propensity for discovering corpses. He didn’t go around looking for the bodies of people who’d been murdered; they just happened and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
He couldn’t have known, for instance, what he was going to find when he’d climbed that ladder.
He hoped that Jonathan hadn’t been too humorous about it—or too complimentary. It was always a strain trying to live up to a reputation. Especially when secretly you weren’t altogether sure you could do it.
Someone in the neighbourhood of Moulin d’Or had told the Chief Officer about him and the call to the Yard had been the result. All the signs pointed to his being both a witness and a party to the investigation.
Well, it might be interesting. The island formed a little world of its own, separated from the mainland by no more than a few miles of water and yet, with its own government and its own courts of law, as remote from it as if it lay on the other side of the ocean.
Chief Officer Colinet was in much the same position as a Chief Constable at home. All the threads of the investigation would pass through his hands; it would be exhilarating to enjoy his confidence.
The trouble, of course, was knowing the people who were concerned too well. People like the Creeds, and Ruth Latinam, and the others. There was no telling what would come out once the thing got started, and it wasn’t easy when suspicion began to grow up around people you knew and liked.
‘In the early stages, of course,’ the Chief Officer was saying, ‘we’re so busy covering the facts—just to make sure we don’t overlook anything vital—that we don’t go beyond the routine questions. But now that we’ve had time to see just where we are we can start to look for the details.’
Tremaine pushed his pince-nez back into position.
‘Yes, I see,’ he observed dutifully.
‘Let me just refresh my memory.’ The Chief Officer consulted his notes. ‘You’ve been staying with Mr. and Mrs. Belmore since your arrival?’
‘In their bungalow here at Moulin d’Or,’ Tremaine agreed.
‘And it was through them that you came to meet Mr. Exenley?’
‘Yes. I w
as introduced to him shortly after I got here—about three weeks ago. I understand that Mr. Exenley and Mr. and Mrs. Belmore have known each other for some years.’
‘They are close friends?’
‘Hardly that.’ Tremaine pursed his lips. ‘I suppose you might say they’re on neighbourly terms. At any rate, that was the basis on which I was introduced to him. They visit each other occasionally, but I can’t say that I’ve noticed that their acquaintance is any more than a casual one—just neighbourly, as I said.’
‘Sufficient, though,’ the Chief Officer pursued, ‘to induce Mr. Exenley to invite you to call and see him.’
‘That was largely my doing,’ Tremaine explained. ‘When I heard that Mr. Exenley was a tomato grower I couldn’t resist asking him all sorts of questions. He told me that if I cared to go over and see him at any time he’d take me through his greenhouses and explain everything to me.’
‘And you did go over?’
‘Oh yes. I developed the habit of dropping in for a chat with him. It was as a result of that first visit that I went over this morning.’
‘Had Mr. Exenley started work in his greenhouses when you arrived?’
‘No. He’d only just finished breakfast and was still clearing up indoors.’
‘Before you climbed the ladder to the water tank you had no suspicion that there was anything wrong?’
‘None whatever.’
‘Did you meet Mr. Latinam at any time during your visits to the bungalow?’
Tremaine shook his head.
‘No. Ralph—Mr. Exenley—knew Latinam by sight, but that was all.’
‘So that there was no reason as far as you know why the dead man should have been anywhere near that particular spot,’ the Chief Officer said thoughtfully. He leaned back, overflowing his chair. ‘You met Mr. Latinam on several occasions yourself,’ he added. ‘What was your opinion of him?’
Tremaine hesitated. This room had been Latinam’s office; the plump man must many times have occupied the chair now barely coping with the Chief Officer’s bulky form. It seemed a little indecent to be dissecting Latinam’s character in such a setting.
But murder had been done and the truth must needs be told.
‘I had the impression,’ he said slowly, ‘that there was something not quite right about him. It’s difficult to describe. It’s just that sometimes I felt that he didn’t mean what he was saying and that his smile wasn’t really as open as it looked.’
The Chief Officer made no comment, but a sudden glimmer came and went in his alert, grey eyes. He tapped reflectively with a pencil on the surface of the desk. He surveyed his visitor steadily for a moment or two and then he leaned forward.
‘I’ve been glancing through the statements we’ve taken so far and I think that you can help me a great deal.’
‘Help you?’
Tremaine sounded deliberately vague. He thought he knew what was coming and he didn’t want to look as though he was anticipating.
Chief Officer Colinet nodded. His thick fingers idly ruffled the loose papers in front of him.
‘At the moment these accounts are all more or less disconnected. They’re about the same thing but they’re so many separate versions of it. You can link them up. You know all these people. I dare say you’ve already formed a pretty good idea of how their minds work. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me about your contacts with them—in such a way that all these different statements coalesce into one coherent story. Do I make myself understood?’
‘Yes,’ Tremaine said. ‘Yes, I think you do.’
‘And I can rely upon your co-operation?’
‘There is only one possible answer to that.’
The Chief Officer smiled broadly.
‘I must admit that after talking to Superintendent Boyce I was hoping that you would see it like that. Go ahead and tell it in your own way. I promise you I won’t interrupt. And don’t worry about how long you take. I’ve given instructions that we’re to be left undisturbed.’
Thus reassured, Mordecai Tremaine pushed back his pince-nez and began his story.
12
LADY IN DISTRESS
TREMAINE STOPPED. NOW that he could no longer hear the sound of his own voice the room seemed very quiet.
Chief Officer Colinet was sitting hunched forward in his chair, his bulk resting against the late Hedley Latinam’s desk.
‘Thank you, Mr. Tremaine. You’ve been extremely helpful.’
‘I think,’ Tremaine said slowly, ‘that I should make one point clear. In talking to you I’ve emphasized certain things which seem to me to need emphasis now in view of what has happened. But at the time, before Latinam’s death, they didn’t appear to be as important.’
The Chief Officer nodded.
‘When you write the story backwards you see all the things that escaped you before because then you didn’t know what the end was going to be. It’s always easy to be wise after the event but it isn’t so easy to put your finger on trouble before it happens. You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’ he added shrewdly.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. Ever since I looked into that tank and saw Latinam’s body I’ve been asking myself whether I could have done anything to stop it happening.’
‘Coming events and their shadows? In an affair like this the shadows aren’t as obvious as that. The murderer can’t afford to let them be.’
The Chief Officer turned over the pages of the note-book he had been using. He ran his thick fingers down a list of names, pursing his lips thoughtfully.
‘Have you any—ideas?’ Tremaine asked, probing.
The big man looked at him with a wry smile.
‘Ideas in plenty,’ he returned. ‘You’ve given me a good deal to work on. Whether we shall get very far, though, is a matter for time to decide.’
With difficulty he extricated himself from his chair. Walking across to the door, he opened it and glanced outside. Tremaine heard him speaking to the constable on duty there and in a few moments a police inspector came in, glancing curiously at the Chief Officer’s visitor as he did so.
‘I heard you were with Mr. Tremaine, sir. Anything promising so far?’
‘Quite a bit,’ the Chief Officer said. He tore off a leaf from his note-book and handed it to his subordinate. ‘Rope in your friend Gaston Le Mazon and find out what he was doing last night. And then I want this enquiry put through to the Record Office at Scotland Yard.’ He turned to Tremaine. ‘This is Inspector Marchant. You’ll probably be seeing a lot of him in the next few days.’
‘I’ve heard of you, of course, Mr. Tremaine,’ the inspector said. ‘Glad to have the opportunity of seeing you in action.’
Marchant was a tall, well-built man who looked as though he knew his job. Clearly he wasn’t the type who went around handing out flattery to every stray witness.
Tremaine, embarrassed, glanced at the Chief Officer to see how he was taking it but Colinet had turned away again to study his note-book.
At least it was a relief to know that they didn’t think that he might have killed Latinam even though he had found the body.
He rose to his feet as the door closed behind Inspector Marchant.
‘Have you any—instructions?’ he asked.
‘For the time being,’ Colinet returned, ‘be like Brer Fox. Lie low but see and hear everything. Sometimes it’s the chance unguarded word that starts the hunt in the right direction. But I don’t need to tell you that!’
The desk creaked protestingly as he leaned against it, the open note-book in his hands.
‘At the moment it’s an open field. The doctor puts the time of Latinam’s death at something after eleven o’clock last night. We know that he was alive when you saw him at ten-forty-five and his watch stopped at eleven-thirty so that it’s reasonable to suppose that he was killed at some time during that three-quarters of an hour. At least five people staying in the hotel were out during the most likely period of the mur
der. Mrs. Burres, Major Ayres, Mr. Bendall, Mrs. Paston, and Mr. Holt.’
‘Are there any discrepancies in their stories?’
‘They’ve all admitted frankly that they were out of the hotel last night. No attempt to keep it back.’ The Chief Officer frowned. He shut the note-book and slipped it into his pocket. ‘But they know that you saw them. They might have argued that since it wouldn’t be any use denying they were out they might as well gain a reputation for frankness by admitting it straight away.’
‘A rather cynical explanation,’ Tremaine said. ‘But I see what you mean. It doesn’t apply to Mr. Bendall and Mrs. Paston, though. They didn’t see me.’
‘You mean they gave no sign of it. Maybe they did see you but had their own reasons for not allowing you to suspect it.’
Tremaine studied the big man thoughtfully as he released the desk from bearing his weight and moved across to the window. Colinet was acting on the assumption that it would be wise to be suspicious of all the characters in the drama; that way he would make sure of alighting sooner or later upon the murderer.
‘What about Ruth Latinam?’ he asked.
‘Had a headache,’ Colinet said, without turning and without consulting his notes. ‘Went to bed just after ten.’
‘Has the doctor been able to confirm the cause of death? Was it drowning?’
‘No. His skull was fractured before he was put into the tank.’
Tremaine wrinkled his brows, calling back the grim scene upon which he had gazed earlier. Two iron supporting bars ran from side to side of the water tank and about six inches from the top. They had prevented Latinam’s twisted body from rising to the water level, which had been an inch or two above the bars.
It had been a macabre sight. No movement on the surface of the water, and the body, face turned partially sideways, pinned beneath the iron supports.
He glanced at Colinet.
‘The weapon?’
‘The old-fashioned blunt instrument. We’re looking for it now. Not that we expect it to be very helpful as far as finger-prints are concerned. Only the most careless of crooks leave that kind of trade mark nowadays.’
Behold a Fair Woman Page 11