‘It’s natural that he should be there this morning. In view of what has taken place,’ he told her.
‘Because of that man Le Mazon? He was a bad lot by all accounts and that kind come to a bad end sooner or later.’ There was no vehemence in her voice; she sounded, in fact, quite disinterested. Tremaine wondered whether she would have been quite so detached about it if she had known of Colinet’s murder and suicide theory, and her next words gave him the answer. ‘You’ve been told that Latinam was trying to get rid of me?’
‘I’ve heard that Mr. Latinam asked you if you would find other accommodation,’ he said. ‘The major, too, I understand.’
‘Yes, the major, too. Now you know why I had no room for Latinam. Why neither of us had any room for him,’ she added. ‘After all this time, to turn us out like that. He got what he deserved and I don’t mind who hears me say it.’
She wasn’t disinterested now. There was a rasping note of hatred in her voice.
‘You’ll still be leaving?’ he asked, pretending he had not noticed it.
‘I wouldn’t stay here now,’ she said. ‘Not for all the pleading. I’m sorry for that girl. I don’t think she could do much about it. But it’s no good her asking me now. My nephew’s told me I can stay with him. I’m going at the end of the week. The police won’t want us any more, will they?’
There was a sudden note of doubt in her voice. She clutched Tremaine by the arm.
‘They won’t want us to stay?’ she repeated.
‘That’s a question I can’t answer, Mrs. Burres. This morning’s discovery may have changed the Chief Officer’s plans.’
He was deliberately non-committal. He knew that she had spoken to him because she was anxious to find out what the police were doing; it would be as well not to enlighten her.
He watched her go toiling up the hill in the direction of the hotel, thinking how masculine she looked; and then he made his way on slowly towards the beach.
It was a clear, still morning. It was the kind of day when it would have been pleasant to sit and laze upon the shore, watching the boats move across the water and the small boys paddling among the pools. It was all wrong that the shadow of murder should lie over such a scene.
Two people were coming up from the rocks. He waited for them to approach.
‘Still taking your daily swim, I see,’ he remarked as they drew near him.
‘The world still goes on,’ Alan Creed said, ‘though kings and emperors die.’
His manner was casual. Tremaine regarded him thoughtfully.
‘I haven’t seen anything of you lately. Not since the night of the dance, in fact. It was terrible news about Mr. Latinam!’
‘Terrible,’ Valerie Creed said. She drew her bathing wrap tighter about her and moved closer to her husband. ‘The police—the police haven’t found out yet who did it?’
‘I think they’re very satisfied with the progress they’re making.’
They did not seem to have heard about Le Mazon. It had happened very early, of course, and Colinet had obviously handled the affair circumspectly.
‘They’re behaving as though they’re busy enough, anyway,’ Alan Creed put in. ‘Thought I saw some activity going on up at the hotel this morning. But I can’t say that I’m very much concerned. It isn’t exactly a pleasant thing, of course, to have one’s neighbours getting murdered. Not in the ordinary way. But from what I’ve heard about Latinam he wasn’t altogether a worthy character. No ill of the dead and all that, but you can’t help learning things.’
‘Things?’
‘That’s right. Things. Moulin d’Or’s quite a place for gossip. I’d have thought you’d have discovered that!’
Creed’s smile removed any malice that might have sounded in his words. He did not, however, offer to continue the conversation. He walked on, his arm around his wife’s waist, and in a few moments they had passed out of sight along the lane leading to their cottage.
For some time after they had gone Tremaine sat on the rocks staring out over the beach. Queer doubts had begun to rise in his mind. His encounters with Mrs. Burres and with the Creeds had set all kinds of thoughts in motion.
Was it all going to be as simple as Colinet had implied? There were too many loose ends; too many people were unexplained. He was aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with the way in which things were travelling.
When he returned to the Rohane hotel after lunch the feeling had intensified. It might have been due to the way in which Mark and Janet Belmore had taken the news about Le Mazon. They had been so ready to accept Colinet’s theory; so willing to fall in with the solution it provided.
That was the trouble. They’d been too relieved; they’d shown how much they’d been fearing something worse. You couldn’t help thinking there might have been reason behind their fears.
The Chief Officer’s car wasn’t in the drive but automatically Tremaine made his way to the office. The constable outside recognized him and saluted.
‘Inspector Marchant’s inside, sir.’
The implication in the man’s tone was that the inspector wished him to enter. Tentatively Tremaine knocked upon the door. As he pushed it open, however, he caught the murmur of voices from the room. He would have withdrawn but Marchant caught sight of him and called out quickly.
‘It’s all right, Mr. Tremaine. Come inside. I’m glad you’re here.’
The inspector was a well-built man but seeing him in the chair usually occupied by Colinet’s massive frame gave him an air that was almost delicate. There was a woman facing him. She had no claims to beauty; her face was weather-beaten and traversed by lines of care; her hands were the coarse, worn, and disfigured hands of a woman bred to toil. She was wearing a patched blouse and a skirt of some rough material that classed her among the under-privileged.
‘This is Mrs. Le Mazon,’ Marchant explained. ‘She came to see the Chief Officer. I’ve told her that I do not expect he will be here again today but I’ve telephoned to St. Julian Harbour and arranged an appointment for her in an hour’s time. You might like to come along with us.’
The inspector’s tone was quite level but the significance of his expression gave Tremaine his clue. Besides, Marchant would not have contacted his superior at St. Julian Harbour for nothing.
‘Mrs. Le Mazon has brought fresh information?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Marchant said. ‘Rather important information.’ He saw the woman’s eyes go to the newcomer. ‘This is Mr. Tremaine,’ he added, for her benefit. ‘You may speak quite freely in front of him.’
She nodded. It was a heavy gesture in which weariness, sorrow, and resignation all had a part.
‘I have heard of Mr. Tremaine,’ she said.
‘Mrs. Le Mazon has come to tell us,’ Marchant went on, ‘that she is not satisfied that her husband’s death was due to his suicide.’
Her thick, drooping body straightened.
‘He would not have killed himself. Not Gaston. That would not have been his way. I was his wife. I know.’
There was a quiet emphasis behind the last word that came from a deep, unshakable certainty. Mordecai Tremaine pushed his pince-nez firmly into place. All the doubts which had been vague, disturbing shadows on the mirror of his mind rushed suddenly into solid shape; his own voice seemed to be projected from a stranger whom he was watching with breathless interest.
‘I appreciate how you must feel, Mrs. Le Mazon. But there are many things to suggest that it was suicide.’
‘The inspector has told me. You think that it was Gaston who killed the Mr. Latinam who was here and that when he knew that he had been discovered he threw himself from the cliff. But it is not so. Gaston was my man. I know what he would do. There were many bad things to bring sorrow upon us. But he would not kill.’
‘You knew that he and Mr. Latinam were working together? That they were even seen to quarrel on one occasion?’
‘But it was not Gaston who killed him,’ she said doggedly. ‘He want
ed to prove that it was not so. That was why he went out last night. He was going to show the police that he had nothing to do with what happened.’
Tremaine leaned forward. ‘He went out to meet someone?’
‘That is what I understood. He wanted to be cleared. He wanted it to be known that he was not guilty.’
‘Yet he was frightened. He acted like a man who knew that he was guilty.’
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘He was frightened.’ Her voice became softer; briefly the lines were smoothed from her face and she spoke as a mother might have spoken of a troublesome but still beloved child. ‘Gaston was not a brave man. He was big and rough, and sometimes he did cruel things. But he was not brave. He was afraid when he knew the police did not believe what he had said. He wanted so much to show them they were wrong. Before he went out,’ she said, the tenderness of memory in her eyes, ‘he cried in my arms. He called me Marieque. It is the fond name he had for me when we were young. It is many years since I have heard that.’
‘But he did not kill himself.’
‘No,’ she said simply, ‘he did not kill himself. He would have been afraid.’
Tremaine was silent. There would be no swaying this woman who was constant in her grief. She had known many bitter years with a man who had been a rogue and who had no doubt ill-treated her when the mood was on him but she could regard him still with a tenderness and a candour that were both unafraid. Truth was in the room, irresistible in its simple force.
‘On the night of Mr. Latinam’s murder,’ he said at last, ‘your husband was not at home with you, although he told the police that he was. Do you know why he lied about what was, after all, a very important thing?’
‘Yes, I can tell you that. Now that Gaston is dead it does not matter. He said that he was at home because he went that night to St. Jean’s. There was a house he knew where the people would not be living because they had gone to the mainland for several days.’
St. Jean’s was the adjoining district to Moulin d’Or. Tremaine had noticed a number of fairly large houses in the area.
‘He went there to steal?’
‘He went to steal,’ she said, and bowed her head.
At that moment the constable whom Tremaine had noticed outside knocked at the door and looked into the room.
‘The car’s here now, sir.’
Marchant nodded and rose to his feet.
‘Thank you, Constable.’ He glanced commiseratively at the woman. ‘Shall we go, Mrs. Le Mazon?’
‘One last question,’ Tremaine said. ‘If you don’t mind, Inspector. Did you ever see your husband use a silver cigarette-lighter? Rather a large one, with a cap shaped like a lion?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I did not see it. I am sure he did not have such a thing.’
Tremaine glanced at Marchant. It was a significant glance. It was a glance which asked whether Chief Officer Colinet had any inkling of the surprise which was awaiting him.
20
MEMORY PROVIDES THE ANSWER
THE JOURNEY TO St. Julian Harbour took them half an hour. They drove through the narrow streets to the grey building set on the hill where police headquarters was located. Colinet had just finished a conference with a number of the island’s officials and they were conducted to his room without delay.
He took the news surprisingly philosophically. It was impossible to tell from his placid face that a theory he had apparently regarded as established had been swept utterly away.
Clearly he was impressed with the sad-faced woman’s testimony. He made no attempt to shake it or to cross-examine her. Only on one point did he ask questions.
‘We’re still trying to discover, Mrs. Le Mazon,’ he said, ‘just what your husband’s connection was with Latinam. Can you give us any help at all?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I do not know it. Most things Gaston would tell me but not this. I think it was because it was something he had not done before and he was afraid of being found out. When he spoke it was just about the man.’
‘The man?’ Colinet said quickly.
‘Yes. There was a man he was to meet.’
‘Where was the meeting to take place?’
‘Gaston would not say. He was to take his boat. That is all I know of it.’
‘It was a meeting arranged by Latinam?’
‘Yes. Gaston did not like it. That is why they quarrelled.’
She stopped, patiently awaiting the next question. Colinet sat regarding her thoughtfully.
‘There is nothing else?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘There is nothing else.’
The big man nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘I am glad you came to see me, Mrs. Le Mazon. In an affair like this we are glad when people give us help. The police are not your enemies. It is our duty to find out the truth.’
‘It is right that you should know about Gaston,’ she told him.
Colinet held her eyes. His voice was grave but there was a kindly note in it.
‘I would prefer it, Mrs. Le Mazon, if you did not go back to your home. I will arrange for you to stay here in St. Julian Harbour. You have heard of the big house called Le Bel Abri, where elderly and lonely people and those who have no one to look after them may live?’
‘Yes, I have heard of it. Le Bel Abri is a good place.’
‘They will look after you well and you will have nothing to worry you. I will see that everything that has to be done with regard to your husband is carried out. Later on if you should wish to return to Moulin d’Or there will be no difficulty. Will you do this for me?’
She accepted what he had said without resistance; it seemed that she was without personal desire and prepared to resign herself to whatever might be planned for her.
‘I will do it,’ she said tonelessly.
When she had gone out with Inspector Marchant Tremaine glanced questioningly at the Chief Officer.
‘You think she may be in danger?’
‘Two men have been murdered,’ Colinet said. ‘I’m not running any risks. Whoever killed Le Mazon to keep him from talking may be reasoning that he could have passed on something to his wife, making her a potential source of danger as well. And it won’t do her any harm to have a spell at Le Bel Abri. Poor creature, I don’t suppose she had much of a time of it with that husband of hers!’
‘I thought,’ Tremaine observed, ‘that you were more or less satisfied that the case was closed. You don’t appear disturbed at the thought that it may be wide open again.’
Colinet smiled.
‘I’ve been in this game too long to be disturbed easily. Certainly I said that it was a reasonable theory that Le Mazon had first murdered Latinam and then committed suicide. But it was no more than a theory. There were still plenty of things waiting to be cleared up. I believe I made that point. Anyway, it was a theory that you never did have much faith in, wasn’t it?’ he finished.
‘That’s true,’ Tremaine admitted. ‘I didn’t feel happy about it. Somehow it didn’t seem good enough. I met Mrs. Burres this morning,’ he added. ‘She told me that she was planning to leave at the end of the week. She was wondering whether you’d allow her to go.’
‘I’ll have to speak to Mrs. Burres,’ Colinet said. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have minded but under the latest circumstances I’ll have to explain to her how much I’ll appreciate her changing her plans and staying a while longer. I’ll point out to her that nobody will be leaving,’ he added grimly. ‘Not just yet.’
By the time Tremaine got back to Moulin d’Or it was clear from the air of the little groups of villagers talking in the streets that the news of Gaston Le Mazon’s death was now generally known. He didn’t doubt that the visit the dead man’s wife had paid to Colinet was also common knowledge. It wouldn’t be long before the tide of sightseers poured in again; two murders in the same locality offered an opportunity that couldn’t be ignored.
Inevitably the conversation in the bungalow that
evening turned upon the topic that was doubtless by now spreading gossip and conjecture throughout the island. Mark and Janet Belmore had invited Ralph Exenley over and the four of them were sitting in the lounge with the evening shadows beginning to fall.
‘The Chief Officer’s certain that it was murder in Le Mazon’s case?’ Mark asked.
‘His wife’s quite definite that when he went out last night it was to do something about clearing himself of the murder charge. She swears that he wouldn’t have killed himself and if you’d heard her, Mark, you’d be as convinced as I am that she’s telling the truth.’
‘The inference in that,’ Exenley commented, ‘is that he went out to meet somebody, and that that somebody threw him over the cliff because he was afraid his own neck would be in danger if Le Mazon talked. Right?’
Tremaine nodded agreement.
‘That’s it, Ralph.’
‘I must say it seems much more likely to me than that Le Mazon lost his nerve and committed suicide. It never did strike me as being much of a solution. Le Mazon wasn’t the suicide type.’
There was a faintly inviting note in his voice, as though he was diffident to express himself unasked but would respond to any request that he should reveal what was in his mind.
‘You’ve thought of something, Ralph?’
‘Yes,’ Exenley said seriously, heaving himself upright in his chair. ‘Yes, I have. After you’d gone this morning, Mordecai, I started thinking about your adventure last night when you collected that bruise of yours. You said that when you saw Ruth Latinam, she was carrying a picnic basket, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘And the other day,’ Exenley pursued, ‘you happened to mention that you’d been looking at the old windmill and you asked me if anybody used it. You said you’d seen crumbs on the floor as if somebody’d been having a picnic meal.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Suppose Latinam had been taking food to the mill? Suppose, now that he’s dead, that his sister is going on for some reason with what he was doing?’
‘It’s possible,’ Tremaine said slowly. ‘On the night of the dance at the hotel I got into Latinam’s office by mistake. There was a picnic basket on his desk, and I’m pretty certain that it was the same basket that Ruth Latinam had last night. But last night’s affair didn’t take place anywhere near the mill.’
Behold a Fair Woman Page 19