Significance underlined the last sentence. But the superintendent’s official expression mirrored no reflection of it. He leaned back in his chair. As though he had dismissed all personal thoughts from his mind, he went on:
‘You know, Mr. Tremaine, in a case like this our investigations can’t be altogether satisfactory. The very fact that the police are carrying on an enquiry seems to make people reluctant to talk. They behave unnaturally. They don’t let themselves go in a normal manner. Consequently it’s difficult to find out what they’re really like. Of course, we seldom get the opportunity, but the ideal thing would be to have a sort of unofficial observer. Someone to whom people would talk freely, and who would be able to give us a much more accurate picture of things than we’re able to get for ourselves.’
Mordecai Tremaine fenced delicately.
‘I realize your difficulties, Superintendent.’ His mild glance was all innocence. ‘Of course, it wouldn’t do for you to ask anyone outside the police force to help you. It would lead to all sorts of awkward questions.’
‘Precisely,’ said Cannock. And added: ‘If it became known.’
By now Mordecai Tremaine knew where he stood and the knowledge encouraged him to play his hand boldly. He said enquiringly:
‘I take it there are no more questions you want to ask me at the moment, Superintendent?’
‘No,’ said Cannock unwillingly. ‘That’s all.’
Was there a trace of disappointment in his manner? Mordecai Tremaine found it pleasantly flattering to think that there was. He rose as if to go. And then, with the air of a man to whom the idea had only just occurred, he said:
‘There is one matter I should perhaps mention.’
Cannock looked at him.
‘Yes?’
It is said with truth that what a man wishes to find is what he will find. Mordecai Tremaine was looking for eagerness on the part of the superintendent. It must be admitted, therefore, that it was easy enough for him to convince himself that it was there, and that the monosyllable was invested with the sharpness of hope about to reach fulfilment.
‘It’s about Miss Grame,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ said Cannock again.
‘She said that she had a headache and couldn’t sleep. She thought she heard noises and came downstairs with a torch to find out what was happening. That was why she was the first person to discover Mr. Rainer’s body. Is that the same story she told you?’
‘Why are you asking?’ said Cannock evasively.
‘I very much doubt,’ said Tremaine, ‘whether it is the truth. From what I’ve seen of Miss Grame I do not think she is the kind of person to go downstairs alone in the middle of the night to look for burglars. In any case if she did hear noises and decide to investigate without calling Mr. Grame or any of the servants, it seems reasonable to suppose that she would merely have slipped on a dressing-gown.’
He stopped. He looked at Cannock. The superintendent said encouragingly:
‘Well?’
‘Well,’ said Tremaine, ‘she was fully dressed. She was wearing a tweed costume and even had a thick scarf about her neck. She only needed a top coat and a pair of rubber boots and she would have been ready to go out. Of course, she might have done all that just to go downstairs. But it seemed rather odd to me.’
Cannock was glancing through his notes.
‘I understand that her manner was agitated. Would you say that it was an entirely natural agitation in view of the circumstances? Or would you say that she seemed excessively disturbed?’
‘I can only,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘give you my own opinion.’
‘Of course.’
‘I thought she seemed more than shocked and alarmed. You’d expect her to be distressed after such an experience. But I thought she was—frightened.’
‘What, precisely,’ said the superintendent, ‘do you mean?’
Mordecai Tremaine looked over his pince-nez in a manner Inspector Boyce would have recognized.
‘If,’ he said gently, ‘I knew precisely what I meant I could probably be of much greater assistance to you, Superintendent. Miss Grame is the person who discovered the body. The house was in darkness. She was using a torch to find her way about. She actually stumbled over Jeremy Rainer’s body. It must have been a terrible moment for her when the torchlight showed him lying there. You can imagine what a dreadful scene it was. Everything still and hushed and with the whiteness of the snow outside contrasting with the blackness within. Father Christmas sprawled across the floor, with his red cloak and long white beard. And that decorated tree throwing monstrous and mocking shadows as the torch wavered in her hand.
‘It would have unnerved a person of strong control, and Miss Grame certainly isn’t that. She went to pieces. She screamed. She aroused the household. When I reached the room she was sitting in a chair in a state of collapse and Mr. Delamere was trying to help her.
‘So far so good. It was understandable. It was how anyone might have thought she would react. But it seemed to me that there was something more. She looked like a woman who was possessed by a fear she could not hold in check. And that was not so understandable. Because although she might reasonably be horrified and almost hysterical on account of what she had found there was no reason why she should continue to be so obviously afraid now that the lights were on and help had arrived. Which led me to the conclusion that she was afraid not because of what had happened but because of what she feared was going to happen.’
Superintendent Cannock was impressed. His forefinger smoothed gently along his chin. He said:
‘You haven’t any—theories?’
‘I haven’t any facts,’ said Tremaine.
He waited a moment or two and then he said:
‘You know, Superintendent, I feel envious. You have organization behind you. It’s possible for you to call upon practically every source of information there is in the world. If you set yourself to discover the innermost secrets of a man or a woman’s life it’s within your power to do it. Whereas the ordinary citizen, no matter how much he may wish to do so, can’t make complete enquiries because he’s unable to draw upon official sources for the knowledge he needs.’
‘Sometimes,’ observed Cannock, ‘it’s a boring business. We have to get at the needle by taking every individual piece of hay out of the stack.’
‘But you do get it,’ said Tremaine. He added, as if he was merely expressing his thoughts aloud: ‘It would be fascinating to find out all there is to learn about the people who are staying here. Two days ago, apart from Mr. Grame and Mr. Blaise, I hadn’t met any of them. And now we’ve all been thrown into an intimate relationship. Murder has made us bedfellows, so to speak. We’ve become completely entangled with each other because we’re the people who were here when Jeremy Rainer died. It makes me wish that I knew more about them so that I wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage. I’d like to know all about their backgrounds, how they spend their time and how they make their living, the places they’ve seen and the people they’ve met …’
The superintendent’s brown eyes were smiling. There were lines of humour crinkling the weather-beaten face.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘we understand each other.’
A pagan song of elation was striving to find expression in Mordecai Tremaine’s soul as he left the room and went back along the corridor. In sending Superintendent Cannock to investigate the murder of Jeremy Rainer fate had been more generous than he could have expected. That the superintendent should have recognized his name was not surprising in view of the embarrassing blaze of publicity in which he had basked not so very long ago. A police officer might have been expected to recall an amateur who had achieved such prominence. But that he should also be one of Jonathan Boyce’s old friends who still corresponded with the Yard man was luck indeed, for undoubtedly it was the reason for the superintendent’s attitude.
Cannock hesitated to make any open moves. Perhaps he feared to make himself a figure of ridicule in
the eyes of his subordinates by enlisting the aid of a man who had no official status, or perhaps he had a Chief Constable who would not take kindly to such a departure from orthodoxy. But it was evident that Jonathan Boyce had told him a great deal and that as far as he was able he was prepared to turn a blind eye to any investigations Mordecai Tremaine might choose to make.
Now that his position appeared to be secured Tremaine realized just how much he had secretly desired to be allowed to play an active part in the pursuit of the murderer. It was not merely that he had been a guest in the house when the murder had been committed and that he was therefore already concerned, even if in a minor role, in the inevitable police enquiries. His interest went deeper than that. It went back to the reason for his visit to Sherbroome. It went back to what he had heard and seen and felt from the moment of his arrival.
The sight of that fantastically clothed body sprawled under the Christmas tree had merely been the climax. The drama had been in progress all the time. Its influence had been there beneath the surface, underlying the appearance of lightheartedness and goodwill that Benedict Grame had been trying so pathetically hard to sustain.
And Mordecai Tremaine wanted to be more than a mere spectator in the stalls. He wanted to know what was taking place in the wings. He wanted to know how many acts the drama was scheduled to possess—and how many of the cast were aware of the significance of the parts they played. He wanted to know who had killed Jeremy Rainer and why he had died in that incongruous garb.
As he entered the room where he had left his fellow guests a stillness fell upon them. He sensed it and he stopped upon the threshold. It must be admitted that his action was deliberate and a little theatrical.
He looked round at them, meeting the intensity of their eyes, held by a strange and rather terrifying exhilaration that had its origins in the time when his remote, forgotten ancestors had known both the thrill and the tight-throated danger of the hunt in the primeval forests. Among those eyes might be the eyes of a murderer.
11
DURING THE NIGHT frost had come and used the window-panes to sketch its fantasies. Idly Mordecai Tremaine mused upon the delicacy of the icy tracings revealed against the clear white light beyond them. He was in that pleasant, all too fleeting state that lies between sleeping and waking, when the mind is floating in blissful space and conscious thought has not fettered it with anxiety. All there was of the world lay in that frosted square.
And then the brief spell was broken and the thinking processes had begun.
The first realization was that this was no ordinary day. He groped after its special significance that set it apart from other days, and was vaguely surprised that he should have needed to do so. Of course, this was Christmas Day! The clear light that was filling the room was the light of Christmas morning.
The second realization came tumbling upon the heels of the first. It was that the light was very much stronger than it should have been. It was much brighter than even the magic of the fact that it was Christmas morning could explain away. Six-thirty on a December day should be decently shrouded in winter darkness.
He raised himself on his elbow and peered at his watch. The hands pointed to eighteen minutes past ten. But even as his eyes were carrying the astounding message to his brain that he had overslept by almost four hours, memory was rushing upon him with a vehement desire to remind him of what had happened.
Jeremy Rainer was dead. He had died in the darkness, and his body had lain fantastically under the Christmas tree in the red robes of Father Christmas. Charlotte Grame’s screams had roused a startled household.
And then the police had come and Superintendent Cannock, politely reassuring but quite evidently grimly determined to allow no possible scent to grow cold, had settled down to a patient taking of statements. Dawn had been near before anyone had gone back to bed. That was the reason for this ten o’clock awakening. Placid routine had been shattered by murder.
Mordecai Tremaine looked around his room, and it seemed to him that it was no longer as bright as it had appeared. This was Christmas morning. Peace and goodwill to all men. That was the message this day should bring, and down below there was a dead man whose blood cried out to the law for retribution upon the guilty, and through all the rooms in the house were stealing the three frightful shades whose names were fear, suspicion and terror.
Although he had had so little sleep he knew that if he closed his eyes again it would only be to watch memory’s images flickering across his mind, and that his thoughts would only go round in an interminable series of questions.
Why had Charlotte Grame been fully dressed? Why had it taken so long to arouse Benedict Grame? Why had Professor Lorring stolen the last present from the Christmas tree? And why had Jeremy Rainer been wearing the robes of Father Christmas?
Tremaine shaved, dressed and went downstairs in search of breakfast. Murder might strike terribly across the scene, but for those who lived the essential functions must still continue.
Austin Delamere and Ernest Lorring were seated at either end of the long table in the dining-room. Each had apparently decided to ignore the other.
Lorring was eating purposefully, as if he had no interest in what was taking place around him; Delamere, on the other hand, was picking moodily at his meal, plainly with no enjoyment. He looked up as Tremaine came in and then glanced quickly away again with a muttered ‘’Morning’ in response to his greeting.
The scientist merely grunted without raising his eyes from his plate, but despite his air of self-sufficient indifference Tremaine suspected that Lorring was not so unmoved as he wanted to appear. As he walked across to the buffet and began to remove the various coverings he would have offered long odds that the other’s glance was upon him from under the shadow of the fierce eyebrows. Ernest Lorring was a man who had something to hide and he was therefore suspicious. And especially suspicious of someone who had already shown a decided tendency to probe and curious to know just what that someone intended to do.
But Mordecai Tremaine betrayed no sign that he suspected that he was under observation. He sat down at the table and began his breakfast. It gave him a mild satisfaction to know that he had Lorring guessing.
He had almost finished his meal when Charlotte Grame came in. She slipped apologetically through the doorway, and only her half-whispered ‘Good morning’ told him that she had appeared.
She had not, he thought, slept a great deal. Her face was very white, and the dark patches of strain under her eyes had become intensified.
At first she did not look at him, and then, as if she was being driven by a force she could not control, her glance lifted waveringly to his face. He smiled at her and she returned the smile tremulously.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘you’re feeling better this morning?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I am. Much—much better. Thank you.’
He knew that she was lying. Knew also that she was aware that he knew and that the knowledge was no light addition to her burden of discomfort.
He was glad when he had finished breakfast and was able to make his escape from the dining-room. Utterly dissimilar though they might be in all other respects, his three companions shared one thing in common—suspicion of himself. It expressed itself in different ways, but it was there in each of them—in Charlotte Grame’s obvious terror, in Ernest Lorring’s aggressive silences, and in Austin Delamere’s constant and nervous sideways glances, mixed, in his case, with a kind of petulant resentment.
It was Rosalind Marsh who put the situation into words. He found her in the library, a book open in her hands, but her eyes staring unseeingly through the windows.
‘Oh—hullo,’ she said, turning as he came in. She added, with a deliberate cynicism, ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘It isn’t,’ he said, ‘the kind of Christmas morning I was expecting. I’m afraid poor Rainer’s death has put a stop to any festivities.’
‘Poor Rainer?’ she queried. ‘What makes you think
so?’
He looked at her. She betrayed no signs due to lack of sleep; certainly she showed nothing of the haggard anxiety that marked Charlotte Grame. Her cold beauty was as perfect as ever, and she was in complete possession of her nerves.
‘Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully,’ he said. ‘But it’s the sort of expression one does use. After all, he was murdered.’
‘Oh yes,’ she agreed. ‘He was murdered.’
Mordecai Tremaine felt a little shocked. He could not help the feeling that her calmness verged on the indecent. ‘You sound,’ he said slowly, ‘as though you think he was the kind of man who deserves to be murdered.’
‘Do I?’ she said. She seemed amused. ‘Jeremy Rainer wasn’t exactly a saint. During his lifetime he was mixed up in quite a lot of shady things. He had secrets he wasn’t at all anxious for the police to hear about.’
‘You mean that there were things that were outside the law?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘After all, there must have been.’
It was not conjecture. It was a casual statement of fact from a person who was in no doubt. Mordecai Tremaine felt that he was slipping out of his depth. She saw something of it in his face. She said:
‘Perhaps you don’t know as much as I thought you might. Or as much as certain other people think you do.’
‘I’m not very good at riddles,’ he told her, and she surprised him by the spontaneity of her laugh.
‘You’re either a very modest detective or a dangerously subtle one. You’ve succeeded in setting everybody by the ears, anyway. They’re all afraid to move in case you start suspecting them.’
A sick disappointment clawed unpleasantly at Mordecai Tremaine’s stomach. Superintendent Cannock’s hopes of gaining an uninhibited insight into what went on inside Sherbroome House seemed to be sliding away. If his fellow guests already suspected him of being linked with the police they would be no more anxious to talk to him than they would be to talk to the superintendent or his men. And if he could give nothing to Cannock that Cannock did not already know, then he could expect nothing in return.
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