‘Do you think I might have a look at it?’
‘I dare say,’ said the superintendent, ‘that it could be arranged.’ He added, and now there was a definite twinkle in his eyes, ‘I’ve always wanted to see how an amateur sleuth looked when he was hot on the scent!’
Nevertheless there was a serious note behind the banter. Tremaine knew that the other was not allowing him so much liberty without reason. He was doing it because he believed that it was a policy that might yield him rich dividends.
Which meant that Jonathan Boyce must have been warm in his praises when he had been writing to his colleague. Mordecai Tremaine buried his head in the tree to hide his embarrassment. He hoped he would be able to live up to the flattering portrait the Yard man had obviously drawn.
‘Any clues?’ came Cannock’s voice.
There was a vague stirring in Mordecai Tremaine’s mind. Something the superintendent had told him and something he himself had seen had linked significantly. But his thoughts were too nebulous for him to risk voicing them. It would be best, he decided, to safeguard his reputation by appearing mysterious.
‘I’d like,’ he said, ‘to see that gun before I start offering any theories.’ He added musingly, ‘Rainer was a fairly tall man—taller than average, anyway.’
‘He was five feet eleven,’ said Cannock. ‘Is it important?’
‘It might be,’ returned Tremaine. He replaced the steps against the wall. He said, as he came back towards his companion, ‘Have you been told about the hide?’
‘The priest’s hiding-place?’ The superintendent nodded. ‘Mr. Blaise told me all about it and showed me the entrance in this room. He’s been very helpful,’ he added appreciatively. ‘He’s given us a great deal of information—the location of everyone’s room, routine of the house and so on. I understand that Mr. Grame thinks a great deal of him and that he’s more or less one of the family.’
‘Nick runs the household,’ said Tremaine. ‘I’ve only been here a very short while, of course, but I’ve noticed that although he doesn’t say a great deal he does a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes. I imagine Benedict Grame would be lost without him.’
Cannock had moved over to the tree. He was staring reflectively at the decorations.
‘Mr. Grame’s Christmas parties are something of a local tradition already,’ he said. ‘This must be a terrible blow to him.’
Tremaine accepted the obvious invitation.
‘It’s my first visit so I haven’t had a great deal of time in which to judge, but I believe he tries to keep Christmas in the Dickens style, with all the festivities we associate with the season.’
‘I wonder,’ observed the superintendent, ‘that he’s never held a children’s party for all the kiddies in the neighbourhood. It seems the kind of thing that such a man would naturally do.’
Was there any significance in his tone? Tremaine looked at him curiously, but Cannock’s broad face told him nothing.
And after a moment or two the superintendent said:
‘I suppose you noticed those stray pieces of blue cord on the tree?’
Tremaine had noticed them. Attached to several of the branches in the vicinity of a number of the brackets with the name cards were short pieces of cord. It was not easy to see them because in most cases they were very tiny—just a loop around the branch and a fragment dangling below it.
‘They look to me,’ he said, ‘like pieces of the cord that Grame used to tie the presents. Have you spoken to him about them?’
‘I have and they are,’ said Cannock. ‘The odd thing is that we found a supply of that cord in Rainer’s room.’
‘Anything else?’
‘If,’ said the superintendent, ‘you mean did we find any of the presents there the answer is that we didn’t. And Grame swears that he tied them on the tree last night. He seemed to be taking their disappearance to heart at first, but apparently he’s got over it now.’
Mordecai Tremaine pushed his pince-nez back over his nose just in time to prevent his companion leaning involuntarily across and doing it for him. The superintendent was not used to their providence-defying air. He eyed his companion reprovingly.
‘It’s a strange business,’ he said. ‘Benedict Grame puts the presents on the tree in his usual manner, and a little later Jeremy Rainer is found dead beside it, dressed in a Father Christmas outfit, and with the presents nowhere in evidence. And just to make things a little more complicated the gun that did the killing is found in Rainer’s own room with only his own finger-prints on it.’
‘Don’t forget,’ said Tremaine, ‘that Rainer’s present was still on the tree when we found his body.’
‘But it isn’t there now,’ remarked the superintendent. ‘It looks as though it was overlooked for some reason—probably because it was at the top of the tree—and the murderer came back for it as soon as the opportunity occurred.’
‘The murderer?’ queried Mordecai Tremaine quietly.
‘Who else? Who else took all the other presents? Perhaps Rainer disturbed the killer when he was at work and before he’d had time to take them all.’
‘And handed over his gun so that he could be murdered more conveniently?’
Momentarily the superintendent looked disconcerted, and then he smiled.
‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But who took those presents and why? Robbery doesn’t seem to me to be a satisfactory motive. After all, I don’t suppose they were really valuable articles. As I understand it the tree was more in the nature of a seasonable gesture.’
‘You’ve checked up on everyone’s whereabouts, of course?’
‘The same answer in each case and the obvious one. They all claim to have gone straight to bed when the party broke up last night. Except Grame, and he says that he saw and heard nothing unusual whilst he was attending to the tree and went to bed himself immediately afterwards.’
‘He didn’t go out of doors at all?’
‘No.’
‘No one heard the shot or any other suspicious sound?’
‘Silencer,’ returned the superintendent briefly. ‘It’s reasonable that it passed unnoticed. After all, you didn’t hear it.’
‘That’s true enough,’ admitted Tremaine. ‘But I did see Father Christmas. I was looking out of my window just before going off to sleep,’ he added in explanation. ‘I saw a figure down below on the terrace. At first I thought my imagination was playing tricks and then I remembered that Grame was supposed to dress up on Christmas Eve and play at being Father Christmas. I thought it was Grame, but if he didn’t go outside the house then it couldn’t have been him.’
‘Probably it was Rainer. You said that Wynton saw him at the lodge.’
Mordecai Tremaine shook his head.
‘No, it wasn’t Rainer. It was too early for him to have been coming back from the lodge—it wasn’t long after we’d all gone to our rooms—and he didn’t wear the Father Christmas outfit on his way to the lodge. And this Father Christmas had snow on his cap.’
The superintendent stared at him and Mordecai Tremaine enjoyed the mild sensation he had caused.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not mad. When I saw Jeremy Rainer’s body I noticed that the cap he was wearing was a plain red one except for white trimming on the lower edge. But the cap on the Father Christmas I saw on the terrace had little pieces of cotton wool set all over it to represent snow.’
‘Then if it wasn’t Grame and it wasn’t Rainer, who was it?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘it was Gerald Beechley.’
Cannock reached out a foot and hooked a chair towards him. He sat down. He crossed his legs with deliberate slowness. He said:
‘I think you’d better give me the whole story.’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t much of a story.’ Tremaine told the other of his meeting with Beechley and of that gentleman’s reluctance to display his purchase and of Benedict Grame’s comment of a few moments before. ‘Why Grame told me, I don’t
know,’ he finished. ‘He said he thought it would be in Beechley’s best interests to let you know the facts.’
The superintendent was frowning thoughtfully.
‘We started off with one Father Christmas and that seemed crazy enough, but now we’ve discovered three!’
‘I hope,’ said Tremaine diffidently, ‘that I’ve been of some use to you, Superintendent.’ He added, ‘I take it that in view of Roger Wynton’s statement you’ll be going to the lodge?’
The spark of humour came back into the superintendent’s brown eyes.
‘We’ve already been,’ he said. ‘It was routine in any case.’ He rose from his chair and crossed to a small suitcase lying on the floor near the doorway. He opened it and took out a cardboard box. Carefully he opened the box. ‘Do you recognize that?’ he asked.
It was a gold signet ring. Tremaine recognized the somewhat flamboyant seal. It was a ring he had observed on Jeremy Rainer’s finger.
‘I know it,’ he said. ‘It belonged to Rainer.’
‘It was found in the lodge,’ said the superintendent. ‘So was this.’
He replaced the ring and took something else from the case. It was a piece of notepaper, creased and slightly dirty, as though it had been hurriedly thrust into someone’s pocket and had fallen unnoticed upon an unswept floor.
It bore no address and was unsigned, but it carried several lines of typescript. Tremaine took it from the superintendent’s hand and read slowly.
Go to the old lodge at twelve-thirty. Wait for half an hour then return to your room. Leave your signet ring on the floor of the lodge. Destroy this afterwards.
‘It confirms Wynton’s story,’ observed Cannock. ‘Rainer did go to the lodge. But who gave him this and why?’
In his mind Mordecai Tremaine was seeing Rosalind Marsh as he had seen her in the library earlier in the morning. He was hearing her cool voice telling him without a trace of doubt in it that Jeremy Rainer had been involved in matters that were on the wrong side of the law and that there had been things in his past about which he had not been anxious for the police to learn. After all, she had said, there must have been.
Why had Rosalind Marsh used that expression? What did she know of Jeremy Rainer that had made her so certain?
Tremaine handed the paper back to Superintendent Cannock. He watched him as he returned it to the case. Just what secret meaning lay behind those typewritten sentences? What last strange business had Jeremy Rainer been engaged upon that had taken him out to the lodge in the snow and the darkness and ended in his dead body lying in dreadful fantasy at the foot of the Christmas tree Benedict Grame had been at such pains to prepare?
He sensed that the superintendent was gazing at him expectantly. He said:
‘There’s a typewriter in the library.’
‘There is,’ agreed the superintendent. ‘It’s the machine that was used to type that message. Mr. Blaise recognized the lettering when I showed it to him. Apparently it’s a machine he uses in carrying out his secretarial duties on Mr. Grame’s behalf.’
‘Does anyone else use it in the ordinary way?’
‘No. But Mr. Blaise told me that he couldn’t guarantee that no one had ever done so because it’s always left out in full view of anyone who might want to type something in a hurry. I asked Miss Arden whether she’d seen anyone at work on it besides Mr. Blaise and she told me that several mornings ago her guardian was in the library typing.’
‘All roads,’ said Mordecai Tremaine softly, ‘lead to Rainer.’
‘But Rainer,’ said the superintendent, ‘didn’t kill himself. Or if he did it’s the strangest suicide I’ve ever encountered.’
‘Did Miss Arden know what he was typing?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ returned Cannock, ‘she did. He was copying out a leading article from the Financial Times. It was on the subject of a new plastics combine that’s just been formed. I’m working on it, of course, in case it gives us a lead, but I must confess I can’t make much of it. As far as I can see there’s nothing in the article beyond a summing up of facts that must be pretty well known in the City if not to outsiders.’
‘It’s odd,’ said Tremaine reflectively, ‘how many of the people here seem to do unaccountable things.’
His eyes were bright behind the pince-nez. He looked like a man upon whom knowledge had suddenly broken, but a knowledge so wild and so mixed with surmise that he was half afraid to admit it to his mind. The superintendent saw it.
‘Just what,’ he said, ‘are you thinking?’
For answer Mordecai Tremaine turned and raised a hand towards the Christmas tree. He stood looking at its gay tinsel and silver bells. He was thinking of Ernest Lorring, sitting in the half-light, his eyes fixed upon the tree in a steady, baleful stare. He was thinking of Jeremy Rainer, coming into the room when Benedict Grame and Nicholas Blaise had been engaged upon it, and of the intensity of hatred in his face.
And after a moment or two he said:
‘It looks delightful, doesn’t it? It’s full of the very spirit of Christmas. And yet, somehow, I’ve a feeling that this is where the solution lies. That if this tree could speak it would give us both the name of the murderer and the reason why Jeremy Rainer died.’
13
THE TENSION was mounting. As yet there was no open hostility, but the atmosphere was growing steadily more brittle. The strain was a tangible thing. It was possible to feel it in the air, inducing irritation and suspicion, bearing oppressively upon the mind and fretting at nerves growing ever more ragged.
‘There’s a crisis on the way. If something doesn’t happen soon to clear things up there’s going to be an explosion.’
Nicholas Blaise spoke with an air of perturbation. His dark face was anxious. Mordecai Tremaine regarded him sympathetically.
‘It’s a difficult situation for you, Nick, but I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about it. The police are in control and you can depend upon it that they’ll take action quickly enough as soon as they feel they’ve sufficient evidence.’
‘But in the meantime,’ said Blaise, ‘everybody is looking at everybody else as if they think they’re hiding something and ought to go off and confess, or is walking around like a modern Hamlet.’
‘It’s inevitable. When you know that one of your number is a murderer it doesn’t make for a lively gathering. Especially,’ added Tremaine quietly, ‘when you’re afraid that the police may uncover some of your own secrets during their investigations.’
The deep brown eyes narrowed in enquiry.
‘Secrets? In this galley? You can’t be serious!’
‘That, Nick, is just what I am.’
‘But it’s absurd,’ protested Blaise. ‘I can grant you Delamere, perhaps—and even Lorring. Delamere’s a politician and Heaven knows what he’s been mixed up in during his career. And I must admit that Lorring’s face certainly doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. He looks as if he might be capable of anything. But the others—no, I just can’t believe it. The Napiers, for instance—can you imagine either Harold or his wife having a dark secret in their lives? They just aren’t the type. Rosalind Marsh and Lucia Tristam? Each of them is a striking enough woman in her own way, but that doesn’t mean that they’re women of mystery. And Charlotte! Poor, helpless, ineffectual Charlotte! Can you suspect her of having anything to hide?’
‘Charlotte,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘perhaps most of all. Why was she fully dressed when we came down last night?’
He was watching the younger man as he spoke. He saw the doubt that came into his face. Then, abruptly, Blaise turned away.
‘I was afraid,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘that you were going to ask that.’
‘The police are going to ask it, Nick.’
‘Yes, I know.’
The words came reluctantly. Blaise looked like a man who was being forced to admit something unpalatable but which he knew to be the truth and could not avoid.
‘You know the answer,
Nick. What was Charlotte doing?’
‘I’m sorry, Mordecai.’ Nicholas Blaise shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I can’t tell you that. I haven’t the right.’
Tremaine did not press the point. Instead he went on, as if talking more to himself than to his companion:
‘I feel sorry for Charlotte Grame. She must have led a very restricted life. I’ve seen very little of her, of course, but I’ve found myself wondering whether there was any tragedy in her past.’
‘Tragedy?’ queried Blaise doubtfully.
‘Yes. She doesn’t strike me as being the kind of woman who remains a spinster from choice. She ought to be married and have a home and children. And yet she seems somehow shut in upon herself as though she’s afraid to show her real feelings. I’ll admit that I’m only guessing, but my theory is that she was engaged to be married at one time and that she was either jilted or something else happened that prevented her going on with the wedding.’
There was a sudden respect in Nicholas Blaise’s dark eyes.
‘If you haven’t been talking to Charlotte,’ he said slowly, ‘you’ve managed to guess very near the truth. She was engaged. It was a long time ago—before I knew her. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I believe that it was she who broke off the affair. She’s never given any sign of interest in marriage since.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mordecai Tremaine. ‘I wonder.’
It was clear from the look Nicholas Blaise gave him that the other wanted to ask questions but he pretended not to notice it. Blaise knew a great deal more about Charlotte Grame than he had so far admitted. Tremaine suspected that he was uncomfortable over it, and he knew that if he was prepared to wait Blaise would sooner or later decide that confession was the wisest policy.
‘I hear you’ve been able to give Superintendent Cannock a good deal of help, Nick,’ he said, changing the subject, perhaps too obviously.
Blaise shrugged.
‘It’s little enough real help I was able to give. I told him what I could and showed him the layout of the house. After all, I suppose I was the natural choice for the job.’
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