A moment or two later Mordecai Tremaine heard a dry, deliberate cough. He turned. Ernest Lorring had come out on to the terrace and was regarding him sardonically. Lorring said:
‘You appear to have a gift for upsetting people.’
‘Only,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘those people who have cause to be upset.’
The wiry eyebrows bristled. Lorring stalked past with a snort. Tremaine said quietly:
‘I presume you’re no longer so interested in the Christmas tree.’
The other spun round, his heel scrunching upon the snow. His gaunt face was black with anger.
‘Be careful, Tremaine,’ he snarled. ‘I’m warning you! Don’t try me too far!’
For a moment or two he stood motionless, his expression menacing. Tremaine was glad that their encounter was taking place on the terrace, and that it was unlikely that Lorring would risk a display of physical violence in public. For he knew that the other’s mood was ugly enough to have impelled him to strike out viciously if they had been unobserved.
Slowly Lorring regained control of his temper. He turned away at last. Mordecai Tremaine allowed him a moment or two to leave the terrace and then pushed open the french windows and went into the house himself.
He found himself facing Benedict Grame and behind his host were Denys Arden and Roger Wynton. It was clear from their faces that they had witnessed that brief scene. Grame cleared his throat self-consciously.
‘I’m sorry, Tremaine,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m afraid Lorring’s a little difficult sometimes. He isn’t an easy man to understand. But he doesn’t mean all he says, you know.’
Tremaine looked at the other reflectively. Benedict Grame seemed anxious to give his guest a good character. He wondered whether Grame had observed his conversation with Lucia Tristam, and whether there was any connection. He did not doubt that Grame really was in love with her.
His gaze went slowly around the room. It was very much as it had been when Jeremy Rainer had been lying dead and the tragedy had been raw in its impact. Although the police had finished their investigations there had been an understandable reluctance on the part of the members of the household to make use of it. Even the servants had so far made no attempt to touch it.
Tremaine’s eyes came to rest upon the Christmas tree. A thought came into his mind and he said to Benedict Grame:
‘Isn’t there something a little odd about that bracket? I mean the one with Mr. Rainer’s name on it. I wonder if you’d mind getting it down for me?’
Grame gave him a puzzled stare but he made no objection. He glanced at the tree, hesitated a moment or two, and then fetched the pair of wooden steps still standing against the wall. Roger Wynton and the girl watched him curiously as he climbed up and removed the bracket from the tree.
It took him only a moment or two. He descended the steps and handed it to Mordecai Tremaine. That gentleman turned it over, studying it intently. His eyes were bright with excitement.
‘Well,’ said Grame, ‘what does it tell you?’
Mordecai Tremaine put the bracket carefully into his pocket.
‘A great deal,’ he said softly. ‘A very great deal.’
It seemed that Benedict Grame was on the point of putting another question and then gave a quick glance towards Denys Arden and Roger Wynton and changed his mind. He said:
‘If you three people will excuse me I’ve one or two things to discuss with Nick this morning. He insists on keeping me to the grindstone!’
When the door had closed behind him Tremaine said to Roger Wynton:
‘Well, young man, so they haven’t put the handcuffs on you yet?’
‘Thanks to you,’ returned Wynton. ‘If it hadn’t been for your intervention I’m pretty sure the superintendent would have had me behind bars by now.’
‘I don’t know how to repay you for what you’ve done,’ said Denys Arden. ‘I know he wouldn’t have believed Roger’s story if you hadn’t spoken to him.’
She was so prettily serious that Mordecai Tremaine was embarrassed. He felt as though he had been mistaken for a hero and presented with a medal for a deed he had not performed. He said hastily:
‘Did you know that your guardian didn’t really object to your marrying Mr. Wynton?’
Denys Arden stared at him.
‘But he did object,’ she told him. ‘That was what we couldn’t understand.’
‘What,’ said Roger Wynton suddenly, ‘made you say that?’
‘Never mind why for the moment,’ said Mordecai Tremaine. ‘Are you quite sure that he disliked you so much?’
Wynton frowned.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not. When I first knew Denys we were on good terms. It was a complete surprise when he suddenly changed. And sometimes I’ve had an odd feeling that there was something behind it and that he was saying things he didn’t really mean—almost as though he was playing a part. I thought that it was just my imagination and that it was just because I was trying to find a ray of hope. But now you’ve mentioned it, perhaps it wasn’t merely my imagination after all.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t,’ said Mordecai Tremaine.
His mind returned often to Denys Arden and Roger Wynton during the day. They were so obviously in love that it was a source of comfort to his sentimental soul.
It was a difficult day. The unspoken fear of the reporters they might meet was sufficient to confine them all uneasily to the house. It was clear that everyone was anxious to leave and equally clear that no one dared to go.
The inquest and the funeral still remained. To be missing from either of those necessary functions would be to invite unwelcome comment and neither was due to take place before the morrow.
Mordecai Tremaine was relieved when the day was over and he was able to retire to the shelter of his room. Even his intense interest in all that took place had shown signs of wilting under the oppressive atmosphere and the dark suspicion that met him in nearly all their eyes. He was tired and a little sick at heart. His faith in humanity was burning dim.
He pushed open his window and gazed out over the snow-covered fields shining under a clear moon. He drew the cold air into his lungs, felt it caressing his forehead.
He knew his own symptoms. He was nearing the end of the road. So far he had been sustained by the excitement of the chase. He had been savouring the keenness of matching his intellect with a fascinating problem that had been largely of the mind.
But now that problem had been reduced to a human equation. He had become more intimately aware of the actors in the drama, and instead of shadowy creatures whom he could study dispassionately and whose emotions he could analyse without feeling, they were beings of flesh and blood among whom he moved and talked. And above all he now knew which one of them it was by whose hand Jeremy Rainer had died.
The murder had suddenly resolved itself into a sharply personal thing. Something that meant tragedy and horror and the judicial destruction of someone with whom he had lived for days that now seemed an eternity.
He shivered, and went over again in his mind all the things that had led him at last to this inescapable conclusion, testing them for flaws, searching for some little sign that would tell him that, after all, his theories were wrong.
But they were not wrong. He did not know the whole story. There were some things it would be necessary for Superintendent Cannock to explain, things at which he could only guess. But the truth was there, terrible and incontestable.
He closed the window and climbed into bed. He started to read Romantic Stories, but it was a gesture that had no heart in it, and after a moment or two he put the magazine aside and lay staring into the darkness.
When he awoke, after a troubled, dream-filled sleep, it was to a household fearful with expectancy, fretting to learn what the inquest might have to tell and yet afraid what the knowledge might bring. The frost had broken. The snow had begun to melt, and already a dreary sludge had broken the beauty the frozen whiteness had lent to the land. It w
as a cheerless morning, breathing depression and from which all hint of Christmas had gone.
Before he went down to the village Tremaine slipped in for a last glance at the Christmas tree. He thought the grey morning light was unkind to it. The branches were sagging dejectedly; its decorations hung limply, their sparkle dulled.
The funeral was not the ordeal that had been expected. The service was conducted in the village church and Jeremy Rainer was laid to rest in the little churchyard adjoining it. There was nothing to show that there was anything different between this solemn occasion and the others the ancient grey building had seen.
The inquest was held in the village schoolroom in the early afternoon. Mordecai Tremaine gazed at the wooden desks, the blackboard and the coloured maps pinned along the wall, and tried to keep his mind centred upon the pleasant scenes the room must have witnessed. But despite the innocence of its setting, the grimness of the task for which they had gathered was too pronounced to be dismissed into the background of one’s thoughts.
The coroner was a brisk, efficient personage with a military crispness, who evidently believed in leaving the conduct of affairs in the hands of the police and who did not intend to allow matters to drag on discursively. He handled the witnesses swiftly and expertly, kept them to the point, and in a very short time had established the fact that Jeremy Rainer had been murdered by some person or persons at present unknown.
Mordecai Tremaine was not called upon to give evidence. Benedict Grame, Denys Arden and Nicholas Blaise were the only persons from the house who were required. The remainder of the witnesses were technical—the police surgeon and the superintendent among them, the superintendent briefly official and quite obviously in possession of more information than he was yet prepared to divulge, and the surgeon casually precise and firing a battery of medical terms.
During the cross-examinations, Tremaine studied the occupants of the schoolroom. Besides the party from the house and the reporters, a number of local people had managed to squeeze themselves into the building. At the back of the room, plainly very interested in what was taking place, he saw Desmond Latimer and the man Nicholas Blaise had called Brett.
Of the two, Latimer was undoubtedly the more ill-at-ease. His face wore a nervous, furtive look. He might have been expecting the hand of the constable who stood at the door to fall upon his shoulder in dread summons. When he realized that Tremaine’s eyes were upon him he glanced hastily away.
Brett, on the other hand, gave back a challenging stare. A wintry smile curled his mouth. Tremaine thought he could detect a hint of sardonic laughter in his lean face.
It was not an easy matter to contact Superintendent Cannock when the inquest was over. Too many people seemed to be intent upon surrounding him. He managed at last, however, to catch his eye, and the superintendent divined the urgency behind his manner. He made a meaning gesture and Tremaine nodded understandingly. He picked his way slowly through the trampled slush and walked along the road in the direction of Calnford.
Only the Napiers seemed interested in his departure. They were standing together just outside the school-house, a short distance apart from the others. Against the dreary background of grey stone, leaden skies and melting snow they seemed more drably unimportant than ever.
He saw Evelyn Napier clutch her husband’s arm. He could not hear what she said, but he knew that their eyes were fixed upon him with a dread expectancy. He did not allow them to see that he had noticed them, but the incident gave him further cause for reflection.
He turned a corner in the road that hid him from the village and waited by a convenient stile. Ten minutes later Superintendent Cannock’s car, snow and water flurrying from its wheels, stopped alongside. The superintendent opened the door. He said:
‘You look as though you’ve got the murderer in your pocket!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mordecai Tremaine gravely, ‘I have.’
Cannock’s jocular manner left him. He stepped from the car. His weatherbeaten face had an eager look.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well. Who is it?’
‘Not yet,’ said Mordecai Tremaine. ‘The proof isn’t complete. There are things I must know first.’
‘What things?’ said Cannock.
‘For instance, why did Charlotte Grame go out? Was it to see a man called Brett who’s staying in the village?’
The superintendent nodded.
‘Yes. She went straight to the inn and asked for him.’
‘Anything known against him?’
‘Not so far. I’m having it followed up, of course.’
‘What about Beechley?’
Cannock pulled at his chin thoughtfully.
‘I’m not at all sure about Beechley,’ he said. ‘He tumbled to it that he was being followed and tried to throw my man off the scent. He’s hiding something all right.’
‘Did he see anyone in the village?’
‘No. But he put through a telephone call. Evidently he didn’t want it to go from the house. I’ve had it traced. It was to the private address of a gentleman named Rubens. He’s the senior partner in MacAnstey and Brenlow, a Calnford firm of Turf Commission agents.’
‘A book-maker,’ said Mordecai Tremaine.
‘A book-maker,’ agreed the superintendent.
Tremaine digested the information he had been given. His eyes were speculative. He said at last:
‘What have you been able to find out about the people at the house? Lorring and the others.’
The superintendent did not betray any impatience at the cross-examination. He said:
‘Lorring I’m still working on. It takes time to check everything. But I’ve been able to get details of some of them. Maybe you won’t be surprised to hear that Delamere’s been mixed up in one or two shady affairs. A bit more proof and he wouldn’t have been able to bluff his way out of the last one. It was about five or six years ago. A nasty business about the placing of Government contracts. If a certain letter he wrote hadn’t disappeared he would have been finished. I don’t doubt,’ added Cannock drily, ‘that he realized it too and took good care to see that the letter was destroyed.’
‘What about his financial position now?’
‘Fairly sound. At least as far as I’ve been able to discover.’
‘Any connection between Delamere and Rainer—or with Grame?’
‘Nothing suspicious. He seems to have known Grame for some years. Comes regularly to these Christmas house-parties.’
‘Anything significant in Rainer’s past?’
Cannock pursed his lips.
‘We-ell,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s murky. I haven’t been able to get at all of it yet. It’s going to be a job to go back that far. I understand that Rainer was Miss Arden’s guardian—paid for her education and so on. The odd thing is that it looks very much as though it was Rainer who ruined her father. Arden lost every penny in some clever gold-share swindle and went down with pneumonia shortly afterwards. Denys Arden was only a child at the time. Rainer seems to have had an attack of conscience and made himself responsible for her upbringing. From what I’ve been able to find out so far,’ added the superintendent grimly, ‘I’d say he needed a few more twinges. He had to leave South Africa in a hurry with the police only a move or two behind him. It was an illicit diamond buying affair. There might have been a murder charge on the end of it if they could have brought it home to him.’
Mordecai Tremaine nodded approvingly.
‘You’ve moved fast, Superintendent.’
‘Crime doesn’t stop for Christmas!’ said Cannock. There was a sparkle in the depths of his brown eyes as he looked at his companion. ‘There’s another item of news for you,’ he said. ‘It concerns our friends the Napiers.’
‘Ah,’ said Mordecai Tremaine softly, ‘the Napiers.’
‘Harold Napier hasn’t always called himself Napier,’ the superintendent went on. ‘Once upon a time his name was Newton. Dr. Newton. He was struck off for supplying drugs to his patients
. He was lucky that was all that happened to him. There was an element of doubt and he escaped a criminal charge. You wouldn’t think so to look at him now, but he was quite the man about town. Always seen in the West End nightclubs. Spent money like water. He was certainly not the type to bury himself in the country. His nerve seems to have broken completely.’
Mordecai Tremaine was displaying the satisfaction of a man who finds his theories vindicated. He beamed over the pince-nez.
‘You’ve given me a good deal of information, Superintendent. Maybe now I can give some to you. Do you happen to know the name of the man from whom Benedict Grame bought Sherbroome House?’
‘Not off-hand. Melvin, I believe. Wasn’t it the Melvin family who owned it?’
‘Originally,’ agreed Tremaine. ‘But the estate passed to a distant branch when all the Melvins died out. Benedict Grame bought the house from a man named Latimer. Do you appreciate what that means, Superintendent? A man named Latimer. There is a man named Latimer staying in the village at this moment. And he was in the house on the night of the murder!’
The superintendent was staring at him, gripped by the note of drama in his voice.
‘What have you found out?’ he said sharply.
‘I will tell you,’ said Mordecai Tremaine gravely.
He spoke earnestly to his companion for almost half an hour, and when he had finished it was significant that Superintendent Cannock agreed without question to the request he made.
17
AHEAD OF HIM in the roadway Mordecai Tremaine saw a woman’s figure. He hurried forward through the slush, and as he drew level with her he saw that it was Rosalind Marsh.
‘At least that’s one ordeal over,’ he remarked.
She turned to look at him.
‘Is it?’ she said tonelessly.
He saw then that her face was drawn and tired. She had lost her cold, impassive beauty. She looked a great deal older. Shadowy ghosts were in her eyes. Tremaine said:
‘What was it you did?’
There was bitterness in her reply.
‘So it’s come at last, has it?’
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