‘You should know. You put them there after you’d taken them from the Christmas tree. They were too dangerous to keep in your possession, and yet you couldn’t destroy them and daren’t take them out of the house in case you were seen. It occurred to me that you might have thought of the old chest in this room and decided to use it to hide them until it was safe to get them away. You reasoned that even if anyone did find them there would be nothing to connect them with you.’
Blaise’s tongue passed over his lips.
‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘Why should I want to kill Benedict?’
‘For a very ancient reason,’ said Tremaine. ‘For money.’
Blaise tried to infuse a sneer into his voice.
‘Does it sound likely? By killing Benedict I’d be putting myself out of a job. I don’t suppose he’s left me any great sum in his will. Certainly nothing large enough to make me want to kill him.’
‘You laid your plans very cleverly. I don’t doubt that you even made sure that Benedict didn’t make a suspiciously large provision for you in his will. You wanted the police to believe that you had nothing to gain by his death. You wanted them to believe, in fact, that you stood to lose by it since your relationship was a good deal closer than that of master and servant. But you weren’t interested in legacies. You knew that by killing Benedict Grame you could provide yourself with a source of income that you could go on drawing upon for years.’
‘And just what was this remarkable gold-mine?’
‘Blackmail,’ said Mordecai Tremaine icily, and this time Nicholas Blaise did not sneer.
‘Almost from the moment I arrived,’ went on Tremaine, ‘I noticed how everybody seemed to be interested in one thing—the Christmas tree. It wasn’t just an ordinary interest. It was as if they were fascinated by it. There was Jeremy Rainer, who came into the room when Benedict Grame and yourself were attending to the decorations, and stared at it so intently that he had no eyes for anything else. There was Professor Lorring, whom I found sitting in front of the tree when it was all but dark, looking as though he wanted to shrivel it where it stood. And there was Austin Delamere whom I happened to see just as he arrived. Almost his first thought was about the tree.
‘I began to ask myself what there was about it that should cause it to have such an attraction for Benedict Grame’s guests—and an attraction that wasn’t, apparently, a very pleasant one. It seemed such an ordinary tree. In fact, I thought that it was quite a happy idea of Grame’s, a pleasantly seasonable touch, to provide a gaily decorated Christmas tree with a present for each of the members of his house-party.
‘But that simple explanation didn’t fit in with what seemed to be happening. There was a definite attitude of fear and dislike towards that tree, something that wasn’t at all simple. And when I tried to find out why I discovered a number of curious things.
‘I discovered that each year the same people were in the house-party. I discovered that they seemed to regard it as highly important that they should spend Christmas with Benedict Grame. For instance, Austin Delamere must be a busy man, but he came this year just as he’s come before. Jeremy Rainer was going to America but he cancelled his passage. It could be, of course, that being fond of Grame and knowing his delight in his Christmas gatherings, they didn’t want to disappoint him. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to accept that as the truth.
‘You see, there was Lorring. It was his first visit, so obviously he couldn’t be feeling the pull of tradition and friendship. It seemed odd to find him in the house-party at all. He’s been disinclined to talk to anyone even, and he’s certainly shown no signs of possessing the Christmas spirit. He gave me the impression that far from being a willing visitor he was here against his will. And there was Jeremy Rainer’s visit to America. Not even Denys Arden knew why he suddenly decided not to go. If it had been because he didn’t want to disappoint Benedict Grame there was surely no reason why he shouldn’t have said as much.’
Nicholas Blaise did not make any comment. His eyes were fixed upon Mordecai Tremaine in a baleful glare.
Tremaine said:
‘There were other curious things. There was Rainer’s attitude towards Roger Wynton. At first he and Wynton were on friendly terms, and then, without warning, Rainer changed. For no apparent reason—just as unexpectedly as he later cancelled his American trip—he developed a violent dislike for him and wouldn’t hear of Denys marrying him. At least, that was what the situation appeared to be, but Charlotte Grame told me that it wasn’t true. She said that Rainer didn’t dislike Wynton.
‘There was Charlotte’s own peculiar behaviour. She was afraid to admit that I’d seen her in Calnford. She dreaded her association with Brett becoming known, although you’d imagine she was old enough to choose her own course of action. It was Charlotte, incidentally, who gave me another interesting item of information. She told me that Gerald Beechley wasn’t really fond of practical jokes, despite his reputation for indulging in schoolboy pranks.
‘And then there were the Napiers. They didn’t look the kind of people to enjoy being buried in the country. They seemed out of their element, and whenever I questioned them casually about how long they’d been in the neighbourhood, and whether they’d known Benedict Grame before coming to Sherbroome, they were evasive and ill-at-ease.’
Mordecai Tremaine paused. Through the open window he could see light clouds drifting across the sky. The room was very quiet. They might have been in a secluded world of their own, completely cut off from every other human being.
‘It seemed to me,’ he went on, after a moment or two, ‘that there could be only one solution. If so many individuals were doing things they didn’t really want to do it could only be because they had no option. Because they were being made to do them. And that led me to Benedict Grame. For the one thing common to all of them was the fact that they all attended Grame’s Christmas parties—and that they all received a present from his Christmas tree.
‘It was the tree that dominated the situation. It was fear of the tree that was in all their minds and was responsible for the atmosphere of strain that you could always feel despite the apparent gaiety. It was not, of course, the tree itself but what it stood for. The knowledge that Benedict Grame was their master, and that no matter what he might require they would be compelled to do his bidding.
‘It wasn’t the old, crude type of blackmail, the obvious demand for money and yet more money. It was more devilish to the spirit than that. Benedict Grame isn’t interested in money. Maybe only because he already has sufficient for his needs, but it’s true that money holds little attraction for him. His craving is for something less tangible, perhaps, but infinitely more terrible—for power!
‘That’s the real motive behind these outwardly merry Christmas parties. They aren’t given by Benedict Grame, the immortal Pickwick, delighting in spreading happiness and goodwill. They’re given by Benedict Grame the tyrant, cracking his whip over his slaves, revelling in his sense of power.’
Mordecai Tremaine’s eyes had lost their mildness and their benevolence. They were cold with an anger that was the more potent because it was so seldom there.
‘Under the pretence of spreading the Christmas spirit,’ he said stonily, ‘he’s been making a mockery of it. He’s been deliberately encouraging a belief in his generosity and his goodwill and his real enjoyment of the Christmas season in order to inflict added torture upon his victims.
‘He knew they wouldn’t dare reveal the truth. He knew they’d have to aid him to keep up the pretence of a gay house-party celebrating in the old-fashioned way. It amused him to make them suffer. It amused him to act the benevolent host and watch them reacting to the tunes he called, knowing all the time that they were hating the whole thing and that for them it was a ghastly, empty farce.’
Nicholas Blaise crooked a finger into his collar. He loosened it, as though he found it difficult to breathe. He said:
‘Even if this incredible story of yours were
true, what is there in it to prove that I had a hand in the murder?’
‘Enough,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘to hang you. I imagine that you learned the truth about Benedict Grame in a gradual fashion as you gained more and more of his confidence. I don’t suppose he actually told you, but you must have seen and heard enough to make you suspect, and once you realized that there was something queer going on you set to work to find out what that something was. I don’t doubt that when you did find out you told yourself that Benedict Grame was wasting his opportunities. If you possessed the knowledge Grame had you could make far better use of it. You aren’t a rich man, and if money doesn’t mean anything to Benedict Grame it means a great deal to you.
‘You didn’t dare try blackmail on your own account even when you’d discovered the secrets of Grame’s annual guests. It would have been too dangerous. One of them might have told him or he might have found out himself, and that would have uncovered you—something no blackmailer relishes. So you decided that Benedict Grame would have to die.
‘Naturally you didn’t want to find yourself in the dock on a murder charge. You had to kill Grame in such a manner that the crime wouldn’t be brought home to you. I don’t know how long you were working out your plans, but you certainly didn’t want to leave anything to chance. That was why you persuaded Grame to invite me here for Christmas.
‘A friend of mine once told me,’ Tremaine added reflectively, ‘that I was a murder magnet. He said that no matter where I went murder seemed to follow me. I thought of that when Jeremy Rainer died. It seemed almost as though it was true, and that in some strange way murder did follow me.
‘But the explanation is a very simple one. This murder was premeditated and it was part of the murderer’s plan—your plan—that I should be here when it happened. You wanted me here because you thought that I would have the confidence of the police, and you intended to put the right ideas into my head before the murder so that I could pass them on after it. That was why you added that postscript to your invitation. You wanted to plant the belief in my mind that there was something out of the ordinary going on even before I arrived.
‘And when I did get here you carefully hinted that Jeremy Rainer was responsible for what you described as Benedict Grame’s uneasiness. Rainer was the man you intended to be accused of the crime you were going to commit, and you wanted to throw suspicion upon him from the very beginning.
‘Christmas Eve was the time you planned for the murder. You knew that Benedict Grame would keep to his usual programme of placing the presents on the tree after the rest of the household had gone to bed. That was the fact upon which you were counting.
‘You stole Jeremy Rainer’s revolver from his room, taking care not to remove his finger-prints, and when the others had gone to bed and before Grame arrived as Father Christmas, you fixed the gun in position in the earth under the Christmas tree. The trigger needed only a slight pressure to bring the hammer down, and you ran a length of thin cord up through the centre of the tree, over the top branch and down to the bracket with Rainer’s name upon it, so that it ran taut from the trigger to the bracket. If the branch bearing the bracket was pulled down it would have the effect of tightening the cord still further and causing the gun to fire.
‘You helped with the decorating of the tree and you took care to see that it was placed in the best position to aid your plan. You must have made very careful calculations to find out the exact angle at which the gun needed to be set, but you’d plenty of opportunity to study Benedict Grame and it was only a matter of perseverance.
‘As part of your plan you’d given Jeremy Rainer instructions, purporting to come from Grame, that he was to go to the lodge late on Christmas Eve and leave his signet-ring there. It was the kind of thing Grame might have been expected to demand in order to show his power—just as he compelled Gerald Beechley to play those practical jokes everyone thought he enjoyed—and you knew that Rainer would obey. Your object was to incriminate him by making it plain that he was out of his room at the time of the murder.
‘Leaving that one present on the tree was intended to provide a further piece of evidence against him. Benedict Grame’s orders to his victims were given in the form of typewritten slips included in their Christmas presents. Rainer’s present was to be left for the police to find. They would examine it and would promptly discover that Grame had been blackmailing him.
‘The motive for the crime would then appear to be plain, and together with the gun you’d left in his room in a place where it was certain to be found and the fact that he was not where he was supposed to be at the time of the murder, he’d find it difficult to prove his innocence. You had to get rid of all the other presents, of course, otherwise the police would have realized that Rainer wasn’t the only person who was being blackmailed, and that would have weakened the case against him.’
Nicholas Blaise seemed to be trying to force himself to speak. He said at last:
‘You make it sound so ingenious that I can’t understand how it came to go wrong.’
‘It went wrong,’ said Mordecai Tremaine, ‘like the plans of a murderer always do go wrong—because it’s impossible to foresee just what is going to happen. You may have suspected that Jeremy Rainer was trying to find a way of breaking Benedict Grame’s hold over him—and after all, that was excellent from your point of view because it strengthened the evidence against him. But it certainly didn’t occur to you that Benedict Grame would use a step-ladder.
‘That was the simple little fact that destroyed all your careful calculations. Grame was in a hurry. He was going to Lucia Tristam and he didn’t want to waste too much time. The step-ladder he’d had during the morning was still in the room and he carried it over and used it to put the presents on the tree. It meant that he didn’t have to stretch up to that top branch, and consequently he didn’t exert the necessary pressure on the cord that would have pulled the trigger of the gun and killed him.
‘Still, even that needn’t have mattered. All you would have had to do would have been to take the gun away and you would have been back where you were. No one would ever have suspected what you had planned to do.
‘But two more unforeseen developments went against you. Charlotte Grame was going to run away and she came to your room to tell you about it. You were later than you had intended in going downstairs to find out what had happened, and in the meantime the second unexpected thing had taken place—Jeremy Rainer had come back from the lodge.
‘You had given Rainer a part in your little drama but you hadn’t allowed for the fact that he might decide to play a part of his own as well. He’d got hold of a Father Christmas outfit—no doubt so that he’d be mistaken for Grame if anyone saw him—and he came back into the house and began to cut the presents off the tree.
‘Exactly what he was going to do I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out, but he probably had some idea of checking the names of the others who were being blackmailed and forming an alliance against Grame. Charlotte told me that he’d said that things were going to change, and I don’t think there’s much doubt over what ‘things’ she meant. The ends of the cords were still on the tree, but I dare say he was going to examine the presents in his room and replace them later when the household should have been soundly asleep and there wouldn’t be so much risk of being disturbed. The last present he touched was his own. He reached up to it—and pulled down the branch.
‘When you eventually came down you saw Father Christmas lying on his face in front of the tree and you assumed that everything had gone according to plan and that it was Benedict Grame. In the darkness you didn’t notice the remnants of cord on the tree and for obvious reasons you weren’t anxious to linger any longer than was necessary.
‘You saw the sack at the side of the body and one present in position, and you took it for granted that Grame had started at the top of the tree with the vital branch and had been killed before he’d had time to attend to any of the others. You cut the cord
and took away the sack of presents and the gun. There was plenty of opportunity for you to plant it in Rainer’s room later.
‘It was the very extent of the evidence against Rainer that first made me suspect that he might have been killed by mistake. It seemed so much as though he should have been the murderer and not the victim that it started me wondering whether it was Rainer who had been intended to die, after all. He’d been wearing a Father Christmas outfit, just as Benedict Grame was known to do, and the angle at which the bullet had been fired was decidedly curious. It looked as though the murderer must have lain on the floor and fired upwards.
‘I examined the tree carefully and I found the remains of the cord that had been over the top branch. It wasn’t the same colour as the other pieces. It was green, obviously so that it wouldn’t easily be noticed. There was also a mark in the soil that might have been made by a gun-butt and one of the decorations had been shattered. It was directly in the path the bullet might have taken if it had been fired from a position at the foot of the tree at a man stretching upwards. This suggested that the murderer had not actually been present when the shot was fired, and that gave added weight to the theory that the wrong man had been killed.’
Mordecai Tremaine’s eyes, bright and watchful, peered over the pince-nez at his companion. He said:
‘Do you remember what happened when Charlotte Grame screamed? You were one of the last people to arrive. No one paid any attention to it at the time and a little later on it was Benedict Grame’s failure to appear that was in the limelight. Looking back it seemed to me that it was curious that you’d taken so long—almost as though you knew what to expect and hung back deliberately. And you didn’t look like a man who’d been roughly aroused from sleep. Your hair was as neatly brushed as if you’d just performed a careful toilet—or as if you hadn’t been to bed.
‘And do you remember what else happened? You didn’t give more than a glance at the body. You turned straight to me and asked me to find Benedict Grame’s murderer. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that it was Grame who was lying there.
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