So Jonathan Boyce had not been mistaken when he had thought he had heard something. It had been the sound of Karen Hammond’s approach which his keen ears had detected. She must have been near at hand, concealed in the darkness of the hedgerow, whilst he and Boyce had been talking. It was a disturbing thought. Tremaine wondered what Boyce would say when he knew. If Karen Hammond was aware of his interest in crime and of his acquaintance with the Yard man, how many others of the village’s inhabitants also knew?
‘Suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘I have been talking to Inspector Boyce. What then?’
‘Have they—have they found out anything?’ she asked him.
‘Policemen,’ he returned reprovingly, ‘don’t go around telling people things like that, you know.’
She caught his arm impulsively.
‘You’ve got to help—you’ve got to find out who killed Lydia.’
‘That’s what the Inspector has come here to do, Mrs. Hammond. And he will do it—no matter how long it takes.’
‘But you don’t understand! It musn’t take a long time! It must be done quickly—quickly!’
She was standing quite close to him. He could feel her breath soft upon his cheek. Her agitation seemed to be enhancing her beauty in some strange way, making her elusively desirable. Oddly, Mordecai Tremaine the elderly bachelor knew a faint moment of jealousy towards the man on whose behalf this exciting creature was showing herself so disturbed.
Was it a man? That, of course, he did not know. His conjecture might be wildly astray.
‘Why is it so important that the murderer should be found quickly?’ he asked her quietly. ‘I mean important for you?’
‘The longer it goes on the more enquiries there will be,’ she told him. ‘It will be questions—questions—all the time. Newspaper reporters will be here, photographers, searching and prying. Nothing will belong to us any more. We’ll have no rights, no thoughts even. Everything will be dragged out and shown to the public, just to make a story. Nothing will be private. Nothing will be respected. Philip—’
She stopped. She bit the word off abruptly, vehemently, as though she had realized that in her headlong expression of her feelings she had been in danger of betraying herself.
‘Yes?’ prompted Tremaine, but she evaded him by replying with another question.
‘You will help, won’t you? It’s terribly important.’
‘I’m sure that Inspector Boyce will do all he can,’ he replied. ‘That’s his job—to find the murderer as quickly as possible.’
Karen Hammond looked full into his face, and once again he was aware of the unsettling but pleasurable sensation that her beauty was swaying his reason.
‘It’s you I mean,’ she said. ‘You could find out who did it.’
Before her urgent pleading Tremaine’s sentimental soul wavered.
‘I’ll do anything I can to help, Mrs. Hammond,’ he told her.
He felt her reach for his hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said, a little catch in her voice. ‘I knew from what Jean said about you that you would help me. You don’t know what it means—you don’t know . . .’
He felt the soft, grateful pressure of her fingers on his, and then, quite suddenly, she was gone. Without another word she had turned and had almost fled from him. Back through the darkness which had enveloped her the hurried patter of her shoes on the roadway came to tell him of her haste.
There was, obviously, no point in pursuing her. Karen Hammond had said all that she intended to say—for the time being at any rate.
Tremaine walked on slowly. Why had she followed him? She had told him nothing—nothing to justify her approaching him in the agitated manner in which she had done—and yet some urgent reason must have been driving her.
Philip—evidently she had meant her husband. What was it she had almost said before prudence had overtaken her distress? What was there about Philip Hammond that his wife was so anxious that the mystery of Lydia Dare’s death should be solved quickly—and not by the police?
On the surface, of course, it indicated that both Karen and Philip Hammond were innocent of any connection with the murder. But, on the other hand, it might merely be part of a subtle move to cover their guilt. Jonathan Boyce had said that their story was that they had spent the night of the crime at home together; the alibi of each supported the alibi of the other. Karen Hammond’s action might have been intended to throw dust in the eyes of the law. After all, she had not approached Inspector Boyce, the professional. She had come to Mordecai Tremaine, the amateur.
Had she done so because she secretly believed that the amateur, his reason blinded by his friendship with her friends, would offer less danger than the dispassionate policeman who would ruthlessly tear her alibi to pieces if necessary?
It was not exactly a complimentary thought. Tremaine grimaced, as though he had taken a dose of a particularly unpleasant medicine. He hoped he didn’t give the appearance of being quite such a fool. The advancing years had brought no diminution of his dislike of seeming ridiculous in the eyes of a beautiful woman.
He stopped suddenly. Startled, he drew back. Another figure had loomed towards him out of the shadows at the side of the road.
Visions of a crumpled body being discovered in the early hours of the morning flashed across his mind. His heart thumping, he yet managed to clench his fists and summon up the resolve to sell his life dearly.
And then leaping fear was replaced by relief.
‘Excuse me. Have you a light?’
It was a quiet, diffident voice. Its tone carried an apology.
‘Yes—certainly,’ said Tremaine, hoping he did not sound as unnerved as he had momentarily felt.
He searched in his pockets for his matches and struck one a little fumblingly, cupping his hands to shield the flame.
The other leaned forward, his cigarette in his mouth. But his attention seemed to be only half upon the task of lighting it. Tremaine felt the man’s eyes searching his face, peering at him across the flickering glow of the match, as if he was intent upon making sure that he would be able to recognize him again.
He stared back. He saw a pair of narrow, inquisitive eyes; a sharp, beaklike nose; a face in which the features were thin but prominent, and possessing an air of wizened cunning. And their owner was wearing a sports jacket and grey flannels.
Mordecai Tremaine’s mind went back to ‘Roseland’. Geoffrey Manning was speaking:
‘A short, ferrety-looking fellow in grey flannels and a sports coat. . . .’
‘Thanks.’
The cigarette was drawing now. The ferrety one seemed to have finished his scrutiny. He turned back towards the hedgerow. Tremaine saw that he had evidently been leaning against a small stile like the entrance to a footpath across the fields, for it was to this spot that the other returned.
He stood irresolutely. This, beyond doubt, was the stranger to whom reference had been made. The stranger who had asked for Philip Hammond and at the mention of whom Karen Hammond had betrayed such fear—or, at the least, such agitation. And it was evident that he had been following her and that his sole purpose in asking for a light had been in order to obtain a good look at the man to whom she had been speaking.
Tremaine stared towards the shadowy figure by the stile.
‘It’s a beautiful night.’
‘Yes. Thanks for the light.’
The ferrety one made it ostentatiously obvious that he intended it to be his last effort at conversation. Since to persevere would merely serve to arouse suspicion in the man’s mind without accomplishing anything constructive, Tremaine gave a rueful shrug and walked on.
Despite the intriguing nature of his dual encounters, it was not the thought of the man he had just left or even of Karen Hammond which occupied his mind. He had not, indeed, taken many steps before both of them had been temporarily forgotten.
Something had been lodged at the back of his brain. Something which had been disturbing him, worrying him ever si
nce he had left ‘Roseland’. He had not spoken of it to Boyce because he had not been able to give it a name.
But now he knew what it was. Unbidden, since he was no longer fretting after it, the revelation had come to him.
He could hear Martin Vaughan and Howard Shannon. He could hear the big man speaking of the storm which had broken over London; could hear him speaking humorously of the vagaries of the English summer which brought rain clouds without warning; could hear him asking:
‘I hope you weren’t one of the unlucky ones, Shannon? ’
And he could hear Shannon’s reply. Could hear him saying that he had missed the worst of it because he had taken a taxi from the station.
That was what was wrong! There was the jarring note!
For Mordecai Tremaine himself had been in London then. And he knew that over the whole city not one drop of rain had fallen.
6
DALMERING WAS IN the public eye. From the front pages of the daily newspapers the story of the murder of Lydia Dare beckoned to a world of hurrying human midgets with the tidings that one of their number had been lifted out of anonymity by the violence of her passing.
The crime had coincided with a temporary lull in the storms of home and foreign politics and the morning newspapers had featured it prominently. It did not occupy the main headlines, but such details as were known had been made the basis for a long account in each case.
After breakfast on the morning after his arrival at ‘Roseland’ Mordecai Tremaine retired to the garden with half a dozen of the leading London journals. Jean Russell had told him that anticipating his desire to read as many as possible of the opinions which would certainly be expressed upon the murder, she had requested the local newsagent (who was also the grocer and the chemist; specialization had not so far penetrated to the Dalmering backwater) to provide all the additional newspapers he could. Despite what must have been a greatly increased demand he had responded gratifyingly.
It was a beautiful morning—in the best sense of that hackneyed phrase. The sun had risen untroubled in a clear blue sky, and although there was a faint suggestion of over brilliance which gave a forewarning of uncomfortable heat later in the day, at the moment the village lay smilingly in a caressing warmth.
Paul Russell, with an apology that he had to leave his guest to his own devices, had disappeared into his surgery to face the day’s round of wheezing chests, muscular rheumatism and the countless, but routine, minor ailments of a G.P.’s existence. Tremaine could sympathize with his friend. Paul, he knew, would have preferred the life of research, the exciting pursuit with the microscope in a laboratory, the thrill of accomplishment in pitting his skill against the minute organisms which threaten the continuance of the human miracle of nerve, bone and muscle, and in gaining the victory over yet another obscure aspect of disease. But finance and the responsibilities of marriage had forced the replacement of the microscope by the stethoscope, had compelled the abandonment of the uncertain glory of medical research for the steady if uninspired income of the G.P.
Tremaine settled himself in a deck chair and began to read. As he had expected, he learned nothing new. The newspaper reporters were aware of no facts he himself did not know; he was certain, on the contrary, that he knew considerably more than they. But it moulded his deliberately pliant mind into the desired pattern; made it easier for him to reflect in the manner in which he required to do so.
He took out his pipe. A little self-consciously he lit it. As usual it cost him three matches and a burnt finger.
He smoked a pipe on principle. For a long while his smoking had been limited to the ritual of three cigarettes a day, after meals. He had been unable to settle down to a pipe; at each experiment his stomach had rebelled bitterly.
Nevertheless he had persevered. A pipe was essential. It was, he felt, the kind of thing a detective was expected to do. Eventually he had conquered nature to the extent of being able to hold his own, but still he lacked real professional enjoyment, and it was a source of trivial annoyance with him that he always had the air of an amateur, that his attempts at packing and lighting the tobacco were invariably clumsy. Sometimes, indeed, the smoke penetrated his throat in a stinging wave and caused him to cough.
He coughed now. And looked up to see Jean’s eyes upon him, a twinkle of amusement dancing in them.
‘Rotten tobacco,’ he explained carefully. ‘I haven’t been able to get my usual brand.’
Her amusement widened into a smile.
‘Don’t mind me, Mordecai,’ she said, in the tolerant voice of a woman who knew what eternal little boys the most adult of men were in their hearts. ‘I’m used to watching Paul. He likes to smoke a pipe whenever the vicar calls to talk over the affairs of the parish. He says it lends him dignity.’
Mordecai Tremaine looked down at the tumbled walls of his defences. Then he saw the humour of it and smiled back.
‘Don’t give me away, Jean. I’m playing the great detective.’
He puffed conscientiously at his pipe, allowing his thoughts to drift, passing in slow review the various actors in the drama. Karen Hammond, Howard Shannon—Martin Vaughan.
Vaughan. The memory of the big man rose before him—dominant, somehow ruthless. He saw the thick fingers clamping down upon the gate at the entrance to the path where Lydia Dare had died. Vaughan had the appearance of a man whose passions might break the bonds of his self-control and drive him to excesses, of a man who had lived hard and who might react in violent ways to any emotional strain.
But why should he have wanted to kill Lydia Dare? Tremaine puffed out a smoke cloud and admitted that he did not know.
He spent a pleasant if hardly profitable couple of hours smoking, reading and thinking. He had reached the point where he knew that he could not allow his limited knowledge to form the basis of any more theories lest they should lead him into the dangerous realms of pure invention, when he saw Paul approaching him.
‘Hullo, Paul. All the cures completed?’
‘Well, I’ve prescribed all the pills and iron tonics,’ returned the doctor, with a smile. ‘I usually spend a few moments pottering around the garden just about now. Helps to keep down my waistline and saves me from ordering any digestive tablets for myself.’
At the end of the garden was a little potting shed and tool shed. Russell pushed open the door.
‘I think I’ll arm myself with a trowel,’ he observed. ‘A little bending wouldn’t do me any harm.’
He disappeared inside the shed. Tremaine heard him give a sudden exclamation.
‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.
‘I’ll swear I’m cursed with a poltergeist,’ said the doctor, reappearing. ‘Look there!’
Tremaine lifted himself from his deck chair and peered into the interior of the shed.
‘What’s the poltergeist been doing?’
‘Those boots.’ Russell pointed. ‘Two days ago I hunted high and low for them and there wasn’t a trace of them anywhere. Now here they are, under my nose—grinning at me.’
‘You probably looked at them without seeing them. You know how easy it is to do that sort of thing.’
‘No—I’m certain they weren’t there the last time I looked.’
Tremaine glanced down at the articles in question, lying untidily where they had evidently been carelessly thrown in the middle of the wooden floor. They were roomy, wooden-soled Somerset clogs which fastened with a strap. He bent to examine them.
‘They’re ideal for the spring and autumn digging seasons,’ he remarked.
He smiled to himself as his eyes roamed casually around the shed. It was to be hoped that Paul was not so careless of his surgical instruments when he was called upon—as he sometimes was—to perform a minor operation at the Cottage Hospital just outside Kingshampton, as he appeared to be of his gardening implements.
Rakes, forks, spades and various-sized trowels were in an entangled heap in one corner; in another a tumbled pile of flower-pots and watering can
s were gathering dirt and cobwebs. Wooden trays which had been used for seed were lying everywhere.
Through the half-open window he saw Jean come out of the house, a bag on her arm, and walk towards the gate, evidently about to make a shopping expedition to the village.
‘There’s your poltergeist, Paul,’ he told his companion. ‘Jean’s probably been tidying up after you.’
‘Maybe,’ returned Russell cheerfully. ‘I’d like to think it really was a poltergeist though. What an alibi! It would help to explain why I’m always upsetting things and leaving things about!’
He began to busy himself with a nearby flower-bed, loosening the soil and weeding with a surgeon’s quick precision among the banked lupins and antirrhinums.
‘Any theories yet?’ he asked, over his shoulder.
‘Dozens,’ returned Tremaine. ‘All useless. I’ve been thinking,’ he added, ‘about Vaughan.’
‘Vaughan?’ Russell looked up. ‘In what way?’
‘Oh, no particular way—just generally. He and Lydia Dare seem to have been pretty good friends.’
‘I suppose you might say that of most of us. We’ve been a happy little crowd down here.’
Was there a note of insincerity in Russell’s voice, something which did not ring quite true? Tremaine thought of the surging emotions of which he had caught a brief glimpse on the previous evening, and was not quite sure. Loyalty and an unwillingness to admit that the Garden of Eden possessed its serpents could be keeping a guard over his friend’s words.
‘I suppose so,’ he said non-committally. ‘Do you think he was at all—well, what you might call disturbed over Lydia’s engagement?’
‘Good lord, no. He was delighted—as we all were.’
‘Her fiancé—Gerald Farrant—has he met Vaughan?’
‘Yes. Several times. Why?’ Russell had straightened from his weeding operations and was looking at him with a doubtful, puzzled expression. ‘You don’t mean to tell me that you suspect—Vaughan?’
He brought the word out with an air of unbelief—as though the thought was too incredible to harbour.
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