In addition there was the question of Vaughan. Hard upon the shock of Lydia’s death had come the numbing horror of the suspicion that Martin Vaughan might have been responsible for what had happened.
What secret struggle had been going on in her mind? What torment of doubt and fear had she lived through before she had made her way to ‘Roseland’ to seek relief by telling her story—the age-old relief of confession? Paul Russell had shaken his head gravely. There was no doubt that she had been cruelly torn by conflicting thoughts. Loyalty to Lydia, loyalty to Martin Vaughan, fierce desire to see the truth laid bare and murder avenged, and yet with it a desperate anxiety not to lose another of her friends in the accomplishment—there had been war within her.
Her sudden collapse and the stormy sobbing which had followed her recital of her story had been in the nature of a safety-valve. It had driven her turbulent emotions outwards instead of inwards; it had given her relief, saved her from what might have been a longer delayed but far more harmful nervous prostration.
Tremaine found himself wondering what she was thinking as she stood in the wings watching Martin Vaughan’s performance. Was she labouring under the same sense of strain as all the others so obviously were? He knew that even if the big man had not himself added to it by the very force of the manner in which he was playing his part, there would have been that about him which would have drawn attention upon him tonight. Suspicion had swept through Dalmering. It was as evident as though the placard hung upon Vaughan’s chest, bearing the design of the accusing finger pointing inwards.
There were no secrets in a village. Without any definite words having been spoken or any definite accusation having been framed, the big man had been indicted.
The atmosphere in the hall was an accusing atmosphere, an atmosphere charged with a belief of guilt. Tremaine knew it now. He wondered that he had not sensed it earlier, he who judged himself to be quick to feel and assimilate such things.
Only Vaughan seemed unconscious of it. He was striding through his part like a man who lived only for what he was now engaged upon.
And then, as though one half of his mind had, until that moment, been blacked out by a shutter which had suddenly been lifted, Mordecai Tremaine realized what was happening. He realized just why that dreadful, tense, unspoken accusation lay in the air. He realized why it was that Vaughan’s performance was so compelling and so laden with drama.
The part the big man played was that of Robert Barnett, a solicitor who had fallen in love with a girl much younger than himself. Phyllis Galway played the girl. The sight of her trim loveliness on the stage had earlier caused Tremaine to remark mentally that it was not surprising that the middle-aged bachelor whom Vaughan was supposed to be had fallen in love with her. Strike thirty years from his age, he had ruminated unprofitably, and he would have been delighted to do the same thing himself.
In the play, the situation, after having promised favourably for Barnett, had taken a turn decidedly against him. An opponent (Geoffrey Manning) younger than himself had begun to challenge the issue. The girl, from being acquiescent if not really in love with him, had become uncertain. She had begun to realize that she was not at all sure that she wanted to tie herself for life to a man so much older, so set in his ways.
The drama had surged towards a climax. Jealousy had eaten its insidious way into Barnett’s soul until now it was consuming him, turning him from a reasoning human being into a cunning madman, thirsting to destroy.
Tremaine knew the next step. Robert Barnett was going to kill the girl. Martin Vaughan was going to kill Phyllis Galway. Martin Vaughan was going to kill Lydia Dare. Martin Vaughan had killed Lydia Dare. . . .
That was the thought-sequence which was running through the hall. The reason for his inability to see until now what the others had seen so long before him was clear at last to Mordecai Tremaine. He had been suffering from the disadvantage that he had not seen the play before; he had not known from the beginning, as all the others had known, that Vaughan was going to act the murderer.
And among those who had known, of course, was Martin Vaughan himself. That was why the big man had dominated the performance, and why he was still dominating it. He was behaving as he had behaved to Inspector Boyce and as he had behaved that afternoon. He was being deliberately aggressive. He was flaunting the parallel between his actions on the stage and what he knew might be regarded as his actions in reality; he was flaunting it as a bull-fighter might flaunt the red cloak in the ring, daring the beast to charge. Only in this case the beast was that unspoken accusation of guilt.
The murder, when it came, was an act of defiance. Martin Vaughan thundered his lines and drove home the killer’s knife with a savagery that betrayed him. Under other circumstances it would have been a remarkable piece of acting. As it was, real tragedy was too near for there to be any abstract appreciation of the way in which he had played the scene. It was too obviously a gage flung at the feet of those who watched.
The crime did not mark the end of the play. There were, in fact, two other violent deaths before the final curtain. Murder Has a Motive certainly provided its quota of bodies.
Nevertheless, it was Vaughan who stole the thunder—on this occasion at least. Before the violence of his jealousy—or, rather, his portrayal of it and of the bloody climax of his passion—the other crimes became of minor significance. They were mere side pieces supporting the central drama; there was no virility in them compared with that fierce realism Vaughan had infused into his own act.
Tremaine subjected the play to a critical mental examination. What effect had the author been striving to obtain? It was a thriller, of course, devised as a vehicle for giving entertainment, but there seemed to be another aspect. Murder had been analysed. An attempt had been made to study the underlying psychology of murder and to dissect the several minds of the guilty.
Karen Hammond played the part of a murderess. Her ‘victim’ was Howard Shannon. Tremaine felt rather sorry for the plump man. The plot required that one of the scenes should end with the discovery of his ‘dead’ body in a trunk occupying a prominent position on the stage. No wonder, he thought, that Shannon’s suit invariably looked so crumpled! He must spend an uncomfortable period at each rehearsal cramped inside the trunk waiting to be ‘discovered’. There seemed to be a faithful attempt at reproducing all details; Shannon was found in the trunk.
The motive behind this ‘killing’ was also a familiar one. Shannon played the part of the unfaithful husband, murdered by his tormented, desperate wife. The ‘other woman’ did not make any actual appearance, but the dialogue suggested her presence so well and so cleverly that the atmosphere of the wronged wife, finding the situation becoming more and more intolerable, was dramatically developed. In its creation by inference of events and persons not shown upon the stage it reminded Tremaine of the play Jealousy by the French author, Louis Verneuill, that powerful tour de force in which only two characters appeared and all the rest were created by the dialogue.
The third victim was Pauline Conroy. Tremaine—secretly a little ashamed of his callousness—experienced no concern for her. Perhaps it was an unconscious reaction. He was afraid of women as overpowering as Pauline; confronted with them he always felt like a small boy in need of protection, despite his attempts to appear blasé.
It amused him to see that her murderer was Paul Russell. Tolerant, friendly old Paul, playing the killer! The sheep in wolf’s clothing!
This crime was a somewhat more complicated one, involving a considerable emphasis upon psychology and the interplay of emotions. Pauline Conroy played Margot Forester, a young, ambitious actress—not a difficult part for her since it came so close to the truth. The doctor was her evil genius—also a doctor, incidentally, in the play. Tremaine guessed that these chance resemblances had influenced the casting.
Under the guidance and inspiration of Karl Loudon—the doctor—Margot Forester was shown as achieving the success for which she craved. But success at a pr
ice; success which monopolized her life and bound her—body and soul—to the man who had created her.
And, of course, it could not last. A vague hunger to be free hardened into a fierce hatred of the possessive doctor who had given her all she had desired but who, in doing so, had become the dominant force in her life. Karl was always there in the background, suggesting, ordering, framing her existence. It was Karl who said do this, Karl who said you must not do that. Karl, Karl. . . .
So she decided that she must break with him—and learned that he had no intention of allowing her to be free; that he would never release her from her bondage. She pleaded with him, stormed at him, reviled him, and, at last, told him that there was another man and that she was going away with him.
It was untrue. There was no other man. But Karl, the doctor, believed it.
And he killed her. Not in passion, after a furious, emotional scene. But coldly, deliberately, with the poison that he as a doctor knew so well, with a deadly, implacable purpose rendered all the more dreadful by his apparent impassivity.
Tremaine thought that Paul was uneasy in the part. He did his best, but it was obvious that Karl Loudon, the scientific, self-centred killer, was far removed from the easy-going humanitarian Paul Russell whom Dalmering knew and loved. He was struggling to portray a sadistic, dominating character completely alien to his own way of life, and the contrast too often became evident.
Pauline Conroy, on the other hand, was excellent. Ungrudgingly, although he did not like her, Mordecai Tremaine admitted that she could act. Her Margot Forester was a clever, understanding character study. But for Martin Vaughan’s overwhelming dominance of the play, she would have attracted considerably more attention.
Inevitably, as there were three separate plots, although each was linked to the others, the piece was inclined to be a little sketchy in treatment. Its construction was not always faultless, but there was no doubt that it possessed a compelling quality. It left one with a sense of horror and explosive force. Tremaine could imagine it being well received.
When the final curtain fell there was no attempt to study the evening’s performance. As if by common consent, players and audience drifted into detached little groups, talking idly but with an obviously artificial inconsequent gaiety which belied their attempts to appear at ease. This latest rehearsal of Murder Has a Motive had been too raw a thing, too much an exposure of a painful, open wound to permit of any discussion.
Martin Vaughan had seated himself in a chair just below the stage. He was seemingly immersed in a note-book he had produced. No one had made any attempt to speak to him, and Tremaine guessed that he had taken refuge in the pretence of consulting the book in an endeavour to render less obvious the fact that he was being avoided by the others.
The big man’s attitude was not easy to explain. Despite his apparent preoccupation his expression still held the challenge which had been evident in him all through the evening. Was he behaving with such truculence because he was guilty and knew the net to be closing about him? Or because he was guilty and was trying to create an exaggerated impression of guilt in order that, paradoxically, it would be thought that he was giving himself away so utterly that he must be innocent? Or because he was innocent?
Tremaine was not given the opportunity of pursuing his thoughts along what would, in any case, merely have been a circular road leading him back to his starting-point. Paul Russell was trying to attract his attention. The doctor was talking to Karen Hammond and her husband, and evidently he was mindful of his friend’s request to meet Philip Hammond.
The introductions were made. Tremaine knew that he was being subjected to a close scrutiny; as their hands met, Philip Hammond’s eyes searched his face with more than a conventional curiosity. It was as though the other was weighing him up, making a shrewd if necessarily quick estimate of his capabilities.
He fancied that the man was disappointed. Was there a faint trace of dismay in his attitude? Tremaine thought that it was quite possible, although he could not see why Philip Hammond should react in such a manner. People very often did experience an initial sense of disappointment when they came face to face with an elderly, benevolent-looking ex-tobacconist, with an old-fashioned pair of pince-nez balancing, by no more than the mercy of Providence, on the end of his nose, instead of with a strong-jawed, obvious sleuth, with manhunter stamped on his lean and hungry features.
However, Hammond said nothing to produce the suspicion that such were his particular thoughts. The conversation followed routine lines.
‘What did you think of the play, Mordecai?’ asked Russell.
‘Strong meat, Paul,’ he returned. ‘But it should be a big success. I thought the production was excellent.’
‘Thanks to Sandy,’ said Karen Hammond. ‘She’s worked harder than any of us to get things going.’
‘I thought Mr. Vaughan played his part very well,’ observed Tremaine.
He expected that there would be a sudden silence, and he was justified. There was.
‘Er—yes,’ said the doctor hastily, before the silence could become too painful. ‘Martin is usually pretty good.’
Neither Karen Hammond nor her husband made any attempt to elaborate Russell’s remark. Tremaine saw that his seed had fallen upon stony ground. He said:
‘I thought you were very good, too, Mrs. Hammond. Have you done much acting?’
‘No,’ she said, with a smile. ‘This is the first time on any stage—except for small parts at school when I was dragooned into making an appearance. I’m afraid you’re trying to flatter me.’
‘On the contrary, I thought you played extremely well,’ he told her. He added questioningly, ‘Mr. Hammond isn’t taking any part then?’
Philip Hammond started to make a reply, but his wife broke in quickly before he could do more than shape the first words.
‘No—Philip’s business engagements make it awkward for him to attend rehearsals,’ she said, ‘so he decided that it wouldn’t be fair to the others to take a definite part. He did try, but he found it so difficult to get away on several occasions that he had to give up the idea. That was when we were just reading the play,’ she explained. ‘Before we had the cast arranged.’
‘Let me see,’ said Russell, ‘wasn’t it suggested that you should take Shannon’s part, Philip? Opposite your wife? I’ve an idea you weren’t keen on it, though.’
Karen Hammond revealed a momentary agitation, but her husband was unmoved.
‘That’s right, Paul,’ he returned calmly. ‘It was suggested. But I turned it down for the reason Karen gave—it’s so infernally difficult sometimes to get away from the office. That’s part of the price I have to pay for the pleasure of living in Dalmering,’ he said to Tremaine.
That gentleman nodded understandingly.
‘It’s a pleasure which is certainly well worth paying for.’
In a moment or two the group was broken up—Geoffrey Manning called across to Karen Hammond with a question about a tennis party which had apparently been arranged some while before and was now likely to be cancelled—and Tremaine took advantage of his release to explore the hall more thoroughly. He had had ample opportunity of studying the main part of the building whilst the rehearsal had been in progress, but he was curious to see of what the rest of it consisted.
The stage, although not elaborate, was a workmanlike affair, with double curtains. They appeared, most unusually for amateur properties, to work smoothly and reliably. Behind the stage were several small rooms. There was one on either side, each used as a dressing-room, and these two were connected by a third, somewhat larger, so that it was possible to leave the stage on one side and reappear on the other without having to go out of the building in order to avoid being seen by the audience when the play required a change of entrance.
This centre room contained a big porcelain sink provided with two taps, a gas-ring and a fair-sized gas-stove. Upon a plain kitchen table there was a neat pile of cups and saucers, a jug stil
l containing a little milk, and canisters of tea and sugar. This, apparently, was the nerve-centre of the production; no doubt innumerable cups of tea had been brewed here during rehearsals, although tonight—probably by virtue of the atmosphere created by Martin Vaughan—looked like being a departure from precedent.
‘They tell me,’ said a quiet voice, ‘that you’re a detective.’
Tremaine had heard the sound of light footsteps on the bare boards. He turned without haste. It was Philip Hammond who had followed him inside.
‘It’s a little—exaggerated,’ he said deprecatingly.
‘Maybe,’ said Hammond. He seemed quite cool, entirely self-possessed. His eyes were still appraising, judging. ‘You know, of course, who killed Lydia.’
His level statement brought a look of surprise to Tremaine’s face. Hammond saw it and smiled.
‘Naturally, you aren’t going to commit yourself. But we don’t need to beat about the bush. It was Vaughan. When are you going to arrest him?’
‘But I’ve no power to arrest people, Mr. Hammond. And isn’t that rather a grave accusation to make against Mr. Vaughan?’
‘Murder is rather a grave business,’ replied Hammond, and Tremaine was not quite sure whether he was being mocked. ‘You may not be able to arrest anyone, but your friend Inspector Boyce isn’t in the same category.’ He took a step closer. He lowered his voice. ‘We all know that Vaughan is the man you want. Why don’t you get it over with? Arrest him and finish the whole wretched affair. Every miserable little reporter in the country will be coming down here poking and prying. Dalmering is being turned into a peep-show for every morbid-minded sensation-seeking busybody for miles around. There’ll be no privacy for any of us soon. Put Vaughan behind bars, give him what he deserves and let’s forget this thing ever happened.’
Tremaine tried to think of something adequate to say and failed. Hammond misconstrued his silence.
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