Mordecai Tremaine sighed. The day was beautiful. The sky was again blue and cloudless and the slight breeze of the night before had had the effect of tempering what might have been an over-fierce sun, so that it was pleasantly warm. It was a bitter reflection that beneath the fragrance and the sunshine there lurked hate and fear and lustful murder.
He saw tears glistening in Edith Lorrington’s eyes, saw a tiny, only partially opened rose fall from her hand into the grave. She was displaying far more emotion than he had so far observed in her. Did she know about that five hundred pounds in Lydia Dare’s will, and was this public exhibition of grief intended for the eyes of the village?
The thought was fully formed in Mordecai Tremaine’s mind before he knew that it was on its way. He recoiled from it. Because he had taken it upon himself to investigate murder, did it mean that he had to become cynically suspicious; that he had to find a base motive behind every human appearance and action?
He knew the answer. Knew it instinctively, without a prolonged mental searching of his soul. He had only reacted as he had trained himself to react and as he had done when Jonathan Boyce had given him the news that Paul was the chief beneficiary under the will. Murderers did not shriek their guilt aloud to the world. They betrayed themselves in little things. That was why he had to be critical. That was why he had to watch for every detail and take nothing for granted but be constantly on the alert for the tiniest slip which might be an indication of guilt.
Coming away from the churchyard he caught sight of Pauline Conroy and Serge Galeski. Upon Galeski’s face there was an expression of polite boredom, but Pauline bore herself with the conscious dignity of a leading figure in the tragedy. Tremaine guessed that the dark tie Galeski was wearing with his sports jacket was a gesture to convention which Pauline had prevailed upon him to make. As he passed them he fancied that Pauline gave him a half-smile of recognition. She said something quickly to Galeski and that untidily dressed gentleman gave him a definite if somewhat brief nod.
Tremaine smiled back and went on his way a little puzzled. He had not expected such gracious acknowledgment from Pauline Conroy. Her dark ladyship appeared to be developing a manner which was almost friendly.
The corpulent but indubitably important-looking and confidence-inspiring Mr. Burgess, who was the middle portion of Dereford, Burgess and Dereford, paid a visit to what was now Sandra Borne’s cottage during the afternoon and made public the contents of the will. Only a handful of people who had been requested to be present—Sandra Borne herself, Edith Lorrington, Gerald Farrant, the Russells and Lydia Dare’s father—were there to hear the terms read out, but it was not long before the news of the legacies was common knowledge.
Tongues were soon wagging all over the village and the most favoured topic of conversation was the fact that Dr. Russell had been left the bulk of Lydia Dare’s monetary estate.
The doctor himself had seemed genuinely surprised—and a trifle disconcerted. He had turned to his companions and to the solicitor, expressing doubts as to whether the will really represented Lydia’s feelings. He had drawn attention to the date; insisted that her father, Sandra, or Farrant, should accept some or all of the sum which had been left to him.
But Burgess had assured him of the will’s validity. There was no doubt that it was perfectly legal, and the others had refused to listen to any suggestion that some sort of compromise should be worked out.
‘If Lydia said that you were t’have t’ money, doctor,’ the old man Dare had stated in his blunt Yorkshire manner, ‘then have it you shall. Lydia always knew what she was doing and I’m standing by what she wanted. She knew that her mother and I weren’t wanting for owt. We’ve all we need for all t’ days we’ve left. Take it, doctor, and good luck in t’ researches.’
‘I agree with Mr. Dare,’ said Farrant. ‘It was obviously Lydia’s wish.’
‘You know the way I feel, Paul,’ said Sandra Borne. ‘Lydia and I understood each other. I know that she admired you and wanted to help you. It would have made her happy to know that she’d done something to help you do what you’ve always hoped to do.’
Somehow the legacy had seemed to exercise a dampening effect upon the atmosphere at ‘Roseland’. Russell had appeared ill-at-ease, and even Jean had developed a strangeness of manner. It was as though both of them felt that they had to guard their tongues; that they had to weigh their words before they spoke lest one of them should make a fatal error.
Sensing the constraint Tremaine tried to probe gently into his friend’s mind.
‘Will the legacy make much difference to you, Paul?’ he asked. ‘Will it be enough to enable you to give up your practice here?’
‘Not immediately,’ the other replied, ‘but it will certainly make it possible for me to get away much more quickly than I’d imagined, I can start making plans—start looking around for the right instruments and a decent laboratory, for instance. Normally it would have taken me a few more years to reach that stage and by that time my ambition might have died on me.’
‘Yes, I suppose there was that danger,’ said Tremaine slowly. ‘Ambition is inclined to die off as the years slip by. It tends to make one impatient of achieving one’s goal.’
Jean rattled a tea-cup nervously against its saucer. Russell, too, seemed momentarily at a loss, and Tremaine did not pursue the subject. Obviously it was not likely to make for his enjoyment of his tea.
A rehearsal of Murder Has a Motive had been fixed for that evening. It had been arranged before the time of the funeral had been known and it had not been cancelled through some general lack of co-ordination. The fact caused the proceedings to start off at a disadvantage, and they never recovered from it but plunged progressively deeper into gloom.
The atmosphere engendered by the funeral seemed to have produced a state of nervous tension. Tempers were short and Tremaine observed several little outbursts which were patently due solely to the general unhappy air of suspicion and depression. He had made his way to the village hall for a variety of reasons when he had learned of the rehearsal. Paul, of course, as one of the principal players, had been under an obligation to attend, and it had been natural for him to extend an invitation to his friend to accompany him. Secondly, he had wanted a further opportunity of studying the various actors in the real-life drama which was being played around him and had wanted to observe their latest reactions. And thirdly, he had developed a considerable interest in Murder Has a Motive and was anxious to see it performed again.
Martin Vaughan, uncommunicative, inclined, in fact, to be more than off-hand with anyone who approached him, but at the same time watching his colleagues with a darting, watchful intentness, his eyes alive with a curious probing quality, was one of the early arrivals. He just missed Gerald Farrant, who arrived some five minutes afterwards and took a seat in the gloom at the back of the hall, where he sat unmoving, his attention fixed upon the stage.
From the beginning the performance was ragged and uninspired. Sandra Borne was taking Jean’s place as prompter (Jean had been prevented by various urgent domestic duties from attending) and was doubling that task with her others as producer and stage manager. She was kept fully occupied, for this time, unlike the previous rehearsal where most of them had appeared to be almost word-perfect, there were many painful halts when lines were forgotten, or missed cues when they were wrongly spoken. It was possible to see the production heading for inevitable disaster; each scene was a little less well played, a little more out of control.
Vaughan was revealing none of his old fire. No longer did he tower above the rest of the company. He had sunk into mediocrity and worse. He spoke his lines mechanically and without feeling.
Tremaine had to admit that the only performance worth applauding was Pauline Conroy’s. There was no disputing her talent as an actress. At the side of her dark vitality Paul Russell as her controlling genius was a clumsy wooden puppet who deceived no one.
Phyllis Galway and Geoffrey Manning did their best t
o infuse life into the play, but appealing though the girl’s youthful beauty was, and enthusiastic though Manning tried to be, their abilities were not enough to defeat the prevailing lack of spirit, and they too were not altogether free from the depression and were in consequence guilty of occasional lapses.
Howard Shannon was unable to concentrate or to remember his lines for more than a few moments at a time. Again and again Sandra Borne was compelled to correct him, and Tremaine could see that she was gradually losing her patience. Her own nerves had not remained unaffected and although she was making obvious efforts to remain calm it was clear that she would not be able to hold in her temper much longer.
The situation had degenerated to a point where the simplest incident, and one which would normally have been laughed aside, was sufficient to awake a storm, and very shortly one such incident arose. During the course of the play, as Tremaine now knew, Howard Shannon as the unfaithful husband was murdered (off-stage) by his outraged and jealous wife. The plot required that the wife should effect to ‘discover’ his body, in the presence of witnesses, inside a large tin trunk, and since the trunk occupied a position on the stage for some ten minutes of the scene in question before the discovery was made, it was therefore necessary for Shannon to spend some while in cramped confinement.
At the previous rehearsal Tremaine had remarked upon the passion for detail which had been displayed, inasmuch as Shannon’s ‘body’ had actually been ‘discovered’ in the trunk although there had been no need to convince an audience. But tonight the plump man displayed a violent reluctance to perform the duty. He made the point that it was merely a rehearsal and that there was no necessity for him to undergo the discomfort. He acted, in fact, like a petulant small boy stubbornly refusing to play as his companions wanted.
He made quite a scene and Tremaine saw Sandra Borne bite her lip in annoyance.
‘What’s the matter with you, Howard? You’ve never made this fuss before.’
‘I don’t see why I should have to stay in that confounded trunk,’ he persisted sulkily. ‘We’re only rehearsing, aren’t we?’
‘I know, but we’ve always made a point of playing it as much like the real thing as possible.’
‘I’m not doing it, anyway. The whole thing’s a stupid waste of time.’
‘All right,’ she said hastily, recognizing the danger sign in his voice, ‘we’ll leave it for tonight. But you might put the trunk in position, Howard, so that we can at least make some pretence at it. You’ll find it over there behind the scenery.’
Still protesting and grumbling the plump man began to drag the trunk from its place in the darkness of the wings into the position in which it was required on the stage for the ensuing scene.
‘It’s darned heavy,’ he said petulantly, ‘why can’t we let it go for once?’
‘If we’re going to play the scene at all,’ snapped Sandra Borne, ‘we’ve got to play it properly.’
It was the first time Mordecai Tremaine had seen her control really go, and the ragged note of anger made itself evident to Shannon and sobered him, for he completed his task without any further argument.
The scene was mainly carried by Karen Hammond, the climax being her pretence of surprise and horror as she ‘discovered’ the body of her husband. She was shown as cleverly trying to build up an alibi; it was not until the last act of the play that her guilt was revealed.
She began haltingly. Like Vaughan, she seemed to have her mind centred upon something else and to have no interest in what she was saying.
Tremaine looked around the gloomy hall. Philip Hammond was not there. He glanced back to the beautiful woman on the stage and tried to read the haunted expression in her eyes. What lay behind her strange evasiveness where her husband was concerned? What was she attempting to conceal?
The drama limped on, approached its climax. Karen Hammond spoke the lines, apparently casual but in reality premeditated, which were intended to give her the opportunity of opening the trunk in front of Paul Russell and Geoffrey Manning, with whom she was playing the scene.
She walked towards the trunk. She threw back the lid. She screamed.
The scream was part of her performance. It was a very realistic scream.
But suddenly Mordecai Tremaine was aware that something was wrong. Karen Hammond was no longer keeping to her part.
She was still screaming—wildly, hysterically, as though she would never stop.
He heard Sandra Borne’s voice, sharp with panic and anxiety.
‘Karen—what is it?’
Tremaine came out of his seat and ran for the stage. He did not trouble to use the steps at the side but clambered hastily over the footlights. He made straight for the open trunk at the side of which Karen Hammond was standing like a woman demented.
And then, in an incredible moment of horrified comprehension, he understood why the screams had not stopped. Staring up at him from the interior of the trunk was the queerly pink and distorted face of Philip Hammond. But the wide open eyes which were meeting his own with such a frightful intensity could see nothing, for Philip Hammond was undoubtedly dead.
12
THE NEWSPAPERS HAD made the most of their opportunity. ‘Horror Comes to Dalmering’ said the two-inch headlines of the Daily View, over photographs of the village hall and of the entrance to the copse bearing a prominent X, ‘Unknown Killer Claims Second Victim’. And, adding its voice to the chorus: ‘Beautiful Widow’s Ghastly Ordeal’, said the Morning Globe. ‘Finds Husband’s Body in Trunk: Who is the Mystery Murderer?’
The headlines were the model for the accounts which followed. The circumstances in which Philip Hammond’s body had been discovered would have been dramatic enough had they only been recounted in a plain, matter-of-fact manner; under the exuberant pens of some of Fleet Street’s most colourful writers they formed the foundation for columns of vivid prose which were not lacking in adjectives.
The murder of Lydia Dare had already focused attention upon the village. The second murder, therefore, fell upon fruitful soil which had already been well prepared. Enough information had been gleaned by the journalists who had been despatched to cover the original story to enable a firm background to be provided, and the provision had been lavish.
It was perhaps a natural development that the macabre element should have been stressed. Its news value was too great for it to be passed over. The scene in the village hall had been reconstructed, not without a certain freedom of description, and Karen Hammond had been featured as a tragic figure of beauty occupying the central place in a drama terrifying in its grotesqueness.
Mordecai Tremaine read Barry Anston’s report in the Daily Record several times. The journalist had written what was perhaps the most detailed account of all. It was evident that his time in Dalmering had been well spent. He revealed a knowledge of the village and its inhabitants which was a proof of a great deal of painstaking investigation.
In addition to his recital of the facts, which although both accurate and arresting contained nothing which Mordecai Tremaine did not know, Anston had also written a general article on the two murders in which he had allowed himself the luxury of some highly imaginative passages. Tremaine could tell that he had enjoyed himself when he had been setting them down.
What is the secret of Dalmering? [he had written]. What strange, grim truth lies behind the horror which has fallen like a malevolent shadow across this beautiful and once quietly peaceful village?
It is impossible to live here, as I have done during these past few days, and not sense the tragedy which seems to permeate all its beauty. There is evil in the air. Does that seem a fantastic statement for a hardened crime reporter to make? Nevertheless it is true. The foul presence of murder can be detected in the atmosphere. It is as though the neighbourhood is being haunted by some unspeakable fiend which has been conjured up from the depths of the inferno and needs to be exorcised before peace can come back again.
One looks out upon some of the love
liest scenes to be found anywhere in this English garden of ours. But there is no pleasure in them. For one’s mind whispers that there it was that Lydia Dare was struck down. In that place Philip Hammond died. And the horror of their deaths has caused fragrance to perish and beauty to wither away.
Twice already has the evil been unleashed. Will there be a third time? Will there be a third dreadful manifestation and a third victim?
That question dominates life in this little community. That is why, as I write, people’s voices are hushed and no children play in the sunlit roadway outside my window. That is the reason for the unspoken terror which, at this moment lies paralysingly over the village of Dalmering.
Mordecai Tremaine folded the newspaper carefully, and, leaning back in his deck chair, gazed reflectively up at the blue sky. He found the article interesting. It tended to support the theory which had been slowly developing in his mind.
He had not been openly expecting the murder of Philip Hammond. Which is to say that when it had come it had shocked and horrified him. But he had gradually become aware of a strange belief in his mind that he had known about it all along and that it had not come as such a surprise to him as it should have been.
He had tried to tell himself that it was a mere trick of his brain—a sensation, for instance, such as people often experienced when they went into a room which they knew was strange to them and yet in which they had a suddenly odd feeling that they had been before. It was something to do with the relativity of time and the subconscious mind receiving an impression the tiniest fraction of a second before the conscious mind also received it.
And yet, somehow, his reasoning had not been convincing. He had not been able to rid himself of the persistent idea that he had known that the murder must come. It was absurd, of course. He could not have known. Had he even suspected that such a thing was possible he would have gone at once to Jonathan Boyce and laid what facts he had before him. The tear-streaked, haunted face of Karen Hammond had come into his mind. Never again did he want to see such utter misery and despair in the eyes of a human being. It was not true that he could have known that tragedy so devastating was stalking her and yet have remained inactive. He would have accounted himself a criminal as black as the murderer himself.
Murder has a Motive Page 17