‘I think we could manage that.’ She gave him a glance of curiosity. ‘Would you come upstairs?’
Mordecai Tremaine followed her obediently, and in a few moments he was speaking to the typist whom he had made the journey to Kingshampton to see. He had a number of questions to ask concerning Murder Has a Motive, and apparently the answers he received were satisfactory, for he quitted the premises in a confident state of mind, albeit he left behind him several very puzzled ladies.
For the rest of the day, after his return to Dalmering, Tremaine appeared to be no more than an inactive spectator of the busy village scene, but when it was dark he made his way to the Admiral Inn. Here it was that he had arranged to see Jonathan Boyce. He entered the inn by the side door and went up to the low-ceilinged but pleasant room the other was occupying. The inspector was drinking thirstily but gloomily from a pint tankard.
‘Hullo,’ he said morosely. ‘Find yourself a chair.’
Tremaine accepted the invitation, and when he was comfortably seated in a wicker chair which allowed him to lie back at his ease:
‘Have the brickbats started to fly already?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Boyce, ‘but they’ll be coming. I’ve been expecting a personal message from the Commissioner all day.’
‘You can’t do more than you have been doing,’ said his visitor consolingly.
‘I could make an arrest.’
Tremaine eyed the Yard man expectantly.
‘What have you found out? That Martin Vaughan hasn’t an alibi?’
‘Correct,’ nodded the other. ‘He admitted himself that he was out of his house at the time when the medical opinion states that Hammond must have been killed. He didn’t go back there for a long time after the rehearsal at the village hall. On the night of the first murder, if you remember, his man Blenkinson said that his master was in his study from the time Lydia Dare left until the time he went to bed. But as far as the night before last is concerned—the night of Hammond’s murder—Blenkinson says quite definitely that Vaughan didn’t come in until a very late hour.’
‘And Vaughan doesn’t deny it?’
‘In the face of Blenkinson’s evidence he isn’t in a position to.’
‘I suppose his explanation of his whereabouts is a thin one?’
‘You’ve guessed it,’ said Boyce. ‘He was wandering around—didn’t feel like going to bed and stayed out in search of fresh air.’
‘At the rehearsal last night,’ said Tremaine, ‘he looked pleased with himself—at least, he looked as confident as I’ve ever seen him. What did you make of his attitude towards Hammond’s death?’
‘Non-committal,’ returned the inspector. ‘He didn’t shed any tears but at the same time he didn’t act as though he was trying to hide anything. In fact, he seemed almost casual about it.’
The wicker chair creaked as Mordecai Tremaine leaned even farther back in it so that he could stare at the ceiling.
‘If Vaughan killed Lydia Dare. . . . If Philip Hammond knew it and not only knew it, but was in a position to prove it. . . . If Vaughan knew that he knew, and if he killed Hammond in order to safeguard himself . . . then it’s very possible that he would be going around looking satisfied with himself—because he had removed a potential source of danger—and that he would display a casual, almost a callous attitude towards the murder.’
‘Vaughan would need to be a cold-blooded devil to make that true,’ observed Boyce. ‘A madman, in fact.’
‘Whoever killed Hammond was cold-blooded,’ said Tremaine. ‘And Vaughan’s behaviour hasn’t exactly been consistently normal. But I agree that the case against him, although it all adds up, is largely theorizing. Is there any solid proof? Did you connect him with those footprints in the copse, for instance?’
‘The prints were made by boots,’ returned the inspector, ‘and Vaughan habitually wears shoes. On the other hand, they were bigger than Vaughan’s normal prints, so that if he had worn the right-sized boots on that one occasion he could quite easily have made them. Which brings us back to where we were.’
He returned to his tankard and was inarticulate for a satisfying period. When he was once again able to carry on a conversation:
‘I’m still not satisfied, Mordecai,’ he announced. ‘Vaughan could be our man. He could have committed both murders. In fact, it looks as though he did, and yet I don’t like it.’
‘You mean it’s all too obvious?’
‘Something like that. As a suspect he leaps to the eye too easily.’
‘Suppose,’ said Tremaine, ‘that a murderer knew that no matter how clever he was he couldn’t hope to avoid coming under suspicion. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to make himself look like a murderer?’
‘My brain,’ said Boyce, ‘isn’t working very well. I’ve had a hard day.’
‘If the murderer knew that it was inevitable that sooner or later the possibility of his being guilty would come under examination, he might deliberately draw attention upon himself from the very beginning. He might even set out to act like a guilty man—for instance, he might go out of his way to be unsociable and make it quite plain that he was under suspicion. It would be a dangerous game, of course, especially if there was any flaw in his plans, but it might lead the police to think that he was such an obvious murderer that he couldn’t possibly be one in actual fact. Little points which they might regard as highly significant if he tried to gloss them over might come to be regarded as having no real importance.’
‘I see,’ said the Yard man, ‘what you’re driving at. But I’m not anxious to bring a definite charge against Vaughan until I’ve cleared up several other points. There’s that fellow Shannon, for example. After what you told me when we were having tea the other day, I set to work on that story of his again. Until I’ve had the latest reports in and until I’ve had a chance to tackle Anston and find out exactly what he knows, I’m not leaving Shannon out of my thoughts. Why did he refuse to get into that trunk last night? That’s another thing we’ll need to clear up.’
‘Everybody was in a bad state of nerves. They’d been gradually going to pieces all day. Shannon was feeling the strain just like all the others and that happened to be his particular outburst.’
‘He’d never objected to getting into the trunk before,’ said Boyce, ‘and there must have been plenty of other rehearsals. Why did he choose last night for his refusal? Was it because he knew Hammond’s body was there?’
‘He did not wait for any answer to his questions, which had, in any case, been plainly rhetorical.
‘Then here’s Mrs. Hammond,’ he went on, and Mordecai Tremaine gave a gentle sigh.
‘I thought it was coming,’ he said. ‘You’re not satisfied with her story.’
‘No,’ said Boyce, ‘I’m not. I’m beginning to get used to people telling me only half the truth in this village. Philip Hammond attended the rehearsal at the village hall and was seen to leave it with his wife. After that nobody saw him again until his body was discovered—forty-eight hours later. Why didn’t Karen Hammond say that he was missing? Why didn’t she at least tell me?’
‘Any explanation?’
‘She said,’ the inspector replied, ‘that her husband’s business claimed a great deal of his time and that he often had to go to London at short notice. She said that there was a telephone message from his office just after they reached the house. She said that he left almost immediately and that she hadn’t seen him again.’
‘Did she tell you that she herself took the message? Or that her husband answered the ’phone and told her that it was from his office asking him to go up?’
‘She said that it was her husband who answered the ’phone,’ admitted Boyce. ‘But there wasn’t a telephone call from London that night. I didn’t believe there had been, of course, but I checked up with the local exchange to make certain. I also found out that Philip Hammond didn’t leave for London by train—he was nowhere in the neighbourhood of the station—a
nd he didn’t leave by road because his car is still in the garage at this moment.’
‘The conclusion being,’ murmured Mordecai Tremaine, ‘that Karen Hammond’s story is full of holes.’
He raised himself out of the protesting wicker chair. He stood looking down at his companion.
‘Jonathan,’ he said quietly, ‘I don’t suppose that you’re anxious for there to be a third murder?’
The inspector started so violently that he was barely able to save his tankard from being swept to the floor.
‘Have you gone crazy?’ he demanded.
‘I’m afraid, Jonathan—honestly and dreadfully afraid.’ Tremaine leaned over the table, and the note of seriousness in his voice was so genuine that Boyce’s expression of protest died half-formed on his lips. ‘I’m telling you now—if you want to prevent more tragedy and more terror in this doomed village—watch Pauline Conroy! ’
‘Pauline Conroy?’ The inspector’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘You mean that she’s—’
‘I can’t tell you what I mean. I’m not even certain exactly what I’m thinking. But watch her, Jonathan, watch her day and night. Don’t lose sight of her for one single moment! ’
Mordecai Tremaine straightened. He turned. Inspector Boyce, his tankard still clutched in his right hand, heard his footsteps echo back from the bare oak stairs as he went out, heard him open the door of the inn, heard the sharp sound of it closing behind him.
13
THE CARRIAGE WHEELS were drumming out the same phrase over and over again in a rhythmically soothing if oddly accented repetition. Ka-ren Ham-mond . . . Ka-ren Ham-mond. . . .
And then the train rattled and swayed over multitudinous points and Mordecai Tremaine came out of his doze with a start to find that they were running through the South London suburbs.
Karen Hammond had been on his mind ever since he had left Dalmering that morning. She had been on his mind because he was afraid. Because he was afraid of what he would very soon find out. Because he knew that a tangled twisted story lay behind her grief-stricken, tragic eyes and behind the death of Philip Hammond—and because he shrank from facing it although he knew that it was inescapable.
A dozen times during the journey he had thought over what little he already knew. He had recalled her hunted expression that night at ‘Roseland’ and the pleading, desperate appeal in her face when she had stopped him later in the roadway. He had recalled the ferrety Hornsby and his interest in the Hammonds, and the fear of him which Karen Hammond had tried to conceal. He had recalled that glaring fact with which Jonathan Boyce had found himself face to face—the fact that Philip Hammond had been murdered a full forty-eight hours before his death had been revealed and that in all that time his wife had not voiced any anxiety because she had had no news of him nor had she done anything to set enquiries on foot.
And he had recalled the obvious tension she had betrayed on the night after that upon which her husband was now known to have died, and the strangeness of the expression she had used to Paul Russell when she had deliberately lingered in the hallway so that she could speak to him:
‘. . . Whatever happens, please don’t—please don’t think too hardly of me.’
What was it which had driven her to speak? Mordecai Tremaine had thought of the most likely reasons and his sentimental soul had been agonized.
The train pulled into Victoria station. Tremaine took a taxi, and within thirty-five minutes he was enjoying a cup of coffee with Miss Anita Lane in her charming Kensington flat. Anita Lane was well known to a great many people who had never met her. She had built up a reputation as one of the most reliable, if sometimes slightly pungent critics in London, and her articles on stage and film matters were eagerly read and her judgment respected.
She was a softly spoken, greying-haired woman of fifty, charming in manner and able to talk intelligently upon many topics. Mordecai Tremaine had met her on one of his periodic visits to London to see Jonathan Boyce. The inspector had introduced them—it was surprising the number of people with whom he seemed to be acquainted and how varied were their interests—and they had taken a liking to each other on sight. They had met several times since and corresponded regularly, and Tremaine knew that he was always sure of a friendly reception at the artistically furnished little flat in which a portable typewriter was the only visible sign of Anita Lane’s literary activities.
She allowed him to finish his coffee and the chocolate biscuit which went with it. And then:
‘Now, Mordecai, what’s the reason for this unexpected visit? You don’t usually arrive without letting me know of your intention in your letters beforehand, so I take it that it’s something special.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is,’ he admitted. ‘I’m staying in Dalmering at the moment, and—’
‘Dalmering?’ She drew her eyebrows together suddenly at the name and then made a gesture towards the newspapers she had evidently been reading before his arrival. ‘You mean that Dalmering? You’ve been detecting again!’
‘Well, I suppose you could call it that,’ he told her. ‘Jonathan Boyce is there and I have been taking a sort of interest in the case. That’s why I’ve come to see you, Nita.’ He held out the square, brown-paper parcel he had brought with him. ‘I’d like you to read this play for me.’
‘A play?’ she said, amusedly. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve started on the road to ruin!’ And then her expression changed. ‘Oh—you mean the play they’re producing in the village—the one they were rehearsing when the body was discovered on the stage! Let me see—Murder Has a Motive. . . . Isn’t that it?’
‘That,’ said Tremaine, ‘is it.’ He unwrapped the parcel and handed her the bundle of manuscript it contained. ‘I’d like you to read it, Nita, and give me your opinion of it. Unless,’ he added, as an afterthought, ‘you’ve read it already.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I haven’t read it.’ She glanced down at the typescript. ‘Alexis Kent—I can’t say I’ve heard the name.’
Mordecai Tremaine looked at his watch.
‘It’s almost eleven o’clock. I’ll call back for you in an hour and a half and you can come out to lunch with me. That is,’ he added hastily, ‘if you haven’t a previous engagement.’
‘If I had one I’d cancel it,’ she told him. ‘This sounds exciting. Anyway, I’m not doing very much at the moment—that’s why you found me in. Off you go, Mordecai. For the next hour and a half I’m not to be disturbed!’
Tremaine smiled. He did not wish to stay in the flat because he was anxious that she should read through the play he had brought without the distraction of having to look after the comfort of a visitor. He knew that an hour and a half free of interruption would be ample time for her to dissect it. Hers was a quick, agile brain, and it had been trained in such tasks.
He himself found plenty to entertain him during the time of waiting. London always fascinated him. Its huge grey buildings, its air of having its roots immovably in the earth, its busy traffic and its hurrying millions, its power and drive and its tremendous sense of life, never failed to arouse the small boy in him, never failed to send him through its streets wide-eyed with the wonder of its high adventure.
When he returned to the flat Anita was waiting for him, and over lunch a few streets away in a small but perfect restaurant whose chef made of each dish a labour of love, she gave him her opinion.
‘It’s immature, Mordecai. The construction could be tightened and the dialogue needs pruning. But it has something. There’s life in it. You can sense that it was written white hot. The whole thing rushes along almost as though it got out of control and the author couldn’t do much about it.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s funny, but in places I found it almost—almost terrible.’
‘That’s interesting,’ remarked Tremaine. ‘Decidedly interesting.’ His eyes were shining behind his pince-nez. ‘Thank you, Nita. I knew your opinion would be invaluable.’
‘The pleasure was mine,’ she said. ‘I feel I’ve
made a discovery. I’d like to meet Alexis Kent. She must be an intriguing person.’
‘She?’ he interjected sharply.
‘Why, yes. It is a woman, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tremaine. ‘Yet.’
He stayed talking with Anita Lane as long as she would allow him—conversation with her was always stimulating—but finally she told him with regret that she would have to leave.
‘I’m not doing a great deal,’ she said, ‘but I am doing something. I’ve a column to finish for the Stage Review. A girl must live.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said contritely. ‘I’ve been talking away like a selfish old man and completely forgetting that you must have work to do.’
There was a frequent service to Dalmering—it was on one of the main Southern electric lines—and he had only ten minutes to wait at Victoria, for he arrived at an opportune time. He came out of the little station at the end of the journey with the pleasant feeling that his arrival at ‘Roseland’ would coincide with tea.
He was walking down the roadway towards the house when he saw Geoffrey Manning. The other nodded and would have passed on, but Tremaine beckoned to him.
‘Just a moment, Manning, if you don’t mind—I was hoping I might see you.’
Manning came across to him. He looked a little apprehensive. His acquaintance with Inspector Boyce, thought Tremaine wryly, seemed to be inducing an increasing amount of apprehension in the local inhabitants. Pauline Conroy had revealed hers by a sudden display of friendship; Manning, not possessing such a well-developed talent for acting, was revealing his more obviously.
‘Terrible business about Hammond,’ remarked Tremaine.
‘It’s hard for Karen,’ said the younger man. ‘She’s prostrate, they say.’
He was looking uncomfortable. He knew that these were merely the preliminaries and that the mildly speaking man with the pince-nez who was reported to be on such close terms with the Scotland Yard detective who was in charge of the murder investigations had not stopped him in order to indulge in banal remarks.
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