‘You wrote Murder Has a Motive. You wrote it with the deliberate intention of seeing the murders in the play paralleled in real life. You wrote it so that it would be a pointer to the police as to the identity of the guilty persons when the crimes were being investigated.
‘It was in your cleverness that your mistakes began. You took the manuscript of the play to Kingshampton to have it typed. You told the typing agency that it was a play which was out of print and of which you wanted a copy. That move was careless—especially as Edith Lorrington was on friendly terms with the people who run the typing agency in question—but it happens to be the only one of its kind in this area, and I don’t doubt that you relied upon the fact that even if enquiries did happen to be made and the question of the original manuscript was raised, you could always say that your friend Lydia had asked you to take it over for her. And Lydia, being dead, would not be able to deny your story.
‘But you overlooked one little point. A lot of people in the village could have written parts of Murder Has a Motive. More than one of them probably suspected or guessed that Martin Vaughan was in love with Lydia Dare. But at the time when the play must have been written there was only one person who could have known so much about the lives of Dalmering’s inhabitants and who could also have known that Lydia was in love with someone else—and that person was her closest friend, Sandra Borne, in whom it was natural that she should have confided. Because at that time no one else in the village knew that Lydia Dare had even met Gerald Farrant, still less that she was in love with him! ’
Tremaine paused. There was no sound in the hall—only the harsh, spasmodic, over-emphasized noise of the laboured, unnatural breathing of the woman he was indicting. The others were sitting perfectly still, not looking at Sandra Borne, waiting for him to unfold the remainder of the grim tragedy under whose shadow they had been living.
‘A little while ago,’ he said, ‘I took the manuscript of the play up to Anita Lane, the London stage and film writer. She happens to be a friend of mine, and I asked her to read it and let me have her opinion. She told me that she thought that the author was a woman and that in places her own thoughts and desires had crept into the dialogue she had written for her characters. It confirmed my belief that, if I wanted to find “Alexis Kent”, I need look no farther than Sandra Borne.
‘When I was at Dr. Russell’s house on one occasion,’ he went on, still speaking directly to a white-faced woman whose staring eyes were not looking at him, ‘you tried to give the impression that you hadn’t known of Farrant’s existence for a long while; that Lydia hadn’t confided in you. It was too close to my arrival here for me to have developed any real suspicions, but it didn’t seem to me to tally with what I’d been told about the closeness of your relations with Lydia Dare. And when, one by one, the other points began to arise, I was certain that you’d lied.
‘You remember why you called that evening, don’t you? Ostensibly it was to relieve your mind because you’d not been frank with Inspector Boyce. You said that you hadn’t told him the truth because you hadn’t wished to injure your friend’s reputation or to throw suspicion on Martin Vaughan. Your real reason was to reveal to the inspector that Martin Vaughan had been in love with Lydia and to make quite certain that suspicion was thrown on him. You knew that if you came to Dr. Russell he would be forced to do his duty and advise you to tell the police the whole story.
‘You see, your plan didn’t stop at killing Lydia. You wanted to kill Martin Vaughan as well. You wanted him to be hanged for the murder. You knew where Lydia was going that night, and what time she would be returning. You stole the knife from Vaughan’s house—you would have had ample opportunity during one of your visits to him with Lydia. And you stole a pair of gardening clogs from the shed in Dr. Russell’s garden. You wore those on the night of the murder. They were big enough to slip over your shoes—you have a very small foot—and they left a footprint which was sufficiently misleading for your purpose. It was clever of you to stand on the only patch of soft ground so that the police would have what looked like a valuable clue, but perhaps it was just a little overdone. It seemed too good to be true that the murderer should have stood so thoughtfully on just that spot, especially as it was too far from the bushes to make it likely that he was waiting in hiding there for any length of time. I was dubious about those two prints from the beginning. And there was that cigarette-end—it was another piece of local colour that didn’t seem to ring quite true. It hadn’t been stamped into the ground, as it might have been if a person who smoked so much that a cigarette had been a necessity even during those tense moments of waiting had thrown down the stump in a moment of forgetfulness and put a foot upon it automatically. It had been only half smoked, and it had clearly been pinched out between finger and thumb—almost as though it had been deliberately left there.
‘When Lydia Dare came along the path you leaped out upon her and killed her. She was your friend, but you struck her murderously down; hate strengthened your arm, drove the weapon deep into her yielding body. The knife, of course, you left; it was part of your plan that it should be discovered and traced to Martin Vaughan. The gardening clogs, which you had stolen several days previously, you returned at the first available moment. It had to be at a time when both Dr. Russell and his wife were out, and your opportunity came when they drove together to meet me at the station. When I was introduced to you for the first time you’d just appeared from behind the garage at ‘Roseland’—you’d obviously come from the garden. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but you’d just returned the clogs. The shed had been locked, but you had been able to pitch them in through the window. Dr. Russell found them later lying on the floor.’
Paul Russell had given a start when Tremaine had mentioned the gardening clogs. As he heard the explanation of their theft and return, a look of surprise and understanding came into his eyes. It mingled with the horror which had been there since that first accusation had been levelled at Sandra Borne.
‘Your plan seemed to be going well,’ went on Tremaine’s level, implacable tones. ‘Lydia was dead, and you were already doing all you could to embroil Martin Vaughan. If the question of Murder Has a Motive came up, you knew that suspicion would fall upon him again because his name had been connected with it from the very beginning. Everyone in the village believed that that particular play had been chosen because Vaughan had wanted it. The truth was that Lydia had asked him to use his influence to ensure its being performed and had asked him not to mention her name in connection with it. I’ve had a—a talk—with Mr. Vaughan’—Tremaine caressed his neck significantly—‘and he’s told me all that happened. He sponsored the play for Lydia’s sake. She asked him to do so for your sake. I don’t know what arguments you used in order to persuade her, but as the person she believed to be her dearest friend, she obviously would have been only too willing to help you and to keep your interest in the play secret.
‘The next step was the murder of Philip Hammond. You knew that he was on intimate terms with another woman. You pretended to blackmail him, and instructed him to come to the village hall alone after one of the rehearsals. You were waiting for him in the darkness, and before he could defend himself you struck him with the hammer you had ready in your hand. You aren’t a big woman, but you had hate and desperation to nerve you, and the hammer was a vicious enough weapon to enable you to strike a blow which stunned him. You dragged him into the room at the back of the stage, and when you were certain that he was dead, you lifted him into the trunk which was used in the play.
‘There was a rehearsal on the day of Lydia Dare’s funeral. People thought that it hadn’t been cancelled because in the emotional upheaval everyone had overlooked it. But you hadn’t overlooked it. You didn’t cancel that rehearsal because you knew that Philip Hammond’s body was in the trunk and you wanted it to be discovered dramatically. You wanted to exact the last ounce of good measure from your revenge. You wanted to terrify and shock; to see fear and
horror in people’s faces.
‘You knew that sooner or later the fact that Philip Hammond was having an affaire would become known. I dare say that you would have taken good care that it did leak out. That would have set the stage for Karen Hammond’s torture, and the next scene in your devil’s plan. You wanted her to die for the murder of her husband.
‘By that time I was beginning to make progress. I thought I knew what you had done and what you would do next. I thought I knew whom it was you had intended to be the next to die. I made arrangements to prevent your succeeding again; to prevent your destruction of another human life. But something went wrong. You didn’t strike where I had expected. It was Edith Lorrington who was your victim.
‘At first I thought that my theory was false; that all the time I had been following the wrong track. And then I recalled what I should have recollected before, and I knew why you had been forced to kill Edith Lorrington instead of your intended victim. She was a menace to you. She herself was unaware of it, but you had no guarantee that she wouldn’t one day awake to the significance of what she knew. And when she did that, her knowledge might hang you.
‘Edith Lorrington suffered from insomnia. On the night that Lydia Dare died, she was walking about the neighbourhood and she happened to pass your cottage. She confirmed that you were in—as you had told the police—because she had seen the light and heard your wireless. But without realizing what it meant, she told Dr. Russell and myself that there had been a swing programme on. And it’s a well-known fact that you can’t stand swing, and that whenever a programme of that type comes on, you invariably switch off your radio! ’
There was triumph in Mordecai Tremaine’s voice. The triumph of a man who sees the steady, patient labours upon which he has been engaged coming to sure fruition. He said:
‘Edith Lorrington also told us that she wished to see you and lend you a new novel which she thought you would like. She said that she had tried to give it to you before but that she hadn’t been able to catch you. She didn’t say that she’d done so but, knowing her, I’m certain that, seeing the light in your cottage and being anxious to give you that novel, she not only passed by, but she made an attempt to attract your attention. She didn’t succeed because, although the wireless was playing loudly and the light was burning, those things were merely to build up your alibi. You yourself weren’t there. You were waiting outside in the darkness for Lydia Dare, with murder in your heart!
‘Unfortunately it wasn’t until it was too late to save Edith Lorrington that I awoke to the truth. But after Inspector Boyce had brought the news of her murder I suddenly connected the fact that everyone knew that you didn’t listen to swing programmes with what Edith Lorrington had said, and I knew why you had killed her.
‘It’s the simple things that cause murderers to hang,’ he added grimly. ‘You should have studied the radio programmes covering the period for which you intended to be away from the cottage, and made certain that there would be no changes which might make things awkward for you.’
There was a cold, chilling note in the quiet words; a note which seemed to breathe an icy, accusing wind, and which carried Sandra Borne’s doom. Mordecai Tremaine stood looking down upon her with the dispassionate face of a judge. He said:
‘Lydia Dare used to say that she had the feeling that horror was lurking in Dalmering; that some evil presence seemed to be hovering over the village. Other people have talked in the same way. The newspapers have printed articles on the same theme, And at first, I, too, thought I could sense what others had apparently experienced.
‘But I discovered that all the fears, all the whispers, all the hinted terror had a common origin—Sandra Borne! It was you who built up the atmosphere of suspicion and horror. It was you who slowly spread fear through the village. You preyed first of all upon Lydia’s mind. You pretended to be uncertain and afraid yourself and gradually you wore down her nerves. After her death, of course, things became easier for you. With the aid of your carefully planted suggestions there were plenty of susceptible people who were willing to fall in unknowingly with your plans and spread the report that the village lay under some malign influence. You had only to wait and watch the campaign you had started steadily develop.
‘There was a malign influence, but it was a human one.’ Tremaine’s voice became harder, icier, more laden with accusation. ‘There was evil in Dalmering,’ he said. ‘But it was the evil in your heart!’
Sandra Borne raised her head.
‘Damn you,’ she said. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn you! You knew it all the time! ’
She moved with a tigerish fury. Tremaine’s voice rapped out sharply in warning:
‘Look out, Paul! ’
Paul Russell reacted swiftly. He flung himself backwards, and as he did so his left arm went up to ward aside the woman’s right, the hand of which was holding the viciously stabbing knife. Before she could strike again the quick scuffle of feet sounded urgently on the stage behind her. Biting, spitting, snarling, like a cornered hellcat, Sandra Borne was overpowered by the efficient combined strength of Jonathan Boyce and two of his men.
‘I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of wilful murder,’ said the inspector. ‘I have to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence.’
Mordecai Tremaine drew a long breath of relief.
‘I think that was what you wanted, wasn’t it, Jonathan?’
Inspector Boyce nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that was what I wanted.’
Dishevelled, her hair streaming down over a passion-contorted face, Sandra Borne’s wild eyes glared at them.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I did it! I killed them! I planned it all, just as you said! I hated them. I wanted to see them squirm and suffer. I wanted to smash their smug, complacent lives!’ She struggled in the arms of the detectives who were holding her, thrust her face forward. There was no trace of the eager little woman they had known. She had disintegrated into an evil fury. ‘I hate all of you!’ she screamed. ‘All of you—you hear me? You—!’
She uttered a filthy word. Mordecai Tremaine felt a little sick. He turned his head away. Jonathan Boyce made a gesture to his subordinates.
‘Take her away,’ he said quietly.
It seemed a long time before anyone spoke. And then Paul Russell said, shakily:
‘Thanks, Mordecai. She meant to kill. It was only your warning that saved me. I don’t know how you realized so quickly that I was the person she intended to attack.’
‘I remarked just now,’ said Tremaine, ‘that Sandra Borne was forced to change her plans when she killed Edith Lorrington. The third victim had originally been designed to be someone else.’
‘You mean,’ said Russell incredulously, ‘that I was booked to be the next on the list?’
‘Not directly. Your part in Murder Has a Motive, Paul, was one in which you were supposed to kill an actress because she was deserting you for another man after you had had for a long while what amounted to control over her life.’ Tremaine glanced significantly at Pauline Conroy and Serge Galeski. ‘Perhaps you can see what was to have happened? Miss Conroy would have died. You would have been suspected. I don’t know just how you were to have been embroiled, but you can guess that Sandra Borne would have found some way of linking you with Miss Conroy so that it would have looked as though you had killed her because she had deserted you for Mr. Galeski. The third parallel would have been complete and there would have been a triple revenge for the author of it. Pauline Conroy would have been dead, you would have been standing in the dock accused of her murder—and Jean’s happiness would also have been destroyed.’
The doctor was struggling to arrange his thoughts. He said, slowly:
‘It sounds incredible, and yet—and yet I’m not so sure. Now I look back she did have a habit of trying to link me with Pauline, and of trying to throw us together at rehearsals. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it looks now as though that
was the reason.’ He added: ‘So that was what lay behind what I thought was your suspicion of me! That was why you seemed to be watching me. You were expecting Pauline to be killed, and you thought that, if you could account for every moment of my time, you would be able to give me an alibi!’
Tremaine smiled.
‘You’re getting warm, Paul,’ he said, and his friend presented an appearance which was a mixture of bewilderment and contrition.
‘Sorry, Mordecai,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I thought—’
‘You thought I was trying to get you hanged,’ said Tremaine. ‘And I don’t blame you. You had every reason to!’
Pauline Conroy had been listening to their conversation, understanding dawning in her face. She was a very subdued Pauline Conroy. She said:
‘I owe you an apology, too. I thought you suspected me and that that was why you were having me watched. But you really had those detectives to shadow me because you thought my life was in danger and were trying to protect me.’
‘You were certainly in grave danger, Miss Conroy. In fact, I suspected that, if I could break Sandra Borne’s nerve tonight and drive her to confession, she would make a last attempt to attain her end, and would attack either yourself or Dr. Russell. You were seated too far away from her, as it happened, for her to have any hope of injuring you before she was seized, which meant that it would almost certainly be Dr. Russell upon whom she would turn. That was why I was able to warn him so quickly.’
Mordecai Tremaine looked around the table. His glance rested understandingly upon Phyllis Galway.
‘I don’t think you need delay over that announcement any longer,’ he said, with a twinkle. ‘I think you know now why I asked you to keep it secret for a little while. There was always a danger that if Sandra Borne learned of it, her twisted, jealous reaction might have taken the form of trying to do you some violence. But that danger is past now.’
‘Thanks to you,’ said Geoffrey Manning fervently. ‘I’m afraid you must have found me a little difficult at times. I knew that someone here must be the killer, and I was half off my head with anxiety for Phyllis.’
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