‘You were in love,’ said Tremaine. ‘That excuses a lot of things.’ He said: ‘We know the answer to the question we’ve all been asking ourselves. It’s been an unhappy, difficult time, but the murders have been solved. There are no more questions we need ask.’ His gaze sought out Howard Shannon. ‘None,’ he said firmly, and he saw the relief that came into the plump man’s eyes.
When Mordecai Tremaine left the hall, Karen Hammond was waiting for him. He had known that she would be. She stepped towards him out of the shadows surrounding the doorway. Diffidently, she put a hand on his arm. She said:
‘You know—about us?’
‘Yes,’ said Tremaine gently, ‘I know. I saw his wife.’
Her face was averted.
‘You don’t—you don’t think I’m a terrible person?’ she said, in a low voice.
‘I haven’t any right to think anything of the sort,’ he told her.
‘It was because I—I loved Philip.’
‘I’m quite sure you loved him. That was why you said that he was at home with you on the night that Lydia Dare was killed. You knew that if you admitted that he was in London he would be asked to state where he had been, and that would have revealed the fact that he had been with his wife—his legal wife. You might have lost him.’ She nodded. He could see that her beautiful face was lined with grief and he knew that she was crying. He could think of no words to say that would be adequate in the face of her tragedy. All he could say was:
‘You will be leaving Dalmering, of course?’
‘Yes—tomorrow. I thought it would be best to go as quickly as possible. Officially, I’m going up to—up to Philip’s funeral. It’s to be at Harford Row. I’m not coming back. I—I just wanted to say “thank you” for being so—so understanding just now and not saying anything.’
‘There is no need to thank me,’ he said, and took her hand. ‘There was no reason why I should have said anything.’
She returned the pressure of his fingers and turned quickly away. Tremaine waited for a few moments longer before he himself set off up the road.
It was five minutes later when he saw Jonathan Boyce. The Yard man came towards him with a springy step. He was smoking a pipe, and he looked like a man from whose soul a crushing weight had been removed. Which was, indeed, the fact.
‘Well, Mordecai,’ he said, ‘it worked. It was theatrical, but it worked.’
‘It worked because it was theatrical,’ returned Tremaine. ‘All the things I said on that stage were true, but I couldn’t prove they were true. A lot of it was theorizing. The only thing to do was to pretend that I knew everything and try and crack her nerve. It was a big chance, of course, but I’ve been watching her, and I knew that she was breaking up. She was bound to go under sooner or later.’
The inspector puffed out contented smoke clouds.
‘I’ll admit that I felt dubious about it right up to the last. That woman, doing all those cold-blooded things, planning them for months beforehand. You wouldn’t dream she could be capable of it. Until tonight,’ he added soberly. ‘The mask dropped tonight all right.’
‘A jealous woman,’ said Tremaine, ‘will do a great many surprising things. I told you when you started on this case that murder always has a motive. Mix jealousy and hate and a woman, and you have a motive that’s dynamite.’
‘The whole picture seems complete now,’ observed the inspector. ‘Howard Shannon’s real name, as you surmised, is Herbert Roydale. He came down here under an assumed name after he’d finished his sentence. He’s been going straight, but he’s been living in fear all the time that someone would find out who he really was, and when Hornsby came down to watch Philip Hammond, the thing he’d been afraid of actually happened—and in the worst way. Hornsby—as Anston said—doesn’t mind doing a little blackmail when he gets the chance, and when he discovered that Herbert Roydale, the man who’d got fifteen years for the Roydale Trust Company fraud, was living in Dalmering under the name of Shannon, he didn’t waste any time in putting the squeeze on him as a sideline to his detective activities. Roydale, or Shannon, didn’t want his identity known—he’d got himself pretty well established, and he wanted to stay in Dalmering—and agreed to pay. He used to board the London train as if he was going right through, but he’d get off at Colminster, meet Hornsby, and pay him his hush-money, and then continue his journey the next day. That was what he did on the night of Lydia Dare’s murder. He couldn’t tell the truth without giving himself away, so he invented that story about having a business appointment. That’s why he’s been such a mass of nerves.
‘It didn’t make matters any better for him when Martin Vaughan found out that he’d been in Colminster on the night of the murder and tried to do some investigating on his own account. Vaughan, of course, has been labouring all the time under the shock of Lydia Dare’s death. That’s why his attitude was so strange. He didn’t show any confidence until he stumbled on the fact that Shannon was hiding something and felt he had another suspect whom he could work upon.’
‘When I decided to take a chance after Edith Lorrington’s death and go to his house and ask him for the full story about how he came to insist on Murder Has a Motive being performed,’ said Tremaine, ‘he tried to turn my attention to Shannon. I think that part of his unhelpful attitude was due to a feeling of genuine hurt that, loving Lydia Dare as he had done, people could even suspect him of having killed her.’
Jonathan Boyce gave his companion a sideways glance.
‘Talking about suspects,’ he remarked, ‘I think you gave your friend the doctor a few bad moments.’
‘I’m afraid I did,’ said Tremaine. ‘Poor Paul. He really believed I was after him. But I daren’t tell him the truth in case it accidentally got back to Sandra Borne and put her on her guard. That legacy, of course, made matters worse for him, although it had nothing to do with the murder. Martin Vaughan was intended to hang for Lydia Dare. Paul was being reserved for Pauline.’
They had reached the gate of ‘Roseland’. The inspector stopped. He said:
‘I’m giving the Commissioner a full report. I haven’t said “thank you” yet, Mordecai, but you know how I feel. The fact that I took the risk of using my authority to persuade those people to go to the village hall tonight is a proof that I was at my wits’ end. I won’t forget what you’ve done.’
‘It was nothing,’ said Tremaine, somewhat awkwardly, for Jonathan Boyce was not an emotional man and he knew the depth of his feelings. ‘It was just a bluff that happened to come off.’
He said good night to the inspector and pushed open the gate. But he did not go into the house. He walked into the garden and stood looking up at the stars studding a clear sky. He was troubled within himself and vaguely dissatisfied.
Lying darkly under a new moon, Dalmering was still and peaceful. The air about him was tranquil and the faint swish of the sea was just audible. It called to mind the loveliness he had seen in his surroundings on that long-ago day when he had crested the hill in Paul Russell’s little car and seen the village lying below him.
But he knew now that its loveliness was an illusion; that under the beauty there was evil and decay. Greed, and hate, and jealousy, and fear and murder lay beneath its placid, false surface.
He thought of the hysterically screaming woman who had been taken from the hall. He thought of Howard Shannon, nursing the fear of being exposed to the neighbours who respected him as the man who had caused the ruin of thousands, and prepared to pay heavily in blackmail to keep his secret safe and remain in hiding under the name he had assumed. He thought of Pauline Conroy and her guilty intrigue with Galeski. He thought of Philip Hammond and the woman Karen, the beautiful, unhappy woman for whom there could be no peace.
Everything he had touched had turned to pitch under his hand. His investigations had revealed only rottenness lying beneath the veneer of a happy, peaceful community. There had only been terror and intrigue, jealousy and dreadful murder. Was the heart of man just c
orruption, mocking his outward splendour?
And then a fresh, caressing coolness was gently fanning his cheeks. He squared his shoulders, as though he was brushing the depression from him. It was only a night breeze from the sea, of course. It possessed no magical powers. But suddenly his mind was clear again.
You couldn’t see only beauty in the world. You had to see the disfiguring stains; the sordid and sprawling things, too. Because that was life. Life was ugly and untidy besides being beautiful and marvellous and full of wonder. You had to see the dirt as well as the stars. To see the dirt and not become a cynic; to hold fast to one’s ideals; to preserve one’s belief in the underlying decencies of humanity—that was the real purpose of living.
He went slowly back towards the house and as he walked his feet made a little crunching noise upon the gravel path.
THE END
So Pretty a Problem
Adrian Carthallow, enfant terrible of the art world, is no stranger to controversy. But this time it’s not his paintings that have provoked a blaze of publicity – it’s the fact that his career has been suddenly terminated by a bullet to the head. Not only that, but his wife has confessed to firing the fatal shot.
Inspector Penross of the town constabulary is, however, less than convinced by Helen Carthallow’s story – but has no other explanation for the incident that occurred when the couple were alone in their clifftop house.
Luckily for the Inspector, amateur criminologist Mordecai Tremaine has an uncanny habit of being in the near neighbourhood whenever sudden death makes its appearance. Investigating the killing, Tremaine is quick to realise that however handsome a couple the Carthallows were, and however extravagant a life they led, beneath the surface there’s a pretty devil’s brew . . .
Behold a Fair Woman
Mordecai Tremaine’s hobby of choice – crime detection – has left him in need of a holiday. A break away from that gruesome business of murder will be just the ticket, and the picturesque island of Moulin d’Or seems to be just the destination.
Amid the sunshine and the sea air, Mordecai falls in with a band of fellow holidaymakers and tries to forget that such a thing as foul play exists. He should have been wiser, of course, because before too long villainy rears its head and a dead body is discovered.
With a killer stalking the sand dunes, it falls to Mordecai to piece together the truth about just who has smuggled murder on to the island idyll . . .
In at the Death
Mordecai Tremaine and Chief Inspector Jonathan Boyce are never pleased to have a promising game of chess interrupted – though when murder is the disrupting force, they are persuaded to make an exception.
A quick stop at Scotland Yard to collect any detective’s most trusted piece of equipment – the murder bag – and the pair are spirited away to Bridgton.
No sooner have they arrived than it becomes clear that the city harbours more than its fair share of passions and motives . . . and one question echoes loudly throughout the cobbled streets: why did Dr Hardene, the local GP of impeccable reputation, bring a revolver with him on a routine visit to a patient?
Mordecai Tremaine’s latest excursion into crime detection leaves him in doubt that, when it comes to murder, nothing can be assumed . . .
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Copyright © Francis Duncan 1947
Francis Duncan has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Vintage in 2016
First published in Great Britain by John Long in 1947
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ISBN 9781784704810
Murder has a Motive Page 27