Murder for Christmas Read online

  He did not think, however, that he had gone into details concerning his hobby. He was an amateur, and he had no wish to embarrass his friends—such as Inspector Boyce, of Scotland Yard, for instance—by proclaiming that he had been allowed to take part in enquiries that should have been the strict prerogative of the police.

  The attention he had received from the Press at the time of the Dalmering murders was still a somewhat painful memory. He had not sought publicity but the reporters who had swarmed in the little Sussex village had discovered his connection with the case and had thrust him into the full glare of the limelight. Sometimes he shuddered yet at the thought of some of the less restrained headlines.

  He hoped he had not betrayed his passion for sentimental literature. Mordecai Tremaine was a steadfast reader of that innocent but undoubtedly treacle-laden magazine Romantic Stories. He followed its serials thirstily, suffering and triumphing with their virtuous heroines. But although he read it so avidly, he was still a little shamefaced whenever he was caught doing so, and would make furtive attempts to smuggle it out of sight. He did not think Benedict Grame was the kind of man who would be likely to understand his weakness, and 4 a.m. confidences had a habit of appearing regrettably threadbare by daylight.

  The problem of Romantic Stories was still hovering anxiously at the back of his mind several weeks later as he climbed into the modest mass-production saloon car that was one of his few extravagances and drove carefully through London’s traffic maze on a sunny but sharply frosty morning. It was significant, however, that the latest issue of that magazine nestled between the folds of his dress suit in the suitcase occupying the rear seat. Mordecai Tremaine might suffer agony of mind, but he did not retreat.

  He was light of heart. He was humming a gay tune the morning radio had provided as an accompaniment for his shave, and he did not leave off even when he was suddenly called upon to perform a miracle of steering to avoid being pancaked between a stationary lorry and a confidently thrusting omnibus. It was not entirely due to the fact that the sun was shining and that through the glass it possessed a spring-like warmth. Nor was it entirely due to the fact that it was Christmas and that his soul was riding on the wave of seasonable sentiment produced by snowy decorations and fairy lights in the shop windows.

  He was running into adventure. Somewhere ahead of him a problem was waiting for him, and there was an anticipatory tingling within him. Not since those long summer days when terror had lain upon the loveliness of Dalmering had he tasted the thrill of a real-life crime investigation. His appetite for detection had been compelled to feed upon literature and he had forgotten the sordid background of hate, fear and jealousy. He had forgotten that the end of the pursuit was sick disillusionment and the destruction of a human creature. He was conscious only of the excitement of the chase and the keenness of testing his brain against the cunning of a murderer.

  Quite suddenly he realized the way his thoughts were running and was sobered. What talk was this of murder? Towards what fantastic destination was his imagination leading him? He was on his way to spend a Christmas holiday among new-found friends. It was the season of goodwill and happiness. Why should his mind be travelling along such a forbidding road?

  He succeeded in breaking the spell that was on him but something of his zest had gone. As he drove on, the eyes behind the pince-nez that seemed to be always on the point of sliding off his nose but somehow never did, were shadowed and perplexed.

  By midday the clouds were a leaden panoply, and there was only a barren countryside in which bare-armed trees leaned under an icy wind. He was driving deeper into a world of grey light and chill air in which dreadful things could be done.

  He knew the truth, of course. He knew that snow had fallen in the West Country and that he must be getting near the edge of it. The only significance in the failing light and the cheerless sigh of the wind was that they were signs that he was near the area of the snowfall. To imbue the wintry landscape with an atmosphere of mournfulness and terror was merely to pander to an imagination straining under the loneliness of deserted December fields.

  Fortunately, although it was not long before the snow was all around him, the roads were firm and he was able to maintain a good speed. There was still more than an hour of daylight left as he drove down the long hill leading into the town of Calnford, and he knew that Sherbroome was no more than four miles or so beyond.

  It was the knowledge that he would be able to reach his destination before dusk that made him decide to obtain a cup of tea in the town. The right-hand trafficator on the saloon had developed the habit of sticking, which meant that he had had to keep the off driving window down in order to give his signals by hand, and he was feeling the numbing effect of the icy wind.

  Just off the main street was a quiet square which was used as a car-park. He pulled towards the kerb and, glad of the opportunity to stretch his legs, walked briskly back towards the crowded shopping centre.

  Calnford was an attractive little town. Wooded hills rising steeply on almost every side had prevented it from breaking out into the usual rash of suburban villas, and it still retained the grace it had possessed when it had been a fashionable spa and eighteenth-century dandies had danced the minuet with Gainsborough’s ladies under the candles in its public rooms. In its tall, loftily proportioned houses the Regency still lived.

  But besides the quiet dignity of its residential squares and the peace of the gardens alongside the river across which the stone bridges sat with such an air of unhurried security, it also enjoyed a throbbing heart that pumped a stream of prosperity along the shop-lined artery running close to the ancient walls of its Abbey. Mordecai Tremaine’s sentimental soul responded to the warm life pulsing by him as he walked along the crowded pavements, at which gleaming cars, laden with parcels and appearing to radiate the Christmas spirit from their shining chromium fittings, waited for their passengers to come back from the gaily decorated stores.

  Even the sad and discoloured slush that was all a procession of churning tyres had left of the snow possessed an air of magic for him. His gloom had vanished. The strange depression that had overwhelmed him earlier in the day had slunk away in defeat.

  He was a child again, snatching at a belief in fairies and in a Santa Claus who came down chimneys and filled a million stockings in one amazing night. The pince-nez slipped even further but he did not notice them. Sentiment was in control, and for Mordecai Tremaine this was a moment that would help to sustain him when the time came for him to feel again the knowledge that bitterness and terror and dark despair had their being in the hearts of men.

  But he could not afford to delay much longer if he wished to complete his journey in daylight. Most of the big restaurants were already crowded. After a glance at the packed tables of two of them he turned down a side-street and under an arch hard by the Abbey where there was an old-fashioned backwater into which the tide of thirsty and hungry humanity did not swirl.

  There was a tiny tea-shop sandwiched between a bookseller and a basket-maker’s premises and he went through the narrow door, instinctively lowering his head to avoid hitting the oak beam that formed the lintel. At first he thought the shop was empty, and then he saw the two people sitting at a table set back in the gloom of the panelled wall at the rear and partially concealed by a stand for hats and coats.

  They looked up as he came in—quickly, and as though they were startled. When they saw him eyeing them curiously they looked away again in an equally hurried manner as if guilty at having been observed.

  Tremaine chose a table and sat down. He had his back to the two, but facing him, over the shop counter, there was a mirror in which he could see them as they talked, heads together, whispering in a fashion that had something conspiratorial about it.

  An intense interest in people and a highly developed faculty for watching others without being suspected meant that Mordecai Tremaine seldom ignored an opportunity of studying his fellows. And since he had nothing to do apart f
rom drinking his tea, it was inevitable that his eyes should have strayed to the mirror. It was a mechanical process, a natural practising of his acquired talents. He had no suspicion that the incident was fated to be of such significance.

  One of the two was a man and the other a woman. A colourless, indeterminate creature she seemed, dressed in a coat that was good but dull, and wearing a hat that was clearly not in the current fashion. Her hair was inclined to be straggly and was without lustre, although he admitted that he could not see her too clearly as the high collar of her coat was turned up to meet her hat. Her features were delicate, and her face, small and round, was white and peaked as though she spent little time in the open air.

  The waitress switched on one of the electric lights and Tremaine’s view was momentarily improved. He saw that although the woman was not young she was not as old as he had at first imagined. Her style of dress had given him a deceptive impression of her age.

  She did not appreciate the sudden light. She half-turned, so that her shoulder filled the mirror, and he could no longer see her expression. The movement was so obvious that it betrayed her.

  Her companion was not, apparently, so sensitive. He was sitting full face towards the mirror and he did not shift his position, although he blinked under the glare of the light and looked searchingly across the room as if he suspected the action of the waitress to have been deliberately directed against him.

  A phrase from Julius Caesar came into Mordecai Tremaine’s mind:

  ‘Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look.’

  In the mirror there was only the indistinct reflection of a gaunt man wearing a shabby raincoat. A man who could have walked unnoticed through the crowds in the streets outside. But some trick of the electric light upon the glass brought the upper part of his features into prominence so that Tremaine had the uncomfortable experience of looking straight into his eyes. They were dark eyes, set wide beneath a high forehead and with a sombre vitality smouldering in their depths. They were disturbing eyes that looked as if they would burn with a visionary fire.

  Tremaine drank his tea slowly, trying to appear as though he was unaware of the existence of the mirror. He did not think that the two had any interest in him or that they suspected his own interest in them. After that first quick survey they had taken up their conversation again.

  They were still engrossed when Tremaine paid his bill. They did not look up as he left the tea-shop. As he walked back to his car he found himself wondering about them. He always wondered about people. He liked to weave theories about who they were and where they were going and what the pattern of their lives might be. Usually he found it easy to place them and to give them occupations and characters.

  But with these two his imagination would not respond. They were removed from the general pattern.

  He recalled the woman’s face, saw the over-large mouth with its pale lips. They were tremulous, like the lips of a woman unsure of herself. She was a fragile creature for whom life was not an easy matter. Doll-like, brittle, bewildered by the world—the kind who might break beneath any sudden cruel blow of Fate.

  What was her connection with her companion? Were they married? He had been unable to see her hands, so he did not know whether she had been wearing a wedding-ring.

  Still, although they had provided him with material for a brief mental exercise, they had passed out of his life. He would never find out whether his conjectures were near the truth or whether he had invested two perfectly ordinary people with a background of mystery to which their mundane lives could lay no claim.

  Ordinary? Somehow he did not think the term was adequate. They had been altogether too watchful, too anxious to remain unnoticed in the gloom.

  Within a few minutes he was too busy trying to get clear of the congested streets of Calnford to continue his speculations. When he had left the town behind and had branched off along the road to Sherbroome driving became even more difficult. The snow was heavier; there had not been a constant stream of traffic to squelch it into ineffectual sludge, and he was forced to reduce his speed almost to a crawl.

  The light was going fast as he drove through Sherbroome village. In some of the houses the oil-lamps were already in use and the place had an air of fairyland with its smattering of lighted windows showing up against the huddled, grey old houses, the snow thick upon their uneven roofs. It was like a scene from pantomime or some children’s fantasy. The Village of the Elves: Snow Time. Mordecai Tremaine imagined the whole thing as it would look if it could be picked up by some friendly giant and placed down between the wings of a theatre with a row of footlights underlining it.

  Sherbroome was a showpiece. It recurred year after year in travel magazines, with photographs of its centuries-old inn and its Norman church illustrating articles on the beauties of England.

  Unsuspected by the bulk of the traffic scorching past the modest signpost on the main road, and served by a meandering and strictly limited bus route, it had no railway station nearer than that at Calnford. It had, therefore, remained undiscovered by the larger world of tourist souvenirs and tea-gardens, and was unspoilt in the sense that it was still much in the state in which it had been when the eighth Henry had plundered Calnford Abbey. To the villagers, struggling against inadequate sanitation and compelled to rely upon oil-lamps in the long winter evenings, it was not entirely a matter for congratulation, but they had at least the satisfaction of knowing that they had not been sacrificed to the false gods of exploitation.

  Tremaine was not quite certain of the location of Sherbroome House, but there was only one road he could take and he accordingly took it. He was beginning to feel a little uneasy. It would not be long before it was quite dark, and in this lonely countryside he might easily drive past his destination unawares.

  He had travelled about a mile along a narrowing road that was becoming increasingly icebound when he saw a dark figure standing in the shelter of the raggedly bare hedge a hundred yards ahead. He braked gently so that he stopped as he drew level.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘could you tell me the whereabouts of Sherbroome House?’

  The other gave him a prolonged stare. He was a big man, and huddled into a heavy overcoat with the collar turned up around his face he seemed exaggeratedly so. Tremaine felt uneasy, although the other had made no unfriendly move. He had a menacing aspect, standing there in the wintry gloom without moving, like some monstrous shadow. But at last:

  ‘It’s there,’ he said brusquely. ‘Facing you.’

  Tremaine was too relieved to pay much attention to his hostile manner. He noticed that a few yards on, and set back a short distance from the road, were two stone pillars flanking a driveway.

  ‘Thanks,’ he returned. ‘I didn’t notice the gates in this light.’

  He eased in his clutch and brought the saloon cautiously round on the treacherous surface of the road so that he could enter the drive. As he passed close to the big man he lifted his hand in a gesture of acknowledgment.

  The other made no response. Tremaine saw his face and experienced a feeling of shock, for there was but one description of the expression it bore. Malevolent. It was the face of a man with hatred in his soul.

  And then he had driven by and was making his way up the drive. Within a few yards of the gate there was a sharp bend, and then, for the first time, he saw the house.

  It was perhaps a quarter of a mile away. It was big and black, reaching up tall, gabled roofs towards the snow-filled gloom of the sky. It looked old and mysterious and sombre. The few lights that were burning served only to emphasize its grimness.

  Mordecai Tremaine tried to banish the wisp of fear that curled across his mind. He tried to forget the chill that was constricting his heart. Because it was almost dark and he was cold and his nerves were strained after his journey, it did not mean that he must allow his imagination to deliver itself of a nightmare.

  But he did not succeed in convincing himself. As he drew nearer to the lowering old house
with its high mullioned windows, he was conscious of the vague but insistent and disturbing feeling that fate was at his side, and that in the great building just ahead darkness and terror were waiting.

  3

  THE WARMTH of the welcome Nicholas Blaise gave him and the sight of roaringly healthy log fires drove the sense of oppression and foreboding from his mind. As physical heat seeped comfortingly into his bones, mental well-being returned. This was reality. This was human companionship and the mellow glow of Christmas.

  Mordecai Tremaine was fortunate in possessing a child’s elasticity of outlook. He could swing with ease from depression to high optimism, from gloomy expectation of disaster to a naive delight with the best of worlds.

  ‘We were just beginning to get worried about you,’ said Blaise. ‘Did you have much trouble driving down?’

  ‘None at all,’ returned Tremaine. ‘I spent half an hour or so in Calnford and I’m afraid I cut my schedule rather fine. I hope I haven’t put you out?’

  ‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Blaise cheerfully. ‘We keep open house at Christmas. There’s still Professor Lorring to come. He was to have been here yesterday but couldn’t get away. He’s probably travelling by rail, and I dare say the trains are finding it a job to cope with the holiday traffic and the snow at the same time.’

  ‘Professor Lorring? Is that the Professor Ernest Lorring who’s been doing research work for the Government?’

  Blaise nodded as he led the way towards the door.

  ‘Yes. He’s one of Benedict’s latest finds. I believe he thought Lorring had been overdoing things and that a few days at Sherbroome would act as a tonic. By the way,’ he added, with a smile, ‘I hope you like Christmas!’

  Tremaine raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I hope I don’t look all that much like Scrooge!’

  ‘Nothing personal,’ said Blaise. ‘But I thought it was as well to warn you! Benedict’s a Christmas fan. He likes to have all the orthodox trimmings. Christmas carols, holly and mistletoe, Christmas tree and Santa Claus.’