Murder has a Motive Read online

‘We haven’t overlooked that,’ said Boyce. ‘We appreciate that your evidence may be important, and there are a number of questions we would like to ask you—later.’

  Martin Vaughan’s great bulk surged up to the wooden gate, eliminating the space between them in one flood-tide of movement.

  ‘By thunder, man! Don’t you know a woman’s been killed? Somewhere her murderer’s walking around as free as you or I, hugging his devil’s secret and laughing at all of us, and you’re standing there as if time wasn’t important, doing damn-all about it!’

  And then the storm slowly subsided. They saw him fight to bring his passions under control, his thick fingers clamping down on the woodwork of the gate. He looked at Boyce.

  ‘Sorry, Inspector. It is Inspector, isn’t it? I’m afraid I’m a bit under the weather. The shock—after dining with her only last night—’ He drew a deep breath, as though to steady himself. ‘Have you—have you discovered anything?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ said Boyce, ‘to discover things.’

  Vaughan’s glance flickered past him, rested momentarily on the path through the copse, came back—guardedly it seemed—to the Yard man’s face.

  ‘When you want me,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’ll know where to find me. I live at “Home Lodge”—just across the common.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Boyce, ‘I know.’

  For a little space of time longer Vaughan stood looking at him, as though uncertain whether he should say what was in his mind. And then:

  ‘There’s something evil in this place,’ he said, intensity clipping his words so that his voice seemed to vibrate with hardly controlled power. ‘It’s peaceful and lovely and normal to look at, but underneath it’s rotten—rotten, and festering and corrupt. All the reeking powers of darkness and evil are hidden in it. She knew it. She tried to tell me of it but I wouldn’t listen. God, if only I’d believed her! If only I’d insisted on going back with her when she told me she preferred to go alone!’

  He leaned forward. His voice was level enough but his eyes had a wildness in them.

  ‘It’s too late for that now, Inspector. We can’t put back the clock and live yesterday again. But we can find out who killed her. We can find him and feel his throat in our hands’—the thick fingers had begun to work—‘and hear him try to squeal for mercy and see his obscene murderer’s eyes blaze with terror and come bulging out of their sockets as he knows the life is being choked out of him!’

  Boyce made no movement. His features remained expressionless. But:

  ‘I must point out, Mr. Vaughan,’ he said quietly, ‘that the law has its own machinery for dealing with these matters.’

  Martin Vaughan drew back. He laughed. It was a strange, faintly mocking sound that came from deep inside him.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. What I was trying to say, Inspector, was that you can rely upon me to give you all the assistance I can. I shall welcome any opportunity to help you. But no doubt you’re busy and I’m taking up your time. My apologies for the outburst just now.’

  ‘No apologies are needed,’ said Boyce. ‘I understand how you feel.’

  ‘Do you?’

  The words were quiet. Vaughan gave him a queer sideways glance and then nodded and turned away.

  Boyce stood watching him until he judged that the big man was out of earshot, then he looked round for Mordecai Tremaine.

  ‘What,’ he said, ‘do you think of our Mr. Vaughan?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Tremaine reflectively. ‘Is he mad—or clever?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Boyce patiently, ‘try to be the mysterious and great detective. Just say what you mean.’

  Mordecai Tremaine looked guilty.

  ‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is that you seem to be receiving a surprising number of offers to help. First of all from me, and now from Martin Vaughan. I’m easy enough to explain,’ he added modestly. ‘But why Vaughan?’

  ‘You’re the brilliant, unorthodox investigator,’ said Boyce maliciously. ‘All right—why?’

  ‘It might be,’ said Tremaine, ‘because he’s mad. Because his mind is obsessed with the one idea that he must find Lydia Dare’s murderer and take his revenge for her death. Because he thinks that by offering to help you he will be able to share any information you may obtain and achieve his purpose more quickly. Or it might be because he’s clever. Because he killed Lydia Dare himself. Because he wants to keep level with your investigations in order to safeguard himself.’

  ‘In other words you’re suggesting that he was deliberately putting on an act just now?’ Boyce shook his head. ‘You’re a long way ahead of me, Mordecai. I’m just a policeman. I have to stick to facts. I can’t afford to start romancing.’

  He added, after a pause:

  ‘All the same, there may be something in that suggestion of yours that he’s mad. He’s an archæologist—done a lot of excavating and written books about what things were like thousands of years ago. A fellow like that, buried in the past, might get hold of some queer and bloodthirsty ideas—about revenge and human sacrifice and so on. All that stuff about the powers of darkness, for instance, didn’t sound like the talk of a mentally healthy man.’

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed Mordecai Tremaine, in a manner, however, which allowed the word to mean anything.

  Boyce was frowning, his toe prodding in a dissatisfied fashion among the bracken.

  ‘But where’s the motive?’ he asked. ‘What reason would Vaughan have, either for killing Lydia Dare or for wanting to revenge her murder so badly? Do you know, Mordecai,’ he went on, in a sudden burst of frankness, ‘what I’ve always been most afraid of? Ever since I can remember I’ve been scared that one day I might meet a motiveless crime, that I might be called upon to solve something with no reason behind it, something just plain senseless, something that would beat me just because there wasn’t a mind or a motive I could track down. And I’ve a feeling that this,’ he finished grimly, ‘is going to be it.’

  Mordecai Tremaine looked carefully up and down the road. It was quite clear. He opened the gate and passed through.

  ‘You’re getting morbid, Jonathan. It’s because the case has only just begun and you’ve not found anything yet to get your teeth into. This is murder. And murder,’ he added sententiously, ‘always has a motive.’

  4

  EFFICIENTLY MORDECAI TREMAINE had effaced himself. Once the inevitable introductions had been made he had gradually withdrawn from the conversation, and his own action and the fact that one subject was occupying the minds of his companions to the exclusion of all others had combined to give him the position he desired of the unnoticed spectator.

  The scene was the drawing-room at ‘Roseland’, which was the attractive name the Russells had given to their equally attractive and invitingly cosily furnished house. Eight people were seated around the room, perched on the arms of chairs where it was not possible to adopt a more orthodox position, making themselves comfortable in the easy, informal manner of those who are on terms of familiarity with each other. It was evident that Jean and Paul Russell had been in the habit of keeping open house, and that ‘Roseland’ was an unofficial centre of Dalmering’s social life.

  Outwardly it was a friendly little gathering. But it had not taken Mordecai Tremaine long to sense that under the apparent calm the atmosphere was dangerously electric. The surface of the relationship between the men and women talking so casually was perilously brittle; occasionally it would break for an instant and reveal the ugly storm of fear and mistrust which was sultrily brewing beneath it.

  The reason lay in one menacing word. Murder. All these people had known Lydia Dare. To a greater or less degree all their lives had been bound up with hers. And now that she was dead and her murderer was walking abroad undetected and probably in their midst, suspicion had become the dominating factor in their contacts with their neighbours. Guilty or innocent, consciously or sub-consciously, they were on guard against each other, on the alert for a chance wo
rd which might possess a grim significance, quick to read some damaging meaning into what would otherwise have been an ordinary phrase.

  Women, Mordecai Tremaine noted, were in the majority. In addition to himself and Paul Russell there was only one other male member of the party. Russell had introduced him as Geoffrey Manning. Tremaine judged him to be in the middle twenties—a quietly spoken young fellow whose rugged features and big-boned frame effectively prevented him from laying any claim to being handsome, but who was possessed of a quick smile which gave him a frank and likeable air.

  It was true that he was obviously suffering from the same sense of strain which obsessed the other members of the group, but even so there were occasions when his engaging grin relieved the underlying tension, and momentarily the conversation would become free and unrestrained. Inclining, as always, to the side of youth, Mordecai Tremaine found himself liking Manning on sight. He had to remind himself that it would be unwise for an investigator engaged upon what must necessarily be a grim search after truth to allow his judgment to be swayed by first impressions and personal prejudices.

  The same self-discipline was necessary in respect of the girl on the arm of whose chair Manning was seated. Phyllis Galway was a highly attractive brunette, and her appeal was of the type—usually somewhat inadequately described as fresh and unspoilt—to which Mordecai Tremaine was especially prone to fall a victim. She approximated so closely to the charming image he carried in his heart of the daughter he would have liked to have.

  The girl was frowning now, but it was a thoughtful, puzzled little frown which increased rather than detracted from her youthful good looks. She was, thought Mordecai Tremaine, wondering to himself what was wrong with Geoffrey Manning that he showed no sign of being aware of it, wholly adorable.

  ‘It’s very difficult,’ she said doubtfully, ‘to know what to do for the best. What do you think, Pauline?’

  The question was addressed to a woman who was seated opposite her. Tremaine had found his eyes straying very frequently towards Pauline Conroy. If Phyllis Galway’s beauty was typical of the eager, fragrant appeal of youth, Pauline Conroy’s was of the variety best described by the hackneyed word striking.

  There was, Mordecai Tremaine decided, something about her which was slightly larger than life. Undeniably she was a beautiful woman, but her beauty had an air of being just a little more obvious than was consistent with good taste.

  Her dark hair, curled at the ends and just sweeping her graceful shoulders so that each studied movement of her head revealed the slim column of her neck, was of a blackness which was boldly Spanish in its intensity. Her flawless skin; the vivid dark eyes, shaded by their long lashes, which could obviously flutter with the maximum of effect; the full red lips, parting when she smiled to display almost too even white teeth, reminded Mordecai Tremaine of a glossy photograph in a film magazine.

  Photogenic. The word projected itself on to his mind as though a camera shutter had clicked. She was Hollywood with trimmings. She was languorous grace upon a background of velvet luxury.

  It was not, of course, surprising that she should create such an impression. Pauline Conroy was an actress. Not, as yet, a star. Not, as yet, one of the dazzling lights of the firmament whose radiance could attract adoring crowds to the box offices. But possessed of ambition, consumed by the desire to climb the difficult slopes towards the angels.

  Which meant that she was consistently playing to an audience—consistently, in fact, overplaying in order to draw attention upon herself. Her talents as yet unrecognized, she was compelled to display them lavishly. Not yet could she afford to hide modestly behind the dark glasses and the assumed name of a million dollar success.

  She did not make any immediate reply to Phyllis Galway’s question. Tremaine was not sure whether her hesitation was part of her pose or whether it was due to the fact that she found it genuinely difficult to frame an answer.

  ‘I think we should go on with the play,’ she said slowly. ‘After all, we owe it to the public. And I think it’s what Lydia would have wished us to do.’

  She stopped. She looked around her. Her air was a little guilty, as though she herself felt that she had been a trifle too stereotyped, as though she had adhered too closely to the lines written in her part by convention.

  Mordecai Tremaine had heard enough of the conversation which had been taking place to be fully aware of the situation which was under discussion. His mind had been presented with the memory of the notice-board he had seen outside the building Jonathan Boyce had described as the village hall. Murder Has a Motive, the play which had been advertised, was being produced by the residents of Dalmering’s ‘colony’ for the benefit of a local charity—an orphanage situated on the outskirts of Kingshampton, the seaside resort some five miles away. The production had been extensively advertised in the district, and the play was due to be performed in a fortnight’s time. The question at issue was should it be postponed—or even cancelled—in view of the murder which had shaken the village?

  Lydia Dare had not been playing any actual part, but she had been acting as stage manager and had done a great deal of the inevitable behind-the-scenes organizing. Her death in any circumstances must naturally have cast a gloom over the remainder of the company, and coming in the stark and ugly manner in which it had, its effect had been doubly felt.

  There was a brief silence after Pauline Conroy had delivered her judgment. And then:

  ‘I think,’ said another voice, hesitantly, ‘I think it would be better to drop the whole thing.’

  It was Karen Hammond who had spoken. She was not wearing the dark spectacles now, and Mordecai Tremaine had been able to confirm the truth of his assumption that her eyes were blue. He had confirmed, too, his first estimate of her beauty—Dalmering appeared to be singularly fortunate as far as the good looks of its womenfolk were concerned—and he had made in addition the discovery that she was in a bad state of nerves.

  Occasionally he would observe a twitching at the side of her mouth, a restless movement of her hands. She herself was clearly unconscious of those things—or, if she was aware of them, they had become so much a part of her that she took them for granted. The glimpse of her which he had obtained from the car as they had reached the house that afternoon had been too brief for him to do more than assimilate the obvious—which meant her looks, dress and graceful bearing—but now he was certain that if ever a woman was a prey to a continuous, nagging anxiety, it was Karen Hammond.

  There was sudden antagonism in the glance which Pauline Conroy bestowed upon the woman whose blonde loveliness was in such striking contrast to her own flamboyantly dark beauty.

  ‘Why?’ she asked sharply.

  The slender fingers of Karen Hammond’s right hand nervously twisted the artistically chased circle of gold on the wedding finger of her left. The words came from her reluctantly.

  ‘It’s all—all so horrible. Everything’s so different now that Lydia’s been—now that she’s dead. It’s become sordid—and—and beastly. There’ll be enquiries—publicity. We’ll have newspaper reporters asking questions—prying into everything we say or do. Don’t you see’—there was a breathless, appealing note in her voice—‘if we go on with the play the newspapers are sure to write about it. They’ll think it’s good copy—they’ll want to know what she was going to do and who’s taking her place and every little detail there is. It will make it all so—so tainted.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Pauline Conroy coldly, ‘see why it should. Suppose the newspapers do get hold of the play and make news out of it? Publicity is what we need. We want the play to be a success, don’t we? We all know that it was what Lydia wanted. And as for the reporters asking all sorts of questions’—there was an edge of malice in her tone—‘there’s no need for us to be afraid of that. We none of us have anything to hide, have we?’

  The final question was a barely-concealed challenge. The foil was all but off the rapier. Karen Hammond stiffened. Again there cam
e that momentary twitching born of agitation, and beneath her sun-tan her face had whitened.

  ‘Of course not. That wasn’t what I meant. It was just that I wanted to save any more trouble than we shall have to face in any case. I thought it would save pain for everyone—for all of us here, for Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Shannon—and for Mr. Galeski.’

  It was clear from her attitude—expectant and defensive—that she knew that the last name would produce a reaction.

  She was right. Fire blazed viciously from Pauline Conroy’s eyes before she could control herself and the long lashes had swept concealingly down.

  ‘I don’t think,’ she said, through lips which had temporarily lost their soft allure and become a thin, harsh line, ‘that Mr. Galeski will object to answering any questions—from anyone.’

  From the way in which she accented the last word it was evident that it was ‘Scotland Yard’ she meant to convey. Hostility crackled dangerously between the two women.

  Paul Russell leaned forward, metaphorically gloved hands holding the naked wires tactfully apart.

  ‘Of course he won’t,’ he observed. ‘Serge is as ready as any of us to do what he can to help.’

  A faint, warning bell was echoing distantly in Mordecai Tremaine’s brain. But before he could grasp the meaning of what was happening, before he could pin it firmly to the wall of his mind, it was happening no longer. Russell had brought back normality into the room. He had turned towards Sandra Borne.

  ‘The best thing we can do, Sandy, is to leave this to you. You were closer to Lydia than any of us. You should be the one to decide.’

  Sandra Borne had been taking little part in the conversation. Tremaine had been watching her as she had sat, sad-faced, in one corner of the room. Her eyes had travelled restlessly from one to the other of the faces of her companions, but she had made no effort to express any opinion. She had a listless air, as though the vitality had been drained out of her by some emotional turmoil which had left her exhausted.

  Sympathy for her had flooded Mordecai Tremaine’s soul. Sandra Borne and Lydia Dare had been more than friends; they had not only shared the same house but the same tastes and interests—almost the same thoughts. There was about her the look of one who had been crushed beneath a fate in which she had trusted unquestioningly and which had suddenly overwhelmed her for a reason she did not comprehend.