Roberta Fairham seemed to have shrunk within herself. She looked old and lifeless—and frightened. Her tongue passed over her lips.
“I didn’t kill Adrian,” she said unsteadily. “I didn’t. I didn’t!”
It was significant that no one looked at her. Colonel Neale said:
“This is all very interesting but don’t you think it would be as well to come to the point of the matter first?”
“Am I taking too long?” Mordecai Tremaine smiled disarmingly. “I wanted to make sure that we’d disposed of all the secondary matters before dealing with the major question, so that we could see the real problem more clearly.”
He glanced at Helen Carthallow. He said:
“When you saw the dead body of your husband, Mrs.Carthallow, did you think he might have committed suicide?”
She looked at him in a puzzled manner and he knew that she was recalling that this was not the first time the possibility of suicide had been put to her. But she shook her head.
“No,” she told him. “The thought of suicide never came into my mind.”
“Why not?”
“Adrian wasn’t the kind of man to kill himself. His reaction to trouble of any kind would have been to disappear. He’d have gone to South America or some other country where it would have been difficult to trace him. He wouldn’t have taken his own life. Besides—”
Mordecai Tremaine did not prompt her and after a moment or two she went on:
“It was the revolver. It was on the floor. It was too far away for Adrian to have dropped it. I knew he couldn’t have used it against himself.”
“Was his body,” Tremaine said carefully, “in exactly the same position as it was when I came into the house with you?”
She hesitated. Her eyes flashed momentarily to Lester Imleyson.
“No,” she said slowly. “No, it wasn’t. Adrian was sitting in his chair, leaning forward across the desk. I—I pushed him so that he fell on the floor. That was how the chair came to be overturned.”
“Why did you do that?”
There was distress in her face. The lock of hair came down over her forehead. Mordecai Tremaine said, quietly:
“I think I know why. It was because you thought it looked as though someone had murdered him in cold blood as he sat at the desk and you didn’t want the police to gain the same impression.”
Her silence was her consent. Mordecai felt a wave of compassion for her. She must have believed that Lester Imleyson had killed her husband not in the heat of passion, but deliberately and coolly as he had sat unsuspecting. She must have endured an unspeakable agony of mind.
He did not wish to prolong her torment now. He said, quickly:
“Adrian Carthallow was a successful artist. He made a lot of money. But he didn’t make as much as he wanted and he didn’t make it quickly enough. He was heavily in debt. He owed Mr. Haldean several thousand pounds and there were probably other creditors who weren’t so ready to wait for settlement. So he looked around for another method of dealing with his difficulties. And he found it. He found it in selling pictures that were supposed to be by famous artists of the past but that he actually painted himself.
“As a painter he was a genius. He had a versatility of style that enabled him to imitate the work of artists like Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Lawrence so well that he could deceive experts. The trouble was, of course, that he couldn’t market them himself. He had to find a man who could sell the paintings for him without allowing his name to be mentioned.
“The man he found was called Galley. Just how he met him I don’t suppose we shall ever discover, but Carthallow often went into strange places and was acquainted with a great many people of doubtful reputation. He could always explain it by saying that he was searching for copy—trying to find suitable models for his pictures and studying humanity in the raw. Galley was a con man—a smooth-tongued confidence trickster who could negotiate the selling end.”
Hilda Eveland’s plump face bore an expression of incredulity.
“Are you trying to tell us, Mordecai, that Adrian was actually engaged in a conspiracy with this man Galley to sell faked old masters?”
“Precisely,” said Mordecai Tremaine. “We know that one picture was definitely sold—a painting purported to be by Reynolds that was bought by Warren Belmont, the American millionaire who was over here a short while ago. It was very cleverly arranged, of course. Belmont was led to believe that he had made a find and was getting a bargain—the picture was supposed to have been discovered among a lot of old paintings stored in the ancestral home of a peer who’d just succeeded to his title and who was only too glad to sell but who didn’t want his name mentioned. It was so good a fake that it fooled experts over here, but suspicions were raised in New York and Belmont asked for discreet enquiries to be made. It may be that other pictures will come to light—the investigations are still going on.
“Galley was in Falporth until recently. He was going under the name Morton Westfield and was a member of the Follies concert party at the Pavilion. He was keeping in touch with Carthallow—I saw them myself one morning on the beach. It seemed that he wanted Carthallow to paint more pictures—I imagine he looked upon him as a kind of magic goose that would go on laying golden eggs indefinitely—and Carthallow didn’t sound at all happy about it. Perhaps he realized better than his accomplice that to produce too many fakes would be to risk discovery, or perhaps he already knew that Warren Belmont was suspicious about the Reynolds and that enquiries were being made about it. It’s true enough, as Mr. Haldean told me, that Carthallow was worried and obviously had something on his mind.
“It’s more than probable that Westfield—or Galley, rather—was trying his hand at blackmail. Having painted and sold one fake painting Carthallow had put himself in the hands of his accomplice. Instead of being the master, paying a small percentage of the profit for the actual work of selling, he may have become the servant, with Galley demanding more pictures as the price of his silence. Carthallow dared not refuse him outright because he knew that if Galley went to the police his own position and reputation would be gone. Galley would be in it, too, of course, but being only a minor instrument and having turned King’s Evidence, he would be able to hope for a much lighter sentence.”
Mordecai Tremaine’s pince-nez had been steadily slipping. In the very moment when it seemed that nothing could save them he settled them back into position.
“Perhaps,” he said mildly, “you can already see what I’m suggesting?”
Both Hilda Eveland and Helen Carthallow were looking puzzled but Elton Steele leaned forward. His voice held a note of eagerness that was foreign to him.
“You mean that this chap Galley—or Westfield, whatever his real name is—might be mixed up in the murder?”
Mordecai Tremaine did not reply. He sat regarding them, doing his utmost to appear inscrutable.
It was Lewis Haldean who took up the point Steele had raised. He gestured excitedly.
“You think it was Galley who brought Adrian back unexpectedly? You think Galley told him he wanted to see him here where they wouldn’t be disturbed and that there was a quarrel and that Galley shot him, either accidentally or deliberately? By Heaven, Tremaine, if what you’ve said about this picture business is true there’s a motive there right enough!”
He turned to face Inspector Penross, still standing impassively against the door.
“Have you tackled Galley, Inspector? What’s his story? Was he able to give you a decent alibi?”
Penross glanced at Mordecai Tremaine. That gentleman said:
“Unfortunately, Galley isn’t in a position to give us any kind of information. You see, he’s dead.”
The enthusiasm faded slowly from Haldean’s face.
“Dead?” he echoed. “But how? When did it happen?”
“His body was found yesterday among the rocks at the foot of Trecarne Head. The newspapers were asked to hold the information until further enquiries could be
made. It could have been an accident—the cliff edge is dangerous just there, as you probably know—or it could have been suicide.”
“Poor devil.” It was Elton Steele’s voice. He saw their expressions of surprise, looked disconcerted for an instant, and then shrugged. “Sorry. I suppose if he killed Adrian I ought to say good riddance to a murderer. But I never really liked Adrian and it’s no use pretending I did. I think he deserved all he got.”
“Elton!”
Helen Carthallow sounded distressed, but her distress was edged with fear. Mordecai Tremaine eyed her reflectively. Steele twisted in his chair so that he was facing her.
“Don’t worry, Helen. They can’t hang me just for disliking Adrian. They’ll have to prove I killed him first.”
“Wait a moment,” Lewis Haldean said suddenly. “Wait a moment!” He had been hunched in his chair, a look of intense concentration upon his face. “It’s beginning to fit. Suppose Galley did come here and kill Adrian—not intentionally but after a quarrel in which both their nerves were on edge. Suppose he knew that the police were already taking an interest in the crooked game with the paintings and that sooner or later they were bound to catch up with him. Isn’t it possible that he decided to take the easiest way out? After all, Trecarne Head’s the obvious place for suicide. If that was what happened it clears up the whole thing!”
“It’s certainly a nice, tidy theory,” Mordecai Tremaine agreed, “but it takes us back to where we started. How did Galley manage to get into the house and then make his escape without being seen? I asked you all to come here today,” he added, “because I wondered whether any of you could tell me anything that would give the answers to those questions.”
At first there was a silence. And then Elton Steele’s breath came in a long sigh.
“So it was Galley,” he said.
There was a sudden ripple of conversation. A ripple that swelled into a volume of sound that held conjecture and wonder and relief. Above all, relief.
Mordecai Tremaine glanced at Colonel Neale, a distant, aloof grey figure, somehow immeasurably detached from the others.
“You, Colonel,” he said. “You were in the neighbourhood of the house that day. Did you see anything of him?”
Colonel Neale shook his head.
“I didn’t notice anyone in particular. I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“He’s dead,” Mordecai Tremaine said. “I know where your sympathies lie, but it won’t harm Galley for you to speak now.”
The wintry smile was on the Colonel’s lips.
“I still can’t tell you I saw him. I just didn’t notice anyone.”
Hilda Eveland said:
“But, Mordecai, even if he was in the neighbourhood it doesn’t prove he came to the house. He would have had to cross the bridge and Matilda would have seen him. And she wouldn’t have had any reason to tell lies about that.”
“No,” Mordecai Tremaine agreed, “she wouldn’t. It looks as though we’ve reached a deadlock, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Lewis Haldean said, “he didn’t get to the house by using the bridge, after all.”
“What d’you mean?” queried Elton Steele sharply.
“I mean suppose he came up the cliff?”
“But that’s impossible, Lewis,” Helen Carthallow said. “No one could climb up that way. It’s far too steep.”
The blond man stuck to his point.
“I don’t think it would be impossible. Helen, do you remember that day a couple of years ago when Adrian wanted to explore the side of the cliff? He saw a cleft in the rock that he thought might be a cave and we fixed up a rope and lowered him down.”
She frowned.
“Yes, I remember,” she said. “But I don’t see the connection, Lewis.”
“Don’t you see, Helen? We fastened the rope around an iron staple in the ruined look-out place out on the headland. And that staple’s still there! ”
Mordecai Tremaine said, doubtfully:
“Surely it would need a long rope to reach from the look-outhut right down to the beach?”
“There wouldn’t be any need to use a rope for the whole distance. The top portion of the cliff is sheer—a fly couldn’t hope to climb it—but once you’ve got past that the rest is fairly easy. An active man could manage it all right.”
“It sounds reasonable,” Mordecai Tremaine said. “He could have put a double rope around the staple, lowered himself down the cliff until he came to the part where he could use his hands and feet, and then have pulled the rope after him so that nobody could tell he’d gone that way. It shows us how he might have got away but the question is how did he get in? Obviously, he couldn’t have fixed the rope around the staple in order to climb up the cliff.”
Haldean looked crestfallen.
“No,” he admitted, “I suppose not.” And then, after a moment or two, his face cleared again. “I’ve got it!” he said exultantly. “Matilda Vickery would have seen him if he’d crossed the bridge in daylight, so he must have crossed it hours before Adrian got back—when it was still dark! ”
“You mean that he waited in the empty house all day for Adrian Carthallow to come?”
“Yes! Don’t you see, if Matilda Vickery didn’t see him he must have done, and it was vital from his point of view anyway that nobody should know about his connection with Carthallow.”
Roberta Fairham gave a cry. Her face had gone white.
“Then—then he must have been there when I—I—”
Mordecai Tremaine inclined his head.
“That’s it, Miss Fairham. If that’s what he did he must have been here when you paid your visit. You must have been alone with a murderer. Fortunately,” he added dryly, “you didn’t know it.”
Haldean was still shaping his theory, eagerly fitting fresh pieces into the puzzle.
“With that rope to carry,” he said, “he knew that he’d be a conspicuous figure. So he came by sea. The tide was full at about half-past three that morning. There are several caves at the end of the headland. They aren’t very wide but they run well back into the cliff. On a full tide he could have taken his boat well in out of sight and moored it. Then he scrambled over the rocks and worked his way along the headland until he reached the sands and was able to go up to the bridge and cross over in the dark.
“He waited for Adrian to come, killed him, and then used the rope to make his escape down the cliff just before Helen got back. It’s pretty deserted on the far side of the headland and he would have been able to make sure there was nobody about before he started to climb down. By that time the afternoon tide would have been well in and it would have been a simple job to get his boat out again.
“The murder may not have been premeditated, but he would have had his way of escape ready because of the need to avoid drawing attention to his visit. There wouldn’t have been any danger of the boat being noticed during the day because he could have left it far enough inside the cave to prevent anyone seeing it from the sea, and even at low tide there’s water covering the end of the headland so that it was unlikely that anybody would come exploring on foot.”
The blond man stopped. He was sitting forward expectantly.
“Well,” he said, “there you are, Tremaine. What do you think of that for an explanation?”
Mordecai Tremaine nodded approvingly.
“Thank you, Mr. Haldean. You’ve given us a very lucid account.”
He added, quietly:
“I thought that must have been the way you did it.”
9
AT FIRST IT seemed that none of them had realized what he had said. And then Hilda Eveland’s voice came shakily, incredulously:
“Mordecai—you don’t, you can’t mean that it was Lewis who killed Adrian?”
“I’m afraid,” Mordecai Tremaine said, “that is just what I do mean.”
Haldean was bolt upright, as though shock had jerked him there. There was indignation in the thrust of his beard and the blaze of his
Viking’s blue eyes.
“Look here, Tremaine, I’m not in the mood for jokes of this kind.”
Mordecai Tremaine said:
“No one knows better than yourself that I’ve no intention of joking.”
Slowly the blond man relaxed. He glanced over his shoulder. Inspector Penross was standing a yard away from him and his attitude was tense and watchful. Haldean smiled.
“I presume,” he said, “you have some foundation for this absurd accusation of yours. I think you’d better tell me what it is.”
Helen Carthallow was staring at Mordecai Tremaine.
“There must be some mistake,” she said. “Some dreadful mistake. It couldn’t have been Lewis.”
“There’s no mistake,” he told her gravely. “When you came down to me that afternoon on the beach and told me about your husband, I’d been aroused once before—by what I later discovered must have been the sound of a shot, and I’d also been aware of a vague buzzing noise. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time—it was mixed up with the surf and you can’t be certain of things when you’re neither asleep nor awake. But afterwards, when we were faced with the problem of whether anyone could have got into the house without being seen, that vague sound kept recurring to my mind. It worried me. And at last I realized what it had been—the engine of a motor launch.
“I knew then how the murderer—assuming it had been someone we hadn’t so far suspected—could have made his escape. And having thought of the sea as a means of getting away without crossing the bridge the next step was to deduce that somehow a rope had been used to get down the steep, upper part of the cliff and that the murderer had then managed to climb the rest of the way. I remembered, too, that when Adrian Carthallow had shown me the look-out hut I’d noticed a big iron staple in the ground that would have made an ideal support for the rope. It didn’t explain, of course, how the murderer had managed to get into the house in the first place, and the only explanation I could think of was that he’d crossed the bridge in darkness and had waited on the premises all day, leaving his boat concealed in one of the caves at the foot of the cliffs.”
So Pretty a Problem Page 25
