“Of course, Galley was interested in Carthallow’s friends for obvious reasons, and I think Carthallow must have told him something about Haldean’s being afraid there was trouble coming. Anyway, he’d been keeping an eye on Haldean and after the murder he put two and two together. Carthallow had been a useful meal ticket and you can imagine that he didn’t take kindly to the thought of losing him. He tackled Haldean, told him he knew what had happened and that he expected to be well paid if he was to keep his mouth shut.
“Naturally, Haldean wasn’t anxious to spend the rest of his life paying out blackmail, but he knew that he couldn’t take the risk of turning Galley down flat. He pretended to go to pieces and arranged to meet him at an old hut near Trecarne Head to talk about terms. He said that with enquiries still going on he didn’t want to chance being seen in Galley’s company anywhere in the town. It seemed reasonable enough, and since Haldean put up a convincing show of a man who’d lost his nerve Galley agreed to the meeting. Which was just too bad for him. Haldean was there first, laid in wait for him, and knocked him out with a handy chunk of rock and then dragged his body to the edge of the cliff in the dark and threw him over.”
The inspector heaved a sigh. He said:
“Well, that’s it. I don’t mind admitting, though, that I had some pretty bad moments when you were working up to your final curtain at Paradise. You amateurs can sail near the wind and get away with it, but we professionals have to be above reproach. I was having all sorts of unpleasant thoughts about the Judges Rules and the admissibility of evidence. Fortunately, Haldean seems to have taken it for granted that he was done for, and when I got him down to the station after I’d cautioned him he gave his statement without any trouble.”
Mordecai Tremaine nodded thoughtfully.
“It certainly prevents any awkwardness, Charles. What’s Haldean’s attitude?”
“It’s as though he’s resigned himself to take what’s coming,” Penross said. “He’s just not interested—acts as if now that he’s done the job he wanted to do he doesn’t care what happens. It may not last, of course. When he realizes just where he is he may change his tune.”
“Right now,” said Mordecai Tremaine slowly, “I think he feels that he’s a man who has fulfilled his destiny and hasn’t any need to go on living.”
“He must have been in love with that girl of his.”
“He was in love with her. But I’m pretty certain that for a long time now she’s been only an excuse in his mind. His real love has been a desire for revenge. He allowed the thought of getting even with Carthallow to become an obsession. That’s why he didn’t do the obvious thing and go to the police when he found out about Carthallow and Galley. As you said just now he wanted something more. He wanted a life for a life and he wanted the self-glorification of believing that he was the chosen instrument for taking it.”
Penross said:
“I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor devil. He must have gone through a bad time when that girl died, and from all accounts Carthallow isn’t any great loss—despite his pictures.”
“But he had the right to live, Charles,” Mordecai Tremaine said slowly. “You know that. No man can take the law into his own hands.”
His hand went up to his pince-nez. There was a troubled look in his eyes.
“Perhaps I should have seen it sooner. I might have been able to do something. I knew that there was trouble of some kind, but I was too slow. I couldn’t put my finger on it. If only I’d taken pains with Haldean he might have talked to me. I heard him say once that without purpose a man couldn’t begin to live. It occurred to me that it was an odd thing to come from a man who didn’t seem to have any purpose himself but I let it go, Charles. I didn’t follow it up as I should have done.”
Penross placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I know how you feel,” he said quietly. “I’ve been in this game a long time and I still don’t like it when I have to put a man inside unless he’s just plain crook. You couldn’t have done any more than you did. Haldean wouldn’t have talked. If he could stick close to Carthallow for so long without letting him suspect anything he wouldn’t have given himself away to you, a comparative stranger.”
“Maybe not,” Mordecai Tremaine said. “But you see, Charles, right from my first meeting with him I had a strange feeling where Adrian Carthallow was concerned. It was as though our lives were fated to come together. It was probably just my imagination. I dare say the reason he went out of his way to be friendly towards me when he found out I was here was that he had a guilty conscience and wanted to make sure that my visit was purely an innocent one and that I hadn’t come to keep an eye on him.
“That afternoon on the beach, when Helen Carthallow came down to me, I’d been thinking things over because I knew that the situation was beginning to look dangerous, but I didn’t dream that it was going to come to a head so soon or so violently. The shot I heard, of course, must have been the second that Haldean fired. What probably happened was that the first shot, although I don’t recall it, disturbed my nap so that when the second report came I was already half awake and heard it distinctly. If only I’d taken the trouble to notice the time we might have been able to clear things up sooner.”
“It hasn’t turned out so badly,” Penross said. “Maybe,” he added, “it was a good thing for somebody that Haldean acted when he did.”
Tremaine gave him an enquiring glance.
“You mean Colonel Neale?”
“I mean Colonel Neale,” his companion agreed. “He didn’t come to Falporth merely for his health.”
“You think he intended to do something about Carthallow?” Mordecai Tremaine pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Charles,” he said doubtfully. “There’s a big difference between a man who’d like to murder someone and a man who’s actually prepared to do it. Still, whether Neale came here with any definite purpose in his mind is merely an academic question. He’s cleared now.”
“Yes,” Penross said, “he’s cleared now.”
Both of them were silent, and then, after a moment or two, Mordecai Tremaine said:
“You won’t be—too hard on her, Charles? She’s been through a great deal, you know.”
There was understanding in the inspector’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not anxious to wash any more dirty linen in public than is absolutely necessary, and Haldean’s confession will help to keep the questions down.”
After Penross had gone Mordecai Tremaine went out on to the cliffs. This was the time he dreaded. The time of black reaction when the excitement of the pursuit and the exhilaration of the problem were over and he was left with the ashes of despair.
All the romanticism and the idealism within him seemed to be threatened by an engulfing darkness. He wanted to believe in an ordered, happy world in which cheating and lying and dreadful murder had no part. He wanted there always to be a happy ending. And instead he could see only ruined lives and ugly, twisted passions.
He walked slowly along the cliff path, the evening breeze blowing about him and the sound of the surf in his ears, and tried to tell himself that it was no use nursing regrets for what was past. You had to keep your eyes on the future; you had to forget the heartache and the disillusion of what had gone before.
He glanced down to the beach and saw two figures where the waves were still breaking white in that ceaseless flood of cleansing water. One of them was Elton Steele and the big man’s arm was around his companion’s waist, holding her closely to him.
Mordecai Tremaine found that his eyes were misty. He took off his pince-nez and began to polish them. The sentimental glow began to creep to hesitant life again in his heart.
He thought that for Helen Carthallow there was going to be a happy ending, after all.
THE END
Murder Has a Motive
When Mordecai Tremaine emerges from the train station, murder is the last thing on his mind. But then again, he has never been able t
o resist anything in the nature of a mystery – and a mystery is precisely what awaits him in the village of Dalmering.
Rehearsals for the local amateur dramatic production are in full swing – but as Mordecai discovers all too soon, the real tragedy is unfolding offstage. The star of the show has been found dead, and the spotlight is soon on Mordecai, whose reputation in the field of crime-solving precedes him.
With a murderer waiting in the wings, it’s up to Mordecai to derail the killer’s performance . . . before it’s curtains for another victim.
Murder for Christmas
‘Kept guessing to the end, I am left wondering why it has taken so long to discover Francis Duncan . . . With some 20 crime novels to his credit, a relaunch seems long overdue’
Daily Mail
Mordecai Tremaine, former tobacconist and perennial lover of romance novels, has been invited to spend Christmas in the sleepy village of Sherbroome at the country retreat of one Benedict Grame.
Arriving on Christmas Eve, he finds that the revelries are in full flow - but so too are tensions amongst the assortment of guests.
Midnight strikes and the party-goers discover that it’s not just presents nestling under the tree . . . there’s a dead body too. A dead body that bears a striking resemblance to Father Christmas.
With the snow falling and the suspicions flying, it’s up to Mordecai to sniff out the culprit – and prevent someone else from getting murder for Christmas.
‘The booknods towards Agatha Christie but retains a crackling atmosphere of dread and horror that will chill the heart however warm your fireside’
Metro
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 1950
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First published by Vintage in 2016
First published in Great Britain by John Long in 1950
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So Pretty a Problem Page 27
