The Condamine Case

A Golden Age Mystery

Moray Dalton

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781913054823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Literatura de crímenes y misterio

“’Tes a queer place seemingly.... Full of ghostesses, what with beasts coming down from the church roof and her that walks, hair blowing like smoke in the gale. ’T’esn’t a place to be out alone at night.”

In London, rising young movie director Stephen Latimer learns of a gentrified family in Somerset with an old history of witchcraft and haunting. Scenting an excellent subject for his next film, he visits their ancestral manor.

Pleased with his discoveries, Stephen returns to London, planning to spice up the family legend still further for the film. But he is soon to learn that after his departure Death came to Little Baring.

Inspector Hugh Collier of the Yard arrives on the scene, facing a case that concerns not one murder, but two. Whodunit? Someone within the narrow Condamine circle in Little Baring? Or someone farther afield? And is witchcraft really dead in Little Baring?

The Condamine Case was originally published in 1947. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

CHAPTER I
IN SEARCH OF A SUBJECT

Stephen Latimer’s assistant director, Evan Hughes, the swarthy, sardonic, and fanatically devoted little Welshman who was always running his errands, when he was not hovering at his elbow with his notebook and his footrule and the battered Kodak camera with which he took such disconcertingly good shots of possible backgrounds, had collapsed just after taking the last out-of-doors shots of Latimer’s second picture, Blackpool Blues. The trouble was acute appendicitis, and he was hustled off to the nearest cottage hospital. The operation was successful, but there were complications. The doctors and nurses fought for his life as doctors and nurses will for even the most trying of patients; and his idol remembered to send him bundles of newspapers with accounts of the triumphant London première of the picture he had helped to make.

Four months later he turned up one evening at Latimer’s flat in Bloomsbury Square. Latimer opened the door.

“Bunny! At last. I’ve missed you. Where the hell have you been since they kicked you out of the hospital?”

“Convalescing with an aunt who runs a chicken farm at Manorbier.”

“Where’s that?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. “You’ve come in the nick of time.” He led the way into the living-room and switched off the radio. “Make yourself at home. You know where the drinks are kept.”

“Thanks. I’ll put on the kettle. I’d like a cup of tea.”

“You old soak,” said Latimer affectionately.

Evan, who was essentially a humble-minded person, was surprised and touched by his reception. He had not realized that he would be missed. “What about a meal?” he enquired. “Have you been out to dinner?”

“No. I couldn’t be bothered. I thought I might open a tin of beans presently. I’m not hungry.”

“I am. We’ll have sardines on toast and an omelette.” Evan was worried. Stephen looked tired and hollow-eyed and it was obvious that he had been smoking and possibly also drinking too much. He lay on the divan and talked while Evan prepared the meal and laid the table.

“The Blackpool picture was a wow. I’ve been compared to René Claire and Orson Welles. But a lot depends on the third effort. If you can pull off three you’ve something more than a flash in the pan. One thing, I do know my limitations. I can’t do dialogue. Can’t get away from clichés.”

“What’s it all about? Is it in production?”

“No.”

Evan turned the toast and gently poked the sardines in the pan.

“How’s that? Time’s getting on. I thought—”

“I know. I’ve had several ideas, but never just what I wanted. There has to be a part to suit Stella Chance. Period, I think. I want drama with a touch of the macabre, and I’m keen to use backgrounds as Hardy used Egdon Heath, to get back to what some directors were trying to do when talkies came in and shifted the interest.”

“How much time have you?”

Stephen winced. “Very little. But I’m going down to Somerset to-morrow. A chap I met has asked me down to his place. It seems there’s an incident in his family history that I might be able to use. Condamine is the name.” Stephen broke off to light another cigarette. “As a matter of fact, Mrs. Condamine is a sister of Doris Palmer’s, those people I know at Hampstead. She comes up now and then to have teeth stopped and buy a new hat and so forth, but he very seldom shows up. He—it’s rather a joke really—he regards me with awe. Not a bad sort of blighter, but simple.”

He went on talking, rather jerkily and disconnectedly, while they ate their supper. Evan was attentive; it was part of his job to be a good listener. His mind was the anvil on which Stephen hammered out his stuff. He wished he had not had to leave him so long. Stephen, like many brilliant people, was a fool about himself. He had hung about in London instead of taking a holiday and had let himself get stale. The process of hunting for and discarding subjects always got on his nerves, but if he had come to it after a real break he would have been more fit to cope with it.

It was past eleven before Stephen would let him go, though they were to make an early start.

“You are still in the same diggings round the corner?”

“Yes. There was a room vacant, luckily. Are you sure you want me to go down with you? These people have invited you, but—”

“You’re coming,” Stephen said. “I shall need you. I always do. And if the Condamines don’t like you they’ll damned well have to lump you.”

“That will be pleasant for all concerned,” said Evan, grinning. He did not really anticipate any difficulty. He did not consider himself a social asset, but he was very good at merging into the background, and that was usually all that was required of him when Stephen was about.

Stephen Latimer’s appearance was undeniably striking. With his great height, his brilliant reddish-brown eyes, his mass of chestnut-coloured hair, he could hardly be overlooked or forgotten. His features were good, too: he had a short, straight nose, a mobile, sensitive mouth, a finely modelled if rather weak chin. Though his enemies, who said with a sneer that he was produced in glorious Technicolor, would not have believed it, he had little personal vanity. He used his charm at times deliberately, but it was always in the interests of his work.

“Nine sharp to-morrow, Bunny.”

“I’ll be ready.”

They were going by car, in Stephen’s ancient, battered, but still roadworthy Austin.

Stephen looked much less careworn in the light of morning and appeared to be in excellent spirits. The sun was shining when they started, but it clouded over as they reached Salisbury, and rain was falling as they emerged from the White Hart after a leisurely lunch.

Evan dozed, hypnotized by the steady swing of the wiper across the windscreen, and only roused himself when Stephen stopped the car and let down the window, leaning out to speak to an old labourer who was trudging home from work with a sack over his shoulders. “Is this Baring St. Mary? Which is the way to Little Baring? A quarter of a mile farther on? Thank you.”

“What do you think of it?”

The two men had got out to stretch their legs and were looking curiously up and down the village street. Their informant had vanished into one of the cottages, and there was not another soul in sight. The only living thing was a black cat mewing piteously outside a closed door. A slow-moving stream overgrown with reeds and loosestrife bordered one side of the road, so that many of the cottages could only be approached by means of a rotting plank bridge. All were built of the local stone, had thatched roofs, and appeared to be in the last stages of neglect and decay.

Evan shrugged. “I wouldn’t use it for a ‘Back to the Land’ poster.”

“No. But it’s perfect for period stuff. Nothing has changed here since—what’s the date over that door? 1603. Well, we shall see. Let’s get on.”

They skirted an ivy-grown and crumbling wall and passed between stone gateposts crowned with rampant heraldic beasts holding shields, up a short avenue of beeches, and drew up before a portico with Ionic columns.

An old black-and-white spaniel which had been asleep on the steps came down to welcome them, wagging his tail. The door opened and his master came bustling out to greet them.

“Good of you to come, Mr. Latimer. This is an honour—”

Mr. Condamine was a stocky little man, somewhere in the late forties, with a florid complexion and child-like blue eyes that seemed to gaze on the world about him with mild surprise. He looked kind and faintly foolish. He was dressed in well-worn brown tweeds and leather leggings and his boots were muddy.

“Punch and I were out getting something for the pot. Rabbits, you know—” He looked at Evan.

“My assistant director and secretary,” explained Latimer as they shook hands. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing him along. I can’t do without him.”

“No. No, of course not. That’s all right. Leave the car. Trask is about somewhere. He’ll run it into the garage and take up your luggage. Come along and have some tea.”

They followed him across a stone-paved hall. Evan noticed a big blue bowl full of hydrangeas on an oak refectory table strewn with an untidy litter of seed catalogues, dog-leads, cigarette-ends and old gloves. They entered a long, narrow room panelled in oak bleached by time to a pale silvery grey. There were chairs and a chesterfield covered with faded chintz. Everything in the room had been good, but was now old and threadbare.

A girl in a green woollen jumper and grey tweed skirt was wheeling a laden tea trolley over to the hearth, where a fire had been lit.

Another girl who had been kneeling on the hearthrug got up quickly and stood staring as if their arrival was unexpected. No, it isn’t that, thought Evan. She has set a scene and we’ve messed it up in some way.

Mr. Condamine went forward fussily. “My dear, here’s Mr. Latimer. He’s brought his secretary. Mr. Hughes. My wife—”

Mrs. Condamine acknowledged this introduction with a hardly perceptible movement of her head, and shook hands unsmilingly with Stephen. She was a tall girl with a figure which in a few years’ time would be Junoesque, a mane of black hair which was cut to shoulder length, and a face which Evan—who had taken a dislike to her—had to admit was photogenic. He summed her up as good to look at and bad to live with.

Mr. Condamine, who was obviously embarrassed by his wife’s glacial reception of their guests, urged them to sit down.

“Tea. Tea before I take you up to your rooms, eh? Unless you’d like something stronger—”

“Tea will be very welcome,” said Stephen.

Evan went over to the trolley where the girl in the green jumper was filling the cups. “Can I hand things round?”

Mr. Condamine intervened, “Lucy, my dear, forgive me. Forgetting my manners, eh? Mr. Latimer, Mr. Hughes. Miss Arden.”

Stephen joined them. “If I may say so, what a charming name. I, too, shall hand things round. Are these potato cakes? I have a passion for potato cakes, inherited from my Irish grandmother.”

Miss Arden, who was small, pale, and insignificant, smiled shyly and rather uneasily. Mrs. Condamine had, for the moment, been left quite outside their circle.

Evan, knowing his friend, realized that he had deliberately engineered this effect to teach his hostess not to be a toad. He was amused but apprehensive. Mrs. Condamine was probably unused to snubs and was, he thought, the type of woman who would think all the more of Stephen for standing up to her, and get her own back later on with Miss Arden, who seemed to occupy a subordinate position in the household and would be unable to defend herself.

But the group had dissolved almost before he could formulate his ideas, and Lucy Arden was left alone and a little apart with her tea trolley, while Stephen, having supplied Mrs. Condamine with tea and cake, sat down beside her on the chesterfield and turned to her with his famous crooked smile.

“Is it going to be a frightful nuisance to you if I decide to make a film here? I do hope you’re going to be kind—”

Evan did not hear her reply, for he had to listen to Mr. Condamine, and he could not see her face, because it was hidden from him by a curtain of black hair. He settled down to the enjoyment of a solid West-Country tea, and had disposed of two potato cakes, several sandwiches and a saffron bun, and was just finishing his second cup, when Stephen, having lighted Mrs. Condamine’s cigarette and his own, got up and stood with his back to the fire, dominating the room.

“I’m so sorry, Evan,” he said pleasantly. “Mr. Condamine had offered to put me up for the night. You had not turned up then, and I, most inexcusably, neglected to wire last night and ask if I might bring you along. I have told Mrs. Condamine that we don’t mind sharing a room.”

Mrs. Condamine said sharply, “But why should you be uncomfortable? Why not an hotel in Wells for Mr. Hughes? He could run over there in your car in twenty minutes.”

“I’m sorry,” said Stephen again, “but I must remind you that we are to spend the evening listening to the family legend your husband thinks might make a good scenario. If I’m taken with it I shall probably want to sit up half the night talking it over with my assistant director. Of course we could both go to Wells. That might be the best plan.” Mr. Condamine had been looking puzzled and unhappy, like a child whose companions are playing a game he does not understand. He had turned very red. “I don’t quite—Ida, surely we have two or three spare rooms?”

“Oh dear,” she said plaintively, “this makes me look such a rotten housekeeper. The fact is, darling, some of the mattresses have been sent to be re-covered and they haven’t come back. So there is only the west room.”

“Very well,” said her husband. He was unexpectedly firm and had even achieved something like dignity. “The camp bed can be moved out of my dressing-room for Mr. Hughes. The west room is quite large enough for two. Lucy, will you go now and tell Mrs. Trask to see about it. Trask can help her if she can’t manage alone.”

Stephen protested that they were giving too much trouble. “We can go to Wells. Really—”

“Please,” said Mr. Condamine very earnestly. “I should be so hurt, so ashamed. I do beg of you. I—I asked you here—”

“We’ll stay then. It’s very good of you. But, look here, no camp bed. Isn’t there a sofa? Bunny doesn’t take up much room—”

After some further discussion the sofa was agreed to as a compromise, and Lucy, who had lingered by the door, evidently anticipating some change in her instructions, was sent off to find blankets and pillows. Mrs. Condamine, meanwhile, had not uttered a word for some time and sat smoking her cigarette and looking into the fire, indifferent and aloof.

Or was she so indifferent? Evan wondered. He was sensitive to atmospheres, and it seemed to him that someone in that room was in a state of repressed fury. He glanced doubtfully at her. There might be more in that young woman than met the eye.

CHAPTER II
A WEED LIKE HAIR

Ida Condamine was still awake when the men came upstairs soon after the grandfather clock in the hall had struck twelve. She heard the murmur of their voices, subdued to avoid disturbing the sleeping household, and then the closing of the door of the west room and of her husband’s room farther down the corridor.

A few minutes elapsed before the handle of her door was turned. George, of course. She breathed steadily and audibly, hoping that he would think she slept, and presently he...