A Shilling for Candles ag-2 Read online

  He was peering into a paper bag which held two rather jaded buns.

  "Oh, I took these along for her to eat. They were all I could find. We always had a bun when we came out of the water when we were kids. I thought maybe she'd be glad of something."

  The car was slipping down the steep track to the main Westover-Stonegate road. They crossed the high road and entered a deep lane on the other side. A signpost said "Medley 1, Liddlestone 3."

  "So you had no intention of stealing the car when you set off to follow her to the beach?"

  "Certainly not!" Tisdall said, as indignantly as if it made a difference. "It didn't even cross my mind till I came up the hill and saw the car waiting there. Even now I can't believe I really did it. I've been a fool, but I've never done anything like that before."

  "Was she in the sea then?"

  "I don't know. I didn't go to look. If I had seen her even in the distance I couldn't have done it. I just slung the buns in and beat it. When I came to I was halfway to Canterbury. I just turned her around without stopping, and came straight back."

  The sergeant made no comment.

  "You still haven't told me how long you've been staying at the cottage?"

  "Since Saturday midnight."

  It was now Thursday.

  "And you still ask me to believe that you don't know your hostess's last name?"

  "No. It's a bit queer, I know. I thought so, myself, at first. I had a conventional upbringing. But she made it seem natural. After the first day we simply accepted each other. It was as if I had known her for years." As the sergeant said nothing, but sat radiating doubt as a stove radiates heat, he added with a hint of temper, "Why shouldn't I tell you her name if I knew it!"

  "How should I know?" said the sergeant, unhelpfully. He considered out of the corner of his eye the young man's pale, if composed, face. He seemed to have recovered remarkably quickly from his exhibition of nerves and grief. Lightweights, these moderns. No real emotion about anything. Just hysteria. What they called love was just a barnyard exercise; they thought anything else "sentimental." No discipline. No putting up with things. Every time something got difficult, they ran away. Not slapped enough in their youth. All this modern idea about giving children their own way. Look what it led to. Howling on the beach one minute and as cool as a cucumber the next.

  And then the sergeant noticed the trembling of the too fine hands on the wheel. No, whatever else Robert Tisdall was he wasn't cool.

  "This is the place?" the sergeant asked, as they slowed down by a hedged garden. "This is the place."

  It was a half-timbered cottage of about five rooms; shut in from the road by a seven-foot hedge of briar and honeysuckle, and dripping with roses. A godsend for Americans, weekenders, and photographers. The little windows yawned in the quiet, and the bright blue door stood hospitably open, disclosing in the shadow the gleam of a brass warming pan on the wall. The cottage had been "discovered."

  As they walked up the brick path, a thin small woman appeared on the doorstep, brilliant in a white apron; her scanty hair drawn to a knob at the back of her head, and a round bird's-nest affair of black satin set insecurely at the very top of her arched, shining poll.

  Tisdall lagged as he caught sight of her, so that the sergeant's large official elevation should announce trouble to her with the clarity of a sandwich board.

  But Mrs. Pitts was a policeman's widow, and no apprehension showed on her tight little face. Buttons coming up the path meant for her a meal in demand; her mind acted accordingly.

  "I've been making some griddle cakes for breakfast. It's going to be hot later on. Best to let the stove out. Tell Miss Robinson when she comes in, will you, sir?" Then, realizing that buttons were a badge of office, "Don't tell me you've been driving without a license, sir!"

  "Miss — Robinson, is it? Has met with an accident," the sergeant said.

  "The car! Oh, dear! She was always that reckless with it. Is she bad?"

  "It wasn't the car. An accident in the water."

  "Oh," she said slowly. "That bad!"

  "How do you mean: that bad?"

  "Accidents in the water only mean one thing."

  "Yes," agreed the sergeant.

  "Well, well," she said, sadly contemplative. Then, her manner changing abruptly, "And where were you?" she snapped, eyeing the drooping Tisdall as she eyed Saturday-night fish on a Westover fishmonger's slab. Her superficial deference to «gentry» had vanished in the presence of catastrophe. Tisdall appeared as the "bundle of uselessness" she had privately considered him.

  The sergeant was interested but snubbing. "The gentleman wasn't there."

  "He ought to have been there. He left just after her."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I saw him. I live in the cottage down the road."

  "Do you know Miss Robinson's other address? I take it for granted this isn't her permanent home."

  "No, of course it isn't. She only has this place for a month. It belongs to Owen Hughes." She paused, impressively, to let the importance of the name sink in. "But he's doing a film in Hollywood. About a Spanish count, it was to be, so he told me. He said he's done Italian counts and French counts and he thought it would be a new experience for him to be a Spanish count. Very nice, Mr. Hughes is. Not a bit spoiled in spite of all the fuss they make of him. You wouldn't believe it, but a girl came to me once and offered me five pounds if I'd give her the sheets he had slept in. What I gave her was a piece of my mind. But she wasn't a bit ashamed. Offered me twenty-five shillings for a pillow slip. I don't know what the world is coming to, that I don't, what with —»

  "What other address had Miss Robinson?"

  "I don't know any of her addresses but this one."

  "Didn't she write and tell you that she was coming?"

  "Write! No! She sent telegrams. I suppose she could write, but I'll take my alfred davy she never did. About six telegrams a day used to go to the post office in Liddlestone. My Albert used to take them, mostly; between school. Some of them used three or four forms, they were that long."

  "Do you know any of the people she had down here, then?"

  "She didn't have any folks here. 'Cept Mr. Stannaway, that is."

  "No one!"

  "Not a one. Once — it was when I was showing her the trick of flushing the W.C.; you have to pull hard and then let go smart-like — once she said: 'Do you ever, Mrs. Pitts, she said, 'get sick of the sight of people's faces? I said I got a bit tired of some. She said: 'Not some, Mrs. Pitts. All of them. Just sick of people. I said when I felt like that I took a dose of castor oil. She laughed and said it wasn't a bad idea. Only everyone should have one and what a good new world it would be in two days. 'Mussolini never thought of that one, she said."

  "Was it London she came from?"

  "Yes. She went up just once or twice in the three weeks she's been here. Last time was last weekend, when she brought Mr. Stannaway back." Again her glance dismissed Tisdall as something less than human. "Doesn't he know her address?" she asked.

  "No one does," the sergeant said. "I'll look through her papers and see what I can find."

  Mrs. Pitts led the way into the living room; cool, low-beamed, and smelling of sweet peas.

  "What have you done with her — with the body, I mean?" she asked.

  "At the mortuary."

  This seemed to bring home tragedy for the first time.

  "Oh, deary me." She moved the end of her apron over a polished table, slowly. "And me making griddle cakes."

  This was not a lament for wasted griddle cakes, but her salute to the strangeness of life.

  "I expect you'll need breakfast," she said to Tisdall, softened by her unconscious recognition of the fact that the best are but puppets.

  But Tisdall wanted no breakfast. He shook his head and turned away to the window, while the sergeant searched in the desk.

  "I wouldn't mind one of those griddle cakes," the sergeant said, turning over papers.

  "You won'
t get better in Kent, though it's me that's saying it. And perhaps Mr. Stannaway will swallow some tea."

  She went away to the kitchen.

  "So you didn't know her name was Robinson?" said the sergeant, glancing up.

  "Mrs. Pitts always addressed her as 'miss. And anyhow, did she look as if her name was Robinson?"

  The sergeant, too, did not believe for a moment that her name was Robinson, so he let the subject drop.

  Presently Tisdall said: "If you don't need me, I think I'll go into the garden. It — it's stuffy in here."

  "All right. You won't forget I need the car to get back to Westover."

  "I've told you. It was a sudden impulse. Anyhow, I couldn't very well steal it now and hope to get away with it."

  Not so dumb, decided the sergeant. Quite a bit of temper, too. Not just a nonentity, by any means.

  The desk was littered with magazines, newspapers, half-finished cartons of cigarettes, bits of a jigsaw puzzle, a nail file and polish, patterns of silk, and a dozen more odds and ends; everything, in fact, except notepaper. The only documents were bills from the local tradesmen, most of them receipted. If the woman had been untidy and unmethodical, she had at least had a streak of caution. The receipts might be crumpled and difficult to find if wanted, but they had never been thrown away.

  The sergeant, soothed by the quiet of the early morning, the cheerful sounds of Mrs. Pitts making tea in the kitchen, and the prospect of griddle cakes to come, began as he worked at the desk to indulge in his one vice. He whistled. Very low and round and sweet, the sergeant's whistling was, but, still — whistling. "Sing to Me Sometimes" he warbled, not forgetting the grace notes, and his subconscious derived great satisfaction from the performance. His wife had once shown him a bit in the Mail that said that whistling was the sign of an empty mind. But it hadn't cured him.

  And then, abruptly, the even tenor of the moment was shattered. Without warning there came a mock tattoo on the half-open sitting-room door — tum-te-ta-tum-tumta-TA! A man's voice said, "So this is where you're hiding out!" The door was flung wide with a flourish and in the opening stood a short dark stranger.

  "We-e-ell," he said, making several syllables of it. He stood staring at the sergeant, amused and smiling broadly. "I thought you were Chris! What is the Force doing here? Been a burglary?"

  "No, no burglary." The sergeant was trying to collect his thoughts.

  "Don't tell me Chris has been throwing a wild party! I thought she gave that up years ago. They don't go with all those highbrow roles."

  "No, as a matter of fact, there's —»

  "Where is she, anyway?" He raised his voice in a cheerful shout directed at the upper story. "Yo-hoo! Chris. Come on down, you old so-and-so! Hiding out on me!" To the sergeant: "Gave us all the slip for nearly three weeks now. Too much Kleig, I guess. Gives them all the jitters sooner or later. But then, the last one was such a success they naturally want to cash in on it." He hummed a bar of "Sing to Me Sometimes," with mock solemnity. "That's why I thought you were Chris; you were whistling her song. Whistling darned good, too."

  "Her — her song?" Presently, the sergeant hoped, a gleam of light would be vouchsafed him.

  "Yes, her song. Who else's? You didn't think it was mine, my dear good chap, did you? Not on your life. I wrote the thing, sure. But that doesn't count. It's her song. And perhaps she didn't put it across! Eh? Wasn't that a performance?"

  "I couldn't really say." If the man would stop talking, he might sort things out.

  "Perhaps you haven't seen Bars of Iron yet?"

  "No, I can't say I have."

  "That's the worst of wireless and gramophone records and what not: they take all the pep out of a film. Probably by the time you hear Chris sing that song you'll be so sick of the sound of it that you'll retch at the ad lib. It's not fair to a film. All right for songwriters and that sort of cattle, but rough on a film, very rough. There ought to be some sort of agreement. Hey, Chris! Isn't she here, after all my trouble in catching up on her?" His face drooped like a disappointed baby's. "Having her walk in and find me isn't half such a good one as walking in on her. Do you think —»

  "Just a minute, Mr. - er — I don't know your name."

  "I'm Jay Harmer. Jason on the birth certificate. I wrote 'If It Can't Be in June. You probably whistle that as —»

  "Mr. Harmer. Do I understand that the lady who is — was — staying here is a film actress?"

  "Is she a film actress!" Slow amazement deprived Mr. Harmer for once of speech. Then it began to dawn on him that he must have made a mistake. "Say, Chris is staying here, isn't she?"

  "The lady's name is Chris, yes. But — well, perhaps you'll be able to help us. There's been some trouble — very unfortunate — and apparently she said her name was Robinson."

  The man laughed in rich amusement. "Robinson! That's a good one. I always said she had no imagination. Couldn't write a gag. Did you believe she was a Robinson?"

  "Well, no; it seemed unlikely."

  "What did I tell you! Well, just to pay her out for treating me like bits on the cutting-room floor, I'm going to split on her. She'll probably put me in the icebox for twenty-four hours, but it'll be worth it. I'm no gentleman, anyhow, so I won't damage myself in the telling. The lady's name, Sergeant, is Christine Clay."

  "Christine Clay!" said the sergeant. His jaw slackened and dropped, quite beyond his control.

  "Christine Clay!" breathed Mrs. Pitts, standing in the doorway, a forgotten tray of griddle cakes in her hands.

  Chapter 3

  "Christine Clay! Christine Clay!" yelled the midday posters.

  "Christine Clay!" screamed the headlines. "Christine Clay!" chattered the wireless. "Christine Clay!" said neighbor to neighbor.

  All over the world people paused to speak the words. Christine Clay was drowned! And in all civilization only one person said, "Who is Christine Clay?" — a bright young man at a Bloomsbury party. And he was merely being "bright."

  All over the world things happened because one woman had lost her life. In California a man telephoned a summons to a girl in Greenwich Village. A Texas airplane pilot did an extra night flight carrying Clay films for rush showing. A New York firm canceled an order. An Italian nobleman went bankrupt: he had hoped to sell her his yacht. A man in Philadelphia ate his first square meal in months, thanks to an "I knew her when" story. A woman in Le Touquet sang because now her chance had come. And in an English cathedral town a man thanked God on his knees.

  The Press, becalmed in the doldrums of the silly season, leaped to movement at so unhoped-for a wind. The Clarion recalled Bart Bartholomew, their «descriptive» man, from a beauty contest in Brighton (much to Bart's thankfulness — he came back loudly wondering how butchers ate meat), and «Jammy» Hopkins, their "crime and passion" star, from a very dull and low-class poker killing in Bradford. (So far had the Clarion sunk.) News photographers deserted motor race tracks, reviews, society weddings, cricket, and the man who was going to Mars in a balloon, and swarmed like beetles over the cottage in Kent, the maisonette in South Street, and the furnished manor in Hampshire. That, having rented so charming a country retreat as this last, Christine Clay had yet run away to an unknown and inconvenient cottage without the knowledge of her friends made a very pleasant appendage to the main sensation of her death. Photographs of the manor (garden front, because of the yews) appeared labeled "The place Christine Clay owned" (she had only rented it for the season, but there was no emotion in renting a place); and next to these impressive pictures were placed photographs of the rose-embowered home of the people, with the caption "The place she preferred."

  Her press agent shed tears over that. Something like that would break when it was too late.

  It might have been observed by any student of nature not too actively engaged in the consequences of it that Christine Clay's death, while it gave rise to pity, dismay, horror, regret, and half a dozen other emotions in varying degrees, yet seemed to move no one to grief. The only ou
tburst of real feeling had been that hysterical crisis of Robert Tisdall's over her body. And who should say how much of that was self-pity? Christine was too international a figure to belong to anything so small as a "set." But among her immediate acquaintances dismay was the most marked reaction of the dreadful news. And not always that. Coyne, who was due to direct her third and final picture in England, might be at the point of despair, but Lejeune (late Tomkins), who had been engaged to play opposite her, was greatly relieved; a picture with Clay might be a feather in your cap but it was a jinx in your box office. The Duchess of Trent, who had arranged a Clay luncheon which was to rehabilitate her as a hostess in the eyes of London, might be gnashing her teeth, but Lydia Keats was openly jubilant. She had prophesied the death, and even for a successful society seer that was a good guess. "Darling, how wonderful of you!" fluttered her friends. "Darling how wonderful of you!" On and on. Until Lydia so lost her head with delight that she spent all her days going from one gathering to another so that she might make that delicious entrance all over again, hear them say: "Here's Lydia! Darling how — " and bask in the radiance of their wonder. No, as far as anyone could see, no hearts were breaking because Christine Clay was no more. The world dusted off its blacks and hoped for invitations to the funeral.

  Chapter 4

  But first there was the inquest. And it was at the inquest that the first faint stirring of a much greater sensation began to appear. It was Jammy Hopkins who noted the quiver on the smooth surface. He had earned his nickname because of his glad cry of "Jam! Jam!" when a good story broke, and his philosophical reflection when times were thin that "all was jam that came to the rollers." Hopkins had an excellent nose for jam, and so it was that he stopped suddenly in the middle of analyzing for Bartholomew's benefit the various sensation seekers crowding the little Kentish village hall. Stopped dead and stared. Because, between the flyaway hats of two bright sensationalists, he could see a man's calm face which was much more sensational than anything in that building.