A Shilling for Candles Page 4

  “Chris?”

  “I didn’t know her name, then. She looked at me for a little. The street was very quiet. Just us two. And we were so close that it seemed natural when she smiled and said, ‘Take you anywhere, mister?’ I said: ‘Yes. Land’s End.’ She said: ‘A bit off my route. Chatham, Faversham, Canterbury, and points east?’ Well, it was one solution. I couldn’t go on standing there, and I couldn’t think of a water-tight tale that would get me a bed in a friend’s house. Besides, I felt far away from all that crowd already. So I got in without thinking much about it. She was charming to me. I didn’t tell her all I’m telling you, but she soon found out I was broke to the wide. I began to explain, but she said: ‘All right, I don’t want to know. Let’s accept each other on face value. You’re Robin and I’m Chris.’ I’d told her my name was Robert Stannaway, and without knowing it she used my family pet name. The crowd called me Bobby. It was sort of comforting to hear someone call me Robin again.”

  “Why did you say your name was Stannaway?”

  “I don’t know. A sort of desire to get away from the fortune side of things. I hadn’t been much ornament to the name, anyhow. And in my mind I always thought of myself as Stannaway.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “There isn’t much more to tell. She offered me hospitality. Told me she was alone, but that—well, that I’d be just a guest. I said wasn’t she taking a chance. She said, ‘Yes, but I’ve taken them all my life and it’s worked out pretty well, so far.’ It seemed an awkward arrangement to me, but it turned out just the opposite. She was right about it. It made things very easy, just accepting each other. In a way (it was queer, but it was like that) it was as if we had known each other for years. If we had had to start at scratch and work up, it would have taken us weeks to get to the same stage. We liked each other a lot. I don’t mean sentimentally, although she was stunning to look at; I mean I thought her grand. I had no clothes for the next morning, but I spent that day in a bathing suit and a dressing gown that someone had left. And on Monday Mrs. Pitts came in to my room and said, ‘Your suitcase, sir,’ and dumped a case I’d never seen before in the middle of the floor. It had a complete new outfit in it—tweed coat and flannels, socks, shirt, everything. From a place in Canterbury. The suitcase was old, and had a label with my name on it. She had even remembered my name. Well, I can’t describe to you what I felt about these things. You see, it was the first time for years that anyone had given me anything. With the crowd it was take, take, all the time. ‘Bobby’ll pay.’ ‘Bobby’ll lend his car.’ They never thought of me at all. I don’t think they ever stopped to look at me. Anyhow, those clothes sort of broke me up. I’d have died for her. She laughed when she saw me in them—they were reach-me-downs, of course, but they fitted quite well—and said: ‘Not exactly Bruton Street, but they’ll do. Don’t say I can’t size a man up.’ So we settled down to having a good time together, just lazing around, reading, talking, swimming, cooking when Mrs. Pitts wasn’t there. I put out of my head what was going to happen after. She said that in about ten days she’d have to leave the cottage. I tried to go after the first day, out of politeness, but she wouldn’t let me. And after that I didn’t try. That’s how I came to be staying there, and that’s how I didn’t know her name.” He drew in his breath in a sharp sigh as he sat back. “Now I know how these psychoanalysts make money. It’s a long time since I enjoyed anything like telling you all about myself.”

  Grant smiled involuntarily. There was an engaging childlikeness about the boy.

  Then he shook himself mentally, like a dog coming out of water.

  Charm. The most insidious weapon in all the human armory. And here it was, being exploited under his nose. He considered the good-natured feckless face dispassionately. He had known at least one murderer who had had that type of good looks; blue-eyed, amiable, harmless; and he had buried his dismembered fiancée in an ash pit. Tisdall’s eyes were of that particular warm opaque blue which Grant had noted so often in men to whom the society of women was a necessity of existence. Mother’s darlings had those eyes; so sometimes, had womanizers.

  Well, presently he would check up on Tisdall. Meanwhile—

  “Do you ask me to believe that in your four days together you had no suspicion at all of Miss Clay’s identity?” he asked, marking time until he could bring Tisdall unsuspecting to the crucial matter.

  “I suspected that she was an actress. Partly from things she said, but mostly because there were such a lot of stage and film magazines in the house. I asked her about it once, but she said: ‘No names, no pack drill. It’s a good motto, Robin. Don’t forget.’ “

  “I see. Did the outfit Miss Clay bought for you include an overcoat?”

  “No. A mackintosh. I had a coat.”

  “You were wearing a coat over your evening things?”

  “Yes. It had been drizzling when we set out for dinner—the crowd and I, I mean.”

  “And you still have that coat?”

  “No. It was stolen from the car one day when we were over at Dymchurch.” His eyes grew alarmed suddenly. “Why? What has the coat got to do with it?”

  “Was it dark- or light-colored?”

  “Dark, of course. A sort of gray-black. Why?”

  “Did you report its loss?”

  “No, neither of us wanted attention called to us. What has it—”

  “Just tell me about Thursday morning, will you?” The face opposite him was steadily losing its ingenuousness and becoming wary and inimical again. “I understand that you didn’t go with Miss Clay to swim. Is that right?”

  “Yes. But I awoke almost as soon as she had gone—”

  “How do you know when she went if you were asleep?”

  “Because it was still only six. She couldn’t have been gone long. And Mrs. Pitts said afterwards that I had followed down the road on her heels.”

  “I see. And in the hour and a half—roughly—between your getting up and the finding of Miss Clay’s body you walked to the Gap, stole the car, drove it in the direction of Canterbury, regretted what you had done, came back, and found that Miss Clay had been drowned. Is that a complete record of your actions?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “If you felt so grateful to Miss Clay, it was surely an extraordinary thing to do.”

  “Extraordinary isn’t the word at all. Even yet I can’t believe I did it.”

  “You are quite sure that you didn’t enter the water that morning?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Why?”

  “When was your last swim? Previous to Thursday morning, I mean?”

  “Noon on Wednesday.”

  “And yet your swimming suit was soaking wet on Thursday morning.”

  “How do you know that! Yes, it was. But not with salt water. It had been spread to dry on the roof below my window, and when I was dressing on Thursday morning I noticed that the birds in the tree—an apple tree hangs over that gable—had made too free with it. So I washed it in the water I had been washing in.”

  “You didn’t put it out to dry again, though, apparently?”

  “After what happened the last time? No! I put it on the towel rail. For God’s sake, Inspector, tell me what all this has to do with Chris’s death? Can’t you see that questions you can’t see the reason of are torture? I’ve had about all I can stand. The inquest this morning was the last straw. Everyone describing how they found her. Talking about ‘the body,’ when all the time it was Chris. Chris! And now all this mystery and suspicion. If there was anything not straightforward about her drowning, what has my coat got to do with it anyway?”

  “Because this was found entangled in her hair.”

  Grant opened a cardboard box on the table and exhibited a black button of the kind used for men’s coats. It had been torn from its proper place, the worn threads of its attachment still forming a ragged “neck.” And around the neck, close to the button, was twined a thin strand of bright hair.

  Tisdall was on
his feet, both hands on the table edge, staring down at the object.

  “You think someone drowned her? I mean—like that! But that isn’t mine. There are thousands of buttons like that. What makes you think it is mine?”

  “I don’t think anything, Mr. Tisdall. I am only eliminating possibilities. All I wanted you to do was to account for any garment owned by you which had buttons like that. You say you had one but that it was stolen.”

  Tisdall stared at the Inspector, his mouth opening and shutting helplessly.

  The door breezed open, after the sketchiest of knocks, and in the middle of the floor stood a small, skinny child of sixteen in shabby tweeds, her dark head hatless and very untidy.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought my father was here. Sorry.”

  Tisdall slumped to the floor with a crash.

  Grant, who was sitting on the other side of the large table sprang to action, but the skinny child, with no sign of haste or dismay, was there first.

  “Dear me!” she said, getting the slumped body under the shoulders from behind and turning it over.

  Grant took a cushion from a chair.

  “I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “You let their heads stay back unless it’s apoplexy. And he’s a bit young for that, isn’t he?”

  She was loosening collar and tie and shirt band with the expert detachment of a cook paring pastry from a pie edge. Grant noticed that her sunburnt wrists were covered with small scars and scratches of varying age, and that they stuck too far out of her out-grown sleeves.

  “You’ll find brandy in the cupboard, I think. Father isn’t allowed it, but he has no self-control.”

  Grant found the brandy and came back to find her slapping Tisdall’s unconscious face with a light insistent tapotement.

  “You seem to be good at this sort of thing,” Grant said.

  “Oh, I ran the Guides at school.” She had a voice at once precise and friendly. “A ve-ry silly institution. But it varied the routine. That is the main thing, to vary the routine.”

  “Did you learn this from the Guides?” he asked, nodding at her occupation.

  “Oh, no. They burn paper and smell salts and things. I learned this in Bradford Pete’s dressing room.”

  “Where?”

  “You know. The welterweight. I used to have great faith in Pete, but I think he’s lost his speed lately. Don’t you? At least, I hope it’s his speed. He’s coming to nicely.” This last referred to Tisdall. “I think he’d swallow the brandy now.”

  While Grant was administering the brandy, she said: “Have you been giving him the third degree, or something? You’re police aren’t you?”

  “My dear young lady—I don’t know your name?”

  “Erica. I’m Erica Burgoyne.”

  “My dear Miss Burgoyne, as the Chief Constable’s daughter you must be aware that the only people in Britain who are subjected to the third degree are the police.”

  “Well, what did he faint for? Is he guilty?”

  “I don’t know,” Grant said, before he thought.

  “I shouldn’t think so.” She was considering the now spluttering Tisdall. “He doesn’t look capable of much.” This with the same grave detachment as she used to everything she did.

  “Don’t let looks influence your judgment, Miss Burgoyne.”

  “I don’t. Not the way you mean. Anyhow, he isn’t at all my type. But it’s quite right to judge on looks if you know enough. You wouldn’t buy a washy chestnut narrow across the eyes, would you?”

  This, thought Grant, is quite the most amazing conversation.

  She was standing up now, her hands pushed into her jacket pockets so much the much-tried garment sagged to two bulging points. The tweed she wore was rubbed at the cuffs and covered all over with “pulled” ends of thread where briars had caught. Her skirt was too short and one stocking was violently twisted on its stick of leg. Only her shoes—scarred like her hands, but thick, well-shaped, and expensive—betrayed the fact that she was not a charity child.

  And then Grant’s eyes went back to her face. Except her face. The calm sureness of that sallow little triangular visage was not bred in any charity school.

  “There!” she said encouragingly, as Grant helped Tisdall to his feet and guided him into a chair. “You’ll be all right. Have a little more of Father’s brandy. It’s a much better end for it than Father’s arteries. I’m going now. Where is Father, do you know?” This to Grant.

  “He has gone to lunch at The Ship.”

  “Thank you.” Turning to the still dazed Tisdall, she said, “That shirt collar of yours is far too tight.” As Grant moved to open the door for her, she said, “You haven’t told me your name?”

  “Grant. At your service.” He gave her a little bow.

  “I don’t need anything just now, but I might some day.” She considered him. Grant found himself hoping with a fervor which surprised him that he was not being placed in the same category as “washy chestnuts.”

  “You’re much more my type. I like people broad across the cheekbones. Good-bye, Mr. Grant.”

  “Who was that?” Tisdall asked, in the indifferent tones of the newly conscious.

  “Colonel Burgoyne’s daughter.”

  “She was right about my shirt.”

  “One of the reach-me-downs?”

  “Yes. Am I being arrested?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

  “It mightn’t be a bad idea.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “It would settle my immediate future. I left the cottage this morning and now I’m on the road.”

  “You mean you’re serious about tramping?”

  “As soon as I have got suitable clothes.”

  “I’d rather you stayed where I could get information from you if I wanted.”

  “I see the point. But how?”

  “What about that architect’s office? Why not try for a job?”

  “I’m never going back to an office. Not an architect’s anyhow. I was shoved there only because I could draw.”

  “Do I understand that you consider yourself permanently incapacitated from earning your bread?”

  “Phew! That’s nasty. No, of course not. I’ll have to work. But what kind of job am I fit for?”

  “Two years of hitting the high spots must have educated you to something. Even if it is only driving a car.”

  There came a tentative tap at the door, and the sergeant put his head in.

  “I’m very sorry indeed to disturb you, Inspector, but I’d like something from the Chief’s files. It’s rather urgent.”

  Permission given, he came in.

  “This coast’s lively in the season, sir,” he said, as he ran through the files. “Positively continental. Here’s the chef at the Marine—it’s just outside the town, so it’s our affair—the chef at the Marine’s stabbed a waiter because he had dandruff, it seems. The waiter, I mean, sir. Chef on the way to prison and waiter on the way to hospital. They think maybe his lung’s touched. Well, thank you, sir. Sorry to disturb you.”

  Grant eyed Tisdall, who was achieving the knot in his tie with a melancholy abstraction. Tisdall caught the look, appeared puzzled by it, and then, comprehension dawning, leaped into action.

  “I say, Sergeant, have they a fellow to take the waiter’s place, do you know?”

  “That they haven’t. Mr. Toselli—he’s the manager—he’s tearing his hair.”

  “Have you finished with me?” he asked Grant.

  “For today,” Grant said. “Good luck.”

  Chapter 5

  No. No arrest,” said Grant to Superintendent Barker over the telephone in the early evening. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt about its being murder. The surgeon’s sure of it. The button in her hair might be an accident—although if you saw it you’d be convinced it wasn’t—but her fingernails were broken with clawing at something. What was under the nails has gone to the analyst, but there wasn’t much after an hour’s immersion
in salt water . . . ’M? . . . Well, indications point one way certainly, but they cancel each other out, somehow. Going to be difficult, I think. I’m leaving Williams here on routine inquiry, and coming back to town tonight. I want to see her lawyer—Erskine. He arrived just in time for the inquest, and afterward I had Tisdall on my hands so I missed him. Would you find out for me when I can talk to him tonight. They’ve fixed the funeral for Monday. Golders Green. Yes, cremation. I’d like to be there, I think. I’d like to look over the intimates. Yes, I may look in for a drink, but it depends how late I am. Thanks.”

  Grant hung up and went to join Williams for a high tea, it being too early for dinner and Williams having a passion for bacon and eggs garnished with large pieces of fried bread.