A Shilling for Candles

by Josephine Tey

  If a policeman’s heart can be said to ache, then Williams’s stout heart ached for his superior.

  “You can get rid of this disgusting object,” Grant said, indicating the coat. “It’s twenty years old, at least, and hasn’t had a button on it for the last ten. That’s one thing that puzzles me, you know, Williams. He had it at the beach, and it was missing when he came back. He had to get rid of that coat somewhere along his route. It isn’t a very extensive route, when all is said. And there wasn’t time for him to go far off it. He’d be too anxious to get back and cover up his mistake in going away. And yet we haven’t turned the coat up. Two duck ponds, both shallow, both well dragged. Three streams that wouldn’t hide a penny and wouldn’t float a paper boat. Ditches beaten, garden walls inspected on the wrong side, two copses scoured. Nothing! What did he do with it? What would you do with it?”

  “Burn it.”

  “No time. It’s damp too. Soaking wet, probably.”

  “Roll it small and stick it in the fork of a tree. Everyone looks on the ground for things.”

  “Williams, you’re a born criminal. Tell Sanger your theory and ask him to make use of it this afternoon. I’d rather have that coat than have Tisdall. In fact, I’ve got to have that coat!”

  “Talking of razors, you don’t think maybe, he took his razor with him, sir?”

  “I didn’t think of it. Shouldn’t think he had the presence of mind. But then I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to bolt. I concentrated on suicide. Where are his things?”

  “Sanger took them over here in the case. Everything he had.”

  “Just see if his razor is there? It’s just as well to know whether he’s shaved or not.”

  There was no razor.

  “Well!” said Grant. “Who’d have thought it! ’You disappoint me, Inspector,’ says he, quietly pocketing the razor, and arranging his getaway with the world’s prize chump of a detective watching him. I’m all wrong about that lad, Sergeant. All wrong. I thought first, when I took him from the inquest that he was one of these hysterical, do-it-on-the-spur-of-the-moment creatures. Then, after I knew about the will, I changed my mind. Still thought him a ’poor thing,’ though. And now I find he was planning a getaway under my very nose—and he brought it off! It isn’t Tisdall who’s a washout, it’s me!”

  “Cheer up, sir. Our luck is out at the moment. But you and I between us, and no one else, so help me, are going to put that cold-blooded brute where he belongs,” Williams said fervently, not knowing that the person who was to be the means of bringing the murderer of Christine Clay to justice was a rather silly little woman in Kansas City who had never heard of any of them.

  Chapter 11

  Erica stood on the brake and brought her disreputable little car to a standstill. She then backed it the necessary yards, and stopped again. She inspected with interest the sole of a man’s boot, visible in the grass and gorse, and then considered the wide empty landscape and the mile-long straight of chalky lane with its borders of speedwell and thrift, shining in the sun.

  “You can come out,” she said. “There’s no one in sight for miles.”

  The boot sole disappeared and a man’s astonished face appeared in the bushes above it.

  “That’s a great relief to me,” Erica observed. “I thought for a moment that you might be dead.”

  “How did you know it was me? I suppose you did know it was me?”

  “Yes. There’s a fanny squiggle on the instep part of your sole where the price has been scored off. I noticed it when you were lying on the floor of Father’s office.”

  “Oh, yes; that’s who you are, of course. You’re a very good detective.”

  “You’re a very bad escaper. No one could have missed your foot.”

  “You didn’t give me much time. I didn’t hear your car till it was nearly on me.”

  “You must be deaf. She’s one of the County jokes, poor Tinny. Like Lady Middleway’s hat and old Mr. Dyne’s shell collection.”

  “Tinny?”

  “Yes. She used to be Christina, but the inevitable happened. You couldn’t not have heard her.”

  “I think perhaps I was asleep for a minute or two. I—I’m a bit short of sleep.”

  “Yes, I expect so. Are you hungry?”

  “Is that just an academic question, or—or are you offering me food?”

  Erica reached into the back of the car and produced half a dozen rolls, a glass of tongue, half a pound of butter, and four tomatoes.

  “I’ve forgotten a tin opener,” she said, passing him the tongue, “but if you hit the tin lid hard with a flint it will make a hole.” She split a roll with a penknife produced from her pocket and began to butter it.

  “Do you always carry food about with you?” he asked, doubtfully.

  “Oh, always. I’m a very hungry person. Besides I’m often not home from morning till night. Here’s the knife. Cut a hunk of the tongue and lay it on that.” She gave him the buttered roll. “I want the knife back for the other roll.”

  He did as he was bidden, and she busied herself with the knife again, politely ignoring him so that he should not have to pretend to an indifference that would be difficult of achievement.

  Presently he said, “I suppose you know that all this is very wrong.”

  “Why is it wrong?”

  “For one thing, you’re aiding an escaped criminal, which is wrong in itself, and doubly wrong in your father’s daughter. And for another—and this is much worse—if I were what they think me you’d be in the gravest danger at this minute. You shouldn’t do things like that, you know.”

  “If you were a murderer it wouldn’t help you much to commit another one just to keep me from saying I saw you.”

  “If you’ve committed one, I suspect you don’t easily stop at another. You can only be hanged once. And so you don’t think I did it?”

  “I’m quite sure you didn’t.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You’re not capable of it.”

  “Thank you,” he said gratefully.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Oh! Oh, I see.” A smile actually broke through. “Disconcerting but invigorating. George an ancestor of yours?”

  “George? Oh. No. No, I can tell lies with the best.”

  “You’ll have to tonight. Unless you are going to give me up.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone will question me at all,” she said, ignoring the latter half of his remark. “I don’t think a beard becomes you, by the way.”

  “I don’t like it myself. I took a razor with me but couldn’t manage to do anything without soap and water. I suppose you haven’t soap in the car?”

  “I’m afraid not. I don’t wash as often as I eat. But there’s a frothy stuff in a bottle—Snowdrop, they call it—that I use to clean my hands when I change a wheel. Perhaps that would work.” She got out the bottle from the car pocket. “You must be much cleverer than I thought you were, you know.”

  “Yes? How clever does that make me actually?”

  “To get away from Inspector Grant. He’s very good at his job, Father says.”

  “Yes, I think he probably is. If I didn’t happen to have a horror of being shut up, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to run. As it was, that half hour was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. I know now what living at top speed means. I used to think having money and doing what you liked—twenty different things a day—was living at speed. But I just didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Was she nice, Christine Clay?”

  He looked disconcerted. “You do jump about, don’t you? Yes, she was a grand person.” He forgot his food for a moment. “Do you know what she did? She left me her ranch in California because she knew I had no money and hated an office.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard Father and the others discussing it.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. . . . And you still believ
e I didn’t do it? I must be very bargain counter in your eyes!”

  “Was she very beautiful?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen her, then? On the screen, I mean?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Neither have I. Funny, isn’t it. I suppose, roaming from place to place it’s easy to miss pictures.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t go to the cinema often. It’s a long way to a good one from our place. Have some more tongue.”

  “She meant to do me such a good turn—Chris. Irony, isn’t it? That her gift should be practically my death warrant.”

  “I suppose you have no idea who could have done it?”

  “No. I didn’t know any of her friends, you know. She just picked me up one night.” He considered the schoolgirlish figure before him. “I suppose that sounds dreadful to you?”

  “Oh, no. Not if you liked the look of each other. I judge a lot on looks.”

  “I can’t help feeling that the police may be making a mistake—I mean, that it was just an accident. If you’d seen the country that morning. Utterly deserted. No one going to be awake for at least another hour. It’s almost incredible that someone should have been out for murder at that time and in that place. That button might be an accident, after all.”

  “If your coat turned up with the buttons on it, would that prove you had nothing to do with it?”

  “Yes, I think so. That seemed to be all the evidence the police had.” He smiled a little. “But you know more about it than I do.”

  “Where were you when you lost it—the coat, I mean?”

  “We’d gone over to Dymchurch one day: Tuesday, it was. And we left the car to walk along the seawall for about half an hour. Our coats were always left lying in the back. I didn’t miss mine till we stopped for petrol about halfway home, and I turned around to get the bag Chris had flung there when she got in.” His face suddenly flamed scarlet, and Erica watched him in surprise and then in embarrassment. It was moments later before it occurred to her that the tacit admission that the woman was paying was more humiliating to him than any murder accusation. “The coat wasn’t there then,” he went on hurriedly, “so it could only have gone while we were walking.”

  “Gypsies?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any. A casual passerby, more likely.”

  “Is there anything to tell that the coat is yours? You’d have to prove it to the police, you know.”

  “My name is on the lining—one of those tailor’s tags, you know.”

  “But if it was stolen that would be the first thing they’d take off.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so. There’s another thing, though. There’s a small burn on the right-hand side below the pocket, where someone held a cigarette against it.”

  “That’s better, isn’t it! That would settle it very nicely.”

  “if the coat were found!”

  “Well, no one who stole a coat is likely to bring it to the police station just because the police want it. And the police are not looking for coats on people. They’re looking for discarded ones. So far no one has done anything about getting your coat. On your behalf, I mean. To be evidence for you.”

  “Well, what can I do?”

  “Give yourself up.”

  “What!”

  “Give yourself up. Then they’ll give you a lawyer and things. And it will be his business to look for the coat.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t, What’s-Your-Name.”

  “Erica.”

  “Erica. The thought of having a key turned on me gives me the jitters.”

  “Claustrophobia?”

  “Yes. I don’t really mind closed spaces as long as I know that I can get out. Caves and things. But to have a key turned on me, and then to have nothing to do but sit and think of—I just couldn’t do it.”

  “No, I suppose you couldn’t, if you feel like that about it. It’s a pity. It’s much the most sensible way. What are you going to do now?”

  “Sleep out again, I suppose. There’s no rain coming.”

  “Haven’t you any friends who’d look after you?”

  “With a murder charge against me? No! You overrate human friendship.” He paused a moment, and added, in a surprised voice: “No. No, perhaps you don’t, at that. I’ve just not met the right kind before.”

  “Then we had better decide on a place where I can meet you tomorrow and bring you some more food. Here, if you like.”

  “No!”

  “Where then?”

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean that you’re not meeting me anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’d be committing a felony, or whatever it is. I don’t know what the penalty is, but you’d be a criminal. It can’t be done.”

  “Well, you can’t stop me dropping food out of the car, can you? There is no law against that, that I know of. It will just happen that a cheese and a loaf and some chocolates will fall out of the car into these bushes tomorrow morning. I must go now. The landscape looks deserted, but if you leave a car standing long enough someone always pops up to make inquiries.”

  She swept the refuse of the food into the car, and got in herself.

  He made a movement to get to his feet.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said sharply. “Keep down.”

  He swiveled around on his knees. “All right. You can’t object to this position. And it expresses my feelings much better.”

  She shut the car door, and leaned over it.

  “Nut or plain?”

  “What?”

  “The chocolate.”

  “Oh! The kind with raisins in it, please. Some day, Erica Burgoyne, I shall crown you with rubies and make you to walk on carpets rich as—”

  But the sentence was lost in the roar of Tinny’s departure.

  Chapter 12

  Kindness,” said Erica, to her father’s head groom, “have you anything laid by?”

  Kindness paused in his checking the corn account, shot her a pale glance from a wrinkled old eye, and went on with his adding.

  “Tuppence!” he said at length, in the tone one uses instead of a spit.

  This referred to the account, and Erica waited. Kindness hated accounts.

  “Enough to bury me decent,” he said, having reached the top of the column again.

  “You don’t want to be buried yet a while. Could you lend me ten pounds, do you think?”

  The old man paused in licking his stub of pencil, so that the lead made a purple stain on the exposed tip of his tongue.

  “So that’s the way it is!” he said. “What have you been doing now?”

  “I haven’t been doing anything. But there are some things I might want to do. And petrol is a dreadful price.”

  The mention of petrol was a bad break.

  “Oh, the car is it?” he said jealously. Kindness hated Tinny. “If it’s the car you want it for, why don’t you ask Hart?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” Erica was almost shocked. “Hart is quite new.” Hart being a newcomer with only eleven years’ service.

  Kindness looked mollified.

  “It isn’t anything shady,” she assured him. “I would have got it from Father at dinner tonight; the money, I mean; but he has gone to Uncle William’s for the night. And women are so inquisitive,” she added after a pause.

  This, which could only refer to Nannie, made up the ground she had lost over the petrol. Kindness hated Nannie.

  “Ten pounds is a big bit out of my coffin,” he said with a sideways jerk of the head.

  “You won’t need it before Saturday. I have eight pounds in the bank, but I don’t want to waste time tomorrow morning going into Westover for it. Time is awfully precious just now. If anything happens to me, you’re sure of eight pounds anyhow. And Father is good for the other two.”

  “And what made you come to Kindness?”

  There was complacence in the tone, and anyone but Erica would have said: because you are
my oldest friend, because you have always helped me out of difficulties since I was three years old and first put my legs astride a pony, because you can keep my counsel and yours, because in spite of your cantankerousness you are an old darling.

  But Erica said, “I just thought how much handier tea caddies were than banks.”

  “What’s that!”

  “Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. Your wife told me about that, one day I was having tea with her. It wasn’t her fault, really. I saw the notes peering through the tea. A bit germy, I thought. For the tea, I mean. But an awfully good idea.” As Kindness was still speechless. “Boiling water kills most things, anyhow. Besides,” she said, bringing up as support what she should have used for attack, “who else could I go to?”

  She reached over and took the stub of pencil from him, turned over a handbill of the local gymkhana which was lying on the saddle-room table, and wrote in schoolgirl characters on the back:

  I owe Bartholomew Kindness ten pounds. Erica Meir Burgoyne.

  “That will do until Saturday,” she said. “My checkbook is finished, anyhow.”

  “I don’t like you frittering away my brass handles all over Kent,” Kindness grumbled.

  “I think brass handles are very showy,” Erica said. “You’d do much better to have wrought iron.”

  As they went through the gardens together towards his cottage and the tea caddy, Erica said:

  “About how many pawnbrokers are there in Kent?”

  “’Bout two thousand.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Erica. And let the conversation lapse.

  But the two thousand pawnbrokers slept with her that night, and leaped awake before her waking eyes.

  Two thousand! My hat!

  But of course Kindness was just guessing. He probably had never pawned anything in his life. How could he know in the very least how many pawnbrokers there were in a county? Still, there was bound to be quite a number. Even in a well-to-do county like Kent. She had never noticed even one. But she supposed you wouldn’t notice one unless you happened to be looking for it. Like mushrooms.