A Shilling for Candles ag-2

by Josephine Tey

  "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.

  "Tomorrow being Sunday may hold up the button inquiries," Grant said as they sat down. "Well, what did Mrs. Pitts say?"

  "She says she couldn't say whether he was wearing a coat or not. All she saw was the top of his head over her hedge as he went past. But whether he wore it or not doesn't much matter, because she says the coat habitually lay in the back of the car along with that coat that Miss Clay wore. She doesn't remember when she saw Tisdall's dark coat last. He wore it a fair amount, it seems. Mornings and evenings. He was a 'chilly mortal, she said. Owing to his having come back from foreign parts, she thought. She hasn't much of an opinion of him."

  "You mean she thinks he's a wrong 'un?"

  "No. Just no account. You know, sir, has it occurred to you that it was a clever man who did this job?"

  "Why?"

  "Well, but for that button coming off no one would ever have suspected anything. She'd have been found drowned after going to bathe in the early morning — all quite natural. No footsteps, no weapon, no signs of violence. Very neat."

  "Yes. It's neat."

  "You don't sound very enthusiastic about it."

  "It's the coat. If you were going to drown a woman in the sea, would you wear an overcoat to do it?"

  "I don't know. 'Pends how I meant to drown her."

  "How would you drown her?"

  "Go swimming with her and keep her head under."

  "You'd have scratches that way, ten to one. Evidence."

  "Not me. I'd catch her by the heels in shallow water and upend her. Just stand there and hold her till she drowned."

  "Williams! What resource. And what ferocity."

  "Well, how would you do it, sir?"

  "I hadn't thought of aquatic methods. I mightn't be able to swim, or I mightn't like early-morning dips, or I might want to make a quick getaway from a stretch of water containing a body. No, I think I'd stand on a rock in deep water, wait till she came to talk to me, grip her head and keep it under. The only part of me that she could scratch that way would be my hands. And I'd wear leather gloves. It takes only a few seconds before she is unconscious."

  "Very nice, sir. But you couldn't use that method anywhere within miles of the Gap."

  "Why not?"

  "There aren't any rocks."

  "No. Good man. But there are the equivalent. There are stone groins."

  "Yes. Yes, so there are! Think that was how it was done, sir?"

  "Who knows? It's a theory. But the coat still worries me."

  "I don't see why it need, sir. It was a misty morning, a bit chilly at six. Anyone might have worn a coat."

  "Y-es," Grant said doubtfully, and let the matter drop, this being one of those unreasonable things which occasionally worried his otherwise logical mind (and had more than once been the means of bringing success to his efforts when his logic failed).

  He gave Williams instructions for his further inquiries, when he himself should be in town. "I've just had another few minutes with Tisdall," he finished. "He has got himself a waiter's job at the Marine. I don't think he'll bolt, but you'd better plant a man. Sanger will do. That's Tisdall's car route on Thursday morning, according to himself." He handed a paper to the sergeant. "Check up on it. It was very early but someone may remember him. Did he wear a coat or not? That's the main thing. I think, myself, there's no doubt of his taking the car as he said. Though not for the reason he gave."

  "I thought it a silly reason myself, when I read that statement. I just thought: 'Well, he might have made up a better one! What's your theory, sir?"

  "I think that when he had drowned her his one idea was to get away. With a car he could be at the other end of England, or out of the country, before they found her body! He drove away. And then something made him realize what a fool he was. Perhaps he missed the button from his cuff. Anyhow, he realized that he had only to stay where he was and look innocent. He got rid of the telltale coat — even if he hadn't missed the button the sleeve almost up to the elbow must have been soaking with salt water — came back to replace the car, found that the body had been discovered thanks to an incoming tide, and put on a very good act on the beach. It wouldn't have been difficult. The very thought of how nearly he had made a fool of himself would have been enough to make him burst into tears."

  "So you think he did it?"

  "I don't know. There seems to be a lack of motive. He was penniless and she was a liberal woman. That was every reason for keeping her alive. He was
greatly interested in her, certainly. He says he wasn't in love with her, but we have only his word for it. I think he's telling the truth when he says there was nothing between them. He may have suffered from frustration, but if that were so he would be much more likely to beat her up. It was a queerly cold-blooded murder, Williams."

  "It was certainly that, sir. Turns my stomach." Williams laid a large forkful of best Wiltshire lovingly on a pink tongue.

  Grant smiled at him: the smile that made Grant's subordinates "work their fingers to the bone for him." He and Williams had worked together often, and always in amity and mutual admiration. Perhaps, in a large measure because Williams, bless him, coveted no one's shoes. He was much more the contented husband of a pretty and devoted wife than the ambitious detective-sergeant.

  "I wish I hadn't missed her lawyer after the inquest. There's a lot I want to ask him, and heaven knows where he'll be for the weekend. I've asked the Yard for her dossier, but her lawyer would be much more helpful. Must find out whom her death benefits. It was a misfortune for Tisdall, but it must have been lucky for a lot of people. Being an American, I suppose her will's in the States somewhere. The Yard will know by the time I get up."

  "Christine Clay was no American, sir!" Williams said in a well-I-am-surprised-at-you voice.

  "No? What then?"

  "Born in Nottingham."

  "But everyone refers to her as an American."

  "Can't help that. She was born in Nottingham and went to school there. They do say she worked in a lace factory, but no one knows the truth of that."

  "I forgot you were a film fan, Williams. Tell me more."

  "Well, of course, what I know is just by reading Screenland and Photoplay and magazines like that. A lot of what they write is hooey, but on the other hand they'll never stop at truth as long as it makes a good story. She wasn't fond of being interviewed. And she used to tell a different story each time. When someone pointed out that that wasn't what she had said last time, she said: 'But that's so dull! I've thought of a much better one. No one ever knew where they were with her. Temperament, they called it, of course."

  "And don't you call it that?" asked Grant, always sensitive to an inflection.