A Shilling for Candles ag-2

by Josephine Tey

  "What is it, Williams?" he asked, his voice sharp with anticipation.

  "The nut," Williams said.

  "The what?"

  "The person to make a confession, sir." Williams's tone held a shade of guilt now, as if he felt that by mentioning the thing yesterday he had brought the evil to pass. Grant groaned.

  "Not a bit the usual kind, sir. Quite interesting. Very smart."

  "Outside or inside?"

  "Oh, her clothes, I meant, sir."

  "Her! Is it a woman?"

  "Yes. A lady, sir."

  "Bring her in." Rage ran over him in little prickles. How dare some sensation-mad female waste his time in order to satisfy her perverted and depraved appetite.

  Williams swung the door back and ushered in a bright fashionable figure.

  It was Judy Sellers.

  She said nothing, but came into the room with a sulky deliberation. Even in his surprise at seeing her, Grant thought how Borstal she was in spite of her soigne exterior. That air of resentment against the world in general and her own fate in particular was very familiar to him.

  He pulled out a chair in silence. Grant could be very intimidating.

  "All right, Sergeant," he said, "there won't be any need for you to stay." And then, to Judy as Williams went: "Don't you think this is a little unfair, Miss Sellers?"

  "Unfair?"

  "I am working twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, on dreadfully important work, and you see fit to waste my time by treating us to a bogus confession."

  "There's nothing bogus about it."

  "It's so bogus that I have a good mind to dismiss you now, without another word."

  She stayed his half-movement to the door. "You can't do that. I'll just go to another police station and confess and they'll send me on to you. I did it, you see!"

  "Oh, no, you didn't."

  "Why not?"

  "For one thing, you weren't near the place."

  "How do you know where I was?"

  "You forget that in the course of conversation on Saturday night it was apparent that on Wednesday night you were at Miss Keats's house in Chelsea."

  "I was only there for cocktails. I left early because Lydia was going to a party up the river."

  "Even so, that makes it rather unlikely that you should be on a beach near Westover shortly after dawn next morning."

  "It wouldn't be at all surprising if I were in the north of England next morning. I motored down if you want to know. You can inquire at my flat. The girl I live with will tell you that I didn't come home till lunchtime on Thursday."

  "That hardly proves that your activities were murderous."

  "They were, though. I drove to the Gap, hid in the wood, and waited till she came to swim."

  "You were, of course, wearing a man's coat?"

  "Yes, though I don't know how you knew. It was cold driving, and I wore one of my brother's that was lying in the car."

  "Did you wear the coat to go down to the beach?"

  "Yes. It was dithering cold. I don't like bathing in the dawn."

  "You went bathing!"

  "Of course I did. I couldn't drown her from the shore, could I?"

  "And you left the coat on the beach?"

  "Oh, no," she said with elaborate sarcasm. "I went swimming in it."

  And Grant breathed again. For a moment he had had a fright.

  "So you changed into swimming things, walked down to the beach with your brother's coat over you, and — then what?"

  "She was a fair way out. I went in, swam up to her, and drowned her."

  "How?"

  "She said, 'Hello, Judy. I said, 'Hello. I gave her a light tap on the chin. My brother taught me where to hit a person's chin, so as to addle them. Then I dived under her and pulled her through the water by the heels until she was drowned."

  "Very neat," Grant said. "You've thought it all out, haven't you? Have you invented a motive for yourself, too?"

  "Oh, I just didn't like her. I hated her, if you want to know. Her success and her looks and her self-sufficiency. She got in my hair until I couldn't bear it another day."

  "I see. And will you explain why, having achieved the practically perfect murder, you should calmly come here and put a noose around your neck?"

  "Because you've got someone for it."

  "You mean because we've got Robert Tisdall. And that explains everything. And now having wasted some precious minutes of my time, you might recompense me and rehabilitate yourself at the same time, by telling me what you know of Tisdall."

  "I don't know anything. Except that he would be the very last person in the world to commit a murder. For any reason."

  "You knew him fairly well, then?"

  "No. I hardly knew him at all."

  "You weren't — friends?"

  "No, nor lovers, if that's what you're trying to say. Bobby Tisdall didn't know I was alive, except to hand me a cocktail."

  Grant's tone changed. "And yet you'd go even to this length to get him out of a jam?" he said, quite kindly.

  She braced into resentment at the kindness, "If you'd committed a murder wouldn't you confess to save an innocent person?"

  "Depends on how innocent I thought the police were. You underrate us, Miss Sellers."

  "I think you're a lot of idiots. You got a man who is innocent. You're busy hounding him to death. And you won't listen to a perfectly good confession when you get one."

  "Well, you see, Miss Sellers, there are always things about a case that are known only to the police and are not to be learned from newspapers. The mistake you made was to get up your story from the newspaper accounts. There was one thing you didn't know. And one thing you forgot."

  "What did I forget?"

  "That no one knew where Christine Clay was staying."

  "The murderer did."

  "Yes. That is my point. And now — I'm very busy."

  "So you don't believe a word I say."

  "Oh, yes. Quite a lot of it. You were out all night on Wednesday, you probably went swimming, and you arrived back at lunchtime on Thursday. But none of that makes you guilty of murder."

  She got up, in her reluctant, indolent way, and produced her lipstick. "Well," she drawled between applications, "having failed in my little bid for publicity, I suppose I must go on playing blonde nitwits for the rest of my life. It's good I bought a day-return."

  "You don't fool me," Grant said, with a not too grim smile as he opened the door for her.

  "All right, then, maybe you're right about that, and blast you anyhow," she burst out. "But you're wrong about his doing it. So wrong that your name will stink before this case is over."

  And she brushed past an astonished Williams and two clerks, and disappeared.

  "Well," said Williams, "that's the first. Humans are queer, aren't they, sir? You know, if we announced the fact that the coat we want has a button missing, there'd be people who would pull the button off their coats and bring it in. Just for fun. As if things weren't difficult enough without that. Not just the usual type, though, was she, sir?"

  "No. What did you make of her, Williams?"

  "Musical comedy. Looking for publicity to help her career. Hard as nails."

  "All wrong. Legitimate stage. Hates her career. Softhearted to the point of self-sacrifice."

  Williams looked a little crestfallen. "Of course, I didn't have a chance to talk to her," he reminded.

  "No. On looks it was quite a good reading, Williams. I wish I could read this case as well." He sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. "What would you do, Williams, once you had got clear of the Marine?"

  Williams understood that he was supposed to be Tisdall.

  "I'd take a fairly crowded bus somewhere. First that came to hand. Get off with a crowd of others, and walk off as if I knew where I was going. In fact, wherever I went I'd look as if I knew where I was going."

  "And then, what?"

  "I'd probably have to take another bus to get out of townified p
arts."

  "You'd get out of built-up areas, would you?"

  "Sure!" said Williams, surprised.

  "A man's much more conspicuous in open country."

  "There are woods. In fact, some of the woods in this part of the world would hide a man indefinitely. And if a man got as far west as Ashdown Forest, well, it'd take about a hundred men to comb Ashdown properly."

  Grant shook his head. "There's food. And lodging."

  "Sleep out. It's warm weather."

  "He's been out two nights now. If he has taken to the country he must be looking shopworn by this time. But has he? Have you noticed that no one has reported him as buying a razor? There's just the chance that he's with friends. I wonder — " his eyes strayed to the chair where Judy had been sitting. "But no! She'd never risk as big a bluff as that. No need for it."

  Williams wished to himself that Grant would go to the hotel and have some sleep. He was taking far too much to heart his failure to arrest Tisdall. Mistakes happened to the best of people, and everyone knew that Grant was all right. He had the Yard solid behind him. Why need he worry himself sick over something that might have happened to anyone? There were one or two crabbers, of course — people who wanted his job — but no one paid any attention to the likes of them. Everyone knew what they were getting at. Grant was all right, and everyone knew it. It was silly of him to get so worked up over a little slip.

  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 funny 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 fr
om 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, 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 believe 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."