“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.
“Well, I don’t know. It always seemed to me more like—well, like protection, if you know what I mean. People can only get at you if they know what you’re like—what matters to you. If you keep them guessing, they’re the victims, not you.”
“A girl who’d pushed her way from a lace factory in Nottingham to the top of the film world couldn’t be very vulnerable.”
“It’s because she was from a lace factory that she was what-d’you-call-it. Every six months she was in a different social sphere, she went up at such a rate. That takes a lot of living up to—like a diver coming up from a long way below. You’re continually adjusting yourself to the pressure. No, I think she needed a shell to get into, and keeping people guessing was her shell.”
“So you were a Clay fan, Williams.”
“Sure I was,” said Williams in the appropriate idiom. His pink cheeks grew a shade pinker. He slapped marmalade with venom onto his slab of toast. “And before this affair’s finished I’m going to put bracelets on the chap that did it. It’s a comforting thought.”
“Go
t any theories yourself?”
“Well, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve passed over the person with the obvious motive.”
“Who?”
“Jason Harmer. What was he doing snooping around at half past eight of a morning?”
“He’d come over from Sandwich. Spent the night at the pub there.”
“So he said. Did the County people verify that?”
Grant consulted his notes.
“Perhaps they haven’t. The statement was volunteered before they found the button, and so they weren’t suspicious. And since then everyone has concentrated on Tisdall.”
“Plenty of motive, Harmer has. Clay walks out on him, and he runs her to earth in a country cottage, alone with a man.”
“Yes, very plausible. Well, you can add Harmer to your list of chores. Find out about his wardrobe. There’s an SOS out for a discarded coat. I hope it brings in something. A coat’s a much easier clue than a button. Tisdall, by the way, says he sold his wardrobe complete (except for his evening things) to a man called—appropriately enough—Togger, but doesn’t know where his place of business is. Is that the chap who used to be in Craven Road?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is he now?”
“Westbourne Grove. The far end.”
“Thanks. I don’t doubt Tisdall’s statement. But there’s just a chance there’s the duplicate of that button on another coat. It might lead us to something.” He got to his feet. “Well, on with the job of making bricks without straw! And talking of that Israelitish occupation, here’s a grand sample of it to flavor your third cup.” He pulled from his pocket the afternoon edition of the Sentinel, the Clarion’s evening representative, and laid it, with its staring headlines, “Was Clay’s Death an Accident?” upward, by Williams’s plate.
“Jammy Hopkins!” Williams said, with feeling, and flung sugar violently into his black tea.
Chapter 6
Marta Hallard, as befitted a leading lady who alternated between the St. James’s and the Haymarket, lived in the kind of apartment block which has deep carpet on the stairs and a cloistered hush in the corridors. Grant, climbing the stairs with weary feet, appreciated the carpet even while his other self wondered about the vacuum cleaning. The dim pink square of the lift had fled upward as he came through the revolving door, and rather than wait for its return he was walking the two flights. The commissionaire had said that Marta was at home: had arrived about eleven from the theater with several people. Grant regretted the people, but was determined that this day was not going to end without his obtaining some light on Christine Clay and her entourage. Barker had failed to find the lawyer, Erskine, for him; his man said he was suffering from the shock of the last three days and had gone into the country over Sunday; address unknown. (“Ever heard of a lawyer suffering from shock?” Barker had said.) So the matter which most interested Grant—the contents of Christine Clay’s will—must wait until Monday. At the Yard he had read through the dossier—still, of course, incomplete—which they had gathered together in the last twelve hours. In all the five sheets of it Grant found only two things remarkable.
Her real name, it appeared, was Christina Gotobed.
And she had had no lovers.
No public ones, that is. Even in those crucial years when the little Broadway hoofer was blossoming into the song-and-dance star, she seemed to have had no patron. Nor yet when, tiring of song-and-dance pictures, her ambition had reached out to drama; her rocket had shot to the stars under its own power, it would seem. This could only mean one of two things: that she had remained virgin until her marriage at twenty-six (a state of affairs which Grant, who had a larger experience of life than of psychology text-books, found quite possible) or that her favor was given only when her heart (or her fancy, according to whether you are sentimentalist or cynic) was touched. Four years ago Lord Edward Champneis (pronounced Chins), old Bude’s fifth son, had met her in Hollywood, and in a month they were married. She was at that time shooting her first straight film, and it was generally agreed that she had “done well for herself” in her marriage. Two years later Lord Edward was “Christine Clay’s husband.”
He took it gracefully, it was reported; and the marriage had lasted. It had become a casual affair of mutual friendliness; partly owing to the demands of time and space that her profession made on Christine, and partly to the fact that Edward Champneis’s main interest in life (after Christine) was to invade the uncomfortable interiors of ill-governed and inaccessible countries and then to write books about them. During the book-writing solstice he and Christine lived more or less under one roof, and were apparently very happy. The fact that Edward, although a fifth son, had nevertheless a large fortune of his own, inherited from his mother’s brother (Bremer, the leather king), had done much to save the marriage from its most obvious dangers. And Edward’s delighted pride in his wife did the rest.
Now, where in that life, as shown in the dossier, did a murder fit in? Grant asked himself, toiling up the padded stairs. Harmer? He had been her constant companion for the three months she had been in England. True, they had work in common (producers still liked to insert a song somewhere in the plot of Christine’s films: the public felt cheated if they did not hear her sing), but the world which amuses itself had no doubt of their relations, whatever their colleagues thought. Or Tisdall? An ill-balanced boy, picked up in a moment of waywardness or generosity, at a time when he was reckless and without direction.
Well, he himself would find out more about Tisdall. Meanwhile he would find out about the Harmers of her life.
As he came to the top of the second flight, he heard the gentle sound of the lift closing, and he turned the corner to find Jammy Hopkins just taking his thumb from the bell push.
“Well, well,” said Jammy, “it’s a party!”
“I hope you have an invitation.”
“I hope you have a warrant. People shriek for their lawyer nowadays at the very sight of a policeman on the mat. Look, Inspector,” he said hurriedly in a different voice, “let’s not spoil each other’s game. We both thought of Marta. Let’s pool results. No need for crowding.”
From which Grant deduced that Hopkins was doubtful of his reception. He followed Grant into the little hall without giving his name, and Grant, while appreciating the ingenuity, rebelled at providing a cloak for the press.
“This gentleman is, I believe, from the Clarion,” he said to the servant who had turned away to announce them.
“Oh!” she said, turning back and eyeing Hopkins without favor. “Miss Hallard is always very tired at night, and she has some friends with her at the moment—”
But luck saved Hopkins from any necessity for coercion. The double doors to the living room stood open, and from the room beyond came welcome in high excited tones.
“Mr. Hopkins! How charming! Now you can tell us what all these midday editions were talking about. I didn’t know you knew Mr. Hopkins, Marta darling!”
“Who’d have thought I’d ever be glad to hear that voice!” Jammy murmured to Grant as he moved forward to greet the speaker, and Grant turned to meet Marta Hallard, who had come from the room into the hall.
“Alan Grant!” she said, smiling at him. “Is this business or pleasure?”
“Both. Do me a favor. Don’t tell these people who I am. Just talk as you were talking before I came. And if you can get rid of them fairly soon, I’d like to talk to you alone for a little.”
“I’d do a lot more than that for you. Every time I tie these around my neck,” she indicated a rope of pearls, “I remember you.”
This was not because Grant had given her the pearls but because he had once recovered them for her.
“Come and meet the others. Who is your friend?”
“Not a friend. Hopkins of the Clarion”
“Oh. Now I understand Lydia’s welcome. And they say professional people are publicity hounds!” She led Grant in, introduced people as they came. The first was Clemen
t Clements, the society photographer, radiant in purple “tails” and a soft shirt of a pale butter color. He had never heard of an Alan Grant, and made it perfectly clear. The second was a Captain Somebody, a nondescript and humble follower of Marta’s, who clung to his glass of whisky and soda as being the only familiar object in an unknown terrain. The third was Judy Sellers, a sulky fair girl who played “dumb” blondes from year’s end to year’s end, and whose life was one long fight between her greed and her weight. And the fourth was that intimate of the stars, Miss Lydia Keats, who was now talking all over Jammy Hopkins and enjoying herself immensely.
“Mr. Grant?” Jammy said, nastily, as Grant was introduced.
“Isn’t it ’Mr.’?” Lydia asked, her ears pricked, her eyes snapping with curiosity.
“No, it isn’t!”
But Hopkins met Grant’s eye and lacked the courage of his desire. It would be folly to make an enemy of a C.I.D. Inspector.
“He has one of those Greek titles, you know, but he’s ashamed to own it. Got it for rescuing a Greek royalist’s shirt from a Greek laundry.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Grant. He loves to hear himself talk. I know, you see. He has interviewed me so often. But he never listens to a word I say. Not his fault, of course. Aries people are often talkative. I knew the first time he crossed my threshold that he was April born. Now you, Mr. Grant, are a Leo person. Am I right? No, you don’t need to tell me. I know. Even if I couldn’t feel it—here—” she thumped her skinny chest, “you have all the stigmata.”
“I hope they’re not very deadly?” Grant asked, wondering how soon he could disengage himself from this harpy.
“Deadly! My dear Mr. Grant! Don’t you know anything of astrology? To be born in Leo is to be a king. They are the favorites of the stars. Born to success, predestined to glory. They are the great ones of the world.”
“And when does one have to be born to qualify for a Leo benefit?”
“Between the middle of July and the middle of August. I should say that you were born in the first weeks of August.” Grant hoped he didn’t look as surprised as he felt. He had certainly been born on the 4th of August.
A Shilling for Candles Page 5