That was Grant’s third surprise. The fourth came at the end of the list of legacies. The last legacy of all read, “To my brother Herbert, a shilling for candles.”
“A brother?” Grant said, and looked up inquiring.
“Lord Edward was unaware that Lady Edward had a brother until the will was read. Lady Edward’s parents died many years ago, and there had been no mention of any surviving family except for herself.”
“A shilling for candles. Does it convey anything to you, sir?” He turned to Champneis, who shook his head.
“A family feud, I expect. Perhaps something that happened when they were children. These are often the things one is more unforgiving about.” He glanced toward the lawyer. “The thing I remember when I meet Alicia is always that she smashed my birds’-egg collection.”
“But not necessarily a childhood quarrel,” Grant said. “She must have known him much later.”
“Bundle would be the person to ask. She dressed my wife from her early days in New York. But is it important? After all, the fellow was being dismissed with a shilling.”
“It’s important because it is the first sign of real enmity I have discovered among Miss Clay’s relationships. One never knows what it might lead us to.”
“The Inspector may not think it so important when he has seen this,” Erskine said. “This, which I will give you to read, is the surprise I spoke of.”
So the surprise had not been one of those in the will.
Grant took the paper from the lawyer’s dry, slightly trembling hand. It was a sheet of the shiny, thick, cream-colored note-paper to be obtained in village shops all over England, and on it was a letter from Christine Clay to her lawyer. The letter was headed “Briars, Medley, Kent,” and contained instructions for a codicil to her will. She left her ranch in California, with all stock and implements, together with the sum of five thousand pounds, to one Robert Stannaway, late of Yeoman’s Row, London.
“That,” said the lawyer, “was written on Wednesday, as you see. And on Thursday morning—” He broke off, expressively.
“Is it legal?” Grant asked.
“I should not like to contest it. It is entirely handwritten and properly signed with her full name. The signature is witnessed by Margaret Pitts. The provision is perfectly clear, and the style eminently sane.”
“No chance of a forgery?”
“Not the slightest. I know Lady Edward’s hand very well—you will observe that it is peculiar and not easy to reproduce— and moreover I am very well acquainted with her style, which would be still more difficult to imitate.”
“Well!” Grant read the letter again, hardly believing in its existence. “That alters everything. I must get back to Scotland Yard. This will probably mean an arrest before night.” He stood up.
“I’ll come with you,” Champneis said.
“Very good, sir,” Grant agreed automatically. “If I may, I’ll telephone first to make sure that the Superintendent will be there.”
And as he picked up the receiver, the looker-on in him said: Harmer was right. We do treat people variously. If the husband had been an insurance agent in Brixton, we wouldn’t take it for granted that he could horn in on a Yard conference!
“Is Superintendent Barker in the Yard, do you know? . . . Oh . . . At half past? That’s in about twenty minutes. Well, tell him that Inspector Grant has important information and wants a conference straightaway. Yes, the Commissioner, too, if he’s there.”
He hung up.
“Thankyou for helping us so greatly,” he said, taking farewell of Erskine. “And by the way, if you unearth the brother, I should be glad to know.”
And he and Champneis went down the dark, narrow stairs and out into the hot sunshine.
“Do you think,” Champneis asked, pausing with one hand on the door of Grant’s car, “there would be time for a drink, I feel the need of some stiffening. It’s been a—a trying morning.”
“Yes, certainly. It won’t take us longer than ten minutes along the Embankment. Where would you like to go?”
“Well, my club is in Carlton House Terrace, but I don’t want to meet people I know. The Savoy isn’t much better—”
“There’s a nice little pub up here,” Grant said, and swung the car around. “Very quiet at this time. Cool, too.”
As they turned the corner Grant caught sight of the news-sellers’ posters. CLAY FUNERAL: UNPRECEDENTED SCENES. TEN WOMEN FAINT. LONDON’S FAREWELL TO CLAY. And (the Sentinel) CLAY’S LAST AUDIENCE.
Grant’s foot came down on the accelerator.
“It was unbelievably ghastly,” said the man beside him, quietly.
“Yes, I can imagine.”
“Those women. I think the end of our greatness as a race must be very near. We came through the war well, but perhaps the effort was too great. It left us—epileptic. Great shocks do, sometimes.” He was silent for a moment, evidently seeing it all again in his mind’s eye. “I’ve seen machine guns turned on troops in the open—in China—and rebelled against the slaughter. But I would have seen that subhuman mass of hysteria riddled this morning with more joy than I can describe to you. Not because it was—Chris, but because they made me ashamed of being human, of belonging to the same species.”
“I had hoped that at that early hour there would be very little demonstration. I know the police were counting on that.”
“We counted on it too. That is why we chose that hour. Now that I’ve seen with my own eyes, I know that nothing could have prevented it. The people are insane.”
He paused, and gave an unamused laugh. “She never did like people much. It was because she found people—disappointing that she left her money as she did. Her fans this morning have vindicated her judgment.”
The bar was all that Grant had promised, cool, quiet, and undemanding. No one took any notice of Champneis. Of the six men present three nodded to Grant and three looked wary. Champneis, observant even in his pain, said: “Where do you go when you want to be unrecognized?” and Grant smiled. “I’ve not found a place yet,” he admitted. “I landed in Labrador from a friend’s yacht once, and the man in the village store said, ’You wear your mustache shorter now, Sergeant.’ After that I gave up expecting.”
They talked of Labrador for a little, and then of Galeria, where Champneis had spent the last few months.
“I used to think Asia primitive, and some of the Indian tribes of South America, but the east of Europe has them all beaten. Except for the towns, Galeria is still in the primeval dark.”
“I see they’ve mislaid their spectacular patriot,” Grant said.
“Rimnik? Yes. He’ll turn up again when his party is ready. That’s the way they run the benighted country.”
“How many parties are there?”
“About ten, I think, not counting subdivisions. There are at least twenty races in that boiling pot of a country, all of them clamoring for self-government, and all of them medieval in their outlook. It’s a fascinating place. You should go there someday. The capital is their shopwindow—as nearly a replica of every other capital as they can make it. Opera, trams, electric light, imposing railway station, cinemas—but twenty miles into the country you’ll find bride barter. Girls set in rows with their dowry at their feet, waiting to go to the highest bidder. I’ve seen an old country woman led raving mad out of a lift in one of the town buildings. She thought she was the victim of witchcraft. They had to take her to the asylum. Graft in the town and superstition in the country—and yet a place of infinite promise.”
Grant let him talk, glad that for even a few minutes he might be able to forget the horror of the morning. His own thoughts were not in Galeria but in Westover. So he had done it, that good-looking emotionalist! He had screwed a ranch and five thousand out of his hostess and then made sure that he would not have to wait for it. Grant’s own inclination to like the boy died an instant death. From now on Robert Tisdall would be no more to him than the bluebottle he swatted on the windowpane, a n
uisance to be exterminated as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. If, away in the depths, he was sorry that the pleasant person who was the surface Tisdall did not exist, his main and overwhelming emotion was relief that the business was going to be cleared up so easily. There was little doubt of the result of the conference. They had evidence enough. And they would have more before it came to a trial.
Barker, his Superintendent, agreed with him, and so did the Commissioner. It was a clear enough case. The man is broke, homeless, and at his wit’s end. He is picked up by a rich woman at the psychological moment. Four days later a will is made in his favor. On the following morning very early, the woman goes to swim. He follows her ten minutes later. When her body is found he has disappeared. He reappears with an unbelievable tale about stealing the car and bringing it back. A black button is found twisted in the dead woman’s hair. The man’s dark coat is missing. He says it was stolen two days before. But a man identifies him as wearing it that morning.
Yes, it was a good enough case. The opportunity, the motive, the clue.
The only person to protest against the issue of the warrant was, strangely enough, Edward Champneis.
“It’s too pat, don’t you think?” he said. “I mean, would any man in his senses commit the murder the very next morning?”
“You forget, Lord Edward,” Barker said, “that but for the merest chance there would be no question of murder at all.”
“And moreover, time was precious to him,” Grant pointed out. “There were only a few days left. The tenancy of the cottage expired at the end of the month. He knew that. She might not go bathing again. The weather might break, or she might be seized with a desire to go inland. More especially she might not go swimming in the early morning again. It was an ideal setting: a lonely beach in the very early morning, with the mist just rising. Too perfect a chance to let go to waste.”
Yes, it was a good case. Edward Champneis went back to the house in Regent’s Park which he had inherited with the Bremer fortune, and which between his peregrinations he called home. And Grant went down to Westover with a warrant in his pocket.
Chapter 9
If there was one thing Toselli hated more than another it was the police. All his life he had been no poor hater, Toselli. As commis he had hated the maître d’hôtel, as maître d’hôtel he had hated the management, as the management: he hated many things: the chef, wet weather, his wife, the head porter’s mustache, clients who demanded to see him at breakfast time—oh, many things! But more than all he hated the police. They were bad for business and bad for the digestion. It stopped his digestive juices flowing just to see one of them walk in through the glass doors. It was bad enough to remember his annual bill for New Year “presents” to the local officers—thirty bottles of Scotch, thirty of gin, two dozen champagne, and six of liqueur brandy it had come to last year—but to suffer the invasion of officers not so far “looked after,” and therefore callous to the brittle delicacy of hotel well-being—well, it was more than Toselli’s abundant flesh and high-pressured blood could stand.
That is why he smiled so sweetly upon Grant—all his life Toselli’s smile had been stretched across his rage, like a tightrope spanning a chasm—and gave him one of the second-best cigars. Inspector Grant wanted to interview the new waiter, did he? But certainly! This was the waiter’s hour off—between lunch and afternoon tea—but he should be sent for immediately.
“Stop!” said Grant. “You say the man is off duty? Do you know where he will be?”
“Very probably in his room. Waiters like to take the weight off their feet for a little, you understand.”
“I’d like to see him there.”
“But certainly. Tony!” Toselli called to a page passing the office door. “Take this gentleman up to the room of the new waiter.”
“Thankyou,” Grant said. “You’ll be here when I come down? I should like to talk to you.”
“I shall be here.” Toselli’s tone expressed dramatic resignation. His smile deepened as he flung out his hands. “Last week it was a stabbing affair in the kitchen, this week it is—what? theft? affiliation?”
“I’ll tell you all about it presently, Mr. Toselli.”
“I shall be here.” His smile became ferocious. “But not for long, no! I am going to buy one of those businesses where one puts sixpence into a slot and the meal comes out. Yes. There, but there, would be happiness.”
“Even there, there are bent coins,” Grant said as he followed Tony to the lift.
“Sanger, you come up with me,” he said as they passed through the busy hall. “You can wait for us here, Williams. We’ll bring him out this way. Much less fuss than through the servants’ side. No one will notice anything. Car waiting?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grant and Sanger went up in the lift. In those few seconds of sudden quiet and suspended action, Grant found time to wonder why he had not shown his warrant and told Toselli what he had come for. That would have been his normal course. Why was he so anxious to have the bird in his hand? Was it just the canniness of his Scots ancestry coming out, or was there a presentiment that—that what? He didn’t know. He knew only that he was here, he could not wait. Explanations could follow. He must have the man in his hands.
The soft sound of the lift in the silence was like the sound of the curtain going up.
At the very top of the colossal building which was the West-over Marine Hotel, were the quarters of those waiters who were resident: small single rooms set in a row close together under the roof. As the page put out a bony fist to knock on a door, Grant restrained him. “All right, thank you,” he said, and page and liftman disappeared into the crowded and luxurious depths, leaving the two policemen on the deserted coconut-matted landing. It was very quiet up there.
Grant knocked.
Tisdall’s indifferent voice bade him come in.
The room was so small that Grant’s involuntary thought was that the cell that waited would be no great change. A bed on one side, a window on the other, and in the far wall two cupboard doors. On the bed lay Tisdall in his shirt sleeves, his shoes on the floor. A book lay open, face down, on the coverlet.
He had expected to see a colleague. That was obvious. At the sight of Grant his eyes widened, and as they traveled to Sanger, standing behind Grant in the doorway, realization flooded them.
Before Grant could speak, he said, “You can’t mean it!”
“Yes, I’m afraid we do,” Grant said. He said his regulation piece of announcement and warning, Tisdall sitting with feet dangling on the bed’s edge, not apparently listening.
When he had finished Tisdall said slowly: “I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.”
“How were you so sure what we had come for?”
“It doesn’t need two of you to ask about my health.” His voice rose a little. “What I want to know is why you’re doing it? What have you against me? You can’t have proved that button was mine because it wasn’t. Why don’t you tell me what you have found so that I can explain away whatever it was? If you have new evidence you can surely ask me for an explanation. I have a right to know, haven’t I? Whether I can explain or not?”
“There isn’t anything you could explain away, Tisdall. You’d better get ready to come with us.”
Tisdall got to his feet, his mind still entangled in the unbelievableness of what was happening to him. “I can’t go in these things,” he said, looking down at his waiter’s dress. “Can I change?”
“Yes, you can change, and take some things with you.” Grant’s hands ran over his pockets in expert questioning, and came away empty. “But you’ll have to do it with us here. Don’t be too long about it, will you? You can wait there, Sanger,” he added, and swung the door to, leaving Sanger outside. He himself moved over to lean against the windowsill. It was a long way to the ground, and Tisdall, in Grant’s opinion, was the suicide type. Not enough guts to brazen a thing out. No
t enough vanity, perhaps to like the limelight at any price. Certainly the “everyone sorry when I’m dead” type.
Grant watched him now with minute attention. To an outsider he was a casual visitor, propped casually in the window while he indulged in casual conversation. In reality he was ready for instant emergency.
But there was no excitement. Tisdall pulled his suitcase from under the bed, and began with automatic method to change into his tweed and flannels. Grant felt that if the man carried poison, it would be somewhere in his working garments, and unconsciously relaxed a little as the waiter’s dress was cast aside. There was going to be no trouble. The man was coming quietly.
“I needn’t have worried as to how I was going to live,” Tisdall was saying. “There seems to be a moral somewhere in this very immoral proceeding. What do I do about a lawyer, by the way, when I have no money and no friends?”
“One will be provided.”
“Like a table napkin. I see.”
He opened the cupboard nearest to Grant, and began to take things from their hangers and fold them into his case.
“At least you can tell me what my motive was?” he said presently, as if a new thought had struck him. “You can mistake buttons; you can even wish a button on to a coat that never had it; but you can’t pin a motive where there couldn’t be one!”
“So you had no motive?”
“Certainly not. Quite the opposite. What happened last Thursday morning was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I should have thought that was obvious even to an outsider.”
“And of course you had not the faintest idea that Miss Clay had made a codicil to her will leaving you a ranch and a large sum of money.”
Tisdall had been readjusting the folds of a garment. He stopped now, his hands still holding the cloth, but motionless, and stared at Grant.
“Chris did that!” he said. “No. No, I didn’t know. How wonderful of her!”
And for a moment doubt stirred in Grant. That had been beautifully done. Timing, expression, action. No professional actor could have done it better. But the doubt passed. He recrossed his legs, by way of shaking himself, recalled the charm and innocence of murderers he had known (Andrew Hamey, who specialized in marrying women and drowning them and who looked like a choir soloist, and others of even greater charm and iniquity) and then composed his mind to the peace of a detective who has got his man.
A Shilling for Candles Page 8