But there was going to be a question time, it would seem. Miss Keats, sipping water and smiling benevolently between sips, was waiting for the audience to collect its wits. Then some bold spirit began, and presently questions were raining around her. Some were amusing; and the audience, a little tired by the warm air, Lydia’s voice, and the dullish lecture, laughed easily in relief. Presently the questions grew more intimate, and then—so inevitably that half the audience could see it coming—the query came:
Was it true that Miss Keats accurately foretold the manner of Christine Clay’s death?
There was a shocked and eager silence. Lydia said, simply and with more dignity than she usually possessed, that it was true; that she had often foretold the future truly from a horoscope. She gave some instances.
Emboldened by the growing intimacy of the atmosphere, someone asked if she was helped in her reading of horoscopes by second sight. She waited so long before answering that stillness fell back on the moving heads and hands; their eyes watched her expectantly.
“Yes,” she said, at length. “Yes. It is not a matter that I like to discuss. But there are times when I have known, beyond reason, that a thing is so.” She paused a moment, as if in doubt, and then took three steps forward to the edge of the platform with such impetuosity that it seemed that she meant to walk forward on to thin air. “And one thing I have known ever since I stepped on the platform. The murderer of Christine Clay is here in this hall.”
It is said that ninety-nine people out of a hundred, receiving a telegram reading All is discovered: fly, will snatch a toothbrush and make for the garage. Lydia’s words were so unexpected, and their meaning when understood so horrifying, that there was a moment of blank silence. And then the rush began, like the first breath of a hurricane through palm trees. Above the rising babel, chairs shrieked like human beings as they were thrust out of the way. And the more they were thrust aside, the greater the chaos and the more frantic the anxiety of the escapers to reach the door. Not one in the crowd knew what they were escaping from. With most of them it began as a desire to escape from a tense situation; they belonged, as a class, to people who hate “awkwardness.” But the difficulty of reaching the door through the scattered chairs and the densely packed crowd increased their natural desire to escape, into something like panic.
The chairman was saying something that was meant to be reassuring, to tide over the situation: but he was quite inaudible. Someone had gone to Lydia, and Jammy heard her say:
“What made me say that? Oh, what made me say that?”
He had moved forward to mount the platform, all the journalist in him tingling with anticipation. But as he laid his hand on the platform edge to vault, he recognized Lydia’s escort. It was the fellow from the Courier. She was practically the Courier’s property, he remembered. It was a million to one against his getting a word with her, and, at these odds, it wasn’t worth the effort. There was better game, after all. When Lydia had made that incredible statement, Jammy, having abruptly pulled his own jaw into place, had turned to see how two people took the shock.
Marta had gone quite white, and a look of something like fury had come into her face. She had been one of the first to get to her feet, moving so abruptly that Lejeune was taken by surprise and had to fish his hat from under her heels. She had made for the door without a second glance at the platform or Lydia, but since she had had a seat in the front rows she had become firmly wedged halfway down the hall, where confusion became worse confounded by someone having violent hysteria.
Jason Harmer, on the other hand, had not moved a muscle. He had gone on looking at Lydia with the same pleased interest during and after her staggering announcement as he had shown before. He had made no move to get up until people began to walk over him. Then he rose leisurely, helped a woman to climb over a chair that was blocking her path, patted his pocket to assure himself that something or other was there (his gloves probably), and turned to the door.
It took Jammy several minutes of scientific shoving to reach Marta, wedged in an alcove between two radiators.
“The silly fools!” she said viciously, when Jammy had reminded her who he was. And she glared, with most un-Hallard-like lack of poise, at her fellow beings.
“Nicer with an orchestra pit between, aren’t they?”
Marta remembered that these were her public, and he could see her automatically pull herself together. But she was still what Jammy called “het up.”
“Amazing business,” he said, prompting. And in explanation: “Miss Keats.”
“An utterly disgusting exhibition!”
“Disgusting?” said Jammy, at a loss.
“Why doesn’t she turn cartwheels in the Strand?”
“You think this was just a publicity stunt?”
“What do you call it? A sign from Heaven?”
“But you said yourself, Miss Hallard, that night you were so kind as to put up with me, that she isn’t a quack. That she really—”
“Of course she isn’t a quack! She has done some amazing horoscopes. But that is a very different matter from this finding of murderers at a penny a time. If Lydia doesn’t take care,” she said after a pause and with venom, “she will end by being an Aimee McPherson!”
It occurred to Jammy that this was hardly the line he had expected Marta to hand out. He didn’t know what he had expected. But somehow it wasn’t this. Into the pause that his doubt made, she said in a new crisp tone:
“This isn’t by any chance an interview, is it, Mr. Hopkins? Because if so, please understand quite clearly that I have said none of these things.”
“All right, Miss Hallard, you haven’t said a word. Unless the police ask me, of course,” he added, smiling.
“I don’t think the police are on speaking terms with you,” she said. “And now, if you will be so kind as to stand a little to your left, I think I can get past you into that space over there.”
She nodded to him, smiled a little, pushed her scented person past him into the place of vantage, and was swallowed up in the crowd.
“Not a ha’penny change!” said Jammy to himself. And ruefully began to push his way back to where he had last seen Jason Harmer. Dowagers cursed him and debutantes glared, but half Jammy’s life had been spent in getting through crowds. He made a good job of it.
“And what do you think of this, Mr. Harmer?”
Jason eyed him in a good-humored silence. “How much?” he said at last.
“How much what?”
“How much for my golden words?”
“A free copy of the paper.”
Jason laughed, then his face grew sober. “Well, I think it has been a most instructive afternoon. You believe in this star stuff?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Me, I’m not so sure. There’s a lot in that crack about more things in heaven and earth whatever-it-is. I’ve seen some funny things happen in the village where I was born. Witchcraft and that. No accounting for any of it by any natural means. Makes you wonder.”
“Where was that?”
Jason looked suddenly startled for the first time that afternoon. “East of Europe,” he said abruptly. And went on: “That Miss Keats, she’s a wonder. Not a canny thing to have around the house, though. No, sir! Must spoil your chances of matrimony quite a bit to be able to see what’s going to happen. To say nothing of what has been happening. Every man has a right to his alibis.”
Was no one, thought Jammy in exasperation, going to take the expected line of country this afternoon! Perhaps if he pushed his way into Lydia’s presence, she at least would behave according to the pattern he had marked out for her.
“You believe that Miss Keats was genuinely feeling the presence of evil when she made that statement?” he pursued hopefully.
“Sure, sure!” Jason looked a little surprised. “You don’t make a fool of yourself that way unless you’re pretty worked up.”
“I noticed you weren’t very surprised by the statement.”
“I been in the States fifteen years. Nothing surprises me anymore. Ever seen Holy Rollers? Ever seen Coney Island? Ever seen a tramp trying to sell a gold mine? Go west, young man, go west!”
“I’m going home to bed,” said Jammy, and took his pushing way through the crowd.
But by the time he had reached the vestibule, he had recovered a little. He adjusted his collar and waited to see the crowd move past. Once outside the inner door, and breathing the secure air of Wigmore Street, they recovered from their fright and broke with one accord into excited speech.
But Jammy gleaned little from their unguarded chatter.
And then over their heads he saw a face that made him pause. A fair face with light lashes and the look of a rather kind terrier. He knew that man. His name was Sanger. And the last time he had seen him was sitting at a desk in Scotland Yard.
So Grant had had a little imagination after all!
Jammy flung his hat disgustedly on and went out to think things over.
Chapter 20
Grant had imagination, yes. But it was not Jammy’s kind. It would never have occurred to him to waste the time of a perfectly good detective by sending him to look at an audience for two hours. Sanger was at the Elwes Hall because his job for the moment was to tail Jason Harmer.
He brought back an account of the afternoon’s drama, and reported that Harmer had been, as far as he could see, quite unmoved. He, Jason, had been accosted by Hopkins from the Clarion directly afterwards; but Hopkins didn’t seem to get very far with him.
“Yes?” said Grant, lifting an eyebrow. “If he’s a match for Hopkins, we must begin to consider him again. Cleverer than I thought!” And Sanger grinned.
• • •
On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Erskine telephoned to say that the fish had bitten. What he said, of course, was that “the line of investigation suggested by Inspector Grant had, it would appear, proved unexpectedly successful,” but what he meant was that the fish had risen. Would Grant come along as soon as he could to inspect a document which Mr. Erskine was anxious to show him?
Grant would! In twelve minutes he was in the little green-lighted room.
Erskine, his hand trembling a little more than usual, gave him a letter to read.
Sir,
Having seen your advertisement saying that if Herbert Gotobed will call at your office he will hear of something to his advantage, I beg to state that I am unable to come personally but if you will communicate your news to me by letter to 5, Threadle Street, Canterbury, I will get the letter.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT GOTOBED
“Canterbury!” Grant’s eyes lighted. He handled the letter lovingly. The paper was cheap, and the ink poor. The style and the writing vaguely illiterate. Grant remembered Christine’s letter with its easy sentences and its individual hand, and marveled for the thousandth time at the mystery of breeding.
“Canterbury! It’s almost too good to be true. An accommodation address. I wonder why? Is our Herbert ’wanted,’ by any chance? The Yard certainly don’t know him. Not by that name. Pity we haven’t got a photograph of him.”
“And what is our next move, Inspector?”
“You write saying that if he doesn’t put in a personal appearance you have no guarantee that he is Herbert Gotobed, and that it is therefore necessary for him to come to your offices!”
“Yes. Yes, certainly. That would be quite in order.”
As if it mattered a hoot whether it was in order, Grant thought. How did these fellows imagine criminals were caught? Not by wondering what would be in order, that was certain!
“If you post it straightaway, it will be in Canterbury tonight. I’ll go down tomorrow morning and be waiting for the bird when he arrives. May I use your telephone?”
He called the Yard and asked, “Are you sure that none of the list of ’wanted’ men has a passion for preaching or otherwise indulging in theatricality?”
The Yard said no, only Holy Mike, and everyone in the force had known him for years. He was reported from Plymouth, by the way.
“How appropriate!” Grant said, and hung up. “Strange!” he said to Erskine. “If he isn’t wanted, why lie low? If he has nothing on his conscience—no, he hasn’t a conscience. I mean, if we have nothing on him, I should have thought the same lad would have been in your office by return of post. He’d do almost anything for money. Clay knew where to hurt him when she left him that shilling.”
“Lady Edward was a shrewd judge of character. She had, I think, been brought up in a hard school, and the fact helped her to discriminate.”
Grant asked if he had known her well.
“No, I regret to say, no. A very charming woman. A little impatient of orthodox form, but otherwise—”
Yes. Grant could almost hear her saying, “And in plain English what does that mean?” She, too, must have suffered from Mr. Erskine.
Grant took his leave, warned Williams to be ready to accompany him next morning to Canterbury, arranged for a substitute in the absence of them both, and went home and slept for ten hours. In the morning, very early, he and Williams left a London not yet awake and arrived in a Canterbury shrouded in the smoke of breakfast.
The accommodation address proved to be, as Grant had expected, a small newsagent in a side street. Grant considered it, and said: “I don’t suppose our friend will show up this end of the day, but one never knows. You go across to the pub over the way, engage that room above the saloon door, and have breakfast sent up to you. Don’t leave the window, and keep an eye on everyone who comes. I’m going inside. When I want you I’ll sign from the shop window.”
“Aren’t you going to have breakfast, sir?”
“I’ve had it. You can order lunch for one o’clock, though. It doesn’t look the kind of place that would have a chop in the house.”
Grant lingered until he saw Williams come to the upper window. Then he turned into the small shop. A round bald man with a heavy black mustache was transferring cartons of cigarettes from a cardboard box to a glass case.
“Good morning. Are you Mr. Rickett?”
“That’s me,” Mr. Rickett said, with caution.
“I understand that you sometimes use these premises as an accommodation address?”
Mr. Rickett looked him over. His experienced eye asked, Customer or police? and decided correctly.
“And what if I do? Nothing wrong in that, is there?”
“Not a thing!” Grant answered cheerfully. “I wanted to know whether you knew a Mr. Herbert Gotobed?”
“This a joke?”
“Certainly not. He gave your shop as an address for letters, and I wondered if you knew him.”
“Not me. I don’t take no interest in the people who has letters. They pay their fee when they come for them, and that finishes it as far as I am concerned.”
“I see. Well, I want you to help me. I want you to let me stay in your shop until Mr. Gotobed comes to claim his letter. You have a letter for him?”
“Yes, I have a letter. It came last night. But—you police?”
“Scotland Yard,” Grant showed his credentials.
“Yes. Well, I don’t want no arrests on my premises. This is a respectable business, this is, even if I do a little on the side. I don’t want no bad name hanging around my business.”
Grant assured him that no arrest was contemplated. All he wanted was to meet Mr. Gotobed. He wanted information from him.
Oh, well, if that was all.
So Grant was established behind the little tower of cheap editions at the end of the counter, and found the morning passing not so slowly as he had feared. Humanity, even after all his years in the force, still had a lively interest in Grant’s eyes—except in moments of depression—and interest proved plentiful. It was Williams, watching a very ordinary small-town street, who was bored. He welcomed the half hour of conversation behind the books when Grant went to lunch, and went back reluctantly to the frowsy room above the saloon.
The long summer afternoon, clouded and warm, wore away into a misty evening, and a too early dusk. The first lights appeared, very pale in the daylight.
“What time do you close?” Grant asked anxiously.
“Oh, tennish.”
There was still plenty of time.
And then, about half-past nine, Grant became aware of a presence in the shop. There had been no warning of footsteps, no announcement at all except a swish of drapery. Grant looked up to see a man in monk’s garb.
A high-pitched peevish voice said, “You have a letter addressed to Mr. Herbert—”
A light movement on Grant’s part called attention to his presence.
Without a moment’s pause the man turned and disappeared, leaving his sentence unfinished.
The apparition had been so unexpected, the disappearance so abrupt, that it was a second or two before mortal wits could cope with the situation. But Grant was out of the shop before the stranger was more than a few yards down the street. He saw the figure turn into an alley, and he ran. It was a little back court of two-story houses, all the doors open to the warm evening, and two transverse alleys leading out of it. The man had disappeared. He turned to find Williams, a little breathless, at his back.
“Good man!” he said. “But it isn’t much use. You take that alley and I’ll take this one. A monk of sorts!”
“I saw him!” Williams said, making off.
But it was no good. In ten minutes they met at the newsagent’s, blank.
“Who was that?” Grant demanded of Mr. Rickett. “Don’t know. Never saw him before as far as I know.”
“Is there a monastery here?”
“In Canterbury? No!”
“Well, in the district?”
“Not as I knows.”
A woman behind them put down sixpence on the counter. “Goldflake,” she said. “You looking for a monastery? There’s that brotherhood place in Bligh Vennel. They’re by way of being monks. Ropes around their middles and bare heads.”
A Shilling for Candles Page 17