And then Grant felt gravel pavement under his stocking feet and cursed. The man was making for the country; for the outer suburbs at least.
For about twenty minutes Grant followed that half-seen figure through a dark and silent world. He did not know his surrounding; he had to follow the figure blindly. He did not know when a step came, or a declivity, or an obstacle. And a bad stumble might be fatal to the night’s work. But as far as he could see, his quarry never hesitated. This was not a flight; it was a journey he had done often before.
Presently Grant could tell that they were in more or less open country. If there were houses they were built behind the original field hedges—a new suburb, probably. The hedges made it difficult to see the man he was following; their dark mass made a gloomy background for a moving figure. And then Grant suddenly found that he had lost him. Nothing moved in front of him anymore. He stood still instantly. Was the man waiting for him? Or had he disappeared into an opening? Several times, when pebbles had slid under his own tread, he had wondered if the man suspected his presence. There had been as far as he could see no pause for reconnoitering in the man’s progress. But now there was a complete absence of any movement at all.
Grant went forward step by step, and found himself level with an opening in the hedge. A gate. He wished passionately that he could use his torch. This blindfold moving through an unknown country was getting on his nerves. He decided to risk a guess that this was where the man had gone, and moved into the entrance. Immediately there was soft sand under his feet. He paused doubtfully. Was it only a sandpit? What was the man planning? An attack?
Then he remembered that fine red sand which decorates the trim approaches to new villas, and breathed again. Reassured he moved forward, finding with one foot the cut edge of turf, and letting it lead him to the building which must be in front of him somewhere. It loomed quite suddenly in the darkness. A whitewashed house of perhaps eight rooms. Its paleness made it slightly luminous even on so dark a night; and against its ghostly shimmer he saw the man again. He was standing still, and it seemed to Grant that he was looking back at him. He realized too late that he too was now standing where a wing of the house made a background for him. He dropped to his knees. And after a moment the man moved on and vanished round the corner of the house.
Grant made the best of his way to the corner and waited, pressed up against the wall. But there was no sound, no breathing, not a movement; the man had gone on; he was wasting time. He stepped around the corner. A soft wool substance smothered him, falling over his face and being drawn tightly about his neck. A split second before the folds closed on his throat, he got his fingers between the stuff and his flesh. He held on with all his might, and then, using the material as purchase, bent forward abruptly and felt the man’s body come sliding over him, head first to the ground. The weight knocked Grant down, and the vile suffocating thing was still over his head, but his hands were free. He reached out for his opponent and felt with passionate gladness the restriction around his throat relax. He was still blind and suffocating, but he was in no immediate danger of being throttled. He was, in fact, doing his best to throttle the other man, if only he could find his throat. But the man was twisting like an eel, and using his knees with malicious art. This was not the first time that Herbert Gotobed had fought foul. Grant wished, hitting blindly and finding only seed-sown grass, that he could see for just thirty seconds. He let go the part of his assailant he happened to be holding—he was not sure whether it was a leg or an arm—and did his best to roll away. It was not successful, since the man had just as firm a grip of him. But he had time to reach into his pocket and close his fingers around his torch. His hand was prisoned there as he was rolled onto his back, but with all his might Grant hit with the free hand into the breath that was sobbing into his face. His knuckles hit bone and he heard the snap of teeth meeting. The man’s full weight descended on him. He wrenched himself free from it, and dragged the torch from his pocket. Before he had got it out, the man was moving again. He had only rocked him. He flashed the torch on him, and before the light had reached his face the man leaped. Grant stepped aside and swung the weapon at him as he came. It missed him by a hair’s breadth and they went down together. Grant lacked stance for the reception of such a weight: all his attention had been on his own blow; he hit the ground with violence. In the dimness of the moment, when all his faculties were trying to summon his stunned body to its duty, he wondered detachedly how the man would kill him.
To his surprise he felt the weight of the man’s body lift, something hit him across the side of the head, and he was aware, even while his ears sang, that the man had gone from his side.
He dragged himself to a sitting position; sitting, incidentally, on the stone he had been hit with (by its feel its proper place was a rockery), and was groping for his torch preparatory to following the man, when a woman’s voice said out of the dark in a whisper:
“Is that you, Bert? Is anything wrong?”
Grant’s hand lighted on the torch, and he got to his feet.
The light shone into eyes big and brown and soft as a deer’s. But the rest of the face was not soft.
She drew in her breath as the light flashed, and made a movement backwards.
“Stay still,” said Grant in a voice that brooked no disobedience, and the movement ceased.
“Don’t talk so loud,” she said urgently. “Who are you, anyway? I thought you were—a friend of mine.”
“I’m a detective inspector—a policeman.”
This statement, Grant had found, produced invariably one of two expressions: fear or wariness. Quite innocent people often showed the first; but the second was a giveaway. It gave away the woman now.
Grant’s light flashed on the house—a one-story building with small attic rooms.
“Don’t do that!” she hissed. “You’ll waken her.”
“Who is ’her’?”
“The old lady. My boss.”
“You a maid here?”
“I’m the housekeeper.”
“Just the two of you in the house?”
“Yes.”
He indicated with his light the open window behind her. “Is that your room?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go in there and talk.”
“You can’t come into the house. You can’t do anything to me. I haven’t done anything.”
“Would you mind!” said Grant, in a tone that belied the meaning of the phrase.
“You can’t come into the house without a warrant. I know!” She was standing against the windowsill now, defending her rooms.
“You don’t need a warrant for murder,” Grant said.
“Murder!” She stared at him. “What have I to do with murder?”
“Will you get in, please, and put on the light?”
She did as she was bidden, climbing over the sill with the ease of practice. As the light clicked, Grant stepped over the sill and drew the curtains.
It was a very pleasant bedroom, with eiderdown on the bed and shaded light on the table.
“Who is your employer?” he asked.
She gave her employer’s name, and admitted that she had been there only a few months.
“Where was your last reference from?”
“A place in Australia.”
“And what relation are you to Herbert Gotobed?”
“Who’s that?”
“Come, don’t let’s waste time, Miss—What name do you use, by the way?”
“I use my own name,” she glared at him. “Rosa Freeson.”
Grant tilted the lamp for a better view of her. He had never seen her before. “Herbert Gotobed came out here to see you tonight and you were waiting for him. You will save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me all about it, now.”
“I was waiting, if you must know, for Bert. He’s the milk roundsman. You can’t run me in for that. You can’t blame me much, either. A girl has to have a little fun in a place like this.”
“Yes?” He moved toward the built-in wardrobe. “Stay where you are,” he said.
The wardrobe held nothing but women’s clothes; rather too good for her position but none of them very new. Grant asked to see the contents of the chest of drawers, and she showed them sullenly. They were all quite normal. He asked where her boxes were.
“In the box room in the attic,” she said.
“And what are the suitcases under the bed?”
She looked ready to strike him.
“Let me see what is in these.”
“You have no right! Show me your warrant. I won’t open anything for you.”
“If you have nothing to hide, you can’t possibly object to my seeing what is inside.”
“I’ve lost the key.”
“You’re making me very suspicious.”
She produced the key from a string around her neck and pulled out the first suitcase. Grant, watching her, thought for the first time that she was not all white. Something in her movements, in the texture of her hair, was—what? Negro? Indian? And then he remembered the South Sea Mission which Herbert had run.
“How long since you left the Islands?” he asked conversationally.
“About—” She stopped, and finished immediately, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The first suitcase was empty. The second was full to the brim with men’s clothes.
“Male impersonator?” asked Grant, who in spite of his swollen feet and aching head was beginning to feel happier. “Or just old clothes dealer?”
“These are the clothes of my dead fiancé. I’ll thank you not to be funny about them.”
“Didn’t your fiancé wear a coat?”
“Yes, but it was mussed up when he was killed.”
“Oh? How was he killed?” Grant asked amiably, his hands running through the clothes.
“Motor accident.”
“You disappoint me.”
“Come again?”
“I’d expected a more imaginative end from you. What was your fiancé’s name?”
“John Starboard.”
“Starboard! That cancels out the motor accident.”
“I suppose you know what you’re talking about. I don’t.”
“It wasn’t your fiancé’s coat you kept in that now empty suitcase, by any chance?”
“It was not.”
Grant’s searching hand paused. He withdrew it holding a bundle of passports: four in all. One was a British one issued to Herbert Gotobed; one was an American one in the name of Alexander Byron Black; one a Spanish one, issued to a deaf-mute, one José Fernandez; and the fourth an American one for William Cairns Black and his wife. But the photographs were all of the same man: Herbert Gotobed; and the wife’s photograph was that of Rosa Freeson.
“A collector, your fiancé. An expensive hobby, I’ve always understood.” He put the passports into his pocket.
“You can’t do that. They’re not yours. I’ll scream the house down. I will say you came in and attacked me. Look!” She pulled her wrap open and began to tear her nightdress.
“Scream as much as you like. Your old lady would be very interested in these passports. And if you have any designs on the old lady, by the way, I should advise you to reconsider them. Now I shall retrieve my boots. They are lying somewhere in the garden. Though God alone knows if my feet will go into them. My advice to you, Mrs. Cairns Black, is to do nothing at all until you hear from me. We have nothing against you, so far, so don’t begin putting ideas into our heads by doing anything you might regret.”
Chapter 23
Grant managed to get his boots on (by dint of thinking strenuously of something else, his childhood’s recipe for painful moments), but after two or three steps hastily took them off again, and hobbled homeward as he had come: stocking-soled. It was not easy to find his way back, but he had an excellent bump of locality (it was said at the Yard that if you blindfolded Grant and turned him until he was dizzy he still knew where north was) and the general direction was clear enough to him. He stood in a doorway on the opposite side of the street and watched the officer on the beat go by, rather than ask a direction and have to explain himself. No member of the C.I.D. likes to appear before a borough policeman with his boots in his hands.
He wrote a note asking Williams to telephone the Yard when he came in at six and ask for any information they might have about a sect or order or whatnot called the Tree of Lebanon, and to waken him when the answer came. He then fell into bed, and slept dreamlessly, the passports under his pillow until Williams called him just before ten o’clock.
“News of Tisdall?” Grant said as his eyes opened.
But there was no news.
The Yard said that the Holy Order of the Tree of Lebanon had been founded by a rich bachelor in 1862, for the furtherance of the monastic life, he having been what was then known as jilted by the object of his affections. He himself had been the first prior, and all his wealth had been used to endow the foundation. The rule of poverty had been very strict, money being used only for charities approved by the prior of the moment, so that by the present day the order had the reputation of having a lot of money laid away. A prior was nominated by his predecessor, but a prior could be superseded at any moment by the unanimous vote of the brethren.
Grant drank the horrible coffee supplied by the establishment, and considered things. “That is what our Herbert wants: the priorship. He has the prior dancing on a stick. It’s almost incredible that a man like the prior could be such a fool. But then! Think of the fools we’ve known, Williams.”
“I’m thinking, sir,” Williams said, eloquently.
“All those hardheaded self-made pieces of original conglomerate who fall for a few honeyed words from a confidence man in a hotel lobby! And of course Herbert has no ordinary gift of tongues. Perhaps he worked his churches in America as leaven to the prior’s interest. Anyhow, he’s the prior’s fair-haired boy at the moment. With the prospect of having a fortune in his hands if he plays his cards rightly for the next few weeks. Not much wonder he was scared of getting in wrong. He wanted to know just how much his sister had left him, without compromising himself with his brethren. If she had left him enough to make it worth his while, he’d give up the monastic life. I shouldn’t think it appeals greatly to him. Even with occasional visits to the villa.”
“How long do you think he’d stay in any case, sir?”
“Till he had transferred enough hard cash to his own particular charities. Oh, well, these,” he indicated the passports, “will be enough to frame a nice little indictment on, so that we can have him under our hands when we want him. The thing that disappoints me, Williams, is where is the murder in all this? I don’t mean that he didn’t do it. I’ve no doubt that he was having his twenty-four hours off at the time. But why did he do it? He came to England when he heard that she was coming. I think, judging by his woman’s clothes, that he was possibly broke when he arrived. That was why he took to the Tree of Lebanon. But the possibilities of the Tree must have occurred to him pretty soon. Why kill his sister?”
“Went to see her and had a quarrel. The queer hour that’s puzzled us all would be quite normal for him. Six o’clock would be just as usual as lunchtime.”
“Yes, that’s true. I’m going now to find out from the Reverend Father whether Brother Aloysius was out of the monastery a fortnight yesterday. The Reverend Father would have sat on a very high horse yesterday, but he’ll talk when he sees what his favorite looks like on these passports.”
But the Reverend Father was not receiving callers. The little guichet displayed the sour face of the doorkeeper, who delivered his stolid message in answer to all Grant’s questions, whether the phrase was relevant or not. Herbert’s golden tongue had been at work. The guichet shut, and Grant was left helpless in the little lane. There was nothing for it but a warrant. He went slowly away, his feet still aching; admired the job Herbert had made of oiling the cellar entrance in the pavement,
and climbed into his car. Yes, he had better get that warrant.
He went back to the hotel for his pajamas, razor, and toothbrush (he had no intention of spending another night there) and was leaving a message for the sleeping Williams, when he was called to the telephone by the Yard.
Would he go to Dover? The man there wanted him. Something had turned up, it seemed.
He changed the message for Williams, threw his things into the car, found time to wonder why he overtipped the frowsy virago for her inattendance, disgusting food, and deplorable cooking, and set out for Dover.
Something had turned up. That could only mean Champneis. Something out of the ordinary. If they had merely found where Champneis had spent the night, it would have been reported by telephone in the ordinary way. But—something had turned up.
Rimell, the detective in charge—a kind, melancholy-looking boy, whose greatest asset was his unlikeness to the popular conception of a detective—was waiting for Grant at that police-station door, and Grant drew him into the car. Rimell said that he had, after endless delving, unearthed an old fellow called Searle, a retired deckhand, who had been coming home from his granddaughter’s engagement party about half-past twelve on the Wednesday night—or rather, the Thursday morning. He was alone, because very few people lived down the harborway nowadays. They’d got ideas and lived up the hill in gimcrack villas you’d be afraid to sneeze in. He had stopped a minute or two when he had got to the sea level, to look at the harbor. It still made him feel fine to look at riding lights at night. It was beginning to mist over, but it was still clear enough to see the outlines of everything. He knew the Petronel was coming in—had seen her through his glasses before he went to the party—and so he looked for her now, and saw her lying not at the jetty, but out in the water at anchor. As he watched, a small motorboat came out from her side and made for the shore, going slowly with a quiet chug-chug as if not anxious to call attention to itself. As it touched the jetty steps a man moved out of the shadows by the quay. A tall figure whom Searle identified as Lord Edward (he had seen him often and had in fact once served aboard a previous yacht of his brother’s) appeared from the boat and said, “Is that you, Harmer?” and the smaller man had said, “It’s me,” and then, in a low tone, “Customs all right?” Lord Edward had said, “No trouble at all,” and they had gone down into the motorboat together and pushed off. The mist had come down quickly after that, blotting out the harbor. After about fifteen minutes Searle had gone on his way. But as he was going up the street, he heard a motorboat leave the Petronel. Whether it came ashore or went out of the harbor he didn’t know. He didn’t think at the moment any of all this was of any importance.
A Shilling for Candles Page 19