A Shilling for Candles (2 page)

“Yes.” The sergeant was thoughtful. “I still wonder how she came here, and
what—”

His eyes had lifted to the cliff face, and he paused.

“So! We have company!” he said.

They turned to see a man’s figure on the cliff-top at the Gap. He was
standing in an attitude of intense eagerness, watching them. As they turned
towards him he did a swift right-about and disappeared.

“A bit early for strollers,” the sergeant said. “And what’s he running
away for? We’d better have a talk with him.”

But before he and the constable had moved more than a pace or two it
became evident that the man, far from running away, had been merely making
for the entrance to the Gap. His thin dark figure shot now from the mouth of
the Gap and came towards them at a shambling run, slipping and stumbling, and
giving the little group watching his advent an impression of craziness. They
could hear the breath panting through his open mouth as he drew near,
although the distance from the Gap was not long and he was young.

He stumbled into their compact circle without looking at them, pushing
aside the two policemen who had unconsciously interposed their bulk between
him and the body.

“Oh, yes, it is! Oh, it is, it is!” he cried, and without warning sat down
and burst into loud tears.

Six flabbergasted men watched him in silence for a moment. Then the
sergeant patted him kindly on the back and said, idiotically, “It’s all
right, son!”

But the young man only rocked himself to and fro and wept the more.

“Come on, come on,” rallied the constable, coaxing. (Really, a dreadful
exhibition on a nice bright morning.) “That won’t do anyone any good, you
know. Best pull yourself together—sir,” he added, noting the quality of
the handkerchief which the young man had produced.

“A relation of yours?” the sergeant inquired, his voice suitably modulated
from its former businesslike pitch.

The young man shook his head.

“Oh, just a friend?”

“She was so good to me, so good!”

“Well, at least you’ll be able to help us. We were beginning to wonder
about her. You can tell us who she is.”

“She’s my—hostess.”

“Yes, but I meant, what is her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You—don’t—know! Look here, sir, pull yourself together.
You’re the only one that can help us. You must know the name of the lady you
were staying with.”

“No, no; I don’t.”

“What did you call her, then?”

“Chris.”

“Chris, what?”

“Just Chris.”

“And what did she call you?”

“Robin.”

“Is that your name?”

“Yes, my name’s Robert Stannaway. No, Tisdall. It used to be Stannaway,”
he added, catching the sergeant’s eye and feeling apparently that explanation
was needed.

What the sergeant’s eye said was “God give me patience!” What his tongue
said was “It all sounds a bit strange to me, Mr.—er—”

“Tisdall.”

“Tisdall. Can you tell me how the lady got here this morning?”

“Oh, yes. By car.”

“By car, eh? Know what became of the car?”

“Yes. I stole it.”

“You what?”

“I stole it. I’ve just brought it back. It was a swinish thing to do. I
felt a cad so I came back. When I found she wasn’t anywhere on the road, I
thought I’d find her stamping about here. Then I saw you all standing around
something—oh dear, oh dear!” He began to rock himself again.

“Where were you staying with this lady?” asked the sergeant, in
exceedingly businesslike tones. “In Westover?”

“Oh, no. She has—had, I mean—oh dear!—a cottage. Briars,
it’s called. Just outside Medley.”

“‘Bout a mile and a half inland,” supplemented Potticary, as the sergeant,
who was not a native, looked a question.

“Were you alone, or is there a staff there?”

“There’s just a woman from the village—Mrs. Pitts—who comes in
and cooks.”

“I see.”

There was a slight pause.

“All right, boys.” The sergeant nodded to the ambulance men, and they bent
to their work with the stretcher. The young man drew in his breath sharply
and once more covered his face with his hands.

“To the mortuary, Sergeant?”

“Yes.”

The man’s hands came away from his face abruptly.

“Oh, no! Surely not! She had a home. Don’t they take people home?”

“We can’t take the body of an unknown woman to an uninhabited
bungalow.”

“It isn’t a bungalow,” the man automatically corrected. “No. No, I suppose
not. But it seems dreadful—the mortuary. Oh, God in heaven above!” he
burst out, “why did this have to happen!”

“Davis,” the sergeant said to the constable, “you go back with the others
and report. I’m going over to—what is it?—Briars? with Mr.
Tisdall.”

The two ambulance men crunched their heavy way over the pebbles, followed
by Potticary and Bill. The noise of their progress had become distant before
the sergeant spoke again.

“I suppose it didn’t occur to you to go swimming with your hostess?”

A spasm of something like embarrassment ran across Tisdall’s face. He
hesitated.

“No. I not much in my line, I’m afraid: swimming before breakfast.
I—I’ve always been a rabbit at games and things like that.”

The sergeant nodded, noncommittal. “When did she leave for a swim?”

“I don’t know. She told me last night that she was going to the Gap for a
swim if she woke early. I woke early myself, but she was gone.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Tisdall, if you’ve recovered I think we’ll be getting
along.”

“Yes. Yes, certainly. I’m all right.” He got to his feet and together and
in silence they traversed the beach, climbed the steps at the Gap, and came
on the car where Tisdall said he had left it: in the shade of the trees where
the track ended. It was a beautiful car, if a little too opulent. A
cream-colored two-seater with a space between the seats and the hood for
parcels, or, at a pinch, for an extra passenger. From this space, the
sergeant, exploring, produced a woman’s coat and a pair of the sheepskin
boots popular with women at winter race-meetings.

“That’s what she wore to go down to the beach. Just the coat and boots
over her bathing things. There’s a towel, too.”

There was. The sergeant produced it: a brilliant object in green and
orange.

“Funny she didn’t take it to the beach with her,” he said.

“She liked to dry herself in the sun usually.”

“You seem to know a lot about the habits of a lady whose name you didn’t
know.” The sergeant inserted himself into the second seat. “How long have you
been living with her?”

“Staying with her,” amended Tisdall, his voice for the first time showing
an edge. “Get this straight, Sergeant, and it may save you a lot of bother:
Chris was my hostess. Not anything else. We stayed in her cottage
unchaperoned, but a regiment of servants couldn’t have made our relations
more correct. Does that strike you as so very peculiar?”

“Very,” said the sergeant frankly. “What are these doing here?”

He was peering into a paper bag which held two rather jaded buns.

“Oh, I took these along for her to eat. They were all I could find. We
always had a bun when we came out of the water when we were kids. I thought
maybe she’d be glad of something.”

The car was slipping down the steep track to the main Westover-Stonegate
road. They crossed the high road and entered a deep lane on the other side. A
signpost said “Medley 1, Liddlestone 3.”

“So you had no intention of stealing the car when you set off to follow
her to the beach?”

“Certainly not!” Tisdall said, as indignantly as if it made a difference.
“It didn’t even cross my mind till I came up the hill and saw the car waiting
there. Even now I can’t believe I really did it. I’ve been a fool, but I’ve
never done anything like that before.”

“Was she in the sea then?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go to look. If I had seen her even in the distance
I couldn’t have done it. I just slung the buns in and beat it. When I came to
I was halfway to Canterbury. I just turned her around without stopping, and
came straight back.”

The sergeant made no comment.

“You still haven’t told me how long you’ve been staying at the
cottage?”

“Since Saturday midnight.”

It was now Thursday.

“And you still ask me to believe that you don’t know your hostess’s last
name?”

“No. It’s a bit queer, I know. I thought so, myself, at first. I had a
conventional upbringing. But she made it seem natural. After the first day we
simply accepted each other. It was as if I had known her for years.” As the
sergeant said nothing, but sat radiating doubt as a stove radiates heat, he
added with a hint of temper, “Why shouldn’t I tell you her name if I knew
it!”

“How should I know?” said the sergeant, unhelpfully. He considered out of
the corner of his eye the young man’s pale, if composed, face. He seemed to
have recovered remarkably quickly from his exhibition of nerves and grief.
Lightweights, these moderns. No real emotion about anything. Just hysteria.
What they called love was just a barnyard exercise; they thought anything
else “sentimental.” No discipline. No putting up with things. Every time
something got difficult, they ran away. Not slapped enough in their youth.
All this modern idea about giving children their own way. Look what it led
to. Howling on the beach one minute and as cool as a cucumber the next.

And then the sergeant noticed the trembling of the too fine hands on the
wheel. No, whatever else Robert Tisdall was he wasn’t cool.

“This is the place?” the sergeant asked, as they slowed down by a hedged
garden. “This is the place.”

It was a half-timbered cottage of about five rooms; shut in from the road
by a seven-foot hedge of briar and honeysuckle, and dripping with roses. A
godsend for Americans, weekenders, and photographers. The little windows
yawned in the quiet, and the bright blue door stood hospitably open,
disclosing in the shadow the gleam of a brass warming pan on the wall. The
cottage had been “discovered.”

As they walked up the brick path, a thin small woman appeared on the
doorstep, brilliant in a white apron; her scanty hair drawn to a knob at the
back of her head, and a round bird’s-nest affair of black satin set
insecurely at the very top of her arched, shining poll.

Tisdall lagged as he caught sight of her, so that the sergeant’s large
official elevation should announce trouble to her with the clarity of a
sandwich board.

But Mrs. Pitts was a policeman’s widow, and no apprehension showed on her
tight little face. Buttons coming up the path meant for her a meal in demand;
her mind acted accordingly.

“I’ve been making some griddle cakes for breakfast. It’s going to be hot
later on. Best to let the stove out. Tell Miss Robinson when she comes in,
will you, sir?” Then, realizing that buttons were a badge of office, “Don’t
tell me you’ve been driving without a license, sir!”

“Miss—Robinson, is it? Has met with an accident,” the sergeant
said.

“The car! Oh, dear! She was always that reckless with it. Is she bad?”

“It wasn’t the car. An accident in the water.”

“Oh,” she said slowly. “
That
bad!”

“How do you mean: that bad?”

“Accidents in the water only mean one thing.”

“Yes,” agreed the sergeant.

“Well, well,” she said, sadly contemplative. Then, her manner changing
abruptly, “And where were
you
.” she snapped, eyeing the drooping
Tisdall as she eyed Saturday-night fish on a Westover fishmonger’s slab. Her
superficial deference to “gentry” had vanished in the presence of
catastrophe. Tisdall appeared as the “bundle of uselessness” she had
privately considered him.

The sergeant was interested but snubbing. “The gentleman wasn’t
there.”

“He ought to have been there. He left just after her.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him. I live in the cottage down the road.”

“Do you know Miss Robinson’s other address? I take it for granted this
isn’t her permanent home.”

“No, of course it isn’t. She only has this place for a month. It belongs
to Owen Hughes.” She paused, impressively, to let the importance of the name
sink in. “But he’s doing a film in Hollywood. About a Spanish count, it was
to be, so he told me. He said he’s done Italian counts and French counts and
he thought it would be a new experience for him to be a Spanish count. Very
nice, Mr. Hughes is. Not a bit spoiled in spite of all the fuss they make of
him. You wouldn’t believe it, but a girl came to me once and offered me five
pounds if I’d give her the sheets he had slept in. What I gave her was a
piece of my mind. But she wasn’t a bit ashamed. Offered me twenty-five
shillings for a pillow slip. I don’t know what the world is coming to, that I
don’t, what with—”

“What other address had Miss Robinson?”

“I don’t know any of her addresses but this one.”

“Didn’t she write and tell you that she was coming?”

“Write! No! She sent telegrams. I suppose she could write, but I’ll take
my alfred davy she never did. About six telegrams a day used to go to the
post office in Liddlestone. My Albert used to take them, mostly; between
school. Some of them used three or four forms, they were that long.”

“Do you know any of the people she had down here, then?”

“She didn’t have any folks here. ‘Cept Mr. Stannaway, that is.”

“No one!”

“Not a one. Once—it was when I was showing her the trick of flushing
the W.C.; you have to pull hard and then let go smart-like—once she
said: ‘Do you ever, Mrs. Pitts,’ she said, ‘get sick of the sight of people’s
faces?’ I said I got a bit tired of some. She said: ‘Not some, Mrs. Pitts.
All of them. Just sick of people.’ I said when I felt like that I took a dose
of castor oil. She laughed and said it wasn’t a bad idea. Only everyone
should have one and what a good new world it would be in two days. ‘Mussolini
never thought of that one,’ she said.”