A Shilling for Candles (20 page)

He bought his cigarettes, emptied them gloomily into the gold case his
provincial colleagues had given him when he left for London (it was whispered
that the munificence was more the expression of thankfulness than of
devotion), and went gloomily back to the office. In the front entrance of
that up-to-the-minute cathedral which is the headquarters of the
Clarion
, he encountered young Musker, one of the junior reporters, on
his way out. He nodded briefly, and without stopping made the conventional
greeting.

“Where you off to?”

“Lecture on stars,” said Musker, with no great enthusiasm.

“Very interesting, astronomy,” reproved Jammy.

“Not astronomy. Astrology.” The boy was turning from the shade of the
entrance into the sunlit street. “Woman called Pope or something.”

“Pope!” Jammy stood arrested halfway to the lift door. “You don’t mean
Keats, do you?”

“Is it Keats?” Musker looked at the card again. “Yes, so it is. I knew it
was a poet. Hey, what’s the matter?” as Jammy caught him by the arm and
dragged him back into the hall.

“Matter is you’re not going to any astrology lecture,” said Jammy,
propeling him into the lift.

“Well!” said the astonished Musker. “For this relief much thanks, but why?
You got a ‘thing’ about astrology?”

Jammy dragged him into an office and assaulted with his rapid speech the
placid pink man behind the desk.

“But, Jammy,” said the placid one when he could get a word in edgeways,
“it was Blake’s assignment. He was the obvious person for it: doesn’t he tell
the world every week on Page 6 what is going to happen to it for the next
seven days? It’s his subject: astrology. What he didn’t foresee was that his
wife would have a baby this week instead of next. So I let him off and sent
Musker instead.”

“Musker!” said Jammy. “Say, don’t you know that this is the woman who
foretold Clay’s death? The woman the
Courier
is running to give
horoscopes at a shilling a time?”

“What of it?”

“What of it! Man, she’s news!”

“She’s the
Courier’s
news. And about dead at that. I killed a story
about her yesterday.”

“All right, then, she’s dead. But a lot of ‘interesting’ people must be
interested in her at this moment. And the most interested of the lot is going
to be the man who made her prophecy come true! For all we know she may have
been responsible for giving him the idea; her and her prophecies. Keats may
be dead, but her vicinity isn’t. Not by a long chalk.” He leaned forward and
took the card that the Musker boy was still holding. “Find something for this
nice boy to do this afternoon. He doesn’t like astrology. See you later.”

“But what about that story for—”

“All right, you’ll have your story. And perhaps another one into the
bargain!”

As Jammy was shot downwards in the lift he flicked the card in his hand
with a reflective thumb. The Elwes Hall! Lydia was coming on!

“Know the best way to success, Pete?” he said to the liftman.

“All right, I’ll buy,” said Pete.

“Choose a good brand of hooey.”

“You should know!” grinned Pete, and Jammy made a pass at him as he
stepped through the doors. Pete had known him since—well, if not since
his short-pant days, at least since his wrong-kind-of-collar days.

The Elwes Hall was in Wigmore Street: a nice neighborhood; which had been
responsible in no small measure for its success. Chamber music was much more
attractive when one could combine it with tea at one’s club and seeing about
that frock at Debenham’s. And the plump sopranos who were flattered at the
hush that attended their lieder never guessed at the crepe-versussatin that
filled their listeners’ minds. It was a pleasant little place: small enough
to be intimate, large enough not to be huddled. As Jammy made his way to a
seat, he observed that it was filled with the most fashionable audience that
he had seen at any gathering since the Beaushire-Curzon wedding. Not only was
“smart” society present in bulk, but there was a blue-blooded leaven of what
Jammy usually called “duchessesup-for-the-day”: of those long-shoed,
long-nosed, long-pedigreed people who lived on their places and not on their
wits. And sprinkled over the gathering, of course, were the cranks.

The cranks came not for the thrill, nor because Lydia’s mother had been
the third daughter of an impoverished marquis, but because the Lion, the
Bull, and the Crab were household pets of theirs, the houses of the Zodiac
their spiritual home. There was no mistaking them: their pale eyes rested on
the middle distance, their clothes looked like a bargain basement after a
stay-in strike, and it seemed that they all wore the same string of sixpenny
beads around their thin necks.

Jammy refused the seat which had been reserved for the
Clarion
representative, and insisted on having one among the palms on the far side of
the hall below the platform. This had been refused, with varying degrees of
indignation, by both those who had come to see Lydia and those who had come
to be seen. But Jammy belonged to neither of these. What Jammy had come to
see was the audience. And the seat half buried in Messrs. Willoughby’s
decorations provided as good a view of the audience as anything but the
platform itself could afford.

Next to him was a shabby little man of thirty-five or so, who eyed Jammy
as he sat down and presently leaned over until his rabbit-mouth was an inch
from Jammy’s ear, and breathed:

“Wonderful woman!”

This Jammy took to refer to Lydia. “Wonderful,” he agreed. “You know
her?”

The shabby man (“crank,” said Jammy’s mind, placing him) hesitated, and
then said: “No. But I knew Christine Clay.” And further converse was
prevented by the arrival of Lydia and her chairman on the platform.

Lydia was at the best of times a poor speaker. She had a high thin voice,
and when she became enthusiastic or excited her delivery was painfully like a
very old gramophone record played on a very cheap gramophone. Jammy’s
attention soon wandered. He had heard Lydia on her favorite subject too
often. His eyes began to quarter the crowded little hall. If he had bumped
off Clay, and was still, thanks to the inadequacy of the police, both
unsuspected and at large, would he or would he not come to see the woman who
had prophesied for Clay the end he had brought about?

Jammy decided that, on the whole, he would. The Clay murderer was clever.
That was admitted. And he must now be hugging himself over his cleverness.
Thinking how superior a man of his caliber was to the ordinary rules that
hedged common mortals. That was a common frame of mind in persons who
achieved a planned murder. They had planned something forbidden, and had
brought it off. It went to their heads like wine. They looked around for more
“dares” to bring off, as children play “last across the road.” This, this
orthodox gathering of orthodox people in one of the most orthodox districts
in London, was a perfect “dare.” In every mind in that hall the thought of
Christine’s death was uppermost. It was not mentioned from the platform, of
course; the dignities must be observed. The lecture was a simple lecture on
astrology; its history and its meaning. But all these people—or nearly
all—had come to the gathering because nearly a year ago Lydia had had
that lucky brain wave about the manner of Christine Clay’s death. Christine
was almost as much part of the gathering as Lydia herself; the hall was full
of her. Yes, it would give Jammy, hypothetical murderer, a great kick to be
one of that audience.

He looked at the audience now, pluming himself on the imagination that had
got him where he was; the imagination that Grant, poor dear idiot, could
never aspire to. He wished he had brought Bartholomew along. Bart was much
better informed where the society racket was concerned than he was. It was
Bart’s business to be descriptive: and at whatever was
“descriptive”—weddings, motor racing, launches, or whatnot—the
same faces from the racket turned up. Bart would have been useful.

But Jammy knew enough of those faces to keep him interested.

“On the other hand,” said Lydia, “Capricorn people are often melancholic,
doubtful of themselves, and perverse. On a lower plane still, they are
gloomy, miserly, and deceptive.” But Jammy was not listening. In any case he
did not know which of the signs had had the honor of assisting at his birth,
and did not care. Lydia had several times told him that he was “typically,
oh, but typically, Aries” but he never remembered. All hooey.

There was the Duchess of Trent in the third row. She, poor, silly, unhappy
wretch, had the perfect alibi. She had been going to have a luncheon for
Christine: a luncheon that would make her the most envied hostess in London
instead of a rather tiresome back number, and Christine had gone and died on
her.

Jammy’s eye wandered, and paused at a good-looking dark face in the fourth
row. Very familiar that face; as familiar as the head on a coin. Why? He
didn’t know the man; would swear he had never seen him in the flesh.

And then it came to him. It was Gene Lejeune; the actor who had been
engaged to play opposite Clay in her third and last picture in England: the
picture she had never made. It was rumored that Lejeune was glad that he
would never have to make that picture; Clay’s brilliance habitually made her
men look like penny candles; but that was hardly a good reason for getting up
at dawn to hold her head under water until she died. Jammy wasn’t greatly
interested in Lejeune. Next to him was a fashion plate in black and white.
Marta Hallard. Of course. Marta had been given the part that Clay had been
scheduled to play. Marta was not in the Clay class, but holding up production
was likely to prove expensive, and Marta had poise, sophistication,
sufficient acting ability, sufficient personality, and what Coyne called
“class.” She was now Lejeune’s leading woman. Or was he her leading man? It
would be difficult to say which of these two was the “supporting” one.
Neither of them was in the first flight. Considered simply as a partnership,
it was likely to prove much more successful than the Clay-Lejeune one would
have been. A step up—a big step up for Marta—and more chance to
shine for Lejeune. Yes, Christine’s death had been a lucky break for both of
them.

He heard in his mind a girl’s voice saying, “You, of course, murdered her
yourself.” Who had said that? Yes, that Judy girl who played dumb blondes.
And she had said it about Marta. That Saturday night when he and Grant had
met on the doorstep of Marta’s flat and had been entertained by her. The Judy
person had said it with that sulky air of defiance that she used to life’s
most trivial activities. And they had taken it as a joke. Someone else had
laughed and agreed, supplying the motive: “Of course! You wanted that part
for yourself?” And the conversation had flowed on in unbroken
superficiality.

Well, ambition was one of the better-known incentives to murder. It came,
well up the list, just below passion and greed. But Marta Hallard was Marta
Hallard. Murder and that brittle, insincere sophisticate were poles apart.
She didn’t even play murder well on the stage, now he came to think of it.
She had always the air of saying at the back of her mind, “Too tiresome, all
this earnestness.” If she didn’t find murder humorless, she would undoubtedly
find it plebeian. No, he could imagine Marta being a murderee, but not a
murderer.

He became aware that Marta was paying no attention whatever to Lydia. All
her interest—and it was a fixed and whole-hearted interest—was
centered on someone to her right in the row in front. Jammy’s eyes followed
the imaginary dotted line of her glance and came to rest, a little surprised,
on a nondescript little man. Incredulous, he traveled the dotted line again.
But the answer was still the small round-faced man with the sleepy
expression. Now what could interest Marta Hallard in that very commercial
exterior and that far from exciting—

And then Sammy remembered who that little man was. He was Jason Harmer,
the songwriter. One of Christine’s best friends. Marta’s “merry kettle.” And,
if women’s judgment was to be accepted, anything but unexciting. In fact,
that was the chap who was popularly supposed to have been Christine Clay’s
lover. Jammy’s mind did the equivalent of a long, low whistle. Well, well, so
that was Jay Harmer. He had never seen him off a song cover until now. Queer
taste women had, and no mistake.

Harmer was listening to Lydia with a rapt and childlike interest. Jammy
wondered how anyone could remain unaware of so concentrated a battery of
attention as Marta Hallard was directing on him. There he sat, short-necked
and placid, while Marta’s brilliant eyes bored into the side of his head. A
lot of hooey, that about making people turn by just looking at them. And
what, in any case, was the reason for Marta’s secret interest? For secret it
was. The brim of her hat hid her eyes from her escort, and she had taken it
for granted that the eyes of everyone else were on the lecturer. Unconscious
of being watched, she was letting her eyes have their fill of Harmer.
Why?

Was it a “heart” interest—and if so, just how much of a heart
interest? Or was it that, in spite of her companionship of him that night at
her flat, she was seeing Jason Harmer as a possible murderer?

For nearly fifteen minutes Jammy watched them both, his mind full of
speculation. Again and again his glance went over the crowded little hall and
came back to them. Interest there was plenty elsewhere, but not interest like
this.

He remembered Marta’s instant refutal of the suggestion that there was
more than friendship between Harmer and Christine Clay. What did that mean?
Was she interested in him herself? And how much? How much
would
Marta
Hallard be interested? Enough to get rid of a rival?

He found himself wondering if Marta was a good swimmer, and pulled himself
up. Fifteen minutes ago he had laughed at the very thought of Marta as a
person passionate to the point of murder. The very idea had been
ludicrous.