A Shilling for Candles (26 page)

THE kitchen of the Marine was in the roof; the latest
discovery of architects being that smells go upward. It had set out to be an
all-electric kitchen, that being also in the recent creed of architects. But
it was not in the creed of Henri, chef of chefs. Henri was Provencal, and to
cook by electricity, my God, it was a horror, but a horror! If God had meant
us to cook by lightning, He would not have invented fire. So Henri had his
stoves and his braziers. And so now, at three in the morning, a soft glow
from the banked-up fires filled the enormous white room. Full of high lights,
the room was: copper, silver, and enamel. (Not aluminum. Henri fainted at the
mention of aluminum.) The door stood half open, and the fire made a quiet
ticking now and then.

Presently the door moved. Was pushed a little further ajar. A man stood in
the opening, apparently listening. He came in, silent as a shadow, and moved
to the cutlery table. A knife gleamed in the dimness as he took it from the
drawer. But he made no sound. From the table he moved to the wall where the
keys hung on their little board, each on its appointed hook. Without fumbling
he took the key he wanted. He hesitated as he was about to leave the room,
and came back to the fire as if it fascinated him. His eyes in the light were
bright and excited, his face shadowed.

By the hearth lay kindling wood for some morning fire. It had been spread
on a newspaper to dry thoroughly. The man noticed it. He pushed the cut wood
to one side and lifted the rest of the paper into the small square of
firelight. For a moment he read, so still in that silent room that it might
have been empty.

And suddenly all was changed. He leaped to his feet, ran to the electric
button, and switched on the lights. Ran back to the paper and snatched it
from its bed of sticks. He spread it on the table with shaking hands, patting
it and smoothing it as if it were a live thing. Then he began to laugh.
Softly and consumedly, drumming with his fists on the scrubbed wood. His
laughter grew, beyond his control. He ran to the switch again and snapped on
all the lights in the kitchen; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight. A new thought possessed him. He ran out of the kitchen, along the
tiled corridors, silent as a shadow. Down the dim stairs he sped, flight
after flight, like a bat. And now he began to laugh again, in sobbing gusts.
He shot into the darkness of the great lounge and across it to the green
light of the reception desk. There was no one there. The night porter was on
his rounds. The man turned a page of the registration book, and ran a
wavering finger down it. Then he made off up the stairs again, silent except
for his sobbing breath. In the service room on the second floor he took a
master key from its hook, and ran to the door of Room 73. The door yielded,
he put out his hand to the switch, and leaped on the man in the bed.

Grant struggled out of his dream of contraband, to defend himself against
a maniac who was kneeling on his bed shaking him and repeating between sobs:
“So you were wrong, and it’s all right! You were wrong, and it’s all
right!”

“Tisdall!” said Grant. “My God, I’m glad to see you. Where have you
been?”

“Among the cisterns.”

“In the Marine? All the time?”

“Since Thursday night. How long is that? I just walked in at the service
door late at night. Rain like stair rods. You could have walked the length of
the town in your birthday suit, and there wouldn’t have been anyone to see. I
knew about the little attic place because I saw it when workmen were here one
day. No one’s ever there but workmen. I come out at night to get food from
the larder. I expect someone’s in trouble about that food. Or perhaps they
never missed it? Do you think?”

His unnaturally bright eyes scanned Grant anxiously. He had begun to
shiver. It did not need much guesswork to place his probable temperature.

Grant pushed him gently down to a sitting position on the bed, took a pair
of pajamas from the drawer, and handed them over.

“Here. Get into these and into bed at once. I suppose you were soaking
when you arrived at the hotel?”

“Yes. My clothes weighed so much I could hardly walk. But it’s dry up in
the roof. Warm, too. Too warm in the daytime. You have a n-n-nice taste in
n-n-night wear.” His teeth were chattering; reaction was flooding him.

Grant helped him with the pajamas and covered him up. He rang for the
porter and ordered hot soup and the presence of a doctor. Then he sat down at
the telephone and told the good news to the Yard, Tisdall’s overbright eyes
watching him, quizzically. When he had finished he came over to the bed and
said: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this. I’d give a lot to undo
it.”

“Blankets!” said Tisdall. “Sheets! Pillows! Eiderdown! Gosh!” He grinned
as far as his chattering teeth and his week’s growth of beard would let him.
“Say ‘Now I Lay Me’ for me,” he said. And fell abruptly asleep.

IN the morning, because the doctor said that “there was a
certain congestion which in the subject’s weakened condition might at any
moment develop into pneumonia,” Grant summoned Tisdall’s Aunt Muriel, whom
the Yard obligingly found, Tisdall having refused to consider the presence of
any aunts. Williams was sent to Canterbury to arrest Brother Aloysius, and
Grant planned to go back to town after lunch to interview Champneis. He had
telephoned the good news of Tisdall’s reappearance to Colonel Burgoyne, and
the telephone had been answered by Erica.

“Oh, I’m so glad for you!” she said. “For
me?
.

“Yes, it must have been awful for you.”

And it was only then that Grant realized quite how awful it had been. That
continual pushing down of an unnamed fear. What a nice child she was.

The nice child had sent over for the patient in the course of the morning
a dozen fresh eggs taken from the Steynes nests that very hour. Grant thought
how typical it was of her to send fresh eggs, and not the conventional
flowers or fruit.

“I hope she didn’t get into trouble for giving me food that time?” Tisdall
asked. He always talked as if the occurrences of the last week were many
years away; the days in the attic had been a lifetime to him.

“On the contrary. She saved your neck and my reputation. It was she who
found your coat. No, I can’t tell you about it now. You’re supposed not to
talk or be talked to.”

But he had had to tell all about it. And had left Tisdall saying softly to
himself, “Well!” Over and over again: “Well!” in a wondering tone.

The shadow of the Champneis interview had begun to loom over Grant.
Supposing he said frankly: “Look here, both you and Jason Harmer went out of
your way to lie to me about your movements on a certain night, and now I find
that you were together at Dover. What were you doing?” What would the answer
be? “My dear sir, I can’t answer for Harmer’s prevarications, but he was my
guest on the
Petronel
and we spent the night fishing in our
motorboat.” That would be a good alibi.

And still his mind dwelled on the contraband idea. What contraband was of
interest to both Champneis and Harmer? And it didn’t take a whole night to
hand over even a whole cargoload of contraband. Yet neither of them had an
alibi for that night. What had they done with the hours from midnight to
breakfast?

He had felt, ever since Rimell’s revelation at Dover, that if he could
remember what Champneis had been talking about just before his fib about the
day of his arrival, all would be clear to him.

He decided to go downstairs and have his hair cut before he left the
Marine. He was to remember that haircut.

As he put out his hand to push the swing door open, he heard Champneis’s
voice in his mind, drawling a sentence.

So
that
was what he had been talking about!

Yes. Yes. Pictures ran together in Grant’s mind to make a sequence that
made sense. He turned from the saloon door to the telephone and called the
Special Branch. He asked them half a dozen questions, and then went to have
his hair cut, smiling fatuously. He knew now what he was going to say to
Edward Champneis.

It was the busy time of the morning and all the chairs were full.

“Won’t be a minute, sir,” an anxious supervisor said. “Not a minute if you
will wait.”

Grant sat down by the wall and reached for a magazine from the pile on a
shelf. The pile fell over; a well-thumbed collection, most of them far from
new. Because it had a frontispiece of Christine Clay, he picked up a copy of
the
Silver Sheet
, an American cinema magazine, and idly turned over
the pages. It was the usual bouquet. The “real truth” was told about someone
for the fifty-second time, being a completely different real truth from all
the other fifty-one real truths. A nitwit blonde explained how she read new
meaning into Shakespeare. Another told how she kept her figure. An actress
who didn’t know one end of a frying pan from the other was photographed in
her kitchen making griddle cakes. A he-man star said how grand he thought all
the other he-man stars. Grant turned the pages more impatiently. He was on
the point of exchanging the magazine for another when his attention was
suddenly caught. He read through an article with growing interest. At the
last paragraph he got to his feet, still holding the paper and staring at the
page.

“Your turn now, sir,” the barber said. “This chair, please.”

But Grant took no notice.

“We’re quite ready for you now, sir. Sorry you’ve been kept waiting.”

Grant looked up at them, only half-conscious of them.

“Can I have this?” he asked, indicating the magazine. “It’s six months
old. Thank you,” and rushed out of the room.

They stared after him, and laughed a little, speculating as to what had
taken his fancy.

“Found his affinity,” someone suggested.

“Thought they were extinct, affinities,” another countered.

“Found something to cure his corns.”

“No, gone to consult his best friend.”

And they laughed and forgot him.

Grant was in the telephone booth, and the impatient gentleman in the
patent leather shoes was beginning to wonder if he was ever coming out of it.
He was talking to Owen Hughes, the cinema star. That was why the patent
leather gentleman didn’t go upstairs to the numerous booths on the ground
floor. He was hoping to hear some of the conversation. It was about whether
someone had mentioned something in a letter to someone.

“You
did!
. Grant said. “Thanks! That’s all I wanted to know. Keep
it under your hat. That I asked, I mean.”

Then he had asked for the Thames police, pulling the door tighter and so
exasperating the waiting gentleman.

“Has 276 River Walk a motorboat, do you know?”

There was a consultation at the other end.

Yes, 276 had a boat. Yes, very fast. Seagoing? Oh, yes, if necessary. Used
it for fowling along the Essex flats, they thought. Used for navigation of
the lower river, anyhow? Oh, yes.

Grant asked if they would have a boat ready for him in about an hour and a
half, by which time he’d be in town, he hoped. He’d take it as a great
favor.

Certainly, they would.

Grant telephoned to Barker—at which point the patent leather
gentleman gave it up—and asked that if Williams was back in town within
the next ninety minutes he should meet Grant at Westminster Pier. If Williams
was not back in time, then Sanger.

Grant took full advantage of the lunchtime lull in traffic, and in
unrestricted areas excelled himself in the gentle art of speed with safety.
He found Williams waiting for him, a little breathless, since he had that
moment arrived from the Yard and sent the disappointed Sanger back. Williams
had no intention of being out of anything, if he could help it. And the
Superintendent had said that something exciting was due to break.

“Well, was the Reverend Father shocked?” Grant asked.

“Not as shocked as Brother Aloysius. He didn’t for a moment imagine we’d
got anything on him. By the way he behaved, I should think some other police
forces must be anxious to catch up with him.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Where are we going, sir?”

“Chelsea Reach. Beloved of painters and folk dancers.”

Williams looked benignly at his superior and noticed how much better he
was looking now that the Tisdall boy had turned up.

The police boat drew in to the bank at 276 River Walk where a large
grayish motorboat was moored. The police boat edged gingerly nearer until
only a foot separated the gunwales.

Grant stepped across. “Come with me, Williams. I want witnesses.”

The cabin was locked. Grant glanced up at the house opposite and shook his
head. “I’ll have to risk it. I’m sure I’m right, anyhow.”

While the river police stood by, he forced the lock and went in. It was a
tidy, seamanlike cabin; everything was neat and ship-shape. Grant began to go
through the lockers. In the one under the starboard bunk he found what he was
looking for. An oilskin coat. Black. Bought in Cannes. With the button
missing from the right cuff.

“You take that, Williams, and come up to the house with me.”

The maid said that Miss Keats was in, and left them in a dining room on
the ground floor; a very austere and up-to-the-minute apartment.

“Looks more like a place to have your appendix out than to put roast beef
into you,” Williams observed.

But Grant said nothing.

Lydia came in, smiling, her bracelets jangling and her beads clashing.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t take you upstairs, my dear Leo person, but I have
some clients who mightn’t understand that this is just a friendly visit.”

“So you knew who I was, at Marta’s?”

“Of course. You don’t flatter my powers of divination, my dear Mr. Grant.
Won’t you present your friend?”