A Shilling for Candles (3 page)

“Was it London she came from?”

“Yes. She went up just once or twice in the three weeks she’s been here.
Last time was last weekend, when she brought Mr. Stannaway back.” Again her
glance dismissed Tisdall as something less than human. “Doesn’t
he
know her address?” she asked.

“No one does,” the sergeant said. “I’ll look through her papers and see
what I can find.”

Mrs. Pitts led the way into the living room; cool, low-beamed, and
smelling of sweet peas.

“What have you done with her—with the body, I mean?” she asked.

“At the mortuary.”

This seemed to bring home tragedy for the first time.

“Oh, deary me.” She moved the end of her apron over a polished table,
slowly. “And me making griddle cakes.”

This was not a lament for wasted griddle cakes, but her salute to the
strangeness of life.

“I expect you’ll need breakfast,” she said to Tisdall, softened by her
unconscious recognition of the fact that the best are but puppets.

But Tisdall wanted no breakfast. He shook his head and turned away to the
window, while the sergeant searched in the desk.

“I wouldn’t mind one of those griddle cakes,” the sergeant said, turning
over papers.

“You won’t get better in Kent, though it’s me that’s saying it. And
perhaps Mr. Stannaway will swallow some tea.”

She went away to the kitchen.

“So you didn’t know her name was Robinson?” said the sergeant, glancing
up.

“Mrs. Pitts always addressed her as ‘miss.’ And anyhow, did she look as if
her name was Robinson?”

The sergeant, too, did not believe for a moment that her name was
Robinson, so he let the subject drop.

Presently Tisdall said: “If you don’t need me, I think I’ll go into the
garden. It—it’s stuffy in here.”

“All right. You won’t forget I need the car to get back to Westover.”

“I’ve told you. It was a sudden impulse. Anyhow, I couldn’t very well
steal it now and hope to get away with it.”

Not so dumb, decided the sergeant. Quite a bit of temper, too. Not just a
nonentity, by any means.

The desk was littered with magazines, newspapers, half-finished cartons of
cigarettes, bits of a jigsaw puzzle, a nail file and polish, patterns of
silk, and a dozen more odds and ends; everything, in fact, except notepaper.
The only documents were bills from the local tradesmen, most of them
receipted. If the woman had been untidy and unmethodical, she had at least
had a streak of caution. The receipts might be crumpled and difficult to find
if wanted, but they had never been thrown away.

The sergeant, soothed by the quiet of the early morning, the cheerful
sounds of Mrs. Pitts making tea in the kitchen, and the prospect of griddle
cakes to come, began as he worked at the desk to indulge in his one vice. He
whistled. Very low and round and sweet, the sergeant’s whistling was, but,
still—whistling. “Sing to Me Sometimes” he warbled, not forgetting the
grace notes, and his subconscious derived great satisfaction from the
performance. His wife had once shown him a bit in the Mail that said that
whistling was the sign of an empty mind. But it hadn’t cured him.

And then, abruptly, the even tenor of the moment was shattered. Without
warning there came a mock tattoo on the half-open sitting-room
door—
tum-te-ta-tum-tumta-TA!
A man’s voice said, “So this is
where you’re hiding out!” The door was flung wide with a flourish and in the
opening stood a short dark stranger.

“
We-e-ell
,” he said, making several syllables of it. He stood
staring at the sergeant, amused and smiling broadly. “I thought you were
Chris! What is the Force doing here? Been a burglary?”

“No, no burglary.” The sergeant was trying to collect his thoughts.

“Don’t tell me Chris has been throwing a wild party! I thought she gave
that up years ago. They don’t go with all those highbrow roles.”

“No, as a matter of fact, there’s—”

“Where is she, anyway?” He raised his voice in a cheerful shout directed
at the upper story. “Yo-hoo! Chris. Come on down, you old so-and-so! Hiding
out on me!” To the sergeant: “Gave us all the slip for nearly three weeks
now. Too much Kleig, I guess. Gives them all the jitters sooner or later. But
then, the last one was such a success they naturally want to cash in on it.”
He hummed a bar of “Sing to Me Sometimes,” with mock solemnity. “That’s why I
thought you were Chris; you were whistling her song. Whistling darned good,
too.”

“Her—her song?” Presently, the sergeant hoped, a gleam of light
would be vouchsafed him.

“Yes, her song. Who else’s? You didn’t think it was mine, my dear good
chap, did you? Not on your life. I wrote the thing, sure. But that doesn’t
count. It’s her song. And perhaps she didn’t put it across! Eh? Wasn’t that a
performance?”

“I couldn’t really say.” If the man would stop talking, he might sort
things out.

“Perhaps you haven’t seen
Bars of Iron
yet?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“That’s the worst of wireless and gramophone records and what not: they
take all the pep out of a film. Probably by the time you hear Chris sing that
song you’ll be so sick of the sound of it that you’ll retch at the ad lib.
It’s not fair to a film. All right for songwriters and that sort of cattle,
but rough on a film, very rough. There ought to be some sort of agreement.
Hey, Chris! Isn’t she here, after all my trouble in catching up on her?” His
face drooped like a disappointed baby’s. “Having her walk in and find me
isn’t half such a good one as walking in on her. Do you think—”

“Just a minute, Mr.—er—I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Jay Harmer. Jason on the birth certificate. I wrote ‘If It Can’t Be
in June.’ You probably whistle that as—”

“Mr. Harmer. Do I understand that the lady who is—was—staying
here is a film actress?”

“Is she a film actress!” Slow amazement deprived Mr. Harmer for once of
speech. Then it began to dawn on him that he must have made a mistake. “Say,
Chris is staying here, isn’t she?”

“The lady’s name is Chris, yes. But—well, perhaps you’ll be able to
help us. There’s been some trouble—very unfortunate—and
apparently she said her name was Robinson.”

The man laughed in rich amusement. “Robinson! That’s a good one. I always
said she had no imagination. Couldn’t write a gag. Did you believe she was a
Robinson?”

“Well, no; it seemed unlikely.”

“What did I tell you! Well, just to pay her out for treating me like bits
on the cutting-room floor, I’m going to split on her. She’ll probably put me
in the icebox for twenty-four hours, but it’ll be worth it. I’m no gentleman,
anyhow, so I won’t damage myself in the telling. The lady’s name, Sergeant,
is Christine Clay.”

“Christine Clay!” said the sergeant. His jaw slackened and dropped, quite
beyond his control.

“Christine Clay!” breathed Mrs. Pitts, standing in the doorway, a
forgotten tray of griddle cakes in her hands.

“CHRISTINE CLAY! Christine Clay!” yelled the midday
posters.

“Christine Clay!” screamed the headlines. “Christine Clay!” chattered the
wireless. “Christine Clay!” said neighbor to neighbor.

All over the world people paused to speak the words. Christine Clay was
drowned! And in all civilization only one person said, “Who is Christine
Clay?”—a bright young man at a Bloomsbury party. And he was merely
being “bright.”

All over the world things happened because one woman had lost her life. In
California a man telephoned a summons to a girl in Greenwich Village. A Texas
airplane pilot did an extra night flight carrying Clay films for rush
showing. A New York firm canceled an order. An Italian nobleman went
bankrupt: he had hoped to sell her his yacht. A man in Philadelphia ate his
first square meal in months, thanks to an “I knew her when” story. A woman in
Le Touquet sang because now her chance had come. And in an English cathedral
town a man thanked God on his knees.

The Press, becalmed in the doldrums of the silly season, leaped to
movement at so unhoped-for a wind. The
Clarion
recalled Bart
Bartholomew, their “descriptive” man, from a beauty contest in Brighton (much
to Bart’s thankfulness—he came back loudly wondering how butchers ate
meat), and “Jammy” Hopkins, their “crime and passion” star, from a very dull
and low-class poker killing in Bradford. (So far had the
Clarion
sunk.) News photographers deserted motor race tracks, reviews, society
weddings, cricket, and the man who was going to Mars in a balloon, and
swarmed like beetles over the cottage in Kent, the maisonette in South
Street, and the furnished manor in Hampshire. That, having rented so charming
a country retreat as this last, Christine Clay had yet run away to an unknown
and inconvenient cottage without the knowledge of her friends made a very
pleasant appendage to the main sensation of her death. Photographs of the
manor (garden front, because of the yews) appeared labeled “The place
Christine Clay owned” (she had only rented it for the season, but there was
no emotion in renting a place); and next to these impressive pictures were
placed photographs of the rose-embowered home of the people, with the caption
“The place she preferred.”

Her press agent shed tears over that. Something like that
would
break when it was too late.

It might have been observed by any student of nature not too actively
engaged in the consequences of it that Christine Clay’s death, while it gave
rise to pity, dismay, horror, regret, and half a dozen other emotions in
varying degrees, yet seemed to move no one to grief. The only outburst of
real feeling had been that hysterical crisis of Robert Tisdall’s over her
body. And who should say how much of that was self-pity? Christine was too
international a figure to belong to anything so small as a “set.” But among
her immediate acquaintances dismay was the most marked reaction of the
dreadful news. And not always that. Coyne, who was due to direct her third
and final picture in England, might be at the point of despair, but Lejeune
(late Tomkins), who had been engaged to play opposite her, was greatly
relieved; a picture with Clay might be a feather in your cap but it was a
jinx in your box office. The Duchess of Trent, who had arranged a Clay
luncheon which was to rehabilitate her as a hostess in the eyes of London,
might be gnashing her teeth, but Lydia Keats was openly jubilant. She had
prophesied the death, and even for a successful society seer that was a good
guess. “Darling, how wonderful of you!” fluttered her friends. “Darling how
wonderful of you!” On and on. Until Lydia so lost her head with delight that
she spent all her days going from one gathering to another so that she might
make that delicious entrance all over again, hear them say: “Here’s Lydia!
Darling how—” and bask in the radiance of their wonder. No, as far as
anyone could see, no hearts were breaking because Christine Clay was no more.
The world dusted off its blacks and hoped for invitations to the funeral.

BUT first there was the inquest. And it was at the inquest
that the first faint stirring of a much greater sensation began to appear. It
was Jammy Hopkins who noted the quiver on the smooth surface. He had earned
his nickname because of his glad cry of “Jam! Jam!” when a good story broke,
and his philosophical reflection when times were thin that “all was jam that
came to the rollers.” Hopkins had an excellent nose for jam, and so it was
that he stopped suddenly in the middle of analyzing for Bartholomew’s benefit
the various sensation seekers crowding the little Kentish village hall.
Stopped dead and stared. Because, between the flyaway hats of two bright
sensationalists, he could see a man’s calm face which was much more
sensational than anything in that building.

“Seen something?” Bart asked.

“Have I seen something!” Hopkins slid from the end of the form, just as
the coroner sat down and tapped for silence. “Keep my place,” he whispered,
and disappeared out of the building. He entered it again at the back door,
expertly pushed his way to the place he wanted, and sat down. The man turned
his head to view this gate-crasher. “Morning, Inspector,” said Hopkins. The
Inspector looked his disgust.

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t need the money,” Hopkins said,
vox
humana
.

The coroner tapped again for silence, but the Inspector’s face
relaxed.

Presently, under cover of the bustle of Potticary’s arrival to give
evidence, Hopkins said, “What is Scotland Yard doing here, Inspector?”

“Looking on.”

“I see. Just studying inquests as an institution. Crime slack these days?”
As the Inspector showed no sign of being drawn: “Oh, have a heart, Inspector.
What’s in the wind? Is there something phony about the death? Suspicions, eh?
If you don’t want to talk for publication I’m the original locked
casket.”

“You’re the original camel fly.”

“Oh, well, look at the hides I have to get through!” This produced a grin
and nothing else. “Look here. Just tell me one thing, Inspector. Is this
inquest going to be adjourned?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Thank you. That tells me everything,” Hopkins said, half sarcastic, half
serious, as he made his way out again. He prised Mrs. Pitts’s Albert away
from the wall where he clung limpetlike by the window, persuaded him that two
shillings were better than a partial view of dull proceedings, and sent him
to Liddlestone with a telegram which set the
Clarion
office buzzing.
Then he went back to Bart.

“Something wrong,” he said out of the corner of his mouth in answer to
Bart’s eyebrows. “The Yard’s here. That’s Grant, behind the scarlet hat.
Inquest going to be adjourned. Spot the murderer!”

“Not here,” Bart said, having considered the gathering.

“No,” agreed Jammy. “Who’s the chap in the flannel bags?”