A Shilling for Candles (10 page)

And as he picked up the receiver, the looker-on in him said: Harmer was
right. We do treat people variously. If the husband had been an insurance
agent in Brixton, we wouldn’t take it for granted that he could horn in on a
Yard conference!

“Is Superintendent Barker in the Yard, do you know?…Oh…At half past?
That’s in about twenty minutes. Well, tell him that Inspector Grant has
important information and wants a conference straightaway. Yes, the
Commissioner, too, if he’s there.” He hung up.

“Thank you for helping us so greatly,” he said, taking farewell of
Erskine. “And by the way, if you unearth the brother, I should be glad to
know.”

And he and Champneis went down the dark, narrow stairs and out into the
hot sunshine.

“Do you think,” Champneis asked, pausing with one hand on the door of
Grant’s car, “there would be time for a drink, I feel the need of some
stiffening. It’s been a—a trying morning.”

“Yes, certainly. It won’t take us longer than ten minutes along the
Embankment. Where would you like to go?”

“Well, my club is in Carlton House Terrace, but I don’t want to meet
people I know. The Savoy isn’t much better—”

“There’s a nice little pub up here,” Grant said, and swung the car around.
“Very quiet at this time. Cool, too.”

As they turned the corner Grant caught sight of the news-sellers’ posters.
CLAY FUNERAL: UNPRECEDENTED SCENES. TEN WOMEN FAINT. LONDON’S FAREWELL TO
CLAY. And (the
Sentinel
. CLAY’S LAST AUDIENCE.

Grant’s foot came down on the accelerator.

“It was unbelievably ghastly,” said the man beside him, quietly.

“Yes, I can imagine.”

“Those women. I think the end of our greatness as a race must be very
near. We came through the war well, but perhaps the effort was too great. It
left us—epileptic. Great shocks do, sometimes.” He was silent for a
moment, evidently seeing it all again in his mind’s eye. “I’ve seen machine
guns turned on troops in the open—in China—and rebelled against
the slaughter. But I would have seen that subhuman mass of hysteria riddled
this morning with more joy than I can describe to you. Not because it
was—Chris, but because they made me ashamed of being human, of
belonging to the same species.”

“I had hoped that at that early hour there would be very little
demonstration. I know the police were counting on that.”

“We counted on it too. That is why we chose that hour. Now that I’ve seen
with my own eyes, I know that nothing could have prevented it. The people are
insane.”

He paused, and gave an unamused laugh. “She never did like people much. It
was because she found people—disappointing that she left her money as
she did. Her fans this morning have vindicated her judgment.”

The bar was all that Grant had promised, cool, quiet, and undemanding. No
one took any notice of Champneis. Of the six men present three nodded to
Grant and three looked wary. Champneis, observant even in his pain, said:
“Where do you go when you want to be unrecognized?” and Grant smiled. “I’ve
not found a place yet,” he admitted. “I landed in Labrador from a friend’s
yacht once, and the man in the village store said, ‘You wear your mustache
shorter now, Sergeant.’ After that I gave up expecting.”

They talked of Labrador for a little, and then of Galeria, where Champneis
had spent the last few months.

“I used to think Asia primitive, and some of the Indian tribes of South
America, but the east of Europe has them all beaten. Except for the towns,
Galeria is still in the primeval dark.”

“I see they’ve mislaid their spectacular patriot,” Grant said.

“Rimnik? Yes. He’ll turn up again when his party is ready. That’s the way
they run the benighted country.”

“How many parties are there?”

“About ten, I think, not counting subdivisions. There are at least twenty
races in that boiling pot of a country, all of them clamoring for
self-government, and all of them medieval in their outlook. It’s a
fascinating place. You should go there someday. The capital is their shop
window—as nearly a replica of every other capital as they can make it.
Opera, trams, electric light, imposing railway station, cinemas—but
twenty miles into the country you’ll find bride barter. Girls set in rows
with their dowry at their feet, waiting to go to the highest bidder. I’ve
seen an old country woman led raving mad out of a lift in one of the town
buildings. She thought she was the victim of witchcraft. They had to take her
to the asylum. Graft in the town and superstition in the country—and
yet a place of infinite promise.”

Grant let him talk, glad that for even a few minutes he might be able to
forget the horror of the morning. His own thoughts were not in Galeria but in
Westover. So he had done it, that good-looking emotionalist! He had screwed a
ranch and five thousand out of his hostess and then made sure that he would
not have to wait for it. Grant’s own inclination to like the boy died an
instant death. From now on Robert Tisdall would be no more to him than the
bluebottle he swatted on the windowpane, a nuisance to be exterminated as
quickly and with as little fuss as possible. If, away in the depths, he was
sorry that the pleasant person who was the surface Tisdall did not exist, his
main and overwhelming emotion was relief that the business was going to be
cleared up so easily. There was little doubt of the result of the conference.
They had evidence enough. And they would have more before it came to a
trial.

Barker, his Superintendent, agreed with him, and so did the Commissioner.
It was a clear enough case. The man is broke, homeless, and at his wit’s end.
He is picked up by a rich woman at the psychological moment. Four days later
a will is made in his favor. On the following morning very early, the woman
goes to swim. He follows her ten minutes later. When her body is found he has
disappeared. He reappears with an unbelievable tale about stealing the car
and bringing it back. A black button is found twisted in the dead woman’s
hair. The man’s dark coat is missing. He says it was stolen two days before.
But a man identifies him as wearing it that morning.

Yes, it was a good enough case. The opportunity, the motive, the clue.

The only person to protest against the issue of the warrant was, strangely
enough, Edward Champneis.

“It’s too pat, don’t you think?” he said. “I mean, would any man in his
senses commit the murder the very next morning?”

“You forget, Lord Edward,” Barker said, “that but for the merest chance
there would be no question of murder at all.”

“And moreover, time was precious to him,” Grant pointed out. “There were
only a few days left. The tenancy of the cottage expired at the end of the
month. He knew that. She might not go bathing again. The weather might break,
or she might be seized with a desire to go inland. More especially she might
not go swimming in the early morning again. It was an ideal setting: a lonely
beach in the very early morning, with the mist just rising. Too perfect a
chance to let go to waste.”

Yes, it was a good case. Edward Champneis went back to the house in
Regent’s Park which he had inherited with the Bremer fortune, and which
between his peregrinations he called home. And Grant went down to Westover
with a warrant in his pocket.

IF there was one thing Toselli hated more than another it
was the police. All his life he had been no poor hater, Toselli. As
commis
he had hated the maitre maitre d’hôtel, as maitre d’hôtel he
had hated the management, as the management he hated many things: the chef,
wet weather, his wife, the head porter’s mustache, clients who demanded to
see him at breakfast time—oh, many things! But more than all he hated
the police. They were bad for business and bad for the digestion. It stopped
his digestive juices flowing just to see one of them walk in through the
glass doors. It was bad enough to remember his annual bill for New Year
“presents” to the local officers—thirty bottles of Scotch, thirty of
gin, two dozen champagne, and six of liqueur brandy it had come to last
year—but to suffer the invasion of officers not so far “looked after,”
and therefore callous to the brittle delicacy of hotel well-being—well,
it was more than Toselli’s abundant flesh and high-pressured blood could
stand.

That is why he smiled so sweetly upon Grant—all his life Toselli’s
smile had been stretched across his rage, like a tight-rope spanning a
chasm—and gave him one of the second-best cigars. Inspector Grant
wanted to interview the new waiter, did he? But certainly! This was the
waiter’s hour off—between lunch and afternoon tea—but he should
be sent for immediately.

“Stop!” said Grant. “You say the man is off duty? Do you know where he
will be?”

“Very probably in his room. Waiters like to take the weight off their feet
for a little, you understand.”

“I’d like to see him there.”

“But certainly. Tony!” Toselli called to a page passing the office door.
“Take this gentleman up to the room of the new waiter.”

“Thank you,” Grant said. “You’ll be here when I come down? I should like
to talk to you.”

“I shall be here.” Toselli’s tone expressed dramatic resignation. His
smile deepened as he flung out his hands. “Last week it was a stabbing affair
in the kitchen, this week it is—what? theft? affiliation?”

“I’ll tell you all about it presently, Mr. Toselli.”

“I shall be here.” His smile became ferocious “But not for long, no! I am
going to buy one of those businesses where one puts sixpence into a slot and
the meal comes out. Yes. There, but there, would be happiness.”

“Even there, there are bent coins,” Grant said as he followed Tony to the
lift.

“Sanger, you come up with me,” he said as they passed through the busy
hall. “You can wait for us here, Williams. We’ll bring him out this way. Much
less fuss than through the servants’ side. No one will notice anything. Car
waiting?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grant and Sanger went up in the lift. In those few seconds of sudden quiet
and suspended action, Grant found time to wonder why he had not shown his
warrant and told Toselli what he had come for. That would have been his
normal course. Why was he so anxious to have the bird in his hand? Was it
just the canniness of his Scots ancestry coming out, or was there a
presentiment that—that what? He didn’t know. He knew only that he was
here, he could not wait. Explanations could follow. He must have the man in
his hands.

The soft sound of the lift in the silence was like the sound of the
curtain going up.

At the very top of the colossal building which was the Westover Marine
Hotel, were the quarters of those waiters who were resident: small single
rooms set in a row close together under the roof. As the page put out a bony
fist to knock on a door, Grant restrained him. “All right, thank you,” he
said, and page and liftman disappeared into the crowded and luxurious depths,
leaving the two policemen on the deserted coconut-matted landing. It was very
quiet up there.

Grant knocked.

Tisdall’s indifferent voice bade him come in.

The room was so small that Grant’s involuntary thought was that the cell
that waited would be no great change. A bed on one side, a window on the
other, and in the far wall two cupboard doors. On the bed lay Tisdall in his
shirt sleeves, his shoes on the floor. A book lay open, face down, on the
coverlet.

He had expected to see a colleague. That was obvious. At the sight of
Grant his eyes widened, and as they traveled to Sanger, standing behind Grant
in the doorway, realization flooded them.

Before Grant could speak, he said, “You can’t mean it!”

“Yes, I’m afraid we do,” Grant said. He said his regulation piece of
announcement and warning, Tisdall sitting with feet dangling on the bed’s
edge, not apparently listening.

When he had finished Tisdall said slowly: “I expect this is what death is
like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.”

“How were you so sure what we had come for?”

“It doesn’t need two of you to ask about my health.” His voice rose a
little. “What I want to know is why you’re doing it? What have you against
me? You can’t have proved that button was mine because it wasn’t. Why don’t
you tell me what you have found so that I can explain away whatever it was?
If you have new evidence you can surely ask me for an explanation. I have a
right to know, haven’t I? Whether I can explain or not?”

“There isn’t anything you could explain away, Tisdall. You’d better get
ready to come with us.”

Tisdall got to his feet, his mind still entangled in the unbelievableness
of what was happening to him. “I can’t go in these things,” he said, looking
down at his waiter’s dress. “Can I change?”

“Yes, you can change, and take some things with you.” Grant’s hands ran
over his pockets in expert questioning, and came away empty. “But you’ll have
to do it with us here. Don’t be too long about it, will you? You can wait
there, Sanger,” he added, and swung the door to, leaving Sanger outside. He
himself moved over to lean against the windowsill. It was a long way to the
ground, and Tisdall, in Grant’s opinion, was the suicide type. Not enough
guts to brazen a thing out. Not enough vanity, perhaps to like the limelight
at any price. Certainly the “everyone sorry when I’m dead” type.

Grant watched him now with minute attention. To an outsider he was a
casual visitor, propped casually in the window while he indulged in casual
conversation. In reality he was ready for instant emergency.

But there was no excitement. Tisdall pulled his suitcase from under the
bed, and began with automatic method to change into his tweed and flannels.
Grant felt that if the man carried poison, it would be somewhere in his
working garments, and unconsciously relaxed a little as the waiter’s dress
was cast aside. There was going to be no trouble. The man was coming
quietly.