A Shilling for Candles (24 page)

And then Grant felt gravel pavement under his stocking feet and cursed.
The man was making for the country; for the outer suburbs at least.

For about twenty minutes Grant followed that half-seen figure through a
dark and silent world. He did not know his surrounding; he had to follow the
figure blindly. He did not know when a step came, or a declivity, or an
obstacle. And a bad stumble might be fatal to the night’s work. But as far as
he could see, his quarry never hesitated. This was not a flight; it was a
journey he had done often before.

Presently Grant could tell that they were in more or less open country. If
there were houses they were built behind the original field hedges—a
new suburb, probably. The hedges made it difficult to see the man he was
following; their dark mass made a gloomy background for a moving figure. And
then Grant suddenly found that he had lost him. Nothing moved in front of him
anymore. He stood still instantly. Was the man waiting for him? Or had he
disappeared into an opening? Several times, when pebbles had slid under his
own tread, he had wondered if the man suspected his presence. There had been
as far as he could see no pause for reconnoitering in the man’s progress. But
now there was a complete absence of any movement at all.

Grant went forward step by step, and found himself level with an opening
in the hedge. A gate. He wished passionately that he could use his torch.
This blindfold moving through an unknown country was getting on his nerves.
He decided to risk a guess that this was where the man had gone, and moved
into the entrance. Immediately there was soft sand under his feet. He paused
doubtfully. Was it only a sandpit? What was the man planning? An attack?

Then he remembered that fine red sand which decorates the trim approaches
to new villas, and breathed again. Reassured he moved forward, finding with
one foot the cut edge of turf, and letting it lead him to the building which
must be in front of him somewhere. It loomed quite suddenly in the darkness.
A white-washed house of perhaps eight rooms. Its paleness made it slightly
luminous even on so dark a night; and against its ghostly shimmer he saw the
man again. He was standing still, and it seemed to Grant that he was looking
back at him. He realized too late that he too was now standing where a wing
of the house made a background for him. He dropped to his knees. And after a
moment the man moved on and vanished round the corner of the house.

Grant made the best of his way to the corner and waited, pressed up
against the wall. But there was no sound, no breathing, not a movement; the
man had gone on; he was wasting time. He stepped around the corner. A soft
wool substance smothered him, falling over his face and being drawn tightly
about his neck. A split second before the folds closed on his throat, he got
his fingers between the stuff and his flesh. He held on with all his might,
and then, using the material as purchase, bent forward abruptly and felt the
man’s body come sliding over him, head first to the ground. The weight
knocked Grant down, and the vile suffocating thing was still over his head,
but his hands were free. He reached out for his opponent and felt with
passionate gladness the restriction around his throat relax. He was still
blind and suffocating, but he was in no immediate danger of being throttled.
He was, in fact, doing his best to throttle the other man, if only he could
find his throat. But the man was twisting like an eel, and using his knees
with malicious art. This was not the first time that Herbert Gotobed had
fought foul. Grant wished, hitting blindly and finding only seed-sown grass,
that he could see for just thirty seconds. He let go the part of his
assailant he happened to be holding—he was not sure whether it was a
leg or an arm—and did his best to roll away. It was not successful,
since the man had just as firm a grip of him. But he had time to reach into
his pocket and close his fingers around his torch. His hand was prisoned
there as he was rolled onto his back, but with all his might Grant hit with
the free hand into the breath that was sobbing into his face. His knuckles
hit bone and he heard the snap of teeth meeting. The man’s full weight
descended on him. He wrenched himself free from it, and dragged the torch
from his pocket. Before he had got it out, the man was moving again. He had
only rocked him. He flashed the torch on him, and before the light had
reached his face the man leaped. Grant stepped aside and swung the weapon at
him as he came. It missed him by a hair’s breadth and they went down
together. Grant lacked stance for the reception of such a weight: all his
attention had been on his own blow; he hit the ground with violence. In the
dimness of the moment, when all his faculties were trying to summon his
stunned body to its duty, he wondered detachedly how the man would kill
him.

To his surprise he felt the weight of the man’s body lift, something hit
him across the side of the head, and he was aware, even while his ears sang,
that the man had gone from his side.

He dragged himself to a sitting position; sitting, incidentally, on the
stone he had been hit with (by its feel its proper place was a rockery), and
was groping for his torch preparatory to following the man, when a woman’s
voice said out of the dark in a whisper:

“Is that you, Bert? Is anything wrong?”

Grant’s hand lighted on the torch, and he got to his feet.

The light shone into eyes big and brown and soft as a deer’s. But the rest
of the face was not soft.

She drew in her breath as the light flashed, and made a movement
backwards.

“Stay still,” said Grant in a voice that brooked no disobedience, and the
movement ceased.

“Don’t talk so loud,” she said urgently. “Who are you, anyway? I thought
you were—a friend of mine.”

“I’m a detective inspector—a policeman.”

This statement, Grant had found, produced invariably one of two
expressions: fear or wariness. Quite innocent people often showed the first;
but the second was a giveaway. It gave away the woman now.

Grant’s light flashed on the house—a one-story building with small
attic rooms.

“Don’t do that!” she hissed. “You’ll waken her.”

“Who is ‘her’?”

“The old lady. My boss.”

“You a maid here?”

“I’m the housekeeper.”

“Just the two of you in the house?”

“Yes.”

He indicated with his light the open window behind her. “Is that your
room?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll go in there and talk.”

“You can’t come into the house. You can’t do anything to me. I haven’t
done anything.”

“Would you mind!” said Grant, in a tone that belied the meaning of the
phrase.

“You can’t come into the house without a warrant. I know!” She was
standing against the windowsill now, defending her rooms.

“You don’t need a warrant for murder,” Grant said.

“Murder!” She stared at him. “What have I to do with murder?”

“Will you get in, please, and put on the light?”

She did as she was bidden, climbing over the sill with the ease of
practice. As the light clicked, Grant stepped over the sill and drew the
curtains.

It was a very pleasant bedroom, with eiderdown on the bed and shaded light
on the table.

“Who is your employer?” he asked.

She gave her employer’s name, and admitted that she had been there only a
few months.

“Where was your last reference from?”

“A place in Australia.”

“And what relation are you to Herbert Gotobed?”

“Who’s that?”

“Come, don’t let’s waste time, Miss What name do you use, by the way?”

“I use my own name,” she glared at him. “Rosa Freeson.”

Grant tilted the lamp for a better view of her. He had never seen her
before. “Herbert Gotobed came out here to see you tonight and you were
waiting for him. You will save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me all
about it, now.”

“I was waiting, if you must know, for Bert. He’s the milk roundsman. You
can’t run me in for that. You can’t blame me much, either. A girl has to have
a little fun in a place like this.”

“Yes?” He moved toward the built-in wardrobe. “Stay where you are,” he
said.

The wardrobe held nothing but women’s clothes; rather too good for her
position but none of them very new. Grant asked to see the contents of the
chest of drawers, and she showed them sullenly. They were all quite normal.
He asked where her boxes were.

“In the box room in the attic,” she said.

“And what are the suitcases under the bed?”

She looked ready to strike him.

“Let me see what is in these.”

“You have no right! Show me your warrant. I won’t open anything for
you.”

“If you have nothing to hide, you can’t possibly object to my seeing what
is inside.”

“I’ve lost the key.”

“You’re making me very suspicious.”

She produced the key from a string around her neck and pulled out the
first suitcase. Grant, watching her, thought for the first time that she was
not all white. Something in her movements, in the texture of her hair,
was—what? Negro? Indian? And then he remembered the South Sea Mission
which Herbert had run.

“How long since you left the Islands?” he asked conversationally.

“About—” She stopped, and finished immediately, “I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

The first suitcase was empty. The second was full to the brim with men’s
clothes.

“Male impersonator?” asked Grant, who in spite of his swollen feet and
aching head was beginning to feel happier. “Or just old clothes dealer?”

“These are the clothes of my dead fiancé. I’ll thank you not to be funny
about them.”

“Didn’t your fiance wear a coat?”

“Yes, but it was mussed up when he was killed.”

“Oh? How was he killed?” Grant asked amiably, his hands running through
the clothes.

“Motor accident.”

“You disappoint me.”

“Come again?”

“I’d expected a more imaginative end from you. What was your fiancé‘s
name?”

“John Starboard.”

“Starboard! That cancels out the motor accident.”

“I suppose you know what you’re talking about. I don’t.”

“It wasn’t your fiance’s coat you kept in that now empty suit-case, by any
chance?”

“It was not.”

Grant’s searching hand paused. He withdrew it holding a bundle of
passports: four in all. One was a British one issued to Herbert Gotobed; one
was an American one in the name of Alexander Byron Black; one a Spanish one,
issued to a deaf-mute, one Jose Fernandez; and the fourth an American one for
William Cairns Black and his wife. But the photographs were all of the same
man: Herbert Gotobed; and the wife’s photograph was that of Rosa Freeson.

“A collector, your fiance. An expensive hobby, I’ve always understood.” He
put the passports into his pocket.

“You can’t do that. They’re not yours. I’ll scream the house down. I will
say you came in and attacked me. Look!” She pulled her wrap open and began to
tear her nightdress.

“Scream as much as you like. Your old lady would be very interested in
these passports. And if you have any designs on the old lady, by the way, I
should advise you to reconsider them. Now I shall retrieve my boots. They are
lying somewhere in the garden. Though God alone knows if my feet will go into
them. My advice to you, Mrs. Cairns Black, is to do nothing at all until you
hear from me. We have nothing against
you
, so far, so don’t begin
putting ideas into our heads by doing anything you might regret.”

GRANT managed to get his boots on (by dint of thinking
strenuously of something else, his childhood’s recipe for painful moments),
but after two or three steps hastily took them off again, and hobbled
homeward as he had come: stocking-soled. It was not easy to find his way
back, but he had an excellent bump of locality (it was said at the Yard that
if you blindfolded Grant and turned him until he was dizzy he still knew
where north was) and the general direction was clear enough to him. He stood
in a doorway on the opposite side of the street and watched the officer on
the beat go by, rather than ask a direction and have to explain himself. No
member of the C.I.D. likes to appear before a borough policeman with his
boots in his hands.

He wrote a note asking Williams to telephone the Yard when he came in at
six and ask for any information they might have about a sect or order or
whatnot called the Tree of Lebanon, and to waken him when the answer came. He
then fell into bed, and slept dreamlessly, the passports under his pillow
until Williams called him just before ten o’clock.

“News of Tisdall?” Grant said as his eyes opened.

But there was no news.

The Yard said that the Holy Order of the Tree of Lebanon had been founded
by a rich bachelor in 1862, for the furtherance of the monastic life, he
having been what was then known as jilted by the object of his affections. He
himself had been the first prior, and all his wealth had been used to endow
the foundation. The rule of poverty had been very strict, money being used
only for charities approved by the prior of the moment, so that by the
present day the order had the reputation of having a lot of money laid away.
A prior was nominated by his predecessor, but a prior could be superseded at
any moment by the unanimous vote of the brethren.

Grant drank the horrible coffee supplied by the establishment, and
considered things. “That is what our Herbert wants: the prior-ship. He has
the prior dancing on a stick. It’s almost incredible that a man like the
prior could be such a fool. But then! Think of the fools we’ve known,
Williams.”

“I’m thinking, sir,” Williams said, eloquently.

“All those hardheaded self-made pieces of original conglomerate who fall
for a few honeyed words from a confidence man in a hotel lobby! And of course
Herbert has no ordinary gift of tongues. Perhaps he worked his churches in
America as leaven to the prior’s interest. Anyhow, he’s the prior’s
fair-haired boy at the moment. With the prospect of having a fortune in his
hands if he plays his cards rightly for the next few weeks. Not much wonder
he was scared of getting in wrong. He wanted to know just how much his sister
had left him, without compromising himself with his brethren. If she had left
him enough to make it worth his while, he’d give up the monastic life. I
shouldn’t think it appeals greatly to him. Even with occasional visits to the
villa.”