Josephine Tey - A Shilling for Candles

Sanger had made further inquiries from many people about that unsympathetic character Herbert Gotobed. But hardly anyone remembered him. He had never stayed in a job for more than five months (the five months was his record: in an ironmonger's) and no one had been sorry to see him go. No one knew what had become of him.

But Vine, coming back from interviewing the onetime dresser, Bundle, in South Street, had brought news of him. Yes. Bundle had known there was a brother. The snapping brown eyes in the wizened face had snapped ferociously at the very mention of him. She had only seen him once, and she hoped she never saw him again. He had sent in a note to her lady one night in New York, to her dressing room. It was the first dressing room she had ever had to herself, the first show she had been billed in, Let's Go! it was. And she was a success. Bundle had dressed her as a chorus girl, along with nine others, but when her lady had gone up in the world she had taken Bundle with her. That's the sort her lady was: never forgot a friend. She had been talking and laughing till the note was brought in. But when she read that she was just like someone who was about to take a spoonful of ice cream and noticed a beetle in it. When he came in she had said, "So you've turned up!" He said he'd come to warn her that she was bound for perdition, or something. She said, "Come to see what pickings there are, you mean." Bundle had never seen her so angry. She had just taken off her day makeup to put on her stage one, and there wasn't a spark of color anywhere in her face. She had sent Bundle out of the room then, but there had been a grand row. Bundle, standing guard before the door — there were lots even then, who thought they would like to meet her lady — couldn't help hearing some of it. In the end she had to go in because her lady was going to be late for her entrance if she didn't. The man had turned on her for interrupting, but her lady had said that she would give him in charge if he didn't go. He had gone then, and had never to her knowledge turned up again. But he had written. Letters came from him occasionally — Bundle recognized the writing — and he always seemed to know where they were, because the address was the correct one, not a forwarded affair. Her lady always had acute depression after a letter had come. Sometimes for two days or more. She had said once, "Hate is very lowering , isn't it, Bundle?" Bundle had never hated anyone except a cop who was habitually rude to her, but she had hated him plenty, and she agreed that hate was very weakening. Burned you up inside till there was nothing left.

And to Bundle's account of Christine's brother was added the report of the American police. Herbert Gotobed had entered the States about five years after his sister. He had worked for a short while as a sort of houseman for a famous Boston divine who had been taken (in) by his manners and his piety. He had left the divine under some sort of cloud — the exact nature of the cloud was doubtful since the divine, either from Christian charity or more likely from a reluctance to have his bad judgment made public, had preferred no charges — and had disappeared from the ken of the police. It was supposed, however, that he was the man who, under the name of the Brother of God, had toured the States in the role of prophet, and had been, it was reported, both an emotional and financial success. He had been jailed in Kentucky for blasphemy, in Texas for fraud, in Missouri for creating a riot, in Arkansas for his own safety, and in Wyoming for seduction. In all detentions he had denied any connection with Herbert Gotobed. He had no name, he said, other than the Brother of God. When the police had pointed out that relation to the deity would not be considered by them an insuperable obstacle to deportation, he had taken the hint and had disappeared. The last that had been heard of him was that he had run a mission in the islands somewhere — Fiji, they thought — and had decamped with the funds to Australia.

"A charming person," Grant said, looking up from the dossier.

"That's our man, sir, never a doubt of it," Williams said.

"He certainly has all the stigmata: greed, enormous conceit, and lack of conscience. I rather hope he is our man. It would be doing the world a good turn to squash that slug. But why did he do it?"

"Hoped for money, perhaps."

"Hardly likely. He must have known only too well how she felt about him."

"I wouldn't put it past him to forge a will, sir."

"No, neither would I. But if he has a forged will, why hasn't he come forward? It will soon be a fortnight since her death. We haven't a thing to go on. We don't even know that he's in England."

"He's in England all right, sir. 'Member what her housekeeper said: that he always knew where she was? Clay had been more than three months in England. You bet he was here, too."

"Yes. Yes, that's true. Australia? Let me see." He looked up the New York report again. "That's about two years ago. He'd be difficult to trace there, but if he came to England after Clay he shouldn't be difficult to trace. He can't keep his mouth shut. Anything quite so vocal must be noticeable."

"No letters from him among her things?"

"No, Lord Edward has been through everything. Tell me, Williams, on what provocation, for what imaginable reason, would a Champneis, in your opinion, tell a lie?"

"Noblesse oblige," said Williams promptly.

Grant stared. "Quite right," he said at length. "I hadn't thought of that. Can't imagine what he could have been shielding, though."

So the candles weren't the kind you go to bed with, Grant thought, as the car sped along the embankment that Monday afternoon en route for the Temple; they were the kind you put on altars. The Brother of God's tabernacle had been none of your bare mission tents. It had been hung with purple and fine linen and furnished with a shrine of great magnificence. And what had been merely an expression of Herbert's own love of the theatrical had in most cases (Kentucky was an exception) proved good business. A beauty-starved and theatrically-minded people had fallen hard — in hard cash.

Christine's shilling was the measure of her contempt. Her return, perhaps, for all those occasions when Herbert's Lord had seen fit to deny her the small things her soul needed.

In the green subaqueous light of Mr. Erskine's small room beside the plane tree, Grant put his proposition to the lawyer. They wanted to bring Herbert Gotobed to the surface, and this was the way to do it. It was quite orthodox, so the lawyer needn't mind doing it. Lord Edward had approved.

The lawyer hummed and hawed, not because he had any real objections but because it is a lawyer's business to consider remote contingencies, and a straightforward agreement to anything would be wildly unprofessional. In the end he agreed that it might be done.

Grant said: "Very well, I leave it to you. In tomorrow's papers, please," and went out wondering why the legal mind delighted in manufacturing trouble when there was so much ready-made in the world. There was plenty in poor Grant's mind at the moment. "Surrounded by trouble," as the spaewives said when they told your cards: that's what he was. Monday would soon be over and there was no sign that Robert Tisdall was in the world of men. The first low howl had come from the Clarion that morning, and by tomorrow the whole wolf pack would be on him. Where was Robert Tisdall? What were the police doing to find him? To do Grant justice the discomfort in his mind was less for the outcry that was imminent than for the welfare of Tisdall. He had genuinely believed for the last two days that Tisdall's nonappearance was due to lack of knowledge on Tisdall's part. It is not easy to see newspapers when one is on the run. But now doubt like a chill wind played through his thoughts. There was something wrong, Every newspaper poster in every village in England had read: TISDALL INNOCENT. HUNTED MAN INNOCENT. How could he have missed it? In every pub, railway carriage, bus, and house in the country the news had been the favorite subject of conversation. And yet Tisdall was silent. No one had seen him since Erica drove away from him last Wednesday. On Thursday night the whole of England had been swamped by the worst storm for years, and it had rained and blown for two days afterwards. Tisdall had picked up the food left by Erica on Thursday, but not afterwards. The food she left on Friday was still there, a sodden pulp, on Saturday. Grant knew that Erica had spent all that Saturday scouring the countryside; she had quartered the country with the efficiency and persistence of a game dog, every barn, every shelter of any description, being subjected to search. Her very sound theory was that shelter he must have had on Thursday night — no human being could have survived such a storm — and since he had been in that chalky lane on Thursday morning to pick up the food she left, then he could not have gone far afield.