Джозефина Тэй - A Shilling for Candles

Grant disclaimed any crusading interest in the drink traffic.

“Well, what’s the news? You have got news, haven’t you?” He became serious, and looked earnestly, at Grant. “Something real turned up?”

“I just wanted to know what you were doing in Dover on that Wednesday night.”

“In Dover?”

“A fortnight last Wednesday.”

“Someone been pulling your leg?”

“Listen, Mr. Harmer, your lack of frankness is complicating everything. It’s keeping us from running down the man who killed Christine Clay. The whole business is cockeyed. You come clean about your movements on that Wednesday night, and half the irrelevant bits and pieces that are weighing the case down can be shorn off and thrown away. We can’t see the outline of it with all the bits that are covering it up and hanging on to it. You want to help us get our man, don’t you? Well, prove it!”

“I like you a lot, Inspector. I never thought I’d like a cop so much. But I told you already: I lost my way looking for Chris’s cottage, and slept in the car.”

“And if I bring witnesses to prove that you were in Dover after midnight?”

“I still slept in the car.”

Grant was silent, disappointed. Now he would have to go to Champneis.

Harmer’s little brown eyes watched him with something like solicitude.

“You’re not getting your sleep these days, Inspector. Heading for a breakdown. Change your mind and have a drink. Wonderful how a drink puts things in their place.”

“If you didn’t insist on sleeping in the car, I’d have a better chance of sleeping in my bed,” Grant said angrily, and took his leave with less than his usual grace.

He wanted to get at Champneis before Jason Harmer had time to tell him that Grant had been making inquiries. The best way to do that was to telephone and ask Champneis to come down to Westover. Offer to send a police car for him at once. And if necessary keep Harmer talking until Champneis would have left town.

But Champneis had already left town. He was in Edinburgh addressing a polite gathering on “The Future of Galeria.”

That settled it. Long before anyone could get to him, Harmer would have communicated with him either by telegram or telephone. Grant asked that both means of communication should be tapped, and went back to the lounge to find Jason still sitting over his drink.

“I know you don’t like me, Inspector, but honest to God I like you, and honest to God that woman is a holy terror. Do you think you could sort of forget that we are famous-detective and worm-of-a-suspect, and eat together after all?”

Grant smiled, against his will. He had no objections.

Jason smiled, too, a little knowingly. “But if you think by the end of dinner I won’t have slept in that car, don’t kid yourself.”

In spite of himself, Grant enjoyed that meal. It was a good game: trying to trap Jason into some kind of admission. The food was good. And Jason was amusing.

Another telephone message came to say that Lord Edward was returning on the first train in the morning, and would be in London by teatime. Grant could expect the warrant for Gotobed by the first post in the morning.

So Grant went to bed at the Marine, puzzled but not suicidal; at least there was a program for the morrow. Jason, too, slept at the Marine, having declared his inability to face Leni anymore that day.

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. Sounds like a colony of nuns or something, doesn’t it? I shall write a book about it. ‘My Days with the Cisterns’ or ‘How I Roofed It’!”

“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.