Josephine Tey - The Collected Works

It was not put just like that, but to anyone reading between the lines it was perfectly clear.

Meg really had known Christine. She was a quiet girl, she said, always trying to better herself. Not very popular with her contemporaries. Her father was dead and she lived with her mother and brother in a three-room tenement house. The brother was older, and was the mother’s favourite. When Chris was seventeen the mother had died, and the family had disappeared from Nottingham. They did not belong to the town and had had no roots there, and no one had regretted them when they went. Least of all people who hadn’t come into the town until years afterwards.

Grant wondered how Jammy would enjoy being taken for a ride by the imaginative Nell. So the elder brother had been the mother’s favourite, had he? Grant wondered how much that meant. A shilling for candles. What family row had left such a mark that she should immortalise it in her will? Oh, well! Reporters thought they were clever, but the Yard had ways and means that were not open to the Press, however powerful. By the time he got back tonight, Christine Clay’s early life would be on his desk in full detail. He discarded the Wire and turned to the other papers in the bundle. The Sunday Telegraph had a symposium—a very dignified and conveniently cheap method of filling a page. Everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Jason Harmer had given their personal view of Christine Clay and her influence on her art. (The Sunday Telegraph liked influence and art. Even boxers never described punches to it: they explained their art.) The silly little paragraphs were all conventional, except Jason’s, which had a violent sincerity beneath its sickly phrases. Marta Hallard was graceful about Clay’s genius, and for once omitted to condone her lowly origin. The heir to a European throne extolled her beauty. A flying ace her courage. An ambassador her wit. It must have cost the Telegraph something in telephones.

Grant turned to the Courier, and found Miss Lydia Keats being informative all over the middle pages on the signs of the Zodiac. Lydia’s stock had dropped a little in her own circles during the last week. It was felt that if she had foreseen the Clay end so clearly it was a little weak of her to overlook a small detail like murder. But in the public eye she was booming. There was no fraud about Lydia. She had stated in public, many months ago, what the stars foretold for Christine Clay, and the stars were right. And if there is anything the public loves it is a prophecy come true. They pushed their shuddering spines more firmly into the cushions and asked for more. And Lydia was giving it to them. In small type at the end of the article appeared the information that, thanks to the Courier’s generosity, its readers might obtain horoscopes from the infallible Miss Keats at the cost of one shilling, coupon on the back page.

Grant tucked the smaller illustrateds under his arm, and prepared to get off the boat. He watched a sailor twisting a hawser round a bollard and wished that he had chosen a profession that dealt with things and not with people.

The Petronel was moored in the roads. Grant engaged a boatman and was rowed out to her. An elderly deckhand pushed a pipe into a pocket and prepared to receive them. Grant asked if Lord Giles were on board, happily aware that he was in Buckinghamshire. On hearing that he was not expected for a week, Grant looked suitably disappointed and asked if he might come on board: he had hoped that Giles would show him the craft. The man was pleased and garrulous. He was alone on board and had been very bored. It would be a pleasant diversion to show the good-looking friend of Lord Giles round the ship, and no doubt there would be a tip forthcoming. He did the honours with a detail that wearied Grant a little, but he was very informative. When Grant remarked on the splendid sleeping accommodation, the man said that Lord Giles wasn’t one for ever sleeping ashore if he could help it. Never so happy as on salt water, Lord Giles wasn’t.

“Lord Edward isn’t so fond of it,” Grant remarked, and the man chuckled.

“No, not Lord Edward, he wasn’t. He was ashore the minute the dinghy could be swung out or a hawser slapped on a quay.”

“I suppose he stayed with the Beechers the night you made Dover?”

The deckhand didn’t rightly know where he slept. All he knew was that he didn’t sleep on board. In fact, they hadn’t seen him again. His hand luggage had been sent to the boat train and the rest had been sent to town after him. Because of the sad thing that happened to his lady, that was. Had Grant ever seen her? A film actress, she was. Very good, too. It was dreadful wasn’t it, the things that happened in good families nowadays. Even murders. Changed days indeed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Grant said. “The older families of England made a pastime of murder if my history books told the truth.”

The man was so pleased with his tip that he offered to make cocoa for the visitor, but Grant wanted to get ashore so that he could talk to the Yard. On the way back he wondered just how Champneis had spent that night ashore. The most likely explanation was that he had stayed with friends. But if he had stayed with friends, why the desire to avoid attention? The more Grant thought of it the more out-of-character it was in the man to want to hide anything. Edward Champneis was a person who did what he wanted to in broad daylight and cared not a straw for opinions or consequences. Grant found it difficult to associate him in his mind with any furtive activity whatever. And that very thought led to a logical and rather staggering sequel. It was no petty thing that Champneis had to hide. Nothing but some matter of vast importance would have driven Champneis to prevarication. Grant could dismiss, therefore, any thought of a light love affair. Champneis had, in any case, a reputation that bordered on the austere. And if one dismissed a love affair what was left? What possible activity could a man of Champneis’s stamp want to keep secret? Except murder!

Murder was just possible. If that calm security were once shattered, who knew what might flame out? He was a man who would both give and demand fidelity—and be unforgiving to the faithless. Supposing—! There was Harmer. Christine Clay’s colleagues may have doubted that she and Harmer were lovers, but the beau monde, unused to the partnership of work, had no doubt. Had Champneis come to believe that? His and Christine’s love for each other was an equable affair, but his pride would be a very real thing, fragile and passionate. Had he—? That was an idea! Had he driven over to the cottage that night? He was, after all, the only person who knew where she was: nearly all her telegrams had been to him. He was in Dover, and she was only an hour away. What more natural than that he should have motored over to surprise her? And if so—

A picture swam into Grant’s mind. The cottage in the summer dark, the lit windows open to the night, so that every word, every movement almost, is audible outside. And in the rose-tangled mass of the garden a man standing, arrested by the voices. He stands there, quite silent, quite still, watching. Presently the lights go out. And in a little while the figure in the garden moves away. Where? To brood on his home-coming; on his cuckold state? To tramp the downs till morning? To see her come to the beach, unexpected, alone? To—

Grant shook himself and picked up the telephone receiver.

“Edward Champneis didn’t spend the night of Wednesday on board,” he said, when he had been connected. “I want to know where he did spend it. And don’t forget, discretion is the better part. You may find that he spent it with the Warden of the Cinque Ports, or something equally orthodox, but I’ll be surprised if he did. It would be a good idea if someone got friendly with his valet and went through his wardrobe for a dark coat. You know the strongest card we have is that no one outside the force knows about that button. The fact that we asked for any discarded coat that was found to be brought in doesn’t convey much to anyone. The chances are ten to one, I think, that the coat is still with its owner. Keeping a coat, even with a missing button, is less conspicuous than getting rid of one. And that S.O.S. for the coat was only a police circular, anyhow, not a public appeal. So inspect the Champneis wardrobe. . . . No, I haven’t got anything on him. . . . Yes, I know it is mad. But I’m not taking any more chances in this case. Only be discreet, for Heaven’s sake. I’m in bad enough odour as it is. What is the news? Has Tisdall turned up? . . . Oh, well, I expect he will by night. He might give the Press a break. They’re waiting breathless for him. How is the Clay dossier coming? . . . Oh. Has Vine come back from interviewing the dresser—what’s-her-name? Bundle—yet? No? All right, I’m coming straight back to town.”