Josephine Tey - The Collected Works

But her efforts had come to nothing. Today an organised gang of amateur searchers had undertaken the work—the police had no men to spare—but so far no news had come. And in Grant’s mind was growing a slow fear that he tried with all his self-awareness to beat down. But it was like a moor fire. You whipped it to cinder only to see it run under the surface and break out ahead of you.

News from Dover was slow, too. The investigation was hampered beyond any but police patience by the necessity of (a) not offending the peerage, and (b) not frightening the bird: the first applying to a possibly innocent, the second to a possibly guilty. It was all very complicated. Watching Edward Champneis’s calm face—he had eyebrows which gave a peculiar expression of repose—while he discussed with him the trapping of Herbert, Grant had several times forcibly to restrain himself from saying: “Where were you on Wednesday night?” What would Champneis do? Look a little puzzled, think a moment, and then say: “The night I arrived in Dover? I spent it with the So-and-sos at Such-and-Such.” And then realisation of what the question entailed would dawn, and he would look incredulously at Grant, and Grant would feel the world’s prize fool. More! In Edward Champneis’s presence he felt that it was sheer insult to suggest that he might have been responsible for his wife’s death. Away from him, that picture of the man in the garden, watching the lighted house with the open windows, might swim up in his mind more often than he cared to admit. But in his presence, any such thought was fantastic. Until his men had accounted—or failed to account—for Champneis’s movements that night, any direct enquiry must be shelved.

All he knew so far was that Champneis had stayed in none of the obvious places. The hotels and the family friends had both been drawn blank. The radius was now being extended. At any moment news might come that my lord had slept in a blameless four-poster and the county’s best linen sheets, and Grant would be forced to admit that he had been mistaken when he imagined that Lord Edward was deliberately misleading him.

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On Tuesday morning word came from Collins, the man who was investigating Champneis’s wardrobe. Bywood, the valet, had proved “very sticky going,” he reported. He didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke and there seemed to be no plane on which Collins could establish a mutual regard. But every man has his price, and Bywood’s proved to be snuff. A very secret vice, it was. Lord Edward would dismiss him on the spot if he suspected such indulgence. (Lord Edward would probably have been highly pleased by anything so eighteenth century.) Collins had procured him “very special snuff,” and had at last got within inspecting distance of the wardrobe. On his arrival in England—or rather, in London—Champneis had weeded out his wardrobe. The weeding out had included two coats, one dark and one camel-hair. Bywood had given the camel-hair one to his brother-in-law, a chorus-boy; the other he had sold to a dealer in London. Collins gave the name and address of the dealer.

Grant sent an officer down to the dealer, and as the officer went through the stock the dealer said: “That coat came from Lord Edward Champneis, the Duke of Bude’s son. Nice bit of stuff.”

It was a nice bit of stuff. And it had all its buttons; with no sign of replacements.

Grant sighed when the news came, not sure whether he was glad or sorry. But he still wanted to know where Champneis had spent the night.

And what the Press wanted to know was where Tisdall was. Every newspaper in Britain wanted to know. The C.I.D. were in worse trouble than they had been for many years. The Clarion openly called them murderers, and Grant, trying to get a line on a baffling case, was harassed by the fury of colleagues, the condolences of his friends, a worried Commissioner, and his own growing anxiety. In the middle of the morning Jammy Hopkins rang up to explain away his “middle” in the Clarion. It was “all in the way of business,” and he knew his good friends at the Yard would understand. Grant was out, and it was Williams at the other end of the telephone. Williams was not in the mood for butter. He relieved his overburdened soul with a gusto which left Hopkins hoping that he had not irretrievably put himself in the wrong with the Yard. “As for hounding people to death,” Williams finished, “you know very well that the Press do more hounding in a week than the Yard has since it was founded. And all your victims are innocent!”

“Oh, have a heart, Sergeant! You know we’ve got to deliver the goods. If we don’t make it hot and strong, we’ll be out on our ear. St. Martin’s Crypt, or the Embankment. And you pushing people off the seats. We’ve got our jobs to keep just as much as—”

The sound of Williams’s hang-up was eloquent. It was action and comment compressed into one little monosyllable. Jammy felt hardly used. He had enjoyed writing that article. He had in fact been full of righteous indignation as the scarifying phrases poured forth. When Jammy was writing his tongue came out of its habitual position in his cheek, and emotion flooded him. That the tongue went back when he had finished did not matter; the popular appeal of his article was secure; it was “from the heart”; and his salary went up by leaps and bounds.

But he was a little hurt that all his enemies-on-paper couldn’t see just what a jape it was. He flung his hat with a disgusted gesture on to his right eyebrow and went out to lunch.

And less than five minutes away Grant was sitting in a dark corner, a huge cup of black coffee before him, his head propped in his hands. He was “telling it to himself in words of one syllable.”

Christine Clay was living in secret. But the murderer knew where she was. That eliminated a lot of people.

Champneis knew.

Jason Harmer knew.

Herbert Gotobed almost certainly knew.

The murderer had worn a coat dark enough to be furnished with a black button and black sewing thread.

Champneis had such a coat, but there was no missing button.

Jason Harmer had no such coat, and had not lately worn any such coat.

No one knew what Herbert Gotobed wore.

The murderer had a motive so strong and of such duration that he could wait for his victim at six of a morning and deliberately drown her.

Champneis had a possible motive.

Jason Harmer had a possible motive if they had been lovers, but there was no proof of that.

Herbert Gotobed had no known motive but had almost certainly hated her.

On points Gotobed won. He knew where his sister was; he had the kind of record that was “headed for murder”; and he had been on bad terms with the victim.

Oh, well! By tomorrow Gotobed might have declared himself. Meanwhile he would drug himself with black coffee and try to keep his mind off the Press.

As he raised the cup to his lips, his eyes lighted on a man in the opposite corner. The man’s cup was half empty, and he was watching Grant with amused and friendly eyes.

Grant smiled, and hit first. “Hiding that famous profile from the public gaze? Why don’t you give your fans a break?”

“It’s all break for them. A fan can’t be wrong. You’re being given a hell of a time, aren’t you? What do they think the police are? Clairvoyants?”

Grant rolled the honey on his tongue and swallowed it.

“Some day,” Owen Hughes said, “someone is going to screw Jammy Hopkins’s head off his blasted shoulders. If my face wasn’t insured for the sum total of the world’s gold, I’d do it myself. He once said I was ‘every girl’s dream’!”

“And aren’t you?”

“Have you seen my cottage lately?”

“No. I saw the photograph of the wreck in the paper one day.”