“Great Heavens!” said Grant. “I can’t believe it. There just—there just isn’t one single thing in all the world that these two men have in common.” (His subconscious added before he could stop it: except a woman.) “They just don’t touch anywhere. And yet they’re as thick as thieves.” He sat silent a little. “All right, Rimell. Good work. I’m going to have lunch and think this over.”
“Yes, sir. May I give you a friendly piece of advice, sir?”
“If you must. It’s a bad habit in subordinates.”
“No black coffee, sir. I expect you had four cups for breakfast and nothing else.”
Grant laughed. “Why should you worry?” he said, pressing the starter. “The more breakdowns, the quicker the promotion.”
“I grudge the money for wreaths, sir.”
But Grant was not smiling as he drove lunchwards. Christine Clay’s husband and her reputed lover had midnight business together. That was strange enough. But that Edward Champneis, fifth son of the seventh Duke of Bude, and a reputable if unorthodox member of his race, should have underhand traffic with Jason Harmer, of Tin Pan Alley, was definitely stranger. What was the common bond? Not murder. Grant refused to consider anything so outré as murder in couples. One or the other might have wanted to murder her, but that they should have forgathered on the subject was unimaginable. The motorboat had left the Petronel again, Searle said. Supposing only one of them had been in it? It was only a short distance north along the coast to the Gap at Westover; and Harmer had turned up at Clay’s cottage two hours after her death. To drown Clay from a motorboat was the ideal way. As good as his groin theory, with escape both quicker and easier. The more he thought of the motorboat, the more enamored of the method he grew. They had checked the boats in the vicinity as a matter of routine at the time of the first investigation; but a motorboat has a wide cruising radius. But—oh, well, just “but”! The theory was fantastic.
Could one imagine Jason saying, “You lend me your boat and I’ll drown your wife,” or Champneis suggesting, “I’ll lend you the boat if you’ll do the work.” These two had met for some other reason altogether. If murder had resulted, then it had been unplanned, incidental.
What then had they met for? Harmer had said something about Customs. It had been his first greeting. He had been anxious about it. Was Harmer a drug fiend?
There were two things against that. Harmer didn’t look like an addict. And Champneis would never have supplied the stuff. Risk might be the breath of life to him, but that kind of risk would be very definitely out.
What, then, was to be kept from the eyes of the Customs? Tobacco? Jewels? Champneis had shown George Meir, next morning, the topazes he had brought back for Christine.
There was one thing against all of it. Smuggling Edward Champneis might descend to, as a ploy, a mere bit of excitement; but Grant could not see him smuggling for the benefit of Jason Harmer. One ran one’s head continually against that. What had these two men in common? They had something. Their association proved it. But what? They were, as far as anyone knew, the merest acquaintances. Not even that. Champneis had almost certainly left England before Harmer had arrived, and Christine had not known Harmer until they worked together on these English pictures.
No digestive juices flowed in Grant’s alimentary tracts during that lunch; his brain was working like an engine. The sweet-breads and green peas might as well have been thrown into the chef’s waste bin. By the time coffee had arrived he was no nearer a solution. He wished he was one of these marvelous creatures of superinstinct and infallible judgment who adorned the pages of detective stories, and not just a hard-working, well-meaning, ordinarily intelligent Detective Inspector. As far as he could see, the obvious course was to interview one or other of these men. And the obvious one to interview was Harmer. Why? Oh, because he’d talk more easily. Oh, yes, all right, and because there was less chance of running into trouble! What it was to have someone inside you checking up your motives for everything you did or thought!
He refrained from his second cup of coffee, with a smile for the absent Rimell. Nice kid. He’d make a good detective someday.
He rang up Devonshire House, and asked if Mr. Harmer could make it convenient to see Alan Grant (no need to advertise his profession) this evening between tea and dinner.
He was told that Mr. Harmer was not in London. He had gone down to see Leni Primhofer, the continental star, who was staying at Whitecliffe. He was writing a song for her. No, he was not expected back that night. The address was Tall Hatch, Whitecliffe, and the telephone number Whitecliffe 3025.
Grant rang Whitecliffe 3025, and asked when Mr. Harmer could see him. Harmer was in the country motoring with Fraülein Primhofer and would not be back before dinner.
Whitecliffe is a continuation of Westover: a collection of plutocratic villas set on the cliff beyond the cries of trippers and the desecration of blown newspaper pages. Grant still had a room at the Marine, and so to Westover he went, and there Williams joined him. All he could do now was to wait for a warrant from the Yard and a visit from Harmer.
It was cocktail time when Harmer presented himself.
“Are you asking me to dinner, Inspector? If not, say you are and let the dinner be on me, will you; there’s a good sport. Another hour of that woman and I shall be daffy. Loco. Nuts. I have known stars in my time, but holy mackerel! she takes the cake. You’d think with her English being on the sticky side that she’d let up now and then to think a bit. But no! Jabbers right along, with German to fill in, and bits of French dressing here and there to make it look nice. Waiter! What’s yours, Inspector? Not drinking? Oh, come on! No? That’s too bad. One gin and mixed, waiter. You don’t need to climb on the wagon with a waist like that, Inspector. Don’t say you’re Prohibition from conviction!”
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 wo
uld 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.
Chapter 24
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 Provençal, 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.”
“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.
Grant helped him with the pajamas and covered him up. He rang for the porter and ordered hot soup and the presence of a doctor. Then he sat down at the telephone and told the good news to the Yard, Tisdall’s overbright eyes watching him, quizzically. When he had finished he came over to the bed and said: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this. I’d give a lot to undo it.”
“Blankets!” said Tisdall. “Sheets! Pillows! Eiderdown! Gosh!” He grinned as far as his chattering teeth and his week’s growth of beard would let him. “Say ’Now I Lay Me’ for me,” he said. And fell abruptly asleep.
Chapter 25
In the morning, because the doctor said that “there was a certain congestion which in the subject’s weakened condition might at any moment develop into pneumonia,” Grant summoned Tisdall’s Aunt Muriel, whom the Yard obligingly found, Tisdall having refused to consider the presence of any aunts. Williams was sent to Canterbury to arrest Brother Aloysius, and Grant planned to go back to town after lunch to interview Champneis. He had telephoned the good news of Tisdall’s reappearance to Colonel Burgoyne, and the telephone had been answered by Erica.
“Oh, I’m so glad for you!” she said.
“For me?”
“Yes, it must have been awful for you.”
And it was only then that Grant realized quite how awful it had been. That continual pushing down of an unnamed fear. What a nice child she was.
The nice child had sent over for the patient in the course of the morning a dozen fresh eggs taken from the Steynes nests that very hour. Grant thought how typical it was of her to send fresh eggs, and not the conventional flowers or fruit.
“I hope she didn’t get into trouble for giving me food that time?” Tisdall asked. He always talked as if the occurrences of the last week were many years away; the days in the attic had been a lifetime to him.
“On the contrary. She saved your neck and my reputation. It was she who found your coat. No, I can’t tell you about it now. You’re supposed not to talk or be talked to.”
But he had had to tell all about it. And had left Tisdall saying softly to himself, “Well!” Over and over again: “Well!” in a wondering tone.
The shadow of the Champneis interview had begun to loom over Grant. Supposing he said frankly: “Look here, both you and Jason Harmer went out of your way to lie to me about your movements on a certain night, and now I find that you were together at Dover. What were you doing?” What would the answer be? “My dear sir, I can’t answer for Harmer’s prevarications, but he was my guest on the Petronel and we spent the night fishing in our motorboat.” That would be a good alibi.
And still his mind dwelled
on the contraband idea. What contraband was of interest to both Champneis and Harmer? And it didn’t take a whole night to hand over even a whole car-goload of contraband. Yet neither of them had an alibi for that night. What had they done with the hours from midnight to breakfast?
He had felt, ever since Rimell’s revelation at Dover, that if he could remember what Champneis had been talking about just before his fib about the day of his arrival, all would be clear to him.
He decided to go downstairs and have his hair cut before he left the Marine. He was to remember that haircut.
As he put out his hand to push the swing door open, he heard Champneis’s voice in his mind, drawling a sentence.
So that was what he had been talking about!
Yes. Yes. Pictures ran together in Grant’s mind to make a sequence that made sense. He turned from the saloon door to the telephone and called the Special Branch. He asked them half a dozen questions, and then went to have his hair cut, smiling fatuously. He knew now what he was going to say to Edward Champneis.