Harmer laughed under his breath. “I can hear her,” he said, affectionately. “Well, I went straight from Seemon’s to Covent Garden and found out where those cherries came from. An orchard at a place called Bird’s Green. And on Wednesday morning bright and early Jason sets off for Bird’s Green. That took a bit of finding, but I got there about three o’clock. Then I had to find the orchard and the people who were working in it on Friday. I expected to find Chris straightaway, but it seemed that they didn’t know her. They said that when they were picking, early on Friday morning, a lady passing in a car had stopped to watch and then asked if she might help. The old boy who owned the place said they didn’t need paid help, but if she liked to amuse herself good and well. ‘She were a good picker,’ he said. ‘wouldn’t mind paying her another time.’ Then his grandson said he’d seen the lady—or thought he’d seen her—one day lately in the post office at Liddlestone—about six miles away. So I found Liddlestone, but the post office regular staff was ‘home to her tea’ and I had to wait till she came back. She said that the lady who sent ‘all the telegrams’—seems they never saw so many telegrams in their lives as Chris sent—was living over at Medley. So I set out in the half-dark to find Medley, and ended by sleeping in a lane. And sleeping out or no sleeping out, that was a better piece of detective work than you’re doing this morning, Inspector Grant!”
Grant grinned good-humoredly. “Yes? Well, I’ve nearly done.” He got up to go. “I suppose you had a coat with you in the car?”
“Sure.”
“What was it made of?”
“Brown tweed. Why?”
“Have you got it here?”
“Sure.” He turned to a wardrobe, built in the passage where the sitting room led into the bedroom, and pulled the sliding door open. “Have a look at my whole wardrobe. You’re cleverer than I am if you can find the button.”
“What button?” Grant asked, more quickly than he intended.
“It’s always a button, isn’t it?” Harmer said, the small pansy-brown eyes, alert under their lazy lids, smiling confidently into Grant’s.
Grant found nothing of interest in the wardrobe. He had taken his leave not knowing how much to believe of Jason Harmer’s story, but very sure that he had “nothing on him.” The hopes of the police, so to speak, lay in Tisdall.
Now, as he pulled up by the curb in the cool bright morning, he remembered Jason’s wardrobe, and smiled in his mind. Jason did not get his clothes from Stacey and Brackett. As he considered the dark, small, and shabby interior which was revealed to him as he opened the door, he could almost hear Jason laugh. The English! They’d had a business for a hundred and fifty years and this was all they could make of it. The original counters probably. Certainly the original lighting. But Grant’s heart warmed. This was the England he knew and loved. Fashions might change, dynasties might fall, horses’ shoes in the quiet street change to the crying of a thousand taxi hooters, but Stacey and Brackett continued to make clothes with leisured efficiency for leisured and efficient gentlemen.
There was now neither a Stacey nor a Brackett, but Mr. Trimley—Mr. Stephen Trimley (as opposed to Mr. Robert and Mr. Thomas!)—saw Inspector Grant and was entirely at Inspector Grant’s service. Yes, they had made clothes for Mr. Robert Tisdall. Yes, the clothes had included a dark coat for wear with evening things. No, that certainly was not a button from the coat in question. That was not a button they had ever put on any coat. It was not a class of button they were in the habit of using. If the Inspector would forgive Mr. Trimley (Mr. Stephen Trimley), the button in question was in his opinion of a very inferior make, and would not be used by any tailor of any standing. He would not be surprised, indeed, to find that the button was of foreign origin.
“American, perhaps?” suggested Grant.
Perhaps. Although to Mr. Trimley’s eye it suggested the Continent. No, he certainly had no reason for such a surmise. Entirely instinctive. Probably wrong. And he hoped the Inspector would not put any weight on his opinion. He also hoped that there was no question of Mr. Tisdall being in trouble. A very charming young man, indeed. The Grammar schools—especially the older Grammar schools of the country—turned out a very fine type of boy. Better often, didn’t the Inspector think so? than came from the minor public schools. There was a yeoman quality of permanence about Grammar-school families—generation after generation going to the same school—that was not matched, outside the great public schools.
There being, in Grant’s opinion, no yeoman quality of permanence whatever about young Tisdall, he forbore to argue, contenting himself by assuring Mr. Trimley that as far as he knew Mr. Tisdall was in no trouble up to date.
Mr. Trimley was glad to hear that. He was getting old, and his faith in the young generation which was growing up was too often sadly shaken. Perhaps every generation thought that the rising one lacked due standards of behavior and spirit, but it did seem to him this one . . . Ah, well, he was growing old, and the tragedy of young lives weighed more heavily on him than it used to. This Monday morning was blackened for him, yes, entirely blackened, by the thought that all the brightness that was Christine Clay was at this hour being transformed into ashes. It would be many years, perhaps generations (Mr. Trimley’s mind worked in generations: the result of having a hundred-and-fifty-year-old business) before her like would be seen again. She had quality, didn’t the Inspector think so? Amazing quality. It was said that she had a very humble origin, but there must be breeding somewhere. Something like Christine Clay did not just happen in space, as it were. Nature must plan for it. He was not what is known, he believed, as a film fan, but there was no picture of Miss Clay’s which he had not seen since his niece had taken him to view her first essay in a dramatic role. He had on that occasion entirely forgotten that he was in a cinema. He was dazed with delight. Surely if this new medium could produce material of this strength and richness one need not continue to regret Bernhardt and Duse.
Grant went out into the street, marveling at the all-pervading genius of Christine Clay. The mind of all the world it seemed was in that building at Golders Green. A strange end for the little lace-hand from Nottingham. Strange, too, for the world’s idol. “And they put him in an oven just as if he were—” Oh, no, he mustn’t think of that. Hateful. Why should it be hateful? He didn’t know. The suburbanity of it, he supposed. Sensible, and all that. And probably much less harrowing for everyone. But someone whose brilliance had flamed across the human firmament as Clay’s had should have a hundred-foot pyre. Something spectacular. A Viking’s funeral. Not ovens in the suburb. Oh, my God, he was growing morbid, if not sentimental. He pressed the starter, and swung into the traffic.
He had yesterday changed his mind about going to the Clay funeral. The Tisdall evidence progressing normally, he had seen no need to give himself a harrowing hour which he could avoid. But only now did he realize how very glad he was to have escaped it, and (being Grant) began instantly to wonder whether after all he should have gone. Whether his subconscious desire to get out of it had influenced his decision. He decided that it had not. There was no need for him now to study the psychology of unknown friends of Christine’s. He had had a good cross-section of them at Marta’s, and had learned very little, after all. The party had stubbornly refused to break up. Jammy had begun to talk again, hoping that they would dance to his piping. But Marta vetoed any more talk of Christine, and although they had come back to her several times, not even Jammy’s genius for evocation could keep them on the subject. Lydia, who could never stay off her own subject for long, had read their palms, chiromancy being a sideline of hers when horoscopes were not available (she had given a shrewd enough reading of Grant’s character and had warned him about making a mistaken decision in the immediate future: “a nice safe thing to say to anyone,” he had reflected) and it was not until one o’clock that the hostess had managed to shepherd them all to the door. Grant had lingered, not, curiously enough, because he had questions to ask her (the conversation had
provided answers for him), but because she was anxious to question him. Was Scotland Yard called in to investigate Christine’s death? What was wrong? What had they found? What did they suspect?
Grant had said that yes, they had been called in (so much would by now be common property) but that so far there was only suspicion. She had wept a little, becomingly, with not too disastrous effect on the mascara, had treated him to a short appreciation of Christine as artist and woman. “A grand person. It must have taken tremendous character to overcome her initial disadvantages.” She enumerated the disadvantages.
And Grant had gone out into the warm night with a sigh for human nature—and a shrug for the sigh.
But there were bright spots even in human nature. Grant edged in toward the curb, and came to a halt, his brown face glad and welcoming.
“Good morning!” he called to the little gray figure.
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Grant,” Erica said, crossing the pavement to him. She gave him a brief little smile, but seemed pleased to see him; so much was apparent through her schoolboy matter-of-factness. She was dressed in her “town” clothes, he noticed; but they did not seem to be an improvement on her country ones. They were neat, certainly, but they had an unused look; and the gray suit she was wearing, although undoubtedly “good,” was dowdy. Her hat had been got to match, and matched also in dowdiness.
“I didn’t know you ever stayed in town.”
“I don’t. I came up to get a bridge.”
“A bridge?”
“But it seems you can’t get them by the yard. They have to be made to measure. So I’ve got to come up another day. All he did today was put a lot of clay in my mouth.”
“Oh, the dentist. I see. I thought only old ladies had bridges.”
“Well, you see, the silly thing he put in the last time doesn’t hold. I’m always picking it out of bits of toffee. I lost a lot of side teeth when Flight fell with me at a post-and-rails last winter. I had a face like a turnip. So it had to be a bridge, he says.”
“A misnomer, Flight.”
“In one way. Not in another. He was nearly at the other end of Kent before they caught him.”
“Where are you going now? Can I give you a lift anywhere?”
“I suppose you wouldn’t like to show me Scotland Yard?”
“I would. Very much. But in twenty minutes I have an appointment with a lawyer in the Temple.”
“Oh. In that case perhaps you would drop me in Cockspur Street. I have an errand to do for Nannie.”
Yes, he thought, as she inserted herself beside him, it would be a Nannie. No mother had chosen those clothes. They were ordered from the tailor just as her school clothes had been. “One gray flannel suit and hat to match.” In spite of her independence and her sureness of spirit, there was something forlorn about her, he felt.
“This is nice,” she said. “They’re not very high, but I hate walking in them.”
“What are?”
“My shoes.” She held up a foot and exhibited her very modest Cuban heel. “Nannie thinks they are the right thing to wear in town, but I feel dreadful in them. Teetery.”
“I expect one gets used to them in time. One must conform to the taboos of the tribe.”
“Why must one?”
“Because an unquiet life is a greater misery than wearing the badge of conformity.”
“Oh, well. I don’t come to town often. I suppose you haven’t time to have an ice with me?”
“I’m afraid not. Let’s postpone it until I’m back in Westover, shall we?”
“Of course, you’ll be back. I had forgotten that. I saw your victim yesterday,” she added conversationally.
“My victim?”
“Yes, the man who fainted.”
“You saw him! Where?”
“Father took me over to luncheon at the Marine.”
“But I thought your father hated the Marine?”
“He does. He said he’d never seen such a set of poisonous bloaters in his life. I think ‘bloaters’ is a little strong. They weren’t so very bad. And the melon was very good.”
“Did your father tell you that Tisdall was waiting there?”
“No, the sergeant did. He doesn’t look very professional. Mr. Tisdall, not the sergeant. Too friendly and interested. No professional waiter looks interested. Not really. And he forgets the spoons for the ices. But I expect you upset him pretty thoroughly the day before.”
“I upset him!” Grant took a deep breath and expressed his hope that Erica was not going to let the plight of a good-looking young man play havoc with her heart.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. His nose is too long. Besides, I’m in love with Togare.”
“Who is Togare?”
“The lion tamer, of course.” She turned to look at him doubtfully. “Do you really mean that you haven’t heard of Togare?”
Grant was afraid that that was so.
“Don’t you go to Olympia at Christmas? But you should! I’ll get Mr. Mills to send you seats.”
“Thank you. And how long have you been in love with this Togare?”
“Four years. I’m very faithful.”
Grant admitted that she must be.
“Drop me at the Orient office, will you?” she said, in the same tone as she had announced her faithfulness. And Grant set her down by the yellow-funneled liner.
“Going cruising?” he asked.
“Oh, no. I go round the offices collecting booklets for Nannie. She loves them. She’s never been out of England because she’s terrified of the sea, but she likes to sit in safety and imagine. I got her some marvelous mountain ones from the Austrian place in Regent Street in the spring. And she’s very knowledgeable about the German spas. Good-bye. Thank you for the lift. How shall I know when you come to Westover? For the ice, I mean.”
“I shall send you word through your father. Will that do?”
“Yes. Good-bye.” And she disappeared into the office.
And Grant went on his way to meet Christine Clay’s lawyer and Christine Clay’s husband, feeling better.
Chapter 8
It was obvious at once why no one called Edward Champneis anything but Edward. He was a very tall, very dignified, very good-looking, and very orthodox person, with a manner of grave, if kindly, interest, and a rare but charming smile. Alongside the fretful movements of the fussy Mr. Erskine, his composure was like that of a liner suffering the administrations of a tug.
Grant had not met him before. Edward Champneis had arrived in London on Thursday afternoon, after nearly three months’ absence, only to be greeted by the news of his wife’s death. He had gone down immediately to Westover and identified the body, and on Friday he had interviewed the worried County Constabulary, puzzling over the button, and helped them to make up their minds that it was a case for the Yard. The thousand things waiting in town to be done as a result of his wife’s death and his own long absence had sent him back to London just as Grant left it.
He looked very tired, now, but showed no emotion. Grant wondered under what circumstances this orthodox product of five hundred years of privilege and obligation would show emotion. And then, suddenly, as he drew the chair under him, it occurred to him that Edward Champneis was anything but orthodox. Had he conformed to the tribe, as his looks conformed, he would have married a second cousin, gone into the Service, looked after an estate, and read the Morning Post. But he had done none of those things. He had married an artist picked up at the other side of the world, he explored for fun, and he wrote books. There was something almost eerie in the thought that an exterior could be so utterly misleading.
“Lord Edward has, of course, seen the will,” Erskine was saying. “He was, in fact, aware of its most important provisions some time ago, Lady Edward having acquainted him with her desires at the time the testament was made. There is, however, one surprise. But perhaps you would like to read the document for yourself.”
He turned the impressive-looking sheet round on
the table so that it faced Grant.
“Lady Edward had made two previous wills, both in the United States, but they were destroyed, on her instructions, by her American lawyers. She was anxious that her estate should be administered from England, for the stability of which she had a great admiration.”
Christine had left nothing to her husband. “I leave no money to my husband, Edward Champneis, because he has always had, and always will have, more than he can spend, and because he has never greatly cared for money.” Whatever he cared to keep of her personal possessions were to be his, however, except where legacies specifically provided otherwise. There were various bequests of money, in bulk or in annuities, to friends and dependents. To Bundle, her housekeeper and late dresser. To her Negro chauffeur. To Joe Myers, who had directed her greatest successes. To a bellhop in Chicago “to buy that gas station with.” To nearly thirty people in all, in all parts of the globe and in all spheres of existence. But there was no mention of Jason Harmer.
Grant glanced at the date. Eighteen months ago. She had at that time probably not yet met Harmer.
The legacies, however generous, left the great bulk of her very large fortune untouched. And that fortune was left, surprisingly, not to any individual, but “for the preservation of the beauty of England.” There was to be a trust, in which would be embodied the power to buy any beautiful building or space threatened by extinction and to provide for its upkeep.