He had set the official machinery moving to discover the whereabouts of
Christine Clay’s brother; he had started a train of inquiries which had the
object of proving that Jason Harmer had once had a dark coat which he had
lately discarded and which had a missing button. And he himself took on the
investigation of Lord Edward Champneis. He noticed with his usual
self-awareness that he had no intention of going to Champneis and asking for
an account of his movements on Wednesday night. It would be highly
embarrassing, for one thing, if Champneis proved that he had slept peacefully
in his bunk all night. Or at the Lord Warden. Or otherwise had a perfect
alibi. For another—oh, well, there was no getting away from the fact;
one didn’t demand information from the son of a ducal house as one demanded
it from a coster. A rotten world, no doubt, but one must conform.
Grant learned that the
Petronel
had gone around to Cowes, where her
owner, Giles Champneis, would live in her for Cowes’s week. On Sunday
morning, therefore, Grant flew down to Gosport, and got a boat across the
glittering Spithead to the island. What had been a white flurry of
rain-whipped water yesterday was now a Mediterranean sea of the most
beguiling blue. The English summer was being true to form.
Grant flung the Sunday papers on the seat beside him and prepared to enjoy
the crossing. And then his eye caught the
Sunday Newsreel’s
heading:
THE TRUTH ABOUT CLAY’S EARLY LIFE. And once more the case drew him into it.
On the previous Sabbath, the Sunday Wire had had as its chief “middle” a
tear-compelling article by that prince of newspapermen, Jammy Hopkins. The
article had consisted of an interview with a Nottingham lace-hand, Miss Helen
Cozens, who had, it appeared, been a contemporary of Christine Clay’s in the
factory. It had dealt touchingly with Chris’s devotion to her family, her
sunny disposition, her excellent work, the number of times Miss Helen Cozens
had helped her in one way or another, and it had finished with a real Hopkins
touch of get-togetherness. It had been the fate of one of these two friends,
he pointed out, to climb to the stars, to give pleasure to millions, to
irradiate the world. But there were other fates as glowing if less
spectacular; and Helen Cozens, in her little two-room home, looking after a
delicate mother, had had a destiny no less wonderful, no less worthy of the
world’s homage. It was a good article, and Jammy had been pleased with
it.
Now the
Sunday Newsreel
appeared with an interview of its own. And
it caused Grant the only smile he had enjoyed that week. Meg Hindler was the
lady interviewed. Once a factory hand but now the mother of eight. And she
wanted to know what the hell that goddamned old maid Nell Cozens thought she
was talking about, and she hoped she might be struck down for her lies, and
if her mother drank the lord knew it was no wonder with a nagging dyspeptic
piece of acid like her daughter around, and everyone knew that Christina
Gotobed was out of the factory and away from the town long before Nell Cozens
put her crooked nose into the place at all.
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 favorite. 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 favorite, had
he? Grant wondered how much that meant. A shilling for candles. What family
row had left such a mark that she should immortalize 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 around 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 around the
ship, and no doubt there would be a tip forthcoming. He did the honors 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. W-hat 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 homecoming; 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 SOS 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 odor 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.”
As Grant hung up he shut his mind quickly on the thought that tried to
jump in. Of
course
Tisdall was all right. What could happen to an
adult in the English countryside in summer? Of course he was all right.
THE dossier was filling up nicely. Henry Gotobed had been an
estate carpenter near Long Eaton, and had married a laundry maid at the “big
house.” He had been killed in a threshing-mill accident, and—partly
because his father and grandfather had been estate servants, partly because
she was not strong enough to work—the widow had been given a small
pension. The cottage at Long Eaton having to be vacated, she had brought her
two children to Nottingham, where there was better hope of ultimate
employment for them. The girl was then twelve and the boy fourteen. It had
been curiously difficult to obtain information about them after that.
Information other than the bare official record, that is to say. In the
country, changes were slow, interests circumscribed, and memories long. But
in the fluctuating life of the town, where a family stayed perhaps six months
in a house and moved elsewhere, interest was superficial where it existed at
all.
Meg Hindler, the
Newsreel’s
protegée, had proved the only real
help. She was an enormous, hearty, loud-voiced, good-natured woman, who
cuffed her numerous brood with one hand and caressed with the other. She was
still suffering a little from a Nell Cozens phobia, but when she could be
kept off the Cozens tack she was genuinely informative. She remembered the
family not because there was anything memorable about them, but because she
had lived with her own family across the landing from them, and had worked in
the same factory as Chris, so that they sometimes came home together. She had
liked Chris Gotobed in a mild way; didn’t approve of her stuck-up ideas, of
course; if you had to earn your living by working in a factory, then you had
to earn your living by working in a factory, and why make a fuss about it?
Not that Chris made a fuss, but she had a way of shaking the dust of the
factory off her as if it was dirt. And she wore a hat always; a quite
unnecessary piece of affectation. She had adored her mother, but her mother
couldn’t see anything in life but Herbert. A nasty piece of work, if ever
there was one, Herbert. As slimy, sneaking, cadging, self-satisfied a piece
of human trash as you’d meet in a month of Sundays. But Mrs. Gotobed thought
he was the cat’s whiskers. He was always making it difficult for Chris. Chris
had once talked her mother into letting her have dancing lessons—though
what you wanted dancing lessons for, Meg couldn’t think: you’d only to watch
the others hopping around for a little and you’d got the general idea: after
that it was only practice—but when Herbert had heard about it he had
quickly put a stop to anything like that. They couldn’t afford it, he
said—they never could afford anything unless Herbert wanted
it—and besides, dancing was a light thing, and the Lord wouldn’t
approve. Herbert always knew what the Lord would like. He not only stopped
the dancing lesson idea but he found some way of getting the money Chris had
saved and that she had hoped her mother would make up to the required amount.
He had pointed out how selfish it was of Chris to save money for her own ends
when their mother was so poorly. He talked such a lot about their mother’s
bad health that Mrs. Gotobed began to feel very poorly indeed, and took to
her bed. And Herbert helped eat the delicacies that Chris bought. And Herbert
went with his mother for four days to Skegness because Chris couldn’t leave
the factory and it just happened that this was one of the numerous occasions
when Herbert was without a job.