name was Stannaway?”
“I don’t know. A sort of desire to get away from the fortune side of things. I hadn’t been much ornament to the name, anyhow. And in my mind I always thought of myself as Stannaway.”
“All right. Go on.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. She offered me hospitality. Told me she was alone, but that—well, that I’d be just a guest. I said wasn’t she taking a chance. She said, ‘Yes, but I’ve taken them all my life and it’s worked out pretty well, so far.’ It seemed an awkward arrangement to me, but it turned out just the opposite. She was right about it. It made things very easy, just accepting each other. In a way (it was queer, but it was like that) it was as if we had known each other for years. If we had had to start at scratch and work up, it would have taken us weeks to get to the same stage. We liked each other a lot. I don’t mean sentimentally, although she was stunning to look at; I mean I thought her grand. I had no clothes for the next morning, but I spent that day in a bathing suit and a dressing-gown that someone had left. And on Monday Mrs. Pitts came in to my room and said, ‘Your suit-case, sir,’ and dumped a case I’d never seen before in the middle of the floor. It had a complete new outfit in it—tweed coat and flannels, socks, shirts, everything. From a place in Canterbury. The suit-case was old, and had a label with my name on it. She had even remembered my name. Well, I can’t describe to you what I felt about these things. You see, it was the first time for years that anyone had given me anything. With the crowd it was take, take, all the time. ‘Bobby’ll pay.’ ‘Bobby’ll lend his car.’ They never thought of me at all. I don’t think they ever stopped to look at me. Anyhow, those clothes sort of broke me up. I’d have died for her. She laughed when she saw me in them—they were reach-me-downs, of course, but they fitted quite well—and said: ‘Not exactly Bruton Street, but they’ll do. Don’t say I can’t size a man up.’ So we settled down to having a good time together, just lazing around, reading, talking, swimming, cooking when Mrs. Pitts wasn’t there. I put out of my head what was going to happen after. She had said that in about ten days she’d have to leave the cottage. I tried to go after the first day, out of politeness, but she wouldn’t let me. And after that I didn’t try. That’s how I came to be staying there, and that’s how I didn’t know her name.” He drew in his breath in a sharp sigh as he sat back. “Now I know how these psycho-analysts make money. It’s a long time since I enjoyed anything like telling you all about myself.”
Grant smiled involuntarily. There was an engaging childlikeness about the boy.
Then he shook himself mentally, like a dog coming out of water.
Charm. The most insidious weapon in all the human armoury. And here it was, being exploited under his nose. He considered the good-natured feckless face dispassionately. He had known at least one murderer who had had that type of good looks; blue-eyed, amiable, harmless; and he had buried his dismembered fiancée in an ash-pit. Tisdall’s eyes were of that particular warm opaque blue which Grant had noted so often in men to whom the society of women was a necessity of existence. Mother’s darlings had those eyes; so, sometimes, had womanizers.
Well, presently he would check up on Tisdall. Meanwhile—
“Do you ask me to believe that in your four days together you had no suspicion at all of Miss Clay’s identity?” he asked, marking time until he could bring Tisdall unsuspecting to the crucial matter.
“I suspected that she was an actress. Partly from things she said, but mostly because there were such a lot of stage and film magazines in the house. I asked her about it once, but she said: ‘No names, no pack drill. It’s a good motto, Robin. Don’t forget.’ ”
“I see. Did the outfit Miss Clay bought for you include an overcoat?”
“No. A mackintosh. I had a coat.”
“You were wearing a coat over your evening things?”
“Yes. It had been drizzling when we set out for dinner—the crowd and I, I mean.”
“And you still have that coat?”
“No. It was stolen from the car one day when we were over at Dymchurch.” His eyes grew alarmed suddenly. “Why? What has the coat got to do with it?”
“Was it dark- or light-coloured?”
“Dark, of course. A sort of grey-black. Why?”
“Did you report its loss?”
“No, neither of us wanted attention called to us. What has it—”
“Just tell me about Thursday morning, will you?” The face opposite him was steadily losing its ingenuousness and becoming wary and inimical again. “I understand that you didn’t go with Miss Clay to swim. Is that right?”
“Yes. But I awoke almost as soon as she had gone—”
“How do you know when she went if you were asleep?”
“Because it was still only six. She couldn’t have been gone long. And Mrs. Pitts said afterwards that I had followed down the road on her heels.”
“I see. And in the hour and a half—roughly—between your getting up and the finding of Miss Clay’s body you walked to the Gap, stole the car, drove it in the direction of Canterbury, regretted what you had done, came back, and found that Miss Clay had been drowned. Is that a complete record of your actions?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“If you felt so grateful to Miss Clay, it was surely an extraordinary thing to do.”
“Extraordinary isn’t the word at all. Even yet I can’t believe I did it.”
“You are quite sure that you didn’t enter the water that morning?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why?”
“When was your last swim? Previous to Thursday morning, I mean?”
“Noon on Wednesday.”
“And yet your swimming suit was soaking wet on Thursday morning.”
“How do you know that! Yes, it was. But not with salt water. It had been spread to dry on the roof below my window, and when I was dressing on Thursday morning I noticed that the birds in the tree—an apple tree hangs over that gable—had made too free with it. So I washed it in the water I had been washing in.”
“You didn’t put it out to dry again, though, apparently?”
“After what happened the last time? No! I put it on the towel rail. For God’s sake, Inspector, tell me what all this has to do with Chris’s death? Can’t you see that questions you can’t see the reason of are torture? I’ve had about all I can stand. The inquest this morning was the last straw. Everyone describing how they found her. Talking about ‘the body,’ when all the time it was Chris. Chris! And now all this mystery and suspicion. If there was anything not straightforward about her drowning, what has my coat got to do with it, anyway?”
“Because this was found entangled in her hair.”
Grant opened a cardboard box on the table and exhibited a black button of the kind used for men’s coats. It had been torn from its proper place, the worn threads of its attachment still forming a ragged “neck.” And round
