Free A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey

necessary to check the movements of everyone who knew
her, irrespective of persons or probabilities. Now, you told the sergeant of
the County police force, when you talked to him on Thursday, that you had
spent the night in a hotel at Sandwich. When this was checked in the ordinary
course it was found that you hadn’t stayed there.”
    Harmer fumbled among the music, without looking up.
    “Where did you stay, Mr. Harmer?”
    Harmer looked up with a small laugh. “You know,” he said, “it’s pretty
funny at that! Charming gentleman calls in a perfectly friendly way about
breakfast time, apologizing for disturbing you and hopes he isn’t going to be
a trouble to you but he’s an inspector of police and would you be so very
kind as to give some information because last time your information wasn’t as
accurate as it might have been. It’s lovely, that’s what it is. And you get
results with it, too. Perhaps they just break down and sob, on account of all
the friendliness. Pie like mother made. What I’d like to know is if that
method goes in Pimlico or if you keep it for Park Lane.”
    “What I would like to know is where you stayed last Wednesday night, Mr.
Harmer.”
    “The Mr., too, I guess that’s Park Lane as well. In fact, if you’d been
talking to the Jason of ten years back, you’d have had me to the station and
scared hell out of me just like the cops of any other country. They’re all
the same; dough worshippers.”
    “I haven’t your experience of the world’s police forces, I’m afraid, Mr.
Harmer.”
    Harmer grinned. “Stung you! A limey’s got to be plenty stung before he’s
rude-polite like that. Don’t get me wrong, though, Inspector. There aren’t
any police brands on me. As for last Wednesday night, I spent it in my
car.”
    “You mean you didn’t go to bed at all?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “And where was the car?”
    “In a lane with hedges as high as houses each side, parked on the grass
verge. An awful lot of space goes to waste in England in these verges. The
ones in that lane were about forty feet wide.”
    “And you say you slept in the car? Have you someone who can bear witness
to that?”
    “No. It wasn’t that kind of park. I was just sleepy and lost and couldn’t
be bothered going any further.”
    “Lost! In the east of Kent!”
    “Yes, anywhere in Kent, if it comes to that. Have you ever tried to find a
village in England after dark? Night in the desert is nothing to it. You see
a sign at last that says Whatsit two and a half miles and you think: Good old
Whatsit! Nearly there! Hurrah for England and signposts! And then half a mile
on you come to a place where three ways fork, and there’s a nice tidy
signpost on the little bit of green in the middle and every blame one of that
signpost’s arms has got at least three names on it, but do you think one of
them mentions Whatsit? Oh, no! That would make it far too easy! So you read
‘em all several times and hope someone’ll come past before you have to
decide, but no one comes. Last person passed there a week last Tuesday. No
houses; nothing but fields, and an advertisement for a circus that was there
the previous April. So you take one of the three roads, and after passing two
more signposts that don’t take any notice of Whatsit, you come to one that
says Whatsit, six and three-quarters. So you start off all over again, four
miles to the bad, as it were, and it happens all over again. And again! And
by the time Whatsit has done that on you half a dozen times, you don’t care
what happens as long as you can stop driving around corners and go to sleep.
So I just stopped where I was and went to sleep. It was too late to drop in
on Chris by that time, anyway.”
    “But not too late to get a bed at an inn.”
    “Not if you know where an inn is. ‘Sides, judging by some of the inns I’ve
seen here, I’d just as soon sleep in the car.”
    “You grow a heavy