“Just a moment. You might explain to a dullard just why these five pennies should have been important.”
“They were the end of a fortune, you see. Thirty thousand. I inherited it from my uncle. My mother’s brother. My real name is Stannaway, but Uncle Tom asked that I should take his name with the money. I didn’t mind. The Tisdalls were a much better lot than the Stannaways, anyhow. Stamina and ballast and all that. If I’d been a Tisdall I wouldn’t be broke now, but I’m nearly all Stannaway. I’ve been the perfect fool, the complete Awful Warning. I was in an architect’s office when I inherited the money, living in rooms and just making do; and it went to my head to have what seemed more than I could ever spend. I gave up my job and went to see all the places I’d wanted to see and never hoped to. New York and Hollywood and Budapest and Rome and Capri and God knows where else. I came back to London with about two thousand, meaning to bank it and get a job. It would have been easy enough two years before—I mean, to bank the money. I hadn’t anyone to help spend it then. But in those two years I had gathered a lot of friends all over the world, and there were never less than a dozen of them in London at the same time. So I woke up one morning to find that I was down to my last hundred. It was a bit of a shock. Like cold water. I sat down and thought for the first time for two years. I had the choice of two things: sponging—you can live in luxury anywhere in the world’s capitals for six months if you’re a good sponger: I know; I supported dozens of that sort—and disappearing. Disappearing seemed easier. I could drop out quite easily. People would just say, ‘Where’s Bobby Tisdall these days?’ and they’d just take it for granted that I was in some of the other corners of the world where their sort went, and that they’d run into me one of these days. I was supposed to be suffocatingly rich, you see, and it was easier to drop out and leave them thinking of me like that than to stay and be laughed at when the truth began to dawn on them. I paid my bills, and that left me with fifty-seven pounds. I thought I’d have one last gamble then, and see if I could pick up enough to start me off on the new level. So I had thirty pounds—fifteen each way; that’s the bit of Tisdall in me—on Red Rowan in the Eclipse. He finished fifth. Twenty-odd pounds isn’t enough to start anything except a barrow. There was nothing for it but tramping. I wasn’t much put out at the thought of tramping—it would be a change—but you can’t tramp with twenty-seven pounds in the bank, so I decided to blue it all in one grand last night. I promised myself that I’d finish up without a penny in my pocket. Then I’d pawn my evening things for some suitable clothes and hit the road. What I hadn’t reckoned with was that you can’t pawn things in the west-end on a Saturday midnight. And you can’t take to the road in evening things without being conspicuous. So I was standing there, as I said, feeling resentful about these five pennies and wondering what I was to do about my clothes and a place to sleep. I was standing by the traffic lights at the Aldwych, just before you turn round into Lancaster Place, when a car was pulled up by the red lights. Chris was in it, alone—”
“Chris?”
“I didn’t know her name, then. She looked at me for a little. The street was very quiet. Just us two. And we were so close that it seemed natural when she smiled and said, ‘Take you anywhere, mister?’ I said: ‘Yes. Land’s End.’ She said: ‘A bit off my route. Chatham, Faversham, Canterbury, and points east?’ Well, it was one solution. I couldn’t go on standing there, and I couldn’t think of a water-tight tale that would get me a bed in a friend’s house. Besides, I felt far away from all that crowd already. So I got in without thinking much about it. She was charming to me. I didn’t tell her all I’m telling you, but she soon found out I was broke to the wide. I began to explain, but she said: ‘All right, I don’t want to know. Let’s accept each other on face value. You’re Robin and I’m Chris.’ I’d told her my name was Robert Stannaway, and without knowing it she used my family pet name. The crowd called me Bobby. It was sort of comforting to hear someone call me Robin again.”
“Why did you say your 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