A Shilling For Candles – Josephine Tey

Description

Inspector Grant returns…

Beneath the sea cliffs of the south coast, suicides are a sad but common fact. Yet even the hardened coastguard knows something is unusually wrong when the beautiful young film actress Christine Clay is found dead on the beach one morning. Suspicion fixes on Robert Tisdall, a destitute young man she had met on her way to Kent and impulsively invited to join her. Tisdall goes on the run, and receives unexpected assistance from Erica Burgoyne, the daughter of the local chief constable.

Inspector Grant is on the case and his probe produces several other suspects, including a songwriter rumoured to be Christine’s lover, who was in Kent on the morning in question and is known to have lied about his movements, and Christine’s estranged brother, whom she cut off in her will with nothing but “a shilling for candles”.

The novel inspired the 1937 Alfred Hitchcock film Young and Innocent.