All Fall Down

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After lunch, Ellis announced his intention of going to call upon Mrs. Baildon’s sister. Mr. Pawle, the vicar, and Mrs. Exworthy he had handed over to Bradstreet, alleging his own generosity. Bradstreet smiled placidly, and was not deceived.

Once more Gilkison petitioned to be allowed to get to work upon the books. He expressed himself with such heat that Ellis was obliged to soothe him and tell him that he should start that same afternoon, as soon as this last visit was over.

“You look so respectable, Gilk. You inspire such confidence. You’ve no idea what a help you are to me.”

Gilkison refused to rise. He complained again when they set out only twenty minutes after lunch, and received a homily upon laziness. By the time they reached their goal, his manner was one of dignified reserve.

Ellis chuckled to himself. He enjoyed baiting the precise and old-maidish side of Gilkison; it was one of the many pleasures that were built into the strong affection between them. Even better, he loved to exasperate Gilkison into attacking him. The venom and direction of the darts that then came in showers delighted him and ministered to his vanity. And, all the time, he knew that Gilkison’s pique was superficial only, and that he, too, recognised and enjoyed the game.

“He’s like an aunt I had,” Ellis once said of him. “We used to rag her like demons, and she adored it. When we got tired, she’d start to trail her coat and attract our attention till we began again.”

Thoughts of an aunt seemed appropriate as they walked up Martha Attwill’s path: but Joan Baildon’s aunt proved to be not at all like Ellis’s.

They did not see her at first. The two-storey cottage of brown stone had in front of it a little porch and conservatory combined. Both the glass door and the inner door stood wide. A stiff bell, of the kind that one turns like a key, set up a jangling just inside the door, so loud as to startle them.

“Yes?”

Ellis spun round. He could not tell where the voice came from.

“Hallo, then?”

They looked back into the small garden, to their left, and saw a plump little woman sitting in the shade of an arbour. In front of her gleamed a white enamel basin.

“Oh, there you are.”

Ellis plunged across to her, Gilkison rather nervously following.

“Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

Martha Attwill was small, dark, plump, and smiling. She bore a likeness to her sister which one saw immediately, and immediately dismissed; for no two expressions could have been more unlike. This woman—she might have been fifty-five or sixty—radiated a steady and cheerful confidence. She had come to terms with life, found it neither good nor bad, and cared for nobody.

She was shelling peas: the basin was on her lap. Ellis introduced Gilkison and himself.

“Sit down,” she said. “I was wondering how long it’d be before you came. There’s room for one here, but the end’s rickety. I wouldn’t risk it. Try the stool.”

“We can’t sit idle. Let me get another basin. Two, in fact. Even Gilk can shell peas.”

“Don’t mind him,” she said to Gilkison.

Ellis stood over her.

“Where are the basins? Tell me, and I’ll find ’em.”

“There’s only one as I’ll trust you with. But you can get a basket if you like. That is, if you want to. There’s no compulsion.”

“I’ll have the basin, and Gilk shall have the basket. He can’t bear to be left out of things. It makes him sulky.”

“Basket’s hanging up behind the door in the kitchen. Basin’s under the sink in the scullery.”

“I’ll get ’em.”

“He’ll bring something else,” said Miss Attwill placidly to Gilkison. “Men always do. I let a chap lay the table for supper last week, and he put things on it I hadn’t seen for years. Forgotten I had them in the house. I don’t know how he found them. ’Tis a mystery to me.”

Gilkison made an embarrassed sound. He was saved from thinking of a reply by a burst of tenor carolling from within.

“Esultate! Esultate!” cried the voice; and after a few moments Ellis emerged, brandishing a basket and a basin.

“Here we are, auntie. Got ’em in one.”

“Cheeky toad,” Miss Attwill said contentedly. Ellis drew the stool close to her feet, sat on it, considered the basin, frowned, set it on the ground between his feet, reached forward and grabbed a mass of the bright green pods, and set to work. Self consciously, Gilkison rose, possessed himself of the basket, and began.

For a time there was no sound but the methodical slitting of the pods, and the tinkle of the peas on the metal of Ellis’s basin. Pigeons were cooing intermittently somewhere behind the house. To Gilkison the whole scene seemed unreal. Ellis was working away as if he had known the garden and the little woman all his life.

“Queer business, this, auntie,” Ellis said suddenly.

“H’hm.”

He reached forward for more pods.

“Think it was an accident?”

She selected a large pod, and looked at it.

“It ought to be.”

“For all our sakes. But d’you think it was?”

There was a short pause, while she cleared the pod, and dropped it.

“No,” she said, without emphasis.

“That’s what I feel. At the same time, I can’t see who. And, even if I could see who, I can’t see why—at that time.”

“If anyone was minded to kill Matt, they’d have done it long ago. At least, I would have, if’t had been me.”

Ellis nodded. “There are a good many questions I can’t very well ask you.”

“You can ask ’em all right. I don’t say I shall answer.”

“The strongest argument in favour of those two is what you’ve just said. If they wanted to bump him off, why wait till now? Especially when they’ve had such excellent opportunities before.”

A pea fell outside the basin. He retrieved it surreptitiously, brushed it on his sleeve, and dropped it in with the rest. Miss Attwill’s eyes twinkled, but she said nothing.

“I want to see that girl clear of all this, and launched at Oxford,” Ellis went on. “That’s one reason why I’ve come to you.”

“ ’Twill be a good day for her when she gets away from West Nattering.”

“I don’t think they’re in any real danger, those two, whatever happens.” He spoke as if he were thinking aloud. “The coroner’s jury will see to that. Still, we want something stronger. We don’t want the girl followed by whispers in years to come.”

“People do talk,” Miss Attwill agreed.

“And she’d be just the one to magnify it, and let it prey on her.”

“She does take things hard. But there, you can’t blame her.”

“It strikes me, auntie, there’s been far too much on those young shoulders.”

“Ah!” For the first time, Miss Attwill’s casual tone hardened. “I’ve spoken my mind about it, more than once.”

“It’s a mercy she’s had you to turn to. To confide in.”

“She don’t say much. I don’t encourage her to. I just set her to help me with some job, and be a child again. If she hasn’t got her nose in some old book. I don’t hold with so much bookwork, for a young girl.”

“Nor do I. But it’s her one way of escape, poor child.”

“The only reason I put up with it. Even so, I’ve often made her shut the books. ‘That’s enough, child,’ I’ve said to her. And she was often glad to obey me.”

“Work. Home. Eyes. Enough in all conscience. But there’s more. What else is there, auntie?”

“Ah,” she said, and made no move to answer him. He stopped shelling the peas, and looked at her.

“Help bought at a price,” he conjectured.

Miss Attwill’s mouth tightened.

“You’re not going to get any gossip out of me,” she said, “nor no scandal-mongering neither.”

“You don’t approve, though,” Ellis said, watching her through half-closed eyes, and rocking two and fro on the stool.

“What I think’s none of your business. Get on with your work, man, and leave me do mine.”

Ellis attacked the peas again.

“That’s all right, auntie,” he said cheerfully. “We understand one another, you and I.”

“Cheeky toad.” She was mollified.

For a while they were silent. The noise of the pigeons and the rhythmical slitting of the pods were beginning to hypnotise Gilkison. He still could not believe in the scene at all. The other two had an understanding out of his reach, He could see it, but could not see how they had arrived at it.

“Yes,” Ellis said, looking around him. “A good place for the child to come. Shouldn’t be surprised if this is what’s kept her sane.”

“ ’Tis restful, here in the garden.”

“And in the parlour. Summer and winter. I could just see it, of a winter evening, with the fire twinkling on the warming pans and on that Spanish mahogany sideboard.”

“Who told you you might go in there?”

“Only a peep, auntie. Only a peep. I couldn’t resist it.”

“Snooping round.”

“My trade, auntie. My horrid trade.”

“And your pleasure. Don’t tell me.”

“I’m interested in my fellow creatures. Not only to their harm. That’s only an accident. A melancholy accident of my trade. Even then, I’m interested in the innocent more than in the guilty. Someone’s suffered. Someone’s been the victim. Someone’s blood cries aloud. I think of them, auntie.”

“Yes. There’s that side to it. But you’d be a snooper, even if you weren’t paid for it.”

“I said, I’m interested in my fellow creatures.’

“Oh, you’re a great hero, I’m sure. There. That’s the lot.”

“Let me carry ’em in for you, auntie.”

“Do what you like. Have you got all you came for?”

She eyed him ironically. He grinned, unabashed.

“Not quite. I was going to ask you if you’d be a darling and invite those two poor creatures down here for a bit to-day. It’ll be so good for them to get away from the house.”

“And give you a chance to poke around. Nosey Parker.”

“I hadn’t only that in mind. I was genuinely thinking of them.”

“Drat the man,” said Miss Attwill. “He talks as if no one had any thought but him. If you want to know, I’ve asked ’em down here for the whole evening. The peas are for them. Did you reckon I was going to eat ’em all myself? I’ve asked ’em for tea and supper. That’s why you’ll have to go. I must start making ready. I haven’t enough for you two as well.”

“Auntie.” Ellis embraced her. “You’re an angel. You think of everything.”

“Get out with you,” Miss Attwill exclaimed. “I suppose you think nobody can do the right thing without you come and tell ’em.”

“When I want putting right, auntie, I’ll come to you.”

She turned to Gilkison.

“What do you think of it all?” she asked. “You haven’t said aught yet.”

“He doesn’t get the chance,” said Ellis. “You and I do all the talking.”

“Cheeky toad. I pity you,” she said to Gilkison, “if you have to be with him all day.”

“Heaven forbid,” Gilkison said. “We only meet occasionally.”

“You don’t work with him, then?”

Ellis cut in and explained his friend’s job and errand. She nodded, and became grave.

“See to them,” she said. “Annie’s so bitter against the books, she might do something silly just to get rid of them.”

“Gilk will look after her. He’s a romantic soul. The care of the widow and the fatherless is just his line. Besides, he knows about books. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he does.”

She gave Ellis a slap.

“You leave him alone. He’s got better manners than you.”

“That’s what my wife always says.”

“For the good Lord’s sake! Are you married?”

“Triumphantly.”

“Where’s your wife?”

“She doesn’t accompany me on my professional trips.”

“You said this was a holiday.”

“Not to you. The subject was never mentioned. Aha! No time for gossip. Got you there, auntie.”

“Don’t take your wife on holidays, eh? Well—I guess she’s just as glad. Any woman’d want a holiday from your tongue.”

“She is on holiday, as it happens. Or I wouldn’t be here. Gilk knew I was at a loose end, so he asked me to come with him.”

“Well. Do something useful, now you are here.”

She came with them to the gate.

“Auntie. Why did your sister marry Matt?”

She looked past him at the trees, heavy in the splendour of their new foliage.

“Don’t ask me. Why does a woman ever marry a man?”

“Dozens of reasons, auntie. Literally, dozens. Why did Kathleen ever marry me? Not for my golden locks. Not for my blue eyes. If you can believe her, it was because she couldn’t bear to see all my things in such a mess, and because she liked the silly way my hair sticks up at the back. Like a duck’s bottom. Her words, not mine.”

He cocked his head on one side.

“I don’t expect your sister married Matt because he looked like any part of a duck.”

Miss Attwill bent down, and tweaked up a tiny weed from the flower bed.

“Annie was always a fool, to my way of thinking. She slaved for father——”

“She’s younger than you.”

“Meaning, why didn’t I? I wouldn’t stand it. I cleared out, and made a home for myself.”

“Leaving her to do the job.”

“She could have cleared out, same as I did.”

“Not she.”

“She could, if she’d had the guts.”

“But she hadn’t.”

“If she liked to stay, it was her lookout. Then father died, and what does she go and do but marry a man that was worse.”

“She needed it, by then. Tyranny. Someone to boss her.”

“You can’t make out I’m responsible for it,” Miss Attwill said, looking at him with amusement, “so you needn’t try.”

“You’ve given me a good point in her favour, anyway, auntie. She’s all the less likely to have bumped Matt off. That’s what I really wanted. Thank you.”

“Liar,” said Miss Attwill cheerfully. “Get out with you.”