All Fall Down

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ellis stood in the doorway of Joan Baildon’s room, fingering his chin.

He crossed to the window, which was open top and bottom, pulled aside the flimsy white curtains that swayed gently in and out with the breeze, stuck his head out, and made sure that he could see the little drive. He withdrew his head, propped the door open with a large book, and stood by the foot of the bed, again fingering his chin.

Then, with almost unbelievable quickness, he began his search. First he tried the chest of drawers. Delicately, without deranging them, he ran his fingers through the piles of cheap, mended underwear, feeling for the bundle which, he was sure, was stowed away somewhere in the room.

Three minutes took him through the chest of drawers. There was no letters there. Joan had no desk. Her wardrobe held nothing but a few frocks. There were some boxes on top of it: they looked dirty. Ellis hesitated, then, with a fat grimace, reserved them for the end.

Matt’s books were everywhere. The child had one bookcase of her own, however. Ellis’s eyes brightened: each row of books was double. The two top rows were small, and, from his point of view, improbable. The bottom rows were tall. He pulled out a few books. No, there were books behind. Another few—ah! the light fell dimly on the brown woodwork of a box.

Ellis pulled away the books, and lifted the box out to the light of day. It was shaped like the top of a small desk, old and scarred, with a lock of inlaid mother-o’-pearl. Ellis shook the box. It was heavy, and the contents slithered about smoothly.

He put it on the bed, pulled out a fat knife with a multiplicity of gadgets, selected one, fiddled delicately at the lock, and in less than a minute had it open. The contents, as he expected, were letters, some done up in bundles, some singly, and one or two still in their original envelopes. One of them, postmarked Frinton and dated from years earlier, came from the tenor of a pierrot troupe, in answer to a youthful letter of admiration. Another was from an author, another from the comedian of a pantomime. This one surprised him. Boys, more often than girls, admire low comedians.

Ellis flipped the single letters over quickly, and examined the bundles. He gave a grunt of satisfaction. The fattest of them was labelled “E.” Two others, marked respectively “M” and “G,” he discarded after the briefest examination. They came from school friends. He picked up a long envelope marked “D,” and tipped out its contents. They came from Rattray; there was no doubt about that. The first two or three began “Dear Miss Baildon”; one started off without addressing her, and the three last said “My Dears”: but that was all that Ellis got from them. Without exception, they were short notes cancelling lessons or changing the hour. The last, referring to the vagaries of “she,” showed that the two correspondents had discussed Ursula Rattray with some freedom: but the letters told Ellis far less than he knew already.

He replaced them in the box, and started on the packet labelled “E.” These were far more promising, and in a couple of minutes Ellis was absorbed. He read fast, skipping, but missing nothing essential. By degrees a comical expression of disgust grew on his face. Impatient exclamations came from him, clickings of the tongue, explosions of breath: his nose wrinkled as at an unpleasant smell, and the exclamations crystallised into epithets discreditable to Eunice Caunter.

Then, as he picked up yet another letter from the pile, his whole body stiffened into attention. He turned the page, took a deep breath, read on, and burst into a gasp of protest.

“Oh no. No. This is too much.”

He set the letter aside, and hurried through the rest. After he had finished, he sat for a few minutes looking at nothing: then he put all the letters together, with the exception of the one he had set aside, which he pocketed. He replaced the band, put the letters back in the box, locked it, and restored it to its place, taking care not to move the dust on top of the books. Joan had chosen a good hiding-place, obvious to an experienced searcher, but perfect for her purpose. The last things likely to attract Matt’s attention would be the Girls’ Annuals and Bumper Books, the relics of his daughter’s earlier years.

He looked round the room with a grimace of pity, and went downstairs. Gilkison was still at work, proceeding at the same unhurried pace. Not till Ellis stood in front of him and grunted did he take any notice of his arrival. Even then, he did not look up.

“Well,” he said. “How’s the dirty work?”

“Very dirty.”

Ellis paused expectantly. Then, as Gilkison said nothing, he went on:

“There’s a fat bunch of letters from that wench of yours.”

Gilkison turned over a flyleaf, and made a note in his book.

“What wench?”

“That sexy piece with the moustache. The one you got so excited about. The schoolmistress. I don’t think much of your taste, Gilk. Not a nice girl. Not a nice girl at all.”

“I suppose this sort of thing amuses you.”

“It doesn’t amuse me a bit. She’s no good. She’s damn’ bad for that poor girl. You ought to see those letters. All intense and gooey and squarmy—if they’re no worse.”

Gilkison looked up.

“Are you suggesting——?”

“Emotional vampirism. The woman has no drama in her life, so she vamps up her personal relationships. Bad enough among adults, but damnable with a child. Hitting below the belt. Nagging. Doing the ‘don’t you love me’ stuff. No wonder there’s all that strain—particularly if Joan’s fond of the creature.”

“All very interesting, I’m sure,” Gilkison commented acidly, “but I can’t see that it advances you very far.”

“Can’t you though. What do you say to this?”

He pulled out the letter from his pocket, and began to read.

“ ‘Darling Joanikins, I am longing to get my arms around you and have a real good talk.’ There—I thought that would get you. Bad luck, Gilk. She loves another.”

“Really, Ellis. Sometimes you are quite insufferable.”

“Shut up. I’ll miss out a page or two, in deference to your feelings. Here we are. ‘Joanie dearest—when shall I kill your father for you? Honestly, it seems the only thing I can do for you, now!’ (Got the force of that ‘now’? Now that Rattray is on the job.) ‘I’ve often planned how I’d do it. I’d go in, as bold as brass, one day when you’re both out, and he’s sitting in his room reading. He’ll be so deep in his book, he’ll never hear me. Shall I hit him over the head from behind, with a mallet or a hammer? Perhaps that would be messy, and I can’t bear blood. And he’d have horrid blood. No’—listen to this, Gilk—‘perhaps it would be better to strangle him in his muffler. One would only have to get the two ends, and pull, and pull, and pull. I’d crouch down, so as not to pull the chair over backwards. It would be very quick, I feel sure. Then I’d push over all that case of books on top of him, and he’d be so crushed and buried that everyone would think that was what had killed him. Then I’d slip out by the back way, and no one would know, and you and your mother would come back and find yourselves free, free for always.”

He looked up.

“Now then. What do you think of that?”

If his aim had been to impress Gilkison, he had certainly succeeded. The bookseller’s pale face was long with concern.

“But, good heavens, Ellis! This is serious.”

“It is. Damn’ serious.”

“Do you believe she did it?”

“Not she. But”—he tapped the letter—“this wouldn’t do her any good with a jury. Remember Mrs. Thompson—Thompson and Bywaters? It’s a dangerous letter, all right. Old Bradstreet won’t half look solemn at it. And, if we put it in at the inquest——”

“Ellis. I don’t understand you. If you don’t believe she did it, what are you——”

“The serious part of this letter, my good fool, is its possible effect on Joan. Now, do you see?”

“Good God, Ellis. You mean, it might have put it into her head?”

“Never mind about that. It’d be quite bad enough to think that her friend actually did it. Carried out the plan. A terrible letter to have in one’s possession, now that Matt’s dead.”

“When was it written?”

“Don’t know. Fool of a girl writes ‘Tuesday’ and things like that on her letters. It’s since Rattray began coaching Joan—we get that from the ‘now’: it can’t mean anything else, that I can see—and he’s told us that was ten months ago.”

“Joan may have forgotten it, then.”

“Would you forget a letter like that—from someone you thought a lot of—in view of what’s happened?”

“Has she been at the letters, since it happened? She might, to refresh her memory.”

“ ‘Refresh’ is good. She might, but I don’t think she would. I saw no sign of it, anyway.”

“What will she do, if she goes to them, and finds the letter isn’t there?”

“That we shall have to see. I mean to keep a pretty close watch on Joan Baildon. Poor child! what a load to lay on her.”

He walked over to the window, and looked out.

“How much longer are you going to be grubbing about here? I want my tea.”

“I’ll come and have some with you. But I must come back here again afterwards. You don’t realise what a lot I have to get through.”

“You’re not going to try to value them all?”

“Not this time. But I want to check over the most important items, and get an idea of the extent of the library.”

“How many books had the old devil got?”

“Between thirteen and fourteen thousand, I should think.”

“God. That ought to fetch some money for those two. Gilk?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like this case.”

“I can understand that.”

“One thing we’ve got now, anyway.”

“What?”

“Why those two—Rattray and your bit of skirt—are so cagey about each other. They’re jealous as hell.”

“Over Joan, do you mean?”

“Yes. Each goes all tense when the other’s mentioned. Rattray, the professional Christian, tries to be fair, but his foot stops tapping. The girl doesn’t try to be fair. She gets at Joan in her letters.”

“Aren’t you reading a lot into the one word ‘now’?”

“I tell you, she keeps harping on it. Go upstairs and read for yourself.”

Gilkison drew himself together with a fastidious shudder.

“No thanks. I’m quite content to take your word for it.”

“A pretty kettle of fish. I don’t like it; but it’s damned interesting. Come on; let’s get our tea.”