All Fall Down

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After tea, Gilkison returned to his work, and Ellis went up to the station to see how Bradstreet was getting on.

The Inspector had not come back, so Ellis engaged in a long conversation with the sergeant, who, to his unbounded delight, turned out to be a gramophone enthusiast. When Bradstreet returned, he found them deep in a discussion of West Country singers, the general paucity of their records, and the sad fact that so few were still listed in the catalogues.

“Charles Saunders,” lamented the Sergeant. “I ’eard ’im frequent. A lovely singer: and not a record left. I’ve never even yerd one.”

“I have one,” said Ellis, “but only one.”

“Frank Webster. There was a brave tenor, now: and I ’aven’t but the one record of ’im.”

“I heard him with Tetrazzini, ’way back. I was only a boy.”

The Sergeant saw Bradstreet, and rose respectfully. Ellis looked up.

“Hallo, Bradstreet. Well, Sergeant—you must come and hear some of my records, when you’re next in town. Bradstreet—your sergeant is a very intelligent man. He collects records, and has all kinds of sound ideas. Promote him at once.”

The Sergeant reddened to an incredible colour. Bradstreet smiled easily.

“All right. Go off and get some tea.”

“Well, you old devil,” said Ellis, as soon as they were alone. “How did it go?”

“Pretty much as you expected, I reckon, or you wouldn’t have asked me to do it.”

“Bradders! Bradders! I never thought to hear you speak such bitter words.”

Bradstreet fished in his pocket, produced a large spectacle case, and put the glasses on his nose. He took out his notebook, licked his thumb, and turned the pages. Ellis watched him with affectionate delight.

“Mr. Pawle had nothing, except that he confirmed the bit about handing the paper over the wall. He never posted any letter for the old man.

“Stevens said the girl came in for half a pound of petty—what d’you call ’em—biscuits: showed me the order.

“The vicar had nothing. He looked in once when Matt was ill, but only for a short time; and he posted no letters.

“Miss Jenkinson said that Mrs. Baildon was with her for upwards of half an hour. She isn’t positive of the time, but knows Mrs. Baildon left before four, because she pressed her to stay for tea, which she has round about four or ten past.” He looked up. “Did you get confirmation of Mrs. Baildon’s statement from Miss Attwill?”

Ellis grinned.

“I got a lot from Miss Attwill, but not that.”

“You mean she didn’t confirm it?”

“I didn’t trouble to ask her. She’s heart and soul for those two. She’d swear anything to shield ’em. As good as told me so. Don’t worry about that. We can clear it up, if we want to.”

Bradstreet once more consulted his notebook.

“Old Exworthy. She gave me sauce to start with, so I had to scare her a bit. I’m pretty sure she didn’t post anything to Nelder.”

“A good afternoon’s work, Bradders. Very good.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Bradstreet shut his notebook and put it away. “Did you get anything?”

“I got plenty. Whether it’s any good is another matter.”

He told Bradstreet of his interviews, and of the search in Joan’s bedroom, and finally handed him Eunice Caunter’s letter.

Bradstreet read it slowly. His face became grave.

“Ah,” he said. “A very awkward letter. Very awkward indeed.”

“Shall we put it in at the inquest?”

The Inspector rubbed his moustache. He gave Ellis a quick glance, and was met with a broad grin.

“All right, Bradders, I shan’t cry, if you crab my wonderful, wonderful find. You are a lamb.”

Relief beamed over Bradstreet’s face. As often in moments of feeling, his speech broadened.

“I was going to say, I don’t reckon ’twould be really fair, without we were minded to follow it up.”

Ellis shook his head decisively. “She didn’t do it. But the letter has a nasty follow up. More than one, in fact.”

“Why I don’t think we ought to put it in,” Bradstreet continued, following the line of his thought, “she’s not too well liked hereabouts, isn’t Miss Caunter, and the jury, being anxious to clear the Baildons, might read more into that letter than what you or I would.”

“There’s another reason, you old ruffian.” Ellis pointed at him. “You wouldn’t want to put it in, no matter how much the village loved Miss Caunter. People might think it had put ideas into someone’s head. I know you can trust your local jury, but——”

“I don’t think you ought to say that,” Bradstreet protested. “If I thought it was my duty to put the letter in, I’d put it in. But, as things are——”

“I know you would, you old idiot. But you wouldn’t want to. Which—please—is all I said. Get out, man! Don’t you dare to take umbrage at me.”

Bradstreet’s brow cleared. He grinned, a shade ruefully.

“This thing has got me worried, I won’t deny. It may seem funny to you, but we’re jealous for our good name, in these parts.”

“I know. Three complete strangers have seen fit to buttonhole me, and assure me that the only local sources of sin are the aerodrome and the camp.”

“And, of course, knowing the Baildons personally——”

“Yes. Horrid job, ours, sometimes, isn’t it?”

“It’s got to be done.”

“Of course it has. And, most of the time, you like it. Don’t you, now?”

“I can’t say I think much about it, one way or the other. I’m not what you’d call a thinking man. At least, I suppose—I don’t know.” He looked up at Ellis. “I reckon I just go ahead with the job in hand.”

“Thank heaven you do. No police force, no army, no navy, no country could be run if there weren’t a number of people so constituted. What’s troubling you? D’you look on that as a drawback?”

Bradstreet’s brow was corrugated.

“I can’t help feeling one ought to be able to do both. Think about the job, and yet do it.”

“Which is just what you’re doing now. It isn’t always pleasant, that’s all. Well—we can’t do any more to-night. I’m going home.”

“So am I, in a few minutes. I’ve a trifle or two to clear up first.”

“See you soon, then. Glad you don’t want to put in that letter.” Ellis chuckled. “You ought to have seen your own face, when I gave it to you.”

“I was a bit worried, I allow.”

“Thought I thought I’d made a find, and was carrying on like a hen that had laid an egg.”

“I don’t reckon you’re much like a hen,” Bradstreet began gravely—and broke off, as Ellis pretended to aim a blow at him, and went out.

As soon as he got back to the Plume of Feathers, Ellis went up to his room and began a long letter to his wife. It was his habit, when working away from home, to send her a resume of the case on which he was engaged, partly because she was interested, and partly to clear his own mind. The necessity for giving someone else a vivid picture of the circumstances and characters often brought out ideas which were lurking in the background, and gave a significance to things which he had not consciously noticed. The practice had its dangers. Attempted too soon, it could head his ideas in the wrong direction, and he had always to fight against the tendency to make a good story. But, once he had reached a certain point in a case, the writing became a necessity, both giving shape to the mass of collected detail, and a lens through which to view it.

For some forty minutes Ellis wrote fast and steady. His handwriting was curiously round and unformed, and gave a deceptive air of candour to what he wrote. At Oxford, his tutor had more than once urged him to cultivate some degree of illegibility, or at least a few mannerisms, lest examiners, finding his work easy to read, should suppose that there was nothing in it. Ellis had managed a mannerism or two, but no illegibility at all. An increase in speed had not detracted from the blank simplicity of his script. The hand of an idiot child, Kathleen called it: and the facial contortions accompanying its production, the frown, the tongue curled round the left-hand corner of the mouth, added a further plausibility to her picture.

By degrees, the pace of the writing slowed. Ellis stopped between sentences, looked out of the window, scowled, started determinedly again, only to stop once more. He put down his pen, squeezed his fat chin, and stared from bulbous eyes.

“Damn!”

With a simian grimace, he picked up his pen, and wrote faster than ever.

“You see now why I don’t like the smell of this case. The Bradder doesn’t like it either, and with even better reason, poor chap. On a cold view of the facts, there is only one place to look, and neither of us wants to look there. Put down on paper, nothing else will make sense. With one exception, the reasons pointing away don’t amount to a row of beans, compared with all that points there. We must be damned careful, my girl. Damned careful. An idea one hates can be just as fascinating as one that seems absolutely irresistible.

“What are the indications worth? How much is there that brands us as crass sentimentalists for not wanting to follow where it points? For, unless something quite fresh turns up, for anyone else to have killed Matt would be sheer altruism, or a fluke.

“1. Self-interest bulks a good deal larger as a motive than altruism: and you know what I think of the story-book killer who crams a murder into twenty seconds, on the spur of the moment, when people’s backs are turned, in circumstances he couldn’t possibly have foreseen.

“2. Of the two people concerned, only one has an alibi, and that none too good. One party to it can’t swear to the time, and ’tother would swear to anything. The distances are short, too.

“3. Lack of motive apart, why should anyone come in from outside and bump off Matt while his daughter was about the place? (And, unless the murderer were a friend, and knew Mrs. B. would be out, she might have been there, too.)

“No: there’s every reason to look inside the house, and none to look outside. Now let’s have a squint at t’other side of the picture.

“1. The doctor could have done it, either before he was called in, or after. If the latter, Matt could have had another heart attack, and Carter could have finished him of.

“2. The schoolmistress might have done it, on the strength of her letter, or her often expressed hostility to the old man.

“3. Rattray could have done it, and perhaps might have done it, during his call to return the book.

“4. Since he can’t prove he didn’t return to the house, the American could have done it. Less improbably, he might have so infuriated Matt by a second visit that the old boy had a seizure, and someone else was inspired to finish the job.

“5. An unspecified number of people, possibly including Nelder, if he can’t prove he was elsewhere, could have got in and done it.

“6. If the job was a home job, why wait till the old boy got up, instead of popping him off earlier, when there was every chance of getting away with it?

“7. There still remains the first probability that it was an accident.

“Now of these seven considerations, imposing though they are in bulk, only one is worth a damn. The trouble is, as you’ll have seen, there’s no evidence at all. Motive by the bucketful, opportunity galore, but not a tittle of evidence as to the pair of hands that pulled tight old Matt’s muffler and tipped the tomes on his unlovely nob.

“I can’t definitely rule out the outside suspects, because of this same blasted lack of evidence, but I class ’em all as non-starters on psychological grounds. Now, now! None of your sniffing. Listen, girl.

“Carter I won’t have, because he’s an honest physician, and honest physicians don’t bump off their patients. He’s violent and testy, and might kill a man in a fight, but he wouldn’t harm a frail old man under his professional care, to whose tantrums he was well accustomed.

“Eunice Caunter (a nasty bit of work! I’d love you to see her) I won’t have, because this killing isn’t in her character. She could plan it—she did, in fancy—but never carry it out. What’s more, she has no motive. She might do it to regain a commanding place in Joan’s affections and win the lead back from Rattray: but that, again, is a story-book sort of motive, and I’ve never met it in practice.

“Rattray could kill all right, but only if he was worked up to a frenzy or scared out of his wits. He’d never plan. If he were the cold type of killer, he’s had the ideal victim in his house for years. So I pass by Rattray.

“The American didn’t do it. One, he isn’t the sort: two, he’d nothing to gain. Exit Mr. Stuyvesant.

“I don’t back any dark horses, either, in the shape of tradesmen or strangers. Why the hell? The possibility that someone called in and so angered Matt that he had a seizure and was polished off by a third party, has something to recommend it: but, if anything, it tells against the home team, both on grounds of motive and opportunity.

“No, the only argument for the home team is No. 6. Why, if they were going to do it at all, didn’t they do it before? What was there special about Friday afternoon? Nothing that we know of, except the fact that Gilkie had come. Was there anything to make his arrival dangerous to any of the parties concerned? He’d come to value certain books. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs’—sweetheart, I don’t like this case. Unless we find something new and quite unexpected, things look poorly for the home team: and I fear me that anything new we find isn’t going to help them. Contrariwise.

“I’ve no doubt, of course, that the Coroner’s jury will run true to form: but—well——”

He shrugged, grimaced again, and passed on to personal matters. Ending with a flourish, he addressed the envelope, licked it vigorously, thumped down the flap with his fist, and trotted downstairs.

“ ’E won’t go ’fore to-morrow, not now, sir,” the porter told him.

“Doesn’t matter. I want to be shut of it.”

They smiled at each other, and Ellis hurried off to the pillar box. He was afraid that, at any moment, he might have to add a postscript to the letter.

Dinner was a silent meal. Gilkison was preoccupied with the books, Ellis with his thoughts. They went into the lounge for their coffee, a weird place of wicker chairs, glass-topped tables, and tall tobacco plants.

From it they could hear the cheerful Saturday night uproar from the bar. As soon as they had drunk their coffee, Ellis got up. “I’m going into the bar. Coming?”

“My dear Ellis. You’ll be most unpopular.”

“Take a bet on it?”

Gilkison sat back in his chair.

“I should be obliged to come and see you lose it.”

“Funk.”

“I haven’t your thickness of skin.”

Ellis started off. Catching sight of a periodical on one of the tables, he picked it up, and brought it back to Gilkison.

“Here you are, love,” he cried in a shrill falsetto, and threw it into his lap. Gilkison started, and looked apprehensively around him. It was a ladies’ fashion journal. Before he could remonstrate, Ellis was out of range.

Ellis padded off down the passage, reached the door, squared his shoulders, pushed it open, and walked in.

The result was as dramatic as the most hardened showman could desire. Conversation and hubbub stopped, almost at once. A few men, who did not see him, went on for a couple of seconds, noticed the cessation of talk, saw him, and fell silent too.

Ellis behaved as if he noticed nothing.

“A pint, please,” he said, in loud, cheerful tones. Everyone stared while it was drawn, and all eyes watched him as he took it to a table and sat down. Those nearest him drew away in alarm.

In his element, Ellis looked around the bar, inspected the pictures on the walls, sipped his beer, and whistled to himself under his breath. By degrees, the conversation started again: but it was hushed and guarded. His presence oppressed them all: he could feel them drawing together protectively against the invader.

In a corner, against the wall farthest from Ellis, stood a piano. Ellis eyed it, and his spirit rose in him to a peak of arrogance and daring. For a while he stayed where he was, to see if by any chance the atmosphere would improve. Then he got up, and, taking his glass tankard with him, walked deliberately across to the piano.

The moment he moved, silence fell again. All the eyes followed him. Ellis put his beer on top of the piano, sat down, and opened it.

“No one seems to have much to say,” he said to the piano. “Let’s have a little music.”

He struck a series of resounding chords, dashed up to the treble in a flamboyant arpeggio, then shot into a popular tune. The rhythm was so strong, so gay, that in spite of themselves their senses were hypnotised into obedience. Sitting there at the piano, Ellis could feel the atmosphere loosen. From one tune he went to another, with an impudence, a certainty of attack that electrified his unwilling listeners. He gave them ten minutes of it, then led into a chorus song. No one joined in. He hummed himself, then sang the chorus alone.

At the end, without taking his hands from the keys, he swung round on his chair and laughed in their stupefied faces.

“Come on, you swabs,” he cried, and his fingers flew from a wild flourish into The Lily of Laguna.

It was touch and go. For a few bars they hung back: then a couple of voices started, tentatively. By the end of the first chorus, half of them were in. Ellis took it again, singing fat harmonies, and with a rising roar they all came in. From that moment he gave them no rest, whirling them from chorus to chorus till at last he banged a final terrific chord and lunged round on the chair, shouting with laughter in which they joined. Then, with a rush, came orders for a fresh round of drinks, and everyone was laughing and talking at once. Three or four pressed forward, grinning all across their faces, in their anxiety to assure him.

“We reckoned you was comin’ in to try and find summat out.”

“Snoopin’ round, like.”

“Lord love you,” Ellis cried. “Aren’t you going to give me any time off? Can’t I even have my evenings free?”

A man with a moustache edged closer.

“D’you really reckon, mister——”

Ellis held up his hand.

“No. No shop, please. Not a word. I’m off duty now.”

The rest laughed, and the would-be questioner grinned sheepishly, and shrank back discomfited.

“Don’t you ever have sing-songs here?” Ellis asked them. “No? Why not?”

“Nobody to play.”

“Rubbish. Must be somebody. You don’t mean to tell me that, in this whole village, there’s nobody who can play the piano!”

There were two or three, it appeared, but they were females or didn’t patronise the bar.

“You ought to have all sorts of songs. Who sings solo? Who’s in the choir?”

One or two bashful individuals were gleefully pointed out by their friends.

“Well—damn it—what’s the good of being in the choir, if you never sing a solo? Why don’t you rope in that schoolmaster bloke? He’s got a good voice. I heard him, in his garden.”

They looked at each other. “Can’t often get he. He’s busy most evenin’s.” They detailed Rattray’s activities in the village and at the camp.

“ ’E don’t finish up there, not till nine o’clock,” one man volunteered.

“Oh well—we’ll have to do without him. I’ll start you off. Who’s going to be here to-morrow night? Sunday’s a bad night, is it? All right: what about Monday?”

On Monday, it seemed, several were going to one of Rattray’s affairs at the Institute.

“Very well. Tuesday then. That is, if it’s too late for you after nine?”

Yes. They thought it was. After nine, they liked to go home.

“Us got to be up early in the mornin’, master.”

“Not like me, eh? Hogging it in bed. All right. Tuesday it is, then. Mind you come, every man jack of you, and we’ll have the roof off.”

He waited a little longer, then withdrew, to a cordial chorus of good-nights, and returned to Gilkison, well pleased with himself.

“You’ve been kicking up a filthy row out there,” Gilkison told him.

A look of intolerable complacency came over Ellis’s face.

“I got ’em,” he said. “I made ’em eat out of my hand. And I got something valuable as well.”

“What was that?”

“Remember Mrs. Rattray telling us that darling hubby didn’t get back till ten on the nights he does his good works? Well—the good works finish at nine, leaving an hour off, for fun and games.”