All Fall Down

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ellis woke next morning from deep sleep, and lay staring at the ceiling. It looked back at him, unnaturally bland, reflecting the sunlight from outside, which, thrown up by a neighbouring roof, was reaching it before it reached the walls. There had been a storm the evening before, with heavy showers, and more than once in the night Ellis had heard the rain.

For a few seconds his mind floated, like an untroubled cloud: and he wondered at it, since somewhere, far below, there lurked a feeling that it should not be untroubled, and, therefore, he felt the beginnings of a vague surprise.

Then, with a shock that twisted some little cold thing in his stomach, he remembered the long and fruitless discussion he had had with Bradstreet on the way home, and afterwards. Was there any possible way of keeping Nelder’s evidence out, and so protecting Mrs. Baildon and Joan?

Bradstreet, with the slow casuistry of the countryman, had argued that to put in the evidence was to prejudice the Baildons’ case, and so defeat the ends of justice. The question of stealing books was irrelevant to the graver charge which overhung and which so easily might fall upon them. Why, then, bring it in?

And Ellis, feeling for the man, loving him, and wishing with all his heart that they could do as they wished, felt bound to put the other side: knowing all the time that Bradstreet saw it as clearly as he did, and would be constrained by it.

“After all, Bradder,” Ellis had asked him brutally, “who do you think did scupper Matt?”

And Bradstreet, with a sigh that was almost a groan, could only answer, “I don’t know. I try not to think about it.”

So, remembering all this, Ellis’s face darkened, till he looked like a dissipated and sulky cherub, and he jumped out of bed with an oath, a cloud over his day.

The cloud did not prevent him from making a very robust breakfast. Volatile and highly suggestible, he had reacted to the cheering influence of silky porridge, of pink, crisped bacon and eggs, of toast and marmalade and hot strong coffee, when the little waitress, to whom he and all he did were a perpetual marvel, summoned him to the telephone.

Ellis stumped across the room, napkin in hand, and belched as he reached the instrument.

“Hallo, hallo, hallo. Bradder? Well, how goes it? Thought up a solution to our puzzle of last night?”

“No.” Bradstreet’s voice was grave. “I’ve got something more serious to think about. Eunice Caunter’s been found murdered.”

“Good God! how? Where?”

“Strangled. On Higworthy Common, a mile from the camp.”

Ellis whistled.

“I’ll come right along.”

“I’m sending a car. Save time.”

Ellis returned hastily to the table, told the news to a shocked and startled Gilkison, gulped down another cup of coffee, and was ready for the car. The constable who was driving explained that they had to pick up the photographer, and that Inspector Bradstreet would be ready for them when they returned. It was the quickest way round.

The photographer was collected, carrying a large tripod and looking apprehensive. He got in beside the driver, and they drove to the station. Bradstreet came out at once.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. But it’d have taken longer to fetch him first.”

“That’s all right. Where d’you say she is?”

“Higworthy. Won’t take us long.”

“Seen her?”

“Yes. Left the sergeant in charge.”

“Who found her?”

“Chap taking his dog for a run. He told the village constable, who rang us.”

The morning was unnaturally clear, and a pearly cloud or two drifted low down on the horizon. The grasses gleamed with drops.

“It must have rained a lot. That should help.”

Bradstreet grunted. “I’ve never found it did, very much.”

He was disinclined to talk. Inside five minutes the car drove on to a small common that rose a little above the road, and was dotted with generous furse bushes.

“Popular resort, at night?” Ellis asked.

“M’m.”

“Godsend to the camp, I should say.”

“We’ve had complaints.”

The local man was keeping a lookout. He signalled to them, then approached. Evidently he was in a high state of excitement. He began a fresh account to Bradstreet, stammering in his eagerness, but the Inspector cut him short.

They followed a trodden path for a hundred and fifty yards, then turned off among the bushes. The furze grew high: each bush was a complete protection.

“She mightn’t have been found for weeks in here,” Ellis said to Bradstreet.

“No. But there’s a good many people about this time of year.”

Ellis glanced at the wrappings and empty packets of cigarettes that lay in the shelter of several of the bushes. They rounded an extra large one, and came on the sergeant.

“Here you are, sir.”

Eunice Caunter was lying on her back. One leg was straight, the other bent sideways. Her skirt was partly pulled back, and the bent leg showed a stretch of thigh between her stocking and her knickers. Her clothes were soaked with rain. One arm was flung stiffly outwards, with some torn ends of grass clutched in her rigid fingers.

The face was turned away. They had to walk round her to see it. It was not pleasant: there was no doubt about the way she had died. A purplish bruise on each side of her throat confirmed that she had been strangled.

Ellis uttered an exclamation, and fell on his knees. He looked close, then turned to Bradstreet a face from which the colour had gone.

“Good God! seen this?”

Bradstreet nodded glumly. Ellis looked back, shuddering. Into each of the dead girl’s nostrils something had been inserted. It looked like paper.

“What’s the sense of that?” Ellis said, half to himself.

“Stop her breathing, perhaps?”

“Couldn’t be. Unless he plugged ’em and then held a hand over her mouth. She’d never let him. No, this was done afterwards. Some perversion here. I don’t like it, Bradder.”

He got up, brushing his knees absently. There was a wet stain on each. “Have ’em photographed,” he said.

They stood by while the photographer did his work. The poor man’s hand shook, and the sergeant kindly came to his help. He looked very pale about the gills. Then the sergeant came over to where Ellis and Bradstreet stood.

“I’ve had another look round, sir,” he reported to Bradstreet. “There’s hardly a sign. The rain has washed it all out. The soil is very light hereabouts,” he explained to Ellis. “It takes impressions fairly well, but they come out just as easy. The grass is all freshened up with the rain, too. It’s hardly crushed at all where she struggled.”

“It was a strong man did that,” Ellis said. “She was a well-built girl. She wouldn’t go easily. Unless he did it suddenly, as a climax to lovemaking.”

Both Bradstreet and the sergeant appeared to be shocked at this. Each avoided the other’s eye, and neither looked at Ellis. Ellis observed Bradstreet from screwed-up eyes.

“What’s your theory, then, Bradder? Someone from the camp?”

“I don’t know that I’ve got one,” Bradstreet mumbled. “Bit early in the day.”

“Apparently respectable young ladies have been known to find a uniform attractive. A sexy piece: I wouldn’t put it past her. What was she doing here, anyway?” His voice rasped irritably. “Snap out of it, Bradder! I know this is the village where nothing goes wrong, but we’ve been bumping into the exceptions that prove the rule.”

Bradstreet regarded him from level gray eyes.

“I’ve known Miss Caunter ever since she came here six years ago. She often used to take a walk by herself in the evening. We have never had any reason to believe that there was any illicit interest.”

“What an old Puritan you are. Why shouldn’t the girl have a boy friend?”

“No reason. Saving that I wouldn’t expect a lady of her bringing up to go in the bushes on Higworthy Common.”

“All right. I gather you don’t know of any boy friend?”

“Miss Caunter never showed any particular interest in any man in these parts. Not to my knowledge. Did you ever hear to the contrary, sergeant?”

“No, sir.” The sergeant was blushing profusely.

“You want to make it rape by a maniac. Well: you may be right.”

He looked back at the body, grotesquely foreshortened from where they stood.

“Poor girl. There’s a good many like her going sour up and down the country. It’s a mad world we live in. Good. Our friend has finished. Come along.”

He walked briskly to the body, the others slowly following. Kneeling down again, he took from his pocket a small, flat tin, which looked as if it had once contained lozenges, and extracted from it a fine-pointed tweezers. Then, his own nose wrinkled with repugnance, he extracted the plug from each nostril, and laid the two little pieces of paper in the lid of the tin. He then fetched out the fat pocket knife, and selected a long, straight probe.

A thought struck him. He looked up at Bradstreet.

“What did Carter make of these?”

“He hasn’t seen her. He’s in the middle of a baby case. We couldn’t get him.”

“Just as well. I’d rather have the outsider.”

“We’ve always found Dr. Carter very good. Most conscientious and reliable,” Bradstreet said, a little stiffly.

“Not a word against him,” Ellis sang back. “Not a syllable. But t’other chap doesn’t know her from Adam—from Eve, rather—and it leaves him freer. Now then. Hold the tin, will you? Watch and see I don’t cheat.”

Bradstreet took the tin, and Ellis, using probe and tweezers, delicately unfolded the two little pieces of sodden paper. He had to go carefully; even so, he tore the first. It proved to be blank. As Ellis spread out the second, Bradstreet caught his breath. Blurred but readable, it held a fragment of a written message: the end of one word, and the start of another. There were three letters only: “t se.”

“—t se—” said Ellis thoughtfully. “Not secret. Discreet seamstress. Hot semolina.”

For the first time Bradstreet’s broad face showed emotion. A spasm of bewilderment convulsed it.

“Semolina!” he cried, loud with surprise. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Fat serpent. Wet seaweed. Get set. Best selected.” He opened innocent eyes at Bradstreet, “I’m only trying to fit words to the letters. There’s such a wide selection. Last seven. Must sell.”

“That’s better,” growled Bradstreet. “It don’t need to be nothing so out of the way as what you said first. Things are complicated enough without making up any more.”

“Lined paper,” Ellis said. “Of course, the piece may be torn out of the middle, but, as you see, there’s a bit of the line showing above the writing, and though it’s no wider really than the space between the two words, I’m inclined to bet that these letters are the first line of whatever it was. What do you say?”

“In that case, it wouldn’t be nothing about semolina,” said Bradstreet, with whom the suggestion seemed to rankle.

“Unless it was a shopping list. ‘1 pkt semolina. 2 oz. baking soda’ and so on. Don’t you like milk puddings, Bradder? Never mind: I don’t insist on it. What’s your guess?”

“I don’t see much point in guessing, until we know some more. But if it was the first line, it might be ‘I can’t see you to-night,’ or something of the sort. That is”—he paused, in some confusion.

“——if the poor girl was involved with someone. Bradder, that’s brilliant, simple and probable. Full marks. Go up top. But, as you meant, though you didn’t say it, it would be better still if we could find the rest of the message. Have a search made? I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

He suddenly became excited.

“I’m hopeful about this. If the murderer tore up that bit of paper inadvertently—the first bit that came to his hand—we stand a good chance of finding the rest of it. He’ll have chucked it away, or stuck it back in his pocket. I think the odds are it was inadvertent; otherwise, why use this particular bit of paper?”

“Unless it was a letter she wrote him, that angered him.”

“In that case, why use only one tiny bit of it? Besides, it’s such a damning thing: such an obvious clue. He couldn’t have left it on purpose.”

“Not without it was to mislead us.” Bradstreet was still back in dialect, a sure sign that he was moved.

“I don’t think so. I think the action—the putting of the paper there at all—is pathological. Something in the nature of a compulsion.”

Bradstreet wrinkled his brow.

“You mean, the murder’s a madman’s work?”

“Perhaps. Not necessarily. A sort of kink, coming to the surface in the excitement of the murder.”

“Criminals do queer things. Leave their trademarks, as you might say. But I never saw one like this.”

“Have a search made for the paper, anyway.”

“That I will.”

Bradstreet went across to the sergeant. Ellis shut away the pieces of paper in the tin, and put it in his pocket. He squatted down, and cleaned the tweezers and probe by thrusting them several times into the turf. Bradstreet, turning round, beheld him in astonishment. He looked for all the world like a small boy crouching over a frog in the grass.

Ellis stood up, beating his palms together.

“Doctor coming out here?”

“The ambulance will be here for her in a minute. What he’s got to do can be done better elsewhere.”

“Shall we wait?”

“Do you want to look around?”

“I’m no good at it, Bradder. When it comes to crawling about with a magnifying glass, I fade right out. I can do something with the stuff when it’s found: but someone else has got to find it for me.”

“I’ve given orders to bring in every piece of paper on the common,” Bradstreet said soberly. “You’ll have something to work on.”

“Good God. It’ll take years.”

“No. I can get half a dozen men on to it: and it’s all in just a few places.”

“You believe in doing the thing thoroughly.”

“Well, we don’t know where he’d throw the paper away. He may have dropped it nearby. He may have put it in his pocket, and thrown it away later, especially if he was the sort you say, not thinking what he was doing, like.”

Ellis looked at him with a fresh access of respect. Though upset and ruffled by Ellis’s flippancy, Bradstreet had taken in all the possibilities arising from his suggestion, and had acted methodically upon them.

“You don’t want to look around yourself, Bradder?”

“I had a look when I was out here before.”

“You don’t miss much, I expect.”

“I’m not very quick. Hallo. Here are the ambulance chaps. Yes. All clear. Go ahead.” He turned to Ellis. “We needn’t wait,” he said, almost pleadingly.

They walked away together towards the car.

“Sorry for being unpleasant,” Ellis said. “Fact is, I hate this sort of thing, and it always makes me show off. Like laughing when you hear bad news. Can’t help it. Never have been able to.”

“I know,” Bradstreet said unexpectedly. “I’ve often wanted to laugh in church myself.”

“Yes. But you don’t do it, Bradder. You’ve got some self-control. I’ve none. My wife tells me I’m not even adolescent yet.”

They reached the car.

“What do we do now? Till we start on the waste paper basket?”

“I know what I do,” Bradstreet said.

“Yes. I’d like to use the phone for a few minutes first, if I may.”