All Fall Down

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was ten past nine. The western glory still reached high overhead, the air was mild, and the trio that sat round a metal table at the far end of the inn’s small garden felt no chill from the grass and the deep hedge behind.

A good deal had happened in the interval. Matt Baildon’s body had been removed, and a small assembly of gapers had been sharply addressed by Ellis and dispersed. Gilkison, who had been methodically picking up and sorting the scattered books, had been retrieved, and the pair had returned to the inn, whence Ellis had rung up Scotland Yard, and, after a long parley, had been formally put in charge of the investigation.

He and Gilkison then had dinner. Gilkison was full of questions and rather resentful. On the way back to the Plume of Feathers, Ellis had waved a podgy preoccupied hand and shut him up. He would say nothing at dinner either, maintaining that the walls had ears, and exasperating Gilkison more than usual by his complacent air of superior wisdom.

While they were having coffee, the waitress, round-eyed, announced Inspector Bradstreet.

Ellis sprang up, and hailed him with hearty goodwill. The Inspector was obviously pleased by the warmth of the greeting, but it soon appeared that he needed no careful handling. He had a broad, honest countryman’s face, and spoke with a pleasant Devon burr.

“Waitress—a pint for Inspector Bradstreet, please. Gilk? No? Fie. And another for me. Please.”

“Thank you, I’m sure.” Bradstreet mopped his brow. “I’m more than glad you’re here to take charge,” he said. “This sort of thing may be meat and drink to you: but we don’t care for it hereabouts, I must say.”

Ellis guffawed.

“Don’t know that I relish it myself, Inspector. I came down here for a rest.”

“Oh well. ’Twill be a pleasure to work with you. And we don’t yet know that ’tis anything, after all.”

“Dr. Carter would like us to believe that it isn’t.”

Bradstreet’s face clouded.

“I do hope, for the sake of those two poor souls, that there’s no scandal. They’ve had a heavy cross to bear, a heavy cross.”

They fell silent as the girl came with the beer.

“I’d be the last man to want to add to their troubles,” Ellis said, as soon as she had gone. “But we have our job to do, Inspector, even though it isn’t always a pleasant one.”

“No.” The Inspector sipped his beer. “It has its awkward side, sometimes.”

“You’ll agree, I think, that on the face of it there’s something to look into?”

“Yes. Yes,” Bradstreet said slowly. “Yes. I reckon I would.”

“If you’d been on your own here, you’d have thought twice about Dr. Carter’s view that it was an accident?”

“Would I now.” Bradstreet looked at him thoughtfully. “I dare say I should. If only because I’d be so anxious for it to be an accident, I’d be a bit suspicious of myself, like.”

Ellis nodded approval.

“Now, Inspector—you know the house. You know how those books were stacked up. Did it strike you that everybody was in such perpetual dread of their tumbling down as they’re all trying to make out?”

“The old man used to mention it, certainly,” Bradstreet said. “But then, he created a good deal, about all sorts.”

“You see, I look at it like this. You’ve all had the idea dinned into you that those books would fall if anyone so much as sneezed. Tishoo, tishoo, all fall down. You’ve got accustomed to the idea. So, when the books do fall—at a time when no one belonging to the house is there to see how or why they fall—you’re none of you surprised. You accept readily that the thing you were prepared for has happened at last. To me, coming in fresh from outside—and knowing something you don’t know—to me the whole thing naturally looks a bit different. I’ve no expectations. Gilkie here, having been to the house before, and heard the story, inclines to the accident theory. I merely see the objections to it.”

Bradstreet lit his pipe. “What are they, then, Mr. McKay, in your view?”

“First,” Ellis said, “there’s the position of the chair.”

He repeated what he had pointed out to the doctor, demonstrating it on the table with an indiarubber and a box of matches. Bradstreet, watching, nodded placidly as he finished.

“There were several books on the seat of the chair,” Gilkison put in, with sudden excitement. “Doesn’t that look as if they’d been put there afterwards? I mean, if the books knocked him out of his chair, and the blow at the same time sent the chair all that distance from the shelves, no books could have fallen on it after he’d been knocked down: and they couldn’t have fallen on the seat until he’ d been knocked down.”

“We can’t rely on that,” Bradstreet answered him good-humouredly. “Suppose he’d been leaning forward, and a few books fell between his back and the back of the chair. Then, as soon as he’d fallen out of the chair, they might slip down on to the seat. No. We can’t rely on that. ’Tis a good thought, though,” he added, as Gilkison’s face reddened in disappointment.

Ellis was waiting to go on.

“Next,” he said, “we’re asked to believe that the very man who was always screaming and making a fuss about the danger of the books coming down is the one to forget all about it and bump his wheel-chair into the shelves. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Bradstreet admitted. “That’s a point, I allow. But there again, you can’t be sure. We don’t even know that he was sitting in his chair when he was struck. He may have risen up out of it, to get a book, and then, being weak after so long upstairs, he may have slipped and fallen against the bookshelves.”

“In that case, wouldn’t you expect to find him close underneath them, instead of six or seven feet away?”

“In the natural course of things, you would,” Bradstreet agreed cautiously. “But there again, he may have been knocked staggering, before he fell over.”

“True. But”—Ellis seemed to rise and swell in his chair—“I’ve a third point, which disposes of that argument, and makes me dead certain the thing wasn’t an accident.”

“You have?”

“Yes. Gilkison will know what I mean.”

“I?” Gilkison expostulated. “I’ve no idea.”

“Then you damned well ought to have. You were there.”

“I was there?”

“Yes. It happened under your nose. Inspector—even if Matt Baildon had bumped his chair into the shelves—even if he’d stood up and fallen against them—the books wouldn’t have come down. When I came into the room yesterday afternoon, I tripped and only saved myself from going for six by catching hold of that bookshelf. I fell with my full weight against the thing, and only rocked it. I weigh thirteen stone ten: pretty well twice as much as Matt. Well, gentlemen—what about it?”

He sat back in triumph, and beamed at them. Bradstreet nodded gently.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s a good one, I allow. You don’t reckon, now, that you weakened the structure, like, so that it came down next day at a touch?”

Ellis started, and gazed at him in dismay. Then he threw back his head, and uttered a roar of laughter.

“Inspector—you’re a man after my own heart. It’s going to be a joy to work with you.” He narrowed his eyes, and leaned forward. “I’ll put you a question you can’t slide out of. Come now: answer me honestly. Taking the thing all round—plus the fact that it happened when it did—does it smell to you like an accident?”

Bradstreet did not answer at once. He took his pipe out, looked into the bowl, prodded the tobacco with his finger, replaced the pipe, and took a puff or two.

“No,” he said at last. “Since you put it to me like that, I can’t claim it does. Not that I have any great experience of such things.”

“But, like myself, you have an instinct that tells you when something’s wrong?”

“That may be. But it don’t do to trust to anything like that. Not where a life may be in the balance.”

“I agree. But it is valuable, all the same, in telling one when to have a good look. When you get a really strong feeling like that about a case, you don’t disregard it, I’ll bet.”

“I didn’t say I had a strong feeling about this case,” objected Bradstreet.

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you what you did when you had a strong feeling about a case.”

“It doesn’t happen often,” Bradstreet said. He leaned back, blew a couple of smoke rings, and watched them rise in the still air. “I remember a case once; nothing big, a matter of petty theft and an anonymous letter or two, but awkward, because ’twas at a vicarage. The evidence pointed one way clear enough, but I had the feeling all the time that ’tweren’t so. It came on me so bad one night, I couldn’t sleep.”

He said this open-eyed, as if it were a major disaster.

“I got up, and took a walk round about—it was full moon, clear as day—and caught the girl posting a letter in the pillar box. And no one had so much as looked at her. Well, you know; there’d have been a very bad miscarriage of justice, only for that.”

“I’ve a friend who’s a doctor,” Ellis said. “He has made a great name for himself in diagnosis, and in research. He tells me that all his best shots have been intuitive, and he’s built his reputation by checking on ’em rigorously in the laboratory.”

Bradstreet nodded.

“That’s what we have to do,” Ellis went on. “I’m plumb sure this wasn’t an accident. (So are you, deep down inside, though you won’t admit it.) All right,” as Bradstreet began a soft rumble of protest. “What we have to do is to check up fully on everybody and everything to do with the business. It’s going to be damned hard, and we shall be obstructed at every step.”

He waited for Bradstreet to object, but the Inspector placidly sucked his pipe.

“We’ll be obstructed,” Ellis went on, “because nobody wants to believe it was murder, or to find the murderer if it was. Nobody cares a damn about Matt. They all think it good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“I must say I agree with them,” Gilkison put in, his precise voice sounding thin and comical after the deep softness of Bradstreet’s. “This is an occasion, if you’ll pardon my saying so, when your activities seem out of place: positively mischievous, in fact. An unpleasant old man is removed, who was a plague to his wife and daughter and to everyone else. No one is a penny the worse, and those directly concerned are very much the better. Why not leave it at that?”

Ellis grinned. “Most immoral. Isn’t he, Inspector? Undermining the entire structure of British justice.”

“British justice would get on a good deal better if you left her alone,” Gilkison said acidly. “If she’s so anxious to reach the guilty party, she can be trusted to provide plenty of evidence that points towards him. If she hasn’t troubled to do so, it’s probably for a very good reason. You’re not called upon to go nosing about on her behalf.”

“That’d be all right if this female personification of yours weren’t so capricious. Vide Oscar Slater, and other unfortunates to whom she took a dislike. No, Gilk. You can’t dispose of us in that glib and unethical manner. We, having no prejudices——”

“Only intuitions,” Gilkison cut in sarcastically.

“Five points to you.” Ellis bowed. “But only debating points, and in the school debating society at that.”

“——plus a commercial interest in securing a conviction.”

“No points at all. Mere vulgar abuse.”

“Can you possibly maintain that the police are never influenced by the desire to obtain a conviction?”

“Can you possibly maintain that booksellers never misrepresent their wares? But you wouldn’t like being lumped in with the black sheep and having dishonesty imputed to you as a trade motive. Would he, Inspector?”

“My dear Ellis, I wasn’t speaking personally.”

“My dear Gilkie, we are. While you’re babbling about Justice, and other agreeable generalisations, we are considering how Inspector Bradstreet and Detective Inspector McKay shall conduct our joint investigation of the circumstances surrounding the demise of an unlovely old codger named Matt Baildon, which occurred in his own front room at some unspecified hour this afternoon.”

“It was you who began generalising,” Gilkison said, offended, “and talking about intuition and doctors and so forth.”

“Did I? Well, I’ve stopped. Now, Inspector”—Ellis leaned forward—“this seems to me essentially the sort of case where we have to get a general picture of the situation before we begin. On the accuracy of that picture the whole thing may depend.”

Bradstreet nodded.

“For a period of close on two hours and a half the old man is left alone in his front room. Alone in the house, if we can believe his wife and daughter. At any time during those two hours and a half, anyone at all can have entered the house and got at him. Damn it, the thing’s wide open. It couldn’t have been wider open if it had been deliberately arranged; as in all probability it was.”

“How long did Dr. Carter reckon the old man had been dead?” Bradstreet asked. “That should narrow the time down a bit.”

“He couldn’t say; or he wouldn’t. Said the day was so warm, and the room so stuffy, and the body so muffled up with clothes and covered with books, he couldn’t be definite within an hour or so.”

“Sounds reasonable enough.”

“We’re not going to get any help from Dr. Carter. It’s as well to be clear on that point.”

“That’s because——” Bradstreet began, and broke off.

“Because he thinks, if it’s proved not to be an accident, suspicion will most naturally fall on Baildon’s wife and daughter.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. He wants the whole thing hushed up, for fear of hurting them.”

“We can’t exclude the possibility that he did it himself.” Ellis watched to see how Bradstreet would react, but the countryman did not bat an eyelid.

“I had thought of that, of course,” he said. “But I don’t reckon ’tis likely.”

“Because he’d know suspicion might fall on them? I agree. If he’d meant to do it, I think he’d have provided them with a proper alibi. Packed ’em off together for the afternoon where there’d be a hatful of witnesses.”

“He might do. He’s a bit of an impulsive sort, is Dr. Carter. Been in more than one police court case, years back, over losing his temper. Violent, like.”

“Not the sort to do in a helpless old boy in a chair, you mean. Much less to plan it.”

“You take my meaning very quick,” Bradstreet said.

“Still, we can’t eliminate him. Now; what we want, first of all, is evidence of any callers at the house during those two hours and a half. And I doubt very much if we’ll get it.”

“Be lucky if we do.”

“Failing that, we want a full list of anyone who might have had occasion to call. It will be up to them to prove they didn’t.”

Bradstreet nodded again.

“We want tabs on our American friend. The two women, by the way, were very anxious to sell me the point that he said he’d come back. Almost as anxious as they were about the liability of the books to fall.”

“People often behave in a suspicious way when they’re scared or upset. I’ve noticed it scores of times.”

“So have I. But, if you’ll excuse my saying so, there you go again. Everyone’s up in arms to defend those two. Damn it, we’d hardly get a murder verdict here if he’d had a knife stuck between his shoulder blades.”

Bradstreet smiled peacefully.

“I’m glad you realise you may not get one, Mr. McKay.”

“I bloody well know I won’t—unless something turns up in the meantime.”

“That’s all right, then.”

The brown eyes twinkled suddenly, and Ellis laughed.

“Well, as I said, we must get tabs on our American. I think he’s neither here nor there, but that doesn’t matter. Then there’s another bloke; a friend of Gilkie’s here. Tell the Inspector, Gilk.”

Gilkison started indignantly.

“Nothing of the kind. I have no sort of dealings with the fellow. He’s a known rogue.”

Bradstreet twinkled again, and sucked his pipe.

“Who is this, Mr. Gilkison?”

Still indignant, Gilkison told him of Nelder’s presence in the inn the day before, and of his belief that it must in some way be connected with Matt Baildon.

“We’ll rope in Nelder,” Ellis said, “and find out first, if we can, whether the estimable Matt gave any of his bedside callers a letter for him. One Treweek, his daughter said, is the likeliest.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get any truth out of him,” the Inspector remarked.

“Perhaps we can scare him.”

“I’ve seen more than one Petty Sessions try, and come short of it.”

Ellis grunted, and pulled out his pocket book.

“I’ve got a list of people here—for God’s sake, Gilk, sit still. Have you got St. Vitus’ Dance? What are you slapping and flapping at?”

“Midges,” said Gilkison shortly.

“You should smoke, and keep them off. Puff at him, Inspector.”

“No, thank you,” Gilkison said hastily. “I shall go in in a minute.”

“Stern duty keeps us at our post. You, of course, may abandon us if you choose.”

“That’s all very well. They don’t bite you.”

“They know better. They don’t visit the Inspector either.”

“I can’t say they trouble me,” Bradstreet smiled. “Some find them very vexatious, I know.”

“Here’s the list. Mrs. Exworthy, who comes in twice a week to clean. Mrs. Baildon gave me to understand she was likely to resemble old Treweek. We can but try. Treweek, aforesaid. Mr. Rawlings, the vicar.”

“I shouldn’t hardly suspect him,” smiled Bradstreet.

“Not of bumping the old boy off. But he may have posted a letter. Mr. Pawle. Who’s he?”

“An old retired gentleman, interested in Spiritualism and the British Israelites.”

“Bradstreet—you’re a gem. A perfect miniature biography. I can see we shall get nothing from Mr. Pawle If Matt did give him a letter, he’d be far too honourable even to look at the envelope. The last on my list is Mr. Rattray, who I understand coaches Joan Baildon in Latin. What about him?”

The Inspector considered before replying.

“Rattray? He’s a very decent, pleasant spoken young fellow. A bit on the serious side. Headmaster of the boys’ grammar school, runs Scouts and Sunday school classes. Has an invalid wife.”

“Another perfect cameo. Inspector, your talents are wasted here. Does he push her about in a bath chair?”

“Yes. Have you met him?”

“I saw a chap this morning who’d fit in with your account.” He told Bradstreet how he had spent the morning.

“He’s a possibility, then,” Ellis said. “Though it’s less likely, if he was passing in the morning. Anyone else? Any regular visitor that you know of?”

“I don’t know the family as closely as all that,” said Bradstreet. “I haven’t been in more than two or three times in the past twelvemonth.”

“Got an alibi yourself?” Ellis grinned at him.

“Good enough, I reckon.” Bradstreet’s eyes gleamed back with pleasure. “There’s one other person might be on the list, though. I don’t suppose old Baildon would ask her to post a letter for him, nor she do it if he did.”

“Who’s that?”

“Miss Caunter, from the girls’ school. Miss Eunice Caunter. She takes a great interest in Joan Baildon, and has been helping her with her work for the last couple of years. The maid’s clever,” Bradstreet went on, “but her eyes have kept her back. You’ll have noticed they’re weak.”

“Partly due to neglect, I’m told.”

“So I believe. Miss Caunter has always taken the maid’s part, and had more than one row with the old man. One time, he forbade her the house. But he had the sense to see he was getting something for nothing: so——”

“She didn’t charge for her services, then?”

“Nothing, I believe. And he couldn’t stop Joan from seeing her at the school, so he suffered the extra lessons to go on. Most times, though, Joan used to go down to Miss Caunter’s place.”

“Used to go?”

“I gather she hasn’t been so often since Mr. Rattray started to coach her. After all, she hasn’t a great deal of time. She’s still at school.”

“Does Rattray also work for love?”

“That I couldn’t say.”

“I’m glad to find something you can’t say. You who pretend you don’t know much about the family. What’s it like when you really claim to know?”

Bradshaw smiled, and did not reply. Gilkison got up.

“I can’t stand this any longer. I’m going in.”

“Polite, isn’t he?”

“You know perfectly well I’m alluding to the midges.”

“Well—we’ll come in too. One had the sauce to bite me just now.”