“I thought perhaps,” Ellis said, “you might have wished to save your mother from coming downstairs.”
The girl flushed swiftly.
“As a matter of fact, I did start to wonder if I should go in. I’d come as far as the door, when I heard mother coming. That’s how I heard what the American man said.”
“Yes. A difficult position for you. Well now, Mrs. Baildon; when you went in to your husband, how did you find him?”
“He was in a dreadful rage. Dreadful.”
“More than usual?”
“Oh, yes. I noticed it particularly. Made me afraid for his heart, it did.”
Ellis’s inner eye gave a twinkle. It seemed to see the promptings of Dr. Carter.
“Generally,” Mrs. Baildon went on, “he could settle down at once after one of his tempers. You’d find him quite easy in himself, as if nothing had happened. It used to surprise people.”
“Knew how to take care of himself, eh?
“He did that,” said the girl, her mouth in a hard line.
“But this time it was different?”
“Yes. He was all of a twitch and a tremble; quite out of himself, like.”
“Did he tell you what had happened to upset him so much?”
“He told me a whole long rigmarole of a story. It seems the American gentleman had a letter of introduction to him, from Sir George Tweedy. He knew about some of Matt’s books, and there were three or four he particularly wanted to see. Matt made me get them out this morning, and put them on the little table by his chair. The American gentleman looked at them, and then he offered to buy them. For some reason this made Matt furious, and he told him to go then and there, I couldn’t see what was wrong, myself: but that’s what Matt told me.”
For the first time, Ellis felt a twinge of sympathy for the deceased.
“But then,” Mrs. Baildon went on, “Matt was always unreasonable. You could never tell what would set him off.”
Ellis nodded.
“What did you do then, Mrs. Baildon?”
“I tried to calm him down, but he swore at me, so I thought best to let him be. I was too sort of roused up to rest any more, so I went up and put on my things to go and do a bit of shopping. I put my head in before I went out, just to see if Matt was all right.”
“Was he?”
“Oh yes. He was reading a book, just as if nothing had happened.”
Joan looked down at her mother, who at once looked up, either from a pressure of the hand on her shoulder, or because of the sympathy between them. Mrs. Baildon gave an uneasy cough. Ellis saw that the girl was afraid her mother was blurring the impression of wild derangement Dr. Carter had been anxious for him to receive.
“And then you went shopping?” Ellis prompted her.
“Yes. I always do my week-end shopping on a Friday.”
“Is it a very slow business, shopping here?”
Mrs. Baildon looked blank.
“Slow——?”
“I understand from Dr. Carter that you haven’t been in very long. Would your shopping normally take you the whole afternoon?”
“Not the shopping wouldn’t. I didn’t take more than half an hour. But I went to see a friend, and then I looked in on Martha—that’s my elder sister—and had a cup of tea with her. I didn’t leave her, not till a quarter to five.”
“How far off does she live?”
“I couldn’t rightly say. Not far.”
“About six or seven minutes’ walk,” Joan interrupted, “if you go by the back way.”
The ghost of a flicker passed over Mrs. Baildon’s face.
“Is that by the little gate at the side?” Ellis asked.
“No. There’s another small gate in the back wall, down past the gooseberry bushes. It opens on a footpath to the village.”
“How long were you with your friend, Mrs. Baildon—the one you went to before visiting your sister?”
“I didn’t really notice. About half an hour, I think; not longer.”
“May I have her name and address, please? I’m sorry to seem so inquisitive; but we have to check up on these things.” Mrs. Baildon hesitated and looked up appealingly at her daughter.
“I’m sure Miss Jenkinson wouldn’t want to be mixed up in any unpleasantness,” she said faintly.
“As a friend of yours,” Ellis said, “she’ll be only too glad to help you. That’s all I want of her: confirmation of what you have told me.”
“I can’t see what you’re doing here,” the girl burst out, her eyes dark and enormous behind the lenses. “We’ve done nothing wrong. Even father hadn’t—not against the law, that is. I can’t understand what’s brought you here.”
“Chance. Pure chance. And Mr. Gilkison.”
Mrs. Baildon flushed.
“I don’t see what call Mr. Gilkison had to bring a detective in on us,” she said. “We had always served him quite polite. Even Matt had, as near as he could come to it.”
“He didn’t bring me in as a policeman, Mrs. Baildon. He brought me because I’m interested in books. I’m on holiday.”
“If you’re on holiday,” Joan said, “why can’t you go away and leave us alone?”
“Miss Baildon. Innocent people have nothing to fear from the law. Why do you imagine I’m working against you? You ought to be glad that someone who represents the law is here to look after you.”
The girl looked disconcerted for a moment, but rallied fiercely.
“Inspector Bradstreet would look after us all right. He knows us.”
“Inspector Bradstreet? You haven’t got an inspector in West Nattering, surely?”
“He belongs to Compton Royal, but he comes from here. He still lives at the end of the village. He’s often been in to see us.”
“Fond of books, eh?”
“I wouldn’t say that. He used to come in to look things up. Father had some books here which they haven’t got in the library. Not even at Exeter.”
“I can well believe it. Right you are, Miss Baildon: don’t worry. You’ll soon have your friend here to look after you. He’ll see to it that I don’t do you any harm.”
He grinned at her cheerfully. She coloured again, then flung up her chin at him.
“I’ve seen you before,” she blurted out. “Aren’t you Mr. McKay?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Ellis McKay—the composer?”
For the first time, Ellis looked out of countenance.
“I have written one or two things, yes. But——”
“I saw you conduct your West Highland Rhapsody in Exeter, in the spring of last year.”
Ellis grinned, to cover his confusion.
“The ’cellos made a muck of that entry in the scherzo, didn’t they? Pity you didn’t hear it at Bath. Like music?”
She looked at him, refusing to be deflected.
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you doing your proper work?”
“I have to earn my living. If I depended on music, my wife and small boy would have a very thin time of it. I’d have to pot-boil, or teach. No: I prefer this. It keeps me honest, and I can write what I want.”
She was still staring at him.
“I can’t understand how anyone who can write what you can could go poking about asking questions and ferreting out all sorts of nastiness.”
“Let’s hope there’s no nastiness to ferret out this time,” said Ellis heartily. “Just give me Miss Jenkinson’s address, will you, please? And your aunt’s. Then we can get on.”
Mother and daughter looked at each other. Joan spoke.
“Two, Borough Cottages,” she said unwillingly.
“That’s Miss Jenkinson’s. And your aunt’s?”
“The Cedars, Hill Lane.”
“Good.” Ellis wrote this down. “Miss Jenkinson shan’t be scandalised. I’ll use all my tact. Mr. Gilkison says I haven’t any, but he’s a liar. However. Mrs. Baildon—I’ve only a couple more questions for you. Can you tell me what happened after you came back? You did use the back way, didn’t you?—the quick one? Good.”