Mrs. Baildon looked helplessly at Joan.
“I can’t, to be sure. You see, the door was open, and they’d walk straight up.”
“Mr. Rawlings came,” the girl said. “And Mr. Pawle.”
“Well—we can look into that later. Now—yes—the letter to Mr. Gilkison: did either of you see that?”
“I don’t remember,” Mrs. Baildon answered. “But we knew he was coming. Matt warned us.”
“Warned you?”
“So that we’d be ready, and have the books dusted, and so on.”
“I see.” Ellis got off the bed. “Well, thank you very much, both of you. You’ve given me a very clear picture of the whole position, and I needn’t bother you any more for this evening.” He glanced out of the window. “I think I’d stay up here for a while, if I were you.”
“Dr. Carter said they would be coming to—to fetch Matt away,” Mrs. Baildon said faintly.
“Yes. As soon as possible. Do you want to see him, before they do?”
She stared in front of her. Her eyes slowly filled with darkness; her face became vivid and concentrated, and a muscle worked in her jaw.
“No,” she said, with an extraordinary intensity. “I don’t want to see him.”
Joan took a quick step forward, and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. The room was electric with suppressed passion. Ellis went to the door, then stopped and looked around. He rubbed his chin with his forefinger.
“There’s just one thing. I take it there’s no reason why Mr. Gilkison shouldn’t carry on with the work he was called to do? After all, the books are your inheritance. They represent a great deal of money—more than enough to take you to Oxford, Miss Baildon. It will be well to have them valued.”
“I shan’t rest till every one of them is cleared out of the house,” Mrs. Baildon said vehemently.
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry, though. You want to get the best price you can. I knew a woman who sold her brother’s books to a local chap who offered her tuppence a book for the lot. She lost hundreds of pounds. Don’t you worry, though,” as the woman’s face wavered. “Gilkie’s the man to look after you. An honester, more scrupulous man never sewed a button on his own pants. What’s more, he knows his business backwards.”
“Matt always said he wasn’t such a fool as he looked. Oh—I——”
“High praise, Mrs. Baildon. High praise. And very true. Well—good-night to you both. Take it easy, now. Dr. Carter will give you something to make you sleep.”
He went out, aware of their eyes as they stared uncertainly after him; and closed the door.
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.