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.”