“I don’t know,” Ellis replied blandly. “I don’t know what anything has to do with anything, yet. A case like this is like a jigsaw. Before you can start fitting the bits together, you must make sure you’ve got ’em all. Well—I’m trying to get all the bits. At this stage, I can’t possibly know what’s relevant and what isn’t.”
“So you go round asking everyone to betray the confidences which other people have reposed in them.”
“You said just now that Joan had not confided in you about her feelings towards Mr. Rattray.”
“Nor has she. But you said just now that I was her friend, and in her confidence, and that that’s why you’re questioning me.”
Ellis shook his head at her in good-natured sorrow.
“I wish you’d get it out of your head that we’re on opposite sides, Miss Caunter. I have no mission to persecute the widow and the fatherless. Everything I have heard inclines me to feel the liveliest sympathy for them. As a policeman and as a private individual, I’m all for them. I hope you’ll believe that. It’s my maxim that the facts can never harm the innocent, and therefore that the best way to defend the innocent is to unearth every possible fact, no matter where it may seem to point at first.”
“It’s a little difficult to remember, sometimes.” The girl had recovered her poise: she gave him a thin smile. “This idea of the police as one’s dear protector is not the first to come to one’s mind when they come rushing round suggesting there’s been a murder and asking questions.”
“I didn’t suggest there’d been a murder,” Ellis said, jerking his head up abruptly to look at her.
“What else could it be, if it wasn’t an accident? Suicide? You ask me to be frank with you, and then go all cautious at me. And I have been frank with you, anyway.”
“I’m sure you have.” Ellis put his notebook away, and stood up. “And I’m very grateful to you for it, Miss Caunter, I’m going to ask you a favour.”
He put his head on one side, and eyed her with a smiling appraisal.
“What is it?” She was not giving anything away.
“I’m going to ask, if anything turns up about Joan or her mother that puzzles me, whether I may call in and consult you about it. I’m above all things anxious to do full justice to them. Please believe that.”
She looked at him hard for a moment. Then she breathed out in a long sigh, and the tension of her body relaxed.
“All right,” she said. “I’m here most evenings.”
“Thank you. Oh!” He turned to her again. “There’s just one more point. I was forgetting. Joan Baildon’s aunt. Let me see, what’s her name?”
“Miss Attwill.”
“Miss Attwill. What sort is she?”
Eunice looked along her nose at him.
“I think she’s rather a tiresome old thing. Cranky, and fancies herself. I’m-as-good-as-you-and-don’t-you-forget-it. That sort.”
“She’s a good deal older than Mrs. Baildon, I understand?”
“Years older,” said the girl decisively. “She might be her mother, to look at her. I believe she’s very kindhearted,” she went on, in an obvious desire to be fair. “She’s been very good to Joan, I must say. Lets her go down there to work when the house is too unbearable. Joan’s very fond of her, and that’s to her credit. At least, I think so.”
“Good. Anything else I ought to know about her?”
“If there is, she’ll tell you. She never stops talking. She keeps bees, and tells fortunes, and makes cowslip wine. All that sort of thing. You know.”
“Splendid,” Ellis said, smiling. “That’s a very complete picture. I knew I’d be right to come to you first, Miss Caunter, but I didn’t realise how right. Thank you so much. Good morning.”
“Good-morning.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Well.” Gilkison let out the monosyllable in shocked explosion. “Never in my life have I heard anything more utterly disingenuous than your approach to that young woman.”
“Seldom,” Ellis retorted, “can you have heard anything more utterly disingenuous than her reception of it. In any case, I don’t know what you’re complaining of.”
“The way you turned everything about, to get at her. Trying to trap her into saying something to incriminate those wretched women.”
“No, damn it!” Ellis stopped dead. “That I won’t take, even from you. Good God! And I always thought you were reasonably intelligent.”
“Perhaps I am. And perhaps that’s why——”
“Perhaps my foot. Listen, you blasted idiot. Damn it, you’ll make me angry in a minute! For sheer nerve——”
Ellis had gone a rich crimson.
“Look here, you miserable huxter. I have no theory, no axe to grind, nothing at all in my head, except the conviction that the old boy was bumped off. I don’t know who did it, any more than you do. For their sake and for everyone else’s, I devoutly hope it wasn’t either of the Baildons. But I’m not going to be such a sentimental bloody fool as to leave them out of the inquiry I’m paid by the State to make. If they’re innocent, as I hope, then the more I can find out about ’em the better.”
“So you’ve said twice already.”
“All right, all right. It doesn’t seem to have made much impression on you.”
He started to walk again, and fell in by Gilkison’s side.
“I had to make that woman talk, and I went the best way about it.”
“I can’t see that rubbing her up the wrong way helped you.”
“I didn’t rub her up the wrong way. She just flew off the handle.”
“Sheer Act of God, in fact. Nothing to do with you at all. My dear Ellis. You’ll be telling me next how tactful you are.”
“Go to hell,” said Ellis cheerfully. He had regained his composure. “I ought to know better by now than take any notice of what you say. Tell me: what did you make of her?”
“That question is rather undermined by the sentence before it.”
“Yes, yes. But let’s have your opinion, even if it isn’t worth anything.”
“She seemed to me a somewhat emotional young woman,” Gilkison said, after a pause.
“Quite. But what were the emotions? And what roused ’em?”
“Well. First of all, she is obviously fond of Joan Baildon.”
“Yes.”
“She hated the old man.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“She appears jealous of this Mr. Rattray’s giving Joan lessons. Jealous of him altogether, perhaps. Did you notice how angry she became when you asked about Joan’s attitude to him?”
“Oddly enough, I did.”
“And, at the same time, she appeared to sympathise with him about his wife. That seems a little inconsistent, to me.”
“D’you get anything else?”
Gilkison considered. “I can’t remember anything.”
“Yes, you can. One thing she said made you go all maidenly. You hated it.”
“What? I don’t——”
“When she said Joan was the old man’s daughter. There you are, you see. It disgusted you so much that you’ve forgotten it. Didn’t show a very nice mind, did it?”
“It did not,” Gilkison said, with distaste. “She even saw that herself.”
“Think she did?”
“Don’t you remember her saying we’d better consult Dr. Carter about it?”
“That was to make sure we understood what she meant. Oh no, Gilk. I don’t think for a moment that she saw herself as others saw her. D’you get anything else?”
“She seemed very touchy. But go on. I know you’re only waiting to tell me what you got, so that you can vaunt your superior powers of observation.”
“I don’t think I got much more than you did,” Ellis rejoined: “Two small things seemed to me very significant; though I’m not quite sure what they signify.”