“Oh, there you are.”
Ellis plunged across to her, Gilkison rather nervously following.
“Excuse me if I don’t get up.”
Martha Attwill was small, dark, plump, and smiling. She bore a likeness to her sister which one saw immediately, and immediately dismissed; for no two expressions could have been more unlike. This woman—she might have been fifty-five or sixty—radiated a steady and cheerful confidence. She had come to terms with life, found it neither good nor bad, and cared for nobody.
She was shelling peas: the basin was on her lap. Ellis introduced Gilkison and himself.
“Sit down,” she said. “I was wondering how long it’d be before you came. There’s room for one here, but the end’s rickety. I wouldn’t risk it. Try the stool.”
“We can’t sit idle. Let me get another basin. Two, in fact. Even Gilk can shell peas.”
“Don’t mind him,” she said to Gilkison.
Ellis stood over her.
“Where are the basins? Tell me, and I’ll find ’em.”
“There’s only one as I’ll trust you with. But you can get a basket if you like. That is, if you want to. There’s no compulsion.”
“I’ll have the basin, and Gilk shall have the basket. He can’t bear to be left out of things. It makes him sulky.”
“Basket’s hanging up behind the door in the kitchen. Basin’s under the sink in the scullery.”
“I’ll get ’em.”
“He’ll bring something else,” said Miss Attwill placidly to Gilkison. “Men always do. I let a chap lay the table for supper last week, and he put things on it I hadn’t seen for years. Forgotten I had them in the house. I don’t know how he found them. ’Tis a mystery to me.”
Gilkison made an embarrassed sound. He was saved from thinking of a reply by a burst of tenor carolling from within.
“Esultate! Esultate!” cried the voice; and after a few moments Ellis emerged, brandishing a basket and a basin.
“Here we are, auntie. Got ’em in one.”
“Cheeky toad,” Miss Attwill said contentedly. Ellis drew the stool close to her feet, sat on it, considered the basin, frowned, set it on the ground between his feet, reached forward and grabbed a mass of the bright green pods, and set to work. Self consciously, Gilkison rose, possessed himself of the basket, and began.
For a time there was no sound but the methodical slitting of the pods, and the tinkle of the peas on the metal of Ellis’s basin. Pigeons were cooing intermittently somewhere behind the house. To Gilkison the whole scene seemed unreal. Ellis was working away as if he had known the garden and the little woman all his life.
“Queer business, this, auntie,” Ellis said suddenly.
“H’hm.”
He reached forward for more pods.
“Think it was an accident?”
She selected a large pod, and looked at it.
“It ought to be.”
“For all our sakes. But d’you think it was?”
There was a short pause, while she cleared the pod, and dropped it.
“No,” she said, without emphasis.
“That’s what I feel. At the same time, I can’t see who. And, even if I could see who, I can’t see why—at that time.”
“If anyone was minded to kill Matt, they’d have done it long ago. At least, I would have, if’t had been me.”
Ellis nodded. “There are a good many questions I can’t very well ask you.”
“You can ask ’em all right. I don’t say I shall answer.”
“The strongest argument in favour of those two is what you’ve just said. If they wanted to bump him off, why wait till now? Especially when they’ve had such excellent opportunities before.”
A pea fell outside the basin. He retrieved it surreptitiously, brushed it on his sleeve, and dropped it in with the rest. Miss Attwill’s eyes twinkled, but she said nothing.
“I want to see that girl clear of all this, and launched at Oxford,” Ellis went on. “That’s one reason why I’ve come to you.”
“ ’Twill be a good day for her when she gets away from West Nattering.”
“I don’t think they’re in any real danger, those two, whatever happens.” He spoke as if he were thinking aloud. “The coroner’s jury will see to that. Still, we want something stronger. We don’t want the girl followed by whispers in years to come.”
“People do talk,” Miss Attwill agreed.
“And she’d be just the one to magnify it, and let it prey on her.”
“She does take things hard. But there, you can’t blame her.”
“It strikes me, auntie, there’s been far too much on those young shoulders.”
“Ah!” For the first time, Miss Attwill’s casual tone hardened. “I’ve spoken my mind about it, more than once.”
“It’s a mercy she’s had you to turn to. To confide in.”
“She don’t say much. I don’t encourage her to. I just set her to help me with some job, and be a child again. If she hasn’t got her nose in some old book. I don’t hold with so much bookwork, for a young girl.”
“Nor do I. But it’s her one way of escape, poor child.”
“The only reason I put up with it. Even so, I’ve often made her shut the books. ‘That’s enough, child,’ I’ve said to her. And she was often glad to obey me.”
“Work. Home. Eyes. Enough in all conscience. But there’s more. What else is there, auntie?”
“Ah,” she said, and made no move to answer him. He stopped shelling the peas, and looked at her.
“Help bought at a price,” he conjectured.
Miss Attwill’s mouth tightened.
“You’re not going to get any gossip out of me,” she said, “nor no scandal-mongering neither.”
“You don’t approve, though,” Ellis said, watching her through half-closed eyes, and rocking two and fro on the stool.
“What I think’s none of your business. Get on with your work, man, and leave me do mine.”
Ellis attacked the peas again.
“That’s all right, auntie,” he said cheerfully. “We understand one another, you and I.”
“Cheeky toad.” She was mollified.
For a while they were silent. The noise of the pigeons and the rhythmical slitting of the pods were beginning to hypnotise Gilkison. He still could not believe in the scene at all. The other two had an understanding out of his reach, He could see it, but could not see how they had arrived at it.
“Yes,” Ellis said, looking around him. “A good place for the child to come. Shouldn’t be surprised if this is what’s kept her sane.”
“ ’Tis restful, here in the garden.”
“And in the parlour. Summer and winter. I could just see it, of a winter evening, with the fire twinkling on the warming pans and on that Spanish mahogany sideboard.”
“Who told you you might go in there?”
“Only a peep, auntie. Only a peep. I couldn’t resist it.”
“Snooping round.”
“My trade, auntie. My horrid trade.”
“And your pleasure. Don’t tell me.”
“I’m interested in my fellow creatures. Not only to their harm. That’s only an accident. A melancholy accident of my trade. Even then, I’m interested in the innocent more than in the guilty. Someone’s suffered. Someone’s been the victim. Someone’s blood cries aloud. I think of them, auntie.”
“Yes. There’s that side to it. But you’d be a snooper, even if you weren’t paid for it.”
“I said, I’m interested in my fellow creatures.’
“Oh, you’re a great hero, I’m sure. There. That’s the lot.”
“Let me carry ’em in for you, auntie.”
“Do what you like. Have you got all you came for?”
She eyed him ironically. He grinned, unabashed.
“Not quite. I was going to ask you if you’d be a darling and invite those two poor creatures down here for a bit to-day. It’ll be so good for them to get away from the house.”