“And give you a chance to poke around. Nosey Parker.”
“I hadn’t only that in mind. I was genuinely thinking of them.”
“Drat the man,” said Miss Attwill. “He talks as if no one had any thought but him. If you want to know, I’ve asked ’em down here for the whole evening. The peas are for them. Did you reckon I was going to eat ’em all myself? I’ve asked ’em for tea and supper. That’s why you’ll have to go. I must start making ready. I haven’t enough for you two as well.”
“Auntie.” Ellis embraced her. “You’re an angel. You think of everything.”
“Get out with you,” Miss Attwill exclaimed. “I suppose you think nobody can do the right thing without you come and tell ’em.”
“When I want putting right, auntie, I’ll come to you.”
She turned to Gilkison.
“What do you think of it all?” she asked. “You haven’t said aught yet.”
“He doesn’t get the chance,” said Ellis. “You and I do all the talking.”
“Cheeky toad. I pity you,” she said to Gilkison, “if you have to be with him all day.”
“Heaven forbid,” Gilkison said. “We only meet occasionally.”
“You don’t work with him, then?”
Ellis cut in and explained his friend’s job and errand. She nodded, and became grave.
“See to them,” she said. “Annie’s so bitter against the books, she might do something silly just to get rid of them.”
“Gilk will look after her. He’s a romantic soul. The care of the widow and the fatherless is just his line. Besides, he knows about books. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he does.”
She gave Ellis a slap.
“You leave him alone. He’s got better manners than you.”
“That’s what my wife always says.”
“For the good Lord’s sake! Are you married?”
“Triumphantly.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“She doesn’t accompany me on my professional trips.”
“You said this was a holiday.”
“Not to you. The subject was never mentioned. Aha! No time for gossip. Got you there, auntie.”
“Don’t take your wife on holidays, eh? Well—I guess she’s just as glad. Any woman’d want a holiday from your tongue.”
“She is on holiday, as it happens. Or I wouldn’t be here. Gilk knew I was at a loose end, so he asked me to come with him.”
“Well. Do something useful, now you are here.”
She came with them to the gate.
“Auntie. Why did your sister marry Matt?”
She looked past him at the trees, heavy in the splendour of their new foliage.
“Don’t ask me. Why does a woman ever marry a man?”
“Dozens of reasons, auntie. Literally, dozens. Why did Kathleen ever marry me? Not for my golden locks. Not for my blue eyes. If you can believe her, it was because she couldn’t bear to see all my things in such a mess, and because she liked the silly way my hair sticks up at the back. Like a duck’s bottom. Her words, not mine.”
He cocked his head on one side.
“I don’t expect your sister married Matt because he looked like any part of a duck.”
Miss Attwill bent down, and tweaked up a tiny weed from the flower bed.
“Annie was always a fool, to my way of thinking. She slaved for father——”
“She’s younger than you.”
“Meaning, why didn’t I? I wouldn’t stand it. I cleared out, and made a home for myself.”
“Leaving her to do the job.”
“She could have cleared out, same as I did.”
“Not she.”
“She could, if she’d had the guts.”
“But she hadn’t.”
“If she liked to stay, it was her lookout. Then father died, and what does she go and do but marry a man that was worse.”
“She needed it, by then. Tyranny. Someone to boss her.”
“You can’t make out I’m responsible for it,” Miss Attwill said, looking at him with amusement, “so you needn’t try.”
“You’ve given me a good point in her favour, anyway, auntie. She’s all the less likely to have bumped Matt off. That’s what I really wanted. Thank you.”
“Liar,” said Miss Attwill cheerfully. “Get out with you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ellis and Gilkison were once again in Matt Baildon’s front room. The afternoon sun poured in the window, and motes swam gravely in the rich shaft. Gilkison, wholly preoccupied, picked up one book after another, opened and inspected it, and made an entry in a notebook. Ellis read desultorily, and hummed to himself, stopping now and then when his interest was really caught.
While they were so engaged, a knock sounded on the door: a knock at once expressive of good-humour and confidence.
Ellis looked up, then, dramatising himself, leaned to one side and made in a semi-circular sweep for the door, giving the long bookshelf a violent shove as he passed.
“ ‘I co-ome, I come,’ ” he chanted, and stumped to the front door, “ ‘I co-ome, I come, my hea-rt’s delight; I COME, I COME, my——’ ”
He jerked the door open with shattering suddenness, to disclose a middle-aged gentleman, equipped with co-respondent shoes, pale flannels graced by a thin dark stripe, a linen coat, and a panama—with which, at the moment, he was fanning his face. Ellis took in his appearance in that order, as he was looking downwards when he opened the door.
The visitor’s face was smooth and rosy. Though he fanned it, it betrayed no sign of heat. His sparse grey hair was well pomaded. He wore gold pince-nez, through which he regarded Ellis with bland good-humour.
“Well, well, well!” Ellis cried. “If it isn’t our old friend Mr. Stuyvesant. The very man we want to see. How do you do, sir. Come right in.”
The American surveyed him calmly. “You know me,” he said, in level, musical tones, “but I don’t know you.”
“You soon will. This way.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Stuyvesant stepped across the threshold. “I called in to see Mr. Baildon.”
“To the right. But I forgot: you know the way. My colleague, Mr. Gilkison. A chair. Shall I take your hat? No: you prefer to use it as a fan. Well, Mr. Stuyvesant, if you want to see Matt, you’re round about twenty-four hours too late.”
Mr. Stuyvesant did not reply at once. There was excuse for him, since Ellis had rattled on like a machine gun. But, as they soon realised, he habitually allowed two or three seconds to elapse before he replied to anything.
“Why?” he said. “Has he gone?” (He pronounced it to rhyme with dawn.)
“He has indeed.”
“You don’t mean——”
“Mps. Do you recollect that bookcase—how it was stacked up to the ceiling? Well—Matt Baildon was found dead on the floor, just by your left foot, with all those books on top of him. There they are. My colleague has been stacking them up.”
Mr. Stuyvesant moved his left foot nearer its fellow. He showed the whites of his eyes, and blew out his pink cheeks in a soundless whistle.
“That’s bad news,” he said. “How’d it happen? What fetched the books down?”
“If we knew that, we could all go home.”
Mr. Stuyvesant did some quick thinking. He looked at Ellis with a new light in his eye.
“You a dick?”
“Got it in one,” Ellis said. “Mr. Gilkison isn’t. He’s a bookseller. He’s looking after that end of the business.”
“Mr. Paul Gilkison, of Vigo Street?”
“The one and only,” Ellis answered.
The American bowed.
“I have your name on my list, Mr. Gilkison. It was given me by John Ling, of New York, but I haven’t worked the metropolis yet.”