“Yes.” She wriggled in the chair. “But you can’t get out of it as easily as that. After all, you don’t need to be a detective.”
“A policeman is like a soldier. The state decides this, that, and t’other. He has to obey. He mayn’t always like it, but he has no choice. I’ve a certain talent for this kind of thing—at least, my superiors seem to think so—and I earn my daily bread at it. However—to-day you can look on me as off duty; we won’t talk about this business at all. Then you needn’t be afraid what you say to me.”
“You might lay a trap for me,” she smiled at him.
“I won’t. You’ll see I won’t.”
“If you aren’t going to talk about what’s happened, or to lay traps for me, why have you come?”
“I wanted to see you, and get to know you, just as I wanted to see auntie and get to know her. The way I work—since for the moment you make me talk about it—the way I work isn’t so much to burrow about with a magnifying glass looking for clues and finger-prints. I do that, of course, or whoever’s with me does it, because I’m not particularly good at it. The way I work, and the part of the job I have most talent for, is to get to know the people concerned in a case, and get the feel and the character of it all. I’ve often been able to say, quite positively, that someone didn’t do a thing, in spite of all the evidence against him, simply because it didn’t fit in with his character and the feel of the whole situation. Being the man he was, he couldn’t have done it. There are two really first-class ways of clearing a person from suspicion. One is to prove that he wasn’t there, and couldn’t have been there. The other is to prove that the crime wasn’t in his character. Unfortunately, in the present backward state of the world, only the first one is accepted. But the second is very valuable, because it does save one, privately, from following up the wrong scent.”
“Can you ever be so sure of a person’s character—to know they haven’t done a thing?”
“I believe so,” Ellis replied, looking straight into her eyes.
“Haven’t you ever been wrong? Not once?”
“Oh yes. I’ve been wrong. But only because I didn’t really know the person. Didn’t know enough about him.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
“It’s not always easy to know a person through and through, so as to be ready to stake your life that he or she didn’t do a thing. In a way, it’s harder when it’s someone you’ve known for a long time. One gets to take one’s near friends for granted. If you were to ask me, suddenly, if Gilk would do a thing—well, I’d know he wouldn’t do some things. He couldn’t. But others, things that just might conceivably be in his character, if something went wrong, if life pushed him or got him in a corner; I’d have to think a long time to be sure. It’s easier if you come in from outside. You’ve no emotions about it. If Gilk were in trouble, my feelings would be aroused. That makes it hard to be sure. When all the people are strangers, it’s far easier.”
She was listening with all her attention. Her lip was quivering.
“So, you see,” Ellis said very softly, “you needn’t blame yourself so much.”
Instantly she was on the defensive. Her eyes blazed at him.
“What do you mean?” she began: but he held up his hand, smiling.
“Now, now. I know what’s been your trouble. Why not admit it? You’ve let yourself wonder whether one of your friends may not just possibly have done this thing: and then you’ve been blaming yourself and calling yourself every sort of a skunk for having such a terrible thought of them.”
She hung her head, and did not look at him.
“Well. Cheer up. You couldn’t help wondering. How could you?”
“Why have you started all this again?” she said passionately. “I’d managed to forget it for a bit. Now you’ve brought it all back.”
“Stop blaming yourself. Cheer up.”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” she cried. “Do you—— How can I cheer up? Someone——”
She broke off, and turned her face away from him, biting her lip.
“Someone must have done it. I know. Welclass="underline" your mother’s got an alibi. Even if she hadn’t, why should she wait till now, when she could have done it at any time of the day or night since he was ill? You might—I say you might—have worried about her if it had happened in the middle of the night, when she was alone with him: but not as things are. You don’t need to worry about what you were doing, because you know. If anyone’s got to worry about that, the police have. Anyway, you haven’t. The American—whether he did it or not, you’re not going to lose any sleep over him. If it was a tradesman, or a stranger, you aren’t worried about him. There are only two people for you to be worried about, and you’re cursing yourself sick for having a doubt about either of them. Well—cheer up. I don’t believe that either of them did it.”
She looked at him, silent, breathing fast.
“I don’t,” he repeated. “Cross my heart. Cut my throat. It’s not in their characters.”
She let out a deep, slow breath, and leaned back once more.
“I won’t pretend that either of them might not conceivably take a life, in certain circumstances,” Ellis said. “I believe she could: and I believe that he could. But only under intense provocation, and in circumstances very, very different from these. So, you see, you’re not so much to blame for thinking that, perhaps——”
She was looking oddly at him. He persevered.
“When people talk a lot, and say it’d be a mercy if something was done, it’s hard not to remember it later on. You had a worse fear, too. One you haven’t said anything about. If either of them had done it, he or she might be found out.”
She stared.
“Of course. What else would I worry about?”
“Blaming yourself for thinking either of them capable of killing a helpless old man.”
Her lips twisted scornfully.
“That wouldn’t worry me.”
Ellis was disconcerted. His mouth fell open foolishly, and be blinked.
“Surely,” he said, “you wouldn’t like to think——”
“Don’t be sentimental. Calling father helpless. He trampled on mother for twenty-five years, and me too, ever since I was tiny. Helpless! he was a powerful, cruel old devil. I’d have killed him gladly, a hundred times, if I’d had the guts. Oh, don’t look shocked! You’d have felt the same, if you’d been me, and seen how he treated mother. Everyone knows it’s true.”
“Well,” said Ellis dryly—he had recovered himself—“it seems I’ve been wasting my pity on you.”
To his amazement, she put out a hand and caught his arm.
“Don’t think me horrid. No, no, don’t. You’re not to. Oh, it isn’t fair!” She burst into tears. “If I’d had a decent life like any other girl, you wouldn’t have. I’m not hard a bit, really, to other people. Truly I’m not. It’s father made me like it, father, father, father! Everything that’s wrong with me is father. Oh—it isn’t fair!”
“My dear,” Ellis said. He took her hand, but she snatched it away, and held a handkerchief to her mouth. “I made a fool of myself a minute ago, but I’m not a total fool. I know you’re not hard. I know what you’ve been through. I know all about it. That’s why I sympathise with you, that’s why I’m your friend, that’s why I want to clear this whole damned business up, so that you can go to Oxford and put it all behind you for good.”
She kept the handkerchief to her mouth. Her face was turned away. A sob shook her thin shoulders.
“I hate myself,” she said. “I wish I was dead.”