“Yes. Goon. Tell me.”
“The second edition of one book—Lakewater. That didn’t come from the front room.”
“Sure?”
“I noticed it particularly, the last time I was here. It has a bookplate on the flyleaf—Coppin: Charles Coppin. I remember noticing the design.”
“What room did it come from?”
“It was in the room where I was sleeping. I had time to examine the books there.”
“Whose room?”
“Joan Baildon’s.”
Ellis sighed.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s have tea. Then I’ll get on to the Bradder, and tell him his inquest’s off.”
“Inquest off? But I thought you implied——”
“Nelder.”
“Nelder? You don’t think he took the books.”
“Oh, Gilk, Gilk! Who wrote to Nelder, if Matt didn’t? Who needed the money Matt wouldn’t hand out? Who was in for the worst sort of trouble, as soon as Matt discovered that the books were gone? Nelder’s evidence is vital. Even the locals can’t suggest holding the inquest until we’ve got what he has to say.”
“Ellis. This is appalling.”
“Just found that out, have you?”
“Do you really mean that those two——?”
“Don’t put it on to me. I don’t mean anything. I go by the facts, like the poor bloody policeman I am. It must have struck you what brought Nelder here.”
“I didn’t think of it. I must say, Ellis, I think you are going ahead rather faster than the facts warrant. What proof have you Matt didn’t get rid of the books and make the substitution himself? May he not have written to Nelder? He sold books before.”
“Gilkie! Gilkie! You’re as bad as the Bradder. Worse, in fact, for you haven’t the same excuse. You’re going right back on yourself. To start with, you were incredulous that Matt could have had dealings with anyone but you. Now, like the sentimentalist you are, you switch right across, and argue against your own professional status.”
“You dare to call me a sentimentalist! After saying you were afraid I’d find something like this, and damning me for finding it. No, but seriously, Ellis, I don’t see how you can prove that Matt wasn’t responsible.”
“That’s why Nelder’s evidence is vital, and the inquest must be adjourned till we can get it. Now—tea. Tea. And lots of it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
All things considered, Bradstreet took Ellis’s news well. Ellis did not trust this time to the telephone, but went to deliver his news in person.
“Yes,” Bradstreet said. “I was afraid something like that might come out. Though, mind you,” he added cautiously, “I think we can exaggerate the importance of it. Even if those two poor souls did take a book or two, it doesn’t follow that they killed him.”
“I know it doesn’t, Bradder. I know it doesn’t. What’s more, I know it’s just the kind of pitfall we as a tribe are very apt to fall into. But I think we’re more likely to fall into it when we’re looking for evidence against someone. Not when we’re doing our level best not to find it.”
“That might work just the same way,” Bradstreet argued. “I mean, just because we didn’t want anything of the kind to come up, we may exaggerate its importance when it does, or even mistake its meaning altogether. Besides, we don’t know who took the books. Yet we’re talking as if it was proved that those two did it. That’s what I mean: we’re prejudiced.”
Ellis gazed at him reverently.
“Bradder, you’re a marvel. For sheer casuistry, I never heard the like.”
“What’s that?” Bradstreet asked.
“Casuistry? Twiddling the facts.”
“Come now, I’m not twiddling no facts.” He had slipped into dialect again: “I’m only saying we don’t know yet how to read ’em. Valuable books have been taken, and other books, less valuable, put in their place. That’s all we know for certain.”
“True for you. And the fact that this supplies a motive for the bumping off of Matt on the day he was bumped off, and that one of the books came from the bedroom of one of the suspects—that goes for nothing, does it?”
“It might mean a lot, and it might mean nothing at all.”
Ellis grinned at him.
“It does my heart good to hear you. When Gilk told me what he’d found, I damned him good and hard.”
Bradstreet picked up the telephone.
“Well, I must get on to the coroner, and put off this here inquest. Better put it off for—how long? Shall we say Thursday? That allows for anything else turning up.”
“You country blokes do things very much your own way, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Either you have the inquest five minutes after the corpse is found, or—what will you do with Matt? Embalm him?”
“I don’t reckon we shall need to do that,” Bradstreet replied, in matter-of-fact tones. “Say we see this Nelder chap to-morrow. We shan’t be back till evening time. That takes us to Tuesday. There may be something in his evidence that we’ll have to follow up. Then that friend of yours, Mr. What’s-his-name——”
“Gilkison.”
“That’s his right name, is it. I get a bit muddled, what with you calling him different things. He may find out something else, while he’s working on the books, same as he found this out. I reckon Thursday will be about right.”
“I bow to you, Bradder.” Ellis blew out a huge sigh. “I’m rotten at the legal minutiæ of a case. Always have been I’ve been spoilt, that’s what it is. Had it all done for me. Been left to do my own stuff in my own way. I need a nanny.”
Bradstreet spoke into the receiver.
“Nattering 104, please.”
“You’re a perfect nanny, Bradder.”
Bradstreet smiled indulgently.
“No chance of luring you up to town, I suppose?” Ellis went on.
“I don’t reckon I should be any use up in those parts. Thank you, all the—— Hallo. Is that Mr. Dobell’s house? Yes, please. Inspector Bradstreet. I’m a countryman born and bred. I should be all thumbs, up in London.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’d be grand. Well—we’ll talk of that later. So long.”
He left the station, and stood for a moment in the road, wondering whether to look in once more at the Baildons’—there was always the pretext of going to see how Gilkison was getting on—or to call on Miss Attwill, or to go back to the hotel. He decided on the last, and had gone fifty yards in that direction, when he stopped again. An instinct, which he could not explain, urged him to go to the Baildon’s. He felt obscurely that, if he didn’t, something might go wrong.
“Ellis, you’re getting jumpy, my lad. It won’t do.”
All the same, he obeyed the prompting, and took the now familiar road: so familiar that it was only by an effort that he remembered how, forty-eight hours ago, he had not known that it existed.
The feeling which made him go to the house was never fully explained, but there was something going on in the Baildon’s front room, and that was an acute conflict in the mind of Paul Gilkison.
Gilkison, when he got back after tea to continue his work, ran into Joan in the garden. She smiled at him, and showed a tendency to engage him in conversation. They exchanged a few obvious remarks about the weather, and came to a full stop. Both stood silent, both smiled, and Gilkison, excusing himself, went indoors and resumed his cataloguing.
Presently he became aware that she was in the passage outside the room. She was hesitating, trying to pluck up her courage to come in. To his keen annoyance, Gilkison felt his face burning, and his heart beating faster, and knew that he was listening with preternatural attention for her to move. He heard no sound, yet he was aware, through what sense he could not say, first, that she was in the door, next that she was in the laneway between the projecting bookcase and the walclass="underline" and then she came out into the open space.