They walked away together towards the car.
“Sorry for being unpleasant,” Ellis said. “Fact is, I hate this sort of thing, and it always makes me show off. Like laughing when you hear bad news. Can’t help it. Never have been able to.”
“I know,” Bradstreet said unexpectedly. “I’ve often wanted to laugh in church myself.”
“Yes. But you don’t do it, Bradder. You’ve got some self-control. I’ve none. My wife tells me I’m not even adolescent yet.”
They reached the car.
“What do we do now? Till we start on the waste paper basket?”
“I know what I do,” Bradstreet said.
“Yes. I’d like to use the phone for a few minutes first, if I may.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The amount of paper brought in an hour later was not as great as Ellis had expected—and this in spite of the fact that the collectors had interpreted their instructions very generously, and brought in toffee papers and a cigarette carton or two. It did not take long to sort the damp basketfuclass="underline" and the result, although it brought to light two or three interesting love letters, and one that was quite startlingly obscene, was completely negative. No fragment belonging to or at all resembling the two small pieces was in the collection.
The question of handwriting had naturally not been overlooked: but in practice it is not easy to identify a hand by three letters, especially when these three letters show every sign of having been scrawled in haste. Ellis and Bradstreet pored over their precious clue, with the uneasy feeling that at each fresh scrutiny its value was decreasing. Finally Bradstreet got up, and announced that he was going to the dead girl’s place to have a look round.
The words touched off a spring in Ellis. He swore, and started to his feet.
“Here am I, ferreting about in all this rubbish instead of doing my job. I told you I was no good at this sort of thing.”
“What is your job, if this isn’t?”
“People. People are my job. Human beings. I should have been up at the Baildons’, seeing that this thing doesn’t get to that poor child with too violent a shock. It’s bound to be bad for her: but it needn’t reach her in the crudest way, from errand boys and such. I ought to have gone there right away.”
“I don’t think so. If we’d got something here, we might have had to act right away.”
“You could have done that for me, Bradder. No. I’ve fallen down on my job. I’ll go right along.”
He plodded off, and, reaching the Baildons’, found his fears confirmed. Seeking out Mrs. Baildon in the kitchen, he learned, with renewed self-accusation, that Joan had heard the news from the gleeful lips of Jane Exworthy, and received a severe shock. She was now lying down in her room and could see nobody. Ellis sighed.
“That’s my fault, Mrs. Baildon, I’m afraid. I should have come here at once, and broken the news to her quietly.”
Mrs. Baildon looked at him. Her expression was the most difficult to read that he had ever encountered. One could read almost anything into it—irony, blame, disapproval, deep reserve: but the big eyes, that at first gave a vaguely mournful look to the face, were so blank and so queerly lit that they made the face into a mask, whether for comedy or tragedy Ellis could not determine.
He set himself to penetrate beneath it, to exact from this silent woman one recognisable, definite human note. The look and tone with which she told him of Joan’s retirement conveyed nothing at all. She might have been an uninterested shop assistant telling a customer the price of some article not in stock.
“Your daughter is going through a very trying time, Mrs. Baildon. I hope it will soon be over.”
“Yes.”
“A good girl. She must have been a great comfort to you.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’ve been through, too. We policemen have to do unpleasant things from time to time; but they don’t rob us of the power to sympathise with our fellow-creatures in misfortune.”
Evidently Mrs. Baildon did not feel that this deserved a reply. Privately, Ellis agreed with her. He tried another tack.
“This poor girl that’s been murdered. Can you tell us anything that would help us, do you think?”
She shook her head.
“Did you know her well?”
“Not to say well.”
“She came here a good deal, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Did she never talk to you? Tell you about herself?”
Mrs. Baildon shook her head.
“It would be only natural for a girl, living by herself, to expand a little in the company of friends.”
“I didn’t see her much. She and Joan were together working.”
“She never talked to you about herself.”
“No more than to say she had a cold, or what someone had given her for Christmas.”
Ellis looked at her steadily, with a gaze which nineteen people out of twenty found disconcerting. She met it with her own, not the resolute blank of the poker player, but a relaxed nothingness; steady, but void of interest or enquiry; expressionless, but not at all mad. Ellis was well used to the faces of criminals and others who have much to hide, but this was wholly baffling.
He held it a full half minute, during which time it neither wavered nor concentrated. She could have stared at him silently for an hour without embarrassment.
“Then you can tell me nothing? Nothing to help us catch the man who killed her?”
She shook her head slowly, as if in wonder; and stood waiting for him.
“That’s a pity,” Ellis said. “Maybe Miss Attwill may be able to help. She seems very observant.”
A faint flicker came over the smooth face.
“It wouldn’t do to take too much notice of everything Martha says.”
“No?” said Ellis encouragingly.
“What she doesn’t know she makes up.”
Spoken in a level tone, the remark seemed to hold no touch of malice. Mrs. Baildon sounded as objective as if she were talking about something in a greenhouse.
“She’s very kindhearted, I know,” said Ellis, with a smile. “I dare say she wouldn’t want to disappoint me.”
To his surprise she smiled briefly back.
“You’ve hit her,” she said. “That’s Martha. Mind you, she’s a very sensible woman. Her mind’s very active.”
“And she hasn’t enough to occupy it. I see.”
The ghost of life had left her face. She regarded the subject as exhausted.
“Well,” Ellis told her, “bearing what you’ve said in mind, I’ll go and see Miss Attwill, and see what she has to say. Good-bye. And tell Joan not to worry. Not much good, I’m afraid, poor child.”
“She’s the worrying age,” replied Mrs. Baildon: and Ellis took his leave of her and departed, feeling that he had been completely and effortlessly outwitted. A poised and determined antagonist was one thing, but this woman, who did not exert herself, whose whole attitude had not a trace of tension—he had never met her like.
As he passed the door of the front room, Gilkison popped out and called after him in a sibilant whisper.
“Good God, Gilk! Have you been taking elocution lessons from a cobra?”
Gilkison made his usual offended pause.
“I thought you might like to know something that happened,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Happened when? While I’ve been talking to Mrs. B.?”
“No. Before.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when I came in?”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Good Lord. Well—go on. What is it?”
“Only that this morning, before the news came about the schoolmistress, I found those two had been upstairs, dusting the books. In here, too. They were both very friendly, and said they ought to have done it before, and did I get very dirty, and so on.”