He passed Ellis the typewritten sheet with the medical findings. Ellis scanned it.
“Cause of death, strangulation. Bruises on throat and upper arm inflicted before death. H’m. He doesn’t think it was rape.”
“No.” Bradstreet was looking at something on his desk.
“On the other hand. . . . Recently, but not so recently as all that. Ye—es. What d’you make of it?”
“It doesn’t seem to help us very much.”
“Neither your theory nor mine. Unless——”
“Yes?” Bradstreet enquired, after a pause.
“Nothing. Get anything else? Among her effects? Any letters?”
“Nothing to signify. There was a batch of eleven letters from one Maurice, from an address at South Shields, but no more than friendly, and they tailed off. There was eight months between the last two.”
“Nothing local?”
“None from anyone we’ve an eye on. Excepting a few from Joan Baildon. All full of admiration and gratitude. The letters a child would write.”
“Not recent, I take it, then.”
“They aren’t dated. There’s one a bit different from the rest, asking if the girl was offended with her, and what had she done. It had a pencil mark in the margin, and the what-had-she-done part was underlined, with an exclamation mark after it.”
“Typical,” Ellis said. “Got it here?”
Bradstreet smiled, opened a drawer, and passed over the bundle of letters. Ellis flipped them through.
“Notice how the writing has matured? This little one, about the book she’d borrowed—I’ll bet you that’s later than the rest. I’ll bet you, too, that there were more in between it and the what-have-I-done one, and that this beauty tore ’em up because she didn’t like ’em. I know her sort. The sort that cuts her own photo out of a group if she doesn’t like it.”
He passed the letters back.
“There’s been some hellish stuff here, Bradder. Playing up that poor child’s feelings.”
“Over what?”
“Over Rattray. ‘You don’t love me any more’ when Rattray comes to give the Latin lessons.”
“I don’t see you’ve a right to say that. It’s conjecture.”
“Well, if I’m wronging the dead, I apologise.”
“They continued good friends. Miss Caunter was always ready to do what she could to help.”
“Leading to Discovery Number Two. Out with it, Bradder. I think I can guess.”
Bradstreet looked at him. Ellis grinned into the wide, expressionless face.
“Miss Caunter was the muffled lady who handed Nelder the books,” he said.
Bradstreet took something else out of the drawer.
“The anonymous letter was done on her typewriter. So she may have been.”
“Understand me, Bradder. I don’t mean for a second that the girl turned against Joan, because of Rattray. All I mean is that she belonged to a type that can’t help making emotional capital out of everything that occurs. She had to play the girl up. She’d play anyone up; at any time, however happy she was. And, since she was probably quite unhappy, and her life lacked drama, she’d be bound to make the most of every chance she got.”
“I still don’t see—Well, never mind. It doesn’t bear on the matter in hand.”
“Like half the things I say, Bradder. Only it never does to disregard me entirely, because sometimes I talk sense by accident.”
Bradstreet was in no mood for persiflage. He put the letters away in the drawer, and took out a further bundle of papers, and Ellis’s small flat tin.
“I’ve been over a number of samples of her handwriting, and I think you’ll agree with me that the most we can say is that she might have written the three letters on that little piece of paper.”
He passed the papers over to Ellis, who scrutinised them through a magnifying glass, comparing them with the small crumpled piece.
“The ‘s’ is the most like. But it’s such a scrawl.”
“Her writing varies a lot,” Bradstreet commented.
“Typical, again. It was very marked in the letters to Joan that I read. Well, Bradder. Where do we go from here?”
“I’ve put my men on to all the usual routine. We’re checking up on all the men from the camp and aerodrome who had leave last night.”
“And the movements of everyone hereabouts.”
“Naturally.” Bradstreet looked hurt.
“Bless your heart, Bradder. I was afraid you’d tell me it couldn’t be any of the local race of Galahads. Now, now. I’m only pulling your leg, and you know it.”
Bradstreet’s expression suggested that the time and place were unsuitable.
“Who’s going to interview some of our more prominent citizens, Bradder? You or I?”
“Which of them have you got in mind?”
“Well—Rattray, for one. It was one of his evenings out. He finishes at nine, he’s home by ten. What does he do between nine and ten? What did he do the night before, when he came in so late? Lucky for him she wasn’t killed that night. He’d have had something to explain away. He has, as it is: but not her death.”
“Seeing she did a full day’s work in the school, no,” Bradstreet agreed. “I think you’d better tackle him, don’t you?”
They looked at each other.
“Perhaps I had. But not yet. I’ve a half notion in my head . . .”
He told Bradstreet what it was. Bradstreet looked concerned, but nodded slowly.
“Worth trying, I dare say. But I shouldn’t play around too long.”
“Bradder! What a low view you take of my professional activities.”
“Well,” said the Devonian doggedly, “you work on rather fancy lines, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Fancy, that is, compared to the likes of me. I just go along my own way.”
“And a damned good way too. I admire it. I’d do it, if I could. But I can only go my own.”
Bradstreet nodded. “While you’re doing your thing, I’ll do t’other.”
“Choosing a time——”
“Yes. I’ll find a tale to satisfy her.”
“I think it’s as well that the two operations should be independent.”
“There may be nothing in it,” Bradstreet said. “But, if there is——” He shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“It boils down to two questions, Bradder. Why was she killed? Was it because she knew something? In other words, is her death connected with Matt’s, or is it quite irrelevant? My notion can work in either event.”
“It’s a bit much to ask me to believe, in a little place like this, which I know like the back of my hand, and which has been quiet for years, that two independent murders can take place in four days.”
“That’s a sound point, Bradder. Even I, who am handicapped by no local knowledge, can allow it some force.”
“Local knowledge isn’t always a handicap.”
“Of course it isn’t. But, when it comes to an estimate of possibilities, the outsider and the local man will judge differently. I maintain there’s only been one unexpected murder—Eunice’s. Half a dozen people, yourself included, have told me they wondered nobody had polished Matt off sooner.”
“We might have said it, but we didn’t mean it literally.”
“Didn’t you though. Personally, I always attach great importance to the things people say without meaning them. That is, without knowing they mean them. No, Bradder: the form of words is very important. You not only said you wondered Matt hadn’t been killed: you said you wondered his wife or Joan hadn’t done it.”
“That was only a manner of speaking. I never——”
“Out of the heart the mouth speaketh. On top of all that, you can’t claim that Matt’s murder was unexpected or outside probability. That leaves you with only one murder to explain: whether it’s related to the other or not. Personally, I’m betting that it’s not.”