“Tell you—when I get my—breath back.”
“Take it easy. That was a risk, you know.” Bradstreet shook his head reprovingly. “I was afraid that’s what you might be up to. You should have let us know.”
“Watching—for Joan. She came—didn’t know he would. Hoped, though.”
“Take it easy.”
Ellis turned his head away, and retched again. Then, with the supporting hand of the sergeant, he scrambled to his feet.
“M’m.” He made a grimace of pain. “Not in training for this sort of thing, Bradder.”
“Yes?”
“He did it.”
“I know.”
“You know? How?”
“I went down, as we arranged, while he was out. Told his wife some cock-and-bull story. The rest of the paper was in his mackintosh pocket.”
“That’s one thing I’ve got right, anyway.” He looked about him. “I wonder where he’s gone.”
“That’s no matter,” Bradstreet said cheerfully. “We’ll soon get him.”
“Won’t be too easy. He’s dangerous. And he’ll be cunning as hell now.”
“He wasn’t very cunning about the paper.”
“No. But then he must have acted like an automaton.”
Bradstreet shook his head from side to side.
“I can’t see what he did it for. Come to that, I can’t see why he killed her at all. Unless he’s gone mad.”
“He’s beside himself: but I doubt if he’s certifiable.”
“How did you know he’d done it?”
“I said it was queer, to plug a corpse’s nose with paper, instead of cotton wool, and asked if they hadn’t used cotton wool on his mother.”
“His mother!” Bradstreet stared. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“It was Joan gave me the idea. She told me he’d nursed his mother, as a boy, till she died: that she was the first dead person he’d seen: and that it was a terrible shock to him. Welclass="underline" he kills this girl, for some reason we’ve yet to find—though I can make a guess at it—in a fit of frenzy. Then, when he sees her dead, he remembers the other dead face, also a woman’s, and tries to compose this one to the same stillness. He can’t. He can’t even get the eyes to shut properly. One thing he can do, though: and in a sort of trance, he feels in his pockets, finds a bit of paper, and does it.”
“My God,” Bradstreet said.
“At least,” Ellis added, “that’s my guess. Anyway, he killed her, and put the plugs in afterwards.”
“Have we any evidence that he killed her? Might he have found her lying dead, and then done as you say?”
“He might. But, if he’d nothing to do with killing her, why keep quiet about it? Why not come and tell us what he’d found? Damn it all, Bradder, we don’t want to start looking for a third murderer.”
“You still keep to it, then, that the two things are separate.”
“I see no reason to think otherwise. Coo!” Ellis stopped, and bent forward. “He’s got a punch, that lad. I’m not half sore.”
“A good job he was content with knocking you out, instead of serving you as he served her.”
“Good lord!” Ellis gazed at him with round comical eyes. “I never thought of that.”
Bradstreet smiled at him. Then his face set again.
“Well,” he said, “we’d best get back to the station.”
“I’m going home,” Ellis said. “I’ve had enough for tonight.”
“That’s right. We’ll let you know in the morning when we’ve got him.”
“You’re an optimist, Bradder.”
“He can’t get far,” said Bradstreet comfortably. “We’ve a cordon all round, and we’ll have men searching everywhere.”
“If he gets into the woods, he’ll lead you a dance.”
“Not for long. We’ve hunted chaps hereabouts before now.”
“In this God-fearing, law-abiding spot? Fie, Bradder, fie.”
“I’m tired of that joke,” said Bradstreet simply.
“Sorry. We’ll give it decent burial. By the way, Bradder—what was on the paper? The bit you found in his pocket? What did the mystic letters stand for?”
“ ‘I must see you.’ She was making an appointment with him.”
“I thought as much.” Ellis grinned. “Nothing about semolina.”
“No,” Bradstreet said, in tones that suggested he was tired of that joke too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The car came round for Ellis soon after breakfast. There was a bruise where Rattray’s fist had landed, but it had not interfered with his sleep, and he decided that it was not going to interfere with his meal.
The sergeant was at the door.
“You all right, sir?”
“Grand. Well—what’s the news! Found him?”
“Yes, sir. Railway line.”
“Like that, eh? Well—maybe it’s the best way out. Poor devil!”
They got into the car.
“I think the Inspector feels that way too, sir. At least, mostly.”
Ellis nodded. “You mean, we may have some trouble with the evidence.”
“I suppose it’ll come in that he was mad.”
“That would save trouble, certainly. We shouldn’t have to find a motive.”
“Was he mad, d’you reckon, sir?”
“When he killed her? No: not in the legal sense. I think he had a motive. A reason, anyway.”
The sergeant said no more. Evidently the subject still troubled his sense of delicacy, as his colour rose a little, and he concentrated on the steering wheel.
They reached the station, and Ellis went in to Bradstreet.
“Well, Bradder. That’s that.”
“Yes.” Bradstreet’s eyes were heavy and a little bloodshot.
“Bradder! You haven’t been to bed.”
“Too much to see to. How are you feeling?”
“Still a bit sore. Otherwise, fit as a flea.”
“Good.”
“When did you find him?”
“Twenty to six. In Prowse’s Cutting. Only a couple of miles away.”
“Had he been there long?”
“Four or five hours.”
“Instantaneous, I hope.”
“Must have been.”
Ellis pulled himself a chair, and sat down.
“Sorry,” Bradstreet said: and yawned.
“Well, Bradder, he’s saved us quite a bit of trouble. It’ll be easy to bring in a verdict of unsound mind.”
“To cover all three?” Bradder raised his head.
“Now, now, now! My dear Bradder, you know as well as I do there isn’t a scrap of evidence to connect him with the Matt business.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Bradstreet said. “To my way of thinking, he’s the only person we have got definite evidence against. He went into the house on Friday afternoon, on his own admission. He was observed to come out in a hurry and to look up and down the road, to see if anyone was watching. We don’t know how long he was in the house—we’ve only his own word that he was there just long enough to return the book: but, even if that’s true, it wouldn’t have taken long to do the job.”
“And to risk the row of upsetting all those books?”
“Not much risk. Joan was in the garden. It wouldn’t take him a minute to make sure that Mrs. Baildon was out. He’d only to look in the kitchen, and tiptoe quietly upstairs. Her bedroom and the bathroom are side by side, and, this weather, the doors’d be open.”
Ellis shook his head decisively.
“It’s physically possible, Bradder. I’ll admit that. But it’s wrong. There’s no motive.”
“I don’t see that. Not if he was mad.”
“I keep telling you he wasn’t.”
“I don’t see it,” Bradstreet persisted stubbornly. “I can’t see how you make that out. Everything you told me about him—that night when he came in and found you with his wife——”
“Damn it, Bradder. Don’t put it like that. You make me want a bath.”