“A very natural procedure. Ellis—for God’s sake! don’t make such a noise. What is there to guffaw at in that?”
“You!” crowed Ellis. “You, going from cottage to cottage and saying you wanted lodgings. If you could only see yourself. Did you wear gloves, by any chance? No? You should have. That would have finished it.”
“If you would have the goodness——”
“It’s a damned good job we’re not here on business. You’d have queered every conceivable pitch. Look at yourself, man! You, dressed like that, talking the way you talk, mincing up cottage paths and saying you want lodgings. Now, if I did it, they might believe it. I’m dirty enough, and I know the way to talk to them. They could only think I was mad, and they think that already. But you——”
“If you’d have the goodness to let me finish, instead of braying and gabbling——”
“Your vocabulary’s improving. Good! You’ll have quite a neat turn of phrase by the time I’ve done with you. Well—go on—what is it you want to say?”
“Naturally, I did not pretend I wanted lodgings for myself. I said our old housekeeper had had an operation, and I wanted to find a nice quiet place where she’d be well looked after.”
“Yes,” said Ellis, after a pause. “Yes. That’s in character. That’s not bad. You’re coming on, Gilk.” Ellis leaned over, and patted him affectionately on the arm.
“Kind of you to say so,” Gilkison said, with a wary eye on the greasy knife.
“Always encourage the learner. Praise where praise is due. Works wonders. You didn’t find Nelder?”
“No.”
“He’s not staying here, then?”
“It appears not. But there are a number of villages around where he might stay. I took the bus to two of them, but drew blank. I’ll have another try this afternoon.”
“You have a certain pertinacity one can’t but admire. Misguided, perhaps: even stupid. But let that pass.” Ellis handed him the mint sauce. “No? Well, well.” He poured himself a second lavish dose. “Why do you attach so much importance to the appearance of the fellow Nelder?”
“I know him. He’s not the sort of man to come all this way for nothing.”
“I grant you that. But what he’s come for may have nothing to do with our suave and courteous friend up the road. There may be a score of shady opportunities in the neighbourhood, which we know nothing about.”
“There may. But I have the strongest feeling that he’s here on some business to do with Baildon. Otherwise, why did he rush away as soon as he heard my voice?”
“A sensitive ear, maybe.”
“Ellis—really—this prep school repartee——”
“Is there no other person or place in the neighbourhood that might interest him? Are you certain of that?”
“There’s a junk shop on the Moreton road that has a few books, but I’ve never found anything there worth bothering about. Anyway, he hadn’t been there. The books were thick with dust, and the man told me nobody’d turned them over since “Friday week.”
“Someone’s died, or is selling his library—or his gramophone records. Is Nelder interested in records?”
“Not that I know of. He might be. Anything he might make a dishonest penny on interests him.”
“He knows something you don’t know. Or he was just passing through, and wanted a drink.”
“Nobody passes through here. It isn’t on the way to anywhere.”
Ellis yawned.
“I’m tired of Nelder.”
“Sorry to bore you with my affairs.”
“Hoity toity. Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“Retire, and plunge in hoggish slumber.”
“Coarsely worded, but correct. I advise you to do the same. Wake me at tea time.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Life,” Ellis pronounced, “has shrunk to a pattern. Alter tea, we go to call on Matt Baildon. On our arrival, Matt Baildon is rude to us.”
“There may be a variant or two this afternoon,” Gilkison said, “when Matt starts cross-examining you about the ’nineties.”
“That was your lie, not mine. I shall see that it recoils on you.”
“No doubt.”
The two were walking up the road. The sun was still very hot. The haze that had softened it earlier had been burned away.
Matt Baildon’s trees stood staring in bleak ugliness. They looked lumpy and indigestible in the sunlight. His front gate was open: a small van was drawn up against the kerb.
“ ‘Daffodil Laundry,’ ” Ellis read. “A hankering after the grace which nature has denied him.”
They went in. As they rounded the stiff bend in the drive, a man came round the angle of the house at a half run. His face was yellow, his eyes at once startled and gloating. His lips moved, and he was muttering soundlessly to himself, as if memorising the lines of a part.
As soon as he saw them, his eyes opened to their widest. He shook his head, and made a strange wavering gesture with his hand.
“No. You can’t go in there,” he babbled. “No. Not in there.”
“Why not?” Ellis asked sharply.
“Mr. Baildon.”
The man could not get his breath. He had to shape the words with his lips before he could utter them.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“ ’E’s dead.”
“Dead?”
The man nodded. “Doctor’s in with en.” His words came suddenly, in a rush. “I been in to leave laundry. Couldn’t get no answer, didn’t hear nobody, so I puts me ’ead in to the front room, to ask where they’m all to, and then I sees en, layin’ all knocked over, like.”
Ellis and Gilkison exchanged glances, and ran up the steps, Ellis leading. They fumbled hurriedly down the dark passage, and into the room.
It was strangely lighter. As he rounded the corner of the jutting bookcase, Ellis realised why. The rampart of books was gone from the top of it, and the light now poured across it unobstructed.
Another step, and he saw where the books had gone. The floor was piled deep with them, a scattered angular avalanche, from which arose, like a half-buried building, Matt Baildon’s wheel chair.
All this Ellis saw half consciously. His eyes had fixed on something more remarkable. On the floor, among the shoal of books, the huddled figure of their owner lay all awry. Over him, on one knee, hampered by the books, bent the figure of a large, powerfully built man in brown tweeds.
He looked up angrily as Ellis entered. His lean face was dark against the light. A patch of hair grew on each cheek, above the line of the razor. Long moustaches did not altogether hide a wide, resolute mouth.
“This is most improper,” he exclaimed thickly. “What are you doing here? Get out at once.”
Ellis clicked his tongue.
“You’ve moved him,” he cried accusingly.
The doctor glared.
“Of course I’ve moved him, you bloody fool. How else d’you think I’m going to get at him?”
“Never move the body. You may destroy vital evidence. It’s clear you have no experience of police procedure.”
The doctor’s pupils went small.
“You a policeman?”
“I am.”
“Thank God I haven’t, then.”
He bent down, and went on with his examination. Ellis looked at him with wrinkled brow, and suddenly grinned. The doctor’s head jerked up again.
“Why the hell shouldn’t I move him? What right have you to question me, sir? This has got nothing whatever to do with you. This is a purely medical matter.”
“I’m not so sure, doctor.”
The older man’s face became clotted with rage. He gazed at Ellis, his moustaches working. A bright bead of saliva gleamed at the corner of his mouth.