Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door by Ellis Peters

Friday he’d thought of something and someone else he might try. And drawn another blank.
    Who or what filled in that gap? Alix Trent? The author of the series might well possess prints of all the pictures concerned, but apparently she hadn’t storage space, either. And the picture wasn’t her work, only an illustration by someone else, she had no copyright in it, why keep it?
    All he had to do was get off the bus and make his way to New Street station, and go home. And so he would have done, if the editorial offices of
The Midland Scene
had not been so close to the city centre, and he had not had at least half an hour to wait for a train.
    The office was in a new glass and concrete block, smart, sterile and cold, with a fountain and the pillars of Baalbek in the hall; but two floors up, where
The Midland Scene
lived, the premises had settled down into a practical workaday scale and style. A minute front office housed only a receptionist and a telephonist. Dave asked after Alix Trent, and where he could contact her in connection with one of her articles. The receptionist willingly explained that Miss Trent was not on the magazine’s pay-roll, but was a freelance who often did work for them, and the office would naturally forward any communications to her. Dave was duly grateful for the information, but had thought of getting in touch with Miss Trent personally while he was here in town—if, of course, she lived in Birmingham. The receptionist examined him sternly through her iris-tinted butterfly glasses, and pondered whether he looked a proper person to be given Miss Trent’s address. She was a nice girl, about eighteen and a half by the look of her, with a head of smooth blue-black hair like a well-groomed rook, and the scimitar points of her raven wings stabbed her pink cheeks and made hollows there. She looked over her glasses, because she could see better that way. On the whole, she thought he looked a harmless creature; and Miss Trent was known to be capable of dealing with most eventualities.
    “It’s in Handsworth, close to the park, I’ll write it down for you.” Which she did, earnestly.
    Dave thanked her, and hesitated. “Look, would you mind telling me—are you on here regularly?”
    “Yes, days,” she said, and took off her glasses altogether, the better to consider him.
    “Do you know if anyone inquired after Miss Trent here last week? I believe a friend of mine may have called in on the same errand.”
    He must have sounded casual enough and innocent enough. She pondered, visibly turning back the pages of her memory.
    “Well, yes, one person did—but I don’t think that could be the one you’re thinking of, it was one of the photographers who sometimes works for us. He used to work with Miss Trent quite a lot, so I’m told, a few years back. They told me it was O.K. to tell him.” She looked momentarily anxious, but not because death had leaned over her shoulder. She was young, she had something better to do in her spare time than read the crime news.
    “No, that wouldn’t be my man. Never mind, thanks, anyhow.”
    “He didn’t come just for that, actually,” the girl said, “he came to go through our library pictures for something he wanted, but I don’t think he found it. We don’t keep material that hasn’t been used for publication, you see, not for more than a year or so—not unless it’s of exceptional interest.”
    “No, of course not. I suppose space is always a problem.”
    “These new places,” she told him with conviction, “look
huge
, but you try working in them! There isn’t room to swing a cat, let alone a camera.”
    Dave went out and took a bus towards Handsworth from the nearest bus-stop.
    At something after ten o’clock, Alix Trent opened the door of her Edwardian semi wide, as only large-minded people do, and looked at her unexpected visitor with mild inquiry. As she stood on her three-inch doorstep, her eyes were exactly on a level with his.
     
    She was