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

the brownest girl Dave had ever seen. Her hair was a weighty long bob, the colour of good tan shoe-polish, and glossy as conkers, her lashes and brows were the same tint with an added relish of red, her forehead and cheeks were matt brown in an indescribable shade, flushed with rose and fading into ivory. She wore a shirt-dress in a tint very like her own complexion, saddle-stitched with dark brown, and in the collar she had a gossamer scarf in bright apricot. Her shoes were tan, coffee and cream in a series of fragile straps. Her features were wry and friendly, not at all beautiful, apart from the deep-brown, luminous eyes, which so far remained distantly grave though her large, generous mouth smiled at him.
    “Miss Trent?” Dave inquired, and his tone was almost incredulous, so far removed did this girl seem from the racy rival Bobbie Bracewell had been imagining, and so extremely unlikely ever to have had any but business connections with Gerry Bracewell.
    “Yes, I’m Alix Trent.”
    Her voice was low-pitched, brisk and pleasant, with a note of good-humoured patience in it. He had interrupted her at work, but he didn’t look the type to do so without reason.
    “If you could spare me just a few minutes I should be very much obliged. My name’s Cressett. I’m not the police or the press or anything official, and I haven’t any standing, but it’s about Gerry Bracewell’s death.” He saw by her face that she did read the papers, and that she would never be able to feel completely disinterested about the murder of someone she had known and worked with. “I got involved,” he said, “whether I wanted to or not. I found him. And I’ve just come from his widow.”
    That struck two notes at once with her, her face was mobile and expressive, she was sorry for Bobbie Bracewell, but also she knew how she herself had been regarded in that quarter, and his coming from the widow could mean several very different things.
    “There’s a matter of a feature article you and he handled together,” Dave said carefully, “which seems to be connected in some way with his death. Or at least the house in it does. I believe he came to see you before he was killed.”
    “Yes,” she said readily and coolly, “he did come to see me.”
    “Don’t misunderstand me—you, his visit to you—this has nothing to do with the case. Only the matter about which he wanted to see you, this
is
relevant. At least,
I
think so.”
    “But you are not the police,” she said reasonably, and for the first time almost smiled at him with her eyes as well as her lips.
    “This is something the police don’t yet know, but will as soon as I get back today. His widow gave me this to take back to them.” He held out the magazine for her to see, and her understanding was candid, neutral and detached. “I thought I might, with luck, be able to take more at the same time. Will you help me?”
    “Forgive me,” she said, aware that her smile was getting a little out of hand, “but you do appear such an improbable amateur detective.”
    “I’m not one,” he said shortly, “I don’t want to be one, I never shall be one. I’m just the man who found the body, and I happen to belong—I mean
belong
—to the small, closed community where it happened. I don’t like a man being wiped out anywhere, and especially not in our village. And I don’t like unpaid debts hanging round the necks of innocent people. I want right done, that’s all.”
    A long time afterwards, when they knew each other very much better, she told him that what had impressed her most of all, and made up her mind for her there and then about more matters than one, was that the word he used was not “justice,” but “right.” A distinction so narrow and so profound.
    “Come in!” said Alix, and set the door wide.
     
    She listened to everything he had to say, and he said much more than he had realised was necessary, because she was a good listener, intent, responsive, with