The Knocker on Death's Door

“Yes, do that,” said Dave, and got up from the kitchen table. “Thanks a lot for the coffee. Now just tell me where I can put the car for you, and I’ll be getting back.”

He walked away from Number 10 Clement Gardens, towards the nearest bus-stop, and he had never been so glad that he wasn’t married. The last thing she had said to him, as he left, was: “Call in again some time, if you’re this way. You’re welcome any time.” And the kindling spark he had seen in her eye might have been merely the stimulus of preparing for the day’s work, but might equally well have been the first signal of a reviving interest in men—all those men who were still alive and not on a slab in the mortuary. Whatever its source, it made up his mind for him that he was never going to call in at Number 10 again. He didn’t dislike her, he was sincerely sorry for her, she even inspired a sort of respect by her rigorous honesty; but he was never going to see her again if he could help it. He’d take her magazine to Sergeant Moon or to Chief Inspector Felse, and he hoped she’d go through all those negatives and transparencies her husband had kept—at least it would give her an interest for an evening or two, and help her over the worst, even if she found nothing—but from this on, let the police take care of anything she produced.

But the magazine under his arm bothered him. Here was confirmation, if nothing more, that Gerry Bracewell had seen something that puzzled, intrigued and excited him about that church door at St. Eata’s, and had wanted desperately to hunt up the pictures he had once made of the house in which the door had then hung. To compare? To confirm some nagging suspicion in his own mind that there was something changed about it? Could he have forgotten, in six years, exactly what pictures he had taken? Was it only a shot in the dark that there might have been a photograph of that door in its old position? Or did he know he’d photographed it? As many as thirty pictures to get three, his wife had said. He couldn’t remember which of his batch the magazine had chosen, he had to get hold of a copy of the article first. When that failed, what next? The negatives, presumably, would belong to The Midland Scene. So the next step would be—supposing the whole thing was urgent enough, and promising enough—to consult their records. Another disappointment? After he’d thrown the magazine across the room in fury and frustration he’d disappeared until the Friday, and only after that had he settled down grimly to turn out all his dead, past pictures, just in case he’d missed it. So before 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 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.