The Knocker on Death's Door

“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 the patience to wait for a slower but possibly more powerful and accurate mind than her own to find the words it needed without prompting. She kept very still while he talked, and she thought deeply and talked openly when it was her turn. Once she had made up her mind there were no half- measures.

“Yes, you’re right, of course, he did come to me. After he’d found nothing in the archives, I suppose. He wanted to know if I’d kept any of the unused pictures from that country house series. He didn’t say which one he was interested in at first, and if I’d had anything to show him I don’t think he’d have committed himself any further, but I don’t keep past material, except file copies of my own work. And it hadn’t seemed likely that there’d be any future sales in that particular set, they were commissioned, and nobody else was going to show interest. As I remember it, all the houses were much the same—after all, the major ones are too well known, it was the small stuff we were concerned with. These tumbledown dumps miles from anywhere, with arthritis in every flagstone—So when it was clear I had nothing to show, then he did begin to probe in another way. That was the first time he actually mentioned Mottisham Abbey. I read the papers, I knew about the door being put back into the church porch, it didn’t take much guessing to decide that he’d been covering the ceremony. He started reminding me of what the house was like, and asking how much I remembered. In the end it came down to what he really wanted. How well did I remember the wine-cellar door.”

She looked up at Dave, across her plain, practical, uncluttered workroom, and smiled. Smiling made her mouth slightly oblique, one corner flicking engagingly upwards.

It sounded hopeless. One house in a series of at least five, one minor feature in the house, one visit… “It was expecting a lot,” Dave owned ruefully.

“As it happens, I had some reason to remember it, though not enough to be much use to him, apparently. I do remember it was a nice piece of carving, though very dark and coated with a rather nasty varnish…”

“They’ve removed that,” said Dave.

“Good for them! It did look well worth cleaning up. But nobody said a word, about any legends attaching to it, not to us, at any rate. Of course, it was the old man himself who showed us round, and he wasn’t the kind to retail legends, from what we saw of him. He scoffed at the whole thing. I was slightly offended, to tell the truth, after all I was twenty-three then, and took my job very seriously, and I expected patrician elderly gentlemen to take their historic houses seriously, too. He didn’t. He told me exactly what he thought of old, cold, insanitary stone houses, and said if my rag thought so highly of the place they could have it, he was only waiting for a reasonable offer. He was a character. And handsome, too. Not to say oncoming! What I chiefly remember about the wine-cellar is that he contrived to close the door—or partially close it—with himself and me inside, while Gerry was making some shots of the outside.”

“Then he did photograph the door?” Dave interrupted quickly.

“Oh, yes, both he and I were quite sure of that, that’s why he was hunting for the prints, but none of us had kept them—they weren’t used, as you’ve seen. And when we were alone inside there, not to make a long story of it, old Mr. Martel made a very debonair but very determined pass at me, and I had to whip the door open pretty smartly and make a discreet getaway. The things I know about that door are not so much visual, consequently. What I remember most is how surprised I was, considering its size, at the sweet way it swung. Whoever hung it knew his business. It balanced beautifully, even though it wasn’t all that well cared for, and creaked a little in motion.”

It sounded absolutely authentic. Given the late Robert’s reputation, it would have been unthinkable for him to be shut in a cellar with an attractive twenty-three-year-old girl and not make a pass at her. He would have considered it an opportunity wasted, almost a dereliction of duty.