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.
“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.”