Rollison went to the back. The door was open, as farmhouse doors were likely to be. A huge pile of logs was quite close to it, all old and weathered. The lawns in front were overgrovm, and a few years ago there had been flowerbeds, but these had become a small wilderness. Everything carried the look and the smell of decay, and yet men had offered a fortune for this place.
Did Old Smith know why?
He was pottering about somewhere in the kitchen. Rollison went in, and saw him at a big dresser, cutting bread from a huge loaf. The stone-flagged floor had been brushed in the middle, but dust and dirt and debris was gathered round the sides, and on a draining-board just in sight was a pile of dirty crockery, old tin cans, old packages and table peelings. This was a slum in the middle of the country; no-one should be allowed to live in such conditions.
Rollison went softly up a flight of twisting stairs, each tread of which was worn low, and some of were cracked. He had to lower his head to avoid banging it. The floor erf a large bedroom was concave, and a huge four-poster bed sloped down towards the middle. Unexpectedly, the bed and the linen on it looked clean. There were three
Other rooms, all used for junk, such junk as Rollison had never seen before. Old dressing-tables, old chairs, old sofas, all in varying stages of dilapidation, stood by big packing-cases, boxes, suit-cases, piles of books, greater piles of newspapers, old brooms, old crockery, anything that might be found in a household. It was little more than a junk-house, and if anyone ever dropped a lighted cigarette in here, it would bum like tinder.
So would the farmhouse.
“Fifteen thousand pounds,” Rollison murmured.
He went downstairs. The old man was sitting at the kitchen table, eating bread and butter with jam piled thick on it, and drinking tea out of a cup which looked as if it hadn’t been washed for weeks. He appeared to hear nothing. Rollison looked through the big room where M.M.M. had been, and another, smaller room opposite, which meant that he had seen every room at Selby Farm.
Fifteen thousand pounds; two dead bodies; and a kidnapping ; and all of these still needed explanation.
Rollison went outside, and then turned back and knocked sharply on the door. Nothing happened. He banged again, more loudly, and at last Old Smith came hobbling with his unexpected speed. He had a mahogany-coloured face with deep etched lines, a sunken mouth because he had no teeth, but he also had as clear a pair of grey eyes Rollison had seen in a man, young or old.
He barred the door.
“What do you want ?” he demanded, and gave no doubt that whatever the visitor desired, he couldn’t have it.
“I want to buy the farm,” announced Rollison, in the mildest of voices, “and I thought you might be able to help me find a way of persuading Miss Selby to let me have it.” He smiled, as if taking it for granted that he would get what he wanted. ‘“Perhaps we could have a chat, Mr. Smith.”
“We can’t have a chat, now or any time,” Old Smith crackled, “I haven’t any time for talk with you or with anyone.”
“It might be worth your while.”
“It’ll be worth your while to turn round and get off quicker than you came here.” This was the tone Smith had used for M.M.M. “Now don’t waste my time any longer.”
“Mr. Smith,” murmured Rollison, “I don’t really want to buy the house at all, I just want to buy a story. It would be worth five hundred pounds.”
The old man demanded sharply : “What story?”
“Your story, and that of Selby Farm.”
“You must be daft!”
“You must have a good reason for refusing to sell the property, Mr. Smith, and “
“I’ve lived here man and boy for seventy-two years and if that isn’t reason enough I’d like to know what is,” roared Old Smith, “and you can go back and tell your editor felly that he can’t have my story for five hundred or five thousand pounds. I live a private life and I don’t want my name in any scandal-mongering newspaper. Now get out. I’m in the middle of my tea.”
“Don’t you think you’re being hard on Gillian Selby and her brother, by refusing “
“Hard be damned to them! They’re young, they’ve got their lives ahead of them, don’t say I’m being hard. All they want is easy money, like all the young fools these days. Something for nothing, that’s what they’re after. But I’ve a right to this farm while I pay my rent, it’s in the old man’s will. Ask the wench, if you don’t believe me. Her father made sure no-one could turn me out. Now good-day to you.”
“What will happen if they get a court order compelling you to leave?” asked Rollison, still mildly.
“I’d tear it up and throw it in their faces,” said Old Smith, and then broke into a cackle of laughter. “But they’ll never get a court order, they’ll never even have the guts to try. You go back and tell your editor man that, and if you meet the Selby’s, tell them it’s time they stopped wasting their breath and mine.”
He turned round and hobbled off; cackling.
He was very sure of himself. Why?
Detective Inspector Bishop and a murder team were at the cottage when Rollison got back. There were eight men in all, including a police-surgeon, who had formally pronounced that Charlie’s life was extinct. Rollison was in time to see the body carried into a small ambulance, and to see the ambulance move off. In and about the cottage, men were taking photographs, noting footprints, barricading anything of interest, drawing lines, making sketches, taking measurements; all the paraphernalia of routine which made the difference between the professional and the amateur at work.
Gillian was in the downstairs room, still very pale, with M.M.M. Bishop saw Rollison arrive, and came to meet him.
“Did you know about the money Lodwin was supposed to have left ?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Rollison. “Has Miss Selby turned it in?”
“Yes,” Bishop said, and then took Rollison’s arm. “I don’t know how well you know Miss Selby, but our medic says that she is suffering very badly from shock, and that she ought to get away from here, and have some rest. She won’t go to a nursing home, but says she’s going to stay here until her brother gets back. Do you think you can persuade her that it won’t do any good ?”
“We’d persuade her more easily if we could find her brother,” Rollison said. “Any news?”
“Give us a chance, man !”
“I feel the same way,” Rollison said, dryly. “I’ll try to get her away, but the only place I can take her to is London.”
“That’s all right,” said Bishop, and added slyly : “We’ve been in touch with the Yard, and they’re sending a man here. We didn’t want to take any chances, especially as the man killed at Brighton was known to the Yard.”
“What as?”
“You’d better ask your friend Grice,” said Bishop, “but take it from me, the important thing is to get the girl away from here.”
“Have you finished questioning her?”
“She won’t say a word: just sits and stares and looks at me as if I were a lunatic.”
“I see what she means,” said Rollison gravely, and enjoyed the smile which leapt into Bishop’s eyes. “How about this friend of hers, Monty Morne ?”
“No reason why he shouldn’t go if you want him to,” said Bishop.
He was being very obliging; in fact, almost too obliging. When the police made everything easy, there was always a good reason, Rollison tried to guess what it was, and felt reasonably sure of one factor. They would prefer to have the run of the cottage and the farm without the benefit of his presence. That fitted in well with what he wanted to do: first see William Brandt, known as Tex, then make Gillian tell him who had been on the telephone.
Rollison went into the living-room. There had been hostility on M.M.M.’s face before, and it was certainly present now. Gillian just looked lifeless and dejected.