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

conjurer’s misdirection to divert attention from his own solid humanity and his entirely earthly motives. No, on reflection there was, regrettably, the third possibility: someone who enjoyed trouble and chaos had simply added his own contribution to the brew here out of pure devilment. Of that kind of devil even villages as remote as Mottisham have more than enough.
    George turned up the collar of his coat and made a dash for it through what had now become a downpour, across the road and into the vicarage drive. In the gateway he collided with a young man who had just descended from the Comerbourne bus and made for the same haven. They steadied each other solicitously with hasty apologies, and recognition was instant and mutual.
    “I was just coming to see you, Mr. Felse,” said Dave Cressett, hugging
The Midland Scene
under his jacket from the driving rain, “I’ve got something here Mrs. Bracewell asked me to bring to you. And something besides to tell you.”
     
    “Always the door,” said Sergeant Moon, late that Friday evening, after they had abandoned the mounds of official reports and statements, and were sitting back relaxed and tired over cigarettes and beer, thoughtfully brought in from the “Duck” by young Brian Jennings. “I’d be ready to bet my job that we were right, it’s the door, not the man. He just blundered into something he didn’t realise was dangerous— apparently merely by having this feeling that there was something odd about this door he’d once photographed for this magazine article. Now you tell me what dangerous secret there can be about an oak door? Worth killing for?”
    “And before he’d even run to earth whatever it was he was after,” George pointed out. “A very dangerous secret indeed—show a little too much interest in it, and that’s enough, you’re knocked off just in case. Yet there was plenty of interest being shown in it—by all kinds of people. It was ceremonially on show. So what was so different about this man Bracewell’s interest, to mark him out as the chance that couldn’t be taken?”
    “He was there prowling around it at night,” said Moon, “and alone. A crowd with a battery of cameras was O.K. One man with a torch sneaking back by himself wasn’t.”
    “There was one more thing about him that was different, Jack.
He’d seen it before
.”
    Moon considered that carefully. For centuries the door had hung in the cellars of the Abbey. The house had never been shown; and it was improbable that there had ever been more than one such article about it as the one in
The Midland Scene
. It wasn’t important enough or beautiful enough; it played too insignificant a part in history. The wonder was that it had achieved a place even once in such a series. That made Bracewell, in all probability, the only person present at the re-dedication, apart, of course, from the family, who had ever seen the door in its previous position.
    “But even so, what could there have been about it to make him think he might get a scoop out of it? Something he hadn’t noticed until the thing was cleaned up? But then it would be there for everyone to notice. Whatever was queer about it meant nothing to anyone but him.”
    “And what discoveries can you make about a door, for God’s sake? There it is, a solid block of wood with a lump of iron attached, everything about it visible at a glance.” George stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ll see this Miss Trent tomorrow, and have another word with Mrs. Bracewell. Who knows, I may hit on the right question by sheer luck, and stir a recollection, or she may have thought of something on her own. We’ve no choice about pulling out all the stops now, Jack. It took some hard work to get the Old Man to leave it with us, we’ve got to justify it now or die trying.”
    “Well, at least we found the camera. Not that I expect the lab boys will get anything off it.” And of course it had been empty, the film extracted, and no doubt