Answer in the Negative

by Henrietta Hamilton

  Then he came into Toby’s office. His ruddy complexion was a little patchy. Toby, appearing in the doorway, was as white as a sheet. He said abruptly, ‘There you are, sir. Will you excuse me a minute? I think I know where to find some whisky.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea, Lorn.’

  Toby scuffed away. Camberley looked at Sally with a steady reassurance, which was not quite a smile, and pulled another chair up to the desk. Sally pushed the telephone over to him, and he thanked her and dialled. Someone answered, and he said, ‘Brigadier Camberley speaking. Is Superintendent Wigram by any chance still there?…Good. Thank you.’

  There was a pause. Then he said, ‘Hullo, Wigram. Listen. I’m speaking from the National Press Archives, which are on the top floor of the Echo building in Fleet Street. We’ve got a’ — he hesitated, and then went firmly on — ‘a fatality here…No, I don’t think I can be much more specific. I honestly don’t know what you’d call it, but perhaps it’s nearer murder than anything else…A man called Frank Morningside — an Archives assistant…Thanks very much. I’m sorry you can’t do it yourself, but I quite understand. Look here, Wigram. You know what Fleet Street is. Could your chaps arrive with as little publicity as possible? In fact, if they were to come up the alley on the east side of the building — it’s called Thrale Passage — they’d find a side door…Fine. I’ll tell the porter to expect them and show them the nearest lift, and there’ll be someone at the top to bring them in…In about ten minutes? Thank you, Wigram. I’m very grateful. Goodbye.’

  He rang off, looked kindly again at Sally, and asked, ‘Better, Mrs Heldar?’

  ‘Quite all right, thank you.’

  ‘Well done,’ he said, not casually but with emphasis. Then he rose, went to the door, and spoke to her and Johnny together.

  ‘I talked to Superintendent Wigram — the man I know. He can’t come himself; he’s tied up at Scotland Yard, and anyway I don’t think Superintendents go into action much these days. But he’s sending us a chap called Lindesay — a Chief Detective-Inspector — who is evidently a very good man.’

  Toby’s scuffing step came back. He reappeared beside Camberley with a flask in his hand.

  ‘Sorry to be so long. I had a bit of a job finding it,’ he said.

  He came over to Sally. She smelt no whisky and realised that he hadn’t stopped to have a drink himself. He unscrewed the silver top of the flask, wiped it with a clean handkerchief, filled it with a slightly unsteady hand, and gave it to her. She didn’t like whisky, but she knew she needed it. She drank it, not too fast. She didn’t ask where it had come from; she knew that too. Michael Knox might easily be casual enough not to keep it locked up. He had been drinking this afternoon, she thought; not drunk, but having drink taken.

  When she had finished Toby gave a tot to Camberley, and then they went out of sight beyond the door. She heard Johnny say, ‘After you, Toby.’

  Camberley came back into Toby’s office, got on to the porter at the side door by way of the Echo switchboard, and said, ‘Brigadier Camberley speaking, Laxton. The police will be coming in your way in a few minutes, to deal with a spot of trouble upstairs. Show them the back lift, and keep it quiet, will you? We’d like a bit of peace till we get sorted out.’

  His voice was a mixture of authority and friendliness. Sally knew this gift for dealing with men; Johnny had it, but not quite to the same degree as Camberley, who had risen from the ranks to become a brigadier at thirty-eight and was said to have earned and retained the personal devotion of every man in his brigade.

  He went back to Johnny and Toby, and Toby’s voice said, ‘This — this bloody thing must have been fixed up while we were in the canteen.’

  ‘When were you in the canteen, exactly?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘We got there about a quarter to seven — that’s when they start serving supper. The Brigadier had a date with Morningside, and when I said I was coming back here he asked me to join them. Morningside was there when we arrived; he’s — he was always very punctual. But I shouldn’t think he’d been there long; he was worried about leaving his office. And he left us about a quarter past seven, didn’t he, sir?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Camberley. ‘And we sat over our coffee for a few minutes longer.’

  ‘Yes. He would have got here about twenty past — a little before.’

  ‘And he’d have left here on his way to the canteen about twenty to — possibly earlier. Plenty of time to rig this thing, assuming the box of tricks was here. I believe it was — I believe I saw it when I was in his office this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toby. ‘He was going to work on the negs this evening.’

  Teddy had helped to bring the box up, thought Sally. Michael Knox had been in Morningside’s office after that and might have noticed it. Toby had known it was there — but Toby, thank God, had an alibi. But the joker hadn’t necessarily known it was there, just as on previous occasions he hadn’t necessarily known there would be pictures to tear up or negatives to smash; it was quite likely he had come simply to see what damage he could find to do. He hadn’t necessarily known that Morningside would be in the canteen, either. He must surely have known that Morningside was coming back to the office this evening, but the presence of an overcoat would make that clear. He might simply have rigged his trap on the spur of the moment. But he must have realised that it might easily kill Morningside. There could be no doubt now that he was insane.

  Toby said suddenly, ‘How did this — this joker get out when he’d rigged his trap?’ Then he answered himself, ‘Of course. By the hatch into my office. It’s just about big enough.’

  He moved towards his door, but Johnny said, ‘Don’t touch, Toby. Leave it for the police.’

  Toby desisted and volunteered to go and receive the Inspector at the lift. He scuffed off again, and Johnny and Camberley came into his office. Camberley took the second chair again, and Johnny sat on the corner of the desk beside Sally. They were still sitting there when footsteps and voices sounded from the far end of the big room. They got up again, leaving her, and went out to meet the police.

  Chief Detective-Inspector Lindesay had a pleasant voice which Sally identified as Lowland Scots. He asked them all to wait in the typists’ office and was outside with his assistants for a while. Low voices and quiet movements came unintelligibly through the closed door. Johnny sat beside Sally, very steady, but with a grim white face. Camberley was like a rock, and Toby read the Post Office Directory with great assiduity.

  Presently Inspector Lindesay looked in and asked the Brigadier if he might have a word with him. They went, apparently, into Toby’s office. After about twenty minutes another plain-clothes man came to fetch Toby, but Camberley didn’t come back. Obviously, no one who had been interrogated was to be given a chance of talking to those who were still waiting, even if he were a man of the Brigadier’s standing. When Toby had gone Johnny pulled his chair closer to Sally’s and tucked her hand under his arm. She had a strange feeling that he was asking for comfort as well as offering it, and she moved closer to him.

  Nearly half an hour passed before he was sent for, and Sally spent nearly another half-hour alone. She studied the Post Office Directory carefully and at some length. By the time the second plain-clothes man came to fetch her she had read the names of all her neighbours in St Cross Square, all Old Father William Heldar’s in Liphook Road, Wimbledon, all Uncle Charles’s in Queen’s Gate Row, and a good many other people.

  Inspector Lindesay rose from behind Toby’s desk as she came in. He was a Scot of the tall, lean, sandy-haired type whose age is always hard to judge; he might have been anything between thirty-five and fifty. His thin, high-boned, leathery face was a little austere.

  ‘Come away, Mrs Heldar,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry to have kept you so long. I’m afraid you’ll be tired.’

  ‘I’m quite all right,’ said Sally, and sat down on the chair in front of the desk. ‘Please tell me how I can help.’ She was aware that t
he man who had fetched her had sat down behind her, no doubt to take notes, but that didn’t worry her.

  Lindesay looked at her with thoughtful frosty-blue eyes.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that Mr Heldar has been enquiring into this persecution of Mr Frank Morningside. I think I’ve got the early history of it clear enough, but I’m interested in what you observed this afternoon and yesterday afternoon, while you were out there in the big room. Will you just tell me all the things that happened in your own words?’

  She told him. She knew the list of yesterday’s lunch-hour visitors by heart now. After what she had seen tonight, she had no scruples left. All but one of the people she was involving were presumably innocent, but if she wanted this madman caught, she had got to talk freely. She took her story right up to six o’clock this evening, when she had left Echo House with Toby and Camberley and Silcutt.

  ‘And then you went home to St Cross Square,’ said Lindesay, ‘and you and Mr Heldar had supper? Now I understand Mr Lorn ’phoned Mr Heldar before you came back here. What time would that be, do you think? The ’phone call, I mean.’

  ‘It was just after half past seven. We’d just finished supper, and I looked at my watch and asked my husband if we had time to wash up.’

  ‘And how long was Mr Heldar on the phone, would you say?’

  ‘Quite a little while. Perhaps four or five minutes. I’d done the washing and was getting ready to dry when he came in again.’

  ‘I see. Now I’m very sorry, Mrs Heldar, but I want you to tell me about your discovery of Mr Morningside’s body. This doesn’t mean I haven’t asked Mr Heldar and Brigadier Camberley and Mr Lorn, but I want everybody’s picture of it, you see. Will you take it from the moment you arrived back at Echo House?’

  Probably he had taken the rest of her statement first to give her time to talk herself over the shock a little. Her evidence might be more reliable now. She did her best.

  When she had finished, he nodded and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Heldar. I think that’s all I need trouble you with tonight. You’ll want to get away home. Kent, go and tell Mr Heldar that Mrs Heldar’s ready to leave.’

  They all went. Camberley and Toby were still here; they had evidently been sitting with Johnny in the typists’ office. Downstairs in the hall Camberley asked the porter to get them two taxis, and they waited on the pseudo-Edwardian seat while he telephoned. The contemporary clock said twenty-five to eleven.

  When the taxis came and they went out, Sally realised that it was raining hard now. Between the street lamps the pavement was black and shining like a black slug. The lamps sank broken reflections into it. The rain fell heavily on Sally’s shoulders for a moment. Then Johnny put her into one of the taxis and followed her in. Camberley was going to take the other and drop Toby. In the dry, enclosed darkness, which smelt of cigarette smoke, Johnny put his arm round Sally and held her.

  It wasn’t very far. Presently they let themselves into the house and climbed the little curved staircase to the first floor. They crossed the narrow landing and went into the drawing room. The fire hadn’t been lit and it was very cold.

  Sally turned to Johnny and said, ‘Darling, you mustn’t look like that. Please.’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said very quietly, ‘This is my fault, you know, Sally. Lindesay said we ought to have come to the police, and he was plumb right. If I’d insisted and not tried to sort it out myself, Morningside would probably be alive now.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Sally. ‘No one could have known there was a really dangerous lunatic about. Practical jokes don’t usually turn fatal. The police couldn’t have foreseen it any more than you.’

  ‘I don’t know. They have far more experience of this sort of thing. Anyway, the merest suggestion of the police might have made the joker let up on his tricks, if only temporarily.’

  Sally put her arms round him. ‘It’s no use torturing yourself,’ she said. ‘I think you’re wrong — I don’t think the police could have prevented it — I don’t think a lunatic would have let up for the police or anyone else. But don’t go on brooding about it. Get down to it and find the man.’

  ‘The police will do that now.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t work on it too.’ She knew he would go on torturing himself unless he did.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said. He smiled faintly at her, and then took her hand and held it for a moment against his lips.

  But neither of them slept much that night. Towards three in the morning they stopped trying not to disturb each other and, moving quietly because of Nanny and the children, went down to the kitchen and made tea. It was warm there because of the stove which heated the water. Johnny looked miserable, and Sally thought it better to encourage him to talk about the case. He sat with his elbows on the kitchen table and talked in a quiet, worried voice.

  ‘I asked Toby about the times at which the different things happened, and he’s not altogether clear about it. Most of the filthy letters were delivered by night, and a few by day. The poltergeist stuff also happened both by day and by night; he thinks it was fairly equally divided between the two but can’t be quite sure. The real trouble is that he can’t say that only the prep school stuff or only the ruder rhymes happened at night. He knows some of the ruder rhymes did, but he’s not sure that some of the prep school stuff didn’t. He thinks it unlikely that Silcutt will be any more definite. So — assuming it was our joker who killed Morningside, and that seems likely — the case is still wide open. There’s Teddy — a deprived adolescent with a bad record, who was responsible for at least part of the Morningside persecution. And do you remember, incidentally, the night-porter who walked into a fire bucket after he’d reported Teddy’s bonfire? There was a quality in that which the perpetrator probably saw as poetic justice. There’s rather the same quality in a booby-trap rigged with a box of negatives which had made Morningside lose his temper with Teddy. And then there’s Michael Knox, who is probably unhampered by a conscience, has some sort of record of violence, and had been drinking yesterday afternoon, when he had a quite serious quarrel with Morningside. He seems to be in love with Selina, and, justifiably or not, to have been jealous of Morningside. There’s also a history of friction over pictures for his book. Then we have Selina herself, who was engaged to Morningside, and was on at least irritable terms with him the day before his death. We don’t know how bad the terms were, or why; there’s a lot that needs explaining there.’

  ‘But, Johnny, she couldn’t conceivably have lifted that box of negatives to the top of the door.’

  ‘She couldn’t have lifted it full. Given time, she could have emptied it and balanced it on the top of the door and against the lintel — as it probably was balanced — and then filled it again. We ought to note that, although she was mentioned in some of the letters, that doesn’t necessarily let her out. She might have mentioned herself to avert suspicion. Toby is out of it, thank God, because he was in the canteen when the trap must have been rigged. But there’s Miss Quimper, a highly emotional middle-aged spinster, perhaps rather unbalanced. She evidently suffered acutely from professional jealousy of Morningside, and she was very worked up about him on Tuesday afternoon. Toby told us, incidentally, that she was astonishingly muscular for her size and had been moving these boxes about for over thirty years. I don’t suppose for a moment that she could have lifted a full one to the top of the door, but she could probably have rigged the trap quite quickly by the emptying and refilling process, because she’s accustomed to handling the negs and the boxes. Those are all our suspects, I think.’

  ‘Except Silcutt,’ said Sally.

  ‘Silcutt,’ said Johnny almost irritably. ‘Yes, if you want him. But I can’t see that he had any motive. Some of these people probably have alibis, so we may be able to bring it down a bit further. I’ll ask Toby to try to find out about that.’

  Sally looked at him, and he nodded. ‘Yes. You were perfectly right, darling. I
’ve got to keep on with this — as far as I can without annoying the police, anyway. I’m indirectly responsible for Morningside’s death, so it’s up to me to find this joker if I possibly can.’

  Chapter Five

  The Press went to town over Morningside’s death. It was fairly clear that, as Toby had said, the Archives were not much liked, and that any rules there might be about dog not eating dog were not considered to apply here. Fleet Street had discovered a great deal and made up the rest, and the newspapers were full of fantastic and macabre stories. Johnny brought an armful of them home at lunchtime, in the hope of finding something which would help him, and Sally read them conscientiously too, but got no good of them.

  Toby came to St. Cross Square at six o’clock. The police had spent part of the day in the Archives, looking for alibis as well as for other things, and he had been able to persuade most of his colleagues to tell him what they had been doing on the previous evening.

  Sally had the impression that he had found Selina a little difficult to deal with, but on her own statement she had left Echo House just after six and gone straight home by bus to her flat in Chelsea, which she had reached just after half past. Unfortunately the girl with whom she shared it hadn’t come in till eleven, and she had no alibi. Unfortunately also she had been the last person, except Morningside, to leave the top floor of Echo House, and no one could bear witness to her departure, except perhaps the night-porter at the main entrance, whom Toby hadn’t seen. Even if she were vouched for at that point, no one could say for certain that she hadn’t come back. Since the bonfire on Guy Fawkes night, the night-porter at the side entrance had been in the habit of making a brief round of Garrick Square, Thrale Passage, and two or three neighbouring alleys between half past six and a quarter to seven, after all the day-staff had gone home. This took him a matter of five minutes: not long, but quite long enough to allow someone to enter unnoticed by the side door.