Answer in the Negative

by Henrietta Hamilton

  Sally looked at her watch. ‘I think his lunch,’ she said gently. ‘It’s getting on for one o’clock.’

  There was a general laugh, and then Camberley came up behind them and got them into a taxi. Sally was grateful to him; the exchange of badinage with the Press wasn’t really her line.

  He insisted on giving them lunch, and only Silcutt refused the invitation. He was obviously very shaken, more by the publicity of the proceedings than by anything else, and Camberley didn’t press him. They dropped him and went on.

  ‘Funny,’ said Camberley thoughtfully. ‘I’ve never got to the bottom of that man, and I don’t suppose I ever shall. He seems so transparent, and then suddenly you realise you don’t really know him at all.’

  He took them to a surprisingly quiet pub in the City and ordered drinks. ‘I don’t usually drink at lunchtime,’ he said, ‘and perhaps you don’t either. But I think we need it today.’

  They had an excellent lunch and felt rather better for it. Camberley was known here, and their waiter was very attentive. The Brigadier refused to discuss the case while they ate, and it was only over coffee that he returned to it. He looked at Toby and said, ‘Did you get anything from Laxton? I was going to have a chat with him myself, but I saw you using your reporter’s wiles on him and I thought I’d leave him to you.’

  Toby grinned, and then looked worried. ‘Yes, I got something. I meant to go home and write, as I said’ — he looked at Sally — ‘but I changed my mind and went detecting instead. Laxton is the side-door night-porter, incidentally. When he came on duty last night, he had a talk with the side-door day-porter about our spot of trouble, and they compared notes about the police interrogation. The day man had been asked in the morning when the Archives messengers had left the building on the previous evening, and he’d said they’d all walked out on the stroke of five-thirty, as usual. That was a minute or two before Laxton came on. The boys always use the side door, and they’re never a moment after five-thirty unless they’re up to something. Now Laxton had been asked in the course of the previous night if anyone from the Archives had gone out or come in while he was on duty, and he’d said yes, Teddy had gone out a little before seven o’clock. That was very late indeed for a messenger, and Laxton was extremely suspicious. He didn’t challenge Teddy — he knew he’d only be checked — but he made sure the boy had really gone and then went and had another look at the messengers’ room. I think I told you he’s in the habit of looking round it when he first comes on duty. He’d found it normal on his first visit — and Teddy hadn’t been there — and he found it normal again.

  ‘Well, he and the day man deduced that Teddy had probably slipped in while he was doing his round outside — which as far as he can remember was approximately between twenty-five and twenty to seven. I saw the night-porter at the Fleet Street entrance — one Brown — and he’s pretty sure Teddy didn’t come in his way. Lindesay, of course, must realise the implications, and he may have confronted Teddy with Laxton’s evidence. But Teddy still lied to me about it.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Johnny, ‘he values your good opinion. Tell me this, Toby. In the absence of a porter’s evidence to the contrary — and apart from moments when a porter was absent from his post — can we be sure that any given person didn’t re-enter the building?’

  ‘No,’ said Toby slowly. ‘The van entrance in Garrick Square is closed at that time, but Laxton says he has known the boys get in by some way of their own. He reckons it involves a coal-flap in the square and an inside door left open in advance. He doesn’t know Teddy didn’t get in that way on Wednesday evening, but judging by the time Teddy says he left home, his arrival probably coincided with Laxton’s patrol outside. And he probably knew about the patrol.’

  ‘I see. Any more news?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toby. He looked rather more worried now, and Sally thought: He’s heard about Selina. But he went on, ‘It’s Miss Quimper. When Laxton is at his desk inside the door he can’t see the back lift, which is down a flight of steps and round a corner in another passage. He can’t see anyone in its immediate vicinity, either. But when he came in after his patrol that evening, he went down the steps and round the corner to leave his coat, and when he came out of the Gents’ he saw Miss Quimper come out of the lift and make for Negs. She doesn’t use his door — most of the Negs people don’t. I think it’s a question of caste. But he knows her by sight, because she works late fairly often. He said she was looking rather upset. He hasn’t told the police this — they only asked him if he’d seen any of the Archives people entering or leaving the building, and he didn’t think of it at the time. That’s what he says, anyway. But it may simply have been old-fashioned chivalry.’

  ‘The time he saw her,’ said Johnny, ‘would be just after twenty to seven?’

  ‘Something after a quarter to, he says. He stayed in the Gents’, it seems, to wash out two pairs of socks — he’s living in rooms where there’s next to no hot water.’ Toby hesitated. ‘As far as I can see, Johnny, she must have been up to Peex or Cuts. We have no offices on any other floor, and as far as I know she has no friends on any other.’

  ‘No, I see. Assuming Morningside started for the canteen at twenty to seven, and she was waiting to slip into his office as soon as he left it, she’d have five or six minutes to rig the trap. Not very long.’

  ‘I had a word with the evening shift in the canteen,’ said Toby reluctantly. ‘The girls say Morningside arrived about two minutes before we did — he waited at the end of the counter. That means he could have left Peex as early as — let’s say six-thirty-eight. The canteen’s in the basement, and if the lifts are slow in coming one can spend about five minutes in transit.’

  ‘Seven or eight minutes,’ said Johnny. ‘She’d have to take the negs out of the box and put them back again when it was in place. But she handles the stuff every day. And she’d have no difficulty in getting through your hatch; she’s very small, and apparently quite active. I’m afraid she could have done it.’

  ‘I’m afraid so too,’ said Camberley quietly. ‘Though I don’t find it easy to suspect Miss Quimper. But then I don’t find it easy to suspect anyone. Damn it, it’s not easy to suppose that someone you see every day, someone with whom you have friendly professional relations, is a dangerous lunatic.’

  They were all silent for a moment. Sally felt a little shiver pass over her.

  Johnny noticed it. He said he would like to go back to the Archives with Toby and asked her if she wanted to get home.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. We’re out in the open now, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m just wondering how people are going to take us.’

  Camberley dropped them, at Toby’s particular request, a little way short of Echo House, and they slipped in by way of Thrale Passage and the side door. It seemed that one or two of the Echo’s young men might be lying in wait for news in the entrance hall, and that this was in any case the quickest way to the Negatives Department. As they went down a steep flight of steps Toby said, ‘By the way, don’t worry too much about your reception. Camberley’s paved the way for you. I don’t suppose Miss Quimper will fall on your necks, but she won’t be too difficult.’

  But Sally, remembering the emotion Miss Quimper had shown in Morningside’s office, found the meeting extremely embarrassing. Toby made introductions and slipped away, leaving them to face the ugly, unhappy woman they had spied on.

  Miss Quimper took immediate refuge in an over-brisk professionalism. ‘Well, Mr Heldar?’ she said. ‘I shall of course be glad to answer any questions you care to ask me.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Johnny. ‘But won’t you sit down? We’ll bring up these chairs, if we may.’

  They were in a corner of the big basement room, which reminded Sally a little of Heldar Brothers’ book-rooms. There were steel cases across its length, with low shelves rising in tiers almost to the low ceiling, and full of cardboard boxes, each car
efully labelled and presumably containing negatives. Narrow alleys ran between the cases. Someone might be within two feet of you and you wouldn’t know it. Someone might be within ten feet of Miss Quimper’s desk now, listening, though there was no one to be seen.

  Johnny said quietly, ‘I think Mr Lorn asked you to try to keep an eye on the Venezuelan negatives, Miss Quimper. Have you managed to do that?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Heldar. It was quite easy, because the negatives are at this end of the room, in the second gangway. I had only to move my chair a little to the right and I could see along it. It was really a little too easy, because anyone who was interested in the negatives would know that I could keep them under observation. So at lunchtime I didn’t go to the canteen. I went and sat at the end of a gangway at the other end of the room, where I could see the door and the end of the second gangway.’

  ‘I’m sorry you missed your lunch,’ said Johnny. ‘It was very good of you to give it up. Did anyone come?’

  ‘No, Mr Heldar, I’m afraid not. And I checked ten minutes ago, and the negatives are still there. But I was going to suggest that you or Mrs Heldar should watch from the other end now, and I should go up to Pictures for a bit. Of course, if one of my own assistants is doing this, she may see you and be warned. But if it’s someone from another department they won’t wander round the shelving.’

  Johnny considered for a moment. ‘I think I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I want to go upstairs for a minute first, and I’ll leave my wife there. But before we go, Miss Quimper, I’ve got another question to ask you. I hope you’ll forgive me, and not think it an impertinence. Why did you go up to Peex the evening before last?’

  Miss Quimper didn’t answer, but her face gave her away at once, and her big hands, folded on the desk in front of her, clasped each other convulsively.

  Johnny waited, and at last she asked, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Someone saw you come down after a quarter to seven.’

  ‘Oh, yes. It was Laxton — the night-porter — wasn’t it? I did see him. I hoped afterwards he’d forget.’ Her harsh voice was shaking now; she sounded excited and a little hysterical.

  ‘Why did you go up?’ asked Johnny very steadily.

  ‘I wanted to see Mr Morningside about my negs. I thought he’d been down here interfering with them and getting them into the wrong order. I thought he would be working late — he nearly always did on Wednesdays — so I went up and he was there.’

  ‘What time was that, Miss Quimper?’

  ‘About twenty-five to seven. I talked to him for about five minutes — no, perhaps not quite as much as that — and then he said he had to meet Brigadier Camberley in the canteen, and he went off to the lift — the main lifts. So I came down again.’

  Johnny’s manner had calmed her a little. But she was still frightened and tense.

  ‘These negs, Miss Quimper. They were some of the old ones that the Archives have taken over, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They’d obviously been handled — the dust on the bags had been disturbed — and I couldn’t be sure they hadn’t been disarranged. But there were some that were already in the files, too; they were actually missing, though on Wednesday afternoon I found they’d been put back.’

  ‘Those were the negs of the Hungarian Rising, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, a little surprised. ‘Anyhow, you see, I’d told Mr Lorn all about this on Tuesday afternoon. He said he’d speak to Mr Morningside about it, but on Wednesday afternoon I found that some more of the old negs had been handled, so I thought he couldn’t have done it, and I decided I’d have to see Mr Morningside myself.’

  ‘And what did Mr Morningside say?’

  ‘He said he hadn’t touched the Hungarian negs, and I thought at the time that might be true, because he’d have no particular reason for wanting them. Besides, he was an honest man; I don’t think he’d have lied to me. And now you’re looking for someone who may be interested in the negs of the Venezuelan Revolution, so I think he probably was telling the truth.’

  Miss Quimper’s voice was still a little unsteady. But a sudden shrewd intelligence was showing behind her pince-nez.

  ‘And the old negs?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘Oh, he more or less admitted handling them. He said he had worries just now — he meant the jokes that were being played on him, obviously — and he was so upset he really didn’t know what he was doing. Poor man,’ said Miss Quimper, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I wish now I hadn’t upset him. I can’t forgive myself.’

  Johnny said quietly — and Sally was very much aware of his reluctance, ‘Did you quarrel with him before he went downstairs, Miss Quimper?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’d call it a quarrel or not. We had an argument. We were both very upset.’ Her mouth was trembling. Sally saw a disquieting picture: the over-emotional middle-aged woman and the nerve-racked young man, facing each other in the little office, both of them wrought up to a pitch quite unwarranted by the subject of their argument, both very near the limit of self-control — or one of them, perhaps, passing beyond it.

  Johnny went doggedly on. ‘You said you went upstairs about twenty-five to seven, and talked to him for about five minutes, or possibly less. That would mean that you left him about twenty to seven, or perhaps a little before.’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘But Laxton saw you come out of the lift after a quarter to. It wouldn’t take you all that time to get down that way, would it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I went into the Ladies’ Cloakroom between Pix and Cuts. I — I wanted to wash my face.’

  They left her after that. Johnny looked savage, and Sally knew it was with himself. She slipped her arm into his, and they found the back lift, which had no operator. As they went up, he pulled himself together and said, ‘If no one’s restored the Venezuelan pix you can watch the file, for what it’s worth. All the staff know we’re investigating Morningside’s death; we can only hope they don’t all know we’re interested in the missing pix.’

  The lift landed them in a short corridor. Sally saw glass doors with a notice beside them which said ‘Press Cuttings’, the stairhead, the Ladies’ and Gents’, and the glass doors which led into Peex. They went that way, and Johnny knocked on the door of Toby’s office. Toby’s voice called, ‘Come in.’

  He got up when he saw Sally. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, and added when Johnny had shut the door, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Selina saw no one approach the Venezuelan file. It was too difficult — she couldn’t keep her eye on it all the time, and she didn’t like to enlist anyone else, because for all she knew one of our own assistants was the guilty party. She didn’t go to lunch — she stayed here and did what she could. But when I got back after lunch the pix had been replaced.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Johnny philosophically. ‘Never mind. In that case I’m going straight down again to watch the negs. Sally, if you want to go home, do.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like me to do the negs?’ asked Sally. ‘Then you could get on with whatever you want to do here.’ But she knew he wouldn’t let her go alone to that place of mysterious, dusty alleyways. Up here there were light and space and clients to make for safety, and Toby to look after her. Down there it would be too easy to strike a blow in the shadows. She reminded herself that no one was at all likely to want to strike a blow at her. Johnny knew that too. But he wouldn’t be quite rational about it either.

  ‘I haven’t got anything I want to do here,’ he said.

  ‘Then let me come with you. You’d be just as suspicious by yourself as we shall be together, if anyone noticed you.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said after a moment. ‘Toby, would you mind ringing down to Miss Quimper and asking her to come up here? She was kind enough to say she’d leave us a clear field.’

  ‘Right,’ said Toby. ‘Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that I spent an hour or so in public ’ouses last night, round about here, and I found one man who was ta
lking to Michael Knox on Wednesday evening. It was in the Cat-in-Boots — not very far from Echo House — somewhere between six and half past. The barmaid thinks Mike was there a bit later than that, but she can’t be sure. Incidentally, I hear he hasn’t been seen about Fleet Street nearly so much in the last month or so. Of course he’s been here most of the day and most people assume he’s working on his book in the evenings. But I’m not so sure it’s just that. Mike likes his drink, but that’s not really the point. The point is that Fleet Street is meat and drink to him, and I can’t see him keeping off it for long for the sake of any book.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Johnny. ‘You might keep on asking about his movements on Wednesday evening, Toby.’

  They left Toby’s office, and in the back passage ran into Knox himself.

  ‘Good afternoon to you,’ he said, and his dark face was amused and cynical at the same time. ‘You’ve made a proper fool of me, the pair of you. At my time of life I should know a detective when I see one. I should have recognised you from Press photographs, too. And the best I can do is to talk politics and association football to one of you and pay insipid compliments to the other.’

  Sally looked into his amused eyes and was stung to retaliation.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said kindly. ‘You only want a little more practice.’

  She got home, but the amusement was back in a second.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Heldar,’ said Knox meekly. ‘I hope you’ll be kind enough to help me. Well, now, what can I do for you both? I’m sure there are questions you would like to ask me.’

  Johnny thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said placidly. ‘Thank you all the same.’

  It was more successful than Sally’s effort. Knox’s black eyebrows rose very slightly. ‘No? All right. Good luck to you, then.’