A small, precise voice said, ‘Is that you, Heldar? Lionel Silcutt speaking. I wonder if I might call on you this evening — quite unofficially, of course — for a few minutes?’
Johnny’s eyebrows had gone up. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. ‘We shall be delighted to see you.’
‘You’re — er — alone, Heldar? It’s a rather confidential matter.’
‘There’s no one here but ourselves. When may we expect you?’
‘I’m at the Club. I can be with you in about a quarter of an hour, if that suits you.’
‘Very well indeed, sir. Come along.’
‘Thank you, Heldar — thank you. In a quarter of an hour, then. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
Johnny rang off, and Sally asked, ‘What on earth do you suppose he wants?’
‘I can’t imagine. If this were a detective story, he’d be bumped off before he could tell us. It’s a classic situation.’
But a quarter of an hour later a taxi drew up at the front door and the bell rang. Johnny went downstairs and brought Silcutt up. He looked even better against the background of the Regency drawing room than he did in the Archives, and he was very uncomfortable and obviously wondering if he ought to have come. Sally did her best, but he couldn’t thaw. He refused a drink, coffee, and tea, in that order, and sat on the edge of his chair.
Finally they had to wait for him to speak. He made an obvious effort, swallowed, and began.
‘In the course of my duties, Heldar, I have acquired a piece of information which in the last two days has caused me some anxiety. I have at last decided that it is my very distasteful duty to give it to the police, and I should also wish to give it to you — unofficially, you understand.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Johnny gravely.
‘It concerns Michael Knox of the Cuttings Department. He has, as perhaps you know, been with us just under a month, and he came to us from the staff of the Sunday Reflector. When he applied for this post, he had no written references, and I naturally rang up his late editor. Among the questions I asked was: “Why did he leave the Reflector?” The answer was somewhat disconcerting. He had had a serious quarrel with the editor, and had, I gathered, actually used violence. The editor went on — I thought somewhat indiscreetly, although he knows me fairly well — to tell me the subject of the quarrel. Knox had asked him to find a job for a young Irish cousin of his: a boy named Terence Dowd, who apparently has some literary ability. He is, in fact, the author of that rather sordid Irish novel called Fair City. The editor interviewed him and discovered — with some difficulty — that he had been dismissed from his last post; he had been teaching English at a prep school on the South coast. I recognised its name and knew that it was a very second-rate establishment. The editor communicated with the headmaster, whose reply was unfavourable. He was obliged to turn the boy down, and Knox was infuriated. He chose to believe, I gathered, that Dowd was being rejected on moral grounds — which with some justification he considered unfair — whereas the editor was really influenced by the headmaster’s opinion and his own that the boy was quite unsuited to journalism.
‘The matter might have ended there. But, as I told you, I had recognised the name of young Dowd’s school. It was, in fact, the school at which Morningside had taught before coming to us. Out of idle curiosity, I asked Morningside what he knew of Dowd. He knew, unfortunately, a good deal.’ Silcutt hesitated. ‘De mortuis, Heldar. I knew Morningside better than most of his colleagues did — we formed the nucleus of the Archives personnel, before the place was ever opened. I admired his ability, and in many ways, I liked him very much. But he hadn’t been to a public school, poor chap, and he was by nature a prig and a talebearer. He told me he had discovered, in the summer of last year, that young Dowd was — er—’ Silcutt looked uneasily at Sally and then made up his mind with difficulty ‘—was carrying on a passionate and ill-timed affair with the matron, a very young and half-trained girl who in any better-organised school wouldn’t have held a position of responsibility. Morningside had felt himself obliged to inform the headmaster, and they had both been dismissed. The following term he himself had resigned; he had never been popular with his colleagues, and as a result of the — er — the affaire Dowd’ — Silcutt turned rather pink, evidently deciding that the phrase was not as well chosen as he had thought — ‘he had become even less so.’
There was another silence. It took Sally some little time to remember that Selina had virtually confessed to having caused Morningside’s death. Her reason for bearing him ill-will was still a little obscure, and here was something which, combined with Knox’s jealousy, looked more like a motive than anything they had found yet.
Silcutt was looking acutely unhappy. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘I can trust you not to get this thing out of proportion. Of course it’s ridiculous when one really thinks about it. Knox may have an Irish temper, but he’s a reputable newspaperman.’
Chapter Eight
It was ten minutes to eight, and Sally was frying bacon, when she heard the telephone ring. She cursed it, took the frying-pan off the gas, turned out the grill to save the toast, and ran to the door. She was in the hall when Johnny answered the telephone in the drawing room, and she sighed and went back to the kitchen.
A few minutes later Johnny came in. He was in his dressing gown, with a towel round his neck. She knew as soon as she saw his face that something had happened.
‘Darling—’ she said.
‘That was Toby,’ he said flatly. ‘Miss Quimper is dead.’
He couldn’t tell her the story then, for Nanny came down with the children. He told her the bones of it after breakfast, while he finished dressing, but neither of them knew the full details until they heard it from Laxton three-quarters of an hour later. The police had finished with him, for the moment at least, and he was off duty. He sat in Toby’s office, large and stolid and youngish, with Toby and Camberley as well as the Heldars listening to him and talked in his steady Yorkshire voice with its broad flat vowels. Only his eyes still showed signs of shock.
‘I came off duty as usual at ’alf past seven. I went through Garrick Square, like I always do, and along the path between this building and the bombed site. It runs from the square to St Barnabas’ Lane, down below ’ere.’ He jerked a broad thumb at the window. ‘It was a chilly-like morning, with a bit of a drizzle — a Scotch mist, like. The clouds were low down, and there was no sign of the sun, though it should ’ave been just rising. There’s a wooden railing between the path and the bombed site, but it’s been rotten for a long time now. I ’appened to look down, and I saw ’er lying there, close in below the path. She was sort of spread-eagled, but ’er ’ead was on its side, and I knew ’er at once. I knew she’d ’ad it, too, the way she was lying. All in among the rubble and the dead willow-’erb, she was. It’s about twenty feet down — must ’ave been a double basement — and falling on the stones she could easily ’ave been killed. Or she might ’ave died of exposure during the night.’ His eyes widened suddenly.
Camberley said quietly, ‘No good brooding, Laxton. You couldn’t have known she was there.’
‘Did you see her go out?’ asked Johnny.
‘No, sir. She always goes the front way. I suppose she could ’ave gone out my way while I was looking round outside. That would be a little after six-thirty. Say six-thirty-five to six-forty, same as it was the last time. But even then, I’d ’ave a good chance of seeing ’er if she went through the square. It’s a small place, and well lit.’
Johnny left it at that. As it happened, the night-porter at the Fleet Street entrance had been relieved just sufficiently late to hear about Miss Quimper’s death, and had stayed, out of curiosity, just sufficiently later to be questioned by Toby, who had arrived at twenty past eight. Miss Quimper hadn’t left by his door, so she must, thought Sally, have slipped out by Laxton’s while he was on patrol.
‘And after you’d found her?’ asked Johnny.
‘I didn�
��t waste time going down, sir. Even if she ’ad been alive I couldn’t ’ave done nothing for ’er. I came straight back to my door — it was quicker than ’unting for a policeman — and got the switchboard to dial nine-nine-nine. Then I phoned Mr Lorn.’
‘You couldn’t have done better, Laxton.’ Camberley looked at Johnny.
‘He did exactly right,’ said Johnny. ‘Tell me, Laxton, did anyone from the Archives leave by your door after you came on duty last night?’
‘No, sir. When I came on the day man told me the boys ’ad just gone as usual — we ’ave to keep an eye on them. That Teddy went first, and then the others, a couple of minutes later. But nobody else from the Archives ever goes out our way, except one or two of the girls from the Negatives Department, now and then — so the day man says.’
‘Right, Laxton. Thank you. That’s all.’
‘Go home and try to get some sleep, Laxton,’ said Camberley.
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ He got up and went out, and the small office seemed a little less crowded, though Johnny and Camberley between them took up a good deal of it.
Johnny rose too, moved to the window, opened one casement, and looked out and down. Camberley joined him and stood with one foot on the low sill. Johnny said, ‘We can’t see much from here. I’m going down, if I may. The police seem to have closed the path, but I think I can get some sort of view.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Camberley.
Johnny let Sally come too, which showed her that he was extremely reluctant to leave her in Peex. Toby made a fourth. They went down in the back lift and out by Laxton’s door and turned into the little square. It was loud with the rhythmic clatter of printing-presses coming up through the frosted-glass windows of the basement, and the open throttles of the news vans which were pulling out from the ramp on the left. Beyond the ramp was an old grey archway, which led to a very narrow alley running between the back of the Echo building and the side of an eighteenth-century house. Under the arch a uniformed constable was standing. He recognised Camberley and saluted.
‘Good morning,’ said Camberley. ‘We don’t want to make things awkward for you. May we go along so far?’
‘Certainly, sir. It’s all right to the end of the concrete, where the trestle is. But it becomes earth after that, so if you don’t mind—’
‘Of course not. We don’t want to mess up any footprints there are.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The trestle stood six or seven paces down the alley. The house came to an end here, and the ground behind it fell away. The alley itself turned into a narrow path with the Echo building on its left, and on its right a sheer drop inadequately barred by a mouldering rail, with a wide gap in it a couple of paces beyond the trestle. Twenty yards farther on the path ran into St. Barnabas’ Lane. At that point there were a second trestle and a second policeman, who was discouraging a tendency among the passers-by to coagulate along the low parapet.
Sally was so well accustomed to bombed sites that they had ceased to horrify her, except now and then, when she looked at a great area of devastation, and remembered. But this one held horror for her. She looked down into it, below the gap in the railing, and saw a series of white chalk marks, like a frame, on the broken stones. The frame was a most extraordinary shape.
Johnny looked down and up. Then he said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything more to see here. I’d just like to go round to the other side of the site.’ He took Sally’s arm and walked her back to the square.
Another alley led them out of it on the north side and into a lane which ran along the far side of the site. Johnny stopped on the narrow pavement and looked across the parapet and the crater to the path with the ugly brick wall towering above it. After a moment he said, ‘Toby, would Miss Quimper have gone along that path in the dark?’
‘Oh, yes, I think so,’ said Toby. ‘She was very tough — physically — and I imagine quite fearless, and she always wore sensible shoes. And there’s a streetlamp on a bracket inside that archway, and another at the St Barnabas’ Lane end. The path is a reasonable short-cut on the way to Holborn, if you leave by Laxton’s door.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘Yes, no doubt.’
‘I notice,’ said Camberley, ‘you don’t think this was an accident. Nor do I. I don’t like coincidences. Two violent but unconnected deaths within forty-eight hours or so are a bit more than I can swallow.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnny, with conviction this time. ‘And what’s more, Miss Quimper died after she’d told Sally that she’d seen Morningside within a minute or two of his death, and before I could question her about it.’
‘She told Sally that?’ asked Toby. He added abruptly, before either of the Heldars could answer, ‘Newshounds over there. Let’s get back to Peex before you’re recognised.’
They retreated before the advance of a couple of young men in mackintoshes, one of them armed with a camera, and went quickly back through the square. In his office Toby handed round cigarettes, and Johnny told him and Camberley the story of Miss Quimper’s first visit to Morningside on the evening of his death, and then asked Sally to repeat the story of the second.
When she had finished Camberley said, ‘Yes. I think I can confirm this business of the cutting. It was a Reflector editorial on the assassination of the Sultan of Morocco, which I remembered and wanted to refer to for the book I’m doing. I can’t remember if I asked Morningside for it when I was in his office in the afternoon, or while we were in the canteen. Can you help me there, Lorn?’
‘I don’t remember your asking him for a cutting in the canteen, sir.’
‘Then it must have been in the afternoon. I ought to have asked Michael Knox for it, of course, but I’d got into a lazy habit of asking Morningside for whatever I wanted for the book — pix or cuts — and leaving him to approach Michael when necessary. I said — or at any rate I meant — that I wanted the thing in the next day or two. But Morningside was always very prompt and conscientious, poor chap. I suppose he had no opportunity of talking to Mike in the afternoon, or perhaps he forgot about it — he had enough on his mind, Heaven knows.’ Including, thought Sally, a stand-up row with Mike. It wasn’t in the least surprising that Morningside hadn’t got round to asking him for cuttings.
‘I suppose he remembered it,’ Camberley went on, ‘while we were all in the canteen, or after he’d left us, and decided to go and look for it himself, before he went into his office, and give it to me when we met at eight. He could cope with the Cuts files, I take it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Toby. ‘We’re all interchangeable up to a point. It might take him a few minutes, but he’d find it. But’ — he turned to Johnny — ‘I’m not quite clear about this story. In the first place, I gather Miss Quimper talked to Sally from this office. Are you suggesting that the conversation was overheard?’
‘I think it was,’ said Johnny. ‘Neither of us repeated it to anyone here, and I doubt if Miss Quimper would have made her admission — consciously — to anyone but Sally or me. I know everyone has normally left by half past six, but — well, someone came back on Wednesday evening and killed Morningside.’
‘Someone was in Morningside’s office,’ said Toby, ‘while Miss Quimper talked to Sally. You can hear normal voices through that hatch. They sealed the office for a bit, but it was open again yesterday.’
Sally avoided Johnny’s eye. He nodded, and asked, ‘Who had the hatch put in, by the way?’
‘Not guilty. The original idea was that the man in this office should have a secretary in Morningside’s office, and be able to throw letters and things at her. But I don’t rate a secretary. To continue: I don’t see that Miss Quimper’s story was dangerous to the — the murderer. If she’d told Sally she’d seen someone in Peex at seven-twenty-five, but didn’t want to mention his name over the telephone, that would have been plain enough. But—’
Johnny grinned faintly. ‘And if she’d said in a low, urgent voice, “There’s someone next door.
I must go—” But you don’t get it handed to you on a plate, Toby. I don’t know what there was in her story that was dangerous to the murderer — or that he thought was dangerous to him. He may have been mistaken; acute anxiety is apt to distort one’s sense of proportion. But I do think he was afraid to let her be questioned about it by the police and/or me.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Toby. ‘But here’s another point. How could he be sure she’d die? Twenty feet’s quite a fall, but it isn’t necessarily fatal. He couldn’t even be sure, in the dark, that she’d fall on stones. Suppose she recovered and gave him away.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘That’s certainly a point. I don’t know.’
He sounded a little abstracted, and Sally diagnosed reluctance to discuss the point. She said, ‘And what about the cutting? Where is it now? Miss Quimper said Morningside found it.’
‘That’s a question,’ said Camberley. ‘It wasn’t visible when we found him. He may have put it in his pocket; I can ask Lindesay about that. I don’t think it’s in his office — I was in there yesterday afternoon looking for some pix, and I think I’d have noticed it. But we can look.’
They searched Morningside’s office carefully, but the cutting wasn’t there. Then they went along to Cuts. It was another big room, though not as big as Peex, with one small office for Knox and another for his typists and, in a far corner, a glass-walled cubicle which contained the Archives switchboard.
Knox wandered out of his office as they made their way between the filing cabinets, and Toby said, ‘Hullo, Mike. I thought this was your Saturday off.’
‘Most of them are,’ said Knox, with a warm smile. ‘Here next Saturday and here last Saturday — but never here this Saturday. Well, hardly ever.’ Then the smile faded.
‘My principal assistant,’ he said, clipping his words, ‘rang me up and told me about Miss Quimper. If I can help you at all, Heldar, please tell me. I never got on with Miss Quimper, but she was a good woman.’
Answer in the Negative Page 10