Answer in the Negative

by Henrietta Hamilton

  After a moment Sally said, ‘I’d like to come with you, then.’

  ‘Do you mean that? It won’t be very enjoyable.’

  Sally hadn’t meant quite that. She had recognised in Johnny the particular symptoms of anxiety which meant that he had begun seriously to suspect someone whom he really liked. She didn’t want to leave him to investigate Toby alone. If he were going to make any disturbing discovery, she didn’t want him to make it alone, and as likely as not keep it from her and worry about it by himself.

  ‘I’d rather be there,’ she said.

  The Echo’s young men were apparently as wide awake as ever, and the Heldars used the side door, and approached it from the back of the building. They were crossing Garrick Square when Michael Knox, returning late from lunch, strode into it from a narrow passage on the east side.

  ‘Good afternoon to you,’ he said, and raised two long fingers to his temple in a casual salute.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m glad to see you. I’ve been doing a pub-crawl — hobnobbing with barmaids and such — and as far as I can see I needn’t bother Lindesay.’

  Sally thought she saw relief in Knox’s eyes, but it was generally difficult to read them.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ said Sally on an impulse.

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’

  They went in, past Laxton’s opposite number at his desk, down the steps and along the passage. One of the girls from Negs followed them into the lift, and it was impossible to say any more. But as they went up Sally caught Knox’s eye, and his long mouth curled. There was cynicism in the smile, but there was something warmer too. She had to smile back.

  When they came out into the back passage Knox gave the Heldars a jerk of his long head and turned towards Cuts. They followed Miss Quimper’s girl into Peex and went on to the farther end. Johnny glanced round, and Selina materialised from behind the filing cabinets.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid Toby isn’t here; he went to lunch very late. Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Johnny. ‘I suppose you’ve no idea if Brigadier Camberley is anywhere in the building?’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t. He’s not up here; I know that. I’ll get on to the Echo switchboard and ask them if they can find him.’

  ‘Thank you so much. There’s no need to mention my name to the switchboard. Just ask for him, if you don’t mind, and if you get him tell him I’m here. Say John or something. The Echo men are rather ghoulish.’

  ‘I know,’ said Selina. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  But she couldn’t find Camberley. After ten minutes on the telephone she reported that he didn’t seem to be in the building, and that a usually reliable source thought he was at the House. Johnny thanked her and apologised for bothering her.

  Teddy appeared suddenly, coming from the other end of the room. He was carrying a handful of glossy prints. They had evidently been in a cellophane bag, but he had taken them out and was looking at them as he came. He wandered on to the open door of the typists’ office without noticing the Heldars. Selina had gone back to her work.

  ‘Cor stone the crows!’ he said. ‘I wonder if they’ll syndicate this stuff after all, now old Morny’s gone. “Meself when Young.” Look at the Cabinet Minister in a short frock and long curls! Might ’ave murdered ’im meself if I thought ’e was all set to publish one like that of me.’

  Either he had recovered with rather surprising speed from his interview with Johnny, or — more likely — he was trying to conceal his apprehensions under an aggressive jauntiness.

  ‘Pipe down, Teddy,’ said Pat’s voice. ‘Those are from the dark-room, I suppose. Mr Morningside must have sent the negs down before he was killed. Where’s the slip for them?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Teddy with unconvincing blankness. ‘Don’t think they give me one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Pam’s voice. ‘They always give you one. Try your pockets.’

  Teddy, standing just inside the door, with his back to the Heldars, slapped his pockets with large gestures. ‘Not ’ere,’ he said.

  ‘Feel in your pockets,’ said Pat coldly.

  Teddy slid two fingers into his breast pocket. ‘Not ’ere,’ he said again, shaking his red head. He put his hand deliberately into a side pocket.

  Someone lost patience. A chair skidded back, and Pat advanced on Teddy, coming into the Heldars’ field of vision. He raised his arms. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You can search me.’

  Pat emptied his pockets briskly, laying the contents on a side table. The breast pocket yielded an orange silk handkerchief, obviously for show only, a ballpoint pen, and a propelling pencil, and the inner breast pocket a cheap wallet hideously patterned in no known tartan. The side pockets were empty, except for fluff; evidently Teddy was afraid of spoiling the set of his jacket. From his trouser pockets Pat produced a handkerchief for use, which she dropped on the table from understandably fastidious fingers, a squashed packet of cigarettes and a cheap lighter, some loose change, two lengths of string, some rubber bands, a couple of paperclips, and finally two pieces of crumpled paper, one very small.

  ‘Cinema ticket,’ she said, and threw the scrap out of sight, presumably into a wastepaper basket. Then she unfolded the other paper. ‘Yes, this is it. All right, Teddy, thank you.’

  ‘Sendin’ me away so soon?’ asked Teddy languishingly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pat. ‘We’ve got work to do. Shut the door, please.’

  Teddy’s further protest was drowned by the rattle of typewriter keys. He swung round, saw Johnny, and turned slowly crimson, the colour flooding up his pale wedge of a face. Johnny nodded to him, and he swallowed convulsively and almost ran.

  Johnny, who had seemed to be waiting out of idle curiosity, watched him go out by the back way and then knocked on the typists’ door. They both called, ‘Come in,’ and he opened it.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Heldar. What can we do for you?’

  Johnny was drawing Sally into the room. He shut the door behind them and said quietly, ‘May I see the cinema ticket you took off Teddy? In here, is it?’ He squatted down beside Pam’s wastepaper bin.

  ‘The cinema ticket?’ said Pam. ‘Oh! He said he was at the pictures on Wednesday evening, only he couldn’t prove it. Will the ticket give him an alibi, Mr Heldar?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I hope it may.’ Johnny had found it and was looking at it carefully. ‘It’s got a number on it. It’s the half you get back from the usherette, of course. I don’t know quite how these things work, but I’ll hand it over to Inspector Lindesay and he’ll find out. Of course Teddy may quite well have got it some other evening.’

  ‘I hope not, poor kid,’ said Pam.

  ‘I hope not too. Have you got an envelope I can put it in? Thank you; that’s fine. You’ll keep this to yourselves, won’t you? If it is going to be a wash-out it would be a pity if people got to know about it.’

  ‘We won’t say anything,’ said Pat. She hesitated. ‘We oughtn’t to be asking this, but it’s not that we’re curious. Oh, well, it is, of course. But it’s really because it’s such a strain, just waiting and wondering. Do you know who did it?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’m sorry, because I do know how you feel. We had someone murdered at our shop once, and we both know what it’s like.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally. ‘It’s a frightful strain.’

  ‘You can’t believe it’s anyone in the office,’ said Pam. ‘And yet every time you see anyone you wonder: Is it him?’

  The Heldars stopped at the post office in Fleet Street, and Johnny rang up Scotland Yard and was put through to Lindesay. He explained about the cinema ticket, and Lindesay was pleased and entirely approving — its discovery, of course, had obviously not entailed any poaching on police preserves. He said he would send a man to pick it up; was Mr Heldar going back to Heldar Broth
ers? Johnny said he was, and after further civilities rang off. He and Sally cut through to Holborn and took the same bus to Southampton Row, and there Sally got off and walked home.

  After supper that evening Camberley called on the Heldars. When the bell rang Sally was quite sure it was Toby. But after Johnny had gone down to the front door, she recognised the deep voice on the staircase. She relaxed, and then she remembered why Johnny had wanted to see Camberley, and wished he wasn’t here.

  But she almost changed her mind when he came in. He was so warm and friendly that her polite welcome became entirely sincere. They put him on the sofa and gave him a cigarette, and Johnny got him a drink.

  He waited till Johnny had helped himself, and then nodded and smiled to Sally over his glass and drank. Then he said, ‘What a very attractive house this is.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Sally.

  ‘I like it very much.’ He smiled again — a slow, reminiscent smile this time. ‘I was brought up in a small flat over a grocer’s shop, in a little town in the West Country.’ (So that, thought Sally, was the pleasant accent below the surface of his voice.) ‘It was full of the worst possible Victorian and Edwardian stuff — horse-hair chairs, plush tablecloths, hideous floral wallpapers, presents from Margate, and the like. It didn’t worry me when I was a child, and I didn’t begin to think about furnishings for a long time after that, but during my years in the Army I gradually got ideas about peaceful rooms with things like these in them. I’ve done what I can with my own flat — I should like to show it to you some day — but this is the best I’ve seen yet.’

  Sally said they would love to see his flat, and Johnny, a little to her surprise, explained how they had come by Mark Mercator’s furniture. He very seldom gave explanations which involved his detective successes, and it pleased her to see him drawn out.

  When he had finished, Camberley said, ‘That’s extraordinarily interesting — to me. I don’t suppose it was so much fun for you. A detective story isn’t very entertaining when you’re right in the middle of it. All the same, I’d better get on with it, and tell you why I’m here. In the first place, I had a word with Lindesay a little while ago, and he says Teddy is in the clear — thanks entirely to you. The police had already made enquiries at the cinema, of course, but no one remembered the boy; it’s evidently a biggish place. But when they went back with the ticket, the people there were able to say that it was issued on Wednesday evening before seven-thirty — probably not very long before. It was near the end of a roll — the serial number showed that — and it was just about seven-thirty when the box-office girl put a new roll in the machine, or whatever the drill is. So that settles it. The boy must have gone there straight from the Grapevine. If he didn’t kill Morningside, presumably he didn’t kill Miss Quimper either. He’s in quite enough trouble without that, unfortunately. Silcutt can’t overlook it this time.’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. Sally remembered his earlier arguments. Either Teddy or one of a limited group of intelligent people: Michael Knox, Selina, Miss Quimper, Toby, and Silcutt. The murderer was certainly the joker. It wasn’t Teddy. It almost certainly wasn’t Michael Knox. It wasn’t Miss Quimper. It wasn’t Selina, unless Johnny’s whole theory of the case was wrong, and his theory was extremely convincing. But not Toby, she thought. Not Toby.

  ‘In the second place,’ Camberley was saying, ‘the Echo switchboard told me that Miss Marvell was trying to find me, and Miss Marvell told me that you were trying to find me. What can I do for you, if it’s not too late?’

  Sally saw Johnny grow a little taut. ‘It’s very kind of you, sir,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask you to go over the earlier part of Wednesday evening for me.’

  Camberley blinked. Then he said sharply, ‘Lorn? Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m sufficiently serious to want his movements, sir.’

  ‘But he was with Morningside and me all through the crucial period.’

  ‘The canteen period. I’m not quite sure now that that is the crucial period.’

  The Brigadier looked at him very hard. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You know what you’re doing, I’m afraid. I’ll start at six o’clock, shall I?’

  ‘Please, sir.’

  ‘At about six o’clock Lorn and I left Echo House. Mrs Heldar and Silcutt came down in the lift with us — I’d been with Silcutt in his office for the last half-hour or so. We parted from them outside the Fleet Street entrance and went along to the Old Fleet. Our actual destination, incidentally, wasn’t prearranged, and it was my suggestion. I had asked Lorn half an hour before to join me in a drink somewhere nearby, and to meet me in the entrance hall at six. In fact we met outside Silcutt’s office, but that was mere chance. I had also mentioned to Lorn that I was going on to the House later, and I think I made it clear to him then — that is, at half past five or thereabouts — that before I went, I was going to eat with Morningside in the canteen. I don’t think I told him then at what time we were eating. I’m giving you these details in case they’re of some use.

  ‘In the Old Fleet, Lorn told me that you and he were seeing Morningside in Peex at eight, and, as he was going back to Echo House, I suggested he should eat with Morningside and me in the canteen at a quarter to seven. He agreed.

  ‘In due course we returned to Echo House and went straight down to the canteen. We reached it, as I think Lorn told you, about a quarter to seven. Morningside was already there. We ate, and Lorn told Morningside about the conference at eight. His manner, incidentally, seemed perfectly normal. He was rather tired — I think he generally is after a long day — but that was all. Morningside left us about a quarter past seven, and we sat over our coffee for perhaps five minutes longer. I told Lorn then that I should be tremendously interested to attend your conference, but that I didn’t want to force myself upon you, and I asked him if he would ring you up and find out what you felt about it. When we left the canteen, he went off to do that, but I’m afraid I don’t know where he telephoned from. Perhaps you do?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Pity. We did touch briefly on that question. We agreed that Lorn had better not use the telephone in his own office, because of the glass hatch between his office and Morningside’s, which as you know is not soundproof. We also agreed that he shouldn’t use any Echo telephone, because we didn’t particularly want the conversation overheard by the Echo switchboard. He said he’d find a telephone somewhere and went off. He may have talked to you from one of the call boxes in the entrance hall, but he was a little doubtful about those; as he said, the Echo’s reporters are often hanging about there, and he might conceivably be overheard. I think it’s more likely he went out and rang up from a call box in some pub.

  ‘Well, in the meantime I was looking for Carfrae of the Daily Echo. I ran him to earth after a bit in someone else’s office, had a chat with him, and got back to the entrance hall, where I’d agreed to meet Lorn, just before eight o’clock. About three minutes to, I think. He was there when I arrived. But you want to talk to Brown — the night-porter there. He may be able to give Lorn an alibi, and he’s fairly discreet.’

  ‘Yes. I must see him. Thank you very much, sir.’

  ‘If you’d like to go tonight, I’ll ring him up and tell him he can safely answer anything you ask him.’

  ‘That’s very good of you. I think perhaps I will go tonight.’

  Sally was grateful to Camberley too. It would be better to get it over. Brown’s evidence might tell against Toby, but if Johnny didn’t get it tonight, he wouldn’t sleep.

  Camberley talked to Brown, who was obviously a friend of his. ‘That’s all right,’ he said when he had rung off. ‘He’s expecting you. If you want to go now, we’ll find a taxi and I’ll drop you. What about you, Mrs Heldar? Are you going with your husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally quickly.

  Before they reached Fleet Street, Camberley said, ‘I don’t want to ask awkward questions, but is Michael still in this?’

  ‘
No,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve gone into him very carefully, and I don’t see how he can possibly have done it.’

  Camberley gave a little sigh. ‘Thank God for that, anyway.’

  ‘You know what was behind it all, I gather.’

  ‘You mean I know what would have been his motive? Yes. He told me that story himself, some time ago. But he never mentioned Morningside’s name; I only heard it much later in that connection. If he had mentioned it, I wouldn’t have recommended him for this job. I don’t mean that I should have expected him to do murder, but neither should I have expected him to deal wisely or discreetly with what was undoubtedly a very difficult situation. That poor wretched boy—’

  ‘What happened to the girl?’ asked Sally. She had wanted to know that ever since Silcutt had told them the story.

  ‘He wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t have him. She felt, I gather, that their whole relationship had been vitiated and cheapened by Morningside’s talebearing, and she was afraid that Dowd only wanted to make an honest woman of her. I don’t know where she is now, but I hope he’ll find her again someday. Well, here we are. I shall see you at the inquest tomorrow, I expect. Goodnight.’

  The entrance hall was fortunately unoccupied, except by Brown. He welcomed them almost warmly and made them sit down on the red quilted seat. He was a little, bright, bird-like Cockney, Ortheris to Laxton’s Learoyd.

  ‘The Brigadier says I’m ter answer yer questions, sir, and not say nothink ter nobody. Right you are, sir. I’m ready.’

  ‘Good,’ said Johnny. ‘Can you remember if Mr Lorn of the Archives telephoned from one of these call boxes round about half past seven on Wednesday evening — the evening Mr Morningside was killed?’

  Brown, standing almost at attention in front of Johnny, considered at some length. He wrinkled his forehead and screwed up his eyes in an intense effort to remember. At last he said, ‘No. No, sir, I’m very sorry; I couldn’t say. There’s so many people uses them boxes.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Of course. I wasn’t ’ere abaht ’alf past seven that evenin’. I told the Brigadier that, and the perlice, when they was wantin’ ter know wot time Miss Marvell left the buildin’ after she came back. You ’eard abaht that, sir?’