by Mark Place
Medicinal ,’ said Miss Waterhouse fiercely.
‘Very wise of you, madam,’ said Inspector Hardcastle.
‘And that’s that,’ said Miss Waterhouse with finality.
‘I wanted to ask you if you were quite sure you had never seen this girl before?’
‘May have seen her a dozen times,’ said Miss Waterhouse, ‘but not to remember. I mean, she may have served me in Woolworth’s, or sat next to me in a bus, or sold me tickets in a cinema.’
‘She was a shorthand typist at the Cavendish Bureau.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever had occasion to use a shorthand typist. Perhaps she worked in my brother’s office at Gainsford and Swettenham. Is that what you’re driving at?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘there appears to be no connection of that kind. But I just wondered if she’d come to see you this morning before being killed.’
‘Come to see me? No, of course not. Why should she?’
‘Well, that we wouldn’t know,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘but you would say, would you, that anyone who saw her coming in at your gate this morning was mistaken?’ He looked at her with innocent eyes.
‘Somebody saw her coming in at my gate? Nonsense,’ said Miss Waterhouse. She hesitated. ‘At least—’
‘Yes?’ said Hardcastle, alert though he did not show it.
‘Well, I suppose she may have pushed a leaflet or something through the door…There was a leaflet there at lunch time. Something about a meeting for nuclear disarmament, I think. There’s always something every day. I suppose conceivably she might have come and pushed something through the letter box; but you can’t blame me for that, can you?’
‘Of course not. Now as to your telephone call—you say your own telephone was out of order.
According to the exchange, that was not so.’
‘Exchanges will say anything! I dialled and got a most peculiar noise, not the engaged signal, so I went out to the call box.’
Hardcastle got up.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Waterhouse, for bothering you in this way, but there is some idea that this girl did come to call on someone in the crescent and that she went to a house not very far from here.’
‘And so you have to inquire all along the crescent,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘I should think the most likely thing is that she went to the house next door—Miss Pebmarsh’s, I mean.’
‘Why should you consider that the most likely?’
‘You said she was a shorthand typist and came from the Cavendish Bureau. Surely, if I remember rightly, it was said that Miss Pebmarsh asked for a shorthand typist to come to her house the other day when that man was killed.’
‘It was said so, yes, but she denied it.’
‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Miss Waterhouse, ‘not that anyone ever listens to what I say until it’s too late, I should say that she’d gone a little batty. Miss Pebmarsh, I mean. I think, perhaps, that she does ring up bureaux and ask for shorthand typists to come. Then, perhaps, she forgets all about it.’
‘But you don’t think that she would do murder?’
‘I never suggested murder or anything of that kind. I know a man was killed in her house, but I’m not for a moment suggesting that Miss Pebmarsh had anything to do with it. No. I just thought that she might have one of those curious fixations like people do. I knew a woman once who was always ringing up a confectioner’s and ordering a dozen meringues. She didn’t want them, and when they came she said she hadn’t ordered them. That sort of thing.’
‘Of course, anything is possible,’ said Hardcastle. He said goodbye to Miss Waterhouse and left.
He thought she’d hardly done herself justice by her last suggestion. On the other hand, if she believed that the girl had been seen entering her house, and that that had in fact been the case, then the suggestion that the girl had gone to No. 19 was quite an adroit one under the circumstances. Hardcastle glanced at his watch and decided that he had still time to tackle the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau. It had, he knew, been reopened at two o’clock this afternoon. He might get some help from the girls there. And he would find Sheila Webb there too.
III
One of the girls rose at once as he entered the office.
‘It’s Detective Inspector Hardcastle, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Miss Martindale is expecting you.’ She ushered him into the inner office. Miss Martindale did not wait a moment before attacking him.
‘It’s disgraceful, Inspector Hardcastle, absolutely disgraceful! You must get to the bottom of this. You must get to the bottom of it at once. No dilly-dallying about. The police are supposed to give protection and that is what we need here at this office. Protection. I want protection for my girls and I mean to get it.’
‘I’m sure, Miss Martindale, that—’
‘Are you going to deny that two of my girls, two of them, have been victimized? There is clearly some irresponsible person about who has got some kind of—what do they call it nowadays—a fixture or a complex—about shorthand typists or secretarial bureaux. They are deliberately martyrizing this institute. First Sheila Webb was summoned by a heartless trick to find a dead body—the kind of thing that might send a nervous girl off her head—and now this. A perfectly nice harmless girl murdered in a telephone box. You must get to the bottom of it, Inspector.’
‘There’s nothing I want more than to get to the bottom of it, Miss Martindale. I’ve come to see if you can give me any help.’
‘Help! What help can I give you? Do you think if I had any help, I wouldn’t have rushed to you with it before now? You’ve got to find who killed that poor girl, Edna, and who played that heartless trick on Sheila. I’m strict with my girls, Inspector, I keep them up to their work and I won’t allow them to be late or slipshod. But I don’t stand for their being victimized or murdered. I intend to defend them, and I intend to see that people who are paid by the State to defend them do their work.’ She glared at him and looked rather like a tigress in human form. ‘Give us time, Miss Martindale,’ he said.
‘Time? Just because that silly child is dead, I suppose you think you’ve all the time in the world. The next thing that happens will be one of the other girls is murdered.’
‘I don’t think you need fear that, Miss Martindale.’
‘I don’t suppose you thought this girl was going to be killed when you got up this morning, Inspector. If so, you’d have taken a few precautions, I suppose, to look after her. And when one of my girls gets killed or is put in some terribly compromising position, you’ll be equally surprised. The whole thing is extraordinary, crazy! You must admit yourself it’s a crazy set-up. That is, if the things one reads in the paper were true. All those clocks for instance. They weren’t mentioned this morning at the inquest, I noticed.’
‘As little as possible was mentioned this morning, Miss Martindale. It was only an adjourned inquest, you know.’
‘All I say is,’ said Miss Martindale, glaring at him again, ‘you must do something about it.’
‘And there’s nothing you can tell me, no hint Edna might have given to you? She didn’t appear worried by anything, she didn’t consult you?’
‘I don’t suppose she’d have consulted me if she was worried,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘But what had she to be worried about?’
That was exactly the question that Inspector Hardcastle would have liked to have answered for him, but he could see that it was not likely that he would get the answer from Miss Martindale. Instead he said: ‘I’d like to talk to as many of your girls here as I can. I can see that it is not likely that Edna Brent would have confided any fears or worries to you, but she might have spoken of them to her fellow employees.’
‘That’s possible enough, I expect,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘They spend their time gossiping—these girls. The moment they hear my step in the passage outside all the typewriters begin to rattle. But what have they been doing just before? Talking. Chat, chat, chitter-chat!’ Calming down a little, she said
, ‘There are only three of them in the office at present. Would you like to speak to them while you’re here? The others are out on assignments. I can give you their names and their home addresses, if you like.’
‘Thank you, Miss Martindale.’
‘I expect you’d like to speak to them alone,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘They wouldn’t talk as freely if I was standing there looking on. They’d have to admit, you see, that they had been gossiping and wasting their time.’
She got up from her seat and opened the door into the outer office. ‘Girls,’ she said, ‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle wants to talk things over with you. You can stop work for the moment. Try and tell him anything you know that can help him to find out who killed Edna Brent.’ She went back into her own private office and shut the door firmly. Three startled girlish faces looked at the inspector. He summed them up quickly and superficially, but sufficiently to make up his mind as to the quality of the material with which he was about to deal. A fair solid-looking girl with spectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not particularly bright. A rather rakish-looking brunette with the kind of hair-do that suggested she’d been out in a blizzard lately. Eyes that noticed things here, perhaps, but probably highly unreliable in her recollection of events. Everything would be suitably touched up. The third was a born giggler who would, he was sure, agree with whatever anyone else said.
He spoke quietly, informally. ‘I suppose you’ve all heard what has happened to Edna Brent who worked here?’
Three heads nodded violently. ‘By the way, how did you hear?’
They looked at each other as if trying to decide who should be spokesman. By common consent it appeared to be the fair girl, whose name, it seemed, was Janet. ‘Edna didn’t come to work at two o’clock, as she should have done,’ she explained.
‘And Sandy Cat was very annoyed,’ began the dark-haired girl, Maureen, and then stopped herself.
‘Miss Martindale, I mean.’
The third girl giggled. ‘Sandy Cat is just what we call her,’ she explained. ‘And not a bad name,’ the inspector thought.
‘She’s a perfect terror when she likes,’ said Maureen. ‘Fairly jumps on you. She asked if Edna had said anything to us about not coming back to the office this afternoon, and that she ought to have at least sent an excuse.’
The fair girl said: ‘I told Miss Martindale that she’d been at the inquest with the rest of us, but that we hadn’t seen her afterwards and didn’t know where she’d gone.’
‘That was true, was it?’ asked Hardcastle. ‘You’ve no idea where she did go when she left the inquest.’
‘I suggested she should come and have some lunch with me,’ said Maureen, ‘but she seemed to have something on her mind. She said she wasn’t sure that she’d bother to have any lunch. Just buy something and eat it in the office.’
‘So she meant, then, to come back to the office?’
‘Oh, yes, of course. We all knew we’d got to do that.’
‘Have any of you noticed anything different about Edna Brent these last few days? Did she seem to you worried at all, as though she had something on her mind? Did she tell you anything to that effect? If there is anything at all you know, I must beg of you to tell me.’
They looked at each other but not in a conspiratorial manner. It seemed to be merely vague conjecture.
‘She was always worried about something,’ said Maureen. ‘She gets things muddled up, and makes mistakes. She was a bit slow in the uptake.’
‘Things always seemed to happen to Edna,’ said the giggler. ‘Remember when that stiletto heel of hers came off the other day? Just the sort of thing that would happen to Edna.’
‘I remember,’ said Hardcastle.
He remembered how the girl had stood looking down ruefully at the shoe in her hand.
‘You know, I had a feeling something awful had happened this afternoon when Edna didn’t get here at two o’clock,’ said Janet. She nodded with a solemn face.
Hardcastle looked at her with some dislike. He always disliked people who were wise after the event. He was quite sure that the girl in question had thought nothing of the kind. Far more likely, he thought to himself, that she had said, ‘Edna will catch it from Sandy Cat when she does come in.’
‘When did you hear what had happened?’ he asked again.
They looked at each other. The giggler flushed guiltily. Her eyes shot sideways to the door into Miss Martindale’s private office.
‘Well, I—er—I just slipped out for a minute,’ she said. ‘I wanted some pastries to take home and I knew they’d all be gone by the time we left. And when I got to the shop—it’s on the corner and they know me quite well there—the woman said, “She worked at your place, didn’t she, ducks?” and I said,
“Who do you mean?” And then she said, “This girl they’ve just found dead in a telephone box.” Oh, it gave me ever such a turn! So I came rushing back and I told the others and in the end we all said we’d have to tell Miss Martindale about it, and just at that moment she came bouncing out of her office and said to us, “Now what are you doing? Not a single typewriter going.” ’
The fair girl took up the saga.
‘And I said, “Really it’s not our fault. We’ve heard some terrible news about Edna, Miss Martindale.” ’
‘And what did Miss Martindale say or do?’
‘Well, she wouldn’t believe it at first,’ said the brunette. ‘She said, “Nonsense. You’ve just been picking up some silly gossip in a shop. It must be some other girl. Why should it be Edna?” And she marched back into her room and rang up the police station and found out it was true.’
‘But I don’t see,’ said Janet almost dreamily, ‘I don’t see why anyone should want to kill Edna.’
‘It’s not as though she had a boy or anything,’ said the brunette.
All three looked at Hardcastle hopefully as though he could give them the answer to the problem. He sighed. There was nothing here for him. Perhaps one of the other girls might be more helpful. And there was Sheila Webb herself.
‘Were Sheila Webb and Edna Brent particular friends?’ he asked.
They looked at each other vaguely.
‘Not special, I don’t think.’
‘Where is Miss Webb, by the way?’
He was told that Sheila Webb was at the Curlew Hotel, attending on Professor Purdy.
Chapter 19
Professor Purdy sounded irritated as he broke off dictating and answered the telephone.
‘Who? What? You mean he is here now? Well, ask him if tomorrow will do?—Oh, very well—very well—Tell him to come up.’
‘Always something,’ he said with vexation. ‘How can one ever be expected to do any serious work with these constant interruptions.’ He looked with mild displeasure at Sheila Webb and said: ‘Now where were we, my dear?’
Sheila was about to reply when there was a knock at the door. Professor Purdy brought himself back with some difficulty from the chronological difficulties of approximately three thousand years ago.
‘Yes?’ he said testily, ‘yes, come in, what is it? I may say I mentioned particularly that I was not to be disturbed this afternoon.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir, very sorry indeed that it has been necessary to do so. Good evening, Miss Webb.’
Sheila Webb had risen to her feet, setting aside her note-book. Hardcastle wondered if he only fancied that he saw sudden apprehension come into her eyes.
‘Well, what is it?’ said the professor again, sharply.
‘I am Detective Inspector Hardcastle, as Miss Webb here will tell you.’
‘Quite,’ said the professor. ‘Quite.’
‘What I really wanted was a few words with Miss Webb.’
‘Can’t you wait? It is really most awkward at this moment. Most awkward. We were just at a critical point. Miss Webb will be disengaged in about a quarter of an hour—oh, well, perhaps half an hour. Something like that. Oh, dear me, is it six o’clock already?’
‘I’m very sorry, Professor Purdy,’ Hardcastle’s tone was firm.
‘Oh, very well, very well. What is it—some motoring offence, I suppose? How very officious these traffic wardens are. One insisted the other day that I had left my car four and a half hours at a parking meter. I’m sure that could not possibly be so.’
‘It’s a little more serious than a parking offence, sir.’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And you don’t have a car, do you, my dear?’ He looked vaguely at Sheila Webb.
‘Yes, I remember, you come here by bus. Well, Inspector, what is it?’
‘It’s about a girl called Edna Brent.’ He turned to Sheila Webb. ‘I expect you’ve heard about it.’
She stared at him. Beautiful eyes. Cornflower-blue eyes. Eyes that reminded him of someone.
‘Edna Brent, did you say?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, yes, I know her, of course. What about her?’
‘I see the news hasn’t got to you yet. Where did you lunch, Miss Webb?’
Colour came up in her cheeks. ‘I lunched with a friend at the Ho Tung restaurant, if—if it’s really any business of yours.’
‘You didn’t go on afterwards to the office?’
‘To the Cavendish Bureau, you mean? I called in there and was told it had been arranged that I was to come straight here to Professor Purdy at half past two.’
‘That’s right,’ said the professor, nodding his head. ‘Half past two. And we have been working here ever since. Ever since. Dear me, I should have ordered tea. I am very sorry, Miss Webb, I’m afraid you must have missed having your tea. You should have reminded me.’
‘Oh, it didn’t matter, Professor Purdy, it didn’t matter at all.’
‘Very remiss of me,’ said the professor, ‘very remiss. But there. I mustn’t interrupt, since the inspector wants to ask you some questions.’