by June Wright
I saw her finger-tips whiten under their polish as she pressed her hands against the board.
“We must have another little talk later on,” I suggested conversationally. “Just now, breakfast and bed are my one ambition. I think Mr. Clarkson is approaching to tell us that we may go.”
CHAPTER VII
John read through the untidy sheets up to this point when he came to see me one day. They do allow visitors occasionally in this dreadful place. I asked him for assistance in describing that fateful Saturday when the charity dance was held at the Exchange. I was a little undecided how to begin. His advice was the same as when he started me off on this manuscript. It was quite simple. As a record of my part in the affairs of the Exchange during that week, it must contain certain details of what I had thought was my ordinary life.
“But I can’t tell people that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast,” I objected. “It’s too mundane.”
He laughed, and suggested that perhaps that could be quite well omitted without misleading anyone, but to continue with the first items connecting with the terrible event that was to occur later.
“I’d better say at what time I awoke,” I remarked, sighing despondently, “though that seems rather futile, too.”
I arrived home that morning feeling very weary and grubby, with just enough time to snatch a shower and change into a cool dirndl before breakfast. I took one depressing look in the mirror, and then strolled along to my mother’s room.
“Are you up, Charlotte?” I called, tapping her door gently with my fingertips.
“Come in,” she answered. I pushed it open. “Darling, you do look dreadful!”
“Don’t rub it in,” I replied irritably. “I’ve been up all night, you know. Are you coming down to breakfast?”
“Why don’t you go straight to bed,” she coaxed. “I’ll bring you up a tray.”
I shook my head so violently that I was compelled to retie the narrow white ribbon I wore to keep my hair from my face.
“I’d fall asleep before I ate anything. What will you do with yourself to-day?”
“I’ve got an engagement for this afternoon,” she replied placidly. “I’m going to watch a basketball match.”
“What!” I yelled, unable to believe my ears.
“A basketball match, dear,” Charlotte repeated distinctly. “That nice boy who used to have freckles is taking me.”
“You mean Sergeant Matheson? I’ll have you know that you’re cutting me out. He asked me first.”
“So he said,” agreed my mother, “but he told me that you didn’t seem keen to go. The poor boy was quite disappointed. I felt so sorry for him that I said I’d never seen a basketball match, and if he didn’t mind, would he take me?”
“When did all this take place?” I asked.
“He rang you up last night. Mrs. Bates told him you were on all-night shift, so he asked to speak to me. By the way, Maggie, Mrs. Bates was giving me such peculiar looks when I was on the ’phone.
“She was probably worrying about the Sergeant’s intentions,” I explained. “She hates men.”
“How odd of her! I must get your father to meet her. I’m ready. Shall we go down?”
We strolled down arm in arm. In the lower hail I paused and said half-laughingly, half-earnestly: “There’s more in this than meets the eye. Are you really going to see that absurd game for the fun of it? Or are you trying your hand at the same game as your daughter?”
Charlotte never gave much away. “I thought it might be interesting if I could have a little chat with that nice boy,” she remarked, opening the dining-room door. “I used to know his mother many years ago.”
“Then the conversation will be purely personal? All right, we’ll let it go at that. Perhaps if Sergeant Matheson hasn’t anything better to do, he might drop in later this evening. Will you ask him for me?”
“Certainly,” my mother replied with surprise. We seated ourselves at a small table near a window. “But I thought you didn’t like him.”
“He’s all right,” I said carelessly, unfolding my table-napkin. “I should imagine that he makes a very nice husband and father. I gleaned that bit of news last night, so you can take that innocent look from your face and keep it for Sunday. I’ve arranged a game for you.”
“Have you, Maggie?” she asked, selecting an orange to squeeze into a tumbler. “That’ll be enjoyable. Is Mr. Clarkson a terribly good player?”
“Moderate. You may be able to beat him; especially as he might be nervous.”
My mother sipped her orange juice. “Why should he be nervous?” I grinned at her even though I felt a slow blush creeping into my face. “Darling, how dense of me!” she said apologetically, changing the subject in a hurry. “Tell me, what are you going to eat?”
The dining-room was almost empty of my fellow-boarders. Being Saturday, many took the opportunity to sleep on and skipped breakfast. I nodded briefly to one or two who entered, not being in a sociable mood, and escaped as soon as I could to my room. Charlotte came in to draw the curtains, and to make the room as dark as possible by anchoring the blinds with pillows to prevent them from blowing inwards. Trying to get a sound sleep by daylight was one of the major problems of the all-night telephonist, but I was so tired that I would probably have fallen asleep with a searchlight blazing into my face.
“Stick up my ‘Don’t disturb’ notice on the door,” I murmured, turning over, “and remember you’re a lady when you’re watching that riotous match.”
“I will,” my mother promised to both requests, closing the door carefully behind her.
I fell at once into that hot, restless slumber that brings no refreshment. My brain kept turning out grotesque dreams that seemed almost real, so vivid were they. It was the same sort of troubled sleep I had had the previous night. Familiar faces and places, distorted but still recognizable, grew up in my overexcited brain. Voices and noises were as clamorous as before. Presently I heard one voice speak quite clearly: “You’ll enter only over my dead body.” I shook myself into semi-consciousness. There was a short, metallic laugh and the sound of footsteps, then the banging of a door. I heard all three as separate impressions. I tried to rouse myself completely, but the effort was too great and I sank into a deeper sleep.
It was the flapping of the curtains that awoke me finally. I turned over on my back in exasperation and watched the room fill with light and then darken with each motion. Suddenly I sat up, my body tense, searching in the recesses of my mind for some thought that was nagging at my memory. It was only the middle of the afternoon, but more sleep was impossible when I remembered the brief laugh that I had thought was part of my dreams. I slipped back into my dirndl quickly and made for the stairs, going down two at a time. Mrs. Bates was peeling potatoes in the kitchen, her voice uplifted in some dreary song.
“Stop that row,” I ordered, entering in a rush, “How can you expect me to sleep?”
She dropped a potato and stared at me in offended dignity. “That was a hymn of hope.”
I grinned. “Sorry, but it sounded like nothing on earth. Tell me, has anyone been to see me this afternoon?”
Mrs. Bates nodded virtuously. “I wouldn’t let her disturb you. I knew you were worn out and wanted to sleep.”
“You didn’t seem to realize it just now. Was it Miss MacIntyre by any chance?”
“She came about two,” Mrs. Bates said, resuming her potato peeling, “but I wouldn’t let her go in. I stood at your door and said ‘You’ll enter only over my dead body.’ When she saw I meant what I said she left.” Mrs. Bates looked around at me, waiting for commendation.
“I wish you’d woken me,” I said, troubled. “Was Miss MacIntyre anxious to see me?”
“I couldn’t say I’m sure. She wouldn’t leave any message with me.”
I smiled and let it pass without comment.
“Did she say if she was coming back?” I asked, but Mrs. Bates shook her head. “Thanks very much for not disturbing me,” I said mechanical
ly and went out of the kitchen.
I mounted the stairs slowly, lost in thought. Mac had wanted to see me. It must have been something important, otherwise she wouldn’t have risked breaking in on my sleep. Telephonists respected each other’s hours of rest, especially when they were on the all-night shift. She was probably going to make an effort to lower that barrier that had come between us, and I had missed the opportunity. I felt restless and uneasy, and walked round my room tidying up in an unseeing fashion. I wished that my mother hadn’t been out. She was a grand person to talk to, and Mac might have come straight with her.
On impulse, I went to my wardrobe and found a pair of sandals to slip on my bare feet. I settled a rough straw hat anyhow on my head, and snatched up my handbag.
Mrs. Bates poked her head into the hall at the sound of my running footsteps, her eyes round with curiosity. “Will you be in to dinner, Miss Byrnes?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m only going out for a moment.”
I cut down the right-of-way where John Clarkson had driven me home that awful night of Sarah Compton’s murder. The wind billowed the full skirt of my dress, and made me clutch my hat as I rounded the corner of the street where Mac lodged.
As was the custom of all boarding-houses, the front door was ajar. I passed in without bothering to ring. Mac used an outside bungalow as a bedroom. I went down the hail and through a side door to reach it. It was a fibrous-plaster building, shaped something like a tent with a sloping roof and fly-wired all the way round just below the ceiling. I knocked gently, calling her name. There was no answer. A slovenly woman came round the side of the house, wiping her red hands on her apron.
“Is Miss MacIntyre in?” I asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know. Isn’t she in her room?”
“I’ve knocked, but there is no reply. Do you know where she is?”
The woman thought for a minute. “Have you looked in the front room?”
I presumed that she meant the lounge, so I hurriedly retraced my steps. Boarding houses in the Park area were all much the same. I had no difficulty in finding my way around. There was always a long hall dividing the rooms on either side, which led past the steep stairs to the first floor down to the kitchen premises and back yard. The first room on the left was usually given over to a living-room. But Mac was not there either. It was unoccupied, except for a middle-aged man reading the newspaper and listening to the radio.
I went back to the bungalow, thinking that I would wait there for a while. It was too early for her to have left for work. I knew that she wasn’t on duty until 7 p.m. that evening. The slovenly woman seemed to have disappeared. I tried Mac’s door and found it was unlocked. That meant that she must have been coming back presently. No one leaves their bedroom door unlocked in a boarding-house; especially an easily accessible place like a bungalow.
“That’s funny,” I said aloud, standing very still with one hand on the door knob. The room was a riot of confusion. Drawers were hanging open and their contents billowed forth untidily. Even the bed had been stripped, with the bedclothes dumped on the floor and the mattress folded double one end of the bed. I looked down at the knob in my hand, and then at the keyhole on the outside. The woodwork around it had been scratched and torn. My heart missed a beat as I realized the significance of that untidy room.
It wasn’t like Mac to leave her bedroom in such a mess. She was always so neat and orderly. Therefore, there was only one explanation. Someone had forced her door, and had ransacked the room in a desperate search. But who it was and what they were looking for, I could not even hazard a guess. As I surveyed the scene grimly, I told myself that Mac would probably have been able to answer both those questions had she been at my side that moment. What was more, the search must have been conducted not long before my appearance on the scene. The person who had made the room into such a rubbish dump must have been very urgent indeed to risk a daylight raid. The possibility of burglary drifted into my mind. I dismissed it immediately as I saw a tiny gold-bar brooch of Mac’s pinned to the lace runner on the dressing-table. No burglar would be fool enough to overlook that.
I pulled the mattress back and sat down to think. Should I go and tell the landlady of the establishment that one of her guests’ rooms had been ransacked? Or should I wait until I saw Mac, so that she would be able to decide what was to be done? There was one conclusion that I came to: Mac could not be returning for some time. Otherwise, such a thorough search would not have been risked. As I sat there on Mac’s bed brooding on what was the best way to get in touch with her, I suddenly remembered the most likely place where she would be.
‘I’ll tidy up a bit,’ I told myself. ‘She might get a fright when she sees her room like this. It’s giving me the jumps just looking at it, and I don’t have to sleep here to-night. It’s horrid knowing that someone has been going through your possessions.’
I re-made the bed and closed drawers. The floor was littered with papers. I bent down to gather them up. Suddenly I stiffened and rose to a standing position slowly, holding one scrap in my hand. It was a piece from a notepaper set that I had given Mac the previous Christmas. I remembered the trouble that I had had in obtaining that particular shade and quality of paper. She had evidently been writing a letter, and had torn it up after making some mistake. The name “John” leaped to my eyes, and I stared at it wonderingly. There could be only one John where Mac and I were concerned. I forgot all the nice manners my mother had taught me as I knelt quickly and gathered together the rest of the papers that had been spilled from the overturned wastepaper basket. I dumped the heap on the bed and went through them, feeling puzzled. They were all the same type of paper, but I finally came to one that fitted into the torn slip that I held in my hand. It didn’t convey much. Mac had only written a few words in her neat hand and then tossed it aside. It started off “Dear John, I don’t know how to—” and there it stopped.
Filled with an overwhelming curiosity, I tried fitting other pieces of the heap together and discovered that they all began with the same address, and continued with a similar, unfinished sentence that conveyed nothing.
‘What on earth was she trying to write,’ I thought irritably, ‘that it takes her sheets of paper to compose?’
A door slammed in the main house. I started guiltily. ‘I’m pretty low,’ I thought in disgust, piling the scraps into the wastepaper basket and standing it in its corner. I gave the room a final look over before I closed the door carefully after me, and went round the side of the house to a back gate. It opened on to a lane that would take me to the tram route.
* * * * *
There was an atmosphere of gay expectancy at the Exchange, which was wholly at variance with the groups of quietly gossiping telephonists of the past few days. Girls in working kit were calling brightly over the banisters to others who were dressed for the street. As far as I could understand the principal topic of conversation was what everyone was going to wear that night to the charity social in the new building. I was filled with a sudden sense of bitterness. Although I was on the ticket committee, the only pleasure I would get from it would be an hour or so before I went on all-night duty at 11 p.m.
‘There’s one good thing about it, anyway,’ I told myself, as I proceeded to the seventh floor. ‘It has made people forget the unpleasant events of the past few days.’ I wondered if I was doing a very foolish thing in trying to stir up more trouble.
The dormitory echoed hollowly with the sound of laughing voices and the occasional thud of a hammer. I opened the door and saw half a dozen girls decorating the room with long streamers and pieces of asparagus fern. It had been cleared of furniture and the floor gleamed with polish. At the far end on a small dais, where the three-piece dance band would play that night, I recognized the curly head of the mechanic, Dan Mitchell. He was wiring a group of multi-coloured lights, cunningly hidden amid a mass of greenery. I was greeted with derisive remarks as to the way I had timed my entry when all the work was practically fini
shed.
“I was on all night,” I protested indignantly. “Anyway, the room looks so beautiful that I doubt whether I could have done much to improve it.”
“What’s all this about Gloria Patterson fainting in Clark’s arms last night. I wish it had been me. Weren’t you jealous, Maggie?”
“Not in the least. Fainting is never enjoyable.”
“Why did she faint?” asked another curiously. I thought for a minute. But it was not from wanting to comply with Gloria’s wishes that I replied: “The heat, I suppose. It was red-hot in the trunkroom all night.”
My interrogator spoke coyly: “A little bird told me it was something you said that made the fair Gloria collapse.”
“Really! And did the same little bird tell you what it was I said?”
“No,” she replied with regret. “I suppose it’s no use asking you?”
“No,” I said curtly. “Has anyone seen Gerda MacIntyre this afternoon?”
They looked at each other. “Mac?” queried one. “She came in for a while. The bell from the centre light is her contribution. It makes the room, don’t you think, Maggie?”
“It looks fine. When did she go?”
“I don’t know. Did anyone see Mac leave?”
They shook their heads. “She must have been gone for some time.”
“Thanks,” I said, and strolled down the room to the dais. “Those lights will be pretty, Dan.”
He glanced down to see who had spoken and then grinned. “Hullo, lady, you don’t look quite so angelic by daylight.”
“Sorry you’re disappointed,” I retorted. “Has anything been said about last night’s adventure?”
“Nothing.” He climbed down the stepladder and dropped a coil of wire and hammer to the floor. “Anything new on the horizon?”
I glanced over my shoulder, but the others were busy clearing up odd fragments of fern. “Our Senior Traffic Officer, Mr. Scott, came in last night when I was in the power-room.”
Dan whistled, and raised his brows comically.
“Not a word,” I whispered warningly. His eyes danced with excitement. “Are you coming to the social?” I asked, raising my voice for the benefit of the others.