Murder in the Telephone Exchange

by June Wright

  “With some fruit, it should be quite adequate,” she replied, sitting down beside me. “I think I’ll have some coffee, too.”

  As she poured out, a thought suddenly occurred to me. “Charlotte,” I commanded solemnly. “Show me your feet.”

  “Why, darling?” she asked, turning sideways in her chair. I looked down, and then at the tailored linen dress that she wore.

  “Where are your clubs?” I asked slyly.

  “In the hall,” she answered. “By the way, will you be using your putter? Mine seems to be missing. I remember your father was practising long shots on the front lawn a few days ago. He probably forgot to put it back in my bag. Why are you looking at me like that, Maggie?”

  “By any chance,” I asked carefully, “did you use the telephone to-day?”

  “Several times. I rang your father.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, instantly diverted. “No, never mind. Wait until I’ve finished with what I was going to say.” She glanced at me inquiringly. “I don’t suppose,” I went on, “that one of the calls you made was to a Windsor number?”

  “I might have,” she replied cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

  I took another sandwich, satisfied that I was the victim of a conspiracy. “Clark just rang to make certain if the game was still on. He’ll be round shortly.”

  “That’ll be nice, dear,” was the only comment she made. I felt a little nonplussed.

  “What did the Old Man say?” I asked presently.

  “Don’t call your father that,” she protested. “He got a bit het up when I broke the news, but he was pretty right by the time we rang off. He told me to bring you home.”

  “Now, Charlotte,” I began argumentatively.

  “I told him that the police probably wouldn’t let you leave town,” she finished in a mild tone.

  “How did he reply to that?”

  “He grunted, but I think that he understood. However, I received strict instructions to return tomorrow. Bertha forgot to put salt in the porridge this morning.”

  “What a calamity!” I said, grinning. “Do you want to go home?”

  “Not much,” she confessed. “I told your father that I hadn’t found my garden hat yet. He gave way when I promised to return as soon as I found one.”

  “You’d better try looking for it in shoe stores,” I advised, folding my table-napkin and rising from the table. “At least until the case is solved.”

  Charlotte got up too, and we walked arm in arm to the door.

  “Do you think that they’ll ever find out?” she asked despairingly. “I can’t make head nor tail of the business.”

  “Of course they will,” I replied, though I shared her apprehensions. It would be ghastly if the case dragged on for months, perhaps even years, like the Albury pyjama-girl mystery. I sighed despondently.

  “I’ll run upstairs and get those putters,” I said. “You wait in the hall.”

  I came down, clad in a grey linen skirt and checked shirt with my golf bag slung across my shoulder. Clark had arrived and was practising mashie shots with a matchbox as a ball.

  “Mind the light,” I called from half-way down the stairs. He came forward with the iron against his shoulder. I was shocked at his appearance.

  “Did you have any sleep at all?” I asked severely.

  “Not much,” he replied. “You look fresh enough.”

  “I’m better now. Charlotte gave me a sleeping draught when I got home, unbeknown to me. The net result was a splitting head and a tongue like cotton-wool.”

  “A game will do us all good. Are you ready?”

  We travelled towards the south-eastern suburbs where the sandbelt lay, and where most of the best courses ran side by side.

  “I thought it might have changed,” I remarked, letting down the window as I sat in the front seat with Clark, “but it is still as hot as ever. Are we going to Riverlea?”

  He nodded, turning the wheel with one hand. “I booked for 4 p.m., but I don’t think that it was necessary. Most people will be playing in the clubhouse over beer.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “It won’t be too hot for you, Charlotte?”

  “No, dear,” she replied, following the flying landscape on her right. “I like summer golf. It makes my ball go farther.”

  “That’s what she says,” I remarked confidentially to Clark. “I’ve seen my mother drive a hundred and fifty yards along a marshy fairway in the middle of winter.”

  “I am going to ask for two strokes,” Clark said solemnly.

  We drove on in silence for a while, until he asked abruptly: “Are you working to-night?”

  I had been humming a little tune, but his words pulled me up with a jerk.

  “I suppose I will. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. What about you?”

  “There is no need for a traffic officer to-night, my pet. Bertie is coming in.”

  “What’s the idea? He’s never worked on all-night before.”

  Clark shrugged, lifting his hands from the wheel. “Search me. However, it lets me off. I won’t question his actions.”

  “I’m glad, for your sake,” I admitted. “You’d better get my mother to give you a couple of those pills. Are there any left, Charlotte?”

  “I loathe forced sleep,” said Clark emphatically.

  “Never mind! You do as I say for a change. We’ll collect them on the way home.”

  “Just as you wish,” he replied in a meek voice, and I touched the rough sleeve of his coat for a second.

  The course, as Clark had foreseen, held but few players, while the lounge of the clubhouse was crowded with rubber-soled feet. I ran a ball down the empty race idiotically, and went to tee up.

  “I’ll show you the way, Charlotte,” I called, my club held between my bent knees as I pulled on a grey felt hat. “Red flags out—white flags in.”

  Our first drives landed us about the same distance, although my ball lay slightly in the rough. I took out an iron, calling to the others cheerfully: “Watch me hit the pin!”

  I saw Clark take my mother’s bag before I swung. As I followed my lifting ball, shading my eyes with one hand, I remembered how Mac had always sliced on this first hole, whereas I usually pulled. It had been quite a joke between us.

  “Just off the green,” said Clark’s voice behind me. “Your mother is on, but I think that I have hit through.”

  “Bad luck,” I said tightly, striding along in step.

  Charlotte had holed out in three when we reached the green. As I flung down my bag, kicking it aside to give me room for a stance. Clark crossed to the other side, and disappeared into a bunker. The chip shot was a failure, and it took me two putts to achieve the hole. I straightened after picking the balls out of the tin, and caught Clark looking at me queerly.

  “Five, Maggie?” asked my mother, marking her card as she walked ahead.

  “Six,” I corrected, fumbling over my shoulder for my club. “Your honour.”

  We watched her drive off in silence. I half-closed my eyes, visualizing a slimmer, smaller figure following the stroke through gracefully. What a farce the whole idea was! Nobody wanted to play, excepting perhaps Charlotte, and then she was probably only doing it for my sake. I might have known that the very feel of a club in my left hand would bring back agonizing memories of Mac.

  ‘We were fools to think that it would do us good,’ I told myself bitterly. I nodded briefly to Clark to drive off before me.

  He made no comment, but for once I didn’t care. How fickle we humans are! Those dead become infinitely more precious than those alive, yet while our friends are on earth we quarrel with and criticize them unmercifully. What a difference there would have been if I had been more patient, more understanding with Mac!

  ‘It looks as though I may be responsible for another death,’ I thought dully, as I placed my ball on the tee and stood back to survey the fairway mechanically. Now I must go through the rest of my life reproaching myself that my loyal
ty to Mac was not so strong after all.

  I knew as soon as I reached the top of my swing that something was wrong, but I did not reckon on mis-hitting. In earlier days. such a catastrophe would have aroused my mirth. but I merely stared gloomily at the ball now.

  “Maggie, darling,” said Charlotte in a shocked voice. “Your left shoulder!”

  I grunted. A shadow fell across my stance. “Take it easily,” said Clark.

  I looked up to see his face white and set. Was he talking about the game or had he some other thought in mind? His face was expressionless in a way that would convey nothing to the ordinary observer. But I had seen that look before, and knew that his mind was surging with conflicting emotions.

  Charlotte coughed significantly, rousing me out of my daze. I drove off unseeingly.

  “What a fluke!” said Clark, pushing me gently onward. “Stop admiring it, Maggie, and get a move on.” His voice held that would-be hearty quality that only increased my gloom. This was going to be terrible, and we’d only played one hole. Only Charlotte remained unconcerned, and kept her mind on the game. One would have thought that Clark and I had guilty consciences, the way we stroked that round. Perhaps we had, in so far that each of us was reproaching ourselves for the lack of concern we had shown Mac in the last few days before her death.

  The sun had sunk below the horizon when we walked slowly up the path to the clubhouse. Clark had offered to take my mother’s bag, but she had refused independently, and strode along ahead of us adding up the scores. She was the only one of the trio who was not hot, weary and thoroughly unhappy.

  “Don’t bother with mine,” I called out irritably. “It’s well over the hundred.”

  “I hope that you’re deducting eighteen from my score, Mrs. Byrnes, though I doubt that it will make any difference to the final issue.”

  “Don’t, Clark,” I said wearily. “Don’t try to pretend.”

  He slid my bag off my shoulder. “I must,” he answered in a quiet voice. “Otherwise I’ll go mad. What a fool I was!”

  “We both were,” I corrected. “If only I’d realized. But Mac was more than half to blame. She wouldn’t have told, no matter what persuasion I used.”

  “She was just as stubborn with me. Wait until I lay my hands on the fiend who killed her. There won’t be much left of him to hang.”

  I shivered at the grim note in his voice, not envying anyone who chose Clark as an opponent.

  “I never thought that I’d be glad to finish a round of golf,” I declared, turning back to survey that part of the course which lay amongst the trees in the valley. Even under the strong February sun, the fairways were still unburnt, while the greens were circles of a more vivid colour. The rising evening wind fluttered the triangular flags on the pins, and, brushing aside the branches of the evergreens, fanned my face. I put up one hand.

  “I’ll he the colour of mahogany soon. This is my second dose of sunburn within two days.”

  Charlotte called from the steps of the clubhouse, motioning that she would go in and not wait for us.

  “How did you happen to get burnt yesterday?” Clark asked absently. “You should have been asleep.”

  “So I was until—” I stopped short, and he eyed me speculatively. “There are such a lot of things that you don’t know about,” I went on, “that I was taking for granted that you do.”

  “What has happened?” he asked swiftly.

  “Nothing concrete,” I replied, sitting on the bottom step of the clubhouse and lifting my head to the vivid sky. “It’s a funny thing,” I mentioned idly, my eyes sweeping a line from the zenith to where the sun had left its final mark, “that if any artist mixed his paints to match exactly this scene of sky and trees, and painted it accurately in every detail, the result would only be appreciated in such terms as ‘pretty’ and ‘dainty’.”

  Clark made a gesture of impatience. “Are you heading me off, Maggie?”

  “Not at all. I was trying to remember how I began.”

  He came to sit beside me, looking puzzled.

  “I made a list,” I explained, “in my diary. Sergeant Matheson has it now. I’ll get it back from him if I can, so that you can read my notes.”

  “Can’t you remember what you wrote?”

  “Not without a wash and a drink,” I answered meaningly. “Pull me up, Clark, and we’ll find Charlotte. She’ll be wondering what’s happened to us.”

  He rose stiffly, and held out his strong lean hands. I put mine into them, and was surprised to find them so hot.

  “You’re not getting a chill?” I asked anxiously.

  He stared at me in silence, still holding my hands. With a swift movement he put his head down to mine, and I heard his voice muffled in my hair. “Maggie, I’m tired! So damned tired!”

  Very gently I slid my hands to his shoulders, and we stood together in silence. Presently a burst of noise came from the veranda above. The door into the lounge had been opened to emit someone. Clark must have noticed it too, and straightened himself quickly.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What about that drink?”

  It must have been an effort to pull himself together after that sudden collapse, but as we went up the steps he held his head high. The straightness of his back made me wonder if the few minutes I had spent so close to him in his weakness had not been a dream. Twice in the same day people to whom I looked for strength and encouragement had come to me for comfort. First of all my placid mother, who usually remained undisturbed in the biggest crisis, had clung weeping and imploring me to go home. And now Clark, the debonair hero of the junior staff at Central, had manifested that his resistance to emotion was not as strong as I had previously believed. I don’t think I was disappointed. After all, it would be very tiring to live with anyone who had an unquenchable vitality. But Clark had always been, as it were, on top of the troubles of the past few days. Then I remembered that this had been our first time alone since Mac’s death, and I felt a sudden pang of jealousy. Was she the one that he really loved after all? Or was his feeling for her now like mine—sad that I hadn’t shown proof of my devotion during the last hours before she died?

  Charlotte came round the corner of the veranda. “Oh, there you are! I’ve ordered drinks to be brought out here. The lounge is packed.”

  “I must have a wash,” I said. “What about you, Clark?”

  He held out his hands for Charlotte to inspect. She bent over them critically.

  “They’ll do,” she declared. “You’ll find us around the side, Maggie, and don’t be long.”

  But I dallied on purpose, taking a long time over my face and hair, to give them an opportunity to get to know each other. So far the only chances had been in a crowded danceroom and on the links, where the topic of their conversation, that is myself, had been with them. I knew that Charlotte would want to make a genealogical research, and such a task could not be accomplished without time. I experimented with a hair-do à la Gloria, only to become convinced that my usual method was better. I’d rather look hard, as Gloria described me, than the poor imitation of a girl I disliked. Certain that Charlotte should have reached the great-grandparents at least, I took a circuitous route through the lounge to the side veranda.

  The lounge was full of smartly-dressed women with impossible vowels, and their appendages. The latter were, for the most part, inclined to Falstaffian figures, and to them golf was a means of diminishing their poundage. Not that to-day’s playing would do much to accomplish that. Rather to the contrary; that is, if most of them had spent their time on the nineteenth, as they appeared to have done. White-coated waiters sped to and fro, handling trays of chinking glasses with amazing dexterity. I nodded briefly to one or two golfers, with whom Clark and I had had a foursome one crowded day. I was just refusing an invitation to join them in a drink, when a crash sounded near the far wall. There was a sudden lull in the conversation, as heads turned quickly to survey the scene.

  One of the waiters, no more than a lad of sixte
en, was nervously dabbing at the erstwhile immaculate slacks of one of the armchair golfers. He was a middle-aged man, fair, but with that high complexion that deepens to a purple when its owner becomes incensed. I watched the transition interestedly, feeling very sorry for the hapless youth, and grimaced at a woman whom I knew slightly and whose accent was genuine. She shrugged hopelessly in answer, as some deep-throated swearing was heard from the purple-faced man. I considered it high time to retire and made for the main swing doors. Unfortunately, at the same moment the angry man, his trousers stained with beer, was also departing, followed by the protesting waiter.

  “Excuse me,” I said coolly, as we both placed a hand on the doors. He muttered something under his breath, but stood back, the lad behind him saying in an apologetic voice: “Sir, will I go and—”

  “You can go to hell,” declared the man roundly. I walked out ahead of him, just as Clark came down the veranda.

  “Hullo,” he said. “You’ve been an age, and you don’t seem to look any different.”

  “At least my hands are clean,” I retorted. “Who is that man who came out behind me? He’s just crossing the gravel to the car park now.”

  Clark glanced over his shoulder casually. “Atkinson. The bad-tempered swine!”

  “I quite agree with you. You should have heard the language when young Tom upset some beer over his slacks. I came to find my mother immediately,” I finished virtuously.

  “For her sake or yours?” he grinned, and then became serious.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “Pretty right, as long as I don’t start to think. The brain is a treacherous thing when you try to co-operate it with your emotions. You start wondering if you’re not a murderer yourself.”

  He made no comment, as we rounded the corner to find Charlotte lying in a long chair sipping dry ginger ale. Mentally I kicked myself for being so tactless. Clark probably blamed himself for not having forced Mac’s confidence, and thereby—but there was no use speculating. The fact remained that Mac was dead, and it was up to us to keep in a calm state of mind in order to help hunt her murderer.