THE CLOCKS The whole thing was fantastic! A blind woman—a dead man whom no one could identify—four strange clocks all showing the same time—thirteen minutes past four. Who had brought them here? What did they mean? And who was the dead man? It all has Detective Inspector Hardcastle badly worried—especially when a second murder follows. But his friend, Colin Lamb, who has come to Crowdean on a security matter, is so intrigued by these bizarre happenings, that he thinks of his father's old friend, Hercule Poirot. How Poirot would enjoy this! And Poirot does enjoy it. "This crime is so complicated that it must be quite simple," he declares. But is it? This Large Print Edition has been published by kind permission of COLLINS, LONDON & GLASGOW AGATHA CHRISTIE The Clocks 'R. ^fo Q ULVERSCROFT Leicester First published 1963 © Agatha Christie Ltd., 1963 0060134 This special large print edition is made and printed in England for F. A. Thorpe, Glenfield, Leicestershire. To my old friend MARIO with happy memories of delicious food at the CAPRICE '•i* PROLOGUE The afternoon of the 9th of September was exactly like any other afternoon. None of those who were to be concerned in the events of that day could lay claim to having had a premonition of disaster. (With the exception, that is, of Mrs. Packer of 47, Wilbraham |Crescent, who specialised in premonitions, and who always described at great length afterwards the peculiar forebodings and tremors that had beset her. But Mrs. Packer at No. 47, was so far away from No. 19, and so little concerned with the happenings there, that it seemed unnecessary for her to have had a premonition at all.) At the Cavendish Secretarial and Typewriting Bureau, Principal, Miss K. Martindale, September 9th had been a dull day, a day of routine. The telephone rang, typewriters clicked, the pressure of business was average, neither above nor below its usual volume. None of it was particularly interest- ^g. Up till 2.35, September 9th might have been a day like any other day. At 2.35 Miss Martindale's buzzer went, and Edna Brent in the outer office answered it in her usual breathy and slightly nasal voice, as she manoeuvred a toffee along the line of her jaw. "Yes, Miss Martindale?" "Now, Edna--that is not the way I've told you to speak when answering the telephone. Enunciate clearly, and keep your breath behind your tone." "Sorry, Miss Martindale." "That's better. You can do it when you try. Send Sheila Webb in to me." "She's not back from lunch yet. Miss Martindale." "Ah." Miss Martindale's eye consulted the clock on her desk. 2.36. Exactly six minutes late. Sheila Webb had been getting slack lately. "Send her in when she comes." "Yes, Miss Martindale." Edna restored the toffee to the centre of her tongue and, sucking pleasurably, resumed her typing of Naked Love by Armand Levine. Its painstaking eroticism left her uninterested--as indeed it did most of Mr. Levine's readers, in spite of his efforts. He was a notable example of the fact that nothing can be duller than dull pornography. In spite of lurid jackets and provocative titles, 2 his sales went down every year, and his last typing bill had already been sent in three times. p The door opened and Sheila Webb came in, slightly out of breath. "Sandy Cat's asking for you," said Edna. Sheila Webb made a face. "Just my luck--on the one day I'm late back!" She smoothed down her hair, picked up pad and pencil, and knocked at the Principal's door. Miss Martindale looked up from her desk. She was a woman of forty-odd, bristling with efficiency. Her pompadour of pale reddish hair and her Christian name of Katherine had led to her nickname of Sandy Cat. "You're late back. Miss Webb." "Sorry, Miss Martindale. There was a terrific bus jam." "There is always a terrific bus jam at this time of day. You should allow for it." She referred to a note on her pad. "A Miss Pebmarsh rang up. She wants a stenographer at three o'clock. She asked for you particularly. Have you worked for her before?" "I can't remember doing so. Miss Martindale. Not lately, anyway." 3 *. ,\ '. t9«,Hi,n;»,;,u;n; "The address is 19, Wilbraham Crescent." She paused questioningly, but Sheila Webb shook her head. "I can't remember going there." Miss Martindale glanced at the clock. "Three o'clock. You can manage that easily. Have you any other appointments this afternoon? Ah, yes," her eye ran down the appointment book at her elbow. "Professor Purdy at the Curlew Hotel. Five o'clock. You ought to be back before then. If not, I can send Janet." She gave a nod of dismissal, and Sheila went back to the outer office. "Anything interesting, Sheila?" "Just another of those dull days. Some old pussy up at Wilbraham Crescent. And at five Professor Purdy--all those awful archaeological names! How I wish something exciting could sometimes happen." Miss Martindale's door opened. "I see I have a memo here, Sheila. If Miss Pebmarsh is not back when you arrive, you are to go in, the door will not be latched. Go in and go into the room on the right of the hall and wait. Can you remember that or shall I write it down?" "I can remember it. Miss Martindale." 4 Miss Martindale went back into her sanc|um. Edna Brent fished under her chair and wrought up, secretly, a rather flashy shoe and i stiletto heel that had become detached from it. "However am I going to get home?" she noaned. "Oh, do stop fussing--we'll think ofsomeJiing," said one of the other girls, and resumed her typing. Edna sighed and put in a fresh sheet of paper: 'Desire had him in its grasp. With ^renzied fingers he tore the fragile chiffon from her breasts and forced her down on the soap.1 'Damn," said Edna and reached for the eraser. Sheila picked up her handbag and went 3Ut. Wilbraham Crescent was a fantasy exe;uted by a Victorian builder in the i88o's. It ivas a half-moon of double houses and gar- tens set back to back. This conceit was a source of considerable difficulty to persons inacquainted with the locality. Those who arrived on the outer side were unable to find die lower numbers and those who hit the Inner side first were baffled as to the where abouts of the higher numbers. The houses ROSEMARY in worn gilt letters across the were neat, prim, artistically balconied and corner. eminently respectable. Modernisation had as Sheila Webb looked at the clock on the yet barely touched them—on the outside, desk with some surprise. It showed the time that is to say. Kitchens and bathrooms were to be a little after ten minutes past four. Her the first to feel the wind of change, gaze shifted to the chimney piece. The clock There was nothing unusual about No. 19. there said the same. It had neat curtains and a well-polished Sheila started violently as there was a whir brass front-door handle. There were standard and a click above her head, and from a rose trees each side of the path leading to the wooden carved clock on the wall a cuckoo front door. sprang out through his little door and an- Sheila Webb opened the front gate, walked nounced loudly and definitely: Cuckoo, up to the front door and rang the bell. There Cuckoo, Cuckoo! The harsh note seemed was no response and after waiting a minute almost menacing. The cuckoo disappeared or two, she did as she had been directed, and again with a snap of his door. turned the handle. The door opened and she Sheila Webb gave a half-smile and walked walked in. The door on the right of the small round the end of the sofa. Then she stopped hall was ajar. She tapped on it, waited, and short, pulling up with a jerk. then walked in. It was an ordinary quite Sprawled on the floor was the body of a pleasant sitting-room, a little over-furnished man. His eyes were half open and sightless. for modem tastes. The only thing at all There was a dark moist patch on the front of remarkable about it was the profusion of his dark grey suit. Almost mechanically clocks—a grandfather clock ticking in the Sheila bent down. She touched his cheekcorner, a Dresden china clock on the mantel- cold—his hand, the same . . . touched the piece, a silver carriage clock on the desk, a wet patch and drew her hand away sharply, small fancy gilt clock on a whatnot near Staring at it in horror. the fireplace and on a table by the window, At that moment she heard the click of a a faded leather travelling clock, with gate outside, her head turned mechanically 6 I 7 to the window. Through it she saw a ^ woman's figure hurrying up the path. Sheila i swallowed mechanically--her throat was dry. C H A P T E R i She stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, to cry out. . . staring in front of her. colin lamb's narrative The door opened and a tall elderly woman entered, carrying a shopping bag. She had To use police terms: at 2.59 p.m. on wavy grey hair pulled back from her fore- September 9th, I was proceeding along head, and her eyes were a wide and beautiful Wilbraham Crescent in a westerly direction. blue. Their gaze passed unseeingly over It was my first introduction to Wilbraham Sheila. Crescent, and frankly Wilbraham Crescent Sheila uttered a faint sound, no more than had me baffled. a croak. The wide blue eyes came to her and I had been following a hunch with a the woman spoke sharply: persistence becoming more dogged day by "Is somebody there?" day as the hunch seemed less and less likely "I--it's----" The girl broke off as the to pay off. I'm like that. woman came swiftly towards her round the The number I wanted was 61, and could back of the sofa. I ^d it? No, I could not. Having studiously And then she screamed, followed the numbers from i to 35, Wilbra"Don't--don't. . . you'll tread on it--him ham Crescent then appeared to end. A . . . And he's dead . . ." thoroughfare uncompromisingly labelled Albany Road barred my way. I turned back. On the north side there were no houses, only a wall. Behind the wall, blocks of modem flats soared upwards, the entrance of them being obviously in another road. No help there. II looked up at the numbers I was passing. 8 9 24, 23, 22, 21. Diana Lodge (presumably 20, "Who was? Why?" with an orange cat on the gate post washing «i think--because she's blind. And there's its face), 19---- blood on him." She looked down and The door of 19 opened and a girl came out loosened one of her clutching hands. "And of it and down the path with what seemed to on me. There's blood on me:' be the speed of a bomb. The likeness to a "So there is," I said. I looked at the stains bomb was intensified by the screaming that on my coat sleeve. "And on me as well now," accompanied her progress. It was high and i pointed out. I sighed and considered the thin and singularly inhuman. Through the situation. "You'd better take me in and show gate the girl came and collided with me with ^^ I said. a force that nearly knocked me off the pave^- put she began to shake violently. The girl steadied. She still^clutched^butjposit a half-fainting girl. I lowered her gently with any brilliance. I asked her if anythingfcack. I shan't be long. You'll "be'all rieht" was the matter. Recognising mat my ques-^ean forward and put your head between tion was singularly feeble I amended ,it. f j ^ uciwccn "What's the matter?" The girl took a deep breath. "In thereF' she gestured behind her. ment. She did not only collide. She clutched --a frenzied desperate clutching. "Steady," I said, as I recovered my balance. I shook her slightly. "Steady now." ^f she stopped screaming. Instead she gasped deep sobbing gasps. I can't say that I reacted to the situation ^Yes?" "There's a man on the floor . . . dead She was going to step on him." 10 "I can't--I can't ... I won't go in there again. "Perhaps you're right." I looked round. There seemed nowhere very suitable to de- :o the pavement and sat her with her back |against the iron railings. "You stay there," I said, "until I come ^our knees if you feel queer." "I--I think I'm all right now." She was a little doubtful about it, but I didn't want to parley. I gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and strode off briskly up the path. I went in through the door, hesiated a moment in the hallway, looked into ii ---^- .-T.rmTrr . . ;,;,'; -1; :".n;.- . ...tH^i,........»>UU,I 1:1;.;,., the door on the left, found an empty diningroom, crossed the hall and entered the sitting-room opposite. The first thing I saw was an elderly woman with grey hair sitting in a chair. She turned her head sharply as I entered and said: "Who's that?" I realised at once that the woman was blind. Her eyes which looked directly towards me were focused on a spot behind my left ear. I spoke abruptly and to the point. "A young woman rushed out into the street saying there was a dead man in here." I felt a sense of absurdity as I said the words. It did not seem possible that there should be a dead man in this tidy room with this calm woman sitting in her chair with her hands folded. But her answer came at once. "Behind the sofa," she said. I moved round the angle of the sofa. I saw it then--the outflung arms--the glazed eyes --the congealing patch of blood. "How did this happen?" I asked abruptly. "I don't know." "But--surely. Who is he?" "I have no idea." 12 "We must get the police." I looked round. "Where's the telephone?" "I have not got a telephone." I concentrated upon her more closely. "You live here? This is your house?" "Yes." "Can you tell me what happened?" "Certainly. I came in from shopping——" I noted the shopping bag flung on a chair near the door. "I came in here. I realised at once there was someone in the room. One does very easily when one is blind. I asked who was there. There was no answer—only the sound of someone breathing rather quickly. I went towards the sound—and then whoever it was cried out—something about someone being dead and that I was going to tread on him. And then whoever it was rushed past me out of the room screaming." I nodded. Their stories clicked. "And what did you do?" "I felt my way very carefully until my foot touched an obstacle." "And then?" "I knelt down. I touched something—a man's hand. It was cold—there was no pulse •.. I got up and came over here and sat down '-to wait. Someone was bound to come in i ^ due course. The young woman, whoever she was, would give the alarm. I thought I had better not leave the house." I was impressed with the calm of this woman. She had not screamed, or stumbled panic-stricken from the house. She had sat down calmly to wait. It was the sensible thing to do, but it must have taken some doing. Her voice inquired: "Who exactly are you?" "My name is Colin Lamb. I happened to be passing by." "Where is the young woman?" "I left her propped up by the gate. She's suffering from shock. Where is the nearest telephone?" "There is a call-box about fifty yards down the road just before you come to the corner." "Of course. I remember passing it. I'll go and ring the police. Will you----" I hesitated. I didn't know whether to say "Will you remain here?" or to make it "Will you be all ri^ht?" She relieved me from my choice. "You had better go and bring the girl 14 back into the house," she said decisively. "I don't know that she will come," I said doubtfully. "Not into this room, naturally. Put her in the dining-room the other side of the hall. Tell her I am making some tea." She rose and came towards me. "But--can you manage----" | A faint grim smile showed for a moment Ion her face. "My dear young man. I have made meals for myself in my own kitchen ever since I came to live in this house--fourteen years ago. To be blind is not necessarily to be helpless." "I'm sorry. It was stupid of me. Perhaps I ought to know your name?" "Millicent Pebmarsh--Miss." I went out and down the path. The girl looked up at me and began to struggle to her Feet. "I--I think I'm more or less all right low." I helped her up, saying cheerfully : "Good." "There--there was a dead man in there, wasn't there?" I agreed promptly. i5 "Certainly there was. I'm just going down "Just a moment, please." to the telephone box to report it to the police. I waited. Then Dick Hardcastle's voice I should wait in the house if I were you." I spoke. raised my voice to cover her quick protest. Colm? I didn t expect you yet awhile. "Go into the dining-room-on the left as you Where are you?" eo in Miss Pebmarsh is making a cup of tea Crowdean. I m actually in Wilbraham 6 * „ Crescent. There's a man lying dead on the ^"i^that was Miss Pebmarsh? And she's floor of Number 19, stabbed I should think. „. ,-.„ He's been dead approximately half an hour blinds I » "Yes. It's been a shock to her, too, of or^. u < 1,^0 1^,,,/r x^rv cpndhle Come wh0 found him. You? course, but she s being very sensioie. ^umc . , ^ , on I'll take you in. A cup of tea will do you| No, I was an innocent passer-by. Sudffood whilst you are waiting for the police to denly a girl came flying out of the house like good wnust you are wai g p ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ knocked me down. ^out an arm round her shoulders and She said there was a dead man on the floor urged her up the path. I settled her comfort- ^da blind woman was trampling on him.' ^e, i.,, ^^,^-r^m mhle. and hurried . You ^ not having me on, are you?" Dick's voice asked suspiciously. LLl^CU. AA^l. Wp «-«.*», j^^^.^. - _.--__ „ ably by the dining-room table, and hurried off again to telephone. "It does sound fantastic, I admit. But the facts seem to be as stated. The blind woman li said "Crowdean is ^lss Millicent Pebmarsh who owns the 9 house." An unemotional voice Police Station." "Can I speak Hardcastle?" "And was she trampling on the dead man?" to Detective Inspector "Not in the sense you mean it. It seems The voice said cautiously ^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^ ^ The voice said cautiously: "I don t know whether he is here. wno is ^ „ ^^Sfhim it's Colin Lamb." A "I don't have a telephone in the house." "There is a call-box at the end of the street," Inspector Hardcastle pointed out. grey, "Yes, of course. But I can only assure you, firm Inspector Hardcastle, that I had no need for man to see if it suggests to you ^ '^ dead particular. Height five feet nine t^\ one in approximately sixty, dark hair g^^ a^ brown eyes, clean shaven, thin ^^ grey, jaw. Well nourished but not fat. )1\^ f™ suit, well-kept hands. Might be a ^^k grey a stenographer and did not—repeat not— an accountant, a lawyer, or a P^^ clerkl "^ "P this Cavendish place with any such man of some kind. Does that sug^ yssional request." anyone that you know?" to you "You Millicent Pebmarsh considered ^ before replying. "You did not ask for Miss Sheila Webb particularly?" ^refully "I have never heard that name before." Hardcastle stared at her, astonished. "You left the front door unlocked," he pointed out. "I frequently do so in the daytime." "Anybody might walk in." "Anybody seems to have done so in this case," said Miss Pebmarsh dryly. "Miss Pebmarsh, this man according to the medical evidence died roughly between 1.30 and 2.45. Where were you yourself ;1U1.C A^pAJXX^. .ii} "I can't say that it does. Of c^ ^ very generalised description. It .^^ ltls a quite a number of people. It migl^ y^uld fit one I have seen or met on some ov, \^ somecertainly not anyone I know well. ^ ^a Dut "You have not received any 1^ \ from anyone proposing to call up^ 'r ^ate^ "Definitely not." A "Very good. Now, you rang up .\ _ ——— - -—... _ dish Secretarial Bureau and as^ Caven- ^and 2.45. Where services of a stenographer and—/\ f01* tl1£ n' Miss Pebmarsh reflected. "At 1.30 I must either have left or been preparing to leave the house. I had some She interrupted him. . "Excuse me. I did nothing oft^ "You did not ring up the Cave^^ind. \.^r^ - " tarial Bureau and ask——" ^ Secre< Popping to do. stared. Vdcastlr me. Her name is Mrs. Curtin." Detective Inspector Hardcastle was taken >ack. There was a positive assurance, a iskness in Miss Pebmarsh's tone that car- ied conviction. He took a moment or two irning over things in his mind. Then he |pse to his feet. 3i "I wonder. Miss Pebmarsh, if you would mind accompanying me into the next room?" "Certainly. Frankly, I would like to see those clocks myself." "See?" Hardcastle was quick to query the word. "Examine would be a better word," said Miss Pebmarsh, "but even blind people, Inspector, use conventional modes of speech that do not exactly apply to their own powers. When I say I would like to see those clocks, I mean I would like to examine and/eel them with my own fingers." Followed by Miss Pebmarsh, Hardcastle went out of the kitchen, crossed the small hall and into the sitting-room. The fingerprint man looked up at him. "I've about finished in here, sir," he said, "You can touch anything you like." Hardcastle nodded and picked up the small travelling clock with "Rosemary" written across the corner. He put it into Misi Pebmarsh's hands. She felt it over carefully "It seems an ordinary travelling clock,' she said, "the leather folding kind. It is no1 mine. Inspector Hardcastle, and it was not ii this room, I am fairly sure I can say, when left the house at half past one." 32 t "Thank you." The inspector took it back from her. Carefully he lifted the small Dresden clock from the mantelpiece. "Be careful of this," he said, as he put it into her hands, "it's breakable." IMillicent Pebmarsh felt the small china lock with delicate probing fingertips. Then she shook her head. "It must be a charming clock," she said, "but it's not mine. Where was it, do you say?" "On the right hand side of the mantelpiece." "There should be one of a pair of china candlesticks there," said Miss Pebmarsh. "Yes," said Hardcastle, "there is a candlestick there, but it's been pushed to the end." "You say there was still another clock?" "Two more." Hardcastle took back the Dresden china lock and gave her the small French gilt irmolu one. She felt it over rapidly, then handed it back to him. "No. That is not mine either." | He handed her the silver one and that, (go, she returned. | "The only clocks that are ordinarily in (his room are a grandfather clock over 33 there in that corner by the window----"' "What about the rest of the room?" "Quite right." "There are about three or four different "__and a cuckoo on the wall near the sets of prints in the room, all women's, I door " should say. The contents of the pockets are Hardcastle found it difficult to know on the table." exactly what to say next. He looked search- By an indication of his head he drew atteningly at the woman in front of him with the tion to a small pile of things on a table. additional security of knowing that she could Hardcastle went over and looked at them. not return his survey. There was a slight There was a notecase containing seven frown as of perplexity on her forehead. She pounds ten, a little loose change, a silk pocket said sharply, handkerchief, unmarked, a small box of di- "I can't understand it. I simply can't gestive pills and a printed card. Hardcastle understand it." bent to look at it. She stretched out one hand, with the easy Mr. R. H Curry knowledge of where she was in the room, and Metropolis and Provincial Insurance Co. Ltd sat down. Hardcastle looked at the hnger- ^ Denvers Street, print man who was standing by the door. London, w.2. "You've been over these clocks?" he ^gd Hardcastle came back to the sofa where "I've been over everything, sir. No dabs MissPebmarsh sat. on the gilt clock, but there wouldn't be. The Were you by any chance expecting somesurface wouldn't take it. The same goes for ^e from an insurance company to call upon the china one. But there are no dabs on the you?" leather travelling clock or the silver one and ^surance company? No, certainly not." that is a bit unlikely if things were normal- T]^ Metropolis and Provincial Insurance there ought to be dabs. By the way, none of ^P^ sald Hardcastle, them are wound up and they are all set to the Miss Pebmarsh shook her head. "I've same time-thirteen minutes past four." ^ver heard of it," she said. 34 I 35 "You were not contemplating taking out insurance of any kind?" "No, I was not. I am insured against fire and burglary with the Jove Insurance Company which has a branch here. I carry no personal insurance. I have no family or near relations so I see no point in insuring my life." "I see," said Hardcastle. "Does the name of Curry mean anything to you? Mr. R. H. Curry?" He was watching her closely. He saw no reaction in her face. "Curry," she repeated the name, then shook her head. "It's not a very usual name, is it? No, I don't think I've heard the name or known anyone of that name. Is that the name of the man who is dead?" "It would seem possible," said Hardcastle. Miss Pebmarsh hesitated a moment. Then she said: "Do you want me to--to--touch----" He was quick to understand her. "Would you, Miss Pebmarsh? If it's not asking too much of you, that is? I'm not very knowledgeable in these matters, but your fingers will probably tell you more accurately what a person looks like than 36 you could possibly know by description." "Exactly," said Miss Pebmarsh. "I agree it is not a very pleasant thing to have to do but I am quite willing to do it if you think it might be a help to you." "Thank you," said Hardcastle. "If you will let me guide you----" He took her round the sofa, indicated to her to kneel down, then gently guided her hands to the dead man's face. She was very calm, displaying no emotion. Her fingers traced the hair, the ears, lingering a moment behind the left ear, the line of the nose, mouth and chin. Then she shook her head and got up. "I have a clear idea what he would look like," she said, "but I am quite sure that it is no one I have seen or known." The fingerprint man had packed up his kit and gone out of the room. He stuck his head back in. "They've come for him," he said, indicating the body. "All right to take him Iway?" "Right," said Inspector Hardcastle. "Just Come and sit over here, will you. Miss Pebmarsh?" He established her in a corner chair. Two « \ . ------^''^mm ' ulKnm mm.,»... .^. --.„:„„„ -'i^i^^JJiUH^ men came into the room. The remov late Mr. Curry was rapid and prof Hardcastle went out to the gate a returned to the sitting-room. He s near Miss Pebmarsh. "This is an extraordinary busine Pebmarsh," he said. "I'd like to run main points with you and see if I' right. Correct me if I am wrong. pected no visitors to-day, you've inquiries re insurance of any kind have received no letter from anyor that a representative of an insurai pany was going to call upon you t that correct?" "Quite correct." "You did not need the services c hand typist or stenographer and yc ring up the Cavendish Bureau or re one should be here at three o'clock "That again is correct." "When you left the house at appi 1.30, there were in this room only t the cuckoo clock and the grandfat No others." About to reply. Miss Pebmars herself. "If I am to be absolutely accura al of the not swear to that statement. Not having my essional. sight I would not notice the absence or nd then presence of anything not usually in the room. at down That is to say, the last time I can be sure of the contents of this room was when I dusted ;ss. Miss it early this morning. Everything then was in over the its place. I usually do this room myself as we got it cleaning women are apt to be careless with You ex- ornaments." made no "Did you leave the house at all this mornand you ing?" ie stating "Yes. I went at ten o'clock as usual to the ace corn- Aaronberg Institute. I have classes there :o-day. Is until twelve-fifteen. I returned here at about quarter to one, made myself some scrambled eggs in the kitchen and a cup of tea and went »f a short- out again, as I have said, at half past one. I )U did nol\ ate my meal in the kitchen, by the way, and quest that[did not come into this room." /' | "I see," said Hardcastle. "So while you Ban say definitely that at ten o'clock this oximately morning there were no superfluous clocks we clocksi here, they could possibly have been intro:her clock duced some time during the morning." "As to that you would have to ask my h checked Leaning woman, Mrs. Curtin. She comes |here about ten and usually leaves at twelve te, I couly'clock. She lives at 17, Dipper Street." 39 "Thank you. Miss Pebmarsh. Now we are left with these following facts and this is where I want you to give me any ideas or suggestions that occur to you. At some time during to-day four clocks were brought here. The hands of these four clocks were set at thirteen minutes past four. Now does that time suggest anything to you?" "Thirteen minutes past four." Miss Pebmarsh shook her head. "Nothing at all." "Now we pass from the clocks to the dead man. It seems unlikely that he would have been let in by your cleaning woman and left in the house by her unless you had told her you were expecting him, but that we can learn from her. He came here presumably to see you for some reason, either a business one or a private one. Between one-thirty and two-forty-five he was stabbed and killed. II he came here by appointment, you say yoi know nothing of it. Presumably he was con nected with insurance—but there again ycrt cannot help us. The door was unlocked so hi could have come in and sat down to wait foi you—but why?" "The whole thing's daft," said Miss Peb marsh impatiently. "You think this—what's^ his-name Curry—brought the clocks here? 40 "There's no sign of a container anywhere," said Hardcastle. "He could hardly have brought four clocks in his pockets. Now Miss Pebmarsh, think very carefully. Is there any association in your mind, any suggestion you could possibly make about anything to do with clocks, or if not with clocks, say with time. 4.13. Thirteen minutes past four?" She shook her head. "I've been trying to say to myself that it is the work of a lunatic or that somebody came to the wrong house. But even that doesn't really explain anything. No, Inspector, I can't help you." A young constable looked in. Hardcastle went to join him in the hall and from there went down to the gate. He spoke for a few minutes to the men. "You can take the young lady home now," he said, "14, Palmerston Road is the address." He went back and into the dining-room. Through the open door to the kitchen he could hear Miss Pebmarsh busy at the sink. He stood in the doorway. "I shall want to take those clocks. Miss Pebmarsh. I'll leave you a receipt for ^em." 41 w^s^iaaasfiHm "T: -1 -t T?'--*yT^TT^T77T^7"- "That will be quite all right, Inspector they don't belong to me----" Hardcastle turned to Sheila Webb. "You can go home now. Miss Webb. The police car will take you." Sheila and Colin rose. "Just see her into the car, will you, Colin?" said Hardcastle as he pulled a chair to the table and started to scribble a receipt. Colin and Sheila went out and started down the path. Sheila paused suddenly. "My gloves--I left them----" "I'll get them." "No--I know just where I put them. I don't mind now--now that they've taken il\ away." She ran back and rejoined him a moment or two later. "I'm sorry I was so silly--before." "Anybody would have been," said Colin. Hardcastle joined them as Sheila enterd the car. Then, as it drove away, he turned t( the young constable. "I want those clocks in the sitting-rooir packed up carefully--all except the cuckoo clock on the wall and the big grandfathe1 clock." 42 He gave a few more directions an 44 "Quite," I said. He cast an amused look in my direction. "But she told a very remarkable story. The sooner it's checked up on, the better." "You don't think that she----" He cut me short. "I'm always interested in people who find bodies." "But that girl was half mad with fright! If you had heard the way she was screaming »» He gave me another of his quizzical looks and repeated that she was a very attractive girl. "And how did you come to be wandering about in Wilbraham Crescent, Colin? Admiring our genteel Victorian architecture? Or had you a purpose?" "I had a purpose. I was looking for Number 61--and I couldn't find it. Possibly it doesn't exist?" "It exists all right. The numbers go up to -88,1 think." "But look here, Dick, when I came to Number 28, Wilbraham Crescent just Petered out." "It's always puzzling to strangers. If you'd ^rned to the right up Albany Road and then | 45 ;; .4tiit?n»irt;()HM»t5iAMmi turned to the right again you'd have found fairly near the wind sometimes. Sharp pracyourself in the other half of Wilbraham dee--but just manages to get away with it." Crescent. It's built back to back, you see. "It's no good tempting me, Dick. The man " T "'<-«»->* f.T^i-il^-1 r>1t->->/^+- ^Qfl-oiMliT uq n mlinf ^F I want would almost certainly be a pillar of The gardens back on each other. - - i - i_ « I see I said, when he had explained! rectitude." . i---^ «t ;U , "pianri / "Bland came into a lot of money about a year ago--or rather his wife did. She's a Canadian, came over here in the war and met Bland. Her family didn't want her to marry * "-----'J -- this peculiar geography at length. "Like those Squares and Gardens in London. Onslow Square, isn't it? Or Cadogan. You start down one side of a square, and then it slid- ^ ' T-?_..- dOWn UI1C &i»^ ^ " ^-----» ---- -r-r -j i i- re l i- denly becomes a Place or Gardens. Even him, and more or less cut her off when she taxis are frequently baffled. Anyway, there is did. Then last year a great-uncle died, his . ^ A«,r \a^ who lives there?" o^Y son had been killed in an air crash and Yes, that would be what with war casualties and one thing and another, Mrs. Bland was the only one left of the family. So he left his money to her. Just saved Bland from going bankrupt, I believe." 'You seem to know a lot about Mr. a 61. Any idea who lives there?" "61? Let me see ... Yes, th Bland the builder." "Oh dear," I said. "That's bad. "You don't want a builder?" "No. I don't fancy a builder at all. Unless --perhaps he's only just come here recently [Bland. --just started up?" "r^ "Oh that--well, you see, the Inland Reve- just started up;' 11 ~ ~ "7" "-J"/ ~ ~ ~ T ~\~~ --~~~ - - "Bland was born here, I think. He's cer- due are always interested when a man sudtainlv a local man--been in business for denly gets rich overnight. They wonder if „ he's been doing a little fiddling and salting way--so they check up. They checked and was all O.K." years. "Very disappointing. "He's a very bad builder," said Hardcastle encouragingly. "Uses pretty poor materials Puts up the kind of houses that look more or less all right until you live in them, the^ everything falls down or goes wrong. S"^ 46 "In any case," I said, "I'm not interested i a man who has suddenly got rich. It's not ie kind of set-up that I'm looking for." 'No? You've had that, haven't you?" 47 I nodded. f couples were also represented. Bashful look"And finished with it? Or—not finished ing young men with smiling girls. On the with it?" ^^ slde °^ the Cavendish Secretarial "It's something of a story," I said evasive- Bureau were the offices of an old-established ly. "Are we dining together to-night as and old-fashioned coal merchant. Beyond planned—or will this business put paid to that again the original old-fashioned houses that^" had been pulled down and a glittering three- "No, that will be all right. At the moment storey building proclaimed itself as the the first thing to do is set the machinery in Orient Cafe and Restaurant. motion. We want to find out all about Mr. Hardcastle and I walked up the four steps, Curry. In all probability once we know just passed through the open front door and who he is and what he does, we'll have a obeying the legend on a door on the right pretty good idea as to who wanted him out which said "Please Enter," entered. It was a of the way." He looked out of the window, good-sized room, and three young women "Here we are." were ^P^g witn assiduity. Two of them The Cavendish Secretarial and Typewrit- continued to type, paying no attention to the ing Bureau was situated in the main shop- entrance of strangers. The third one who ping street, called rather grandly Palace was typing at a table with a telephone, Street. It had been adapted, like many other directly opposite the door, stopped and of the establishments there, from a Victorian looked at us inquiringly. She appeared to be house. To the right of it a similar house dis- sucking a sweet of some kind. Having arplayed the legend Edwin Glen, Artist Photo- ranged it in a convenient position in her grapher. Specialist, Children's Photographs, mouth, she inquired in faintly adenoidal Wedding Groups, etc. In support of this tones: statement the window was filled with en- "Can I help you?" largements of all sizes and ages of children, "Miss Martindale?" said Hardcastle. from babies to six-year-olds. These presum' "I think she's engaged at the moment on ably were to lure in fond mammas. A fe^ ^e telephone——" At that moment there 48 |^ 49 •_ t * n * f * i ^» i»a f was a click and the girl picked up the telephone receiver and fiddled with a switch, and said: "Two gentlemen to see you. Miss Martindale." She looked at us and asked, "Can I have your names, please?" "Hardcastle," said Dick. "A Mr. Hardcastle, Miss Martindale." She replaced the receiver and rose. "This way, please," she said, going to a door which bore the name miss martindale on a brass plate. She opened the door, flattened herself against it to let us pass, said "Mr. Hardcastle," and shut the door behind us. Miss Martindale looked up at us from a large desk behind which she was sitting. She was an efficient-looking woman of about fifty with a pompadour of pale red hair and an alert glance. She looked from one to the other of us. "Mr. Hardcastle?" Dick took out one of his official cards and handed it to her. I effaced myself by taking an upright chair by the door. Miss Martindale's sandy eyebrows rose in surprise and a certain amount of displeasure "Detective Inspector Hardcastle? What can I do for you. Inspector?" "I have come to you to ask for a little 50 te information. Miss Martindale. I think you may be able to help me." From his tone of voice, I judged that Dick was going to play it in a roundabout way, exerting charm. I was rather doubtful myself whether Miss Martindale would be amenable to charm. She was of the type that the French label so aptly a femme formidable. I was studying the general layout. On the walls above Miss Martindale's desk was hung a collection of signed photographs. I recognised one as that of Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, detective writer, with whom I was slightly acquainted. Sincerely yours, Ariadne Oliver, was written across it in a bold black hand. Yours gratefully. Carry Gregson adorned another photograph of a thriller writer who had died about sixteen years ago. Yours ever, Miriam adorned the photograph of Miriam Hogg, a woman writer who specialised in romance. Sex was represented by a photograph of a timid-looking balding man, signed in tiny writing. Gratefully, Armand Levine. There was a sameness about these trophies. The men mostly held pipes and wore tweeds, the women looked earnest and tended to fade into furs. Whilst I was rather busy using my eyes, 5i ^ Hardcastle was proceeding with his questions. "I believe you employ a girl called Sheila Webb?" "That is correct. I am afraid she is not here at present--at least----" She touched a buzzer and spoke to the outer office. "Edna, has Sheila Webb come back?" "No, Miss Martindale, not yet." Miss Martindale switched off. "She went out on an assignment earlier this afternoon," she explained. "I thought she might have been back by now. It is possible she has gone on to the Curlew Hotel at the end of the Esplanade where she had an appointment at five o'clock." "I see," said Hardcastle. "Can you tell me something about Miss Sheila Webb?" "I can't tell you very much," said Miss Martindale. "She has been here for--let me see, yes, I should say close on a year now. Her work has proved quite satisfactory." "Do you know where she worked before she came to you?" "I dare say I could find out for you if you specially want the information. Inspector Hardcastle. Her references will be filed i somewhere. As far as I can remember offband, she was formerly employed in London and had quite a good reference from her employers there. I think, but I am not sure, that it was some business firm--estate agents possibly, that she worked for." "You say she is good at her job?" "Fully adequate," said Miss Martindale, who was clearly not one to be lavish with praise. "Not first-class?" "No, I should not say that. She has good average speed and is tolerably well educated. She is a careful and accurate typist." "Do you know her personally, apart from your official relations?" "No. She lives, I believe, with an aunt." Here Miss Martindale got slightly restive. "May I ask. Inspector Hardcastle, why you are asking all these questions? Has the girl got herself into trouble in any way?" "I would not quite say that. Miss Martindale. Do you know a Miss Millicent Pebmarsh?" "Pebmarsh," said Miss Martindale, wrinkling her sandy brows. "Now when ~^oh, of course. It was to Miss PebOlarsh's house that Sheila went this after- J 53 tA noon. The appointment was for three o'clock." "How was that appointment made. Miss Martindale?" "By telephone. Miss Pebmarsh rang up and said she wanted the services of a shorthand typist and would I send her Miss Webb." "She asked for Sheila Webb particularly?" "Yes." "What time was this call put through?" Miss Martindale reflected for a moment. "It came through to me direct. That would mean that it was in the lunch hour. As near as possible I would say that it was about ten minutes to two. Before two o'clock at all events. Ah yes, I see I made a note on my pad. It was 1.49 precisely." "It was Miss Pebmarsh herself who spoke to you?" J Miss Martindale looked a little surprised "I presume so." "But you didn't recognise her voice? You don't know her personally?" "No. I don't know her. She said that she was Miss Millicent Pebmarsh, gave me her address, a number in Wilbrahair Crescent. Then, as I say, she asked fol 54 Sheila Webb, if she was free, to come to her at three o'clock." It was a clear, definite statement. I thought that Miss Martindale would make an excellent witness. "If you would kindly tell me what all this is about?" said Miss Martindale with slight impatience. "Well, you see. Miss Martindale, Miss Pebmarsh herself denies making any such call." Miss Martindale stared. "Indeed! How extraordinary." "You, on the other hand, say such a call was made, but you cannot say definitely that it was Miss Pebmarsh who made that call." "No, of course I can't say definitely. I don't know the woman. But really, I can't see the point of doing such a thing. Was it a hoax of some kind?" ("Rather more than that," said Hardcastle. Did this Miss Pebmarsh--or whoever it as--give any reason for wanting Miss Sheila Webb particularly?" Miss Martindale reflected a moment. "I think she said that Sheila Webb had done work for her before." "And is that in fact so?" 55 "Sheila said she had no recollection of having done anything for Miss Pebmarsh. But that is not quite conclusive. Inspector. After all, the girls go out so often to different people at different places that they would be unlikely to remember if it had taken place some months ago. Sheila wasn't very definite on the point. She only said that she couldn't remember having been there. But really, Inspector, even if this was a hoax, I cannot see where your interest comes in?" "I am just coming to that. When Miss Webb arrived at 19, Wilbraham Crescent she walked into the house and into the sittingroom. She has told me that those were the directions given her. You agree?" "Quite right," said Miss Martindak. "Miss Pebmarsh said that she might be a little late in getting home and that Sheila was to go in and wait." "When Miss Webb went into the sittingroom," continued Hardcastle, "she found a dead man lying on the floor." Miss Martindale stared at him. For a moment she could hardly find her voice. "Did you say a dead man. Inspector?" "A murdered man," said Hardcastle "Stabbed, actually." 56 "Dear, dear," said Miss Martindale. "The girl must have been very upset." It seemed the kind of understatement characteristic of Miss Martindale. "Does the name of Curry mean anything to you. Miss Martindale? Mr. R. H. Curry?" "I don't think so, no." "From the Metropolis and Provincial nsurance Company?" Miss Martindale continued to shake her iead. "You see my dilemma," said the inspector. "You say Miss Pebmarsh telephoned to you and asked for Sheila Webb to go to her house at three o'clock. Miss Pebmarsh denies doing any such thing. Sheila Webb gets there. She finds a dead man there." He waited hopefully. Miss Martindale looked at him blankly. "It all seems to me wildly improbable," she said disapprovingly. Dick Hardcastle sighed and got up. "Nice place you've got here," he said Politely. "You've been in business some ^e, haven't you?" "Fifteen years. We have done extremely E^U. Starting in quite a small way, we have tended the business until we have almost " more than we can cope with. I now employ eight girls, and they are kept busy all the time." "You do a good deal of literary work, I see." Hardcastle was looking up at the photographs on the wall. "Yes, to start with I specialised in authors, I had been secretary to the well-known thriller writer, Mr. Garry Gregson, for many years. In fact, it was with a legacy from him that I started this Bureau. I knew a good many of his fellow authors and they recommended me. My specialised knowledge of authors' requirements came in very useful. I offer a very helpful service in the way of necessary research--dates and quotations, inquiries as to legal points and police procedure, and details of poison schedules. All that sort of thing. Then foreign names and addresses and restaurants for people who set their novels in foreign places. In the old days the public didn't really mind much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on evefl possible occasion, pointing out flaws." Miss Martindale paused. Hardcastle sai< politely: "I'm sure you have every cause t( congratulate yourself." 58 He moved towards the door. I opened it ahead of him. In the outer office, the three girls were preparing to leave. Lids had been placed on typewriters. The receptionist, Edna, was standing forlornly, holding in one hand a stiletto heel and in the other a shoe from which it had been torn. "I've only had them a month," she was vailing. "And they were quite expensive. It's that beastly grating—the one at the corner by the cake shop quite near here. I aught my heel in it and off it came. I ;ouldn't walk, had to take both shoes off and ome back here with a couple of buns, and low I'll ever get home or get on to the bus really don't know——" At that moment our presence was noted ind Edna hastily concealed the offending hoe with an apprehensive glance towards Hiss Martindale whom I appreciated was lot the sort of woman to approve of stiletto eels. She herself was wearing sensible flateeled leather shoes. "Thank you. Miss Martindale," said lardcastle. "I'm sorry to have taken up ) much of your time. If anything should ccur to you——" s 59 "Naturally," said Miss Martindale, cutting him short rather brusquely. As we got into the car, I said: "So Sheila Webb's story, in spite of your suspicions, turns out to have been quite »i true." "All right, all right," said Dick. "You 60 CHAPTER 5 "Mom!" said Ernie Curtin, desisting for a moment from his occupation of running a small metal model up and down the window pane, accompanying it with a semi-zooming, semi-moaning noise intended to reproduce a rocket ship going through outer space on its way to Venus, "Mom, what d'you think?" Mrs. Curtin, a stern-faced woman who was busy washing up crockery in the sink, made no response. "Mom, there's a police car drawn up outside our house." "Don't you tell no more ofyer lies, Ernie," said Mrs. Curtin as she banged cups and saucers down on the draining-board. "You know what I've said to you about that before." "I never," said Ernie virtuously. "And 's a police car right enough, and there's two ^en gettin' out." Mrs. Curtin wheeled on her offspring. "What've you been doing nowT' she demanded. "Bringing us into disgrace, that's ^hatitis!" 61 said Ernie. "I 'aven't "Your son?" said Detective Inspector Hardcastle. "Yes," said Mrs. Curtin, and added belligerently, "he's a good boy, no matter what you say." "I'm sure he is," said Detective Inspector and Kardcastle, politely. Some of the defiance in Mrs. Curtin's face :elaxed. I've come to ask you a few questions "" 19, Wilbraham Crescent. You work Wiping her hands quickly on the tea-towel Mrs. Curtin went out into the passage and here, I understand." ' " " '^>a--.-«-r< r>*>a Tra-mrr --fpt-.Qtt ^ii-- and Their agents are very often our Boosting his ego? Or plain money?" ... , i a-r . »UI»tlllg A1AO ^B^' ^^ f-------- -------^ ,» . ,,.,,, "He was no idealist," I said. "Just money ents. And in the end who is double^ »» ossing who becomes a kind of nightmare! I'd say." "Couldn't you have got on to him soone toietimes I think that everybody knows that way? He spent the money, didn't he ^erybody else's secrets and that they enter 'to a kind of conspiracy to pretend that He didn't salt it away. "Oh, no, he splashed it about all rigblley don't." 72 73 "i something tangible to start me off." imber 61 and the initial W. I took over I took out my wallet, extracted a sheet fter his death. I don't know what I'm lookpaper and passed it over to him. It wafag for yet, but I'm pretty sure there's 74 \6 75 "I see what you mean," Dick said thoughtfully. Hote; Barrfngton Kerners Street London VV.2 Then he looked at me curiously. "I can see why you should still be hanging around Portlebury. But Crowdean's a good ten miles from Portlebury." "What I'm really after," I said, "are Crescents." "Crescents?" Hardcastle looked puzzled. "Yes. Or alternatively, moons. New moons, rising moons and so on. I started my quest in Portlebury itself. There's a pubf there called The Crescent Moon. I wasted «L long time over that. It sounded ideal. TheAngle sheet of hotel writing pacer on wh^' there's The Moon and Stars. The Rism^rough sketch had been dr^wn Moon. The Jolly Sickle. The Cross and th< «a chap called Hanbury had thk in nCrescentthai was in a little place callec ,Uet. Hanbury did a ^1'of wo^ in £ Seamede. Nothing doing. Then I abandons ,arkin case. He was good-veryToo ^-1-1-. -.<*«-^...-.-"^ft--T-\nt \X7hpn Tip \\'sr\ j^u. ^. 5,-- ---j That's what I was doing this afternoon--but I couldn't find Number 6i." ^ULLIVJJ-L - aai.a»a -^ - -------- - , l 1 L _1 «^g ^ ^d you, 61 is occupied by a local happened. .„ » For a moment Hardcastle seemed unable builder.' "And that's not what,I'm after. Have they to speak. Then he spluttered out: "Those damned clocks! "The clocks got a foreign help of any kind?" "Could be. A good many people do again? What's happened T111 1 V^»tJ..t.V* u-v - - c7 - nowadays. If so, she'll be registered. I'll look now?' it up for you by to-morrow." "One of them is missing. "Thanks, Dick." '^Missing ? Which one ?" "I'll be making routine inquiries to- "The leather travelling clock. The one morrow at the two houses on either side ofmh 'Rosemary' across the corner." 19. Whether they saw anyone come to tb6 I whistled. house, et cetera. I might include the house? "That seems very extraordinary. How did directly behind 19, the ones whose garden come about?" J. went wrong. course, the grandfather. And that's where indwhen she rejoined you?" went wrong. I should have said, q^y hesitated. "Yes-yes, I think she did. «-ri, a ed fools--I'm one of them definitely,/oMr clocks. Edwards says he went The_ damnea ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^ ^ ^^ really, I suppos honest man) "-- cross every t and dot every CDick was a very in at once and did as I told him. He insists 's sot to remember to there were only three clocks other than the i or things go we fixtures." ^ng^ll1 ThTclTcks^wereAe^^ tit'mians^1 give much time3" I said" ^T^Th £ pounds t pounds l^ ^rpebmarsh woman could have done fammar She couldn't help. Then they came I. She could have picked up the clock after I lamnidi. 011^ ^ ^ ^ ^ room and pone strflitrht rn rhp kitph^n to remove the body. "Yes?" "I went out to the gate to supervise, then I came back to the house, spoke to Miss * <*.1 1 "IT - -^-- ^.^^ or»i^ | K't the room and gone straight to the kitchen thit." "True enough. But why?" We've got a lot to learn. Is there anybody ». ^-^ ««« << - . -- - - ^rsnTho^m^^^^^^ said I Ise? Could the girl have done it? StaSThe clocks away and would give I reflected. "I don't think so. musi Lc^c ^ ^ ^ ^ topped, remembering something topped, remembering something. "So she did," said Hardcastle. her a receipt for them. "Go on. "I remember. I heard you. 1 rememuci. .1. i.^^^ j--- Then I told the girl I'd send her home inpien was it? one of our cars, and I asked you to see her I "wp wer^ i - f « We were just going out to the police car,' said unhappily. "She'd left her gloves ehind. I said 'I'll get them for you' and she into it. "Yes." Yes' ^A,ccpphmarsh the receipt though lid, 'Oh, I know just where I must have "I ^ve ^s8 Jebm^^^^^^^ P ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ she said it wasntnw^^^^ I told )om now that the body's gone' and she ran Sr^I6^ the docks in the siiun. ^_mto^house. But she was only gone ti,awams jl wai.A^^ -- .---- room packed up carefully and brought herelminute---- All of them except the cuckoo clock and, o Did she have her gl or in her loves on, i?" 78 79 "Obviously she didn't," said Hardcastle, th "or you wouldn't have hesitated." Ai I "She probably stuffed them in her bag." sh 1 "The trouble is," said Hardcastle in an to | accusing manner, "you've fallen for that I. | girl." ^ "Don't be idiotic," I defended myself tyi vigorously. "I saw her for the first time ' yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't exactly fas what you'd call a romantic introduction." ] "I'm not so sure of that," said Hardcastle. ' "It isn't every day that young men have girlsp falling into their arms screaming for help inpel the approved Victorian fashion. Makes a manpc feel a hero and a gallant protector. Onlynee you've got to stop protecting her. That's alLpnc So far as you know, that girl may be up tcrb the neck in this murder business." tp, "Are you saying that this slip of a girl(< stuck a knife into a man, hid it somewhere s(pr< carefully that none of your sleuths could finyll it, then deliberately rushed out of the housl and did a screaming act all over me?" "You'd be surprised at what I've seen i my time," said Hardcastle darkly. "Don't you realise," I demanded, in I" dignantly, "that my life has been full ( K beautiful spies of every nationality? All < ss 80 em with vital statistics that would make an nerican prii^e eye forget all about the of of rye m ti^g collar drawer. I'm immune all female aliments." "Everybody ^g^s his Waterloo in the d," said Hai^astle. "It all depends on the )e. Sheila W^ seems to be your type." > ( A T Anyway, l^^'t see why you're so set on tening it onh^ " FIardcastle si^g^ 'I'm not faa^^g ^ q^ her--but I've got start somew^re. The body was found in ^marsh's hci^. That involves her. The iy was four^ ^y the Webb girl--I don't ;d to tell yoi ^^ often the first person to i a dead bc^y ^ ^ g^^g gg ^ person o last saw hi^ ^q until more facts turn those two K^in in the picture." When I wei^ ^^ ^^ room at just after ;e o'clock, tl^ body had been dead at least : an hour, ]>^bably longer. How about Sheila Wetb> had her lunch hour from ) tO 2.30." looked at hr^ ^ exasperation. What have ^ f^^ ^ ^^out Curry?" [ardcastle s<^ ^h unexpected bitter,: "Nothing ^81 "What do you mean—nothing?" "Just that he doesn't exist—there's no such person." "What do the Metropolis Insurance Company say?" "They've nothing to say either, because there's no such thing. The Metropolis and Provincial Insurance Company doesn't exist, As far as Mr. Curry from Denvers Street goes, there's no Mr. Curry, no Denvers Street, Number 7 or any other number." "Interesting," I said. "You mean he just had some bogus cards printed with a bogus name, address and insurance company?" "Presumably." "What is the big idea, do you think?" Hardcastle shrugged his shoulders. "At the moment it's guesswork. Perhaps he collected bogus premiums. Perhaps it was a way of introducing himself into houses and working some confidence trick. He may have been a swindler or a confidence trickster or i picker-up of unconsidered trifles or a private inquiry agent. We just don't know." "But you'll find out." "Oh, yes, we'll know in the end. We sen up his finger-prints to see if he's got record of any kind. If he has it'll be a bi 82 step on the way. If he hasn't, it'll be rather -more difficult." "A private dick," I said thoughtfully. "I rather like that. It opens up—possibilities." "Possibilities are all we've got so far." "When's the inquest?" "Day after to-morrow. Purely formal and an adj ournment.'' "What's the medical evidence?" "Oh, stabbed with a sharp instrument. Something like a kitchen vegetable-knife." "That rather lets out Miss Pebmarsh, doesn't it?" I said thoughtfully. "A blind woman would hardly be able to stab a man. She really is blind, I suppose?" "Oh, yes, she's blind. We checked up. And she's exactly what she says she is. She was a teacher of mathematics in a North Country school—lost her sight about sixteen years ago—took up training in Braille, etc., and finally got a post with the Aaronberg Institute here." "She could be mental, I suppose?" "With a fixation on clocks and insurance igents?" "It really is all too fantastic for words." couldn't help speaking with some enhusiasm. "Like Ariadne Oliver in her worst 83 moments, or the late Garry Gregson at the top of his form----" "Go on--enjoy yourself. You're not the wretched D.D.I, in charge. You haven't got to satisfy a superintendent or a chief constable and all the rest of it." "Oh well! Perhaps we'll get something useful out of the neighbours." "I doubt it," said Hardcastle bitterly. "If that man was stabbed in the front garden and two masked men carried him into the house --nobody would have looked out of the window or seen anything. This isn't a village, worse luck. Wilbraham Crescent is a genteel residential road. By one o'clock, daily women who might have seen something have gone home. There's not even a pram being wheeled along----" "No elderly invalid who sits all day by the window?" "That's what we want--but that's not what we've got." "What about numbers 18 and 20?" "i 8 is occupied by Mr. Waterhouse, Managing Clerk to Gainsford and Swettenham. Solicitors, and his sister who spends her spare time managing him. All I know about 20 is that the woman who lives there 84 keeps about twenty cats. I don't like cats——" I told him that a policeman's life was a bard one, and we started off. 85 CHAPTER 7 Mr. Waterhouse, hovering uncertainly on the steps of 183 Wilbraham Crescent, looked back nervously at his sister. "You're quite sure you'll be all right?" said Mr. Waterhouse. Miss Waterhouse snorted with some indignation. "I really don't know what you mean, James." Mr. Waterhouse looked apologetic. He had to look apologetic so often that it was practically his prevailing cast of countenance. "Well, I just meant, my dear, considering what happened next door yesterday ..." Mr. Waterhouse was prepared for departure to the solicitors' office where he worked. He was a neat, grey-haired man with slightly stooping shoulders and a face that was also grey rather than pink, though not in the least unhealthy looking. Miss Waterhouse was tall, angular, and the kind of woman with no nonsense about her who is extremely intolerant of nonsense in others. 86 "Is there any reason, James, because someone was murdered in the next door house that I shall be murdered today?" "Well, Edith," said Mr. Waterhouse, "it depends so much, does it not, by whom the murder was committed?" "You think, in fact, that there's someone going up and down Wilbraham Crescent selecting a victim from every house? Really, James, that is almost blasphemous." "Blasphemous, Edith?" said Mr. Waterhouse in lively surprise. Such an aspect of his remark would never have occurred to him. "Reminiscent of the Passover," said Miss Waterhouse. "Which, let me remind you, is Holy Writ." "That is a little far-fetched I think, Edith," said Mr. Waterhouse. "I should like to see anyone coming here, trying to murder me," said Miss Waterhouse with spirit. Her brother reflected to himself that it did ^em highly unlikely. If he himself had been Loosing a victim he would not have chosen ^is sister. If anyone were to attempt such a ^ling it was far more likely that the attacker ^ould be knocked out by a poker or a lead 87 Miss Waterhouse snorted again. Having Ait the door behind her brother she was HJU.L J.L. ^ "And that Miss Pebmarsh murdered him? Mr. Waterhouse looked mildly amused. "A blind woman? Surely----" "Slipped a piece of wire round his neck'about to retire upstairs when she paused and strangled him," said Miss Waterhouse ^oughtfully, went to her golf bag, removed "He wouldn't be on his guard, you see. Who a niblick, and placed it in a strategic position would be with anyone blind? Not that ^ear the front door. "There," said Miss 88 y 89 doorstop and delivered over to the police in a bleeding and humiliated condition. "I just meant," he said, the apologetic air deepening, "that there are--well--clearly undesirable characters about." "We don't know very much about what did happen yet," said Miss Waterhouse. "All sorts of rumours are going about. Mrs. Head had some extraordinary stories this morning." "I expect so, I expect so," said Mr. Waterhouse. He looked at his watch. He had no real desire to hear the stories brought in by their loquacious daily help. His sister never lost time in debunking these lurid flights of fancy, but nevertheless enjoyed them. "Some people are saying," said Miss Waterhouse, "that this man was the treasurer or a trustee of the Aaronberg Institute and that there is something wrong in the accounts, and that he came to Miss Pebmarsh to inquire about it. believe it myself," she added. "I'm sure Miss Pebmarsh is a person of excellent character. If I do not see eye to eye with her on various subjects, that is not because I impute anything of a criminal nature to her. I merely think that her views are bigoted and extravagant. After all, there are other things besides education. All these new peculiar looking grammar schools, practically built of glass. You might think they were meant to grow cucumbers in, or tomatoes. I'm sure very prejudicial to children in the summer months. Mrs. Head herself told me that her Susan didn't like their new classrooms. Said it was impossible to attend to your lessons because with all those windows you couldn't help looking out of them all the time." "Dear, dear," said Mr. Waterhouse, looking at his watch again. "Well, well, I'm going to be very late, I'm afraid. Good-bye, my dear. Look after yourself. Better keep the door on the chain perhaps? Waterhouse, with some satisfaction. Of | "I expect they'll want to ask you about Still it was course James talked nonsense. ^liss Pebmarsh," said Mrs. Head. "Want to aFways as~well to be prepared. The way they know whether you've noticed anything funny let mental cases out of nursing homes ||n her manner. They say these manias come nowadays, urging them to lead a normal life - - . i 5n very sudden sometimes and there's very J.J.U TT &*»««* J ^.J --------^--------<_, was in her view fraught with danger to all little to show beforehand. But there's usually ' ^ . . , something, some way of speaking, you know. sorts of innocent people. I. t.1^ V/-. ----------------___------- ^ ^ Miss Waterhouse was in her bedroom You can tell by their eyes, they say. But then when Mrs. Head came bustling up the stairs, that wouldn't hold with a blind woman, Mrs. Head was small and round and very would it? Ah----" she shook her head. like a rubber ball--she enjoyed practically "' WT ' ' ' ' everything that happened. Miss Waterhouse marched downstairs and entered the dining-room with a certain amount of pleasurable curiosity masked by her usual air of belligerence. "Detective Inspector Hardcastle?" "Good morning. Miss Waterhouse." "A couple of gentlemen want to see you, said Mrs. Head with avidity. "Leastways,' she added, "they aren't really gentlemen- it's the police.' She shoved forward a card. Miss Water- FIardcastle had risen. He had with him a tall, use took it. dark Y0111^ man whom Miss Waterhouse did "Detective Inspector Hardcastle," she not bother to greet. She paid no attention to read. "Did you show them into the drawing- a faint murmur of "Sergeant Lamb." house took it. room?" T hope 1 have not called at t00 ^y an "No. I put 'em in the dinin'-room. I'd ^our," said Hardcastle, "but I imagine you cleared away breakfast and I thought that bow what it is about. You've heard what that would be more proper a place. I mean, happened next door yesterday." "Murder in one's next door neighbour's they're only the police after all.' Miss Waterhouse did not quite follow thisttouse does not usually go unnoticed," said However she said, "I'll con^iss Waterhouse. "I even had to turn ^ay one or two reporters who came reasoning. down." reporters 9i 90 here asking if I had observed anything." "You turned them away?" "Naturally." "You were quite right," said Hardcastle. "Of course they like to worm their way in anywhere but I'm sure you are quite capable of dealing with anything of that kind." Miss Waterhouse allowed herself to show a faintly pleasurable reaction to this compliment. "I hope you won't mind us asking you the same kind of questions," said Hardcastle, "but if you did see anything at all that could be of interest to us, I can assure you we should be only too grateful. You were here in your house at the time, I gather?" "I don't know when the murder was committed," said Miss Waterhouse. "We think between half past one and half past two." "I was here then, yes, certainly." "And your brother?" "He does not come home to lunch. Who exactly was murdered? It doesn't seem to say in the short account there was in the local »» morning paper. "We don't yet know who he was," said Hardcastle. 92 "A stranger?" "So it seems." "You don't mean he was a stranger to Miss pebmarsh also?" "Miss Pebmarsh assures us that she was not expecting this particular guest and that she has no idea who he was." "She can't be sure of that," said Miss waterhouse. "She can't see." "We gave her a very careful description." "What kind of man was he?" Hardcastle took a rough print from an envelope and handed it to her. "This is the man," he said. "Have you any idea who he can be?" Miss Waterhouse looked at the print. "No. No ... I'm certain I've never seen him before. Dear me. He looks quite a respectable man." "He was a most respectable-looking man," said the inspector. "He looks like a lawyer or a business man of some kind." "Indeed. This photograph is not at all distressing. He just looks as though he might ^e asleep." Hardcastle did not tell her that of the varies police photographs of the corpse this one ^ad been selected as the least disturbing. 93 "Death can be a peaceful business," he said. "I don't think this particular man had any idea that it was coming to him when it did." "What does Miss Pebmarsh say about it all?" demanded Miss Waterhouse. "She is quite at a loss." "Extraordinary," commented Miss Waterhouse. "Now, can you help us in any way. Miss Waterhouse? If you cast your mind back to yesterday, were you looking out of the window at all, or did you happen to be in your garden, say any time between half past twelve and three o'clock?" Miss Waterhouse reflected. "Yes, I was in the garden . . . Now let me see. It must have been before one o'clock. 1 came in about ten to one from the garden; washed my hands and sat down to lunch." "Did you see Miss Pebmarsh enter 01 leave the house?" "I think she came in--I heard the gat< squeak--yes, some time after half pas twelve." "You didn't speak to her?" "Oh no. It was just the squeak of the g^ made me look up. It is her usual time ft 94 eturning. She finishes her classes then, I )elieve. She teaches at the Disabled Children is probably you know." "According to her own statement. Miss ^ebmarsh went out again about half past one. ^buld you agree to that?" "Well, I couldn't tell you the exact time but -yes, I do remember her passing the gate." "I beg your pardon. Miss Waterhouse, du said 'passing the gate5." "Certainly. I was in my sitting-room. 'hat gives on the street, whereas the dining)om, where we are sitting now, gives as you m see, on the back garden. But I took my 3ffee into the sitting-room after lunch and I 'as sitting with it in a chair near the window. was reading The Times, and I think it was lien I .was turning the sheet that I noticed liss Pebmarsh passing the front gate. Is lere anything extraordinary about that, nspector?" "Not extraordinary, no," said the inspec)r, smiling. "Only I understood that Miss ebmarsh was going out to do a little shoping and to the post office, and I had an idea lat the nearest way to the shops and the ost office would be to go the other way ong the crescent." 95 "Depends on which shops you are going to," said Miss Waterhouse. "Of course the shops are nearer that way, and there's a post 5 ' E" I office in Albany Road——" "But perhaps Miss Pebmarsh usually passed your gate about that time?" "Well, really, I don't know what time Miss Pebmarsh usually went out, or in which direction. I'm not really given to watching my neighbours in any way. Inspector. I'm a busy woman and have far too much to do with my own affairs. Some people I know spend their entire time looking out of the window and noticing who passes and who calls on whom. That is more a habit of invalids or for people who've nothing better to do than to speculate and gossip about their neighbours' affairs." Miss Waterhouse spoke with such acerbity that the inspector felt sure that she had some one particular person in mind. He said hastily, "Quite so. Quite so." He added, "Since Miss Pebmarsh passed your front gate, she might have been going to telephone, might she not? That is where the public telephone box is situated?" "Yes. It's opposite Number 15." "The important question I have to ask 96 you. Miss Water-house, is if you saw the arrival of this man—the mystery man as I'm afraid the morning papers have called him." Miss Waterhouse shook her head. "No, I didn't see him or any other caller." "What were you doing between half past one and three o'clock?" "I spent about half an hour doing the crossword in The Times, ,or as much of it as I could, then I went out to the kitchen and washed up the lunch. Let me see. I wrote a couple of letters, made some cheques out for bills, then I went upstairs and sorted out some things I wanted to take to the cleaners. I think it was from my bedroom that I noticed a certain amount of commotion next door. I distinctly heard someone screaming, so naturally I went to the window. There was a young man and a girl at the gate. He seemed to be embracing her." Sergeant Lamb shifted his feet but Miss Waterhouse was not looking at him and clearly had no idea that he had been that particular young man in question. "I could only see the back of the young man's head. He seemed to be arguing with ^e girl. Finally he sat her down against ^e gate post. An extraordinary thing to do. 97 And he strode off and went into the house." "You had not seen Miss Pebmarsh return to the house a short time before?" Miss Waterhouse shook her head. "No. I don't really think I had looked out the window at all until I heard this extraordinary screaming. However, I didn't pay much attention to all this. Young girls and men are always doing such extraordinary things- screaming, pushing each other, giggling or making some kind of noise--that I had no idea it was anything serious. Not until some cars drove up with policemen did I realise anything out of the ordinary had occurred." "What did you do then?" "Well, naturally I went out of the house, stood on the steps and then I walked round to the back garden. I wondered what had happened but there didn't seem to be anything much to see from that side. When I got back again there was quite a little crowd gathering. Somebody told me there'd been a murder in the house. It seemed to me most extraordinary. Most extraordinary!" said Miss Waterhouse with a great deal of disapproval. "There is nothing else you can think of That you can tell us?" 98 I "Really, I'm afraid not." "Has anybody recently written to you suggesting insurance, or has anybody called upon you or proposed calling upon you?" "No. Nothing of the kind. Both James and I have taken out insurance policies with the Mutual Help Assurance Society. Of course one is always getting letters which are really circulars or advertisements of some kind but I don't recall anything of that kind recently." "No letters signed by anybody called Curry?" "Curry? No, certainly not." "And the name of Curry means nothing to you in any way?" "No. Should it?" Hardcastle smiled. "No. I really don't think it should," he said. "It just happens to be the name that the man who was murdered was calling himself by." "It wasn't his real name?" "We have some reason to think that it was aot his real name." "A swindler of some kind, eh?" said Miss ^aterhouse. "We can't say that till we have evidence to prove it." Of course not, of course not. You've got <« 99 to be careful. I know that," said Miss Waterhouse. "Not like some of the people around here. They'd say anything. I wonder some aren't had up for libel all the time." "Slander," corrected Sergeant Lamb, speaking for the first time. Miss Waterhouse looked at him in some surprise, as though not aware before that he had an entity of his own and was anything other than a necessary appendage to Inspector Hardcastle. "I'm sorry I can't help you, I really am," said Miss Waterhouse. "I'm sorry too," said Hardcastle. "A person of your intelligence and judgment with a faculty of observation would have been a very useful witness to have." "I wish I had seen something," said Miss Waterhouse. For a moment her tone was as wistful as a young girl's. "Your brother, Mr. James Waterhouse?" "James wouldn't know anything," said Miss Waterhouse scornfully. "He never does. And anyway he was at Gainsford and Swettenhams in the High Street. Oh no? James wouldn't be able to help you. As I say? he doesn't come back to lunch." 100 "Where does he lunch usually?" "He usually has sandwiches and coffee at e Three Feathers. A very nice respectable house. They specialise in quick lunches for professional people." "Thank you. Miss Waterhouse. Well, we mustn't keep you any longer." He rose and went out into the hall. Miss Waterhouse accompanied them. Colin Lamb picked up the golf club by the door. "Nice club, this," he said. "Plenty of weight in the head." He weighed it up and down in his hand. "I see you are prepared, Miss Waterhouse, for any eventualities." Miss Waterhouse was slightly taken aback. "Really," she said, "I can't imagine how that club came to be there." She snatched it from him and replaced it in the golf bag. "A very wise precaution to take," said Hardcastle. Miss Waterhouse opened the door and let them out. "Well," said Colin Lamb, with a sigh, "we didn't get much out of her, in spite of you Uttering her up so nicely all the time. Is ^at your invariable method?" "It gets good results sometimes with a 101 person of her type. The tough kind always respond to flattery." "She was purring like a cat that has been offered a saucer of cream in the end," said Colin. "Unfortunately, it didn't disclose anything of interest." "No?" said Hardcastle. Colin looked at him quickly. "What's on your mind?" "A very slight and possibly unimportant point. Miss Pebmarsh went out to the post office and the shops but she turned left instead of right, and that telephone call, according to Miss Martindale, was put through about ten minutes to two." Colin looked at him curiously. "You still think that in spite of her denial she might have made it? She was very positive." "Yes," said Hardcastle. "She was very positive." His tone was noncommittal. "But if she did make it, why?" "Oh, it's all why," said Hardcastle impatiently. "Why, why? Why all this rigmarole? If Miss Pebmarsh made that call why did she want to get the girl there? If11 was someone else, why did they want to 102 involve Miss Pebmarsh? We don't know anything yet. If that Martindale woman had known Miss Pebmarsh personally, she'd have known whether it was her voice or not, or at any rate whether it was reasonably like Miss Pebmarsh's. Oh well, we haven't got much from Number 18. Let's see whether Number 20 will do us any better." 103 In addition to its number, 20, Wilbraham Crescent had a name. It was called Diana Lodge. The gates had obstacles against intruders by being heavily wired on the inside. Rather melancholy speckled laurels, imperfectly trimmed, also interfered with the efforts of anyone to enter through the gate. "If ever a house could have been called The Laurels, this one could," remarked Colin Lamb. "Why call it Diana Lodge, I wonder?" He looked round him appraisingly. Diana Lodge did not run to neatness or to flowerbeds. Tangled and overgrown shrubbery was its most salient point together with a strong catty smell of ammonia. The house seemed in a rather tumbledown condition with gutters that could do with repairing. The only sign of any recent kind of attention being paid to it was a freshly painted front door whose colour of bright azure blue made the general unkempt appearance of the rest of the house and garden even more noticeable. There was no electric bell but a kind oi 104 handle that was clearly meant to be pulled. The inspector pulled it and a faint sound of remote jangling was heard inside. "It sounds," said Colin, "like the Moated Grange." I They waited for a moment or two, then sounds were heard from inside. Rather curious sounds. A kind of high crooning, half singing, half speaking. "What the devil----" began Hardcastle. The singer or crooner appeared to be approaching the front door and words began to be discernible. "No, sweet-sweetie. In there, my love. Mindems tailems Shah-Shah-Mimi. Cleo-- Cleopatra. Ah de doodlums. Ah loulou." Doors were heard to shut. Finally the front door opened. Facing them was a lady in a pale moss-green, rather rubbed, velvet tea gown. Her hair, in flaxen grey wisps, was twirled elaborately in a kind of coiffure of some thirty years back. Round her neck she ^as wearing a necklet of orange fur. Inspector Hardcastle said dubiously: "Mrs. Hemming?" "I am Mrs. Hemming. Gently, Sunbeam, Sently doodleums." It was then that the inspector perceived 105 that the orange fur was really a ce not the only cat. Three other cats along the hall, two of them miaowi took up their place, gazing at the twirling gently round their mistres At the same time a pervading sir afflicted the nostrils of both men. "I am Detective Inspector Hard "I hope you've come about tha man who came to see me from the I of Cruelty to Animals," said Mrs. 1 "Disgraceful! I wrote and repo Saying my cats were kept in a prejudicial to their health and 1 Quite disgraceful! I live for my ca tor. They are my only joy and { life. Everything is done for th< Shah-Mimi. Not there, sweetie." Shah-Shah-Mimi paid no atte restraining hand and jumped o table. He sat down and washe< staring at the strangers. "Come in," said Mrs. Hemmin not that room. I'd forgotten." She pushed open a door on th atmosphere here was even more \ "Come on, my pretties, come c In the room various brushes 106 with cat hairs in them lay about on chairs and tables. There were faded and soiled cushions, and there were at least six more cats. "I live for my darlings," said Mrs. Hemming. "They understand every word I say to them." ^ Inspector Hardcastle walked in manfully. Unfortunately for him he was one of those men who have cat allergy. As usually happens on these occasions all the cats immediately made for him. One jumped on his knee,^ another rubbed affectionately against his trousers. Detective Inspector Hardcastle, who was a brave man, set his lips and endured. "I wonder if I could ask you a few questions, Mrs. Hemming, about——" "Anything you please," said Mrs. Hemming, interrupting him. "I have nothing to hide. I can show you the cats' food, their beds where they sleep, five in my room, the other seven down here. They have only the very best fish cooked by myself." "This is nothing to do with cats," said Hardcastle, raising his voice. "I came to talk ^ you about the unfortunate affair which happened next door. You have probably ^eard about it." eg 107 "Next door? You mean Mr. Joshua's dog?" "No," said Hardcastle,"I do not. I mean at Number 19 where a man was found murdered yesterday." "Indeed?" said Mrs. Hemming, with polite interest but no more. Her eyes were still straying over her pets. "Were you at home yesterday afternoon, may I ask? That is to say between half past one and half past three?" "Oh yes, indeed. I usually do my shopping quite early in the day and then get back so that I can do the darlings' lunch, and then comb and groom them." "And you didn't notice any activity next door? Police cars—ambulance—anything like that?" "Well, I'm afraid I didn't look out of the front windows. I went out of the back of the house into the garden because dear Arabella was missing. She is quite a young cat and she had climbed up one of the trees and I was afraid she might not be able to get down. 1 tried to tempt her with a saucer of fish but she was frightened, poor little thing. I had to give up in the end and come back into the house. And would you believe it, just asl went through the door, down she came and 108 followed me in." She looked from one man to the other as though testing their powers of belief. "Matter of fact, I would believe it," said Colin, unable to keep silence any more. "I beg your pardon?" Mrs. Hemming looked at him, slightly startled. "I am much attached to cats," said Colin, "and I have therefore made a study of cat nature. What you have told me illustrates perfectly the pattern of cat behaviour and the rules they have made for themselves. In the same way your cats are all congregating round my friend who frankly does not care for cats, they will pay no attention to me in spite of all my blandishments." If it occurred to Mrs. Hemming that Colin was hardly speaking in the proper role of sergeant of police, no trace of it appeared in her face. She merely murmured vaguely. "They always know, the dear things, don't they?" A handsome grey Persian put two paws on Inspector Hardcastle's knees, looked at him ^lan ecstasy of pleasure and dug his claws in t^rd with a kneading action as though the ^spector was a pincushion. Goaded beyond ^durance, Hardcastle rose to his feet. 109 "I wonder, madam," he said, "if I could see this back garden of yours." Colin grinned slightly. "Oh, of course, of course. Anything you please." Mrs. Hemming rose. The orange cat unwound itself from her neck. She replaced it in an absentminded way with the grey Persian. She led the way out of the room. Hardcastle and Colin followed. "We've met before," said Colin to the orange cat and added, "And you're a beauty, aren't you," addressing another grey Persian who was sitting on a table by a Chinese lamp, swishing his tail slightly. Colin stroked him, tickled him behind the ears and the grey cat condescended to purr. "Shut the door, please, as you come out, Mr.--er--er," said Mrs. Hemming from the hall. "There's a sharp wind to-day and I don't want my dears to get cold. Besides, there are those terrible boys--it's really no1 safe to let the dear things wander about in the garden by themselves." She walked towards the back of the ball and opened a side door. "What terrible boys?" asked Hardcastle. "Mrs. Ramsay's two boys. They live in the no I I south part of the crescent. Our gardens more or less back on each other. Absolute young hooligans, that's what they are. They have a catapult, you know, or they had. I insisted on its being confiscated but I have my suspicions. They make ambushes and hide. In the summer they throw apples." "Disgraceful," said Colin. The back garden was like the front only more so. It had some unkempt grass, some unpruned and crowded shrubs and a great many more laurels of the speckled variety, and some rather gloomy macrocarpas. In Colin's opinion, both he and Hardcastle were wasting their time. There was a solid barrage of laurels, trees and shrubs through which nothing of Miss Pebmarsh's garden could possibly be seen. Diana Lodge could be described as a fully detached house. From the point of view of its inhabitants, it might have had no neighbours. "Number 19, did you say?" said Mrs. Hemming, pausing irresolutely in the middle 'ft her back garden. "But I thought there was itfy one person living in the house, a blind /oman." "The murdered man was not an occupant fthe house," said the inspector. in "Oh, I see," said Mrs. Hemming, still vaguely, "he came there to be murdered. How odd." "Now that," said Colin thoughtfully to himself, "is a damned good description." 112 CHAPTER 9 They drove along Wilbraham Crescent, turned to the right up Albany Road and then to the right again along the second instalment of Wilbraham Crescent. "Simple really," said Hardcastle. "Once you know," said Colin. "61 really backs on Mrs. Hemming's house--but a corner of it touches on 19, so that's good enough. It will give you a chance to look at your Mr. Bland. No foreign help, by the way." "So there goes a beautiful theory." The car drew up and the two men got out. "Well, well," said Colin. "Some front garden!" It was indeed a model of suburban perfection in a small way. There were beds of geraniums with lobelia edging. There were large fleshy-looking begonias, and there was a fine display of garden ornaments--frogs, loadstools, comic gnomes and pixies. "I'm sure Mr. Bland must be a nice worthy ^n," said Colin, with a shudder. "He wouldn't have these terrible ideas if he ii3 wasn't." He added as Hardcastle pushed the 's bell, "Do you expect him to be in at this it time of the morning?" >i "I rang up," explained Hardcastle. "Asked r! him if it would be convenient." w At that moment a smart little traveller van it drew up and turned into the garage, which 01 had obviously been a late addition to the w; house. Mr. Josaiah Bland got out, slammed ge the door and advanced towards them. He id was a man of medium height with a bald m head and rather small blue eyes. He had a a 1 hearty manner, is "Inspector Hardcastle? Come right in." lui He led the way into the sitting-room. It on evinced several proofs of prosperity. There the were expensive and rather ornate lamps, an ba Empire writing desk, a coruscated ormolu uk set of mantelpiece ornaments, a marquetry mi cabinet, and Sijardiniere full of flowers in the Or window. The chairs were modern and richly im upholstered, els "Sit down," said Mr. Bland heartily, t 1 "Smoke? Or can't you when you're on the sir job?" >ai "No, thanks," said Hardcastle. 1 "Don't drink either, I suppose?" said Mr- ] Bland. "Ah well, better for both of us, I dare 114 ly. Now what's it all about? This business : Number 19 I suppose? The corners of ir gardens adjoin, but we've not much real ew of it except from the upper floor indows. Extraordinary business altogether seems to be—at least from what I read in ir local paper this morning. I was delighted hen I got your message. A chance of •tting some of the real dope. You've no ea the rumours that are flying about! It's ade my wife quite nervous—feeling there's killer on the loose, you know. The trouble they let all these barmy people out of aatic asylums nowadays. Send them home . parole or whatever they call it. Then ey do in someone else and they clap them ck again. And as I say, the rumours! I ;an, what with our daily woman and the 1k and paper boy, you'd be surprised. ie says he was strangled with picture wire, d the other says he was stabbed. Someone e that he was coshed. At any rate it was ie, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't the old 1 who was done in ? An unknown man, the ?ers said." vir. Bland came to a full stop at last. -lardcastle smiled and said in a deprecatvoice: "5 "Well, as to unknown, he had a card and an address in his pocket." "So much for that story then," said Bland. "But you know what people are. I don't know who thinks up all these things." "While we're on the subject of the victim," said Hardcastle, "perhaps you'll have a look at this" Once more he brought out the police photograph. "So that's him, is it?" said Bland. "He looks a perfectly ordinary chap, doesn't he? Ordinary as you and me. I suppose I mustn't ask if he had any particular reason to be murdered?" "It's early days to talk about that," said Hardcastle. "What I want to know, Mr, Bland, is if you've ever seen this man before." Bland shook his head. "I'm sure I haven't. I'm quite good at remembering faces." "He hasn't called upon you for any particular purpose--selling insurance or- vacuum cleaners or washing machines, or anything of that kind ?" "No, no. Certainly not." "We ought perhaps to ask your wife," said Hardcastle. "After all, if he called 116 at the house, it's your wife he would see." "Yes, that's perfectly true. I don't know, though... Valerie's not got very good health, you know. I wouldn't like to upset her. What I mean is, well, I suppose that's a picture of him when he's dead, isn't it?" "Yes," said Hardcastle, "that is quite true. But it is not a painful photograph in any way." "No, no. Very well done. The chap might be asleep, really." "Are you talking about me, Josaiah?" An adjoining door from the other room was pushed open and a middle-aged woman entered the room. She had, Hardcastle decided, been listening with close attention on the other side of the door. "Ah, there you are, my dear," said Bland, "I thought you were having your morning nap. This is my wife. Detective Inspector Hardcastle." "That terrible murder," murmured Mrs. Bland. "It really makes me shiver to think of it." She sat down on the sofa with a little gasping sigh. "Put your feet up, dear," said Bland. Mrs. Bland obeyed. She was a sandy-haired 117 woman, with a faint whining voice. She looked anaemic, and had all the airs of an invalid who accepts her invalidism with a certain amount of enjoyment. For a moment or two, she reminded Inspector Hardcastle of somebody. He tried to think who it was, but failed. The faint, rather plaintive voice continued. "My health isn't very good. Inspector Hardcastle, so my husband naturally tries to spare me any shocks or worry. I'm very sensitive. You were speaking about a photograph, I think, of the--of the murdered man. Oh dear, how terrible that sounds. I don't know that I can bear to look!" "Dying to see it, really,' thought Hardcastle to himself. With faint malice in his voice, he said: "Perhaps I'd better not ask you to look at it, then, Mrs. Bland. I just thought you might be able to help us, in case the man has called at this house at any time." "I must do my duty, mustn't I," said Mrs. Bland, with a sweet brave smile. She held out her hand. "Do you think you'd better upset your' self, Val?" "Don't be foolish. Of course I must see.' 118 She looked at the photograph with much interest and, or so the inspector thought, a certain amount of disappointment. | "He looks—really, he doesn't look dead at ^11," she said. "Not at all as though he'd jbeen murdered. Was he—he can't have been strangled?" "He was stabbed," said the inspector. Mrs. Bland closed her eyes and shivered. "Oh dear," she said, "how terrible." "You don't feel you've ever seen him, Mrs. Bland?" "No," said Mrs. Bland with obvious reluctance, "no, no, I'm afraid not. Was he the sort of man who—who calls at houses selling things?" "He seems to have been an insurance agent," said the inspector carefully. "Oh, I see. No, there's been nobody of that kind, I'm sure. You never remember my mentioning anything of that kind, do you, Josaiah?" "Can't say I do," said Mr. Bland. "Was he any relation to Miss Pebmarsh?" asked Mrs. Bland. "No," said the inspector, "he was quite Unknown to her." "Very peculiar," said Mrs. Bland. 119 "You know Miss Pebmarsh?" "Oh yes, I mean, we know her as neighbours, of course. She asks my husband for advice sometimes about the garden." "You're a very keen gardener, I gather?" said the inspector. "Not really, not really," said Bland deprecatingly. "Haven't the time, you know. Of course, I know what's what. But I've got an excellent fellow--comes twice a week. He sees the garden's kept well stocked, and well tidied up. I'd say you couldn't beat our garden round here, but I'm not one of those real gardeners like my neighbour." "Mrs. Ramsay?" said Hardcastle in some surprise. "No, no, farther along. 63. Mr. MeNaughton. He just lives for his garden. In if all day long, and mad on compost. Really, he's quite a bore on the subject of compost- but I don't suppose that's what you want to talk about." "Not exactly," said the inspector. "I only wondered if anyone--you or your wife, for instance--were out in your garden yesterday- After all, as you say, it does touch on the border of 19 and there's just a chance that you might have seen something interesting 120 yesterday--or heard something, perhaps?" "Midday, wasn't it? When the murder happened I mean?" "The relevant times are between one o'clock and three o'clock." Bland shook his head. "I wouldn't have seen much then. I was here. So was Valerie, but we'd be having lunch, you know, and our dining-room looks out on the roadside. We shouldn't see anything that was going on in the garden." "What time do you have your meal?" "One o'clock or thereabouts. Sometimes it's one-thirty." "And you didn't go out in the garden at all afterwards?" Bland shook his head. "Matter of fact," he said, "my wife always goes up to rest after lunch and, if things aren't too busy, I take a bit of shuteye myself in that chair there. I must have left the house about--oh, I suppose a quarter to three, but unfortunately I didn't go out in the garden at all." "Oh, well," said Hardcastle with a sigh, "we have to ask everyone." "Of course, of course. Wish I could be ^ore helpful." 121 "Nice place you have here." said the inspector. "No money spared, if I may say so." Bland laughed jovially. "Ah well, we like things that are nice. My wife's got a lot of taste. We had a bit of a windfall a year ago. My wife came into some money from an uncle of hers. She hadn't seen him for twenty-five years. Quite a surprise it was! It made a bit of difference to us, I can tell you. We've been able to do ourselves well and we're thinking of going on one of these cruises later in the year. \/ Very educational they are, I believe. Greece and all that. A lot of professors on them lecturing. Well, of course, I'm a self-made man and I haven't had much time for that sort of thing but I'd be interested. That chap who went and dug up Troy, he was a grocer, I believe. Very romantic. I must say I like going to foreign parts--not that I've done much of that--an occasional week-end in gay Paree, that's all. I've toyed with the idea of selling up here and going to live in Spain or Portugal or even the West Indies. A lot of people are doing it. Saves income tax and all that. But my wife doesn't fancy the idea." 122 "I'm fond of travel, but I wouldn't care to Ave out of England," said Mrs. Bland. "We've got all our friends here—and my sister lives here, and everybody knows us. If we went abroad we'd be strangers. And then we've got a very good doctor here. He really understands my health. I shouldn't care at all for a foreign doctor. I wouldn't have any confidence in him." "We'll see," said Mr. Bland cheerfully. 'We'll go on a cruise and you may fall in love with a Greek island." Mrs. Bland looked as though that were i^ery unlikely. "There'd be a proper English doctor aboard, I suppose," she said doubtfully. "Sure to be," said her husband. He accompanied Hardcastle and Colin to the front door, repeating once more how sorry he was that he couldn't help them. "Well," said Hardcastle. "What do you think of him?" "I wouldn't care to let him build a house for me," said Colin. "But a crooked little builder isn't what I'm after. I'm looking for a man who is dedicated. And as regards your Murder case, you've got the wrong kind of Murder. Now if Bland was to feed his wife c9 123 arsenic or push her into the Aegean in order to inherit her money and marry a slap-up blonde——" "We'll see about that when it happens," said Inspector Hardcastle. "In the meantime we've got to get on with this murder." 124 CHAPTER 10 At No. 62, Wilbraham Crescent, Mrs. Ramsay was saying to herself encouragingly, "Only two days now. Only two days." She pushed back some dank hair from her forehead. An almighty crash came from the kitchen. Mrs. Ramsay felt very disinclined even to go and see what the crash portended. If only she could pretend that there hadn't been a crash. Oh well--only two days. She stepped across the hall, flung the kitchen oor open and said in a voice of far less idligerence than it would have held three ^eks ago: "Now what have you done?" "Sorry, Mum," said her son Bill. "We ^ere just having a bit of a bowling match with these tins and somehow or other they rolled into the bottom of the china cup board." "We didn't mean them to go into the bottom of the china cupboard," said his Younger brother Ted agreeably. ; "Well, pick up those things and put ^m back in the cupboard and sweep up 125 that broken china and put it in the bin." "Oh, Mum, not now" "Yes, now." "Ted can do it," said Bill. "I like that," said Ted. "Always putting on me. I won't do it if you won't." "Bet you will." "Bet I won't." "I'll make you." "Yahh!" The boys closed in a fierce wrestling match. Ted was forced back against the kitchen table and a bowl of eggs rocked ominously. "Oh, get out of the kitchen!" cried Mrs. Ramsay. She pushed the two boys out of the kitchen door and shut it, and began to pick up tins and sweep up china. ^wo days,' she thought, 'and they'll be back at school! What a lovely, what a heavenly thought for a mother.' She remembered vaguely some wicked remark by a woman columnist. Only six happy days in the year for a woman. The first and the last days of the holidays. How true that was, thought Mrs. Ramsay, sweeping up portions of her best dinner-service. With what pleasure, what joy, had she conteni' 126 plated the return of her offspring a bare five weeks before! And now? "To-morrow," she .repeated to herself, "to-morrow Bill and Ted Eill be back at school. I can hardly believe . I can't wait!" How heavenly it had been five weeks ago when she met them at the station. Their tempestuous and affectionate welcome! The "way they had rushed all over the house and garden. A special cake baked for tea. And i now--what was she looking forward to now? I A day of complete peace. No enormous meals |to prepare, no incessant clearing up. She t loved the boys--they were fine boys, no doubt of that. She was proud of them. But they were also exhausting. Their appetite, their vitality, the noise they made. At that moment, raucous cries arose. She 'turned her head in sharp alarm. It was all right. They had only gone out in the garden. That was better, there was far more room for them in the garden. They would probably annoy the neighbours. She hoped to goodness they would leave Mrs. Hemming's cats alone. Not, it must be confessed, for the sake of the cats, but because the wired enclosure Grounding Mrs. Hemming's garden was W to tear. their shorts. She cast a fleeting eye 127 over the first-aid box which lay handy on the dresser. Not that she fussed unduly over the natural accidents of vigorous boyhood. In fact her first inevitable remark was: "Now haven't I told you a hundred times, you are not to bleed in the drawing-room! Come straight into the kitchen and bleed there, where I can wipe over the linoleum." A terrific yell from outside seemed to be cut off mid-way and was followed by a silence so profound that Mrs. Ramsay felt a real feeling of alarm spring up in her breast. Really, that silence was most unnatural. She stood uncertainly, the dust-pan with broken china in her hand. The kitchen door opened and Bill stood there. He had an awed, ecstatic expression most unusual on his eleven-yearold face. "Mum," he said, "There's a detective inspector here and another man with him" "Oh," said Mrs. Ramsay, relieved. "What does he want, dear?" "He asked for you," said Bill, "but I think it must be about the murder. You know, the one at Miss Pebmarsh's yesterday." "I don't see why he should come and wish to see me," said Mrs. Ramsay, in a slightly vexed voice. 128 Life was just one thing after another, she thought. How was she to get the potatoes on for the Irish stew if detective inspectors came along at this awkward hour ? "Oh well," she said with a sigh. "I suppose I'd better come." She shot the broken china into the bin under the sink, rinsed her hands under the tap, smoothed her hair and prepared to follow Bill, who was saying impatiently, "Oh, come on. Mum." Mrs. Ramsay, closely flanked by Bill, entered the sitting-room. Two men were standing there. Her younger son, Ted, was in attendance upon them, staring at them with wide appreciative eyes. "Mrs. Ramsay?" "Good morning." "I expect these young men have told you that I am Detective Inspector Hardcastle?" "It's very awkward," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Very awkward this morning. I'm very busy. TOl it take very long?" "Hardly any time at all," said Detective Inspector Hardcastle reassuringly. "May we ^t down?" "Oh, yes, do, do." Mrs. Ramsay took an upright chair and 129 looked at them impatiently. She had suspicions that it was not going to take hardly any time at all. "No need for you two to remain," said Hardcastle to the boys pleasantly. "Aw, we're not going," said Bill. "We're not going," echoed Ted. "We want to hear all about it," said Bill. "Sure we do," said Ted. "Was there a lot of blood?" asked Bill. "Was it a burglar?" said Ted. "Be quiet, boys," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Didn't you hear the--Mr. Hardcastle say he didn't want you in here?" "We're not going," said Bill. "We want to hear." Hardcastle moved across to the door and opened it. He looked at the boys. "Out," he said. It was only one word, quietly uttered, but it had behind it the quality of authority. Without more ado both boys got up, shuffled their feet and shuffled out of the room. "How wonderful," thought Mrs. Ramsay appreciatively. "Now why can't / be lik6 that?" But then, she reflected, she was the boys mother. She knew by hearsay that the boys^ 130 when they went out, behaved in a manner entirely different from at home. It was always mothers who got the worst of things. But perhaps, she reflected, one would rather have it like that. To have nice quiet attentive polite boys at home and to have little hooligans going out, creating unfavourable opinions of themselves, would be worse-- yes, that would be worse. She recalled herself to what was required of her, as Inspector Hardcastle came back and sat down again. "If it's about what happened at Number 19 yesterday," she said nervously, "I really don't see that I can tell you anything, Inspector. I don't know anything about it. I don't even know the people who live there." "The house is lived in by a Miss Pebmarsh. She's blind and works at the Aaronberg Institute." "Oh, I see," said Mrs. Ramsay. "I'm afraid I know hardly anybody in the lower Crescent." "Were you yourself here yesterday between half past twelve and three o'clock ?" j "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Ramsay. "There Was dinner to cook and all that. I went °Ut before three, though. I took the boys to ^e cinema." i3i The inspector took the photograph from his pocket and handed it to her. "I'd like you to tell me if you've ever seen this man before." Mrs. Ramsay looked at it with a slight awakening of interest. "No," she said, "no, I don't think so. I'm not sure if I would remember if I had seen him." "He did not come to this house on any occasion—trying to sell you insurance or anything of that kind?" Mrs. Ramsay shook her head more positively. "No. No, I'm sure he didn't." "His name, we have some reason to believe, is Curry. Mr. R. Curry." He looked inquiringly at her. Mrs. Ramsay shook her head again. "I'm afraid," she said apologetically, "I really haven't time to see or notice anything during the holidays." "That's always a busy time, isn't it," said the inspector. "Fine boys you've got. Full of life and spirits. Rather too many spirits sometimes, I expect?" Mrs. Ramsay positively smiled. "Yes," she said, "it gets a little 132 tiring, but they're very good boys really." "I'm sure they are," said the inspector. Tine fellows, both of them. Very intelligent, I should say. I'll have a word with them before I go, if you don't mind. Boys notice jthings sometimes that nobody else in the (house does." | "I don't really see how they can have jnoticed anything," said Mrs. Ramsay. "It's hot as though we were next door or any^ ing." "But your gardens back on each other." "Yes, they do," agreed Mrs. Ramsay. But they're quite separate." "Do you know Mrs. Hemming at dumber 20?" "Well, in a way I do, said Mrs. Ramsay, "because of the cats and one thing and another." [| "You are fond of cats?" || "Oh, no," said Mrs. Ramsay, "it's not that. I mean it's usually complaints." "Oh, I see. Complaints. What about?" Mrs. Ramsay flushed. "The trouble is," she said, "when people ^eep cats in that way--fourteen, she's got-- ^ey get absolutely besotted about them. ^gd it's all a lot of nonsense. I like cats. We i33 used to have a cat ourselves, a tabby. Very good mouser, too. But all the fuss that woman makes, cooking special food—hardly ever letting the poor things out to have a life of their own. Of course the cats are always trying to escape. I would, if I was one of those cats. And the boys are very good really, they wouldn't torment a cat in any way. What I say is cats can always take care of themselves very well. They're very sensible animals, cats, that is if they are treated sensibly." "I'm sure you're quite right," said the inspector. "You must have a busy life," he went on, "keeping those boys of yours amused and fed during the holidays. When are they going back to school?" "The day after to-morrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "I hope you'll have a good rest then." "I mean to treat myself to a real lazy time," she said. The other young man who had been silently taking down notes, startled her a little by speaking. "You ought to have one of those foreign girls," he said. ^Au pair, don't they call i1? do chores here in return for learning English. »» i34 "I suppose I might try something of that kind," said Mrs. Ramsay, considering, "though I always feel that foreigners may be difficult. My husband laughs at me. But then of course he knows more about it than I do. I haven't travelled abroad as much as he has." "He's away now, isn't he?" said Hardcastle. "Yes--he had to go to Sweden at the beginning of August. He's a constructional engineer. A pity he had to go just then--at the beginning of the holidays, too. He's so good with the children. He really likes playing with electric trains more than the boys do. Sometimes the lines and the marshalling yards and everything go right across the hall and into the other room. It's very difficult not to fall over them." She shook her head. "Men are such children," she said indulgently. "When do you expect him back, Mrs. Ramsay?" ( "I never know." She sighed. "It makes it rather--difficult." There was a tremor in her voice. Colin looked at her keenly. "We mustn't take up more of your time, ^rs. Ramsay." Hardcastle rose to his feet. i35 "Perhaps your boys will show us the garden?" Bill and Ted were waiting in the hall and fell in with the suggestion immediately. "Of course," said Bill apologetically, "it isn't a very big garden." There had been some slight effort made to keep the garden of No. 62, Wilbraham Crescent in reasonable order. On one side there was a border of dahlias and Michaelmas daisies. Then a small lawn somewhat unevenly mown. The paths badly needed hoeing, models of aeroplanes, space guns and other representations of modem science lay about, looking slightly the worse for wear. At the end of the garden was an apple tree with pleasant-looking red apples on it. Next to it was a pear tree. "That's it," said Ted, pointing at the space between the apple and the pear, through which the back of Miss Pebmarsh's house showed clearly. "That's Number 19 where the murder was." "Got quite a good view of the house, haven't you," said the inspector. "Better still, I expect, from the upstairs windows." "That's right," said Bill. "If only we'd been up there yesterday looking out, we 136 might have seen something. But we didn't." "We were at the cinema," said Ted. "Were there fingerprints?" asked Bill. "Not very helpful ones. Were you out in the garden at all yesterday?" "Oh, yes, off and on," said Bill. "All the morning, that is. We didn't hear anything, though, or see anything." "If we'd been there in the afternoon we might have heard screams," said Ted, wistfully. "Awful screams there were." "Do you know Miss Pebmarsh, the lady who owns that house, by sight?" The boys looked at each other, then nodded. "She's blind," said Ted, "but she can walk around the garden all right. Doesn't have to walk with a stick or anything like that. She threw a ball back to us once. Quite nice about it she was." I "You didn't see her at all yesterday?" The boys shook their heads. "We wouldn't see her in the morning. She's always out," Bill explained. "She dually comes out in the garden after tea." Colin was exploring a line of hosepipe ^hich was attached to a tap in the house. lt ran along the garden path and was i37 laid down in the corner near the pear tree. "Never knew that pear trees needed watering," he remarked. "Oh, that," said Bill. He looked slightly embarrassed. "On the other hand," said Colin, "if you climbed up in this tree." He looked at both boys and grinned suddenly. "You could get a very nice little line of water to play on a cat, couldn't you?" Both boys scuffled the gravel with their feet and looked in every other direction but at Colin. "That's what you do, isn't it?" said Colin. "Aw, well," said Bill, "it doesn't hurt 'em. It's not," he said with an air of virtue, "like a catapult." "I suppose you used to use a catapult at one time." "Not properly," said Ted. "We never seemed to hit anything." "Anyway, you do have a bit of fun with that hose sometimes," said Colin, "and then Mrs. Hemming comes along and complains?" "She's always complaining," said Bill. "You ever get through her fence?" "Not through that wire here," said Ted? unguardedly. 138 "But you do get into her garden some:imes, is that right? How do you do it?" "Well, you can get through the fence-- into Miss Pebmarsh's garden. Then a little way down to the right you can push through the hedge into Mrs. Hemming's garden. There's a hole there in the wire." "Can't you shut up, you fool?" said Bill. "I suppose you've done a bit of hunting about for clues since the murder?" said Hardcastle. The boys looked at each other. "When you came back from the cinema and heard what had happened, I bet you went through the fence into the garden of 19 and had a jolly good look round." "Well----" Bill paused cautiously. "It's always possible," said Hardcastle leriously, "that you may have found something that we missed. If you have--er--a collection I should be much obliged if you would show it to me." ) Bill made up his mind. ' "Get 'em, Ted," he said. Ted departed obediently at a run. "I'm afraid we haven't got anything really good," admitted Bill. "We only--sort of Pretended." do 139 He looked at Hardcastle anxiously. "I quite understand," said the inspector. "Most o1 police work is like that. A lot of disappointments." Bill looked relieved. Ted returned at a run. He passed over a grubby lotted handkerchief which chinked. Hardcastle unknotted it, with a boy on either side of ^lm) an(^ spread out the contents. Ther^ was the handle off a cup, a fragment of willow pattern china, a broken trowel, a rusty fork, a coin, a clothes-peg, a bit of iridescent glass and half a pair of scissors. "An interesting lot," said the inspector solemnly- He took pity on the eager faces of the boys and picked up the piece of glass. "I'll take this. It may just possibly tie up with something." Colin had picked up the coin and was examine lt "It's not English," said Ted. "No," said Colin, "It's not English." He looked across at Hardcastle. "We might perhaps take this, too," he suggested. "Don't say a word about this to anyone said Hardcastle in a conspiratorial fashion. The boys promised that they wouldn't. 140 CHAPTERii Ramsay," said Colin, thoughtfully. "What about him?" "I like the sound of him, that's all. He (ravels abroad—at a moment's notice. His wife say's he's a construction engineer, but that's all she seems to know about him." "She's a nice woman," said Hardcastle. "Yes—and not a very happy one." "Tired, that's all. Kids are tiring." "I think it's more than that." "Surely the sort of person you want wouldn't be burdened with a wife and two sons," Hardcastle said sceptically. "You never know," said Colin. "You'd be surprised what some of the boys do for camouflage. A hard-up widow with a couple of kids might be willing to come to an irrangement." "I shouldn't have thought she was that kind," said Hardcastle primly. "I don't mean living in sin, my dear fellow. I mean that she'd agree to be Mrs. Ramsay and supply a background. Naturally, le'd spin her a yam of the right kind. He'd 141 L hp doine a spot of espionage, say, on our foreign help at last. "and handed her his card. uc uuu^ ^ y ^_^^,, "Police." said i4i^ wmn/r i,r/^,r.., 01^ ^i- "Police," said the young woman. She took a step or two back and looked at Hardcastle s though he were the Fiend in person. "Mrs. McNaughton," said Hardcastle. "Mrs. McNaughton is here." She led them into the sitting-room, which side. All highly patriotic.3 Hardcastle shook his head. "You live in a strange world, Colin," he said. "Yes we do. I think, you know, I'll have to get out of it one day . . . One begins to - - TT_1.C . r forget what is what and who is who. Half oflverlooked the back garden. It was empty. & _ - - .» .1 _ ^.i i ^fi^.^ ---- ^.i--_ _^__ si « < ~'--e»~- these people work for both sides and in the ,., ., JB. *' She up the stairs is," said the no-longer- /» < L.A.J.VrU^' y^-^ f ----.---- end they don't know themselves which side ;heerful young woman. She went out into they are really on. Standards get gummed he hall and called, "Mrs. McNaughton-- up--Oh, well--let's get on with things." ^Irs. McNaughton." "We'd better do the McNaughtons," said A voice far awa^ said, "Yes. What is it Hardcastle, pausing at the gates of 63. "A bit Sretel ?" -»-n . -1 » «T«- ;„ . of his garden touches 19--same as Bland." It is the police--two police. I put them * i-t-i-i »«<"> <<-»<-»»-« " "What do you know about the McNaugh-jn sitting-room. ,ns?" ] There was a faint scurrying noise upstairs "Not much--they came here about a yearind the words "Oh, dear. Oh, dear, what aeo. Elderly couple--retired professor, wext," floated down. Then there was a patter tons i & * - - M p^. ^»4- -- ---- -J __ .__ .1 « , . - A feet and presently Mrs. McNaughton believe. He gardens." Tl^frontearden had rose bushes in it andntered the room with a worried expression thick bed of autumn crocus under th^ her face. There was. Hardcastle decided a ite soon, usually a worried expression on rs. McNaughton's face. windows. A cheerful young woman in a brightl flowered overall opened the door to and said: "You want?--Yes?" Inspector Hardcastle murmured, 142 "Oh, dear," she said again, "oh, dear. spector--what is it--Hardcastle--oh, yes." looked at the card. "But why do you it to see M5? We don't know anything i43 about it. I mean I suppose it is this murder, isn't it? I mean, it wouldn't be the television licence?" Hardcastle reassured her on that point. "It all seems so extraordinary, doesn't it," said Mrs. McNaughton, brightening up. "And more or less midday, too. Such an odd time to come and burgle a house. Just the time when people are usually at home. But then one does read of such terrible things nowadays. All happening in broad daylight. Why, some friends of ours—they were out for lunch and a furniture van drove up and the men broke in and carried out every stick of furniture. The whole street saw it happen but of course they never thought there was anything wrong. You know, I did think I heard someone screaming yesterday, but Angus said it was those dreadful boys of Mrs. Ramsay's. They rush about the garden making noises like space-ships, you know, or rockets, or atom bombs. It really is quite frightening sometimes." Once again Hardcastle produced his photograph. "Have you ever seen this man, Mrs. McNaughton ?'' Mrs. McNaughton stared at it with avidity' 144 "I'm almost sure I've seen him. Yes. Yes, m practically certain. Now, where was it? ^as it the man who came and asked me if I yanted to buy a new encyclopaedia in four:een volumes? Or was it the man who came yith a new model of vacuum cleaner. I wouldn't have anything to do with him, and ie went out and worried my husband in the ront garden. Angus was planting some bulbs, roll know, and he didn't want to be interupted and the man went on and on saying what the thing would do. You know, how it would run up and down curtains, and would ;lean doorsteps and do the stairs and cushions md spring-clean things. Everything, he said, ibsolutely everything. And then Angus just ooked up at him and said, 'Can it plant bulbs?' and I must say I had to laugh because it took the man quite aback and he went away." "And you really think that was the man in this photograph?" "Well, no, I don't really," said Mrs. McNaughton, "because that was a much Younger man, now I come to think of t. But all the same I think I have 'een this face before. Yes. The more look at it the more sure I am that i45 he came here and asked me to buy something." "Insurance perhaps?" "No, no, not insurance. My husband attends to all that kind of thing. We are fully insured in every way. No. But all the same- yes, the more I look at that photograph----" Hardcastle was less encouraged by this than he might have been. He put down Mrs. McNaughton, from the fund of his experience, as a woman who would be anxious for the excitement of having seen someone connected with murder. The longer she looked at the picture, the more sure she would be that she could remember someone just like it. He sighed. "He was driving a van, I believe," said Mrs. McNaughton. "But just when I saw him I can't remember. A baker's van, I think." "You didn't see him yesterday, did you, Mrs. McNaughton?" Mrs. McNaughton's face fell slightly. She pushed back her rather untidy grey waved hair from her forehead. "No. No, not yesterday,'9 she said. "A1 least----" she paused. "I don't think so." 146 Then she brightened a little. "Perhaps my husband will remember." "Is he at home?" "Oh, he's out in the garden." She pointed through the window where at this moment an elderly man was pushing a wheelbarrow along the path. "Perhaps we might go out and speak to him." "Of course. Come this way." She led the way out through a side door and into the garden. Mr. McNaughton was in a fine state of perspiration. "These gentlemen are from the police, Angus," said his wife breathlessly. "Come about the murder at Miss Pebmarsh's. There's a photograph they've got of the dead man. Do you know, I'm sure I've seen him somewhere. It wasn't the man, was it, who came last week and asked us if we had any antiques to dispose of?" "Let's see," said Mr. McNaughton. "Just liold it for me, will you," he said to Hardcastle. "My hands are too earthy to touch anything." He took a brief look and remarked, "Never seen that fellow in my life." "Your neighbour tells me you're very fond ^gardening," said Hardcastle. 147 "Who told you that--not Mrs. Ramsay?" "No. Mr. Bland." Angus McNaughton snorted. "Bland doesn't know what gardening means," he said. "Bedding out, that's all he does. Shoves in begonias and geraniums and lobelia edging. That's not what I call gardening. Might as well live in a public park. Are you interested in shrubs at all. Inspector? Of course, it's the wrong time of year now, but I've one or two shrubs here that you'd be surprised at my being able to grow. Shrubs that they say only do well in Devon and Cornwall." "I'm afraid I can't lay claim to being a practical gardener," said Hardcastle. McNaughton looked at him much as an artist looks at someone who says they know nothing of art but they know what they like. "I'm afraid I've called about a much less pleasant subject," Hardcastle said. "Of course. This business yesterday. I was out in the garden, you know, when it happened." "Indeed?" "Well, I mean I was here when the girl screamed." "What did you do?" 148 "Well," said Mr. McNaughton rather sheepishly, "I didn't do anything. As a matter of fact I thought it was those blasted Ramsay boys. Always yelling and screaming and making a noise." "But surely this scream didn't come from quite the same direction?" "Not if those blasted boys ever stayed in their own garden. But they don't, you know. They get through people's fences and hedges. They chase those wretched cats of Mrs. Hemming's all over the place. There's nobody to keep a firm hand on them, that's the trouble. Their mother's weak as water. Of course, when there's no man in the house, boys do get out of hand." "Mr. Ramsay is abroad a good deal I understand." "Construction engineer, I believe," said Mr. McNaughton vaguely. "Always going off somewhere. Dams, you know. I'm not swearing, my dear," he assured his wife. "I mean jobs to do with the building of dams, or else it's oil or pipelines or something like that. I don't really know. He had to go off to Sweden a month ago at a moment's notice. ^hat left the boys' mother with a lot to do-- Poking and housework and that--and, 149 well--of course they were bound to run wild They're not bad boys, mind you, but they need discipline." "You yourself didn't see anything--apart I mean from hearing the scream? When was that, by the way?" "No idea," said Mr. McNaughton. "I take my watch off always before I come out here. Ran the hose over it the other day and had quite a job getting it repaired afterwards. What time was it, my dear? You heard it, didn't you?" "It must have been half past two perhaps-- it was at least half an hour after we finished lunch." "I see. What time do you lunch?" "Half past one," said Mr. McNaughton, "if we're lucky. Our Danish girl has got no sense of time." "And afterwards--do you have a nap?" "Sometimes. I didn't yesterday. I wanted to get on with what I was doing. I was clearing away a lot of stuff, adding to the compost heap, and all that." "Wonderful thing, a compost heap," said Hardcastle, solemnly. Mr. McNaughton brightened immediately "Absolutely. Nothing like it. Ah! ^ 150 number of people I've converted. Using all these chemical manures! Suicide! Let me show you." He drew Hardcastle eagerly by the arm and trundling his barrow, went along the path to the edge of the fence that divided his garden from that of No. 19. Screened by lilac bushes, the compost heap was displayed in its glory. Mr. McNaughton wheeled the wheelbarrow to a small shed beside it. Inside the shed were several nicely arranged tools. "Very tidy you keep everything," remarked Hardcastle. "Got to take care of your tools," said McNaughton. Hardcastle was looking thoughtfully towards No. 19. On the other side of the fence was a rose pergola which led up to the side of the house. ("You didn't see anyone in the garden 3t Number 19 or looking out of the Window in the house, or anything like ^at while you were at your compost heap?" McNaughton shook his head. ^ "Didn't see anything at all," he said. ^ Sorry I can't help you. Inspector." You know, Angus," said his wife, "I i5i believe I did see a figure skulking in the garden of 19." "I don't think you did, my dear," said her husband firmly. "I didn't, either." "That woman would say she'd seen anything^ Hardcastle growled when they were back in the car. "You don't think she recognised the photograph?" Hardcastle shook his head. "I doubt it. She just wants to think she's seen him. I know that type of witness only too well. When I pinned her down to it, she couldn't give chapter or verse, could she?" "No. » "Of course she may have sat opposite him in a bus or something. I'll allow you that. But if you ask me, it's wishful thinking. What do you think?" "I think the same." "We didn't get much," Hardcastle sighed. "Of course there are things that seem queer. For instance, it seems almost impossible that Mrs. Hemming--no matter how wrapped up in her cats she is--should know so little about ; her neighbour. Miss Pebmarsh, as she does. And also that she should be so extremely vague and uninterested in the murder." 152 "She is a vague kind of woman." "Scatty!" said Hardcastle. "When you meet a scatty woman--well, fires, burglaries, murders can go on all round them and they wouldn't notice it." "She's very well fenced in with all that wire netting, and that Victorian shrubbery doesn't leave you much of a view." They had arrived back at the police station. Hardcastle grinned at his friend and said, "Well, Sergeant Lamb, I can let you go off duty now." „ "No more visits to pay?" 1 "Not just now. I must pay one more later, but I'm not taking you with me." ' "Well, thanks for this morning. Can you get these notes of mine typed up?" He handed them over. - "Inquest is the day after to-morrow you |id? What time?" - "Eleven." "Right. I'll be back for it." "Are you going away?" "I've got to go up to London tomorrow-- ^ake my report up to date." "I can guess who to." "You're not allowed to do that." K Hardcastle grinned. i53 "Give the old boy my love." "Also, I may be going to see a specialist," said Colin. "A specialist? What for? What's wrong with you?" "Nothing—bar thick-headedness. I don't mean that kind of a specialist. One in your line." "Scotland Yard?" "No. A private detective—a friend of my Dad's—and a friend of mine. This fantastic business of yours will be just down his street. He'll love it—it will cheer him up. I've an idea he needs cheering up." "What's his name?" "Hercule Poirot." "I've heard of him. I thought he was dead." "He's not dead. But I have a feeling he's bored. That's worse." Hardcastle looked at him curiously. "You're an odd fellow, Colin. You make such unlikely friends." "Including you," Colin said, and grinned. 154 CHAPTER 12 laving dismissed Colin, Inspector Hardcastle looked at the address neatly written in this note-book and nodded his head. Then he slipped the book back in his pocket and started to deal with the routine matters that tiad piled up on his desk. It was a busy day for him. He sent out for coffee and sandwiches, and received reports from Sergeant Cray--no helpful lead had come up. Nobody at the railway station or buses had recognised the photograph of Mr. Curry. The laboratory reports on clothing idded up to nil. The suit had been made by t good tailor, but the tailor's name had been "emoved. Desire for anonymity on the part if Mr. Curry? Or on the part of his killer. )etails of dentistry had been circulated to he proper quarters and were probably the tiost helpful leads--it took a little time--but t got results in the end. Unless, of course, ^ir. Curry had been a foreigner? Hardcastle onsidered the idea. There might be a 'ossibility that the dead man was French-- n the other hand his clothes were definitely " 155 not French. No laundry marks had helped yet. Hardcastle was not impatient. Identification was quite often a slow job. But in the end, someone always came forward. A laundry, a dentist, a doctor, a landlady. The picture of the dead man would be circulated to police stations, would be reproduced in newspapers. Sooner or later, Mr. Curry would be known in his rightful identity. In the meantime there was work to be done, and not only on the Curry case. Hardcastle worked without a break until half past five. He looked at his wrist-watch again and decided the time was ripe for the call he f wanted to make. i Sergeant Cray had reported that Sheila i Webb had resumed work at the Cavendish Bureau, and that at five o'clock she would be [ working with Professor Purdy at the Curlew \ Hotel and that she was very unlikely to leave there until well after six. What was the aunt's name again? Lawton --Mrs. Lawton. 14, Palmerston Road. He did not take a police car but chose to walk the short distance. Palmerston Road was a gloomy street that had known, as is said, better days. The 156 i houses, Hardcastle noted, had been mainly converted into flats or maisonettes. As he turned the corner, a girl who was approaching him along the sidewalk hesitated for a moment. His mind occupied, the inspector had some momentary idea that she was going to ask him the way to somewhere. However, fthat was so, the girl thought better of it and resumed her walk past him. He wondered why the idea of shoes came into his mind so suddenly. Shoes . . . No, one shoe. The girl's face was faintly familiar to him. Who was it now--someone he had seen just lately . . . Perhaps she had recognised him and was about to speak to him? He paused for a moment, looking back after her. She was walking quite fast now. The trouble was, he thought, she had one of those indeterminate faces that are very hard to recognise unless there is some special reason for doing so. Blue eyes, fair complexion, slightly open mouth. Mouth. That recalled something also. Something that she'd ^een doing with her mouth? Talking? Put- ^ng on lipstick? No. He felt slightly annoyed ^th himself. Hardcastle prided himself on ^s recognition of faces. He never forgot, ^d been apt to say, a face he had seen in the 157 dock or in the witness-box, but there were after all other places of contact. He would not be likely to remember, for instance, every waitress who had ever served him. He would not remember every bus conductress. He dismissed the matter from his mind. He had arrived now at No. 14. The door stood ajar and there were four bells with names underneath. Mrs. Lawton, he saw, had a flat on the ground floor. He went in and pressed the bell on the door on the left of the hall. It was a few moments before it was answered. Finally he heard steps inside and the door was opened by a tall, thin woman with straggling dark hair who had on an overall and seemed a little short of breath. The smell of onions wafted along from the direction of what was obviously the kitchen. "Mrs. Lawton?" "Yes?" She looked at him doubtfully, with slight annoyance. She was, he thought, about forty-five. Something faintly gipsyish about her appearance. "What is it?" "I should be glad if you could spare me a moment or two." "Well, what about? I'm really rather busy 158 ^ just now." She added sharply, "You're not a reporter, are you?" "Of course," said Hardcastle, adopting a nnpathetic tone, "I expect you've been good deal worried by reporters." "Indeed we have. Knocking at the door id ringing the bell and asking all sorts of foolish questions." "Very annoying I know," said the inspector. "I wish we could spare you all that, Mrs. Lawton. I am Detective Inspector Hardcastle, by the way, in charge of the case about which the reporters have been annoying you. We'd put a stop to a good deal of that if we could, but we're powerless in the matter, you know. The Press has its rights." "It's a shame to worry private people as tiey do," said Mrs. Lawton, "saying they Lave to have news for the public. The only tiing I've ever noticed about the news that ^iey print is that it's a tissue of lies from beginning to end. They'll cook up anything so far as I can see. But come in." She stepped back and the inspector passed over the door-step and she shut the door. ^here were a couple of letters which had len on the mat. Mrs. Lawton bent forward pick them up, but the inspector politely 159 forestalled her. His eyes swept over them for half a second as he handed them to her, addresses uppermost. "Thank you." She laid them down on the hall table. "Come into the sitting-room, won't you? At least--if you go in this door and give me just a moment. I think something's boiling over." She beat a speedy retreat to the kitchen. Inspector Hardcastle took a last deliberate look at the letters on the hall table. One was addressed to Mrs. Lawton and the two others to Miss R. S. Webb. He went into the room indicated. It was a small room, rather untidy, shabbily furnished but here and there it displayed some bright spot of colour or some unusual object. An attractive, probably expensive piece of Venetian glass of moulded colours and an abstract shape, two brightly coloured velvet cushions and an earthenware platter of foreign shells. Either the aunt or the niece, he thought, had an j[ original streak in her makeup. Mrs. Lawton returned, slightly more breathless than before. "I think that'll be all right now," she said, rather uncertainly. 160 , The inspector apologised again. "I'm sorry if I've called at an inconvenient time," he said, "but I happened to be in this neighbourhood and I wanted to check over a few further points about this affair in which your niece was so unfortunately concerned. I hope she's none the worse for her experience? It must have been a great shock to ^anygirl." } "Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lawton. "Sheila came back in a terrible state. But she was all right by this morning and she's gone back to work again." "Oh, yes, I know that," said the inspector. "But I was told she was out doing work for a client somewhere and I didn't want to interrupt anything of that kind so I thought it would be better if I came round here and talked to her in her own home. But she's not back yet, is that it?" "She'll probably be rather late this evening," said Mrs. Lawton. "She's working for a Professor Purdy and from what Sheila ^ys, he's a man with no idea of time at all. Always says 'this won't take more than bother ten minutes so I think we might as we!! get it finished,' and then of course it ^kes nearer to three-quarters of an hour. 161 He's a very nice man and most apologetic. Once or twice he's urged her to stay and have dinner and seemed quite concerned because he's kept her so much longer than he realised. Still, it is rather annoying sometimes. Is there something I can tell you. Inspector? In case Sheila is delayed a long time." "Well, not really," said the inspector smiling. "Of course, we only took down the bare details the other day and I'm not sure really whether I've even got those right." He made a show of consulting his notebook once more. "Let me see. Miss Sheila Webb-- is that her full name or has she another Christian name? We have to have these things very exact, you know, for the records at the inquest." "The inquest is the day after tomorrow, isn't it? She got a notice to attend." "Yes, but she needn't let that worry her," said Hardcastle. "She'll just have to tell her story of how she found the body." » "You don't know who the man was yet?" "No. I'm afraid it's early days for that. There was a card in his pocket and we thought at first he was some kind o^ insurance agent. But it seems more likely now that it was a card he'd been given by 162 someone. Perhaps he was contemplating insurance himself." "Oh, I see." Mrs. Lawton looked vaguely interested. s "Now I'll just get these names right," said the inspector. "I think I've got it down as Miss Sheila Webb or Miss Sheila R. Webb. I just couldn't remember what the other name was. Was it Rosalie?" "Rosemary," said Mrs. Lawton, "she was christened Rosemary Sheila but Sheila always thought Rosemary was rather fanciful so she's never called anything but Sheila." "I see." There was nothing in Hardcastle's tone to show that he was pleased that one of his hunches had come out right. He noted another point. The name Rosemary occasioned no distress in Mrs. Lawton. To her Rosemary was simply a Christian name that her niece did not use. "I've got it straight now all right," said the inspector smiling. "I gather that your niece came from London and has been working for the Cavendish Bureau for the last ten months or so. You don't know the exact date, I suppose?" "Well, really, I couldn't say now. ft was last November some time. I 163 think more towards the end of November." "Quite so. It doesn't really matter. She was not living with you here previously to taking the job at the Cavendish Bureau?" "No. She was living in London before that." "Have you got her address in London?" "Well, I've got it somewhere," Mrs. Lawton looked round her with the vague expression of the habitually untidy. "I've got such a short memory," she said. "Something like Allington Grove, I think it was- out Fulham way. She shared a flat with two other girls. Terribly expensive rooms are in London for girls." "Do you remember the name of the firm she worked at there?" "Oh, yes. Hopgood and Trent. They were estate agents in the Fulham Road." "Thank you. Well all that seems very clear. Miss Webb is an orphan, I understand?" "Yes," said Mrs. Lawton. She moved uneasily. Her eyes strayed to the door. "Do you mind if I just go into the kitchen again?' "Of course." He opened the door for her. She went out. He wondered if he had been right or wrong 164 ^|n thinking that his last question had in some way perturbed Mrs. Lawton. Her replies had come quite readily and easily up to then. He R ought about it until Mrs. Lawton returned. "I'm so sorry," she said, apologetically, "but you know what it is—cooking things. Everything's quite all right now. Was there anything else you want to ask me? I've remembered, by the way, it wasn't Allington Grove. It was Carrington Grove and the number was 17." "Thank you," said the inspector. "I think I was asking you whether Miss Webb was an orphan." I "Yes, she's an orphan. Her parents are dead." "Long ago?" "They died when she was a child." There was something like defiance just perceptible in her tone. "Was she your sister's child or your brother's?" "My sister's." "Ah, yes. And what was Mr. Webb's Profession?" ^rs. Lawton paused a moment before ^swering. She was biting her lips. Then she sai^ "I don't know." 165 think more towards the end of November." "Quite so. It doesn't really matter. She was not living with you here previously to taking the job at the Cavendish Bureau?" "No. She was living in London before that." "Have you got her address in London?" "Well, I've got it somewhere," Mrs. Lawton looked round her with the vague expression of the habitually untidy. "I've got such a short memory," she said. "Something like Allington Grove, I think it was- out Fulham way. She shared a flat with two other girls. Terribly expensive rooms are in London for girls." "Do you remember the name of the firm she worked at there?" "Oh, yes. Hopgood and Trent. They were estate agents in the Fulham Road." "Thank you. Well all that seems very clear. Miss Webb is an orphan, I understand?" "Yes," said Mrs. Lawton. She moved uneasily. Her eyes strayed to the door. "Do you mind if I just go into the kitchen again?" "Of course." He opened the door for her. She went out. He wondered if he had been right or wrong 164 bp thinking that his last question had in some j^ay perturbed Mrs. Lawton. Her replies had come quite readily and easily up to then. He thought about it until Mrs. Lawton returned. "I'm so sorry," she said, apologetically, "but you know what it is—cooking things. Everything's quite all right now. Was there anything else you want to ask me? I've remembered, by the way, it wasn't Allington Grove. It was Carrington Grove and the number was 17." "Thank you," said the inspector. "I think I was asking you whether Miss Webb was an orphan." "Yes, she's an orphan. Her parents are dead." j "Long ago?" I "They died when she was a child." There was something like defiance just perceptible in her tone. "Was she your sister's child or your brother's?" "My sister's." "Ah, yes. And what was Mi. Webb's Profession?" Mrs. Lawton paused a moment before answering. She was biting her lips. Then she sa^, "I don't know." 165 "You don't know?" "I mean I don't remember, it's so long ago." Hardcastle waited, knowing that she would speak again. She did. "May I ask what all this has got to do with it--I mean what does it matter who her father and mother were and what her father did and where he came from or anything like that?" "I suppose it doesn't matter really, Mrs. Lawton, not from your point of view, that is. But you see, the circumstances are rather unusual." "What do you mean--the circumstances are unusual?" "Well, we have reason to believe that Miss Webb went to that house yesterday because she had been specially asked for at the Cavendish Bureau by name. It looks therefore as though someone had deliberately arranged for her to be there. Someone perhaps----" he hesitated "----with a grudge against her." "I can't imagine that anyone could have a grudge against Sheila. She's a very sweet girl. A nice friendly girl." "Yes," said Hardcastle mildly. "That's 166 what I should have thought myself." "And I don't like to hear anybody suggesting the contrary," said Mrs. Lawton belligerently. "Exactly." Hardcastle continued to smile appeasingly. "But you must realise, Mrs. Lawton, that it looks as though your niece has been deliberately made a victim. She was being, as they say on the films, put on the spot. Somebody was arranging for her to go into a house where there was a dead man, and that dead man had died very recently. It seems on the face of it a malicious thing to do." ( "You mean--you mean someone was trying to make it appear that Sheila killed [him? Oh, no, I can't believe it." "It is rather difficult to believe," agreed the inspector, "but we've got to make quite sure and clear up the matter. Could there be, for instance, some young man, someone perhaps who had fallen in love with your niece, and whom she, perhaps, did not care for? Young men sometimes do some very bitter and revengeful things, especially if they're rather ill-balanced." "I don't think it could be anything of that l^ind," said Mrs. Lawton, puckering her eyes 167 in thought and frowning. "Sheila has had one or two boys she's been friendly with, but there's been nothing serious. Nobody steady of any kind." "It might have been while she was living in London?" the inspector suggested. "After all, I don't suppose you know very much about what friends she had there." "No, no, perhaps not. .. Well, you'll have to ask her about that yourself. Inspector Hardcastle. But I never heard of any trouble of any kind." "Or it might have been another girl," suggested Hardcastle. "Perhaps one of the girls she shared rooms with there was jealous of her?" "I suppose," said Mrs. Lawton doubtfully, "that there might be a girl who'd want to do her a bad turn. But not involving murder, surely." It was a shrewd appreciation and Hardcastle noted that MrSw Lawton was by no means a fool. He said quickly: "I know it all sounds most unlikely, but then this whole business is unlikely." "It must have been someone mad," said Mrs. Lawton. "Even in madness," said Hardcastle? 168 "there's a definite idea behind the madness, you know. Something that's given rise to it. And that really," he went on, "is why I was asking you about Sheila Webb's father and mother. You'd be surprised how often motives arise that have their roots in the past. ,> Since Miss Webb's father and mother died when she was a young child, naturally she can't tell me anything about them. That's why I'm applying to you." "Yes, I see, but—well. . ." He noted that the trouble and uncertainty were back in her voice. "Were they killed at the same time, in an accident, anything like that?" "No, there was no accident." "They both died from natural causes?" "I—well, yes, I mean—I don't really know." "I think you must know a little more than you are telling me, Mrs. Lawton." He hazarded a guess. "Were they, perhaps, divorced—something of that kind?" "No, they weren't divorced." "Come now, Mrs. Lawton. You know— You must know of what your sister died?" "I don't see what—I mean, I can't say— '^s all very difficult. Raking up things. It's 169 much better not raking them up." There was a kind of desperate perplexity in her glance. Hardcastle looked at her keenly. Then he said gently, "Was Sheila Webb perhaps--an illegitimate child?" He saw immediately a mixture of consternation and relief in her face. "She's not my child," she said. "She is your sister's illegitimate child?" "Yes. But she doesn't know it herself. I've never told her. I told her her parents died young. So that's why--well, you see . . ." "Oh, yes, I see," said the inspector, "and I assure you that unless something comes of this particular line of inquiry there is no need for me to question Miss Webb on this subject." "You mean you needn't tell her?" "Not unless there is some relevance to the case, which, I may say, seems unlikely. But I do want all the facts that you know, Mrs. Lawton, and I assure you that I'll do my best to keep what you tell me entirely between ourselves." "It's not a nice thing to happen," said Mrs. Lawton, "and I was very distressed about it, I can tell you. My sister, you see, had always been the clever one of the family' 170 She was a school teacher and doing very well. Highly respected and everything else. The last person you'd ever think would——" "Well," said the inspector, tactfully, "it often happens that way. She got to know this man—this Webb——" "I never even knew what his name was," said Mrs. Lawton. "I never met him. But she came to me and told me what had happened. That she was expecting a child and that the man couldn't, or wouldn't—I never knew which—marry her. She was unbitious and it would have meant giving up er job if the whole thing came out. So aturally I—I said I'd help." "Where is your sister now, Mrs. Lawton?" "I've no idea. Absolutely no idea at all." (he was emphatic. "She's alive, though." "I suppose so." "But you haven't kept in touch with her?" "That's the way she wanted it. She iought it was best for the child and best for •t that there should be a clean break. So it as fixed that way. We both had a little 'come of our own that our mother left us. An turned her half-share over to me to be fed for the child's bringing up and keep. 171 "Where was all this? Not here in Crow.s. y X-' w. He looked at her thoughtfully. Was that really all she knew? It was a difficult question to answer with any certainty. It was certainly all that she meant to tell him. It might very killed in the war. I kept a small sweetshop at well be all she knew. Slight as the references the time." to the sister had been, Hardcastle got an "w" impression of a forceful, bitter, angry personality. The sort of woman who was determined not to have her life blasted by the time. I came here in the holidays once one mistake. In a cold hard-headed way she and I liked it so much that I sold the shop had provided for the upkeep and presumable md came here to live. Later, when Sheila happiness of her child. From that moment ^as old enough to go to school I took a ;ob on she had cut herself adrift to start life in Roscoe and West. the bu? draners here. again on her own. y°u know. I still It was conceivable, he thought, that she pleasant people. - - - -» ----l->nt tciirr 11 n i - Lincolnshire at AL ac^l.no wj.u |.j.j.u.« .---_ _ keep in touch with you by letter, did not want to know how the child was progressing?' Mrs. Lawton shook her head. 172 Roscoe and West, the big drapers here, I still work there. They're very U.L lltl Oi.oi.^.1. .«» "----- ---- " i pt I - It seems odd that she did not at leasi your frankness in what you have told me. i - -.«- iTrlfltl "A-- -!_____ ____ „ ?^_ _______ i f . . t^i i continue with her probut she would change She was going to fession, she said, x^ljuxv^a.aj w-- _ ^ schools. There was some idea, I believe, of a year's exchange with a teacher abroad. Australia or somewhere. That's all I know, Inspector Hardcastle, and that's all I can tell you." XL Wtto ^v&j.^>w^ t »«,---_, __ _ might feel like that about the child. But what about her sister? He said mildly: j « "Not if you knew Ann," she said. "She ras always very clear-cut in her decisions. A-nd then she and I weren't very close. I was younger than she was by a good deal-- twelve years. As I say, we were never very close." "And what did your husband feel about this adoption?" "I was a widow then," said Mrs. Lawton. "I married young and my husband was clean." "No. We were living in "Well," said Hardcastle, rising to his feet, thank you very much, Mrs. Lawton, for ?» And you won't say a word of it to Sheila ?" "Not unless it should become necessary, ^d that would only happen if some i73 iUiHiHiHi^^lHit'fiw'iimiwMttM* ---^_ --------------------circumstances out of the past proved to have been connected with this murder at 19, Wilbraham Crescent. And that, I think, is unlikely." He took the photograph from his pocket which he had been showing to so many people, and showed it to Mrs. Lawton. "You've no idea who this man could be?" "They've shown it me already," said Mrs. Lawton. She took it and scrutinised it earnestly. "No. I'm sure, quite sure I've never seen this man before. I don't think he belonged round here or I might have remembered seeing him about. Of course----" she looked closely. She paused a moment before adding, rather unexpectedly, "He looks a nice man I think. A gentleman, I'd say, wouldn't you?" It was a slightly outmoded term in the inspector's experience, yet it fell very naturally from Mrs. Lawton's lips. "Brought up in the country," he thought. "They still think of things that way." He looked at the photograph again himself reflecting, with faint surprise, that he had not thought of the dead man in quite that way. Was he a ni^ man? He had been assuming just the contrary. Assuming it unconsciously perhaps, ^ influenced perhaps by the fact that the nia° 174 had a card in his pocket which bore a name and an address which were obviously false. But the explanation he had given to Mrs. Lawton just now might have been the true one. It might have been that the card did represent some bogus insurance agent who had pressed the card upon the dead man. And that, he thought wryly, would really make the whole thing even more difficult. He glanced at his watch again. "I mustn't keep you from your cooking any longer," he said, "since your niece is not home yet----" Mrs. Lawton in turn looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Only one clock in this room, thank heaven," thought the inspector to himself. I "Yes, she is late," she remarked. "Surprising really. It's a good thing Edna didn't wait." Seeing a slightly puzzled expression on lardcastle's face, she explained. "It's just one of the girls from the office. he came here to see Sheila this evening and she waited a bit but after a while she said she ^uldn't wait any longer. She'd got a date ^th someone. She said it would do to- orrow, or some other time." i75 Enlightenment came to the inspector. The girl he had passed in the street! He knew now why she'd made him think of shoes. Of course. It was the girl who had received him in the Cavendish Bureau and the girl who, when he left, had been holding up a shoe with a stiletto heel torn off it, and had been discussing in unhappy puzzlement how on earth she was going to get home like that. A nondescript kind of girl, he remembered, not very attractive, sucking some kind of sweet as she talked. She had recognised him when she passed him in the street, although he had not recognised her. She had hesitated, too, as though she thought of speaking to him. He wondered rather idly what she had wanted to say. Had she wanted to explain why she was calling on Sheila Webb or had she thought he would expect her to say something? He asked: "Is she a great friend of your niece's?" "Well, not particularly," said Mrs. Lawton. "I mean they work in the same office and all that, but she's rather a dull girl. Not very bright and she and Sheila aren't particular friends. In fact, I wondered why she was so keen to see Sheila to-night. She said it was something she couldn't understand 176 and that she wanted to ask Sheila about it." I "She didn't tell you what it was?" "No, she said it would keep and it didn't matter." "I see. Well, I must be going." "It's odd," said Mrs. Lawton, "that Sheila hasn't telephoned. She usually does if she's late, because the professor sometimes asks her to stay to dinner. Ah, well, I expect she'll be here any moment now. There are a lot of bus queues sometimes and the Curlew Hotel is quite a good way along the Esplanade. There's nothing--no message--you want to leave for Sheila?" 'T think not," said the inspector. As he went out he asked, "By the way, who chose your niece's Christian names. Rosemary and Sheila? Your sister or yourself?" "Sheila was our mother's name. Rosemary was my sister's choice. Funny name to choose really. Fanciful. And yet my sister wasn't fanciful or sentimental in any way." "Well, good night, Mrs. Lawton." As the inspector turned the corner from ^e gateway into the street he thought, "Rose- mary--hm . . . Rosemary for remembrance. romantic remembrance? Or--something quite different?" i77 CHAPTER 13 COLIN LAMB'S NARRATIVE I walked up Charing Cross Road and turned into the maze of streets that twist their way between New Oxford Street and Covent Garden. All sorts of unsuspected shops did business there, antique shops, a dolls' hospital, ballet shoes, foreign delicatessen shops. I resisted the lure of the dolls' hospital with its various pairs of blue or brown glass eyes, and came at last to my objective. It was a small dingy bookshop in a side street not far from the British Museum. It had the usual trays of books outside. Ancient novels, old text books, odds and ends of all kinds, labelled 3d., 6d., is., even some aristocrats which had nearly all their pages, and occasionally even their binding intact. I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle since precariously arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passageway from the street. Inside, i1 was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere 178 Ithey had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down. The distance between bookshelves was so narrow that you could only get along with great difficulty. There were piles of books perched on every shelf or table. On a stool in a corner, hemmed in by books, was an old man in a pork-pie hat with a large flat face like a stuffed fish. He had the air of one who has given up an unequal struggle. He had attempted to master the books, but the books had obviously succeeded in mastering him. He was a kind of King Canute of the book world, retreating before the advancing book tide. If he ordered it to retreat it would have been with the sure and hopeless certainty that it would not do so. This was Mr. Soloman, proprietor of the shop. He recognised me, his fishlike stare softened for a moment and he nodded. "Got anything in my line?" I asked. "You'll have to go up and see, Mr. Lamb. Still on seaweeds and that stuff?" I "That's right." "Well, you know where they are. Marine biology, fossils--Antarctica second floor. I lad a new parcel in day before yesterday. I 179 started to unpack 'em but I haven't got round to it properly yet. You'll find them in a corner up there." I nodded and sidled my way onwards to where a small rather rickety and very dirty staircase led up from the back of the shop. On the first floor were Orientalia, art books, medicine, and French classics. In this room was a rather interesting little curtained corner not known to the general public, but accessible to experts, where what is called "odd" or "curious" volumes reposed. I passed them and went on up to the second floor. Here archaeological, natural history, and other respectable volumes were rather inadequately sorted into categories. I steered my way through students and elderly colonels and clergymen, passed round the angle of a bookcase, stepped over various gaping parcels of books on the floor and found my further progress barred by two students of opposite sexes lost to the world in a closely knit embrace. They stood there swaying to and fro. I said: "Excuse me," pushed them firmly aside, raised a curtain which masked a door, and slipping a key from my pocket, turned it i11 180 I the lock and passed through. I found myself incongruously in a kind of vestibule with cleanly distempered walls hung with prints of Highland cattle, and a door with a highly polished knocker on it. I manipulated the knocker discreetly and the door was opened by an elderly woman with grey hair, spectacles of a particularly old-fashioned kind, a black skirt and a rather unexpected peppermint-striped jumper. "It's you, is it?" she said without any other form of greeting. "He was asking about you only yesterday. He wasn't pleased." She shook her head at me, rather as an elderly governess might do at a disappointing child. "You'll have to try and do better," she said. "Oh, come off it. Nanny," I said. "And don't call me Nanny," said the lady. It's a cheek. I've told you so before." "It's your fault," I said. "You mustn't ilk to me as if I were a small boy." "Time you grew up. You'd better go in and get it over." She pressed a buzzer, picked up a tele»hone from the desk, and said, "Mr. Colin . . . Yes, I'm sending him in." »he put it down and nodded to me. 181 I went through a door at the end of the room into another room which was so full of cigar smoke that it was difficult to see anything at all. After my smarting eyes had cleared, I beheld the ample proportions of my chief sitting back in an aged, derelict grandfather chair, by the arm of which was an old-fashioned reading- or writing-desk on a swivel. Colonel Beck took off his spectacles, pushed aside the reading-desk on which was a vast tome and looked disapprovingly at me. "So it's you at last?" he said. "Yes, sir," I said. "Got anything?" "No, sir." "Ah! Well, it won't do, Colin, d'you hear? Won't do. Crescents indeed!" "I still think," I began. "All right. You still think. But we can't wait for ever while you're thinking." "I'll admit it was only a hunch," I said. "No harm in that," said Colonel Beck. He was a contradictory man. "Best jobs I've ever done have been hunches. Only this hunch of yours doesn't seem to be working out. Finished with the pubs?" 182 S "Yes, sir. As I told you I've started on escents. Houses in crescents is what I ;an." ; tedly. "You mind your step, my boy! Sex rearing its ugly head as usual. How long have you known her?" ,' "There isn't any--I mean--well--there f was a girl who discovered the body." ) "What did she do when she discovered it?" \ "Screamed." "Very nice too," said the colonel. "She rushed to you, cried on your shoulder and tolc[you about it. Is that it?" "I don't know what you're talking about," I said coldly. "Have a look at these." I gave him a selection of the police photographs. "Who's this?" demanded Colonel Beck. "The dead man." "Ten to one this girl you're so keen about killed him. The whole story sounds very fishy to me." 188 "You haven't even heard it yet," I said. 'I haven't told it to you." "I don't need telling," Colonel Beck waved its cigar. "Go away to your inquest, my boy, nd look out for that girl. Is her name Diana, of Artemis, or anything crescenty or moonike?" "No, it isn't." "Well, remember that it might be!" 189 CHAPTER 14 COLIN LAMB'S NARRATIVE It had been quite a long time since I had > visited Whitehaven Mansions. Some years • ago it had been an outstanding building of modem flats. Now there were many other more imposing and even more modern blocks of buildings flanking it on either side. Inside, I noted, it had recently had a face lift. It had been repainted in pale shades of yellow and green. I went up in the lift and pressed the bell of Number 203. It was opened to me by that impeccable man-servant, George. A smile of welcome came to his face. "Mr. Colin! It's a long time since we've seen you here." "Yes, I know. How are you, George?" "I am in good health, I am thankful to say, sir." I lowered my voice. "And how's he?" George lowered his own voice, hardly necessary as it had been pitched in a discreet key from the beginning of our conversation. 190 "I think, sir, that sometimes he gets a little depressed." I nodded sympathetically. "If you will come this way, sir——" He relieved me of my hat. "Announce me, please, as Mr. Colin Lamb." "Very good, sir." He opened a door and spoke in a clear voice. "Mr. Colin Lamb to see you sir." He drew back to allow me to pass him and I went into the room. My friend, Hercule Poirot, was sitting in his usual large, square armchair in front of the fireplace. I noted that one bar of the rectangular electric fire glowed red. It was early September, the weather was warm, but Poirot was one of the first men to recognise the autumn chill, and to take precautions against it. On either side of him on the floor (is a neat pile of books. More books stood the table at his left side. At his right hand is a cup from which steam rose. A tisane, I suspected. He was fond of tisanes and often ^ged them on me. They were nauseating to taste and pungent to smell. "Don't get up," I said, but Poirot was ^ready on his feet. He came towards me on 191 twinkling, patent-leather shod feet with outstretched hands. "Aha, so it is you, it is you, my friend! My young friend Colin. But why do you call yourself by the name of Lamb ? Let me think now. There is a proverb or a saying. Something about mutton dressed as lamb. No. That is what is said of elderly ladies who are trying to appear younger than they are. That does not apply to you. Aha, I have it. You are a wolf in sheep's clothing. Is that it?" "Not even that," I said. "It's just that in my line of business I thought my own name might be rather a mistake, that it might be connected too much with my old man. Hence, Lamb. Short, simple, easily remembered. Suiting, I natter myself, my personality." "Of that I cannot be sure," said Poirot, "and how is my good friend, your father?" "The old man's fine," I said. "Very busy with the hollyhocks--or is it chrysanthemums ? The seasons go by so fast I can never remember what it is at the moment." "He busies himself then, with the horticulture?" "Everyone seems to come to that in the end," I said. 192 r "Not me," said Hercule Poirot. "Once the vegetable marrows, yes--but never again. If you want the best flowers, why not go to the florist's shop? I thought the good Superintendent was going to write his memoirs?" "He started," I said, "but he found that so much would have to be left out that he finally came to the conclusion that what was left in would be so unbearably tame as not to be worth writing." "One has to have the discretion, yes. It is unfortunate," said Poirot, "because your father could tell some very interesting things. I have much admiration for him. I always had. You know, his methods were to me very interesting. He was so straightforward. He used the obvious as no man has used it before. He would set the trap, the very obvious trap and the people he wished to catch would say 'it is too obvious, that. It cannot be true' and so they fell into it!" I laughed. "Well," I said, "it's not the fashion nowadays for sons to admire their fathers. Most of them seem to sit down, venom in their pens, and remember all the dirty things they can and put them down ^ith obvious satisfaction. But personally, we got enormous respect for my old man. I 193 hope I'll even be as good as he was. Not that I'm exactly in his line of business, of course." "But related to it," said Poirot. "Closely related to it, though you have to work behind the scenes in a way that he did not." He coughed delicately. "I think I am to congratulate you on having had a rather spectacular success lately. Is it not so? The affaire Larking "It's all right so far as it goes," I said. "But there's a good deal more that I'd like to have, just to round it off properly. Still, that isn't really what I came here to talk to you about." "Of course not, of course not," said Poirot. He waved me to a chair and offered me some tisane, which I instantly refused. George entered at the apposite moment with a whisky decanter, a glass and a siphon which he placed at my elbow. "And what are you doing with yourself these days?" I asked Poirot. Casting a look at the various books around him I said: "It looks as though you are doing a little research?" Poirot sighed. "You may call it that. Yes, perhaps in a way it is true. Lately I have felt very badly the need for a problem. ^ 194 does not matter, I said to myself, what the problem is. It can be like the good Sherlock Holmes, the depth at which the parsley has sunk in the butter. All that matters is that there should be a problem. It is not the muscles I need to exercise, you see, it is the cells of the brain." "Just a question of keeping fit. I understand." "As you say." He sighed. "But problems, won cher, are not so easy to come by. It is true that last Thursday one presented itself to me. The unwarranted appearance of three pieces of dried orange peel in my umbrella stand. How did they come there? How could they have come there? I do not eat oranges fciyself. George would never put old pieces >f orange peel in the umbrella stand. Nor is visitor likely to bring with him three pieces >f orange peel. Yes, it was quite a problem." "And you solved it?" "I solved it," said Poirot. He spoke with more melancholy than Pride. "It was not in the end very interesting. A question of a remplacement of the usual Leaning woman and the new one brought ^th her, strictly against orders, one of her 195 children. Although it does not sound interesting, nevertheless it needed a steady penetration of lies, camouflage and all the rest of it. It was satisfactory, shall we say, but not important." "Disappointing," I suggested. "Enfin^ said Poirot, <f recognition." "Clocks?" I suggested hopefully. "Bogus nsurance agents?" "No, no," Poirot shook his head. "Blind women?" "No, no, no. Do not confuse me." "I'm disappointed in you, Poirot," I said. "I thought you'd give me the answer straight away." "But, my friend, at present you have presented me only with a pattern. There are many more things to find out. Presumably this man will be identified. In that kind of thing the police are excellent. They have their criminal records, they can advertise the man's picture, they have access to a list of missing persons, there is scientific examination of the dead man's clothing, and so on and so on. Oh, yes, there are a hundred other ways and means at their disposal. Undoubtedly, this man will be identified." "So there's nothing to do at the moment. Is that what you think?" "There is always something to do," said ercule Poirot, severely. "Such as?" He wagged an emphatic forefinger at me. 209 "Talk to the neighbours," he said. "I've done that," I said. "I went with Hardcastle when he was questioning them. They don't know anything useful." "Ah, tcha, tcha, that is what you think. But I assure you, that cannot be so. You go to them, you ask them: 'Have you seen anything suspicious?' and they say no, and you think that that is all there is to it. But that is not what I mean when I say talk to the neighbours. I say talk to them. Let them talk to you. And from their conversation always, somewhere, you will find a clue. They may be talking about their gardens or their pets or their hairdressing or their dressmaker, or their friends, or the kind of food they like. Always somewhere there will be a word that sheds light. You say there was nothing in those conversations that was useful. I say that cannot be so. If you could repeat them to me word for word . . ." "Well, that's practically what I can do," I said. "I took shorthand transcripts of what was said, acting in my role of assistant police officer. I've had them transcribed and typed and I've brought them along to you. Here they are." "Ah, but you are a good boy, you are a ^li , 210 FR1;very good boy indeed! What you have done is exactly right. Exactly. Je vous remercie infiniment" I felt quite embarrassed. "Have you any more suggestions?" I asked. "Yes, always I have suggestions. There is this girl. You can talk to thib girl. Go and see her. Already you are friends, are you not? Have you not clasped her in'your arms when she flew from the house in terror?" "You've been affected by reading Garry Gregson," I said. "You've caught the melodramatic style." "Perhaps you are right," Poirot admitted. "One gets infected, it is true, by the style of a work that one has been reading." "As for the girl----" I said, then paused. I Poirot looked at me inquiringly. "Yes?" he said. "I shouldn't like--I don't want..." "Ah, so that is it. At the back of your mind you think she is concerned somehow in this case." "No, I don't. It was absolutely pure chance that she happened to be there." "No, no, mon ami, it was not pure chance. ^ou know that very well. You've told me so. She was specially asked for over the phone." I 211 "But she doesn't know why." "You cannot be sure that she does not know why. Very likely she does know why and is hiding the fact." "I don't think so," I said obstinately. "It is even possible you may find out why by talking to her, even if she herself does not realise the truth." "I don't see very well how—I mean—1 hardly know her." Hercule Poirot shut his eyes again. "There is a time," he said, "in the course of an attraction between two persons of the opposite sex, when that particular statement is bound to be true. She is an attractive girl, I suppose?" "Well—yes," I said, "Quite attractive." "You will talk to her," Poirot ordered, "because you are already friends, and you will go and see again this blind woman with some excuse. And you will talk to her. And you will go to the typewriting bureau on the pretence perhaps of having some manuscript typed. You will make friends, perhaps, with one of the other young ladies who works there. You will talk to all these people and then you will come and see me again and you will tell me all the things that they will say." »? 212 "Have mercy!" I said. "Not at all," said Poirot, "you will enjoy it." 1 "You don't seem to realise that I've got my own work to do." t "You will work all the better for having a certain amount of relaxation," Poirot assured me. I got up and laughed. "Well," I said, "you're the doctor! Any more words of wisdom for me? What do you feel about this strange business of the clocks?" Poirot leaned back in his chair again and closed his eyes. The words he then spoke were quite unexpected. " ''The time has come, the Walrus said, To talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, And cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings.9 " He opened his eyes again and nodded lis head. "Do you understand?" he said. "Quotation from "The Walrus and the 213 Carpenter,' Alice Through the Looking Glass;9 "Exactly. For the moment, that is the best I can do for you, won cher. Reflect upon it." 214 CHAPTER 15 ie inquest was well attended by the general public. Thrilled by a murder in their midst, Crowdean turned out with eager hopes of sensational disclosures. The proceedings, lowever, were as dry as they could be. Sheila Webb need not have dreaded her >rdeal, it was over in a couple of minutes. There had been a telephone message to he Cavendish Bureau directing her to go to 19, Wilbraham Crescent. She had gone, acting as told to do, by entering the sittingroom. She had found the dead man there and had screamed and rushed out of the house to summon assistance. There were no questions or elaborations. Miss Martindale, who also gave evidence, was questioned for an even shorter time. She had received a message purporting to be from Miss Peb- marsh asking her to send a shorthand typist, Preferably Miss Sheila Webb, to 19, Wilbraham Crescent, and giving certain direc^Qns. She had noted down the exact time of ^e telephone call as i .49. That disposed of ^ss Martindale. 215 Miss Pebmarsh, called next, denied categorically that she had asked for any typist to be sent to her that day from the Cavendish Bureau. Detective Inspector Hardcastle made a short emotionless statement. On receipt of a telephone call, he had gone to 19, Wilbraham Crescent where he had found the body of a dead man. The coroner then asked him: "Have you been able to identify the dead man?" "Not as yet, sir. For that reason, I would ask for this inquest to be adjourned." "Quite so." Then came the medical evidence. Doctor Rigg, the police surgeon, having described himself and his qualifications, told of his arrival at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, and of his examination of the dead man. "Can you give us an approximate idea of the time of death. Doctor?" "I examined him at half past three. I should put the time of death as between half past one and half past two." "You cannot put it nearer than that?" "I should prefer not to do so. At a guess, the most likely time would be two o'clock or rather earlier, but there are many factors 216 which have to be taken into account. Age, state of health, and so on." "You performed an autopsy?" "I did." "The cause of death?" "The man had been stabbed with a thin, sharp knife. Something in the nature, perhaps, of a French cooking-knife with a tapering blade. The point of the knife entered ..." Here the doctor became technical as he xplained the exact position where the knife iad entered the heart. "Would death have been instantaneous?" "It would have occurred within a very w minutes." "The man would not have cried out or jtruggled?" j "Not under the circumstances in which He was stabbed." "Will you explain to us. Doctor, what you mean by that phrase?" "I made an examination of certain organs and made certain tests. I would say that when he was killed he was in a state of coma due to the administration of a drug." "Can you tell us what this drug was, doctor?" "Yes. It was chloral hydrate." A 217 "Can you tell how this was administered?" "I should say presumably in alcohol of some kind. The effect of chloral hydrate is very rapid." "Known in certain quarters as a Mickey Finn, I believe," murmured the coroner. "That is quite correct," said Doctor Rigg. "He would drink the liquid unsuspectingly, and a few moments later he would reel over and fall unconscious." "And he was stabbed, in your opinion, while unconscious?" "That is my belief. It would account for there being no sign of a struggle and for his peaceful appearance." "How long after becoming unconscious was he killed?" "That I cannot say with any accuracy. There again it depends on the personal idiosyncrasy of the victim. He would certainly not come round under half an hour and it might be a good deal more than that." "Thank you. Doctor Rigg. Have you any evidence as to when this man last had a meal?" "He had not lunched if that is what you mean. He had eaten no solid food for at least four hours." 218 "Thank you. Doctor Rigg. I think that is all." The coroner then looked round and said, "The inquest will be adjourned for a fortnight, until September 28th." - The inquest concluded, people began to jmove out of the court. Edna Brent who, jwith most of the other girls at the Cavendish Bureau, had been present, hesitated as she got outside the door. The Cavendish Secretarial Bureau had been closed for the morning. Maureen West, one of the other girls, spoke to her. "What about it, Edna? Shall we go to the Bluebird for lunch? We've got heaps of time. At any rate, you have." "I haven't got any more time than you ive," said Edna in an injured voice. "Sandy it told me I'd better take the first interval >r lunch. Mean of her. I thought I'd get a )od extra hour for shopping and things." "Just like Sandy Cat," said Maureen. Mean as hell, isn't she? We open up again , a! two and we've all got to be there. Are you looking for anyone?" r,ji "Only Sheila. I didn't see her come out." "She went away earlier," said Maureen, ^fter she'd finished giving her evidence. «, ^s 219 lbk She went off with a young man--but I didn't see who he was. Are you coming?" Edna still hovered uncertainly, and said "You go on--I've got shopping to do anyway." Maureen and another girl went off together. Edna lingered. Finally she nerved herself to speak to the fair-haired young policeman who stood at the entrance. "Could I go in again?" she murmured timidly, "and speak to--to the one who came to the office--Inspector something." "Inspector Hardcastle?" "That's right. The one who was giving evidence this morning." ^ "Well----" the young policeman looked into the court and observed the inspector | in deep consultation with the coroner and ' with the chief constable of the county. / "He looks busy at the moment, miss," he said. "If you called round at the station later, or if you'd like to give me a message ... ' Is it anything important?" "Oh, it doesn't matter really," said Edna. "It's--well--just that I don't see how what she said could have been true because I mean ..." She turned away, still frowning l perplexedly. 220 She wandered away from the Cornmarket and along the High Street. She was still frowning perplexedly and trying to think. Thinking had never been Edna's strong point. The more she tried to get things clear in her mind, the more muddled her mind became. Once she said aloud: "But it couldn't have been like that ... It couldn't have been like she said ..." Suddenly, with an air of one making a resolution, she turned off from the High Street and along Albany Road in the direction of Wilbraham Crescent. Since the day that the Press had announced that a murder had been committed at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, large numbers of people had gathered in front of the house every day to have a good look at it. The fascination mere bricks and mortar can have for the general public under certain circumstances is a truly mysterious thing. For the first twenty-four hours a policeman had been stationed there to pass people along in an authoritative manner. Since then interest had lessened, but had still not ceased sntirely. Tradesmen's delivery vans would ^lacken speed a little as they passed, women 221 wheeling prams would come to a four or five minute stop on the opposite pavement and stare their eyes out as they contemplated Miss Pebmarsh's neat residence. Shopping women with baskets would pause with avid eyes and exchange pleasurable gossip with friends. "That's the house—that one there ..." "The body was in the sitting-room . . . No, I think the sitting-room's the room at the front, the one on the left ..." "The grocer's man told me it was the one on the right." "Well, of course it might be, I've been into Number 10 once and there, I distinctly remember the dining-room was on the right, and the sitting-room was on the left ..." "It doesn't look a bit as though there had been a murder done there, does it . . .?" "The girl, I believe, came out of the gate screaming her head off . . ." "They say she's not been right in her head since . . . Terrible shock, of course ..." "He broke in by a back window, so they say. He was putting the silver in a bag when this girl came in and found him there . • •" "The poor woman who owns the house, she's blind, poor soul. So, of course, 222 she couldn't know what was going on." "Oh, but she wasn't there at the time . . ." "Oh, I thought she was. I thought she was upstairs and heard him. Oh, dear, I must get on to the shops." These and similar conversations went on most of the time. Drawn as though by a magnet, the most unlikely people arrived in Wilbraham Crescent, paused, stared, and |then passed on, some inner need satisfied. B Here, still puzzling in her mind—Edna Brent found herself jostling a small group of five or six people who were engaged Fthe favourite pastime of looking at the urder house. Edna, always suggestible, stared also. So that was the house where it happened! Net curtains in the windows. Looked ever so nice. And yet a man had been killed there. Killed with a kitchen knife. An ordinary kitchen knife. Nearly everybody had got a kitchen knife . . . Mesmerised by this behaviour, Edna, too, stared and ceased to think . . . She had almost forgotten what had bought her here . . . She started when a voice spoke in her ear. • She turned her head, surprised. 223 CHAPTER 16 COLIN'S NARRATIVE I noticed when Sheila Webb slipped quietly out of the Coroner's Court. She'd given her evidence very well. She had looked nervous but not unduly nervous. Just natural, in fact. (What would Beck say? "Quite a good performance." I could hear him say it!) I took in the surprise finish of Doctor Rigg's evidence, (Dick Hardcastle hadn't told me that, but he must have known) and then I went after her. "It wasn't so bad after all, was it?" I said, when I had caught her up. "No. It was quite easy really. The coroner was very nice." She hesitated. "What will happen next?" "He'll adjourn the inquest--for further evidence. A fortnight probably or un11! ^^ can identify the dead man." "You think they will identify him?" "Oh, yes," I said. "They'll identify him all right. No doubt of that." She shivered. "It's cold today.95 111;! it 224 It wasn't particularly cold. In fact J thought it was rather warm. "What about an early lunch?" I suggested. "You haven't got to go back to your typewriting place, have you?" "No. It's closed until two o'clock." "Come along then. How do you react to Chinese food? I see there's a little Chinese restaurant just down the street." Sheila looked hesitant. "I've really got to do some shopping." "You can do it afterwards." "No, I can't--some of the shops close between one and two." "All right then. Will you meet me there? In half an hour's time?" She said she would. I went along to the sea front and sat there in a shelter. As the wind was blowing straight in from the sea, I had it to myself. I wanted to think. It always infuriates one when other people know more about you than you know about yourself. But old Beck ^d Hercule Poirot and Dick Hardcastle, ^ey all had seen quite clearly what I was ^w forced to admit to myself was true. I minded about this girl--minded in a way had never minded about a girl before. 225 It wasn't her beauty--she was pretty, pretty in rather an unusual way, no more. It wasn't her sex appeal--1 had met that often enough--had been given the full treatment. It was just that, almost from the first, I had recognised that she was my girl. And I didn't know the first damned thing about her! It was just after two o'clock that I walked into the station and asked for Dick. I found him at his desk leafing over a pile of stuff. He looked up and asked me what I had thought of the inquest. I told him I thought it had been a very nicely managed and gentlemanly performance. "We do this sort of thing so well in this country." "What did you think of the medical evidence?" "Rather a facer. Why didn't you tell me about it?" "You were away. Did you consult your specialist?" "Yes, I did." "I believe I remember him vaguely. 226 If I am right he has a lot of moustache." "Oceans of it," I agreed. "He's very proud of that moustache." , "He must be quite old." [ "Old but not ga-ga," I said. "Why did you really go to see him? Was it purely the milk of human kindness?" "You have such a suspicious policeman's mind, Dick! It was mainly that. But I admit to curiosity, too. I wanted to hear what he had to say about our own particular setup. You see, he's always talked what I call a lot of cock about its being easy to solve a case by just sitting in your chair, bringing the tips of your fingers symmetrically together, closing your eyes and thinking. I wanted to call his bluff." "Did he go through that procedure for you?" "He did." "And what did he say?" Dick asked with Some curiosity. [ "He said," I told him, "that it must be a very simple murder." "Simple, my God!" said Hardcastle, roused. "Why simple?" "As far as I could gather," I said, "because Xe whole set-up was so complex." 227 Hardcastle shook his head. "I don't see it," he said. "It sounds like one of those clever things that young people in Chelsea say, but I don't see it. Anything else?" "Well, he told me to talk to the neighbours. I assured him we had done so." "The neighbours are even more important now in view of the medical evidence." "The presumption being that he was doped somewhere else and brought to Number 19 to be killed?" Something familiar about the words struck me. "That's more or less what Mrs. What'sher-name, the cat woman said. It struck me at the time as a rather interesting remark." "Those cats," said Dick, and shuddered. He went on: "We've found the weapon, by the way. Yesterday." "You have? Where?" "In the cattery. Presumably thrown there by the murderer after the crime." "No fingerprints, I suppose?" "Carefully wiped. And it could be anybody's knife--slightly used--recently sharpened." "So it goes like this. He was doped--then brought to Number 19--in a car? Or how?" 5? 228 "He could have been brought from one of the houses with an adjoining garden." "Bit risky, wouldn't it have been?" "It would need audacity," Hardcastle agreed, "and it would need a very good knowledge of the neighbourhood's habits. It's more likely that he would have been brought in a car." [ "That would have been risky too. People (notice a car." "Nobody did. But I agree that the murierer couldn't know that they wouldn't. ^assers-by would have noted a car stopping it Number 19 that day----" "I wonder if they would notice," I said. "Everyone's so used to cars. Unless, of course, it had been a very lush car--something unusual, but that's not likely----" "And of course it was the lunch hour. You realise, Colin, that this brings Miss Millicent Pebmarsh back into the picture? It seems far-fetched to think of an able-bodied man being stabbed by a blind woman--but if he was doped----" "In other words 'if he came there to be killed,' as our Mrs. Hemming put it, he srrived by appointment quite unsuspiciously, w^ offered a sherry or a cocktail--the 229 Mickey Finn took effect and Miss Pebmarsh got to work. Then she washed up the Mickey Finn glass, arranged the body neatly on the floor, threw the knife into her neighbour's garden, and tripped out as usual." "Telephoning to the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau on the way----" "And why should she do that? And ask particularly for Sheila Webb?" "I wish we knew." Hardcastle looked at me. "Does she know? The girl herself?" "She says not." "She says not," Hardcastle repeated tonelessly. "I'm asking you what you think about it?" I didn't speak for a moment or two. What did I think? I have to decide right now on my course of action. The truth would come out in the end. It would do Sheila no harm if she were what I believed her to be. With a brusque movement I pulled a postcard out of my pocket and shoved it across the table. "Sheila got this through the post." Hardcastle scanned. it. It was one of a series of postcards of London buildings. n represented the Central Criminal Court. Hardcastle turned it over. On the right was 230 the address--in neat printing. Miss R. S. Webb, 14, Palmerston Road, Crowdean, Sussex. On the left hand side, also printed, was the word REMEMBER! and below it W- ] "4.13," said Hardcastle. "That was the Itime the clocks showed that day." He shook his head. "A picture of the Old Bailey, the word 'Remember' and a time--4.13. It must tie up with something." "She says she doesn't know what it aeans." I added, "I believe her." Hardcastle nodded. "I'm keeping this. We may get something romit." "I hope you do." There was embarrassment between us. To relieve it, I said: "You've got a lot of bumf there." "All the usual. And most of it no damned X)d. The dead man hadn't got a criminal record, his fingerprints aren't on file. Practically all this stuff is from people who claim to have recognised him." He read: ('Dear Sir, the picture that was in the paper ^ almost sure is the same as a man who was etching a train at Willesden Junction the other ay- He was muttering to himself and looking 231 very wild and excited, I thought when I saw him there must be something wrong.9 " ^Dear Sir, I think this man looks very like my husband's cousin John. He went abroad to South Africa but it may be that he's come back. He had a moustache when he went away but of course he could have shaved that off.' " ^Dear Sir, I saw the man in the paper in a tube train last night. I thought at the time there was something peculiar about him.' "And of course there are all the women who recognise husbands. Women don't really seem to know what their husbands look like! There are hopeful mothers who recognise sons they have not seen for twenty years. "And here's the list of missing persons. Nothing here likely to help us. 'George Barlow, 65, missing from home. His wife thinks he must have lost his memory.' And a note below 'Owes a lot of money. Has been seen going about with a red-haired widow. Almost certain to have done a bunk.' "Next one; 'Professor Hargraves, expected to deliver a lecture last Tuesday. Did not turn up and sent no wire or note of excuse.'' Hardcastle did not appear to consider Professor Hargraves seriously. "Thought the lecture was the week before 232 or the week after," he said. "Probably thought he had told his housekeeper where he was going but hasn't done so. We get a lot of that." The buzzer on Hardcastle's table sounded. He picked up the receiver. "Yes? ... What? . . . Who found her? Did she give her name? ... I see. Carry on." He put down the receiver again. His face as he turned to me was a changed face. It was stern, almost vindictive. "They've found a girl dead in a telephone box on Wilbraham Crescent," he said. "Dead?" I stared at him. "How?" "Strangled. With her own scarf!" I felt suddenly cold. "What girl Pit's not——" Hardcastle looked at me with a cold, ppraising glance that I didn't like. "It's not your girl friend," he said, "if that's what you're afraid of. The constable there seems to know who she is. He says she's a girl who works in the same office as Sheila ^ebb. Edna Brent her name is." . "Who found her? The constable?" " "She was found by Miss Waterhouse, the oman from Number 18. It seems she went the box to make a telephone call as her . 233 phone was out of order and found the girl there huddled down in a heap." The door opened and a police constable said, "Doctor Rigg telephones that he's on his way, sir. He'll meet you at Wilbraham Crescent." 234 CHAPTER 17 It was an hour and a half later and Detective Inspector Hardcastle sat down behind his desk and accepted with relief an official cup of tea. His face still held its bleak, angry look. "Excuse me, sir. Pierce would like a word with you." Hardcastle roused himself. "Pierce? Oh, all right. Send him in." Pierce entered, a nervous-looking young constable. "Excuse me, sir, I thought per'aps as I ought to tell you." "Yes? Tell me what?" 1 "It was after the inquest, sir. I was on duty at the door. This girl—this girl that's been killed. She—she spoke to me." "Spoke to you, did she? What did she lay?" "She wanted to have a word with you, sir." Hardcastle sat up, suddenly alert. "She wanted to have a word with me? Did ^e say why?" "Not exactly, sir. I'm sorry, sir, if I—if I ^ght to have done something about it. I 235 asked her if she could give me a message or- or if perhaps she could come to the station later on. You see, you were busy with the chief constable and the coroner and I thought----" "Damn!" said Hardcastle, under his breath. "Couldn't you have told her just to wait until I was free?" "I'm sorry, sir." The young man flushed. "I suppose if I'd known, I ought to have done so. But I didn't think it was anything important. I don't think she thought it was important. It was just something she said she was worried about." "Worried?" said Hardcastle. He was silent for quite a minute turning over in his mind certain facts. This was the girl he had passed in the street when he was going to Mrs. Lawton's house, the girl who had wanted to see Sheila Webb. The girl who had recognised him as she passed him and had hesitated a moment as though uncertain whether to stop him or not. She'd had something on her mind. Yes, that was it. Something on her mind. He'd slipped up. He'd not been quick enough on the ball. Filled with his own purpose of finding out a little more about Sheila Webb's background, he had over236 looked a valuable point. The girl had been worried? Why? Now, probably, they'd never ^know why. "Go on. Pierce," he said, "tell me all you |can remember." He added kindly, for he was a fair man: "You couldn't know that it was important." ^ It wasn't, he knew, any good to pass on ^his own anger and frustration by blaming it on this boy. How should the boy have known? Part of his training was to uphold discipline, to make sure that his superiors were only accosted at the proper times and i the proper places. If the girl had said it fas important or urgent, that would have een different. But she hadn't been, he bought, remembering his first view of her a the office, that kind of girl. A slow thinker. A girl probably distrustful of her own mental processes. "Can you remember exactly what happened, and what she said to you. Pierce?" he asked. Pierce was looking at him with a kind of ^ger gratitude. "Well, sir, she just come up to me when ^eryone was leaving and she sort of hesi^ted a moment and looked round just as 237 though she were looking for someone. Not you, sir, I don't think. Somebody else. Then she come up to me and said could she speak to the police officer, and she said the one that had given evidence. So, as I said, I saw you were busy with the chief constable so I explained to her that you were engaged just now, could she give me a message or contact you later at the station. And I think she said that would do quite well. I said was it anything particular ..." "Yes?" Hardcastle leaned forward. "And she said well not really. It was just something, she said, that she didn't see how it could have been the way she'd said it was." "She didn't see how what she said could have been like that?" Hardcastle repeated. "That's right, sir. I'm not sure of the exact words. Perhaps it was: 'I don't see how what she said can have been true.' She was frowning and looking puzzled-like. But when I asked her, she said it wasn't really important." Not really important, the girl had said. The same girl who had been found not long afterwards strangled in a telephone box . . < "Was anybody near you at the time she was talking to you?" he asked. 238 "Well, there were a good many people, sir, filing out, you know. There'd been a lot of people attending the inquest. It's caused quite a stir, this murder has, what with the lyay the Press have taken it up and all." "You don't remember anyone in particular who was near you at the time--any of the people who'd given evidence, for instance?" "I'm afraid I don't recall anyone in particular, sir." "Well," said Hardcastle, "it can't be helped. All right. Pierce, if you remember nything further, come to me at once with » Left alone he made an effort to subdue his rising anger and self-condemnation. That girl, that rabbity-looking girl, had known something. No, perhaps not put it as high as known, but she had seen something, heard something. Something that had worried her, ^d the worry had been intensified after Wending the inquest. What could it have been? Something in the evidence? Some- ^ng, in all probability, in Sheila Webb's ^idence? Had she gone to Sheila's aunt's house two days before on purpose to see ^eila. Surely she could have talked to Sheila ^the office? Why did she want to see her 239 privately? Did she know somethir Sheila Webb that perplexed her? want to ask Sheila for an explan whatever it was, somewhere in priv in front of the other girls? It looked1 It certainly looked like it. He dismissed Pierce. Then he gi directions to Sergeant Cray. "What do you think the girl Wilbraham Crescent /or?" Serge asked. "I've been wondering about tt Hardcastle. "It's possible, of course just suffered from curiosity—wani what the place looked like. There' unusual about that—half the pop Crowdean seems to feel the same." "Don't we know it," said Serg with feeling. "On the other hand," said 1 slowly, "she may have gone to se< who lived there ..." When Sergeant Cray had gone Hardcastle wrote down three numi blotting pad. "20," he wrote, and put a que He added: "19?" and then "18?' names to correspond. Hemming, 240 ig about ^aterhouse. The three houses in the higher Did she crescent were out of it. To visit one of them iation of Edna Brent would not have gone along the 'ate--not lower road at all. that way. 1| Hardcastle studied the three possibilities. i I He took No. 20 first. The knife used in the ive a few original murder had been found there. It seemed more likely that the knife had been went to thrown there from the garden of No. 19 but ant Cray they didn't know that it had. It could have been thrust into the shrubbery by the owner iat," said nf No. 20 herself. When questioned, Mrs. i, that she lemming's only reaction had been indigna:ed to see ^ "How wicked of someone to throw a s nothings ^y jy^fg ^g ^hat at my cats!" she had ulation of i ^ How did Mrs. Hemming connect up With Edna Brent? She didn't. Inspector eant Cray Hardcastle decided. He went on to consider Miss Pebmarsh. Hardcastle ^ g^ g^^ g^ ^ Wilbraham Cress someone ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ Pebmarsh? Miss Peb- marsh had given evidence at the inquest. out aga-I Had there been something in that evidence bersonn ^^ ^ aroused disbelief in Edna? But . ^e had been worried before the inquest. Had r^ ote ^ ^^dy known something about Miss rsb ^""^sh? Had she known, for instance, Pebrn that there was a link of some kind between 241 Miss Pebmarsh and Sheila Webb? That would fit in with her words to Pierce. "It couldn't have been true what she said." "Conjecture, all conjecture," he thought angrily. And No. i8? Miss Waterhouse had found the body. Inspector Hardcastle was professionally prejudiced against people who found bodies. Finding the body avoided so many difficulties for a murderer--it saved the hazards of arranging an alibi, it accounted for any overlooked fingerprints. In many ways it was a cast-iron position--with one j i proviso only. There must be no obvious i | motive. There was certainly no apparent ^ | motive for Miss Waterhouse to do away with little Edna Brent. Miss Waterhouse had not given evidence at the inquest. She might have been there, though. Did Edna perhaps have some reason for knowing, or believing? that it was Miss Waterhouse who had impersonated Miss Pebmarsh over the telephone and asked for a shorthand typist to be sent to No. 19? More conjecture. And there was, of course, Sheila Webbj herself... B Hardcastle's hand went to the telephone. 242 He got on to the hotel where Colin Lamb was staying. Presently he got Colin himself on the wire. "Hardcastle here--what time was it when you lunched with Sheila Webb today?" There was a pause before Colin answered: "How do you know that we lunched together?" "A damned good guess. You did, didn't you?" "Why shouldn't I have lunch with her?" "No reason at all. I'm merely asking you the time. Did you go off to lunch straight from the inquest?" "No. She had shopping to do. We met at I the Chinese place in Market Street at one io'clock." "I see." Hardcastle looked down at his notes. Edna Brent had died between 12.30 and one o'clock. "Don't you want to know what we had for lunch?" "Keep your hair on. I just wanted the exact time. For the record." I "I see. It's like that." ; There was a short pause. Hardcastle said, endeavouring to ease the strain, 243 "If you're not doing anything this evening----" The other interrupted. "I'm off. Just packing up. I found a message waiting for me. I've got to go abroad." "When will you be back?" "That's anybody's guess. A week at least --perhaps longer--possibly never!" "Bad luck--or isn't it?" "I'm not sure," said Colin, and rang off. 244 CHAPTER 18 ardcastle arrived at No. 1% Wilbraham rescent just as Miss Pebmarsh was coming iut of the house. "Excuse me a minute. Miss Pebmarsh." "Oh. Is it--Detective Inspector Hardcastle?" "Yes. Can I have a word with you?" "I don't want to be late at the Institute. Will it take long?" "I assure you only three or four minutes." She went into the house and he followed. "You've heard what happened this afternoon?" he said. "Has anything happened?" "I thought you might have heard. A girl as killed in the telephone box just down e road." "Killed? When?" "Two hours and three quarters ago." He )ked at the grandfather clock. "I've heard nothing about it. Nothing," said Miss Pebmarsh. A kind of anger sounded momentarily in her voice. It was as though her disability had been brought home to her I ^5 in some particularly wounding way. "A girl —killed! What girl?" "Her name is Edna Brent and she worked at the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau." "Another girl from there! Had she been sent for like this girl, Sheila what's-hername was?" "I don't think so," said the inspector. "She did not come to see you here, it your house ?" "Here? No. Certainly not." "Would you have been in if she had come here?" "I'm not sure. What time did you say?" "Approximately twelve-thirty or a little later." "Yes," said Miss Pebmarsh. "I would have been home by then." "Where did you go after the inquest?" "I came straight back here." She paused and then asked, "Why did you think this girl might have come to see me?" "Well, she had been at the inquest this morning and she had seen you there, and she must have had some reason for coming to Wilbraham Crescent. As far as we know, she was not acquainted with anyone in this road." "But why should she come to see me just because she had seen me at the inquest ? m' 246 "Well----" the inspector smiled a little, then hastily tried to put the smile into his voice as he realised that Miss Pebmarsh could not appreciate its disarming quality. "One never knows with these girls. She might just have wanted an autograph. Something like that." "An autograph!" Miss Pebmarsh sounded scornful. Then she said, "Yes . . . Yes, I suppose you're right. That sort of thing does happen." Then she shook her head briskly. "I can only assure you. Inspector Hardcastle, that it did not happen to-day. Nobody has been here since I came back from the inquest." "Well, thank you. Miss Pebmarsh. We thought we had better check up on every possibility." "How old was she ?" asked Miss Pebmarsh. | "I believe she was nineteen." B "Nineteen? Very young." Her voice changed slightly. "Very young . . . Poor child. Who could want to kill a girl of that age?" "It happens," said Hardcastle. "Was she pretty--attractive--sexy?" "No," said Hardcastle. "She would have ^ked to be, I think, but she was not." 247 "Then that was not the reason," said Miss Pebmarsh. She shook her head again. "I'm sorry. More sorry than I can say. Inspector Hardcastle, that I can't help you." He went out, impressed as he always was impressed, by Miss Pebmarsh's personality. ll Miss Waterhouse was also at home. She was also true to type, opening the door with a suddenness which displayed a desire to trap someone doing what they should not do. "Oh, it's your she said. "Really, I've told your people all I know." "I'm sure you've replied to all the questions that were asked you," said Hardcastle, "but they can't all be asked at once, you know. We have to go into a few more details." "I don't see why. The whole thing was a most terrible shock," said Miss Waterhouse, looking at him in a censorious way as though it had been all his doing. "Come in, come in. You can't stand on the mat all day. Come in and sit down and ask me any questions you want to, though really what questions there can be, I cannot see. As I told you, I went out to make a telephone call. I opened the 248 door of the box and there was the girl. Never had such a shock in my life. I hurried down and got the police constable. And after that, in case you want to know, I came back here and I gave myself a medicinal dose of brandy. | Medicinal," said Miss Waterhouse fiercely. "Very wise of you, madam," said Inspector Hardcastle. "And that's that," said Miss Waterhouse 7ith finality. "I wanted to ask you if you were quite sure ou 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 in 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 ^e you this morning before being killed." 249 "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." 250 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 yebmarsh asked for a shorthand typist to rome 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 Water- (ouse, "not that anyone ever listens to what say until it's too late, I should say that she'd gone a little batty. Miss Pebmarsh, I mean. think, perhaps, that she does ring up eaux and ask for shorthand typists to e. Then, perhaps, she forgets all about 251 "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 short of thing." "Of course, anything is possible," said Hardcastle. He said good-bye 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 252 , girls there. And he would find Sheila Webb there too. in Qne of the girls rose at once as he entered (he 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 victimised? There is clearly some irresponsible person ^out who has got some kind of--what do ^y call it nowadays--a fixture or a complex ^about shorthand typists or secretarial ^reaux. They are deliberately martyrising 1 253 this institute. First Sh^ila Webb was summoned by a heartless trick to find a dead body--the kind of thing that might send a nervous girl off her he^l--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 call 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 gir^s. Inspector, I keep them up to their worl< and I won't allow them to be late or sUpshod. But I don't stand for their being victimised or murdered. I intend to defend thenO, and I intend to see that people who are paid by the State to defend them do their ^ork." She glared at him and looked rather l^ke a tigress in human form. "Give us time. Miss Martindale," he said. "Time? Just because that silly child is dead, I suppose you thi^lk you've all the tin^ in the world. The nex:t thing that happe^ 25^ J 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 )ming. Miss Martindale. It was only an journed 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 ^e if she was worried," said Miss 255 At this institute. First Sheila Webb was sum| moned 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 victimised 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 1s dead, I suppose you think you've all the tirn6 in the world. The next thing that napped [ 254 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 loming. Miss Martindale. It was only an ijoumed inquest, you know." "All I say is," said Miss Martindale, iaring at him again, "you must do someling about it." "And there's nothing you can tell me, ^o 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 255 Martindale. "But what had she to be worried about?" That was exactly the question that Inspector Hardcastle would have liked to have had 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 256 d wouldn't tak as freely if I was standing Ibere looking on. They'd have to admit, you see, that the^ had been gossiping and wasting , their time." She got u) from her seat and opened the door into tie outer office. "Girls," she said, "Detective Inspector Hardcastle Vants to talk things over with you. You can stop work for the moment. Try and tell Jiini anything you know that can help him to fnd out who killed Edna Brent." She went back into her own private office |id shut the door firmly. Three startled rlish faces looked at the inspector. He immed them up quickly and superficially, it sufficiently to make up his mind as to ie quality of the material with which he was >out to deal. A fair solid-looking girl with 'ectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not Pju"ticularly bright. A rather rakish-looking ^ onette with the kind of hair-do that sug8'sted she'd been out in a blizzard lately. ^es that noticed things here, perhaps, but ; ^obably highly unreliable in her recollection 01 events. Everything would be suitably ^iched up. The third was a born giggler i ^k) would, he was sure, agree with whatever I ^one else ssiid. 257 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 oi us, but that we hadn't seen her afterwards and didn't know where she'd gone. 258 "That was true, was it?" asked Hardstie. "You've no idea where she did go ien she left the inquest." "I suggested she shoulld come and have me lunch with me," said Maureen, "but e seemed to have something on her mind. ie said she wasn't sure that she'd bother have any lunch. Just buy something and t it in the office." "So she meant, then, to come back to the &ce?" "Oh, yes, of course. We all knew we'd >t to do that." "Have any of you noticed anything fferent about Edna Brent these last few iys? Did she seem to you worried at all, though she had something on her mind? id she tell you anything to that effect? If ere is anything at all you know, I must beg you to tell me." They looked at each other but not in a 'nspiratorial manner. It seemed to be merely ^gue conjecture. "She was always worried about some- ing," said Maureen. "She gets things mud^ up, and makes mistakes. She was a bit ^w in the uptake." "Things always seemed to happen to 259 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 260 by the time we left. And when I got to the shop---1!^ on the e^uer and they know me auite 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. Wow 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 ^ a shop. It must be some other girl. Why ^hould it be Edna?' And she marched back into her room and rang up the police station ^d found out it was true." 'But I don't see," said Janet almost 261 dreamily, "I don't see why anyone should I 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 coiuld give them the answer to the problem, ^e sighed. There was nothing here for him. ^Perhaps one of the other girls might be more; helpful. And there was Sheila Webb herself. "Were Shei^a Webb and Edna Brent particular friends ?" he asked. They looker at each other vaguely. "Not specia:!, I don't think." "Where is 2\^iss Webb, by the way?" He was told that Sheila Webb was at the [ Curlew Hotel, attending on Professor Purdy. | 262 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 ifto-morrow will do?----Oh, very well--very well--Tell him to come up." "Always something," he said with vexation. "How one can 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 wfcmydear?" ISheila 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, ^hat is it? I may say I mentioned particularly that I was not to be disturbed this tfternoon." "I'm very sorry, sir, very sorry ^deed that it has been necessary to disturb A, 263 you to-day. Good evening. Miss Webb." Sheila Webb had risen to her feet, setting aside her notebook. 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- on, 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 have been so." 264 "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 ^ranged that I was to come straight here to Professor Purdy at half past two." "That's right," said the professor, nod265 ding his head. "Half past two. And we hav< been wording ever since. Ever since. Deai me, I should have ordered tea. I am ven 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 anatter at all." "Very remiss of me," said the professor, "very remiss. But there. I mustn't interrupt, since tie inspector wants to ask you some questions." "So jou don't know what's happened to EdnaBrent?" ^Happened to her?" asked Sheila, sharply, her voice rising. "Happened to her? What do you mean? Has she had an accident or something--been run over?" "Very dangerous, all this speeding," put in the professor. \ "Yes," said Hardcastle, "something's < happened to lier." He paused and then said, r putting it as brutally as possible, "She was \ strangled abcut half past twelve, in a tele- q phone box." I "In a tele^lione box?" said the professor, \ rising to thu occasion by showing some ^ interest. 266 Sheila Webb said nothing. She stared at him- ^er mouth opened slightly, her eyes widened. "Either this is the first you've heard of it or you're a damn' good actress," thought Hardcastle to himself. "Dear, dear," said the professor. "Stranded in a telephone box. That seems very extraordinary to me. Very extraordinary. Not the sort of place I would choose myself. I mean, if I were to do such a thing. No, indeed. Well, well. Poor girl. Most unfortunate for her." ("Edna--killed! But why?" ["Did you know. Miss Webb, that Edna Jent was very anxious to see you the day |fore yesterday, that she came to your pt's house, and waited for some time for yep to come back?" 'My fault again," said the professor guiltily. "I kept Miss Webb very late that evening, I remember. Very late indeed. I eally still feel very apologetic about it. ^u must always remind me of the time, ty dear. You really must." | "My aunt told me about that," said Sheila, w I didn't know it was anything special. as it? Was Edna in trouble of any kind?" "We don't know," said the inspector. 267 "We probably never shall know. Unless you can tell us?" "/ tell you? How should I know?" "You might have had some idea, perhaps, of what Edna Brent wanted to see you about?" 1» She shook her head. "I've no idea, no idea at all." "Hasn't she hinted anything to you, spoken to you in the office at all about whatever the trouble was?" "No. No, indeed she hasn't—hadn't—I wasn't at the office at all yesterday. I had to go over to Landis Bay to one of our authors for the whole day." "You didn't think that she'd been worried lately?" "Well, Edna always looked worried or puzzled. She had a very—what shall I saydiffident, uncertain kind of mind. I mear, she was never quite sure that what she thought of doing was the right thing or no'. She missed out two whole pages in typing Armand Levine's book once and she was terribly worried about what to do ther? because she'd sent it off to him before she realised what had happened." "I see. And she asked you all your advic? as to what she should do about it?" 268 "Yes. I told he- she'd better write a note :o him quickly because people don't always start reading ther typescript at once for correction. She Could write and say what had happened an([ ask him not to complain to Miss Martindae. But she said she didn't quite like to do tl^t." "She usually c^me and asked for advice when one of these problems arose?" "Oh, yes, always. But the trouble was, of course, that wg didn't always all agree as to what she should do. Then she got puzzled again." "So it would Ie quite natural that she should come to <>ne of you if she had a problem? It happened quite frequently?" "Yes. Yes, it die," "You don't think it might have been something more serious this time?" "I don't suppose so. What sort of serious thing could it bei" Was Sheila Web^ the inspector wondered, luite as much at e^se as she tried to appear? "I don't know v^hat she wanted to talk to ne about," she went on, rather breathlessly. 'I've no idea. Anc I certainly can't imagine why she wanted t^ come out to my aunt's louse and speak to me there" 269 "It would seem, wouldn't it, that it was something she did not want to speak to you about at the Cavendish Bureau? Before the other girls, shall we say? Something, perhaps, that she felt ought to be kept private between you and her. Could that have been the case?" "I think it's very unlikely. I'm sure it couldn't have been at all like that." Her breath came quickly. "So you can't help me. Miss Webb?" "No. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry about Edna, but I don't know anything that could help you." "Nothing that might have a connection or a tie-up with what happened on the 9th of September?" "You mean--that man--that man in Wilbraham Crescent?" "That's what I mean." "How could it have been? What could Edna have known about that?" "Nothing very important, perhaps," said the inspector, "but something. And anything would help. Anything, however small." rle paused. "The telephone box where she was killed was in Wilbraham Crescent. Does that convey anything to you. Miss Webb? 270 "Nothing at all." "Were you yourself in Wilbraham Cresc nt today?" "No, I wasn't," she said vehemently. "I o ver went near it. I'm beginning to feel t at it's a horrible place. I wish I'd never g >ne there in the first place, I wish I'd never g )t mixed up in all this. Why did they send f< r me, ask for me specially, that day? Why d d Edna have to get killed near there ? You nust find out. Inspector, you must, you ffto!" "We mean to find out. Miss Webb," the iispector said. There was a faint menace in hs voice as he went on: "I can assure you of that." "You're trembling, my dear," said Profe ssor Purdy. "I think, I really do think that y< u ought to have a glass of sherry." xk 271 CHAPTER 20 COUNT'S NARRATIVE I reported to Beck as soon as I got to London. He waved his cigar at me. "There might have been something in that idiotic crescent idea of yours after all," he allowed. "I've turned up something at last, have I ?" "I won't go as far as that, but I'll just say that you may have. Our construction engineer, Mr. Ramsay of 62, Wilbraham Crescent, is not all he seems. Some very curious assignments he's taken on lately. Genuine firms, but firms without much back history, and what history they have, rather a peculiar one. Ramsay went off at a moment's notice about five weeks ago. He went to Rumania." "That's not what he told his wife." "Possibly not, but that's where he went. And that's where he is now. We'd like to know a bit more about him. So you can stir your stumps, my lad, and get going. I^6 got all the visas ready for you, and a nice new passport. Nigel Trench it will be this 272 time- ^u^ ^ y01111 knowledge of rare plants ,n the Balkans. You're a botanist." "Any special instructions?" "No. We'll give you your contact when you P^k ^P y01"" papers. Find out all you can about our Mr. Ramsay." He looked at me keenly. "You don't sound as pleased as you might be." He peered through the cigar smoke. "It's always pleasant when a hunch pays off," I said evasively. "Right Crescent, wrong number. 61 is occupied by a perfectly blameless builder. Blameless in our sense, that is. Poor old Hanbury got the number wrong, but he wasn't far off." "Have you vetted the others? Or only Ramsay?" "Diana Lodge seems to be as pure as Diana. A long history of cats. McNaughton was vaguely interesting. He's a retired processor, as you know. Mathematics. Quite brilliant, it seems. Resigned his Chair quite ^ddenly on the grounds of ill-health. I Oppose that may be true--but he seems ^ite hale and hearty. He seems to have cut ^niself off from all his old friends, which is ^ther odd." 273 "The trouble is," I said, "that we get to thinking that everything that everybody does is highly suspicious." "You may have got something there " said Colonel Beck. "There are times when I suspect you, Colin, of having changed over to the other side. There are times when I suspect myself of having changed over to the other side, and then having changed back again to this one! All a jolly mixup." My plane left at ten p.m. I went to see Hercule Poirot first. This time he was drinking a strop de cassis. (Blackcurrant to you and me.) He offered me some. I refused. George brought me whisky. Everything as usual. "You look depressed," said Poirot. "Not at all. I'm just off abroad." He looked at me. I nodded. "So it is like that?" "Yes, it is like that." "I wish you all success." "Thank you. And what about you, Poirot, how are you getting along with your homework?" "ParAw?" . "What about the Crowdean Clocks Murder --Have you leaned back, closed your ey65 and come up with all the answers?" 274 "I have read what you left here with great interest," said Poirot. "Not much there, was there? I told you these particular neighbours were a washout-----' "On the contrary. In the case of at least two of these people very illuminating remarks were made----" "Which of them? And what were the remarks?" Poirot told me in an irritating fashion that I must reread my notes carefully. "You will see for yourself then----It leaps to the eye. The thing to do now is to talk to more neighbours." "There aren't any more." "There must be. Somebody has always seen something. It is an axiom." "It may be an axiom but it isn't so in this case. And I've got further details for you. There has been another murder." "Indeed? So soon? That is interesting. Tell me." I told him. He questioned me closely ^til he got every single detail out of me. 1 ^Id him, too, of the postcard I had passed °n to Hardcastle. Remember--four one three--or four