“Well, I—er—I just slipped out for a minute,” she said. “I wanted some pastries to take home and I knew they’d all be gone by the time we left. And when I got to the shop—it’s on the corner and they know me quite well there—the woman said, ‘She worked at your place, didn’t she, ducks?’ and I said, ‘Who do you mean?’ And then she said, ‘This girl they’ve just found dead in a telephone box.’ Oh, it gave me ever such a turn! So I came rushing back and I told the others and in the end we all said we’d have to tell Miss Martindale about it, and just at that moment she came bouncing out of her office and said to us, ‘Now what are you doing? Not a single typewriter going.’”
The fair girl took up the saga.
“And I said, ‘Really it’s not our fault. We’ve heard some terrible news about Edna, Miss Martindale.’”
“And what did Miss Martindale say or do?”
“Well, she wouldn’t believe it at first,” said the brunette. “She said, ‘Nonsense. You’ve just been picking up some silly gossip in a shop. It must be some other girl. Why should it be Edna?’ And she marched back into her room and rang up the police station and found out it was true.”
“But I don’t see,” said Janet almost dreamily, “I don’t see why anyone should want to kill Edna.”
“It’s not as though she had a boy or anything,” said the brunette.
All three looked at Hardcastle hopefully as though he could give them the answer to the problem. He sighed. There was nothing here for him. Perhaps one of the other girls might be more helpful. And there was Sheila Webb herself.
“Were Sheila Webb and Edna Brent particular friends?” he asked.
They looked at each other vaguely.
“Not special, I don’t think.”
“Where is Miss Webb, by the way?”
He was told that Sheila Webb was at the Curlew Hotel, attending on Professor Purdy.
Nineteen
Professor Purdy sounded irritated as he broke off dictating and answered the telephone.
“Who? What? You mean he is here now? Well, ask him if tomorrow will do?—Oh, very well—very well—Tell him to come up.”
“Always something,” he said with vexation. “How can one ever be expected to do any serious work with these constant interruptions.” He looked with mild displeasure at Sheila Webb and said: “Now where were we, my dear?”
Sheila was about to reply when there was a knock at the door. Professor Purdy brought himself back with some difficulty from the chronological difficulties of approximately three thousand years ago.
“Yes?” he said testily, “yes, come in, what is it? I may say I mentioned particularly that I was not to be disturbed this afternoon.”
“I’m very sorry, sir, very sorry indeed that it has been necessary to do so. Good evening, Miss Webb.”
Sheila Webb had risen to her feet, setting aside her 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—oh, well, perhaps half an hour. Something like that. Oh, dear me, is it six o’clock already?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Purdy,” Hardcastle’s tone was firm.
“Oh, very well, very well. What is it—some motoring offence, I suppose? How very officious these traffic wardens are. One insisted the other day that I had left my car four and a half hours at a parking meter. I’m sure that could not possibly be so.”
“It’s a little more serious than a parking offence, sir.”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And you don’t have a car, do you, my dear?” He looked vaguely at Sheila Webb. “Yes, I remember, you come here by bus. Well, Inspector, what is it?”
“It’s about a girl called Edna Brent.” He turned to Sheila Webb. “I expect you’ve heard about it.”
She stared at him. Beautiful eyes. Cornflower-blue eyes. Eyes that reminded him of someone.
“Edna Brent, did you say?” She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, yes, I know her, of course. What about her?”
“I see the news hasn’t got to you yet. Where did you lunch, Miss Webb?”
Colour came up in her cheeks.
“I lunched with a friend at the Ho Tung restaurant, if—if it’s really any business of yours.”
“You didn’t go on afterwards to the office?”
“To the Cavendish Bureau, you mean? I called in there and was told it had been arranged that I was to come straight here to Professor Purdy at half past two.”
“That’s right,” said the professor, nodding his head. “Half past two. And we have been working here ever since. Ever since. Dear me, I should have ordered tea. I am very sorry, Miss Webb, I’m afraid you must have missed having your tea. You should have reminded me.”
“Oh, it didn’t matter, Professor Purdy, it didn’t matter at all.”
“Very remiss of me,” said the professor, “very remiss. But there. I mustn’t interrupt, since the inspector wants to ask you some questions.”
“So you don’t know what’s happened to Edna Brent?”
“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 her.” He paused and then said, putting it as brutally as possible, “She was strangled about half past twelve, in a telephone box.”
“In a telephone box?” said the professor, rising to the occasion by showing some interest.
Sheila Webb said nothing. She stared at him. Her 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. “Strangled 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 Brent was very anxious to see you the day before yesterday, that she came to your aunt’s house, and waited for some time for you to come back?”
“My fault again,” said the professor guiltily. “I kept Miss Webb very late that evening, I remember. Very late indeed. I really still feel very apologetic about it. You must always remind me of the time, my dear. You really must.”
“My aunt told me about that,” said Sheila, “but I didn’t know it was anything special. Was it? Was Edna in trouble of any kind?”
“We don’t know,” said the inspector. “We probably never shall know. Unless you can tell us?”
“I tell you? How should I know?”
“You might have had some idea, perhaps, of what Edna Brent wanted to see you about?”
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 say—diffident, uncertain kind of mind. I mean, she was never quite sure that what she thought of doing was the right thing or not. She missed out two whole pages in typing Armand Levine’s book once and she was terribly worried about what to do
then, because she’d sent it off to him before she realized what had happened.”
“I see. And she asked you all your advice as to what she should do about it?”
“Yes. I told her she’d better write a note to him quickly because people don’t always start reading their typescript at once for correction. She could write and say what had happened and ask him not to complain to Miss Martindale. But she said she didn’t quite like to do that.”
“She usually came and asked for advice when one of these problems arose?”
“Oh, yes, always. But the trouble was, of course, that we didn’t always all agree as to what she should do. Then she got puzzled again.”
“So it would be quite natural that she should come to one of you if she had a problem? It happened quite frequently?”
“Yes. Yes, it did.”
“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 be?”
Was Sheila Webb, the inspector wondered, quite as much at ease as she tried to appear?”
“I don’t know what she wanted to talk to me about,” she went on, speaking faster and rather breathlessly. “I’ve no idea. And I certainly can’t imagine why she wanted to come out to my aunt’s house and speak to me there.”
“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.” He paused. “The telephone box where she was killed was in Wilbraham Crescent. Does that convey anything to you, Miss Webb?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Were you yourself in Wilbraham Crescent today?”
“No, I wasn’t,” she said vehemently. “I never went near it. I’m beginning to feel that it’s a horrible place. I wish I’d never gone there in the first place, I wish I’d never got mixed up in all this. Why did they send for me, ask for me specially, that day? Why did Edna have to get killed near there? You must find out, Inspector, you must, you must!”
“We mean to find out, Miss Webb,” the inspector said. There was a faint menace in his voice as he went on: “I can assure you of that.”
“You’re trembling, my dear,” said Professor Purdy. “I think, I really do think that you ought to have a glass of sherry.”
Twenty
COLIN LAMB’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 minute’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’ve got all the visas ready for you, and a nice new passport. Nigel Trench it will be this time. Rub up your knowledge of rare plants in the Balkans. You’re a botanist.”
“Any special instructions?”
“No. We’ll give you your contact when you pick up your 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 professor, as you know. Mathematics. Quite brilliant, it seems. Resigned his Chair quite suddenly on the grounds of ill-health. I suppose that may be true—but he seems quite hale and hearty. He seems to have cut himself off from all his old friends, which is rather odd.”
“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 mix-up.”
My plane left at ten p.m. I went to see Hercule Poirot first. This time he was drinking a sirop de cassis (Black currant 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?”
“Pardon?”
“What about the Crowdean Clocks Murder—Have you leaned back, closed your eyes and come up with all the answers?”
“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 wash-out—”
“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 read 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 until he got every single detail out of me. I told him, too, of the postcard I had passed on to Hardcastle.
“Remember—four one three—or four thirteen,” he repeated. “Yes—it is the same pattern.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Poirot closed his eyes.
“That postcard lacks only one thing, a fingerprint dipped in blood.”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“What do you really think of this business?”
“It grows much clearer—as usual, the murderer cannot let well alone.”
“But who’s the murderer?”
Poirot craftily did not reply to that.
“Whilst you are away, you permit that I make a few researches?”
“Such as?”
“Tomorrow I shall ins
truct Miss Lemon to write a letter to an old lawyer friend of mine, Mr. Enderby. I shall ask her to consult the marriage records at Somerset House. She will also send for me a certain overseas cable.”
“I’m not sure that’s fair,” I objected. “You’re not just sitting and thinking.”
“That is exactly what I am doing! What Miss Lemon is to do, is to verify for me the answers that I have already arrived at. I ask not for information, but for confirmation.”
“I don’t believe you know a thing, Poirot! This is all bluff. Why, nobody knows yet who the dead man is—”
“I know.”
“What’s his name?”
“I have no idea. His name is not important. I know, if you can understand, not who he is but who he is.”
“A blackmailer?”
Poirot closed his eyes.
“A private detective?”
Poirot opened his eyes.
“I say to you a little quotation. As I did last time. And after that I say no more.”
He recited with the utmost solemnity:
“Dilly, dilly, dilly—Come and be killed.”
Twenty-one
Detective Inspector Hardcastle looked at the calendar on his desk. 20th September. Just over ten days. They hadn’t been able to make as much progress as he would have liked because they were held up with that initial difficulty: the identification of a dead body. It had taken longer than he would have thought possible. All the leads seemed to have petered out, failed. The laboratory examination of the clothes had brought in nothing particularly helpful. The clothes themselves had yielded no clues. They were good quality clothes, export quality, not new but well cared for. Dentists had not helped, nor laundries, nor cleaners. The dead man remained a “mystery man!” And yet, Hardcastle felt, he was not really a “mystery man.” There was nothing spectacular or dramatic about him. He was just a man whom nobody had been able to come forward and recognize. That was the pattern of it, he was sure. Hardcastle sighed as he thought of the telephone calls and letters that had necessarily poured in after the publication in the public press of the photograph with the caption below it: DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? Astonishing the amount of people who thought they did know this man. Daughters who wrote in a hopeful vein of fathers from whom they’d been estranged for years. An old woman of ninety was sure that the photograph in question was her son who had left home thirty years ago. Innumerable wives had been sure that it was a missing husband. Sisters had not been quite so anxious to claim brothers. Sisters, perhaps, were less hopeful thinkers. And, of course, there were vast numbers of people who had seen that very man in Lincolnshire, Newcastle, Devon, London, on a tube, in a bus, lurking on a pier, looking sinister at the corner of a road, trying to hide his face as he came out of the cinema. Hundreds of leads, the more promising of them patiently followed up and not yielding anything.