Then, dismissing his difficulties with a wave of his hand, he asked:
“You have had the success, yes?”
I said slowly: “I don’t know.”
“Ah—it is like that.”
“I found out what I was sent to find out. I did not find the man himself. I myself do not know what was wanted. Information? Or a body?”
“Speaking of bodies, I read the account of the adjourned inquest at Crowdean. Wilful murder by a person or persons unknown. And your body has been given a name at last.”
I nodded.
“Harry Castleton, whoever he may be.”
“Identified by his wife. You have been to Crowdean?”
“Not yet. I thought of going down tomorrow.”
“Oh, you have some leisure time?”
“Not yet. I’m still on the job. My job takes me there—” I paused a moment and then said: “I don’t know much about what’s been happening while I’ve been abroad—just the mere fact of identification—what do you think of it?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“It was to be expected.”
“Yes—the police are very good—”
“And wives are very obliging.”
“Mrs. Merlina Rival! What a name!”
“It reminds me of something,” said Poirot. “Now of what does it remind me?”
He looked at me thoughtfully but I couldn’t help him. Knowing Poirot, it might have reminded him of anything.
“A visit to a friend—in a country house,” mused Poirot, then shook his head. “No—it is so long ago.”
“When I come back to London, I’ll come and tell you all I can find out from Hardcastle about Mrs. Merlina Rival,” I promised.
Poirot waved a hand and said: “It is not necessary.”
“You mean you know all about her already without being told?”
“No. I mean that I am not interested in her—”
“You’re not interested—but why not? I don’t get it.” I shook my head.
“One must concentrate on the essentials. Tell me instead of the girl called Edna—who died in the telephone box in Wilbraham Crescent.”
“I can’t tell you more than I’ve told you already—I know nothing about the girl.”
“So all you know,” said Poirot accusingly, “or all you can tell me is that the girl was a poor little rabbit, whom you saw in a typewriting office, where she had torn the heel off her shoe in a grating—” he broke off. “Where was that grating, by the way?”
“Really, Poirot, how should I know?”
“You could have known if you had asked. How do you expect to know anything if you do not ask the proper questions?”
“But how can it matter where the heel came off?”
“It may not matter. On the other hand, we should know a definite spot where this girl had been, and that might connect up with a person she had seen there—or with an event of some kind which took place there.”
“You are being rather farfetched. Anyway I do know it was quite near the office because she said so and that she bought a bun and hobbled back on her stocking feet to eat the bun in the office and she ended up by saying how on earth was she to get home like that?”
“Ah, and how did she get home?” Poirot asked with interest.
I stared at him.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Ah—but it is impossible, the way you never ask the right questions! As a result you know nothing of what is important.”
“You’d better come down to Crowdean and ask questions yourself,” I said, nettled.
“That is impossible at the moment. There is a most interesting sale of authors’ manuscripts next week—”
“Still on your hobby?”
“But, yes, indeed.” His eyes brightened. “Take the works of John Dickson Carr or Carter Dickson, as he calls himself sometimes—”
I escaped before he could get under way, pleading an urgent appointment. I was in no mood to listen to lectures on past masters of the art of crime fiction.
II
I was sitting on the front step of Hardcastle’s house, and rose out of the gloom to greet him when he got home on the following evening.
“Hallo, Colin? Is that you? So you’ve appeared out of the blue again, have you?”
“If you called it out of the red, it would be much more appropriate.”
“How long have you been here, sitting on my front doorstep?”
“Oh, half an hour or so.”
“Sorry you couldn’t get into the house.”
“I could have got into the house with perfect ease,” I said indignantly. “You don’t know our training!”
“Then why didn’t you get in?”
“I wouldn’t like to lower your prestige in any way,” I explained. “A detective inspector of police would be bound to lose face if his house were entered burglariously with complete ease.”
Hardcastle took his keys from his pocket and opened the front door.
“Come on in,” he said, “and don’t talk nonsense.”
He led the way into the sitting room, and proceeded to supply liquid refreshment.
“Say when.”
I said it, not too soon, and we settled ourselves with our drinks.
“Things are moving at last,” said Hardcastle. “We’ve identified our corpse.”
“I know. I looked up the newspaper files—who was Harry Castleton?”
“A man of apparently the utmost respectability and who made his living by going through a form of marriage or merely getting engaged to well-to-do credulous women. They entrusted their savings to him, impressed by his superior knowledge of finance and shortly afterwards he quietly faded into the blue.”
“He didn’t look that kind of man,” I said, casting my mind back.
“That was his chief asset.”
“Wasn’t he ever prosecuted?”
“No—we’ve made inquiries but it isn’t easy to get much information. He changed his name fairly often. And although they think at the Yard that Harry Castleton, Raymond Blair, Lawrence Dalton, Roger Byron were all one and the same person, they never could prove it. The women, you see, wouldn’t tell. They preferred to lose their money. The man was really more of a name than anything—cropping up here and there—always the same pattern—but incredibly elusive. Roger Byron, say, would disappear from Southend, and a man called Lawrence Dalton would commence operations in Newcastle on Tyne. He was shy of being photographed—eluded his lady friends’ desire to snapshot him. All this goes quite a long time back—fifteen to twenty years. About that time he seemed really to disappear. The rumour spread about that he was dead—but some people said he had gone abroad—”
“Anyway, nothing was heard of him until he turned up, dead, on Miss Pebmarsh’s sitting room carpet?” I said.
“Exactly.”
“It certainly opens up possibilities.”
“It certainly does.”
“A woman scorned who never forgot?” I suggested.
“It does happen, you know. There are women with long memories who don’t forget—”
“And if such a woman were to go blind—a second affliction on top of the other—”
“That’s only conjecture. Nothing to substantiate it as yet.”
“What was the wife like—Mrs—what was it?—Merlina Rival? What a name! It can’t be her own.”
“Her real name is Flossie Gapp. The other she invented. More suitable for her way of life.”
“What is she? A tart?”
“Not a professional.”
“What used to be called, tactfully, a lady of easy virtue?”
“I should say she was a good-natured woman, and one willing to oblige her friends. Described herself as an ex-actress. Occasionally did ‘hostess’ work. Quite likeable.”
“Reliable?”
“As reliable as most. Her recognition was quite positive. No hesitation.”
“That’s a blessing.”
; “Yes. I was beginning to despair. The amount of wives I’ve had here! I’d begun to think it’s a wise woman who knows her own husband. Mind you, I think Mrs. Rival might have known a little more about her husband than she lets on.”
“Has she herself ever been mixed up in criminal activities?”
“Not for the record. I think she may have had, perhaps still has, some shady friends. Nothing serious—just fiddles—that kind of thing.”
“What about the clocks?”
“Didn’t mean a thing to her. I think she was speaking the truth. We’ve traced where they came from—Portobello Market. That’s the ormolu and the Dresden china. And very little help that is! You know what it’s like on a Saturday there. Bought by an American lady, the stall keeper thinks—but I’d say that’s just a guess. Portobello Market is full of American tourists. His wife says it was a man bought them. She can’t remember what he looked like. The silver one came from a silversmith in Bournemouth. A tall lady who wanted a present for her little girl! All she can remember about her is she wore a green hat.”
“And the fourth clock? The one that disappeared?”
“No comment,” said Hardcastle.
I knew just what he meant by that.
Twenty-three
COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE
The hotel I was staying in was a poky little place by the station. It served a decent grill but that was all that could be said for it. Except, of course, that it was cheap.
At ten o’clock the following morning I rang the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau and said that I wanted a shorthand typist to take down some letters and retype a business agreement. My name was Douglas Weatherby and I was staying at the Clarendon Hotel (extraordinarily tatty hotels always have grand names). Was Miss Sheila Webb available? A friend of mine had found her very efficient.
I was in luck. Sheila could come straight away. She had, however, an appointment at twelve o’clock. I said that I would have finished with her well before that as I had an appointment myself.
I was outside the swing doors of the Clarendon when Sheila appeared. I stepped forward.
“Mr. Douglas Weatherby at your service,” I said.
“Was it you rang up?”
“It was.”
“But you can’t do things like that.” She looked scandalized.
“Why not? I’m prepared to pay the Cavendish Bureau for your services. What does it matter to them if we spend your valuable and expensive time in the Buttercup Café just across the street instead of dictating dull letters beginning ‘Yours of the 3rd prontissimo to hand,’ etc. Come on, let’s go and drink indifferent coffee in peaceful surroundings.”
The Buttercup Café lived up to its name by being violently and aggressively yellow. Formica tabletops, plastic cushions and cups and saucers were all canary colour.
I ordered coffee and scones for two. It was early enough for us to have the place practically to ourselves.
When the waitress had taken the order and gone away, we looked across the table at each other.
“Are you all right, Sheila?”
“What do you mean—am I all right?”
Her eyes had such dark circles under them that they looked violet rather than blue.
“Have you been having a bad time?”
“Yes—no—I don’t know. I thought you had gone away?”
“I had. I’ve come back.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I’m afraid of him,” she said after a pause of at least a minute, which is a long time.
“Who are you afraid of?”
“That friend of yours—that inspector. He thinks … he thinks I killed that man, and that I killed Edna too….”
“Oh, that’s just his manner,” I said reassuringly. “He always goes about looking as though he suspected everybody.”
“No, Colin, it’s not like that at all. It’s no good saying things just to cheer me up. He’s thought that I had something to do with it right from the beginning.”
“My dear girl, there’s no evidence against you. Just because you were there on the spot that day, because someone put you on the spot….”
She interrupted.
“He thinks I put myself on the spot. He thinks it’s all a trumped-up story. He thinks that Edna in some way knew about it. He thinks that Edna recognized my voice on the telephone pretending to be Miss Pebmarsh.”
“Was it your voice?” I asked.
“No, of course it wasn’t. I never made that telephone call. I’ve always told you so.”
“Look here, Sheila,” I said. “Whatever you tell anyone else, you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“So you don’t believe a word I say!”
“Yes, I do. You might have made that telephone call that day for some quite innocent reason. Someone may have asked you to make it, perhaps told you it was part of a joke, and then you got scared and once you’d lied about it, you had to go on lying. Was it like that?”
“No, no, no! How often have I got to tell you?”
“It’s all very well, Sheila, but there’s something you’re not telling me. I want you to trust me. If Hardcastle has got something against you, something that he hasn’t told me about—”
She interrupted again.
“Do you expect him to tell you everything?”
“Well, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. We’re roughly members of the same profession.”
The waitress brought our order at this point. The coffee was as pale as the latest fashionable shade of mink.
“I didn’t know you had anything to do with the police,” Sheila said, slowly stirring her coffee round and round.
“It’s not exactly the police. It’s an entirely different branch. But what I was getting at was, that if Dick doesn’t tell me things he knows about you, it’s for a special reason. It’s because he thinks I’m interested in you. Well, I am interested in you. I’m more than that. I’m for you, Sheila, whatever you’ve done. You came out of that house that day scared to death. You were really scared. You weren’t pretending. You couldn’t have acted a part the way you did.”
“Of course I was scared. I was terrified.”
“Was it only finding the dead body that scared you? Or was there something else?”
“What else should there be?”
I braced myself.
“Why did you pinch that clock with Rosemary written across it?”
“What do you mean? Why should I pinch it?”
“I’m asking you why you did.”
“I never touched it.”
“You went back into that room because you’d left your gloves there, you said. You weren’t wearing any gloves that day. A fine September day. I’ve never seen you wear gloves. All right then, you went back into that room and you picked up that clock. Don’t lie to me about that. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”
She was silent for a moment or two, crumbling up the scones on her plate.
“All right,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “All right. I did. I picked up the clock and I shoved it into my bag and I came out again.”
“But why did you do it?”
“Because of the name—Rosemary. It’s my name.”
“Your name is Rosemary, not Sheila?”
“It’s both. Rosemary Sheila.”
“And that was enough, just that? The fact that you’d the same name as was written on one of those clocks?”
She heard my disbelief, but she stuck to it.
“I was scared, I tell you.”
I looked at her. Sheila was my girl—the girl I wanted—and wanted for keeps. But it wasn’t any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival—the quick easy glib denial. It was a child’s weapon—and she’d probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila I must accept her as she was—be at hand to prop up the weak places. We’ve all
got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila’s but they were there.
I made up my mind and attacked. It was the only way.
“It was your clock, wasn’t it?” I said. “It belonged to you?”
She gasped.
“How did you know?”
“Tell me about it.”
The story tumbled out then in a helter-skelter of words. She’d had the clock nearly all her life. Until she was about six years old she’d always gone by the name of Rosemary—but she hated it and had insisted on being called Sheila. Lately the clock had been giving trouble. She’d taken it with her to leave at a clock-repairing shop not far from the Bureau. But she’d left it somewhere—in the bus, perhaps, or in the milk bar where she went for a sandwich at lunchtime.
“How long was this before the murder at 19, Wilbraham Crescent?”
About a week, she thought. She hadn’t bothered much, because the clock was old and always going wrong and it would really be better to get a new one.
And then:
“I didn’t notice it at first,” she said. “Not when I went into the room. And then I—found the dead man. I was paralysed. I straightened up after touching him and I just stood there staring and my clock was facing me on a table by the fire—my clock—and there was blood on my hand—and then she came in and I forgot everything because she was going to tread on him. And—and so—I bolted. To get away—that’s all I wanted.”
I nodded.
“And later?”
“I began to think. She said she hadn’t telephoned for me—then who had—who’d got me there and put my clock there? I—I said that about leaving gloves and—and stuffed it into my bag. I suppose it was—stupid of me.”
“You couldn’t have done anything sillier,” I told her. “In some ways, Sheila, you’ve got no sense at all.”
“But someone is trying to involve me. That postcard. It must have been sent by someone who knows I took that clock. And the postcard itself—the Old Bailey. If my father was a criminal—”
“What do you know about your father and mother?”
“My father and mother died in an accident when I was a baby. That’s what my aunt told me, what I’ve always been told. But she never speaks about them, she never tells me anything about them. Sometimes, once or twice when I asked, she’s told me things about them that aren’t the same as what she’s told me before. So I’ve always known, you see, that there’s something wrong.”