A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [59]
I will not recount the secretarial work I did for Colonel Edwards, because to do so would bore even the writer to tears. Suffice it to say that for the next few days I was a secretary: I filed and organised, I typed, and I took dictation. At the same time, of course, I had my ears fully cocked and my eyes into everything, at every moment. I listened in on telephone calls when I could, hearing long, dreary, manly conversations about dead birds and alcoholic beverages. I went systematically through each filing cabinet until my fingers and back cramped, and I dutifully chatted with the servants whenever I could manage to happen across them, receiving mostly monosyllabic grunts for my pains. No, if I wanted a life filled with nonstop excitement and challenge, I should not choose the life of a detective. High-wire acrobatics, perhaps, or teaching twelve-year-olds, or motherhood, but not detecting.
It is endurance that wins the case, not short bursts of flashy footwork (though those, too, have their place.) For the next days, I soaked up all possible information about Colonel Edwards and the people around him: his eating and drinking habits, what he read, how he slept, his likes, dislikes, passions, and hates— all the urges and habits that made the man.
The first day, Thursday, I spent all morning with the colonel in his upstairs study, sorting out correspondence and putting things to order. We ate lunch together in the study, and afterwards he showed me, almost shyly, the first pages of his book on Egypt in the years preceding the war. I promised to take it home and study it, which seemed to please him. We then sat down to dictation.
The first letters were to the managers of two manufacturing businesses, concerned with the upcoming yearly reports. The third was a short letter to a friend confirming a weekend bird-slaughtering party in September. ("Do much shooting, Miss Small?" "Why, no, Colonel." "Invigorating way to spend a holiday. Of course, it takes some strength to use a bird-gun." "Does it, Colonel? It sounds jolly fun.") The fourth was to a bank manager, with details for increasing the monthly allowance for the colonel's son, Gerald, when he returned to Cambridge. (Thank God it's Cambridge, I thought, and not Oxford. I'm not exactly unknown there.) The fifth was of considerable interest to me, addressed to a friend, concerning a comember of an organisation whose name set off bells. It read:
Dear Brooks,
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the little flap-up last week, and I have come to the conclusion that I shall have to resign from the Friends. It was a downright nasty trick Lawson played on me, keeping information from me until the last minute like that. I was the chair of that committee, after all, and it makes me look a damned ('I beg your pardon, Miss Small, change that to confounded, would you please?') fool not to know it was a woman I was meeting.
His supporters seem to have rallied round, and there's little chance he'll resign. If he apologises, I might reconsider, but not otherwise.
My best to the missus, and hope to see you both on the twenty-fourth.
Dennis Edwards
I did not think his resignation threat referred to the Society of Friends.
Two other letters followed, but I recorded them mechanically, taking little notice of their content other than seeing that they had nothing to do with my interests.
"That's it for today, Miss Small. Do you want to read them back to me before you type them?"
"If you like, but I think they're quite clear."
"Didn't go too fast for you, did I? Let me see."
"No, not at all. Oh, do you read shorthand?"
"I read a bit, but I don't recognise this. What is it?"
I couldn't very well tell him the truth, that it was my own system, a boustrophedonic code based on six languages, three alphabets, a variety of symbols mathematical and chemical, and a hieroglyphic, designed to keep up with even the fastest of lecturers and leave me time to record nonverbal