The Clocks - Agatha Christie [60]
“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.”
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 Pebmarsh asked for a shorthand typist to come 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 Waterhouse, “not that anyone ever listens to what I say until it’s too late, I should say that she’d gone a little batty. Miss Pebmarsh, I mean. I think, perhaps, that she does ring up bureaux and ask for shorthand typists to come. Then, perhaps, she forgets all about it.”
“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 sort 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 girls there. And he would find Sheila Webb there too.
III
One of the girls rose at once as he entered the 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 victimized? There is clearly some irresponsible person about who has got some kind of—what do they call it nowadays—a fixture or a complex—about shorthand typists or secretarial bureaux. They are deliberately martyrizing this institute. First Sheila Webb was summoned 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