The Clocks - Christie Agatha - Страница 30

‘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’s-her-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?’

‘Hecould 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 murderer couldn’t know that they wouldn’t. Passers-by would have noted a car stopping at Number 19 that day-’

‘I wonder if theywould 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 realize, 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 arrived by appointment quite unsuspiciously, was offered a sherry or a cocktail-the 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. ‘Doesshe know? The girl herself?’

‘She says not.’

‘She says not,’ Hardcastle repeated tonelessly. ‘I’m asking you whatyou think about it?’ 

I didn’t speak for a moment or two. Whatdid I think? I had 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. It represented the Central Criminal Court. Hardcastle turned it over. On the right was 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 4.13.

‘4.13,’ said Hardcastle. ‘That was the time the clocks showed that day.’ He shook his head. ‘A picture of the Old Bailey, the word “Remember” and a time-4.13. Itmust tie up with something.’

‘She says she doesn’t know what it means.’ I added: ‘I believe her.’

Hardcastle nodded.

‘I’m keeping this. We may get something from it.’

‘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 good. 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 recognized him.’ He read:

‘ “Dear Sir, the picture that was in the paper I’m almost sure is the same as a man who was catching a train at Willesden Junction the other day. He was muttering to himself and looking very wild and excited, I thought when I saw him there must be something wrong.”

‘ “Dear Sir, I think this man looks very like my husband’s cousin John. He went abroad to South Africa but it maybe 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 recognize husbands. Women don’t really seem to know what their husbands look like! There are hopeful mothers who recognize 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 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? It’s not-’

Hardcastle looked at me with a cold, appraising 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 Webb. Edna Brent her name is.’

‘Who found her? The constable?’

‘She was found by Miss Waterhouse, the woman from Number 18. It seems she went to the box to make a telephone call as her 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 telephoned that he’s on his way, sir. He’ll meet you at Wilbraham Crescent.’

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?’

‘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 say?’

‘She wanted to have a word with you, sir.’

Hardcastle sat up, suddenly alert. 

‘She wanted to have a word with me? Did she say why?’

‘Not exactly, sir. I’m sorry, sir, if I-if I ought to have done something about it. I 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 thinkshe thought it was important. It was just something she said she was worried about.’