Murder in the Telephone Exchange (19 page)

“Very well,” she replied in an unbelieving tone. Her eyes wandered curiously down to my clenched hand. Bill must have gone at last. There was no sign of him.

I stood there in the corridor wondering what to do next when Mac came strolling down the passage to meet me.

“Here's your handbag,” she said, holding it out.

“Thanks. I suppose Gordon has gone back to the trunkroom.”

We climbed up the stairs to the roof. I had been doing exactly the same thing only twenty-four hours ago. It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since we discovered Compton's battered body.

“What's it all about, Maggie?” Mac asked, as we leaned over the rail towards the sunset sky.

“I don't know,” I replied unhappily. “I don't know at all. Everything and everyone are out of perspective to me. First you,” and she turned her profile to the red sky, “then Gloria, Bertie, Gordon, and now Bill.”

“Bill!” Mac exclaimed in amazement. “You mean the liftman. What's he done?”

“Look,” I said, opening my hand. She bent over it.

“An indelible pencil. Where did you find it?”

In some surprise, I saw the purple mark on my damp hand, “I wonder!” I cried excitedly. The note that Sarah had received so precipitately in the lift came before my mental vision. I could swear that it had been written in an indelible pencil. That meant my mind leaped on and upwards until Mac's laughing voice called me down to earth.

“Maggie, Maggie, what's the matter with you? Why are you looking so fierce?”

I glanced down at her. “Am I? I don't feel fierce. Only rather sad. Listen, Mac. You know that note Inspector Coleman gave you to read this morning. Would you say that it had been written in an ordinary pencil, or—” and I held out my hand again.

She gazed at the indelible pencil again, and then at me. I could see her dark eyes shining with excitement also.

“Great balls of fire!” she ejaculated, borrowing from Scarlett. “You're right, Maggie. Where did you find it?”

“On the floor behind the cafeteria counter. When I dashed off like a madwoman at tea, I thought that I heard someone there. This,” and I held the pencil up, “proves that there must have been someone behind the counter trying to eavesdrop.”

“Did you see anyone?” Mac asked eagerly.

“Not inside. That cleaner-woman let me go in before she locked up. But Bill was standing just outside.”

“Oh,” said Mac.

“Quite,” I agreed. “Rather nasty, isn't it? That's the rotten part. I'd hate him to be mixed up in anything like this.”

“What's the full story, Maggie? I promise you that I'll be close-mouthed.” Her lips twisted a little ironically.

I repeated the facts I had given John Clarkson in the restroom that afternoon concerning the three notes Inspector Coleman had given me to read. Mac interrupted me once. “Those first two letters, Maggie? Were they anonymous too?”

“No,” I replied, speaking very slowly and distinctly. “The writer's name was Irene Patterson.”

I heard Mac's smothered ejaculation, and went on as she made no further comment. “The similarity between those first two notes and last night's was not the writing, but the fact that practically the same wording was used. I want you to keep that point in mind. To continue, I came back to the Exchange and found Bill on his last trip in the lift. We got talking and I started to ask him a few questions. He remembered without hesitation this girl-friend of Compton's. He was a mechanic at that time. One day he overheard them quarrelling violently about some man. He was
able to tell me all this without once scratching his head or saying ‘um.' ” I paused significantly.

“Are you trying to inform me,” Mac demanded, “that Sarah and her girl-friend were both after the one man, and that you think that man was Bill!”

I nodded wretchedly. “It fits in. He talked about Sarah as if—well, as if he had had some sort of an affair with her, and when she got too possessive, he became weary of her and turned to Irene. He is married, you know, with a son and a daughter.”

Mac flung her cigarette high into the air. I watched its gleaming descent.

“Silly thing to do,” she remarked. “It might start a fire.”

“It should be pretty safe,” I answered without caring much.

She turned to look at me quizzically. “Are you cogitating on the same thing as I am?” she asked.

“I wouldn't be surprised. Have you ever heard Bill's surname?”

“No, never, have you?”

I shook my head and remarked cautiously: “It could be so. He said that he had a daughter.”

Mac's lip curled a little. “I can't see her claiming a parent in a liftman, can you?”

“No, indeed,” I agreed, “little snob!”

Mac turned towards the sky again. “Well, it's none of our business,” she said in an even voice. She had retired into her shell again after a brief emergence.

“Isn't it? Are you sure, Mac?”

She made no reply. I sighed, “Listen, old girl,” I said earnestly. “I'm your friend. Why are you like this? Can't you tell me what your trouble is? Surely I can help in some way.”

She gave me a quick cold glance. “Mac,” I said miserably, and she laughed, a short and ugly sound.

“Forget it, Maggie. I swear that there's nothing wrong. Let's get back to Bill again. You think he was trying to overhear our conversation at tea, and that he dropped that pencil as he crouched behind the counter?” I nodded. “It sounds a bit melodramatic. What about the cleaner-woman? Wasn't she there, too?”

“She was on her rounds, locking up the building. She wouldn't have seen him. Why was he so long leaving the Exchange if he told me some time previously that he was going home?”

Mac digested this in silence. “You're probably right,” she admitted presently. “But what are you going to do about it? Tell Inspector Coleman?”

“I'll have to, I suppose. By the way, he is interviewing young Gloria
now. There's a chance he might be learning all this from her. I hope so. Bill is a nice person. I'd hate to have to tell the Inspector what I think. But you remember what he said this morning about telling everything we know.”

Mac faced me quickly. I waited for her to speak but she didn't. She only gave that horrid little laugh again. It hurt me to the heart. And in my heart I knew Mac's friendship meant a great deal to me. I spoke lightly trying to disguise that hurt.

“Is it time that we went back to work, or rather that I commenced? I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. Two personalities. Only mine are not quite so sinister; one a detective, and the other a hardworking telephonist.”

“Where does Gordon come in?” Mac asked abruptly. We moved off, skirting the lift cabin, where I had overheard Compton the previous night having fun and games.

“Again, I don't know. Did you consider that she was telling the truth when she denied all knowledge of yet another anonymous letter? As far as I can see, this crime has been conducted by correspondence. It's all most confusing.”

“I wouldn't care to give an opinion,” Mac said slowly, knitting her straight brows. “I haven't had many dealings with Gordon. I should say that she was a straightforward type of girl.”

“I thought so of most of my fellow-men, once,” I remarked with a sidelong glance. “Now, I am even beginning to doubt my own veracity. To bear that out, our friends in the Force have both more or less called me a liar.”

“You're becoming very cynical, Maggie,” Mac reproved. “Too much does not suit you.”

“That's what my mother would say,” I agreed absently. “Which reminds me, I haven't read her letter yet. One came from home this morning, but in the excitement of having Gloria for lunch, I forgot it.”

“I wish you wouldn't get away from the point,” Mac complained, as we ignored the lift in an unspoken agreement, and went down by the stairs.

“You should talk,” I exclaimed. “You mean my little warning to Gordon? She's a silly fool if she's keeping something back. I don't mind her not telling me, but she forgets that this is a very serious affair, and that she's up against trained minds which doubt every word you utter. Damn!” I stopped on the stairs.

“What's the matter now?” asked Mac patiently.

“I haven't got my outfit. A telephonist can't work without a telephone, you know. Didn't I leave it in the lunchroom?”

“I didn't notice it.”

“I couldn't have taken it out of my locker after all. That means that I'll have to go back. You needn't wait for me. Tell Clark that I'll only be a minute.”

* * * * *

I retraced my steps, leaving Mac at the trunkroom door. ‘Silly ass!' I muttered to myself, taking the stairs two at a time. ‘I remember now. I was just getting it out when Clark gave me that hearty fright. Then Bertie and the Inspector rolled along. I'll be glad when I settle down to some nice quiet switching, and stop all this rushing about.'

The corridor was now deserted and appeared extra gloomy and silent to my sharpened senses. When I neared the cloakroom door I heard a comforting murmur of voices from the police officers' temporary office, and bars of light shone through the corrugated panel at the top of their door.

‘If that blasted restroom door has been locked again,' I thought grimly, ‘people would be quite correct in suspecting me.' However it was still standing ajar as we had left it before tea. Beyond giving it a cursory glance I took no further notice as I hunted for my locker key, holding my bag up to the dim light.

Some sixth sense told me something had happened as soon as I put the key in the lock. I hesitated a brief moment before I swung open the door. A sheet of paper, which had been pushed under it, slipped to the floor. Bending to retrieve it, I saw my name printed in block letters. With my telephone held dangling from one hand, I glanced through it thoughtfully, and on impulse walked straight out of the cloakroom to knock at the Inspector's door.

The murmur ceased abruptly, and the ensuing silence was broken by the scraping of a chair. Sergeant Matheson opened the door, the look of surprise on his face changing quickly to one of eagerness.

“The bad penny again,” I said coldly. “See what you can make of this.”

He stood aside to let me enter. Inspector Coleman raised a frowning face from his papers. On the opposite side of the desk Gloria Patterson sat, her cheeks flushed defiantly. Her eyes looked like those of a trapped animal. I don't mean a caged tiger; more like a sheep which had caught its wool in barbed wire.

“Where did you find this letter?” asked Sergeant Matheson, as I seated myself calmly. I was getting used to this office and its occupants.

“In my locker,” I replied, giving Gloria another appraising glance. She appeared as though she had been having a bad time, and I almost felt
sorry for her now that she had realized just what an actual
rencontre
with the police meant. They would stand no nonsense, and one couldn't expect them to.

“Do you see, sir?” asked the Sergeant eagerly, “exactly the same type of printing.”

“And the same paper,” I added. “Tell me, would you say that it had been written in indelible pencil. The light was bad outside.”

Inspector Coleman moistened his forefinger and rubbed. “No, it isn't,” he replied, turning his keen gaze on me. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered,” I said airily. That meant that the note had been written and put into my locker during the short time when Mac and I had been on the roof; the author, on discovering the loss of the indelible pencil, had used an ordinary one. However, that did not prove that Bill had written it, because there were Gordon and Patterson to remember. By the former's attitude, I was convinced that she knew something about the little practice of anonymous letters, though it hardly seemed likely that she would go straight from my warning at tea to repeat her performance. On the other hand, she would have had ample opportunity, just as my young friend who was sitting in the same room had.

Inspector Coleman had been searching through his brief-case. He brought to light a grimy slip of paper. He submitted this to the same experiment of rubbing with a wet finger. He looked up and said with a curtness that smacked of chagrin, “An indelible pencil was used on Miss Compton's letter. But how did you guess?”

“It came before my mind's eye some time ago,” I had no intention of telling them about my discovery behind the cafeteria counter. I had absolutely nothing to go on in thinking that Bill was the culprit, and to drag him into this affair without proof was unjust and foolish. ‘Let the police ferret things out for themselves,' I thought obstinately.

“May I read my correspondence again?” I asked. “I only gave it a brief glance and then came straight to you. Thanks.” It was such a typical example of an anonymous letter that I was almost bored. I was warned against prying into affairs which did not concern me, and the note concluded with a dark threat to my general health and well-being. I felt rather flattered by the writer's confidence in my perspicacity. Whoever wrote it did not understand that whatever knowledge I held had been thrust upon my unwilling attention.