Murder in the Telephone Exchange (61 page)

“It is very kind of you to come and see me,” I said, seating myself on the edge of the opposite chair, and drawing the folds of my long housecoat together.

“Not at all, not at all,” he replied, standing up with a jerk. He must have known that he still seemed ill-at-ease even in that position, and sat down again.

“How are you?” Bertie demanded with that forced smile which men seem to keep for the sickroom.

“Fine, thank you. I didn't go out of my head after all. The doctors were disappointed,” I added dryly.

He looked very unhappy. “I'm sure that there wasn't the slightest possibility, Miss Byrnes. You've been remarkable, simply remarkable.”

‘A true daughter of my mother,' I thought to myself, as Bertie began to cough and fidget. I was about to start commenting on the weather when he said abruptly, not meeting my eyes:

“I want to apologize to you, Miss Byrnes.”

“Do you?” I asked in a dazed fashion. I had thought that the hoot was on the other foot.

“Yes, I do,” he insisted fiercely. “My behaviour was scandalous, and
I am very, very sorry. I should have known better, but at the time I was suspicious of everyone. I hope you understand what I mean?”

“I think I do,” I replied cautiously, “but I'd be glad if you'd explain a bit more.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Bertie, coughing again. “It was your—er—friendship with Mr. Clarkson that made me apprehensive. You see, I thought that the pair of you were working hand-in-glove, as it were. Whenever anything untoward happened, you always seemed to be together. That was why I decided to work that Sunday night in his place. I hoped that I might be able to find out what part you were playing. When I found you at Miss MacIntyre's locker I considered that my worst fears were justified.”

Bertie arose, and walked to the edge of the veranda. Without turning around, he said gruffly: “I need hardly tell you, Miss Byrnes, that I was most upset. I had always considered you as a young lady of the highest integrity.”

I stared in amazement at his dumpy little figure, silhouetted against the sky. So that was why he had let me go unharmed from the cloakroom! The warning that he had issued was not prompted from any sinister motive, but from his desire to release me from Clark's toils.

“I thought that you were mixed up in the murders yourself,” I burst out.

Bertie spun around. His pince-nez slipped down the length of its chain as his brows rose in an astonishment that must have been equal to mine.

“Dear me!” he said blankly. Then I saw a twinkle appear in his eyes, and as a broad grin lit up his face, I suddenly began to laugh.

“How amusing!” he exclaimed with his odd little chuckle. “We seem to have been at cross-purposes, Miss Byrnes.”

“When you started apologizing to me,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I wondered what on earth you were talking about. It was I who should have been doing the apologizing.”

“Not at all,” he repeated, seating himself again. But this time he lay back at his ease, crossing his short legs. “May I ask what made you think that I committed the murders? I presume that is what you did think?”

I nodded. “I'm afraid I did, and for just the same reason as you suspected me. You always seemed to be on the scene when anything happened. The night Miss Compton was killed, you entered the Exchange in the most suspicious way.” I hesitated, glancing at him for a brief moment. “Although you gave an explanation of what made you return after your usual working hours, that explanation only increased my suspicion. I thought maybe that Compton was blackmailing you. She had tried to with others, you know. My theory was that you killed her, and made your
escape by that door down in the basement.”

Bertie placed the tips of his fingers together, and inclined his head gravely. “Quite feasible,” he announced. “To concoct such a story as I did about that meeting was most abhorrent to me. Apart from soiling your ears with sordid facts, I never did like telling untruths. But at the time I had no option. Mr. Clarkson was there as well as you. In fact, Mr. Clarkson's dramatic defence rather amused me. There was no better way in which he could have made worse my already uncertain position. I knew he was guilty but I had no proof, and I had been warned to use the utmost discretion in handling the situation. Time was with Mr. Clarkson, and he used it to put me in the most suspicious light possible.”

“About what were you to be discreet?” I asked.

Bertie glanced sideways at me, a dubious look.

“I know that Mr. Clarkson was mixed up in some espionage game,” I said encouragingly. “Sergeant Matheson told me.”

Bertie seemed relieved. “If the police told you, I suppose that there is no harm in my telling you what I know. Over the space of several months many well-known people, not the least among them a high Defence official, have approached the head of the Telephone Department concerning information that had leaked out over the lines. You may have observed the way the secrecy line has come into more frequent use just lately. I had instructions to employ it for every call of a confidential nature.”

I nodded. That secrecy line had certainly been working overtime.

“Mr. Dunn called for my assistance in tracing the person who was at the root of all the trouble. As I have told you, he warned me to go carefully as the good name of the Department had to be protected. There was also the fear that our man might slip through our fingers. It was impossible to go to the police. They would have immediately started inquiries at the Exchange, and that was the last thing that we wanted to happen.

“Checking up on my staff's activities was a very difficult job, and one that was most distasteful. It meant putting all the outward phones in the building under observation, and even going through the lockers in the endeavour to discover who the person was.”

My mind flew back to that game of solo I had played in the restroom. I could hear the girls' indignant voices as they protested against the continual spying.

“After a while,” Bertie went on, “I came to the conclusion that the person must be fairly high up on my staff. A monitor, or even a traffic officer. Strangely enough I thought of Mr. Clarkson almost at once. But it wasn't until I overheard a certain remark that I had anything to go on. It was passed by a person who had recently been at a party Mr. Clarkson
had given at his flat. Perhaps you were there too?”

I nodded, and felt that weary feeling creeping through my brain again. How could I forget the sight of Clark playing the debonair host in the middle of his charming flower-filled apartment. He had come to us for help.

“Look here, you girls,” he had said. “What about coming and poking weeds into vases before the show. I don't know how to arrange flowers.”

I could see the broad mixed bowl on the window sill against the chintz, and Mac standing back, her small dark head on one side, as she surveyed her handiwork with grave concentration. I jerked myself back to the present. What was it Bertie was saying? Someone was wondering where Clark got his money; how he managed to run a flat in South Yarra on a traffic officer's income?

“That's funny,” I said aloud. “I used to speculate on the same thing. I presumed that his parents had been well-off.”

“He was a member of a very exclusive golf club, too,” Bertie continued. “It was always a source of surprise to me, until I made a few inquiries. I discovered that his name had been put up for election by a man called Atkinson.”

“Atkinson!” I repeated, almost yelling the name. “So it wasn't a coincidence after all.”

Bertie surveyed me anxiously. “I am making you excited. Please be calm, Miss Byrnes, or they'll make me go.”

“No, they won't,” I replied firmly. “You're staying until we thrash things out.”

Bertie chuckled again, like a playful conspirator. “That's exactly how I feel about anything unpleasant. Get it off your chest, and then forget all about it. Where was I?”

“I'd just taken over the conversation,” I said, smiling at him warmly. He was a lamb, after all. “Did you know about Mr. Atkinson?” I demanded.

“I had been furnished with the names and telephone numbers of several persons who were suspected of being connected with the affair. He was one of them. As soon as I realized that there was some link between him and Mr. Clarkson I knew that I was on the right track.” Bertie paused, and I noticed that the twinkle had faded from his eyes.

“Everything was going well,” he went on presently. “I had only to wait for such time when I could catch Mr. Clarkson red-handed, when Sarah Compton started to interfere. Poor woman! She thought that she was acting for the best, but really she was just an infernal nuisance. I tried to head her off, but she kept coming to tell me that something wrong was going on in the Exchange. It was only a matter of time before Mr. Clarkson
would realize she was on his trail. I became desperate,” Bertie stopped again, and I wondered why he looked so sheepish.

“I even had recourse to a trick I have never done since my schooldays,” he confessed. “I sent her an anonymous letter, warning her to mind her own business.”

“So that's how that letter fitted in!” I exclaimed, remembering the third note Inspector Coleman had handed me to read in Compton's room. “It had me puzzled.”

“Even that did not work,” Bertie went on regretfully.

“I should think that it would only increase her curiosity,” I told him. “The mere fact that she kept it proves that.”

“She was a very foolish woman,” said Bertie, shaking his head. “Her inquisitiveness caused her death.”

“In spite of all her faults, she was proud of the Telephone Exchange,” I declared slowly. “I think that she would have done anything to protect its reputation.”

Even my own defence of Sarah Compton did nothing to dispel the feeling of angry bitterness that filled me when I remembered the unhappiness and destruction she had left in her wake. Had she not started prying into matters that were really none of her concern, Clark would not have had to kill her. Not only Mac would have been still alive, but also Dulcie Gordon.

By a great effort I had managed to write a short note to Gordon's people. It was an unpleasant task, and one that I considered was more than amply rewarded by the grateful reply that came by the following mail. They thanked me for the description I had given them of what I knew of Dulcie's last days, and also for the way in which I had befriended their girl.

Far from being satisfied with their letter, it did more to augment that guilty feeling that I was responsible for Dulcie's death. Certainly I had achieved what I had sworn to do. She was totally exonerated from any suspicion of murder; but what comfort was that now, when she was dead by her own hand? Compton was more to blame than I, by her wicked exploitation of the simple country girl not overladen with brains. Poor little unsophisticated Dulcie, with her easily aroused timidity and concern for her family. Rather than face what she imagined would be shocked and disappointed parents, she had chosen to commit suicide. The principal emotion I felt when I thought of Gordon was regret. But the slightest remembrance of Mac made me clench my hands in the endeavour to beat off that old feeling of horror I had known so well in the first days of my breakdown.

One lonely, hot night, when sleep was playing the coquette, I got up to pace the floor of my narrow room and pondered on every incident that
brought Mac to her death. It was easy enough now to slip facts and incidents into their correct places to make a whole picture, which contained as its central figure a small, dark-haired girl lying dead in a pool of her own blood. It was like working out a jig-saw puzzle when you already knew the answer. Mac's secretive manner and haunted eyes were both explainable now I knew the secret she had been hiding. If she had loved Clark so completely, and it was obvious that she had, what an agony of indecision she must have experienced. Either she had to denounce Clark, or keep her guilty secret for his sake. Mac must have known the probable result of her foolish choice, but she was willing to risk even that.

I could only guess at what time and how she arrived at that decision. The day after Compton was killed, she had clung to me trembling with fright and begged to be allowed to spend the night with me. Then Dulcie Gordon wanted to speak to me, and I sent Mac home armed with my latchkey. Although Dulcie had kept me a considerable period, I had arrived at my boardinghouse before Mac. What had she been doing in that time? No one would ever know. My idea was that Clark had followed her. Perhaps at first they talked about everything but what was uppermost in both their minds. But Mac could not pretend for long. She told him what she knew and promised to hold her tongue. Clark went one step further by proposing that she joined forces with him.

“Money!” I could hear him saying persuasively, and almost see the greedy light in his eyes. “We could make a lot of money, Gerda.”

Little Mac, always as straight as a die! What did she do? She twisted her hands, and her fine eyes filled with untold agony as her innate honesty fought with her loyalty to Clark. I could hear her begging for time in which to think it over, and then see the hurried glance at her watch.

“I must hurry. Maggie mustn't suspect anything, John.”