Seventeen

It was an hour and a half later and Detective Inspector Hardcastle satdown behind his desk and accepted with relief an official cup of tea. Hisface 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—thisgirl 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 somethingabout it. I asked her if she could give me a message or—or if perhaps shecould come to the station later on. You see, you were busy with the chiefconstable and the coroner and I thought—”

“Damn!” said Hardcastle, under his breath. “Couldn’t you have told herjust to wait until I was free?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The young man flushed. “I suppose if I’d known, I oughtto 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 wor-ried about.”

“Worried?” said Hardcastle. He was silent for quite a minute turningover in his mind certain facts. This was the girl he had passed in the streetwhen he was going to Mrs. Lawton’s house, the girl who had wanted to seeSheila Webb. The girl who had recognized him as she passed him and hadhesitated a moment as though uncertain whether to stop him or not. She’dhad something on her mind. Yes, that was it. Something on her mind. He’dslipped up. He’d not been quick enough on the ball. Filled with his ownpurpose of finding out a little more about Sheila Webb’s background, hehad overlooked a valuable point. The girl had been worried? Why? Now,probably, they’d never know why.

“Go on, Pierce,” he said, “tell me all you can remember.” He addedkindly, for he was a fair man: “You couldn’t know that it was important.”

It wasn’t, he knew, any good to pass on his own anger and frustration byblaming it on the boy. How should the boy have known? Part of his train-ing was to uphold discipline, to make sure that his superiors were only ac-costed at the proper times and in the proper places. If the girl had said itwas important or urgent, that would have been different. But she hadn’tbeen, he thought, remembering his first view of her in the office, that kindof girl. A slow thinker. A girl probably distrustful of her own mental pro-cesses.

“Can you remember exactly what happened, and what she said to you,Pierce?” he asked.

Pierce was looking at him with a kind of eager gratitude.

“Well, sir, she just come up to me when everyone was leaving and shesort of hesitated a moment and looked round just as though she were look-ing for someone. Not you, sir, I don’t think. Somebody else. Then she comeup to me and said could she speak to the police officer, and she said theone that had given evidence. So, as I said, I saw you were busy with thechief constable so I explained to her that you were engaged just now,could she give me a message or contact you later at the station. And I thinkshe said that would do quite well. I said was it anything particular….”

“Yes?” Hardcastle leaned forward.

“And she said well not really. It was just something, she said, that shedidn’t see how it could have been the way she’d said it was.”

“She didn’t see how what she said could have been like that?” Hard-castle repeated.

“That’s right, sir. I’m not sure of the exact words. Perhaps it was: ‘I don’tsee how what she said can have been true.’ She was frowning and lookingpuzzled-like. But when I asked her, she said it wasn’t really important.”

Not really important, the girl had said. The same girl who had beenfound not long afterwards strangled in a telephone box….

“Was anybody near you at the time she was talking to you?” he asked.

“Well, there were a good many people, sir, filing out, you know. There’dbeen a lot of people attending the inquest. It’s caused quite a stir, thismurder has, what with the way the Press have taken it up and all.”

“You don’t remember anyone in particular who was near you at thetime—any of the people who’d given evidence, for instance?”

“I’m afraid I don’t recall anyone in particular, sir.”

“Well,” said Hardcastle, “it can’t be helped. All right, Pierce, if you re-member anything further, come to me at once with it.”

Left alone he made an effort to subdue his rising anger and self-condem-nation. That girl, that rabbity-looking girl, had known something. No, per-haps not put it as high as known, but she had seen something, heard some-thing. Something that had worried her; and the worry had been intensi-fied after attending the inquest. What could it have been? Something inthe evidence? Something, in all probability, in Sheila Webb’s evidence?

Had she gone to Sheila’s aunt’s house two days before on purpose to seeSheila? Surely she could have talked to Sheila at the office? Why did shewant to see her privately? Did she know something about Sheila Webbthat perplexed her? Did she want to ask Sheila for an explanation ofwhatever it was, somewhere in private—not in front of the other girls? Itlooked that way. It certainly looked like it.

He dismissed Pierce. Then he gave a few directions to Sergeant Cray.

“What do you think the girl went to Wilbraham Crescent for?” SergeantCray asked.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” said Hardcastle. “It’s possible, ofcourse, that she just suffered from curiosity—wanted to see what the placelooked like. There’s nothing unusual about that—half the population ofCrowdean seems to feel the same.”

“Don’t we know it,” said Sergeant Cray with feeling.

“On the other hand,” said Hardcastle slowly, “she may have gone to seesomeone who lived there….”

When Sergeant Cray had gone out again, Hardcastle wrote down threenumbers on his blotting pad.

“20,” he wrote, and put a query after it. He added: “19?” and then “18?”

He wrote names to correspond. Hemming, Pebmarsh, Waterhouse. Thethree houses in the higher crescent were out of it. To visit one of themEdna Brent would not have gone along the lower road at all.

Hardcastle studied the three possibilities.

He took No. 20 first. The knife used in the original murder had beenfound there. It seemed more likely that the knife had been thrown therefrom the garden of No. 19 but they didn’t know that it had. It could havebeen thrust into the shrubbery by the owner of No. 20 herself. When ques-tioned, Mrs. Hemming’s only reaction had been indignation. “How wickedof someone to throw a nasty knife like that at my cats!” she had said. Howdid Mrs. Hemming connect up with Edna Brent? She didn’t, InspectorHardcastle decided. He went on to consider Miss Pebmarsh.

Had Edna Brent gone to Wilbraham Crescent to call on Miss Pebmarsh?

Miss Pebmarsh had given evidence at the inquest. Had there been some-thing in that evidence which had aroused disbelief in Edna? But she hadbeen worried before the inquest. Had she already known something aboutMiss Pebmarsh? Had she known, for instance, that there was a link ofsome kind between Miss Pebmarsh and Sheila Webb? That would fit inwith her words to Pierce. “It couldn’t have been true what she said.”

“Conjecture, all conjecture,” he thought angrily.

And No. 18? Miss Waterhouse had found the body. Inspector Hardcastlewas professionally prejudiced against people who found bodies. Findingthe body avoided so many difficulties for a murderer—it saved the haz-ards of arranging an alibi, it accounted for any overlooked fingerprints. Inmany ways it was a cast-iron position—with one proviso only. There mustbe no obvious motive. There was certainly no apparent motive for MissWaterhouse to do away with little Edna Brent. Miss Waterhouse had notgiven evidence at the inquest. She might have been there, though. DidEdna perhaps have some reason for knowing, or believing, that it wasMiss Waterhouse who had impersonated Miss Pebmarsh over the tele-phone and asked for a shorthand typist to be sent to No. 19?

More conjecture.

And there was, of course, Sheila Webb herself….

Hardcastle’s hand went to the telephone. He got on to the hotel whereColin Lamb was staying. Presently he got Colin himself on the wire.

“Hardcastle here — what time was it when you lunched with SheilaWebb today?”

There was a pause before Colin answered:

“How do you know that we lunched together?”

“A damned good guess. You did, didn’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I have lunch with her?”

“No reason at all. I’m merely asking you the time. Did you go off tolunch straight from the inquest?”

“No. She had shopping to do. We met at the Chinese place in MarketStreet at one o’clock.”

“I see.”

Hardcastle looked down his notes. Edna Brent had died between 12:30and one o’clock.

“Don’t you want to know what we had for lunch?”

“Keep your hair on. I just wanted the exact time. For the record.”

“I see. It’s like that.”

There was a pause. Hardcastle said, endeavouring to ease the strain:

“If you’re not doing anything this evening—”

The other interrupted.

“I’m off. Just packing up. I found a message waiting for me. I’ve got to goabroad.”

“When will you be back?”

“That’s anybody’s guess. A week at least — perhaps longer — possiblynever!”

“Bad luck—or isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure,” said Colin, and rang off.