II

Miss Waterhouse was also at home. She was also true to type, openingthe door with a suddenness which displayed a desire to trap someone do-ing what they should not do.

“Oh, it’s you!” she said. “Really, I’ve told your people all I know.”

“I’m sure you’ve replied to all the questions that were asked you,” saidHardcastle, “but they can’t all be asked at once, you know. We have to gointo a few more details.”

“I don’t see why. The whole thing was a most terrible shock,” said MissWaterhouse, looking at him in a censorious way as though it had been allhis doing. “Come in, come in. You can’t stand on the mat all day. Come inand sit down and ask me any questions you want to, though really whatquestions there can be, I cannot see. As I told you, I went out to make atelephone call. I opened the door of the box and there was the girl. Neverhad such a shock in my life. I hurried down and got the police constable.

And after that, in case you want to know, I came back here and I gave my-self a medicinal dose of brandy. Medicinal,” said Miss Waterhousefiercely.

“Very wise of you, madam,” said Inspector Hardcastle.

“And that’s that,” said Miss Waterhouse with finality.

“I wanted to ask you if you were quite sure you had never seen this girlbefore?”

“May have seen her a dozen times,” said Miss Waterhouse, “but not toremember. I mean, she may have served me in Woolworth’s, or sat next tome in a bus, or sold me tickets in a cinema.”

“She was a shorthand typist at the Cavendish Bureau.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had occasion to use a shorthand typist. Perhapsshe worked in my brother’s office at Gainsford and Swettenham. Is thatwhat you’re driving at?”

“Oh, no,” said Inspector Hardcastle, “there appears to be no connectionof that kind. But I just wondered if she’d come to see you this morning be-fore being killed.”

“Come to see me? No, of course not. Why should she?”

“Well, that we wouldn’t know,” said Inspector Hardcastle, “but youwould say, would you, that anyone who saw her coming in at your gatethis morning was mistaken?” He looked at her with innocent eyes.

“Somebody saw her coming in at my gate? Nonsense,” said Miss Water-house. She hesitated. “At least—”

“Yes?” said Hardcastle, alert though he did not show it.

“Well, I suppose she may have pushed a leaflet or something throughthe door … There was a leaflet there at lunchtime. Something about ameeting for nuclear disarmament, I think. There’s always somethingevery day. I suppose conceivably she might have come and pushed some-thing through the letter box; but you can’t blame me for that, can you?”

“Of course not. Now as to your telephone call—you say your own tele-phone was out of order. According to the exchange, that was not so.”

“Exchanges will say anything! I dialled and got a most peculiar noise, notthe 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 issome idea that this girl did come to call on someone in the crescent andthat she went to a house not very far from here.”

“And so you have to inquire all along the crescent,” said Miss Water-house. “I should think the most likely thing is that she went to the housenext 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 Bur-eau. Surely, if I remember rightly, it was said that Miss Pebmarsh askedfor a shorthand typist to come to her house the other day when that manwas killed.”

“It was said so, yes, but she denied it.”

“Well, if you ask me,” said Miss Waterhouse, “not that anyone everlistens to what I say until it’s too late, I should say that she’d gone a littlebatty. Miss Pebmarsh, I mean. I think, perhaps, that she does ring up bur-eaux and ask for shorthand typists to come. Then, perhaps, she forgets allabout it.”

“But you don’t think that she would do murder?”

“I never suggested murder or anything of that kind. I know a man waskilled in her house, but I’m not for a moment suggesting that Miss Peb-marsh had anything to do with it. No. I just thought that she might haveone of those curious fixations like people do. I knew a woman once whowas 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 orderedthem. That sort of thing.”

“Of course, anything is possible,” said Hardcastle. He said good-bye toMiss Waterhouse and left.

He thought she’d hardly done herself justice by her last suggestion. Onthe other hand, if she believed that the girl had been seen entering herhouse, and that that had in fact been the case, then the suggestion that thegirl 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 totackle the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau. It had, he knew, been reopenedat two o’clock this afternoon. He might get some help from the girls there.

And he would find Sheila Webb there too.