III

One of the girls rose at once as he entered the office.

“It’s Detective Inspector Hardcastle, isn’t it?” she said. “Miss Martindaleis expecting you.”

She ushered him into the inner office. Miss Martindale did not wait amoment before attacking him.

“It’s disgraceful, Inspector Hardcastle, absolutely disgraceful! You mustget to the bottom of this. You must get to the bottom of it at once. No dilly-dallying about. The police are supposed to give protection and that is whatwe need here at this office. Protection. I want protection for my girls and Imean to get it.”

“I’m sure, Miss Martindale, that—”

“Are you going to deny that two of my girls, two of them, have been vic-timized? There is clearly some irresponsible person about who has gotsome kind of—what do they call it nowadays—a fixture or a complex—about shorthand typists or secretarial bureaux. They are deliberately mar-tyrizing this institute. First Sheila Webb was summoned by a heartlesstrick to find a dead body—the kind of thing that might send a nervous girloff her head—and now this. A perfectly nice harmless girl murdered in atelephone box. You must get to the bottom of it, Inspector.”

“There’s nothing I want more than to get to the bottom of it, Miss Mar-tindale. I’ve come to see if you can give me any help.”

“Help! What help can I give you? Do you think if I had any help, Iwouldn’t have rushed to you with it before now? You’ve got to find whokilled that poor girl, Edna, and who played that heartless trick on Sheila.

I’m strict with my girls, Inspector, I keep them up to their work and Iwon’t allow them to be late or slipshod. But I don’t stand for their beingvictimized or murdered. I intend to defend them, and I intend to see thatpeople who are paid by the State to defend them do their work.” Sheglared at him and looked rather like a tigress in human form.

“Give us time, Miss Martindale,” he said.

“Time? Just because that silly child is dead, I suppose you think you’veall the time in the world. The next thing that happens will be one of theother girls is murdered.”

“I don’t think you need fear that, Miss Martindale.”

“I don’t suppose you thought this girl was going to be killed when yougot up this morning, Inspector. If so, you’d have taken a few precautions, Isuppose, to look after her. And when one of my girls gets killed or is put insome terribly compromising position, you’ll be equally surprised. Thewhole thing is extraordinary, crazy! You must admit yourself it’s a crazysetup. That is, if the things one reads in the paper were true. All thoseclocks for instance. They weren’t mentioned this morning at the inquest, Inoticed.”

“As little as possible was mentioned this morning, Miss Martindale. Itwas only an adjourned inquest, you know.”

“All I say is,” said Miss Martindale, glaring at him again, “you must dosomething about it.”

“And there’s nothing you can tell me, no hint Edna might have given toyou? She didn’t appear worried by anything, she didn’t consult you?”

“I don’t suppose she’d have consulted me if she was worried,” said MissMartindale. “But what had she to be worried about?”

That was exactly the question that Inspector Hardcastle would haveliked to have answered for him, but he could see that it was not likely thathe would get the answer from Miss Martindale. Instead he said:

“I’d like to talk to as many of your girls here as I can. I can see that it isnot likely that Edna Brent would have confided any fears or worries toyou, but she might have spoken of them to her fellow employees.”

“That’s possible enough, I expect,” said Miss Martindale. “They spendtheir time gossiping—these girls. The moment they hear my step in thepassage outside all the typewriters begin to rattle. But what have theybeen doing just before? Talking. Chat, chat, chitter-chat!” Calming down alittle, she said, “There are only three of them in the office at present.

Would you like to speak to them while you’re here? The others are out onassignments. I can give you their names and their home addresses, if youlike.”

“Thank you, Miss Martindale.”

“I expect you’d like to speak to them alone,” said Miss Martindale. “Theywouldn’t talk as freely if I was standing there looking on. They’d have toadmit, you see, that they had been gossiping and wasting their time.”

She got up from her seat and opened the door into the outer office.

“Girls,” she said, “Detective Inspector Hardcastle wants to talk thingsover with you. You can stop work for the moment. Try and tell him any-thing you know that can help him to find out who killed Edna Brent.”

She went back into her own private office and shut the door firmly.

Three startled girlish faces looked at the inspector. He summed them upquickly and superficially, but sufficiently to make up his mind as to thequality of the material with which he was about to deal. A fair solid-look-ing girl with spectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not particularlybright. A rather rakish-looking brunette with the kind of hairdo that sug-gested she’d been out in a blizzard lately. Eyes that noticed things here,perhaps, but probably highly unreliable in her recollection of events.

Everything would be suitably touched up. The third was a born gigglerwho would, he was sure, agree with whatever anyone else said.

He spoke quietly, informally.

“I suppose you’ve all heard what has happened to Edna Brent whoworked here?”

Three heads nodded violently.

“By the way, how did you hear?”

They looked at each other as if trying to decide who should be spokes-man. By common consent it appeared to be the fair girl, whose name, itseemed, was Janet.

“Edna didn’t come to work at two o’clock, as she should have done,” sheexplained.

“And Sandy Cat was very annoyed,” began the dark-haired girl, Maur-een, and then stopped herself. “Miss Martindale, I mean.”

The third girl giggled. “Sandy Cat is just what we call her,” she ex-plained.

“And not a bad name,” the inspector thought.

“She’s a perfect terror when she likes,” said Maureen. “Fairly jumps onyou. She asked if Edna had said anything to us about not coming back tothe office this afternoon, and that she ought to have at least sent an ex-cuse.”

The fair girl said: “I told Miss Martindale that she’d been at the inquestwith the rest of us, but that we hadn’t seen her afterwards and didn’tknow where she’d gone.”

“That was true, was it?” asked Hardcastle. “You’ve no idea where shedid go when she left the inquest.”

“I suggested she should come and have some lunch with me,” said Maur-een, “but she seemed to have something on her mind. She said she wasn’tsure that she’d bother to have any lunch. Just buy something and eat it inthe office.”

“So she meant, then, to come back to the office?”

“Oh, yes, of course. We all knew we’d got to do that.”

“Have any of you noticed anything different about Edna Brent these lastfew days? Did she seem to you worried at all, as though she had somethingon her mind? Did she tell you anything to that effect? If there is anythingat all you know, I must beg of you to tell me.”

They looked at each other but not in a conspiratorial manner. It seemedto be merely vague conjecture.

“She was always worried about something,” said Maureen. “She getsthings muddled up, and makes mistakes. She was a bit slow in the up-take.”

“Things always seemed to happen to Edna,” said the giggler. “Rememberwhen that stiletto heel of hers came off the other day? Just the sort of thingthat would happen to Edna.”

“I remember,” said Hardcastle.

He remembered how the girl had stood looking down ruefully at theshoe in her hand.

“You know, I had a feeling something awful had happened this after-noon when Edna didn’t get here at two o’clock,” said Janet. She noddedwith a solemn face.

Hardcastle looked at her with some dislike. He always disliked peoplewho were wise after the event. He was quite sure that the girl in questionhad thought nothing of the kind. Far more likely, he thought to himself,that she had said, “Edna will catch it from Sandy Cat when she does comein.”

“When did you hear what had happened?” he asked again.

They looked at each other. The giggler flushed guiltily. Her eyes shotsideways to the door into Miss Martindale’s private office.

“Well, I—er—I just slipped out for a minute,” she said. “I wanted somepastries to take home and I knew they’d all be gone by the time we left.

And when I got to the shop—it’s on the corner and they know me quitewell there—the woman said, ‘She worked at your place, didn’t she, ducks?’

and I said, ‘Who do you mean?’ And then she said, ‘This girl they’ve justfound dead in a telephone box.’ Oh, it gave me ever such a turn! So I camerushing back and I told the others and in the end we all said we’d have totell Miss Martindale about it, and just at that moment she came bouncingout of her office and said to us, ‘Now what are you doing? Not a singletypewriter going.’”

The fair girl took up the saga.

“And I said, ‘Really it’s not our fault. We’ve heard some terrible newsabout Edna, Miss Martindale.’”

“And what did Miss Martindale say or do?”

“Well, she wouldn’t believe it at first,” said the brunette. “She said, ‘Non-sense. You’ve just been picking up some silly gossip in a shop. It must besome other girl. Why should it be Edna?’ And she marched back into herroom and rang up the police station and found out it was true.”

“But I don’t see,” said Janet almost dreamily, “I don’t see why anyoneshould want to kill Edna.”

“It’s not as though she had a boy or anything,” said the brunette.

All three looked at Hardcastle hopefully as though he could give themthe answer to the problem. He sighed. There was nothing here for him.

Perhaps one of the other girls might be more helpful. And there was SheilaWebb herself.

“Were Sheila Webb and Edna Brent particular friends?” he asked.

They looked at each other vaguely.

“Not special, I don’t think.”

“Where is Miss Webb, by the way?”

He was told that Sheila Webb was at the Curlew Hotel, attending on Pro-fessor Purdy.