Twenty-three

COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE

The hotel I was staying in was a poky little place by the station. It served adecent grill but that was all that could be said for it. Except, of course, thatit was cheap.

At ten o’clock the following morning I rang the Cavendish SecretarialBureau and said that I wanted a shorthand typist to take down some let-ters and retype a business agreement. My name was Douglas Weatherbyand I was staying at the Clarendon Hotel (extraordinarily tatty hotels al-ways have grand names). Was Miss Sheila Webb available? A friend ofmine had found her very efficient.

I was in luck. Sheila could come straight away. She had, however, an ap-pointment at twelve o’clock. I said that I would have finished with herwell before that as I had an appointment myself.

I was outside the swing doors of the Clarendon when Sheila appeared. Istepped forward.

“Mr. Douglas Weatherby at your service,” I said.

“Was it you rang up?”

“It was.”

“But you can’t do things like that.” She looked scandalized.

“Why not? I’m prepared to pay the Cavendish Bureau for your services.

What does it matter to them if we spend your valuable and expensive timein the Buttercup Café just across the street instead of dictating dull lettersbeginning ‘Yours of the 3rd prontissimo to hand,’ etc. Come on, let’s go anddrink indifferent coffee in peaceful surroundings.”

The Buttercup Café lived up to its name by being violently and aggress-ively yellow. Formica tabletops, plastic cushions and cups and saucerswere all canary colour.

I ordered coffee and scones for two. It was early enough for us to havethe place practically to ourselves.

When the waitress had taken the order and gone away, we lookedacross the table at each other.

“Are you all right, Sheila?”

“What do you mean—am I all right?”

Her eyes had such dark circles under them that they looked violetrather than blue.

“Have you been having a bad time?”

“Yes—no—I don’t know. I thought you had gone away?”

“I had. I’ve come back.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Her eyes dropped.

“I’m afraid of him,” she said after a pause of at least a minute, which is along time.

“Who are you afraid of?”

“That friend of yours—that inspector. He thinks … he thinks I killed thatman, and that I killed Edna too….”

“Oh, that’s just his manner,” I said reassuringly. “He always goes aboutlooking as though he suspected everybody.”

“No, Colin, it’s not like that at all. It’s no good saying things just to cheerme up. He’s thought that I had something to do with it right from the be-ginning.”

“My dear girl, there’s no evidence against you. Just because you werethere on the spot that day, because someone put you on the spot….”

She interrupted.

“He thinks I put myself on the spot. He thinks it’s all a trumped-up story.

He thinks that Edna in some way knew about it. He thinks that Edna re-cognized my voice on the telephone pretending to be Miss Pebmarsh.”

“Was it your voice?” I asked.

“No, of course it wasn’t. I never made that telephone call. I’ve alwaystold you so.”

“Look here, Sheila,” I said. “Whatever you tell anyone else, you’ve got totell me the truth.”

“So you don’t believe a word I say!”

“Yes, I do. You might have made that telephone call that day for somequite innocent reason. Someone may have asked you to make it, perhapstold you it was part of a joke, and then you got scared and once you’d liedabout it, you had to go on lying. Was it like that?”

“No, no, no! How often have I got to tell you?”

“It’s all very well, Sheila, but there’s something you’re not telling me. Iwant you to trust me. If Hardcastle has got something against you, some-thing that he hasn’t told me about—”

She interrupted again.

“Do you expect him to tell you everything?”

“Well, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. We’re roughly members ofthe same profession.”

The waitress brought our order at this point. The coffee was as pale asthe latest fashionable shade of mink.

“I didn’t know you had anything to do with the police,” Sheila said,slowly stirring her coffee round and round.

“It’s not exactly the police. It’s an entirely different branch. But what Iwas getting at was, that if Dick doesn’t tell me things he knows about you,it’s for a special reason. It’s because he thinks I’m interested in you. Well, Iam interested in you. I’m more than that. I’m for you, Sheila, whateveryou’ve done. You came out of that house that day scared to death. Youwere really scared. You weren’t pretending. You couldn’t have acted apart the way you did.”

“Of course I was scared. I was terrified.”

“Was it only finding the dead body that scared you? Or was there some-thing else?”

“What else should there be?”

I braced myself.

“Why did you pinch that clock with Rosemary written across it?”

“What do you mean? Why should I pinch it?”

“I’m asking you why you did.”

“I never touched it.”

“You went back into that room because you’d left your gloves there, yousaid. You weren’t wearing any gloves that day. A fine September day. I’venever seen you wear gloves. All right then, you went back into that roomand you picked up that clock. Don’t lie to me about that. That’s what youdid, isn’t it?”

She was silent for a moment or two, crumbling up the scones on herplate.

“All right,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “All right. I did.

I picked up the clock and I shoved it into my bag and I came out again.”

“But why did you do it?”

“Because of the name—Rosemary. It’s my name.”

“Your name is Rosemary, not Sheila?”

“It’s both. Rosemary Sheila.”

“And that was enough, just that? The fact that you’d the same name aswas written on one of those clocks?”

She heard my disbelief, but she stuck to it.

“I was scared, I tell you.”

I looked at her. Sheila was my girl—the girl I wanted—and wanted forkeeps. But it wasn’t any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liarand probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for sur-vival—the quick easy glib denial. It was a child’s weapon—and she’d prob-ably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila I must accept her as shewas — be at hand to prop up the weak places. We’ve all got our weakplaces. Mine were different from Sheila’s but they were there.

I made up my mind and attacked. It was the only way.

“It was your clock, wasn’t it?” I said. “It belonged to you?”

She gasped.

“How did you know?”

“Tell me about it.”

The story tumbled out then in a helter-skelter of words. She’d had theclock nearly all her life. Until she was about six years old she’d alwaysgone by the name of Rosemary—but she hated it and had insisted on beingcalled Sheila. Lately the clock had been giving trouble. She’d taken it withher to leave at a clock-repairing shop not far from the Bureau. But she’dleft it somewhere—in the bus, perhaps, or in the milk bar where she wentfor a sandwich at lunchtime.

“How long was this before the murder at 19, Wilbraham Crescent?”

About a week, she thought. She hadn’t bothered much, because the clockwas old and always going wrong and it would really be better to get a newone.

And then:

“I didn’t notice it at first,” she said. “Not when I went into the room. Andthen I — found the dead man. I was paralysed. I straightened up aftertouching him and I just stood there staring and my clock was facing me ona table by the fire—my clock—and there was blood on my hand—and thenshe came in and I forgot everything because she was going to tread onhim. And—and so—I bolted. To get away—that’s all I wanted.”

I nodded.

“And later?”

“I began to think. She said she hadn’t telephoned for me—then who had—who’d got me there and put my clock there? I—I said that about leavinggloves and—and stuffed it into my bag. I suppose it was—stupid of me.”

“You couldn’t have done anything sillier,” I told her. “In some ways,Sheila, you’ve got no sense at all.”

“But someone is trying to involve me. That postcard. It must have beensent by someone who knows I took that clock. And the postcard itself—theOld Bailey. If my father was a criminal—”

“What do you know about your father and mother?”

“My father and mother died in an accident when I was a baby. That’swhat my aunt told me, what I’ve always been told. But she never speaksabout them, she never tells me anything about them. Sometimes, once ortwice when I asked, she’s told me things about them that aren’t the sameas what she’s told me before. So I’ve always known, you see, that there’ssomething wrong.”

“Go on.”

“So I think that perhaps my father was some kind of criminal—perhapseven, a murderer. Or perhaps it was my mother. People don’t say yourparents are dead and can’t or won’t tell you anything about those parents,unless the real reason is something—something that they think would betoo awful for you to know.”

“So you got yourself all worked up. It’s probably quite simple. You mayjust have been an illegitimate child.”

“I thought of that, too. People do sometimes try and hide that kind ofthing from children. It’s very stupid. They’d much better just tell them thereal truth. It doesn’t matter as much nowadays. But the whole point is, yousee, that I don’t know. I don’t know what’s behind all this. Why was I calledRosemary? It’s not a family name. It means remembrance, doesn’t it?”

“Which could be a nice meaning,” I pointed out.

“Yes, it could … But I don’t feel it was. Anyway, after the inspector hadasked me questions that day, I began to think. Why had someone wantedto get me there? To get me there with a strange man who was dead? Orwas it the dead man who had wanted me to meet him there? Was he, per-haps—my father, and he wanted me to do something for him? And thensomeone had come along and killed him instead. Or did someone want tomake out from the beginning that it was I who had killed him? Oh, I wasall mixed up, frightened. It seemed somehow as if everything was beingmade to point at me. Getting me there, and a dead man and my name—Rosemary—on my own clock that didn’t belong there. So I got in a panicand did something that was stupid, as you say.”

I shook my head at her.

“You’ve been reading or typing too many thrillers and mystery stories,”

I said accusingly. “What about Edna? Haven’t you any idea at all whatshe’d got into her head about you? Why did she come all the way to yourhouse to talk to you when she saw you every day at the office?”

“I’ve no idea. She couldn’t have thought I had anything to do with themurder. She couldn’t.”

“Could it have been something she overheard and made a mistakeabout?”

“There was nothing, I tell you. Nothing!”

I wondered. I couldn’t help wondering … Even now, I didn’t trust Sheilato tell the truth.

“Have you got any personal enemies? Disgruntled young men, jealousgirls, someone or other a bit unbalanced who might have it in for you?”

It sounded most unconvincing as I said it.

“Of course not.”

So there it was. Even now I wasn’t sure about that clock. It was a fantas-tic story. 413. What did those figures mean? Why write them on a postcardwith the word: REMEMBER unless they would mean something to the per-son to whom the postcard was sent?

I sighed, paid the bill and got up.

“Don’t worry,” I said. (Surely the most fatuous words in the English orany other language.) “The Colin Lamb Personal Service is on the job.

You’re going to be all right, and we’re going to be married and live happilyever after on practically nothing a year. By the way,” I said, unable to stopmyself, though I knew it would have been better to end on the romanticnote, but the Colin Lamb Personal Curiosity drove me on. “What have youactually done with that clock? Hidden it in your stocking drawer?”

She waited just a moment before she said:

“I put it in the dustbin of the house next door.”

I was quite impressed. It was simple and probably effective. To think ofthat had been clever of her. Perhaps I had underestimated Sheila.