Murder in the Telephone Exchange Read online

  “Nice?” asked Sergeant Matheson with a smile.

  “Very,” I answered politely, trying to revenge the snub. He looked a shade disappointed, and perversely I felt mean.

  The tea-shop was cool and dim, and almost empty of customers. It was past the afternoon tea hour. Soon we had the room to ourselves.

  “Would you like more to eat?” asked the Sergeant, as I poured out a second cup of tea.

  “I don’t think that I’d better. Otherwise I won’t be able to eat the three-course dinner that I left at the Exchange.” He seemed puzzled. I went on to explain: “Sandwiches, cake and fruit served in a brown paper bag. Most palatable!”

  Sergeant Matheson laughed. He seemed so like an ordinary man, and not the representative of the law who had taken my statement the previous night, that I asked coaxingly: “Tell me, how is our murder going? Is the inspector anywhere near solving the mystery, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “You shouldn’t,” he answered, relighting the half-smoked cigarette that he had butted economically before tea. “He has his own ideas, but there is a lot of spade-work yet to do.”

  “You being the spade,” I pointed out.

  “I suppose so. But after all he is directing the case. He has all the responsibility.”

  “The Inspector seems to be an able man,” I said disinterestedly and the subject was dropped.

  “Do you play golf?” I asked suddenly.

  “No, I’m afraid not. Are you a golfer?”

  “A very humble one. What about tennis?”

  He shook his head. I stared at him in surprise.

  “Don’t you play anything with a bat and ball? Cricket?”

  His mouth was quirking up at the corners. “I am afraid that I don’t play anything with a bat, but I am rather keen on basketball.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked faintly. I had always imagined that that was a game relegated to one’s schooldays. I had memories of myself, clad in a short tunic, with the knee out of one black stocking, tearing around after a leather ball. The Sergeant looked quite enthusiastic.

  “Best game in the world,” he declared. “Fast and interesting. I used to play for the University team.”

  “Are there actually teams?” I asked, awed.

  “Certainly,” he replied, looking puzzled again. “You’re not thinking that I play that tame pat-ball as kids do at school? You were, I can tell. Just let me take you to see the real thing, and you’ll soon make up your mind as to whether it’s a good game or not.

  “Thanks, I’d love to,” I lied politely. I couldn’t see myself going out with a policeman, let alone to a basketball match.

  “You haven’t been quite frank with Inspector Coleman, have you, Miss Byrnes?” he asked abruptly. I wondered whether he had hoped to catch me unawares.

  “Why do you ask that?” I parried, pulling on my gloves.

  “You know who wrote that last letter. Are you protecting someone?”

  I avoided his eyes, and answered lightly: “Yes and no. Is all this out of office hours, or will you use it in evidence against me?”

  “I’ll use your confidence with discretion, and to the best advantage,” he said gravely.

  I hesitated, playing with the clasp of my handbag. “Did the Inspector choose that letter as a sample of the latest of its kind, or does he think that it has some bearing on the case’?” I was trying to steer a straight course. When I heard him laughing, I looked up suspiciously.

  “You are to be congratulated, Miss Byrnes, on your shrewdness. Although he has not said anything definite to me, I think that he considers that it has not the slightest connection with the crime. A sample, as you observed, for there must have been a dozen others like it written about the same matter. I might add that they all showed distinct unoriginality. The letters could have been written by one person.”

  “If it has no significance, why are you so anxious to find out who wrote it?”

  The Sergeant looked a little sheepish. “The Inspector told me to.”

  I felt indignation rising up inside me. “So that’s the meaning of this tête-à-tête,” I declared scornfully. “You brought me here so that we could get all confidential and matey, and you could weed information out of me. Well, you’re wrong, Sergeant whatever your name is. It’s nearly ten years now since I came to town, and that is the lowest trick that has been played on me.” I leaned forward, and said softly: “If you had been a shade more patient, and not given your game away, I would have told you what I know; but now I won’t. That is, not until I have consulted the writer of that letter. Then it depends on that person whether I do or not. So you can go back to your superior officer, and tell him that his little idea did not go over so well.”

  He sat unmoved by my abuse, though his eyes seemed troubled. “Look here, Miss Byrnes,” he said with a frank air. “I admit that it was a cad’s trick, and I’m sorry that I was so clumsy. Apart from my job I really did want to take you to tea.” I snorted, and pushed back my chair to get up.

  “No, wait a minute,” he commanded. “Do you remember what Inspector Coleman said to you this morning? To you and Miss MacIntyre? This is a dangerous business. Whether you disliked Miss Compton or not, it is up to you to help us find that person who battered her to death.”

  I rose to my feet in contemptuous silence.

  “Please,” he said, and I caught an urgent note in his voice. “This is not another act. Good Heavens, girl! Do you think that I want to investigate another death at the Exchange? Yours, perhaps? It could happen, you know.”

  I shivered at his words, but kept my face passive. He came round the table to my side.

  “You fool, you hopeless little fool,” he continued, gripping my arm. “Don’t you realize that you may be holding in that silly brain of yours some half-forgotten fact that may make your life a danger to this inhuman creature?”

  My eyes swept his face. Some half-forgotten fact! Last night I had been trying to remember something when I was switching at the boards, and I couldn’t. Was the Sergeant right? Was that semi-conscious thought a necessary thread of evidence? Then I remembered Mac and her big tragic eyes. I couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t, not until she had given me my cue. Mac knew something; of that I was certain.

  “You’re hurting my arm,” I said coldly. “Can we go back to the Exchange now? Thanks for the tea.”

  Sergeant Matheson removed his hand. He looked at me in a helpless way. “I could shake you,” I heard him say breathlessly, as I led the way between the tables to the door.

  * * * * *

  He appeared so stern as we drove up town, that I began to think that I had behaved idiotically. I felt almost frightened of him. “After all, he is an officer of the law, not a shy boy,” I argued with myself. “I suppose that I should tell him.” But some instinct made me hold my tongue. “I’ll wait until I have seen Dulcie.” I thought.

  Sergeant Matheson parked the car without a word, and took my arm as we crossed the street to the Exchange door. “Please tell me everything you know soon, Miss Byrnes,” he begged. His voice sounded anxious. I shook my head wretchedly. What a nuisance one’s loyalties could be!

  The Sergeant stopped at the door to speak to the guard, but I continued on my way. A different knot of telephonists was gathered in the hall, but they gazed at me with the same curiosity as the others had that morning. I felt a strong temptation to put my tongue out at them, and was compelled to use all my will-power to pass them in silence. It had more effect than any vulgar gesture I could have made, and they dispersed rapidly. I found old Bill making his last trip for the night before switching the lift over to the automatic, and felt inexpressibly relieved. I hadn’t fancied a walk up eight flights of stairs. I would never have ridden in that lift alone.

  “Well, little lady?” he asked in his kindly way. “Have you had a trying day?”

  “Not so little,” I retorted. “Yes, I’m worn out even before I start work.”

  “Terrible business,” he said abruptly,
banging one of the indicators shut.

  “Very,” I agreed. Then a thought struck me. “Look here, Bill, you must know a lot about this place one way and another, driving this box up and down all day. What did you think of Miss Compton? What sort of woman would you say she was?”

  He ignored a signal from the third floor and I could hear someone calling out indignantly.

  “I knew her when she first came here to work,” he said slowly. “I was a mechanic in the old power room at Central; before this happened, of course,” and he took his hand from the lever to indicate his empty sleeve. I felt touched. He was probably an excellent mechanic; the way in which he looked after the lift proved that. Now, because of that bloody debacle of over a quarter of a century ago, he was reduced to the inanity of his present job.

  Bill glanced at me smiling, as though sensing my sympathy. “You mightn’t believe me,” he declared, “but Sarah Compton was quite a good-looking girl when she was young. Not unlike yourself, as a matter of fact. Tall and fair.”

  “Good lord,” I said blankly. “Will I look like her when I reach middle age?”

  “Quite likely. I see ’em all fade as the years go by.”

  I gazed at him curiously, as we stopped at the eighth floor. “You’ve been with the Department for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since before the First World War,” he nodded. “I was down on the Post Office lifts until this place was built a few years back.”

  “Did you ever know an Irene Smith? She was a telephonist about 1917, and married a man called Patterson.”

  There was a pause. He bent forward to open the doors. “Yes, I knew her. She and Sarah used to work on the same rota if I recollect properly.”

  I began to feel excited. “What did she look like?” I demanded. Bill pursed up his mouth. “She was of medium height, I should say, and darkish. Attractive, but not like Sarah, who had the most arresting face that I have ever seen. Blondes always fade quickly,” he added, so regretfully that I made a mental vow to buy some more cold cream, and to use it lavishly that very night.

  “Was Compton well-liked in those days?”

  Bill closed the doors and sat back in his chair. “You’re keeping me from going home,” he reproached me. “What is your interest in Miss Compton? You’d better leave these things to people who know how to handle them,” he added in a serious voice.

  “So I’ve just been told,” I remarked dryly. “Let us say that I am merely curious.”

  “I don’t like it,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’ll answer anything you like to ask me.”

  I repeated my question. He considered it in a careful manner before he replied. “I wouldn’t say Sarah Compton was very popular even then. She was the possessive type, if you follow what I mean. She would attract people, women as well as men, by her strong personality, and then hang on to them too hard. No one likes that, even nowadays. When the break came Sarah would get madly jealous and spiteful.”

  I nodded. “Love turns to hate, as it were. Was she friendly with this Irene Smith I was asking you about?”

  “I imagine that she was,” he answered, frowning. “There must have been some attachment between them. I recollect one day I overheard them quarrelling violently. It stuck in my mind because they had been inseparable. They were on Central positions, and I was behind the boards with a buttinsky fixing some wires.”

  A buttinsky, for the information of those who might think that it is some sort of Russian musical instrument, is a telephone receiver, transmitter and dial all in one piece. Mechanics and linesmen generally use them a great deal, for “butting in” on the wires.

  “They didn’t quarrel noisily,” Bill went on. “They couldn’t, because they were on duty. But the abuse that those two girls hurled at each other, and in such soft voices, nearly made my hair stand on end.”

  I laughed. “No wonder you never married.”

  Bill looked at me queerly. “How do you know that I am not married?” he asked. “As a matter of fact, I have a son and a daughter. My boy would be about your age.”

  I was frankly astonished when he told me that. Somehow it had not occurred to me that he might have a family. To cover my surprise I asked if he remembered the nature of the quarrel between Sarah Compton and Irene Smith.

  “Some man, I think, but don’t forget that it is over twenty-five years ago, and I’ve been through a war since then.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said gently, touching his shoulder for a brief moment. “Go home now, Bill, and have your tea. How are the tomatoes this year?”

  He pulled open the doors again. “They’re just fine. Would you like some?”

  “Would I what?” I declared enthusiastically as I stepped out.

  “I’ll bring some in to-morrow,” he nodded through the grille. He lifted his one hand from the lever in good-bye. I waited on the landing until the lights above the lift door winked one after the other and then stopped at the ground floor.

  The eighth floor seemed deserted. I walked wearily down the corridor to the cloakroom. It was the hour when telephonists had either gone home, or had not yet been relieved for tea. I noticed that my stolid-faced friend, Roberts, was absent from his post in front of the cloakroom, and wondered where he was, until I remembered Inspector Coleman telling Bertie that we could use the rooms again.

  ‘I suppose all the sensation-mongers will be pouring in soon, and asking me questions,’ I thought gloomily, as I opened the door. I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder, thinking that I heard a footstep. I waited a moment with my hand on the knob, my heart beating a little faster than usual. I was beginning to regret not waiting for the Sergeant to accompany me. I might have known that the eighth floor would be as lonely as a grave at this hour of the evening. I took a grip of myself and walked in boldly, even trying to whistle a little. As I opened my locker, my hand paused again. I stood frozen to the spot, straining my ears. I could have sworn that someone was moving about in the restroom.

  ‘Pull yourself together, my girl,’ I said severely. ‘This is pure imagination.’ But I wasn’t game to have a look round the half-open door of that restroom. Then, as I was pulling my telephone out, a voice behind me said loudly and suddenly: “Boo!” I dropped my apparatus and spun round with a hand to my mouth to stop a semi-materialized scream.

  “John Clarkson!” I cried furiously. “What on earth are you doing? What do you mean by giving me such a fright?”

  He stood in the doorway, grinning. A look of concern came into his face as he realized that I was in earnest.

  “Poor little Maggie,” he said anxiously, coming forward and taking my hand. “I’m sorry I was such a brute. Do you feel all right?”

  “No, I don’t,” I choked. “You nearly scared me out of my wits.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders comfortingly, and I felt a kiss dropped on my hair. I pushed him away.

  “I feel better now,” I declared, turning aside to hide my embarrassment. “Just look what you made me do!” The mouthpiece of my telephone had a large piece missing out of it. I got down on the floor to look for the broken-off ebonite. “It was a rotten transmitter, anyway. You’ll have to find me another. It was your fault that it broke.”

  “You will have the best available,” Clark promised in a big-hearted way. “Are you coming to revisit the scene of the crime?”

  “You talk as if I was the murderer,” I protested, walking gingerly into the restroom. “It looks just the same.” I stared around in surprise. Unconsciously I must have expected some change. Clark was so quiet that I glanced up at him, and saw his face was very grim.

  “Yes, just the same,” he repeated.

  “Anyway, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me that you are playing amateur detective?” I asked sarcastically. Clark walked into the centre of the room, gazing about him in frowning silence.

  “Looking for clues?” I inquired in the same vein, as I caught his eye.

  “Just mooching about,” he answered airily. “Where have you
been all day, my girl? I rang this morning, but that old battle-horse of yours said that you were asleep. Then I called in this afternoon only to find that you had left.”

  “I have been hunting with the hounds,” I said, seating myself deliberately on the chair at the foot of which I had seen Sarah Compton sprawled in her own blood the previous night. “I’m not too sure if I’m not a hare,” I continued, staring fascinated at the damp patch at my feet. It seemed the only visible link with that horrible scene I remembered so vividly.

  “In with the cops, are you, my pet? What happened?”

  I shrugged indifferently. “They got the bright idea of going through Sarah’s papers at her room. You remember the letter that I told you about last night? They wanted to see if I could identify that with other letters she had. You’d be surprised at the amount of mail that woman got.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said with emphasis. “She was pretty poisonous, though I suppose one shouldn’t talk ill of the dead.”

  “That’s what Patterson said this morning,” I remarked absently.

  “What was that?”

  “Gloria Patterson. You know; the wench who thinks that he has ‘oomph’ or ‘it’ or whatever it is. She came to see me this morning with a long tale of woe that reeked to high heaven with suspicious circumstances. I told her to take it to the Inspector, and see what he would make of it. Like the majority of us, Gloria seems to have something on her mind.”

  Clark came to stand over me, looking very large. “Have you?” he asked swiftly. “I asked you last night, Maggie. What is it?”

  “Not my hidden thought,” I dismissed with a gesture of my hand. “It’s just—Mac.” I gazed up at him earnestly. “Have you seen her to-day at all, Clark? I can’t make head or tail of her attitude. I wish you’d try to win her confidence.”