by Cyril Hare
“Is it true you always write the last chapter first?” Miss Danville asked.
“Certainly not. How can you tell what the end of a book is going to be before you’ve begun it?”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Miss Clarke in a severely disapproving tone, “that you will start a book of this kind without knowing what the solution is going to be?”
“That’s not what I said at all. I only meant——”
“Order, order!” Mrs. Hopkinson clapped her hands. “We’re wandering from the giddy point. The question is, who do we want to have murdered?”
It was Mr. Phillips who was actually the first person to say, “Rickaby”, but Mr. Edelman, Miss Clarke and Miss Brown were so close behind him that the name came out almost in chorus.
“Splendid! That’s one thing settled right away. Now who——”
“Wait a minute.” In spite of himself, it was obvious that Mr. Wood was becoming interested. It was as though Amyas Leigh was beginning to stir beneath the disguise of the self-effacing temporary civil servant. “Wait a minute. I’m not sure that I want to murder Rickaby.”
“Not want to murder——? But Mr. Wood, dear, why not? We all want to. He’s such a ghastly person.”
“No, no. I’m not talking about my personal feelings. I’m speaking as a novelist. I just don’t see Rickaby as a murderee, that’s all. He’s not—how shall I put it?—not important enough. I always like to have some central figure, on whom you can focus a mass of different motives—jealousies, hates and fears and so on. Then you have something to work on. A little wretch whom everybody dislikes isn’t good enough.”
“I’m old-fashioned,” Pettigrew observed. “Give me the millionaire’s body in the library, and I’m quite content.”
Wood gave him an understanding look.
“Exactly,” he said slowly. “Now we are getting somewhere. Do you see what I see?”
Pettigrew smiled and nodded.
“What are you two talking about?” the Merry Widow asked in exasperation. “We haven’t got a millionaire in this outfit!”
“But we have a very beautiful library,” said Pettigrew.
Wood was filling his pipe with an air of immense concentration.
“Two entrances and french windows opening on to the terrace,” he murmured. “I noticed it the first time I went in there. It’s ideal.”
Mrs. Hopkinson looked from one to the other in bewilderment, and then light suddenly came to her and she clapped her hands.
“The Controller!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t we think of it sooner? Of course! We’ll blooming well massacre the Controller!”
“Really!” said Miss Clarke in her office voice, the voice that was wont to spread alarm and despondency through her entire department. “A joke’s a joke, I know, Alice, but I have to consider office discipline, and this is——”
“Now Judith, if you are going to wet-blanket our fun and games, I’ll never speak to you again! This is out of office hours and we can say what we like. Besides, Mr. Wood is a real author, and if he says the Controller’s to be murdered then murdered he will be. Now, who shall we have for murderer?”
“This is rather like Nuts in May, isn’t it?” said Phillips.
“Rather!” Mrs. Hopkinson giggled. “Who shall we have to fetch him away, fetch him away, fetch——”
But Miss Danville had risen to her feet.
“If you’ll excuse me, I think I shall go to bed,” she said, breathlessly but determinedly. “I don’t like this—this discussion of taking the life of a fellow human being. Even in fun. It’s—it’s not seemly. Especially just now. When so many men and women are being sacrificed all over the world. I know I was to blame, too—I joined in this game, thoughtlessly. But when it comes to selecting one of us to play the part of Cain——You must excuse me.”
She walked out of the room with dignity, clutching her little leather-covered book in her hand.
There was a moment’s silence following her departure, and then Miss Brown’s soft voice was heard.
“Oh, poor Miss Danville!” she murmured in a tone of genuine pity.
Pettigrew could not but notice the look of sympathy and admiration that Phillips gave her at that moment. It was obvious that, whether he shared her feelings or not, the little secretary’s kindheartedness had moved him.
“Damn it! I believe he really cares for her!” thought Pettigrew. The reflection disturbed him. Miss Brown, he felt, was not the type to take a love affair lightly. It would ruin her efficiency as a secretary, and he was fully aware of her value to him.
Miss Danville had no other sympathizers.
“I expect we shall all be well and truly prayed for to-night,” said Miss Clarke contemptuously. She seemed to have conquered any distaste which she might have originally felt for the proposal, for she added, “Go on, Alice.”
“Where was I? Oh, yes, of course, looking for a murderer. Who can we find who’s a really villainous, bloodthirsty piece of work? I don’t mind saying I have a certain person in my mind’s eye——”
“If you mean Rickaby,” said Wood authoritatively, watching his pipe smoke curl upwards to the ceiling, “he’s no good at all.”
“Oh, Mr. Wood, have a heart!” the Merry Widow groaned.
“But he isn’t,” the novelist persisted. “You’ve just given the reason yourself. If a man is obviously the sort you’d expect at sight to commit a crime, you can’t have him for the villain of a detective story. If you do, where’s your puzzle? What you want, of course, is the most unlikely person you can find.”
“I have some little experience of this sort of thing in real life,” Pettigrew remarked. “And there, I find, the police nearly always pick on the obvious person. And it is distressing to observe that they are nearly always right.”
“We’re not getting anywhere,” complained Mrs. Hopkinson. “Look how late it is! I’ll have to be toddling in five minutes and I know I shan’t sleep if we haven’t settled this. Mr. Wood, who is it to be?”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to make up my mind about. You want somebody unexpected. Well, that, I think, would apply to any of us here. The difficulty is to find a plausible motive for murdering the Controller, and motive is half the battle in these things.”
“We’d all like to murder him sometimes,” said Edelman.
“Of course, but that isn’t quite what I meant. We’d all be suspects, naturally. Anyone in the Control could be. There’s no reason why one should confine oneself to the people in this room.” He paused, and then added, “No, if I had to choose a villain, I should be rather inclined to select Miss Danville.”
“Oh, but that’s unkind!” exclaimed Miss Brown impulsively.
“My dear child, this is only a game,” said Miss Clarke reprovingly.
“Miss Danville,” Mr. Wood repeated. “I don’t know whether it has occurred to you, but she is so very religious, it’s hardly normal. For the purposes of a story only, of course, one might exaggerate the abnormality, present the Controller with some unholy hidden vice which she would discover, and then, given the right circumstances——”
“Religious mania?” Mr. Phillips inquired doubtfully. “I seem to have read something like it before—I never can remember the names of books, but——”
“Of course it has been done before,” said Mr. Wood with a frown. “Everything has. That’s the worst of this game. But I’m asked to propound a plot on the spur of the moment and that’s the best that I can do. I’m sorry if——”
“Oh, but Mr. Phillips didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Hopkinson hastened to assure him. “I think it’s a lovely idea, and I’m sure we all do. And when it’s written down, I’m certain nobody will ever guess the secret till the last chapter, except lucky us, who were in at the start. You will write it, won’t you, Mr. Wood?”
He shook his head.
“I’m afraid not. Even if I had the leisure for writing here, I couldn’t possibly do it—put real people into a b
ook, I mean.”
“Well, if you say not, but it does seem a shame. . . . Still, there’d be no harm in seeing how the book would go, if there was a book, so to speak? And it might always come in handy for you if you were going to write a real book later on, about something different, wouldn’t it? I’m sure we’d all love to help you.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“I think,” said Edelman in his heavy precise manner, “that what Mrs. Hopkinson has in mind is that we should beguile our leisure by constructing an imaginary detective tale, casting ourselves for the various parts——”
“That’s it, exactly!”
“With you, of course, as editor-in-chief, so to speak. It might be amusing.”
“Well, it is an idea, certainly,” Wood admitted. “I don’t know quite how——”
“My dears, I must fly!” Mrs. Hopkinson exclaimed, gathering her belongings hastily together. “Just look at the time! Thanks ever so for a lovely evening. I think it’s a thrilling notion. We’ll have a good old pow-wow about it later on. I’m sure I shall dream of horrors! Good night all!”
Her flurried departure broke up the party. Soon afterwards the other ladies went to bed, followed by Phillips and Wood. Pettigrew remained, staring into the fire, his nose wrinkled in a fashion peculiar to him when deep in thought. Then he looked across the room at Edelman and chuckled softly.
“What’s the joke?” It was so rare for Edelman to put a direct question that the effect was quite startling.
“I was just thinking that you seem to have insured against Mrs. Hopkinson being your partner at bridge for quite a time to come.”
Edelman uttered a short, mirthless laugh.
“That is one advantage, certainly,” he said drily. “It will give her something else to do.”
“Quite. Let us hope there will be no compensating disadvantages.”
But his tone did not sound particularly hopeful.
Chapter 3
THE BLENKINSOP FILE
The late Lord Eglwyswrw’s mansion was a rectangular two-storied building, disproportionately long for its breadth, perched precariously half-way down the steep slope of the north side of Marsett Bay.
The entrance faced the hill, and owing to the lie of the land, the ground floor, supported by stout rusticated columns on the seaward side, rode high above the derelict gardens running down towards the beach. Beneath it was a semi-basement, so designed that his lordship’s domestic staff should have the assistance of a north light supplied through grated windows, without being distracted from their duties by any view of the bay to the south. This now stood empty. It was equipped for an air raid shelter, and would have made an admirable one, if air raids had been known at Marsett Bay.
The bedroom storey housed the voluminous records of the Pin Control. Here the weight of the accumulated files had already caused the floor to sag in one or two places and prompted the introduction of some incongruous wooden beams among the ornamental pillars of the reception rooms beneath.
It was on the ground floor that the main work of the Control was carried on. The late owner had allowed his architect to design for him a suite of long, lofty and exquisitely ugly rooms fit for entertaining half the countryside and for very little else. It was left to the Control for the first time to populate these echoing saloons. The Ministry of Works played its part in furnishing them with trestle tables and office chairs and dividing them where necessary into cubicles with partitions of plywood and frosted glass, which reached less than half-way to the ceiling. But even so, as Mrs. Hopkinson remarked, the result was not very homely.
Even Miss Clarke, important though her position was in the hierarchy of the Pin Control, did not occupy a room of her own. In this she was less fortunate than Pettigrew, but it was a misfortune that visited itself principally on her subordinates in the Licencing department. From behind the flimsy screen that secluded her from the rank and file she was able to hear everything that went on, and they knew that at any moment she was liable to pounce upon the unwary. Miss Clarke was a great pouncer.
On the morning succeeding the murderous discussion at the Fernlea Residential Club, Miss Clarke, as though to atone for the levity into which she had allowed herself to be drawn, had been at her most severe. She had pounced frequently and violently. She was in the mood, common from time to time to most capable organizers, of wanting to meddle in every detail of everybody else’s work. The result was a very jumpy morning for the staff. Even Mrs. Hopkinson had to run the gauntlet of her inquisition. But they by now had been long versed in Miss Clarke’s ways. By dint of sheer bullying she had made them unquestionably the most efficient section in the whole office. To the public, clamouring for licences to manufacture, acquire or dispose of pins, they appeared evasive, dilatory and imperturbably indifferent; but administratively they were wellnigh perfect. They knew all the answers, even the answers to Miss Clarke’s questions. Or so it seemed, until, in an evil hour, Miss Clarke called for the Blenkinsop file.
“Miss Danville!” Miss Clarke’s leonine head appeared round the door of her cubicle. “Miss Danville!”
Honoria Danville, though she vainly hoped that nobody else suspected it, was in fact more than a little deaf. Also, her mind was at the moment wandering some way from her work. She had of late found it increasingly hard to concentrate on the things of this world, with the other world seeming nearer and more important every day. None the less, the second repetition of her name was loud enough to bring her back to her surroundings with a start. She rose, smoothed down her dress with fingers that trembled a little, and answered, “Yes, Miss Clarke.”
“Will you bring me the Blenkinsop file, please, XP782.” The head withdrew.
Miss Danville looked hopelessly at the litter of papers on the table before her, and then began to search. It always took her twice as long to find a file as anybody else, a fact that Miss Clarke had learned and accepted with a certain genial contempt, but this time she began her task with a sense of despair. She was sure she would not find the file. And in this she was perfectly right. Five full minutes later she trailed down the long room into Miss Clarke’s apartment, empty handed.
Miss Clarke, without looking up from her desk, extended her hand for the file. The gesture was characteristic of her in her more unpleasant moods, and appeared to be designed to emphasize that the staff were machines serving the interests of the Pin Control, rather than human beings. But in this instance, the machine failed to function. The extended hand remained unfilled. After a pause, during which she deliberately read through the letter which she was holding in the other hand, Miss Clarke was compelled to treat Miss Danville as a human being, and a very fallible one at that.
“Well?” she said, turning towards her. “Miss Danville, I am waiting. The Blenkinsop file, please.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Clarke, but I haven’t got it.”
“Not got it?” Miss Clarke’s expression was one of disbelief rather than displeasure. “But you must have it. It is marked out to you.”
“Oh yes,” Miss Danville agreed eagerly. “It was marked out to me all right, I know. It’s on my list.”
“Very well then.”
If a file is marked out to you, Miss Clarke’s tone implied, you have it. That is the System of the department, and if the System errs, then chaos is come again.
“But I haven’t got it.” Miss Danville was trembling. “I’ve looked and looked and——” Her face cleared suddenly. “Oh—I’ve just remembered. Of course, Mr. Edelman’s got it.”
“Really, Miss Danville, this will not do. You know perfectly well that when a file is marked out to another section, the carbon transfer slip must be placed in my tray. I suppose you sent it up to Registry along with the top copy. You girls are getting too careless. Ring up Registry and ask for it back. Then——What is the matter?”
“I—I don’t think there was a transfer slip,” Miss Danville faltered.
Miss Clarke’s expression, from being merely se
vere became outraged.
“No transfer slip?” she echoed. Then, with the air of one determined to probe iniquity to its depths, she went on. “Then perhaps you will tell me where is A.14’s requisition note for the file?”
Even her profound emotion could not make her forget that officially Mr. Edelman was A.14.
Miss Danville, quite unstrung, could only shake her head.
“No requisition note?” Miss Clarke went on remorselessly.
“No.” Miss Danville squeaked in a curious high-pitched tone. “No. Mr. Edelman just came into the room the other day, Wednesday, I think it was, or Thursday, no, Wednesday I’m almost sure, it doesn’t matter which, I suppose, and said, ‘Can I have the Blenkinsop file for a bit?’ and I said, ‘Oh yes, I suppose so,’ and he put it under his arm and walked off with it, and I never thought anything about it, because I knew the file wouldn’t be likely to be wanted again in a hurry, as I’d sent them a form P.C.52 only the day before, and that always keeps them quiet for ages, and so——Well, that’s what happened,” she concluded, her torrent of words stopping as abruptly as it had begun.
There was a shocked silence at the end of her recital. Chaos, Miss Clarke’s expression indicated, had come again indeed.
“I see,” she said at last, grimly. “Well, now that you have remembered the whereabouts of the file, perhaps you will oblige me by fetching it.”
“From Mr. Edelman?” Miss Danville asked nervously.
“Obviously—unless somebody else has decided to have it for a bit, in which case you will fetch it from that person,” Miss Clarke replied with bitter irony.
“Might—might I send a messenger for it, Miss Clarke? Mr. Edelman is sometimes rather—difficult.”
“That was why I suggested that you should fetch it yourself. I see no reason for adding to the messengers’ difficulties. And while you are about it, please give my compliments to Mr. Edelman, and draw his attention to Registry’s standing order governing Transit of Files. Take this copy with you. It may assist your memory.”
