One thing she must do: make certain about the two of them. It would be better to know than to suspect, she guessed, with clear insight into her own psychology. By this time she had convinced herself that Kitty would return that evening, once she was sure that all the staff had gone. It was what had happened in her own case. She would spy on the two of them, now, and get certainty, at any rate.
She took her bag from a drawer, stepped over to the little mirror by the coat-rack, and looked to her make-up. Then she put on her coat and hat, glanced mechanically round the office, switched off the lights, and went down the stairs. Some distance along the street was a tea-shop with an out-jutting window from which one could keep the office-door under inspection. That would be better than lingering on the pavement, where Kitty might notice her. And at least until closing-time she would be in shelter.
“This can’t be true,” she said to herself as she walked along with her eyes on the pavement, forgetting even to keep watch for Kitty. “It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up and find everything’s all right. I can’t lose him. I simply can’t go on without him. Oh, Ossie, I do want you!”
Mechanically she bought a newspaper from a boy. It would give her an excuse for lingering over the tea-table. She entered the tea-shop and was relieved to find that the window-seats were vacant. She chose the one which commanded the best view of the office entrance. It was a good way down the street and now the light was fading out of the sky; but she had no fears that anything would escape her. That grey coat and skirt and the grey fur would be plain enough even if she were further away.
She ordered tea and was glad of the delay before it came. So much time gained, she reflected.
“No, you needn’t bother about more cakes,” she told the waitress. “I’ve got a headache. All I want is a cup of tea.”
“You look pretty bad, miss,” the waitress said, sympathetically. “I’ve got some aspirin, if you’d like some. I get headaches myself.”
“No, thanks, the tea will put it right,” Olive assured her.
Then she realised that she had a headache, a splitting one; but she shrank from an open reconsideration of her refusal. It would look silly. The waitress had no other customers, and, being a sociable soul, she attempted to begin a conversation.
“It’s the stuffiness of this place gives me headaches, I think,” she volunteered. “I’m always getting them. But they’re easy enough to put away. It’s this standing about that tells on you. I’ve got a varicose vein that’s worse than any headache. Sometimes I don’t know how I get through the day’s work; and when I get home I’m fit for nothing but to lie on my bed. Not much of a life.”
Olive scowled at her. Did the little fool think that headaches and a varicose vein were real troubles? Headaches! What would she feel like if the bottom suddenly fell out of her universe and left her where Olive was? Some people didn’t know they were born, grousing about trifles like that.
“No, not much of a life,” she replied unsympathetically, her eyes on the window. “Can you get me some more cream?”
When the waitress returned, Olive had entrenched herself behind her newspaper as a hint that she wanted no more conversation. The waitress put down the jug, stared curiously at Olive’s face for a moment, then, evidently seeing that she would get no further entertainment from this customer, she withdrew and began talking to one of her colleagues at the rear of the shop.
Olive sipped her tea and made a show of reading her paper; but it was always the top of the column she looked at, and her eyes wandered over it every second or two, watching the long stretch of pavement which separated her from Lockhurst’s office entrance.
Suddenly, far beyond the office door she saw a grey-clad little figure with a light fur come hesitatingly along the pavement. It was too far off for her to recognise the face, or even the gait in the failing light. It paused irresolutely at the office entrance and seemed to examine it for a moment. Then, with a swift movement, it vanished into the portals.
Olive sat up suddenly in her chair, all her muscles braced in an involuntary tension. So that was that. Now she knew exactly where they were. And now, she found, certainty was far worse than the uncertainty from which she had been so eager to free herself. It was all up. “You know my methods, Watson.” Oh, yes, she knew them; and it was agony to know them.
She dropped her paper on the floor, got to her feet with an effort, and beckoned to the waitress for her bill. Then, with it in her hand, she made her way to the cash desk, paid, and went out into the street. The shops had closed earlier, and in only one or two office windows were lights showing that someone was still at work. As she came near the office, she crossed to the other side of the street and looked up at the façade. No lights burned in the outer office; but in the private room the curtains were drawn and she saw beams at the edges which showed that someone was using the place. Then, as she watched, this light went out also.
She fumbled in her bag for her handkerchief, and as she did so her fingers touched the office key, one which Ossie had got made for her in earlier days. She gripped it, undecided. Should she go up and confront those two? But almost as the idea came, she rejected it. What was the use? It would only be giving that little beast the chance to crow over her. Ossie would tell her off, if she ventured up there; and she would merely lose dignity by appearing as the discarded favourite in the presence of her supplanter. Anything rather than that. She glanced again at the unillumined window. They might be coming downstairs now, and she had no wish to be found hanging about the street if they did appear. She turned and walked swiftly away to her usual bus-stop, glancing over her shoulder as she went.
In the bus, she began to come to her bearings. That dullness of shock-anæsthesia wore off little by little, and as it went it was replaced by a cold fury as she thought over the events since the office had closed. Ossie had thrown her aside in a way which was in itself an insult, superimposed on the meanness of his treatment of her after all these months. She would make him pay for that, she reflected, cost what it might.
She got out of the bus and walked painfully up to her flat. She took off her hat and coat mechanically, and sat down on her settee to contrive ways and means of squaring her account with Ossie. She knew all about these anonymous letters which were causing so much trouble. Ossie and she had even laughed over one which he had received and shown to her. That was the weapon she needed.
She got up, went into the little hall, and found the newspaper she had brought in with her. Then she found a pair of scissors in her workbasket; and with these materials before her, she began to think out the message she could send. The shorter the better, she concluded; and soon she had clipped out the required letters from the newspaper. Then, taking some paste, she assembled the fragments she had cut out, and began to fix them in order on a sheet of notepaper. When she had finished, she read over the message: —
Hyson is using your private room to meet one of your typists after the office is closed for the night. After this you cannot pretend you don’t know what is going on.
She held it in her hand, reading and re-reading it, delighting in what she had done. Then, with a smile of satisfied malice, she found an envelope and slipped her missive into it.
That would wake up Lockhurst, she reflected with a short laugh. Old Puritan that he was, he’d go in off the deep end when he found that on his breakfast-tray. It wouldn’t be long before Ossie was out of a job, damn him! He wouldn’t set up Kitty in a flat now, that was one thing made sure. And that little beast would be out of a job too. Two birds with one stone. And all at the cost of 1½d. Cheap at the money, as she pointed out to herself with another laugh. But the laugh ended in a choke, for she was coming as near hysterics as a woman of her type could.
She sat fingering the closed envelope, suddenly alive to a difficulty which she had not remembered before: the address. She would have to disguise her handwriting effectually. After a number of trials, she hit on the idea of supporting her right wrist with her left hand
while she scribbled the address, and this method seemed to yield a satisfactory scrawl quite unlike her normal manuscript.
“Well, that’s done,” she assured herself as she stuck the stamp on the envelope.
She could not wait a moment longer, but ran down the stairs without troubling to put on her hat, so as to get the letter into the pillar-box as quickly as possible.
Chapter Six
Duncannon of the I.B.
“I’VE asked a man to drop in to-night, Squire,” Sir Clinton explained after dinner. “If you don’t want to meet him, you needn’t show up. But I think you might find him interesting, if you can draw him out.”
“Who is he?” inquired Wendover.
“Duncannon’s his name, and his address is I.B., G.P.O.”
“I know the General Post Office when I see it, but I.B. is new to me,” Wendover admitted.
“Investigation Branch,” amplified the Chief Constable. “He’s a sort of opposite number of mine in the Post Office. They have their own detective system, you know, quite independent of ours, and he’s pretty high up in it.”
“I’ve got some vague ideas about that, but nothing very clear,” Wendover confessed. “What sort of things do they handle? And why do they need a special detective force of their own? Why can’t they be content with the police?”
“For one thing, the Post Office operates all over the country and letters are posted in one police district while they may be delivered in another. If you tried to handle a system of that sort by calling in our localised City and County Constabularies, you’d have perhaps two or three separate investigations of the same case going on in different districts; and the coordination of them would be as much trouble as the case itself, probably. Whereas, with a special organisation under the G.P.O., you can send the right man down to any district to investigate and then pass on to any other region that may happen to be concerned in the affair. In case of need, he can always enlist the help of the local constabulary. Besides that, the G.P.O. problems are of a special sort which requires expert knowledge and a technique which doesn’t come under the heading of ordinary police work.”
“What sort of cases do they tackle?” Wendover persisted.
“You’d better try to get that out of Duncannon himself,” Sir Clinton retorted. “I don’t profess to know his job. In fact, so far, except for some letter thieves, we’ve had very little to do with the I.B. hereabouts, until this accursed poison-pen affair started. But it’s grown to such proportions now that it’s becoming a case of all hands to the pumps. We must get it cleared up before long, or some really bad damage may be done.”
“Suppose you catch the writer, what can he get? I forget the penalty.”
“Not much, unfortunately. Ten pounds fine. Twelve months, with or without hard labour. My job’s to execute the law, Squire, not to criticise it; but I agree with you that in some cases a bigger penalty wouldn’t come amiss.”
“It must be a queer kind of mind that produces that sort of stuff,” Wendover mused.
“Better put that to Duncannon,” the Chief Constable suggested. “He knows far more about the type than I do.”
“It sounds like an interesting point in psychology,” Wendover said, thoughtfully. “I’ll ask his opinion.”
“Well, you won’t have to wait long. That sounds like someone at the door. I’ll introduce you as a J.P. which may lull any suspicions that your appearance might arouse, Squire. Perhaps you’ll succeed in winning his confidence and getting him to tell you a few things.”
When Duncannon was ushered in, Wendover saw at a glance that he was different from the ordinary detective promoted from the ranks of the Constabulary. He looked wiry rather than powerful, and his inches would hardly have allowed him to scrape into the police force. Keen grey eyes with a twinkle in them, a high-bridged nose, a pleasant smile, and an easy manner, all combined to make Wendover’s first impression favourable. “This man ought to be a good mixer, by the look of him,” was his judgement; and in the rest of the evening he found it confirmed.
After they had exchanged the usual commonplaces with which strangers break the ice at a first interview, Sir Clinton seemed in no hurry to plunge into the actual business in hand. Wendover guessed that he was being given a chance to find out something about the work of the Investigation Branch, and he seized it without more ado.
“You’re in the Investigation Branch of the Post Office, Driffield tells me, Mr. Duncannon. I suppose your work’s mostly internal: thefts of letters, and so on. You don’t come much in contact with criminals outside the staff, do you?”
“I shouldn’t go that length,” Duncannon answered with a smile. “In fact, my work’s to a great extent outside our offices. We have a more or less routine method of trapping sorters and postmen who take to letter-stealing.”
“How do you manage it?” inquired Wendover. “That is, of course, if it’s a fair question to ask.”
“There’s nothing very secret about it nowadays,” Duncannon replied. “Some of the methods have been put in print, so there’s no secrecy so far as they go. Suppose we get complaints that a letter posted in a stated box at a certain time has gone astray. The first thing is to find out what officials should have handled it if it had followed its normal course. The collecting postman might have taken it, or a sorter might have pocketed it, or it might have gone astray when sent out for delivery. All these people come under suspicion immediately. If a number of letters have gone astray at different periods, a comparison of the lists of men on duty helps to narrow down the field a bit. If we suspect a sorter, we have means of watching him at work without his knowing he’s under observation, and that often catches a thief in the act. If it’s a case of the delivery postman holding back part of his letters, we sometimes use a ‘test letter’ to catch him red-handed. The most troublesome case is when a fellow confines himself to mis-sorted letters. Our system is nearly perfect in the G.P.O., but sometimes a letter by accident gets on to the wrong sorter’s table or into the wrong postman’s bag. If that’s stolen, then we’re rather up against it, obviously, because it has got out of the normal chain of communication. Still, we have our methods to fit even that case. Everything’s cut and dried, so far as our own officials are concerned. It’s when we come up against the outside criminal that the trouble really starts.”
“What sort of thing happens there?” asked Wendover. “In the ordinary way, I shouldn’t think there was much room for outsiders tampering with Post Office machinery. Mail-bag thefts one hears about now and again, of course.”
Duncannon laughed at this modest estimate.
“Here are one or two more,” he explained. “There are people who specialise in forging Post Office Savings Bank withdrawal forms. Then there are parcel-stealers who help themselves to parcels left lying on the Post Office counters. All that lot are more or less small fry, but they give trouble. We can’t afford to let that kind of thing go on in even the most modest way, or people would begin to lose faith in the G.P.O. as a safe means of communication. But there are more serious affairs than that, by a long way.”
“Such as?”
“Well, take letter-box thieves, for instance,” Duncannon explained. “Suppose you have a big firm which takes in a lot of orders by letter, with postal orders enclosed in payment. The shop shuts at 6 P.M., say, but they have a big letter-box on the door to receive the letters which come in by the 7 P.M. post, for example. Now suppose an ingenious gentleman comes along with a neat contrivance which clips on to the inside of the big letter-slit. The postman shoves in his bundles of letters as usual, but they don’t drop to the bottom of the firm’s letter-box. No, they drop into a bag that the thief has clipped inside the box. Once the postman has gone on with his round, the ingenious gentleman comes back, hawks out his contrivance with the enclosed letters, and cashes the P.O.’s in due course. Some of them of course are of no use to him: the ones crossed with a banker’s name and the ones with the firm’s name filled in. Though even in that case
he can do a bit with bleaching agents and take out the writing. In any case, when it’s a big firm with a large post, he can be pretty sure of getting trade-union wages out of it. Well, he’s one of the people we have to catch if we can.”
“I suppose it would pay,” Wendover conceded, “but I shouldn’t care to be your friend when he’s fixing his net or when he’s taking out his catch. It must be an uncomfortable minute or two, if anyone heaves in sight.”
“I’m not concerned with his sensations,” said Duncannon, dryly. “The same game’s sometimes played on pillar-boxes. Do you ever put your fingers inside the slit of a pillar-box when you post your letters? No? I thought not. Well, that shows you how easy it would be to have the same kind of thing fitted to the pillar-box slit. That’s a much worse case than the letter-box trick.”
“Why?” asked Wendover, not seeing Duncannon’s point.
“Why? Because in the case of the firm’s letter-box, the only letters that can go astray are commercial things, just a matter of money. But take the pillar-box case. There the thief gets away with a whole lot of letters, say. One or two of them may have money in them. The rest may be ordinary letters, which the thief simply destroys as soon as he can, so as to have nothing compromising in his possession. Well, now, just take one example of what might happen. Suppose a fellow has quarrelled with his girl and, on second thoughts, he wants to make it up. He writes her a penitent letter. It never reaches her. The thief gets it and destroys it. The fellow expects an answer. Naturally he never gets one. He thinks his overtures have been turned down brutally. Why, you might have two people’s lives spoiled by a thing like that, especially if they lived in different towns and didn’t meet in the normal way.”
“Yes, that’s pretty damnable,” Wendover admitted. “I hadn’t thought of that side of letter-stealing.”
“That’s what makes me impervious to hard-luck stories when we catch a thief of that sort, whether he’s an official or an outsider,” Duncannon said. “One never knows, even when we’ve caught him, how much damage he may have done by his tricks. And if he reads the letters before destroying them, it may be worse still.”
Murder Will Speak Page 10
