Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  Forbury seemed completely staggered by this question.

  “What do you mean, sir? I don’t quite get that.”

  Then he saw what might lie behind the inquiry.

  “Do you mean he didn’t suicide? That he was murdered? And you’re suspecting me of it? I had nothing to do with it, if he was murdered. I’m a good churchgoer. I never set eyes on him after I left the office.”

  He paused to rack his memory and then continued with relief in his tone.

  “I know, now. I went home, had supper with the wife, smoked a pipe after that, then she and I and my eldest went out to the pictures, and we didn’t get home till about eleven. I can prove that; there’s no doubt about it whatever.”

  “It was a formal question,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “Don’t get excited about it, Mr. Forbury. We sometimes have to ask things like that.”

  “But was he murdered?” Forbury demanded in a high-pitched tone.

  “That’s for the coroner’s jury to settle,” Sir Clinton assured him. “Don’t let’s take on their work.”

  Forbury was evidently about to say something further when Cadbury came to the door.

  “That Miss Ruth Jessop’s called, Mr. Forbury. She’s in a fine way,” he added in an undertone. “About off her rocker to know if some bonds of hers are safe. Says she must see you about it at once and no denial taken. Better see her, or she’ll have a fit of hysterics outside.”

  “Bring her in,” Sir Clinton directed.

  Cadbury disappeared and returned to usher Ruth Jessop into the private office. She was in a woeful state of excitement, just as Cadbury had described. She glanced round, recognised Forbury, and ignored the others.

  “I’ve just heard some dreadful stories, Mr. Forbury,” she began, almost gabbling in her agitation. “They say that man Hyson has been embezzling. I was told that a whole lot of bonds have gone amissing. Is there anything in that, Mr. Forbury? Don’t put me off, for it’ll all come out in the end. I must know if my bonds are safe.”

  Forbury’s glance at Sir Clinton carried an easily interpretable message: “I told you bad news travels fast. Here’s the result.”

  “I know I was a fool to leave the things here after Mr. Lockhurst took ill, Mr. Forbury,” Ruth went on without waiting for an answer and stuttering a little in her haste. “I never trusted that man Hyson in the least. Look at the way he’s treated his poor wife. A thorough scoundrel, Mr. Forbury, that’s what he was, a dreadful creature. And now he’s taken to suicide. One can’t even get him punished. It’s . . . it’s terrible. Oh, why didn’t I take my bonds away before this happened? It’s not as if I hadn’t had warning of the sort of man he was. I’ll tell you something about him, Mr. Forbury. It happened in this very office. I’d come in to see him in the afternoon about something or other, and I forgot my bag when I was leaving. I only found it out a good while later and I came back to see if I could get it. I thought the office might be open late, perhaps. I looked up as I came along, Mr. Forbury, and I could see a light in the window here. Then I saw a girl going up the steps, a fair-haired girl in a grey dress. She went in. She was a good bit ahead of me. When I came into the hall, I could hear her steps away up on the stairs. Then I heard a door open and shut. I went up after her, and when I got to the door of the office I knocked. No one took the least notice. I knocked and knocked, and no one came. So I went away down again and looked up at the windows. Every one in the building was dark, except the one in this office we’re in. Well, that was plain enough, wasn’t it? I knew what sort of a man Hyson was. And the girl couldn’t have gone into any other office, because they were all dark. So it was no use going upstairs again and trying to get in, was it, Mr. Forbury? Oh, if only I’d done what I ought to have done, then, and taken my bonds to my bank! I might have known he was spending money on women and that he couldn’t be getting it honestly. Oh, dear! . . . Oh, dear! . . .”

  Her emotions got the better of her. Tears rolled down her pendulous cheeks, sobs shook her plump body, she collapsed on the settee and cried unashamedly, like a heart-broken child.

  Sir Clinton moved swiftly over to her side.

  “You must pull yourself together, Miss Jessop,” he said kindly. “Perhaps your bonds haven’t been taken, after all.”

  He ignored Forbury’s expressive pantomime of hopelessness and continued:

  “Mr. Forbury will go through the safe immediately and find out definitely. But while he’s making his search, I expect you’d rather be alone, or have one of the girl clerks to look after you?”

  Ruth Jessop made an inarticulate protest. Even in her unnerved state, apparently, she would have preferred to rely on male sympathy instead of being handed over to one of her own sex. But she was given no chance to object. Effie Hinkley was called in, and Ruth was transferred to her rather austere and contemptuous charge in the little room which Forbury usually occupied.

  “She’d better have a chance to calm down before she goes out into the street,” Sir Clinton said, when the door had closed behind her. “Just see if her bonds have disappeared, Mr. Forbury.”

  Forbury shrugged his shoulders as though to indicate that it would be time wasted. Then he ran his eye over several of the lists he had drawn up, paused at one item, and shook his head gloomily.

  “They’re gone,” he reported. “He took all the bearer bonds he could lay hands on, first thing. It was after that that he took to forging signatures to the transfers.”

  “Hard luck on her,” Sir Clinton commented. “She doesn’t look very affluent, poor thing. Still, if Lockhurst’s estate runs up to a fair figure, she may get some dividend out of it. Lockhurst is technically responsible, I suppose, since the bonds were left in his charge.”

  “Perhaps,” Forbury admitted grudgingly.

  If things got to that pitch, he reflected pessimistically, it meant the street for him. No other local firm would want to take over the business and keep it afloat. But the Chief Constable allowed him no time to ruminate on that subject.

  “Now, Mr. Forbury, I want to see Miss Lyndoch. Will you call her in here, please?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Arctic Fox

  FORBURY put his finger on the white TYPISTS button on the desk and pressed it once, with the air of one summoning spirits from the vasty deep. Had something of the sort obeyed his call, it would have surprised him hardly more than what he saw when the senior typist entered the room.

  Forbury had no reason to like Olive Lyndoch; but when he saw her come into the private office, his natural kindliness overbore his grudge against her for doings in the past. Instead of the cool, self-confident personality to which he was accustomed, he found before him a spiritless, heavy-eyed girl, evidently near to tears. Forbury’s mind was so full of the Hyson tragedy that he linked it immediately with the girl’s changed appearance and jumped instanter to a correct inference. “Why, she must have been fond of that fellow!” he deduced. The discovery amazed him. Olive Lyndoch had always seemed to him a cold, calculating kind of girl, the last sort of person to be carried away by sentiment. And a married man, too! He’d credited her with more common sense than that, somehow. And yet, there she was, looking as though all the props had been knocked from under her world and nothing could put it right again. A rum affair! He simply could not understand any girl falling “in love” with Hyson, a man who, in Forbury’s opinion, had been a mere compendium of unlikeable qualities. What on earth had she seen in the fellow? A queer world, really, when things like this happened in it. Yet for all his amazement, the little man found some place in his mind for pity. He disliked the girl intensely; but to see her in that state made him sympathise with her trouble, since it was obviously so deep.

  “Please sit down, Miss Lyndoch,” said Sir Clinton, pointing to a chair at the desk. “I can see you’re rather upset just now, but we have to put a question or two. Can you throw any light on this for us?”

  He pointed to the anonymous letter which was still spread out on the desk, but as she
put out her hand to it he made a restraining gesture.

  “Don’t touch it, please. Just read it. I’ll turn it round for you.”

  In her normal state, Olive would have acted her part coolly enough. All she had to do was to glance over the document as though seeing it for the first time, and then wait for questions. But at this moment she was too busy with her own thoughts to take note of such trifles. Ossie was dead! His dismissal of her had been hard enough to bear; but even after that, there was a chance of winning him back. That hope had always been in her mind, and it had dulled her pain as she now realised. But this final disaster was far more dreadful. Death finished everything. She’d never see him again, never hear his voice, never feel his arm about her any more. What did anything else matter now, compared with this awful loneliness which had fallen on her as she read that brief paragraph in the newspaper.

  Sir Clinton, watching her intently, saw that she had paid no attention to the crudely-pasted scraps of lettering which formed the document. Unobtrusively he turned the paper round again, as though he wished to consult it himself.

  “Now, Miss Lyndoch, can you tell us anything about that?”

  Olive made an effort to pull herself together. No need to look at that letter. She knew its contents well enough.

  “You mean about Mr. Hyson bringing girls to the office after hours?” she asked dully. “That’s true enough.”

  And to numb her present agony, she deliberately revivified that other anguish which she had gone through as she looked from the tea-shop window and saw her supplanter on the steps of the office. She described the scene to them: the diffident approach of the little figure in grey with the conspicuous fox fur, the halt of indecision on the office steps, and the dark front of the building broken only by one lighted window, the window of this private office.

  “You recognised the girl as one of your fellow-typists?” asked Sir Clinton suavely.

  “She was wearing a grey coat and skirt and a grey fox fur. I’d seen her dressed like that when she left the office half an hour or so before.”

  “Did you see her face?”

  Olive made a gesture of irritation.

  “No, I didn’t. But if you go outside you’ll find the fox fur on her coat-hook now,” she said waspishly. “Surely that’s good enough for you.”

  “Do you mean Miss Nevern’s fur?” interrupted Forbury, shocked to the core by this unexpected charge against a girl whom he had always assumed to be straight.

  “Oh, don’t bother me about it,” Olive retorted angrily.

  Her nerves were gradually fraying under the strain of this interview, which had come on the top of her own personal trouble. She wanted someone to be kind to her, instead of all this questioning about trivial things. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? She had all that she could bear, already. And there was no one to be kind to her, now that Ossie was dead.

  Sir Clinton silenced Forbury with a gesture. Then he turned to the girl again.

  “When did this happen?” he asked.

  “Two months ago. The seventeenth, it was.”

  Not much chance of her ever forgetting that date. It was printed ineffaceably on her mind.

  Sir Clinton picked up the envelope of the anonymous letter. Craythorn idly speculated whether they could bring up enough fingerprints on it to make their case. After passing through the post, it would hardly give clear results with the ordinary powders. But they might get something by Hudson’s silver chloride method. The Chief Constable, however, had something else in view. He glanced at the postmark on the envelope to refresh his memory. Now he had all the case he needed, and he chose the most direct method.

  “Then you wrote this letter that same evening?” he asked sharply.

  Olive was of different metal from Ruth Jessop. Trouble left her dry-eyed. She had no inclination to bury her head in the cushions of the settee and cry her heart out. But as she sat there at the desk, with unseeing eyes, a wave of black despondency seemed to well up in her mind. Ossie was gone. What did anything matter after that? If these men wanted answers to their idiotic questions, why not tell them and then perhaps they’d let her alone. That was what she wanted most, just to be left alone and not to be worried by trivial things. She had come to the end of her tether and was ready to admit anything, so long as it brought her surcease from this futile catechism. Let them put their fussy little questions and be done with it. She gave an assenting nod.

  “The seventeenth? You’re quite sure? Now will you explain why you sent this message to Mr. Lockhurst?”

  Olive suddenly had an optical illusion. The room seemed to extend itself, the ceiling grew lower, and everything diminished in size as though she were examining it through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses. She seemed to be under interrogation by a trio of pigmies. Well, that put things into perspective. What did these people matter? She faced round towards the Chief Constable.

  “Because I hate that little beast, of course. I wanted to get her sacked.”

  “Ah! You did send this letter, then?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Have you sent any others of the same sort?”

  What were they after now? Olive asked herself with dull resentment. What had she to do with “other letters of the same sort”? Oh, of course, that poison-pen stuff there had been such a fuss about.

  “No, I sent no others.”

  Now would they leave her alone? One would think there was no real trouble in the world, to see these people worrying about things that had no importance whatever. She could almost have laughed at them from the pinnacle of her sorrow.

  “What’s at the back of this animus of yours against Miss Nevern?”

  Oh, damn them, with their questions!

  “Because she took Ossie away from me, that’s why. I used to meet him here. Then she got hold of him and he dropped me. Is that plain enough for you?”

  She’s got roused at last, Craythorn reflected, as he examined her critically. Hell knows no fury, etc. And then that suggestion of Sir Clinton’s about the possibility of a bruise at the back of Hyson’s head flitted across his mind. Olive Lyndoch was a well-built girl, lithe and sinewy. She could have stunned Hyson if she took him unawares, and she was powerful enough to drag him to the gas-oven while he lay at her mercy. And that would account for her curious apathy in the first part of this examination. It was the relaxation after the strain, perhaps. He waited for Sir Clinton’s next move, but it surprised him completely when it came.

  “Where do you live, Miss Lyndoch?” he demanded.

  “I’ve a flat at 33 Cristowe Road.”

  “Let me see your latchkey, please.”

  “It’s in my bag, outside. I’ll get it.”

  She rose listlessly, went out, and returned with a key which she laid on the table before the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton drew a second key from his pocket, placed the two side by side, and examined them carefully.

  “I thought so,” he commented, offering them to Craythorn for comparison.

  To himself, Craythorn admitted that “the Chief had wiped his eye for him.” He himself had taken one of these keys from Hyson’s pocket when he made the inventory last night. It had gone with the other things to the station; and evidently Sir Clinton had secured it there this morning. Then, in that tour of inspection he made while Craythorn was telephoning, he must have found that it fitted no lock on the premises and must have brought it along in the hope of finding why Hyson had carried it. And now it turned out to be a second key of Olive Lyndoch’s flat. Well, one knew what that meant. No wonder she had been furious when this Nevern girl cut her out and captured Hyson for herself.

  Sir Clinton made no comment on the identity of the keys. He gave Olive her own back and left the other in Craythorn’s charge. Olive received the key indifferently. Evidently she had forgotten that without it she could not have got into her flat again. She sat waiting for any further questions.

  “Now, Miss Lyndoch,” Sir Clinton demanded, “tell me wh
at your movements were after you left this office last night.”

  Olive seemed to come out of a day-dream with a start.

  “I went home to my flat.”

  “You mean you stayed there all evening?”

  “Yes. I didn’t go out again. I stayed there until about eleven o’clock, doing one thing and another, and then I went to bed.”

  “No visitors? Nobody you could call to prove that you actually were at home all the time?”

  Olive shook her head. Craythorn got the impression that she had completely missed the point of the question.

  “That’s all for the present, thank you,” Sir Clinton intimated. “Would you ask Miss Hinkley to come and speak to us, please?”

  Olive nodded mechanically and left the room without even a word in reply. She seemed to have become entirely absorbed in her own unhappy thoughts. In a few seconds Miss Hinkley appeared: neat, cool, and collected, with the faintly-cynical expression which was habitual in her.

  “Is Miss Jessop feeling better now?” Sir Clinton asked.

  “She’s still moaning and talking about being ruined. Rather too melodramatic to be genuine. She wants all the limelight to herself.”

  Evidently Effie Hinkley was not particularly touched by Ruth’s woes.

  “Just look at this, please,” Sir Clinton invited her, pointing to the anonymous letter. “Can you throw any light on it?”

  Effie Hinkley studied the message closely and her eyebrows rose as she read it. Then she re-read it with an amused expression.

  “Nice piece of work,” she commented. “I wouldn’t put it past Hyson, myself. He tried to put the comether on me, once. But he wasn’t my style, quite apart from other things. I choked him off completely. As to the other girls, you’ll have to ask them themselves. I took no interest in his doings.”

  “This is serious,” Sir Clinton pointed out.

  “So am I,” Effie retorted, unperturbed. “But I know nothing, so I can’t tell you anything. I never saw this thing before and I’ve no idea who made it up. I don’t know whether the tale’s true or not, so I can’t say one thing or another. Anything else?”