Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  Sir Clinton knew truth when he heard it.

  “Then we can take it that your relations with Hyson were purely on a business footing and that outside the office hours you and he never met?”

  “That’s correct,” Effie confirmed with perfect good-temper.

  “You’d make a first-class witness, Miss Hinkley,” Sir Clinton declared with a smile. “Now, if you’ll write down your address, we needn’t trouble you further.”

  Effie jotted down the required particulars, glanced up at Sir Clinton with the inquiry: “That’s all?” and then composedly left the room. When she had gone, Sir Clinton turned to Forbury.

  “I’d like to see Miss Nevern now. Perhaps you’d better leave us while we talk to her.”

  “Just as you please, sir,” Forbury agreed, evidently with some relief. “I’ll send her in here.”

  He went out, and in a few seconds Kitty Nevern appeared at the open door. She was nervous, but was making a brave effort not to show it; and she forced a smile as Sir Clinton’s gesture invited her to take a seat. Craythorn’s appraising glance noted that she was a natural platinum blonde and that she was wearing a grey skirt.

  “Now, Miss Nevern,” Sir Clinton began, “you know you don’t need to answer questions unless you want to. But you may be able to help us, if you like to do it. And, frankly, I think it would be in your own interest if you did answer. Is that quite clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kitty answered with some slight hesitation which might have been due to her nervousness. “I suppose it’s something about Mr. Hyson?”

  “We’ll come to Mr. Hyson by-and-by. Now let’s go back to the month before last. Can you remember what you did on the night of the seventeenth?”

  Kitty’s face showed that she was completely at sea. She frowned faintly as though striving to force her memory. Then, quite naturally, she shook her head as though giving it up.

  “No, I couldn’t remember that,” she declared. “It’s too far back and I’ve nothing to go on. I don’t even remember what day of the week the seventeenth was.”

  “Let’s try again. A Miss Jessop came to the office this morning. You know her? One of the clients. Once upon a time she left her bag behind her. Can you remember anything about that?”

  It was plain enough from Kitty’s expression that she had no idea what the Chief Constable was driving at. But she recalled the incident of the forgotten bag.

  “Oh, yes, I can remember that,” she said. “I found her bag on the floor here, after she’d gone, and I kept it till next day. I gave it to Cadbury — the office-boy, you know — to hand over to Miss Jessop when she called for it. If she hadn’t come for it, I’d have sent her a note about it.”

  “Well, it’s the day she left her bag that I’m speaking about,” Sir Clinton explained. “You know where you are now? Can you remember anything about how you spent your time on that evening?”

  Kitty frowned again and twisted her fingers in her lap in what appeared to be an agony of concentration.

  “I can’t remember, really,” she confessed at last.

  “Try it another way,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Can you remember the bag incident clearly? Yes? Then can you carry on from that to what happened during the rest of the day? For example, can you remember leaving the office that night? Or who you went downstairs with? Anything of that sort that would jog your memory?”

  Again Kitty seemed to be coaxing her memory, but again the result was nil.

  “I simply can’t remember a thing about it,” she declared, with a little quiver in her voice. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You didn’t forget anything yourself that day — leave anything behind, I mean, and come back for it?”

  This question seemed to be one for which Kitty had an answer ready.

  “No, I didn’t. I know that. I’m quite sure about it.”

  “Well, try again,” said Sir Clinton patiently. “What do you do with yourself in the evenings? Dance, go to the pictures, play bridge, or what?”

  Some elusive recollection seemed to be just evading Kitty.

  “I think I might have gone to the pictures, that night,” she said slowly. “Somehow . . . I’ve a sort of idea I did . . . No, I can’t be really sure about it.”

  “At any rate you feel sure you didn’t come back here that night?”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure about that,” Kitty affirmed without hesitation. “What good would it be to come back here? I couldn’t have got in. I’ve no key.”

  “Tell me, who has a key?” inquired the Chief Constable.

  “Mr. Hyson had one, of course. And Mr. Forbury. And I think Miss Lyndoch.”

  “Mr. Hyson would have one, of course,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now Mr. Hyson’s dead, as you probably know. Was he a friend of yours — I mean outside office hours?”

  Kitty evidently considered before answering.

  “Not exactly a friend,” she explained. “I went to the pictures once or twice with him, and he wanted to hold hands and that sort of thing. I didn’t want him to do that. And he used to call me in here and try to paw me about. I hated that. And he used to send me chocolates, as if that gave him some sort of claim on me. I had to keep on the right side of him. He’d have sacked me, if I hadn’t. But I never let him go too far with me. It was beastly, because it seemed to make Miss Lyndoch cross with me. She’d been a favourite of his before. I didn’t want to put her nose out. But I could see by the way she looked at me, sometimes, that she thought I was cutting her out. And I could hardly tell her I wasn’t, could I? It was awfully awkward. But what could I do?”

  “Very unpleasant,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now, Miss Nevern, tell me what you did last night after you left here.”

  “I went and had some tea, first of all. Then I went to the pictures. That boy Cadbury asked if he might come along with me. . . .”

  She stopped abruptly as if this had suggested something to her, then she went on rapidly:

  “That reminds me! I believe I can remember now what I did that evening after Miss Jessop forgot her bag. I’m not dead sure of it, but I think . . . I’m almost sure that I went to the pictures that night too, and that Cadbury came with me. I’m almost certain about it. Would you ask him, sir? Perhaps he could remember. He’s outside in the office there.”

  Craythorn got up, walked to the door, and called Cadbury.

  After seeing the rest of the staff taken one by one, the boy had been expecting this summons. It made him feel important in the extreme. He was so impressed by the solemnity of the occasion that he even remembered to pull his tie straight as he crossed the threshold. He would dearly have loved to pose as the Indispensable Witness; but though he had racked his brains, he had failed to think of a single fact which seemed to bear on Hyson’s death. Still, here he was in the presence of the Master Sleuth, and already he was framing the phrases in which he would describe the meeting to his young friends. “He put me through it — proper, I can tell you!” “He looked me up and down with these steely eyes of his, and says he . . .” “ ‘Sir Clinton,’ says I, ‘this is what I saw . . .’ ” And so on. Very dramatic, and tense.

  Actually, the interview began in a different atmosphere.

  “Just sit down, Mr. Cadbury,” Sir Clinton said, pointing to the settee.

  The “Mr.” delighted Cadbury, as Sir Clinton intended it should. It gave him the assurance that he was being treated as adult to adult and not as a schoolboy. He sat down ungracefully and suddenly discovered that he did not know what to do with his hands. Then he wished he had taken the precaution of washing them before this interview. After this, he had an opportunity of stealing a glance at Kitty’s face. Had they been “fairly putting her through it” the way they had evidently done to Miss Lyndoch and Miss Jessop? But to his relief, he could see no signs of emotional breakdown in her features. She was gazing at him, he found rather to his embarrassment, as though she was hoping for something. He caught her eye and glanced shyly aside.

  “Now, Mr. Cadbury
, we’re in hopes that you may be able to help us a little,” Sir Clinton continued pleasantly. “Got a good memory? That’s what we want. Well, I suppose you can remember last night. What did you do after leaving the office?”

  Cadbury shot a glance at Kitty’s face again and found her gazing intently at him. What did she want him to say? It flashed across his mind that Hyson had suicided last night. How could Kitty be mixed up in that affair? He couldn’t imagine. Still, he could give her an alibi. He forgot all about looking the Master Sleuth steadily in the eye. Instead, he kept his gaze on Kitty’s face to see if he was saying the right thing.

  “I went out to a tea-shop, first of all, sir. Then I went to the pictures — the Majestic, sir — with Miss Nevern.”

  Ah! Evidently he had said the right thing! What a relief! Kitty gave him an encouraging smile: so she was all right, and it was all right, whatever “it” was.

  “How long were you in the picture-house?” Sir Clinton inquired.

  “Till about eleven o’clock, sir. Then I saw Miss Nevern home,” he added with a mixture of pride and self-consciousness.

  “Now we’ll go back a bit,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Do you often accompany Miss Nevern to the pictures?”

  Cadbury was inwardly thankful for the Chief Constable’s phrasing. It enabled him to avoid the confession that he hadn’t “taken” Kitty to the pictures. She had insisted on paying for herself.

  “Just once before, sir.”

  He wasn’t likely to forget episodes like that. These two visits to the picture-house stood out like beacons in retrospect. All he had done was to sit beside her and hold her fur on his lap, but that in itself had provided him with amazing sensations and recollections.

  “Can you tell me when that was? What date, I mean?”

  And now Cadbury, without guessing it, did prove to be the indispensable witness. He fumbled in his pocket, produced a crumpled and dog-eared volume.

  “I’ll look it up in my diary, sir,” he mumbled, turning over the pages with clumsy haste. “Yes, it’s here, sir.”

  He passed the battered booklet over to Sir Clinton.

  “There it is, sir. On the seventeenth.”

  Sir Clinton glanced at the name of the month at the top of the page. His eye caught the large exclamation mark after the note on the visit to the picture-house, and he had little difficulty in fathoming Cadbury’s little secret. Tactfully he forbore to read the entry aloud, much to the boy’s relief. And Cadbury had further cause for joy. He could see from Kitty’s face that he had said the right thing, though he was quite unable to guess what, exactly, he had achieved by his evidence. Sir Clinton’s comment put him almost into the seventh heaven.

  “Thanks, Mr. Cadbury. That’s a very valuable piece of evidence. You won’t mind our keeping this diary of yours for a while?”

  This would be something to boast about, wouldn’t it? Complimented by the Master Sleuth! Valuable evidence! Of course they were welcome to keep his diary if they needed it. He was so excited that he could only nod in answer to Sir Clinton’s request.

  “Now would you go and get Miss Nevern’s coat and fur, please,” Sir Clinton asked him, glancing at the girl for permission as he spoke.

  Cadbury rushed off, almost tripping over himself in his excitement.

  “Would you please put these on, Miss Nevern,” Sir Clinton suggested when Cadbury returned with the articles.

  And once again Cadbury had the pleasure of helping Kitty with her coat.

  “Now, Mr. Cadbury, would you be so good as to ask Miss Jessop to come here for a moment?”

  Under Effie Hinkley’s faintly sarcastic ministrations, Ruth had recovered some command of herself. She came into the room, sniffing and red-eyed, but at least not hysterical.

  “Would you look at Miss Nevern carefully, Miss Jessop,” Sir Clinton directed, “and then tell us if you think she was the person you saw going into this office after hours on the occasion you mentioned?”

  Ruth Jessop looked uncomfortably at Kitty as if not very sure what she should say.

  “Walk a few steps up and down, Miss Nevern,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Perhaps that will make it easier.”

  Kitty did her best to walk naturally, but she could not help feeling rather self-conscious as she paced up and down the room under the eyes of the spectators. Ruth stared at her at first as if in doubt, but Sir Clinton surmised that she was really trying to cover up a possible mistake. At last she seemed to make up her mind.

  “No, it must have been someone else I saw, Sir Clinton,” she said. “There’s a likeness, and of course the dress and fur are the same. But I don’t think it was Miss Nevern, Sir Clinton. In fact, now I look carefully, I’m sure it was someone else. Yes, I’m quite sure.”

  She glanced at the Chief Constable to see if this was the answer he had expected, and she was evidently relieved to find how narrowly she had escaped a trap when he continued:

  “You’re quite right. Miss Nevern wasn’t anywhere near this office when you saw the girl come in here that night. It must have been the similarity in the costumes that puzzled you at the first glance.”

  “Oh, yes, Sir Clinton, that was it,” Ruth hastened to confirm his hint. “It was that that misled me for a moment. But Miss Nevern’s face is different from that girl’s, and although her walk’s rather like the other one’s, I can see the difference easily enough now.”

  “You’re quite definite about it?”

  “Oh, quite, Sir Clinton, quite. I’ve no doubt about it at all, now.”

  At this moment, Effie Hinkley came into the room and handed an envelope to the Chief Constable.

  “A man in uniform brought this. He says it’s important, sir.”

  With gesture asking permission, Sir Clinton opened the envelope, examined the contents, and passed them over to Craythorn. The inspector turned first to a telegram form:

  OFFICER IN CHARGE POLICE HEADQUARTERS. MRS. TELFORD USED TO MEET HYSON AT HIS OFFICE AFTER HOURS. SALVATOR.

  Craythorn examined the particulars on the form. Office of origin: Waterloo Street; Time handed in: 11.49 A.M.; Received: 12.03 P.M. Sent on from the G.P.O. to police headquarters; better allow ten minutes for that, and another ten minutes for transmission between headquarters and Lockhurst’s office. He glanced at his watch and found his estimate fairly accurate, as it was just twenty-five past twelve. “Salvator”? Funny name, that, he reflected. Then a further idea occurred to him, an obvious one: this wire might be another of these poison-pen productions, and “Salvator” was just a pseudonym, not a real name at all. Well, he’d have a look at the back of the original telegram form and see what address was given by the sender. And, with luck, if this really was a poison-pen production, the girl at the post-office counter might recall the look of the sender and help to put them on the track of this poison-pen pest. And then yet another idea dawned on him. This Lyndoch girl had admitted sending one anonymous letter. Was she responsible for this telegram also? Handed in 11.49 A.M. at Waterloo Street. No, that barred her out. She’d been in the office here at 11.49 A.M. So were Forbury, the other two girl clerks, and this Jessop woman. And Cadbury. None of them could have got to Waterloo Street and back without their absence being noticed. Still, he’d better make sure of the point.

  “Just a moment, sir,” he excused himself to Sir Clinton, “I want to ask a question.” Sir Clinton gave permission with a nod, and Craythorn turned to Kitty Nevern. “You haven’t been out of the office, have you, since you came in this morning?”

  Kitty looked completely surprised by the inquiry.

  “No, I’ve been here since nine o’clock,” she assured him.

  “And you haven’t been out either?” he demanded of Cadbury.

  “Me? No, I haven’t been over the door-step,” the boy answered rather indignantly.

  “Miss Lyndoch or Mr. Forbury, have they been out?” Craythorn pursued addressing both Cadbury and Kitty.

  “No, no one has gone out, I’d have seen if they had,” Cadbur
y asserted.

  “You’ve been in this room, part of the time,” Craythorn reminded him, “so how can you be sure . . .”

  He broke off, recalling that Cadbury had actually been in the outer office at the critical period round about a quarter to twelve.

  “That’s all right,” he added.

  Then a further idea occurred to him. That Lyndoch girl might have used the office phone and sent the wire by that means without leaving the office at all. But he rejected this explanation almost immediately. In such a case the telegram would have been marked as issued from the G.P.O., not from Waterloo Street Post Office. Rather crestfallen, he indicated to Sir Clinton that he had finished his intervention; and to cover his slight confusion he glanced at the second paper in his hand. It was merely a brief report stating that the police surgeon, in conducting the P.M., had found a marked bruise on the back of Hyson’s head.

  “Somebody knocked him out and then hauled him to the gas-oven,” Craythorn decided. “Well, almost anyone might have done that single-handed.”

  He began to run over his list of suspects and was surprised to find how long it was. This Lyndoch girl — she’d got the mitten from Hyson not so long ago, and her manner this morning was a bit queer, to put it mildly. Then Hyson’s wife — she had every reason to want the fellow out of the way, and she had a sister to give her a good alibi. And if it wasn’t she, what about this man Barsett, who was always hanging about the house when Hyson was out? He had the same reason as the wife for wanting the husband out of the way. And now another possibility had turned up, if Hyson had been monkeying with this Telford woman, whoever she was. She had a husband, too, probably. And, finally, how did this poison-pen pest know so much about things? That seemed a bit rum, when one came to think of it.

  Sir Clinton interrupted his further musings by speaking to Kitty Nevern and Cadbury.

  “I must thank you both for your assistance,” he said cordially. “Rather trying for you, Miss Nevern, I’m afraid; but we had to make it quite clear that you weren’t mixed up in any way in this unpleasant affair. We’ve got Mr. Cadbury to thank for putting that completely out of the question.”