‘I see. It’s like that.’

There was a pause. Hardcastle said, endeavouring to ease the strain:

‘If you’re not doing anything this evening-’

The other interrupted.

‘I’m off. Just packing up. I found a message waiting for me. I’ve got to go abroad.’

‘When will you be back?’

‘That’s anybody’s guess. A week at least-perhaps longer-possibly never!’

‘Bad luck-or isn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Colin, and rang off.

Hardcastle arrived at No. 19, Wilbraham Crescent just as Miss Pebmarsh was coming out of the house.

‘Excuse me a minute, Miss Pebmarsh.’

‘Oh. Is it-Detective Inspector Hardcastle?’

‘Yes. Can I have a word with you?’

‘I don’t want to be late at the Institute. Will it take long?’

‘I assure you only three or four minutes.’

She went into the house and he followed.

‘You’ve heard what happened this afternoon?’ he said.

‘Has anything happened?’

‘I thought you might have heard. A girl was killed in the telephone box just down the road.’

‘Killed? When?’

‘Two hours and three quarters ago.’ He looked at the grandfather clock. 

‘I’ve heard nothing about it. Nothing,’ said Miss Pebmarsh. A kind of anger sounded momentarily in her voice. It was as though her disability had been brought home to her in some particularly wounding way. ‘A girl-killed! What girl?’

‘Her name is Edna Brent and she worked at the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau.’

‘Another girl from there! Had she been sent for like this girl, Sheila what’s-her-name was?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said the inspector. ‘She did not come to see you here, at your house?’

‘Here? No. Certainly not.’

‘Would you have been in if she had come here?’

‘I’m not sure. What time did you say?’

‘Approximately twelve-thirty or a little later.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Pebmarsh. ‘I would have been home by then.’

‘Where did you go after the inquest?’

‘I came straight back here.’ She paused and then asked, ‘Why did you think this girl might have come to see me?’

‘Well, she had been at the inquest this morning and she had seen you there, and she must have hadsome reason for coming to Wilbraham Crescent. As far as we know, she was not acquainted with anyone in this road.’

‘But why should she come to see me just because she had seen me at the inquest?’ 

‘Well-’ the inspector smiled a little, then hastily tried to put the smile in his voice as he realized that Miss Pebmarsh could not appreciate its disarming quality. ‘One never knows with these girls. She might just have wanted an autograph. Something like that.’

‘An autograph!’ Miss Pebmarsh sounded scornful. Then she said, ‘Yes…Yes, I suppose you’re right. That sort of thing does happen.’ Then she shook her head briskly. ‘I can only assure you, Inspector Hardcastle, that it didnot happen today. Nobody has been here since I came back from the inquest.’

‘Well, thank you, Miss Pebmarsh. We thought we had better check up on every possibility.’

‘How old was she?’ asked Miss Pebmarsh.

‘I believe she was nineteen.’

‘Nineteen? Very young.’ Her voice changed slightly. ‘Very young…Poor child. Who would want to kill a girl of that age?’

‘It happens,’ said Hardcastle.

‘Was she pretty-attractive-sexy?’

‘No,’ said Hardcastle. ‘She would have liked to be, I think, but she was not.’

‘Then that was not the reason,’ said Miss Pebmarsh. She shook her head again. ‘I’m sorry. More sorry than I can say, Inspector Hardcastle, that I can’t help you.’

He went out, impressed as he always was impressed, by Miss Pebmarsh’s personality.

Miss Waterhouse was also at home. She was also true to type, opening the door with a suddenness which displayed a desire to trap someone doing what they should not do.

‘Oh, it’syou!’ she said. ‘Really, I’ve told your people all I know.’

‘I’m sure you’ve replied to all the questions that were asked you,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but they can’t all be asked at once, you know. We have to go into a few more details.’

‘I don’t see why. The whole thing was a most terrible shock,’ said Miss Waterhouse, looking at him in a censorious way as though it had been all his doing. ‘Come in, come in. You can’t stand on the mat all day. Come in and sit down and ask me any questions you want to, though really what questions there can be, I cannot see. As I told you, I went out to make a telephone call. I opened the door of the box and there was the girl. Never had such a shock in my life. I hurried down and got the police constable. And after that, in case you want to know, I came back here and I gave myself a medicinal dose of brandy.Medicinal,’ said Miss Waterhouse fiercely.

‘Very wise of you, madam,’ said Inspector Hardcastle. 

‘And that’s that,’ said Miss Waterhouse with finality.

‘I wanted to ask you if you were quite sure you had never seen this girl before?’

‘May have seen her a dozen times,’ said Miss Waterhouse, ‘but not to remember. I mean, she may have served me in Woolworth’s, or sat next to me in a bus, or sold me tickets in a cinema.’

‘She was a shorthand typist at the Cavendish Bureau.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had occasion to use a shorthand typist. Perhaps she worked in my brother’s office at Gainsford and Swettenham. Is that what you’re driving at?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘there appears to be no connection of that kind. But I just wondered if she’d come to see you this morning before being killed.’

‘Come tosee me? No, of course not. Why should she?’

‘Well, that we wouldn’t know,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘but you would say, would you, that anyone who saw her coming in at your gate this morning was mistaken?’ He looked at her with innocent eyes.

‘Somebody saw her coming in at my gate? Nonsense,’ said Miss Waterhouse. She hesitated. ‘At least-’

‘Yes?’ said Hardcastle, alert though he did not show it.

‘Well, I suppose she may have pushed a leaflet or something through the door…Therewas a leaflet there at lunch time. Something about a meeting for nuclear disarmament, I think. There’s always something every day. I suppose conceivably she might have come and pushed something through the letter box; but you can’t blame me for that, can you?’

‘Of course not. Now as to your telephone call-you say your own telephone was out of order. According to the exchange, that was not so.’

‘Exchanges will say anything! I dialled and got amost peculiar noise, not the engaged signal, so I went out to the call box.’

Hardcastle got up.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Waterhouse, for bothering you in this way, but there is some idea that this girldid come to call on someone in the crescent and that she went to a house not very far from here.’

‘And so you have to inquire all along the crescent,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘I should think the most likely thing is that she went to the house next door-Miss Pebmarsh’s, I mean.’

‘Why should you consider that the most likely?’

‘You said she was a shorthand typist and came from the Cavendish Bureau. Surely, if I remember rightly, it was said that Miss Pebmarsh asked for a shorthand typist to come to her house the other day when that man was killed.’ 

‘It was said so, yes, but she denied it.’

‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Miss Waterhouse, ‘not that anyone ever listens to whatI say until it’s too late, I should say that she’d gone a little batty. Miss Pebmarsh, I mean. I think, perhaps, that shedoes ring up bureaux and ask for shorthand typists to come. Then, perhaps, she forgets all about it.’

‘But you don’t think that she would do murder?’

‘I never suggested murder or anything of that kind. I know a man was killed in her house, but I’m not for a moment suggesting that Miss Pebmarsh had anything to do with it. No. I just thought that she might have one of those curious fixations like people do. I knew a woman once who was always ringing up a confectioner’s and ordering a dozen meringues. She didn’t want them, and when they came she said she hadn’t ordered them. That sort of thing.’