Miss Martindale continued to shake her head.

‘You see my dilemma,’ said the inspector. ‘You say Miss Pebmarsh telephoned you and asked for Sheila Webb to go to her house at three o’clock. Miss Pebmarsh denies doing any such thing. Sheila Webb gets there. She finds a dead man there.’ He waited hopefully.

Miss Martindale looked at him blankly.

‘It all seems to me wildly improbable,’ she said disapprovingly.

Dick Hardcastle sighed and got up.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said politely. ‘You’ve been in business some time, haven’t you?’

‘Fifteen years. We have done extremely well. Starting in quite a small way, we have extended the business until we have almost more than we can cope with. I now employ eight girls, and they are kept busy all the time.’

‘You do a good deal of literary work, I see.’ Hardcastle was looking up at the photographs on the wall.

‘Yes, to start with I specialized in authors. I had been secretary to the well-known thriller writer, Mr Garry Gregson, for many years. In fact, it was with a legacy from him that I started this Bureau. I knew a good many of his fellow authors and they recommended me. My specialized knowledge of authors’ requirements came in very useful. I offer a very helpful service in the way of necessary research-dates and quotations, inquiries as to legal points and police procedure, and details of poison schedules. All that sort of thing. Then foreign names and addresses and restaurants for people who set their novels in foreign places. In old days the public didn’t really mind so much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on every possible occasion, pointing out flaws.’

Miss Martindale paused. Hardcastle said politely: ‘I’m sure you have every cause to congratulate yourself.’

He moved towards the door. I opened it ahead of him.

In the outer office, the three girls were preparing to leave. Lids had been placed on typewriters. The receptionist, Edna, was standing forlornly, holding in one hand a stiletto heel and in the other a shoe from which it had been torn.

‘I’ve only had them a month,’ she was wailing. ‘And they were quite expensive. It’s that beastly grating-the one at the corner by the cake shop quite near here. I caught my heel in it and off it came. I couldn’t walk, had to take both shoes off and come back here with a couple of buns, and how I’ll ever get home or get on to the bus I really don’t know-’

At that moment our presence was noted and Edna hastily concealed the offending shoe with an apprehensive glance towards Miss Martindale whom I appreciated was not the sort of woman to approve of stiletto heels. She herself was wearing sensible flat-heeled leather shoes.

‘Thank you, Miss Martindale,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time. If anything should occur to you-’

‘Naturally,’ said Miss Martindale, cutting him short rather brusquely.

As we got into the car, I said:

‘So Sheila Webb’s story, in spite of your suspicions, turns out to have been quite true.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Dick. ‘You win.’

‘Mom!’ said Ernie Curtin, desisting for a moment from his occupation of running a small metal model up and down the window pane, accompanying it with a semi-zooming, semi-moaning noise intended to reproduce a rocket ship going through outer space on its way to Venus, ‘Mom, what d’you think?’

Mrs Curtin, a stern-faced woman who was busy washing up crockery in the sink, made no response.

‘Mom, there’s a police car drawn up outside our house.’

‘Don’t you tell no more of yer lies, Ernie,’ said Mrs Curtin as she banged cups and saucers down on the draining board. ‘You know what I’ve said to you about that before.’

‘I never,’ said Ernie virtuously. ‘And it’s a police car right enough, and there’s two men gettin’ out.’

Mrs Curtin wheeled round on her offspring. 

‘What’ve you been doingnow?’ she demanded. ‘Bringing us into disgrace, that’s what it is!’

‘Course I ain’t,’ said Ernie. ‘I ’aven’t done nothin’.’

‘It’s going with that Alf,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘Him and his gang. Gangs indeed! I’ve told you, and yer father’s told you, that gangs isn’t respectable. In the end there’s trouble. First it’ll be the juvenile court and then you’ll be sent to a remand home as likely as not. And I won’t have it, d’you hear?’

‘They’re comin’ up to the front door,’ Ernie announced.

Mrs Curtin abandoned the sink and joined her offspring at the window.

‘Well,’ she muttered.

At that moment the knocker was sounded. Wiping her hands quickly on the tea-towel, Mrs Curtin went out into the passage and opened the door. She looked with defiance and doubt at the two men on her doorstep.

‘Mrs Curtin?’ said the taller of the two, pleasantly.

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Curtin.

‘May I come in a moment? I’m Detective Inspector Hardcastle.’

Mrs Curtin drew back rather unwillingly. She threw open a door and motioned the inspector inside. It was a very neat, clean little room and gave the impression of seldom being entered, which impression was entirely correct. 

Ernie, drawn by curiosity, came down the passage from the kitchen and sidled inside the door.

‘Your son?’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Curtin, and added belligerently, ‘he’s a good boy, no matter what you say.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle, politely.

Some of the defiance in Mrs Curtin’s face relaxed.

‘I’ve come to ask you a few questions about 19, Wilbraham Crescent. You work there, I understand.’

‘Never said I didn’t,’ said Mrs Curtin, unable yet to shake off her previous mood.

‘For a Miss Millicent Pebmarsh.’

‘Yes, I work for Miss Pebmarsh. A very nice lady.’

‘Blind,’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle.

‘Yes, poor soul. But you’d never know it. Wonderful the way she can put her hand on anything and find her way about. Goes out in the street, too, and over the crossings. She’s not one to make a fuss about things, not like some people I know.’

‘You work there in the mornings?’

‘That’s right. I come about half past nine to ten, and leave at twelve o’clock or when I’m finished.’ Then sharply, ‘You’re not saying as anything ’as beenstolen, are you?’

‘Quite the reverse,’ said the inspector, thinking of four clocks. 

Mrs Curtin looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘What’s the trouble?’ she asked.

‘A man was found dead in the sitting-room at 19, Wilbraham Crescent this afternoon.’

Mrs Curtin stared. Ernie Curtin wriggled in ecstasy, opened his mouth to say ‘Coo’, thought it unwise to draw attention to his presence, and shut it again.

‘Dead?’ said Mrs Curtin unbelievingly. And with even more unbelief, ‘In thesitting-room?’

‘Yes. He’d been stabbed.’

‘You mean it’smurder?’

‘Yes, murder.’

‘Oo murdered ’im?’ demanded Mrs Curtin.

‘I’m afraid we haven’t got quite so far as that yet,’ said Inspector Hardcastle. ‘We thought perhaps you may be able to help us.’

‘I don’t know anything about murder,’ said Mrs Curtin positively.

‘No, but there are one or two points that have arisen. This morning, for instance, did any man call at the house?’

‘Not that I can remember. Not today. What sort of man was he?’

‘An elderly man about sixty, respectably dressed in a dark suit. He may have represented himself as an insurance agent.’

‘I wouldn’t have let him in,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘No insurance agents and nobody selling vacuum cleaners or editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nothing of that sort. Miss Pebmarsh doesn’t hold with selling at the door and neither do I.’

‘The man’s name, according to a card that was on him, was Mr Curry. Have you ever heard that name?’