The Clocks

‘Not if you knew Ann,’ she said. ‘She was always very clear-cut in her decisions. And then she and I weren’t very close. I was younger than she was by a good deal-twelve years. As I say, we were never very close.’

‘And what did your husband feel about this adoption?’

‘I was a widow then,’ said Mrs Lawton. ‘I married young and my husband was killed in the war. I kept a small sweetshop at the time.’

‘Where was all this? Not here in Crowdean.’

‘No. We were living in Lincolnshire at the time. I came here in the holidays once, and I liked it so much that I sold the shop and came here to live. Later, when Sheila was old enough to go to school, I took a job in Roscoe and West, the big drapers here, you know. I still work there. They’re very pleasant people.’

‘Well,’ said Hardcastle, rising to his feet, ‘thank you very much, Mrs Lawton, for your frankness in what you have told me.’

‘And you won’t say a word of it to Sheila?’

‘Not unless it should become necessary, and that would only happen if some circumstances out of the past proved to have been connected with this murder at 19, Wilbraham Crescent. And that, I think, is unlikely.’ He took the photograph from his pocket which he had been showing to so many people, and showed it to Mrs Lawton. ‘You’ve no idea who this man could be?’

‘They’ve shown it me already,’ said Mrs Lawton.

She took it and scrutinized it earnestly.

‘No. I’m sure, quite sure, I’ve never seen this man before. I don’t think he belonged round here or I might have remembered seeing him about. Of course-’ she looked closely. She paused a moment before adding, rather unexpectedly, ‘He looks a nice man I think. A gentleman, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’

It was a slightly outmoded term in the inspector’s experience, yet it fell very naturally from Mrs Lawton’s lips. ‘Brought up in the country,’ he thought. ‘They still think of things that way.’ He looked at the photograph again himself reflecting, with faint surprise, that he had not thought of the dead man in quite that way. Was he a nice man? He had been assuming just the contrary. Assuming it unconsciously perhaps, or influenced perhaps by the fact that the man had a card in his pocket which bore a name and an address which were obviously false. But the explanation he had given to Mrs Lawton just now might have been the true one. It might have been that the card did represent some bogus insurance agent who had pressed the card upon the dead man. And that, he thought wryly, would really make the whole thing even more difficult. He glanced at his watch again.

‘I mustn’t keep you from your cooking any longer,’ he said, ‘since your niece is not home yet-’

Mrs Lawton in turn looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Only one clock in this room, thank heaven,’ thought the inspector to himself.

‘Yes, she is late,’ she remarked. ‘Surprising really. It’s a good thing Edna didn’t wait.’

Seeing a slightly puzzled expression on Hardcastle’s face, she explained.

‘It’s just one of the girls from the office. She came here to see Sheila this evening and she waited a bit but after a while she said she couldn’t wait any longer. She’d got a date with someone. She said it would do tomorrow, or some other time.’ 

Enlightenment came to the inspector. The girl he had passed in the street! He knew now why she’d made him think of shoes. Of course. It was the girl who had received him in the Cavendish Bureau and the girl who, when he left, had been holding up a shoe with a stiletto heel torn off it, and had been discussing in unhappy puzzlement how on earth she was going to get home like that. A nondescript kind of girl, he remembered, not very attractive, sucking some kind of sweet as she talked. She had recognized him when she passed him in the street, although he had not recognized her. She had hesitated, too, as though she thought of speaking to him. He wondered rather idly what she had wanted to say. Had she wanted to explain why she was calling on Sheila Webb or had she thought he would expect her to say something? He asked:

‘Is she a great friend of your niece’s?’

‘Well, not particularly,’ said Mrs Lawton. ‘I mean they work in the same office and all that, but she’s rather a dull girl. Not very bright and she and Sheila aren’t particular friends. In fact, I wondered why she was so keen to see Sheila tonight. She said it was something she couldn’t understand and that she wanted to ask Sheila about it.’

‘She didn’t tell you what it was?’

‘No, she said it would keep and it didn’t matter.’

‘I see. Well, I must be going.’ 

‘It’s odd,’ said Mrs Lawton, ‘that Sheila hasn’t telephoned. She usually does if she’s late, because the professor sometimes asks her to stay to dinner. Ah, well, I expect she’ll be here any moment now. There are a lot of bus queues sometimes and the Curlew Hotel is quite a good way along the Esplanade. There’s nothing-no message-you want to leave for Sheila?’

‘I think not,’ said the inspector.