The Clocks

‘Girls,’ she said, ‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle wants to talk things over with you. You can stop work for the moment. Try and tell him anything you know that can help him to find out who killed Edna Brent.’

She went back into her own private office and shut the door firmly. Three startled girlish faces looked at the inspector. He summed them up quickly and superficially, but sufficiently to make up his mind as to the quality of the material with which he was about to deal. A fair solid-looking girl with spectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not particularly bright. A rather rakish-looking brunette with the kind of hair-do that suggested she’d been out in a blizzard lately. Eyes that noticed things here, perhaps, but probably highly unreliable in her recollection of events. Everything would be suitably touched up. The third was a born giggler who would, he was sure, agree with whatever anyone else said.

He spoke quietly, informally.

‘I suppose you’ve all heard what has happened to Edna Brent who worked here?’

Three heads nodded violently.

‘By the way, how did you hear?’

They looked at each other as if trying to decide who should be spokesman. By common consent it appeared to be the fair girl, whose name, it seemed, was Janet.

‘Edna didn’t come to work at two o’clock, as she should have done,’ she explained.

‘And Sandy Cat was very annoyed,’ began the dark-haired girl, Maureen, and then stopped herself. ‘Miss Martindale, I mean.’

The third girl giggled. ‘Sandy Cat is just what we call her,’ she explained.

‘And not a bad name,’ the inspector thought.

‘She’s a perfect terror when she likes,’ said Maureen. ‘Fairly jumps on you. She asked if Edna had said anything to us about not coming back to the office this afternoon, and that she ought to have at least sent an excuse.’

The fair girl said: ‘I told Miss Martindale that she’d been at the inquest with the rest of us, but that we hadn’t seen her afterwards and didn’t know where she’d gone.’

‘That was true, was it?’ asked Hardcastle. ‘You’ve no idea where she did go when she left the inquest.’

‘I suggested she should come and have some lunch with me,’ said Maureen, ‘but she seemed to have something on her mind. She said she wasn’t sure that she’d bother to have any lunch. Just buy something and eat it in the office.’

‘So she meant, then, to come back to the office?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. We all knew we’d got to do that.’

‘Have any of you noticed anything different about Edna Brent these last few days? Did she seem to you worried at all, as though she had something on her mind? Did she tell you anything to that effect? If there is anything at all you know, I must beg of you to tell me.’

They looked at each other but not in a conspiratorial manner. It seemed to be merely vague conjecture.

‘She was always worried about something,’ said Maureen. ‘She gets things muddled up, and makes mistakes. She was a bit slow in the uptake.’ 

‘Things always seemed to happen to Edna,’ said the giggler. ‘Remember when that stiletto heel of hers came off the other day? Just the sort of thing thatwould happen to Edna.’

‘I remember,’ said Hardcastle.

He remembered how the girl had stood looking down ruefully at the shoe in her hand.

‘You know, I had a feeling something awful had happened this afternoon when Edna didn’t get here at two o’clock,’ said Janet. She nodded with a solemn face.

Hardcastle looked at her with some dislike. He always disliked people who were wise after the event. He was quite sure that the girl in question had thought nothing of the kind. Far more likely, he thought to himself, that she had said, ‘Edna will catch it from Sandy Cat when she does come in.’

‘When did you hear what had happened?’ he asked again.

They looked at each other. The giggler flushed guiltily. Her eyes shot sideways to the door into Miss Martindale’s private office.

‘Well, I-er-I just slipped out for a minute,’ she said. ‘I wanted some pastries to take home and I knew they’d all be gone by the time we left. And when I got to the shop-it’s on the corner and they know me quite well there-the woman said, “She worked at your place, didn’t she, ducks?” and I said, “Who do you mean?” And then she said, “This girl they’ve just found dead in a telephone box.” Oh, it gave me ever such a turn! So I came rushing back and I told the others and in the end we all said we’d have to tell Miss Martindale about it, and just at that moment she came bouncing out of her office and said to us, “Nowwhat are you doing? Not a single typewriter going.” ’

The fair girl took up the saga.

‘And I said, “Really it’s notour fault. We’ve heard some terrible news about Edna, Miss Martindale.” ’

‘And what did Miss Martindale say or do?’

‘Well, she wouldn’t believe it at first,’ said the brunette. ‘She said, “Nonsense. You’ve just been picking up some silly gossip in a shop. It must be some other girl. Why should it be Edna?” And she marched back into her room and rang up the police station and found out itwas true.’