The Clocks (4 page)

“Dear, dear,” said Miss Martindale. “The girl must have been very upset.”

It seemed the kind of understatement characteristic of Miss Martindale.

“Does the name of Curry mean anything to you, Miss Martindale? Mr. R.H. Curry?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“From the Metropolis and Provincial Insurance Company?”

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.”

“M
om!” 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 doing
now?
” 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 been
stolen,
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 the
sitting room?
”

“Yes. He'd been stabbed.”

“You mean it's
murder?
”

“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?”

“Curry? Curry?” Mrs. Curtin shook her head. “Sounds Indian to me,” she said, suspiciously.

“Oh, no,” said Inspector Hardcastle, “he wasn't an Indian.”

“Who found him—Miss Pebmarsh?”

“A young lady, a shorthand typist, had arrived because, owing to a misunderstanding, she thought she'd been sent for to do some work for Miss Pebmarsh. It was she who discovered the body. Miss Pebmarsh returned almost at the same moment.”

Mrs. Curtin uttered a deep sigh.

“What a to-do,” she said, “what a to-do!”

“We may ask you at some time,” said Inspector Hardcastle, “to look at this man's body and tell us if he is a man you have ever seen
in Wilbraham Crescent or calling at the house before. Miss Pebmarsh is quite positive he has never been there. Now there are various small points I would like to know. Can you recall offhand how many clocks there are in the sitting room?”

Mrs. Curtin did not even pause.

“There's that big clock in the corner, grandfather they call it, and there's the cuckoo clock on the wall. It springs out and says ‘cuckoo.' Doesn't half make you jump sometimes.” She added hastily, “I didn't touch neither of them. I never do. Miss Pebmarsh likes to wind them herself.”

“There's nothing wrong with them,” the inspector assured her. “You're sure these were the only two clocks in the room this morning?”

“Of course. What others should there be?”

“There was not, for instance, a small square silver clock, what they call a carriage clock, or a little gilt clock—on the mantelpiece that was, or a china clock with flowers on it—or a leather clock with the name Rosemary written across the corner?”

“Of course there wasn't. No such thing.”

“You would have noticed them if they had been there?”

“Of course I should.”

“Each of these four clocks represented a time about an hour later than the cuckoo clock and the grandfather clock.”

“Must have been foreign,” said Mrs. Curtin. “Me and my old man went on a coach trip to Switzerland and Italy once and it was a whole hour further on there. Must be something to do with this Common Market. I don't hold with the Common Market and nor does Mr. Curtin. England's good enough for me.”

Inspector Hardcastle declined to be drawn into politics.

“Can you tell me exactly when you left Miss Pebmarsh's house this morning?”

“Quarter past twelve, near as nothing,” said Mrs. Curtin.

“Was Miss Pebmarsh in the house then?”

“No, she hadn't come back. She usually comes back some time between twelve and half past, but it varies.”

“And she had left the house—when?”

“Before I got there. Ten o'clock's my time.”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Curtin.”

“Seems queer about these clocks,” said Mrs. Curtin. “Perhaps Miss Pebmarsh had been to a sale. Antiques, were they? They sound like it by what you say.”

“Does Miss Pebmarsh often go to sales?”

“Got a roll of hair carpet about four months ago at a sale. Quite good condition. Very cheap, she told me. Got some velour curtains too. They needed cutting down, but they were really as good as new.”

“But she doesn't usually buy bric-à-brac or things like pictures or china or that kind of thing at sales?”

Mrs. Curtin shook her head.

“Not that I've ever known her, but of course, there's no saying in sales, is there? I mean, you get carried away. When you get home you say to yourself ‘whatever did I want with that?' Bought six pots of jam once. When I thought about it I could have made it cheaper myself. Cups and saucers, too. Them I could have got better in the market on a Wednesday.”

She shook her head darkly. Feeling that he had no more to learn for the moment, Inspector Hardcastle departed. Ernie then made his contribution to the subject that had been under discussion.

“Murder! Coo!” said Ernie.

Momentarily the conquest of outer space was displaced in his mind by a present-day subject of really thrilling appeal.

“Miss Pebmarsh couldn't have done 'im in, could she?” he suggested yearningly.

“Don't talk so silly,” said his mother. A thought crossed her mind. “I wonder if I ought to have told him—”

“Told him what, Mom?”

“Never you mind,” said Mrs. Curtin. “It was nothing, really.”

I

W
hen we had put ourselves outside two good underdone steaks, washed down with draught beer, Dick Hardcastle gave a sigh of comfortable repletion, announced that he felt better and said:

“To hell with dead insurance agents, fancy clocks and screaming girls! Let's hear about you, Colin. I thought you'd finished with this part of the world. And here you are wandering about the back streets of Crowdean. No scope for a marine biologist at Crowdean, I can assure you.”

“Don't you sneer at marine biology, Dick. It's a very useful subject. The mere mention of it so bores people and they're so afraid you're going to talk about it, that you never have to explain yourself further.”

“No chance of giving yourself away, eh?”

“You forget,” I said coldly, “that I
am
a marine biologist. I took
a degree in it at Cambridge. Not a very good degree, but a degree. It's a very interesting subject, and one day I'm going back to it.”

“I know what you've been working on, of course,” said Hardcastle. “And congratulations to you. Larkin's trial comes on next month, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Amazing the way he managed to carry on passing stuff out for so long. You'd think somebody would have suspected.”

“They didn't, you know. When you've got it into your head that a fellow is a thoroughly good chap, it doesn't occur to you that he mightn't be.”

“He must have been clever,” Dick commented.

I shook my head.

“No, I don't think he was, really. I think he just did as he was told. He had access to very important documents. He walked out with them, they were photographed and returned to him, and they were back again where they belonged the same day. Good organization there. He made a habit of lunching at different places every day. We think that he hung up his overcoat where there was always an overcoat exactly like it—though the man who wore the other overcoat wasn't always the same man. The overcoats were switched, but the man who switched them never spoke to Larkin, and Larkin never spoke to him. We'd like to know a good deal more about the mechanics of it. It was all very well-planned with perfect timing. Somebody had brains.”

“And that's why you're still hanging round the Naval Station at Portlebury?”

“Yes, we know the Naval end of it and we know the London end. We know just when and where Larkin got his pay and how.
But there's a gap. In between the two there's a very pretty little bit of organization. That's the part we'd like to know more about, because that's the part where the brains are.
Somewhere
there's a very good headquarters, with excellent planning, which leaves a trail that is confused not once but probably seven or eight times.”

“What did Larkin do it for?” asked Hardcastle, curiously. “Political idealist? Boosting his ego? Or plain money?”

“He was no idealist,” I said. “Just money, I'd say.”

“Couldn't you have got on to him sooner that way? He spent the money, didn't he? He didn't salt it away.”

“Oh, no, he splashed it about all right. Actually, we got on to him a little sooner than we're admitting.”

Hardcastle nodded his head understandingly.

“I see. You tumbled and then you used him for a bit. Is that it?”

“More or less. He had passed out some quite valuable information before we got on to him, so we let him pass out more information, also apparently valuable. In the Service I belong to, we have to resign ourselves to looking fools now and again.”

“I don't think I'd care for your job, Colin,” said Hardcastle thoughtfully.

“It's not the exciting job that people think it is,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it's usually remarkably tedious. But there's something beyond that. Nowadays one gets to feeling that nothing really
is
secret. We know Their secrets and They know our secrets. Our agents are often Their agents, too, and Their agents are very often our agents. And in the end who is double-crossing who becomes a kind of nightmare! Sometimes I think that everybody knows everybody else's secrets and that they enter into a kind of conspiracy to pretend that they don't.”

“I see what you mean,” Dick said thoughtfully.

Then he looked at me curiously.

“I can see why you should still be hanging around Portlebury. But Crowdean's a good ten miles from Portlebury.”

“What I'm really after,” I said, “are Crescents.”

“Crescents?” Hardcastle looked puzzled.

“Yes. Or alternatively, moons. New moons, rising moons and so on. I started my quest in Portlebury itself. There's a pub there called The Crescent Moon. I wasted a long time over that. It sounded ideal. Then there's The Moon and Stars. The Rising Moon, The Jolly Sickle, The Cross and the Crescent—that was in a little place called Seamede. Nothing doing. Then I abandoned moons and started on Crescents. Several Crescents in Portlebury. Lansbury Crescent, Aldridge Crescent, Livermead Crescent, Victoria Crescent.”

I caught sight of Dick's bewildered face and began to laugh.

“Don't look so much at sea, Dick. I had something tangible to start me off.”

I took out my wallet, extracted a sheet of paper and passed it over to him. It was a single sheet of hotel writing paper on which a rough sketch had been drawn.

“A chap called Hanbury had this in his wallet. Hanbury did a lot of work in the Larkin case. He was good—very good. He was run over by a hit and run car in London. Nobody got its number. I don't know what this means, but it's something that Hanbury jotted down, or copied, because he thought it was important. Some idea that he had? Or something that he'd seen or heard? Something to do with a moon or crescent, the number 61 and the initial M. I took over after his death. I don't know what I'm looking for yet,
but I'm pretty sure there's something to find. I don't know what 61 means. I don't know what M means. I've been working in a radius from Portlebury outwards. Three weeks of unremitting and unrewarding toil. Crowdean is on my route. That's all there is to it. Frankly, Dick, I didn't expect very much of Crowdean. There's only one Crescent here. That's Wilbraham Crescent. I was going to have a walk along Wilbraham Crescent and see what I thought of Number 61 before asking you if you'd got any dope that could help me. That's what I was doing this afternoon—but I couldn't find Number 61.”

“As I told you, 61 is occupied by a local builder.”

“And that's not what I'm after. Have they got a foreign help of any kind?”

“Could be. A good many people do nowadays. If so, she'll be registered. I'll look it up for you by tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Dick.”

“I'll be making routine inquiries tomorrow at the two houses on either side of 19. Whether they saw anyone come to the house,
etcetera. I might include the houses directly
behind
19, the ones whose gardens adjoin it. I rather think that 61 is almost directly behind 19. I could take you along with me if you liked.”

I closed with the offer greedily.

“I'll be your Sergeant Lamb and take shorthand notes.”

We agreed that I should come to the police station at nine thirty the following morning.

II

I arrived the next morning promptly at the agreed hour and found my friend literally fuming with rage.

When he had dismissed an unhappy subordinate, I inquired delicately what had happened.

For a moment Hardcastle seemed unable to speak. Then he spluttered out: “Those damned clocks!”

“The clocks again? What's happened now?”

“One of them is missing.”

“Missing? Which one?”

“The leather travelling clock. The one with ‘Rosemary' across the corner.”

I whistled.

“That seems very extraordinary. How did it come about?”

“The damned fools—I'm one of them really, I suppose—” (Dick was a very honest man) “—One's got to remember to cross every t and dot every i or things go wrong. Well, the clocks were there all right yesterday in the sitting room. I got Miss Pebmarsh to feel them all to see if they felt familiar. She couldn't help. Then they came to remove the body.”

“Yes?”

“I went out to the gate to supervise, then I came back to the house, spoke to Miss Pebmarsh who was in the kitchen, and said I must take the clocks away and would give her a receipt for them.”

“I remember. I heard you.”

“Then I told the girl I'd send her home in one of our cars, and I asked you to see her into it.”

“Yes.”

“I gave Miss Pebmarsh the receipt though she said it wasn't necessary since the clocks weren't hers. Then I joined you. I told Edwards I wanted the clocks in the sitting room packed up carefully and brought here. All of them except the cuckoo clock and, of course, the grandfather. And that's where I went wrong. I should have said, quite definitely,
four
clocks. Edwards says he went in at once and did as I told him. He insists there were only three clocks other than the two fixtures.”

“That doesn't give much time,” I said. “It means—”

“The Pebmarsh woman could have done it. She could have picked up the clock after I left the room and gone straight to the kitchen with it.”

“True enough. But why?”

“We've got a lot to learn. Is there anybody else? Could the girl have done it?”

I reflected. “I don't think so. I—” I stopped, remembering something.

“So she did,” said Hardcastle. “Go on. When was it?”

“We were just going out to the police car,” I said unhappily. “She'd left her gloves behind. I said, ‘I'll get them for you' and she
said, ‘Oh, I know just where I must have dropped them. I don't mind going into that room now that the body's gone' and she ran back into the house. But she was only gone a minute—”

“Did she have her gloves on, or in her hand when she rejoined you?”

I hesitated. “Yes—yes, I think she did.”

“Obviously she didn't,” said Hardcastle, “or you wouldn't have hesitated.”

“She probably stuffed them in her bag.”

“The trouble is,” said Hardcastle in an accusing manner, “you've fallen for that girl.”

“Don't be idiotic,” I defended myself vigorously. “I saw her for the first time yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't exactly what you'd call a romantic introduction.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” said Hardcastle. “It isn't every day that young men have girls falling into their arms screaming for help in the approved Victorian fashion. Makes a man feel a hero and a gallant protector. Only you've got to stop protecting her. That's all. So far as you know, that girl may be up to the neck in this murder business.”

“Are you saying that this slip of a girl stuck a knife into a man, hid it somewhere so carefully that none of your sleuths could find it, then deliberately rushed out of the house and did a screaming act all over me?”

“You'd be surprised at what I've seen in my time,” said Hardcastle darkly.

“Don't you realize,” I demanded, indignantly, “that my life has been full of beautiful spies of every nationality? All of them with vital statistics that would make an American private eye forget all
about the shot of rye in his collar drawer. I'm immune to all female allurements.”

“Everybody meets his Waterloo in the end,” said Hardcastle. “It all depends on the type. Sheila Webb seems to be your type.”

“Anyway, I can't see why you're so set on fastening it on her.”

Hardcastle sighed.

“I'm not fastening it on her—but I've got to start somewhere. The body was found in Pebmarsh's house. That involves her. The body was found by the Webb girl—I don't need to tell you how often the first person to find a dead body is the same as the person who last saw him alive. Until more facts turn up, those two remain in the picture.”

“When I went into that room at just after three o'clock, the body had been dead at least half an hour, probably longer. How about that?”

“Sheila Webb had her lunch hour from 1:30 to 2:30.”

I looked at him in exasperation.

“What have you found out about Curry?”

Hardcastle said with unexpected bitterness: “Nothing!”

“What do you mean—nothing?”

“Just that he doesn't exist—there's no such person.”

“What do the Metropolis Insurance Company say?”

“They've nothing to say either, because there's no such thing. The Metropolis and Provincial Insurance Company doesn't exist. As far as Mr. Curry from Denvers Street goes, there's no Mr. Curry, no Denvers Street, Number 7 or any other number.”

“Interesting,” I said. “You mean he just had some bogus cards printed with a bogus name, address and insurance company?”

“Presumably.”

“What is the big idea, do you think?”