Murder in the Telephone Exchange (2 page)

When June's husband Stewart suddenly fell ill and could no longer work, she gave up writing crime fiction altogether to earn a regular salary. This was a great pity as I believe she could have written many more first-rate detective novels in the same vein as
Murder in the Telephone Exchange
, which not only tests the reader's wits, but also is a wonderful evocation of post-war Melbourne. Nor had she exhausted the possibilities of Mother Paul in my view, a detective identified as “special” by a number of crime fiction reviewers. For example, according to J.C. of
The Advocate
(1961): “Mother Paul is indeed a most attractive personality, worthy to rank with the great sleuths of fiction, even if devoid of the eccentricities possessed by most of them. We shall be very disappointed if we do not meet her again.”

June passed away on the 4th of February 2012 aged 92. “Maybe I'll never write a classic,” she once told Lisa Allan of
The Argus
newspaper in Melbourne. “Maybe that isn't my role in life. But vegetable I'll never be, and neither will I toss out any God-given talent simply because ‘I'm only a housewife'.”

DERHAM GROVES

CHAPTER I

This is John's idea, not mine. It will bear my reluctant signature and is a record of my impressions of the various incidents which occurred during the heat-wave of last February, but the inspiration is John's. I think his suggestion sprang from the desire to give me something to do besides count the days for my stay in this shameful place to end.

The whole project fills me with revulsion and the lethargy of one who has survived a crisis only to find another ahead. For that is what I have experienced. I have been through some terrible moments of suspicion, fear and misery. Heaven knows what other words there are to describe the emotions which accompanied me step by step into this room, so bare and expressionless except for the sinister barred window. I reached the peak of those emotions two weeks ago. Now, another summit is waiting to be scaled; for climb it I must, if I wish to survive the results of my own errors. Perhaps this is the way I can do it.

It is so hot again. The cool change which followed the thunderstorm was only a temporary respite. Even in this stone building I can feel the heat. The bars at the window seem to waver against the hard burning sky. As I reached for the jug of water on the table a moment ago, a bird perched itself on the ledge with its beak slightly open. We stared at each other with envious eyes.

It was hot then. The newspapers printed paragraphs about record temperatures and bush fire warnings, filling up picture space with snaps taken of bathers, ice vendors and children drinking lemonade. That was before we hit the headlines. But it was during the same heat-wave that crime, as it was so melodramatically phrased, held the upper hand at the Telephone Exchange, so I daresay they went on printing things like that. I didn't notice them. But I do remember the heat. It seemed part of the whole ghastly business. A background, just as much as the Exchange buildings were themselves.

I find it difficult to know where to start, and how to express myself in the way I was then. I didn't feel lonely, embittered and miserable a few weeks ago. Life was full and intriguing.

My perspective and sense of values were totally dissimilar to the distorted vision from which I am now suffering. Maybe I'll be able to see straight once I get this off my chest.

Did you read about the Telephone Exchange murders in the papers? There wasn't much chance of anyone missing them. Just in case you were not one of those numerous sightseers who parked themselves outside the building and gaped like landed fish, I will give you a brief description of where the crimes took place.

The Telephone Exchange, which comprises two buildings standing back to back, runs half a block in length. But the frontage being comparatively small renders it a rather inconspicuous place. The old Exchange, facing Lonsdale Street, is a two-storied establishment with Corinthian pillars and other arcanthus decorations, containing aged apparatus for the dwindling manual subscribers in the city and some country stations. At the back of “Central,” like a modern miss shielded by her anxious grandmother, rises the eight-story red brick building which houses the most up-to-date Trunk Exchange in the Southern Hemisphere. We telephonists who have worked there, while dubbing it a “madhouse” or a “hell of a hole,” will always be proud of it.

Eight floors with a basement, a flat roof and one lift, which had the rather trying tendency to break down on occasions when one was running late, the switchroom and cloakroom being on the sixth and eighth floors respectively. This only happened at odd hours, as by day it was run by old Bill, one of the nicest men who ever lost a limb in the First World War. He was intensely proud of his lift, and would hear no word against it.

I am trying to remember when I first became conscious of the changed atmosphere in the Trunk Exchange. It was so gradual that its beginning was almost undetectable. The strange behaviour of the Senior Traffic Officer can provide a point from which to start. That was the first significant item that penetrated my consciousness.

Albert James Scott, or Bertie as he was spoken of except to his face, was in charge of the two Exchanges, Central and Trunks; a dynamic little man with the sense of humour that usually goes with a rotund figure, who changed before our eyes almost overnight. It was his custom to trot about the room, throwing cheery words at traffic officers, monitors and telephonists alike, or to mumble under his breath other words, that began more often than not with the second letter of the alphabet, if any of the Departmental heads had been tedious. Either he would bang the handset telephones about on his desk, or swoop down to the boards and toss the orderly piles of dockets into disarray if he considered the delay on the lines was too high. But that was his way. Those sorts of thing did
not worry anyone. Indeed, if one had been connected with the Exchange for as many years as Bertie such behaviour was normal and quite to be expected.

Then one day arrived when he did none of those things, but spent most of his time quietly at his desk in the centre of the room, the single line between his eyes obliterated as his bushy brows met in one unbroken bar. I heard Sarah Compton, the monitor in attendance at the Senior Traffic Officer's table, comment: “Poor old Bertie is getting very grey. I wonder what he is worrying about?”

He was staring moodily in front of him when, going off duty to my tea one evening, I asked if I could change my all-night shift with the girl Patterson. John Clarkson, a traffic officer, was talking on one of Bertie's telephones, but he found time to wink at me. He was rather a lamb, with the figure of an athlete and the wrists of a golfer. As a matter of fact I had played with him several times, as the whole Exchange now knew thanks to Compton, who was a regular snooper. I would not have put it beyond her to be jealous. Clark had a very attractive personality.

Bertie came out of his trance with a sigh.

“What did you say, Miss Byrnes?”

“May I change with Miss Patterson on Friday? She is working from four until eleven. I am on all-night.”

It was quite a normal request. Changing shifts and their ensuing paybacks occurred every day. As I started unbuckling my headset, the pencil that I had slipped over my right ear caught and then fell with a tiny clatter to the floor. Bertie started like a shying horse.

“Change!” he said loudly. “No more changing until further notice. Miss Compton, tell the staff, please, and get me the Sydney Traffic Officer.”

He indicated dismissal still further by scribbling out the booking on a docket.

I departed without a word, completely baffled. As a rule relations between Bertie and me were very friendly, bordering almost on the mildly flirtatious. I concluded our Senior Traffic Officer was feeling the weather and decided to reopen the subject at some later and more suitable time.

Two flights of stairs, a long corridor and into the telephonists' cloakroom with its rows of lockers and racks. It was cool and dim as the lights had not yet been switched on, but with the ease of long practice I located my own locker without difficulty, and put my telephone set away. The ebonite was sweating slightly from my long session at the boards. We were always busy at that time of the year. Now, in this February heat, there was a bushfire or two thrown in for good measure.

Voices floated through the half-open door that connected the
cloakroom with the telephonists' restroom. Recognizing one, I strolled in, kicking the door shut behind me. Five girls were seated around a table playing cards.

“Bertie won't let us change, Patterson,” I said, as a fresh hand was dealt. “What's got into the man, does anyone know? I'd go misère if I were you,” I added as Dulcie Gordon tilted her hand up for me to see. “You won't get through, but it's worth a try.”

“Shut up, Byrnes. No help required,” one of them ordered.

“Yes, be quiet, Maggie,” said Gloria Patterson. “It spoils the game if you give hints. Why won't Mr. Scott give you permission? Not that I mind overmuch. I loathe all-nights.”

“It was to be a pay-back,” I reminded her.

“Was it?” she queried vaguely. “But I can't on Friday. I am going to the Embassy that night with an American fellow I met the other day.”

“What are you wearing, Gloria?” I asked, instantly diverted, and giving the others a wink. “The gold lamé or the marquisette model?”

Patterson was always telling us of her extensive wardrobe and many boy-friends. There were those unkind souls who considered both were myths. Certainly she was looking very snappy now,. with a cyclamen orchid pinned to the lapel of her sheer black suit, and I had seen more than one seedy-looking individual waiting for her outside the Exchange. But she was quite unabashed and serious as she told with a wealth of detail, incidentally allowing the little Gordon girl to get her misère, what she was going to wear. Presently she got up to leave.

“Take my hand, Maggie, will you? I'm due at the ‘Australia' for a cocktail in five minutes.”

I took her place.

“Only one hand. I must have my tea.”

I saw an easy solo and declared it. We played a quick hand in silence. Ormond snorted as she paid me for two over.

“Cocktails at the ‘Australia'! Oh yeah! And how does she manage to dress on our miserable screw? That's if she has all the clothes that she says she has, which I very much doubt.”

“Shut up,” I said softly. The door into the cloakroom was ajar. Yet I was sure a click had registered itself on my brain as Gloria had left. When I opened it suddenly and looked out, the shadows cast by the light summer coats seemed to waver as though someone had just passed. There was no sight of Gloria, however, and Mrs. Smith, one of the cleaners, was there dusting the lockers.

It was a puerile impulse to try to catch Gloria. I still don't know what prompted it or what result I expected. But it manifests the state of nerves
everyone was in at that time. I noticed several others had been suffering from similar futile and unreasonable impulses. There was definitely something wrong in the Trunk Exchange, for no one is so sensitive to atmosphere as a crowd of females; especially when those females are telephonists.

“What's up, Maggie?” said one of the rota from the restroom. “Are you going to play this hand? Diamonds are trumps.”

I turned my head, still standing on the threshold.

“No. I'm going to have my tea. The fair Gloria has gone.”

“Did you think she had been listening at the key-hole? Talking about listening at key-holes, someone around here has been doing a spot of prying. A couple of the girls complained that their lockers had been tampered with, though nothing was actually taken. And I'll swear that someone was listening in on that call I made yesterday from our phone in here.”

“How sinister!” I replied in a light tone. “Probably it was Compton. She seems to find out a lot of things.”

“Meaning you and Clark, Maggie? I say—”

“I am going to my tea,” I repeated firmly. “So long.”

As I made a pot of tea at the boiling urn in the lunchroom across the passage, I tried to put my finger on the cause of my sudden and unfounded apprehensions. Perhaps it was the heat, a close humid blanket of it enough to fray the already taut nerves of any telephonist. But Bertie with the jumps and now all this poking and prying were facts that could not be ignored.

“Oh, blast!” I thought, trying to dismiss them. “I need my leave.”

The lunchroom is long and narrow, with a cafeteria at one end divided off by a grille reaching from the roof to the counter. At the special table reserved for the traffic officers and monitors, Sarah Compton was talking in low tones to John Clarkson. She was leaning forward, with her pale eyes looking earnestly and compellingly into poor Clark's. He appeared to be slightly discomfited. I caught his eye as I went to sit facing Compton, and the expression of relief that came into his face was almost ludicrous. Presently he lounged over to my table.

“Hullo, Maggie,” he said, then added softly, “How good it is to see you after yon desiccated old maid. She has been holding forth. Like the bridegroom, I couldn't get away once she fixed me with her eye.”

“What was she holding forth about?” I asked, exploring the contents of a sandwich.