Murder in the Telephone Exchange (4 page)

After some solid climbing, I arrived at the glass doors that opened into the trunkroom, slightly breathless and with the backs of my knees aching. Although every floor in the Exchange is architecturally the same, there is something unforgettably familiar about the sixth. You can feel a unique atmosphere, one of telephones and telephonists working flat out to serve a public, which for the most part remains ungrateful. Just as a ‘wowser' seeing an intoxicated person thinks that everyone who drinks is a drunkard, so the person who, by chance, gives the responsibility of their call to a careless telephonist considers that all Exchange employees are rude and haphazard.

I have seen girls, beaded with perspiration from hot apparatus, putting calls through every minute for hours on end during bad bush-fires and crises in Europe and the Pacific, until they collapsed from sheer nervous exhaustion. I know that strained concentration which is needed to complete connections, with half a dozen lines under your tense fingers, that must not make mistakes.

I can honestly say that the greater majority of telephonists endeavour conscientiously to answer the oftentimes outrageous demands of the public. Here is an excellent example, when an unnamed man was located in one of our larger country towns for a very urgent call. He was a traveller for an engineering firm in the city, but for some inexplicable reason his name could not be supplied. He was tracked down through thirteen hotels, half a dozen garages and hardware shops and three clubs. I know this for a fact, because I found him myself!

However, we to whom the Exchange means our bread take the romance of the telephone very casually. So it was that buckling on my apparatus in obedience to the rule before entering the trunkroom, I resigned myself to a hot and tiring night.

The trunkroom is a T-shaped room covering the whole of the sixth floor, except for the front and back stair landings and a telephonists' toilet and washroom. Gone are the days of the plugs and cords more familiar to others than telephone employees. In their place are highly polished rows of boards about three feet in height, and worked by keys, lights and automatic dials. These boards occupy the larger part of the room together with booking, inquiry and information desks, and the Senior Traffic Officer's table. In one arm of the T-shape stands the sortagraph, which brings dockets to the operator from the boards by means of air-pressure tubes under
the floor. In the other is an immense delay board, another marvel of this mechanical age, which manifests the waiting time on the various interstate and country lines. The room is lighted and aired by windows on all sides for the hundred or more people working therein at the peak period.

At night the Senior Traffic Officer was not on duty, so John Clarkson was head man. I could hardly expect a rebuke from him for my tardy return, though he was a great stickler for punctuality as a rule. He was sitting at Bertie's desk, his head bent over his writing. And there was Compton fluttering around him as normally as ever. It was as if I had last beheld her plain face in an absurd nightmare. She even had the audacity to say accusingly: “You're very late, Miss Byrnes,” as I approached her to learn my position. I glanced at her keenly to observe any recognition of our last meeting, but the pale eyes that met mine were quite blank.

“You can start the relieving,” she told me.

If there was one job I loathed more than another, it was that. In the hour before the rush half-fee period, those telephonists working more than three hours on end were entitled to a ten-minute break. I suspected Compton of spite in allotting the relieving to me, though to give her her due, it was usually the job of the late telephonist. Where all the other telephonists would go off duty at 10.30 p.m., I had to wait until the all-night girls who worked the interstate positions came on at 11 p.m. Just as the late telephonist on the country positions on the far side of the room would gather all working country lines on to a couple of boards and operate them all, so I would have to do the same with the interstate lines. Although traffic was cleared up rather well by 10 p.m., two telephonists to cover the work of sixty meant all your concentration and ability. I have always hated that last half-hour.

To-night there was no late country operator. It had been arranged that Gerda Maclntyre, the sortagrapher, would transfer there when her own position closed down at 10 p.m. Mac, who was by way of being a particular friend of mine, was one of the most versatile telephonists I have ever known. She had a lovely voice, unroughened by many years in the Exchange, and tiny hands that dealt with any amount of work with the most amazing competence and ease. John Clarkson would probably take us both down town somewhere for supper after work. There was a time when I was afraid Mac was taking Clark rather seriously. However, everything seemed to have cleared up, and I was somewhat relieved, though I could never put my finger on the exact cause of my relief.

I started on my tour of the interstate positions; ten minutes here, and ten minutes there. No two telephonists work alike. By the time you got the lines working your own system the original operator returned to say
rather acidly: “You seem to be in a bag.”

‘In a bag' is an expression peculiar to the Melbourne telephonist; it means that you are in a muddle or so confused that you can't straighten things out. In Sydney, the girls say that they are ‘overboard.' As a rule Mac was sent for when anyone got in a bag. It was a delight to watch those small hands of hers pass rapidly over the board from key to dial and from dial to docket, a pencil always between the first two fingers but in no way hindering the clearance at which she arrived so quickly.

I plugged my flex on the main Adelaide board, waiting for Gloria Patterson to slip out of the position. Patterson was what I call a genteel telephonist, and one to whom Mac often rendered assistance. She was more concerned with keeping her rather high-pitched voice refined, like those of our local socialites to whose calls she delighted in listening, than speeding up the tempo of her connections. She ought to have been shot for eavesdropping of course; one day she'd be reported and would most deservedly get it in the neck.

“That's there, and I was just dialling this out, and that's been on for two and a half minutes,” she said, pointing at the dockets clipped under the three Adelaide lines she was working.

I could hear Adelaide saying: “Waiting, Mel., waiting,” rather querulously. I concluded that Patterson must have been super-refined to-night.

“That's just grand, Gloria,” I replied gravely, “most lucid. Now, run along, dear, and I'll have it all nice and straight for you when you return.”

She gave me a cross look, as I transferred my attention to the patient girl in Adelaide. I knew her rather well.

“Thank goodness it's you, Byrnes,” she declared with a sigh of relief. “Who is that awful mug?”

“One of our shining lights,” I replied, picking up a docket. “I'll have L3178 for U7173, not a personal call, here. Give me your country line to Salisbury on number 3. How are you going? Has the weather changed yet?”

“Wait for a minute.” She went off with a click of her key to dial out my number. Presently she said: “No! It is still as hot as ever. Perth have had a change; the girl there says that she is wearing a woollen cardigan. Salisbury on three.”

“Thanks, Ad.,” I said, dialling my caller quickly. “That means that we won't get a cool change for at least another three days.”

“Stop gassing, Maggie,” nudged the girl next to me. “Ob. is hovering around.”

Ob. is observation. About two or three monitors of Sarah Compton's vintage patrol the boards to see amongst other things, that we behave
ourselves. Their listening post was situated on the third floor. It is considered a matter of honour to warn your neighbour when she is approaching. Presently a voice said coldly in my ear: “Who are you, Trunks?”

When I had replied M. Byrnes, the voice went on: “I shall be observing your work for the next quarter of an hour for a time check.” It was very decent of her to let me know. As a rule Ob. doesn't make her presence known. The first you learn of her presence is a report on the Senior Traffic Officer's desk with an immense “Please explain” at the foot of it.

“I am only relieving,” I warned her. “I will be off in a few minutes.”

“Very well, then. Thank you, Miss Byrnes. I'll come back presently,” and the voice departed as quietly as it had come. I could see the telephonists farther down looking startled, and then giving their names. Ob. gets you that way.

Patterson came back late. She had cribbed an extra five minutes. Compton followed her down to her position, the look of malice on her face reminding me of the lift episode again. Although I didn't care much for Gloria, I felt sorry for her when Compton had her claws bared as now. What a beast that woman could be! I was becoming more and more convinced that she must be mentally deranged.

“You're five minutes late, Miss Patterson,” she said. “You will not be allowed to go until 10.35 p.m. I was timing you.”

She would be, I thought. Patterson replied: “I couldn't help it. I had to go to the other building to ring up. The restroom door is locked.”

Compton looked surprised.

“Who locked it?”

“I don't know,” said Patterson. “And the key is missing. Are you ready, Maggie?”

I slipped from the chair, explaining how the work stood until Compton moved away.

“I quite agree with you, Gloria,” I said, as she muttered angrily under her breath. “Are you sure the door was locked? It might have just jammed.”

“I tell you it was locked,” she replied crossly. “If you don't believe me, go and ask your friend Maclntyre. She was with me.”

“All right, keep calm,” I said soothingly. “But I'll take your advice and ask Mac.”

Mac had been talking to John Clarkson and Compton. I walked down the room with her.

“I've just been reporting the mystery of the locked door, Maggie. Did the girl Patterson tell you about it?”

I nodded. “Our Sarah jumped on her for being five minutes late. Has the key been found?”

“No. And as far as I can make out there is no duplicate. It will have to stay locked until the morning.”

“I wonder who could have done it, and why,” I said thoughtfully.

“Anyone, I suppose. The key is usually in the door. Did you go back there after your tea?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn't. I went up on to the roof for a cigarette. I met Compton there, so she can vouch for me, which I'm sure she won't. Bless her kindly heart!”

Mac adjusted her mouthpiece to the regulation inch from her charming mouth. I remembered how Clark had once said, with mock sentiment, that a telephone set was a privileged thing. “By the way, Maggie, do you know what is wrong with Compton? She's like a cat on hot bricks tonight.”

I leaned towards her. “To give you my candid and unprejudiced opinion,” I said softly, “I think that she has gone crackers.”

Mac looked at me, mildly surprised at my earnestness.

“I'll tell you why, later. I must get back to the relieving at once, or she'll jump on me the way she did to young Gloria. So long.”

I finished the job about five minutes before the rush period. An atmosphere of tension is always felt at this time. To-night, with the oppressive heat, the strain seemed augmented. I felt hot and weary, but my brain was keyed up and alert to take the burden of the next two hours. I will never forget that night. The main Sydney board was given to me to work, and there was a two hours' delay on the lines. I could not give my whole mind to the operating, as the brush with Compton and the subsequent event of the lift and even the locked restroom door were playing around in my brain in a jumble. Still further back, in the recesses of my subconscious mind, something was trying to thrust itself on to my notice. Making rapid connections was not conducive to recapturing an elusive thought, even if it had registered itself on my brain in the first place. During a respite when I had all my lines covered, I came to the conclusion that it was something peculiar that I had either seen or heard. But when and where, my memory failed me.

After that, I settled down more peacefully to the business of breaking that pack of dockets, so much so that by the time the last call was put on, I realized with a jerk that I had forgotten all about those odd occurrences that had taken place earlier in the evening. I felt strangely loath to summon them again, and kept telling myself that I was imagining the premonition of disaster I was experiencing. But the whole building and its occupants including myself seemed to be on tip-toe waiting for a climax. There was that solo hand that I had played in the restroom and Dulcie Gordon's conviction of an eavesdropper on the telephonists'
private phone; also her knowledge of the rifled lockers, and presently that unnaturally ajar door after Patterson's departure; even Mrs. Smith, the cleaner with an ever present familiarity about her that I could never place. Then I considered Bertie, a mass of nerves, and Sarah Compton with that evil look on her face, full of malice and triumph.

Compton had been dodging around the boards, querying dockets and taking inquiries in her usual fashion all night. That was one of her habits that I deplored most. She would ask you questions when you were in the middle of booking with the other telephonist. Her sharp voice, which reminded me always of someone using a steel file, sounded in your uncovered ear demanding futile explanations.