Murder in the Telephone Exchange (48 page)

His voice was stern over the wires. “Listen to me, Maggie. You're going to play this afternoon, and I mean it. I don't care about your mother, but you are coming. You'll be a screaming lunatic soon, if you don't have some sort of relaxation.”

‘That's a coincidence,' I thought grimly.

“Now go and get ready like a good girl. I'll be there as soon as I can rake up a car from somewhere.” Clark hung up without a word of farewell. He was right, of course. I must get out and forget things for a while. Maybe I'd be able to think more clearly after the fresh air and exercise.

The dining-room door opened.

“Come along, Maggie,” said my mother briskly. “Your lunch is ready.” Charlotte seemed to have regained her composure so completely that I wondered if the weeping woman of a few minutes ago could possibly have been she. The small table near the window, where Sergeant Matheson had sat with us at dinner the previous night, held a plate of freshly-cut tomato sandwiches and a pot of black coffee.

“Do you think that this will be enough on which to play eighteen holes?” I asked, watching carefully for her reaction. But my mother's expression did not alter one atom.

“With some fruit, it should be quite adequate,” she replied, sitting down beside me. “I think I'll have some coffee, too.”

As she poured out, a thought suddenly occurred to me. “Charlotte,” I commanded solemnly. “Show me your feet.”

“Why, darling?” she asked, turning sideways in her chair. I looked down, and then at the tailored linen dress that she wore.

“Where are your clubs?” I asked slyly.

“In the hall,” she answered. “By the way, will you be using your putter? Mine seems to be missing. I remember your father was practising long shots on the front lawn a few days ago. He probably forgot to put it back in my bag. Why are you looking at me like that, Maggie?”

“By any chance,” I asked carefully, “did you use the telephone to-day?”

“Several times. I rang your father.”

“What did he say?” I asked, instantly diverted. “No, never mind. Wait until I've finished with what I was going to say.” She glanced at me inquiringly. “I don't suppose,” I went on, “that one of the calls you made was to a Windsor number?”

“I might have,” she replied cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

I took another sandwich, satisfied that I was the victim of a conspiracy. “Clark just rang to make certain if the game was still on. He'll be round shortly.”

“That'll be nice, dear,” was the only comment she made. I felt a little nonplussed.

“What did the Old Man say?” I asked presently.

“Don't call your father that,” she protested. “He got a bit het up when I broke the news, but he was pretty right by the time we rang off. He told me to bring you home.”

“Now, Charlotte,” I began argumentatively.

“I told him that the police probably wouldn't let you leave town,” she finished in a mild tone.

“How did he reply to that?”

“He grunted, but I think that he understood. However, I received strict instructions to return tomorrow. Bertha forgot to put salt in the porridge this morning.”

“What a calamity!” I said, grinning. “Do you want to go home?”

“Not much,” she confessed. “I told your father that I hadn't found my garden hat yet. He gave way when I promised to return as soon as I found one.”

“You'd better try looking for it in shoe stores,” I advised, folding my table-napkin and rising from the table. “At least until the case is solved.”

Charlotte got up too, and we walked arm in arm to the door.

“Do you think that they'll ever find out?” she asked despairingly. “I can't make head nor tail of the business.”

“Of course they will,” I replied, though I shared her apprehensions. It would be ghastly if the case dragged on for months, perhaps even years, like the Albury pyjama-girl mystery. I sighed despondently.

“I'll run upstairs and get those putters,” I said. “You wait in the hall.”

I came down, clad in a grey linen skirt and checked shirt with my golf bag slung across my shoulder. Clark had arrived and was practising mashie shots with a matchbox as a ball.

“Mind the light,” I called from half-way down the stairs. He came forward with the iron against his shoulder. I was shocked at his appearance.

“Did you have any sleep at all?” I asked severely.

“Not much,” he replied. “You look fresh enough.”

“I'm better now. Charlotte gave me a sleeping draught when I got home, unbeknown to me. The net result was a splitting head and a tongue like cotton-wool.”

“A game will do us all good. Are you ready?”

We travelled towards the south-eastern suburbs where the sandbelt lay, and where most of the best courses ran side by side.

“I thought it might have changed,” I remarked, letting down the window as I sat in the front seat with Clark, “but it is still as hot as ever. Are we going to Riverlea?”

He nodded, turning the wheel with one hand. “I booked for 4 p.m., but I don't think that it was necessary. Most people will be playing in the clubhouse over beer.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “It won't be too hot for you, Charlotte?”

“No, dear,” she replied, following the flying landscape on her right. “I like summer golf. It makes my ball go farther.”

“That's what she says,” I remarked confidentially to Clark. “I've seen my mother drive a hundred and fifty yards along a marshy fairway in the middle of winter.”

“I am going to ask for two strokes,” Clark said solemnly.

We drove on in silence for a while, until he asked abruptly: “Are you working to-night?”

I had been humming a little tune, but his words pulled me up with a jerk.

“I suppose I will. There's no reason why I shouldn't. What about you?”

“There is no need for a traffic officer to-night, my pet. Bertie is coming in.”

“What's the idea? He's never worked on all-night before.”

Clark shrugged, lifting his hands from the wheel. “Search me. However, it lets me off. I won't question his actions.”

“I'm glad, for your sake,” I admitted. “You'd better get my mother to give you a couple of those pills. Are there any left, Charlotte?”

“I loathe forced sleep,” said Clark emphatically.

“Never mind! You do as I say for a change. We'll collect them on the way home.”

“Just as you wish,” he replied in a meek voice, and I touched the rough sleeve of his coat for a second.

The course, as Clark had foreseen, held but few players, while the lounge of the clubhouse was crowded with rubber-soled feet. I ran a ball down the empty race idiotically, and went to tee up.

“I'll show you the way, Charlotte,” I called, my club held between my bent knees as I pulled on a grey felt hat. “Red flags out—white flags in.”

Our first drives landed us about the same distance, although my ball lay slightly in the rough. I took out an iron, calling to the others cheerfully: “Watch me hit the pin!”

I saw Clark take my mother's bag before I swung. As I followed my lifting ball, shading my eyes with one hand, I remembered how Mac had always sliced on this first hole, whereas I usually pulled. It had been quite a joke between us.

“Just off the green,” said Clark's voice behind me. “Your mother is on, but I think that I have hit through.”

“Bad luck,” I said tightly, striding along in step.

Charlotte had holed out in three when we reached the green. As I flung down my bag, kicking it aside to give me room for a stance. Clark crossed to the other side, and disappeared into a bunker. The chip shot was a failure, and it took me two putts to achieve the hole. I straightened after picking the balls out of the tin, and caught Clark looking at me queerly.

“Five, Maggie?” asked my mother, marking her card as she walked ahead.

“Six,” I corrected, fumbling over my shoulder for my club. “Your honour.”

We watched her drive off in silence. I half-closed my eyes, visualizing a slimmer, smaller figure following the stroke through gracefully. What a farce the whole idea was! Nobody wanted to play, excepting perhaps Charlotte, and then she was probably only doing it for my sake. I might have known that the very feel of a club in my left hand would bring back agonizing memories of Mac.

‘We were fools to think that it would do us good,' I told myself bitterly. I nodded briefly to Clark to drive off before me.

He made no comment, but for once I didn't care. How fickle we humans are! Those dead become infinitely more precious than those alive, yet while our friends are on earth we quarrel with and criticize them unmercifully. What a difference there would have been if I had been more patient, more understanding with Mac!

‘It looks as though I may be responsible for another death,' I thought dully, as I placed my ball on the tee and stood back to survey the fairway mechanically. Now I must go through the rest of my life reproaching myself that my loyalty to Mac was not so strong after all.

I knew as soon as I reached the top of my swing that something was wrong, but I did not reckon on mis-hitting. In earlier days. such a catastrophe would have aroused my mirth. but I merely stared gloomily at the ball now.

“Maggie, darling,” said Charlotte in a shocked voice. “Your left shoulder!”

I grunted. A shadow fell across my stance. “Take it easily,” said Clark.

I looked up to see his face white and set. Was he talking about the game or had he some other thought in mind? His face was expressionless in a way that would convey nothing to the ordinary observer. But I had seen that look before, and knew that his mind was surging with conflicting emotions.

Charlotte coughed significantly, rousing me out of my daze. I drove off unseeingly.

“What a fluke!” said Clark, pushing me gently onward. “Stop admiring it, Maggie, and get a move on.” His voice held that would-be hearty quality that only increased my gloom. This was going to be terrible, and we'd only played one hole. Only Charlotte remained unconcerned, and kept her mind on the game. One would have thought that Clark and I had guilty consciences, the way we stroked that round. Perhaps we had, in so far that each of us was reproaching ourselves for the lack of concern we had shown Mac in the last few days before her death.

The sun had sunk below the horizon when we walked slowly up the path to the clubhouse. Clark had offered to take my mother's bag, but she had refused independently, and strode along ahead of us adding up the scores. She was the only one of the trio who was not hot, weary and thoroughly unhappy.

“Don't bother with mine,” I called out irritably. “It's well over the hundred.”

“I hope that you're deducting eighteen from my score, Mrs. Byrnes, though I doubt that it will make any difference to the final issue.”

“Don't, Clark,” I said wearily. “Don't try to pretend.”

He slid my bag off my shoulder. “I must,” he answered in a quiet voice. “Otherwise I'll go mad. What a fool I was!”

“We both were,” I corrected. “If only I'd realized. But Mac was more than half to blame. She wouldn't have told, no matter what persuasion I used.”

“She was just as stubborn with me. Wait until I lay my hands on the fiend who killed her. There won't be much left of him to hang.”

I shivered at the grim note in his voice, not envying anyone who chose Clark as an opponent.

“I never thought that I'd be glad to finish a round of golf,” I declared, turning back to survey that part of the course which lay amongst the trees in the valley. Even under the strong February sun, the fairways were still unburnt, while the greens were circles of a more vivid colour. The rising evening wind fluttered the triangular flags on the pins, and, brushing aside the branches of the evergreens, fanned my face. I put up one hand.

“I'll he the colour of mahogany soon. This is my second dose of sunburn within two days.”

Charlotte called from the steps of the clubhouse, motioning that she would go in and not wait for us.

“How did you happen to get burnt yesterday?” Clark asked absently. “You should have been asleep.”

“So I was until—” I stopped short, and he eyed me speculatively. “There are such a lot of things that you don't know about,” I went on, “that I was taking for granted that you do.”

“What has happened?” he asked swiftly.

“Nothing concrete,” I replied, sitting on the bottom step of the clubhouse and lifting my head to the vivid sky. “It's a funny thing,” I mentioned idly, my eyes sweeping a line from the zenith to where the sun had left its final mark, “that if any artist mixed his paints to match exactly this scene of sky and trees, and painted it accurately in every detail, the result would only be appreciated in such terms as ‘pretty' and ‘dainty'.”