Murder in the Telephone Exchange (58 page)

“I didn't kill them!” she shrieked, hanging on to her chair. “You're arresting an innocent person. Bill! Tell them I didn't.”

“Be quiet, Millicent,” he said sternly. “Pull yourself together. You are only being detained for further questioning because you have no alibi. Go quietly now, and I'll do all I can to help.” He helped to lead her from the room.

I stayed where I was, spent and weary, and slumped in my chair. It was all over. They had found Mac's killer, but somehow I didn't feel as jubilant as I should. A hand touched my shoulder.

“Maggie!” I opened my eyes, and saw John Clarkson looking down at me. Tears of sheer exhaustion started to pour down my face.

“They sent me to find you, Maggie.”

“They've arrested Mrs. Smith,” I started to explain incoherently. “She's Gloria Patterson's mother. They think that Mr. Atkinson is Dan Patterson.”

“Hush!” Clark put a hand on my mouth. “Come and get some air, Maggie. You'll feel better.”

“Not on the roof,” I shuddered. “It reminds me of Sarah. This was about the time when I saw her there on the day she was killed.”

Clark drew me to my feet. “Nonsense. Come and I'll give you something more pleasant to remember.”

“I want to go home,” I said forlornly.

“No, Maggie,” he insisted. “Come upstairs for a little while. You're in no fit state to go home.”

I allowed myself to be led up the back stairs to the roof. The air was still and hot. The north wind had dropped, and the sky was banked with heavy black clouds.

“It will change soon,” said Clark. I nodded eagerly in anticipation of a cold wind that would bite through my thin dress, and the heavy drops of rain which would fall on my hot body. A low growl came out of the south.

“A thunderstorm!” I said excitedly. “Let's wait for it.”

We leaned over the rail of the parapet as the sky grew darker above us, and watched the heart of the city waiting for the elements to disturb the furnace of heat. The buildings were shrouded in the gloom of the approaching storm. Directly below me lay the dump-yard where they had found the buttinsky that had killed Compton. I shivered, and glanced involuntarily over my shoulder to where the lift cabin stood black against the sky.

“What is it?” Clark asked quickly.

“I was thinking of Sarah Compton,” I replied. “That dump-yard down there reminded me of the way in which she was killed.”

“Don't think,” he said, and I searched for his face through the gathering darkness.

“It was odd the way a buttinsky was chosen for the job,” I went on presently. “You know, somehow it strikes a familiar chord in my mind. Like the time I saw Sarah lying on the floor of the restroom. It was almost as though I expected it.”

A flash of lightning lit Clark's face palely and another clap of thunder sounded, but still the rain held off. The air was wet with humidity, and my clothes were beginning to cling to my body. I stared musingly down to where the yard was now a black well.

“Very odd,” I said half to myself. “I wonder if that is what I have been trying to remember all these days.”

I felt Clark's shoulder touch my head as he stood directly behind me.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, and his voice sounded harsh in my ears. “What is it you remember?”

“I don't know,” I confessed, smiling up at him, “but it is something about a buttinsky. If I thought hard and long enough, maybe I'd remember
all. Gosh! That was a beauty!”

A jagged fork of lightning split the southern sky, and its accompanying thunder sounded closer.

“It won't be long now,” I remarked, glancing at the set white face above me. Was it a trick of the light, or did I see faint beads of perspiration clinging to Clark's upper lip? When he met my gaze, he placed his hands either side of me on the railing, hemming me in completely. There was something odd and intense in his eyes that made my heart skip a beat, and then continue at a harder pressure.

“Margaret!” he began, I thought his big body trembled, and felt sorry for him. Surely it was not going to be hard for him to say. I laughed softly and encouragingly. Clark's hands left the rail and gripped my waist.

“Don't laugh, damn you!” he said, between clenched teeth. His body shook again, but this time it did not stop. I knew something was wrong then, when the grip on my flesh tightened and the big man behind me trembled violently. I struggled to escape.

“What are you doing?” I panted. as I felt myself lifted from my feet. “John, have you gone mad?”

His laugh was a horrible sound. “I'm doing something that I should have done days ago. Let go that rail. It's no use, Maggie. I knew that you'd remember sooner or later.”

But I clung on tighter than ever. The thunder crashed down again. My ears were filled with a sudden roaring, as though the thunder was continuous. The next flash of lightning lit a face which I was not to forget for many years.

Somewhere in my brain a voice was saying over and over: ‘Clark! He's mad—he's going to kill you.'

But it couldn't be Clark who was trying to loosen my grip on the railing, tearing and biting at my knuckles. It was an animal. A mad, raving beast. I heard my own sobbing breath, and felt my tired muscles weakening at every second, while the stranger who was pushing me over the parapet grew stronger and stronger.

The days rolled back before my eyes during those desperate seconds, and I remembered my imaginary fall through the glass of the basement. There would be no crash of glass this time; only a dull, sickening thud as my body would hit the scrap-iron that filled the yard below. My world was one of thunder and lightning, and a sea that seemed to sweep up to my very feet. I was so tired, so very weary of waiting for the end. I let go the railing and sank slowly, wafting here and there like a feather, into the blackness.

CHAPTER XI

‘Complete mental exhaustion,' they diagnosed, charitably vague. But I thought that I knew better, and complained to Charlotte of the iron bars at my window, and the handleless taps in the bathroom.

“I know, darling,” she sighed, “but it was the only place the doctor could get you in. You know how things are nowadays.”

I looked at her straightly. “Tell me one thing,” I demanded, “and I don't want any quibbling, or beating around the bush. Have I gone mad?” I noticed for the first time that my mother's eyes were heavily ringed.

“No, Margaret,” she replied gently. “They thought you might be for a while, but you're not. All you've got to do is to have a complete rest, and soon you'll be well again.”

I grinned, trying to dispel the mist before my eyes. “That's one thing out of the way,” I said, ticking off items with my fingers. “How long have I been here?”

“Five days.” My mother got up to re-arrange the phlox that she had brought with her. I stirred restlessly in bed.

“Stop pretending to fix those flowers,” I ordered, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Come and sit down. Now listen, Charlotte, if you want me to get well, and believe me I've had enough of this place already, I must know what has happened. The doctors have told me nothing but a string of medical phrases that might mean anything. As for the nurses! They call me ‘dear' in voices you could sharpen an axe on, and their eyes never leave my movements. Do they think that I'm going to bite them? I certainly feel like it sometimes.”

Charlotte laughed suddenly, and came to sit on the edge of my bed. “I knew they were wrong!” she exclaimed joyously. “They only let me in on the condition that I made no mention of the Exchange. I told them that I knew my daughter better than they, and that the first step to regaining your health would be to give you the true facts.”

“Silly fools,” I smiled at her. “Go on.”

Her face grew grave again. “It's liable to hurt you, Maggie.” “I know,” I replied, dropping my eyes to the counterpane. “Clark?”

“Yes. You loved him, didn't you?”

I turned my head on the pillows, and stared through the bars to the brilliant sky. “I thought I did,' I said dreamily, “but somehow I don't feel as bad about him as I should now. It's funny, Charlotte, but I never dreamed that he had a weak streak until that day at the golf-house when he clung to me.”

“You fell in love with the romance woven about him,” she suggested gravely. “Love is not like that, Maggie.”

“I suppose not,” I agreed, and a short silence fell between us.

“Where is he?” I asked presently, turning my head to look at her. She made no reply, but her eyes were full of sadness.

“Dead?” I queried and nodded gently to myself. “It is better so. Poor Clark, I still can't understand how it happened. I thought that I'd let go the railing.”

“Sergeant Matheson followed you up on the roof. He suspected him all the time.”

“The Sergeant?” I repeated, frowning. “Do I owe my life to him?”

“Yes, Maggie.”

I waved my hand to another group of flowers. “Those came from him. It took me a while to work out who he was. Get the card and read it.”

Charlotte rose obediently and stood with her back towards me, the piece of pasteboard held between her forefinger and thumb. She remained so a longer time than was necessary to decipher the scrawled message.

“Well?” I said impatiently.

She turned round slowly, “It must have given you a shock,” she said.

“Not really. I'd only called Clark by his Christian name once or twice. Mac was the only one who used it regularly. Give me that card again.” I studied the name engraven on it—John P. Matheson—before turning it over. On the back was written: “May l come and see you?”

“Have you got a pen?” I asked my mother on impulse. “Or a pencil would do.”

I crossed out the message and wrote “Please come.” I signed “Margaret Byrnes” with a flourish.

“Will you post this to Sergeant Matheson?” I asked Charlotte. “Don't put it in your bag, or you'll forget it.”

“I'll hold it in my hand until I find an envelope and stamp,” she promised with alacrity.

“I wonder how he came to suspect Clark,” I said musingly, as Charlotte slipped the card between her glove and palm.

“Several facts seemed to point to him, but I'll let him tell you himself.”

I sat up with a jerk. “You thought that it was Clark too!” I exclaimed. “Why?”

Charlotte put out her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don't know exactly why. It was Mrs. Bates who first put me on to it. She remarked on his eyes.”

“His eyes?” I repeated in astonishment. “What had they to do with suspecting him of murder?”

“They were brown,” she replied simply. “I never yet have been able to trust anyone with brown eyes. Neither has Mrs. Bates.”

“I only hope that you didn't tell Sergeant Matheson,” I remarked. “I don't think that he holds much brief for feminine intuition.”

“It is very well in its right place. It caused me to discover the truth about Mr. Scott.”

I looked at her curiously. “What did you say to him? He was very loud in his praises of you. I was beginning to be afraid that his intentions were dishonourable.”

“I considered that the story he gave about coming into the Exchange to keep a clandestine appointment was very weak indeed. I told him so. Surely there are heaps of other places to conduct such meetings. Anyway, he buckled at the knees, so to speak. I suppose I took him by surprise. It was then that I received the first hint of what was going on.”

“And what was going on?” I demanded wearily. It appeared that I had been the only one in the dark.

As Charlotte opened her mouth to answer, a nurse rustled in bearing a glass of some repulsive liquid that I was coerced into swallowing four times a day.

“How are we after our first visitor?” she asked brightly, closing my fingers around the tumbler. I supposed she thought that I might try balancing it on one foot, the fool!

“We are very much better,” I retorted. “It's a pity that a few more aren't let in.”

She wagged one finger roguishly. I longed to throw the glass into her face. “Now, now! You know doctor's orders. Complete rest and no excitement. Say good-bye now, Mrs. Byrnes.”

I protested violently, but it was no use. Nurses seem to have wills of iron.

“Don't forget that card,” I whispered, as Charlotte bent to kiss me, “and come again soon.”

I had to wait another two days before learning the answer to the question that I had asked Charlotte. Two days, which I spent wandering around the grounds of the rest home, nearly tearing my hair with impatience. I tried talking to my fellow inmates in order to pass the time, but gave up in despair after a long session with a white-haired, regal-looking woman, who told me some astounding stories about the life of Louis the Fifteenth, at whose court she had displaced La Pompadour as the royal favourite.