‘Of course, anything is possible,’ said Hardcastle. He said goodbye to Miss Waterhouse and left.

He thought she’d hardly done herself justice by her last suggestion. On the other hand, if she believed that the girl had been seen entering her house, and that that had in fact been the case, then the suggestion that the girl had gone to No. 19 was quite an adroit one under the circumstances.

Hardcastle glanced at his watch and decided that he had still time to tackle the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau. It had, he knew, been reopened at two o’clock this afternoon. He might get some help from the girls there. And he would find Sheila Webb there too.

One of the girls rose at once as he entered the office.

‘It’s Detective Inspector Hardcastle, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Miss Martindale is expecting you.’

She ushered him into the inner office. Miss Martindale did not wait a moment before attacking him.

‘It’s disgraceful, Inspector Hardcastle, absolutely disgraceful! You must get to the bottom of this. You must get to the bottom of itat once. No dilly-dallying about. The police are supposed to give protection and that is what we need here at this office.Protection. I want protection for my girls and I mean to get it.’

‘I’m sure, Miss Martindale, that-’

‘Are you going to deny that two of my girls,two of them, have been victimized? There is clearly some irresponsible person about who has got some kind of-what do they call it nowadays-a fixture or a complex-about shorthand typists or secretarial bureaux. They are deliberately martyrizing this institute. First Sheila Webb was summoned by a heartless trick to find a dead body-the kind of thing that might send a nervous girl off her head-and now this. A perfectly nice harmless girl murdered in a telephone box. You must get to the bottom of it, Inspector.’

‘There’s nothing I want more than to get to the bottom of it, Miss Martindale. I’ve come to see if you can give me any help.’

‘Help! What help can I give you? Do you think if I had any help, I wouldn’t have rushed to you with it before now? You’ve got to find who killed that poor girl, Edna, and who played that heartless trick on Sheila. I’m strict with my girls, Inspector, I keep them up to their work and I won’t allow them to be late or slipshod. But I don’t stand for their being victimized or murdered. I intend to defend them, and I intend to see that people who are paid by the State to defend them do their work.’ She glared at him and looked rather like a tigress in human form.

‘Give us time, Miss Martindale,’ he said.

‘Time? Just because that silly child is dead, I suppose you think you’ve all the time in the world. The next thing that happens will be one of the other girls is murdered.’

‘I don’t think you need fear that, Miss Martindale.’

‘I don’t suppose you thought this girl was going to be killed when you got up this morning, Inspector. If so, you’d have taken a few precautions, I suppose, to look after her. And when one of my girls gets killed or is put in some terribly compromising position, you’ll be equally surprised. The whole thing is extraordinary,crazy! You must admit yourself it’s a crazy set-up. That is, if the things one reads in the paper were true. All those clocks for instance. They weren’t mentioned this morning at the inquest, I noticed.’

‘As little as possible was mentioned this morning, Miss Martindale. It was only anadjourned inquest, you know.’

‘All I say is,’ said Miss Martindale, glaring at him again, ‘you mustdo something about it.’

‘And there’s nothing you can tell me, no hint Edna might have given to you? She didn’t appear worried by anything, she didn’t consult you?’

‘I don’t suppose she’d have consulted me if shewas worried,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘But what had she to be worried about?’

That was exactly the question that Inspector Hardcastle would have liked to have answered for him, but he could see that it was not likely that he would get the answer from Miss Martindale. Instead he said:

‘I’d like to talk to as many of your girls here as I can. I can see that it is not likely that Edna Brent would have confided any fears or worries to you, but shemight have spoken of them to her fellow employees.’

‘That’s possible enough, I expect,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘They spend their time gossiping-these girls. The moment they hear my step in the passage outside all the typewriters begin to rattle. But what have they been doing just before? Talking. Chat, chat, chitter-chat!’ Calming down a little, she said, ‘There are only three of them in the office at present. Would you like to speak to them while you’re here? The others are out on assignments. I can give you their names and their home addresses, if you like.’

‘Thank you, Miss Martindale.’

‘I expect you’d like to speak to them alone,’ said Miss Martindale. ‘They wouldn’t talk as freely if I was standing there looking on. They’d have to admit, you see, that theyhad been gossiping and wasting their time.’

She got up from her seat and opened the door into the outer office.

‘Girls,’ she said, ‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle wants to talk things over with you. You can stop work for the moment. Try and tell him anything you know that can help him to find out who killed Edna Brent.’

She went back into her own private office and shut the door firmly. Three startled girlish faces looked at the inspector. He summed them up quickly and superficially, but sufficiently to make up his mind as to the quality of the material with which he was about to deal. A fair solid-looking girl with spectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not particularly bright. A rather rakish-looking brunette with the kind of hair-do that suggested she’d been out in a blizzard lately. Eyes that noticed things here, perhaps, but probably highly unreliable in her recollection of events. Everything would be suitably touched up. The third was a born giggler who would, he was sure, agree with whatever anyone else said.

He spoke quietly, informally.

‘I suppose you’ve all heard what has happened to Edna Brent who worked here?’

Three heads nodded violently.

‘By the way, how did you hear?’

They looked at each other as if trying to decide who should be spokesman. By common consent it appeared to be the fair girl, whose name, it seemed, was Janet.

‘Edna didn’t come to work at two o’clock, as she should have done,’ she explained.

‘And Sandy Cat was very annoyed,’ began the dark-haired girl, Maureen, and then stopped herself. ‘Miss Martindale, I mean.’

The third girl giggled. ‘Sandy Cat is just what we call her,’ she explained.

‘And not a bad name,’ the inspector thought.

‘She’s a perfect terror when she likes,’ said Maureen. ‘Fairly jumps on you. She asked if Edna had said anything to us about not coming back to the office this afternoon, and that she ought to have at least sent an excuse.’

The fair girl said: ‘I told Miss Martindale that she’d been at the inquest with the rest of us, but that we hadn’t seen her afterwards and didn’t know where she’d gone.’

‘That was true, was it?’ asked Hardcastle. ‘You’ve no idea where she did go when she left the inquest.’

‘I suggested she should come and have some lunch with me,’ said Maureen, ‘but she seemed to have something on her mind. She said she wasn’t sure that she’d bother to have any lunch. Just buy something and eat it in the office.’

‘So she meant, then, to come back to the office?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. We all knew we’d got to do that.’

‘Have any of you noticed anything different about Edna Brent these last few days? Did she seem to you worried at all, as though she had something on her mind? Did she tell you anything to that effect? If there is anything at all you know, I must beg of you to tell me.’