One of the girls rose at once as he entered the office.
“It’s Detective Inspector1 Hardcastle, isn’t it?” she said. “Miss Martindale is expecting you.”
She ushered2 him into the inner office. Miss Martindale did not wait a moment before attackinghim.
“It’s disgraceful, Inspector Hardcastle, absolutely disgraceful! You must get to the bottom ofthis. You must get to the bottom of it at once. No dilly-dallying about. The police are supposed togive protection and that is what we need here at this office. Protection. I want protection for mygirls 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 isclearly some irresponsible person about who has got some kind of—what do they call it nowadays—a fixture3 or a complex—about shorthand typists or secretarial bureaux. They are deliberatelymartyrizing this institute. First Sheila Webb was summoned by a heartless trick to find a deadbody—the kind of thing that might send a nervous girl off her head—and now this. A perfectlynice 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 seeif 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 youwith it before now? You’ve got to find who killed that poor girl, Edna, and who played thatheartless trick on Sheila. I’m strict with my girls, Inspector, I keep them up to their work and Iwon’t allow them to be late or slipshod. But I don’t stand for their being victimized or murdered. Iintend to defend them, and I intend to see that people who are paid by the State to defend them dotheir 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 theworld. 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 ofmy 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 setup. That is, if thethings one reads in the paper were true. All those clocks for instance. They weren’t mentioned thismorning at the inquest, I noticed.”
“As little as possible was mentioned this morning, Miss Martindale. It was only an adjournedinquest, you know.”
“All I say is,” said Miss Martindale, glaring at him again, “you must do something about it.”
“And there’s nothing you can tell me, no hint Edna might have given to you? She didn’t appearworried by anything, she didn’t consult you?”
“I don’t suppose she’d have consulted me if she was worried,” said Miss Martindale. “But whathad she to be worried about?”
That was exactly the question that Inspector Hardcastle would have liked to have answered forhim, 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 EdnaBrent would have confided4 any fears or worries to you, but she might have spoken of them to herfellow 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 rattle6.
But what have they been doing just before? Talking. Chat, chat, chitter-chat!” Calming down alittle, she said, “There are only three of them in the office at present. Would you like to speak tothem while you’re here? The others are out on assignments. I can give you their names and theirhome 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 asfreely if I was standing7 there looking on. They’d have to admit, you see, that they had beengossiping 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 canstop work for the moment. Try and tell him anything you know that can help him to find out whokilled Edna Brent.”
She went back into her own private office and shut the door firmly. Three startled girlish faceslooked at the inspector. He summed them up quickly and superficially, but sufficiently8 to make uphis mind as to the quality of the material with which he was about to deal. A fair solid-looking girlwith spectacles. Dependable, he thought, but not particularly bright. A rather rakish- lookingbrunette with the kind of hairdo that suggested she’d been out in a blizzard9 lately. Eyes thatnoticed things here, perhaps, but probably highly unreliable in her recollection of events.
Everything would be suitably touched up. The third was a born giggler10 who would, he was sure,agree with whatever anyone else said.
He spoke5 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 consentit 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 stoppedherself. “Miss Martindale, I mean.”
The third girl giggled11. “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 Ednahad said anything to us about not coming back to the office this afternoon, and that she ought tohave 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, butthat 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 theinquest.”
“I suggested she should come and have some lunch with me,” said Maureen, “but she seemed tohave something on her mind. She said she wasn’t sure that she’d bother to have any lunch. Justbuy 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 sheseem to you worried at all, as though she had something on her mind? Did she tell you anything tothat effect? If there is anything at all you know, I must beg of you to tell me.”
They looked at each other but not in a conspiratorial12 manner. It seemed to be merely vagueconjecture.
“She was always worried about something,” said Maureen. “She gets things muddled13 up, andmakes mistakes. She was a bit slow in the uptake.”
“Things always seemed to happen to Edna,” said the giggler. “Remember when that stiletto heelof hers came off the other day? Just the sort of thing that would happen to Edna.”
“I remember,” said Hardcastle.
He remembered how the girl had stood looking down ruefully at the shoe in her hand.
“You know, I had a feeling something awful had happened this afternoon when Edna didn’t gethere at two o’clock,” said Janet. She nodded with a solemn face.
Hardcastle looked at her with some dislike. He always disliked people who were wise after theevent. He was quite sure that the girl in question had thought nothing of the kind. Far more likely,he thought to himself, that she had said, “Edna will catch it from Sandy Cat when she does comein.”
“When did you hear what had happened?” he asked again.
They looked at each other. The giggler flushed guiltily. Her eyes shot sideways to the door intoMiss Martindale’s private office.
“Well, I—er—I just slipped out for a minute,” she said. “I wanted some pastries14 to take homeand I knew they’d all be gone by the time we left. And when I got to the shop—it’s on the cornerand they know me quite well there—the woman said, ‘She worked at your place, didn’t she,ducks?’ and I said, ‘Who do you mean?’ And then she said, ‘This girl they’ve just found dead in atelephone box.’ Oh, it gave me ever such a turn! So I came rushing back and I told the others andin the end we all said we’d have to tell Miss Martindale about it, and just at that moment she camebouncing out of her office and said to us, ‘Now what are you doing? Not a single typewritergoing.’”
The fair girl took up the saga15.
“And I said, ‘Really it’s not our fault. We’ve heard some terrible news about Edna, MissMartindale.’”
“And what did Miss Martindale say or do?”
“Well, she wouldn’t believe it at first,” said the brunette. “She said, ‘Nonsense. You’ve justbeen picking up some silly gossip in a shop. It must be some other girl. Why should it be Edna?’
And she marched back into her room and rang up the police station and found out it was true.”
“But I don’t see,” said Janet almost dreamily, “I don’t see why anyone should want to killEdna.”
“It’s not as though she had a boy or anything,” said the brunette.
All three looked at Hardcastle hopefully as though he could give them the answer to theproblem. He sighed. There was nothing here for him. Perhaps one of the other girls might be morehelpful. And there was Sheila Webb herself.
“Were Sheila Webb and Edna Brent particular friends?” he asked.
They looked at each other vaguely16.
“Not special, I don’t think.”
“Where is Miss Webb, by the way?”
He was told that Sheila Webb was at the Curlew Hotel, attending on Professor Purdy.
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收听单词发音
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1
inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fixture
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| n.固定设备；预定日期；比赛时间；定期存款 | |
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4
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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5
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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blizzard
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| n.暴风雪 | |
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giggler
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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conspiratorial
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| adj.阴谋的，阴谋者的 | |
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13
muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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14
pastries
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| n.面粉制的糕点 | |
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15
saga
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| n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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