The Clocks

‘I expect they’ll want to ask you about Miss Pebmarsh,’ said Mrs Head. ‘Want to know whether you’ve noticed anything funny in her manner. They say these manias come on very sudden sometimes and there’s very little to show beforehand. But there’s usually something, some way of speaking, you know. You can tell by their eyes, they say. But then that wouldn’t hold with a blind woman, would it? Ah—’ she shook her head.

Miss Waterhouse marched downstairs and entered the dining-room with a certain amount of pleasurable curiosity masked by her usual air of belligerence.

‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle?’

‘Good morning, Miss Waterhouse.’ Hardcastle had risen. He had with him a tall, dark young man whom Miss Waterhouse did not bother to greet. She paid no attention to a faint murmur of ‘Sergeant Lamb’.

‘I hope I have not called at too early an hour,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but I imagine you know what it is about. You’ve heard what happened next door yesterday.’

‘Murder in one’s next door neighbour’s house does not usually go unnoticed,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘I even had to turn away one or two reporters who came here asking if I had observed anything.’

‘You turned them away?’

‘Naturally.’

‘You were quite right,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Of course they like to worm their way in anywhere but I’m sure you are quite capable of dealing with anything of that kind.’

Miss Waterhouse allowed herself to show a faintly pleasurable reaction to this compliment.

‘I hope you won’t mind us asking you the same kind of questions,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but if you did see anything at all that could be of interest to us, I can assure you we should be only too grateful. You were here in the house at the time, I gather?’

‘I don’t know when the murder was committed,’ said Miss Waterhouse.

‘We think between half past one and half past two.’

‘I was here then, yes, certainly.’

‘And your brother?’

‘He does not come home to lunch. Who exactly was murdered? It doesn’t seem to say in the short account there was in the local morning paper.’

‘We don’t yet know who he was,’ said Hardcastle.

‘A stranger?’

‘So it seems.’

‘You don’t mean he was a stranger to Miss Pebmarsh also?’

‘Miss Pebmarsh assures us that she was not expecting this particular guest and that she has no idea who he was.’

‘She can’t be sure of that,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘She can’t see.’

‘We gave her a very careful description.’

‘What kind of man was he?’

Hardcastle took a rough print from an envelope and handed it to her.

‘This is the man,’ he said. ‘Have you any idea who he can be?’

Miss Waterhouse looked at the print. ‘No. No… I’m certain I’ve never seen him before. Dear me. He looks quite a respectable man.’

‘He was a most respectable-looking man,’ said the inspector. ‘He looks like a lawyer or a business man of some kind.’

‘Indeed. This photograph is not at all distressing. He just looks as though he might be asleep.’

Hardcastle did not tell her that of the various police photographs of the corpse this one had been selected as the least disturbing to the eye.

‘Death can be a peaceful business,’ he said. ‘I don’t think this particular man had any idea that it was coming to him when it did.’

‘What does Miss Pebmarsh say about it all?’ demanded Miss Waterhouse.

‘She is quite at a loss.’

‘Extraordinary,’ commented Miss Waterhouse.

‘Now, can you help us in any way, Miss Waterhouse? If you cast your mind back to yesterday, were you looking out of the window at all, or did you happen to be in your garden, say any time between half past twelve and three o’clock?’

Miss Waterhouse reflected.

‘Yes, I was in the garden… Now let me see. It must have been before one o’clock. I came in about ten to one from the garden, washed my hands and sat down to lunch.’

‘Did you see Miss Pebmarsh enter or leave the house?’

‘I think she came in—I heard the gate squeak—yes, some time after half past twelve.’

‘You didn’t speak to her?’

‘Oh no. It was just the squeak of the gate made me look up. It is her usual time for returning. She finishes her classes then, I believe. She teaches at the Disabled Children as probably you know.’

‘According to her own statement, Miss Pebmarsh went out again about half past one. Would you agree to that?’

‘Well, I couldn’t tell you the exact time but—yes, I do remember her passing the gate.’

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Waterhouse, you said “passing the gate”.’

‘Certainly. I was in my sitting-room. That gives on the street, whereas the dining-room, where we are sitting now, gives as you can see, on the back garden. But I took my coffee into the sitting-room after lunch and I was sitting with it in a chair near the window. I was reading The Times, and I think it was when I was turning the sheet that I noticed Miss Pebmarsh passing the front gate. Is there anything extraordinary about that, Inspector?’

‘Not extraordinary, no,’ said the inspector, smiling. ‘Only I understood that Miss Pebmarsh was going out to do a little shopping and to the post office, and I had an idea that the nearest way to the shops and the post office would be to go the other way along the crescent.’

‘Depends on which shops you are going to,’ said Miss Waterhouse. ‘Of course the shops are nearer that way, and there’s a post office in Albany Road—’

‘But perhaps Miss Pebmarsh usually passed your gate about that time?’

‘Well, really, I don’t know what time Miss Pebmarsh usually went out, or in which direction. I’m not really given to watching my neighbours in any way, Inspector. I’m a busy woman and have far too much to do with my own affairs. Some people I know spend their entire time looking out of the window and noticing who passes and who calls on whom. That is more a habit of invalids or of people who’ve got nothing better to do than to speculate and gossip about their neighbours’ affairs.’

Miss Waterhouse spoke with such acerbity that the inspector felt sure that she had some one particular person in mind. He said hastily, ‘Quite so. Quite so.’ He added, ‘Since Miss Pebmarsh passed your front gate, she might have been going to telephone, might she not? That is where the public telephone box is situated?’