Kitabı oku: «Bodies from the Library 2», sayfa 4

‘For pipes,’ Edna explained. ‘Cute, isn’t it? How ever they think of these things I don’t know.’

Mr Brodribb, overcome, acknowledged her thought for him and the genius of the inventor.

‘It hasn’t been such a bad old time, has it?’ he asked wistfully.

‘I believe you,’ Edna replied. ‘As good as a trip to the sea. You tell your wife from me she doesn’t know a gentleman when she sees one.’

They left next morning, some two hours before the arrival of a young man who made inquiries. This young man, having told his errand, and assured the proprietress, anxious for the good name of ‘Melrose’, that only servants’ evidence would be required, sent for Ivy and Queenie, whom he interviewed in her presence. He questioned them, took notes, made clear their duty, and within twenty-five minutes departed. He was a brisk young man, who now and then sacrificed other things to promptness, and he did not on this occasion take time to observe the demeanour of the witnesses, which was, to say the least, reluctant. But three months later, when the case of Brodribb v. Brodribb and Another was called, he and his employers had cause to regret this economy of time.

For plaintiff’s counsel, seeking to establish the facts of Mr Brodribb’s desertion and adultery, met with a check when he called upon Ivy Blout to prove that Mr Brodribb had for weeks lived in an intimacy unsanctioned by law. Having ascertained her name, age and calling, he suavely inquired:

‘You were housemaid at this address from October 5th last until December 10th?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ivy replied.

‘During that time was the defendant a paying guest in the house?’

‘I don’t know.’

Counsel halted, staring.

Ivy, contemplating Mr Brodribb, repeated without hesitation or haste:

‘I don’t know that gentleman.’

‘You lived in the same house, in constant attendance on this man for weeks, and you say you don’t recognise him?’

‘No, sir.’

Counsel took another tack.

‘You understand that you are on your oath?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you quite understand what is meant by perjury?’

‘Telling lies.’

‘Telling lies on oath, yes. A serious offence, punishable by imprisonment. Do you still insist, on your oath, that you don’t know the defendant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why do you suppose you were brought here into court at all?’

Ivy, for the first time, permitted herself a smile.

‘I really couldn’t say.’

He fared no better at the hands of Queenie; words, questions and threats alike broke in spume against her unshaken gratitude. At last, on a note from his instructors, he sat down. There was a chill pause, into which the ironic comments of the judge fell softly as snowflakes. The case was dismissed.

On their way home, in the ’bus, Queenie said to Ivy:

‘That was ’is wife, her in the blue hat. Think of it; sitting there with a face like that, and trying to get rid of that nice little feller.’

‘Cheek!’ Ivy agreed. ‘She ought to be thankful for a husband like him. Whatever Mr Brodribb’s done,’ said Ivy, ‘he’s a real gentleman, and they don’t get their dirty evidence out of Ivy Blout.’

In the restaurant off Fleet Street where they had met as arranged Mrs Brodribb lamented to Arthur:

‘Now what? Do I have to take him back?’

‘Not him,’ said Arthur. ‘We’ll get more evidence, other witnesses. Prosecute these witnesses. Whatever can have happened I don’t know, but it’s not his fault, I’ll bet. He’s been having no end of a time on his own.’

‘Yes; well, if that’s how he’s been going on,’ said Mrs Brodribb with decision, ‘he’d better come home. I’m not going to be made a laughing-stock again. Going over it all again, and the same thing happening, most likely. Like trying to get a number on the telephone.’

‘That’s your look-out,’ Arthur answered, hurt, but jaunty. ‘If you like to take him back slightly soiled, you’re welcome.’

‘Oh, Arthur,’ said Mrs Brodribb, suddenly overcome, ‘and we’d even chosen the bedroom suite.’

Lunching alone in a chop-house in the city, and waiting for his cheese, Mr Brodribb thought with affection of a brown plaster monkey in bathing drawers, playing the fiddle left-handed; then, suddenly recollecting, of a hot-water bottle, dressed in tiger skin, which, after only five months’ use, had begun to leak at the seams, and which Prosser’s, according to their guarantee, were obliged to replace without charge. He made a note on his cuff there and then.

HELEN SIMPSON

Helen de Guerry Simpson was born in 1897 in Sydney, Australia, where she was brought up on a sheep farm. At the age of seventeen, after her parents’ divorce, Simpson was sent by her father to study in France, but with the outbreak of war she travelled to England to stay with her mother. In September 1915 she went up to Oxford to read French, but after two years she left the university and joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service, working in the Admiralty as an interpreter and cipher clerk until the end of the war. A competent flautist and pianist, Simpson decided to return to Oxford, this time to read music as she now intended to become a composer. Although she composed a few songs and—in her own words—‘fragments for piano’, she soon realised that her future did not lie in music and finished without a degree.

While at Oxford Simpson became very interested in the theatre, and she founded the Oxford Women’s Dramatic Society. This led to her first book, Lightning Strikes (1918), a collection of four playlets including one in which a vampire makes a compact with the devil. She also wrote longer pieces including the fantasy Pan in Pimlico (1923) and A Man of His Time (1923), a more substantial but episodic work about the renaissance polymath Benvenuto Cellini. As well as plays, Simpson wrote poetry, and a selection was collected in the well-received Philosophies in Little (1921), together with some verse translations from French, Italian and Spanish.

Simpson’s first novel, Acquittal, was published in 1925, having been written in five weeks as the result of a bet after Simpson had described modern novels as being ‘written in six weeks by half-wits or persons under the influence of drink’. The book concerns the aftermath of a murder trial, and it sold sufficiently well for Simpson to decide to take up writing full time, always using pen and paper rather than a typewriter which, for her, would shatter ‘the peace and quietness necessary to the creative artist’, and always working in a room without a distracting view. Her next book, The Baseless Fabric (1925), was a collection of strange and sometimes sinister short stories, while the awkwardly titled Cups, Wands and Swords (1927) took her back to Oxford.

Around this time, Simpson married Dennis Browne, a fellow Australian and a children’s surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children in London, now better known as Great Ormond Street. She also met the writer Clemence Dane. The two became firm friends, so much so that Simpson named her daughter after Dane, and they collaborated on three novel-length detective stories, two of which—Enter Sir John (1929) and Re-Enter Sir John (1932)—feature Sir John Saumarez, an actor-manager. They also co-wrote a stage play and the screenplay for Mary (1931), an atmospheric thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, whose film Murder! (1930) had been based on Enter Sir John. Simpson also wrote another crime novel, but without Dane. This was Vantage Striker (1931), described by one critic as ‘the jolliest murder case we’ve had for a long, long while’. Her next novel, Boomerang (1932), drew on the history of her mother’s family and won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Among Helen Simpson’s many hobbies was the study of witchcraft and demonology, which were the subject of the many rare books that formed the ‘Library of the Devil’ in her London home, where she also made her own wine. In 1932, she and her husband travelled to France and Hungary to research sightings of werewolves and vampires as well as to investigate the alleged involvement of satanists in the brutal murder of a typist in Strasbourg; Simpson would draw on this research for a radio talk, ‘On Witchcraft Bound’, which made headlines when it was first broadcast by the BBC in 1934 for its frank discussion of ritual murder. She also presented radio programmes for the BBC on homecraft and cookery, and she took part in several celebrity panel shows. Simpson also continued to write. Her other novels include The Woman on the Beast (1933), a long triptych fantasy set partly in 1999, as well as two historical novels: Saraband for Dead Lovers (1935), about the doomed romance between Sophie Dorothea of Celle and Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, and Under Capricorn (1937), about Australia’s early settlers. As well as the libertarian organisation PEN, Simpson was a member of the Detection Club and she contributed to two of the Club’s round-robin mysteries and to The Anatomy of Murder (1936), in which Dorothy L. Sayers and others explored notorious real-life crimes—in Simpson’s case, the murder of Henry Kinder in 1865.

In 1937, Helen Simpson embarked on a lecture tour of Australia and made various broadcasts for charity. In 1939, she was chosen as a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Party, but the General Election was postponed because of the Second World War. Her final novel, Maid No More, a strange story of slavery and Caribbean beliefs, was published in March 1940. At this time, Simpson and her husband were living in a flat above the hospital where her husband worked and, on 9 September 1940, the hospital was hit by a bomb during an air raid by the Luftwaffe; together with nursing staff and air raid wardens, they helped to extinguish the flames and move the sick children to safety. Just over a month later, the hospital where Simpson was recovering from a cancer operation was bombed and she died of shock. Her last literary assignment had been a series of articles giving a woman’s perspective of the war in response to views expressed by an American columnist.

‘Hotel Evidence’ was first published in Woman’s Journal in May 1934.

EXIT BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Q Patrick

It was a relief to escape from the office for a while, even though she did have to go back later. Here at the hairdresser’s, Carol felt almost human again for the first time in days. Nothing was expected of her. She could just relax and leave all the worrying to Lucille.

The rush of work during the past week had been simply hectic. Carol had not realized how much temperament and typing were entailed in the winding-up of a company. She had thought that some bigger firm just came along, took one bite, a swallow and—gulp—it was all over! But the preparations for the merger of the little Leland and Rowley Process Company with a great monster like the Pan-American Dye Combine had been one headache after another. As harassed secretary to a harassed president, most of the headaches had devolved upon Carol Thorne.

But the company’s headaches, at least, would soon be cured, she was thinking as Lucille’s expert fingers ran soothingly over her fair hair. After all, a head couldn’t ache when it had been cut off. And the shareholders of Leland and Rowley’s were, at that very minute, meeting in Mr Rowley’s office to go through the formalities necessary for profitable self-decapitation.

It was bad enough that, in their hurry to collect the proceeds they should have picked on New Year’s Eve for their meeting. It was bad enough that she would have to go back to a gloomy, deserted office building at a time when she should have been at home balancing the allure of backless black velvet against sleeves and simplicity for her very important dinner date with Peter Howe. But Carol didn’t mind working overtime; nor was it a desire to pay herself back for the extra hours put in lately that had prompted her to slip out of the office before the shareholders arrived.

Her chief reason had been a reluctance to meet Miles Shenton. Also, although she had reconciled herself to the company’s extermination, she just couldn’t bear to be there when the blow actually fell. Leland & Rowley’s had been her first job, and she was absurdly sentimental about it. And, unfortunately, her job would end at midnight with the firm’s corporate existence. The prospect of unemployment was the best possible excuse for an expensive and quite unnecessary hair-do.

‘Make it the best ever, Lucille,’ she said. ‘I want to face the New Year with all flags flying.’

‘ls this the same date as the Christmas Eve manicure and shampoo, Miss Thorne?’ Lucille stood back a moment to survey her very creditable handiwork; Carol’s soft, naturally fair hair and the intriguing line of her forehead always put the artist in Lucille on her mettle. ‘I mean the good looking young research chemist?’

Carol’s dark amber eyes widened slightly and she was annoyed to see in the mirror that her cheeks had flushed. Who could have told Lucille about Miles? And did she—did anyone—know he had let her down on Christmas Eve? That was the worst of hairdressers. They sort of anaesthetised you, and you let things slip out before you realised. Or, if you didn’t, the other girls in the office did it for you. Mabel Gregg, for example.

‘You’re out of date on my dates, Lucille,’ she said crisply and glanced at her watch. It was after half-past five. ‘Heavens, I’ve got to fly!’

She slipped from the chair, pulled the hood of her camel hair coat carefully over the soft curls and paid the bill.

‘Good night, Miss Thorne. And Happy New Year.’

Happy New Year! Lucille’s conventional phrase rang in Carol’s ears as she joined the home-going thousands on Manhattan’s snowy sidewalks. Would it be a happy new year as Mrs Peter Howe—the wife of Mr Rowley’s nephew? Could it be a happy new year until she’d learned to forget Miles Shenton, to forget what a fool she’d been and what a fool he’d made of her?

And she’d never have had to see him again if Mr Rowley hadn’t asked her to go back and tidy up the corpse of the poor old company after the shareholders had voted it to death. She knew that Miles and Peter would both be at the meeting—up there.

lnstinctively, Carol had glanced up at the Moderna Building which loomed just ahead of her. The newest and emptiest of New York’s skyscrapers was almost completely dark. Only the offices of Leland & Rowley’s glimmered in bright miniature from the top of the tower.

She had entered and left the Moderna Building practically every day, but she had never noticed before how deserted and dreary it looked at night. Now, seen through the pall of snow and silhouetted against the starless December sky, the huge structure seemed somehow sinister. It was like a strangely-shaped dagger, she thought—a dagger stabbing the darkness. And the tower was a blade—a gigantic blade upon whose tip, lonely and isolated, were impaled the offices of a dying company.

She was indulging in these gloomy reflections as she hurried into the main building and shot upwards in the lift, past empty offices and dark passages. She was even more conscious of the sense of isolation when, at the thirtieth floor, she changed to the single lift which served the tower.

‘You’re going to wait for the shareholders, aren’t you?’ she reminded the lift man.

‘All services except the lift in the main building close at six. New Year’s Eve.’ The man let her out at Leland & Rowley’s whose offices took up the whole top floor. ‘If the meeting’s not through, it won’t hurt them shareholders to walk down ten flights through the tower. They’ll be feeling so rich anyway, they wouldn’t mind doing the whole forty.’

Realizing that further argument would be fruitless, Carol made her way into the office.

Most of the lights had been turned out. In this sombre illumination, the familiar desks and chairs looked oddly different. Already they seemed to have ceased to be a part of Leland & Rowley’s. They were just desks and chairs, waiting for the new occupants.

The strongest light came from the half-open door of Mr Rowley’s office which was used as a conference room and where the meeting was still in progress. A pale shaft struck out, gleaming on Carol’s desk and on her typewriter.

The typewriter looked different, too, thought Carol idly. Why? Of course. A sheet of paper had been slipped into it. She was certain she had left nothing unfinished when she sneaked out for her appointment with Lucille.

Curious, she moved towards her desk. From the president’s office she could hear Mr Rowley’s rather breathless voice telling the shareholders how the firm had been steadily losing ground since Mr Leland’s death in June and what wonderful things the merger with Pan-American Dye was going to do to their shares.

She pulled the sheet from the machine, holding it up so that the oblique light shone on it.

MEMORANDUM to:

Mr Rowley, Mr Howe, Mr Shenton, Mr Whitfield, Miss Gregg, Mr Druten, Miss Leland.

But that was absurd. Memorandum to Marcia Leland! The daughter of the firm’s founder and heiress of his twenty thousand shares! She didn’t work for the company. And Mr Druten—he was the representative of Pan-American Dye. What was it all about? Who had typed it? When?

Carol read on. She felt the blood draining from her cheeks as she took in the amazing phrases of the actual message.

This is to remind you that the merger with Pan-American Dye is not going through. Of course, you’re planning to have it carried at the meeting by an overwhelming majority. But it is not going through.

Remember—it doesn’t become valid until midnight, anyhow. If enough of the largest shareholders died before then, fifty-one per cent of the stock would change hands, wouldn’t it? The heirs of the deceased would undoubtedly demand a new vote. Think that over when you turn in your ballot slips.

Because, if the merger is passed, I have decided to murder several of you—possibly all of you.

You’ll have plenty of time to consider whether you want to—EXIT BEFORE MIDNIGHT.

A threat of murder! This was a threat of murder!

Carol stared dazedly. Obviously it had been put in her typewriter for her to see while the meeting was still going on. Was it just a hoax? A practical joke fixed up by one of the girls? She didn’t think so. There was something brutally purposeful about those terse sentences—an alarming ring of veracity to the threat.

‘So you’re staying to be in at the death, Miss Thorne?’

Carol spun round. Little Mr Whitfield, the company’s lawyer, had slipped out of the president’s office. His thin birdlike fingers were picking up the briefcase which he had left on her desk.

A lawyer! Just the person.

‘Mr Whitfield …!’

Carol threw out a hand to detain him. But the little man had scurried back into the lighted room. She was alone again in the bleak half darkness with that crazy memorandum.

In at the death. How ironical Mr Whitfield’s phrase had been! Carol made up her mind swiftly. She could not risk the responsibility of keeping this to herself. She would have to go in there, interrupt the shareholders meeting at once.

Mr Rowley had finished his speech. When Carol entered his office, the large room was portentously silent. Grouped round in chairs, the score or so of shareholders were bending over ballot slips, signing their names.

So it was too late to do anything about it anyway. The vote was actually being taken at this moment.

Carol hesitated by the door. She noticed Mr Rowley’s gaze on her, inquiring, annoyed. Some of the other shareholders had glanced up, too. To whom should she take this mad memorandum? Not to her boss, Mr Rowley; the shock might bring on one of his heart attacks.

Peter, of course.

The young vice-president was sitting at the far end of the room next to Mr Druten from the Pan-American Dye Combine. There was something reassuring about Peter Howe’s athletically square shoulders and forthright face. He typified all that was normal, regular. Crazy murder threats and sane, sensible Peter just didn’t go together.

Carol hurried to his side and slipped the note into his hand.

‘I found it in my typewriter. Just now.’

His smile faded as he read. His wide grey eyes became grave.

‘Better stay in here, Carol.’

As he passed the memorandum to Mr Druten, Carol dropped into an empty chair at his side. Miss Gregg, the firm’s plump, bespectacled treasurer, was bustling officiously round, collecting up the ballot slips. The merger was going to be carried, of course. Carol knew it had always been a foregone conclusion. But after the meeting—what was going to happen then?

While the shareholders waited expectantly for the result of the vote, the names on the memorandum kept repeating themselves in Carol’s mind. Miss Gregg was one of them, little Mr Whitfield, Mr Rowley and Peter. And Mr Druten from Pan-American—the stocky, dynamic man who sat alert and bushy-browed at Peter’s side.

Then there was Miles. Although she deliberately did not look at him, Carol was acutely conscious of Miles Shenton, the erratic but brilliant young protégé of Nathaniel Leland who had inherited the old man’s unfinished work and his position as head research chemist for the firm. He was sitting over by the curtainless window next to Marcia Leland.

There was a maddening half smile on his dark face with its excitingly high cheek bones and its narrowed insolent eyes. He had smiled like that when she had found him in the office late on Christmas Eve after he had broken their date earlier in the evening. He had smiled like that when he had made love to her and had then casually informed her that he had designs on the wealthy Marcia Leland as a ‘permanent meal ticket’. He would smile like that, she knew, when he heard about this threat of murder. Miles Shenton never took anything seriously. Nothing, Carol added viciously, except his own bread and butter.

And his future bread and butter, Marcia Leland, was sitting impassively at his side. Slim, young, exquisitely dressed, like some fragile sea nymph, thought Carol, with her dark hair cut to her shoulders and those green, strangely observant eyes. No wonder Miles was trying to land her. With twenty thousand shares and that figure—and brains, too—she would make a satisfactory ‘meal ticket’ even for the most fastidious of breadliners.

Peter and Mr Druten were bent together over the note. She could hear them whispering earnestly. Were they going to say anything now? Or were they going to wait until the result of the vote had been announced?

Miss Gregg’s brisk fingers had counted through the ballot slips. Her spectacles flashing, she stooped and said something to Mr Rowley. Rather shakily, the president rose, his thin fingers absently twisting the long steel paper knife which always lay on his desk.

Once this transaction with Pan-American Dye had gone through, Peter’s unmarried uncle was retiring after a thirty year association with Leland and Rowley’s. Carol knew he was taking it rather hard. This final farewell to the company must be an ordeal for her almost-ex-boss.

‘Ladies and gentlemen—’ there was quiet dignity in his tone—‘the merger has been carried. Ninety per cent of your votes are in favour of it. The papers which Mr Druten and I will sign are dated January the first. The merger will therefore go into effect legally at midnight.’

Amidst a flutter of approval from the shareholders, Mr Druten crossed to Mr Rowley’s side. The two men were signing their names. Carol glanced anxiously at Peter who still held the fantastic memorandum clasped in his hand.

‘Peter,’ she whispered, ‘what are you going to do?’

‘Ask the people concerned to stay behind afterwards. Don’t want to make a fuss in front of everyone.’

‘You—you don’t think it’s serious?’

She could tell from the expression in his eyes that he was worried, but he smiled lightly.

‘Probably just a crank. You and I are going to exit before midnight anyhow. We’re going to Longval’s to knock the old year for a loop.’

Longval’s with Peter on New Year’s Eve—it sounded very gay and—unmurderous.

Mr Rowley’s short tribute to the genius of the late Nathaniel Leland had drawn to a conclusion. He bent over his desk and speared with his paper knife the final sheet of the old year’s calendar which lay there next to an unnecessary one for the new year. He held it out with a little dramatic flourish.

‘December the thirty-first, ladies and gentlemen. The end of an old year, the end of a fine company and the end of my own business activities. As shareholders of the Pan-American Dye Combine, we can all wish ourselves a happy and a prosperous New Year.’

The meeting had started to adjourn as Peter rose but there was something about his tall, virile body and the set determined angle of his jaw that compelled immediate attention. Gloves remained half drawn on; coat sleeves hung poised in mid air.

‘Miss Thorne,’ he said quietly, ‘has brought me a rather unusual communication. Perhaps the following people would care to stay behind for a few moments to consider it.’

As he read out the list of names, a ripple of polite curiosity stirred the gathering. Then those shareholders who had not been mentioned moved, chattering, to the door and out into the main office. Peter slipped away to speak to his uncle. Carol was left alone.

‘So the beautiful secretary has done something dangerous to her hair.’

She glanced up sharply. Miles Shenton had lounged to her side, his faun-like eyes regarding her ironically through cigarette smoke. ‘You shouldn’t, you know. It’s not fair to the male members of the staff.’

‘The male members of the staff have just been voted out of existence.’

‘But they’re still male.’ He moved a little closer. Carol hated herself for being so conscious of his nearness. ‘I was wondering whether an ex-secretary felt like drowning her sorrows tonight with an unemployed chemist. How about a—?’

‘Another broken date?’ cut in Carol with dangerous sweetness.

‘Blondes and elephants never forget.’ He shrugged ruefully. ‘Perhaps I might try explaining Christmas Eve.’

‘Why bother? I quite understand how important your—er—business engagement with Miss Leland was.’

‘That sounds very ominous. No armistice then? No New Year’s Eve debauch?’

‘Strange as it seems,’ said Carol tersely, ‘no.’

As she moved away the lift doors clanged shut behind the batch of departing shareholders. The sound echoed drearily through the room.

She glanced at her watch. Exactly six o’clock. So the tower lift had made its last trip for the night.

She found herself thinking of Leland and Rowley’s offices as she had seen them from the street, perched high and lonely on the top of the Moderna Tower. Now that the lift had stopped working, there was nothing but the stairs in the fire tower to connect them with the active bustling life forty floors below.

Exit before midnight. She shivered.

Mr. Rowley’s large office seemed austere and empty now that the majority of the shareholders had left. The people whose names had been typed on the memorandum were grouped curiously around the desk. As Carol joined them, Peter started to read out the message.

‘This is to remind you …’

Carol watched the faces round her. Marcia Leland listened with absorbed impersonal interest; Miss Gregg’s tight-lipped mouth dropped open with surprise; little Mr Whitfield, looking like an agitated but very legal robin, shot startled glances at Mr Rowley.

For a moment there was unbroken silence. Peter laid the memorandum down on the desk.

‘I thought you all ought to hear it, he said. ‘Presumably this was fixed up to try and frighten us into voting against the merger.’ His mouth moved wryly. ‘Personally, I don’t think these formidable threats will be put into action. But if anyone feels at all nervous—’

‘Certainly I’m nervous,’ snapped Miss Gregg, the woolly tassel on the front of her blouse quivering indignantly. ‘We must consult the police at once. A threat of murder! Disgraceful!’

‘But ingenious.’ Miles had strolled over to join them. ‘Killing off the major shareholders to get a new vote on the merger. If he wants fifty thousand shares to change hands before midnight, he’ll have to be pretty wholesale.’

‘We cannot afford to treat this lightly, Mr Shenton,’ chirruped Mr Whitfield, the company’s lawyer, his pince-nez trembling on the thin bridge of his nose. ‘Even if we do not inform the police, we should each of us take adequate precautions until midnight.’

‘I agree.’ Mr Rowley’s thin, ascetic face was even more drawn than usual, his voice was weary. ‘We have no reason to suppose this is a hoax. Mergers always cause bad feeling. This was probably written by some employee who’s losing his work. He may conceivably be desperate enough to attempt something—er—rash.’ He turned to the bushy-browed representative of Pan-American. ‘This is most unfortunate, Druten. I feel we owe you an apology.’

Marcia Leland alone seemed completely unaffected by the general consternation. Her soft green eyes turned to Carol.

‘But where did you find this extraordinary note. Miss Thorne?’

‘In my typewriter. I’d just slipped out about four-thirty. It was there when I came back.’

‘So any of the employees or the shareholders could have put it there?’

Carol nodded. ‘Yes, anyone at all.’

While she was speaking, Mr Whitfield had been moving the zipper of his briefcase jerkily to and fro. Now he gave a sudden little exclamation.