Elizabeth Ferrars and The Murder Room

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The Murder Room

Where Criminal Minds Meet

themurderroom.com

The Clock that Wouldn’t Stop

Elizabeth Ferrars

Contents

Cover

The Murder Room Introduction

Title page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Outro

By Elizabeth Ferrars

About the author

Copyright page

Chapter One

BEFORE STARTING her breakfast, Alex Summerill went to the telephone. When a man’s voice answered her, she began rapidly: “Daniel, please will you tell me what I’m to do about this business of having a third eye that doesn’t work like my other two? Here have I been looking at people’s faces for the past forty years and thinking that they were pretty or plain and nice or nasty, but not seeing evil in them. And I got along all right like that. I don’t like seeing evil. It makes me stay awake at night or dream bad dreams. But when that detestable camera you gave me gets people down on paper, that’s all it ever seems to show me. Evil. Cruelty. Treachery.”

Her own face had flushed excitably while she was speaking and her free hand made passes in the air, as if she felt that these gestures would help the man at the other end of the line to understand what she was talking about.

He appeared to do so with surprisingly little difficulty.

“Who is it this time?” he asked.

“My assistant, Vivian Dale.”

“That nice girl who’s getting married? Oh, nonsense. You’ve known her for years.”

“No, not Henrietta,” said Alex. “I told you, she’s left me already. Vivian’s the new one. She’s been working for me for a month now. And I’ve been thinking how lucky I was to get her. And I took the photographs for fun, chiefly because I thought she was so pretty she’d make a wonderful subject. And I made the prints last night and I’ve been in a terrible state ever since. Because, don’t you see, Daniel, I can’t possibly afford to have anyone in that job whom I don’t trust absolutely. It’d be a perfect goldmine for anyone with a slight leaning to blackmail or anything like that.”

“Now, now, let’s keep the melodrama for later,” he said. “All that’s happened, so far as I can make out, is that you’ve taken some photographs of your Miss Dale, and they’re not very satisfactory. Well, throw them in the waste-paper basket and take some more.”

“That’s precisely what I’m going to do—I’d thought that out all by myself,” said Alex. “But if the second lot come out with the same expression as these I shall get rid of her. I must. I can’t take any risks with my work.”

“Probably the poor girl just isn’t photogenic and can’t look like her normal self in front of a camera,” said the man’s voice. “That happens to lots of people.”

“But she does look her normal self, that’s what’s so awful!” said Alex. “If I’d simply found a face that I’d never seen before, I’d know that what you’ve just said was true and I shouldn’t be worrying at all. But now that I’ve seen this dreadful face on paper, I’ve recognised it, don’t you understand? I know that I’ve seen that same expression on her face again and again and not liked it, and yet just looked away because I didn’t want to have to think about what it meant. I think I must be beginning to find out what a fool I’ve always been about people. I must have been, mustn’t I? I can’t ever have looked at their faces properly before.”

“Very few people do look at faces properly,” the man said. “And I should let myself calm down before saying anything about this to anyone else.”

“Of course, I shan’t say anything to anyone else. I shouldn’t dream of telling anyone but you, and I’ve told you only because it’s mostly your fault, getting me to mess around with this photography business. Besides, I want you to look at the photographs and tell me what you think.”

“Certainly,” he said, “if you think that’ll help you.”

“When shall I come and see you?”

“Come and have lunch with me to-day.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea—no, wait a minute, I’ve an appointment. I’m having lunch with Henrietta. She’s coming to London for the day and I believe she’s bringing her young man to show him to me. After lunch I’m going to take them shopping to buy them a wedding-present and I don’t know how long that’ll take. But I should think I could be free by three o’clock. So I’ll come along then, shall I?”

“Anything you say.”

“Bless you,” she said. “It’s lucky for me you’ve retired and are as idle as you are nowadays, because this is urgent—really terribly urgent, and I couldn’t bear to wait.”

“I’m not idle,” he said. “I merely dispose of my time now according to my own inclinations, and your claims on it have always come high. But don’t expect me to take one look at your pictures and say that poor Miss Dale is a murderess, an adultress or anything else undesirable. I’ve never yet heard of anyone being condemned just for having a certain sort of face.”

“I wonder. When you see these pictures, I wonder if you won’t say one of those things straight off,” said Alex. Putting down the telephone, she went to the table and sat down to breakfast.

When she had finished she did not start immediately for the office. The evening before she had brought some work home with her and now, for half of the morning, she sat at her desk at the window of her sitting-room, busily writing. The window overlooked the narrow strip of her London garden, where from the time when the first crocuses and snowdrops opened in the grass until the fading of the last chrysanthemums, she could always see the gleam of flowers. But just now the earth was bare, the laburnum, stopping across the lawn, was a sooty skeleton of a tree and only the holly bush in the corner had its leaves and a sprinkling of red berries. The January sun, shining through a haze of cloud, spread a pale light over the desk by the window.

Alex’s work consisted of writing letters. These letters all began with such words as, “Dear Distracted Wife,” or “Dear Depressed,” or “Dear Hopeful.” They were all signed, “Your friend, Alice Summers.” What they contained was the best advice and comfort that Alex was able to give to women with faithless husbands, men with faithless wives, parents with difficult children, children with unaccommodating parents, girls who were afraid they might never get married, young men who wanted to know how to discover a perfect woman. Alex wrote these letters for a column called “Ask Alice Summers,” that appeared every Thursday in a daily newspaper.

She always did a great deal of her work at home. She liked the feeling of intimacy with her correspondents that arose from remaining in her own pleasant sitting-room, seated at the old mahogany desk that had come from her grandmother’s house in Clifton. For Alex took her work very seriously and in spite of the fact that she was highly paid for giving advice, that which she offered was probably no worse than her correspondents would have received from any other well-meaning, warm-hearted person.

When she left the house later in the morning, the time was nearly twelve o’clock. In her handbag she had the six prints of the photograph that she had taken of her assistant, Vivian Dale. The letters that had just been written were in a leather brief-case. Alex’s face showed no signs of the worry in her mind, but, brightly made-up under the veil of her small hat, looked fresh and charming. She was a small woman, naturally blonde, grey-eyed and with a moderate, quite attractive plumpness. Seeing her that morning with the look that she usually had of being on her way to some agreeable appointment, it would have been easy to believe that she was a woman who had never done a hard day’s work in her life. In fact, she had supported herself and her son, who was at a public school, since the death of her husband fifteen years before, and the first few years at least had not been easy.

Arriving in Fleet Street, she paid off her taxi, entered the building of the newspaper for which she worked, and took the lift up to her own office on the fourth floor. On the way she exchanged, as usual, a few remarks with George, the liftman, on the subject of pools. George had an idea that she brought him luck and sometimes persuaded her to fill in his coupons for him, which she always did with her eyes shut. To-day he told her that her last attempt had won him eight shillings, but Alex knew that he was generally over-optimistic in his calculations.

Opening the gate for her at the fourth floor, he said: “I took Miss Selby up again a few minutes ago. Is she coming back to work here?”

“No, this is just a visit,” said Alex. “She’s getting married a fortnight on Saturday. She’d a young man with her, hadn’t she? Well, that’s the one she’s marrying.”

“She hadn’t any young man with her as I noticed,” said George.

“She hadn’t? Oh, I do hope he wasn’t too shy to come,” said Alex. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing him. I hardly know anything about him yet. I haven’t even seen his photograph so far . . .” She stopped herself. She did not want to think about photographs all the time.

“She looked kind of different from what she used,” said George. “She only said good-morning, she didn’t say nothing else. I almost felt she didn’t remember me.”

“Excitement, probably,” said Alex. “After all, one would have a good deal on one’s mind if one were getting married a fortnight on Saturday.”

“That’s right, or maybe she’s got a throat like me, and didn’t feel much like talking,” said George. “Everyone’s got a throat this weather. I got a yellow medicine for mine, wot the doctor give me when I was in hospital with my rupture. This morning when I got up I couldn’t hardly speak, but the wife give me a spoonful of my yellow medicine and it done wonders. Any time you get any trouble with your throat, Miss Summers, you tell me and I’ll bring you some of my yellow medicine along.”

Thanking him, Alex left the lift and started down the corridor.

In her office, she found Vivian Dale and Henrietta Selby, sitting facing one another across the desk that was now Vivian’s but at which Henrietta had worked for four years. Both girls were smoking cigarettes and both were laughing.

Alex’s first thought as she saw them there together was that they were such a nice-looking couple of girls, it must be unspeakably foolish of her to be worrying about the one any more than she had ever worried about the other.

They both said, “Hallo, Alex,” at just the same time and Henrietta sprang up and came to meet her, holding out her hands.

“How lovely to see you again,” she said. “It feels ages since I saw you last. And it feels ages already since I left here. It doesn’t make sense that it’s only a month.”

“I can’t believe it’s nearly as long as a month,” said Vivian in her softer voice. “I’m still in such a state of confusion.”

“That, of course, is nonsense—Vivian is competent to the last degree,” said Alex. “Well, Henrietta, my dear, how are you? You’re looking marvellous.”

But this was not quite true. As George had just said, Henrietta did in some way look different, as if some nervousness or strain had taken a little of the bloom from her face. It was the other girl, who had remained seated at the desk and who was now reaching out towards a pile of papers, who really looked marvellous, disturbingly marvellous. Henrietta Selby was certainly a pretty young woman, but Vivian Dale, with her composed and delicate and rather emotionless features, had a finished beauty that kept taking Alex by surprise. She could never quite keep its quality in mind and so never got used to it. Even to-day, with the face in the photographs fresh in her mind, Alex felt the usual little shock of pure admiration, tinged with a trace of natural envy.

Vivian was very slender, gracefully and finely made, with a look of fragility about her that was completely contradicted by her energy, except when now and then she had moods of lassitude, when she seemed suddenly to have no life in her at all. She had a pale, clear skin and chestnut hair that grew in short, soft curls. Her eyes were large and dark, with a way of watching steadily the eyes of anyone with whom she was talking, though without showing much of the thoughts that were passing in her own mind. But she had a swift, sweet smile that momentarily took away the impassivity of her face and that seemed to reveal her as a gay and gentle as well as a very intelligent person. She usually dressed in daring colours, bright blues or greens or yellows, with glittering touches of bizarre jewellery.

Henrietta was the shorter of the two girls and only slightly less slender than Vivian, but there always seemed in some way to be more of her, more talk, more laughter, more red in her cheeks. She gave herself away more and showed more interest in other people. She usually dressed in not very expensive suits, seldom wore a hat on her smooth, dark hair and had never quite lost the look of having grown up in the country. She looked younger than her age, which was twenty-five, and probably would always do so, even when she had grown matronly, which was likely to come about in quite a few years’ time, at least if she married happily and had children.

“We’ll go out and have lunch straight away, shall we?” said Alex. “As soon as I’ve unloaded these letters on Vivian. Only where’s Conrad? He isn’t waiting around downstairs, is he, afraid of coming up? Or are we going to pick him up somewhere? I was thinking we’d have lunch at Colonna’s, but if he’s waiting somewhere that isn’t convenient for that—”

“No, he isn’t waiting,” said Henrietta. “Actually he didn’t come up to London with me to-day. He’s starting a bad cold. He got up this morning with an awful throat.”

“Oh, dear, what a pity—I did so want to meet your Conrad. But George just said to me that everyone has colds this weather.”

Not believing for a moment in Conrad’s sore throat, Alex reflected that she would probably hear the truth about the quarrel that had stopped Conrad Moorhouse coming to London with Henrietta, over the second cocktail at Colonna’s.

But here Alex was wrong. In the taxi to Greek Street, Henrietta talked about her aunt, with whom she had gone back to live on giving up her job in London. She talked about her aunt’s new house, her aunt’s wedding-present, her aunt’s boarders, and then, over her martini at Colonna’s, became more silent rather than more talkative. Fingering the stem of her glass, she gazed down into it as if the pale liquid had begun to hypnotise her and her face became remote and thoughtful.

Alex started talking about some rugs that she had seen in a shop in Victoria Street. She said that she thought Henrietta and Conrad might like one as a wedding-present and suggested that after lunch she and Henrietta might go and see if Henrietta liked the rugs as much as Alex did herself.

Henrietta raised her eyes briefly, saying: “You’re a darling, Alex. But you know that you’ve got much better taste than I have. I’ll like anything that you do.”

“Haven’t you the time to come with me this afternoon, or don’t you like the idea?” Alex asked. “Would you sooner have something different?”

“No, I’d love the rug,” said Henrietta. “But . . . Well, I’m worried to-day, I know you’ve noticed it already. I’ve got something on my mind. It’s . . .” She hesitated a long time. “It’s Aunt Jay. And—and this wedding and everything. It isn’t that I mind having a proper wedding, and Aunt Jay’s set her heart on it. But I think it’s much too tiring for her and too expensive.”

“Is that all that’s worrying you?”asked Alex.

She thought that Henrietta hesitated again before she answered.

“Yes, that’s all.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound much of a worry to me,” said Alex. “Some things are worth while even if they do cost a bit more and wear one out. One can always rest and economise afterwards.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But you see . . .” Henrietta had started drawing patterns on the tablecloth with the prong of a fork. “Ever since the fire in the old house, Aunt Jay’s been different. She doesn’t seem to have the same energy any more. I know her heart’s troubling her and she says and—and she does very queer things. You’ll see what I mean when you come down. You are coming, aren’t you?” There was a trace of anxiety in the question.

“Of course,” said Alex. “I wouldn’t stay away for anything. Vivian’s going to drive me down on Friday afternoon.”

“It’ll soon be over, anyway,” said Henrietta. “Then, as you say, she can rest. Perhaps that’s all she needs, really. She’s got too excited over the whole affair and it’s come too soon after the shock of the fire and that poor old man getting killed, and then the move to the new house and so on . . . Aunt Jay always used to want this new house, yet she doesn’t seem happy in it. I believe she’d sooner be back in the old ramshackle dump on the other side of the cove. By the way, talking of houses, Conrad and I think we’ve found a cottage that we’re going to buy.”

“Good,” said Alex. “Have another martini. And don’t worry about the wedding. As I remember Miss Clyde, she was a rather formidable old rake who was obviously pining for more excitement, not less of it. Whereabouts is this cottage?”

“It’s about half-way between Aunt Jay’s and Sharnmouth,” said Henrietta. “It’s a glorious little place, at least it will be when we’ve done a good many things to it. Conrad isn’t particularly handy, but I think we’ll be able to do most of them ourselves. Only I wish you would come and take a look at it and advise us about it . . . Oh, I say, isn’t that a good idea?” A new note came into her voice. “Do come, please come. You could, couldn’t you? Come a couple of days early and advise us about the cottage. If Vivian’s with you, you can deal with your mail down there.”

Even less able than most people to resist an invitation to give advice, Alex smiled, hesitated and said that she must think about it.

But if there was anything on which she enjoyed advising even more than on affairs of the heart, it was on old buildings, gardens, furniture and decorations. In her spare time she sometimes wrote articles about these things for the women’s magazines, under the name of Alexandra Soames. So Henrietta had only to repeat her invitation, with an appearance of growing excitement over her own suggestion, for Alex to admit that she would be delighted to go down to Sharnmouth two days earlier than she had intended and give her opinion on the cottage.

“And you will bring Vivian, too, won’t you? She looks as if she could do with a few extra days of country air,” said Henrietta with what struck Alex as a slightly curious insistence. She had not realised that the two girls, who, so far as she knew, had met only about six weeks before, when Henrietta was helping to instruct Vivian in the taking over of her job, had become so friendly.

“Talking of Vivian . . .” said Alex.

“Yes?” said Henrietta.

“Oh, nothing,” said Alex, her own more cheerful spirits suddenly evaporating. “Except that I’ve an important appointment at three o’clock, so we mustn’t be too long over lunch, if we’re going to Victoria Street to look at those rugs.”