Answer in the Negative Read online

  Five minutes later Miss Quimper left Toby’s office, looking a little calmer. Toby called through the open door of the typists’ office, ‘Pat, would you mind taking a letter?’ and the chocolate-box girl came out with a notebook and pencil and said, ‘Of course, Mr Lorn.’ Toby held the door of his office open for her, and she smiled at him and led the way in. The smile was frankly provocative, but the look in her eyes made it a sort of family joke.

  For a few minutes the life of the place went quietly on. The assistants moved about among the filing cabinets. A client thanked the girl in the unbecoming frock and went away. Another typist came out of the typists’ office and vanished.

  Then the glass doors squeaked, and a man came in. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and Sally found it difficult not to stare at him, for he was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen. He was middle-aged, but his features were splendid, his eyes dark and fine, his hair thick and iron-grey. Sally wondered who on earth he was.

  He walked past her and sidled up to the typists’ door. He glanced round it and then half turned, drumming impatiently with his knuckles on the painted wood. Then he moved back to Morningside’s door and disappeared through it, shutting it behind him. He came out carrying a big folio and returned to the typists’ room.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Silcutt.’ One of the typists had come back. ‘Did you want a letter taken?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ The voice was precise and rather small, and utterly lacking in authority. ‘I rang and no one came. Where have you all been?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Silcutt. Mrs Beates is still at lunch, and Pat is with Mr Lorn. I’ll come this minute.’ There was a faintly soothing note — perhaps entirely unconscious — in the girl’s voice. She hurried into the office, came out with a notebook, and followed Silcutt to the glass doors, and so, presumably, to his own office.

  Sally sighed. She couldn’t remember ever having experienced such a sense of anticlimax. She knew now why no one had told her that Lionel Silcutt had the head of a great statesman, or a bishop, or a judge. Toby was so accustomed to the little Civil Servant inside that the superb exterior had become irrelevant for him. Johnny must have had her experience — and more forcibly, for he had talked to the man — but he hadn’t had time to tell her, and even for him, perhaps, the impact had begun to lose its force. She remembered that he had said Silcutt was fussed. The man Silcutt looked like could never have been fussed. Sally was suddenly and profoundly sorry for him. Nature had played an unkind trick on him.

  She was aware of someone who was coming with long strides from the far end of the big room. The footsteps came alongside, and she glanced up again. She saw a very tall, thin figure in a tweed coat and grey flannel trousers in even worse repair than the ones Johnny wore for gardening, and a long head of thick blue-black hair lightly powdered with grey. The tall man went into Morningside’s office, drawing the door to behind him, and she heard him moving about inside.

  When he came out again her eyes were lowered a little. She saw a scarlet pullover with several darns in various shades of red and several holes, and an emerald-green tie.

  ‘Have you seen Morningside?’

  She looked up. ‘I’m afraid not. I don’t think he’s back from lunch.’ This time she saw a narrow, high-boned face, with a long mouth and a pair of bright sapphire-blue eyes.

  The mouth twisted. ‘Always under your feet when you don’t want him, and never there when you do.’ He stopped suddenly and seemed to become aware of Sally. ‘Your hair is the colour of bracken in the autumn sunlight,’ he remarked. His Irish brogue, which had been barely noticeable before, was suddenly much more obvious.

  ‘How very kind of you to say so,’ said Sally civilly.

  The sapphire eyes danced at her. The long mouth curled in amusement this time. ‘You have your wits about you, too,’ he said, and bowed to her and strode away.

  He had only just gone when a telephone began to ring in Morningside’s office. It rang four times, and then someone came running, lightly. Sally saw only a back view again: a tall girl with a very slim figure in a well-cut grey frock, and a beautifully set head with fair hair. Perhaps the girl who had admired Toby’s way with Miss Quimper.

  Sally heard a click as she lifted the receiver, and then her voice, high, clear, and assured.

  ‘Mr Morningside’s office…No, I’m afraid he’s at lunch. Can I do anything?…The charge of the Light Brigade?…No, I think it was Balaclava…Never mind; I’ll see if he’s got anything for you. Hold on, will you?’

  A man in an overcoat came quickly past Sally and went through the open doorway into the office. ‘Okay, Selina,’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Bruce and Cotton. Charge of the Light Brigade.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they want it to illustrate some advert. I’ve got something for them here.’ Morningside’s voice was a flat tenor with some sort of Midland accent which had been carefully and consciously subdued. At this moment it had a tone which Sally found hard to define, or even to analyse. Embarrassment, irritation, a sort of smug condescension, and perhaps, oddly enough, a hint of the defensive. But when he spoke on the telephone, he was sure of himself — or almost sure; his voice was a shade too brisk.

  ‘Hullo. Morningside here. The Charge of the Light Brigade at Sebastopol, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Balaclava,’ said Selina venomously, and swept out of the room. She didn’t notice Sally, but Sally saw her. She was Toby’s admirer.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got something for you,’ said Morningside. ‘A contemporary engraving and a lithograph in colour. They’re not the same picture, but they both show the cavalry charge, and men being hit and falling off, and cannon round about and a lot of smoke and—’

  He broke off suddenly. Sally assumed he had been interrupted. But after perhaps twenty seconds he said abruptly, ‘Yes, I’m here. Sorry; I — it struck me we might have another picture filed under another heading, but I don’t think we have. Shall I send these two along?…Okay, we’ll try and let you have them this afternoon…Goodbye.’

  He put down the receiver, and there was another silence. Then he came across the room and shut the door sharply. Sally didn’t see his face.

  A minute or two later one of the typists came to the door: the attractive girl who had taken Silcutt’s letter. She had a good figure and a demure expression which might be deceptive. She knocked and went in, and Sally heard her say, ‘That’s your letter to Thought, Mr Morningside.’

  ‘I thought I gave that to Pat,’ said Morningside.

  ‘So you did, Mr Morningside. But Pat did half of it and I finished it. It just happened to work out that way. I can read her shorthand.’

  ‘You and Pat — you and Pat—’ Morningside’s voice rose suddenly. ‘You always write everything together, don’t you?’

  Again there was silence in the office. Then Pam said quietly, ‘Mr Morningside, you know—’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ His voice was trembling, but under slightly better control. ‘I know. I’m sorry, Pam. Thank you.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Morningside.’ Pam came out. Her demure expression was gone. She looked much more adult, and very worried.

  Ten minutes later, Morningside himself reappeared. He was a tallish man, fairly well built, wearing a blue suit which was a shade too bright. His hair was mouse-coloured and dry. His features could only be described as ordinary, but his face was distinguished for the moment by a look of angry, haggard misery. He strode out through the glass doors, and a quarter of an hour passed before he came back, looking as unhappy as before. He had barely shut himself into his office when Toby emerged from his and disappeared in his turn. He came back after ten minutes and threw a despairing glance at Sally as he passed her.

  For the rest of the afternoon nothing very much happened. People moved about; two or three went into Morningside’s office and spoke to him and came out again. Sally knew that, as long as he was there, there wasn’t really much point in her keeping watch. But there was always the off-chance that
something would turn up. By half past five she knew the pictures on the table by heart.

  Between half past five and six the typists and most of the assistants went away, Pat and Pam carrying quantities of letters and packets for the post. At ten minutes to six Toby limped out of his office.

  ‘Have you finished, Miss Merton?’ he asked apologetically. ‘We’re usually closed by six.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sally. ‘I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting. What do I do with these?’

  ‘We’ll leave them in my office, I think.’

  Sally insisted on taking them there herself, but he came with her. He jerked a warning thumb at a glass hatch in the wall between him and Morningside, and said very softly, ‘He’s had another letter.’

  ‘I was afraid so,’ whispered Sally. ‘He broke off in the middle of a telephone conversation just after he came back from lunch, and I had the impression he was shaken.’

  ‘He reported to Silcutt, and Silcutt sent for me. I’ve got the thing now. I’ll bring it round, if I may; we can’t discuss it here.’

  ‘Do. Come and have a drink.’

  ‘Thank you. I won’t leave with you, though. You go ahead. See you presently.’

  Sally went home as she had come, and never saw Toby on the way. Johnny was before her, but she got in in time to say goodnight to Peter and the twins. When she went down to the drawing room, she found Johnny and Toby drinking gin and examining the letter.

  They stood up as she came in, and Johnny got her a sherry. As he gave her the glass he said, ‘Just the same as the other. Same sort of paper and envelope; same sort of ballpoint ink; same sort of printing. Toby says Morningside found it on his desk, under a photograph and a letter typed and presumably left there by Pat, when he came back from lunch a little before half past two. He always goes for an hour or so from about one-thirty. He was talking on the telephone, and fiddling about as one’s apt to do, and he uncovered the envelope.’

  ‘He’s absolutely certain it wasn’t there when he went out,’ said Toby. ‘You came in just about twenty-five to two, Sally, and about ten minutes after he left. During the first six or seven of those ten minutes I was talking to James Camberley at a point from which I could see the door of Morningside’s office, and no one went in except Camberley himself, after a picture. After he’d left, I thought I’d keep a check on the office until you came, if it didn’t mean hanging about too obviously. As it happened, you turned up almost at once, and before anyone else had gone in. So if you’ve got a list of the people who went in after that and before Morningside came back—’

  ‘It’s in that notebook beside Johnny,’ she said.

  Johnny picked up the blue notebook and ran through it.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘“1.55 Pat” — “or Pam” deleted — “with typed letter”.’

  ‘I sorted them out later,’ said Sally. ‘This one was Pat. Toby, do you know which was immediately on top of this letter, Pat’s letter or the photograph?’

  ‘The photograph. Silcutt asked Morningside that. It covered the envelope completely. Pat could easily have put her letter down without noticing the other.’

  Johnny continued, ‘“1.59 Query Teddy. Apparently looking for Mr M.”’

  ‘A boily boy,’ said Sally, ‘with red hair and an incredible tie.’

  Toby nodded. ‘That’s Teddy. He may have been looking for Mr M, and he may have had a perfectly good reason for doing so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have known,’ asked Johnny, ‘that Morningside was almost certain to be at lunch at that time?’

  ‘I should have thought so. But it’s fair to say that although God gave him some brains, he seldom uses them to any good purpose.’

  ‘Sins of commission as well as omission?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, dear me, yes. He’s stayed away without permission on at least eight days in the last six months. I’ve got him there now, I think, because he’s buried three grandmothers. Since he lost count, I haven’t had so much trouble; he more or less admitted it was my game. The boys are supposed to come under the Echo’s commissionaire for discipline, but it doesn’t really work, because he doesn’t feel it’s his job. That’s one reason why we have so much trouble with them. On Guy Fawkes night, for instance, Teddy and the other three lit a bonfire in Garrick Square — that’s the little square behind Echo House — and the Fire Service had to be sent for to put it out. The Bench treated that as a sort of Boat-Race Night frolic, but it wasn’t all. A fortnight later — last week, indeed — Teddy borrowed a car from the Echo park and nearly killed himself and several other people in Holborn. What was more, it turned out to be Camberley’s car. He was put on probation for that, and he would certainly have lost his job if Camberley hadn’t spoken for him.’

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Not quite seventeen. He hasn’t got much of a home. His parents don’t live together — I don’t know if they were ever married — and he lives with an uncle and aunt in the King’s Cross neighbourhood who obviously haven’t much time for him.’ Toby hesitated, and then went on.

  ‘It was the side-door night-porter who rang up the Fire Service on the fifth,’ he said, ‘and he gave the boys hell afterwards — quite rightly. He’s in the habit of having a look round their room after he comes on duty, just to make sure everything’s all right, and they evidently knew that. On the evening of the sixth he walked down the steps inside the door and straight into a full fire bucket. He might have damaged himself more than he did.’

  There was a short silence. Then Johnny rose and refilled Toby’s glass and his own, and finally returned to the notebook.

  ‘“2.03 Toby. Looking for dead donkey.” That is a reasonable thing to look for in Morningside’s office, is it, Toby?’

  ‘Eminently,’ said Toby gravely. ‘I didn’t know we had one, but he did. I told you he was good.’

  ‘All right. “2.05 Miss Quimper.” Blank. What about that?’

  Sally explained, reluctantly, and Toby looked unhappy.

  ‘It was her negs again,’ he said. ‘These boxes of glass negs from Evans’s and the other defunct agencies. She arranges them all very carefully, because she likes to file the ones we keep in a certain order, and therefore Morningside must examine them in a certain order and return those he doesn’t reject in that order. Once when he couldn’t get two boys to bring a box up, he went down himself and took one with Teddy, and it was the wrong one, and she raised hell. She thought this afternoon he’d been messing up another box, and she said he’d taken some of the already filed stuff too. I promised I’d tackle him, but I haven’t done it yet, because he was so upset about the letter. It’s quite possible he isn’t responsible this time. One of the boys may have done it only to annoy — most likely Teddy. I’m not sure, though, because whoever it was borrowed a pair of the cotton gloves, they always use to handle negs, and I doubt if Teddy would have bothered with that.’

  ‘You say it takes two boys to shift the things?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘It takes two boys to get them upstairs, even in the lift. Morningside can heave them about in his office. Miss Quimper can lift them about a bit, too; she’s astonishingly muscular, considering her size. It’s partly practice, of course; she’s been doing it for over thirty years.’ He hesitated again, and Sally saw in his face the familiar reluctance, and the familiar determination to leave nothing unsaid. ‘She resented it very much when Morningside was asked to go through the negs. She thought they were her job — particularly the ones from Evans’s, because she worked with them there. But we couldn’t have let her do it. She’d never have rejected anything, and we haven’t room for anything like all of them. Most of them are so much lumber, anyway — the local grammar school hockey team in 1924, and so on. And, anyway, she hasn’t got Morningside’s memory. I did my best to calm her down this afternoon, but it wasn’t easy.’

  ‘Did she say why she was in Morningside’s office?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘I don’t think she did. She
said she’d got to go there. I assume she wanted to check up in case he’d taken any negs.’

  ‘She said she’d got to go to his office, not to see him? In other words, she knew he would be at lunch?’

  ‘She said she’d got to go to his office, yes.’

  ‘Right. “2.18 Mr Silcutt. Came out with large red folio.”’

  ‘That would probably be a bound volume of old magazines,’ said Toby. ‘Early Graphics, or something. He might want them almost any day, almost any time. Though I’d expect him to ring through and send a typist for them.’

  Sally explained the temporary lack of typists, and Toby nodded and said, ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘“2.21”,’ said Johnny. ‘“Query Michael Knox. Apparently looking for Mr M.”’

  ‘A long, lanky Irishman?’ asked Toby. ‘Yes, that’s Michael. He could have been looking for Morningside as well as anyone else. It might have been a purely professional matter, or it might have been pix for his book. He was a war correspondent, and he wants stuff on France and North Africa. He wants it badly and quickly — though I can’t quite see why it’s so urgent — and he takes rather too much advantage of his position in the Archives. It irritates Morningside very much, and Michael knows it and usually picks on him when he wants anything.’

  ‘But surely he’d know Morningside was at lunch?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘He’d know if he thought about it. As like as not he wouldn’t think.’ Again Toby hesitated, and again went firmly on. ‘He doesn’t care for Morningside — they’re very obviously as different as they could possibly be. Morningside is’ — Toby frowned, searching for phrases that would be scrupulously fair — ‘he’s a narrow man — a typical suburbanite without any experience of the world — a good man because he’s never really come into contact with evil, and from Michael’s point of view quite unjustifiably smug about it. That’s probably,’ said Toby parenthetically and half to himself, ‘why he sees evil where there isn’t any, and probably wouldn’t know it if he really did see it. Sorry; I’m wandering. Michael, on the other hand, has seen ten times more of the world than any of us, and knows more about human nature in all its aspects than ten slum padres and ten policemen put together. He’s extremely tough, in the real sense of that misused word, and he has many faults — selfishness, of a kind, among them. And he has no patience with — with untried virtue. So they’re at daggers drawn all the time.’