‘I imagine so… went to the Kindleford police as soon as he read about the murder, and told them a rather interesting story which may have considerable significance. It appears that this Mr Mandsell took, on a public telephone, a call from Miss Faintley which, it had clearly been arranged, was to have been picked up by somebody else. The result was that Mr Mandsell, for a whim, went to a railway station, picked up a parcel and delivered it at an obscure and not too much above-board little shop in a back street. He had been told to ask for a receipt, forgot to do so, went back and was blandly informed that no parcel had been handed in.’
‘Very fishy. Whom did Miss Faintley think she’d been talking to on the phone? Did that come out?’
‘No, it did not, and the police have no clue to his identity. But for Mr Mandsell’s having picked up the call by mistake, they would not even know that this man existed.’
‘Mandsell may be lying?’
‘The Kindleford police do not think so. They have made inquiries, and there is no reason to doubt that he had never so much as heard of Miss Faintley before. My own view, from what little I know at present, is that Miss Faintley’s correspondent was one of the men teachers at the school.’
‘A teacher? What makes you think that? Teachers, on the whole, are not given to mixing themselves up with fishy parcels and grimy, two-purpose little shops, are they?’
‘No, decidedly they are not, but one or two things in Mr Mandsell’s evidence struck me as pointers to Miss Faintley’s collaborator. First, although there was this arrangement to call some man up on a public telephone at a given time —’
‘You’d think it would have been more practical for
‘You certainly would… but I’m coming to that. It all fits in with my theory that he was a teacher. Well, now: Miss Faintley lived with an aunt in this little provincial town of Kindleford, but we know from the police that the aunt’s house is not on the telephone. Therefore, wherever she was, Miss Faintley was not at home when she spoke to Mandsell. The time, incidentally, was round about nine in the evening. All the shops, including the post office, were shut, and had been, all the afternoon.’
‘Yes, she must have been at school,’ said Laura, ‘but wasn’t it rather late in the evening for that?’
‘It was the end of the term, remember. It is likely that some festivity was going on… a tennis dance, perhaps. It is a mixed school with a mixed staff, you see.’
‘Oh, yes. And that would account for her having never known when she was likely to be interrupted on the telephone, I suppose.’
‘Then, there were references to people being about in the vestibule.’
‘Yes, that does, perhaps, sound rather schooly. Oh, but, look here, if you’re right, it ought to be easy enough to find out who her correspondent was supposed to have been! If there was a dance on, or some other school function, you’d only have to check with the staff to find out which master wasn’t present. I mean, whoever he is, he must know by now that Miss Faintley was murdered, and he must be guilty of the murder, I should say, or he’d have come forward by this time.’
‘That last is not a warrantable assumption. He may be abroad for his holiday and, if so, he may not have seen the London papers. But you are right to suggest that we may be able to discover his identity by checking whether he was present or not at the school on that particular evening.’
‘Of course, he may not be one of the masters. I still think that.’
‘I think he is. If Mr Mandsell reported the conversation correctly, the woman’s voice told him that it was Faintley speaking. He, quite naturally, thought she was using the adverb “faintly” and assured her that her voice was not faint! But you see what the implication is?’
‘Just giving her surname, you mean? Yes, most women put Miss or Mrs in front if they don’t give their Christian name, don’t they?’
‘Yes, that is the whole point! She did not put anything in front of her surname until he misunderstood, therefore it is almost certain that she was talking to someone to whom habitually she was known as Faintley, and not as
‘Unless the parcel was part of a dark and criminal deed, and Miss Faintley was, although not a domestic, definitely the servant of the man she thought she was speaking to.’
‘Quite true, but the school is the likeliest and certainly the easiest starting-point for our investigations in Kindleford, and Miss Golightly is the person to tackle. As I say, she is almost certain to be on the premises, for there is always much to be done when the school year opens.’
‘It’s bound to be a nasty sort of place,’ said Laura, wrinkling her nose, ‘and she’s certain to be busy, she won’t thank us for calling, will she? I wonder how much she’s upset about Miss Faintley’s death?’
They made the cross-country journey by car, with Laura driving. The school, which was well away from the centre of the town, looked pleasantly clean and modern and was surrounded by gardens and its own playing- fields.
Butters, the caretaker, whom Darling had already interviewed, was superintending the unloading of coke for the school furnaces when Mrs Bradley and Laura arrived.
‘Did you want someone?’ he asked warily, for it was not unknown for the myrmidons of the Education Office to descend upon the school with extraordinary queries and sheaves of official forms just when the head teacher was busiest. ‘And don’t stick that next load down there, mate,’ he added to one of the coalmen. ‘That there’s a means of egress, if you don’t mind me pointing it out, and if you goes and blocks it all up —’
‘I would like to speak to Miss Golightly,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Will you kindly direct me to her room if she is in the building? My name is Lestrange Bradley.’
‘Very good,’ said Butters. He led the way along a short stone corridor and into a cool, dim vestibule. ‘That there’s her door. You have to knock and then wait for the buzzer.’
Mrs Bradley carried out these instructions and the buzzer’s discourteous invitation took her into Miss Golightly’s
