The Victim in Victoria Station (14 page)

The meeting lasted most of the morning. Try as I might, between answering phone calls and gingerly typing a couple of memos on my computer, I could hear nothing more than an angry rumble until the meeting broke up and the three salespeople erupted into the hall where I sat.

Mr. Dalal was sweating profusely through his thin suit. He looked as though his narrow, rather light brown shoes were pinching, and his voice rang out high and somewhat piercing.

“I will not take the blame! It is not my fault! I have worked extremely hard, and I cannot be held accountable if the company insists upon pricing the product so high that small countries—”

“Oh, stuff it, Chandra!” Mrs. Shore looked sullen. Her spike heels clicked on the black-and-white marble floor. “Nobody's blaming you any more than anyone else. Our Brian's got the wind up, that's all. I don't know why he expects us to be miracle workers. The bloody thing's gone stale for some reason. Summer slump, probably. Business will pick up when this damned heat breaks. There's no reason to panic and talk about reducing the price!”

“It is easy for you to talk,” whined Mr. Dalal. “You have a husband to support you. I am engaged to be married, and if I lose my job, my fiancée—” He raised his hands to the sky, showing well-worn shirt cuffs.

“Dalal, if you mention your fiancée once more, I may throw up. You are absolutely obsessed by that girl. Well, you'll find out soon enough that marriage is not necessarily love's young dream. Won't he, my sweet?” Mr. Pierce shot his own impeccable cuffs and gave Mrs. Shore a look that has meant the same thing to men and women for as long as there have been men and women.

She pushed back her abundant auburn hair with a perfectly manicured hand and returned the look.

My, my! The sparks in the sales conference were not the only ones flying around the office, it seemed. As the three quarreled their way out the door, I reflected that I understood exactly what Mrs. Forbes had meant about Vicki Shore. She was, as a school principal of mine used to say, the kind of woman who gets herself talked about. And most of the talk, my catty mind added, is probably true.

My mind also noted that Mr. Pierce had, in addition to the longest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a man, a marked Canadian accent.

The only other notable event of the morning was a little encounter between Mr. Upton and Mr. Spragge. I didn't catch the beginning of it, but as I was coming back from the bathroom, Mr. Upton came out of Mr. Spragge's office, looking extremely angry. He stood for a moment with the door open, and Mr. Spragge's voice floated out. It was pitched low, but the diction was so steely sharp that I had no trouble hearing what he said.

“You will do, Mr. Upton, what I tell you to do. I will have no further argument!”

I was shaken. Was that the genial rose grower talking?

M
RS. FORBES AND
I went out to lunch together again. “Do you know,” she said, “I believe in formality in the office, but when we're out of uniform, so to speak, I do wish you'd call me Evelyn. I feel I've known you for such a long time.”

“And please,” I said promptly, “call me—” I stopped abruptly and had a coughing fit. What on earth was my assumed name?

“Are you all right?” she said anxiously. “You're not choking, are you, Louise? It is Louise, isn't it?”

“Yes, I'm fine, thank you.” I could attribute my red face to the coughing. “Something went down the wrong way. And it is Louise. I narrowly escaped Louisa; my mother liked Alcott, but my father intervened.”

So we got past that little awkwardness. But I began to wonder if I really was too old to play detective. I was willing to bet that when Sherlock Holmes was in disguise, he never forgot his alias!

“What did you think of the sales staff?” she asked as we walked back to the office, slowly because of the stifling midday heat. Clouds were gathering, and there was a heavy feel to the air. Our brief spell of fine weather was about to end.

“They get excited, don't they?”

“My dear! Hammer and tongs, I do assure you. Of course I could hear them quite clearly, and so could Mr. Spragge and his client. Really, Mr. Upton should be more temperate in his speech!”

“I suppose he's worried about sales figures.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was sharp. Too late, I remembered that I wasn't supposed to know about sales figures.

“Oh, I heard the three of them talking as they came out of the meeting. I inferred that sales hadn't been too good lately.”

“I see.” Evelyn frowned. “I hope they stopped talking about it when they left the office.”

“I'm sorry to say I don't think they did. I know they were arguing about it when they went out the door.”

She pursed her lips. “They must learn to be more discreet. I will mention something to Mr. Spragge. It's no good talking to Mr. Upton, especially about that—about Mrs. Shore. She has all the men in the place under her spell.”

“You must admit she's an extremely beautiful woman.”

“That's as may be. Handsome is as handsome does, is what my mother said, and it's what I say. Just look at the clothes she wears, will you! Skirts so short I don't know where to look. I hate to have to think it, but that woman is no lady.”

Should I agree with her, or was I too new, too junior? I took the plunge. “It did seem as though there was something between her and Mr. Pierce. Or am I imagining things?”

Evelyn snorted again. “Perfectly shameless, they are! And her with a perfectly nice husband, and him with a sweet little wife!”

“Why don't they just get divorces and marry each other, if they're so smitten?”

“Oh, that Mr. Pierce is just looking for a good time, believe you me! If his wife doesn't keep him from doing that, why ruin a perfectly good arrangement? And as for her, she'd not want to leave all that lovely money, would she?”

Goodness, women can be cats when they want to be! I wouldn't have thought Mrs. Forbes could be so spiteful.

“To tell you the truth, I've had half a mind to tell Mr. Spragge what's going on, though whether he'd believe me, I don't know. He won't have that kind of thing in the office, you know. A churchwarden, Mr. Spragge is, and he doesn't approve of carryings-on, but he has too nice a mind to see a thing, even when it's right under his nose.”

Well, that was fortunate for me, if true. The kind of intrigue I was carrying on right under his nose wasn't exactly the sort to which Evelyn referred, but I doubted he'd be pleased if he knew. And I'd had a little taste this morning of what he could be like when displeased.

As luck would have it, I was away from my desk for a few minutes when Mr. Fortier came in. I had been poking around a little, hoping to find a place to hide that evening if I couldn't manage to pilfer a key, and I came through the main office just as a back was disappearing through Mr. Spragge's door.

“Client?” I asked. “I'm sorry I wasn't there to announce him; I had to go to the bathroom for a minute.”

“The lavatory, dear, or the loo. A bathroom is where one has a bath. No, that was Mr. Fortier. I mustn't interrupt them, but you can meet him when he leaves.”

I turned away; I couldn't let Evelyn Forbes see that I was shaking. Now that the moment had come, I was terrified.

Did I really need to meet Fortier? He was the prime candidate for first murderer. I'd met all the rest of the men and failed to recognize them. Of course, I might not have anyway—but then there was his reaction on the phone that night. At the very least, he knew something. If he was the murderer, he knew me, or at least he had seen me. In any case, I hadn't come to the Multilinks office principally to identify a person. I'd come to find out what was going on, to discover a motive; and perhaps tonight Nigel and I would come up with something. Wouldn't my time be better spent working out a plan, rather than confronting a killer?

You're scared
, an inner voice jeered.

Well, all right, I was. And rightly so. If Fortier recognized me, it was all over. At the very least I'd have to get out of there fast and lose the opportunity to learn anything more. At the worst …

Pull yourself together
, the voice demanded.
You have to know for certain. And you know he's extremely unlikely to recognize you. You didn't recognize your own sister once, in a long red wig. He won't have the slightest idea. If it is him. And if it isn't, you've already met and talked to the murderer. So it may well be too late
.

That was not a comforting thought. I tried to distract myself by comparing the back view I had just seen with the front view that was all I'd gotten on the train. It was a pity I'd had no chance to see the train “doctor” from the rear. Backs are very distinctive, especially when combined with a gait. But I'd never seen my doctor walking.

The build was about right, I supposed. But men, unless they're extraordinarily fat or thin or tall or short, tend to look very much alike in a business suit. Fortier had a rather soft look about him, and I didn't remember that about the train man, but he hadn't been wearing a raincoat, as Fortier was today. And the train man had worn a hat. Fortier's hair looked pretty thin—but a hat disguises a lot. I'd had a friend at home who had only a fringe of hair above his ears, but in the warm hat he wore in winter, you couldn't tell he didn't have a full head of hair.

More and more I was beginning to understand why policemen are wary of eyewitness identifications. It isn't a bit easy to spot someone you've seen only for moments under conditions of stress. I had to have a better look, and really listen to Fortier talk.

I spent an anxious hour watching, between phone calls, waiting for the office door to open. The rain had begun, the sort we would have called a gullywasher back home, with distant thunder that tightened my nerves still further. I was also dithering about what to tell Nigel when he called.

There seemed to be no way that I could obtain a key to any of the office doors, either the outer door to the building or any of the inner doors. If I could hide—and there was a roomy broom closet that would do for that—I could let Nigel in through the front door easily enough; it had a spring lock that opened without a key from the inside. The office doors were another matter. In my little snooping tour I'd noticed that they had simple locks of the push-button variety—push one button in the edge of the door, and it's locked, push the other, and it's open—but yesterday I had seen Evelyn try the doors carefully before leaving. She was observant and conscientious. There was no way I could manipulate those locks without her noticing and correcting the matter.

At that point in my speculations I heard male voices in the outer office. I picked up the telephone and became engrossed in conversation with the fictitious person at the other end of the line just as Fortier came into the hallway with Mr. Spragge. They were intent on their conversation and didn't notice me particularly, but Evelyn, right behind them, put a hand on Fortier's arm, obviously wishing to introduce me. I smiled and shrugged, pointing to the phone wedged between my shoulder and my chin. “No, I'm sorry, I don't believe you have the right—no, this is Multilinks, not Multitronics—no, they're not the same. Sir, I—sir, if you'll let me explain—yes, certainly we are a software company, but we don't make computer games—”

The two men nodded absently at me, opened their umbrellas, and swept on out the front door, still talking in an undertone, Fortier nodding earnestly at every remark Mr. Spragge made. The dangerous moment was past, and I could hang up on the nonexistent wrong number. My hand was wet on the receiver.

“What a pity,” said Evelyn serenely. “We don't see Mr. Fortier often, so you may have missed your chance for a week or two. How infuriating that you should have a nuisance call just then.”

“Yes, isn't it?” My voice hardly trembled at all. The encounter was over, and I still wasn't sure whether or not I had just watched a murderer pass by. My little ruse had been a poor idea, really; it had prevented my hearing anything useful of Fortier's voice, and though I'd kept my face hidden, I had at the same time blocked my clear view of
his
face.

Cowardice creates terrible limitations for the amateur detective.

“Mr. Spragge won't be back this afternoon, in case you get any calls for him.” Evelyn interrupted my thoughts. “You're not likely to, of course, with only half an hour till closing time.”

I looked at my watch. It was four-thirty. “But—”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you? We close the office at five on Fridays. Mr. Spragge is very understanding about people wanting to get home and begin their weekend, and six o'clock traffic in London is simply frightful on a Friday.”

Here, unexpectedly, was my opportunity. I seized it.

“Oh, dear,” I said, trying to sound upset. It wasn't difficult; I was still shaking. “I don't quite know what I'm going to do, in that case. A friend is picking me up after work, and I told her to come at six. We're having an early meal and then going to see
Cats
. I could wait outside, I suppose, but for an hour, in the rain …”

Evelyn frowned. “Can't you ring her up?”

“She's shopping.” What a good thing I'd made her a woman; shopping is always a believable female activity.

“Well, then, I suppose you'll have to wait here.”

She wasn't being very gracious about it, but I went on anyway. Nothing ventured …

“Thank you, Mrs. Forbes. I can use the time to get caught up on this filing; I've been so busy I've fallen behind. And—well, I do hate to ask, but—I haven't been feeling too well this afternoon. I think those prawns at lunch might not have been good. Do you think you could leave the office door unlocked, so I could get to the bathroom—the loo, I mean—if I have to? I'll lock it when I leave, of course.”