Miss Silver looked at her compassionately.
“Was Tuesday one of your bad nights?”
Maggie screwed up her face.
“Well, it was. Mum sleeps in the next room. I don’t call her unless I’ve got to-you can’t work all day and not get your rest at night. The phone’s kind of company.”
“Did anyone ring up Field End after you were in bed?”
“Well, they did.”
“Do you know who it was?”
Maggie shook her head.
“Not but what I’d heard him before.”
“You mean you knew the voice?”
“I’d heard it before-not to know who it was though.”
Miss Silver sat there pleasant and composed. No one would have known that Maggie’s answers were of any special interest or importance. To Maggie herself they were just a part of the nice interesting conversation she was having with Mrs. Abbott’s little visiting lady. It was always nice to have someone fresh to talk to, and it wasn’t everyone who listened to what you had to say as if they appreciated it. Miss Silver listened, and Miss Silver said,
“It was a man’s voice? Do you know to whom he was speaking?”
“Oh, it was to Mr. Field.”
“I suppose you do not remember what they were talking about?”
“Of course I remember-as far as it went.”
“How do you mean, Miss Bell?”
It enchanted Maggie to be called Miss Bell. When you never go out and you live in a village where everyone has known you since you were a baby, it isn’t a thing that very often happens to you. She became as anxious to speak as Miss Silver was to hear. Someone who really listened, someone who called her Miss Bell. A flow of words set in.
“Well, you see, it was like this. There I was in my bed, and not so bad as long as I didn’t try and move, and there was the phone and I couldn’t reach it without I did move. So first I thought I wouldn’t, and then I thought I would, and by the time I got hold of the receiver there was Mr. Field saying, ‘Rather a late hour to suggest a meeting, isn’t it?’ ”
“And what did the caller say?”
“Oh, he said he’d had trouble with his car or he’d have been down earlier-had to stop at a garage and have something done. And then he went on to say it was the best he could do-he was bound to push on to London because of having to take the first plane in the morning. ‘So it’s now or never,’ he said, ‘and the chance of a lifetime.’ And then Mr. Field said, ‘All right, come round on to the terrace behind the house and I’ll let you in. You’ll see the light.’ ”
There was a momentary pause before Miss Silver said,
“Miss Bell, did it not occur to you that the police should be informed about this call?”
Maggie sniffed.
“They’ve their own ways of finding out, haven’t they?”
“They were aware that a call had been put through to Field End at half-past-ten, but the operator was unable to tell them any more than that.”
“It wasn’t any business of mine-not if no one troubled to ask me!”
Miss Silver became aware that Maggie was not one of those who can be prompted to further confidences by severity. She said in her mildest voice,
“You are being most helpful. I am sure you can see that what you have just told me might be very important. When you heard next day of Mr. Field’s murder it must have occurred to you that the person who made that appointment on the telephone was most probably the murderer.”
Maggie said, “Oooh!” drawing the vowel out very long indeed.
“You are a great deal too intelligent not to have seen the connection and to have drawn your own conclusions.”
Maggie was twisting her handkerchief into a rope.
“Well, I did think-”
Miss Silver gave her an encouraging smile.
“Of course you did. Now you said that you thought you had heard this man’s voice before.”
“I didn’t think nothing about it! I knew right away I’d heard it. And that’s why I thought I’d keep quiet, because I thought if it was someone that was friendly with the family there couldn’t be anything to tell, and anyway least said soonest mended.”
“You knew the voice because you had heard it before? On the line to Field End?”
Maggie nodded, made a grimace as if the movement hurt her, and said,
“I’d heard it all right, and I’d know it again if I heard it again.”
“Miss Bell, when did you hear it before?”
There was no hesitation this time. Words came trippingly.
“Fortnight ago, the Saturday they gave that dance for Miss Georgina and Miss Mirrie-that’s when I heard it.”
“At what time?”
“Ten minutes past seven, because she was in the middle of her dressing and she run over to Miss Georgina’s sitting-room to take the call.”
“Who did, Miss Bell-who took the call? Miss Georgina?”
“Well then, she didn’t. He wasn’t Miss Georgina’s sort- anyone could tell that.”
“Was it Miss Mirrie?”
Maggie had coloured right up. The flush made her features look very sharp and thin. She hadn’t meant to give Miss Mirrie away, not if it was ever so. That bit about her having run over to take the call in Miss Georgina’s sitting-room had just slipped out and no harm meant. But now that it was out she couldn’t take it back. Not that she had said the name, but name or no name you couldn’t miss that it was bound to be Miss Mirrie, with her room just over the way from Miss Georgina’s.
Miss Silver had missed nothing.
“It was Miss Mirrie who took the call on the night of the dance?”
“Well then, it was.”
Miss Silver smiled.
“Miss Mirrie is a very pretty girl. It would not surprise me to hear that a good many young men would be glad if she rang them up.”
Maggie nodded.
“They say she’s going steady with Mr. Johnny. But this one she was ringing up before the dance-bit of a jealous one I should say he was. He’d got to see her. Right up on his high horse he was about it. He would come down on his motorbike and he’d be out on the terrace just before twelve, and she was to come out and see him. She said something about showing him her dress-ever so pretty it was, all white frills. And he come in as sharp as sharp and said dresses weren’t nothing to him, but he’d got to see her and tell her about new arrangements for where to write. Said the old ones weren’t safe any more, and nor was the phone, and she wasn’t to ring him up on any account or there’d be trouble. And he rung off without giving her time to say anything.”
“You are sure it was Miss Mirrie he was speaking to?”
“Oh, yes, there was several times she tried to get a word in and he wouldn’t let her. Right away at the beginning he said he doesn’t want anything out of her, only to listen to what he’d got to say and do like he told her.” Maggie tossed her head. “Well, I know what I’d have said to him, talking like that! But all she did was to say, ‘Oh!’ and shut up like he told her.”
“You are sure about its being the same voice that was speaking to Mr. Field on Tuesday night?”
“I didn’t mean to say, because of Miss Mirrie, but I’m sure all right.”
There was a vexed sound in Maggie’s voice. She lay immovable on her sofa, but Miss Silver was aware of a withdrawal. She said,
“Was that the only time you heard Miss Mirrie talking to this man?”
Maggie did not stop to think. She saw what she thought was a way out and she made a dash for it. She tossed her head again and said,
“Why, she couldn’t get a word in edgeways, which isn’t what I’d call talking to anyone!”
Miss Silver ignored the sharpness of her tone.
“No, you made it quite clear that it was this man who was doing the talking. What I am asking you now is whether there was any other occasion when you heard the same voice speaking, either to Miss Mirrie or to anyone else.”