“I don’t see as how it could have been,” Lil said. “I mean, who would ever connect up electric wires to a telephone switchboard? Only someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and nobody like that has ever been in here. We ain’t had no kind of work done, or outsiders in here.”

“There was that man about the clock,” the other girl reminded her.

“Oh, right. A man came in the other day—day before poor Glad’s tragedy, it were. Said he was sent to repair the clock. He weren’t here long, fiddled about a bit and then he went.”

“What did he look like?”

“Nothing much. About forty-something, I’d say. Thin bloke. Big mustache. Glasses. Wearing overalls.”

“He didn’t give his name or say who had sent him?”

“We were busy. He seemed to know what he was doing, and he said he’d been sent from the town hall, so we left him to it.”

“Thank you,” Darcy said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

“Do you reckon they’ll ever catch the person what did this?” Lil asked.

“We hope so,” Darcy said. “Oh, and tell me—did Gladys have anyone who might have carried a grudge against her? An old boyfriend, maybe? A neighbor she had annoyed?”

They frowned, thinking. “Like I said”—the other girl glanced at Lil before speaking—“she did like to gossip so maybe that got her in trouble. But she weren’t the sort for boyfriends. Not much of a catch, you might say. She got her romance from the cinema.”

“Should we go to the town hall?” I asked as we came out again to the busy high street. “They’d know who was sent to repair a clock, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t see how that could have any bearing on Gladys,” Darcy said. “If he’d rigged up the switchboard to kill somebody while he was there, he’d have killed one of the other girls before Gladys came on duty in the early morning.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Granddad commented. “They let us in and chatted to us easily enough. Who is to say that people don’t often pop in for a chat and that they don’t even remember them afterward?”

“Good point,” Darcy said. “Emphasizing that we’re on a wild-goose chase.”

“Fine,” I said angrily. “You’ve made it quite clear that I’m an idiot and we’re wasting our time.”

I started walking fast toward the motorcar. Darcy hurried to catch up with me. “Nobody says you’re an idiot. I just don’t think we have any way of achieving what you hope to achieve. We’re amateurs, Georgie. We have no access to police records.”