Phyllis Bentley
Miss  Phipps  on  the Telephone

Everything is grist to the writer's milland to the detective's.
Even a midnight phone call that is apparently a wrong number
can arouse Miss Phipps's creative impulses . . .
Detective: MISS MARIAN PHIPPS

The telephone rang. Miss Phipps, dragged up from the cosy
depths of her first sleep, mumbled, rolled over, and took up the
phone from the table beside her bed. The time, she noted from the
illuminated electric clock, was three minutes past midnight.
"Tottenham three four one eight," Miss Phipps said crossly.
"Tettenham three four one eight?" queried a voice.
"Yes," said Miss Phipps, noting that the voice was young, girl-
ish, not very well educated, with a definitely northern intonation.
She corrected herself and gave the new exchange, formerly known
as Tettenham.
"Are you Miss Phipps?"
"Yes."
"Miss Marian Phipps?"
"Yes."
In anguish Miss Phipps ran rapidly over in her mind all her
friends and relations and their present whereabouts. There was
her niece with her family, there was Inspector Tarrant with his
family. Which of them had had an accident? Which were near
enough to London to warrant the police calling her rather than a
relative? Which? Why? Where?
"Have you a brother called Randall Harvey?" continued the
voice.
"No!" said Miss Phipps explosively, remembering her well-loved
brother who had perished in the Normandy landing.
"No?" said the voice incredulously. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely sure."
"Or a half brother?"
"No!"
"Perhaps your housekeeper has a brother of that name?"
"I have no housekeeper."
"Oh. Well." There was a pause in which the voice could be
heard calling briskly, "Mr. Harvey! Mr. Harvey!" Then there was
a pause in which nothing could be heard. Finally the voice re-
sumed. "There's been some mistake," it said on a note of disap-
pointment. "Good night. Sorry to have troubled you."
"Well, good night," said Miss Phipps, taken aback.
She replaced the telephone with an angry clash, and, rolling
over, buried her head in the pillow and tried to fall asleep agam.
But she could not. It was not so much a matter of sleep inter-
rupted as of wounded pride. Miss Phipps was a novelist and a
writer of detective stories. She often began a story by imagining
some mysterious situation, then thinking up circumstances which
would explain it. But try as she would, she could not explain that
telephone call.
It was a local call, since the girl had not begun with the 01
which nowadays preceded all London calls from a distance. The
girl was northern, probably Yorkshire, so that she may have been
somebody connected with Miss Phipps's niece, who lived in that
county. But she seemed to think some Mr. Harvey had known
Miss Phipps and claimed to be her brother.
Miss Phipps, as a woman living alone with her name in the
telephone directory, was not unfamiliar with calls from young
men who wanted to "Come round and have a good time," promis-
ing to be her friend if she would let them. All such callers she
terrified out of their wits by assuming a booming schoolmistressy
Oxford-English voice, addressing them as "young man," remind-
ing them of their mothers, and threatening to inform the police.
But young men of that sort, in that kind of situation, did not em-
ploy a young girl to do their telephoning for them. Moreoverand
this puzzled Miss Phippsthe girl had sounded genuinely disap-
pointed. She seemed really sorry that Miss Phipps had no brother
named Randall. Or was she sorry for some other reason?
A mistaken identity, that's all it was, Miss Phipps told herself.
Randall Harvey wanted another Miss Marian Phipps, of course.
He was a visitor from Yorkshire who had a friend in London who
had a sister named Marian Phipps who lived in Tottenham. Miss
Phipps sat up crossly, put on the light, and took up the telephone
directory. There was no other Marian Phipps in the Tottenham
section. In fact, there were no other Phippses there at all.
Miss Phipps gave a loud angry snort. From under the pillow she
drew the notebook and pencil she put there every night. She
found her reading glasses and put them on. Sighing, she took up
her pencil and wrote down carefully the exact time of the call and
every word of the conversation.
At ten o'clock the next morning, as Miss Phipps was sitting at
her desk struggling with a plot which declined to grow, a ring
sounded at the door of her flat. Exclaiming irritably at the inter-
ruption, she bounced to the door and flung it open.
A young man stood there. He was in his twenties, Miss Phipps
judged, personable, even handsome, dark, with hair and sideburns
longish, but not too long to be acceptable to Miss Phipps's old-
fashioned taste. His eyes were brown and sparkling, his suit,
shirt, tie, and shoes almost up to advertisement standards. Miss
Phipps looked at him with interest but coldly, suspecting a sales-
man.
"Good morning," he said.
Miss Phipps remained markedly silent.
"I came to apologize for that stupid telephone call last night,"
he went on.
Miss Phipps, unable to resist an expression of genuine human
feeling, thawed.
"What was it all about?" she asked.
"Well" began the young man.
His pause and perplexed eyebrows skillfully suggested that the
tale was too long to be told from a threshold.
"Well, come in," said Miss Phipps, still rather cross. "Sit down
and tell me all. But I warn you," she added grimly, "the story had
better be good."
The young man, seating himself, cleared his throat.
He's going to lie to me, reflected the experienced Miss Phipps.
"We wanted to find out if you were in. So my sister"
"Now listen to me," said Miss Phipps kindly. "The young lady
was probably not your sister, and there was no need to invent Mr.
Randall Harvey in order to find out whether or not I was in."
"Well, my wife then."
"That's better. Is she really your wife, eh?"
"Yes!" shouted the young man. "What do you take me for?"
"Keep cool. Why did you invent Mr. Randall Harvey?"
"I  didn't invent him,"  said the young man.  "We  landed in
France together on D-Day!"
"Now, come, young man!" Miss Phipps said with some anger.
"You're far too young for that. On D-Day you would be how old?
Let's say, three?"
"My father and Mr. Harvey" began the young man.
"Your father! Well, at least your chronology is improving."
"As a matter of fact"
"That phrase usually precedes a lie, my dear boy."
"You're too clever for me, and thafs a fact," admitted the young
man, starting to rise.
"Why not tell me the truth?" suggested Miss Phipps mildly. "I
am curious to know why you invented a Mr. Randall Harvey."
"I didn't invent him. He's all too real. He cheated me out of a
sum of money, then said his sister would pay."
"But my name is not Harvey."
"He said you were a best-selling novelist who wrote under a
pseudonym."
"Ha!"
"I saw paperbacks by you on the station bookstall."
"And so?"
"He had a northern accent and I saw a picture of a mill chim-
ney on one of your book jackets, so it seemed a good guess you
were from the north."
"Better and better."
"I have heard," faltered the young man, suddenly turning scar-
let, "that you could write a check for ten thousand pounds and
never feel it."
"Oh, my dear boy," said Miss Phipps sadly. "Very few people
can write a check for ten thousand pounds and not feel it. Those
who can are usually not aging novelists. How were you proposing
to make me write this check?"
"Oh, I didn't have any such grand aspirations. I just hopedfor
a little help."
"Now at last you're talking some sense."
"You sounded kind on the telephone," said the lad hopefully.
"How much do you want, and why?"
"My wife and I are actors in a touring group," began the young
man. "And you see"
"Don't tell me the manager went bankrupt and there was no
salary for you?"
"Why shouldn't I tell you that?" said the young man on a note
of pique.
"Because it's not with it, my dear boyit's out of date. That sort
of thing doesn't happen nowadays. You have a trade union, Equity,
you know; you can appeal to them for help."
"Unfortunately it isn't an Equity matter. This fellow Harvey
iswasa friend of mine. He's been stealing money from people's
coat pockets; somebody suspected and threatened to bring a court
action if he didn't pay it all back. Of course, if he once got hauled
up by the police his career would be done forand he's quite a
good actor, you know. That's the pity of it. Yes, really a very
promising actor. So I lent him the money on his assurance he'd
pay me back, but he didn't, and now we haven't the money to pay
our hotel bill."
"Where is this hotel?"
"In Yorkshire."
"What are you doing in London, then?"
"We came last night after the show." (After the show, mused
Miss Phipps, reflecting sadly on the distance from Yorkshire, the
probable curtain time of the show, and the hour of the telephone
call.) "To see if we could touch my wife's father. He's not a bad old
boy, and the sum isn't very large. But he's away"
"On holiday?"
"In New York on business."
"Do you know," said Miss Phipps with some solemnity, "I'm
rather surprised that when you found out I was alonefor that
was really the object of the Harvey ploy, wasn't it?"
"Well, y-yes."
"I thought so. I'm rather surprised," repeated Miss Phipps, "that
you didn't try a spot of burglary."
"Oh, I wanted to," confessed the young man with a paradoxical
air of virtue, "but Celeste was afraid you might get hurt. She's
having a baby, you know."
"I'm glad Celeste has so much sense. And so you thought you'd
come round this morning and try a sob story on a silly old
spinster-novelist living alone."
"I don't understand you, Miss Phipps," said the young man
haughtily, springing to his feet.
"By the way, what is your name?"
"Mark."
-  "Mark what?"
"You can't expect me to tell you that," said the young man.
"No. I don't expect so. Ah, there you are, Harrison," said Miss
Phipps cheerfully, as the door opened and a large solid man in a
doorman's uniform filled the gap. She now remembered with
gratitude Inspector Tarrant's insistence on the installation of an
emergency summoning bell from her flat to the front entrance.
"You rang, Madam?"
"Yes. Just see Mr. Mark out, will you? Off the premises,
please."
"Is he annoying you? Shall I ring for the police, Miss Phipps?"
"No. I don't wish to prefer charges," said Miss Phipps.
With some care Mark suppressed a sigh of relief.
"You, Mark, are a confidence-trickster," Miss Phipps told him.
"I don't recall what the modern phrase iscon man, is it?but
I'm sure you understand what I mean. I don't believe a single
word of anything you've told me. Would a five-pound note be any
use to you?"
"No!" Mark burst out in a fury.
"I thought not. Your suit is too expensive. To conclude, if there
is a choice for me between tricking and being tricked, I prefer to
be tricked. I prefer being the lamb to the tiger."
"You can keep it. It's a silly choice."
"Not in the long run, young man. Next time things won't go so
well for you. I seriously suggest that you turn to honest work."
"What sort of honest work is open to me, do you think?" cried
Mark with bitter resentment.  <
"Why not try writing for the magazines?" suggested Miss
Phipps, handing him a copy ofEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
"You have a genuine gift for story-telling. But my dear Mark,
you must get your details right. Verisimilitude matters, - you
know"
"Thanks for the advice," said the young man sarcastically.
"And I also suggest that you get married."
Mark snorted and withdrew, clutching, Miss Phipps noted with
satisfaction, the magazine.