The Deputy-manager of the Shan Hills Mining Company, Mr Harold Fairfax, received Superintendent Hannasyde with anxious deference, and raised no objection at all to the Superintendent's request that he might be allowed to question certain members of the staff. Mr Fairfax was a spare little man of middle age, and seemed to be in a perpetual state of being worried. He could throw no light on the mystery of Arnold Vereker's death. “You see,” he said unhappily, “so many people disliked Mr Vereker. He was a hard man, oh, a very hard man! I - I believe he trusted me. I like to think he did. We never quarrelled. Sometimes he would be very short with me, but I have known him for a great many years, and I think I understood him. It is a dreadful thing, his murder; an appalling thing. And all, perhaps, because someone couldn't make allowances for his temper!”
Miss Miller, Arnold Vereker's secretary, was more helpful. She was a businesslike-looking woman, of an age hard to determine. She fixed her cold, competent eyes on the Superintendent, and answered his questions with a composure tinged with contempt. She told him the exact hour of Arnold Vereker's arrival at the office on Saturday morning; she recited a list of the engagements he had had, and described his callers. “At five-and-twenty minutes past ten,” she said briskly, “Mr Vereker sent for Mr Mesurier, who remained in his room for twenty-seven minutes.”
“You are very exact, Miss Miller,” said the Superintendent politely.
She smiled with tolerant superiority. “Certainly. I pride myself on being efficient. Mr Mesurier was sent for immediately after the departure of Sir Henry Watson, whose appointment, as I have informed you, was at ten o'clock. Mr Cedric Johnson, of Messrs Johnson, Hayes & Heverside, had an appointment with Mr Vereker at eleven, and arrived seven minutes early. I informed Mr Vereker at once, through the medium of the house telephone, and Mr Mesurier then came out, and, I presume, returned to his own office.”
“Thank you,” said the Superintendent. “Can you tell me if there was any unpleasantness during any of Mr Vereker's appointments that morning?”
“Yes; Mr Vereker's interview with Mr Mesurier was, I imagine, extremely unpleasant.”
“Why do you imagine that, Miss Miller?”
She raised her brows. “The room which is my office communicates with the late Mr Vereker's. I could hardly fail to be aware of a quarrel taking place behind the intervening door.”
“Do you know what the quarrel was about?”
“If I did I should immediately have volunteered the information, which must necessarily be of importance. But it is not my custom either to listen at keyholes, or to waste my employer's time. During Mr Vereker's interview with Mr Mesurier, and his subsequent one with Mr Cedric Johnson, I occupied myself with Mr Vereker's correspondence, using the dictaphone and a typewriter. What was said, therefore, I did not hear, or wish to hear. From time to time both voices were raised to what I can only describe as shouting-pitch. More than that I am not prepared to say.”