1
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:17,631
From the case log. April, twenty twenty-two. Hollywood, Los Angeles. Tuesday evening, the twelfth, in our converted craftsman house above Echo Park, with the radio still quarrelling over Sunday's awards show.

2
00:00:18,151 --> 00:00:25,457
Holmes knelt on the drive, pouring plaster into a coyote's paw print. He had been at such small work for weeks.

3
00:00:25,977 --> 00:00:32,457
I stood on the lawn in wet socks, at war with a sprinkler timer that fired at dusk, not dawn.

4
00:00:33,477 --> 00:00:38,103
Stop, you wretched thing. I set this for dawn, Holmes, I distinctly—

5
00:00:37,712 --> 00:00:42,245
You pressed the little sun. On that model the little sun means sunset.

6
00:00:42,765 --> 00:00:45,026
Who builds a sprinkler with opinions?

7
00:00:46,046 --> 00:00:50,584
There. Silence, and my socks are a total loss.

8
00:00:51,104 --> 00:00:54,515
Drip somewhere else. This plaster is nearly set.

9
00:00:55,035 --> 00:00:57,131
All that for a neighbour's dog.

10
00:00:57,651 --> 00:01:03,318
Dogs wander, Watson. This animal walks a ruled line, past your rubbish bins, nightly.

11
00:01:03,838 --> 00:01:07,038
He's welcome to them. He can have the timer too.

12
00:01:07,558 --> 00:01:11,238
Get it in his jaws and I'll cast that as well.

13
00:01:11,758 --> 00:01:12,756
Very funny.

14
00:01:13,776 --> 00:01:15,788
Your phone is walking off the rail.

15
00:01:16,308 --> 00:01:19,378
My hands are plaster to the wrist. You answer it.

16
00:01:20,398 --> 00:01:22,773
You're on speaker, whoever you are.

17
00:01:23,293 --> 00:01:28,764
Mr Holmes? Vivian Stroud, Burbank. Find somewhere to sit.

18
00:01:29,284 --> 00:01:31,486
I'm kneeling on gravel, Ms Stroud.

19
00:01:32,006 --> 00:01:38,349
A photographer I've never met, Nora Lindgren, has just phoned me, stranded in Jakarta, and she—

20
00:01:37,966 --> 00:01:40,728
Never mind her. Your own purpose in phoning me?

21
00:01:41,248 --> 00:01:43,690
I need you at my Burbank studio tonight.

22
00:01:44,710 --> 00:01:48,272
Gone, without a goodbye. Shall I find the car keys?

23
00:01:48,792 --> 00:01:57,422
Studio chiefs have lawyers and stranded travellers have consulates, Watson. My last three weeks paid nothing, and your clinic's rent falls due on Friday, so—

24
00:01:57,047 --> 00:01:59,165
Since when has my rent troubled you?

25
00:01:59,685 --> 00:02:05,885
Since you took to reciting it over breakfast. Why drive across the hills for someone else's bad evening?

26
00:02:06,405 --> 00:02:15,325
Look at who got the call. Of everyone she could phone from Jakarta, a stranded photographer chose a Burbank studio chief she has never met.

27
00:02:15,845 --> 00:02:18,139
Annoyingly good.

28
00:02:18,659 --> 00:02:19,581
And Friday?

29
00:02:20,101 --> 00:02:24,963
Friday can look after itself until Thursday. Keys, Watson, and dry socks.

30
00:02:25,483 --> 00:02:28,590
Will you wash first, or shall I warn Burbank?

31
00:02:29,110 --> 00:02:31,714
The hose... is on the way to the car.

32
00:02:32,734 --> 00:02:40,203
Case log, same evening: we left the paw print to set, the timer to its opinions, and the rent to Friday.

33
00:02:45,223 --> 00:02:51,331
Burbank had to wait. Holmes stopped the car at the foot of our own hill, outside a stucco walk-up.

34
00:02:51,851 --> 00:02:53,929
She did say tonight, Holmes.

35
00:02:54,449 --> 00:03:02,529
Nora Lindgren's website gives this address, four streets below our own. A client tells me what suits her. I'd sooner see the rooms.

36
00:03:03,049 --> 00:03:09,219
That's Nora's buzzer. I'm Owen, I look after the building. Nobody ever comes about Nora.

37
00:03:09,739 --> 00:03:13,925
Holmes. This is Dr. Watson. Her friends are uneasy.

38
00:03:14,445 --> 00:03:18,581
Then come on up. Anybody asks after her, that's a good day.

39
00:03:19,601 --> 00:03:22,590
Fresh in here, for rooms empty all this time.

40
00:03:23,110 --> 00:03:27,242
I air them whenever she asks. Open the windows, run the taps.

41
00:03:27,762 --> 00:03:35,219
Nobody's aired the back room. That's a darkroom, cold as a morgue drawer, and the fixer's dried to crust in the tray.

42
00:03:35,739 --> 00:03:41,589
Left in the tray. A careful woman does that only if she expects to be back before it spoils.

43
00:03:42,109 --> 00:03:43,789
She's careful, all right.

44
00:03:44,309 --> 00:03:53,312
Here, on the table. "Two months' rent owing. No hurry, but do call. O. Rusk." Awfully polite, for a demand.

45
00:03:53,832 --> 00:03:59,754
Owners make me send those. I slip them inside, so the neighbors can't read them.

46
00:04:00,274 --> 00:04:01,264
Decent of you.

47
00:04:01,784 --> 00:04:06,069
The calendar stops at September. Seven months, on what?

48
00:04:06,589 --> 00:04:12,108
One film job, over in Jakarta. Some big studio promised it to her.

49
00:04:13,128 --> 00:04:15,563
She only packed for two weeks...

50
00:04:20,583 --> 00:04:29,442
The lot was still lit when we reached it, and Vivian Stroud received us on a dubbing stage, an actress frozen mid-sob on the screen behind her.

51
00:04:30,462 --> 00:04:38,127
Will I keep the actors on, Ms. Stroud? Oh, visitors! Bridie Boyle, gentlemen. Dialects and despair.

52
00:04:38,647 --> 00:04:41,884
Not now, Bridie. Go teach somebody something.

53
00:04:42,404 --> 00:04:46,362
Grand so. Mind her, gentlemen, she bites.

54
00:04:46,882 --> 00:04:58,412
I took that call myself and wrote it down. Her words, one line. "You told me so kindly on the telephone my expenses would be repaid, and they remain unpaid."

55
00:04:58,932 --> 00:05:02,132
Stranded in Jakarta, and that's the whole of—

56
00:05:01,810 --> 00:05:09,427
That, and "Oh good, it's you." She knew my voice. I never— I never spoke to that girl in my life.

57
00:05:09,947 --> 00:05:13,599
That's why she picked you, then. To her you're no stranger.

58
00:05:14,119 --> 00:05:23,288
Listen to how polite it is, though. She isn't accusing anyone, she's reminding a friend. Someone has been telephoning that young woman in your voice.

59
00:05:23,808 --> 00:05:25,888
Good grief.

60
00:05:26,408 --> 00:05:34,833
Nobody's called me kind on a telephone in thirty years. My investors hear a stranger can pick up a phone as me, they're gone.

61
00:05:35,353 --> 00:05:37,063
Insulted, or frightened?

62
00:05:37,583 --> 00:05:42,795
Both. Someone out there's being me, and kinder at it.

63
00:05:47,815 --> 00:05:55,754
Grey felt swallowed every noise in the dubbing booth, and from it Holmes rang Jakarta, where tomorrow morning had already begun.

64
00:05:56,774 --> 00:06:00,844
Miss Lindgren. Sherlock Holmes, with Dr. Watson, in Burbank.

65
00:06:01,364 --> 00:06:06,140
Oh, yes, she said someone would, sorry, it's a bad line.

66
00:06:06,660 --> 00:06:11,220
My recorder's running, for the case log. It runs wherever we go. You don't mind?

67
00:06:11,740 --> 00:06:13,011
No, please.

68
00:06:14,031 --> 00:06:18,546
Motorbikes under your window and no air conditioner. You've moved somewhere cheap.

69
00:06:19,066 --> 00:06:25,253
A guesthouse, sorry, over a noodle shop. It was a hotel, at first.

70
00:06:25,773 --> 00:06:26,523
The job.

71
00:06:27,043 --> 00:06:40,189
Ms. Stroud rang me herself, in September. Stills on a picture here, two weeks, expenses repaid once I flew out. Then a driver, and permits, and every permit was cash to him.

72
00:06:40,709 --> 00:06:41,432
How much?

73
00:06:41,952 --> 00:06:49,782
Fifty-two thousand dollars. Sorry. That's my savings, and, well, my cameras...

74
00:06:50,302 --> 00:06:51,902
Oh, no.

75
00:06:52,422 --> 00:06:54,693
And when it ran out, you rang Burbank.

76
00:06:55,213 --> 00:07:20,697
The studio exchange. Nobody'd heard of any picture. So I tried four one nine oh, her private line. She gave me that here, my second week. And it was— it was dead. Just a dead line. So, back to the exchange, every morning, until they put me through today. Same voice, Doctor. Same voice, and she'd never heard of me...

77
00:07:21,217 --> 00:07:24,734
Your one line to Ms. Stroud left that number out. Why?

78
00:07:25,254 --> 00:07:34,800
It felt like a confidence. Sorry, I know how that sounds. A woman like that gives you her own number, you don't go repeating it.

79
00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:38,499
You're still keeping faith with her. Who else has it?

80
00:07:39,019 --> 00:07:42,450
It's in my notebook, and I've told nobody but you.

81
00:07:47,970 --> 00:07:55,291
The stairs to the front office lay beyond a long corridor of framed posters, and Bridie Boyle appointed herself our guide.

82
00:07:56,311 --> 00:08:01,774
Mind the cable, gentlemen. Forty years of masterpieces, and the odd war crime.

83
00:08:02,294 --> 00:08:07,026
You tick your nail on some frames and skip others, Miss Boyle. What did you coach?

84
00:08:07,546 --> 00:08:16,629
Am I ticking? God. That one, a Georgia widow, from nothing, in nine days. That one, the Romanian spy.

85
00:08:17,149 --> 00:08:20,479
I saw that one. The reviews raved about her accent.

86
00:08:20,999 --> 00:08:23,738
They did, doctor. They did.

87
00:08:24,258 --> 00:08:29,789
Yet you tick them like a prisoner ticking off days. Nobody counts what they've been thanked for.

88
00:08:30,309 --> 00:08:39,903
My mother, God rest her, sat in the Carrick in Dublin for every one. Right through the credits, the lights up, the ushers sweeping round her.

89
00:08:40,423 --> 00:08:41,578
Looking for you.

90
00:08:42,098 --> 00:08:50,921
Looking for me. The next one, Mammy, I'd tell her, Ms. Stroud's promised it— she's promised—

91
00:08:50,520 --> 00:08:52,465
And struck it off each time.

92
00:08:52,985 --> 00:08:57,554
Thirty-one pictures, Mr. Holmes, and not one with my name.

93
00:09:02,574 --> 00:09:10,483
Vivian Stroud's office overlooked the lot, blinds drawn, an ashtray defying the fire code. She offered us no chairs.

94
00:09:11,503 --> 00:09:20,842
Seven months that voice has held, down a bad line from Jakarta. No party trick lasts that long. Who has heard you for years, Ms. Stroud?

95
00:09:21,362 --> 00:09:28,786
I've been on the phone since Corbin. Agents, assistants, every kid who ever put me through. Pick one.

96
00:09:29,306 --> 00:09:34,496
Fifty-two thousand dollars, across an ocean. That wants police, and whatever your—

97
00:09:34,110 --> 00:09:39,216
No police. My investors sign a week from Monday. You close this first.

98
00:09:39,736 --> 00:09:46,132
One lieutenant, then, as a quiet favor to me. Nothing filed, nobody in uniform at your gate.

99
00:09:46,652 --> 00:09:49,212
And when your lieutenant asks who can do me?

100
00:09:49,732 --> 00:09:55,369
You've known since the stage. You sent one person out of the room before you'd read me that line.

101
00:09:55,889 --> 00:10:01,963
Fine. Bridie. Ask the woman who sells voices by the hour.

102
00:10:02,483 --> 00:10:03,180
Thank you.

103
00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:15,338
Mirrors, a desk telephone and a wall of labelled tape filled the coaching room, and Bridie Boyle had her good humour back.

104
00:10:15,858 --> 00:10:19,106
How's a voice taught, Miss Boyle? Where do you begin?

105
00:10:19,626 --> 00:10:28,882
At the breath, Mr. Holmes. Any fool can do the words. Where does she snatch her air? What does she swallow before a word she dislikes?

106
00:10:29,402 --> 00:10:30,563
Is that so.

107
00:10:31,083 --> 00:10:34,361
And you could do that with anybody? Your employer, say?

108
00:10:34,881 --> 00:10:41,950
Doctor, I can do Vivian to the breath. But not cold, and not without tea. The kettle's next door.

109
00:10:42,970 --> 00:10:45,564
She never asked why we want to know, Watson.

110
00:10:46,084 --> 00:10:47,077
Odd, that.

111
00:10:48,097 --> 00:10:50,302
Coaching room, Dr. Watson speaking.

112
00:10:50,822 --> 00:10:58,577
Doctor. Vivian Stroud. Take the grey binder off that shelf and bring it up to my office. Now.

113
00:10:59,097 --> 00:11:01,978
Yes, of course, Ms. Stroud. Right— right away.

114
00:11:02,998 --> 00:11:05,539
The grey binder, Holmes. Come on, she wants it—

115
00:11:05,143 --> 00:11:08,869
Look at you. On your feet with your shoulders back.

116
00:11:09,389 --> 00:11:09,856
What?

117
00:11:10,876 --> 00:11:17,414
Put it back, doctor, that's my invoices. You stood up for them, God love you!

118
00:11:17,934 --> 00:11:25,020
That was— that was you? You even caught her breath before her own name. I'd have sworn to it in court.

119
00:11:25,540 --> 00:11:32,819
And he listens to chests for a living. That takes more than pitch, Miss Boyle. You've been paying attention for years, and—

120
00:11:32,435 --> 00:11:39,377
Years of it, and the meter running. Now, it's gone eight and I'm away. Goodnight to you.

121
00:11:40,397 --> 00:11:46,435
Holmes, she walked next door and became that woman. If it isn't her, who else on earth could do that voice?

122
00:11:51,455 --> 00:11:57,181
Lieutenant Quintero came to the dubbing stage next morning, and Vivian Stroud sent down for her coach.

123
00:11:58,201 --> 00:12:03,380
Miss Boyle, Lieutenant Quintero. Homicide, and here as a favor to me.

124
00:12:03,900 --> 00:12:07,141
Homicide! And who's dead, the picture?

125
00:12:07,661 --> 00:12:12,018
Nobody I know of. Where do you spend your nights?

126
00:12:12,538 --> 00:12:18,080
At home, lieutenant, with a book and a hot water bottle. Quiet as a nun.

127
00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:28,532
Your landlady gave me a statement at breakfast. Car out by nine, engine still ticking at six. According to her, you're gone every night.

128
00:12:29,052 --> 00:12:33,084
She's a nosy old article, so she is, and if she thinks—

129
00:12:32,682 --> 00:12:41,230
She also sees envelopes of cash going out from your kitchen table. Ms. Stroud, does a coach's wage run to envelopes?

130
00:12:41,750 --> 00:12:43,270
Not on my lot.

131
00:12:43,790 --> 00:12:44,241
Huh.

132
00:12:44,761 --> 00:12:51,544
I've pupils— I've pupils of my own, cash in the hand. Actors pay well not to be seen learning.

133
00:12:52,064 --> 00:12:56,429
You answered the money at once, Miss Boyle, and the hours not at all.

134
00:12:56,949 --> 00:12:58,052
Did I, now.

135
00:12:58,572 --> 00:13:09,585
I stood up for that voice of yours, and I heard you in that corridor. A woman who says "not one with my name" like that has every reason to go telephoning under Ms. Stroud's.

136
00:13:10,105 --> 00:13:18,374
Credits. All this over credits. That's your case, Holmes. Bridie, you're finished here.

137
00:13:18,894 --> 00:13:21,301
You can't— I've a room full of—

138
00:13:20,905 --> 00:13:26,760
Your pass, on the console. A guard walks you in to clear that room, and you've got the week.

139
00:13:27,280 --> 00:13:31,713
Last chance, Miss Boyle. Where do you go?

140
00:13:32,733 --> 00:13:35,371
There's your pass. It's all you'll get from me.

141
00:13:40,391 --> 00:13:46,809
Back up our hill that night, Holmes stood his plaster paw on the kitchen table and made me argue my case to it.

142
00:13:47,829 --> 00:13:53,421
You keep saying "that woman." Her name, Watson, and the whole case, aloud.

143
00:13:53,941 --> 00:14:09,417
All right. Bridie Boyle does Vivian Stroud well enough to put me on my feet. That's one. Her nights are empty and she won't fill them. Cash goes out, from pupils nobody may name. And she's hated her employer for thirty-one pictures.

144
00:14:09,937 --> 00:14:10,807
And the rest?

145
00:14:11,327 --> 00:14:17,597
She lost her living this morning on my say-so. So I'd very much like to be right...

146
00:14:18,117 --> 00:14:22,575
Stroud was ready to fire her anyway. All you did was give her the excuse.

147
00:14:23,095 --> 00:14:23,812
Is it her?

148
00:14:24,332 --> 00:14:32,154
I've got a voice and a grudge. All a voice can do is ask. Somebody had to be handed the money. Where did fifty-two thousand dollars go?

149
00:14:37,174 --> 00:14:44,963
By dusk next day, traffic on Sunset Boulevard had stopped dead, so Holmes wedged his phone in the dash and rang Jakarta.

150
00:14:45,983 --> 00:14:49,305
Miss Lindgren, the driver's receipts. Did you keep them?

151
00:14:49,825 --> 00:14:59,364
All of them, sorry, in a shoebox. Stamped on the back: Remit to Box two one four, Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

152
00:14:59,884 --> 00:15:02,963
A mail drop. He wrote down where the money—

153
00:15:02,604 --> 00:15:11,303
Goes, yes, and a thief wouldn't write that down. So the driver only forwards takings to an address he was given. Quintero can sit on that box.

154
00:15:11,823 --> 00:15:15,514
Those calls from Ms. Stroud, Miss Lindgren. What time of day?

155
00:15:16,034 --> 00:15:19,007
Mornings here. Always mornings.

156
00:15:19,527 --> 00:15:20,220
Ah.

157
00:15:20,740 --> 00:15:26,450
That's our evening, Holmes. After eight, nobody can say where Bridie Boyle is. I want those dates.

158
00:15:26,970 --> 00:15:36,986
No, I never kept dates, sorry. When I'd had enough, I'd book a seat, send word to have my rooms aired, and within the hour she'd ring.

159
00:15:37,506 --> 00:15:38,326
Every time?

160
00:15:38,846 --> 00:15:47,721
Four times. Five. So kind, you know? I used to think, that's how you get to run a studio. You just know.

161
00:15:48,241 --> 00:15:49,408
And you stayed.

162
00:15:49,928 --> 00:15:57,870
I stayed. Mr. Holmes, sorry, one more thing. Are my rooms — are they still waiting for me?

163
00:16:03,390 --> 00:16:09,853
Up in the front office a victory cigarette was burning when we came back, and Vivian Stroud did not trouble to rise.

164
00:16:10,373 --> 00:16:13,733
I fired your thief, Holmes. Send me a bill.

165
00:16:14,253 --> 00:16:18,390
One number first. Four one nine oh. What is it?

166
00:16:18,910 --> 00:16:21,441
Sounds like one of ours. Why?

167
00:16:21,961 --> 00:16:30,856
Does the ledger care? A woman on the phone since Corbin keeps her switchboard books. That fat green spine behind you.

168
00:16:31,376 --> 00:16:33,056
Oh, for crying out loud.

169
00:16:34,076 --> 00:16:38,905
That board? We ripped it out four years back. What's any of this got to—

170
00:16:38,509 --> 00:16:42,109
Just read it as written, would you? My recorder likes a clean copy.

171
00:16:42,629 --> 00:16:50,420
"Four one nine oh. Night switchboard room only, sole operator one Rusk." Not an office line.

172
00:16:50,940 --> 00:16:54,718
One room, then, and dark for four years...

173
00:16:55,238 --> 00:16:58,804
That's it? He's gone quiet. Does he do that?

174
00:16:59,324 --> 00:17:02,319
Almost never. Who was this Rusk?

175
00:17:02,839 --> 00:17:11,499
Bridie ran late sessions for years, in and out of that room. Rusk? Some night man I sacked by memo. Your coach knew that board.

176
00:17:16,519 --> 00:17:24,082
A guard walked Bridie Boyle back through the gate that evening, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in the felt with Jakarta on the speaker.

177
00:17:24,602 --> 00:17:29,973
One hour on my lot, Holmes, because you asked. Then she's back outside the—

178
00:17:29,573 --> 00:17:36,282
The gate, I know. He promised me my name, Ms. Stroud, cleared or buried. I'd have crawled in.

179
00:17:37,802 --> 00:17:40,006
You're packing already, Miss Lindgren.

180
00:17:40,526 --> 00:17:46,873
Sorry. It helps. I've got the— the guesthouse phone's here and my cell beside it.

181
00:17:47,393 --> 00:17:54,433
Send your usual word about the rooms. Have them aired. You fly home tonight, on your last five thousand dollars.

182
00:17:54,953 --> 00:17:59,197
But I haven't got the— sorry, I haven't got the money, I—

183
00:17:58,811 --> 00:18:03,398
Say so anyway. If your cell rings, set it on speaker by this phone.

184
00:18:03,918 --> 00:18:05,554
Cute.

185
00:18:06,574 --> 00:18:10,999
Forty minutes by my watch, Miss Boyle, and that nail hasn't stopped.

186
00:18:11,519 --> 00:18:18,099
She's boxed in here with no phone, so nothing rings. There's your answer, Holmes. Now can we—

187
00:18:19,119 --> 00:18:22,521
It's ringing. Oh God. Sorry. Here.

188
00:18:23,041 --> 00:18:25,323
We're muted at this end. Speak as you like.

189
00:18:26,343 --> 00:18:29,303
Nora, honey. What's this about a plane?

190
00:18:29,823 --> 00:18:31,590
That's — that's my —

191
00:18:31,196 --> 00:18:33,887
I'm so sorry, I just can't keep —

192
00:18:33,487 --> 00:18:40,112
You came so far. One last fee and your permit clears. Give the driver the money, and don't fly.

193
00:18:40,632 --> 00:18:44,272
The catch before the name, Holmes. That's the very breath, that's—

194
00:18:43,703 --> 00:18:50,010
No. No, I never called anybody honey in my life. Who's that? Who's that?

195
00:18:50,530 --> 00:18:54,005
I look after my people, Nora. You know I do —

196
00:18:53,643 --> 00:18:58,548
Are you listening, doctor? Are you? Because she's talking and I'm right here!

197
00:19:04,068 --> 00:19:09,634
Down the hill on foot next morning, for the post, we met Owen on the stairs with it already sorted.

198
00:19:10,654 --> 00:19:15,087
Here's Nora's mail. What's that in your pocket, doc, with the little light?

199
00:19:15,607 --> 00:19:19,486
My case log, Owen. It does the listening so I don't have to.

200
00:19:20,006 --> 00:19:24,096
You've put the bills at the bottom. You've opened some bad news yourself.

201
00:19:24,616 --> 00:19:28,424
Who hasn't? Let her get through the postcards first.

202
00:19:28,944 --> 00:19:33,282
Her trouble is that studio. She rings, and nobody there can help her.

203
00:19:33,802 --> 00:19:40,687
Girl in three-B, six weeks stranded in Vancouver on some pilot. They all think somebody's coming.

204
00:19:41,207 --> 00:19:42,019
Does somebody?

205
00:19:42,539 --> 00:19:56,149
Not often. Nora's luckier than most, though. Big people always keep a back door. Last resort, she's still got Stroud's private line, four one nine oh. Woman like that picks up her own phone.

206
00:19:56,669 --> 00:19:57,508
Lucky her.

207
00:19:58,028 --> 00:19:59,821
Is there anything here from an airline?

208
00:20:00,341 --> 00:20:09,007
Just the one, with the coupon. You'll want to check her rooms, so here's her key. I'll be downstairs.

209
00:20:14,527 --> 00:20:23,240
By noon cardboard had taken the coaching room, Bridie Boyle spending the week she'd been allowed, a guard at the door and Quintero at her elbow.

210
00:20:24,260 --> 00:20:34,794
Holmes says that speaker cleared your voice, Miss Boyle. Not your hours. Somebody empties a box on Sunset, and you're gone every night. Where?

211
00:20:35,314 --> 00:20:43,798
Lieutenant, one moment. Miss Boyle, I accused you on that stage and it cost you your living. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.

212
00:20:44,318 --> 00:20:47,899
You were, doctor. Mind that carton, that's Georgia.

213
00:20:48,419 --> 00:20:49,589
Sorry, sorry.

214
00:20:50,609 --> 00:20:55,994
Georgia doesn't rattle, Miss Boyle. Those are pills, packed by someone who carries them everywhere.

215
00:20:56,514 --> 00:21:04,178
May I? A water pill, and digoxin. That's a very old heart, Holmes, and the pharmacy's in Sandrock.

216
00:21:04,698 --> 00:21:05,708
Give those back.

217
00:21:06,228 --> 00:21:12,334
Two hours each way. Out by nine, back by six. You can forget any assignation, Lieutenant. It's a night shift.

218
00:21:12,854 --> 00:21:15,144
Then the envelopes, whose cash is—

219
00:21:14,733 --> 00:21:22,243
My own! My pupils' cash, every cent, and it goes— it goes to the woman who sits with her by day.

220
00:21:22,763 --> 00:21:26,617
Sits with whom? Your mother lies in Dublin, God rest her.

221
00:21:27,137 --> 00:21:33,393
I told you, Mr. Holmes, I can do Vivian to the breath. Did you think she was the first?

222
00:21:33,913 --> 00:21:34,881
Your voice —

223
00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:47,295
Library records, at seventeen, in Sandrock. Nobody hires a dialect coach from Sandrock. So I made up an Irish one, and she — she came with a dead mother, it played so well —

224
00:21:46,935 --> 00:21:49,055
Then who sat through the credits at the Carrick?

225
00:21:49,575 --> 00:21:57,351
The Harlan. H Street, Sandrock. Right through the credits, that part's — that part was true...

226
00:21:57,871 --> 00:22:03,150
Once, plainly, Miss Boyle, for the lieutenant's notebook. Then he closes it.

227
00:22:03,670 --> 00:22:05,728
My mother isn't dead.

228
00:22:10,748 --> 00:22:17,721
The green ledger had never left the desk when we climbed back that afternoon, and the woman behind it had smoked her ashtray full.

229
00:22:18,741 --> 00:22:22,499
So the coach has a partner. That's all your speaker proved.

230
00:22:23,019 --> 00:22:32,096
A ledger that says sole operator one Rusk leaves nobody else in that room. He'll have signed his shifts. What's the first name, Ms. Stroud?

231
00:22:32,616 --> 00:22:39,050
Here, a holiday roster. Owen. Owen Rusk, eleven years of nights.

232
00:22:39,570 --> 00:22:46,203
Eleven years, and you called him some night man. Did he never speak to you?

233
00:22:46,723 --> 00:22:58,052
I'd ring in from New York, three in the morning. And before I said a word— I mean, before I'd opened my mouth. Evening, Ms. Stroud. Off my breath.

234
00:22:58,572 --> 00:23:03,580
Off a breath, across a continent. I know cardiologists with worse ears.

235
00:23:04,100 --> 00:23:15,102
Every woman who ran anything in this town went through that board after dark. Go easy on her tonight, Ms. Stroud, she's been crying. I figured it for manners.

236
00:23:15,622 --> 00:23:19,898
You paid an ear for eleven years, then threw it out with the furniture.

237
00:23:20,418 --> 00:23:31,830
Bridie yelled it in my own booth, she's talking and I'm right here, and I still— I still looked at her first. All those nights in the dark, and that voice was learning me...

238
00:23:32,350 --> 00:23:34,646
You searched among the people you remember.

239
00:23:35,166 --> 00:23:39,603
I never counted him. I couldn't pick him out of a lineup...

240
00:23:40,123 --> 00:23:43,848
Owen Rusk. That man unlocked Nora's door for us.

241
00:23:48,868 --> 00:23:55,742
We shut ourselves in the felt once more, no line open to anywhere, and I stood the recorder on the sill between us.

242
00:23:56,262 --> 00:24:02,256
I dislike him as much as you do, Holmes, but an old operator knows old numbers. That's no crime.

243
00:24:02,776 --> 00:24:08,415
Agreed. Knowing it is nothing. Play Miss Lindgren, our first call to Jakarta.

244
00:24:09,435 --> 00:24:11,554
You don't go repeating it.

245
00:24:12,074 --> 00:24:14,436
So she didn't repeat it. Now the stairs.

246
00:24:14,956 --> 00:24:17,443
Still got Stroud's private line —

247
00:24:17,104 --> 00:24:19,876
Stop. Now Stroud, with her ledger.

248
00:24:20,396 --> 00:24:22,032
Not an office line.

249
00:24:23,052 --> 00:24:26,875
Then he knew better than anyone alive that it was never hers.

250
00:24:27,395 --> 00:24:36,291
He did. An old operator's memory would say the night room. He said something else. Watson, who in all this ever called it a private line?

251
00:24:41,311 --> 00:24:50,116
Every window in those rooms down the hill stood open by evening, taps running, when Owen came up at Holmes's asking, Quintero a step behind.

252
00:24:51,136 --> 00:24:56,091
Aired them last night, soon as she asked. Smells like somebody lives here.

253
00:24:56,611 --> 00:25:01,919
On those stairs you offered me Stroud's private line, four one nine oh. Why hers?

254
00:25:02,439 --> 00:25:08,842
No mystery. I worked nights at that studio, ran the old switchboard. You don't forget a number.

255
00:25:09,362 --> 00:25:10,147
Uh-huh.

256
00:25:10,667 --> 00:25:13,651
You'd remember it better than most. Where did it ring?

257
00:25:14,171 --> 00:25:17,480
The night room. My room. It only ever —

258
00:25:16,940 --> 00:25:21,162
Only ever rang at your elbow. So never hers, and you knew it.

259
00:25:21,682 --> 00:25:27,070
Well, no. I mean— look, Nora must have told me. She called it that.

260
00:25:27,590 --> 00:25:28,251
Did she.

261
00:25:29,271 --> 00:25:35,735
Miss Lindgren, you're on speaker, in your own rooms. Your manager says you gave him four one nine oh.

262
00:25:36,255 --> 00:25:44,415
Owen? No. It's in my notebook. When I said I've told nobody but you, Mr. Holmes, I meant you.

263
00:25:44,935 --> 00:25:46,568
Now hang on, I—

264
00:25:46,137 --> 00:25:53,955
No, Owen. One voice ever called that line Stroud's, and only to her, in Jakarta. You've been quoting yourself.

265
00:25:54,475 --> 00:26:06,343
Box two one four, Sunset. You emptied it at four today, with me across the street. Hundreds of slips, Vancouver, Manila, more than a million dollars in all.

266
00:26:06,863 --> 00:26:12,313
Vancouver. The girl in three-B, Owen? They all think somebody's coming, you said.

267
00:26:12,833 --> 00:26:16,567
Owen? You have my key. Why would you —

268
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:22,499
Eleven years I put those women through, and not one ever asked who was on the line.

269
00:26:23,019 --> 00:26:29,803
Owen Rusk, you're under arrest for fraud. Anything for Miss Lindgren, before we go?

270
00:26:30,823 --> 00:26:34,944
Nora, honey. You know I look after my people.

271
00:26:40,464 --> 00:26:49,824
The last of it, from the case log: back in our consulting rooms that night, at the kitchen table, the plaster paw weighing down my notes, with Jakarta on the line.

272
00:26:50,844 --> 00:26:59,313
Miss Lindgren, Owen Rusk is charged with fraud. Your fifty-two thousand dollars is traced, and Ms. Stroud is paying your fare home.

273
00:26:59,833 --> 00:27:06,948
He ran my taps. He— Mr. Holmes, the word about my rooms. Who did I send it to?

274
00:27:07,468 --> 00:27:08,518
You tell us.

275
00:27:09,038 --> 00:27:18,816
Owen. Only ever Owen. Air my rooms, I'm coming home. And within the hour she'd ring...

276
00:27:19,336 --> 00:27:19,991
Yes.

277
00:27:20,511 --> 00:27:27,508
I thought she just knew. He'd shut off my taps, and go downstairs, and— and dial...

278
00:27:28,028 --> 00:27:31,110
Your rooms are still waiting. We've seen to that.

279
00:27:31,630 --> 00:27:36,676
Thank you. I'm not even sorry. Isn't that funny?

280
00:27:37,696 --> 00:27:42,333
You ran the trap through her rooms before you ever heard him on the stairs. Why?

281
00:27:42,853 --> 00:27:51,330
Owen told us that first night he airs them whenever she asks. Nora told us on Sunset what followed. I only rang the same bell.

282
00:27:51,850 --> 00:27:52,604
And the number?

283
00:27:53,124 --> 00:27:57,708
He chose a line nobody could answer, then forgot which of his voices had said so.

284
00:27:58,228 --> 00:28:02,585
Bridie Boyle paid for the voice, and I helped. I should've—

285
00:28:01,818 --> 00:28:13,482
Stop that. Her pass is back, her name on Stroud's next picture. My condition for sending a bill. Stroud's courier beat us home, so your clinic's rent is met. Friday looked after itself.

286
00:28:14,002 --> 00:28:18,963
For the log, then. Owen Rusk charged. Wrong number, right man.