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Agatha Christie
4:50 from Paddington
A Miss Marple Mystery
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About the Author
Other Books by Agatha Christie
Credit
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Mrs. McGillicuddy panted along the platform in the wake of the porter carrying
her suitcase. Mrs. McGillicuddy was short and stout, the porter was tall and
free-striding. In addition, Mrs. McGillicuddy was burdened with a large
quantity of parcels; the result of a day’s Christmas shopping. The race was,
therefore, an uneven one, and the porter turned the corner at the end of the
platform whilst Mrs. McGillicuddy was still coming up the straight.
No. 1 Platform was not at the moment unduly crowded, since a train had just
gone out, but in the no-man’s-land beyond, a milling crowd was rushing in
several directions at once, to and from undergrounds, left-luggage offices,
tea rooms, inquiry offices, indicator boards, and the two outlets, Arrival and
Departure, to the outside world.
Mrs. McGillicuddy and her parcels were buffeted to and fro, but she arrived
eventually at the entrance to No. 3 Platform, and deposited one parcel at her
feet whilst she searched her bag for the ticket that would enable her to pass
the stern uniformed guardian at the gate.
At that moment, a Voice, raucous yet refined, burst into speech over her head.
“The train standing at Platform 3,” the Voice told her, “is the 4:50 for
Brackhampton, Milchester, Waverton, Carvil Junction, Roxeter and stations to
Chadmouth. Passengers for Brackhampton and Milchester travel at the rear of
the train. Passengers for Vanequay change at Roxeter.” The Voice shut itself
off with a click, and then reopened conversation by announcing the arrival at
Platform 9 of the 4:35 from Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
Mrs. McGillicuddy found her ticket and presented it. The man clipped it,
murmured: “On the right—rear portion.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy padded up the platform and found her porter, looking bored
and staring into space, outside the door of a third-class carriage.
“Here you are, lady.”
“I’m travelling first-class,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“You didn’t say so,” grumbled the porter. His eye swept her masculine-looking
pepper-and-salt tweed coat disparagingly.
Mrs. McGillicuddy, who had said so, did not argue the point. She was sadly out
of breath.
The porter retrieved the suitcase and marched with it to the adjoining coach
where Mrs. McGillicuddy was installed in solitary splendour. The 4:50 was not
much patronized, the first-class clientele preferring either the faster
morning express, or the 6:40 with dining car. Mrs. McGillicuddy handed the
porter his tip which he received with disappointment, clearly considering it
more applicable to third-class than to first-class travel. Mrs. McGillicuddy,
though prepared to spend money on comfortable travel after a night journey
from the North and a day’s feverish shopping, was at no time an extravagant
tipper.
She settled herself back on the plush cushions with a sigh and opened her
magazine. Five minutes later, whistles blew, and the train started. The
magazine slipped from Mrs. McGillicuddy’s hand, her head dropped sideways,
three minutes later she was asleep. She slept for thirty-five minutes and
awoke refreshed. Resettling her hat which had slipped askew she sat up and
looked out of the window at what she could see of the flying countryside. It
was quite dark now, a dreary misty December day—Christmas was only five days
ahead. London had been dark and dreary; the country was no less so, though
occasionally rendered cheerful with its constant clusters of lights as the
train flashed through towns and stations.
“Serving last tea now,” said an attendant, whisking open the corridor door
like a jinn. Mrs. McGillicuddy had already partaken of tea at a large
department store. She was for the moment amply nourished. The attendant went
on down the corridor uttering his monotonous cry. Mrs. McGillicuddy looked up
at the rack where her various parcels reposed, with a pleased expression. The
face towels had been excellent value and just what Margaret wanted, the space
gun for Robby and the rabbit for Jean were highly satisfactory, and that
evening coatee was just the thing she herself needed, warm but dressy. The
pullover for Hector, too…her mind dwelt with approval on the soundness of her
purchases.
Her satisfied gaze returned to the window, a train travelling in the opposite
direction rushed by with a screech, making the windows rattle and causing her
to start. The train clattered over points and passed through a station.
Then it began suddenly to slow down, presumably in obedience to a signal. For
some minutes it crawled along, then stopped, presently it began to move
forward again. Another up-train passed them, though with less vehemence than
the first one. The train gathered speed again. At that moment another train,
also on a down-line, swerved inwards towards them, for a moment with almost
alarming effect. For a time the two trains ran parallel, now one gaining a
little, now the other. Mrs. McGillicuddy looked from her window through the
windows of the parallel carriages. Most of the blinds were down, but
occasionally the occupants of the carriages were visible. The other train was
not very full and there were many empty carriages.
At the moment when the two trains gave the illusion of being stationary, a
blind in one of the carriages flew up with a snap. Mrs. McGillicuddy looked
into the lighted first-class carriage that was only a few feet away.
Then she drew her breath in with a gasp and half-rose to her feet.
Standing with his back to the window and to her was a man. His hands were
round the throat of a woman who faced him, and he was slowly, remorselessly,
strangling her. Her eyes were starting from their sockets, her face was purple
and congested. As Mrs. McGillicuddy watched fascinated, the end came; the body
went limp and crumpled in the man’s hands.
At the same moment, Mrs. McGillicuddy’s train slowed down again and the other
began to gain speed. It passed forward and a moment or two later it had
vanished from sight.
Almost automatically Mrs. McGillicuddy’s hand went up to the communication
cord, then paused, irresolute. After all, what use would it be ringing the
cord of the train in which she was travelling? The horror of what she had seen
at such close quarters, and the unusual circumstances, made her feel
paralysed. Some immediate action was necessary—but what?
The door of her compartment was drawn back and a ticket collector said,
“Ticket, please.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy turned to him with vehemence.
“A woman has been strangled,” she said. “In a train that has just passed. I
saw it.”
The ticket collector looked at her doubtfully.
“I beg your pardon, madam?”
“A man strangled a woman! In a train. I saw it—through there.” She pointed to
the window.
The ticket collector looked extremely doubtful.
“Strangled?” he said disbelievingly.
“Yes, strangled! I saw it, I tell you. You must do something at once!”
The ticket collector coughed apologetically.
“You don’t think, madam, that you may have had a little nap and—er—” he broke
off tactfully.
“I have had a nap, but if you think this was a dream, you’re quite wrong. I
saw it, I tell you.”
The ticket collector’s eyes dropped to the open magazine lying on the seat. On
the exposed page was a girl being strangled whilst a man with a revolver
threatened the pair from an open doorway.
He said persuasively: “Now don’t you think, madam, that you’d been reading an
exciting story, and that you just dropped off, and awaking a little confused—”
Mrs. McGillicuddy interrupted him. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
McGillicuddy interrupted him.
“I saw it,” she said. “I was as wide awake as you are. And I looked out of the
window into the window of the train alongside, and a man was strangling a
woman. And what I want to know is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Well—madam—”
“You’re going to do something, I suppose?”
The ticket collector sighed reluctantly and glanced at his watch.
“We shall be in Brackhampton in exactly seven minutes. I’ll report what you’ve
told me. In what direction was the train you mention going?”
“This direction, of course. You don’t suppose I’d have been able to see this
if a train had flashed past going in the other direction?”
The ticket collector looked as though he thought Mrs. McGillicuddy was quite
capable of seeing anything anywhere as the fancy took her. But he remained
polite.
“You can rely on me, madam,” he said. “I will report your statement. Perhaps I
might have your name and address—just in case….”
Mrs. McGillicuddy gave him the address where she would be staying for the next
few days and her permanent address in Scotland, and he wrote them down. Then
he withdrew with the air of a man who has done his duty and dealt successfully
with a tiresome member of the travelling public.
Mrs. McGillicuddy remained frowning and vaguely unsatisfied. Would the ticket
collector report her statement? Or had he just been soothing her down? There
were, she supposed vaguely, a lot of elderly women travelling around, fully
convinced that they had unmasked communist plots, were in danger of being
murdered, saw flying saucers and secret space ships, and reported murders that
had never taken place. If the man dismissed her as one of those….
The train was slowing down now, passing over points and running through the
bright lights of a large town.
Mrs. McGillicuddy opened her handbag, pulled out a receipted bill which was
all she could find, wrote a rapid note on the back of it with her ball-pen,
put it into a spare envelope that she fortunately happened to have, stuck the
envelope down and wrote on it.
The train drew slowly into a crowded platform. The usual ubiquitous Voice was
intoning:
“The train now arriving at Platform 1 is the 5:38 for Milchester, Waverton,
Roxeter, and stations to Chadmouth. Passengers for Market Basing take the
train now waiting at No. 3 platform. No. 1 bay for stopping train to Carbury.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked anxiously along the platform. So many passengers and
so few porters. Ah, there was one! She hailed him authoritatively.
“Porter! Please take this at once to the Stationmaster’s office.”
She handed him the envelope, and with it a shilling.
Then, with a sigh, she leaned back. Well, she had done what she could. Her
mind lingered with an instant’s regret on the shilling… Sixpence would really
have been enough….
Her mind went back to the scene she had witnessed. Horrible, quite horrible…
She was a strong-nerved woman, but she shivered. What a strange—what a
fantastic thing to happen to her, Elspeth McGillicuddy! If the blind of the
carriage had not happened to fly up… But that, of course, was Providence.
Providence had willed that she, Elspeth McGillicuddy, should be a witness of
the crime. Her lips set grimly.
Voices shouted, whistles blew, doors were banged shut. The 5:38 drew slowly
out of Brackhampton station. An hour and five minutes later it stopped at
Milchester.
Mrs. McGillicuddy collected her parcels and her suitcase and got out. She
peered up and down the platform. Her mind reiterated its former judgment: Not
enough porters. Such porters as there were seemed to be engaged with mail bags
and luggage vans. Passengers nowadays seemed always expected to carry their
own cases. Well, she couldn’t carry her suitcase and her umbrella and all her
parcels. She would have to wait. In due course she secured a porter.
“Taxi?”
“There will be something to meet me, I expect.”
Outside Milchester station, a taxi-driver who had been watching the exit came
forward. He spoke in a soft local voice.
“Is it Mrs. McGillicuddy? For St. Mary Mead?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy acknowledged her identity. The porter was recompensed,
adequately if not handsomely. The car, with Mrs. McGillicuddy, her suitcase,
and her parcels drove off into the night. It was a nine-mile drive. Sitting
bolt upright in the car, Mrs. McGillicuddy was unable to relax. Her feelings
yearned for expression. At last the taxi drove along the familiar village
street and finally drew up at its destination; Mrs. McGillicuddy got out and
walked up the brick path to the door. The driver deposited the cases inside as
the door was opened by an elderly maid. Mrs. McGillicuddy passed straight
through the hall to where, at the open sitting room door, her hostess awaited
her; an elderly frail old lady.
“Elspeth!”
“Jane!”
They kissed and, without preamble or circumlocution, Mrs. McGillicuddy burst
into speech.
“Oh, Jane!” she wailed. “I’ve just seen a murder!”
Two
True to the precepts handed down to her by her mother and grandmother—to wit:
that a true lady can neither be shocked nor surprised—Miss Marple merely
raised her eyebrows and shook her head, as she said:
“Most distressing for you, Elspeth, and surely most unusual. I think you had
better tell me about it at once.”
That was exactly what Mrs. McGillicuddy wanted to do. Allowing her hostess to
draw her nearer to the fire, she sat down, pulled off her gloves and plunged
into a vivid narrative.
Miss Marple listened with close attention. When Mrs. McGillicuddy at last
paused for breath, Miss Marple spoke with decision.
“The best thing, I think, my dear, is for you to go upstairs and take off your
hat and have a wash. Then we will have supper—during which we will not discuss
this at all. After supper we can go into the matter thoroughly and discuss it
from every aspect.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy concurred with this suggestion. The two ladies had supper,
discussing, as they ate, various aspects of life as lived in the village of
St. Mary Mead. Miss Marple commented on the general distrust of the new
organist, related the recent scandal about the chemist’s wife, and touched on
the hostility between the schoolmistress and the village institute. They then
discussed Miss Marple’s and Mrs. McGillicuddy’s gardens.
“Paeonies,” said Miss Marple as she rose from table, “are most unaccountable.
Either they do—or they don’t do. But if they do establish themselves, they are
with you for life, so to speak, and really most beautiful varieties nowadays.”
They settled themselves by the fire again, and Miss Marple brought out two old
Waterford glasses from a corner cupboard, and from another cupboard produced a
bottle.
“No coffee tonight for you, Elspeth,” she said. “You are already overexcited
(and no wonder!) and probably would not sleep. I prescribe a glass of my
cowslip wine, and later, perhaps, a cup of camo-mile tea.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy acquiescing in these arrangements, Miss Marple poured out
the wine.
“Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, as she took an appreciative sip, “you don’t
think, do you, that I dreamt it, or imagined it?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple with warmth.
Mrs. McGillicuddy heaved a sigh of relief.
“That ticket collector,” she said, “he thought so. Quite polite, but all the
same—”
“I think, Elspeth, that that was quite natural under the circumstances. It
sounded—and indeed was—a most unlikely story. And you were a complete stranger
to him. No, I have no doubt at all that you saw what you’ve told me you saw.
It’s very extraordinary—but not at all impossible. I recollect myself being
interested when a train ran parallel to one on which I was travelling, to
notice what a vivid and intimate picture one got of what was going on in one
or two of the carriages. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
A little girl, I remember once, playing with a teddy
bear, and suddenly she threw it deliberately at a fat man who was asleep in
the corner and he bounced up and looked most indignant, and the other
passengers looked so amused. I saw them all quite vividly. I could have
described afterwards exactly what they looked like and what they had on.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy nodded gratefully.
“That’s just how it was.”
“The man had his back to you, you say. So you didn’t see his face?”
“No.”
“And the woman, you can describe her? Young, old?”
“Youngish. Between thirty and thirty-five, I should think. I couldn’t say
closer than that.”
“Good-looking?”
“That again, I couldn’t say. Her face, you see, was all contorted and—”
Miss Marple said quickly:
“Yes, yes, I quite understand. How was she dressed?”
“She had on a fur coat of some kind, a palish fur. No hat. Her hair was
blonde.”
“And there was nothing distinctive that you can remember about the man?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy took a little time to think carefully before she replied.
“He was tallish—and dark, I think. He had a heavy coat on so that I couldn’t
judge his build very well.” She added despondently, “It’s not really very much
to go on.”
“It’s something,” said Miss Marple. She paused before saying: “You feel quite
sure, in your own mind, that the girl was—dead?”
“She was dead, I’m sure of it. Her tongue came out and—I’d rather not talk
about it….”
“Of course not. Of course not,” said Miss Marple quickly. “We shall know more,
I expect, in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“I should imagine it will be in the morning papers. After this man had
attacked and killed her, he would have a body on his hands. What would he do?
Presumably he would leave the train quickly at the first station—by the way,
can you remember if it was a corridor carriage?”
“No, it was not.”
“That seems to point to a train that was not going far afield. It would almost
certainly stop at Brackhampton. Let us say he leaves the train at
Brackhampton, perhaps arranging the body in a corner seat, with her face
hidden by the fur collar to delay discovery. Yes—I think that that is what he
would do. But of course it will be discovered before very long—and I should
imagine that the news of a murdered woman discovered on a train would be
almost certain to be in the morning papers—we shall see.”
II
But it was not in the morning papers.
Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy, after making sure of this, finished their
breakfast in silence. Both were reflecting.
After breakfast, they took a turn round the garden. But this, usually an
absorbing pastime, was today somewhat halfhearted. Miss Marple did indeed call
attention to some new and rare species she had acquired for her rock-garden
but did so in an almost absentminded manner. And Mrs. McGillicuddy did not, as
was customary, counter-attack with a list of her own recent acquisitions.
“The garden is not looking at all as it should,” said Miss Marple, but still
speaking absentmindedly. “Doctor Haydock has absolutely forbidden me to do any
stooping or kneeling—and really, what can you do if you don’t stoop or kneel?
There’s old Edwards, of course—but so opinionated. And all this jobbing gets
them into bad habits, lots of cups of tea and so much pottering—not any real
work.”
“Oh, I know,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Of course, there’s no question of my
being forbidden to stoop, but really, especially after meals—and having put on
weight”—she looked down at her ample proportions—“it does bring on heartburn.”
There was a silence and then Mrs. McGillicuddy planted her feet sturdily,
stood still, and turned on her friend.
“Well?” she said.
It was a small insignificant word, but it acquired full significance from Mrs.
McGillicuddy’s tone, and Miss Marple understood its meaning perfectly.
“I know,” she said.
The two ladies looked at each other.
“I think,” said Miss Marple, “we might walk down to the police station and
talk to Sergeant Cornish. He’s intelligent and patient, and I know him very
well, and he knows me. I think he’ll listen—and pass the information on to the
proper quarter.”
Accordingly, some three-quarters of an hour later, Miss Marple and Mrs.
McGillicuddy were talking to a fresh-faced grave man between thirty and forty
who listened attentively to what they had to say.
Frank Cornish received Miss Marple with cordiality and even deference. He set
chairs for the two ladies, and said: “Now what can we do for you, Miss
Marple?”
Miss Marple said: “I would like you, please, to listen to my friend Mrs.
McGillicuddy’s story.”
And Sergeant Cornish had listened. At the close of the recital he remained
silent for a moment or two.
Then he said:
“That’s a very extraordinary story.” His eyes, without seeming to do so, had
sized Mrs. McGillicuddy up whilst she was telling it.
On the whole, he was favourably impressed. A sensible woman, able to tell a
story clearly; not, so far as he could judge, an over-imaginative or a
hysterical woman. Moreover, Miss Marple, so it seemed, believed in the
accuracy of her friend’s story and he knew all about Miss Marple. Everybody in
St. Mary Mead knew Miss Marple; fluffy and dithery in appearance, but inwardly
as sharp and as shrewd as they make them.
He cleared his throat and spoke.
“Of course,” he said, “you may have been mistaken—I’m not saying you were,
mind—but you may have been. There’s a lot of horse-play goes on—it mayn’t have
been serious or fatal.”
“I know what I saw,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy grimly.
“And you won’t budge from it,” thought Frank Cornish, “and I’d say that,
likely or unlikely, you may be right.”
Aloud he said: “You reported it to the railway officials, and you’ve come and
reported it to me. That’s the proper procedure and you may rely on me to have
inquiries instituted.”
He stopped. Miss Marple nodded her head gently, satisfied. Mrs. McGillicuddy
was not quite so satisfied, but she did not say anything. Sergeant Cornish
addressed Miss Marple, not so much because he wanted her ideas, as because he
wanted to hear what she would say.
“Granted the facts are as reported,” he said, “what do you think has happened
to the body?”
“There seems to be only two possibilities,” said Miss Marple without
hesitation. “The most likely one, of course, is that the body was left in the
train, but that seems improbable now, for it would have been found some time
last night, by another traveller, or by the railway staff at the train’s
ultimate destination.”
Frank Cornish nodded.
“The only other course open to the murderer would be to push the body out of
the train on to the line. It must, I suppose, be still on the track somewhere
as yet undiscovered—though that does seem a little unlikely. But there would
be, as far as I can see, no other way of dealing with it.”
“You read about bodies being put in trunks,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “but no-
one travels with trunks nowadays, only suitcases, and you couldn’t get a body
into a suitcase.”
“Yes,” said Cornish. “I agree with you both. The body, if there is a body,
ought to have been discovered by now, or will be very soon. I’ll let you know
any developments there are—though I dare say you’ll read about them in the
papers. There’s the possibility, of course, that the woman, though savagely
attacked, was not actually dead. She may have been able to leave the train on
her own feet.”
“Hardly without assistance,” said Miss Marple. “And if so, it will have been
noticed. A man, supporting a woman whom he says is ill.”
“Yes, it will have been noticed,” said Cornish. “Or if a woman was found
unconscious or ill in a carriage and was removed to hospital, that, too, will
be on record. I think you may rest assured that you’ll hear about it all in a
very short time.”
But that day passed and the next day. On that evening Miss Marple received a
note from Sergeant Cornish. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
On that evening Miss Marple received a
note from Sergeant Cornish.
In regard to the matter on which you consulted me, full inquiries have been
made, with no result. No woman’s body has been found. No hospital has
administered treatment to a woman such as you describe, and no case of a woman
suffering from shock or taken ill, or leaving a station supported by a man has
been observed. You may take it that the fullest inquiries have been made. I
suggest that your friend may have witnessed a scene such as she described but
that it was much less serious than she supposed.
Three
“Less serious? Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “It was murder!”
She looked defiantly at Miss Marple and Miss Marple looked back at her.
“Go on, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Say it was all a mistake! Say I
imagined the whole thing! That’s what you think now, isn’t it?”
“Anyone can be mistaken,” Miss Marple pointed out gently. “Anybody,
Elspeth—even you. I think we must bear that in mind. But I still think, you
know, that you were most probably not mistaken… You use glasses for reading,
but you’ve got very good far sight—and what you saw impressed you very
powerfully. You were definitely suffering from shock when you arrived here.”
“It’s a thing I shall never forget,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy with a shudder.
“The trouble is, I don’t see what I can do about it!”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that there’s anything more
you can do about it.” (If Mrs. McGillicuddy had been alert to the tones of her
friend’s voice, she might have noticed a very faint stress laid on the you.)
“You’ve reported what you saw—to the railway people and to the police. No,
there’s nothing more you can do.”
“That’s a relief, in a way,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “because as you know, I’m
going out to Ceylon immediately after Christmas—to stay with Roderick, and I
certainly do not want to put that visit off— I’ve been looking forward to it
so much. Though of course I would put it off if I thought it was my duty,” she
added conscientiously.
“I’m sure you would, Elspeth, but as I say, I consider you’ve done everything
you possibly could do.”
“It’s up to the police,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “And if the police choose to
be stupid—”
Miss Marple shook her head decisively.
“Oh, no,” she said, “the police aren’t stupid. And that makes it interesting,
doesn’t it?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her without comprehension and Miss Marple
reaffirmed her judgment of her friend as a woman of excellent principles and
no imagination.
“One wants to know,” said Miss Marple, “what really happened.”
“She was killed.”
“Yes, but who killed her, and why, and what happened to her body? Where is it
now?”
“That’s the business of the police to find out.”
“Exactly—and they haven’t found out. That means, doesn’t it, that the man was
clever—very clever. I can’t imagine, you know,” said Miss Marple, knitting her
brows, “how he disposed of it… You kill a woman in a fit of passion—it must
have been unpremeditated, you’d never choose to kill a woman in such
circumstances just a few minutes before running into a big station. No, it
must have been a quarrel—jealousy—something of that kind. You strangle her—and
there you are, as I say, with a dead body on your hands and on the point of
running into a station. What could you do except as I said at first, prop the
body up in a corner as though asleep, hiding the face, and then yourself leave
the train as quickly as possible. I don’t see any other possibility—and yet
there must have been one….”
Miss Marple lost herself in thought.
Mrs. McGillicuddy spoke to her twice before Miss Marple answered.
“You’re getting deaf, Jane.”
“Just a little, perhaps. People do not seem to me to enunciate their words as
clearly as they used to do. But it wasn’t that I did not hear you. I’m afraid
I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I just asked about the trains to London tomorrow. Would the afternoon be all
right? I’m going to Margaret’s and she isn’t expecting me before teatime.”
“I wonder, Elspeth, if you would mind going up by the 12:15? We could have an
early lunch.”
“Of course and—” Miss Marple went on, drowning her friend’s words:
“And I wonder, too, if Margaret would mind if you didn’t arrive for tea—if you
arrived about seven, perhaps?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her friend curiously.
“What’s on your mind, Jane?”
“I suggest, Elspeth, that I should travel up to London with you, and that we
should travel down again as far as Brackhampton in the train you travelled by
the other day. You would then return to London from Brackhampton and I would
come on here as you did. I, of course, would pay the fares,” Miss Marple
stressed this point firmly.
Mrs. McGillicuddy ignored the financial aspect.
“What on earth do you expect, Jane?” she asked. “Another murder?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple shocked. “But I confess I should like to see
for myself, under your guidance, the—the—really it is most difficult to find
the correct term—the terrain of the crime.”
So accordingly on the following day Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy found
themselves in two opposite corners of a first-class carriage speeding out of
London by the 4:50 from Paddington. Paddington had been even more crowded than
on the preceding Friday—as there were now only two days to go before
Christmas, but the 4:50 was comparatively peaceful—at any rate, in the rear
portion.
On this occasion no train drew level with them, or they with another train. At
intervals trains flashed past them towards London. On two occasions trains
flashed past them the other way going at high speed. At intervals Mrs.
McGillicuddy consulted her watch doubtfully.
“It’s hard to tell just when—we’d passed through a station I know…” But they
were continually passing through stations.
“We’re due in Brackhampton in five minutes,” said Miss Marple.
A ticket collector appeared in the doorway. Miss Marple raised her eyes
interrogatively. Mrs. McGillicuddy shook her head. It was not the same ticket
collector. He clipped their tickets, and passed on staggering just a little as
the train swung round a long curve. It slackened speed as it did so.
“I expect we’re coming into Brackhampton,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“We’re getting into the outskirts, I think,” said Miss Marple.
There were lights flashing past outside, buildings, an occasional glimpse of
streets and trams. Their speed slackened further. They began crossing points.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “and I can’t really see
this journey has been any good at all. Has it suggested anything to you,
Jane?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple in a rather doubtful voice.
“A sad waste of good money,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, but with less disapproval
than she would have used had she been paying for herself. Miss Marple had been
quite adamant on that point.
“All the same,” said Miss Marple, “one likes to see with one’s own eyes where
a thing happened. This train’s just a few minutes late. Was yours on time on
Friday?”
“I think so. I didn’t really notice.”
The train drew slowly into the busy length of Brackhampton station. The
loudspeaker announced hoarsely, doors opened and shut, people got in and out,
milled up and down the platform. It was a busy crowded scene.
Easy, thought Miss Marple, for a murderer to merge into that crowd, to leave
the station in the midst of that pressing mass of people, or even to select
another carriage and go on in the train wherever its ultimate destination
might be. Easy to be one male passenger amongst many. But not so easy to make
a body vanish into thin air. That body must be somewhere.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had descended. She spoke now from the platform, through the
open window.
“Now take care of yourself, Jane,” she said. “Don’t catch a chill. It’s a
nasty treacherous time of year, and you’re not so young as you were.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“And don’t let’s worry ourselves anymore over all this. We’ve done what we
could.”
Miss Marple nodded, and said:
“Don’t stand about in the cold, Elspeth. Or you’ll be the one to catch a
chill. Go and get yourself a good hot cup of tea in the Restaurant Room.
You’ve got time, twelve minutes before your train back to town.”
“I think perhaps I will. Good-bye, Jane.”
“Good-bye, Elspeth. A happy Christmas to you. I hope you find Margaret well.
Enjoy yourself in Ceylon, and give my love to dear Roderick—if he remembers me
at all, which I doubt.”
“Of course he remembers you—very well. You helped him in some way when he was
at school—something to do with money that was disappearing from a locker—he’s
never forgotten it.”
“Oh, that!” said Miss Marple.
Mrs. McGillicuddy turned away, a whistle blew, the train began to move. Miss
Marple watched the sturdy thickset body of her friend recede. Elspeth could go
to Ceylon with a clear conscience—she had done her duty and was freed from
further obligation.
Miss Marple did not lean back as the train gathered speed. Instead she sat
upright and devoted herself seriously to thought. Though in speech Miss Marple
was woolly and diffuse, in mind she was clear and sharp. She had a problem to
solve, the problem of her own future conduct; and, perhaps strangely, it
presented itself to her as it had to Mrs. McGillicuddy, as a question of duty.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had said that they had both done all that they could do. It
was true of Mrs. McGillicuddy but about herself Miss Marple did not feel so
sure.
It was a question, sometimes, of using one’s special gifts… But perhaps that
was conceited… After all, what could she do? Her friend’s words came back to
her, “You’re not so young as you were….”
Dispassionately, like a general planning a campaign, or an accountant
assessing a business, Miss Marple weighed up and set down in her mind the
facts of and against further enterprise. On the credit side were the
following:
1\. My long experience of life and human nature.
2\. Sir Henry Clithering and his godson (now at Scotland Yard, I believe), who
was so very nice in the Little Paddocks case.
3\. My nephew Raymond’s second boy, David, who is, I am almost sure, in
British Railways.
4\. Griselda’s boy Leonard who is so very knowledgeable about maps.
Miss Marple reviewed these assets and approved them. They were all very
necessary, to reinforce the weaknesses on the debit side—in particular her own
bodily weakness.
“It is not,” thought Miss Marple, “as though I could go here, there and
everywhere, making inquiries and finding out things.”
Yes, that was the chief objection, her own age and weakness. Although, for her
age, her health was good, yet she was old. And if Dr. Haydock had strictly
forbidden her to do practical gardening he would hardly approve of her
starting out to track down a murderer. For that, in effect, was what she was
planning to do—and it was there that her loophole lay. For if heretofore
murder had, so to speak, been forced upon her, in this case it would be that
she herself set out deliberately to seek it. And she was not sure that she
wanted to do so… She was old—old and tired. She felt at this moment, at the
end of a tiring day, a great reluctance to enter upon any project at all. She
wanted nothing at all but to march home and sit by the fire with a nice tray
of supper, and go to bed, and potter about the next day just snipping off a
few things in the garden, tidying up in a very mild way, without stooping,
without exerting herself….
“I’m too old for anymore adventures,” said Miss Marple to herself, watching
absently out of the window the curving line of an embankment….
A curve….
Very faintly something stirred in her mind… Just after the ticket collector
had clipped their tickets….
It suggested an idea. Only an idea. An entirely different idea….
A little pink flush came into Miss Marple’s face. Suddenly she did not feel
tired at all!
“I’ll write to David tomorrow morning,” she said to herself.
And at the same time another valuable asset flashed through her mind.
“Of course. My faithful Florence!”
II
Miss Marple set about her plan of campaign methodically and making due
allowance for the Christmas season which was a definitely retarding factor.
She wrote to her great-nephew, David West, combining Christmas wishes with an
urgent request for information.
Fortunately she was invited, as on previous years, to the vicarage for
Christmas dinner, and here she was able to tackle young Leonard, home for the
Christmas season, about maps.
Maps of all kinds were Leonard’s passion. The reason for the old lady’s
inquiry about a large-scale map of a particular area did not rouse his
curiosity. He discoursed on maps generally with fluency, and wrote down for
her exactly what would suit her purpose best. In fact, he did better. He
actually found that he had such a map amongst his collection and he lent it to
her, Miss Marple promising to take great care of it and return it in due
course.
III
“Maps,” said his mother, Griselda, who still, although she had a grown-up son,
looked strangely young and blooming to be inhabiting the shabby old vicarage.
“What does she want with maps? I mean, what does she want them for?”
“I don’t know,” said young Leonard, “I don’t think she said exactly.”
“I wonder now…” said Griselda. “It seems very fishy to me… At her age the old
pet ought to give up that sort of thing.”
Leonard asked what sort of thing, and Griselda said elusively:
“Oh, poking her nose into things. Why maps, I wonder?”
In due course Miss Marple received a letter from her great-nephew David West.
It ran affectionately:
Dear Aunt Jane,— Now what are you up to? I’ve got the information you wanted.
There are only two trains that can possibly apply—the 4:33 and the 5 o’clock.
The former is a slow train and stops at Haling Broadway, Barwell Heath,
Brackhampton and then stations to Market Basing. The 5 o’clock is the Welsh
express for Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. The former might be overtaken
somewhere by the 4:50, although it is due in Brackhampton five minutes earlier
and the latter passes the 4:50 just before Brackhampton.
In all this do I smell some village scandal of a fruity character? Did you,
returning from a shopping spree in town by the 4:50, observe in a passing
train the mayor’s wife being embraced by the Sanitary Inspector? But why does
it matter which train it was? A weekend at Porthcawl perhaps? Thank you for
the pullover. Just what I wanted. How’s the garden? Not very active this time
of year, I should imagine.
Yours ever,
David
Miss Marple smiled a little, then considered the information thus presented to
her. Mrs. McGillicuddy had said definitely that the carriage had not been a
corridor one. Therefore—not the Swansea express. The 4:33 was indicated.
Also some more travelling seemed unavoidable. Miss Marple sighed, but made her
plans.
She went up to London as before on the 12:15, but this time returned not by
the 4:50, but by the 4:33 as far as Brackhampton. The journey was uneventful,
but she registered certain details. The train was not crowded—4:33 was before
the evening rush hour. Of the first-class carriages only one had an occupant—a
very old gentleman reading the New Statesman. Miss Marple travelled in an
empty compartment and at the two stops, Haling Broadway and Barwell Heath,
leaned out of the window to observe passengers entering and leaving the train.
A small number of third-class passengers got in at Haling Broadway. At Barwell
Heath several third-class passengers got out. Nobody entered or left a first-
class carriage except the old gentleman carrying his New Statesman.
As the train neared Brackhampton, sweeping around a curve of line, Miss Marple
rose to her feet and stood experimentally with her back to the window over
which she had drawn down the blind. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Yes, she decided, the impetus of the sudden curving of the line and the
slackening of speed did throw one off one’s balance back against the window
and the blind might, in consequence, very easily fly up. She peered out into
the night. It was lighter than it had been when Mrs. McGillicuddy had made the
same journey—only just dark, but there was little to see. For observation she
must make a daylight journey.
On the next day she went up by the early morning train, purchased four linen
pillow-cases (tut-tutting at the price!) so as to combine investigation with
the provision of household necessities, and returned by a train leaving
Paddington at twelve fifteen. Again she was alone in a first-class carriage.
“This taxation,” thought Miss Marple, “that’s what it is. No one can afford to
travel first class except business men in the rush hours. I suppose because
they can charge it to expenses.”
About a quarter of an hour before the train was due at Brackhampton, Miss
Marple got out the map with which Leonard had supplied her and began to
observe the country-side. She had studied the map very carefully beforehand,
and after noting the name of a station they passed through, she was soon able
to identify where she was just as the train began to slacken for a curve. It
was a very considerable curve indeed. Miss Marple, her nose glued to the
window, studied the ground beneath her (the train was running on a fairly high
embankment) with close attention. She divided her attention between the
country outside and the map until the train finally ran into Brackhampton.
That night she wrote and posted a letter addressed to Miss Florence Hill, 4
Madison Road, Brackhampton… On the following morning, going to the County
library, she studied a Brackhampton directory and gazetteer, and a County
history.
Nothing so far had contradicted the very faint and sketchy idea that had come
to her. What she had imagined was possible. She would go no further than that.
But the next step involved action—a good deal of action—the kind of action for
which she, herself, was physically unfit. If her theory were to be definitely
proved or disproved, she must at this point have help from some other source.
The question was—who? Miss Marple reviewed various names and possibilities
rejecting them all with a vexed shake of the head. The intelligent people on
whose intelligence she could rely were all far too busy. Not only had they all
got jobs of varying importance, their leisure hours were usually apportioned
long beforehand. The unintelligent who had time on their hands were simply,
Miss Marple decided, no good.
She pondered in growing vexation and perplexity.
Then suddenly her forehead cleared. She ejaculated aloud a name.
“Of course!” said Miss Marple. “Lucy Eyelesbarrow!”
Four
The name of Lucy Eyelesbarrow had already made itself felt in certain circles.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow was thirty-two. She had taken a First in Mathematics at
Oxford, was acknowledged to have a brilliant mind and was confidently expected
to take up a distinguished academic career.
But Lucy Eyelesbarrow, in addition to scholarly brilliance, had a core of good
sound common sense. She could not fail to observe that a life of academic
distinction was singularly ill rewarded. She had no desire whatever to teach
and she took pleasure in contacts with minds much less brilliant than her own.
In short, she had a taste for people, all sorts of people—and not the same
people the whole time. She also, quite frankly, liked money. To gain money one
must exploit shortage.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow hit at once upon a very serious shortage—the shortage of any
kind of skilled domestic labour. To the amazement of her friends and fellow-
scholars, Lucy Eyelesbarrow entered the field of domestic labour.
Her success was immediate and assured. By now, after a lapse of some years,
she was known all over the British Isles. It was quite customary for wives to
say joyfully to husbands, “It will be all right. I can go with you to the
States. I’ve got Lucy Eyelesbarrow!” The point of Lucy Eyelesbarrow was that
once she came into a house, all worry, anxiety and hard work went out of it.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow did everything, saw to everything, arranged everything. She
was unbelievably competent in every conceivable sphere. She looked after
elderly parents, accepted the care of young children, nursed the sickly,
cooked divinely, got on well with any old crusted servants there might happen
to be (there usually weren’t), was tactful with impossible people, soothed
habitual drunkards, was wonderful with dogs. Best of all she never minded what
she did. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, dug in the garden, cleaned up dog
messes, and carried coals!
One of her rules was never to accept an engagement for any long length of
time. A fortnight was her usual period—a month at most under exceptional
circumstances. For that fortnight you had to pay the earth! But, during that
fortnight, your life was heaven. You could relax completely, go abroad, stay
at home, do as you pleased, secure that all was going well on the home front
in Lucy Eyelesbarrow’s capable hands.
Naturally the demand for her services was enormous. She could have booked
herself up if she chose for about three years ahead. She had been offered
enormous sums to go as a permanency. But Lucy had no intention of being a
permanency, nor would she book herself for more than six months ahead. And
within that period, unknown to her clamouring clients, she always kept certain
free periods which enabled her either to take a short luxurious holiday (since
she spent nothing otherwise and was handsomely paid and kept) or to accept any
position at short notice that happened to take her fancy, either by reason of
its character, or because she “liked the people.” Since she was now at liberty
to pick and choose amongst the vociferous claimants for her services, she went
very largely by personal liking. Mere riches would not buy you the services of
Lucy Eyelesbarrow. She could pick and choose and she did pick and choose. She
enjoyed her life very much and found in it a continual source of
entertainment.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow read and reread the letter from Miss Marple. She had made
Miss Marple’s acquaintance two years ago when her services had been retained
by Raymond West, the novelist, to go and look after his old aunt who was
recovering from pneumonia. Lucy had accepted the job and had gone down to St.
Mary Mead. She had liked Miss Marple very much. As for Miss Marple, once she
had caught a glimpse out of her bedroom window of Lucy Eyelesbarrow really
trenching for sweet peas in the proper way, she had leaned back on her pillows
with a sigh of relief, eaten the tempting little meals that Lucy Eyelesbarrow
brought to her, and listened, agreeably surprised, to the tales told by her
elderly irascible maidservant of how “I taught that Miss Eyelesbarrow a
crochet pattern what she’d never heard of! Proper grateful, she was.” And had
surprised her doctor by the rapidity of her convalescence.
Miss Marple wrote asking if Miss Eyelesbarrow could undertake a certain task
for her—rather an unusual one. Perhaps Miss Eyelesbarrow could arrange a
meeting at which they could discuss the matter.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow frowned for a moment or two as she considered. She was in
reality fully booked up. But the word unusual, and her recollection of Miss
Marple’s personality, carried the day and she rang up Miss Marple straight
away explaining that she could not come down to St. Mary Mead as she was at
the moment working, but that she was free from 2 to 4 on the following
afternoon and could meet Miss Marple anywhere in London. She suggested her own
club, a rather nondescript establishment which had the advantage of having
several small dark writing rooms which were usually empty.
Miss Marple accepted the suggestion and on the following day the meeting took
place.
Greetings were exchanged; Lucy Eyelesbarrow led her guest to the gloomiest of
the writing rooms, and said: “I’m afraid I’m rather booked up just at present,
but perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want me to undertake?”
“It’s very simple, really,” said Miss Marple. “Unusual, but simple. I want you
to find a body.”
For a moment the suspicion crossed Lucy’s mind that Miss Marple was mentally
unhinged, but she rejected the idea. Miss Marple was eminently sane. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Miss Marple was eminently sane. She meant
exactly what she had said.
“What kind of a body?” asked Lucy Eyelesbarrow with admirable composure.
“A woman’s body,” said Miss Marple. “The body of a woman who was
murdered—strangled actually—in a train.”
Lucy’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“Well, that’s certainly unusual. Tell me about it.”
Miss Marple told her. Lucy Eyelesbarrow listened attentively, without
interrupting. At the end she said:
“It all depends on what your friend saw—or thought she saw—?”
She left the sentence unfinished with a question in it.
“Elspeth McGillicuddy doesn’t imagine things,” said Miss Marple. “That’s why
I’m relying on what she said. If it had been Dorothy Cartwright, now—it would
have been quite a different matter. Dorothy always has a good story, and quite
often believes it herself, and there is usually a kind of basis of truth but
certainly no more. But Elspeth is the kind of woman who finds it very hard to
make herself believe that anything at all extraordinary or out of the way
could happen. She’s almost unsuggestible, rather like granite.”
“I see,” said Lucy thoughtfully. “Well, let’s accept it all. Where do I come
in?”
“I was very much impressed by you,” said Miss Marple, “and you see, I haven’t
got the physical strength nowadays to get about and do things.”
“You want me to make inquiries? That sort of thing? But won’t the police have
done all that? Or do you think they have been just slack?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “They haven’t been slack. It’s just that I’ve got
a theory about the woman’s body. It’s got to be somewhere. If it wasn’t found
in the train, then it must have been pushed or thrown out of the train—but it
hasn’t been discovered anywhere on the line. So I travelled down the same way
to see if there was anywhere where the body could have been thrown off the
train and yet wouldn’t have been found on the line—and there was. The railway
line makes a big curve before getting into Brackhampton, on the edge of a high
embankment. If a body were thrown out there, when the train was leaning at an
angle, I think it would pitch right down the embankment.”
“But surely it would still be found—even there?”
“Oh, yes. It would have to be taken away… But we’ll come to that presently.
Here’s the place—on this map?”
Lucy bent to study where Miss Marple’s finger pointed.
“It is right in the outskirts of Brackhampton now,” said Miss Marple, “but
originally it was a country house with extensive park and grounds and it’s
still there, untouched—ringed round with building estates and small suburban
houses. It’s called Rutherford Hall. It was built by a man called
Crackenthorpe, a very rich manufacturer, in 1884. The original Crackenthorpe’s
son, an elderly man, is living there still with, I understand, a daughter. The
railway encircles quite half of the property.”
“And you want me to do—what?”
Miss Marple replied promptly.
“I want you to get a post there. Everyone is crying out for efficient domestic
help— I should not imagine it would be difficult.”
“No, I don’t suppose it would be difficult.”
“I understand that Mr. Crackenthorpe is said locally to be somewhat of a
miser. If you accept a low salary, I will make it up to the proper figure
which should, I think, be rather more than the current rate.”
“Because of the difficulty?”
“Not the difficulty so much as the danger. It might, you know, be dangerous.
It’s only right to warn you of that.”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy pensively, “that the idea of danger would deter me.”
“I didn’t think it would,” said Miss Marple. “You’re not that kind of person.”
“I dare say you thought it might even attract me? I’ve encountered very little
danger in my life. But do you really believe it might be dangerous?”
“Somebody,” Miss Marple pointed out, “has committed a very successful crime.
There has been no hue-and-cry, no real suspicion. Two elderly ladies have told
a rather improbable story, the police have investigated it and found nothing
in it. So everything is nice and quiet. I don’t think that this somebody,
whoever he may be, will care about the matter being raked up—especially if you
are successful.”
“What do I look for exactly?”
“Any signs along the embankment, a scrap of clothing, broken bushes—that kind
of thing.”
Lucy nodded.
“And then?”
“I shall be quite close at hand,” said Miss Marple. “An old maidservant of
mine, my faithful Florence, lives in Brackhampton. She has looked after her
old parents for years. They are now both dead, and she takes in lodgers—all
most respectable people. She has arranged for me to have rooms with her. She
will look after me most devotedly, and I feel I should like to be close at
hand. I would suggest that you mention you have an elderly aunt living in the
neighbourhood, and that you want a post within easy distance of her, and also
that you stipulate for a reasonable amount of spare time so that you can go
and see her often.”
Again Lucy nodded.
“I was going to Taormina the day after tomorrow,” she said. “The holiday can
wait. But I can only promise three weeks. After that, I am booked up.”
“Three weeks should be ample,” said Miss Marple. “If we can’t find out
anything in three weeks, we might as well give up the whole thing as a mare’s
nest.”
Miss Marple departed, and Lucy, after a moment’s reflection, rang up a
Registry Office in Brackhampton, the manageress of which she knew very well.
She explained her desire for a post in the neighbourhood so as to be near her
“aunt.” After turning down, with a little difficulty and a good deal of
ingenuity, several more desirable places, Rutherford Hall was mentioned.
“That sounds exactly what I want,” said Lucy firmly.
The Registry Office rang up Miss Crackenthorpe, Miss Crackenthorpe rang up
Lucy.
Two days later Lucy left London en route for Rutherford Hall.
II
Driving her own small car, Lucy Eyelesbarrow drove through an imposing pair of
vast iron gates. Just inside them was what had originally been a small lodge
which now seemed completely derelict, whether through war damage, or merely
through neglect, it was difficult to be sure. A long winding drive led through
large gloomy clumps of rhododendrons up to the house. Lucy caught her breath
in a slight gasp when she saw the house which was a kind of miniature Windsor
Castle. The stone steps in front of the door could have done with attention
and the gravel sweep was green with neglected weeds.
She pulled an old-fashioned wrought-iron bell, and its clamour sounded echoing
away inside. A slatternly woman, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the
door and looked at her suspiciously.
“Expected, aren’t you?” she said. “Miss Somethingbarrow, she told me.”
“Quite right,” said Lucy.
The house was desperately cold inside. Her guide led her along a dark hall and
opened a door on the right. Rather to Lucy’s surprise, it was quite a pleasant
sitting room, with books and chintz-covered chairs.
“I’ll tell her,” said the woman, and went away shutting the door after having
given Lucy a look of profound disfavour.
After a few minutes the door opened again. From the first moment Lucy decided
that she liked Emma Crackenthorpe.
She was a middle-aged woman with no very outstanding characteristics, neither
good-looking nor plain, sensibly dressed in tweeds and pullover, with dark
hair swept back from her forehead, steady hazel eyes and a very pleasant
voice.
She said: “Miss Eyelesbarrow?” and held out her hand.
Then she looked doubtful.
“I wonder,” she said, “if this post is really what you’re looking for? I don’t
want a housekeeper, you know, to supervise things. I want someone to do the
work.”
Lucy said that that was what most people needed.
Emma Crackenthorpe said apologetically:
“So many people, you know, seem to think that just a little light dusting will
answer the case—but I can do all the light dusting myself.”
“I quite understand,” said Lucy. “You want cooking and washing-up, and
housework and stoking the boiler. That’s all right. That’s what I do. I’m not
at all afraid of work.”
“It’s a big house, I’m afraid, and inconvenient. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Of course we only live in a
portion of it—my father and myself, that is. He is rather an invalid. We live
quite quietly, and there is an Aga stove. I have several brothers, but they
are not here very often. Two women come in, a Mrs. Kidder in the morning, and
Mrs. Hart three days a week to do brasses and things like that. You have your
own car?”
“Yes. It can stand out in the open if there’s nowhere to put it. It’s used to
it.”
“Oh, there are any amount of old stables. There’s no trouble about that.” She
frowned a moment, then said, “Eyelesbarrow—rather an unusual name. Some
friends of mine were telling me about a Lucy Eyelesbarrow—the Kennedys?”
“Yes. I was with them in North Devon when Mrs. Kennedy was having a baby.”
Emma Crackenthorpe smiled.
“I know they said they’d never had such a wonderful time as when you were
there seeing to everything. But I had the idea that you were terribly
expensive. The sum I mentioned—”
“That’s quite all right,” said Lucy. “I want particularly, you see, to be near
Brackhampton. I have an elderly aunt in a critical state of health and I want
to be within easy distance of her. That’s why the salary is a secondary
consideration. I can’t afford to do nothing. If I could be sure of having some
time off most days?”
“Oh, of course. Every afternoon, till six, if you like?”
“That seems perfect.”
Miss Crackenthorpe hesitated a moment before saying: “My father is elderly and
a little—difficult sometimes. He is very keen on economy, and he says things
sometimes that upset people. I wouldn’t like—”
Lucy broke in quickly:
“I’m quite used to elderly people, of all kinds,” she said. “I always manage
to get on well with them.” Emma Crackenthorpe looked relieved.
“Trouble with father!” diagnosed Lucy. “I bet he’s an old tartar.”
She was apportioned a large gloomy bedroom which a small electric heater did
its inadequate best to warm, and was shown round the house, a vast
uncomfortable mansion. As they passed a door in the hall a voice roared out:
“That you, Emma? Got the new girl there? Bring her in. I want to look at her.”
Emma flushed, glanced at Lucy apologetically.
The two women entered the room. It was richly upholstered in dark velvet, the
narrow windows let in very little light, and it was full of heavy mahogany
Victorian furniture.
Old Mr. Crackenthorpe was stretched out in an invalid chair, a silver-headed
stick by his side.
He was a big gaunt man, his flesh hanging in loose folds. He had a face rather
like a bulldog, with a pugnacious chin. He had thick dark hair flecked with
grey, and small suspicious eyes.
“Let’s have a look at you, young lady.”
Lucy advanced, composed and smiling.
“There’s just one thing you’d better understand straight away. Just because we
live in a big house doesn’t mean we’re rich. We’re not rich. We live simply—do
you hear?—simply! No good coming here with a lot of high-falutin ideas. Cod’s
as good a fish as turbot any day, and don’t you forget it. I don’t stand for
waste. I live here because my father built the house and I like it. After I’m
dead they can sell it up if they want to—and I expect they will want to. No
sense of family. This house is well built—it’s solid, and we’ve got our own
land around us. Keeps us private. It would bring in a lot if sold for building
land but not while I’m alive. You won’t get me out of here until you take me
out feet first.”
He glared at Lucy.
“Your home is your castle,” said Lucy.
“Laughing at me?”
“Of course not. I think it’s very exciting to have a real country place all
surrounded by town.”
“Quite so. Can’t see another house from here, can you? Fields with cows in
them—right in the middle of Brackhampton. You hear the traffic a bit when the
wind’s that way—but otherwise it’s still country.”
He added, without pause or change of tone, to his daughter:
“Ring up that damn’ fool of a doctor. Tell him that last medicine’s no good at
all.”
Lucy and Emma retired. He shouted after them:
“And don’t let that damned woman who sniffs dust in here. She’s disarranged
all my books.”
Lucy asked:
“Has Mr. Crackenthorpe been an invalid long?”
Emma said, rather evasively:
“Oh, for years now… This is the kitchen.”
The kitchen was enormous. A vast kitchen range stood cold and neglected. An
Aga stood demurely beside it.
Lucy asked times of meals and inspected the larder. Then she said cheerfully
to Emma Crackenthorpe:
“I know everything now. Don’t bother. Leave it all to me.”
Emma Crackenthorpe heaved a sigh of relief as she went up to bed that night.
“The Kennedys were quite right,” she said. “She’s wonderful.”
Lucy rose at six the next morning. She did the house, prepared vegetables,
assembled, cooked and served breakfast. With Mrs. Kidder she made the beds and
at eleven o’clock they sat down to strong tea and biscuits in the kitchen.
Mollified by the fact that Lucy “had no airs about her,” and also by the
strength and sweetness of the tea, Mrs. Kidder relaxed into gossip. She was a
small spare woman with a sharp eye and tight lips.
“Regular old skinflint he is. What she has to put up with! All the same, she’s
not what I call down-trodden. Can hold her own all right when she has to. When
the gentlemen come down she sees to it there’s something decent to eat.”
“The gentlemen?”
“Yes. Big family it was. The eldest, Mr. Edmund, he was killed in the war.
Then there’s Mr. Cedric, he lives abroad somewhere. He’s not married. Paints
pictures in foreign parts. Mr. Harold’s in the City, lives in London—married
an earl’s daughter. Then there’s Mr. Alfred, he’s got a nice way with him, but
he’s a bit of a black-sheep, been in trouble once or twice—and there’s Miss
Edith’s husband, Mr. Bryan, ever so nice, he is—she died some years ago, but
he’s always stayed one of the family, and there’s Master Alexander, Miss
Edith’s little boy. He’s at school, comes here for part of the holidays
always; Miss Emma’s terribly set on him.”
Lucy digested all this information, continuing to press tea on her informant.
Finally, reluctantly, Mrs. Kidder rose to her feet.
“Seem to have got along a treat, we do, this morning,” she said wonderingly.
“Want me to give you a hand with the potatoes, dear?”
“They’re all done ready.”
“Well, you are a one for getting on with things! I might as well be getting
along myself as there doesn’t seem anything else to do.”
Mrs. Kidder departed and Lucy, with time on her hands, scrubbed the kitchen
table which she had been longing to do, but which she had put off so as not to
offend Mrs. Kidder whose job it properly was. Then she cleaned the silver till
it shone radiantly. She cooked lunch, cleared it away, washed it up, and at
two-thirty was ready to start exploration. She had set out the tea things
ready on a tray, with sandwiches and bread and butter covered with a damp
napkin to keep them moist.
She strolled round the gardens which would be the normal thing to do. The
kitchen garden was sketchily cultivated with a few vegetables. The hot-houses
were in ruins. The paths everywhere were overgrown with weeds. A herbaceous
border near the house was the only thing that showed free of weeds and in good
condition and Lucy suspected that that had been Emma’s hand. The gardener was
a very old man, somewhat deaf, who was only making a show of working. Lucy
spoke to him pleasantly. He lived in a cottage adjacent to the big stableyard.
Leading out of the stableyard a back drive led through the park which was
fenced off on either side of it, and under a railway arch into a small back
lane. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Every few minutes a train thundered along the main line over the railway arch.
Lucy watched the trains as they slackened speed going round the sharp curve
that encircled the Crackenthorpe property. She passed under the railway arch
and out into the lane. It seemed a little-used track. On the one side was the
railway embankment, on the other was a high wall which enclosed some tall
factory buildings. Lucy followed the lane until it came out into a street of
small houses. She could hear a short distance away the busy hum of main road
traffic. She glanced at her watch. A woman came out of a house nearby and Lucy
stopped her.
“Excuse me, can you tell me if there is a public telephone near here?”
“Post office just at the corner of the road.”
Lucy thanked her and walked along until she came to the Post Office which was
a combination shop and post office. There was a telephone box at one side.
Lucy went into it and made a call. She asked to speak to Miss Marple. A
woman’s voice spoke in a sharp bark.
“She’s resting. And I’m not going to disturb her!! She needs her rest—she’s an
old lady. Who shall I say called?”
“Miss Eyelesbarrow. There’s no need to disturb her. Just tell her that I’ve
arrived and everything is going on well and that I’ll let her know when I’ve
any news.”
She replaced the receiver and made her way back to Rutherford Hall.
Five
“I suppose it will be all right if I just practise a few iron shots in the
park?” asked Lucy.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Are you fond of golf?”
“I’m not much good, but I like to keep in practice. It’s a more agreeable form
of exercise than just going for a walk.”
“Nowhere to walk outside this place,” growled Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Nothing but
pavements and miserable little band boxes of houses. Like to get hold of my
land and build more of them. But they won’t until I’m dead. And I’m not going
to die to oblige anybody. I can tell you that! Not to oblige anybody!”
Emma Crackenthorpe said mildly:
“Now, Father.”
“I know what they think—and what they’re waiting for. All of ’em. Cedric, and
that sly fox Harold with his smug face. As for Alfred, I wonder he hasn’t had
a shot at bumping me off himself. Not sure he didn’t, at Christmas-time. That
was a very odd turn I had. Puzzled old Quimper. He asked me a lot of discreet
questions.”
“Everyone gets these digestive upsets now and again, Father.”
“All right, all right, say straight out that I ate too much! That’s what you
mean. And why did I eat too much? Because there was too much food on the
table, far too much. Wasteful and extravagant. And that reminds me—you, young
woman. Five potatoes you sent in for lunch—good-sized ones too. Two potatoes
are enough for anybody. So don’t send in more than four in future. The extra
one was wasted today.”
“It wasn’t wasted, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I’ve planned to use it in a Spanish
omelette tonight.”
“Urgh!” As Lucy went out of the room carrying the coffee tray she heard him
say, “Slick young woman, that, always got all the answers. Cooks well,
though—and she’s a handsome kind of girl.”
Lucy Eyelesbarrow took a light iron out of the set of golf clubs she had had
the forethought to bring with her, and strolled out into the park, climbing
over the fence.
She began playing a series of shots. After five minutes or so, a ball,
apparently sliced, pitched on the side of the railway embankment. Lucy went up
and began to hunt about for it. She looked back towards the house. It was a
long way away and nobody was in the least interested in what she was doing.
She continued to hunt for the ball. Now and then she played shots from the
embankment down into the grass. During the afternoon she searched about a
third of the embankment. Nothing. She played her ball back towards the house.
Then, on the next day, she came upon something. A thorn bush growing about
halfway up the bank had been snapped off. Bits of it lay scattered about. Lucy
examined the tree itself. Impaled on one of the thorns was a torn scrap of
fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour. Lucy
looked at it for a moment, then she took a pair of scissors out of her pocket
and snipped it carefully in half. The half she had snipped off she put in an
envelope which she had in her pocket. She came down the steep slope searching
about for anything else. She looked carefully at the rough grass of the field.
She thought she could distinguish a kind of track which someone had made
walking through the long grass. But it was very faint—not nearly so clear as
her own tracks were. It must have been made some time ago and it was too
sketchy for her to be sure that it was not merely imagination on her part.
She began to hunt carefully down in the grass at the foot of the embankment
just below the broken thorn bush. Presently her search was rewarded. She found
a powder compact, a small cheap enamelled affair. She wrapped it in her
handkerchief and put it in her pocket. She searched on but did not find
anything more.
On the following afternoon, she got into her car and went to see her invalid
aunt. Emma Crackenthorpe said kindly, “Don’t hurry back. We shan’t want you
until dinner-time.”
“Thank you, but I shall be back by six at the latest.”
No. 4 Madison Road was a small drab house in a small drab street. It had very
clean Nottingham lace curtains, a shining white doorstep and a well-polished
brass door handle. The door was opened by a tall, grim-looking woman, dressed
in black with a large knob of iron-grey hair.
She eyed Lucy in suspicious appraisal as she showed her in to Miss Marple.
Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting room which looked out on to a small
tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of mats and
doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean suite and two
ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the fire busily
engaged in crocheting.
Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss Marple.
“Well!” she said. “It looks as though you were right.”
She produced her finds and gave details of their finding.
A faint flush of achievement came into Miss Marple’s cheeks.
“Perhaps one ought not to feel so,” she said, “but it is rather gratifying to
form a theory and get proof that it is correct!”
She fingered the small tuft of fur. “Elspeth said the woman was wearing a
light-coloured fur coat. I suppose the compact was in the pocket of the coat
and fell out as the body rolled down the slope. It doesn’t seem distinctive in
any way, but it may help. You didn’t take all the fur?”
“No, I left half of it on the thorn bush.”
Miss Marple nodded approval.
“Quite right. You are very intelligent, my dear. The police will want to check
exactly.”
“You are going to the police—with these things?”
“Well—not quite yet…” Miss Marple considered: “It would be better, I think, to
find the body first. Don’t you?”
“Yes, but isn’t that rather a tall order? I mean, granting that your estimate
is correct. The murderer pushed the body out of the train, then presumably got
out himself at Brackhampton and at some time—probably that same night—came
along and removed the body. But what happened after that? He may have taken it
anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think you’ve followed the thing to
its logical conclusion, my dear Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Do call me Lucy. Why not anywhere?”
“Because, if so, he might much more easily have killed the girl in some lonely
spot and driven the body away from there. You haven’t appreciated—”
Lucy interrupted.
“Are you saying—do you mean—that this was a premeditated crime?”
“I didn’t think so at first,” said Miss Marple. “One wouldn’t—naturally. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“One wouldn’t—naturally. It
seemed like a quarrel and a man losing control and strangling the girl and
then being faced with the problem which he had to solve within a few minutes.
But it really is too much of a coincidence that he should kill the girl in a
fit of passion, and then look out of the window and find the train was going
round a curve exactly at a spot where he could tip the body out, and where he
could be sure of finding his way later and removing it! If he’d just thrown
her out there by chance, he’d have done no more about it, and the body would,
long before now, have been found.”
She paused. Lucy stared at her.
“You know,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “it’s really quite a clever way to
have planned a crime—and I think it was very carefully planned. There’s
something so anonymous about a train. If he’d killed her in the place where
she lived, or was staying, somebody might have noticed him come or go. Or if
he’d driven her out in the country somewhere, someone might have noticed the
car and its number and make. But a train is full of strangers coming and
going. In a non-corridor carriage, alone with her, it was quite
easy—especially if you realize that he knew exactly what he was going to do
next. He knew—he must have known—all about Rutherford Hall—its geographical
position, I mean, its queer isolation—an island bounded by railway lines.”
“It is exactly like that,” said Lucy. “It’s an anachronism out of the past.
Bustling urban life goes on all around it, but doesn’t touch it. The
tradespeople deliver in the mornings and that’s all.”
“So we assume, as you said, that the murderer comes to Rutherford Hall that
night. It is already dark when the body falls and no one is likely to discover
it before the next day.”
“No, indeed.”
“The murderer would come—how? In a car? Which way?”
Lucy considered.
“There’s a rough lane, alongside a factory wall. He’d probably come that way,
turn in under the railway arch and along the back drive. Then he could climb
the fence, go along at the foot of the embankment, find the body, and carry it
back to the car.”
“And then,” continued Miss Marple, “he took it to some place he had already
chosen beforehand. This was all thought out, you know. And I don’t think, as I
say, that he would take it away from Rutherford Hall, or if so, not very far.
The obvious thing, I suppose, would be to bury it somewhere?” She looked
inquiringly at Lucy.
“I suppose so,” said Lucy considering. “But it wouldn’t be quite as easy as it
sounds.”
Miss Marple agreed.
“He couldn’t bury it in the park. Too hard work and very noticeable. Somewhere
where the earth was turned already?”
“The kitchen garden, perhaps, but that’s very close to the gardener’s cottage.
He’s old and deaf—but still it might be risky.”
“Is there a dog?”
“No.”
“Then in a shed, perhaps, or an outhouse?”
“That would be simpler and quicker… There are a lot of unused old buildings;
broken down pigsties, harness rooms, workshops that nobody ever goes near. Or
he might perhaps thrust it into a clump of rhododendrons or shrubs somewhere.”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes, I think that’s much more probable.”
There was a knock on the door and the grim Florence came in with a tray.
“Nice for you to have a visitor,” she said to Miss Marple, “I’ve made you my
special scones you used to like.”
“Florence always made the most delicious tea cakes,” said Miss Marple.
Florence, gratified, creased her features into a totally unexpected smile and
left the room.
“I think, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “we won’t talk anymore about murder
during tea. Such an unpleasant subject!”
II
After tea, Lucy rose.
“I’ll be getting back,” she said. “As I’ve already told you, there’s no one
actually living at Rutherford Hall who could be the man we’re looking for.
There’s only an old man and a middle-aged woman, and an old deaf gardener.”
“I didn’t say he was actually living there,” said Miss Marple. “All I mean is,
that he’s someone who knows Rutherford Hall very well. But we can go into that
after you’ve found the body.”
“You seem to assume quite confidently that I shall find it,” said Lucy. “I
don’t feel nearly so optimistic.”
“I’m sure you will succeed, my dear Lucy. You are such an efficient person.”
“In some ways, but I haven’t had any experience in looking for bodies.”
“I’m sure all it needs is a little common sense,” said Miss Marple
encouragingly.
Lucy looked at her, then laughed. Miss Marple smiled back at her.
Lucy set to work systematically the next afternoon.
She poked round outhouses, prodded the briars which wreathed the old pigsties,
and was peering into the boiler room under the greenhouse when she heard a dry
cough and turned to find old Hillman, the gardener, looking at her
disapprovingly.
“You be careful you don’t get a nasty fall, miss,” he warned her. “Them steps
isn’t safe, and you was up in the loft just now and the floor there ain’t safe
neither.”
Lucy was careful to display no embarrassment.
“I expect you think I’m very nosy,” she said cheerfully. “I was just wondering
if something couldn’t be made out of this place—growing mushrooms for the
market, that sort of thing. Everything seems to have been let go terribly.”
“That’s the master, that is. Won’t spend a penny. Ought to have two men and a
boy here, I ought, to keep the place proper, but won’t hear of it, he won’t.
Had all I could do to make him get a motor mower. Wanted me to mow all that
front grass by hand, he did.”
“But if the place could be made to pay—with some repairs?”
“Won’t get a place like this to pay—too far gone. And he wouldn’t care about
that, anyway. Only cares about saving. Knows well enough what’ll happen after
he’s gone—the young gentlemen’ll sell up as fast as they can. Only waiting for
him to pop off, they are. Going to come into a tidy lot of money when he dies,
so I’ve heard.”
“I suppose he’s a very rich man?” said Lucy.
“Crackenthorpe’s Fancies, that’s what they are. The old gentleman started it,
Mr. Crackenthorpe’s father. A sharp one he was, by all accounts. Made his
fortune, and built this place. Hard as nails, they say, and never forgot an
injury. But with all that, he was open-handed. Nothing of the miser about him.
Disappointed in both his sons, so the story goes. Give ’em an education and
brought ’em up to be gentlemen—Oxford and all. But they were too much of
gentlemen to want to go into the business. The younger one married an actress
and then smashed himself up in a car accident when he’d been drinking. The
elder one, our one here, his father never fancied so much. Abroad a lot, he
was, bought a lot of heathen statues and had them sent home. Wasn’t so close
with his money when he was young—come on him more in middle age, it did. No,
they never did hit it off, him and his father, so I’ve heard.”
Lucy digested this information with an air of polite interest. The old man
leant against the wall and prepared to go on with his saga. He much preferred
talking to doing any work.
“Died before the war, the old gentleman did. Terrible temper he had. Didn’t do
to give him any cause, he wouldn’t stand for it.”
“And after he died, this Mr. Crackenthorpe came and lived here?”
“Him and his family, yes. Nigh grown up they was by then.”
“But surely… Oh, I see, you mean the 1914 war.”
“No, I don’t. Died in 1928, that’s what I mean.”
Lucy supposed that 1928 qualified as “before the war” though it was not the
way she would have described it herself.
She said: “Well, I expect you’ll be wanting to go on with your work. You
mustn’t let me keep you.”
“Ar,” said old Hillman without enthusiasm, “not much you can do this time of
day. Light’s too bad.”
Lucy went back to the house, pausing to investigate a likely-looking copse of
birch and azalea on her way. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
She found Emma Crackenthorpe standing in the hall reading a letter. The
afternoon post had just been delivered.
“My nephew will be here tomorrow—with a school-friend. Alexander’s room is the
one over the porch. The one next to it will do for James Stoddart-West.
They’ll use the bathroom just opposite.”
“Yes, Miss Crackenthorpe. I’ll see the rooms are prepared.”
“They’ll arrive in the morning before lunch.” She hesitated. “I expect they’ll
be hungry.”
“I bet they will,” said Lucy. “Roast beef, do you think? And perhaps treacle
tart?”
“Alexander’s very fond of treacle tart.”
The two boys arrived on the following morning. They both had well-brushed
hair, suspiciously angelic faces, and perfect manners. Alexander Eastley had
fair hair and blue eyes, Stoddart-West was dark and spectacled.
They discoursed gravely during lunch on events in the sporting world, with
occasional references to the latest space fiction. Their manner was that of
elderly professors discussing palaeolithic implements. In comparison with
them, Lucy felt quite young.
The sirloin of beef vanished in no time and every crumb of treacle tart was
consumed.
Mr. Crackenthorpe grumbled: “You two will eat me out of house and home.”
Alexander gave him a blue-eyed reproving glance.
“We’ll have bread and cheese if you can’t afford meat, Grandfather.”
“Afford it? I can afford it. I don’t like waste.”
“We haven’t wasted any, sir,” said Stoddart-West, looking down at his place
which bore clear testimony of that fact.
“You boys both eat twice as much as I do.”
“We’re at the body-building stage,” Alexander explained. “We need a big intake
of proteins.”
The old man grunted.
As the two boys left the table, Lucy heard Alexander say apologetically to his
friend:
“You mustn’t pay any attention to my grandfather. He’s on a diet or something
and that makes him rather peculiar. He’s terribly mean, too. I think it must
be a complex of some kind.”
Stoddart-West said comprehendingly:
“I had an aunt who kept thinking she was going bankrupt. Really, she had
oodles of money. Pathological, the doctor said. Have you got that football,
Alex?”
After she had cleared away and washed up lunch, Lucy went out. She could hear
the boys calling out in the distance on the lawn. She herself went in the
opposite direction, down the front drive and from there she struck across to
some clumped masses of rhododendron bushes. She began to hunt carefully,
holding back the leaves and peering inside. She moved from clump to clump
systematically, and was raking inside with a golf club when the polite voice
of Alexander Eastley made her start.
“Are you looking for something, Miss Eyelesbarrow?”
“A golf ball,” said Lucy promptly. “Several golf balls in fact. I’ve been
practising golf shots most afternoons and I’ve lost quite a lot of balls. I
thought that today I really must find some of them.”
“We’ll help you,” said Alexander obligingly.
“That’s very kind of you. I thought you were playing football.”
“One can’t go on playing footer,” explained Stoddart-West. “One gets too hot.
Do you play a lot of golf?”
“I’m quite fond of it. I don’t get much opportunity.”
“I suppose you don’t. You do the cooking here, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you cook the lunch today?”
“Yes. Was it all right?”
“Simply wizard,” said Alexander. “We get awful meat at school, all dried up. I
love beef that’s pink and juicy inside. That treacle tart was pretty smashing,
too.”
“You must tell me what things you like best.”
“Could we have apple meringue one day? It’s my favourite thing.”
“Of course.”
Alexander sighed happily.
“There’s a clock golf set under the stairs,” he said. “We could fix it up on
the lawn and do some putting. What about it, Stodders?”
“Good-oh!” said Stoddart-West.
“He isn’t really Australian,” explained Alexander courteously. “But he’s
practising talking that way in case his people take him out to see the Test
Match next year.”
Encouraged by Lucy, they went off to get the clock golf set. Later, as she
returned to the house, she found them setting it out on the lawn and arguing
about the position of the numbers.
“We don’t want it like a clock,” said Stoddart-West. “That’s kid’s stuff. We
want to make a course of it. Long holes and short ones. It’s a pity the
numbers are so rusty. You can hardly see them.”
“They need a lick of white paint,” said Lucy. “You might get some tomorrow and
paint them.”
“Good idea.” Alexander’s face lit up. “I say, I believe there are some old
pots of paint in the Long Barn—left there by the painters last hols. Shall we
see?”
“What’s the Long Barn?” asked Lucy.
Alexander pointed to a long stone building a little way from the house near
the back drive.
“It’s quite old,” he said. “Grandfather calls it a Leak Barn and says its
Elizabethan, but that’s just swank. It belonged to the farm that was here
originally. My great-grandfather pulled it down and built this awful house
instead.”
He added: “A lot of grandfather’s collection is in the barn. Things he had
sent home from abroad when he was a young man. Most of them are pretty awful,
too. The Long Barn is used sometimes for whist drives and things like that.
Women’s Institute stuff. And Conservative Sales of Work. Come and see it.”
Lucy accompanied them willingly.
There was a big nail-studded oak door to the barn. Alexander raised his hand
and detached a key on a nail just under some ivy to the right hand of the top
of the door. He turned it in the lock, pushed the door open and they went in.
At a first glance Lucy felt that she was in a singularly bad museum. The heads
of two Roman emperors in marble glared at her out of bulging eyeballs, there
was a huge sarcophagus of a decadent Greco-Roman period, a simpering Venus
stood on a pedestal clutching her falling draperies. Besides these works of
art, there were a couple of trestle tables, some stacked-up chairs, and sundry
oddments such as a rusted hand mower, two buckets, a couple of motheaten car
seats, and a green painted iron garden seat that had lost a leg.
“I think I saw the paint over here,” said Alexander vaguely. He went to a
corner and pulled aside a tattered curtain that shut it off.
They found a couple of paint pots and brushes, the latter dry and stiff.
“You really need some turps,” said Lucy.
They could not, however, find any turpentine. The boys suggested bicycling off
to get some, and Lucy urged them to do so. Painting the clock golf numbers
would keep them amused for some time, she thought.
The boys went off, leaving her in the barn.
“This really could do with a clear up,” she had murmured.
“I shouldn’t bother,” Alexander advised her. “It gets cleaned up if it’s going
to be used for anything, but it’s practically never used this time of year.”
“Do I hang the key up outside the door again? Is that where it’s kept?”
“Yes. There’s nothing to pinch here, you see. Nobody would want those awful
marble things and, anyway, they weigh a ton.”
Lucy agreed with him. She could hardly admire old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s taste in
art. He seemed to have an unerring instinct for selecting the worst specimen
of any period.
She stood looking round her after the boys had gone. Her eyes came to rest on
the sarcophagus and stayed there.
That sarcophagus….
The air in the barn was faintly musty as though unaired for a long time. She
went over to the sarcophagus. It had a heavy close-fitting lid. Lucy looked at
it speculatively.
Then she left the barn, went to the kitchen, found a heavy crowbar, and
returned.
It was not an easy task, but Lucy toiled doggedly.
Slowly the lid began to rise, prised up by the crowbar.
It rose sufficiently for Lucy to see what was inside….
Six
I
A few minutes later Lucy, rather pale, left the barn, locked the door and put
the key back on the nail.
She went rapidly to the stables, got out her car and drove down the back
drive. She stopped at the post office at the end of the road. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
She stopped at the post office at the end of the road. She went into
the telephone box, put in the money and dialled.
“I want to speak to Miss Marple.”
“She’s resting, miss. It’s Miss Eyelesbarrow, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to disturb her and that’s that, miss. She’s an old lady and she
needs her rest.”
“You must disturb her. It’s urgent.”
“I’m not—”
“Please do what I say at once.”
When she chose, Lucy’s voice could be as incisive as steel. Florence knew
authority when she heard it.
Presently Miss Marple’s voice spoke.
“Yes, Lucy?”
Lucy drew a deep breath.
“You were quite right,” she said. “I’ve found it.”
“A woman’s body?”
“Yes. A woman in a fur coat. It’s a stone sarcophagus in a kind of barn-cum-
museum near the house. What do you want me to do? I ought to inform the
police, I think.”
“Yes. You must inform the police. At once.”
“But what about the rest of it? About you? The first thing they’ll want to
know is why I was prying up a lid that weighs tons for apparently no reason.
Do you want me to invent a reason? I can.”
“No. I think, you know,” said Miss Marple in her gentle serious voice, “that
the only thing to do is to tell the exact truth.”
“About you?”
“About everything.”
A sudden grin split the whiteness of Lucy’s face.
“That will be quite simple for me,” she said. “But I imagine they’ll find it
quite hard to believe!”
She rang off, waited a moment, and then rang and got the police station.
“I have just discovered a dead body in a sarcophagus in the Long Barn at
Rutherford Hall.”
“What’s that?”
Lucy repeated her statement and anticipating the next question gave her name.
She drove back, put the car away and entered the house.
She paused in the hall for a moment, thinking.
Then she gave a brief sharp nod of the head and went to the library where Miss
Crackenthorpe was sitting helping her father to do The Times crossword.
“Can I speak to you a moment Miss Crackenthorpe?”
Emma looked up, a shade of apprehension on her face. The apprehension was,
Lucy thought, purely domestic. In such words do useful household staff
announce their imminent departure.
“Well, speak up, girl, speak up,” said old Mr. Crackenthorpe irritably.
Lucy said to Emma:
“I’d like to speak to you alone, please.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “You say straight out here what you’ve got
to say.”
“Just a moment, Father.” Emma rose and went towards the door.
“All nonsense. It can wait,” said the old man angrily.
“I’m afraid it can’t wait,” said Lucy.
Mr. Crackenthorpe said, “What impertinence!”
Emma came out into the hall. Lucy followed her and shut the door behind them.
“Yes?” said Emma. “What is it? If you think there’s too much to do with the
boys here, I can help you and—”
“It’s not that at all,” said Lucy. “I didn’t want to speak before your father
because I understand he is an invalid and it might give him a shock. You see,
I’ve just discovered the body of a murdered woman in that big sarcophagus in
the Long Barn.”
Emma Crackenthorpe stared at her.
“In the sarcophagus? A murdered woman? It’s impossible!”
“I’m afraid it’s quite true. I’ve rung up the police. They will be here at any
minute.”
A slight flush came into Emma’s cheeks.
“You should have told me first—before notifying the police.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lucy.
“I didn’t hear you ring up—” Emma’s glance went to the telephone on the hall
table.
“I rang up from the post office just down the road.”
“But how extraordinary. Why not from here?”
Lucy thought quickly.
“I was afraid the boys might be about—might hear—if I rang up from the hall
here.”
“I see… Yes… I see… They are coming—the police, I mean?”
“They’re here now,” said Lucy, as with a squeal of brakes a car drew up at the
front door and the front doorbell pealed through the house.
II
“I’m sorry, very sorry—to have asked this of you,” said Inspector Bacon.
His hand under her arm, he led Emma Crackenthorpe out of the barn. Emma’s face
was very pale, she looked sick, but she walked firmly erect.
“I’m quite sure that I’ve never seen the woman before in my life.”
“We’re very grateful to you, Miss Crackenthorpe. That’s all I wanted to know.
Perhaps you’d like to lie down?”
“I must go to my father. I telephoned Dr. Quimper as soon as I heard about
this and the doctor is with him now.”
Dr. Quimper came out of the library as they crossed the hall. He was a tall
genial man, with a casual offhand cynical manner that his patients found very
stimulating.
He and the inspector nodded to each other.
“Miss Crackenthorpe has performed an unpleasant task very bravely,” said
Bacon.
“Well done, Emma,” said the doctor, patting her on the shoulder. “You can take
things. I’ve always known that. Your father’s all right. Just go in and have a
word with him, and then go into the dining room and get yourself a glass of
brandy. That’s a prescription.”
Emma smiled at him gratefully and went into the library.
“That woman’s the salt of the earth,” said the doctor, looking after her. “A
thousand pities she’s never married. The penalty of being the only female in a
family of men. The other sister got clear, married at seventeen, I believe.
This one’s quite a handsome woman really. She’d have been a success as a wife
and mother.”
“Too devoted to her father, I suppose,” said Inspector Bacon.
“She’s not really as devoted as all that—but she’s got the instinct some women
have to make their menfolk happy. She sees that her father likes being an
invalid, so she lets him be an invalid. She’s the same with her brothers.
Cedric feels he’s a good painter, what’s his name—Harold—knows how much she
relies on his sound judgment—she lets Alfred shock her with his stories of his
clever deals. Oh, yes, she’s a clever woman—no fool. Well, do you want me for
anything? Want me to have a look at your corpse now Johnstone has done with
it” (Johnstone was the police surgeon) “and see if it happens to be one of my
medical mistakes?”
“I’d like you to have a look, yes, Doctor. We want to get her identified. I
suppose it’s impossible for old Mr. Crackenthorpe? Too much of a strain?”
“Strain? Fiddlesticks. He’d never forgive you or me if you didn’t let him have
a peep. He’s all agog. Most exciting thing that’s happened to him for fifteen
years or so—and it won’t cost him anything!”
“There’s nothing really much wrong with him then?”
“He’s seventy-two,” said the doctor. “That’s all, really, that’s the matter
with him. He has odd rheumatic twinges—who doesn’t? So he calls it arthritis.
He has palpitations after meals—as well he may—he puts them down to ‘heart.’
But he can always do anything he wants to do! I’ve plenty of patients like
that. The ones who are really ill usually insist desperately that they’re
perfectly well. Come on, let’s go and see this body of yours. Unpleasant, I
suppose?”
“Johnstone estimates she’s been dead between a fortnight and three weeks.”
“Quite unpleasant, then.”
The doctor stood by the sarcophagus and looked down with frank curiosity,
professionally unmoved by what he had named the “unpleasantness.”
“Never seen her before. No patient of mine. I don’t remember ever seeing her
about in Brackhampton. She must have been quite good-looking once—hm—somebody
had it in for her all right.”
They went out again into the air. Doctor Quimper glanced up at the building.
“Found in the what—what do they call it?—the Long Barn—in a sarcophagus!
Fantastic! Who found her?”
“Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow.”
“Oh, the latest lady help? What was she doing, poking about in sarcophagi?”
“That,” said Inspector Bacon grimly, “is just what I am going to ask her. Now,
about Mr. Crackenthorpe. Will you—?”
“I’ll bring him along.”
Mr. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Crackenthorpe. Will you—?”
“I’ll bring him along.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe, muffled in scarves, came walking at a brisk pace, the
doctor beside him.
“Disgraceful,” he said. “Absolutely disgraceful! I brought back that
sarcophagus from Florence in—let me see—it must have been in 1908—or was it
1909?”
“Steady now,” the doctor warned him. “This isn’t going to be nice, you know.”
“No matter how ill I am, I’ve got to do my duty, haven’t I?”
A very brief visit inside the Long Barn was, however, quite long enough. Mr.
Crackenthorpe shuffled out into the air again with remarkable speed.
“Never saw her before in my life!” he said. “What’s it mean? Absolutely
disgraceful. It wasn’t Florence—I remember now—it was Naples. A very fine
specimen. And some fool of a woman has to come and get herself killed in it!”
He clutched at the folds of his overcoat on the left side.
“Too much for me… My heart… Where’s Emma? Doctor….”
Doctor Quimper took his arm.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “I prescribe a little stimulant. Brandy.”
They went back together towards the house.
“Sir. Please, sir.”
Inspector Bacon turned. Two boys had arrived, breathless, on bicycles. Their
faces were full of eager pleading.
“Please, sir, can we see the body?”
“No, you can’t,” said Inspector Bacon.
“Oh, sir, please, sir. You never know. We might know who she was. Oh, please,
sir, do be a sport. It’s not fair. Here’s a murder, right in our own barn.
It’s the sort of chance that might never happen again. Do be a sport, sir.”
“Who are you two?”
“I’m Alexander Eastley, and this is my friend James Stoddart-West.”
“Have you ever seen a blonde woman wearing a light-coloured dyed squirrel coat
anywhere about the place?”
“Well, I can’t remember exactly,” said Alexander astutely. “If I were to have
a look—”
“Take ’em in, Sanders,” said Inspector Bacon to the constable who was standing
by the barn door. “One’s only young once!”
“Oh, sir, thank you, sir.” Both boys were vociferous. “It’s very kind of you,
sir.”
Bacon turned away towards the house.
“And now,” he said to himself grimly, “for Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow!”
III
After leading the police to the Long Barn, and giving a brief account of her
actions, Lucy had retired into the background, but she was under no illusion
that the police had finished with her.
She had just finished preparing potatoes for chips that evening when word was
brought to her that Inspector Bacon required her presence. Putting aside the
large bowl of cold water and salt in which the chips were reposing, Lucy
followed the policeman to where the inspector awaited her. She sat down and
awaited his questions composedly.
She gave her name—and her address in London, and added of her own accord:
“I will give you some names and addresses of references if you want to know
all about me.”
The names were very good ones. An Admiral of the Fleet, the Provost of an
Oxford College, and a Dame of the British Empire. In spite of himself
Inspector Bacon was impressed.
“Now, Miss Eyelesbarrow, you went into the Long Barn to find some paint. Is
that right? And after having found the paint you got a crowbar, forced up the
lid of this sarcophagus and found the body. What were you looking for in the
sarcophagus?”
“I was looking for a body,” said Lucy.
“You were looking for a body—and you found one! Doesn’t that seem to you a
very extraordinary story?”
“Oh, yes, it is an extraordinary story. Perhaps you will let me explain it to
you.”
“I certainly think you had better do so.”
Lucy gave him a precise recital of the events which had led up to her
sensational discovery.
The inspector summed it up in an outraged voice.
“You were engaged by an elderly lady to obtain a post here and to search the
house and grounds for a dead body? Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Who is this elderly lady?”
“Miss Jane Marple. She is at present living at 4 Madison Road.”
The inspector wrote it down.
“You expect me to believe this story?”
Lucy said gently:
“Not, perhaps, until after you have interviewed Miss Marple and got her
confirmation of it.”
“I shall interview her all right. She must be cracked.”
Lucy forbore to point out that to be proved right is not really a proof of
mental incapacity. Instead she said:
“What are you proposing to tell Miss Crackenthorpe? About me, I mean?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, as far as Miss Marple is concerned I’ve done my job, I’ve found the
body she wanted found. But I’m still engaged by Miss Crackenthorpe, and there
are two hungry boys in the house and probably some more of the family will
soon be coming down after all this upset. She needs domestic help. If you go
and tell her that I only took this post in order to hunt for dead bodies
she’ll probably throw me out. Otherwise I can get on with my job and be
useful.”
The inspector looked hard at her.
“I’m not saying anything to anyone at present,” he said. “I haven’t verified
your statement yet. For all I know you may be making the whole thing up.”
Lucy rose.
“Thank you. Then I’ll go back to the kitchen and get on with things.”
Seven
I
“We’d better have the Yard in on it, is that what you think, Bacon?”
The Chief Constable looked inquiringly at Inspector Bacon. The inspector was a
big stolid man—his expression was that of one utterly disgusted with humanity.
“The woman wasn’t a local, sir,” he said. “There’s some reason to believe—from
her underclothing—that she might have been a foreigner. Of course,” added
Inspector Bacon hastily, “I’m not letting on about that yet awhile. We’re
keeping it up our sleeves until after the inquest.”
The Chief Constable nodded.
“The inquest will be purely formal, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve seen the Coroner.”
“And it’s fixed for—when?”
“Tomorrow. I understand the other members of the Crackenthorpe family will be
here for it. There’s just a chance one of them might be able to identify her.
They’ll all be here.”
He consulted a list he held in his hand.
“Harold Crackenthorpe, he’s something in the City—quite an important figure, I
understand. Alfred—don’t quite know what he does. Cedric—that’s the one who
lives abroad. Paints!” The inspector invested the word with its full quota of
sinister significance. The Chief Constable smiled into his moustache.
“No reason, is there, to believe the Crackenthorpe family are connected with
the crime in any way?” he asked.
“Not apart from the fact that the body was found on the premises,” said
Inspector Bacon. “And of course it’s just possible that this artist member of
the family might be able to identify her. What beats me is this extraordinary
rigmarole about the train.”
“Ah, yes. You’ve been to see this old lady, this—er—” (he glanced at the
memorandum lying on his desk) “Miss Marple?”
“Yes, sir. And she’s quite set and definite about the whole thing. Whether
she’s barmy or not, I don’t know, but she sticks to her story—about what her
friend saw and all the rest of it. As far as all that goes, I dare say it’s
just make-believe—sort of thing old ladies do make up, like seeing flying
saucers at the bottom of the garden, and Russian agents in the lending
library. But it seems quite clear that she did engage this young woman, the
lady help, and told her to look for a body—which the girl did.”
“And found one,” observed the Chief Constable. “Well, it’s all a very
remarkable story. Marple, Miss Jane Marple—the name seems familiar somehow…
Anyway, I’ll get on to the Yard. I think you’re right about its not being a
local case—though we won’t advertise the fact just yet. For the moment we’ll
tell the Press as little as possible.”
II
The inquest was a purely formal affair. No one came forward to identify the
dead woman. Lucy was called to give evidence of finding the body and medical
evidence was given as to the cause of death—strangulation. The proceedings
were then adjourned. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
The proceedings
were then adjourned.
It was a cold blustery day when the Crackenthorpe family came out of the hall
where the inquest had been held. There were five of them all told, Emma,
Cedric, Harold, Alfred, and Bryan Eastley, the husband of the dead daughter
Edith. There was also Mr. Wimborne, the senior partner of the firm of
solicitors who dealt with the Crackenthorpes’ legal affairs. He had come down
specially from London at great inconvenience to attend the inquest. They all
stood for a moment on the pavement, shivering. Quite a crowd had assembled;
the piquant details of the “Body in the Sarcophagus” had been fully reported
in both the London and the local Press.
A murmur went round: “That’s them….”
Emma said sharply: “Let’s get away.”
The big hired Daimler drew up to the kerb. Emma got in and motioned to Lucy.
Mr. Wimborne, Cedric and Harold followed. Bryan Eastley said: “I’ll take
Alfred with me in my little bus.” The chauffeur shut the door and the Daimler
prepared to roll away.
“Oh, stop!” cried Emma. “There are the boys!”
The boys, in spite of aggrieved protests, had been left behind at Rutherford
Hall, but they now appeared grinning from ear to ear.
“We came on our bicycles,” said Stoddart-West. “The policeman was very kind
and let us in at the back of the hall. I hope you don’t mind, Miss
Crackenthorpe,” he added politely.
“She doesn’t mind,” said Cedric, answering for his sister. “You’re only young
once. Your first inquest, I expect?”
“It was rather disappointing,” said Alexander. “All over so soon.”
“We can’t stay here talking,” said Harold irritably. “There’s quite a crowd.
And all those men with cameras.”
At a sign from him, the chauffeur pulled away from the kerb. The boys waved
cheerfully.
“All over so soon!” said Cedric. “That’s what they think, the young innocents!
It’s just beginning.”
“It’s all very unfortunate. Most unfortunate,” said Harold. “I suppose—”
He looked at Mr. Wimborne who compressed his thin lips and shook his head with
distaste.
“I hope,” he said sententiously, “that the whole matter will soon be cleared
up satisfactorily. The police were very efficient. However, the whole thing,
as Harold says, has been most unfortunate.”
He looked, as he spoke, at Lucy, and there was distinct disapproval in his
glance. “If it had not been for this young woman,” his eyes seemed to say,
“poking about where she had no business to be—none of this would have
happened.”
This statement, or one closely resembling it, was voiced by Harold
Crackenthorpe.
“By the way—er—Miss—er—er Eyelesbarrow, just what made you go looking in that
sarcophagus?”
Lucy had already wondered just when this thought would occur to one of the
family. She had known that the police would ask it first thing; what surprised
her was that it seemed to have occurred to no one else until this moment.
Cedric, Emma, Harold and Mr. Wimborne all looked at her.
Her reply, for what it was worth, had naturally been prepared for some time.
“Really,” she said in a hesitating voice. “I hardly know… I did feel that the
whole place needed a thorough clearing out and cleaning. And there was”—she
hesitated—“a very peculiar and disagreeable smell….”
She had counted accurately on the immediate shrinking of everyone from the
unpleasantness of this idea….
Mr. Wimborne murmured: “Yes, yes, of course…about three weeks the police
surgeon said… I think, you know, we must all try and not let our minds dwell
on this thing.” He smiled encouragingly at Emma who had turned very pale.
“Remember,” he said, “this wretched young woman was nothing to do with any of
us.”
“Ah, but you can’t be so sure of that, can you?” said Cedric.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow looked at him with some interest. She had already been
intrigued by the rather startling differences between the three brothers.
Cedric was a big man with a weather-beaten rugged face, unkempt dark hair and
a jocund manner. He had arrived from the airport unshaven, and though he had
shaved in preparation for the inquest, he was still wearing the clothes in
which he had arrived and which seemed to be the only ones he had; old grey
flannel trousers, and a patched and rather threadbare baggy jacket. He looked
the stage Bohemian to the life and proud of it.
His brother Harold, on the contrary, was the perfect picture of a City
gentleman and a director of important companies. He was tall with a neat erect
carriage, had dark hair going slightly bald on the temples, a small black
moustache, and was impeccably dressed in a dark well-cut suit and a pearl-grey
tie. He looked what he was, a shrewd and successful business man.
He now said stiffly:
“Really, Cedric, that seems a most uncalled-for remark.”
“Don’t see why? She was in our barn after all. What did she come there for?”
Mr. Wimborne coughed, and said:
“Possibly some—er—assignation. I understand that it was a matter of local
knowledge that the key was kept outside on a nail.”
His tone indicated outrage at the carelessness of such procedure. So clearly
marked was this that Emma spoke apologetically.
“It started during the war. For the A.R.P. wardens. There was a little spirit
stove and they made themselves hot cocoa. And afterwards, since there was
really nothing there anybody could have wanted to take, we went on leaving the
key hanging up. It was convenient for the Women’s Institute people. If we’d
kept it in the house it might have been awkward—when there was no one at home
to give it them when they wanted it to get the place ready. With only daily
women and no resident servants….”
Her voice trailed away. She had spoken mechanically, giving a wordy
explanation without interest, as though her mind was elsewhere.
Cedric gave her a quick puzzled glance.
“You’re worried, sis. What’s up?”
Harold spoke with exasperation:
“Really, Cedric, can you ask?”
“Yes, I do ask. Granted a strange young woman has got herself killed in the
barn at Rutherford Hall (sounds like a Victorian melodrama) and granted it
gave Emma a shock at the time—but Emma’s always been a sensible girl—I don’t
see why she goes on being worried now. Dash it, one gets used to everything.”
“Murder takes a little more getting used to by some people than it may in your
case,” said Harold acidly. “I dare say murders are two a penny in Majorca
and—”
“Ibiza, not Majorca.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Not at all—it’s quite a different island.”
Harold went on talking:
“My point is that though murder may be an everyday commonplace to you, living
amongst hot-blooded Latin people, nevertheless in England we take such things
seriously.” He added with increasing irritation, “And really, Cedric, to
appear at a public inquest in those clothes—”
“What’s wrong with my clothes? They’re comfortable.”
“They’re unsuitable.”
“Well, anyway, they’re the only clothes I’ve got with me. I didn’t pack my
wardrobe trunk when I came rushing home to stand in with the family over this
business. I’m a painter and painters like to be comfortable in their clothes.”
“So you’re still trying to paint?”
“Look here, Harold, when you say trying to paint—”
Mr. Wimborne cleared his throat in an authoritative manner.
“This discussion is unprofitable,” he said reprovingly. “I hope, my dear Emma,
that you will tell me if there is any further way in which I can be of service
to you before I return to town?”
The reproof had its effect. Emma Crackenthorpe said quickly:
“It was most kind of you to come down.”
“Not at all. It was advisable that someone should be at the inquest to watch
the proceedings on behalf of the family. I have arranged for an interview with
the inspector at the house. I have no doubt that, distressing as all this has
been, the situation will soon be clarified. In my own mind, there seems little
doubt as to what occurred. As Emma has told us, the key to the Long Barn was
known locally to hang outside the door. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
It seems highly probable that the
place was used in the winter months as a place of assignation by local
couples. No doubt there was a quarrel and some young man lost control of
himself. Horrified at what he had done, his eye lit on the sarcophagus and he
realized that it would make an excellent place of concealment.”
Lucy thought to herself, “Yes, it sounds most plausible. That’s just what one
might think.”
Cedric said, “You say a local couple—but nobody’s been able to identify the
girl locally.”
“It’s early days yet. No doubt we shall get an identification before long. And
it is possible, of course, that the man in question was a local resident, but
that the girl came from elsewhere, perhaps from some other part of
Brackhampton. Brackhampton’s a big place—it’s grown enormously in the last
twenty years.”
“If I were a girl coming to meet my young man, I’d not stand for being taken
to a freezing cold barn miles from anywhere,” Cedric objected. “I’d stand out
for a nice bit of cuddle in the cinema, wouldn’t you, Miss Eyelesbarrow?”
“Do we need to go into all this?” Harold demanded plaintively.
And with the voicing of the question the car drew up before the front door of
Rutherford Hall and they all got out.
Eight
I
On entering the library Mr. Wimborne blinked a little as his shrewd old eyes
went past Inspector Bacon whom he had already met, to the fair-haired, good-
looking man beyond him.
Inspector Bacon performed introductions.
“This is Detective-Inspector Craddock of New Scotland Yard,” he said.
“New Scotland Yard—hm.” Mr. Wimborne’s eyebrows rose.
Dermot Craddock, who had a pleasant manner, went easily into speech.
“We have been called in on the case, Mr. Wimborne,” he said. “As you are
representing the Crackenthorpe family, I feel it is only fair that we should
give you a little confidential information.”
Nobody could make a better show of presenting a very small portion of the
truth and implying that it was the whole truth than Inspector Craddock.
“Inspector Bacon will agree, I am sure,” he added, glancing at his colleague.
Inspector Bacon agreed with all due solemnity and not at all as though the
whole matter were prearranged.
“It’s like this,” said Craddock. “We have reason to believe, from information
that has come into our possession, that the dead woman is not a native of
these parts, that she travelled down here from London and that she had
recently come from abroad. Probably (though we are not sure of that) from
France.”
Mr. Wimborne again raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed,” he said. “Indeed?”
“That being the case,” explained Inspector Bacon, “the Chief Constable felt
that the Yard was better fitted to investigate the matter.”
“I can only hope,” said Mr. Wimborne, “that the case will be solved quickly.
As you can no doubt appreciate, the whole business has been a source of much
distress to the family. Although not personally concerned in any way, they
are—”
He paused for a bare second, but Inspector Craddock filled the gap quickly.
“It’s not a pleasant thing to find a murdered woman on your property? I
couldn’t agree with you more. Now I should like to have a brief interview with
the various members of the family—”
“I really cannot see—”
“What they can tell me? Probably nothing of interest—but one never knows. I
dare say I can get most of the information I want from you, sir. Information
about this house and the family.”
“And what can that possibly have to do with an unknown young woman coming from
abroad and getting herself killed here?”
“Well, that’s rather the point,” said Craddock. “Why did she come here? Had
she once had some connection with this house? >Had she been, for instance, a
servant here at one time? A lady’s maid, perhaps. Or did she come here to meet
a former occupant of Rutherford Hall?”
Mr. Wimborne said coldly that Rutherford Hall had been occupied by the
Crackenthorpes ever since Josiah Crackenthorpe built it in 1884.
“That’s interesting in itself,” said Craddock. “If you’d just give me a brief
outline of the family history—”
Mr. Wimborne shrugged his shoulders.
“There is very little to tell. Josiah Crackenthorpe was a manufacturer of
sweet and savoury biscuits, relishes, pickles, etc. He accumulated a vast
fortune. He built this house. Luther Crackenthorpe, his eldest son, lives here
now.”
“Any other sons?”
“One other son, Henry, who was killed in a motor accident in 1911.”
“And the present Mr. Crackenthorpe has never thought of selling the house?”
“He is unable to do so,” said the lawyer dryly. “By the terms of his father’s
will.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell me about the will?”
“Why should I?”
Inspector Craddock smiled.
“Because I can look it up myself if I want to, at Somerset House.”
Against his will, Mr. Wimborne gave a crabbed little smile.
“Quite right, Inspector. I was merely protesting that the information you ask
for is quite irrelevant. As to Josiah Crackenthorpe’s will, there is no
mystery about it. He left his very considerable fortune in trust, the income
from it to be paid to his son Luther for life, and after Luther’s death the
capital to be divided equally between Luther’s children, Edmund, Cedric,
Harold, Alfred, Emma and Edith. Edmund was killed in the war, and Edith died
four years ago, so that on Luther Crackenthorpe’s decease the money will be
divided between Cedric, Harold, Alfred, Emma and Edith’s son Alexander
Eastley.”
“And the house?”
“That will go to Luther Crackenthorpe’s eldest surviving son or his issue.”
“Was Edmund Crackenthorpe married?”
“No.”
“So the property will actually go—?”
“To the next son— Cedric.”
“Mr. Luther Crackenthorpe himself cannot dispose of it?”
“No.”
“And he has no control of the capital.”
“No.”
“Isn’t that rather unusual? I suppose,” said Inspector Craddock shrewdly,
“that his father didn’t like him.”
“You suppose correctly,” said Mr. Wimborne. “Old Josiah was disappointed that
his eldest son showed no interest in the family business—or indeed in business
of any kind. Luther spent his time travelling abroad and collecting objets
d’art. Old Josiah was very unsympathetic to that kind of thing. So he left his
money in trust for the next generation.”
“But in the meantime the next generation have no income except what they make
or what their father allows them, and their father has a considerable income
but no power of disposal of the capital.”
“Exactly. And what all this has to do with the murder of an unknown young
woman of foreign origin I cannot imagine!”
“It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it,” Inspector Craddock agreed
promptly, “I just wanted to ascertain all the facts.”
Mr. Wimborne looked at him sharply, then, seemingly satisfied with the result
of his scrutiny, rose to his feet.
“I am proposing now to return to London,” he said. “Unless there is anything
further you wish to know?”
He looked from one man to the other.
“No, thank you, sir.”
The sound of the gong rose fortissimo from the hall outside.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Wimborne. “One of the boys, I think, must have been
performing.”
Inspector Craddock raised his voice, to be heard above the clamour, as he
said:
“We’ll leave the family to have lunch in peace, but Inspector Bacon and I
would like to return after it—say at two fifteen—and have a short interview
with every member of the family.”
“You think that is necessary?”
“Well…” Craddock shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just an off chance. Somebody
might remember something that would give us a clue to the woman’s identity.”
“I doubt it, Inspector. I doubt it very much. But I wish you good luck. As I
said just now, the sooner this distasteful business is cleared up, the better
for everybody.”
Shaking his head, he went slowly out of the room.
II
Lucy had gone straight to the kitchen on getting back from the inquest, and
was busy with preparations for lunch when Bryan Eastley put his head in.
“Can I give you a hand in any way?” he asked. “I’m handy about the house.”
Lucy gave him a quick, slightly preoccupied glance. Bryan had arrived at the
inquest direct in his small M.G. car, and she had not as yet had much time to
size him up. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
car, and she had not as yet had much time to
size him up.
What she saw was likeable enough. Eastley was an amiable-looking young man of
thirty-odd with brown hair, rather plaintive blue eyes and an enormous fair
moustache.
“The boys aren’t back yet,” he said, coming in and sitting on the end of the
kitchen table. “It will take ’em another twenty minutes on their bikes.”
Lucy smiled.
“They were certainly determined not to miss anything.”
“Can’t blame them. I mean to say—first inquest in their young lives and right
in the family so to speak.”
“Do you mind getting off the table, Mr. Eastley? I want to put the baking dish
down there.”
Bryan obeyed.
“I say, that fat’s corking hot. What are you going to put in it?”
“Yorkshire pudding.”
“Good old Yorkshire. Roast beef of old England, is that the menu for today?”
“Yes.”
“The funeral baked meats, in fact. Smells good.” He sniffed appreciatively.
“Do you mind my gassing away?”
“If you came in to help I’d rather you helped.” She drew another pan from the
oven. “Here—turn all these potatoes over so that they brown on the other
side….”
Bryan obeyed with alacrity.
“Have all these things been fizzling away in here while we’ve been at the
inquest? Supposing they’d been all burnt up.”
“Most improbable. There’s a regulating number on the oven.”
“Kind of electric brain, eh, what? Is that right?”
Lucy threw a swift look in his direction.
“Quite right. Now put the pan in the oven. Here, take the cloth. On the second
shelf— I want the top for the Yorkshire pudding.”
Bryan obeyed, but not without uttering a shrill yelp.
“Burnt yourself?”
“Just a bit. It doesn’t matter. What a dangerous game cooking is!”
“I suppose you never do your own cooking?”
“As a matter of fact I do—quite often. But not this sort of thing. I can boil
an egg—if I don’t forget to look at the clock. And I can do eggs and bacon.
And I can put a steak under the grill or open a tin of soup. I’ve got one of
those little electric whatnots in my flat.”
“You live in London?”
“If you call it living—yes.”
His tone was despondent. He watched Lucy shoot in the dish with the Yorkshire
pudding mixture.
“This is awfully jolly,” he said and sighed.
Her immediate preoccupations over, Lucy looked at him with more attention.
“What is—this kitchen?”
“Yes. Reminds me of our kitchen at home—when I was a boy.”
It struck Lucy that there was something strangely forlorn about Bryan Eastley.
Looking closely at him, she realized that he was older than she had at first
thought. He must be close on forty. It seemed difficult to think of him as
Alexander’s father. He reminded her of innumerable young pilots she had known
during the war when she had been at the impressionable age of fourteen. She
had gone on and grown up into a post-war world—but she felt as though Bryan
had not gone on, but had been passed by in the passage of years. His next
words confirmed this. He had subsided on to the kitchen table again.
“It’s a difficult sort of world,” he said, “isn’t it? To get your bearings in,
I mean. You see, one hasn’t been trained for it.”
Lucy recalled what she had heard from Emma.
“You were a fighter pilot, weren’t you?” she said. “You’ve got a D.F.C.”
“That’s the sort of thing that puts you wrong. You’ve got a gong and so people
try to make it easy for you. Give you a job and all that. Very decent of them.
But they’re all admin. jobs, and one simply isn’t any good at that sort of
thing. Sitting at a desk getting tangled up in figures. I’ve had ideas of my
own, you know, tried out a wheeze or two. But you can’t get the backing. Can’t
get the chaps to come in and put down the money. If I had a bit of capital—”
He brooded.
“You didn’t know Edie, did you? My wife. No, of course you didn’t. She was
quite different from all this lot. Younger, for one thing. She was in the
W.A.A.F. She always said her old man was crackers. He is, you know. Mean as
hell over money. And it’s not as though he could take it with him. It’s got to
be divided up when he dies. Edie’s share will go to Alexander, of course. He
won’t be able to touch the capital until he’s twenty-one, though.”
“I’m sorry, but will you get off the table again? I want to dish up and make
gravy.”
At that moment Alexander and Stoddart-West arrived with rosy faces and very
much out of breath.
“Hallo, Bryan,” said Alexander kindly to his father. “So this is where you’ve
got to. I say, what a smashing piece of beef. Is there Yorkshire pudding?”
“Yes, there is.”
“We have awful Yorkshire pudding at school—all damp and limp.”
“Get out of my way,” said Lucy. “I want to make the gravy.”
“Make lots of gravy. Can we have two sauce-boats full?”
“Yes.”
“Good-oh!” said Stoddart-West, pronouncing the word carefully.
“I don’t like it pale,” said Alexander anxiously.
“It won’t be pale.”
“She’s a smashing cook,” said Alexander to his father.
Lucy had a momentary impression that their roles were reversed. Alexander
spoke like a kindly father to his son.
“Can we help you, Miss Eyelesbarrow?” asked Stoddart-West politely.
“Yes, you can. Alexander, go and sound the gong. James, will you carry this
tray into the dining room? And will you take the joint in, Mr. Eastley? I’ll
bring the potatoes and the Yorkshire pudding.”
“There’s a Scotland Yard man here,” said Alexander. “Do you think he will have
lunch with us?”
“That depends on what your aunt arranged.”
“I don’t suppose Aunt Emma would mind… She’s very hospitable. But I suppose
Uncle Harold wouldn’t like it. He’s being very sticky over this murder.”
Alexander went out through the door with the tray, adding a little additional
information over his shoulder. “Mr. Wimborne’s in the library with the
Scotland Yard man now. But he isn’t staying to lunch. He said he had to get
back to London. Come on, Stodders. Oh, he’s gone to do the gong.”
At that moment the gong took charge. Stoddart-West was an artist. He gave it
everything he had, and all further conversation was inhibited.
Bryan carried in the joint, Lucy followed with vegetables—returning to the
kitchen to get the two brimming sauce-boats of gravy.
Mr. Wimborne was standing in the hall putting on his gloves as Emma came
quickly down the stairs.
“Are you really sure you won’t stop for lunch, Mr. Wimborne? It’s all ready.”
“No, I’ve an important appointment in London. There is a restaurant car on the
train.”
“It was very good of you to come down,” said Emma gratefully.
The two police officers emerged from the library.
Mr. Wimborne took Emma’s hand in his.
“There’s nothing to worry about, my dear,” he said. “This is Detective-
Inspector Craddock from New Scotland Yard who has come to take charge of the
case. He is coming back at two-fifteen to ask you for any facts that may
assist him in his inquiry. But, as I say, you have nothing to worry about.” He
looked towards Craddock. “I may repeat to Miss Crackenthorpe what you have
told me?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Inspector Craddock has just told me that this almost certainly was not a
local crime. The murdered woman is thought to have come from London and was
probably a foreigner.”
Emma Crackenthorpe said sharply:
“A foreigner. Was she French?”
Mr. Wimborne had clearly meant his statement to be consoling. He looked
slightly taken aback. Dermot Craddock’s glance went quickly from him to Emma’s
face.
He wondered why she had leaped to the conclusion that the murdered woman was
French, and why that thought disturbed her so much?
Nine
I
The only people who really did justice to Lucy’s excellent lunch were the two
boys and Cedric Crackenthorpe who appeared completely unaffected by the
circumstances which had caused him to return to England. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
He seemed, indeed, to
regard the whole thing as a rather good joke of a macabre nature.
This attitude, Lucy noted, was most unpalatable to his brother Harold. Harold
seemed to take the murder as a kind of personal insult to the Crackenthorpe
family and so great was his sense of outrage that he ate hardly any lunch.
Emma looked worried and unhappy and also ate very little. Alfred seemed lost
in a train of thought of his own and spoke very little. He was quite a good-
looking man with a thin dark face and eyes set rather too close together.
After lunch the police officers returned and politely asked if they could have
a few words with Mr. Cedric Crackenthorpe.
Inspector Craddock was very pleasant and friendly.
“Sit down, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I understand you have just come back from the
Balearics? You live out there?”
“Have done for the past six years. In Ibiza. Suits me better than this dreary
country.”
“You get a good deal more sunshine than we do, I expect,” said Inspector
Craddock agreeably. “You were home not so very long ago, I understand—for
Christmas, to be exact. What made it necessary for you to come back again so
soon?”
Cedric grinned.
“Got a wire from Emma—my sister. We’ve never had a murder on the premises
before. Didn’t want to miss anything—so along I came.”
“You are interested in criminology?”
“Oh, we needn’t put it in such highbrow terms! I just like murders—Whodunnits
and all that! With a Whodunnit parked right on the family doorstep, it seemed
the chance of a lifetime. Besides, I thought poor Em might need a spot of
help—managing the old man and the police and all the rest of it.”
“I see. It appealed to your sporting instincts and also to your family
feelings. I’ve no doubt your sister will be very grateful to you—although her
two other brothers have also come to be with her.”
“But not to cheer and comfort,” Cedric told him. “Harold is terrifically put
out. It’s not at all the thing for a City magnate to be mixed up with the
murder of a questionable female.”
Craddock’s eyebrows rose gently.
“Was she—a questionable female?”
“Well, you’re the authority on that point. Going by the facts, it seemed to me
likely.”
“I thought perhaps you might have been able to make a guess at who she was?”
“Come now, Inspector, you already know—or your colleagues will tell you, that
I haven’t been able to identify her.”
“I said a guess, Mr. Crackenthorpe. You might never have seen the woman
before—but you might have been able to make a guess at who she was—or who she
might have been?”
Cedric shook his head.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve absolutely no idea. You’re suggesting,
I suppose, that she may have come to the Long Barn to keep an assignation with
one of us? But we none of us live here. The only people in the house were a
woman and an old man. You don’t seriously believe that she came here to keep a
date with my revered Pop?”
“Our point is—Inspector Bacon agrees with me—that the woman may once have had
some association with this house. It may have been a considerable number of
years ago. Cast your mind back, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
Cedric thought a moment or two, then shook his head.
“We’ve had foreign help from time to time, like most people, but I can’t think
of any likely possibility. Better ask the others—they’d know more than I
would.”
“We shall do that, of course.”
Craddock leaned back in his chair and went on:
“As you have heard at the inquest, the medical evidence cannot fix the time of
death very accurately. Longer than two weeks, less than four—which brings it
somewhere around Christmas-time. You have told me you came home for Christmas.
When did you arrive in England and when did you leave?”
Cedric reflected.
“Let me see… I flew. Got here on the Saturday before Christmas—that would be
the 21st.”
“You flew straight from Majorca?”
“Yes. Left at five in the morning and got here midday.”
“And you left?”
“I flew back on the following Friday, the 27th.”
“Thank you.”
Cedric grinned.
“Leaves me well within the limit, unfortunately. But really, Inspector,
strangling young women is not my favourite form of Christmas fun.”
“I hope not, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
Inspector Bacon merely looked disapproving.
“There would be a remarkable absence of peace and good will about such an
action, don’t you agree?”
Cedric addressed this question to Inspector Bacon who merely grunted.
Inspector Craddock said politely:
“Well, thank you, Mr. Crackenthorpe. That will be all.”
“And what do you think of him?” Craddock asked as Cedric shut the door behind
him.
Bacon grunted again.
“Cocky enough for anything,” he said. “I don’t care for the type myself. A
loose-living lot, these artists, and very likely to be mixed up with a
disreputable class of woman.”
Craddock smiled.
“I don’t like the way he dresses, either,” went on Bacon. “No respect—going to
an inquest like that. Dirtiest pair of trousers I’ve seen in a long while. And
did you see his tie? Looked as though it was made of coloured string. If you
ask me, he’s the kind that would easily strangle a woman and make no bones
about it.”
“Well, he didn’t strangle this one—if he didn’t leave Majorca until the 21st.
And that’s a thing we can verify easily enough.”
Bacon threw him a sharp glance.
“I notice that you’re not tipping your hand yet about the actual date of the
crime.”
“No, we’ll keep that dark for the present. I always like to have something up
my sleeve in the early stages.”
Bacon nodded in full agreement.
“Spring it on ’em when the time comes,” he said. “That’s the best plan.”
“And now,” said Craddock, “we’ll see what our correct City gentleman has to
say about it all.”
Harold Crackenthorpe, thin-lipped, had very little to say about it. It was
most distasteful—a very unfortunate incident. The newspapers, he was afraid…
Reporters, he understood, had already been asking for interviews… All that
sort of thing… Most regrettable….
Harold’s staccato unfinished sentences ended. He leaned back in his chair with
the expression of a man confronted with a very bad smell.
The inspector’s probing produced no result. No, he had no idea who the woman
was or could be. Yes, he had been at Rutherford Hall for Christmas. He had
been unable to come down until Christmas Eve—but had stayed on over the
following weekend.
“That’s that, then,” said Inspector Craddock, without pressing his questions
further. He had already made up his mind that Harold Crackenthorpe was not
going to be helpful.
He passed on to Alfred, who came into the room with a nonchalance that seemed
just a trifle overdone.
Craddock looked at Alfred Crackenthorpe with a faint feeling of recognition.
Surely he had seen this particular member of the family somewhere before? Or
had it been his picture in the paper? There was something discreditable
attached to the memory. He asked Alfred his occupation and Alfred’s answer was
vague.
“I’m in insurance at the moment. Until recently I’ve been interested in
putting a new type of talking machine on the market. Quite revolutionary. I
did very well out of that as a matter of fact.”
Inspector Craddock looked appreciative—and no one could have had the least
idea that he was noticing the superficially smart appearance of Alfred’s suit
and gauging correctly the low price it had cost. Cedric’s clothes had been
disreputable, almost threadbare, but they had been originally of good cut and
excellent material. Here there was a cheap smartness that told its own tale.
Craddock passed pleasantly on to his routine questions. Alfred seemed
interested—even slightly amused.
“It’s quite an idea, that the woman might once have had a job here. Not as a
lady’s maid; I doubt if my sister has ever had such a thing. I don’t think
anyone has nowadays. But, of course, there is a good deal of foreign domestic
labour floating about. We’ve had Poles—and a temperamental German or two. As
Emma definitely didn’t recognize the woman, I think that washes your idea out,
Inspector, Emma’s got a very good memory for a face. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
No, if the woman came
from London… What gives you the idea she came from London, by the way?”
He slipped the question in quite casually, but his eyes were sharp and
interested.
Inspector Craddock smiled and shook his head.
Alfred looked at him keenly.
“Not telling, eh? Return ticket in her coat pocket, perhaps, is that it?”
“It could be, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“Well, granting she came from London, perhaps the chap she came to meet had
the idea that the Long Barn would be a nice place to do a quiet murder. He
knows the setup here, evidently. I should go looking for him if I were you,
Inspector.”
“We are,” said Inspector Craddock, and made the two little words sound quiet
and confident.
He thanked Alfred and dismissed him.
“You know,” he said to Bacon, “I’ve seen that chap somewhere before….”
Inspector Bacon gave his verdict.
“Sharp customer,” he said. “So sharp that he cuts himself sometimes.”
II
“I don’t suppose you want to see me,” said Bryan Eastley apologetically,
coming into the room and hesitating by the door. “I don’t exactly belong to
the family—”
“Let me see, you are Mr. Bryan Eastley, the husband of Miss Edith
Crackenthorpe, who died five years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’s very kind of you, Mr. Eastley, especially if you know something
that you think could assist us in some way?”
“But I don’t. Wish I did. Whole thing seems so ruddy peculiar, doesn’t it?
Coming along and meeting some fellow in that draughty old barn, in the middle
of winter. Wouldn’t be my cup of tea!”
“It is certainly very perplexing,” Inspector Craddock agreed.
“Is it true that she was a foreigner? Word seems to have got round to that
effect.”
“Does that fact suggest anything to you?” The inspector looked at him sharply,
but Bryan seemed amiably vacuous.
“No, it doesn’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Maybe she was French,” said Inspector Bacon, with dark suspicion.
Bryan was roused to slight animation. A look of interest came into his blue
eyes, and he tugged at his big fair moustache.
“Really? Gay Paree?” He shook his head. “On the whole it seems to make it even
more unlikely, doesn’t it? Messing about in the barn, I mean. You haven’t had
any other sarcophagus murders, have you? One of these fellows with an urge—or
a complex? Thinks he’s Caligula or someone like that?”
Inspector Craddock did not even trouble to reject this speculation. Instead he
asked in a casual manner:
“Nobody in the family got any French connections, or—or—relationships that you
know of?”
Bryan said that the Crackenthorpes weren’t a very gay lot.
“Harold’s respectably married,” he said. “Fish-faced woman, some impoverished
peer’s daughter. Don’t think Alfred cares about women much—spends his life
going in for shady deals which usually go wrong in the end. I dare say
Cedric’s got a few Spanish señoritas jumping through hoops for him in Ibiza.
Women rather fall for Cedric. Doesn’t always shave and looks as though he
never washes. Don’t see why that should be attractive to women, but apparently
it is—I say, I’m not being very helpful, am I?”
He grinned at them.
“Better get young Alexander on the job. He and James Stoddart- West are out
hunting for clues in a big way. Bet you they turn up something.”
Inspector Craddock said he hoped they would. Then he thanked Bryan Eastley and
said he would like to speak to Miss Emma Crackenthorpe.
III
Inspector Craddock looked with more attention at Emma Crackenthorpe than he
had done previously. He was still wondering about the expression that he had
surprised on her face before lunch.
A quiet woman. Not stupid. Not brilliant either. One of those comfortable
pleasant women whom men were inclined to take for granted, and who had the art
of making a house into a home, giving it an atmosphere of restfulness and
quiet harmony. Such, he thought, was Emma Crackenthorpe.
Women such as this were often underrated. Behind their quiet exterior they had
force of character, they were to be reckoned with. Perhaps, Craddock thought,
the clue to the mystery of the dead woman in the sarcophagus was hidden away
in the recesses of Emma’s mind.
Whilst these thoughts were passing through his head, Craddock was asking
various unimportant questions.
“I don’t suppose there is much that you haven’t already told Inspector Bacon,”
he said. “So I needn’t worry you with many questions.”
“Please ask me anything you like.”
“As Mr. Wimborne told you, we have reached the conclusion that the dead woman
was not a native of these parts. That may be a relief to you—Mr. Wimborne
seemed to think it would be—but it makes it really more difficult for us.
She’s less easily identified.”
“But didn’t she have anything—a handbag? Papers?”
Craddock shook his head.
“No handbag, nothing in her pockets.”
“You’ve no idea of her name—of where she came from—anything at all?”
Craddock thought to himself: She wants to know—she’s very anxious to know—who
the woman is. Has she felt like that all along, I wonder? Bacon didn’t give me
that impression—and he’s a shrewd man….
“We know nothing about her,” he said. “That’s why we hoped one of you could
help us. Are you sure you can’t? Even if you didn’t recognize her—can you
think of anyone she might be?”
He thought, but perhaps he imagined it, that there was a very slight pause
before she answered.
“I’ve absolutely no idea,” she said.
Imperceptibly, Inspector Craddock’s manner changed. It was hardly noticeable
except as a slight hardness in his voice.
“When Mr. Wimborne told you that the woman was a foreigner, why did you assume
that she was French?”
Emma was not disconcerted. Her eyebrows rose slightly.
“Did I? Yes, I believe I did. I don’t really know why—except that one always
tends to think foreigners are French until one finds out what nationality they
really are. Most foreigners in this country are French, aren’t they?”
“Oh, I really wouldn’t say that was so, Miss Crackenthorpe. Not nowadays. We
have so many nationalities over here, Italians, Germans, Austrians, all the
Scandinavian countries—”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“You don’t have some special reason for thinking that this woman was likely to
be French?”
She didn’t hurry to deny it. She just thought a moment and then shook her head
almost regretfully.
“No,” she said. “I really don’t think so.”
Her glance met his placidly, without flinching. Craddock looked towards
Inspector Bacon. The latter leaned forward and presented a small enamel powder
compact.
“Do you recognize this, Miss Crackenthorpe?”
She took it and examined it.
“No. It’s certainly not mine.”
“You’ve no idea to whom it belonged?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think we need worry you anymore—for the present.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled briefly at them, got up, and left the room. Again he may have
imagined it, but Craddock thought she moved rather quickly, as though a
certain relief hurried her.
“Think she knows anything?” asked Bacon.
Inspector Craddock said ruefully:
“At a certain stage one is inclined to think everyone knows a little more than
they are willing to tell you.”
“They usually do, too,” said Bacon out of the depth of his experience. “Only,”
he added, “it quite often isn’t anything to do with the business in hand. It’s
some family peccadillo or some silly scrape that people are afraid is going to
be dragged into the open.”
“Yes, I know. Well, at least—”
But whatever Inspector Craddock had been about to say never got said, for the
door was flung open and old Mr. Crackenthorpe shuffled in in a high state of
indignation.
“A pretty pass, when Scotland Yard comes down and doesn’t have the courtesy to
talk to the head of the family first! Who’s the master of this house, I’d like
to know? Answer me that? Who’s the master here?”
“You are, of course, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Craddock soothingly and rising
as he spoke. “But we understood that you had already told Inspector Bacon all
you know, and that, your health not being good, we must not make too many
demands upon it. Dr. Quimper said—”
“I dare say—I dare say. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Dr. Quimper said—”
“I dare say—I dare say. I’m not a strong man… As for Dr. Quimper, he’s a
regular old woman—perfectly good doctor, understands my case—but inclined to
wrap me up in cotton-wool. Got a bee in his bonnet about food. Went on at me
Christmas-time when I had a bit of a turn—what did I eat? When? Who cooked it?
Who served it? Fuss, fuss, fuss! But though I may have indifferent health, I’m
well enough to give you all the help that’s in my power. Murder in my own
house—or at any rate in my own barn! Interesting building, that. Elizabethan.
Local architect says not—but fellow doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Not
a day later than 1580—but that’s not what we’re talking about. What do you
want to know? What’s your present theory?”
“It’s a little too early for theories, Mr. Crackenthorpe. We are still trying
to find out who the woman was.”
“Foreigner, you say?”
“We think so.”
“Enemy agent?”
“Unlikely, I should say.”
“You’d say—you’d say! They’re everywhere, these people. Infiltrating! Why the
Home Office lets them in beats me. Spying on industrial secrets, I’d bet.
That’s what she was doing.”
“In Brackhampton?”
“Factories everywhere. One outside my own back gate.”
Craddock shot an inquiring glance at Bacon who responded.
“Metal Boxes.”
“How do you know that’s what they’re really making? Can’t swallow all these
fellows tell you. All right, if she wasn’t a spy, who do you think she was?
Think she was mixed up with one of my precious sons? It would be Alfred, if
so. Not Harold, he’s too careful. And Cedric doesn’t condescend to live in
this country. All right, then, she was Alfred’s bit of skirt. And some violent
fellow followed her down here, thinking she was coming to meet him and did her
in. How’s that?”
Inspector Craddock said diplomatically that it was certainly a theory. But Mr.
Alfred Crackenthorpe, he said, had not reccognized her.
“Pah! Afraid, that’s all! Alfred always was a coward. But he’s a liar,
remember, always was! Lie himself black in the face. None of my sons are any
good. Crowd of vultures, waiting for me to die, that’s their real occupation
in life,” he chuckled. “And they can wait. I won’t die to oblige them! Well,
if that’s all I can do for you… I’m tired. Got to rest.”
He shuffled out again.
“Alfred’s bit of skirt?” said Bacon questioningly. “In my opinion the old man
just made that up,” he paused, hesitated. “I think, personally, Alfred’s quite
all right—perhaps a shifty customer in some ways—but not our present cup of
tea. Mind you—I did just wonder about that Air Force chap.”
“Bryan Eastley?”
“Yes. I’ve run into one or two of his type. They’re what you might call adrift
in the world—had danger and death and excitement too early in life. Now they
find life tame. Tame and unsatisfactory. In a way, we’ve given them a raw
deal. Though I don’t really know what we could do about it. But there they
are, all past and no future, so to speak. And they’re the kind that don’t mind
taking chances—the ordinary fellow plays safe by instinct, it’s not so much
morality as prudence. But these fellows aren’t afraid—playing safe isn’t
really in their vocabulary. If Eastley were mixed up with a woman and wanted
to kill her…” He stopped, threw out a hand hopelessly. “But why should he want
to kill her? And if you do kill a woman, why plant her in your father-in-law’s
sarcophagus? No, if you ask me, none of this lot had anything to do with the
murder. If they had, they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of planting
the body on their own back door step, so to speak.”
Craddock agreed that that hardly made sense.
“Anything more you want to do here?”
Craddock said there wasn’t.
Bacon suggested coming back to Brackhampton and having a cup of tea—but
Inspector Craddock said that he was going to call on an old acquaintance.
Ten
I
Miss Marple, sitting erect against a background of china dogs and presents
from Margate, smiled approvingly at Inspector Dermot Craddock.
“I’m so glad,” she said, “that you have been assigned to the case. I hoped you
would be.”
“When I got your letter,” said Craddock, “I took it straight to the A.C. As it
happened he had just heard from the Brackhampton people calling us in. They
seemed to think it wasn’t a local crime. The A.C. was very interested in what
I had to tell him about you. He’d heard about you, I gather, from my
godfather.”
“Dear Sir Henry,” murmured Miss Marple affectionately.
“He got me to tell him all about the Little Paddocks business. Do you want to
hear what he said next?”
“Please tell me if it is not a breach of confidence.”
“He said, ‘Well, as this seems a completely cockeyed business, all thought up
by a couple of old ladies who’ve turned out, against all probability, to be
right, and since you already know one of these old ladies, I’m sending you
down on the case.’ So here I am! And now, my dear Miss Marple, where do we go
from here? This is not, as you probably appreciate, an official visit. I
haven’t got my henchmen with me. I thought you and I might take down our back
hair together first.”
Miss Marple smiled at him.
“I’m sure,” she said, “that no one who only knows you officially would ever
guess that you could be so human, and better-looking than ever—don’t blush…
Now, what, exactly, have you been told so far?”
“I’ve got everything, I think. Your friend, Mrs. McGillicuddy’s original
statement to the police at St. Mary Mead, confirmation of her statement by the
ticket collector, and also the note to the stationmaster at Brackhampton. I
may say that all the proper inquiries were made by the people concerned—the
railway people and the police. But there’s no doubt that you outsmarted them
all by a most fantastic process of guesswork.”
“Not guesswork,” said Miss Marple. “And I had a great advantage. I knew
Elspeth McGillicuddy. Nobody else did. There was no obvious confirmation of
her story, and if there was no question of any woman being reported missing,
then quite naturally they would think it was just an elderly lady imagining
things—as elderly ladies often do—but not Elspeth McGillicuddy.”
“Not Elspeth McGillicuddy,” agreed the inspector. “I’m looking forward to
meeting her, you know. I wish she hadn’t gone to Ceylon. We’re arranging for
her to be interviewed there, by the way.”
“My own process of reasoning was not really original,” said Miss Marple. “It’s
all in Mark Twain. The boy who found the horse. He just imagined where he
would go if he were a horse and he went there and there was the horse.”
“You imagined what you’d do if you were a cruel and cold-blooded murderer?”
said Craddock looking thoughtfully at Miss Marple’s pink and white elderly
fragility. “Really, your mind—”
“Like a sink, my nephew Raymond used to say,” Miss Marple agreed, nodding her
head briskly. “But as I always told him, sinks are necessary domestic
equipment and actually very hygienic.”
“Can you go a little further still, put yourself in the murderer’s place, and
tell me just where he is now?”
Miss Marple sighed.
“I wish I could. I’ve no idea—no idea at all. But he must be someone who has
lived in, or knows all about, Rutherford Hall.”
“I agree. But that opens up a very wide field. Quite a succession of daily
women have worked there. There’s the Women’s Institute—and the A.R.P. Wardens
before them. They all know the Long Barn and the sarcophagus and where the key
was kept. The whole setup there is widely known locally. Anybody living round
about might hit on it as a good spot for his purpose.”
“Yes, indeed. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I quite understand your difficulties.”
Craddock said: “We’ll never get anywhere until we identify the body.”
“And that, too, may be difficult?”
“Oh, we’ll get there—in the end. We’re checking up on all the reported
disappearances of a woman of that age and appearance. There’s no one
outstanding who fits the bill. The M.O. puts her down as about thirty-five,
healthy, probably a married woman, has had at least one child. Her fur coat is
a cheap one purchased at a London store. Hundreds of such coats were sold in
the last three months, about sixty per cent of them to blonde women. No sales
girl can recognize the photograph of the dead woman, or is likely to if the
purchase were made just before Christmas. Her other clothes seem mainly of
foreign manufacture mostly purchased in Paris. There are no English laundry
marks. We’ve communicated with Paris and they are checking up there for us.
Sooner or later, of course, someone will come forward with a missing relative
or lodger. It’s just a matter of time.”
“The compact wasn’t any help?”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s a type sold by the hundred in the Rue de Rivoli,
quite cheap. By the way, you ought to have turned that over to the police at
once, you know—or rather Miss Eyelesbarrow should have done so.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“But at that moment there wasn’t any question of a crime having been
committed,” she pointed out. “If a young lady, practising golf shots, picks up
an old compact of no particular value in the long grass, surely she doesn’t
rush straight off to the police with it?” Miss Marple paused, and then added
firmly: “I thought it much wiser to find the body first.”
Inspector Craddock was tickled.
“You don’t seem ever to have had any doubts but that it would be found?”
“I was sure it would. Lucy Eyelesbarrow is a most efficient and intelligent
person.”
“I’ll say she is! She scares the life out of me, she’s so devastatingly
efficient! No man will ever dare marry that girl.”
“Now you know, I wouldn’t say that… It would have to be a special type of man,
of course.” Miss Marple brooded on this thought a moment. “How is she getting
on at Rutherford Hall?”
“They’re completely dependent on her as far as I can see. Eating out of her
hand—literally as you might say. By the way, they know nothing about her
connection with you. We’ve kept that dark.”
“She has no connection now with me. She has done what I asked her to do.”
“So she could hand in her notice and go if she wanted to?”
“Yes.”
“But she stops on. Why?”
“She has not mentioned her reasons to me. She is a very intelligent girl. I
suspect that she has become interested.”
“In the problem? Or in the family?”
“It may be,” said Miss Marple, “that it is rather difficult to separate the
two.”
Craddock looked hard at her.
“Oh, no—oh, dear me, no.”
“Have you got anything particular in mind?”
“I think you have.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
Dermot Craddock sighed. “So all I can do is to ‘prosecute my inquiries’—to put
it in jargon. A policeman’s life is a dull one!”
“You’ll get results, I’m sure.”
“Any ideas for me? More inspired guesswork?”
“I was thinking of things like theatrical companies,” said Miss Marple rather
vaguely. “Touring from place to place and perhaps not many home ties. One of
those young women would be much less likely to be missed.”
“Yes. Perhaps you’ve got something there. We’ll pay special attention to that
angle.” He added, “What are you smiling about?”
“I was just thinking,” said Miss Marple, “of Elspeth McGillicuddy’s face when
she hears we’ve found the body!”
II
“Well!” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Well!”
Words failed her. She looked across at the nicely spoken pleasant young man
who had called upon her with official credentials and then down at the
photograph that he handed her.
“That’s her all right,” she said. “Yes, that’s her. Poor soul. Well, I must
say I’m glad you’ve found her body. Nobody believed a word I said! The police,
or the railway people or anyone else. It’s very galling not to be believed. At
any rate, nobody could say I didn’t do all I possibly could.”
The nice young man made sympathetic and appreciative noises.
“Where did you say the body was found?”
“In a barn at a house called Rutherford Hall, just outside Brackhampton.”
“Never heard of it. How did it get there, I wonder?”
The young man didn’t reply.
“Jane Marple found it, I suppose. Trust Jane.”
“The body,” said the young man, referring to some notes, “was found by a Miss
Lucy Eyelesbarrow.”
“Never heard of her either,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “I still think Jane
Marple had something to do with it.”
“Anyway, Mrs. McGillicuddy, you definitely identify this picture as that of
the woman whom you saw in a train?”
“Being strangled by a man. Yes, I do.”
“Now, can you describe this man?”
“He was a tall man,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“Yes?”
“And dark.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all I can tell you,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “He had his back to me. I
didn’t see his face.”
“Would you be able to recognize him if you saw him?”
“Of course I shouldn’t! He had his back to me. I never saw his face.”
“You’ve no idea at all as to his age?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy considered.
“No—not really. I mean, I don’t know… He wasn’t, I’m almost sure—very young.
His shoulders looked—well, set, if you know what I mean.” The young man
nodded. “Thirty and upward, I can’t get closer than that. I wasn’t really
looking at him, you see. It was her—with those hands round her throat and her
face—all blue… You know, sometimes I dream of it even now….”
“It must have been a distressing experience,” said the young man
sympathetically.
He closed his notebook and said:
“When are you returning to England?”
“Not for another three weeks. It isn’t necessary, is it, for me?”
He quickly reassured her.
“Oh, no. There’s nothing you could do at present. Of course, if we make an
arrest—”
It was left like that.
The mail brought a letter from Miss Marple to her friend. The writing was
spiky and spidery and heavily underlined. Long practice made it easy for Mrs.
McGillicuddy to decipher. Miss Marple wrote a very full account to her friend
who devoured every word with great satisfaction.
She and Jane had shown them all right!
Eleven
I
“I simply can’t make you out,” said Cedric Crackenthorpe.
He eased himself down on the decaying wall of a long derelict pigsty and
stared at Lucy Eyelesbarrow.
“What can’t you make out?”
“What you’re doing here?”
“I’m earning my living.”
“As a skivvy?” he spoke disparagingly.
“You’re out of date,” said Lucy. “Skivvy, indeed! I’m a Household Help, a
Professional Domestician, or an Answer to Prayer, mainly the latter.”
“You can’t like all the things you have to do—cooking and making beds and
whirring about with a hoopla or whatever you call it, and sinking your arms up
to the elbows in greasy water.”
Lucy laughed.
“Not the details, perhaps, but cooking satisfies my creative instincts, and
there’s something in me that really revels in clearing up mess.”
“I live in a permanent mess,” said Cedric. “I like it,” he added defiantly.
“You look as though you did.”
“My cottage in Ibiza is run on simple straightforward lines. Three plates, two
cups and saucers, a bed, a table and a couple of chairs. There’s dust
everywhere and smears of paint and chips of stone—I sculpt as well as
paint—and nobody’s allowed to touch a thing. I won’t have a woman near the
place.”
“Not in any capacity?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I was assuming that a man of such artistic tastes presumably had some kind of
love life.”
“My love life, as you call it, is my own business,” said Cedric with dignity.
“What I won’t have is woman in her tidying-up interfering bossing capacity.”
“How I’d love to have a go at your cottage,” said Lucy. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“It would be a
challenge!”
“You won’t get the opportunity.”
“I suppose not.”
Some bricks fell out of the pigsty. Cedric turned his head and looked into its
nettle-ridden depths.
“Dear old Madge,” he said. “I remember her well. A sow of most endearing
disposition and prolific mother. Seventeen in the last litter, I remember. We
used to come here on fine afternoons and scratch Madge’s back with a stick.
She loved it.”
“Why has this whole place been allowed to get into the state it’s in? It can’t
only be the war?”
“You’d like to tidy this up, too, I suppose? What an interfering female you
are. I quite see now why you would be the person to discover a body! You
couldn’t even leave a Greco-Roman sarcophagus alone.” He paused and then went
on. “No, it’s not only the war. It’s my father. What do you think of him, by
the way?”
“I haven’t had much time for thinking.”
“Don’t evade the issue. He’s as mean as hell, and in my opinion a bit crazy as
well. Of course he hates all of us—except perhaps Emma. That’s because of my
grandfather’s will.”
Lucy looked inquiring.
“My grandfather was the man who madea-da-monitch. With the Crunchies and the
Cracker Jacks and the Cosy Crisps. All the afternoon tea delicacies and then,
being far-sighted, he switched on very early to Cheesies and Canapés so that
now we cash in on cocktail parties in a big way. Well, the time came when
father intimated that he had a soul above Crunchies. He travelled in Italy and
the Balkans and Greece and dabbled in art. My grandfather was peeved. He
decided my father was no man of business and a rather poor judge of art (quite
right in both cases), so left all his money in trust for his grandchildren.
Father had the income for life, but he couldn’t touch the capital. Do you know
what he did? He stopped spending money. He came here and began to save. I’d
say that by now he’s accumulated nearly as big a fortune as my grandfather
left. And in the meantime all of us, Harold, myself, Alfred and Emma haven’t
got a penny of grandfather’s money. I’m a stony-broke painter. Harold went
into business and is now a prominent man in the City—he’s the one with the
money-making touch, though I’ve heard rumours that he’s in Queer Street
lately. Alfred—well, Alfred is usually known in the privacy of the family as
Flash Alf—”
“Why?”
“What a lot of things you want to know! The answer is that Alf is the black
sheep of the family. He’s not actually been to prison yet, but he’s been very
near it. He was in the Ministry of Supply during the war, but left it rather
abruptly under questionable circumstances. And after that there were some
dubious deals in tinned fruits—and trouble over eggs. Nothing in a big
way—just a few doubtful deals on the side.”
“Isn’t it rather unwise to tell strangers all these things?”
“Why? Are you a police spy?”
“I might be.”
“I don’t think so. You were here slaving away before the police began to take
an interest in us. I should say—”
He broke off as his sister Emma came through the door of the kitchen garden.
“Hallo, Em? You’re looking very perturbed about something?”
“I am. I want to talk to you, Cedric.”
“I must get back to the house,” said Lucy, tactfully.
“Don’t go,” said Cedric. “Murder has made you practically one of the family.”
“I’ve got a lot to do,” said Lucy. “I only came out to get some parsley.”
She beat a rapid retreat to the kitchen garden. Cedric’s eyes followed her.
“Good-looking girl,” he said. “Who is she really?”
“Oh, she’s quite well known,” said Emma. “She’s made a speciality of this kind
of thing. But never mind Lucy Eyelesbarrow, Cedric, I’m terribly worried.
Apparently the police think that the dead woman was a foreigner, perhaps
French. Cedric, you don’t think that she could possibly be— Martine?”
II
For a moment or two Cedric stared at her as though uncomprehending.
“Martine? But who on earth—oh, you mean Martine?”
“Yes. Do you think—”
“Why on earth should it be Martine?”
“Well, her sending that telegram was odd when you come to think of it. It must
have been roughly about the same time… Do you think that she may, after all,
have come down here and—”
“Nonsense. Why should Martine come down here and find her way into the Long
Barn? What for? It seems wildly unlikely to me.”
“You don’t think, perhaps, that I ought to tell Inspector Bacon—or the other
one?”
“Tell him what?”
“Well—about Martine. About her letter.”
“Now don’t you go complicating things, sis, by bringing up a lot of irrelevant
stuff that has nothing to do with all this. I was never very convinced about
that letter from Martine, anyway.”
“I was.”
“You’ve always been good at believing impossible things before breakfast, old
girl. My advice to you is, sit tight, and keep your mouth shut. It’s up to the
police to identify their precious corpse. And I bet Harold would say the
same.”
“Oh, I know Harold would. And Alfred, also. But I’m worried, Cedric, I really
am worried. I don’t know what I ought to do.”
“Nothing,” said Cedric promptly. “You keep your mouth shut, Emma. Never go
halfway to meet trouble, that’s my motto.”
Emma Crackenthorpe sighed. She went slowly back to the house uneasy in her
mind.
As she came into the drive, Doctor Quimper emerged from the house and opened
the door of his battered Austin car. He paused when he saw her, then leaving
the car he came towards her.
“Well, Emma,” he said. “Your father’s in splendid shape. Murder suits him.
It’s given him an interest in life. I must recommend it for more of my
patients.”
Emma smiled mechanically. Dr. Quimper was always quick to notice reactions.
“Anything particular the matter?” he asked.
Emma looked up at him. She had come to rely a lot on the kindness and sympathy
of the doctor. He had become a friend on whom to lean, not only a medical
attendant. His calculated brusqueness did not deceive her—she knew the
kindness that lay behind it.
“I am worried, yes,” she admitted.
“Care to tell me? Don’t if you don’t want to.”
“I’d like to tell you. Some of it you know already. The point is I don’t know
what to do.”
“I should say your judgment was usually most reliable. What’s the trouble?”
“You remember—or perhaps you don’t—what I once told you about my brother—the
one who was killed in the war?”
“You mean about his having married—or wanting to marry—a French girl?
Something of that kind?”
“Yes. Almost immediately after I got that letter, he was killed. We never
heard anything of or about the girl. All we knew, actually, was her christian
name. We always expected her to write or to turn up, but she didn’t. We never
heard anything—until about a month ago, just before Christmas.”
“I remember. You got a letter, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Saying she was in England and would like to come and see us. It was all
arranged and then, at the last minute, she sent a wire that she had to return
unexpectedly to France.”
“Well?”
“The police think that this woman who was killed—was French.”
“They do, do they? She looked more of an English type to me, but one can’t
really judge. What’s worrying you then, is that just possibly the dead woman
might be your brother’s girl?”
“Yes.”
“I think it’s most unlikely,” said Dr. Quimper, adding: “But all the same, I
understand what you feel.”
“I’m wondering if I ought not to tell the police about—about it all. Cedric
and the others say it’s quite unnecessary. What do you think?”
“Hm.” Dr. Quimper pursed his lips. He was silent for a moment or two, deep in
thought. Then he said, almost unwillingly, “It’s much simpler, of course, if
you say nothing. I can understand what your brothers feel about it. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I can understand what your brothers feel about it. All the
same—”
“Yes?”
Quimper looked at her. His eyes had an affectionate twinkle in them.
“I’d go ahead and tell ’em,” he said. “You’ll go on worrying if you don’t. I
know you.”
Emma flushed a little.
“Perhaps I’m foolish.”
“You do what you want to do, my dear—and let the rest of the family go hang!
I’d back your judgment against the lot of them any day.”
Twelve
I
“Girl! You, girl! Come in here.”
Lucy turned her head, surprised. Old Mr. Crackenthorpe was beckoning to her
fiercely from just inside a door.
“You want me, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”
“Don’t talk so much. Come in here.”
Lucy obeyed the imperative finger. Old Mr. Crackenthorpe took hold of her arm
and pulled her inside the door and shut it.
“Want to show you something,” he said.
Lucy looked round her. They were in a small room evidently designed to be used
as a study, but equally evidently not used as such for a very long time. There
were piles of dusty papers on the desk and cobwebs festooned from the corners
of the ceiling. The air smelt damp and musty.
“Do you want me to clean this room?” she asked.
Old Mr. Crackenthorpe shook his head fiercely.
“No, you don’t! I keep this room locked up. Emma would like to fiddle about in
here, but I don’t let her. It’s my room. See these stones? They’re geological
specimens.”
Lucy looked at a collection of twelve or fourteen lumps of rock, some polished
and some rough.
“Lovely,” she said kindly. “Most interesting.”
“You’re quite right. They are interesting. You’re an intelligent girl. I don’t
show them to everybody. I’ll show you some more things.”
“It’s very kind of you, but I ought really to get on with what I was doing.
With six people in the house—”
“Eating me out of house and home… That’s all they do when they come down here!
Eat. They don’t offer to pay for what they eat, either. Leeches! All waiting
for me to die. Well, I’m not going to die just yet—I’m not going to die to
please them. I’m a lot stronger than even Emma knows.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“I’m not so old, either. She makes out I’m an old man, treats me as an old
man. You don’t think I’m old, do you?”
“Of course not,” said Lucy.
“Sensible girl. Take a look at this.”
He indicated a large faded chart which hung on the wall. It was, Lucy saw, a
genealogical tree; some of it done so finely that one would have to have a
magnifying glass to read the names. The remote forebears, however, were
written in large proud capitals with crowns over the names.
“Descended from Kings,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “My mother’s family tree, that
is—not my father’s. He was a vulgarian! Common old man! Didn’t like me. I was
a cut above him always. Took after my mother’s side. Had a natural feeling for
art and classical sculpture—he couldn’t see anything in it—silly old fool.
Don’t remember my mother—died when I was two. Last of her family. They were
sold up and she married my father. But you look there—Edward the
Confessor—Ethelred the Unready—whole lot of them. And that was before the
Normans came. Before the Normans—that’s something isn’t it?”
“It is indeed.”
“Now I’ll show you something else.” He guided her across the room to an
enormous piece of dark oak furniture. Lucy was rather uneasily conscious of
the strength of the fingers clutching her arm. There certainly seemed nothing
feeble about old Mr. Crackenthorpe today. “See this? Came out of
Lushington—that was my mother’s people’s place. Elizabethan, this is. Takes
four men to move it. You don’t know what I keep inside it, do you? Like me to
show you?”
“Do show me,” said Lucy politely.
“Curious, aren’t you? All women are curious.” He took a key from his pocket
and unlocked the door of the lower cupboard. From this he took out a
surprisingly new-looking cash box. This, again, he unlocked.
“Take a look here, my dear. Know what these are?”
He lifted out a small paper-wrapped cylinder and pulled away the paper from
one end. Gold coins trickled out into his palm.
“Look at these, young lady. Look at ’em, hold ’em, touch ’em. Know what they
are? Bet you don’t! You’re too young. Sovereigns—that’s what they are. Good
golden sovereigns. What we used before all these dirty bits of paper came into
fashion. Worth a lot more than silly pieces of paper. Collected them a long
time back. I’ve got other things in this box, too. Lots of things put away in
here. All ready for the future. Emma doesn’t know—nobody knows. It’s our
secret, see, girl? D’you know why I’m telling you and showing you?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to think I’m a played-out sick old man. Lots of life
in the old dog yet. My wife’s been dead a long time. Always objecting to
everything, she was. Didn’t like the names I gave the children—good Saxon
names—no interest in that family tree. I never paid any attention to what she
said, though—and she was a poor-spirited creature—always gave in. Now you’re a
spirited filly—a very nice filly indeed. I’ll give you some advice. Don’t
throw yourself away on a young man. Young men are fools! You want to take care
of your future. You wait…” His fingers pressed into Lucy’s arm. He leaned to
her ear. “I don’t say more than that. Wait. Those silly fools think I’m going
to die soon. I’m not. Shouldn’t be surprised if I outlived the lot of them.
And then we’ll see! Oh, yes, then we’ll see. Harold’s got no children. Cedric
and Alfred aren’t married. Emma—Emma will never marry now. She’s a bit sweet
on Quimper—but Quimper will never think of marrying Emma. There’s Alexander,
of course. Yes, there’s Alexander… But, you know, I’m fond of Alexander… Yes,
that’s awkward. I’m fond of Alexander.”
He paused for a moment, frowning, then said:
“Well, girl, what about it? What about it, eh?”
“Miss Eyelesbarrow….”
Emma’s voice came faintly through the closed study door. Lucy seized
gratefully at the opportunity.
“Miss Crackenthorpe’s calling me. I must go. Thank you so much for all you
have shown me….”
“Don’t forget…our secret….”
“I won’t forget,” said Lucy, and hurried out into the hall not quite certain
as to whether she had or had not just received a conditional proposal of
marriage.
II
Dermot Craddock sat at his desk in his room at New Scotland Yard. He was
slumped sideways in an easy attitude, and was talking into the telephone
receiver which he held with one elbow propped up on the table. He was speaking
in French, a language in which he was tolerably proficient.
“It was only an idea, you understand,” he said.
“But decidedly it is an idea,” said the voice at the other end, from the
Prefecture in Paris. “Already I have set inquiries in motion in those circles.
My agent reports that he has two or three promising lines of inquiry. Unless
there is some family life—or a lover, these women drop out of circulation very
easily and no one troubles about them. They have gone on tour, or there is
some new man—it is no one’s business to ask. It is a pity that the photograph
you sent me is so difficult for anyone to recognize. Strangulation it does not
improve the appearance. Still, that cannot be helped. I go now to study the
latest reports of my agents on this matter. There will be, perhaps, something. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
There will be, perhaps, something.
Au revoir, mon cher.”
As Craddock reiterated the farewell politely, a slip of paper was placed
before him on the desk. It read:
Miss Emma Crackenthorpe.
To see Detective-Inspector Craddock.
Rutherford Hall case.
He replaced the receiver and said to the police constable:
“Bring Miss Crackenthorpe up.”
As he waited, he leaned back in his chair, thinking.
So he had not been mistaken—there was something that Emma Crackenthorpe
knew—not much, perhaps, but something. And she had decided to tell him.
He rose to his feet as she was shown in, shook hands, settled her in a chair
and offered her a cigarette which she refused. Then there was a momentary
pause. She was trying, he decided, to find just the words she wanted. He
leaned forward.
“You have come to tell me something, Miss Crackenthorpe? Can I help you?
You’ve been worried about something, haven’t you? Some little thing, perhaps,
that you feel probably has nothing to do with the case, but on the other hand,
just might be related to it. You’ve come here to tell me about it, haven’t
you? It’s to do, perhaps, with the identity of the dead woman. You think you
know who she was?”
“No, no, not quite that. I think really it’s most unlikely. But—”
“But there is some possibility that worries you. You’d better tell me about
it—because we may be able to set your mind at rest.”
Emma took a moment or two before speaking. Then she said:
“You have seen three of my brothers. I had another brother, Edmund, who was
killed in the war. Shortly before he was killed, he wrote to me from France.”
She opened her handbag and took out a worn and faded letter. She read from it:
“I hope this won’t be a shock to you, Emmie, but I’m getting married—to a
French girl. It’s all been very sudden—but I know you’ll be fond of
Martine—and look after her if anything happens to me. Will write you all the
details in my next—by which time I shall be a married man. Break it gently to
the old man, won’t you? He’ll probably go up in smoke.”
Inspector Craddock held out a hand. Emma hesitated, then put the letter into
it. She went on, speaking rapidly.
“Two days after receiving this letter, we had a telegram saying Edmund was
Missing, believed killed. Later he was definitely reported killed. It was just
before Dunkirk—and a time of great confusion. There was no Army record, as far
as I could find out, of his having been married—but as I say, it was a
confused time. I never heard anything from the girl. I tried, after the war,
to make some inquiries, but I only knew her Christian name and that part of
France had been occupied by the Germans and it was difficult to find out
anything, without knowing the girl’s surname and more about her. In the end I
assumed that the marriage had never taken place and that the girl had probably
married someone else before the end of the war, or might possibly herself have
been killed.”
Inspector Craddock nodded. Emma went on.
“Imagine my surprise to receive a letter just about a month ago, signed
Martine Crackenthorpe.”
“You have it?”
Emma took it from her bag and handed it to him. Craddock read it with
interest. It was written in a slanting French hand—an educated hand.
Dear Mademoiselle,
I hope it will not be a shock to you to get this letter. I do not even know if
your brother Edmund told you that we were married.
He said he was going to do so. He was killed only a few days after
our marriage and at the same time the Germans occupied our village. After the
war ended, I decided that I would not write to you or approach you, though
Edmund had told me to do so. But by then I had made a new life for myself, and
it was not necessary.
But now things have changed. For my son’s sake I write this letter.
He is your brother’s son, you see, and I— I can no longer give him the
advantages he ought to have. I am coming to England early next week. Will you
let me know if I can come and see you? My address for letters is 126 Elvers
Crescent, N.10. I hope again this will not be the great shock to you.
I remain with assurance of my excellent sentiments,
Martine Crackenthorpe
Craddock was silent for a moment or two. He reread the letter carefully before
handing it back.
“What did you do on receipt of this letter, Miss Crackenthorpe?”
“My brother-in-law, Bryan Eastley, happened to be staying with me at the time
and I talked to him about it. Then I rang up my brother Harold in London and
consulted him about it. Harold was rather sceptical about the whole thing and
advised extreme caution. We must, he said, go carefully into this woman’s
credentials.”
Emma paused and then went on:
“That, of course, was only common sense and I quite agreed. But if this
girl—woman—was really the Martine about whom Edmund had written to me, I felt
that we must make her welcome. I wrote to the address she gave in her letters,
inviting her to come down to Rutherford Hall and meet us. A few days later I
received a telegram from London: Very sorry forced to return to France
unexpectedly. Martine. There was no further letter or news of any kind.”
“All this took place—when?”
Emma frowned.
“It was shortly before Christmas. I know, because I wanted to suggest her
spending Christmas with us—but my father would not hear of it—so I suggested
she could come down the weekend after Christmas while the family would still
be there. I think the wire saying she was returning to France came actually a
few days before Christmas.”
“And you believe that this woman whose body was found in the sarcophagus might
be this Martine?”
“No, of course I don’t. But when you said she was probably a foreigner—well, I
couldn’t help wondering…if perhaps….”
Her voice died away.
Craddock spoke quickly and reassuringly.
“You did quite right to tell me about this. We’ll look into it. I should say
there is probably little doubt that the woman who wrote to you actually did go
back to France and is there now alive and well. On the other hand, there is a
certain coincidence of dates, as you yourself have been clever enough to
realize. As you heard at the inquest, the woman’s death according to the
police surgeon’s evidence must have occurred about three to four weeks ago.
Now don’t worry, Miss Crackenthorpe, just leave it to us.” He added casually,
“You consulted Mr. Harold Crackenthorpe. What about your father and your other
brothers?”
“I had to tell my father, of course. He got very worked up,” she smiled
faintly. “He was convinced it was a put up thing to get money out of us. My
father gets very excited about money. He believes, or pretends to believe,
that he is a very poor man, and that he must save every penny he can. I
believe elderly people do get obsessions of that kind sometimes. It’s not
true, of course, he has a very large income and doesn’t actually spend a
quarter of it—or used not to until these days of high income tax. Certainly he
has a large amount of savings put by.” She paused and then went on. “I told my
other two brothers also. Alfred seemed to consider it rather a joke, though
he, too, thought it was almost certainly an imposture. Cedric just wasn’t
interested—he’s inclined to be self-centred. Our idea was that the family
would receive Martine, and that our lawyer, Mr. Wimborne, should also be asked
to be present.”
“What did Mr. Wimborne think about the letter?”
“We hadn’t got as far as discussing the matter with him. We were on the point
of doing so when Martine’s telegram arrived.”
“You have taken no further steps?”
“Yes. I wrote to the address in London with Please forward on the envelope,
but I have had no reply of any kind.”
“Rather a curious business… Hm….”
He looked at her sharply.
“What do you yourself think about it?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“What were your reactions at the time? Did you think the letter was genuine—or
did you agree with your father and brothers? | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Did you think the letter was genuine—or
did you agree with your father and brothers? What about your brother-in-law,
by the way, what did he think?”
“Oh, Bryan thought that the letter was genuine.”
“And you?”
“I—wasn’t sure.”
“And what were your feelings about it—supposing that this girl really was your
brother Edmund’s widow?”
Emma’s face softened.
“I was very fond of Edmund. He was my favourite brother. The letter seemed to
me exactly the sort of letter that a girl like Martine would write under the
circumstances. The course of events she described was entirely natural. I
assumed that by the time the war ended she had either married again or was
with some man who was protecting her and the child. Then perhaps, this man had
died, or left her, and it then seemed right to her to apply to Edmund’s
family—as he himself had wanted her to do. The letter seemed genuine and
natural to me—but, of course, Harold pointed out that if it was written by an
imposter, it would be written by some woman who had known Martine and who was
in possession of all the facts, and so would write a thoroughly plausible
letter. I had to admit the justice of that—but all the same….”
She stopped.
“You wanted it to be true?” said Craddock gently.
She looked at him gratefully.
“Yes, I wanted it to be true. I would be so glad if Edmund had left a son.”
Craddock nodded.
“As you say, the letter, on the face of it, sounds genuine enough. What is
surprising is the sequel; Martine Crackenthorpe’s abrupt departure for Paris
and the fact that you have never heard from her since. You had replied kindly
to her, were prepared to welcome her. Why, even if she had to return to
France, did she not write again? That is, presuming her to be the genuine
article. If she were an imposter, of course, it’s easier to explain. I thought
perhaps that you might have consulted Mr. Wimborne, and that he might have
instituted inquiries which alarmed the woman. That, you tell me, is not so.
But it’s still possible that one or other of your brothers may have done
something of the kind. It’s possible that this Martine may have had a
background that would not stand investigation. She may have assumed that she
would be dealing only with Edmund’s affectionate sister, not with hard-headed
suspicious business men. She may have hoped to get sums of money out of you
for the child (hardly a child now—a boy presumably of fifteen or sixteen)
without many questions being asked. But instead she found she was going to run
up against something quite different. After all, I should imagine that serious
legal aspects would arise. If Edmund Crackenthorpe left a son, born in
wedlock, he would be one of the heirs to your grandfather’s estate?”
Emma nodded.
“Moreover, from what I have been told, he would in due course inherit
Rutherford Hall and the land round it—very valuable building land, probably,
by now.”
Emma looked slightly startled.
“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, I shouldn’t worry,” said Inspector Craddock. “You did quite right to
come and tell me. I shall make enquiries, but it seems to me highly probably
that there is no connection between the woman who wrote the letter (and who
was probably trying to cash in on a swindle) and the woman whose body was
found in the sarcophagus.”
Emma rose with a sigh of relief.
“I’m so glad I’ve told you. You’ve been very kind.”
Craddock accompanied her to the door.
Then he rang for Detective-Sergeant Wetherall.
“Bob, I’ve got a job for you. Go to 126 Elvers Crescent, N.10. Take
photographs of the Rutherford Hall woman with you. See what you can find out
about a woman calling herself Mrs. Crackenthorpe— Mrs. Martine Crackenthorpe,
who was either living there, or calling for letters there, between the dates
of, say, 15th to the end of December.”
“Right, sir.”
Craddock busied himself with various other matters that were waiting attention
on his desk. In the afternoon he went to see a theatrical agent who was a
friend of his. His inquiries were not fruitful.
Later in the day when he returned to his office he found a wire from Paris on
his desk.
Particulars given by you might apply to Anna Stravinska of Ballet
Maritski. Suggest you come over. Dessin, Prefecture.
Craddock heaved a big sigh of relief, and his brow cleared.
At last! So much, he thought, for the Martine Crackenthorpe hare… He decided
to take the night ferry to Paris.
Thirteen
I
“It’s so very kind of you to have asked me to take tea with you,” said Miss
Marple to Emma Crackenthorpe.
Miss Marple was looking particularly woolly and fluffy—a picture of a sweet
old lady. She beamed as she looked round her—at Harold Crackenthorpe in his
well-cut dark suit, at Alfred handing her sandwiches with a charming smile, at
Cedric standing by the mantelpiece in a ragged tweed jacket scowling at the
rest of his family.
“We are very pleased that you could come,” said Emma politely.
There was no hint of the scene which had taken place after lunch that day when
Emma had exclaimed: “Dear me, I quite forgot. I told Miss Eyelesbarrow that
she could bring her old aunt to tea today.”
“Put her off,” said Harold brusquely. “We’ve still got a lot to talk about. We
don’t want strangers here.”
“Let her have tea in the kitchen or somewhere with the girl,” said Alfred.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” said Emma firmly. “That would be very rude.”
“Oh, let her come,” said Cedric. “We can draw her out a little about the
wonderful Lucy. I should like to know more about that girl, I must say. I’m
not sure that I trust her. Too smart by half.”
“She’s very well connected and quite genuine,” said Harold. “I’ve made it my
business to find out. One wanted to be sure. Poking about and finding the body
the way she did.”
“If we only knew who this damned woman was,” said Alfred.
Harold added angrily:
“I must say, Emma, that I think you were out of your senses, going and
suggesting to the police that the dead woman might be Edmund’s French girl
friend. It will make them convinced that she came here, and that probably one
or other of us killed her.”
“Oh, no, Harold. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Harold’s quite right,” said Alfred. “Whatever possessed you, I don’t know.
I’ve a feeling I’m being followed everywhere I go by plainclothesmen.”
“I told her not to do it,” said Cedric. “Then Quimper backed her up.”
“It’s no business of his,” said Harold angrily. “Let him stick to pills and
powders and National Health.”
“Oh, do stop quarrelling,” said Emma wearily. “I’m really glad this old Miss
Whatshername is coming to tea. It will do us all good to have a stranger here
and be prevented from going over and over the same things again and again. I
must go and tidy myself up a little.”
She left the room.
“This Lucy Eyelesbarrow,” said Harold, and stopped. “As Cedric says, it is odd
that she should nose about in the barn and go opening up a sarcophagus—really
a Herculean task. Perhaps we ought to take steps. Her attitude, I thought, was
rather antagonistic at lunch—”
“Leave her to me,” said Alfred. “I’ll soon find out if she’s up to anything.”
“I mean, why open up that sarcophagus?”
“Perhaps she isn’t really Lucy Eyelesbarrow at all,” suggested Cedric.
“But what would be the point—?” Harold looked thoroughly upset. “Oh, damn!”
They looked at each other with worried faces.
“And here’s this pestilential old woman coming to tea. Just when we want to
think.”
“We’ll talk things over this evening,” said Alfred. “In the meantime, we’ll
pump the old aunt about Lucy.”
So Miss Marple had duly been fetched by Lucy and installed by the fire and she
was now smiling up at Alfred as he handed her sandwiches with the approval she
always showed towards a good-looking man.
“Thank you so much…may I ask…? Oh, egg and sardine, yes, that will be very
nice. I’m afraid I’m always rather greedy over my tea. As one gets on, you
know… And, of course, at night only a very light meal… I have to be careful.”
She turned to her hostess once more. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“What a beautiful house you have. And so
many beautiful things in it. Those bronzes, now, they remind me of some my
father bought—at the Paris Exhibition. Really, your grandfather did? In the
classical style, aren’t they? Very handsome. How delightful for you having
your brothers with you? So often families are scattered—India, though I
suppose that is all done with now—and Africa—the west coast, such a bad
climate.”
“Two of my brothers live in London.”
“That is very nice for you.”
“But my brother Cedric is a painter and lives in Ibiza, one of the Balearic
Islands.”
“Painters are so fond of islands, are they not?” said Miss Marple.
“Chopin—that was Majorca, was it not? But he was a musician. It is Gauguin I
am thinking of. A sad life—misspent, one feels. I myself never really care for
paintings of native women—and although I know he is very much admired—I have
never cared for that lurid mustard colour. One really feels quite bilious
looking at his pictures.”
She eyed Cedric with a slightly disapproving air.
“Tell us about Lucy as a child, Miss Marple,” said Cedric.
She smiled up at him delightedly.
“Lucy was always so clever,” she said. “Yes, you were, dear—now don’t
interrupt. Quite remarkable at arithmetic. Why, I remember when the butcher
overcharged me for top side of beef….”
Miss Marple launched full steam ahead into reminiscences of Lucy’s childhood
and from there to experiences of her own in village life.
The stream of reminiscence was interrupted by the entry of Bryan and the boys
rather wet and dirty as a result of an enthusiastic search for clues. Tea was
brought in and with it came Dr. Quimper who raised his eyebrows slightly as he
looked round after acknowledging his introduction to the old lady.
“Hope your father’s not under the weather, Emma?”
“Oh, no—that is, he was just a little tired this afternoon—”
“Avoiding visitors, I expect,” said Miss Marple with a roguish smile. “How
well I remember my own dear father. ‘Got a lot of old pussies coming?’ he
would say to my mother. ‘Send my tea into the study.’ Very naughty about it,
he was.”
“Please don’t think—” began Emma, but Cedric cut in.
“It’s always tea in the study when his dear sons come down. Psychologically to
be expected, eh, Doctor?”
Dr. Quimper, who was devouring sandwiches and coffee cake with the frank
appreciation of a man who has usually too little time to spend on his meals,
said:
“Psychology’s all right if it’s left to the psychologists. Trouble is,
everyone is an amateur psychologist nowadays. My patients tell me exactly what
complexes and neuroses they’re suffering from, without giving me a chance to
tell them. Thanks, Emma, I will have another cup. No time for lunch today.”
“A doctor’s life, I always think, is so noble and self-sacrificing,” said Miss
Marple.
“You can’t know many doctors,” said Dr. Quimper. “Leeches they used to be
called, and leeches they often are! At any rate, we do get paid nowadays, the
State sees to that. No sending in of bills that you know won’t ever be met.
Trouble is that all one’s patients are determined to get everything they can
‘out of the Government,’ and as a result, if little Jenny coughs twice in the
night, or little Tommy eats a couple of green apples, out the poor doctor has
to come in the middle of the night. Oh, well! Glorious cake, Emma. What a cook
you are!”
“Not mine. Miss Eyelesbarrow’s.”
“You make ’em just as good,” said Quimper loyally.
“Will you come and see Father?”
She rose and the doctor followed her. Miss Marple watched them leave the room.
“Miss Crackenthorpe is a very devoted daughter, I see,” she said.
“Can’t imagine how she sticks the old man myself,” said the outspoken Cedric.
“She has a very comfortable home here, and father is very much attached to
her,” said Harold quickly.
“Em’s all right,” said Cedric. “Born to be an old maid.”
There was a faint twinkle in Miss Marple’s eye as she said:
“Oh, do you think so?”
Harold said quickly:
“My brother didn’t use the term old maid in any derogatory sense, Miss
Marple.”
“Oh, I wasn’t offended,” said Miss Marple. “I just wondered if he was right. I
shouldn’t say myself that Miss Crackenthorpe would be an old maid. She’s the
type, I think, that’s quite likely to marry late in life—and make a success of
it.”
“Not very likely living here,” said Cedric. “Never sees anybody she could
marry.”
Miss Marple’s twinkle became more pronounced than ever.
“There are always clergymen—and doctors.”
Her eyes, gentle and mischievous, went from one to another.
It was clear that she had suggested to them something that they had never
thought of and which they did not find overpleasing.
Miss Marple rose to her feet, dropping as she did so, several little woolly
scarves and her bag.
The three brothers were most attentive picking things up.
“So kind of you,” fluted Miss Marple. “Oh, yes, and my little blue muffler.
Yes—as I say—so kind to ask me here. I’ve been picturing, you know, just what
your home was like—so that I can visualize dear Lucy working here.”
“Perfect home conditions—with murder thrown in,” said Cedric.
“Cedric!” Harold’s voice was angry.
Miss Marple smiled up at Cedric.
“Do you know who you remind me of? Young Thomas Eade, our bank manager’s son.
Always out to shock people. It didn’t do in banking circles, of course, so he
went to the West Indies… He came home when his father died and inherited quite
a lot of money. So nice for him. He was always better at spending money than
making it.”
II
Lucy took Miss Marple home. On her way back a figure stepped out of the
darkness and stood in the glare of the headlights just as she was about to
turn into the back lane. He held up his hand and Lucy recognized Alfred
Crackenthorpe.
“That’s better,” he observed, as he got in. “Brr, it’s cold! I fancied I’d
like a nice bracing walk. I didn’t. Taken the old lady home all right?”
“Yes. She enjoyed herself very much.”
“One could see that. Funny what a taste old ladies have for any kind of
society, however dull. And, really, nothing could be duller than Rutherford
Hall. Two days here is about as much as I can stand. How do you manage to
stick it out, Lucy? Don’t mind if I call you Lucy, do you?”
“Not at all. I don’t find it dull. Of course with me it’s not a permanency.”
“I’ve been watching you—you’re a smart girl, Lucy. Too smart to waste yourself
cooking and cleaning.”
“Thank you, but I prefer cooking and cleaning to the office desk.”
“So would I. But there are other ways of living. You could be a freelance.”
“I am.”
“Not this way. I mean, working for yourself, pitting your wits against—”
“Against what?”
“The powers that be! All the silly pettifogging rules and regulations that
hamper us all nowadays. The interesting thing is there’s always a way round
them if you’re smart enough to find it. And you’re smart. Come now, does the
idea appeal to you?”
“Possibly.”
Lucy manoeuvred the car into the stableyard.
“Not going to commit yourself?”
“I’d have to hear more.”
“Frankly, my dear girl, I could use you. You’ve got the sort of manner that’s
invaluable—creates confidence.”
“Do you want me to help you sell gold bricks?”
“Nothing so risky. Just a little by-passing of the law—no more.” His hand
slipped up her arm. “You’re a damned attractive girl, Lucy. I’d like you as a
partner.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Meaning nothing doing? Think about it. Think of the fun. The pleasure you’d
get out of outwitting all the sober-sides. The trouble is, one needs capital.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got any.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a touch! I’ll be laying my hands on some before long. My
revered Papa can’t live forever, mean old brute. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
My
revered Papa can’t live forever, mean old brute. When he pops off, I lay my
hands on some real money. What about it, Lucy?”
“What are the terms?”
“Marriage if you fancy it. Women seem to, no matter how advanced and self-
supporting they are. Besides, married women can’t be made to give evidence
against their husbands.”
“Not so flattering!”
“Come off it, Lucy. Don’t you realize I’ve fallen for you?”
Rather to her surprise Lucy was aware of a queer fascination. There was a
quality of charm about Alfred, perhaps due to sheer animal magnetism. She
laughed and slipped from his encircling arm.
“This is no time for dalliance. There’s dinner to think about.”
“So there is, Lucy, and you’re a lovely cook. What’s for dinner?”
“Wait and see! You’re as bad as the boys!”
They entered the house and Lucy hurried to the kitchen. She was rather
surprised to be interrupted in her preparations by Harold Crackenthorpe.
“Miss Eyelesbarrow, can I speak to you about something?”
“Would later do, Mr. Crackenthorpe? I’m rather behind hand.”
“Certainly. Certainly. After dinner?”
“Yes, that will do.”
Dinner was duly served and appreciated. Lucy finished washing up and came out
into the hall to find Harold Crackenthorpe waiting for her.
“Yes, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”
“Shall we come in here?” He opened the door of the drawing room and led the
way. He shut the door behind her.
“I shall be leaving early in the morning,” he explained, “but I want to tell
you how struck I have been by your ability.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy, feeling a little surprised.
“I feel that your talents are wasted here—definitely wasted.”
“Do you? I don’t.”
At any rate, he can’t ask me to marry him, thought Lucy. He’s got a wife
already.
“I suggest that having very kindly seen us through this lamentable crisis, you
call upon me in London. If you will ring up and make an appointment, I will
leave instructions with my secretary. The truth is that we could use someone
of your outstanding ability in the firm. We could discuss fully in what field
your talents would be most ably employed. I can offer you, Miss Eyelesbarrow,
a very good salary indeed with brilliant prospects. I think you will be
agreeably surprised.”
His smile was magnanimous.
Lucy said demurely:
“Thank you, Mr. Crackenthorpe, I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t wait too long. These opportunities should not be missed by a young
woman anxious to make her way in the world.”
Again his teeth flashed.
“Good night, Miss Eyelesbarrow, sleep well.”
“Well,” said Lucy to herself, “well…this is all very interesting….”
On her way up to bed, Lucy encountered Cedric on the stairs.
“Look here, Lucy, there’s something I want to say to you.”
“Do you want me to marry you and come to Ibiza and look after you?”
Cedric looked very much taken aback, and slightly alarmed.
“I never thought of such a thing.”
“Sorry. My mistake.”
“I just wanted to know if you’ve a timetable in the house?”
“Is that all? There’s one on the hall table.”
“You know,” said Cedric, reprovingly, “you shouldn’t go about thinking
everyone wants to marry you. You’re quite a good-looking girl but not as good-
looking as all that. There’s a name for that sort of thing—it grows on you and
you get worse. Actually, you’re the last girl in the world I should care to
marry. The last girl.”
“Indeed?” said Lucy. “You needn’t rub it in. Perhaps you’d prefer me as a
stepmother?”
“What’s that?” Cedric stared at her stupefied.
“You heard me,” said Lucy, and went into her room and shut the door.
Fourteen
I
Dermot Craddock was fraternizing with Armand Dessin of the Paris Prefecture.
The two men had met on one or two occasions and got on well together. Since
Craddock spoke French fluently, most of their conversation was conducted in
that language.
“It is an idea only,” Dessin warned him, “I have a picture here of the corps
de ballet—that is she, the fourth from the left—it says anything to you, yes?”
Inspector Craddock said that actually it didn’t. A strangled young woman is
not easy to recognize, and in this picture all the young women concerned were
heavily made up and were wearing extravagant bird headdresses.
“It could be,” he said. “I can’t go further than that. Who was she? What do
you know about her?”
“Almost less than nothing,” said the other cheerfully. “She was not important,
you see. And the Ballet Maritski—it is not important, either. It plays in
suburban theatres and goes on tour—it has no real names, no stars, no famous
ballerinas. But I will take you to see Madame Joilet who runs it.”
Madame Joilet was a brisk business-like Frenchwoman with a shrewd eye, a small
moustache, and a good deal of adipose tissue.
“Me, I do not like the police!” She scowled at them, without camouflaging her
dislike of the visit. “Always, if they can, they make me embarrassments.”
“No, no, Madame, you must not say that,” said Dessin, who was a tall thin
melancholy-looking man. “When have I ever caused you embarrassments?”
“Over that little fool who drank the carbolic acid,” said Madame Joilet
promptly. “And all because she has fallen in love with the chef
d’orchestre—who does not care for women and has other tastes. Over that you
made the big brouhaha! Which is not good for my beautiful ballet.”
“On the contrary, big box office business,” said Dessin. “And that was three
years ago. You should not bear malice. Now about this girl, Anna Stravinska.”
“Well, what about her?” said Madame cautiously.
“Is she Russian?” asked Inspector Craddock.
“No, indeed. You mean, because of her name? But they all call themselves names
like that, these girls. She was not important, she did not dance well, she was
not particularly good-looking. Elle était assez bien, c’est tout. She danced
well enough for the corps de ballet—but no solos.”
“Was she French?”
“Perhaps. She had a French passport. But she told me once that she had an
English husband.”
“She told you that she had an English husband? Alive—or dead?”
Madame Joilet shrugged her shoulders.
“Dead, or he had left her. How should I know which? These girls—there is
always some trouble with men—”
“When did you last see her?”
“I take my company to London for six weeks. We play at Tor-quay, at
Bournemouth, at Eastbourne, at somewhere else I forget and at Hammersmith.
Then we come back to France, but Anna—she does not come. She sends a message
only that she leaves the company, that she goes to live with her husband’s
family—some nonsense of that kind. I did not think it is true, myself. I think
it more likely that she has met a man, you understand.”
Inspector Craddock nodded. He perceived that that was what Madame Joilet would
invariably think.
“And it is no loss to me. I do not care. I can get girls just as good and
better to come and dance, so I shrug the shoulders and do not think of it
anymore. Why should I? They are all the same, these girls, mad about men.”
“What date was this?”
“When we return to France? It was—yes—the Sunday before Christmas. And Anna
she leaves two—or is it three—days before that? I cannot remember exactly… But
the end of the week at Hammersmith we have to dance without her—and it means
rearranging things… It was very naughty of her—but these girls—the moment they
meet a man they are all the same. Only I say to everybody. ‘Zut, I do not take
her back, that one!’”
“Very annoying for you.”
“Ah! Me—I do not care. No doubt she passes the Christmas holiday with some man
she has picked up. It is not my affair. I can find other girls—girls who will
leap at the chance of dancing in the Ballet Maritski and who can dance as
well—or better than Anna.”
Madame Joilet paused and then asked with a sudden gleam of interest:
“Why do you want to find her? Has she come into money?”
“On the contrary,” said Inspector Craddock politely. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Has she come into money?”
“On the contrary,” said Inspector Craddock politely. “We think she may have
been murdered.”
Madame Joilet relapsed into indifference.
“Ca se peut! It happens. Ah, well! She was a good Catholic. She went to Mass
on Sundays, and no doubt to confession.”
“Did she ever speak to you, Madame, of a son?”
“A son? Do you mean she had a child? That, now, I should consider most
unlikely. These girls, all—all of them know a useful address to which to go.
M. Dessin knows that as well as I do.”
“She may have had a child before she adopted a stage life,” said Craddock.
“During the war, for instance.”
“Ah! dans la guerre. That is always possible. But if so, I know nothing about
it.”
“Who amongst the other girls were her closest friends?”
“I can give you two or three names—but she was not very intimate with anyone.”
They could get nothing else useful from Madame Joilet.
Shown the compact, she said Anna had one of that kind, but so had most of the
other girls. Anna had perhaps bought a fur coat in London—she did not know.
“Me, I occupy myself with the rehearsals, with the stage lighting, with all
the difficulties of my business. I have not time to notice what my artists
wear.”
After Madame Joilet, they interviewed the girls whose names she had given
them. One or two of them had known Anna fairly well, but they all said that
she had not been one to talk much about herself, and that when she did, it
was, so one girl said, mostly lies.
“She liked to pretend things—stories about having been the mistress of a Grand
Duke—or of a great English financier—or how she worked for the Resistance in
the war. Even a story about being a film star in Hollywood.”
Another girl said:
“I think that really she had had a very tame bourgeois existence. She liked to
be in ballet because she thought it was romantic, but she was not a good
dancer. You understand that if she were to say, ‘My father was a draper in
Amiens,’ that would not be romantic! So instead she made up things.”
“Even in London,” said the first girl, “she threw out hints about a very rich
man who was going to take her on a cruise round the world, because she
reminded him of his dead daughter who had died in a car accident. Quelle
blague!”
“She told me she was going to stay with a rich lord in Scotland,” said the
second girl. “She said she would shoot the deer there.”
None of this was helpful. All that seemed to emerge from it was that Anna
Stravinska was a proficient liar. She was certainly not shooting deer with a a
peer in Scotland, and it seemed equally unlikely that she was on the sun deck
of a liner cruising round the world. But neither was there any real reason to
believe that her body had been found in a sarcophagus at Rutherford Hall. The
identification by the girls and Madame Joilet was very uncertain and
hesitating. It looked something like Anna, they all agreed. But really! All
swollen up—it might be anybody!
The only fact that was established was that on the 19th of December Anna
Stravinska had decided not to return to France, and that on the 20th December
a woman resembling her in appearance had travelled to Brackhampton by the 4:33
train and had been strangled.
If the woman in the sarcophagus was not Anna Stravinska, where was Anna now?
To that, Madame Joilet’s answer was simple and inevitable.
“With a man!”
And it was probably the correct answer, Craddock reflected ruefully.
One other possibility had to be considered—raised by the casual remark that
Anna had once referred to having an English husband.
Had that husband been Edmund Crackenthorpe?
It seemed unlikely, considering the word picture of Anna that had been given
him by those who knew her. What was much more probable was that Anna had at
one time known the girl Martine sufficiently intimately to be acquainted with
the necessary details. It might have been Anna who wrote that letter to Emma
Crackenthorpe and, if so, Anna would have been quite likely to have taken
fright at any question of an investigation. Perhaps she had even thought it
prudent to sever her connection with the Ballet Maritski. Again, where was she
now?
And again, inevitably, Madame Joilet’s answer seemed the most likely.
With a man….
II
Before leaving Paris, Craddock discussed with Dessin the question of the woman
named Martine. Dessin was inclined to agree with his English colleague that
the matter had probably no connection with the woman found in the sarcophagus.
All the same, he agreed, the matter ought to be investigated.
He assured Craddock that the Sûreté would do their best to discover if there
actually was any record of a marriage between Lieutenant Edmund Crackenthorpe
of the 4th Southshire Regiment and a French girl whose Christian name was
Martine. Time—just prior to the fall of Dunkirk.
He warned Craddock, however, that a definite answer was doubtful. The area in
question had not only been occupied by the Germans at almost exactly that
time, but subsequently that part of France had suffered severe war damage at
the time of the invasion. Many buildings and records had been destroyed.
“But rest assured, my dear colleague, we shall do our best.”
With this, he and Craddock took leave of each other.
III
On Craddock’s return Sergeant Wetherall was waiting to report with gloomy
relish:
“Accommodation address, sir—that’s what 126 Elvers Crescent is. Quite
respectable and all that.”
“Any identifications?”
“No, nobody could recognize the photograph as that of a woman who had called
for letters, but I don’t think they would anyway—it’s a month ago, very near,
and a good many people use the place. It’s actually a boarding-house for
students.”
“She might have stayed there under another name.”
“If so, they didn’t recognize her as the original of the photograph.”
He added:
“We circularized the hotels—nobody registering as Martine Crackenthorpe
anywhere. On receipt of your call from Paris, we checked up on Anna
Stravinska. She was registered with other members of the company in a cheap
hotel off Brook Green. Mostly theatricals there. She cleared out on the night
of Thursday 19th after the show. No further record.”
Craddock nodded. He suggested a line of further inquiries—though he had little
hope of success from them.
After some thought, he rang up Wimborne, Henderson and Carstairs and asked for
an appointment with Mr. Wimborne.
In due course, he was ushered into a particularly airless room where Mr.
Wimborne was sitting behind a large old-fashioned desk covered with bundles of
dusty-looking papers. Various deed boxes labelled Sir John ffouldes, dec.,
Lady Derrin, George Rowbottom, Esq., ornamented the walls; whether as relics
of a bygone era or as part of present-day legal affairs, the inspector did not
know.
Mr. Wimborne eyed his visitor with the polite wariness characteristic of a
family lawyer towards the police.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“This letter…” Craddock pushed Martine’s letter across the table. Mr. Wimborne
touched it with a distasteful finger but did not pick it up. His colour rose
very slightly and his lips tightened.
“Quite so,” he said; “quite so! I received a letter from Miss Emma
Crackenthorpe yesterday morning, informing me of her visit to Scotland Yard
and of—ah—all the circumstances. I may say that I am at a loss to
understand—quite at a loss—why I was not consulted about this letter at the
time of its arrival! Most extraordinary! I should have been informed
immediately….”
Inspector Craddock repeated soothingly such platitudes as seemed best
calculated to reduce Mr. Wimborne to an amenable frame of mind.
“I’d no idea that there was ever any question of Edmund’s having married,”
said Mr. Wimborne in an injured voice.
Inspector Craddock said that he supposed—in war time—and left it to trail away
vaguely.
“War time!” snapped Mr. Wimborne with waspish acerbity. “Yes, indeed, we were
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at the outbreak of war and there was a direct hit on
the house next door, and a great number of our records were destroyed. Not the
really important documents, of course; they had been removed to the country
for safety. But it caused a great deal of confusion. Of course, the
Crackenthorpe business was in my father’s hands at that time. He died six
years ago. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
He died six
years ago. I dare say he may have been told about this so-called marriage of
Edmund’s—but on the face of it, it looks as though that marriage, even if
contemplated, never took place, and so, no doubt, my father did not consider
the story of any importance. I must say, all this sounds very fishy to me.
This coming forward, after all these years, and claiming a marriage and a
legitimate son. Very fishy indeed. What proofs had she got, I’d like to know?”
“Just so,” said Craddock. “What would her position, or her son’s position be?”
“The idea was, I suppose, that she would get the Crackenthorpes to provide for
her and for the boy.”
“Yes, but I meant, what would she and the son be entitled to, legally
speaking—if she could prove her claim?”
“Oh, I see.” Mr. Wimborne picked up his spectacles which he had laid aside in
his irritation, and put them on, staring through them at Inspector Craddock
with shrewd attention. “Well, at the moment, nothing. But if she could prove
that the boy was the son of Edmund Crackenthorpe, born in lawful wedlock, then
the boy would be entitled to his share of Josiah Crackenthorpe’s trust on the
death of Luther Crackenthorpe. More than that, he’d inherit Rutherford Hall,
since he’s the son of the eldest son.”
“Would anyone want to inherit the house?”
“To live in? I should say, certainly not. But that estate, my dear Inspector,
is worth a considerable amount of money. Very considerable. Land for
industrial and building purposes. Land which is now in the heart of
Brackhampton. Oh, yes, a very considerable inheritance.”
“If Luther Crackenthorpe dies, I believe you told me that Cedric gets it?”
“He inherits the real estate—yes, as the eldest living son.”
“Cedric Crackenthorpe, I have been given to understand, is not interested in
money?”
Mr. Wimborne gave Craddock a cold stare.
“Indeed? I am inclined, myself, to take statements of such a nature with what
I might term a grain of salt. There are doubtless certain unworldly people who
are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.”
Mr. Wimborne obviously derived a certain satisfaction from this remark.
Inspector Craddock hastened to take advantage of this ray of sunshine.
“Harold and Alfred Crackenthorpe,” he ventured, “seem to have been a good deal
upset by the arrival of this letter?”
“Well they might be,” said Mr. Wimborne. “Well they might be.”
“It would reduce their eventual inheritance?”
“Certainly. Edmund Crackenthorpe’s son—always presuming there is a son—would
be entitled to a fifth share of the trust money.”
“That doesn’t really seem a very serious loss?”
Mr. Wimborne gave him a shrewd glance.
“It is a totally inadequate motive for murder, if that is what you mean.”
“But I suppose they’re both pretty hard up,” Craddock murmured.
He sustained Mr. Wimborne’s sharp glance with perfect impassivity.
“Oh! So the police have been making inquiries? Yes, Alfred is almost
incessantly in low water. Occasionally he is very flush of money for a short
time—but it soon goes. Harold, as you seem to have discovered, is at present
somewhat precariously situated.”
“In spite of his appearance of financial prosperity?”
“Façade. All façade! Half these city concerns don’t even know if they’re
solvent or not. Balance sheets can be made to look all right to the inexpert
eye. But when the assets that are listed aren’t really assets—when those
assets are trembling on the brink of a crash—where are you?”
“Where, presumably, Harold Crackenthorpe is, in bad need of money.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have got it by strangling his late brother’s widow,” said
Mr. Wimborne. “And nobody’s murdered Luther Crackenthorpe which is the only
murder that would do the family any good. So, really, Inspector, I don’t quite
see where your ideas are leading you?”
The worst of it was, Inspector Craddock thought, that he wasn’t very sure
himself.
Fifteen
I
Inspector Craddock had made an appointment with Harold Crackenthorpe at his
office, and he and Sergeant Wetherall arrived there punctually. The office was
on the fourth floor of a big block of City offices. Inside everything showed
prosperity and the acme of modern business taste.
A neat young woman took his name, spoke in a discreet murmur through a
telephone, and then, rising, showed them into Harold Crackenthorpe’s own
private office.
Harold was sitting behind a large leather-topped desk and was looking as
impeccable and self-confident as ever. If, as the inspector’s private
knowledge led him to surmise, he was close upon Queer Street, no trace of it
showed.
He looked up with a frank welcoming interest.
“Good morning, Inspector Craddock. I hope this means that you have some
definite news for us at last?”
“Hardly that, I am afraid, Mr. Crackenthorpe. It’s just a few more questions
I’d like to ask.”
“More questions? Surely by now we have answered everything imaginable.”
“I dare say it feels like that to you, Mr. Crackenthorpe, but it’s just a
question of our regular routine.”
“Well, what is it this time?” He spoke impatiently.
“I should be glad if you could tell me exactly what you were doing on the
afternoon and evening of 20th December last—say between the hours of 3 p.m.
and midnight.”
Harold Crackenthorpe went an angry shade of plum red.
“That seems to be a most extraordinary question to ask me. What does it mean,
I should like to know?”
Craddock smiled gently.
“It just means that I should like to know where you were between the hours of
3 p.m. and midnight on Friday, 20th December.”
“Why?”
“It would help to narrow things down.”
“Narrow them down? You have extra information, then?”
“We hope that we’re getting a little closer, sir.”
“I’m not at all sure that I ought to answer your question. Not, that is,
without having my solicitor present.”
“That, of course, is entirely up to you,” said Craddock. “You are not bound to
answer any questions, and you have a perfect right to have a solicitor present
before you do so.”
“You are not—let me be quite clear—er—warning me in any way?”
“Oh, no, sir.” Inspector Craddock looked properly shocked. “Nothing of that
kind. The questions I am asking you, I am asking several other people as well.
There’s nothing directly personal about this. It’s just a matter of necessary
eliminations.”
“Well, of course— I’m anxious to assist in any way I can. Let me see now. Such
a thing isn’t easy to answer off hand, but we’re very systematic here. Miss
Ellis, I expect, can help.”
He spoke briefly into one of the telephones on his desk and almost immediately
a streamlined young woman in a well-cut black suit entered with a notebook.
“My secretary, Miss Ellis, Inspector Craddock. Now, Miss Ellis, the inspector
would like to know what I was doing on the afternoon and evening of—what was
the date?”
“Friday, 20th December.”
“Friday, 20th December. I expect you will have some record.”
“Oh, yes.” Miss Ellis left the room, returned with an office memorandum
calendar and turned the pages.
“You were in the office on the morning of 20th December. You had a conference
with Mr. Goldie about the Cromartie merger, you lunched with Lord Forthville
at the Berkeley—”
“Ah, it was that day, yes.”
“You returned to the office about 3 o’clock and dictated half a dozen letters.
You then left to attend Sotheby’s sale rooms where you were interested in some
rare manuscripts which were coming up for sale that day. You did not return to
the office again, but I have a note to remind you that you were attending the
Catering Club dinner that evening.” She looked up interrogatively.
“Thank you, Miss Ellis.”
Miss Ellis glided from the room.
“That is all quite clear in my mind,” said Harold. “I went to Sotheby’s that
afternoon but the items I wanted there went for too high a price. I had tea in
a small place in Jermyn Street—Russell’s, I think, it was called. I dropped
into a News Theatre for about half an hour or so, then went home—I live at 43
Cardigan Gardens. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
The Catering Club dinner took place at seven-thirty at
Caterer’s Hall, and after it I returned home to bed. I think that should
answer your questions.”
“That’s all very clear, Mr. Crackenthorpe. What time was it when you returned
home to dress?”
“I don’t think I can remember exactly. Soon after six, I should think.”
“And after your dinner?”
“It was, I think, half past eleven when I got home.”
“Did your manservant let you in? Or perhaps Lady Alice Crackenthorpe—”
“My wife, Lady Alice, is abroad in the South of France and has been since
early December. I let myself in with my latch key.”
“So there is no one who can vouch for your returning home when you say you
did?”
Harold gave him a cold stare.
“I dare say the servants heard me come in. I have a man and wife. But, really,
Inspector—”
“Please, Mr. Crackenthorpe, I know these kind of questions are annoying, but I
have nearly finished. Do you own a car?”
“Yes, a Humber Hawk.”
“You drive it yourself?”
“Yes. I don’t use it much except at weekends. Driving in London is quite
impossible nowadays.”
“I presume you use it when you go down to see your father and sister in
Brackhampton?”
“Not unless I am going to stay there for some length of time. If I just go
down for the night—as, for instance, to the inquest the other day—I always go
by train. There is an excellent train service and it is far quicker than going
by car. The car my sister hires meets me at the station.”
“Where do you keep your car?”
“I rent a garage in the mews behind Cardigan Gardens. Any more questions?”
“I think that’s all for now,” said Inspector Craddock, smiling and rising.
“I’m very sorry for having to bother you.”
When they were outside, Sergeant Wetherall, a man who lived in a state of dark
suspicions of all and sundry, remarked meaningly:
“He didn’t like those questions—didn’t like them at all. Put out, he was.”
“If you have not committed a murder, it naturally annoys you if it seems
someone thinks that you have,” said Inspector Craddock mildly. “It would
particularly annoy an ultra respectable man like Harold Crackenthorpe. There’s
nothing in that. What we’ve got to find out now is if anyone actually saw
Harold Crackenthorpe at the sale that afternoon, and the same applies to the
tea shop place. He could easily have travelled by the 4:33, pushed the woman
out of the train and caught a train back to London in time to appear at the
dinner. In the same way he could have driven his car down that night, moved
the body to the sarcophagus and driven back again. Make inquiries in the
mews.”
“Yes, sir. Do you think that’s what he did do?”
“How do I know?” asked Inspector Craddock. “He’s a tall dark man. He could
have been on that train and he’s got a connection with Rutherford Hall. He’s a
possible suspect in this case. Now for Brother Alfred.”
II
Alfred Crackenthorpe had a flat in West Hampstead, in a big modern building of
slightly jerry-built type with a large courtyard in which the owners of flats
parked their cars with a certain lack of consideration for others.
The flat was the modern built-in type, evidently rented furnished. It had a
long plywood table that led down from the wall, a divan bed, and various
chairs of improbable proportions.
Alfred Crackenthorpe met them with engaging friendliness but was, the
inspector thought, nervous.
“I’m intrigued,” he said. “Can I offer you a drink, Inspector Craddock?” He
held up various bottles invitingly.
“No, thank you, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“As bad as that?” He laughed at his own little joke, then asked what it was
all about.
Inspector Craddock said his little piece.
“What was I doing on the afternoon and evening of 20th December. How should I
know? Why, that’s—what—over three weeks ago.”
“Your brother Harold has been able to tell us very exactly.”
“Brother Harold, perhaps. Not Brother Alfred.” He added with a touch of
something—envious malice possibly: “Harold is the successful member of the
family—busy, useful, fully employed—a time for everything, and everything at
that time. Even if he were to commit a—murder, shall we say?—it would be
carefully timed and exact.”
“Any particular reason for using that example?”
“Oh, no. It just came into my mind—as a supreme absurdity.”
“Now about yourself.”
Alfred spread out his hands.
“It’s as I tell you—I’ve no memory for times or places. If you were to say
Christmas Day now—then I should be able to answer you—there’s a peg to hang it
on. I know where I was Christmas Day. We spend that with my father at
Brackhampton. I really don’t know why. He grumbles at the expense of having
us—and would grumble that we never came near him if we didn’t come. We really
do it to please my sister.”
“And you did it this year?”
“Yes.”
“But unfortunately your father was taken ill, was he not?”
Craddock was pursuing a sideline deliberately, led by the kind of instinct
that often came to him in his profession.
“He was taken ill. Living like a sparrow in that glorious cause of economy,
sudden full eating and drinking had its effect.”
“That was all it was, was it?”
“Of course. What else?”
“I gathered that his doctor was—worried.”
“Ah, that old fool Quimper,” Alfred spoke quickly and scornfully. “It’s no use
listening to him, Inspector. He’s an alarmist of the worst kind.”
“Indeed? He seemed a rather sensible kind of man to me.”
“He’s a complete fool. Father’s not really an invalid, there’s nothing wrong
with his heart, but he takes in Quimper completely. Naturally, when father
really felt ill, he made a terrific fuss, and had Quimper going and coming,
asking questions, going into everything he’d eaten and drunk. The whole thing
was ridiculous!” Alfred spoke with unusual heat.
Craddock was silent for a moment or two, rather effectively. Alfred fidgeted,
shot him a quick glance, and then said petulantly:
“Well, what is all this? Why do you want to know where I was on a particular
Friday, three or four weeks ago?”
“So you do remember that it was a Friday?”
“I thought you said so.”
“Perhaps I did,” said Inspector Craddock. “At any rate, Friday 20th is the day
I am asking about.”
“Why?”
“A routine inquiry.”
“That’s nonsense. Have you found out something more about this woman? About
where she came from?”
“Our information is not yet complete.”
Alfred gave him a sharp glance.
“I hope you’re not being led aside by this wild theory of Emma’s that she
might have been my brother Edmund’s widow. That’s complete nonsense.”
“This— Martine, did not at any rate apply to you?”
“To me? Good lord, no! That would have been a laugh.”
“She would be more likely, you think, to go to your brother Harold?”
“Much more likely. His name’s frequently in the papers. He’s well off. Trying
a touch there wouldn’t surprise me. Not that she’d have got anything. Harold’s
as tight-fisted as the old man himself. Emma, of course, is the soft-hearted
one of the family, and she was Edmund’s favourite sister. All the same, Emma
isn’t credulous. She was quite alive to the possibility of this woman being
phoney. She had it all laid on for the entire family to be there—and a hard-
headed solicitor as well.”
“Very wise,” said Craddock. “Was there a definite date fixed for this
meeting?”
“It was to be soon after Christmas—the weekend of the 27th…” he stopped.
“Ah,” said Craddock pleasantly. “So I see some dates have a meaning to you.”
“I’ve told you—no definite date was fixed.”
“But you talked about it—when?”
“I really can’t remember.”
“And you can’t tell me what you yourself were doing on Friday, 20th December?”
“Sorry—my mind’s an absolute blank.”
“You don’t keep an engagement book?”
“Can’t stand the things.”
“The Friday before Christmas—it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“I played golf one day with a likely prospect.” Alfred shook his head. “No,
that was the week before. I probably just mooched around. I spend a lot of my
time doing that. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I probably just mooched around. I spend a lot of my
time doing that. I find one’s business gets done in bars more than anywhere
else.”
“Perhaps the people here, or some of your friends, may be able to help?”
“Maybe. I’ll ask them. Do what I can.”
Alfred seemed more sure of himself now.
“I can’t tell you what I was doing that day,” he said; “but I can tell you
what I wasn’t doing. I wasn’t murdering anyone in the Long Barn.”
“Why should you say that, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”
“Come now, my dear Inspector. You’re investigating this murder, aren’t you?
And when you begin to ask ‘Where were you on such and such a day at such and
such a time?’ you’re narrowing down things. I’d very much like to know why
you’ve hit on Friday the 20th between—what? Lunchtime and midnight? It
couldn’t be medical evidence, not after all this time. Did somebody see the
deceased sneaking into the barn that afternoon? She went in and she never came
out, etc.? Is that it?”
The sharp black eyes were watching him narrowly, but Inspector Craddock was
far too old a hand to react to that sort of thing.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to let you guess about that,” he said pleasantly.
“The police are so secretive.”
“Not only the police. I think, Mr. Crackenthorpe, you could remember what you
were doing on that Friday if you tried. Of course you may have reasons for not
wishing to remember—”
“You won’t catch me that way, Inspector. It’s very suspicious, of course, very
suspicious, indeed, that I can’t remember—but there it is! Wait a minute now—I
went to Leeds that week—stayed at a hotel close to the Town Hall—can’t
remember its name—but you’d find it easy enough. That might have been on the
Friday.”
“We’ll check up,” said the inspector unemotionally.
He rose. “I’m sorry you couldn’t have been more cooperative, Mr.
Crackenthorpe.”
“Most unfortunate for me! There’s Cedric with a safe alibi in Ibiza, and
Harold, no doubt, checked with business appointments and public dinners every
hour—and here am I with no alibi at all. Very sad. And all so silly. I’ve
already told you I don’t murder people. And why should I murder an unknown
woman, anyway? What for? Even if the corpse is the corpse of Edmund’s widow,
why should any of us wish to do away with her? Now if she’d been married to
Harold in the war, and had suddenly reappeared—then it might have been awkward
for the respectable Harold—bigamy and all that. But Edmund! Why we’d all have
enjoyed making Father stump up a bit to give her an allowance and send the boy
to a decent school. Father would have been wild, but he couldn’t in decency
refuse to do something. Won’t you have a drink before you go, Inspector? Sure?
Too bad I haven’t been able to help you.”
III
“Sir, listen, do you know what?”
Inspector Craddock looked at his excited sergeant.
“Yes, Wetherall, what is it?”
“I’ve placed him, sir. That chap. All the time I was trying to fix it and
suddenly it came. He was mixed up in that tinned food business with Dicky
Rogers. Never got anything on him—too cagey for that. And he’s been in with
one or more of the Soho lot. Watches and that Italian sovereign business.”
Of course! Craddock realized now why Alfred’s face had seemed vaguely familiar
from the first. It had all been small-time stuff—never anything that could be
proved. Alfred had always been on the outskirts of the racket with a plausible
innocent reason for having been mixed up in it at all. But the police had been
quite sure that a small steady profit came his way.
“That throws rather a light on things,” Craddock said.
“Think he did it?”
“I shouldn’t have said he was the type to do murder. But it explains other
things—the reason why he couldn’t come up with an alibi.”
“Yes, that looked bad for him.”
“Not really,” said Craddock. “It’s quite a clever line—just to say firmly you
can’t remember. Lots of people can’t remember what they did and where they
were even a week ago. It’s especially useful if you don’t particularly want to
call attention to the way you spend your time—interesting rendezvous at lorry
pull-ups with the Dicky Rogers crowd, for instance.”
“So you think he’s all right?”
“I’m not prepared to think anyone’s all right just yet,” said Inspector
Craddock. “You’ve got to work on it, Wetherall.”
Back at his desk, Craddock sat frowning, and making little notes on the pad in
front of him.
Murderer (he wrote)… A tall dark man!!!
Victim?… Could have been Martine, Edmund
Crackenthorpe’s girlfriend or widow.
Or
Could have been Anna Stravinska. Went out of circulation at appropriate time,
right age and appearance, clothing, etc. No connections with Rutherford Hall
as far as is known. Could be Harold’s first wife! Bigamy!
" " first mistress. Blackmail!
If connection with Alfred, might be blackmail. Had knowledge that could have
sent him to gaol? If Cedric—might have had connections with him abroad— Paris?
Balearics?
Or
Victim could be Anna S. posing as Martine
or
Victim is unknown woman killed by unknown murderer!
“And most probably the latter,” said Craddock aloud.
He reflected gloomily on the situation. You couldn’t get far with a case until
you had the motive. All the motives suggested so far seemed either inadequate
or far fetched.
Now if only it had been the murder of old Mr. Crackenthorpe… Plenty of motive
there….
Something stirred in his memory….
He made further notes on his pad.
Ask Dr. Q. about Christmas illness.
Cedric—alibi.
Consult Miss M. for the latest gossip.
Sixteen
When Craddock got to 4 Madison Road he found Lucy Eyelesbarrow with Miss
Marple.
He hesitated for a moment in his plan of campaign and then decided that Lucy
Eyelesbarrow might prove a valuable ally.
After greetings, he solemnly drew out his notecase, extracting three pound
notes, added three shillings and pushed them across the table to Miss Marple.
“What’s this, Inspector?”
“Consultation fee. You’re a consultant—on murder! Pulse, temperature, local
reactions, possible deepseated cause of said murder. I’m just the poor
harassed local G.P.”
Miss Marple looked at him and twinkled. He grinned at her. Lucy Eyelesbarrow
gave a faint gasp and then laughed.
“Why, Inspector Craddock—you’re human after all.”
“Oh, well, I’m not strictly on duty this afternoon.”
“I told you we had met before,” said Miss Marple to Lucy. “Sir Henry
Clithering is his godfather—a very old friend of mine.”
“Would you like to hear, Miss Eyelesbarrow, what my godfather said about
her—the first time we met? He described her as just the finest detective God
ever made—natural genius cultivated in a suitable soil. He told me never to
despise the”—Dermot Craddock paused for a moment to seek for a synonym for
“old pussies”—“—er elderly ladies. He said they could usually tell you what
might have happened, what ought to have happened, and even what actually did
happen! And,” he said, “they can tell you why it happened. He added that this
particular—er—elderly lady—was at the top of the class.”
“Well!” said Lucy. “That seems to be a testimonial all right.”
Miss Marple was pink and confused and looked unusually dithery.
“Dear Sir Henry,” she murmured. “Always so kind. Really I’m not at all
clever—just perhaps, a slight knowledge of human nature—living, you know, in a
village—”
She added, with more composure:
“Of course, I am somewhat handicapped, by not actually being on the spot. It
is so helpful, I always feel, when people remind you of other people—because
types are alike everywhere and that is such a valuable guide.”
Lucy looked a little puzzled, but Craddock nodded comprehendingly.
“But you’ve been to tea there, haven’t you?” he said.
“Yes, indeed. Most pleasant. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see old
Mr. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Most pleasant. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see old
Mr. Crackenthorpe—but one can’t have everything.”
“Do you feel that if you saw the person who had done the murder, you’d know?”
asked Lucy.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, dear. One is always inclined to guess—and guessing
would be very wrong when it is a question of anything as serious as murder.
All one can do is to observe the people concerned—or who might have been
concerned—and see of whom they remind you.”
“Like Cedric and the bank manager?”
Miss Marple corrected her.
“The bank manager’s son, dear. Mr. Eade himself was far more like Mr. Harold—a
very conservative man—but perhaps a little too fond of money—the sort of man,
too, who could go a long way to avoid scandal.”
Craddock smiled, and said:
“And Alfred?”
“Jenkins at the garage,” Miss Marple replied promptly. “He didn’t exactly
appropriate tools?—but he used to exchange a broken or inferior jack for a
good one. And I believe he wasn’t very honest over batteries—though I don’t
understand these things very well. I know Raymond left off dealing with him
and went to the garage on the Milchester road. As for Emma,” continued Miss
Marple thoughtfully, “she reminds me very much of Geraldine Webb—always very
quiet, almost dowdy—and bullied a good deal by her elderly mother. Quite a
surprise to everybody when the mother died unexpectedly and Geraldine came
into a nice sum of money and went and had her hair cut and permed, and went
off on a cruise, and came back married to a very nice barrister. They had two
children.”
The parallel was clear enough. Lucy said, rather uneasily: “Do you think you
ought to have said what you did about Emma marrying? It seemed to upset the
brothers.”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “So like men—quite unable to see what’s going on under their
eyes. I don’t believe you noticed yourself.”
“No,” admitted Lucy. “I never thought of anything of that kind. They both
seemed to me—”
“So old?” said Miss Marple smiling a little. “But Dr. Quimper isn’t much over
forty, I should say, though he’s going grey on the temples, and it’s obvious
that he’s longing for some kind of home life; and Emma Crackenthorpe is under
forty—not too old to marry and have a family. The doctor’s wife died quite
young having a baby, so I have heard.”
“I believe she did. Emma said something about it one day.”
“He must be lonely,” said Miss Marple. “A busy hard-working doctor needs a
wife—someone sympathetic—not too young.”
“Listen, darling,” said Lucy. “Are we investigating crime, or are we match-
making?”
Miss Marple twinkled.
“I’m afraid I am rather romantic. Because I am an old maid, perhaps. You know,
dear Lucy, that, as far as I am concerned, you have fulfilled your contract.
If you really want a holiday abroad before taking up your next engagement, you
would have time still for a short trip.”
“And leave Rutherford Hall? Never! I’m the complete sleuth by now. Almost as
bad as the boys. They spend their entire time looking for clues. They looked
all through the dustbins yesterday. Most unsavoury—and they haven’t really the
faintest idea what they were looking for. If they come to you in triumph,
Inspector Craddock, bearing a torn scrap of paper with Martine—if you value
your life keep away from the Long Barn! on it, you’ll know that I’ve taken
pity on them and concealed it in the pigsty!”
“Why the pigsty, dear?” asked Miss Marple with interest. “Do they keep pigs?”
“Oh, no, not nowadays. It’s just— I go there sometimes.”
For some reason Lucy blushed. Miss Marple looked at her with increased
interest.
“Who’s at the house now?” asked Craddock.
“Cedric’s there, and Bryan’s down for the weekend. Harold and Alfred are
coming down tomorrow. They rang up this morning. I somehow got the impression
that you had been putting the cat among the pigeons, Inspector Craddock.”
Craddock smiled.
“I shook them up a little. Asked them to account for their movements on
Friday, 20th December.”
“And could they?”
“Harold could. Alfred couldn’t—or wouldn’t.”
“I think alibis must be terribly difficult,” said Lucy. “Times and places and
dates. They must be hard to check up on, too.”
“It takes time and patience—but we manage.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be
coming to Rutherford Hall presently to have a word with Cedric, but I want to
get hold of Dr. Quimper first.”
“You’ll be just about right. He has his surgery at six and he’s usually
finished about half past. I must get back and deal with dinner.”
“I’d like your opinion on one thing, Miss Eyelesbarrow. What’s the family view
about this Martine business—amongst themselves?”
Lucy replied promptly.
“They’re all furious with Emma for going to you about it—and with Dr. Quimper
who, it seemed, encouraged her to do so. Harold and Alfred think it was a try
on and not genuine. Emma isn’t sure. Cedric thinks it was phoney, too, but he
doesn’t take it as seriously as the other two. Bryan, on the other hand, seems
quite sure that it’s genuine.”
“Why, I wonder?”
“Well, Bryan’s rather like that. Just accepts things at their face value. He
thinks it was Edmund’s wife—or rather widow—and that she had suddenly to go
back to France, but that they’ll hear from her again sometime. The fact that
she hasn’t written, or anything, up to now, seems to him to be quite natural
because he never writes letters himself. Bryan’s rather sweet. Just like a dog
that wants to be taken for a walk.”
“And do you take him for a walk, dear?” asked Miss Marple. “To the pigsties,
perhaps?”
Lucy shot a keen glance at her.
“So many gentlemen in the house, coming and going,” mused Miss Marple.
When Miss Marple uttered the word “gentlemen” she always gave it its full
Victorian flavour—an echo from an era actually before her own time. You were
conscious at once of dashing full-blooded (and probably whiskered) males,
sometimes wicked, but always gallant.
“You’re such a handsome girl,” pursued Miss Marple, appraising Lucy. “I expect
they pay you a good deal of attention, don’t they?”
Lucy flushed slightly. Scrappy remembrances passed across her mind. Cedric,
leaning against the pigsty wall. Bryan sitting disconsolately on the kitchen
table. Alfred’s fingers touching hers as he helped her collect the coffee
cups.
“Gentlemen,” said Miss Marple, in the tone of one speaking of some alien and
dangerous species, “are all very much alike in some ways—even if they are
quite old.…”
“Darling,” cried Lucy. “A hundred years ago you would certainly have been
burned as a witch!”
And she told her story of old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s conditional proposal of
marriage.
“In fact,” said Lucy, “they’ve all made what you might call advances to me in
a way. Harold’s was very correct—an advantageous financial position in the
City. I don’t think it’s my attractive appearance—they must think I know
something.”
She laughed.
But Inspector Craddock did not laugh.
“Be careful,” he said. “They might murder you instead of making advances to
you.”
“I suppose it might be simpler,” Lucy agreed.
Then she gave a slight shiver.
“One forgets,” she said. “The boys have been having such fun that one almost
thought of it all as a game. But it’s not a game.”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game.”
She was silent for a moment or two before she said:
“Don’t the boys go back to school soon?”
“Yes, next week. They go tomorrow to James Stoddart-West’s home for the last
few days of the holidays.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Miss Marple gravely. “I shouldn’t like anything to
happen while they’re there.”
“You mean to old Mr. Crackenthorpe. Do you think he’s going to be murdered
next?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “He’ll be all right. I meant to the boys.”
“Well, to Alexander.”
“But surely—”
“Hunting about, you know—looking for clues. Boys love that sort of thing—but
it might be very dangerous.”
Craddock looked at her thoughtfully. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“You’re not prepared to believe, are you, Miss Marple, that it’s a case of an
unknown woman murdered by an unknown man? You tie it up definitely with
Rutherford Hall?”
“I think there’s a definite connection, yes.”
“All we know about the murderer is that he’s a tall dark man. That’s what your
friend says and all she can say. There are three tall dark men at Rutherford
Hall. On the day of the inquest, you know, I came out to see the three
brothers standing waiting on the pavement for the car to draw up. They had
their backs to me and it was astonishing how, in their heavy overcoats, they
looked all alike. Three tall dark men. And yet, actually, they’re all three
quite different types.” He sighed. “It makes it very difficult.”
“I wonder,” murmured Miss Marple. “I have been wondering—whether it might
perhaps be all much simpler than we suppose. Murders so often are quite
simple—with an obvious rather sordid motive….”
“Do you believe in the mysterious Martine, Miss Marple?”
“I’m quite ready to believe that Edmund Crackenthorpe either married, or meant
to marry, a girl called Martine. Emma Crackenthorpe showed you his letter, I
understand, and from what I’ve seen of her and from what Lucy tells me, I
should say Emma Crackenthorpe is quite incapable of making up a thing of that
kind—indeed, why should she?”
“So granted Martine,” said Craddock thoughtfully, “there is a motive of a
kind. Martine’s reappearance with a son would diminish the Crackenthorpe
inheritance—though hardly to a point, one would think, to activate murder.
They’re all very hard up—”
“Even Harold?” Lucy demanded incredulously.
“Even the prosperous-looking Harold Crackenthorpe is not the sober and
conservative financier he appears to be. He’s been plunging heavily and mixing
himself up in some rather undesirable ventures. A large sum of money, soon,
might avoid a crash.”
“But if so—” said Lucy, and stopped.
“Yes, Miss Eyelesbarrow—”
“I know, dear,” said Miss Marple. “The wrong murder, that’s what you mean.”
“Yes. Martine’s death wouldn’t do Harold—or any of the others—any good. Not
until—”
“Not until Luther Crackenthorpe died. Exactly. That occurred to me. And Mr.
Crackenthorpe, senior, I gather from his doctor, is a much better life than
any outsider would imagine.”
“He’ll last for years,” said Lucy. Then she frowned.
“Yes?” Craddock spoke encouragingly.
“He was rather ill at Christmas-time,” said Lucy. “He said the doctor made a
lot of fuss about it—‘Anyone would have thought I’d been poisoned by the fuss
he made.’ That’s what he said.”
She looked inquiringly at Craddock.
“Yes,” said Craddock. “That’s really what I want to ask Dr. Quimper about.”
“Well, I must go,” said Lucy. “Heavens, it’s late.”
Miss Marple put down her knitting and picked up The Times with a half-done
crossword puzzle.
“I wish I had a dictionary here,” she murmured. “Tontine and Tokay— I always
mix those two words up. One, I believe, is a Hungarian wine.”
“That’s Tokay,” said Lucy, looking back from the door. “But one’s a five-
letter word and one’s a seven. What’s the clue?”
“Oh, it wasn’t in the crossword,” said Miss Marple vaguely. “It was in my
head.”
Inspector Craddock looked at her very hard. Then he said goodbye and went.
Seventeen
I
Craddock had to wait a few minutes whilst Quimper finished his evening
surgery, and then the doctor came to him. He looked tired and depressed.
He offered Craddock a drink and when the latter accepted he mixed one for
himself as well.
“Poor devils,” he said as he sank down in a worn easy-chair. “So scared and so
stupid—no sense. Had a painful case this evening. Woman who ought to have come
to me a year ago. If she’d come then, she might have been operated on
successfully. Now it’s too late. Makes me mad. The truth is people are an
extraordinary mixture of heroism and cowardice. She’s suffering agony, and
borne it without a word, just because she was too scared to come and find out
that what she feared might be true. At the other end of the scale are the
people who come and waste my time because they’ve got a dangerous swelling
causing them agony on their little finger which they think may be cancer and
which turns out to be a common or garden chilblain! Well, don’t mind me. I’ve
blown off steam now. What did you want to see me about?”
“First, I’ve got you to thank, I believe, for advising Miss Crackenthorpe to
come to me with the letter that purported to be from her brother’s widow.”
“Oh, that? Anything in it? I didn’t exactly advise her to come. She wanted to.
She was worried. All the dear little brothers were trying to hold her back, of
course.”
“Why should they?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Afraid the lady might be proved genuine, I suppose.”
“Do you think the letter was genuine?”
“No idea. Never actually saw it. I should say it was someone who knew the
facts, just trying to make a touch. Hoping to work on Emma’s feelings. They
were dead wrong, there. Emma’s no fool. She wouldn’t take an unknown sister-
in-law to her bosom without asking a few practical questions first.”
He added with some curiosity:
“But why ask my views? I’ve got nothing to do with it?”
“I really came to ask you something quite different—but I don’t quite know how
to put it.”
Dr. Quimper looked interested.
“I understand that not long ago—at Christmas-time, I think it was—Mr.
Crackenthorpe had rather a bad turn of illness.”
He saw a change at once in the doctor’s face. It hardened.
“Yes.”
“I gather a gastric disturbance of some kind?”
“Yes.”
“This is difficult… Mr. Crackenthorpe was boasting of his health, saying he
intended to outlive most of his family. He referred to you—you’ll excuse me,
Doctor….”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m not sensitive as to what my patients say about me!”
“He spoke of you as an old fuss-pot.” Quimper smiled. “He said you had asked
him all sorts of questions, not only as to what he had eaten, but as to who
prepared it and served it.”
The doctor was not smiling now. His face was hard again.
“Go on.”
“He used some such phrase as—‘Talked as though he believed someone had
poisoned me.’”
There was a pause.
“Had you—any suspicion of that kind?”
Quimper did not answer at once. He got up and walked up and down. Finally, he
wheeled round on Craddock.
“What the devil do you expect me to say? Do you think a doctor can go about
flinging accusations of poisoning here and there without any real evidence?”
“I’d just like to know, off the record, if—that idea—did enter your head?”
Dr. Quimper said evasively:
“Old Crackenthorpe leads a fairly frugal life. When the family comes down,
Emma steps up the food. Result—a nasty attack of gastro-enteritis. The
symptoms were consistent with that diagnosis.”
Craddock persisted.
“I see. You were quite satisfied? You were not at all—shall we say—puzzled?”
“All right. All right. Yes, I was Yours Truly Puzzled! Does that please you?”
“It interests me,” said Craddock. “What actually did you suspect—or fear?”
“Gastric cases vary, of course, but there were certain indications that would
have been, shall we say, more consistent with arsenic poisoning than with
plain gastro-enteritis. Mind you, the two things are very much alike. Better
men than myself have failed to recognize arsenic poisoning—and have given a
certificate in all good faith.”
“And what was the result of your inquiries?”
“It seemed that what I suspected could not possibly be true. Mr. Crackenthorpe
assured me that he had similar attacks before I attended him—and from the same
cause, he said. They had always taken place when there was too much rich food
about.”
“Which was when the house was full? With the family? Or guests?”
“Yes. That seemed reasonable enough. But frankly, Craddock, I wasn’t happy. I
went so far as to write to old Dr. Morris. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I
went so far as to write to old Dr. Morris. He was my senior partner and
retired soon after I joined him. Crackenthorpe was his patient originally. I
asked about these earlier attacks that the old man had had.”
“And what response did you get?”
Quimper grinned.
“I got a flea in the ear. I was more or less told not to be a damned fool.
Well”—he shrugged his shoulders—“presumably I was a damned fool.”
“I wonder,” Craddock was thoughtful.
Then he decided to speak frankly.
“Throwing discretion aside, Doctor, there are people who stand to benefit
pretty considerably from Luther Crackenthorpe’s death.” The doctor nodded.
“He’s an old man—and a hale and hearty one. He may live to be ninety odd?”
“Easily. He spends his life taking care of himself, and his constitution is
sound.”
“And his sons—and daughter—are all getting on, and they are all feeling the
pinch?”
“You leave Emma out of it. She’s no poisoner. These attacks only happen when
the others are there—not when she and he are alone.”
“An elementary precaution—if she’s the one,” the inspector thought, but was
careful not to say aloud.
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“Surely—I’m ignorant on these matters—but supposing just as a hypothesis that
arsenic was administered—hasn’t Crackenthorpe been very lucky not to succumb?”
“Now there,” said the doctor, “you have got something odd. It is exactly that
fact that leads me to believe that I have been, as old Morris puts it, a
damned fool. You see, it’s obviously not a case of small doses of arsenic
administered regularly—which is what you might call the classic method of
arsenic poisoning. Crackenthorpe has never had any chronic gastric trouble. In
a way, that’s what makes these sudden violent attacks seem unlikely. So,
assuming they are not due to natural causes, it looks as though the poisoner
is muffing it every time—which hardly makes sense.”
“Giving an inadequate dose, you mean?”
“Yes. On the other hand, Crackenthorpe’s got a strong constitution and what
might do in another man, doesn’t do him in. There’s always personal
idiosyncrasy to be reckoned with. But you’d think that by now the
poisoner—unless he’s unusually timid—would have stepped up the dose. Why
hasn’t he?
“That is,” he added, “if there is a poisoner which there probably isn’t!
Probably all my ruddy imagination from start to finish.”
“It’s an odd problem,” the inspector agreed. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
II
“Inspector Craddock!”
The eager whisper made the inspector jump.
He had been just on the point of ringing the front doorbell. Alexander and his
friend Stoddart-West emerged cautiously from the shadows.
“We heard your car, and we wanted to get hold of you.”
“Well, let’s come inside.” Craddock’s hand went out to the door bell again,
but Alexander pulled at his coat with the eagerness of a pawing dog.
“We’ve found a clue,” he breathed.
“Yes, we’ve found a clue,” Stoddart-West echoed.
“Damn that girl,” thought Craddock unamiably.
“Splendid,” he said in a perfunctory manner. “Let’s go inside the house and
look at it.”
“No,” Alexander was insistent. “Someone’s sure to interrupt. Come to the
harness room. We’ll guide you.”
Somewhat unwillingly, Craddock allowed himself to be guided round the corner
of the house and along to the stableyard. Stoddart-West pushed open a heavy
door, stretched up, and turned on a rather feeble electric light. The harness
room, once the acme of Victorian spit and polish, was now the sad repository
of everything that no one wanted. Broken garden chairs, rusted old garden
implements, a vast decrepit mowing-machine, rusted spring mattresses,
hammocks, and disintegrated tennis nets.
“We come here a good deal,” said Alexander. “One can really be private here.”
There were certain tokens of occupancy about. The decayed mattresses had been
piled up to make a kind of divan, there was an old rusted table on which
reposed a large tin of chocolate biscuits, there was a hoard of apples, a tin
of toffees, and a jig-saw puzzle.
“It really is a clue, sir,” said Stoddart-West eagerly, his eyes gleaming
behind his spectacles. “We found it this afternoon.”
“We’ve been hunting for days. In the bushes—”
“And inside hollow trees—”
“And we went through the ash bins—”
“There were some jolly interesting things there, as a matter of fact—”
“And then we went into the boiler house—”
“Old Hillman keeps a great galvanized tub there full of waste paper—”
“For when the boiler goes out and he wants to start it again—”
“Any odd paper that’s blowing about. He picks it up and shoves it in there—”
“And that’s where we found it—”
“Found WHAT?” Craddock interrupted the duet.
“The clue. Careful, Stodders, get your gloves on.”
Importantly, Stoddart-West, in the best detective story tradition, drew on a
pair of rather dirty gloves and took from his pocket a Kodak photographic
folder. From this he extracted in his gloved fingers with the utmost care a
soiled and crumpled envelope which he handed importantly to the inspector.
Both boys held their breath in excitement.
Craddock took it with due solemnity. He liked the boys and he was ready to
enter into the spirit of the thing.
The letter had been through the post, there was no enclosure inside, it was
just a torn envelope—addressed to Mrs. Martine Crackenthorpe, 126 Elvers
Crescent, N.10.
“You see?” said Alexander breathlessly. “It shows she was here— Uncle Edmund’s
French wife, I mean—the one there’s all the fuss about. She must have actually
been here and dropped out somewhere. So it looks, doesn’t it—”
Stoddart-West broke in:
“It looks as though she was the one who got murdered— I mean, don’t you think,
sir, that it simply must have been her in the sarcophagus?”
They waited anxiously.
Craddock played up.
“Possible, very possible,” he said.
“This is important, isn’t it?”
“You’ll test it for fingerprints, won’t you, sir?”
“Of course,” said Craddock.
Stoddart-West gave a deep sigh.
“Smashing luck for us, wasn’t it?” he said. “On our last day, too.”
“Last day?”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “I’m going to Stodders’ place tomorrow for the last few
days of the holidays. Stodders’ people have got a smashing house— Queen Anne,
isn’t it?”
“William and Mary,” said Stoddart-West.
“I thought your mother said—”
“Mum’s French. She doesn’t really know about English architecture.”
“But your father said it was built—”
Craddock was examining the envelope.
Clever of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. How had she managed to fake the post mark? He
peered closely, but the light was too feeble. Great fun for the boys, of
course, but rather awkward for him. Lucy, drat her, hadn’t considered that
angle. If this were genuine, it would enforce a course of action. There….
Beside him a learned architectural argument was being hotly pursued. He was
deaf to it.
“Come on, boys,” he said, “we’ll go into the house. You’ve been very helpful.”
Eighteen
I
Craddock was escorted by the boys through the back door into the house. This
was, it seemed, their common mode of entrance. The kitchen was bright and
cheerful. Lucy, in a large white apron, was rolling out pastry. Leaning
against the dresser, watching her with a kind of dog-like attention, was Bryan
Eastley. With one hand he tugged at his large fair moustache.
“Hallo, Dad,” said Alexander kindly. “You out here again?”
“I like it out here,” said Bryan, and added: “Miss Eyelesbarrow doesn’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Lucy. “Good evening, Inspector Craddock.”
“Coming to detect in the kitchen?” asked Bryan with interest.
“Not exactly. Mr. Cedric Crackenthorpe is still here, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, Cedric’s here. Do you want him?”
“I’d like a word with him—yes, please.”
“I’ll go and see if he’s in,” said Bryan. “He may have gone round to the
local.”
He unpropped himself from the dresser.
“Thank you so much,” said Lucy to him. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“Thank you so much,” said Lucy to him. “My hands are all over flour or I’d
go.”
“What are you making?” asked Stoddart-West anxiously.
“Peach flan.”
“Good-oh,” said Stoddart-West.
“Is it nearly suppertime?” asked Alexander.
“No.”
“Gosh! I’m terribly hungry.”
“There’s the end of the ginger cake in the larder.”
The boys made a concerted rush and collided in the door.
“They’re just like locusts,” said Lucy.
“My congratulations to you,” said Craddock.
“What on—exactly?”
“Your ingenuity—over this!”
“Over what!”
Craddock indicated the folder containing the letter.
“Very nicely done,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“This, my dear girl—this.” He half-drew it out.
She stared at him uncomprehendingly.
Craddock felt suddenly dizzy.
“Didn’t you fake this clue—and put it in the boiler room, for the boys to
find? Quick—tell me.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” said Lucy. “Do you
mean that—?”
Craddock slipped the folder quickly back in his pocket as Bryan returned.
“Cedric’s in the library,” he said. “Go on in.”
He resumed his place on the dresser. Inspector Craddock went to the library.
II
Cedric Crackenthorpe seemed delighted to see the inspector.
“Doing a spot more sleuthing down here?” he asked. “Got any further?”
“I think I can say we are a little further on, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“Found out who the corpse was?”
“We’ve not got a definite identification, but we have a fairly shrewd idea.”
“Good for you.”
“Arising out of our latest information, we want to get a few statements. I’m
starting with you, Mr. Crackenthorpe, as you’re on the spot.”
“I shan’t be much longer. I’m going back to Ibiza in a day or two.”
“Then I seem to be just in time.”
“Go ahead.”
“I should like a detailed account, please, of exactly where you were and what
you were doing on Friday, 20th December.”
Cedric shot a quick glance at him. Then he leaned back, yawned, assumed an air
of great nonchalance, and appeared to be lost in the effort of remembrance.
“Well, as I’ve already told you, I was in Ibiza. Trouble is, one day there is
so like another. Painting in the morning, siesta from three p.m. to five.
Perhaps a spot of sketching if the light’s suitable. Then an apéritif,
sometimes with the mayor, sometimes with the doctor, at the café in the
Piazza. After that some kind of a scratch meal. Most of the evening in
Scotty’s Bar with some of my lower-class friends. Will that do you?”
“I’d rather have the truth, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
Cedric sat up.
“That’s a most offensive remark, Inspector.”
“Do you think so? You told me, Mr. Crackenthorpe, that you left Ibiza on 21st
December and arrived in England that same day?”
“So I did. Em! Hi, Em?”
Emma Crackenthorpe came through the adjoining door from the small morning
room. She looked inquiringly from Cedric to the inspector.
“Look here, Em. I arrived here for Christmas on the Saturday before, didn’t I?
Came straight from the airport?”
“Yes,” said Emma wonderingly. “You got here about lunchtime.”
“There you are,” said Cedric to the inspector.
“You must think us very foolish, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Craddock pleasantly.
“We can check on these things, you know. I think, if you’ll show me your
passport—”
He paused expectantly.
“Can’t find the damned thing,” said Cedric. “Was looking for it this morning.
Wanted to send it to Cook’s.”
“I think you could find it, Mr. Crackenthorpe. But it’s not really necessary.
The records show that you actually entered this country on the evening of 19th
December. Perhaps you will now account to me for your movements between that
time until lunchtime on 21st December when you arrived here.”
Cedric looked very cross indeed.
“That’s the hell of life nowadays,” he said angrily. “All this red tape and
form-filling. That’s what comes of a bureaucratic state. Can’t go where you
like and do as you please anymore! Somebody’s always asking questions. What’s
all this fuss about the 20th, anyway? What’s special about the 20th?”
“It happens to be the day we believe the murder was committed. You can refuse
to answer, of course, but—”
“Who says I refuse to answer? Give a chap time. And you were vague enough
about the date of the murder at the inquest. What’s turned up new since then?”
Craddock did not reply.
Cedric said, with a sidelong glance at Emma:
“Shall we go into the other room?”
Emma said quickly: “I’ll leave you.” At the door, she paused and turned.
“This is serious, you know, Cedric. If the 20th was the day of murder, then
you must tell Inspector Craddock exactly what you were doing.”
She went through into the next room and closed the door behind her.
“Good old Em,” said Cedric. “Well, here goes. Yes, I left Ibiza on the 19th
all right. Planned to break the journey in Paris, and spend a couple of days
routing up some old friends on the Left Bank. But, as a matter of fact, there
was a very attractive woman on the plane… Quite a dish. To put it plainly, she
and I got off together. She was on her way to the States, had to spend a
couple of nights in London to see about some business or other. We got to
London on the 19th. We stayed at the Kingsway Palace in case your spies
haven’t found that out yet! Called myself John Brown—never does to use your
own name on these occasions.”
“And on the 20th?”
Cedric made a grimace.
“Morning pretty well occupied by a terrific hangover.”
“And the afternoon. From three o’clock onwards?”
“Let me see. Well, I mooned about, as you might say. Went into the National
Galley—that’s respectable enough. Saw a film. Rowenna of the Range. I’ve
always had a passion for Westerns. This was a corker… Then a drink or two in
the bar and a bit of a sleep in my room, and out about ten o’clock with the
girl-friend and a round of various hot spots—can’t even remember most of their
names— Jumping Frog was one, I think. She knew ’em all. Got pretty well
plastered and to tell the truth, don’t remember much more till I woke up the
next morning—with an even worse hangover. Girlfriend hopped off to catch her
plane and I poured cold water over my head, got a chemist to give me a devils’
brew, and then started off for this place, pretending I’d just arrived at
Heathrow. No need to upset Emma, I thought. You know what women are—always
hurt if you don’t come straight home. I had to borrow money from her to pay
the taxi. I was completely cleaned out. No use asking the old man. He’d never
cough up. Mean old brute. Well, Inspector, satisfied?”
“Can any of this be substantiated, Mr. Crackenthorpe? Say between 3 p.m. and 7
p.m.”
“Most unlikely, I should think,” said Cedric cheerfully. “National Gallery
where the attendants look at you with lack-lustre eyes and a crowded picture
show. No, not likely.”
Emma reentered. She held a small engagement book in her hand.
“You want to know what everyone was doing on 20th December, is that right,
Inspector Craddock?”
“Well—er—yes, Miss Crackenthorpe.”
“I have just been looking in my engagement book. On the 20th I went into
Brackhampton to attend a meeting of the Church Restoration Fund. That finished
about a quarter to one and I lunched with Lady Adington and Miss Bartlett who
were also on the committee, at the Cadena Café. After lunch I did some
shopping, stores for Christmas, and also Christmas presents. I went to
Greenford’s and Lyall and Swift’s, Boots’, and probably several other shops. I
had tea about a quarter to five in the Shamrock Tea Rooms and then went to the
station to meet Bryan who was coming by train. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I got home about six o’clock
and found my father in a very bad temper. I had left lunch ready for him, but
Mrs. Hart who was to come in in the afternoon and give him his tea had not
arrived. He was so angry that he had shut himself in his room and would not
let me in or speak to me. He does not like my going out in the afternoon, but
I make a point of doing so now and then.”
“You’re probably wise. Thank you, Miss Crackenthorpe.”
He could hardly tell her that as she was a woman, height five foot seven, her
movements that afternoon were of no great importance. Instead he said:
“Your other two brothers came down later, I understand?”
“Alfred came down late on Saturday evening. He tells me he tried to ring me on
the telephone that afternoon I was out—but my father, if he is upset, will
never answer the telephone. My brother Harold did not come down until
Christmas Eve.”
“Thank you, Miss Crackenthorpe.”
“I suppose I mustn’t ask”—she hesitated—“what has come up new that prompts
these inquiries?”
Craddock took the folder from his pocket. Using the tips of his fingers, he
extracted the envelope.
“Don’t touch it, please, but do you recognize this?”
“But…” Emma stared at him, bewildered. “That’s my handwriting. That’s the
letter I wrote to Martine.”
“I thought it might be.”
“But how did you get it? Did she—? Have you found her?”
“It would seem possible that we have—found her. This empty envelope was found
here.”
“In the house?”
“In the grounds.”
“Then—she did come here! She… You mean—it was Martine there—in the
sarcophagus?”
“It would seem very likely, Miss Crackenthorpe,” said Craddock gently.
It seemed even more likely when he got back to town. A message was awaiting
him from Armand Dessin.
“One of the girl-friends has had a postcard from Anna Stravinska.
Apparently the cruise story was true! She has reached Jamaica and is having,
in your phrase, a wonderful time!”
Craddock crumpled up the message and threw it into the wastepaper basket.
III
“I must say,” said Alexander, sitting up in bed, thoughtfully consuming a
chocolate bar, “that this has been the most smashing day ever. Actually
finding a real clue!”
His voice was awed.
“In fact the whole holidays have been smashing,” he added happily. “I don’t
suppose such a thing will ever happen again.”
“I hope it won’t happen again to me,” said Lucy who was on her knees packing
Alexander’s clothes into a suitcase. “Do you want all this space fiction with
you?”
“Not those two top ones. I’ve read them. The football and my football boots,
and the gum-boots can go separately.”
“What difficult things you boys do travel with.”
“It won’t matter. They’re sending the Rolls for us. They’ve got a smashing
Rolls. They’ve got one of the new Mercedes- Benzes too.”
“They must be rich.”
“Rolling! Jolly nice, too. All the same, I rather wish we weren’t leaving
here. Another body might turn up.”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“Well, it often does in books. I mean somebody who’s seen something or heard
something gets done in, too. It might be you,” he added, unrolling a second
chocolate bar.
“Thank you!”
“I don’t want it to be you,” Alexander assured her. “I like you very much and
so does Stodders. We think you’re out of this world as a cook. Absolutely
lovely grub. You’re very sensible, too.”
This last was clearly an expression of high approval. Lucy took it as such,
and said: “Thank you. But I don’t intend to get killed just to please you.”
“Well, you’d better be careful, then,” Alexander told her.
He paused to consume more nourishment and then said in a slightly offhand
voice:
“If Dad turns up from time to time, you’ll look after him, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” said Lucy, a little surprised.
“The trouble with Dad is,” Alexander informed her, “that London life doesn’t
suit him. He gets in, you know, with quite the wrong type of women.” He shook
his head in a worried manner.
“I’m very fond of him,” he added; “but he needs someone to look after him. He
drifts about and gets in with the wrong people. It’s a great pity Mum died
when she did. Bryan needs a proper home life.”
He looked solemnly at Lucy and reached out for another chocolate bar.
“Not a fourth one, Alexander,” Lucy pleaded. “You’ll be sick.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I ate six running once and I wasn’t. I’m not the
bilious type.” He paused and then said:
“Bryan likes you, you know.”
“That’s very nice of him.”
“He’s a bit of an ass in some ways,” said Bryan’s son; “but he was a jolly
good fighter pilot. He’s awfully brave. And he’s awfully good-natured.”
He paused. Then, averting his eyes to the ceiling, he said rather self-
consciously:
“I think, really, you know, it would be a good thing if he married again…
Somebody decent… I shouldn’t, myself, mind at all having a stepmother…not, I
mean, if she was a decent sort….”
With a sense of shock Lucy realized that there was a definite point in
Alexander’s conversation.
“All this stepmother bosh,” went on Alexander, still addressing the ceiling,
“is really quite out of date. Lots of chaps Stodders and I know have
stepmothers—divorce and all that—and they get on quite well together. Depends
on the stepmother, of course. And of course, it does make a bit of confusion
taking you out and on Sports Day, and all that. I mean if there are two sets
of parents. Though again it helps if you want to cash in!” He paused,
confronted with the problems of modern life. “It’s nicest to have your own
home and your own parents—but if your mother’s dead—well, you see what I mean?
If she’s a decent sort,” said Alexander for the third time.
Lucy felt touched.
“I think you’re very sensible, Alexander,” she said. “We must try and find a
nice wife for your father.”
“Yes,” said Alexander noncommittally.
He added in an offhand manner:
“I thought I’d just mention it. Bryan likes you very much. He told me so….”
“Really,” thought Lucy to herself. “There’s too much match-making round here.
First Miss Marple and now Alexander!”
For some reason or other, pigsties came into her mind.
She stood up.
“Good night, Alexander. There will be only your washing things and pyjamas to
put in in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night,” said Alexander. He slid down in bed, laid his head on the
pillow, closed his eyes, giving a perfect picture of a sleeping angel; and was
immediately asleep.
Nineteen
I
“Not what you’d call conclusive,” said Sergeant Wetherall with his usual
gloom.
Craddock was reading through the report on Harold Crackenthorpe’s alibi for
20th December.
He had been noticed at Sotheby’s about three-thirty, but was thought to have
left shortly after that. His photograph had not been recognized at Russell’s
tea shop, but as they did a busy trade there at teatime, and he was not an
habitué, that was hardly surprising. His manservant confirmed that he had
returned to Cardigan Gardens to dress for his dinner-party at a quarter to
seven—rather late, since the dinner was at seven-thirty, and Mr. Crackenthorpe
had been somewhat irritable in consequence. Did not remember hearing him come
in that evening, but, as it was some time ago, could not remember accurately
and, in any case, he frequently did not hear Mr. Crackenthorpe come in. He and
his wife liked to retire early whenever they could. The garage in the mews
where Harold kept his car was a private lockup that he rented and there was no
one to notice who came and went or any reason to remember one evening in
particular.
“All negative,” said Craddock, with a sigh.
“He was at the Caterers’ Dinner all right, but left rather early before the
end of the speeches.”
“What about the railway stations?”
But there was nothing there, either at Brackhampton or at Paddington. It was
nearly four weeks ago, and it was highly unlikely that anything would have
been remembered.
Craddock sighed, and stretched out his hand for the data on Cedric. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Craddock sighed, and stretched out his hand for the data on Cedric. That again
was negative, though a taxi-driver had made a doubtful recognition of having
taken a fare to Paddington that day some time in the afternoon “what looked
something like that bloke. Dirty trousers and a shock of hair. Cussed and
swore a bit because fares had gone up since he was last in England.” He
identified the day because a horse called Crawler had won the two-thirty and
he’d had a tidy bit on. Just after dropping the gent, he’d heard it on the
radio in his cab and had gone home forthwith to celebrate.
“Thank God for racing!” said Craddock, and put the report aside.
“And here’s Alfred,” said Sergeant Wetherall.
Some nuance in his voice made Craddock look up sharply. Wetherall had the
pleased appearance of a man who has kept a titbit until the end.
In the main the check was unsatisfactory. Alfred lived alone in his flat and
came and went at unspecified times. His neighbours were not the inquisitive
kind and were in any case office workers who were out all day. But towards the
end of the report, Wetherall’s large finger indicated the final paragraph.
Sergeant Leakie, assigned to a case of thefts from lorries, had been at the
Load of Bricks, a lorry pull-up on the Waddington- Brackhampton Road, keeping
certain lorry drivers under observation. He had noticed at an adjoining table,
Chick Evans, one of the Dicky Rogers mob. With him had been Alfred
Crackenthorpe whom he knew by sight, having seen him give evidence in the
Dicky Rogers case. He’d wondered what they were cooking up together. Time,
9:30 p.m., Friday, 20th December. Alfred Crackenthorpe had boarded a bus a few
minutes later, going in the direction of Brackhampton. William Baker, ticket
collector at Brackhampton station, had clipped ticket of gentleman whom he
recognized by sight as one of Miss Crackenthorpe’s brothers, just before
departure of eleven-fifty-five train for Paddington. Remembers day as there
had been story of some batty old lady who swore she had seen somebody murdered
in a train that afternoon.
“Alfred?” said Craddock as he laid the report down. “Alfred? I wonder.”
“Puts him right on the spot, there,” Wetherall pointed out.
Craddock nodded. Yes, Alfred could have travelled down by the 4:33 to
Brackhampton committing murder on the way. Then he could have gone out by bus
to the Load of Bricks. He could have left there at nine-thirty and would have
had plenty of time to go to Rutherford Hall, move the body from the embankment
to the sarcophagus, and get into Brackhampton in time to catch the 11:55 back
to London. One of the Dicky Rogers gang might even have helped move the body,
though Craddock doubted this. An unpleasant lot, but not killers.
“Alfred?” he repeated speculatively.
II
At Rutherford Hall there had been a gathering of the Crackenthorpe family.
Harold and Alfred had come down from London and very soon voices were raised
and tempers were running high.
On her own initiative, Lucy mixed cocktails in a jug with ice and then took
them towards the library. The voices sounded clearly in the hall, and
indicated that a good deal of acrimony was being directed towards Emma.
“Entirely your fault, Emma,” Harold’s bass voice rang out angrily. “How you
could be so shortsighted and foolish beats me. If you hadn’t taken that letter
to Scotland Yard—and started all this—”
Alfred’s high-pitched voice said: “You must have been out of your senses!”
“Now don’t bully her,” said Cedric. “What’s done is done. Much more fishy if
they’d identified the woman as the missing Martine and we’d all kept mum about
having heard from her.”
“It’s all very well for you, Cedric,” said Harold angrily. “You were out of
the country on the 20th which seems to be the day they are inquiring about.
But it’s very embarrassing for Alfred and myself. Fortunately, I can remember
where I was that afternoon and what I was doing.”
“I bet you can,” said Alfred. “If you’d arranged a murder, Harold, you’d
arrange your alibi very carefully, I’m sure.”
“I gather you are not so fortunate,” said Harold coldly.
“That depends,” said Alfred. “Anything’s better than presenting a cast-iron
alibi to the police if it isn’t really cast-iron. They’re so clever at
breaking these things down.”
“If you are insinuating that I killed the woman—”
“Oh, do stop, all of you,” cried Emma. “Of course none of you killed the
woman.”
“And just for your information, I wasn’t out of England on the 20th,” said
Cedric. “And the police are wise to it! So we’re all under suspicion.”
“If it hadn’t been for Emma—”
“Oh, don’t begin again, Harold,” cried Emma.
Dr. Quimper came out of the study where he had been closeted with old Mr.
Crackenthorpe. His eye fell on the jug in Lucy’s hand.
“What’s this? A celebration?”
“More in the nature of oil on troubled waters. They’re at it hammer and tongs
in there.”
“Recriminations?”
“Mostly abusing Emma.”
Dr. Quimper’s eyebrows rose.
“Indeed?” He took the jug from Lucy’s hand, opened the library door and went
in.
“Good evening.”
“Ah, Dr. Quimper, I should like a word with you.” It was Harold’s voice,
raised and irritable. “I should like to know what you meant by interfering in
a private and family matter, and telling my sister to go to Scotland Yard
about it.”
Dr. Quimper said calmly:
“Miss Crackenthorpe asked my advice. I gave it to her. In my opinion she did
perfectly right.”
“You dare to say—”
“Girl!”
It was old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s familiar salutation. He was peering out of the
study door just behind Lucy.
Lucy turned rather reluctantly.
“Yes, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”
“What are you giving us for dinner tonight? I want curry. You make a very good
curry. It’s ages since we’ve had curry.”
“The boys don’t care much for curry, you see.”
“The boys—the boys. What do the boys matter? I’m the one who matters. And,
anyway, the boys have gone—good riddance. I want a nice hot curry, do you
hear?”
“All right, Mr. Crackenthorpe, you shall have it.”
“That’s right. You’re a good girl, Lucy. You look after me and I’ll look after
you.”
Lucy went back to the kitchen. Abandoning the fricassée of chicken which she
had planned, she began to assemble the preparations for curry. The front door
banged and from the window she saw Dr. Quimper stride angrily from the house
to his car and drive away.
Lucy sighed. She missed the boys. And in a way she missed Bryan, too.
Oh, well. She sat down and began to peel mushrooms.
At any rate she’d give the family a rattling good dinner.
Feed the brutes!
III
It was 3 a.m. when Dr. Quimper drove his car into the garage, closed the doors
and came in pulling the front door behind him rather wearily. Well, Mrs. Josh
Simpkins had a fine healthy pair of twins to add to her present family of
eight. Mr. Simpkins had expressed no elation over the arrival. “Twins,” he had
said gloomily. “What’s the good of they? Quads now, they’re good for
something. All sorts of things you get sent, and the Press comes round and
there’s pictures in the paper, and they do say as Her Majesty sends you a
telegram. But what’s twins except two mouths to feed instead of one? Never
been twins in our family, nor in the missus’s either. Don’t seem fair,
somehow.”
Dr. Quimper walked upstairs to his bedroom and started throwing off his
clothes. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes past three. It had proved an
unexpectedly tricky business bringing those twins into the world, but all had
gone well. He yawned. He was tired—very tired. He looked appreciatively at his
bed.
Then the telephone rang.
Dr. Quimper swore, and picked up the receiver.
“Dr. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Dr. Quimper swore, and picked up the receiver.
“Dr. Quimper?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Lucy Eyelesbarrow from Rutherford Hall. I think you’d better come
over. Everybody seems to have taken ill.”
“Taken ill? How? What symptoms?”
Lucy detailed them.
“I’ll be over straight away. In the meantime…” He gave her short sharp
instructions.
Then he quickly resumed his clothes, flung a few extra things into his
emergency bag, and hurried down to his car.
IV
It was some three hours later when the doctor and Lucy, both of them somewhat
exhausted, sat down by the kitchen table to drink large cups of black coffee.
“Ha,” Dr. Quimper drained his cup, set it down with a clatter on the saucer.
“I needed that. Now, Miss Eyelesbarrow, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
Lucy looked at him. The lines of fatigue showed clearly on his face making him
look older than his forty-four years, the dark hair on his temples was flecked
with grey, and there were lines under his eyes.
“As far as I can judge,” said the doctor, “they’ll be all right now. But how
come? That’s what I want to know. Who cooked the dinner?”
“I did,” said Lucy.
“And what was it? In detail.”
“Mushroom soup. Curried chicken and rice. Syllabubs. A savoury of chicken
livers and bacon.”
“Canapés Diane,” said Dr. Quimper unexpectedly.
Lucy smiled faintly.
“Yes, Canapés Diane.”
“All right—let’s go through it. Mushroom soup—out of a tin, I suppose?”
“Certainly not. I made it.”
“You made it. Out of what?”
“Half a pound of mushrooms, chicken stock, milk, a roux of butter and flour,
and lemon juice.”
“Ah. And one’s supposed to say ‘It must have been the mushrooms.’”
“It wasn’t the mushrooms. I had some of the soup myself and I’m quite all
right.”
“Yes, you’re quite all right. I hadn’t forgotten that.”
Lucy flushed.
“If you mean—”
“I don’t mean. You’re a highly intelligent girl. You’d be groaning upstairs,
too, if I’d meant what you thought I meant. Anyway, I know all about you. I’ve
taken the trouble to find out.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
Dr. Quimper’s lips were set in a grim line.
“Because I’m making it my business to find out about the people who come here
and settle themselves in. You’re a bona fide young woman who does this
particular job for a livelihood and you seem never to have had any contact
with the Crackenthorpe family previous to coming here. So you’re not a girl-
friend of either Cedric, Harold or Alfred—helping them to do a bit of dirty
work.”
“Do you really think—?”
“I think quite a lot of things,” said Quimper. “But I have to be careful.
That’s the worst of being a doctor. Now let’s get on. Curried chicken. Did you
have some of that?”
“No. When you’ve cooked a curry, you’ve dined off the smell, I find. I tasted
it, of course. I had soup and some syllabub.”
“How did you serve the syllabub?”
“In individual glasses.”
“Now, then, how much of all this is cleared up?”
“If you mean washing up, everything was washed up and put away.”
Dr. Quimper groaned.
“There’s such a thing as being overzealous,” he said.
“Yes, I can see that, as things have turned out, but there it is, I’m afraid.”
“What do you have still?”
“There’s some of the curry left—in a bowl in the larder. I was planning to use
it as a basis for mulligatawny soup this evening. There’s some mushroom soup
left, too. No syllabub and none of the savoury.”
“I’ll take the curry and the soup. What about chutney? Did they have chutney
with it?”
“Yes. In one of those stone jars.”
“I’ll have some of that, too.”
He rose. “I’ll go up and have a look at them again. After that, can you hold
the fort until morning? Keep an eye on them all? I can have a nurse round,
with full instructions, by eight o’clock.”
“I wish you’d tell me straight out. Do you think it’s food
poisoning—or—or—well, poisoning.”
“I’ve told you already. Doctors can’t think—they have to be sure. If there’s a
positive result from these food specimens I can go ahead. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise?” Lucy repeated.
Dr. Quimper laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Look after two people in particular,” he said. “Look after Emma. I’m not
going to have anything happen to Emma….”
There was emotion in his voice that could not be disguised. “She’s not even
begun to live yet,” he said. “And you know, people like Emma Crackenthorpe are
the salt of the earth… Emma—well, Emma means a lot to me. I’ve never told her
so, but I shall. Look after Emma.”
“You bet I will,” said Lucy.
“And look after the old man. I can’t say that he’s ever been my favourite
patient, but he is my patient, and I’m damned if I’m going to let him be
hustled out of the world because one or other of his unpleasant sons—or all
three of them, maybe—want him out of the way so that they can handle his
money.”
He threw her a sudden quizzical glance.
“There,” he said. “I’ve opened my mouth too wide. But keep your eyes skinned,
there’s a good girl, and incidentally keep your mouth shut.”
V
Inspector Bacon was looking upset.
“Arsenic?” he said. “Arsenic?”
“Yes. It was in the curry. Here’s the rest of the curry—for your fellow to
have a go at. I’ve only done a very rough test on a little of it, but the
result was quite definite.”
“So there’s a poisoner at work?”
“It would seem so,” said Dr. Quimper dryly.
“And they’re all affected, you say—except that Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Except Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Looks a bit fishy for her….”
“What motive could she possibly have?”
“Might be barmy,” suggested Bacon. “Seem all right, they do, sometimes, and
yet all the time they’re right off their rocker, so to speak.”
“Miss Eyelesbarrow isn’t off her rocker. Speaking as a medical man, Miss
Eyelesbarrow is as sane as you or I are. If Miss Eyelesbarrow is feeding the
family arsenic in their curry, she’s doing it for a reason. Moreover, being a
highly intelligent young woman, she’d be careful not to be the only one
unaffected. What she’d do, what any intelligent poisoner would do, would be to
eat a very little of the poisoned curry, and then exaggerate the symptoms.”
“And then you wouldn’t be able to tell?”
“That she’d had less than the others? Probably not. People don’t all react
alike to poisons anyway—the same amount will upset some people more than
others. Of course,” added Dr. Quimper cheerfully, “once the patient’s dead,
you can estimate fairly closely how much was taken.”
“Then it might be…” Inspector Bacon paused to consolidate his idea. “It might
be that there’s one of the family now who’s making more fuss than he
need—someone who you might say is mucking in with the rest so as to avoid
causing suspicion? How’s that?”
“The idea has already occurred to me. That’s why I’m reporting to you. It’s in
your hands now. I’ve got a nurse on the job that I can trust, but she can’t be
everywhere at once. In my opinion, nobody’s had enough to cause death.”
“Made a mistake, the poisoner did?”
“No. It seems to me more likely that the idea was to put enough in the curry
to cause signs of food poisoning—for which probably the mushrooms would be
blamed. People are always obsessed with the idea of mushroom poisoning. Then
one person would probably take a turn for the worse and die.”
“Because he’d been given a second dose?”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s why I’m reporting to you at once, and why I’ve put a special nurse on
the job.”
“She knows about the arsenic?”
“Of course. She knows and so does Miss Eyelesbarrow. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
She knows and so does Miss Eyelesbarrow. You know your own job
best, of course, but if I were you, I’d get out there and make it quite clear
to them all that they’re suffering from arsenic poisoning. That will probably
put the fear of the Lord into our murderer and he won’t dare to carry out his
plan. He’s probably been banking on the food-poisoning theory.”
The telephone rang on the inspector’s desk. He picked it up and said:
“OK. Put her through.” He said to Quimper, “It’s your nurse on the phone. Yes,
hallo—speaking… What’s that? Serious relapse… Yes… Dr. Quimper’s with me now…
If you’d like a word with him….”
He handed the receiver to the doctor.
“Quimper speaking… I see… Yes… Quite right… Yes, carry on with that. We’ll be
along.”
He put the receiver down and turned to Bacon.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Alfred,” said Dr. Quimper. “And he’s dead.”
Twenty
I
Over the telephone, Craddock’s voice came in sharp disbelief.
“Alfred?” he said. “Alfred?”
Inspector Bacon, shifting the telephone receiver a little, said: “You didn’t
expect that?”
“No, indeed. As a matter of fact, I’d just got him taped for the murderer!”
“I heard about him being spotted by the ticket collector. Looked bad for him
all right. Yes, looked as though we’d got our man.”
“Well,” said Craddock flatly, “we were wrong.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Craddock asked:
“There was a nurse in charge. How did she come to slip up?”
“Can’t blame her. Miss Eyelesbarrow was all in and went to get a bit of sleep.
The nurse had five patients on her hands, the old man, Emma, Cedric, Harold
and Alfred. She couldn’t be everywhere at once. It seems old Mr. Crackenthorpe
started creating in a big way. Said he was dying. She went in, got him soothed
down, came back again and took Alfred in some tea with glucose. He drank it
and that was that.”
“Arsenic again?”
“Seems so. Of course it could have been a relapse, but Quimper doesn’t think
so and Johnstone agrees.”
“I suppose,” said Craddock, doubtfully, “that Alfred was meant to be the
victim?”
Bacon sounded interested. “You mean that whereas Alfred’s death wouldn’t do
anyone a penn’orth of good, the old man’s death would benefit the lot of them?
I suppose it might have been a mistake—somebody might have thought the tea was
intended for the old man.”
“Are they sure that that’s the way the stuff was administered?”
“No, of course they aren’t sure. The nurse, like a good nurse, washed up the
whole contraption. Cups, spoons, teapot—everything. But it seems the only
feasible method.”
“Meaning,” said Craddock thoughtfully, “that one of the patients wasn’t as ill
as the others? Saw his chance and doped the cup?”
“Well, there won’t be anymore funny business,” said Inspector Bacon grimly.
“We’ve got two nurses on the job now, to say nothing of Miss Eyelesbarrow, and
I’ve got a couple of men there too. You coming down?”
“As fast as I can make it!”
II
Lucy Eyelesbarrow came across the hall to meet Inspector Craddock. She looked
pale and drawn.
“You’ve been having a bad time of it,” said Craddock.
“It’s been like one long ghastly nightmare,” said Lucy. “I really thought last
night that they were all dying.”
“About this curry—”
“It was the curry?”
“Yes, very nicely laced with arsenic—quite the Borgia touch.”
“If that’s true,” said Lucy. “It must—it’s got to be—one of the family.”
“No other possibility?”
“No, you see I only started making that damned curry quite late—after six
o’clock—because Mr. Crackenthorpe specially asked for curry. And I had to open
a new tin of curry powder—so that couldn’t have been tampered with. I suppose
curry would disguise the taste?”
“Arsenic hasn’t any taste,” said Craddock absently. “Now, opportunity. Which
of them had the chance to tamper with the curry while it was cooking?”
Lucy considered.
“Actually,” she said, “anyone could have sneaked into the kitchen whilst I was
laying the table in the dining room.”
“I see. Now, who was here in the house? Old Mr. Crackenthorpe, Emma, Cedric—”
“Harold and Alfred. They’d come down from London in the afternoon. Oh, and
Bryan—Bryan Eastley. But he left just before dinner. He had to meet a man in
Brackhampton.”
Craddock said thoughtfully, “It ties up with the old man’s illness at
Christmas. Quimper suspected that that was arsenic. Did they all seem equally
ill last night?”
Lucy considered. “I think old Mr. Crackenthorpe seemed the worst. Dr. Quimper
had to work like a maniac on him. He’s a jolly good doctor, I will say. Cedric
made by far the most fuss. Of course, strong healthy people always do.”
“What about Emma?”
“She has been pretty bad.”
“Why Alfred, I wonder?” said Craddock.
“I know,” said Lucy. “I suppose it was meant to be Alfred?”
“Funny— I asked that too!”
“It seems, somehow, so pointless.”
“If I could only get at the motive for all this business,” said Craddock. “It
doesn’t seem to tie up. The strangled woman in the sarcophagus was Edmund
Crackenthorpe’s widow, Martine. Let’s assume that. It’s pretty well proved by
now. There must be a connection between that and the deliberate poisoning of
Alfred. It’s all here, in the family somewhere. Even saying one of them’s mad
doesn’t help.”
“Not really,” Lucy agreed.
“Well, look after yourself,” said Craddock warningly. “There’s a poisoner in
this house, remember, and one of your patients upstairs probably isn’t as ill
as he pretends to be.”
Lucy went upstairs again slowly after Craddock’s departure. An imperious
voice, somewhat weakened by illness, called to her as she passed old Mr.
Crackenthorpe’s room.
“Girl—girl—is that you? Come here.”
Lucy entered the room. Mr. Crackenthorpe was lying in bed well propped up with
pillows. For a sick man he was looking Lucy thought, remarkably cheerful.
“The house is full of damned hospital nurses,” complained Mr. Crackenthorpe.
“Rustling about, making themselves important, taking my temperature, not
giving me what I want to eat—a pretty penny all that must be costing. Tell
Emma to send ’em away. You could look after me quite well.”
“Everybody’s been taken ill, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Lucy. “I can’t look
after everybody, you know.”
“Mushrooms,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Damned dangerous things, mushrooms. It
was that soup we had last night. You made it,” he added accusingly.
“The mushrooms were quite all right, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“I’m not blaming you, girl, I’m not blaming you. It’s happened before. One
blasted fungus slips in and does it. Nobody can tell. I know you’re a good
girl. You wouldn’t do it on purpose. How’s Emma?”
“Feeling rather better this afternoon.”
“Ah, and Harold?”
“He’s better too.”
“What’s this about Alfred having kicked the bucket?”
“Nobody’s supposed to have told you that, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe laughed, a high, whinnying laugh of intense amusement. “I
hear things,” he said. “Can’t keep things from the old man. They try to. So
Alfred’s dead, is he? He won’t sponge on me anymore, and he won’t get any of
the money either. They’ve all been waiting for me to die, you know—Alfred in
particular. Now he’s dead. I call that rather a good joke.”
“That’s not very kind of you, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Lucy severely.
Mr. Crackenthorpe laughed again. “I’ll outlive them all,” he crowed. “You see
if I don’t, my girl. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“You see
if I don’t, my girl. You see if I don’t.”
Lucy went to her room, she took out her dictionary and looked up the word
“tontine.” She closed the book thoughtfully and stared ahead of her.
III
“Don’t see why you want to come to me,” said Dr. Morris, irritably.
“You’ve known the Crackenthorpe family a long time,” said Inspector Craddock.
“Yes, yes, I knew all the Crackenthorpes. I remember old Josiah Crackenthorpe.
He was a hard nut—shrewd man, though. Made a lot of money,” he shifted his
aged form in his chair and peered under bushy eyebrows at Inspector Craddock.
“So you’ve been listening to that young fool, Quimper,” he said. “These
zealous young doctors! Always getting ideas in their heads. Got it into his
head that somebody was trying to poison Luther Crackenthorpe. Nonsense!
Melodrama! Of course, he had gastric attacks. I treated him for them. Didn’t
happen very often—nothing peculiar about them.”
“Dr. Quimper,” said Craddock, “seemed to think there was.”
“Doesn’t do for a doctor to go thinking. After all, I should hope I could
recognize arsenical poisoning when I saw it.”
“Quite a lot of well-known doctors haven’t noticed it,” Craddock pointed out.
“There was”—he drew upon his memory—“the Greenbarrow case, Mrs. Teney, Charles
Leeds, three people in the Westbury family, all buried nicely and tidily
without the doctors who attended them having the least suspicion. Those
doctors were all good, reputable men.”
“All right, all right,” said Doctor Morris, “you’re saying that I could have
made a mistake. Well, I don’t think I did.” He paused a minute and then said,
“Who did Quimper think was doing it—if it was being done?”
“He didn’t know,” said Craddock. “He was worried. After all, you know,” he
added, “there’s a great deal of money there.”
“Yes, yes, I know, which they’ll get when Luther Crackenthorpe dies. And they
want it pretty badly. That is true enough, but it doesn’t follow that they’d
kill the old man to get it.”
“Not necessarily,” agreed Inspector Craddock.
“Anyway,” said Dr. Morris, “my principle is not to go about suspecting things
without due cause. Due cause,” he repeated. “I’ll admit that what you’ve just
told me has shaken me up a bit. Arsenic on a big scale, apparently—but I still
don’t see why you come to me. All I can tell you is that I didn’t suspect it.
Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have taken those gastric attacks of Luther
Crackenthorpe’s much more seriously. But you’ve got a long way beyond that
now.”
Craddock agreed. “What I really need,” he said, “is to know a little more
about the Crackenthorpe family. Is there any queer mental strain in them—a
kink of any kind?”
The eyes under the bushy eyebrows looked at him sharply. “Yes, I can see your
thoughts might run that way. Well, old Josiah was sane enough. Hard as nails,
very much all there. His wife was neurotic, had a tendency to melancholia.
Came of an inbred family. She died soon after her second son was born. I’d
say, you know, that Luther inherited a certain—well, instability, from her. He
was commonplace enough as a young man, but he was always at loggerheads with
his father. His father was disappointed in him and I think he resented that
and brooded on it, and in the end got a kind of obsession about it. He carried
that on into his married life. You’ll notice, if you talk to him at all, that
he’s got a hearty dislike for all his own sons. His daughters he was fond of.
Both Emma and Edie—the one who died.”
“Why does he dislike the sons so much?” asked Craddock.
“You’ll have to go to one of these new-fashioned psychiatrists to find that
out. I’d just say that Luther has never felt very adequate as a man himself,
and that he bitterly resents his financial position. He has possession of an
income but no power of appointment of capital. If he had the power to
disinherit his sons he probably wouldn’t dislike them as much. Being powerless
in that respect gives him a feeling of humiliation.”
“That’s why he’s so pleased at the idea of outliving them all?” said Inspector
Craddock.
“Possibly. It is the root, too, of his parsimony, I think. I should say that
he’s managed to save a considerable sum out of his large income—mostly, of
course, before taxation rose to its present giddy heights.”
A new idea struck Inspector Craddock. “I suppose he’s left his savings by will
to someone? That he can do.”
“Oh, yes, though God knows who he has left it to. Maybe to Emma, but I should
rather doubt it. She’ll get her share of the old man’s property. Maybe to
Alexander, the grandson.”
“He’s fond of him, is he?” said Craddock.
“Used to be. Of course he was his daughter’s child, not a son’s child. That
may have made a difference. And he had quite an affection for Bryan Eastley,
Edie’s husband. Of course I don’t know Bryan well, it’s some years since I’ve
seen any of the family. But it struck me that he was going to be very much at
a loose end after the war. He’s got those qualities that you need in wartime;
courage, dash, and a tendency to let the future take care of itself. But I
don’t think he’s got any stability. He’ll probably turn into a drifter.”
“As far as you know there’s no peculiar kink in any of the younger
generation?”
“Cedric’s an eccentric type, one of those natural rebels. I wouldn’t say he
was perfectly normal, but you might say, who is? Harold’s fairly orthodox, not
what I call a very pleasant character, coldhearted, eye to the main chance.
Alfred’s got a touch of the delinquent about him. He’s a wrong ’un, always
was. Saw him taking money out of a missionary box once that they used to keep
in the hall. That type of thing. Ah, well, the poor fellow’s dead, I suppose I
shouldn’t be talking against him.”
“What about…” Craddock hesitated. “Emma Crackenthorpe?”
“Nice girl, quiet, one doesn’t always know what she’s thinking. Has her own
plans and her own ideas, but she keeps them to herself. She’s more character
than you might think from her general appearance.”
“You knew Edmund, I suppose, the son who was killed in France?”
“Yes. He was the best of the bunch I’d say. Goodhearted, gay, a nice boy.”
“Did you ever hear that he was going to marry, or had married, a French girl
just before he was killed?”
Dr. Morris frowned. “It seems as though I remember something about it,” he
said, “but it’s a long time ago.”
“Quite early on in the war, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Ah, well, I dare say he’d have lived to regret it if he had married a
foreign wife.”
“There’s some reason to believe that he did do just that,” said Craddock.
In a few brief sentences he gave an account of recent happenings.
“I remember seeing something in the papers about a woman found in a
sarcophagus. So it was at Rutherford Hall.”
“And there’s reason to believe that the woman was Edmund Crackenthorpe’s
widow.”
“Well, well, that seems extraordinary. More like a novel than real life. But
who’d want to kill the poor thing—I mean, how does it tie up with arsenical
poisoning in the Crackenthorpe family?”
“In one of two ways,” said Craddock; “but they are both very farfetched.
Somebody perhaps is greedy and wants the whole of Josiah Crackenthorpe’s
fortune.”
“Damn fool if he does,” said Dr. Morris. “He’ll only have to pay the most
stupendous taxes on the income from it.”
Twenty-one
“Nasty things, mushrooms,” said Mrs. Kidder.
Mrs. Kidder had made the same remark about ten times in the last few days.
Lucy did not reply.
“Never touch ’em myself,” said Mrs. Kidder, “much too dangerous. It’s a
merciful Providence as there’s only been one death. The whole lot might have
gone, and you, too, miss. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
The whole lot might have
gone, and you, too, miss. A wonderful escape, you’ve had.”
“It wasn’t the mushrooms,” said Lucy. “They were perfectly all right.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Mrs. Kidder. “Dangerous they are, mushrooms. One
toadstool in among the lot and you’ve had it.”
“Funny,” went on Mrs. Kidder, among the rattle of plates and dishes in the
sink, “how things seem to come all together, as it were. My sister’s eldest
had measles and our Ernie fell down and broke ’is arm, and my ’usband came out
all over with boils. All in the same week! You’d hardly believe it, would you?
It’s been the same thing here,” went on Mrs. Kidder, “first that nasty murder
and now Mr. Alfred dead with mushroom-poisoning. Who’ll be the next, I’d like
to know?”
Lucy felt rather uncomfortably that she would like to know too.
“My husband, he doesn’t like me coming here now,” said Mrs. Kidder, “thinks
it’s unlucky, but what I say is I’ve known Miss Crackenthorpe a long time now
and she’s a nice lady and she depends on me. And I couldn’t leave poor Miss
Eyelesbarrow, I said, not to do everything herself in the house. Pretty hard
it is on you, miss, all these trays.”
Lucy was forced to agree that life did seem to consist very largely of trays
at the moment. She was at the moment arranging trays to take to the various
invalids.
“As for them nurses, they never do a hand’s turn,” said Mrs. Kidder. “All they
want is pots and pots of tea made strong. And meals prepared. Wore out, that’s
what I am.” She spoke in a tone of great satisfaction, though actually she had
done very little more than her normal morning’s work.
Lucy said solemnly, “You never spare yourself, Mrs. Kidder.”
Mrs. Kidder looked pleased. Lucy picked up the first of the trays and started
off up the stairs.
“What’s this?” said Mr. Crackenthorpe disapprovingly.
“Beef tea and baked custard,” said Lucy.
“Take it away,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “I won’t touch that stuff. I told that
nurse I wanted a beef steak.”
“Dr. Quimper thinks you ought not to have beef steak just yet,” said Lucy.
Mr. Crackenthorpe snorted. “I’m practically well again. I’m getting up
tomorrow. How are the others?”
“Mr. Harold’s much better,” said Lucy. “He’s going back to London tomorrow.”
“Good riddance,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “What about Cedric—any hope that he’s
going back to his island tomorrow?”
“He won’t be going just yet.”
“Pity. What’s Emma doing? Why doesn’t she come and see me?”
“She’s still in bed, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“Women always coddle themselves,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “But you’re a good
strong girl,” he added approvingly. “Run about all day, don’t you?”
“I get plenty of exercise,” said Lucy.
Old Mr. Crackenthorpe nodded his head approvingly. “You’re a good strong
girl,” he said, “and don’t think I’ve forgotten what I talked to you about
before. One of these days you’ll see what you’ll see. Emma isn’t always going
to have things her own way. And don’t listen to the others when they tell you
I’m a mean old man. I’m careful of my money. I’ve got a nice little packet put
by and I know who I’m going to spend it on when the time comes.” He leered at
her affectionately.
Lucy went rather quickly out of the room, avoiding his clutching hand.
The next tray was taken in to Emma.
“Oh, thank you, Lucy. I’m really feeling quite myself again by now. I’m
hungry, and that’s a good sign, isn’t it? My dear,” went on Emma as Lucy
settled the tray on her knees, “I’m really feeling very upset about your aunt.
You haven’t had any time to go and see her, I suppose?”
“No, I haven’t, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m afraid she must be missing you.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Miss Crackenthorpe. She understands what a terrible time
we’ve been through.”
“Have you rung her up?”
“No, I haven’t just lately.”
“Well, do. Ring her up every day. It makes such a difference to old people to
get news.”
“You’re very kind,” said Lucy. Her conscience smote her a little as she went
down to fetch the next tray. The complications of illness in a house had kept
her thoroughly absorbed and she had had no time to think of anything else. She
decided that she would ring Miss Marple up as soon as she had taken Cedric his
meal.
There was only one nurse in the house now and she passed Lucy on the landing,
exchanging greetings.
Cedric, looking incredibly tidied up and neat, was sitting up in bed writing
busily on sheets of paper.
“Hallo, Lucy,” he said, “what hell brew have you got for me today? I wish
you’d get rid of that god-awful nurse, she’s simply too arch for words. Calls
me ‘we’ for some reason. ‘And how are we this morning? Have we slept well? Oh,
dear, we’re very naughty, throwing off the bedclothes like that.’” He imitated
the refined accents of the nurse in a high falsetto voice.
“You seem very cheerful,” said Lucy. “What are you busy with?”
“Plans,” said Cedric. “Plans for what to do with this place when the old man
pops off. It’s a jolly good bit of land here, you know. I can’t make up my
mind whether I’d like to develop some of it myself, or whether I’ll sell it in
lots all in one go. Very valuable for industrial purposes. The house will do
for a nursing home or a school. I’m not sure I shan’t sell half the land and
use the money to do something rather outrageous with the other half. What do
you think?”
“You haven’t got it yet,” said Lucy, dryly.
“I shall have it, though,” said Cedric. “It’s not divided up like the other
stuff. I get it outright. And if I sell it for a good fat price the money will
be capital, not income, so I shan’t have to pay taxes on it. Money to burn.
Think of it.”
“I always understood you rather despised money,” said Lucy.
“Of course I despise money when I haven’t got any,” said Cedric. “It’s the
only dignified thing to do. What a lovely girl you are, Lucy, or do I just
think so because I haven’t seen any good-looking women for such a long time?”
“I expect that’s it,” said Lucy.
“Still busy tidying everyone and everything up?”
“Somebody seems to have been tidying you up,” said Lucy, looking at him.
“That’s that damned nurse,” said Cedric with feeling. “Have you had the
inquest on Alfred yet? What happened?”
“It was adjourned,” said Lucy.
“Police being cagey. This mass poisoning does give one a bit of a turn,
doesn’t it? Mentally, I mean. I’m not referring to more obvious aspects.” He
added: “Better look after yourself, my girl.”
“I do,” said Lucy.
“Has young Alexander gone back to school yet?”
“I think he’s still with the Stoddart-Wests. I think it’s the day after
tomorrow that school begins.”
Before getting her own lunch Lucy went to the telephone and rang up Miss
Marple.
“I’m so terribly sorry I haven’t been able to come over, but I’ve been really
very busy.”
“Of course, my dear, of course. Besides, there’s nothing that can be done just
now. We just have to wait.”
“Yes, but what are we waiting for?”
“Elspeth McGillicuddy ought to be home very soon now,” said Miss Marple. “I
wrote to her to fly home at once. I said it was her duty. So don’t worry too
much, my dear.” Her voice was kindly and reassuring.
“You don’t think…” Lucy began, but stopped.
“That there will be anymore deaths? Oh, I hope not, my dear. But one never
knows, does one? When anyone is really wicked, I mean. And I think there is
great wickedness here.”
“Or madness,” said Lucy. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
And I think there is
great wickedness here.”
“Or madness,” said Lucy.
“Of course I know that is the modern way of looking at things. I don’t agree
myself.”
Lucy rang off, went into the kitchen and picked up her tray of lunch. Mrs.
Kidder had divested herself of her apron and was about to leave.
“You’ll be all right, miss, I hope?” she asked solicitously.
“Of course I shall be all right,” snapped Lucy.
She took her tray not into the big, gloomy dining room but into the small
study. She was just finishing her meal when the door opened and Bryan Eastley
came in.
“Hallo,” said Lucy, “this is very unexpected.”
“I suppose it is,” said Bryan. “How is everybody?”
“Oh, much better. Harold’s going back to London tomorrow.”
“What do you think about it all? Was it really arsenic?”
“It was arsenic all right,” said Lucy.
“It hasn’t been in the papers yet.”
“No, I think the police are keeping it up their sleeves for the moment.”
“Somebody must have a pretty good down on the family,” said Bryan. “Who’s
likely to have sneaked in and tampered with the food?”
“I suppose I’m the most likely person really,” said Lucy.
Bryan looked at her anxiously. “But you didn’t, did you?” he asked. He sounded
slightly shocked.
“No. I didn’t,” said Lucy.
Nobody could have tampered with the curry. She had made it—alone in the
kitchen, and brought it to table, and the only person who could have tampered
with it was one of the five people who sat down to the meal.
“I mean—why should you?” said Bryan. “They’re nothing to you, are they? I
say,” he added, “I hope you don’t mind my coming back here like this?”
“No, no, of course I don’t. Have you come to stay?”
“Well, I’d like to, if it wouldn’t be an awful bore to you.”
“No. No, we can manage.”
“You see, I’m out of a job at the moment and I—well, I get rather fed up. Are
you really sure you don’t mind?”
“Oh, I’m not the person to mind, anyway. It’s Emma.”
“Oh, Emma’s all right,” said Bryan. “Emma’s always been very nice to me. In
her own way, you know. She keeps things to herself a lot, in fact, she’s
rather a dark horse, old Emma. This living here and looking after the old man
would get most people down. Pity she never married. Too late now, I suppose.”
“I don’t think it’s too late, at all,” said Lucy.
“Well…” Bryan considered. “A clergyman perhaps,” he said hopefully. “She’d be
useful in the parish and tactful with the Mothers’ Union. I do mean the
Mothers’ Union, don’t I? Not that I know what it really is, but you come
across it sometimes in books. And she’d wear a hat in church on Sundays,” he
added.
“Doesn’t sound much of a prospect to me,” said Lucy, rising and picking up the
tray.
“I’ll do that,” said Bryan, taking the tray from her. They went into the
kitchen together. “Shall I help you wash up? I do like this kitchen,” he
added. “In fact, I know it isn’t the sort of thing that people do like
nowadays, but I like this whole house. Shocking taste, I suppose, but there it
is. You could land a plane quite easily in the park,” he added with
enthusiasm.
He picked up a glass-cloth and began to wipe the spoons and forks.
“Seems a waste, its coming to Cedric,” he remarked. “First thing he’ll do is
to sell the whole thing and go breaking off abroad again. Can’t see, myself,
why England isn’t good enough for anybody. Harold wouldn’t want this house
either, and of course it’s much too big for Emma. Now, if only it came to
Alexander, he and I would be as happy together here as a couple of sand boys.
Of course it would be nice to have a woman about the house.” He looked
thoughtfully at Lucy. “Oh, well, what’s the good of talking? If Alexander were
to get this place it would mean the whole lot of them would have to die first,
and that’s not really likely, is it? Though from what I’ve seen of the old boy
he might easily live to be a hundred, just to annoy them all. I don’t suppose
he was much cut up by Alfred’s death, was he?”
Lucy said shortly, “No, he wasn’t.”
“Cantankerous old devil,” said Bryan Eastley cheerfully.
Twenty-two
“Dreadful, the things people go about saying,” said Mrs. Kidder. “I don’t
listen, mind you, more than I can help. But you’d hardly believe it.” She
waited hopefully.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lucy.
“About that body that was found in the Long Barn,” went on Mrs. Kidder, moving
crablike backwards on her hands and knees, as she scrubbed the kitchen floor,
“saying as how she’d been Mr. Edmund’s fancy piece during the war, and how she
come over here and a jealous husband followed her, and did her in. It is a
likely thing as a foreigner would do, but it wouldn’t be likely after all
these years, would it?”
“It sounds most unlikely to me.”
“But there’s worse things than that, they say,” said Mrs. Kidder. “Say
anything, people will. You’d be surprised. There’s those that say Mr. Harold
married somewhere abroad and that she come over and found out that he’s
committed bigamy with that lady Alice, and that she was going to bring ’im to
court and that he met her down here and did her in, and hid her body in the
sarcoffus. Did you ever!”
“Shocking,” said Lucy vaguely, her mind elsewhere.
“Of course I didn’t listen,” said Mrs. Kidder virtuously, “I wouldn’t put no
stock in such tales myself. It beats me how people think up such things, let
alone say them. All I hope is none of it gets to Miss Emma’s ears. It might
upset her and I wouldn’t like that. She’s a very nice lady, Miss Emma is, and
I’ve not heard a word against her, not a word. And of course Mr. Alfred being
dead nobody says anything against him now. Not even that it’s a judgment,
which they well might do. But it’s awful, miss, isn’t it, the wicked talk
there is.”
Mrs. Kidder spoke with immense enjoyment.
“It must be quite painful for you to listen to it,” said Lucy.
“Oh, it is,” said Mrs. Kidder. “It is indeed. I says to my husband, I says,
however can they?”
The bell rang.
“There’s the doctor, miss. Will you let ’im in, or shall I?”
“I’ll go,” said Lucy.
But it was not the doctor. On the doorstep stood a tall, elegant woman in a
mink coat. Drawn up to the gravel sweep was a purring Rolls with a chauffeur
at the wheel.
“Can I see Miss Emma Crackenthorpe, please?”
It was an attractive voice, the R’s slightly blurred. The woman was attractive
too. About thirty-five, with dark hair and expensively and beautifully made
up.
“I’m sorry,” said Lucy, “Miss Crackenthorpe is ill in bed and can’t see
anyone.”
“I know she has been ill, yes; but it is very important that I should see
her.”
“I’m afraid,” Lucy began.
The visitor interrupted her. “I think you are Miss Eyelesbarrow, are you not?”
She smiled, an attractive smile. “My son has spoken of you, so I know. I am
Lady Stoddart-West and Alexander is staying with me now.”
“Oh, I see,” said Lucy.
“And it is really important that I should see Miss Crackenthorpe,” continued
the other. “I know all about her illness and I assure you this is not just a
social call. It is because of something that the boys have said to me—that my
son has said to me. It is, I think, a matter of grave importance and I would
like to speak to Miss Crackenthorpe about it. Please, will you ask her?”
“Come in.” Lucy ushered her visitor into the hall and into the drawing room.
Then she said, “I’ll go up and ask Miss Crackenthorpe.”
She went upstairs, knocked on Emma’s door and entered.
“Lady Stoddart-West is here,” she said. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“Lady Stoddart-West is here,” she said. “She wants to see you very
particularly.”
“Lady Stoddart-West?” Emma looked surprised. A look of alarm came into her
face. “There’s nothing wrong, is there, with the boys—with Alexander?”
“No, no,” Lucy reassured her. “I’m sure the boys are all right. It seemed to
be something the boys have told her or said to her.”
“Oh. Well…” Emma hesitated. “Perhaps I ought to see her. Do I look all right,
Lucy?”
“You look very nice,” said Lucy.
Emma was sitting up in bed, a soft pink shawl was round her shoulders and
brought out the faint rose-pink of her cheeks. Her dark hair had been neatly
brushed and combed by Nurse. Lucy had placed a bowl of autumn leaves on the
dressing table the day before. Her room looked attractive and quite unlike a
sick room.
“I’m really quite well enough to get up,” said Emma. “Dr. Quimper said I could
tomorrow.”
“You look really quite like yourself again,” said Lucy. “Shall I bring Lady
Stoddart-West up?”
“Yes, do.”
Lucy went downstairs again. “Will you come up to Miss Crackenthorpe’s room?”
She escorted the visitor upstairs, opened the door for her to pass in and then
shut it. Lady Stoddart-West approached the bed with outstretched hand.
“Miss Crackenthorpe? I really do apologize for breaking in on you like this. I
have seen you, I think, at the sports at the school.”
“Yes,” said Emma, “I remember you quite well. Do sit down.”
In the chair conveniently placed by the bed Lady Stoddart-West sat down. She
said in a quiet low voice:
“You must think it very strange of me coming here like this, but I have
reason. I think it is an important reason. You see, the boys have been telling
me things. You can understand that they were very excited about the murder
that happened here. I confess I did not like it at the time. I was nervous. I
wanted to bring James home at once. But my husband laughed. He said that
obviously it was a murder that had nothing to do with the house and the
family, and he said that from what he remembered from his boyhood, and from
James’s letters, both he and Alexander were enjoying themselves so wildly that
it would be sheer cruelty to bring them back. So I gave in and agreed that
they should stay on until the time arranged for James to bring Alexander back
with him.”
Emma said: “You think we ought to have sent your son home earlier?”
“No, no, that is not what I mean at all. Oh, it is difficult for me, this! But
what I have to say must be said. You see, they have picked up a good deal, the
boys. They told me that this woman—the murdered woman—that the police have an
idea that she may be a French girl whom your eldest brother—who was killed in
the war—knew in France. That is so?”
“It is a possibility,” said Emma, her voice breaking slightly, “that we are
forced to consider. It may have been so.”
“There is some reason for believing that the body is that of this girl, this
Martine?”
“I have told you, it is a possibility.”
“But why—why should they think that she was Martine? Did she have letters on
her—papers?”
“No. Nothing of that kind. But you see, I had had a letter, from this
Martine.”
“You had had a letter—from Martine?”
“Yes. A letter telling me she was in England and would like to come and see
me. I invited her down here, but got a telegram saying she was going back to
France. Perhaps she did go back to France. We do not know. But since then an
envelope was found here addressed to her. That seems to show that she had come
down here. But I really don’t see…” She broke off.
Lady Stoddart-West broke in quickly:
“You really do not see what concern it is of mine? That is very true. I should
not in your place. But when I heard this—or rather, a garbled account of
this—I had to come to make sure it was really so because, if it is—”
“Yes?” said Emma.
“Then I must tell you something that I had never intended to tell you. You
see, I am Martine Dubois.”
Emma stared at her guest as though she could hardly take in the sense of her
words.
“You!” she said. “You are Martine?”
The other nodded vigorously. “But, yes. It surprises you, I am sure, but it is
true. I met your brother Edmund in the first days of the war. He was indeed
billeted at our house. Well, you know the rest. We fell in love. We intended
to be married, and then there was the retreat to Dunkirk, Edmund was reported
missing. Later he was reported killed. I will not speak to you of that time.
It was long ago and it is over. But I will say to you that I loved your
brother very much….
“Then came the grim realities of war. The Germans occupied France. I became a
worker for the Resistance. I was one of those who was assigned to pass
Englishmen through France to England. It was in that way that I met my present
husband. He was an Air Force officer, parachuted into France to do special
work. When the war ended we were married. I considered once or twice whether I
should write to you or come and see you, but I decided against it. It could do
no good, I thought, to take up old memories. I had a new life and I had no
wish to recall the old.” She paused and then said: “But it gave me, I will
tell you, a strange pleasure when I found that my son James’s greatest friend
at his school was a boy whom I found to be Edmund’s nephew. Alexander, I may
say, is very like Edmund, as I dare say you yourself appreciate. It seemed to
me a very happy state of affairs that James and Alexander should be such
friends.”
She leaned forward and placed her hand on Emma’s arm. “But you see, dear Emma,
do you not, that when I heard this story about the murder, about this dead
woman being suspected to be the Martine that Edmund had known, that I had to
come and tell you the truth. Either you or I must inform the police of the
fact. Whoever the dead woman is, she is not Martine.”
“I can hardly take it in,” said Emma, “that you, you should be the Martine
that dear Edmund wrote to me about.” She sighed, shaking her head, then she
frowned perplexedly. “But I don’t understand. Was it you, then, who wrote to
me?”
Lady Stoddart-West shook a vigorous head. “No, no, of course I did not write
to you.”
“Then…” Emma stopped.
“Then there was someone pretending to be Martine who wanted perhaps to get
money out of you? That is what it must have been. But who can it be?”
Emma said slowly: “I suppose there were people at the time, who knew?”
The other shrugged her shoulders. “Probably, yes. But there was no one
intimate with me, no one very close to me. I have never spoken of it since I
came to England. And why wait all this time? It is curious, very curious.”
Emma said: “I don’t understand it. We will have to see what Inspector Craddock
has to say.” She looked with suddenly softened eyes at her visitor. “I’m so
glad to know you at last, my dear.”
“And I you… Edmund spoke of you very often. He was very fond of you. I am
happy in my new life, but all the same, I don’t quite forget.”
Emma leaned back and heaved a sigh. “It’s a terrible relief,” she said. “As
long as we feared that the dead woman might be Martine—it seemed to be tied up
with the family. But now—oh, it’s an absolute load off my back. I don’t know
who the poor soul was but she can’t have had anything to do with us!”
Twenty-three
The streamlined secretary brought Harold Crackenthorpe his usual afternoon cup
of tea.
“Thanks, Miss Ellis, I shall be going home early today.”
“I’m sure you ought really not to have come at all, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said
Miss Ellis. “You look quite pulled down still.”
“I’m all right,” said Harold Crackenthorpe, but he did feel pulled down. No
doubt about it, he’d had a very nasty turn. Ah, well, that was over. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Ah, well, that was over.
Extraordinary, he thought broodingly, that Alfred should have succumbed and
the old man should have come through. After all, what was he—seventy-
three—seventy-four? Been an invalid for years. If there was one person you’d
have thought would have been taken off, it would have been the old man. But
no. It had to be Alfred. Alfred who, as far as Harold knew, was a healthy wiry
sort of chap. Nothing much the matter with him.
He leaned back in his chair sighing. That girl was right. He didn’t feel up to
things yet, but he had wanted to come down to the office. Wanted to get the
hang of how affairs were going. Touch and go. All this—he looked round him—the
richly appointed office, the pale gleaming wood, the expensive modern chairs,
it all looked prosperous enough, and a good thing too! That’s where Alfred had
always gone wrong. If you looked prosperous, people thought you were
prosperous. There were no rumours going around as yet about his financial
stability. All the same, the crash couldn’t be delayed very long. Now, if only
his father had passed out instead of Alfred, as surely, surely he ought to
have done. Practically seemed to thrive on arsenic! Yes, if his father had
succumbed—well, there wouldn’t have been anything to worry about.
Still, the great thing was not to seem worried. A prosperous appearance. Not
like poor old Alfred who always looked seedy and shiftless, who looked in fact
exactly what he was. One of those small-time speculators, never going all out
boldly for the big money. In with a shady crowd here, doing a doubtful deal
there, never quite rendering himself liable to prosecution but going very near
the edge. And where had it got him? Short periods of affluence and then back
to seediness and shabbiness, once more. No broad outlook about Alfred. Taken
all in all, you couldn’t say Alfred was much loss. He’d never been
particularly fond of Alfred and with Alfred out of the way the money that was
coming to him from that old curmudgeon, his grandfather, would be sensibly
increased, divided not into five shares but into four shares. Very much
better.
Harold’s face brightened a little. He rose, took his hat and coat and left the
office. Better take it easy for a day or two. He wasn’t feeling too strong
yet. His car was waiting below and very soon he was weaving through London
traffic to his house.
Darwin, his manservant, opened the door.
“Her ladyship has just arrived, sir,” he said.
For a moment Harold stared at him. Alice! Good heavens, was it today that
Alice was coming home? He’d forgotten all about it. Good thing Darwin had
warned him. It wouldn’t have looked so good if he’d gone upstairs and looked
too astonished at seeing her. Not that it really mattered, he supposed.
Neither Alice nor he had any illusions about the feeling they had for each
other. Perhaps Alice was fond of him—he didn’t know.
All in all, Alice was a great disappointment to him. He hadn’t been in love
with her, of course, but though a plain woman she was quite a pleasant one.
And her family and connections had undoubtedly been useful. Not perhaps as
useful as they might have been, because in marrying Alice he had been
considering the position of hypothetical children. Nice relations for his boys
to have. But there hadn’t been any boys, or girls either, and all that had
remained had been he and Alice growing older together without much to say to
each other and with no particular pleasure in each other’s company.
She stayed away a good deal with relations and usually went to the Riviera in
the winter. It suited her and it didn’t worry him.
He went upstairs now into the drawing room and greeted her punctiliously.
“So you’re back, my dear. Sorry I couldn’t meet you, but I was held up in the
City. I got back as early as I could. How was San Raphael?”
Alice told him how San Raphael was. She was a thin woman with sandy-coloured
hair, a well-arched nose and vague, hazel eyes. She talked in a well-bred,
monotonous and rather depressing voice. It had been a good journey back, the
Channel a little rough. The Customs, as usual, very trying at Dover.
“You should come by air,” said Harold, as he always did. “So much simpler.”
“I dare say, but I don’t really like air travel. I never have. Makes me
nervous.”
“Saves a lot of time,” said Harold.
Lady Alice Crackenthorpe did not answer. It was possible that her problem in
life was not to save time but to occupy it. She inquired politely after her
husband’s health.
“Emma’s telegram quite alarmed me,” she said. “You were all taken ill, I
understand.”
“Yes, yes,” said Harold.
“I read in the paper the other day,” said Alice, “of forty people in a hotel
going down with food poisoning at the same time. All this refrigeration is
dangerous, I think. People keep things too long in them.”
“Possibly,” said Harold. Should he, or should he not mention arsenic? Somehow,
looking at Alice, he felt himself quite unable to do so. In Alice’s world, he
felt, there was no place for poisoning by arsenic. It was a thing you read
about in the papers. It didn’t happen to you or your own family. But it had
happened in the Crackenthorpe family….
He went up to his room and lay down for an hour or two before dressing for
dinner. At dinner, tête-à-tête with his wife, the conversation ran on much the
same lines. Desultory, polite. The mention of acquaintances and friends at San
Raphael.
“There’s a parcel for you on the hall table, a small one,” Alice said.
“Is there? I didn’t notice it.”
“It’s an extraordinary thing but somebody was telling me about a murdered
woman having been found in a barn, or something like that. She said it was at
Rutherford Hall. I suppose it must be some other Rutherford Hall.”
“No,” said Harold, “no, it isn’t. It was in our barn, as a matter of fact.”
“Really, Harold! A murdered woman in the barn at Rutherford Hall—and you never
told me anything about it.”
“Well, there hasn’t been much time, really,” said Harold, “and it was all
rather unpleasant. Nothing to do with us, of course. The Press milled around a
good deal. Of course we had to deal with the police and all that sort of
thing.”
“Very unpleasant,” said Alice. “Did they find out who did it?” she added, with
rather perfunctory interest.
“Not yet,” said Harold.
“What sort of woman was she?”
“Nobody knows. French, apparently.”
“Oh, French,” said Alice, and allowing for the difference in class, her tone
was not unlike that of Inspector Bacon. “Very annoying for you all,” she
agreed.
They went out from the dining room and crossed into the small study where they
usually sat when they were alone. Harold was feeling quite exhausted by now.
“I’ll go up to bed early,” he thought.
He picked up the small parcel from the hall table, about which his wife had
spoken to him. It was a small neatly waxed parcel, done up with meticulous
exactness. Harold ripped it open as he came to sit down in his usual chair by
the fire.
Inside was a small tablet box bearing the label, “Two to be taken nightly.”
With it was a small piece of paper with the chemist’s heading in Brackhampton.
“Sent by request of Doctor Quimper” was written on it.
Harold Crackenthorpe frowned. He opened the box and looked at the tablets.
Yes, they seemed to be the same tablets he had been having. But surely, surely
Quimper had said that he needn’t take anymore? “You won’t want them, now.”
That’s what Quimper had said.
“What is it, dear?” said Alice. “You look worried.”
“Oh, it’s just—some tablets. I’ve been taking them at night. But I rather
thought the doctor said don’t take anymore.”
His wife said placidly: “He probably said don’t forget to take them.”
“He may have done, I suppose,” said Harold doubtfully.
He looked across at her. She was watching him. Just for a moment or two he
wondered—he didn’t often wonder about Alice—exactly what she was thinking. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
That mild gaze of hers told him nothing. Her eyes were like windows in an
empty house. What did Alice think about him, feel about him? Had she been in
love with him once? He supposed she had. Or did she marry him because she
thought he was doing well in the City, and she was tired of her own
impecunious existence? Well, on the whole, she’d done quite well out of it.
She’d got a car and a house in London, she could travel abroad when she felt
like it and get herself expensive clothes, though goodness knows they never
looked like anything on Alice. Yes, on the whole she’d done pretty well. He
wondered if she thought so. She wasn’t really fond of him, of course, but then
he wasn’t really fond of her. They had nothing in common, nothing to talk
about, no memories to share. If there had been children—but there hadn’t been
any children—odd that there were no children in the family except young Edie’s
boy. Young Edie. She’d been a silly girl, making that foolish, hasty war-time
marriage. Well, he’d given her good advice.
He’d said: “It’s all very well, these dashing young pilots, glamour, courage,
all that, but he’ll be no good in peace time, you know. Probably be barely
able to support you.”
And Edie had said, what did it matter? She loved Bryan and Bryan loved her,
and he’d probably be killed quite soon. Why shouldn’t they have some
happiness? What was the good of looking to the future when they might well be
bombed any minute. And after all, Edie had said, the future doesn’t really
matter because some day there’ll be all grandfather’s money.
Harold squirmed uneasily in his chair. Really, that will of his grandfather’s
had been iniquitous! Keeping them all dangling on a string. The will hadn’t
pleased anybody. It didn’t please the grandchildren and it made their father
quite livid. The old boy was absolutely determined not to die. That’s what
made him take so much care of himself. But he’d have to die soon. Surely,
surely he’d have to die soon. Otherwise—all Harold’s worries swept over him
once more making him feel sick and tired and giddy.
Alice was still watching him, he noticed. Those pale, thoughtful eyes, they
made him uneasy somehow.
“I think I shall go to bed,” he said. “It’s been my first day out in the
City.”
“Yes,” said Alice, “I think that’s a good idea. I’m sure the doctor told you
to take things easily at first.”
“Doctors always tell you that,” said Harold.
“And don’t forget to take your tablets, dear,” said Alice. She picked up the
box and handed it to him.
He said good night and went upstairs. Yes, he needed the tablets. It would
have been a mistake to leave them off too soon. He took two of them and
swallowed them with a glass of water. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
He took two of them and
swallowed them with a glass of water.
Twenty-four
“Nobody could have made more of a muck of it than I seem to have done,” said
Dermot Craddock gloomily.
He sat, his long legs stretched out, looking somehow incongruous in faithful
Florence’s somewhat overfurnished parlour. He was thoroughly tired, upset and
dispirited.
Miss Marple made soft, soothing noises of dissent. “No, no, you’ve done very
good work, my dear boy. Very good work indeed.”
“I’ve done very good work, have I? I’ve let a whole family be poisoned. Alfred
Crackenthorpe’s dead and now Harold’s dead too. What the hell’s going on here.
That’s what I should like to know.”
“Poisoned tablets,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“Yes. Devilishly cunning, really. They looked just like the tablets that he’d
been having. There was a printed slip sent in with them ‘by Doctor Quimper’s
instructions.’ Well, Quimper never ordered them. There were chemist’s labels
used. The chemist knew nothing about it, either. No. That box of tablets came
from Rutherford Hall.”
“Do you actually know it came from Rutherford Hall?”
“Yes. We’ve had a thorough check up. Actually, it’s the box that held the
sedative tablets prescribed for Emma.”
“Oh, I see. For Emma….”
“Yes. It’s got her fingerprints on it and the fingerprints of both the nurses
and the fingerprint of the chemist who made it up. Nobody else’s, naturally.
The person who sent them was careful.”
“And the sedative tablets were removed and something else substituted?”
“Yes. That of course is the devil with tablets. One tablet looks exactly like
another.”
“You are so right,” agreed Miss Marple. “I remember so very well in my young
days, the black mixture and the brown mixture (the cough mixture that was) and
the white mixture, and Doctor So-and- So’s pink mixture. People didn’t mix
those up nearly as much. In fact, you know, in my village of St. Mary Mead we
still like that kind of medicine. It’s a bottle they always want, not tablets.
What were the tablets?” she asked.
“Aconite. They were the kind of tablets that are usually kept in a poison
bottle, diluted one in a hundred for outside application.”
“And so Harold took them, and died,” Miss Marple said thoughtfully. Dermot
Craddock uttered something like a groan.
“You mustn’t mind my letting off steam to you,” he said. “Tell it all to Aunt
Jane; that’s how I feel!”
“That’s very, very nice of you,” said Miss Marple, “and I do appreciate it. I
feel towards you, as Sir Henry’s godson, quite differently from the way I feel
to any ordinary detective-inspector.”
Dermot Craddock gave her a fleeting grin. “But the fact remains that I’ve made
the most ghastly mess of things all along the line,” he said. “The Chief
Constable down here calls in Scotland Yard, and what do they get? They get me
making a prize ass of myself!”
“No, no,” said Miss Marple.
“Yes, yes. I don’t know who poisoned Alfred, I don’t know who poisoned Harold,
and, to cap it all, I haven’t the least idea who the original murdered woman
was! This Martine business seemed a perfectly safe bet. The whole thing seemed
to tie up. And now what happens? The real Martine shows up and turns out, most
improbably, to be the wife of Sir Robert Stoddart-West. So, who’s the woman in
the barn now? Goodness knows. First I go all out on the idea she’s Anna
Stravinska, and then she’s out of it—”
He was arrested by Miss Marple giving one of her small peculiarly significant
coughs.
“But is she?” she murmured.
Craddock stared at her. “Well, that postcard from Jamaica—”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple; “but that isn’t really evidence, is it? I mean,
anyone can get a postcard sent from almost anywhere, I suppose. I remember
Mrs. Brierly, such a very bad nervous breakdown. Finally, they said she ought
to go to the mental hospital for observation, and she was so worried about the
children knowing about it and so she wrote fourteen postcards and arranged
that they should be posted from different places abroad, and told them that
Mummy was going abroad on a holiday.” She added, looking at Dermot Craddock,
“You see what I mean.”
“Yes, of course,” said Craddock, staring at her. “Naturally we’d have checked
that postcard if it hadn’t been for the Martine business fitting the bill so
well.”
“So convenient,” murmured Miss Marple.
“It tied up,” said Craddock. “After all, there’s the letter Emma received
signed Martine Crackenthorpe. Lady Stoddart-West didn’t send that, but
somebody did. Somebody who was going to pretend to be Martine, and who was
going to cash in, if possible, on being Martine. You can’t deny that.”
“No, no.”
“And then, the envelope of the letter Emma wrote to her with the London
address on it. Found at Rutherford Hall, showing she’d actually been there.”
“But the murdered woman hadn’t been there!” Miss Marple pointed out. “Not in
the sense you mean. She only came to Rutherford Hall after she was dead.
Pushed out of a train on to the railway embankment.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What the envelope really proves is that the murderer was there. Presumably he
took that envelope off her with her other papers and things, and then dropped
it by mistake—or—I wonder now, was it a mistake? Surely Inspector Bacon, and
your men too, made a thorough search of the place, didn’t they, and didn’t
find it. It only turned up later in the boiler house.”
“That’s understandable,” said Craddock. “The old gardener chap used to spear
up any odd stuff that was blowing about and shove it in there.”
“Where it was very convenient for the boys to find,” said Miss Marple
thoughtfully.
“You think we were meant to find it?”
“Well, I just wonder. After all, it would be fairly easy to know where the
boys were going to look next, or even to suggest to them… Yes, I do wonder. It
stopped you thinking about Anna Stravinska anymore, didn’t it?”
Craddock said: “And you think it really may be her all the time?”
“I think someone may have got alarmed when you started making inquiries about
her, that’s all… I think somebody didn’t want those inquiries made.”
“Let’s hold on to the basic fact that someone was going to impersonate
Martine,” said Craddock. “And then for some reason—didn’t. Why?”
“That’s a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple.
“Somebody sent a note saying Martine was going back to France, then arranged
to travel down with the girl and kill her on the way. You agree so far?”
“Not exactly,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think, really, you’re making it
simple enough.”
“Simple!” exclaimed Craddock. “You’re mixing me up,” he complained.
Miss Marple said in a distressed voice that she wouldn’t think of doing
anything like that.
“Come, tell me,” said Craddock, “do you or do you not think you know who the
murdered woman was?” Miss Marple sighed. “It’s so difficult,” she said, “to
put it the right way. I mean, I don’t know who she was, but at the same time
I’m fairly sure who she was, if you know what I mean.”
Craddock threw up his head. “Know what you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea.”
He looked out through the window. “There’s your Lucy Eyelesbarrow coming to
see you,” he said. “Well, I’ll be off. My amour propre is very low this
afternoon and having a young woman coming in, radiant with efficiency and
success, is more than I can bear.”
Twenty-five
“I looked up tontine in the dictionary,” said Lucy.
The first greetings were over and now Lucy was wandering rather aimlessly
round the room, touching a china dog here, an antimacassar there, the plastic
work-box in the window.
“I thought you probably would,” said Miss Marple equably.
Lucy spoke slowly, quoting the words. “Lorenzo Tonti, Italian banker,
originator, 1653, of a form of annuity in which the shares of subscribers who
die are added to the profit shares of the survivors.” She paused. “That’s it,
isn’t it? That fits well enough, and you were thinking of it even then before
the last two deaths.”
She took up once more her restless, almost aimless prowl round the room. Miss
Marple sat watching her. This was a very different Lucy Eyelesbarrow from the
one she knew. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
This was a very different Lucy Eyelesbarrow from the
one she knew.
“I suppose it was asking for it really,” said Lucy. “A will of that kind,
ending so that if there was only one survivor left he’d get the lot. And
yet—there was quite a lot of money, wasn’t there? You’d think it would be
enough shared out…” She paused, the words trailing off.
“The trouble is,” said Miss Marple, “that people are greedy. Some people.
That’s so often, you know, how things start. You don’t start with murder, with
wanting to do murder, or even thinking of it. You just start by being greedy,
by wanting more than you’re going to have.” She laid her knitting down on her
knee and stared ahead of her into space. “That’s how I came across Inspector
Craddock first, you know. A case in the country. Near Medenham Spa. That began
the same way, just a weak amiable character who wanted a great deal of money.
Money that that person wasn’t entitled to, but there seemed an easy way to get
it. Not murder then. Just something so easy and simple that it hadn’t seemed
wrong. That’s how things begin… But it ended with three murders.”
“Just like this,” said Lucy. “We’ve had three murders now. The woman who
impersonated Martine and who would have been able to claim a share for her
son, and then Alfred, and then Harold. And now it only leaves two, doesn’t
it?”
“You mean,” said Miss Marple, “there are only Cedric and Emma left?”
“Not Emma. Emma isn’t a tall dark man. No. I mean Cedric and Bryan Eastley. I
never thought of Bryan because he’s fair. He’s got a fair moustache and blue
eyes, but you see—the other day…” She paused.
“Yes, go on,” said Miss Marple. “Tell me. Something has upset you very badly,
hasn’t it?”
“It was when Lady Stoddart-West was going away. She had said good-bye and then
suddenly turned to me just as she was getting into the car and asked: ‘Who was
that tall dark man who was standing on the terrace as I came in?’
“I couldn’t imagine who she meant at first, because Cedric was still laid up.
So I said, rather puzzled, ‘You don’t mean Bryan Eastley?’ and she said, ‘Of
course, that’s who it was, Squadron Leader Eastley. He was hidden in our loft
once in France during the Resistance. I remembered the way he stood, and the
set of his shoulders,’ and she said, ‘I should like to meet him again,’ but we
couldn’t find him.”
Miss Marple said nothing, just waited.
“And then,” said Lucy, “later I looked at him… He was standing with his back
to me and I saw what I ought to have seen before. That even when a man’s fair
his hair looks dark because he plasters it down with stuff. Bryan’s hair is a
sort of medium brown, I suppose, but it can look dark. So you see, it might
have been Bryan that your friend saw in the train. It might….”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I had thought of that.”
“I suppose you think of everything!” said Lucy bitterly.
“Well, dear, one has to really.”
“But I can’t see what Bryan would get out of it. I mean the money would come
to Alexander, not to him. I suppose it would make an easier life, they could
have a bit more luxury, but he wouldn’t be able to tap the capital for his
schemes, or anything like that.”
“But if anything happened to Alexander before he was twenty-one, then Bryan
would get the money as his father and next of kin,” Miss Marple pointed out.
Lucy cast a look of horror at her.
“He’d never do that. No father would ever do that just—just to get the money.”
Miss Marple sighed. “People do, my dear. It’s very sad and very terrible, but
they do.
“People do very terrible things,” went on Miss Marple. “I know a woman who
poisoned three of her children just for a little bit of insurance money. And
then there was an old woman, quite a nice old woman apparently, who poisoned
her son when he came home on leave. Then there was that old Mrs. Stanwich.
That case was in the papers. I dare say you read about it. Her daughter died
and her son, and then she said she was poisoned herself. There was poison in
the gruel, but it came out, you know, that she’d put it there herself. She was
just planning to poison the last daughter. That wasn’t exactly for money. She
was jealous of them for being younger than she was and alive, and she was
afraid—it’s a terrible thing to say but it’s true—they would enjoy themselves
after she was gone. She’d always kept a very tight hold on the purse strings.
Yes, of course she was a little peculiar, as they say, but I never see myself
that that’s any real excuse. I mean you can be a little peculiar in so many
different ways. Sometimes you just go about giving all your possessions away
and writing cheques on bank accounts that don’t exist, just so as to benefit
people. It shows, you see, that behind being peculiar you have quite a nice
disposition. But of course if you’re peculiar and behind it you have a bad
disposition—well, there you are. Now, does that help you at all, my dear
Lucy?”
“Does what help me?” asked Lucy, bewildered.
“What I’ve been telling you,” said Miss Marple. She added gently, “You mustn’t
worry, you know. You really mustn’t worry. Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here
any day now.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“No, dear, perhaps not. But I think it’s important myself.”
“I can’t help worrying,” said Lucy. “You see, I’ve got interested in the
family.”
“I know, dear, it’s very difficult for you because you are quite strongly
attracted to both of them, aren’t you, in very different ways.”
“What do you mean?” said Lucy. Her tone was sharp.
“I was talking about the two sons of the house,” said Miss Marple. “Or rather
the son and the son-in-law. It’s unfortunate that the two more unpleasant
members of the family have died and the two more attractive ones are left. I
can see that Cedric Crackenthorpe is very attractive. He is inclined to make
himself out worse than he is and has a provocative way with him.”
“He makes me fighting mad sometimes,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “and you enjoy that, don’t you? You’re a girl with a
lot of spirit and you enjoy a battle. Yes, I can see where that attraction
lies. And then Mr. Eastley is a rather plaintive type, rather like an unhappy
little boy. That, of course, is attractive, too.”
“And one of them’s a murderer,” said Lucy bitterly, “and it may be either of
them. There’s nothing to choose between them really. There’s Cedric, not
caring a bit about his brother Alfred’s death or about Harold’s. He just sits
back looking thoroughly pleased making plans for what he’ll do with Rutherford
Hall, and he keeps saying that it’ll need a lot of money to develop it in the
way he wants to do. Of course I know he’s the sort of person who exaggerates
his own callousness and all that. But that could be a cover, too. I mean
everyone says that you’re more callous than you really are. But you mightn’t
be. You might be even more callous than you seem!”
“Dear, dear Lucy, I’m so sorry about all this.”
“And then Bryan,” went on Lucy. “It’s extraordinary, but Bryan really seems to
want to live there. He thinks he and Alexander could find it awfully jolly and
he’s full of schemes.”
“He’s always full of schemes of one kind or another, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I think he is. They all sound rather wonderful—but I’ve got an uneasy
feeling that they’d never really work. I mean, they’re not practical. The idea
sounds all right—but I don’t think he ever considers the actual working
difficulties.”
“They are up in the air, so to speak?”
“Yes, in more ways than one. I mean they are usually literally up in the air.
They are all air schemes. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
I mean they are usually literally up in the air.
They are all air schemes. Perhaps a really good fighter pilot never does quite
come down to earth again….”
She added: “And he likes Rutherford Hall so much because it reminds him of the
big rambling Victorian house he lived in when he was a child.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully. “Yes, I see….”
Then, with a quick sideways glance at Lucy, she said with a kind of verbal
pounce, “But that isn’t all of it, is it, dear? There’s something else.”
“Oh, yes, there’s something else. Just something that I didn’t realize until
just a couple of days ago. Bryan could actually have been on that train.”
“On the 4:33 from Paddington?”
“Yes. You see Emma thought she was required to account for her movements on
20th December and she went over it all very carefully—a committee meeting in
the morning, and then shopping in the afternoon and tea at the Green Shamrock,
and then, she said, she went to meet Bryan at the station. The train she met
was the 4:50 from Paddington, but he could have been on the earlier train and
pretended to come by the later one. He told me quite casually that his car had
had a biff and was being repaired and so he had to come down by train—an awful
bore, he said, he hates trains. He seemed quite natural about it all… It may
be quite all right—but I wish, somehow, he hadn’t come down by train.”
“Actually on the train,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t really prove anything. The awful thing is all this suspicion. Not
to know. And perhaps we never shall know!”
“Of course we shall know, dear,” said Miss Marple briskly. “I mean—all this
isn’t going to stop just at this point. The one thing I do know about
murderers is that they can never let well alone. Or perhaps one should say—ill
alone. At any rate,” said Miss Marple with finality, “they can’t once they’ve
done a second murder. Now don’t get too upset, Lucy. The police are doing all
they can, and looking after everybody—and the great thing is that Elspeth
McGillicuddy will be here very soon now!”
Twenty-six
I
“Now, Elspeth, you’re quite clear as to what I want you to do?”
“I’m clear enough,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “but what I say to you is, Jane,
that it seems very odd.”
“It’s not odd at all,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, I think so. To arrive at the house and to ask almost immediately
whether I can—er—go upstairs.”
“It’s very cold weather,” Miss Marple pointed out, “and after all, you might
have eaten something that disagreed with you and—er—have to ask to go
upstairs. I mean, these things happen. I remember poor Louisa Felby came to
see me once and she had to ask to go upstairs five times during one little
half hour. That,” added Miss Marple parenthetically, “was a bad Cornish
pasty.”
“If you’d just tell me what you’re driving at, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“That’s just what I don’t want to do,” said Miss Marple.
“How irritating you are, Jane. First you make me come all the way back to
England before I need—”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Miss Marple; “but I couldn’t do anything else.
Someone, you see, may be killed at any moment. Oh, I know they’re all on their
guard and the police are taking all the precautions they can, but there’s
always the outside chance that the murderer might be too clever for them. So
you see, Elspeth, it was your duty to come back. After all, you and I were
brought up to do our duty, weren’t we?”
“We certainly were,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “no laxness in our young days.”
“So that’s quite all right,” said Miss Marple, “and that’s the taxi now,” she
added, as a faint hoot was heard outside the house.
Mrs. McGillicuddy donned her heavy pepper-and-salt coat and Miss Marple
wrapped herself up with a good many shawls and scarves. Then the two ladies
got into the taxi and were driven to Rutherford Hall.
II
“Who can this be driving up?” Emma asked, looking out of the window, as the
taxi swept past it. “I do believe it’s Lucy’s old aunt.”
“What a bore,” said Cedric.
He was lying back in a long chair looking at Country Life with his feet
reposing on the side of the mantelpiece.
“Tell her you’re not at home.”
“When you say tell her I’m not at home, do you mean that I should go out and
say so? Or that I should tell Lucy to tell her aunt so?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Cedric. “I suppose I was thinking of our butler
and footman days, if we ever had them. I seem to remember a footman before the
war. He had an affair with the kitchen maid and there was a terrific rumpus
about it. Isn’t there one of those old hags about the place cleaning?”
But at that moment the door was opened by Mrs. Hart, whose afternoon it was
for cleaning the brasses, and Miss Marple came in, very fluttery, in a whirl
of shawls and scarves, with an uncompromising figure behind her.
“I do hope,” said Miss Marple, taking Emma’s hand, “that we are not intruding.
But you see, I’m going home the day after tomorrow, and I couldn’t bear not to
come over and see you and say good-bye, and thank you again for your goodness
to Lucy. Oh, I forgot. May I introduce my friend, Mrs. McGillicuddy, who is
staying with me?”
“How d’you do,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, looking at Emma with complete
attention and then shifting her gaze to Cedric, who had now risen to his feet.
Lucy entered the room at this moment.
“Aunt Jane, I had no idea….”
“I had to come and say good-bye to Miss Crackenthorpe,” said Miss Marple,
turning to her, “who has been so very, very kind to you, Lucy.”
“It’s Lucy who’s been very kind to us,” said Emma.
“Yes, indeed,” said Cedric. “We’ve worked her like a galley slave. Waiting on
the sick room, running up and down the stairs, cooking little invalid
messes….”
Miss Marple broke in. “I was so very, very sorry to hear of your illness. I do
hope you’re quite recovered now, Miss Crackenthorpe?”
“Oh, we’re quite well again now,” said Emma.
“Lucy told me you were all very ill. So dangerous, isn’t it, food poisoning?
Mushrooms, I understand.”
“The cause remains rather mysterious,” said Emma.
“Don’t you believe it,” said Cedric. “I bet you’ve heard the rumours that are
flying round, Miss—er—”
“Marple,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, as I say, I bet you’ve heard the rumours that are flying round. Nothing
like arsenic for raising a little flutter in the neighbourhood.”
“Cedric,” said Emma, “I wish you wouldn’t. You know Inspector Craddock said….”
“Bah,” said Cedric, “everybody knows. Even you’ve heard something, haven’t
you?” he turned to Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“I myself,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “have only just returned from abroad—the
day before yesterday,” she added.
“Ah, well, you’re not up on our local scandal then,” said Cedric. “Arsenic in
the curry, that’s what it was. Lucy’s aunt knows all about it, I bet.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I did just hear—I mean, it was just a hint, but of
course I didn’t want to embarrass you in any way, Miss Crackenthorpe.”
“You must pay no attention to my brother,” said Emma. “He just likes making
people uncomfortable.” She gave him an affectionate smile as she spoke.
The door opened and Mr. Crackenthorpe came in, tapping angrily with his stick.
“Where’s tea?” he said, “why isn’t tea ready? You! Girl!” he addressed Lucy,
“why haven’t you brought tea in?”
“It’s just ready, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I’m bringing it in now. I was just
setting the table ready.”
Lucy went out of the room again and Mr. Crackenthorpe was introduced to Miss
Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
McGillicuddy.
“Like my meals on time,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Punctuality and economy.
Those are my watchwords.”
“Very necessary, I’m sure,” said Miss Marple, “especially in these times with
taxation and everything.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe snorted. “Taxation! Don’t talk to me of those robbers. A
miserable pauper—that’s what I am. And it’s going to get worse, not better.
You wait, my boy,” he addressed Cedric, “when you get this place ten to one
the Socialists will have it off you and turn it into a Welfare Centre or
something. And take all your income to keep it up with!”
Lucy reappeared with a tea tray, Bryan Eastley followed her carrying a tray of
sandwiches, bread and butter and cake.
“What’s this? What’s this?” Mr. Crackenthorpe inspected the tray. “Frosted
cake? We having a party today? Nobody told me about it.”
A faint flush came into Emma’s face.
“Dr. Quimper’s coming to tea, Father. It’s his birthday today and—”
“Birthday?” snorted the old man. “What’s he doing with a birthday? Birthdays
are only for children. I never count my birthdays and I won’t let anyone else
celebrate them either.”
“Much cheaper,” agreed Cedric. “You save the price of candles on your cake.”
“That’s enough from you, boy,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe.
Miss Marple was shaking hands with Bryan Eastley. “I’ve heard about you, of
course,” she said, “from Lucy. Dear me, you remind me so of someone I used to
know at St. Mary Mead. That’s the village where I’ve lived for so many years,
you know. Ronnie Wells, the solicitor’s son. Couldn’t seem to settle somehow
when he went into his father’s business. He went out to East Africa and
started a series of cargo boats on the lake out there. Victoria Nyanza, or is
it Albert, I mean? Anyway, I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t a success, and he
lost all his capital. Most unfortunate! Not any relation of yours, I suppose?
The likeness is so great.”
“No,” said Bryan, “I don’t think I’ve any relations called Wells.”
“He was engaged to a very nice girl,” said Miss Marple. “Very sensible. She
tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn’t listen to her. He was wrong of course.
Women have a lot of sense, you know, when it comes to money matters. Not high
finance, of course. No woman can hope to understand that, my dear father said.
But everyday L.s.d.—that sort of thing. What a delightful view you have from
this window,” she added, making her way across and looking out.
Emma joined her.
“Such an expanse of parkland! How picturesque the cattle look against the
trees. One would never dream that one was in the middle of a town.”
“We’re rather an anachronism, I think,” said Emma. “If the windows were open
now you’d hear far off the noise of the traffic.”
“Oh, of course,” said Miss Marple, “there’s noise everywhere, isn’t there?
Even in St. Mary Mead. We’re now quite close to an airfield, you know, and
really the way those jet planes fly over! Most frightening. Two panes in my
little greenhouse broken the other day. Going through the sound barrier, or so
I understand, though what it means I never have known.”
“It’s quite simple, really,” said Bryan, approaching amiably. “You see, it’s
like this.”
Miss Marple dropped her handbag and Bryan politely picked it up. At the same
moment Mrs. McGillicuddy approached Emma and murmured, in an anguished
voice—the anguish was quite genuine since Mrs. McGillicuddy deeply disliked
the task which she was now performing:
“I wonder—could I go upstairs for a moment?”
“Of course,” said Emma.
“I’ll take you,” said Lucy.
Lucy and Mrs. McGillicuddy left the room together.
“Very cold, driving today,” said Miss Marple in a vaguely explanatory manner.
“About the sound barrier,” said Bryan, “you see it’s like this… Oh, hallo,
there’s Quimper.”
The doctor drove up in his car. He came in rubbing his hands and looking very
cold.
“Going to snow,” he said, “that’s my guess. Hallo, Emma, how are you? Good
lord, what’s all this?”
“We made you a birthday cake,” said Emma. “D’you remember? You told me today
was your birthday.”
“I didn’t expect all this,” said Quimper. “You know it’s years—why, it must
be—yes sixteen years since anyone’s remembered my birthday.” He looked almost
uncomfortably touched.
“Do you know Miss Marple?” Emma introduced him.
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Marple, “I met Dr. Quimper here before and he came and
saw me when I had a very nasty chill the other day and he was most kind.”
“All right again now, I hope?” said the doctor.
Miss Marple assured him that she was quite all right now.
“You haven’t been to see me lately, Quimper,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “I might
be dying for all the notice you take of me!”
“I don’t see you dying yet awhile,” said Dr. Quimper.
“I don’t mean to,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Come on, let’s have tea. What’re
we waiting for?”
“Oh, please,” said Miss Marple, “don’t wait for my friend. She would be most
upset if you did.”
They sat down and started tea. Miss Marple accepted a piece of bread and
butter first, and then went on to a sandwich.
“Are they—?” she hesitated.
“Fish,” said Bryan. “I helped make ’em.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe gave a cackle of laughter.
“Poisoned fishpaste,” he said. “That’s what they are. Eat ’em at your peril.”
“Please, Father!”
“You’ve got to be careful what you eat in this house,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe
to Miss Marple. “Two of my sons have been murdered like flies. Who’s doing
it—that’s what I want to know.”
“Don’t let him put you off,” said Cedric, handing the plate once more to Miss
Marple. “A touch of arsenic improves the complexion, they say, so long as you
don’t have too much.”
“Eat one yourself, boy,” said old Mr. Crackenthorpe.
“Want me to be official taster?” said Cedric. “Here goes.”
He took a sandwich and put it whole into his mouth. Miss Marple gave a gentle,
ladylike little laugh and took a sandwich. She took a bite, and said:
“I do think it’s so brave of you all to make these jokes. Yes, really, I think
it’s very brave indeed. I do admire bravery so much.”
She gave a sudden gasp and began to choke. “A fish bone,” she gasped out, “in
my throat.”
Quimper rose quickly. He went across to her, moved her backwards towards the
window and told her to open her mouth. He pulled out a case from his pocket,
selecting some forceps from it. With quick professional skill he peered down
the old lady’s throat. At that moment the door opened and Mrs. McGillicuddy,
followed by Lucy, came in. Mrs. McGillicuddy gave a sudden gasp as her eyes
fell on the tableau in front of her, Miss Marple leaning back and the doctor
holding her throat and tilting up her head.
“But that’s him,” cried Mrs. McGillicuddy. “That’s the man in the train….”
With incredible swiftness Miss Marple slipped from the doctor’s grasp and came
towards her friend.
“I thought you’d recognize him, Elspeth!” she said. “No. Don’t say another
word.” She turned triumphantly round to Dr. Quimper. “You didn’t know, did
you, Doctor, when you strangled that woman in the train, that somebody
actually saw you do it? It was my friend here. Mrs. McGillicuddy. She saw you.
Do you understand? Saw you with her own eyes. She was in another train that
was running parallel with yours.”
“What the hell?” Dr. Quimper made a quick step towards Mrs. McGillicuddy but
again, swiftly, Miss Marple was between him and her.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “She saw you, and she recognizes you, and she’ll
swear to it in court. It’s not often, I believe,” went on Miss Marple in her
gentle plaintive voice, “that anyone actually sees a murder committed. It’s
usually circumstantial evidence of course. But in this case the conditions
were very unusual. There was actually an eyewitness to murder.”
“You devilish old hag,” said Dr. Quimper. He lunged forward at Miss Marple but
this time it was Cedric who caught him by the shoulder.
“So you’re the murdering devil, are you?” said Cedric as he swung him round.
“I never liked you and I always thought you were a wrong ’un, but lord knows,
I never suspected you.”
Bryan Eastley came quickly to Cedric’s assistance. Inspector Craddock and
Inspector Bacon entered the room from the farther door.
“Dr. Quimper,” said Bacon, “I must caution you that….”
“You can take your caution to hell,” said Dr. Quimper. “Do you think anyone’s
going to believe what a couple of old women say? Who’s ever heard of all this
rigmarole about a train!”
Miss Marple said: “Elspeth McGillicuddy reported the murder to the police at
once on the 20th December and gave a description of the man.”
Dr. Quimper gave a sudden heave of the shoulders. “If ever a man had the
devil’s own luck,” said Dr. Quimper.
“But—” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“Be quiet, Elspeth,” said Miss Marple.
“Why should I want to murder a perfectly strange woman?” said Dr. Quimper.
“She wasn’t a strange woman,” said Inspector Craddock. “She was your wife.”
Twenty-seven
“So you see,” said Miss Marple, “it really turned out to be, as I began to
suspect, very, very simple. The simplest kind of crime. So many men seem to
murder their wives.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at Miss Marple and Inspector Craddock. “I’d be
obliged,” she said, “if you’d put me a little more up to date.”
“He saw a chance, you see,” said Miss Marple, “of marrying a rich wife, Emma
Crackenthorpe. Only he couldn’t marry her because he had a wife already.
They’d been separated for years but she wouldn’t divorce him. That fitted in
very well with what Inspector Craddock told me of this girl who called herself
Anna Stravinska. She had an English husband, so she told one of her friends,
and it was also said she was a very devout Catholic. Dr. Quimper couldn’t risk
marrying Emma bigamously, so he decided, being a very ruthless and cold-
blooded man, that he would get rid of his wife. The idea of murdering her in
the train and later putting her body in the sarcophagus in the barn was really
rather a clever one. He meant it to tie up, you see, with the Crackenthorpe
family. Before that he’d written a letter to Emma which purported to be from
the girl Martine whom Edmund Crackenthorpe had talked of marrying. Emma had
told Dr. Quimper all about her brother, you see. Then, when the moment arose
he encouraged her to go to the police with her story. He wanted the dead woman
identified as Martine. I think he may have heard that inquiries were being
made by the Paris police about Anna Stravinska, and so he arranged to have a
postcard come from her from Jamaica.
“It was easy for him to arrange to meet his wife in London, to tell her that
he hoped to be reconciled with her and that he would like her to come down and
‘meet his family.’ We won’t talk about the next part of it, which is very
unpleasant to think about. Of course he was a greedy man. When he thought
about taxation, and how much it cuts into income, he began thinking that it
would be nice to have a good deal more capital. Perhaps he’d already thought
of that before he decided to murder his wife. Anyway, he started spreading
rumours that someone was trying to poison old Mr. Crackenthorpe so as to get
the ground prepared, and then he ended by administering arsenic to the family.
Not too much, of course, for he didn’t want old Mr. Crackenthorpe to die.”
“But I still don’t see how he managed,” said Craddock. “He wasn’t in the house
when the curry was being prepared.”
“Oh, but there wasn’t any arsenic in the curry then,” said Miss Marple. “He
added it to the curry afterwards when he took it away to be tested. He
probably put the arsenic in the cocktail jug earlier. Then, of course, it was
quite easy for him, in his role of medical attendant, to poison off Alfred
Crackenthorpe and also to send the tablets to Harold in London, having
safeguarded himself by telling Harold that he wouldn’t need anymore tablets.
Everything he did was bold and audacious and cruel and greedy, and I am really
very, very sorry,” finished Miss Marple, looking as fierce as a fluffy old
lady can look, “that they have abolished capital punishment because I do feel
that if there is anyone who ought to hang, it’s Dr. Quimper.”
“Hear, hear,” said Inspector Craddock.
“It occurred to me, you know,” continued Miss Marple, “that even if you only
see anybody from the back view, so to speak, nevertheless a back view is
characteristic. I thought that if Elspeth were to see Dr. Quimper in exactly
the same position as she’d seen him in the train in, that is, with his back to
her, bent over a woman whom he was holding by the throat, then I was almost
sure she would recognize him, or would make some kind of startled exclamation.
That is why I had to lay my little plan with Lucy’s kind assistance.”
“I must say,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “it gave me quite a turn. I said,
‘That’s him’ before I could stop myself. And yet, you know, I hadn’t actually
seen the man’s face and—”
“I was terribly afraid that you were going to say so, Elspeth,” said Miss
Marple.
“I was,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “I was going to say that of course I hadn’t
seen his face.”
“That,” said Miss Marple, “would have been quite fatal. You see, dear, he
thought you really did recognize him. I mean, he couldn’t know that you hadn’t
seen his face.”
“A good thing I held my tongue then,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“I wasn’t going to let you say another word,” said Miss Marple.
Craddock laughed suddenly. “You two!” he said. “You’re a marvellous pair. What
next, Miss Marple? What’s the happy ending? What happens to poor Emma
Crackenthorpe, for instance?”
“She’ll get over the doctor, of course,” said Miss Marple, “and I dare say if
her father were to die—and I don’t think he’s quite so robust as he thinks he
is—that she’d go on a cruise or perhaps to stay abroad like Geraldine Webb,
and I dare say something might come of it. A nicer man than Dr. Quimper, I
hope.”
“What about Lucy Eyelesbarrow? Wedding bells there too?”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Marple, “I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Which of ’em is she going to choose?” said Dermot Craddock.
“Don’t you know?” said Miss Marple.
“No, I don’t,” said Craddock. “Do you?”
“Oh, yes, I think so,” said Miss Marple.
And she twinkled at him. | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
The Agatha Christie Collection
THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES
Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com
The Agatha Christie Collection
THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES
Join the legendary spinster sleuth from St. Mary Mead in solving murders far
and wide.
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 From Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Story Collection
THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES
Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving couple from Young
Adventurers Ltd.
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com
The Agatha Christie Collection
Don’t miss a single one of Agatha Christie’s stand-alone novels and short-
story collections.
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com
About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any
language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more
than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign
languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story
collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the
name Mary Westmacott.
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital
dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with
her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the
Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane
Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-
fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker
Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films,
and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in
1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film
adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot,
respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by
David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine
McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir
Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also
serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of
Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She
died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth
anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.
www.AgathaChristie.com
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THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
The Hercule Poirot Mysteries
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
The Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs Postern of Fate
Credits
Cover illustration and design by Sara Wood | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Credits
Cover illustration and design by Sara Wood
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are
drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
This title was previously published as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!.
AGATHA CHRISTIE® MARPLE® MISS MARPLE® 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON™. Copyright © 2011
Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. 4:50 from
Paddington was first published in 1957.
4:50 FROM PADDINGTON © 1957. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a
member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have
been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the
text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced,
transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or
introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or
by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-207366-2
EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-173844-9
11 12 13 14 15
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http://www.harpercollins.com | 4-50 from paddington - agatha christie.epub |
Agatha Christie
A Caribbean Mystery
A Miss Marple Mystery
To my old friend John Cruickshank Rose with happy memories of my visit to the
West Indies
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1. Major Palgrave Tells a Story
2. Miss Marple Makes Comparisons
3. A Death in the Hotel
4. Miss Marple Seeks Medical Attention
5. Miss Marple Makes a Decision
6. In the Small Hours
7. Morning on the Beach
8. A Talk with Esther Walters
9. Miss Prescott and Others
10. A Decision in Jamestown
11. Evening at the Golden Palm
12. Old Sins Cast Long Shadows
13. Exit Victoria Johnson
14. Inquiry
15. Inquiry Continued
16. Miss Marple Seeks Assistance
17. Mr. Rafiel Takes Charge
18. Without Benefit of Clergy
19. Uses of a Shoe
20. Night Alarm
21. Jackson on Cosmetics
22. A Man in Her Life?
23. The Last Day
24. Nemesis
25. Miss Marple Uses Her Imagination
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by Agatha Christie
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
MAJOR PALGRAVE TELLS A STORY
“Take all this business about Kenya,” said Major Palgrave.
“Lots of chaps gabbing away who know nothing about the place! Now I spent
fourteen years of my life there. Some of the best years of my life, too—”
Old Miss Marple inclined her head.
It was a gentle gesture of courtesy. Whilst Major Palgrave proceeded with the
somewhat uninteresting recollections of a lifetime, Miss Marple peacefully
pursued her own thoughts. It was a routine with which she was well acquainted.
The locale varied. In the past, it had been predominantly India. Majors,
Colonels, Lieutenant-Generals—and a familiar series of words: Simla. Bearers.
Tigers. Chota Hazri—Tiffin. Khitmagars, and so on. With Major Palgrave the
terms were slightly different. Safari. Kikuyu. Elephants. Swahili. But the
pattern was essentially the same. An elderly man who needed a listener so that
he could, in memory, relive days in which he had been happy. Days when his
back had been straight, his eyesight keen, his hearing acute. Some of these
talkers had been handsome soldierly old boys, some again had been regrettably
unattractive; and Major Palgrave, purple of face, with a glass eye, and the
general appearance of a stuffed frog, belonged in the latter category.
Miss Marple had bestowed on all of them the same gentle charity. She had sat
attentively, inclining her head from time to time in gentle agreement,
thinking her own thoughts and enjoying what there was to enjoy: in this case
the deep blue of a Caribbean Sea.
So kind of dear Raymond—she was thinking gratefully, so really and truly kind
… Why he should take so much trouble about his old aunt, she really did not
know. Conscience, perhaps; family feeling? Or possibly he was truly fond of
her….
She thought, on the whole, that he was fond of her—he always had been—in a
slightly exasperated and contemptuous way! Always trying to bring her up to
date. Sending her books to read. Modern novels. So difficult—all about such
unpleasant people, doing such very odd things and not, apparently, even
enjoying them. “Sex” as a word had not been mentioned in Miss Marple’s young
days; but there had been plenty of it—not talked about so much—but enjoyed far
more than nowadays, or so it seemed to her. Though usually labelled Sin, she
couldn’t help feeling that that was preferable to what it seemed to be
nowadays—a kind of Duty.
Her glance strayed for a moment to the book on her lap lying open at page
twenty-three which was as far as she had got (and indeed as far as she felt
like getting!).
“‘Do you mean that you’ve had no sexual experience at ALL?’ demanded the young
man incredulously. ‘At nineteen? But you must. It’s vital.’
“The girl hung her head unhappily, her straight greasy hair fell forward over
her face.
“‘I know,’ she muttered, ‘I know.’
“He looked at her, stained old jersey, the bare feet, the dirty toe nails, the
smell of rancid fat … He wondered why he found her so maddeningly attractive.”
Miss Marple wondered too! And really! To have sex experience urged on you
exactly as though it was an iron tonic! Poor young things….
“My dear Aunt Jane, why must you bury your head in the sand like a very
delightful ostrich? All bound up in this idyllic rural life of yours. REAL
LIFE—that’s what matters.”
Thus Raymond—and his Aunt Jane—had looked properly abashed—and said “Yes,” she
was afraid she was rather old-fashioned.
Though really rural life was far from idyllic. People like Raymond were so
ignorant. In the course of her duties in a country parish, Jane Marple had
acquired quite a comprehensive knowledge of the facts of rural life. She had
no urge to talk about them, far less to write about them—but she knew them.
Plenty of sex, natural and unnatural. Rape, incest, perversion of all kinds.
(Some kinds, indeed, that even the clever young men from Oxford who wrote
books didn’t seem to have heard about.)
Miss Marple came back to the Caribbean and took up the thread of what Major
Palgrave was saying….
“A very unusual experience,” she said encouragingly. “Most interesting.”
“I could tell you a lot more. Some of the things, of course, not fit for a
lady’s ears—”
With the ease of long practice, Miss Marple dropped her eyelids in a fluttery
fashion, and Major Palgrave continued his bowdlerized version of tribal
customs whilst Miss Marple resumed her thoughts of her affectionate nephew.
Raymond West was a very successful novelist and made a large income, and he
conscientiously and kindly did all he could to alleviate the life of his
elderly aunt. The preceding winter she had had a bad go of pneumonia, and
medical opinion had advised sunshine. In lordly fashion Raymond had suggested
a trip to the West Indies. Miss Marple had demurred—at the expense, the
distance, the difficulties of travel, and at abandoning her house in St. Mary
Mead. Raymond had dealt with everything. A friend who was writing a book
wanted a quiet place in the country. “He’ll look after the house all right.
He’s very house proud. He’s a queer. I mean—”
He had paused, slightly embarrassed—but surely even dear old Aunt Jane must
have heard of queers.
He went on to deal with the next points. Travel was nothing nowadays. She
would go by air—another friend, Diana Horrocks, was going out to Trinidad and
would see Aunt Jane was all right as far as there, and at St. Honoré she would
stay at the Golden Palm Hotel which was run by the Sandersons. Nicest couple
in the world. They’d see she was all right. He’d write to them straight away.
As it happened the Sandersons had returned to England. But their successors,
the Kendals, had been very nice and friendly and had assured Raymond that he
need have no qualms about his aunt. There was a very good doctor on the island
in case of emergency and they themselves would keep an eye on her and see to
her comfort.
They had been as good as their word, too. Molly Kendal was an ingenuous blonde
of twenty odd, always apparently in good spirits. She had greeted the old lady
warmly and did everything to make her comfortable. Tim Kendal, her husband,
lean, dark and in his thirties, had also been kindness itself.
So there she was, thought Miss Marple, far from the rigours of the English
climate, with a nice bungalow of her own, with friendly smiling West Indian
girls to wait on her, Tim Kendal to meet her in the dining room and crack a
joke as he advised her about the day’s menu, and an easy path from her
bungalow to the sea front and the bathing beach where she could sit in a
comfortable basket chair and watch the bathing. There were even a few elderly
guests for company. Old Mr. Rafiel, Dr. Graham, Canon Prescott and his sister,
and her present cavalier Major Palgrave.
What more could an elderly lady want?
It is deeply to be regretted, and Miss Marple felt guilty even admitting it to
herself, but she was not as satisfied as she ought to be.
Lovely and warm, yes—and so good for her rheumatism—and beautiful scenery,
though perhaps—a trifle monotonous? So many palm trees. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
So many palm trees. Everything the same
every day—never anything happening. Not like St. Mary Mead where something was
always happening. Her nephew had once compared life in St. Mary Mead to scum
on a pond, and she had indignantly pointed out that smeared on a slide under
the microscope there would be plenty of life to be observed. Yes, indeed, in
St. Mary Mead, there was always something going on. Incident after incident
flashed through Miss Marple’s mind, the mistake in old Mrs. Linnett’s cough
mixture—that very odd behaviour of young Polegate—the time when Georgy Wood’s
mother had come down to see him—(but was she his mother—?) the real cause of
the quarrel between Joe Arden and his wife. So many interesting human
problems—giving rise to endless pleasurable hours of speculation. If only
there were something here that she could—well—get her teeth into.
With a start she realized that Major Palgrave had abandoned Kenya for the
North West Frontier and was relating his experiences as a subaltern.
Unfortunately he was asking her with great earnestness: “Now don’t you agree?”
Long practice had made Miss Marple quite an adept at dealing with that one.
“I don’t really feel that I’ve got sufficient experience to judge. I’m afraid
I’ve led rather a sheltered life.”
“And so you should, dear lady, so you should,” cried Major Palgrave gallantly.
“You’ve had such a very varied life,” went on Miss Marple, determined to make
amends for her former pleasurable inattention.
“Not bad,” said Major Palgrave, complacently. “Not bad at all.” He looked
round him appreciatively. “Lovely place, this.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Miss Marple and was then unable to stop herself going on:
“Does anything ever happen here, I wonder?”
Major Palgrave stared.
“Oh rather. Plenty of scandals—eh what? Why, I could tell you—”
But it wasn’t really scandals Miss Marple wanted. Nothing to get your teeth
into in scandals nowadays. Just men and women changing partners, and calling
attention to it, instead of trying decently to hush it up and be properly
ashamed of themselves.
“There was even a murder here a couple of years ago. Man called Harry Western.
Made a big splash in the papers. Dare say you remember it.”
Miss Marple nodded without enthusiasm. It had not been her kind of murder. It
had made a big splash mainly because everyone concerned had been very rich. It
had seemed likely enough that Harry Western had shot the Count de Ferrari, his
wife’s lover, and equally likely that his well-arranged alibi had been bought
and paid for. Everyone seemed to have been drunk, and there was a fine
scattering of dope addicts. Not really interesting people, thought Miss
Marple—although no doubt very spectacular and attractive to look at. But
definitely not her cup of tea.
“And if you ask me, that wasn’t the only murder about that time.” He nodded
and winked. “I had my suspicions—oh!—well—”
Miss Marple dropped her ball of wool, and the Major stooped and picked it up
for her.
“Talking of murder,” he went on. “I once came across a very curious case—not
exactly personally.”
Miss Marple smiled encouragingly.
“Lot of chaps talking at the club one day, you know, and a chap began telling
a story. Medical man he was. One of his cases. Young fellow came and knocked
him up in the middle of the night. His wife had hanged herself. They hadn’t
got a telephone, so after the chap had cut her down and done what he could,
he’d got out his car and hared off looking for a doctor. Well, she wasn’t dead
but pretty far gone. Anyway, she pulled through. Young fellow seemed devoted
to her. Cried like a child. He’d noticed that she’d been odd for some time,
fits of depression and all that. Well, that was that. Everything seemed all
right. But actually, about a month later, the wife took an overdose of
sleeping stuff and passed out. Sad case.”
Major Palgrave paused, and nodded his head several times. Since there was
obviously more to come Miss Marple waited.
“And that’s that, you might say. Nothing there. Neurotic woman, nothing out of
the usual. But about a year later, this medical chap was swapping yarns with a
fellow medico, and the other chap told him about a woman who’d tried to drown
herself, husband got her out, got a doctor, they pulled her round—and then a
few weeks later she gassed herself.
“Well, a bit of a coincidence—eh? Same sort of story. My chap said—‘I had a
case rather like that. Name of Jones (or whatever the name was)—What was your
man’s name?’ ‘Can’t remember. Robinson I think. Certainly not Jones.’
“Well, the chaps looked at each other and said it was pretty odd. And then my
chap pulled out a snapshot. He showed it to the second chap. ‘That’s the
fellow,’ he said—‘I’d gone along the next day to check up on the particulars,
and I noticed a magnificent species of hibiscus just by the front door, a
variety I’d never seen before in this country. My camera was in the car and I
took a photo. Just as I snapped the shutter the husband came out of the front
door so I got him as well. Don’t think he realized it. I asked him about the
hibiscus but he couldn’t tell me its name.’ Second medico looked at the snap.
He said: ‘It’s a bit out of focus—But I could swear—at any rate I’m almost
sure—it’s the same man.’
“Don’t know if they followed it up. But if so they didn’t get anywhere. Expect
Mr. Jones or Robinson covered his tracks too well. But queer story, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t think things like that could happen.”
“Oh, yes, I would,” said Miss Marple placidly. “Practically every day.”
“Oh, come, come. That’s a bit fantastic.”
“If a man gets a formula that works—he won’t stop. He’ll go on.”
“Brides in the bath—eh?”
“That kind of thing, yes.”
“Doctor let me have that snap just as a curiosity—”
Major Palgrave began fumbling through an overstuffed wallet murmuring to
himself: “Lots of things in here—don’t know why I keep all these things….”
Miss Marple thought she did know. They were part of the Major’s stock-in-
trade. They illustrated his repertoire of stories. The story he had just told,
or so she suspected, had not been originally like that—it had been worked up a
good deal in repeated telling.
The Major was still shuffling and muttering—“Forgotten all about that
business. Good-looking woman she was, you’d never suspect—now where—Ah—that
takes my mind back—what tusks! I must show you—”
He stopped—sorted out a small photographic print and peered down at it.
“Like to see the picture of a murderer?”
He was about to pass it to her when his movement was suddenly arrested.
Looking more like a stuffed frog than ever, Major Palgrave appeared to be
staring fixedly over her right shoulder—from whence came the sound of
approaching footsteps and voices.
“Well, I’m damned—I mean—” He stuffed everything back into his wallet and
crammed it into his pocket.
His face went an even deeper shade of purplish red—He exclaimed in a loud,
artificial voice:
“As I was saying—I’d like to have shown you those elephant tusks—Biggest
elephant I’ve ever shot—Ah, hallo!” His voice took on a somewhat spurious
hearty note.
“Look who’s here! The great quartette—Flora and Fauna—What luck have you had
today—Eh?”
The approaching footsteps resolved themselves into four of the hotel guests
whom Miss Marple already knew by sight. They consisted of two married couples
and though Miss Marple was not as yet acquainted with their surnames, she knew
that the big man with the upstanding bush of thick grey hair was addressed as
“Greg,” that the golden blonde woman, his wife, was known as Lucky—and that
the other married couple, the dark lean man and the handsome but rather
weather-beaten woman, were Edward and Evelyn. They were botanists, she
understood, and also interested in birds.
“No luck at all,” said Greg—“At least no luck in getting what we were after.”
“Don’t know if you know Miss Marple? Colonel and Mrs. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon and Greg and
Lucky Dyson.”
They greeted her pleasantly and Lucky said loudly that she’d die if she didn’t
have a drink at once or sooner.
Greg hailed Tim Kendal who was sitting a little way away with his wife poring
over account books.
“Hi, Tim. Get us some drinks.” He addressed the others. “Planters Punch?”
They agreed.
“Same for you, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple said Thank you, but she would prefer fresh lime.
“Fresh lime it is,” said Tim Kendal, “and five Planters Punches.”
“Join us, Tim?”
“Wish I could. But I’ve got to fix up these accounts. Can’t leave Molly to
cope with everything. Steel band tonight, by the way.”
“Good,” cried Lucky. “Damn it,” she winced, “I’m all over thorns. Ouch! Edward
deliberately rammed me into a thorn bush!”
“Lovely pink flowers,” said Hillingdon.
“And lovely long thorns. Sadistic brute, aren’t you, Edward?”
“Not like me,” said Greg, grinning. “Full of the milk of human kindness.”
Evelyn Hillingdon sat down by Miss Marple and started talking to her in an
easy pleasant way.
Miss Marple put her knitting down on her lap. Slowly and with some difficulty,
owing to rheumatism in the neck, she turned her head over her right shoulder
to look behind her. At some little distance there was the large bungalow
occupied by the rich Mr. Rafiel. But it showed no sign of life.
She replied suitably to Evelyn’s remarks (really, how kind people were to
her!) but her eyes scanned thoughtfully the faces of the two men.
Edward Hillingdon looked a nice man. Quiet but with a lot of charm … And
Greg—big, boisterous, happy-looking. He and Lucky were Canadian or American,
she thought.
She looked at Major Palgrave, still acting a bonhomie a little larger than
life.
Interesting….
Two
MISS MARPLE MAKES COMPARISONS
I
It was very gay that evening at the Golden Palm Hotel.
Seated at her little corner table, Miss Marple looked round her in an
interested fashion. The dining room was a large room open on three sides to
the soft warm scented air of the West Indies. There were small table lamps,
all softly coloured. Most of the women were in evening dress: light cotton
prints out of which bronzed shoulders and arms emerged. Miss Marple herself
had been urged by her nephew’s wife, Joan, in the sweetest way possible, to
accept “a small cheque.”
“Because, Aunt Jane, it will be rather hot out there, and I don’t expect you
have any very thin clothes.”
Jane Marple had thanked her and had accepted the cheque. She came of the age
when it was natural for the old to support and finance the young, but also for
the middle-aged to look after the old. She could not, however, force herself
to buy anything very thin! At her age she seldom felt more than pleasantly
warm even in the hottest weather, and the temperature of St. Honoré was not
really what is referred to as “tropical heat.” This evening she was attired in
the best traditions of the provincial gentlewoman of England—grey lace.
Not that she was the only elderly person present. There were representatives
of all ages in the room. There were elderly tycoons with young third or fourth
wives. There were middle-aged couples from the North of England. There was a
gay family from Caracas complete with children. The various countries of South
America were well represented, all chattering loudly in Spanish or Portuguese.
There was a solid English background of two clergymen, one doctor and one
retired judge. There was even a family of Chinese. The dining room service was
mainly done by women, tall black girls of proud carriage, dressed in crisp
white; but there was an experienced Italian head waiter in charge, and a
French wine waiter, and there was the attentive eye of Tim Kendal watching
over everything, pausing here and there to have a social word with people at
their tables. His wife seconded him ably. She was a good-looking girl. Her
hair was a natural golden blonde and she had a wide generous mouth that
laughed easily. It was very seldom that Molly Kendal was out of temper. Her
staff worked for her enthusiastically, and she adapted her manner carefully to
suit her different guests. With the elderly men she laughed and flirted; she
congratulated the younger women on their clothes.
“Oh, what a smashing dress you’ve got on tonight, Mrs. Dyson. I’m so jealous I
could tear it off your back.” But she looked very well in her own dress, or so
Miss Marple thought: a white sheath, with a pale green embroidered silk shawl
thrown over her shoulders. Lucky was fingering the shawl. “Lovely colour! I’d
like one like it.” “You can get them at the shop here,” Molly told her and
passed on. She did not pause by Miss Marple’s table. Elderly ladies she
usually left to her husband. “The old dears like a man much better,” she used
to say.
Tim Kendal came and bent over Miss Marple.
“Nothing special you want, is there?” he asked. “Because you’ve only got to
tell me—and I could get it specially cooked for you. Hotel food, and semi-
tropical at that, isn’t quite what you’re used to at home, I expect?”
Miss Marple smiled and said that that was one of the pleasures of coming
abroad.
“That’s all right, then. But if there is anything—”
“Such as?”
“Well—” Tim Kendal looked a little doubtful—“Bread and butter pudding?” he
hazarded.
Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without bread and
butter pudding very nicely for the present.
She picked up her spoon and began to eat her passion fruit sundae with
cheerful appreciation.
Then the steel band began to play. The steel bands were one of the main
attractions of the islands. Truth to tell, Miss Marple could have done very
well without them. She considered that they made a hideous noise,
unnecessarily loud. The pleasure that everyone else took in them was
undeniable, however, and Miss Marple, in the true spirit of her youth, decided
that as they had to be, she must manage somehow to learn to like them. She
could hardly request Tim Kendal to conjure up from somewhere the muted strains
of the “Blue Danube.” (So graceful—waltzing.) Most peculiar, the way people
danced nowadays. Flinging themselves about, seeming quite contorted. Oh well,
young people must enjoy—Her thoughts were arrested. Because, now she came to
think of it, very few of these people were young. Dancing, lights, the music
of a band (even a steel band), all that surely was for youth. But where was
youth? Studying, she supposed, at universities, or doing a job—with a
fortnight’s holiday a year. A place like this was too far away and too
expensive. This gay and carefree life was all for the thirties and the
forties—and the old men who were trying to live up (or down) to their young
wives. It seemed, somehow, a pity.
Miss Marple sighed for youth. There was Mrs. Kendal, of course. She wasn’t
more than twenty-two or three, probably, and she seemed to be enjoying
herself—but even so, it was a job she was doing.
At a table nearby Canon Prescott and his sister were sitting. They motioned to
Miss Marple to join them for coffee and she did so. Miss Prescott was a thin
severe-looking woman, the Canon was a round, rubicund man, breathing
geniality.
Coffee was brought, and chairs were pushed a little way away from the tables.
Miss Prescott opened a work bag and took out some frankly hideous table mats
that she was hemming. She told Miss Marple all about the day’s events. They
had visited a new Girls’ School in the morning. After an afternoon’s rest,
they had walked through a cane plantation to have tea at a pension where some
friends of theirs were staying.
Since the Prescotts had been at the Golden Palm longer than Miss Marple, they
were able to enlighten her as to some of her fellow guests.
That very old man, Mr. Rafiel. He came every year. Fantastically rich! Owned
an enormous chain of supermarkets in the North of England. The young woman
with him was his secretary, Esther Walters—a widow. (Quite all right, of
course. Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly eighty!) | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly eighty!)
Miss Marple accepted the propriety of the relationship with an understanding
nod and the Canon remarked:
“A very nice young woman; her mother, I understand, is a widow and lives in
Chichester.”
“Mr. Rafiel has a valet with him, too. Or rather a kind of Nurse
Attendant—he’s a qualified masseur, I believe. Jackson, his name is. Poor Mr.
Rafiel is practically paralysed. So sad—with all that money, too.”
“A generous and cheerful giver,” said Canon Prescott approvingly.
People were regrouping themselves round about, some going farther from the
steel band, others crowding up to it. Major Palgrave had joined the
Hillingdon-Dyson quartette.
“Now those people—” said Miss Prescott, lowering her voice quite unnecessarily
since the steel band easily drowned it.
“Yes, I was going to ask you about them.”
“They were here last year. They spend three months every year in the West
Indies, going round the different islands. The tall thin man is Colonel
Hillingdon and the dark woman is his wife—they are botanists. The other two,
Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Dyson—they’re American. He writes on butterflies, I
believe. And all of them are interested in birds.”
“So nice for people to have open-air hobbies,” said Canon Prescott genially.
“I don’t think they’d like to hear you call it hobbies, Jeremy,” said his
sister. “They have articles printed in the National Geographic and in the
Royal Horticultural Journal. They take themselves very seriously.”
A loud outburst of laughter came from the table they had been observing. It
was loud enough to overcome the steel band. Gregory Dyson was leaning back in
his chair and thumping the table, his wife was protesting, and Major Palgrave
emptied his glass and seemed to be applauding.
They hardly qualified for the moment as people who took themselves seriously.
“Major Palgrave should not drink so much,” said Miss Prescott acidly. “He has
blood pressure.”
A fresh supply of Planters Punches was brought to the table.
“It’s so nice to get people sorted out,” said Miss Marple. “When I met them
this afternoon I wasn’t sure which was married to which.”
There was a slight pause. Miss Prescott coughed a small dry cough, and
said—“Well, as to that—”
“Joan,” said the Canon in an admonitory voice. “Perhaps it would be wise to
say no more.”
“Really, Jeremy, I wasn’t going to say anything. Only that last year, for some
reason or other—I really don’t know why—we got the idea that Mrs. Dyson was
Mrs. Hillingdon until someone told us she wasn’t.”
“It’s odd how one gets impressions, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple innocently.
Her eyes met Miss Prescott’s for a moment. A flash of womanly understanding
passed between them.
A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was de trop.
Another signal passed between the women. It said as clearly as if the words
had been spoken: “Some other time….”
“Mr. Dyson calls his wife ‘Lucky.’ Is that her real name or a nickname?” asked
Miss Marple.
“It can hardly be her real name, I should think.”
“I happened to ask him,” said the Canon. “He said he called her Lucky because
she was his good-luck piece. If he lost her, he said, he’d lose his luck. Very
nicely put, I thought.”
“He’s very fond of joking,” said Miss Prescott.
The Canon looked at his sister doubtfully.
The steel band outdid itself with a wild burst of cacophony and a troupe of
dancers came racing on to the floor.
Miss Marple and the others turned their chairs to watch. Miss Marple enjoyed
the dancing better than the music; she liked the shuffling feet and the
rhythmic sway of the bodies. It seemed, she thought, very real. It had a kind
of power of understatement.
Tonight, for the first time, she began to feel slightly at home in her new
environment … Up to now, she had missed what she usually found so easy, points
of resemblance in the people she met, to various people known to her
personally. She had, possibly, been dazzled by the gay clothes and the exotic
colouring; but soon, she felt, she would be able to make some interesting
comparisons.
Molly Kendal, for instance, was like that nice girl whose name she couldn’t
remember, but who was a conductress on the Market Basing bus. Helped you in,
and never rang the bus on until she was sure you’d sat down safely. Tim Kendal
was just a little like the head waiter at the Royal George in Medchester.
Self-confident, and yet, at the same time, worried. (He had had an ulcer, she
remembered.) As for Major Palgrave, he was undistinguishable from General
Leroy, Captain Flemming, Admiral Wicklow and Commander Richardson. She went on
to someone more interesting. Greg for instance? Greg was difficult because he
was American. A dash of Sir George Trollope, perhaps, always so full of jokes
at the Civil Defence meetings—or perhaps Mr. Murdoch the butcher. Mr. Murdoch
had had rather a bad reputation, but some people said it was just gossip, and
that Mr. Murdoch himself liked to encourage the rumours! “Lucky” now? Well,
that was easy—Marleen at the Three Crowns. Evelyn Hillingdon? She couldn’t fit
Evelyn in precisely. In appearance she fitted many roles—tall thin weather-
beaten Englishwomen were plentiful. Lady Caroline Wolfe, Peter Wolfe’s first
wife, who had committed suicide? Or there was Leslie James—that quiet woman
who seldom showed what she felt and who had sold up her house and left without
ever telling anyone she was going. Colonel Hillingdon? No immediate clue
there. She’d have to get to know him a little first. One of those quiet men
with good manners. You never knew what they were thinking about. Sometimes
they surprised you. Major Harper, she remembered, had quietly cut his throat
one day. Nobody had ever known why. Miss Marple thought that she did know—but
she’d never been quite sure….
Her eyes strayed to Mr. Rafiel’s table. The principal thing known about Mr.
Rafiel was that he was incredibly rich, he came every year to the West Indies,
he was semi-paralysed and looked like a wrinkled old bird of prey. His clothes
hung loosely on his shrunken form. He might have been seventy or eighty, or
even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was frequently rude, but people
seldom took offence, partly because he was so rich, and partly because of his
overwhelming personality which hypnotized you into feeling that somehow, Mr.
Rafiel had the right to be rude if he wanted to.
With him sat his secretary, Mrs. Walters. She had corn-coloured hair, and a
pleasant face. Mr. Rafiel was frequently very rude to her, but she never
seemed to notice it—She was not so much subservient, as oblivious. She behaved
like a well-trained hospital nurse. Possibly, thought Miss Marple, she had
been a hospital nurse.
A young man, tall and good-looking, in a white jacket, came to stand by Mr.
Rafiel’s chair. The old man looked up at him, nodded, then motioned him to a
chair. The young man sat down as bidden. “Mr. Jackson, I presume,” said Miss
Marple to herself—“His valet-attendant.”
She studied Mr. Jackson with some attention.
II
In the bar, Molly Kendal stretched her back, and slipped off her high-heeled
shoes. Tim came in from the terrace to join her. They had the bar to
themselves for the moment.
“Tired, darling?” he asked.
“Just a bit. I seem to be feeling my feet tonight.”
“Not too much for you, is it? All this? I know it’s hard work.” He looked at
her anxiously.
She laughed. “Oh, Tim, don’t be ridiculous. I love it here. It’s gorgeous. The
kind of dream I’ve always had, come true.”
“Yes, it would be all right—if one was just a guest. But running the
show—that’s work.”
“Well, you can’t have anything for nothing, can you?” said Molly Kendal
reasonably.
Tim Kendal frowned.
“You think it’s going all right? A success? | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Tim Kendal frowned.
“You think it’s going all right? A success? We’re making a go of it?”
“Of course we are.”
“You don’t think people are saying, ‘It’s not the same as when the Sandersons
were here.’”
“Of course someone will be saying that—they always do! But only some old
stick-in-the-mud. I’m sure that we’re far better at the job than they were.
We’re more glamorous. You charm the old pussies and manage to look as though
you’d like to make love to the desperate forties and fifties, and I ogle the
old gentlemen and make them feel sexy dogs—or play the sweet little daughter
the sentimental ones would love to have had. Oh, we’ve got it all taped
splendidly.”
Tim’s frown vanished.
“As long as you think so. I get scared. We’ve risked everything on making a
job of this. I chucked my job—”
“And quite right to do so,” Molly put in quickly. “It was soul-destroying.”
He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.
“I tell you we’ve got it taped,” she repeated. “Why do you always worry?”
“Made that way, I suppose. I’m always thinking—suppose something should go
wrong.”
“What sort of thing—”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somebody might get drowned.”
“Not they. It’s one of the safest of all the beaches. And we’ve got that
hulking Swede always on guard.”
“I’m a fool,” said Tim Kendal. He hesitated—and then said, “You—haven’t had
any more of those dreams, have you?”
“That was shellfish,” said Molly, and laughed. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Three
A DEATH IN THE HOTEL
Miss Marple had her breakfast brought to her in bed as usual. Tea, a boiled
egg, and a slice of pawpaw.
The fruit on the island, thought Miss Marple, was rather disappointing. It
seemed always to be pawpaw. If she could have a nice apple now—but apples
seemed to be unknown.
Now that she had been here a week, Miss Marple had cured herself of the
impulse to ask what the weather was like. The weather was always the
same—fine. No interesting variations.
“The many-splendoured weather of an English day,” she murmured to herself and
wondered if it was a quotation, or whether she had made it up.
There were, of course, hurricanes, or so she understood. But hurricanes were
not weather in Miss Marple’s sense of the word. They were more in the nature
of an Act of God. There was rain, short violent rainfall that lasted five
minutes and stopped abruptly. Everything and everyone was wringing wet, but in
another five minutes they were dry again.
The black West Indian girl smiled and said Good Morning as she placed the tray
on Miss Marple’s knees. Such lovely white teeth and so happy and smiling. Nice
natures, all these girls, and a pity they were so averse to getting married.
It worried Canon Prescott a good deal. Plenty of christenings, he said, trying
to console himself, but no weddings.
Miss Marple ate her breakfast and decided how she would spend her day. It
didn’t really take much deciding. She would get up at her leisure, moving
slowly because it was rather hot and her fingers weren’t as nimble as they
used to be. Then she would rest for ten minutes or so, and she would take her
knitting and walk slowly along towards the hotel and decide where she would
settle herself. On the terrace overlooking the sea? Or should she go on to the
bathing beach to watch the bathers and the children? Usually it was the
latter. In the afternoon, after her rest, she might take a drive. It really
didn’t matter very much.
Today would be a day like any other day, she said to herself.
Only, of course, it wasn’t.
Miss Marple carried out her programme as planned and was slowly making her way
along the path towards the hotel when she met Molly Kendal. For once that
sunny young woman was not smiling. Her air of distress was so unlike her that
Miss Marple said immediately:
“My dear, is anything wrong?”
Molly nodded. She hesitated and then said: “Well, you’ll have to know—everyone
will have to know. It’s Major Palgrave. He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes. He died in the night.”
“Oh, dear, I am sorry.”
“Yes, it’s horrid having a death here. It makes everyone depressed. Of
course—he was quite old.”
“He seemed quite well and cheerful yesterday,” said Miss Marple, slightly
resenting this calm assumption that everyone of advanced years was liable to
die at any minute.
“He seemed quite healthy,” she added.
“He had high blood pressure,” said Molly.
“But surely there are things one takes nowadays—some kind of pill. Science is
so wonderful.”
“Oh yes, but perhaps he forgot to take his pills, or took too many of them.
Like insulin, you know.”
Miss Marple did not think that diabetes and high blood pressure were at all
the same kind of thing. She asked:
“What does the doctor say?”
“Oh, Dr. Graham, who’s practically retired now, and lives in the hotel, took a
look at him, and the local people came officially, of course, to give a death
certificate, but it all seems quite straightforward. This kind of thing is
quite liable to happen when you have high blood pressure, especially if you
overdo the alcohol, and Major Palgrave was really very naughty that way. Last
night, for instance.”
“Yes, I noticed,” said Miss Marple.
“He probably forgot to take his pills. It is bad luck for the old boy—but
people can’t live for ever, can they? But it’s terribly worrying—for me and
Tim, I mean. People might suggest it was something in the food.”
“But surely the symptoms of food poisoning and of blood pressure are quite
different?”
“Yes. But people do say things so easily. And if people decided the food was
bad—and left—or told their friends—”
“I really don’t think you need worry,” said Miss Marple kindly. “As you say,
an elderly man like Major Palgrave—he must have been over seventy—is quite
liable to die. To most people it will seem quite an ordinary occurrence—sad,
but not out of the way at all.”
“If only,” said Molly unhappily, “it hadn’t been so sudden.”
Yes, it had been very sudden, Miss Marple thought as she walked slowly on.
There he had been last night, laughing and talking in the best of spirits with
the Hillingdons and the Dysons.
The Hillingdons and the Dysons … Miss Marple walked more slowly still …
Finally she stopped abruptly. Instead of going to the bathing beach she
settled herself in a shady corner of the terrace. She took out her knitting
and the needles clicked rapidly as though they were trying to match the speed
of her thoughts. She didn’t like it—no, she didn’t like it. It came so pat.
She went over the occurrences of yesterday in her mind.
Major Palgrave and his stories….
That was all as usual and one didn’t need to listen very closely … Perhaps,
though, it would have been better if she had.
Kenya—he had talked about Kenya and then India—the North West Frontier—and
then—for some reason they had got on to murder—And even then she hadn’t really
been listening….
Some famous case that had taken place out here—that had been in the
newspapers—
It was after that—when he picked up her ball of wool—that he had begun telling
her about a snapshot—A snapshot of a murderer—that is what he had said.
Miss Marple closed her eyes and tried to remember just exactly how that story
had gone.
It had been rather a confused story—told to the Major in his club—or in
somebody else’s club—told him by a doctor—who had heard it from another
doctor—and one doctor had taken a snapshot of someone coming through a front
door—someone who was a murderer—
Yes, that was it—the various details were coming back to her now—
And he had offered to show her that snapshot—He had got out his wallet and
begun hunting through its contents—talking all the time….
And then still talking, he had looked up—had looked—not at her—but at
something behind her—behind her right shoulder to be accurate. And he had
stopped talking, his face had gone purple—and he had started stuffing back
everything into his wallet with slightly shaky hands and had begun talking in
a loud unnatural voice about elephant tusks!
A moment or two later the Hillingdons and the Dysons had joined them….
It was then that she had turned her head over her right shoulder to look … But
there had been nothing and nobody to see. To her left, some distance away, in
the direction of the hotel, there had been Tim Kendal and his wife; and beyond
them a family group of Venezuelans. But Major Palgrave had not been looking in
that direction….
Miss Marple meditated until lunch time.
After lunch she did not go for a drive.
Instead she sent a message to say that she was not feeling very well and to
ask if Dr. Graham would be kind enough to come and see her. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Four
MISS MARPLE SEEKS MEDICAL ATTENTION
Dr. Graham was a kindly elderly man of about sixty-five. He had practised in
the West Indies for many years, but was now semi-retired, and left most of his
work to his West Indian partners. He greeted Miss Marple pleasantly and asked
her what the trouble was. Fortunately at Miss Marple’s age, there was always
some ailment that could be discussed with slight exaggerations on the
patient’s part. Miss Marple hesitated between “her shoulder” and “her knee,”
but finally decided upon the knee. Miss Marple’s knee, as she would have put
it to herself, was always with her.
Dr. Graham was exceedingly kindly but he refrained from putting into words the
fact that at her time of life such troubles were only to be expected. He
prescribed for her one of the brands of useful little pills that form the
basis of a doctor’s prescriptions. Since he knew by experience that many
elderly people could be lonely when they first came to St. Honoré, he remained
for a while gently chatting.
“A very nice man,” thought Miss Marple to herself, “and I really feel rather
ashamed of having to tell him lies. But I don’t quite see what else I can do.”
Miss Marple had been brought up to have a proper regard for truth and was
indeed by nature a very truthful person. But on certain occasions, when she
considered it her duty so to do, she could tell lies with a really astonishing
verisimilitude.
She cleared her throat, uttered an apologetic little cough, and said, in an
old ladyish and slightly twittering manner:
“There is something, Dr. Graham, I would like to ask you. I don’t really like
mentioning it—but I don’t quite see what else I am to do—although of course
it’s quite unimportant really. But you see, it’s important to me. And I hope
you will understand and not think what I am asking is tiresome or—or
unpardonable in any way.”
To this opening Dr. Graham replied kindly: “Something is worrying you? Do let
me help.”
“It’s connected with Major Palgrave. So sad about his dying. It was quite a
shock when I heard it this morning.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Graham, “it was very sudden, I’m afraid. He seemed in such
good spirits yesterday.” He spoke kindly, but conventionally. To him, clearly,
Major Palgrave’s death was nothing out of the way. Miss Marple wondered
whether she was really making something out of nothing. Was this suspicious
habit of mind growing on her? Perhaps she could no longer trust her own
judgment. Not that it was judgment really, only suspicion. Anyway she was in
for it now! She must go ahead.
“We were sitting talking together yesterday afternoon,” she said. “He was
telling me about his very varied and interesting life. So many strange parts
of the globe.”
“Yes indeed,” said Dr. Graham, who had been bored many times by the Major’s
reminiscences.
“And then he spoke of his family, boyhood rather, and I told him a little
about my own nephews and nieces and he listened very sympathetically. And I
showed him a snapshot I had with me of one of my nephews. Such a dear boy—at
least not exactly a boy now, but always a boy to me if you understand.”
“Quite so,” said Dr. Graham, wondering how long it would be before the old
lady was going to come to the point.
“I had handed it to him and he was examining it when quite suddenly those
people—those very nice people—who collect wild flowers and butterflies,
Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon I think the name is—”
“Oh yes? The Hillingdons and the Dysons.”
“Yes, that’s right. They came suddenly along laughing and talking. They sat
down and ordered drinks and we all talked together. Very pleasant it was. But
without thinking, Major Palgrave must have put back my snapshot into his
wallet and returned it to his pocket. I wasn’t paying very much attention at
the time but I remembered afterward and I said to myself—‘I mustn’t forget to
ask the Major to give me back my picture of Denzil.’ I did think of it last
night while the dancing and the band was going on, but I didn’t like to
interrupt him just then, because they were having such a merry party together
and I thought ‘I will remember to ask him for it in the morning.’ Only this
morning—” Miss Marple paused—out of breath.
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Graham, “I quite understand. And you—well, naturally you
want the snapshot back. Is that it?”
Miss Marple nodded her head in eager agreement.
“Yes. That’s it. You see, it is the only one I have got and I haven’t got the
negative. And I would hate to lose that snapshot, because poor Denzil died
some five or six years ago and he was my favourite nephew. This is the only
picture I have to remind me of him. I wondered—I hoped—it is rather tiresome
of me to ask—whether you could possibly manage to get hold of it for me? I
don’t really know who else to ask, you see. I don’t know who’ll attend to all
his belongings and things like that. It is all so difficult. They would think
it such a nuisance of me. You see, they don’t understand. Nobody could quite
understand what this snapshot means to me.”
“Of course, of course,” said Dr. Graham. “I quite understand. A most natural
feeling on your part. Actually, I am meeting the local authorities shortly—the
funeral is tomorrow—and someone will be coming from the Administrator’s office
to look over his papers and effects before communicating with the next of
kin—all that sort of thing—If you could describe this snapshot.”
“It was just the front of a house,” said Miss Marple. “And someone—Denzil, I
mean—was just coming out of the front door. As I say it was taken by one of my
other nephews who is very keen on flower shows—and he was photographing a
hibiscus, I think, or one of those beautiful—something like antipasto—lilies.
Denzil just happened to come out of the front door at that time. It wasn’t a
very good photograph of him—just a trifle blurred—But I liked it and have
always kept it.”
“Well,” said Dr. Graham, “that seems clear enough. I think we’ll have no
difficulty in getting back your picture for you, Miss Marple.”
He rose from his chair. Miss Marple smiled up at him.
“You are very kind, Dr. Graham, very kind indeed. You do understand, don’t
you?”
“Of course I do, of course I do,” said Dr. Graham, shaking her warmly by the
hand. “Now don’t you worry. Exercise that knee every day gently but not too
much, and I’ll send you round these tablets. Take one three times a day.”
Five
MISS MARPLE MAKES A DECISION
The funeral service was said over the body of the late Major Palgrave on the
following day. Miss Marple attended in company with Miss Prescott. The Canon
read the service—after that life went on as usual.
Major Palgrave’s death was already only an incident, a slightly unpleasant
incident, but one that was soon forgotten. Life here was sunshine, sea, and
social pleasures. A grim visitor had interrupted these activities, casting a
momentary shadow, but the shadow was now gone. After all, nobody had known the
deceased very well. He had been rather a garrulous elderly man of the club-
bore type, always telling you personal reminiscences that you had no
particular desire to hear. He had had little to anchor himself to any
particular part of the world. His wife had died many years ago. He had had a
lonely life and a lonely death. But it had been the kind of loneliness that
spends itself in living amongst people, and in passing the time that way not
unpleasantly. Major Palgrave might have been a lonely man, he had also been
quite a cheerful one. He had enjoyed himself in his own particular way. And
now he was dead, buried, and nobody cared very much, and in another week’s
time nobody would even remember him or spare him a passing thought.
The only person who could possibly be said to miss him was Miss Marple. Not
indeed out of any personal affection, but he represented a kind of life that
she knew. As one grew older, so she reflected to herself, one got more and
more into the habit of listening; listening possibly without any great
interest, but there had been between her and the Major the gentle give and
take of two old people. It had had a cheerful, human quality. She did not
actually mourn Major Palgrave but she missed him.
On the afternoon of the funeral, as she was sitting knitting in her favourite
spot, Dr. Graham came and joined her. She put her needles down and greeted
him. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Graham came and joined her. She put her needles down and greeted
him. He said at once, rather apologetically:
“I am afraid I have rather disappointing news, Miss Marple.”
“Indeed? About my—”
“Yes. We haven’t found that precious snapshot of yours. I’m afraid that will
be a disappointment to you.”
“Yes. Yes it is. But of course it does not really matter. It was a
sentimentality. I do realize that now. It wasn’t in Major Palgrave’s wallet?”
“No. Nor anywhere else among his things. There were a few letters and
newspaper clippings and odds and ends, and a few old photographs, but no sign
of a snapshot such as you mentioned.”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “Well, it can’t be helped … Thank you very much,
Dr. Graham, for the trouble you’ve taken.”
“Oh it was no trouble, indeed. But I know quite well from my own experience
how much family trifles mean to one, especially as one is getting older.”
The old lady was really taking it very well, he thought. Major Palgrave, he
presumed, had probably come across the snapshot when taking something out of
his wallet, and not even realizing how it had come there, had torn it up as
something of no importance. But of course it was of great importance to this
old lady. Still, she seemed quite cheerful and philosophical about it.
Internally, however, Miss Marple was far from being either cheerful or
philosophical. She wanted a little time in which to think things out, but she
was also determined to use her present opportunities to the fullest effect.
She engaged Dr. Graham in conversation with an eagerness which she did not
attempt to conceal. That kindly man, putting down her flow of talk to the
natural loneliness of an old lady, exerted himself to divert her mind from the
loss of the snapshot, by conversing easily and pleasantly about life in St.
Honoré, and the various interesting places perhaps Miss Marple might like to
visit. He hardly knew himself how the conversation drifted back to Major
Palgrave’s decease.
“It seems so sad,” said Miss Marple. “To think of anyone dying like this away
from home. Though I gather, from what he himself told me, that he had no
immediate family. It seems he lived by himself in London.”
“He travelled a fair amount, I believe,” said Dr. Graham. “At any rate in the
winters. He didn’t care for our English winters. Can’t say I blame him.”
“No, indeed,” said Miss Marple. “And perhaps he had some special reason like a
weakness of the lungs or something which made it necessary for him to winter
abroad?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“He had high blood pressure, I believe. So sad nowadays. One hears so much of
it.”
“He spoke about it to you, did he?”
“Oh no. No, he never mentioned it. It was somebody else who told me.”
“Ah, really.”
“I suppose,” went on Miss Marple, “that death was to be expected under those
circumstances.”
“Not necessarily,” said Dr. Graham. “There are methods of controlling blood
pressure nowadays.”
“His death seemed very sudden—but I suppose you weren’t surprised.”
“Well I wasn’t particularly surprised in a man of that age. But I certainly
didn’t expect it. Frankly, he always seemed to me in very good form, but I
hadn’t ever attended him professionally. I’d never taken his blood pressure or
anything like that.”
“Does one know—I mean, does a doctor know—when a man has high blood pressure
just by looking at him?” Miss Marple inquired with a kind of dewy innocence.
“Not just by looking,” said the doctor, smiling. “One has to do a bit of
testing.”
“Oh I see. That dreadful thing when you put a rubber band round somebody’s arm
and blow it up—I dislike it so much. But my doctor said that my blood pressure
was really very good for my age.”
“Well that’s good hearing,” said Dr. Graham.
“Of course, the Major was rather fond of Planters Punch,” said Miss Marple
thoughtfully.
“Yes. Not the best thing with blood pressure—alcohol.”
“One takes tablets, doesn’t one, or so I have heard?”
“Yes. There are several on the market. There was a bottle of one of them in
his room—Serenite.”
“How wonderful science is nowadays,” said Miss Marple. “Doctors can do so
much, can’t they?”
“We all have one great competitor,” said Dr. Graham. “Nature, you know. And
some of the good old-fashioned home remedies come back from time to time.”
“Like putting cobwebs on a cut?” said Miss Marple. “We always used to do that
when I was a child.”
“Very sensible,” said Dr. Graham.
“And a linseed poultice on the chest and rubbing in camphorated oil for a bad
cough.”
“I see you know it all!” said Dr. Graham laughing. He got up. “How’s the knee?
Not been too troublesome?”
“No, it seems much, much better.”
“Well, we won’t say whether that’s Nature or my pills,” said Dr. Graham.
“Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help to you.”
“But you have been most kind—I am really ashamed of taking up your time—Did
you say that there were no photographs in the Major’s wallet?”
“Oh yes—a very old one of the Major himself as quite a young man on a polo
pony—and one of a dead tiger—He was standing with his foot on it. Snaps of
that sort—memories of his younger days—But I looked very carefully, I assure
you, and the one you describe of your nephew was definitely not there—”
“Oh I’m sure you looked carefully—I didn’t mean that—I was just interested—We
all tend to keep such very odd things—”
“Treasures from the past,” said the doctor smiling.
He said goodbye and departed.
Miss Marple remained looking thoughtfully at the palm trees and the sea. She
did not pick up her knitting again for some minutes. She had a fact now. She
had to think about that fact and what it meant. The snapshot that the Major
had brought out of his wallet and replaced so hurriedly was not there after he
died. It was not the sort of thing the Major would throw away. He had replaced
it in his wallet and it ought to have been in his wallet after his death.
Money might have been stolen, but no one would want to steal a snapshot.
Unless, that is, they had a special reason for so doing….
Miss Marple’s face was grave. She had to take a decision. Was she, or was she
not, going to allow Major Palgrave to remain quietly in his grave? Might it
not be better to do just that? She quoted under her breath. “Duncan is dead.
After Life’s fitful fever he sleeps well!” Nothing could hurt Major Palgrave
now. He had gone where danger could not touch him. Was it just a coincidence
that he should have died on that particular night? Or was it just possibly not
a coincidence? Doctors accepted the deaths of elderly men so easily.
Especially since in his room there had been a bottle of the tablets that
people with high blood pressure had to take every day of their lives. But if
someone had taken the snapshot from the Major’s wallet, that same person could
have put that bottle of tablets in the Major’s room. She herself never
remembered seeing the Major take tablets; he had never spoken about his blood
pressure to her. The only thing he had ever said about his health was the
admission—“Not as young as I was.” He had been occasionally a little short of
breath, a trifle asthmatic, nothing else. But someone had mentioned that Major
Palgrave had high blood pressure—Molly? Miss Prescott? She couldn’t remember.
Miss Marple sighed, then admonished herself in words, though she did not speak
those words aloud.
“Now, Jane, what are you suggesting or thinking? Are you, perhaps, just making
the whole thing up? Have you really got anything to build on?”
She went over, step by step, as nearly as she could, the conversation between
herself and the Major on the subject of murder and murderers.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “Even if—really, I don’t see how I can do
anything about it—”
But she knew that she meant to try. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Six
IN THE SMALL HOURS
I
Miss Marple woke early. Like many old people she slept lightly and had periods
of wakefulness which she used for the planning of some action or actions to be
carried out on the next or following days. Usually, of course, these were of a
wholly private or domestic nature, of little interest to anybody but herself.
But this morning Miss Marple lay thinking soberly and constructively of
murder, and what, if her suspicions were correct, she could do about it. It
wasn’t going to be easy. She had one weapon and one weapon only, and that was
conversation.
Old ladies were given to a good deal of rambling conversation. People were
bored by this, but certainly did not suspect them of ulterior motives. It
would not be a case of asking direct questions. (Indeed, she would have found
it difficult to know what questions to ask!) It would be a question of finding
out a little more about certain people. She reviewed these certain people in
her mind.
She could find out, possibly, a little more about Major Palgrave, but would
that really help her? She doubted if it would. If Major Palgrave had been
killed it was not because of secrets in his life or to inherit his money or
for revenge upon him. In fact, although he was the victim, it was one of those
rare cases where a greater knowledge of the victim does not help you or lead
you in any way to his murderer. The point, it seemed to her, and the sole
point, was that Major Palgrave talked too much!
She had learnt one rather interesting fact from Dr. Graham. He had had in his
wallet various photographs: one of himself in company with a polo pony, one of
a dead tiger, also one or two other shots of the same nature. Now why did
Major Palgrave carry these about with him? Obviously, thought Miss Marple,
with long experience of old admirals, brigadier-generals and mere majors
behind her, because he had certain stories which he enjoyed telling to people.
Starting off with “Curious thing happened once when I was out tiger shooting
in India….” Or a reminiscence of himself and a polo pony. Therefore this story
about a suspected murderer would in due course be illustrated by the
production of the snapshot from his wallet.
He had been following that pattern in his conversation with her. The subject
of murder having come up, and to focus interest on his story, he had done what
he no doubt usually did, produced his snapshot and said something in the
nature of “Wouldn’t think this chap was a murderer, would you?”
The point was that it had been a habit of his. This murderer story was one of
his regular repertoire. If any reference to murder came up, then away went the
Major, full steam ahead.
In that case, reflected Miss Marple, he might already have told his story to
someone else here. Or to more than one person—If that were so, then she
herself might learn from that person what the further details of the story had
been, possibly what the person in the snapshot had looked like.
She nodded her head in satisfaction—That would be a beginning.
And, of course, there were the people she called in her mind the “Four
Suspects.” Though really, since Major Palgrave had been talking about a
man—there were only two. Colonel Hillingdon or Mr. Dyson, very unlikely-
looking murderers, but then murderers so often were unlikely. Could there have
been anyone else? She had seen no one when she turned her head to look. There
was the bungalow of course. Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. Could somebody have come
out of the bungalow and gone in again before she had had time to turn her
head? If so, it could only have been the valet-attendant. What was his name?
Oh yes, Jackson. Could it have been Jackson who had come out of the door? That
would have been the same pose as the photograph. A man coming out of a door.
Recognition might have struck suddenly. Up till then, Major Palgrave would not
have looked at Arthur Jackson, valet-attendant, with any interest. His roving
and curious eye was essentially a snobbish eye—Arthur Jackson was not a pukka
sahib—Major Palgrave would not have glanced at him twice.
Until, perhaps, he had had the snapshot in his hand, and had looked over Miss
Marple’s right shoulder and had seen a man coming out of a door …?
Miss Marple turned over on her pillow—Programme for tomorrow—or rather for
today—Further investigation of the Hillingdons, the Dysons and Arthur Jackson,
valet-attendant.
II
Dr. Graham also woke early. Usually he turned over and went to sleep again.
But today he was uneasy and sleep failed to come. This anxiety that made it so
difficult to go to sleep again was a thing he had not suffered from for a long
time. What was causing this anxiety? Really, he couldn’t make it out. He lay
there thinking it over. Something to do with—something to do with—yes, Major
Palgrave. Major Palgrave’s death? He didn’t see, though, what there could be
to make him uneasy there. Was it something that that twittery old lady had
said? Bad luck for her about her snapshot. She’d taken it very well. But now
what was it she had said, what chance word of hers had it been, that had given
him this funny feeling of uneasiness? After all, there was nothing odd about
the Major’s death. Nothing at all. At least he supposed there was nothing at
all.
It was quite clear that in the Major’s state of health—a faint check came in
his thought process. Did he really know much about Major Palgrave’s state of
health? Everybody said that he’d suffered from high blood pressure. But he
himself had never had any conversation with the Major about it. But then he’d
never had much conversation with Major Palgrave anyway. Palgrave was an old
bore and he avoided old bores. Why on earth should he have this idea that
perhaps everything mightn’t be all right? Was it that old woman? But after all
she hadn’t said anything. Anyway, it was none of his business. The local
authorities were quite satisfied. There had been that bottle of Serenite
tablets, and the old boy had apparently talked to people about his blood
pressure quite freely.
Dr. Graham turned over in bed and soon went to sleep again.
III
Outside the hotel grounds, in one of a row of shanty cabins beside a creek,
the girl Victoria Johnson rolled over and sat up in bed. The St. Honoré girl
was a magnificent creature with a torso of black marble such as a sculptor
would have enjoyed. She ran her fingers through her dark, tightly curling
hair. With her foot she nudged her sleeping companion in the ribs.
“Wake up, man.”
The man grunted and turned.
“What you want? It’s not morning.”
“Wake up, man. I want to talk to you.”
The man sat up, stretched, showed a wide mouth and beautiful teeth.
“What’s worrying you, woman?”
“That Major man who died. Something I don’t like. Something wrong about it.”
“Ah, what d’you want to worry about that? He was old. He died.”
“Listen, man. It’s them pills. Them pills the doctor asked me about.”
“Well, what about them? He took too many maybe.”
“No. It’s not that. Listen.” She leant towards him, talking vehemently. He
yawned and lay down again.
“There’s nothing in that. What’re you talking about?”
“All the same, I’ll speak to Mrs. Kendal about it in the morning. I think
there’s something wrong there somewhere.”
“Shouldn’t bother,” said the man who, without benefit of ceremony, she
considered as her present husband. “Don’t let’s look for trouble,” he said and
rolled over on his side yawning.
Seven
MORNING ON THE BEACH
I
It was mid-morning on the beach below the hotel.
Evelyn Hillingdon came out of the water and dropped on the warm golden sand.
She took off her bathing cap and shook her dark head vigorously. The beach was
not a very big one. People tended to congregate there in the mornings and
about 11:30 there was always something of a social reunion. To Evelyn’s left
in one of the exotic-looking modern basket chairs lay Señora de Caspearo, a
handsome woman from Venezuela. Next to her was old Mr. Rafiel who was by now
the doyen of the Golden Palm Hotel and held the sway that only an elderly
invalid of great wealth could attain. Esther Walters was in attendance on him.
She usually had her shorthand notebook and pencil with her in case Mr. Rafiel
should suddenly think of urgent business cables which must be got off at once.
Mr. Rafiel in beach attire was incredibly desiccated, his bones draped with
festoons of dry skin. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Though looking like a man on the point of death, he had
looked exactly the same for at least the last eight years—or so it was said in
the islands. Sharp blue eyes peered out of his wrinkled cheeks, and his
principal pleasure in life was denying robustly anything that anyone else
said.
Miss Marple was also present. As usual she sat and knitted and listened to
what went on, and very occasionally joined in the conversation. When she did
so, everyone was surprised because they had usually forgotten that she was
there! Evelyn Hillingdon looked at her indulgently, and thought that she was a
nice old pussy.
Señora de Caspearo rubbed some more oil on her long beautiful legs and hummed
to herself. She was not a woman who spoke much. She looked discontentedly at
the flask of sun oil.
“This is not so good as Frangipanio,” she said, sadly. “One cannot get it
here. A pity.” Her eyelids drooped again.
“Are you going in for your dip now, Mr. Rafiel?” asked Esther Walters.
“I’ll go in when I’m ready,” said Mr. Rafiel, snappishly.
“It’s half past eleven,” said Mrs. Walters.
“What of it?” said Mr. Rafiel. “Think I’m the kind of man to be tied by the
clock? Do this at the hour, do this at twenty minutes past, do that at twenty
to—bah!”
Mrs. Walters had been in attendance on Mr. Rafiel long enough to have adopted
her own formula for dealing with him. She knew that he liked a good space of
time in which to recover from the exertion of bathing and she had therefore
reminded him of the time, allowing a good ten minutes for him to rebut her
suggestion and then be able to adopt it without seeming to do so.
“I don’t like these espadrilles,” said Mr. Rafiel raising a foot and looking
at it. “I told that fool Jackson so. The man never pays attention to a word I
say.”
“I’ll fetch you some others, shall I, Mr. Rafiel?”
“No, you won’t, you’ll sit here and keep quiet. I hate people rushing about
like clucking hens.”
Evelyn shifted slightly in the warm sand, stretching out her arms.
Miss Marple, intent on her knitting—or so it seemed—stretched out a foot, then
hastily she apologized.
“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, Mrs. Hillingdon. I’m afraid I kicked you.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” said Evelyn. “This beach gets rather crowded.”
“Oh, please don’t move. Please. I’ll move my chair a little back so that I
won’t do it again.”
As Miss Marple resettled herself, she went on talking in a childish and
garrulous manner.
“It still seems so wonderful to be here! I’ve never been to the West Indies
before, you know. I thought it was the kind of place I never should come to
and here I am. All by the kindness of my dear nephew. I suppose you know this
part of the world very well, don’t you, Mrs. Hillingdon?”
“I have been in this island once or twice before and of course in most of the
others.”
“Oh yes. Butterflies isn’t it, and wild flowers? You and your—your friends—or
are they relations?”
“Friends. Nothing more.”
“And I suppose you go about together a great deal because of your interests
being the same?”
“Yes. We’ve travelled together for some years now.”
“I suppose you must have had some rather exciting adventures sometimes?”
“I don’t think so,” said Evelyn. Her voice was unaccentuated, slightly bored.
“Adventures always seem to happen to other people.” She yawned.
“No dangerous encounters with snakes or with wild animals or with natives gone
berserk?”
(“What a fool I sound,” thought Miss Marple.)
“Nothing worse than insect bites,” Evelyn assured her.
“Poor Major Palgrave, you know, was bitten by a snake once,” said Miss Marple,
making a purely fictitious statement.
“Was he?”
“Did he never tell you about it?”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember.”
“I suppose you knew him quite well, didn’t you?”
“Major Palgrave? No, hardly at all.”
“He always had so many interesting stories to tell.”
“Ghastly old bore,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Silly fool, too. He needn’t have died if
he’d looked after himself properly.”
“Oh come now, Mr. Rafiel,” said Mrs. Walters.
“I know what I’m talking about. If you look after your health properly you’re
all right anywhere. Look at me. The doctors gave me up years ago. All right, I
said, I’ve got my own rules of health and I shall keep to them. And here I
am.”
He looked round proudly.
It did indeed seem rather a mistake that he should be there.
“Poor Major Palgrave had high blood pressure,” said Mrs. Walters.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“Oh, but he did,” said Evelyn Hillingdon. She spoke with sudden, unexpected
authority.
“Who says so?” said Mr. Rafiel. “Did he tell you so?”
“Somebody said so.”
“He looked very red in the face,” Miss Marple contributed.
“Can’t go by that,” said Mr. Rafiel. “And anyway he didn’t have high blood
pressure because he told me so.”
“What do you mean, he told you so?” said Mrs. Walters. “I mean, you can’t
exactly tell people you haven’t got a thing.”
“Yes you can. I said to him once when he was downing all those Planters
Punches, and eating too much, I said, ‘You ought to watch your diet and your
drink. You’ve got to think of your blood pressure at your age.’ And he said
he’d nothing to look out for in that line, that his blood pressure was very
good for his age.”
“But he took some stuff for it, I believe,” said Miss Marple, entering the
conversation once more. “Some stuff called—oh, something like—was it
Serenite?”
“If you ask me,” said Evelyn Hillingdon, “I don’t think he ever liked to admit
that there could be anything the matter with him or that he could be ill. I
think he was one of those people who are afraid of illness and therefore deny
there’s ever anything wrong with them.”
It was a long speech for her. Miss Marple looked thoughtfully down at the top
of her dark head.
“The trouble is,” said Mr. Rafiel dictatorially, “everybody’s too fond of
knowing other people’s ailments. They think everybody over fifty is going to
die of hypertension or coronary thrombosis or one of those things—poppycock!
If a man says there’s nothing much wrong with him I don’t suppose there is. A
man ought to know about his own health. What’s the time? Quarter to twelve? I
ought to have had my dip long ago. Why can’t you remind me about these things,
Esther?”
Mrs. Walters made no protest. She rose to her feet and with some deftness
assisted Mr. Rafiel to his. Together they went down the beach, she supporting
him carefully. Together they stepped into the sea.
Señora de Caspearo opened her eyes and murmured: “How ugly are old men! Oh how
they are ugly! They should all be put to death at forty, or perhaps thirty-
five would be better. Yes?”
Edward Hillingdon and Gregory Dyson came crunching down the beach.
“What’s the water like, Evelyn?”
“Just the same as always.”
“Never much variation, is there? Where’s Lucky?”
“I don’t know,” said Evelyn.
Again Miss Marple looked down thoughtfully at the dark head.
“Well, now I give my imitation of a whale,” said Gregory. He threw off his
gaily patterned Bermuda shirt and tore down the beach, flinging himself,
puffing and panting, into the sea, doing a fast crawl. Edward Hillingdon sat
down on the beach by his wife. Presently he asked, “Coming in again?”
She smiled—put on her cap—and they went down the beach together in a much less
spectacular manner.
Señora de Caspearo opened her eyes again.
“I think at first those two they are on their honeymoon, he is so charming to
her, but I hear they have been married eight—nine years. It is incredible, is
it not?”
“I wonder where Mrs. Dyson is?” said Miss Marple.
“That Lucky? She is with some man.”
“You—you think so?”
“It is certain,” said Señora de Caspearo. “She is that type. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“She is that type. But she is not so
young any longer—Her husband—already his eyes go elsewhere—He makes
passes—here, there, all the time. I know.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I expect you would know.”
Señora de Caspearo shot a surprised glance at her. It was clearly not what she
had expected from that quarter.
Miss Marple, however, was looking at the waves with an air of gentle
innocence.
II
“May I speak to you, ma’am, Mrs. Kendal?”
“Yes, of course,” said Molly. She was sitting at her desk in the office.
Victoria Johnson, tall and buoyant in her crisp white uniform, came in farther
and shut the door behind her with a somewhat mysterious air.
“I like to tell you something, please, Mrs. Kendal.”
“Yes, what is it? Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know that. Not for sure. It’s the old gentleman who died. The Major
gentleman. He die in his sleep.”
“Yes, yes. What about it?”
“There was a bottle of pills in his room. Doctor, he asked me about them.”
“Yes?”
“The doctor said—‘Let me see what he has here on the bathroom shelf,’ and he
looked, you see. He see there was tooth powder and indigestion pills and
aspirin and cascara pills, and then these pills in a bottle called Serenite.”
“Yes,” repeated Molly yet again.
“And the doctor looked at them. He seemed quite satisfied, and nodded his
head. But I get to thinking afterwards. Those pills weren’t there before. I’ve
not seen them in his bathroom before. The others, yes. The tooth powder and
the aspirin and the aftershave lotion and all the rest. But those pills, those
Serenite pills, I never noticed them before.”
“So you think—” Molly looked puzzled.
“I don’t know what to think,” said Victoria. “I just think it’s not right, so
I think I better tell you about it. Perhaps you tell doctor? Perhaps it means
something. Perhaps someone put those pills there so he take them and he died.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely at all,” said Molly.
Victoria shook her dark head. “You never know. People do bad things.”
Molly glanced out of the window. The place looked like an earthly paradise.
With its sunshine, its sea, its coral reef, its music, its dancing, it seemed
a Garden of Eden. But even in the Garden of Eden, there had been a shadow—the
shadow of the Serpent—Bad things—how hateful to hear those words.
“I’ll make inquiries, Victoria,” she said sharply. “Don’t worry. And above all
don’t go starting a lot of silly rumours.”
Tim Kendal came in, just as Victoria was, somewhat unwillingly, leaving.
“Anything wrong, Molly?”
She hesitated—but Victoria might go to him—She told him what the girl had
said.
“I don’t see what all this rigmarole—what were these pills anyway?”
“Well, I don’t really know, Tim. Dr. Robertson when he came said they—were
something to do with blood pressure, I think.”
“Well, that would be all right, wouldn’t it? I mean, he had high blood
pressure, and he would be taking things for it, wouldn’t he? People do. I’ve
seen them, lots of times.”
“Yes,” Molly hesitated, “but Victoria seemed to think that he might have taken
one of these pills and it would have killed him.”
“Oh darling, that is a bit too melodramatic! You mean that somebody might have
changed his blood pressure pills for something else, and that they poisoned
him?”
“It does sound absurd,” said Molly apologetically, “when you say it like that.
But that seemed to be what Victoria thought!”
“Silly girl! We could go and ask Dr. Graham about it, I suppose he’d know. But
really it’s such nonsense that it’s not worth bothering him.”
“That’s what I think.”
“What on earth made the girl think anybody would have changed the pills? You
mean, put different pills into the same bottle?”
“I didn’t quite gather,” said Molly, looking rather helpless. “Victoria seemed
to think that was the first time that Serenite bottle had been there.”
“Oh but that’s nonsense,” said Tim Kendal. “He had to take those pills all the
time to keep his blood pressure down.” And he went off cheerfully to consult
with Fernando the maître d’hôtel.
But Molly could not dismiss the matter so lightly. After the stress of lunch
was over she said to her husband:
“Tim—I’ve been thinking—If Victoria is going around talking about this perhaps
we ought just to ask someone about it?”
“My dear girl! Robertson and all the rest of them came and looked at
everything and asked all the questions they wanted at the time.”
“Yes, but you know how they work themselves up, these girls—”
“Oh, all right! I’ll tell you what—we’ll go and ask Graham—he’ll know.”
Dr. Graham was sitting on his loggia with a book. The young couple came in and
Molly plunged into her recital. It was a little incoherent and Tim took over.
“Sounds rather idiotic,” he said apologetically, “but as far as I can make
out, this girl has got it into her head that someone put some poison tablets
in the—what’s the name of the stuff—Sera—something bottle.”
“But why should she get this idea into her head?” asked Dr. Graham. “Did she
see anything or hear anything or—I mean, why should she think so?”
“I don’t know,” said Tim rather helplessly. “Was it a different bottle? Was
that it, Molly?”
“No,” said Molly. “I think what she said was that there was a bottle there
labelled—Seven—Seren—”
“Serenite,” said the doctor. “That’s quite right. A well-known preparation.
He’d been taking it regularly.”
“Victoria said she’d never seen it in his room before.”
“Never seen it in his room before?” said Graham sharply. “What does she mean
by that?”
“Well, that’s what she said. She said there were all sorts of things on the
bathroom shelf. You know, tooth powder, aspirin and aftershave and—oh—she
rattled them off gaily. I suppose she’s always cleaning them and so she knows
them all off by heart. But this one—the Serenite—she hadn’t seen it there
until the day after he died.”
“That’s very odd,” said Dr. Graham, rather sharply. “Is she sure?”
The unusual sharpness of his tone made both of the Kendals look up at him.
They had not expected Dr. Graham to take up quite this attitude.
“She sounded sure,” said Molly slowly.
“Perhaps she just wanted to be sensational,” suggested Tim.
“I think perhaps,” said Dr. Graham, “I’d better have a few words with the girl
myself.”
Victoria displayed a distinct pleasure at being allowed to tell her story.
“I don’t want to get in no trouble,” she said. “I didn’t put that bottle there
and I don’t know who did.”
“But you think it was put there?” asked Graham.
“Well, you see, Doctor, it must have been put there if it wasn’t there
before.”
“Major Palgrave could have kept it in a drawer—or a dispatch-case, something
like that.”
Victoria shook her head shrewdly.
“Wouldn’t do that if he was taking it all the time, would he?”
“No,” said Graham reluctantly. “No, it was stuff he would have to take several
times a day. You never saw him taking it or anything of that kind?”
“He didn’t have it there before. I just thought—word got round as that stuff
had something to do with his death, poisoned his blood or something, and I
thought maybe he had an enemy put it there so as to kill him.”
“Nonsense, my girl,” said the doctor robustly. “Sheer nonsense.” Victoria
looked shaken.
“You say as this stuff was medicine, good medicine?” she asked doubtfully.
“Good medicine, and what is more, necessary medicine,” said Dr. Graham. “So
you needn’t worry, Victoria. I can assure you there was nothing wrong with
that medicine. It was the proper thing for a man to take who had his
complaint.”
“Surely you’ve taken a load off my mind,” said Victoria. She showed white
teeth at him in a cheerful smile.
But the load was not taken off Dr. Graham’s mind. That uneasiness of his that
had been so nebulous was now becoming tangible.
Eight
A TALK WITH ESTHER WALTERS
“This place isn’t what it used to be,” said Mr. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Rafiel, irritably, as he
observed Miss Marple approaching the spot where he and his secretary were
sitting. “Can’t move a step without some old hen getting under your feet. What
do old ladies want to come to the West Indies for?”
“Where do you suggest they should go?” asked Esther Walters.
“To Cheltenham,” said Mr. Rafiel promptly. “Or Bournemouth,” he offered, “or
Torquay or Llandrindod Wells. Plenty of choice. They like it there—they’re
quite happy.”
“They can’t often afford to come to the West Indies, I suppose,” said Esther.
“It isn’t everyone who is as lucky as you are.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Rub it in. Here am I, a mass of aches and
pains and disjoints. You grudge me any alleviation! And you don’t do any
work—Why haven’t you typed out those letters yet?”
“I haven’t had time.”
“Well, get on with it, can’t you? I bring you out here to do a bit of work,
not to sit about sunning yourself and showing off your figure.”
Some people would have considered Mr. Rafiel’s remarks quite insupportable but
Esther Walters had worked for him for some years and she knew well enough that
Mr. Rafiel’s bark was a great deal worse than his bite. He was a man who
suffered almost continual pain, and making disagreeable remarks was one of his
ways of letting off steam. No matter what he said she remained quite
imperturbable.
“Such a lovely evening, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple, pausing beside them.
“Why not?” said Mr. Rafiel. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
Miss Marple gave a tinkly little laugh.
“You’re so severe—of course the weather is a very English subject of
conversation—one forgets—Oh dear—this is the wrong coloured wool.” She
deposited her knitting bag on the garden table and trotted towards her own
bungalow.
“Jackson!” yelled Mr. Rafiel.
Jackson appeared.
“Take me back inside,” said Mr. Rafiel. “I’ll have my massage now before that
chattering hen comes back. Not that massage does me a bit of good,” he added.
Having said which, he allowed himself to be deftly helped to his feet and went
off with the masseur beside him into his bungalow.
Esther Walters looked after them and then turned her head as Miss Marple came
back with a ball of wool to sit down near her.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you?” said Miss Marple.
“Of course not,” said Esther Walters, “I’ve got to go off and do some typing
in a minute, but I’m going to enjoy another ten minutes of the sunset first.”
Miss Marple sat down and in a gentle voice began to talk. As she talked, she
summed up Esther Walters. Not at all glamorous, but could be attractive-
looking if she tried. Miss Marple wondered why she didn’t try. It could be, of
course, because Mr. Rafiel would not have liked it, but Miss Marple didn’t
think Mr. Rafiel would really mind in the least. He was so completely taken up
with himself that so long as he was not personally neglected, his secretary
might have got herself up like a houri in Paradise without his objecting.
Besides, he usually went to bed early and in the evening hours of steel bands
and dancing, Esther Walters might easily have—Miss Marple paused to select a
word in her mind, at the same time conversing cheerfully about her visit to
Jamestown—Ah yes, blossomed. Esther Walters might have blossomed in the
evening hours.
She led the conversation gently in the direction of Jackson.
On the subject of Jackson Esther Walters was rather vague.
“He’s very competent,” she said. “A fully trained masseur.”
“I suppose he’s been with Mr. Rafiel a long time?”
“Oh no—about nine months, I think—”
“Is he married?” Miss Marple hazarded.
“Married? I don’t think so,” said Esther slightly surprised. “He’s never
mentioned it if so—
“No,” she added. “Definitely not married, I should say.” And she showed
amusement.
Miss Marple interpreted that by adding to it in her own mind the following
sentence—“At any rate he doesn’t behave as though he were married.”
But then, how many married men there were who behaved as though they weren’t
married! Miss Marple could think of a dozen examples!
“He’s quite good-looking,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yes—I suppose he is,” said Esther without interest.
Miss Marple considered her thoughtfully. Uninterested in men? The kind of
woman, perhaps, who was only interested in one man—A widow, they had said.
She asked—“Have you worked for Mr. Rafiel long?”
“Four or five years. After my husband died, I had to take a job again. I’ve
got a daughter at school and my husband left me very badly off.”
“Mr. Rafiel must be a difficult man to work for?” Miss Marple hazarded.
“Not really, when you get to know him. He flies into rages and is very
contradictory. I think the real trouble is he gets tired of people. He’s had
five different valet-attendants in two years. He likes having someone new to
bully. But he and I have always got on very well.”
“Mr. Jackson seems a very obliging young man?”
“He’s very tactful and resourceful,” said Esther. “Of course, he’s sometimes a
little—” She broke off.
Miss Marple considered. “Rather a difficult position sometimes?” she
suggested.
“Well, yes. Neither one thing nor the other. However—” she smiled—“I think he
manages to have quite a good time.”
Miss Marple considered this also. It didn’t help her much. She continued her
twittering conversation and soon she was hearing a good deal about that
nature-loving quartet, the Dysons and the Hillingdons.
“The Hillingdons have been here for the last three or four years at least,”
said Esther, “but Gregory Dyson has been here much longer than that. He knows
the West Indies very well. He came here, originally, I believe, with his first
wife. She was delicate and had to go abroad in the winters, or go somewhere
warm, at any rate.”
“And she died? Or was it divorce?”
“No. She died. Out here, I believe. I don’t mean this particular island but
one of the West Indies islands. There was some sort of trouble, I believe,
some kind of scandal or other. He never talks about her. Somebody else told me
about it. They didn’t, I gather, get on very well together.”
“And then he married this wife. ‘Lucky.’” Miss Marple said the word with faint
dissatisfaction as if to say “Really, a most incredible name!”
“I believe she was a relation of his first wife.”
“Have they known the Hillingdons a great many years?”
“Oh, I think only since the Hillingdons came out here. Three or four years,
not more.”
“The Hillingdons seem very pleasant,” said Miss Marple. “Quiet, of course.”
“Yes. They’re both quiet.”
“Everyone says they’re very devoted to each other,” said Miss Marple. The tone
of her voice was quite noncommittal but Esther Walters looked at her sharply.
“But you don’t think they are?” she said.
“You don’t really think so yourself, do you, my dear?”
“Well, I’ve wondered sometimes….”
“Quiet men, like Colonel Hillingdon,” said Miss Marple, “are often attracted
to flamboyant types.” And she added, after a significant pause, “Lucky—such a
curious name. Do you think Mr. Dyson has any idea of—of what might be going
on?”
“Old scandal-monger,” thought Esther Walters. “Really, these old women!”
She said rather coldly, “I’ve no idea.”
Miss Marple shifted to another subject. “It’s very sad about poor Major
Palgrave isn’t it?” she said.
Esther Walters agreed, though in a somewhat perfunctory fashion.
“The people I’m really sorry for are the Kendals,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose it is really rather unfortunate when something of that kind
happens in a hotel.”
“People come here, you see, to enjoy themselves, don’t they?” said Esther. “To
forget about illnesses and deaths and income tax and frozen pipes and all the
rest of it. They don’t like—” she went on, with a sudden flash of an entirely
different manner—“any reminders of mortality.”
Miss Marple laid down her knitting. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“Now that is very well put, my dear,” she
said, “very well put indeed. Yes, it is as you say.”
“And you see they’re quite a young couple,” went on Esther Walters. “They only
just took over from the Sandersons six months ago and they’re terribly worried
about whether they’re going to succeed or not, because they haven’t had much
experience.”
“And you think this might be really disadvantageous to them?”
“Well, no, I don’t, frankly,” said Esther Walters. “I don’t think people
remember anything for more than a day or two, not in this atmosphere of
‘we’ve-all-come-out-here-to-enjoy-ourselves-let’s-get-on-with-it.’ I think a
death just gives them a jolt for about twenty-four hours or so and then they
don’t think of it again once the funeral is over. Not unless they’re reminded
of it, that is. I’ve told Molly so, but of course she is a worrier.”
“Mrs. Kendal is a worrier? She always seems so carefree.”
“I think a lot of that is put on,” said Esther slowly. “Actually, I think
she’s one of those anxious sort of people who can’t help worrying all the time
that things may go wrong.”
“I should have thought he worried more than she did.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think she’s the worrier and he worries because she
worries if you know what I mean.”
“That is interesting,” said Miss Marple.
“I think Molly wants desperately to try and appear very gay and to be enjoying
herself. She works at it very hard but the effort exhausts her. Then she has
these odd fits of depression. She’s not—well, not really well-balanced.”
“Poor child,” said Miss Marple. “There certainly are people like that, and
very often outsiders don’t suspect it.”
“No, they put on such a good show, don’t they? However,” Esther added, “I
don’t think Molly has really anything to worry about in this case. I mean,
people are dying of coronary thrombosis or cerebral hæmorrhage or things of
that kind all the time nowadays. Far more than they used to, as far as I can
see. It’s only food poisoning or typhoid or something like that, that makes
people get het up.”
“Major Palgrave never mentioned to me that he had high blood pressure,” said
Miss Marple. “Did he to you?”
“He said so to somebody—I don’t know who—it may have been to Mr. Rafiel. I
know Mr. Rafiel says just the opposite—but then he’s like that! Certainly
Jackson mentioned it to me once. He said the Major ought to be more careful
over the alcohol he took.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. She went on: “I expect you found him
rather a boring old man? He told a lot of stories and I expect repeated
himself a good deal.”
“That’s the worst of it,” said Esther. “You do hear the same story again and
again unless you can manage to be quick enough to fend it off.”
“Of course I didn’t mind so much,” said Miss Marple, “because I’m used to that
sort of thing. If I get stories told to me rather often, I don’t really mind
hearing them again because I’ve usually forgotten them.”
“There is that,” said Esther and laughed cheerfully.
“There was one story he was very fond of telling,” said Miss Marple, “about a
murder. I expect he told you that, didn’t he?”
Esther Walters opened her handbag and started searching through it. She drew
out her lipstick saying, “I thought I’d lost it.” Then she asked, “I beg your
pardon, what did you say?”
“I asked if Major Palgrave told you his favourite murder story?”
“I believe he did, now I come to think of it. Something about someone who
gassed themselves, wasn’t it? Only really it was the wife who gassed him. I
mean she’d given him a sedative of some kind and then stuck his head in the
gas oven. Was that it?”
“I don’t think that was exactly it,” said Miss Marple. She looked at Esther
Walters thoughtfully.
“He told such a lot of stories,” said Esther Walters, apologetically, “and as
I said, one didn’t always listen.”
“He had a snapshot,” said Miss Marple, “that he used to show people.”
“I believe he did … I can’t remember what it was now. Did he show it to you?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “He didn’t show it to me. We were interrupted—”
Nine
MISS PRESCOTT AND OTHERS
“The story I heard,” began Miss Prescott, lowering her voice, and looking
carefully around.
Miss Marple drew her chair a little closer. It had been some time before she
had been able to get together with Miss Prescott for a heart-to-heart chat.
This was owing to the fact that clergymen are very strong family men so that
Miss Prescott was nearly always accompanied by her brother, and there was no
doubt that Miss Marple and Miss Prescott found it less easy to take their back
hair down in a good gossip when the jovial Canon was of their company.
“It seems,” said Miss Prescott, “though of course I don’t want to talk any
scandal and I really know nothing about it—”
“Oh, I quite understand,” said Miss Marple.
“It seems there was some scandal when his first wife was still alive!
Apparently this woman, Lucky—such a name!—who I think was a cousin of his
first wife, came out here and joined them and I think did some work with him
on flowers or butterflies or whatever it was. And people talked a lot because
they got on so well together—if you know what I mean.”
“People do notice things so much, don’t they?” said Miss Marple.
“And then of course, when his wife died rather suddenly—”
“She died here, on this island?”
“No. No, I think they were in Martinique or Tobago at the time.”
“I see.”
“But I gathered from some other people who were there at the time, and who
came on here and talked about things, that the doctor wasn’t very satisfied.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Marple, with interest.
“It was only gossip,” of course, “but—well, Mr. Dyson certainly married again
very quickly.” She lowered her voice again. “Only a month I believe.”
“Only a month,” said Miss Marple.
The two women looked at each other. “It seemed—unfeeling,” said Miss Prescott.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “It certainly did.” She added delicately, “Was
there—any money?”
“I don’t really know. He makes his little joke—perhaps you’ve heard him—about
his wife being his ‘lucky piece’—”
“Yes, I’ve heard him,” said Miss Marple.
“And some people think that means that he was lucky to marry a rich wife.
Though, of course,” said Miss Prescott with the air of one being entirely
fair, “she’s very good-looking too, if you care for that type. And I think
myself that it was the first wife who had the money.”
“Are the Hillingdons well off?”
“Well, I think they’re well off. I don’t mean fabulously rich, I just mean
well off. They have two boys at public school and a very nice place in
England, I believe, and they travel most of the winter.”
The Canon appearing at this moment to suggest a brisk walk, Miss Prescott rose
to join her brother. Miss Marple remained sitting there.
A few minutes later Gregory Dyson passed her striding along towards the hotel.
He waved a cheerful hand as he passed.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he called out.
Miss Marple smiled gently, wondering how he would have reacted if she had
replied:
“I was wondering if you were a murderer.”
It really seemed most probable that he was. It all fitted in so nicely—This
story about the death of the first Mrs. Dyson—Major Palgrave had certainly
been talking about a wife killer—with special reference to the “Brides in the
Bath Case.”
Yes—it fitted—the only objection was that it fitted almost too well. But Miss
Marple reproved herself for this thought—who was she to demand Murders Made to
Measure?
A voice made her jump—a somewhat raucous one.
“Seen Greg any place, Miss—er—”
Lucky, Miss Marple thought, was not in a good temper.
“He passed by just now—going towards the hotel.”
“I’ll bet!” Lucky uttered an irritated ejaculation and hurried on.
“Forty, if she’s a day, and looks it this morning,” thought Miss Marple.
Pity invaded her—pity for the Luckys of the world—who were so vulnerable to
Time—
At the sound of a noise behind her, she turned her chair round—
Mr. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Rafiel, supported by Jackson, was making his morning appearance and coming
out of his bungalow—
Jackson settled his employer in his wheelchair and fussed round him. Mr.
Rafiel waved his attendant away impatiently and Jackson went off in the
direction of the hotel.
Miss Marple lost no time—Mr. Rafiel was never left alone for long—Probably
Esther Walters would come and join him. Miss Marple wanted a word alone with
Mr. Rafiel and now, she thought, was her chance. She would have to be quick
about what she wanted to say. There could be no leading up to things. Mr.
Rafiel was not a man who cared for the idle twittering conversation of old
ladies. He would probably retreat again into his bungalow, definitely
regarding himself the victim of persecution. Miss Marple decided to plump for
downrightness.
She made her way to where he was sitting, drew up a chair, sat down, and said:
“I want to ask you something, Mr. Rafiel.”
“All right, all right,” said Mr. Rafiel, “let’s have it. What do you want—a
subscription, I suppose? Missions in Africa or repairing a church, something
of that kind?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I am interested in several objects of that nature,
and I shall be delighted if you will give me a subscription for them. But that
wasn’t actually what I was going to ask you. What I was going to ask you was
if Major Palgrave ever told you a story about a murder.”
“Oho,” said Mr. Rafiel. “So he told it to you too, did he? And I suppose you
fell for it, hook, line and sinker.”
“I didn’t really know what to think,” said Miss Marple. “What exactly did he
tell you?”
“He prattled on,” said Mr. Rafiel, “about a lovely creature, Lucrezia Borgia
reincarnated. Beautiful, young, golden-haired, everything.”
“Oh,” said Miss Marple slightly taken aback, “and who did she murder?”
“Her husband, of course,” said Mr. Rafiel, “who do you think?”
“Poison?”
“No, I think she gave him a sleeping draught and then stuck him in a gas oven.
Resourceful female. Then she said it was suicide. She got off quite lightly.
Diminished responsibility or something. That’s what it’s called nowadays if
you’re a good-looking woman, or some miserable young hooligan whose mother’s
been too fond of him. Bah!”
“Did the Major show you a snapshot?”
“What—a snapshot of the woman? No. Why should he?”
“Oh—” said Miss Marple.
She sat there, rather taken aback. Apparently Major Palgrave spent his life
telling people not only about tigers he had shot and elephants he had hunted
but also about murderers he had met. Perhaps he had a whole repertoire of
murder stories. One had to face it—She was startled by Mr. Rafiel suddenly
giving a roar of “Jackson!” There was no response.
“Shall I find him for you?” said Miss Marple rising.
“You won’t find him. Tom-catting somewhere, that’s what he does. No good, that
fellow. Bad character. But he suits me all right.”
“I’ll go and look for him,” said Miss Marple.
Miss Marple found Jackson sitting on the far side of the hotel terrace having
a drink with Tim Kendal.
“Mr. Rafiel is asking for you,” she said.
Jackson made an expressive grimace, drained his glass, and rose to his feet.
“Here we go again,” he said. “No peace for the wicked—Two telephone calls and
a special diet order—I thought that might give me a quarter of an hour’s
alibi—Apparently not! Thank you, Miss Marple. Thanks for the drink, Mr.
Kendal.”
He strode away.
“I feel sorry for that chap,” said Tim. “I have to stand him a drink now and
then, just to cheer him up—Can I offer you something, Miss Marple—How about
fresh lime? I know you’re fond of that.”
“Not just now, thank you—I suppose looking after someone like Mr. Rafiel must
always be rather exacting. Invalids are frequently difficult—”
“I didn’t mean only that—It’s very well paid and you expect to put up with a
good deal of crotchetiness—old Rafiel’s not really a bad sort. I mean more
that—” he hesitated.
Miss Marple looked inquiring.
“Well—how shall I put it—it’s difficult for him socially. People are so damned
snobbish—there’s no one here of his class. He’s better than a servant—and
below the average visitor—or they think he is. Rather like the Victorian
governess. Even the secretary woman, Mrs. Walters—feels she’s a cut above him.
Makes things difficult.” Tim paused, then said with feeling: “It’s really
awful the amount of social problems there are in a place like this.”
Dr. Graham passed them—he had a book in his hand. He went and sat at a table
overlooking the sea.
“Dr. Graham looks rather worried,” remarked Miss Marple.
“Oh! We’re all worried.”
“You too? Because of Major Palgrave’s death?”
“I’ve left off worrying about that. People seem to have forgotten it—taken it
in their stride. No—it’s my wife—Molly—Do you know anything about dreams?”
“Dreams?” Miss Marple was surprised.
“Yes—bad dreams—nightmares, I suppose. Oh, we all get that sort of thing
sometimes. But Molly—she seems to have them nearly all the time. They frighten
her. Is there anything one can do about them? Take for them? She’s got some
sleeping pills, but she says they make it worse—she struggles to wake up and
can’t.”
“What are the dreams about?”
“Oh, something or someone chasing her—Or watching her and spying on her—she
can’t shake off the feeling even when she’s awake.”
“Surely a doctor—”
“She’s got a thing against doctors. Won’t hear of it—Oh well—I dare say it
will all pass off—But we were so happy. It was all such fun—And now, just
lately—Perhaps old Palgrave’s death upset her. She seems like a different
person since….”
He got up.
“Must get on with the daily chores—are you sure you won’t have that fresh
lime?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
She sat there, thinking. Her face was grave and anxious.
She glanced over at Dr. Graham.
Presently she came to a decision.
She rose and went across to his table.
“I have got to apologize to you, Dr. Graham,” she said.
“Indeed?” The doctor looked at her in kindly surprise. He pulled forward a
chair and she sat down.
“I am afraid I have done the most disgraceful thing,” said Miss Marple. “I
told you, Dr. Graham, a deliberate lie.”
She looked at him apprehensively.
Dr. Graham did not look at all shattered, but he did look a little surprised.
“Really?” he said. “Ah well, you mustn’t let that worry you too much.”
What had the dear old thing been telling lies about, he wondered; her age?
Though as far as he could remember she hadn’t mentioned her age. “Well, let’s
hear about it,” he said, since she clearly wished to confess.
“You remember my speaking to you about a snapshot of my nephew, one that I
showed to Major Palgrave, and that he didn’t give back to me?”
“Yes, yes, of course I remember. Sorry we couldn’t find it for you.”
“There wasn’t any such thing,” said Miss Marple, in a small frightened voice.
“I beg your pardon?”
“There wasn’t any such thing. I made up that story, I’m afraid.”
“You made it up?” Dr. Graham looked slightly annoyed. “Why?”
Miss Marple told him. She told him quite clearly, without twittering. She told
him about Major Palgrave’s murder story and how he’d been about to show her
this particular snapshot and his sudden confusion and then she went on to her
own anxiety and to her final decision to try somehow to obtain a view of it.
“And really, I couldn’t see any way of doing so without telling you something
that was quite untrue,” she said, “I do hope you will forgive me.”
“You thought that what he had been about to show you was a picture of a
murderer?”
“That’s what he said it was,” said Miss Marple. “At least he said it was given
him by this acquaintance who had told him the story about a man who was a
murderer.”
“Yes, yes. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
And—excuse me—you believed him?”
“I don’t know if I really believed him or not at the time,” said Miss Marple.
“But then, you see, the next day he died.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Graham, struck suddenly by the clarity of that one sentence.
The next day he died….
“And the snapshot had disappeared.”
Dr. Graham looked at her. He didn’t know quite what to say.
“Excuse me, Miss Marple,” he said at last, “but is what you’re telling me
now—is it really true this time?”
“I don’t wonder your doubting me,” said Miss Marple. “I should, in your place.
Yes, it is true what I am telling you now, but I quite realize that you have
only my word for it. Still, even if you don’t believe me, I thought I ought to
tell you.”
“Why?”
“I realized that you ought to have the fullest information possible—in case—”
“In case what?”
“In case you decided to take any steps about it.”
Ten
A DECISION IN JAMESTOWN
Dr. Graham was in Jamestown, in the Administrator’s office, sitting at a table
opposite his friend Daventry, a grave young man of thirty-five.
“You sounded rather mysterious on the phone, Graham,” said Daventry. “Anything
special the matter?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Graham, “but I’m worried.”
Daventry looked at the other’s face, then he nodded as drinks were brought in.
He spoke lightly of a fishing expedition he had made lately. Then when the
servant had gone away, he sat back in his chair and looked at the other man.
“Now then,” he said, “let’s have it.”
Dr. Graham recounted the facts that had worried him. Daventry gave a slow long
whistle.
“I see. You think maybe there’s something funny about old Palgrave’s death?
You’re no longer sure that it was just natural causes? Who certified the
death? Robertson, I suppose. He didn’t have any doubts, did he?”
“No, but I think he may have been influenced in giving the certificate by the
fact of the Serenite tablets in the bathroom. He asked me if Palgrave had
mentioned that he suffered from hypertension, and I said No, I’d never had any
medical conversation with him myself, but apparently he had talked about it to
other people in the hotel. The whole thing—the bottle of tablets, and what
Palgrave had said to people—it all fitted in—no earthly reason to suspect
anything else. It was a perfectly natural inference to make—but I think now it
may not have been correct. If it had been my business to give the certificate,
I’d have given it without a second thought. The appearances are quite
consistent with his having died from that cause. I’d never have thought about
it since if it hadn’t been for the odd disappearance of that snapshot….”
“But look here, Graham,” said Daventry, “if you will allow me to say so,
aren’t you relying a little too much on a rather fanciful story told you by an
elderly lady? You know what these elderly ladies are like. They magnify some
small detail and work the whole thing up.”
“Yes, I know,” said Dr. Graham, unhappily. “I know that. I’ve said to myself
that it may be so, that it probably is so. But I can’t quite convince myself.
She was so very clear and detailed in her statement.”
“The whole thing seems wildly improbable to me,” said Daventry. “Some old lady
tells a story about a snapshot that ought not to be there—no, I’m getting
mixed myself—I mean the other way about, don’t I?—but the only thing you’ve
really got to go on is that a chambermaid says that a bottle of pills which
the authorities had relied on for evidence, wasn’t in the Major’s room the day
before his death. But there are a hundred explanations for that. He might
always have carried those pills about in his pocket.”
“It’s possible, I suppose, yes.”
“Or the chambermaid may have made a mistake and she simply hadn’t noticed them
before—”
“That’s possible, too.”
“Well, then.”
Graham said slowly:
“The girl was very positive.”
“Well, the St. Honoré people are very excitable. You know. Emotional. Work
themselves up easily. Are you thinking that she knows—a little more than she
has said?”
“I think it might be so,” said Dr. Graham slowly.
“You’d better try and get it out of her, if so. We don’t want to make an
unnecessary fuss—unless we’ve something definite to go on. If he didn’t die of
blood pressure, what do you think it was?”
“There are too many things it might be nowadays,” said Dr. Graham.
“You mean things that don’t leave recognizable traces?”
“Not everyone,” said Dr. Graham dryly, “is so considerate as to use arsenic.”
“Now let’s get things quite clear—what’s the suggestion? That a bottle of
pills was substituted for the real ones? And that Major Palgrave was poisoned
in that way?”
“No—it’s not like that. That’s what the girl—Victoria Something thinks—But
she’s got it all wrong—If it was decided to get rid of the Major—quickly—he
would have been given something—most likely in a drink of some kind. Then to
make it appear a natural death, a bottle of the tablets prescribed to relieve
blood pressure was put in his room. And the rumour was put about that he
suffered from high blood pressure.”
“Who put the rumour about?”
“I’ve tried to find out—with no success—It’s been too cleverly done. A says ‘I
think B told me’—B, asked, says ‘No, I didn’t say so but I do remember C
mentioning it one day.’ C says ‘Several people talked about it—one of them, I
think, was A.’ And there we are, back again.”
“Someone was clever?”
“Yes. As soon as the death was discovered, everybody seemed to be talking
about the Major’s high blood pressure and repeating round what other people
had said.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to poison him and let it go at that?”
“No. That might have meant an inquiry—possibly an autopsy—This way, a doctor
would accept the death and give a certificate—as he did.”
“What do you want me to do? Go to the CID? Suggest they dig the chap up? It’d
make a lot of stink—”
“It could be kept quite quiet.”
“Could it? In St. Honoré? Think again! The grapevine would be on to it before
it had happened. All the same,” Daventry sighed—“I suppose we’ll have to do
something. But if you ask me, it’s all a mare’s nest!”
“I devoutly hope it is,” said Dr. Graham.
Eleven
EVENING AT THE GOLDEN PALM
I
Molly rearranged a few of the table decorations in the dining room, removed an
extra knife, straightened a fork, reset a glass or two, stood back to look at
the effect and then walked out on to the terrace outside. There was no one
about just at present and she strolled to the far corner and stood by the
balustrade. Soon another evening would begin. Chattering, talking, drinking,
all so gay and carefree, the sort of life she had longed for and, up to a few
days ago, had enjoyed so much. Now even Tim seemed anxious and worried.
Natural, perhaps, that he should worry a little. It was important that this
venture of theirs should turn out all right. After all, he had sunk all he had
in it.
But that, thought Molly, is not really what’s worrying him. It’s me. But I
don’t see, said Molly to herself, why he should worry about me. Because he did
worry about her. That she was quite sure of. The questions he put, the quick
nervous glance he shot at her from time to time. “But why?” thought Molly.
“I’ve been very careful.” She summed up things in her mind. She didn’t
understand it really herself. She couldn’t remember when it had begun. She
wasn’t even very sure what it was. She’d begun to be frightened of people. She
didn’t know why. What could they do to her? What should they want to do to
her?
She nodded her head, then started violently as a hand touched her arm. She
spun round to find Gregory Dyson, slightly taken aback, looking apologetic.
“Ever so sorry. Did I startle you, little girl?”
Molly hated being called “little girl.” She said quickly and brightly: “I
didn’t hear you coming, Mr. Dyson, so it made me jump.”
“Mr. Dyson? We’re very formal tonight. Aren’t we all one great happy family
here? Ed and me and Lucky and Evelyn and you and Tim and Esther Walters and
old Rafiel. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
All the lot of us one happy family.”
“He’s had plenty to drink already,” thought Molly. She smiled at him
pleasantly.
“Oh! I come over the heavy hostess sometimes,” she said, lightly. “Tim and I
think it’s more polite not to be too handy with Christian names.”
“Aw! we don’t want any of that stuffed-shirt business. Now then, Molly my
lovely, have a drink with me.”
“Ask me later,” said Molly. “I have a few things to get on with.”
“Now don’t run away.” His arm fastened round her arm. “You’re a lovely girl,
Molly. I hope Tim appreciates his good luck.”
“Oh, I see to it that he does,” said Molly cheerfully.
“I could go for you, you know, in a big way.” He leered at her—“though I
wouldn’t let my wife hear me say so.”
“Did you have a good trip this afternoon?”
“I suppose so. Between you and me I get a bit fed up sometimes. You can get
tired of the birds and butterflies. What say you and I go for a little picnic
on our own one day?”
“We’ll have to see about that,” said Molly gaily. “I’ll be looking forward to
it.”
With a light laugh she escaped, and went back into the bar.
“Hallo, Molly,” said Tim, “you seem in a hurry. Who’s that you’ve been with
out there?”
He peered out.
“Gregory Dyson.”
“What does he want?”
“Wanted to make a pass at me,” said Molly.
“Blast him,” said Tim.
“Don’t worry,” said Molly, “I can do all the blasting necessary.”
Tim started to answer her, caught sight of Fernando and went over to him
shouting out some directions. Molly slipped away through the kitchen door and
down the steps to the beach.
Gregory Dyson swore under his breath. Then he walked slowly back in the
direction of his bungalow. He had nearly got there when a voice spoke to him
from the shadow of one of the bushes. He turned his head, startled. In the
gathering dusk he thought for a moment that it was a ghostly figure that stood
there. Then he laughed. It had looked like a faceless apparition but that was
because, though the dress was white, the face was black.
Victoria stepped out of the bushes on to the path.
“Mr. Dyson, please?”
“Yes. What is it?”
Ashamed of being startled, he spoke with a touch of impatience.
“I brought you this, sir.” She held out her hand. In it was a bottle of
tablets. “This belongs to you, doesn’t it? Yes?”
“Oh, my bottle of Serenite tablets. Yes, of course. Where did you find it?”
“I found it where it had been put. In the gentleman’s room.”
“What do you mean—in the gentleman’s room?”
“The gentleman who is dead,” she added gravely. “I do not think he sleeps very
well in his grave.”
“Why the devil not?” asked Dyson.
Victoria stood looking at him.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. You mean you found this bottle
of tablets in Major Palgrave’s bungalow?”
“That’s right, yes. After the doctor and the Jamestown people go away, they
give me all the things in his bathroom to throw away. The toothpaste and the
lotions, and all the other things—including this.”
“Well, why didn’t you throw it away?”
“Because these are yours. You missed them. You remember, you asked about
them?”
“Yes—well—yes, I did. I—I thought I’d just mislaid them.”
“No, you did not mislay them. They were taken from your bungalow and put in
Major Palgrave’s bungalow.”
“How do you know?” He spoke roughly.
“I know. I saw.” She smiled at him in a sudden flash of white teeth. “Someone
put them in the dead gentleman’s room. Now I give them back to you.”
“Here—wait. What do you mean? What—who did you see?”
She hurried away, back into the darkness of the bushes. Greg made as to move
after her and then stopped. He stood stroking his chin.
“What’s the matter, Greg? Seen a ghost?” asked Mrs. Dyson, as she came along
the path from their bungalow.
“Thought I had for a minute or two.”
“Who was that you were talking to?”
“The coloured girl who does our place. Victoria, her name is, isn’t it?”
“What did she want? Making a pass at you?”
“Don’t be stupid, Lucky. That girl’s got some idiotic idea into her head.”
“Idea about what?”
“You remember I couldn’t find my Serenite the other day?”
“You said you couldn’t.”
“What do you mean ‘I said I couldn’t?’”
“Oh, for heck’s sake, have you got to take me up on everything?”
“I’m sorry,” said Greg. “Everybody goes about being so damn’ mysterious.” He
held out his hand with the bottle in it. “That girl brought them back to me.”
“Had she pinched them?”
“No. She—found them somewhere I think.”
“Well, what of it? What’s the mystery about?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Greg. “She just riled me, that’s all.”
“Look here, Greg, what is this stuff all about? Come along and have a drink
before dinner.”
II
Molly had gone down to the beach. She pulled out one of the old basket chairs,
one of the more rickety ones that were seldom used. She sat in it for a while
looking at the sea, then suddenly she dropped her head in her hands and burst
into tears. She sat there sobbing unrestrainedly for some time. Then she heard
a rustle close by her and glanced up sharply to see Mrs. Hillingdon looking
down at her.
“Hallo, Evelyn, I didn’t hear you. I—I’m sorry.”
“What’s the matter, child?” said Evelyn. “Something gone wrong?” She pulled
another chair forward and sat down. “Tell me.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” said Molly. “Nothing at all.”
“Of course there is. You wouldn’t sit and cry here for nothing. Can’t you tell
me? Is it—some trouble between you and Tim?”
“Oh no.”
“I’m glad of that. You always look so happy together.”
“Not more than you do,” said Molly. “Tim and I always think how wonderful it
is that you and Edward should seem so happy together after being married so
many years.”
“Oh, that,” said Evelyn. Her voice was sharp as she spoke but Molly hardly
noticed.
“People bicker so,” she said, “and have such rows. Even if they’re quite fond
of each other they still seem to have rows and not to mind a bit whether they
have them in public or not.”
“Some people like living that way,” said Evelyn. “It doesn’t really mean
anything.”
“Well, I think it’s horrid,” said Molly.
“So do I, really,” said Evelyn.
“But to see you and Edward—”
“Oh it’s no good, Molly. I can’t let you go on thinking things of that kind.
Edward and I—” she paused. “If you want to know the truth, we’ve hardly said a
word to each other in private for the last three years.”
“What!” Molly stared at her, appalled. “I—I can’t believe it.”
“Oh, we both put up quite a good show,” said Evelyn. “We’re neither of us the
kind that like having rows in public. And anyway there’s nothing really to
have a row about.”
“But what went wrong?” asked Molly.
“Just the usual.”
“What do you mean by the usual? Another—”
“Yes, another woman in the case, and I don’t suppose it will be difficult for
you to guess who the woman is.”
“Do you mean Mrs. Dyson—Lucky?”
Evelyn nodded.
“I know they always flirt together a lot,” said Molly, “but I thought that was
just….”
“Just high spirits?” said Evelyn. “Nothing behind it?”
“But why—” Molly paused and tried again. “But didn’t you—oh I mean, well I
suppose I oughtn’t to ask.”
“Ask anything you like,” said Evelyn. “I’m tired of never saying a word, tired
of being a well-bred happy wife. Edward just lost his head completely about
Lucky. He was stupid enough to come and tell me about it. It made him feel
better I suppose. Truthful. Honourable. All that sort of stuff. It didn’t
occur to him to think that it wouldn’t make me feel better.”
“Did he want to leave you?”
Evelyn shook her head. “We’ve got two children, you know,” she said. “Children
whom we’re both very fond of. They’re at school in England. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
They’re at school in England. We didn’t want to
break up the home. And then of course, Lucky didn’t want a divorce either.
Greg’s a very rich man. His first wife left a lot of money. So we agreed to
live and let live—Edward and Lucky in happy immorality, Greg in blissful
ignorance, and Edward and I just good friends.” She spoke with scalding
bitterness.
“How—how can you bear it?”
“One gets used to anything. But sometimes—”
“Yes?” said Molly.
“Sometimes I’d like to kill that woman.”
The passion behind her voice startled Molly.
“Don’t let’s talk any more about me,” said Evelyn. “Let’s talk about you. I
want to know what’s the matter.”
Molly was silent for some moments and then she said, “It’s only—it’s only that
I think there’s something wrong about me.”
“Wrong? What do you mean?”
Molly shook her head unhappily. “I’m frightened,” she said. “I’m terribly
frightened.”
“Frightened of what?”
“Everything,” said Molly. “It’s—growing on me. Voices in the bushes,
footsteps—or things that people say. As though someone were watching me all
the time, spying on me. Somebody hates me. That’s what I keep feeling.
Somebody hates me.”
“My dear child.” Evelyn was shocked and startled. “How long has this been
going on?”
“I don’t know. It came—it started by degrees. And there have been other things
too.”
“What sort of things?”
“There are times,” said Molly slowly, “that I can’t account for, that I can’t
remember.”
“Do you mean you have blackouts—that sort of thing?”
“I suppose so. I mean sometimes it’s—oh, say it’s five o’clock—and I can’t
remember anything since about half past one or two.”
“Oh my dear, but that’s just that you’ve been asleep. Had a doze.”
“No,” said Molly, “it’s not like that at all. Because you see, at the end of
the time it’s not as though I’d just dozed off. I’m in a different place.
Sometimes I’m wearing different clothes and sometimes I seem to have been
doing things—even saying things to people, talked to someone, and not
remembering that I’ve done so.”
Evelyn looked shocked. “But Molly, my dear, if this is so, then you ought to
see a doctor.”
“I won’t see a doctor! I don’t want to. I wouldn’t go near a doctor.”
Evelyn looked sharply down into her face, then she took the girl’s hand in
hers.
“You may be frightening yourself for nothing, Molly. You know there are all
kinds of nervous disorders that aren’t really serious at all. A doctor would
soon reassure you.”
“He mightn’t. He might say that there was something really wrong with me.”
“Why should there be anything wrong with you?”
“Because—” Molly spoke and then was silent “—no reason, I suppose,” she said.
“Couldn’t your family—haven’t you any family, any mother or sisters or someone
who could come out here?”
“I don’t get on with my mother. I never have. I’ve got sisters. They’re
married but I suppose—I suppose they could come if I wanted them. But I don’t
want them. I don’t want anyone—anyone except Tim.”
“Does Tim know about this? Have you told him?”
“Not really,” said Molly. “But he’s anxious about me and he watches me. It’s
as though he were trying to—to help me or to shield me. But if he does that it
means I want shielding, doesn’t it?”
“I think a lot of it may be imagination but I still think you ought to see a
doctor.”
“Old Dr. Graham? He wouldn’t be any good.”
“There are other doctors on the island.”
“It’s all right, really,” said Molly. “I just—mustn’t think of it. I expect,
as you say, it’s all imagination. Good gracious, it’s getting frightfully
late. I ought to be on duty now in the dining room. I—I must go back.”
She looked sharply and almost offensively at Evelyn Hillingdon, and then
hurried off. Evelyn stared after her. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Evelyn stared after her.
Twelve
OLD SINS CAST LONG SHADOWS
I
“I think as I am on to something, man.”
“What’s that you say, Victoria?”
“I think I’m on to something. It may mean money. Big money.”
“Now look, girl, you be careful, you’ll not tangle yourself up in something.
Maybe I’d better tackle what it is.”
Victoria laughed, a deep rich chuckle.
“You wait and see,” she said. “I know how to play this hand. It’s money, man,
it’s big money. Something I see, and something I guess. I think I guess
right.”
And again the soft rich chuckle rolled out on the night.
II
“Evelyn….”
“Yes?”
Evelyn Hillingdon spoke mechanically, without interest. She did not look at
her husband.
“Evelyn, would you mind if we chucked all this and went home to England?”
She had been combing her short dark hair. Now her hands came down from her
head sharply. She turned towards him.
“You mean—but we’ve only just come. We’ve not been out here in the islands for
more than three weeks.”
“I know. But—would you mind?”
Her eyes searched him incredulously.
“You really want to go back to England? Back home?”
“Yes.”
“Leaving—Lucky?”
He winced.
“You’ve known all the time, I suppose, that—that it was going on?”
“Pretty well. Yes.”
“You’ve never said anything.”
“Why should I? We had the whole thing out years ago. Neither of us wanted to
make a break. So we agreed to go our separate ways—but keep up the show in
public.” Then she added before he could speak, “But why are you so set on
going back to England now?”
“Because I’m at breaking point. I can’t stick it any longer, Evelyn. I can’t.”
The quiet Edward Hillingdon was transformed. His hands shook, he swallowed,
his calm unemotional face seemed distorted by pain.
“For God’s sake, Edward, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter except that I want to get out of here—”
“You fell wildly in love with Lucky. And now you’ve got over it. Is that what
you’re telling me?”
“Yes. I don’t suppose you’ll ever feel the same.”
“Oh let’s not go into that now! I want to understand what’s upsetting you so
much, Edward.”
“I’m not particularly upset.”
“But you are. Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it isn’t,” said Evelyn. “Let’s put it in plain concrete terms. You’ve had
an affair with a woman. That happens often enough. And now it’s over. Or isn’t
it over? Perhaps it isn’t over on her side. Is that it? Does Greg know about
it? I’ve often wondered.”
“I don’t know,” said Edward. “He’s never said anything. He always seems
friendly enough.”
“Men can be extraordinarily obtuse,” said Evelyn thoughtfully. “Or
else—Perhaps Greg has got an outside interest of his own!”
“He’s made passes at you, hasn’t he?” said Edward. “Answer me—I know he has—”
“Oh yes,” said Evelyn, carelessly, “but he makes passes at everyone. That’s
just Greg. It doesn’t ever really mean much, I imagine. It’s just part of the
Greg he-man act.”
“Do you care for him, Evelyn? I’d rather know the truth.”
“Greg? I’m quite fond of him—he amuses me. He’s a good friend.”
“And that’s all? I wish I could believe you.”
“I can’t really see how it can possibly matter to you,” said Evelyn dryly.
“I suppose I deserve that.”
Evelyn walked to the window, looked out across the veranda and came back
again.
“I wish you would tell me what’s really upsetting you, Edward.”
“I’ve told you.”
“I wonder.”
“You can’t understand, I suppose, how extraordinary a temporary madness of
this kind can seem to you after you’ve got over it.”
“I can try, I suppose. But what’s worrying me now is that Lucky seems to have
got some kind of stranglehold upon you. She’s not just a discarded mistress.
She’s a tigress with claws. You must tell me the truth, Edward. It’s the only
way if you want me to stand by you.”
Edward said in a low voice: “If I don’t get away from her soon—I shall kill
her.”
“Kill Lucky? Why?”
“Because of what she made me do….”
“What did she make you do?”
“I helped her to commit a murder—”
The words were out—There was silence—Evelyn stared at him.
“Do you know what you are saying?”
“Yes. I didn’t know I was doing it. There were things she asked me to get for
her—at the chemist’s. I didn’t know—I hadn’t the least idea what she wanted
them for—She got me to copy out a prescription she had….”
“When was this?”
“Four years ago. When we were in Martinique. When—when Greg’s wife—”
“You mean Greg’s first wife—Gail? You mean Lucky poisoned her?”
“Yes—and I helped her. When I realized—”
Evelyn interrupted him.
“When you realized what had happened, Lucky pointed out to you that you had
written out the prescription, that you had got the drugs, that you and she
were in it together? Is that right?”
“Yes. She said she had done it out of pity—that Gail was suffering—that she
had begged Lucky to get something that would end it all.”
“A mercy killing! I see. And you believed that?”
Edward Hillingdon was silent a moment—then he said:
“No—I didn’t really—not deep down—I accepted it because I wanted to believe
it—because I was infatuated with Lucky.”
“And afterwards—when she married Greg—did you still believe it?”
“I’d made myself believe it by then.”
“And Greg—how much did he know about it all?”
“Nothing at all.”
“That I find hard to believe!”
Edward Hillingdon broke out—
“Evelyn, I’ve got to get free of it all! That woman taunts me still with what
I did. She knows I don’t care for her any longer. Care for her?—I’ve come to
hate her—But she makes me feel I’m tied to her—by the thing we did together—”
Evelyn walked up and down the room—then she stopped and faced him.
“The entire trouble with you, Edward, is that you are ridiculously
sensitive—and also incredibly suggestible. That devil of a woman has got you
just where she wants you by playing on your sense of guilt—And I’ll tell you
this in plain Bible terms, the guilt that weighs on you is the guilt of
adultery—not murder—you were guilt-stricken about your affair with Lucky—and
then she made a cat’s-paw of you for her murder scheme, and managed to make
you feel you shared her guilt. You don’t.”
“Evelyn….” He stepped towards her—
She stepped back a minute—and looked at him searchingly.
“Is this all true, Edward—Is it? Or are you making it up?”
“Evelyn! Why on earth should I do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Evelyn Hillingdon slowly—“It’s just perhaps—because I
find it hard to trust—anybody. And because—Oh! I don’t know—I’ve got, I
suppose, so that I don’t know the truth when I hear it.”
“Let’s chuck all this—Go back home to England.”
“Yes—We will—But not now.”
“Why not?”
“We must carry on as usual—just for the present. It’s important. Do you
understand, Edward? Don’t let Lucky have an inkling of what we’re up to—” | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Thirteen
EXIT VICTORIA JOHNSON
The evening was drawing to a close. The steel band was at last relaxing its
efforts. Tim stood by the dining room looking over the terrace. He
extinguished a few lights on tables that had been vacated.
A voice spoke behind him. “Tim, can I speak to you a moment?”
Tim Kendal started.
“Hallo, Evelyn, is there anything I can do for you?”
Evelyn looked round.
“Come to this table here, and let’s sit down a minute.”
She led the way to a table at the extreme end of the terrace. There were no
other people near them.
“Tim, you must forgive me talking to you, but I’m worried about Molly.”
His face changed at once.
“What about Molly?” he said stiffly.
“I don’t think she’s awfully well. She seems upset.”
“Things do seem to upset her rather easily just lately.”
“She ought to see a doctor, I think.”
“Yes, I know, but she doesn’t want to. She’d hate it.”
“Why?”
“Eh? What d’you mean?”
“I said why? Why should she hate seeing a doctor?”
“Well,” said Tim rather vaguely, “people do sometimes, you know. It’s—well, it
sort of makes them feel frightened about themselves.”
“You’re worried about her yourself, aren’t you, Tim?”
“Yes. Yes, I am rather.”
“Isn’t there anyone of her family who could come out here to be with her?”
“No. That’d make things worse, far worse.”
“What is the trouble—with her family, I mean?”
“Oh, just one of those things. I suppose she’s just highly strung and—she
didn’t get on with them—particularly her mother. She never has.
They’re—they’re rather an odd family in some ways and she cut loose from them.
Good thing she did, I think.”
Evelyn said hesitantly—“She seems to have had blackouts, from what she told
me, and to be frightened of people. Almost like persecution mania.”
“Don’t say that,” said Tim angrily. “Persecution mania! People always say that
about people. Just because she—well—maybe she’s a bit nervy. Coming out here
to the West Indies. All the dark faces. You know, people are rather queer,
sometimes, about the West Indies and coloured people.”
“Surely not girls like Molly?”
“Oh, how does one know the things people are frightened of? There are people
who can’t be in the room with cats. And other people who faint if a
caterpillar drops on them.”
“I hate suggesting it—but don’t you think perhaps she ought to see a—well, a
psychiatrist?”
“No!” said Tim explosively. “I won’t have people like that monkeying about
with her. I don’t believe in them. They make people worse. If her mother had
left psychiatrists alone….”
“So there was trouble of that kind in her family—was there? I mean a history
of—” she chose the word carefully—“instability.”
“I don’t want to talk about it—I took her away from it all and she was all
right, quite all right. She has just got into a nervous state … But these
things aren’t hereditary. Everybody knows that nowadays. It’s an exploded
idea. Molly’s perfectly sane. It’s just that—oh! I believe it was that
wretched old Palgrave dying that started it all off.”
“I see,” said Evelyn thoughtfully. “But there was nothing really to worry
anyone in Major Palgrave’s death, was there?”
“No, of course there wasn’t. But it’s a kind of shock when somebody dies
suddenly.”
He looked so desperate and defeated that Evelyn’s heart smote her. She put her
hand on his arm.
“Well, I hope you know what you’re doing, Tim, but if I could help in any
way—I mean if I could go with Molly to New York—I could fly with her there or
Miami or somewhere where she could get really first-class medical advice.”
“It’s very good of you, Evelyn, but Molly’s all right. She’s getting over it,
anyway.”
Evelyn shook her head in doubt. She turned away slowly and looked along the
line of the terrace. Most people had gone by now to their bungalows. Evelyn
was walking towards her table to see if she’d left anything behind there, when
she heard Tim give an exclamation. She looked up sharply. He was staring
towards the steps at the end of the terrace and she followed his gaze. Then
she too caught her breath.
Molly was coming up the steps from the beach. She was breathless with deep,
sobbing breaths, her body swayed to and fro as she came, in a curious
directionless run. Tim cried:
“Molly! What’s the matter?”
He ran towards her and Evelyn followed him. Molly was at the top of the steps
now and she stood there, both hands behind her back. She said in sobbing
breaths:
“I found her … She’s there in the bushes … There in the bushes … And look at
my hands—look at my hands.” She held them out and Evelyn caught her breath as
she saw the queer dark stains. They looked dark in the subdued lighting but
she knew well enough that their real colour was red.
“What’s happened, Molly?” cried Tim.
“Down there,” said Molly. She swayed on her feet. “In the bushes….”
Tim hesitated, looked at Evelyn, then shoved Molly a little towards Evelyn and
ran down the steps. Evelyn put her arm round the girl.
“Come. Sit down, Molly. Here. You’d better have something to drink.”
Molly collapsed in a chair and leaned forward on the table, her forehead on
her crossed arm. Evelyn did not question her any more. She thought it better
to leave her time to recover.
“It’ll be all right, you know,” said Evelyn gently. “It’ll be all right.”
“I don’t know,” said Molly. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know
anything. I can’t remember. I—” she raised her head suddenly. “What’s the
matter with me? What’s the matter with me?”
“It’s all right, child. It’s all right.”
Tim was coming slowly up the steps. His face was ghastly. Evelyn looked up at
him, raising her eyebrows in a query.
“It’s one of our girls,” he said. “What’s-her-name—Victoria. Somebody’s put a
knife in her.”
Fourteen
INQUIRY
I
Molly lay on her bed. Dr. Graham and Dr. Robertson, the West Indian police
doctor, stood on one side—Tim on the other. Robertson had his hand on Molly’s
pulse—He nodded to the man at the foot of the bed, a slender dark man in
police uniform, Inspector Weston of the St. Honoré Police Force.
“A bare statement—no more,” the doctor said.
The other nodded.
“Now, Mrs. Kendal—just tell us how you came to find this girl.”
For a moment or two it was as though the figure on the bed had not heard. Then
she spoke in a faint, faraway voice.
“In the bushes—white….”
“You saw something white—and you looked to see what it was? Is that it?”
“Yes—white—lying there—I tried—tried to lift—she it—blood—blood all over my
hands.”
She began to tremble.
Dr. Graham shook his head at them. Robertson whispered—“She can’t stand much
more.”
“What were you doing on the beach path, Mrs. Kendal?”
“Warm—nice—by the sea—”
“You knew who the girl was?”
“Victoria—nice—nice girl—laughs—she used to laugh—oh! and now she won’t—She
won’t ever laugh again. I’ll never forget it—I’ll never forget it—” Her voice
rose hysterically.
“Molly—don’t.” It was Tim.
“Quiet—Quiet—” Dr. Robertson spoke with a soothing authority—“Just
relax—relax—Now just a small prick—” He withdrew the hypodermic.
“She’ll be in no fit condition to be questioned for at least twenty-four
hours,” he said—“I’ll let you know when.”
II
The big handsome negro looked from one to the other of the men sitting at the
table.
“Ah declare to God,” he said. “That’s all Ah know. Ah don’t know nothing but
what Ah’ve told you.”
The perspiration stood out on his forehead. Daventry sighed. The man presiding
at the table, Inspector Weston of the St. Honoré CID, made a gesture of
dismissal. Big Jim Ellis shuffled out of the room.
“It’s not all he knows, of course,” Weston said. He had the soft Island voice.
“But it’s all we shall learn from him.”
“You think he’s in the clear himself?” asked Daventry.
“Yes. They seem to have been on good terms together.”
“They weren’t married?”
A faint smile appeared on Lieutenant Weston’s lips. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“No,” he said, “they
weren’t married. We don’t have so many marriages on the Island. They christen
the children, though. He’s had two children by Victoria.”
“Do you think he was in it, whatever it was, with her?”
“Probably not. I think he’d have been nervous of anything of that kind. And
I’d say, too, that what she did know wasn’t very much.”
“But enough for blackmail?”
“I don’t know that I’d even call it that. I doubt if the girl would even
understand that word. Payment for being discreet isn’t thought of as
blackmail. You see, some of the people who stay here are the rich playboy lot
and their morals won’t bear much investigation.” His voice was slightly
scathing.
“We get all kinds, I agree,” said Daventry. “A woman, maybe, doesn’t want it
known that she’s sleeping around, so she gives a present to the girl who waits
on her. It’s tacitly understood that the payment’s for discretion.”
“Exactly.”
“But this,” objected Daventry, “wasn’t anything of that kind. It was murder.”
“I should doubt, though, if the girl knew it was serious. She saw something,
some puzzling incident, something to do presumably with this bottle of pills.
It belonged to Mr. Dyson, I understand. We’d better see him next.”
Gregory came in with his usual hearty air.
“Here I am,” he said, “what can I do to help? Too bad about this girl. She was
a nice girl. We both liked her. I suppose it was some sort of quarrel or other
with a man, but she seemed quite happy and no signs of being in trouble about
anything. I was kidding her only last night.”
“I believe you take a preparation, Mr. Dyson, called Serenite?”
“Quite right. Little pink tablets.”
“You have them on prescription from a physician?”
“Yes. I can show it to you if you like. Suffer a bit from high blood pressure,
like so many people do nowadays.”
“Very few people seem to be aware of that fact.”
“Well, I don’t go talking about it. I—well, I’ve always been well and hearty
and I never like people who talk about their ailments all the time.”
“How many of the pills do you take?”
“Two, three times a day.”
“Do you have a fairly large stock with you?”
“Yes. I’ve got about half a dozen bottles. But they’re locked up, you know, in
a suitcase. I only keep out one, the one that’s in current use.”
“And you missed this bottle a short time ago, so I hear?”
“Quite right.”
“And you asked this girl, Victoria Johnson, whether she’d seen it?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said the last time she’d seen it was on the shelf in our bathroom. She
said she’d looked around.”
“And after that?”
“She came and returned the bottle to me some time later. She said was this the
bottle that was missing?”
“And you said?”
“I said ‘That’s it, all right, where did you find it?’ and she said it was in
old Major Palgrave’s room. I said ‘How on earth did it get there?’”
“And what did she answer to that?”
“She said she didn’t know, but—” he hesitated.
“Yes, Mr. Dyson?”
“Well, she gave me the feeling that she did know a little more than she was
saying, but I didn’t pay much attention. After all, it wasn’t very important.
As I say, I’ve got other bottles of the pills with me. I thought perhaps I’d
left it around in the restaurant or somewhere and old Palgrave picked it up
for some reason. Perhaps he put it in his pocket meaning to return it to me,
then forgot.”
“And that’s all you know about it, Mr. Dyson?”
“That’s all I know. Sorry to be so unhelpful. Is it important? Why?”
Weston shrugged his shoulders. “As things are, anything may be important.”
“I don’t see where pills come in. I thought you’d want to know about what my
movements were when this wretched girl was stabbed. I’ve written them all down
as carefully as I can.”
Weston looked at him thoughtfully.
“Indeed? That was very helpful of you, Mr. Dyson.”
“Save everybody trouble, I thought,” said Greg. He shoved a piece of paper
across the table.
Weston studied it and Daventry drew his chair a little closer and looked over
his shoulder.
“That seems very clear,” said Weston, after a moment or two. “You and your
wife were together changing for dinner in your bungalow until ten minutes to
nine. You then went along to the terrace where you had drinks with Señora de
Caspearo. At quarter past nine Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon joined you and you
went in to dine. As far as you can remember, you went off to bed at about half
past eleven.”
“Of course,” said Greg, “I don’t know what time the girl was actually
killed—?”
There was a faint semblance of a question in the words. Lieutenant Weston,
however, did not appear to notice it.
“Mrs. Kendal found her, I understand? Must have been a very nasty shock for
her.”
“Yes. Dr. Robertson had to give her a sedative.”
“This was quite late, wasn’t it, when most people had trundled off to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Had she been dead long? When Mrs. Kendal found her, I mean?”
“We’re not quite certain of the exact time yet,” said Weston smoothly.
“Poor little Molly. It must have been a nasty shock for her. Matter of fact, I
didn’t notice her about last night. Thought she might have had a headache or
something and was lying down.”
“When was the last time you did see Mrs. Kendal?”
“Oh, quite early, before I went to change. She was playing about with some of
the table decorations and things. Rearranging the knives.”
“I see.”
“She was quite cheerful then,” said Greg. “Kidding and all that. She’s a great
girl. We’re all very fond of her. Tim’s a lucky fellow.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Dyson. You can’t remember anything more than you’ve told
us about what the girl Victoria said when she returned the tablets?”
“No … It was just as I say. Asked me were these the tablets I’d been asking
for. Said she’d found them in old Palgrave’s room.”
“She’d no idea who put them there?”
“Don’t think so—can’t remember, really.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dyson.”
Gregory went out.
“Very thoughtful of him,” said Weston, gently tapping the paper with his
fingernail, “to be so anxious to want us to know for sure exactly where he was
last night.”
“A little over-anxious do you think?” asked Daventry.
“That’s very difficult to tell. There are people, you know, who are naturally
nervous about their own safety, about being mixed up with anything. It isn’t
necessarily because they have any guilty knowledge. On the other hand it might
be just that.”
“What about opportunity? Nobody’s really got much of an alibi, what with the
band and the dancing and the coming and going. People are getting up, leaving
their tables, coming back. Women go to powder their noses. Men take a stroll.
Dyson could have slipped away. Anybody could have slipped away. But he does
seem rather anxious to prove that he didn’t.” He looked thoughtfully down at
the paper. “So Mrs. Kendal was rearranging knives on the table,” he said. “I
rather wonder if he dragged that in on purpose.”
“Did it sound like it to you?”
The other considered. “I think it’s possible.”
Outside the room where the two men were sitting, a noise had arisen. A high
voice was demanding admittance shrilly.
“I’ve got something to tell. I’ve got something to tell. You take me in to
where the gentlemen are. You take me in to where the policeman is.”
A uniformed policeman pushed open the door.
“It’s one of the cooks here,” he said, “very anxious to see you. Says he’s got
something you ought to know.”
A frightened dark man in a cook’s cap pushed past him and came into the room.
It was one of the minor cooks. A Cuban, not a native of St. Honoré.
“I tell you something. I tell you,” he said. “She come through my kitchen, she
did, and she had a knife with her. A knife, I tell you. She had a knife in her
hand. She come through my kitchen and out the door. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
She come through my kitchen and out the door. Out into the garden. I saw
her.”
“Now calm down,” said Daventry, “calm down. Who are you talking about?”
“I tell you who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the boss’s wife. Mrs.
Kendal. I’m talking about her. She have a knife in her hand and she go out
into the dark. Before dinner that was—and she didn’t come back.”
Fifteen
INQUIRY CONTINUED
I
“Can we have a word with you, Mr. Kendal?”
“Of course.” Tim looked up from his desk. He pushed some papers aside and
indicated chairs. His face was drawn and miserable. “How are you getting on?
Got any forwarder? There seems to be a doom in this place. People are wanting
to leave, you know, asking about air passages. Just when it seemed everything
was being a success. Oh Lord, you don’t know what it means, this place, to me
and to Molly. We staked everything on it.”
“It’s very hard on you, I know,” said Inspector Weston. “Don’t think that we
don’t sympathize.”
“If it all could be cleared up quickly,” said Tim. “This wretched girl
Victoria—Oh! I oughtn’t to talk about her like that. She was quite a good
sort, Victoria was. But—but there must be some quite simple reason, some—kind
of intrigue, or love affair she had. Perhaps her husband—”
“Jim Ellis wasn’t her husband, and they seemed a settled sort of couple.”
“If it could only be cleared up quickly,” said Tim again. “I’m sorry. You
wanted to talk to me about something, ask me something.”
“Yes. It was about last night. According to medical evidence Victoria was
killed some time between 10:30 pm and midnight. Alibis under the circumstances
that prevail here are not very easy to prove. People are moving about,
dancing, walking away from the terrace, coming back. It’s all very difficult.”
“I suppose so. But does that mean that you definitely consider Victoria was
killed by one of the guests here?”
“Well, we have to examine that possibility, Mr. Kendal. What I want to ask you
particularly about, is a statement made by one of your cooks.”
“Oh? Which one? What does he say?”
“He’s a Cuban, I understand.”
“We’ve got two Cubans and a Puerto Rican.”
“This man Enrico states that your wife passed through the kitchen on her way
from the dining room, and went out into the garden and that she was carrying a
knife.”
Tim stared at him.
“Molly, carrying a knife? Well, why shouldn’t she? I mean—why—you don’t
think—what are you trying to suggest?”
“I am talking of the time before people had come into the dining room. It
would be, I suppose, some time about 8:30. You yourself were in the dining
room talking to the head waiter, Fernando, I believe.”
“Yes.” Tim cast his mind back. “Yes, I remember.”
“And your wife came in from the terrace?”
“Yes, she did,” Tim agreed. “She always went out to look over the tables.
Sometimes the boys set things wrong, forgot some of the cutlery, things like
that. Very likely that’s what it was. She may have been rearranging cutlery or
something. She might have had a spare knife or a spoon, something like that in
her hand.”
“And she came from the terrace into the dining room. Did she speak to you?”
“Yes, we had a word or two together.”
“What did she say? Can you remember?”
“I think I asked her who she’d been talking to. I heard her voice out there.”
“And who did she say she’d been talking to?”
“Gregory Dyson.”
“Ah. Yes. That is what he said.”
Tim went on, “He’d been making a pass at her, I understand. He was a bit given
to that kind of thing. It annoyed me and I said ‘Blast him’ and Molly laughed
and said she could do all the blasting that needed to be done. Molly’s a very
clever girl that way. It’s not always an easy position, you know. You can’t
offend guests, and so an attractive girl like Molly has to pass things off
with a laugh and a shrug. Gregory Dyson finds it difficult to keep his hands
off any good-looking woman.”
“Had there been an altercation between them?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think, as I say, she just laughed it off as usual.”
“You can’t say definitely whether she had a knife in her hand or not?”
“I can’t remember—I’m almost sure she didn’t—in fact quite sure she didn’t.”
“But you said just now….”
“Look here, what I meant was that if she was in the dining room or in the
kitchen it’s quite likely she might have picked up a knife or had one in her
hand. Matter of fact I can remember quite well, she came in from the dining
room and she had nothing in her hand. Nothing at all. That’s definite.”
“I see,” said Weston.
Tim looked at him uneasily.
“What on earth is this you’re getting at? What did that damn’ fool
Enrico—Manuel—whoever it was—say?”
“He said your wife came out into the kitchen, that she looked upset, that she
had a knife in her hand.”
“He’s just dramatizing.”
“Did you have any further conversation with your wife during dinner or after?”
“No, I don’t think I did really. Matter of fact I was rather busy.”
“Was your wife there in the dining room during the meal?”
“I—oh—yes, we always move about among the guests and things like that. See how
things are going on.”
“Did you speak to her at all?”
“No, I don’t think I did … We’re usually fairly busy. We don’t always notice
what the other one’s doing and we certainly haven’t got time to talk to each
other.”
“Actually you don’t remember speaking to her until she came up the steps three
hours later, after finding the body?”
“It was an awful shock for her. It upset her terribly.”
“I know. A very unpleasant experience. How did she come to be walking along
the beach path?”
“After the stress of dinner being served, she often does go for a turn. You
know, get away from the guests for a minute or two, get a breather.”
“When she came back, I understand you were talking to Mrs. Hillingdon.”
“Yes. Practically everyone else had gone to bed.”
“What was the subject of your conversation with Mrs. Hillingdon?”
“Nothing particular. Why? What’s she been saying?”
“So far she hasn’t said anything. We haven’t asked her.”
“We were just talking of this and that. Molly, and hotel running, and one
thing and another.”
“And then—your wife came up the steps of the terrace and told you what had
happened?”
“Yes.”
“There was blood on her hands?”
“Of course there was! She’d been over the girl, tried to lift her, couldn’t
understand what had happened, what was the matter with her. Of course there
was blood on her hands! Look here, what the hell are you suggesting? You are
suggesting something?”
“Please calm down,” said Daventry. “It’s all a great strain on you I know,
Tim, but we have to get the facts clear. I understand your wife hasn’t been
feeling very well lately?”
“Nonsense—she’s all right. Major Palgrave’s death upset her a bit. Naturally.
She’s a sensitive girl.”
“We shall have to ask her a few questions as soon as she’s fit enough,” said
Weston.
“Well, you can’t now. The doctor gave her a sedative and said she wasn’t to be
disturbed. I won’t have her upset and brow-beaten, d’you hear?”
“We’re not going to do any brow-beating,” said Weston. “We’ve just got to get
the facts clear. We won’t disturb her at present, but as soon as the doctor
allows us, we’ll have to see her.” His voice was gentle—inflexible.
Tim looked at him, opened his mouth, but said nothing.
II
Evelyn Hillingdon, calm and composed as usual, sat down in the chair
indicated. She considered the few questions asked her, taking her time over
it. Her dark, intelligent eyes looked at Weston thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she said, “I was talking to Mr. Kendal on the terrace when his wife
came up the steps and told us about the murder.”
“Your husband wasn’t there?”
“No, he had gone to bed.”
“Had you any special reason for your conversation with Mr. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Kendal?”
Evelyn raised her finely pencilled eyebrows—It was a definite rebuke.
She said coldly:
“What a very odd question. No—there was nothing special about our
conversation.”
“Did you discuss the matter of his wife’s health?”
Again Evelyn took her time.
“I really can’t remember,” she said at last.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Sure that I can’t remember? What a curious way of putting it—one talks about
so many things at different times.”
“Mrs. Kendal has not been in good health lately, I understand.”
“She looked quite all right—a little tired perhaps. Of course running a place
like this means a lot of worries, and she is quite inexperienced. Naturally,
she gets flustered now and then.”
“Flustered.” Weston repeated the word. “That was the way you would describe
it?”
“It’s an old-fashioned word, perhaps, but just as good as the modern jargon we
use for everything—A ‘virus infection’ for a bilious attack—an ‘anxiety
neurosis’ for the minor bothers of daily life—”
Her smile made Weston feel slightly ridiculous. He thought to himself that
Evelyn Hillingdon was a clever woman. He looked at Daventry, whose face
remained unmoved, and wondered what he thought.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hillingdon,” said Weston.
III
“We don’t want to worry you, Mrs. Kendal, but we have to have your account of
just how you came to find this girl. Dr. Graham says you are sufficiently
recovered to talk about it now.”
“Oh yes,” said Molly, “I’m really quite all right again.” She gave them a
small nervous smile. “It was just the shock—It was rather awful, you know.”
“Yes, indeed it must have been—I understand you went for a walk after dinner.”
“Yes—I often do.”
Her eyes shifted, Daventry noticed, and the fingers of her hands twined and
untwined about each other.
“What time would that have been, Mrs. Kendal?” asked Weston.
“Well, I don’t really know—we don’t go much by the time.”
“The steel band was still playing?”
“Yes—at least—I think so—I can’t really remember.”
“And you walked—which way?”
“Oh, along the beach path.”
“To the left or the right?”
“Oh! First one way—and then the other—I—I—really didn’t notice.”
“Why didn’t you notice, Mrs. Kendal?”
She frowned.
“I suppose I was—well—thinking of things.”
“Thinking of anything particular?”
“No—No—Nothing particular—Just things that had to be done—seen to—in the
hotel.” Again that nervous twining and untwining of fingers. “And then—I
noticed something white—in a clump of hibiscus bushes—and I wondered what it
was. I stopped and—and pulled—” She swallowed convulsively—“And it was
her—Victoria—all huddled up—and I tried to raise her head up and I
got—blood—on my hands.”
She looked at them and repeated wonderingly as though recalling something
impossible:
“Blood—on my hands.”
“Yes—Yes—A very dreadful experience. There is no need for you to tell us more
about that part of it—How long had you been walking, do you think, when you
found her—”
“I don’t know—I have no idea.”
“An hour? Half an hour? Or more than an hour—”
“I don’t know,” Molly repeated.
Daventry asked in a quiet everyday voice:
“Did you take a knife with you on your—walk?”
“A knife?” Molly sounded surprised. “Why should I take a knife?”
“I only ask because one of the kitchen staff mentioned that you had a knife in
your hand when you went out of the kitchen into the garden.”
Molly frowned.
“But I didn’t go out of the kitchen—oh you mean earlier—before dinner—I—I
don’t think so—”
“You had been rearranging the cutlery on the tables, perhaps.”
“I have to, sometimes. They lay things wrong—not enough knives—or too many.
The wrong number of forks and spoons—that sort of thing.”
“So you may have gone out of the kitchen that evening carrying a knife in your
hand?”
“I don’t think I did—I’m sure I didn’t—” She added—“Tim was there—he would
know. Ask him.”
“Did you like this girl—Victoria—was she good at her work?” asked Weston.
“Yes—she was a very nice girl.”
“You had no dispute with her?”
“Dispute? No.”
“She had never threatened you—in any way?”
“Threatened me? What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter—You have no idea of who could have killed her? No idea at
all?”
“None.” She spoke positively.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Kendal.” He smiled. “It wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all for now.”
Daventry got up, opened the door for her, and watched her go out.
“Tim would know,” he quoted as he returned to his chair. “And Tim says
definitely that she didn’t have a knife.”
Weston said gravely:
“I think that that is what any husband would feel called upon to say.”
“A table knife seems a very poor type of knife to use for murder.”
“But it was a steak knife, Mr. Daventry. Steaks were on the menu that evening.
Steak knives are kept sharp.”
“I really can’t bring myself to believe that that girl we’ve just been talking
to is a red-handed murderess, Weston.”
“It is not necessary to believe it yet. It could be that Mrs. Kendal went out
into the garden before dinner, clasping a knife she had taken off one of the
tables because it was superfluous—she might not even have noticed she was
holding it, and she could have put it down somewhere—or dropped it—It could
have been found and used by someone else—I, too, think her an unlikely
murderess.”
“All the same,” said Daventry thoughtfully, “I’m pretty sure she is not
telling all she knows. Her vagueness over time is odd—where was she—what was
she doing out there? Nobody, so far, seems to have noticed her in the dining
room that evening.”
“The husband was about as usual—but not the wife—”
“You think she went to meet someone—Victoria Johnson?”
“Perhaps—or perhaps she saw whoever it was who did go to meet Victoria.”
“You’re thinking of Gregory Dyson?”
“We know he was talking to Victoria earlier—He may have arranged to meet her
again later—everyone moved around freely on the terrace, remember—dancing,
drinking—in and out of the bar.”
“No alibi like a steel band,” said Daventry wryly.
Sixteen
MISS MARPLE SEEKS ASSISTANCE
If anybody had been there to observe the gentle-looking elderly lady who stood
meditatively on the loggia outside her bungalow, they would have thought she
had nothing more on her mind than deliberation on how to arrange her time that
day—An expedition, perhaps, to Castle Cliff—a visit to Jamestown—a nice drive
and lunch at Pelican Point—or just a quiet morning on the beach—
But the gentle old lady was deliberating quite other matters—she was in
militant mood.
“Something has got to be done,” said Miss Marple to herself.
Moreover, she was convinced that there was no time to be lost—There was
urgency.
But who was there that she could convince of that fact? Given time, she
thought she could find out the truth by herself.
She had found out a good deal. But not enough—not nearly enough. And time was
short.
She realized, bitterly, that here on this Paradise of an island, she had none
of her usual allies.
She thought regretfully of her friends in England—Sir Henry Clithering—always
willing to listen indulgently—his godson Dermot, who in spite of his increased
status at Scotland Yard was still ready to believe that when Miss Marple
voiced an opinion there was usually something behind it.
But would that soft-voiced native police officer pay any attention to an old
lady’s urgency? Dr. Graham? But Dr. Graham was not what she needed—too gentle
and hesitant, certainly not a man of quick decisions and rapid actions.
Miss Marple, feeling rather like a humble deputy of the Almighty, almost cried
aloud her need in Biblical phrasing.
Who will go for me?
Whom shall I send?
The sound that reached her ears a moment later was not instantly recognized by
her as an answer to prayer—far from it—At the back of her mind it registered
only as a man possibly calling his dog.
“Hi!”
Miss Marple, lost in perplexity, paid no attention.
“Hi!” The volume thus increased, Miss Marple looked vaguely round.
“HI!” called Mr. Rafiel impatiently. He added—“You there—”
Miss Marple had not at first realized that Mr. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
He added—“You there—”
Miss Marple had not at first realized that Mr. Rafiel’s “Hi You” was addressed
to her. It was not a method that anyone had ever used before to summon her. It
was certainly not a gentlemanly mode of address. Miss Marple did not resent
it, because people seldom did resent Mr. Rafiel’s somewhat arbitrary method of
doing things. He was a law unto himself and people accepted him as such. Miss
Marple looked across the intervening space between her bungalow and his. Mr.
Rafiel was sitting outside on his loggia and he beckoned her.
“You were calling me?” she asked.
“Of course I was calling you,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Who did you think I was
calling—a cat? Come over here.”
Miss Marple looked round for her handbag, picked it up, and crossed the
intervening space.
“I can’t come to you unless someone helps me,” explained Mr. Rafiel, “so
you’ve got to come to me.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I quite understand that.”
Mr. Rafiel pointed to an adjacent chair. “Sit down,” he said, “I want to talk
to you. Something damned odd is going on in this island.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Miss Marple, taking the chair as indicated. By sheer
habit she drew her knitting out of her bag.
“Don’t start knitting again,” said Mr. Rafiel, “I can’t stand it. I hate women
knitting. It irritates me.”
Miss Marple returned her knitting to her bag. She did this with no undue air
of meekness, rather with the air of one who makes allowances for a fractious
patient.
“There’s a lot of chit-chat going on,” said Mr. Rafiel, “and I bet you’re in
the forefront of it. You and the parson and his sister.”
“It is, perhaps, only natural that there should be chit-chat,” said Miss
Marple with spirit, “given the circumstances.”
“This Island girl gets herself knifed. Found in the bushes. Might be ordinary
enough. That chap she was living with might have got jealous of another man—or
he’d got himself another girl and she got jealous and they had a row. Sex in
the tropics. That sort of stuff. What do you say?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head.
“The authorities don’t think so, either.”
“They would say more to you,” pointed out Miss Marple, “than they would say to
me.”
“All the same, I bet you know more about it than I do. You’ve listened to the
tittle-tattle.”
“Certainly I have,” said Miss Marple.
“Nothing much else to do, have you, except listen to tittle-tattle?”
“It is often informative and useful.”
“D’you know,” said Mr. Rafiel, studying her attentively. “I made a mistake
about you. I don’t often make mistakes about people. There’s a lot more to you
than I thought there was. All these rumours about Major Palgrave and the
stories he told. You think he was bumped off, don’t you?”
“I very much fear so,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, he was,” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. “That is definite, is it?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s definite enough. I had it from Daventry. I’m not breaking a
confidence because the facts of the autopsy will have to come out. You told
Graham something, he went to Daventry, Daventry went to the Administrator, the
CID were informed, and between them they agreed that things looked fishy, so
they dug up old Palgrave and had a look.”
“And they found?” Miss Marple paused interrogatively.
“They found he’d had a lethal dose of something that only a doctor could
pronounce properly. As far as I remember it sounds vaguely like di-flor,
hexagonal-ethylcarbenzol. That’s not the right name. But that’s roughly what
it sounds like. The police doctor put it that way so that nobody should know,
I suppose, what it really was. The stuff’s probably got some quite simple nice
easy name like Evipan or Veronal or Easton’s Syrup or something of that kind.
This is its official name to baffle laymen with. Anyway, a sizeable dose of
it, I gather, would produce death, and the signs would be much the same as
those of high blood pressure aggravated by over-indulgence in alcohol on a gay
evening. In fact, it all looked perfectly natural and nobody questioned it for
a moment. Just said ‘poor old chap’ and buried him quick. Now they wonder if
he ever had high blood pressure at all. Did he ever say he had to you?”
“No.”
“Exactly! And yet everyone seems to have taken it as a fact.”
“Apparently he told people he had.”
“It’s like seeing ghosts,” said Mr. Rafiel. “You never meet the chap who’s
seen the ghost himself. It’s always the second cousin of his aunt, or a
friend, or a friend of a friend. But leave that for a moment. They thought he
had blood pressure, because there was a bottle of tablets controlling blood
pressure found in his room but—and now we’re coming to the point—I gather that
this girl who was killed went about saying that that bottle was put there by
somebody else, and that actually it belonged to that fellow Greg.”
“Mr. Dyson has got blood pressure. His wife mentioned it,” said Miss Marple.
“So it was put in Palgrave’s room to suggest that he suffered from blood
pressure and to make his death seem natural.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “And the story was put about, very cleverly, that
he had frequently mentioned to people that he had high blood pressure. But you
know, it’s very easy to put about a story. Very easy. I’ve seen a lot of it in
my time.”
“I bet you have,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“It only needs a murmur here and there,” said Miss Marple. “You don’t say it
of your own knowledge, you just say that Mrs. B. told you that Colonel C. told
her. It’s always at second hand or third hand or fourth hand and it’s very
difficult to find out who was the original whisperer. Oh yes, it can be done.
And the people you say it to go on and repeat it to others as if they know it
of their own knowledge.”
“Somebody’s been clever,” said Mr. Rafiel thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I think somebody’s been quite clever.”
“This girl saw something, or knew something and tried blackmail, I suppose,”
said Mr. Rafiel.
“She mayn’t have thought of it as blackmail,” said Miss Marple. “In these
large hotels, there are often things the maids know that some people would
rather not have repeated. And so they hand out a larger tip or a little
present of money. The girl possibly didn’t realize at first the importance of
what she knew.”
“Still, she got a knife in her back all right,” said Mr. Rafiel brutally.
“Yes. Evidently someone couldn’t afford to let her talk.”
“Well? Let’s hear what you think about it all.”
Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully.
“Why should you think I know any more than you do, Mr. Rafiel?”
“Probably you don’t,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but I’m interested to hear your ideas
about what you do know.”
“But why?”
“There’s not very much to do out here,” said Mr. Rafiel, “except make money.”
Miss Marple looked slightly surprised.
“Make money? Out here?”
“You can send out half a dozen cables in code every day if you like,” said Mr.
Rafiel. “That’s how I amuse myself.”
“Take-over bids?” Miss Marple asked doubtfully, in the tone of one who speaks
a foreign language.
“That kind of thing,” agreed Mr. Rafiel. “Pitting your wits against other
people’s wits. The trouble is it doesn’t occupy enough time, so I’ve got
interested in this business. It’s aroused my curiosity. Palgrave spent a good
deal of his time talking to you. Nobody else would be bothered with him, I
expect. What did he say?”
“He told me a good many stories,” said Miss Marple.
“I know he did. Damn’ boring, most of them. And you hadn’t only got to hear
them once. If you got anywhere within range you heard them three or four times
over.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid that does happen when gentlemen get
older.”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her very sharply. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Rafiel looked at her very sharply.
“I don’t tell stories,” he said. “Go on. It started with one of Palgrave’s
stories, did it?”
“He said he knew a murderer,” said Miss Marple. “There’s nothing really
special about that,” she added in her gentle voice, “because I suppose it
happens to nearly everybody.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“I don’t mean specifically,” said Miss Marple, “but surely, Mr. Rafiel, if you
cast over in your mind your recollections of various events in your life,
hasn’t there nearly always been an occasion when somebody has made some
careless reference such as ‘Oh yes I knew the So-and-So’s quite well—he died
very suddenly and they always say his wife did him in, but I dare say that’s
just gossip.’ You’ve heard people say something like that, haven’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so—yes, something of the kind. But not—well, not seriously.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple, “but Major Palgrave was a very serious man. I
think he enjoyed telling this story. He said he had a snapshot of the
murderer. He was going to show it to me but—actually—he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he saw something,” said Miss Marple. “Saw someone, I suspect. His
face got very red and he shoved back the snapshot into his wallet and began
talking on another subject.”
“Who did he see?”
“I’ve thought about that a good deal,” said Miss Marple. “I was sitting
outside my bungalow, and he was sitting nearly opposite me and—whatever he
saw, he saw over my right shoulder.”
“Someone coming along the path then from behind you on the right, the path
from the creek and the car park—”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone coming along the path?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dyson and Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I can find out. Of course, your bungalow would also be in his line
of vision….”
“Ah. Then we include—shall we say—Esther Walters and my chap, Jackson. Is that
right? Either of them, I suppose, might have come out of the bungalow and gone
back inside again without your seeing them.”
“They might have,” said Miss Marple, “I didn’t turn my head at once.”
“The Dysons, the Hillingdons, Esther, Jackson. One of them’s a murderer. Or,
of course, myself,” he added; obviously as an afterthought.
Miss Marple smiled faintly.
“And he spoke of the murderer as a man?”
“Yes.”
“Right. That cuts out Evelyn Hillingdon, Lucky and Esther Walters. So your
murderer, allowing that all this far-fetched nonsense is true, your murderer
is Dyson, Hillingdon or my smooth-tongued Jackson.”
“Or yourself,” said Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel ignored this last point.
“Don’t say things to irritate me,” he said. “I’ll tell you the first thing
that strikes me, and which you don’t seem to have thought of. If it’s one of
those three, why the devil didn’t old Palgrave recognize him before? Dash it
all, they’ve all been sitting round looking at each other for the last two
weeks. That doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“I think it could,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, tell me how.”
“You see, in Major Palgrave’s story he hadn’t seen this man himself at any
time. It was a story told to him by a doctor. The doctor gave him the snapshot
as a curiosity. Major Palgrave may have looked at the snapshot fairly closely
at the time but after that he’d just stack it away in his wallet and keep it
as a souvenir. Occasionally, perhaps, he’d take it out and show it to someone
he was telling the story to. And another thing, Mr. Rafiel, we don’t know how
long ago this happened. He didn’t give me any indication of that when he was
telling the story. I mean this may have been a story he’s been telling to
people for years. Five years—ten years—longer still perhaps. Some of his tiger
stories go back about twenty years.”
“They would!” said Mr. Rafiel.
“So I don’t suppose for a moment that Major Palgrave would recognize the face
in the snapshot if he came across the man casually. What I think happened,
what I’m almost sure must have happened, is that as he told his story he
fumbled for the snapshot, took it out, looked down at it studying the face and
then looked up to see the same face, or one with a strong resemblance, coming
towards him from a distance of about ten or twelve feet away.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rafiel consideringly, “yes, that’s possible.”
“He was taken aback,” said Miss Marple, “and he shoved it back in his wallet
and began to talk loudly about something else.”
“He couldn’t have been sure,” said Mr. Rafiel, shrewdly.
“No,” said Miss Marple, “he couldn’t have been sure. But of course afterwards
he would have studied the snapshot very carefully and would have looked at the
man and tried to make up his mind whether it was just a likeness or whether it
could actually be the same person.”
Mr. Rafiel reflected a moment or two, then he shook his head.
“There’s something wrong here. The motive’s inadequate. Absolutely inadequate.
He was speaking to you loudly, was he?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “quite loudly. He always did.”
“True enough. Yes, he did shout. So whoever was approaching would hear what he
said?”
“I should imagine you could hear it for quite a good radius round.”
Mr. Rafiel shook his head again. He said, “It’s fantastic, too fantastic.
Anybody would laugh at such a story. Here’s an old booby telling a story about
another story somebody told him, and showing a snapshot, and all of it
centring round a murder which had taken place years ago! Or at any rate, a
year or two. How on earth can that worry the man in question? No evidence,
just a bit of hearsay, a story at third hand. He could even admit a likeness,
he could say: ‘Yes, I do look rather like that fellow, don’t I! Ha, ha!’
Nobody’s going to take old Palgrave’s identification seriously. Don’t tell me
so, because I won’t believe it. No, the chap, if it was the chap, had nothing
to fear—nothing whatever. It’s the kind of accusation he can just laugh off.
Why on earth should he proceed to murder old Palgrave? It’s absolutely
unnecessary. You must see that.”
“Oh I do see that,” said Miss Marple. “I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s
what makes me uneasy. So very uneasy that I really couldn’t sleep last night.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her. “Let’s hear what’s on your mind,” he said quietly.
“I may be entirely wrong,” said Miss Marple hesitantly.
“Probably you are,” said Mr. Rafiel with his usual lack of courtesy, “but at
any rate let’s hear what you’ve thought up in the small hours.”
“There could be a very powerful motive if—”
“If what?”
“If there was going to be—quite soon—another murder.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her. He tried to pull himself up a little in his chair.
“Let’s get this clear,” he said.
“I am so bad at explaining.” Miss Marple spoke rapidly and rather
incoherently. A pink flush rose to her cheeks. “Supposing there was a murder
planned. If you remember, the story Major Palgrave told me concerned a man
whose wife died under suspicious circumstances. Then, after a certain lapse of
time, there was another murder under exactly the same circumstances. A man of
a different name had a wife who died in much the same way and the doctor who
was telling it recognized him as the same man, although he’d changed his name.
Well, it does look, doesn’t it, as though this murderer might be the kind of
murderer who made a habit of the thing?”
“You mean like Smith, Brides in the Bath, that kind of thing. Yes.”
“As far as I can make out,” said Miss Marple, “and from what I have heard and
read, a man who does a wicked thing like this and gets away with it the first
time, is, alas, encouraged. He thinks it’s easy, he thinks he’s clever. And so
he repeats it. And in the end, as you say, like Smith and the Brides in the
Bath, it becomes a habit. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Each time in a different place and each time the man
changes his name. But the crimes themselves are all very much alike. So it
seems to me, although I may be quite wrong—”
“But you don’t think you are wrong, do you?” Mr. Rafiel put in shrewdly.
Miss Marple went on without answering. “—that if that were so and if this—this
person had got things all lined up for a murder out here, for getting rid of
another wife, say, and if this is crime three or four, well then, the Major’s
story would matter because the murderer couldn’t afford to have any similarity
pointed out. If you remember, that was exactly the way Smith got caught. The
circumstances of a crime attracted the attention of somebody who compared it
with a newspaper clipping of some other case. So you do see, don’t you, that
if this wicked person has got a crime planned, arranged, and shortly about to
take place, he couldn’t afford to let Major Palgrave go about telling this
story and showing that snapshot.”
She stopped and looked appealingly at Mr. Rafiel.
“So you see he had to do something very quickly, as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Rafiel spoke. “In fact, that very same night, eh?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple.
“Quick work,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but it could be done. Put the tablets in old
Palgrave’s room, spread the blood pressure rumour about and add a little of
our fourteen-syllable drug to a Planters Punch. Is that it?”
“Yes—But that’s all over—we needn’t worry about it. It’s the future. It’s now.
With Major Palgrave out of the way and the snapshot destroyed, this man will
go on with his murder as planned.”
Mr. Rafiel whistled.
“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?”
Miss Marple nodded. She said in a most unaccustomed voice, firm and almost
dictatorial, “And we’ve got to stop it. You’ve got to stop it, Mr. Rafiel.”
“Me?” said Mr. Rafiel, astonished, “Why me?”
“Because you’re rich and important,” said Miss Marple, simply. “People will
take notice of what you say or suggest. They wouldn’t listen to me for a
moment. They would say that I was an old lady imagining things.”
“They might at that,” said Mr. Rafiel. “More fools if they did. I must say,
though, that nobody would think you had any brains in your head to hear your
usual line of talk. Actually, you’ve got a logical mind. Very few women have.”
He shifted himself uncomfortably in his chair. “Where the hell’s Esther or
Jackson?” he said. “I need resettling. No, it’s no good your doing it. You’re
not strong enough. I don’t know what they mean, leaving me alone like this.”
“I’ll go and find them.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll stay here—and thrash this out. Which of them is it? The
egregious Greg? The quiet Edward Hillingdon or my fellow Jackson? It’s got to
be one of the three, hasn’t it?”
Seventeen
MR. RAFIEL TAKES CHARGE
“I don’t know,” said Miss Marple.
“What do you mean? What have we been talking about for the last twenty
minutes?”
“It has occurred to me that I may have been wrong.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her.
“Scatty after all!” he said disgustedly. “And you sounded so sure of
yourself.”
“Oh, I am sure—about the murder. It’s the murderer I’m not sure about. You see
I’ve found out that Major Palgrave had more than one murder story—you told me
yourself he’d told you one about a kind of Lucrezia Borgia—”
“So he did—at that. But that was quite a different kind of story.”
“I know. And Mrs. Walters said he had one about someone being gassed in a gas
oven—”
“But the story he told you—”
Miss Marple allowed herself to interrupt—a thing that did not often happen to
Mr. Rafiel.
She spoke with desperate earnestness and only moderate incoherence.
“Don’t you see—it’s so difficult to be sure. The whole point is that—so
often—one doesn’t listen. Ask Mrs. Walters—she said the same thing—you listen
to begin with—and then your attention flags—your mind wanders—and suddenly you
find you’ve missed a bit. I just wonder if possibly there may have been a
gap—a very small one—between the story he was telling me—about a man—and the
moment when he was getting out his wallet and saying—‘Like to see a picture of
a murderer.’”
“But you thought it was a picture of the man he had been talking about?”
“I thought so—yes. It never occurred to me that it mightn’t have been. But
now—how can I be sure?”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her very thoughtfully….
“The trouble with you is,” he said, “that you’re too conscientious. Great
mistake—Make up your mind and don’t shilly shally. You didn’t shilly shally to
begin with. If you ask me, in all this chit-chat you’ve been having with the
parson’s sister and the rest of them, you’ve got hold of something that’s
unsettled you.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Well, cut it out for the moment. Let’s go ahead with what you had to begin
with. Because, nine times out of ten, one’s original judgments are right—or so
I’ve found. We’ve got three suspects. Let’s take ’em out and have a good look
at them. Any preference?”
“I really haven’t,” said Miss Marple, “all three of them seem so very
unlikely.”
“We’ll take Greg first,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Can’t stand the fellow. Doesn’t
make him a murderer, though. Still, there are one or two points against him.
Those blood pressure tablets belonged to him. Nice and handy to make use of.”
“That would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it?” Miss Marple objected.
“I don’t know that it would,” said Mr. Rafiel. “After all, the main thing was
to do something quickly, and he’d got the tablets. Hadn’t much time to go
looking round for tablets that somebody else might have. Let’s say it’s Greg.
All right. If he wanted to put his dear wife Lucky out of the way—(Good job,
too, I’d say. In fact I’m in sympathy with him.) I can’t actually see his
motive. From all accounts he’s rich. Inherited money from his first wife who
had pots of it. He qualifies on that as a possible wife murderer all right.
But that’s over and done with. He got away with it. But Lucky was his first
wife’s poor relation. No money there, so if he wants to put her out of the way
it must be in order to marry somebody else. Any gossip going around about
that?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Not that I have heard. He—er—has a very gallant manner with all the ladies.”
“Well, that’s a nice, old-fashioned way of putting it,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All
right, he’s a stoat. He makes passes. Not enough! We want more than that.
Let’s go on to Edward Hillingdon. Now there’s a dark horse, if ever there was
one.”
“He is not, I think, a happy man,” offered Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel looked at her thoughtfully.
“Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?”
Miss Marple coughed.
“Well, they usually have been in my experience.”
“I don’t suppose your experience has gone very far,” said Mr. Rafiel.
In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she
forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put
right in their facts.
“I rather fancy Hillingdon myself,” said Mr. Rafiel. “I’ve an idea that there
is something a bit odd going on between him and his wife. You noticed it at
all?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I have noticed it. Their behaviour is perfect in
public, of course, but that one would expect.”
“You probably know more about those sort of people than I would,” said Mr.
Rafiel. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Rafiel. “Very well, then, everything is in perfectly good taste but it’s a
probability that, in a gentlemanly way, Edward Hillingdon is contemplating
doing away with Evelyn Hillingdon. Do you agree?”
“If so,” said Miss Marple, “there must be another woman.”
Miss Marple shook her head in a dissatisfied manner.
“I can’t help feeling—I really can’t—that it’s not all quite as simple as
that.”
“Well, who shall we consider next—Jackson? We leave me out of it.”
Miss Marple smiled for the first time.
“And why do we leave you out of it, Mr. Rafiel?”
“Because if you want to discuss the possibilities of my being a murderer you’d
have to do it with somebody else. Waste of time talking about it to me. And
anyway, I ask you, am I cut out for the part? Helpless, hauled out of bed like
a dummy, dressed, wheeled about in a chair, shuffled along for a walk. What
earthly chance have I of going and murdering anyone?”
“Probably as good a chance as anyone else,” said Miss Marple vigorously.
“And how do you make that out?”
“Well, you would agree yourself, I think, that you have brains?”
“Of course I’ve got brains,” declared Mr. Rafiel. “A good deal more than
anybody else in this community, I’d say.”
“And having brains,” went on Miss Marple, “would enable you to overcome the
physical difficulties of being a murderer.”
“It would take some doing!”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “it would take some doing. But then, I think, Mr.
Rafiel, you would enjoy that.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her for a long time and then he suddenly laughed.
“You’ve got a nerve!” he said. “Not quite the gentle fluffy old lady you look,
are you? So you really think I’m a murderer?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I do not.”
“And why?”
“Well, really, I think just because you have got brains. Having brains, you
can get most things you want without having recourse to murder. Murder is
stupid.”
“And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?”
“That would be a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple. “I have not yet
had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a theory as to
that.”
Mr. Rafiel’s smile broadened.
“Conversations with you might be dangerous,” he said.
“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide,” said Miss
Marple.
“You may be right. Let’s get on to Jackson. What do you think of Jackson?”
“It is difficult for me to say. I have not had the opportunity really of any
conversation with him.”
“So you’ve no views on the subject?”
“He reminds me a little,” said Miss Marple reflectively, “of a young man in
the Town Clerk’s office near where I live, Jonas Parry.”
“And?” Mr. Rafiel asked and paused.
“He was not,” said Miss Marple, “very satisfactory.”
“Jackson’s not wholly satisfactory either. He suits me all right. He’s first
class at his job, and he doesn’t mind being sworn at. He knows he’s damn’ well
paid and so he puts up with things. I wouldn’t employ him in a position of
trust, but I don’t have to trust him. Maybe his past is blameless, maybe it
isn’t. His references were all right but I discern—shall I say—a note of
reserve. Fortunately, I’m not a man who has any guilty secrets, so I’m not a
subject for blackmail.”
“No secrets?” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “Surely, Mr. Rafiel, you have
business secrets?”
“Not where Jackson can get at them. No. Jackson is a smooth article, one might
say, but I really don’t see him as a murderer. I’d say that wasn’t his line at
all.”
He paused a minute and then said suddenly, “Do you know, if one stands back
and takes a good look at all this fantastic business, Major Palgrave and his
ridiculous stories and all the rest of it, the emphasis is entirely wrong. I’m
the person who ought to be murdered.”
Miss Marple looked at him in some surprise.
“Proper type casting,” explained Mr. Rafiel. “Who’s the victim in murder
stories? Elderly men with lots of money.”
“And lots of people with a good reason for wishing him out of the way, so as
to get that money,” said Miss Marple. “Is that true also?”
“Well—” Mr. Rafiel considered. “I can count up to five or six men in London
who wouldn’t burst into tears if they read my obituary in The Times. But they
wouldn’t go so far as to do anything to bring about my demise. After all, why
should they? I’m expected to die any day. In fact the bug—blighters are
astonished that I’ve lasted so long. The doctors are surprised too.”
“You have, of course, a great will to live,” said Miss Marple.
“You think that’s odd, I suppose,” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Oh no,” she said, “I think it’s quite natural. Life is more worth living,
more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn’t be,
perhaps, but it is. When you’re young and strong and healthy, and life
stretches ahead of you, living isn’t really important at all. It’s young
people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from
sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how
interesting.”
“Hah!” said Mr. Rafiel, snorting. “Listen to a couple of old crocks.”
“Well, what I said is true, isn’t it?” demanded Miss Marple.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Rafiel, “it’s true enough. But don’t you think I’m right
when I say that I ought to be cast as the victim?”
“It depends on who has reason to gain by your death,” said Miss Marple.
“Nobody, really,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Apart, as I’ve said, from my competitors
in the business world who, as I have also said, can count comfortably on my
being out of it before very long. I’m not such a fool as to leave a lot of
money divided up among my relations. Precious little they’d get of it after
the Government had taken practically the lot. Oh, no, I’ve attended to all
that years ago. Settlements, trusts and all the rest of it.”
“Jackson, for instance, wouldn’t profit by your death?”
“He wouldn’t get a penny,” said Mr. Rafiel cheerfully. “I pay him double the
salary that he’d get from anyone else. That’s because he has to put up with my
bad temper; and he knows quite well that he will be the loser when I die.”
“And Mrs. Walters?”
“The same goes for Esther. She’s a good girl. First-class secretary,
intelligent, good-tempered, understands my ways, doesn’t turn a hair if I fly
off the handle, couldn’t care less if I insult her. Behaves like a nice
nursery governess in charge of an outrageous and obstreperous child. She
irritates me a bit sometimes, but who doesn’t? There’s nothing outstanding
about her. She’s rather a commonplace young woman in many ways, but I couldn’t
have anyone who suited me better. She’s had a lot of trouble in her life.
Married a man who wasn’t much good. I’d say she never had much judgment when
it came to men. Some women haven’t. They fall for anyone who tells them a
hard-luck story. Always convinced that all the man needs is proper female
understanding. That, once married to her, he’ll pull up his socks and make a
go of life! But of course that type of man never does. Anyway, fortunately her
unsatisfactory husband died; drank too much at a party one night and stepped
in front of a bus. Esther had a daughter to support and she went back to her
secretarial job. She’s been with me five years. I made it quite clear to her
from the start that she need have no expectations from me in the event of my
death. I paid her from the start a very large salary, and that salary I’ve
augmented by as much as a quarter as much again each year. However decent and
honest people are, one should never trust anybody—that’s why I told Esther
quite clearly that she’d nothing to hope for from my death. Every year I live
she’ll get a bigger salary. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Every year I live
she’ll get a bigger salary. If she puts most of that aside every year—and
that’s what I think she has done—she’ll be quite a well-to-do woman by the
time I kick the bucket. I’ve made myself responsible for her daughter’s
schooling and I’ve put a sum in trust for the daughter which she’ll get when
she comes of age. So Mrs. Esther Walters is very comfortably placed. My death,
let me tell you, would mean a serious financial loss to her.” He looked very
hard at Miss Marple. “She fully realizes all that. She’s very sensible, Esther
is.”
“Do she and Jackson get on?” asked Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel shot a quick glance at her.
“Noticed something, have you?” he said. “Yes, I think Jackson’s done a bit of
tom-catting around, with an eye in her direction, especially lately. He’s a
good-looking chap, of course, but he hasn’t cut any ice in that direction. For
one thing, there’s class distinction. She’s just a cut above him. Not very
much. If she was really a cut above him it wouldn’t matter, but the lower
middle class—they’re very particular. Her mother was a school teacher and her
father a bank clerk. No, she won’t make a fool of herself about Jackson. Dare
say he’s after her little nest egg, but he won’t get it.”
“Hush—she’s coming now!” said Miss Marple.
They both looked at Esther Walters as she came along the hotel path towards
them.
“She’s quite a good-looking girl, you know,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but not an atom
of glamour. I don’t know why, she’s quite nicely turned out.”
Miss Marple sighed, a sigh that any woman will give however old at what might
be considered wasted opportunities. What was lacking in Esther had been called
by so many names during Miss Marple’s span of existence. “Not really
attractive to me.” “No SA.” “Lacks Come-hither in her eye.” Fair hair, good
complexion, hazel eyes, quite a good figure, pleasant smile, but lacking that
something that makes a man’s head turn when he passes a woman in the street.
“She ought to get married again,” said Miss Marple, lowering her voice.
“Of course she ought. She’d make a man a good wife.”
Esther Walters joined them and Mr. Rafiel said, in a slightly artificial
voice:
“So there you are at last! What’s been keeping you?”
“Everyone seemed to be sending cables this morning,” said Esther. “What with
that, and people trying to check out—”
“Trying to check out, are they? A result of this murder business?”
“I suppose so. Poor Tim Kendal is worried to death.”
“And well he might be. Bad luck for that young couple, I must say.”
“I know. I gather it was rather a big undertaking for them to take on this
place. They’ve been worried about making a success of it. They were doing very
well, too.”
“They were doing a good job,” agreed Mr. Rafiel. “He’s very capable and a
damned hard worker. She’s a very nice girl—attractive too. They’ve both worked
like blacks, though that’s an odd term to use out here, for blacks don’t work
themselves to death at all, so far as I can see. Was looking at a fellow
shinning up a coconut tree to get his breakfast, then he goes to sleep for the
rest of the day. Nice life.”
He added, “We’ve been discussing the murder here.”
Esther Walters looked slightly startled. She turned her head towards Miss
Marple.
“I’ve been wrong about her,” said Mr. Rafiel, with characteristic frankness.
“Never been much of a one for the old pussies. All knitting wool and tittle-
tattle. But this one’s got something. Eyes and ears, and she uses them.”
Esther Walters looked apologetically at Miss Marple, but Miss Marple did not
appear to take offence.
“That’s really meant to be a compliment, you know,” Esther explained.
“I quite realize that,” said Miss Marple. “I realize, too, that Mr. Rafiel is
privileged, or thinks he is.”
“What do you mean—privileged?” asked Mr. Rafiel.
“To be rude if you want to be rude,” said Miss Marple.
“Have I been rude?” said Mr. Rafiel, surprised. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended
you.”
“You haven’t offended me,” said Miss Marple, “I make allowances.”
“Now, don’t be nasty. Esther, get a chair and bring it here. Maybe you can
help.”
Esther walked a few steps to the balcony of the bungalow and brought over a
light basket chair.
“We’ll go on with our consultation,” said Mr. Rafiel. “We started with old
Palgrave, deceased, and his eternal stories.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Esther. “I’m afraid I used to escape from him whenever I
could.”
“Miss Marple was more patient,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Tell me, Esther, did he ever
tell you a story about a murderer?”
“Oh yes,” said Esther. “Several times.”
“What was it exactly? Let’s have your recollection.”
“Well—” Esther paused to think. “The trouble is,” she said apologetically, “I
didn’t really listen very closely. You see, it was rather like that terrible
story about the lion in Rhodesia which used to go on and on. One did get
rather in the habit of not listening.”
“Well, tell us what you do remember.”
“I think it arose out of some murder case that had been in the papers. Major
Palgrave said that he’d had an experience not every person had had. He’d
actually met a murderer face to face.”
“Met?” Mr. Rafiel exclaimed. “Did he actually use the word ‘met?’”
Esther looked confused.
“I think so.” She was doubtful. “Or he may have said, ‘I can point you out a
murderer.’”
“Well, which was it? There’s a difference.”
“I can’t really be sure … I think he said he’d show me a picture of someone.”
“That’s better.”
“And then he talked a lot about Lucrezia Borgia.”
“Never mind Lucrezia Borgia. We know all about her.”
“He talked about poisoners and that Lucrezia was very beautiful and had red
hair. He said there were probably far more women poisoners going about the
world than anyone knew.”
“That I fear is quite likely,” said Miss Marple.
“And he talked about poison being a woman’s weapon.”
“Seems to have been wandering from the point a bit,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“Well, of course, he always did wander from the point in his stories. And then
one used to stop listening and just say ‘Yes’ and ‘Really?’ And ‘You don’t say
so.’”
“What about this picture he was going to show you?”
“I don’t remember. It may have been something he’d seen in the paper—”
“He didn’t actually show you a snapshot?”
“A snapshot? No.” She shook her head. “I’m quite sure of that. He did say that
she was a good-looking woman, and you’d never think she was a murderer to look
at her.”
“She?”
“There you are,” exclaimed Miss Marple. “It makes it all so confusing.”
“He was talking about a woman?” Mr. Rafiel asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“The snapshot was a snapshot of a woman?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t have been!”
“But it was,” Esther persisted. “He said ‘She’s here in this island. I’ll
point her out to you, and then I’ll tell you the whole story.’”
Mr. Rafiel swore. In saying what he thought of the late Major Palgrave he did
not mince his words.
“The probabilities are,” he finished, “that not a word of anything he said was
true!”
“One does begin to wonder,” Miss Marple murmured.
“So there we are,” said Mr. Rafiel. “The old booby started telling you hunting
tales. Pig sticking, tiger shooting, elephant hunting, narrow escapes from
lions. One or two of them might have been fact. Several of them were fiction,
and others had happened to somebody else! Then he gets on to the subject of
murder and he tells one murder story to cap another murder story. And what’s
more he tells them all as if they’d happened to him. Ten to one most of them
were a hash-up of what he’d read in the paper, or seen on TV.”
He turned accusingly on Esther. “You admit that you weren’t listening closely. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“You admit that you weren’t listening closely.
Perhaps you misunderstood what he was saying.”
“I’m certain he was talking about a woman,” said Esther obstinately, “because
of course I wondered who it was.”
“Who do you think it was?” asked Miss Marple.
Esther flushed and looked slightly embarrassed.
“Oh, I didn’t really—I mean, I wouldn’t like to—”
Miss Marple did not insist. The presence of Mr. Rafiel, she thought, was
inimical to her finding out exactly what suppositions Esther Walters had made.
That could only be cosily brought out in a tête-à-tête between two women. And
there was, of course, the possibility that Esther Walters was lying.
Naturally, Miss Marple did not suggest this aloud. She registered it as a
possibility but she was not inclined to believe in it. For one thing she did
not think that Esther Walters was a liar (though one never knew) and for
another, she could see no point in such a lie.
“But you say,” Mr. Rafiel was now turning upon Miss Marple, “you say that he
told you this yarn about a murderer and that he then said he had a picture of
him which he was going to show you.”
“I thought so, yes.”
“You thought so? You were sure enough to begin with!”
Miss Marple retorted with spirit.
“It is never easy to repeat a conversation and be entirely accurate in what
the other party to it has said. One is always inclined to jump at what you
think they meant. Then, afterwards, you put actual words into their mouths.
Major Palgrave told me this story, yes. He told me that the man who told it to
him, this doctor, had shown him a snapshot of the murderer; but if I am to be
quite honest I must admit that what he actually said to me was ‘Would you like
to see a snapshot of a murderer?’ and naturally I assumed that it was the same
snapshot he had been talking about. That it was the snapshot of that
particular murderer. But I have to admit that it is possible—only remotely
possible, but still possible—that by an association of ideas in his mind he
leaped from the snapshot he had been shown in the past, to a snapshot he had
taken recently of someone here who he was convinced was a murderer.”
“Women!” snorted Mr. Rafiel in exasperation. “You’re all the same, the whole
blinking lot of you! Can’t be accurate. You’re never exactly sure of what a
thing was. And now,” he added irritably, “where does that leave us?” He
snorted. “Evelyn Hillingdon, or Greg’s wife, Lucky? The whole thing is a
mess.”
There was a slight apologetic cough. Arthur Jackson was standing at Mr.
Rafiel’s elbow. He had come so noiselessly that nobody had noticed him.
“Time for your massage, sir,” he said.
Mr. Rafiel displayed immediate temper.
“What do you mean by sneaking up on me in that way and making me jump? I never
heard you.”
“Very sorry, sir.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any massage today. It never does me a damn’ bit of
good.”
“Oh, come sir, you mustn’t say that.” Jackson was full of professional
cheerfulness. “You’d soon notice if you left it off.”
He wheeled the chair deftly round.
Miss Marple rose to her feet, smiled at Esther and went down to the beach.
Eighteen
WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
I
The beach was rather empty this morning. Greg was splashing in the water in
his usual noisy style, Lucky was lying on her face on the beach with a sun-
tanned back well oiled and her blonde hair splayed over her shoulders. The
Hillingdons were not there. Señora de Caspearo, with an assorted bag of
gentlemen in attendance, was lying face upwards and talking deep-throated,
happy Spanish. Some French and Italian children were playing at the water’s
edge and laughing. Canon and Miss Prescott were sitting in beach chairs
observing the scene. The Canon had his hat tilted forward over his eyes and
seemed half asleep. There was a convenient chair next to Miss Prescott and
Miss Marple made for it and sat down.
“Oh dear,” she said with a deep sigh.
“I know,” said Miss Prescott.
It was their joint tribute to violent death.
“That poor girl,” said Miss Marple.
“Very sad,” said the Canon. “Most deplorable.”
“For a moment or two,” said Miss Prescott, “we really thought of leaving,
Jeremy and I. But then we decided against it. It would not really be fair, I
felt, on the Kendals. After all, it’s not their fault—It might have happened
anywhere.”
“In the midst of life we are in death,” said the Canon solemnly.
“It’s very important, you know,” said Miss Prescott, “that they should make a
go of this place. They have sunk all their capital in it.”
“A very sweet girl,” said Miss Marple, “but not looking at all well lately.”
“Very nervy,” agreed Miss Prescott. “Of course her family—” she shook her
head.
“I really think, Joan,” said the Canon in mild reproof, “that there are some
things—”
“Everybody knows about it,” said Miss Prescott. “Her family live in our part
of the world. A great-aunt—most peculiar—and one of her uncles took off all
his clothes in one of the tube stations. Green Park, I believe it was.”
“Joan, that is a thing that should not be repeated.”
“Very sad,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head, “though I believe not an
uncommon form of madness. I know when we were working for the Armenian relief,
a most respectable elderly clergyman was afflicted the same way. They
telephoned his wife and she came along at once and took him home in a cab,
wrapped in a blanket.”
“Of course, Molly’s immediate family’s all right,” said Miss Prescott. “She
never got on very well with her mother, but then so few girls seem to get on
with their mothers nowadays.”
“Such a pity,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head, “because really a young
girl needs her mother’s knowledge of the world and experience.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Prescott with emphasis. “Molly, you know, took up with
some man—quite unsuitable, I understand.”
“It so often happens,” said Miss Marple.
“Her family disapproved, naturally. She didn’t tell them about it. They heard
about it from a complete outsider. Of course her mother said she must bring
him along so that they met him properly. This, I understand, the girl refused
to do. She said it was humiliating to him. Most insulting to be made to come
and meet her family and be looked over. Just as though you were a horse, she
said.”
Miss Marple sighed. “One does need so much tact when dealing with the young,”
she murmured.
“Anyway, there it was! They forbade her to see him.”
“But you can’t do that nowadays,” said Miss Marple. “Girls have jobs and they
meet people whether anyone forbids them or not.”
“But then, very fortunately,” went on Miss Prescott, “she met Tim Kendal, and
the other man sort of faded out of the picture. I can’t tell you how relieved
the family was.”
“I hope they didn’t show it too plainly,” said Miss Marple. “That so often
puts girls off from forming suitable attachments.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“One remembers oneself—” murmured Miss Marple, her mind going back to the
past. A young man she had met at a croquet party. He had seemed so nice—rather
gay, almost Bohemian in his views. And then he had been unexpectedly warmly
welcomed by her father. He had been suitable, eligible; he had been asked
freely to the house more than once, and Miss Marple had found that, after all,
he was dull. Very dull.
The Canon seemed safely comatose and Miss Marple advanced tentatively to the
subject she was anxious to pursue.
“Of course you know so much about this place,” she murmured. “You have been
here several years running, have you not?”
“Well, last year and two years before that. We like St. Honoré very much.
Always such nice people here. Not the flashy, ultra-rich set.”
“So I suppose you know the Hillingdons and the Dysons well?”
“Yes, fairly well.”
Miss Marple coughed and lowered her voice slightly.
“Major Palgrave told me such an interesting story,” she said.
“He had a great repertoire of stories, hadn’t he? Of course he had travelled
very widely. Africa, India, even China I believe.”
“Yes indeed,” said Miss Marple. “But I didn’t mean one of those stories. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“But I didn’t mean one of those stories. This
was a story concerned with—well, with one of the people I have just
mentioned.”
“Oh!” said Miss Prescott. Her voice held meaning.
“Yes. Now I wonder—” Miss Marple allowed her eyes to travel gently round the
beach to where Lucky lay sunning her back. “Very beautifully tanned, isn’t
she,” remarked Miss Marple. “And her hair. Most attractive. Practically the
same colour as Molly Kendal’s, isn’t it?”
“The only difference,” said Miss Prescott, “is that Molly’s is natural and
Lucky’s comes out of a bottle!”
“Really, Joan,” the Canon protested, unexpectedly awake again. “Don’t you
think that is rather an uncharitable thing to say?”
“It’s not uncharitable,” said Miss Prescott, acidly. “Merely a fact.”
“It looks very nice to me,” said the Canon.
“Of course. That’s why she does it. But I assure you, my dear Jeremy, it
wouldn’t deceive any woman for a moment. Would it?” She appealed to Miss
Marple.
“Well, I’m afraid—” said Miss Marple, “of course I haven’t the experience that
you have—but I’m afraid—yes I should say definitely not natural. The
appearance at the roots every fifth or sixth day—” She looked at Miss Prescott
and they both nodded with quiet female assurance.
The Canon appeared to be dropping off again.
“Major Palgrave told me a really extraordinary story,” murmured Miss Marple,
“about—well I couldn’t quite make out. I am a little deaf sometimes. He
appeared to be saying or hinting—” she paused.
“I know what you mean. There was a great deal of talk at the time—”
“You mean at the time that—”
“When the first Mrs. Dyson died. Her death was quite unexpected. In fact,
everybody thought she was a malade imaginaire—a hypochondriac. So when she had
the attack and died so unexpectedly, well, of course, people did talk.”
“There wasn’t—any—trouble at the time?”
“The doctor was puzzled. He was quite a young man and he hadn’t had much
experience. He was what I call one of those antibiotics-for-all men. You know,
the kind that doesn’t bother to look at the patient much, or worry what’s the
matter with him. They just give them some kind of pill out of a bottle and if
they don’t get better, then they try a different pill. Yes, I believe he was
puzzled, but it seemed she had had gastric trouble before. At least her
husband said so, and there seemed no reason for believing anything was wrong.”
“But you yourself think—”
“Well, I always try to keep an open mind, but one does wonder, you know. And
what with various things people said—”
“Joan!” The Canon sat up. He looked belligerent. “I don’t like—I really don’t
like to hear this kind of ill-natured gossip being repeated. We’ve always set
our faces against that kind of thing. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no
evil—and what is more, think no evil! That should be the motto of every
Christian man and woman.”
The two women sat in silence. They were rebuked, and in deference to their
training they deferred to the criticism of a man. But inwardly they were
frustrated, irritated and quite unrepentant. Miss Prescott threw a frank
glance of irritation towards her brother. Miss Marple took out her knitting
and looked at it. Fortunately for them Chance was on their side.
“Mon père,” said a small shrill voice. It was one of the French children who
had been playing at the water’s edge. She had come up unnoticed, and was
standing by Canon Prescott’s chair.
“Mon père,” she fluted.
“Eh? Yes, my dear? Oui, qu’est-ce qu’il y a, ma petite?”
The child explained. There had been a dispute about who should have the water-
wings next and also other matters of seaside etiquette. Canon Prescott was
extremely fond of children, especially small girls. He was always delighted to
be summoned to act as arbiter in their disputes. He rose willingly now and
accompanied the child to the water’s edge. Miss Marple and Miss Prescott
breathed deep sighs and turned avidly towards each other.
II
“Jeremy, of course rightly, is very against ill-natured gossip,” said Miss
Prescott, “but one cannot really ignore what people are saying. And there was,
as I say, a great deal of talk at the time.”
“Yes?” Miss Marple’s tone urged her forward.
“This young woman, you see, Miss Greatorex I think her name was then, I can’t
remember now, was a kind of cousin and she looked after Mrs. Dyson. Gave her
all her medicines and things like that.” There was a short, meaningless pause.
“And of course there had, I understand”—Miss Prescott’s voice was
lowered—“been goings-on between Mr. Dyson and Miss Greatorex. A lot of people
had noticed them. I mean things like that are quickly observed in a place like
this. Then there was some curious story about some stuff that Edward
Hillingdon got for her at a chemist.”
“Oh, Edward Hillingdon came into it?”
“Oh yes, he was very much attracted. People noticed it. And Lucky—Miss
Greatorex—played them off against each other. Gregory Dyson and Edward
Hillingdon. One has to face it, she has always been an attractive woman.”
“Though not as young as she was,” Miss Marple replied.
“Exactly. But she was always very well turned out and made up. Of course not
so flamboyant when she was just the poor relation. She always seemed very
devoted to the invalid. But, well, you see how it was.”
“What was this story about the chemist—how did that get known?”
“Well, it wasn’t in Jamestown, I think it was when they were in Martinique.
The French, I believe, are more lax than we are in the matter of drugs—This
chemist talked to someone, and the story got around—Well, you know how these
things happen.”
Miss Marple did. None better.
“He said something about Colonel Hillingdon asking for something and not
seeming to know what it was he was asking for. Consulting a piece of paper,
you know, on which it was written down. Anyway, as I say, there was talk.”
“But I don’t see quite why Colonel Hillingdon—” Miss Marple frowned in
perplexity.
“I suppose he was just being used as a cat’s-paw. Anyway, Gregory Dyson
married again in an almost indecently short time. Barely a month later, I
understand.”
They looked at each other.
“But there was no real suspicion?” Miss Marple asked.
“Oh no, it was just—well, talk. Of course there may have been absolutely
nothing in it.”
“Major Palgrave thought there was.”
“Did he say so to you?”
“I wasn’t really listening very closely,” confessed Miss Marple. “I just
wondered if—er—well, if he’d said the same thing to you?”
“He did point her out to me one day,” said Miss Prescott.
“Really? He actually pointed her out?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I thought at first it was Mrs. Hillingdon he was
pointing out. He wheezed and chuckled a bit and said, ‘Look at that woman over
there. In my opinion that’s a woman who’s done murder and got away with it.’ I
was very shocked, of course. I said, ‘Surely you’re joking, Major Palgrave,’
and he said, ‘Yes, yes, dear lady, let’s call it joking.’ The Dysons and the
Hillingdons were sitting at a table quite near to us, and I was afraid they’d
overhear. He chuckled and said ‘Wouldn’t care to go to a drinks party and have
a certain person mix me a cocktail. Too much like supper with the Borgias.’”
“How very interesting,” said Miss Marple. “Did he mention—a—a photograph?”
“I don’t remember … Was it some newspaper cutting?”
Miss Marple, about to speak, shut her lips. The sun was momentarily obscured
by a shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon paused beside them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I was wondering where you were,” said Miss Prescott, looking up brightly.
“I’ve been to Jamestown, shopping.”
“Oh, I see.”
Miss Prescott looked round vaguely and Evelyn Hillingdon said:
“Oh, I didn’t take Edward with me. Men hate shopping.”
“Did you find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t that sort of shopping. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
I just had to go to the chemist.”
With a smile and a slight nod she went on down the beach.
“Such nice people, the Hillingdons,” said Miss Prescott, “though she’s not
really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she’s always very pleasant and all
that, but one never seems to get to know her any better.”
Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.
“One never knows what she is thinking,” said Miss Prescott.
“Perhaps that is just as well,” said Miss Marple.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh nothing really, only that I’ve always had the feeling that perhaps her
thoughts might be rather disconcerting.”
“Oh,” said Miss Prescott, looking puzzled. “I see what you mean.” She went on
with a slight change of subject. “I believe they have a very charming place in
Hampshire, and a boy—or is it two boys—who have just gone—or one of them—to
Winchester.”
“Do you know Hampshire well?”
“No. Hardly at all. I believe their house is somewhere near Alton.”
“I see.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “And where do the Dysons live?”
“California,” said Miss Prescott. “When they are at home, that is. They are
great travellers.”
“One really knows so little about the people one meets when one is
travelling,” said Miss Marple. “I mean—how shall I put it—one only knows,
doesn’t one, what they choose to tell you about themselves. For instance, you
don’t really know that the Dysons live in California.”
Miss Prescott looked startled.
“I’m sure Mr. Dyson mentioned it.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what I mean. And the same thing perhaps with the
Hillingdons. I mean when you say that they live in Hampshire, you’re really
repeating what they told you, aren’t you?”
Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live in
Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I was
only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know about
people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead, which is a
place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t, if I may say
so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less where
Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the South of England
and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,” she agreed hastily,
“and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that,” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did she really
know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott were
really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott? They said so. There was no evidence
to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not, to put on a dog-
collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appropriate conversation.
If there was a motive….
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of the
world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She had no
doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same thing—one
believed what people said to one.
Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps … She shook her
head thoughtfully.
Nineteen
USES OF A SHOE
Canon Prescott came back from the water’s edge slightly short of breath
(playing with children is always exhausting).
Presently he and his sister went back to the hotel, finding the beach a little
too hot.
“But,” said Señora de Caspearo scornfully as they walked away—“how can a beach
be too hot? It is nonsense that—And look what she wears—her arms and her neck
are all covered up. Perhaps it is as well, that. Her skin it is hideous, like
a plucked chicken!”
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. Now or never was the time for conversation
with Señora de Caspearo. Unfortunately she did not know what to say. There
seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet.
“You have children, Señora?” she inquired.
“I have three angels,” said Señora de Caspearo, kissing her fingertips.
Miss Marple was rather uncertain as to whether this meant that Señora de
Caspearo’s offspring were in Heaven or whether it merely referred to their
characters.
One of the gentlemen in attendance made a remark in Spanish and Señora de
Caspearo flung back her head appreciatively and laughed loudly and
melodiously.
“You understand what he said?” she inquired of Miss Marple.
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple apologetically.
“It is just as well. He is a wicked man.”
A rapid and spirited interchange of Spanish badinage followed.
“It is infamous—infamous,” said Señora de Caspearo, reverting to English with
sudden gravity, “that the police do not let us go from this island. I storm, I
scream, I stamp my foot—but all they say is No—No. You know how it will end—we
shall all be killed.”
Her bodyguard attempted to reassure her.
“But yes—I tell you it is unlucky here. I knew it from the first—That old
Major, the ugly one—he had the Evil Eye—you remember? His eyes they crossed—It
is bad, that! I make the Sign of the Horns every time when he looks my way.”
She made it in illustration. “Though since he is cross-eyed I am not always
sure when he does look my way—”
“He had a glass eye,” said Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. “An accident,
I understand, when he was quite young. It was not his fault.”
“I tell you he brought bad luck—I say it is the Evil Eye he had.”
Her hand shot out again in the well-known Latin gesture—the first finger and
the little finger sticking out, the two middle ones doubled in. “Anyway,” she
said cheerfully, “he is dead—I do not have to look at him any more. I do not
like to look at things that are ugly.”
It was, Miss Marple thought, a somewhat cruel epitaph on Major Palgrave.
Farther down the beach Gregory Dyson had come out of the sea. Lucky had turned
herself over on the sand. Evelyn Hillingdon was looking at Lucky, and her
expression, for some reason, made Miss Marple shiver.
“Surely I can’t be cold—in this hot sun,” she thought.
What was the old phrase—“A goose walking over your grave—”
She got up and went slowly back to her bungalow.
On the way she passed Mr. Rafiel and Esther Walters coming down the beach. Mr.
Rafiel winked at her. Miss Marple did not wink back. She looked disapproving.
She went into her bungalow and lay down on her bed. She felt old and tired and
worried.
She was quite certain that there was no time to be lost—no time—to—be lost …
It was getting late … The sun was going to set—the sun—one must always look at
the sun through smoked glass—Where was that piece of smoked glass that someone
had given her?…
No, she wouldn’t need it after all. A shadow had come over the sun blotting it
out. A shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon’s shadow—No, not Evelyn Hillingdon—The Shadow
(what were the words?) the Shadow of the Valley of Death. That was it. She
must—what was it? Make the Sign of the Horns—to avert the Evil Eye—Major
Palgrave’s Evil Eye.
Her eyelids flickered open—she had been asleep. But there was a shadow—someone
peering in at her window.
The shadow moved away—and Miss Marple saw who it was—It was Jackson.
“Impertinence—peering in like that,” she thought—and added parenthetically,
“Just like Jonas Parry.”
The comparison reflected no credit on Jackson.
Then she wondered why Jackson had been peering into her bedroom. To see if she
was there? Or to note that she was there, but was asleep.
She got up, went into the bathroom and peered cautiously through the window.
Arthur Jackson was standing by the door of the bungalow next door. Mr.
Rafiel’s bungalow. She saw him give a rapid glance round and then slip quickly
inside. Interesting, thought Miss Marple. Why did he have to look round in
that furtive manner? Nothing in the world could have been more natural than
his going into Mr. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Nothing in the world could have been more natural than
his going into Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow since he himself had a room at the back
of it. He was always going in and out of it on some errand or other. So why
that quick, guilty glance round? “Only one reason,” said Miss Marple answering
her own question, “he wanted to be sure that nobody was observing him enter at
this particular moment because of something he was going to do in there.”
Everybody, of course, was on the beach at this moment except those who had
gone for expeditions. In about twenty minutes or so, Jackson himself would
arrive on the beach in the course of his duties to aid Mr. Rafiel to take his
sea dip. If he wanted to do anything in the bungalow unobserved, now was a
very good time. He had satisfied himself that Miss Marple was asleep on her
bed, he had satisfied himself that there was nobody near at hand to observe
his movements. Well, she must do her best to do exactly that.
Sitting down on her bed, Miss Marple removed her neat sandal shoes and
replaced them with a pair of plimsolls. Then she shook her head, removed the
plimsolls, burrowed in her suitcase and took out a pair of shoes the heel of
one of which she had recently caught on a hook by the door. It was now in a
slightly precarious state and Miss Marple adroitly rendered it even more
precarious by attention with a nail file. Then she emerged with due precaution
from her door walking in stockinged feet. With all the care of a Big Game
Hunter approaching up-wind of a herd of antelope, Miss Marple gently
circumnavigated Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. Cautiously she manoeuvred her way
around the corner of the house. She put on one of the shoes she was carrying,
gave a final wrench to the heel of the other, sank gently to her knees and lay
prone under the window. If Jackson heard anything, if he came to the window to
look out, an old lady would have had a fall owing to the heel coming off her
shoe. But evidently Jackson had heard nothing.
Very, very gently Miss Marple raised her head. The windows of the bungalow
were low. Shielding herself slightly with a festoon of creeper she peered
inside….
Jackson was on his knees before a suitcase. The lid of the suitcase was up and
Miss Marple could see that it was a specially fitted affair containing
compartments filled with various kinds of papers. Jackson was looking through
the papers, occasionally drawing documents out of long envelopes. Miss Marple
did not remain at her observation post for long. All she wanted was to know
what Jackson was doing. She knew now. Jackson was snooping. Whether he was
looking for something in particular, or whether he was just indulging his
natural instincts, she had no means of judging. But it confirmed her in her
belief that Arthur Jackson and Jonas Parry had strong affinities in other
things than facial resemblance.
Her problem was now to withdraw. Very carefully she dropped down again and
crept along the flowerbed until she was clear of the window. She returned to
her bungalow and carefully put away the shoe and the heel that she had
detached from it. She looked at them with affection. A good device which she
could use on another day if necessary. She resumed her own sandal shoes, and
went thoughtfully down to the beach again.
Choosing a moment when Esther Walters was in the water, Miss Marple moved into
the chair Esther had vacated.
Greg and Lucky were laughing and talking with Señora de Caspearo and making a
good deal of noise.
Miss Marple spoke very quietly, almost under her breath, without looking at
Mr. Rafiel.
“Do you know that Jackson snoops?”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Caught him at it, did you?”
“I managed to observe him through a window. He had one of your suitcases open
and was looking through your papers.”
“Must have managed to get hold of a key to it. Resourceful fellow. He’ll be
disappointed though. Nothing he gets hold of in that way will do him a mite of
good.”
“He’s coming down now,” said Miss Marple, glancing up towards the hotel.
“Time for that idiotic sea dip of mine.”
He spoke again—very quietly.
“As for you—don’t be too enterprising. We don’t want to be attending your
funeral next. Remember your age, and be careful. There’s somebody about who
isn’t too scrupulous, remember.”
Twenty
NIGHT ALARM
I
Evening came—The lights came up on the terrace—People dined and talked and
laughed, albeit less loudly and merrily than they had a day or two ago—The
steel band played.
But the dancing ended early. People yawned—went off to bed—The lights went
out—There was darkness and stillness—The Golden Palm Tree slept….
“Evelyn. Evelyn!” The whisper came sharp and urgent.
Evelyn Hillingdon stirred and turned on her pillow.
“Evelyn. Please wake up.”
Evelyn Hillingdon sat up abruptly. Tim Kendal was standing in the doorway. She
stared at him in surprise.
“Evelyn, please, could you come? It’s—Molly. She’s ill. I don’t know what’s
the matter with her. I think she must have taken something.”
Evelyn was quick, decisive.
“All right, Tim. I’ll come. You go back to her. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Tim Kendal disappeared. Evelyn slipped out of bed, threw on a dressing gown
and looked across at the other bed. Her husband, it seemed, had not been
awakened. He lay there, his head turned away, breathing quietly. Evelyn
hesitated for a moment, then decided not to disturb him. She went out of the
door and walked rapidly to the main building and beyond it to the Kendals’
bungalow. She caught up with Tim in the doorway.
Molly lay in bed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was clearly not
natural. Evelyn bent over her, rolled up an eyelid, felt her pulse and then
looked at the bedside table. There was a glass there which had been used.
Beside it was an empty phial of tablets. She picked it up.
“They were her sleeping pills,” said Tim, “but that bottle was half full
yesterday or the day before. I think she must have taken the lot.”
“Go and get Dr. Graham,” said Evelyn, “and on the way knock them up and tell
them to make strong coffee. Strong as possible. Hurry.”
Tim dashed off. Just outside the doorway he collided with Edward Hillingdon.
“Oh, sorry, Edward.”
“What’s happening here?” demanded Hillingdon. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Molly. Evelyn’s with her. I must get hold of the doctor. I suppose I
ought to have gone to him first but I—I wasn’t sure and I thought Evelyn would
know. Molly would have hated it if I’d fetched a doctor when it wasn’t
necessary.”
He went off, running. Edward Hillingdon looked after him for a moment and then
he walked into the bedroom.
“What’s happening?” he said. “Is it serious?”
“Oh, there you are, Edward. I wondered if you’d woken up. This silly child has
been taking things.”
“Is it bad?”
“One can’t tell without knowing how much she’s taken. I shouldn’t think it was
too bad if we get going in time. I’ve sent for coffee. If we can get some of
that down her—”
“But why should she do such a thing? You don’t think—” He stopped.
“What don’t I think?” said Evelyn.
“You don’t think it’s because of the inquiry—the police—all that?”
“It’s possible, of course. That sort of thing could be very alarming to a
nervous type.”
“Molly never used to seem a nervous type.”
“One can’t really tell,” said Evelyn. “It’s the most unlikely people sometimes
who lose their nerve.”
“Yes, I remember….” Again he stopped.
“The truth is,” said Evelyn, “that one doesn’t really know anything about
anybody.” She added, “Not even the people who are nearest to you….”
“Isn’t that going a little too far, Evelyn—exaggerating too much?”
“I don’t think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have
made of them for yourself.”
“I know you,” said Edward Hillingdon quietly.
“You think you do.”
“No. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“You think you do.”
“No. I’m sure.” He added, “And you’re sure of me.”
Evelyn looked at him then turned back to the bed. She took Molly by the
shoulders and shook her.
“We ought to be doing something, but I suppose it’s better to wait until Dr.
Graham comes—Oh, I think I hear them.”
II
“She’ll do now.” Dr. Graham stepped back, wiped his forehead with a
handkerchief and breathed a sigh of relief.
“You think she’ll be all right, sir?” Tim demanded anxiously.
“Yes, yes. We got to her in good time. Anyway, she probably didn’t take enough
to kill her. A couple of days and she’ll be as right as rain but she’ll have a
rather nasty day or two first.” He picked up the empty bottle. “Who gave her
these things anyway?”
“A doctor in New York. She wasn’t sleeping well.”
“Well, well. I know all we medicos hand these things out freely nowadays.
Nobody tells young women who can’t sleep to count sheep, or get up and eat a
biscuit, or write a couple of letters and then go back to bed. Instant
remedies, that’s what people demand nowadays. Sometimes I think it’s a pity we
give them to them. You’ve got to learn to put up with things in life. All very
well to stuff a comforter into a baby’s mouth to stop it crying. Can’t go on
doing that all a person’s life.” He gave a small chuckle. “I bet you, if you
asked Miss Marple what she does if she can’t sleep, she’d tell you she counted
sheep going under a gate.” He turned back to the bed where Molly was stirring.
Her eyes were open now. She looked at them without interest or recognition.
Dr. Graham took her hand.
“Well, well, my dear, and what have you been doing to yourself?”
She blinked but did not reply.
“Why did you do it, Molly, why? Tell me why?” Tim took her other hand.
Still her eyes did not move. If they rested on anyone it was on Evelyn
Hillingdon. There might have been even a faint question in them but it was
hard to tell. Evelyn spoke as though there had been the question.
“Tim came and fetched me,” she said.
Her eyes went to Tim, then shifted to Dr. Graham.
“You’re going to be all right now,” said Dr. Graham, “but don’t do it again.”
“She didn’t mean to do it,” said Tim quietly. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to do
it. She just wanted a good night’s rest. Perhaps the pills didn’t work at
first and so she took more of them. Is that it, Molly?”
Her head moved very faintly in a negative motion.
“You mean—you took them on purpose?” said Tim.
Molly spoke then. “Yes,” she said.
“But why, Molly, why?”
The eyelids faltered. “Afraid.” The word was just heard.
“Afraid? Of what?”
But her eyelids closed down.
“Better let her be,” said Dr. Graham. Tim spoke impetuously.
“Afraid of what? The police? Because they’ve been hounding you, asking you
questions? I don’t wonder. Anyone might feel frightened. But it’s just their
way, that’s all. Nobody thinks for one moment—” he broke off.
Dr. Graham made him a decisive gesture.
“I want to go to sleep,” said Molly.
“The best thing for you,” said Dr. Graham.
He moved to the door and the others followed him.
“She’ll sleep all right,” said Graham.
“Is there anything I ought to do?” asked Tim. He had the usual, slightly
apprehensive attitude of a man in illness.
“I’ll stay if you like,” said Evelyn kindly.
“Oh no. No, that’s quite all right,” said Tim.
Evelyn went back towards the bed. “Shall I stay with you, Molly?”
Molly’s eyes opened again. She said, “No,” and then after a pause, “just Tim.”
Tim came back and sat down by the bed.
“I’m here, Molly,” he said and took her hand. “Just go to sleep. I won’t leave
you.”
She sighed faintly and her eyes closed.
The doctor paused outside the bungalow and the Hillingdons stood with him.
“You’re sure there’s nothing more I can do?” asked Evelyn.
“I don’t think so, thank you, Mrs. Hillingdon. She’ll be better with her
husband now. But possibly tomorrow—after all, he’s got this hotel to run—I
think someone should be with her.”
“D’you think she might—try again?” asked Hillingdon.
Graham rubbed his forehead irritably.
“One never knows in these cases. Actually, it’s most unlikely. As you’ve seen
for yourselves, the restorative treatment is extremely unpleasant. But of
course one can never be absolutely certain. She may have more of this stuff
hidden away somewhere.”
“I should never have thought of suicide in connection with a girl like Molly,”
said Hillingdon.
Graham said dryly, “It’s not the people who are always talking of killing
themselves, threatening to do so, who do it. They dramatize themselves that
way and let off steam.”
“Molly always seemed such a happy girl. I think perhaps”—Evelyn hesitated—“I
ought to tell you, Dr. Graham.” She told him then about her interview with
Molly on the beach the night that Victoria had been killed. Graham’s face was
very grave when she had finished.
“I’m glad you’ve told me, Mrs. Hillingdon. There are very definite indications
there of some kind of deep-rooted trouble. Yes. I’ll have a word with her
husband in the morning.”
III
“I want to talk to you seriously, Kendal, about your wife.”
They were sitting in Tim’s office. Evelyn Hillingdon had taken his place by
Molly’s bedside and Lucky had promised to come and, as she expressed it,
“spell her” later. Miss Marple had also offered her services. Poor Tim was
torn between his hotel commitments and his wife’s condition.
“I can’t understand it,” said Tim, “I can’t understand Molly any longer. She’s
changed. Changed out of all seeming.”
“I understand she’s been having bad dreams?”
“Yes. Yes, she complained about them a good deal.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, I don’t know. About—oh, I suppose a month—perhaps longer. She—we—thought
they were just—well, nightmares, you know.”
“Yes, yes, I quite understand. But what’s a much more serious sign is the fact
that she seems to have felt afraid of someone. Did she complain about that to
you?”
“Well, yes. She said once or twice that—oh, people were following her.”
“Ah! Spying on her?”
“Yes, she did use that term once. She said they were her enemies and they’d
followed her here.”
“Did she have enemies, Mr. Kendal?—”
“No. Of course she didn’t.”
“No incident in England, anything you know about before you were married?”
“Oh no, nothing of that kind. She didn’t get on with her family very well,
that was all. Her mother was rather an eccentric woman, difficult to live with
perhaps, but….”
“Any signs of mental instability in her family?”
Tim opened his mouth impulsively, then shut it again. He pushed a fountain pen
about on the desk in front of him.
The doctor said:
“I must stress the fact that it would be better to tell me, Tim, if that is
the case.”
“Well, yes, I believe so. Nothing serious, but I believe there was an aunt or
something who was a bit batty. But that’s nothing. I mean—well you get that in
almost any family.”
“Oh yes, yes, that’s quite true. I’m not trying to alarm you about that, but
it just might show a tendency to—well, to break down or imagine things if any
stress arose.”
“I don’t really know very much,” said Tim. “After all, people don’t pour out
all their family histories to you, do they?”
“No, no. Quite so. She had no former friend—she was not engaged to anyone,
anyone who might have threatened her or made jealous threats? That sort of
thing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Molly was engaged to some other man before I
came along. Her parents were very against it, I understand, and I think she
really stuck to the chap more out of opposition and defiance than anything
else.” He gave a sudden half-grin. “You know what it is when you’re young. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
“You know what it is when you’re young. If
people cut up a fuss it makes you much keener on whoever it is.”
Dr. Graham smiled too. “Ah yes, one often sees that. One should never take
exception to one’s children’s objectionable friends. Usually they grow out of
them naturally. This man, whoever he was, didn’t make threats of any kind
against Molly?”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t. She would have told me. She said herself she just had
a silly adolescent craze on him, mainly because he had such a bad reputation.”
“Yes, yes. Well, that doesn’t sound serious. Now there’s another thing.
Apparently your wife has had what she describes as blackouts. Brief passages
of time during which she can’t account for her actions. Did you know about
that, Tim?”
“No,” said Tim slowly. “No. I didn’t. She never told me. I did notice, you
know, now you mention it, that she seemed rather vague sometimes and …” He
paused, thinking. “Yes, that explains it. I couldn’t understand how she seemed
to have forgotten the simplest things, or sometimes not to seem to know what
time of day it was. I just thought she was absent-minded, I suppose.”
“What it amounts to, Tim, is just this. I advise you most strongly to take
your wife to see a good specialist.”
Tim flushed angrily.
“You mean a mental specialist, I suppose?”
“Now, now, don’t be upset by labels. A neurologist, a psychologist, someone
who specializes in what the layman calls nervous breakdowns. There’s a good
man in Kingston. Or there’s New York of course. There is something that is
causing these nervous terrors of your wife’s. Something perhaps for which she
hardly knows the reason herself. Get advice about her, Tim. Get advice as soon
as possible.”
He clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder and got up.
“There’s no immediate worry. Your wife has good friends and we’ll all be
keeping an eye on her.”
“She won’t—you don’t think she’ll try it again?”
“I think it most unlikely,” said Dr. Graham.
“You can’t be sure,” said Tim.
“One can never be sure,” said Dr. Graham, “that’s one of the first things you
learn in my profession.” Again he laid a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Don’t worry
too much.”
“That’s easy to say,” said Tim as the doctor went out of the door. “Don’t
worry, indeed! What does he think I’m made of?”
Twenty-one
JACKSON ON COSMETICS
“You’re sure you don’t mind, Miss Marple?” said Evelyn Hillingdon.
“No, indeed, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “I’m only too delighted to be of use
in any way. At my age, you know, one feels very useless in the world.
Especially when I am in a place like this, just enjoying myself. No duties of
any kind. No, I’ll be delighted to sit with Molly. You go along on your
expedition. Pelican Point, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn. “Both Edward and I love it. I never get tired of seeing
the birds diving down, catching up the fish. Tim’s with Molly now. But he’s
got things to do and he doesn’t seem to like her being left alone.”
“He’s quite right,” said Miss Marple. “I wouldn’t in his place. One never
knows, does one? When anyone has attempted anything of that kind—Well, go
along, my dear.”
Evelyn went off to join a little group that was waiting for her. Her husband,
the Dysons and three or four other people. Miss Marple checked her knitting
requirements, saw that she had all she wanted with her, and walked over
towards the Kendals’ bungalow.
As she came up on to the loggia she heard Tim’s voice through the half-open
french window.
“If you’d only tell me why you did it, Molly. What made you? Was it anything I
did? There must be some reason. If you’d only tell me.”
Miss Marple paused. There was a little pause inside before Molly spoke. Her
voice was flat and tired.
“I don’t know, Tim, I really don’t know. I suppose—something came over me.”
Miss Marple tapped on the window and walked in.
“Oh, there you are, Miss Marple. It is very good of you.”
“Not at all,” said Miss Marple. “I’m delighted to be of any help. Shall I sit
here in this chair? You’re looking much better, Molly. I’m so glad.”
“I’m all right,” said Molly. “Quite all right. Just—oh, just sleepy.”
“I shan’t talk,” said Miss Marple. “You just lie quiet and rest. I’ll get on
with my knitting.”
Tim Kendal threw her a grateful glance and went out. Miss Marple established
herself in her chair.
Molly was lying on her left side. She had a half-stupefied, exhausted look.
She said in a voice that was almost a whisper:
“It’s very kind of you, Miss Marple. I—I think I’ll go to sleep.”
She half turned away on her pillows and closed her eyes. Her breathing grew
more regular though it was still far from normal. Long experience of nursing
made Miss Marple almost automatically straighten the sheet and tuck it under
the mattress on her side of the bed. As she did so her hand encountered
something hard and rectangular under the mattress. Rather surprised she took
hold of this and pulled it out. It was a book. Miss Marple threw a quick
glance at the girl in the bed, but she lay there utterly quiescent. She was
evidently asleep. Miss Marple opened the book. It was, she saw, a current work
on nervous diseases. It came open naturally at a certain place which gave a
description of the onset of persecution mania and various other manifestations
of schizophrenia and allied complaints.
It was not a highly technical book, but one that could be easily understood by
a layman. Miss Marple’s face grew very grave as she read. After a minute or
two she closed the book and stayed thinking. Then she bent forward and with
care replaced the book where she had found it, under the mattress.
She shook her head in some perplexity. Noiselessly she rose from her chair.
She walked the few steps towards the window, then turned her head sharply over
her shoulder. Molly’s eyes were open but even as Miss Marple turned the eyes
shut again. For a minute or two Miss Marple was not quite certain whether she
might not have imagined that quick, sharp glance. Was Molly then only
pretending to be asleep? That might be natural enough. She might feel that
Miss Marple would start talking to her if she showed herself awake. Yes, that
could be all it was.
Was she reading into that glance of Molly’s a kind of slyness that was somehow
innately disagreeable? One doesn’t know, Miss Marple thought to herself, one
really doesn’t know.
She decided that she would try to manage a little talk with Dr. Graham as soon
as it could be managed. She came back to her chair by the bed. She decided
after about five minutes or so that Molly was really asleep. No one could have
lain so still, could have breathed so evenly. Miss Marple got up again. She
was wearing her plimsolls today. Not perhaps very elegant, but admirably
suited to this climate and comfortable and roomy for the feet.
She moved gently round the bedroom, pausing at both of the windows, which gave
out in two different directions.
The hotel grounds seemed quiet and deserted. Miss Marple came back and was
standing a little uncertainly before regaining her seat, when she thought she
heard a faint sound outside. Like the scrape of a shoe on the loggia? She
hesitated a moment then she went to the window, pushed it a little farther
open, stepped out and turned her head back into the room as she spoke.
“I shall be gone only a very short time, dear,” she said, “just back to my
bungalow, to see where I could possibly have put that pattern. I was so sure I
had brought it with me. You’ll be quite all right till I come back, won’t
you?” Then turning her head back, she nodded to herself. “Asleep, poor child.
A good thing.”
She went quietly along the loggia, down the steps and turned sharp right to
the path there. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Passing along between the screen of some hibiscus bushes an
observer might have been curious to see that Miss Marple veered sharply on to
the flower bed, passed round to the back of the bungalow and entered it again
through the second door there. This led directly into a small room that Tim
sometimes used as an unofficial office and from that into the sitting room.
Here there were wide curtains semi-drawn to keep the room cool. Miss Marple
slipped behind one of them. Then she waited. From the window here she had a
good view of anyone who approached Molly’s bedroom. It was some few minutes,
four or five, before she saw anything.
The neat figure of Jackson in his white uniform went up the steps of the
loggia. He paused for a minute at the balcony there, and then appeared to be
giving a tiny discreet tap on the door of the window that was ajar. There was
no response that Miss Marple could hear. Jackson looked around him, a quick
furtive glance, then he slipped inside the open doors. Miss Marple moved to
the door which led into the adjoining bathroom. Miss Marple’s eyebrows rose in
slight surprise. She reflected a minute or two, then walked out into the
passageway and into the bathroom by the other door.
Jackson spun round from examining the shelf over the washbasin. He looked
taken aback, which was not surprising.
“Oh,” he said, “I—I didn’t….”
“Mr. Jackson,” said Miss Marple, in great surprise.
“I thought you’d be here somewhere,” said Jackson.
“Did you want anything?” inquired Miss Marple.
“Actually,” said Jackson, “I was just looking at Mrs. Kendal’s brand of face
cream.”
Miss Marple appreciated the fact that as Jackson was standing with a jar of
face cream in his hand he had been adroit in mentioning the fact at once.
“Nice smell,” he said, wrinkling up his nose. “Fairly good stuff, as these
preparations go. The cheaper brands don’t suit every skin. Bring it out in a
rash as likely as not. The same thing with face powders sometimes.”
“You seem to be very knowledgeable on the subject,” said Miss Marple.
“Worked in the pharmaceutical line for a bit,” said Jackson. “One learns to
know a good deal about cosmetics there. Put stuff in a fancy jar, package it
expensively, and it’s astonishing what you could rook women for.”
“Is that what you—?” Miss Marple broke off deliberately.
“Well no, I didn’t come in here to talk about cosmetics,” Jackson agreed.
“You’ve not had much time to think up a lie,” thought Miss Marple to herself.
“Let’s see what you’ll come out with.”
“Matter of fact,” said Jackson, “Mrs. Walters lent her lipstick to Mrs. Kendal
the other day. I came in to get it back for her. I tapped on the window and
then I saw Mrs. Kendal was fast asleep, so I thought it would be quite all
right if I just walked across into the bathroom and looked for it.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple. “And did you find it?”
Jackson shook his head. “Probably in one of her handbags,” he said lightly. “I
won’t bother. Mrs. Walters didn’t make a point of it. She only just mentioned
it casually.” He went on, surveying the toilet preparations: “Doesn’t have
very much, does she? Ah well, doesn’t need it at her age. Good natural skin.”
“You must look at women with quite a different eye from ordinary men,” said
Miss Marple, smiling pleasantly.
“Yes. I suppose various jobs do alter one’s angle.”
“You know a good deal about drugs?”
“Oh yes. Good working acquaintance with them. If you ask me, there are too
many of them about nowadays. Too many tranquillizers and pep pills and miracle
drugs and all the rest of it. All right if they’re given on prescription, but
there are too many of them you can get without prescription. Some of them can
be dangerous.”
“I suppose so,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“They have a great effect, you know, on behaviour. A lot of this teenage
hysteria you get from time to time. It’s not natural causes. The kids’ve been
taking things. Oh, there’s nothing new about it. It’s been known for ages. Out
in the East—not that I’ve ever been there—all sorts of funny things used to
happen. You’d be surprised at some of the things women gave their husbands. In
India, for example, in the bad old days, a young wife who married an old
husband. Didn’t want to get rid of him, I suppose, because she’d have been
burnt on the funeral pyre, or if she wasn’t burnt she’d have been treated as
an outcast by the family. No catch to have been a widow in India in those
days. But she could keep an elderly husband under drugs, make him semi-
imbecile, give him hallucinations, drive him more or less off his head.” He
shook his head. “Yes, lot of dirty work.”
He went on: “And witches, you know. There’s a lot of interesting things known
now about witches. Why did they always confess, why did they admit so readily
that they were witches, that they had flown on broomsticks to the Witches’
Sabbath?”
“Torture,” said Miss Marple.
“Not always,” said Jackson. “Oh yes, torture accounted for a lot of it, but
they came out with some of those confessions almost before torture was
mentioned. They didn’t so much confess as boast about it. Well, they rubbed
themselves with ointment, you know. Anointing they used to call it. Some of
the preparations, belladonna, atropine, all that sort of thing; if you rub
them on the skin they give you hallucinations of levitation, of flying through
the air. They thought it all was genuine, poor devils. And look at the
Assassins—medieval people, out in Syria, the Lebanon, somewhere like that.
They fed them Indian hemp, gave them hallucinations of Paradise and houris,
and endless time. They were told that that was what would happen to them after
death, but to attain it they had to go and do a ritual killing. Oh, I’m not
putting it in fancy language, but that’s what it came to.”
“What it came to,” said Miss Marple, “is in essence the fact that people are
highly credulous.”
“Well yes, I suppose you could put it like that.”
“They believe what they are told,” said Miss Marple. “Yes indeed, we’re all
inclined to do that,” she added. Then she said sharply, “Who told you these
stories about India, about the doping of husbands with datura,” and she added
sharply, before he could answer, “Was it Major Palgrave?”
Jackson looked slightly surprised. “Well—yes, as a matter of fact, it was. He
told me a lot of stories like that. Of course most of it must have been before
his time, but he seemed to know all about it.”
“Major Palgrave was under the impression that he knew a lot about everything,”
said Miss Marple. “He was often inaccurate in what he told people.” She shook
her head thoughtfully. “Major Palgrave,” she said, “has a lot to answer for.”
There was a slight sound from the adjoining bedroom. Miss Marple turned her
head sharply. She went quickly out of the bathroom into the bedroom. Lucky
Dyson was standing just inside the window.
“I—oh! I didn’t think you were here, Miss Marple.”
“I just stepped into the bathroom for a moment,” said Miss Marple, with
dignity and a faint air of Victorian reserve.
In the bathroom, Jackson grinned broadly. Victorian modesty always amused him.
“I just wondered if you’d like me to sit with Molly for a bit,” said Lucky.
She looked over towards the bed. “She’s asleep, isn’t she?”
“I think so,” said Miss Marple. “But it’s really quite all right. You go and
amuse yourself, my dear. I thought you’d gone on that expedition?”
“I was going,” said Lucky, “but I had such a filthy headache that at the last
moment I cried off. So I thought I might as well make myself useful.”
“That was very nice of you,” said Miss Marple. She reseated herself by the bed
and resumed her knitting, “but I’m quite happy here.”
Lucky hesitated for a moment or two and then turned away and went out. Miss
Marple waited a moment then tiptoed back into the bathroom, but Jackson had
departed, no doubt through the other door. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Miss Marple picked up the jar of
face cream he had been holding, and slipped it into her pocket.
Twenty-two
A MAN IN HER LIFE?
Getting a little chat in a natural manner with Dr. Graham was not so easy as
Miss Marple had hoped. She was particularly anxious not to approach him
directly since she did not want to lend undue importance to the questions that
she was going to ask him.
Tim was back, looking after Molly, and Miss Marple had arranged that she
should relieve him there during the time that dinner was served and he was
needed in the dining room. He had assured her that Mrs. Dyson was quite
willing to take that on, or even Mrs. Hillingdon, but Miss Marple said firmly
that they were both young women who liked enjoying themselves and that she
herself preferred a light meal early and so that would suit everybody. Tim
once again thanked her warmly. Hovering rather uncertainly round the hotel and
on the pathway which connected with various bungalows, among them Dr.
Graham’s, Miss Marple tried to plan what she was going to do next.
She had a lot of confused and contradictory ideas in her head and if there was
one thing that Miss Marple did not like, it was to have confused and
contradictory ideas. This whole business had started out clearly enough. Major
Palgrave with his regrettable capacity for telling stories, his indiscretion
that had obviously been overheard and the corollary, his death within twenty-
four hours. Nothing difficult about that, thought Miss Marple.
But afterwards, she was forced to admit, there was nothing but difficulty.
Everything pointed in too many different directions at once. Once admit that
you didn’t believe a word that anybody had said to you, that nobody could be
trusted, and that many of the persons with whom she had conversed here had
regrettable resemblances to certain persons at St. Mary Mead, and where did
that lead you?
Her mind was increasingly focused on the victim. Someone was going to be
killed and she had the increasing feeling that she ought to know quite well
who that someone was. There had been something. Something she had heard?
Noticed? Seen?
Something someone had told her that had a bearing on the case. Joan Prescott?
Joan Prescott had said a lot of things about a lot of people. Scandal? Gossip?
What exactly had Joan Prescott said?
Gregory Dyson, Lucky—Miss Marple’s mind hovered over Lucky. Lucky, she was
convinced with a certainty born of her natural suspicions, had been actively
concerned in the death of Gregory Dyson’s first wife. Everything pointed to
it. Could it be that the predestined victim over whom she was worrying was
Gregory Dyson? That Lucky intended to try her luck again with another husband,
and for that reason wanted not only freedom but the handsome inheritance that
she would get as Gregory Dyson’s widow?
“But really,” said Miss Marple to herself, “this is all pure conjecture. I’m
being stupid. I know I’m being stupid. The truth must be quite plain, if one
could just clear away the litter. Too much litter, that’s what’s the matter.”
“Talking to yourself?” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple jumped. She had not noticed his approach. Esther Walters was
supporting him and he was coming slowly down from his bungalow to the terrace.
“I really didn’t notice you, Mr. Rafiel.”
“Your lips were moving. What’s become of all this urgency of yours?”
“It’s still urgent,” said Miss Marple, “only I can’t just see what must be
perfectly plain—”
“I’m glad it’s as simple as that—Well, if you want any help, count on me.”
He turned his head as Jackson approached them along the path.
“So there you are, Jackson. Where the devil have you been? Never about when I
want you.”
“Sorry, Mr. Rafiel.”
Dexterously he slipped his shoulder under Mr. Rafiel’s. “Down to the terrace,
sir?”
“You can take me to the bar,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All right, Esther, you can go
now and change into your evening togs. Meet me on the terrace in half an
hour.”
He and Jackson went off together. Mrs. Walters dropped into the chair by Miss
Marple. She rubbed her arm gently.
“He seems a very light weight,” she observed, “but at the moment my arm feels
quite numb. I haven’t seen you this afternoon at all, Miss Marple.”
“No, I’ve been sitting with Molly Kendal,” Miss Marple explained. “She seems
really very much better.”
“If you ask me there was never very much wrong with her,” said Esther Walters.
Miss Marple raised her eyebrows. Esther Walters’s tone had been decidedly dry.
“You mean—you think her suicide attempt….”
“I don’t think there was any suicide attempt,” said Esther Walters. “I don’t
believe for a moment she took a real overdose and I think Dr. Graham knows
that perfectly well.”
“Now you interest me very much,” said Miss Marple. “I wonder why you say
that?”
“Because I’m almost certain that it’s the case. Oh, it’s a thing that happens
very often. It’s a way, I suppose, of calling attention to oneself,” went on
Esther Walters.
“‘You’ll be sorry when I’m dead?’” quoted Miss Marple.
“That sort of thing,” agreed Esther Walters, “though I don’t think that was
the motive in this particular instance. That’s the sort of thing you feel like
when your husband’s playing you up and you’re terribly fond of him.”
“You don’t think Molly Kendal is fond of her husband?”
“Well,” said Esther Walters, “do you?”
Miss Marple considered. “I have,” she said, “more or less assumed it.” She
paused a moment before adding, “Perhaps wrongly.”
Esther was smiling her rather wry smile.
“I’ve heard a little about her, you know. About the whole business.”
“From Miss Prescott?”
“Oh,” said Esther, “from one or two people. There’s a man in the case. Someone
she was keen on. Her people were dead against him.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I did hear that.”
“And then she married Tim. Perhaps she was fond of him in a way. But the other
man didn’t give up. I’ve wondered once or twice if he didn’t actually follow
her out here.”
“Indeed. But—who?”
“I’ve no idea who,” said Esther, “and I should imagine that they’ve been very
careful.”
“You think she cares for this other man?”
Esther shrugged her shoulders. “I dare say he’s a bad lot,” she said, “but
that’s very often the kind who knows how to get under a woman’s skin and stay
there.”
“You never heard what kind of a man—what he did—anything like that?”
Esther shook her head. “No. People hazard guesses, but you can’t go by that
type of thing. He may have been a married man. That may have been why her
people disliked it, or he may have been a real bad lot. Perhaps he drank.
Perhaps he tangled with the law—I don’t know. But she cares for him still.
That I know positively.”
“You’ve seen something, heard something?” Miss Marple hazarded.
“I know what I’m talking about,” said Esther. Her voice was harsh and
unfriendly.
“These murders—” began Miss Marple.
“Can’t you forget murders?” said Esther. “You’ve got Mr. Rafiel now all
tangled up in them. Can’t you just—let them be? You’ll never find out any
more, I’m sure of that.”
Miss Marple looked at her.
“You think you know, don’t you?” she said.
“I think I do, yes. I’m fairly sure.”
“Then oughtn’t you to tell what you know—do something about it?”
“Why should I? What good would it do? I couldn’t prove anything. What would
happen anyway? People get let off nowadays so easily. They call it diminished
responsibility and things like that. A few years in prison and you’re out
again, as right as rain.”
“Supposing, because you don’t tell what you know, somebody else gets
killed—another victim?”
Esther shook her head with confidence. “That won’t happen,” she said.
“You can’t be sure of it.”
“I am sure. And in any case I don’t see who—” She frowned. “Anyway,” she
added, almost inconsequently, “perhaps it is—diminished responsibility.
Perhaps you can’t help it—not if you are really mentally unbalanced. Oh, I
don’t know. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Oh, I
don’t know. By far the best thing would be if she went off with whoever it is,
then we could all forget about things.”
She glanced at her watch, gave an exclamation of dismay and got up.
“I must go and change.”
Miss Marple sat looking after her. Pronouns, she thought, were always puzzling
and women like Esther Walters were particularly prone to strew them about
haphazard. Was Esther Walters for some reason convinced that a woman had been
responsible for the deaths of Major Palgrave and Victoria? It sounded like it.
Miss Marple considered.
“Ah, Miss Marple, sitting here all alone—and not even knitting?”
It was Dr. Graham for whom she had sought so long and so unsuccessfully. And
here he was prepared of his own accord to sit down for a few minutes’ chat. He
wouldn’t stay long, Miss Marple thought, because he too was bent on changing
for dinner, and he usually dined fairly early. She explained that she had been
sitting by Molly Kendal’s bedside that afternoon.
“One can hardly believe she has made such a good recovery so quickly,” she
said.
“Oh well,” said Dr. Graham, “it’s not very surprising. She didn’t take a very
heavy overdose, you know.”
“Oh, I understood she’d taken quite a half-bottle full of tablets.”
Dr. Graham was smiling indulgently.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think she took that amount. I dare say she meant to
take them, then probably at the last moment she threw half of them away.
People, even when they think they want to commit suicide, often don’t really
want to do it. They manage not to take a full overdose. It’s not always
deliberate deceit, it’s just the subconscious looking after itself.”
“Or, I suppose it might be deliberate. I mean, wanting it to appear that….”
Miss Marple paused.
“It’s possible,” said Dr. Graham.
“If she and Tim had had a row, for instance?”
“They don’t have rows, you know. They seem very fond of each other. Still, I
suppose it can always happen once. No, I don’t think there’s very much wrong
with her now. She could really get up and go about as usual. Still, it’s safer
to keep her where she is for a day or two—”
He got up, nodded cheerfully and went off towards the hotel. Miss Marple sat
where she was a little while longer.
Various thoughts passed through her mind—The book under Molly’s mattress—The
way Molly had feigned sleep—
Things Joan Prescott and, later, Esther Walters, had said….
And then she went back to the beginning of it all—to Major Palgrave—
Something struggled in her mind. Something about Major Palgrave—
Something that if she could only remember—
Twenty-three
THE LAST DAY
I
“And the evening and the morning were the last day,” said Miss Marple to
herself.
Then, slightly confused, she sat upright again in her chair. She had dozed
off, an incredible thing to do because the steel band was playing and anyone
who could doze off during the steel band—Well, it showed, thought Miss Marple,
that she was getting used to this place! What was it she had been saying? Some
quotation that she’d got wrong. Last day? First day. That’s what it ought to
be. This wasn’t the first day. Presumably it wasn’t the last day either.
She sat upright again. The fact was that she was extremely tired. All this
anxiety, this feeling of having been shamefully inadequate in some way … She
remembered unpleasantly once more that queer sly look that Molly had given her
from under her half-closed eyelids. What had been going on in that girl’s
head? How different, thought Miss Marple, everything had seemed at first. Tim
Kendal and Molly, such a natural happy young couple. The Hillingdons so
pleasant, so well-bred, such what is called “nice” people. The gay hearty
extrovert, Greg Dyson, and the gay strident Lucky, talking nineteen to the
dozen, pleased with herself and the world … A quartet of people getting on so
well together. Canon Prescott, that genial kindly man. Joan Prescott, an acid
streak in her, but a very nice woman, and nice women had to have their gossipy
distractions. They have to know what is going on, to know when two and two
make four, and when it is possible to stretch them to five! There was no harm
in such women. Their tongues wagged but they were kind if you were in
misfortune. Mr. Rafiel, a personality, a man of character, a man that you
would never by any chance forget. But Miss Marple thought she knew something
else about Mr. Rafiel.
The doctors had often given him up, so he had said, but this time, she
thought, they had been more certain in their pronouncements. Mr. Rafiel knew
that his days were numbered.
Knowing this with certainty, was there any action he might have been likely to
take?
Miss Marple considered the question.
It might, she thought, be important.
What was it exactly he had said, his voice a little too loud, a little too
sure? Miss Marple was very skilful in tones of voice. She had done so much
listening in her life.
Mr. Rafiel had been telling her something that wasn’t true.
Miss Marple looked round her. The night air, the soft fragrance of flowers,
the tables with their little lights, the women with their pretty dresses,
Evelyn in a dark indigo and white print, Lucky in a white sheath, her golden
hair shining. Everybody seemed gay and full of life tonight. Even Tim Kendal
was smiling. He passed her table and said:
“Can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done. Molly’s practically herself
again. The doc says she can get up tomorrow.”
Miss Marple smiled at him and said that that was good hearing. She found it,
however, quite an effort to smile. Decidedly, she was tired….
She got up and walked slowly back to her bungalow. She would have liked to go
on thinking, puzzling, trying to remember, trying to assemble various facts
and words and glances. But she wasn’t able to do it. The tired mind rebelled.
It said “Sleep! You’ve got to go to sleep!”
Miss Marple undressed, got into bed, read a few verses of the Thomas à Kempis
which she kept by her bed, then she turned out the light. In the darkness she
sent up a prayer. One couldn’t do everything oneself. One had to have help.
“Nothing will happen tonight,” she murmured hopefully.
II
Miss Marple woke suddenly and sat up in bed. Her heart was beating. She
switched on the light and looked at the little clock by her bedside. Two am.
Two am and outside activity of some kind was going on. She got up, put on her
dressing gown and slippers, and a woollen scarf round her head and went out to
reconnoitre. There were people moving about with torches. Among them she saw
Canon Prescott and went to him.
“What’s happening?”
“Oh, Miss Marple? It’s Mrs. Kendal. Her husband woke up, found she’d slipped
out of bed and gone out. We’re looking for her.”
He hurried on. Miss Marple walked more slowly after him. Where had Molly gone?
Why? Had she planned this deliberately, planned to slip away as soon as the
guard on her was relaxed, and while her husband was deep in sleep? Miss Marple
thought it was probable. But why? What was the reason? Was there, as Esther
Walters had so strongly hinted, some other man? If so, who could that man be?
Or was there some more sinister reason?
Miss Marple walked on, looking around her, peering under bushes. Then suddenly
she heard a faint call:
“Here … This way….”
The cry had come from some little distance beyond the hotel grounds. It must
be, thought Miss Marple, near the creek of water that ran down to the sea. She
went in that direction as briskly as she could.
There were not really so many searchers as it had seemed to her at first. Most
people must still be asleep in their bungalows. She saw a place on the creek
bank where there were people standing. Someone pushed past her, almost
knocking her down, running in that direction. It was Tim Kendal. A minute or
two later she heard his voice cry out:
“Molly! My God, Molly!”
It was a minute or two before Miss Marple was able to join the little group. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
It consisted of one of the Cuban waiters, Evelyn Hillingdon, and two of the
native girls. They had parted to let Tim through. Miss Marple arrived as he
was bending over to look.
“Molly …” He slowly dropped on to his knees. Miss Marple saw the girl’s body
clearly, lying there in the creek, her face below the level of the water, her
golden hair spread over the pale green embroidered shawl that covered her
shoulders. With the leaves and rushes of the creek, it seemed almost like a
scene from Hamlet with Molly as the dead Ophelia….
As Tim stretched out a hand to touch her, the quiet, commonsense Miss Marple
took charge and spoke sharply and authoritatively.
“Don’t move her, Mr. Kendal,” she said. “She mustn’t be moved.”
Tim turned a dazed face up to her.
“But—I must—it’s Molly. I must….”
Evelyn Hillingdon touched his shoulder.
“She’s dead, Tim. I didn’t move her, but I did feel her pulse.”
“Dead?” said Tim unbelievingly. “Dead? You mean she’s—drowned herself?”
“I’m afraid so. It looks like it.”
“But why?” A great cry burst from the young man. “Why? She was so happy this
morning. Talking about what we’d do tomorrow. Why should this terrible death
wish come over her again? Why should she steal away as she did—rush out into
the night, come down here and drown herself? What despair did she have—what
misery—why couldn’t she tell me anything?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” said Evelyn gently. “I don’t know.”
Miss Marple said:
“Somebody had better get Dr. Graham. And someone will have to telephone the
police.”
“The police?” Tim uttered a bitter laugh. “What good will they be?”
“The police have to be notified in a case of suicide,” said Miss Marple.
Tim rose slowly to his feet.
“I’ll get Graham,” he said heavily. “Perhaps—even now—he could—do something.”
He stumbled away in the direction of the hotel.
Evelyn Hillingdon and Miss Marple stood side by side looking down at the dead
girl.
Evelyn shook her head. “It’s too late. She’s quite cold. She must have been
dead at least an hour—perhaps more. What a tragedy it all is. Those two always
seemed so happy. I suppose she was always unbalanced.”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think she was unbalanced.”
Evelyn looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
The moon had been behind a cloud, but now it came out into the open. It shone
with a luminous silvery brightness on Molly’s outspread hair….
Miss Marple gave a sudden ejaculation. She bent down, peering, then stretched
out her hand and touched the golden head. She spoke to Evelyn Hillingdon, and
her voice sounded quite different.
“I think,” she said, “that we had better make sure.”
Evelyn Hillingdon stared at her in astonishment.
“But you yourself told Tim we mustn’t touch anything?”
“I know. But the moon wasn’t out. I hadn’t seen—”
Her finger pointed. Then, very gently, she touched the blonde hair and parted
it so that the roots were exposed….
Evelyn gave a sharp ejaculation.
“Lucky!”
And then after a moment she repeated:
“Not Molly … Lucky.”
Miss Marple nodded. “Their hair was of much the same colour—but hers, of
course, was dark at the roots because it was dyed.”
“But she’s wearing Molly’s shawl?”
“She admired it. I heard her say she was going to get one like it. Evidently
she did.”
“So that’s why we were—deceived….”
Evelyn broke off as she met Miss Marple’s eyes watching her.
“Someone,” said Miss Marple, “will have to tell her husband.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Evelyn said:
“All right. I’ll do it.”
She turned and walked away through the palm trees.
Miss Marple remained for a moment motionless, then she turned her head very
slightly, and said:
“Yes, Colonel Hillingdon?”
Edward Hillingdon came from the trees behind her to stand by her side.
“You knew I was there?”
“You cast a shadow,” said Miss Marple.
They stood a moment in silence.
He said, more as though he were speaking to himself:
“So, in the end, she played her luck too far….”
“You are, I think, glad that she is dead?”
“And that shocks you? Well, I will not deny it. I am glad she is dead.”
“Death is often a solution to problems.”
Edward Hillingdon turned his head slowly. Miss Marple met his eyes calmly and
steadfastly.
“If you think—” he took a sharp step towards her.
There was a sudden menace in his tone.
Miss Marple said quietly:
“Your wife will be back with Mr. Dyson in a moment. Or Mr. Kendal will be here
with Dr. Graham.”
Edward Hillingdon relaxed. He turned back to look down at the dead woman.
Miss Marple slipped away quietly. Presently her pace quickened.
Just before reaching her own bungalow, she paused. It was here that she had
sat that day talking to Major Palgrave. It was here that he had fumbled in his
wallet looking for the snapshot of a murderer….
She remembered how he had looked up, and how his face had gone purple and
red…. “So ugly,” as Señora de Caspearo had said. “He has the Evil Eye.”
The Evil Eye … Eye …Eye….
Twenty-four
NEMESIS
I
Whatever the alarms and excursions of the night, Mr. Rafiel had not heard
them.
He was fast asleep in bed, a faint thin snore coming from his nostrils, when
he was taken by the shoulders and shaken violently.
“Eh—what—what the devil’s this?”
“It’s me,” said Miss Marple, for once ungrammatical, “though I should put it a
little more strongly than that. The Greeks, I believe, had a word for it.
Nemesis, if I am not wrong.”
Mr. Rafiel raised himself on his pillows as far as he could. He stared at her.
Miss Marple, standing there in the moonlight, her head encased in a fluffy
scarf of pale pink wool, looked as unlike a figure of Nemesis as it was
possible to imagine.
“So you’re Nemesis, are you?” said Mr. Rafiel after a momentary pause.
“I hope to be—with your help.”
“Do you mind telling me quite plainly what you’re talking about like this in
the middle of the night.”
“I think we may have to act quickly. Very quickly. I have been foolish.
Extremely foolish. I ought to have known from the very beginning what all this
was about. It was so simple.”
“What was simple, and what are you talking about?”
“You slept through a good deal,” said Miss Marple. “A body was found. We
thought at first it was the body of Molly Kendal. It wasn’t, it was Lucky
Dyson. Drowned in the creek.”
“Lucky, eh?” said Mr. Rafiel. “And drowned? In the creek. Did she drown
herself or did somebody drown her?”
“Somebody drowned her,” said Miss Marple.
“I see. At least I think I see. That’s what you mean by saying it’s so simple,
is it? Greg Dyson was always the first possibility, and he’s the right one. Is
that it? Is that what you’re thinking? And what you’re afraid of is that he
may get away with it.”
Miss Marple took a deep breath.
“Mr. Rafiel, will you trust me? We have got to stop a murder being committed.”
“I thought you said it had been committed.”
“That murder was committed in error. Another murder may be committed any
moment now. There’s no time to lose. We must prevent it happening. We must go
at once.”
“It’s all very well to talk like that,” said Mr. Rafiel. “We, you say? What do
you think I can do about it? I can’t even walk without help. How can you and I
set about preventing a murder? You’re about a hundred and I’m a broken-up old
crock.”
“I was thinking of Jackson,” said Miss Marple. “Jackson will do what you tell
him, won’t he?”
“He will indeed,” said Mr. Rafiel, “especially if I add that I’ll make it
worth his while. Is that what you want?”
“Yes. Tell him to come with me and tell him to obey any orders I give him.”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her for about six seconds. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Rafiel looked at her for about six seconds. Then he said:
“Done. I expect I’m taking the biggest risk of my life. Well, it won’t be the
first one.” He raised his voice. “Jackson.” At the same time he picked up the
electric bell that lay beside his hand and pressed the button.
Hardly thirty seconds passed before Jackson appeared through the connecting
door to the adjoining room.
“You called and rang, sir? Anything wrong?” He broke off, staring at Miss
Marple.
“Now, Jackson, do as I tell you. You will go with this lady, Miss Marple.
You’ll go where she takes you and you’ll do exactly as she says. You’ll obey
every order she gives you. Is that understood?”
“I—”
“Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for doing that,” said Mr. Rafiel, “you won’t be the loser. I’ll make it
worth your while.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Come along, Mr. Jackson,” said Miss Marple. She spoke over her shoulder to
Mr. Rafiel. “We’ll tell Mrs. Walters to come to you on your way. Get her to
get you out of bed and bring you along.”
“Bring me along where?”
“To the Kendals’ bungalow,” said Miss Marple. “I think Molly will be coming
back there.”
II
Molly came up the path from the sea. Her eyes stared fixedly ahead of her.
Occasionally, under her breath, she gave a little whimper….
She went up the steps of the loggia, paused a moment, then pushed open the
window and walked into the bedroom. The lights were on, but the room itself
was empty. Molly went across to the bed and sat down. She sat for some
minutes, now and again passing her hand over her forehead and frowning. Then,
after a quick surreptitious glance round, she slipped her hand under the
mattress and brought out the book that was hidden there. She bent over it,
turning the pages to find what she wanted.
Then she raised her head as a sound of running footsteps came from outside.
With a quick guilty movement she pushed the book behind her back.
Tim Kendal, panting and out of breath, came in, and uttered a great sigh of
relief at the sight of her.
“Thank God. Where have you been, Molly? I’ve been searching everywhere for
you.”
“I went to the creek.”
“You went—” he stopped.
“Yes. I went to the creek. But I couldn’t wait there. I couldn’t. There was
someone in the water—and she was dead.”
“You mean—Do you know I thought it was you. I’ve only just found out it was
Lucky.”
“I didn’t kill her. Really, Tim, I didn’t kill her. I’m sure I didn’t. I
mean—I’d remember if I did, wouldn’t I?”
Tim sank slowly down on the end of the bed.
“You didn’t—Are you sure that—? No. No, of course you didn’t!” He fairly
shouted the words. “Don’t start thinking like that, Molly. Lucky drowned
herself. Of course she drowned herself. Hillingdon was through with her. She
went and lay down with her face in the water—”
“Lucky wouldn’t do that. She’d never do that. But I didn’t kill her. I swear I
didn’t.”
“Darling, of course you didn’t!” He put his arms round her but she pulled
herself away.
“I hate this place. It ought to be all sunlight. It seemed to be all sunlight.
But it isn’t. Instead there’s a shadow—a big black shadow … And I’m in it—and
I can’t get out—”
Her voice had risen to a shout.
“Hush, Molly. For God’s sake, hush!” He went into the bathroom, came back with
a glass.
“Look. Drink this. It’ll steady you.”
“I—I can’t drink anything. My teeth are chattering so.”
“Yes you can, darling. Sit down. Here, on the bed.” He put his arm round her.
He approached the glass to her lips. “There you are now. Drink it.”
A voice spoke from the window.
“Jackson,” said Miss Marple clearly. “Go over. Take that glass from him and
hold it tightly. Be careful. He’s strong and he may be pretty desperate.”
There were certain points about Jackson. He was a man with a great love for
money, and money had been promised him by his employer, that employer being a
man of stature and authority. He was also a man of extreme muscular
development heightened by his training. His not to reason why, his but to do.
Swift as a flash he had crossed the room. His hand went over the glass that
Tim was holding to Molly’s lips, his other arm had fastened round Tim. A quick
flick of the wrist and he had the glass. Tim turned on him wildly, but Jackson
held him firmly.
“What the devil—let go of me. Let go of me. Have you gone mad? What are you
doing?”
Tim struggled violently.
“Hold him, Jackson,” said Miss Marple.
“What’s going on? What’s the matter here?”
Supported by Esther Walters, Mr. Rafiel came through the window.
“You ask what’s the matter?” shouted Tim. “Your man’s gone mad, stark, staring
mad, that’s what’s the matter. Tell him to let go of me.”
“No,” said Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel turned to her.
“Speak up, Nemesis,” he said. “We’ve got to have chapter and verse of some
kind.”
“I’ve been stupid and a fool,” said Miss Marple, “but I’m not being a fool
now. When the contents of that glass that he was trying to make his wife drink
have been analysed, I’ll wager—yes, I’ll wager my immortal soul that you’ll
find it’s got a lethal dose of narcotic in it. It’s the same pattern, you see,
the same pattern as in Major Palgrave’s story. A wife in a depressed state,
and she tries to do away with herself, husband saves her in time. Then the
second time she succeeds. Yes, it’s the right pattern. Major Palgrave told me
the story and he took out a snapshot and then he looked up and saw—”
“Over your right shoulder—” continued Mr. Rafiel.
“No,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head. “He didn’t see anything over my
right shoulder.”
“What are you talking about? You told me….”
“I told you wrong. I was completely wrong. I was stupid beyond belief. Major
Palgrave appeared to me to be looking over my right shoulder, glaring, in
fact, at something—But he couldn’t have seen anything, because he was looking
through his left eye and his left eye was his glass eye.”
“I remember—he had a glass eye,” said Mr. Rafiel. “I’d forgotten—or I took it
for granted. You mean he couldn’t see anything?”
“Of course he could see,” said Miss Marple. “He could see all right, but he
could only see with one eye. The eye he could see with was his right eye. And
so, you see, he must have been looking at something or someone not to the
right of me but to the left of me.”
“Was there anyone on the left of you?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “Tim Kendal and his wife were sitting not far off.
Sitting at a table just by a big hibiscus bush. They were doing accounts
there. So you see the Major looked up. His glass left eye was glaring over my
shoulder, but what he saw with his other eye was a man sitting by a hibiscus
bush and the face was the same, only rather older, as the face in the
snapshot. Also by a hibiscus bush. Tim Kendal had heard the story the Major
had been telling and he saw that the Major had recognized him. So, of course,
he had to kill him. Later, he had to kill the girl, Victoria, because she’d
seen him putting a bottle of tablets in the Major’s room. She didn’t think
anything of it at first because of course it was quite natural on various
occasions for Tim Kendal to go into the guests’ bungalows. He might have just
been returning something to it that had been left on a restaurant table. But
she thought about it and then she asked him questions and so he had to get rid
of her. But this is the real murder, the murder he’s been planning all along.
He’s a wife-killer, you see.”
“What damned nonsense, what—” Tim Kendal shouted.
There was a sudden cry, a wild angry cry. | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
There was a sudden cry, a wild angry cry. Esther Walters detached herself from
Mr. Rafiel, almost flinging him down, and rushed across the room. She pulled
vainly at Jackson.
“Let go of him—let go of him. It’s not true. Not a word of it’s true. Tim—Tim
darling, it’s not true. You could never kill anyone, I know you couldn’t. I
know you wouldn’t. It’s that horrible girl you married. She’s been telling
lies about you. They’re not true. None of them are true. I believe in you. I
love you and trust in you. I’ll never believe a word anyone says. I’ll—”
Then Tim Kendal lost control of himself.
“For God’s sake, you damned bitch,” he said, “shut up, can’t you? D’you want
to get me hanged? Shut up, I tell you. Shut that big, ugly mouth of yours.”
“Poor silly creature,” said Mr. Rafiel softly. “So that’s what’s been going
on, is it?”
Twenty-five
MISS MARPLE USES HER IMAGINATION
“So that’s what had been going on?” said Mr. Rafiel.
He and Miss Marple were sitting together in a confidential manner.
“She’d been having an affair with Tim Kendal, had she?”
“Hardly an affair, I imagine,” said Miss Marple, primly. “It was, I think, a
romantic attachment with the prospect of marriage in the future.”
“What—after his wife was dead?”
“I don’t think poor Esther Walters knew that Molly was going to die,” said
Miss Marple. “I just think she believed the story Tim Kendal told her about
Molly having been in love with another man, and the man having followed her
here, and I think she counted on Tim’s getting a divorce. I think it was all
quite proper and respectable. But she was very much in love with him.”
“Well, that’s easily understood. He was an attractive chap. But what made him
go for her—d’you know that too?”
“You know, don’t you?” said Miss Marple.
“I dare say I’ve got a pretty fair idea, but I don’t know how you should know
about it. As far as that goes, I don’t see how Tim Kendal could know about
it.”
“Well, I really think I could explain all that with a little imagination,
though it would be simpler if you told me.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Mr. Rafiel. “You tell me, since you’re being
so clever.”
“Well, it seems to me possible,” said Miss Marple, “that as I have already
hinted to you, your man Jackson was in the habit of taking a good snoop
through your various papers from time to time.”
“Perfectly possible,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but I shouldn’t have said there was
anything there that could do him much good. I took care of that.”
“I imagine,” said Miss Marple, “he read your will.”
“Oh I see. Yes, yes, I did have a copy of my will along.”
“You told me,” said Miss Marple, “you told me—(as Humpty Dumpty said—very loud
and clear) that you had not left anything to Esther Walters in your will. You
had impressed that fact upon her, and also upon Jackson. It was true in
Jackson’s case, I should imagine. You have not left him anything, but you had
left Esther Walters money, though you weren’t going to let her have any
inkling of the fact. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, it’s quite right, but I don’t know how you knew.”
“Well, it’s the way you insisted on the point,” said Miss Marple. “I have a
certain experience of the way people tell lies.”
“I give in,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All right. I left Esther £50,000. It would come
as a nice surprise to her when I died. I suppose that, knowing this, Tim
Kendal decided to exterminate his present wife with a nice dose of something
or other and marry £50,000 and Esther Walters. Possibly to dispose of her also
in good time. But how did he know she was going to have £50,000?”
“Jackson told him, of course,” said Miss Marple. “They were very friendly,
those two. Tim Kendal was nice to Jackson and, quite, I should imagine,
without ulterior motive. But amongst the bits of gossip that Jackson let slip
I think Jackson told him that unbeknownst to herself, Esther Walters was going
to inherit a fat lot of money, and he may have said that he himself hoped to
induce Esther Walters to marry him though he hadn’t had much success so far in
taking her fancy. Yes, I think that’s how it happened.”
“The things you imagine always seem perfectly plausible,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“But I was stupid,” said Miss Marple, “very stupid. Everything fitted in
really, you see. Tim Kendal was a very clever man as well as being a very
wicked one. He was particularly good at putting about rumours. Half the things
I’ve been told here came from him originally, I imagine. There were stories
going around about Molly wanting to marry an undesirable young man, but I
rather fancy that the undesirable young man was actually Tim Kendal himself,
though that wasn’t the name he was using then. Her people had heard something,
perhaps that his background was fishy. So he put on a high indignation act,
refused to be taken by Molly to be ‘shown off’ to her people and then he
brewed up a little scheme with her which they both thought great fun. She
pretended to sulk and pine for him. Then a Mr. Tim Kendal turned up, primed
with the names of various old friends of Molly’s people, and they welcomed him
with open arms as being the sort of young man who would put the former
delinquent one out of Molly’s head. I am afraid Molly and he must have laughed
over it a good deal. Anyway, he married her, and with her money he bought out
the people who ran this place and they came out here. I should imagine that he
ran through her money at a pretty fair rate. Then he came across Esther
Walters and he saw a nice prospect of more money.”
“Why didn’t he bump me off?” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple coughed.
“I expect he wanted to be fairly sure of Mrs. Walters first. Besides—I mean …”
She stopped, a little confused.
“Besides, he realized he wouldn’t have to wait long,” said Mr. Rafiel, “and it
would clearly be better for me to die a natural death. Being so rich. Deaths
of millionaires are scrutinized rather carefully, aren’t they, unlike mere
wives?”
“Yes, you’re quite right. Such a lot of lies as he told,” said Miss Marple.
“Look at the lies he got Molly herself to believe—putting that book on mental
disorders in her way. Giving her drugs which would give her dreams and
hallucinations. You know, your Jackson was rather clever over that. I think he
recognized certain of Molly’s symptoms as being the result of drugs. And he
came into the bungalow that day to potter about a bit in the bathroom. That
face cream he examined. He might have got some idea from the old tales of
witches rubbing themselves with ointments that had belladonna in them.
Belladonna in face cream could have produced just that result. Molly would
have blackouts. Times she couldn’t account for, dreams of flying through the
air. No wonder she got frightened about herself. She had all the signs of
mental illness, Jackson was on the right track. Maybe he got the idea from
Major Palgrave’s stories about the use of datura by Indian women on their
husbands.”
“Major Palgrave!” said Mr. Rafiel. “Really, that man!”
“He brought about his own murder,” said Miss Marple, “and that poor girl
Victoria’s murder, and he nearly brought about Molly’s murder. But he
recognized a murderer all right.”
“What made you suddenly remember about his glass eye?” asked Mr. Rafiel
curiously.
“Something that Señora de Caspearo said. She talked some nonsense about his
being ugly, and having the Evil Eye; and I said it was only a glass eye, and
he couldn’t help that, poor man, and she said his eyes looked different ways,
they were cross-eyes—which, of course, they were. And she said it brought bad
luck. I knew—I knew that I had heard something that day that was important.
Last night, just after Lucky’s death, it came to me what it was! | a caribbean mystery - agatha christie.epub |
Last night, just after Lucky’s death, it came to me what it was! And then I
realized there was no time to waste….”
“How did Tim Kendal come to kill the wrong woman?”
“Sheer chance. I think his plan was this: Having convinced everybody—and that
included Molly herself—that she was mentally unbalanced, and after giving her
a sizeable dose of the drug he was using, he told her that between them they
were going to clear up all these murder puzzles. But she had got to help him.
After everyone was asleep, they would go separately and meet at an agreed spot
by the creek.
“He said he had a very good idea who the murderer was, and they would trap
him. Molly went off obediently—but she was confused and stupefied with the
drug she had been given, and it slowed her up. Tim arrived there first and saw
what he thought was Molly. Golden hair and pale green shawl. He came up behind
her, put his hand over her mouth, and forced her down into the water and held
her there.”
“Nice fellow! But wouldn’t it have been easier just to give her an overdose of
narcotic?”
“Much easier, of course. But that might have given rise to suspicion. All
narcotics and sedatives have been very carefully removed from Molly’s reach,
remember. And if she had got hold of a fresh supply, who more likely to have
supplied it than her husband? But if, in a fit of despair, she went out and
drowned herself whilst her innocent husband slept, the whole thing would be a
romantic tragedy, and no one would be likely to suggest that she had been
drowned deliberately. Besides,” added Miss Marple, “murderers always find it
difficult to keep things simple. They can’t keep themselves from elaborating.”
“You seem convinced you know all there is to be known about murderers! So you
believe Tim didn’t know he had killed the wrong woman?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“He didn’t even look at her face, just hurried off as quickly as he could, let
an hour elapse, then started to organize a search for her, playing the part of
a distracted husband.”
“But what the devil was Lucky doing hanging about the creek in the middle of
the night?”
Miss Marple gave an embarrassed little cough.
“It is possible, I think, that she was—er—waiting to meet someone.”
“Edward Hillingdon?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “That’s all over, I wondered whether—just
possibly—she might have been waiting for Jackson.”
“Waiting for Jackson?”
“I’ve noticed her—look at him once or twice,” murmured Miss Marple, averting
her eyes.
Mr. Rafiel whistled.
“My Tom Cat Jackson! I wouldn’t put it past him! Tim must have had a shock
later when he found he’d killed the wrong woman.”
“Yes, indeed. He must have felt quite desperate. Here was Molly alive and
wandering about. And the story he’d circulated so carefully about her mental
condition wouldn’t stand up for a moment once she got into the hands of
competent mental specialists. And once she told her damning story of his
having asked her to meet him at the creek, where would Tim Kendal be? He’d
only one hope—to finish off Molly as quickly as possible. Then there was a
very good chance that everyone would believe that Molly, in a fit of mania,
had drowned Lucky, and had then, horrified by what she had done, taken her own
life.”
“And it was then,” said Mr. Rafiel, “that you decided to play Nemesis, eh?”
He leaned back suddenly and roared with laughter. “It’s a damned good joke,”
he said. “If you knew what you looked like that night with that fluffy pink
wool all round your head, standing there and saying you were Nemesis! I’ll
never forget it!”
Epilogue
The time had come and Miss Marple was waiting at the airport for her plane.
Quite a lot of people had come to see her off. The Hillingdons had left
already. Gregory Dyson had flown to one of the other islands and the rumour
had come that he was devoting himself to an Argentinian widow. Señora de
Caspearo had returned to South America.
Molly had come to see Miss Marple off. She was pale and thin but she had
weathered the shock of her discovery bravely and with the help of one of Mr.
Rafiel’s nominees whom he had wired for to England, she was carrying on with
the running of the hotel.
“Do you good to be busy,” Mr. Rafiel observed. “Keep you from thinking. Got a
good thing here.”
“You don’t think the murders—”
“People love murders when they’re all cleared up,” Mr. Rafiel had assured her.
“You carry on, girl, and keep your heart up. Don’t distrust all men because
you’ve met one bad lot.”
“You sound like Miss Marple,” Molly had said, “she’s always telling me Mr.
Right will come along one day.”
Mr. Rafiel grinned at this sentiment. So Molly was there and the two Prescotts
and Mr. Rafiel, of course, and Esther—an Esther who looked older and sadder
and to whom Mr. Rafiel was quite often unexpectedly kind. Jackson also was
very much to the fore, pretending to be looking after Miss Marple’s baggage.
He was all smiles these days and let it be known that he had come into money.
There was a hum in the sky. The plane was arriving. Things were somewhat
informal here. There was no “taking your place by Channel 8” or Channel 9. You
just walked out from the little flower-covered pavilion on to the tarmac.
“Goodbye, darling Miss Marple.” Molly kissed her.
“Goodbye. Do try and come and visit us.” Miss Prescott shook her warmly by the
hand.
“It has been a great pleasure to know you,” said the Canon. “I second my
sister’s invitation most warmly.”
“All the best, Madam,” said Jackson, “and remember any time you want any
massage free, just you send me a line and we’ll make an appointment.”
Only Esther Walters turned slightly away when the time came for goodbyes. Miss
Marple did not force one upon her. Mr. Rafiel came last. He took her hand.
“Ave Caesar, nos morituri te salutamus,” he said.
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Marple, “I don’t know very much Latin.”
“But you understand that?”
“Yes.” She said no more. She knew quite well what he was telling her.
“It has been a great pleasure to know you,” she said.
Then she walked across the tarmac and got into the plane.
The Agatha Christie Collection
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The Murder on the Links
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
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The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
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Elephants Can Remember
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The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 From Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES
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Partners in Crime
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Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
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Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
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About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any
language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more
than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign
languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story
collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the
name Mary Westmacott.
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital
dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with
her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the
Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane
Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-
fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker
Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films,
and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in
1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film
adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot,
respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by
David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine
McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir
Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also
serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of
Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She
died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth
anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.
www.AgathaChristie.com
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THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
The Hercule Poirot Mysteries
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
The Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are
drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
AGATHA CHRISTIE® MARPLE® MISS MARPLE® A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY™. Copyright © 2011
Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. A Caribbean
Mystery was first published in 1964.
A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY © 1965. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a
member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have
been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the
text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced,
transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or
introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or
by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-207368-6
EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-174005-3
11 12 13 14 15
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Agatha Christie
A Murder Is Announced
A Miss Marple Mystery
To Ralph and Anne Newman
at whose house I first tasted
“Delicious Death!”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1.
A Murder Is Announced
2.
Breakfast at Little Paddocks
3.
At 6:30 p.m.
4.
The Royal Spa Hotel
5.
Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner
6.
Julia, Mitzi and Patrick
7.
Among Those Present
8.
Enter Miss Marple
9.
Concerning a Door
10.
Pip and Emma
11.
Miss Marple Comes to Tea
12.
Morning Activities in Chipping Cleghorn
13.
Morning Activities in Chipping Cleghorn (continued)
14.
Excursion into the Past
15.
Delicious Death
16.
Inspector Craddock Returns
17.
The Album
18.
The Letters
19.
Reconstruction of the Crime
20.
Miss Marple Is Missing
21.
Three Women
22.
The Truth
23.
Evening at the Vicarage
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by Agatha Christie
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED
I
Between 7:30 and 8:30 every morning except Sundays, Johnnie Butt made the
round of the village of Chipping Cleghorn on his bicycle, whistling
vociferously through his teeth, and alighting at each house or cottage to
shove through the letterbox such morning papers as had been ordered by the
occupants of the house in question from Mr. Totman, stationer, of the High
Street. Thus, at Colonel and Mrs. Easterbrook’s he delivered The Times and the
Daily Graphic; at Mrs. Swettenham’s he left The Times and the Daily Worker; at
Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd’s he left the Daily Telegraph and the New
Chronicle; at Miss Blacklock’s he left the Telegraph, The Times and the Daily
Mail.
At all these houses, and indeed at practically every house in Chipping
Cleghorn, he delivered every Friday a copy of the North Benham News and
Chipping Cleghorn Gazette, known locally simply as “the Gazette.”
Thus, on Friday mornings, after a hurried glance at the headlines in the daily
paper
(International situation critical! U.N.O. meets today! Bloodhounds seek blonde
typist’s killer! Three collieries idle. Twenty-three die of food poisoning in
Seaside Hotel, etc.)
most of the inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn eagerly opened the Gazette and
plunged into the local news. After a cursory glance at Correspondence (in
which the passionate hates and feuds of rural life found full play) nine out
of ten subscribers then turned to the PERSONAL column. Here were grouped
together higgledy-piggledy articles for Sale or Wanted, frenzied appeals for
Domestic Help, innumerable insertions regarding dogs, announcements concerning
poultry and garden equipment; and various other items of an interesting nature
to those living in the small community of Chipping Cleghorn.
This particular Friday, October 29th—was no exception to the rule—
II
Mrs. Swettenham, pushing back the pretty little grey curls from her forehead,
opened The Times, looked with a lacklustre eye at the left-hand centre page,
decided that, as usual, if there was any exciting news The Times had succeeded
in camouflaging it in an impeccable manner; took a look at the Births,
Marriages and Deaths, particularly the latter; then, her duty done, she put
aside The Times and eagerly seized the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette.
When her son Edmund entered the room a moment later, she was already deep in
the Personal Column.
“Good morning, dear,” said Mrs. Swettenham. “The Smedleys are selling their
Daimler. 1935—that’s rather a long time ago, isn’t it?”
Her son grunted, poured himself out a cup of coffee, helped himself to a
couple of kippers, sat down at the table and opened the Daily Worker which he
propped up against the toast rack.
“Bull mastiff puppies,” read out Mrs. Swettenham. “I really don’t know how
people manage to feed big dogs nowadays—I really don’t … H’m, Selina Lawrence
is advertising for a cook again. I could tell her it’s just a waste of time
advertising in these days. She hasn’t put her address, only a box
number—that’s quite fatal—I could have told her so—servants simply insist on
knowing where they are going. They like a good address … False teeth—I can’t
think why false teeth are so popular. Best prices paid … Beautiful bulbs. Our
special selection. They sound rather cheap … Here’s a girl wants an
‘Interesting post—Would travel.’ I dare say! Who wouldn’t?… Dachshunds… I’ve
never really cared for dachshunds myself—I don’t mean because they’re German,
because we’ve got over all that—I just don’t care for them, that’s all.—Yes,
Mrs. Finch?”
The door had opened to admit the head and torso of a grim-looking female in an
aged velvet beret.
“Good morning, Mum,” said Mrs. Finch. “Can I clear?”
“Not yet. We haven’t finished,” said Mrs. Swettenham. “Not quite finished,”
she added ingratiatingly.
Casting a look at Edmund and his paper, Mrs. Finch sniffed, and withdrew.
“I’ve only just begun,” said Edmund, just as his mother remarked:
“I do wish you wouldn’t read that horrid paper, Edmund. Mrs. Finch doesn’t
like it at all.”
“I don’t see what my political views have to do with Mrs. Finch.”
“And it isn’t,” pursued Mrs. Swettenham, “as though you were a worker. You
don’t do any work at all.”
“That’s not in the least true,” said Edmund indignantly. “I’m writing a book.”
“I meant real work,” said Mrs. Swettenham. “And Mrs. Finch does matter. If she
takes a dislike to us and won’t come, who else could we get?”
“Advertise in the Gazette,” said Edmund, grinning.
“I’ve just told you that’s no use. Oh dear me, nowadays unless one has an old
Nannie in the family, who will go into the kitchen and do everything, one is
simply sunk.”
“Well, why haven’t we an old Nannie? How remiss of you not to have provided me
with one. What were you thinking about?”
“You had an ayah, dear.”
“No foresight,” murmured Edmund.
Mrs. Swettenham was once more deep in the Personal Column.
“Second hand Motor Mower for sale. Now I wonder … Goodness, what a price!…
More dachshunds … ‘Do write or communicate desperate Woggles.’ What silly
nicknames people have … Cocker Spaniels… Do you remember darling Susie,
Edmund? She really was human. Understood every word you said to her … Sheraton
sideboard for sale. Genuine family antique. Mrs. Lucas, Dayas Hall … What a
liar that woman is! Sheraton indeed …!”
Mrs. Swettenham sniffed and then continued her reading:
“All a mistake, darling. Undying love. Friday as usual.—J … I suppose they’ve
had a lovers’ quarrel—or do you think it’s a code for burglars?… More
dachshunds! Really, I do think people have gone a little crazy about breeding
dachshunds. I mean, there are other dogs. Your Uncle Simon used to breed
Manchester Terriers. Such graceful little things. I do like dogs with legs …
Lady going abroad will sell her navy two piece suiting … no measurements or
price given … A marriage is announced—no, a murder. What? Well, I never!
Edmund, Edmund, listen to this….
A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little
Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.
What an extraordinary thing! Edmund!”
“What’s that?” Edmund looked up from his newspaper.
“Friday, October 29th … Why, that’s today.”
“Let me see.” Her son took the paper from her.
“But what does it mean?” Mrs. Swettenham asked with lively curiosity.
Edmund Swettenham rubbed his nose doubtfully.
“Some sort of party, I suppose. The Murder Game—That kind of thing.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Swettenham doubtfully. “It seems a very odd way of doing it.
Just sticking it in the advertisements like that. Not at all like Letitia
Blacklock who always seems to me such a sensible woman.”
“Probably got up by the bright young things she has in the house.”
“It’s very short notice. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Today. Do you think we’re just supposed to go?”
“It says ‘Friends, please accept this, the only intimation,’” her son pointed
out.
“Well, I think these newfangled ways of giving invitations are very tiresome,”
said Mrs. Swettenham decidedly.
“All right, Mother, you needn’t go.”
“No,” agreed Mrs. Swettenham.
There was a pause.
“Do you really want that last piece of toast, Edmund?”
“I should have thought my being properly nourished mattered more than letting
that old hag clear the table.”
“Sh, dear, she’ll hear you … Edmund, what happens at a Murder Game?”
“I don’t know, exactly … They pin pieces of paper upon you, or something … No,
I think you draw them out of a hat. And somebody’s the victim and somebody
else is a detective—and then they turn the lights out and somebody taps you on
the shoulder and then you scream and lie down and sham dead.”
“It sounds quite exciting.”
“Probably a beastly bore. I’m not going.”
“Nonsense, Edmund,” said Mrs. Swettenham resolutely. “I’m going and you’re
coming with me. That’s settled!”
III
“Archie,” said Mrs. Easterbrook to her husband, “listen to this.”
Colonel Easterbrook paid no attention, because he was already snorting with
impatience over an article in The Times.
“Trouble with these fellows is,” he said, “that none of them knows the first
thing about India! Not the first thing!”
“I know, dear, I know.”
“If they did, they wouldn’t write such piffle.”
“Yes, I know. Archie, do listen.
A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th (that’s
today), at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only
intimation.”
She paused triumphantly. Colonel Easterbrook looked at her indulgently but
without much interest.
“Murder Game,” he said.
“Oh.”
“That’s all it is. Mind you,” he unbent a little, “it can be very good fun if
it’s well done. But it needs good organizing by someone who knows the ropes.
You draw lots. One person’s the murderer, nobody knows who. Lights out.
Murderer chooses his victim. The victim has to count twenty before he screams.
Then the person who’s chosen to be the detective takes charge. Questions
everybody. Where they were, what they were doing, tries to trip the real
fellow up. Yes, it’s a good game—if the detective—er—knows something about
police work.”
“Like you, Archie. You had all those interesting cases to try in your
district.”
Colonel Easterbrook smiled indulgently and gave his moustache a complacent
twirl.
“Yes, Laura,” he said. “I dare say I could give them a hint or two.”
And he straightened his shoulders.
“Miss Blacklock ought to have asked you to help her in getting the thing up.”
The Colonel snorted.
“Oh, well, she’s got that young cub staying with her. Expect this is his idea.
Nephew or something. Funny idea, though, sticking it in the paper.”
“It was in the Personal Column. We might never have seen it. I suppose it is
an invitation, Archie?”
“Funny kind of invitation. I can tell you one thing. They can count me out.”
“Oh, Archie,” Mrs. Easterbrook’s voice rose in a shrill wail.
“Short notice. For all they know I might be busy.”
“But you’re not, are you, darling?” Mrs. Easterbrook lowered her voice
persuasively. “And I do think, Archie, that you really ought to go—just to
help poor Miss Blacklock out. I’m sure she’s counting on you to make the thing
a success. I mean, you know so much about police work and procedure. The whole
thing will fall flat if you don’t go and help to make it a success. After all,
one must be neighbourly.”
Mrs. Easterbrook put her synthetic blonde head on one side and opened her blue
eyes very wide.
“Of course, if you put it like that, Laura …” Colonel Easterbrook twirled his
grey moustache again, importantly, and looked with indulgence on his fluffy
little wife. Mrs. Easterbrook was at least thirty years younger than her
husband.
“If you put it like that, Laura,” he said.
“I really do think it’s your duty, Archie,” said Mrs. Easterbrook solemnly.
IV
The Chipping Cleghorn Gazette had also been delivered at Boulders, the
picturesque three cottages knocked into one inhabited by Miss Hinchcliffe and
Miss Murgatroyd.
“Hinch?”
“What is it, Murgatroyd?”
“Where are you?”
“Henhouse.”
“Oh.”
Padding gingerly through the long wet grass, Miss Amy Murgatroyd approached
her friend. The latter, attired in corduroy slacks and battledress tunic, was
conscientiously stirring in handfuls of balancer meal to a repellently
steaming basin full of cooked potato peelings and cabbage stumps.
She turned her head with its short man-like crop and weather-beaten
countenance toward her friend.
Miss Murgatroyd, who was fat and amiable, wore a checked tweed skirt and a
shapeless pullover of brilliant royal blue. Her curly bird’s nest of grey hair
was in a good deal of disorder and she was slightly out of breath.
“In the Gazette,” she panted. “Just listen—what can it mean?
A murder is announced … and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little
Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.”
She paused, breathless, as she finished reading, and awaited some
authoritative pronouncement.
“Daft,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
“Yes, but what do you think it means?”
“Means a drink, anyway,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
“You think it’s a sort of invitation?”
“We’ll find out what it means when we get there,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “Bad
sherry, I expect. You’d better get off the grass, Murgatroyd. You’ve got your
bedroom slippers on still. They’re soaked.”
“Oh, dear.” Miss Murgatroyd looked down ruefully at her feet. “How many eggs
today?”
“Seven. That damned hen’s still broody. I must get her into the coop.”
“It’s a funny way of putting it, don’t you think?” Amy Murgatroyd asked,
reverting to the notice in the Gazette. Her voice was slightly wistful.
But her friend was made of sterner and more single-minded stuff. She was
intent on dealing with recalcitrant poultry and no announcement in a paper,
however enigmatic, could deflect her.
She squelched heavily through the mud and pounced upon a speckled hen. There
was a loud and indignant squawking.
“Give me ducks every time,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “Far less trouble….”
V
“Oo, scrumptious!” said Mrs. Harmon across the breakfast table to her husband,
the Rev. Julian Harmon, “there’s going to be a murder at Miss Blacklock’s.”
“A murder?” said her husband, slightly surprised. “When?”
“This afternoon … at least, this evening. 6:30. Oh, bad luck, darling, you’ve
got your preparations for confirmation then. It is a shame. And you do so love
murders!”
“I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Bunch.”
Mrs. Harmon, the roundness of whose form and face had early led to the
soubriquet of “Bunch” being substituted for her baptismal name of Diana,
handed the Gazette across the table.
“There. All among the second-hand pianos, and the old teeth.”
“What a very extraordinary announcement.”
“Isn’t it?” said Bunch happily. “You wouldn’t think that Miss Blacklock cared
about murders and games and things, would you? I suppose it’s the young
Simmonses put her up to it—though I should have thought Julia Simmons would
find murders rather crude. Still, there it is, and I do think, darling, it’s a
shame you can’t be there. Anyway, I’ll go and tell you all about it, though
it’s rather wasted on me, because I don’t really like games that happen in the
dark. They frighten me, and I do hope I shan’t have to be the one who’s
murdered. If someone suddenly puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers, ‘You’re
dead,’ I know my heart will give such a big bump that perhaps it really might
kill me! Do you think that’s likely?”
“No, Bunch. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Do you think that’s likely?”
“No, Bunch. I think you’re going to live to be an old, old woman—with me.”
“And die on the same day and be buried in the same grave. That would be
lovely.”
Bunch beamed from ear to ear at this agreeable prospect.
“You seem very happy, Bunch?” said her husband, smiling.
“Who’d not be happy if they were me?” demanded Bunch, rather confusedly. “With
you and Susan and Edward, and all of you fond of me and not caring if I’m
stupid … And the sun shining! And this lovely big house to live in!”
The Rev. Julian Harmon looked round the big bare dining room and assented
doubtfully.
“Some people would think it was the last straw to have to live in this great
rambling draughty place.”
“Well, I like big rooms. All the nice smells from outside can get in and stay
there. And you can be untidy and leave things about and they don’t clutter
you.”
“No labour-saving devices or central heating? It means a lot of work for you,
Bunch.”
“Oh, Julian, it doesn’t. I get up at half past six and light the boiler and
rush around like a steam engine, and by eight it’s all done. And I keep it
nice, don’t I? With beeswax and polish and big jars of Autumn leaves. It’s not
really harder to keep a big house clean than a small one. You go round with
mops and things much quicker, because your behind isn’t always bumping into
things like it is in a small room. And I like sleeping in a big cold room—it’s
so cosy to snuggle down with just the tip of your nose telling you what it’s
like up above. And whatever size of house you live in, you peel the same
amount of potatoes and wash up the same amount of plates and all that. Think
how nice it is for Edward and Susan to have a big empty room to play in where
they can have railways and dolls’ tea-parties all over the floor and never
have to put them away? And then it’s nice to have extra bits of the house that
you can let people have to live in. Jimmy Symes and Johnnie Finch—they’d have
had to live with their in-laws otherwise. And you know, Julian, it isn’t nice
living with your in-laws. You’re devoted to Mother, but you wouldn’t really
have liked to start our married life living with her and Father. And I
shouldn’t have liked it, either. I’d have gone on feeling like a little girl.”
Julian smiled at her.
“You’re rather like a little girl still, Bunch.”
Julian Harmon himself had clearly been a model designed by Nature for the age
of sixty. He was still about twenty-five years short of achieving Nature’s
purpose.
“I know I’m stupid—”
“You’re not stupid, Bunch. You’re very clever.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not a bit intellectual. Though I do try … And I really love
it when you talk to me about books and history and things. I think perhaps it
wasn’t an awfully good idea to read aloud Gibbon to me in the evenings,
because if it’s been a cold wind out, and it’s nice and hot by the fire,
there’s something about Gibbon that does, rather, make you go to sleep.”
Julian laughed.
“But I do love listening to you, Julian. Tell me the story again about the old
vicar who preached about Ahasuerus.”
“You know that by heart, Bunch.”
“Just tell it me again. Please.”
Her husband complied.
“It was old Scrymgour. Somebody looked into his church one day. He was leaning
out of the pulpit and preaching fervently to a couple of old charwomen. He was
shaking his finger at them and saying, ‘Aha! I know what you are thinking. You
think that the Great Ahasuerus of the First Lesson was Artaxerxes the Second.
But he wasn’t!’ And then with enormous triumph, ‘He was Artaxerxes the
Third.’”
It had never struck Julian Hermon as a particularly funny story himself, but
it never failed to amuse Bunch.
Her clear laugh floated out.
“The old pet!” she exclaimed. “I think you’ll be exactly like that some day,
Julian.”
Julian looked rather uneasy.
“I know,” he said with humility. “I do feel very strongly that I can’t always
get the proper simple approach.”
“I shouldn’t worry,” said Bunch, rising and beginning to pile the breakfast
plates on a tray. “Mrs. Butt told me yesterday that Butt, who never went to
church and used to be practically the local atheist, comes every Sunday now on
purpose to hear you preach.”
She went on, with a very fair imitation of Mrs. Butt’s super-refined voice:
“‘And Butt was saying only the other day, Madam, to Mr. Timkins from Little
Worsdale, that we’d got real culture here in Chipping Cleghorn. Not like Mr.
Goss, at Little Worsdale, who talks to the congregation as though they were
children who hadn’t had any education. Real culture, Butt said, that’s what
we’ve got. Our Vicar’s a highly educated gentleman—Oxford, not Milchester, and
he gives us the full benefit of his education. All about the Romans and the
Greeks he knows, and the Babylonians and the Assyrians, too. And even the
Vicarage cat, Butt says, is called after an Assyrian king!’ So there’s glory
for you,” finished Bunch triumphantly. “Goodness, I must get on with things or
I shall never get done. Come along, Tiglath Pileser, you shall have the
herring bones.”
Opening the door and holding it dexterously ajar with her foot, she shot
through with the loaded tray, singing in a loud and not particularly tuneful
voice, her own version of a sporting song.
“It’s a fine murdering day, (sang Bunch)
And as balmy as May
And the sleuths from the village are gone.”
A rattle of crockery being dumped in the sink drowned the next lines, but as
the Rev. Julian Harmon left the house, he heard the final triumphant
assertion:
“And we’ll all go a’murdering today!”
Two
BREAKFAST AT LITTLE PADDOCKS
I
At Little Paddocks also, breakfast was in progress.
Miss Blacklock, a woman of sixty odd, the owner of the house, sat at the head
of the table. She wore country tweeds—and with them, rather incongruously, a
choker necklace of large false pearls. She was reading Lane Norcott in the
Daily Mail. Julia Simmons was languidly glancing through the Telegraph.
Patrick Simmons was checking up on the crossword in The Times. Miss Dora
Bunner was giving her attention wholeheartedly to the local weekly paper.
Miss Blacklock gave a subdued chuckle, Patrick muttered: “Adherent—not
adhesive—that’s where I went wrong.”
Suddenly a loud cluck, like a startled hen, came from Miss Bunner.
“Letty—Letty—have you seen this? Whatever can it mean?”
“What’s the matter, Dora?”
“The most extraordinary advertisement. It says Little Paddocks quite
distinctly. But whatever can it mean?”
“If you’d let me see, Dora dear—”
Miss Bunner obediently surrendered the paper into Miss Blacklock’s
outstretched hand, pointing to the item with a tremulous forefinger.
“Just look, Letty.”
Miss Blacklock looked. Her eyebrows went up. She threw a quick scrutinizing
glance round the table. Then she read the advertisement out loud.
“A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little
Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.”
Then she said sharply: “Patrick, is this your idea?”
Her eyes rested searchingly on the handsome devil-may-care face of the young
man at the other end of the table.
Patrick Simmons’ disclaimer came quickly.
“No, indeed, Aunt Letty. Whatever put that idea into your head? Why should I
know anything about it?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” said Miss Blacklock grimly. “I thought it might
be your idea of a joke.”
“A joke? Nothing of the kind.”
“And you, Julia?”
Julia, looking bored, said: “Of course not.”
Miss Bunner murmured: “Do you think Mrs. Haymes—” and looked at an empty place
where someone had breakfasted earlier.
“Oh, I don’t think our Phillipa would try and be funny,” said Patrick. “She’s
a serious girl, she is.”
“But what’s the idea, anyway?” said Julia, yawning. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“What does it mean?”
Miss Blacklock said slowly, “I suppose—it’s some silly sort of hoax.”
“But why?” Dora Bunner exclaimed. “What’s the point of it? It seems a very
stupid sort of joke. And in very bad taste.”
Her flabby cheeks quivered indignantly, and her shortsighted eyes sparkled
with indignation.
Miss Blacklock smiled at her.
“Don’t work yourself up over it, Bunny,” she said. “It’s just somebody’s idea
of humour, but I wish I knew whose.”
“It says today,” pointed out Miss Bunner. “Today at 6:30 p.m. What do you
think is going to happen?”
“Death!” said Patrick in sepulchral tones. “Delicious death.”
“Be quiet, Patrick,” said Miss Blacklock as Miss Bunner gave a little yelp.
“I only meant the special cake that Mitzi makes,” said Patrick apologetically.
“You know we always call it delicious death.”
Miss Blacklock smiled a little absentmindedly.
Miss Bunner persisted: “But Letty, what do you really think—?”
Her friend cut across the words with reassuring cheerfulness.
“I know one thing that will happen at 6:30,” she said dryly. “We’ll have half
the village up here, agog with curiosity. I’d better make sure we’ve got some
sherry in the house.”
II
“You are worried, aren’t you Lotty?”
Miss Blacklock started. She had been sitting at her writing-table,
absentmindedly drawing little fishes on the blotting paper. She looked up into
the anxious face of her old friend.
She was not quite sure what to say to Dora Bunner. Bunny, she knew, mustn’t be
worried or upset. She was silent for a moment or two, thinking.
She and Dora Bunner had been at school together. Dora then had been a pretty,
fair-haired, blue-eyed rather stupid girl. Her being stupid hadn’t mattered,
because her gaiety and high spirits and her prettiness had made her an
agreeable companion. She ought, her friend thought, to have married some nice
Army officer, or a country solicitor. She had so many good
qualities—affection, devotion, loyalty. But life had been unkind to Dora
Bunner. She had had to earn her living. She had been painstaking but never
competent at anything she undertook.
The two friends had lost sight of each other. But six months ago a letter had
come to Miss Blacklock, a rambling, pathetic letter. Dora’s health had given
way. She was living in one room, trying to subsist on her old age pension. She
endeavoured to do needlework, but her fingers were stiff with rheumatism. She
mentioned their schooldays—since then life had driven them apart—but
could—possibly—her old friend help?
Miss Blacklock had responded impulsively. Poor Dora, poor pretty silly fluffy
Dora. She had swooped down upon Dora, had carried her off, had installed her
at Little Paddocks with the comforting fiction that “the housework is getting
too much for me. I need someone to help me run the house.” It was not for
long—the doctor had told her that—but sometimes she found poor old Dora a sad
trial. She muddled everything, upset the temperamental foreign “help,”
miscounted the laundry, lost bills and letters—and sometimes reduced the
competent Miss Blacklock to an agony of exasperation. Poor old muddle-headed
Dora, so loyal, so anxious to help, so pleased and proud to think she was of
assistance—and, alas, so completely unreliable.
She said sharply:
“Don’t, Dora. You know I asked you—”
“Oh,” Miss Bunner looked guilty. “I know. I forgot. But—but you are, aren’t
you?”
“Worried? No. At least,” she added truthfully, “not exactly. You mean about
that silly notice in the Gazette?”
“Yes—even if it’s a joke, it seems to me it’s a—a spiteful sort of joke.”
“Spiteful?”
“Yes. It seems to me there’s spite there somewhere. I mean—it’s not a nice
kind of joke.”
Miss Blacklock looked at her friend. The mild eyes, the long obstinate mouth,
the slightly upturned nose. Poor Dora, so maddening, so muddle-headed, so
devoted and such a problem. A dear fussy old idiot and yet, in a queer way,
with an instinctive sense of value.
“I think you’re right, Dora,” said Miss Blacklock. “It’s not a nice joke.”
“I don’t like it at all,” said Dora Bunner with unsuspected vigour. “It
frightens me.” She added, suddenly: “And it frightens you, Letitia.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Blacklock with spirit.
“It’s dangerous. I’m sure it is. Like those people who send you bombs done up
in parcels.”
“My dear, it’s just some silly idiot trying to be funny.”
“But it isn’t funny.”
It wasn’t really very funny … Miss Blacklock’s face betrayed her thoughts, and
Dora cried triumphantly, “You see. You think so, too!”
“But Dora, my dear—”
She broke off. Through the door there surged a tempestuous young woman with a
well-developed bosom heaving under a tight jersey. She had on a dirndl skirt
of a bright colour and had greasy dark plaits wound round and round her head.
Her eyes were dark and flashing.
She said gustily:
“I can speak to you, yes, please, no?”
Miss Blacklock sighed.
“Of course, Mitzi, what is it?”
Sometimes she thought it would be preferable to do the entire work of the
house as well as the cooking rather than be bothered with the eternal nerve
storms of her refugee “lady help.”
“I tell you at once—it is in order, I hope? I give you my notices and I go—I
go at once!”
“For what reason? Has somebody upset you?”
“Yes, I am upset,” said Mitzi dramatically. “I do not wish to die! Already in
Europe I escape. My family they all die—they are all killed—my mother, my
little brother, my so sweet little niece—all, all they are killed. But me I
run away—I hide. I get to England. I work. I do work that never—never would I
do in my own country—I—”
“I know all that,” said Miss Blacklock crisply. It was, indeed, a constant
refrain on Mitzi’s lips. “But why do you want to leave now?”
“Because again they come to kill me!”
“Who do?”
“My enemies. The Nazis! Or perhaps this time it is the Bolsheviks. They find
out I am here. They come to kill me. I have read it—yes—it is in the
newspaper!”
“Oh, you mean in the Gazette?”
“Here, it is written here.” Mitzi produced the Gazette from where she had been
holding it behind her back. “See—here it says a murder. At Little Paddocks.
That is here, is it not? This evening at 6:30. Ah! I do not wait to be
murdered—no.”
“But why should this apply to you? It’s—we think it is a joke.”
“A joke? It is not a joke to murder someone.”
“No, of course not. But my dear child, if anyone wanted to murder you, they
wouldn’t advertise the fact in the paper, would they?”
“You do not think they would?” Mitzi seemed a little shaken. “You think,
perhaps, they do not mean to murder anyone at all? Perhaps it is you they mean
to murder, Miss Blacklock.”
“I certainly can’t believe anyone wants to murder me,” said Miss Blacklock
lightly. “And really, Mitzi, I don’t see why anyone should want to murder you.
After all, why should they?”
“Because they are bad peoples … Very bad peoples. I tell you, my mother, my
little brother, my so sweet niece….”
“Yes, yes.” Miss Blacklock stemmed the flow, adroitly. “But I cannot really
believe anyone wants to murder you, Mitzi. Of course, if you want to go off
like this at a moment’s notice, I can’t possibly stop you. But I think you
will be very silly if you do.”
She added firmly, as Mitzi looked doubtful:
“We’ll have that beef the butcher sent stewed for lunch. It looks very tough.”
“I make you a goulash, a special goulash.”
“If you prefer to call it that, certainly. And perhaps you could use up that
rather hard bit of cheese in making some cheese straws. I think some people
may come in this evening for drinks.”
“This evening? | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I think some people
may come in this evening for drinks.”
“This evening? What do you mean, this evening?”
“At half past six.”
“But that is the time in the paper? Who should come then? Why should they
come?”
“They’re coming to the funeral,” said Miss Blacklock with a twinkle. “That’ll
do now, Mitzi. I’m busy. Shut the door after you,” she added firmly.
“And that’s settled her for the moment,” she said as the door closed behind a
puzzled-looking Mitzi.
“You are so efficient, Letty,” said Miss Bunner admiringly.
Three
AT 6:30 P.M.
I
“Well, here we are, all set,” said Miss Blacklock. She looked round the double
drawing room with an appraising eye. The rose-patterned chintzes—the two bowls
of bronze chrysanthemums, the small vase of violets and the silver cigarette
box on a table by the wall, the tray of drinks on the centre table.
Little Paddocks was a medium-sized house built in the early Victorian style.
It had a long shallow veranda and green shuttered windows. The long, narrow
drawing room which lost a good deal of light owing to the veranda roof had
originally had double doors at one end leading into a small room with a bay
window. A former generation had removed the double doors and replaced them
with portieres of velvet. Miss Blacklock had dispensed with the portieres so
that the two rooms had become definitely one. There was a fireplace each end,
but neither fire was lit although a gentle warmth pervaded the room.
“You’ve had the central heating lit,” said Patrick.
Miss Blacklock nodded.
“It’s been so misty and damp lately. The whole house felt clammy. I got Evans
to light it before he went.”
“The precious precious coke?” said Patrick mockingly.
“As you say, the precious coke. But otherwise there would have been the even
more precious coal. You know the Fuel Office won’t even let us have the little
bit that’s due to us each week—not unless we can say definitely that we
haven’t got any other means of cooking.”
“I suppose there was once heaps of coke and coal for everybody?” said Julia
with the interest of one hearing about an unknown country.
“Yes, and cheap, too.”
“And anyone could go and buy as much as they wanted, without filling in
anything, and there wasn’t any shortage? There was lots of it there?”
“All kinds and qualities—and not all stones and slates like what we get
nowadays.”
“It must have been a wonderful world,” said Julia, with awe in her voice.
Miss Blacklock smiled. “Looking back on it, I certainly think so. But then I’m
an old woman. It’s natural for me to prefer my own times. But you young things
oughtn’t to think so.”
“I needn’t have had a job then,” said Julia. “I could just have stayed at home
and done the flowers, and written notes … Why did one write notes and who were
they to?”
“All the people that you now ring up on the telephone,” said Miss Blacklock
with a twinkle. “I don’t believe you even know how to write, Julia.”
“Not in the style of that delicious ‘Complete Letter Writer’ I found the other
day. Heavenly! It told you the correct way of refusing a proposal of marriage
from a widower.”
“I doubt if you would have enjoyed staying at home as much as you think,” said
Miss Blacklock. “There were duties, you know.” Her voice was dry. “However, I
don’t really know much about it. Bunny and I,” she smiled affectionately at
Dora Bunner, “went into the labour market early.”
“Oh, we did, we did indeed,” agreed Miss Bunner. “Those naughty, naughty
children. I’ll never forget them. Of course, Letty was clever. She was a
business woman, secretary to a big financier.”
The door opened and Phillipa Haymes came in. She was tall and fair and placid-
looking. She looked round the room in surprise.
“Hallo,” she said. “Is it a party? Nobody told me.”
“Of course,” cried Patrick. “Our Phillipa doesn’t know. The only woman in
Chipping Cleghorn who doesn’t, I bet.”
Phillipa looked at him inquiringly.
“Here you behold,” said Patrick dramatically, waving a hand, “the scene of a
murder!”
Phillipa Haymes looked faintly puzzled.
“Here,” Patrick indicated the two big bowls of chrysanthemums, “are the
funeral wreaths and these dishes of cheese straws and olives represent the
funeral baked meats.”
Phillipa looked inquiringly at Miss Blacklock.
“Is it a joke?” she asked. “I’m always terribly stupid at seeing jokes.”
“It’s a very nasty joke,” said Dora Bunner with energy. “I don’t like it at
all.”
“Show her the advertisement,” said Miss Blacklock. “I must go and shut up the
ducks. It’s dark. They’ll be in by now.”
“Let me do it,” said Phillipa.
“Certainly not, my dear. You’ve finished your day’s work.”
“I’ll do it, Aunt Letty,” offered Patrick.
“No, you won’t,” said Miss Blacklock with energy. “Last time you didn’t latch
the door properly.”
“I’ll do it, Letty dear,” cried Miss Bunner. “Indeed, I should love to. I’ll
just slip on my goloshes—and now where did I put my cardigan?”
But Miss Blacklock, with a smile, had already left the room.
“It’s no good, Bunny,” said Patrick. “Aunt Letty’s so efficient that she can
never bear anybody else to do things for her. She really much prefers to do
everything herself.”
“She loves it,” said Julia.
“I didn’t notice you making any offers of assistance,” said her brother.
Julia smiled lazily.
“You’ve just said Aunt Letty likes to do things herself,” she pointed out.
“Besides,” she held out a well-shaped leg in a sheer stocking, “I’ve got my
best stockings on.”
“Death in silk stockings!” declaimed Patrick.
“Not silk—nylons, you idiot.”
“That’s not nearly such a good title.”
“Won’t somebody please tell me,” cried Phillipa plaintively, “why there is all
this insistence on death?”
Everybody tried to tell her at once—nobody could find the Gazette to show her
because Mitzi had taken it into the kitchen.
Miss Blacklock returned a few minutes later.
“There,” she said briskly, “that’s done.” She glanced at the clock. “Twenty
past six. Somebody ought to be here soon—unless I’m entirely wrong in my
estimate of my neighbours.”
“I don’t see why anybody should come,” said Phillipa, looking bewildered.
“Don’t you, dear?… I dare say you wouldn’t. But most people are rather more
inquisitive than you are.”
“Phillipa’s attitude to life is that she just isn’t interested,” said Julia,
rather nastily.
Phillipa did not reply.
Miss Blacklock was glancing round the room. Mitzi had put the sherry and three
dishes containing olives, cheese straws and some little fancy pastries on the
table in the middle of the room.
“You might move that tray—or the whole table if you like—round the corner into
the bay window in the other room, Patrick, if you don’t mind. After all, I am
not giving a party! I haven’t asked anyone. And I don’t intend to make it
obvious that I expect people to turn up.”
“You wish, Aunt Letty, to disguise your intelligent anticipation?”
“Very nicely put, Patrick. Thank you, my dear boy.”
“Now we can all give a lovely performance of a quiet evening at home,” said
Julia, “and be quite surprised when somebody drops in.”
Miss Blacklock had picked up the sherry bottle. She stood holding it
uncertainly in her hand.
Patrick reassured her.
“There’s quite half a bottle there. It ought to be enough.”
“Oh, yes—yes …” She hesitated. Then, with a slight flush, she said:
“Patrick, would you mind … there’s a new bottle in the cupboard in the pantry
… Bring it and a corkscrew. I—we—might as well have a new bottle. This—this
has been opened some time.”
Patrick went on his errand without a word. He returned with the new bottle and
drew the cork. He looked up curiously at Miss Blacklock as he placed it on the
tray.
“Taking this seriously, aren’t you, darling?” he asked gently.
“Oh,” cried Dora Bunner, shocked. “Surely, Letty, you can’t imagine—”
“Hush,” said Miss Blacklock quickly. “That’s the bell. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“That’s the bell. You see, my intelligent
anticipation is being justified.”
II
Mitzi opened the door of the drawing room and admitted Colonel and Mrs.
Easterbrook. She had her own methods of announcing people.
“Here is Colonel and Mrs. Easterbrook to see you,” she said conversationally.
Colonel Easterbrook was very bluff and breezy to cover some slight
embarrassment.
“Hope you don’t mind us dropping in,” he said. (A subdued gurgle came from
Julia.) “Happened to be passing this way—eh what? Quite a mild evening. Notice
you’ve got your central heating on. We haven’t started ours yet.”
“Aren’t your chrysanthemums lovely?” gushed Mrs. Easterbrook. “Such beauties!”
“They’re rather scraggy, really,” said Julia.
Mrs. Easterbrook greeted Phillipa Haymes with a little extra cordiality to
show that she quite understood that Phillipa was not really an agricultural
labourer.
“How is Mrs. Lucas’ garden getting on?” she asked. “Do you think it will ever
be straight again? Completely neglected all through the war—and then only that
dreadful old man Ashe who simply did nothing but sweep up a few leaves and put
in a few cabbage plants.”
“It’s yielding to treatment,” said Phillipa. “But it will take a little time.”
Mitzi opened the door again and said:
“Here are the ladies from Boulders.”
“’Evening,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, striding over and taking Miss Blacklock’s
hand in her formidable grip. “I said to Murgatroyd: ‘Let’s just drop in at
Little Paddocks!’ I wanted to ask you how your ducks are laying.”
“The evenings do draw in so quickly now, don’t they?” said Miss Murgatroyd to
Patrick in a rather fluttery way. “What lovely chrysanthemums!”
“Scraggy!” said Julia.
“Why can’t you be cooperative?” murmured Patrick to her in a reproachful
aside.
“You’ve got your central heating on,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. She said it
accusingly. “Very early.”
“The house gets so damp this time of year,” said Miss Blacklock.
Patrick signalled with his eyebrows: “Sherry yet?” and Miss Blacklock
signalled back: “Not yet.”
She said to Colonel Easterbrook:
“Are you getting any bulbs from Holland this year?”
The door again opened and Mrs. Swettenham came in rather guiltily, followed by
a scowling and uncomfortable Edmund.
“Here we are!” said Mrs. Swettenham gaily, gazing round her with frank
curiosity. Then, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she went on: “I just thought
I’d pop in and ask you if by any chance you wanted a kitten, Miss Blacklock?
Our cat is just—”
“About to be brought to bed of the progeny of a ginger tom,” said Edmund. “The
result will, I think, be frightful. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!”
“She’s a very good mouser,” said Mrs. Swettenham hastily. And added: “What
lovely chrysanthemums!”
“You’ve got your central heating on, haven’t you?” asked Edmund, with an air
of originality.
“Aren’t people just like gramophone records?” murmured Julia.
“I don’t like the news,” said Colonel Easterbrook to Patrick, buttonholing him
fiercely. “I don’t like it at all. If you ask me, war’s inevitable—absolutely
inevitable.”
“I never pay any attention to news,” said Patrick.
Once more the door opened and Mrs. Harmon came in.
Her battered felt hat was stuck on the back of her head in a vague attempt to
be fashionable and she had put on a rather limp frilly blouse instead of her
usual pullover.
“Hallo, Miss Blacklock,” she exclaimed, beaming all over her round face. “I’m
not too late, am I? When does the murder begin?”
III
There was an audible series of gasps. Julia gave an approving little giggle,
Patrick crinkled up his face and Miss Blacklock smiled at her latest guest.
“Julian is just frantic with rage that he can’t be here,” said Mrs. Harmon.
“He adores murders. That’s really why he preached such a good sermon last
Sunday—I suppose I oughtn’t to say it was a good sermon as he’s my husband—but
it really was good, didn’t you think?—so much better than his usual sermons.
But as I was saying it was all because of Death Does the Hat Trick. Have you
read it? The girl at Boots’ kept it for me specially. It’s simply baffling.
You keep thinking you know—and then the whole thing switches round—and there
are a lovely lot of murders, four or five of them. Well, I left it in the
study when Julian was shutting himself up there to do his sermon, and he just
picked it up and simply could not put it down! And consequently he had to
write his sermon in a frightful hurry and had to just put down what he wanted
to say very simply—without any scholarly twists and bits and learned
references—and naturally it was heaps better. Oh, dear, I’m talking too much.
But do tell me, when is the murder going to begin?”
Miss Blacklock looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“If it’s going to begin,” she said cheerfully, “it ought to begin soon. It’s
just a minute to the half hour. In the meantime, have a glass of sherry.”
Patrick moved with alacrity through the archway. Miss Blacklock went to the
table by the archway where the cigarette box was.
“I’d love some sherry,” said Mrs. Harmon. “But what do you mean by if?”
“Well,” said Miss Blacklock, “I’m as much in the dark as you are. I don’t know
what—”
She stopped and turned her head as the little clock on the mantelpiece began
to chime. It had a sweet silvery bell-like tone. Everybody was silent and
nobody moved. They all stared at the clock.
It chimed a quarter—and then the half. As the last note died away all the
lights went out.
IV
Delighted gasps and feminine squeaks of appreciation were heard in the
darkness. “It’s beginning,” cried Mrs. Harmon in an ecstasy. Dora Bunner’s
voice cried out plaintively, “Oh, I don’t like it!” Other voices said, “How
terribly, terribly frightening!” “It gives me the creeps.”
“Archie, where are you?” “What do I have to do?” “Oh dear—did I step on your
foot? I’m so sorry.”
Then, with a crash, the door swung open. A powerful flashlight played rapidly
round the room. A man’s hoarse nasal voice, reminiscent to all of pleasant
afternoons at the cinema, directed the company crisply to:
“Stick ’em up!
“Stick ’em up, I tell you!” the voice barked.
Delightedly, hands were raised willingly above heads.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” breathed a female voice. “I’m so thrilled.”
And then, unexpectedly, a revolver spoke. It spoke twice. The ping of two
bullets shattered the complacency of the room. Suddenly the game was no longer
a game. Somebody screamed….
The figure in the doorway whirled suddenly round, it seemed to hesitate, a
third shot rang out, it crumpled and then it crashed to the ground. The
flashlight dropped and went out.
There was darkness once again. And gently, with a little Victorian protesting
moan, the drawing room door, as was its habit when not propped open, swung
gently to and latched with a click.
V
Inside the drawing room there was pandemonium. Various voices spoke at once.
“Lights.” “Can’t you find the switch?” “Who’s got a lighter?” “Oh, I don’t
like it, I don’t like it.” “But those shots were real!” “It was a real
revolver he had.” “Was it a burglar?” “Oh, Archie, I want to get out of here.”
“Please, has somebody got a lighter?”
And then, almost at the same moment, two lighters clicked and burned with
small steady flames.
Everybody blinked and peered at each other. Startled face looked into startled
face. Against the wall by the archway Miss Blacklock stood with her hand up to
her face. The light was too dim to show more than that something dark was
trickling over her fingers.
Colonel Easterbrook cleared his throat and rose to the occasion.
“Try the switches, Swettenham,” he ordered.
Edmund, near the door, obediently jerked the switch up and down.
“Off at the main, or a fuse,” said the Colonel. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“Off at the main, or a fuse,” said the Colonel. “Who’s making that awful row?”
A female voice had been screaming steadily from somewhere beyond the closed
door. It rose now in pitch and with it came the sound of fists hammering on a
door.
Dora Bunner, who had been sobbing quietly, called out:
“It’s Mitzi. Somebody’s murdering Mitzi….”
Patrick muttered: “No such luck.”
Miss Blacklock said: “We must get candles. Patrick, will you—?”
The Colonel was already opening the door. He and Edmund, their lighters
flickering, stepped into the hall. They almost stumbled over a recumbent
figure there.
“Seems to have knocked him out,” said the Colonel. “Where’s that woman making
that hellish noise?”
“In the dining room,” said Edmund.
The dining room was just across the hall. Someone was beating on the panels
and howling and screaming.
“She’s locked in,” said Edmund, stooping down. He turned the key and Mitzi
came out like a bounding tiger.
The dining room light was still on. Silhouetted against it Mitzi presented a
picture of insane terror and continued to scream. A touch of comedy was
introduced by the fact that she had been engaged in cleaning silver and was
still holding a chamois leather and a large fish slice.
“Be quiet, Mitzi,” said Miss Blacklock.
“Stop it,” said Edmund, and as Mitzi showed no disposition to stop screaming,
he leaned forward and gave her a sharp slap on the cheek. Mitzi gasped and
hiccuped into silence.
“Get some candles,” said Miss Blacklock. “In the kitchen cupboard. Patrick,
you know where the fusebox is?”
“The passage behind the scullery? Right, I’ll see what I can do.”
Miss Blacklock had moved forward into the light thrown from the dining room
and Dora Bunner gave a sobbing gasp. Mitzi let out another full-blooded
scream.
“The blood, the blood!” she gasped. “You are shot—Miss Blacklock, you bleed to
death.”
“Don’t be so stupid,” snapped Miss Blacklock. “I’m hardly hurt at all. It just
grazed my ear.”
“But Aunt Letty,” said Julia, “the blood.”
And indeed Miss Blacklock’s white blouse and pearls and her hands were a
horrifyingly gory sight.
“Ears always bleed,” said Miss Blacklock. “I remember fainting in the
hairdresser’s when I was a child. The man had only just snipped my ear. There
seemed to be a basin of blood at once. But we must have some light.”
“I get the candles,” said Mitzi.
Julia went with her and they returned with several candles stuck into saucers.
“Now let’s have a look at our malefactor,” said the Colonel. “Hold the candles
down low, will you, Swettenham? As many as you can.”
“I’ll come the other side,” said Phillipa.
With a steady hand she took a couple of saucers. Colonel Easterbrook knelt
down.
The recumbent figure was draped in a roughly made black cloak with a hood to
it. There was a black mask over the face and he wore black cotton gloves. The
hood had slipped back disclosing a ruffled fair head.
Colonel Easterbrook turned him over, felt the pulse, the heart … then drew
away his fingers with an exclamation of distaste, looking down on them. They
were sticky and red.
“Shot himself,” he said.
“Is he badly hurt?” asked Miss Blacklock.
“H’m. I’m afraid he’s dead … May have been suicide—or he may have tripped
himself up with that cloak thing and the revolver went off as he fell. If I
could see better—”
At that moment, as though by magic, the lights came on again.
With a queer feeling of unreality those inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn who
stood in the hall of Little Paddocks realized that they stood in the presence
of violent and sudden death. Colonel Easterbrook’s hand was stained red. Blood
was still trickling down Miss Blacklock’s neck over her blouse and coat and
the grotesquely sprawled figure of the intruder lay at their feet….
Patrick, coming from the dining room, said, “It seemed to be just one fuse
gone …” He stopped.
Colonel Easterbrook tugged at the small black mask.
“Better see who the fellow is,” he said. “Though I don’t suppose it’s anyone
we know….”
He detached the mask. Necks were craned forward. Mitzi hiccuped and gasped,
but the others were very quiet.
“He’s quite young,” said Mrs. Harmon with a note of pity in her voice.
And suddenly Dora Bunner cried out excitedly:
“Letty, Letty, it’s the young man from the Spa Hotel in Medenham Wells. The
one who came out here and wanted you to give him money to get back to
Switzerland and you refused. I suppose the whole thing was just a pretext—to
spy out the house … Oh, dear—he might easily have killed you….”
Miss Blacklock, in command of the situation, said incisively:
“Phillipa, take Bunny into the dining room and give her a half glass of
brandy. Julia dear, just run up to the bathroom and bring me the sticking
plaster out of the bathroom cupboard—it’s so messy bleeding like a pig.
Patrick, will you ring up the police at once?”
Four
THE ROYAL SPA HOTEL
I
George Rydesdale, Chief Constable of Middleshire, was a quiet man. Of medium
height, with shrewd eyes under rather bushy brows, he was in the habit of
listening rather than talking. Then, in his unemotional voice, he would give a
brief order—and the order was obeyed.
He was listening now to Detective-Inspector Dermot Craddock. Craddock was now
officially in charge of the case. Rydesdale had recalled him last night from
Liverpool where he had been sent to make certain inquiries in connection with
another case. Rydesdale had a good opinion of Craddock. He not only had brains
and imagination, he had also, which Rydesdale appreciated even more, the self-
discipline to go slow, to check and examine each fact, and to keep an open
mind until the very end of a case.
“Constable Legg took the call, sir,” Craddock was saying. “He seems to have
acted very well, with promptitude and presence of mind. And it can’t have been
easy. About a dozen people all trying to talk at once, including one of those
Mittel Europas who go off at the deep end at the mere sight of a policeman.
Made sure she was going to be locked up, and fairly screamed the place down.”
“Deceased has been identified?”
“Yes, sir. Rudi Scherz. Swiss Nationality. Employed at the Royal Spa Hotel,
Medenham Wells, as a receptionist. If you agree, sir, I thought I’d take the
Royal Spa Hotel first, and go out to Chipping Cleghorn afterwards. Sergeant
Fletcher is out there now. He’ll see the bus people and then go on to the
house.”
Rydesdale nodded approval.
The door opened, and the Chief Constable looked up.
“Come in, Henry,” he said. “We’ve got something here that’s a little out of
the ordinary.”
Sir Henry Clithering, ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, came in with slightly
raised eyebrows. He was a tall, distinguished-looking elderly man.
“It may appeal to even your blasé palate,” went on Rydesdale.
“I was never blasé,” said Sir Henry indignantly.
“The latest idea,” said Rydesdale, “is to advertise one’s murders beforehand.
Show Sir Henry that advertisement, Craddock.”
“The North Benham News and Chipping Cleghorn Gazette,” said Sir Henry. “Quite
a mouthful.” He read the half inch of print indicated by Craddock’s finger.
“H’m, yes, somewhat unusual.”
“Any line on who inserted this advertisement?” asked Rydesdale.
“By the description, sir, it was handed in by Rudi Scherz himself—on
Wednesday.”
“Nobody questioned it? The person who accepted it didn’t think it odd?”
“The adenoidal blonde who receives the advertisements is quite incapable of
thinking, I should say, sir. She just counted the words and took the money.”
“What was the idea?” asked Sir Henry.
“Get a lot of the locals curious,” suggested Rydesdale. “Get them all together
at a particular place at a particular time, then hold them up and relieve them
of their spare cash and valuables. As an idea, it’s not without originality.”
“What sort of a place is Chipping Cleghorn?” asked Sir Henry.
“A large sprawling picturesque village. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“A large sprawling picturesque village. Butcher, baker, grocer, quite a good
antique shop—two tea shops. Self-consciously a beauty spot. Caters for the
motoring tourist. Also highly residential. Cottages formerly lived in by
agricultural labourers now converted and lived in by elderly spinsters and
retired couples. A certain amount of building done round about in Victorian
times.”
“I know,” said Sir Henry. “Nice old Pussies and retired Colonels. Yes, if they
noticed that advertisement they’d all come sniffing round at 6:30 to see what
was up. Lord, I wish I had my own particular old Pussy here. Wouldn’t she like
to get her nice ladylike teeth into this. Right up her street it would be.”
“Who’s your own particular Pussy, Henry? An aunt?”
“No,” Sir Henry sighed. “She’s no relation.” He said reverently: “She’s just
the finest detective God ever made. Natural genius cultivated in a suitable
soil.”
He turned upon Craddock.
“Don’t you despise the old Pussies in this village of yours, my boy,” he said.
“In case this turns out to be a high-powered mystery, which I don’t suppose
for a moment it will, remember that an elderly unmarried woman who knits and
gardens is streets ahead of any detective sergeant. She can tell you what
might have happened and what ought to have happened and even what actually did
happen! And she can tell you why it happened!”
“I’ll bear that in mind, sir,” said Detective-Inspector Craddock in his most
formal manner, and nobody would have guessed that Dermot Eric Craddock was
actually Sir Henry’s godson and was on easy and intimate terms with his
godfather.
Rydesdale gave a quick outline of the case to his friend.
“They’d all turn up at 6:30, I grant you that,” he said. “But would that Swiss
fellow know they would? And another thing, would they be likely to have much
loot on them to be worth the taking?”
“A couple of old-fashioned brooches, a string of seed pearls—a little loose
change, perhaps a note or two—not more,” said Sir Henry, thoughtfully. “Did
this Miss Blacklock keep much money in the house?”
“She says not, sir. Five pounds odd, I understand.”
“Mere chicken feed,” said Rydesdale.
“What you’re getting at,” said Sir Henry, “is that this fellow liked to
playact—it wasn’t the loot, it was the fun of playing and acting the hold-up.
Cinema stuff? Eh? It’s quite possible. How did he manage to shoot himself?”
Rydesdale drew a paper towards him.
“Preliminary medical report. The revolver was discharged at close
range—singeing … h’m … nothing to show whether accident or suicide. Could have
been done deliberately, or he could have tripped and fallen and the revolver
which he was holding close to him could have gone off … Probably the latter.”
He looked at Craddock. “You’ll have to question the witnesses very carefully
and make them say exactly what they saw.”
Detective-Inspector Craddock said sadly: “They’ll all have seen something
different.”
“It’s always interested me,” said Sir Henry, “what people do see at a moment
of intense excitement and nervous strain. What they do see and, even more
interesting, what they don’t see.”
“Where’s the report on the revolver?”
“Foreign make—(fairly common on the Continent)—Scherz did not hold a permit
for it—and did not declare it on coming into England.”
“Bad lad,” said Sir Henry.
“Unsatisfactory character all round. Well, Craddock, go and see what you can
find out about him at the Royal Spa Hotel.”
II
At the Royal Spa Hotel, Inspector Craddock was taken straight to the Manager’s
office.
The Manager, Mr. Rowlandson, a tall florid man with a hearty manner, greeted
Inspector Craddock with expansive geniality.
“Glad to help you in any way we can, Inspector,” he said. “Really a most
surprising business. I’d never have credited it—never. Scherz seemed a very
ordinary, pleasant young chap—not at all my idea of a hold-up man.”
“How long has he been with you, Mr. Rowlandson?”
“I was looking that up just before you came. A little over three months. Quite
good credentials, the usual permits, etc.”
“And you found him satisfactory?”
Without seeming to do so, Craddock marked the infinitesimal pause before
Rowlandson replied.
“Quite satisfactory.”
Craddock made use of a technique he had found efficacious before now.
“No, no, Mr. Rowlandson,” he said, gently shaking his head. “That’s not really
quite the case, is it?”
“We-ll—” The Manager seemed slightly taken aback.
“Come now, there was something wrong. What was it?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know.”
“But you thought there was something wrong?”
“Well—yes—I did … But I’ve nothing really to go upon. I shouldn’t like my
conjectures to be written down and quoted against me.”
Craddock smiled pleasantly.
“I know just what you mean. You needn’t worry. But I’ve got to get some idea
of what this fellow, Scherz, was like. You suspected him of—what?”
Rowlandson said, rather reluctantly:
“Well, there was trouble, once or twice, about the bills. Items charged that
oughtn’t to have been there.”
“You mean you suspected that he charged up certain items which didn’t appear
in the hotel records, and that he pocketed the difference when the bill was
paid?”
“Something like that … Put it at the best, there was gross carelessness on his
part. Once or twice quite a big sum was involved. Frankly, I got our
accountant to go over his books suspecting that he was—well, a wrong ’un, but
though there were various mistakes and a good deal of slipshod method, the
actual cash was quite correct. So I came to the conclusion that I must be
mistaken.”
“Supposing you hadn’t been wrong? Supposing Scherz had been helping himself to
various small sums here and there, he could have covered himself, I suppose,
by making good the money?”
“Yes, if he had the money. But people who help themselves to ‘small sums’ as
you put it—are usually hard up for those sums and spend them offhand.”
“So, if he wanted money to replace missing sums, he would have had to get
money—by a hold-up or other means?”
“Yes. I wonder if this is his first attempt….”
“Might be. It was certainly a very amateurish one. Is there anyone else he
could have got money from? Any women in his life?”
“One of the waitresses in the Grill. Her name’s Myrna Harris.”
“I’d better have a talk with her.”
III
Myrna Harris was a pretty girl with a glorious head of red hair and a pert
nose.
She was alarmed and wary, and deeply conscious of the indignity of being
interviewed by the police.
“I don’t know a thing about it, sir. Not a thing,” she protested. “If I’d
known what he was like I’d never have gone out with Rudi at all. Naturally,
seeing as he worked in Reception here, I thought he was all right. Naturally I
did. What I say is the hotel ought to be more careful when they employ
people—especially foreigners. Because you never know where you are with
foreigners. I suppose he might have been in with one of these gangs you read
about?”
“We think,” said Craddock, “that he was working quite on his own.”
“Fancy—and him so quiet and respectable. You’d never think. Though there have
been things missed—now I come to think of it. A diamond brooch—and a little
gold locket, I believe. But I never dreamed that it could have been Rudi.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Craddock. “Anyone might have been taken in. You
knew him fairly well?”
“I don’t know that I’d say well.”
“But you were friendly?”
“Oh, we were friendly—that’s all, just friendly. Nothing serious at all. I’m
always on my guard with foreigners, anyway. They’ve often got a way with them,
but you never know, do you? Some of those Poles during the war! And even some
of the Americans! Never let on they’re married men until it’s too late. Rudi
talked big and all that—but I always took it with a grain of salt.”
Craddock seized on the phrase.
“Talked big, did he? That’s very interesting, Miss Harris. I can see you’re
going to be a lot of help to us. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |