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I can see you’re
going to be a lot of help to us. In what way did he talk big?”
“Well, about how rich his people were in Switzerland—and how important. But
that didn’t go with his being as short of money as he was. He always said that
because of the money regulation he couldn’t get money from Switzerland over
here. That might be, I suppose, but his things weren’t expensive. His clothes,
I mean. They weren’t really class. I think, too, that a lot of the stories he
used to tell me were so much hot air. About climbing in the Alps, and saving
people’s lives on the edge of a glacier. Why, he turned quite giddy just going
along the edge of Boulter’s Gorge. Alps, indeed!”
“You went out with him a good deal?”
“Yes—well—yes, I did. He had awfully good manners and he knew how to—to look
after a girl. The best seats at the pictures always. And even flowers he’d buy
me, sometimes. And he was just a lovely dancer—lovely.”
“Did he mention this Miss Blacklock to you at all?”
“She comes in and lunches here sometimes, doesn’t she? And she’s stayed here
once. No, I don’t think Rudi ever mentioned her. I didn’t know he knew her.”
“Did he mention Chipping Cleghorn?”
He thought a faintly wary look came into Myrna Harris’s eyes but he couldn’t
be sure.
“I don’t think so … I think he did once ask about buses—what time they
went—but I can’t remember if that was Chipping Cleghorn or somewhere else. It
wasn’t just lately.”
He couldn’t get more out of her. Rudi Scherz had seemed just as usual. She
hadn’t seen him the evening before. She’d no idea—no idea at all—she stressed
the point, that Rudi Scherz was a crook.
And probably, Craddock thought, that was quite true.
Five
MISS BLACKLOCK AND MISS BUNNER
Little Paddocks was very much as Detective-Inspector Craddock had imagined it
to be. He noted ducks and chickens and what had been until lately an
attractive herbaceous border and in which a few late Michaelmas daisies showed
a last dying splash of purple beauty. The lawn and the paths showed signs of
neglect.
Summing up, Detective-Inspector Craddock thought: “Probably not much money to
spend on gardeners—fond of flowers and a good eye for planning and massing a
border. House needs painting. Most houses do, nowadays. Pleasant little
property.”
As Craddock’s car stopped before the front door, Sergeant Fletcher came round
the side of the house. Sergeant Fletcher looked like a guardsman, with an
erect military bearing, and was able to impart several different meanings to
the one monosyllable: “Sir.”
“So there you are, Fletcher.”
“Sir,” said Sergeant Fletcher.
“Anything to report?”
“We’ve finished going over the house, sir. Scherz doesn’t seem to have left
any fingerprints anywhere. He wore gloves, of course. No signs of any of the
doors or windows being forced to effect an entrance. He seems to have come out
from Medenham on the bus, arriving here at six o’clock. Side door of the house
was locked at 5:30, I understand. Looks as though he must have walked in
through the front door. Miss Blacklock states that that door isn’t usually
locked until the house is shut up for the night. The maid, on the other hand,
states that the front door was locked all the afternoon—but she’d say
anything. Very temperamental you’ll find her. Mittel Europa refugee of some
kind.”
“Difficult, is she?”
“Sir!” said Sergeant Fletcher, with intense feeling.
Craddock smiled.
Fletcher resumed his report.
“Lighting system is quite in order everywhere. We haven’t spotted yet how he
operated the lights. It was just the one circuit went. Drawing room and hall.
Of course, nowadays the wall brackets and lamps wouldn’t all be on one
fuse—but this is an old-fashioned installation and wiring. Don’t see how he
could have tampered with the fusebox because it’s out by the scullery and he’d
have had to go through the kitchen, so the maid would have seen him.”
“Unless she was in it with him?”
“That’s very possible. Both foreigners—and I wouldn’t trust her a yard—not a
yard.”
Craddock noticed two enormous frightened black eyes peering out of a window by
the front door. The face, flattened against the pane, was hardly visible.
“That her there?”
“That’s right, sir.”
The face disappeared.
Craddock rang the front doorbell.
After a long wait the door was opened by a good-looking young woman with
chestnut hair and a bored expression.
“Detective-Inspector Craddock,” said Craddock.
The young woman gave him a cool stare out of very attractive hazel eyes and
said:
“Come in. Miss Blacklock is expecting you.”
The hall, Craddock noted, was long and narrow and seemed almost incredibly
full of doors.
The young woman threw open a door on the left, and said: “Inspector Craddock,
Aunt Letty. Mitzi wouldn’t go to the door. She’s shut herself up in the
kitchen and she’s making the most marvellous moaning noises. I shouldn’t think
we’ll get any lunch.”
She added in an explanatory manner to Craddock: “She doesn’t like the police,”
and withdrew, shutting the door behind her.
Craddock advanced to meet the owner of Little Paddocks.
He saw a tall active-looking woman of about sixty. Her grey hair had a slight
natural wave and made a distinguished setting for an intelligent, resolute
face. She had keen grey eyes and a square determined chin. There was a
surgical dressing on her left ear. She wore no makeup and was plainly dressed
in a well-cut tweed coat and skirt and pullover. Round the neck of the latter
she wore, rather unexpectedly, a set of old-fashioned cameos—a Victorian touch
which seemed to hint at a sentimental streak not otherwise apparent.
Close beside her, with an eager round face and untidy hair escaping from a
hair net, was a woman of about the same age whom Craddock had no difficulty in
recognizing as the “Dora Bunner—companion” of Constable Legg’s notes—to which
the latter had added an off-the-record commentary of “Scatty!”
Miss Blacklock spoke in a pleasant well-bred voice.
“Good morning, Inspector Craddock. This is my friend, Miss Bunner, who helps
me run the house. Won’t you sit down? You won’t smoke, I suppose?”
“Not on duty, I’m afraid, Miss Blacklock.”
“What a shame!”
Craddock’s eyes took in the room with a quick, practised glance. Typical
Victorian double drawing room. Two long windows in this room, built-out bay
window in the other … chairs … sofa … centre table with a big bowl of
chrysanthemums—another bowl in window—all fresh and pleasant without much
originality. The only incongruous note was a small silver vase with dead
violets in it on a table near the archway into the further room. Since he
could not imagine Miss Blacklock tolerating dead flowers in a room, he
imagined it to be the only indication that something out of the way had
occurred to distract the routine of a well-run household.
He said:
“I take it, Miss Blacklock, that this is the room in which the—incident
occurred?”
“Yes.”
“And you should have seen it last night,” Miss Bunner exclaimed. “Such a mess.
Two little tables knocked over, and the leg off one—people barging about in
the dark—and someone put down a lighted cigarette and burnt one of the best
bits of furniture. People—young people especially—are so careless about these
things … Luckily none of the china got broken—”
Miss Blacklock interrupted gently but firmly:
“Dora, all these things, vexatious as they may be, are only trifles. It will
be best, I think, if we just answer Inspector Craddock’s questions.”
“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I shall come to what happened last night,
presently. First of all I want you to tell me when you first saw the dead
man—Rudi Scherz.”
“Rudi Scherz?” Miss Blacklock looked slightly surprised. “Is that his name?
Somehow, I thought … Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. My first encounter with him
was when I was in Medenham Spa for a day’s shopping about—let me see, about
three weeks ago. We—Miss Bunner and I—were having lunch at the Royal Spa
Hotel. As we were just leaving after lunch, I heard my name spoken. It was
this young man. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
It was
this young man. He said: ‘It is Miss Blacklock, is it not?’ And went on to say
that perhaps I did not remember him, but that he was the son of the proprietor
of the Hotel des Alpes at Montreux where my sister and I had stayed for nearly
a year during the war.”
“The Hotel des Alpes, Montreux,” noted Craddock. “And did you remember him,
Miss Blacklock?”
“No, I didn’t. Actually I had no recollection of ever having seen him before.
These boys at hotel reception desks all look exactly alike. We had had a very
pleasant time at Montreux and the proprietor there had been extremely
obliging, so I tried to be as civil as possible and said I hoped he was
enjoying being in England, and he said, yes, that his father had sent him over
for six months to learn the hotel business. It all seemed quite natural.”
“And your next encounter?”
“About—yes, it must have been ten days ago, he suddenly turned up here. I was
very surprised to see him. He apologized for troubling me, but said I was the
only person he knew in England. He told me that he urgently needed money to
return to Switzerland as his mother was dangerously ill.”
“But Letty didn’t give it to him,” Miss Bunner put in breathlessly.
“It was a thoroughly fishy story,” said Miss Blacklock, with vigour. “I made
up my mind that he was definitely a wrong ’un. That story about wanting the
money to return to Switzerland was nonsense. His father could easily have
wired for arrangements to have been made in this country. These hotel people
are all in with each other. I suspected that he’d been embezzling money or
something of that kind.” She paused and said dryly: “In case you think I’m
hardhearted, I was secretary for many years to a big financier and one becomes
wary about appeals for money. I know simply all the hard-luck stories there
are.
“The only thing that did surprise me,” she added thoughtfully, “was that he
gave in so easily. He went away at once without any more argument. It’s as
though he had never expected to get the money.”
“Do you think now, looking back on it, that his coming was really by way of a
pretext to spy out the land?”
Miss Blacklock nodded her head vigorously.
“That’s exactly what I do think—now. He made certain remarks as I let him
out—about the rooms. He said, ‘You have a very nice dining room’ (which of
course it isn’t—it’s a horrid dark little room) just as an excuse to look
inside. And then he sprang forward and unfastened the front door, said, ‘Let
me.’ I think now he wanted to have a look at the fastening. Actually, like
most people round here, we never lock the front door until it gets dark.
Anyone could walk in.”
“And the side door? There is a side door to the garden, I understand?”
“Yes. I went out through it to shut up the ducks not long before the people
arrived.”
“Was it locked when you went out?”
Miss Blacklock frowned.
“I can’t remember … I think so. I certainly locked it when I came in.”
“That would be about quarter past six?”
“Somewhere about then.”
“And the front door?”
“That’s not usually locked until later.”
“Then Scherz could have walked in quite easily that way. Or he could have
slipped in whilst you were out shutting up the ducks. He’d already spied out
the lie of the land and had probably noted various places of
concealment—cupboards, etc. Yes, that all seems quite clear.”
“I beg your pardon, it isn’t at all clear,” said Miss Blacklock. “Why on earth
should anyone take all that elaborate trouble to come and burgle this house
and stage that silly sort of hold-up?”
“Do you keep much money in the house, Miss Blacklock?”
“About five pounds in that desk there, and perhaps a pound or two in my
purse.”
“Jewellery?”
“A couple of rings and brooches, and the cameos I’m wearing. You must agree
with me, Inspector, that the whole thing’s absurd.”
“It wasn’t burglary at all,” cried Miss Bunner. “I’ve told you so, Letty, all
along. It was revenge! Because you wouldn’t give him that money! He
deliberately shot at you—twice.”
“Ah,” said Craddock. “We’ll come now to last night. What happened exactly,
Miss Blacklock? Tell me in your own words as nearly as you can remember.”
Miss Blacklock reflected a moment.
“The clock struck,” she said. “The one on the mantelpiece. I remember saying
that if anything were going to happen it would have to happen soon. And then
the clock struck. We all listened to it without saying anything. It chimes,
you know. It chimed the two quarters and then, quite suddenly, the lights went
out.”
“What lights were on?”
“The wall brackets in here and the further room. The standard lamp and the two
small reading lamps weren’t on.”
“Was there a flash first, or a noise when the lights went out?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m sure there was a flash,” said Dora Bunner. “And a cracking noise.
Dangerous!”
“And then, Miss Blacklock?”
“The door opened—”
“Which door? There are two in the room.”
“Oh, this door in here. The one in the other room doesn’t open. It’s a dummy.
The door opened and there he was—a masked man with a revolver. It just seemed
too fantastic for words, but of course at the time I just thought it was a
silly joke. He said something—I forget what—”
“Hands up or I shoot!” supplied Miss Bunner, dramatically.
“Something like that,” said Miss Blacklock, rather doubtfully.
“And you all put your hands up?”
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Bunner. “We all did. I mean, it was part of it.”
“I didn’t,” said Miss Blacklock crisply. “It seemed so utterly silly. And I
was annoyed by the whole thing.”
“And then?”
“The flashlight was right in my eyes. It dazzled me. And then, quite
incredibly, I heard a bullet whizz past me and hit the wall by my head.
Somebody shrieked and then I felt a burning pain in my ear and heard the
second report.”
“It was terrifying,” put in Miss Bunner.
“And what happened next, Miss Blacklock?”
“It’s difficult to say—I was so staggered by the pain and the surprise.
The—the figure turned away and seemed to stumble and then there was another
shot and his torch went out and everybody began pushing and calling out. All
banging into each other.”
“Where were you standing, Miss Blacklock?”
“She was over by the table. She’d got that vase of violets in her hand,” said
Miss Bunner breathlessly.
“I was over here.” Miss Blacklock went over to the small table by the archway.
“Actually it was the cigarette box I’d got in my hand.”
Inspector Craddock examined the wall behind her. The two bullet holes showed
plainly. The bullets themselves had been extracted and had been sent for
comparison with the revolver.
He said quietly:
“You had a very near escape, Miss Blacklock.”
“He did shoot at her,” said Miss Bunner. “Deliberately at her! I saw him. He
turned the flash round on everybody until he found her and then he held it
right at her and just fired at her. He meant to kill you, Letty.”
“Dora dear, you’ve just got that into your head from mulling the whole thing
over and over.”
“He shot at you,” repeated Dora stubbornly. “He meant to shoot you and when
he’d missed, he shot himself. I’m certain that’s the way it was!”
“I don’t think he meant to shoot himself for a minute,” said Miss Blacklock.
“He wasn’t the kind of man who shoots himself.”
“You tell me, Miss Blacklock, that until the revolver was fired you thought
the whole business was a joke?”
“Naturally. What else could I think it was?”
“Who do you think was the author of this joke?”
“You thought Patrick had done it at first,” Dora Bunner reminded her.
“Patrick?” asked the Inspector sharply.
“My young cousin, Patrick Simmons,” Miss Blacklock continued sharply, annoyed
with her friend. “It did occur to me when I saw this advertisement that it
might be some attempt at humour on his part, but he denied it absolutely.”
“And then you were worried, Letty,” said Miss Bunner. “You were worried,
although you pretended not to be. And you were quite right to be worried. It
said a murder is announced—and it was announced—your murder! And if the man
hadn’t missed, you would have been murdered. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
And if the man
hadn’t missed, you would have been murdered. And then where should we all be?”
Dora Bunner was trembling as she spoke. Her face was puckered up and she
looked as though she were going to cry.
Miss Blacklock patted her on the shoulder.
“It’s all right, Dora dear—don’t get excited. It’s so bad for you.
Everything’s quite all right. We’ve had a nasty experience, but it’s over
now.” She added, “You must pull yourself together for my sake, Dora. I rely on
you, you know, to keep the house going. Isn’t it the day for the laundry to
come?”
“Oh, dear me, Letty, how fortunate you reminded me! I wonder if they’ll return
that missing pillowcase. I must make a note in the book about it. I’ll go and
see to it at once.”
“And take those violets away,” said Miss Blacklock. “There’s nothing I hate
more than dead flowers.”
“What a pity. I picked them fresh yesterday. They haven’t lasted at all—oh,
dear, I must have forgotten to put any water in the vase. Fancy that! I’m
always forgetting things. Now I must go and see about the laundry. They might
be here any moment.”
She bustled away, looking quite happy again.
“She’s not very strong,” said Miss Blacklock, “and excitements are bad for
her. Is there anything more you want to know, Inspector?”
“I just want to know exactly how many people make up your household here and
something about them.”
“Yes, well in addition to myself and Dora Bunner, I have two young cousins
living here at present, Patrick and Julia Simmons.”
“Cousins? Not a nephew and niece?”
“No. They call me Aunt Letty, but actually they are distant cousins. Their
mother was my second cousin.”
“Have they always made their home with you?”
“Oh, dear no, only for the last two months. They lived in the South of France
before the war. Patrick went into the Navy and Julia, I believe, was in one of
the Ministries. She was at Llandudno. When the war was over their mother wrote
and asked me if they could possibly come to me as paying guests—Julia is
training as a dispenser in Milchester General Hospital, Patrick is studying
for an engineering degree at Milchester University. Milchester, as you know,
is only fifty minutes by bus, and I was very glad to have them here. This
house is really too large for me. They pay a small sum for board and lodging
and it all works out very well.” She added with a smile, “I like having
somebody young about the place.”
“Then there is a Mrs. Haymes, I believe?”
“Yes. She works as an assistant gardener at Dayas Hall, Mrs. Lucas’s place.
The cottage there is occupied by the old gardener and his wife and Mrs. Lucas
asked if I could billet her here. She’s a very nice girl. Her husband was
killed in Italy, and she has a boy of eight who is at a prep school and whom I
have arranged to have here in the holidays.”
“And by way of domestic help?”
“A jobbing gardener comes in on Tuesdays and Fridays. A Mrs. Huggins from the
village comes up five mornings a week and I have a foreign refugee with a most
unpronouncable name as a kind of lady cook help. You will find Mitzi rather
difficult, I’m afraid. She has a kind of persecution mania.”
Craddock nodded. He was conscious in his own mind of yet another of Constable
Legg’s invaluable commentaries. Having appended the word “Scatty” to Dora
Bunner, and “All right” to Letitia Blacklock, he had embellished Mitzi’s
record with the one word “Liar.”
As though she had read his mind Miss Blacklock said:
“Please don’t be too prejudiced against the poor thing because she’s a liar. I
do really believe that, like so many liars, there is a real substratum of
truth behind her lies. I mean that though, to take an instance, her atrocity
stories have grown and grown until every kind of unpleasant story that has
ever appeared in print has happened to her or her relations personally, she
did have a bad shock initially and did see one, at least, of her relations
killed. I think a lot of these displaced persons feel, perhaps justly, that
their claim to our notice and sympathy lies in their atrocity value and so
they exaggerate and invent.”
She added: “Quite frankly, Mitzi is a maddening person. She exasperates and
infuriates us all, she is suspicious and sulky, is perpetually having
‘feelings’ and thinking herself insulted. But in spite of it all, I really am
sorry for her.” She smiled. “And also, when she wants to, she can cook very
nicely.”
“I’ll try not to ruffle her more than I can help,” said Craddock soothingly.
“Was that Miss Julia Simmons who opened the door to me?”
“Yes. Would you like to see her now? Patrick has gone out. Phillipa Haymes you
will find working at Dayas Hall.”
“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I’d like to see Miss Simmons now if I may.”
Six
JULIA, MITZI AND PATRICK
I
Julia, when she came into the room, and sat down in the chair vacated by
Letitia Blacklock, had an air of composure that Craddock for some reason found
annoying. She fixed a limpid gaze on him and waited for his questions.
Miss Blacklock had tactfully left the room.
“Please tell me about last night, Miss Simmons.”
“Last night?” murmured Julia with a blank stare. “Oh, we all slept like logs.
Reaction, I suppose.”
“I mean last night from six o’clock onwards.”
“Oh, I see. Well, a lot of tiresome people came—”
“They were?”
She gave him another limpid stare.
“Don’t you know all this already?”
“I’m asking the questions, Miss Simmons,” said Craddock pleasantly.
“My mistake. I always find repetitions so dreary. Apparently you don’t … Well,
there was Colonel and Mrs. Easterbrook, Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd,
Mrs. Swettenham and Edmund Swettenham, and Mrs. Harmon, the Vicar’s wife. They
arrived in that order. And if you want to know what they said—they all said
the same thing in turn. ‘I see you’ve got your central heating on’ and ‘What
lovely chrysanthemums!’”
Craddock bit his lip. The mimicry was good.
“The exception was Mrs. Harmon. She’s rather a pet. She came in with her hat
falling off and her shoelaces untied and she asked straight out when the
murder was going to happen. It embarrassed everybody because they’d all been
pretending they’d dropped in by chance. Aunt Letty said in her dry way that it
was due to happen quite soon. And then that clock chimed and just as it
finished, the lights went out, the door was flung open and a masked figure
said, ‘Stick ’em up, guys,’ or something like that. It was exactly like a bad
film. Really quite ridiculous. And then he fired two shots at Aunt Letty and
suddenly it wasn’t ridiculous any more.”
“Where was everybody when this happened?”
“When the lights went out? Well, just standing about, you know. Mrs. Harmon
was sitting on the sofa—Hinch (that’s Miss Hinchcliffe) had taken up a manly
stance in front of the fireplace.”
“You were all in this room, or the far room?”
“Mostly, I think, in this room. Patrick had gone into the other to get the
sherry. I think Colonel Easterbrook went after him, but I don’t really know.
We were—well—as I said, just standing about.”
“Where were you yourself?”
“I think I was over by the window. Aunt Letty went to get the cigarettes.”
“On that table by the archway?”
“Yes—and then the lights went out and the bad film started.”
“The man had a powerful torch. What did he do with it?”
“Well, he shone it on us. Horribly dazzling. It just made you blink.”
“I want you to answer this very carefully, Miss Simmons. Did he hold the torch
steady, or did he move it about?”
Julia considered. Her manner was now definitely less weary.
“He moved it,” she said slowly. “Like a spotlight in a dance hall. It was full
in my eyes and then it went on round the room and then the shots came. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Two
shots.”
“And then?”
“He whirled round—and Mitzi began to scream like a siren from somewhere and
his torch went out and there was another shot. And then the door closed (it
does, you know, slowly, with a whining noise—quite uncanny) and there we were
all in the dark, not knowing what to do, and poor Bunny squealing like a
rabbit and Mitzi going all out across the hall.”
“Would it be your opinion that the man shot himself deliberately, or do you
think he stumbled and the revolver went off accidentally?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. The whole thing was so stagey. Actually I
thought it was still some silly joke—until I saw the blood from Letty’s ear.
But even if you were actually going to fire a revolver to make the thing more
real, you’d be careful to fire it well above someone’s head, wouldn’t you?”
“You would indeed. Do you think he could see clearly who he was firing at? I
mean, was Miss Blacklock clearly outlined in the light of the torch?”
“I’ve no idea. I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at the man.”
“What I’m getting at is—do you think the man was deliberately aiming at her—at
her in particular, I mean?”
Julia seemed a little startled by the idea.
“You mean deliberately picking on Aunt Letty? Oh, I shouldn’t think so … After
all, if he wanted to take a pot shot at Aunt Letty, there would be heaps of
more suitable opportunities. There would be no point in collecting all the
friends and neighbours just to make it more difficult. He could have shot her
from behind a hedge in the good old Irish fashion any day of the week, and
probably got away with it.”
And that, thought Craddock, was a very complete reply to Dora Bunner’s
suggestion of a deliberate attack on Letitia Blacklock.
He said with a sigh, “Thank you, Miss Simmons. I’d better go and see Mitzi
now.”
“Mind her fingernails,” warned Julia. “She’s a tartar!”
II
Craddock, with Fletcher in attendance, found Mitzi in the kitchen. She was
rolling pastry and looked up suspiciously as he entered.
Her black hair hung over her eyes; she looked sullen, and the purple jumper
and brilliant green skirt she wore were not becoming to her pasty complexion.
“What do you come in my kitchen for, Mr. Policeman? You are police, yes?
Always, always there is persecution—ah! I should be used to it by now. They
say it is different here in England, but no, it is just the same. You come to
torture me, yes, to make me say things, but I shall say nothing. You will tear
off my fingernails, and put lighted matches on my skin—oh, yes, and worse than
that. But I will not speak, do you hear? I shall say nothing—nothing at all.
And you will send me away to a concentration camp, and I shall not care.”
Craddock looked at her thoughtfully, selecting what was likely to be the best
method of attack. Finally he sighed and said:
“O.K., then, get your hat and coat.”
“What is that you say?” Mitzi looked startled.
“Get your hat and coat and come along. I haven’t got my nail-pulling apparatus
and the rest of the bag of tricks with me. We keep all that down at the
station. Got the handcuffs handy, Fletcher?”
“Sir!” said Sergeant Fletcher with appreciation.
“But I do not want to come,” screeched Mitzi, backing away from him.
“Then you’ll answer civil questions civilly. If you like, you can have a
solicitor present.”
“A lawyer? I do not like a lawyer. I do not want a lawyer.”
She put the rolling pin down, dusted her hands on a cloth and sat down.
“What do you want to know?” she asked sulkily.
“I want your account of what happened here last night.”
“You know very well what happened.”
“I want your account of it.”
“I tried to go away. Did she tell you that? When I saw that in the paper
saying about murder. I wanted to go away. She would not let me. She is very
hard—not at all sympathetic. She made me stay. But I knew—I knew what would
happen. I knew I should be murdered.”
“Well, you weren’t murdered, were you?”
“No,” admitted Mitzi grudgingly.
“Come now, tell me what happened.”
“I was nervous. Oh, I was nervous. All that evening. I hear things. People
moving about. Once I think someone is in the hall moving stealthily—but it is
only that Mrs. Haymes coming in through the side door (so as not to dirty the
front steps, she says. Much she cares!). She is a Nazi herself, that one, with
her fair hair and her blue eyes, so superior and looking at me and thinking
that I—I am only dirt—”
“Never mind Mrs. Haymes.”
“Who does she think she is? Has she had expensive university education like I
have? Has she a degree in Economics? No, she is just a paid labourer. She digs
and mows grass and is paid so much every Saturday. Who is she to call herself
a lady?”
“Never mind Mrs. Haymes, I said. Go on.”
“I take the sherry and the glasses, and the little pastries that I have made
so nice into the drawing room. Then the bell rings and I answer the door.
Again and again I answer the door. It is degrading—but I do it. And then I go
back into the pantry and I start to polish the silver, and I think it will be
very handy, that, because if someone comes to kill me, I have there close at
hand the big carving knife, all sharp.”
“Very foresighted of you.”
“And then, suddenly—I hear shots. I think: ‘It has come—it is happening.’ I
run through the dining room (the other door—it will not open). I stand a
moment to listen and then there comes another shot and a big thud, out there
in the hall, and I turn the door handle, but it is locked outside. I am shut
in there like a rat in a trap. And I go mad with fear. I scream and I scream
and I beat upon the door. And at last—at last—they turn the key and let me
out. And then I bring candles, many many candles—and the lights go on, and I
see blood—blood! Ach, Gott in Himmel, the blood! It is not the first time I
have seen blood. My little brother—I see him killed before my eyes—I see blood
in the street—people shot, dying—I—”
“Yes,” said Inspector Craddock. “Thank you very much.”
“And now,” said Mitzi dramatically, “you can arrest me and take me to prison!”
“Not today,” said Inspector Craddock.
III
As Craddock and Fletcher went through the hall to the front door it was flung
open and a tall handsome young man almost collided with them.
“Sleuths as I live,” cried the young man.
“Mr. Patrick Simmons?”
“Quite right, Inspector. You’re the Inspector, aren’t you, and the other’s the
Sergeant?”
“You are quite right, Mr. Simmons. Can I have a word with you, please?”
“I am innocent, Inspector. I swear I am innocent.”
“Now then, Mr. Simmons, don’t play the fool. I’ve a good many other people to
see and I don’t want to waste time. What’s this room? Can we go in here?”
“It’s the so-called study—but nobody studies.”
“I was told that you were studying?” said Craddock.
“I found I couldn’t concentrate on mathematics, so I came home.”
In a businesslike manner Inspector Craddock demanded full name, age, details
of war service.
“And now, Mr. Simmons, will you describe what happened last night?”
“We killed the fatted calf, Inspector. That is, Mitzi set her hand to making
savoury pastries, Aunt Letty opened a new bottle of sherry—”
Craddock interrupted.
“A new bottle? Was there an old one?”
“Yes. Half full. But Aunt Letty didn’t seem to fancy it.”
“Was she nervous, then?”
“Oh, not really. She’s extremely sensible. It was old Bunny, I think, who had
put the wind up her—prophesying disaster all day.”
“Miss Bunner was definitely apprehensive, then?”
“Oh, yes, she enjoyed herself thoroughly.”
“She took the advertisement seriously?”
“It scared her into fits.”
“Miss Blacklock seems to have thought, when she first read that advertisement,
that you had had something to do with it. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Why was that?”
“Ah, sure, I get blamed for everything round here!”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you, Mr. Simmons?”
“Me? Never in the world.”
“Had you ever seen or spoken to this Rudi Scherz?”
“Never seen him in my life.”
“It was the kind of joke you might have played, though?”
“Who’s been telling you that? Just because I once made Bunny an apple pie
bed—and sent Mitzi a postcard saying the Gestapo was on her track—”
“Just give me your account of what happened.”
“I’d just gone into the small drawing room to fetch the drinks when, Hey
Presto, the lights went out. I turned round and there’s a fellow standing in
the doorway saying, ‘Stick your hands up,’ and everybody gasping and
squealing, and just when I’m thinking—can I rush him? he starts firing a
revolver and then crash down he goes and his torch goes out and we’re in the
dark again, and Colonel Easterbrook starts shouting orders in his barrack-room
voice. ‘Lights,’ he says, and will my lighter go on? No, it won’t as is the
way of those cussed inventions.”
“Did it seem to you that the intruder was definitely aiming at Miss
Blacklock?”
“Ah, how could I tell? I should say he just loosed off his revolver for the
fun of the thing—and then found, maybe, he’d gone too far.”
“And shot himself?”
“It could be. When I saw the face of him, he looked like the kind of little
pasty thief who might easily lose his nerve.”
“And you’re sure you had never seen him before?”
“Never.”
“Thank you, Mr. Simmons. I shall want to interview the other people who were
here last night. Which would be the best order in which to take them?”
“Well, our Phillipa—Mrs. Haymes—works at Dayas Hall. The gates of it are
nearly opposite this gate. After that, the Swettenhams are the nearest. Anyone
will tell you.”
Seven
AMONG THOSE PRESENT
I
Dayas Hall had certainly suffered during the war years. Couch grass grew
enthusiastically over what had once been an asparagus bed, as evidenced by a
few waving tufts of asparagus foliage. Grounsel, bindweed and other garden
pests showed every sign of vigorous growth.
A portion of the kitchen garden bore evidence of having been reduced to
discipline and here Craddock found a sour-looking old man leaning pensively on
a spade.
“It’s Mrs. ’Aymes you want? I couldn’t say where you’d find ’er. ’As ’er own
ideas, she ’as, about what she’ll do. Not one to take advice. I could show
her—show ’er willing—but what’s the good, won’t listen these young ladies
won’t! Think they know everything because they’ve put on breeches and gone for
a ride on a tractor. But it’s gardening that’s needed here. And that isn’t
learned in a day. Gardening, that’s what this place needs.”
“It looks as though it does,” said Craddock.
The old man chose to take this remark as an aspersion.
“Now look here, mister, what do you suppose I can do with a place this size?
Three men and a boy, that’s what it used to ’ave. And that’s what it wants.
There’s not many men could put in the work on it that I do. ’Ere sometimes I
am till eight o’clock at night. Eight o’clock.”
“What do you work by? An oil lamp?”
“Naterally I don’t mean this time o’ year. Naterally. Summer evenings I’m
talking about.”
“Oh,” said Craddock. “I’d better go and look for Mrs. Haymes.”
The rustic displayed some interest.
“What are you wanting ’er for? Police, aren’t you? She been in trouble, or is
it the do there was up to Little Paddocks? Masked men bursting in and holding
up a roomful of people with a revolver. An’ that sort of thing wouldn’t ’ave
’appened afore the war. Deserters, that’s what it is. Desperate men roaming
the countryside. Why don’t the military round ’em up?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Craddock. “I suppose this hold-up caused a lot of talk?”
“That it did. What’s us coming to? That’s what Ned Barker said. Comes of going
to the pictures so much, he said. But Tom Riley he says it comes of letting
these furriners run about loose. And depend on it, he says, that girl as cooks
up there for Miss Blacklock and ’as such a nasty temper—she’s in it, he said.
She’s a communist or worse, he says, and we don’t like that sort ’ere. And
Marlene, who’s behind the bar, you understand, she will ’ave it that there
must be something very valuable up at Miss Blacklock’s. Not that you’d think
it, she says, for I’m sure Miss Blacklock goes about as plain as plain, except
for them great rows of false pearls she wears. And then she says—Supposin’ as
them pearls is real, and Florrie (what’s old Bellamy’s daughter) she says,
‘Nonsense,’ she says—‘noovo ar—that’s what they are—costume jewellery,’ she
says. Costume jewellery—that’s a fine way of labelling a string of false
pearls. Roman pearls, the gentry used to call ’em once—and Parisian
diamonds—my wife was a lady’s maid and I know. But what does it all mean—just
glass! I suppose it’s ‘costume jewellery’ that young Miss Simmons wears—gold
ivy leaves and dogs and such like. ’Tisn’t often you see a real bit of gold
nowadays—even wedding rings they make of this grey plattinghum stuff. Shabby,
I call it—for all that it costs the earth.”
Old Ashe paused for breath and then continued:
“‘Miss Blacklock don’t keep much money in the ’ouse, that I do know,’ says Jim
’Uggins, speaking up. ’E should know, for it’s ’is wife as goes up and does
for ’em at Little Paddocks, and she’s a woman as knows most of what’s going
on. Nosey, if you take me.”
“Did he say what Mrs. Huggins’ view was?”
“That Mitzi’s mixed up in it, that’s what she thinks. Awful temper she ’as,
and the airs she gives ’erself! Called Mrs. ’Uggins a working woman to ’er
face the other morning.”
Craddock stood a moment, checking over in his orderly mind the substance of
the old gardener’s remarks. It gave him a good cross-section of rural opinion
in Chipping Cleghorn, but he didn’t think there was anything to help him in
his task. He turned away and the old man called after him grudgingly:
“Maybe you’d find her in the apple orchard. She’s younger than I am for
getting the apples down.”
And sure enough in the apple orchard Craddock found Phillipa Haymes. His first
view was a pair of nice legs encased in breeches sliding easily down the trunk
of a tree. Then Phillipa, her face flushed, her fair hair ruffled by the
branches, stood looking at him in a startled fashion.
“Make a good Rosalind,” Craddock thought automatically, for Detective-
Inspector Craddock was a Shakespeare enthusiast and had played the part of the
melancholy Jaques with great success in a performance of As You Like It for
the Police Orphanage.
A moment later he amended his views. Phillipa Haymes was too wooden for
Rosalind, her fairness and her impassivity were intensely English, but English
of the twentieth rather than of the sixteenth century. Well-bred, unemotional
English, without a spark of mischief.
“Good morning, Mrs. Haymes. I’m sorry if I startled you. I’m Detective-
Inspector Craddock of the Middleshire Police. I wanted to have a word with
you.”
“About last night?”
“Yes.”
“Will it take long? Shall we—?”
She looked about her rather doubtfully.
Craddock indicated a fallen tree trunk.
“Rather informal,” he said pleasantly, “but I don’t want to interrupt your
work longer than necessary.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s just for the record. You came in from work at what time last night?”
“At about half past five. I’d stayed about twenty minutes later in order to
finish some watering in the greenhouse.”
“You came in by which door?”
“The side door. One cuts across by the ducks and the hen-house from the drive. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
One cuts across by the ducks and the hen-house from the drive.
It saves you going round, and besides it avoids dirtying up the front porch.
I’m in rather a mucky state sometimes.”
“You always come in that way?”
“Yes.”
“The door was unlocked?”
“Yes. During the summer it’s usually wide open. This time of the year it’s
shut but not locked. We all go out and in a good deal that way. I locked it
when I came in.”
“Do you always do that?”
“I’ve been doing it for the last week. You see, it gets dark at six. Miss
Blacklocks goes out to shut up the ducks and the hens sometimes in the
evening, but she very often goes out through the kitchen door.”
“And you are quite sure you did lock the side door this time?”
“I really am quite sure about that.”
“Quite so, Mrs. Haymes. And what did you do when you came in?”
“Kicked off my muddy footwear and went upstairs and had a bath and changed.
Then I came down and found that a kind of party was in progress. I hadn’t
known anything about this funny advertisement until then.”
“Now please describe just what occurred when the hold-up happened.”
“Well, the lights went out suddenly—”
“Where were you?”
“By the mantelpiece. I was searching for my lighter which I thought I had put
down there. The lights went out—and everybody giggled. Then the door was flung
open and this man shone a torch on us and flourished a revolver and told us to
put our hands up.”
“Which you proceeded to do?”
“Well, I didn’t actually. I thought it was just fun, and I was tired and I
didn’t think I needed really to put them up.”
“In fact, you were bored by the whole thing?”
“I was, rather. And then the revolver went off. The shots sounded deafening
and I was really frightened. The torch went whirling round and dropped and
went out, and then Mitzi started screaming. It was just like a pig being
killed.”
“Did you find the torch very dazzling?”
“No, not particularly. It was quite a strong one, though. It lit up Miss
Bunner for a moment and she looked quite like a turnip ghost—you know, all
white and staring with her mouth open and her eyes starting out of her head.”
“The man moved the torch?”
“Oh, yes, he played it all round the room.”
“As though he were looking for someone?”
“Not particularly, I should say.”
“And after that, Mrs. Haymes?”
Phillipa Haymes frowned.
“Oh, it was all a terrible muddle and confusion. Edmund Swettenham and Patrick
Simmons switched on their lighters and they went out into the hall and we
followed, and someone opened the dining room door—the lights hadn’t fused
there—and Edmund Swettenham gave Mitzi a terrific slap on the cheek and
brought her out of her screaming fit, and after that it wasn’t so bad.”
“You saw the body of the dead man?”
“Yes.”
“Was he known to you? Had you ever seen him before?”
“Never.”
“Have you any opinion as to whether his death was accidental, or do you think
he shot himself deliberately?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“You didn’t see him when he came to the house previously?”
“No. I believe it was in the middle of the morning and I shouldn’t have been
there. I’m out all day.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Haymes. One thing more. You haven’t any valuable jewellery?
Rings, bracelets, anything of that kind?”
Phillipa shook her head.
“My engagement ring—a couple of brooches.”
“And as far as you know, there was nothing of particular value in the house?”
“No. I mean there is some quite nice silver—but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Haymes.”
II
As Craddock retraced his steps through the kitchen garden he came face to face
with a large red-faced lady, carefully corseted.
“Good morning,” she said belligerently. “What do you want here?”
“Mrs. Lucas? I am Detective-Inspector Craddock.”
“Oh, that’s who you are? I beg your pardon. I don’t like strangers forcing
their way into my garden wasting the gardeners’ time. But I quite understand
you have to do your duty.”
“Quite so.”
“May I ask if we are to expect a repetition of that outrage last night at Miss
Blacklock’s? Is it a gang?”
“We are satisfied, Mrs. Lucas, that it was not the work of a gang.”
“There are far too many robberies nowadays. The police are getting slack.”
Craddock did not reply. “I suppose you’ve been talking to Phillipa Haymes?”
“I wanted her account as an eyewitness.”
“You couldn’t have waited until one o’clock, I suppose? After all, it would be
fairer to question her in her time, rather than in mine. …”
“I’m anxious to get back to headquarters.”
“Not that one expects consideration nowadays. Or a decent day’s work. On duty
late, half an hour’s pottering. A break for elevenses at ten o’clock. No work
done at all the moment the rain starts. When you want the lawn mown there’s
always something wrong with the mower. And off duty five or ten minutes before
the proper time.”
“I understood from Mrs. Haymes that she left here at twenty minutes past five
yesterday instead of five o’clock.”
“Oh, I dare say she did. Give her her due, Mrs. Haymes is quite keen on her
work, though there have been days when I have come out here and not been able
to find her anywhere. She is a lady by birth, of course, and one feels it’s
one’s duty to do something for these poor young war widows. Not that it isn’t
very inconvenient. Those long school holidays and the arrangement is that she
has extra time off then. I told her that there are really excellent camps
nowadays where children can be sent and where they have a delightful time and
enjoy it far more than wandering about with their parents. They need
practically not come home at all in the summer holidays.”
“But Mrs. Haymes didn’t take kindly to that idea?”
“She’s as obstinate as a mule, that girl. Just the time of year when I want
the tennis court mowed and marked nearly every day. Old Ashe gets the lines
crooked. But my convenience is never considered!”
“I presume Mrs. Haymes takes a smaller salary than is usual?”
“Naturally. What else could she expect?”
“Nothing, I’m sure,” said Craddock. “Good morning, Mrs. Lucas.”
III
“It was dreadful,” said Mrs. Swettenham happily. “Quite—quite—dreadful, and
what I say is that they ought to be far more careful what advertisements they
accept at the Gazette office. At the time, when I read it, I thought it was
very odd. I said so, didn’t I, Edmund?”
“Do you remember just what you were doing when the lights went out, Mrs.
Swettenham?” asked the Inspector.
“How that reminds me of my old Nannie! Where was Moses when the light went
out? The answer, of course, was ‘In the Dark.’ Just like us yesterday evening.
All standing about and wondering what was going to happen. And then, you know,
the thrill when it suddenly went pitch black. And the door opening—just a dim
figure standing there with a revolver and that blinding light and a menacing
voice saying ‘Your money or your life!’ Oh, I’ve never enjoyed anything so
much. And then a minute later, of course, it was all dreadful. Real bullets,
just whistling past our ears! It must have been just like the Commandos in the
war.”
“Whereabouts were you standing or sitting at the time, Mrs. Swettenham?”
“Now let me see, where was I? Who was I talking to, Edmund?”
“I really haven’t the least idea, Mother.”
“Was it Miss Hinchcliffe I was asking about giving the hens cod liver oil in
the cold weather? Or was it Mrs. Harmon—no, she’d only just arrived. I think I
was just saying to Colonel Easterbrook that I thought it was really very
dangerous to have an atom research station in England. It ought to be on some
lonely island in case the radio activity gets loose.”
“You don’t remember if you were sitting or standing?”
“Does it really matter, Inspector? I was somewhere over by the window or near
the mantelpiece, because I know I was quite near the clock when it struck.
Such a thrilling moment! Waiting to see if anything might be going to happen.”
“You describe the light from the torch as blinding. Was it turned full on to
you?”
“It was right in my eyes. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Was it turned full on to
you?”
“It was right in my eyes. I couldn’t see a thing.”
“Did the man hold it still, or did he move it about, from person to person?”
“Oh, I don’t really know. Which did he do, Edmund?”
“It moved rather slowly over us all, so as to see what we were all doing, I
suppose, in case we should try and rush him.”
“And where exactly in the room were you, Mr. Swettenham?”
“I’d been talking to Julia Simmons. We were both standing up in the middle of
the room—the long room.”
“Was everyone in that room, or was there anyone in the far room?”
“Phillipa Haymes had moved in there, I think. She was over by that far
mantelpiece. I think she was looking for something.”
“Have you any idea as to whether the third shot was suicide or an accident?”
“I’ve no idea at all. The man seemed to swerve round very suddenly and then
crumple up and fall—but it was all very confused. You must realise that you
couldn’t really see anything. And then that refugee girl started yelling the
place down.”
“I understand it was you who unlocked the dining room door and let her out?”
“Yes.”
“The door was definitely locked on the outside?”
Edmund looked at him curiously.
“Certainly it was. Why, you don’t imagine—?”
“I just like to get my facts quite clear. Thank you, Mr. Swettenham.”
IV
Inspector Craddock was forced to spend quite a long time with Colonel and Mrs.
Easterbrook. He had to listen to a long disquisition on the psychological
aspect of the case.
“The psychological approach—that’s the only thing nowadays,” the Colonel told
him. “You’ve got to understand your criminal. Now the whole setup here is
quite plain to a man who’s had the wide experience that I have. Why does this
fellow put that advert in? Psychology. He wants to advertise himself—to focus
attention on himself. He’s been passed over, perhaps despised as a foreigner
by the other employees at the Spa Hotel. A girl has turned him down, perhaps.
He wants to rivet her attention on him. Who is the idol of the cinema
nowadays—the gangster—the tough guy? Very well, he will be a tough guy.
Robbery with violence. A mask? A revolver? But he wants an audience—he must
have an audience. So he arranges for an audience. And then, at the supreme
moment, his part runs away with him—he’s more than a burglar. He’s a killer.
He shoots—blindly—”
Inspector Craddock caught gladly at a word:
“You say ‘blindly,’ Colonel Easterbrook. You didn’t think that he was firing
deliberately at one particular object—at Miss Blacklock, that is to say?”
“No, no. He just loosed off, as I say, blindly. And that’s what brought him to
himself. The bullet hit someone—actually it was only a graze, but he didn’t
know that. He comes to himself with a bang. All this—this make-believe he’s
been indulging in—is real. He’s shot at someone—perhaps killed someone … It’s
all up with him. And so in blind panic he turns the revolver on himself.”
Colonel Easterbrook paused, cleared his throat appreciatively and said in a
satisfied voice, “Plain as a pikestaff, that’s what it is, plain as a
pikestaff.”
“It really is wonderful,” said Mrs. Easterbrook, “the way you know exactly
what happened, Archie.”
Her voice was warm with admiration.
Inspector Craddock thought it was wonderful, too, but he was not quite so
warmly appreciative.
“Exactly where were you in the room, Colonel Easterbrook, when the actual
shooting business took place?”
“I was standing with my wife—near a centre table with some flowers on it.”
“I caught hold of your arm, didn’t I, Archie, when it happened? I was simply
scared to death. I just had to hold on to you.”
“Poor little kitten,” said the Colonel playfully.
V
The Inspector ran Miss Hinchcliffe to earth by a pigsty.
“Nice creatures, pigs,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, scratching a wrinkled pink
back. “Coming on well, isn’t he? Good bacon round about Christmas time. Well,
what do you want to see me about? I told your people last night I hadn’t the
least idea who the man was. Never seen him anywhere in the neighbourhood
snooping about or anything of that sort. Our Mrs. Mopp says he came from one
of the big hotels in Medenham Wells. Why didn’t he hold up someone there if he
wanted to? Get a much better haul.”
That was undeniable—Craddock proceeded with his inquiries.
“Where were you exactly when the incident took place?”
“Incident! Reminds me of my A.R.P. days. Saw some incidents then, I can tell
you. Where was I when the shooting started? That what you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Leaning up against the mantelpiece hoping to God someone would offer me a
drink soon,” replied Miss Hinchcliffe promptly.
“Do you think that the shots were fired blindly, or aimed carefully at one
particular person?”
“You mean aimed at Letty Blacklock? How the devil should I know? Damned hard
to sort out what your impressions really were or what really happened after
it’s all over. All I know is the lights went out, and that torch went whirling
round dazzling us all, and then the shots were fired and I thought to myself,
‘If that damned young fool Patrick Simmons is playing his jokes with a loaded
revolver somebody will get hurt.’”
“You thought it was Patrick Simmons?”
“Well, it seemed likely. Edmund Swettenham is intellectual and writes books
and doesn’t care for horseplay, and old Colonel Easterbrook wouldn’t think
that sort of thing funny. But Patrick’s a wild boy. However, I apologize to
him for the idea.”
“Did your friend think it might be Patrick Simmons?”
“Murgatroyd? You’d better talk to her yourself. Not that you’ll get any sense
out of her. She’s down the orchard. I’ll yell for her if you like.”
Miss Hinchcliffe raised her stentorian voice in a powerful bellow:
“Hi-youp, Murgatroyd….”
“Coming …” floated back a thin cry.
“Hurry up—Polieece,” bellowed Miss Hinchcliffe.
Miss Murgatroyd arrived at a brisk trot very much out of breath. Her skirt was
down at the hem and her hair was escaping from an inadequate hair net. Her
round, good-natured face beamed.
“Is it Scotland Yard?” she asked breathlessly. “I’d no idea. Or I wouldn’t
have left the house.”
“We haven’t called in Scotland Yard yet, Miss Murgatroyd. I’m Inspector
Craddock from Milchester.”
“Well, that’s very nice, I’m sure,” said Miss Murgatroyd vaguely. “Have you
found any clues?”
“Where were you at the time of the crime, that’s what he wants to know,
Murgatroyd?” said Miss Hinchcliffe. She winked at Craddock.
“Oh, dear,” gasped Miss Murgatroyd. “Of course. I ought to have been prepared.
Alibis, of course. Now, let me see, I was just with everybody else.”
“You weren’t with me,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
“Oh, dear, Hinch, wasn’t I? No, of course, I’d been admiring the
chrysanthemums. Very poor specimens, really. And then it all happened—only I
didn’t really know it had happened—I mean I didn’t know that anything like
that had happened. I didn’t imagine for a moment that it was a real
revolver—and all so awkward in the dark, and that dreadful screaming. I got it
all wrong, you know. I thought she was being murdered—I mean the refugee girl.
I thought she was having her throat cut across the hall somewhere. I didn’t
know it was him—I mean, I didn’t even know there was a man. It was really just
a voice, you know, saying, ‘Put them up, please.’”
“‘Stick ’em up!’” Miss Hinchcliffe corrected. “And no suggestion of ‘please’
about it.”
“It’s so terrible to think that until that girl started screaming I was
actually enjoying myself. Only being in the dark was very awkward and I got a
knock on my corn. Agony, it was. Is there anything more you want to know,
Inspector?”
“No,” said Inspector Craddock, eyeing Miss Murgatroyd speculatively. “I don’t
really think there is.”
Her friend gave a short bark of laughter. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“I don’t
really think there is.”
Her friend gave a short bark of laughter.
“He’s got you taped, Murgatroyd.”
“I’m sure, Hinch,” said Miss Murgatroyd, “that I’m only too willing to say
anything I can.”
“He doesn’t want that,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
She looked at the Inspector. “If you’re doing this geographically I suppose
you’ll go to the Vicarage next. You might get something there. Mrs. Harmon
looks as vague as they make them—but I sometimes think she’s got brains.
Anyway, she’s got something.”
As they watched the Inspector and Sergeant Fletcher stalk away, Amy Murgatroyd
said breathlessly:
“Oh, Hinch, was I very awful? I do get so flustered!”
“Not at all,” Miss Hinchcliffe smiled. “On the whole, I should say you did
very well.”
VI
Inspector Craddock looked round the big shabby room with a sense of pleasure.
It reminded him a little of his own Cumberland home. Faded chintz, big shabby
chairs, flowers and books strewn about, and a spaniel in a basket. Mrs.
Harmon, too, with her distraught air, and her general disarray and her eager
face he found sympathetic.
But she said at once, frankly, “I shan’t be any help to you. Because I shut my
eyes. I hate being dazzled. And then there were shots and I screwed them up
tighter than ever. And I did wish, oh, I did wish, that it had been a quiet
murder. I don’t like bangs.”
“So you didn’t see anything.” The Inspector smiled at her. “But you heard—?”
“Oh, my goodness, yes, there was plenty to hear. Doors opening and shutting,
and people saying silly things and gasping and old Mitzi screaming like a
steam engine—and poor Bunny squealing like a trapped rabbit. And everyone
pushing and falling over everyone else. However, when there really didn’t seem
to be any more bangs coming, I opened my eyes. Everyone was out in the hall
then, with candles. And then the lights came on and suddenly it was all as
usual—I don’t mean really as usual, but we were ourselves again, not
just—people in the dark. People in the dark are quite different, aren’t they?”
“I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Harmon.”
Mrs. Harmon smiled at him.
“And there he was,” she said. “A rather weaselly-looking foreigner—all pink
and surprised-looking—lying there dead—with a revolver beside him. It
didn’t—oh, it didn’t seem to make sense, somehow.”
It did not make sense to the Inspector, either.
The whole business worried him.
Eight
ENTER MISS MARPLE
I
Craddock laid the typed transcript of the various interviews before the Chief
Constable. The latter had just finished reading the wire received from the
Swiss Police.
“So he had a police record all right,” said Rydesdale. “H’m—very much as one
thought.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jewellery … h’m, yes … falsified entries … yes … cheque … Definitely a
dishonest fellow.”
“Yes, sir—in a small way.”
“Quite so. And small things lead to large things.”
“I wonder, sir.”
The Chief Constable looked up.
“Worried, Craddock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why? It’s a straightforward story. Or isn’t it? Let’s see what all these
people you’ve been talking to have to say.”
He drew the report towards him and read it through rapidly.
“The usual thing—plenty of inconsistencies and contradictions. Different
people’s accounts of a few moments of stress never agree. But the main picture
seems clear enough.”
“I know, sir—but it’s an unsatisfactory picture. If you know what I mean—it’s
the wrong picture.”
“Well, let’s take the facts. Rudi Scherz took the 5:20 bus from Medenham to
Chipping Cleghorn arriving there at six o’clock. Evidence of conductor and two
passengers. From the bus stop he walked away in the direction of Little
Paddocks. He got into the house with no particular difficulty—probably through
the front door. He held up the company with a revolver, he fired two shots,
one of which slightly wounded Miss Blacklock, then he killed himself with a
third shot, whether accidentally or deliberately there is not sufficient
evidence to show. The reasons why he did all this are profoundly
unsatisfactory, I agree. But why isn’t really a question we are called upon to
answer. A Coroner’s jury may bring it in suicide—or accidental death.
Whichever verdict it is, it’s the same as far as we’re concerned. We can write
finis.”
“You mean we can always fall back upon Colonel Easterbrook’s psychology,” said
Craddock gloomily.
Rydesdale smiled.
“After all, the Colonel’s probably had a good deal of experience,” he said.
“I’m pretty sick of the psychological jargon that’s used so glibly about
everything nowadays—but we can’t really rule it out.”
“I still feel the picture’s all wrong, sir.”
“Any reason to believe that somebody in the setup at Chipping Cleghorn is
lying to you?”
Craddock hesitated.
“I think the foreign girl knows more than she lets on. But that may be just
prejudice on my part.”
“You think she might possibly have been in it with this fellow? Let him into
the house? Put him up to it?”
“Something of the kind. I wouldn’t put it past her. But that surely indicates
that there really was something valuable, money or jewellery, in the house,
and that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Miss Blacklock negatived it quite
decidedly. So did the others. That leaves us with the proposition that there
was something valuable in the house that nobody knew about—”
“Quite a best-seller plot.”
“I agree it’s ridiculous, sir. The only other point is Miss Bunner’s certainty
that it was a definite attempt by Scherz to murder Miss Blacklock.”
“Well, from what you say—and from her statement, this Miss Bunner—”
“Oh, I agree, sir,” Craddock put in quickly, “she’s an utterly unreliable
witness. Highly suggestible. Anyone could put a thing into her head—but the
interesting thing is that this is quite her own theory—no one has suggested it
to her. Everybody else negatives it. For once she’s not swimming with the
tide. It definitely is her own impression.”
“And why should Rudi Scherz want to kill Miss Blacklock?”
“There you are, sir. I don’t know. Miss Blacklock doesn’t know—unless she’s a
much better liar than I think she is. Nobody knows. So presumably it isn’t
true.”
He sighed.
“Cheer up, Craddock,” said the Chief Constable. “I’m taking you off to lunch
with Sir Henry and myself. The best that the Royal Spa Hotel in Medenham Wells
can provide.”
“Thank you, sir.” Craddock looked slightly surprised.
“You see, we received a letter—” He broke off as Sir Henry Clithering entered
the room. “Ah, there you are, Henry.”
Sir Henry, informal this time, said, “Morning, Dermot.”
“I’ve got something for you, Henry,” said the Chief Constable.
“What’s that?”
“Authentic letter from an old Pussy. Staying at the Royal Spa Hotel. Something
she thinks we might like to know in connection with this Chipping Cleghorn
business.”
“The old Pussies,” said Sir Henry triumphantly. “What did I tell you? They
hear everything. They see everything. And, unlike the famous adage, they speak
all evil. What’s this particular one got hold of?”
Rydesdale consulted the letter.
“Writes just like my old grandmother,” he complained. “Spiky. Like a spider in
the ink bottle, and all underlined. A good deal about how she hopes it won’t
be taking up our valuable time, but might possibly be of some slight
assistance, etc., etc. What’s her name? Jane—something—Murple—no, Marple, Jane
Marple.”
“Ye Gods and Little Fishes,” said Sir Henry, “can it be? George, it’s my own
particular, one and only, four-starred Pussy. The super Pussy of all old
Pussies. And she has managed somehow to be at Medenham Wells, instead of
peacefully at home in St. Mary Mead, just at the right time to be mixed up in
a murder. Once more a murder is announced—for the benefit and enjoyment of
Miss Marple.”
“Well, Henry,” said Rydesdale sardonically, “I’ll be glad to see your paragon.
Come on! | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Come on! We’ll lunch at the Royal Spa and we’ll interview the lady. Craddock,
here, is looking highly sceptical.”
“Not at all, sir,” said Craddock politely.
He thought to himself that sometimes his godfather carried things a bit far.
II
Miss Jane Marple was very nearly, if not quite, as Craddock had pictured her.
She was far more benignant than he had imagined and a good deal older. She
seemed indeed very old. She had snow-white hair and a pink crinkled face and
very soft innocent blue eyes, and she was heavily enmeshed in fleecy wool.
Wool round her shoulders in the form of a lacy cape and wool that she was
knitting and which turned out to be a baby’s shawl.
She was all incoherent delight and pleasure at seeing Sir Henry, and became
quite flustered when introduced to the Chief Constable and Detective-Inspector
Craddock.
“But really, Sir Henry, how fortunate … how very fortunate. So long since I
have seen you … Yes, my rheumatism. Very bad of late. Of course I couldn’t
have afforded this hotel (really fantastic what they charge nowadays) but
Raymond—my nephew, Raymond West, you may remember him—”
“Everyone knows his name.”
“Yes, the dear boy has been so successful with his clever books—he prides
himself upon never writing about anything pleasant. The dear boy insisted on
paying all my expenses. And his dear wife is making a name for herself too, as
an artist. Mostly jugs of dying flowers and broken combs on windowsills. I
never dare tell her, but I still admire Blair Leighton and Alma Tadema. Oh,
but I’m chattering. And the Chief Constable himself—indeed I never expected—so
afraid I shall be taking up his time—”
“Completely ga-ga,” thought the disgusted Detective-Inspector Craddock.
“Come into the Manager’s private room,” said Rydesdale. “We can talk better
there.”
When Miss Marple had been disentangled from her wool, and her spare knitting
pins collected, she accompanied them, fluttering and protesting, to Mr.
Rowlandson’s comfortable sitting-room.
“Now, Miss Marple, let’s hear what you have to tell us,” said the Chief
Constable.
Miss Marple came to the point with unexpected brevity.
“It was a cheque,” she said. “He altered it.”
“He?”
“The young man at the desk here, the one who is supposed to have staged that
hold-up and shot himself.”
“He altered a cheque, you say?”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes. I have it here.” She extracted it from her bag and laid it on the table.
“It came this morning with my others from the Bank. You can see, it was for
seven pounds, and he altered it to seventeen. A stroke in front of the 7, and
teen added after the word seven with a nice artistic little blot just blurring
the whole word. Really very nicely done. A certain amount of practice, I
should say. It’s the same ink, because I wrote the cheque actually at the
desk. I should think he’d done it quite often before, wouldn’t you?”
“He picked the wrong person to do it to, this time,” remarked Sir Henry.
Miss Marple nodded agreement.
“Yes. I’m afraid he would never have gone very far in crime. I was quite the
wrong person. Some busy young married woman, or some girl having a love
affair—that’s the kind who write cheques for all sorts of different sums and
don’t really look through their passbooks carefully. But an old woman who has
to be careful of the pennies, and who has formed habits—that’s quite the wrong
person to choose. Seventeen pounds is a sum I never write a cheque for. Twenty
pounds, a round sum, for the monthly wages and books. And as for my personal
expenditure, I usually cash seven—it used to be five, but everything has gone
up so.”
“And perhaps he reminded you of someone?” prompted Sir Henry, mischief in his
eye.
Miss Marple smiled and shook her head at him.
“You are very naughty, Sir Henry. As a matter of fact he did. Fred Tyler, at
the fish shop. Always slipped an extra 1 in the shillings column. Eating so
much fish as we do nowadays, it made a long bill, and lots of people never
added it up. Just ten shillings in his pocket every time, not much but enough
to get himself a few neckties and take Jessie Spragge (the girl in the
draper’s) to the pictures. Cut a splash, that’s what these young fellows want
to do. Well, the very first week I was here, there was a mistake in my bill. I
pointed it out to the young man and he apologized very nicely and looked very
much upset, but I thought to myself then: ‘You’ve got a shifty eye, young
man.’
“What I mean by a shifty eye,” continued Miss Marple, “is the kind that looks
very straight at you and never looks away or blinks.”
Craddock gave a sudden movement of appreciation. He thought to himself “Jim
Kelly to the life,” remembering a notorious swindler he had helped to put
behind bars not long ago.
“Rudi Scherz was a thoroughly unsatisfactory character,” said Rydesdale. “He’s
got a police record in Switzerland, we find.”
“Made the place too hot for him, I suppose, and came over here with forged
papers?” said Miss Marple.
“Exactly,” said Rydesdale.
“He was going about with the little red-haired waitress from the dining room,”
said Miss Marple. “Fortunately I don’t think her heart’s affected at all. She
just liked to have someone a bit ‘different,’ and he used to give her flowers
and chocolates which the English boys don’t do much. Has she told you all she
knows?” she asked, turning suddenly to Craddock. “Or not quite all yet?”
“I’m not absolutely sure,” said Craddock cautiously.
“I think there’s a little to come,” said Miss Marple. “She’s looking very
worried. Brought me kippers instead of herrings this morning, and forgot the
milk jug. Usually she’s an excellent waitress. Yes, she’s worried. Afraid she
might have to give evidence or something like that. But I expect”—her candid
blue eyes swept over the manly proportions and handsome face of Detective-
Inspector Craddock with truly feminine Victorian appreciation—“that you will
be able to persuade her to tell you all she knows.”
Detective-Inspector Craddock blushed and Sir Henry chuckled.
“It might be important,” said Miss Marple. “He may have told her who it was.”
Rydesdale stared at her.
“Who what was?”
“I express myself so badly. Who it was who put him up to it, I mean.”
“So you think someone put him up to it?”
Miss Marple’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Oh, but surely—I mean … Here’s a personable young man—who filches a little
bit here and a little bit there—alters a small cheque, perhaps helps himself
to a small piece of jewellery if it’s left lying around, or takes a little
money from the till—all sorts of small petty thefts. Keeps himself going in
ready money so that he can dress well, and take a girl about—all that sort of
thing. And then suddenly he goes off, with a revolver, and holds up a room
full of people, and shoots at someone. He’d never have done a thing like
that—not for a moment! He wasn’t that kind of person. It doesn’t make sense.”
Craddock drew in his breath sharply. That was what Letitia Blacklock had said.
What the Vicar’s wife had said. What he himself felt with increasing force. It
didn’t make sense. And now Sir Henry’s old Pussy was saying it, too, with
complete certainty in her fluting old lady’s voice.
“Perhaps you’ll tell us, Miss Marple,” he said, and his voice was suddenly
aggressive, “what did happen, then?”
She turned on him in surprise.
“But how should I know what happened? There was an account in the paper—but it
says so little. One can make conjectures, of course, but one has no accurate
information.”
“George,” said Sir Henry, “would it be very unorthodox if Miss Marple were
allowed to read the notes of the interviews Craddock had with these people at
Chipping Cleghorn?”
“It may be unorthodox,” said Rydesdale, “but I’ve not got where I am by being
orthodox. She can read them. I’d be curious to hear what she has to say.”
Miss Marple was all embarrassment.
“I’m afraid you’ve been listening to Sir Henry. Sir Henry is always too kind.
He thinks too much of any little observations I may have made in the past. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
He thinks too much of any little observations I may have made in the past.
Really, I have no gifts—no gifts at all—except perhaps a certain knowledge of
human nature. People, I find, are apt to be far too trustful. I’m afraid that
I have a tendency always to believe the worst. Not a nice trait. But so often
justified by subsequent events.”
“Read these,” said Rydesdale, thrusting the typewritten sheets upon her. “They
won’t take you long. After all, these people are your kind—you must know a lot
of people like them. You may be able to spot something that we haven’t. The
case is just going to be closed. Let’s have an amateur’s opinion on it before
we shut up the files. I don’t mind telling you that Craddock here isn’t
satisfied. He says, like you, that it doesn’t make sense.”
There was silence whilst Miss Marple read. She put the typewritten sheets down
at last.
“It’s very interesting,” she said with a sigh. “All the different things that
people say—and think. The things they see—or think that they see. And all so
complex, nearly all so trivial and if one thing isn’t trivial, it’s so hard to
spot which one—like a needle in a haystack.”
Craddock felt a twinge of disappointment. Just for a moment or two, he
wondered if Sir Henry might be right about this funny old lady. She might have
put her finger on something—old people were often very sharp. He’d never, for
instance, been able to conceal anything from his own great aunt Emma. She had
finally told him that his nose twitched when he was about to tell a lie.
But just a few fluffy generalities, that was all that Sir Henry’s famous Miss
Marple could produce. He felt annoyed with her and said rather curtly:
“The truth of the matter is that the facts are indisputable. Whatever
conflicting details these people give, they all saw one thing. They saw a
masked man with a revolver and a torch open the door and hold them up, and
whether they think he said ‘Stick ’em up’ or ‘Your money or your life,’ or
whatever phrase is associated with a hold-up in their minds, they saw him.”
“But surely,” said Miss Marple gently. “They couldn’t—actually—have seen
anything at all….”
Craddock caught his breath. She’d got it! She was sharp, after all. He was
testing her by that speech of his, but she hadn’t fallen for it. It didn’t
actually make any difference to the facts, or to what happened, but she’d
realized, as he’d realized, that those people who had seen a masked man
holding them up couldn’t really have seen him at all.
“If I understand rightly,” Miss Marple had a pink flush on her cheeks, her
eyes were bright and pleased as a child’s, “there wasn’t any light in the hall
outside—and not on the landing upstairs either?”
“That’s right,” said Craddock.
“And so, if a man stood in the doorway and flashed a powerful torch into the
room, nobody could see anything but the torch, could they?”
“No, they couldn’t. I tried it out.”
“And so when some of them say they saw a masked man, etc., they are really,
though they don’t realize it, recapitulating from what they saw
afterwards—when the lights came on. So it really all fits in very well,
doesn’t it, on the assumption that Rudi Scherz was the—I think, ‘fall guy’ is
the expression I mean?”
Rydesdale stared at her in such surprise that she grew pinker still. “I may
have got the term wrong,” she murmured.
“I am not very clever about Americanisms—and I understand they change very
quickly. I got it from one of Mr. Dashiel Hammett’s stories. (I understand
from my nephew Raymond that he is considered at the top of the tree in what is
called the ‘tough’ style of literature.) A ‘fall guy,’ if I understand it
rightly, means someone who will be blamed for a crime really committed by
someone else. This Rudi Scherz seems to me exactly the right type for that.
Rather stupid really, you know, but full of cupidity and probably extremely
credulous.”
Rydesdale said, smiling tolerantly:
“Are you suggesting that he was persuaded by someone to go out and take pot
shots at a room full of people? Rather a tall order.”
“I think he was told that it was a joke,” said Miss Marple. “He was paid for
doing it, of course. Paid, that is, to put an advertisement in the newspaper,
to go out and spy out the household premises, and then, on the night in
question, he was to go there, assume a mask and a black cloak and throw open a
door, brandishing a torch, and cry ‘Hands up!’”
“And fire off a revolver?”
“No, no,” said Miss Marple. “He never had a revolver.”
“But everyone says—” began Rydesdale, and stopped.
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “Nobody could possibly have seen a revolver even
if he had one. And I don’t think he had. I think that after he’d called ‘Hands
up’ somebody came up quietly behind him in the darkness and fired those two
shots over his shoulder. It frightened him to death. He swung round and as he
did so, that other person shot him and then let the revolver drop beside
him….”
The three men looked at her. Sir Henry said softly:
“It’s a possible theory.”
“But who is Mr. X who came up in the darkness?” asked the Chief Constable.
Miss Marple coughed.
“You’ll have to find out from Miss Blacklock who wanted to kill her.”
Good for old Dora Bunner, thought Craddock. Instinct against intelligence
every time.
“So you think it was a deliberate attempt on Miss Blacklock’s life,” asked
Rydesdale.
“It certainly has that appearance,” said Miss Marple. “Though there are one or
two difficulties. But what I was really wondering about was whether there
mightn’t be a short cut. I’ve no doubt that whoever arranged this with Rudi
Scherz took pains to tell him to keep his mouth shut, but if he talked to
anybody it would probably be to that girl, Myrna Harris. And he may—he just
may—have dropped some hint as to the kind of person who’d suggested the whole
thing.”
“I’ll see her now,” said Craddock, rising.
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes, do, Inspector Craddock. I’ll feel happier when you have. Because once
she’s told you anything she knows she’ll be much safer.”
“Safer?… Yes, I see.”
He left the room. The Chief Constable said doubtfully, but tactfully:
“Well, Miss Marple, you’ve certainly given us something to think about.”
III
“I’m sorry about it, I am really,” said Myrna Harris. “It’s ever so nice of
you not to be ratty about it. But you see Mum’s the sort of person who fusses
like anything. And it did look as though I’d—what’s the phrase?—been an
accessory before the fact” (the words ran glibly off her tongue). “I mean, I
was afraid you’d never take my word for it that I only thought it was just a
bit of fun.”
Inspector Craddock repeated the reassuring phrase with which he had broken
down Myrna’s resistance.
“I will. I’ll tell you all about it. But you will keep me out of it if you can
because of Mum? It all started with Rudi breaking a date with me. We were
going to the pictures that evening and then he said he wouldn’t be able to
come and I was a bit standoffish with him about it—because after all, it had
been his idea and I don’t fancy being stood up by a foreigner. And he said it
wasn’t his fault, and I said that was a likely story, and then he said he’d
got a bit of a lark on that night—and that he wasn’t going to be out of pocket
by it and how would I fancy a wristwatch? So I said, what do you mean by a
lark? And he said not to tell anyone, but there was to be a party somewhere
and he was to stage a sham hold-up. Then he showed me the advertisement he’d
put in and I had to laugh. He was a bit scornful about it all. Said it was
kid’s stuff, really—but that was just like the English. They never really grew
up—and of course, I said what did he mean by talking like that about Us—and we
had a bit of an argument, but we made it up. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Only you can understand, can’t
you, sir, that when I read all about it, and it hadn’t been a joke at all and
Rudi had shot someone and then shot himself—why, I didn’t know what to do. I
thought if I said I knew about it beforehand, it would look as though I were
in on the whole thing. But it really did seem like a joke when he told me
about it. I’d have sworn he meant it that way. I didn’t even know he’d got a
revolver. He never said anything about taking a revolver with him.”
Craddock comforted her and then asked the most important question.
“Who did he say it was who had arranged this party?”
But there he drew a blank.
“He never said who it was that was getting him to do it. I suppose nobody was,
really. It was all his own doing.”
“He didn’t mention a name? Did he say he—or she?”
“He didn’t say anything except that it was going to be a scream. ‘I shall
laugh to see all their faces.’ That’s what he said.”
He hadn’t had long to laugh, Craddock thought.
IV
“It’s only a theory,” said Rydesdale as they drove back to Medenham. “Nothing
to support it, nothing at all. Put it down as old maid’s vapourings and let it
go, eh?”
“I’d rather not do that, sir.”
“It’s all very improbable. A mysterious X appearing suddenly in the darkness
behind our Swiss friend. Where did he come from? Who was he? Where had he
been?”
“He could have come in through the side door,” said Craddock, “just as Scherz
came. Or,” he added slowly, “he could have come from the kitchen.”
“She could have come from the kitchen, you mean?”
“Yes, sir, it’s a possibility. I’ve not been satisfied about that girl all
along. She strikes me as a nasty bit of goods. All that screaming and
hysterics—it could have been put on. She could have worked on this young
fellow, let him in at the right moment, rigged the whole thing, shot him,
bolted back into the dining room, caught up her bit of silver and her chamois
and started her screaming act.”
“Against that we have the fact that—er—what’s his name—oh, yes, Edmund
Swettenham, definitely says the key was turned on the outside of the door, and
that he turned it to release her. Any other door into that part of the house?”
“Yes, there’s a door to the back stairs and kitchen just under the stairs, but
it seems the handle came off three weeks ago and nobody’s come to put it on
yet. In the meantime you can’t open the door. I’m bound to say that story
seems correct. The spindle and the two handles were on a shelf outside the
door in the hall and they were thickly coated with dust, but of course a
professional would have ways of opening that door all right.”
“Better look up the girl’s record. See if her papers are in order. But it
seems to me the whole thing is very theoretical.”
Again the Chief Constable looked inquiringly at his subordinate. Craddock
replied quietly:
“I know, sir, and of course if you think the case ought to be closed, it must
be. But I’d appreciate it if I could work on it for just a little longer.”
Rather to his surprise the Chief Constable said quietly and approvingly:
“Good lad.”
“There’s the revolver to work on. If this theory is correct, it wasn’t
Scherz’s revolver and certainly nobody so far has been able to say that Scherz
ever had a revolver.”
“It’s a German make.”
“I know, sir. But this country’s absolutely full of Continental makes of guns.
All the Americans brought them back and so did our chaps. You can’t go by
that.”
“True enough. Any other lines of inquiry?”
“There’s got to be a motive. If there’s anything in this theory at all, it
means that last Friday’s business wasn’t a mere joke, and wasn’t an ordinary
hold-up, it was a cold-blooded attempt at murder. Somebody tried to murder
Miss Blacklock. Now why? It seems to me that if anyone knows the answer to
that it must be Miss Blacklock herself.”
“I understand she rather poured cold water on that idea?”
“She poured cold water on the idea that Rudi Scherz wanted to murder her. And
she was quite right. And there’s another thing, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Somebody might try again.”
“That would certainly prove the truth of the theory,” said the Chief Constable
dryly. “By the way, look after Miss Marple, won’t you?”
“Miss Marple? Why?”
“I gather she is taking up residence at the Vicarage in Chipping Cleghorn and
coming into Medenham Wells twice a week for her treatments. It seems that Mrs.
What’shername is the daughter of an old friend of Miss Marple’s. Good sporting
instincts, that old bean. Oh, well, I suppose she hasn’t much excitement in
her life and sniffing round after possible murderers gives her a kick.”
“I wish she wasn’t coming,” said Craddock seriously.
“Going to get under your feet?”
“Not that, sir, but she’s a nice old thing. I shouldn’t like anything to
happen to her … always supposing, I mean, that there’s anything in this
theory.”
Nine
CONCERNING A DOOR
I
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Miss Blacklock—”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I suppose, as the inquest was adjourned for a week,
you’re hoping to get more evidence?”
Detective-Inspector Craddock nodded.
“To begin with, Miss Blacklock, Rudi Scherz was not the son of the proprietor
of the Hotel des Alpes at Montreux. He seems to have started his career as an
orderly in a hospital at Berne. A good many of the patients missed small
pieces of jewellery. Under another name he was a waiter at one of the small
winter sports places. His speciality there was making out duplicate bills in
the restaurant with items on one that didn’t appear on the other. The
difference, of course, went into his pocket. After that he was in a department
store in Zürich. There losses from shoplifting were rather above the average
whilst he was with them. It seems likely that the shoplifting wasn’t entirely
due to customers.”
“He was a picker up of unconsidered trifles, in fact?” said Miss Blacklock
dryly. “Then I was right in thinking that I had not seen him before?”
“You were quite right—no doubt you were pointed out to him at the Royal Spa
Hotel and he pretended to recognize you. The Swiss police had begun to make
his own country rather too hot for him, and he came over here with a very nice
set of forged papers and took a job at the Royal Spa.”
“Quite a good hunting ground,” said Miss Blacklock dryly. “It’s extremely
expensive and very well-off people stay there. Some of them are careless about
their bills, I expect.”
“Yes,” said Craddock. “There were prospects of a satisfactory harvest.”
Miss Blacklock was frowning.
“I see all that,” she said. “But why come to Chipping Cleghorn? What does he
think we’ve got here that could possibly be better than the rich Royal Spa
Hotel?”
“You stick to your statement that there’s nothing of especial value in the
house?”
“Of course there isn’t. I should know. I can assure you Inspector, we’ve not
got an unrecognized Rembrandt or anything like that.”
“Then it looks, doesn’t it, as though your friend Miss Bunner was right? He
came here to attack you.”
(“There, Letty, what did I tell you!”
“Oh, nonsense, Bunny.”)
“But is it nonsense?” said Craddock. “I think, you know, that it’s true.”
Miss Blacklock stared very hard at him.
“Now, let’s get this straight. You really believe that this young man came out
here—having previously arranged by means of an advertisement that half the
village would turn up agog at that particular time—”
“But he mayn’t have meant that to happen,” interrupted Miss Bunner eagerly.
“It may have been just a horrid sort of warning—to you, Letty—that’s how I
read it at the time—‘A murder is announced’—I felt in my bones that it was
sinister—if it had all gone as planned he would have shot you and got away—and
how would anyone have ever known who it was?”
“That’s true enough,” said Miss Blacklock. “But—”
“I knew that advertisement wasn’t a joke, Letty. I said so. And look at
Mitzi—she was frightened, too!”
“Ah,” said Craddock, “Mitzi. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I’d like to know rather more about that young
woman.”
“Her permit and papers are quite in order.”
“I don’t doubt that,” said Craddock dryly. “Scherz’s papers appeared to be
quite correct, too.”
“But why should this Rudi Scherz want to murder me? That’s what you don’t
attempt to explain, Inspector Craddock.”
“There may have been someone behind Scherz,” said Craddock slowly. “Have you
thought of that?”
He used the words metaphorically though it flashed across his mind that if
Miss Marple’s theory was correct, the words would also be true in a literal
sense. In any case they made little impression on Miss Blacklock, who still
looked sceptical.
“The point remains the same,” she said. “Why on earth should anyone want to
murder me?”
“It’s the answer to that that I want you to give me, Miss Blacklock.”
“Well, I can’t! That’s flat. I’ve no enemies. As far as I’m aware I’ve always
lived on perfectly good terms with my neighbours. I don’t know any guilty
secrets about anyone. The whole idea is ridiculous! And if what you’re hinting
is that Mitzi has something to do with this, that’s absurd, too. As Miss
Bunner has just told you she was frightened to death when she saw that
advertisement in the Gazette. She actually wanted to pack up and leave the
house then and there.”
“That may have been a clever move on her part. She may have known you’d press
her to stay.”
“Of course, if you’ve made up your mind about it, you’ll find an answer to
everything. But I can assure you that if Mitzi had taken an unreasoning
dislike to me, she might conceivably poison my food, but I’m sure she wouldn’t
go in for all this elaborate rigmarole.
“The whole idea’s absurd. I believe you police have got an anti-foreigner
complex. Mitzi may be a liar but she’s not a cold-blooded murderer. Go and
bully her if you must. But when she’s departed in a whirl of indignation, or
shut herself up howling in her room, I’ve a good mind to make you cook the
dinner. Mrs. Harmon is bringing some old lady who is staying with her to tea
this afternoon and I wanted Mitzi to make some little cakes—but I suppose
you’ll upset her completely. Can’t you possibly go and suspect somebody else?”
II
Craddock went out to the kitchen. He asked Mitzi questions that he had asked
her before and received the same answers.
Yes, she had locked the front door soon after four o’clock. No, she did not
always do so, but that afternoon she had been nervous because of “that
dreadful advertisement.” It was no good locking the side door because Miss
Blacklock and Miss Bunner went out that way to shut up the ducks and feed the
chickens and Mrs. Haymes usually came in that way from work.
“Mrs. Haymes says she locked the door when she came in at 5:30.”
“Ah, and you believe her—oh, yes, you believe her….”
“Do you think we shouldn’t believe her?”
“What does it matter what I think? You will not believe me.”
“Supposing you give us a chance. You think Mrs. Haymes didn’t lock that door?”
“I am thinking she was very careful not to lock it.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Craddock.
“That young man, he does not work alone. No, he knows where to come, he knows
that when he comes a door will be left open for him—oh, very conveniently
open!”
“What are you trying to say?”
“What is the use of what I say? You will not listen. You say I am a poor
refugee girl who tells lies. You say that a fair-haired English lady, oh, no,
she does not tell lies—she is so British—so honest. So you believe her and not
me. But I could tell you. Oh, yes, I could tell you!”
She banged down a saucepan on the stove.
Craddock was in two minds whether to take notice of what might be only a
stream of spite.
“We note everything we are told,” he said.
“I shall not tell you anything at all. Why should I? You are all alike. You
persecute and despise poor refugees. If I say to you that when, a week before,
that young man come to ask Miss Blacklock for money and she sends him away, as
you say, with a flea in the ear—if I tell you that after that I hear him
talking with Mrs. Haymes—yes, out there in the summerhouse—all you say is that
I make it up!”
And so you probably are making it up, thought Craddock. But he said aloud:
“You couldn’t hear what was said out in the summerhouse.”
“There you are wrong,” screamed Mitzi triumphantly. “I go out to get
nettles—it makes very nice vegetables, nettles. They do not think so, but I
cook it and not tell them. And I hear them talking in there. He say to her
‘But where can I hide?’ And she say ‘I will show you’—and then she say, ‘At a
quarter past six,’ and I think, ‘Ach so! That is how you behave, my fine lady!
After you come back from work, you go out to meet a man. You bring him into
the house.’ Miss Blacklock, I think, she will not like that. She will turn you
out. I will watch, I think, and listen and then I will tell Miss Blacklock.
But I understand now I was wrong. It was not love she planned with him, it was
to rob and to murder. But you will say I make all this up. Wicked Mitzi, you
will say. I will take her to prison.”
Craddock wondered. She might be making it up. But possibly she might not. He
asked cautiously:
“You are sure it was this Rudi Scherz she was talking to?”
“Of course I am sure. He just leave and I see him go from the drive across to
the summerhouse. And presently,” said Mitzi defiantly, “I go out to see if
there are any nice young green nettles.”
Would there, the Inspector wondered, be any nice young green nettles in
October? But he appreciated that Mitzi had had to produce a hurried reason for
what had undoubtedly been nothing more than plain snooping.
“You didn’t hear any more than what you have told me?”
Mitzi looked aggrieved.
“That Miss Bunner, the one with the long nose, she call and call me. Mitzi!
Mitzi! So I have to go. Oh, she is irritating. Always interfering. Says she
will teach me to cook. Her cooking! It tastes, yes, everything she does, of
water, water, water!”
“Why didn’t you tell me this the other day?” asked Craddock sternly.
“Because I did not remember—I did not think … Only afterwards do I say to
myself, it was planned then—planned with her.”
“You are quite sure it was Mrs. Haymes?”
“Oh, yes, I am sure. Oh, yes, I am very sure. She is a thief, that Mrs.
Haymes. A thief and the associate of thieves. What she gets for working in the
garden, it is not enough for such a fine lady, no. She has to rob Miss
Blacklock who has been kind to her. Oh, she is bad, bad, bad, that one!”
“Supposing,” said the Inspector, watching her closely, “that someone was to
say that you had been seen talking to Rudi Scherz?”
The suggestion had less effect than he had hoped for. Mitzi merely snorted and
tossed her head.
“If anyone say they see me talking to him, that is lies, lies, lies, lies,”
she said contemptuously. “To tell lies about anyone, that is easy, but in
England you have to prove them true. Miss Blacklock tells me that, and it is
true, is it not? I do not speak with murderers and thieves. And no English
policeman shall say I do. And how can I do cooking for lunch if you are here,
talk, talk, talk? Go out of my kitchens, please. I want now to make a very
careful sauce.”
Craddock went obediently. He was a little shaken in his suspicions of Mitzi.
Her story about Phillipa Haymes had been told with great conviction. Mitzi
might be a liar (he thought she was), but he fancied that there might be some
substratum of truth in this particular tale. He resolved to speak to Phillipa
on the subject. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
He resolved to speak to Phillipa
on the subject. She had seemed to him when he questioned her a quiet, well-
bred young woman. He had had no suspicion of her.
Crossing the hall, in his abstraction, he tried to open the wrong door. Miss
Bunner, descending the staircase, hastily put him right.
“Not that door,” she said. “It doesn’t open. The next one to the left. Very
confusing, isn’t it? So many doors.”
“There are a good many,” said Craddock, looking up and down the narrow hall.
Miss Bunner amiably enumerated them for him.
“First the door to the cloakroom, and then the cloaks cupboard door and then
the dining room—that’s on that side. And on this side, the dummy door that you
were trying to get through and then there’s the drawing room door proper, and
then the china cupboard and the door of the little flower room, and at the end
the side door. Most confusing. Especially these two being so near together.
I’ve often tried the wrong one by mistake. We used to have the hall table
against it, as a matter of fact, but then we moved it along against the wall
there.”
Craddock had noted, almost mechanically, a thin line horizontally across the
panels of the door he had been trying to open. He realized now it was the mark
where the table had been. Something stirred vaguely in his mind as he asked,
“Moved? How long ago?”
In questioning Dora Bunner there was fortunately no need to give a reason for
any question. Any query on any subject seemed perfectly natural to the
garrulous Miss Bunner who delighted in the giving of information, however
trivial.
“Now let me see, really quite recently—ten days or a fortnight ago.”
“Why was it moved?”
“I really can’t remember. Something to do with the flowers. I think Phillipa
did a big vase—she arranges flowers quite beautifully—all autumn colouring and
twigs and branches, and it was so big it caught your hair as you went past,
and so Phillipa said, ‘Why not move the table along and anyway the flowers
would look much better against the bare wall than against the panels of the
door.’ Only we had to take down Wellington at Waterloo. Not a print I’m really
very fond of. We put it under the stairs.”
“It’s not really a dummy, then?” Craddock asked, looking at the door.”
“Oh, no, it’s a real door, if that’s what you mean. It’s the door of the small
drawing room, but when the rooms were thrown into one, one didn’t need two
doors, so this one was fastened up.”
“Fastened up?” Craddock tried it again, gently. “You mean it’s nailed up? Or
just locked?”
“Oh, locked, I think, and bolted too.”
He saw the bolt at the top and tried it. The bolt slid back easily—too
easily….
“When was it last open?” he asked Miss Bunner.
“Oh, years and years ago, I imagine. It’s never been opened since I’ve been
here, I know that.”
“You don’t know where the key is?”
“There are a lot of keys in the hall drawer. It’s probably among those.”
Craddock followed her and looked at a rusty assortment of old keys pushed far
back in the drawer. He scanned them and selected one that looked different
from the rest and went back to the door. The key fitted and turned easily. He
pushed and the door slid open noiselessly.
“Oh, do be careful,” cried Miss Bunner. “There may be something resting
against it inside. We never open it.”
“Don’t you?” said the Inspector.
His face now was grim. He said with emphasis:
“This door’s been opened quite recently, Miss Bunner. The lock’s been oiled
and the hinges.”
She stared at him, her foolish face agape.
“But who could have done that?” she asked.
“That’s what I mean to find out,” said Craddock grimly. He thought—“X from
outside? No—X was here—in this house—X was in the drawing room that night….”
Ten
PIP AND EMMA
I
Miss Blacklock listened to him this time with more attention. She was an
intelligent woman, as he had known, and she grasped the implications of what
he had to tell her.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That does alter things … No one had any right to
meddle with that door. Nobody has meddled with it to my knowledge.”
“You see what it means,” the Inspector urged. “When the lights went out,
anybody in this room the other night could have slipped out of that door, come
up behind Rudi Scherz and fired at you.”
“Without being seen or heard or noticed?”
“Without being seen or heard or noticed. Remember when the lights went out
people moved, exclaimed, bumped into each other. And after that all that could
be seen was the blinding light of the electric torch.”
Miss Blacklock said slowly, “And you believe that one of those people—one of
my nice commonplace neighbours—slipped out and tried to murder me? Me? But
why? For goodness’ sake, why?”
“I’ve a feeling that you must know the answer to that question, Miss
Blacklock.”
“But I don’t, Inspector. I can assure you, I don’t.”
“Well, let’s make a start. Who gets your money if you were to die?”
Miss Blacklock said rather reluctantly:
“Patrick and Julia. I’ve left the furniture in this house and a small annuity
to Bunny. Really, I’ve not much to leave. I had holdings in German and Italian
securities which became worthless, and what with taxation, and the lower
percentages that are now paid on invested capital, I can assure you I’m not
worth murdering—I put most of my money into an annuity about a year ago.”
“Still, you have some income, Miss Blacklock, and your nephew and niece would
come into it.”
“And so Patrick and Julia would plan to murder me? I simply don’t believe it.
They’re not desperately hard up or anything like that.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“No. I suppose I only know it from what they’ve told me … But I really refuse
to suspect them. Some day I might be worth murdering, but not now.”
“What do you mean by some day you might be worth murdering, Miss Blacklock?”
Inspector Craddock pounced on the statement.
“Simply that one day—possibly quite soon—I may be a very rich woman.”
“That sounds interesting. Will you explain?”
“Certainly. You may not know it, but for more than twenty years I was
secretary to and closely associated with Randall Goedler.”
Craddock was interested. Randall Goedler had been a big name in the world of
finance. His daring speculations and the rather theatrical publicity with
which he surrounded himself had made him a personality not quickly forgotten.
He had died, if Craddock remembered rightly, in 1937 or 1938.
“He’s rather before your time, I expect,” said Miss Blacklock. “But you’ve
probably heard of him.”
“Oh, yes. He was a millionaire, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, several times over—though his finances fluctuated. He always risked most
of what he made on some new coup.”
She spoke with a certain animation, her eyes brightened by memory.
“Anyway he died a very rich man. He had no children. He left his fortune in
trust for his wife during her lifetime and after death to me absolutely.”
A vague memory stirred in the Inspector’s mind.
IMMENSE FORTUNE TO COME TO FAITHFUL SECRETARY
—something of that kind.
“For the last twelve years or so,” said Miss Blacklock with a slight twinkle,
“I’ve had an excellent motive for murdering Mrs. Goedler—but that doesn’t help
you, does it?”
“Did—excuse me for asking this—did Mrs. Goedler resent her husband’s
disposition of his fortune?”
Miss Blacklock was now looking frankly amused.
“You needn’t be so very discreet. What you really mean is, was I Randall
Goedler’s mistress? No, I wasn’t. I don’t think Randall ever gave me a
sentimental thought, and I certainly didn’t give him one. He was in love with
Belle (his wife), and remained in love with her until he died. I think in all
probability it was gratitude on his part that prompted his making his will.
You see, Inspector, in the very early days, when Randall was still on an
insecure footing, he came very near to disaster. It was a question of just a
few thousands of actual cash. It was a big coup, and a very exciting one;
daring, as all his schemes were; but he just hadn’t got that little bit of
cash to tide him over. I came to the rescue. I had a little money of my own. I
believed in Randall. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I had a little money of my own. I
believed in Randall. I sold every penny I had out and gave it to him. It did
the trick. A week later he was an immensely wealthy man.
“After that, he treated me more or less as a junior partner. Oh! they were
exciting days.” She sighed. “I enjoyed it all thoroughly. Then my father died,
and my only sister was left a hopeless invalid. I had to give it all up and go
and look after her. Randall died a couple of years later. I had made quite a
lot of money during our association and I didn’t really expect him to leave me
anything, but I was very touched, yes, and very proud to find that if Belle
predeceased me (and she was one of those delicate creatures whom everyone
always says won’t live long) I was to inherit his entire fortune. I think
really the poor man didn’t know who to leave it to. Belle’s a dear, and she
was delighted about it. She’s really a very sweet person. She lives up in
Scotland. I haven’t seen her for years—we just write at Christmas. You see, I
went with my sister to a sanatorium in Switzerland just before the war. She
died of consumption out there.”
She was silent for a moment or two, then said:
“I only came back to England just over a year ago.”
“You said you might be a rich woman very soon … How soon?”
“I heard from the nurse attendant who looks after Belle Goedler that Belle is
sinking rapidly. It may be—only a few weeks.”
She added sadly:
“The money won’t mean much to me now. I’ve got quite enough for my rather
simple needs. Once I should have enjoyed playing the markets again—but now …
Oh, well, one grows old. Still, you do see, Inspector, don’t you, that if
Patrick and Julia wanted to kill me for a financial reason they’d be crazy not
to wait for another few weeks.”
“Yes, Miss Blacklock, but what happens if you should predecease Mrs. Goedler?
Who does the money go to then?”
“D’you know, I’ve never really thought. Pip and Emma, I suppose….”
Craddock stared and Miss Blacklock smiled.
“Does that sound rather crazy? I believe, if I predecease Belle, the money
would go to the legal offspring—or whatever the term is—of Randall’s only
sister, Sonia. Randall had quarrelled with his sister. She married a man whom
he considered a crook and worse.”
“And was he a crook?”
“Oh, definitely, I should say. But I believe a very attractive person to
women. He was a Greek or a Roumanian or something—what was his name
now—Stamfordis, Dmitri Stamfordis.”
“Randall Goedler cut his sister out of his will when she married this man?”
“Oh, Sonia was a very wealthy woman in her own right. Randall had already
settled packets of money on her, as far as possible in a way so that her
husband couldn’t touch it. But I believe that when the lawyers urged him to
put in someone in case I predeceased Belle, he reluctantly put down Sonia’s
offspring, simply because he couldn’t think of anyone else and he wasn’t the
sort of man to leave money to charities.”
“And there were children of the marriage?”
“Well, there are Pip and Emma.” She laughed. “I know it sounds ridiculous. All
I know is that Sonia wrote once to Belle after her marriage, telling her to
tell Randall that she was extremely happy and that she had just had twins and
was calling them Pip and Emma. As far as I know she never wrote again. But
Belle, of course, may be able to tell you more.”
Miss Blacklock had been amused by her own recital. The Inspector did not look
amused.
“It comes to this,” he said. “If you had been killed the other night, there
are presumably at least two people in the world who would have come into a
very large fortune. You are wrong, Miss Blacklock, when you say that there is
no one who has a motive for desiring your death. There are two people, at
least, who are vitally interested. How old would this brother and sister be?”
Miss Blacklock frowned.
“Let me see … 1922… no—it’s difficult to remember … I suppose about twenty-
five or twenty-six.” Her face had sobered. “But you surely don’t think—?”
“I think somebody shot at you with the intent to kill you. I think it possible
that that same person or persons might try again. I would like you, if you
will, to be very very careful, Miss Blacklock. One murder has been arranged
and did not come off. I think it possible that another murder may be arranged
very soon.”
II
Phillipa Haymes straightened her back and pushed back a tendril of hair from
her damp forehead. She was cleaning a flower border.
“Yes, Inspector?”
She looked at him inquiringly. In return he gave her a rather closer scrutiny
than he had done before. Yes, a good-looking girl, a very English type with
her pale ash-blonde hair and her rather long face. An obstinate chin and
mouth. Something of repression—of tautness about her. The eyes were blue, very
steady in their glance, and told you nothing at all. The sort of girl, he
thought, who would keep a secret well.
“I’m sorry always to bother you when you’re at work, Mrs. Haymes,” he said,
“but I didn’t want to wait until you came back for lunch. Besides, I thought
it might be easier to talk to you here, away from Little Paddocks.”
“Yes, Inspector?”
No emotion and little interest in her voice. But was there a note of
wariness—or did he imagine it?
“A certain statement has been made to me this morning. This statement concerns
you.”
Phillipa raised her eyebrows very slightly.
“You told me, Mrs. Haymes, that this man, Rudi Scherz, was quite unknown to
you?”
“Yes.”
“That when you saw him there, dead, it was the first time you had set eyes on
him. Is that so?”
“Certainly. I had never seen him before.”
“You did not, for instance, have a conversation with him in the summerhouse of
Little Paddocks?”
“In the summerhouse?”
He was almost sure he caught a note of fear in her voice.
“Yes, Mrs. Haymes.”
“Who says so?”
“I am told that you had a conversation with this man, Rudi Scherz, and that he
asked you where he could hide and you replied that you would show him, and
that a time, a quarter past six, was definitely mentioned. It would be a
quarter past six, roughly, when Scherz would get here from the bus stop on the
evening of the hold-up.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Phillipa gave a short scornful laugh. She
looked amused.
“I don’t know who told you that,” she said. “At least I can guess. It’s a very
silly, clumsy story—spiteful, of course. For some reason Mitzi dislikes me
even more than she dislikes the rest of us.”
“You deny it?”
“Of course it’s not true … I never met or saw Rudi Scherz in my life, and I
was nowhere near the house that morning. I was over here, working.”
Inspector Craddock said very gently:
“Which morning?”
There was a momentary pause. Her eyelids flickered.
“Every morning. I’m here every morning. I don’t get away until one o’clock.”
She added scornfully:
“It’s no good listening to what Mitzi tells you. She tells lies all the time.”
III
“And that’s that,” said Craddock when he was walking away with Sergeant
Fletcher. “Two young women whose stories flatly contradict each other. Which
one am I to believe?”
“Everyone seems to agree that this foreign girl tells whoppers,” said
Fletcher. “It’s been my experience in dealing with aliens that lying comes
more easy than truth-telling. Seems to be clear she’s got a spite against this
Mrs. Haymes.”
“So, if you were me, you’d believe Mrs. Haymes?”
“Unless you’ve got reason to think otherwise, sir.”
And Craddock hadn’t, not really—only the remembrance of a pair of oversteady
blue eyes and the glib enunciation of the words that morning. For to the best
of his recollection he hadn’t said whether the interview in the summerhouse
had taken place in the morning or the afternoon.
Still, Miss Blacklock, or if not Miss Blacklock, certainly Miss Bunner, might
have mentioned the visit of the young foreigner who had come to cadge his fare
back to Switzerland. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
And Phillipa Haymes might have therefore assumed that the
conversation was supposed to have taken place on that particular morning.
But Craddock still thought that there had been a note of fear in her voice as
she asked:
“In the summerhouse?”
He decided to keep an open mind on the subject.
IV
It was very pleasant in the Vicarage garden. One of those sudden spells of
autumn warmth had descended upon England. Inspector Craddock could never
remember if it was St. Martin’s or St. Luke’s Summer, but he knew that it was
very pleasant—and also very enervating. He sat in a deck chair provided for
him by an energetic Bunch, just on her way to a Mothers’ Meeting, and, well
protected with shawls and a large rug round her knees, Miss Marple sat
knitting beside him. The sunshine, the peace, the steady click of Miss
Marple’s knitting needles, all combined to produce a soporific feeling in the
Inspector. And yet, at the same time, there was a nightmarish feeling at the
back of his mind. It was like a familiar dream where an undertone of menace
grows and finally turns Ease into Terror….
He said abruptly, “You oughtn’t to be here.”
Miss Marple’s needles stopped clicking for a moment. Her placid china-blue
eyes regarded him thoughtfully.
She said, “I know what you mean. You’re a very conscientious boy. But it’s
perfectly all right. Bunch’s father (he was vicar of our parish, a very fine
scholar) and her mother (who is a most remarkable woman—real spiritual power)
are very old friends of mine. It’s the most natural thing in the world that
when I’m at Medenham I should come on here to stay with Bunch for a little.”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Craddock. “But—but don’t snoop around … I’ve a feeling—I
have really—that it isn’t safe.”
Miss Marple smiled a little.
“But I’m afraid,” she said, “that we old women always do snoop. It would be
very odd and much more noticeable if I didn’t. Questions about mutual friends
in different parts of the world and whether they remember so and so, and do
they remember who it was that Lady Somebody’s daughter married? All that
helps, doesn’t it?”
“Helps?” said the Inspector, rather stupidly.
“Helps to find out if people are who they say they are,” said Miss Marple.
She went on:
“Because that’s what’s worrying you, isn’t it? And that’s really the
particular way the world has changed since the war. Take this place, Chipping
Cleghorn, for instance. It’s very much like St. Mary Mead where I live.
Fifteen years ago one knew who everybody was. The Bantrys in the big house—and
the Hartnells and the Price Ridleys and the Weatherbys … They were people
whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, or whose aunts
and uncles, had lived there before them. If somebody new came to live there,
they brought letters of introduction, or they’d been in the same regiment or
served in the same ship as someone there already. If anybody new—really
new—really a stranger—came, well, they stuck out—everybody wondered about them
and didn’t rest till they found out.”
She nodded her head gently.
“But it’s not like that any more. Every village and small country place is
full of people who’ve just come and settled there without any ties to bring
them. The big houses have been sold, and the cottages have been converted and
changed. And people just come—and all you know about them is what they say of
themselves. They’ve come, you see, from all over the world. People from India
and Hong Kong and China, and people who used to live in France and Italy in
little cheap places and odd islands. And people who’ve made a little money and
can afford to retire. But nobody knows any more who anyone is. You can have
Benares brassware in your house and talk about tiffin and chota Hazri—and you
can have pictures of Taormina and talk about the English church and the
library—like Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. You can come from the South
of France, or have spent your life in the East. People take you at your own
valuation. They don’t wait to call until they’ve had a letter from a friend
saying that the So-and-So’s are delightful people and she’s known them all
their lives.”
And that, thought Craddock, was exactly what was oppressing him. He didn’t
know. There were just faces and personalities and they were backed up by
ration books and identity cards—nice neat identity cards with numbers on them,
without photographs or fingerprints. Anybody who took the trouble could have a
suitable identity card—and partly because of that, the subtler links that had
held together English social rural life had fallen apart. In a town nobody
expected to know his neighbour. In the country now nobody knew his neighbour
either, though possibly he still thought he did….
Because of the oiled door, Craddock knew that there had been somebody in
Letitia Blacklock’s drawing room who was not the pleasant friendly country
neighbour he or she pretended to be….
And because of that he was afraid for Miss Marple who was frail and old and
who noticed things….
He said: “We can, to a certain extent, check up on these people …” But he knew
that that wasn’t so easy. India and China and Hong Kong and the South of
France … It wasn’t as easy as it would have been fifteen years ago. There were
people, as he knew only too well, who were going about the country with
borrowed identities—borrowed from people who had met sudden death by
“incidents’ in the cities. There were organizations who bought up identities,
who faked identity and ration cards—there were a hundred small rackets
springing into being. You could check up—but it would take time—and time was
what he hadn’t got, because Randall Goedler’s widow was very near death.
It was then that, worried and tired, lulled by the sunshine, he told Miss
Marple about Randall Goedler and about Pip and Emma.
“Just a couple of names,” he said. “Nicknames at that! They mayn’t exist. They
may be respectable citizens living in Europe somewhere. On the other hand one,
or both, of them may be here in Chipping Cleghorn.”
Twenty-five years old approximately—Who filled that description? He said,
thinking aloud:
“That nephew and niece of hers—or cousins or whatever they are … I wonder when
she saw them last—”
Miss Marple said gently: “I’ll find out for you, shall I?”
“Now, please, Miss Marple, don’t—”
“It will be quite simple, Inspector, you really need not worry. And it won’t
be noticeable if I do it, because, you see, it won’t be official. If there is
anything wrong you don’t want to put them on their guard.”
Pip and Emma, thought Craddock, Pip and Emma? He was getting obsessed by Pip
and Emma. That attractive dare-devil young man, the good-looking girl with the
cool stare….
He said: “I may find out more about them in the next forty-eight hours. I’m
going up to Scotland. Mrs. Goedler, if she’s able to talk, may know a good
deal more about them.”
“I think that’s a very wise move.” Miss Marple hesitated. “I hope,” she
murmured, “that you have warned Miss Blacklock to be careful?”
“I’ve warned her, yes. And I shall leave a man here to keep an unobtrusive eye
on things.”
He avoided Miss Marple’s eye which said plainly enough that a policeman
keeping an eye on things would be little good if the danger was in the family
circle….
“And remember,” said Craddock, looking squarely at her, “I’ve warned you.”
“I assure you, Inspector,” said Miss Marple, “that I can take care of myself.” | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Eleven
MISS MARPLE COMES TO TEA
I
If Letitia Blacklock seemed slightly absentminded when Mrs. Harmon came to tea
and brought a guest who was staying with her, Miss Marple, the guest in
question, was hardly likely to notice the fact since it was the first time she
had met her.
The old lady was very charming in her gentle gossipy fashion. She revealed
herself almost at once to be one of those old ladies who have a constant
preoccupation with burglars.
“They can get in anywhere, my dear,” she assured her hostess, “absolutely
anywhere nowadays. So many new American methods. I myself pin my faith to a
very old-fashioned device. A cabin hook and eye. They can pick locks and draw
back bolts but a brass hook and eye defeats them. Have you ever tried that?”
“I’m afraid we’re not very good at bolts and bars,” said Miss Blacklock
cheerfully. “There’s really nothing much to burgle.”
“A chain on the front door,” Miss Marple advised. “Then the maid need only
open it a crack and see who is there and they can’t force their way in.”
“I expect Mitzi, our Mittel European, would love that.”
“The hold-up you had must have been very, very frightening,” said Miss Marple.
“Bunch has been telling me all about it.”
“I was scared stiff,” said Bunch.
“It was an alarming experience,” admitted Miss Blacklock.
“It really seems like Providence that the man tripped himself up and shot
himself. These burglars are so violent nowadays. How did he get in?”
“Well, I’m afraid we don’t lock our doors much.”
“Oh, Letty,” exclaimed Miss Bunner. “I forgot to tell you the Inspector was
most peculiar this morning. He insisted on opening the second door—you
know—the one that’s never been opened—the one over there. He hunted for the
key and everything and said the door had been oiled. But I can’t see why
because—”
Too late she got Miss Blacklock’s signal to be quiet, and paused openmouthed.
“Oh, Lotty, I’m so—sorry—I mean, oh, I do beg your pardon, Letty—oh, dear, how
stupid I am.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Miss Blacklock, but she was annoyed. “Only I don’t
think Inspector Craddock wants that talked about. I didn’t know you had been
there when he was experimenting, Dora. You do understand, don’t you, Mrs.
Harmon?”
“Oh, yes,” said Bunch. “We won’t breathe a word, will we, Aunt Jane. But I
wonder why he—”
She relapsed into thought. Miss Bunner fidgeted and looked miserable, bursting
out at last: “I always say the wrong thing—Oh, dear, I’m nothing but a trial
to you, Letty.”
Miss Blacklock said quickly, “You’re my great comfort, Dora. And anyway in a
small place like Chipping Cleghorn there aren’t really any secrets.”
“Now that is very true,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid, you know, that things
do get round in the most extraordinary way. Servants, of course, and yet it
can’t only be that, because one has so few servants nowadays. Still, there are
the daily women and perhaps they are worse, because they go to everybody in
turn and pass the news round.”
“Oh!” said Bunch Harmon suddenly. “I’ve got it! Of course, if that door could
open too, someone might have gone out of here in the dark and done the hold-
up—only of course they didn’t—because it was the man from the Royal Spa Hotel.
Or wasn’t it?… No, I don’t see after all …” She frowned.
“Did it all happen in this room then?” asked Miss Marple, adding
apologetically: “I’m afraid you must think me sadly curious, Miss
Blacklock—but it really is so very exciting—just like something one reads
about in the paper—I’m just longing to hear all about it and to picture it
all, if you know what I mean—”
Immediately Miss Marple received a confused and voluble account from Bunch and
Miss Bunner—with occasional emendations and corrections from Miss Blacklock.
In the middle of it Patrick came in and good-naturedly entered into the spirit
of the recital—going so far as to enact himself the part of Rudi Scherz.
“And Aunt Letty was there—in the corner by the archway … Go and stand there,
Aunt Letty.”
Miss Blacklock obeyed, and then Miss Marple was shown the actual bullet holes.
“What a marvellous—what a providential escape,” she gasped.
“I was just going to offer my guests cigarettes—” Miss Blacklock indicated the
big silver box on the table.
“People are so careless when they smoke,” said Miss Bunner disapprovingly.
“Nobody really respects good furniture as they used to do. Look at the horrid
burn somebody made on this beautiful table by putting a cigarette down on it.
Disgraceful.”
Miss Blacklock sighed.
“Sometimes, I’m afraid, one thinks too much of one’s possessions.”
“But it’s such a lovely table, Letty.”
Miss Bunner loved her friend’s possessions with as much fervour as though they
had been her own. Bunch Harmon had always thought it was a very endearing
trait in her. She showed no sign of envy.
“It is a lovely table,” said Miss Marple politely. “And what a very pretty
china lamp on it.”
Again it was Miss Bunner who accepted the compliment as though she and not
Miss Blacklock was the owner of the lamp.
“Isn’t it delightful? Dresden. There is a pair of them. The other’s in the
spare room, I think.”
“You know where everything in this house is, Dora—or you think you do,” said
Miss Blacklock, good-humouredly. “You care far more about my things than I
do.”
Miss Bunner flushed.
“I do like nice things,” she said. Her voice was half defiant—half wistful.
“I must confess,” said Miss Marple, “that my own few possessions are very dear
to me, too—so many memories, you know. It’s the same with photographs. People
nowadays have so few photographs about. Now I like to keep all the pictures of
my nephews and nieces as babies—and then as children—and so on.”
“You’ve got a horrible one of me, aged three,” said Bunch. “Holding a fox
terrier and squinting.”
“I expect your aunt has many photographs of you,” said Miss Marple, turning to
Patrick.
“Oh, we’re only distant cousins,” said Patrick.
“I believe Elinor did send me one of you as a baby, Pat,” said Miss Blacklock.
“But I’m afraid I didn’t keep it. I’d really forgotten how many children she’d
had or what their names were until she wrote me about you two being over
here.”
“Another sign of the times,” said Miss Marple. “Nowadays one so often doesn’t
know one’s younger relations at all. In the old days, with all the big family
reunions, that would have been impossible.”
“I last saw Pat and Julia’s mother at a wedding thirty years ago,” said Miss
Blacklock. “She was a very pretty girl.”
“That’s why she has such handsome children,” said Patrick with a grin.
“You’ve got a marvellous old album,” said Julia. “Do you remember, Aunt Letty,
we looked through it the other day. The hats!”
“And how smart we thought ourselves,” said Miss Blacklock with a sigh.
“Never mind, Aunt Letty,” said Patrick, “Julia will come across a snapshot of
herself in about thirty years’ time—and won’t she think she looks a guy!”
II
“Did you do that on purpose?” said Bunch, as she and Miss Marple were walking
home. “Talk about photographs, I mean?”
“Well, my dear, it is interesting to know that Miss Blacklock didn’t know
either of her two young relatives by sight … Yes—I think Inspector Craddock
will be interested to hear that.”
Twelve
MORNING ACTIVITIES IN CHIPPING CLEGHORN
I
Edmund Swettenham sat down rather precariously on a garden roller.
“Good morning, Phillipa,” he said.
“Hallo.”
“Are you very busy?”
“Moderately.”
“What are you doing?”
“Can’t you see?”
“No. I’m not a gardener. You seem to be playing with earth in some fashion.”
“I’m pricking out winter lettuce.”
“Pricking out? What a curious term! Like pinking. Do you know what pinking is?
I only learnt the other day. I always thought it was a term for professional
duelling.”
“Do you want anything particular?” asked Phillipa coldly.
“Yes. I want to see you.”
Phillipa gave him a quick glance.
“I wish you wouldn’t come here like this. Mrs. Lucas won’t like it.”
“Doesn’t she allow you to have followers?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Followers. That’s another nice word. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
That’s another nice word. It describes my attitude perfectly.
Respectful—at a distance—but firmly pursuing.”
“Please go away, Edmund. You’ve no business to come here.”
“You’re wrong,” said Edmund triumphantly. “I have business here. Mrs. Lucas
rang up my mamma this morning and said she had a good many vegetable marrows.”
“Masses of them.”
“And would we like to exchange a pot of honey for a vegetable marrow or so.”
“That’s not a fair exchange at all! Vegetable marrows are quite unsaleable at
the moment—everybody has such a lot.”
“Naturally. That’s why Mrs. Lucas rang up. Last time, if I remember rightly,
the exchange suggested was some skim milk—skim milk, mark you—in exchange for
some lettuces. It was then very early in the season for lettuces. They were
about a shilling each.”
Phillipa did not speak.
Edmund tugged at his pocket and extracted a pot of honey.
“So here,” he said, “is my alibi. Used in a loose and quite indefensible
meaning of the term. If Mrs. Lucas pops her bust round the door of the potting
shed, I’m here in quest of vegetable marrows. There is absolutely no question
of dalliance.”
“I see.”
“Do you ever read Tennyson?” inquired Edmund conversationally. “Not very
often.”
“You should. Tennyson is shortly to make a comeback in a big way. When you
turn on your wireless in the evening it will be the Idylls of the King you
will hear and not interminable Trollope. I always thought the Trollope pose
was the most unbearable affectation. Perhaps a little of Trollope, but not to
drown in him. But speaking of Tennyson, have you read Maud?”
“Once, long ago.”
“It’s got some points about it.” He quoted softly:
“‘Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.’ That’s you, Phillipa.”
“Hardly a compliment!”
“No, it wasn’t meant to be. I gather Maud got under the poor fellow’s skin
just like you’ve got under mine.”
“Don’t be absurd, Edmund.”
“Oh, hell, Phillipa, why are you like you are? What goes on behind your
splendidly regular features? What do you think? What do you feel? Are you
happy, or miserable, or frightened, or what? There must be something.”
Phillipa said quietly:
“What I feel is my own business.”
“It’s mine, too. I want to make you talk. I want to know what goes on in that
quiet head of yours. I’ve a right to know. I have really. I didn’t want to
fall in love with you. I wanted to sit quietly and write my book. Such a nice
book, all about how miserable the world is. It’s frightfully easy to be clever
about how miserable everybody is. And it’s all a habit, really. Yes, I’ve
suddenly become convinced of that. After reading a life of Burne Jones.”
Phillipa had stopped pricking out. She was staring at him with a puzzled
frown.
“What has Burne Jones got to do with it?”
“Everything. When you’ve read all about the Pre-Raphaelites you realize just
what fashion is. They were all terrifically hearty and slangy and jolly, and
laughed and joked, and everything was fine and wonderful. That was fashion,
too. They weren’t any happier or heartier than we are. And we’re not any more
miserable than they were. It’s all fashion, I tell you. After the last war, we
went in for sex. Now it’s all frustration. None of it matters. Why are we
talking about all this? I started out to talk about us. Only I got cold feet
and shied off. Because you won’t help me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Talk! Tell me things. Is it your husband? Do you adore him and he’s dead and
so you’ve shut up like a clam? Is that it? All right, you adored him, and he’s
dead. Well, other girls’ husbands are dead—lots of them—and some of the girls
loved their husbands. They tell you so in bars, and cry a bit when they’re
drunk enough, and then want to go to bed with you so that they’ll feel better.
It’s one way of getting over it, I suppose. You’ve got to get over it,
Phillipa. You’re young—and you’re extremely lovely—and I love you like hell.
Talk about your damned husband, tell me about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell. We met and got married.”
“You must have been very young.”
“Too young.”
“Then you weren’t happy with him? Go on, Phillipa.”
“There’s nothing to go on about. We were married. We were as happy as most
people are, I suppose. Harry was born. Ronald went overseas. He—he was killed
in Italy.”
“And now there’s Harry?”
“And now there’s Harry.”
“I like Harry. He’s a really nice kid. He likes me. We get on. What about it,
Phillipa? Shall we get married? You can go on gardening and I can go on
writing my book and in the holidays we’ll leave off working and enjoy
ourselves. We can manage, with tact, not to have to live with Mother. She can
fork out a bit to support her devoted son. I sponge, I write tripey books, I
have defective eyesight and I talk too much. That’s the worst. Will you try
it?”
Phillipa looked at him. She saw a tall rather solemn young man with an anxious
face and large spectacles. His sandy head was rumpled and he was regarding her
with a reassuring friendliness.
“No,” said Phillipa.
“Definitely—no?”
“Definitely no.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Is that all?”
“No, you don’t know anything about anything.”
Edmund considered.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But who does? Phillipa, my adored one—” He broke
off.
A shrill and prolonged yapping was rapidly approaching.
“Pekes in the high hall garden, (said Edmund)
When twilight was falling (only it’s eleven a.m.)
Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil,
They were crying and calling
“Your name doesn’t lend itself to the rhythm, does it? Sounds like an Ode to a
Fountain Pen. Have you got another name?”
“Joan. Please go away. That’s Mrs. Lucas.”
“Joan, Joan, Joan, Joan. Better, but still not good. When greasy Joan the pot
doth keel—that’s not a nice picture of married life, either.”
“Mrs. Lucas is—”
“Oh, hell!” said Edmund. “Get me a blasted vegetable marrow.”
II
Sergeant Fletcher had the house at Little Paddocks to himself.
It was Mitzi’s day off. She always went by the eleven o’clock bus into
Medenham Wells. By arrangement with Miss Blacklock, Sergeant Fletcher had the
run of the house. She and Dora Bunner had gone down to the village.
Fletcher worked fast. Someone in the house had oiled and prepared that door,
and whoever had done it, had done it in order to be able to leave the drawing
room unnoticed as soon as the lights went out. That ruled out Mitzi who
wouldn’t have needed to use the door.
Who was left? The neighbours, Fletcher thought, might also be ruled out. He
didn’t see how they could have found an opportunity to oil and prepare the
door. That left Patrick and Julia Simmons, Phillipa Haymes, and possibly Dora
Bunner. The young Simmonses were in Milchester. Phillipa Haymes was at work.
Sergeant Fletcher was free to search out any secrets he could. But the house
was disappointingly innocent. Fletcher, who was an expert on electricity,
could find nothing suggestive in the wiring or appurtenances of the electric
fixtures to show how the lights had been fused. Making a rapid survey of the
household bedrooms he found an irritating normality. In Phillipa Haymes’ room
were photographs of a small boy with serious eyes, an earlier photo of the
same child, a pile of schoolboy letters, a theatre programme or two. In
Julia’s room there was a drawer full of snapshots of the South of France.
Bathing photos, a villa set amidst mimosa. Patrick’s held some souvenirs of
Naval days. Dora Bunner’s held few personal possessions and they seemed
innocent enough.
And yet, thought Fletcher, someone in the house must have oiled that door. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
And yet, thought Fletcher, someone in the house must have oiled that door.
His thoughts broke off at a sound below stairs. He went quickly to the top of
the staircase and looked down.
Mrs. Swettenham was crossing the hall. She had a basket on her arm. She looked
into the drawing room, crossed the hall and went into the dining room. She
came out again without the basket.
Some faint sound that Fletcher made, a board that creaked unexpectedly under
his feet, made her turn her head. She called up:
“Is that you, Miss Blacklock?”
“No, Mrs. Swettenham, it’s me,” said Fletcher.
Mrs. Swettenham gave a faint scream.
“Oh! how you startled me. I thought it might be another burglar.”
Fletcher came down the stairs.
“This house doesn’t seem very well protected against burglars,” he said. “Can
anybody always walk in and out just as they like?”
“I just brought up some of my quinces,” explained Mrs. Swettenham. “Miss
Blacklock wants to make quince jelly and she hasn’t got a quince tree here. I
left them in the dining room.”
Then she smiled.
“Oh, I see, you mean how did I get in? Well, I just came in through the side
door. We all walk in and out of each other’s houses, Sergeant. Nobody dreams
of locking a door until it’s dark. I mean it would be so awkward, wouldn’t it,
if you brought things and couldn’t get in to leave them? It’s not like the old
days when you rang a bell and a servant always came to answer it.” Mrs.
Swettenham sighed. “In India, I remember,” she said mournfully, “we had
eighteen servants—eighteen. Not counting the ayah. Just as a matter of course.
And at home, when I was a girl, we always had three—though Mother always felt
it was terribly poverty-stricken not to be able to afford a kitchen maid. I
must say that I find life very odd nowadays, Sergeant, though I know one
mustn’t complain. So much worse for the miners always getting psitticosis (or
is that parrot disease?) and having to come out of the mines and try to be
gardeners though they don’t know weeds from spinach.”
She added, as she tripped towards the door, “I mustn’t keep you. I expect
you’re very busy. Nothing else is going to happen, is it?”
“Why should it, Mrs. Swettenham?”
“I just wondered, seeing you here. I thought it might be a gang. You’ll tell
Miss Blacklock about the quinces, won’t you?”
Mrs. Swettenham departed. Fletcher felt like a man who has received an
unexpected jolt. He had been assuming—erroneously, he now perceived—that it
must have been someone in the house who had done the oiling of the door. He
saw now that he was wrong. An outsider had only to wait until Mitzi had
departed by bus and Letitia Blacklock and Dora Bunner were both out of the
house. Such an opportunity must have been simplicity itself. That meant that
he couldn’t rule out anybody who had been in the drawing room that night.
III
“Murgatroyd!”
“Yes, Hinch?”
“I’ve been doing a bit of thinking.”
“Have you, Hinch?”
“Yes, the great brain has been working. You know, Murgatroyd, the whole setup
the other evening was decidedly fishy.”
“Fishy?”
“Yes. Tuck your hair up, Murgatroyd, and take this trowel. Pretend it’s a
revolver.”
“Oh,” said Miss Murgatroyd, nervously.
“All right. It won’t bite you. Now come along to the kitchen door. You’re
going to be the burglar. You stand here. Now you’re going into the kitchen to
hold up a lot of nit-wits. Take the torch. Switch it on.”
“But it’s broad daylight!”
“Use your imagination, Murgatroyd. Switch it on.”
Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm
while she did so.
“Now then,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “off you go. Remember the time you played
Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Women’s Institute? Act. Give it all
you’ve got. ‘Stick ’em up!’ Those are your lines—and don’t ruin them by saying
‘Please.’”
Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and
advanced on the kitchen door.
Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and
stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.
“Stick ’em up!” she fluted, adding vexedly: “Dear me, this is very difficult,
Hinch.”
“Why?”
“The door. It’s a swing door, it keeps coming back and I’ve got both hands
full.”
“Exactly,” boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. “And the drawing room door at Little
Paddocks always swings to. It isn’t a swing door like this, but it won’t stay
open. That’s why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass
doorstop from Elliot’s in the High Street. I don’t mind saying I’ve never
forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute
down most successfully. He’d come down from eight guineas to six pound ten,
and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I’d never seen as
attractive a doorstop, you don’t often get those glass bubbles in that big
size.”
“Perhaps the burglar put the doorstop against the door to keep it open,”
suggested Miss Murgatroyd.
“Use your common sense, Murgatroyd. What does he do? Throw the door open, say
‘Excuse me a moment,’ stoop and put the stop into position and then resume
business by saying ‘Hands up’? Try holding the door with your shoulder.”
“It’s still very awkward,” complained Miss Murgatroyd.
“Exactly,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “A revolver, a torch and a door to hold
open—a bit too much, isn’t it? So what’s the answer?”
Miss Murgatroyd did not attempt to supply an answer. She looked inquiringly
and admiringly at her masterful friend and waited to be enlightened.
“We know he’d got a revolver, because he fired it,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
“And we know he had a torch because we all saw it—that is unless we’re all
victims of mass hypnotism like explanations of the Indian Rope Trick (what a
bore that old Easterbrook is with his Indian stories) so the question is, did
someone hold that door open for him?”
“But who could have done that?”
“Well, you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were
standing directly behind it when the lights went out.” Miss Hinchcliffe
laughed heartily. “Highly suspicious character, aren’t you, Murgatroyd? But
who’d think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel—thank heavens it
isn’t really a revolver. You’d have shot yourself by now!”
IV
“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” muttered Colonel Easterbrook. “Most
extraordinary. Laura.”
“Yes, darling?”
“Come into my dressing room a moment.”
“What is it, darling?”
Mrs. Easterbrook appeared through the open door.
“Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?”
“Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horrid black thing.”
“Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well, it’s not there now.”
“Archie, how extraordinary!”
“You haven’t moved it or anything?”
“Oh, no, I’d never dare to touch the horrid thing.”
“Think old mother whatsername did?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Mrs. Butt would never do a thing like
that. Shall I ask her?”
“No—no, better not. Don’t want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you
remember when it was I showed it to you?”
“Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry
and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked you
what it was.”
“Yes, that’s right. About a week ago. You don’t remember the date?”
Mrs. Easterbrook considered, eyelids down over her eyes, a shrewd brain
working.
“Of course,” she said. “It was Saturday. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“Of course,” she said. “It was Saturday. The day we were to have gone in to
the pictures, but we didn’t.”
“H’m—sure it wasn’t before that? Wednesday? Thursday or even the week before
that again?”
“No, dear,” said Mrs. Easterbrook. “I remember quite distinctly. It was
Saturday the 30th. It just seems a long time because of all the trouble
there’s been. And I can tell you how I remember. It’s because it was the day
after the hold-up at Miss Blacklock’s. Because when I saw your revolver it
reminded me of the shooting the night before.”
“Ah,” said Colonel Easterbrook, “then that’s a great load off my mind.”
“Oh, Archie, why?”
“Just because if that revolver had disappeared before the shooting—well, it
might possibly have been my revolver that was pinched by that Swiss fellow.”
“But how would he have known you had one?”
“These gangs have a most extraordinary communication service. They get to know
everything about a place and who lives there.”
“What a lot you do know, Archie.”
“Ha. Yes. Seen a thing or two in my time. Still as you definitely remember
seeing my revolver after the hold-up—well, that settles it. The revolver that
Swiss fellow used can’t have been mine, can it?”
“Of course it can’t.”
“A great relief. I should have had to go to the police about it. And they ask
a lot of awkward questions. Bound to. As a matter of fact I never took out a
licence for it. Somehow, after a war, one forgets these peacetime regulations.
I looked on it as a war souvenir, not as a firearm.”
“Yes, I see. Of course.”
“But all the same—where on earth can the damned thing be?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Butt took it. She’s always seemed quite honest, but perhaps she
felt nervous after the hold-up and thought she’d like to—to have a revolver in
the house. Of course, she’ll never admit doing that. I shan’t even ask her.
She might get offended. And what should we do then? This is such a big house—I
simply couldn’t—”
“Quite so,” said Colonel Easterbrook. “Better not say anything.”
Thirteen
MORNING ACTIVITIES IN CHIPPING CLEGHORN (CONTINUED)
Miss Marple came out of the Vicarage gate and walked down the little lane that
led into the main street.
She walked fairly briskly with the aid of the Rev. Julian Harmon’s stout
ashplant stick.
She passed the Red Cow and the butcher’s and stopped for a brief moment to
look into the window of Mr. Elliot’s antique shop. This was cunningly situated
next door to the Bluebird Tearooms and Café so that rich motorists, after
stopping for a nice cup of tea and somewhat euphemistically named “Home Made
Cakes” of a bright saffron colour, could be tempted by Mr. Elliot’s
judiciously planned shop window.
In this antique bow frame, Mr. Elliot catered for all tastes. Two pieces of
Waterford glass reposed on an impeccable wine cooler. A walnut bureau, made up
of various bits and pieces, proclaimed itself a Genuine Bargain and on a
table, in the window itself, were a nice assortment of cheap doorknockers and
quaint pixies, a few chipped bits of Dresden, a couple of sad-looking bead
necklaces, a mug with “A Present from Tunbridge Wells” on it, and some tit-
bits of Victorian silver.
Miss Marple gave the window her rapt attention, and Mr. Elliot, an elderly
obese spider, peeped out of his web to appraise the possibilities of this new
fly.
But just as he decided that the charms of the Present from Tunbridge Wells
were about to be too much for the lady who was staying at the Vicarage (for of
course Mr. Elliot, like everybody else, knew exactly who she was), Miss Marple
saw out of the corner of her eye Miss Dora Bunner entering the Bluebird Café,
and immediately decided that what she needed to counteract the cold wind was a
nice cup of morning coffee.
Four or five ladies were already engaged in sweetening their morning shopping
by a pause for refreshment. Miss Marple, blinking a little in the gloom of the
interior of the Bluebird, and hovering artistically, was greeted by the voice
of Dora Bunner at her elbow.
“Oh, good morning, Miss Marple. Do sit down here. I’m all alone.”
“Thank you.”
Miss Marple subsided gratefully on to the rather angular little blue-painted
armchair which the Bluebird affected.
“Such a sharp wind,” she complained. “And I can’t walk very fast because of my
rheumatic leg.”
“Oh, I know. I had sciatica one year—and really most of the time I was in
agony.”
The two ladies talked rheumatism, sciatica and neuritis for some moments with
avidity. A sulky-looking girl in a pink overall with a flight of bluebirds
down the front of it took their order for coffee and cakes with a yawn and an
air of weary patience.
“The cakes,” Miss Bunner said in a conspiratorial whisper, “are really quite
good here.”
“I was so interested in that very pretty girl I met as we were coming away
from Miss Blacklock’s the other day,” said Miss Marple. “I think she said she
does gardening. Or is she on the land? Hynes—was that her name?”
“Oh, yes, Phillipa Haymes. Our ‘Lodger,’ as we call her.” Miss Bunner laughed
at her own humour. “Such a nice quiet girl. A lady, if you know what I mean.”
“I wonder now. I knew a Colonel Haymes—in the Indian cavalry. Her father
perhaps?”
“She’s Mrs. Haymes. A widow. Her husband was killed in Sicily or Italy. Of
course, it might be his father.”
“I wondered, perhaps, if there might be a little romance on the way?” Miss
Marple suggested roguishly. “With that tall young man?”
“With Patrick, do you mean? Oh, I don’t—”
“No, I meant a young man with spectacles. I’ve seen him about.”
“Oh, of course, Edmund Swettenham. Sh! That’s his mother, Mrs. Swettenham,
over in the corner. I don’t know, I’m sure. You think he admires her? He’s
such an odd young man—says the most disturbing things sometimes. He’s supposed
to be clever, you know,” said Miss Bunner with frank disapproval.
“Cleverness isn’t everything,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head. “Ah, here
is our coffee.”
The sulky girl deposited it with a clatter. Miss Marple and Miss Bunner
pressed cakes on each other.
“I was so interested to hear you were at school with Miss Blacklock. Yours is
indeed an old friendship.”
“Yes, indeed.” Miss Bunner sighed. “Very few people would be as loyal to their
old friends as dear Miss Blacklock is. Oh, dear, those days seem a long time
ago. Such a pretty girl and enjoyed life so much. It all seemed so sad.”
Miss Marple, though with no idea of what had seemed so sad, sighed and shook
her head.
“Life is indeed hard,” she murmured.
“And sad affliction bravely borne,” murmured Miss Bunner, her eyes suffusing
with tears. “I always think of that verse. True patience; true resignation.
Such courage and patience ought to be rewarded, that is what I say. What I
feel is that nothing is too good for dear Miss Blacklock, and whatever good
things come to her, she truly deserves them.”
“Money,” said Miss Marple, “can do a lot to ease one’s path in life.”
She felt herself safe in this observation since she judged that it must be
Miss Blacklock’s prospects of future affluence to which her friend referred.
The remark, however, started Miss Bunner on another train of thought.
“Money!” she exclaimed with bitterness. “I don’t believe, you know, that until
one has really experienced it, one can know what money, or rather the lack of
it, means.”
Miss Marple nodded her white head sympathetically.
Miss Bunner went on rapidly, working herself up, and speaking with a flushed
face:
“I’ve heard people say so often ‘I’d rather have flowers on the table than a
meal without them.’ But how many meals have those people ever missed? They
don’t know what it is—nobody knows who hasn’t been through it—to be really
hungry. Bread, you know, and a jar of meat paste, and a scrape of margarine.
Day after day, and how one longs for a good plate of meat and two vegetables. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Day after day, and how one longs for a good plate of meat and two vegetables.
And the shabbiness. Darning one’s clothes and hoping it won’t show. And
applying for jobs and always being told you’re too old. And then perhaps
getting a job and after all one isn’t strong enough. One faints. And you’re
back again. It’s the rent—always the rent—that’s got to be paid—otherwise
you’re out in the street. And in these days it leaves so little over. One’s
old age pension doesn’t go far—indeed it doesn’t.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple gently. She looked with compassion at Miss Bunner’s
twitching face.
“I wrote to Letty. I just happened to see her name in the paper. It was a
luncheon in aid of Milchester Hospital. There it was in black and white, Miss
Letitia Blacklock. It brought the past back to me. I hadn’t heard of her for
years and years. She’d been secretary, you know, to that very rich man,
Goedler. She was always a clever girl—the kind that gets on in the world. Not
so much looks—as character. I thought—well, I thought—perhaps she’ll remember
me—and she’s one of the people I could ask for a little help. I mean someone
you’ve known as a girl—been at school with—well, they do know about you—they
know you’re not just a—begging letter-writer—”
Tears came into Dora Bunner’s eyes.
“And then Lotty came and took me away—said she needed someone to help her. Of
course, I was very surprised—very surprised—but then newspapers do get things
wrong. How kind she was—and how sympathetic. And remembering all the old days
so well … I’d do anything for her—I really would. And I try very hard, but I’m
afraid sometimes I muddle things—my head’s not what it was. I make mistakes.
And I forget and say foolish things. She’s very patient. What’s so nice about
her is that she always pretends that I am useful to her. That’s real kindness,
isn’t it?”
Miss Marple said gently: “Yes, that’s real kindness.”
“I used to worry, you know, even after I came to Little Paddocks—about what
would become of me if—if anything were to happen to Miss Blacklock. After all,
there are so many accidents—these motors dashing about—one never knows, does
one? But naturally I never said anything—but she must have guessed. Suddenly,
one day she told me that she’d left me a small annuity in her will—and—what I
value far more—all her beautiful furniture. I was quite overcome … But she
said nobody else would value it as I should—and that is quite true—I can’t
bear to see some lovely piece of china smashed—or wet glasses put down on a
table and leaving a mark. I do really look after her things. Some people—some
people especially, are so terribly careless—and sometimes worse than careless!
“I’m not really as stupid as I look,” Miss Bunner continued with simplicity.
“I can see, you know, when Letty’s being imposed upon. Some people—I won’t
name names—but they take advantage. Dear Miss Blacklock is, perhaps, just a
shade too trusting.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“That’s a mistake.”
“Yes, it is. You and I, Miss Marple, know the world. Dear Miss Blacklock—” She
shook her head.
Miss Marple thought that as the secretary of a big financier Miss Blacklock
might be presumed to know the world too. But probably what Dora Bunner meant
was that Letty Blacklock had always been comfortably off, and that the
comfortably off do not know the deeper abysses of human nature.
“That Patrick!” said Miss Bunner with a suddenness and an asperity that made
Miss Marple jump. “Twice, at least, to my knowledge, he’s got money out of
her. Pretending he’s hard up. Run into debt. All that sort of thing. She’s far
too generous. All she said to me when I remonstrated with her was: ‘The boy’s
young, Dora. Youth is the time to have your fling.’”
“Well, that’s true enough,” said Miss Marple. “Such a handsome young man,
too.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said Dora Bunner. “Much too fond of poking fun
at people. And a lot of going on with girls, I expect. I’m just a figure of
fun to him—that’s all. He doesn’t seem to realize that people have their
feelings.”
“Young people are rather careless that way,” said Miss Marple.
Miss Bunner leaned forward suddenly with a mysterious air.
“You won’t breathe a word, will you, my dear?” she demanded. “But I can’t help
feeling that he was mixed up in this dreadful business. I think he knew that
young man—else Julia did. I daren’t hint at such a thing to dear Miss
Blacklock—at least I did, and she just snapped my head off. And, of course,
it’s awkward—because he’s her nephew—or at any rate her cousin—and if the
Swiss young man shot himself Patrick might be held morally responsible,
mightn’t he? If he’d put him up to it, I mean. I’m really terribly confused
about the whole thing. Everyone making such a fuss about that other door into
the drawing room. That’s another thing that worries me—the detective saying it
had been oiled. Because you see, I saw—”
She came to an abrupt stop.
Miss Marple paused to select a phrase.
“Most difficult for you,” she said sympathetically. “Naturally you wouldn’t
want anything to get round to the police.”
“That’s just it,” Dora Bunner cried. “I lie awake at nights and worry—because,
you see, I came upon Patrick in the shrubbery the other day. I was looking for
eggs—one hen lays out—and there he was holding a feather and a cup—an oily
cup. And he jumped most guiltily when he saw me and he said: ‘I was just
wondering what this was doing here.’ Well, of course, he’s a quick thinker. I
should say he thought that up quickly when I startled him. And how did he come
to find a thing like that in the shrubbery unless he was looking for it,
knowing perfectly well it was there? Of course, I didn’t say anything.”
“No, no, of course not.”
“But I gave him a look, if you know what I mean.”
Dora Bunner stretched out her hand and bit abstractedly into a lurid salmon-
coloured cake.
“And then another day I happened to overhear him having a very curious
conversation with Julia. They seemed to be having a kind of quarrel. He was
saying: ‘If I thought you had anything to do with a thing like that!’ and
Julia (she’s always so calm, you know) said: ‘Well, little brother, what would
you do about it?’ And then, most unfortunately, I trod on that board that
always squeaks, and they saw me. So I said, quite gaily: ‘You two having a
quarrel?’ and Patrick said, ‘I’m warning Julia not to go in for these black-
market deals.’ Oh, it was all very slick, but I don’t believe they were
talking about anything of the sort! And if you ask me, I believe Patrick had
tampered with that lamp in the drawing room—to make the lights go out, because
I remember distinctly that it was the shepherdess—not the shepherd. And the
next day—”
She stopped and her face grew pink. Miss Marple turned her head to see Miss
Blacklock standing behind them—she must just have come in.
“Coffee and gossip, Bunny?” said Miss Blacklock, with quite a shade of
reproach in her voice. “Good morning, Miss Marple. Cold, isn’t it?”
The doors flew open with a clang and Bunch Harmon came into the Bluebird with
a rush.
“Hallo,” she said, “am I too late for coffee?”
“No, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Sit down and have a cup.”
“We must get home,” said Miss Blacklock. “Done your shopping, Bunny?”
Her tone was indulgent once more, but her eyes still held a slight reproach.
“Yes—yes, thank you, Letty. I must just pop into the chemists in passing and
get some aspirin and some cornplasters.”
As the doors of the Bluebird swung to behind them, Bunch asked:
“What were you talking about?”
Miss Marple did not reply at once. She waited whilst Bunch gave the order,
then she said:
“Family solidarity is a very strong thing. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Very strong. Do you remember some
famous case—I really can’t remember what it was. They said the husband
poisoned his wife. In a glass of wine. Then, at the trial, the daughter said
she’d drunk half her mother’s glass—so that knocked the case against her
father to pieces. They do say—but that may be just rumour—that she never spoke
to her father or lived with him again. Of course, a father is one thing—and a
nephew or a distant cousin is another. But still there it is—no one wants a
member of their own family hanged, do they?”
“No,” said Bunch, considering. “I shouldn’t think they would.”
Miss Marple leaned back in her chair. She murmured under her breath, “People
are really very alike, everywhere.”
“Who am I like?”
“Well, really, dear, you are very much like yourself. I don’t know that you
remind me of anyone in particular. Except perhaps—”
“Here it comes,” said Bunch.
“I was just thinking of a parlourmaid of mine, dear.”
“A parlourmaid? I should make a terrible parlourmaid.”
“Yes, dear, so did she. She was no good at all at waiting at table. Put
everything on the table crooked, mixed up the kitchen knives with the dining
room ones, and her cap (this was a long time ago, dear) her cap was never
straight.”
Bunch adjusted her hat automatically.
“Anything else?” she demanded anxiously.
“I kept her because she was so pleasant to have about the house—and because
she used to make me laugh. I liked the way she said things straight out. Came
to me one day, ‘Of course, I don’t know, ma’am,’ she says, ‘but Florrie, the
way she sits down, it’s just like a married woman.’ And sure enough poor
Florrie was in trouble—the gentlemanly assistant at the hairdresser’s.
Fortunately it was in good time, and I was able to have a little talk with
him, and they had a very nice wedding and settled down quite happily. She was
a good girl, Florrie, but inclined to be taken in by a gentlemanly
appearance.”
“She didn’t do a murder, did she?” asked Bunch. “The parlourmaid, I mean.”
“No, indeed,” said Miss Marple. “She married a Baptist Minister and they had a
family of five.”
“Just like me,” said Bunch. “Though I’ve only got as far as Edward and Susan
up to date.”
She added, after a minute or two:
“Who are you thinking about now, Aunt Jane?”
“Quite a lot of people, dear, quite a lot of people,” said Miss Marple,
vaguely.
“In St. Mary Mead?”
“Mostly … I was really thinking about Nurse Ellerton—really an excellent
kindly woman. Took care of an old lady, seemed really fond of her. Then the
old lady died. And another came and she died. Morphia. It all came out. Done
in the kindest way, and the shocking thing was that the woman herself really
couldn’t see that she’d done anything wrong. They hadn’t long to live in any
case, she said, and one of them had cancer and quite a lot of pain.”
“You mean—it was a mercy killing?”
“No, no. They signed their money away to her. She liked money, you know….
“And then there was that young man on the liner—Mrs. Pusey at the paper shop,
her nephew. Brought home stuff he’d stolen and got her to dispose of it. Said
it was things that he’d bought abroad. She was quite taken in. And then when
the police came round and started asking questions, he tried to bash her on
the head, so that she shouldn’t be able to give him away … Not a nice young
man—but very good-looking. Had two girls in love with him. He spent a lot of
money on one of them.”
“The nastiest one, I suppose,” said Bunch.
“Yes, dear. And there was Mrs. Cray at the wool shop. Devoted to her son,
spoilt him, of course. He got in with a very queer lot. Do you remember Joan
Croft, Bunch?”
“N-no, I don’t think so.”
“I thought you might have seen her when you were with me on a visit. Used to
stalk about smoking a cigar or a pipe. We had a Bank hold-up once, and Joan
Croft was in the Bank at the time. She knocked the man down and took his
revolver away from him. She was congratulated on her courage by the Bench.”
Bunch listened attentively. She seemed to be learning by heart.
“And—?” she prompted.
“That girl at St. Jean des Collines that summer. Such a quiet girl—not so much
quiet as silent. Everybody liked her, but they never got to know her much
better … We heard afterwards that her husband was a forger. It made her feel
cut off from people. It made her, in the end, a little queer. Brooding does,
you know.”
“Any Anglo-Indian Colonels in your reminiscences, darling?”
“Naturally, dear. There was Major Vaughan at The Larches and Colonel Wright at
Simla Lodge. Nothing wrong with either of them. But I do remember Mr. Hodgson,
the Bank Manager, went on a cruise and married a woman young enough to be his
daughter. No idea of where she came from—except what she told him of course.”
“And that wasn’t true?”
“No, dear, it definitely wasn’t.”
“Not bad,” said Bunch, nodding, and ticking people off on her fingers. “We’ve
had devoted Dora, and handsome Patrick, and Mrs. Swettenham and Edmund, and
Phillipa Haymes, and Colonel Easterbrook and Mrs. Easterbrook—and if you ask
me, I should say you’re absolutely right about her. But there wouldn’t be any
reason for her murdering Letty Blacklock.”
“Miss Blacklock, of course, might know something about her that she didn’t
want known.”
“Oh, darling, that old Tanqueray stuff? Surely that’s dead as the hills.”
“It might not be. You see, Bunch, you are not the kind that minds much about
what people think of you.”
“I see what you mean,” said Bunch suddenly. “If you’d been up against it, and
then, rather like a shivering stray cat, you’d found a home and cream and a
warm stroking hand and you were called Pretty Pussy and somebody thought the
world of you … You’d do a lot to keep that … Well, I must say, you’ve
presented me with a very complete gallery of people.”
“You didn’t get them all right, you know,” said Miss Marple, mildly.
“Didn’t I? Where did I slip up? Julia? Julia, pretty Julia is peculiar.”
“Three and sixpence,” said the sulky waitress, materialising out of the gloom.
“And,” she added, her bosom heaving beneath the bluebirds, “I’d like to know,
Mrs. Harmon, why you call me peculiar. I had an Aunt who joined the Peculiar
People, but I’ve always been good Church of England myself, as the late Rev.
Hopkinson can tell you.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Bunch. “I was just quoting a song. I didn’t mean
you at all. I didn’t know your name was Julia.”
“Quite a coincidence,” said the sulky waitress, cheering up. “No offence, I’m
sure, but hearing my name, as I thought—well, naturally if you think someone’s
talking about you, it’s only human nature to listen. Thank you.”
She departed with her tip.
“Aunt Jane,” said Bunch, “don’t look so upset. What is it?”
“But surely,” murmured Miss Marple. “That couldn’t be so. There’s no reason—”
“Aunt Jane!”
Miss Marple sighed and then smiled brightly.
“It’s nothing, dear,” she said.
“Did you think you knew who did the murder?” asked Bunch. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know at all,” said Miss Marple. “I got an idea for a moment—but it’s
gone. I wish I did know. Time’s so short. So terribly short.”
“What do you mean short?”
“That old lady up in Scotland may die any moment.”
Bunch said, staring:
“Then you really do believe in Pip and Emma. You think it was them—and that
they’ll try again?”
“Of course they’ll try again,” said Miss Marple, almost absentmindedly. “If
they tried once, they’ll try again. If you’ve made up your mind to murder
someone, you don’t stop because the first time it didn’t come off. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Especially
if you’re fairly sure you’re not suspected.”
“But if it’s Pip and Emma,” said Bunch, “there are only two people it could
be. It must be Patrick and Julia. They’re brother and sister and they’re the
only ones who are the right age.”
“My dear, it isn’t nearly as simple as that. There are all sorts of
ramifications and combinations. There’s Pip’s wife if he’s married, or Emma’s
husband. There’s their mother—she’s an interested party even if she doesn’t
inherit direct. If Letty Blacklock hasn’t seen her for thirty years, she’d
probably not recognize her now. One elderly woman is very like another. You
remember Mrs. Wotherspoon drew her own and Mrs. Bartlett’s Old Age Pension
although Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for years. Anyway, Miss Blacklock’s
shortsighted. Haven’t you noticed how she peers at people? And then there’s
the father. Apparently he was a real bad lot.”
“Yes, but he’s a foreigner.”
“By birth. But there’s no reason to believe he speaks broken English and
gesticulates with his hands. I dare say he could play the part of—of an Anglo-
Indian Colonel as well as anybody else.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t indeed, dear. I just think that there’s a great deal of
money at stake, a great deal of money. And I’m afraid I know only too well the
really terrible things that people will do to lay their hands on a lot of
money.”
“I suppose they will,” said Bunch. “It doesn’t really do them any good, does
it? Not in the end?”
“No—but they don’t usually know that.”
“I can understand it.” Bunch smiled suddenly, her sweet rather crooked smile.
“One feels it would be different for oneself … Even I feel that.” She
considered: “You pretend to yourself that you’d do a lot of good with all that
money. Schemes … Homes for Unwanted Children … Tired Mothers … A lovely rest
abroad somewhere for elderly women who have worked too hard….”
Her face grew sombre. Her eyes were suddenly dark and tragic.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said to Miss Marple. “You’re thinking that
I’d be the worst kind. Because I’d kid myself. If you just wanted the money
for selfish reasons you’d at any rate see what you were like. But once you
began to pretend about doing good with it, you’d be able to persuade yourself,
perhaps, that it wouldn’t very much matter killing someone….”
Then her eyes cleared.
“But I shouldn’t,” she said. “I shouldn’t really kill anyone. Not even if they
were old, or ill, or doing a lot of harm in the world. Not even if they were
blackmailers or—or absolute beasts.” She fished a fly carefully out of the
dregs of the coffee and arranged it on the table to dry. “Because people like
living, don’t they? So do flies. Even if you’re old and in pain and can just
crawl out in the sun. Julian says those people like living even more than
young strong people do. It’s harder, he says, for them to die, the struggle’s
greater. I like living myself—not just being happy and enjoying myself and
having a good time. I mean living—waking up and feeling, all over me, that I’m
there—ticking over.”
She blew on the fly gently; it waved its legs, and flew rather drunkenly away.
“Cheer up, darling Aunt Jane,” said Bunch. “I’d never kill anybody.”
Fourteen
EXCURSION INTO THE PAST
After a night in the train, Inspector Craddock alighted at a small station in
the Highlands.
It struck him for a moment as strange that the wealthy Mrs. Goedler—an
invalid—with a choice of a London house in a fashionable square, an estate in
Hampshire, and a villa in the South of France, should have selected this
remote Scottish home as her residence. Surely she was cut off here from many
friends and distractions. It must be a lonely life—or was she too ill to
notice or care about her surroundings?
A car was waiting to meet him. A big old-fashioned Daimler with an elderly
chauffeur driving it. It was a sunny morning and the Inspector enjoyed the
twenty-mile drive, though he marvelled anew at this preference for isolation.
A tentative remark to the chauffeur brought partial enlightenment.
“It’s her own home as a girl. Ay, she’s the last of the family. And she and
Mr. Goedler were always happier here than anywhere, though it wasn’t often he
could get away from London. But when he did they enjoyed themselves like a
couple of bairns.”
When the grey walls of the old keep came in sight, Craddock felt that time was
slipping backwards. An elderly butler received him, and after a wash and a
shave he was shown into a room with a huge fire burning in the grate, and
breakfast was served to him.
After breakfast, a tall, middle-aged woman in nurse’s dress, with a pleasant
and competent manner, came in and introduced herself as Sister McClelland.
“I have my patient all ready for you, Mr. Craddock. She is, indeed, looking
forward to seeing you.”
“I’ll do my best not to excite her,” Craddock promised.
“I had better warn you of what will happen. You will find Mrs. Goedler
apparently quite normal. She will talk and enjoy talking and then—quite
suddenly—her powers will fail. Come away at once, then, and send for me. She
is, you see, kept almost entirely under the influence of morphia. She drowses
most of the time. In preparation for your visit, I have given her a strong
stimulant. As soon as the effect of the stimulant wears off, she will relapse
into semiconsciousness.”
“I quite understand, Miss McClelland. Would it be in order for you to tell me
exactly what the state of Mrs. Goedler’s health is?”
“Well, Mr. Craddock, she is a dying woman. Her life cannot be prolonged for
more than a few weeks. To say that she should have been dead years ago would
strike you as odd, yet it is the truth. What has kept Mrs. Goedler alive is
her intense enjoyment and love of being alive. That sounds, perhaps, an odd
thing to say of someone who has lived the life of an invalid for many years
and has not left her home here for fifteen years, but it is true. Mrs. Goedler
has never been a strong woman—but she has retained to an astonishing degree
the will to live.” She added with a smile, “She is a very charming woman, too,
as you will find.”
Craddock was shown into a large bedroom where a fire was burning and where an
old lady lay in a large canopied bed. Though she was only about seven or eight
years older than Letitia Blacklock, her fragility made her seem older than her
years.
Her white hair was carefully arranged, a froth of pale blue wool enveloped her
neck and shoulders. There were lines of pain on the face, but lines of
sweetness, too. And there was, strangely enough, what Craddock could only
describe as a roguish twinkle in her faded blue eyes.
“Well, this is interesting,” she said. “It’s not often I receive a visit from
the police. I hear Letitia Blacklock wasn’t much hurt by this attempt on her?
How is my dear Blackie?”
“She’s very well, Mrs. Goedler. She sent you her love.”
“It’s a long time since I’ve seen her … For many years now, it’s been just a
card at Christmas. I asked her to come up here when she came back to England
after Charlotte’s death, but she said it would be painful after so long and
perhaps she was right … Blackie always had a lot of sense. I had an old school
friend to see me about a year ago, and, lor!”—she smiled—“we bored each other
to death. After we’d finished all the ‘Do you remembers?’ there wasn’t
anything to say. Most embarrassing.”
Craddock was content to let her talk before pressing his questions. He wanted,
as it were, to get back into the past, to get the feel of the Goedler-
Blacklock ménage.
“I suppose,” said Belle shrewdly, “that you want to ask about the money?
Randall left it all to go to Blackie after my death. Really, of course,
Randall never dreamed that I’d outlive him. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Really, of course,
Randall never dreamed that I’d outlive him. He was a big strong man, never a
day’s illness, and I was always a mass of aches and pains and complaints and
doctors coming and pulling long faces over me.”
“I don’t think complaints would be the right word, Mrs. Goedler.”
The old lady chuckled.
“I didn’t mean it in the complaining sense. I’ve never been too sorry for
myself. But it was always taken for granted that I, being the weakly one,
would go first. It didn’t work out that way. No—it didn’t work out that way….”
“Why, exactly, did your husband leave his money the way he did?”
“You mean, why did he leave it to Blackie? Not for the reason you’ve probably
been thinking.” The roguish twinkle was very apparent. “What minds you
policemen have! Randall was never in the least in love with her and she wasn’t
with him. Letitia, you know, has really got a man’s mind. She hasn’t any
feminine feelings or weaknesses. I don’t believe she was ever in love with any
man. She was never particularly pretty and she didn’t care for clothes. She
used a little makeup in deference to prevailing custom, but not to make
herself look prettier.” There was pity in the old voice as she went on: “She
never knew any of the fun of being a woman.”
Craddock looked at the frail little figure in the big bed with interest. Belle
Goedler, he realized, had enjoyed—still enjoyed—being a woman. She twinkled at
him.
“I’ve always thought,” she said, “it must be terribly dull to be a man.”
Then she said thoughtfully:
“I think Randall looked on Blackie very much as a kind of younger brother. He
relied on her judgment which was always excellent. She kept him out of trouble
more than once, you know.”
“She told me that she came to his rescue once with money?”
“That, yes, but I meant more than that. One can speak the truth after all
these years. Randall couldn’t really distinguish between what was crooked and
what wasn’t. His conscience wasn’t sensitive. The poor dear really didn’t know
what was just smart—and what was dishonest. Blackie kept him straight. That’s
one thing about Letitia Blacklock, she’s absolutely dead straight. She would
never do anything that was dishonest. She’s a very fine character, you know.
I’ve always admired her. They had a terrible girlhood, those girls. The father
was an old country doctor—terrifically pig-headed and narrow-minded—the
complete family tyrant. Letitia broke away, came to London, and trained
herself as a chartered accountant. The other sister was an invalid, there was
a deformity of kinds and she never saw people or went out. That’s why when the
old man died, Letitia gave up everything to go home and look after her sister.
Randall was wild with her—but it made no difference. If Letitia thought a
thing was her duty she’d do it. And you couldn’t move her.”
“How long was that before your husband died?”
“A couple of years, I think. Randall made his will before she left the firm,
and he didn’t alter it. He said to me: ‘We’ve no one of our own.’ (Our little
boy died, you know, when he was two years old.) ‘After you and I are gone,
Blackie had better have the money. She’ll play the markets and make ’em sit
up.’
“You see,” Belle went on, “Randall enjoyed the whole money-making game so
much—it wasn’t just the money—it was the adventure, the risks, the excitement
of it all. And Blackie liked it too. She had the same adventurous spirit and
the same judgment. Poor darling, she’d never had any of the usual fun—being in
love, and leading men on and teasing them—and having a home and children and
all the real fun of life.”
Craddock thought it was odd, the real pity and indulgent contempt felt by this
woman, a woman whose life had been hampered by illness, whose only child had
died, whose husband had died, leaving her to a lonely widowhood, and who had
been a hopeless invalid for years.
She nodded her head at him.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I’ve had all the things that make life worth
while—they may have been taken from me—but I have had them. I was pretty and
gay as a girl, I married the man I loved, and he never stopped loving me … My
child died, but I had him for two precious years … I’ve had a lot of physical
pain—but if you have pain, you know how to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of the
times when pain stops. And everyone’s been kind to me, always … I’m a lucky
woman, really.”
Craddock seized upon an opening in her former remarks.
“You said just now, Mrs. Goedler, that your husband left his fortune to Miss
Blacklock because he had no one else to leave it to. But that’s not strictly
true, is it? He had a sister.”
“Oh, Sonia. But they quarrelled years ago and made a clean break of it.”
“He disapproved of her marriage?”
“Yes, she married a man called—now what was his name—?”
“Stamfordis.”
“That’s it. Dmitri Stamfordis. Randall always said he was a crook. The two men
didn’t like each other from the first. But Sonia was wildly in love with him
and quite determined to marry him. And I really never saw why she shouldn’t.
Men have such odd ideas about these things. Sonia wasn’t a mere girl—she was
twenty-five, and she knew exactly what she was doing. He was a crook, I dare
say—I mean really a crook. I believe he had a criminal record—and Randall
always suspected the name he was passing under here wasn’t his own. Sonia knew
all that. The point was, which of course Randall couldn’t appreciate, that
Dmitri was really a wildly attractive person to women. And he was just as much
in love with Sonia as she was with him. Randall insisted that he was just
marrying her for her money—but that wasn’t true. Sonia was very handsome, you
know. And she had plenty of spirit. If the marriage had turned out badly, if
Dmitri had been unkind to her or unfaithful to her, she would just have cut
her losses and walked out on him. She was a rich woman and could do as she
chose with her life.”
“The quarrel was never made up?”
“No. Randall and Sonia never had got on very well. She resented his trying to
prevent the marriage. She said, ‘Very well. You’re quite impossible! This is
the last you hear of me!’”
“But it was not the last you heard of her?”
Belle smiled.
“No, I got a letter from her about eighteen months afterwards. She wrote from
Budapest, I remember, but she didn’t give an address. She told me to tell
Randall that she was extremely happy and that she’d just had twins.”
“And she told you their names?”
Again Belle smiled. “She said they were born just after midday—and she
intended to call them Pip and Emma. That may have been just a joke, of
course.”
“Didn’t you hear from her again?”
“No. She said she and her husband and the babies were going to America on a
short stay. I never heard any more….”
“You don’t happen, I suppose, to have kept that letter?”
“No, I’m afraid not … I read it to Randall and he just grunted: ‘She’ll regret
marrying that fellow one of these days.’ That’s all he ever said about it. We
really forgot about her. She went right out of our lives….”
“Nevertheless Mr. Goedler left his estate to her children in the event of Miss
Blacklock predeceasing you?”
“Oh, that was my doing. I said to him, when he told me about the will: ‘And
suppose Blackie dies before I do?’ He was quite surprised. I said, ‘Oh, I know
Blackie is as strong as a horse and I’m a delicate creature—but there’s such a
thing as accidents, you know, and there’s such a thing as creaking gates …’
And he said, ‘There’s no one—absolutely no one.’ I said, ‘There’s Sonia.’ And
he said at once, ‘And let that fellow get hold of my money? No—indeed!’ I
said, ‘Well, her children then. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
No—indeed!’ I
said, ‘Well, her children then. Pip and Emma, and there may be lots more by
now’—and so he grumbled, but he did put it in.”
“And from that day to this,” Craddock said slowly, “you’ve heard nothing of
your sister-in-law or her children?”
“Nothing—they may be dead—they may be—anywhere.”
They may be in Chipping Cleghorn, thought Craddock.
As though she read his thoughts, a look of alarm came into Belle Goedler’s
eyes. She said, “Don’t let them hurt Blackie. Blackie’s good—really good—you
mustn’t let harm come to—”
Her voice trailed off suddenly. Craddock saw the sudden grey shadows round her
mouth and eyes.
“You’re tired,” he said. “I’ll go.”
She nodded.
“Send Mac to me,” she whispered. “Yes, tired …” She made a feeble motion of
her hand. “Look after Blackie … Nothing must happen to Blackie … look after
her….”
“I’ll do my very best, Mrs. Goedler.” He rose and went to the door.
Her voice, a thin thread of sound, followed him….
“Not long now—until I’m dead—dangerous for her—Take care….”
Sister McClelland passed him as he went out. He said, uneasily:
“I hope I haven’t done her harm.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Craddock. I told you she would tire quite
suddenly.”
Later, he asked the nurse:
“The only thing I hadn’t time to ask Mrs. Goedler was whether she had any old
photographs? If so, I wonder—”
She interrupted him.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing of that kind. All her personal papers and things
were stored with their furniture from the London house at the beginning of the
war. Mrs. Goedler was desperately ill at the time. Then the storage
despository was blitzed. Mrs. Goedler was very upset at losing so many
personal souvenirs and family papers. I’m afraid there’s nothing of that
kind.”
So that was that, Craddock thought.
Yet he felt his journey had not been in vain. Pip and Emma, those twin
wraiths, were not quite wraiths.
Craddock thought, “Here’s a brother and sister brought up somewhere in Europe.
Sonia Goedler was a rich woman at the time of her marriage, but money in
Europe hasn’t remained money. Queer things have happened to money during these
war years. And so there are two young people, the son and daughter of a man
who had a criminal record. Suppose they came to England, more or less
penniless. What would they do? Find out about any rich relatives. Their uncle,
a man of vast fortune, is dead. Possibly the first thing they’d do would be to
look up their uncle’s will. See if by any chance money had been left to them
or to their mother. So they go to Somerset House and learn the contents of his
will, and then, perhaps, they learn of the existence of Miss Letitia
Blacklock. Then they make inquiries about Randall Goedler’s widow. She’s an
invalid, living up in Scotland, and they find out she hasn’t long to live. If
this Letitia Blacklock dies before her, they will come into a vast fortune.
What then?”
Craddock thought, “They wouldn’t go to Scotland. They’d find out where Letitia
Blacklock is living now. And they’d go there—but not as themselves … They’d go
together—or separately? Emma … I wonder?… Pip and Emma … I’ll eat my hat if
Pip, or Emma, or both of them, aren’t in Chipping Cleghorn now….”
Fifteen
DELICIOUS DEATH
I
In the kitchen at Little Paddocks, Miss Blacklock was giving instructions to
Mitzi.
“Sardine sandwiches as well as the tomato ones. And some of those little
scones you make so nicely. And I’d like you to make that special cake of
yours.”
“Is it a party then, that you want all these things?”
“It’s Miss Bunner’s birthday, and some people will be coming to tea.”
“At her age one does not have birthdays. It is better to forget.”
“Well, she doesn’t want to forget. Several people are bringing her
presents—and it will be nice to make a little party of it.”
“That is what you say last time—and see what happened!”
Miss Blacklock controlled her temper.
“Well, it won’t happen this time.”
“How do you know what may happen in this house? All day long I shiver and at
night I lock my door and I look in the wardrobe to see no one is hidden
there.”
“That ought to keep you nice and safe,” said Miss Blacklock, coldly.
“The cake that you want me to make, it is the—?” Mitzi uttered a sound that to
Miss Blacklock’s English ear sounded like Schwitzebzr or alternatively like
cats spitting at each other.
“That’s the one. The rich one.”
“Yes. It is rich. For it I have nothing! Impossible to make such a cake. I
need for it chocolate and much butter, and sugar and raisins.”
“You can use this tin of butter that was sent us from America. And some of the
raisins we were keeping for Christmas, and here is a slab of chocolate and a
pound of sugar.”
Mitzi’s face suddenly burst into radiant smiles.
“So, I make him for you good—good,” she cried, in an ecstasy. “It will be
rich, rich, of a melting richness! And on top I will put the icing—chocolate
icing—I make him so nice—and write on it Good Wishes. These English people
with their cakes that tastes of sand, never never, will they have tasted such
a cake. Delicious, they will say—delicious—”
Her face clouded again.
“Mr. Patrick. He called it Delicious Death. My cake! I will not have my cake
called that!”
“It was a compliment really,” said Miss Blacklock. “He meant it was worth
dying to eat such a cake.”
Mitzi looked at her doubtfully.
“Well, I do not like that word—death. They are not dying because they eat my
cake, no, they feel much, much better….”
“I’m sure we all shall.”
Miss Blacklock turned away and left the kitchen with a sigh of relief at the
successful ending of the interview. With Mitzi one never knew.
She ran into Dora Bunner outside.
“Oh, Letty, shall I run in and tell Mitzi just how to cut the sandwiches?”
“No,” said Miss Blacklock, steering her friend firmly into the hall. “She’s in
a good mood now and I don’t want her disturbed.”
“But I could just show her—”
“Please don’t show her anything, Dora. These central Europeans don’t like
being shown. They hate it.”
Dora looked at her doubtfully. Then she suddenly broke into smiles.
“Edmund Swettenham just rang up. He wished me many happy returns of the day
and said he was bringing me a pot of honey as a present this afternoon. Isn’t
it kind? I can’t imagine how he knew it was my birthday.”
“Everybody seems to know. You must have been talking about it, Dora.”
“Well, I did just happen to mention that today I should be fifty-nine.”
“You’re sixty-four,” said Miss Blacklock with a twinkle.
“And Miss Hinchcliffe said, ‘You don’t look it. What age do you think I am?’
Which was rather awkward because Miss Hinchcliffe always looks so peculiar
that she might be any age. She said she was bringing me some eggs, by the way.
I said our hens hadn’t been laying very well, lately.”
“We’re not doing so badly out of your birthday,” said Miss Blacklock. “Honey,
eggs—a magnificent box of chocolates from Julia—”
“I don’t know where she gets such things.”
“Better not ask. Her methods are probably strictly illegal.”
“And your lovely brooch.” Miss Bunner looked down proudly at her bosom on
which was pinned a small diamond leaf.
“Do you like it? I’m glad. I never cared for jewellery.”
“I love it.”
“Good. Let’s go and feed the ducks.”
II
“Ha,” cried Patrick dramatically, as the party took their places round the
dining room table. “What do I see before me? Delicious Death.”
“Hush,” said Miss Blacklock. “Don’t let Mitzi hear you. She objects to your
name for her cake very much.”
“Nevertheless, Delicious Death it is! Is it Bunny’s birthday cake?”
“Yes, it is,” said Miss Bunner. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Is it Bunny’s birthday cake?”
“Yes, it is,” said Miss Bunner. “I really am having the most wonderful
birthday.”
Her cheeks were flushed with excitement and had been ever since Colonel
Easterbrook had handed her a small box of sweets and declaimed with a bow,
“Sweets to the Sweet!”
Julia had turned her head away hurriedly, and had been frowned at by Miss
Blacklock.
Full justice was done to the good things on the tea table and they rose from
their seats after a round of crackers.
“I feel slightly sick,” said Julia. “It’s that cake. I remember I felt just
the same last time.”
“It’s worth it,” said Patrick.
“These foreigners certainly understand confectionery,” said Miss Hinchcliffe.
“What they can’t make is a plain boiled pudding.”
Everybody was respectfully silent, though it seemed to be hovering on
Patrick’s lips to ask if anyone really wanted a plain boiled pudding.
“Got a new gardener?” asked Miss Hinchcliffe of Miss Blacklock as they
returned to the drawing room.
“No, why?”
“Saw a man snooping round the henhouse. Quite a decent-looking Army type.”
“Oh, that,” said Julia. “That’s our detective.”
Mrs. Easterbrook dropped her handbag.
“Detective?” she exclaimed. “But—but—why?”
“I don’t know,” said Julia. “He prowls about and keeps an eye on the house.
He’s protecting Aunt Letty, I suppose.”
“Absolute nonsense,” said Miss Blacklock. “I can protect myself, thank you.”
“But surely it’s all over now,” cried Mrs. Easterbrook. “Though I meant to ask
you, why did they adjourn the inquest?”
“Police aren’t satisfied,” said her husband. “That’s what that means.”
“But aren’t satisfied of what?”
Colonel Easterbrook shook his head with the air of a man who could say a good
deal more if he chose. Edmund Swettenham, who disliked the Colonel, said, “The
truth of it is, we’re all under suspicion.”
“But suspicion of what?” repeated Mrs. Easterbrook.
“Never mind, kitten,” said her husband.
“Loitering with intent,” said Edmund. “The intent being to commit murder upon
the first opportunity.”
“Oh, don’t, please don’t, Mr. Swettenham.” Dora Bunner began to cry. “I’m sure
nobody here could possibly want to kill dear, dear Letty.”
There was a moment of horrible embarrassment. Edmund turned scarlet, murmured,
“Just a joke.” Phillipa suggested in a high clear voice that they might listen
to the six o’clock news and the suggestion was received with enthusiastic
assent.
Patrick murmured to Julia: “We need Mrs. Harmon here. She’d be sure to say in
that high clear voice of hers, ‘But I suppose somebody is still waiting for a
good chance to murder you, Miss Blacklock?’”
“I’m glad she and that old Miss Marple couldn’t come,” said Julia. “That old
woman is the prying kind. And a mind like a sink, I should think. Real
Victorian type.”
Listening to the news led easily into a pleasant discussion on the horrors of
atomic warfare. Colonel Easterbrook said that the real menace to civilization
was undoubtedly Russia, and Edmund said that he had several charming Russian
friends—which announcement was coldly received.
The party broke up with renewed thanks to the hostess.
“Enjoy yourself, Bunny?” asked Miss Blacklock, as the last guest was sped.
“Oh, I did. But I’ve got a terrible headache. It’s the excitement, I think.”
“It’s the cake,” said Patrick. “I feel a bit liverish myself. And you’ve been
nibbling chocolates all the morning.”
“I’ll go and lie down, I think,” said Miss Bunner. “I’ll take a couple of
aspirins and try and have a nice sleep.”
“That would be a very good plan,” said Miss Blacklock.
Miss Bunner departed upstairs.
“Shall I shut up the ducks for you, Aunt Letty?”
Miss Blacklock looked at Patrick severely.
“If you’ll be sure to latch that door properly.”
“I will. I swear I will.”
“Have a glass of sherry, Aunt Letty,” said Julia. “As my old nurse used to
say, ‘It will settle your stomach.’ A revolting phrase, but curiously apposite
at this moment.”
“Well, I dare say it might be a good thing. The truth is one isn’t used to
rich things. Oh, Bunny, how you made me jump. What is it?”
“I can’t find my aspirin,” said Miss Bunner disconsolately.
“Well, take some of mine, dear, they’re by my bed.”
“There’s a bottle on my dressing table,” said Phillipa.
“Thank you—thank you very much. If I can’t find mine—but I know I’ve got it
somewhere. A new bottle. Now where could I have put it?”
“There’s heaps in the bathroom,” said Julia impatiently. “This house is chock
full of aspirin.”
“It vexes me to be so careless and mislay things,” replied Miss Bunner,
retreating up the stairs again.
“Poor old Bunny,” said Julia, holding up her glass. “Do you think we ought to
have given her some sherry?”
“Better not, I think,” said Miss Blacklock. “She’s had a lot of excitement
today, and it isn’t really good for her. I’m afraid she’ll be the worse for it
tomorrow. Still, I really do think she has enjoyed herself!”
“She’s loved it,” said Phillipa.
“Let’s give Mitzi a glass of sherry,” suggested Julia. “Hi, Pat,” she called
as she heard him entering the side door. “Fetch Mitzi.”
So Mitzi was brought in and Julia poured her out a glass of sherry.
“Here’s to the best cook in the world,” said Patrick.
Mitzi was gratified—but felt nevertheless that a protest was due.
“That is not so. I am not really a cook. In my country I do intellectual
work.”
“Then you’re wasted,” said Patrick. “What’s intellectual work compared to a
chef d’oeuvre like Delicious Death?”
“Oo—I say to you I do not like—”
“Never mind what you like, my girl,” said Patrick. “That’s my name for it and
here’s to it. Let’s all drink to Delicious Death and to hell with the
aftereffects.”
III
“Phillipa, my dear, I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, Miss Blacklock?”
Phillipa Haymes looked up in slight surprise.
“You’re not worrying about anything, are you?”
“Worrying?”
“I’ve noticed that you’ve looked worried lately. There isn’t anything wrong,
is there?”
“Oh no, Miss Blacklock. Why should there be?”
“Well—I wondered. I thought, perhaps, that you and Patrick—?”
“Patrick?” Phillipa looked really surprised.
“It’s not so, then. Please forgive me if I’ve been impertinent. But you’ve
been thrown together a lot—and although Patrick is my cousin, I don’t think
he’s the type to make a satisfactory husband. Not for some time to come, at
all events.”
Phillipa’s face had frozen into a hard immobility.
“I shan’t marry again,” she said.
“Oh, yes, you will some day, my child. You’re young. But we needn’t discuss
that. There’s no other trouble. You’re not worried about—money, for instance?”
“No, I’m quite all right.”
“I know you get anxious sometimes about your boy’s education. That’s why I
want to tell you something. I drove into Milchester this afternoon to see Mr.
Beddingfeld, my lawyer. Things haven’t been very settled lately and I thought
I would like to make a new will—in view of certain eventualities. Apart from
Bunny’s legacy, everything goes to you, Phillipa.”
“What?” Phillipa spun round. Her eyes stared. She looked dismayed, almost
frightened.
“But I don’t want it—really I don’t … Oh, I’d rather not … And anyway, why?
Why to me?”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Blacklock in a peculiar voice, “because there’s no one
else.”
“But there’s Patrick and Julia.”
“Yes, there’s Patrick and Julia.” The odd note in Miss Blacklock’s voice was
still there.
“They are your relations.”
“Very distant ones. They have no claim on me.”
“But I—I haven’t either—I don’t know what you think … Oh, I don’t want it.”
Her gaze held more hostility than gratitude. There was something almost like
fear in her manner.
“I know what I’m doing, Phillipa. I’ve become fond of you—and there’s the boy
… You won’t get very much if I should die now—but in a few weeks’ time it
might be different.”
Her eyes met Phillipa’s steadily.
“But you’re not going to die!” Phillipa protested. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“But you’re not going to die!” Phillipa protested.
“Not if I can avoid it by taking due precautions.”
“Precautions?”
“Yes. Think it over … And don’t worry any more.”
She left the room abruptly. Phillipa heard her speaking to Julia in the hall.
Julia entered the drawing room a few moments later.
There was a slightly steely glitter in her eyes.
“Played your cards rather well, haven’t you, Phillipa? I see you’re one of
those quiet ones … a dark horse.”
“So you heard—?”
“Yes, I heard. I rather think I was meant to hear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our Letty’s no fool … Well, anyway, you’re all right, Phillipa. Sitting
pretty, aren’t you?”
“Oh, Julia—I didn’t mean—I never meant—”
“Didn’t you? Of course you did. You’re fairly up against things, aren’t you?
Hard up for money. But just remember this—if anyone bumps off Aunt Letty now,
you’ll be suspect No. 1.”
“But I shan’t be. It would be idiotic if I killed her now when—if I waited—”
“So you do know about old Mrs. Whatsername dying up in Scotland? I wondered …
Phillipa, I’m beginning to believe you’re a very dark horse indeed.”
“I don’t want to do you and Patrick out of anything.”
“Don’t you, my dear? I’m sorry—but I don’t believe you.”
Sixteen
INSPECTOR CRADDOCK RETURNS
Inspector Craddock had had a bad night on his night journey home. His dreams
had been less dreams than nightmares. Again and again he was racing through
the grey corridors of an old-world castle in a desperate attempt to get
somewhere, or to prevent something, in time. Finally he dreamt that he awoke.
An enormous relief surged over him. Then the door of his compartment slid
slowly open, and Letitia Blacklock looked in at him with blood running down
her face, and said reproachfully: “Why didn’t you save me? You could have if
you’d tried.”
This time he really awoke.
Altogether, the Inspector was thankful finally to reach Milchester. He went
straight away to make his report to Rydesdale who listened carefully.
“It doesn’t take us much further,” he said. “But it confirms what Miss
Blacklock told you. Pip and Emma—h’m, I wonder.”
“Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age, sir. If we could establish that
Miss Blacklock hadn’t seen them since they were children—”
With a very faint chuckle, Rydesdale said: “Our ally, Miss Marple, has
established that for us. Actually Miss Blacklock had never seen either of them
at all until two months ago.”
“Then, surely, sir—”
“It’s not so easy as all that, Craddock. We’ve been checking up. On what we’ve
got, Patrick and Julia seem definitely to be out of it. His Naval record is
genuine—quite a good record bar a tendency to ‘insubordination.’ We’ve checked
with Cannes, and an indignant Mrs. Simmons says of course her son and daughter
are at Chipping Cleghorn with her cousin Letitia Blacklock. So that’s that!”
“And Mrs. Simmons is Mrs. Simmons?”
“She’s been Mrs. Simmons for a very long time, that’s all I can say,” said
Rydesdale dryly.
“That seems clear enough. Only—those two fitted. Right age. Not known to Miss
Blacklock, personally. If we wanted Pip and Emma—well, there they were.”
The Chief Constable nodded thoughtfully, then he pushed across a paper to
Craddock.
“Here’s a little something we’ve dug up on Mrs. Easterbrook.”
The Inspector read with lifted eyebrows.
“Very interesting,” he remarked. “Hoodwinked that old ass pretty well, hasn’t
she? It doesn’t tie in with this business though, as far as I can see.”
“Apparently not.”
“And here’s an item that concerns Mrs. Haymes.”
Again Craddock’s eyebrows rose.
“I think I’ll have another talk with the lady,” he said.
“You think this information might be relevant?”
“I think it might be. It would be a long shot, of course….”
The two men were silent for a moment or two.
“How has Fletcher got on, sir?”
“Fletcher has been exceedingly active. He’s made a routine search of the house
by agreement with Miss Blacklock—but he didn’t find anything significant. Then
he’s been checking up on who could have had the opportunity of oiling that
door. Checking who was up at the house on the days that that foreign girl was
out. A little more complicated than we thought, because it appears she goes
for a walk most afternoons. Usually down to the village where she has a cup of
coffee at the Bluebird. So that when Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner are
out—which is most afternoons—they go blackberrying—the coast is clear.”
“And the doors are always left unlocked?”
“They used to be. I don’t suppose they are now.”
“What are Fletcher’s results? Who’s known to have been in the house when it
was left empty?”
“Practically the whole lot of them.”
Rydesdale consulted a page in front of him.
“Miss Murgatroyd was there with a hen to sit on some eggs. (Sounds complicated
but that’s what she says.) Very flustered about it all and contradicts
herself, but Fletcher thinks that’s temperamental and not a sign of guilt.”
“Might be,” Craddock admitted. “She flaps.”
“Then Mrs. Swettenham came up to fetch some horse meat that Miss Blacklock had
left for her on the kitchen table because Miss Blacklock had been in to
Milchester in the car that day and always gets Mrs. Swettenham’s horse meat
for her. That make sense to you?”
Craddock considered.
“Why didn’t Miss Blacklock leave the horse meat when she passed Mrs.
Swettenham’s house on her way back from Milchester?”
“I don’t know, but she didn’t. Mrs. Swettenham says she (Miss B.) always
leaves it on the kitchen table, and she (Mrs. S.) likes to fetch it when Mitzi
isn’t there because Mitzi is sometimes so rude.”
“Hangs together quite well. And the next?”
“Miss Hinchcliffe. Says she wasn’t there at all lately. But she was. Because
Mitzi saw her coming out of the side door one day and so did a Mrs. Butt
(she’s one of the locals). Miss H. then admitted she might have been there but
had forgotten. Can’t remember what she went for. Says she probably just
dropped in.”
“That’s rather odd.”
“So was her manner, apparently. Then there’s Mrs. Easterbrook. She was
exercising the dear dogs out that way and she just popped in to see if Miss
Blacklock would lend her a knitting pattern but Miss Blacklock wasn’t in. She
says she waited a little.”
“Just so. Might be snooping round. Or might be oiling a door. And the
Colonel?”
“Went there one day with a book on India that Miss Blacklock had expressed a
desire to read.”
“Had she?”
“Her account is that she tried to get out of having to read it, but it was no
use.”
“And that’s fair enough,” sighed Craddock. “If anyone is really determined to
lend you a book, you never can get out of it!”
“We don’t know if Edmund Swettenham was up there. He’s extremely vague. Said
he did drop in occasionally on errands for his mother, but thinks not lately.”
“In fact, it’s all inconclusive.”
“Yes.”
Rydesdale said, with a slight grin:
“Miss Marple has also been active. Fletcher reports that she had morning
coffee at the Bluebird. She’s been to sherry at Boulders, and to tea at Little
Paddocks. She’s admired Mrs. Swettenham’s garden—and dropped in to see Colonel
Easterbrook’s Indian curios.”
“She may be able to tell us if Colonel Easterbrook’s a pukka Colonel or not.”
“She’d know, I agree—he seems all right. We’d have to check with the Far
Eastern Authorities to get certain identification.”
“And in the meantime”—Craddock broke off—“do you think Miss Blacklock would
consent to go away?”
“Go away from Chipping Cleghorn?”
“Yes. Take the faithful Bunner with her, perhaps, and leave for an unknown
destination. Why shouldn’t she go up to Scotland and stay with Belle Goedler?
It’s a pretty unget-at-able place.”
“Stop there and wait for her to die? I don’t think she’d do that. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I don’t think she’d do that. I don’t
think any nice-natured woman would like that suggestion.”
“If it’s a matter of saving her life—”
“Come now, Craddock, it isn’t quite so easy to bump someone off as you seem to
think.”
“Isn’t it, sir?”
“Well—in one way—it’s easy enough I agree. Plenty of methods. Weed-killer. A
bash on the head when she’s out shutting up the poultry, a pot shot from
behind a hedge. All quite simple. But to bump someone off and not be suspected
of bumping them off—that’s not quite so easy. And they must realize by now
that they’re all under observation. The original carefully planned scheme
failed. Our unknown murderer has got to think up something else.”
“I know that, sir. But there’s the time element to consider. Mrs. Goedler’s a
dying woman—she might pop off any minute. That means that our murderer can’t
afford to wait.”
“True.”
“And another thing, sir. He—or she—must know that we’re checking up on
everybody.”
“And that takes time,” said Rydesdale with a sigh. “It means checking with the
East, with India. Yes, it’s a long tedious business.”
“So that’s another reason for—hurry. I’m sure, sir, that the danger is very
real. It’s a very large sum that’s at stake. If Belle Goedler dies—”
He broke off as a constable entered.
“Constable Legg on the line from Chipping Cleghorn, sir.”
“Put him through here.”
Inspector Craddock, watching the Chief Constable, saw his features harden and
stiffen.
“Very good,” barked Rydesdale. “Detective-Inspector Craddock will be coming
out immediately.”
He put the receiver down.
“Is it—?” Craddock broke off.
Rydesdale shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It’s Dora Bunner. She wanted some aspirin. Apparently she took
some from a bottle beside Letitia Blacklock’s bed. There were only a few
tablets left in the bottle. She took two and left one. The doctor’s got that
one and is sending it to be analysed. He says it’s definitely not aspirin.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes, found dead in her bed this morning. Died in her sleep, doctor says. He
doesn’t think it was natural though her health was in a bad state. Narcotic
poisoning, that’s his guess. Autopsy’s fixed for tonight.”
“Aspirin tablets by Letitia Blacklock’s bed. The clever clever devil. Patrick
told me Miss Blacklock threw away a half bottle of sherry—opened a new one. I
don’t suppose she’d have thought of doing that with an open bottle of aspirin.
Who had been in the house this time—within the last day or two? The tablets
can’t have been there long.”
Rydesdale looked at him.
“All our lot were there yesterday,” he said. “Birthday party for Miss Bunner.
Any of them could have nipped upstairs and done a neat little substitution. Or
of course anyone living in the house could have done it any time.”
Seventeen
THE ALBUM
Standing by the Vicarage gate, well wrapped up, Miss Marple took the note from
Bunch’s hand.
“Tell Miss Blacklock,” said Bunch, “that Julian is terribly sorry he can’t
come up himself. He’s got a parishioner dying out at Locke Hamlet. He’ll come
up after lunch if Miss Blacklock would like to see him. The note’s about the
arrangements for the funeral. He suggests Wednesday if the inquest’s on
Tuesday. Poor old Bunny. It’s so typical of her, somehow, to get hold of
poisoned aspirin meant for someone else. Goodbye, darling. I hope the walk
won’t be too much for you. But I’ve simply got to get that child to hospital
at once.”
Miss Marple said the walk wouldn’t be too much for her, and Bunch rushed off.
Whilst waiting for Miss Blacklock, Miss Marple looked round the drawing room,
and wondered just exactly what Dora Bunner had meant that morning in the
Bluebird by saying that she believed Patrick had “tampered with the lamp” to
“make the lights go out.” What lamp? And how had he “tampered” with it?
She must, Miss Marple decided, have meant the small lamp that stood on the
table by the archway. She had said something about a shepherdess or a
shepherd—and this was actually a delicate piece of Dresden china, a shepherd
in a blue coat and pink breeches holding what had originally been a
candlestick and had now been adapted to electricity. The shade was of plain
vellum and a little too big so that it almost masked the figure. What else was
it that Dora Bunner had said? “I remember distinctly that it was the
shepherdess. And the next day—” Certainly it was a shepherd now.
Miss Marple remembered that when she and Bunch had come to tea, Dora Bunner
had said something about the lamp being one of a pair. Of course—a shepherd
and a shepherdess. And it had been the shepherdess on the day of the hold-
up—and the next morning it had been the other lamp—the lamp that was here now,
the shepherd. The lamps had been changed over during the night. And Dora
Bunner had had reason to believe (or had believed without reason) that it was
Patrick who had changed them.
Why? Because, if the original lamp were examined, it would show just how
Patrick had managed to “make the lights go out.” How had he managed? Miss
Marple looked earnestly at the lamp in front of her. The flex ran along the
table over the edge and was plugged into the wall. There was a small pear-
shaped switch halfway along the flex. None of it suggested anything to Miss
Marple because she knew very little about electricity.
Where was the shepherdess lamp? she wondered. In the “spare room’ or thrown
away, or—where was it Dora Bunner had come upon Patrick Simmons with a feather
and an oily cup? In the shrubbery? Miss Marple made up her mind to put all
these points to Inspector Craddock.
At the very beginning Miss Blacklock had leaped to the conclusion that her
nephew Patrick had been behind the insertion of that advertisement. That kind
of instinctive belief was often justified, or so Miss Marple believed.
Because, if you knew people fairly well, you knew the kind of things they
thought of….
Patrick Simmons….
A handsome young man. An engaging young man. A young man whom women liked,
both young women and old women. The kind of man, perhaps, that Randall
Goedler’s sister had married. Could Patrick Simmons be “Pip’? But he’d been in
the Navy during the war. The police could soon check up on that.
Only—sometimes—the most amazing impersonations did happen.
You could get away with a great deal if you had enough audacity….
The door opened and Miss Blacklock came in. She looked, Miss Marple thought,
many years older. All the life and energy had gone out of her.
“I’m very sorry, disturbing you like this,” said Miss Marple. “But the Vicar
had a dying parishioner and Bunch had to rush a sick child to hospital. The
Vicar wrote you a note.”
She held it out and Miss Blacklock took it and opened it.
“Do sit down, Miss Marple,” she said. “It’s very kind of you to have brought
this.”
She read the note through.
“The Vicar’s a very understanding man,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t offer
one fatuous consolation … Tell him that these arrangements will do very well.
Her—her favourite hymn was Lead Kindly Light.”
Her voice broke suddenly.
Miss Marple said gently:
“I am only a stranger, but I am so very very sorry.”
And suddenly, uncontrollably, Letitia Blacklock wept. It was a piteous
overmastering grief, with a kind of hopelessness about it. Miss Marple sat
quite still.
Miss Blacklock sat up at last. Her face was swollen and blotched with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It—it just came over me. What I’ve lost. She—she was
the only link with the past, you see. The only one who—who remembered. Now
that she’s gone I’m quite alone.”
“I know what you mean,” said Miss Marple. “One is alone when the last one who
remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends—but there’s no
one who knew me as a young girl—no one who belongs to the old days. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I’ve been
alone for quite a long time now.”
Both women sat silent for some moments.
“You understand very well,” said Letitia Blacklock. She rose and went over to
her desk. “I must write a few words to the Vicar.” She held the pen rather
awkwardly and wrote slowly.
“Arthritic,” she explained. “Sometimes I can hardly write at all.”
She sealed up the envelope and addressed it.
“If you wouldn’t mind taking it, it would be very kind.”
Hearing a man’s voice in the hall she said quickly:
“That’s Inspector Craddock.”
She went to the mirror over the fireplace and applied a small powder puff to
her face.
Craddock came in with a grim, angry face.
He looked at Miss Marple with disapprobation.
“Oh,” he said. “So you’re here.”
Miss Blacklock turned from the mantelpiece.
“Miss Marple kindly came up with a note from the Vicar.”
Miss Marple said in a flurried manner:
“I am going at once—at once. Please don’t let me hamper you in any way.”
“Were you at the tea party here yesterday afternoon?”
Miss Marple said, nervously:
“No—no, I wasn’t. Bunch drove me over to call on some friends.”
“Then there’s nothing you can tell me.” Craddock held the door open in a
pointed manner, and Miss Marple scuttled out in a somewhat abashed fashion.
“Nosey Parkers, these old women,” said Craddock.
“I think you’re being unfair to her,” said Miss Blacklock. “She really did
come with a note from the Vicar.”
“I bet she did.”
“I don’t think it was idle curiosity.”
“Well, perhaps you’re right, Miss Blacklock, but my own diagnosis would be a
severe attack of Nosey Parkeritis….”
“She’s a very harmless old creature,” said Miss Blacklock.
“Dangerous as a rattlesnake if you only knew,” the Inspector thought grimly.
But he had no intention of taking anyone into his confidence unnecessarily.
Now that he knew definitely there was a killer at large, he felt that the less
said the better. He didn’t want the next person bumped off to be Jane Marple.
Somewhere—a killer … Where?
“I won’t waste time offering sympathy, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “As a matter
of fact I feel pretty bad about Miss Bunner’s death. We ought to have been
able to prevent it.”
“I don’t see what you could have done.”
“No—well, it wouldn’t have been easy. But now we’ve got to work fast. Who’s
doing this, Miss Blacklock? Who’s had two shots at killing you, and will
probably, if we don’t work fast enough, soon have another?”
Letitia Blacklock shivered. “I don’t know, Inspector—I don’t know at all!”
“I’ve checked up with Mrs. Goedler. She’s given me all the help she can. It
wasn’t very much. There are just a few people who would definitely profit by
your death. First Pip and Emma. Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age,
but their background seems clear enough. Anyway, we can’t concentrate on these
two alone. Tell me, Miss Blacklock, would you recognize Sonia Goedler if you
saw her?”
“Recognize Sonia? Why, of course—” She stopped suddenly. “No,” she said
slowly, “I don’t know that I would. It’s a long time. Thirty years … She’d be
an elderly woman now.”
“What was she like when you remember her?”
“Sonia?” Miss Blacklock considered for some moments. “She was rather small,
dark….”
“Any special peculiarities? Mannerisms?”
“No—no, I don’t think so. She was gay—very gay.”
“She mayn’t be so gay now,” said the Inspector. “Have you got a photograph of
her?”
“Of Sonia? Let me see—not a proper photograph. I’ve got some old snapshots—in
an album somewhere—at least I think there’s one of her.”
“Ah. Can I have a look at it?”
“Yes, of course. Now where did I put that album?”
“Tell me, Miss Blacklock, do you consider it remotely possible that Mrs.
Swettenham might be Sonia Goedler?”
“Mrs. Swettenham?” Miss Blacklock looked at him in lively atonishment. “But
her husband was in the Government Service—in India first, I think, and then in
Hong Kong.”
“What you mean is, that that’s the story she’s told you. You don’t, as we say
in the Courts, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
“No,” said Miss Blacklock slowly. “When you put it like that, I don’t … But
Mrs. Swettenham? Oh, it’s absurd!”
“Did Sonia Goedler ever do any acting? Amateur theatricals?”
“Oh, yes. She was good.”
“There you are! Another thing, Mrs. Swettenham wears a wig. At least,” the
Inspector corrected himself, “Mrs. Harmon says she does.”
“Yes—yes, I suppose it might be a wig. All those little grey curls. But I
still think it’s absurd. She’s really very nice and exceedingly funny
sometimes.”
“Then there’s Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Could either of them be
Sonia Goedler?”
“Miss Hinchcliffe is too tall. She’s as tall as a man.”
“Miss Murgatroyd then?”
“Oh, but—oh no, I’m sure Miss Murgatroyd couldn’t be Sonia.”
“You don’t see very well, do you, Miss Blacklock?”
“I’m shortsighted; is that what you mean?”
“Yes. What I’d like to see is a snapshot of this Sonia Goedler, even if it’s a
long time ago and not a good likeness. We’re trained, you know, to pick out
resemblances, in a way no amateur can ever do.”
“I’ll try and find it for you.”
“Now?”
“What, at once?”
“I’d prefer it.”
“Very well. Now, let me see. I saw that album when we were tidying a lot of
books out of the cupboard. Julia was helping me. She laughed, I remember, at
the clothes we used to wear in those days … The books we put in the shelf in
the drawing room. Where did we put the albums and the big bound volumes of the
Art Journal? What a wretched memory I have! Perhaps Julia will remember. She’s
at home today.”
“I’ll find her.”
The Inspector departed on his quest. He did not find Julia in any of the
downstairs rooms. Mitzi, asked where Miss Simmons was, said crossly that it
was not her affair.
“Me! I stay in my kitchen and concern myself with the lunch. And nothing do I
eat that I have not cooked myself. Nothing, do you hear?”
The Inspector called up the stairs “Miss Simmons,” and getting no response,
went up.
He met Julia face to face just as he turned the corner of the landing. She had
just emerged from a door that showed behind it a small twisty staircase.
“I was up in the attic,” she explained. “What is it?”
Inspector Craddock explained.
“Those old photograph albums? Yes, I remember them quite well. We put them in
the big cupboard in the study, I think. I’ll find them for you.”
She led the way downstairs and pushed open the study door. Near the window
there was a large cupboard. Julia pulled it open and disclosed a heterogenous
mass of objects.
“Junk,” said Julia. “All junk. But elderly people simply will not throw things
away.”
The Inspector knelt down and took a couple of old-fashioned albums from the
bottom shelf.
“Are these they?”
“Yes.”
Miss Blacklock came in and joined them.
“Oh, so that’s where we put them. I couldn’t remember.”
Craddock had the books on the table and was turning the pages.
Women in large cartwheel hats, women with dresses tapering down to their feet
so that they could hardly walk. The photos had captions neatly printed
underneath them, but the ink was old and faded.
“It would be in this one,” said Miss Blacklock. “On about the second or third
page. The other book is after Sonia had married and gone away.” She turned a
page. “It ought to be here.” She stopped.
There were several empty spaces on the page. Craddock bent down and deciphered
the faded writing. “Sonia … Self … R.G.” A little further along, “Sonia and
Belle on beach.” And again on the opposite page, “Picnic at Skeyne.” He turned
over another page, “Charlotte, Self, Sonia, R.G.”
Craddock stood up. His lips were grim.
“Somebody has removed these photographs—not long ago, I should say.”
“There weren’t any blank spaces when we looked at them the other day. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Were
there, Julia?”
“I didn’t look very closely—only at some of the dresses. But no … you’re
right, Aunt Letty, there weren’t any blank spaces.”
Craddock looked grimmer still.
“Somebody,” he said, “has removed every photo of Sonia Goedler from this
album.”
Eighteen
THE LETTERS
I
“Sorry to worry you again, Mrs. Haymes.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Phillipa coldly.
“Shall we go into this room here?”
“The study? Yes, if you like, Inspector. It’s very cold. There’s no fire.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not for long. And we’re not so likely to be overheard
here.”
“Does that matter?”
“Not to me, Mrs. Haymes. It might to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you told me, Mrs. Haymes, that your husband was killed fighting in
Italy?”
“Well?”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have told me the truth—that he was a
deserter from his regiment.”
He saw her face grow white, and her hands close and unclose themselves.
She said bitterly:
“Do you have to rake up everything?”
Craddock said dryly:
“We expect people to tell us the truth about themselves.”
She was silent. Then she said:
“Well?”
“What do you mean by ‘Well?,’ Mrs. Haymes?”
“I mean, what are you going to do about it? Tell everybody? Is that
necessary—or fair—or kind?”
“Does nobody know?”
“Nobody here. Harry”—her voice changed—“my son, he doesn’t know. I don’t want
him to know. I don’t want him to know—ever.”
“Then let me tell you that you’re taking a very big risk, Mrs. Haymes. When
the boy is old enough to understand, tell him the truth. If he finds out by
himself some day—it won’t be good for him. If you go on stuffing him up with
tales of his father dying like a hero—”
“I don’t do that. I’m not completely dishonest. I just don’t talk about it.
His father was—killed in the war. After all, that’s what it amounts to—for
us.”
“But your husband is still alive?”
“Perhaps. How should I know?”
“When did you see him last, Mrs. Haymes?”
Phillipa said quickly:
“I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Are you quite sure that’s true? You didn’t, for instance, see him about a
fortnight ago?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“It never seemed to me very likely that you met Rudi Scherz in the summerhouse
here. But Mitzi’s story was very emphatic. I suggest, Mrs. Haymes, that the
man you came back from work to meet that morning was your husband.”
“I didn’t meet anybody in the summerhouse.”
“He was hard up for money, perhaps, and you supplied him with some?”
“I’ve not seen him, I tell you. I didn’t meet anybody in the summerhouse.”
“Deserters are often rather desperate men. They often take part in robberies,
you know. Hold-ups. Things of that kind. And they have foreign revolvers very
often that they’ve brought back from abroad.”
“I don’t know where my husband is. I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Is that your last word, Mrs. Haymes?”
“I’ve nothing else to say.”
II
Craddock came away from his interview with Phillipa Haymes feeling angry and
baffled.
“Obstinate as a mule,” he said to himself angrily.
He was fairly sure that Phillipa was lying, but he hadn’t succeeded in
breaking down her obstinate denials.
He wished he knew a little more about ex-Captain Haymes. His information was
meagre. An unsatisfactory Army record, but nothing to suggest that Haymes was
likely to turn criminal.
And anyway Haymes didn’t fit in with the oiled door.
Someone in the house had done that, or someone with easy access to it.
He stood looking up the staircase, and suddenly he wondered what Julia had
been doing up in the attic. An attic, he thought, was an unlikely place for
the fastidious Julia to visit.
What had she been doing up there?
He ran lightly up to the first floor. There was no one about. He opened the
door out of which Julia had come and went up the narrow stairs to the attic.
There were trunks there, old suitcases, various broken articles of furniture,
a chair with a leg off, a broken china lamp, part of an old dinner service.
He turned to the trunks and opened the lid of one.
Clothes. Old-fashioned, quite good-quality women’s clothes. Clothes belonging,
he supposed, to Miss Blacklock, or to her sister who had died.
He opened another trunk.
Curtains.
He passed to a small attaché-case. It had papers in it and letters. Very old
letters, yellowed with time.
He looked at the outside of the case which had the initials C.L.B. on it. He
deduced correctly that it had belonged to Letitia’s sister Charlotte. He
unfolded one of the letters. It began
Dearest Charlotte.
Yesterday Belle felt well enough to go for a picnic. R.G. also took a day off.
The Asvogel flotation has gone splendidly, R.G. is terribly pleased about it.
The Preference shares are at a premium.
He skipped the rest and looked at the signature:
Your loving sister, Letitia.
He picked up another.
Darling Charlotte.
I wish you would sometimes make up your mind to see people. You do exaggerate,
you know. It isn’t nearly as bad as you think. And people really don’t mind
things like that. It’s not the disfigurement you think it is.
He nodded his head. He remembered Belle Goedler saying that Charlotte
Blacklock had a disfigurement or deformity of some kind. Letitia had, in the
end, resigned her job, to go and look after her sister. These letters all
breathed the anxious spirit of her affection and love for an invalid. She had
written her sister, apparently, long accounts of everyday happenings, of any
little detail that she thought might interest the sick girl. And Charlotte had
kept these letters. Occasionally odd snapshots had been enclosed.
Excitement suddenly flooded Craddock’s mind. Here, it might be, he would find
a clue. In these letters there would be written down things that Letitia
Blacklock herself had long forgotten. Here was a faithful picture of the past
and somewhere amongst it, there might be a clue that would help him to
identify the unknown. Photographs, too. There might, just possibly, be a
photograph of Sonia Goedler here that the person who had taken the other
photos out of the album did not know about.
Inspector Craddock packed the letters up again, carefully, closed the case,
and started down the stairs.
Letitia Blacklock, standing on the landing below, looked at him in amazement.
“Was that you up in the attic? I heard footsteps. I couldn’t imagine who—”
“Miss Blacklock, I have found some letters here, written by you to your sister
Charlotte many years ago. Will you allow me to take them away and read them?”
She flushed angrily.
“Must you do a thing like that? Why? What good can they be to you?”
“They might give me a picture of Sonia Goedler, of her character—there may be
some allusion—some incident—that will help.”
“They are private letters, Inspector.”
“I know.”
“I suppose you will take them anyway … You have the power to do so, I suppose,
or you can easily get it. Take them—take them! But you’ll find very little
about Sonia. She married and went away only a year or two after I began to
work for Randall Goedler.”
Craddock said obstinately:
“There may be something.” He added, “We’ve got to try everything. I assure you
the danger is very real.”
She said, biting her lips:
“I know. Bunny is dead—from taking an aspirin tablet that was meant for me. It
may be Patrick, or Julia, or Phillipa, or Mitzi next—somebody young with their
life in front of them. Somebody who drinks a glass of wine that is poured out
for me, or eats a chocolate that is sent to me. Oh! take the letters—take them
away. And afterwards burn them. They don’t mean anything to anyone but me and
Charlotte. It’s all over—gone—past. Nobody remembers now….”
Her hand went up to the choker of false pearls she was wearing. Caddock
thought how incongruous it looked with her tweed coat and skirt.
She said again:
“Take the letters.”
III
It was the following afternoon that the Inspector called at the Vicarage. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
It was a dark gusty day.
Miss Marple had her chair pulled close to the fire and was knitting. Bunch was
on hands and knees, crawling about the floor, cutting out material to a
pattern.
She sat back and pushed a mop of hair out of her eyes, looking up expectantly
at Craddock.
“I don’t know if it’s a breach of confidence,” said the Inspector, addressing
himself to Miss Marple, “but I’d like you to look at this letter.”
He explained the circumstances of his discovery in the attic.
“It’s rather a touching collection of letters,” he said. “Miss Blacklock
poured out everything in the hopes of sustaining her sister’s interest in life
and keeping her health good. There’s a very clear picture of an old father in
the background—old Dr. Blacklock. A real old pig-headed bully, absolutely set
in his ways, and convinced that everything he thought and said was right.
Probably killed thousands of patients through obstinacy. He wouldn’t stand for
any new ideas or methods.”
“I don’t really know that I blame him there,” said Miss Marple. “I always feel
that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they’ve
whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar
glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be
done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of
medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.”
She took the letter that Craddock handed her.
He said: “I want you to read it because I think that that generation is more
easily understood by you than by me. I don’t know really quite how these
people’s minds worked.”
Miss Marple unfolded the fragile paper.
Dearest Charlotte,
I’ve not written for two days because we’ve been having the most terrible
domestic complications. Randall’s sister Sonia (you remember her? She came to
take you out in the car that day? How I wish you would go out more). Sonia has
declared her intention of marrying one Dmitri Stamfordis. I have only seen him
once. Very attractive—not to be trusted, I should say. R.G. raves against him
and says he is a crook and a swindler. Belle, bless her, just smiles and lies
on her sofa. Sonia, who though she looks so impassive has really a terrific
temper, is simply wild with R.G. I really thought yesterday she was going to
murder him!
I’ve done my best. I’ve talked to Sonia and I’ve talked to R.G. and I’ve got
them both into a more reasonable frame of mind and then they come together and
it all starts over again! You’ve no idea how tiring it is. R.G. has been
making enquiries—and it does really seem as though this Stamfordis man was
thoroughly undesirable.
In the meantime business is being neglected. I carry on at the office and in a
way it’s rather fun because R.G. gives me a free hand. He said to me
yesterday: “Thank Heaven, there’s one sane person in the world. You’re never
likely to fall in love with a crook, Blackie, are you?” I said I didn’t think
I was likely to fall in love with anybody. R.G. said: “Let’s start a few new
hares in the City.” He’s really rather a mischievous devil sometimes and he
sails terribly near the wind. “You’re quite determined to keep me on the
straight and narrow path aren’t you, Blackie?” he said the other day. And I
shall too! I can’t understand how people can’t see when a thing’s
dishonest—but R.G. really and truly doesn’t. He only knows what is actually
against the law.
Belle only laughs at all this. She thinks the fuss about Sonia is all
nonsense. “Sonia has her own money,” she said. “Why shouldn’t she marry this
man if she wants to?” I said it might turn out to be a terrible mistake and
Belle said, “It’s never a mistake to marry a man you want to marry—even if you
regret it.” And then she said, “I suppose Sonia doesn’t want to break with
Randall because of money. Sonia’s very fond of money.”
No more now. How is father? I won’t say Give him my love. But you can if you
think it’s better to do so. Have you seen more people? You really must not be
morbid, darling.
Sonia asks to be remembered to you. She has just come in and is closing and
unclosing her hands like an angry cat sharpening its claws. I think she and
R.G. have had another row. Of course Sonia can be very irritating. She stares
you down with that cool stare of hers.
Lots of love, darling, and buck up. This iodine treatment may make a lot of
difference. I’ve been enquiring about it and it really does seem to have good
results.
Your loving sister,
Letitia.
Miss Marple folded the letter and handed it back. She looked abstracted.
“Well, what do you think about her?” Craddock urged. “What picture do you get
of her?”
“Of Sonia? It’s difficult, you know, to see anyone through another person’s
mind … Determined to get her own way—that, definitely, I think. And wanting
the best of two worlds….”
“Closing and unclosing her hands like an angry cat,” murmured Craddock. “You
know, that reminds me of someone….”
He frowned.
“Making enquiries …” murmured Miss Marple.
“If we could get hold of the result of those inquiries,” said Craddock.
“Does that letter remind you of anything in St. Mary Mead?” asked Bunch,
rather indistinctly since her mouth was full of pins.
“I really can’t say it does, dear … Dr. Blacklock is, perhaps, a little like
Mr. Curtiss the Wesleyan Minister. He wouldn’t let his child wear a plate on
her teeth. Said it was the Lord’s Will if her teeth stuck out. ‘After all,’ I
said to him, ‘you do trim your beard and cut your hair. It might be the Lord’s
Will that your hair should grow out.’ He said that was quite different. So
like a man. But that doesn’t help us with our present problem.”
“We’ve never traced that revolver, you know. It wasn’t Rudi Scherz. If I knew
who had had a revolver in Chipping Cleghorn—”
“Colonel Easterbrook has one,” said Bunch. “He keeps it in his collar drawer.”
“How do you know, Mrs. Harmon?”
“Mrs. Butt told me. She’s my daily. Or rather, my twice weekly. Being a
military gentleman, she said, he’d naturally have a revolver and very handy it
would be if burglars were to come along.”
“When did she tell you this?”
“Ages ago. About six months ago, I should think.”
“Colonel Easterbrook?” murmured Craddock.
“It’s like those pointer things at fairs, isn’t it?” said Bunch, still
speaking through a mouthful of pins. “Go round and round and stop at something
different every time.”
“You’re telling me,” said Craddock and groaned.
“Colonel Easterbrook was up at Little Paddocks to leave a book there one day.
He could have oiled that door then. He was quite straightforward about being
there though. Not like Miss Hinchcliffe.”
Miss Marple coughed gently. “You must make allowances for the times we live
in, Inspector,” she said.
Craddock looked at her, uncomprehendingly.
“After all,” said Miss Marple. “you are the Police, aren’t you? People can’t
say everything they’d like to say to the Police, can they?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Craddock. “Unless they’ve got some criminal matter
to conceal.”
“She means butter,” said Bunch, crawling actively round a table leg to anchor
a floating bit of paper. “Butter and corn for hens, and sometimes cream—and
sometimes, even, a side of bacon.”
“Show him that note from Miss Blacklock,” said Miss Marple. “It’s some time
ago now, but it reads like a first-class mystery story.”
“What have I done with it? Is this the one you mean, Aunt Jane?”
Miss Marple took it and looked at it.
“Yes,” she said with satisfaction. “That’s the one.”
She handed it to the Inspector.
“I have made inquiries—Thursday is the day,” Miss Blacklock had written. “Any
time after three. If there is any for me leave it in the usual place.”
Bunch spat out her pins and laughed. Miss Marple was watching the Inspector’s
face. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Miss Marple was watching the Inspector’s
face.
The Vicar’s wife took it upon herself to explain.
“Thursday is the day one of the farms round here makes butter. They let
anybody they like have a bit. It’s usually Miss Hinchcliffe who collects it.
She’s very much in with all the farmers—because of her pigs, I think. But it’s
all a bit hush hush, you know, a kind of local scheme of barter. One person
gets butter, and sends along cucumbers, or something like that—and a little
something when a pig’s killed. And now and then an animal has an accident and
has to be destroyed. Oh, you know the sort of thing. Only one can’t, very
well, say it right out to the Police. Because I suppose quite a lot of this
barter is illegal—only nobody really knows because it’s all so complicated.
But I expect Hinch had slipped into Little Paddocks with a pound of butter or
something and had put it in the usual place. That’s a flour bin under the
dresser, by the way. It doesn’t have flour in it.”
Craddock sighed.
“I’m glad I came here to you ladies,” he said.
“There used to be clothing coupons, too,” said Bunch. “Not usually bought—that
wasn’t considered honest. No money passes. But people like Mrs. Butt or Mrs.
Finch or Mrs. Huggins like a nice woollen dress or a winter coat that hasn’t
seen too much wear and they pay for it with coupons instead of money.”
“You’d better not tell me any more,” said Craddock. “It’s all against the
law.”
“Then there oughtn’t to be such silly laws,” said Bunch, filling her mouth up
with pins again. “I don’t do it, of course, because Julian doesn’t like me to,
so I don’t. But I know what’s going on, of course.”
A kind of despair was coming over the Inspector.
“It all sounds so pleasant and ordinary,” he said. “Funny and petty and
simple. And yet one woman and a man have been killed, and another woman may be
killed before I can get anything definite to go on. I’ve left off worrying
about Pip and Emma for the moment. I’m concentrating on Sonia. I wish I knew
what she looked like. There was a snapshot or two in with these letters, but
none of the snaps could have been of her.”
“How do you know it couldn’t have been her? Do you know what she looked like?”
“She was small and dark, Miss Blacklock said.”
“Really,” said Miss Marple, “that’s very interesting.”
“There was one snap that reminded me vaguely of someone. A tall fair girl with
her hair all done up on top of her head. I don’t know who she could have been.
Anyway, it can’t have been Sonia. Do you think Mrs. Swettenham could have been
dark when she was a girl?”
“Not very dark,” said Bunch. “She’s got blue eyes.”
“I hoped there might be a photo of Dmitri Stamfordis—but I suppose that was
too much to hope for … Well”—he took up the letter—“I’m sorry this doesn’t
suggest anything to you, Miss Marple.”
“Oh! but it does,” said Miss Marple. “It suggests a good deal. Just read it
through again, Inspector—especially where it says that Randall Goedler was
making inquiries about Dmitri Stamfordis.”
Craddock stared at her.
The telephone rang.
Bunch got up from the floor and went out into the hall where, in accordance
with the best Victorian traditions, the telephone had originally been placed
and where it still was.
She reentered the room to say to Craddock:
“It’s for you.”
Slightly surprised, the Inspector went out to the instrument—carefully
shutting the door of the living room behind him.
“Craddock? Rydesdale here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve been looking through your report. In the interview you had with Phillipa
Haymes I see she states positively that she hasn’t seen her husband since his
desertion from the Army?”
“That’s right, sir—she was most emphatic. But in my opinion she wasn’t
speaking the truth.”
“I agree with you. Do you remember a case about ten days ago—man run over by a
lorry—taken to Milchester General with concussion and a fractured pelvis?”
“The fellow who snatched a child practically from under the wheels of a lorry,
and got run down himself?”
“That’s the one. No papers of any kind on him and nobody came forward to
identify him. Looked as though he might be on the run. He died last night
without regaining consciousness. But he’s been identified—deserter from the
Army—Ronald Haymes, ex-Captain in the South Loamshires.”
“Phillipa Haymes’ husband?”
“Yes. He’d got an old Chipping Cleghorn bus ticket on him, by the way—and
quite a reasonable amount of money.”
“So he did get money from his wife? I always thought he was the man Mitzi
overheard talking to her in the summerhouse. She denied it flatly, of course.
But surely, sir, that lorry accident was before—”
Rydesdale took the words out of his mouth.
“Yes, he was taken to Milchester General on the 28th. The hold-up at Little
Paddocks was on the 29th. That lets him out of any possible connection with
it. But his wife, of course, knew nothing about the accident. She may have
been thinking all along that he was concerned in it. She’d hold her
tongue—naturally—after all he was her husband.”
“It was a fairly gallant bit of work, wasn’t it, sir?” said Craddock slowly.
“Rescuing that child from the lorry? Yes. Plucky. Don’t suppose it was
cowardice that made Haymes desert. Well, all that’s past history. For a man
who’d blotted his copybook, it was a good death.”
“I’m glad for her sake,” said the Inspector. “And for that boy of theirs.”
“Yes, he needn’t be too ashamed of his father. And the young woman will be
able to marry again now.”
Craddock said slowly:
“I was thinking of that, sir … It opens up—possibilities.”
“You’d better break the news to her as you’re on the spot.”
“I will, sir. I’ll push along there now. Or perhaps I’d better wait until
she’s back at Little Paddocks. It may be rather a shock—and there’s someone
else I rather want to have a word with first.”
Nineteen
RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CRIME
I
“I’ll put a lamp by you before I go,” said Bunch. “It’s so dark in here.
There’s going to be a storm, I think.”
She lifted the small reading lamp to the other side of the table where it
would throw light on Miss Marple’s knitting as she sat in a wide highbacked
chair.
As the flex pulled across the table, Tiglath Pileser the cat leapt upon it and
bit and clawed it violently.
“No, Tiglath Pileser, you mustn’t … He really is awful. Look, he’s nearly
bitten it through—it’s all frayed. Don’t you understand, you idiotic puss,
that you may get a nasty electric shock if you do that?”
“Thank you, dear,” said Miss Marple, and put out a hand to turn on the lamp.
“It doesn’t turn on there. You have to press that silly little switch halfway
along the flex. Wait a minute. I’ll take these flowers out of the way.”
She lifted a bowl of Christmas roses across the table. Tiglath Pileser, his
tail switching, put out a mischievous paw and clawed Bunch’s arm. She spilled
some of the water out of the vase. It fell on the frayed area of flex and on
Tiglath Pileser himself, who leapt to the floor with an indignant hiss.
Miss Marple pressed the small pear-shaped switch. Where the water had soaked
the frayed flex there was a flash and a crackle.
“Oh, dear,” said Bunch. “It’s fused. Now I suppose all the lights in here are
off.” She tried them. “Yes, they are. So stupid being all on the same
thingummibob. And it’s made a burn on the table, too. Naughty Tiglath
Pileser—it’s all his fault. Aunt Jane—what’s the matter? Did it startle you?”
“It’s nothing, dear. Just something I saw quite suddenly which I ought to have
seen before….”
“I’ll go and fix the fuse and get the lamp from Julian’s study.”
“No, dear, don’t bother. You’ll miss your bus. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
You’ll miss your bus. I don’t want any more light. I
just want to sit quietly and—think about something. Hurry dear, or you won’t
catch your bus.”
When Bunch had gone, Miss Marple sat quite still for about two minutes. The
air of the room was heavy and menacing with the gathering storm outside.
Miss Marple drew a sheet of paper towards her.
She wrote first: Lamp? and underlined it heavily.
After a moment or two, she wrote another word.
Her pencil travelled down the paper, making brief cryptic notes….
II
In the rather dark living room of Boulders with its low ceiling and latticed
window panes, Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd were having an argument.
“The trouble with you, Murgatroyd,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “is that you won’t
try.”
“But I tell you, Hinch, I can’t remember a thing.”
“Now look here, Amy Murgatroyd, we’re going to do some constructive thinking.
So far we haven’t shone on the detective angle. I was quite wrong over that
door business. You didn’t hold the door open for the murderer after all.
You’re cleared, Murgatroyd!”
Miss Murgatroyd gave a rather watery smile.
“It’s just our luck to have the only silent cleaning woman in Chipping
Cleghorn,” continued Miss Hinchcliffe. “Usually I’m thankful for it, but this
time it means we’ve got off to a bad start. Everybody else in the place knows
about that second door in the drawing room being used—and we only heard about
it yesterday—”
“I still don’t quite understand how—”
“It’s perfectly simple. Our original premises were quite right. You can’t hold
open a door, wave a torch and shoot with a revolver all at the same time. We
kept in the revolver and the torch and cut out the door. Well, we were wrong.
It was the revolver we ought to have cut out.”
“But he did have a revolver,” said Miss Murgatroyd. “I saw it. It was there on
the floor beside him.”
“When he was dead, yes. It’s all quite clear. He didn’t fire that revolver—”
“Then who did?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. But whoever did it, the same person put
a couple of poisoned aspirin tablets by Letty Blacklock’s bed—and thereby
bumped off poor Dora Bunner. And that couldn’t have been Rudi Scherz, because
he’s as dead as a doornail. It was someone who was in the room that night of
the hold-up and probably someone who was at the birthday party, too. And the
only person that lets out is Mrs. Harmon.”
“You think someone put those aspirins there the day of the birthday party?”
“Why not?”
“But how could they?”
“Well, we all went to the loo, didn’t we?” said Miss Hinchcliffe coarsely.
“And I washed my hands in the bathroom because of that sticky cake. And little
Sweetie Easterbrook powdered her grubby little face in Blacklock’s bedroom,
didn’t she?”
“Hinch! Do you think she—?”
“I don’t know yet. Rather obvious, if she did. I don’t think if you were going
to plant some tablets, that you’d want to be seen in the bedroom at all. Oh,
yes, there were plenty of opportunities.”
“The men didn’t go upstairs.”
“There are back stairs. After all, if a man leaves the room, you don’t follow
him to see if he really is going where you think he is going. It wouldn’t be
delicate! Anyway, don’t argue, Murgatroyd. I want to get back to the original
attempt on Letty Blacklock. Now, to begin with, get the facts firmly into your
head, because it’s all going to depend upon you.”
Miss Murgatroyd looked alarmed.
“Oh, dear, Hinch, you know what a muddle I get into!”
“It’s not a question of your brains, or the grey fluff that passes for brains
with you. It’s a question of eyes. It’s a question of what you saw.”
“But I didn’t see anything.”
“The trouble with you is, Murgatroyd, as I said just now, that you won’t try.
Now pay attention. This is what happened. Whoever it is that’s got it in for
Letty Blacklock was there in that room that evening. He (I say he because it’s
easier, but there’s no reason why it should be a man more than a woman except,
of course, that men are dirty dogs), well, he has previously oiled that second
door that leads out of the drawing room and which is supposed to be nailed up
or something. Don’t ask me when he did it, because that confuses things.
Actually, by choosing my time, I could walk into any house in Chipping
Cleghorn and do anything I liked there for half an hour or so with no one
being the wiser. It’s just a question of working out where the daily women are
and when the occupiers are out and exactly where they’ve gone and how long
they’ll be. Just good staff work. Now, to continue. He’s oiled that second
door. It will open without a sound. Here’s the setup: Lights go out, door A
(the regular door) opens with a flourish. Business with torch and hold-up
lines. In the meantime, while we’re all goggling, X (that’s the best term to
use) slips quietly out by door B into the dark hall, comes up behind that
Swiss idiot, takes a couple of shots at Letty Blacklock and then shoots the
Swiss. Drops the revolver, where lazy thinkers like you will assume it’s
evidence that the Swiss did the shooting, and nips back into the room again by
the time that someone gets a lighter going. Got it?”
“Yes—ye-es, but who was it?”
“Well, if you don’t know, Murgatroyd, nobody does!”
“Me?” Miss Murgatroyd fairly twittered in alarm. “But I don’t know anything at
all. I don’t really, Hinch!”
“Use that fluff of yours you call a brain. To begin with, where was everybody
when the lights went out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You’re maddening, Murgatroyd. You know where you were, don’t
you? You were behind the door.”
“Yes—yes, I was. It knocked against my corn when it flew open.”
“Why don’t you go to a proper chiropodist instead of messing about yourself
with your feet?. You’ll give yourself blood poisoning one of these days. Come
on, now—you’re behind the door. I’m standing against the mantelpiece with my
tongue hanging out for a drink. Letty Blacklock is by the table near the
archway, getting the cigarettes. Patrick Simmons has gone through the archway
into the small room where Letty Blacklock has had the drinks put. Agreed?”
“Yes, yes, I remember all that.”
“Good, now somebody else followed Patrick into that room or was just starting
to follow him. One of the men. The annoying thing is that I can’t remember
whether it was Easterbrook or Edmund Swettenham. Do you remember?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You wouldn’t! And there was someone else who went through to the small room:
Phillipa Haymes. I remember that distinctly because I remember noticing what a
nice flat back she has, and I thought to myself ‘that girl would look well on
a horse.’ I was watching her and thinking just that. She went over to the
mantelpiece in the other room. I don’t know what it was she wanted there,
because at that moment the lights went out.
“So that’s the position. In the drawing room are Patrick Simmons, Phillipa
Haymes, and either Colonel Easterbrook or Edmund Swettenham—we don’t know
which. Now, Murgatroyd, pay attention. The most probable thing is that it was
one of those three who did it. If anyone wanted to get out of that far door,
they’d naturally take care to put themselves in a convenient place when the
lights went out. So, as I say, in all probability, it’s one of those three.
And in that case, Murgatroyd, there’s not a thing you can do about it!”
Miss Murgatroyd brightened perceptibly.
“On the other hand,” continued Miss Hinchcliffe, “there’s the possibility that
it wasn’t one of those three. And that’s where you come in, Murgatroyd.”
“But how should I know anything about it?”
“As I said before if you don’t nobody does.”
“But I don’t! I really don’t! | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I really don’t! I couldn’t see anything at all!”
“Oh, yes, you could. You’re the only person who could see. You were standing
behind the door. You couldn’t look at the torch—because the door was between
you and it. You were facing the other way, the same way as the torch was
pointing. The rest of us were just dazzled. But you weren’t dazzled.”
“No—no, perhaps not, but I didn’t see anything, the torch went round and
round—”
“Showing you what? It rested on faces, didn’t it? And on tables? And on
chairs?”
“Yes—yes, it did … Miss Bunner, her mouth wide open and her eyes popping out
of her head, staring and blinking.”
“That’s the stuff!” Miss Hinchcliffe gave a sigh of relief. “The difficulty
there is in making you use that grey fluff of yours! Now then, keep it up.”
“But I didn’t see any more, I didn’t, really.”
“You mean you saw an empty room? Nobody standing about? Nobody sitting down?”
“No, of course not that. Miss Bunner with her mouth open and Mrs. Harmon was
sitting on the arm of a chair. She had her eyes tight shut and her knuckles
all doubled up to her face—like a child.”
“Good, that’s Mrs. Harmon and Miss Bunner. Don’t you see yet what I’m getting
at? The difficulty is that I don’t want to put ideas into your head. But when
we’ve eliminated who you did see—we can get on to the important point which
is, was there anyone you didn’t see. Got it? Besides the tables and the chairs
and the chrysanthemums and the rest of it, there were certain people: Julia
Simmons, Mrs. Swettenham, Mrs. Easterbrook—either Colonel Easterbrook or
Edmund Swettenham—Dora Bunner and Bunch Harmon. All right, you saw Bunch
Harmon and Dora Bunner. Cross them off. Now think, Murgatroyd, think, was
there one of those people who definitely wasn’t there?”
Miss Murgatroyd jumped slightly as a branch knocked against the open window.
She shut her eyes. She murmured to herself….
“The flowers … on the table … the big armchair … the torch didn’t come round
as far as you, Hinch—Mrs. Harmon, yes….”
The telephone rang sharply. Miss Hinchcliffe went to it.
“Hallo, yes? The station?”
The obedient Miss Murgatroyd, her eyes closed, was reliving the night of the
29th. The torch, sweeping slowly round … a group of people … the windows … the
sofa … Dora Bunner … the wall … the table with lamp … the archway … the sudden
spat of the revolver….
“… but that’s extraordinary!” said Miss Murgatroyd.
“What?” Miss Hinchcliffe was barking angrily into the telephone. “Been there
since this morning? What time? Damn and blast you, and you only ring me up
now? I’ll set the S.P.C.A. after you. An oversight? Is that all you’ve got to
say?”
She banged down the receiver.
“It’s that dog,” she said. “The red setter. Been at the station since this
morning—since this morning at eight o’clock. Without a drop of water! And the
idiots only ring me up now. I’m going to get her right away.”
She plunged out of the room, Miss Murgatroyd squeaking shrilly in her wake.
“But listen, Hinch, a most extraordinary thing … I don’t understand it….”
Miss Hinchcliffe had dashed out of the door and across to the shed which
served as a garage.
“We’ll go on with it when I come back,” she called. “I can’t wait for you to
come with me. You’ve got your bedroom slippers on as usual.”
She pressed the starter of the car and backed out of the garage with a jerk.
Miss Murgatroyd skipped nimbly sideways.
“But listen, Hinch, I must tell you—”
“When I come back….”
The car jerked and shot forwards. Miss Murgatroyd’s voice came faintly after
it on a high excited note.
“But, Hinch, she wasn’t there. …”
III
Overhead the clouds had been gathering thick and blue. As Miss Murgatroyd
stood looking after the retreating car, the first big drops began to fall.
In an agitated fashion, Miss Murgatroyd plunged across to a line of string on
which she had, some hours previously, hung out a couple of jumpers and a pair
of woollen combinations to dry.
She was murmuring under her breath:
“Really most extraordinary … Oh, dear, I shall never get these down in
time—and they were nearly dry….”
She struggled with a recalcitrant clothes peg, then turned her head as she
heard someone approaching.
Then she smiled a pleased welcome.
“Hallo—do go inside, you’ll get wet.”
“Let me help you.”
“Oh, if you don’t mind … so annoying if they all get soaked again. I really
ought to let down the line, but I think I can just reach.”
“Here’s your scarf. Shall I put it round your neck?”
“Oh, thank you … Yes, perhaps … If I could just reach this peg….”
The woollen scarf was slipped round her neck and then, suddenly, pulled
tight….
Miss Murgatroyd’s mouth opened, but no sound came except a small choking
gurgle.
And the scarf was pulled tighter still….
IV
On her way back from the station, Miss Hinchcliffe stopped the car to pick up
Miss Marple who was hurrying along the street.
“Hallo,” she shouted. “You’ll get very wet. Come and have tea with us. I saw
Bunch waiting for the bus. You’ll be all alone at the Vicarage. Come and join
us. Murgatroyd and I are doing a bit of reconstruction of the crime. I rather
think we’re just getting somewhere. Mind the dog. She’s rather nervous.”
“What a beauty!”
“Yes, lovely bitch, isn’t she! Those fools kept her at the station since this
morning without letting me know. I told them off, the lazy b—s. Oh, excuse my
language. I was brought up by grooms at home in Ireland.”
The little car turned with a jerk into the small backyard of Boulders.
A crowd of eager ducks and fowls encircled the two ladies as they descended.
“Curse Murgatroyd,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “she hasn’t given ’em their corn.”
“Is it difficult to get corn?” Miss Marple inquired.
Miss Hincliffe winked.
“I’m in with most of the farmers,” she said.
Shooing away the hens, she escorted Miss Marple towards the cottage.
“Hope you’re not too wet?”
“No, this is a very good mackintosh.”
“I’ll light the fire if Murgatroyd hasn’t lit it. Hiyah, Murgatroyd? Where is
the woman? Murgatroyd! Where’s that dog? She’s disappeared now.”
A slow dismal howl came from outside.
“Curse the silly bitch.” Miss Hinchcliffe tramped to the door and called:
“Hyoup, Cutie—Cutie. Damn” silly name but that’s what they called her
apparently. We must find her another name. Hiyah, Cutie.”
The red setter was sniffing at something lying below the taut string where a
row of garments swirled in the wind.
“Murgatroyd’s not even had the sense to bring the washing in. Where is she?”
Again the red setter nosed at what seemed to be a pile of clothes, and raised
her nose high in the air and howled again.
“What’s the matter with the dog?”
Miss Hinchcliffe strode across the grass.
And quickly, apprehensively, Miss Marple ran after her. They stood there, side
by side, the rain beating down on them, and the older woman’s arm went round
the younger one’s shoulders.
She felt the muscles go stiff and taut as Miss Hinchcliffe stood looking down
on the thing lying there, with the blue congested face and the protruding
tongue.
“I’ll kill whoever did this,” said Miss Hinchcliffe in a low quiet voice, “if
I once get my hands on her….”
Miss Marple said questioningly:
“Her?”
Miss Hinchcliffe turned a ravaged face towards her.
“Yes. I know who it is—near enough … That is, it’s one of three possibles.”
She stood for another moment, looking down at her dead friend, and then turned
towards the house. Her voice was dry and hard. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Her voice was dry and hard.
“We must ring up the police,” she said. “And while we’re waiting for them,
I’ll tell you. My fault, in a way, that Murgatroyd’s lying out there. I made a
game of it … Murder isn’t a game….”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game.”
“You know something about it, don’t you?” said Miss Hinchcliffe as she lifted
the receiver and dialled.
She made a brief report and hung up.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes … Yes, I heard that you’d been mixed up in
this sort of business before … I think it was Edmund Swettenham told me so …
Do you want to hear what we were doing, Murgatroyd and I?”
Succinctly she described the conversation held before her departure for the
station.
“She called after me, you know, just as I was leaving … That’s how I know it’s
a woman and not a man … If I’d waited—if only I’d listened! God dammit, the
dog could have stopped where she was for another quarter of an hour.”
“Don’t blame yourself, my dear. That does no good. One can’t foresee.”
“No, one can’t … Something tapped against the window, I remember. Perhaps she
was outside there, then—yes, of course, she must have been … coming to the
house … and there were Murgatroyd and I shouting at each other. Top of our
voices … She heard … She heard it all….”
“You haven’t told me yet what your friend said.”
“Just one sentence! ‘She wasn’t there.’”
She paused. “You see? There were three women we hadn’t eliminated. Mrs.
Swettenham, Mrs. Easterbrook, Julia Simmons. And one of those three—wasn’t
there … She wasn’t there in the drawing room because she had slipped out
through the other door and was out in the hall.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I see.”
“It’s one of those three women. I don’t know which. But I’ll find out!”
“Excuse me,” said Miss Marple. “But did she—did Miss Murgatroyd, I mean, say
it exactly as you said it?”
“How d’you mean—as I said it?”
“Oh, dear, how can I explain? You said it like this. She-wasn’t-there. An
equal emphasis on every word. You see, there are three ways you could say it.
You could say, ‘She wasn’t there.’ Very personal. Or again, ‘She wasn’t
there.’ Confirming, some suspicion already held. Or else you could say (and
this is nearer to the way you said it just now), ‘She wasn’t there…’ quite
blankly—with the emphasis, if there was emphasis—on the ‘there.’”
“I don’t know.” Miss Hinchcliffe shook her head. “I can’t remember … How the
hell can I remember? I think, yes, surely she’d say “She wasn’t there.’ That
would be the natural way, I should think. But I simply don’t know. Does it
make any difference?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “I think so. It’s a very slight
indication, of course, but I think it is an indication. Yes, I should think it
makes a lot of difference….”
Twenty
MISS MARPLE IS MISSING
I
The postman, rather to his disgust, had lately been given orders to make an
afternoon delivery of letters in Chipping Cleghorn as well as a morning one.
On this particular afternoon he left three letters at Little Paddocks at
exactly ten minutes to five.
One was addressed to Phillipa Haymes in a schoolboy’s hand; the other two were
for Miss Blacklock. She opened them as she and Phillipa sat down at the tea
table. The torrential rain had enabled Phillipa to leave Dayas Hall early
today, since once she had shut up the greenhouses there was nothing more to
do.
Miss Blacklock tore open her first letter which was a bill for repairing a
kitchen boiler. She snorted angrily.
“Dymond’s prices are preposterous—quite preposterous. Still, I suppose all the
other people are just as bad.”
She opened the second letter which was in a handwriting quite unknown to her.
Dear Cousin Letty (it said),
I hope it will be all right for me to come to you on Tuesday? I wrote to
Patrick two days ago but he hasn’t answered. So I presume it’s all right.
Mother is coming to England next month and hopes to see you then.
My train arrives at Chipping Cleghorn at 6:15 if that’s convenient?
Yours affectionately,
Julia Simmons.
Miss Blacklock read the letter once with astonishment pure and simple, and
then again with a certain grimness. She looked up at Phillipa who was smiling
over her son’s letter.
“Are Julia and Patrick back, do you know?”
Phillipa looked up.
“Yes, they came in just after I did. They went upstairs to change. They were
wet.”
“Perhaps you’d not mind going and calling them.”
“Of course I will.”
“Wait a moment—I’d like you to read this.”
She handed Phillipa the letter she had received.
Phillipa read it and frowned. “I don’t understand….”
“Nor do I, quite … I think it’s about time I did. Call Patrick and Julia,
Phillipa.”
Phillipa called from the bottom of the stairs:
“Patrick! Julia! Miss Blacklock wants you.”
Patrick came running down the stairs and entered the room.
“Don’t go, Phillipa,” said Miss Blacklock.
“Hallo, Aunt Letty,” said Patrick cheerfully. “Want me?”
“Yes, I do. Perhaps you’ll give me an explanation of this?”
Patrick’s face showed an almost comical dismay as he read.
“I meant to telegraph her! What an ass I am!”
“This letter, I presume, is from your sister Julia?”
“Yes—yes, it is.”
Miss Blacklock said grimly:
“Then who, may I ask, is the young woman whom you brought here as Julia
Simmons, and whom I was given to understand was your sister and my cousin?”
“Well—you see—Aunt Letty—the fact of the matter is—I can explain it all—I know
I oughtn’t to have done it—but it really seemed more of a lark than anything
else. If you’ll just let me explain—”
“I am waiting for you to explain. Who is this young woman?”
“Well, I met her at a cocktail party soon after I got demobbed. We got talking
and I said I was coming here and then—well, we thought it might be rather a
good wheeze if I brought her along … You see, Julia, the real Julia, was mad
to go on the stage and Mother had seven fits at the idea—however, Julia got a
chance to join a jolly good repertory company up in Perth or somewhere and she
thought she’d give it a try—but she thought she’d keep Mum calm by letting Mum
think that she was here with me studying to be a dispenser like a good little
girl.”
“I still want to know who this other young woman is.”
Patrick turned with relief as Julia, cool and aloof, came into the room.
“The balloon’s gone up,” he said.
Julia raised her eyebrows. Then, still cool, she came forward and sat down.
“O.K.,” she said. “That’s that. I suppose you’re very angry?” She studied Miss
Blacklock’s face with almost dispassionate interest. “I should be if I were
you.”
“Who are you?”
Julia sighed.
“I think the moment’s come when I make a clean breast of things. Here we go.
I’m one half of the Pip and Emma combination. To be exact, my christened name
is Emma Jocelyn Stamfordis—only Father soon dropped the Stamfordis. I think he
called himself De Courcy next.
“My father and mother, let me tell you, split up about three years after Pip
and I were born. Each of them went their own way. And they split us up. I was
Father’s part of the loot. He was a bad parent on the whole, though quite a
charming one. I had various desert spells of being educated in convents—when
Father hadn’t any money, or was preparing to engage in some particularly
nefarious deal. He used to pay the first term with every sign of affluence and
then depart and leave me on the nuns’ hands for a year or two. In the
intervals, he and I had some very good times together, moving in cosmopolitan
society. However, the war separated us completely. I’ve no idea of what’s
happened to him. I had a few adventures myself. I was with the French
Resistance for a time. Quite exciting. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I was with the French
Resistance for a time. Quite exciting. To cut a long story short, I landed up
in London and began to think about my future. I knew that Mother’s brother
with whom she’d had a frightful row had died a very rich man. I looked up his
will to see if there was anything for me. There wasn’t—not directly, that is
to say. I made a few inquiries about his widow—it seemed she was quite ga-ga
and kept under drugs and was dying by inches. Frankly, it looked as though you
were my best bet. You were going to come into a hell of a lot of money and
from all I could find out, you didn’t seem to have anyone much to spend it on.
I’ll be quite frank. It occurred to me that if I could get to know you in a
friendly kind of way, and if you took a fancy to me—well, after all,
conditions have changed a bit, haven’t they, since Uncle Randall died? I mean
any money we ever had has been swept away in the cataclysm of Europe. I
thought you might pity a poor orphan girl, all alone in the world, and make
her, perhaps, a small allowance.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Miss Blacklock grimly.
“Yes. Of course, I hadn’t seen you then … I visualized a kind of sob stuff
approach … Then, by a marvellous stroke of luck, I met Patrick here—and he
turned out to be your nephew or your cousin, or something. Well, that struck
me as a marvellous chance. I went bullheaded for Patrick and he fell for me in
a most gratifying way. The real Julia was all wet about this acting stuff and
I soon persuaded her it was her duty to Art to go and fix herself up in some
uncomfortable lodgings in Perth and train to be the new Sarah Bernhardt.
“You mustn’t blame Patrick too much. He felt awfully sorry for me, all alone
in the world—and he soon thought it would be a really marvellous idea for me
to come here as his sister and do my stuff.”
“And he also approved of your continuing to tell a tissue of lies to the
police?”
“Have a heart, Letty. Don’t you see that when that ridiculous hold-up business
happened—or rather after it happened—I began to feel I was in a bit of a spot.
Let’s face it, I’ve got a perfectly good motive for putting you out of the
way. You’ve only got my word for it now that I wasn’t the one who tried to do
it. You can’t expect me deliberately to go and incriminate myself. Even
Patrick got nasty ideas about me from time to time, and if even he could think
things like that, what on earth would the police think? That Detective-
Inspector struck me as a man of singularly sceptical mind. No, I figured out
the only thing for me to do was to sit tight as Julia and just fade away when
term came to an end.
“How was I to know that fool Julia, the real Julia, would go and have a row
with the producer, and fling the whole thing up in a fit of temperament? She
writes to Patrick and asks if she can come here, and instead of wiring her
‘Keep away’ he goes and forgets to do anything at all!” She cast an angry
glance at Patrick. “Of all the utter idiots!”
She sighed.
“You don’t know the straits I’ve been put to in Milchester! Of course, I
haven’t been to the hospital at all. But I had to go somewhere. Hours and
hours I’ve spent in the pictures seeing the most frightful films over and over
again.”
“Pip and Emma,” murmured Miss Blacklock. “I never believed, somehow, in spite
of what the Inspector said, that they were real—”
She looked searchingly at Julia.
“You’re Emma,” she said. “Where’s Pip?”
Julia’s eyes, limpid and innocent, met hers.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t the least idea.”
“I think you’re lying, Julia. When did you see him last?”
Was there a momentary hesitation before Julia spoke?
She said clearly and deliberately:
“I haven’t seen him since we were both three years old—when my mother took him
away. I haven’t seen either him or my mother. I don’t know where they are.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
Julia sighed.
“I could say I was sorry. But it wouldn’t really be true; because actually I’d
do the same thing again—though not if I’d known about this murder business, of
course.”
“Julia,” said Miss Blacklock, “I call you that because I’m used to it. You
were with the French Resistance, you say?”
“Yes. For eighteen months.”
“Then I suppose you learned to shoot?”
Again those cool blue eyes met hers.
“I can shoot all right. I’m a first-class shot. I didn’t shoot at you, Letitia
Blacklock, though you’ve only got my word for that. But I can tell you this,
that if I had shot at you, I wouldn’t have been likely to miss.”
II
The sound of a car driving up to the door broke through the tenseness of the
moment.
“Who can that be?” asked Miss Blacklock.
Mitzi put a tousled head in. She was showing the whites of her eyes.
“It is the police come again,” she said. “This, it is persecution! Why will
they not leave us alone? I will not bear it. I will write to the Prime
Minister. I will write to your King.”
Craddock’s hand put her firmly and not too kindly aside. He came in with such
a grim set to his lips that they all looked at him apprehensively. This was a
new Inspector Craddock.
He said sternly:
“Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered. She was strangled—not more than an hour
ago.” His eye singled out Julia. “You—Miss Simmons—where have you been all
day?”
Julia said warily:
“In Milchester. I’ve just got in.”
“And you?” The eye went on to Patrick.
“Yes.”
“Did you both come back here together?”
“Yes—yes, we did,” said Patrick.
“No,” said Julia. “It’s no good, Patrick. That’s the kind of lie that will be
found out at once. The bus people know us well. I came back on the earlier
bus, Inspector—the one that gets here at four o’clock.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I went for a walk.”
“In the direction of Boulders?”
“No. I went across the fields.”
He stared at her. Julia, her face pale, her lips tense, stared back.
Before anyone could speak, the telephone rang.
Miss Blacklock, with an inquiring glance at Craddock, picked up the receiver.
“Yes. Who? Oh, Bunch. What? No. No, she hasn’t. I’ve no idea … Yes, he’s here
now.”
She lowered the instrument and said:
“Mrs. Harmon would like to speak to you, Inspector. Miss Marple has not come
back to the Vicarage and Mrs. Harmon is worried about her.”
Craddock took two strides forward and gripped the telephone.
“Craddock speaking.”
“I’m worried, Inspector.” Bunch’s voice came through with a childish tremor in
it. “Aunt Jane’s out somewhere—and I don’t know where. And they say that Miss
Murgatroyd’s been killed. Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true, Mrs. Harmon. Miss Marple was there with Miss Hinchcliffe when
they found the body.”
“Oh, so that’s where she is.” Bunch sounded relieved.
“No—no, I’m afraid she isn’t. Not now. She left there about—let me see—half an
hour ago. She hasn’t got home?”
“No—she hasn’t. It’s only ten minutes’ walk. Where can she be?”
“Perhaps she’s called in on one of your neighbours?”
“I’ve rung them up—all of them. She’s not there. I’m frightened, Inspector.”
“So am I,” thought Craddock.
He said quickly:
“I’ll come round to you—at once.”
“Oh, do—there’s a piece of paper. She was writing on it before she went out. I
don’t know if it means anything … It just seems gibberish to me.”
Craddock replaced the receiver.
Miss Blacklock said anxiously:
“Has something happened to Miss Marple? Oh, I hope not.”
“I hope not, too.” His mouth was grim.
“She’s so old—and frail.”
“I know.”
Miss Blacklock, standing with her hand pulling at the choker of pearls round
her neck, said in a hoarse voice:
“It’s getting worse and worse. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Whoever’s doing these things must be mad,
Inspector—quite mad….”
“I wonder.”
The choker of pearls round Miss Blacklock’s neck broke under the clutch of her
nervous fingers. The smooth white globules rolled all over the room.
Letitia cried out in an anguished tone.
“My pearls—my pearls—” The agony in her voice was so acute that they all
looked at her in astonishment. She turned, her hand to her throat, and rushed
sobbing out of the room.
Phillipa began picking up the pearls.
“I’ve never seen her so upset over anything,” she said. “Of course—she always
wears them. Do you think, perhaps, that someone special gave them to her?
Randall Goedler, perhaps?”
“It’s possible,” said the Inspector slowly.
“They’re not—they couldn’t be—real by any chance?” Phillipa asked from where,
on her knees, she was still collecting the white shining globules.
Taking one in his hand, Craddock was just about to reply contemptuously,
“Real? Of course not!” when he suddenly stifled the words.
After all, could the pearls be real?
They were so large, so even, so white that their falseness seemed palpable,
but Craddock remembered suddenly a police case where a string of real pearls
had been bought for a few shillings in a pawnbroker’s shop.
Letitia Blacklock had assured him that there was no jewellery of value in the
house. If these pearls were, by any chance, genuine, they must be worth a
fabulous sum. And if Randall Goedler had given them to her—then they might be
worth any sum you cared to name.
They looked false—they must be false, but—if they were real?
Why not? She might herself be unaware of their value. Or she might choose to
protect her treasure by treating it as though it were a cheap ornament worth a
couple of guineas at most. What would they be worth if real? A fabulous sum …
Worth doing murder for—if anybody knew about them.
With a start, the Inspector wrenched himself away from his speculations. Miss
Marple was missing. He must go to the Vicarage.
III
He found Bunch and her husband waiting for him, their faces anxious and drawn.
“She hasn’t come back,” said Bunch.
“Did she say she was coming back here when she left Boulders?” asked Julian.
“She didn’t actually say so,” said Craddock slowly, throwing his mind back to
the last time he had seen Jane Marple.
He remembered the grimness of her lips and the severe frosty light in those
usually gentle blue eyes.
Grimness, an inexorable determination … to do what? To go where?
“She was talking to Sergeant Fletcher when I last saw her,” he said. “Just by
the gate. And then she went through it and out. I took it she was going
straight home to the Vicarage. I would have sent her in the car—but there was
so much to attend to, and she slipped away very quietly. Fletcher may know
something! Where’s Fletcher?”
But Sergeant Fletcher, it seemed, as Craddock learned when he rang up
Boulders, was neither to be found there nor had he left any message where he
had gone. There was some idea that he had returned to Milchester for some
reason.
The Inspector rang up headquarters in Milchester, but no news of Fletcher was
to be found there.
Then Craddock turned to Bunch as he remembered what she had told him over the
telephone.
“Where’s that paper? You said she’d been writing something on a bit of paper.”
Bunch brought it to him. He spread it out on the table and looked down on it.
Bunch leant over his shoulder and spelled it out as he read. The writing was
shaky and not easy to read:
Lamp.
Then came the word “Violets.”
Then after a space:
Where is bottle of aspirin?
The next item in this curious list was more difficult to make out. “Delicious
death,” Bunch read. “That’s Mitzi’s cake.”
“Making enquiries,” read Craddock.
“Inquiries? What about, I wonder? What’s this? Severe affliction bravely borne
… What on earth—!”
“Iodine,” read the Inspector. “Pearls. Ah, pearls.”
“And then Lotty—no, Letty. Her e’s look like o’s. And then Berne. And what’s
this? Old Age Pension. …”
They looked at each other in bewilderment.
Craddock recapitulated swiftly:
“Lamp. Violets. Where is bottle of aspirin? Delicious Death. Making enquiries.
Severe affliction bravely borne. Iodine. Pearls. Letty. Berne. Old Age
Pension.”
Bunch asked: “Does it mean anything? Anything at all? I can’t see any
connection.”
Craddock said slowly: “I’ve just a glimmer—but I don’t see. It’s odd that she
should have put down that about pearls.”
“What about pearls? What does it mean?”
“Does Miss Blacklock always wear that three-tier choker of pearls?”
“Yes, she does. We laugh about it sometimes. They’re so dreadfully false-
looking, aren’t they? But I suppose she thinks it’s fashionable.”
“There might be another reason,” said Craddock slowly.
“You don’t mean that they’re real. Oh! they couldn’t be!”
“How often have you had an opportunity of seeing real pearls of that size,
Mrs. Harmon?”
“But they’re so glassy.”
Craddock shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyway, they don’t matter now. It’s Miss Marple that matters. We’ve got to
find her.”
They’d got to find her before it was too late—but perhaps it was already too
late? Those pencilled words showed that she was on the track … But that was
dangerous—horribly dangerous. And where the hell was Fletcher?
Craddock strode out of the Vicarage to where he’d left his car. Search—that
was all he could do—search.
A voice spoke to him out of the dripping laurels.
“Sir!” said Sergeant Fletcher urgently. “Sir. …”
Twenty-one
THREE WOMEN
Dinner was over at Little Paddocks. It had been a silent and uncomfortable
meal.
Patrick, uneasily aware of having fallen from grace, only made spasmodic
attempts at conversation—and such as he did make were not well received.
Phillipa Haymes was sunk in abstraction. Miss Blacklock herself had abandoned
the effort to behave with her normal cheerfulness. She had changed for dinner
and had come down wearing her necklace of cameos but for the first time fear
showed from her darkly circled eyes, and betrayed itself by her twitching
hands.
Julia, alone, had maintained her air of cynical detachment throughout the
evening.
“I’m sorry, Letty,” she said, “that I can’t pack my bag and go. But I presume
the police wouldn’t allow it. I don’t suppose I’ll darken your roof—or
whatever the expression is—for long. I should imagine that Inspector Craddock
will be round with a warrant and the handcuffs any moment. In fact I can’t
imagine why something of the kind hasn’t happened already.”
“He’s looking for the old lady—for Miss Marple,” said Miss Blacklock.
“Do you think she’s been murdered, too?” Patrick asked with scientific
curiosity. “But why? What could she know?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Blacklock dully. “Perhaps Miss Murgatroyd told her
something.”
“If she’s been murdered too,” said Patrick, “there seems to be logically only
one person who could have done it.”
“Who?”
“Hinchcliffe, of course,” said Patrick triumphantly. “That’s where she was
last seen alive—at Boulders. My solution would be that she never left
Boulders.”
“My head aches,” said Miss Blacklock in a dull voice. She pressed her fingers
to her forehead. “Why should Hinch murder Miss Marple? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It would if Hinch had really murdered Murgatroyd,” said Patrick triumphantly.
Phillipa came out of her apathy to say:
“Hinch wouldn’t murder Murgatroyd.”
“She might have if Murgatroyd had blundered on something to show that
she—Hinch—was the criminal.”
“Anyway, Hinch was at the station when Murgatroyd was killed.”
“She could have murdered Murgatroyd before she left.”
Startling them all, Letitia Blacklock suddenly screamed out:
“Murder, murder, murder—! Can’t you talk of anything else? I’m frightened,
don’t you understand? I’m frightened. I wasn’t before. I thought I could take
care of myself … But what can you do against a murderer who’s waiting—and
watching—and biding his time! | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Oh, God!”
She dropped her head forward on her hands. A moment later she looked up and
apologized stiffly.
“I’m sorry. I—I lost control.”
“That’s all right, Aunt Letty,” said Patrick affectionately. “I’ll look after
you.”
“You?” was all Letitia Blacklock said, but the disillusionment behind the word
was almost an accusation.
That had been shortly before dinner, and Mitzi had then created a diversion by
coming and declaring that she was not going to cook the dinner.
“I do not do anything more in this house. I go to my room. I lock myself in. I
stay there until it is daylight. I am afraid—people are being killed—that Miss
Murgatroyd with her stupid English face—who would want to kill her? Only a
maniac! Then it is a maniac that is about! And a maniac does not care who he
kills. But me, I do not want to be killed. There are shadows in the
kitchen—and I hear noises—I think there is someone out in the yard and then I
think I see a shadow by the larder door and then it is footsteps I hear. So I
go now to my room and I lock the door and perhaps even I put the chest of
drawers against it. And in the morning I tell that cruel hard policeman that I
go away from here. And if he will not let me I say: ‘I scream and I scream and
I scream until you have to let me go!’”
Everybody, with a vivid recollection of what Mitzi could do in the screaming
line, shuddered at the threat.
“So I go to my room,” said Mitzi, repeating the statement once more to make
her intentions quite clear. With a symbolic action she cast off the cretonne
apron she had been wearing. “Good night, Miss Blacklock. Perhaps in the
morning, you may not be alive. So in case that is so, I say good-bye.”
She departed abruptly and the door, with its usual gentle little whine, closed
softly after her.
Julia got up.
“I’ll see to dinner,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “Rather a good
arrangement—less embarrassing for you all than having me sit down at table
with you. Patrick (since he’s constituted himself your protector, Aunt Letty)
had better taste every dish first. I don’t want to be accused of poisoning you
on top of everything else.”
So Julia had cooked and served a really excellent meal.
Phillipa had come out to the kitchen with an offer of assistance but Julia had
said firmly that she didn’t want any help.
“Julia, there’s something I want to say—”
“This is no time for girlish confidences,” said Julia firmly. “Go on back in
the dining room, Phillipa.”
Now dinner was over and they were in the drawing room with coffee on the small
table by the fire—and nobody seemed to have anything to say. They were
waiting—that was all.
At 8:30 Inspector Craddock rang up.
“I shall be with you in about a quarter of an hour’s time,” he announced. “I’m
bringing Colonel and Mrs. Easterbrook and Mrs. Swettenham and her son with
me.”
“But really, Inspector … I can’t cope with people tonight—”
Miss Blacklock’s voice sounded as though she were at the end of her tether.
“I know how you feel, Miss Blacklock. I’m sorry. But this is urgent.”
“Have you—found Miss Marple?”
“No,” said the Inspector, and rang off.
Julia took the coffee tray out to the kitchen where, to her surprise, she
found Mitzi contemplating the piled-up dishes and plates by the sink.
Mitzi burst into a torrent of words.
“See what you do in my so nice kitchen! That frying pan—only, only for
omelettes do I use it! And you, what have you used it for?”
“Frying onions.”
“Ruined—ruined. It will have now to be washed and never—never—do I wash my
omelette pan. I rub it carefully over with a greasy newspaper, that is all.
And this saucepan here that you have used—that one, I use him only for milk—”
“Well, I don’t know what pans you use for what,” said Julia crossly. “You
choose to go to bed and why on earth you’ve chosen to get up again, I can’t
imagine. Go away again and leave me to wash up in peace.”
“No, I will not let you use my kitchen.”
“Oh, Mitzi, you are impossible!”
Julia stalked angrily out of the kitchen and at that moment the doorbell rang.
“I do not go to the door,” Mitzi called from the kitchen. Julia muttered an
impolite Continental expression under her breath and stalked to the front
door.
It was Miss Hinchcliffe.
“’Evening,” she said in her gruff voice. “Sorry to barge in. Inspector’s rung
up, I expect?”
“He didn’t tell us you were coming,” said Julia, leading the way to the
drawing room.
“He said I needn’t come unless I liked,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “But I do
like.”
Nobody offered Miss Hinchcliffe sympathy or mentioned Miss Murgatroyd’s death.
The ravaged face of the tall vigorous woman told its own tale, and would have
made any expression of sympathy an impertinence.
“Turn all the lights on,” said Miss Blacklock. “And put more coal on the fire.
I’m cold—horribly cold. Come and sit here by the fire, Miss Hinchcliffe. The
Inspector said he would be here in a quarter of an hour. It must be nearly
that now.”
“Mitzi’s come down again,” said Julia.
“Has she? Sometimes I think that girl’s mad—quite mad. But then perhaps we’re
all mad.”
“I’ve no patience with this saying that all people who commit crimes are mad,”
barked Miss Hinchcliffe. “Horribly and intelligently sane—that’s what I think
a criminal is!”
The sound of a car was heard outside and presently Craddock came in with
Colonel and Mrs. Easterbrook and Edmund and Mrs. Swettenham.
They were all curiously subdued.
Colonel Easterbrook said in a voice that was like an echo of his usual tones:
“Ha! A good fire.”
Mrs. Easterbrook wouldn’t take off her fur coat and sat down close to her
husband. Her face, usually pretty and rather vapid, was like a little pinched
weasel face. Edmund was in one of his furious moods and scowled at everybody.
Mrs. Swettenham made what was evidently a great effort, and which resulted in
a kind of parody of herself.
“It’s awful—isn’t it?” she said conversationally. “Everything, I mean. And
really the less one says, the better. Because one doesn’t know who next—like
the Plague. Dear Miss Blacklock, don’t you think you ought to have a little
brandy? Just half a wineglass even? I always think there’s nothing like
brandy—such a wonderful stimulant. I—it seems so terrible of us—forcing our
way in here like this, but Inspector Craddock made us come. And it seems so
terrible—she hasn’t been found, you know. That poor old thing from the
Vicarage, I mean. Bunch Harmon is nearly frantic. Nobody knows where she went
instead of going home. She didn’t come to us. I’ve not even seen her today.
And I should know if she had come to the house because I was in the drawing
room—at the back, you know, and Edmund was in his study writing—and that’s at
the front—so if she’d come either way we should have seen. And oh, I do hope
and pray that nothing has happened to that dear sweet old thing—all her
faculties still and everything.”
“Mother,” said Edmund in a voice of acute suffering, “can’t you shut up?”
“I’m sure, dear, I don’t want to say a word,” said Mrs. Swettenham, and sat
down on the sofa by Julia.
Inspector Craddock stood near the door. Facing him, almost in a row, were the
three women. Julia and Mrs. Swettenham on the sofa. Mrs. Easterbrook on the
arm of her husband’s chair. He had not brought about this arrangement, but it
suited him very well.
Miss Blacklock and Miss Hinchcliffe were crouching over the fire. Edmund stood
near them. Phillipa was far back in the shadows.
Craddock began without preamble.
“You all know that Miss Murgatroyd’s been killed,” he began. “We’ve reason to
believe that the person who killed her was a woman. And for certain other
reasons we can narrow it down still more. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
And for certain other
reasons we can narrow it down still more. I’m about to ask certain ladies here
to account for what they were doing between the hours of four and four-twenty
this afternoon. I have already had an account of her movements from—from the
young lady who has been calling herself Miss Simmons. I will ask her to repeat
that statement. At the same time, Miss Simmons, I must caution you that you
need not answer if you think your answers may incriminate you, and anything
you say will be taken down by Constable Edwards and may be used as evidence in
court.”
“You have to say that, don’t you?” said Julia. She was rather pale, but
composed. “I repeat that between four and four-thirty I was walking along the
field leading down to the brook by Compton Farm. I came back to the road by
that field with three poplars in it. I didn’t meet anyone as far as I can
remember. I did not go near Boulders.”
“Mrs. Swettenham?”
Edmund said, “Are you cautioning all of us?”
The Inspector turned to him.
“No. At the moment only Miss Simmons. I have no reason to believe that any
other statement made will be incriminating, but anyone, of course, is entitled
to have a solicitor present and to refuse to answer questions unless he is
present.”
“Oh, but that would be very silly and a complete waste of time,” cried Mrs.
Swettenham. “I’m sure I can tell you at once exactly what I was doing. That’s
what you want, isn’t it? Shall I begin now?”
“Yes, please, Mrs. Swettenham.”
“Now, let me see.” Mrs. Swettenham closed her eyes, opened them again. “Of
course I had nothing at all to do with killing Miss Murgatroyd. I’m sure
everybody here knows that. But I’m a woman of the world, I know quite well
that the police have to ask all the most unnecessary questions and write the
answers down very carefully, because it’s all for what they call ‘the record.’
That’s it, isn’t it?” Mrs. Swettenham flashed the question at the diligent
Constable Edwards, and added graciously, “I’m not going too fast for you, I
hope?”
Constable Edwards, a good shorthand writer, but with little social savoir
faire, turned red to the ears and replied:
“It’s quite all right, madam. Well, perhaps a little slower would be better.”
Mrs. Swettenham resumed her discourse with emphatic pauses where she
considered a comma or a full stop might be appropriate.
“Well, of course it’s difficult to say—exactly—because I’ve not got, really, a
very good sense of time. And ever since the war quite half our clocks haven’t
gone at all, and the ones that do go are often either fast or slow or stop
because we haven’t wound them up.” Mrs. Swettenham paused to let this picture
of confused time sink in and then went on earnestly, “What I think I was doing
at four o’clock was turning the heel of my sock (and for some extraordinary
reason I was going round the wrong way—in purl, you know, not plain) but if I
wasn’t doing that, I must have been outside snipping off the dead
chrysanthemums—no, that was earlier—before the rain.”
“The rain,” said the Inspector, “started at 4:10 exactly.”
“Did it now? That helps a lot. Of course, I was upstairs putting a wash basin
in the passage where the rain always comes through. And it was coming through
so fast that I guessed at once that the gutter was stopped up again. So I came
down and got my mackintosh and rubber boots. I called Edmund, but he didn’t
answer, so I thought perhaps he’d got to a very important place in his novel
and I wouldn’t disturb him, and I’ve done it quite often myself before. With
the broom handle, you know, tied on to that long thing you push up windows
with.”
“You mean,” said Craddock, noting bewilderment on his subordinate’s face,
“that you were cleaning out the gutter?”
“Yes, it was all choked up with leaves. It took a long time and I got rather
wet, but I got it clear at last. And then I went in and got changed and
washed—so smelly, dead leaves—and then I went into the kitchen and put the
kettle on. It was 6:15 by the kitchen clock.”
Constable Edwards blinked.
“Which means,” finished Mrs. Swettenham triumphantly, “that it was exactly
twenty minutes to five.”
“Or near enough,” she added.
“Did anybody see what you were doing whilst you were out cleaning the gutter?”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Swettenham. “I’d soon have roped them in to help if
they had! It’s a most difficult thing to do single-handed.”
“So, by your own statement, you were outside, in a mackintosh and boots, at
the time when the rain was coming down, and according to you, you were
employed during that time in cleaning out a gutter but you have no one who can
substantiate that statement?”
“You can look at the gutter,” said Mrs. Swettenham. “It’s beautifully clear.”
“Did you hear your mother call to you, Mr. Swettenham?”
“No,” said Edmund. “I was fast asleep.”
“Edmund,” said his mother reproachfully, “I thought you were writing.”
Inspector Craddock turned to Mrs. Easterbrook.
“Now, Mrs. Easterbrook?”
“I was sitting with Archie in his study,” said Mrs. Easterbrook, fixing wide
innocent eyes on him. “We were listening to the wireless together, weren’t we,
Archie?”
There was a pause. Colonel Easterbrook was very red in the face. He took his
wife’s hand in his.
“You don’t understand these things, kitten,” he said. “I—well, I must say,
Inspector, you’ve rather sprung this business on us. My wife, you know, has
been terribly upset by all this. She’s nervous and highly strung and doesn’t
appreciate the importance of—of taking due consideration before she makes a
statement.”
“Archie,” cried Mrs. Easterbrook reproachfully, “are you going to say you
weren’t with me?”
“Well, I wasn’t, was I, my dear? I mean one’s got to stick to the facts. Very
important in this sort of inquiry. I was talking to Lampson, the farmer at
Croft End, about some chicken netting. That was about a quarter to four. I
didn’t get home until after the rain had stopped. Just before tea. A quarter
to five. Laura was toasting the scones.”
“And had you been out also, Mrs. Easterbrook?”
The pretty face looked more like a weasel’s than ever. Her eyes had a trapped
look.
“No—no, I just sat listening to the wireless. I didn’t go out. Not then. I’d
been out earlier. About—about half past three. Just for a little walk. Not
far.”
She looked as though she expected more questions, but Craddock said quietly:
“That’s all, Mrs. Easterbrook.”
He went on: “These statements will be typed out. You can read them and sign
them if they are substantially correct.”
Mrs. Easterbrook looked at him with sudden venom.
“Why don’t you ask the others where they were? That Haymes woman? And Edmund
Swettenham? How do you know he was asleep indoors? Nobody saw him.”
Inspector Craddock said quietly:
“Miss Murgatroyd, before she died, made a certain statement. On the night of
the hold-up here, someone was absent from this room. Someone who was supposed
to have been in the room all the time. Miss Murgatroyd told her friend the
names of the people she did see. By a process of elimination, she made the
discovery that there was someone she did not see.”
“Nobody could see anything,” said Julia.
“Murgatroyd could,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, speaking suddenly in her deep
voice. “She was over there behind the door, where Inspector Craddock is now.
She was the only person who could see anything of what was happening.”
“Aha! That is what you think, is it!” demanded Mitzi.
She made one of her dramatic entrances, flinging open the door and almost
knocking Craddock sideways. She was in a frenzy of excitement.
“Ah, you do not ask Mitzi to come in here with the others, do you, you stiff
policemen? I am only Mitzi! Mitzi in the kitchen! Let her stay in the kitchen
where she belongs! | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Mitzi in the kitchen! Let her stay in the kitchen
where she belongs! But I tell you that Mitzi, as well as anyone else, and
perhaps better, yes, better, can see things. Yes, I see things. I see
something the night of the burglary. I see something and I do not quite
believe it, and I hold my tongue till now. I think to myself I will not tell
what it is I have seen, not yet. I will wait.”
“And when everything had calmed down, you meant to ask for a little money from
a certain person, eh?” said Craddock.
Mitzi turned on him like an angry cat.
“And why not? Why look down your nose? Why should I not be paid for it if I
have been so generous as to keep silence? Especially if some day there will be
money—much much money. Oh! I have heard things—I know what goes on. I know
this Pippemmer—this secret society of which she”—she flung a dramatic finger
towards Julia—“is an agent. Yes, I would have waited and asked for money—but
now I am afraid. I would rather be safe. For soon, perhaps, someone will kill
me. So I will tell what I know.”
“All right then,” said the Inspector sceptically. “What do you know?”
“I tell you.” Mitzi spoke solemnly. “On that night I am not in the pantry
cleaning silver as I say—I am already in the dining room when I hear the gun
go off. I look through the keyhole. The hall it is black, but the gun go off
again and the torch it falls—and it swings round as it falls—and I see her. I
see her there close to him with the gun in her hand. I see Miss Blacklock.”
“Me?” Miss Blacklock sat up in astonishment. “You must be mad!”
“But that’s impossible,” cried Edmund. “Mitzi couldn’t have seen Miss
Blacklock.”
Craddock cut in and his voice had the corrosive quality of a deadly acid.
“Couldn’t she, Mr. Swettenham? And why not? Because it wasn’t Miss Blacklock
who was standing there with the gun? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I—of course not—what the hell!”
“You took Colonel Easterbrook’s revolver. You fixed up the business with Rudi
Scherz—as a good joke. You had followed Patrick Simmons into the far room and
when the lights went out, you slipped out through the carefully oiled door.
You shot at Miss Blacklock and then you killed Rudi Scherz. A few seconds
later you were back in the drawing room clicking your lighter.”
For a moment Edmund seemed at a loss for words, then he spluttered out:
“The whole idea is monstrous. Why me? What earthly motive had I got?”
“If Miss Blacklock dies before Mrs. Goedler, two people inherit, remember. The
two we know of as Pip and Emma. Julia Simmons has turned out to be Emma—”
“And you think I’m Pip?” Edmund laughed. “Fantastic—absolutely fantastic! I’m
about the right age—nothing else. And I can prove to you, you damned fool,
that I am Edmund Swettenham. Birth certificate, schools,
university—everything.”
“He isn’t Pip.” The voice came from the shadows in the corner. Phillipa Haymes
came forward, her face pale. “I’m Pip, Inspector.”
“You, Mrs. Haymes?”
“Yes. Everybody seems to have assumed that Pip was a boy—Julia knew, of
course, that her twin was another girl—I don’t know why she didn’t say so this
afternoon—”
“Family solidarity,” said Julia. “I suddenly realized who you were. I’d had no
idea till that moment.”
“I’d had the same idea as Julia did,” said Phillipa, her voice trembling a
little. “After I—lost my husband and the war was over, I wondered what I was
going to do. My mother died many years ago. I found out about my Goedler
relations. Mrs. Goedler was dying and at her death the money would go to a
Miss Blacklock. I found out where Miss Blacklock lived and I—I came here. I
took a job with Mrs. Lucas. I hoped that, since this Miss Blacklock was an
elderly woman without relatives, she might, perhaps, be willing to help. Not
me, because I could work, but help with Harry’s education. After all, it was
Goedler money and she’d no one particular of her own to spend it on.
“And then,” Phillipa spoke faster, it was as though, now her long reserve had
broken down, she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, “that hold-up
happened and I began to be frightened. Because it seemed to me that the only
possible person with a motive for killing Miss Blacklock was me. I hadn’t the
least idea who Julia was—we aren’t identical twins and we’re not much alike to
look at. No, it seemed as though I was the only one bound to be suspected.”
She stopped and pushed her fair hair back from her face, and Craddock suddenly
realized that the faded snapshot in the box of letters must have been a
photograph of Phillipa’s mother. The likeness was undeniable. He knew too why
that mention of closing and unclosing hands had seemed familiar—Phillipa was
doing it now.
“Miss Blacklock has been good to me. Very very good to me—I didn’t try to kill
her. I never thought of killing her. But all the same, I’m Pip.” She added,
“You see, you needn’t suspect Edmund any more.”
“Needn’t I?” said Craddock. Again there was that acid biting tone in his
voice. “Edmund Swettenham’s a young man who’s fond of money. A young man,
perhaps, who would like to marry a rich wife. But she wouldn’t be a rich wife
unless Miss Blacklock died before Mrs. Goedler. And since it seemed almost
certain that Mrs. Goedler would die before Miss Blacklock, well—he had to do
something about it—didn’t you, Mr. Swettenham?”
“It’s a damned lie!” Edmund shouted.
And then, suddenly, a sound rose on the air. It came from the kitchen—a long
unearthly shriek of terror.
“That isn’t Mitzi!” cried Julia.
“No,” said Inspector Craddock, “it’s someone who’s murdered three people….” | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“No,” said Inspector Craddock, “it’s someone who’s murdered three people….”
Twenty-two
THE TRUTH
When the Inspector turned on Edmund Swettenham, Mitzi had crept quietly out of
the room and back to the kitchen. She was running water into the sink when
Miss Blacklock entered.
Mitzi gave her a shamefaced sideways look.
“What a liar you are, Mitzi,” said Miss Blacklock pleasantly. “Here—that isn’t
the way to wash up. The silver first, and fill the sink right up. You can’t
wash up in about two inches of water.”
Mitzi turned the taps on obediently.
“You are not angry at what I say, Miss Blacklock?” she asked.
“If I were to be angry at all the lies you tell, I should never be out of a
temper,” said Miss Blacklock.
“I will go and say to the Inspector that I make it all up, shall I?” asked
Mitzi.
“He knows that already,” said Miss Blacklock, pleasantly.
Mitzi turned off the taps and as she did so two hands came up behind her head
and with one swift movement forced it down into the water-filled sink.
“Only I know that you’re telling the truth for once,” said Miss Blacklock
viciously.
Mitzi thrashed and struggled but Miss Blacklock was strong and her hands held
the girl’s head firmly under water.
Then, from somewhere quite close behind her, Dora Bunner’s voice rose
piteously on the air:
“Oh Lotty—Lotty—don’t do it … Lotty.”
Miss Blacklock screamed. Her hands flew up in the air, and Mitzi, released,
came up chocking and spluttering.
Miss Blacklock screamed again and again. For there was no one there in the
kitchen with her….
“Dora, Dora, forgive me. I had to … I had to—”
She rushed distractedly towards the scullery door—and the bulk of Sergeant
Fletcher barred her way, just as Miss Marple stepped, flushed and triumphant,
out of the broom cupboard.
“I could always mimic people’s voices,” said Miss Marple.
“You’ll have to come with me, Madam,” said Sergeant Fletcher. “I was a witness
of your attempt to drown this girl. And there will be other charges. I must
warn you, Letitia Blacklock—”
“Charlotte Blacklock,” corrected Miss Marple. “That’s who she is, you know.
Under that choker of pearls she always wears you’ll find the scar of the
operation.”
“Operation?”
“Operation for goitre.”
Miss Blacklock, quite calm now, looked at Miss Marple.
“So you know all about it?” she said.
“Yes, I’ve known for some time.”
Charlotte Blacklock sat down by the table and began to cry.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “Not made Dora’s voice come. I loved
Dora. I really loved Dora.”
Inspector Craddock and the others had crowded in the doorway.
Constable Edwards, who added a knowledge of first aid and artificial
respiration to his other accomplishments, was busy with Mitzi. As soon as
Mitzi could speak she was lyrical with self-praise.
“I do that good, do I not? I am clever! And I am brave! Oh, I am brave! Very
very nearly was I murdered, too. But I was so brave I risk everything.”
With a rush Miss Hinchcliffe thrust aside the others and leapt upon the
weeping figure of Charlotte Blacklock by the table.
It took all Sergeant Fletcher’s strength to hold her off.
“Now then—” he said. “Now then—no, no, Miss Hinchcliffe—”
Between clenched teeth Miss Hinchcliffe was muttering:
“Let me get at her. Just let me get at her. It was she who killed Amy
Murgatroyd.”
Charlotte Blacklock looked up and sniffed.
“I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to kill anybody—I had to—but it’s
Dora I mind about—after Dora was dead, I was all alone—ever since she
died—I’ve been alone—oh, Dora—Dora—”
And once again she dropped her head on her hands and wept.
Twenty-three
EVENING AT THE VICARAGE
Miss Marple sat in the tall armchair. Bunch was on the floor in front of the
fire with her arms round her knees.
The Reverend Julian Harmon was leaning forward and was for once looking more
like a schoolboy than a man foreshadowing his own maturity. And Inspector
Craddock was smoking his pipe and drinking a whisky and soda and was clearly
very much off duty. An outer circle was composed of Julia, Patrick, Edmund and
Phillipa.
“I think it’s your story, Miss Marple,” said Craddock.
“Oh no, my dear boy. I only just helped a little, here and there. You were in
charge of the whole thing, and conducted it all, and you know so much that I
don’t.”
“Well, tell it together,” said Bunch impatiently. “Bit each. Only let Aunt
Jane start because I like the muddly way her mind works. When did you first
think that the whole thing was a put-up job by Blacklock?”
“Well, my dear Bunch, it’s hard to say. Of course, right at the very
beginning, it did seem as though the ideal person—or rather the obvious
person, I should say—to have arranged the hold-up was Miss Blacklock herself.
She was the only person who was known to have been in contact with Rudi
Scherz, and how much easier to arrange something like that when it’s your own
house. The central heating, for instance. No fires—because that would have
meant light in the room. But the only person who could have arranged not to
have a fire was the mistress of the house herself.
“Not that I thought of all that at the time—it just seemed to me that it was a
pity it couldn’t be as simple as that! Oh, no, I was taken in like everyone
else, I thought that someone really did want to kill Letitia Blacklock.”
“I think I’d like to get clear first on what really happened,” said Bunch.
“Did this Swiss boy recognize her?”
“Yes. He’d worked in—”
She hesitated and looked at Craddock.
“In Dr. Adolf Koch’s clinic in Berne,” said Craddock. “Koch was a world-famous
specialist on operations for goitre. Charlotte Blacklock went there to have
her goitre removed and Rudi Scherz was one of the orderlies. When he came to
England he recognized in the hotel a lady who had been a patient and on the
spur of the moment he spoke to her. I dare say he mightn’t have done that if
he’d paused to think, because he left the place under a cloud, but that was
some time after Charlotte had been there, so she wouldn’t know anything about
it.”
“So he never said anything to her about Montreux and his father being a hotel
proprietor?”
“Oh, no, she made that up to account for his having spoken to her.”
“It must have been a great shock to her,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “She
felt reasonably safe—and then—the almost impossible mischance of somebody
turning up who had known her—not as one of the two Miss Blacklocks—she was
prepared for that—but definitely as Charlotte Blacklock, a patient who’d been
operated on for goitre.
“But you wanted to go through it all from the beginning. Well, the beginning,
I think—if Inspector Craddock agrees with me—was when Charlotte Blacklock, a
pretty, lighthearted affectionate girl, developed that enlargement of the
thryoid gland that’s called a goitre. It ruined her life, because she was a
very sensitive girl. A girl, too, who had always set a lot of stress on her
personal appearance. And girls just at that age in their teens are
particularly sensitive about themselves. If she’d had a mother, or a
reasonable father, I don’t think she would have got into the morbid state she
undoubtedly did get into. She had no one, you see, to take her out of herself,
and force her to see people and lead a normal life and not think too much
about her infirmity. And, of course, in a different household, she might have
been sent for an operation many years earlier.
“But Dr. Blacklock, I think, was an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, tyrannical
and obstinate man. He didn’t believe in these operations. Charlotte must take
it from him that nothing could be done—apart from dosage with iodine and other
drugs. Charlotte did take it from him, and I think her sister also placed more
faith in Dr. Blacklock’s powers as a physician than he deserved.
“Charlotte was devoted to her father in a rather weak and soppy way. She
thought, definitely, that her father knew best. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
She
thought, definitely, that her father knew best. But she shut herself up more
and more as the goitre became larger and more unsightly, and refused to see
people. She was actually a kindly affectionate creature.”
“That’s an odd description of a murderess,” said Edmund.
“I don’t know that it is,” said Miss Marple. “Weak and kindly people are often
very treacherous. And if they’ve got a grudge against life it saps the little
moral strength that they may possess.
“Letitia Blacklock, of course, had quite a different personality. Inspector
Craddock told me that Belle Goedler described her as really good—and I think
Letitia was good. She was a woman of great integrity who found—as she put it
herself—a great difficulty in understanding how people couldn’t see what was
dishonest. Letitia Blacklock, however tempted, would never have contemplated
any kind of fraud for a moment.
“Letitia was devoted to her sister. She wrote her long accounts of everything
that happened in an effort to keep her sister in touch with life. She was
worried by the morbid state Charlotte was getting into.
“Finally Dr. Blacklock died. Letitia, without hesitation, threw up her
position with Randall Goedler and devoted herself to Charlotte. She took her
to Switzerland, to consult authorities there on the possibility of operating.
It had been left very late—but as we know the operation was successful. The
deformity was gone—and the scar this operation had left was easily hidden by a
choker of pearls or beads.
“The war had broken out. A return to England was difficult and the two sisters
stayed in Switzerland doing various Red Cross and other work. That’s right,
isn’t it, Inspector?”
“Yes, Miss Marple.”
“They got occasional news from England—amongst other things, I expect, they
heard that Belle Goedler could not live long. I’m sure it would be only human
nature for them both to have planned and talked together of the days ahead
when a big fortune would be theirs to spend. One has got to realize, I think,
that this prospect meant much more to Charlotte than it did to Letitia. For
the first time in her life, Charlotte could go about feeling herself a normal
woman, a woman at whom no one looked with either repulsion or pity. She was
free at last to enjoy life—and she had a whole lifetime, as it were, to crowd
into her remaining years. To travel, to have a house and beautiful grounds—to
have clothes and jewels, and go to plays and concerts, to gratify every
whim—it was all a kind of fairy tale come true to Charlotte.
“And then Letitia, the strong healthy Letitia, got flu which turned to
pneumonia and died within the space of a week! Not only had Charlotte lost her
sister, but the whole dream existence she had planned for herself was
cancelled. I think, you know, that she may have felt almost resentful towards
Letitia. Why need Letitia have died, just then, when they had just had a
letter saying Belle Goedler could not last long? Just one more month, perhaps,
and the money would have been Letitia’s—and hers when Letitia died….
“Now this is where I think the difference between the two came in. Charlotte
didn’t really feel that what she suddenly thought of doing was wrong—not
really wrong. The money was meant to come to Letitia—it would have come to
Letitia in the course of a few months—and she regarded herself and Letitia as
one.
“Perhaps the idea didn’t occur to her until the doctor or someone asked her
her sister’s Christian name—and then she realized how to nearly everyone they
had appeared as the two Miss Blacklocks—elderly, well-bred Englishwomen,
dressed much the same, with a strong family resemblance—(and, as I pointed out
to Bunch, one elderly woman is so like another). Why shouldn’t it be Charlotte
who had died and Letitia who was alive?
“It was an impulse, perhaps, more than a plan. Letitia was buried under
Charlotte’s name. ‘Charlotte’ was dead, ‘Letitia’ came to England. All the
natural initiative and energy, dormant for so many years, were now in the
ascendant. As Charlotte she had played second fiddle. She now assumed the airs
of command, the feeling of command that had been Letitia’s. They were not
really so unlike in mentality—though there was, I think, a big difference
morally.
“Charlotte had, of course, to take one or two obvious precautions. She bought
a house in a part of England quite unknown to her. The only people she had to
avoid were a few people in her own native town in Cumberland (where in any
case she’d lived as a recluse) and, of course, Belle Goedler who had known
Letitia so well that any impersonation would have been out of the question.
Handwriting difficulties were got over by the arthritic condition of her
hands. It was really very easy because so few people had ever really known
Charlotte.”
“But supposing she’d met people who’d known Letitia?” asked Bunch. “There must
have been plenty of those.”
“They wouldn’t matter in the same way. Someone might say: ‘I came across
Letitia Blacklock the other day. She’s changed so much I really wouldn’t have
known her.’ But there still wouldn’t be any suspicion in their minds that she
wasn’t Letitia. People do change in the course of ten years. Her failure to
recognize them could always be put down to her shortsightedness; and you must
remember that she knew every detail of Letitia’s life in London—the people she
met—the places she went. She’d got Letitia’s letters to refer to, and she
could quickly have disarmed any suspicion by mention of some incident, or an
inquiry after a mutual friend. No, it was recognition as Charlotte that was
the only thing she had to fear.
“She settled down at Little Paddocks, got to know her neighbours and, when she
got a letter asking dear Letitia to be kind, she accepted with pleasure the
visit of two young cousins she had never seen. Their acceptance of her as Aunt
Letty increased her security.
“The whole thing was going splendidly. And then—she made her big mistake. It
was a mistake that arose solely from her kindness of heart and her naturally
affectionate nature. She got a letter from an old school friend who had fallen
on evil days, and she hurried to the rescue. Perhaps it may have been partly
because she was, in spite of everything, lonely. Her secret kept her in a way
apart from people. And she had been genuinely fond of Dora Bunner and
remembered her as a symbol of her own gay carefree days at school. Anyway, on
an impulse, she answered Dora’s letter in person. And very surprised Dora must
have been! She’d written to Letitia and the sister who turned up in answer to
her letter was Charlotte. There was never any question of pretending to be
Letitia to Dora. Dora was one of the few old friends who had been admitted to
see Charlotte in her lonely and unhappy days.
“And because she knew that Dora would look at the matter in exactly the same
way as she did herself, she told Dora what she had done. Dora approved
wholeheartedly. In her confused muddle-headed mind it seemed only right that
dear Lotty should not be done out of her inheritance by Letty’s untimely
death. Lotty deserved a reward for all the patient suffering she had borne so
bravely. It would have been most unfair if all that money should have gone to
somebody nobody had ever heard of.
“She quite understood that nothing must be allowed to get out. It was like an
extra pound of butter. You couldn’t talk about it but there was nothing wrong
about having it. So Dora came to Little Paddocks—and very soon Charlotte began
to understand that she had made a terrible mistake. It was not merely the fact
that Dora Bunner, with her muddles and her mistakes and her bungling, was
quite maddening to live with. Charlotte could have put up with that—because
she really cared for Dora, and anyway knew from the doctor that Dora hadn’t
got a very long time to live. But Dora very soon became a real danger. Though
Charlotte and Letitia had called each other by their full names, Dora was the
kind of person who always used abbreviations. To her the sisters had always
been Letty and Lotty. And though she schooled her tongue resolutely to call
her friend Letty—the old name often slipped out. Memories of the past, too,
were rather apt to come to her tongue—and Charlotte had constantly to be on
the watch to check these forgetful allusions. It began to get on her nerves. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
It began to get on her nerves.
“Still, nobody was likely to pay attention to Dora’s inconsistencies. The real
blow to Charlotte’s security came, as I say, when she was recognized and
spoken to by Rudi Scherz at the Royal Spa Hotel.
“I think that the money Rudi Scherz used to replace his earlier defalcations
at the hotel may have come from Charlotte Blacklock. Inspector Craddock
doesn’t believe—and I don’t either—that Rudi Scherz applied to her for money
with any idea of blackmail in his head.”
“He hadn’t the faintest idea he knew anything to blackmail her about,” said
Inspector Craddock. “He knew that he was quite a personable young man—and he
was aware by experience that personable young men sometimes can get money out
of elderly ladies if they tell a hard-luck story convincingly enough.
“But she may have seen it differently. She may have thought that it was a form
of insidious blackmail, that perhaps he suspected something—and that later, if
there was publicity in the papers as there might be after Belle Goedler’s
death, he would realize that in her he had found a gold mine.
“And she was committed to the fraud now. She’d established herself as Letitia
Blacklock. With the Bank. With Mrs. Goedler. The only snag was this rather
dubious Swiss hotel clerk, an unreliable character, and possibly a
blackmailer. If only he were out of the way—she’d be safe.
“Perhaps she made it all up as a kind of fantasy first. She’d been starved of
emotion and drama in her life. She pleased herself by working out the details.
How would she go about getting rid of him?
“She made her plan. And at last she decided to act on it. She told her story
of a sham hold-up at a party to Rudi Scherz, explained that she wanted a
stranger to act the part of the ‘gangster,’ and offered him a generous sum for
his cooperation.
“And the fact that he agreed without any suspicion is what makes me quite
certain that Scherz had no idea that he had any kind of hold over her. To him
she was just a rather foolish old woman, very ready to part with money.
“She gave him the advertisement to insert, arranged for him to pay a visit to
Little Paddocks to study the geography of the house, and showed him the spot
where she would meet him and let him into the house on the night in question.
Dora Bunner, of course, knew nothing about all this.
“The day came—” He paused.
Miss Marple took up the tale in her gentle voice.
“She must have spent a very miserable day. You see, it still wasn’t too late
to draw back … Dora Bunner told us that Letty was frightened that day and she
must have been frightened. Frightened of what she was going to do, frightened
of the plan going wrong—but not frightened enough to draw back.
“It had been fun, perhaps, getting the revolver out of Colonel Easterbrook’s
collar drawer. Taking along eggs, or jam—slipping upstairs in the empty house.
It had been fun getting the second door in the drawing room oiled, so that it
would open and shut noiselessly. Fun suggesting the moving of the table
outside the door so that Phillipa’s flower arrangements would show to better
advantage. It may have all seemed like a game. But what was going to happen
next definitely wasn’t a game any longer. Oh, yes, she was frightened … Dora
Bunner was right about that.”
“All the same, she went through with it,” said Craddock. “And it all went
according to plan. She went out just after six to ‘shut up the ducks,’ and she
let Scherz in then and gave him the mask and cloak and gloves and the torch.
Then, at 6:30, when the clock begins to chime, she’s ready by that table near
the archway with her hand on the cigarette box. It’s all so natural. Patrick,
acting as host, has gone for the drinks. She, the hostess, is fetching the
cigarettes. She’d judged, quite correctly, that when the clock begins to
chime, everyone will look at the clock. They did. Only one person, the devoted
Dora, kept her eyes fixed on her friend. And she told us, in her very first
statement, exactly what Miss Blacklock did. She said that Miss Blacklock had
picked up the vase of violets.
“She’d previously frayed the cord of the lamp so that the wires were nearly
bare. The whole thing only took a second. The cigarette box, the vase and the
little switch were all close together. She picked up the violets, spilt the
water on the frayed place and switched on the lamp. Water’s a good conductor
of electricity. The wires fused.”
“Just like the other afternoon at the Vicarage,” said Bunch. “That’s what
startled you so, wasn’t it, Aunt Jane?”
“Yes, my dear. I’ve been puzzling about those lights. I’d realized that there
were two lamps, a pair, and that one had been changed for the other—probably
during the night.”
“That’s right,” said Craddock. “When Fletcher examined that lamp the next
morning it was, like all the others, perfectly in order, no frayed flex or
fused wires.”
“I’d understood what Dora Bunner meant by saying it had been the shepherdess
the night before,” said Miss Marple, “but I fell into the error of thinking,
as she thought, that Patrick had been responsible. The interesting thing about
Dora Bunner was that she was quite unreliable in repeating things she had
heard—she always used her imagination to exaggerate or distort them, and she
was usually wrong in what she thought—but she was quite accurate about the
things she saw. She saw Letitia pick up the violets—”
“And she saw what she described as a flash and a crackle,” put in Craddock.
“And, of course, when dear Bunch spilt the water from the Christmas roses on
to the lamp wire—I realized at once that only Miss Blacklock herself could
have fused the lights because only she was near that table.”
“I could kick myself,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner even prattled about a burn
on the table where someone had ‘put their cigarette down’—but nobody had even
lit a cigarette … And the violets were dead because there was no water in the
vase—a slip on Letitia’s part—she ought to have filled it up again. But I
suppose she thought nobody would notice and as a matter of fact Miss Bunner
was quite ready to believe that she herself had put no water in the vase to
begin with.”
He went on:
“She was highly suggestible, of course. And Miss Blacklock took advantage of
that more than once. Bunny’s suspicions of Patrick were, I think, induced by
her.”
“Why pick on me?” demanded Patrick in an aggrieved tone.
“It was not, I think, a serious suggestion—but it would keep Bunny distracted
from any suspicion that Miss Blacklock might be stage managering the business.
Well, we know what happened next. As soon as the lights went and everyone was
exclaiming, she slipped out through the previously oiled door and up behind
Rudi Scherz who was flashing his torch round the room and playing his part
with gusto. I don’t suppose he realized for a moment she was there behind him
with her gardening gloves pulled on and the revolver in her hand. She waits
till the torch reaches the spot she must aim for—the wall near which she is
supposed to be standing. Then she fires rapidly twice and as he swings round
startled, she holds the revolver close to his body and fires again. She lets
the revolver fall by his body, throws her gloves carelessly on the hall table,
then back through the other door and across to where she had been standing
when the lights went out. She nicked her ear—I don’t quite know how—”
“Nail scissors, I expect,” said Miss Marple. “Just a snip on the lobe of the
ear lets out a lot of blood. That was very good psychology, of course. The
actual blood running down over her white blouse made it seem certain that she
had been shot at, and that it had been a near miss.”
“It ought to have gone off quite all right,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner’s
insistence that Scherz had definitely aimed at Miss Blacklock had its uses.
Without meaning it, Dora Bunner conveyed the impression that she’d actually
seen her friend wounded. It might have been brought in Suicide or Accidental
Death. And the case would have been closed. That it was kept open is due to
Miss Marple here.”
“Oh, no, no.” Miss Marple shook her head energetically. “Any little efforts on
my part were quite incidental. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“Any little efforts on
my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren’t satisfied, Mr. Craddock.
It was you who wouldn’t let the case be closed.”
“I wasn’t happy about it,” said Craddock. “I knew it was all wrong somewhere.
But I didn’t see where it was wrong, till you showed me. And after that Miss
Blacklock had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that that second door had
been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever we agreed might have
happened—we’d nothing to go upon but a pretty theory. But that oiled door was
evidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance—by catching hold of a handle by
mistake.”
“I think you were led to it, Inspector,” said Miss Marple. “But then I’m old-
fashioned.”
“So the hunt was up again,” said Craddock. “But this time with a difference.
We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill Letitia Blacklock.”
“And there was someone with a motive, and Miss Blacklock knew it,” said Miss
Marple. “I think she recognized Phillipa almost at once. Because Sonia Goedler
seems to have been one of the very few people who had been admitted to
Charlotte’s privacy. And when one is old (you wouldn’t know this yet, Mr.
Craddock) one has a much better memory for a face you’ve seen when you were
young than you have for anyone you’ve only met a year or two ago. Phillipa
must have been just about the same age as her mother was when Charlotte
remembered her, and she was very like her mother. The odd thing is that I
think Charlotte was very pleased to recognize Phillipa. She became very fond
of Phillipa and I think, unconsciously, it helped to stifle any qualms of
conscience she may have had. She told herself that when she inherited the
money, she was going to look after Phillipa. She would treat her as a
daughter. Phillipa and Harry should live with her. She felt quite happy and
beneficent about it. But once the Inspector began asking questions and finding
out about ‘Pip and Emma’ Charlotte became very uneasy. She didn’t want to make
a scapegoat of Phillipa. Her whole idea had been to make the business look
like a hold-up by a young criminal and his accidental death. But now, with the
discovery of the oiled door, the whole viewpoint was changed. And, except for
Phillipa, there wasn’t (as far as she knew, for she had absolutely no idea of
Julia’s identity) anyone with the least possible motive for wishing to kill
her. She did her best to shield Phillipa’s identity. She was quick-witted
enough to tell you when you asked her, that Sonia was small and dark and she
took the old snapshots out of the album so that you shouldn’t notice any
resemblance at the same time as she removed snapshots of Letitia herself.”
“And to think I suspected Mrs. Swettenham of being Sonia Goedler,” said
Craddock disgustedly.
“My poor mamma,” murmured Edmund. “A woman of blameless life—or so I have
always believed.”
“But of course,” Miss Marple went on, “it was Dora Bunner who was the real
danger. Every day Dora got more forgetful and more talkative. I remember the
way Miss Blacklock looked at her the day we went to tea there. Do you know
why? Dora had just called her Lotty again. It seemed to us a mere harmless
slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte. And so it went on. Poor Dora
could not stop herself talking. That day we had coffee together in the
Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora was talking about two people,
not one—and so, of course, she was. At one moment she spoke of her friend as
not pretty but having so much character—but almost at the same moment she
described her as a pretty lighthearted girl. She’d talk of Letty as so clever
and so successful—and then say what a sad life she’d had, and then there was
that quotation about stern affliction bravely borne—which really didn’t seem
to fit Letitia’s life at all. Charlotte must, I think, have overheard a good
deal that morning she came into the café. She certainly must have heard Dora
mention about the lamp having been changed—about its being the shepherd and
not the shepherdess. And she realized then what a very real danger to her
security poor devoted Dora Bunner was.
“I’m afraid that that conversation with me in the café really sealed Dora’s
fate—if you’ll excuse such a melodramatic expression. But I think it would
have come to the same in the end … Because life couldn’t be safe for Charlotte
while Dora Bunner was alive. She loved Dora—she didn’t want to kill Dora—but
she couldn’t see any other way. And, I expect (like Nurse Ellerton that I was
telling you about, Bunch) she persuaded herself that it was almost a kindness.
Poor Bunny—not long to live anyway and perhaps a painful end. The queer thing
is that she did her best to make Bunny’s last day a happy day. The birthday
party—and the special cake….”
“Delicious Death,” said Phillipa with a shudder.
“Yes—yes, it was rather like that … she tried to give her friend a delicious
death … The party, and all the things she liked to eat, and trying to stop
people saying things to upset her. And then the tablets, whatever they were,
in the aspirin bottle by her own bed so that Bunny, when she couldn’t find the
new bottle of aspirin she’d just bought, would go there to get some. And it
would look, as it did look, that the tablets had been meant for Letitia. …
“And so Bunny died in her sleep, quite happily, and Charlotte felt safe again.
But she missed Dora Bunner—she missed her affection and her loyalty, she
missed being able to talk to her about the old days … She cried bitterly the
day I came up with that note from Julian—and her grief was quite genuine.
She’d killed her own dear friend….”
“That’s horrible,” said Bunch. “Horrible.”
“But it’s very human,” said Julian Harmon. “One forgets how human murderers
are.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple. “Human. And often very much to be pitied. But very
dangerous, too. Especially a weak kindly murderer like Charlotte Blacklock.
Because, once a weak person gets really frightened, they get quite savage with
terror and they’ve no self-control at all.”
“Murgatroyd?” said Julian.
“Yes, poor Miss Murgatroyd. Charlotte must have come up to the cottage and
heard them rehearsing the murder. The window was open and she listened. It had
never occurred to her until that moment that there was anyone else who could
be a danger to her. Miss Hinchcliffe was urging her friend to remember what
she’d seen and until that moment Charlotte hadn’t realized that anyone could
have seen anything at all. She’d assumed that everybody would automatically be
looking at Rudi Scherz. She must have held her breath outside the window and
listened. Was it going to be all right? And then, just as Miss Hinchcliffe
rushed off to the station Miss Murgatroyd got to a point which showed that she
had stumbled on the truth. She called after Miss Hinchcliffe: ‘She wasn’t
there.…’
“I asked Miss Hinchcliffe, you know, if that was the way she said it … Because
if she’d said ‘She wasn’t there’ it wouldn’t have meant the same thing.”
“Now that’s too subtle a point for me,” said Craddock.
Miss Marple turned her eager pink and white face to him.
“Just think what’s going on in Miss Murgatroyd’s mind … One does see things,
you know, and not know one sees them. In a railway accident once, I remember
noticing a large blister of paint at the side of the carriage. I could have
drawn it for you afterwards. And once, when there was a flying bomb in
London—splinters of glass everywhere—and the shock—but what I remember best is
a woman standing in front of me who had a big hole halfway up the leg of her
stockings and the stockings didn’t match. So when Miss Murgatroyd stopped
thinking and just tried to remember what she saw, she remembered a good deal.
“She started, I think, near the mantelpiece, where the torch must have hit
first—then it went along the two windows and there were people in between the
windows and her. Mrs. Harmon with her knuckles screwed into her eyes for
instance. | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
Mrs. Harmon with her knuckles screwed into her eyes for
instance. She went on in her mind following the torch past Miss Bunner with
her mouth open and her eyes staring—past a blank wall and a table with a lamp
and a cigarette box. And then came the shots—and quite suddenly she remembered
a most incredible thing. She’d seen the wall where, later, there were the two
bullet holes, the wall where Letitia Blacklock had been standing when she was
shot, and at the moment when the revolver went off and Letty was shot, Letty
hadn’t been there.…
“You see what I mean now? She’d been thinking of the three women Miss
Hinchcliffe had told her to think about. If one of them hadn’t been there, it
would have been the personality she’d have fastened upon. She’d have said—in
effect—‘That’s the one! She wasn’t there;’ But it was a place that was in her
mind—a place where someone should have been—but the place wasn’t filled—there
wasn’t anybody there. The place was there—but the person wasn’t. And she
couldn’t take it in all at once. ‘How extraordinary, Hinch,’ she said. ‘She
wasn’t there’… So that could only mean Letitia Blacklock….”
“But you knew before that, didn’t you?” said Bunch. “When the lamp fused. When
you wrote down those things on the paper.”
“Yes, my dear. It all came together then, you see—all the various isolated
bits—and made a coherent pattern.”
Bunch quoted softly:
“Lamp? Yes. Violets? Yes. Bottle of Aspirin. You meant that Bunny had been
going to buy a new bottle that day, and so she ought not to have needed to
take Letitia’s?”
“Not unless her own bottle had been taken or hidden. It had to appear as
though Letitia Blacklock was the one meant to be killed.”
“Yes, I see. And then ‘Delicious Death.’ The cake—but more than the cake. The
whole party setup. A happy day for Bunny before she died. Treating her rather
like a dog you were going to destroy. That’s what I find the most horrible
thing of all—the sort of—of spurious kindness.”
“She was quite a kindly woman. What she said at the last in the kitchen was
quite true. ‘I didn’t want to kill anybody.’ What she wanted was a great deal
of money that didn’t belong to her! And before that desire—(and it had become
a kind of obsession—the money was to pay her back for all the suffering life
had inflicted on her)—everything else went to the wall. People with a grudge
against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them
something. I’ve known many an invalid who has suffered far worse and been cut
off from life much more than Charlotte Blacklock—and they’ve managed to lead
happy contented lives. It’s what in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.
But, oh dear, I’m afraid I’m straying away from what we were talking about.
Where were we?”
“Going over your list,” said Bunch. “What did you mean by ‘Making enquiries?’
Inquiries about what?”
Miss Marple shook her head playfully at Inspector Craddock.
“You ought to have seen that, Inspector Craddock. You showed me that letter
from Letitia Blacklock to her sister. It had the word ‘enquiries’ in it
twice—each time spelt with an e. But in the note I asked Bunch to show you,
Miss Blacklock had written ‘inquiries’ with an i. People don’t often alter
their spelling as they get older. It seemed to me very significant.”
“Yes,” Craddock agreed. “I ought to have spotted that.”
Bunch was continuing. “Severe afflictions bravely borne. That’s what Bunny
said to you in the café and of course Letitia hadn’t had any affliction.
Iodine. That put you on the track of goitre?”
“Yes, dear. Switzerland, you know, and Miss Blacklock giving the impression
that her sister had died of consumption. But I remembered then that the
greatest authorities on goitre and the most skillful surgeons operating on it
are Swiss. And it linked up with those really preposterous pearls that Letitia
Blacklock always wore. Not really her style—but just right for concealing the
scar.”
“I understand now her agitation the night the string broke,” said Craddock.
“It seemed at the time quite disproportionate.”
“And after that, it was Lotty you wrote, not Letty as we thought,” said Bunch.
“Yes, I remembered that the sister’s name was Charlotte, and that Dora Bunner
had called Miss Blacklock Lotty once or twice—and that each time she did so,
she had been very upset afterwards.”
“And what about Berne and Old Age Pensions?”
“Rudi Scherz had been an orderly in a hospital in Berne.”
“And Old Age Pension.”
“Oh, my dear Bunch, I mentioned that to you in the Bluebird though I didn’t
really see the application then. How Mrs. Wotherspoon drew Mrs. Bartlett’s Old
Age Pension as well as her own—though Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for
years—simply because one old woman is so like another old woman—yes, it all
made a pattern and I felt so worked up I went out to cool my head a little and
think what could be done about proving all this. Then Miss Hinchcliffe picked
me up and we found Miss Murgatroyd….”
Miss Marple’s voice dropped. It was no longer excited and pleased. It was
quiet and remorseless.
“I knew then something had got to be done. Quickly! But there still wasn’t any
proof. I thought out a possible plan and I talked to Sergeant Fletcher.”
“And I have had Fletcher on the carpet for it!” said Craddock. “He’d no
business to go agreeing to your plans without reporting first to me.”
“He didn’t like it, but I talked him into it,” said Miss Marple. “We went up
to Little Paddocks and I got hold of Mitzi.”
Julia drew a deep breath and said, “I can’t imagine how you ever got her to do
it.”
“I worked on her, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “She thinks far too much about
herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done something for others.
I flattered her up, of course, and said I was sure if she’d been in her own
country she’d have been in the Resistance movement, and she said, ‘Yes,
indeed.’ And I said I could see she had got just the temperament for that sort
of work. She was brave, didn’t mind taking risks, and could act a part. I told
her stories of deeds done by girls in the Resistance movements, some of them
true, and some of them, I’m afraid, invented. She got tremendously worked up!”
“Marvellous,” said Patrick.
“And then I got her to agree to do her part. I rehearsed her till she was word
perfect. Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not come down until
Inspector Craddock came. The worst of these excitable people is that they’re
apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing before the time.”
“She did it very well,” said Julia.
“I don’t quite see the point,” said Bunch. “Of course, I wasn’t there—” she
added apologetically.
“The point was a little complicated—and rather touch and go. The idea was that
Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail had been in her
mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was willing to come out with
the truth. She’d seen, through the keyhole of the dining room, Miss Blacklock
in the hall with a revolver behind Rudi Scherz. She’d seen, that is, what had
actually taken place. Now the only danger was that Charlotte Blacklock might
have realized that, as the key was in the keyhole, Mitzi couldn’t possibly
have seen anything at all. But I banked on the fact that you don’t think of
things like that when you’ve just had a bad shock. All she could take in was
that Mitzi had seen her.”
Craddock took over the story.
“But—and this was essential—I pretended to receive this with scepticism, and I
made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteries at last, upon
someone who had not been previously suspected. I accused Edmund—”
“And very nicely I played my part,” said Edmund. “Hot denial. All according to
plan. What wasn’t according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was you throwing in
your little chirp and coming out into the open as ‘Pip.’ Neither the Inspector
nor I had any idea you were Pip. I was going to be Pip! | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
I was going to be Pip! It threw us off our
stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterly comeback and made
some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wanting a rich wife which will
probably stick in your subconscious and make irreparable trouble between us
one day.”
“I don’t see why that was necessary?”
“Don’t you? It meant that, from Charlotte Blacklock’s point of view, the only
person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi. The suspicions of the
police were elsewhere. They had treated Mitzi for the moment as a liar. But if
Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seriously. So
Mitzi had got to be silenced.”
“Mitzi went straight out of the room and back to the kitchen—just like I had
told her,” said Miss Marple. “Miss Blacklock came out after her almost
immediately. Mitzi was apparently alone in the kitchen. Sergeant Fletcher was
behind the scullery door. And I was in the broom cupboard in the kitchen.
Luckily I’m very thin.”
Bunch looked at Miss Marple.
“What did you expect to happen, Aunt Jane?”
“One of two things. Either Charlotte would offer Mitzi money to hold her
tongue—and Sergeant Fletcher would be a witness to that offer, or else—or else
I thought she’d try to kill Mitzi.”
“But she couldn’t hope to get away with that? She’d have been suspected at
once.”
“Oh, my dear, she was past reasoning. She was just a snapping terrified
cornered rat. Think what had happened that day. The scene between Miss
Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Miss Hinchcliffe driving off to the station.
As soon as she comes back Miss Murgatroyd will explain that Letitia Blacklock
wasn’t in the room that night. There’s just a few minutes in which to make
sure Miss Murgatroyd can’t tell anything. No time to make a plan or set a
stage. Just crude murder. She greets the poor woman and strangles her. Then a
quick rush home, to change, to be sitting by the fire when the others come in,
as though she’d never been out.
“And then came the revelation of Julia’s identity. She breaks her pearls and
is terrified they may notice her scar. Later, the Inspector telephones that
he’s bringing everyone there. No time to think, to rest. Up to her neck in
murder now, no mercy killing—or undesirable young man to be put out of the
way. Crude plain murder. Is she safe? Yes, so far. And then comes Mitzi—yet
another danger. Kill Mitzi, stop her tongue! She’s beside herself with fear.
Not human any longer. Just a dangerous animal.”
“But why were you in the broom cupboard, Aunt Jane?” asked Bunch. “Couldn’t
you have left it to Sergeant Fletcher?”
“It was safer with two of us, my dear. And besides, I knew I could mimic Dora
Bunner’s voice. If anything could break Charlotte Blacklock down—that would.”
“And it did …!”
“Yes … She went to pieces.”
There was a long silence as memory laid hold of them and then, speaking with
determined lightness, to ease the strain, Julia said:
“It’s made a wonderful difference to Mitzi. She told me yesterday that she was
taking a post near Southampton. And she said (Julia produced a very good
imitation of Mitzi’s accent):
“‘I go there and if they say to me you have to register with the police—you
are an alien, I say to them, “Yes, I will register! The police, they know me
very well. I assist the police! Without me the police never would they have
made the arrest of a very dangerous criminal. I risked my life because I am
brave—brave like a lion—I do not care about risks.” “Mitzi,” they say to me,
“you are a heroine, you are superb.” “Ach, it is nothing, I say.”’”
Julia stopped.
“And a great deal more,” she added.
“I think,” said Edmund thoughtfully, “that soon Mitzi will have assisted the
police in not one but hundreds of cases!”
“She’s softened towards me,” said Phillipa. “She actually presented me with
the recipe for Delicious Death as a kind of wedding present. She added that I
was on no account to divulge the secret to Julia, because Julia had ruined her
omelette pan.”
“Mrs. Lucas,” said Edmund, “is all over Phillipa now that since Belle
Goedler’s death Phillipa and Julia have inherited the Goedler millions. She
sent us some silver asparagus tongs as a wedding present. I shall have
enormous pleasure in not asking her to the wedding!”
“And so they lived happily ever after,” said Patrick. “Edmund and Phillipa—and
Julia and Patrick?” he added tentatively.
“Not with me, you won’t live happily ever after,” said Julia. “The remarks
that Inspector Craddock improvised to address to Edmund apply far more aptly
to you. You are the sort of soft young man who would like a rich wife. Nothing
doing!”
“There’s gratitude for you,” said Patrick. “After all I did for that girl.”
“Nearly landed me in prison on a murder charge—that’s what your forgetfulness
nearly did for me,” said Julia. “I shall never forget that evening when your
sister’s letter came. I really thought I was for it. I couldn’t see any way
out.”
“As it is,” she added musingly, “I think I shall go on the stage.”
“What? You, too?” groaned Patrick.
“Yes. I might go to Perth. See if I can get your Julia’s place in the Rep
there. Then, when I’ve learnt my job, I shall go into theatre management—and
put on Edmund’s plays, perhaps.”
“I thought you wrote novels,” said Julian Harmon.
“Well, so did I,” said Edmund. “I began writing a novel. Rather good it was.
Pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smelt like, and the
grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy and a vicious young tart
who dribbled down her chin—and they all talked interminably about the state of
the world and wondered what they were alive for. And suddenly I began to
wonder too … And then a rather comic idea occurred to me … and I jotted it
down—and then I worked up rather a good little scene … All very obvious stuff.
But somehow, I got interested … And before I knew what I was doing I’d
finished a roaring farce in three acts.”
“What’s it called?” asked Patrick. “What the Butler Saw?”
“Well, it easily might be … As a matter of I’ve called it Elephants Do Forget.
What’s more, it’s been accepted and it’s going to be produced!”
“Elephants Do Forget,” murmured Bunch. “I thought they didn’t?”
The Rev. Julian Harmon gave a guilty start.
“My goodness. I’ve been so interested. My sermon!”
“Detective stories again,” said Bunch. “Real-life ones this time.”
“You might preach on Thou Shall Do No Murder,” suggested Patrick.
“No,” said Julian Harmon quietly. “I shan’t take that as my text.”
“No,” said Bunch. “You’re quite right, Julian. I know a much nicer text, a
happy text.” She quoted in a fresh voice, “For lo the Spring is here and the
Voice of the Turtle is heard in the Land—I haven’t got it quite right—but you
know the one I mean. Though why a turtle I can’t think. I shouldn’t think
turtles have got nice voices at all.”
“The word turtle,” explained the Rev. Julian Harmon, “is not very happily
translated. It doesn’t mean a reptile but the turtle dove. The Hebrew word in
the original is—”
Bunch interrupted him by giving him a hug and saying:
“I know one thing—You think that the Ahasuerus of the Bible is Artaxerxes the
Second, but between you and me it was Artaxerxes the Third.”
As always, Julian Harmon wondered why his wife should think that story so
particularly funny.
“Tiglath Pileser wants to go and help you,” said Bunch. “He ought to be a very
proud cat. He showed us how the lights fused.” | a murder is announced - agatha christie.epub |
“He ought to be a very
proud cat. He showed us how the lights fused.”
Epilogue
“We ought to order some papers,” said Edmund to Phillipa upon the day of their
return to Chipping Cleghorn after the honeymoon. “Let’s go along to Totman’s.”
Mr. Totman, a heavy-breathing, slow-moving man, received them with affability.
“Glad to see you back, sir. And madam.”
“We want to order some papers.”
“Certainly sir. And your mother is keeping well, I hope? Quite settled down at
Bournemouth?”
“She loves it,” said Edmund, who had not the faintest idea whether this was so
or not, but like most sons, preferred to believe that all was well with those
loved, but frequently irritating beings, parents.
“Yes, sir. Very agreeable place. Went there for my holiday last year. Mrs.
Totman enjoyed it very much.”
“I’m glad. About papers, we’d like—”
“And I hear you have a play on in London, sir. Very amusing, so they tell me.”
“Yes, it’s doing very well.”
“Called Elephants Do Forget, so I hear. You’ll excuse me, sir, asking you, but
I always thought that they didn’t—forget, I mean.”
“Yes—yes, exactly—I’ve begun to think it was a mistake calling it that. So
many people have said just what you say.”
“A kind of natural-history fact, I’ve always understood.”
“Yes—yes. Like earwigs making good mothers.”
“Do they indeed, sir? Now, that’s a fact I didn’t know.”
“About the papers—”
“The Times, sir, I think it was?” Mr. Totman paused with pencil uplifted.
“The Daily Worker,” said Edmund firmly. “And the Daily Telegraph,” said
Phillipa. “And the New Statesman,” said Edmund. “The Radio Times,” said
Phillipa. “The Spectator,” said Edmund. “The Gardener’s Chronicle,” said
Phillipa.
They both paused to take breath.
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Totman. “And the Gazette, I suppose?”
“No,” said Edmund.
“No,” said Phillipa.
“Excuse me, you do want the Gazette?”
“No.”
“No.”
“You mean”—Mr. Totman liked to get things perfectly clear—“You don’t want the
Gazette!”
“No, we don’t.”
“Certainly not.”
“You don’t want the North Benham News and the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette—”
“No.”
“You don’t want me to send it along to you every week?”
“No.” Edmund added: “Is that quite clear now?”
“Oh, yes, sir—yes.”
Edmund and Phillipa went out, and Mr. Totman padded into his back parlour.
“Got a pencil, Mother?” he said. “My pen’s run out.”
“Here you are,” said Mrs. Totman, seizing the order book. “I’ll do it. What do
they want?”
“Daily Worker, Daily Telegraph, Radio Times, New Statesman, Spectator—let me
see—Gardener’s Chronicle.”
“Gardener’s Chronicle,” repeated Mrs. Totman, writing busily. “And the
Gazette.”
“They don’t want the Gazette.”
“What?”
“They don’t want the Gazette. They said so.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Totman. “You don’t hear properly. Of course they want
the Gazette! Everybody has the Gazette. How else would they know what’s going
on round here?”
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
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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 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
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
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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
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 MURDER IS ANNOUNCED™. Copyright © 2011
Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. A Murder Is
Announced was first published in 1950.
A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED © 1950. 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 978-0-06-207363-1
EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-175038-0
11 12 13 14 15
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A Pocket Full of Rye
A Miss Marple Mystery
Agatha Christie
!img
Dedication
For Bruce Ingram who liked and published my first short stories
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
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
Chapter Twenty-Eight
About the Author
The Agatha Christie Collection
Credits
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
It was Miss Somers’s turn to make the tea. Miss Somers was the newest and the
most inefficient of the typists. She was no longer young and had a mild
worried face like a sheep. The kettle was not quite boiling when Miss Somers
poured the water onto the tea, but poor Miss Somers was never quite sure when
a kettle was boiling. It was one of the many worries that afflicted her in
life.
She poured out the tea and took the cups round with a couple of limp, sweet
biscuits in each saucer.
Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a grey-haired martinet who had been
with Consolidated Investments Trust for sixteen years, said sharply: “Water
not boiling again, Somers!” and Miss Somers’s worried meek face went pink and
she said, “Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time.”
Miss Griffith thought to herself: “She’ll last for another month, perhaps,
just while we’re so busy . . . But really! The mess the silly idiot made of
that letter to Eastern Developments—a perfectly straightforward job, and
always so stupid over the tea. If it weren’t so difficult to get hold of any
intelligent typists—and the biscuit tin lid wasn’t shut tightly last time,
either. Really—”
Like so many of Miss Griffith’s indignant inner communings the sentence went
unfinished.
At that moment Miss Grosvenor sailed in to make Mr. Fortescue’s sacred tea.
Mr. Fortescue had different tea, and different china and special biscuits.
Only the kettle and the water from the cloakroom tap were the same. But on
this occasion, being Mr. Fortescue’s tea, the water boiled. Miss Grosvenor saw
to that.
Miss Grosvenor was an incredibly glamorous blonde. She wore an expensively cut
little black suit and her shapely legs were encased in the very best and most
expensive black-market nylons.
She sailed back through the typists’ room without deigning to give anyone a
word or a glance. The typists might have been so many blackbeetles. Miss
Grosvenor was Mr. Fortescue’s own special personal secretary; unkind rumour
always hinted that she was something more, but actually this was not true. Mr.
Fortescue had recently married a second wife, both glamorous and expensive,
and fully capable of absorbing all his attention. Miss Grosvenor was to Mr.
Fortescue just a necessary part of the office décor—which was all very
luxurious and very expensive.
Miss Grosvenor sailed back with the tray held out in front of her like a
ritual offering. Through the inner office and through the waiting room, where
the more important clients were allowed to sit, and through her own anteroom,
and finally with a light tap on the door she entered the holy of holies, Mr.
Fortescue’s office.
It was a large room with a gleaming expanse of parquet floor on which were
dotted expensive oriental rugs. It was delicately panelled in pale wood and
there were some enormous stuffed chairs upholstered in pale buff leather.
Behind a colossal sycamore desk, the centre and focus of the room, sat Mr.
Fortescue himself.
Mr. Fortescue was less impressive than he should have been to match the room,
but he did his best. He was a large flabby man with a gleaming bald head. It
was his affectation to wear loosely cut country tweeds in his city office. He
was frowning down at some papers on his desk when Miss Grosvenor glided up to
him in her swanlike manner. Placing the tray on the desk at his elbow, she
murmured in a low impersonal voice, “Your tea, Mr. Fortescue,” and withdrew.
Mr. Fortescue’s contribution to the ritual was a grunt.
Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor proceeded with the business in
hand. She made two telephone calls, corrected some letters that were lying
there typed ready for Mr. Fortescue to sign and took one incoming call.
“Ay’m afraid it’s impossible just now,” she said in haughty accents. “Mr.
Fortescue is in conference.”
As she laid down the receiver she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes
past eleven.
It was just then that an unusual sound penetrated through the almost
soundproof door of Mr. Fortescue’s office. Muffled, it was yet fully
recognizable, a strangled agonized cry. At the same moment the buzzer on Miss
Grosvenor’s desk sounded in a long-drawn frenzied summons. Miss Grosvenor,
startled for a moment into complete immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet.
Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was shaken. However, she moved towards
Mr. Fortescue’s door in her usual statuesque fashion, tapped and entered.
What she saw upset her poise still further. Her employer behind his desk
seemed contorted with agony. His convulsive movements were alarming to watch.
Miss Grosvenor said, “Oh dear, Mr. Fortescue, are you ill?” and was
immediately conscious of the idiocy of the question. There was no doubt but
that Mr. Fortescue was very seriously ill. Even as she came up to him, his
body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement.
Words came out in jerky gasps.
“Tea—what the hell—you put in the tea—get help—quick get a doctor—”
Miss Grosvenor fled from the room. She was no longer the supercilious blonde
secretary—she was a thoroughly frightened woman who had lost her head.
She came running into the typists’ office crying out:
“Mr. Fortescue’s having a fit—he’s dying—we must get a doctor—he looks
awful—I’m sure he’s dying.”
Reactions were immediate and varied a good deal.
Miss Bell, the youngest typist, said, “If it’s epilepsy we ought to put a cork
in his mouth. Who’s got a cork?”
Nobody had a cork.
Miss Somers said, “At his age it’s probably apoplexy.”
Miss Griffith said, “We must get a doctor—at once.”
But she was hampered in her usual efficiency because in all her sixteen years
of service it had never been necessary to call a doctor to the city office.
There was her own doctor but that was at Streatham Hill. Where was there a
doctor near here?
Nobody knew. Miss Bell seized a telephone directory and began looking up
Doctors under D. But it was not a classified directory and doctors were not
automatically listed like taxi ranks. Someone suggested a hospital—but which
hospital? “It has to be the right hospital,” Miss Somers insisted, “or else
they won’t come. Because of the National Health, I mean. It’s got to be in the
area.”
Someone suggested 999 but Miss Griffith was shocked at that and said it would
mean the police and that would never do. For citizens of a country which
enjoyed the benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of quite reasonably
intelligent women showed incredible ignorance of correct procedure. Miss Bell
started looking up Ambulances under A. Miss Griffith said, “There’s his own
doctor—he must have a doctor.” Someone rushed for the private address book.
Miss Griffith instructed the office boy to go out and find a doctor—somehow,
anywhere. In the private address book, Miss Griffith found Sir Edwin Sandeman
with an address in Harley Street. Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a chair, wailed
in a voice whose accent was noticeably less Mayfair than usual, “I made the
tea just as usual—really I did—there couldn’t have been anything wrong in it.”
“Wrong in it?” Miss Griffith paused, her hand on the dial of the telephone.
“Why do you say that?”
“He said it—Mr. Fortescue—he said it was the tea—”
Miss Griffith’s hand hovered irresolutely between Welbeck and 999. Miss Bell,
young and hopeful, said: “We ought to give him some mustard and water—now.
Isn’t there any mustard in the office?”
There was no mustard in the office.
Some short while later Dr. Isaacs of Bethnal Green, and Sir Edwin Sandeman met
in the elevator just as two different ambulances drew up in front of the
building. The telephone and the office boy had done their work. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Two
Inspector Neele sat in Mr. Fortescue’s sanctum behind Mr. Fortescue’s vast
sycamore desk. One of his underlings with a notebook sat unobstrusively
against the wall near the door.
Inspector Neele had a smart soldierly appearance with crisp brown hair growing
back from a rather low forehead. When he uttered the phrase “just a matter of
routine” those addressed were wont to think spitefully: “And routine is about
all you’re capable of!” They would have been quite wrong. Behind his
unimaginative appearance, Inspector Neele was a highly imaginative thinker,
and one of his methods of investigation was to propound to himself fantastic
theories of guilt which he applied to such persons as he was interrogating at
the time.
Miss Griffith, whom he had at once picked out with an unerring eye as being
the most suitable person to give him a succinct account of the events which
had led to his being seated where he was, had just left the room having given
him an admirable résumé of the morning’s happenings. Inspector Neele
propounded to himself three separate highly coloured reasons why the faithful
doyenne of the typists’ room should have poisoned her employer’s mid-morning
cup of tea, and rejected them as unlikely.
He classified Miss Griffith as (a) Not the type of a poisoner, (b) Not in love
with her employer, (c) No pronounced mental instability, (d) Not a woman who
cherished grudges. That really seemed to dispose of Miss Griffith except as a
source of accurate information.
Inspector Neele glanced at the telephone. He was expecting a call from St.
Jude’s Hospital at any moment now.
It was possible, of course, that Mr. Fortescue’s sudden illness was due to
natural causes, but Dr. Isaacs of Bethnal Green had not thought so and Sir
Edwin Sandeman of Harley Street had not thought so.
Inspector Neele pressed a buzzer conveniently situated at his left hand and
demanded that Mr. Fortescue’s personal secretary should be sent in to him.
Miss Grosvenor had recovered a little of her poise, but not much. She came in
apprehensively, with nothing of the swanlike glide about her motions, and said
at once defensively:
“I didn’t do it!”
Inspector Neele murmured conversationally: “No?”
He indicated the chair where Miss Grosvenor was wont to place herself, pad in
hand, when summoned to take down Mr. Fortescue’s letters. She sat down now
with reluctance and eyed Inspector Neele in alarm. Inspector Neele, his mind
playing imaginatively on the themes Seduction? Blackmail? Platinum Blonde in
Court? etc., looked reassuring and just a little stupid.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with the tea,” said Miss Grosvenor. “There
couldn’t have been.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele. “Your name and address, please?”
“Grosvenor. Irene Grosvenor.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Oh. Like the Square.”
“And your address?”
“14 Rushmoor Road, Muswell Hill.”
Inspector Neele nodded in a satisfied fashion.
“No seduction,” he said to himself. “No Love Nest. Respectable home with
parents. No blackmail.”
Another good set of speculative theories washed out.
“And so it was you who made the tea?” he said pleasantly.
“Well, I had to. I always do, I mean.”
Unhurried, Inspector Neele took her closely through the morning ritual of Mr.
Fortescue’s tea. The cup and saucer and teapot had already been packed up and
dispatched to the appropriate quarter for analysis. Now Inspector Neele
learned that Irene Grosvenor and only Irene Grosvenor had handled that cup and
saucer and teapot. The kettle had been used for making the office tea and had
been refilled from the cloakroom tap by Miss Grosvenor.
“And the tea itself?”
“It was Mr. Fortescue’s own tea, special China tea. It’s kept on the shelf in
my room next door.”
Inspector Neele nodded. He inquired about sugar and heard that Mr. Fortescue
didn’t take sugar.
The telephone rang. Inspector Neele picked up the receiver. His face changed a
little.
“St. Jude’s?”
He nodded to Miss Grosvenor in dismissal.
“That’s all for now, thank you, Miss Grosvenor.”
Miss Grosvenor sped out of the room hurriedly.
Inspector Neele listened carefully to the thin unemotional tones speaking from
St. Jude’s Hospital. As the voice spoke he made a few cryptic signs with a
pencil on the corner of the blotter in front of him.
“Died five minutes ago, you say?” he asked. His eye went to the watch on his
wrist. Twelve forty-three, he wrote on the blotter.
The unemotional voice said that Dr. Bernsdorff himself would like to speak to
Inspector Neele.
Inspector Neele said, “Right. Put him through,” which rather scandalized the
owner of the voice, who had allowed a certain amount of reverence to seep into
the official accents.
There were then various clicks, buzzes, and far-off ghostly murmurs. Inspector
Neele sat patiently waiting.
Then without warning a deep bass roar caused him to shift the receiver an inch
or two away from his ear.
“Hallo, Neele, you old vulture. At it again with your corpses?”
Inspector Neele and Professor Bernsdorff of St. Jude’s had been brought
together over a case of poisoning just over a year ago and had remained on
friendly terms.
“Our man’s dead, I hear, doc.”
“Yes. We couldn’t do anything by the time he got here.”
“And the cause of death?”
“There will have to be an autopsy, naturally. Very interesting case. Very
interesting indeed. Glad I was able to be in on it.”
The professional gusto in Bernsdorff’s rich tones told Inspector Neele one
thing at least.
“I gather you don’t think it was natural death,” he said dryly.
“Not a dog’s chance of it,” said Dr. Bernsdorff robustly. “I’m speaking
unofficially, of course,” he added with belated caution.
“Of course. Of course. That’s understood. He was poisoned?”
“Definitely. And what’s more—this is quite unofficial, you understand—just
between you and me—I’d be prepared to make a bet on what the poison was.”
“In-deed?”
“Taxine, my boy. Taxine.”
“Taxine? Never heard of it.”
“I know. Most unusual. Really delightfully unusual! I don’t say I’d have
spotted it myself if I hadn’t had a case only three or four weeks ago. Couple
of kids playing dolls’ tea parties—pulled berries off a yew tree and used them
for tea.”
“Is that what it is? Yew berries?”
“Berries or leaves. Highly poisonous. Taxine, of course, is the alkaloid.
Don’t think I’ve heard of a case where it was used deliberately. Really most
interesting and unusual . . . You’ve no idea, Neele, how tired one gets of the
inevitable weed killer. Taxine is a real treat. Of course, I may be
wrong—don’t quote me, for Heaven’s sake—but I don’t think so. Interesting for
you, too, I should think. Varies the routine!”
“A good time is to be had by all, is that the idea? With the exception of the
victim.”
“Yes, yes, poor fellow.” Dr. Bernsdorff’s tone was perfunctory. “Very bad luck
on him.”
“Did he say anything before he died?”
“Well, one of your fellows was sitting by him with a notebook. He’ll have the
exact details. He muttered something once about tea—that he’d been given
something in his tea at the office—but that’s nonsense, of course.”
“Why is it nonsense?” Inspector Neele, who had been reviewing speculatively
the picture of the glamorous Miss Grosvenor adding yew berries to a brew of
tea, and finding it incongruous, spoke sharply.
“Because the stuff couldn’t possibly have worked so soon. I understand the
symptoms came on immediately he had drunk the tea?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Well, there are very few poisons that act as quickly as that, apart from the
cyanides, of course—and possibly pure nicotine—”
“And it definitely wasn’t cyanide or nicotine?”
“My dear fellow. He’d have been dead before the ambulance arrived. Oh no,
there’s no question of anything of that kind. I did suspect strychnine, but
the convulsions were not at all typical. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Still unofficial, of course, but I’ll
stake my reputation it’s taxine.”
“How long would that take to work?”
“Depends. An hour. Two hours, three hours. Deceased looked like a hearty
eater. If he had had a big breakfast, that would slow things up.”
“Breakfast,” said Inspector Neele thoughtfully. “Yes, it looks like
breakfast.”
“Breakfast with the Borgias.” Dr. Bernsdorff laughed cheerfully. “Well, good
hunting, my lad.”
“Thanks, doctor. I’d like to speak to my sergeant before you ring off.”
Again there were clicks and buzzes and far-off ghostly voices. And then the
sound of heavy breathing came through, an inevitable prelude to Sergeant Hay’s
conversation.
“Sir,” he said urgently. “Sir.”
“Neele here. Did the deceased say anything I ought to know?”
“Said it was the tea. The tea he had at the office. But the M.O. says not. . .
.”
“Yes, I know about that. Nothing else?”
“No, sir. But there’s one thing that’s odd. The suit he was wearing—I checked
the contents of the pockets. The usual stuff—handkerchief, keys, change,
wallet—but there was one thing that’s downright peculiar. The right-hand
pocket of his jacket. It had cereal in it.”
“Cereal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you mean by cereal? Do you mean a breakfast food? Farmer’s Glory or
Wheatifax. Or do you mean corn or barley—”
“That’s right, sir. Grain it was. Looked like rye to me. Quite a lot of it.”
“I see . . . Odd . . . But it might have been a sample—something to do with a
business deal.”
“Quite so, sir—but I thought I’d better mention it.”
“Quite right, Hay.”
Inspector Neele sat staring ahead of him for a few moments after he had
replaced the telephone receiver. His orderly mind was moving from Phase I to
Phase II of the inquiry—from suspicion of poisoning to certainty of poisoning.
Professor Bernsdorff’s words may have been unofficial, but Professor
Bernsdorff was not a man to be mistaken in his beliefs. Rex Fortescue had been
poisoned and the poison had probably been administered one to three hours
before the onset of the first symptoms. It seemed probable, therefore, that
the office staff could be given a clean bill of health.
Neele got up and went into the outer office. A little desultory work was being
done but the typewriters were not going at full speed.
“Miss Griffith? Can I have another word with you?”
“Certainly, Mr. Neele. Could some of the girls go out to lunch? It’s long past
their regular time. Or would you prefer that we get something sent in?”
“No. They can go to lunch. But they must return afterwards.”
“Of course.”
Miss Griffith followed Neele back into the private office. She sat down in her
composed efficient way.
Without preamble, Inspector Neele said:
“I have heard from St. Jude’s Hospital. Mr. Fortescue died at 12:43.”
Miss Griffith received the news without surprise, merely shook her head.
“I was afraid he was very ill,” she said.
She was not, Neele noted, at all distressed.
“Will you please give me particulars of his home and family?”
“Certainly. I have already tried to get into communication with Mrs.
Fortescue, but it seems she is out playing golf. She was not expected home to
lunch. There is some uncertainty as to which course she is playing on.” She
added in an explanatory manner, “They live at Baydon Heath, you know, which is
a centre for three well-known golf courses.”
Inspector Neele nodded. Baydon Heath was almost entirely inhabited by rich
city men. It had an excellent train service, was only twenty miles from London
and was comparatively easy to reach by car even in the rush of morning and
evening traffic.
“The exact address, please, and the telephone number?”
“Bayden Heath 3400. The name of the house is Yewtree Lodge.”
“What?” The sharp query slipped out before Inspector Neele could control it.
“Did you say Yewtree Lodge?”
“Yes.”
Miss Griffith looked faintly curious, but Inspector Neele had himself in hand
again.
“Can you give me particulars of his family?”
“Mrs. Fortescue is his second wife. She is much younger than he is. They were
married about two years ago. The first Mrs. Fortescue has been dead a long
time. There are two sons and a daughter of the first marriage. The daughter
lives at home and so does the elder son, who is a partner in the firm.
Unfortunately he is away in the North of England today on business. He is
expected to return tomorrow.”
“When did he go away?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“Have you tried to get in touch with him?”
“Yes. After Mr. Fortescue was removed to hospital I rang up the Midland Hotel
in Manchester where I thought he might be staying, but he had left early this
morning. I believe he was also going to Sheffield and Leicester, but I am not
sure about that. I can give you the names of certain firms in those cities
whom he might be visiting.”
Certainly an efficient woman, thought the inspector, and if she murdered a man
she would probably murder him very efficiently, too. But he forced himself to
abandon these speculations and concentrate once more on Mr. Fortescue’s home
front.
“There is a second son you said?”
“Yes. But owing to a disagreement with his father he lives abroad.”
“Are both sons married?”
“Yes. Mr. Percival has been married for three years. He and his wife occupy a
self-contained flat in Yewtree Lodge, though they are moving into their own
house at Baydon Heath very shortly.”
“You were not able to get in touch with Mrs. Percival Fortescue when you rang
up this morning?”
“She had gone to London for the day.” Miss Griffith went on, “Mr. Lancelot got
married less than a year ago. To the widow of Lord Frederick Anstice. I expect
you’ve seen pictures of her. In the Tatler—with horses, you know. And at
point-to-points.”
Miss Griffith sounded a little breathless and her cheeks were faintly flushed.
Neele, who was quick to catch the moods of human beings, realized that this
marriage had thrilled the snob and the romantic in Miss Griffith. The
aristocracy was the aristocracy to Miss Griffith and the fact that the late
Lord Frederick Anstice had had a somewhat unsavoury reputation in sporting
circles was almost certainly not known to her. Freddie Anstice had blown his
brains out just before an inquiry by the Stewards into the running of one of
his horses. Neele remembered something vaguely about his wife. She had been
the daughter of an Irish Peer and had been married before to an airman who had
been killed in the Battle of Britain.
And now, it seemed, she was married to the black sheep of the Fortescue
family, for Neele assumed that the disagreement with his father, referred to
primly by Miss Griffith, stood for some disgraceful incident in young Lancelot
Fortescue’s career.
Lancelot Fortescue! What a name! And what was the other son—Percival? He
wondered what the first Mrs. Fortescue had been like? She’d had a curious
taste in Christian names. . . .
He drew the phone towards him and dialled TOL. He asked for Baydon Heath 3400.
Presently a man’s voice said:
“Baydon Heath 3400.”
“I want to speak to Mrs. Fortescue or Miss Fortescue.”
“Sorry. They aren’t in, either of ’em.”
The voice struck Inspector Neele as slightly alcoholic.
“Are you the butler?”
“That’s right.”
“Mr. Fortescue has been taken seriously ill.”
“I know. They rung up and said so. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Mr.
Val’s away up North and Mrs. Fortescue’s out playing golf. Mrs. Val’s gone up
to London but she’ll be back for dinner and Miss Elaine’s out with her
Brownies.”
“Is there no one in the house I can speak to about Mr. Fortescue’s illness?
It’s important.”
“Well—I don’t know.” The man sounded doubtful. “There’s Miss Ramsbottom—but
she don’t ever speak over the phone. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“There’s Miss Ramsbottom—but
she don’t ever speak over the phone. Or there’s Miss Dove—she’s what you might
call the ’ousekeeper.”
“I’ll speak to Miss Dove, please.”
“I’ll try and get hold of her.”
His retreating footsteps were audible through the phone. Inspector Neele heard
no approaching footsteps but a minute or two later a woman’s voice spoke.
“This is Miss Dove speaking.”
The voice was low and well poised, with clear-cut enunciation. Inspector Neele
formed a favourable picture of Miss Dove.
“I am sorry to have to tell you, Miss Dove, that Mr. Fortescue died in St.
Jude’s Hospital a short time ago. He was taken suddenly ill in his office. I
am anxious to get in touch with his relatives—”
“Of course. I had no idea—” She broke off. Her voice held no agitation, but it
was shocked. She went on: “It is all most unfortunate. The person you really
want to get in touch with is Mr. Percival Fortescue. He would be the one to
see to all the necessary arrangements. You might be able to get in touch with
him at the Midland in Manchester or possibly at the Grand in Leicester. Or you
might try Shearer and Bonds of Leicester. I don’t know their telephone number,
I’m afraid, but I know they are a firm on whom he was going to call and they
might be able to inform you where he would be likely to be today. Mrs.
Fortescue will certainly be in to dinner and she may be in to tea. It will be
a great shock to her. It must have been very sudden? Mr. Fortescue was quite
well when he left here this morning.”
“You saw him before he left?”
“Oh yes. What was it? Heart?”
“Did he suffer from heart trouble?”
“No—no—I don’t think so—But I thought as it was so sudden—” She broke off.
“Are you speaking from St. Jude’s Hospital? Are you a doctor?”
“No, Miss Dove, I’m not a doctor. I’m speaking from Mr. Fortescue’s office in
the city. I am Detective Inspector Neele of the CID and I shall be coming down
to see you as soon as I can get there.”
“Detective Inspector? Do you mean—what do you mean?”
“It was a case of sudden death, Miss Dove; and when there is a sudden death we
get called to the scene, especially when the deceased man hasn’t seen a doctor
lately—which I gather was the case?”
It was only the faintest suspicion of a question mark but the young woman
responded.
“I know. Percival made an appointment twice for him, but he wouldn’t keep it.
He was quite unreasonable—they’ve all been worried—”
She broke off and then resumed in her former assured manner.
“If Mrs. Fortescue returns to the house before you arrive, what do you want me
to tell her?”
Practical as they make ’em, thought Inspector Neele.
Aloud he said:
“Just tell her that in a case of sudden death we have to make a few inquiries.
Routine inquiries.”
He hung up. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Routine inquiries.”
He hung up.
Chapter Three
Neele pushed the telephone away and looked sharply at Miss Griffith.
“So they’ve been worried about him lately,” he said. “Wanted him to see a
doctor. You didn’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t think of it,” said Miss Griffith, and added: “He never seemed to me
really ill—”
“Not ill—but what?”
“Well, just off. Unlike himself. Peculiar in his manner.”
“Worried about something?”
“Oh no, not worried. It’s we who were worried—”
Inspector Neele waited patiently.
“It’s difficult to say, really,” said Miss Griffith. “He had moods, you know.
Sometimes he was quite boisterous. Once or twice, frankly, I thought he had
been drinking . . . He boasted and told the most extraordinary stories which
I’m sure couldn’t possibly have been true. For most of the time I’ve been here
he was always very close about his affairs—not giving anything away, you know.
But lately he’s been quite different, expansive, and positively—well—flinging
money about. Most unlike his usual manner. Why, when the office boy had to go
to his grandmother’s funeral, Mr. Fortescue called him in and gave him a five
pound note and told him to put it on the second favourite and then roared with
laughter. He wasn’t—well, he just wasn’t like himself. That’s all I can say.”
“As though, perhaps, he had something on his mind?”
“Not in the usual meaning of the term. It was as though he were looking
forward to something pleasurable—exciting—”
“Possibly a big deal that he was going to pull off?”
Miss Griffith agreed with more conviction.
“Yes—yes, that’s much more what I mean. As though everyday things didn’t
matter anymore. He was excited. And some very odd-looking people came to see
him on business. People who’d never been here before. It worried Mr. Percival
dreadfully.”
“Oh, it worried him, did it?”
“Yes. Mr. Percival’s always been very much in his father’s confidence, you
see. His father relied on him. But lately—”
“Lately they weren’t getting along so well.”
“Well, Mr. Fortescue was doing a lot of things that Mr. Percival thought
unwise. Mr. Percival is always very careful and prudent. But suddenly his
father didn’t listen to him anymore and Mr. Percival was very upset.”
“And they had a real row about it all?”
Inspector Neele was still probing.
“I don’t know about a row . . . Of course, I realize now Mr. Fortescue can’t
have been himself—shouting like that.”
“Shouted, did he? What did he say?”
“He came right out in the typists’ room—”
“So that you all heard?”
“Well—yes.”
“And he called Percival names—abused him—swore at him.”
“What did he say Percival had done?”
“It was more that he hadn’t done anything . . . he called him a miserable
pettifogging little clerk. He said he had no large outlook, no conception of
doing business in a big way. He said: ‘I shall get Lance home again. He’s
worth ten of you—and he’s married well. Lance has got guts even if he did risk
a criminal prosecution once—’ Oh dear, I oughtn’t to have said that!” Miss
Griffith, carried away as others before her had been under Inspector Neele’s
expert handling, was suddenly overcome with confusion.
“Don’t worry,” said Inspector Neele comfortingly. “What’s past is past.”
“Oh yes, it was a long time ago. Mr. Lance was just young and high-spirited
and didn’t really realize what he was doing.”
Inspector Neele had heard that view before and didn’t agree with it. But he
passed on to fresh questions.
“Tell me a little more about the staff here.”
Miss Griffith, hurrying to get away from her indiscretion, poured out
information about the various personalities in the firm. Inspector Neele
thanked her and then said he would like to see Miss Grosvenor again.
Detective Constable Waite sharpened his pencil. He remarked wistfully that
this was a Ritzy joint. His glance wandered appreciatively over the huge
chairs, the big desk and the indirect lighting.
“All these people have got Ritzy names, too,” he said. “Grosvenor—that’s
something to do with a Duke. And Fortescue—that’s a classy name, too.”
Inspector Neele smiled.
“His father’s name wasn’t Fortescue. Fontescu—and he came from somewhere in
Central Europe. I suppose this man thought Fortescue sounded better.”
Detective Constable Waite looked at his superior officer with awe.
“So you know all about him?”
“I just looked up a few things before coming along on the call.”
“Not got a record, had he?”
“Oh no. Mr. Fortescue was much too clever for that. He’s had certain
connections with the black market and put through one or two deals that are
questionable to say the least of it, but they’ve always been just within the
law.”
“I see,” said Waite. “Not a nice man.”
“A twister,” said Neele. “But we’ve got nothing on him. The Inland Revenue
have been after him for a long time but he’s been too clever for them. Quite a
financial genius, the late Mr. Fortescue.”
“The sort of man,” said Constable Waite, “who might have enemies?”
He spoke hopefully.
“Oh yes—certainly enemies. But he was poisoned at home, remember. Or so it
would seem. You know, Waite, I see a kind of pattern emerging. An old-
fashioned familiar kind of pattern. The good boy, Percival. The bad boy,
Lance—attractive to women. The wife who’s younger than her husband and who’s
vague about which course she’s going to play golf on. It’s all very familiar.
But there’s one thing that sticks out in a most incongruous way.”
Constable Waite asked “What’s that?” just as the door opened and Miss
Grosvenor, her poise restored, and once more her glamorous self, inquired
haughtily:
“You wished to see me?”
“I wanted to ask you a few questions about your employer—your late employer,
perhaps I should say.”
“Poor soul,” said Miss Grosvenor unconvincingly.
“I want to know if you had noticed any difference in him lately.”
“Well, yes. I did, as a matter of fact.”
“In what way?”
“I couldn’t really say . . . He seemed to talk a lot of nonsense. I couldn’t
really believe half of what he said. And then he lost his temper very
easily—especially with Mr. Percival. Not with me, because of course I never
argue. I just say, ‘Yes, Mr. Fortescue,’ whatever peculiar thing he says—said,
I mean.”
“Did he—ever—well—make any passes at you?”
Miss Grosvenor replied rather regretfully:
“Well, no, I couldn’t exactly say that.”
“There’s just one other thing, Miss Grosvenor. Was Mr. Fortescue in the habit
of carrying grain about in his pocket?”
Miss Grosvenor displayed a lively surprise.
“Grain? In his pocket? Do you mean to feed pigeons or something?”
“It could have been for that purpose.”
“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t. Mr. Fortescue? Feed pigeons? Oh no.”
“Could he have had barley—or rye—in his pocket today for any special reason? A
sample, perhaps? Some deal in grain?”
“Oh no. He was expecting the Asiatic Oil people this afternoon. And the
President of the Atticus Building Society . . . No one else.”
“Oh well—” Neele dismissed the subject and Miss Grosvenor with a wave of the
hand.
“Lovely legs she’s got,” said Constable Waite with a sigh. “And super nylons—”
“Legs are no help to me,” said Inspector Neele. “I’m left with what I had
before. A pocketful of rye—and no explanation of it.”
Chapter Four
Mary Dove paused on her way downstairs and looked out through the big window
on the stairs. A car had just driven up from which two men were alighting. The
taller of the two stood for a moment with his back to the house surveying his
surroundings. Mary Dove appraised the two men thoughtfully. Inspector Neele
and presumably a subordinate.
She turned from the window and looked at herself in the full-length mirror
that hung on the wall where the staircase turned . . . She saw a small demure
figure with immaculate white collar and cuffs on a beige grey dress. Her dark
hair was parted in the middle and drawn back in two shining waves to a knot in
the back of the neck . . . The lipstick she used was a pale rose colour.
On the whole Mary Dove was satisfied with her appearance. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
On the whole Mary Dove was satisfied with her appearance. A very faint smile
on her lips, she went on down the stairs.
Inspector Neele, surveying the house, was saying to himself:
Call it a lodge, indeed! Yewtree Lodge! The affectation of these rich people!
The house was what he, Inspector Neele, would call a mansion. He knew what a
lodge was. He’d been brought up in one! The lodge at the gates of Hartington
Park, that vast unwieldy Palladian house with its twenty-nine bedrooms which
had now been taken over by the National Trust. The lodge had been small and
attractive from the outside, and had been damp, uncomfortable and devoid of
anything but the most primitive form of sanitation within. Fortunately these
facts had been accepted as quite proper and fitting by Inspector Neele’s
parents. They had no rent to pay and nothing whatever to do except open and
shut the gates when required, and there were always plenty of rabbits and an
occasional pheasant or so for the pot. Mrs. Neele had never discovered the
pleasure of electric irons, slow combustion stoves, airing cupboards, hot and
cold water from taps, and the switching on of light by a mere flick of a
finger. In winter the Neeles had an oil lamp and in summer they went to bed
when it got dark. They were a healthy family and a happy one, all thoroughly
behind the times.
So when Inspector Neele heard the word Lodge, it was his childhood memories
that stirred. But this place, this pretentiously named Yewtree Lodge was just
the kind of mansion that rich people built themselves and then called it
“their little place in the country.” It wasn’t in the country either,
according to Inspector Neele’s idea of the country. The house was a large
solid red-brick structure, sprawling lengthwise rather than upward, with
rather too many gables, and a vast number of leaded paned windows. The gardens
were highly artificial—all laid out in rose beds and pergolas and pools, and
living up to the name of the house with large numbers of clipped yew hedges.
Plenty of yew here for anybody with a desire to obtain the raw material of
taxine. Over on the right, behind the rose pergola, there was a bit of actual
nature left—a vast yew tree of the kind one associates with churchyards, its
branches held up by stakes—like a kind of Moses of the forest world. That
tree, the inspector thought, had been there long before the rash of newly
built red-brick houses had begun to spread over the countryside. It had been
there before the golf courses had been laid out and the fashionable architects
had walked round with their rich clients, pointing out the advantages of the
various sites. And since it was a valuable antique, the tree had been kept and
incorporated in the new setup and had, perhaps, given its name to the new
desirable residence. Yewtree Lodge. And possibly the berries from that very
tree—
Inspector Neele cut off these unprofitable speculations. Must get on with the
job. He rang the bell.
It was opened promptly by a middle-aged man who fitted in quite accurately
with the mental image Inspector Neele had formed of him over the phone. A man
with a rather spurious air of smartness, a shifty eye and a rather unsteady
hand.
Inspector Neele announced himself and his subordinate and had the pleasure of
seeing an instant look of alarm come into the butler’s eye . . . Neele did not
attach too much importance to that. It might easily have nothing to do with
the death of Rex Fortescue. It was quite possibly a purely automatic reaction.
“Has Mrs. Fortescue returned yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor Mr. Percival Fortescue? Nor Miss Fortescue?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I would like to see Miss Dove, please.”
The man turned his head slightly.
“Here’s Miss Dove now—coming downstairs.”
Inspector Neele took in Miss Dove as she came composedly down the wide
staircase. This time the mental picture did not correspond with the reality.
Unconsciously the word housekeeper had conjured up a vague impression of
someone large and authoritative dressed in black with somewhere concealed
about her a jingle of keys.
The inspector was quite unprepared for the small trim figure descending
towards him. The soft dove-coloured tones of her dress, the white collar and
cuffs, the neat waves of hair, the faint Mona Lisa smile. It all seemed,
somehow, just a little unreal, as though this young woman of under thirty was
playing a part: not, he thought, the part of a housekeeper, but the part of
Mary Dove. Her appearance was directed towards living up to her name.
She greeted him composedly.
“Inspector Neele?”
“Yes. This is Sergeant Hay. Mr. Fortescue, as I told you through the phone,
died in St. Jude’s Hospital at 12:43. It seems likely that his death was the
result of something he ate at breakfast this morning. I should be glad
therefore if Sergeant Hay could be taken to the kitchen where he can make
inquiries as to the food served.”
Her eyes met his for a moment, thoughtfully, then she nodded.
“Of course,” she said. She turned to the uneasily hovering butler. “Crump,
will you take Sergeant Hay out and show him whatever he wants to see.”
The two men departed together. Mary Dove said to Neele:
“Will you come in here?”
She opened the door of a room and preceded him into it. It was a characterless
apartment, clearly labelled “Smoking Room,” with panelling, rich upholstery,
large stuffed chairs, and a suitable set of sporting prints on the walls.
“Please sit down.”
He sat and Mary Dove sat opposite him. She chose, he noticed, to face the
light. An unusual preference for a woman. Still more unusual if a woman had
anything to hide. But perhaps Mary Dove had nothing to hide.
“It is very unfortunate,” she said, “that none of the family is available.
Mrs. Fortescue may return at any minute. And so may Mrs. Val. I have sent
wires to Mr. Percival Fortescue at various places.”
“Thank you, Miss Dove.”
“You say that Mr. Fortescue’s death was caused by something he may have eaten
for breakfast? Food poisoning, you mean?”
“Possibly.” He watched her.
She said composedly, “It seems unlikely. For breakfast this morning there were
bacon and scrambled eggs, coffee, toast and marmalade. There was also a cold
ham on the sideboard, but that had been cut yesterday, and no one felt any ill
effects. No fish of any kind was served, no sausages—nothing like that.”
“I see you know exactly what was served.”
“Naturally. I order the meals. For dinner last night—”
“No.” Inspector Neele interrupted her. “It would not be a question of dinner
last night.”
“I thought the onset of food poisoning could sometimes be delayed as much as
twenty-four hours.”
“Not in this case . . . Will you tell me exactly what Mr. Fortescue ate and
drank before leaving the house this morning?”
“He had early tea brought to his room at eight o’clock. Breakfast was at a
quarter past nine. Mr. Fortescue, as I have told you, had scrambled eggs,
bacon, coffee, toast and marmalade.”
“Any cereal?”
“No, he didn’t like cereals.”
“The sugar for the coffee—it is lump sugar or granulated?”
“Lump. But Mr. Fortescue did not take sugar in his coffee.”
“Was he in the habit of taking any medicines in the morning? Salts? A tonic?
Some digestive remedy?”
“No, nothing of that kind.”
“Did you have breakfast with him also?”
“No. I do not take meals with the family.”
“Who was at breakfast?”
“Mrs. Fortescue. Miss Fortescue. Mrs. Val Fortescue. Mr. Percival Fortescue,
of course, was away.”
“And Mrs. and Miss Fortescue ate the same things for breakfast?”
“Mrs. Fortescue has only coffee, orange juice and toast, Mrs. Val and Miss
Fortescue always eat a hearty breakfast. Besides eating scrambled eggs and
cold ham, they would probably have a cereal as well. Mrs. Val drinks tea, not
coffee.”
Inspector Neele reflected for a moment. The opportunities seemed at least to
be narrowing down. Three people and three people only had had breakfast with
the deceased, his wife, his daughter and his daughter-in-law. Either of them
might have seized an opportunity to add taxine to his cup of coffee. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Either of them
might have seized an opportunity to add taxine to his cup of coffee. The
bitterness of the coffee would have masked the bitter taste of the taxine.
There was the early morning tea, of course, but Bernsdorff had intimated that
the taste would be noticeable in tea. But perhaps, first thing in the morning,
before the senses were alert . . . He looked up to find Mary Dove watching
him.
“Your questions about tonic and medicines seem to me rather odd, Inspector,”
she said. “It seems to imply that either there was something wrong with a
medicine, or that something had been added to it. Surely neither of those
processes could be described as food poisoning.”
Neele eyed her steadily.
“I did not say—definitely—that Mr. Fortescue died of food poisoning. But some
kind of poisoning. In fact—just poisoning.”
She repeated softly: “Poisoning. . . .”
She appeared neither startled nor dismayed, merely interested. Her attitude
was of one sampling a new experience.
In fact she said as much, remarking after a moment’s reflection: “I have never
had anything to do with a poisoning case before.”
“It’s not very pleasant,” Neele informed her dryly.
“No—I suppose not. . . .”
She thought about it for a moment and then looked up at him with a sudden
smile.
“I didn’t do it,” she said. “But I suppose everybody will tell you that!”
“Have you any idea who did do it, Miss Dove?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Frankly, he was an odious man. Anybody might have done it.”
“But people aren’t poisoned just for being ‘odious,’ Miss Dove. There usually
has to be a pretty solid motive.”
“Yes, of course.”
She was thoughtful.
“Do you care to tell me something about the household here?”
She looked up at him. He was a little startled to find her eyes cool and
amused.
“This isn’t exactly a statement you’re asking me to make, is it? No, it
couldn’t be, because your sergeant is busy upsetting the domestic staff. I
shouldn’t like to have what I say read out in court—but all the same I should
rather like to say it—unofficially. Off the record, so to speak?”
“Go ahead then, Miss Dove. I’ve no witness, as you’ve already observed.”
She leaned back, swinging one slim foot and narrowing her eyes.
“Let me start by saying that I’ve no feeling of loyalty to my employers. I
work for them because it’s a job that pays well and I insist that it should
pay well.”
“I was a little surprised to find you doing this type of job. It struck me
that with your brains and education—”
“I ought to be confined in an office? Or compiling files in a Ministry? My
dear Inspector Neele, this is the perfect racket. People will pay
anything—anything—to be spared domestic worries. To find and engage a staff is
a thoroughly tedious job. Writing to agencies, putting in advertisements,
interviewing people, making arrangements for interviews, and finally keeping
the whole thing running smoothly—it takes a certain capacity which most of
these people haven’t got.”
“And suppose your staff, when you’ve assembled it, runs out on you? I’ve heard
of such things.”
Mary smiled.
“If necessary, I can make the beds, dust the rooms, cook a meal and serve it
without anyone noticing the difference. Of course I don’t advertise that fact.
It might give rise to ideas. But I can always be sure of tiding over any
little gap. But there aren’t often gaps. I work only for the extremely rich
who will pay anything to be comfortable. I pay top prices and so I get the
best of what’s going.”
“Such as the butler?”
She threw him an amused, appreciative glance.
“There’s always that trouble with a couple. Crump stays because of Mrs. Crump,
who is one of the best cooks I’ve ever come across. She’s a jewel and one
would put up with a good deal to keep her. Our Mr. Fortescue likes his
food—liked, I should say. In this household nobody has any scruples and they
have plenty of money. Butter, eggs, cream, Mrs. Crump can command what she
likes. As for Crump, he just makes the grade. His silver’s all right, and his
waiting at table is not too bad. I keep the key of the wine cellar and a sharp
eye on the whisky, and gin, and supervise his valeting.”
Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.
“The admirable Miss Crichton.”
“I find one must know how to do everything oneself. Then—one need never do it.
But you wanted to know my impressions of the family.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“They are really all quite odious. The late Mr. Fortescue was the kind of
crook who is always careful to play safe. He boasted a great deal of his
various smart dealings. He was rude and overbearing in manner and was a
definite bully. Mrs. Fortescue, Adele—was his second wife and about thirty
years younger than he was. He came across her at Brighton. She was a
manicurist on the look out for big money. She is very good-looking—a real sexy
piece, if you know what I mean.”
Inspector Neele was shocked but managed not to show it. A girl like Mary Dove
ought not to say such things, he felt.
The young lady was continuing composedly:
“Adele married him for his money, of course, and his son, Percival, and his
daughter, Elaine, were simply livid about it. They’re as nasty as they can be
to her, but very wisely she doesn’t care or even notice. She knows she’s got
the old man where she wants him. Oh dear, the wrong tense again. I haven’t
really grasped yet that he’s dead. . . .”
“Let’s hear about the son.”
“Dear Percival? Val, as his wife calls him. Percival is a mealy-mouthed
hypocrite. He’s prim and sly and cunning. He’s terrified of his father and has
always let himself be bullied, but he’s quite clever at getting his own way.
Unlike his father he’s mean about money. Economy is one of his passions.
That’s why he’s been so long about finding a house of his own. Having a suite
of rooms here saved his pocket.”
“And his wife?”
“Jennifer’s meek and seems very stupid. But I’m not so sure. She was a
hospital nurse before her marriage—nursed Percival through pneumonia to a
romantic conclusion. The old man was disappointed by the marriage. He was a
snob and wanted Percival to make what he called a ‘good marriage.’ He despised
poor Mrs. Val and snubbed her. She dislikes—disliked him a good deal, I think.
Her principal interests are shopping and the cinema; her principal grievance
is that her husband keeps her short of money.”
“What about the daughter?”
“Elaine? I’m rather sorry for Elaine. She’s not a bad sort. One of those great
schoolgirls who never grow up. She plays games quite well, and runs Guides and
Brownies and all that sort of thing. There was some sort of affair not long
ago with a disgruntled young schoolmaster, but Father discovered the young man
had communistic ideas and came down on the romance like a ton of bricks.”
“She hadn’t got the spirit to stand up to him?”
“She had. It was the young man who ratted. A question of money yet again, I
fancy. Elaine is not particularly attractive, poor dear.”
“And the other son?”
“I’ve never seen him. He’s attractive, by all accounts, and a thoroughly bad
lot. Some little matter of a forged cheque in the past. He lives in East
Africa.”
“And was estranged from his father.”
“Yes, Mr. Fortescue couldn’t cut him off with a shilling because he’d already
made him a junior partner in the firm, but he held no communication with him
for years, and in fact if Lance was ever mentioned, he used to say: ‘Don’t
talk to me of that rascal. He’s no son of mine.’ All the same—”
“Yes, Miss Dove?”
Mary said slowly: “All the same, I shouldn’t be surprised if old Fortescue
hadn’t been planning to get him back here.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because, about a month ago, old Fortescue had a terrific row with Percival—he
found out something that Percival had been doing behind his back—I don’t know
what it was—and he was absolutely furious. Percival suddenly stopped being the
white-headed boy. He’s been quite different lately, too.”
“Mr. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
He’s been quite different lately, too.”
“Mr. Fortescue was quite different?”
“No. I meant Percival. He’s gone about looking worried to death.”
“Now what about servants? You’ve already described the Crumps. Who else is
there?”
“Gladys Martin is the parlourmaid or waitress, as they like to call themselves
nowadays. She does the downstairs rooms, lays the table, clears away and helps
Crump wait at table. Quite a decent sort of girl but very nearly half-witted.
The adenoidal type.”
Neele nodded.
“The housemaid is Ellen Curtis. Elderly, very crabbed, and very cross, but has
been in good service and is a first-class housemaid. The rest is outside
help—odd women who come in.”
“And those are the only people living here?”
“There’s old Miss Ramsbottom.”
“Who is she?”
“Mr. Fortescue’s sister-in-law—his first wife’s sister. His wife was a good
deal older than he was and her sister again was a good deal older than
her—which makes her well over seventy. She has a room of her own on the second
floor—does her own cooking and all that, with just a woman coming in to clean.
She’s rather eccentric and she never liked her brother-in-law, but she came
here while her sister was alive and stayed on when she died. Mr. Fortescue
never bothered about her much. She’s quite a character, though, is Aunt
Effie.”
“And that is all.”
“That’s all.”
“So we come to you, Miss Dove.”
“You want particulars? I’m an orphan. I took a secretarial course at the St.
Alfred’s Secretarial College. I took a job as shorthand typist, left it and
took another, decided I was in the wrong racket, and started on my present
career. I have been with three different employers. After about a year or
eighteen months I get tired of a particular place and move on. I have been at
Yewtree Lodge just over a year. I will type out the names and addresses of my
various employers and give them, with a copy of my references to Sergeant—Hay,
is it? Will that be satisfactory?”
“Perfectly, Miss Dove.” Neele was silent for a moment, enjoying a mental image
of Miss Dove tampering with Mr. Fortescue’s breakfast. His mind went back
farther, and he saw her methodically gathering yew berries in a little basket.
With a sigh he returned to the present and reality. “Now, I would like to see
the girl—er Gladys—and then the housemaid, Ellen.” He added as he rose: “By
the way, Miss Dove, can you give me any idea why Mr. Fortescue would be
carrying loose grain in his pocket?”
“Grain?” she stared at him with what appeared to be genuine surprise.
“Yes—grain. Does that suggest something to you, Miss Dove?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Who looked after his clothes?”
“Crump.”
“I see. Did Mr. Fortescue and Mrs. Fortescue occupy the same bedroom?”
“Yes. He had a dressing room and bath, of course, and so did she . . .” Mary
glanced down at her wristwatch. “I really think that she ought to be back very
soon now.”
The inspector had risen. He said in a pleasant voice:
“Do you know one thing, Miss Dove? It strikes me as very odd that even though
there are three golf courses in the immediate neighbourhood, it has yet not
been possible to find Mrs. Fortescue on one of them before now?”
“It would not be so odd, Inspector, if she did not actually happen to be
playing golf at all.”
Mary’s voice was dry. The inspector said sharply:
“I was distinctly informed that she was playing golf.”
“She took her golf clubs and announced her intention of doing so. She was
driving her own car, of course.”
He looked at her steadily, perceiving the inference.
“Who was she playing with? Do you know?”
“I think it possible that it might be Mr. Vivian Dubois.”
Neele contented himself by saying: “I see.”
“I’ll send Gladys in to you. She’ll probably be scared to death.” Mary paused
for a moment by the door, then she said:
“I should hardly advise you to go too much by all I’ve told you. I’m a
malicious creature.”
She went out. Inspector Neele looked at the closed door and wondered. Whether
actuated by malice or not, what she had told him could not fail to be
suggestive. If Rex Fortescue had been deliberately poisoned, and it seemed
almost certain that that was the case, then the setup at Yewtree Lodge seemed
highly promising. Motives appeared to be lying thick on the ground. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Motives appeared to be lying thick on the ground.
Chapter Five
The girl who entered the room with obvious unwillingness was an unattractive,
frightened-looking girl, who managed to look faintly sluttish in spite of
being tall and smartly dressed in a claret-coloured uniform.
She said at once, fixing imploring eyes upon him:
“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t really. I don’t know anything about it.”
“That’s all right,” said Neele heartily. His voice had changed slightly. It
sounded more cheerful and a good deal commoner in intonation. He wanted to put
the frightened rabbit Gladys at her ease.
“Sit down here,” he went on. “I just want to know about breakfast this
morning.”
“I didn’t do anything at all.”
“Well, you laid the breakfast, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did that.” Even that admission came unwillingly. She looked both
guilty and terrified, but Inspector Neele was used to witnesses who looked
like that. He went on cheerfully, trying to put her at her ease, asking
questions: who had come down first? And who next?
Elaine Fortescue had been the first down to breakfast. She’d come in just as
Crump was bringing in the coffee pot. Mrs. Fortescue was down next, and then
Mrs. Val, and the master last. They waited on themselves. The tea and coffee
and the hot dishes were all on hot plates on the sideboard.
He learnt little of importance from her that he did not know already. The food
and drink was as Mary Dove had described it. The master and Mrs. Fortescue and
Miss Elaine took coffee and Mrs. Val took tea. Everything had been quite as
usual.
Neele questioned her about herself and here she answered more readily. She’d
been in private service first and after that in various cafés. Then she
thought she’d like to go back to private service and had come to Yewtree Lodge
last September. She’d been there two months.
“And you like it?”
“Well, it’s all right, I suppose.” She added: “It’s not so hard on your
feet—but you don’t get so much freedom. . . .”
“Tell me about Mr. Fortescue’s clothes—his suits. Who looked after them?
Brushed them and all that?”
Gladys looked faintly resentful.
“Mr. Crump’s supposed to. But half the time he makes me do it.”
“Who brushed and pressed the suit Mr. Fortescue had on today?”
“I don’t remember which one he wore. He’s got ever so many.”
“Have you ever found grain in the pocket of one of his suits?”
“Grain?” She looked puzzled.
“Rye, to be exact.”
“Rye? That’s bread, isn’t it? A sort of black bread—got a nasty taste, I
always think.”
“That’s bread made from rye. Rye is the grain itself. There was some found in
the pocket of your master’s coat.”
“In his coat pocket?”
“Yes. Do you know how it got there?”
“I couldn’t say I’m sure. I never saw any.”
He could get no more from her. For a moment or two he wondered if she knew
more about the matter than she was willing to admit. She certainly seemed
embarrassed and on the defensive—but on the whole he put it down to a natural
fear of the police.
When he finally dismissed her, she asked:
“It’s really true, is it. He’s dead?”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“Very sudden, wasn’t it? They said when they rang up from the office that he’d
had a kind of fit.”
“Yes—it was a kind of fit.”
Gladys said: “A girl I used to know had fits. Come on anytime, they did. Used
to scare me.”
For the moment this reminiscence seemed to overcome her suspicions.
Inspector Neele made his way to the kitchen.
His reception was immediate and alarming. A woman of vast proportions, with a
red face armed with a rolling pin stepped towards him in a menacing fashion.
“Police, indeed,” she said. “Coming here and saying things like that! Nothing
of the kind, I’d have you know. Anything I’ve sent in the dining room has been
just what it should be. Coming here and saying I poisoned the master. I’ll
have the law on you, police or no police. No bad food’s ever been served in
this house.”
It was sometime before Inspector Neele could appease the irate artist.
Sergeant Hay looked in grinning from the pantry and Inspector Neele gathered
that he had already run the gauntlet of Mrs. Crump’s wrath.
The scene was terminated by the ringing of the telephone.
Neele went out into the hall to find Mary Dove taking the call. She was
writing down a message on a pad. Turning her head over her shoulder she said:
“It’s a telegram.”
The call concluded, she replaced the receiver and handed the pad on which she
had been writing to the inspector. The place of origin was Paris and the
message ran as follows:
Fortescue Yewtree Lodge Baydon Heath Surrey. Sorry your letter delayed. Will
be with you tomorrow about teatime. Shall expect roast veal for dinner. Lance.
Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.
“So the Prodigal Son had been summoned home,” he said. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Six
At the moment when Rex Fortescue had been drinking his last cup of tea, Lance
Fortescue and his wife had been sitting under the trees on the Champs Elysées
watching the people walking past.
“It’s all very well to say ‘describe him,’ Pat. I’m a rotten hand at
descriptions. What do you want to know? The Guvnor’s a bit of an old crook,
you know. But you won’t mind that? You must be used to that more or less.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pat. “Yes—as you say—I’m acclimatized.”
She tried to keep a certain forlornness out of her voice. Perhaps, she
reflected, the whole world was really crooked—or was it just that she herself
had been unfortunate?
She was a tall, long-legged girl, not beautiful but with a charm that was
made-up of vitality and a warm-hearted personality. She moved well, and had
lovely gleaming chestnut brown hair. Perhaps from a long association with
horses, she had acquired the look of a thoroughbred filly.
Crookedness in the racing world she knew about—now, it seemed, she was to
encounter crookedness in the financial world. Though for all that, it seemed
that her father-in-law, whom she had not yet met, was, as far as the law was
concerned, a pillar of rectitude. All these people who went about boasting of
“smart work” were the same—technically they always managed to be within the
law. Yet it seemed to her that her Lance, whom she loved, and who had
admittedly strayed outside the ringed fence in earlier days, had an honesty
that these successful practitioners of the crooked lacked.
“I don’t mean,” said Lance, “that he’s a swindler—not anything like that. But
he knows how to put over a fast one.”
“Sometimes,” said Pat, “I feel I hate people who put over fast ones.” She
added: “You’re fond of him.” It was a statement, not a question.
Lance considered it for a moment, and then said in a surprised kind of voice:
“Do you know, darling, I believe I am.”
Pat laughed. He turned his head to look at her. His eyes narrowed. What a
darling she was! He loved her. The whole thing was worth it for her sake.
“In a way, you know,” he said, “it’s hell going back. City life. Home on the
5:18. It’s not my kind of life. I’m far more at home among the down and outs.
But one’s got to settle down sometime, I suppose. And with you to hold my hand
the process may even be quite a pleasant one. And since the old boy has come
round, one ought to take advantage of it. I must say I was surprised when I
got his letter . . . Percival, of all people, blotting his copybook. Percival,
the good little boy. Mind you, Percy was always sly. Yes, he was always sly.”
“I don’t think,” said Patricia Fortescue, “that I’m going to like your brother
Percival.”
“Don’t let me put you against him. Percy and I never got on—that’s all there
is to it. I blued my pocket money, he saved his. I had disreputable but
entertaining friends, Percy made what’s called ‘worthwhile contacts.’ Poles
apart we were, he and I. I always thought him a poor fish, and he—sometimes,
you know, I think he almost hated me. I don’t know why exactly. . . .”
“I think I can see why.”
“Can you, darling? You’re so brainy. You know I’ve always wondered—it’s a
fantastic thing to say—but—”
“Well? Say it.”
“I’ve wondered if it wasn’t Percival who was behind that cheque business—you
know, when the old man kicked me out—and was he mad that he’d given me a share
in the firm and so he couldn’t disinherit me! Because the queer thing was that
I never forged that cheque—though of course nobody would believe that after
that time I swiped funds out of the till and put it on a horse. I was dead
sure I could put it back, and anyway it was my own cash in a manner of
speaking. But that cheque business—no. I don’t know why I’ve got the
ridiculous idea that Percival did that—but I have, somehow.”
“But it wouldn’t have done him any good? It was paid into your account.”
“I know. So it doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Pat turned sharply towards him.
“You mean—he did it to get you chucked out of the firm?”
“I wondered. Oh well—it’s a rotten thing to say. Forget it. I wonder what old
Percy will say when he sees the Prodigal returned. Those pale, boiled-
gooseberry eyes of his will pop right out of his head!”
“Does he know you are coming?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know a damned thing! The old man’s got
rather a funny sense of humour, you know.”
“But what has your brother done to upset your father so much?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Something must have made the old man livid.
Writing off to me the way he did.”
“When was it you got his first letter?”
“Must be four—no five months ago. A cagey letter, but a distinct holding out
of the olive branch. ‘Your elder brother has proved himself unsatisfactory in
many ways.’ ‘You seem to have sown your wild oats and settled down.’ ‘I can
promise you that it will be well worth your while financially.’ ‘Shall welcome
you and your wife.’ You know, darling, I think my marrying you had a lot to do
with it. The old boy was impressed that I’d married into a class above me.”
Pat laughed.
“What? Into the aristocratic riff-raff?”
He grinned. “That’s right. But riff-raff didn’t register and aristocracy did.
You should see Percival’s wife. She’s the kind who says ‘Pass the preserves,
please’ and talks about a postage stamp.”
Pat did not laugh. She was considering the women of the family into which she
had married. It was a point of view which Lance had not taken into account.
“And your sister?” she asked.
“Elaine—? Oh she’s all right. She was pretty young when I left home. Sort of
an earnest girl—but probably she’s grown out of that. Very intense over
things.”
It did not sound very reassuring. Pat said:
“She never wrote to you—after you went away?”
“I didn’t leave an address. But she wouldn’t have, anyway. We’re not a devoted
family.”
“No.”
He shot a quick look at her.
“Got the wind up? About my family? You needn’t. We’re not going to live with
them, or anything like that. We’ll have our own little place, somewhere.
Horses, dogs, anything you like.”
“But there will still be the 5:18.”
“For me, yes. To and fro to the city, all togged up. But don’t worry,
sweet—there are rural pockets, even round London. And lately I’ve felt the sap
of financial affairs rising in me. After all, it’s in my blood—from both sides
of the family.”
“You hardly remember your mother, do you?”
“She always seemed to me incredibly old. She was old, of course. Nearly fifty
when Elaine was born. She wore lots of clinking things and lay on a sofa and
used to read me stories about knights and ladies which bored me stiff.
Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King.’ I suppose I was fond of her . . . She was
very—colourless, you know. I realize that, looking back.”
“You don’t seem to have been particularly fond of anybody,” said Pat
disapprovingly.
Lance grasped and squeezed her arm.
“I’m fond of you,” he said. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Seven
Inspector Neele was still holding the telegraph message in his hand when he
heard a car drive up to the front door and stop with a careless scrunching of
brakes.
Mary Dove, “That will be Mrs. Fortescue now.”
Inspector Neele moved forwards to the front door. Out of the tail of his eye,
he saw Mary Dove melt unobtrusively into the background and disappear. Clearly
she intended to take no part in the forthcoming scene. A remarkable display of
tact and discretion—and also a rather remarkable lack of curiosity. Most
women, Inspector Neele decided, would have remained. . . .
As he reached the front door he was aware of the butler, Crump, coming forward
from the back of the hall. So he had heard the car.
The car was a Rolls Bentley sports model coupé. Two people got out of it and
came towards the house. As they reached the door, it opened. Surprised, Adele
Fortescue stared at Inspector Neele.
He realized at once that she was a very beautiful woman, and he realized too
the force of Mary Dove’s comment which had so shocked him at the time. Adele
Fortescue was a sexy piece. In figure and type she resembled the blonde Miss
Grosvenor, but whereas Miss Grosvenor was all glamour without and all
respectability within, Adele Fortescue was glamour all through. Her appeal was
obvious, not subtle. It said simply to every man “Here am I. I’m a woman.” She
spoke and moved and breathed sex—and yet, within it all, her eyes had a shrewd
appraising quality. Adele Fortescue, he thought, liked men—but she would
always like money even better.
His eyes went on to the figure behind her who carried her golf clubs. He knew
the type very well. It was the type that specialized in the young wives of
rich and elderly men. Mr. Vivian Dubois, if this was he, had that rather
forced masculinity which is, in reality, nothing of the kind. He was the type
of man who “understands” women.
“Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Yes.” It was a wide blue-eyed gaze. “But I don’t know—”
“I am Inspector Neele. I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”
“Do you mean—a burglary—something of that kind?”
“No, nothing of that kind. It is about your husband. He was taken seriously
ill this morning.”
“Rex? Ill?”
“We have been trying to get in touch with you since half past eleven this
morning.”
“Where is he? Here? Or in hospital?”
“He was taken to St. Jude’s Hospital. I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for
a shock.”
“You don’t mean—he isn’t—dead.”
She lurched forward a little and clutched his arm. Gravely feeling like
someone playing a part in a stage performance, the inspector supported her
into the hall. Crump was hovering eagerly.
“Brandy she’ll be needing,” he said.
The deep voice of Mr. Dubois said:
“That’s right, Crump. Get the brandy.” To the inspector he said: “In here.”
He opened a door on the left. The procession filed in. The inspector and Adele
Fortescue, Vivian Dubois, and Crump with a decanter and two glasses.
Adele Fortescue sank onto an easy chair, her eyes covered with her hand. She
accepted the glass that the inspector offered and took a tiny sip, then pushed
it away.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I’m all right. But tell me, what was it? A
stroke, I suppose? Poor Rex.”
“It wasn’t a stroke, Mrs. Fortescue.”
“Did you say you were an inspector?” It was Mr. Dubois who made the inquiry.
Neele turned to him. “That’s right,” he said pleasantly. “Inspector Neele of
the CID.”
He saw the alarm grow in the dark eyes. Mr. Dubois did not like the appearance
of an inspector of the CID. He didn’t like it at all.
“What’s up?” he said. “Something wrong—eh?”
Quite unconsciously he backed away a little towards the door. Inspector Neele
noted the movement.
“I’m afraid,” he said to Mrs. Fortescue, “that there will have to be an
inquest.”
“An inquest? Do you mean—what do you mean?”
“I’m afraid this is all very distressing for you, Mrs. Fortescue.” The words
came smoothly. “It seemed advisable to find out as soon as possible exactly
what Mr. Fortescue had to eat or drink before leaving for the office this
morning.”
“Do you mean he might have been poisoned?”
“Well, yes, it would seem so.”
“I can’t believe it. Oh—you mean food poisoning.”
Her voice dropped half an octave on the last words. His face wooden, his voice
still smooth, Inspector Neele said:
“Madam? What did you think I meant?”
She ignored that question, hurrying on.
“But we’ve been all right—all of us.”
“You can speak for all the members of the family?”
“Well—no—of course—I can’t really.”
Dubois said with a great show of consulting his watch:
“I’ll have to push off, Adele. Dreadfully sorry. You’ll be all right, won’t
you? I mean, there are the maids, and the little Dove and all that—”
“Oh, Vivian, don’t. Don’t go.”
It was quite a wail, and it affected Mr. Dubois adversely. His retreat
quickened.
“Awfully sorry, old girl. Important engagement. I’m putting up at the Dormy
House, by the way, Inspector. If you—er—want me for anything.”
Inspector Neele nodded. He had no wish to detain Mr. Dubois. But he recognized
Mr. Dubois’s departure for what it was. Mr. Dubois was running away from
trouble.
Adele Fortescue said, in an attempt to carry off the situation:
“It’s such a shock, to come back and find the police in the house.”
“I’m sure it must be. But you see, it was necessary to act promptly in order
to obtain the necessary specimens of foodstuffs, coffee, tea, etc.”
“Tea and coffee? But they’re not poisonous? I expect it’s the awful bacon we
sometimes get. It’s quite uneatable sometimes.”
“We shall find out, Mrs. Fortescue. Don’t worry. You’d be surprised at some of
the things that can happen. We once had a case of digitalis poisoning. It
turned out that foxglove leaves had been picked in mistake for horseradish.”
“You think something like that could happen here?”
“We shall know better after the autopsy, Mrs. Fortescue.”
“The autop—oh I see.” She shivered.
The inspector went on: “You’ve got a lot of yew round the house, haven’t you,
madam. There’s no possibility, I suppose, of the berries or leaves having
got—mixed-up in anything?”
He was watching her closely. She stared at him.
“Yew berries? Are they poisonous?”
The wonder seemed a little too wide-eyed and innocent.
“Children have been known to eat them with unfortunate results.”
Adele clasped her hands to her head.
“I can’t bear to talk about it anymore. Must I? I want to go and lie down. I
can’t stand anymore. Mr. Percival Fortescue will arrange everything—I can’t—I
can’t—it isn’t fair to ask me.”
“We are getting in touch with Mr. Percival Fortescue as soon as possible.
Unfortunately he is away in the North of England.”
“Oh yes, I forgot.”
“There’s just one thing, Mrs. Fortescue. There was a small quantity of grain
in your husband’s pocket. Could you give me some explanation of that?”
She shook her head. She appeared quite bewildered.
“Would anyone have slipped it in there as a joke?”
“I don’t see why it would be a joke?”
Inspector Neele did not see either. He said:
“I won’t trouble you any further at present, Mrs. Fortescue. Shall I send one
of the maids to you? Or Miss Dove?”
“What?” The word came abstractedly. He wondered what she had been thinking
about.
She fumbled with her bag and pulled out a handkerchief. Her voice trembled.
“It’s so awful,” she said unsteadily. “I’m only just beginning to take it in.
I’ve really been numbed up to now. Poor Rex. Poor dear Rex.”
She sobbed in a manner that was almost convincing.
Inspector Neele watched her respectfully for a moment or two.
“It’s been very sudden, I know,” he said. “I’ll send someone to you.”
He went towards the door, opened it and passed through. He paused for a moment
before looking back into the room.
Adele Fortescue still held the handkerchief to her eyes. The ends of it hung
down but did not quite obscure her mouth. On her lips was a very faint smile. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Eight
I
“I’ve got what I could, sir.” So Sergeant Hay reported. “The marmalade, bit of
the ham. Samples of tea, coffee and sugar, for what they’re worth. Actual
brews have been thrown out by now, of course, but there’s one point. There was
a good lot of coffee left over and they had it in the servants’ hall at
elevenses—that’s important, I should say.”
“Yes, that’s important. Shows that if he took it in his coffee, it must have
been slipped into the actual cup.”
“By one of those present. Exactly. I’ve inquired, cautious like, about the yew
stuff—berries or leaves—there’s been none of it seen about the house. Nobody
seems to know anything about the cereal in his pocket, either . . . It just
seems daft to them. Seems daft to me, too. He doesn’t seem to have been one of
those food faddists who’ll eat any mortal thing so long as it isn’t cooked. My
sister’s husband’s like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips. But even he
doesn’t eat raw grain. Why, I should say it would swell up in your inside
something awful.”
The telephone rang and, on a nod from the inspector, Sergeant Hay sprinted off
to answer it. Following him, Neele found that it was headquarters on the line.
Contact had been made with Mr. Percival Fortescue, who was returning to London
immediately.
As the inspector replaced the telephone, a car drew up at the front door.
Crump went to the door and opened it. The woman who stood there had her arms
full of parcels. Crump took them from her.
“Thanks, Crump. Pay the taxi, will you? I’ll have tea now. Is Mrs. Fortescue
or Miss Elaine in?”
The butler hesitated, looking back over his shoulder.
“We’ve had bad news, ma’am,” he said. “About the master.”
“About Mr. Fortescue?”
Neele came forward. Crump said: “This is Mrs. Percival, sir.”
“What is it? What’s happened? An accident?”
The inspector looked her over as he replied. Mrs. Percival Fortescue was a
plump woman with a discontented mouth. Her age he judged to be about thirty.
Her questions came with a kind of eagerness. The thought flashed across his
mind that she must be very bored.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Fortescue was taken to St. Jude’s
Hospital this morning seriously ill and has since died.”
“Died? You mean he’s dead?” The news was clearly even more sensational than
she had hoped for. “Dear me—this is a surprise. My husband’s away. You’ll have
to get in touch with him. He’s in the North somewhere. I dare say they’ll know
at the office. He’ll have to see to everything. Things always happen at the
most awkward moment, don’t they.”
She paused for a moment, turning things over in her mind.
“It all depends, I suppose,” she said, “where they’ll have the funeral. Down
here, I suppose. Or will it be in London?”
“That will be for the family to say.”
“Of course. I only just wondered.” For the first time she took direct
cognisance of the man who was speaking to her.
“Are you from the office?” she asked. “You’re not a doctor, are you?”
“I’m a police officer. Mr. Fortescue’s death was very sudden and—”
She interrupted him.
“Do you mean he was murdered?”
It was the first time that word had been spoken. Neele surveyed her eager
questioning face carefully.
“Now why should you think that, madam?”
“Well, people are sometimes. You said sudden. And you’re police. Have you seen
her about it? What did she say?”
“I don’t quite understand to whom you are referring?”
“Adele, of course. I always told Val his father was crazy to go marrying a
woman years younger than himself. There’s no fool like an old fool. Besotted
about that awful creature, he was. And now look what comes of it . . . A nice
mess we’re all in. Pictures in the paper and reporters coming round.”
She paused, obviously visualizing the future in a series of crude highly
coloured pictures. He thought that the prospect was still not wholly
unpleasing. She turned back to him.
“What was it? Arsenic?”
In a repressive voice Inspector Neele said:
“The cause of death has yet to be ascertained. There will be an autopsy and an
inquest.”
“But you know already, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t come down here.”
There was a sudden shrewdness in her plump rather foolish face.
“You’ve been asking about what he ate and drank, I suppose? Dinner last night.
Breakfast this morning. And all the drinks, of course.”
He could see her mind ranging vividly over all the possibilities. He said,
with caution:
“It seems possible that Mr. Fortescue’s illness resulted from something he ate
at breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” She seemed surprised. “That’s difficult. I don’t see how. . . .”
She paused and shook her head.
“I don’t see how she could have done it, then . . . unless she slipped
something into the coffee—when Elaine and I weren’t looking. . . .”
A quiet voice spoke softly beside them:
“Your tea is all ready in the library, Mrs. Val.”
Mrs. Val jumped.
“Oh thank you, Miss Dove. Yes, I could do with a cup of tea. Really, I feel
quite bowled over. What about you, Mr.—Inspector—”
“Thank you, not just now.”
The plump figure hesitated and then went slowly away.
As she disappeared through a doorway, Mary Dove murmured softly:
“I don’t think she’s ever heard of the term slander.”
Inspector Neele did not reply.
Mary Dove went on:
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Where can I find the housemaid, Ellen?”
“I will take you to her. She’s just gone upstairs.”
II
Ellen proved to be grim but unafraid. Her sour old face looked triumphantly at
the inspector.
“It’s a shocking business, sir. And I never thought I’d live to find myself in
a house where that sort of thing has been going on. But in a way I can’t say
that it surprises me. I ought to have given my notice in long ago and that’s a
fact. I don’t like the language that’s used in this house, and I don’t like
the amount of drink that’s taken, and I don’t approve of the goings on
there’ve been. I’ve nothing against Mrs. Crump, but Crump and that girl Gladys
just don’t know what proper service is. But it’s the goings on that I mind
about most.”
“What goings on do you mean exactly?”
“You’ll soon hear about them if you don’t know already. It’s common talk all
over the place. They’ve been seen here, there and everywhere. All this
pretending to play golf—or tennis—And I’ve seen things—with my own eyes—in
this house. The library door was open and there they were, kissing and
canoodling.”
The venom of the spinster was deadly. Neele really felt it unnecessary to say
“Whom do you mean?” but he said it nevertheless.
“Who should I mean? The mistress—and that man. No shame about it, they hadn’t.
But if you ask me, the master had got wise to it. Put someone on to watch
them, he had. Divorce, that’s what it would have come to. Instead, it’s come
to this.”
“When you say this, you mean—”
“You’ve been asking questions, sir, about what the master ate and drank and
who gave it to him. They’re in it together, sir, that’s what I’d say. He got
the stuff from somewhere and she gave it to the master, that was the way of
it, I’ve no doubt.”
“Have you ever seen any yew berries in the house—or thrown away anywhere?”
The small eyes glinted curiously.
“Yew? Nasty poisonous stuff. Never you touch those berries, my mother said to
me when I was a child. Was that what was used, sir?”
“We don’t know yet what was used.”
“I’ve never seen her fiddling about with yew.” Ellen sounded disappointed. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“No, I can’t say I’ve seen anything of that kind.”
Neele questioned her about the grain found in Fortescue’s pocket but here
again he drew a blank.
“No, sir. I know nothing about that.”
He went on to further questions, but with no gainful result. Finally he asked
if he could see Miss Ramsbottom.
Ellen looked doubtful.
“I could ask her, but it’s not everyone she’ll see. She’s a very old lady, you
know, and she’s a bit odd.”
The inspector pressed his demand, and rather unwillingly Ellen led him along a
passage and up a short flight of stairs to what he thought had probably been
designed as a nursery suite.
He glanced out of a passage window as he followed her and saw Sergeant Hay
standing by the yew tree talking to a man who was evidently a gardener.
Ellen tapped on a door, and when she received an answer, opened it and said:
“There’s a police gentleman here who would like to speak to you, miss.”
The answer was apparently in the affirmative for she drew back and motioned
Neele to go in.
The room he entered was almost fantastically overfurnished. The inspector felt
rather as though he had taken a step backward into not merely Edwardian but
Victorian times. At a table drawn up to a gas fire an old lady was sitting
laying out a patience. She wore a maroon-coloured dress and her sparse grey
hair was slicked down each side of her face.
Without looking up or discontinuing her game she said impatiently:
“Well, come in, come in. Sit down if you like.”
The invitation was not easy to accept as every chair appeared to be covered
with tracts or publications of a religious nature.
As he moved them slightly aside on the sofa Miss Ramsbottom asked sharply:
“Interested in mission work?”
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not very, ma’am.”
“Wrong. You should be. That’s where the Christian spirit is nowadays. Darkest
Africa. Had a young clergyman here last week. Black as your hat. But a true
Christian.”
Inspector Neele found it a little difficult to know what to say.
The old lady further disconcerted him by snapping:
“I haven’t got a wireless.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I thought perhaps you came about a wireless licence. Or one of these
silly forms. Well, man, what is it?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Miss Ramsbottom, that your brother-in-law, Mr.
Fortescue, was taken suddenly ill and died this morning.”
Miss Ramsbottom continued with her patience without any sign of perturbation,
merely remarking in a conversational way:
“Struck down at last in his arrogance and sinful pride. Well, it had to come.”
“I hope it’s not a shock to you?”
It obviously wasn’t but the inspector wanted to hear what she would say.
Miss Ramsbottom gave him a sharp glance over the top of her spectacles and
said:
“If you mean I am not distressed, that is quite right. Rex Fortescue was
always a sinful man and I never liked him.”
“His death was very sudden—”
“As befits the ungodly,” said the old lady with satisfaction.
“It seems possible that he may have been poisoned—”
The inspector paused to observe the effect he had made.
He did not seem to have made any. Miss Ramsbottom merely murmured: “Red seven
on black eight. Now I can move up the King.”
Struck apparently by the inspector’s silence, she stopped with a card poised
in her hand and said sharply:
“Well, what did you expect me to say? I didn’t poison him if that’s what you
want to know.”
“Have you any idea who might have done so?”
“That’s a very improper question,” said the old lady sharply. “Living in this
house are two of my dead sister’s children. I decline to believe that anybody
with Ramsbottom blood in them could be guilty of murder. Because it’s murder
you’re meaning, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say so, madam.”
“Of course it’s murder. Plenty of people have wanted to murder Rex in their
time. A very unscrupulous man. And old sins have long shadows, as the saying
goes.”
“Have you anyone in particular in mind?”
Miss Ramsbottom swept up the cards and rose to her feet. She was a tall woman.
“I think you’d better go now,” she said.
She spoke without anger but with a kind of cold finality.
“If you want my opinion,” she went on, “it was probably one of the servants.
The butler looks to me a bit of a rascal, and that parlourmaid is definitely
subnormal. Good evening.”
Inspector Neele found himself meekly walking out. Certainly a remarkable old
lady. Nothing to be got out of her.
He came down the stairs into the square hall to find himself suddenly face to
face with a tall dark girl. She was wearing a damp mackintosh and she stared
into his face with a curious blankness.
“I’ve just come back,” she said. “And they told me—about Father—that he’s
dead.”
“I’m afraid that’s true.”
She pushed out a hand behind her as though blindly seeking for support. She
touched an oak chest and slowly, stiffly, she sat down on it.
“Oh no,” she said. “No. . . .”
Slowly two tears ran down her cheeks.
“It’s awful,” she said. “I didn’t think that I even liked him . . . I thought
I hated him . . . But that can’t be so, or I wouldn’t mind. I do mind.”
She sat there, staring in front of her, and again tears forced themselves from
her eyes and down her cheeks.
Presently she spoke again, rather breathlessly:
“The awful thing is that it makes everything come right. I mean, Gerald and I
can get married now. I can do everything that I want to do. But I hate it
happening this way. I don’t want Father to be dead . . . Oh I don’t. Oh
Daddy—Daddy. . . .”
For the first time since he had come to Yewtree Lodge, Inspector Neele was
startled by what seemed to be genuine grief for the dead man.
Chapter Nine
“Sounds like the wife to me,” said the assistant commissioner. He had been
listening attentively to Inspector Neele’s report.
It had been an admirable précis of the case. Short, but with no relevant
detail left out.
“Yes,” said the AC. “It looks like the wife. What do you think yourself,
Neele, eh?”
Inspector Neele said that it looked like the wife to him too. He reflected
cynically that it usually was the wife—or the husband as the case might be.
“She had the opportunity all right. And motive?” The AC paused. “There is
motive?”
“Oh, I think so, sir. This Mr. Dubois, you know.”
“Think he was in it, too?”
“No, I shouldn’t say that, sir.” Inspector Neele weighed the idea. “A bit too
fond of his own skin for that. He may have guessed what was in her mind, but I
shouldn’t imagine that he instigated it.”
“No, too careful.”
“Much too careful.”
“Well, we mustn’t jump to conclusions, but it seems a good working hypothesis.
What about the other two who had opportunity?”
“That’s the daughter and the daughter-in-law. The daughter was mixed-up with a
young man whom her father didn’t want her to marry. And he definitely wasn’t
marrying her unless she had the money. That gives her a motive. As to the
daughter-in-law, I wouldn’t like to say. Don’t know enough about her yet. But
any of the three of them could have poisoned him, and I don’t see how anyone
else could have done so. The parlourmaid, the butler, the cook, they all
handled the breakfast or brought it in, but I don’t see how any of them could
have been sure of Fortescue himself getting the taxine and nobody else. That
is, if it was taxine.”
The AC said: “It was taxine all right. I’ve just got the preliminary report.”
“That settles that, then,” said Inspector Neele. “We can go ahead.”
“Servants seem all right?”
“The butler and the parlourmaid both seem nervous. There’s nothing uncommon
about that. Often happens. The cook’s fighting mad and the housemaid was
grimly pleased. In fact all quite natural and normal.”
“There’s nobody else whom you consider suspicious in any way?”
“No, I don’t think so, sir.” Involuntarily, Inspector Neele’s mind went back
to Mary Dove and her enigmatic smile. There had surely been a faint yet
definite look of antagonism. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
There had surely been a faint yet
definite look of antagonism. Aloud he said, “Now that we know it’s taxine,
there ought to be some evidence to be got as to how it was obtained or
prepared.”
“Just so. Well, go ahead, Neele. By the way, Mr. Percival Fortescue is here
now. I’ve had a word or two with him and he’s waiting to see you. We’ve
located the other son, too. He’s in Paris at the Bristol, leaving today.
You’ll have him met at the airport, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. That was my idea. . . .”
“Well, you’d better see Percival Fortescue now.” The AC chuckled. “Percy Prim,
that’s what he is.”
Mr. Percival Fortescue was a neat fair man of thirty odd, with pale hair and
eyelashes and a slightly pedantic way of speech.
“This has been a terrible shock to me, Inspector Neele, as you can well
imagine.”
“It must have been, Mr. Fortescue,” said Inspector Neele.
“I can only say that my father was perfectly well when I left home the day
before yesterday. This food poisoning, or whatever it was, must have been very
sudden?”
“It was very sudden, yes. But it wasn’t food poisoning, Mr. Fortescue.”
Percival stared and frowned.
“No? So that’s why—” he broke off.
“Your father,” said Inspector Neele, “was poisoned by the administration of
taxine.”
“Taxine? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Very few people have, I should imagine. It is a poison that takes effect very
suddenly and drastically.”
The frown deepened.
“Are you telling me, Inspector, that my father was deliberately poisoned by
someone?”
“It would seem so, yes, sir.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yes indeed, Mr. Fortescue.”
Percival murmured: “I understand now their attitude in the hospital—their
referring me here.” He broke off. After a pause he went on, “The funeral?” He
spoke interrogatively.
“The inquest is fixed for tomorrow after the postmortem. The proceedings at
the inquest will be purely formal and the inquest will be adjourned.”
“I understand. That is usually the case?”
“Yes, sir. Nowadays.”
“May I ask, have you formed any ideas, any suspicions of who could—Really, I—”
again he broke off.
“It’s rather early days for that, Mr. Fortescue,” murmured Neele.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“All the same it would be helpful to us, Mr. Fortescue, if you could give us
some idea of your father’s testamentary dispositions. Or perhaps you could put
me in touch with his solicitor.”
“His solicitors are Billingsby, Horsethorpe & Walters of Bedford Square. As
far as his will goes, I think I can more or less tell you its main
dispositions.”
“If you will be kind enough to do so, Mr. Fortescue. It’s a routine that has
to be gone through, I’m afraid.”
“My father made a new will on the occasion of his marriage two years ago,”
said Percival precisely. “My father left the sum of £100,000 to his wife
absolutely and £50,000 to my sister, Elaine. I am his residuary legatee. I am
already, of course, a partner in the firm.”
“There was no bequest to your brother, Lancelot Fortescue?”
“No, there is an estrangement of long standing between my father and my
brother.”
Neele threw a sharp glance at him—but Percival seemed quite sure of his
statement.
“So as the will stands,” said Inspector Neele, “the three people who stand to
gain are Mrs. Fortescue, Miss Elaine Fortescue and yourself?”
“I don’t think I shall be much of a gainer.” Percival sighed. “There are death
duties, you know, Inspector. And of late my father has been—well, all I can
say is, highly injudicious in some of his financial dealings.”
“You and your father have not seen eye to eye lately about the conduct of the
business?” Inspector Neele threw out the question in a genial manner.
“I put my point of view to him, but alas—” Percival shrugged his shoulders.
“Put it rather forcibly, didn’t you?” Neele inquired. “In fact, not to put too
fine a point on it, there was quite a row about it, wasn’t there?”
“I should hardly say that, Inspector.” A red flush of annoyance mounted to
Percival’s forehead.
“Perhaps the dispute you had was about some other matter then, Mr. Fortescue?”
“There was no dispute, Inspector.”
“Quite sure of that, Mr. Fortescue? Well, no matter. Did I understand that
your father and brother are still estranged?”
“That is so.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me what this means?”
Neele handed him the telephone message Mary Dove had jotted down.
Percival read it and uttered an exclamation of surprise and annoyance. He
seemed both incredulous and angry.
“I can’t understand it, I really can’t. I can hardly believe it.”
“It seems to be true, though, Mr. Fortescue. Your brother is arriving from
Paris today.”
“But it’s extraordinary, quite extraordinary. No, I really can’t understand
it.”
“Your father said nothing to you about it?”
“He certainly did not. How outrageous of him. To go behind my back and send
for Lance.”
“You’ve no idea, I suppose, why he did such a thing?”
“Of course I haven’t. It’s all on a par with his behaviour lately—Crazy!
Unaccountable. It’s got to be stopped—I—”
Percival came to an abrupt stop. The colour ebbed away again from his pale
face.
“I’d forgotten—” he said. “For the moment I’d forgotten that my father was
dead—”
Inspector Neele shook his head sympathetically.
Percival Fortescue prepared to take his departure—as he picked up his hat he
said:
“Call upon me if there is anything I can do. But I suppose—” he paused—“you
will be coming down to Yewtree Lodge?”
“Yes, Mr. Fortescue—I’ve got a man in charge there now.”
Percival shuddered in a fastidious way.
“It will all be most unpleasant. To think such a thing should happen to us—”
He sighed and moved towards the door.
“I shall be at the office most of the day. There is a lot to be seen to here.
But I shall get down to Yewtree Lodge this evening.”
“Quite so, sir.”
Percival Fortescue went out.
“Percy Prim,” murmured Neele.
Sergeant Hay who was sitting unobtrusively by the wall looked up and said
“Sir?” interrogatively.
Then as Neele did not reply, he asked, “What do you make of it all, sir?”
“I don’t know,” said Neele. He quoted softly, “ ‘They’re all very unpleasant
people.’ ”
Sergeant Hay looked somewhat puzzled.
“Alice in Wonderland,” said Neele. “Don’t you know your Alice, Hay?”
“It’s a classic, isn’t it, sir?” said Hay. “Third Programme stuff. I don’t
listen to the Third Programme.” | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“Third Programme stuff. I don’t
listen to the Third Programme.”
Chapter Ten
I
It was about five minutes after leaving Le Bourget that Lance Fortescue opened
his copy of the continental Daily Mail. A minute or two later he uttered a
startled exclamation. Pat, in the seat beside him, turned her head
inquiringly.
“It’s the old man,” said Lance. “He’s dead.”
“Dead! Your father?”
“Yes, he seems to have been taken suddenly ill at the office, was taken to St.
Jude’s Hospital and died there soon after arrival.”
“Darling, I’m so sorry. What was it, a stroke?”
“I suppose so. Sounds like it.”
“Had he ever had a stroke before?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“I thought people never died from a first one.”
“Poor old boy,” said Lance. “I never thought I was particularly fond of him,
but somehow, now that he’s dead. . . .”
“Of course you were fond of him.”
“We haven’t all got your nice nature, Pat. Oh well, it looks as though my
luck’s out again, doesn’t it.”
“Yes. It’s odd that it should happen now. Just when you were on the point of
coming home.”
He turned his head sharply towards her.
“Odd? What do you mean by odd, Pat?”
She looked at him with slight surprise.
“Well, a sort of coincidence.”
“You mean that whatever I set out to do goes wrong?”
“No, darling, I didn’t mean that. But there is such a thing as a run of bad
luck.”
“Yes, I suppose there is.”
Pat said again: “I’m so sorry.”
When they arrived at Heathrow and were waiting to disembark from the plane, an
official of the air company called out in a clear voice:
“Is Mr. Lancelot Fortescue abroad?”
“Here,” said Lance.
“Would you just step this way, Mr. Fortescue.”
Lance and Pat followed him out of the plane, preceding the other passengers.
As they passed a couple in the last seat, they heard the man whisper to his
wife:
“Well-known smugglers, I expect. Caught in the act.”
II
“It’s fantastic,” said Lance. “Quite fantastic.” He stared across the table at
Detective Inspector Neele.
Inspector Neele nodded his head sympathetically.
“Taxine—yewberries—the whole thing seems like some kind of melodrama. I dare
say this sort of thing seems ordinary enough to you, Inspector. All in the
day’s work. But poisoning, in our family, seems wildly far-fetched.”
“You’ve no idea then at all,” asked Inspector Neele, “who might have poisoned
your father?”
“Good lord, no. I expect the old man’s made a lot of enemies in business, lots
of people who’d like to skin him alive, do him down financially—all that sort
of thing. But poisoning? Anyway I wouldn’t be in the know. I’ve been abroad
for a good many years and have known very little of what’s going on at home.”
“That’s really what I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Fortescue. I understand
from your brother that there was an estrangement between you and your father
which had lasted for many years. Would you like to tell me the circumstances
that led to your coming home at this time?”
“Certainly, Inspector. I heard from my father, let me see it must be
about—yes, six months ago now. It was soon after my marriage. My father wrote
and hinted that he would like to let bygones be bygones. He suggested that I
should come home and enter the firm. He was rather vague in his terms and I
wasn’t really sure that I wanted to do what he asked. Anyway, the upshot was
that I came over to England last—yes, last August, just about three months
ago. I went down to see him at Yewtree Lodge and he made me, I must say, a
very advantageous offer. I told him that I’d have to think about it and I’d
have to consult my wife. He quite understood that. I flew back to East Africa,
talked it over with Pat. The upshot was that I decided to accept the old boy’s
offer. I had to wind up my affairs there, but I agreed to do so before the end
of last month. I told him I would wire to him the date of my actual arrival in
England.”
Inspector Neele coughed.
“Your arrival back seems to have caused your brother some surprise.”
Lance gave a sudden grin. His rather attractive face lit up with the spirit of
pure mischief.
“Don’t believe old Percy knew a thing about it,” he said. “He was away on his
holiday in Norway at the time. If you ask me, the old man picked that
particular time on purpose. He was going behind Percy’s back. In fact I’ve a
very shrewd suspicion that my father’s offer to me was actuated by the fact
that he had a blazing row with poor old Percy—or Val as he prefers to be
called. Val, I think, had been more or less trying to run the old man. Well,
the old man would never stand for anything of that kind. What the exact row
was about I don’t know, but he was furious. And I think he thought it a jolly
good idea to get me there and thereby spike poor old Val’s guns. For one thing
he never liked Percy’s wife much and he was rather pleased, in a snobbish way,
with my marriage. It would be just his idea of a good joke to get me home and
suddenly confront Percy with the accomplished fact.”
“How long were you at Yewtree Lodge on this occasion?”
“Oh, not more than an hour or two. He didn’t ask me to stay the night. The
whole idea, I’m sure, was a kind of secret offensive behind Percy’s back. I
don’t think he even wanted the servants to report upon it. As I say, things
were left that I’d think it over, talk about it to Pat and then write him my
decision, which I did. I wrote giving him the approximate date of my arrival,
and I finally sent him a telegram yesterday from Paris.”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“A telegram which surprised your brother very much.”
“I bet it did. However, as usual, Percy wins. I’ve arrived too late.”
“Yes,” said Inspector Neele thoughtfully, “you’ve arrived too late.” He went
on briskly: “On the occasion of your visit last August, did you meet any other
members of the family?”
“My stepmother was there at tea.”
“You had not met her previously?”
“No.” He grinned suddenly. “The old boy certainly knew how to pick them. She
must be thirty years younger than him at least.”
“You will excuse my asking, but did you resent your father’s remarriage, or
did your brother do so?”
Lance looked surprised.
“I certainly didn’t, and I shouldn’t think Percy did either. After all, our
own mother died when we were about—oh, ten, twelve years old. What I’m really
surprised at is that the old man didn’t marry again before.”
Inspector Neele murmured:
“It may be considered taking rather a risk to marry a woman very much younger
than yourself.”
“Did my dear brother say that to you? It sounds rather like him. Percy is a
great master of the art of insinuation. Is that the setup, Inspector? Is my
stepmother suspected of poisoning my father?”
Inspector Neele’s face became blank.
“It’s early days to have any definite ideas about anything, Mr. Fortescue,” he
said pleasantly. “Now, may I ask you what your plans are?”
“Plans?” Lance considered. “I shall have to make new plans, I suppose. Where
is the family? All down at Yewtree Lodge?”
“Yes.”
“I’d better go down there straight away.” He turned to his wife. “You’d better
go to an hotel, Pat.”
She protested quickly. “No, no, Lance, I’ll come with you.”
“No, darling.”
“But I want to.”
“Really, I’d rather you didn’t. Go and stay at the—oh it’s so long since I
stayed in London—Barnes’s. Barnes’s Hotel used to be a nice, quiet sort of
place. That’s still going, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Fortescue.”
“Right, Pat. I’ll settle you in there if they’ve got a room, then I’ll go on
down to Yewtree Lodge.”
“But why can’t I come with you, Lance?”
Lance’s face took suddenly a rather grim line.
“Frankly, Pat, I’m not sure of my welcome. It was Father who invited me there,
but Father’s dead. I don’t know who the place belongs to now. Percy, I
suppose, or perhaps Adele. Anyway, I’d like to see what reception I get before
I bring you there. Besides—”
“Besides what?”
“I don’t want to take you to a house where there’s a poisoner at large.”
“Oh, what nonsense.”
Lance said firmly:
“Where you’re concerned, Pat, I’m taking no risks.”
Chapter Eleven
I
Mr. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Eleven
I
Mr. Dubois was annoyed. He tore Adele Fortescue’s letter angrily across and
threw it into the wastepaper basket. Then, with a sudden caution, he fished
out the various pieces, struck a match and watched them burn to ashes. He
muttered under his breath:
“Why have women got to be such damned fools? Surely common prudence . . .” But
then, Mr. Dubois reflected gloomily, women never had any prudence. Though he
had profited by this lack many a time, it annoyed him now. He himself had
taken every precaution. If Mrs. Fortescue rang up they had instructions to say
that he was out. Already Adele Fortescue had rung him up three times, and now
she had written. On the whole, writing was far worse. He reflected for a
moment or two, then he went to the telephone.
“Can I speak to Mrs. Fortescue, please? Yes, Mr. Dubois.” A minute or two
later he heard her voice.
“Vivian, at last!”
“Yes, yes, Adele, but be careful. Where are you speaking from?”
“From the library.”
“Sure nobody’s listening in, in the hall?”
“Why should they?”
“Well, you never know. Are the police still about the house?”
“No, they’ve gone for the moment, anyhow. Oh, Vivian dear, it’s been awful.”
“Yes, yes, it must have I’m sure. But look here, Adele, we’ve got to be
careful.”
“Oh, of course, darling.”
“Don’t call me darling through the phone. It isn’t safe.”
“Aren’t you being a little bit panicky, Vivian? After all, everybody says
darling nowadays.”
“Yes, yes, that’s true enough. But listen. Don’t telephone to me and don’t
write.”
“But Vivian—”
“It’s just for the present, you understand. We must be careful.”
“Oh. All right.” Her voice sounded offended.
“Adele, listen. My letters to you. You did burn them, didn’t you?”
There was a momentary hesitation before Adele Fortescue said:
“Of course. I told you I was going to do so.”
“That’s all right then. Well I’ll ring off now. Don’t phone and don’t write.
You’ll hear from me in good time.”
He put the receiver back in its hook. He stroked his cheek thoughtfully. He
didn’t like that moment’s hesitation. Had Adele burnt his letters? Women were
all the same. They promised to burn things and then didn’t.
Letters, Mr. Dubois thought to himself. Women always wanted you to write them
letters. He himself tried to be careful but sometimes one could not get out of
it. What had he said exactly in the few letters he had written to Adele
Fortescue? “It was the usual sort of gup,” he thought, gloomily. But were
there any special words—special phrases that the police could twist to make
them say what they wanted them to say. He remembered the Edith Thompson case.
His letters were innocent enough, he thought, but he could not be sure. His
uneasiness grew. Even if Adele had not already burnt his letters, would she
have the sense to burn them now? Or had the police already got hold of them?
Where did she keep them, he wondered. Probably in that sitting room of hers
upstairs. That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had
said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret
drawer! That would not fool the police long. But there were no police about
the house now. She had said so. They had been there that morning, and now they
had all gone away.
Up to now they had probably been busy looking for possible sources of poison
in the food. They would not, he hoped, have got round to a room by room search
of the house. Perhaps they would have to ask permission or get a search
warrant to do that. It was possible that if he acted now, at once—
He visualized the house clearly in his mind’s eye. It would be getting towards
dusk. Tea would be brought in, either into the library or into the drawing
room. Everyone would be assembled downstairs and the servants would be having
tea in the servants’ hall. There would be no one upstairs on the first floor.
Easy to walk up through the garden, skirting the yew hedges that provided such
admirable cover. Then there was the little door at the side onto the terrace.
That was never locked until just before bedtime. One could slip through there
and, choosing one’s moment, slip upstairs.
Vivian Dubois considered very carefully what it behove him to do next. If
Fortescue’s death had been put down to a seizure or to a stroke as surely it
ought to have been, the position would be very different. As it was—Dubois
murmured under his breath: “Better be safe than sorry.”
II
Mary Dove came slowly down the big staircase. She paused a moment at the
window on the half landing, from which she had seen Inspector Neele arrive on
the preceding day. Now, as she looked out in the fading light, she noticed a
man’s figure just disappearing round the yew hedge. She wondered if it was
Lancelot Fortescue, the prodigal son. He had, perhaps, dismissed his car at
the gate and was wandering round the garden recollecting old times there
before tackling a possibly hostile family. Mary Dove felt rather sympathetic
towards Lance. A faint smile on her lips, she went on downstairs. In the hall
she encountered Gladys, who jumped nervously at the sight of her.
“Was that the telephone I heard just now?” Mary asked. “Who was it?”
“Oh, that was a wrong number. Thought we were the laundry.” Gladys sounded
breathless and rather hurried. “And before that, it was Mr. Dubois. He wanted
to speak to the mistress.”
“I see.”
Mary went on across the hall. Turning her head, she said: “It’s teatime, I
think. Haven’t you brought it in yet?”
Gladys said: “I don’t think it’s half past four yet, is it, miss?”
“It’s twenty minutes to five. Bring it in now, will you?”
Mary Dove went on into the library where Adele Fortescue, sitting on the sofa,
was staring at the fire, picking with her fingers at a small lace
handkerchief. Adele said fretfully:
“Where’s tea?”
Mary Dove said: “It’s just coming in.”
A log had fallen out of the fireplace and Mary Dove knelt down at the grate
and replaced it with the tongs, adding another piece of wood and a little
coal.
Gladys went out into the kitchen, where Mrs. Crump raised a red and wrathful
face from the kitchen table where she was mixing pastry in a large bowl.
“The library bell’s been ringing and ringing. Time you took in the tea, my
girl.”
“All right, all right, Mrs. Crump.”
“What I’ll say to Crump tonight,” muttered Mrs. Crump. “I’ll tell him off.”
Gladys went on into the pantry. She had not cut any sandwiches. Well, she
jolly well wasn’t going to cut sandwiches. They’d got plenty to eat without
that, hadn’t they? Two cakes, biscuits and scones and honey. Fresh black-
market farm butter. Plenty without her bothering to cut tomato or fois gras
sandwiches. She’d got other things to think about. Fair temper Mrs. Crump was
in, all because Mr. Crump had gone out this afternoon. Well, it was his day
out, wasn’t it? Quite right of him, Gladys thought. Mrs. Crump called out from
the kitchen:
“The kettle’s boiling its head off. Aren’t you ever going to make that tea?”
“Coming.”
She jerked some tea without measuring it into the big silver pot, carried it
into the kitchen and poured the boiling water on it. She added the teapot and
the kettle to the big silver tray and carried the whole thing through to the
library where she set it on the small table near the sofa. She went back
hurriedly for the other tray with the eatables on it. She carried the latter
as far as the hall when the sudden jarring noise of the grandfather clock
preparing itself to strike made her jump.
In the library, Adele Fortescue said querulously, to Mary Dove:
“Where is everybody this afternoon?”
“I really don’t know, Mrs. Fortescue. Miss Fortescue came in sometime ago. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Fortescue. Miss Fortescue came in sometime ago. I
think Mrs. Percival’s writing letters in her room.”
Adele said pettishly: “Writing letters, writing letters. That woman never
stops writing letters. She’s like all people of her class. She takes an
absolute delight in death and misfortune. Ghoulish, that’s what I call it.
Absolutely ghoulish.”
Mary murmured tactfully: “I’ll tell her that tea is ready.”
Going towards the door she drew back a little in the doorway as Elaine
Fortescue came into the room. Elaine said:
“It’s cold,” and dropped down by the fireplace, rubbing her hands before the
blaze.
Mary stood for a moment in the hall. A large tray with cakes on it was
standing on one of the hall chests. Since it was getting dark in the hall,
Mary switched on the light. As she did so she thought she heard Jennifer
Fortescue walking along the passage upstairs. Nobody, however, came down the
stairs and Mary went up the staircase and along the corridor.
Percival Fortescue and his wife occupied a self-contained suite in one wing of
the house. Mary tapped on the sitting room door. Mrs. Percival liked you to
tap on doors, a fact which always roused Crump’s scorn of her. Her voice said
briskly:
“Come in.”
Mary opened the door and murmured:
“Tea is just coming in, Mrs. Percival.”
She was rather surprised to see Jennifer Fortescue with her outdoor clothes
on. She was just divesting herself of a long camel-hair coat.
“I didn’t know you’d been out,” said Mary.
Mrs. Percival sounded slightly out of breath.
“Oh, I was just in the garden, that’s all. Just getting a little air. Really,
though, it was too cold. I shall be glad to get down to the fire. The central
heating here isn’t as good as it might be. Somebody must speak to the
gardeners about it, Miss Dove.”
“I’ll do so,” Mary promised.
Jennifer Fortescue dropped her coat on a chair and followed Mary out of the
room. She went down the stairs ahead of Mary, who drew back a little to give
her precedence. In the hall, rather to Mary’s surprise, she noticed the tray
of eatables was still there. She was about to go out to the pantry and call to
Gladys when Adele Fortescue appeared in the door of the library, saying in an
irritable voice:
“Aren’t we ever going to have anything to eat for tea?”
Quickly Mary picked up the tray and took it into the library, disposing the
various things on low tables near the fireplace. She was carrying the empty
tray out to the hall again when the front-door bell rang. Setting down the
tray, Mary went to the door herself. If this was the prodigal son at last she
was rather curious to see him. “How unlike the rest of the Fortescues,” Mary
thought, as she opened the door and looked up into the dark lean face and the
faint quizzical twist of the mouth. She said quietly:
“Mr. Lancelot Fortescue?”
“Himself.”
Mary peered beyond him.
“Your luggage?”
“I’ve paid off the taxi. This is all I’ve got.”
He picked up a medium-sized zip bag. Some faint feeling of surprise in her
mind, Mary said:
“Oh, you did come in a taxi. I thought perhaps you’d walked up. And your
wife?”
His face set in a rather grim line, Lance said:
“My wife won’t be coming. At least, not just yet.”
“I see. Come this way, will you, Mr. Fortescue. Everyone is in the library,
having tea.”
She took him to the library door and left him there. She thought to herself
that Lancelot Fortescue was a very attractive person. A second thought
followed the first. Probably a great many other women thought so, too.
III
“Lance!”
Elaine came hurrying forward towards him. She flung her arms round his neck
and hugged him with a schoolgirl abandon that Lance found quite surprising.
“Hallo. Here I am.”
He disengaged himself gently.
“This is Jennifer?”
Jennifer Fortescue looked at him with eager curiosity.
“I’m afraid Val’s been detained in town,” she said. “There’s so much to see
to, you know. All the arrangements to make and everything. Of course it all
comes on Val. He has to see to everything. You can really have no idea what
we’re all going through.”
“It must be terrible for you,” said Lance gravely.
He turned to the woman on the sofa, who was sitting with a piece of scone and
honey in her hand, quietly appraising him.
“Of course,” cried Jennifer, “you don’t know Adele, do you?”
Lance murmured, “Oh yes, I do,” as he took Adele Fortescue’s hand in his. As
he looked down at her, her eyelids fluttered. She set down the scone she was
eating with her left hand and just touched the arrangement of her hair. It was
a feminine gesture. It marked her recognition of the entry to the room of a
personable man. She said in her thick, soft voice:
“Sit down here on the sofa beside me, Lance.” She poured out a cup of tea for
him. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she went on. “We badly need another man in the
house.”
Lance said:
“You must let me do everything I can to help.”
“You know—but perhaps you don’t know—we’ve had the police here. They
think—they think—” she broke off and cried out passionately: “Oh, it’s awful!
Awful!”
“I know.” Lance was grave and sympathetic. “As a matter of fact they met me at
London Airport.”
“The police met you?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“Well,” Lance was deprecating. “They told me what had happened.”
“He was poisoned,” said Adele, “that’s what they think, what they say. Not
food poisoning. Real poisoning, by someone. I believe, I really do believe
they think it’s one of us.”
Lance gave her a sudden quick smile.
“That’s their pigeon,” he said consolingly. “It’s no good our worrying. What a
scrumptious tea! It’s a long time since I’ve seen a good English tea.”
The others fell in with his mood soon enough. Adele said suddenly:
“But your wife—haven’t you got a wife, Lance?”
“I’ve got a wife, yes. She’s in London.”
“But aren’t you—hadn’t you better bring her down here?”
“Plenty of time to make plans,” said Lance. “Pat—oh, Pat’s quite all right
where she is.”
Elaine said sharply:
“You don’t mean—you don’t think—”
Lance said quickly:
“What a wonderful-looking chocolate cake. I must have some.”
Cutting himself a slice, he asked:
“Is Aunt Effie alive still?”
“Oh, yes, Lance. She won’t come down and have meals with us or anything, but
she’s quite well. Only she’s getting very peculiar.”
“She always was peculiar,” said Lance. “I must go up and see her after tea.”
Jennifer Fortescue murmured:
“At her age one does really feel that she ought to be in some kind of a home.
I mean somewhere where she will be properly looked after.”
“Heaven help any old ladies’ home that got Aunt Effie in their midst,” said
Lance. He added, “Who’s the demure piece of goods who let me in?”
Adele looked surprised.
“Didn’t Crump let you in? The butler? Oh no, I forgot. It’s his day out today.
But surely Gladys—”
Lance gave a description. “Blue eyes, hair parted in the middle, soft voice,
butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth. What goes on behind it all, I wouldn’t like
to say.”
“That,” said Jennifer, “would be Mary Dove.”
Elaine said:
“She sort of runs things for us.”
“Does she, now?”
Adele said:
“She’s really very useful.”
“Yes,” said Lance thoughtfully, “I should think she might be.”
“But what is so nice is,” said Jennifer, “that she knows her place. She never
presumes, if you know what I mean.”
“Clever Mary Dove,” said Lance, and helped himself to another piece of
chocolate cake.
Chapter Twelve
I
“So you’ve turned up again like a bad penny,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance grinned at her. “Just as you say, Aunt Effie.”
“Humph!” Miss Ramsbottom sniffed disapprovingly. “You’ve chosen a nice time to
do it. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“You’ve chosen a nice time to
do it. Your father got himself murdered yesterday, the house is full of police
poking about everywhere, grubbing in the dustbins, even. I’ve seen them out of
the window.” She paused, sniffed again, and asked: “Got your wife with you?”
“No. I left Pat in London.”
“That shows some sense. I shouldn’t bring her here if I were you. You never
know what might happen.”
“To her? To Pat?”
“To anybody,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance Fortescue looked at her thoughtfully.
“Got any ideas about it all, Aunt Effie?” he asked.
Miss Ramsbottom did not reply directly. “I had an inspector here yesterday
asking me questions. He didn’t get much change out of me. But he wasn’t such a
fool as he looked, not by a long way.” She added with some indignation: “What
your grandfather would feel if he knew we had the police in the house—it’s
enough to make him turn in his grave. A strict Plymouth Brother he was all his
life. The fuss there was when he found out I’d been attending Church of
England services in the evening! And I’m sure that was harmless enough
compared to murder.”
Normally Lance would have smiled at this, but his long, dark face remained
serious. He said:
“D’you know, I’m quite in the dark after having been away so long. What’s been
going on here of late?”
Miss Ramsbottom raised her eyes to heaven.
“Godless doings,” she said firmly.
“Yes, yes, Aunt Effie, you would say that anyway. But what gives the police
the idea that Dad was killed here, in this house?”
“Adultery is one thing and murder is another,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “I
shouldn’t like to think it of her, I shouldn’t indeed.”
Lance looked alert. “Adele?” he asked.
“My lips are sealed,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
“Come on, old dear,” said Lance. “It’s a lovely phrase, but it doesn’t mean a
thing. Adele had a boyfriend? Adele and the boyfriend fed him henbane in the
morning tea. Is that the setup?”
“I’ll trouble you not to joke about it.”
“I wasn’t really joking, you know.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom suddenly. “I believe that girl
knows something about it.”
“Which girl?” Lance looked surprised.
“The one that sniffs,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “The one that ought to have
brought me up my tea this afternoon, but didn’t. Gone out without leave, so
they say. I shouldn’t wonder if she had gone to the police. Who let you in?”
“Someone called Mary Dove, I understand. Very meek and mild—but not really. Is
she the one who’s gone to the police?”
“She wouldn’t go to the police,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “No—I mean that silly
little parlourmaid. She’s been twitching and jumping like a rabbit all day.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said. ‘Have you got a guilty conscience?’ She
said: ‘I never did anything—I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ ‘I hope you
wouldn’t,’ I said to her, ‘but there’s something worrying you now, isn’t
there?’ Then she began to sniff and said she didn’t want to get anybody into
trouble, she was sure it must be all a mistake. I said to her, I said: ‘Now,
my girl, you speak the truth and shame the devil.’ That’s what I said. ‘You go
to the police,’ I said, ‘and tell them anything you know, because no good ever
came,’ I said, ‘of hushing up the truth, however unpleasant it is.’ Then she
talked a lot of nonsense about she couldn’t go to the police, they’d never
believe her and what on earth should she say? She ended up by saying anyway
she didn’t know anything at all.”
“You don’t think,” Lance hesitated, “that she was just making herself
important?”
“No, I don’t. I think she was scared. I think she saw something or heard
something that’s given her some idea about the whole thing. It may be
important, or it mayn’t be of the least consequence.”
“You don’t think she herself could’ve had a grudge against Father and—” Lance
hesitated.
Miss Ramsbottom was shaking her head decidedly.
“She’s not the kind of girl your father would have taken the least notice of.
No man ever will take much notice of her, poor girl. Ah, well, it’s all the
better for her soul, that I dare say.”
Lance took no interest in Glady’s soul. He asked:
“You think she may have run along to the police station?”
Aunt Effie nodded vigorously.
“Yes. I think she mayn’t like to’ve said anything to them in this house in
case somebody overheard her.”
Lance asked: “Do you think she may have seen someone tampering with the food?”
Aunt Effie threw him a sharp glance.
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Then he added apologetically: “The whole thing still
seems so wildly improbable. Like a detective story.”
“Percival’s wife is a hospital nurse,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
The remark seemed so unconnected with what had gone before that Lance looked
at her in a puzzled fashion.
“Hospital nurses are used to handling drugs,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance looked doubtful.
“This stuff—taxine—is it ever used in medicine?”
“They get it from yewberries, I gather. Children eat yewberries sometimes,”
said Miss Ramsbottom. “Makes them very ill, too. I remember a case when I was
a child. It made a great impression on me. I never forgot it. Things you
remember come in useful sometimes.”
Lance raised his head sharply and stared at her.
“Natural affection is one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and I hope I’ve got
as much of it as anyone. But I won’t stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to
be destroyed.”
II
“Went off without a word to me,” said Mrs. Crump, raising her red, wrathful
face from the pastry she was now rolling out on the board. “Slipped out
without a word to anybody. Sly, that’s what it is. Sly! Afraid she’d be
stopped, and I would have stopped her if I’d caught her! The idea! There’s the
master dead, Mr. Lance coming home that hasn’t been home for years and I said
to Crump, I said: ‘Day out or no day out, I know my duty. There’s not going to
be cold supper tonight as is usual on a Thursday, but a proper dinner. A
gentleman coming home from abroad with his wife, what was formerly married in
the aristocracy, things must be properly done.’ You know me, miss, you know I
take a pride in my work.”
Mary Dove, the recipient of these confidences, nodded her head gently.
“And what does Crump say?” Mrs. Crump’s voice rose angrily. “ ‘It’s my day off
and I’m goin’ off,’ that’s what he says. ‘And a fig for the aristocracy,’ he
says. No pride in his work, Crump hasn’t. So off he goes and I tell Gladys
she’ll have to manage alone tonight. She just says: ‘All right, Mrs. Crump,’
then, when my back’s turned out she sneaks. It wasn’t her day out, anyway.
Friday’s her day. How we’re going to manage now, I don’t know! Thank goodness
Mr. Lance hasn’t brought his wife here with him today.”
“We shall manage, Mrs. Crump,” Mary’s voice was both soothing and
authoritative, “if we just simplify the menu a little.” She outlined a few
suggestions. Mrs. Crump nodded unwilling acquiescence. “I shall be able to
serve that quite easily,” Mary concluded.
“You mean you’ll wait at table yourself, miss?” Mrs. Crump sounded doubtful.
“If Gladys doesn’t come back in time.”
“She won’t come back,” said Mrs. Crump. “Gallivanting off, wasting her money
somewhere in the shops. She’s got a young man, you know, miss, though you
wouldn’t think it to look at her. Albert his name is. Going to get married
next spring, so she tells me. Don’t know what the married state’s like, these
girls don’t. What I’ve been through with Crump.” She sighed, then said in an
ordinary voice: “What about tea, miss. Who’s going to clear it away and wash
it up?”
“I’ll do that,” said Mary. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“I’ll go and do it now.”
The lights had not been turned on in the drawing room though Adele Fortescue
was still sitting on the sofa behind the tea tray.
“Shall I switch the lights on, Mrs. Fortescue?” Mary asked. Adele did not
answer.
Mary switched on the lights and went across to the window, where she pulled
the curtains across. It was only then that she turned her head and saw the
face of the woman who had sagged back against the cushions. A half-eaten scone
spread with honey was beside her and her tea cup was still half full. Death
had come to Adele Fortescue suddenly and swiftly.
III
“Well?” demanded Inspector Neele impatiently.
The doctor said promptly:
“Cyanide—potassium cyanide probably—in the tea.”
“Cyanide,” muttered Neele.
The doctor looked at him with slight curiosity.
“You’re taking this hard—any special reason—”
“She was cast as a murderess,” said Neele.
“And she turns out to be a victim. Hm. You’ll have to think again, won’t you?”
Neele nodded. His face was bitter and his jaw was grimly set.
Poisoned! Right under his nose. Taxine in Rex Fortescue’s breakfast coffee,
cyanide in Adele Fortescue’s tea. Still an intimate family affair. Or so it
seemed.
Adele Fortescue, Jennifer Fortescue, Elaine Fortescue and the newly arrived
Lance Fortescue had had tea together in the library. Lance had gone up to see
Miss Ramsbottom, Jennifer had gone to her own sitting room to write letters,
Elaine had been the last to leave the library. According to her Adele had then
been in perfect health and had just been pouring herself out a last cup of
tea.
A last cup of tea! Yes, it had indeed been her last cup of tea.
And after that a blank twenty minutes, perhaps, until Mary Dove had come into
the room and discovered the body.
And during that twenty minutes—
Inspector Neele swore to himself and went out into the kitchen.
Sitting in a chair by the kitchen table, the vast figure of Mrs. Crump, her
belligerence pricked like a balloon, hardly stirred as he came in.
“Where’s that girl? Has she come back yet?”
“Gladys? No—she’s not back—Won’t be, I suspect, until eleven o’clock.”
“She made the tea, you say, and took it in.”
“I didn’t touch it, sir, as God’s my witness. And what’s more I don’t believe
Gladys did anything she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t do a thing like that—not
Gladys. She’s a good enough girl, sir—a bit foolish like, that’s all—not
wicked.”
No, Neele did not think that Gladys was wicked. He did not think that Gladys
was a poisoner. And in any case the cyanide had not been in the teapot.
“But what made her go off suddenly—like this? It wasn’t her day out, you say.”
“No, sir, tomorrow’s her day out.”
“Does Crump—”
Mrs. Crump’s belligerence suddenly revived. Her voice rose wrathfully.
“Don’t you go fastening anything on Crump. Crump’s out of it. He went off at
three o’clock—and thankful I am now that he did. He’s as much out of it as Mr.
Percival himself.”
Percival Fortescue had only just returned from London—to be greeted by the
astounding news of this second tragedy.
“I wasn’t accusing Crump,” said Neele mildly. “I just wondered if he knew
anything about Gladys’s plans.”
“She had her best nylons on,” said Mrs. Crump. “She was up to something. Don’t
tell me! Didn’t cut any sandwiches for tea, either. Oh yes, she was up to
something. I’ll give her a piece of my mind when she comes back.”
When she comes back—
A faint uneasiness possessed Neele. To shake it off he went upstairs to Adele
Fortescue’s bedroom. A lavish apartment—all rose brocade hanging and a vast
gilt bed. On one side of the room was a door into a mirror-lined bathroom with
a sunk orchid-pink porcelain bath. Beyond the bathroom, reached by a
communicating door, was Rex Fortescue’s dressing room. Neele went back into
Adele’s bedroom, and through the door on the farther side of the room into her
sitting room.
The room was furnished in Empire style with a rose pile carpet. Neele only
gave it a cursory glance for that particular room had had his close attention
on the preceding day—with special attention paid to the small elegant desk.
Now, however, he stiffened to sudden attention. On the centre of the rose pile
carpet was a small piece of caked mud.
Neele went over to it and picked it up. The mud was still damp.
He looked round—there were no footprints visible—only this one isolated
fragment of wet earth.
IV
Inspector Neele looked round the bedroom that belonged to Gladys Martin. It
was past eleven o’clock—Crump had come in half an hour ago—but there was still
no sign of Gladys. Inspector Neele looked round him. Whatever Gladys’s
training had been, her own natural instincts were slovenly. The bed, Inspector
Neele judged, was seldom made, the windows seldom opened. Gladys’s personal
habits, however, were not his immediate concern. Instead, he went carefully
through her possessions.
They consisted for the most part of cheap and rather pathetic finery. There
was little that was durable or of good quality. The elderly Ellen, whom he had
called upon to assist him, had not been helpful. She didn’t know what clothes
Gladys had or hadn’t. She couldn’t say what, if anything, was missing. He
turned from the clothes and the underclothes to the contents of the chest of
drawers. There Gladys kept her treasures. There were picture postcards and
newspaper cuttings, knitting patterns, hints on beauty culture, dressmaking
and fashion advice.
Inspector Neele sorted them neatly into various categories. The picture
postcards consisted mainly of views of various places where he presumed Gladys
had spent her holidays. Amongst them were three picture postcards signed
“Bert.” Bert, he took to be the “young man” referred to by Mrs. Crump. The
first postcard said—in an illiterate hand: “All the best. Missing you a lot.
Yours ever, Bert.” The second said: “Lots of nice-looking girls here but not
one that’s a patch on you. Be seeing you soon. Don’t forget our date. And
remember after that—it’s thumbs up and living happy ever after.” The third
said merely: “Don’t forget. I’m trusting you. Love, B.”
Next, Neele looked through the newspaper cuttings and sorted them into three
piles. There were the dressmaking and beauty hints, there were items about
cinema stars to which Gladys had appeared greatly addicted and she had also,
it appeared, been attracted by the latest marvels of science. There were
cuttings about flying saucers, about secret weapons, about truth drugs used by
Russians, and claims for fantastic drugs discovered by American doctors. All
the witchcraft, so Neele thought, of our twentieth century. But in all the
contents of the room there was nothing to give him a clue to her
disappearance. She had kept no diary, not that he had expected that. It was a
remote possibility. There was no unfinished letter, no record at all of
anything she might have seen in the house which could have had a bearing on
Rex Fortescue’s death. Whatever Gladys had seen, whatever Gladys had known,
there was no record of it. It would still have to be guesswork why the second
tea tray had been left in the hall, and Gladys herself had so suddenly
vanished.
Sighing, Neele left the room, shutting the door behind him.
As he prepared to descend the small winding stairs he heard a noise of running
feet coming along the landing below.
The agitated face of Sergeant Hay looked up at him from the bottom of the
stairs. Sergeant Hay was panting a little.
“Sir,” he said urgently. “Sir! We’ve found her—”
“Found her?”
“It was the housemaid, sir—Ellen—remembered as she hadn’t brought the clothes
in from where they were hanging on the line—just round the corner from the
back door. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
So she went out with a torch to take them in and she almost fell
over the body—the girl’s body—strangled, she was, with a stocking round her
throat—been dead for hours, I’d say. And, sir, it’s a wicked kind of
joke—there was a clothes-peg clipped on her nose—”
Chapter Thirteen
An elderly lady travelling by train had bought three morning papers, and each
of them as she finished it, folded it and laid it aside, showed the same
headline. It was no longer a question now of a small paragraph hidden away in
the corner of the papers. There were headlines with flaring announcements of
Triple Tragedy at Yewtree Lodge.
The old lady sat very upright, looking out of the window of the train, her
lips pursed together, an expression of distress and disapproval on her pink
and white wrinkled face. Miss Marple had left St. Mary Mead by the early
train, changing at the junction and going on to London, where she took a
Circle train to another London terminus and thence on to Baydon Heath.
At the station she signalled a taxi and asked to be taken to Yewtree Lodge. So
charming, so innocent, such a fluffy and pink and white old lady was Miss
Marple that she gained admittance to what was now practically a fortress in a
state of siege far more easily than could have been believed possible. Though
an army of reporters and photographers were being kept at bay by the police,
Miss Marple was allowed to drive in without question, so impossible would it
have been to believe that she was anyone but an elderly relative of the
family.
Miss Marple paid off the taxi in a careful assortment of small change, and
rang the front doorbell. Crump opened it and Miss Marple summed him up with an
experienced glance. “A shifty eye,” she said to herself. “Scared to death,
too.”
Crump saw a tall, elderly lady wearing an old-fashioned tweed coat and skirt,
a couple of scarves and a small felt hat with a bird’s wing. The old lady
carried a capacious handbag and an aged but good-quality suitcase reposed by
her feet. Crump recognized a lady when he saw one and said:
“Yes, madam?” in his best and most respectful voice.
“Could I see the mistress of the house, please?” said Miss Marple.
Crump drew back to let her in. He picked up the suitcase and put it carefully
down in the hall.
“Well, madam,” he said rather dubiously, “I don’t know who exactly—”
Miss Marple helped him out.
“I have come,” she said, “to speak about the poor girl who was killed. Gladys
Martin.”
“Oh, I see, madam. Well in that case—” he broke off, and looked towards the
library door from which a tall young woman had just emerged. “This is Mrs.
Lance Fortescue, madam,” he said.
Pat came forward and she and Miss Marple looked at each other. Miss Marple was
aware of a faint feeling of surprise. She had not expected to see someone like
Patricia Fortescue in this particular house. Its interior was much as she had
pictured it, but Pat did not somehow match with that interior.
“It’s about Gladys, madam,” said Crump helpfully.
Pat said rather hesitatingly:
“Will you come in here? We shall be quite alone.”
She led the way into the library and Miss Marple followed her.
“There wasn’t anyone specially you wanted to see, was there?” said Pat,
“because perhaps I shan’t be much good. You see my husband and I only came
back from Africa a few days ago. We don’t really know anything much about the
household. But I can fetch my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law’s wife.”
Miss Marple looked at the girl and liked her. She liked her gravity and her
simplicity. For some strange reason she felt sorry for her. A background of
shabby chintz and horses and dogs, Miss Marple felt vaguely, would have been
much more suitable than this richly furnished interior décor. At the pony show
and gymkhanas held locally round St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple had met many Pats
and knew them well. She felt at home with this rather unhappy-looking girl.
“It’s very simple, really,” said Miss Marple, taking off her gloves carefully
and smoothing out the fingers of them. “I read in the paper, you see, about
Gladys Martin having been killed. And of course I know all about her. She
comes from my part of the country. I trained her, in fact, for domestic
service. And since this terrible thing has happened to her, I felt—well, I
felt that I ought to come and see if there was anything I could do about it.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “Of course. I see.”
And she did see. Miss Marple’s action appeared to her natural and inevitable.
“I think it’s a very good thing you have come,” said Pat. “Nobody seems to
know very much about her. I mean relations and all that.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “of course not. She hadn’t got any relations. She came
to me from the orphanage. St. Faith’s. A very well-run place though sadly
short of funds. We do our best for the girls there, try to give them a good
training and all that. Gladys came to me when she was seventeen and I taught
her how to wait at table and keep the silver and everything like that. Of
course she didn’t stay long. They never do. As soon as she got a little
experience, she went and took a job in a café. The girls nearly always want to
do that. They think it’s freer, you know, and a gayer life. Perhaps it may be.
I really don’t know.”
“I never even saw her,” said Pat. “Was she a pretty girl?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple, “not at all. Adenoids, and a good many spots. She
was rather pathetically stupid, too. I don’t suppose,” went on Miss Marple
thoughtfully, “that she ever made many friends anywhere. She was very keen on
men, poor girl. But men didn’t take much notice of her and other girls rather
made use of her.”
“It sounds rather cruel,” said Pat.
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “life is cruel, I’m afraid. One doesn’t
really know what to do with the Gladyses. They enjoy going to the pictures and
all that, but they’re always thinking of impossible things that can’t possibly
happen to them. Perhaps that’s happiness of a kind. But they get disappointed.
I think Gladys was disappointed in café and restaurant life. Nothing very
glamorous or interesting happened to her and it was just hard on the feet.
Probably that’s why she came back into private service. Do you know how long
she’d been here?”
Pat shook her head.
“Not very long, I should think. Only a month or two.” Pat paused and then went
on, “It seems so horrible and futile that she should have been caught up in
this thing. I suppose she’d seen something or noticed something.”
“It was the clothes-peg that really worried me,” said Miss Marple in her
gentle voice.
“The clothes-peg?”
“Yes. I read about it in the papers. I suppose it is true? That when she was
found there was a clothes-peg clipped onto her nose.”
Pat nodded. The colour rose to Miss Marple’s pink cheeks.
“That’s what made me so very angry, if you can understand, my dear. It was
such a cruel, contemptuous gesture. It gave me a kind of picture of the
murderer. To do a thing like that! It’s very wicked, you know, to affront
human dignity. Particularly if you’ve already killed.”
Pat said slowly:
“I think I see what you mean.” She got up. “I think you’d better come and see
Inspector Neele. He’s in charge of the case and he’s here now. You’ll like
him, I think. He’s a very human person.” She gave a sudden, quick shiver. “The
whole thing is such a horrible nightmare. Pointless. Mad. Without rhyme or
reason in it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, you know,” said Miss Marple. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
Inspector Neele was looking tired and haggard. Three deaths and the press of
the whole country whooping down the trail. A case that seemed to be shaping in
well-known fashion had gone suddenly haywire. Adele Fortescue, that
appropriate suspect, was now the second victim of an incomprehensible murder
case. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
At the close of that fatal day the assistant commissioner had sent for
Neele and the two men had talked far into the night.
In spite of his dismay, or rather behind it, Inspector Neele had felt a faint
inward satisfaction. That pattern of the wife and the lover. It had been too
slick, too easy. He had always mistrusted it. And now that mistrust of his was
justified.
“The whole thing takes on an entirely different aspect,” the AC had said,
striding up and down his room and frowning. “It looks to me, Neele, as though
we’ve got someone mentally unhinged to deal with. First the husband, then the
wife. But the very circumstances of the case seem to show that it’s an inside
job. It’s all there, in the family. Someone who sat down to breakfast with
Fortescue put taxine in his coffee or on his food, someone who had tea with
the family that day put potassium cyanide in Adele Fortescue’s cup of tea.
Someone trusted, unnoticed, one of the family. Which of ’em, Neele?”
Neele said dryly:
“Percival wasn’t there, so that lets him out again. That lets him out again,”
Inspector Neele repeated.
The AC looked at him sharply. Something in the repetition had attracted his
attention.
“What’s the idea, Neele? Out with it, man.”
Inspector Neele looked stolid.
“Nothing, sir. Not so much as an idea. All I say is it was very convenient for
him.”
“A bit too convenient, eh?” The AC reflected and shook his head. “You think he
might have managed it somehow? Can’t see how, Neele. No, I can’t see how.”
He added: “And he’s a cautious type, too.”
“But quite intelligent, sir.”
“You don’t fancy the women. Is that it? Yet the women are indicated. Elaine
Fortescue and Percival’s wife. They were at breakfast and they were at tea
that day. Either of them could have done it. No signs of anything abnormal
about them? Well, it doesn’t always show. There might be something in their
past medical record.”
Inspector Neele did not answer. He was thinking of Mary Dove. He had no
definite reason for suspecting her, but that was the way his thoughts lay.
There was something unexplained about her, unsatisfactory. A faint, amused
antagonism. That had been her attitude after the death of Rex Fortescue. What
was her attitude now? Her behaviour and manner were, as always, exemplary.
There was no longer, he thought, amusement. Perhaps not even antagonism, but
he wondered whether, once or twice, he had not seen a trace of fear. He had
been to blame, culpably to blame, in the matter of Gladys Martin. That guilty
confusion of hers he had put down to no more than a natural nervousness of the
police. He had come across that guilty nervousness so often. In this case it
had been something more. Gladys had seen or heard something which had aroused
her suspicions. It was probably, he thought, some quite small thing, something
so vague and indefinite that she had hardly liked to speak about it. And now,
poor little rabbit, she would never speak.
Inspector Neele looked with some interest at the mild, earnest face of the old
lady who confronted him now at Yewtree Lodge. He had been in two minds at
first how to treat her, but he quickly made-up his mind. Miss Marple would be
useful to him. She was upright, of unimpeachable rectitude and she had, like
most old ladies, time on her hands and an old maid’s nose for scenting bits of
gossip. She’d get things out of servants, and out of the women of the
Fortescue family perhaps, that he and his policemen would never get. Talk,
conjecture, reminiscences, repetitions of things said and done, out of it all
she would pick the salient facts. So Inspector Neele was gracious.
“It’s uncommonly good of you to have come here, Miss Marple,” he said.
“It was my duty, Inspector Neele. The girl had lived in my house. I feel, in a
sense, responsible for her. She was a very silly girl, you know.”
Inspector Neele looked at her appreciatively.
“Yes,” he said, “just so.”
She had gone, he felt, to the heart of the matter.
“She wouldn’t know,” said Miss Marple, “what she ought to do. If, I mean,
something came up. Oh, dear, I’m expressing myself very badly.”
Inspector Neele said that he understood.
“She hadn’t got good judgement as to what was important or not, that’s what
you mean, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, exactly, Inspector.”
“When you say that she was silly—” Inspector Neele broke off.
Miss Marple took up the theme.
“She was the credulous type. She was the sort of girl who would have given her
savings to a swindler, if she’d had any savings. Of course, she never did have
any savings because she always spent her money on most unsuitable clothes.”
“What about men?” asked the inspector.
“She wanted a young man badly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact that’s really, I
think, why she left St. Mary Mead. The competition there is very keen. So few
men. She did have hopes of the young man who delivered the fish. Young Fred
had a pleasant word for all the girls, but of course he didn’t mean anything
by it. That upset poor Gladys quite a lot. Still, I gather she did get herself
a young man in the end?”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“It seems so. Albert Evans, I gather, his name was. She seems to have met him
at some holiday camp. He didn’t give her a ring or anything so maybe she made
it all up. He was a mining engineer, so she told the cook.”
“That seems most unlikely,” said Miss Marple, “but I dare say it’s what he
told her. As I say, she’d believe anything. You don’t connect him with this
business at all?”
Inspector Neele shook his head.
“No. I don’t think there are any complications of that kind. He never seems to
have visited her. He sent her a postcard from time to time, usually from a
seaport—probably 4th Engineer on a boat on the Baltic run.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I’m glad she had her little romance. Since her life
has been cut short in this way—” She tightened her lips. “You know, Inspector,
it makes me very, very angry.” And she added, as she had said to Pat
Fortescue, “Especially the clothes-peg. That, Inspector, was really wicked.”
Inspector Neele looked at her with interest.
“I know just what you mean, Miss Marple,” he said.
Miss Marple coughed apologetically.
“I wonder—I suppose it would be great presumption on my part—if only I could
assist you in my very humble and, I’m afraid, very feminine way. This is a
wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go unpunished.”
“That’s an unfashionable belief nowadays, Miss Marple,” Inspector Neele said
rather grimly. “Not that I don’t agree with you.”
“There is an hotel near the station, or there’s the Golf Hotel,” said Miss
Marple tentatively, “and I believe there’s a Miss Ramsbottom in this house who
is interested in foreign missions.”
Inspector Neele looked at Miss Marple appraisingly.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve got something there, maybe. I can’t say that I’ve had
great success with the lady.”
“It’s really very kind of you, Inspector Neele,” said Miss Marple. “I’m so
glad you don’t think I’m just a sensation hunter.”
Inspector Neele gave a sudden, rather unexpected smile. He was thinking to
himself that Miss Marple was very unlike the popular idea of an avenging fury.
And yet, he thought that was perhaps exactly what she was.
“Newspapers,” said Miss Marple, “are often so sensational in their accounts.
But hardly, I fear, as accurate as one might wish.” She looked inquiringly at
Inspector Neele. “If one could be sure of having just the sober facts.”
“They’re not particularly sober,” said Neele. “Shorn of undue sensation,
they’re as follows. Mr. Fortescue died in his office as a result of taxine
poisoning. Taxine is obtained from the berries and leaves of yew trees.”
“Very convenient,” Miss Marple said. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“Possibly,” said Inspector Neele, “but we’ve no evidence as to that. As yet,
that is.” He stressed the point because it was here that he thought Miss
Marple might be useful. If any brew or concoction of yewberries had been made
in the house, Miss Marple was quite likely to come upon traces of it. She was
the sort of old pussy who would make homemade liqueurs, cordials and herb teas
herself. She would know methods of making and methods of disposal.
“And Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Mrs. Fortescue had tea with the family in the library. The last person to
leave the room and the tea table was Miss Elaine Fortescue, her stepdaughter.
She states that as she left the room Mrs. Fortescue was pouring herself out
another cup of tea. Some twenty minutes or half hour later Miss Dove, who acts
as housekeeper, went in to remove the tea tray. Mrs. Fortescue was still
sitting on the sofa, dead. Beside her was a tea cup a quarter full and in the
dregs of it was potassium cyanide.”
“Which is almost immediate in its action, I believe,” said Miss Marple.
“Exactly.”
“Such dangerous stuff,” murmured Miss Marple. “One has it to take wasps’ nests
but I’m always very, very careful.”
“You’re quite right,” said Inspector Neele. “There was a packet of it in the
gardener’s shed here.”
“Again very convenient,” said Miss Marple. She added, “Was Mrs. Fortescue
eating anything?”
“Oh, yes. They’d had quite a sumptuous tea.”
“Cake, I suppose? Bread and butter? Scones, perhaps? Jam? Honey?”
“Yes, there was honey and scones, chocolate cake and swiss roll and various
other plates of things.” He looked at her curiously. “The potassium cyanide
was in the tea, Miss Marple.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I quite understand that. I was just getting the whole picture,
so to speak. Rather significant, don’t you think?”
He looked at her in a slightly puzzled fashion. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes
were bright.
“And the third death, Inspector Neele?”
“Well, the facts there seem clear enough, too. The girl, Gladys, took in the
tea tray, then she brought the next tray into the hall, but left it there.
She’d been rather absentminded all the day, apparently. After that no one saw
her. The cook, Mrs. Crump, jumped to the conclusion that the girl had gone out
for the evening without telling anybody. She based her belief, I think, on the
fact that the girl was wearing a good pair of nylon stockings and her best
shoes. There, however, she was proved quite wrong. The girl had obviously
remembered suddenly that she had not taken in some clothes that were drying
outside on the clothesline. She ran out to fetch them in, had taken down half
of them apparently, when somebody took her unawares by slipping a stocking
round her neck and—well, that was that.”
“Someone from outside?” said Miss Marple.
“Perhaps,” said Inspector Neele. “But perhaps someone from inside. Someone
who’d been waiting his or her opportunity to get the girl alone. The girl was
upset, nervous, when we first questioned her, but I’m afraid we didn’t quite
appreciate the importance of that.”
“Oh, but how could you,” cried Miss Marple, “because people so often do look
guilty and embarrassed when they are questioned by the police.”
“That’s just it. But this time, Miss Marple, it was rather more than that. I
think the girl Gladys had seen someone performing some action that seemed to
her needed explanation. It can’t, I think, have been anything very definite.
Otherwise she would have spoken out. But I think she did betray the fact to
the person in question. That person realized that Gladys was a danger.”
“And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes-peg clipped on her nose,” murmured
Miss Marple to herself.
“Yes, that’s a nasty touch. A nasty, sneering sort of touch. Just a nasty bit
of unnecessary bravado.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Hardly unnecessary. It does all make a pattern, doesn’t it?”
Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.
“I don’t quite follow you, Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?”
Miss Marple immediately became flustered.
“Well, I mean it does seem—I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you
understand—well, one can’t get away from facts, can one?”
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
“Well, I mean—first we have Mr. Fortescue. Rex Fortescue. Killed in his office
in the city. And then we have Mrs. Fortescue, sitting here in the library and
having tea. There were scones and honey. And then poor Gladys with the
clothes-peg on her nose. Just to point the whole thing. That very charming
Mrs. Lance Fortescue said to me that there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or
reason in it, but I couldn’t agree with her, because it’s the rhyme that
strikes one, isn’t it?”
Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don’t think—”
Miss Marple went on quickly:
“I expect you’re about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren’t you, Inspector Neele?
I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little boy, I
mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose—I
mean it is really highly significant, isn’t it? What I wondered was,” Miss
Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage in her hands went on
bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this
sort of thing to you.”
“Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the
utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddleheaded, and I
dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you
gone into the question of blackbirds?”
Chapter Fourteen
I
For about ten seconds Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple with the utmost
bewilderment. His first idea was that the old lady had gone off her head.
“Blackbirds?” he repeated.
Miss Marple nodded her head vigorously.
“Yes,” she said, and forwith recited:
“ ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?
“ ‘The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey,
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When there came a little dickey bird and nipped off her nose.’ ”
“Good Lord,” Inspector Neele said.
“I mean, it does fit,” said Miss Marple. “It was rye in his pocket, wasn’t it?
One newspaper said so. The others just said cereal, which might mean anything.
Farmer’s Glory or Cornflakes—or even maize—but it was rye?”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“There you are,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “Rex Fortescue. Rex means
King. In his Counting House. And Mrs. Fortescue the Queen in the parlour,
eating bread and honey. And so, of course, the murderer had to put that
clothes-peg on poor Gladys’s nose.”
Inspector Neele said:
“You mean the whole setup is crazy?”
“Well, one mustn’t jump to conclusions—but it is certainly very odd. But you
really must make inquiries about blackbirds. Because there must be
blackbirds!”
It was at this point that Sergeant Hay came into the room saying urgently,
“Sir.”
He broke off at sight of Miss Marple. Inspector Neele, recovering himself,
said:
“Thank you, Miss Marple. I’ll look into the matter. Since you are interested
in the girl, perhaps you would care to look over the things from her room.
Sergeant Hay will show you them presently.”
Miss Marple, accepting her dismissal, twittered her way out.
“Blackbirds!” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.
Sergeant Hay stared.
“Yes, Hay, what is it?”
“Sir,” said Sergeant Hay, urgently again. “Look at this.”
He produced an article wrapped in a somewhat grubby handkerchief.
“Found it in the shrubbery,” said Sergeant Hay. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“Found it in the shrubbery,” said Sergeant Hay. “Could have been chucked there
from one of the back windows.”
He tipped the object down on the desk in front of the inspector, who leaned
forward and inspected it with rising excitement. The exhibit was a nearly full
pot of marmalade.
The inspector stared at it without speech. His face assumed a peculiarly
wooden and stupid appearance. In actual fact this meant that Inspector Neele’s
mind was racing once more round an imaginary track. A moving picture was
enacting itself before the eyes of his mind. He saw a new pot of marmalade, he
saw hands carefully removing its cover, he saw a small quantity of marmalade
removed, mixed with a preparation of taxine and replaced in the pot, the top
smoothed over and the lid carefully replaced. He broke off at this point to
ask Sergeant Hay:
“They don’t take marmalade out of the pot and put it into fancy pots?”
“No, sir. Got into the way of serving it in its own pot during the war when
things were scarce, and it’s gone on like that ever since.”
Neele murmured:
“That made it easier, of course.”
“What’s more,” said Sergeant Hay, “Mr. Fortescue was the only one that took
marmalade for breakfast (and Mr. Percival when he was at home). The others had
jam or honey.”
Neele nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “That made it very simple, didn’t it?”
After a slight gap the moving picture went on in his mind. It was the
breakfast table now. Rex Fortescue stretching out his hand for the marmalade
pot, taking out a spoonful of marmalade and spreading it on his toast and
butter. Easier, far easier that way than the risk and difficulty of
insinuating it into his coffee cup. A foolproof method of administering the
poison! And afterwards? Another gap and a picture that was not quite so clear.
The replacing of that pot of marmalade by another with exactly the same amount
taken from it. And then an open window. A hand and an arm flinging out that
pot into the shrubbery. Whose hand and arm?
Inspector Neele said in a businesslike voice:
“Well, we’ll have of course to get this analysed. See if there are any traces
of taxine. We can’t jump to conclusions.”
“No, sir. There may be fingerprints too.”
“Probably not the ones we want,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “There’ll be
Gladys’s, of course, and Crump’s and Fortescue’s own. Then probably Mrs.
Crump’s, the grocer’s assistant and a few others! If anyone put taxine in here
they’d take care not to go playing about with their own fingers all over the
pot. Anyway, as I say, we mustn’t jump to conclusions. How do they order
marmalade and where is it kept?”
The industrious Sergeant Hay had his answer pat for all these questions.
“Marmalade and jams comes in in batches of six at a time. A new pot would be
taken into the pantry when the old one was getting low.”
“That means,” said Neele, “that it could have been tampered with several days
before it was actually brought onto the breakfast table. And anyone who was in
the house or had access to the house could have tampered with it.”
The term “access to the house” puzzled Sergeant Hay slightly. He did not see
in what way his superior’s mind was working.
But Neele was postulating what seemed to him a logical assumption.
If the marmalade had been tampered with beforehand—then surely that ruled out
those persons who were actually at the breakfast table on the fatal morning.
Which opened up some interesting new possibilities.
He planned in his mind interviews with various people—this time with rather a
different angle of approach.
He’d keep an open mind. . . .
He’d even consider seriously that old Miss Whatshername’s suggestions about
the nursery rhyme. Because there was no doubt that that nursery rhyme fitted
in a rather startling way. It fitted with a point that had worried him from
the beginning. The pocketful of rye.
“Blackbirds?” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.
Sergeant Hay stared.
“It’s not blackberry jelly, sir,” he said. “It’s marmalade.”
II
Inspector Neele went in search of Mary Dove.
He found her in one of the bedrooms on the first floor superintending Ellen,
who was denuding the bed of what seemed to be clean sheets. A little pile of
clean towels lay on a chair.
Inspector Neele looked puzzled.
“Somebody coming to stay?” he asked.
Mary Dove smiled at him. In contrast to Ellen, who looked grim and truculent,
Mary was her usual imperturbable self.
“Actually,” she said, “the opposite is the case.”
Neele looked inquiringly at her.
“This is the guest room we had prepared for Mr. Gerald Wright.”
“Gerald Wright? Who is he?”
“He’s a friend of Miss Elaine Fortescue’s.” Mary’s voice was carefully devoid
of inflection.
“He was coming here—when?”
“I believe he arrived at the Golf Hotel the day after Mr. Fortescue’s death.”
“The day after.”
“So Miss Fortescue said.” Mary’s voice was still impersonal: “She told me she
wanted him to come and stay in the house—so I had a room prepared. Now—after
these other two—tragedies—it seems more suitable that he should remain at the
hotel.”
“The Golf Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Quite,” said Inspector Neele.
Ellen gathered up the sheets and towels and went out of the room.
Mary Dove looked inquiringly at Neele.
“You wanted to see me about something?”
Neele said pleasantly:
“It’s becoming important to get exact times very clearly stated. Members of
the family all seem a little vague about time—perhaps understandably. You, on
the other hand, Miss Dove, I have found extremely accurate in your statements
as to times.”
“Again understandably!”
“Yes—perhaps—I must certainly congratulate you on the way you have kept this
house going in spite of the—well, panic—these last deaths must have caused.”
He paused and then asked curiously: “How did you do it?”
He had realized, astutely, that the one chink in the armour of Mary Dove’s
inscrutability was her pleasure in her own efficiency. She unbent slightly now
as she answered.
“The Crumps wanted to leave at once, of course.”
“We couldn’t have allowed that.”
“I know. But I also told them that Mr. Percival Fortescue would be more likely
to be—well—generous—to those who had spared him inconvenience.”
“And Ellen?”
“Ellen does not wish to leave.”
“Ellen does not wish to leave,” Neele repeated. “She has good nerves.”
“She enjoys disasters,” said Mary Dove. “Like Mrs. Percival, she finds in
disaster a kind of pleasurable drama.”
“Interesting. Do you think Mrs. Percival has—enjoyed the tragedies?”
“No—of course not. That is going too far. I would merely say that it has
enabled her to—well—stand up to them—”
“And how have you yourself been affected, Miss Dove?”
Mary Dove shrugged her shoulders.
“It has not been a pleasant experience,” she said dryly.
Inspector Neele felt again a longing to break down this cool young woman’s
defences—to find out what was really going on behind the careful and efficient
understatement of her whole attitude.
He merely said brusquely:
“Now—to recapitulate times and places: the last time you saw Gladys Martin was
in the hall before tea, and that was at twenty minutes to five?”
“Yes—I told her to bring in tea.”
“You yourself were coming from where?”
“From upstairs—I thought I had heard the telephone a few minutes before.”
“Gladys, presumably, had answered the telephone?”
“Yes. It was a wrong number. Someone who wanted the Baydon Heath Laundry.”
“And that was the last time you saw her?”
“She brought the tea tray into the library about ten minutes or so later.”
“After that Miss Elaine Fortescue came in?”
“Yes, about three or four minutes later. Then I went up to tell Mrs. Percival
tea was ready.”
“Did you usually do that?”
“Oh no—people came in to tea when they pleased—but Mrs. Fortescue asked where
everybody was. I thought I heard Mrs. Percival coming—but that was a mistake—”
Neele interrupted. Here was something new.
“You mean you heard someone upstairs moving about?”
“Yes—at the head of the stairs, I thought. But no one came down so I went up.
Mrs. Percival was in her bedroom. She had just come in. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Mrs. Percival was in her bedroom. She had just come in. She had been out for a
walk—”
“Out for a walk—I see. The time being then—”
“Oh—nearly five o’clock, I think—”
“And Mr. Lancelot Fortescue arrived—when?”
“A few minutes after I came downstairs again—I thought he had arrived
earlier—but—”
Inspector Neele interrupted:
“Why did you think he had arrived earlier?”
“Because I thought I had caught sight of him through the landing window.”
“In the garden, you mean?”
“Yes—I caught a glimpse of someone through the yew hedge—and I thought it
would probably be him.”
“This was when you were coming down after telling Mrs. Percival Fortescue tea
was ready?”
Mary corrected him.
“No—not then—it was earlier—when I came down the first time.”
Inspector Neele stared.
“Are you sure about that, Miss Dove?”
“Yes, I’m perfectly sure. That’s why I was surprised to see him—when he
actually did ring the bell.”
Inspector Neele shook his head. He kept his inner excitement out of his voice
as he said:
“It couldn’t have been Lancelot Fortescue you saw in the garden. His
train—which was due at 4:28, was nine minutes late. He arrived at Baydon Heath
Station at 4:37. He had to wait a few minutes for a taxi—that train is always
very full. It was actually nearly a quarter to five (five minutes after you
had seen the man in the garden) when he left the station and it is a ten-
minute drive. He paid off the taxi at the gate here at about five minutes to
five at the earliest. No—it wasn’t Lancelot Fortescue you saw.”
“I’m sure I did see someone.”
“Yes, you saw someone. It was getting dark. You couldn’t have seen the man
clearly?”
“Oh no—I couldn’t see his face or anything like that—just his build—tall and
slender. We were expecting Lancelot Fortescue—so I jumped to the conclusion
that that’s who it was.”
“He was going—which way?”
“Along behind the yew hedge towards the east side of the house.”
“There is a side door there. Is it kept locked?”
“Not until the house is locked up for the night.”
“Anyone could have come in by that side door without being observed by any of
the household.”
Mary Dove considered.
“I think so. Yes.” She added quickly: “You mean—the person I heard later
upstairs could have come in that way? Could have been hiding—upstairs?”
“Something of the kind.”
“But who—?”
“That remains to be seen. Thank you, Miss Dove.”
As she turned to go away Inspector Neele said in a casual voice: “By the way,
you can’t tell me anything about blackbirds, I suppose?”
For the first time, so it seemed, Mary Dove was taken aback. She turned back
sharply.
“I—what did you say?”
“I was just asking you about blackbirds.”
“Do you mean—”
“Blackbirds,” said Inspector Neele.
He had on his most stupid expression.
“You mean that silly business last summer? But surely that can’t . . .” She
broke off.
Inspector Neele said pleasantly:
“There’s been a bit of talk about it, but I was sure I’d get a clear account
from you.”
Mary Dove was her calm, practical self again.
“It must, I think, have been some silly, spiteful joke,” she said. “Four dead
blackbirds were on Mr. Fortescue’s desk in his study here. It was summer and
the windows were open, and we rather thought it must have been the gardener’s
boy, though he insisted he’d never done anything of the kind. But they were
actually blackbirds the gardener had shot which had been hanging up by the
fruit bushes.”
“And somebody had cut them down and put them on Mr. Fortescue’s desk?”
“Yes.”
“Any sort of reason behind it—any association with blackbirds?”
Mary shook her head.
“I don’t think so.”
“How did Mr. Fortescue take it? Was he annoyed?”
“Naturally he was annoyed.”
“But not upset in any way?”
“I really can’t remember.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele.
He said no more. Mary Dove once more turned away, but this time, he thought,
she went rather unwillingly as though she would have liked to know more of
what was in his mind. Ungratefully, all that Inspector Neele felt was
annoyance with Miss Marple. She had suggested to him that there would be
blackbirds and, sure enough, there the blackbirds were! Not four and twenty of
them, that was true. What might be called a token consignment.
That had been as long ago as last summer and where it fitted in Inspector
Neele could not imagine. He was not going to let this blackbird bogey divert
him from the logical and sober investigation of murder by a sane murderer for
a sane reason, but he would be forced from now on to keep the crazier
possibilities of the case in mind.
Chapter Fifteen
I
“I’m sorry, Miss Fortescue, to bother you again, but I want to be quite, quite
clear about this. As far as we know you were the last person—or rather the
last person but one—to see Mrs. Fortescue alive. It was about twenty past five
when you left the drawing room?”
“About then,” said Elaine, “I can’t say exactly.” She added defensively: “One
doesn’t look at clocks the whole time.”
“No, of course not. During the time that you were alone with Mrs. Fortescue
after the others had left, what did you talk about?”
“Does it matter what we talked about?”
“Probably not,” said Inspector Neele, “but it might give me some clue as to
what was in Mrs. Fortescue’s mind.”
“You mean—you think she might have done it herself?”
Inspector Neele noticed the brightening on her face. It would certainly be a
very convenient solution as far as the family was concerned. Inspector Neele
did not think it was true for a moment. Adele Fortescue was not to his mind a
suicidal type. Even if she had poisoned her husband and was convinced the
crime was about to be brought home to her, she would not, he thought, have
ever thought of killing herself. She would have been sure optimistically that
even if she were tried for murder she would be sure to be acquitted. He was
not, however, averse to Elaine Fortescue’s entertaining the hypothesis. He
said, therefore, quite truthfully:
“There’s a possibility of it at least, Miss Fortescue. Now perhaps you’ll tell
me just what your conversation was about?”
“Well, it was really about my affairs.” Elaine hesitated.
“Your affairs being . . . ? ” he paused questioningly with a genial
expression.
“I—a friend of mine had just arrived in the neighbourhood, and I was asking
Adele if she would have any objection to—to my asking him to stay here at the
house.”
“Ah. And who is this friend?”
“It’s a Mr. Gerald Wright. He’s a schoolmaster. He—he’s staying at the Golf
Hotel.”
“A very close friend, perhaps?”
Inspector Neele gave an avuncular beam which added at least fifteen years to
his age.
“We may expect an interesting announcement shortly, perhaps?”
He felt almost compunction as he saw the awkward gesture of the girl’s hand
and the flush on her face. She was in love with the fellow all right.
“We—we’re not actually engaged and of course we couldn’t have it announced
just now, but—well, yes I think we do—I mean we are going to get married.”
“Congratulations,” said Inspector Neele pleasantly. “Mr. Wright is staying at
the Golf Hotel, you say? How long has he been there?”
“I wired him when Father died.”
“And he came at once. I see,” said Inspector Neele.
He used this favourite phrase of his in a friendly and reassuring way.
“What did Mrs. Fortescue say when you asked her about his coming here?”
“Oh, she said, all right, I could have anybody I pleased.”
“She was nice about it then?”
“Not exactly nice. I mean, she said—”
“Yes, what else did she say?”
Again Elaine flushed.
“Oh, something stupid about my being able to do a lot better for myself now.
It was the sort of thing Adele would say.”
“Ah, well,” said Inspector Neele soothingly, “relations say these sort of
things.”
“Yes, yes, they do. But people often find it difficult to—to appreciate Gerald
properly. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
But people often find it difficult to—to appreciate Gerald
properly. He’s an intellectual, you see, and he’s got a lot of unconventional
and progressive ideas that people don’t like.”
“That’s why he didn’t get on with your father?”
Elaine flushed hotly.
“Father was very prejudiced and unjust. He hurt Gerald’s feelings. In fact,
Gerald was so upset by my father’s attitude that he went off and I didn’t hear
from him for weeks.”
And probably wouldn’t have heard from him now if your father hadn’t died and
left you a packet of money, Inspector Neele thought. Aloud he said:
“Was there any more conversation between you and Mrs. Fortescue?”
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
“And that was about twenty-five past five and Mrs. Fortescue was found dead at
five minutes to six. You didn’t return to the room during that half hour?”
“No.”
“What were you doing?”
“I—I went out for a short walk.”
“To the Golf Hotel?”
“I—well, yes, but Gerald wasn’t in.”
Inspector Neele said “I see” again, but this time with a rather dismissive
effect. Elaine Fortescue got up and said:
“Is that all?”
“That’s all, thank you, Miss Fortescue.”
As she got up to go, Neele said casually:
“You can’t tell me anything about blackbirds, can you?”
She stared at him.
“Blackbirds? You mean the ones in the pie?”
They would be in the pie, the inspector thought to himself. He merely said,
“When was this?”
“Oh! Three or four months ago—and there were some on Father’s desk, too. He
was furious—”
“Furious, was he? Did he ask a lot of questions?”
“Yes—of course—but we couldn’t find out who put them there.”
“Have you any idea why he was so angry?”
“Well—it was rather a horrid thing to do, wasn’t it?”
Neele looked thoughtfully at her—but he did not see any signs of evasion in
her face. He said:
“Oh, just one more thing, Miss Fortescue. Do you know if your stepmother made
a will at any time?”
“I’ve no idea—I—suppose so. People usually do, don’t they?”
“They should do—but it doesn’t always follow. Have you made a will yourself,
Miss Fortescue?”
“No—no—I haven’t—up to now I haven’t had anything to leave—now, of course—”
He saw the realization of the changed position come into her eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Fifty thousand pounds is quite a responsibility—
it changes a lot of things, Miss Fortescue.”
II
For some minutes after Elaine Fortescue left the room, Inspector Neele sat
staring in front of him thoughtfully. He had, indeed, new food for thought.
Mary Dove’s statement that she had seen a man in the garden at approximately
4:35 opened up certain new possibilities. That is, of course, if Mary Dove was
speaking the truth. It was never Inspector Neele’s habit to assume that anyone
was speaking the truth. But, examine her statement as he might, he could see
no real reason why she should have lied. He was inclined to think that Mary
Dove was speaking the truth when she spoke of having seen a man in the garden.
It was quite clear that that man could not have been Lancelot Fortescue,
although her reason for assuming that it was he was quite natural under the
circumstances. It had not been Lancelot Fortescue, but it had been a man about
the height and build of Lancelot Fortescue, and if there had been a man in the
garden at that particular time, moreover a man moving furtively, as it seemed,
to judge from the way he had crept behind the yew hedges, then that certainly
opened up a line of thought.
Added to this statement of hers, there had been the further statement that she
had heard someone moving about upstairs. That, in its turn, tied up with
something else. The small piece of mud he had found on the floor of Adele
Fortescue’s boudoir. Inspector Neele’s mind dwelt on the small dainty desk in
that room. Pretty little sham antique with a rather obvious secret drawer in
it. There had been three letters in that drawer, letters written by Vivian
Dubois to Adele Fortescue. A great many love letters of one kind or another
had passed through Inspector Neele’s hands in the course of his career. He was
acquainted with passionate letters, foolish letters, sentimental letters and
nagging letters. There had also been cautious letters. Inspector Neele was
inclined to classify these three as of the latter kind. Even if read in the
divorce court, they could pass as inspired by a merely platonic friendship.
Though in this case: “Platonic friendship my foot!” thought the inspector
inelegantly. Neele, when he had found the letters, had sent them up at once to
the Yard since at that time the main question was whether the Public
Prosecutor’s office thought that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with
the case against Adele Fortescue or Adele Fortescue and Vivian Dubois
together. Everything had pointed towards Rex Fortescue having been poisoned by
his wife with or without her lover’s connivance. These letters, though
cautious, made it fairly clear that Vivian Dubois was her lover, but there had
not been in the wording, so far as Inspector Neele could see, any signs of
incitement to crime. There might have been incitement of a spoken kind, but
Vivian Dubois would be far too cautious to put anything of that kind down on
paper.
Inspector Neele surmised accurately that Vivian Dubois had asked Adele
Fortescue to destroy his letters and that Adele Fortescue had told him she had
done so.
Well, now they had two more deaths on their hands. And that meant, or should
mean, that Adele Fortescue had not killed her husband.
Unless, that is—Inspector Neele considered a new hypothesis—Adele Fortescue
had wanted to marry Vivian Dubois and Vivian Dubois had wanted, not Adele
Fortescue, but Adele Fortescue’s hundred thousand pounds which would come to
her on the death of her husband. He had assumed, perhaps, that Rex Fortescue’s
death would be put down to natural causes. Some kind of seizure or stroke.
After all, everybody seemed to be worried over Rex Fortescue’s health during
the last year. (Parenthetically, Inspector Neele said to himself that he must
look into that question. He had a subconscious feeling that it might be
important in someway.) To continue, Rex Fortescue’s death had not gone
according to plan. It had been diagnosed without loss of time as poisoning,
and the correct poison named.
Supposing that Adele Fortescue and Vivian Dubois had been guilty, what state
would they be in then? Vivian Dubois would have been scared and Adele
Fortescue would have lost her head. She might have done or said foolish
things. She might have rung up Dubois on the telephone, talking indiscreetly
in a way that he would have realized might have been overheard in Yewtree
Lodge. What would Vivian Dubois have done next?
It was early as yet to try and answer that question, but Inspector Neele
proposed very shortly to make inquiries at the Golf Hotel as to whether Dubois
had been in or out of the hotel between the hours of 4:15 and 6 o’clock.
Vivian Dubois was tall and dark like Lance Fortescue. He might have slipped
through the garden to the side door, made his way upstairs and then what?
Looked for the letters and found them gone? Waited there, perhaps, till the
coast was clear, then come down into the library when tea was over and Adele
Fortescue was alone?
But all this was going too fast—
Neele had questioned Mary Dove and Elaine Fortescue; he must see now what
Percival Fortescue’s wife had to say.
Chapter Sixteen
I
Inspector Neele found Mrs. Percival in her own sitting room upstairs, writing
letters. She got up rather nervously when he came in.
“Is there anything—what—are there—”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Fortescue. There are only just a few more questions I
would like to ask you.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course, Inspector. It’s all so dreadful, isn’t it? So very
dreadful.”
She sat down rather nervously in an armchair. Inspector Neele sat down in the
small, straight chair near her. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Inspector Neele sat down in the
small, straight chair near her. He studied her rather more carefully than he
had done heretofore. In someways a mediocre type of woman, he thought—and
thought also that she was not very happy. Restless, unsatisfied, limited in
mental outlook, yet he thought she might have been efficient and skilled in
her own profession of hospital nurse. Though she had achieved leisure by her
marriage with a well-to-do man, leisure had not satisfied her. She bought
clothes, read novels and ate sweets, but he remembered her avid excitement on
the night of Rex Fortescue’s death, and he saw in it not so much a ghoulish
satisfaction but rather a revelation of the arid deserts of boredom which
encompassed her life. Her eyelids fluttered and fell before his searching
glance. They gave her the appearance of being both nervous and guilty, but he
could not be sure that that was really the case.
“I’m afraid,” he said soothingly, “we have to ask people questions again and
again. It must be very tiresome for you all. I do appreciate that, but so much
hangs, you understand, on the exact timing of events. You came down to tea
rather late, I understand? In fact, Miss Dove came up and fetched you.”
“Yes. Yes, she did. She came and said tea was in. I had no idea it was so
late. I’d been writing letters.”
Inspector Neele just glanced over at the writing desk.
“I see,” he said. “Somehow or other, I thought you’d been out for a walk.”
“Did she say so? Yes—now I believe you’re right. I had been writing letters;
then it was so stuffy and my head ached so I went out and—er—went for a walk.
Only round the garden.”
“I see. You didn’t meet anyone?”
“Meet anyone?” She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I just wondered if you’d seen anybody or anybody had seen you during this
walk of yours.”
“I saw the gardener in the distance, that’s all.” She was looking at him
suspiciously.
“Then you came in, came up here to your room and you were just taking your
things off when Miss Dove came to tell you that tea was ready?”
“Yes. Yes, and so I came down.”
“And who was there?”
“Adele and Elaine, and a minute or two later Lance arrived. My brother-in-law,
you know. The one who’s come back from Kenya.”
“And then you all had tea?”
“Yes, we had tea. Then Lance went up to see Aunt Effie and I came up here to
finish my letters. I left Elaine there with Adele.”
He nodded reassuringly.
“Yes. Miss Fortescue seems to have been with Mrs. Fortescue for quite five or
ten minutes after you left. Your husband hadn’t come home yet?”
“Oh no. Percy—Val—didn’t get home until about half past six or seven. He’d
been kept up in town.”
“He came back by train?”
“Yes. He took a taxi from the station.”
“Was it unusual for him to come back by train?”
“He does sometimes. Not very often. I think he’d been to places in the city
where it’s rather difficult to park the car. It was easier for him to take a
train home from Cannon Street.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele. He went on: “I asked your husband if Mrs.
Fortescue had made a will before she died. He said he thought not. I suppose
you don’t happen to have any idea?”
To his surprise Jennifer Fortescue nodded vigorously.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Adele made a will. She told me so.”
“Indeed! When was this?”
“Oh, it wasn’t very long ago. About a month ago, I think.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Inspector Neele.
Mrs. Percival leant forward eagerly. Her face now was all animation. She
clearly enjoyed exhibiting her superior knowledge.
“Val didn’t know about it,” she said. “Nobody knew. It just happened that I
found out about it. I was in the street. I had just come out of the
stationer’s, then I saw Adele coming out of the solicitor’s office. Ansell and
Worrall’s, you know. In the High Street.”
“Ah,” said Neele, “the local solicitors?”
“Yes. And I said to Adele: ‘Whatever have you been doing there?’ I said. And
she laughed and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ And then as we walked along
together she said: ‘I’ll tell you, Jennifer. I’ve been making my will.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘why are you doing that, Adele, you’re not ill or anything,
are you?’ And she said no, of course she wasn’t ill. She’d never felt better.
But everyone ought to make a will. She said she wasn’t going to those stuck-up
family solicitors in London, Mr. Billingsley. She said the old sneak would go
round and tell the family. ‘No,’ she said, ‘my will’s my own business,
Jennifer, and I’ll make it my own way and nobody’s going to know about it.’
‘Well, Adele,’ I said, ‘I shan’t tell anybody.’ She said: ‘It doesn’t matter
if you do. You won’t know what’s in it.’ But I didn’t tell anyone. No, not
even Percy. I do think women ought to stick together, don’t you, Inspector
Neele?”
“I’m sure that’s a very nice feeling on your part, Mrs. Fortescue,” said
Inspector Neele diplomatically.
“I’m sure I’m never ill-natured,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t particularly care
for Adele, if you know what I mean. I always thought she was the kind of woman
who would stick at nothing in order to get what she wanted. Now she’s dead,
perhaps I misjudged her, poor soul.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Fortescue, for being so helpful to me.”
“You’re welcome, I’m sure. I’m only too glad to do anything I can. It’s all so
very terrible, isn’t it? Who is the old lady who’s arrived this morning?”
“She’s a Miss Marple. She very kindly came here to give us what information
she could about the girl Gladys. It seems Gladys Martin was once in service
with her.”
“Really? How interesting.”
“There’s one other thing, Mrs. Percival. Do you know anything about
blackbirds?”
Jennifer Fortescue started violently. She dropped her handbag on the floor and
bent to pick it up.
“Blackbirds, Inspector? Blackbirds? What kind of blackbirds?”
Her voice was rather breathless. Smiling a little, Inspector, Neele said:
“Just blackbirds. Alive or dead or even, shall we say, symbolical?”
Jennifer Fortescue said sharply:
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know anything about blackbirds, then, Mrs. Fortescue?”
She said slowly:
“I suppose you mean the ones last summer in the pie. All very silly.”
“There were some left on the library table, too, weren’t there?”
“It was all a very silly practical joke. I don’t know who’s been talking to
you about it. Mr. Fortescue, my father-in-law, was very much annoyed by it.”
“Just annoyed? Nothing more?”
“Oh. I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose—yes, it’s true. He asked us if there
were any strangers about the place.”
“Strangers!” Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.
“Well, that’s what he said,” said Mrs. Percival defensively.
“Strangers,” repeated Inspector Neele thoughtfully. Then he asked: “Did he
seem afraid in any way?”
“Afraid? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Nervous. About strangers, I mean.”
“Yes. Yes, he did, rather. Of course I don’t remember very well. It was
several months ago, you know. I don’t think it was anything except a silly
practical joke. Crump perhaps. I really do think that Crump is a very
unbalanced man, and I’m perfectly certain that he drinks. He’s really very
insolent in his manner sometimes. I’ve sometimes wondered if he could have had
a grudge against Mr. Fortescue. Do you think that’s possible, Inspector?”
“Anything’s possible,” said Inspector Neele and went away. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
II
Percival Fortescue was in London, but Inspector Neele found Lancelot sitting
with his wife in the library. They were playing chess together.
“I don’t want to interrupt you,” said Neele, apologetically.
“We’re only killing time, Inspector, aren’t we, Pat?”
Pat nodded.
“I expect you’ll think it’s rather a foolish question I’m asking you,” said
Neele. “Do you know anything about blackbirds, Mr. Fortescue?”
“Blackbirds?” Lance looked amused. “What kind of blackbirds? Do you mean
genuine birds, or the slave trade?”
Inspector Neele said with a sudden, disarming smile:
“I’m not sure what I mean, Mr. Fortescue. It’s just that a mention of
blackbirds has turned up.”
“Good Lord.” Lancelot looked suddenly alert. “Not the old Blackbird Mine, I
suppose?”
Inspector Neele said sharply:
“The Blackbird Mine? What was that?”
Lance frowned in a puzzled fashion.
“The trouble is, Inspector, that I can’t really remember much myself. I just
have a vague idea about some shady transaction in my papa’s past. Something on
the West Coast of Africa. Aunt Effie, I believe, once threw it in his teeth,
but I can’t remember anything definite about it.”
“Aunt Effie? That will be Miss Ramsbottom, won’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go and ask her about it,” said Inspector Neele. He added ruefully:
“She’s rather a formidable old lady, Mr. Fortescue. Always makes me feel quite
nervous.”
Lance laughed.
“Yes. Aunt Effie is certainly a character, but she may be helpful to you,
Inspector, if you get on the right side of her. Especially if you’re delving
into the past. She’s got an excellent memory, she takes a positive pleasure in
remembering anything that’s detrimental in any way.” He added thoughtfully:
“There’s something else. I went up to see her, you know, soon after I got back
here. Immediately after tea that day, as a matter of fact. And she was talking
about Gladys. The maid who got killed. Not that we knew she was dead then, of
course. But Aunt Effie was saying she was quite convinced that Gladys knew
something that she hadn’t told the police.”
“That seems fairly certain,” said Inspector Neele. “She’ll never tell it now,
poor girl.”
“No. It seems Aunt Effie had given her good advice as to spilling anything she
knew. Pity the girl didn’t take it.”
Inspector Neele nodded. Bracing himself for the encounter he penetrated to
Miss Ramsbottom’s fortress. Rather to his surprise, he found Miss Marple
there. The two ladies appeared to be discussing foreign missions.
“I’ll go away, Inspector.” Miss Marple rose hurriedly to her feet.
“No need, madam,” said Inspector Neele.
“I’ve asked Miss Marple to come and stay in the house,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
“No sense in spending money in that ridiculous Golf Hotel. A wicked nest of
profiteers, that is. Drinking and card playing all the evening. She’d better
come and stay in a decent Christian household. There’s a room next door to
mine. Dr. Mary Peters, the missionary, had it last.”
“It’s very, very kind of you,” said Miss Marple, “but I really think I mustn’t
intrude in a house of mourning.”
“Mourning? Fiddlesticks,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Who’ll weep for Rex in this
house? Or Adele either? Or is it the police you’re worried about? Any
objections, Inspector?”
“None from me, madam.”
“There you are,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
“It’s very kind of you,” said Miss Marple gratefully. “I’ll go and telephone
to the hotel to cancel my booking.” She left the room and Miss Ramsbottom said
sharply to the inspector:
“Well, and what do you want?”
“I wondered if you could tell me anything about the Blackbird Mine, ma’am.”
Miss Ramsbottom uttered a sudden, shrill cackle of laughter.
“Ha. You’ve got on to that, have you! Took the hint I gave you the other day.
Well, what do you want to know about it?”
“Anything you can tell me, madam.”
“I can’t tell you much. It’s a long time ago now—oh, twenty to twenty-five
years maybe. Some concession or other in East Africa. My brother-in-law went
into it with a man called MacKenzie. They went out there to investigate the
mine together and MacKenzie died out there of fever. Rex came home and said
the claim or the concession or whatever you call it was worthless. That’s all
I know.”
“I think you know a little more than that, ma’am,” said Neele persuasively.
“Anything else is hearsay. You don’t like hearsay in the law, so I’ve been
told.”
“We’re not in court yet, ma’am.”
“Well, I can’t tell you anything. The MacKenzies kicked up a fuss. That’s all
I know. They insisted that Rex had swindled MacKenzie. I daresay he did. He
was a clever, unscrupulous fellow, but I’ve no doubt whatever he did it was
all legal. They couldn’t prove anything. Mrs. MacKenzie was an unbalanced sort
of woman. She came here and made a lot of threats of revenge. Said Rex had
murdered her husband. Silly, melodramatic fuss! I think she was a bit off her
head—in fact, I believe she went into an asylum not long after. Came here
dragging along a couple of young children who looked scared to death. Said
she’d bring up her children to have revenge. Something like that. Tomfoolery,
all of it. Well, that’s all I can tell you. And mind you, the Blackbird Mine
wasn’t the only swindle that Rex put over in his lifetime. You’ll find a good
many more if you look for them. What put you on to the Blackbird? Did you come
across some trail leading to the MacKenzies?”
“You don’t know what became of the family, ma’am?”
“No idea,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Mind you, I don’t think Rex would have
actually murdered MacKenzie, but he might have left him to die. The same thing
before the Lord, but not the same thing before the law. If he did,
retribution’s caught up with him. The mills of God grind slowly, but they
grind exceeding small—you’d better go away now, I can’t tell you anymore and
it’s no good your asking.”
“Thank you very much for what you have told me,” said Inspector Neele.
“Send that Marple woman back,” Miss Ramsbottom called after him. “She’s
frivolous, like all Church of England people, but she knows how to run a
charity in a sensible way.”
Inspector Neele made a couple of telephone calls, the first to Ansell and
Worrall and the second to the Golf Hotel, then he summoned Sergeant Hay and
told him that he was leaving the house for a short period.
“I’ve a call to pay at a solicitor’s office—after that, you can get me at the
Golf Hotel if anything urgent turns up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And find out anything you can about blackbirds,” added Neele over his
shoulder.
“Blackbirds, sir?” Sergeant Hay repeated, thoroughly mystified.
“That’s what I said—not blackberry jelly—blackbirds.”
“Very good, sir,” said Sergeant Hay bewilderedly.
Chapter Seventeen
I
Inspector Neele found Mr. Ansell the type of solicitor who was more easily
intimidated than intimidating. A member of a small and not very prosperous
firm, he was anxious not to stand upon his rights but instead to assist the
police in every way possible.
Yes, he said, he had made a will for the late Mrs. Adele Fortescue. She had
called at his office about five weeks previously. It had seemed to him rather
a peculiar business but naturally he had not said anything. Peculiar things
did happen in a solicitor’s business, and of course the inspector would
understand that discretion, etc., etc. The inspector nodded to show he
understood. He had already discovered Mr. Ansell had not transacted any legal
business previously for Mrs. Fortescue or for any of the Fortescue family.
“Naturally,” said Mr. Ansell, “she didn’t want to go to her husband’s firm of
lawyers about this.”
Shorn of verbiage, the facts were simple. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Adele Fortescue had made a will
leaving everything of which she died possessed to Vivian Dubois.
“But I gathered,” said Mr. Ansell, looking at Neele in an interrogating
manner, “that she hadn’t actually much to leave.”
Inspector Neele nodded. At the time Adele Fortescue made her will that was
true enough. But since then Rex Fortescue had died, and Adele Fortescue had
inherited £100,000 and presumably that £100,000 (less death duties) now
belonged to Vivian Edward Dubois.
II
At the Golf Hotel, Inspector Neele found Vivian Dubois nervously awaiting his
arrival. Dubois had been on the point of leaving, indeed his bags were packed,
when he had received over the telephone a civil request from Inspector Neele
to remain. Inspector Neele had been very pleasant about it, quite apologetic.
But behind the conventional words the request had been an order. Vivian Dubois
had demurred, but not too much.
He said now:
“I do hope you realize, Inspector Neele, that it is very inconvenient for me
to have to stay on. I really have urgent business that needs attending to.”
“I didn’t know you were in business, Mr. Dubois,” said Inspector Neele,
genially.
“I’m afraid none of us can be as leisured as we would like to appear to be
nowadays.”
“Mrs. Fortescue’s death must have been a great shock to you, Mr. Dubois. You
were great friends, were you not?”
“Yes,” said Dubois, “she was a charming woman. We played golf quite often
together.”
“I expect you’ll miss her very much.”
“Yes, indeed.” Dubois sighed. “The whole thing is really quite, quite
terrible.”
“You actually telephoned her, I believe, on the afternoon of her death?”
“Did I? I really cannot remember now.”
“About four o’clock, I understand.”
“Yes, I believe I did.”
“Don’t you remember what your conversation was about, Mr. Dubois?”
“It wasn’t of any significance. I think I asked her how she was feeling and if
there was any further news about her husband’s death—a more or less
conventional inquiry.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele. He added: “And then you went out for a walk?”
“Er—yes—yes, I—I did, I think. At least, not a walk, I played a few holes of
golf.”
Inspector Neele said gently:
“I think not, Mr. Dubois . . . Not that particular day . . . The porter here
noticed you walking down the road towards Yewtree Lodge.”
Dubois’s eyes met his, then shied away again nervously.
“I’m afraid I can’t remember, Inspector.”
“Perhaps you actually went to call upon Mrs. Fortescue?”
Dubois said sharply:
“No. No, I didn’t do that. I never went near the house.”
“Where did you go, then?”
“Oh, I—went on down the road, down as far as the Three Pigeons and then I
turned around and came back by the links.”
“You’re quite sure you didn’t go to Yewtree Lodge?”
“Quite sure, Inspector.”
The inspector shook his head.
“Come, now, Mr. Dubois,” he said, “it’s much better to be frank with us, you
know. You may have had some quite innocent reason for going there.”
“I tell you I never went to see Mrs. Fortescue that day.”
The inspector stood up.
“You know, Mr. Dubois,” he said pleasantly, “I think we’ll have to ask you for
a statement and you’ll be well-advised and quite within your rights in having
a solicitor present when you are making that statement.”
The colour fled from Mr. Dubois’s face, leaving it a sickly greenish colour.
“You’re threatening me,” he said. “You’re threatening me.”
“No, no, nothing of the kind.” Inspector Neele spoke in a shocked voice.
“We’re not allowed to do anything of that sort. Quite the contrary. I’m
actually pointing out to you that you have certain rights.”
“I had nothing to do with it at all, I tell you! Nothing to do with it.”
“Come now, Mr. Dubois, you were at Yewtree Lodge round about half past four on
that day. Somebody looked out of the window, you know, and saw you.”
“I was only in the garden. I didn’t go into the house.”
“Didn’t you?” said Inspector Neele. “Are you sure? Didn’t you go in by the
side door and up the stairs to Mrs. Fortescue’s sitting room on the first
floor? You were looking for something, weren’t you, in the desk there?”
“You’ve got them, I suppose,” said Dubois sullenly. “That fool Adele kept
them, then—she swore she burnt them—But they don’t mean what you think they
mean.”
“You’re not denying, are you, Mr. Dubois, that you were a very close friend of
Mrs. Fortescue’s?”
“No, of course I’m not. How can I when you’ve got the letters? All I say is,
there’s no need to go reading any sinister meaning into them. Don’t think for
a moment that we—that she—ever thought of getting rid of Rex Fortescue. Good
God, I’m not that kind of man!”
“But perhaps she was that kind of woman?”
“Nonsense,” cried Vivian Dubois, “wasn’t she killed too?”
“Oh yes, yes.”
“Well, isn’t it natural to believe that the same person who killed her husband
killed her?”
“It might be. It certainly might be. But there are other solutions. For
instance—(this is quite a hypothetical case, Mr. Dubois) it’s possible that
Mrs. Fortescue got rid of her husband, and that after his death she became
somewhat of a danger to someone else. Someone who had, perhaps, not helped her
in what she had done but who had at least encouraged her and provided, shall
we say, the motive for the deed. She might be, you know, a danger to that
particular person.”
Dubois stammered:
“You c-c-can’t build up a case against me. You can’t.”
“She made a will, you know,” said Inspector Neele. “She left all her money to
you. Everything she possessed.”
“I don’t want the money. I don’t want a penny of it.”
“Of course, it isn’t very much really,” said Inspector Neele. “There’s
jewellery and some furs, but I imagine very little actual cash.”
Dubois stared at him, his jaw dropping.
“But I thought her husband—”
He stopped dead.
“Did you, Mr. Dubois?” said Inspector Neele, and there was steel now in his
voice. “That’s very interesting. I wondered if you knew the terms of Rex
Fortescue’s will—”
III
Inspector Neele’s second interview at the Golf Hotel was with Mr. Gerald
Wright. Mr. Gerald Wright was a thin, intellectual and very superior young
man. He was, Inspector Neele noted, not unlike Vivian Dubois in build.
“What can I do for you, Inspector Neele?” he asked.
“I thought you might be able to help us with a little information, Mr.
Wright.”
“Information? Really? It seems very unlikely.”
“It’s in connection with the recent events at Yewtree Lodge. You’ve heard of
them, of course?”
Inspector Neele put a little irony into the question. Mr. Wright smiled
patronisingly.
“Heard of them,” he said, “is hardly the right word. The newspapers appear to
be full of nothing else. How incredibly bloodthirsty our public press is! What
an age we live in! On one side the manufacture of atom bombs, on the other our
newspapers delight in reporting brutal murders! But you said you had some
questions to ask. Really, I cannot see what they can be. I know nothing about
this Yewtree Lodge affair. I was actually in the Isle of Man when Mr. Rex
Fortescue was killed.”
“You arrived here very shortly afterwards, didn’t you, Mr. Wright? You had a
telegram, I believe, from Miss Elaine Fortescue.”
“Our police know everything, do they not? Yes, Elaine sent for me. I came, of
course, at once.”
“And you are, I understand, shortly to be married?”
“Quite right, Inspector Neele. You have no objections, I hope.”
“It is entirely Miss Fortescue’s business. I understand the attachment between
you dates from sometime back? | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
I understand the attachment between
you dates from sometime back? Six or seven months ago, in fact?”
“Quite correct.”
“You and Miss Fortescue became engaged to be married. Mr. Fortescue refused to
give his consent, informed you that if his daughter married against his wishes
he did not propose to give her an income of any kind. Whereupon, I understand,
you broke off the engagement and departed.”
Gerald Wright smiled rather pityingly.
“A very crude way of putting things, Inspector Neele. Actually, I was
victimized for my political opinions. Rex Fortescue was the worst type of
capitalist. Naturally I could not sacrifice my political beliefs and
convictions for money.”
“But you have no objections to marrying a wife who has just inherited
£50,000?”
Gerald Wright gave a thin satisfied smile.
“Not at all, Inspector Neele. The money will be used for the benefit of the
community. But surely you did not come here to discuss with me either my
financial circumstances—or my political convictions?”
“No, Mr. Wright. I wanted to talk to you about a simple question of fact. As
you are aware, Mrs. Adele Fortescue died as a result of cyanide poisoning on
the afternoon of November the 5th.
“Since you were in the neighbourhood of Yewtree Lodge on that afternoon I
thought it possible that you might have seen or heard something that had a
bearing on the case.”
“And what leads you to believe that I was, as you call it, in the
neighbourhood of Yewtree Lodge at the time?”
“You left this hotel at a quarter past four on that particular afternoon, Mr.
Wright. On leaving the hotel you walked down the road in the direction of
Yewtree Lodge. It seems natural to suppose that you were going there.”
“I thought of it,” said Gerald Wright, “but I considered that it would be a
rather pointless thing to do. I already had an arrangement to meet Miss
Fortescue—Elaine—at the hotel at six o’clock. I went for a walk along a lane
that branches off from the main road and returned to the Golf Hotel just
before six o’clock. Elaine did not keep her appointment. Quite naturally,
under the circumstances.”
“Anybody see you on this walk of yours, Mr. Wright?”
“A few cars passed me, I think, on the road. I did not see anyone I knew, if
that’s what you mean. The lane was little more than a cart-track and too muddy
for cars.”
“So between the time you left the hotel at a quarter past four until six
o’clock when you arrived back again, I’ve only your word for it as to where
you were?”
Gerald Wright continued to smile in a superior fashion.
“Very distressing for us both, Inspector, but there it is.”
Inspector Neele said softly:
“Then if someone said they looked out of a landing window and saw you in the
garden of Yewtree Lodge at about 4:35—” he paused and left the sentence
unfinished.
Gerald Wright raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
“Visibility must have been very bad by then,” he said. “I think it would be
difficult for anyone to be sure.”
“Are you acquainted with Mr. Vivian Dubois, who is also staying here?”
“Dubois. Dubois? No, I don’t think so. Is that the tall, dark man with a
pretty taste in suede shoes?”
“Yes. He also was out for a walk that afternoon, and he also left the hotel
and walked past Yewtree Lodge. You did not notice him in the road by any
chance?”
“No. No. I can’t say I did.”
Gerald Wright looked for the first time faintly worried. Inspector Neele said
thoughtfully:
“It wasn’t really a very nice afternoon for walking, especially after dark in
a muddy lane. Curious how energetic everyone seems to have felt.”
IV
On Inspector Neele’s return to the house he was greeted by Sergeant Hay with
an air of satisfaction.
“I’ve found out about the blackbirds for you, sir,” he said.
“You have, have you?”
“Yes, sir, in a pie they were. Cold pie was left out for Sunday night’s
supper. Somebody got at that pie in the larder or somewhere. They’d taken off
the crust and they’d taken out the veal and ’am what was inside it, and what
d’you think they put in instead? Some stinkin’ blackbirds they got out of the
gardener’s shed. Nasty sort of trick to play, wasn’t it?”
“ ‘Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?’ ” said Inspector Neele.
He left Sergeant Hay staring after him.
Chapter Eighteen
I
“Just wait a minute,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “This patience is going to come
out.”
She transferred a king and his various impedimenta into an empty space, put a
red seven on a black eight, built up the four, five and six of spades on her
foundation heap, made a few more rapid transfers of cards and then leaned back
with a sign of satisfaction.
“That’s the Double Jester,” she said. “It doesn’t often come out.”
She leaned back in a satisfied fashion, then raised her eyes at the girl
standing by the fireplace.
“So you’re Lance’s wife,” she said.
Pat, who had been summoned upstairs to Miss Ramsbottom’s presence, nodded her
head.
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re a tall girl,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and you look healthy.”
“I’m very healthy.”
Miss Ramsbottom nodded in a satisfied manner.
“Percival’s wife is pasty,” she said. “Eats too many sweets and doesn’t take
enough exercise. Well, sit down, child, sit down. Where did you meet my
nephew?”
“I met him out in Kenya when I was staying there with some friends.”
“You’ve been married before, I understand.”
“Yes. Twice.”
Miss Ramsbottom gave a profound sniff.
“Divorce, I suppose.”
“No,” said Pat. Her voice trembled a little. “They both—died. My first husband
was a fighter pilot. He was killed in the war.”
“And your second husband? Let me see—somebody told me. Shot himself, didn’t
he?”
Pat nodded.
“Your fault?”
“No,” said Pat. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Racing man, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never been on a race course in my life,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Betting
and card playing—all devices of the devil!”
Pat did not reply.
“I wouldn’t go inside a theatre or a cinema,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Ah, well,
it’s a wicked world nowadays. A lot of wickedness was going on in this house,
but the Lord struck them down.”
Pat still found it difficult to say anything. She wondered if Lance’s Aunt
Effie was really quite all there. She was, however, a trifle disconcerted by
the old lady’s shrewd glance at her.
“How much,” demanded Aunt Effie, “do you know about the family you’ve married
into?”
“I suppose,” said Pat, “as much as one ever knows of the family one marries
into.”
“H’m, something in that, something in that. Well, I’ll tell you this. My
sister was a fool, my brother-in-law was a rogue, Percival is a sneak, and
your Lance was always the bad boy of the family.”
“I think that’s all nonsense,” said Pat robustly.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Miss Ramsbottom, unexpectedly. “You can’t just
stick labels on people. But don’t underestimate Percival. There’s a tendency
to believe that those who are labelled good are also stupid. Percival isn’t
the least bit stupid. He’s quite clever in a sanctimonious kind of way. I’ve
never cared for him. Mind you, I don’t trust Lance and I don’t approve of him,
but I can’t help being fond of him . . . He’s a reckless sort of fellow—always
has been. You’ve got to look after him and see he doesn’t go too far. Tell him
not to underestimate Percival, my dear. Tell him not to believe everything
that Percival says. They’re all liars in this house.” The old lady added with
satisfaction: “Fire and brimstone shall be their portion.”
II
Inspector Neele was finishing a telephone conversation with Scotland Yard.
The assistant commissioner at the other end said:
“We ought to be able to get that information for you—by circularizing the
various private sanatoriums. Of course she may be dead.”
“Probably is. It’s a long time ago.”
Old sins cast long shadows. Miss Ramsbottom had said that—said it with a
significance, too—as though she was giving him a hint.
“It’s a fantastic theory,” said the AC. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“It’s a fantastic theory,” said the AC.
“Don’t I know it, sir. But I don’t feel we can ignore it altogether. Too much
fits in—”
“Yes—yes—rye—blackbirds—the man’s Christian name—”
Neele said:
“I’m concentrating on the other lines too—Dubois is a possibility—so is
Wright—the girl Gladys could have caught sight of either of them outside the
side door—she could have left the tea tray in the hall and gone out to see who
it was and what they were doing—whoever it was could have strangled her then
and there and then carried her body round to the clothesline and put the peg
on her nose—”
“A crazy thing to do in all conscience! A nasty one too.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what upset the old lady—Miss Marple, I mean. Nice old
lady—and very shrewd. She’s moved into the house—to be near old Miss
Ramsbottom—and I’ve no doubt she’ll get to hear anything that’s going.”
“What’s your next move, Neele?”
“I’ve an appointment with the London solicitors. I want to find out a little
more about Rex Fortescue’s affairs. And though it’s old history, I want to
hear a little more about the Blackbird Mine.”
III
Mr. Billingsley, of Billingsley, Horsethorpe & Walters, was an urbane man
whose discretion was concealed habitually by a misleadingly forthcoming
manner. It was the second interview that Inspector Neele had had with him, and
on this occasion Mr. Billingsley’s discretion was less noticeable than it had
been on the former one. The triple tragedy at Yewtree Lodge had shaken Mr.
Billingsley out of his professional reserve. He was now only too anxious to
put all the facts he could before the police.
“Most extraordinary business, this whole thing,” he said. “A most
extraordinary business. I don’t remember anything like it in all my
professional career.”
“Frankly, Mr. Billingsley,” said Inspector Neele, “we need all the help we can
get.”
“You can count on me, my dear sir. I shall be only too happy to assist you in
every way I can.”
“First let me ask you how well you knew the late Mr. Fortescue, and how well
do you know the affairs of his firm?”
“I knew Rex Fortescue fairly well. That is to say I’ve known him for a period
of, well, sixteen years I should say. Mind you, we are not the only firm of
solicitors he employed, not by a long way.”
Inspector Neele nodded. He knew that. Billingsley, Horsethorpe & Walters were
what one might describe as Rex Fortescue’s reputable solicitors. For his less
reputable dealings he had employed several different and slightly less
scrupulous firms.
“Now what do you want to know?” continued Mr. Billingsley. “I’ve told you
about his will. Percival Fortescue is the residuary legatee.”
“I’m interested now,” said Inspector Neele, “in the will of his widow. On Mr.
Fortescue’s death she came into the sum of one hundred thousand pounds, I
understand?”
Billingsley nodded his head.
“A considerable sum of money,” he said, “and I may tell you in confidence,
Inspector, that it is one the firm could ill have afforded to pay out.”
“The firm, then, is not prosperous?”
“Frankly,” said Mr. Billingsley, “and strictly between ourselves, it’s
drifting onto the rocks and has been for the last year and a half.”
“For any particular reason?”
“Why yes. I should say the reason was Rex Fortescue himself. For the last year
Rex Fortescue’s been acting like a madman. Selling good stock here, buying
speculative stuff there, talking big about it all the time in the most
extraordinary way. Wouldn’t listen to advice. Percival—the son, you know—he
came here urging me to use my influence with his father. He’d tried,
apparently and been swept aside. Well, I did what I could, but Fortescue
wouldn’t listen to reason. Really, he seems to have been a changed man.”
“But not, I gather, a depressed man,” said Inspector Neele.
“No, no. Quite the contrary. Flamboyant, bombastic.”
Inspector Neele nodded. An idea which had already taken form in his mind was
strengthened. He thought he was beginning to understand some of the causes of
friction between Percival and his father. Mr. Billingsley was continuing:
“But it’s no good asking me about the wife’s will. I didn’t make any will for
her.”
“No. I know that,” said Neele. “I’m merely verifying that she had something to
leave. In short, a hundred thousand pounds.”
Mr. Billingsley was shaking his head violently.
“No, no, my dear sir. You’re wrong there.”
“Do you mean the hundred thousand pounds was only left to her for her
lifetime?”
“No—no—it was left to her outright. But there was a clause in the will
governing that bequest. That is to say, Fortescue’s wife did not inherit the
sum unless she survived him for one month. That, I may say, is a clause fairly
common nowadays. It has come into operation owing to the uncertainties of air
travel. If two people are killed in an air accident, it becomes exceedingly
difficult to say who was the survivor and a lot of very curious problems
arise.”
Inspector Neele was staring at him.
“Then Adele Fortescue had not got a hundred thousand pounds to leave. What
happens to that money?”
“It goes back into the firm. Or rather, I should say, it goes to the residuary
legatee.”
“And the residuary legatee is Mr. Percival Fortescue.”
“That’s right,” said Billingsley, “it goes to Percival Fortescue. And with the
state the firm’s affairs are in,” he added unguardedly, “I should say that
he’ll need it!”
IV
“The things you policemen want to know,” said Inspector Neele’s doctor friend.
“Come on, Bob, spill it.”
“Well, as we’re alone together you can’t quote me, fortunately! But I should
say, you know, that your idea’s dead right. GPI by the sound of it all. The
family suspected it and wanted to get him to see a doctor. He wouldn’t. It
acts just in the way you describe. Loss of judgment, megalomania, violent fits
of irritation and anger—boastfulness—delusions of grandeur—of being a great
financial genius. Anyone suffering from that would soon put a solvent firm on
the rocks—unless he could be restrained—and that’s not so easy to
do—especially if the man himself has an idea of what you’re after. Yes—I
should say it was a bit of luck for your friends that he died.”
“They’re no friends of mine,” said Neele. He repeated what he had once said
before:
“They’re all very unpleasant people. . . .”
Chapter Nineteen
In the drawing room at Yewtree Lodge, the whole Fortescue family was
assembled. Percival Fortescue, leaning against the mantelpiece, was addressing
the meeting.
“It’s all very well,” said Percival. “But the whole position is most
unsatisfactory. The police come and go and don’t tell us anything. One
supposes they’re pursuing some line of research. In the meantime everything’s
at a standstill. One can’t make plans, one can’t arrange things for the
future.”
“It’s all so inconsiderate,” said Jennifer. “And so stupid.”
“There still seems to be this ban against anyone leaving the house,” went on
Percival. “Still, I think among ourselves we might discuss future plans. What
about you, Elaine? I gather you’re going to marry—what’s-his-name—Gerald
Wright? Have you any idea when?”
“As soon as possible,” said Elaine.
Percival frowned.
“You mean, in about six months’ time?”
“No, I don’t. Why should we wait six months?”
“I think it would be more decent,” said Percival.
“Rubbish,” said Elaine. “A month. That’s the longest we’ll wait.”
“Well, it’s for you to say,” said Percival. “And what are your plans when you
are married, if you have any?”
“We’re thinking of starting a school.”
Percival shook his head.
“That’s a very risky speculation in these times. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“That’s a very risky speculation in these times. What with the shortage of
domestic labour, the difficulty of getting an adequate teaching staff—really,
Elaine, it sounds all right. But I should think twice about it if I were you.”
“We have thought. Gerald feels that the whole future of this country lies in
right education.”
“I am seeing Mr. Billingsley the day after tomorrow,” said Percival. “We’ve
got to go into various questions of finance. He was suggesting that you might
like to make this money that’s been left to you by Father into a trust for
yourself and your children. It’s a very sound thing to do nowadays.”
“I don’t want to do that,” said Elaine. “We shall need the money to start up
our school. There’s a very suitable house we’ve heard of for sale. It’s in
Cornwall. Beautiful grounds and quite a good house. It would have to be built
onto a good deal—several wings added.”
“You mean—you mean you’re going to take all your money out of the business?
Really, Elaine, I don’t think you’re wise.”
“Much wiser to take it out than leave it in, I should say,” said Elaine.
“Businesses are going phut all over the place. You said yourself, Val, before
Father died, that things were getting into a pretty bad state.”
“One says that sort of thing,” said Percival vaguely, “but I must say, Elaine,
to take out all your capital and sink it in the buying, equipping and running
of a school is crazy. If it’s not a success, look what happens? You’re left
without a penny.”
“It will be a success,” said Elaine, doggedly.
“I’m with you.” Lance, lying sprawled out in a chair, spoke up encouragingly.
“Have a crack at it, Elaine. In my opinion it’ll be a damned odd sort of
school, but it’s what you want to do—you and Gerald. If you do lose your money
you’ll at any rate have had the satisfaction of doing what you wanted to do.”
“Just what one might have expected you to say, Lance,” said Percival, acidly.
“I know, I know,” said Lance. “I’m the spendthrift prodigal son. But I still
think I’ve had more fun out of life than you have, Percy, old boy.”
“It depends on what you call fun,” said Percival coldly. “Which brings us to
your own plans, Lance. I suppose you’ll be off again back to Kenya—or
Canada—or climbing Mount Everest or something fairly fantastic?”
“Now what makes you think that?” said Lance.
“Well, you’ve never had much use for a stay-at-home life in England, have
you?”
“One changes as one gets older,” said Lance. “One settles down. D’you know,
Percy my boy, I’m quite looking forward to having a crack at being a sober
business man.”
“Do you mean. . . .”
“I mean I’m coming into the firm with you, old boy.” Lance grinned. “Oh,
you’re the senior partner, of course. You’ve got the lion’s share. I’m only a
very junior partner. But I have got a holding in it that gives me the right to
be in on things, doesn’t it?”
“Well—yes—of course, if you put it that way. But I can assure you, my dear
boy, you’ll be very, very bored.”
“I wonder now. I don’t believe I shall be bored.”
Percival frowned.
“You don’t seriously mean, Lance, that you’re coming into the business?”
“Having a finger in the pie? Yes, that’s exactly what I am doing.”
Percival shook his head.
“Things are in a very bad way, you know. You’ll find that out. It’s going to
be about all we can do to pay out Elaine her share, if she insists on having
it paid out.”
“There you are, Elaine,” said Lance. “You see how wise you were to insist on
grabbing your money while it’s still there to grab.”
“Really, Lance,” Percival spoke angrily, “these jokes of yours are in bad
taste.”
“I do think, Lance, you might be more careful what you say,” said Jennifer.
Sitting a little way away near the window, Pat studied them one by one. If
this was what Lance had meant by twisting Percival’s tail, she could see that
he was achieving his object. Percival’s neat impassivity was quite ruffled. He
snapped again, angrily:
“Are you serious, Lance?”
“Dead serious.”
“It won’t work, you know. You’ll soon get fed up.”
“Not me. Think what a lovely change it’ll be for me. A city office, typists
coming and going. I shall have a blonde secretary like Miss Grosvenor—is it
Grosvenor? I suppose you’ve snaffled her. But I shall get one just like her.
‘Yes, Mr. Lancelot; no, Mr. Lancelot. Your tea, Mr. Lancelot.’ ”
“Oh, don’t play the fool,” snapped Percival.
“Why are you so angry, my dear brother? Don’t you look forward to having me
sharing your city cares?”
“You haven’t the least conception of the mess everything’s in.”
“No. You’ll have to put me wise to all that.”
“First you’ve got to understand that for the last six months—no, more, a year,
Father’s not been himself. He’s done the most incredibly foolish things,
financially. Sold out good stock, acquired various wildcat holdings. Sometimes
he’s really thrown away money hand over fist. Just, one might say, for the fun
of spending it.”
“In fact,” said Lance, “it’s just as well for the family that he had taxine in
his tea.”
“That’s a very ugly way of putting it, but in essence you’re quite right. It’s
about the only thing that saved us from bankruptcy. But we shall have to be
extremely conservative and go very cautiously for a bit.”
Lance shook his head.
“I don’t agree with you. Caution never does anyone any good. You must take a
few risks, strike out. You must go for something big.”
“I don’t agree,” said Percy. “Caution and economy. Those are our watchwords.”
“Not mine,” said Lance.
“You’re only the junior partner, remember,” said Percival.
“All right, all right. But I’ve got a little say-so all the same.”
Percival walked up and down the room agitatedly.
“It’s no good, Lance. I’m fond of you and all that—”
“Are you?” Lance interpolated. Percival did not appear to hear him.
“. . . but I really don’t think we’re going to pull together at all. Our
outlooks are totally different.”
“That may be an advantage,” said Lance.
“The only sensible thing,” said Percival, “is to dissolve the partnership.”
“You’re going to buy me out—is that the idea?”
“My dear boy, it’s the only sensible thing to do, with our ideas so
different.”
“If you find it hard to pay Elaine out her legacy, how are you going to manage
to pay me my share?”
“Well, I didn’t mean in cash,” said Percival. “We could—er—divide up the
holdings.”
“With you keeping the gilt-edged and me taking the worst of the speculative
off you, I suppose?”
“They seem to be what you prefer,” said Percival.
Lance grinned suddenly.
“You’re right in a way, Percy, old boy. But I can’t indulge my own taste
entirely. I’ve got Pat here to think of.”
Both men looked towards her. Pat opened her mouth, then shut it again.
Whatever game Lance was playing, it was best that she should not interfere.
That Lance was driving at something special, she was quite sure, but she was
still a little uncertain as to what his actual object was.
“Line ’em up, Percy,” said Lance, laughing. “Bogus Diamond Mines, Inaccessible
Rubies, the Oil Concessions where no oil is. Do you think I’m quite as big a
fool as I look?”
Percival said:
“Of course, some of these holdings are highly speculative, but remember, they
may turn out immensely valuable.”
“Changed your tune, haven’t you?” said Lance, grinning. “Going to offer me
father’s latest wildcat acquisition as well as the old Blackbird Mine and
things of that kind. By the way, has the inspector been asking you about this
Blackbird Mine?”
Percival frowned.
“Yes, he did. I can’t imagine what he wanted to know about it. I couldn’t tell
him much. You and I were children at the time. I just remember vaguely that
Father went out there and came back saying the whole thing was no good.”
“What was it—a gold mine?”
“I believe so. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Father came back pretty certain that there was no gold there.
And, mind you, he wasn’t the sort of man to be mistaken.”
“Who got him into it? A man called MacKenzie, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. MacKenzie died out there.”
“MacKenzie died out there,” said Lance thoughtfully. “Wasn’t there a terrific
scene? I seem to remember . . . Mrs. MacKenzie, wasn’t it? Came here. Ranted
and stormed at Father. Hurled down curses on his head. She accused him, if I
remember rightly, of murdering her husband.”
“Really,” said Percival repressively. “I can’t recollect anything of the
kind.”
“I remember it, though,” said Lance. “I was a good bit younger than you, of
course. Perhaps that’s why it appealed to me. As a child it struck me as full
of drama. Where was Blackbird? West Africa wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I must look up the concession sometime,” said Lance, “when I’m at the
office.”
“You can be quite sure,” said Percival, “that Father made no mistake. If he
came back saying there was no gold, there was no gold.”
“You’re probably right there,” said Lance. “Poor Mrs. MacKenzie. I wonder what
happened to her and to those two kids she brought along. Funny—they must be
grown-up by now.”
Chapter Twenty
At the Pinewood Private Sanatorium, Inspector Neele, sitting in the visitors’
parlour, was facing a grey-haired, elderly lady. Helen MacKenzie was sixty-
three, though she looked younger. She had pale blue, rather vacant-looking
eyes, and a weak, indeterminate chin. She had a long upper lip which
occasionally twitched. She held a large book in her lap and was looking down
at it as Inspector Neele talked to her. In Inspector Neele’s mind was the
conversation he had just had with Dr. Crosbie, the head of the establishment.
“She’s a voluntary patient, of course,” said Dr. Crosbie, “not certified.”
“She’s not dangerous, then?”
“Oh, no. Most of the time she’s as sane to talk to as you or me. It’s one of
her good periods now so that you’ll be able to have a perfectly normal
conversation with her.”
Bearing this in mind, Inspector Neele started his first conversational essay.
“It’s very kind of you to see me, madam,” he said. “My name is Neele. I’ve
come to see you about a Mr. Fortescue who has recently died. A Mr. Rex
Fortescue. I expect you know the name.”
Mrs. MacKenzie’s eyes were fixed on her book. She said:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mr. Fortescue, madam. Mr. Rex Fortescue.”
“No,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “No. Certainly not.”
Inspector Neele was slightly taken aback. He wondered whether this was what
Dr. Crosbie called being completely normal.
“I think, Mrs. MacKenzie, you knew him a good many years ago.”
“Not really,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “It was yesterday.”
“I see,” said Inspector Neele, falling back upon this formula rather
uncertainly. “I believe,” he went on, “that you paid him a visit many years
ago at his residence, Yewtree Lodge.”
“A very ostentatious house,” said Mrs. MacKenzie.
“Yes. Yes, you might call it that. He had been connected with your husband, I
believe, over a certain mine in Africa. The Blackbird Mine, I believe it was
called.”
“I have to read my book,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “There’s not much time and I
have to read my book.”
“Yes, madam. Yes, I quite see that.” There was a pause, then Inspector Neele
went on, “Mr. MacKenzie and Mr. Fortescue went out together to Africa to
survey the mine.”
“It was my husband’s mine,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “He found it and staked a
claim to it. He wanted money to capitalize it. He went to Rex Fortescue. If
I’d been wiser, if I’d known more, I wouldn’t have let him do it.”
“No, I see that. As it was, they went out together to Africa, and there your
husband died of fever.”
“I must read my book,” said Mrs. MacKenzie.
“Do you think Mr. Fortescue swindled your husband over the Blackbird Mine,
Mrs. MacKenzie?”
Without raising her eyes from the book, Mrs. MacKenzie said:
“How stupid you are.”
“Yes, yes, I dare say . . . But you see it’s all a long time ago and making
inquiries about a thing that is over a long time ago is rather difficult.”
“Who said it was over?”
“I see. You don’t think it is over?”
“No question is ever settled until it is settled right. Kipling said that.
Nobody reads Kipling nowadays, but he was a great man.”
“Do you think the question will be settled right one of these days?”
“Rex Fortescue is dead, isn’t he? You said so.”
“He was poisoned,” said Inspector Neele.
Rather disconcertingly, Mrs. MacKenzie laughed.
“What nonsense,” she said, “he died of fever.”
“I’m talking about Mr. Rex Fortescue.”
“So am I.” She looked up suddenly and her pale blue eyes fixed his. “Come
now,” she said, “he died in his bed, didn’t he? He died in his bed?”
“He died in St. Jude’s Hospital,” said Inspector Neele.
“Nobody knows where my husband died,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “Nobody knows how
he died or where he was buried . . . All anyone knows is what Rex Fortescue
said. And Rex Fortescue was a liar!”
“Do you think there may have been foul play?”
“Foul play, foul play, fowls lay eggs, don’t they?”
“You think that Rex Fortescue was responsible for your husband’s death?”
“I had an egg for breakfast this morning,” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “Quite fresh,
too. Surprising, isn’t it, when one thinks that it was thirty years ago?”
Neele drew a deep breath. It seemed unlikely that he was ever going to get
anywhere at this rate, but he persevered.
“Somebody put dead blackbirds on Rex Fortescue’s desk about a month or two
before he died.”
“That’s interesting. That’s very, very interesting.”
“Have you any idea, madam, who might have done that?”
“Ideas aren’t any help to one. One has to have action. I brought them up for
that, you know, to take action.”
“You’re talking about your children?”
She nodded her head rapidly.
“Yes. Donald and Ruby. They were nine and seven and left without a father. I
told them. I told them every day. I made them swear it every night.”
Inspector Neele leant forward.
“What did you make them swear?”
“That they’d kill him, of course.”
“I see.”
Inspector Neele spoke as though it was the most reasonable remark in the
world.
“Did they?”
“Donald went to Dunkirk. He never came back. They sent me a wire saying he was
dead: ‘Deeply regret killed in action.’ Action, you see, the wrong kind of
action.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, madam. What about your daughter?”
“I haven’t got a daughter,” said Mrs. MacKenzie.
“You spoke of her just now,” said Neele. “Your daughter, Ruby.”
“Ruby. Yes, Ruby.” She leaned forward. “Do you know what I’ve done to Ruby?”
“No, madam. What have you done to her?”
She whispered suddenly:
“Look here at the Book.”
He saw then that what she was holding in her lap was a Bible. It was a very
old Bible and as she opened it, on the front page, Inspector Neele saw that
various names had been written. It was obviously a family Bible in which the
old-fashioned custom had been continued of entering each new birth. Mrs.
MacKenzie’s thin forefinger pointed to the two last names. “Donald MacKenzie”
with the date of his birth, and “Ruby MacKenzie” with the date of hers. But a
thick line was drawn through Ruby MacKenzie’s name.
“You see?” said Mrs. MacKenzie. “I struck her out of the Book. I cut her off
forever! | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“I struck her out of the Book. I cut her off
forever! The Recording Angel won’t find her name there.”
“You cut her name out of the book? Now, why, madam?”
Mrs. MacKenzie looked at him cunningly.
“You know why,” she said.
“But I don’t. Really, madam, I don’t.”
“She didn’t keep faith. You know she didn’t keep faith.”
“Where is your daughter now, madam?”
“I’ve told you. I have no daughter. There isn’t such a person as Ruby
MacKenzie any longer.”
“You mean she’s dead?”
“Dead?” The woman laughed suddenly. “It would be better for her if she were
dead. Much better. Much, much better.” She sighed and turned restlessly in her
seat. Then her manner reverting to a kind of formal courtesy, she said: “I’m
so sorry, but really I’m afraid I can’t talk to you any longer. You see, the
time is getting very short, and I must read my book.”
To Inspector Neele’s further remarks Mrs. MacKenzie returned no reply. She
merely made a faint gesture of annoyance and continued to read her Bible with
her finger following the line of the verse she was reading.
Neele got up and left. He had another brief interview with the superintendent.
“Do any of her relations come to see her?” he asked. “A daughter, for
instance?”
“I believe a daughter did come to see her in my predecessor’s time, but her
visit agitated the patient so much that he advised her not to come again.
Since then everything is arranged through solicitors.”
“And you’ve no idea where this Ruby MacKenzie is now?”
The superintendent shook his head.
“No idea whatsoever.”
“You’ve no idea whether she’s married, for instance?”
“I don’t know, all I can do is to give you the address of the solicitors who
deal with us.”
Inspector Neele had already tracked down those solicitors. They were unable,
or said they were unable, to tell him anything. A trust fund had been
established for Mrs. MacKenzie which they managed. These arrangements had been
made some years previously and they had not seen Miss MacKenzie since.
Inspector Neele tried to get a description of Ruby MacKenzie but the results
were not encouraging. So many relations came to visit patients that after a
lapse of years they were bound to be remembered dimly, with the appearance of
one mixed-up with the appearance of another. The matron who had been there for
many years seemed to remember that Miss MacKenzie was small and dark. The only
other nurse who had been there for any length of time recalled that she was
heavily built and fair.
“So there we are, sir,” said Inspector Neele as he reported to the assistant
commissioner. “There’s a whole crazy setup and it fits together. It must mean
something.”
The AC nodded thoughtfully.
“The blackbirds in the pie tying up with the Blackbird Mine, rye in the dead
man’s pocket, bread and honey with Adele Fortescue’s tea—(not that that is
conclusive. After all, anyone might have had bread and honey for tea!) The
third murder, that girl strangled with a stocking and a clothes-peg nipped
onto her nose. Yes, crazy as the setup is, it certainly can’t be ignored.”
“Half a minute, sir,” said Inspector Neele.
“What is it?”
Neele was frowning.
“You know, what you’ve just said. It didn’t ring true. It was wrong
somewhere.” He shook his head and sighed. “No. I can’t place it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I
Lance and Pat wandered round the well-kept grounds surrounding Yewtree Lodge.
“I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, Lance,” Pat murmured, “if I say this is
quite the nastiest garden I’ve ever been in.”
“It won’t hurt my feelings,” said Lance. “Is it? Really I don’t know. It seems
to have three gardeners working on it very industriously.”
Pat said:
“Probably that’s what’s wrong with it. No expense spared, no signs of an
individual taste. All the right rhododendrons and all the right bedding out
done in the proper season, I expect.”
“Well, what would you put in an English garden, Pat, if you had one?”
“My garden,” said Pat, “would have hollyhocks, larkspurs and Canterbury bells,
no bedding out and none of these horrible yews.”
She glanced up at the dark yew hedges, disparagingly.
“Association of ideas,” said Lance easily.
“There’s something awfully frightening about a poisoner,” said Pat. “I mean it
must be a horrid, brooding revengeful mind.”
“So that’s how you see it? Funny! I just think of it as businesslike and cold-
blooded.”
“I suppose one could look at it that way.” She resumed, with a slight shiver,
“All the same, to do three murders . . . Whoever did it must be mad.”
“Yes,” said Lance, in a low voice. “I’m afraid so.” Then breaking out sharply,
he said: “For God’s sake, Pat, do go away from here. Go back to London. Go
down to Devonshire or up to the Lakes. Go to Stratford-on-Avon or go and look
at the Norfolk Broads. The police wouldn’t mind your going—you had nothing to
do with all this. You were in Paris when the old man was killed and in London
when the other two died. I tell you it worries me to death to have you here.”
Pat paused a moment before saying quietly:
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you think you know . . . That’s why you’re frightened for me . . . I wish
you’d tell me.”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know anything. But I wish to God you’d go away from
here.”
“Darling,” said Pat. “I’m not going. I’m staying here. For better, for worse.
That’s how I feel about it.” She added, with a sudden catch in her voice:
“Only with me it’s always for worse.”
“What on earth do you mean, Pat?”
“I bring bad luck. That’s what I mean. I bring bad luck to anybody I come in
contact with.”
“My dear adorable nitwit, you haven’t brought bad luck to me. Look how after I
married you the old man sent for me to come home and make friends with him.”
“Yes, and what happened when you did come home? I tell you, I’m unlucky to
people.”
“Look here, my sweet, you’ve got a thing about all this. It’s superstition,
pure and simple.”
“I can’t help it. Some people do bring bad luck. I’m one of them.”
Lance took her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “You’re my Pat and to
be married to you is the greatest luck in the world. So get that into your
silly head.” Then, calming down, he said in a more sober voice: “But,
seriously, Pat, do be very careful. If there is someone unhinged round here, I
don’t want you to be the one who stops the bullet or drinks the henbane.”
“Or drinks the henbane as you say.”
“When I’m not around, stick to that old lady. What’s-her-name Marple. Why do
you think Aunt Effie asked her to stay here?”
“Goodness knows why Aunt Effie does anything. Lance, how long are we going to
stay here?”
Lance shrugged his shoulders.
“Difficult to say.”
“I don’t think,” said Pat, “that we’re really awfully welcome.” She hesitated
as she spoke the words. “The house belongs to your brother now, I suppose? He
doesn’t really want us here, does he?”
Lance chuckled suddenly.
“Not he, but he’s got to stick us for the present at any rate.”
“And afterwards? What are we going to do, Lance? Are we going back to East
Africa or what?”
“Is that what you’d like to do, Pat?”
She nodded vigorously.
“That’s lucky,” said Lance, “because it’s what I’d like to do, too. I don’t
take much to this country nowadays.”
Pat’s face brightened.
“How lovely. From what you said the other day, I was afraid you might want to
stop here.”
A devilish glint appeared in Lance’s eyes.
“You’re to hold your tongue about our plans, Pat,” he said. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
“You’re to hold your tongue about our plans, Pat,” he said. “I have it in my
mind to twist dear brother Percival’s tail a bit.”
“Oh, Lance, do be careful.”
“I’ll be careful, my sweet, but I don’t see why old Percy should get away with
everything.”
II
With her head a little on one side looking like an amiable cockatoo, Miss
Marple sat in the large drawing room listening to Mrs. Percival Fortescue.
Miss Marple looked particularly incongruous in the drawing room. Her light
spare figure was alien to the vast brocaded sofa in which she sat with its
many-hued cushions strewn around her. Miss Marple sat very upright because she
had been taught to use a backboard as a girl, and not to loll. In a large
armchair beside her, dressed in elaborate black, was Mrs. Percival, talking
away volubly at nineteen to the dozen. “Exactly,” thought Miss Marple, “like
poor Mrs. Emmett, the bank manager’s wife.” She remembered how one day Mrs.
Emmett had come to call and talk about the selling arrangements for Poppy Day,
and how after the preliminary business had been settled, Mrs. Emmett had
suddenly begun to talk and talk and talk. Mrs. Emmett occupied rather a
difficult position in St. Mary Mead. She did not belong to the old guard of
ladies in reduced circumstances who lived in neat houses around the church,
and who knew intimately all the ramifications of the county families even
though they might not be strictly county themselves. Mr. Emmett, the bank
manager, had undeniably married beneath him and the result was that his wife
was in a position of great loneliness since she could not, of course,
associate with the wives of the trades people. Snobbery here raised its
hideous head and marooned Mrs. Emmett on a permanent island of loneliness.
The necessity to talk grew upon Mrs. Emmett, and on that particular day it had
burst its bounds, and Miss Marple had received the full flood of the torrent.
She had been sorry for Mrs. Emmett then, and today she was rather sorry for
Mrs. Percival Fortescue.
Mrs. Percival had had a lot of grievances to bear and the relief of airing
them to a more or less total stranger was enormous.
“Of course I never want to complain,” said Mrs. Percival. “I’ve never been of
the complaining kind. What I always say is that one must put up with things.
What can’t be cured must be endured and I’m sure I’ve never said a word to
anyone. It’s really difficult to know who I could have spoken to. In someways
one is very isolated here—very isolated. It’s very convenient, of course, and
a great saving of expense to have our own set of rooms in this house. But of
course it’s not at all like having a place of your own. I’m sure you agree.”
Miss Marple said she agreed.
“Fortunately our new house is almost ready to move into. It is a question
really of getting the painters and decorators out. These men are so slow. My
husband, of course, has been quite satisfied living here. But then it’s
different for a man. Don’t you agree?”
Miss Marple agreed that it was very different for a man. She could say this
without a qualm as it was what she really believed. “The gentlemen” were, in
Miss Marple’s mind, in a totally different category to her own sex. They
required two eggs plus bacon for breakfast, three good nourishing meals a day
and were never to be contradicted or argued with before dinner. Mrs. Percival
went on.
“My husband, you see, is away all day in the city. When he comes home he’s
just tired and wants to sit down and read. But I, on the contrary, am alone
here all day with no congenial company at all. I’ve been perfectly comfortable
and all that. Excellent food. But what I do feel one needs is a really
pleasant social circle. The people round here are really not my kind. Part of
them are what I call a flashy, bridge-playing lot. Not nice bridge. I like a
hand at bridge myself as well as anyone, but of course, they’re all very rich
down here. They play for enormously high stakes, and there’s a great deal of
drinking. In fact, the sort of life that I call really fast society. Then, of
course, there’s a sprinkling of—well, you can only call them old pussies who
love to potter round with a trowel and do gardening.”
Miss Marple looked slightly guilty since she was herself an inveterate
gardener.
“I don’t want to say anything against the dead,” resumed Mrs. Percy rapidly,
“but there’s no doubt about it, Mr. Fortescue, my father-in-law, I mean, made
a very foolish second marriage. My—well I can’t call her my mother-in-law, she
was the same age as I am. The real truth of it is she was man-mad. Absolutely
man-mad. And the way she spent money! My father-in-law was an absolute fool
about her. Didn’t care what bills she ran up. It vexed Percy very much, very
much indeed. Percy is always so careful about money matters. He hates waste.
And then what with Mr. Fortescue being so peculiar and so bad tempered,
flashing out in these terrible rages, spending money like water backing
wildcat schemes. Well—it wasn’t at all nice.”
Miss Marple ventured upon making a remark.
“That must have worried your husband, too?”
“Oh, yes, it did. For the last year Percy’s been very worried indeed. It’s
really made him quite different. His manner, you know, changed even towards
me. Sometimes when I talked to him he used not to answer.” Mrs. Percy sighed,
then went on: “Then Elaine, my sister-in-law, you know, she’s a very odd sort
of girl. Very out of doors and all that. Not exactly unfriendly, but not
sympathetic, you know. She never wanted to go to London and shop, or go to a
matinée or anything of that kind. She wasn’t even interested in clothes.” Mrs.
Percival sighed again and murmured: “But of course I don’t want to complain in
any way.” A qualm of compunction came over her. She said, hurriedly: “You must
think it most odd, talking to you like this when you are a comparative
stranger. But really, what with all the strain and shock—I think really it’s
the shock that matters most. Delayed shock. I feel so nervous, you know, that
I really—well, I really must speak to someone. You remind me so much of a dear
old lady, Miss Trefusis James. She fractured her femur when she was seventy-
five. It was a very long business nursing her and we became great friends. She
gave me a fox fur cape when I left and I did think it was kind of her.”
“I know just how you feel,” said Miss Marple.
And this again was true. Mrs. Percival’s husband was obviously bored by her
and paid very little attention to her, and the poor woman had managed to make
no local friends. Running up to London and shopping, matinées and a luxurious
house to live in did not make up for the lack of humanity in her relations
with her husband’s family.
“I hope it’s not rude of me to say so,” said Miss Marple in a gentle old
lady’s voice, “but I really feel that the late Mr. Fortescue cannot have been
a very nice man.”
“He wasn’t,” said his daughter-in-law. “Quite frankly my dear, between you and
me, he was a detestable old man. I don’t wonder—I really don’t—that someone
put him out of the way.”
“You’ve no idea at all who—” began Miss Marple and broke off. “Oh dear,
perhaps this is a question I should not ask—not even an idea who—who—well, who
it might have been?”
“Oh, I think it was that horrible man Crump,” said Mrs. Percival. “I’ve always
disliked him very much. He’s got a manner, not really rude, you know, but yet
it is rude. Impertinent, that’s more it.”
“Still, there would have to be a motive, I suppose.”
“I really don’t know that that sort of person requires much motive. I dare say
Mr. Fortescue ticked him off about something, and I rather suspect that
sometimes he drinks too much. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
But what I really think is that he’s a bit
unbalanced, you know. Like that footman, or butler, whoever it was, who went
round the house shooting everybody. Of course, to be quite honest with you, I
did suspect that it was Adele who poisoned Mr. Fortescue. But now, of course,
one can’t suspect that since she’s been poisoned herself. She may have accused
Crump, you know. And then he lost his head and perhaps managed to put
something in the sandwiches and Gladys saw him do it and so he killed her
too—I think it’s really dangerous having him in the house at all. Oh dear, I
wish I could get away, but I suppose these horrible policemen won’t let one do
anything of the kind.” She leant forward impulsively and put a plump hand on
Miss Marple’s arm. “Sometimes I feel I must get away—that if it doesn’t all
stop soon I shall—I shall actually run away.”
She leant back studying Miss Marple’s face.
“But perhaps—that wouldn’t be wise?”
“No—I don’t think it would be very wise—the police could soon find you, you
know.”
“Could they? Could they really? You think they’re clever enough for that?”
“It is very foolish to underestimate the police. Inspector Neele strikes me as
a particularly intelligent man.”
“Oh! I thought he was rather stupid.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“I can’t help feeling”—Jennifer Fortescue hesitated—“that it’s dangerous to
stay here.”
“Dangerous for you, you mean?”
“Ye-es—well, yes—”
“Because of something you—know?”
Mrs. Percival seemed to take breath.
“Oh no—of course I don’t know anything. What should I know? It’s just—just
that I’m nervous. That man Crump—”
But it was not, Miss Marple thought, of Crump that Mrs. Percival Fortescue was
thinking—watching the clenching and unclenching of Jennifer’s hands. Miss
Marple thought that for some reason Jennifer Fortescue was very badly
frightened indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was growing dark. Miss Marple had taken her knitting over to the window in
the library. Looking out of the glass pane she saw Pat Fortescue walking up
and down the terrace outside. Miss Marple unlatched the window and called
through it.
“Come in, my dear. Do come in. I’m sure it’s much too cold and damp for you to
be out there without a coat on.”
Pat obeyed the summons. She came in and shut the window and turned on two of
the lamps.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s not a very nice afternoon.” She sat down on the sofa by
Miss Marple. “What are you knitting?”
“Oh, just a little matinée coat, dear. For a baby, you know. I always say
young mothers can’t have too many matinée coats for their babies. It’s the
second size. I always knit the second size. Babies so soon grow out of the
first size.”
Pat stretched out long legs towards the fire.
“It’s nice in here today,” she said. “With the fire and the lamps and you
knitting things for babies. It all seems cosy and homely and like England
ought to be.”
“It’s like England is,” said Miss Marple. “There are not so many Yewtree
Lodges, my dear.”
“I think that’s a good thing,” said Pat. “I don’t believe this was ever a
happy house. I don’t believe anybody was ever happy in it, in spite of all the
money they spent and the things they had.”
“No,” Miss Marple agreed. “I shouldn’t say it had been a happy house.”
“I suppose Adele may have been happy,” said Pat. “I never met her, of course,
so I don’t know, but Jennifer is pretty miserable and Elaine’s been eating her
heart out over a young man whom she probably knows in her heart of hearts
doesn’t care for her. Oh, how I want to get away from here!” She looked at
Miss Marple and smiled suddenly. “D’you know,” she said, “that Lance told me
to stick as close to you as I could. He seemed to think I should be safe that
way.”
“Your husband’s no fool,” said Miss Marple.
“No. Lance isn’t a fool. At least, he is in someways. But I wish he’d tell me
exactly what he’s afraid of. One thing seems clear enough. Somebody in this
house is mad, and madness is always frightening because you don’t know how mad
people’s minds will work. You don’t know what they’ll do next.”
“My poor child,” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, I’m all right, really. I ought to be tough enough by now.”
Miss Marple said gently:
“You’ve had a good deal of unhappiness, haven’t you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’ve had some very good times, too. I had a lovely childhood in Ireland,
riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of
sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from
you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to
go wrong. To begin with, I suppose, it was the war.”
“Your husband was a fighter pilot, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. We’d only been married about a month when Don was shot down.” She stared
ahead of her into the fire. “I thought at first I wanted to die too. It seemed
so unfair, so cruel. And yet—in the end—I almost began to see that it had been
the best thing. Don was wonderful in the war. Brave and reckless and gay. He
had all the qualities that are needed, wanted in a war. But I don’t believe,
somehow, peace would have suited him. He had a kind of—oh, how shall I put
it?—arrogant insubordination. He wouldn’t have fitted in or settled down. He’d
have fought against things. He was—well, antisocial in a way. No, he wouldn’t
have fitted in.”
“It’s wise of you to see that, my dear.” Miss Marple bent over her knitting,
picked up a stitch, counted under her breath, “Three plain, two purl, slip
one, knit two together,” and then said aloud: “And your second husband, my
dear?”
“Freddy? Freddy shot himself.”
“Oh dear. How very sad. What a tragedy.”
“We were very happy together,” said Pat. “I began to realize, about two years
after we were married, that Freddy wasn’t—well, wasn’t always straight. I
began to find out the sort of things that were going on. But it didn’t seem to
matter, between us two, that is. Because, you see, Freddy loved me and I loved
him. I tried not to know what was going on. That was cowardly of me, I
suppose, but I couldn’t have changed him you know. You can’t change people.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “you can’t change people.”
“I’d taken him and loved him and married him for what he was, and I sort of
felt that I just had to—put up with it. Then things went wrong and he couldn’t
face it, and he shot himself. After he died I went out to Kenya to stay with
some friends there. I couldn’t stop on in England and go on meeting all—all
the old crowd that knew about it all. And out in Kenya I met Lance.” Her face
changed and softened. She went on looking into the fire, and Miss Marple
looked at her. Presently Pat turned her head and said: “Tell me, Miss Marple,
what do you really think of Percival?”
“Well, I’ve not seen very much of him. Just at breakfast usually. That’s all.
I don’t think he very much likes my being here.”
Pat laughed suddenly.
“He’s mean, you know. Terribly mean about money. Lance says he always was.
Jennifer complains of it, too. Goes over the housekeeping accounts with Miss
Dove. Complaining of every item. But Miss Dove manages to hold her own. She’s
really rather a wonderful person. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, indeed. She reminds me of Mrs. Latimer in my own village, St. Mary Mead.
She ran the WVS, you know, and the Girl Guides, and indeed, she ran
practically everything there. It wasn’t for quite five years that we
discovered that—oh, but I mustn’t gossip. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Nothing is more boring than people
talking to you about places and people whom you’ve never seen and know nothing
about. You must forgive me, my dear.”
“Is St. Mary Mead a very nice village?”
“Well, I don’t know what you would call a nice village, my dear. It’s quite a
pretty village. There are some nice people living in it and some extremely
unpleasant people as well. Very curious things go on there just as in any
other village. Human nature is much the same everywhere, is it not?”
“You go up and see Miss Ramsbottom a good deal, don’t you?” said Pat. “Now she
really frightens me.”
“Frightens you? Why?”
“Because I think she’s crazy. I think she’s got religious mania. You don’t
think she could be—really—mad, do you?”
“In what way, mad?”
“Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Marple, well enough. She sits up there and
never goes out, and broods about sin. Well, she might have felt in the end
that it was her mission in life to execute judgment.”
“Is that what your husband thinks?”
“I don’t know what Lance thinks. He won’t tell me. But I’m quite sure of one
thing—that he believes that it’s someone who’s mad, and it’s someone in the
family. Well, Percival’s sane enough, I should say. Jennifer’s just stupid and
rather pathetic. She’s a bit nervy but that’s all, and Elaine is one of those
queer, tempestuous, tense girls. She’s desperately in love with this young man
of hers and she’ll never admit to herself for a moment that he’s marrying her
for money?”
“You think he is marrying her for money?”
“Yes, I do. Don’t you think so?”
“I should say quite certainly,” said Miss Marple. “Like young Ellis who
married Marion Bates, the rich ironmonger’s daughter. She was a very plain
girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite well.
People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really disagreeable
when they’ve married a poor girl for love. They are so annoyed with themselves
for doing it that they take it out on the girl. But if they marry a rich girl
they continue to respect her.”
“I don’t see,” went on Pat, frowning, “how it can be anybody from outside. And
so—and so that accounts for the atmosphere that is here. Everyone watching
everybody else. Only something’s got to happen soon—”
“There won’t be anymore deaths,” said Miss Marple. “At least, I shouldn’t
think so.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am fairly sure. The murderer’s accomplished his
purpose, you see.”
“His?”
“Well, his or her. One says his for convenience.”
“You say his or her purpose. What sort of purpose?”
Miss Marple shook her head—she was not yet quite sure herself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I
Once again Miss Somers had just made tea in the typists’ room, and once again
the kettle had not been boiling when Miss Somers poured the water onto the
tea. History repeats itself. Miss Griffith, accepting her cup, thought to
herself: “I really must speak to Mr. Percival about Somers. I’m sure we can do
better. But with all this terrible business going on, one doesn’t like to
bother him over office details.”
As so often before Miss Griffith said sharply:
“Water not boiling again, Somers,” and Miss Somers, going pink, replied in her
usual formula:
“Oh, dear, I was sure it was boiling this time.”
Further developments on the same line were interrupted by the entrance of
Lance Fortescue. He looked round him somewhat vaguely, and Miss Griffith
jumped up, came forward to meet him.
“Mr. Lance,” she exclaimed.
He swung round towards her and his face lit up in a smile.
“Hallo. Why, it’s Miss Griffith.”
Miss Griffith was delighted. Eleven years since he had seen her and he knew
her name. She said in a confused voice:
“Fancy your remembering.”
And Lance said easily, with all his charm to the fore:
“Of course I remember.”
A flicker of excitement was running round the typists’ room. Miss Somers’s
troubles over the tea were forgotten. She was gaping at Lance with her mouth
slightly open. Miss Bell gazed eagerly over the top of her typewriter and Miss
Chase unobtrusively drew out her compact and powdered her nose. Lance
Fortescue looked round him.
“So everything’s still going on just the same here,” he said.
“Not many changes, Mr. Lance. How brown you look and how well! I suppose you
must have had a very interesting life abroad.”
“You could call it that,” said Lance, “but perhaps I am now going to try and
have an interesting life in London.”
“You’re coming back here to the office?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, but how delightful.”
“You’ll find me very rusty,” said Lance. “You’ll have to show me all the
ropes, Miss Griffith.”
Miss Griffith laughed delightedly.
“It will be very nice to have you back, Mr. Lance. Very nice indeed.”
Lance threw her an appreciative glance.
“That’s sweet of you,” he said, “that’s very sweet of you.”
“We never believed—none of us thought . . .” Miss Griffith broke off and
flushed.
Lance patted her on the arm.
“You didn’t believe the devil was as black as he was painted? Well, perhaps he
wasn’t. But that’s all old history now. There’s no good going back over it.
The future’s the thing.” He added, “Is my brother here?”
“He’s in the inner office, I think.”
Lance nodded easily and passed on. In the anteroom to the inner sanctum a
hard-faced woman of middle age rose behind a desk and said forbiddingly:
“Your name and business, please?”
Lance looked at her doubtfully.
“Are you—Miss Grosvenor?” he asked.
Miss Grosvenor had been described to him as a glamorous blonde. She had indeed
appeared so in the pictures that had appeared in the newspapers reporting the
inquest on Rex Fortescue. This, surely, could not be Miss Grosvenor.
“Miss Grosvenor left last week. I am Mrs. Hardcastle, Mr. Percival Fortescue’s
personal secretary.”
“How like old Percy,” thought Lance. “To get rid of a glamorous blonde and
take on a Gorgon instead. I wonder why? Was it safety or was it because this
one comes cheaper?” Aloud he said easily:
“I’m Lancelot Fortescue. You haven’t met me yet.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Lancelot,” Mrs. Hardcastle apologized, “this is the
first time, I think, you’ve been to the office?”
“The first time but not the last,” said Lance, smiling.
He crossed the room and opened the door of what had been his father’s private
office. Somewhat to his surprise it was not Percival who was sitting behind
the desk there, but Inspector Neele. Inspector Neele looked up from a large
wad of papers which he was sorting, and nodded his head.
“Good morning, Mr. Fortescue, you’ve come to take up your duties, I suppose.”
“So you’ve heard I decided to come into the firm?”
“Your brother told me so.”
“He did, did he? With enthusiasm?”
Inspector Neele endeavoured to conceal a smile.
“The enthusiasm was not marked,” he said gravely.
“Poor Percy,” commented Lance.
Inspector Neele looked at him curiously.
“Are you really going to become a City man?”
“You don’t think it’s likely, Inspector Neele?”
“It doesn’t seem quite in character, Mr. Fortescue.”
“Why not? I’m my father’s son.”
“And your mother’s.”
Lance shook his head.
“You haven’t got anything there, Inspector. My mother was a Victorian
romantic. Her favourite reading was the Idylls of the King, as indeed you may
have deduced from our curious Christian names. She was an invalid and always,
I should imagine, out of touch with reality. I’m not like that at all. I have
no sentiment, very little sense of romance and I’m a realist first and last.”
“People aren’t always what they think themselves to be,” Inspector Neele
pointed out.
“No, I suppose that’s true,” said Lance.
He sat down in a chair and stretched his long legs out in his own
characteristic fashion. He was smiling to himself. Then he said unexpectedly:
“You’re shrewder than my brother, Inspector.”
“In what way, Mr. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Fortescue?”
“I’ve put the wind up Percy all right. He thinks I’m all set for the City
life. He thinks he’s going to have my fingers fiddling about his pie. He
thinks I’ll launch out and spend the firm’s money and try and embroil him in
wildcat schemes. It would be almost worth doing just for the fun of it!
Almost, but not quite. I couldn’t really stand an office life, Inspector. I
like the open air and some possibilities of adventure. I’d stifle in a place
like this.” He added quickly: “This is off the record, mind. Don’t give me
away to Percy, will you?”
“I don’t suppose the subject will arise, Mr. Fortescue.”
“I must have my bit of fun with Percy,” said Lance. “I want to make him sweat
a bit. I’ve got to get a bit of my own back.”
“That’s rather a curious phrase, Mr. Fortescue,” said Neele. “Your own
back—for what?”
Lance shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, it’s old history now. Not worth going back over.”
“There was a little matter of a cheque, I understand, in the past. Would that
be what you’re referring to?”
“How much you know, Inspector!”
“There was no question of prosecution, I understand,” said Neele. “Your father
wouldn’t have done that.”
“No. He just kicked me out, that’s all.”
Inspector Neele eyed him speculatively, but it was not Lance Fortescue of whom
he was thinking, but of Percival. The honest, industrious, parsimonious
Percival. It seemed to him that wherever he got in the case he was always
coming up against the enigma of Percival Fortescue, a man of whom everybody
knew the outer aspects, but whose inner personality was much harder to gauge.
One would have said from observing him a somewhat colourless and insignificant
character, a man who had been very much under his father’s thumb. Percy Prim
in fact, as the AC had once said. Neele was trying now, through Lance, to get
at a closer appreciation of Percival’s personality. He murmured in a tentative
manner:
“Your brother seems always to have been very much—well, how shall I put
it—under your father’s thumb.”
“I wonder.” Lance seemed definitely to be considering the point. “I wonder.
Yes, that would be the effect, I think, given. But I’m not sure that it was
really the truth. It’s astonishing, you know, when I look back through life,
to see how Percy always got his own way without seeming to do so, if you know
what I mean.”
Yes, Inspector Neele thought, it was indeed astonishing. He sorted through the
papers in front of him, fished out a letter and shoved it across the desk
towards Lance.
“This is a letter you wrote last August, isn’t it, Mr. Fortescue?”
Lance took it, glanced at it and returned it.
“Yes,” he said, “I wrote it after I got back to Kenya last summer. Dad kept
it, did he? Where was it—here in the office?”
“No, Mr. Fortescue, it was among your father’s papers in Yewtree Lodge.”
The inspector considered it speculatively as it lay on the desk in front of
him. It was not a long letter.
Dear Dad,
I’ve talked things over with Pat and I agree to your proposition. It will take
me a little time to get things fixed up here, say about the end of October or
beginning of November. I’ll let you know nearer the time. I hope we’ll pull
together better than we used to do. Anyway, I’ll do my best. I can’t say more.
Look after yourself.
Yours, Lance.
“Where did you address this letter, Mr. Fortescue. To the office or Yewtree
Lodge?”
Lance frowned in an effort of recollection.
“It’s difficult. I can’t remember. You see it’s almost three months now. The
office, I think. Yes, I’m almost sure. Here to the office.” He paused a moment
before asking with frank curiosity: “Why?”
“I wondered,” said Inspector Neele. “Your father did not put it on the file
here among his private papers. He took it back with him to Yewtree Lodge, and
I found it in his desk there. I wondered why he should have done that.”
Lance laughed.
“To keep it out of Percy’s way, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Inspector Neele, “it would seem so. Your brother, then, had access
to your father’s private papers here?”
“Well,” Lance hesitated and frowned, “not exactly. I mean, I suppose he could
have looked through them at any time if he liked, but he wouldn’t be. . . .”
Inspector Neele finished the sentence for him.
“Wouldn’t be supposed to do so?”
Lance grinned broadly. “That’s right. Frankly, it would have been snooping.
But Percy, I should imagine, always did snoop.”
Inspector Neele nodded. He also thought it probable that Percival Fortescue
snooped. It would be in keeping with what the inspector was beginning to learn
of his character.
“And talk of the devil,” murmured Lance, as at that moment the door opened and
Percival Fortescue came in. About to speak to the inspector he stopped,
frowning, as he saw Lance.
“Hallo,” he said. “You here? You didn’t tell me you were coming here today.”
“I felt a kind of zeal for work coming over me,” said Lance, “so here I am
ready to make myself useful. What do you want me to do?”
Percival said testily:
“Nothing at present. Nothing at all. We shall have to come to some kind of
arrangement as to what side of the business you’re going to look after. We
shall have to arrange for an office for you.”
Lance inquired with a grin:
“By the way, why did you get rid of glamorous Grosvenor, old boy, and replace
her by Horsefaced Hetty out there?”
“Really, Lance,” Percival protested sharply.
“Definitely a change for the worse,” said Lance. “I’ve been looking forward to
the glamorous Grosvenor. Why did you sack her? Thought she knew a bit too
much?”
“Of course not. What an ideal!” Percy spoke angrily, a flush mounting his pale
face. He turned to the inspector. “You mustn’t pay any attention to my
brother,” he said coldly. “He has a rather peculiar sense of humour.” He
added: “I never had a very high opinion of Miss Grosvenor’s intelligence. Mrs.
Hardcastle has excellent references and is most capable besides being very
moderate in her terms.”
“Very moderate in her terms,” murmured Lance, casting his eyes towards the
ceiling. “You know, Percy, I don’t really approve of skimping over the office
personnel. By the way, considering how loyalty the staff has stood by us
during these last tragic weeks, don’t you think we ought to raise their
salaries all round?”
“Certainly not,” snapped Percival Fortescue. “Quite uncalled for and
unnecessary.”
Inspector Neele noticed the gleam of devilry in Lance’s eyes. Percival,
however, was far too much upset to notice it.
“You always had the most extraordinary extravagant ideas,” he stuttered. “In
the state in which this firm has been left, economy is our only hope.”
Inspector Neele coughed apologetically.
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Fortescue,” he
said to Percival.
“Yes, Inspector?” Percival switched his attention to Neele.
“I want to put certain suggestions before you, Mr. Fortescue. I understand
that for the past six months or longer, possibly a year, your father’s general
behaviour and conduct has been a source of increasing anxiety to you.”
“He wasn’t well,” said Percival, with finality. “He certainly wasn’t at all
well.”
“You tried to induce him to see a doctor but you failed. He refused
categorically?”
“That is so.”
“May I ask you if you suspected that your father was suffering from what is
familiarly referred to as GPI, General Paralysis of the Insane, a condition
with signs of megalomania and irritability which terminates sooner or later in
hopeless insanity?”
Percival looked surprised. “It is remarkably astute of you, Inspector. That is
exactly what I did fear. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
That is
exactly what I did fear. That is why I was so anxious for my father to submit
to medical treatment.”
Neele went on:
“In the meantime, until you could persuade your father to do that, he was
capable of causing a great deal of havoc to the business?”
“He certainly was,” Percival agreed.
“A very unfortunate state of affairs,” said the inspector.
“Quite terrible. No one knows the anxiety I have been through.”
Neele said gently:
“From the business point of view, your father’s death was an extremely
fortunate circumstance.”
Percival said sharply:
“You can hardly think I would regard my father’s death in that light.”
“It is not a question of how you regard it, Mr. Fortescue. I’m speaking merely
of a question of fact. Your father died before his finances were completely on
the rocks.”
Percival said impatiently:
“Yes, yes. As a matter of actual fact, you are right.”
“It was a fortunate occurrence for your whole family, since they are dependent
on this business.”
“Yes. But really, Inspector, I don’t see what you’re driving at . . .”
Percival broke off.
“Oh, I’m not driving at anything, Mr. Fortescue,” said Neele. “I just like
getting my facts straight. Now there’s another thing. I understood you to say
that you’d had no communication of any kind with your brother here since he
left England many years ago.”
“Quite so,” said Percival.
“Yes, but it isn’t quite so, is it, Mr. Fortescue? I mean that last spring
when you were so worried about your father’s health, you actually wrote to
your brother in Africa, told him of your anxiety about your father’s
behaviour. You wanted, I think, your brother to combine with you in getting
your father medically examined and put under restraint, if necessary.”
“I—I—really, I don’t see . . .” Percival was badly shaken.
“That is so, isn’t it, Mr. Fortescue?”
“Well, actually, I thought it only right. After all, Lancelot was a junior
partner.”
Inspector Neele transferred his gaze to Lance. Lance was grinning.
“You received that letter?” Inspector Neele asked.
Lance Fortescue nodded.
“What did you reply to it?”
Lance’s grin widened.
“I told Percy to go and boil his head and to let the old man alone. I said the
old man probably knew what he was doing quite well.”
Inspector Neele’s gaze went back again to Percival.
“Were those the terms of your brother’s answer?”
“I—I—well, I suppose roughly, yes. Far more offensively couched, however.”
“I thought the inspector had better have a bowdlerized version,” said Lance.
He went on, “Frankly, Inspector Neele, that is one of the reasons why, when I
got a letter from my father, I came home to see for myself what I thought. In
the short interview I had with my father, frankly I couldn’t see anything much
wrong with him. He was slightly excitable, that was all. He appeared to me
perfectly capable of managing his own affairs. Anyway, after I got back to
Africa and had talked things over with Pat, I decided that I’d come home
and—what shall we say—see fair play.”
He shot a glance at Percival as he spoke.
“I object,” said Percival Fortescue. “I object strongly to what you are
suggesting. I was not intending to victimize my father, I was concerned for
his health. I admit that I was also concerned . . .” he paused.
Lance filled the pause quickly.
“You were also concerned for your pocket, eh? For Percy’s little pocket.” He
got up and all of a sudden his manner changed. “All right, Percy, I’m through.
I was going to string you along a bit by pretending to work here. I wasn’t
going to let you have things all your own sweet way, but I’m damned if I’m
going on with it. Frankly, it makes me sick to be in the same room with you.
You’ve always been a dirty, mean little skunk all your life. Prying and
snooping and lying and making trouble. I’ll tell you another thing. I can’t
prove it, but I’ve always believed it was you who forged that cheque there was
all the row about, that got me shot out of here. For one thing it was a damn
bad forgery, a forgery that drew attention to itself in letters a foot high.
My record was too bad for me to be able to protest effectively, but I often
wondered that the old boy didn’t realize that if I had forged his name I could
have made a much better job of it than that.”
Lance swept on, his voice rising. “Well, Percy, I’m not going on with this
silly game. I’m sick of this country, and of the City. I’m sick of little men
like you with their pinstripe trousers and their black coats and their mincing
voices and their mean, shoddy financial deals. We’ll share out as you
suggested, and I’ll get back with Pat to a different country—a country where
there’s room to breathe and move about. You can make your own division of
securities. Keep the gilt-edged and the conservative ones, keep the safe two
percent and three percent and three and a half percent. Give me father’s
latest wildcat speculations as you call them. Most of them are probably duds.
But I’ll bet that one or two of them will pay better in the end than all your
playing safe with three percent Trustee Stocks will do. Father was a shrewd
old devil. He took chances, plenty of them. Some of those chances paid five
and six and seven hundred percent. I’ll back his judgment and his luck. As for
you, you little worm. . . .”
Lance advanced towards his brother, who retreated rapidly, round the end of
the desk towards Inspector Neele.
“All right,” said Lance, “I’m not going to touch you. You wanted me out of
here, you’re getting me out of here. You ought to be satisfied.”
He added as he strode towards the door:
“You can throw in the old Blackbird Mine concession too, if you like. If we’ve
got the murdering MacKenzies on our trail, I’ll draw them off to Africa.”
He added as he swung through the doorway:
“Revenge—after all these years—scarcely seems credible. But Inspector Neele
seems to take it seriously, don’t you, Inspector?”
“Nonsense,” said Percival. “Such a thing is impossible!”
“Ask him,” said Lance. “Ask him why he’s making all these inquiries into
blackbirds and rye in father’s pocket.”
Gently stroking his upper lip, Inspector Neele said:
“You remember the blackbirds last summer, Mr. Fortescue. There are certain
grounds for inquiry.”
“Nonsense,” said Percival again. “Nobody’s heard of the MacKenzies for years.”
“And yet,” said Lance, “I’d almost dare to swear that there’s a MacKenzie in
our midst. I rather imagine the inspector thinks so, too.”
II
Inspector Neele caught up Lancelot Fortescue as the latter emerged into the
street below.
Lance grinned at him rather sheepishly.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said. “But I suddenly lost my temper. Oh!
well—it would have come to the same before long. I’m meeting Pat at the
Savoy—are you coming my way, Inspector?”
“No, I’m returning to Baydon Heath. But there’s just something I’d like to ask
you, Mr. Fortescue.”
“Yes!”
“When you came into the inner office and saw me there—you were surprised.
Why?”
“Because I didn’t expect to see you, I suppose. I thought I’d find Percy
there.”
“You weren’t told that he’d gone out?”
Lance looked at him curiously.
“No. They said he was in his office.”
“I see—nobody knew he’d gone out. There’s no second door out of the inner
office—but there is a door leading straight into the corridor from the little
antechamber—I suppose your brother went out that way—but I’m surprised Mrs.
Hardcastle didn’t tell you so.”
Lance laughed.
“She’d probably been to collect her cup of tea.”
“Yes—yes—quite so.”
Lance looked at him.
“What’s the idea, Inspector?”
“Just puzzling over a few little things, that’s all, Mr. Fortescue—”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
In the train on the way down to Baydon Heath, Inspector Neele had singularly
little success doing The Times crossword. His mind was distracted by various
possibilities. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
His mind was distracted by various
possibilities. In the same way he read the news with only half his brain
taking it in. He read of an earthquake in Japan, of the discovery of uranium
deposits in Tanganyika, of the body of a merchant seaman washed up near
Southampton, and of the imminent strike among the dockers. He read of the
latest victims of the cosh and of a new drug that had achieved wonders in
advanced cases of tuberculosis.
All these items made a queer kind of pattern in the back of his mind.
Presently he returned to the crossword puzzle and was able to put down three
clues in rapid succession.
When he reached Yewtree Lodge he had come to a certain decision. He said to
Sergeant Hay:
“Where’s that old lady? Is she still there?”
“Miss Marple? Oh, yes, she’s here still. Great buddies with the old lady
upstairs.”
“I see.” Neele paused for a moment and then said: “Where is she now? I’d like
to see her.”
Miss Marple arrived in a few minutes’ time, looking rather flushed and
breathing fast.
“You want to see me, Inspector Neele? I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting.
Sergeant Hay couldn’t find me at first. I was in the kitchen, talking to Mrs.
Crump. I was congratulating her on her pastry and how light her hand is, and
telling her how delicious the soufflé was last night. I always think, you
know, it’s better to approach a subject gradually, don’t you? At least, I
suppose it isn’t so easy for you. You more or less have to come almost
straight away to the questions you want to ask. But of course for an old lady
like me who has all the time in the world, as you might say, it’s really
expected of her that there should be a great deal of unnecessary talk. And the
way to a cook’s heart, as they say, is through her pastry.”
“What you really wanted to talk to her about,” said Inspector Neele, “was
Gladys Martin?”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes. Gladys. You see, Mrs. Crump could really tell me a lot about the girl.
Not in connection with the murder. I don’t mean that. But about her spirits
lately and the odd things she said. I don’t mean odd in the sense of peculiar.
I mean just the odds and ends of conversation.”
“Did you find it helpful?” asked Inspector Neele.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I found it very helpful indeed. I really think, you
know, that things are becoming very much clearer, don’t you?”
“I do and I don’t,” said Inspector Neele.
Sergeant Hay, he noticed, had left the room. He was glad of it because what he
was about to do now was, to say the least of it, slightly unorthodox.
“Look here, Miss Marple,” he said, “I want to talk to you seriously.”
“Yes, Inspector Neele?”
“In a way,” said Inspector Neele, “you and I represent different points of
view. I admit, Miss Marple, that I’ve heard something about you at the Yard.”
He smiled: “It seems you’re fairly well-known there.”
“I don’t know how it is,” fluttered Miss Marple, “but I so often seem to get
mixed-up in the things that are really no concern of mine. Crimes, I mean, and
peculiar happenings.”
“You’ve got a reputation,” said Inspector Neele.
“Sir Henry Clithering, of course,” said Miss Marple, “is a very old friend of
mine.”
“As I said before,” Neele went on, “you and I represent opposite points of
view. One might almost call them sanity and insanity.”
Miss Marple put her head a little on one side.
“Now what exactly do you mean by that, I wonder, Inspector?”
“Well, Miss Marple, there’s a sane way of looking at things. This murder
benefits certain people. One person, I may say, in particular. The second
murder benefits the same person. The third murder one might call a murder for
safety.”
“But which do you call the third murder?” Miss Marple asked.
Her eyes, a very bright china blue, looked shrewdly at the inspector. He
nodded.
“Yes. You’ve got something there perhaps. You know, the other day when the AC
was speaking to me of these murders, something that he said seemed to me to be
wrong. That was it. I was thinking, of course, of the nursery rhyme. The King
in his counting-house, the Queen in the parlour and the maid hanging out the
clothes.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “A sequence in that order, but actually Gladys
must have been murdered before Mrs. Fortescue, mustn’t she?”
“I think so,” said Neele. “I take it it’s quite certainly so. Her body wasn’t
discovered till late that night, and of course it was difficult then to say
exactly how long she’d been dead. But I think myself that she must almost
certainly have been murdered round about five o’clock, because otherwise. . .
.”
Miss Marple cut in. “Because otherwise she would certainly have taken the
second tray into the drawing room?”
“Quite so. She took one tray in with the tea on it, she brought the second
tray into the hall, and then something happened. She saw something or heard
something. The question is what that something was. It might have been Dubois
coming down the stairs from Mrs. Fortescue’s room. It might have been Elaine
Fortescue’s young man, Gerald Wright, coming in at the side door. Whoever it
was lured her away from the tea tray and out into the garden. And once that
had happened I don’t see any possibility of her death being long delayed. It
was cold out and she was only wearing her thin uniform.”
“Of course you’re quite right,” said Miss Marple. “I mean it was never a case
of ‘the maid was in the garden hanging up the clothes.’ She wouldn’t be
hanging up clothes at that time of the evening and she wouldn’t go out to the
clothesline without putting a coat on. That was all camouflage, like the
clothes-peg, to make the thing fit in with the rhyme.”
“Exactly,” said Inspector Neele, “crazy. That’s where I can’t yet see eye to
eye with you. I can’t—I simply can’t swallow this nursery rhyme business.”
“But it fits, Inspector. You must agree it fits.”
“It fits,” said Neele heavily, “but all the same the sequence is wrong. I mean
the rhyme definitely suggests that the maid was the third murder. But we know
that the Queen was the third murder. Adele Fortescue was not killed until
between twenty-five past five and five minutes to six. By then Gladys must
already have been dead.”
“And that’s all wrong, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple. “All wrong for the nursery
rhyme—that’s very significant, isn’t it?”
Inspector Neele shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s probably splitting hairs. The deaths fulfil the conditions of the rhyme,
and I suppose that’s all that was needed. But I’m talking now as though I were
on your side. I’m going to outline my side of the case now, Miss Marple. I’m
washing out the blackbirds and the rye and all the rest of it. I’m going by
sober facts and common sense and the reasons for which sane people do murders.
First, the death of Rex Fortescue, and who benefits by his death. Well, it
benefits quite a lot of people, but most of all it benefits his son, Percival.
His son Percival wasn’t at Yewtree Lodge that morning. He couldn’t have put
poison in his father’s coffee or in anything that he ate for breakfast. Or
that’s what we thought at first.”
“Ah,” Miss Marple’s eyes brightened. “So there was a method, was there? I’ve
been thinking about it, you know, a good deal, and I’ve had several ideas. But
of course no evidence or proof.”
“There’s no harm in my letting you know,” said Inspector Neele. “Taxine was
added to a new jar of marmalade. That jar of marmalade was placed on the
breakfast table and the top layer of it was eaten by Mr. Fortescue at
breakfast. Later that jar of marmalade was thrown out into the bushes and a
similar jar with a similar amount taken out of it was placed in the pantry.
The jar in the bushes was found and I’ve just had the result of the analysis. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
The jar in the bushes was found and I’ve just had the result of the analysis.
It shows definite evidence of taxine.”
“So that was it,” murmured Miss Marple. “So simple and easy to do.”
“Consolidated Investments,” Neele went on, “was in a bad way. If the firm had
had to pay out a hundred thousand pounds to Adele Fortescue under her
husband’s will, it would, I think, have crashed. If Mrs. Fortescue had
survived her husband for a month that money would have had to be paid out to
her. She would have had no feeling for the firm or its difficulties. But she
didn’t survive her husband for a month. She died, and as a result of her death
the gainer was the residuary legatee of Rex Fortescue’s will. In other words,
Percival Fortescue again.
“Always Percival Fortescue,” the inspector continued bitterly. “And though he
could have tampered with the marmalade, he couldn’t have poisoned his
stepmother or strangled Gladys. According to his secretary he was in his city
office at five o’clock that afternoon, and he didn’t arrive back here until
nearly seven.”
“That makes it very difficult, doesn’t it?” said Miss Marple.
“It makes it impossible,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “In other words,
Percival is out.” Abandoning restraint and prudence, he spoke with some
bitterness, almost unaware of his listener. “Wherever I go, wherever I turn, I
always come up against the same person. Percival Fortescue! Yet it can’t be
Percival Fortescue.” Calming himself a little he said: “Oh, there are other
possibilities, other people who had a perfectly good motive.”
“Mr. Dubois, of course,” said Miss Marple sharply. “And that young Mr. Wright.
I do so agree with you, Inspector. Wherever there is a question of gain, one
has to be very suspicious. The great thing to avoid is having in any way a
trustful mind.”
In spite of himself, Neele smiled.
“Always think the worst, eh?” he asked.
It seemed a curious doctrine to be proceeding from this charming and fragile-
looking old lady.
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple fervently. “I always believe the worst. What is so
sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.”
“All right,” said Neele, “let’s think the worst. Dubois could have done it,
Gerald Wright could have done it (that is to say if he’d been acting in
collusion with Elaine Fortescue and she tampered with the marmalade), Mrs.
Percival could have done it, I suppose. She was on the spot. But none of the
people I have mentioned tie up with the crazy angle. They don’t tie up with
blackbirds and pockets full of rye. That’s your theory and it may be that
you’re right. If so, it boils down to one person, doesn’t it? Mrs. MacKenzie’s
in a mental home and has been for a good number of years. She hasn’t been
messing about with marmalade pots or putting cyanide in the drawing room
afternoon tea. Her son Donald was killed at Dunkirk. That leaves the daughter,
Ruby MacKenzie. And if your theory is correct, if this whole series of murders
arises out of the old Blackbird Mine business, then Ruby MacKenzie must be
here in this house, and there’s only one person that Ruby MacKenzie could be.”
“I think, you know,” said Miss Marple, “that you’re being a little too
dogmatic.”
Inspector Neele paid no attention.
“Just one person,” he said grimly.
He got up and went out of the room.
II
Mary Dove was in her sitting room. It was a small, rather austerely furnished
room, but comfortable. That is to say Miss Dove herself had made it
comfortable. When Inspector Neele tapped at the door Mary Dove raised her
head, which had been bent over a pile of tradesmen’s books, and said in her
clear voice:
“Come in.”
The inspector entered.
“Do sit down, Inspector.” Miss Dove indicated a chair. “Could you wait just
one moment? The total of the fishmonger’s account does not seem to be correct
and I must check it.”
Inspector Neele sat in silence watching her as she totted up the column. How
wonderfully calm and self-possessed the girl was, he thought. He was
intrigued, as so often before, by the personality that underlay that self-
assured manner. He tried to trace in her features any resemblance to those of
the woman he had talked to at the Pinewood Sanatorium. The colouring was not
unlike, but he could detect no real facial resemblance. Presently Mary Dove
raised her head from her accounts and said:
“Yes, Inspector? What can I do for you?”
Inspector Neele said quietly:
“You know, Miss Dove, there are certain very peculiar features about this
case.”
“Yes?”
“To begin with there is the odd circumstance of the rye found in Mr.
Fortescue’s pocket.”
“That was very extraordinary,” Mary Dove agreed. “You know I really cannot
think of any explanation for that.”
“Then there is the curious circumstance of the blackbirds. Those four
blackbirds on Mr. Fortescue’s desk last summer, and also the incident of the
blackbirds being substituted for the veal and ham in the pie. You were here, I
think, Miss Dove, at the time of both those occurrences?”
“Yes, I was. I remember now. It was most upsetting. It seemed such a very
purposeless, spiteful thing to do, especially at the time.”
“Perhaps not entirely purposeless. What do you know, Miss Dove, about the
Blackbird Mine?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Blackbird Mine.”
“Your name, you told me, is Mary Dove. Is that your real name, Miss Dove?”
Mary raised her eyebrows. Inspector Neele was almost sure that a wary
expression had come into her blue eyes.
“What an extraordinary question, Inspector. Are you suggesting that my name is
not Mary Dove?”
“That is exactly what I am suggesting. I’m suggesting,” said Neele pleasantly,
“that your name is Ruby MacKenzie.”
She stared at him. For a moment her face was entirely blank with neither
protest on it nor surprise. There was, Inspector Neele thought, a very
definite effect of calculation. After a minute or two she said in a quiet,
colourless voice:
“What do you expect me to say?”
“Please answer me. Is your name Ruby MacKenzie?”
“I have told you my name is Mary Dove.”
“Yes, but have you proof of that, Miss Dove?”
“What do you want to see? My birth certificate?”
“That might be helpful or it might not. You might, I mean, be in possession of
the birth certificate of a Mary Dove. That Mary Dove might be a friend of
yours or might be someone who had died.”
“Yes, there are a lot of possibilities, aren’t there?” Amusement had crept
back into Mary Dove’s voice. “It’s really quite a dilemma for you, isn’t it,
Inspector?”
“They might possibly be able to recognize you at Pinewood Sanatorium,” said
Neele.
“Pinewood Sanatorium!” Mary raised her eyebrow. “What or where is Pinewood
Sanatorium?”
“I think you know very well, Miss Dove.”
“I assure you I am quite in the dark.”
“And you deny categorically that you are Ruby MacKenzie?”
“I shouldn’t really like to deny anything. I think, you know, Inspector, that
it’s up to you to prove I am this Ruby MacKenzie, whoever she is.” There was a
definite amusement now in her blue eyes, amusement and challenge. Looking him
straight in the eyes, Mary Dove said, “Yes, it’s up to you, Inspector. Prove
that I’m Ruby MacKenzie if you can.” | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Prove
that I’m Ruby MacKenzie if you can.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I
“The old tabby’s looking for you, sir,” said Sergeant Hay in a conspiratorial
whisper, as Inspector Neele descended the stairs. “It appears as how she’s got
a lot more to say to you.”
“Hell and damnation,” said Inspector Neele.
“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Hay, not a muscle of his face moving.
He was about to move away when Neele called him back.
“Go over those notes given us by Miss Dove, Hay, notes as to her former
employment and situations. Check up on them—and, yes, there are just one or
two other things that I would like to know. Put these inquiries in hand, will
you?”
He jotted down a few lines on a sheet of paper and gave them to Sergeant Hay,
who said:
“I’ll get onto it at once, sir.”
Hearing a murmur of voices in the library as he passed, Inspector Neele looked
in. Whether Miss Marple had been looking for him or not, she was now fully
engaged talking to Mrs. Percival Fortescue while her knitting needles clicked
busily. The middle of the sentence which Inspector Neele caught was:
“. . . I have really always thought it was a vocation you needed for nursing.
It certainly is very noble work.”
Inspector Neele withdrew quietly. Miss Marple had noticed him, he thought, but
she had taken no notice of his presence.
She went on in her gentle, soft voice:
“I had such a charming nurse looking after me when I once broke my wrist. She
went on from me to nurse Mrs. Sparrow’s son, a very nice young naval officer.
Quite a romance, really, because they became engaged. So romantic I thought
it. They were married and were very happy and had two dear little children.”
Miss Marple sighed sentimentally. “It was pneumonia, you know. So much depends
on nursing in pneumonia, does it not.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jennifer Fortescue, “nursing is nearly everything in
pneumonia, though of course nowadays M and B works wonders, and it’s not the
long, protracted battle it used to be.”
“I’m sure you must have been an excellent nurse, my dear,” said Miss Marple.
“That was the beginning of your romance, was it not? I mean you came here to
nurse Mr. Percival Fortescue, did you not?”
“Yes,” said Jennifer. “Yes, yes—that’s how it did happen.”
Her voice was not encouraging, but Miss Marple seemed to take no notice.
“I understand. One should not listen to servants’ gossip, of course, but I’m
afraid an old lady like myself is always interested to hear about the people
in the house. Now what was I saying? Oh, yes. There was another nurse at
first, was there not, and she got sent away—something like that. Carelessness,
I believe.”
“I don’t think it was carelessness,” said Jennifer. “I believe her father or
something was desperately ill, and so I came to replace her.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple. “And you fell in love and that was that. Yes, very
nice indeed, very nice.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Jennifer Fortescue. “I often wish”—her
voice trembled—“I often wish I was back in the wards again.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. You were keen on your profession.”
“I wasn’t so much at the time, but now when I think of it—life’s so
monotonous, you know. Day after day with nothing to do, and Val so absorbed in
business.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Gentlemen have to work so hard nowadays,” she said. “There really doesn’t
seem any leisure, no matter how much money there is.”
“Yes, it makes it very lonely and dull for a wife sometimes. I often wish I’d
never come here,” said Jennifer. “Oh, well, I dare say it serves me right. I
ought never to have done it.”
“Ought never to have done what, my dear?”
“I ought never to have married Val. Oh, well—” she sighed abruptly. “Don’t
let’s talk of it anymore.”
Obligingly Miss Marple began to talk about the new skirts that were being worn
in Paris.
II
“So kind of you not to interrupt just now,” said Miss Marple when, having
tapped at the door of the study, Inspector Neele had told her to come in.
“There were just one or two little points, you know, that I wanted to verify.”
She added reproachfully: “We didn’t really finish our talk just now.”
“I’m so sorry, Miss Marple.” Inspector Neele summoned up a charming smile.
“I’m afraid I was rather rude. I summoned you to a consultation and did all
the talking myself.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Miss Marple immediately, “because, you see,
I wasn’t really quite ready then to put all my cards on the table. I mean I
wouldn’t like to make any accusation unless I was absolutely sure about it.
Sure, that is, in my own mind. And I am sure, now.”
“You’re sure about what, Miss Marple?”
“Well, certainly about who killed Mr. Fortescue. What you told me about the
marmalade, I mean, just clinches the matter. Showing how, I mean, as well as
who, and well within the mental capacity.”
Inspector Neele blinked a little.
“I’m so sorry,” said Miss Marple, perceiving this reaction on his part, “I’m
afraid I find it difficult sometimes to make myself perfectly clear.”
“I’m not quite sure yet, Miss Marple, what we’re talking about.”
“Well, perhaps,” said Miss Marple, “we’d better begin all over again. I mean
if you could spare the time. I would rather like to put my own point of view
before you. You see, I’ve talked a good deal to people, to old Miss Ramsbottom
and to Mrs. Crump and to her husband. He, of course, is a liar, but that
doesn’t really matter because, if you know liars are liars, it comes to the
same thing. But I did want to get the telephone calls clear and the nylon
stockings and all that.”
Inspector Neele blinked again and wondered what he had let himself in for and
why he had ever thought that Miss Marple might be a desirable and clearheaded
colleague. Still, he thought to himself, however muddleheaded she was, she
might have picked up some useful bits of information. All Inspector Neele’s
success in his profession had come from listening well. He was prepared to
listen now.
“Please tell me all about it, Miss Marple,” he said, “but start at the
beginning, won’t you.”
“Yes, of course,” said Miss Marple, “and the beginning is Gladys. I mean I
came here because of Gladys. And you very kindly let me look through all her
things. And what with that and the nylon stockings and the telephone calls and
one thing and another, it did come out perfectly clear. I mean about Mr.
Fortescue and the taxine.”
“You have a theory?” asked Inspector Neele, “as to who put the taxine into Mr.
Fortescue’s marmalade.”
“It isn’t a theory,” said Miss Marple. “I know.”
For the third time Inspector Neele blinked.
“It was Gladys, of course,” said Miss Marple.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple and slowly shook his head.
“Are you saying,” he said incredulously, “that Gladys Martin deliberately
murdered Rex Fortescue? I’m sorry, Miss Marple, but I simply don’t believe
it.”
“No, of course she didn’t mean to murder him,” said Miss Marple, “but she did
it all the same! You said yourself that she was nervous and upset when you
questioned her. And that she looked guilty.”
“Yes, but not guilty of murder.”
“Oh, no, I agree. As I say, she didn’t mean to murder anybody, but she put the
taxine in the marmalade. She didn’t think it was poison, of course.”
“What did she think it was?” Inspector Neele’s voice still sounded
incredulous.
“I rather imagine she thought it was a truth drug,” said Miss Marple. “It’s
very interesting, you know, and very instructive—the things these girls cut
out of papers and keep. It’s always been the same, you know, all through the
ages. Recipes for beauty, for attracting the man you love. And witchcraft and
charms and marvellous happenings. Nowadays they’re mostly lumped together
under the heading of Science. Nobody believes in magicians anymore, nobody
believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog.
But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can
alter your vital tissues and you’ll develop froglike characteristics, well,
everybody would believe that. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
And having read in the papers about truth drugs,
of course Gladys would believe it absolutely when he told her that that’s what
it was.”
“When who told her?” said Inspector Neele.
“Albert Evans,” said Miss Marple. “Not of course that that is really his name.
But anyway he met her last summer at a holiday camp, and he flattered her up
and made love to her, and I should imagine told her some story of injustice or
persecution, or something like that. Anyway, the point was that Rex Fortescue
had to be made to confess what he had done and make restitution. I don’t know
this, of course, Inspector Neele, but I’m pretty sure about it. He got her to
take a post here, and it’s really very easy nowadays with the shortage of
domestic staff, to obtain a post where you want one. Staffs are changing the
whole time. They then arranged a date together. You remember on that last
postcard he said: ‘Remember our date.’ That was to be the great day they were
working for. Gladys would put the drug that he gave her into the top of the
marmalade, so that Mr. Fortescue would eat it at breakfast and she would also
put the rye in his pocket. I don’t know what story he told her to account for
the rye, but as I told you from the beginning, Inspector Neele, Gladys Martin
was a very credulous girl. In fact, there’s hardly anything she wouldn’t
believe if a personable young man put it to her the right way.”
“Go on,” said Inspector Neele in a dazed voice.
“The idea probably was,” continued Miss Marple, “that Albert was going to call
upon him at the office that day, and that by that time the truth drug would
have worked, and that Mr. Fortescue would have confessed everything and so on
and so on. You can imagine the poor girl’s feelings when she heard that Mr.
Fortescue was dead.”
“But, surely,” Inspector Neele objected, “she would have told?”
Miss Marple asked sharply:
“What was the first thing she said to you when you questioned her?”
“She said: ‘I didn’t do it,’ ” Inspector Neele said.
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “Don’t you see that’s exactly what
she would say? If she broke an ornament, you know, Gladys would always say: ‘I
didn’t do it, Miss Marple. I can’t think how it happened.’ They can’t help it,
poor dears. They’re very upset at what they’ve done and their great idea is to
avoid blame. You don’t think that a nervous young woman who had murdered
someone when she didn’t mean to murder him is going to admit it, do you? That
would have been quite out of character.”
“Yes,” Neele said, “I suppose it would.”
He ran his mind back over his interview with Gladys. Nervous, upset, guilty,
shifty-eyed, all those things. They might have had a small significance, or a
big one. He could not really blame himself for having failed to come to the
right conclusion.
“Her first idea, as I say,” went on Miss Marple, “would be to deny it all.
Then in a confused way she would try to sort it all out in her mind. Perhaps
Albert hadn’t known how strong the stuff was, or he’d made a mistake and given
her too much of it. She’d think of excuses for him and explanations. She’d
hope he’d get in touch with her, which, of course, he did. By telephone.”
“Do you know that?” asked Neele sharply.
Miss Marple shook her head.
“No. I admit I’m assuming it. But there were unexplained calls that day. That
is to say, people rang up and, when Crump or Mrs. Crump answered, the phone
was hung up. That’s what he’d do, you know. Ring up and wait until Gladys
answered the phone, and then he’d make an appointment with her to meet him.”
“I see,” said Neele. “You mean she had an appointment to meet him on the day
she died.”
Miss Marple nodded vigorously.
“Yes, that was indicated. Mrs. Crump was right about one thing. The girl had
on her best nylon stockings and her good shoes. She was going to meet someone.
Only she wasn’t going out to meet him. He was coming to Yewtree Lodge. That’s
why she was on the look out that day and flustered and late with tea. Then, as
she brought the second tray into the hall, I think she looked along the
passage to the side door, and saw him there, beckoning to her. She put the
tray down and went out to meet him.”
“And then he strangled her,” said Neele.
Miss Marple pursed her lips together. “It would only take a minute,” she said,
“but he couldn’t risk her talking. She had to die, poor, silly, credulous
girl. And then—he put a clothes-peg on her nose!” Stern anger vibrated the old
lady’s voice. ‘To make it fit in with the rhyme. The rye, the blackbirds, the
countinghouse, the bread and honey, and the clothes-peg—the nearest he could
get to a little dickey bird that nipped off her nose—”
“And I suppose at the end of it all he’ll go to Broadmoor and we shan’t be
able to hang him because he’s crazy!” said Neele slowly.
“I think you’ll hang him all right,” said Miss Marple. “And he’s not crazy,
Inspector, not for a moment!”
Inspector Neele looked hard at her.
“Now see here, Miss Marple, you’ve outlined a theory to me. Yes—yes—although
you say you know, it’s only a theory. You’re saying that a man is responsible
for these crimes, who called himself Albert Evans, who picked up the girl
Gladys at a holiday camp and used her for his own purposes. This Albert Evans
was someone who wanted revenge for the old Blackbird Mine business. You’re
suggesting, aren’t you, that Mrs. MacKenzie’s son, Don MacKenzie, didn’t die
at Dunkirk. That he’s still alive, that he’s behind all this?”
But to Inspector Neele’s surprise, Miss Marple was shaking her head violently.
“Oh no!” she said, “oh no! I’m not suggesting that at all. Don’t you see,
Inspector Neele, all this blackbird business is really a complete fake. It was
used, that was all, used by somebody who heard about the blackbirds—the ones
in the library and in the pie. The blackbirds were genuine enough. They were
put there by someone who knew about the old business, who wanted revenge for
it. But only the revenge of trying to frighten Mr. Fortescue or to make him
uncomfortable. I don’t believe, you know, Inspector Neele, that children can
really be brought up and taught to wait and brood and carry out revenge.
Children, after all, have got a lot of sense. But anyone whose father had been
swindled and perhaps left to die might be willing to play a malicious trick on
the person who was supposed to have done it. That’s what happened, I think.
And the killer used it.”
“The killer,” said Inspector Neele. “Come now, Miss Marple, let’s have your
ideas about the killer. Who was he?”
“You won’t be surprised,” said Miss Marple. “Not really. Because you’ll see,
as soon as I tell you who he is, or rather who I think he is, for one must be
accurate must one not?—you’ll see that he’s just the type of person who would
commit these murders. He’s sane, brilliant and quite unscrupulous. And he did
it, of course, for money, probably for a good deal of money.”
“Percival Fortescue?” Inspector Neele spoke almost imploringly, but he knew as
he spoke that he was wrong. The picture of the man that Miss Marple had built
up for him had no resemblance to Percival Fortescue.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “Not Percival. Lance.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I
“It’s impossible,” said Inspector Neele.
He leaned back in his chair and watched Miss Marple with fascinated eyes. As
Miss Marple had said, he was not surprised. His words were a denial, not of
probability, but of possibility. Lance Fortescue fitted the description: Miss
Marple had outlined it well enough. But Inspector Neele simply could not see
how Lance could be the answer. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
But Inspector Neele simply could not see
how Lance could be the answer.
Miss Marple leaned forward in her chair and gently, persuasively, and rather
in the manner of someone explaining the simple facts of arithmetic to a small
child, outlined her theory.
“He’s always been like that, you see. I mean, he’s always been bad. Bad all
through, although with it he’s always been attractive. Especially attractive
to women. He’s got a brilliant mind and he’ll take risks. He’s always taken
risks and because of his charm people have always believed the best and not
the worst about him. He came home in the summer to see his father. I don’t
believe for a moment that his father wrote to him or sent for him—unless, of
course, you’ve got actual evidence to that effect.” She paused inquiringly.
Neele shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve no evidence of his father sending
for him. I’ve got a letter that Lance is supposed to have written to him after
being here. But Lance could quite easily have slipped that among his father’s
papers in the study here the day he arrived.”
“Sharp of him,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head. “Well, as I say, he
probably flew over here and attempted a reconciliation with his father, but
Mr. Fortescue wouldn’t have it. You see, Lance had recently got married and
the small pittance he was living on, and which he had doubtless been
supplementing in various dishonest ways, was not enough for him anymore. He
was very much in love with Pat (who is a dear, sweet girl) and he wanted a
respectable, settled life with her—nothing shifty. And that, from his point of
view, meant having a lot of money. When he was at Yewtree Lodge he must have
heard about these blackbirds. Perhaps his father mentioned them. Perhaps Adele
did. He jumped to the conclusion that MacKenzie’s daughter was established in
the house and it occurred to him that she would make a very good scapegoat for
murder. Because, you see, when he realized that he couldn’t get his father to
do what he wanted, he must have cold-bloodedly decided that murder it would
have to be. He may have realized that his father wasn’t—er, very well—and have
feared that by the time his father died there would have been a complete
crash.”
“He knew about his father’s health all right,” said the inspector.
“Ah—that explains a good deal. Perhaps the coincidence of his father’s
Christian name being Rex together with the blackbird incident suggested the
idea of the nursery rhyme. Make a crazy business of the whole thing—and tie it
up with that old revenge threat of the MacKenzies. Then, you see, he could
dispose of Adele, too, and that hundred thousand pounds going out of the firm.
But there would have to be a third character, the ‘maid in the garden hanging
up the clothes’—and I suppose that suggested the whole wicked plan to him. An
innocent accomplice whom he could silence before she could talk. And that
would give him what he wanted—a genuine alibi for the first murder. The rest
was easy. He arrived here from the station just before five o’clock, which was
the time when Gladys brought the second tray into the hall. He came to the
side door, saw her and beckoned to her. Strangling her and carrying her body
round the house to where the clotheslines were would only have taken three or
four minutes. Then he rang the front doorbell, was admitted to the house, and
joined the family for tea. After tea he went up to see Miss Ramsbottom. When
he came down, he slipped into the drawing room, found Adele alone there
drinking a last cup of tea and sat down by her on the sofa, and while he was
talking to her, he managed to slip the cyanide into her tea. It wouldn’t be
difficult, you know. A little piece of white stuff, like sugar. He might have
stretched out his hand to the sugar basin and taken a lump and apparently
dropped it into her cup. He’d laugh and say: ‘Look, I’ve dropped more sugar
into your tea.’ She’d say she didn’t mind, stir it and drink it. It would be
as easy and audacious as that. Yes, he’s an audacious fellow.”
Inspector Neele said slowly:
“It’s actually possible—yes. But I cannot see—really, Miss Marple, I cannot
see—what he stood to gain by it. Granted that unless old Fortescue died the
business would soon be on the rocks, is Lance’s share big enough to cause him
to plan three murders? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.”
“That is a little difficult,” admitted Miss Marple. “Yes, I agree with you.
That does present difficulties. I suppose . . .” She hesitated, looking at the
inspector. “I suppose—I am so very ignorant in financial matters—but I suppose
it is really true that the Blackbird Mine is worthless?”
Neele reflected. Various scraps fitted together in his mind. Lance’s
willingness to take the various speculative or worthless shares off Percival’s
hands. His parting words today in London that Percival had better get rid of
the Blackbird and its hoodoo. A gold mine. A worthless gold mine. But perhaps
the mine had not been worthless. And yet, somehow, that seemed unlikely. Old
Rex Fortescue was hardly likely to have made a mistake on that point, although
of course there might have been soundings recently. Where was the mine? West
Africa, Lance had said. Yes but somebody else—was it Miss Ramsbottom—had said
it was in East Africa. Had Lance been deliberately misleading when he said
West instead of East? Miss Ramsbottom was old and forgetful, and yet she might
have been right and not Lance. East Africa. Lance had just come from East
Africa. Had he perhaps some recent knowledge?
Suddenly with a click another piece fitted into the inspector’s puzzle.
Sitting in the train, reading The Times. Uranium deposits found in Tanganyika.
Supposing that the uranium deposits were on the site of the old Blackbird?
That would explain everything. Lance had come to have knowledge of that, being
on the spot, and with uranium deposits there, there was a fortune to be
grasped. An enormous fortune! He sighed. He looked at Miss Marple.
“How do you think,” he asked reproachfully, “that I’m ever going to be able to
prove all this?”
Miss Marple nodded at him encouragingly, as an aunt might have encouraged a
bright nephew who was going in for a scholarship exam.
“You’ll prove it,” she said. “You’re a very, very clever man, Inspector Neele.
I’ve seen that from the first. Now you know who it is you ought to be able to
get the evidence. At that holiday camp, for instance, they’ll recognize his
photograph. He’ll find it hard to explain why he stayed there for a week
calling himself Albert Evans.”
Yes, Inspector Neele thought, Lance Fortescue was brilliant and
unscrupulous—but he was foolhardy, too. The risks he took were just a little
too great.
Neele thought to himself, “I’ll get him!” Then, doubt sweeping over him, he
looked at Miss Marple.
“It’s all pure assumption, you know,” he said.
“Yes—but you are sure, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so. After all, I’ve known his kind before.”
The old lady nodded.
“Yes—that matters so much—that’s really why I’m sure.”
Neele looked at her playfully.
“Because of your knowledge of criminals.”
“Oh no—of course not. Because of Pat—a dear girl—and the kind that always
marries a bad lot—that’s really what drew my attention to him at the start—”
“I may be sure—in my own mind,” said the inspector, “but there’s a lot that
needs explaining—the Ruby MacKenzie business for instance. I could swear
that—”
Miss Marple interrupted:
“And you’re quite right. But you’ve been thinking of the wrong person. Go and
talk to Mrs. Percy.”
II
“Mrs. Fortescue,” said Inspector Neele, “do you mind telling me your name
before you were married.”
“Oh!” Jennifer gasped. She looked frightened.
“You needn’t be nervous, madam,” said Inspector Neele, “but it’s much better
to come out with the truth. I’m right, I think, in saying that your name
before you were married was Ruby MacKenzie?”
“My—well, oh well—oh dear—well, why shouldn’t it be?” said Mrs. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Percival
Fortescue.
“No reason at all,” said Inspector Neele gently, and added: “I was talking to
your mother a few days ago at Pinewood Sanatorium.”
“She’s very angry with me,” said Jennifer. “I never go and see her now because
it only upsets her. Poor Mumsy, she was so devoted to Dad, you know.”
“And she brought you up to have very melodramatic ideas of revenge?”
“Yes,” said Jennifer. “She kept making us swear on the Bible that we’d never
forget and that we’d kill him one day. Of course, once I’d gone into hospital
and started my training, I began to realize that her mental balance wasn’t
what it should be.”
“You yourself must have felt revengeful though, Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Well, of course I did. Rex Fortescue practically murdered my father! I don’t
mean he actually shot him, or knifed him or anything like that. But I’m quite
certain that he did leave Father to die. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s the same thing morally—yes.”
“So I did want to pay him back,” said Jennifer. “When a friend of mine came to
nurse his son I got her to leave and to propose my replacing her. I don’t know
exactly what I meant to do . . . I didn’t, really I didn’t, Inspector, I never
meant to kill Mr. Fortescue. I had some idea, I think, of nursing his son so
badly that the son would die. But of course, if you are a nurse by profession
you can’t do that sort of thing. Actually I had quite a job pulling Val
through. And then he got fond of me and asked me to marry him and I thought,
‘Well, really that’s a far more sensible revenge than anything else.” I mean,
to marry Mr. Fortescue’s eldest son and get the money he swindled Father out
of back that way. I think it was a far more sensible way.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Inspector Neele, “far more sensible.” He added, “It was
you, I suppose, who put the blackbirds on the desk and in the pie?”
Mrs. Percival flushed.
“Yes. I suppose it was silly of me really . . . But Mr. Fortescue had been
talking about suckers one day and boasting of how he’d swindled people—got the
best of them. Oh, in quite a legal way. And I thought I’d just like to give
him—well, a kind of fright. And it did give him a fright! He was awfully
upset.” She added anxiously, “But I didn’t do anything else! I didn’t really,
Inspector. You don’t—you don’t honestly think I would murder anyone, do you?”
Inspector Neele smiled.
“No,” he said, “I don’t.” He added: “By the way, have you given Miss Dove any
money lately?”
Jennifer’s jaw dropped.
“How did you know?”
“We know a lot of things,” said Inspector Neele and added to himself: “And
guess a good many, too.”
Jennifer continued, speaking rapidly:
“She came to me and said that you’d accused her of being Ruby MacKenzie. She
said if I’d get hold of five hundred pounds she’d let you go on thinking so.
She said if you knew that I was Ruby MacKenzie, I’d be suspected of murdering
Mr. Fortescue and my stepmother. I had an awful job getting the money, because
of course I couldn’t tell Percival. He doesn’t know about me. I had to sell my
diamond engagement ring and a very beautiful necklace Mr. Fortescue gave me.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Percival,” said Inspector Neele, “I think we can get your
money back for you.”
III
It was on the following day that Inspector Neele had another interview with
Miss Mary Dove.
“I wonder, Miss Dove,” he said, “if you’d give me a cheque for five hundred
pounds payable to Mrs. Percival Fortescue.”
He had the pleasure of seeing Mary Dove lose countenance for once.
“The silly fool told you, I suppose,” she said.
“Yes. Blackmail, Miss Dove, is rather a serious charge.”
“It wasn’t exactly blackmail, Inspector. I think you’d find it hard to make
out a case of blackmail against me. I was just doing Mrs. Percival a special
service to oblige her.”
“Well, if you’ll give me that cheque, Miss Dove, we’ll leave it like that.”
Mary Dove got her cheque book and took out her fountain pen.
“It’s very annoying,” she said with a sigh. “I’m particularly hard up at the
moment.”
“You’ll be looking for another job soon, I suppose?”
“Yes. This one hasn’t turned out quite according to plan. It’s all been very
unfortunate from my point of view.”
Inspector Neele agreed.
“Yes, it put you in rather a difficult position, didn’t it? I mean, it was
quite likely that at any moment we might have to look into your antecedents.”
Mary Dove, cool once more, allowed her eyebrows to rise.
“Really, Inspector, my past is quite blameless, I assure you.”
“Yes, it is,” Inspector Neele agreed, cheerfully. “We’ve nothing against you
at all, Miss Dove. It’s a curious coincidence, though, that in the last three
places which you have filled so admirably, there have happened to be robberies
about three months after you left. The thieves have seemed remarkably well-
informed as to where mink coats, jewels, etc., were kept. Curious coincidence,
isn’t it?”
“Coincidences do happen, Inspector.”
“Oh, yes,” said Neele. “They happen. But they mustn’t happen too often, Miss
Dove. I dare say,” he added, “that we may meet again in the future.”
“I hope”—said Mary Dove—“I don’t mean to be rude, Inspector Neele—but I hope
we don’t.” | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I
Miss Marple smoothed over the top of her suitcase, tucked in an end of woolly
shawl and shut the lid down. She looked round her bedroom. No, she had left
nothing behind. Crump came in to fetch down her luggage. Miss Marple went into
the next room to say goodbye to Miss Ramsbottom.
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Marple, “that I’ve made a very poor return for your
hospitality. I hope you will be able to forgive me someday.”
“Hah,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
She was as usual playing patience.
“Black knave, red queen,” she observed, then she darted a shrewd, sideways
glance at Miss Marple. “You found out what you wanted to, I suppose,” she
said.
“Yes.”
“And I suppose you’ve told that police inspector all about it? Will he be able
to prove a case?”
“I’m almost sure he will,” said Miss Marple. “It may take a little time.”
“I’m not asking you any questions,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “You’re a shrewd
woman. I knew that as soon as I saw you. I don’t blame you for what you’ve
done. Wickedness is wickedness and has got to be punished. There’s a bad
streak in this family. It didn’t come from our side, I’m thankful to say.
Elvira, my sister, was a fool. Nothing worse.
“Black knave,” repeated Miss Ramsbottom, fingering the card. “Handsome, but a
black heart. Yes, I was afraid of it. Ah, well, you can’t always help loving a
sinner. The boy always had a way with him. Even got round me . . . Told a lie
about the time he left me that day. I didn’t contradict him, but I wondered .
. . I’ve wondered ever since. But he was Elvira’s boy—I couldn’t bring myself
to say anything. Ah well, you’re a righteous woman, Jane Marple, and right
must prevail. I’m sorry for his wife, though.”
“So am I,” said Miss Marple.
In the hall Pat Fortescue was waiting to say good-bye.
“I wish you weren’t going,” she said. “I shall miss you.”
“It’s time for me to go,” said Miss Marple. “I’ve finished what I came here to
do. It hasn’t been—altogether pleasant. But it’s important, you know, that
wickedness shouldn’t triumph.”
Pat looked puzzled.
“I don’t understand.”
“No, my dear. But perhaps you will, someday. If I might venture to advise, if
anything ever—goes wrong in your life—I think the happiest thing for you would
be to go back to where you were happy as a child. Go back to Ireland, my dear.
Horses and dogs. All that.”
Pat nodded.
“Sometimes I wish I’d done just that when Freddy died. But if I had”—her voice
changed and softened—“I’d never have met Lance.”
Miss Marple sighed.
“We’re not staying here, you know,” said Pat. “We’re going back to East Africa
as soon as everything’s cleared up. I’m so glad.”
“God bless you, dear child,” said Miss Marple. “One needs a great deal of
courage to get through life. I think you have it.”
She patted the girl’s hand and, releasing it, went through the front door to
the waiting taxi.
II
Miss Marple reached home late that evening.
Kitty—the latest graduate from St. Faith’s Home—let her in and greeted her
with a beaming face.
“I’ve got a herring for your supper, miss. I’m so glad to see you home—you’ll
find everything very nice in the house. Regular spring cleaning I’ve had.”
“That’s very nice, Kitty—I’m glad to be home.”
Six spider’s webs on the cornice, Miss Marple noted. These girls never raised
their heads! She was none the less too kind to say so.
“Your letters is on the hall table, miss. And there’s one as went to Daisymead
by mistake. Always doing that, aren’t they? Does look a bit alike, Dane and
Daisy, and the writing’s so bad I don’t wonder this time. They’ve been away
there and the house shut up, they only got back and sent it round today. Said
as how they hoped it wasn’t important.”
Miss Marple picked up her correspondence. The letter to which Kitty had
referred was on top of the others. A faint chord of remembrance stirred in
Miss Marple’s mind at the sight of the blotted scrawled handwriting. She tore
it open.
Dear Madam,
I hope as you’ll forgive me writing this but I really don’t know what to do
indeed I don’t and I never meant no harm. Dear madam, you’ll have seen the
newspapers it was murder they say but it wasn’t me that did it, not really,
because I would never do anything wicked like that and I know as how he
wouldn’t either. Albert, I mean. I’m telling this badly, but you see we met
last summer and was going to be married only Bert hadn’t got his rights, he’d
been done out of them, swindled by this Mr. Fortescue who’s dead. And Mr.
Fortescue he just denied everything and of course everybody believed him and
not Bert because he was rich and Bert was poor. But Bert had a friend who
works in a place where they make these new drugs and there’s what they call a
truth drug you’ve read about it perhaps in the paper and it makes people speak
the truth whether they want to or not. Bert was going to see Mr. Fortescue in
his office on Nov. 5th and taking a lawyer with him and I was to be sure to
give him the drug at breakfast that morning and then it would work just right
for when they came and he’d admit as all what Bert said was quite true. Well,
madam, I put it in the marmalade but now he’s dead and I think as how it must
have been too strong but it wasn’t Bert’s fault because Bert would never do a
thing like that but I can’t tell the police because maybe they’d think Bert
did it on purpose which I know he didn’t. Oh, madam, I don’t know what to do
or what to say and the police are here in the house and it’s awful and they
ask you questions and look at you so stern and I don’t know what to do and I
haven’t heard from Bert. Oh, madam, I don’t like to ask it of you but if you
could only come here and help me they’d listen to you and you were always so
kind to me, and I didn’t mean anything wrong and Bert didn’t either. If you
could only help us. Yours respectfully,
Gladys Martin.
P. S.—I’m enclosing a snap of Bert and me. One of the boys took it at the camp
and give it me. Bert doesn’t know I’ve got it—he hates being snapped. But you
can see, madam, what a nice boy he is.
Miss Marple, her lips pursed together, stared down at the photograph. The pair
pictured there were looking at each other. Miss Marple’s eyes went from
Gladys’s pathetic adoring face, the mouth slightly open, to the other face—the
dark handsome smiling face of Lance Fortescue.
The last words of the pathetic letter echoed in her mind:
You can see what a nice boy he is.
The tear rose in Miss Marple’s eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger—anger
against a heartless killer.
And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of triumph—the
triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully reconstructed an
extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of teeth. | a pocket full of rye - agatha christie.epub |
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.
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Copyright
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AGATHA CHRISTIE® MARPLE® MISS MARPLE® A POCKET FULL OF RYE™. Copyright © 2011
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Full of Rye was first published in 1953.
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AGATHA CHRISTIE
writing as
MARY WESTMACOTT
Absent in the Spring
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Dedication
From you have I been absent in the Spring …
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Joan Scudamore screwed up her eyes as she peered across the dimness of the
rest house dining-room. She was slightly short-sighted.
Surely that’s – no it isn’t – I believe it is. Blanche Haggard.
Extraordinary – right out in the wilds – to come across an old school friend
whom she hadn’t seen for – oh quite fifteen years.
At first, Joan was delighted by the discovery. She was by nature a sociable
woman, always pleased to run across friends and acquaintances.
She thought to herself, But, poor dear, how dreadfully she’s changed. She
looks years older. Literally years. After all, she can’t be more than –
what, forty-eight?
It was a natural sequence after that to glance at her own appearance in the
mirror that happened, most conveniently, to hang just beside the table. What
she saw there put her in an even better humour.
Really, thought Joan Scudamore, I’ve worn very well.
She saw a slender, middle-aged woman with a singularly unlined face, brown
hair hardly touched with grey, pleasant blue eyes and a cheerful smiling
mouth. The woman was dressed in a neat, cool travelling coat and skirt and
carried a rather large bag containing the necessities of travel.
Joan Scudamore was travelling back from Baghdad to London by the overland
route. She had come up by the train from Baghdad last night. She was to sleep
in the railway rest house tonight and go on by car tomorrow morning.
It was the sudden illness of her younger daughter that had brought her post
haste out from England, her realization of William’s (her son-in-law)
impracticability, and of the chaos that would arise in a household without
efficient control.
Well, that was all right now. She had taken charge, made arrangements. The
baby, William, Barbara convalescent, everything had been planned and set in
good running order. Thank goodness, thought Joan, I’ve always had a head on my
shoulders.
William and Barbara had been full of gratitude. They’d pressed her to stay on,
not to rush back, but she had smilingly, albeit with a stifled sigh, refused.
For there was Rodney to consider – poor old Rodney stuck in Crayminster, up to
his ears in work and with no one in the house to look after his comfort except
servants.
‘And after all,’ said Joan, ‘what are servants?’
Barbara said:
‘ Your servants, Mother, are always perfection. You see to that!’
She had laughed, but she had been pleased all the same. Because when all was
said and done one did like appreciation. She had sometimes wondered if her
family took a little too much for granted the smooth running of the house and
her own care and devotion.
Not really that she had any criticism to make. Tony, Averil and Barbara were
delightful children and she and Rodney had every reason to be proud of their
upbringing and of their success in life.
Tony was growing oranges out in Rhodesia, Averil, after giving her parents
some momentary anxiety, had settled down as the wife of a wealthy and charming
stockbroker. Barbara’s husband had a good job in the Public Works Department
in Iraq.
They were all nice-looking healthy children with pleasant manners. Joan felt
that she and Rodney were indeed fortunate – and privately she was of the
opinion that some of the credit was to be ascribed to them as parents. After
all, they had brought the children up very carefully, taking infinite pains
over the choice of nurses and governesses, and later of schools and always
putting the welfare and well-being of the children first.
Joan felt a little gentle glow as she turned away from her image in the glass.
She thought, Well, it’s nice to feel one’s been a success at one’s job. I
never wanted a career, or anything of that kind. I was quite content to be a
wife and mother. I married the man I loved, and he’s been a success at his job
– and perhaps that’s owing to me a bit too. One can do so much by influence.
Dear Rodney!
And her heart warmed to the thought that soon, very soon, she would be seeing
Rodney again. She’d never been away from him for very long before. What a
happy peaceful life they had had together.
Well, perhaps peaceful was rather overstating it. Family life was never
quite peaceful. Holidays, infectious illnesses, broken pipes in winter. Life
really was a series of petty dramas. And Rodney had always worked very hard,
harder perhaps than was good for his health. He’d been badly run down that
time six years ago. He hadn’t, Joan thought with compunction, worn quite as
well as she had. He stooped rather, and there was a lot of white in his hair.
He had a tired look, too, about the eyes.
Still, after all, that was life. And now, with the children married, and the
firm doing so well, and the new partner bringing fresh money in, Rodney could
take things more easily. He and she would have time to enjoy themselves. They
must entertain more – have a week or two in London every now and then. Rodney,
perhaps, might take up golf. Yes, really she couldn’t think why she hadn’t
persuaded him to take up golf before. So healthy, especially when he had to do
so much office work.
Having settled that point in her mind, Mrs Scudamore looked across the dining-
room once more at the woman whom she believed to be her former school friend.
Blanche Haggard. How she had adored Blanche Haggard when they were at St
Anne’s together! Everyone was crazy about Blanche. She had been so daring, so
amusing, and yes, so absolutely lovely. Funny to think of that now, looking
at that thin, restless, untidy elderly woman. What extraordinary clothes! And
she looked – really she looked – at least sixty …
Of course, thought Joan, she’s had a very unfortunate life.
A momentary impatience rose in her. The whole thing seemed such a wanton
waste. There was Blanche, twenty-one, with the world at her feet – looks,
position, everything – and she had had to throw in her lot with that quite
unspeakable man. A vet – yes, actually a vet. A vet with a wife, too, which
made it worse. Her people had behaved with commendable firmness, taking her
round the world on one of those pleasure cruises. And Blanche had actually got
off the boat somewhere, Algiers, or Naples, and come home and joined her vet.
And naturally he had lost his practice, and started drinking, and his wife
hadn’t wished to divorce him. Presently they’d left Crayminster and after that
Joan hadn’t heard anything of Blanche for years, not until she’d run across
her one day in London at Harrods where they had met in the shoe department,
and after a little discreet conversation (discreet on Joan’s part, Blanche had
never set any store by discretion) she had discovered that Blanche was now
married to a man called Holliday who was in an insurance office, but Blanche
thought he was going to resign soon because he wanted to write a book about
Warren Hastings and he wanted to give all his time to it, not just write
scraps when he came back from the office. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
Joan had murmured that in that case she supposed he had private means? And
Blanche had replied cheerfully that he hadn’t got a cent! Joan had said that
perhaps to give up his job would be rather unwise, unless he was sure the book
would be a success. Was it commissioned? Oh dear me, no, said Blanche
cheerfully, and as a matter of fact she didn’t really think the book would be
a success, because though Tom was very keen on it, he really didn’t write very
well. Whereupon Joan had said with some warmth that Blanche must put her foot
down, to which Blanche had responded with a stare and a ‘But he wants to
write, the poor pet. He wants it more than anything.’ Sometimes, Joan said,
one had to be wise for two. Blanche had laughed and remarked that she herself
had never even been wise enough for one!
Thinking that over, Joan felt that it was only too unfortunately true. A year
later she saw Blanche in a restaurant with a peculiar, flashy looking woman
and two flamboyantly artistic men. After that the only reminder she had had of
Blanche’s existence was five years later when Blanche wrote and asked for a
loan of fifty pounds. Her little boy, she said, needed an operation. Joan had
sent her twenty-five and a kind letter asking for details. The response was a
postcard with scrawled on it: Good for you, Joan. I knew you wouldn’t let me
down – which was gratifying in a way, but hardly satisfactory. After that,
silence. And now here, in a Near Eastern railway rest house, with kerosene
lamps flaring and spluttering amidst a smell of rancid mutton fat and paraffin
and Flit, was the friend of so many years ago, incredibly aged and coarsened
and the worse for wear.
Blanche finished her dinner first and was on her way out when she caught sight
of the other. She stopped dead.
‘Holy Moses, it’s Joan!’
A moment or two later she had pulled up her chair to the table and the two
were chatting together.
Presently Blanche said:
‘Well, you’ve worn well, my dear. You look about thirty. Where have you been
all these years? In cold storage?’
‘Hardly that. I’ve been in Crayminster.’
‘Born, bred, married and buried in Crayminster,’ said Blanche.
Joan said with a laugh:
‘Is that so bad a fate?’
Blanche shook her head.
‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘I’d say it was a pretty good one. What’s happened
to your children? You had some children, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, three. A boy and two girls. The boy is in Rhodesia. The girls are
married. One lives in London. I’ve just been visiting the other one out in
Baghdad. Her name is Wray – Barbara Wray.’
Blanche nodded.
‘I’ve seen her. Nice kid. Married rather too young, didn’t she?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Joan stiffly. ‘We all like William very much, and
they are happy together.’
‘Yes, they seem to be settling down all right now. The baby has probably been
a settling influence. Having a child does sort of steady a girl down. Not,’
added Blanche thoughtfully, ‘that it ever steadied me. I was very fond of
those two kids of mine – Len and Mary. And yet when Johnnie Pelham came along,
I went off with him and left them behind without a second thought.’
Joan looked at her with disapprobation.
‘Really, Blanche,’ she said warmly. ‘How could you?’
‘Rotten of me, wasn’t it?’ said Blanche. ‘Of course I knew they’d be all right
with Tom. He always adored them. He married a really nice domestic girl.
Suited him far better than I ever did. She saw that he had decent meals and
mended his underclothes and all that. Dear Tom, he was always a pet. He used
to send me a card at Christmas and Easter for years afterwards which was nice
of him, don’t you think?’
Joan did not answer. She was too full of conflicting thoughts. The predominant
one was wonder that this – this – could be Blanche Haggard – that well-bred,
high-spirited girl who had been the star pupil at St Anne’s. This really
slatternly woman with apparently no shame in revealing the more sordid details
of her life, and in such common language too! Why, Blanche Haggard had won the
prize for English at St Anne’s!
Blanche reverted to a former topic.
‘Fancy little Barbara Wray being your daughter, Joan. That just shows how
people get things wrong. Everyone had got it into their heads that she was so
unhappy at home that she’d married the first man who asked her in order to
escape.’
‘How ridiculous. Where do these stories come from?’
‘I can’t imagine. Because I’m pretty sure of one thing, Joan and that is that
you’ve always been an admirable mother. I can’t imagine you being cross or
unkind.’
‘That’s nice of you, Blanche. I think I may say that we’ve always given our
children a very happy home and done everything possible for their happiness. I
think it’s so important, you know, that one should be friends with one’s
children.’
‘Very nice – if one ever can.’
‘Oh, I think you can. It’s just a question of remembering your own youth and
putting yourself in their place.’ Joan’s charming, serious face was bent a
little nearer to that of her former friend. ‘Rodney and I have always tried to
do that.’
‘Rodney? Let me see, you married a solicitor, didn’t you? Of course – I went
to their firm at the time when Harry was trying to get a divorce from that
awful wife of his. I believe it was your husband we saw – Rodney Scudamore. He
was extraordinarily nice and kind, most understanding. And you’ve stayed put
with him all these years. No fresh deals?’
Joan said rather stiffly:
‘Neither of us have wanted a fresh deal. Rodney and I have been perfectly
contented with one another.’
‘Of course you always were as cold as a fish, Joan. But I should have said
that husband of yours had quite a roving eye!’
‘Really, Blanche!’
Joan flushed angrily. A roving eye, indeed. Rodney!
And suddenly, discordantly, a thought slipped and flashed sideways across the
panorama of Joan’s mind, much as she had noticed a snake flash and slip across
the dust coloured track in front of the car only yesterday – a mere streak of
writhing green, gone almost before you saw it.
The streak consisted of three words, leaping out of space and back into
oblivion.
The Randolph girl …
Gone again before she had time to note them consciously.
Blanche was cheerfully contrite.
‘Sorry, Joan. Let’s come into the other room and have coffee. I always did
have a vulgar mind, you know.’
‘Oh no,’ the protest came quickly to Joan’s lips, genuine and slightly
shocked.
Blanche looked amused.
‘Oh yes, don’t you remember? Remember the time I slipped out to meet the
baker’s boy?’
Joan winced. She had forgotten that incident. At the time it had seemed daring
and – yes – actually romantic. Really a vulgar and unpleasant episode.
Blanche, settling herself in a wicker chair and calling to the boy to bring
coffee, laughed to herself.
‘Horrid precocious little piece I must have been. Oh, well, that’s always been
my undoing. I’ve always been far too fond of men. And always rotters!
Extraordinary, isn’t it? First Harry – and he was a bad lot all right –
though frightfully good looking. And then Tom who never amounted to much,
though I was fond of him in a way. Johnnie Pelham – that was a good time while
it lasted. Gerald wasn’t much good, either …’
At this point the boy brought the coffee, thus interrupting what Joan could
not but feel was a singularly unsavoury catalogue.
Blanche caught sight of her expression.
‘Sorry, Joan, I’ve shocked you. Always a bit straitlaced, weren’t you?’
‘Oh, I hope I’m always ready to take a broad-minded view.’
Joan achieved a kindly smile.
She added rather awkwardly:
‘I only mean I’m – I’m so sorry.’
‘For me?’ Blanche seemed amused by the idea. ‘Nice of you, darling, but don’t
waste sympathy. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
‘Nice of you, darling, but don’t
waste sympathy. I’ve had lots of fun.’
Joan could not resist a swift sideways glance. Really, had Blanche any idea of
the deplorable appearance she presented? Her carelessly dyed hennaed hair, her
somewhat dirty, flamboyant clothes, her haggard, lined face, an old woman – an
old raddled woman – an old disreputable gipsy of a woman!
Blanche, her face suddenly growing grave, said soberly:
‘Yes, you’re quite right, Joan. You’ve made a success of your life. And I –
well, I’ve made a mess of mine. I’ve gone down in the world and you’ve gone –
no, you’ve stayed where you were – a St Anne’s girl who’s married suitably and
always been a credit to the old school!’
Trying to steer the conversation towards the only ground that she and Blanche
had in common now, Joan said:
‘Those were good days, weren’t they?’
‘So-so.’ Blanche was careless in her praise. ‘I got bored sometimes. It was
all so smug and consciously healthy. I wanted to get out and see the world.
Well,’ her mouth gave a humorous twist, ‘I’ve seen it. I’ll say I’ve seen it!’
For the first time Joan approached the subject of Blanche’s presence in the
rest house.
‘Are you going back to England? Are you leaving on the convoy tomorrow
morning?’
Her heart sank just a little as she put the question. Really, she did not want
Blanche as a travelling companion. A chance meeting was all very well, but she
had grave doubts of being able to sustain the pose of friendship all the way
across Europe. Reminiscences of the old days would soon wear thin.
Blanche grinned at her.
‘No, I’m going the other way. To Baghdad. To join my husband.’
‘Your husband?’
Joan really felt quite surprised that Blanche should have anything so
respectable as a husband.
‘Yes, he’s an engineer – on the railway. Donovan his name is.’
‘Donovan?’ Joan shook her head. ‘I don’t think I came across him at all.’
Blanche laughed.
‘You wouldn’t, darling. Rather out of your class. He drinks like a fish
anyway. But he’s got a heart like a child. And it may surprise you, but he
thinks the world of me.’
‘So he ought,’ said Joan loyally and politely.
‘Good old Joan. Always play the game, don’t you? You must be thankful I’m not
going the other way. It would break even your Christian spirit to have five
days of my company. You needn’t trouble to deny it. I know what I’ve become.
Coarse in mind and body – that’s what you were thinking. Well, there are worse
things.’
Joan privately doubted very much whether there were. It seemed to her that
Blanche’s decadence was a tragedy of the first water.
Blanche went on:
‘Hope you have a good journey, but I rather doubt it. Looks to me as though
the rains are starting. If so, you may be stuck for days, miles from
anywhere.’
‘I hope not. It will upset all my train reservations.’
‘Oh well, desert travel is seldom according to schedule. So long as you get
across the wadis all right, the rest will be easy. And of course the drivers
take plenty of food and water along. Still it gets a bit boring to be stuck
somewhere with nothing to do but think.’
Joan smiled.
‘It might be rather a pleasant change. You know, one never has time as a rule
to relax at all. I’ve often wished I could have just one week with really
nothing to do.’
‘I should have thought you could have had that whenever you liked?’
‘Oh no, my dear. I’m a very busy woman in my small way. I’m the Secretary of
the Country Gardens Association – And I’m on the committee of our local
hospital. And there’s the Institute – and the Guides. And I take quite an
active part in politics. What with all that and running the house and then
Rodney and I go out a good deal and have people in to see us. It’s so good for
a lawyer to have plenty of social background, I always think. And then I’m
very fond of my garden and like to do quite a good deal in it myself. Do you
know, Blanche, that there’s hardly a moment, except perhaps a quarter of an
hour before dinner, when I can really sit down and rest? And to keep up with
one’s reading is quite a task.’
‘You seem to stand up to it all pretty well,’ murmured Blanche, her eyes on
the other’s unlined face.
‘Well, to wear out is better than to rust out! And I must admit I’ve always
had marvellous health. I really am thankful for that. But all the same it
would be wonderful to feel that one had a whole day or even two days with
nothing to do but think.’
‘I wonder,’ said Blanche, ‘what you’d think about?’
Joan laughed. It was a pleasant, tinkling, little sound.
‘There are always plenty of things to think about, aren’t there?’ she said.
Blanche grinned.
‘One can always think of one’s sins!’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Joan assented politely though without amusement.
Blanche eyed her keenly.
‘Only that wouldn’t give you occupation long!’
She frowned and went on abruptly:
‘You’d have to go on from them to think of your good deeds. And all the
blessings of your life! Hm – I don’t know. Might be rather dull. I wonder,’
she paused, ‘if you’d nothing to think about but yourself for days and days I
wonder what you’d find out about yourself –’
Joan looked sceptical and faintly amused.
‘Would one find out anything one didn’t know before?’
Blanche said slowly:
‘I think one might …’ She gave a sudden shiver. ‘I shouldn’t like to try it.’
‘Of course,’ said Joan, ‘some people have an urge towards the contemplative
life. I’ve never been able to understand that myself. The mystic point of view
is very difficult to appreciate. I’m afraid I haven’t got that kind of
religious temperament. It always seems to me to be rather extreme, if you know
what I mean.’
‘It’s certainly simpler,’ said Blanche, ‘to make use of the shortest prayer
that is known.’ And in answer to Joan’s inquiring glance she said abruptly,
‘“God be merciful to me, a sinner.” That covers pretty well everything.’
Joan felt slightly embarrassed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it certainly does.’
Blanche burst out laughing.
‘The trouble with you, Joan, is that you’re not a sinner. That cuts you off
from prayer! Now I’m well equipped. It seems to me sometimes that I’ve never
ceased doing the things that I ought not to have done.’
Joan was silent because she didn’t know quite what to say.
Blanche resumed again in a lighter tone:
‘Oh well, that’s the way of the world. You quit when you ought to stick, and
you take on a thing that you’d better leave alone; one minute life’s so lovely
you can hardly believe it’s true – and immediately after that you’re going
through a hell of misery and suffering! When things are going well you think
they’ll last for ever – and they never do – and when you’re down under you
think you’ll never come up and breathe again. That’s what life is, isn’t it?’
It was so entirely alien to any conception Joan had of life or to life as she
had known it that she was unable to make what she felt would be an adequate
response.
With a brusque movement Blanche rose to her feet.
‘You’re half asleep, Joan. So am I. And we’ve got an early start. It’s been
nice seeing you.’
The two women stood a minute, their hands clasped. Blanche said quickly and
awkwardly, with a sudden, rough tenderness in her voice:
‘Don’t worry about your Barbara. She’ll be all right – I’m sure of it. Bill
Wray is a good sort, you know – and there’s the kid and everything. It was
just that she was very young and the kind of life out here – well, it goes to
a girl’s head sometimes.’
Joan was conscious of nothing but complete bewilderment.
She said sharply:
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Blanche merely looked at her admiringly.
‘That’s the good old school tie spirit! Never admit anything. You really
haven’t changed a bit, Joan. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
Never admit anything. You really
haven’t changed a bit, Joan. By the way I owe you twenty-five pounds. Never
thought of it until this minute.’
‘Oh, don’t bother about that.’
‘No fear.’ Blanche laughed. ‘I suppose I meant to pay it back, but after all
if one ever does lend money to people one knows quite well one will never see
one’s money again. So I haven’t worried much. You were a good sport, Joan –
that money was a godsend.’
‘One of the children had to have an operation, didn’t he?’
‘So they thought. But it turned out not to be necessary after all. So we spent
the money on a bender and got a roll-top desk for Tom as well. He’d had his
eye on it for a long time.’
Moved by a sudden memory, Joan asked:
‘Did he ever write his book on Warren Hastings?’
Blanche beamed at her.
‘Fancy your remembering that! Yes, indeed, a hundred and twenty thousand
words.’
‘Was it published?’
‘Of course not! After that Tom started on a life of Benjamin Franklin. That
was even worse. Funny taste, wasn’t it? I mean such dull people. If I wrote a
life, it would be of someone like Cleopatra, some sexy piece – or Casanova,
say, something spicy. Still, we can’t all have the same ideas. Tom got a job
again in an office – not so good as the other. I’m always glad, though, that
he had his fun. It’s awfully important, don’t you think, for people to do what
they really want to do?’
‘It rather depends,’ said Joan, ‘on circumstances. One has to take so many
things into consideration.’
‘Haven’t you done what you wanted to do?’
‘I?’ Joan was taken aback.
‘Yes, you ,’ said Blanche. ‘You wanted to marry Rodney Scudamore, didn’t
you? And you wanted children? And a comfortable home.’ She laughed and added,
‘And to live happily ever afterwards, world without end, Amen.’
Joan laughed too, relieved at the lighter tone the conversation had taken.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been very lucky, I know.’
And then, afraid that that last remark had been tactless when confronted by
the ruin and bad luck that had been Blanche’s lot in life, she added
hurriedly:
‘I really must go up now. Good night – and it’s been marvellous seeing you
again.’
She squeezed Blanche’s hand warmly (would Blanche expect her to kiss her?
Surely not.) and ran lightly up the stairs to her bedroom.
Poor Blanche, thought Joan as she undressed, neatly laying and folding her
clothes, putting out a fresh pair of stockings for the morning. Poor Blanche.
It’s really too tragic.
She slipped into her pyjamas and started to brush her hair.
Poor Blanche. Looking so awful and so coarse.
She was ready for bed now, but paused irresolutely before getting in.
One didn’t, of course, say one’s prayers every night. In fact it was quite a
long time since Joan had said a prayer of any kind. And she didn’t even go to
church very often.
But one did, of course, believe.
And she had a sudden odd desire to kneel down now by the side of this rather
uncomfortable looking bed (such nasty cotton sheets, thank goodness she had
got her own soft pillow with her) and well – say them properly – like a child.
The thought made her feel rather shy and uncomfortable.
She got quickly into bed and pulled up the covers. She picked up the book that
she had laid on the little table by the bed head, The Memoirs of Lady
Catherine Dysart – really most entertainingly written – a very witty account
of mid-Victorian times.
She read a line or two but found she could not concentrate.
I’m too tired, she thought.
She laid down the book and switched off the light.
Again the thought of prayer came to her. What was it that Blanche had said so
outrageously – ‘that cuts you off from prayer.’ Really, what did she mean?
Joan formed a prayer quickly in her mind – a prayer of isolated words strung
together.
God – thank thee – poor Blanche – thank thee that I am not like that – great
mercies – all my blessings – and especially not like poor Blanche – poor
Blanche – really dreadful. Her own fault of course – dreadful – quite a shock
– thank God – I am different – poor Blanche …
Joan fell asleep.
Chapter Two
It was raining when Joan Scudamore left the rest house the following morning,
a fine gentle rain that seemed somehow incongruous in this part of the world.
She found that she was the only passenger going west – a sufficiently uncommon
occurrence, it appeared, although there was not much traffic this time of
year. There had been a large convoy on the preceding Friday.
A battered looking touring car was waiting with a European driver and a native
relief driver. The manager of the rest house was on the steps in the grey dawn
of the morning to hand Joan in, yell at the Arabs until they adjusted the
baggage to his satisfaction, and to wish Mademoiselle, as he called all his
lady guests, a safe and comfortable journey. He bowed magnificently and handed
her a small cardboard container in which was her lunch.
The driver yelled out cheerily:
‘Bye bye, Satan, see you tomorrow night or next week – and it looks more like
next week.’
The car started off. It wound through the streets of the oriental city with
its grotesque and unexpected blocks of occidental architecture. The horn
blared, donkeys swerved aside, children ran. They drove out through the
western gate and on to a broad, unequally paved road that looked important
enough to run to the world’s end.
Actually it petered out abruptly after two kilometres and an irregular track
took its place.
In good weather it was, Joan knew, about seven hours’ run to Tell Abu Hamid
which was the present terminus of the Turkish railway. The train from Stamboul
arrived there this morning and would go back again at eight-thirty this
evening. There was a small rest house at Tell Abu Hamid for the convenience of
travellers, where they were served with what meals they might need. They
should meet the convoy coming east about half-way along the track.
The going was now very uneven. The car leapt and jumped and Joan was thrown up
and down in her seat.
The driver called back that he hoped she was all right. It was a bumpy bit of
track but he wanted to hurry as much as possible in case he had difficulty
crossing the two wadis they had to negotiate.
From time to time he looked anxiously up at the sky.
The rain began to fall faster and the car began to do a series of skids,
zigzagging to and fro and making Joan feel slightly sick.
They reached the first wadi about eleven. There was water in it, but they got
across and after a slight peril of sticking on the hill up the other side drew
out of it successfully. About two kilometres farther on they ran into soft
ground and stuck there.
Joan slipped on her mackintosh coat and got out, opening her box of lunch and
eating as she walked up and down and watched the two men working, digging with
spades, flinging jacks at each other, putting boards they had brought with
them under the wheels. They swore and toiled and the wheels spun angrily in
the air. It seemed to Joan an impossible task, but the driver assured her that
it wasn’t a bad place at all. Finally, with unnerving suddenness the wheels
bit and roared, and the car quivered forward on to drier ground.
A little farther on they encountered two cars coming in the opposite
direction. All three stopped and the drivers held a consultation, giving each
other recommendations and advice.
In the other cars were a woman and a baby, a young French officer, an elderly
Armenian and two commercial looking Englishmen.
Presently they went on. They stuck twice more and again the long, laborious
business of jacking up and digging out had to be undertaken. The second wadi
was more difficult of negotiation than the first one. It was dusk when they
came to it and the water was rushing through it.
Joan asked anxiously:
‘Will the train wait?’
‘They usually give an hour’s grace. They can make up that on the run, but they
won’t delay beyond nine-thirty. However the track gets better from now on.
Different kind of ground – more open desert.’
They had a bad time clearing the wadi – the farther bank was sheer slippery
mud. It was dark when the car at last reached dry ground. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
It was dark when the car at last reached dry ground. From then on, the
going was better but when they got to Tell Abu Hamid it was a quarter past ten
and the train to Stamboul had gone.
Joan was so completely done up that she hardly noticed her surroundings.
She stumbled into the rest house dining-room with its trestle tables, refused
food but asked for tea and then went straight to the dimly lit, bleak room
with its three iron beds and taking out bare necessaries, she tumbled into bed
and slept like a log.
She awoke the next morning her usual cool competent self. She sat up in bed
and looked at her watch. It was half past nine. She got up, dressed and came
out into the dining-room. An Indian with an artistic turban wrapped round his
head appeared and she ordered breakfast. Then she strolled to the door and
looked out.
With a slight humorous grimace she acknowledged to herself that she had indeed
arrived at the middle of nowhere.
This time, she reflected, it looked like taking about double the time.
On her journey out she had flown from Cairo to Baghdad. This route was new to
her. It was actually seven days from Baghdad to London – three days in the
train from London to Stamboul, two days on to Aleppo, another night to the end
of the railway at Tell Abu Hamid, then a day’s motoring, a night in a rest
house and another motor drive to Kirkuk and on by train to Baghdad.
There was no sign of rain this morning. The sky was blue and cloudless, and
all around was even coloured golden brown sandy dust. From the rest house
itself a tangle of barbed wire enclosed a refuse dump of tins and a space
where some skinny chickens ran about squawking loudly. Clouds of flies had
settled on such tins as had recently contained nourishment. Something that
looked like a bundle of dirty rags suddenly got up and proved to be an Arab
boy.
A little distance away, across another tangle of barbed wire was a squat
building that was evidently the station with something that Joan took to be
either an artesian well or a big water tank beside it. On the far horizon to
the north was the faint outline of a range of hills.
Apart from that, nothing. No landmarks, no buildings, no vegetation, no human
kind.
A station, a railway track, some hens, what seemed to be a disproportionate
amount of barbed wire – and that was all.
Really, Joan thought, it was very amusing. Such an odd place to be held up.
The Indian servant came out and said that the Memsahib’s breakfast was ready.
Joan turned and went in. The characteristic atmosphere of a rest house, gloom,
mutton fat, paraffin and Flit greeted her with a sense of rather distasteful
familiarity.
There was coffee and milk (tinned milk), a whole dish of fried eggs, some hard
little rounds of toast, a dish of jam, and some rather doubtful looking stewed
prunes.
Joan ate with a good appetite. And presently the Indian reappeared and asked
what time the Memsahib would like lunch.
Joan said not for a long time – and it was agreed that half past one would be
a satisfactory hour.
The trains, as she knew, went three days a week, on Monday, Wednesday and
Friday. It was Tuesday morning, so she would not be able to leave until
tomorrow night. She spoke to the man asking if that was correct.
‘That right, Memsahib. Miss train last night. Very unfortunate. Track very
bad, rain very heavy in night. That means no cars can go to and fro from here
to Mosul for some days.’
‘But the trains will be all right?’
Joan was not interested in the Mosul track.
‘Oh yes, train come all right tomorrow morning. Go back tomorrow night.’
Joan nodded. She asked about the car which had brought her.
‘Go off this morning early. Driver hope get through. But I think not. I think
him stick one, two days on way there.’
Again without much interest Joan thought it highly probable.
The man went on giving information.
‘That station, Memsahib, over there.’
Joan said that she had thought, somehow, that it might be the station.
‘Turkish station. Station in Turkey. Railway Turkish. Other side of wire, see.
That wire frontier.’
Joan looked respectfully at the frontier and thought what very odd things
frontiers were.
The Indian said happily:
‘Lunch one-thirty exactly,’ and went back into the rest house. A minute or two
later she heard him screaming in a high angry voice from somewhere at the back
of it. Two other voices chimed in. A spate of high, excited Arabic filled the
air.
Joan wondered why it was always Indians who seemed to be in charge of rest
houses like this one. Perhaps they had had experience of European ways. Oh
well, it didn’t much matter.
What should she do with herself this morning? She might go on with the amusing
Memoirs of Lady Catherine Dysart. Or she might write some letters. She could
post them when the train got to Aleppo. She had a writing pad and some
envelopes with her. She hesitated on the threshold of the rest house. It was
so dark inside and it smelt so. Perhaps she would go for a walk.
She fetched her thick double felt hat – not that the sun was really dangerous
at this time of year, still it was better to be careful. She put on her dark
glasses and slipped the writing pad and her fountain pen into her bag.
Then she set out, past the refuse dump and the tins, in the opposite direction
to the railway station, since there might, possibly, be international
complications if she tried to cross the frontier.
She thought to herself, How curious it is walking like this … there’s nowhere
to walk to.
It was a novel and rather interesting idea. Walking on the downs, on moorland,
on a beach, down a road – there was always some objective in view. Over that
hill, to that clump of trees, to that patch of heather, down this lane to the
farm, along the high road to the next town, by the side of the waves to the
next cove.
But here it was from – not to. Away from the rest house – that was all.
Right hand, left hand, straight ahead – just bare dun-coloured horizon.
She strolled along not too briskly. The air was pleasant. It was hot, but not
too hot. A thermometer, she thought, would have registered seventy. And there
was a faint, a very faint breeze.
She walked for about ten minutes before turning her head.
The rest house and its sordid accompaniments had receded in a very
accommodating manner. From here it looked quite pleasant. Beyond it, the
station looked like a little cairn of stones.
Joan smiled and strolled on. Really the air was delicious! There was a purity
in it, a freshness. No staleness here, no taint of humanity or civilization.
Sun and sky and sandy earth, that was all. Something a little intoxicating in
its quality. Joan took deep breaths into her lungs. She was enjoying herself.
Really this was quite an adventure! A most welcome break in the monotony of
existence. She was quite glad she had missed the train. Twenty-four hours of
absolute quiet and peace would be good for her. It was not as though there
were any absolute urgency in her return. She could wire to Rodney from
Stamboul explaining the delay.
Dear old Rodney! She wondered what he was doing now. Not, really, that there
was anything to wonder about, because she knew. He would be sitting in his
office at Alderman, Scudamore and Witney’s – quite a nice room on the first
floor looking out over the Market Square. He had moved into it when old Mr
Witney died. He liked that room – She remembered how she had come in one day
to see him and had found him standing by the window staring out at the market
(it was market day) and at a herd of cattle that was being driven in. ‘Nice
lot of shorthorns – those,’ he had said. (Or perhaps it wasn’t shorthorns –
Joan wasn’t very good at farming terms – but something like that, anyway.) And
she had said, ‘About the new boiler for the central heating, I think
Galbraith’s estimate is far too high. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
Shall I see what Chamberlain would
charge?’
She remembered the slow way Rodney had turned, taking off his glasses and
rubbing his eyes and looking at her in an absent faraway manner as though he
didn’t really see her, and the way he had said ‘ boiler?’ as though it was
some difficult and remote subject he had never heard of, and then saying –
really rather stupidly, ‘I believe Hoddesdon’s selling that young bull of his.
Wants the money, I suppose.’
She thought it was very nice of Rodney to be so interested in old Hoddesdon at
Lower Mead farm. Poor old man, everyone knew he was going down the hill. But
she did wish Rodney would be a little quicker at listening to what was said to
him. Because, after all, people expected a lawyer to be sharp and alert, and
if Rodney was to look at clients in that vague way it might create quite a bad
impression.
So she had said with quick, affectionate impatience:
‘Don’t wool-gather, Rodney. It’s the boiler I’m talking about for the
central heating.’ And Rodney had said certainly have a second estimate but
that costs were bound to be higher and they must just make up their minds to
it. And then he had glanced at the papers piled up on his desk and she had
said that she mustn’t keep him – it looked as though he had a lot of work to
do.
Rodney smiled and said that as a matter of fact he had got a lot of work piled
up – and he’d been wasting time already watching the market. ‘That’s why I
like this room,’ he said. ‘I look forward to Fridays. Listen to ’em now.’
And he had held up his hand, and she had listened and heard a good deal of
mooing and lowing – really a very confused and rather ugly noise of cattle and
sheep – but Rodney, funnily enough, seemed to like it. He stood there, his
head a little on one side, smiling …
Oh well, it would not be market day today. Rodney would be at his desk with no
distractions. And her fears about clients thinking Rodney vague had been quite
unfounded. He was by far the most popular member of the firm. Everyone liked
him which was half the battle in a country solicitor’s practice.
And but for me, thought Joan proudly, he’d have turned the whole thing down!
Her thoughts went to that day when Rodney had told her about his uncle’s
offer.
It was an old-fashioned flourishing family business and it had always been
understood that Rodney should go into it after he had passed his law exams.
But Uncle Harry’s offer of a partnership and on such excellent terms was an
unexpectedly happy occurrence.
Joan had expressed her own delight and surprise and had congratulated Rodney
warmly before she noticed that Rodney didn’t seem to be sharing in her
sentiments. He had actually uttered the incredible words, ‘If I accept –’
She had exclaimed dismayed, ‘But Rodney!’
Clearly she remembered the white set face he had turned to her. She hadn’t
realized before what a nervous person Rodney was. His hands picking up blades
of turf were trembling. There was a curious pleading look in his dark eyes. He
said:
‘I hate office life. I hate it.’
Joan was quick to sympathize.
‘Oh I know, darling. It’s been awfully stuffy and hard work and just sheer
grind – not even interesting. But a partnership is different – I mean you’ll
have an interest in the whole thing.’
‘In contracts, leases, messuages, covenants, whereas, insomuch as heretofore
–’
Some absurd legal rigmarole he had trotted out, his mouth laughing, his eyes
sad and pleading – pleading so hard with her. And she loved Rodney so much!
‘But it’s always been understood that you’d go into the firm.’
‘Oh I know, I know. But how was I to guess I’d hate it so?’
‘But – I mean – what else – what do you want to do?’
And he had said, very quickly and eagerly, the words pouring out in a rush:
‘I want to farm. There’s Little Mead coming into the market. It’s in a bad
state – Horley’s neglected it – but that’s why one could get it cheap – and
it’s good land, mark you …’
And he had hurried on, outlining plans, talking in such technical terms that
she had felt quite bewildered for she herself knew nothing of wheat or barley
or the rotation of crops, or of pedigreed stocks or dairy herds.
She could only say in a dismayed voice:
‘Little Mead – but that’s right out under Asheldown – miles from anywhere.’
‘It’s good land, Joan – and a good position …’
He was off again. She’d had no idea that Rodney could be so enthusiastic,
could talk so much and with such eagerness.
She said doubtfully, ‘But darling, would you ever make a living out of it?’
‘A living? Oh yes – a bare living anyway.’
‘That’s what I mean. People always say there’s no money in farming.’
‘Oh, there isn’t. Not unless you’re damned lucky – or unless you’ve got a lot
of capital.’
‘Well, you see – I mean, it isn’t practical.’
‘Oh, but it is, Joan. I’ve got a little money of my own, remember, and with
the farm paying its way and making a bit over we’d be all right. And think of
the wonderful life we’d have! It’s grand, living on a farm!’
‘I don’t believe you know anything about it.’
‘Oh yes, I do. Didn’t you know my mother’s father was a big farmer in
Devonshire? We spent our holidays there as children. I’ve never enjoyed myself
so much.’
It’s true what they say, she had thought, men are just like children …
She said gently, ‘I daresay – but life isn’t holidays. We’ve got the future to
think of, Rodney. There’s Tony.’
For Tony had been a baby of eleven months then.
She added, ‘And there may be – others.’
He looked a quick question at her, and she smiled and nodded.
‘But don’t you see, Joan, that makes it all the better? It’s a good place for
children, a farm. It’s a healthy place. They have fresh eggs and milk, and run
wild and learn how to look after animals.’
‘Oh but, Rodney, there are lots of other things to consider. There’s their
schooling. They must go to good schools. And that’s expensive. And boots and
clothes and teeth and doctors. And making nice friends for them. You can’t
just do what you want to do. You’ve got to consider children if you bring
them into the world. After all, you’ve got a duty to them.’
Rodney said obstinately, but there was a question in his voice this time,
‘They’d be happy …’
‘It’s not practical, Rodney, really it isn’t. Why, if you go into the firm you
may be making as much as two thousand pounds a year some day.’
‘Easily, I should think. Uncle Harry makes more than that.’
‘There! You see! You can’t turn a thing like that down. It would be madness!’
She had spoken very decidedly, very positively. She had got, she saw, to be
firm about this. She must be wise for the two of them. If Rodney was blind to
what was best for him, she must assume the responsibility. It was so dear and
silly and ridiculous, this farming idea. He was like a little boy. She felt
strong and confident and maternal.
‘Don’t think I don’t understand and sympathize, Rodney,’ she said. ‘I do. But
it’s just one of those things that isn’t real.’
He had interrupted to say that farming was real enough.
‘Yes, but it’s just not in the picture. Our picture. Here you’ve got a
wonderful family business with a first-class opening in it for you – and a
really quite amazingly generous proposition from your uncle –’
‘Oh, I know. It’s far better than I ever expected.’
‘And you can’t – you simply can’t turn it down! You’d regret it all your
life if you did. You’d feel horribly guilty.’
He muttered, ‘That bloody office!’
‘Oh, Rodney, you don’t really hate it as much as you think you do.’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve been in it five years, remember. I ought to know what I
feel.’
‘You’ll get used to it. And it will be different now. Quite different. Being a
partner, I mean. And you’ll end by getting quite interested in the work – and
in the people you come across. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |
You’ll see, Rodney – you’ll end by being
perfectly happy.’
He had looked at her then – a long sad look. There had been love in it, and
despair and something else, something that had been, perhaps, a last faint
flicker of hope …
‘How do you know,’ he had asked, ‘that I shall be happy?’
And she had answered briskly and gaily, ‘I’m quite sure you will. You’ll see.’
And she had nodded brightly and with authority.
He had sighed and said abruptly: ‘All right then. Have it your own way.’
Yes, Joan thought, that was really a very narrow shave. How lucky for Rodney
that she had held firm and not allowed him to throw away his career for a mere
passing craze! Men, she thought, would make sad messes of their lives if it
weren’t for women. Women had stability, a sense of reality …
Yes, it was lucky for Rodney he’d had her.
She glanced down at her wrist watch. Half past ten. No point in walking too
far – especially (she smiled) as there was nowhere to walk to.
She looked over her shoulder. Extraordinary, the rest house was nearly out of
sight. It had settled down into the landscape so that you hardly saw it. She
thought, I must be careful not to walk too far. I might get lost.
A ridiculous idea – no – perhaps not so ridiculous after all. Those hills in
the distance, you could hardly see them now – they were indistinguishable from
cloud. The station didn’t exist.
Joan looked round her with appreciation. Nothing. No one.
She dropped gracefully to the ground. Opening her bag she took out her writing
pad and her fountain pen. She’d write a few letters. It would be amusing to
pass on her sensations.
Who should she write to? Lionel West? Janet Annesmore? Dorothea? On the whole,
perhaps, Janet.
She unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen. In her easy flowing handwriting she
began to write:
Dearest Janet: You’ll never guess where I’m writing this letter! In the middle
of the desert. I’m marooned here between trains – they only go three times a
week.
There’s a rest house with an Indian in charge of it and a lot of hens and some
peculiar looking Arabs and me. There’s no one to talk to and nothing to do. I
can’t tell you how I am enjoying it.
The desert air is wonderful – so incredibly fresh. And the stillness, you’d
have to feel it to understand. It’s as though for the first time for years I
could hear myself think! One leads such a dreadfully busy life, always rushing
from one thing to the other. It can’t be helped, I suppose, but one ought
really to make time for intervals of thought and recuperation.
I’ve only been here half a day but I feel miles better already. No people. I
never realized how much I wanted to get away from people. It’s soothing to the
nerves to know that all round you for hundreds of miles there’s nothing but
sand and sun …
Joan’s pen flowed on, evenly, over the paper.
Chapter Three
Joan stopped writing and glanced at her watch.
A quarter past twelve.
She had written three letters and her pen had now run out of ink. She noted,
too, that she had nearly finished her writing pad. Rather annoying, that.
There were several more people she could have written to.
Although, she mused, there was a certain sameness in writing after a while …
The sun and the sand and how lovely it was to have time to rest and think! All
quite true – but one got tired of trying to phrase the same facts slightly
differently each time …
She yawned. The sun had really made her feel quite sleepy. After lunch she
would lie on her bed and have a sleep.
She got up and strolled slowly back towards the rest house.
She wondered what Blanche was doing now. She must have reached Baghdad – she
had joined her husband. The husband sounded rather a dreadful kind of man.
Poor Blanche – dreadful to come down in the world like that. If it hadn’t been
for that very good-looking young vet, Harry Marston – if Blanche had met some
nice man like Rodney. Blanche herself had said how charming Rodney was.
Yes, and Blanche had said something else. What was it? Something about
Rodney’s having a roving eye. Such a common expression – and quite untrue!
Quite untrue! Rodney had never – never once –
The same thought as before, but not so snakelike in its rapidity, passed
across the surface of Joan’s mind.
The Randolph girl …
Really, thought Joan indignantly, walking suddenly just a little faster as
though to outpace some unwelcome thought, I can’t imagine why I keep thinking
of the Randolph girl. It’s not as though Rodney …
I mean, there’s nothing in it …
Nothing at all …
It was simply that Myrna Randolph was that kind of a girl. A big, dark,
luscious-looking girl. A girl who, if she took a fancy to a man, didn’t seem
to have any reticence about advertising the fact.
To speak plainly, she’d made a dead set at Rodney. Kept saying how wonderful
he was. Always wanted him for a partner at tennis. Had even got a habit of
sitting at parties devouring him with her eyes.
Naturally Rodney had been a little flattered. Any man would have been. In
fact, it would have been quite ridiculous if Rodney hadn’t been flattered and
pleased by the attentions of a girl years younger than he was and one of the
best-looking girls in the town.
Joan thought to herself, if I hadn’t been clever and tactful about the whole
thing …
She reviewed her conduct with a gentle glow of self-approbation. She had
handled the situation very well – very well indeed. The light touch.
‘Your girl friend’s waiting for you, Rodney. Don’t keep her waiting … Myrna
Randolph of course … Oh yes, she is, darling … Really she makes herself quite
ridiculous sometimes.’
Rodney had grumbled.
‘I don’t want to play tennis with the girl. Put her in that other set.’
‘Now don’t be ungracious, Rodney. You must play with her.’
That was the right way to handle things – lightly – playfully. Showing quite
well that she knew that there couldn’t be anything serious in it …
It must have been rather nice for Rodney – for all that he growled and
pretended to be annoyed. Myrna Randolph was the kind of girl that practically
every man found attractive. She was capricious and treated her admirers with
deep contempt, saying rude things to them and then beckoning them back to her
with a sideways glance of the eyes.
Really, thought Joan (with a heat that was unusual in her) a most detestable
girl. Doing everything she could to break up my married life.
No, she didn’t blame Rodney. She blamed the girl. Men were so easily
flattered. And Rodney had been married then about – what – ten years? Eleven?
Ten years was what writers called a dangerous period in married life. A time
when one or the other party had a tendency to run off the rails. A time to get
through warily until you settled down beyond it into comfortable, set ways.
As she and Rodney had …
No she didn’t blame Rodney – not even for that kiss she had surprised.
Under the mistletoe indeed!
That was what the girl had had the impudence to say when she came into the
study.
‘We’re christening the mistletoe, Mrs Scudamore. Hope you don’t mind.’
Well, Joan thought, I kept my head and didn’t show anything.
‘Now, hands off my husband, Myrna! Go and find some young man of your own.’
And she had laughingly chivvied Myrna out of the room. Taking it all as a
joke.
And then Rodney had said, ‘Sorry, Joan. But she’s an attractive wench – and
it’s Christmas time.’
He had stood there smiling at her, apologizing, but not looking really
sheepish or upset. It showed that the thing hadn’t really gone far.
And it shouldn’t go any farther! She had made up her mind to that. She had
taken every care to keep Rodney out of Myrna Randolph’s way. And the following
Easter Myrna had got engaged to the Arlington boy.
So really the whole incident amounted to exactly nothing at all. Perhaps there
had been just a little fun in it for Rodney. Poor old Rodney – he really
deserved a little fun. He worked so hard.
Ten years – yes, it was a dangerous time. | absent in the spring - agatha christie.epub |