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. 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! 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.
“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….”
Nineteen. Reconstruction of the crime