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. 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.
“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. 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. 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! 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.”
Twenty-three. Evening at the vicarage