Canon Pennyfather had been sent on his way in a taxi to the British Museum. Miss Marple had been ensconced in the lounge by the Chief-Inspector.
Would she mind waiting for him there for about ten minutes? Miss Marple had not minded. She welcomed the opportunity to sit and look around her and think.
Bertram’s Hotel. So many memories…The past fused itself with the present. A French phrase came back to her. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. She reversed the wording. Plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change. Both true, she thought.
She felt sad—for Bertram’s Hotel and for herself. She wondered what Chief-Inspector Davy wanted of her next. She sensed in him the excitement of purpose. He was a man whose plans were at last coming to fruition. It was Chief-Inspector Davy’s D-Day.
The life of Bertram’s went on as usual. No, Miss Marple decided, not as usual. There was a difference, though she could not have defined where the difference lay. An underlying uneasiness, perhaps?
“All set?” he inquired genially.
“Where are you taking me now?”
“We’re going to pay a call on Lady Sedgwick.”
“Is she staying here?”
“Yes. With her daughter.”
Miss Marple rose to her feet. She cast a glance round her and murmured: “Poor Bertram’s.”
“What do you mean—poor Bertram’s?”
“I think you know quite well what I mean.”
“Well—looking at it from your point of view, perhaps I do.”
“It is always sad when a work of art has to be destroyed.”
“You call this place a work of art?”
“Certainly I do. So do you.”
“I see what you mean,” admitted Father.
“It is like when you get ground elder really badly in a border. There’s nothing else you can about it—except dig the whole thing up.”
“I don’t know much about gardens. But change the metaphor to dry rot and I’d agree.”
They went up in the lift and along a passage to where Lady Sedgwick and her daughter had a corner suite.
Chief-Inspector Davy knocked on the door, a voice said, “Come in,” and he entered with Miss Marple behind him.
Bess Sedgwick was sitting in a high-backed chair near the window. She had a book on her knee which she was not reading.
“So it’s you again, Chief-Inspector.” Her eyes went past him towards Miss Marple, and she looked slightly surprised.
“This is Miss Marple,” explained Chief-Inspector Davy. “Miss Marple—Lady Sedgwick.”
“I’ve met you before,” said Bess Sedgwick. “You were with Selina Hazy the other day, weren’t you? Do sit down,” she added. Then she turned towards Chief-Inspector Davy again. “Have you any news of the man who shot at Elvira?”
“Not actually what you’d call news.”
“I doubt if you ever will have. In a fog like that, predatory creatures come out and prowl around looking for women walking alone.”
“True up to a point,” said Father. “How is your daughter?”
“Oh, Elvira is quite all right again.”
“You’ve got her here with you?”
“Yes. I rang up Colonel Luscombe—her guardian. He was delighted that I was willing to take charge.” She gave a sudden laugh. “Dear old boy. He’s always been urging a mother-and-daughter reunion act!”
“He may be right at that,” said Father.
“Oh no, he isn’t. Just at the moment, yes, I think it is the best thing.” She turned her head to look out of the window and spoke in a changed voice. “I hear you’ve arrested a friend of mine—Ladislaus Malinowski. On what charge?”
“Not arrested,” Chief-Inspector Davy corrected her. “He’s just assisting us with our inquiries.”
“I’ve sent my solicitor to look after him.”
“Very wise,” said Father approvingly. “Anyone who’s having a little difficulty with the police is very wise to have a solicitor. Otherwise they may so easily say the wrong thing.”
“Even if completely innocent?”
“Possibly it’s even more necessary in that case,” said Father.
“You’re quite a cynic, aren’t you? What are you questioning him about, may I ask? Or mayn’t I?”
“For one thing we’d like to know just exactly what his movements were on the night when Michael Gorman died.”
Bess Sedgwick sat up sharply in her chair.
“Have you got some ridiculous idea that Ladislaus fired those shots at Elvira? They didn’t even know each other.”
“He could have done it. His car was just round the corner.”
“Rubbish,” said Lady Sedgwick robustly.
“How much did that shooting business the other night upset you, Lady Sedgwick?”
She looked faintly surprised.
“Naturally I was upset when my daughter had a narrow escape of her life. What do you expect?”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean how much did the death of Michael Gorman upset you?”
“I was very sorry about it. He was a brave man.”
“Is that all?”
“What more would you expect me to say?”
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Of course. He worked here.”
“You knew him a little better than that, though, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come, Lady Sedgwick. He was your husband, wasn’t he?”
She did not answer for a moment or two, though she displayed no signs of agitation or surprise.
“You know a good deal, don’t you, Chief-Inspector?” She sighed and sat back in her chair. “I hadn’t seen him for—let me see—a great many years. Twenty—more than twenty. And then I looked out of the window one day, and suddenly recognized Micky.”
“And he recognized you?”
“Quite surprising that we did recognize each other,” said Bess Sedgwick. “We were only together for about a week. Then my family caught up with us, paid Micky off, and took me home in disgrace.”
She sighed.
“I was very young when I ran away with him. I knew very little. Just a fool of a girl with a head full of romantic notions. He was a hero to me, mainly because of the way he rode a horse. He didn’t know what fear was. And he was handsome and gay with an Irishman’s tongue! I suppose really I ran away with him! I doubt if he’d have thought of it himself! But I was wild and headstrong and madly in love!” She shook her head. “It didn’t last long…The first twenty-four hours were enough to disillusion me. He drank and he was coarse and brutal. When my family turned up and took me back with them, I was thankful. I never wanted to see him or hear of him again.”
“Did your family know that you were married to him?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“I didn’t think I was married.”
“How did that come about?”
“We were married in Ballygowlan, but when my people turned up, Micky came to me and told me the marriage had been a fake. He and his friends had cooked it up between them, he said. By that time it seemed to me quite a natural thing for him to have done. Whether he wanted the money that was being offered him, or whether he was afraid he’d committed a breach of the law by marrying me when I wasn’t of age, I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t doubt for a moment that what he said was true—not then.”
“And later?”
She seemed lost in her thoughts. “It wasn’t until—oh, quite a number of years afterwards, when I knew a little more of life, and of legal matters, that it suddenly occurred to me that probably I was married to Micky Gorman after all!”
“In actual fact, then, when you married Lord Coniston, you committed bigamy.”
“And when I married Johnnie Sedgwick, and again when I married my American husband, Ridgway Becker.” She looked at Chief-Inspector Davy and laughed with what seemed like genuine amusement.
“So much bigamy,” she said. “It really does seem very ridiculous.”
“Did you never think of getting a divorce?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It all seemed like a silly dream. Why rake it up? I told Johnnie, of course.” Her voice softened and mellowed as she said his name.
“And what did he say?”
“He didn’t care. Neither Johnnie nor I were ever very law-abiding.”
“Bigamy carries certain penalties, Lady Sedgwick.”
She looked at him and laughed.
“Who was ever going to worry about something that had happened in Ireland years ago? The whole thing was over and done with. Micky had taken his money and gone off. Oh, don’t you understand? It seemed just a silly little incident. An incident I wanted to forget. I put it aside with the things—the very many things—that don’t matter in life.”
“And then,” said Father, in a tranquil voice, “one day in November, Michael Gorman turned up again and blackmailed you?”
“Nonsense! Who said he blackmailed me?”
Slowly Father’s eyes went round to the old lady sitting quietly, very upright in her chair.
“You.” Bess Sedgwick stared at Miss Marple. “What can you know about it?”
Her voice was more curious than accusing.
“The armchairs in this hotel have very high backs,” said Miss Marple. “Very comfortable they are. I was sitting in one in front of the fire in the writing room. Just resting before I went out one morning. You came in to write a letter. I suppose you didn’t realize there was anyone else in the room. And so—I heard your conversation with this man Gorman.”
“You listened?”
“Naturally,” said Miss Marple. “Why not? It was a public room. When you threw up the window and called to the man outside, I had no idea that it was going to be a private conversation.”
Bess stared at her for a moment, then she nodded her head slowly.
“Fair enough,” she said. “Yes, I see. But all the same you misunderstood what you heard. Micky didn’t blackmail me. He might have thought of it—but I warned him off before he could try!” Her lips curled up again in that wide generous smile that made her face so attractive. “I frightened him off.”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Marple. “I think you probably did. You threatened to shoot him. You handled it—if you won’t think it impertinent of me to say so—very well indeed.”
Bess Sedgwick’s eyebrows rose in some amusement.
“But I wasn’t the only person to hear you,” Miss Marple went on.
“Good gracious! Was the whole hotel listening?”
“The other armchair was also occupied.”
“By whom?”
Miss Marple closed her lips. She looked at Chief-Inspector Davy, and it was almost a pleading glance. “If it must be done, you do it,” the glance said, “but I can’t….”
“Your daughter was in the other chair,” said Chief-Inspector Davy.
“Oh no!” The cry came out sharply. “Oh no. Not Elvira! I see—yes, I see. She must have thought—”
“She thought seriously enough of what she had overheard to go to Ireland and search for the truth. It wasn’t difficult to discover.”
Again Bess Sedgwick said softly: “Oh no…” And then: “Poor child…Even now, she’s never asked me a thing. She’s kept it all to herself. Bottled it up inside herself. If she’d only told me I could have explained it all to her—showed her how it didn’t matter.”
“She mightn’t have agreed with you there,” said Chief-Inspector Davy. “It’s a funny thing, you know,” he went on, in a reminiscent, almost gossipy manner, looking like an old farmer discussing his stock and his land, “I’ve learnt after a great many years’ trial and error—I’ve learned to distrust a pattern when it’s simple. Simple patterns are often too good to be true. The pattern of this murder the other night was like that. Girl says someone shot at her and missed. The commissionaire came running to save her, and copped it with a second bullet. That may be all true enough. That may be the way the girl saw it. But actually behind the appearances, things might be rather different.
“You said pretty vehemently just now, Lady Sedgwick, that there could be no reason for Ladislaus Malinowski to attempt your daughter’s life. Well, I’ll agree with you. I don’t think there was. He’s the sort of young man who might have a row with a woman, pull out a knife and stick it into her. But I don’t think he’d hide in an area, and wait cold-bloodedly to shoot her. But supposing he wanted to shoot someone else. Screams and shots—but what actually has happened is that Michael Gorman is dead. Suppose that was actually what was meant to happen. Malinowski plans it very carefully. He chooses a foggy night, hides in the area and waits until your daughter comes up the street. He knows she’s coming because he has managed to arrange it that way. He fires a shot. It’s not meant to hit the girl. He’s careful not to let the bullet go anywhere near her, but she thinks it’s aimed at her all right. She screams. The porter from the hotel, hearing the shot and the scream, comes rushing down the street and then Malinowski shoots the person he’s come to shoot. Michael Gorman.”
“I don’t believe a word of it! Why on earth should Ladislaus want to shoot Micky Gorman?”
“A little matter of blackmail, perhaps,” said Father.
“Do you mean that Micky was blackmailing Ladislaus? What about?”
“Perhaps,” said Father, “about the things that go on at Bertram’s Hotel. Michael Gorman might have found out quite a lot about that.”
“Things that go on at Bertram’s Hotel? What do you mean?”
“It’s been a good racket,” said Father. “Well planned, beautifully executed. But nothing lasts forever. Miss Marple here asked me the other day what was wrong with this place. Well, I’ll answer that question now. Bertram’s Hotel is to all intents and purposes the headquarters of one of the best and biggest crime syndicates that’s been known for years.”
[At Bertram’s Hotel- Agatha Christie] Chapter Twenty-six