A Murder Is Announced (19 page)

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….”

I

T
he 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.

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. 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. 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.