A Murder Is Announced (24 page)

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!”