Miss Marple and Mystery (54 page)

‘Now I didn’t like hearing Jean say that. Of course one had
wondered
–’

Mrs Bantry paused significantly. ‘Yes, dear,’ said Miss Marple placidly. ‘One always does. Is Miss Instow a pretty girl? I suppose she plays golf?’

‘Yes. She’s good at all games. And she’s nice-looking, attractive-looking, very fair with a healthy skin, and nice steady blue eyes. Of course we always have felt that she and George Pritchard – I mean if things had been different – they are so well suited to one another.’

‘And they were friends?’ asked Miss Marple. ‘Oh yes. Great friends.’

‘Do you think, Dolly,’ said Colonel Bantry plaintively, ‘that I might be allowed to go on with my story?’

‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Bantry resignedly, ‘wants to get back to his ghosts.’

‘I had the rest of the story from George himself,’ went on the Colonel. ‘There’s no doubt that Mrs Pritchard got the wind up badly towards the end of the next month. She marked off on a calendar the day when the moon would be full, and on that night she had both the nurse and then George into her room and made them study the wallpaper carefully. There were pink hollyhocks and red ones, but there were no blue amongst them. Then when George left the room she locked the door –’

‘And in the morning there was a large blue hollyhock,’ said Miss Helier joyfully.

‘Quite right,’ said Colonel Bantry. ‘Or at any rate, nearly right. One flower of a hollyhock just above her head had turned blue. It staggered George; and of course the more it staggered him the more he refused to take the thing seriously. He insisted that the whole thing was some kind of practical joke. He ignored the evidence of the locked door and the fact that Mrs Pritchard discovered the change before anyone – even Nurse Copling – was admitted.

‘It staggered George; and it made him unreasonable. His wife wanted to leave the house, and he wouldn’t let her. He was inclined to believe in the supernatural for the first time, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He usually gave in to his wife, but this time he wouldn’t. Mary was not to make a fool of herself, he said. The whole thing was the most infernal nonsense.

‘And so the next month sped away. Mrs Pritchard made less protest than one would have imagined. I think she was superstitious enough to believe that she couldn’t escape her fate. She repeated again and again: “The blue primrose – warning. The blue hollyhock – danger. The blue geranium –
death
.” And she would lie looking at the clump of pinky-red geraniums nearest her bed.

‘The whole business was pretty nervy. Even the nurse caught the infection. She came to George two days before full moon and begged him to take Mrs Pritchard away. George was angry.

‘“If all the flowers on that damned wall turned into blue devils it could-n’t kill anyone!” he shouted.

‘“It might. Shock has killed people before now.”

‘“Nonsense,” said George. ‘George has always been a shade pig-headed. You can’t drive him. I believe he had a secret idea that his wife worked the change herself and that it was all some morbid hysterical plan of hers.

‘Well, the fatal night came. Mrs Pritchard locked the door as usual. She was very calm – in almost an exalted state of mind. The nurse was worried by her state – wanted to give her a stimulant, an injection of strychnine, but Mrs Pritchard refused. In a way, I believe, she was enjoying herself. George said she was.’

‘I think that’s quite possible,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘There must have been a strange sort of glamour about the whole thing.’

‘There was no violent ringing of a bell the next morning. Mrs Pritchard usually woke about eight. When, at eight-thirty, there was no sign from her, nurse rapped loudly on the door. Getting no reply, she fetched George, and insisted on the door being broken open. They did so with the help of a chisel.

‘One look at the still figure on the bed was enough for Nurse Copling. She sent George to telephone for the doctor, but it was too late. Mrs Pritchard, he said, must have been dead at least eight hours. Her smelling salts lay by her hand on the bed,
and on the wall beside her one of the pinky-red geraniums was a bright deep blue
.’

‘Horrible,’ said Miss Helier with a shiver.

Sir Henry was frowning.

‘No additional details?’

Colonel Bantry shook his head, but Mrs Bantry spoke quickly.

‘The gas.’

‘What about the gas?’ asked Sir Henry. ‘When the doctor arrived there was a slight smell of gas, and sure enough he found the gas ring in the fireplace very slightly turned on; but so little it couldn’t have mattered.’

‘Did Mr Pritchard and the nurse not notice it when they first went in?’

‘The nurse said she did notice a slight smell. George said he didn’t notice gas, but something made him feel very queer and overcome; but he put that down to shock – and probably it was. At any rate there was no question of gas poisoning. The smell was scarcely noticeable.’

‘And that’s the end of the story?’

‘No, it isn’t. One way and another, there was a lot of talk. The servants, you see, had overheard things – had heard, for instance, Mrs Pritchard telling her husband that he hated her and would jeer if she were dying. And also more recent remarks. She had said one day, apropos of his refusing to leave the house: “Very well, when I am dead, I hope everyone will realize that you have killed me.” And as ill luck would have it, he had been mixing some weed killer for the garden paths the day before. One of the younger servants had seen him and had afterwards seen him taking up a glass of hot milk for his wife.

‘The talk spread and grew. The doctor had given a certificate – I don’t know exactly in what terms – shock, syncope, heart failure, probably some medical terms meaning nothing much. However the poor lady had not been a month in her grave before an exhumation order was applied for and granted.’

‘And the result of the autopsy was nil, I remember,’ said Sir Henry gravely. ‘A case, for once, of smoke without fire.’

‘The whole thing is really very curious,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘That fortune-teller, for instance – Zarida. At the address where she was supposed to be, no one had ever heard of any such person!’

‘She appeared once – out of the blue,’ said her husband, ‘and then utterly vanished. Out of the
blue
– that’s rather good!’

‘And what is more,’ continued Mrs Bantry, ‘little Nurse Carstairs, who was supposed to have recommended her, had never even heard of her.’

They looked at each other.

‘It’s a mysterious story,’ said Dr Lloyd. ‘One can make guesses; but to guess –’

He shook his head.

‘Has Mr Pritchard married Miss Instow?’ asked Miss Marple in her gentle voice.

‘Now why do you ask that?’ inquired Sir Henry.

Miss Marple opened gentle blue eyes. ‘It seems to me so important,’ she said. ‘Have they married?’ Colonel Bantry shook his head.

‘We – well, we expected something of the kind – but it’s eighteen months now. I don’t believe they even see much of each other.’

‘That is important,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Very important.’

‘Then you think the same as I do,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘You think –’

‘Now, Dolly,’ said her husband. ‘It’s unjustifiable – what you’re going to say. You can’t go about accusing people without a shadow of proof.’

‘Don’t be so – so manly, Arthur. Men are always afraid to say
anything
. Anyway, this is all between ourselves. It’s just a wild fantastic idea of mine that possibly – only
possibly
– Jean Instow disguised herself as a fortune-teller. Mind you, she may have done it for a joke. I don’t for a minute think that she meant any harm; but if she did do it, and if Mrs Pritchard was foolish enough to die of fright – well, that’s what Miss Marple meant, wasn’t it?’

‘No, dear, not quite,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You see, if I were going to kill anyone – which, of course, I wouldn’t dream of doing for a minute, because it would be very wicked, and besides I don’t like killing – not even wasps, though I know it has to be, and I’m sure the gardener does it as humanely as possible. Let me see, what was I saying?’

‘If you wished to kill anyone,’ prompted Sir Henry. ‘Oh yes. Well, if I did, I shouldn’t be at all satisfied to trust to
fright
. I know one reads of people dying of it, but it seems a very uncertain sort of thing, and the most nervous people are far more brave than one really thinks they are. I should like something definite and certain, and make a thoroughly good plan about it.’

‘Miss Marple,’ said Sir Henry, ‘you frighten me. I hope you will never wish to remove me. Your plans would be too good.’

Miss Marple looked at him reproachfully.

‘I thought I had made it clear that I would never contemplate such wickedness,’ she said. ‘No, I was trying to put myself in the place of – er – a certain person.’

‘Do you mean George Pritchard?’ asked Colonel Bantry. ‘I’ll never believe it of George – though – mind you, even the nurse believes it. I went and saw her about a month afterwards, at the time of the exhumation. She didn’t know how it was done – in fact, she wouldn’t say anything at all – but it was clear enough that she believed George to be in some way responsible for his wife’s death. She was convinced of it.’

‘Well,’ said Dr Lloyd, ‘perhaps she wasn’t so far wrong. And mind you, a nurse often
knows
. She can’t say – she’s got no proof – but she
knows
.’

Sir Henry leant forward.

‘Come now, Miss Marple,’ he said persuasively. ‘You’re lost in a daydream. Won’t you tell us all about it?’

Miss Marple started and turned pink.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about our District Nurse. A most difficult problem.’

‘More difficult than the problem of the blue geranium?’

‘It really depends on the primroses,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I mean, Mrs Bantry said they were yellow and pink. If it was a pink primrose that turned blue, of course, that fits in perfectly. But if it happened to be a yellow one –’

‘It was a pink one,’ said Mrs Bantry.

She stared. They all stared at Miss Marple.

‘Then that seems to settle it,’ said Miss Marple. She shook her head regretfully. ‘And the wasp season and everything. And of course the gas.’

‘It reminds you, I suppose, of countless village tragedies?’ said Sir Henry.

‘Not tragedies,’ said Miss Marple. ‘And certainly nothing criminal. But it does remind me a little of the trouble we are having with the District Nurse. After all, nurses are human beings, and what with having to be so correct in their behaviour and wearing those uncomfortable collars and being so thrown with the family – well, can you wonder that things sometimes happen?’

A glimmer of light broke upon Sir Henry.

‘You mean Nurse Carstairs?’

‘Oh no. Not Nurse Carstairs. Nurse
Copling
. You see, she had been there before, and very much thrown with Mr Pritchard, who you say is an attractive man. I dare say she thought, poor thing – well, we needn’t go into that. I don’t suppose she knew about Miss Instow, and of course afterwards, when she found out, it turned her against him and she tried to do all the harm she could. Of course the letter really gave her away, didn’t it?’

‘What letter?’

‘Well, she wrote to the fortune-teller at Mrs Pritchard’s request, and the fortune-teller came, apparently in answer to the letter. But later it was discovered that there never had been such a person at that address. So that shows that Nurse Copling was in it. She only pretended to write – so what could be more likely than that
she
was the fortune-teller herself?’

‘I never saw the point about the letter,’ said Sir Henry. ‘That’s a most important point, of course.’

‘Rather a bold step to take,’ said Miss Marple, ‘because Mrs Pritchard might have recognized her in spite of the disguise – though of course if she had, the nurse could have pretended it was a joke.’

‘What did you mean,’ said Sir Henry, ‘when you said that if you were a certain person you would not have trusted to fright?’

‘One couldn’t be
sure
that way,’ said Miss Marple. ‘No, I think that the warnings and the blue flowers were, if I may use a military term,’ she laughed self-consciously – ‘
just camouflage
.’

‘And the real thing?’

‘I know,’ said Miss Marple apologetically, ‘that I’ve got wasps on the brain. Poor things, destroyed in their thousands – and usually on such a beautiful summer’s day. But I remember thinking, when I saw the gardener shaking up the cyanide of potassium in a bottle with water, how like smelling-salts it looked. And if it were put in a smelling-salt bottle and substituted for the real one – well, the poor lady was in the habit of using her smelling-salts. Indeed you said they were found by her hand. Then, of course, while Mr Pritchard went to telephone to the doctor, the nurse would change it for the real bottle, and she’d just turn on the gas a little bit to mask any smell of almonds and in case anyone felt queer, and I always have heard that cyanide leaves no trace if you wait long enough. But, of course I may be wrong, and it may have been something entirely different in the bottle; but that doesn’t really matter, does it?’

Miss Marple paused, a little out of breath.

Jane Helier leant forward and said, ‘But the blue geranium, and the other flowers?’

‘Nurses always have litmus paper, don’t they?’ said Miss Marple, ‘for – well, for testing. Not a very pleasant subject. We won’t dwell on it. I have done a little nursing myself.’ She grew delicately pink. ‘Blue turns red with acids, and red turns blue with alkalis. So easy to paste some red litmus over a red flower – near the bed, of course. And then, when the poor lady used her smelling-salts, the strong ammonia fumes would turn it blue. Really most ingenious. Of course, the geranium wasn’t blue when they first broke into the room – nobody noticed it till afterwards. When nurse changed the bottles, she held the Sal Ammoniac against the wall-paper for a minute, I expect.’

‘You might have been there, Miss Marple,’ said Sir Henry. ‘What worries me,’ said Miss Marple, ‘is poor Mr Pritchard and that nice girl, Miss Instow. Probably both suspecting each other and keeping apart – and life so very short.’