Miss Marple and Mystery (78 page)

‘Maybe,’ said the inspector cautiously. ‘Such close quarters, you know. Then, so often, the money angle. I hear that it was Mrs Spenlow who had the money, and therefore Mr Spenlow does benefit by her death. In this wicked world I’m afraid the most uncharitable assumptions are often justified.’

‘He comes into a tidy sum, all right.’

‘Just so. It would seem quite plausible, wouldn’t it, for him to strangle her, leave the house by the back, come across the fields to my house, ask for me and pretend he’d had a telephone call from me, then go back and find his wife murdered in his absence – hoping, of course, that the crime would be put down to some tramp or burglar.’

The inspector nodded.

‘What with the money angle – and if they’d been on bad terms lately –’

But Miss Marple interrupted him. ‘Oh, but they hadn’t.’

‘You know that for a fact?’

‘Everyone would have known if they’d quarrelled! The maid, Gladys Brent – she’d have soon spread it round the village.’

The inspector said feebly, ‘She mightn’t have known –’ and received a pitying smile in reply.

Miss Marple went on. ‘And then there’s the other school of thought. Ted Gerard. A good-looking young man. I’m afraid, you know, that good looks are inclined to influence one more than they should. Our last curate but one – quite a magical effect! All the girls came to church – evening service as well as morning. And many older women became unusually active in parish work – and the slippers and scarfs that were made for him! Quite embarrassing for the poor young man.

‘But let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, this young man, Ted Gerard. Of course, there has been talk about him. He’s come down to see her so often. Though Mrs Spenlow told me herself that he was a member of what I think they call the Oxford Group. A religious movement. They are quite sincere and very earnest, I believe, and Mrs Spenlow was impressed by it all.’

Miss Marple took a breath and went on. ‘And I’m sure there was no reason to believe that there was anything more in it than that, but you know what people are. Quite a lot of people are convinced that Mrs Spenlow was infatuated with the young man, and that she’d lent him quite a lot of money. And it’s perfectly true that he was actually seen at the station that day. In the train – the two twenty-seven down train. But of course it would be quite easy, wouldn’t it, to slip out of the other side of the train and go through the cutting and over the fence and round by the hedge and never come out of the station entrance at all. So that he need not have been seen going to the cottage. And, of course, people do think that what Mrs Spenlow was wearing was rather peculiar.’

‘Peculiar?’

‘A kimono. Not a dress.’ Miss Marple blushed. ‘That sort of thing, you know, is, perhaps, rather suggestive to some people.’

‘You think it was suggestive?’

‘Oh, no,
I
don’t think so, I think it was perfectly natural.’

‘You think it was natural?’

‘Under the circumstances, yes.’ Miss Marple’s glance was cool and reflective.

Inspector Slack said, ‘It might give us another motive for the husband. Jealousy.’

‘Oh, no, Mr Spenlow would never be jealous. He’s not the sort of man who notices things. If his wife had gone away and left a note on the pincushion, it would be the first he’d know of anything of that kind.’

Inspector Slack was puzzled by the intent way she was looking at him. He had an idea that all her conversation was intended to hint at something he didn’t understand. She said now, with some emphasis, ‘Didn’t
you
find any clues, Inspector – on the spot?’

‘People don’t leave fingerprints and cigarette ash nowadays, Miss Marple.’

‘But this, I think,’ she suggested, ‘was an old-fashioned crime –’ Slack said sharply, ‘Now what do you mean by that?’

Miss Marple remarked slowly, ‘I think, you know, that Constable Palk could help you. He was the first person on the – on the “scene of the crime”, as they say.’

Mr Spenlow was sitting in a deck chair. He looked bewildered. He said, in his thin, precise voice, ‘I may, of course, be imagining what occurred. My hearing is not as good as it was. But I distinctly think I heard a small boy call after me, “Yah, who’s a Crippen?” It – it conveyed the impression to me that he was of the opinion that I had – had killed my dear wife.’

Miss Marple, gently snipping off a dead rose head, said, ‘That was the impression he meant to convey, no doubt.’

‘But what could possibly have put such an idea into a child’s head?’ Miss Marple coughed. ‘Listening, no doubt, to the opinions of his elders.’

‘You – you really mean that other people think that, also?’

‘Quite half the people in St Mary Mead.’

‘But – my dear lady – what can possibly have given rise to such an idea? I was sincerely attached to my wife. She did not, alas, take to living in the country as much as I had hoped she would do, but perfect agreement on every subject is an impossible idea. I assure you I feel her loss very keenly.’

‘Probably. But if you will excuse my saying so, you don’t sound as though you do.’

Mr Spenlow drew his meagre frame up to its full height. ‘My dear lady, many years ago I read of a certain Chinese philosopher who, when his dearly loved wife was taken from him, continued calmly to beat a gong in the street – a customary Chinese pastime, I presume – exactly as usual. The people of the city were much impressed by his fortitude.’

‘But,’ said Miss Marple, ‘the people of St Mary Mead react rather differently. Chinese philosophy does not appeal to them.’

‘But you understand?’

Miss Marple nodded.

‘My Uncle Henry,’ she explained, ‘was a man of unusual self-control. His motto was “Never display emotion”. He, too, was very fond of flowers.’

‘I was thinking,’ said Mr Spenlow with something like eagerness, ‘that I might, perhaps, have a pergola on the west side of the cottage. Pink roses and, perhaps, wisteria. And there is a white starry flower, whose name for the moment escapes me –’

In the tone in which she spoke to her grandnephew, aged three, Miss Marple said, ‘I have a very nice catalogue here, with pictures. Perhaps you would like to look through it – I have to go up to the village.’

Leaving Mr Spenlow sitting happily in the garden with his catalogue, Miss Marple went up to her room, hastily rolled up a dress in a piece of brown paper, and, leaving the house, walked briskly up to the post office. Miss Politt, the dressmaker, lived in the rooms over the post office.

But Miss Marple did not at once go through the door and up the stairs. It was just two-thirty, and, a minute late, the Much Benham bus drew up outside the post office door. It was one of the events of the day in St Mary Mead. The postmistress hurried out with parcels, parcels connected with the shop side of her business, for the post office also dealt in sweets, cheap books, and children’s toys.

For some four minutes Miss Marple was alone in the post office. Not till the postmistress returned to her post did Miss Marple go upstairs and explain to Miss Politt that she wanted her old grey crepe altered and made more fashionable if that were possible. Miss Politt promised to see what she could do.

* * *

The chief constable was rather astonished when Miss Marple’s name was brought to him. She came in with many apologies. ‘So sorry – so very sorry to disturb you. You are so busy, I know, but then you have always been so very kind, Colonel Melchett, and I felt I would rather come to you instead of Inspector Slack. For one thing, you know, I should hate Constable Palk to get into any trouble. Strictly speaking, I suppose he shouldn’t have touched anything at all.’

Colonel Melchett was slightly bewildered. He said, ‘Palk? That’s the St Mary Mead constable, isn’t it? What has he been doing?’

‘He picked up a pin, you know. It was in his tunic. And it occurred to me at the time that it was quite probable he had actually picked it up in Mrs Spenlow’s house.’

‘Quite, quite. But after all, you know, what’s a pin? Matter of fact he did pick the pin up just by Mrs Spenlow’s body. Came and told Slack about it yesterday – you put him up to that, I gather? Oughtn’t to have touched anything, of course, but as I said, what’s a pin? It was only a common pin. Sort of thing any woman might use.’

‘Oh, no, Colonel Melchett, that’s where you’re wrong. To a man’s eye, perhaps, it looked like an ordinary pin, but it wasn’t. It was a special pin, a very thin pin, the kind you buy by the box, the kind used mostly by dressmakers.’

Melchett stared at her, a faint light of comprehension breaking in on him. Miss Marple nodded her head several times, eagerly.

‘Yes, of course. It seems to me so obvious. She was in her kimono because she was going to try on her new dress, and she went into the front room, and Miss Politt just said something about measurements and put the tape measure round her neck – and then all she’d have to do was to cross it and pull – quite easy, so I’ve heard. And then, of course, she’d go outside and pull the door to and stand there knocking as though she’d just arrived. But the pin shows she’d
already been in the house
.’

‘And it was Miss Politt who telephoned to Spenlow?’

‘Yes. From the post office at two-thirty – just when the bus comes and the post office would be empty.’

Colonel Melchett said, ‘But my dear Miss Marple, why? In heaven’s name, why? You can’t have a murder without a motive.’

‘Well, I think, you know, Colonel Melchett, from all I’ve heard, that the crime dates from a long time back. It reminds me, you know, of my two cousins, Antony and Gordon. Whatever Antony did always went right for him, and with poor Gordon it was just the other way about. Race horses went lame, and stocks went down, and property depreciated. As I see it, the two women were in it together.’

‘In what?’

‘The robbery. Long ago. Very valuable emeralds, so I’ve heard. The lady’s maid and the tweeny. Because one thing hasn’t been explained – how, when the tweeny married the gardener, did they have enough money to set up a flower shop?

‘The answer is, it was her share of the – the swag, I think is the right expression. Everything she did turned out well. Money made money. But the other one, the lady’s maid, must have been unlucky. She came down to being just a village dressmaker. Then they met again. Quite all right at first, I expect, until Mr Ted Gerard came on the scene.

‘Mrs Spenlow, you see, was already suffering from conscience, and was inclined to be emotionally religious. This young man no doubt urged her to “face up” and to “come clean” and I dare say she was strung up to do it. But Miss Politt didn’t see it that way. All she saw was that she might go to prison for a robbery she had committed years ago. So she made up her mind to put a stop to it all. I’m afraid, you know, that she was always rather a wicked woman. I don’t believe she’d have turned a hair if that nice, stupid Mr Spenlow had been hanged.’

Colonel Melchett said slowly, ‘We can – er – verify your theory – up to a point. The identity of the Politt woman with the lady’s maid at the Abercrombies’, but –’

Miss Marple reassured him. ‘It will be all quite easy. She’s the kind of woman who will break down at once when she’s taxed with the truth. And then, you see, I’ve got her tape measure. I – er – abstracted it yesterday when I was trying on. When she misses it and thinks the police have got it – well, she’s quite an ignorant woman and she’ll think it will prove the case against her in some way.’

She smiled at him encouragingly. ‘You’ll have no trouble, I can assure you.’ It was the tone in which his favourite aunt had once assured him that he could not fail to pass his entrance examination into Sandhurst.

And he had passed.

‘The Case of the Caretaker’ was first published in Strand Magazine, January 1942, and then in the USA in Chicago Sunday Tribune, 5 July 1942.

‘Well,’ demanded Doctor Haydock of his patient. ‘And how goes it today?’

Miss Marple smiled at him wanly from pillows. ‘I suppose, really, that I’m better,’ she admitted, ‘but I feel so terribly depressed. I can’t help feeling how much better it would have been if I had died. After all, I’m an old woman. Nobody wants me or cares about me.’

Doctor Haydock interrupted with his usual brusqueness. ‘Yes, yes, typical after-reaction of this type of flu. What you need is something to take you out of yourself. A mental tonic.’

Miss Marple sighed and shook her head. ‘And what’s more,’ continued Doctor Haydock, ‘I’ve brought my medicine with me!’

He tossed a long envelope on to the bed. ‘Just the thing for you. The kind of puzzle that is right up your street.’

‘A puzzle?’ Miss Marple looked interested. ‘Literary effort of mine,’ said the doctor, blushing a little. ‘Tried to make a regular story of it. “He said,” “she said,” “the girl thought,” etc. Facts of the story are true.’

‘But why a puzzle?’ asked Miss Marple.

Doctor Haydock grinned.

‘Because the interpretation is up to you. I want to see if you’re as clever as you always make out.’

With that Parthian shot he departed.

Miss Marple picked up the manuscript and began to read.

‘And where is the bride?’ asked Miss Harmon genially.

The village was all agog to see the rich and beautiful young wife that Harry Laxton had brought back from abroad. There was a general

indulgent feeling that Harry – wicked young scapegrace – had had all the luck. Everyone had always felt indulgent towards Harry. Even the owners of windows that had suffered from his indiscriminate use of a catapult had found their indignation dissipated by young Harry’s abject expression of regret. He had broken windows, robbed orchards, poached rabbits, and later had run into debt, got entangled with the local tobacconist’s daughter – been disentangled and sent off to Africa – and the village as represented by various ageing spinsters had murmured indulgently. ‘Ah, well! Wild oats! He’ll settle down!’

And now, sure enough, the prodigal had returned – not in affliction, but in triumph. Harry Laxton had ‘made good’ as the saying goes. He had pulled himself together, worked hard, and had finally met and successfully wooed a young Anglo-French girl who was the possessor of a considerable fortune.

Harry might have lived in London, or purchased an estate in some fashionable hunting county, but he preferred to come back to the part of the world that was home to him. And there, in the most romantic way, he purchased the derelict estate in the dower house of which he had passed his childhood.

Kingsdean House had been unoccupied for nearly seventy years. It had gradually fallen into decay and abandon. An elderly caretaker and his wife lived in the one habitable corner of it. It was a vast, unpre-possessing grandiose mansion, the gardens overgrown with rank vegetation and the trees hemming it in like some gloomy enchanter’s den.

The dower house was a pleasant, unpretentious house and had been let for a long term of years to Major Laxton, Harry’s father. As a boy, Harry had roamed over the Kingsdean estate and knew every inch of the tangled woods, and the old house itself had always fascinated him.

Major Laxton had died some years ago, so it might have been thought that Harry would have had no ties to bring him back – nevertheless it was to the home of his boyhood that Harry brought his bride. The ruined old Kingsdean House was pulled down. An army of builders and contractors swooped down upon the place, and in almost a miraculously short space of time – so marvellously does wealth tell – the new house rose white and gleaming among the trees.

Next came a posse of gardeners and after them a procession of furniture vans.

The house was ready. Servants arrived. Lastly, a costly limousine deposited Harry and Mrs Harry at the front door.

The village rushed to call, and Mrs Price, who owned the largest house, and who considered herself to lead society in the place, sent out cards of invitation for a party ‘to meet the bride’.

It was a great event. Several ladies had new frocks for the occasion. Everyone was excited, curious, anxious to see this fabulous creature. They said it was all so like a fairy story!

Miss Harmon, weather-beaten, hearty spinster, threw out her question as she squeezed her way through the crowded drawing-room door. Little Miss Brent, a thin, acidulated spinster, fluttered out information.

‘Oh, my dear, quite charming. Such pretty manners. And quite young. Really, you know, it makes one feel quite envious to see someone who has everything like that. Good looks and money and breeding – most distinguished, nothing in the least common about her – and dear Harry so devoted!’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Harmon, ‘it’s early days yet!’

Miss Brent’s thin nose quivered appreciatively. ‘Oh, my dear, do you really think –’

‘We all know what Harry is,’ said Miss Harmon. ‘We know what he was! But I expect now –’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Harmon, ‘men are always the same. Once a gay deceiver, always a gay deceiver. I know them.’

‘Dear, dear. Poor young thing.’ Miss Brent looked much happier. ‘Yes, I expect she’ll have trouble with him. Someone ought really to warn her. I wonder if she’s heard anything of the old story?’

‘It seems so very unfair,’ said Miss Brent, ‘that she should know nothing. So awkward. Especially with only the one chemist’s shop in the village.’

For the erstwhile tobacconist’s daughter was now married to Mr Edge, the chemist.

‘It would be so much nicer,’ said Miss Brent, ‘if Mrs Laxton were to deal with Boots in Much Benham.’

‘I dare say,’ said Miss Harmon, ‘that Harry Laxton will suggest that himself.’

And again a significant look passed between them. ‘But I certainly think,’ said Miss Harmon, ‘that she ought to know.’

‘Beasts!’ said Clarice Vane indignantly to her uncle, Doctor Haydock. ‘Absolute beasts some people are.’

He looked at her curiously.

She was a tall, dark girl, handsome, warm-hearted and impulsive. Her big brown eyes were alight now with indignation as she said, ‘All these cats – saying things – hinting things.’

‘About Harry Laxton?’

‘Yes, about his affair with the tobacconist’s daughter.’

‘Oh, that!’ The doctor shrugged his shoulders. ‘A great many young men have affairs of that kind.’

‘Of course they do. And it’s all over. So why harp on it? And bring it up years after? It’s like ghouls feasting on dead bodies.’

‘I dare say, my dear, it does seem like that to you. But you see, they have very little to talk about down here, and so I’m afraid they do tend to dwell upon past scandals. But I’m curious to know why it upsets you so much?’

Clarice Vane bit her lip and flushed. She said, in a curiously muffled voice. ‘They – they look so happy. The Laxtons, I mean. They’re young and in love, and it’s all so lovely for them. I hate to think of it being spoiled by whispers and hints and innuendoes and general beastliness.’

‘H’m. I see.’

Clarice went on. ‘He was talking to me just now. He’s so happy and eager and excited and – yes, thrilled – at having got his heart’s desire and rebuilt Kingsdean. He’s like a child about it all. And she – well, I don’t suppose anything has ever gone wrong in her whole life. She’s always had everything. You’ve seen her. What did you think of her?’

The doctor did not answer at once. For other people, Louise Laxton might be an object of envy. A spoiled darling of fortune. To him she had brought only the refrain of a popular song heard many years ago,
Poor little rich girl –

A small, delicate figure, with flaxen hair curled rather stiffly round her face and big, wistful blue eyes.

Louise was drooping a little. The long stream of congratulations had tired her. She was hoping it might soon be time to go. Perhaps, even now, Harry might say so. She looked at him sideways. So tall and broad-shouldered with his eager pleasure in this horrible, dull party.

Poor little rich girl –

‘Ooph!’ It was a sigh of relief.

Harry turned to look at his wife amusedly. They were driving away from the party.

She said, ‘Darling, what a frightful party!’

Harry laughed. ‘Yes, pretty terrible. Never mind, my sweet. It had to be done, you know. All these old pussies knew me when I lived here as a boy. They’d have been terribly disappointed not to have got a look at you close up.’

Louise made a grimace. She said, ‘Shall we have to see a lot of them?’

‘What? Oh, no. They’ll come and make ceremonious calls with card cases, and you’ll return the calls and then you needn’t bother any more. You can have your own friends down or whatever you like.’

Louise said, after a minute or two, ‘Isn’t there anyone amusing living down here?’

‘Oh, yes. There’s the County, you know. Though you may find them a bit dull, too. Mostly interested in bulbs and dogs and horses. You’ll ride, of course. You’ll enjoy that. There’s a horse over at Eglinton I’d like you to see. A beautiful animal, perfectly trained, no vice in him but plenty of spirit.’

The car slowed down to take the turn into the gates of Kingsdean. Harry wrenched the wheel and swore as a grotesque figure sprang up in the middle of the road and he only just managed to avoid it. It stood there, shaking a fist and shouting after them.

Louise clutched his arm. ‘Who’s that – that horrible old woman?’ Harry’s brow was black. ‘That’s old Murgatroyd. She and her husband were caretakers in the old house. They were there for nearly thirty years.’

‘Why does she shake her fist at you?’

Harry’s face got red. ‘She – well, she resented the house being pulled down. And she got the sack, of course. Her husband’s been dead two years. They say she got a bit queer after he died.’

‘Is she – she isn’t – starving?’

Louise’s ideas were vague and somewhat melodramatic. Riches prevented you coming into contact with reality.

Harry was outraged. ‘Good Lord, Louise, what an idea! I pensioned her off, of course – and handsomely, too! Found her a new cottage and everything.’

Louise asked, bewildered, ‘Then why does she mind?’

Harry was frowning, his brows drawn together. ‘Oh, how should I know? Craziness! She loved the house.’

‘But it was a ruin, wasn’t it?’

‘Of course it was – crumbling to pieces – roof leaking – more or less unsafe. All the same I suppose it meant something to her. She’d been there a long time. Oh, I don’t know! The old devil’s cracked, I think.’

Louise said uneasily, ‘She – I think she cursed us. Oh, Harry, I wish she hadn’t.’

It seemed to Louise that her new home was tainted and poisoned by the malevolent figure of one crazy old woman. When she went out in the car, when she rode, when she walked out with the dogs, there was always the same figure waiting. Crouched down on herself, a battered hat over wisps of iron-grey hair, and the slow muttering of imprecations.

Louise came to believe that Harry was right – the old woman was mad. Nevertheless that did not make things easier. Mrs Murgatroyd never actually came to the house, nor did she use definite threats, nor offer violence. Her squatting figure remained always just outside the gates. To appeal to the police would have been useless and, in any case,

Harry Laxton was averse to that course of action. It would, he said, arouse local sympathy for the old brute. He took the matter more easily than Louise did.

‘Don’t worry about it, darling. She’ll get tired of this silly cursing business. Probably she’s only trying it on.’

‘She isn’t, Harry. She – she hates us! I can feel it. She – she’s ill-wishing us.’

‘She’s not a witch, darling, although she may look like one! Don’t be morbid about it all.’

Louise was silent. Now that the first excitement of settling in was over, she felt curiously lonely and at a loose end. She had been used to life in London and the Riviera. She had no knowledge of or taste for English country life. She was ignorant of gardening, except for the final act of ‘doing the flowers’. She did not really care for dogs. She was bored by such neighbours as she met. She enjoyed riding best, sometimes with Harry, sometimes, when he was busy about the estate, by herself. She hacked through the woods and lanes, enjoying the easy paces of the beautiful horse that Harry had bought for her. Yet even Prince Hal, most sensitive of chestnut steeds, was wont to shy and snort as he carried his mistress past the huddled figure of a malevolent old woman.

One day Louise took her courage in both hands. She was out walking. She had passed Mrs Murgatroyd, pretending not to notice her, but suddenly she swerved back and went right up to her. She said, a little breathlessly, ‘What is it? What’s the matter? What do you want?’

The old woman blinked at her. She had a cunning, dark gypsy face, with wisps of iron-grey hair, and bleared, suspicious eyes. Louise wondered if she drank.

She spoke in a whining and yet threatening voice. ‘What do I want, you ask? What, indeed! That which has been took away from me. Who turned me out of Kingsdean House? I’d lived there, girl and woman, for near on forty years. It was a black deed to turn me out and it’s black bad luck it’ll bring to you and him!’

Louise said, ‘You’ve got a very nice cottage and –’

She broke off. The old woman’s arms flew up. She screamed, ‘What’s the good of that to me? It’s my own place I want and my own fire as I sat beside all them years. And as for you and him, I’m telling you there will be no happiness for you in your new fine house. It’s the black sorrow will be upon you! Sorrow and death and my curse. May your fair face rot.’