They Do It With Mirrors (10 page)

“Had he any enemies?”

“I should think it most unlikely. He was—really, he was not that type of man.”

“So it boils down, doesn't it, to this house and the people in it? Who from
inside
the house could have killed him?”

Lewis Serrocold said slowly,

“That is difficult for me to say. There are the servants and the members of my household and our guests. They are, from your point of view, all possibilities, I suppose. I can only tell you that, as far as I know, everyone except the servants was in the Great Hall when Christian left it and whilst I was there, nobody left it.”

“Nobody at all?”

“I think”—Lewis frowned in an effort of remembrance—“oh yes. Some of the lights fused—Mr. Walter Hudd went to see to it.”

“That's the young American gentleman?”

“Yes—of course, I don't know what took place after Edgar and I came in here.”

“And you can't give me anything nearer than that, Mr. Serrocold?”

Lewis Serrocold shook his head.

“No, I'm afraid I can't help you. It's—it's all quite inconceivable.”

Inspector Curry sighed. He said:

“You can tell the party that they can all go to bed. I'll talk to them tomorrow.”

When Serrocold had left the room, Inspector Curry said to Lake:

“Well—what do you think?”

“Knows—or thinks he knows, who did it,” said Lake.

“Yes. I agree with you. And he doesn't like it a bit….”

1

G
ina greeted Miss Marple with a rush as the latter came down to breakfast the next morning.

“The police are here again,” she said. “They're in the library this time. Wally is absolutely fascinated by them. He can't understand their being so quiet and so remote. I think he's really quite thrilled by the whole thing. I'm not. I hate it. I think it's horrible. Why do you think I'm so upset? Because I'm half Italian?”

“Very possibly. At least perhaps it explains why you don't mind showing what you feel.”

Miss Marple smiled just a little as she said this.

“Jolly's frightfully cross,” said Gina, hanging on Miss Marple's arm and propelling her into the dining room. “I think really because the police are in charge and she can't exactly ‘run' them like she runs everybody else.

“Alex and Stephen,” continued Gina severely, as they came into the dining room where the two brothers were finishing their breakfast, “just don't care.”

“Gina dearest,” said Alex, “you are most unkind. Good morning, Miss Marple. I care intensely. Except for the fact that I hardly knew your Uncle Christian, I'm far and away the best suspect. You do realise that, I hope.”

“Why?”

“Well, I was driving up to the house at about the right time, it seems. And they've been checking up on times and it seems that I took too much time between the lodge and the house—time enough, the implication is, to leave the car, run round the house, go in through the side door, shoot Christian and rush out and back to the car again.”

“And what were you really doing?”

“I thought little girls were taught quite young not to ask indelicate questions. Like an idiot, I stood for several minutes taking in the fog effect in the headlights and thinking what I'd use to get that effect on a stage. For my new ‘Limehouse' ballet.”

“But you can tell them that!”

“Naturally. But you know what policemen are like. They say ‘thank you' very civilly and write it all down, and you've no idea
what
they are thinking except that one does feel they have rather sceptical minds.”

“It would amuse me to see you in a spot, Alex,” said Stephen with his thin, rather cruel smile. “Now
I'm
quite all right! I never left the Hall last night.”

Gina cried, “But they couldn't possibly think it was one of
us!
”

Her dark eyes were round and dismayed.

“Don't say it must have been a tramp, dear,” said Alex, helping himself lavishly to marmalade. “It's so hackneyed.”

Miss Bellever looked in at the door and said:

“Miss Marple, when you have finished your breakfast, will you go to the library?”

“You again,” said Gina. “Before any of us.”

She seemed a little injured.

“Hi, what was that?” asked Alex.

“Didn't hear anything,” said Stephen.

“It was a pistol shot.”

“They've been firing shots in the room where Uncle Christian was killed,” said Gina. “I don't know why. And outside too.”

The door opened again and Mildred Strete came in. She was wearing black with some onyx beads.

She murmured good morning without looking at anyone and sat down.

In a hushed voice she said:

“Some tea, please, Gina. Nothing much to eat—just some toast.”

She touched her nose and eyes delicately with the handkerchief she held in one hand. Then she raised her eyes and looked in an un-seeing way at the two brothers. Stephen and Alex became uncomfortable. Their voices dropped to almost a whisper and presently they got up and left.

Mildred Strete said, whether to the universe or Miss Marple was not quite certain, “Not even a black tie!”

“I don't suppose,” said Miss Marple apologetically, “that they knew beforehand that a murder was going to happen.”

Gina made a smothered sound and Mildred Strete looked sharply at her.

“Where's Walter this morning?” she asked.

Gina flushed.

“I don't know. I haven't seen him.”

She sat there uneasily like a guilty child.

Miss Marple got up.

“I'll go to the library now,” she said.

2

Lewis Serrocold was standing by the window in the library.

There was no one else in the room.

He turned as Miss Marple came in and came forward to meet her, taking her hand in his.

“I hope,” he said, “that you are not feeling the worse for the shock. To be at close quarters with what is undoubtedly murder must be a great strain on anyone who has not come in contact with such a thing before.”

Modesty forbade Miss Marple to reply that she was, by now, quite at home with murder. She merely said that life in St. Mary Mead was not quite so sheltered as outside people believed.

“Very nasty things go on in a village, I assure you,” she said. “One has an opportunity of studying things there that one would never have in a town.”

Lewis Serrocold listened indulgently, but with only half an ear.

He said very simply: “I want your help.”

“But of course, Mr. Serrocold.”

“It is a matter that affects my wife—affects Caroline. I think that you are really attached to her?”

“Yes, indeed. Everyone is.”

“That is what I believed. It seems that I am wrong. With the
permission of Inspector Curry, I am going to tell you something that no one else as yet knows. Or perhaps I should say what only one person knows.”

Briefly, he told her what he had told Inspector Curry the night before.

Miss Marple looked horrified.

“I can't believe it, Mr. Serrocold. I really can't believe it.”

“That is what I felt when Christian Gulbrandsen told me.”

“I should have said that dear Carrie Louise had not got an enemy in the world.”

“It seems incredible that she should have. But you see the implication? Poisoning—slow poisoning—is an intimate family matter. It must be one of our closely knit little household—”

“If it is
true.
Are you sure that Mr. Gulbrandsen was not mistaken?”

“Christian was not mistaken. He is too cautious a man to make such a statement without foundation. Besides, the police took away Caroline's medicine bottle and a separate sample of its contents. There was arsenic in both of them—and arsenic was not prescribed. The actual quantitative tests will take longer—but the actual fact of arsenic being present is established.”

“Then her rheumatism—the difficulty in walking—all that—”

“Yes, leg cramps are typical, I understand. Also, before you came, Caroline had had one or two severe attacks of a gastric nature—I never dreamed until Christian came—”

He broke off. Miss Marple said softly: “So Ruth was right!”

“Ruth?”

Lewis Serrocold sounded surprised. Miss Marple flushed.

“There is something I have not told you. My coming here was
not entirely fortuitous. If you will let me explain—I'm afraid I tell things so badly. Please have patience.”

Lewis Serrocold listened whilst Miss Marple told him of Ruth's unease and urgency.

“Extraordinary,” he commented. “I had no idea of this.”

“It was all so vague,” said Miss Marple. “Ruth herself didn't know why she had this feeling. There must be a reason—in my experience there always is—but ‘something wrong' was as near as she could get.”

Lewis Serrocold said grimly:

“Well, it seems that she was right. Now, Miss Marple, you see how I am placed. Am I to tell Caroline of this?”

Miss Marple said quickly, “Oh no,” in a distressed voice, and then flushed and stared doubtfully at Lewis. He nodded.

“So you feel as I do? As Christian Gulbrandsen did. Should we feel like that with an ordinary woman?”

“Carrie Louise is
not
an ordinary woman. She lives by her trust, by her belief in human nature—oh dear, I am expressing myself very badly. But I do feel that until we know who—”

“Yes, that is the crux. But you do see, Miss Marple, that there is a risk in saying nothing—”

“And so you want me to—how shall I put it?—watch over her?”

“You see, you are the only person whom I can trust,” said Lewis Serrocold simply. “Everyone here
seems
devoted. But are they? Now your attachment goes back many years.”

“And also I only arrived a few days ago,” said Miss Marple pertinently.

Lewis Serrocold smiled.

“Exactly.”

“It is a very mercenary question,” said Miss Marple apologetically. “But who exactly would benefit if dear Carrie Louise were to die?”

“Money!” said Lewis bitterly. “It always boils down to money, does it?”

“Well, I really think it must in this case. Because Carrie Louise is a very sweet person with a great deal of charm, and one cannot really imagine anyone disliking her. She couldn't, I mean, have an
enemy.
So then it does boil down, as you put it, to a question of money, because as you don't need me to tell you, Mr. Serrocold, people will quite often do anything for money.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

He went on: “Naturally Inspector Curry has already taken up that point. Mr. Gilroy is coming down from London today and can give detailed information. Gilroy, Gilroy, Jaimes and Gilroy are a very eminent firm of lawyers. This Gilroy's father was one of the original trustees and they drew up both Caroline's will and the original will of Eric Gulbrandsen. I will put it in simple terms for you—”

“Thank you,” said Miss Marple gratefully. “So mystifying the law, I always think.”

“Eric Gulbrandsen after endowment of the College and his various fellowships and trusts and other charitable bequests, and having settled an equal sum on his daughter Mildred and on his adopted daughter Pippa (Gina's mother), left the remainder of his vast fortune in trust, the income from it to be paid to Caroline for her lifetime.”

“And after her death?”

“After her death it was to be divided equally between Mildred
and Pippa—or their children, if they themselves had predeceased Caroline.”

“So that, in fact, it goes to Mrs. Strete and to Gina.”

“Yes. Caroline has also quite a considerable fortune of her own—though not in the Gulbrandsen class. Half of this she made over to me four years ago. Of the remaining amount, she left ten thousand pounds to Juliet Bellever, and the rest equally divided between Alex and Stephen Restarick, her two stepsons.”

“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “That's bad. That's very bad.”

“You mean?”

“It means everyone in the house had a financial motive.”

“Yes. And yet, you know, I can't believe that any of these people would do murder. I simply can't … Mildred is her daughter—and already quite well provided for. Gina is devoted to her grandmother. She is generous and extravagant, but has no acquisitive feelings. Jolly Bellever is fanatically devoted to Caroline. The two Restaricks care for Caroline as though she were really their mother. They have no money of their own to speak of, but quite a lot of Caroline's income has gone towards financing their enterprises—especially so with Alex. I simply can't believe either of those two would deliberately poison her for the sake of inheriting money at her death. I just can't believe any of it, Miss Marple.”

“There's Gina's husband, isn't there?”

“Yes,” said Lewis gravely. “There is Gina's husband.”

“You don't really know much about him. And one can't help seeing that he's a very unhappy young man.”

Lewis sighed.

“He hasn't fitted in here—no. He's no interest in or sympathy for what we're trying to do. But after all, why should he? He's young,
crude, and he comes from a country where a man is esteemed by the success he makes of life.”

“Whilst here we are so very fond of failures,” said Miss Marple.

Lewis Serrocold looked at her sharply and suspiciously.

She flushed a little and murmured rather incoherently:

“I think sometimes, you know, one can overdo things the other way … I mean the young people with a good heredity, and brought up wisely in a good home—and with grit and pluck and the ability to get on in life—well, they are really, when one comes down to it—the sort of people a country
needs.
”

Lewis frowned and Miss Marple hurried on, getting pinker and pinker and more and more incoherent.

“Not that I don't appreciate—I do indeed—you and Carrie Louise—a really noble work—real compassion—and one should have compassion—because after all it's what people
are
that counts—good and bad luck—and much more expected (and rightly) of the lucky ones. But I do think sometimes one's sense of proportion—oh, I don't mean
you,
Mr. Serrocold. Really I don't know
what
I mean—but the English
are
rather odd that way. Even in war, so much prouder of their defeats and their retreats than of their victories. Foreigners never can understand why we're so proud of Dunkerque. It's the sort of thing they'd prefer not to mention themselves. But we always seem to be almost embarrassed by a victory—and treat it as though it weren't quite nice to boast about it. And look at all our poets! ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.' And the little Revenge went down in the Spanish Main. It's really a very odd characteristic when you come to think of it!”

Miss Marple drew a fresh breath.

“What I really mean is that everything here must seem rather peculiar to young Walter Hudd.”

“Yes,” Lewis allowed. “I see your point. And Walter has certainly a fine war record. There's no doubt about his bravery.”

“Not that that helps,” said Miss Marple candidly. “Because war is one thing, and everyday life is quite another. And actually to commit a murder, I think you do need bravery—or perhaps, more often, just conceit. Yes, conceit.”