Twenty-three

EVENING AT THE VICARAGE

Miss Marple sat in the tall armchair. Bunch was on the floor in front of thefire with her arms round her knees.

The Reverend Julian Harmon was leaning forward and was for oncelooking more like a schoolboy than a man foreshadowing his own matur-ity. And Inspector Craddock was smoking his pipe and drinking a whiskyand soda and was clearly very much off duty. An outer circle was com-posed of Julia, Patrick, Edmund and Phillipa.

“I think it’s your story, Miss Marple,” said Craddock.

“Oh no, my dear boy. I only just helped a little, here and there. You werein charge of the whole thing, and conducted it all, and you know so muchthat I don’t.”

“Well, tell it together,” said Bunch impatiently. “Bit each. Only let AuntJane start because I like the muddly way her mind works. When did youfirst think that the whole thing was a put-up job by Blacklock?”

“Well, my dear Bunch, it’s hard to say. Of course, right at the very begin-ning, it did seem as though the ideal person—or rather the obvious person,I should say—to have arranged the hold-up was Miss Blacklock herself.

She was the only person who was known to have been in contact withRudi Scherz, and how much easier to arrange something like that whenit’s your own house. The central heating, for instance. No fires—becausethat would have meant light in the room. But the only person who couldhave arranged not to have a fire was the mistress of the house herself.

“Not that I thought of all that at the time—it just seemed to me that itwas a pity it couldn’t be as simple as that! Oh, no, I was taken in like every-one else, I thought that someone really did want to kill Letitia Blacklock.”

“I think I’d like to get clear first on what really happened,” said Bunch.

“Did this Swiss boy recognize her?”

“Yes. He’d worked in—”

She hesitated and looked at Craddock.

“In Dr. Adolf Koch’s clinic in Berne,” said Craddock. “Koch was a world-famous specialist on operations for goitre. Charlotte Blacklock went thereto have her goitre removed and Rudi Scherz was one of the orderlies.

When he came to England he recognized in the hotel a lady who had beena patient and on the spur of the moment he spoke to her. I dare say hemightn’t have done that if he’d paused to think, because he left the placeunder a cloud, but that was some time after Charlotte had been there, soshe wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“So he never said anything to her about Montreux and his father being ahotel proprietor?”

“Oh, no, she made that up to account for his having spoken to her.”

“It must have been a great shock to her,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully.

“She felt reasonably safe—and then—the almost impossible mischance ofsomebody turning up who had known her—not as one of the two MissBlacklocks—she was prepared for that—but definitely as Charlotte Black-lock, a patient who’d been operated on for goitre.

“But you wanted to go through it all from the beginning. Well, the begin-ning, I think—if Inspector Craddock agrees with me—was when CharlotteBlacklock, a pretty, lighthearted affectionate girl, developed that enlarge-ment of the thryoid gland that’s called a goitre. It ruined her life, becauseshe was a very sensitive girl. A girl, too, who had always set a lot of stresson her personal appearance. And girls just at that age in their teens areparticularly sensitive about themselves. If she’d had a mother, or a reas-onable father, I don’t think she would have got into the morbid state sheundoubtedly did get into. She had no one, you see, to take her out of her-self, and force her to see people and lead a normal life and not think toomuch about her infirmity. And, of course, in a different household, shemight have been sent for an operation many years earlier.

“But Dr. Blacklock, I think, was an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, tyran-nical and obstinate man. He didn’t believe in these operations. Charlottemust take it from him that nothing could be done—apart from dosagewith iodine and other drugs. Charlotte did take it from him, and I thinkher sister also placed more faith in Dr. Blacklock’s powers as a physicianthan he deserved.

“Charlotte was devoted to her father in a rather weak and soppy way.

She thought, definitely, that her father knew best. But she shut herself upmore and more as the goitre became larger and more unsightly, and re-fused to see people. She was actually a kindly affectionate creature.”

“That’s an odd description of a murderess,” said Edmund.

“I don’t know that it is,” said Miss Marple. “Weak and kindly people areoften very treacherous. And if they’ve got a grudge against life it saps thelittle moral strength that they may possess.

“Letitia Blacklock, of course, had quite a different personality. InspectorCraddock told me that Belle Goedler described her as really good—and Ithink Letitia was good. She was a woman of great integrity who found—asshe put it herself—a great difficulty in understanding how people couldn’tsee what was dishonest. Letitia Blacklock, however tempted, would neverhave contemplated any kind of fraud for a moment.

“Letitia was devoted to her sister. She wrote her long accounts ofeverything that happened in an effort to keep her sister in touch with life.

She was worried by the morbid state Charlotte was getting into.

“Finally Dr. Blacklock died. Letitia, without hesitation, threw up her pos-ition with Randall Goedler and devoted herself to Charlotte. She took herto Switzerland, to consult authorities there on the possibility of operating.

It had been left very late—but as we know the operation was successful.

The deformity was gone—and the scar this operation had left was easilyhidden by a choker of pearls or beads.

“The war had broken out. A return to England was difficult and the twosisters stayed in Switzerland doing various Red Cross and other work.

That’s right, isn’t it, Inspector?”

“Yes, Miss Marple.”

“They got occasional news from England—amongst other things, I ex-pect, they heard that Belle Goedler could not live long. I’m sure it would beonly human nature for them both to have planned and talked together ofthe days ahead when a big fortune would be theirs to spend. One has gotto realize, I think, that this prospect meant much more to Charlotte than itdid to Letitia. For the first time in her life, Charlotte could go about feelingherself a normal woman, a woman at whom no one looked with either re-pulsion or pity. She was free at last to enjoy life—and she had a whole life-time, as it were, to crowd into her remaining years. To travel, to have ahouse and beautiful grounds—to have clothes and jewels, and go to playsand concerts, to gratify every whim—it was all a kind of fairy tale cometrue to Charlotte.

“And then Letitia, the strong healthy Letitia, got flu which turned topneumonia and died within the space of a week! Not only had Charlottelost her sister, but the whole dream existence she had planned for herselfwas cancelled. I think, you know, that she may have felt almost resentfultowards Letitia. Why need Letitia have died, just then, when they had justhad a letter saying Belle Goedler could not last long? Just one more month,perhaps, and the money would have been Letitia’s—and hers when Letitiadied….

“Now this is where I think the difference between the two came in.

Charlotte didn’t really feel that what she suddenly thought of doing waswrong—not really wrong. The money was meant to come to Letitia—itwould have come to Letitia in the course of a few months—and she re-garded herself and Letitia as one.

“Perhaps the idea didn’t occur to her until the doctor or someone askedher her sister’s Christian name — and then she realized how to nearlyeveryone they had appeared as the two Miss Blacklocks—elderly, well-bred Englishwomen, dressed much the same, with a strong family resemb-lance—(and, as I pointed out to Bunch, one elderly woman is so like an-other). Why shouldn’t it be Charlotte who had died and Letitia who wasalive?

“It was an impulse, perhaps, more than a plan. Letitia was buried underCharlotte’s name. ‘Charlotte’ was dead, ‘Letitia’ came to England. All thenatural initiative and energy, dormant for so many years, were now in theascendant. As Charlotte she had played second fiddle. She now assumedthe airs of command, the feeling of command that had been Letitia’s. Theywere not really so unlike in mentality—though there was, I think, a big dif-ference morally.

“Charlotte had, of course, to take one or two obvious precautions. Shebought a house in a part of England quite unknown to her. The onlypeople she had to avoid were a few people in her own native town inCumberland (where in any case she’d lived as a recluse) and, of course,Belle Goedler who had known Letitia so well that any impersonationwould have been out of the question. Handwriting difficulties were gotover by the arthritic condition of her hands. It was really very easy be-cause so few people had ever really known Charlotte.”

“But supposing she’d met people who’d known Letitia?” asked Bunch.

“There must have been plenty of those.”

“They wouldn’t matter in the same way. Someone might say: ‘I cameacross Letitia Blacklock the other day. She’s changed so much I reallywouldn’t have known her.’ But there still wouldn’t be any suspicion intheir minds that she wasn’t Letitia. People do change in the course of tenyears. Her failure to recognize them could always be put down to hershortsightedness; and you must remember that she knew every detail ofLetitia’s life in London—the people she met—the places she went. She’dgot Letitia’s letters to refer to, and she could quickly have disarmed anysuspicion by mention of some incident, or an inquiry after a mutualfriend. No, it was recognition as Charlotte that was the only thing she hadto fear.

“She settled down at Little Paddocks, got to know her neighbours and,when she got a letter asking dear Letitia to be kind, she accepted withpleasure the visit of two young cousins she had never seen. Their accept-ance of her as Aunt Letty increased her security.

“The whole thing was going splendidly. And then—she made her bigmistake. It was a mistake that arose solely from her kindness of heart andher naturally affectionate nature. She got a letter from an old schoolfriend who had fallen on evil days, and she hurried to the rescue. Perhapsit may have been partly because she was, in spite of everything, lonely.

Her secret kept her in a way apart from people. And she had been genu-inely fond of Dora Bunner and remembered her as a symbol of her owngay carefree days at school. Anyway, on an impulse, she answered Dora’sletter in person. And very surprised Dora must have been! She’d writtento Letitia and the sister who turned up in answer to her letter was Char-lotte. There was never any question of pretending to be Letitia to Dora.

Dora was one of the few old friends who had been admitted to see Char-lotte in her lonely and unhappy days.

“And because she knew that Dora would look at the matter in exactlythe same way as she did herself, she told Dora what she had done. Doraapproved wholeheartedly. In her confused muddle- headed mind itseemed only right that dear Lotty should not be done out of her inherit-ance by Letty’s untimely death. Lotty deserved a reward for all the patientsuffering she had borne so bravely. It would have been most unfair if allthat money should have gone to somebody nobody had ever heard of.

“She quite understood that nothing must be allowed to get out. It waslike an extra pound of butter. You couldn’t talk about it but there wasnothing wrong about having it. So Dora came to Little Paddocks—and verysoon Charlotte began to understand that she had made a terrible mistake.

It was not merely the fact that Dora Bunner, with her muddles and hermistakes and her bungling, was quite maddening to live with. Charlottecould have put up with that—because she really cared for Dora, and any-way knew from the doctor that Dora hadn’t got a very long time to live.

But Dora very soon became a real danger. Though Charlotte and Letitiahad called each other by their full names, Dora was the kind of personwho always used abbreviations. To her the sisters had always been Lettyand Lotty. And though she schooled her tongue resolutely to call herfriend Letty—the old name often slipped out. Memories of the past, too,were rather apt to come to her tongue—and Charlotte had constantly to beon the watch to check these forgetful allusions. It began to get on hernerves.

“Still, nobody was likely to pay attention to Dora’s inconsistencies. Thereal blow to Charlotte’s security came, as I say, when she was recognizedand spoken to by Rudi Scherz at the Royal Spa Hotel.

“I think that the money Rudi Scherz used to replace his earlier defalca-tions at the hotel may have come from Charlotte Blacklock. InspectorCraddock doesn’t believe—and I don’t either—that Rudi Scherz applied toher for money with any idea of blackmail in his head.”

“He hadn’t the faintest idea he knew anything to blackmail her about,”

said Inspector Craddock. “He knew that he was quite a personable youngman—and he was aware by experience that personable young men some-times can get money out of elderly ladies if they tell a hard-luck story con-vincingly enough.

“But she may have seen it differently. She may have thought that it wasa form of insidious blackmail, that perhaps he suspected something—andthat later, if there was publicity in the papers as there might be after BelleGoedler’s death, he would realize that in her he had found a gold mine.

“And she was committed to the fraud now. She’d established herself asLetitia Blacklock. With the Bank. With Mrs. Goedler. The only snag wasthis rather dubious Swiss hotel clerk, an unreliable character, and pos-sibly a blackmailer. If only he were out of the way—she’d be safe.

“Perhaps she made it all up as a kind of fantasy first. She’d been starvedof emotion and drama in her life. She pleased herself by working out thedetails. How would she go about getting rid of him?

“She made her plan. And at last she decided to act on it. She told herstory of a sham hold- up at a party to Rudi Scherz, explained that shewanted a stranger to act the part of the ‘gangster,’ and offered him a gen-erous sum for his cooperation.

“And the fact that he agreed without any suspicion is what makes mequite certain that Scherz had no idea that he had any kind of hold overher. To him she was just a rather foolish old woman, very ready to partwith money.

“She gave him the advertisement to insert, arranged for him to pay avisit to Little Paddocks to study the geography of the house, and showedhim the spot where she would meet him and let him into the house on thenight in question. Dora Bunner, of course, knew nothing about all this.

“The day came—” He paused.

Miss Marple took up the tale in her gentle voice.

“She must have spent a very miserable day. You see, it still wasn’t toolate to draw back … Dora Bunner told us that Letty was frightened thatday and she must have been frightened. Frightened of what she was goingto do, frightened of the plan going wrong—but not frightened enough todraw back.

“It had been fun, perhaps, getting the revolver out of Colonel Easter-brook’s collar drawer. Taking along eggs, or jam—slipping upstairs in theempty house. It had been fun getting the second door in the drawing roomoiled, so that it would open and shut noiselessly. Fun suggesting the mov-ing of the table outside the door so that Phillipa’s flower arrangementswould show to better advantage. It may have all seemed like a game. Butwhat was going to happen next definitely wasn’t a game any longer. Oh,yes, she was frightened … Dora Bunner was right about that.”

“All the same, she went through with it,” said Craddock. “And it all wentaccording to plan. She went out just after six to ‘shut up the ducks,’ andshe let Scherz in then and gave him the mask and cloak and gloves and thetorch. Then, at 6:30, when the clock begins to chime, she’s ready by thattable near the archway with her hand on the cigarette box. It’s all so nat-ural. Patrick, acting as host, has gone for the drinks. She, the hostess, isfetching the cigarettes. She’d judged, quite correctly, that when the clockbegins to chime, everyone will look at the clock. They did. Only one per-son, the devoted Dora, kept her eyes fixed on her friend. And she told us,in her very first statement, exactly what Miss Blacklock did. She said thatMiss Blacklock had picked up the vase of violets.

“She’d previously frayed the cord of the lamp so that the wires werenearly bare. The whole thing only took a second. The cigarette box, thevase and the little switch were all close together. She picked up the violets,spilt the water on the frayed place and switched on the lamp. Water’s agood conductor of electricity. The wires fused.”

“Just like the other afternoon at the Vicarage,” said Bunch. “That’s whatstartled you so, wasn’t it, Aunt Jane?”

“Yes, my dear. I’ve been puzzling about those lights. I’d realized thatthere were two lamps, a pair, and that one had been changed for the other—probably during the night.”

“That’s right,” said Craddock. “When Fletcher examined that lamp thenext morning it was, like all the others, perfectly in order, no frayed flexor fused wires.”

“I’d understood what Dora Bunner meant by saying it had been theshepherdess the night before,” said Miss Marple, “but I fell into the error ofthinking, as she thought, that Patrick had been responsible. The interest-ing thing about Dora Bunner was that she was quite unreliable in repeat-ing things she had heard—she always used her imagination to exaggerateor distort them, and she was usually wrong in what she thought—but shewas quite accurate about the things she saw. She saw Letitia pick up the vi-olets—”

“And she saw what she described as a flash and a crackle,” put in Crad-dock.

“And, of course, when dear Bunch spilt the water from the Christmasroses on to the lamp wire—I realized at once that only Miss Blacklock her-self could have fused the lights because only she was near that table.”

“I could kick myself,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner even prattled abouta burn on the table where someone had ‘put their cigarette down’—butnobody had even lit a cigarette … And the violets were dead because therewas no water in the vase—a slip on Letitia’s part—she ought to have filledit up again. But I suppose she thought nobody would notice and as a mat-ter of fact Miss Bunner was quite ready to believe that she herself had putno water in the vase to begin with.”

He went on:

“She was highly suggestible, of course. And Miss Blacklock took advant-age of that more than once. Bunny’s suspicions of Patrick were, I think, in-duced by her.”

“Why pick on me?” demanded Patrick in an aggrieved tone.

“It was not, I think, a serious suggestion—but it would keep Bunny dis-tracted from any suspicion that Miss Blacklock might be stage manageringthe business. Well, we know what happened next. As soon as the lightswent and everyone was exclaiming, she slipped out through the previ-ously oiled door and up behind Rudi Scherz who was flashing his torchround the room and playing his part with gusto. I don’t suppose he real-ized for a moment she was there behind him with her gardening glovespulled on and the revolver in her hand. She waits till the torch reaches thespot she must aim for—the wall near which she is supposed to be stand-ing. Then she fires rapidly twice and as he swings round startled, sheholds the revolver close to his body and fires again. She lets the revolverfall by his body, throws her gloves carelessly on the hall table, then backthrough the other door and across to where she had been standing whenthe lights went out. She nicked her ear—I don’t quite know how—”

“Nail scissors, I expect,” said Miss Marple. “Just a snip on the lobe of theear lets out a lot of blood. That was very good psychology, of course. Theactual blood running down over her white blouse made it seem certainthat she had been shot at, and that it had been a near miss.”

“It ought to have gone off quite all right,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner’sinsistence that Scherz had definitely aimed at Miss Blacklock had its uses.

Without meaning it, Dora Bunner conveyed the impression that she’d ac-tually seen her friend wounded. It might have been brought in Suicide orAccidental Death. And the case would have been closed. That it was keptopen is due to Miss Marple here.”

“Oh, no, no.” Miss Marple shook her head energetically. “Any little ef-forts on my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren’t satisfied,Mr. Craddock. It was you who wouldn’t let the case be closed.”

“I wasn’t happy about it,” said Craddock. “I knew it was all wrong some-where. But I didn’t see where it was wrong, till you showed me. And afterthat Miss Blacklock had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that thatsecond door had been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever weagreed might have happened—we’d nothing to go upon but a pretty the-ory. But that oiled door was evidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance—bycatching hold of a handle by mistake.”

“I think you were led to it, Inspector,” said Miss Marple. “But then I’mold-fashioned.”

“So the hunt was up again,” said Craddock. “But this time with a differ-ence. We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill LetitiaBlacklock.”

“And there was someone with a motive, and Miss Blacklock knew it,”

said Miss Marple. “I think she recognized Phillipa almost at once. BecauseSonia Goedler seems to have been one of the very few people who hadbeen admitted to Charlotte’s privacy. And when one is old (you wouldn’tknow this yet, Mr. Craddock) one has a much better memory for a faceyou’ve seen when you were young than you have for anyone you’ve onlymet a year or two ago. Phillipa must have been just about the same age asher mother was when Charlotte remembered her, and she was very likeher mother. The odd thing is that I think Charlotte was very pleased to re-cognize Phillipa. She became very fond of Phillipa and I think, uncon-sciously, it helped to stifle any qualms of conscience she may have had.

She told herself that when she inherited the money, she was going to lookafter Phillipa. She would treat her as a daughter. Phillipa and Harryshould live with her. She felt quite happy and beneficent about it. Butonce the Inspector began asking questions and finding out about ‘Pip andEmma’ Charlotte became very uneasy. She didn’t want to make a scape-goat of Phillipa. Her whole idea had been to make the business look like ahold-up by a young criminal and his accidental death. But now, with thediscovery of the oiled door, the whole viewpoint was changed. And, exceptfor Phillipa, there wasn’t (as far as she knew, for she had absolutely noidea of Julia’s identity) anyone with the least possible motive for wishingto kill her. She did her best to shield Phillipa’s identity. She was quick-wit-ted enough to tell you when you asked her, that Sonia was small and darkand she took the old snapshots out of the album so that you shouldn’t no-tice any resemblance at the same time as she removed snapshots of Letitiaherself.”

“And to think I suspected Mrs. Swettenham of being Sonia Goedler,” saidCraddock disgustedly.

“My poor mamma,” murmured Edmund. “A woman of blameless life—or so I have always believed.”

“But of course,” Miss Marple went on, “it was Dora Bunner who was thereal danger. Every day Dora got more forgetful and more talkative. I re-member the way Miss Blacklock looked at her the day we went to teathere. Do you know why? Dora had just called her Lotty again. It seemedto us a mere harmless slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte. Andso it went on. Poor Dora could not stop herself talking. That day we hadcoffee together in the Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora wastalking about two people, not one—and so, of course, she was. At one mo-ment she spoke of her friend as not pretty but having so much character—but almost at the same moment she described her as a pretty lightheartedgirl. She’d talk of Letty as so clever and so successful—and then say what asad life she’d had, and then there was that quotation about stern afflictionbravely borne—which really didn’t seem to fit Letitia’s life at all. Charlottemust, I think, have overheard a good deal that morning she came into thecafé. She certainly must have heard Dora mention about the lamp havingbeen changed—about its being the shepherd and not the shepherdess. Andshe realized then what a very real danger to her security poor devotedDora Bunner was.

“I’m afraid that that conversation with me in the café really sealedDora’s fate—if you’ll excuse such a melodramatic expression. But I think itwould have come to the same in the end … Because life couldn’t be safefor Charlotte while Dora Bunner was alive. She loved Dora—she didn’twant to kill Dora—but she couldn’t see any other way. And, I expect (likeNurse Ellerton that I was telling you about, Bunch) she persuaded herselfthat it was almost a kindness. Poor Bunny—not long to live anyway andperhaps a painful end. The queer thing is that she did her best to makeBunny’s last day a happy day. The birthday party—and the special cake….”

“Delicious Death,” said Phillipa with a shudder.

“Yes—yes, it was rather like that … she tried to give her friend a deli-cious death … The party, and all the things she liked to eat, and trying tostop people saying things to upset her. And then the tablets, whatever theywere, in the aspirin bottle by her own bed so that Bunny, when shecouldn’t find the new bottle of aspirin she’d just bought, would go there toget some. And it would look, as it did look, that the tablets had been meantfor Letitia. …

“And so Bunny died in her sleep, quite happily, and Charlotte felt safeagain. But she missed Dora Bunner—she missed her affection and her loy-alty, she missed being able to talk to her about the old days … She criedbitterly the day I came up with that note from Julian—and her grief wasquite genuine. She’d killed her own dear friend….”

“That’s horrible,” said Bunch. “Horrible.”

“But it’s very human,” said Julian Harmon. “One forgets how humanmurderers are.”

“I know,” said Miss Marple. “Human. And often very much to be pitied.

But very dangerous, too. Especially a weak kindly murderer like CharlotteBlacklock. Because, once a weak person gets really frightened, they getquite savage with terror and they’ve no self-control at all.”

“Murgatroyd?” said Julian.

“Yes, poor Miss Murgatroyd. Charlotte must have come up to the cottageand heard them rehearsing the murder. The window was open and shelistened. It had never occurred to her until that moment that there wasanyone else who could be a danger to her. Miss Hinchcliffe was urging herfriend to remember what she’d seen and until that moment Charlottehadn’t realized that anyone could have seen anything at all. She’d as-sumed that everybody would automatically be looking at Rudi Scherz. Shemust have held her breath outside the window and listened. Was it goingto be all right? And then, just as Miss Hinchcliffe rushed off to the stationMiss Murgatroyd got to a point which showed that she had stumbled onthe truth. She called after Miss Hinchcliffe: ‘She wasn’t there.…’

“I asked Miss Hinchcliffe, you know, if that was the way she said it … Be-cause if she’d said ‘She wasn’t there’ it wouldn’t have meant the samething.”

“Now that’s too subtle a point for me,” said Craddock.

Miss Marple turned her eager pink and white face to him.

“Just think what’s going on in Miss Murgatroyd’s mind … One does seethings, 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. Icould have drawn it for you afterwards. And once, when there was a flyingbomb in London—splinters of glass everywhere—and the shock—butwhat I remember best is a woman standing in front of me who had a bighole halfway up the leg of her stockings and the stockings didn’t match. Sowhen Miss Murgatroyd stopped thinking and just tried to remember whatshe saw, she remembered a good deal.

“She started, I think, near the mantelpiece, where the torch must havehit first—then it went along the two windows and there were people inbetween the windows and her. Mrs. Harmon with her knuckles screwedinto her eyes for instance. She went on in her mind following the torchpast Miss Bunner with her mouth open and her eyes staring—past a blankwall 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 seenthe wall where, later, there were the two bullet holes, the wall where Leti-tia Blacklock had been standing when she was shot, and at the momentwhen 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 womenMiss Hinchcliffe had told her to think about. If one of them hadn’t beenthere, it would have been the personality she’d have fastened upon. She’dhave said—in effect—‘That’s the one! She wasn’t there;’ But it was a placethat was in her mind—a place where someone should have been—but theplace wasn’t filled—there wasn’t anybody there. The place was there—butthe person wasn’t. And she couldn’t take it in all at once. ‘How extraordin-ary, Hinch,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t there’… So that could only mean LetitiaBlacklock….”

“But you knew before that, didn’t you?” said Bunch. “When the lampfused. When you wrote down those things on the paper.”

“Yes, my dear. It all came together then, you see—all the various isolatedbits—and made a coherent pattern.”

Bunch quoted softly:

“Lamp? Yes. Violets? Yes. Bottle of Aspirin. You meant that Bunny hadbeen going to buy a new bottle that day, and so she ought not to haveneeded to take Letitia’s?”

“Not unless her own bottle had been taken or hidden. It had to appearas though Letitia Blacklock was the one meant to be killed.”

“Yes, I see. And then ‘Delicious Death.’ The cake—but more than thecake. 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 findthe 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 kitchenwas quite true. ‘I didn’t want to kill anybody.’ What she wanted was agreat 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 backfor all the suffering life had inflicted on her)—everything else went to thewall. People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. Theyseem to think life owes them something. I’ve known many an invalid whohas suffered far worse and been cut off from life much more than Char-lotte Blacklock—and they’ve managed to lead happy contented lives. It’swhat in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy. But, oh dear, I’mafraid I’m straying away from what we were talking about. Where werewe?”

“Going over your list,” said Bunch. “What did you mean by ‘Making en-quiries?’ Inquiries about what?”

Miss Marple shook her head playfully at Inspector Craddock.

“You ought to have seen that, Inspector Craddock. You showed me thatletter from Letitia Blacklock to her sister. It had the word ‘enquiries’ in ittwice—each time spelt with an e. But in the note I asked Bunch to showyou, Miss Blacklock had written ‘inquiries’ with an i. People don’t often al-ter 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 whatBunny said to you in the café and of course Letitia hadn’t had any afflic-tion. Iodine. That put you on the track of goitre?”

“Yes, dear. Switzerland, you know, and Miss Blacklock giving the im-pression that her sister had died of consumption. But I remembered thenthat the greatest authorities on goitre and the most skillful surgeons oper-ating on it are Swiss. And it linked up with those really preposterouspearls that Letitia Blacklock always wore. Not really her style—but justright for concealing the scar.”

“I understand now her agitation the night the string broke,” said Crad-dock. “It seemed at the time quite disproportionate.”

“And after that, it was Lotty you wrote, not Letty as we thought,” saidBunch.

“Yes, I remembered that the sister’s name was Charlotte, and that DoraBunner had called Miss Blacklock Lotty once or twice—and that each timeshe 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 Ididn’t really see the application then. How Mrs. Wotherspoon drew Mrs.

Bartlett’s Old Age Pension as well as her own—though Mrs. Bartlett hadbeen dead for years—simply because one old woman is so like another oldwoman—yes, it all made a pattern and I felt so worked up I went out tocool 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. Itwas quiet and remorseless.

“I knew then something had got to be done. Quickly! But there stillwasn’t any proof. I thought out a possible plan and I talked to SergeantFletcher.”

“And I have had Fletcher on the carpet for it!” said Craddock. “He’d nobusiness 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 wentup to Little Paddocks and I got hold of Mitzi.”

Julia drew a deep breath and said, “I can’t imagine how you ever got herto do it.”

“I worked on her, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “She thinks far too muchabout herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done somethingfor others. I flattered her up, of course, and said I was sure if she’d been inher own country she’d have been in the Resistance movement, and shesaid, ‘Yes, indeed.’ And I said I could see she had got just the temperamentfor that sort of work. She was brave, didn’t mind taking risks, and couldact a part. I told her stories of deeds done by girls in the Resistance move-ments, some of them true, and some of them, I’m afraid, invented. She gottremendously worked up!”

“Marvellous,” said Patrick.

“And then I got her to agree to do her part. I rehearsed her till she wasword perfect. Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not comedown until Inspector Craddock came. The worst of these excitable peopleis that they’re apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing beforethe 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 ideawas that Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail hadbeen in her mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was will-ing to come out with the truth. She’d seen, through the keyhole of the din-ing 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 wasthat Charlotte Blacklock might have realized that, as the key was in thekeyhole, Mitzi couldn’t possibly have seen anything at all. But I banked onthe fact that you don’t think of things like that when you’ve just had a badshock. 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 scepti-cism, and I made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteriesat last, upon someone who had not been previously suspected. I accusedEdmund—”

“And very nicely I played my part,” said Edmund. “Hot denial. All ac-cording to plan. What wasn’t according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was youthrowing in your little chirp and coming out into the open as ‘Pip.’ Neitherthe Inspector nor I had any idea you were Pip. I was going to be Pip! Itthrew us off our stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterlycomeback and made some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wantinga rich wife which will probably stick in your subconscious and make irre-parable 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, theonly person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi. The suspicions ofthe police were elsewhere. They had treated Mitzi for the moment as aliar. But if Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seri-ously. So Mitzi had got to be silenced.”

“Mitzi went straight out of the room and back to the kitchen—just like Ihad told her,” said Miss Marple. “Miss Blacklock came out after her almostimmediately. Mitzi was apparently alone in the kitchen. Sergeant Fletcherwas behind the scullery door. And I was in the broom cupboard in the kit-chen. 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 hertongue—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 suspectedat once.”

“Oh, my dear, she was past reasoning. She was just a snapping terrifiedcornered rat. Think what had happened that day. The scene between MissHinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Miss Hinchcliffe driving off to the sta-tion. As soon as she comes back Miss Murgatroyd will explain that LetitiaBlacklock wasn’t in the room that night. There’s just a few minutes inwhich to make sure Miss Murgatroyd can’t tell anything. No time to makea plan or set a stage. Just crude murder. She greets the poor woman andstrangles her. Then a quick rush home, to change, to be sitting by the firewhen the others come in, as though she’d never been out.

“And then came the revelation of Julia’s identity. She breaks her pearlsand is terrified they may notice her scar. Later, the Inspector telephonesthat he’s bringing everyone there. No time to think, to rest. Up to her neckin murder now, no mercy killing—or undesirable young man to be put outof the way. Crude plain murder. Is she safe? Yes, so far. And then comesMitzi—yet another danger. Kill Mitzi, stop her tongue! She’s beside herselfwith 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 mimicDora 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, speak-ing with determined lightness, to ease the strain, Julia said:

“It’s made a wonderful difference to Mitzi. She told me yesterday thatshe was taking a post near Southampton. And she said (Julia produced avery 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 knowme very well. I assist the police! Without me the police never would theyhave made the arrest of a very dangerous criminal. I risked my life be-cause 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, Isay.”’”

Julia stopped.

“And a great deal more,” she added.

“I think,” said Edmund thoughtfully, “that soon Mitzi will have assistedthe police in not one but hundreds of cases!”

“She’s softened towards me,” said Phillipa. “She actually presented mewith the recipe for Delicious Death as a kind of wedding present. She ad-ded that I was on no account to divulge the secret to Julia, because Juliahad ruined her omelette pan.”

“Mrs. Lucas,” said Edmund, “is all over Phillipa now that since BelleGoedler’s death Phillipa and Julia have inherited the Goedler millions. Shesent us some silver asparagus tongs as a wedding present. I shall haveenormous pleasure in not asking her to the wedding!”

“And so they lived happily ever after,” said Patrick. “Edmund and Phil-lipa—and Julia and Patrick?” he added tentatively.

“Not with me, you won’t live happily ever after,” said Julia. “The re-marks that Inspector Craddock improvised to address to Edmund applyfar more aptly to you. You are the sort of soft young man who would like arich wife. Nothing doing!”

“There’s gratitude for you,” said Patrick. “After all I did for that girl.”

“Nearly landed me in prison on a murder charge—that’s what your for-getfulness nearly did for me,” said Julia. “I shall never forget that eveningwhen your sister’s letter came. I really thought I was for it. I couldn’t seeany way out.”

“As it is,” she added musingly, “I think I shall go on the stage.”

“What? You, too?” groaned Patrick.

“Yes. I might go to Perth. See if I can get your Julia’s place in the Repthere. Then, when I’ve learnt my job, I shall go into theatre management—and put on Edmund’s plays, perhaps.”

“I thought you wrote novels,” said Julian Harmon.

“Well, so did I,” said Edmund. “I began writing a novel. Rather good itwas. Pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smeltlike, and the grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy and a vi-cious young tart who dribbled down her chin—and they all talked inter-minably about the state of the world and wondered what they were alivefor. And suddenly I began to wonder too … And then a rather comic ideaoccurred to me … and I jotted it down—and then I worked up rather agood little scene … All very obvious stuff. But somehow, I got interested …And before I knew what I was doing I’d finished a roaring farce in threeacts.”

“What’s it called?” asked Patrick. “What the Butler Saw?”

“Well, it easily might be … As a matter of I’ve called it Elephants Do For-get. What’s more, it’s been accepted and it’s going to be produced!”

“Elephants Do Forget,” murmured Bunch. “I thought they didn’t?”

The Rev. Julian Harmon gave a guilty start.

“My goodness. I’ve been so interested. My sermon!”

“Detective stories again,” said Bunch. “Real-life ones this time.”

“You might preach on Thou Shall Do No Murder,” suggested Patrick.

“No,” said Julian Harmon quietly. “I shan’t take that as my text.”

“No,” said Bunch. “You’re quite right, Julian. I know a much nicer text, ahappy text.” She quoted in a fresh voice, “For lo the Spring is here and theVoice of the Turtle is heard in the Land—I haven’t got it quite right—butyou know the one I mean. Though why a turtle I can’t think. I shouldn’tthink turtles have got nice voices at all.”

“The word turtle,” explained the Rev. Julian Harmon, “is not very hap-pily translated. It doesn’t mean a reptile but the turtle dove. The Hebrewword in the original is—”

Bunch interrupted him by giving him a hug and saying:

“I know one thing—You think that the Ahasuerus of the Bible is Artaxer-xes the Second, but between you and me it was Artaxerxes the Third.”

As always, Julian Harmon wondered why his wife should think thatstory so particularly funny.

“Tiglath Pileser wants to go and help you,” said Bunch. “He ought to be avery proud cat. He showed us how the lights fused.”