“Terrible,” she said, “terrible. Such a thing has never happened at Bertram’s. I mean, we’re not the sort of hotel where murders happen.”
“No, no, indeed,” said Canon Pennyfather quickly. “I’m sure you’re not. I mean it would never have occurred to me that anything like that could happen here.”
“Of course it wasn’t inside the hotel,” said Miss Gorringe, cheering up a little as this aspect of the affair struck her. “It was outside in the street.”
“So really nothing to do with you at all,” said the Canon, helpfully.
That apparently was not quite the right thing to say.
“But it was connected with Bertram’s. We had to have the police here questioning people, since it was our commissionaire who was shot.”
“So that’s a new man you have outside. D’you know, I thought somehow things looked a little strange.”
“Yes, I don’t know that he’s very satisfactory. I mean, not quite the style we’re used to here. But of course we had to get someone quickly.”
“I remember all about it now,” said Canon Pennyfather, assembling some rather dim memories of what he had read in the paper a week ago. “But I thought it was a girl who was shot.”
“You mean Lady Sedgwick’s daughter? I expect you remember seeing her here with her guardian, Colonel Luscombe. Apparently she was attacked by someone in the fog. I expect they wanted to snatch her bag. Anyway they fired a shot at her and then Gorman, who of course had been a soldier and was a man with a lot of presence of mind, rushed down, got in front of her and got shot himself, poor fellow.”
“Very sad, very sad,” said the Canon, shaking his head.
“It makes everything terribly difficult,” complained Miss Gorringe. “I mean, the police constantly in and out. I suppose that’s to be expected, but we don’t like it here, though I must say Chief-Inspector Davy and Sergeant Wadell are very respectable-looking. Plain clothes, and very good style, not the sort with boots and mackintoshes like one sees on films. Almost like one of us.”
“Er—yes,” said Canon Pennyfather.
“Did you have to go to hospital?” inquired Miss Gorringe.
“No,” said the Canon, “some very nice people, really good Samaritans—a market gardener, I believe—picked me up and his wife nursed me back to health. I’m most grateful, most grateful. It is refreshing to find that there is still human kindness in the world. Don’t you think so?”
Miss Gorringe said she thought it was very refreshing. “After all one reads about the increase in crime,” she added, “all those dreadful young men and girls holding up banks and robbing trains and ambushing people.” She looked up and said, “There’s Chief-Inspector Davy coming down the stairs now. I think he wants to speak to you.”
“I don’t know why he should want to speak to me,” said Canon Pennyfather, puzzled. “He’s already been to see me, you know,” he said, “at Chadminster. He was very disappointed, I think, that I couldn’t tell him anything useful.”
“You couldn’t?”
The Canon shook his head sorrowfully.
“I couldn’t remember. The accident took place somewhere near a place called Bedhampton and really I don’t understand what I can have been doing there. The Chief-Inspector kept asking me why I was there and I couldn’t tell him. Very odd, isn’t it? He seemed to think I’d been driving a car from somewhere near a railway station to a vicarage.”
“That sounds very possible,” said Miss Gorringe.
“It doesn’t seem possible at all,” said Canon Pennyfather. “I mean, why should I be driving about in a part of the world that I don’t really know?”
Chief-Inspector Davy had come up to them.
“So here you are, Canon Pennyfather,” he said. “Feeling quite yourself again?”
“Oh, I feel quite well now,” said the Canon, “but rather inclined to have headaches still. And I’ve been told not to do too much. But I still don’t seem to remember what I ought to remember and the doctor says it may never come back.”
“Oh well,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “we mustn’t give up hope.” He led the Canon away from the desk. “There’s a little experiment I want you to try,” he said. “You don’t mind helping me, do you?”
III
When Chief-Inspector Davy opened the door of No. 18, Miss Marple was still sitting in the armchair by the window.
“A good many people in the street today,” she observed. “More than usual.”
“Oh well—this is a way through to Berkeley Square and Shepherd Market.”
“I didn’t mean only passersby. Men doing things—road repairs, a telephone repair van—meat trolley—a couple of private cars—”
“And what—may I ask—do you deduce from that?”
“I didn’t say that I deduced anything.”
Father gave her a look. Then he said:
“I want you to help me.”
“Of course. That is why I am here. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to do exactly what you did on the night of November 19th. You were asleep—you woke up—possibly awakened by some unusual noise. You switched on the light, looked at the time, got out of bed, opened the door and looked out. Can you repeat those actions?”
“Certainly,” said Miss Marple. She got up and went across to the bed.
“Just a moment.”
Chief-Inspector Davy went and tapped on the connecting walls of the next room.
“You’ll have to do that louder,” said Miss Marple. “This place is very well built.”
The Chief-Inspector redoubled the force of his knuckles.
“I told Canon Pennyfather to count ten,” he said, looking at his watch. “Now then, off you go.”
Miss Marple touched the electric lamp, looked at an imaginary clock, got up, walked to the door, opened it and looked out. To her right, just leaving his room, walking to the top of the stairs, was Canon Pennyfather. He arrived at the top of the stairs and started down them. Miss Marple gave a slight catch of her breath. She turned back.
“Well?” said Chief-Inspector Davy.
“The man I saw that night can’t have been Canon Pennyfather,” said Miss Marple. “Not if that’s Canon Pennyfather now.”
“I thought you said—”
“I know. He looked like Canon Pennyfather. His hair and his clothes and everything. But he didn’t walk the same way. I think—I think he must have been a younger man. I’m sorry, very sorry, to have misled you, but it wasn’t Canon Pennyfather that I saw that night. I’m quite sure of it.”
“You really are quite sure this time, Miss Marple?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’m sorry,” she added again, “to have misled you.”
“You were very nearly right. Canon Pennyfather did come back to the hotel that night. Nobody saw him come in—but that wasn’t remarkable. He came in after midnight. He came up the stairs, he opened the door of his room next door and he went in. What he saw or what happened next we don’t know, because he can’t or won’t tell us. If there was only some way we could jog his memory….”
“There’s that German word of course,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully.
“What German word?”
“Dear me, I’ve forgotten it now, but—”
There was a knock at the door.
“May I come in?” said Canon Pennyfather. He entered. “Was it satisfactory?”
“Most satisfactory,” said Father. “I was just telling Miss Marple—you know Miss Marple?”
“Oh yes,” said Canon Pennyfather, really slightly uncertain as to whether he did or not.
“I was just telling Miss Marple how we have traced your movements. You came back to the hotel that night after midnight. You came upstairs and you opened the door of your room and went in—” He paused.
Miss Marple gave an exclamation.
“I remember now,” she said, “what the German word is. Doppelgänger!”
Canon Pennyfather uttered an e
xclamation. “But of course,” he said, “of course! How could I have forgotten? You’re quite right, you know. After that film, The Walls of Jericho, I came back here and I came upstairs and I opened my room and I saw—extraordinary, I distinctly saw myself sitting in a chair facing me. As you say, dear lady, a doppelgänger. How very remarkable! And then—let me see—” He raised his eyes, trying to think.
“And then,” said Father, “startled out of their lives to see you, when they thought you were safely in Lucerne, somebody hit you on the head.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Canon Pennyfather had been sent on his way in a taxi to the British Museum. Miss Marple had been ensconced in the lounge by the Chief-Inspector. Would she mind waiting for him there for about ten minutes? Miss Marple had not minded. She welcomed the opportunity to sit and look around her and think.
Bertram’s Hotel. So many memories…The past fused itself with the present. A French phrase came back to her. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. She reversed the wording. Plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change. Both true, she thought.
She felt sad—for Bertram’s Hotel and for herself. She wondered what Chief-Inspector Davy wanted of her next. She sensed in him the excitement of purpose. He was a man whose plans were at last coming to fruition. It was Chief-Inspector Davy’s D-Day.
The life of Bertram’s went on as usual. No, Miss Marple decided, not as usual. There was a difference, though she could not have defined where the difference lay. An underlying uneasiness, perhaps?
“All set?” he inquired genially.
“Where are you taking me now?”
“We’re going to pay a call on Lady Sedgwick.”
“Is she staying here?”
“Yes. With her daughter.”
Miss Marple rose to her feet. She cast a glance round her and murmured: “Poor Bertram’s.”
“What do you mean—poor Bertram’s?”
“I think you know quite well what I mean.”
“Well—looking at it from your point of view, perhaps I do.”
“It is always sad when a work of art has to be destroyed.”
“You call this place a work of art?”
“Certainly I do. So do you.”
“I see what you mean,” admitted Father.
“It is like when you get ground elder really badly in a border. There’s nothing else you can about it—except dig the whole thing up.”
“I don’t know much about gardens. But change the metaphor to dry rot and I’d agree.”
They went up in the lift and along a passage to where Lady Sedgwick and her daughter had a corner suite.
Chief-Inspector Davy knocked on the door, a voice said, “Come in,” and he entered with Miss Marple behind him.
Bess Sedgwick was sitting in a high-backed chair near the window. She had a book on her knee which she was not reading.
“So it’s you again, Chief-Inspector.” Her eyes went past him towards Miss Marple, and she looked slightly surprised.
“This is Miss Marple,” explained Chief-Inspector Davy. “Miss Marple—Lady Sedgwick.”
“I’ve met you before,” said Bess Sedgwick. “You were with Selina Hazy the other day, weren’t you? Do sit down,” she added. Then she turned towards Chief-Inspector Davy again. “Have you any news of the man who shot at Elvira?”
“Not actually what you’d call news.”
“I doubt if you ever will have. In a fog like that, predatory creatures come out and prowl around looking for women walking alone.”
“True up to a point,” said Father. “How is your daughter?”
“Oh, Elvira is quite all right again.”
“You’ve got her here with you?”
“Yes. I rang up Colonel Luscombe—her guardian. He was delighted that I was willing to take charge.” She gave a sudden laugh. “Dear old boy. He’s always been urging a mother-and-daughter reunion act!”
“He may be right at that,” said Father.
“Oh no, he isn’t. Just at the moment, yes, I think it is the best thing.” She turned her head to look out of the window and spoke in a changed voice. “I hear you’ve arrested a friend of mine—Ladislaus Malinowski. On what charge?”
“Not arrested,” Chief-Inspector Davy corrected her. “He’s just assisting us with our inquiries.”
“I’ve sent my solicitor to look after him.”
“Very wise,” said Father approvingly. “Anyone who’s having a little difficulty with the police is very wise to have a solicitor. Otherwise they may so easily say the wrong thing.”
“Even if completely innocent?”
“Possibly it’s even more necessary in that case,” said Father.
“You’re quite a cynic, aren’t you? What are you questioning him about, may I ask? Or mayn’t I?”
“For one thing we’d like to know just exactly what his movements were on the night when Michael Gorman died.”
Bess Sedgwick sat up sharply in her chair.
“Have you got some ridiculous idea that Ladislaus fired those shots at Elvira? They didn’t even know each other.”
“He could have done it. His car was just round the corner.”
“Rubbish,” said Lady Sedgwick robustly.
“How much did that shooting business the other night upset you, Lady Sedgwick?”
She looked faintly surprised.
“Naturally I was upset when my daughter had a narrow escape of her life. What do you expect?”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean how much did the death of Michael Gorman upset you?”
“I was very sorry about it. He was a brave man.”
“Is that all?”
“What more would you expect me to say?”
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Of course. He worked here.”
“You knew him a little better than that, though, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come, Lady Sedgwick. He was your husband, wasn’t he?”
She did not answer for a moment or two, though she displayed no signs of agitation or surprise.
“You know a good deal, don’t you, Chief-Inspector?” She sighed and sat back in her chair. “I hadn’t seen him for—let me see—a great many years. Twenty—more than twenty. And then I looked out of the window one day, and suddenly recognized Micky.”
“And he recognized you?”
“Quite surprising that we did recognize each other,” said Bess Sedgwick. “We were only together for about a week. Then my family caught up with us, paid Micky off, and took me home in disgrace.”
She sighed.
“I was very young when I ran away with him. I knew very little. Just a fool of a girl with a head full of romantic notions. He was a hero to me, mainly because of the way he rode a horse. He didn’t know what fear was. And he was handsome and gay with an Irishman’s tongue! I suppose really I ran away with him! I doubt if he’d have thought of it himself! But I was wild and headstrong and madly in love!” She shook her head. “It didn’t last long…The first twenty-four hours were enough to disillusion me. He drank and he was coarse and brutal. When my family turned up and took me back with them, I was thankful. I never wanted to see him or hear of him again.”
“Did your family know that you were married to him?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“I didn’t think I was married.”
“How did that come about?”
“We were married in Ballygowlan, but when my people turned up, Micky came to me and told me the marriage had been a fake. He and his friends had cooked it up between them, he said. By that time it seemed to me quite a natural thing for him to have done. Whether he wanted the money that was being offered him, or whether he was afraid he’d committed a breach of the law by marrying me when I wasn’t of age, I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t doubt for a moment that what he said was true—not then.”
“And later?”
She
seemed lost in her thoughts. “It wasn’t until—oh, quite a number of years afterwards, when I knew a little more of life, and of legal matters, that it suddenly occurred to me that probably I was married to Micky Gorman after all!”
“In actual fact, then, when you married Lord Coniston, you committed bigamy.”
“And when I married Johnnie Sedgwick, and again when I married my American husband, Ridgway Becker.” She looked at Chief-Inspector Davy and laughed with what seemed like genuine amusement.
“So much bigamy,” she said. “It really does seem very ridiculous.”
“Did you never think of getting a divorce?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It all seemed like a silly dream. Why rake it up? I told Johnnie, of course.” Her voice softened and mellowed as she said his name.
“And what did he say?”
“He didn’t care. Neither Johnnie nor I were ever very law-abiding.”
“Bigamy carries certain penalties, Lady Sedgwick.”
She looked at him and laughed.
“Who was ever going to worry about something that had happened in Ireland years ago? The whole thing was over and done with. Micky had taken his money and gone off. Oh, don’t you understand? It seemed just a silly little incident. An incident I wanted to forget. I put it aside with the things—the very many things—that don’t matter in life.”
“And then,” said Father, in a tranquil voice, “one day in November, Michael Gorman turned up again and blackmailed you?”
“Nonsense! Who said he blackmailed me?”
Slowly Father’s eyes went round to the old lady sitting quietly, very upright in her chair.
“You.” Bess Sedgwick stared at Miss Marple. “What can you know about it?”
Her voice was more curious than accusing.
“The armchairs in this hotel have very high backs,” said Miss Marple. “Very comfortable they are. I was sitting in one in front of the fire in the writing room. Just resting before I went out one morning. You came in to write a letter. I suppose you didn’t realize there was anyone else in the room. And so—I heard your conversation with this man Gorman.”
“You listened?”
“Naturally,” said Miss Marple. “Why not? It was a public room. When you threw up the window and called to the man outside, I had no idea that it was going to be a private conversation.”
At Bertram's Hotel Page 19