“Where did you get it?” asked Miss Marple.
“Well, it was a bit of luck, really. Because, of course, I didn’t know she was going to be murdered then. It was before dinner last night. Ruby caught her nail in Josie’s shawl and it tore it. Mums cut it off for her and gave it to me and said put it in the wastepaper basket, and I meant to, but I put it in my pocket instead, and this morning I remembered and looked to see if it was still there and it was, so now I’ve got it as a souvenir.”
“Disgusting,” said Mrs. Bantry.
Peter said politely: “Oh, do you think so?”
“Got any other souvenirs?” asked Sir Henry.
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve got something that might be.”
“Explain yourself, young man.”
Peter looked at him thoughtfully. Then he pulled out an envelope. From the inside of it he extracted a piece of browny tapey substance.
“It’s a bit of that chap George Bartlett’s shoe-lace,” he explained. “I saw his shoes outside the door this morning and I bagged a bit just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case he should be the murderer, of course. He was the last person to see her and that’s always frightfully suspicious, you know. Is it nearly dinner time, do you think? I’m frightfully hungry. It always seems such a long time between tea and dinner. Hallo, there’s Uncle Hugo. I didn’t know Mums had asked him to come down. I suppose she sent for him. She always does if she’s in a jam. Here’s Josie coming. Hi, Josie!”
Josephine Turner, coming along the terrace, stopped and looked rather startled to see Mrs. Bantry and Miss Marple.
Mrs. Bantry said pleasantly:
“How d’you do, Miss Turner. We’ve come to do a bit of sleuthing!”
Josie cast a guilty glance round. She said, lowering her voice:
“It’s awful. Nobody knows yet. I mean, it isn’t in the papers yet. I suppose everyone will be asking me questions and it’s so awkward. I don’t know what I ought to say.”
Her glance went rather wistfully towards Miss Marple, who said: “Yes, it will be a very difficult situation for you, I’m afraid.”
Josie warmed to this sympathy.
“You see, Mr. Prestcott said to me: ‘Don’t talk about it.’ And that’s all very well, but everyone is sure to ask me, and you can’t offend people, can you? Mr. Prestcott said he hoped I’d feel able to carry on as usual—and he wasn’t very nice about it, so of course I want to do my best. And I really don’t see why it should all be blamed on me.”
Sir Henry said:
“Do you mind me asking you a frank question, Miss Turner?”
“Oh, do ask me anything you like,” said Josie, a little insincerely.
“Has there been any unpleasantness between you and Mrs. Jefferson and Mr. Gaskell over all this?”
“Over the murder, do you mean?”
“No, I don’t mean the murder.”
Josie stood twisting her fingers together. She said rather sullenly:
“Well, there has and there hasn’t, if you know what I mean. Neither of them have said anything. But I think they blamed it on me—Mr. Jefferson taking such a fancy to Ruby, I mean. It wasn’t my fault, though, was it? These things happen, and I never dreamt of such a thing happening beforehand, not for a moment. I—I was quite dumbfounded.”
Her words rang out with what seemed undeniable sincerity.
Sir Henry said kindly:
“I’m quite sure you were. But once it had happened?”
Josie’s chin went up.
“Well, it was a piece of luck, wasn’t it? Everyone’s got the right to have a piece of luck sometimes.”
She looked from one to the other of them in a slightly defiant questioning manner and then went on across the terrace and into the hotel.
Peter said judicially:
“I don’t think she did it.”
Miss Marple murmured:
“It’s interesting, that piece of fingernail. It had been worrying me, you know—how to account for her nails.”
“Nails?” asked Sir Henry.
“The dead girl’s nails,” explained Mrs. Bantry. “They were quite short, and now that Jane says so, of course it was a little unlikely. A girl like that usually has absolute talons.”
Miss Marple said:
“But of course if she tore one off, then she might clip the others close, so as to match. Did they find nail parings in her room, I wonder?”
Sir Henry looked at her curiously. He said:
“I’ll ask Superintendent Harper when he gets back.”
“Back from where?” asked Mrs. Bantry. “He hasn’t gone over to Gossington, has he?”
Sir Henry said gravely:
“No. There’s been another tragedy. Blazing car in a quarry—”
Miss Marple caught her breath.
“Was there someone in the car?”
“I’m afraid so—yes.”
Miss Marple said thoughtfully:
“I expect that will be the Girl Guide who’s missing—Patience—no, Pamela Reeves.”
Sir Henry stared at her.
“Now why on earth do you think that, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple got rather pink.
“Well, it was given out on the wireless that she was missing from her home—since last night. And her home was Daneleigh Vale; that’s not very far from here. And she was last seen at the Girl-Guide Rally up on Danebury Downs. That’s very close indeed. In fact, she’d have to pass through Danemouth to get home. So it does rather fit in, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks as though she might have seen—or perhaps heard—something that no one was supposed to see and hear. If so, of course, she’d be a source of danger to the murderer and she’d have to be—removed. Two things like that must be connected, don’t you think?”
Sir Henry said, his voice dropping a little:
“You think—a second murder?”
“Why not?” Her quiet placid gaze met his. “When anyone has committed one murder, they don’t shrink from another, do they? Nor even from a third.”
“A third? You don’t think there will be a third murder?”
“I think it’s just possible … Yes, I think it’s highly possible.”
“Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry, “you frighten me. Do you know who is going to be murdered?”
Miss Marple said: “I’ve a very good idea.”
Ten
I
Superintendent Harper stood looking at the charred and twisted heap of metal. A burnt-up car was always a revolting object, even without the additional gruesome burden of a charred and blackened corpse.
Venn’s Quarry was a remote spot, far from any human habitation. Though actually only two miles as the crow flies from Danemouth, the approach to it was by one of those narrow, twisted, rutted roads, little more than a cart track, which led nowhere except to the quarry itself. It was a long time now since the quarry had been worked, and the only people who came along the lane were the casual visitors in search of blackberries. As a spot to dispose of a car it was ideal. The car need not have been found for weeks but for the accident of the glow in the sky having been seen by Albert Biggs, a labourer, on his way to work.
Albert Biggs was still on the scene, though all he had to tell had been heard some time ago, but he continued to repeat the thrilling story with such embellishments as occurred to him.
“Why, dang my eyes, I said, whatever be that? Proper glow it was, up in the sky. Might be a bonfire, I says, but who’d be having bonfire over to Venn’s Quarry? No, I says, ’tis some mighty big fire, to be sure. But whatever would it be, I says? There’s no house or farm to that direction. ’Tis over by Venn’s, I says, that’s where it is, to be sure. Didn’t rightly know what I ought to do about it, but seeing as Constable Gregg comes along just then on his bicycle, I tells him about it. ’Twas all died down by then, but I tells him just where ’twere. ’Tis over that direction, I says. Big glare in the sky, I says. Mayhap as it’s a rick, I says.
One of them tramps, as likely as not, set alight of it. But I did never think as how it might be a car—far less as someone was being burnt up alive in it. ’Tis a terrible tragedy, to be sure.”
The Glenshire police had been busy. Cameras had clicked and the position of the charred body had been carefully noted before the police surgeon had started his own investigation.
The latter came over now to Harper, dusting black ash off his hands, his lips set grimly together.
“A pretty thorough job,” he said. “Part of one foot and shoe are about all that has escaped. Personally I myself couldn’t say if the body was a man’s or a woman’s at the moment, though we’ll get some indication from the bones, I expect. But the shoe is one of the black strapped affairs—the kind schoolgirls wear.”
“There’s a schoolgirl missing from the next county,” said Harper; “quite close to here. Girl of sixteen or so.”
“Then it’s probably her,” said the doctor. “Poor kid.”
Harper said uneasily: “She wasn’t alive when—?”
“No, no, I don’t think so. No signs of her having tried to get out. Body was just slumped down on the seat—with the foot sticking out. She was dead when she was put there, I should say. Then the car was set fire to in order to try and get rid of the evidence.”
He paused, and asked:
“Want me any longer?”
“I don’t think so, thank you.”
“Right. I’ll be off.”
He strode away to his car. Harper went over to where one of his sergeants, a man who specialized in car cases, was busy.
The latter looked up.
“Quite a clear case, sir. Petrol poured over the car and the whole thing deliberately set light to. There are three empty cans in the hedge over there.”
A little farther away another man was carefully arranging small objects picked out of the wreckage. There was a scorched black leather shoe and with it some scraps of scorched and blackened material. As Harper approached, his subordinate looked up and exclaimed:
“Look at this, sir. This seems to clinch it.”
Harper took the small object in his hand. He said:
“Button from a Girl Guide’s uniform?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes,” said Harper, “that does seem to settle it.”
A decent, kindly man, he felt slightly sick. First Ruby Keene and now this child, Pamela Reeves.
He said to himself, as he had said before:
“What’s come to Glenshire?”
His next move was first to ring up his own Chief Constable, and afterwards to get in touch with Colonel Melchett. The disappearance of Pamela Reeves had taken place in Radfordshire though her body had been found in Glenshire.
The next task set him was not a pleasant one. He had to break the news to Pamela Reeves’s father and mother….
II
Superintendent Harper looked up consideringly at the façade of Braeside as he rang the front door bell.
Neat little villa, nice garden of about an acre and a half. The sort of place that had been built fairly freely all over the countryside in the last twenty years. Retired Army men, retired Civil Servants—that type. Nice decent folk; the worst you could say of them was that they might be a bit dull. Spent as much money as they could afford on their children’s education. Not the kind of people you associated with tragedy. And now tragedy had come to them. He sighed.
He was shown at once into a lounge where a stiff man with a grey moustache and a woman whose eyes were red with weeping both sprang up. Mrs. Reeves cried out eagerly:
“You have some news of Pamela?”
Then she shrank back, as though the Superintendent’s commiserating glance had been a blow.
Harper said:
“I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for bad news.”
“Pamela—” faltered the woman.
Major Reeves said sharply:
“Something’s happened—to the child?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you mean she’s dead?”
Mrs. Reeves burst out:
“Oh no, no,” and broke into a storm of weeping. Major Reeves put his arm round his wife and drew her to him. His lips trembled but he looked inquiringly at Harper, who bent his head.
“An accident?”
“Not exactly, Major Reeves. She was found in a burnt-out car which had been abandoned in a quarry.”
“In a car? In a quarry?”
His astonishment was evident.
Mrs. Reeves broke down altogether and sank down on the sofa, sobbing violently.
Superintendent Harper said:
“If you’d like me to wait a few minutes?”
Major Reeves said sharply:
“What does this mean? Foul play?”
“That’s what it looks like, sir. That’s why I’d like to ask you some questions if it isn’t too trying for you.”
“No, no, you’re quite right. No time must be lost if what you suggest is true. But I can’t believe it. Who would want to harm a child like Pamela?”
Harper said stolidly:
“You’ve already reported to your local police the circumstances of your daughter’s disappearance. She left here to attend a Guides rally and you expected her home for supper. That is right?”
“Yes.”
“She was to return by bus?”
“Yes.”
“I understand that, according to the story of her fellow Guides, when the rally was over Pamela said she was going into Danemouth to Woolworth’s, and would catch a later bus home. That strikes you as quite a normal proceeding?”
“Oh yes, Pamela was very fond of going to Woolworth’s. She often went into Danemouth to shop. The bus goes from the main road, only about a quarter of a mile from here.”
“And she had no other plans, so far as you know?”
“None.”
“She was not meeting anybody in Danemouth?”
“No, I’m sure she wasn’t. She would have mentioned it if so. We expected her back for supper. That’s why, when it got so late and she hadn’t turned up, we rang up the police. It wasn’t like her not to come home.”
“Your daughter had no undesirable friends—that is, friends that you didn’t approve of?”
“No, there was never any trouble of that kind.”
Mrs. Reeves said tearfully:
“Pam was just a child. She was very young for her age. She liked games and all that. She wasn’t precocious in any way.”
“Do you know a Mr. George Bartlett who is staying at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth?”
Major Reeves stared.
“Never heard of him.”
“You don’t think your daughter knew him?”
“I’m quite sure she didn’t.”
He added sharply: “How does he come into it?”
“He’s the owner of the Minoan 14 car in which your daughter’s body was found.”
Mrs. Reeves cried: “But then he must—”
Harper said quickly:
“He reported his car missing early today. It was in the courtyard of the Majestic Hotel at lunch time yesterday. Anybody might have taken the car.”
“But didn’t someone see who took it?”
The Superintendent shook his head.
“Dozens of cars going in and out all day. And a Minoan 14 is one of the commonest makes.”
Mrs. Reeves cried:
“But aren’t you doing something? Aren’t you trying to find the—the devil who did this? My little girl—oh, my little girl! She wasn’t burnt alive, was she? Oh, Pam, Pam …!”
“She didn’t suffer, Mrs. Reeves. I assure you she was already dead when the car was set alight.”
Reeves asked stiffly:
“How was she killed?”
Harper gave him a significant glance.
“We don’t know. The fire had destroyed all evidence of that kind.”
He turned to the distraught woman on the sofa.
�
�Believe me, Mrs. Reeves, we’re doing everything we can. It’s a matter of checking up. Sooner or later we shall find someone who saw your daughter in Danemouth yesterday, and saw whom she was with. It all takes time, you know. We shall have dozens, hundreds of reports coming in about a Girl Guide who was seen here, there, and everywhere. It’s a matter of selection and of patience—but we shall find out the truth in the end, never you fear.”
Mrs. Reeves asked:
“Where—where is she? Can I go to her?”
Again Superintendent Harper caught the husband’s eye. He said:
“The medical officer is attending to all that. I’d suggest that your husband comes with me now and attends to all the formalities. In the meantime, try and recollect anything Pamela may have said—something, perhaps, that you didn’t pay attention to at the time but which might throw some light upon things. You know what I mean—just some chance word or phrase. That’s the best way you can help us.”
As the two men went towards the door, Reeves said, pointing to a photograph:
“There she is.”
Harper looked at it attentively. It was a hockey group. Reeves pointed out Pamela in the centre of the team.
“A nice kid,” Harper thought, as he looked at the earnest face of the pigtailed girl.
His mouth set in a grim line as he thought of the charred body in the car.
He vowed to himself that the murder of Pamela Reeves should not remain one of Glenshire’s unsolved mysteries.
Ruby Keene, so he admitted privately, might have asked for what was coming to her, but Pamela Reeves was quite another story. A nice kid, if he ever saw one. He’d not rest until he’d hunted down the man or woman who’d killed her.
Eleven
A day or two later Colonel Melchett and Superintendent Harper looked at each other across the former’s big desk. Harper had come over to Much Benham for a consultation.
Melchett said gloomily:
“Well, we know where we are—or rather where we aren’t!”
“Where we aren’t expresses it better, sir.”
“We’ve got two deaths to take into account,” said Melchett. “Two murders. Ruby Keene and the child Pamela Reeves. Not much to identify her by, poor kid, but enough. That shoe that escaped burning has been identified positively as hers by her father, and there’s this button from her Girl Guide uniform. A fiendish business, Superintendent.”
The Body in the Library Page 10