Midwinter Murder

by Agatha Christie

  Molly stared at him. ‘Giles, have you gone out of your mind? What on earth are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that Christopher Wren is an old friend, that you’re on rather closer terms with him than you’d like me to know.’

  ‘Giles, you must be crazy!’

  ‘I suppose you’ll stick to it that you never saw him until he walked in here. Rather odd that he should come and stay in an out-of-the-way place like this, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it any odder than that Major Metcalf and—and Mrs Boyle should?’

  ‘Yes—I think it is. I’ve always read that these lunatics had a peculiar fascination for women. Looks as though it were true. How did you get to know him? How long has this been going on?’

  ‘You’re being absolutely absurd, Giles. I never saw Christopher Wren until he arrived here.’

  ‘You didn’t go up to London to meet him two days ago and fix up to meet here as strangers?’

  ‘You know perfectly well, Giles, I haven’t been up to London for weeks.’

  ‘Haven’t you? That’s interesting.’ He fished a fur-lined glove out of his pocket and held it out. ‘That’s one of the gloves you were wearing day before yesterday, isn’t it? The day I was over at Sailham getting the netting.’

  ‘The day you were over at Sailham getting the netting,’ said Molly, eying him steadily. ‘Yes, I wore those gloves when I went out.’

  ‘You went to the village, you said. If you only went to the village, what is this doing inside that glove?’

  Accusingly, he held out a pink bus ticket.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘You went to London,’ said Giles.

  ‘All right,’ said Molly. Her chin shot up. ‘I went to London.’

  ‘To meet this chap Christopher Wren.’

  ‘No, not to meet Christopher.’

  ‘Then why did you go?’

  ‘Just at the moment, Giles,’ said Molly, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘Meaning you’ll give yourself time to think up a good story!’

  ‘I think,’ said Molly, ‘that I hate you!’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ said Giles slowly. ‘But I almost wish I did. I simply feel that—I don’t know you any more—I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘I feel the same,’ said Molly. ‘You—you’re just a stranger. A man who lies to me—’

  ‘When have I ever lied to you?’

  Molly laughed. ‘Do you think I believed that story of yours about the wire netting? You were in London, too, that day.’

  ‘I suppose you saw me there,’ said Giles. ‘And you didn’t trust me enough—’

  ‘Trust you? I’ll never trust anyone—ever—again.’

  Neither of them had noticed the soft opening of the kitchen door. Mr Paravicini gave a little cough.

  ‘So embarrassing,’ he murmured. ‘I do hope you young people are not both saying just a little more than you mean. One is so apt to in these lovers’ quarrels.’

  ‘Lovers’ quarrels,’ said Giles derisively. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Mr Paravicini. ‘I know just how you feel. I have been through all this myself when I was a younger man. But what I came to say was that the inspector person is simply insisting that we should all come into the drawing room. It appears that he has an idea.’ Mr Paravicini sniggered gently. ‘The police have a clue—yes, one hears that frequently. But an idea? I very much doubt it. A zealous and painstaking officer, no doubt, our Sergeant Trotter, but not, I think, over endowed with brains.’

  ‘Go on, Giles,’ said Molly. ‘I’ve got the cooking to see to. Sergeant Trotter can do without me.’

  ‘Talking of cooking,’ said Mr Paravicini, skipping nimbly across the kitchen to Molly’s side, ‘have you ever tried chicken livers served on toast that has been thickly spread with foie gras and a very thin rasher of bacon smeared with French mustard?’

  ‘One doesn’t see much foie gras nowadays,’ said Giles, ‘Come on, Paravicini.’

  ‘Shall I stay and assist you, dear lady?’

  ‘You come along to the drawing room, Paravicini,’ said Giles.

  Mr Paravicini laughed softly.

  ‘Your husband is afraid for you. Quite natural. He doesn’t fancy the idea of leaving you alone with me. It is my sadistic tendencies he fears—not my dishonorable ones. I yield to force.’ He bowed gracefully and kissed the tips of his fingers.

  Molly said uncomfortably, ‘Oh, Mr Paravicini, I’m sure—’

  Mr Paravicini shook his head. He said to Giles, ‘You’re very wise, young man. Take no chances. Can I prove to you—or to the inspector for that matter—that I am not a homicidal maniac? No, I cannot. Negatives are such difficult things to prove.’

  He hummed cheerfully.

  Molly flinched. ‘Please Mr Paravicini—not that horrible tune.’

  ‘“Three Blind Mice”—so it was! The tune has got into my head. Now I come to think of it, it is a gruesome little rhyme. Not a nice little rhyme at all. But children like gruesome things. You may have noticed that? That rhyme is very English—the bucolic, cruel English countryside. ‘She cut off their tails with a carving knife.’ Of course a child would love that—I could tell you things about children—’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Molly faintly, ‘I think you’re cruel, too.’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘You laugh and smile—you’re like a cat playing with a mouse—playing—’

  She began to laugh.

  ‘Steady, Molly,’ said Giles. ‘Come along, we’ll all go into the drawing room together. Trotter will be getting impatient. Never mind the cooking. Murder is more important than food.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I agree with you,’ said Mr Paravicini as he followed them with little skipping steps. ‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast—that’s what they always say.’

  Christopher Wren joined them in the hall and received a scowl from Giles. He looked at Molly with a quick, anxious glance, but Molly, her head held high, walked looking straight ahead of her. They marched almost like a procession to the drawing room door. Mr Paravicini brought up the rear with his little skipping steps.

  Sergeant Trotter and Major Metcalf were standing waiting in the drawing room. The major was looking sulky. Sergeant Trotter was looking flushed and energetic.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, as they entered. ‘I wanted you all together. I want to make a certain experiment—and for that I shall require your cooperation.’

  ‘Will it take long?’ Molly asked. ‘I’m rather busy in the kitchen. After all, we’ve got to have a meal sometime.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trotter. ‘I appreciate that, Mrs Davis. But, if you’ll excuse me, there are more important things than meals! Mrs Boyle, for instance, won’t need another meal.’

  ‘Really, Sergeant,’ said Major Metcalf, ‘that’s an extraordinarily tactless way of putting things.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Major Metcalf, but I want everyone to cooperate in this.’

  ‘Have you found your skis, Sergeant Trotter?’ asked Molly.

  The young man reddened. ‘No, I have not, Mrs Davis. But I may say I have a very shrewd suspicion who took them. And of why they were taken. I won’t say any more at present.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ begged Mr Paravicini. ‘I always think explanations should be kept to the very end—that exciting last chapter, you know.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Now there I think you’re wrong. I think it is a game—to somebody.’

  ‘The murderer is enjoying himself,’ murmured Molly softly. The others looked at her in astonishment. She flushed.

  ‘I’m only quoting what Sergeant Trotter said to me.’

  Sergeant Trotter did not look too pleased. ‘It’s all very well, Mr Paravicini, mentioning last chapters and speaking as though this was a mystery thriller,’ he said. ‘This is real. This is happening.’

  ‘So long,’ said Christopher Wren, fingering his
neck gingerly, ‘as it doesn’t happen to me.’

  ‘Now, then,’ said Major Metcalf. ‘None of that, young fellow. The sergeant here is going to tell us just what he wants us to do.’

  Sergeant Trotter cleared his throat. His voice became official.

  ‘I took certain statements from you all a short time ago,’ he said. ‘Those statements related to your positions at the time when the murder of Mrs Boyle occurred. Mr Wren and Mr Davis were in their separate bedrooms. Mrs Davis was in the kitchen. Major Metcalf was in the cellar. Mr Paravicini was here in this room—’

  He paused and then went on.

  ‘Those are the statements you made. I have no means of checking those statements. They may be true—they may not. To put it quite clearly—four of those statements are true—but one of them is false. Which one?’

  He looked from face to face. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Four of you are speaking the truth—one is lying. I have a plan that may help me to discover the liar. And if I discover that one of you lied to me—then I know who the murderer is.’

  Giles said sharply, ‘Not necessarily. Someone might have lied—for some other reason.’

  ‘I rather doubt that, Mr Davis.’

  ‘But what’s the idea, man? You’ve just said you’ve no means of checking these statements?’

  ‘No, but supposing everyone was to go through these movements a second time.’

  ‘Bah,’ said Major Metcalf disparagingly. ‘Reconstruction of the crime. Foreign idea.’

  ‘Not a reconstruction of the crime, Major Metcalf. A reconstruction of the movements of apparently innocent persons.’

  ‘And what do you expect to learn from that?’

  ‘You will forgive me if I don’t make that clear just at the moment.’

  ‘You want,’ asked Molly, ‘a repeat performance?’

  ‘More or less, Mrs Davis.’

  There was a silence. It was, somehow, an uneasy silence.

  It’s a trap, thought Molly. It’s a trap—but I don’t see how—

  You might have thought that there were five guilty people in the room, instead of one guilty and four innocent ones. One and all cast doubtful sideways glances at the assured, smiling young man who proposed this innocent-sounding maneuver.

  Christopher burst out shrilly, ‘But I don’t see—I simply can’t see—what you can possibly hope to find out—just by making people do the same thing they did before. It seems to me just nonsense!’

  ‘Does it, Mr Wren?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Giles slowly, ‘what you say goes, Sergeant. We’ll co-operate. Are we all to do exactly what we did before?’

  ‘The same actions will be performed, yes.’

  A faint ambiguity in the phrase made Major Metcalf look up sharply. Sergeant Trotter went on.

  ‘Mr Paravicini has told us that he sat at the piano and played a certain tune. Perhaps, Mr Paravicini, you would kindly show us exactly what you did do?’

  ‘But certainly, my dear Sergeant.’

  Mr Paravicini skipped nimbly across the room to the grand piano and settled himself on the music stool.

  ‘The maestro at the piano will play the signature tune to a murder,’ he said with a flourish.

  He grinned, and with elaborate mannerisms he picked out with one finger the tune of “Three Blind Mice.”

  He’s enjoying himself, thought Molly. He’s enjoying himself.

  In the big room the soft, muted notes had an almost eerie effect.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Paravicini,’ said Sergeant Trotter. ‘That, I take it, is exactly how you played the tune on the—former occasion?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant, it is. I repeated it three times.’

  Sergeant Trotter turned to Molly. ‘Do you play the piano, Mrs Davis?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant Trotter.’

  ‘Could you pick out the tune, as Mr Paravicini has done, playing it in exactly the same manner?’

  ‘Certainly I could.’

  ‘Then will you go and sit at the piano and be ready to do so when I give the signal?’

  Molly looked slightly bewildered. Then she crossed slowly to the piano.

  Mr Paravicini rose from the piano stool with a shrill protest. ‘But, Sergeant, I understood that we were each to repeat our former roles. I was at the piano here.’

  ‘The same actions will be performed as on the former occasion—but they will not necessarily be performed by the same people.’

  ‘I—don’t see the point of that,’ said Giles.

  ‘There is a point, Mr Davis. It is a means of checking up on the original statements—and I may say of one statement in particular. Now, then, please. I will assign you your various stations. Mrs Davis will be here—at the piano. Mr Wren, will you kindly go to the kitchen? Just keep an eye on Mrs Davis’s dinner. Mr Paravicini, will you go to Mr Wren’s bedroom? There you can exercise your musical talents by whistling “Three Blind Mice” just as he did. Major Metcalf, will you go up to Mr Davis’s bedroom and examine the telephone there? And you, Mr Davis, will you look into the cupboard in the hall and then go down to the cellar?’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then four people moved slowly towards the door. Trotter followed them. He looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Count up to fifty and then begin to play, Mrs Davis,’ he said.

  He followed the others out. Before the door closed Molly heard Mr Paravicini’s voice say shrilly, ‘I never knew the police were so fond of parlor games.’

  ‘Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.’

  Obediently, the counting finished, Molly began to play. Again the soft cruel little tune crept out into the big, echoing room.

  Three Blind Mice

  See how they run. . . .

  Molly felt her heart beating faster and faster. As Paravicini had said, it was a strangely haunting and gruesome little rhyme. It had that childish incomprehension of pity which is so terrifying if met with in an adult.

  Very faintly, from upstairs, she could hear the same tune being whistled in the bedroom above—Paravicini enacting the part of Christopher Wren.

  Suddenly, next door, the wireless went on in the library. Sergeant Trotter must have set that going. He himself, then, was playing the part of Mrs Boyle.

  But why? What was the point of it all? Where was the trap? For there was a trap, of that she was certain.

  A draft of cold air blew across the back of her neck. She turned her head sharply. Surely the door had opened. Someone had come into the room—No, the room was empty. But suddenly she felt nervous—afraid. If someone should come in. Supposing Mr Paravicini should skip round the door, should come skipping over to the piano, his long fingers twitching and twisting—

  ‘So you are playing your own funeral march, dear lady, a happy thought—’ Nonsense—don’t be stupid—don’t imagine things. Besides, you can hear him whistling over your head, just as he can hear you.

  She almost took her fingers off the piano as the idea came to her! Nobody had heard Mr Paravicini playing. Was that the trap? Was it, perhaps, possible that Mr Paravicini hadn’t been playing at all? That he had been, not in the drawing room, but in the library. In the library, strangling Mrs Boyle?

  He had been annoyed, very annoyed, when Trotter had arranged for her to play. He had laid stress on the softness with which he had picked out the tune. Of course, he had emphasized the softness in the hopes that it would be too soft to be heard outside the room. Because if anyone heard it this time who hadn’t heard it last time—why then, Trotter would have got what he wanted—the person who had lied.

  The door of the drawing room opened. Molly, strung up to expect Paravicini, nearly screamed. But it was only Sergeant Trotter who entered, just as she finished the third repetition of the tune.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Davis,’ he said.

  He was looking extremely pleased with himself, and his manner was brisk and confident.

  Molly took her hands from the keys. ‘Have you got what you wanted?’ she asked.


  ‘Yes, indeed.’ His voice was exultant. ‘I’ve got exactly what I wanted.’

  ‘Which? Who?’

  ‘Don’t you know, Mrs Davis? Come, now—it’s not so difficult. By the way, you’ve been, if I may say so, extraordinarily foolish. You’ve left me hunting about for the third victim. As a result, you’ve been in serious danger.’

  ‘Me? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean that you haven’t been honest with me, Mrs Davis. You held out on me—just as Mrs Boyle held out on me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do. Why, when I first mentioned the Longridge Farm case, you knew all about it. Oh, yes, you did. You were upset. And it was you who confirmed that Mrs Boyle was the billeting officer for this part of the country. Both you and she came from these parts. So when I began to speculate who the third victim was likely to be, I plumped at once for you. You’d shown firsthand knowledge of the Longridge Farm business. We policemen aren’t so dumb as we look, you know.’

  Molly said in a low voice, ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t want to remember.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ His voice changed a little. ‘Your maiden name was Wainwright, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re just a little older than you pretend to be. In 1940, when this thing happened, you were the schoolteacher at Abbeyvale school.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, yes, you were, Mrs Davis.’

  ‘I wasn’t, I tell you.’

  ‘The child who died managed to get a letter posted to you. He stole a stamp. The letter begged for help—help from his kind teacher. It’s a teacher’s business to find out why a child doesn’t come to school. You didn’t find out. You ignored the poor little devil’s letter.’

  ‘Stop.’ Molly’s cheeks were flaming. ‘It’s my sister you are talking about. She was the schoolmistress. And she didn’t ignore his letter. She was ill—with pneumonia. She never saw the letter until after the child was dead. It upset her dreadfully—dreadfully—she was a terribly sensitive person. But it wasn’t her fault. It’s because she took it to heart so dreadfully that I’ve never been able to bear being reminded of it. It’s been a nightmare to me, always.’

  Molly’s hands went to her eyes, covering them. When she took them away, Trotter was staring at her.