Midwinter Murder

by Agatha Christie

  Exactly what she had expected Mr and Mrs Eccles to be like, Bunch could not have said, but she was conscious, as she greeted them, of a feeling of surprise. Mr Eccles was a stout florid man whose natural manner would have been cheerful and facetious. Mrs Eccles had a vaguely flashy look about her. She had a small, mean, pursed-up mouth. Her voice was thin and reedy.

  ‘It’s been a terrible shock, Mrs Harmon, as you can imagine,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Bunch. ‘It must have been. Do sit down. Can I offer you—well, perhaps it’s a little early for tea—’

  Mr Eccles waved a pudgy hand. ‘No, no, nothing for us,’ he said. ‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure. Just wanted to . . . well . . . what poor William said and all that, you know?’

  ‘He’s been abroad a long time,’ said Mrs Eccles, ‘and I think he must have had some very nasty experiences. Very quiet and depressed he’s been, ever since he came home. Said the world wasn’t fit to live in and there was nothing to look forward to. Poor Bill, he was always moody.’

  Bunch stared at them both for a moment or two without speaking.

  ‘Pinched my husband’s revolver, he did,’ went on Mrs Eccles. ‘Without our knowing. Then it seems he come here by bus. I suppose that was nice feeling on his part. He wouldn’t have liked to do it in our house.’

  ‘Poor fellow, poor fellow,’ said Mr Eccles, with a sigh. ‘It doesn’t do to judge.’

  There was another short pause, and Mr Eccles said, ‘Did he leave a message? Any last words, nothing like that?’

  His bright, rather pig-like eyes watched Bunch closely. Mrs Eccles, too, leaned forward as though anxious for the reply.

  ‘No,’ said Bunch quietly. ‘He came into the church when he was dying, for sanctuary.’

  Mrs Eccles said in a puzzled voice. ‘Sanctuary? I don’t think I quite . . .’

  Mr Eccles interrupted. ‘Holy place, my dear,’ he said impatiently. ‘That’s what the vicar’s wife means. It’s a sin—suicide, you know. I expect he wanted to make amends.’

  ‘He tried to say something just before he died,’ said Bunch. ‘He began, ‘Please,’ but that’s as far as he got.’

  Mrs Eccles put her handkerchief to her eyes and sniffed. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly upsetting, isn’t it?’

  ‘There, there, Pam,’ said her husband. ‘Don’t take on. These things can’t be helped. Poor Willie. Still, he’s at peace now. Well, thank you very much, Mrs Harmon. I hope we haven’t interrupted you. A vicar’s wife is a busy lady, we know that.’

  They shook hands with her. Then Eccles turned back suddenly to say, ‘Oh yes, there’s just one other thing. I think you’ve got his coat here, haven’t you?’

  ‘His coat?’ Bunch frowned.

  Mrs Eccles said, ‘We’d like all his things, you know. Sentimental-like.’

  ‘He had a watch and a wallet and a railway ticket in the pockets,’ said Bunch. ‘I gave them to Sergeant Hayes.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ said Mr Eccles. ‘He’ll hand them over to us, I expect. His private papers would be in the wallet.’

  ‘There was a pound note in the wallet,’ said Bunch. ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘No letters? Nothing like that?’

  Bunch shook her head.

  ‘Well, thank you again, Mrs Harmon. The coat he was wearing—perhaps the sergeant’s got that too, has he?’

  Bunch frowned in an effort of remembrance.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think . . . let me see. The doctor and I took his coat off to examine his wound.’ She looked round the room vaguely. ‘I must have taken it upstairs with the towels and basin.’

  ‘I wonder now, Mrs Harmon, if you don’t mind . . . We’d like his coat, you know, the last thing he wore. Well, the wife feels rather sentimental about it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bunch. ‘Would you like me to have it cleaned first? I’m afraid it’s rather—well—stained.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, that doesn’t matter.’

  Bunch frowned. ‘Now I wonder where . . . excuse me a moment.’ She went upstairs and it was some few minutes before she returned.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said breathlessly, ‘my daily woman must have put it aside with other clothes that were going to the cleaners. It’s taken me quite a long time to find it. Here it is. I’ll do it up for you in brown paper.’

  Disclaiming their protests she did so; then once more effusively bidding her farewell the Eccleses departed.

  Bunch went slowly back across the hall and entered the study. The Reverend Julian Harmon looked up and his brow cleared. He was composing a sermon and was fearing that he’d been led astray by the interest of the political relations between Judaea and Persia, in the reign of Cyrus.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Julian,’ said Bunch. ‘What’s Sanctuary exactly?’

  Julian Harmon gratefully put aside his sermon paper.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Sanctuary in Roman and Greek temples applied to the cella in which stood the statue of a god. The Latin word for altar ‘ara” also means protection.’ He continued learnedly: ‘In three hundred and ninety-nine A.D. the right of sanctuary in Christian churches was finally and definitely recognized. The earliest mention of the right of sanctuary in England is in the Code of Laws issued by Ethelbert in A.D. six hundred . . .’

  He continued for some time with his exposition but was, as often, disconcerted by his wife’s reception of his erudite pronouncement.

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘You are sweet.’

  Bending over, she kissed him on the tip of his nose. Julian felt rather like a dog who has been congratulated on performing a clever trick.

  ‘The Eccleses have been here,’ said Bunch.

  The vicar frowned. ‘The Eccleses? I don’t seem to remember . . .’

  ‘You don’t know them. They’re the sister and her husband of the man in the church.’

  ‘My dear, you ought to have called me.’

  ‘There wasn’t any need,’ said Bunch. ‘They were not in need of consolation. I wonder now . . .’ She frowned. ‘If I put a casserole in the oven tomorrow, can you manage, Julian? I think I shall go up to London for the sales.’

  ‘The sails?’ Her husband looked at her blankly. ‘Do you mean a yacht or a boat or something?’

  Bunch laughed. ‘No, darling. There’s a special white sale at Burrows and Portman’s. You know, sheets, table cloths and towels and glass-cloths. I don’t know what we do with our glass-cloths, the way they wear through. Besides,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘I think I ought to go and see Aunt Jane.’

  That sweet old lady, Miss Jane Marple, was enjoying the delights of the metropolis for a fortnight, comfortably installed in her nephew’s studio flat.

  ‘So kind of dear Raymond,’ she murmured. ‘He and Joan have gone to America for a fortnight and they insisted I should come up here and enjoy myself. And now, dear Bunch, do tell me what it is that’s worrying you.’

  Bunch was Miss Marple’s favourite godchild, and the old lady looked at her with great affection as Bunch, thrusting her best felt hat farther on the back of her head, started her story.

  Bunch’s recital was concise and clear. Miss Marple nodded her head as Bunch finished. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘That’s why I felt I had to see you,’ said Bunch. ‘You see, not being clever—’

  ‘But you are clever, my dear.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Not clever like Julian.’

  ‘Julian, of course, has a very solid intellect,’ said Miss Marple.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Bunch. ‘Julian’s got the intellect, but on the other hand, I’ve got the sense.’

  ‘You have a lot of common sense, Bunch, and you’re very intelligent.’

  ‘You see, I don’t really know what I ought to do. I can’t ask Julian because—well, I mean, Julian’s so full of rectitude . . .’

  This statement appeared to be perfectly understood by Miss Marpl
e, who said, ‘I know what you mean, dear. We women—well, it’s different.’ She went on. ‘You told me what happened, Bunch, but I’d like to know first exactly what you think.’

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ said Bunch. ‘The man who was there in the church, dying, knew all about Sanctuary. He said it just the way Julian would have said it. I mean, he was a well-read, educated man. And if he’d shot himself, he wouldn’t drag himself to a church afterwards and say ‘sanctuary”. Sanctuary means that you’re pursued, and when you get into a church you’re safe. Your pursuers can’t touch you. At one time even the law couldn’t get at you.’

  She looked questioningly at Miss Marple. The latter nodded. Bunch went on, ‘Those people, the Eccleses, were quite different. Ignorant and coarse. And there’s another thing. That watch—the dead man’s watch. It had the initials W.S. on the back of it. But inside—I opened it—in very small lettering there was ‘To Walter from his father” and a date. Walter. But the Eccleses kept talking of him as William or Bill.’

  Miss Marple seemed about to speak but Bunch rushed on. ‘Oh, I know you’re not always called the name you’re baptized by. I mean, I can understand that you might be christened William and called ‘Porgy” or ‘Carrots” or something. But your sister wouldn’t call you William or Bill if your name was Walter.’

  ‘You mean that she wasn’t his sister?’

  ‘I’m quite sure she wasn’t his sister. They were horrid—both of them. They came to the vicarage to get his things and to find out if he’d said anything before he died. When I said he hadn’t I saw it in their faces—relief. I think myself,’ finished Bunch, ‘it was Eccles who shot him.’

  ‘Murder?’ said Miss Marple.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bunch. ‘Murder. That’s why I came to you, darling.’

  Bunch’s remark might have seemed incongruous to an ignorant listener, but in certain spheres Miss Marple had a reputation for dealing with murder.

  ‘He said ‘please” to me before he died,’ said Bunch. ‘He wanted me to do something for him. The awful thing is I’ve no idea what.’

  Miss Marple considered for a moment or two, and then pounced on the point that had already occurred to Bunch. ‘But why was he there at all?’ she asked.

  ‘You mean,’ said Bunch, ‘if you wanted sanctuary you might pop into a church anywhere. There’s no need to take a bus that only goes four times a day and come out to a lonely spot like ours for it.’

  ‘He must have come there for a purpose,’ Miss Marple thought. ‘He must have come to see someone. Chipping Cleghorn’s not a big place, Bunch. Surely you must have some idea of who it was he came to see?’

  Bunch reviewed the inhabitants of her village in her mind before rather doubtfully shaking her head. ‘In a way,’ she said, ‘it could be anybody.’

  ‘He never mentioned a name?’

  ‘He said Julian, or I thought he said Julian. It might have been Julia, I suppose. As far as I know, there isn’t any Julia living in Chipping Cleghorn.’

  She screwed up her eyes as she thought back to the scene. The man lying there on the chancel steps, the light coming through the window with its jewels of red and blue light.

  ‘Jewels,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m coming now,’ said Bunch, ‘to the most important thing of all. The reason why I’ve really come here today. You see, the Eccleses made a great fuss about having his coat. We took it off when the doctor was seeing him. It was an old, shabby sort of coat—there was no reason they should have wanted it. They pretended it was sentimental, but that was nonsense.

  ‘Anyway, I went up to find it, and as I was just going up the stairs I remembered how he’d made a kind of picking gesture with his hand, as though he was fumbling with the coat. So when I got hold of the coat I looked at it very carefully and I saw that in one place the lining had been sewn up again with a different thread. So I unpicked it and I found a little piece of paper inside. I took it out and I sewed it up again properly with thread that matched. I was careful and I don’t really think that the Eccleses would know I’ve done it. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. And I took the coat down to them and made some excuse for the delay.’

  ‘The piece of paper?’ asked Miss Marple.

  Bunch opened her handbag. ‘I didn’t show it to Julian,’ she said, ‘because he would have said that I ought to have given it to the Eccleses. But I thought I’d rather bring it to you instead.’

  ‘A cloakroom ticket,’ said Miss Marple, looking at it. ‘Paddington Station.’

  ‘He had a return ticket to Paddington in his pocket,’ said Bunch.

  The eyes of the two women met.

  ‘This calls for action,’ said Miss Marple briskly. ‘But it would be advisable, I think, to be careful. Would you have noticed at all, Bunch dear, whether you were followed when you came to London today?’

  ‘Followed!’ exclaimed Bunch. ‘You don’t think—’

  ‘Well, I think it’s possible,’ said Miss Marple. ‘When anything is possible, I think we ought to take precautions.’ She rose with a brisk movement. ‘You came up here ostensibly, my dear, to go to the sales. I think the right thing to do, therefore, would be for us to go to the sales. But before we set out, we might put one or two little arrangements in hand. I don’t suppose,’ Miss Marple added obscurely, ‘that I shall need the old speckled tweed with the beaver collar just at present.’

  It was about an hour and a half later that the two ladies, rather the worse for wear and battered in appearance, and both clasping parcels of hardly-won household linen, sat down at a small and sequestered hostelry called the Apple Bough to restore their forces with steak and kidney pudding followed by apple tart and custard.

  ‘Really a prewar quality face towel,’ gasped Miss Marple, slightly out of breath. ‘With a J on it, too. So fortunate that Raymond’s wife’s name is Joan. I shall put them aside until I really need them and then they will do for her if I pass on sooner than I expect.’

  ‘I really did need the glass-cloths,’ said Bunch. ‘And they were very cheap, though not as cheap as the ones that woman with the ginger hair managed to snatch from me.’

  A smart young woman with a lavish application of rouge and lipstick entered the Apple Bough at that moment. After looking around vaguely for a moment or two, she hurried to their table. She laid down an envelope by Miss Marple’s elbow.

  ‘There you are, miss,’ she said briskly.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Gladys,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Thank you very much. So kind of you.’

  ‘Always pleased to oblige, I’m sure,’ said Gladys. ‘Ernie always says to me, ‘Everything what’s good you learned from that Miss Marple of yours that you were in service with,’ and I’m sure I’m always glad to oblige you, miss.’

  ‘Such a dear girl,’ said Miss Marple as Gladys departed again. ‘Always so willing and so kind.’

  She looked inside the envelope and then passed it on to Bunch. ‘Now be very careful, dear,’ she said. ‘By the way, is there still that nice young inspector at Melchester that I remember?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bunch. ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Well, if not,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully. ‘I can always ring up the Chief Constable. I think he would remember me.’

  ‘Of course he’d remember you,’ said Bunch. ‘Everybody would remember you. You’re quite unique.’ She rose.

  Arrived at Paddington, Bunch went to the luggage office and produced the cloakroom ticket. A moment or two later a rather shabby old suitcase was passed across to her, and carrying this she made her way to the platform.

  The journey home was uneventful. Bunch rose as the train approached Chipping Cleghorn and picked up the old suitcase. She had just left her carriage when a man, sprinting along the platform, suddenly seized the suitcase from her hand and rushed off with it.

  ‘Stop!’ Bunch yelled. ‘Stop him, stop him. He’s taken my suitcase.’

  The ticket collector who, at this rural station, was a m
an of somewhat slow processes, had just begun to say, ‘Now, look here, you can’t do that—’ when a smart blow on the chest pushed him aside, and the man with the suitcase rushed out from the station. He made his way towards a waiting car. Tossing the suitcase in, he was about to climb after it, but before he could move a hand fell on his shoulder, and the voice of Police Constable Abel said, ‘Now then, what’s all this?’

  Bunch arrived, panting, from the station. ‘He snatched my suitcase. I just got out of the train with it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know what this lady means. It’s my suitcase. I just got out of the train with it.’

  He looked at Bunch with a bovine and impartial stare. Nobody would have guessed that Police Constable Abel and Mrs Harmon spent long half-hours in Police Constable Abel’s off-time discussing the respective merits of manure and bone meal for rose bushes.

  ‘You say, madam, that this is your suitcase?’ said Police Constable Abel.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bunch. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘I say this suitcase is mine.’

  The man was tall, dark and well dressed, with a drawling voice and a superior manner. A feminine voice from inside the car said, ‘Of course it’s your suitcase, Edwin. I don’t know what this woman means.’

  ‘We’ll have to get this clear,’ said Police Constable Abel. ‘If it’s your suitcase, madam, what do you say is inside it?’

  ‘Clothes,’ said Bunch. ‘A long speckled coat with a beaver collar, two wool jumpers and a pair of shoes.’

  ‘Well, that’s clear enough,’ said Police Constable Abel. He turned to the other.

  ‘I am a theatrical costumer,’ said the dark man importantly. ‘This suitcase contains theatrical properties which I brought down here for an amateur performance.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Police Constable Abel. ‘Well, we’ll just look inside, shall we, and see? We can go along to the police station, or if you’re in a hurry we’ll take the suitcase back to the station and open it there.’

  ‘It’ll suit me,’ said the dark man. ‘My name is Moss, by the way, Edwin Moss.’

  The police constable, holding the suitcase, went back into the station. ‘Just taking this into the parcels office, George,’ he said to the ticket collector.