Midwinter Murder

by Agatha Christie

  Police Constable Abel laid the suitcase on the counter of the parcels office and pushed back the clasp. The case was not locked. Bunch and Mr Edwin Moss stood on either side of him, their eyes regarding each other vengefully.

  ‘Ah!’ said Police Constable Abel, as he pushed up the lid.

  Inside, neatly folded, was a long rather shabby tweed coat with a beaver fur collar. There were also two wool jumpers and a pair of country shoes.

  ‘Exactly as you say, madam,’ said Police Constable Abel, turning to Bunch.

  Nobody could have said that Mr Edwin Moss underdid things. His dismay and compunction were magnificent.

  ‘I do apologize,’ he said. ‘I really do apologize. Please believe me, dear lady, when I tell you how very, very sorry I am. Unpardonable—quite unpardonable—my behaviour has been.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must rush now. Probably my suitcase has gone on the train.’ Raising his hat once more, he said meltingly to Bunch, ‘Do, do forgive me,’ and rushed hurriedly out of the parcels office.

  ‘Are you going to let him get away?’ asked Bunch in a conspiratorial whisper to Police Constable Abel.

  The latter slowly closed a bovine eye in a wink.

  ‘He won’t get too far, ma’am,’ he said. ‘That’s to say he won’t get far unobserved, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bunch, relieved.

  ‘That old lady’s been on the phone,’ said Police Constable Abel, ‘the one as was down here a few years ago. Bright she is, isn’t she? But there’s been a lot cooking up all today. Shouldn’t wonder if the inspector or sergeant was out to see you about it tomorrow morning.’

  It was the inspector who came, the Inspector Craddock whom Miss Marple remembered. He greeted Bunch with a smile as an old friend.

  ‘Crime in Chipping Cleghorn again,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You don’t lack for sensation here, do you, Mrs Harmon?’

  ‘I could do with rather less,’ said Bunch. ‘Have you come to ask me questions or are you going to tell me things for a change?’

  ‘I’ll tell you some things first,’ said the inspector. ‘To begin with, Mr and Mrs Eccles have been having an eye kept on them for some time. There’s reason to believe they’ve been connected with several robberies in this part of the world. For another thing, although Mrs Eccles has a brother called Sandbourne who has recently come back from abroad, the man you found dying in the church yesterday was definitely not Sandbourne.’

  ‘I knew that he wasn’t,’ said Bunch. ‘His name was Walter, to begin with, not William.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘His name was Walter St John, and he escaped forty-eight hours ago from Charrington Prison.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bunch softly to herself, ‘he was being hunted down by the law, and he took sanctuary.’ Then she asked, ‘What had he done?’

  ‘I’ll have to go back rather a long way. It’s a complicated story. Several years ago there was a certain dancer doing turns at the music halls. I don’t expect you’ll have ever heard of her, but she specialized in an Arabian Night turn, ‘Aladdin in the Cave of Jewels” it was called. She wore bits of rhinestone and not much else.

  ‘She wasn’t much of a dancer, I believe, but she was—well—attractive. Anyway, a certain Asian royalty fell for her in a big way. Amongst other things he gave her a very magnificent emerald necklace.’

  ‘The historic jewels of a Rajah?’ murmured Bunch ecstatically.

  Inspector Craddock coughed. ‘Well, a rather more modern version, Mrs Harmon. The affair didn’t last very long, broke up when our potentate’s attention was captured by a certain film star whose demands were not quite so modest.

  ‘Zobeida, to give the dancer her stage name, hung on to the necklace, and in due course it was stolen. It disappeared from her dressing-room at the theatre, and there was a lingering suspicion in the minds of the authorities that she herself might have engineered its disappearance. Such things have been known as a publicity stunt, or indeed from more dishonest motives.

  ‘The necklace was never recovered, but during the course of the investigation the attention of the police was drawn to this man, Walter St John. He was a man of education and breeding who had come down in the world, and who was employed as a working jeweller with a rather obscure firm which was suspected of acting as a fence for jewel robberies.

  ‘There was evidence that this necklace had passed through his hands. It was, however, in connection with the theft of some other jewellery that he was finally brought to trial and convicted and sent to prison. He had not very much longer to serve, so his escape was rather a surprise.’

  ‘But why did he come here?’ asked Bunch.

  ‘We’d like to know that very much, Mrs Harmon. Following up his trial, it seems that he went first to London. He didn’t visit any of his old associates but he visited an elderly woman, a Mrs Jacobs who had formerly been a theatrical dresser. She won’t say a word of what he came for, but according to other lodgers in the house he left carrying a suitcase.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bunch. ‘He left it in the cloakroom at Paddington and then he came down here.’

  ‘By that time,’ said Inspector Craddock, ‘Eccles and the man who calls himself Edwin Moss were on his trail. They wanted that suitcase. They saw him get on the bus. They must have driven out in a car ahead of him and been waiting for him when he left the bus.’

  ‘And he was murdered?’ said Bunch.

  ‘Yes,’ said Craddock. ‘He was shot. It was Eccles’s revolver, but I rather fancy it was Moss who did the shooting. Now, Mrs Harmon, what we want to know is, where is the suitcase that Walter St John actually deposited at Paddington Station?’

  Bunch grinned. ‘I expect Aunt Jane’s got it by now,’ she said. ‘Miss Marple, I mean. That was her plan. She sent a former maid of hers with a suitcase packed with her things to the cloakroom at Paddington and we exchanged tickets. I collected her suitcase and brought it down by train. She seemed to expect that an attempt would be made to get it from me.’

  It was Inspector Craddock’s turn to grin. ‘So she said when she rang up. I’m driving up to London to see her. Do you want to come, too, Mrs Harmon?’

  ‘Wel-l,’ said Bunch, considering. ‘Wel-l, as a matter of fact, it’s very fortunate. I had a toothache last night so I really ought to go to London to see the dentist, oughtn’t I?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Inspector Craddock . . .

  Miss Marple looked from Inspector Craddock’s face to the eager face of Bunch Harmon. The suitcase lay on the table. ‘Of course, I haven’t opened it,’ the old lady said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing till somebody official arrived. Besides,’ she added, with a demurely mischievous Victorian smile, ‘it’s locked.’

  ‘Like to make a guess at what’s inside, Miss Marple?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘I should imagine, you know,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that it would be Zobeida’s theatrical costumes. Would you like a chisel, Inspector?’

  The chisel soon did its work. Both women gave a slight gasp as the lid flew up. The sunlight coming through the window lit up what seemed like an inexhaustible treasure of sparkling jewels, red, blue, green, orange.

  ‘Aladdin’s Cave,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The flashing jewels the girl wore to dance.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Inspector Craddock. ‘Now, what’s so precious about it, do you think, that a man was murdered to get hold of it?’

  ‘She was a shrewd girl, I expect,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, died three years ago.’

  ‘She had this valuable emerald necklace,’ said Miss Marple, musingly. ‘Had the stones taken out of their setting and fastened here and there on her theatrical costume, where everyone would take them for merely coloured rhinestones. Then she had a replica made of the real necklace, and that, of course, was what was stolen. No wonder it never came on the market. The thief soon discovered the stones were false.’

  ‘Here is an envelope,�
� said Bunch, pulling aside some of the glittering stones.

  Inspector Craddock took it from her and extracted two official-looking papers from it. He read aloud, “Marriage Certificate between Walter Edmund St John and Mary Moss.’ That was Zobeida’s real name.’

  ‘So they were married,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I see.’

  ‘What’s the other?’ asked Bunch.

  ‘A birth certificate of a daughter, Jewel.’

  ‘Jewel?’ cried Bunch. ‘Why, of course. Jewel! Jill! That’s it. I see now why he came to Chipping Cleghorn. That’s what he was trying to say to me. Jewel. The Mundys, you know. Laburnum Cottage. They look after a little girl for someone. They’re devoted to her. She’s been like their own granddaughter. Yes, I remember now, her name was Jewel, only, of course, they call her Jill.

  ‘Mrs Mundy had a stroke about a week ago, and the old man’s been very ill with pneumonia. They were both going to go to the infirmary. I’ve been trying hard to find a good home for Jill somewhere. I didn’t want her taken away to an institution.

  ‘I suppose her father heard about it in prison and he managed to break away and get hold of this suitcase from the old dresser he or his wife left it with. I suppose if the jewels really belonged to her mother, they can be used for the child now.’

  ‘I should imagine so, Mrs Harmon. If they’re here.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be here all right,’ said Miss Marple cheerfully . . .

  ‘Thank goodness you’re back, dear,’ said the Reverend Julian Harmon, greeting his wife with affection and a sigh of content. ‘Mrs Burt always tries to do her best when you’re away, but she really gave me some very peculiar fish-cakes for lunch. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I gave them to Tiglath Pileser, but even he wouldn’t eat them so I had to throw them out of the window.’

  ‘Tiglath Pileser,’ said Bunch, stroking the vicarage cat, who was purring against her knee, ‘is very particular about what fish he eats. I often tell him he’s got a proud stomach!’

  ‘And your tooth, dear? Did you have it seen to?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bunch. ‘It didn’t hurt much, and I went to see Aunt Jane again, too . . .’

  ‘Dear old thing,’ said Julian. ‘I hope she’s not failing at all.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Bunch, with a grin.

  The following morning Bunch took a fresh supply of chrysanthemums to the church. The sun was once more pouring through the east window, and Bunch stood in the jewelled light on the chancel steps. She said very softly under her breath, ‘Your little girl will be all right. I’ll see that she is. I promise.’

  Then she tidied up the church, slipped into a pew and knelt for a few moments to say her prayers before returning to the vicarage to attack the piled-up chores of two neglected days.

  The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge

  ‘After all,’ murmured Poirot, ‘it is possible that I shall not die this time.’

  Coming from a convalescent influenza patient, I hailed the remark as showing a beneficial optimism. I myself had been the first sufferer from the disease. Poirot in his turn had gone down. He was now sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows, his head muffled in a woollen shawl, and was slowly sipping a particularly noxious tisane which I had prepared according to his directions. His eye rested with pleasure upon a neatly graduated row of medicine bottles which adorned the mantelpiece.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ my little friend continued. ‘Once more shall I be myself again, the great Hercule Poirot, the terror of evildoers! Figure to yourself, mon ami, that I have a little paragraph to myself in Society Gossip. But yes! Here it is: ‘Go it—criminals—all out! Hercule Poirot—and believe me, girls, he’s some Hercules!—our own pet society detective can’t get a grip on you. ’Cause why? ’Cause he’s got la grippe himself”!’

  I laughed.

  ‘Good for you, Poirot. You are becoming quite a public character. And fortunately you haven’t missed anything of particular interest during this time.’

  ‘That is true. The few cases I have had to decline did not fill me with any regret.’

  Our landlady stuck her head in at the door.

  ‘There’s a gentleman downstairs. Says he must see Monsieur Poirot or you, Captain. Seeing as he was in a great to-do—and with all that quite the gentleman—I brought up ’is card.’

  She handed me a bit of pasteboard. ‘Mr Roger Havering,’ I read.

  Poirot motioned with his head towards the bookcase, and I obediently pulled forth Who’s Who. Poirot took it from me and scanned the pages rapidly.

  ‘Second son of fifth Baron Windsor. Married 1913 Zoe, fourth daughter of William Crabb.’

  ‘H’m!’ I said. ‘I rather fancy that’s the girl who used to act at the Frivolity—only she called herself Zoe Carrisbrook. I remember she married some young man about town just before the War.’

  ‘Would it interest you, Hastings, to go down and hear what our visitor’s particular little trouble is? Make him all my excuses.’

  Roger Havering was a man of about forty, well set up and of smart appearance. His face, however, was haggard, and he was evidently labouring under great agitation.

  ‘Captain Hastings? You are Monsieur Poirot’s partner, I understand. It is imperative that he should come with me to Derbyshire today.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ I replied. ‘Poirot is ill in bed—influenza.’

  His face fell.

  ‘Dear me, that is a great blow to me.’

  ‘The matter on which you want to consult him is serious?’

  ‘My God, yes! My uncle, the best friend I have in the world, was foully murdered last night.’

  ‘Here in London?’

  ‘No, in Derbyshire. I was in town and received a telegram from my wife this morning. Immediately upon its receipt I determined to come round and beg Monsieur Poirot to undertake the case.’

  ‘If you will excuse me a minute,’ I said, struck by a sudden idea.

  I rushed upstairs, and in a few brief words acquainted Poirot with the situation. He took any further words out of my mouth.

  ‘I see. I see. You want to go yourself, is it not so? Well, why not? You should know my methods by now. All I ask is that you should report to me fully every day, and follow implicitly any instructions I may wire you.’

  To this I willingly agreed.

  An hour later I was sitting opposite Mr Havering in a first-class carriage on the Midland Railway, speeding rapidly away from London.

  ‘To begin with, Captain Hastings, you must understand that Hunter’s Lodge, where we are going, and where the tragedy took place, is only a small shooting-box in the heart of the Derbyshire moors. Our real home is near Newmarket, and we usually rent a flat in town for the season. Hunter’s Lodge is looked after by a housekeeper who is quite capable of doing all we need when we run down for an occasional weekend. Of course, during the shooting season, we take down some of our own servants from Newmarket. My uncle, Mr Harrington Pace (as you may know, my mother was a Miss Pace of New York), has, for the last three years, made his home with us. He never got on well with my father, or my elder brother, and I suspect that my being somewhat of a prodigal son myself rather increased than diminished his affection towards me. Of course I am a poor man, and my uncle was a rich one—in other words, he paid the piper! But, though exacting in many ways, he was not really hard to get on with, and we all three lived very harmoniously together. Two days ago, my uncle, rather wearied with some recent gaieties of ours in town, suggested that we should run down to Derbyshire for a day or two. My wife telegraphed to Mrs Middleton, the housekeeper, and we went down that same afternoon. Yesterday evening I was forced to return to town, but my wife and my uncle remained on. This morning I received this telegram.’ He handed it over to me:

  ‘Come at once uncle Harrington murdered last night bring good detective if you can but do come—Zoe.’

  ‘Then, as yet you know no details?’

  ‘No, I suppose it will be in the evening pape
rs. Without doubt the police are in charge.’

  It was about three o’clock when we arrived at the little station of Elmer’s Dale. From there a five-mile drive brought us to a small grey stone building in the midst of the rugged moors.

  ‘A lonely place,’ I observed with a shiver.

  Havering nodded.

  ‘I shall try and get rid of it. I could never live here again.’

  We unlatched the gate and were walking up the narrow path to the oak door when a familiar figure emerged and came to meet us.

  ‘Japp!’ I ejaculated.

  The Scotland Yard inspector grinned at me in a friendly fashion before addressing my companion.

  ‘Mr Havering, I think? I’ve been sent down from London to take charge of this case, and I’d like a word with you, if I may, sir.’

  ‘My wife—’

  ‘I’ve seen your good lady, sir—and the housekeeper. I won’t keep you a moment, but I am anxious to get back to the village now that I’ve seen all there is to see here.’

  ‘I know nothing as yet as to what—’

  ‘Ex-actly,’ said Japp soothingly. ‘But there are just one or two little points I’d like your opinion about all the same. Captain Hastings here, he knows me, and he’ll go on up to the house and tell them you’re coming. What have you done with the little man, by the way, Captain Hastings?’

  ‘He’s ill in bed with influenza.’

  ‘Is he now? I’m sorry to hear that. Rather the case of the cart without the horse, you being here without him, isn’t it?’

  And on his rather ill-timed jest I went on to the house. I rang the bell, as Japp had closed the door behind him. After some moments it was opened to me by a middle-aged woman in black.

  ‘Mr Havering will be here in a moment,’ I explained. ‘He has been detained by the inspector. I have come down with him from London to look into the case. Perhaps you can tell me briefly what occurred last night.’

  ‘Come inside, sir.’ She closed the door behind me, and we stood in the dimly-lighted hall. ‘It was after dinner last night, sir, that the man came. He asked to see Mr Pace, sir, and, seeing that he spoke the same way, I thought it was an American gentleman friend of Mr Pace’s and I showed him into the gun-room, and then went to tell Mr Pace. He wouldn’t give any name, which, of course, was a bit odd, now I come to think of it. I told Mr Pace, and he seemed puzzled like, but he said to the mistress: ‘Excuse me, Zoe, while I see what this fellow wants.’ He went off to the gun-room, and I went back to the kitchen, but after a while I heard loud voices, as if they were quarrelling, and I came out into the hall. At the same time, the mistress she comes out too, and just then there was a shot and then a dreadful silence. We both ran to the gun-room door, but it was locked and we had to go round to the window. It was open, and there inside was Mr Pace, all shot and bleeding.’