A Pocket Full of Rye mm-7

by Agatha Christie

  Neele said dryly:

  "Percival wasn't there, so that lets him out again. That lets him out again," Inspector Neele repeated.

  The A.C. looked at him sharply. Something in the repetition had attracted his attention.

  "What's the idea, Neele? Out with it, man."

  Inspector Neele looked stolid.

  "Nothing, sir. Not so much as an idea. All I say is it was very convenient for him."

  "A bit too convenient, eh?" The A.C. reflected and shook his head. "You think he might have managed it somehow? Can't see how, Neele. No, I can't see how."

  He added, "And he's a cautious type, too."

  "But quite intelligent, sir."

  "You don't fancy the women. Is that it? Yet the women are indicated. Elaine Fortescue and Percival's wife. They were at breakfast and they were at tea that day. Either of them could have done it. No signs of anything abnormal about them? Well, it doesn't always show. There might be something in their past medical record."

  Inspector Neele did not answer. He was thinking of Mary Dove. He had no definite reason for suspecting her, but that was the way his thoughts lay. There was something unexplained about her, unsatisfactory. A taint, amused antagonism. That had been her attitude after the death of Rex Fortescue. What was her attitude now? Her behaviour and manner were, as always, exemplary. There was no longer, he thought, amusement. Perhaps not even antagonism, but he wondered whether, once or twice, he had not seen a trace of fear. He had been to blame, culpably to blame, in the matter of Gladys Martin. That guilty confusion of hers he had put down to no more than a natural nervousness of the police. He had come across that guilty nervousness so often. In this case it had been something more. Gladys had seen or heard something which had aroused her suspicions. It was probably, he thought, some quite small thing, something so vague and indefinite that she had hardly liked to speak about it. And now, poor little rabbit, she would never speak.

  Inspector Neele looked with some interest at the mild, earnest face of the old lady who confronted him now at Yewtree Lodge. He had been in two minds at first how to treat her, but he quickly made up his mind. Miss Marple would be useful to him. She was upright, of unimpeachable rectitude and she had, like most old ladies, time on her hands and an old maid's nose for scenting bits of gossip. She'd get things out of servants and out of the women of the Fortescue family perhaps, that he and his policemen would never get. Talk, conjecture, reminiscences, repetitions of things said and done, out of it all she would pick the salient facts. So Inspector Neele was gracious.

  "It's uncommonly good of you to have come here. Miss Marple," he said.

  "It was my duty. Inspector Neele. The girl had lived in my house. I feel, in a sense, responsible for her. She was a very silly girl, you know."

  Inspector Neele looked at her appreciatively.

  "Yes," he said, "just so."

  She had gone, he felt, to the heart of the matter.

  "She wouldn't know," said Miss Marple, "what she ought to do. If, I mean, something came up. Oh, dear, I'm expressing myself very badly."

  Inspector Neele said that he understood.

  "She hadn't got good judgment as to what was important or not, that's what you mean, isn't it?"

  "Oh yes, exactly. Inspector."

  "When you say that she was silly –" Inspector Neele broke off.

  Miss Marple took up the theme.

  "She was the credulous type. She was the sort of girl who would have given her savings to a swindler, if she'd had any savings. Of course, she never did have any savings because she always spent her money on most unsuitable clothes."

  "What about men?" asked the Inspector.

  "She wanted a young man badly," said Miss Marple. "In fact that's really, I think, why she left St Mary Mead. The competition there is very keen. So few men. She did have hopes of the young man who delivered the fish. Young Fred had a pleasant word for all the girls, but of course he didn't mean anything by it. That upset poor Gladys quite a lot. Still, I gather she did get herself a young man in the end?"

  Inspector Neele nodded.

  "It seems so. Albert Evans, I gather, his name was. She seems to have met him at some holiday camp. He didn't give her a ring or anything so maybe she made it all up. He was a mining engineer, so she told the cook."

  "That seems most unlikely," said Miss Marple, "but I dare say it's what he told her. As I say, she'd believe anything. You don't connect him with this business at all?"

  Inspector Neele shook his head.

  "No. I don't think there are any complications of that kind. He never seems to have visited her. He sent her a postcard from time to time, usually from a seaport – probably 4th Engineer on a boat on the Baltic run."

  "Well," said Miss Marple, "I'm glad she had her little romance. Since her life has been cut short in this way –" She tightened her lips. "You know. Inspector, it makes me very, very angry." And she added, as she had said to Pat Fortescue, "Especially the clothes peg. That, Inspector, was really wicked."

  Inspector Neele looked at her with interest.

  "I know just what you mean. Miss Marple," he said.

  Miss Marple coughed apologetically.

  "I wonder – I suppose it would be great presumption on my part – if only I could assist you in my very humble and, I'm afraid, very feminine way. This is a wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go unpunished."

  "That's an unfashionable belief nowadays, Miss Marple," Inspector Neele said rather grimly. "Not that I don't agree with you."

  "There is an hotel near the station, or there's the Golf Hotel," said Miss Marple tentatively, "and I believe there's a Miss Ramsbottom in this house who is interested in foreign missions."

  Inspector Neele looked at Miss Marple appraisingly.

  "Yes," he said. "You've got something there, maybe. I can't say that I've had great success with the lady."

  "It's really very kind of you Inspector Neele," said Miss Marple. "I'm so glad you don't think I'm just a sensation hunter."

  Inspector Neele gave a sudden, rather unexpected smile. He was thinking to himself that Miss Marple was very unlike the popular idea of an avenging fury. And yet, he thought that was perhaps exactly what she was.

  "Newspapers," said Miss Marple, "are often so sensational in their accounts. But hardly, I fear, as accurate as one might wish." She looked inquiringly at Inspector Neele. "If one could be sure of having just the sober facts."

  "They're not particularly sober," said Neele. "Shorn of undue sensation, they're as follows. Mr Fortescue died in his office as a result of taxine poisoning. Taxine is obtained from the berries and leaves of yew trees."

  "Very convenient," Miss Marple said.

  "Possibly," said Inspector Neele, "but we've no evidence as to that. As yet, that is." He stressed the point because it was here that he thought Miss Marple might be useful. If any brew or concoction of yewberries had been made in the house. Miss Marple was quite likely to come upon traces of it. She was the sort of old pussy who would make homemade liqueurs, cordials and herb teas herself. She would know methods of making and methods of disposal.

  "And Mrs Fortescue?"

  "Mrs Fortescue had tea with the family in the library. The last person to leave the room and the tea table was Miss Elaine Fortescue, her step-daughter. She states that as she left the room Mrs Fortescue was pouring herself out another cup of tea. Some twenty minutes or half-hour later Miss Dove, who acts as housekeeper, went in to remove the tea-tray. Mrs Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa, dead. Beside her was a tea cup a quarter full and in the dregs of it was potassium cyanide."

  "Which is almost immediate in its action, I believe," said Miss Marple.

  "Exactly."

  "Such dangerous stuff," murmured Miss Marple. "One has it to take wasps' nests but I'm always very, very careful."

  "You're quite right," said Inspector Neele. "There was a packet of it in the gardener's shed here."

  "Again very convenient," said M
iss Marple. She added, "Was Mrs Fortescue eating anything?"

  "Oh, yes. They'd had quite a sumptuous tea."

  "Cake, I suppose? Bread and butter? Scones, perhaps? Jam? Honey?"

  "Yes, there was honey and scones, chocolate cake and swiss roll and various other plates of things." He looked at her curiously. "The potassium cyanide was in the tea. Miss Marple."

  "Oh, yes, yes. I quite understand that. I was just getting the whole picture, so to speak. Rather significant, don't you think?"

  He looked at her in a slightly puzzled fashion. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright.

  "And the third death. Inspector Neele?"

  "Well, the facts there seem clear enough, too. The girl, Gladys, took in the tea-tray, then she brought the next tray into the hall, but left it there. She'd been rather absent-minded all the day, apparently. After that no one saw her. The cook, Mrs Crump, jumped to the conclusion that the girl had gone out for the evening without telling anybody. She based her belief, I think, on the fact that the girl was wearing a good pair of nylon stockings and her best shoes. There, however, she was proved quite wrong. The girl had obviously remembered suddenly that she had not taken in some clothes that were drying outside on the clothes line. She ran out to fetch them in, had taken down half of them apparently, when somebody took her unawares by slipping a stocking round her neck and – well, that was that."

  "Someone from outside?" said Miss Marple.

  "Perhaps," said Inspector Neele. "But perhaps someone from inside. Someone who'd been waiting his or her opportunity to get the girl alone. The girl was upset, nervous, when we first questioned her, but I'm afraid we didn't quite appreciate the importance of that."

  "Oh, but how could you," cried Miss Marple, "because people so often do look guilty and embarrassed when they are questioned by the police."

  "That's just it. But this time, Miss Marple, it was rather more than that. I think the girl Gladys had seen someone performing some action that seemed to her needed explanation. It can't, I think, have been anything very definite. Otherwise she would have spoken out. But I think she did betray the fact to the person in question. That person realised that Gladys was a danger."

  "And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes peg clipped on her nose," murmured Miss Marple to herself.

  "Yes, that's a nasty touch. A nasty, sneering sort of touch. Just a nasty bit of unnecessary bravado."

  Miss Marple shook her head.

  "Hardly unnecessary. It does all make a pattern, doesn't it?"

  Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.

  "I don't quite follow you. Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?"

  Miss Marple immediately became flustered.

  "Well, I mean it does seem – I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you understand – well, one can't get away from facts, can one?"

  "I don't think I quite understand."

  "Well, I mean – first we have Mr Fortescue. Rex Fortescue. Killed in his office in the city. And then we have Mrs Fortescue, sitting here in the library and having tea. There were scones and honey. And then poor Gladys with the clothes peg on her nose. Just to point the whole thing. That very charming Mrs Lance Fortescue said to me that there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason in it, but I couldn't agree with her, because it's the rhyme that strikes one, isn't it?"

  Inspector Neele said slowly: "I don't think –"

  Miss Marple went on quickly:

  "I expect you're about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren't you Inspector Neele? I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose – I mean it is really highly significant, isn't it? What I wondered was," Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage in her hands went on bravely: "Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this sort of thing to you."

  "Please say anything you like. Miss Marple."

  "Well, that's very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddle headed, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you gone into the question of blackbirds?"

  Chapter 14

  I

  For about ten seconds Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple with the utmost bewilderment. His first idea was that the old lady had gone off her head.

  "Blackbirds?" he repeated.

  Miss Marple nodded her head vigorously.

  "Yes," she said, and forthwith recited:

  "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye,

  Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

  When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.

  Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

  The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,

  The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey,

  The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

  When there came a little dickey bird and nipped off her nose."

  "Good Lord," Inspector Neele said.

  "I mean, it does fit," said Miss Marple. "It was rye in his pocket, wasn't it? One newspaper said so. The others just said cereal which might mean anything. Farmer's Glory or Cornflakes – or even maize – but it was rye?"

  Inspector Neele nodded.

  "There you are," said Miss Marple, triumphantly. "Rex Fortescue. Rex means King. In his Counting House. And Mrs Fortescue the Queen in the parlour, eating bread and honey. And so, of course, the murderer had to put that clothes peg on poor Gladys's nose."

  Inspector Neele said:

  "You mean the whole set up is crazy?"

  "Well, one mustn't jump to conclusions– but it is certainly very odd. But you really must make inquiries about blackbirds. Because there must be blackbirds!"

  It was at this point that Sergeant Hay came into the room saying urgently, "Sir."

  He broke off at sight of Miss Marple. Inspector Neele, recovering himself said:

  "Thank you. Miss Marple. I'll look into the matter. Since you are interested in the girl, perhaps you would care to look over the things from her room. Sergeant Hay will show you them presently."

  Miss Marple, accepting her dismissal, twittered her way out.

  "Blackbirds!" murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

  Sergeant Hay stared.

  "Yes, Hay, what is it?"

  "Sir," said Sergeant Hay, urgently, again. "Look at this."

  He produced an article wrapped in a somewhat grubby handkerchief.

  "Found it in the shrubbery," said Sergeant Hay. "Could have been chucked there from one of the back windows."

  He tipped the object down on the desk in front of the Inspector who leaned forward and inspected it with rising excitement. The exhibit was a nearly full pot of marmalade.

  The Inspector stared at it without speech. His face assumed a peculiarly wooden and stupid appearance. In actual fact this meant that Inspector Neele's mind was racing once more round an imaginary track. A moving picture was enacting itself before the eyes of his mind. He saw a new pot of marmalade, he saw hands carefully removing its cover, he saw a small quantity of marmalade removed, mixed with a preparation of taxine and replaced in the pot, the top smoothed over and the lid carefully replaced. He broke off at this point to ask Sergeant Hay:

  "They don't take marmalade out of the pot and put into fancy pots?"

  "No, sir. Got into the way of serving it in its own pot during the war when things were scarce, and it's gone on like that ever since."

  Neele murmured:

  "That made it easier, of course."

  "What's more," said Sergeant Hay, "Mr Fortescue was the only one that took marmalade for breakfast (and Mr Percival when he was at home). The others had jam or honey."

  Neele nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "That made it very simple, didn't it?"

  After a slight gap the moving picture went on in his mind. It was the breakfast table now. Re
x Fortescue stretching out his hand for the marmalade pot, taking out a spoonful of marmalade and spreading it on his toast and butter. Easier, far easier that way than the risk and difficulty of insinuating it into his coffee cup. A foolproof method of administering the poison! And afterwards? Another gap and a picture that was not quite so clear. The replacing of that pot of marmalade by another with exactly the same amount taken from it. And then an open window. A hand and an arm flinging out that pot into the shrubbery. Whose hand and arm?

  Inspector Neele said in a businesslike voice:

  "Well, we'll have of course to get this analysed. See if there are any traces of taxine. We can't jump to conclusions."

  "No, sir. There may be fingerprints too."

  "Probably not the ones we want," said Inspector Neele gloomily. "There'll be Gladys's of course, and Crump's and Fortescue's own. Then probably Mrs Crump's, the grocer's assistant and a few others! If anyone put taxine in here they'd take care not to go playing about with their own fingers all over the pot. Anyway, as I say, we mustn't jump to conclusions. How do they order marmalade and where is it kept?"

  The industrious Sergeant Hay had his answers pat for all these questions.

  "Marmalade and jams come in in batches of six at a time. A new pot would be taken into the pantry when the old one was getting low."

  "That means," said Neele, "that it could have been tampered with several days before it was actually brought on to the breakfast table. And anyone who was in the house or had access to the house could have tampered with it."

  The term "access to the house" puzzled Sergeant Hay slightly. He did not see in what way his superior's mind was working.

  But Neele was postulating what seemed to him a logical assumption.