“You wouldn’t—” Cherry hesitated “—mind?”
“Mind what?”
“Well—having a dress that a woman had died in—I mean died that way….”
Gladys stared at her.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. She considered for a moment or two. Then she cheered up.
“I can’t see that it really matters,” she said. “After all, every time you buy something secondhand, somebody’s usually worn it who has died, haven’t they?”
“Yes. But it’s not quite the same.”
“I think you’re being fanciful,” said Gladys. “It’s a lovely bright shade of blue, and really expensive stuff. About that funny business,” she continued thoughtfully, “I think I’ll go up to the hall tomorrow morning on my way to work and have a word with Mr. Giuseppe about it.”
“Is he the Italian butler?”
“Yes. He’s awfully handsome. Flashing eyes. He’s got a terrible temper. When we go and help there, he chivvies us girls something terrible.” She giggled. “But none of us really mind. He can be awfully nice sometimes… Anyway, I might just tell him about it, and ask him what I ought to do.”
“I don’t see that you’ve got anything to tell,” said Cherry.
“Well, it was funny,” said Gladys, defiantly clinging to her favourite adjective.
“I think,” said Cherry, “that you just want an excuse to go and talk to Mr. Giuseppe—and you’d better be careful, my girl. You know what these wops are like! Affiliation orders all over the place. Hot-blooded and passionate, that’s what these Italians are.”
Gladys sighed ecstatically.
Cherry looked at her friend’s fat slightly spotted face and decided that her warnings were unnecessary. Mr. Giuseppe, she thought, would have better fish to fry elsewhere.
II
“Aha!” said Dr. Haydock, “unravelling, I see.”
He looked from Miss Marple to a pile of fluffy white fleecy wool.
“You advised me to try unravelling if I couldn’t knit,” said Miss Marple.
“You seem to have been very thorough about it.”
“I made a mistake in the pattern right at the beginning. That made the whole thing go out of proportion, so I’ve had to unravel it all. It’s a very elaborate pattern, you see.”
“What are elaborate patterns to you? Nothing at all.”
“I ought really, I suppose, with my bad eyesight, to stick to plain knitting.”
“You’d find that very boring. Well, I’m flattered that you took my advice.”
“Don’t I always take your advice, Doctor Haydock?”
“You do when it suits you,” said Dr. Haydock.
“Tell me, Doctor, was it really knitting you had in mind when you gave me that advice?”
He met the twinkle in her eyes and twinkled back at her.
“How are you getting on with unravelling the murder?” he asked.
“I’m afraid my faculties aren’t quite what they were,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head with a sigh.
“Nonsense,” said Dr. Haydock. “Don’t tell me you haven’t formed some conclusions.”
“Of course I have formed conclusions. Very definite ones.”
“Such as?” asked Haydock inquiringly.
“If the cocktail glass was tampered with that day—and I don’t see quite how that could have been done—”
“Might have had the stuff ready in an eyedropper,” suggested Haydock.
“You are so professional,” said Miss Marple admiringly. “But even then it seems to me so very peculiar that nobody saw it happen.”
“Murder should not only be done, but be seen done! Is that it?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” said Miss Marple.
“That was a chance the murderer had to take,” said Haydock.
“Oh quite so. I’m not disputing that for a moment. But there were, I have found by inquiry and adding up the persons, at least eighteen to twenty people on the spot. It seems to me that amongst twenty people somebody must have seen that action occur.”
Haydock nodded. “One would think so, certainly. But obviously no one did.”
“I wonder,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“What have you got in mind exactly?”
“Well, there are three possibilities. I’m assuming that at least one person would have seen something. One out of twenty. I think it’s only reasonable to assume that.”
“I think you’re begging the question,” said Haydock, “and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed-up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything like that,” said Miss Marple. “I was just thinking of what is likely—”
“Yes,” said Haydock thoughtfully, “you’re very good at that. You always have been.”
“It is likely, you know,” said Miss Marple, “that out of twenty people one at least should be an observant one.”
“I give in,” said Haydock. “Let’s have the three possibilities.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to put them in rather sketchily,” said Miss Marple. “I haven’t quite thought it out. Inspector Craddock, and probably Frank Cornish before him, will have questioned everybody who was there so the natural thing would be that whoever saw anything of the kind would have said so at once.”
“Is that one of the possibilities?”
“No, of course it isn’t,” said Miss Marple, “because it hasn’t happened. What you have to account for is if one person did see something why didn’t that person say so?”
“I’m listening.”
“Possibility One,” said Miss Marple, her cheeks going pink with animation. “The person who saw it didn’t realise what they had seen. That would mean, of course, that it would have to be rather a stupid person. Someone, let us say, who can use their eyes but not their brain. The sort of person who, if you asked them. ‘Did you see anyone put anything in Marina Gregg’s glass?’ would answer, ‘Oh, no,’ but if you said ‘Did you see anyone put their hand over the top of Marina Gregg’s glass?’ would say ‘Oh, yes, of course I did.’”
Haydock laughed. “I admit,” he said, “that one never quite allows for the moron in our midst. All right, I grant you Possibility One. The moron saw it, the moron didn’t grasp what the action meant. And the second possibility?”
“This one’s far-fetched, but I do think it is just a possibility. It might have been a person whose action in putting something in a glass was natural.”
“Wait, wait, explain that a little more clearly.”
“It seems to me nowadays,” said Miss Marple, “that people are always adding things to what they eat and drink. In my young days it was considered to be very bad manners to take medicines with one’s meals. It was on a par with blowing your nose at the dinner table. It just wasn’t done. If you had to take pills or capsules, or a spoonful of something, you went out of the room to do so. That’s not the case now. When staying with my nephew Raymond, I observed some of his guests seemed to arrive with quite a quantity of little bottles of pills and tablets. They take them with food, or before food, or after food. They keep aspirins and such things in their handbags and take them the whole time—with cups of tea or with their after-dinner coffee. You understand what I mean?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Haydock, “I’ve got your meaning now and it’s interesting. You mean that someone—” He stopped. “Let’s have it in your own words.”
“I meant,” said Miss Marple, “that it would be quite possible, audacious but possible, for someone to pick up that glass which as soon as it was in his or her hand, of course, would be assumed to be his or her own drink and to add whatever was added quite openly. In that case, you see, people wouldn’t think twice of it.”
“He—or she—couldn’t be sure of that, though,” Haydock pointed out.
“No,” agreed Miss Marple, “it would be a gamble, a risk—but it could happen. And then,” she went on, “there’s the third possibility.”
“Possibility One, a moron,” said the doctor. “Possibility Two, a gambler—what’s Possibility Three?”
“Somebody saw what happened, and has held their tongue deliberately.”
Haydock frowned. “For what reason?” he asked. “Are you suggesting blackmail? If so—”
“If so,” said Miss Marple, “it’s a very dangerous thing to do.”
“Yes, indeed.” He looked sharply at the placid old lady with the white fleecy garment on her lap. “Is the third possibility the one you consider the most probable one?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I wouldn’t go so far as that. I have, at the moment, insufficient grounds. Unless,” she added carefully, “someone else gets killed.”
“Do you think someone else is going to get killed?”
“I hope not,” said Miss Marple. “I trust and pray not. But it so often happens, Doctor Haydock. That’s the sad and frightening thing. It so often happens.”
Seventeen
Ella put down the telephone receiver, smiled to herself and came out of the public telephone box. She was pleased with herself.
“Chief-Inspector God Almighty Craddock!” she said to herself. “I’m twice as good as he is at the job. Variations on the theme of: ‘Fly, all is discovered!’”
She pictured to herself with a good deal of pleasure the reactions recently suffered by the person at the other end of the line. That faint menacing whisper coming through the receiver. “I saw you….”
She laughed silently, the corners of her mouth curving up in a feline cruel line. A student of psychology might have watched her with some interest. Never until the last few days had she had this feeling of power. She was hardly aware herself of how much the heady intoxication of it affected her….
“Damn that old woman,” thought Ella. She could feel Mrs. Bantry’s eyes following her as she walked up the drive.
A phrase came into her head for no particular reason.
The pitcher goes to the well once too often….
Nonsense. Nobody could suspect that it was she who had whispered those menacing words….
She sneezed.
“Damn this hay fever,” said Ella Zielinsky.
When she came into her office, Jason Rudd was standing by the window.
He wheeled round.
“I couldn’t think where you were.”
“I had to go and speak to the gardener. There were—” she broke off as she caught sight of his face.
She asked sharply: “What is it?”
His eyes seemed set deeper in his face than ever. All the gaiety of the clown was gone. This was a man under strain. She had seen him under strain before but never looking like this.
She said again: “What is it?”
He held a sheet of paper out to her. “It’s the analysis of that coffee. The coffee that Marina complained about and wouldn’t drink.”
“You sent it to be analysed?” She was startled. “But you poured it away down the sink. I saw you.”
His wide mouth curled up in a smile. “I’m pretty good at sleight of hand, Ella,” he said. “You didn’t know that, did you? Yes, I poured most of it away but I kept a little and I took it along to be analysed.”
She looked down at the paper in her hand.
“Arsenic.” She sounded incredulous.
“Yes, arsenic.”
“So Marina was right about it tasting bitter?”
“She wasn’t right about that. Arsenic has no taste. But her instinct was quite right.”
“And we thought she was just being hysterical!”
“She is hysterical! Who wouldn’t be? She has a woman drop dead at her feet practically. She gets threatening notes—one after another—there’s not been anything today, has there?”
Ella shook her head.
“Who plants the damned things? Oh well, I suppose it’s easy enough—all these open windows. Anyone could slip in.”
“You mean we ought to keep the house barred and locked? But it’s such hot weather. There’s a man posted in the grounds, after all.”
“Yes, and I don’t want to frighten her more than she’s frightened already. Threatening notes don’t matter two hoots. But arsenic, Ella, arsenic’s different….”
“Nobody could tamper with food here in the house.”
“Couldn’t they, Ella? Couldn’t they?”
“Not without being seen. No unauthorized person—”
He interrupted.
“People will do things for money, Ella.”
“Hardly murder!”
“Even that. And they mightn’t realize it was murder… The servants….”
“I’m sure the servants are all right.”
“Giuseppe now. I doubt if I’d trust Giuseppe very far if it came to the question of money… He’s been with us some time, of course, but—”
“Must you torture yourself like this, Jason?”
He flung himself down in the chair. He leaned forward, his long arms hanging down between his knees.
“What to do?” he said slowly and softly. “My God, what to do?”
Ella did not speak. She sat there watching him.
“She was happy here,” said Jason. He was speaking more to himself than to Ella. He stared down between his knees at the carpet. If he had looked up, the expression on her face might perhaps have surprised him.
“She was happy,” he said again. “She hoped to be happy and she was happy. She was saying so that day, the day Mrs. What’s-her-name—”
“Bantry?”
“Yes. The day Mrs. Bantry came to tea. She said it was ‘so peaceful.’ She said that at last she’d found a place where she could settle down and be happy and feel secure. My goodness, secure!”
“Happy ever after?” Ella’s voice held a slight tone of irony. “Yes, put like that, it sounds just like a fairy story.”
“At any rate she believed it.”
“But you didn’t,” said Ella. “You never thought it would be like that?”
Jason Rudd smiled. “No. I didn’t go the whole hog. But I did think for a while, a year—two years—there might be a period of calm and content. It might have made a new woman of her. It might have given her confidence in herself. She can be happy, you know. When she is happy she’s like a child. Just like a child. And now—this had to happen to her.”
Ella moved restlessly. “Things have to happen to all of us,” she said brusquely. “That’s the way life is. You just have to take it. Some of us can, some of us can’t. She’s the kind that can’t.”
She sneezed.
“Your hay fever bad again?”
“Yes. By the way, Giuseppe’s gone to London.”
Jason looked faintly surprised.
“To London? Why?”
“Some kind of family trouble. He’s got relations in Soho, and one of them’s desperately ill. He went to Marina about it and she said it was all right, so I gave him the day off. He’ll be back sometime tonight. You don’t mind do you?”
“No,” said Jason, “I don’t mind….”
He got up and walked up and down.
“If I could take her away…now…at once.”
“Scrap the picture? But just think.”
His voice rose.
“I can’t think of anything but Marina. Don’t you understand? She’s in danger. That’s all I can think about.”
She opened her mouth impulsively, then closed it.
She gave another muffled sneeze and rose.
“I’d better get my atomizer.”
She left the room and went to her bedroom, a word echoing in her mind.
Marina… Marina… Marina… Always Marina….
Fury rose up in her. She stilled it. She went into the bathroom and picke
d up the spray she used.
She inserted the nozzle into one nostril and squeezed.
The warning came a second too late… Her brain recognized the unfamiliar odour of bitter almonds…but not in time to paralyse the squeezing fingers.
Eighteen
I
Frank Cornish replaced the receiver.
“Miss Brewster is out of London for the day,” he announced.
“Is she now?” said Craddock.
“Do you think she—”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so, but I don’t know. Ardwyck Fenn?”
“Out. I left word for him to ring you. And Margot Bence, Personality Photographer, has got an assignment somewhere in the country. Her pansy partner didn’t know where—or said he didn’t. And the butler’s hooked it to London.”
“I wonder,” said Craddock thoughtfully, “if the butler has hooked it for good. I always suspect dying relatives. Why was he suddenly anxious to go to London today?”
“He could have put the cyanide in the atomizer easily enough before he left.”
“Anybody could.”
“But I think he’s indicated. It could hardly be someone from outside.”
“Oh, yes, it could. You’d have to judge your moment. You could leave a car in one of the side drives, wait until everyone is in the dining room, say, and slip in through a window and upstairs. The shrubberies come close up to the house.”
“Damn’ risky.”
“This murderer doesn’t mind taking risks, you know. That’s been apparent all along.”
“We’ve had a man on duty in the grounds.”
“I know. One man wasn’t enough. So long as it was a question of these anonymous letters I didn’t feel so much urgency. Marina Gregg herself is being well guarded. It never occurred to me that anyone else was in danger. I—”
The telephone rang. Cornish took the call.
“It’s the Dorchester. Mr. Ardwyck Fenn is on the line.”
He proffered the receiver to Craddock who took it.
“Mr. Fenn? This is Craddock here.”
“Ah, yes. I heard you had rung me. I have been out all day.”
“I am sorry to tell you, Mr. Fenn, that Miss Zielinsky died this morning—of cyanide poisoning.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 157