“Another thing I would like to know—” Gwenda broke off.
A car had come up the drive. Major Erskine said, “Ah, my wife has come back from shopping.”
In a moment, as it were, he became a different person. His tone was easy yet formal, his face expressionless. A slight tremor betrayed that he was nervous.
Mrs. Erskine came striding round the corner of the house.
Her husband went towards her.
“Mrs. Reed dropped one of her rings in the garden yesterday,” he said.
Mrs. Erskine said abruptly: “Indeed?”
“Good morning,” said Gwenda. “Yes, luckily I have found it.”
“That’s very fortunate.”
“Oh, it is. I should have hated to lose it. Well, I must be going.”
Mrs. Erskine said nothing. Major Erskine said: “I’ll see you to your car.”
He started to follow Gwenda along the terrace. His wife’s voice came sharply.
“Richard. If Mrs. Reed will excuse you, there is a very important call—”
Gwenda said hastily, “Oh, that’s quite all right. Please don’t bother.”
She ran quickly along the terrace and round the side of the house to the drive.
Then she stopped. Mrs. Erskine had drawn up her car in such a way that Gwenda doubted whether she could get her own car past and down the drive. She hesitated, then slowly retraced her steps to the terrace.
Just short of the french windows she stopped dead. Mrs. Erskine’s voice, deep and resonant, came distinctly to her ears.
“I don’t care what you say. You arranged it—arranged it yesterday. You fixed it up with that girl to come here whilst I was in Daith. You’re always the same—any pretty girl. I won’t stand it, I tell you. I won’t stand it.”
Erskine’s voice cut in—quiet, almost despairing.
“Sometimes, Janet, I really think you’re insane.”
“I’m not the one who’s insane. It’s you! You can’t leave women alone.”
“You know that’s not true, Janet.”
“It is true! Even long ago—in the place where this girl comes from—Dillmouth. Do you dare tell me that you weren’t in love with that yellow-haired Halliday woman?”
“Can you never forget anything? Why must you go on harping on these things? You simply work yourself up and—”
“It’s you! You break my heart … I won’t stand it, I tell you! I won’t stand it! Planning assignations! Laughing at me behind my back! You don’t care for me—you’ve never cared for me. I’ll kill myself! I’ll throw myself over a cliff—I wish I were dead—”
“Janet—Janet—for God’s sake….”
The deep voice had broken. The sound of passionate sobbing floated out into the summer air.
On tip-toe Gwenda crept away and round into the drive again. She cogitated for a moment, then rang the front doorbell.
“I wonder,” she said, “if there is anyone who—er—could move this car. I don’t think I can get out.”
The servant went into the house. Presently a man came round from what had been the stable yard. He touched his cap to Gwenda, got into the Austin and drove it into the yard. Gwenda got into her car and drove rapidly back to the hotel where Giles was waiting for her.
“What a time you’ve been,” he greeted her. “Get anything?”
“Yes. I know all about it now. It’s really rather pathetic. He was terribly in love with Helen.”
She narrated the events of the morning.
“I really think,” she ended, “that Mrs. Erskine is a bit insane. She sounded quite mad. I see now what he meant by jealousy. It must be awful to feel like that. Anyway, we know now that Erskine wasn’t the man who went away with Helen, and that he knows nothing about her death. She was alive that evening when he left her.”
“Yes,” said Giles. “At least—that’s what he says.”
Gwenda looked indignant.
“That,” repeated Giles firmly, “is what he says.”
Eighteen
BINDWEED
Miss Marple bent down on the terrace outside the french window and dealt with some insidious bindweed. It was only a minor victory, since beneath the surface the bindweed remained in possession as always. But at least the delphiniums knew a temporary deliverance.
Mrs. Cocker appeared in the drawing room window.
“Excuse me, madam, but Dr. Kennedy has called. He is anxious to know how long Mr. and Mrs. Reed will be away, and I told him I couldn’t take it upon myself to say exactly, but that you might know. Shall I ask him to come out here?”
“Oh. Oh, yes please, Mrs. Cocker.”
Mrs. Cocker reappeared shortly afterwards with Dr. Kennedy.
Rather flutteringly, Miss Marple introduced herself.
“—and I arranged with dear Gwenda that I would come round and do a little weeding while she was away. I think, you know, that my young friends are being imposed upon by their jobbing gardener, Foster. He comes twice a week, drinks a great many cups of tea, does a lot of talking, and not—so far as I can see—very much work.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Kennedy rather absently. “Yes. They’re all alike—all alike.”
Miss Marple looked at him appraisingly. He was an older man than she had thought from the Reeds’ description of him. Prematurely old, she guessed. He looked, too, both worried and unhappy. He stood there, his fingers caressing the long, pugnacious line of his jaw.
“They’ve gone away,” he said. “Do you know for how long?”
“Oh, not for long. They have gone to visit some friends in the North of England. Young people seem to me so restless, always dashing about here and there.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Kennedy. “Yes—that’s true enough.”
He paused and then said rather diffidently, “Young Giles Reed wrote and asked me for some papers—er—letters, if I could find them—”
He hesitated, and Miss Marple said quietly, “Your sister’s letters?”
He shot her a quick, shrewd glance.
“So—you’re in their confidence, are you? A relation?”
“Only a friend,” said Miss Marple. “I have advised them to the best of my capacity. But people seldom take advice … A pity, perhaps, but there it is….”
“What was your advice?” he asked curiously.
“To let sleeping murder lie,” said Miss Marple firmly.
Dr. Kennedy sat down heavily on an uncomfortable rustic seat.
“That’s not badly put,” he said. “I’m fond of Gwennie. She was a nice small child. I should judge that she’s grown up to be a nice young woman. I’m afraid that she’s heading for trouble.”
“There are so many kinds of trouble,” said Miss Marple.
“Eh? Yes—yes—true enough.”
He sighed. Then he said, “Giles Reed wrote and asked me if I could let him have my sister’s letters, written after she left here—and also some authentic specimen of her handwriting.” He shot a keen glance at her. “You see what that means?”
Miss Marple nodded. “I think so.”
“They’re harking back to the idea that Kelvin Halliday, when he said he had strangled his wife, was speaking neither more nor less than the truth. They believe that the letters my sister Helen wrote after she went away weren’t written by her at all—that they were forgeries. They believe that she never left this house alive.”
Miss Marple said gently, “And you are not, by now, so very sure yourself?”
“I was at the time.” Kennedy still stared ahead of him. “It seemed absolutely clear. Pure hallucination on Kelvin’s part. There was no body, a suitcase and clothes were taken—what else could I think?”
“And your sister had been—recently—rather—ahem—” Miss Marple coughed delicately—“interested in—in a certain gentleman?”
Dr. Kennedy looked at her. There was deep pain in his eyes.
“I loved my sister,” he said, “but I have to admit that, with Helen, there was always some man in the o
ffing. There are women who are made that way—they can’t help it.”
“It all seemed clear to you at the time,” said Miss Marple. “But it does not seem so clear now. Why?”
“Because,” said Kennedy with frankness, “it seems incredible to me that, if Helen is still alive, she has not communicated with me all these years. In the same way, if she is dead, it is equally strange that I have not been notified of the fact. Well—”
He got up. He took a packet from his pocket.
“Here is the best I can do. The first letter I received from Helen I must have destroyed. I can find no trace of it. But I did keep the second one—the one that gave the poste restante address. And here, for comparison, is the only bit of Helen’s handwriting I’ve been able to find. It’s a list of bulbs, etc., for planting. A copy that she had kept of some order. The handwriting of the order and the letter look alike to me, but then I’m no expert. I’ll leave them here for Giles and Gwenda when they return. It’s probably not worth forwarding.”
“Oh no, I believe they expect to return tomorrow—or the next day.”
The doctor nodded. He stood, looking along the terrace, his eyes still absent. He said suddenly, “You know what’s worrying me? If Kelvin Halliday did kill his wife, he must have concealed the body or got rid of it in some way—and that means (I don’t know what else it can mean) that his story to me was a cleverly made-up tale—that he’d already hidden a suitcase full of clothes to give colour to the idea that Helen had gone away—that he’d even arranged for letters to arrive from abroad … It means, in fact, that it was a cold-blooded premeditated murder. Little Gwennie was a nice child. It would be bad enough for her to have a father who’s a paranoiac, but it’s ten times worse to have a father who’s a deliberate murderer.”
He swung round to the open window. Miss Marple arrested his departure by a swift question.
“Who was your sister afraid of, Dr. Kennedy?”
He turned back to her and stared.
“Afraid of? No one, as far as I know.”
“I only wondered … Pray excuse me if I am asking indiscreet questions—but there was a young man, wasn’t there?—I mean, some entanglement—when she was very young. Somebody called Afflick, I believe.”
“Oh, that. Silly business most girls go through. An undesirable young fellow, shifty—and of course not her class, not her class at all. He got into trouble here afterwards.”
“I just wondered if he could have been—revengeful.”
Dr. Kennedy smiled rather sceptically.
“Oh, I don’t think it went deep. Anyway, as I say, he got into trouble here, and left the place for good.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Oh, nothing criminal. Just indiscretions. Blabbed about his employer’s affairs.”
“And his employer was Mr. Walter Fane?”
Dr. Kennedy looked a little surprised.
“Yes—yes—now you say so, I remember, he did work in Fane and Watchman’s. Not articled. Just an ordinary clerk.”
Just an ordinary clerk? Miss Marple wondered, as she stooped again to the bindweed, after Dr. Kennedy had gone….
Nineteen
MR. KIMBLE SPEAKS
“I dunno, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Kimble.
Her husband, driven into speech by what was neither more nor less than an outrage, became vocal.
He shoved his cup forward.
“What you thinking of, Lily?” he demanded. “No sugar!”
Mrs. Kimble hastily remedied the outrage, and then proceeded to elaborate on her own theme.
“Thinking about this advert, I am,” she said. “Lily Abbott, it says, plain as plain. And “formerly house-parlourmaid at St. Catherine’s Dillmouth.” That’s me, all right.”
“Ar,” agreed Mr. Kimble.
“After all these years—you must agree it’s odd, Jim.”
“Ar,” said Mr. Kimble.
“Well, what am I going to do, Jim?”
“Leave it be.”
“Suppose there’s money in it?”
There was a gurgling sound as Mr. Kimble drained his teacup to fortify himself for the mental effort of embarking on a long speech. He pushed his cup along and prefaced his remarks with a laconic: “More.” Then he got under way.
“You went on a lot at one time about what ’appened at St. Catherine’s. I didn’t take much account of it—reckoned as it was mostly foolishness—women’s chatter. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe something did ’appen. If so it’s police business and you don’t want to be mixed up in it. All over and done with, ain’t it? You leave well alone, my girl.”
“All very well to say that. It may be money as has been left me in a will. Maybe Mrs. Halliday’s alive all the time and now she’s dead and left me something in ’er will.”
“Left you something in ’er will? What for? Ar!” said Mr. Kimble, reverting to his favourite monosyllable to express scorn.
“Even if it’s police … You know, Jim, there’s a big reward sometimes for anyone as can give information to catch a murderer.”
“And what could you give? All you know you made up yourself in your head!”
“That’s what you say. But I’ve been thinking—”
“Ar,” said Mr. Kimble disgustedly.
“Well, I have. Ever since I saw that first piece in the paper. Maybe I got things a bit wrong. That Layonee, she was a bit stupid like all foreigners, couldn’t understand proper what you said to her—and her English was something awful. If she didn’t mean what I thought she meant … I’ve been trying to remember the name of that man … Now if it was him she saw … Remember that picture I told you about? Secret Lover. Ever so exciting. They tracked him down in the end through his car. Fifty thousand dollars he paid the garage man to forget he filled up with petrol that night. Dunno what that is in pounds … And the other one was there, too, and the husband crazy with jealousy. All mad about her, they were. And in the end—”
Mr. Kimble pushed back his chair with a grating sound. He rose to his feet with slow and ponderous authority. Preparatory to leaving the kitchen, he delivered an ultimatum—the ultimatum of a man who, though usually inarticulate, had a certain shrewdness.
“You leave the whole thing alone, my girl,” he said. “Or else, likely as not, you’ll be sorry.”
He went into the scullery, put on his boots (Lily was particular about her kitchen floor) and went out.
Lily sat on at the table, her sharp foolish little brain working things out. Of course she couldn’t exactly go against what her husband said, but all the same … Jim was so hidebound, so stick-in-the-mud. She wished there was somebody else she could ask. Someone who would know all about rewards and the police and what it all meant. Pity to turn up a chance of good money.
That wireless set … the home perm … that cherry-coloured coat in Russell’s (ever so smart)… even, maybe, a whole Jacobean suite for the sitting room….
Eager, greedy, shortsighted, she went on dreaming … What exactly had Layonee said all those years ago?
Then an idea came to her. She got up and fetched the bottle of ink, the pen, and a pad of writing paper.
“Know what I’ll do,” she said to herself. “I’ll write to the doctor, Mrs. Halliday’s brother. He’ll tell me what I ought to do—if he’s alive still, that is. Anyway, it’s on my conscience I never told him about Layonee—or about that car.”
There was silence for some time apart from the laborious scratching of Lily’s pen. It was very seldom that she wrote a letter and she found the composition of it a considerable effort.
However it was done at last and she put it into an envelope and sealed it up.
But she felt less satisfied than she had expected. Ten to one the doctor was dead or had gone away from Dillmouth.
Was there anyone else?
What was the name, now, of that fellow?
If she could only remember that….
Twenty
THE GIRL HELEN
Giles
and Gwenda had just finished breakfast on the morning after their return from Northumberland when Miss Marple was announced. She came rather apologetically.
“I’m afraid this is a very early call. Not a thing I am in the habit of doing. But there was something I wanted to explain.”
“We’re delighted to see you,” said Giles, pulling out a chair for her. “Do have a cup of coffee.”
“Oh no, no, thank you—nothing at all. I have breakfasted most adequately. Now let me explain. I came in whilst you were away, as you kindly said I might, to do a little weeding—”
“Angelic of you,” said Gwenda.
“And it really did strike me that two days a week is not quite enough for this garden. In any case I think Foster is taking advantage of you. Too much tea and too much talk. I found out that he couldn’t manage another day himself, so I took it upon myself to engage another man just for one day a week—Wednesdays—today, in fact.”
Giles looked at her curiously. He was a little surprised. It might be kindly meant, but Miss Marple’s action savoured, very faintly, of interference. And interference was unlike her.
He said slowly: “Foster’s far too old, I know, for really hard work.”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Reed, that Manning is even older. Seventy-five, he tells me. But you see, I thought employing him, just for a few odd days, might be quite an advantageous move, because he used, many years ago, to be employed at Dr. Kennedy’s. The name of the young man Helen got engaged to was Afflick, by the way.”
“Miss Marple,” said Giles, “I maligned you in thought. You are a genius. You know I’ve got those specimens of Helen’s handwriting from Kennedy?”
“I know. I was here when he brought them.”
“I’m posting them off today. I got the address of a good handwriting expert last week.”
“Let’s go into the garden and see Manning,” said Gwenda.
Manning was a bent, crabbed-looking old man with a rheumy and slightly cunning eye. The pace at which he was raking a path accelerated noticeably as his employers drew near.
“Morning, sir. Morning, m’am. The lady said as how you could do with a little extra help of a Wednesday. I’ll be pleased. Shameful neglected, this place looks.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 236