“Just like this,” said Lucy. “We’ve had three murders now. The woman who impersonated Martine and who would have been able to claim a share for her son, and then Alfred, and then Harold. And now it only leaves two, doesn’t it?”
“You mean,” said Miss Marple, “there are only Cedric and Emma left?”
“Not Emma. Emma isn’t a tall dark man. No. I mean Cedric and Bryan Eastley. I never thought of Bryan because he’s fair. He’s got a fair moustache and blue eyes, but you see—the other day…” She paused.
“Yes, go on,” said Miss Marple. “Tell me. Something has upset you very badly, hasn’t it?”
“It was when Lady Stoddart-West was going away. She had said good-bye and then suddenly turned to me just as she was getting into the car and asked: ‘Who was that tall dark man who was standing on the terrace as I came in?’
“I couldn’t imagine who she meant at first, because Cedric was still laid up. So I said, rather puzzled, ‘You don’t mean Bryan Eastley?’ and she said, ‘Of course, that’s who it was, Squadron Leader Eastley. He was hidden in our loft once in France during the Resistance. I remembered the way he stood, and the set of his shoulders,’ and she said, ‘I should like to meet him again,’ but we couldn’t find him.”
Miss Marple said nothing, just waited.
“And then,” said Lucy, “later I looked at him… He was standing with his back to me and I saw what I ought to have seen before. That even when a man’s fair his hair looks dark because he plasters it down with stuff. Bryan’s hair is a sort of medium brown, I suppose, but it can look dark. So you see, it might have been Bryan that your friend saw in the train. It might….”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I had thought of that.”
“I suppose you think of everything!” said Lucy bitterly.
“Well, dear, one has to really.”
“But I can’t see what Bryan would get out of it. I mean the money would come to Alexander, not to him. I suppose it would make an easier life, they could have a bit more luxury, but he wouldn’t be able to tap the capital for his schemes, or anything like that.”
“But if anything happened to Alexander before he was twenty-one, then Bryan would get the money as his father and next of kin,” Miss Marple pointed out.
Lucy cast a look of horror at her.
“He’d never do that. No father would ever do that just—just to get the money.”
Miss Marple sighed. “People do, my dear. It’s very sad and very terrible, but they do.
“People do very terrible things,” went on Miss Marple. “I know a woman who poisoned three of her children just for a little bit of insurance money. And then there was an old woman, quite a nice old woman apparently, who poisoned her son when he came home on leave. Then there was that old Mrs. Stanwich. That case was in the papers. I dare say you read about it. Her daughter died and her son, and then she said she was poisoned herself. There was poison in the gruel, but it came out, you know, that she’d put it there herself. She was just planning to poison the last daughter. That wasn’t exactly for money. She was jealous of them for being younger than she was and alive, and she was afraid—it’s a terrible thing to say but it’s true—they would enjoy themselves after she was gone. She’d always kept a very tight hold on the purse strings. Yes, of course she was a little peculiar, as they say, but I never see myself that that’s any real excuse. I mean you can be a little peculiar in so many different ways. Sometimes you just go about giving all your possessions away and writing cheques on bank accounts that don’t exist, just so as to benefit people. It shows, you see, that behind being peculiar you have quite a nice disposition. But of course if you’re peculiar and behind it you have a bad disposition—well, there you are. Now, does that help you at all, my dear Lucy?”
“Does what help me?” asked Lucy, bewildered.
“What I’ve been telling you,” said Miss Marple. She added gently, “You mustn’t worry, you know. You really mustn’t worry. Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here any day now.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“No, dear, perhaps not. But I think it’s important myself.”
“I can’t help worrying,” said Lucy. “You see, I’ve got interested in the family.”
“I know, dear, it’s very difficult for you because you are quite strongly attracted to both of them, aren’t you, in very different ways.”
“What do you mean?” said Lucy. Her tone was sharp.
“I was talking about the two sons of the house,” said Miss Marple. “Or rather the son and the son-in-law. It’s unfortunate that the two more unpleasant members of the family have died and the two more attractive ones are left. I can see that Cedric Crackenthorpe is very attractive. He is inclined to make himself out worse than he is and has a provocative way with him.”
“He makes me fighting mad sometimes,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “and you enjoy that, don’t you? You’re a girl with a lot of spirit and you enjoy a battle. Yes, I can see where that attraction lies. And then Mr. Eastley is a rather plaintive type, rather like an unhappy little boy. That, of course, is attractive, too.”
“And one of them’s a murderer,” said Lucy bitterly, “and it may be either of them. There’s nothing to choose between them really. There’s Cedric, not caring a bit about his brother Alfred’s death or about Harold’s. He just sits back looking thoroughly pleased making plans for what he’ll do with Rutherford Hall, and he keeps saying that it’ll need a lot of money to develop it in the way he wants to do. Of course I know he’s the sort of person who exaggerates his own callousness and all that. But that could be a cover, too. I mean everyone says that you’re more callous than you really are. But you mightn’t be. You might be even more callous than you seem!”
“Dear, dear Lucy, I’m so sorry about all this.”
“And then Bryan,” went on Lucy. “It’s extraordinary, but Bryan really seems to want to live there. He thinks he and Alexander could find it awfully jolly and he’s full of schemes.”
“He’s always full of schemes of one kind or another, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I think he is. They all sound rather wonderful—but I’ve got an uneasy feeling that they’d never really work. I mean, they’re not practical. The idea sounds all right—but I don’t think he ever considers the actual working difficulties.”
“They are up in the air, so to speak?”
“Yes, in more ways than one. I mean they are usually literally up in the air. They are all air schemes. Perhaps a really good fighter pilot never does quite come down to earth again….”
She added: “And he likes Rutherford Hall so much because it reminds him of the big rambling Victorian house he lived in when he was a child.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully. “Yes, I see….”
Then, with a quick sideways glance at Lucy, she said with a kind of verbal pounce, “But that isn’t all of it, is it, dear? There’s something else.”
“Oh, yes, there’s something else. Just something that I didn’t realize until just a couple of days ago. Bryan could actually have been on that train.”
“On the 4:33 from Paddington?”
“Yes. You see Emma thought she was required to account for her movements on 20th December and she went over it all very carefully—a committee meeting in the morning, and then shopping in the afternoon and tea at the Green Shamrock, and then, she said, she went to meet Bryan at the station. The train she met was the 4:50 from Paddington, but he could have been on the earlier train and pretended to come by the later one. He told me quite casually that his car had had a biff and was being repaired and so he had to come down by train—an awful bore, he said, he hates trains. He seemed quite natural about it all… It may be quite all right—but I wish, somehow, he hadn’t come down by train.”
“Actually on the train,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t really prove anything. The awful thing is all this s
uspicion. Not to know. And perhaps we never shall know!”
“Of course we shall know, dear,” said Miss Marple briskly. “I mean—all this isn’t going to stop just at this point. The one thing I do know about murderers is that they can never let well alone. Or perhaps one should say—ill alone. At any rate,” said Miss Marple with finality, “they can’t once they’ve done a second murder. Now don’t get too upset, Lucy. The police are doing all they can, and looking after everybody—and the great thing is that Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here very soon now!”
Twenty-six
I
“Now, Elspeth, you’re quite clear as to what I want you to do?”
“I’m clear enough,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “but what I say to you is, Jane, that it seems very odd.”
“It’s not odd at all,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, I think so. To arrive at the house and to ask almost immediately whether I can—er—go upstairs.”
“It’s very cold weather,” Miss Marple pointed out, “and after all, you might have eaten something that disagreed with you and—er—have to ask to go upstairs. I mean, these things happen. I remember poor Louisa Felby came to see me once and she had to ask to go upstairs five times during one little half hour. That,” added Miss Marple parenthetically, “was a bad Cornish pasty.”
“If you’d just tell me what you’re driving at, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“That’s just what I don’t want to do,” said Miss Marple.
“How irritating you are, Jane. First you make me come all the way back to England before I need—”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Miss Marple; “but I couldn’t do anything else. Someone, you see, may be killed at any moment. Oh, I know they’re all on their guard and the police are taking all the precautions they can, but there’s always the outside chance that the murderer might be too clever for them. So you see, Elspeth, it was your duty to come back. After all, you and I were brought up to do our duty, weren’t we?”
“We certainly were,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “no laxness in our young days.”
“So that’s quite all right,” said Miss Marple, “and that’s the taxi now,” she added, as a faint hoot was heard outside the house.
Mrs. McGillicuddy donned her heavy pepper-and-salt coat and Miss Marple wrapped herself up with a good many shawls and scarves. Then the two ladies got into the taxi and were driven to Rutherford Hall.
II
“Who can this be driving up?” Emma asked, looking out of the window, as the taxi swept past it. “I do believe it’s Lucy’s old aunt.”
“What a bore,” said Cedric.
He was lying back in a long chair looking at Country Life with his feet reposing on the side of the mantelpiece.
“Tell her you’re not at home.”
“When you say tell her I’m not at home, do you mean that I should go out and say so? Or that I should tell Lucy to tell her aunt so?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Cedric. “I suppose I was thinking of our butler and footman days, if we ever had them. I seem to remember a footman before the war. He had an affair with the kitchen maid and there was a terrific rumpus about it. Isn’t there one of those old hags about the place cleaning?”
But at that moment the door was opened by Mrs. Hart, whose afternoon it was for cleaning the brasses, and Miss Marple came in, very fluttery, in a whirl of shawls and scarves, with an uncompromising figure behind her.
“I do hope,” said Miss Marple, taking Emma’s hand, “that we are not intruding. But you see, I’m going home the day after tomorrow, and I couldn’t bear not to come over and see you and say good-bye, and thank you again for your goodness to Lucy. Oh, I forgot. May I introduce my friend, Mrs. McGillicuddy, who is staying with me?”
“How d’you do,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, looking at Emma with complete attention and then shifting her gaze to Cedric, who had now risen to his feet. Lucy entered the room at this moment.
“Aunt Jane, I had no idea….”
“I had to come and say good-bye to Miss Crackenthorpe,” said Miss Marple, turning to her, “who has been so very, very kind to you, Lucy.”
“It’s Lucy who’s been very kind to us,” said Emma.
“Yes, indeed,” said Cedric. “We’ve worked her like a galley slave. Waiting on the sick room, running up and down the stairs, cooking little invalid messes….”
Miss Marple broke in. “I was so very, very sorry to hear of your illness. I do hope you’re quite recovered now, Miss Crackenthorpe?”
“Oh, we’re quite well again now,” said Emma.
“Lucy told me you were all very ill. So dangerous, isn’t it, food poisoning? Mushrooms, I understand.”
“The cause remains rather mysterious,” said Emma.
“Don’t you believe it,” said Cedric. “I bet you’ve heard the rumours that are flying round, Miss—er—”
“Marple,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, as I say, I bet you’ve heard the rumours that are flying round. Nothing like arsenic for raising a little flutter in the neighbourhood.”
“Cedric,” said Emma, “I wish you wouldn’t. You know Inspector Craddock said….”
“Bah,” said Cedric, “everybody knows. Even you’ve heard something, haven’t you?” he turned to Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“I myself,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “have only just returned from abroad—the day before yesterday,” she added.
“Ah, well, you’re not up on our local scandal then,” said Cedric. “Arsenic in the curry, that’s what it was. Lucy’s aunt knows all about it, I bet.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I did just hear—I mean, it was just a hint, but of course I didn’t want to embarrass you in any way, Miss Crackenthorpe.”
“You must pay no attention to my brother,” said Emma. “He just likes making people uncomfortable.” She gave him an affectionate smile as she spoke.
The door opened and Mr. Crackenthorpe came in, tapping angrily with his stick.
“Where’s tea?” he said, “why isn’t tea ready? You! Girl!” he addressed Lucy, “why haven’t you brought tea in?”
“It’s just ready, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I’m bringing it in now. I was just setting the table ready.”
Lucy went out of the room again and Mr. Crackenthorpe was introduced to Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“Like my meals on time,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Punctuality and economy. Those are my watchwords.”
“Very necessary, I’m sure,” said Miss Marple, “especially in these times with taxation and everything.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe snorted. “Taxation! Don’t talk to me of those robbers. A miserable pauper—that’s what I am. And it’s going to get worse, not better. You wait, my boy,” he addressed Cedric, “when you get this place ten to one the Socialists will have it off you and turn it into a Welfare Centre or something. And take all your income to keep it up with!”
Lucy reappeared with a tea tray, Bryan Eastley followed her carrying a tray of sandwiches, bread and butter and cake.
“What’s this? What’s this?” Mr. Crackenthorpe inspected the tray. “Frosted cake? We having a party today? Nobody told me about it.”
A faint flush came into Emma’s face.
“Dr. Quimper’s coming to tea, Father. It’s his birthday today and—”
“Birthday?” snorted the old man. “What’s he doing with a birthday? Birthdays are only for children. I never count my birthdays and I won’t let anyone else celebrate them either.”
“Much cheaper,” agreed Cedric. “You save the price of candles on your cake.”
“That’s enough from you, boy,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe.
Miss Marple was shaking hands with Bryan Eastley. “I’ve heard about you, of course,” she said, “from Lucy. Dear me, you remind me so of someone I used to know at St. Mary Mead. That’s the village where I’ve lived for so many years, you know. Ronnie Wells, the solicitor’s son. C
ouldn’t seem to settle somehow when he went into his father’s business. He went out to East Africa and started a series of cargo boats on the lake out there. Victoria Nyanza, or is it Albert, I mean? Anyway, I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t a success, and he lost all his capital. Most unfortunate! Not any relation of yours, I suppose? The likeness is so great.”
“No,” said Bryan, “I don’t think I’ve any relations called Wells.”
“He was engaged to a very nice girl,” said Miss Marple. “Very sensible. She tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn’t listen to her. He was wrong of course. Women have a lot of sense, you know, when it comes to money matters. Not high finance, of course. No woman can hope to understand that, my dear father said. But everyday L.s.d.—that sort of thing. What a delightful view you have from this window,” she added, making her way across and looking out.
Emma joined her.
“Such an expanse of parkland! How picturesque the cattle look against the trees. One would never dream that one was in the middle of a town.”
“We’re rather an anachronism, I think,” said Emma. “If the windows were open now you’d hear far off the noise of the traffic.”
“Oh, of course,” said Miss Marple, “there’s noise everywhere, isn’t there? Even in St. Mary Mead. We’re now quite close to an airfield, you know, and really the way those jet planes fly over! Most frightening. Two panes in my little greenhouse broken the other day. Going through the sound barrier, or so I understand, though what it means I never have known.”
“It’s quite simple, really,” said Bryan, approaching amiably. “You see, it’s like this.”
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