A Murder Is Announced

by Agatha Christie

  “She’s been Mrs. Simmons for a very long time, that’s all I can say,” said Rydesdale dryly.

  “That seems clear enough. Only—those two fitted. Right age. Not known to Miss Blacklock, personally. If we wanted Pip and Emma—well, there they were.”

  The Chief Constable nodded thoughtfully, then he pushed across a paper to Craddock.

  “Here’s a little something we’ve dug up on Mrs. Easterbrook.”

  The Inspector read with lifted eyebrows.

  “Very interesting,” he remarked. “Hoodwinked that old ass pretty well, hasn’t she? It doesn’t tie in with this business though, as far as I can see.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “And here’s an item that concerns Mrs. Haymes.”

  Again Craddock’s eyebrows rose.

  “I think I’ll have another talk with the lady,” he said.

  “You think this information might be relevant?”

  “I think it might be. It would be a long shot, of course….”

  The two men were silent for a moment or two.

  “How has Fletcher got on, sir?”

  “Fletcher has been exceedingly active. He’s made a routine search of the house by agreement with Miss Blacklock—but he didn’t find anything significant. Then he’s been checking up on who could have had the opportunity of oiling that door. Checking who was up at the house on the days that that foreign girl was out. A little more complicated than we thought, because it appears she goes for a walk most afternoons. Usually down to the village where she has a cup of coffee at the Bluebird. So that when Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner are out—which is most afternoons—they go blackberrying—the coast is clear.”

  “And the doors are always left unlocked?”

  “They used to be. I don’t suppose they are now.”

  “What are Fletcher’s results? Who’s known to have been in the house when it was left empty?”

  “Practically the whole lot of them.”

  Rydesdale consulted a page in front of him.

  “Miss Murgatroyd was there with a hen to sit on some eggs. (Sounds complicated but that’s what she says.) Very flustered about it all and contradicts herself, but Fletcher thinks that’s temperamental and not a sign of guilt.”

  “Might be,” Craddock admitted. “She flaps.”

  “Then Mrs. Swettenham came up to fetch some horse meat that Miss Blacklock had left for her on the kitchen table because Miss Blacklock had been in to Milchester in the car that day and always gets Mrs. Swettenham’s horse meat for her. That make sense to you?”

  Craddock considered.

  “Why didn’t Miss Blacklock leave the horse meat when she passed Mrs. Swettenham’s house on her way back from Milchester?”

  “I don’t know, but she didn’t. Mrs. Swettenham says she (Miss B.) always leaves it on the kitchen table, and she (Mrs. S.) likes to fetch it when Mitzi isn’t there because Mitzi is sometimes so rude.”

  “Hangs together quite well. And the next?”

  “Miss Hinchcliffe. Says she wasn’t there at all lately. But she was. Because Mitzi saw her coming out of the side door one day and so did a Mrs. Butt (she’s one of the locals). Miss H. then admitted she might have been there but had forgotten. Can’t remember what she went for. Says she probably just dropped in.”

  “That’s rather odd.”

  “So was her manner, apparently. Then there’s Mrs. Easterbrook. She was exercising the dear dogs out that way and she just popped in to see if Miss Blacklock would lend her a knitting pattern but Miss Blacklock wasn’t in. She says she waited a little.”

  “Just so. Might be snooping round. Or might be oiling a door. And the Colonel?”

  “Went there one day with a book on India that Miss Blacklock had expressed a desire to read.”

  “Had she?”

  “Her account is that she tried to get out of having to read it, but it was no use.”

  “And that’s fair enough,” sighed Craddock. “If anyone is really determined to lend you a book, you never can get out of it!”

  “We don’t know if Edmund Swettenham was up there. He’s extremely vague. Said he did drop in occasionally on errands for his mother, but thinks not lately.”

  “In fact, it’s all inconclusive.”

  “Yes.”

  Rydesdale said, with a slight grin:

  “Miss Marple has also been active. Fletcher reports that she had morning coffee at the Bluebird. She’s been to sherry at Boulders, and to tea at Little Paddocks. She’s admired Mrs. Swettenham’s garden—and dropped in to see Colonel Easterbrook’s Indian curios.”

  “She may be able to tell us if Colonel Easterbrook’s a pukka Colonel or not.”

  “She’d know, I agree—he seems all right. We’d have to check with the Far Eastern Authorities to get certain identification.”

  “And in the meantime”—Craddock broke off—“do you think Miss Blacklock would consent to go away?”

  “Go away from Chipping Cleghorn?”

  “Yes. Take the faithful Bunner with her, perhaps, and leave for an unknown destination. Why shouldn’t she go up to Scotland and stay with Belle Goedler? It’s a pretty unget-at-able place.”

  “Stop there and wait for her to die? I don’t think she’d do that. I don’t think any nice-natured woman would like that suggestion.”

  “If it’s a matter of saving her life—”

  “Come now, Craddock, it isn’t quite so easy to bump someone off as you seem to think.”

  “Isn’t it, sir?”

  “Well—in one way—it’s easy enough I agree. Plenty of methods. Weed-killer. A bash on the head when she’s out shutting up the poultry, a pot shot from behind a hedge. All quite simple. But to bump someone off and not be suspected of bumping them off—that’s not quite so easy. And they must realize by now that they’re all under observation. The original carefully planned scheme failed. Our unknown murderer has got to think up something else.”

  “I know that, sir. But there’s the time element to consider. Mrs. Goedler’s a dying woman—she might pop off any minute. That means that our murderer can’t afford to wait.”

  “True.”

  “And another thing, sir. He—or she—must know that we’re checking up on everybody.”

  “And that takes time,” said Rydesdale with a sigh. “It means checking with the East, with India. Yes, it’s a long tedious business.”

  “So that’s another reason for—hurry. I’m sure, sir, that the danger is very real. It’s a very large sum that’s at stake. If Belle Goedler dies—”

  He broke off as a constable entered.

  “Constable Legg on the line from Chipping Cleghorn, sir.”

  “Put him through here.”

  Inspector Craddock, watching the Chief Constable, saw his features harden and stiffen.

  “Very good,” barked Rydesdale. “Detective-Inspector Craddock will be coming out immediately.”

  He put the receiver down.

  “Is it—?” Craddock broke off.

  Rydesdale shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “It’s Dora Bunner. She wanted some aspirin. Apparently she took some from a bottle beside Letitia Blacklock’s bed. There were only a few tablets left in the bottle. She took two and left one. The doctor’s got that one and is sending it to be analysed. He says it’s definitely not aspirin.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Yes, found dead in her bed this morning. Died in her sleep, doctor says. He doesn’t think it was natural though her health was in a bad state. Narcotic poisoning, that’s his guess. Autopsy’s fixed for tonight.”

  “Aspirin tablets by Letitia Blacklock’s bed. The clever clever devil. Patrick told me Miss Blacklock threw away a half bottle of sherry—opened a new one. I don’t suppose she’d have thought of doing that with an open bottle of aspirin. Who had been in the house this time—within the last day or two? The tablets can’t have been there long.”

  Rydesdale looked at him.

&n
bsp; “All our lot were there yesterday,” he said. “Birthday party for Miss Bunner. Any of them could have nipped upstairs and done a neat little substitution. Or of course anyone living in the house could have done it any time.”

  Seventeen

  THE ALBUM

  Standing by the Vicarage gate, well wrapped up, Miss Marple took the note from Bunch’s hand.

  “Tell Miss Blacklock,” said Bunch, “that Julian is terribly sorry he can’t come up himself. He’s got a parishioner dying out at Locke Hamlet. He’ll come up after lunch if Miss Blacklock would like to see him. The note’s about the arrangements for the funeral. He suggests Wednesday if the inquest’s on Tuesday. Poor old Bunny. It’s so typical of her, somehow, to get hold of poisoned aspirin meant for someone else. Goodbye, darling. I hope the walk won’t be too much for you. But I’ve simply got to get that child to hospital at once.”

  Miss Marple said the walk wouldn’t be too much for her, and Bunch rushed off.

  Whilst waiting for Miss Blacklock, Miss Marple looked round the drawing room, and wondered just exactly what Dora Bunner had meant that morning in the Bluebird by saying that she believed Patrick had “tampered with the lamp” to “make the lights go out.” What lamp? And how had he “tampered” with it?

  She must, Miss Marple decided, have meant the small lamp that stood on the table by the archway. She had said something about a shepherdess or a shepherd—and this was actually a delicate piece of Dresden china, a shepherd in a blue coat and pink breeches holding what had originally been a candlestick and had now been adapted to electricity. The shade was of plain vellum and a little too big so that it almost masked the figure. What else was it that Dora Bunner had said? “I remember distinctly that it was the shepherdess. And the next day—” Certainly it was a shepherd now.

  Miss Marple remembered that when she and Bunch had come to tea, Dora Bunner had said something about the lamp being one of a pair. Of course—a shepherd and a shepherdess. And it had been the shepherdess on the day of the hold-up—and the next morning it had been the other lamp—the lamp that was here now, the shepherd. The lamps had been changed over during the night. And Dora Bunner had had reason to believe (or had believed without reason) that it was Patrick who had changed them.

  Why? Because, if the original lamp were examined, it would show just how Patrick had managed to “make the lights go out.” How had he managed? Miss Marple looked earnestly at the lamp in front of her. The flex ran along the table over the edge and was plugged into the wall. There was a small pear-shaped switch halfway along the flex. None of it suggested anything to Miss Marple because she knew very little about electricity.

  Where was the shepherdess lamp? she wondered. In the “spare room’ or thrown away, or—where was it Dora Bunner had come upon Patrick Simmons with a feather and an oily cup? In the shrubbery? Miss Marple made up her mind to put all these points to Inspector Craddock.

  At the very beginning Miss Blacklock had leaped to the conclusion that her nephew Patrick had been behind the insertion of that advertisement. That kind of instinctive belief was often justified, or so Miss Marple believed. Because, if you knew people fairly well, you knew the kind of things they thought of….

  Patrick Simmons….

  A handsome young man. An engaging young man. A young man whom women liked, both young women and old women. The kind of man, perhaps, that Randall Goedler’s sister had married. Could Patrick Simmons be “Pip’? But he’d been in the Navy during the war. The police could soon check up on that.

  Only—sometimes—the most amazing impersonations did happen.

  You could get away with a great deal if you had enough audacity….

  The door opened and Miss Blacklock came in. She looked, Miss Marple thought, many years older. All the life and energy had gone out of her.

  “I’m very sorry, disturbing you like this,” said Miss Marple. “But the Vicar had a dying parishioner and Bunch had to rush a sick child to hospital. The Vicar wrote you a note.”

  She held it out and Miss Blacklock took it and opened it.

  “Do sit down, Miss Marple,” she said. “It’s very kind of you to have brought this.”

  She read the note through.

  “The Vicar’s a very understanding man,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t offer one fatuous consolation … Tell him that these arrangements will do very well. Her—her favourite hymn was Lead Kindly Light.”

  Her voice broke suddenly.

  Miss Marple said gently:

  “I am only a stranger, but I am so very very sorry.”

  And suddenly, uncontrollably, Letitia Blacklock wept. It was a piteous overmastering grief, with a kind of hopelessness about it. Miss Marple sat quite still.

  Miss Blacklock sat up at last. Her face was swollen and blotched with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It—it just came over me. What I’ve lost. She—she was the only link with the past, you see. The only one who—who remembered. Now that she’s gone I’m quite alone.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Miss Marple. “One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends—but there’s no one who knew me as a young girl—no one who belongs to the old days. I’ve been alone for quite a long time now.”

  Both women sat silent for some moments.

  “You understand very well,” said Letitia Blacklock. She rose and went over to her desk. “I must write a few words to the Vicar.” She held the pen rather awkwardly and wrote slowly.

  “Arthritic,” she explained. “Sometimes I can hardly write at all.”

  She sealed up the envelope and addressed it.

  “If you wouldn’t mind taking it, it would be very kind.”

  Hearing a man’s voice in the hall she said quickly:

  “That’s Inspector Craddock.”

  She went to the mirror over the fireplace and applied a small powder puff to her face.

  Craddock came in with a grim, angry face.

  He looked at Miss Marple with disapprobation.

  “Oh,” he said. “So you’re here.”

  Miss Blacklock turned from the mantelpiece.

  “Miss Marple kindly came up with a note from the Vicar.”

  Miss Marple said in a flurried manner:

  “I am going at once—at once. Please don’t let me hamper you in any way.”

  “Were you at the tea party here yesterday afternoon?”

  Miss Marple said, nervously:

  “No—no, I wasn’t. Bunch drove me over to call on some friends.”

  “Then there’s nothing you can tell me.” Craddock held the door open in a pointed manner, and Miss Marple scuttled out in a somewhat abashed fashion.

  “Nosey Parkers, these old women,” said Craddock.

  “I think you’re being unfair to her,” said Miss Blacklock. “She really did come with a note from the Vicar.”

  “I bet she did.”

  “I don’t think it was idle curiosity.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right, Miss Blacklock, but my own diagnosis would be a severe attack of Nosey Parkeritis….”

  “She’s a very harmless old creature,” said Miss Blacklock.

  “Dangerous as a rattlesnake if you only knew,” the Inspector thought grimly. But he had no intention of taking anyone into his confidence unnecessarily. Now that he knew definitely there was a killer at large, he felt that the less said the better. He didn’t want the next person bumped off to be Jane Marple.

  Somewhere—a killer … Where?

  “I won’t waste time offering sympathy, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “As a matter of fact I feel pretty bad about Miss Bunner’s death. We ought to have been able to prevent it.”

  “I don’t see what you could have done.”

  “No—well, it wouldn’t have been easy. But now we’ve got to work fast. Who’s doing this, Miss Blacklock? Who’s had two shots at killing you, and will probably, if we don’t work fast enough, soon have another?”r />
  Letitia Blacklock shivered. “I don’t know, Inspector—I don’t know at all!”

  “I’ve checked up with Mrs. Goedler. She’s given me all the help she can. It wasn’t very much. There are just a few people who would definitely profit by your death. First Pip and Emma. Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age, but their background seems clear enough. Anyway, we can’t concentrate on these two alone. Tell me, Miss Blacklock, would you recognize Sonia Goedler if you saw her?”

  “Recognize Sonia? Why, of course—” She stopped suddenly. “No,” she said slowly, “I don’t know that I would. It’s a long time. Thirty years … She’d be an elderly woman now.”

  “What was she like when you remember her?”

  “Sonia?” Miss Blacklock considered for some moments. “She was rather small, dark….”

  “Any special peculiarities? Mannerisms?”

  “No—no, I don’t think so. She was gay—very gay.”

  “She mayn’t be so gay now,” said the Inspector. “Have you got a photograph of her?”

  “Of Sonia? Let me see—not a proper photograph. I’ve got some old snapshots—in an album somewhere—at least I think there’s one of her.”

  “Ah. Can I have a look at it?”

  “Yes, of course. Now where did I put that album?”

  “Tell me, Miss Blacklock, do you consider it remotely possible that Mrs. Swettenham might be Sonia Goedler?”

  “Mrs. Swettenham?” Miss Blacklock looked at him in lively atonishment. “But her husband was in the Government Service—in India first, I think, and then in Hong Kong.”

  “What you mean is, that that’s the story she’s told you. You don’t, as we say in the Courts, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”

  “No,” said Miss Blacklock slowly. “When you put it like that, I don’t … But Mrs. Swettenham? Oh, it’s absurd!”

  “Did Sonia Goedler ever do any acting? Amateur theatricals?”

  “Oh, yes. She was good.”

  “There you are! Another thing, Mrs. Swettenham wears a wig. At least,” the Inspector corrected himself, “Mrs. Harmon says she does.”

  “Yes—yes, I suppose it might be a wig. All those little grey curls. But I still think it’s absurd. She’s really very nice and exceedingly funny sometimes.”