A Murder Is Announced

by Agatha Christie

  “She must have spent a very miserable day. You see, it still wasn’t too late to draw back … Dora Bunner told us that Letty was frightened that day and she must have been frightened. Frightened of what she was going to do, frightened of the plan going wrong—but not frightened enough to draw back.

  “It had been fun, perhaps, getting the revolver out of Colonel Easterbrook’s collar drawer. Taking along eggs, or jam—slipping upstairs in the empty house. It had been fun getting the second door in the drawing room oiled, so that it would open and shut noiselessly. Fun suggesting the moving of the table outside the door so that Phillipa’s flower arrangements would show to better advantage. It may have all seemed like a game. But what was going to happen next definitely wasn’t a game any longer. Oh, yes, she was frightened … Dora Bunner was right about that.”

  “All the same, she went through with it,” said Craddock. “And it all went according to plan. She went out just after six to ‘shut up the ducks,’ and she let Scherz in then and gave him the mask and cloak and gloves and the torch. Then, at 6:30, when the clock begins to chime, she’s ready by that table near the archway with her hand on the cigarette box. It’s all so natural. Patrick, acting as host, has gone for the drinks. She, the hostess, is fetching the cigarettes. She’d judged, quite correctly, that when the clock begins to chime, everyone will look at the clock. They did. Only one person, the devoted Dora, kept her eyes fixed on her friend. And she told us, in her very first statement, exactly what Miss Blacklock did. She said that Miss Blacklock had picked up the vase of violets.

  “She’d previously frayed the cord of the lamp so that the wires were nearly bare. The whole thing only took a second. The cigarette box, the vase and the little switch were all close together. She picked up the violets, spilt the water on the frayed place and switched on the lamp. Water’s a good conductor of electricity. The wires fused.”

  “Just like the other afternoon at the Vicarage,” said Bunch. “That’s what startled you so, wasn’t it, Aunt Jane?”

  “Yes, my dear. I’ve been puzzling about those lights. I’d realized that there were two lamps, a pair, and that one had been changed for the other—probably during the night.”

  “That’s right,” said Craddock. “When Fletcher examined that lamp the next morning it was, like all the others, perfectly in order, no frayed flex or fused wires.”

  “I’d understood what Dora Bunner meant by saying it had been the shepherdess the night before,” said Miss Marple, “but I fell into the error of thinking, as she thought, that Patrick had been responsible. The interesting thing about Dora Bunner was that she was quite unreliable in repeating things she had heard—she always used her imagination to exaggerate or distort them, and she was usually wrong in what she thought—but she was quite accurate about the things she saw. She saw Letitia pick up the violets—”

  “And she saw what she described as a flash and a crackle,” put in Craddock.

  “And, of course, when dear Bunch spilt the water from the Christmas roses on to the lamp wire—I realized at once that only Miss Blacklock herself could have fused the lights because only she was near that table.”

  “I could kick myself,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner even prattled about a burn on the table where someone had ‘put their cigarette down’—but nobody had even lit a cigarette … And the violets were dead because there was no water in the vase—a slip on Letitia’s part—she ought to have filled it up again. But I suppose she thought nobody would notice and as a matter of fact Miss Bunner was quite ready to believe that she herself had put no water in the vase to begin with.”

  He went on:

  “She was highly suggestible, of course. And Miss Blacklock took advantage of that more than once. Bunny’s suspicions of Patrick were, I think, induced by her.”

  “Why pick on me?” demanded Patrick in an aggrieved tone.

  “It was not, I think, a serious suggestion—but it would keep Bunny distracted from any suspicion that Miss Blacklock might be stage managering the business. Well, we know what happened next. As soon as the lights went and everyone was exclaiming, she slipped out through the previously oiled door and up behind Rudi Scherz who was flashing his torch round the room and playing his part with gusto. I don’t suppose he realized for a moment she was there behind him with her gardening gloves pulled on and the revolver in her hand. She waits till the torch reaches the spot she must aim for—the wall near which she is supposed to be standing. Then she fires rapidly twice and as he swings round startled, she holds the revolver close to his body and fires again. She lets the revolver fall by his body, throws her gloves carelessly on the hall table, then back through the other door and across to where she had been standing when the lights went out. She nicked her ear—I don’t quite know how—”

  “Nail scissors, I expect,” said Miss Marple. “Just a snip on the lobe of the ear lets out a lot of blood. That was very good psychology, of course. The actual blood running down over her white blouse made it seem certain that she had been shot at, and that it had been a near miss.”

  “It ought to have gone off quite all right,” said Craddock. “Dora Bunner’s insistence that Scherz had definitely aimed at Miss Blacklock had its uses. Without meaning it, Dora Bunner conveyed the impression that she’d actually seen her friend wounded. It might have been brought in Suicide or Accidental Death. And the case would have been closed. That it was kept open is due to Miss Marple here.”

  “Oh, no, no.” Miss Marple shook her head energetically. “Any little efforts on my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren’t satisfied, Mr. Craddock. It was you who wouldn’t let the case be closed.”

  “I wasn’t happy about it,” said Craddock. “I knew it was all wrong somewhere. But I didn’t see where it was wrong, till you showed me. And after that Miss Blacklock had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that that second door had been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever we agreed might have happened—we’d nothing to go upon but a pretty theory. But that oiled door was evidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance—by catching hold of a handle by mistake.”

  “I think you were led to it, Inspector,” said Miss Marple. “But then I’m old-fashioned.”

  “So the hunt was up again,” said Craddock. “But this time with a difference. We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill Letitia Blacklock.”

  “And there was someone with a motive, and Miss Blacklock knew it,” said Miss Marple. “I think she recognized Phillipa almost at once. Because Sonia Goedler seems to have been one of the very few people who had been admitted to Charlotte’s privacy. And when one is old (you wouldn’t know this yet, Mr. Craddock) one has a much better memory for a face you’ve seen when you were young than you have for anyone you’ve only met a year or two ago. Phillipa must have been just about the same age as her mother was when Charlotte remembered her, and she was very like her mother. The odd thing is that I think Charlotte was very pleased to recognize Phillipa. She became very fond of Phillipa and I think, unconsciously, it helped to stifle any qualms of conscience she may have had. She told herself that when she inherited the money, she was going to look after Phillipa. She would treat her as a daughter. Phillipa and Harry should live with her. She felt quite happy and beneficent about it. But once the Inspector began asking questions and finding out about ‘Pip and Emma’ Charlotte became very uneasy. She didn’t want to make a scapegoat of Phillipa. Her whole idea had been to make the business look like a hold-up by a young criminal and his accidental death. But now, with the discovery of the oiled door, the whole viewpoint was changed. And, except for Phillipa, there wasn’t (as far as she knew, for she had absolutely no idea of Julia’s identity) anyone with the least possible motive for wishing to kill her. She did her best to shield Phillipa’s identity. She was quick-witted enough to tell you when you asked her, that Sonia was small and dark and she took the old snapshots out of the album so that you shouldn’t notice any resemblance at the same time as she removed snapsho
ts of Letitia herself.”

  “And to think I suspected Mrs. Swettenham of being Sonia Goedler,” said Craddock disgustedly.

  “My poor mamma,” murmured Edmund. “A woman of blameless life—or so I have always believed.”

  “But of course,” Miss Marple went on, “it was Dora Bunner who was the real danger. Every day Dora got more forgetful and more talkative. I remember the way Miss Blacklock looked at her the day we went to tea there. Do you know why? Dora had just called her Lotty again. It seemed to us a mere harmless slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte. And so it went on. Poor Dora could not stop herself talking. That day we had coffee together in the Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora was talking about two people, not one—and so, of course, she was. At one moment she spoke of her friend as not pretty but having so much character—but almost at the same moment she described her as a pretty lighthearted girl. She’d talk of Letty as so clever and so successful—and then say what a sad life she’d had, and then there was that quotation about stern affliction bravely borne—which really didn’t seem to fit Letitia’s life at all. Charlotte must, I think, have overheard a good deal that morning she came into the café. She certainly must have heard Dora mention about the lamp having been changed—about its being the shepherd and not the shepherdess. And she realized then what a very real danger to her security poor devoted Dora Bunner was.

  “I’m afraid that that conversation with me in the café really sealed Dora’s fate—if you’ll excuse such a melodramatic expression. But I think it would have come to the same in the end … Because life couldn’t be safe for Charlotte while Dora Bunner was alive. She loved Dora—she didn’t want to kill Dora—but she couldn’t see any other way. And, I expect (like Nurse Ellerton that I was telling you about, Bunch) she persuaded herself that it was almost a kindness. Poor Bunny—not long to live anyway and perhaps a painful end. The queer thing is that she did her best to make Bunny’s last day a happy day. The birthday party—and the special cake….”

  “Delicious Death,” said Phillipa with a shudder.

  “Yes—yes, it was rather like that … she tried to give her friend a delicious death … The party, and all the things she liked to eat, and trying to stop people saying things to upset her. And then the tablets, whatever they were, in the aspirin bottle by her own bed so that Bunny, when she couldn’t find the new bottle of aspirin she’d just bought, would go there to get some. And it would look, as it did look, that the tablets had been meant for Letitia. …

  “And so Bunny died in her sleep, quite happily, and Charlotte felt safe again. But she missed Dora Bunner—she missed her affection and her loyalty, she missed being able to talk to her about the old days … She cried bitterly the day I came up with that note from Julian—and her grief was quite genuine. She’d killed her own dear friend….”

  “That’s horrible,” said Bunch. “Horrible.”

  “But it’s very human,” said Julian Harmon. “One forgets how human murderers are.”

  “I know,” said Miss Marple. “Human. And often very much to be pitied. But very dangerous, too. Especially a weak kindly murderer like Charlotte Blacklock. Because, once a weak person gets really frightened, they get quite savage with terror and they’ve no self-control at all.”

  “Murgatroyd?” said Julian.

  “Yes, poor Miss Murgatroyd. Charlotte must have come up to the cottage and heard them rehearsing the murder. The window was open and she listened. It had never occurred to her until that moment that there was anyone else who could be a danger to her. Miss Hinchcliffe was urging her friend to remember what she’d seen and until that moment Charlotte hadn’t realized that anyone could have seen anything at all. She’d assumed that everybody would automatically be looking at Rudi Scherz. She must have held her breath outside the window and listened. Was it going to be all right? And then, just as Miss Hinchcliffe rushed off to the station Miss Murgatroyd got to a point which showed that she had stumbled on the truth. She called after Miss Hinchcliffe: ‘She wasn’t there.…’

  “I asked Miss Hinchcliffe, you know, if that was the way she said it … Because if she’d said ‘She wasn’t there’ it wouldn’t have meant the same thing.”

  “Now that’s too subtle a point for me,” said Craddock.

  Miss Marple turned her eager pink and white face to him.

  “Just think what’s going on in Miss Murgatroyd’s mind … One does see things, you know, and not know one sees them. In a railway accident once, I remember noticing a large blister of paint at the side of the carriage. I could have drawn it for you afterwards. And once, when there was a flying bomb in London—splinters of glass everywhere—and the shock—but what I remember best is a woman standing in front of me who had a big hole halfway up the leg of her stockings and the stockings didn’t match. So when Miss Murgatroyd stopped thinking and just tried to remember what she saw, she remembered a good deal.

  “She started, I think, near the mantelpiece, where the torch must have hit first—then it went along the two windows and there were people in between the windows and her. Mrs. Harmon with her knuckles screwed into her eyes for instance. She went on in her mind following the torch past Miss Bunner with her mouth open and her eyes staring—past a blank wall and a table with a lamp and a cigarette box. And then came the shots—and quite suddenly she remembered a most incredible thing. She’d seen the wall where, later, there were the two bullet holes, the wall where Letitia Blacklock had been standing when she was shot, and at the moment when the revolver went off and Letty was shot, Letty hadn’t been there.…

  “You see what I mean now? She’d been thinking of the three women Miss Hinchcliffe had told her to think about. If one of them hadn’t been there, it would have been the personality she’d have fastened upon. She’d have said—in effect—‘That’s the one! She wasn’t there;’ But it was a place that was in her mind—a place where someone should have been—but the place wasn’t filled—there wasn’t anybody there. The place was there—but the person wasn’t. And she couldn’t take it in all at once. ‘How extraordinary, Hinch,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t there’… So that could only mean Letitia Blacklock….”

  “But you knew before that, didn’t you?” said Bunch. “When the lamp fused. When you wrote down those things on the paper.”

  “Yes, my dear. It all came together then, you see—all the various isolated bits—and made a coherent pattern.”

  Bunch quoted softly:

  “Lamp? Yes. Violets? Yes. Bottle of Aspirin. You meant that Bunny had been going to buy a new bottle that day, and so she ought not to have needed to take Letitia’s?”

  “Not unless her own bottle had been taken or hidden. It had to appear as though Letitia Blacklock was the one meant to be killed.”

  “Yes, I see. And then ‘Delicious Death.’ The cake—but more than the cake. The whole party setup. A happy day for Bunny before she died. Treating her rather like a dog you were going to destroy. That’s what I find the most horrible thing of all—the sort of—of spurious kindness.”

  “She was quite a kindly woman. What she said at the last in the kitchen was quite true. ‘I didn’t want to kill anybody.’ What she wanted was a great deal of money that didn’t belong to her! And before that desire—(and it had become a kind of obsession—the money was to pay her back for all the suffering life had inflicted on her)—everything else went to the wall. People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something. I’ve known many an invalid who has suffered far worse and been cut off from life much more than Charlotte Blacklock—and they’ve managed to lead happy contented lives. It’s what in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy. But, oh dear, I’m afraid I’m straying away from what we were talking about. Where were we?”

  “Going over your list,” said Bunch. “What did you mean by ‘Making enquiries?’ Inquiries about what?”

  Miss Marple shook her head playfully at Inspector Craddock.

  �
�You ought to have seen that, Inspector Craddock. You showed me that letter from Letitia Blacklock to her sister. It had the word ‘enquiries’ in it twice—each time spelt with an e. But in the note I asked Bunch to show you, Miss Blacklock had written ‘inquiries’ with an i. People don’t often alter their spelling as they get older. It seemed to me very significant.”

  “Yes,” Craddock agreed. “I ought to have spotted that.”

  Bunch was continuing. “Severe afflictions bravely borne. That’s what Bunny said to you in the café and of course Letitia hadn’t had any affliction. Iodine. That put you on the track of goitre?”

  “Yes, dear. Switzerland, you know, and Miss Blacklock giving the impression that her sister had died of consumption. But I remembered then that the greatest authorities on goitre and the most skillful surgeons operating on it are Swiss. And it linked up with those really preposterous pearls that Letitia Blacklock always wore. Not really her style—but just right for concealing the scar.”

  “I understand now her agitation the night the string broke,” said Craddock. “It seemed at the time quite disproportionate.”

  “And after that, it was Lotty you wrote, not Letty as we thought,” said Bunch.

  “Yes, I remembered that the sister’s name was Charlotte, and that Dora Bunner had called Miss Blacklock Lotty once or twice—and that each time she did so, she had been very upset afterwards.”

  “And what about Berne and Old Age Pensions?”

  “Rudi Scherz had been an orderly in a hospital in Berne.”

  “And Old Age Pension.”

  “Oh, my dear Bunch, I mentioned that to you in the Bluebird though I didn’t really see the application then. How Mrs. Wotherspoon drew Mrs. Bartlett’s Old Age Pension as well as her own—though Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for years—simply because one old woman is so like another old woman—yes, it all made a pattern and I felt so worked up I went out to cool my head a little and think what could be done about proving all this. Then Miss Hinchcliffe picked me up and we found Miss Murgatroyd….”