A Pocket Full of Rye
Page 21
"Your letters is on the hall table, miss. And there's one as went to Daisymead by mistake. Always doing that, aren't they? Does look a bit alike, Dane and Daisy, and the writing's so bad I don't wonder this time. They've been away there and the house shut up. They only got back and sent it round today. Said as how they hoped it wasn't important."
Miss Marple picked up her correspondence. The letter to which Kitty had referred was on top of the others. A faint chord of remembrance stirred in Miss Marple's mind at the sight of the blotted scrawled handwriting. She tore it open. Dear Madam,
I hope as you’ll forgive me writing this but I really don't know what to do indeed I don't and I never meant no harm. Dear madam, you'll have seen the newspapers it was murder they say but it wasn't me that did it, not really because I would never do anything wicked like that and I know as how he wouldn't rather. Albert, I mean. I'm telling this badly, but you see we met last summer and was going to be married only Bert hadn't got his rights, he'd been done out of them, swindled by this Mr. Fortescue who's dead. And Mr. Fortescue he just denied everything and of course everybody believed him and not Bert because he was rich and Bert was poor. But Bert had a friend who works in a place where they make these new drugs and there's what they call a truth drug you've read about it perhaps in the paper and it makes people speak the truth whether they want to or not. Bert was going to see Mr. Fortescue in his office on Oct. 31st, and taking a lawyer with him and I was to be sure to give him the drug at breakfast that morning and then it would work just right for when they came and he'd admit as all what Bert said was quite true. Well, madam, I put it in the marmalade but now he's dead and I think as how it must have been too strong but it wasn't Bert's fault because Bert would never do a thing like that but I can't ten the police because maybe they'd think Bert did it on purpose which I know he didn't. Oh, madam, I don't know what to do or what to say and the police are here in the house and it's awful and they ask you questions and look at you so stern and I don't know what to do and I haven't heard from Bert. Oh, madam, I don't like to ask it of you but if you could only come here and help me they'd listen to you and you were always so kind to me and, I didn't mean anything wrong and Bert didn't either. If you could only help us.
Yours respectfully,
Gladys Martin
P.s. I’m enclosing a snap of Bert and me. One of the boys took it at the camp and give it me. Bert doesn't know I've got it-he hates being snapped. But you can see, madam, what a nice boy he is.
Miss Marple, her lips pursed together, stared down at the photograph. The pair pictured there were looking at each other. Mss Marple's eyes went from Gladys's pathetic, adoring face, the mouth slightly open, to the other face-the dark, handsome, sniffing face of Lance Fortescue.
The last words of the pathetic letter echoed in her mind:
You can see what a nice boy he is.
The tears rose in Miss Marple's eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger-anger against a heartless killer.
And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of triumph-the triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully reconstructed an extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of teeth.