The Body in the Library mm-3 Page 14

  "What about Harper? Is he to be in on this?"

  "It might be awkward for him to know too much. But there might be a hint from you. To watch certain persons, have them trailed, you know."

  Sir Henry said slowly, "Yes, that would meet the case."

  Superintendent Harper looked piercingly at Sir Henry Clithering. "Let's get this quite clear, sir. You're giving me a hint?"

  Sir Henry said, "I'm informing you of what my friend has just informed me. He didn't tell me in confidence that he purposes to visit a solicitor in Danemouth tomorrow for the purpose of making a new will."

  The superintendent's bushy eyebrows drew downward over his steady eyes. He said, "Does Mr. Conway Jefferson propose to inform his son-in-law and daughter-in-law of that fact?"

  "He intends to tell them about it this evening."

  "I see." The superintendent tapped his desk with a penholder. He repeated again, "I see." Then the piercing eyes bored once more into the eyes of the other man. Harper said, "So you're not satisfied with the case against Basil Blake?"

  "Are your [missing text]

  The superintendent's mustaches quivered. He said, "Is Miss Marple?" The two men looked at each other. Then Harper said, "You can leave it to me. I'll have men detailed. There will be no funny business, I can promise you that."

  Sir Henry said, "There is one more thing. You'd better see this." He unfolded a slip of paper and pushed it across the table.

  This time the superintendent's calm deserted him. He whistled. "So that's it, is it? That puts an entirely different complexion on the matter. How did you come to dig up this?"

  "Women," said Sir Henry, "are eternally interested in marriages."

  "Especially," said the superintendent, "elderly single women!"

  Conway Jefferson looked up as his friend entered. His grim face relaxed into a smile. He said, "Well, I told 'em. They took it very well."

  "What did you say?"

  [missing text] to endow a hostel for young girls working as professional dancers in London. Damned silly way to leave your money. Surprised they swallowed it as though I'd do a thing like that." He added meditatively, "You know, I made a fool of myself over that girl. Must be turning into a silly old man. I can see it now. She was a pretty kid, but most of what I saw in her I put there myself. I pretended she was another Rosamund. Same coloring, you know. But not the same heart or mind. Hand me that paper; rather an interesting bridge problem."

  Sir Henry went downstairs. He asked a question of the porter.

  "Mr. Gaskell, sir? He's just gone off in his car. Had to go to London." "Oh, I see. Is Mrs. Jefferson about?" "Mrs. Jefferson, sir, has just gone up to bed." Sir Henry looked into the lounge and through to the ballroom. In the lounge Hugo McLean was doing a crossword puzzle and frowning a good deal over it. In the ballroom, Josie was smiling valiantly into the face of a stout, perspiring man as her nimble feet avoided his destructive tread. The stout man was clearly enjoying his dance. Raymond, graceful and weary, was dancing with an anemic-looking girl with adenoids, dull brown hair and an expensive and exceedingly unbecoming dress. Sir Henry said under his breath, "And so to bed," and went upstairs.

  It was three o'clock. The wind had fallen, the moon was shining over the quiet sea. In Conway Jefferson's room there was no sound except his own heavy breathing as he lay half propped up on pillows. There was no breeze to stir the curtains at the window, but they stirred. For a moment they parted and a figure was silhouetted against the moonlight. Then they fell back into place. Everything was quiet again, but there was someone else inside the room. Nearer and nearer to the bed the intruder stole. The deep breathing on the pillow did not relax. There was no sound, or hardly any sound. A finger and thumb were ready to pick up a fold of skin; in the other hand the hypodermic was ready. And then, suddenly, out of the shadows a hand came and closed over the hand that held the needle; the other arm held the figure in an iron grasp. An unemotional voice the voice of the law, said, "No, you don't! I want that needle!" The light switched on, and from his pillows Conway Jefferson looked grimly at the murderer of Ruby Keene.

  Sir Henry Clithering said, "Speaking as Watson, I want to know your methods. Miss Marple."

  Superintendent Harper said, "I'd like to know what put you on to it first."

  Colonel Melchett said, "You've done it again, by Jove, Miss Marple. I want to hear all about it from the beginning."

  Miss Marple smoothed the pure silk of her best evening gown. She flushed and smiled and looked very self-conscious. She said, "I'm afraid you'll think my 'methods,' as Sir Henry calls them, are terribly amateurish. The truth is, you see, that most people, and I don't exclude policemen, are far too trusting for this wicked world. They believe what is told them. I never do. I'm afraid I always like to prove a thing for myself."

  "That is the scientific attitude," said Sir Henry.

  "In this case," continued Miss Marple, "certain things were taken for granted from the first, instead of just confining oneself to the facts. The facts, as I noted them, were that the victim was quite young and that she bit her nails and that her teeth stuck out a little as young girls' so often do if not corrected in time with a plate, and children are very naughty about their plates and take them out when their elders aren't looking."

  "But that is wandering from the point. Where was I? Oh, yes, looking down at the dead girl and feeling sorry, because it is always sad to see a young life cut short, and thinking that whoever had done it was a very wicked person. Of course it was all very confusing, her being found in Colonel Bantry's library, altogether too like a book to be true. In fact, it made the wrong pattern. It wasn't, you see, meant, which confused us a lot. The real idea had been to plant the body on poor young Basil Blake, a much more likely person, and his action in putting it in the colonel's library delayed things considerably and must have been a source of great annoyance to the real murderer. Originally, you see, Mr. Blake would have been the first object of suspicion. They'd have made inquiries at Danemouth, found he knew the girl, then found he had tied himself up with another girl, and they'd have assumed that Ruby came to blackmail him or something like that, and that he'd strangled her in a fit of rage. Just an ordinary, sordid, what I call night-club type of crime!"

  "But that, of course, all went wrong, and interest became focused much too soon on the Jefferson family to the great annoyance of a certain person."

  "As I've told you, I've got a very suspicious mind. My nephew Raymond tells me in fun, of course, that I have a mind like a sink. He says that most Victorians have. All I can say is that the Victorians knew a good deal about human nature. As I say, having this rather insanitary - or surely sanitary? - mind, I looked at once at the money angle of it. Two people stood to benefit by this girl's death you couldn't get away from that. Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money; especially when you are in financial difficulties, as both these people were. Of course they both seemed very nice, agreeable people; they didn't seem likely people, but one never can tell, can one?"

  "Mrs. Jefferson, for instance. Everyone liked her. But it did seem clear that she had become very restless that summer and that she was tired of the life she led, completely dependent on her father-in-law. She knew, because the doctor had told her, that he couldn't live long, so that was all right, to put it callously, or it would have been all right if Ruby Keene hadn't come along. Mrs. Jefferson was passionately devoted to her son, and some women have a curious idea that crimes committed for the sake of their offspring are almost morally justified. I have come across that attitude once or twice in the village. "Well, 'twas all for Daisy, you see, miss," they say, and seem to think that that makes doubtful conduct quite all right. Very lax thinking."

  "Mr. Mark Gaskell, of course, was a much more likely starter, if I may use such a sporting expression. He was a gambler and had not, I fancied, a very high moral code. But for certain reasons I was of the opinion that a woman was concerned in this crime."

  "As I say, with my eye on motive, the mone
y angle seemed very suggestive. It was annoying, therefore, to find that both these people had alibis for the time when Ruby Keene, according to the medical evidence, had met her death. But soon afterward there came the discovery of the burnt-out car with Pamela Reeves' body in it, and then the whole thing leaped to the eye. The alibis, of course, were worthless."

  "I now had two halves of the case, and both quite convincing, but they did not fit. There must be a connection, but I could not find it. The one person whom I knew to be concerned in the crime hadn't got a motive. It was stupid of me," said Miss Marple meditatively. "If it hadn't been for Dinah Lee I shouldn't have thought of it the most obvious thing in the world. Somerset House! Marriage! It wasn't a question of only Mr. Gaskell or Mrs. Jefferson; there was the further possibility of marriage. If either of those two was married, or even was likely to marry, then the other party to the marriage contract was involved too. Raymond, for instance, might think he had a pretty good chance of marrying a rich wife. He had been very assiduous to Mrs. Jefferson, and it was his charm, I think, that awoke her from her long widowhood. She had been quite content just 'being a daughter to Mr. Jefferson.' Like Ruth and Naomi only Naomi, if you remember, took a lot of trouble to arrange a suitable marriage for Ruth."

  "Besides Raymond, there was Mr. McLean. She liked him very much, and it seemed highly possible that she would marry him in the end. He wasn't well off and he was not far from Danemouth on the night in question. So, it seemed, didn't it," said Miss Marple, "as though anyone might have done it? But, of course, really, in my own mind, I knew. You couldn't get away, could you, from those bitten nails?"

  "Nails?" said Sir Henry. "But she tore her nail and cut the others." "Nonsense," said Miss Marple. "Bitten nails and close-cut nails are quite different! Nobody could mistake them who knew anything about girls' nails - very ugly, bitten nails, as I always tell the girls in my class. Those nails, you see, were a fact. And they could only mean one thing. The body in Colonel Bantry's library wasn't Ruby Keene at all."

  "And that brings you straight to the one person who must be concerned. Josie! Josie identified the body. She knew she must have known that it wasn't Ruby Keene's body. She said it was. She was puzzled, completely puzzled, at finding that body where it was. She practically betrayed that fact. Why? Because she knew none better where it ought to have been found! In Basil Blake's cottage. Who directed our attention to Basil? Josie, by saying to Raymond that Ruby might have been with the film man. And before that, by slipping a snapshot of him into Ruby's handbag. Josie! Josie, who was shrewd, practical, hard as nails and all out for money."

  "Since the body wasn't the body of Ruby Keene, it must be the body of someone else. Of whom? Of the other girl who was also missing. Pamela Reeves! Ruby was eighteen, Pamela sixteen. They were both healthy, rather immature, but muscular girls. But why, I asked myself, all this hocus-pocus? There could be only one reason: to give certain persons an alibi. Who had alibis for the supposed time of Ruby Keene's death? Mark Gaskell, Mrs. Jefferson and Josie."

  "It was really quite interesting, you know, tracing out the course of events, seeing exactly how the plan had worked out. Complicated and yet simple. First of all, the selection of the poor child, Pamela; the approach to her from the film angle. A screen test; of course the poor child couldn't resist it. Not when it was put up to her as plausibly as Mark Gaskell put it. She comes to the hotel, he is waiting for her, he takes her in by the side door and introduces her to Josie, one of their make-up experts! That poor child, it makes me quite sick to think of it! Sitting in Josie's bathroom while Josie bleaches her hair and makes up her face and varnishes her fingernails and toenails. During all this the drug was given. In an ice-cream soda, very likely. She goes off into a coma. I imagine that they put her into one of the empty rooms opposite. They were only cleaned once a week, remember."

  "After dinner Mark Gaskell went out in his car to the sea front, he said. That is when he took Pamela's body to the cottage, arranged it, dressed in one of Ruby's old dresses, on the hearth rug. She was still unconscious, but not dead, when he strangled her with the belt of the frock. Not nice, no, but I hope and pray she knew nothing about it. Really, I feel quite pleased to think of him hanging… That must have been just after ten o'clock. Then back at top speed and into the lounge where Ruby Keene, still alive, was dancing her exhibition dance with Raymond. I should imagine that Josie had given Ruby instructions beforehand. Ruby was accustomed to doing what Josie told her. She was to change, go into Josie's room and wait. She, too, was drugged; probably in the after-dinner coffee. She was yawning, remember, when she talked to young Bartlett."

  "Josie came up later with Raymond to 'look for her,' but nobody but Josie went into Josie's room. She probably finished the girl off then with an injection, perhaps, or a blow on the back of the head. She went down, danced with Raymond, debated with the Jeffersons where Ruby could be and finally went up to bed. In the early hours of the morning she dressed the girl in Pamela's clothes, carried the body down the side stairs and out. She was a strong, muscular young woman. Fetched George Bartlett's car, drove two miles to the quarry, poured petrol over the car and set it alight. Then she walked back to the hotel, probably timing her arrival there for eight or nine o'clock. Up early in her anxiety about Ruby!"

  "An intricate plot," said Colonel Melchett.

  "Not more intricate than the steps of a dance," said Miss Marple.

  "I suppose not."

  "She was very thorough," said Miss Marple. "She even foresaw the discrepancy of the nails. That's why she managed to break one of Ruby's nails on her shawl. It made an excuse for pretending that Ruby had clipped her nails close."

  Harper said, "Yes, she thought of everything. And the only real proof you had was a schoolgirl's bitten nails."

  "More than that," said Miss Marple. "People will talk too much. Mark Gaskell talked too much. He was speaking of Ruby and he said, her teeth ran down her throat, but the dead girl in Colonel Bantry's library had teeth that stuck out."

  Conway Jefferson said rather grimly, "And was the last dramatic finale your idea, Miss Marple?"

  "Well, it was, as a matter of fact. It's so nice to be sure, isn't it?"

  "Sure is the word," said Conway Jefferson grimly.

  "You see," said Miss Marple, "once those two knew that you were going to make a new will, they'd have to do something. They'd already committed two murders on account of the money. So they might as well commit a third. Mark, of course, must be absolutely clear, so he went off to London and established an alibi by dining at a restaurant with friends and going on to a night club. Josie was to do the work. They still wanted Ruby's death to be put down to Basil's account, so Mr. Jefferson's death must be thought due to his heart failing. There was digitalis, so the superintendent tells me, in the syringe. Any doctor would think death from heart trouble quite natural in the circumstances. Josie had loosened one of the stone balls on the balcony and she was going to let it crash down afterward. His death would be put down to the shock of the noise."

  Melchett said, "Ingenious devil."

  Sir Henry said, "So the third death you spoke of was to be Conway Jefferson?"

  Miss Marple shook her head. "Oh, no, I meant Basil Blake. They'd have got him hanged if they could."

  "Or shut up in Broadmoor," said Sir Henry.

  Through the doorway floated Adelaide Jefferson. Hugo McLean followed her. The latter said, "I seem to have missed most of this! Haven't got the hang of it yet. What was Josie to Mark Gaskell?"

  Miss Marple said, "His wife. They were married a year ago. They were keeping it dark until Mr. Jefferson died."

  Conway Jefferson grunted. He said, "Always knew Rosamund had married a rotter. Tried not to admit it to myself. She was fond of him. Fond of a murderer! Well, he'll hang, as well as the woman. I'm glad he went to pieces and gave the show away."

  Miss Marple said, "She was always the strong character. It was her plan throughout. The irony of it is that she got the girl down here h
erself, never dreaming that she would take Mr. Jefferson's fancy and rum all her own prospects."

  Jefferson said, "Poor lass. Poor little Ruby."

  Adelaide laid her hand on his shoulder and pressed it gently. She looked almost beautiful tonight. She said, with a little catch in her breath, "I want to tell you something, Jeff. At once. I'm going to marry Hugo."

  Conway Jefferson looked up at her for a moment. He said gruffly, "About time you married again. Congratulations to you both. By the way, Addie, I'm making a new will tomorrow."

  She nodded. "Oh, yes. I know."

  Jefferson said, "No, you don't. I'm settling ten thousand pounds on you. Everything else goes to Peter when I die. How does that suit you, my girl?"

  "Oh, Jeff!" Her voice broke. "You're wonderful!"

  "He's a nice lad. I'd like to see a good deal of him in in the time I've got left."

  "Oh, you shall!"

  "Got a great feeling for crime, Peter has," said Conway Jefferson meditatively. "Not only has he got the fingernail of the murdered girl, one of the murdered girls, anyway, but he was lucky enough to have a bit of Josie's shawl caught in with the nail. So he's got a souvenir of the murderess too! That makes him very happy!"

  Hugo and Adelaide passed by the ballroom. Raymond came up to them. Adelaide said rather quickly, "I must tell you my news. We're going to be married."

  The smile on Raymond's face was perfect a brave, pensive smile. "I hope," he said, ignoring Hugo and gazing into her eyes, "that you will be very, very happy."

  They passed on and Raymond stood looking after her. "A nice woman," he said to himself. "A very nice woman. And she would have had money too. The time I took to mug up that bit about the Devonshire Starrs. Oh, well, my luck's out. Dance, dance, little friend, and Raymond returned to the ballroom.

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