A Murder Is Announced mm-5 Read online

  She was all incoherent delight and pleasure at seeing Sir Henry, and became quite flustered when introduced to the Chief Constable and Detective-Inspector Craddock.

  'But really, Sir Henry, how fortunate?how very fortunate. So long since I have seen you?Yes, my rheumatism. Very bad of late. Of course I couldn't have afforded this hotel (really fantastic what they charge nowadays) but Raymond—my nephew, Raymond West, you may remember him—'

  'Everyone knows his name.'

  'Yes, the dear boy has been so successful with his clever books—he prides himself upon never writing about anything pleasant. The dear boy insisted on paying all my expenses. And his dear wife is making a name for herself too, as an artist. Mostly jugs of dying flowers and broken combs on window-sills. I never dare tell her, but I still admire Blair Leighton and Alma Tadema. Oh, but I'm chattering. And the Chief Constable himself—indeed I never expected—so afraid I shall be taking up his time—'

  'Completely ga-ga,' thought the disgusted Detective-Inspector Craddock.

  'Come into the Manager's private room,' said Rydesdale. 'We can talk better there.'

  When Miss Marple had been disentangled from her wool, and her spare knitting pins collected, she accompanied them, fluttering and protesting, to Mr Rowlandson's comfortable sitting-room.

  'Now, Miss Marple, let's hear what you have to tell us,' said the Chief Constable.

  Miss Marple came to the point with unexpected brevity.

  'It was a cheque,' she said. 'He altered it.'

  'He?'

  'The young man at the desk here, the one who is supposed to have staged that hold-up and shot himself.'

  'He altered a cheque, you say?'

  Miss Marple nodded.

  'Yes. I have it here.' She extracted it from her bag and laid it on the table. 'It came this morning with my others from the Bank. You can see, it was for seven pounds, and he altered it to seventeen. A stroke in front of the 7, and teen added after the word seven with a nice artistic little blot just blurring the whole word. Really very nicely done. A certain amount of practice, I should say. It's the same ink, because I wrote the cheque actually at the desk. I should think he'd done it quite often before, wouldn't you?'

  'He picked the wrong person to do it to, this time,' remarked Sir Henry.

  Miss Marple nodded agreement.

  'Yes. I'm afraid he would never have gone very far in crime. I was quite the wrong person. Some busy young married woman, or some girl having a love affair—that's the kind who write cheques for all sorts of different sums and don't really look through their passbooks carefully. But an old woman who has to be careful of the pennies, and who has formed habits—that's quite the wrong person to choose. Seventeen pounds is a sum I never write a cheque for. Twenty pounds, a round sum, for the monthly wages and books. And as for my personal expenditure, I usually cash seven—it used to be five, but everything has gone up so.'

  'And perhaps he reminded you of someone?' prompted Sir Henry, mischief in his eye.

  Miss Marple smiled and shook her head at him.

  'You are very naughty, Sir Henry. As a matter of fact he did. Fred Tyler, at the fish shop. Always slipped an extra 1 in the shillings column. Eating so much fish as we do nowadays, it made a long bill, and lots of people never added it up. Just ten shillings in his pocket every time, not much but enough to get himself a few neckties and take Jessie Spragge (the girl in the draper's) to the pictures. Cut a splash, that's what these young fellows want to do. Well, the very first week I was here, there was a mistake in my bill. I pointed it out to the young man and he apologized very nicely and looked very much upset, but I thought to myself then: "You've got a shifty eye, young man."

  'What I mean by a shifty eye,' continued Miss Marple, 'is the kind that looks very straight at you and never looks away or blinks.'

  Craddock gave a sudden movement of appreciation. He thought to himself 'Jim Kelly to the life,' remembering a notorious swindler he had helped to put behind bars not long ago.

  'Rudi Scherz was a thoroughly unsatisfactory character,' said Rydesdale. 'He's got a police record in Switzerland, we find.'

  'Made the place too hot for him, I suppose, and came over here with forged papers?' said Miss Marple.

  'Exactly,' said Rydesdale.

  'He was going about with the little red-haired waitress from the dining-room,' said Miss Marple. 'Fortunately I don't think her heart's affected at all. She just liked to have someone a bit "different", and he used to give her flowers and chocolates which the English boys don't do much. Has she told you all she knows?' she asked, turning suddenly to Craddock. 'Or not quite all yet?'

  'I'm not absolutely sure,' said Craddock cautiously.

  'I think there's a little to come,' said Miss Marple. 'She's looking very worried. Brought me kippers instead of herrings this morning, and forgot the milk jug. Usually she's an excellent waitress. Yes, she's worried. Afraid she might have to give evidence or something like that. But I expect'—her candid blue eyes swept over the manly proportions and handsome face of Detective-Inspector Craddock with truly feminine Victorian appreciation—'that you will be able to persuade her to tell you all she knows.' Detective-Inspector Craddock blushed and Sir Henry chuckled.

  'It might be important,' said Miss Marple. 'He may have told her who it was.'

  Rydesdale stared at her.

  'Who what was?'

  'I express myself so badly. Who it was who put him up to it, I mean.'

  'So you think someone put him up to it?'

  Miss Marple's eyes widened in surprise.

  'Oh, but surely—I mean?Here's a personable young man—who filches a little bit here and a little bit there—alters a small cheque, perhaps helps himself to a small piece of jewellery if it's left lying around, or takes a little money from the till—all sorts of small petty thefts. Keeps himself going in ready money so that he can dress well, and take a girl about—all that sort of thing. And then suddenly he goes off, with a revolver, and holds up a room full of people, and shoots at someone. He'd never have done a thing like that—not for a moment! He wasn't that kind of person. It doesn't make sense.'

  Craddock drew in his breath sharply. That was what Letitia Blacklock had said. What the Vicar's wife had said. What he himself felt with increasing force. It didn't make sense. And now Sir Henry's old Pussy was saying it, too, with complete certainty in her fluting old lady's voice.

  'Perhaps you'll tell us, Miss Marple,' he said, and his voice was suddenly aggressive, 'what did happen, then?'

  She turned on him in surprise.

  'But how should I know what happened? There was an account in the paper—but it says so little. One can make conjectures, of course, but one has no accurate information.'

  'George,' said Sir Henry, 'would it be very unorthodox if Miss Marple were allowed to read the notes of the interviews Craddock had with these people at Chipping Cleghorn?'

  'It may be unorthodox,' said Rydesdale, 'but I've not got where I am by being orthodox. She can read them. I'd be curious to hear what she has to say.'

  Miss Marple was all embarrassment.

  'I'm afraid you've been listening to Sir Henry. Sir Henry is always too kind. He thinks too much of any little observations I may have made in the past. Really, I have no gifts—no gifts at all—except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature. People, I find, are apt to be far too trustful. I'm afraid that I have a tendency always to believe the worst. Not a nice trait. But so often justified by subsequent events.'

  'Read these,' said Rydesdale, thrusting the typewritten sheets upon her. 'They won't take you long. After all, these people are your kind—you must know a lot of people like them. You may be able to spot something that we haven't. The case is just going to be closed. Let's have an amateur's opinion on it before we shut up the files. I don't mind telling you that Craddock here isn't satisfied. He says, like you, that it doesn't make sense.'

  There was silence whilst Miss Marple read. She put the typewritten sheets down at
last.

  'It's very interesting,' she said with a sigh. 'All the different things that people say—and think. The things they see—or think that they see. And all so complex, nearly all so trivial and if one thing isn't trivial, it's so hard to spot which one—like a needle in a haystack.'

  Craddock felt a twinge of disappointment. Just for a moment or two, he wondered if Sir Henry might be right about this funny old lady. She might have put her finger on something—old people were often very sharp. He'd never, for instance, been able to conceal anything from his own great aunt Emma. She had finally told him that his nose twitched when he was about to tell a lie.

  But just a few fluffy generalities, that was all that Sir Henry's famous Miss Marple could produce. He felt annoyed with her and said rather curtly:

  'The truth of the matter is that the facts are indisputable. Whatever conflicting details these people give, they all saw one thing. They saw a masked man with a revolver and a torch open the door and hold them up, and whether they think he said "Stick 'em up" or "Your money or your life," or whatever phrase is associated with a hold-up in their minds, they saw him.'

  'But surely,' said Miss Marple gently. 'They couldn't—actually—have seen anything at all?'

  Craddock caught his breath. She'd got it! She was sharp, after all. He was testing her by that speech of his, but she hadn't fallen for it. It didn't actually make any difference to the facts, or to what happened, but she'd realized, as he'd realized, that those people who had seen a masked man holding them up couldn't really have seen him at all.

  'If I understand rightly,' Miss Marple had a pink flush on her cheeks, her eyes were bright and pleased as a child's, 'there wasn't any light in the hall outside—and not on the landing upstairs either?'

  'That's right,' said Craddock.

  'And so, if a man stood in the doorway and flashed a powerful torch into the room, nobody could see anything but the torch, could they?'

  'No, they couldn't. I tried it out.'

  'And so when some of them say they saw a masked man, etc., they are really, though they don't realize it, recapitulating from what they saw afterwards —when the lights came on. So it really all fits in very well, doesn't it, on the assumption that Rudi Scherz was the—I think, "fall guy" is the expression I mean?'

  Rydesdale stared at her in such surprise that she grew pinker still.

  'I may have got the term wrong,' she murmured. 'I am not very clever about Americanisms—and I understand they change very quickly. I got it from one of Mr Dashiel Hammett's stories. (I understand from my nephew Raymond that he is considered at the top of the tree in what is called the "tough" style of literature.) A "fall guy", if I understand it rightly, means someone who will be blamed for a crime really committed by someone else. This Rudi Scherz seems to me exactly the right type for that. Rather stupid really, you know, but full of cupidity and probably extremely credulous.'

  Rydesdale said, smiling tolerantly:

  'Are you suggesting that he was persuaded by someone to go out and take pot shots at a room full of people? Rather a tall order.'

  'I think he was told that it was a joke,' said Miss Marple. 'He was paid for doing it, of course. Paid, that is, to put an advertisement in the newspaper, to go out and spy out the household premises, and then, on the night in question, he was to go there, assume a mask and a black cloak and throw open a door, brandishing a torch, and cry "Hands up!"'

  'And fire off a revolver?'

  'No, no,' said Miss Marple. 'He never had a revolver.'

  'But everyone says—' began Rydesdale, and stopped.

  'Exactly,' said Miss Marple. 'Nobody could possibly have seen a revolver even if he had one. And I don't think he had. I think that after he'd called "Hands up" somebody came up quietly behind him in the darkness and fired those two shots over his shoulder. It frightened him to death. He swung round and as he did so, that other person shot him and then let the revolver drop beside him?'

  The three men looked at her. Sir Henry said softly:

  'It's a possible theory.'

  'But who is Mr X who came up in the darkness?' asked the Chief Constable.

  Miss Marple coughed.

  'You'll have to find out from Miss Blacklock who wanted to kill her.'

  Good for old Dora Bunner, thought Craddock. Instinct against intelligence every time.

  'So you think it was a deliberate attempt on Miss Blacklock's life,' asked Rydesdale.

  'It certainly has that appearance,' said Miss Marple. 'Though there are one or two difficulties. But what I was really wondering about was whether there mightn't be a short cut. I've no doubt that whoever arranged this with Rudi Scherz took pains to tell him to keep his mouth shut, but if he talked to anybody it would probably be to that girl, Myrna Harris. And he may—he just may—have dropped some hint as to the kind of person who'd suggested the whole thing.'

  'I'll see her now,' said Craddock, rising.

  Miss Marple nodded.

  'Yes, do, Inspector Craddock. I'll feel happier when you have. Because once she's told you anything she knows she'll be much safer.'

  'Safer??Yes, I see.'

  He left the room. The Chief Constable said doubtfully, but tactfully:

  'Well, Miss Marple, you've certainly given us something to think about.'

  ***

  'I'm sorry about it, I am really,' said Myrna Harris. 'It's ever so nice of you not to be ratty about it. But you see Mum's the sort of person who fusses like anything. And it did look as though I'd—what's the phrase?—been an accessory before the fact' (the words ran glibly off her tongue). 'I mean, I was afraid you'd never take my word for it that I only thought it was just a bit of fun.'

  Inspector Craddock repeated the reassuring phrase with which he had broken down Myrna's resistance.

  'I will. I'll tell you all about it. But you will keep me out of it if you can because of Mum? It all started with Rudi breaking a date with me. We were going to the pictures that evening and then he said he wouldn't be able to come and I was a bit standoffish with him about it—because after all, it had been his idea and I don't fancy being stood up by a foreigner. And he said it wasn't his fault, and I said that was a likely story, and then he said he'd got a bit of a lark on that night—and that he wasn't going to be out of pocket by it and how would I fancy a wrist-watch? So I said, what do you mean by a lark? And he said not to tell anyone, but there was to be a party somewhere and he was to stage a sham hold-up. Then he showed me the advertisement he'd put in and I had to laugh. He was a bit scornful about it all. Said it was kid's stuff, really—but that was just like the English. They never really grew up—and of course, I said what did he mean by talking like that about Us—and we had a bit of an argument, but we made it up. Only you can understand, can't you, sir, that when I read all about it, and it hadn't been a joke at all and Rudi had shot someone and then shot himself—why, I didn't know what to do. I thought if I said I knew about it beforehand, it would look as though I were in on the whole thing. But it really did seem like a joke when he told me about it. I'd have sworn he meant it that way. I didn't even know he'd got a revolver. He never said anything about taking a revolver with him.'

  Craddock comforted her and then asked the most important question.

  'Who did he say it was who had arranged this party?'

  But there he drew a blank.

  'He never said who it was that was getting him to do it. I suppose nobody was, really. It was all his own doing.'

  'He didn't mention a name? Did he say he—or she?'

  'He didn't say anything except that it was going to be a scream. "I shall laugh to see all their faces." That's what he said.'

  He hadn't had long to laugh, Craddock thought.

  ***

  'It's only a theory,' said Rydesdale as they drove back to Medenham. 'Nothing to support it, nothing at all. Put it down as old maid's vapourings and let it go, eh?'

  'I'd rather not do that, sir.'

  'It's all very improbable. A
mysterious X appearing suddenly in the darkness behind our Swiss friend. Where did he come from? Who was he? Where had he been?'

  'He could have come in through the side door,' said Craddock, 'just as Scherz came. Or,' he added slowly, 'he could have come from the kitchen.'

  'She could have come from the kitchen, you mean?'

  'Yes, sir, it's a possibility. I've not been satisfied about that girl all along. She strikes me as a nasty bit of goods. All that screaming and hysterics—it could have been put on. She could have worked on this young fellow, let him in at the right moment, rigged the whole thing, shot him, bolted back into the dining-room, caught up her bit of silver and her chamois and started her screaming act.'

  'Against that we have the fact that—er—what's his name—oh, yes, Edmund Swettenham, definitely says the key was turned on the outside of the door, and that he turned it to release her. Any other door into that part of the house?'

  'Yes, there's a door to the back stairs and kitchen just under the stairs, but it seems the handle came off three weeks ago and nobody's come to put it on yet. In the meantime you can't open the door. I'm bound to say that story seems correct. The spindle and the two handles were on a shelf outside the door in the hall and they were thickly coated with dust, but of course a professional would have ways of opening that door all right.'

  'Better look up the girl's record. See if her papers are in order. But it seems to me the whole thing is very theoretical.'

  Again the Chief Constable looked inquiringly at his subordinate. Craddock replied quietly:

  'I know, sir, and of course if you think the case ought to be closed, it must be. But I'd appreciate it if I could work on it for just a little longer.'