Агата Кристи: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. No. 75, April 1959, British Edition

“Yes, dear,” said Miss Marple placidly. “One always does. Is Miss Instow a pretty girl? I suppose she plays golf?”

“Yes. She’s good at all games. And she’s attractive-looking, very fair with a healthy skin, and nice steady blue eyes. Of course, we always have felt that she and George Pritchard — I mean if things had been different — they are so well suited to one another.”

“And they were friends?” asked Miss Marple.

“Oh, yes. Great friends.”

“Do you think, Dolly,” said Colonel Bantry plaintively, “that I might be allowed to go on with my story?”

“Arthur,” said Mrs. Bantry resignedly, “wants to get back to his ghosts.”

“I had the rest of the story from George himself,” went on the colonel. “There’s no doubt that Mrs. Pritchard got the wind up badly toward the end of the next month. She marked off on a calendar the day when the moon would be full, and on that night she had both the nurse and then George into her room and made them study the wallpaper carefully. There were pink hollyhocks and red ones, but there were no blue ones. Then when George left the room she locked the door—”

“And in the morning there was a large blue hollyhock,” said Miss Helier joyfully.

“Quite right,” said Colonel Bantry. “Or at any rate, nearly right. One flower of a hollyhock just above her head had turned blue. It staggered George; and of course the more it staggered him the more he refused to take the thing seriously. He insisted that the whole thing was some kind of practical joke. He ignored the evidence of the locked door and the fact that Mrs. Pritchard discovered the change before anyone — even Nurse Copling — was admitted into her bedroom.

“As I say, it staggered George, and it made him unreasonable. His wife wanted to leave the house, and he wouldn’t let her. He was inclined to believe in the supernatural for the first time, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He usually gave, in to his wife, but this time he just wouldn’t. Mary was not to make a fool of herself, he said. The whole thing was the most infernal nonsense.

“And so the next month sped away. Mrs. Pritchard made less protest than one would have imagined. I think she was supersititous enough to believe that she couldn’t escape her fate. She repeated again and again, ‘The blue primrose — warning. The blue hollyhock — danger. The blue geranium — death! And she would lie there looking at the clump of pinky-red geraniums nearest her bed.

“The whole business was pretty nervy. Even the nurse caught the infection. She came to George two days before full moon and begged him to take Mrs. Pritchard away. George was angry.

“ ‘If all, the flowers on that damned wall turned into blue devils it couldn’t kill anyone!’ he shouted.

“ ‘It might. Shock has killed people before.’

“ ‘Nonsense,’ said George.

“George has always been a shade pig-headed. You can’t drive him. I believe he had a secret idea that his wife worked the changes herself and that it was all some morbid hysterical plan of hers.

“Well, the fatal night came. Mrs. Pritchard locked her door as usual. She was very calm — in almost an exalted state of mind. The nurse was worried by her state and wanted to give her a stimulant — an injection of strychnine — but Mrs. Pritchard refused. In a way, I believe, she was enjoying herself. George said she was.”

“I think that’s quite possible,” said Mrs. Bantry. “There must have been a strange sort of glamor about the whole thing.”

“There was no violent ringing of a bell the next morning. Mrs. Pritchard usually woke about eight. When, at eight thirty, there was no sign from her, nurse rapped loudly on the door. Getting no reply, she fetched George, and insisted on the door being broken open. They did so with the help of a chisel.

“One look at the still figure on the bed was enough for Nurse Copling. She sent George to telephone for the doctor, but it was too late. Mrs. Pritchard, the doctor said, must have been dead at least eight hours. Her smelling salts lay by her hand on the bed, and on the wall beside her one of the pinky-red geraniums was a bright deep blue.”

“Horrible,” said Miss Helier with a shiver.

Sir Henry was frowning.

“No additional details?”

Colonel Bantry shook his head, but Mrs. Bantry spoke quickly.

“The gas.”

“What about the gas?” asked Sir Henry.

“When the doctor arrived there was a slight smell of gas, and sure enough he found the gas ring in the fireplace very slightly turned on; but so little that it couldn’t have mattered.”

“Did Mr. Pritchard and the nurse not notice it when they first went in?”

“The nurse said she did notice a silent smell. George said he didn’t notice gas, but something made him feel queer; but he put that down to shock — and probably it was. At any rate, there was no question of gas poisoning. The smell was scarcely noticeable.”

“And that’s the end of the story?”

“No, it isn’t. One way and another, there was a lot of talk. The servants, you see, had overheard things — had heard, for instance, Mrs. Pritchard telling her husband that he hated her and would jeer if she were dying. And also more recent remarks. She said one day, apropos of his refusing to leave the house, ‘Very well, when I am dead, I hope everyone will realize that you have killed me.’ And as ill luck would have it, he had been mixing some weed killer for the garden paths the very day before. One of the younger servants had seen him and had afterward observed him taking up a glass of hot milk to his wife.

“The talk spread and grew. The doctor had given a certificate — I don’t know exactly in what terms — shock, syncope, heart failure, probably some medical term meaning nothing much. However, the poor lady had not been a month in her grave before the exhumation order was applied for and granted.”

“And the result of the autopsy was nil, I remember,” said Sir Henry gravely.

“The whole thing is really very curious,” said Mrs. Bantry. “That fortune-teller, for instance — Zarida. At the address where she was supposed to be, no one had ever heard of any such person!”

“She appeared once — out of the blue,” said her husband, “and then utterly vanished.”

“And what is more,” continued Mrs. Bantry, “little Nurse Carstairs, who was supposed to have recommended her, had never even heard of her.”

“It’s a mysterious story,” said Dr. Lloyd. “One can make guesses; but to guess—”

He shook his head.

“Has Mr. Pritchard married Miss Instow?” asked Miss Marple in her gentle voice.

“Now why do you ask that?” inquired Sir Henry.

Miss Marple opened gentle blue eyes.

“It seems to me so important,” she said. “Have they married?”

Colonel Bantry shook his head.

“We — well, we expected something of the kind — but it’s eighteen months now. I don’t believe they even see much of each other.”

“That is important,” said Miss Marple. “Very important.”

“Then you think the same as I do,” said Mrs. Bantry.

“Now, Dolly,” said her husband. “It’s unjustifiable — what you’re going to say. You can’t go about accusing people.”

“Don’t be so — so manly, Arthur. Men are always afraid to say anything. Anyway, this is all between ourselves. It’s just a wild fantastic idea of mine that possibly — only possibly — Jean Instow disguised herself as a fortune-teller. Mind you, she may have done it for a joke. I don’t for a minute think she meant any harm; but if she did do it, and if Mrs. Pritchard was foolish enough to die of fright — well, that’s what Miss Marple meant, wasn’t it?”