Agatha Christie - Spider's Web

She looked around at her enthralled audience. "Now, I've been thinking about how to get rid of him," she went on. "I happened to dig out a nice deep trench in the garden this morning – for the sweet peas. Well, we'll bury the body there and plant a nice double row of sweet peas all along it."

Completely at a loss for words, Clarissa collapsed onto the sofa.

"I'm afraid, Miss Peake," said Sir Rowland, "grave-digging is no longer a matter for private enterprise."

The gardener laughed merrily at this. "Oh, you men!" she exclaimed, wagging her finger at Sir Rowland. "Always such sticklers for propriety. We women have got more common sense." She leaned over the back of the sofa to address Clarissa. "We can even take murder in our stride. Eh, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown?"

Hugo suddenly leaped to his feet. "This is absurd!" he shouted. "Clarissa didn't kill him. I don't believe a word of it."

"Well, if she didn't kill him," Miss Peake asked breezily, "who did?"

At that moment, Pippa entered the room from the hall, wearing a dressing-gown, walking in a very sleepy manner, yawning, and carrying a glass dish containing chocolate mousse with a teaspoon in it. Everyone turned and looked at her.

STARTLED, CLARISSA jumped to her feet. "Pippa!" she cried. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"I woke up, so I came down," said Pippa between yawns.

Clarissa led her to the sofa. "I'm so frightfully hungry," Pippa complained, yawning again. She sat, then looked up at Clarissa and said reproachfully, "You said you'd bring this up to me."

Clarissa took the dish of chocolate mousse from Pippa, placed it on the stool, and then sat on the sofa next to the child. "I thought you were still asleep, Pippa," she explained.

"I was asleep," Pippa told her, with another enormous yawn. "Then I thought a policeman came in and looked at me. I'd been having an awful dream, and then I half woke up. Then I was hungry, so I thought I'd come down."

She shivered, looked around at everyone, and continued, "Besides, I thought it might be true."

Sir Rowland came and sat on the sofa on Pippa's other side. "What might be true, Pippa?" he asked her.

"That horrible dream I had about Oliver," Pippa replied, shuddering as she recollected it.

"What was your dream about Oliver, Pippa?" Sir Rowland asked quietly. "Tell me."

Pippa looked nervous as she took a small piece of moulded wax from a pocket of her dressing-gown. "I made this earlier tonight," she said. "I melted down a wax candle, then I made a pin red-hot, and I stuck the pin through it."

As she handed the small wax figure to Sir Rowland, Jeremy suddenly gave a startled exclamation of "Good Lord!" He leaped up and began to look around the room, searching for the book Pippa had tried to show him earlier.

"I said the right words and everything," Pippa was explaining to Sir Rowland, "but I couldn't do it quite the way the book said."

"What book?" Clarissa asked. "I don't understand."

Jeremy, who had been looking along the bookshelves, now found what he was seeking. "Here it is," he exclaimed, handing the book to Clarissa over the back of the sofa. "Pippa got it in the market today. She called it a recipe book."

Pippa suddenly laughed. "And you said to me, 'Can you eat it?'" she reminded Jeremy.

Clarissa examined the book. "A Hundred Well-tried and Trusty Spells" she read on the cover. She opened the book, and read on. "'How to Cure Warts. How to Get Your Heart's Desire. How to Destroy Your Enemy.' Oh, Pippa – is that what you did?"

Pippa looked at her stepmother solemnly. "Yes," she answered.

As Clarissa handed the book back to Jeremy, Pippa looked at the wax figure Sir Rowland was still holding. "It isn't very like Oliver," she admitted, "and I couldn't get any clippings of his hair. But it was as much like him as I could make it... and then... then – I dreamt, I thought..." She pushed her hair back from her face as she spoke. "I thought I came down here and he was there." She pointed behind the sofa. "And it was all true."

Sir Rowland put the wax figure down on the stool quietly, as Pippa continued, "He was there, dead. I had killed him." She looked around at them all, and began to shake. "Is it true?" she asked. "Did I kill him?"

"No, darling. No," said Clarissa tearfully, putting an arm around Pippa.

"But he was there," Pippa insisted.

"I know, Pippa," Sir Rowland told her. "But you didn't kill him. When you stuck the pin through that wax figure, it was your hate and your fear of him that you killed in that way. You're not afraid of him and you don't hate him any longer. Isn't that true?"

Pippa turned to him. "Yes, it's true," she admitted. "But I did see him." She glanced over the back of the sofa. "I came down here and I saw him lying there, dead." She leaned her head on Sir Rowland's chest. "I did see him, Uncle Roly."

"Yes, dear, you did see him," Sir Rowland told her gently. "But it wasn't you who killed him." She looked up at him anxiously, and he continued, "Now, listen to me, Pippa. Somebody hit him over the head with a big stick. You didn't do that, did you?"

"Oh, no," said Pippa, shaking her head vigorously. "No, not a stick." She turned to Clarissa. "You mean a golf stick like Jeremy had?"

Jeremy laughed. "No, not a golf club, Pippa, " he explained. "Something like that big stick that's kept in the hall stand."

"You mean the one that used to belong to Mr. Sellon, the one Miss Peake calls a knobkerrie?" Pippa asked.

Jeremy nodded.

"Oh, no," Pippa told him. "I wouldn't do anything like that. I couldn't." She turned back to Sir Rowland. "Oh, Uncle Roly, I wouldn't have killed him really."

"Of course you wouldn't," Clarissa intervened in a voice of calm common sense. "Now come along, darling, you eat up your chocolate mousse and forget all about it." She picked up the dish and offered it to Pippa. However, Pippa refused it with a shake of her head, and Clarissa replaced the dish on the stool. She and Sir Rowland helped Pippa to lie down on the sofa, Clarissa took Pippa's hand, and Sir Rowland stroked the child's hair affectionately.

"I don't understand a word of all this," Miss Peake announced. "What is that book, anyway?" she asked Jeremy, who was now glancing through it.

"'How to Bring a Murrain on Your Neighbour's Cattle.' Does that attract you, Miss Peake?" he replied. "I dare say with a little adjusting you could bring blackspot to your neighbour's roses."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the gardener said brusquely.

"Black magic," Jeremy explained.

"I'm not superstitious, thank goodness," she snorted dismissively, moving away from him.

Hugo, who had been attempting to follow the train of events, now confessed, "I'm in a complete fog."

"Me, too," Miss Peake agreed, tapping him on the shoulder. "So I'll just have a peep and see how the boys in blue are getting on." With another of her boisterous laughs, she went out into the hall.

Sir Rowland looked around at Clarissa, Hugo and Jeremy. "Now where does that leave us?" he wondered aloud.

Clarissa was still recovering from the revelations of the previous few minutes.

"What a fool I've been," she exclaimed confusedly. "I should have known Pippa couldn't possibly... I didn't know anything about this book. Pippa said she killed him and I... I thought it was true."

Hugo got to his feet. "Oh, you mean that you thought Pippa..."

"Yes, darling," Clarissa interrupted him urgently and emphatically to stop him from saying any more. But Pippa, fortunately, was now sleeping peacefully on the sofa.

"Oh, I see," said Hugo. "That explains it. Good God!"

"Well, we'd better go to the police now, and tell them the truth at last," Jeremy suggested.

Sir Rowland shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't know," he murmured. "Clarissa has already told them three different stories – "