Agatha Christie: Endless Night

"You know the old woman," I said. "Do you actually think that she would have been capable of causing an accident by deliberate malice?"

"I can't really believe so, Mike," he said. "To do a thing like that you need a very strong motive. Revenge for some personal injury caused to you. Something like that. And what had Ellie ever done to her? Nothing."

"It seems crazy, I know. Why was she constantly appearing in that queer way, threatening Ellie, telling her to go away? She seemed to have a grudge against her, but how could she have a grudge? She'd never met Ellie or seen her before. What was Ellie to her but a perfectly strange American? There's no past history, no link between them."

"I know, I know," said Phillpot. "I can't help feeling, Mike, that there's something here that we don't understand. I don't know how much your wife was over in England previous to her marriage. Did she ever live in this part of the world for any length of time?"

"No, I'm sure of that. It's all so difficult. I don't really know anything about Ellie. I mean, who she knew, where she went. We just – met." I checked myself and looked at him.

I said "You don't know how we came to meet, do you? No," I went on, "you wouldn't guess in a hundred years how we met." And suddenly, in spite of myself, I began to laugh. Then I pulled myself together. I could feel that I was very near hysteria.

I could see his kind patient face just waiting till I was myself again. He was a helpful man. There was no doubt of that.

"We met here," I said. "Here at Gipsy's Acre. I had been reading the notice board of the sale of The Towers and I walked up the road, up the hill because I was curious about this place. And that's how I first saw her. She was standing there under a tree. I startled her – or perhaps it was she who startled me. Anyway, that's how it all began. That's how we came to live here in this damned, cursed, unlucky place."

"Have you felt that all along? That it would be unlucky?"

"No. Yes. No, I don't know really. I've never admitted it. I've never wanted to admit it. But I think she knew. I think she's been frightened all along." Then I said slowly, "I think somebody deliberately wanted to frighten her."

He said rather sharply, "What do you mean by that? Who wanted to frighten her?"

"Presumably the gipsy woman. But somehow I'm not quite sure about it… She used to lie in wait for Ellie, you know, tell her this place would bring her bad luck. Tell her she ought to go away from it."

"Tcha!" He spoke angrily. "I wish I'd been told more about that. I'd have spoken to old Esther. Told her she couldn't do things like that."

"Why did she?" I asked. "What made her?"

"Like so many people," said Phillpot, "she likes to make herself important. She likes either to give people warnings or else tell their fortunes and prophesy happy lives for them. She likes to pretend she knows the future."

"Supposing," I said slowly, "somebody gave her money. I've been told she's fond of money."

"Yes, she was very fond of money. If someone paid her – that's what you're suggesting – what put that idea into your head?"

"Sergeant Keene," I said. "I should never have thought of it myself."

"I see." He shook his head doubtfully.

"I can't believe," he said, "that she would deliberately try to frighten your wife to the extent of causing an accident."

"She mayn't have counted on a fatal accident. She might have done something to frighten the horse," I said. "Let off a squib or flapped a sheet of white paper or something. Sometimes, you know, I did feel that she had some entirely personal grudge against Ellie, a grudge for some reason that I don't know about."

"That sounds very far-fetched."

"This place never belonged to her?" I asked. "The land, I mean."

"No. Gipsies may have been warned off this property, probably more than once. Gipsies are always getting turned off places, but I doubt if they keep up a life-long resentment about it."

"No," I said, "that would be far-fetched. But I do wonder if for some reason that we don't know about she was paid -"

"A reason we don't know about – what reason?"

I reflected a moment or two.

"Everything I say will just sound fantastic. Let's say that, as Keene suggested, someone paid her to do the things she did. What did that someone want? Say they wanted to make us both go away from here. They concentrated on Ellie, not on me, because I wouldn't be scared in the way Ellie would be. They frightened her to get her – and through her both of us – to leave here. If so, there must be some reason for wanting the land to come on the market again. Somebody, shall we say, for some reason wants our land." I stopped.

"It's a logical suggestion," Phillpot said, "but I know of no reason why anyone should."

"Some important mineral deposit," I suggested, "that nobody knows about."

"Hm, I doubt it."

"Something like buried treasure. Oh, I know it sounds absurd. Or, well, say the proceeds of some big bank robbery."

Phillpot was still shaking his head but rather less vehemently now.

"The only other proposition," I said, "is to go one step farther back as you did just now. Behind Mrs. Lee to the person who paid Mrs. Lee. That might be some unknown enemy of Ellie's."

"But you can't think of anyone it would be likely to be?"

"No. She didn't know anyone down here. That I'm sure of. She had no links with this place." I got up.

"Thank you for listening to me," I said.

"I wish I could have been more helpful."

I went out of the door, fingering the thing that I was carrying in my pocket. Then, taking a sudden decision, I turned on my heel and went back into the room.

"There's something I'd like to show you," I said. "Actually, I was going to take it down to show to Sergeant Keene and see what he could make of it."

I dived into my pocket and brought, out a stone round which was wrapped a crumpled bit of paper with printed writing on it.

"This was thrown through our breakfast window this morning," I said. "I heard the crash of the glass as I came down the stairs. A stone was thrown through the window once before when we first came here. I don't know if this is the same person or not."

I took off the wrapping paper and held it out to him. It was a dirty, coarse bit of paper. There was some printing on it in rather faint ink. Phillpot put on his spectacles and bent over the piece of paper. The message on it was quite short. All it said was, "It was a woman who killed your wife."

Phillpot's eyebrows went up.

"Extraordinary," he said. "Was the first message you got printed?"

"I can't remember now. It was just a warning to go away from here. I can't even remember the exact wording of it now. Anyway, it seems pretty certain that that was hooligans. This doesn't seem quite the same."

"Do you think it was thrown in by someone who knew something?"

"Probably just a bit of silly cruel malice in the anonymous letter class. You get it, you know, a good deal in villages."

He handed it back to me.

"But I think your instinct was right," he said, "to take it to Sergeant Keene. He'll know more about these anonymous things than I should."

I found Sergeant Keene at the police station and he was definitely interested.

"There's queer things going on here," he said.

"What do you think it means?" I asked.

"Hard to say. Might be just malice leading up to accusing some particular person."

"It might be just accusing Mrs. Lee, I suppose?"

"No, I don't think it would have been put that way. It might be – I'd like to think it was – it might be that someone saw or heard something. Heard a noise or a cry or the horse bolted right past someone, and they saw or met a woman soon afterwards. But it sounds as though it was a different woman from the gipsy, because everyone thinks the gipsy's mixed up in this anyway. So this sounds as though another – an entirely different woman was meant."