Agatha Christie - A Murder is Announced

"Oh, no, no." Miss Marple shook her head energetically. "Any little efforts on my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren't satisfied, Mr. Craddock. It was you who wouldn't let the case be closed."

"I wasn't happy about it," said Craddock. "I knew it was all wrong somewhere. But I didn't see where it was wrong, till you showed me. And after that Miss Blacklog had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that that second door had been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever we agreed might have happened – we'd nothing to go upon but a pretty theory. But that oiled door was evidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance – by catching hold of a handle by mistake."

"I think you were led to it, Inspector," said Miss Marple. "But then I'm old-fashioned."

"So the hunt was up again," said Craddock. "But this time with a difference. We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill Letitia Blacklog."

"And there was someone with a motive, and Miss Blacklog knew it," said Miss Marple. "I think she recognised Phillipa almost at once. Because Sonia Goedler seems to have been one of the very few people who had been admitted to Charlotte 's privacy. And when one is old (you wouldn't know this yet, Mr. Craddock) one has a much better memory for a face you've seen when you were young than you have for anyone you've only met a year or two ago. Phillipa must have been just about the same age as her mother was when Charlotte remembered her, and she was very like her mother. The odd thing is that I think Charlotte was very pleased to recognise Phillipa. She became very fond of Phillipa and I think, unconsciously, it helped to stifle any qualms of conscience she may have had. She told herself that when she inherited the money, she was going to look after Phillipa. She would treat her as a daughter. Phillipa and Harry should live with her. She felt quite happy and beneficent about it. But once the Inspector began asking questions and finding out about 'Pip and Emma' Charlotte became very uneasy. She didn't want to make a scapegoat of Phillipa. Her whole idea had been to make the business look like a hold-up by a young criminal and his accidental death. But now, with the discovery of the oiled door, the whole viewpoint was changed. And, except for Phillipa, there wasn't (as far as she knew, for she had absolutely no idea of Julia's identity) anyone with the least possible motive for wishing to kill her. She did her best to shield Phillipa's identity. She was quickwitted enough to tell you when you asked her, that Sonia was small and dark and she took the old snapshots out of the album, so that you shouldn't notice any resemblance, at the same time as she removed snapshots of Letitia herself."

"And to think I suspected Mrs. Swettenham of being Sonia Goedler," said Craddock disgustedly.

"My poor Mamma," murmured Edmund. "A woman of blameless life – or so I have always believed."

"But of course," Miss Marple went on. "It was Dora Bunner who was the real danger. Every day Dora got more forgetful and more talkative. I remember the way Miss Blacklog looked at her the day we went to tea there. Do you know why? Dora had just called her Lotty again. It seemed to us a mere harmless slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte. And so it went on. Poor Dora could not stop herself talking. That day we had coffee together in the Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora was talking about two people, not one – and so, of course, she was. At one moment she spoke of her friend as not pretty but having so much character – but almost at the same moment she described her as a pretty light-hearted girl. She'd talk of Letty as so clever and so successful – and then say what a sad life she'd had, and then there was that quotation about stern affliction bravely borne – which really didn't seem to fit Letitia's life at all. Charlotte must, I think, have overheard a good deal that morning she came into the café. She certainly must have heard Dora mention about the lamp having been changed – about its being the shepherd and not the shepherdess. And she realised then what a very real danger to her security poor devoted Dora Bunner was.

"I'm afraid that that conversation with me in the café really sealed Dora's fate – if you'll excuse such a melodramatic expression. But I think it would have come to the same in the end… Because life couldn't be safe for Charlotte while Dora Bunner was alive. She loved Dora – she didn't want to kill Dora – but she couldn't see any other way. And, I expect (like Nurse Ellerton that I was telling you about, Bunch) she persuaded herself that it was really almost a kindness. Poor Bunny – not long to live anyway and perhaps a painful end. The queer thing is that she did her best to make Bunny's last day a happy day. The birthday party – and the special cake…"

"Delicious Death," said Phillipa with a shudder.

"Yes – yes, it was rather like that… she tried to give her friend a delicious death… The party, and all the things she liked to eat, and trying to stop people saying things to upset her. And then the tablets, whatever they were, in the aspirin bottle by her own bed so that Bunny, when she couldn't find the new bottle of aspirin she'd just bought, would go there to get some. And it would look, as it did look, that the tablets had been meant for Letitia…

"And so Bunny died in her sleep, quite happily, and Charlotte felt safe again. But she missed Dora Bunner – she missed her affection and her loyalty, the missed being able to talk to her about the old days… She cried bitterly the day I came up with that note from Julian – and her grief was quite genuine. She'd killed her own dear friend…"

"That's horrible," said Bunch. "Horrible."

"But it's very human," said Julian Harmon. "One forgets how human murderers are."

"I know," said Miss Marple. "Human. And often very much to be pitied. But very dangerous, too. Especially a weak kindly murderer like Charlotte Blacklog. Because, once a weak person gets realty frightened, they get savage with terror and they've no self-control at all."

"Murgatroyd?" said Julian.

"Yes, poor Miss Murgatroyd. Charlotte must have come up to the cottage and heard them rehearsing the murder. The window was open and she listened. It had never occurred to her until that moment that there was anyone else who could be a danger to her. Miss Hinchliffe was urging her friend to remember what she'd seen and until that moment Charlotte hadn't realised that anyone could have seen anything at all. She'd assumed that everybody would automatically be looking at Rudi Scherz. She must have held her breath outside the window and listened. Was it going to be all right? And then, just as Miss Hinchliffe rushed off to the station Miss Murgatroyd got to a point which showed that she had stumbled on the truth. She called after Miss Hinchliffe: 'She wasn't there…'

"I asked Miss Hinchliffe, you know, if that was the way she said it… Because if she'd said 'She wasn't there' it wouldn't have meant the same thing."

"Now that's too subtle a point for me," said Craddock.

Miss Marple turned her eager pink and white face to him.

"Just think what's going on in Miss Murgatroyd's mind… One does see things, you know, and not know one sees them. In a railway accident once, I remember noticing a large blister of paint at the side of the carriage. I could have drawn it for you afterward. And once, when there was a fly-bomb in London – splinters of glass everywhere – and the shock – but what I remember best is a woman standing in front of me who had a big hole half-way up the leg of her stockings and the stockings didn't match. So when Miss Murgatroyd stopped thinking and just tried to remember what she saw, she remembered a good deal.

"She started, I think, near the mantelpiece, where the torch must have hit first – then it went along the two windows and there were people in between the windows and her. Mrs. Harmon with her knuckles screwed into her eyes for instance. She went on in her mind following the torch past Miss Bunner with her mouth open and her eyes staring – past a blank wall and a table with a lamp and a cigarette-box. And then came the shots – and quite suddenly she remembered a most incredible thing. She'd seen the wall where, later, there were the two bullet holes, the wall where Letitia Blacklog had been standing when she was shot, and at the moment when the revolver went off and Letty was shot, Letty hadn't been there…