Agatha Christie - A Murder is Announced

"You see what I mean now? She'd been thinking of the three women Miss Hinchliffe had told her to think about. If one of them hadn't been there, it would have been the personality she'd have fastened upon. She'd have said – in effect – 'That's the one! She wasn't there!' But it was a place that was in her mind – a place where someone should have been – but the place wasn't filled – there wasn't anybody there. The place was there but the person wasn't. And she couldn't take it in all at once. 'How extraordinary, Hinch,' she said. 'She wasn't there.'… So that could only mean Letitia Blacklog…"

"But you knew before that, didn't you?" said Bunch. "When the lamp fused. When you wrote down those things on the paper."

"Yes, my dear. It all came together then, you see all the various isolated bits and made a coherent pattern."

Bunch quoted softly: "Lamp? Yes. Violets? Yes. Battle of Aspirin. You meant that Bunny had been going to buy a new bottle that day, and so she ought not to have needed to take Letitia's?"

"Not unless her own bottle had been taken or hidden. It had to appear as though Letitia Blacklog was the one meant to be killed."

"Yes, I see. And then 'Delicious Death.' The cake but more than the cake. The whole party set-up. A happy day for Bunny before she died. Treating her rather like a dog you were going to destroy. That's what I find the most horrible thing of all – the sort of spurious kindness."

"She was quite a kindly woman. What she said at the last in the kitchen was quite true. 'I didn't want to kill anybody.' What she wanted was a great deal of money that didn't belong to her! And before that desire (and it had become a kind of obsession – the money was to pay her back for all the suffering life had inflicted on her) everything else went to the wall. People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something. I've known many an invalid who has suffered far worse and been cut off from life much more than Charlotte Blacklog – and they've managed to lead happy contented lives. It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy. But, oh dear, I'm afraid I'm straying away from what we were talking about. Where were we?"

"Going over your list," said Bunch. "What did you mean by 'Making enquiries?' Inquiries about what?"

Miss Marple shook her head playfully at Inspector Craddock.

"You ought to have seen that, Inspector Craddock. You showed me that letter from Letitia Blacklog to her sister. It had the word 'enquiries' in it twice – each time spelt with an e. But in the note I asked Bunch to show you, Miss Blacklog had written 'inquiries' with an i. People don't often alter their spelling as they get older. It seemed to me very significant."

"Yes," Craddock agreed. "I ought to have spotted that."

Bunch was continuing. "Severe affliction bravely borne. That's what Bunny said to you in the café and of course Letitia hadn't had any affliction. Iodine. That put you on the track of goitre?"

"Yes, dear. Switzerland, you know, and Miss Blacklog giving the impression that her sister had died of consumption. But I remembered then that the greatest authorities on goitre and the most skilful surgeons operating on it are Swiss. And it linked up with those really rather preposterous pearls that Letitia Blacklog always wore. Not really her style – but just right for concealing the scar."

"I understand now her agitation the night the string broke," said Craddock. "It seemed at the time quite disproportionate."

"And after that, it was Lotty you wrote – not Letty as we thought," said Bunch.

"Yes, I remembered that the sister's name was Charlotte, and that Dora Bunner had called Miss Blacklog Lotty once or twice – and that each time she did so, she had been very upset afterwards."

"And what about Berne and Old Age Pension?"

"Rudi Scherz had been an orderly in a hospital in Berne."

"And Old Age Pension."

"Oh, my dear Bunch, I mentioned that to you in the Bluebird though I didn't really see the application then. How Mrs. Wotherspoon drew Mrs. Bartlett's Old Age Pension as well as her own – though Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for years – simply because one old woman is so like another old woman – yes, it all made a pattern and I felt so worked up I went out to cool my head a little and think what could be done about proving all this. Then Miss Hinchliffe picked me up and we found Miss Murgatroyd…"

Miss Marple's voice dropped. It was no longer excited and pleased. It was quiet and remorseless.

"I knew then something had got to be done. Quickly! But there still wasn't any proof. I thought out a possible plan and I talked to Sergeant Fletcher."

"And I have had Fletcher on the carpet for it!" said Craddock. "He'd no business to go agreeing to your plans without reporting first to me."

"He didn't like it, but I talked him into it," said Miss Marple. "We went up to Little Paddocks and I got hold of Mitzi."

Julia drew a deep breath and said, "I can't imagine how you ever got her to do it."

"I worked on her, my dear," said Miss Marple. "She thinks far too much about herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done something for others. I flattered her up, of course, and said I was sure if she'd been in her own country she'd have been in the Resistance movement, and she said, 'Yes, indeed.' And I said I could see she had got just the temperament for that sort of work. She was brave, didn't mind taking risks, and could act a part. I told her stories of deeds done by girls in the Resistance movements, some of them true, and some of them, I'm afraid, invented. She got tremendously worked up!"

"Marvellous," said Patrick.

"And then I got her to agree to do her part. I rehearsed her till she was word perfect. Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not come down until Inspector Craddock came. The worst of these excitable people is that they're apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing before the time."

"She did it very well," said Julia.

"I don't quite see the point," said Bunch. "Of course, I wasn't there-" she added apologetically.

"The point was a little complicated – and rather touch and go. The idea was that Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail had been in her mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was willing to come out with the truth. She'd seen, through the keyhole of the dining-room, Miss Blacklog in the hall with a revolver behind Rudi Scherz. She'd seen, that is, what had actually taken place. Now the only danger was that Charlotte Blacklog might have realised that, as the key was in the keyhole, Mitzi couldn't possibly have seen anything at all. But I banked on the fact that you don't think of things like that when you've just had a bad shock. All she could take in was that Mitzi had seen her." Craddock took over the story.

"But – and this was essential – I pretended to receive this with scepticism, and I made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteries at last, upon someone who had not been previously suspected. I accused Edmund-"

"And very nicely I played my part," said Edmund. "Hot denial. All according to plan. What wasn't according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was you throwing in your little chirp and coming out into the open as 'Pip.' Neither the Inspector nor I had any idea you were Pip. I was going to be Pip! It threw us off our stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterly comeback and made some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wanting a rich wife which will probably stick in your subconscious and make irreparable trouble between us one day."

"I don't see why that was necessary?"

"Don't you? It meant that, from Charlotte Blacklog's point of view, the only person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi. The suspicions of the police were elsewhere. They had treated Mitzi for the moment as a liar. But if Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seriously. So Mitzi had got to be silenced."