Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors

'Are you trying to reconstruct the crime?' asked Miss Marple with subdued eagerness.

'Eh?' Alex looked at her with a frown. Then his brow cleared.

'Oh that,' he said. 'No, not exactly. I was looking at the whole thing from an entirely different point of view. I was thinking of this place in the terms of the theatre. Not reality, but artificiality! Just come over here. Think of it in the terms of a stage set. Lighting, entrances, exits.

Dramatis Personae. Noises off. All very interesting. Not all my own idea. The Inspector gave it to me. I think he's rather a cruel man. He did his best to frighten me this morning.'

'And did he frighten you?'

'I'm not sure.'

Alex described the Inspector's experiment and the timing of the performance of the puffing Constable Dodgett.

'Time,' he said, 'is so very misleading. One thinks things take such a long time, but really, of course, they don't.'

'No,' said Miss Marple.

Representing the audience, she moved to a different position. The stage set now consisted of a vast tapestry covered wall going up to dimness, with a grand piano up L. and a window and window seat up R. Very near the window seat was the door into the library. The piano stool was only about eight feet from the door into the square lobby which led to the corridor. Two very convenient exits! The audience, of course, had an excellent view of both of them…

But last night, there had been no audience. Nobody, that is to say, had been facing the stage set that Miss Marple was now facing. The audience, last night, had been sitting with their backs to that particular stage.

How long, Miss Marple wondered, would it have taken to slip out of the room, run along the corridor, shoot Gulbrandsen and come back? Not nearly so long as one would think. Measured in minutes and seconds a very short time indeed…

What had Carrie Louise meant when she had said to her husband: 'So that's what you believe - but you're wrong, Lewis!'

'I must say that that was a very penetrating remark of the Inspector's,' Alex's voice cut in on her meditations.

'About a stage set being real. Made of wood and cardboard and stuck together with glue and as real on the unpainted as on the painted side. "The illusion," he pointed out, "is in the eyes of the audience."'

'Like conjurers,' Miss Marple murmured vaguely.

'They do it with mirrors is, I believe, the slang phrase.' Stephen Restarick came in, slightly out of breath.

'Hallo, Alex,' he said. 'That little rat, Ernie Gregg - I don't know if you remember him?'

'The one who played Feste when you did Twelfth Night? Quite a bit of talent there, I thought.'

'Yes, he's got talent of a sort. Very good with his hands too. Does a lot of our carpentry. However, that's neither here nor there. He's been boasting to Gina that he gets out at night and wanders about the grounds. Says he was wandering round last night and boasts he saw something.' Alex spun round.

'Saw what?'

'Says he's not going to tell. Actually I'm pretty certain he's only trying to show off and get into the limelight. He's an awful liar, but I thought perhaps he ought to be questioned.'

Alex said sharply: 'I should leave him for a bit. Don't let him think we're too interested.'

'Perhaps - yes, I think you may be right there. This evening, perhaps.' Stephen went on into the library.

Miss Marple, moving gently round the Hall in her character of mobile audience, collided with Alex Restarick as he steptied back suddenly.

Miss Marple said, 'I'm so sorry.' Alex frowned at her, said in an absent sort of way: 'I beg your pardon,' and then added in a surprised voice: 'Oh, it's you.' It seemed to Miss Marple an odd remark for someone with whom she had been conversing for some considerable time.

'I was thinking of something else,' said Alex Restarick.

'That boy Ernie -' He made vague motions with both hands.

Then, with a sudden change of manner, he crossed the Hall and went through the library door, shutting it behind him.

The murmur of voices came from behind the closed door, but Miss Marple hardly noticed them. She was uninterested in the versatile Ernie and what he had seen or pretended to see. She had a shrewd suspicion that Ernie had seen nothing at all. She did not believe for a moment that on a cold raw foggy night like last night, Ernie would have troubled to use his lockpicking activities and wander about in the Park. In all probability he never had got out at night. Boasting, that was all it had been.

'Like Johnnie Backhouse,' thought Miss Marple, who always had a good storehouse of parallels to draw upon selected from inhabitants of St Mary Mead.

'I seen you last night,' had been Johnnie Backhouse's unpleasant taunt to all he thought it might affect.

It had been a surprisingly successful remark. So many people, Miss Marple reflected, have been in places where they are anxious not to be seen!

She dismissed Johnnie from her mind and concentrated on a vague something which Alex's account of Inspector Curry's remarks had stirred to life. Those remarks had given Alex an idea. She was not sure that they had not given her an idea, too. The same idea? Or a different one?

She stood where Alex Restarick had stood. She thought to herself, 'This is not a real Hall. This is only cardboard and canvas and wood. This is a stage scene…' Scrappy phrases flashed across her mind. 'Illusion -'

'In the eyes of the audience.'

'They do it with mirrors…' Bowls of goldfish… yards of coloured ribbon. vanishing ladies… all the panoply and misdirection of the conjurer's art.

Something stirred in her consciousness - a picture something that Alex had said… something that he had described to her… Constable Dodgett puffing and panting… Panting… Something shifted in her mind came into sudden focus.

'Why of course!' said Miss Marple. 'That must be it…'

'Oh, Wally, how you startled me!' Gina, emerging from the shadows by the theatre, jumped back a little, as the figure of Wally Hudd materialized out of the gloom. It was not yet quite dark, but had that eerie half light when objects lose their reality and take on the fantastic shapes of nightmare.

'What are you doing down here? You never come near the theatre as a rule.'

'Maybe I was looking for you, Gina. It's usually the best place to find you, isn't it?' Wally's soft, faintly drawling voice held no special insinuation, and yet Gina flinched a little.

'It's a job and I'm keen on it. I like the atmosphere of paint and canvas, and back stage generally.'

'Yes. It means a lot to you. I've seen that. Tell me, Gina, how long do you think it will be before this business is all cleared up?'

'The inquest's tomorrow. It will just be adjourned for a fortnight or something like that. At least, that's what Inspector Curry gave us to understand.'

'A fortnight,' said Wally thoughtfully. 'I see. Say three weeks, perhaps. And after that - we're free. I'm going back to the States then.'

'Oh! but I can't rush off like that,' cried Gina. 'I couldn't leave Grandam. And we've got these two new productions we're working on '

'I didn't say "we." I said I was going.'

Gina stopped and looked up at her husband. Some-thing in the effect of the shadows made him seem very big. A big, quiet figure - and in some way, or so it seemed to her, faintly menacing… Standing over her. Threaten-ing - what?

'Do you mean' - she hesitated - 'you don't want me to come?'

'Why, no - I didn't say that.'

'You don't care if I come or not? Is that it?'

She was suddenly angry.

'See here, Gina. This is where we've got to have a showdown. We didn't know much about each other when we got married - not much about each other's backgrounds, not much about the other one's folks. We thought it didn't matter. We thought nothing mattered except having a swell time together. Well, stage one is over. Your folks didn't - and don't - think much of me.