Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors

"Course it ain't. Just boasting, that's all. Perishing liar, Ernie. He never got out at night. Used to boast he could, but he wasn't that good with locks! He couldn't do anything with a lock as was a lock. Anyway 'e was in larst night, that I do know.'

'You're not saying that just to satisfy us, Arthur?'

'Cross my heart,' said Arthur virtuously.

Lewis did not look quite satisfied.

'Listen,' said Dr Maverick. 'What's that?'

A murmur of voices was approaching. The door was flung open and looking very pale and ill, the spectacled Mr Baumgarten staggered in.

He gasped out: 'We've found him - them. It's horrible…'

He sank down on a chair and mopped his forehead.

Mildred Strete said sharply: 'What do you mean - found them?'

Baumgarten was shaking all over.

'Down at the theatre,' he said. 'Their heads crushed in - the big counterweight must have fallen on them. Alexis Restarick and that boy Ernie Gregg. They're both dead…'

'I've brought you a cup of strong soup, Carrie Louise,' said Miss Marple. 'Now please drink it.' Mrs Serrocold sat up in the big carved oak four-poster bed. She looked very small and childlike. Her cheeks had lost their pink flush, and her eyes had a curiously absent look.

She took the soup obediently from Miss Marple. As she sipped it, Miss Marple sat down in a chair beside the bed.

'First, Christian,' said Carrie Louise, 'and now Alex and poor, sharp, silly little Ernie. Did he really - know anything?'

'I don't think so,' said Miss Marple. 'He was just telling lies - making himself important by hinting that he had seen or knew something. The tragedy is that somebody believed his lies…' Carrie Louise shivered. Her eyes went back to their far away look.

'We meant to do so much for these boys… We did do something. Some of them have done wonderfully well.

Several of them are in really responsible positions. A few slid back - that can't be helped. Modem civilized conditions are so complex - too complex for some simple and undeveloped natures. You know Lewis's great scheme? He always felt that transportation was a thing that had saved many a potential criminal in the past. They were shipped overseas - and they made new lives in simpler surroundings. He wants to start a modern scheme on that basis. To buy up a great tract of territory - or a group of islands. Finance it for some years, make it a co-operative self-supporting community - with eve-ryone taking a stake in it. But cut off so that the early temptation to go back to cities and the bad old days can be neutralized. It's his dream. But it will take a lot of money, of course, and there aren't many philanthropists with vision now. We want another Eric. Eric would have been enthusiastic.'

Miss Marple picked up a little pair of scissors and looked at them curiously.

'What an odd pair of scissors,' she said. 'They've got two fingers holes on one side and one on the other.'

Carrie Louise's eyes came back from that frightening far distance.

'Alex gave them to me this morning,' she said. 'They're supposed to make it easier to cut your right hand nails.

Dear boy, he was so enthusiastic. He made me try them then and there.'

'And I suppose he gathered up the nail clippings and took them tidily away,' said Miss Marple.

'Yes,' said Carrie Louise. 'He -' She broke off. 'Why did you say that?'

'I was thinking about Alex. He had brains. Yes, he had brains.'

'You mean - that's why he died?'

'I think so - yes.'

'He and Ernie - it doesn't bear thinking about. When do they think it happened?'

'Late this evening. Between six and seven o'clock probably…'

'After they'd knocked off work for the day?'

'Yes.' Gina had been down there that evening - and Wally Hudd. Stephen, too, said he had been down to look for Gina.

But as far as that went, anybody could have Miss Marple's train of thought was interrupted.

Carrie Louise said quietly and unexpectedly: 'How much do you know, Jane?' Miss Marple looked up sharply. The eyes of the two women met.

Miss Marple said slowly: 'If I was quite sure…'

'I think you are sure, Jane.' Jane Marple said slowly, 'What do you want me to do?' Carrie leaned back against her pillows.

'It is in your hands, Jane - You'll do what you think right.' She closed her eyes.

'Tomorrow' - Miss Marple hesitated - 'I shall have to try and talk to Inspector Curry - if he'll listen…'

Inspector Curry said rather impatiently: 'Yes, Miss Marple?'

'Could we, do you think, go into the Great Hall.' Inspector Curry looked faintly surprised, 'Is that your idea of privacy? Surely in here ' He looked round the study.

'It's not privacy I'm thinking of so much. It's something I want to show you. Something Alex Restarick made me see.' Inspector Curry, stifling a sigh, got up and followed Miss Marple.

'Somebody has been talking to you?' he suggested hopefully.

'No,' said Miss Marple. 'It's not a question of what people have said. It's really a question of conjuring tricks.

They do it with mirrors, you know - that sort of thing if you understand me.' Inspector Curry did not understand. He stared and wondered if Miss Marple was quite right in the head.

Miss Marple took up her stand and beckoned the Inspector to stand beside her.

'I want you to think of this place as at stage set, Inspector. As it was on the night Christian Gulbrandsen was killed. You're here in the audience looking at the people on the stage. Mrs Serrocold and myself and Mrs Strete, and Gina and Stephen - and just likeon the stage there are entrances and exits and the characters go out to different places. Only you don't think when you're in the audience where they are really going to. They go out "to the front door" or "to the kitchen" and when the door opens you see a little bit of painted backcloth. But really of course they go out to the wings - or the back of the stage with carpenters and electricians, and other characters waiting to come on - they go out - to a different world.'

'I don't quite see, Miss Marple '

'Oh, I know - I daresay it sounds very silly - but if you think of this as a play and the scene is "the Great Hall at Stonygates" - what exactly is behind the scene? - I mean - what is back stage? The terrace - isn't it? - the terrace and a lot of windows opening on to it.

'And that, you see, is how the conjuring trick was done.

It was the trick of the Lady Sawn in Half that made me think of it.'

'The Lady Sawn in Half?.' Inspector Curry was now quite sure that Miss Marple was a mental case.

'A most thrilling conjuring trick. You must have seen it - only not really one girl but two girls. The head of one and the feet of the other. It looks like one person and is really two. And so I thought it could just as well be the other way about. Two people could be really one person.'

'Two people really one?' Inspector Curry looked desperate.

'Yes. Not for long. How long did your constable take in the Park to run to this house and back? Two minutes and forty-five seconds, wasn't it? This would be less than that. Well under two minutes.'

'What was under two minutes?'

'The conjuring trick. The trick when it wasn't two people but one person. In there - in the study. We're only looking at the visible part of the stage. Behind the scenes there is the terrace and a row of windows. So easy when there are two people in the study to open the study window, get out, run along the terrace (those footsteps Alex heard), in at the side door, shoot Christian Gulbrandsen and run back, and during that time, the other person in the study does both voices so that we're all quite sure there are two people in there. And so there were most of the time, but not for that little period of under two minutes.' Inspector Curry found his breath and his voice.