Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors

'Do you mean that it was Edgar Lawson who ran along the terrace and shot Gulbrandsen? Edgar Lawson who poisoned Mrs Serrocold?'

'But you see, Inspector, no one has been poisoning Mrs Serrocold at all. That's where the misdirection comes in.

Someone very cleverly used the fact that Mrs Serrocold's sufferings from arthritis were not unlike the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. It's the old conjurer's trick of forcing a card on you. Quite easy to add arsenic to a bottle of tonic - quite easy to add a few lines to a typewritten letter. But the real reason for Mr Gulbrandsen's coming here was the most likely reason - something to do with the Gulbrandsen Trust. Money, in fact. Suppose that there had been embezzlement - embezzlement on a very big scale - you see where that points? To just one person-'

Inspector Curry gasped: 'Lewis Serrocold?' he murmured incredulously.

'Lewis Serrocold…' said Miss Marple.

Part of letter from Gina Hudd to her aunt Mrs Van Rydock: - and so you see, darling Aunt Ruth, the whole thing has been just like a nightmare - especially the end of it. I've told you all about this funny man Edgar Lawson. He always was a complete rabbit - and when the Inspector began questioning him and breaking him down he lost his nerve completely and scuttled like a rabbit. Just lost his nerve and ran - literally ran. Jumped out of the window and round the house and down the drive and then there was a policeman coming to head him off, and he swerved and ran full tilt for the lake. He leaped into a rotten old punt that's mouldered there for years and pushed off. Quite a mad senseless thing to do, of course, but as I say he was just a panic-stricken rabbit. And then Lewis gave a great shout and said 'That punt's rotten,' and raced off to the lake too. The punt went down and there was Edgar struggling in the water. He couldn't swim. Lewis jumped in and swam out to him. He got to him but they were both in difficulty because they'd got among the reeds. One of the Inspector's men went in with a rope round him but he got entangled too and they had to pull him in. Aunt Mildred said 'They'll drown - they'll drown - they'll both drown…' in a silly sort of way, and Grandam just said 'Yes.' I can't describe to you just how she made that one word sound. Just 'YES' and it went through you like - like a sword.

Am I being just silly and melodramatic? I suppose I am.

But it did sound like that…

And then - when it was all over, and they'd got out and tried artificial respiration. But it was no go.

Inspector came to us and said to Grandam: 'I'm afraid, Mrs Serrocold, there's no hope.' Grandam said very quietly: 'Thank you, Inspector.'

Then she looked at us all longing to help knowing how, and Jolly, looking grim and tender and to minister as usual, and Stephen stretching out, and funny old Miss Marple so sad.

Grandam looking so small and frail and leaning on

Gina paused and sucked the end of her fountain pen.

She resumed:

About me and Wally - we're coming back to the Statas soon as we can.

'What made you guess, Jane?'

Miss Marple took her time about replying. She looked thoughtfully at the other two - Carrie Louise thinner and frailer and yet curiously untouched - and the old man with the sweet smile and the thick white hair. Dr Galbraith, Bishop of Cromer.

The Bishop took Carrie Louise's hand in his.

'This has been a great sorrow to you, my poor child, and a great shock.'

'A sorrow, yes, but not really a shock.'

'No,' said Miss Marple. 'That's what I discovered, you know. Everyone kept saying how Carrie Louise lived in another world from this and was out of touch with reality.

But actually, Carrie Louise, it was reality you were in touch with, and not the illusion. You are never deceived by illusion like most of us are. When I suddenly realized that, I saw that I must go by what you thought and felt.

You were quite sure that no one would try to poison you, you couldn't believe it - and you were quite right not to believe it, because it wasn't so! You never believed that Edgar would harm Lewis - and again you were right. He never would have harmed Lewis. You were sure that Gina did not love anyone but her husband - and that again was quite true.

'So therefore, if I was to go by you, all the things that seemed to be true were only illusions. Illusions created for a definite purpose - in the same way that conjurers create illusions, to deceive an audience. We were the audience.

'Alex Restarick got an inkling of the truth first because he had the chance of seeing things from a different angle - from the outside angle. He was with the Inspector in the drive, and he looked at the house and realized the possibilities of the windows - and he remembered the sound of running feet he had heard that night, and then the timing of the constable showed him what a very short time things take to what we should imagine they would take. The constable panted a lot, and later, thinking of a puffing constable, I remembered that Lewis Serrocold was out of breath that night when he opened the study door. He'd just been running hard, you see.

'But it was Edgar Lawson that was the pivot of it all to me. There was always something wrong to me about Edgar Lawson. All the things he said and did were exactly right for what he was supposed to be, but he himself wasn't right. Because he was actually a normal young man playing the part of a schizophrenic - and he was always, as it were, a little larger than life. He was always theatrical.

'It must have all been very carefully planned and thought out. Lewis must have realized on the occasion of Christian's last visit that something had aroused his suspicions. And he knew Christian well enough to know that if he suspected he would not rest until he had satisfied himself that his suspicions were either justified or unfounded.' Carrie Louise stirred.

'Yes,' she said. 'Christian was like that. Slow and painstaking, but actually very shrewd. I don't know what it was aroused his suspicions but he started investigating - and he found out the truth.' The Bishop said: 'I blame myself for not having been a more conscientious trustee.'

'It was never expected of you to understand finance,' said Carrie Louise. 'That was originally Mr Gilfoy's province. Then, when he died, Lewis's great experience put him in what amounted to complete control. And that, of course, was what went to his head.' The pink colour came up in her cheeks.

'Lewis was a great man,' she said. 'A man of great vision, and a passionate believer in what could be accomplished - with money. He didn't want it for himself - or at least not in the greedy vulgar sense - he did want the power of it - he wanted the power to do great good with it '

'He wanted,' said the Bishop, 'to be God.' His voice was suddenly stern. 'He forgot that man is only the humble instrument of God's will.'

'And so he embezzled the Trust funds?' said Miss Marple.

Dr Galbraith hesitated.

'It wasn't only that…'

'Tell her,' said Carrie Louise. 'She is my oldest friend.' The Bishop said: 'Lewis Serrocold was what one might call a financial wizard. In his years of highly technical accountancy, he had amused himself by working out various methods of swindling which were practically foolproof. This had been merely an academic study, but when he once began to envisage the possibilities that a vast sum of money could encompass, he put these methods into practice.

You see, he had at his disposal some first-class material.

Amongst the boys who passed through here, he chose out a small select band. They were boys whose bent was naturally criminal, who loved excitement and who had a very high order of intelligence. We've not got nearly to the bottom of it all, but it seems clear that this esoteric circle was secret and specially trained and were later placed in key positions, where, by carrying out Lewis's directions, books were falsified in such a way that large sums of money were converted without any suspicion being aroused. I gather that the operations and the ramifications are so complicated that it will be months before the auditors can unravel it all. But the net result seems to be that under various names and banking accounts and companies Lewis Serrocold would have been able to dispose of a colossal sum with which he intended to establish an overseas colony for a cooperative experiment in which juvenile delinquents should eventually own this territory and administer it. It may have been a fantastic dream '