A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple 7)

Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don’t think—”

Miss Marple went on quickly:

“I expect you’re about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren’t you, Inspector Neele? I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose—I mean it is really highly significant, isn’t it? What I wondered was,” Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage in her hands went on bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this sort of thing to you.”

“Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddleheaded, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you gone into the question of blackbirds?”

Chapter Fourteen

I

For about ten seconds Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple with the utmost bewilderment. His first idea was that the old lady had gone off her head.

“Blackbirds?” he repeated.

Miss Marple nodded her head vigorously.

“Yes,” she said, and forwith recited:

“ ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.

Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?

“ ‘The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,

The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey,

The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

When there came a little dickey bird and nipped off her nose.’ ”

“Good Lord,” Inspector Neele said.

“I mean, it does fit,” said Miss Marple. “It was rye in his pocket, wasn’t it? One newspaper said so. The others just said cereal, which might mean anything. Farmer’s Glory or Cornflakes—or even maize—but it was rye?”

Inspector Neele nodded.

“There you are,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “Rex Fortescue. Rex means King. In his Counting House. And Mrs. Fortescue the Queen in the parlour, eating bread and honey. And so, of course, the murderer had to put that clothes-peg on poor Gladys’s nose.”

Inspector Neele said:

“You mean the whole setup is crazy?”

“Well, one mustn’t jump to conclusions—but it is certainly very odd. But you really must make inquiries about blackbirds. Because there must be blackbirds!”

It was at this point that Sergeant Hay came into the room saying urgently, “Sir.”

He broke off at sight of Miss Marple. Inspector Neele, recovering himself, said:

“Thank you, Miss Marple. I’ll look into the matter. Since you are interested in the girl, perhaps you would care to look over the things from her room. Sergeant Hay will show you them presently.”

Miss Marple, accepting her dismissal, twittered her way out.

“Blackbirds!” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

Sergeant Hay stared.

“Yes, Hay, what is it?”

“Sir,” said Sergeant Hay, urgently again. “Look at this.”

He produced an article wrapped in a somewhat grubby handkerchief.

“Found it in the shrubbery,” said Sergeant Hay. “Could have been chucked there from one of the back windows.”

He tipped the object down on the desk in front of the inspector, who leaned forward and inspected it with rising excitement. The exhibit was a nearly full pot of marmalade.

The inspector stared at it without speech. His face assumed a peculiarly wooden and stupid appearance. In actual fact this meant that Inspector Neele’s mind was racing once more round an imaginary track. A moving picture was enacting itself before the eyes of his mind. He saw a new pot of marmalade, he saw hands carefully removing its cover, he saw a small quantity of marmalade removed, mixed with a preparation of taxine and replaced in the pot, the top smoothed over and the lid carefully replaced. He broke off at this point to ask Sergeant Hay:

“They don’t take marmalade out of the pot and put it into fancy pots?”

“No, sir. Got into the way of serving it in its own pot during the war when things were scarce, and it’s gone on like that ever since.”

Neele murmured:

“That made it easier, of course.”

“What’s more,” said Sergeant Hay, “Mr. Fortescue was the only one that took marmalade for breakfast (and Mr. Percival when he was at home). The others had jam or honey.”

Neele nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “That made it very simple, didn’t it?”

After a slight gap the moving picture went on in his mind. It was the breakfast table now. Rex Fortescue stretching out his hand for the marmalade pot, taking out a spoonful of marmalade and spreading it on his toast and butter. Easier, far easier that way than the risk and difficulty of insinuating it into his coffee cup. A foolproof method of administering the poison! And afterwards? Another gap and a picture that was not quite so clear. The replacing of that pot of marmalade by another with exactly the same amount taken from it. And then an open window. A hand and an arm flinging out that pot into the shrubbery. Whose hand and arm?

Inspector Neele said in a businesslike voice:

“Well, we’ll have of course to get this analysed. See if there are any traces of taxine. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

“No, sir. There may be fingerprints too.”

“Probably not the ones we want,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “There’ll be Gladys’s, of course, and Crump’s and Fortescue’s own. Then probably Mrs. Crump’s, the grocer’s assistant and a few others! If anyone put taxine in here they’d take care not to go playing about with their own fingers all over the pot. Anyway, as I say, we mustn’t jump to conclusions. How do they order marmalade and where is it kept?”

The industrious Sergeant Hay had his answer pat for all these questions.

“Marmalade and jams comes in in batches of six at a time. A new pot would be taken into the pantry when the old one was getting low.”

“That means,” said Neele, “that it could have been tampered with several days before it was actually brought onto the breakfast table. And anyone who was in the house or had access to the house could have tampered with it.”

The term “access to the house” puzzled Sergeant Hay slightly. He did not see in what way his superior’s mind was working.

But Neele was postulating what seemed to him a logical assumption.

If the marmalade had been tampered with beforehand—then surely that ruled out those persons who were actually at the breakfast table on the fatal morning.

Which opened up some interesting new possibilities.

He planned in his mind interviews with various people—this time with rather a different angle of approach.

He’d keep an open mind. . . .

He’d even consider seriously that old Miss Whatshername’s suggestions about the nursery rhyme. Because there was no doubt that that nursery rhyme fitted in a rather startling way. It fitted with a point that had worried him from the beginning. The pocketful of rye.

“Blackbirds?” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

Sergeant Hay stared.

“It’s not blackberry jelly, sir,” he said. “It’s marmalade.”

II

Inspector Neele went in search of Mary Dove.

He found her in one of the bedrooms on the first floor superintending Ellen, who was denuding the bed of what seemed to be clean sheets. A little pile of clean towels lay on a chair.

Inspector Neele looked puzzled.

“Somebody coming to stay?” he asked.

Mary Dove smiled at him. In contrast to Ellen, who looked grim and truculent, Mary was her usual imperturbable self.

“Actually,” she said, “the opposite is the case.”

Neele lo

oked inquiringly at her.

“This is the guest room we had prepared for Mr. Gerald Wright.”

“Gerald Wright? Who is he?”

“He’s a friend of Miss Elaine Fortescue’s.” Mary’s voice was carefully devoid of inflection.

“He was coming here—when?”

“I believe he arrived at the Golf Hotel the day after Mr. Fortescue’s death.”

“The day after.”

“So Miss Fortescue said.” Mary’s voice was still impersonal: “She told me she wanted him to come and stay in the house—so I had a room prepared. Now—after these other two—tragedies—it seems more suitable that he should remain at the hotel.”

“The Golf Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Quite,” said Inspector Neele.

Ellen gathered up the sheets and towels and went out of the room.

Mary Dove looked inquiringly at Neele.

“You wanted to see me about something?”

Neele said pleasantly:

“It’s becoming important to get exact times very clearly stated. Members of the family all seem a little vague about time—perhaps understandably. You, on the other hand, Miss Dove, I have found extremely accurate in your statements as to times.”

“Again understandably!”

“Yes—perhaps—I must certainly congratulate you on the way you have kept this house going in spite of the—well, panic—these last deaths must have caused.” He paused and then asked curiously: “How did you do it?”

He had realized, astutely, that the one chink in the armour of Mary Dove’s inscrutability was her pleasure in her own efficiency. She unbent slightly now as she answered.

“The Crumps wanted to leave at once, of course.”

“We couldn’t have allowed that.”