A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple 7)

Chapter Sixteen

I

Inspector Neele found Mrs. Percival in her own sitting room upstairs, writing letters. She got up rather nervously when he came in.

“Is there anything—what—are there—”

“Please sit down, Mrs. Fortescue. There are only just a few more questions I would like to ask you.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course, Inspector. It’s all so dreadful, isn’t it? So very dreadful.”

She sat down rather nervously in an armchair. Inspector Neele sat down in the small, straight chair near her. He studied her rather more carefully than he had done heretofore. In someways a mediocre type of woman, he thought—and thought also that she was not very happy. Restless, unsatisfied, limited in mental outlook, yet he thought she might have been efficient and skilled in her own profession of hospital nurse. Though she had achieved leisure by her marriage with a well-to-do man, leisure had not satisfied her. She bought clothes, read novels and ate sweets, but he remembered her avid excitement on the night of Rex Fortescue’s death, and he saw in it not so much a ghoulish satisfaction but rather a revelation of the arid deserts of boredom which encompassed her life. Her eyelids fluttered and fell before his searching glance. They gave her the appearance of being both nervous and guilty, but he could not be sure that that was really the case.

“I’m afraid,” he said soothingly, “we have to ask people questions again and again. It must be very tiresome for you all. I do appreciate that, but so much hangs, you understand, on the exact timing of events. You came down to tea rather late, I understand? In fact, Miss Dove came up and fetched you.”

“Yes. Yes, she did. She came and said tea was in. I had no idea it was so late. I’d been writing letters.”

Inspector Neele just glanced over at the writing desk.

“I see,” he said. “Somehow or other, I thought you’d been out for a walk.”

“Did she say so? Yes—now I believe you’re right. I had been writing letters; then it was so stuffy and my head ached so I went out and—er—went for a walk. Only round the garden.”

“I see. You didn’t meet anyone?”

“Meet anyone?” She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I just wondered if you’d seen anybody or anybody had seen you during this walk of yours.”

“I saw the gardener in the distance, that’s all.” She was looking at him suspiciously.

“Then you came in, came up here to your room and you were just taking your things off when Miss Dove came to tell you that tea was ready?”

“Yes. Yes, and so I came down.”

“And who was there?”

“Adele and Elaine, and a minute or two later Lance arrived. My brother-in-law, you know. The one who’s come back from Kenya.”

“And then you all had tea?”

“Yes, we had tea. Then Lance went up to see Aunt Effie and I came up here to finish my letters. I left Elaine there with Adele.”

He nodded reassuringly.

“Yes. Miss Fortescue seems to have been with Mrs. Fortescue for quite five or ten minutes after you left. Your husband hadn’t come home yet?”

“Oh no. Percy—Val—didn’t get home until about half past six or seven. He’d been kept up in town.”

“He came back by train?”

“Yes. He took a taxi from the station.”

“Was it unusual for him to come back by train?”

“He does sometimes. Not very often. I think he’d been to places in the city where it’s rather difficult to park the car. It was easier for him to take a train home from Cannon Street.”

“I see,” said Inspector Neele. He went on: “I asked your husband if Mrs. Fortescue had made a will before she died. He said he thought not. I suppose you don’t happen to have any idea?”

To his surprise Jennifer Fortescue nodded vigorously.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Adele made a will. She told me so.”

“Indeed! When was this?”

“Oh, it wasn’t very long ago. About a month ago, I think.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Inspector Neele.

Mrs. Percival leant forward eagerly. Her face now was all animation. She clearly enjoyed exhibiting her superior knowledge.

“Val didn’t know about it,” she said. “Nobody knew. It just happened that I found out about it. I was in the street. I had just come out of the stationer’s, then I saw Adele coming out of the solicitor’s office. Ansell and Worrall’s, you know. In the High Street.”

“Ah,” said Neele, “the local solicitors?”

“Yes. And I said to Adele: ‘Whatever have you been doing there?’ I said. And she laughed and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ And then as we walked along together she said: ‘I’ll tell you, Jennifer. I’ve been making my will.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘why are you doing that, Adele, you’re not ill or anything, are you?’ And she said no, of course she wasn’t ill. She’d never felt better. But everyone ought to make a will. She said she wasn’t going to those stuck-up family solicitors in London, Mr. Billingsley. She said the old sneak would go round and tell the family. ‘No,’ she said, ‘my will’s my own business, Jennifer, and I’ll make it my own way and nobody’s going to know about it.’ ‘Well, Adele,’ I said, ‘I shan’t tell anybody.’ She said: ‘It doesn’t matter if you do. You won’t know what’s in it.’ But I didn’t tell anyone. No, not even Percy. I do think women ought to stick together, don’t you, Inspector Neele?”

“I’m sure that’s a very nice feeling on your part, Mrs. Fortescue,” said Inspector Neele diplomatically.

“I’m sure I’m never ill-natured,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t particularly care for Adele, if you know what I mean. I always thought she was the kind of woman who would stick at nothing in order to get what she wanted. Now she’s dead, perhaps I misjudged her, poor soul.”

“Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Fortescue, for being so helpful to me.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure. I’m only too glad to do anything I can. It’s all so very terrible, isn’t it? Who is the old lady who’s arrived this morning?”

“She’s a Miss Marple. She very kindly came here to give us what information she could about the girl Gladys. It seems Gladys Martin was once in service with her.”

“Really? How interesting.”

“There’s one other thing, Mrs. Percival. Do you know anything about blackbirds?”

Jennifer Fortescue started violently.

She dropped her handbag on the floor and bent to pick it up.

“Blackbirds, Inspector? Blackbirds? What kind of blackbirds?”

Her voice was rather breathless. Smiling a little, Inspector, Neele said:

“Just blackbirds. Alive or dead or even, shall we say, symbolical?”

Jennifer Fortescue said sharply:

“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know anything about blackbirds, then, Mrs. Fortescue?”

She said slowly:

“I suppose you mean the ones last summer in the pie. All very silly.”

“There were some left on the library table, too, weren’t there?”

“It was all a very silly practical joke. I don’t know who’s been talking to you about it. Mr. Fortescue, my father-in-law, was very much annoyed by it.”

“Just annoyed? Nothing more?”

“Oh. I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose—yes, it’s true. He asked us if there were any strangers about the place.”

“Strangers!” Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.

“Well, that’s what he said,” said Mrs. Percival defensively.

“Strangers,” repeated Inspector Neele thoughtfully. Then he asked: “Did he seem afraid in any way?”

“Afraid? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Nervous. About strangers, I mean.”

“Yes. Yes, he did, rather. Of course I don’t remember very well. It was several months ago, you know. I don’t think it was anything except a silly practical joke. Crump perhaps. I really do think that Crump is a very unbalanced man, and I’m perfectly certain that he drinks. He’s really very insolent in his manner sometimes. I’ve sometimes wondered if he could have had a grudge against Mr. Fortescue. Do you think that’s possible, Inspector?”