4:50 From Paddington (Miss Marple 8)

“We know nothing about her,” he said. “That’s why we hoped one of you could help us. Are you sure you can’t? Even if you didn’t recognize her—can you think of anyone she might be?”

He thought, but perhaps he imagined it, that there was a very slight pause before she answered.

“I’ve absolutely no idea,” she said.

Imperceptibly, Inspector Craddock’s manner changed. It was hardly noticeable except as a slight hardness in his voice.

“When Mr. Wimborne told you that the woman was a foreigner, why did you assume that she was French?”

Emma was not disconcerted. Her eyebrows rose slightly.

“Did I? Yes, I believe I did. I don’t really know why—except that one always tends to think foreigners are French until one finds out what nationality they really are. Most foreigners in this country are French, aren’t they?”

“Oh, I really wouldn’t say that was so, Miss Crackenthorpe. Not nowadays. We have so many nationalities over here, Italians, Germans, Austrians, all the Scandinavian countries—”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“You don’t have some special reason for thinking that this woman was likely to be French?”

She didn’t hurry to deny it. She just thought a moment and then shook her head almost regretfully.

“No,” she said. “I really don’t think so.”

Her glance met his placidly, without flinching. Craddock looked towards Inspector Bacon. The latter leaned forward and presented a small enamel powder compact.

“Do you recognize this, Miss Crackenthorpe?”

She took it and examined it.

“No. It’s certainly not mine.”

“You’ve no idea to whom it belonged?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think we need worry you anymore—for the present.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled briefly at them, got up, and left the room. Again he may have imagined it, but Craddock thought she moved rather quickly, as though a certain relief hurried her.

“Think she knows anything?” asked Bacon.

Inspector Craddock said ruefully:

“At a certain stage one is inclined to think everyone knows a little more than they are willing to tell you.”

“They usually do, too,” said Bacon out of the depth of his experience. “Only,” he added, “it quite often isn’t anything to do with the business in hand. It’s some family peccadillo or some silly scrape that people are afraid is going to be dragged into the open.”

“Yes, I know. Well, at least—”

But whatever Inspector Craddock had been about to say never got said, for the door was flung open and old Mr. Crackenthorpe shuffled in in a high state of indignation.

“A pretty pass, when Scotland Yard comes down and doesn’t have the courtesy to talk to the head of the family first! Who’s the master of this house, I’d like to know? Answer me that? Who’s the master here?”

“You are, of course, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Craddock soothingly and rising as he spoke. “But we understood that you had already told Inspector Bacon all you know, and that, your health not being good, we must not make too many demands upon it. Dr. Quimper said—”

“I dare say—I dare say. I’m not a strong man… As for Dr. Quimper, he’s a regular old woman—perfectly good doctor, understands my case—but inclined to wrap me up in cotton-wool. Got a bee in his bonnet about food. Went on at me Christmas-time when I had a bit of a turn—what did I eat? When? Who cooked it? Who served it? Fuss, fuss, fuss! But though I may have indifferent health, I’m well enough to give you all the help that’s in my power. Murder in my own house—or at any rate in my own barn! Interesting building, that. Elizabethan. Local architect says not—but fellow doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Not a day later than 1580—but that’s not what we’re talking about. What do you want to know? What’s your present theory?”

“It’s a little too early for theories, Mr. Crackenthorpe. We are still trying to find out who the woman was.”

“Foreigner, you say?”

“We think so.”

“Enemy agent?”

“Unlikely, I should say.”

“You’d say—you’d say! They’re everywhere, these people. Infiltrating! Why the Home Office lets them in beats me. Spying on industrial secrets, I’d bet. That’s what she was doing.”

“In Brackhampton?”

“Factories everywhere. One outside my own back gate.”

Craddock shot an inquiring glance at Bacon who responded.

“Metal Boxes.”

“How do you know that’s what they’re really making? Can’t swallow all these fellows tell you. All right, if she wasn’t a spy, who do you think she was? Think she was mixed up with one of my precious sons? It would be Alfred, if so. Not Harold, he’s too careful. And Cedric doesn’t condescend to live in this country. All right, then, she was Alfred’s bit of skirt. And some violent fellow followed her down here, thinking she was coming to meet him and did her in. How’s that?”

Inspector Craddock said diplomatically that it was certainly a theory. But Mr. Alfred Crackenthorpe, he said, had not reccognized her.

“Pah! Afraid, that’s all! Alfred always was a coward. But he’s a liar, remember, always was! Lie himself black in the face. None of my sons are any good. Crowd of vultures, waiting for me to die, that’s their real occupation in life,” he chuckled. “And they can wait. I won’t die to oblige them! Well, if that’s all I can do for you… I’m tired. Got to rest.”

He shuffled out again.

“Alfred’s bit of skirt?” said Bacon questioningly. “In my opinion the old man just made that up,” he paused, hesitated. “I think, personally, Alfred’s quite all right—perhaps a shifty customer in some ways—but not our present cup of tea. Mind you—I did just wonder about that Air Force chap.”

“Bryan Eastley?”

“Yes. I’ve run into one or two of his type. They’re what you might call adrift in the world—had danger and death and excitement too early in life. Now they find life tame. Tame and unsatisfactory. In a way, we’ve given them a raw deal. Though I don’t really know what we could do about it. But there they are, all past and no future, so to speak. And they’re the kind that don’t mind taking chances—the ordinary fellow plays safe by instinct, it’s not so much morality as prudence. But these fellows aren’t afraid—playing safe isn’t really in their vocabulary. If Eastley were mixed up with a woman and wanted to kill her…” He stopped, threw out a hand hopelessly. “But why should he want to kill her? And if you do kill a woman, why plant her in your father-in-law’s sarcophagus? No, if you ask me, none of this lot had anything to do with the murder. If they had, they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of planting the body on their own back door step, so to speak.”

Craddock agreed that that hardly made sense.

“Anything more you want to do here?”

Craddock said there wasn’t.

Bacon suggested coming back to Brackhampton and having a cup of tea—but Inspector Craddock said that he was going to call on an old acquaintance.

Ten

I

Miss Marple, sitting erect against a background of china dogs and presents from Margate, smiled approvingly at Inspector Dermot Craddock.

“I’m so glad,” she said, “that you have been assigned to the case. I hoped you would be.”

“When I got your letter,” said Craddock, “I took it straight to the A.C. As it happened he had just heard from the Brackhampton people calling us in. They seemed to think it wasn’t a local crime. The A.C. was very interested in what I had to tell him about you. He’d heard about you, I gather, from my godfather.”

“Dear Sir Henry,” murmured Miss Marple affectionately.

“He got me to tell him all about the Little Paddocks business. Do you want to hear what he said next?”

“Please tell me if it is not a breach of confidence.”

“He said, ‘Well, as this seems a completely cockeyed business, all thought up by a couple of old ladies who’ve turned out, against all probability, to be right, and since you already know one of these old ladies, I’m sending you down on the case.’ So here I am! And now, my dear Miss Marple, where do we go from here? This is not, as you probably appreciate, an official visit. I haven’t got my henchmen with me. I thought you and I might take down our back hair together first.”

Miss Marple smiled at him.

“I’m sure,” she said, “that no one who only knows you officially would ever guess that you could be so human, and better-looking than ever—don’t blush… Now, what, exactly, have you been told so far?”

“I’ve got everything, I think. Your friend, Mrs. McGillicuddy’s original statement to the police at St. Mary Mead, confirmation of her statement by the ticket collector, and also the note to the stationmaster at Brackhampton. I may say that all the proper inquiries were made by the people concerned—the railway people and the police. But there’s no doubt that you outsmarted them all by a most fantastic process of guesswork.”

“Not guesswork,” said Miss Marple. “And I had a great advantage. I knew Elspeth McGillicuddy. Nobody else did. There was no obvious confirmation of her story, and if there was no question of any woman being reported missing, then quite naturally they would think it was just an elderly lady imagining things—as elderly ladies often do—but not Elspeth McGillicuddy.”

“Not Elspeth McGillicuddy,” agreed the inspector. “I’m looking forward to meeting her, you know. I wish she hadn’t gone to Ceylon. We’re arranging for her to be interviewed there, by the way.”

“My own process of reasoning was not really original,” said Miss Marple. “It’s all in Mark Twain. The boy who found the horse. He just imagined where he would go if he were a horse and he went there and there was the horse.”

“You imagined what you’d do if you were a cruel and cold-blooded murderer?” said Craddock looking thoughtfully at Miss Marple’s pink and white elderly fragility. “Really, your mind—”

“Like a sink, my nephew Raymond used to say,” Miss Marple agreed, nodding her head briskly. “But as I always told him, sinks are necessary domestic equipment and actually very hygienic.”

“Can you go a little further still, put yourself in the murderer’s place, and tell me just where he is now?”

Miss Marple sighed.

“I wish I could. I’ve no idea—no idea at all. But he must be someone who has lived in, or knows all about, Rutherford Hall.”

“I agree. But that opens up a very wide field. Quite a succession of daily women have worked there. There’s the Women’s Institute—and the A.R.P. Wardens before them. They all know the Long Barn and the sarcophagus and where the key was kept. The whole setup there is widely known locally. Anybody living round about might hit on it as a good spot for his purpose.”

“Yes, indeed. I quite understand your difficulties.”