4:50 From Paddington (Miss Marple 8)

“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game.”

She was silent for a moment or two before she said:

“Don’t the boys go back to school soon?”

“Yes, next week. They go tomorrow to James Stoddart-West’s home for the last few days of the holidays.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Miss Marple gravely. “I shouldn’t like anything to happen while they’re there.”

“You mean to old Mr. Crackenthorpe. Do you think he’s going to be murdered next?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “He’ll be all right. I meant to the boys.”

“Well, to Alexander.”

“But surely—”

“Hunting about, you know—looking for clues. Boys love that sort of thing—but it might be very dangerous.”

Craddock looked at her thoughtfully.

“You’re not prepared to believe, are you, Miss Marple, that it’s a case of an unknown woman murdered by an unknown man? You tie it up definitely with Rutherford Hall?”

“I think there’s a definite connection, yes.”

“All we know about the murderer is that he’s a tall dark man. That’s what your friend says and all she can say. There are three tall dark men at Rutherford Hall. On the day of the inquest, you know, I came out to see the three brothers standing waiting on the pavement for the car to draw up. They had their backs to me and it was astonishing how, in their heavy overcoats, they looked all alike. Three tall dark men. And yet, actually, they’re all three quite different types.” He sighed. “It makes it very difficult.”

“I wonder,” murmured Miss Marple. “I have been wondering—whether it might perhaps be all much simpler than we suppose. Murders so often are quite simple—with an obvious rather sordid motive….”

“Do you believe in the mysterious Martine, Miss Marple?”

“I’m quite ready to believe that Edmund Crackenthorpe either married, or meant to marry, a girl called Martine. Emma Crackenthorpe showed you his letter, I understand, and from what I’ve seen of her and from what Lucy tells me, I should say Emma Crackenthorpe is quite incapable of making up a thing of that kind—indeed, why should she?”

“So granted Martine,” said Craddock thoughtfully, “there is a motive of a kind. Martine’s reappearance with a son would diminish the Crackenthorpe inheritance—though hardly to a point, one would think, to activate murder. They’re all very hard up—”

“Even Harold?” Lucy demanded incredulously.

“Even the prosperous-looking Harold Crackenthorpe is not the sober and conservative financier he appears to be. He’s been plunging heavily and mixing himself up in some rather undesirable ventures. A large sum of money, soon, might avoid a crash.”

“But if so—” said Lucy, and stopped.

“Yes, Miss Eyelesbarrow—”

“I know, dear,” said Miss Marple. “The wrong murder, that’s what you mean.”

“Yes. Martine’s death wouldn’t do Harold—or any of the others—any good. Not until—”

“Not until Luther Crackenthorpe died. Exactly. That occurred to me. And Mr. Crackenthorpe, senior, I gather from his doctor, is a much better life than any outsider would imagine.”

“He’ll last for years,” said Lucy. Then she frowned.

“Yes?” Craddock spoke encouragingly.

“He was rather ill at Christmas-time,” said Lucy. “He said the doctor made a lot of fuss about it—‘Anyone would have thought I’d been poisoned by the fuss he made.’ That’s what he said.”

She looked inquiringly at Craddock.

“Yes,” said Craddock. “That’s really what I want to ask Dr. Quimper about.”

“Well, I must go,” said Lucy. “Heavens, it’s late.”

Miss Marple put down her knitting and picked up The Times with a half-done crossword puzzle.

“I wish I had a dictionary here,” she murmured. “Tontine and Tokay— I always mix those two words up. One, I believe, is a Hungarian wine.”

“That’s Tokay,” said Lucy, looking back from the door. “But one’s a five-letter word and one’s a seven. What’s the clue?”

“Oh, it wasn’t in the crossword,” said Miss Marple vaguely. “It was in my head.”

Inspector Craddock looked at her very hard. Then he said goodbye and went.

Seventeen

I

Craddock had to wait a few minutes whilst Quimper finished his evening surgery, and then the doctor came to him. He looked tired and depressed.

He offered Craddock a drink and when the latter accepted he mixed one for himself as well.

“Poor devils,” he said as he sank down in a worn easy-chair. “So scared and so stupid—no sense. Had a painful case this evening. Woman who ought to have come to me a year ago. If she’d come then, she might have been operated on successfully. Now it’s too late. Makes me mad. The truth is people are an extraordinary mixture of heroism and cowardice. She’s suffering agony, and borne it without a word, just because she was too scared to come and find out that what she feared might be true. At the other end of the scale are the people who come and waste my time because they’ve got a dangerous swelling causing them agony on their little finger which they think may be cancer and which turns out to be a common or garden chilblain! Well, don’t mind me. I’ve blown off steam now. What did you want to see me about?”

“First, I’ve got you to thank, I believe, for advising Miss Crackenthorpe to come to me with the letter that purported to be from her brother’s widow.”

“Oh, that? Anything in it? I didn’t exactly advise her to come. She wanted to. She was worried. All the dear little brothers were trying to hold her back, of course.”

“Why should they?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“Afraid the lady might be proved genuine, I suppose.”

“Do you think the letter was genuine?”

“No idea. Never actually saw it. I should say it was someone who knew the facts, just trying to make a touch. Hoping to work on Emma’s feelings. They were dead wrong, there. Emma’s no fool. She wouldn’t take an unknown sister-in-law to her bosom without asking a few practical questions first.”

He added with some curiosity:

“But why ask my views? I’ve got nothing to do with it?”

“I really came to ask you something quite different—but I don’t quite know how to put it.”

Dr. Quimper looked interested.

“I understand that not long ago—at Christmas-time, I think it was—Mr. Crackenthorpe had rather a bad turn of illness.”

He saw a change at once in the doctor’s face. It hardened.

“Yes.”

“I gather a gastric disturbance of some kind?”

“Yes.”

“This is difficult… Mr. Crackenthorpe was boasting of his health, saying he intended to outlive most of his family. He referred to you—you’ll excuse me, Doctor….”

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m not sensitive as to what my patients say about me!”

“He spoke of you as an old fuss-pot.” Quimper smiled. “He said you had asked him all sorts of questions, not only as to what he had eaten, but as to who prepared it and served it.”

The doctor was not smiling now. His face was hard again.

“Go on.”

“He used some such phrase as—‘Talked as though he believed someone had poisoned me.’”

There was a pause.

“Had you—any suspicion of that kind?”

Quimper did not answer at once. He got up and walked up and down. Finally, he wheeled round on Craddock.

“What the devil do you expect me to say? Do you think a doctor can go about flinging accusations of poisoning here and there without any real evidence?”

“I’d just like to know, off the record, if—that idea—did enter your head?”

Dr. Quimper said evasively:

“Old Crackenthorpe leads a fairly frugal life. When the family comes down,

Emma steps up the food. Result—a nasty attack of gastro-enteritis. The symptoms were consistent with that diagnosis.”

Craddock persisted.

“I see. You were quite satisfied? You were not at all—shall we say—puzzled?”

“All right. All right. Yes, I was Yours Truly Puzzled! Does that please you?”

“It interests me,” said Craddock. “What actually did you suspect—or fear?”

“Gastric cases vary, of course, but there were certain indications that would have been, shall we say, more consistent with arsenic poisoning than with plain gastro-enteritis. Mind you, the two things are very much alike. Better men than myself have failed to recognize arsenic poisoning—and have given a certificate in all good faith.”

“And what was the result of your inquiries?”

“It seemed that what I suspected could not possibly be true. Mr. Crackenthorpe assured me that he had similar attacks before I attended him—and from the same cause, he said. They had always taken place when there was too much rich food about.”

“Which was when the house was full? With the family? Or guests?”

“Yes. That seemed reasonable enough. But frankly, Craddock, I wasn’t happy. I went so far as to write to old Dr. Morris. He was my senior partner and retired soon after I joined him. Crackenthorpe was his patient originally. I asked about these earlier attacks that the old man had had.”

“And what response did you get?”

Quimper grinned.

“I got a flea in the ear. I was more or less told not to be a damned fool. Well”—he shrugged his shoulders—“presumably I was a damned fool.”

“I wonder,” Craddock was thoughtful.

Then he decided to speak frankly.