4:50 From Paddington (Miss Marple 8)

“Police being cagey. This mass poisoning does give one a bit of a turn, doesn’t it? Mentally, I mean. I’m not referring to more obvious aspects.” He added: “Better look after yourself, my girl.”

“I do,” said Lucy.

“Has young Alexander gone back to school yet?”

“I think he’s still with the Stoddart-Wests. I think it’s the day after tomorrow that school begins.”

Before getting her own lunch Lucy went to the telephone and rang up Miss Marple.

“I’m so terribly sorry I haven’t been able to come over, but I’ve been really very busy.”

“Of course, my dear, of course. Besides, there’s nothing that can be done just now. We just have to wait.”

“Yes, but what are we waiting for?”

“Elspeth McGillicuddy ought to be home very soon now,” said Miss Marple. “I wrote to her to fly home at once. I said it was her duty. So don’t worry too much, my dear.” Her voice was kindly and reassuring.

“You don’t think…” Lucy began, but stopped.

“That there will be anymore deaths? Oh, I hope not, my dear. But one never knows, does one? When anyone is really wicked, I mean. And I think there is great wickedness here.”

“Or madness,” said Lucy.

“Of course I know that is the modern way of looking at things. I don’t agree myself.”

Lucy rang off, went into the kitchen and picked up her tray of lunch. Mrs. Kidder had divested herself of her apron and was about to leave.

“You’ll be all right, miss, I hope?” she asked solicitously.

“Of course I shall be all right,” snapped Lucy.

She took her tray not into the big, gloomy dining room but into the small study. She was just finishing her meal when the door opened and Bryan Eastley came in.

“Hallo,” said Lucy, “this is very unexpected.”

“I suppose it is,” said Bryan. “How is everybody?”

“Oh, much better. Harold’s going back to London tomorrow.”

“What do you think about it all? Was it really arsenic?”

“It was arsenic all right,” said Lucy.

“It hasn’t been in the papers yet.”

“No, I think the police are keeping it up their sleeves for the moment.”

“Somebody must have a pretty good down on the family,” said Bryan. “Who’s likely to have sneaked in and tampered with the food?”

“I suppose I’m the most likely person really,” said Lucy.

Bryan looked at her anxiously. “But you didn’t, did you?” he asked. He sounded slightly shocked.

“No. I didn’t,” said Lucy.

Nobody could have tampered with the curry. She had made it—alone in the kitchen, and brought it to table, and the only person who could have tampered with it was one of the five people who sat down to the meal.

“I mean—why should you?” said Bryan. “They’re nothing to you, are they? I say,” he added, “I hope you don’t mind my coming back here like this?”

“No, no, of course I don’t. Have you come to stay?”

“Well, I’d like to, if it wouldn’t be an awful bore to you.”

“No. No, we can manage.”

“You see, I’m out of a job at the moment and I—well, I get rather fed up. Are you really sure you don’t mind?”

“Oh, I’m not the person to mind, anyway. It’s Emma.”

“Oh, Emma’s all right,” said Bryan. “Emma’s always been very nice to me. In her own way, you know. She keeps things to herself a lot, in fact, she’s rather a dark horse, old Emma. This living here and looking after the old man would get most people down. Pity she never married. Too late now, I suppose.”

“I don’t think it’s too late, at all,” said Lucy.

“Well…” Bryan considered. “A clergyman perhaps,” he said hopefully. “She’d be useful in the parish and tactful with the Mothers’ Union. I do mean the Mothers’ Union, don’t I? Not that I know what it really is, but you come across it sometimes in books. And she’d wear a hat in church on Sundays,” he added.

“Doesn’t sound much of a prospect to me,” said Lucy, rising and picking up the tray.

“I’ll do that,” said Bryan, taking the tray from her. They went into the kitchen together. “Shall I help you wash up? I do like this kitchen,” he added. “In fact, I know it isn’t the sort of thing that people do like nowadays, but I like this whole house. Shocking taste, I suppose, but there it is. You could land a plane quite easily in the park,” he added with enthusiasm.

He picked up a glass-cloth and began to wipe the spoons and forks.

“Seems a waste, its coming to Cedric,” he remarked. “First thing he’ll do is to sell the whole thing and go breaking off abroad again. Can’t see, myself, why England isn’t good enough for anybody. Harold wouldn’t want this house either, and of course it’s much too big for Emma. Now, if only it came to Alexander, he and I would be as happy together here as a couple of sand boys. Of course it would be nice to have a woman about the house.” He looked thoughtfully at Lucy. “Oh, well, what’s the good of talking? If Alexander were to get this place it would mean the whole lot of them would have to die first, and that’s not really likely, is it? Though from what I’ve seen of the old boy he might easily live to be a hundred, just to annoy them all. I don’t suppose he was much cut up by Alfred’s death, was he?”

Lucy said shortly, “No, he wasn’t.”

“Cantankerous old devil,” said Bryan Eastley cheerfully.

Twenty-two

“Dreadful, the things people go about saying,” said Mrs. Kidder. “I don’t listen, mind you, more than I can help. But you’d hardly believe it.” She waited hopefully.

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lucy.

“About that body that was found in the Long Barn,” went on Mrs. Kidder, moving crablike backwards on her hands and knees, as she scrubbed the kitchen floor, “saying as how she’d been Mr. Edmund’s fancy piece during the war, and how she come over here and a jealous husband followed her, and did her in. It is a likely thing as a foreigner would do, but it wouldn’t be likely after all these years, would it?”

“It sounds most unlikely to me.”

“But there’s worse things than that, they say,” said Mrs. Kidder. “Say anything, people will. You’d be surprised. There’s those that say Mr. Harold married somewhere abroad and that she come over and found out that he’s committed bigamy with that lady Alice, and that she was going to bring ’im to court and that he met her down here and did her in, and hid her body in the sarcoffus. Did you ever!”

“Shocking,” said Lucy vaguely, her mind elsewhere.

“Of course I didn’t listen,” said Mrs. Kidder virtuously, “I wouldn’t put no stock in such tales myself. It beats me how people think up such things, let alone say them. All I hope is none of it gets to Miss Emma’s ears. It might upset her and I wouldn’t like that. She’s a very nice lady, Miss Emma is, and I’ve not heard a word against her, not a word. And of course Mr. Alfred being dead nobody says anything against him now. Not even that it’s a judgment, which they well might do. But it’s awful, miss, isn’t it, the wicked talk there is.”

Mrs. Kidder spoke with immense enjoyment.

“It must be quite painful for you to listen to it,” said Lucy.

“Oh, it is,” said Mrs. Kidder. “It is indeed. I says to my husband, I says, however can they?”

The bell rang.

“There’s the doctor, miss. Will you let ’im in, or shall I?”

“I’ll go,” said Lucy.

But it was not the doctor. On the doorstep stood a tall, elegant woman in a mink coat. Drawn up to the gravel sweep was a purring Rolls with a chauffeur at the wheel.

“Can I see Miss Emma Crackenthorpe, please?”

It was an attractive voice, the R’s slightly blurred. The woman was attractive too. About thirty-five, with dark hair and expensively and beautifully made up.