At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple 11)

In Elvira Blake, he thought, everything had been driven inward. Bess Sedgwick had got through life by imposing her will on it. Elvira, he guessed, had a different way of getting through life. She submitted, he thought. She obeyed. She smiled in compliance and behind that, he thought, she slipped away through your fingers. “Sly,” he said to himself, appraising that fact. “That’s the only way she can manage, I expect. She can never brazen things out or impose herself. That’s why, I expect, the people who’ve looked after her have never had the least idea of what she might be up to.”

He wondered what she had been doing slipping along the street to Bertram’s Hotel on a late foggy evening. He was going to ask her presently. He thought it highly probable that the answer he would get would not be the true one. “That’s the way,” he thought, “that the poor child defends herself.” Had she come here to meet her mother or to find her mother? It was perfectly possible, but he didn’t think so. Not for a moment. Instead he thought of the big sports car tucked away round the corner—the car with the number plate FAN 2266. Ladislaus Malinowski must be somewhere in the neighbourhood since his car was there.

“Well,” said Father, addressing Elvira in his most kindly and fatherlike manner, “well, and how are you feeling now?”

“I’m quite all right,” said Elvira.

“Good. I’d like you to answer a few questions if you feel up to it; because, you see, time is usually the essence of these things. You were shot at twice and a man was killed. We want as many clues as we can get to the person who killed him.”

“I’ll tell you everything I can, but it all came so suddenly. And you can’t see anything in a fog. I’ve no idea myself who it could have been—or even what he looked like. That’s what was so frightening.”

“You said this was the second time somebody had tried to kill you. Does that mean there was an attempt on your life before?”

“Did I say that? I can’t remember.” Her eyes moved uneasily. “I don’t think I said that.”

“Oh, but you did, you know,” said Father.

“I expect I was just being—hysterical.”

“No,” said Father, “I don’t think you were. I think you meant just what you said.”

“I might have been imagining things,” said Elvira. Her eyes shifted again.

Bess Sedgwick moved. She said quietly:

“You’d better tell him, Elvira.”

Elvira shot a quick, uneasy look at her mother.

“You needn’t worry,” said Father, reassuringly. “We know quite well in the police force that girls don’t tell their mothers or their guardians everything. We don’t take those things too seriously, but we’ve got to know about them, because, you see, it all helps.”

Bess Sedgwick said:

“Was it in Italy?”

“Yes,” said Elvira.

Father said: “That’s where you’ve been at school, isn’t it, or a finishing place or whatever they call it nowadays?”

“Yes. I was at Contessa Martinelli’s. There were about eighteen or twenty of us.”

“And you thought that somebody tried to kill you. How was that?”

“Well, a big box of chocolates and sweets and things came for me. There was a card with it written in Italian in a flowery hand. The sort of thing they say, you know, ‘To the bellissima Signorina.’ Something like that. And my friends and I—well—we laughed about it a bit, and wondered who’d sent it.”

“Did it come by post?”

“No. No, it couldn’t have come by post. It was just there in my room. Someone must have put it there.”

“I see. Bribed one of the servants, I suppose. I am to take it that you didn’t let the Contessa whoever-it-was in on this?”

A faint smile appeared on Elvira’s face. “No. No. We certainly didn’t. Anyway we opened the box and they were lovely chocolates. Different kinds, you know, but there were some violet creams. That’s the sort of chocolate that has a crystallized violet on top. My favourite. So of course I ate one or two of those first. And then afterwards, in the night, I felt terribly ill. I didn’t think it was the chocolates, I just thought it was something perhaps that I’d eaten at dinner.”

“Anybody else ill?”

“No. Only me. Well, I was very sick and all that, but I felt all right by the end of the next day. Then a day or two later I ate another of the same chocolates, and the same thing happened. So I talked to Bridget about it. Bridget was my special friend. And we looked at the chocolates, and we found that the violet creams had got a sort of hole in the bottom that had been filled up again, so we thought that someone had put some poison in and they’d only put it in the violet creams so that I would be the one who ate them.”

“Nobody else was ill?”

“No.”

“So presumably nobody else ate the violet creams?”

“No. I don’t think they could have. You see, it was my present and they knew I liked the violet ones, so they’d leave them for me.”

“The chap took a risk, whoever he was,” said Father. “The whole place might have been poisoned.”

“It’s absurd,” said Lady Sedgwick sharply. “Utterly absurd! I never heard of anything so crude.”

Chief-Inspector Davy made a slight gesture with his hand. “Please,” he said, then he went on to Elvira: “Now I find that very interesting, Miss Blake. And you still didn’t tell the Contessa?”

“Oh no, we didn’t. She’d have made a terrible fuss.”

“What did you do with the chocolates?”

“We threw them away,” said Elvira. “They were lovely chocolates,” she added, with a tone of slight grief.

“You didn’t try and find out who sent them?” Elvira looked embarrassed.

“Well, you see, I thought it might have been Guido.”

“Yes?” said Chief-Inspector Davy, cheerfully. “And who is Guido?”

“Oh, Guido…” Elvira paused. She looked at her mother.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Bess Sedgwick. “Tell Chief-Inspector Davy about Guido, whoever he is. Every girl of your age has a Guido in her life. You met him out there, I suppose?”

“Yes. When we were taken to the opera. He spoke to me there. He was nice. Very attractive. I used to see him sometimes when we went to classes. He used to pass me notes.”

“And I suppose,” said Bess Sedgwick, “that you told a lot of lies, and made plans with some friends and you managed to get out and meet him? Is that it?”

Elvira looked relieved by this short cut to confession. “Sometimes Guido managed to—”

“What was Guido’s other name?”

“I don’t know,” said Elvira. “He never told me.”

Chief-Inspector Davy smiled at her.

“You mean you’re not going to tell? Never mind. I dare say we’ll be able to find out quite all right without your help, if it should really matter. But why should you think that this young man, who was presumably fond of you, should want to kill you?”

“Oh, because he used to threaten things like that. I mean, we used to have rows now and then. He’d bring some of his friends with him, and I’d pretend to like them better than him, and then he’d get very, very wild and angry. He said I’d better be careful what I did. I couldn’t give him up just like that! That if I wasn’t faithful to him he’d kill me! I just thought he was being melodramatic and theatrical.” Elvira smiled suddenly and unexpectedly. “But it was all rather fun. I didn’t think it was real or serious.”

“Well,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “I don’t think it does seem very likely that a young man such as you describe would really poison chocolates and send them to you.”

“Well, I don’t think so really either,” said Elvira, “but it must have been him because I can’t see that there’s anyone else. It worried me. And then, when I came back here, I got a note—” She stopped.

“What sort of a note?”

“It just came in an envelope and was printed. It said ‘Be on your g

uard. Somebody wants to kill you.’”

Chief-Inspector Davy’s eyebrows went up.

“Indeed? Very curious. Yes, very curious. And it worried you. You were frightened?”

“Yes. I began to—to wonder who could possibly want me out of the way. That’s why I tried to find out if I was really very rich.”

“Go on.”

“And the other day in London something else happened. I was in the tube and there were a lot of people on the platform. I thought someone tried to push me onto the line.”

“My dear child!” said Bess Sedgwick. “Don’t romance.”

Again Father made that slight gesture of his hand.

“Yes,” said Elvira apologetically. “I expect I have been imagining it all but—I don’t know—I mean, after what happened this evening it seems, doesn’t it, as though it might all be true?” She turned suddenly to Bess Sedgwick, speaking with urgency, “Mother! You might know. Does anyone want to kill me? Could there be anyone? Have I got an enemy?”

“Of course you’ve not got an enemy,” said Bess Sedgwick, impatiently. “Don’t be an idiot. Nobody wants to kill you. Why should they?”

“Then who shot at me tonight?”

“In that fog,” said Bess Sedgwick, “you might have been mistaken for someone else. That’s possible, don’t you think?” she said, turning to Father.