The Thirteen Problems (Miss Marple 2)

‘Mr Petherick?’

The lawyer joined the tips of his fingers together professionally. ‘I should hardly like to say. On the facts I should hardly like to say.’

‘But you have got to, Mr Petherick,’ said Joyce. ‘You can’t reserve judgement and say “without prejudice”, and be legal. You have got to play the game.’

‘On the facts,’ said Mr Petherick, ‘there seems nothing to be said. It is my private opinion, having seen, alas, too many cases of this kind, that the husband was guilty. The only explanation that will cover the facts seems to be that Miss Clark for some reason or other deliberately sheltered him. There may have been some financial arrangement made between them. He might realize that he would be suspected, and she, seeing only a future of poverty before her, may have agreed to tell the story of drinking the cornflour in return for a substantial sum to be paid to her privately. If that was the case it was of course most irregular. Most irregular indeed.’

‘I disagree with you all,’ said Raymond. ‘You have forgotten the one important factor in the case. The doctor’s daughter. I will give you my reading of the case. The tinned lobster was bad. It accounted for the poisoning symptoms. The doctor was sent for. He finds Mrs Jones, who has eaten more lobster than the others, in great pain, and he sends, as you told us, for some opium pills. He does not go himself, he sends. Who will give the messenger the opium pills? Clearly his daughter. Very likely she dispenses his medicines for him. She is in love with Jones and at this moment all the worst instincts in her nature rise and she realizes that the means to procure his freedom are in her hands. The pills she sends contain pure white arsenic. That is my solution.’

‘And now, Sir Henry, tell us,’ said Joyce eagerly.

‘One moment,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Miss Marple has not yet spoken.’

Miss Marple was shaking her head sadly.

‘Dear, dear,’ she said. ‘I have dropped another stitch. I have been so interested in the story. A sad case, a very sad case. It reminds me of old Mr Hargraves who lived up at the Mount. His wife never had the least suspicion—until he died, leaving all his money to a woman he had been living with and by whom he had five children. She had at one time been their housemaid. Such a nice girl, Mrs Hargraves always said—thoroughly to be relied upon to turn the mattresses every day—except Fridays, of course. And there was old Hargraves keeping this woman in a house in the neighbouring town and continuing to be a Churchwarden and to hand round the plate every Sunday.’

‘My dear Aunt Jane,’ said Raymond with some impatience. ‘What has dead and gone Hargraves got to do with the case?’

‘This story made me think of him at once,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The facts are so very alike, aren’t they? I suppose the poor girl has confessed now and that is how you know, Sir Henry.’

‘What girl?’ said Raymond. ‘My dear Aunt, what are you talking about?’

‘That poor girl, Gladys Linch, of course—the one who was so terribly agitated when the doctor spoke to her—and well she might be, poor thing. I hope that wicked Jones is hanged, I am sure, making that poor girl a murderess. I suppose they will hang her too, poor thing.’

‘I think, Miss Marple, that you are under a slight misapprehension,’ began Mr Petherick.

But Miss Marple shook her head obstinately and looked across at Sir Henry.

‘I am right, am I not? It seems so clear to me. The hundreds and thousands—and the trifle—I mean, one cannot miss it.’

‘What about the trifle and the hundreds and thousands?’ cried Raymond.

His aunt turned to him.

‘Cooks nearly always put hundreds and thousands on trifle, dear,’ she said. ‘Those little pink and white sugar things. Of course when I heard that they had trifle for supper and that the husband had been writing to someone about hundreds and thousands, I naturally connected the two things together. That is where the arsenic was—in the hundreds and thousands. He left it with the girl and told her to put it on the trifle.’

‘But that is impossible,’ said Joyce quickly. ‘They all ate the trifle.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The companion was banting, you remember. You never eat anything like trifle if you are banting; and I expect Jones just scraped the hundreds and thousands off his share and left them at the side of his plate. It was a clever idea, but a very wicked one.’

The eyes of the others were all fixed upon Sir Henry.

‘It is a very curious thing,’ he said slowly, ‘but Miss Marple happens to have hit upon the truth. Jones had got Gladys Linch into trouble, as the saying goes. She was nearly desperate. He wanted his wife out of the way and promised to marry Gladys when his wife was dead. He doctored the hundreds and thousands and gave them to her with instructions how to use them. Gladys Linch died a week ago. Her child died at birth and Jones had deserted her for another woman. When she was dying she confessed the truth.’

There was a few moments’ silence and then Raymond said:

‘Well, Aunt Jane, this is one up to you. I can’t think how on earth you managed to hit upon the truth. I should never have thought of the little maid in the kitchen being connected with the case.’

‘No, dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but you don’t know as much of life as I do. A man of that Jones’s type—coarse and jovial. As soon as I heard there was a pretty young girl in the house I felt sure that he would not have left her alone. It is all very distressing and painful, and not a very nice thing to talk about. I can’t tell you the shock it was to Mrs Hargraves, and a nine days’ wonder in the village.’

Chapter 2

The Idol House of Astarte

‘And now, Dr Pender, what are you going to tell us?’

The old clergyman smiled gently.

‘My life has been passed in quiet places,’ he said. ‘Very few eventful happenings have come my way. Yet once, when I was a young man, I had one very strange and tragic experience.’

‘Ah!’ said Joyce Lemprière encouragingly.

‘I have never forgotten it,’ continued the clergyman. ‘It made a profound impression on me at the time, and to this day by a slight effort of memory I can feel again the awe and horror of that terrible moment when I saw a man stricken to death by apparently no mortal agency.’

‘You make me feel quite creepy, Pender,’ complained Sir Henry.

‘It made me feel creepy, as you call it,’ replied the other. ‘Since then I have never laughed at the people who use the word atmosphere. There is such a thing. There are certain places imbued and saturated with good or evil influences which can make their power felt.’

‘That house, The Larches, is a very unhappy one,’ remarked Miss Marple. ‘Old Mr Smithers lost all his money and had to leave it, then the Carslakes took it and Johnny Carslake fell downstairs and broke his leg and Mrs Carslake had to go away to the south of France for her health, and now the Burdens have got it and I hear that poor Mr Burden has got to have an operation almost immediately.’

‘There is, I think, rather too much superstition about such matters,’ said Mr Petherick. ‘A lot of damage is done to property by foolish reports heedlessly circulated.’

‘I have known one or two “ghosts” that have had a very robust personality,’ remarked Sir Henry with a chuckle.

‘I think,’ said Raymond, ‘we should allow Dr Pender to go on with his story.’

Joyce got up and switched off the two lamps, leaving the room lit only by the flickering firelight.

‘Atmosphere,’ she said. ‘Now we can get along.’

Dr Pender smiled at her, and leaning back in his chair and taking off his pince-nez, he began his story in a gentle reminiscent voice.

‘I don’t know whether any of you know Dartmoor at all. The place I am telling you about is situated on the borders of Dartmoor. It was a very charming property, though it had been on the market without finding a purchaser for several years. The situation was perhaps a little bleak in winter, but the views were magnificent and there were certa

in curious and original features about the property itself. It was bought by a man called Haydon—Sir Richard Haydon. I had known him in his college days, and though I had lost sight of him for some years, the old ties of friendship still held, and I accepted with pleasure his invitation to go down to Silent Grove, as his new purchase was called.

‘The house party was not a very large one. There was Richard Haydon himself, and his cousin, Elliot Haydon. There was a Lady Mannering with a pale, rather inconspicuous daughter called Violet. There was a Captain Rogers and his wife, hard riding, weather beaten people, who lived only for horses and hunting. There was also a young Dr Symonds and there was Miss Diana Ashley. I knew something about the last named. Her picture was very often in the Society papers and she was one of the notorious beauties of the Season. Her appearance was indeed very striking. She was dark and tall, with a beautiful skin of an even tint of pale cream, and her half closed dark eyes set slantways in her head gave her a curiously piquant oriental appearance. She had, too, a wonderful speaking voice, deep-toned and bell-like.

‘I saw at once that my friend Richard Haydon was very much attracted by her, and I guessed that the whole party was merely arranged as a setting for her. Of her own feelings I was not so sure. She was capricious in her favours. One day talking to Richard and excluding everyone else from her notice, and another day she would favour his cousin, Elliot, and appear hardly to notice that such a person as Richard existed, and then again she would bestow the most bewitching smiles upon the quiet and retiring Dr Symonds.

‘On the morning after my arrival our host showed us all over the place. The house itself was unremarkable, a good solid house built of Devonshire granite. Built to withstand time and exposure. It was unromantic but very comfortable. From the windows of it one looked out over the panorama of the Moor, vast rolling hills crowned with weather-beaten Tors.

‘On the slopes of the Tor nearest to us were various hut circles, relics of the bygone days of the late Stone Age. On another hill was a barrow which had recently been excavated, and in which certain bronze implements had been found. Haydon was by way of being interested in antiquarian matters and he talked to us with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. This particular spot, he explained, was particularly rich in relics of the past.

‘Neolithic hut dwellers, Druids, Romans, and even traces of the early Phoenicians were to be found.

‘ “But this place is the most interesting of all,” he said “You know its name—Silent Grove. Well, it is easy enough to see what it takes its name from.”