The Body in the Library (Miss Marple 3)

“Nevertheless,” said Miss Marple, “I am going to speak. I want to advise you, very strongly, not to continue using your maiden name in the village.”

Dinah stared at her. She said:

“What—what do you mean?”

Miss Marple said earnestly:

“In a very short time you may need all the sympathy and goodwill you can find. It will be important to your husband, too, that he shall be thought well of. There is a prejudice in old-fashioned country districts against people living together who are not married. It has amused you both, I dare say, to pretend that that is what you are doing. It kept people away, so that you weren’t bothered with what I expect you would call ‘old frumps.’ Nevertheless, old frumps have their uses.”

Dinah demanded:

“How did you know we are married?”

Miss Marple smiled a deprecating smile.

“Oh, my dear,” she said.

Dinah persisted.

“No, but how did you know? You didn’t—you didn’t go to Somerset House?”

A momentary flicker showed in Miss Marple’s eyes.

“Somerset House? Oh, no. But it was quite easy to guess. Everything, you know, gets round in a village. The—er—the kind of quarrels you have—typical of early days of marriage. Quite—quite unlike an illicit relationship. It has been said, you know (and, I think, quite truly), that you can only really get under anybody’s skin if you are married to them. When there is no—no legal bond, people are much more careful, they have to keep assuring themselves how happy and halcyon everything is. They have, you see, to justify themselves. They dare not quarrel! Married people, I have noticed, quite enjoy their battles and the—er—appropriate reconciliations.”

She paused, twinkling benignly.

“Well, I—” Dinah stopped and laughed. She sat down and lit a cigarette. “You’re absolutely marvellous!” she said.

Then she went on:

“But why do you want us to own up and admit to respectability?”

Miss Marple’s face was grave. She said:

“Because, any minute now, your husband may be arrested for murder.”

III

For several moments Dinah stared at her. Then she said incredulously:

“Basil? Murder? Are you joking?”

“No, indeed. Haven’t you seen the papers?”

Dinah caught her breath.

“You mean—that girl at the Majestic Hotel. Do you mean they suspect Basil of killing her?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s nonsense!”

There was the whir of a car outside, the bang of a gate. Basil Blake flung open the door and came in, carrying some bottles. He said:

“Got the gin and the vermouth. Did you—?”

He stopped and turned incredulous eyes on the prim, erect visitor.

Dinah burst out breathlessly:

“Is she mad? She says you’re going to be arrested for the murder of that girl Ruby Keene.”

“Oh, God!” said Basil Blake. The bottles dropped from his arms on to the sofa. He reeled to a chair and dropped down in it and buried his face in his hands. He repeated: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Dinah darted over to him. She caught his shoulders.

“Basil, look at me! It isn’t true! I know it isn’t true! I don’t believe it for a moment!”

His hand went up and gripped hers.

“Bless you, darling.”

“But why should they think—You didn’t even know her, did you?”

“Oh, yes, he knew her,” said Miss Marple.

Basil said fiercely:

“Be quiet, you old hag. Listen, Dinah darling, I hardly knew her at all. Just ran across her once or twice at the Majestic. That’s all, I swear that’s all.”

Dinah said, bewildered:

“I don’t understand. Why should anyone suspect you, then?”

Basil groaned. He put his hands over his eyes and rocked to and fro.

Miss Marple said:

“What did you do with the hearthrug?”

His reply came mechanically:

“I put it in the dustbin.”

Miss Marple clucked her tongue vexedly.

“That was stupid—very stupid. People don’t put good hearthrugs in dustbins. It had spangles in it from her dress, I suppose?”

“Yes, I couldn’t get them out.”

Dinah cried: “But what are you both talking about?”

Basil said sullenly:

“Ask her. She seems to know all about it.”

“I’ll tell you what I think happened, if you like,” said Miss Marple. “You can correct me, Mr. Blake, if I go wrong. I think that after having had a violent quarrel with your wife at a party and after having had, perhaps, rather too much—er—to drink, you drove down here. I don’t know what time you arrived—”

Basil Blake said sullenly:

“About two in the morning. I meant to go up to town first, then when I got to the suburbs I changed my mind. I thought Dinah might come down here after me. So I drove down here. The place was all dark. I opened the door and turned on the light and I saw—and I saw—”

He gulped and stopped. Miss Marple went on:

“You saw a girl lying on the hearthrug—a girl in a white evening dress—strangled. I don’t know whether you recognized her then—”

Basil Blake shook his head violently.

“I couldn’t look at her after the first glance—her face was all blue—swollen. She’d been dead some time and she was there—in my room!”

He shuddered.

Miss Marple said gently:

“You weren’t, of course, quite yourself. You were in a fuddled state and your nerves are not good. You were, I think, panic-stricken. You didn’t know what to do—”

“I thought Dinah might turn up any minute. And she’d find me there with a dead body—a girl’s dead body—and she’d think I’d killed her. Then I got an idea—it seemed, I don’t know why, a good idea at the time—I thought: I’ll put her in old Bantry’s library. Damned pompous old stick, always looking down his nose, sneering at me as artistic and effeminate. Serve the pompous old brute right, I thought. He’ll look a fool when a dead lovely is found on his hearthrug.” He added, with a pathetic eagerness to explain: “I was a bit drunk, you know, at the time. It really seemed positively amusing to me. Old Bantry with a dead blonde.”

“Yes, yes,” said Miss Marple. “Little Tommy Bond had very much the same idea. Rather a sensitive boy with an inferiority complex, he said teacher was always picking on him. He put a frog in the clock and it jumped out at her.

“You were just the same,” went on Miss Marple, “only of course, bodies are more serious matters than frogs.”

Basil groaned again.

“By the morning I’d sobered up. I realized what I’d done. I was scared stiff. And th

en the police came here—another damned pompous ass of a Chief Constable. I was scared of him—and the only way I could hide it was by being abominably rude. In the middle of it all Dinah drove up.”

Dinah looked out of the window.

She said:

“There’s a car driving up now … there are men in it.”

“The police, I think,” said Miss Marple.

Basil Blake got up. Suddenly he became quite calm and resolute. He even smiled. He said:

“So I’m for it, am I? All right, Dinah sweet, keep your head. Get on to old Sims—he’s the family lawyer—and go to Mother and tell her everything about our marriage. She won’t bite. And don’t worry. I didn’t do it. So it’s bound to be all right, see, sweetheart?”

There was a tap on the cottage door. Basil called “Come in.” Inspector Slack entered with another man. He said:

“Mr. Basil Blake?”

“Yes.”

“I have a warrant here for your arrest on the charge of murdering Ruby Keene on the night of September 21st last. I warn you that anything you say may be used at your trial. You will please accompany me now. Full facilities will be given you for communicating with your solicitor.”

Basil nodded.

He looked at Dinah, but did not touch her. He said:

“So long, Dinah.”

“Cool customer,” thought Inspector Slack.

He acknowledged the presence of Miss Marple with a half bow and a “Good morning,” and thought to himself:

“Smart old Pussy, she’s on to it! Good job we’ve got that hearthrug. That and finding out from the car-park man at the studio that he left that party at eleven instead of midnight. Don’t think those friends of his meant to commit perjury. They were bottled and Blake told ’em firmly the next day it was twelve o’clock when he left and they believed him. Well, his goose is cooked good and proper! Mental, I expect! Broadmoor, not hanging. First the Reeves kid, probably strangled her, drove her out to the quarry, walked back into Danemouth, picked up his own car in some side lane, drove to this party, then back to Danemouth, brought Ruby Keene out here, strangled her, put her in old Bantry’s library, then probably got the wind up about the car in the quarry, drove there, set it on fire, and got back here. Mad—sex and blood lust—lucky this girl’s escaped. What they call recurring mania, I expect.”