Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple 5)

Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm while she did so.

“Now then,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “off you go. Remember the time you played Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Women’s Institute? Act. Give it all you’ve got. ‘Stick ’em up!’ Those are your lines—and don’t ruin them by saying ‘Please.’”

Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and advanced on the kitchen door.

Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.

“Stick ’em up!” she fluted, adding vexedly: “Dear me, this is very difficult, Hinch.”

“Why?”

“The door. It’s a swing door, it keeps coming back and I’ve got both hands full.”

“Exactly,” boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. “And the drawing room door at Little Paddocks always swings to. It isn’t a swing door like this, but it won’t stay open. That’s why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass doorstop from Elliot’s in the High Street. I don’t mind saying I’ve never forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute down most successfully. He’d come down from eight guineas to six pound ten, and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I’d never seen as attractive a doorstop, you don’t often get those glass bubbles in that big size.”

“Perhaps the burglar put the doorstop against the door to keep it open,” suggested Miss Murgatroyd.

“Use your common sense, Murgatroyd. What does he do? Throw the door open, say ‘Excuse me a moment,’ stoop and put the stop into position and then resume business by saying ‘Hands up’? Try holding the door with your shoulder.”

“It’s still very awkward,” complained Miss Murgatroyd.

“Exactly,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “A revolver, a torch and a door to hold open—a bit too much, isn’t it? So what’s the answer?”

Miss Murgatroyd did not attempt to supply an answer. She looked inquiringly and admiringly at her masterful friend and waited to be enlightened.

“We know he’d got a revolver, because he fired it,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “And we know he had a torch because we all saw it—that is unless we’re all victims of mass hypnotism like explanations of the Indian Rope Trick (what a bore that old Easterbrook is with his Indian stories) so the question is, did someone hold that door open for him?”

“But who could have done that?”

“Well, you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were standing directly behind it when the lights went out.” Miss Hinchcliffe laughed heartily. “Highly suspicious character, aren’t you, Murgatroyd? But who’d think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel—thank heavens it isn’t really a revolver. You’d have shot yourself by now!”

IV

“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” muttered Colonel Easterbrook. “Most extraordinary. Laura.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Come into my dressing room a moment.”

“What is it, darling?”

Mrs. Easterbrook appeared through the open door.

“Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?”

“Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horrid black thing.”

“Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Well, it’s not there now.”

“Archie, how extraordinary!”

“You haven’t moved it or anything?”

“Oh, no, I’d never dare to touch the horrid thing.”

“Think old mother whatsername did?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Mrs. Butt would never do a thing like that. Shall I ask her?”

“No—no, better not. Don’t want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you remember when it was I showed it to you?”

“Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked you what it was.”

“Yes, that’s right. About a week ago. You don’t remember the date?”

Mrs. Easterbrook considered, eyelids down over her eyes, a shrewd brain working.

“Of course,” she said. “It was Saturday. The day we were to have gone in to the pictures, but we didn’t.”

“H’m—sure it wasn’t before that? Wednesday? Thursday or even the week before that again?”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Easterbrook. “I remember quite distinctly. It was Saturday the 30th. It just seems a long time because of all the trouble there’s been. And I can tell you how I remember. It’s because it was the day after the hold-up at Miss Blacklock’s. Because when I saw your revolver it reminded me of the shooting the night before.”

“Ah,” said Colonel Easterbrook, “then that’s a great load off my mind.”

“Oh, Archie, why?”

“Just because if that revolver had disappeared before the shooting—well, it might possibly have been my revolver that was pinched by that Swiss fellow.”

“But how would he have known you had one?”

“These gangs have a most extraordinary communication service. They get to know everything about a place and who lives there.”

“What a lot you do know, Archie.”

“Ha. Yes. Seen a thing or two in my time. Still as you definitely remember seeing my revolver after the hold-up—well, that settles it. The revolver that Swiss fellow used can’t have been mine, can it?”

“Of course it can’t.”

“A great relief. I should have had to go to the police about it. And they ask a lot of awkward questions. Bound to. As a matter of fact I never took out a licence for it. Somehow, after a war, one forgets these peacetime regulations. I looked on it as a war souvenir, not as a firearm.”

“Yes, I see. Of course.”

“But all the same—where on earth can the damned thing be?”

“Perhaps Mrs. Butt took it. She’s always seemed quite honest, but perhaps she felt nervous after the hold-up and thought she’d like to—to have a revolver in the house. Of course, she’ll never admit doing that. I shan’t even ask her. She might get offended. And what should we do then? This is such a big house—I simply couldn’t—”

“Quite so,” said Colonel Easterbrook. “Better not say anything.”

Thirteen

MORNING ACTIVITIES IN CHIPPING CLEGHORN (CONTINUED)

Miss Marple came out of the Vicarage gate and walked down the little lane that led into the main street.

She walked fairly briskly with the aid of the Rev. Julian Harmon’s stout ashplant stick.

She passed the Red Cow and the butcher’s and stopped for a

brief moment to look into the window of Mr. Elliot’s antique shop. This was cunningly situated next door to the Bluebird Tearooms and Café so that rich motorists, after stopping for a nice cup of tea and somewhat euphemistically named “Home Made Cakes” of a bright saffron colour, could be tempted by Mr. Elliot’s judiciously planned shop window.

In this antique bow frame, Mr. Elliot catered for all tastes. Two pieces of Waterford glass reposed on an impeccable wine cooler. A walnut bureau, made up of various bits and pieces, proclaimed itself a Genuine Bargain and on a table, in the window itself, were a nice assortment of cheap doorknockers and quaint pixies, a few chipped bits of Dresden, a couple of sad-looking bead necklaces, a mug with “A Present from Tunbridge Wells” on it, and some tit-bits of Victorian silver.

Miss Marple gave the window her rapt attention, and Mr. Elliot, an elderly obese spider, peeped out of his web to appraise the possibilities of this new fly.

But just as he decided that the charms of the Present from Tunbridge Wells were about to be too much for the lady who was staying at the Vicarage (for of course Mr. Elliot, like everybody else, knew exactly who she was), Miss Marple saw out of the corner of her eye Miss Dora Bunner entering the Bluebird Café, and immediately decided that what she needed to counteract the cold wind was a nice cup of morning coffee.

Four or five ladies were already engaged in sweetening their morning shopping by a pause for refreshment. Miss Marple, blinking a little in the gloom of the interior of the Bluebird, and hovering artistically, was greeted by the voice of Dora Bunner at her elbow.

“Oh, good morning, Miss Marple. Do sit down here. I’m all alone.”

“Thank you.”

Miss Marple subsided gratefully on to the rather angular little blue-painted armchair which the Bluebird affected.

“Such a sharp wind,” she complained. “And I can’t walk very fast because of my rheumatic leg.”

“Oh, I know. I had sciatica one year—and really most of the time I was in agony.”

The two ladies talked rheumatism, sciatica and neuritis for some moments with avidity. A sulky-looking girl in a pink overall with a flight of bluebirds down the front of it took their order for coffee and cakes with a yawn and an air of weary patience.