Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple 5)

Mitzi turned the taps on obediently.

“You are not angry at what I say, Miss Blacklock?” she asked.

“If I were to be angry at all the lies you tell, I should never be out of a temper,” said Miss Blacklock.

“I will go and say to the Inspector that I make it all up, shall I?” asked Mitzi.

“He knows that already,” said Miss Blacklock, pleasantly.

Mitzi turned off the taps and as she did so two hands came up behind her head and with one swift movement forced it down into the water-filled sink.

“Only I know that you’re telling the truth for once,” said Miss Blacklock viciously.

Mitzi thrashed and struggled but Miss Blacklock was strong and her hands held the girl’s head firmly under water.

Then, from somewhere quite close behind her, Dora Bunner’s voice rose piteously on the air:

“Oh Lotty—Lotty—don’t do it … Lotty.”

Miss Blacklock screamed. Her hands flew up in the air, and Mitzi, released, came up chocking and spluttering.

Miss Blacklock screamed again and again. For there was no one there in the kitchen with her….

“Dora, Dora, forgive me. I had to … I had to—”

She rushed distractedly towards the scullery door—and the bulk of Sergeant Fletcher barred her way, just as Miss Marple stepped, flushed and triumphant, out of the broom cupboard.

“I could always mimic people’s voices,” said Miss Marple.

“You’ll have to come with me, Madam,” said Sergeant Fletcher. “I was a witness of your attempt to drown this girl. And there will be other charges. I must warn you, Letitia Blacklock—”

“Charlotte Blacklock,” corrected Miss Marple. “That’s who she is, you know. Under that choker of pearls she always wears you’ll find the scar of the operation.”

“Operation?”

“Operation for goitre.”

Miss Blacklock, quite calm now, looked at Miss Marple.

“So you know all about it?” she said.

“Yes, I’ve known for some time.”

Charlotte Blacklock sat down by the table and began to cry.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “Not made Dora’s voice come. I loved Dora. I really loved Dora.”

Inspector Craddock and the others had crowded in the doorway.

Constable Edwards, who added a knowledge of first aid and artificial respiration to his other accomplishments, was busy with Mitzi. As soon as Mitzi could speak she was lyrical with self-praise.

“I do that good, do I not? I am clever! And I am brave! Oh, I am brave! Very very nearly was I murdered, too. But I was so brave I risk everything.”

With a rush Miss Hinchcliffe thrust aside the others and leapt upon the weeping figure of Charlotte Blacklock by the table.

It took all Sergeant Fletcher’s strength to hold her off.

“Now then—” he said. “Now then—no, no, Miss Hinchcliffe—”

Between clenched teeth Miss Hinchcliffe was muttering:

“Let me get at her. Just let me get at her. It was she who killed Amy Murgatroyd.”

Charlotte Blacklock looked up and sniffed.

“I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to kill anybody—I had to—but it’s Dora I mind about—after Dora was dead, I was all alone—ever since she died—I’ve been alone—oh, Dora—Dora—”

And once again she dropped her head on her hands and wept.

Twenty-three

EVENING AT THE VICARAGE

Miss Marple sat in the tall armchair. Bunch was on the floor in front of the fire with her arms round her knees.

The Reverend Julian Harmon was leaning forward and was for once looking more like a schoolboy than a man foreshadowing his own maturity. And Inspector Craddock was smoking his pipe and drinking a whisky and soda and was clearly very much off duty. An outer circle was composed of Julia, Patrick, Edmund and Phillipa.

“I think it’s your story, Miss Marple,” said Craddock.

“Oh no, my dear boy. I only just helped a little, here and there. You were in charge of the whole thing, and conducted it all, and you know so much that I don’t.”

“Well, tell it together,” said Bunch impatiently. “Bit each. Only let Aunt Jane start because I like the muddly way her mind works. When did you first think that the whole thing was a put-up job by Blacklock?”

“Well, my dear Bunch, it’s hard to say. Of course, right at the very beginning, it did seem as though the ideal person—or rather the obvious person, I should say—to have arranged the hold-up was Miss Blacklock herself. She was the only person who was known to have been in contact with Rudi Scherz, and how much easier to arrange something like that when it’s your own house. The central heating, for instance. No fires—because that would have meant light in the room. But the only person who could have arranged not to have a fire was the mistress of the house herself.

“Not that I thought of all that at the time—it just seemed to me that it was a pity it couldn’t be as simple as that! Oh, no, I was taken in like everyone else, I thought that someone really did want to kill Letitia Blacklock.”