Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple 5)

Miss Marple’s voice dropped. It was no longer excited and pleased. It was quiet and remorseless.

“I knew then something had got to be done. Quickly! But there still wasn’t any proof. I thought out a possible plan and I talked to Sergeant Fletcher.”

“And I have had Fletcher on the carpet for it!” said Craddock. “He’d no business to go agreeing to your plans without reporting first to me.”

“He didn’t like it, but I talked him into it,” said Miss Marple. “We went up to Little Paddocks and I got hold of Mitzi.”

Julia drew a deep breath and said, “I can’t imagine how you ever got her to do it.”

“I worked on her, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “She thinks far too much about herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done something for others. I flattered her up, of course, and said I was sure if she’d been in her own country she’d have been in the Resistance movement, and she said, ‘Yes, indeed.’ And I said I could see she had got just the temperament for that sort of work. She was brave, didn’t mind taking risks, and could act a part. I told her stories of deeds done by girls in the Resistance movements, some of them true, and some of them, I’m afraid, invented. She got tremendously worked up!”

“Marvellous,” said Patrick.

“And then I got her to agree to do her part. I rehearsed her till she was word perfect. Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not come down until Inspector Craddock came. The worst of these excitable people is that they’re apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing before the time.”

“She did it very well,” said Julia.

“I don’t quite see the point,” said Bunch. “Of course, I wasn’t there—” she added apologetically.

“The point was a little complicated—and rather touch and go. The idea was that Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail had been in her mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was willing to come out with the truth. She’d seen, through the keyhole of the dining room, Miss Blacklock in the hall with a revolver behind Rudi Scherz. She’d seen, that is, what had actually taken place. Now the only danger was that Charlotte Blacklock might have realized that, as the key was in the keyhole, Mitzi couldn’t possibly have seen anything at all. But I banked on the fact that you don’t think of things like that when you’ve just had a bad shock. All she could take in was that Mitzi had seen her.”

Craddock took over the story.

“But—and this was essential—I pretended to receive this with scepticism, and I made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteries at last, upon someone who had not been previously suspected. I accused Edmund—”

“And very nicely I played my part,” said Edmund. “Hot denial. All according to plan. What wasn’t according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was you throwing in your little chirp and coming out into the open as ‘Pip.’ Neither the Inspector nor I had any idea you were Pip. I was going to be Pip! It threw us off our stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterly comeback and made some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wanting a rich wife which will probably stick in your subconscious and make irreparable trouble between us one day.”

“I don’t see why that was necessary?”

“Don’t you? It meant that, from Charlotte Blacklock’s point of view, the only person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi. The suspicions of the police were elsewhere. They had treated Mitzi for the moment as a liar. But if Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seriously. So Mitzi had got to be silenced.”

“Mitzi went straight out of the room and back to the kitchen—just like I had told her,” said Miss Marple. “Miss Blacklock came out after her almost immediately. Mitzi was apparently alone in the kitchen. Sergeant Fletcher was behind the scullery door. And I was in the broom cupboard in the kitchen. Luckily I’m very thin.”

Bunch looked at Miss Marple.

“What did you expect to happen, Aunt Jane?”

“One of two things. Either Charlotte would offer Mitzi money to hold her tongue—and Sergeant Fletcher would be a witness to that offer, or else—or else I thought she’d try to kill Mitzi.”

“But she couldn’t hope to get away with that? She’d have been suspected at once.”

“Oh, my dear, she was past reasoning. She was just a snapping terrified cornered rat. Think what had happened that day. The scene between Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Miss Hinchcliffe driving off to the station. As soon as she comes back Miss Murgatroyd will explain that Letitia Blacklock wasn’t in the room that night. There’s just a few minutes in which to make sure Miss Murgatroyd can’t tell anything. No time to make a plan or set a stage. Just crude murder. She greets the poor woman and strangles her. Then a quick rush home, to change, to be sitting by the fire when the others come in, as though she’d never been out.

“And then came the revelation of Julia’s identity. She breaks her pearls and is terrified they may notice her scar. Later, the Inspector telephones that he’s bringing everyone there. No time to think, to rest. Up to her neck in murder now, no mercy killing—or undesirable young man to be put out of the way. Crude plain murder. Is she safe? Yes, so far. And then comes Mitzi—yet another danger. Kill Mitzi, stop her tongue! She’s beside herself with fear. Not human any longer. Just a dangerous animal.”

“But why were you in the broom cupboard, Aunt Jane?” asked Bunch. “Couldn’t you have left it to Sergeant Fletcher?”

“It was safer with two of us, my dear. And besides, I knew I could mimic Dora Bunner’s voice. If anything could break Charlotte Blacklock down—that would.”

“And it did …!”

“Yes … She went to pieces.”

There was a long silence as memory laid hold of them and then, speaking with determined lightness, to ease the strain, Julia said:

“It’s made a wonderful difference to Mitzi. She told me yesterday that she was taking a post near Southampton. And she said (Julia produced a very good imitation of Mitzi’s accent):

“‘I go there and if they say to me you have to register with the police—you are an alien, I say to them, “Yes, I will register! The police, they know me very well. I assist the police! Without me the police never would they have made the arrest of a very dangerous criminal. I risked my life because I am brave—brave like a lion—I do not care about risks.” “Mitzi,” they say to me, “you are a heroine, you are superb.” “Ach, it is nothing, I say.”’”

Julia stopped.

“And a great deal more,” she added.

“I think,” said Edmund thoughtfully, “that soon Mitzi will have assisted the police in not one but hundreds of cases!”

“She’s softened towards me,” said Phillipa. “She actually presented me with the recipe for Delicious Death as a kind of wedding present. She added that I was on no account to divulge the secret to Julia, because Julia had ruined her omelette pan.”

“Mrs. Lucas,” said Edmund, “is all over Phillipa now that since Belle Goedler’s death Phillipa and Julia have inherited the Goedler millions. She sent us some silver asparagus tongs as a wedding present. I shall have enormous pleasure in not asking her to the wedding!”

“And so they lived happily ever after,” said Patrick. “Edmund and Phillipa—and Julia and Patrick?” he added tentatively.

“Not with me, you won’t live happily ever after,” said Julia. “The remarks that Inspector Craddock improvised to address to Edmund apply far more aptly to you. You are the sort of soft young man who would like a rich wife. Nothing doing!”

“There’s gratitude for you,” said Patrick. “After all I did for that girl.”

“Nearly landed me in prison on a murder charge—that’s what your forgetfulness nearly did for me,” said Julia. “I shall never forget that evening when your sister’s letter came. I really thought I was for it. I couldn’t see any way out.”

“As it is,” she added musingly, “I think I shall go on the stage.”

“What? You, too?” groaned Patrick.

“Yes. I might go to Perth. See if I can get your Julia’s place in the Rep there. Then, when I’ve learnt my job, I shall go into theatre management—and put on Edmund’s plays, perhaps.”

“I thought you wrote novels,” said Julian Harmon.

“Well, so did I,” said Edmund. “I began writing a novel. Rather good it was. Pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smelt like, and the grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy and a vicious young tart who dribbled down her chin—and they all talked interminably about the state of the world and wondered what they were alive for. And suddenly I began to wonder too … And then a rather comic idea occurred to me … and I jotted it down—and then I worked up rather a good little scene … All very obvious stuff. But somehow, I got interested … And before I knew what I was doing I’d finished a roaring farce in three acts.”

“What’s it called?” asked Patrick. “What the Butler Saw?”

“Well, it easily might be … As a matter of I’ve called it Elephants Do Forget. What’s more, it’s been accepted and it’s going to be produced!”

“Elephants Do Forget,” murmured Bunch. “I thought they didn’t?”

The Rev. Julian Harmon gave a guilty start.

“My goodness. I’ve been so interested. My sermon!”

“Detective stories again,” said Bunch. “Real-life ones this time.”

“You might preach on Thou Shall Do No Murder,” suggested Patrick.

“No,” said Julian Harmon quietly. “I shan’t take that as my text.”

“No,” said Bunch. “You’re quite right, Julian. I know a much nicer text, a happy text.” She quoted in a fresh voice, “For lo the Spring is here and the Voice of the Turtle is heard in the Land—I haven’t got it quite right—but you know the one I mean. Though why a turtle I can’t think. I shouldn’t think turtles have got nice voices at all.”

“The word turtle,” explained the Rev. Julian Harmon, “is not very happily translated. It doesn’t mean a reptile but the turtle dove. The Hebrew word in the original is—”

Bunch interrupted him by giving him a hug and saying:

“I know one thing—You think that the Ahasuerus of the Bible is Artaxerxes the Second, but between you and me it was Artaxerxes the Third.”

As always, Julian Harmon wondered why his wife should think that story so particularly funny.

“Tiglath Pileser wants to go and help you,” said Bunch. “He ought to be a very proud cat. He showed us how the lights fused.”

Epilogue

“We ought to order some papers,” said Edmund to Phillipa upon the day of their return to Chipping Cleghorn after the honeymoon. “Let’s go along to Totman’s.”

Mr. Totman, a heavy-breathing, slow-moving man, received them with affability.

“Glad to see you back, sir. And madam.”

“We want to order some papers.”

“Certainly sir. And your mother is keeping well, I hope? Quite settled down at Bournemouth?”

“She loves it,” said Edmund, who had not the faintest idea whether this was so or not, but like most sons, preferred to believe that all was well with those loved, but frequently irritating beings, parents.

“Yes, sir. Very agreeable place. Went there for my holiday last year. Mrs. Totman enjoyed it very much.”

“I’m glad. About papers, we’d like—”

“And I hear you have a play on in London, sir. Very amusing, so they tell me.”

“Yes, it’s doing very well.”

“Called Elephants Do Forget, so I hear. You’ll excuse me, sir, asking you, but I always thought that they didn’t—forget, I mean.”

“Yes—yes, exactly—I’ve begun to think it was a mistake calling it that. So many people have said just what you say.”

“A kind of natural-history fact, I’ve always understood.”

“Yes—yes. Like earwigs making good mothers.”

“Do they indeed, sir? Now, that’s a fact I didn’t know.”

“About the papers—”

“The Times, sir, I think it was?” Mr. Totman paused with pencil uplifted.

“The Daily Worker,” said Edmund firmly. “And the Daily Telegraph,” said Phillipa. “And the New Statesman,” said Edmund. “The Radio Times,” said Phillipa. “The Spectator,” said Edmund. “The Gardener’s Chronicle,” said Phillipa.

They both paused to take breath.

“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Totman. “And the Gazette, I suppose?”

“No,” said Edmund.

“No,” said Phillipa.

“Excuse me, you do want the Gazette?”

“No.”

“No.”

“You mean”—Mr. Totman liked to get things perfectly clear—“You don’t want the Gazette!”

“No, we don’t.”

“Certainly not.”

“You don’t want the North Benham News and the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette—”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to send it along to you every week?”

“No.” Edmund added: “Is that quite clear now?”

“Oh, yes, sir—yes.”

Edmund and Phillipa went out, and Mr. Totman padded into his back parlour.

“Got a pencil, Mother?” he said. “My pen’s run out.”

“Here you are,” said Mrs. Totman, seizing the order book. “I’ll do it. What do they want?”

“Daily Worker, Daily Telegraph, Radio Times, New Statesman, Spectator—let me see—Gardener’s Chronicle.”

“Gardener’s Chronicle,” repeated Mrs. Totman, writing busily. “And the Gazette.”

“They don’t want the Gazette.”

“What?”

“They don’t want the Gazette. They said so.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Totman. “You don’t hear properly. Of course they want the Gazette! Everybody has the Gazette. How else would they know what’s going on round here?”

* * *