A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple 7)

“Who is she?”

“Mr. Fortescue’s sister-in-law—his first wife’s sister. His wife was a good deal older than he was and her sister again was a good deal older than her—which makes her well over seventy. She has a room of her own on the second floor—does her own cooking and all that, with just a woman coming in to clean. She’s rather eccentric and she never liked her brother-in-law, but she came here while her sister was alive and stayed on when she died. Mr. Fortescue never bothered about her much. She’s quite a character, though, is Aunt Effie.”

“And that is all.”

“That’s all.”

“So we come to you, Miss Dove.”

“You want particulars? I’m an orphan. I took a secretarial course at the St. Alfred’s Secretarial College. I took a job as shorthand typist, left it and took another, decided I was in the wrong racket, and started on my present career. I have been with three different employers. After about a year or eighteen months I get tired of a particular place and move on. I have been at Yewtree Lodge just over a year. I will type out the names and addresses of my various employers and give them, with a copy of my references to Sergeant—Hay, is it? Will that be satisfactory?”

“Perfectly, Miss Dove.” Neele was silent for a moment, enjoying a mental image of Miss Dove tampering with Mr. Fortescue’s breakfast. His mind went back farther, and he saw her methodically gathering yew berries in a little basket. With a sigh he returned to the present and reality. “Now, I would like to see the girl—er Gladys—and then the housemaid, Ellen.” He added as he rose: “By the way, Miss Dove, can you give me any idea why Mr. Fortescue would be carrying loose grain in his pocket?”

“Grain?” she stared at him with what appeared to be genuine surprise.

“Yes—grain. Does that suggest something to you, Miss Dove?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Who looked after his clothes?”

“Crump.”

“I see. Did Mr. Fortescue and Mrs. Fortescue occupy the same bedroom?”

“Yes. He had a dressing room and bath, of course, and so did she . . .” Mary glanced down at her wristwatch. “I really think that she ought to be back very soon now.”

The inspector had risen. He said in a pleasant voice:

“Do you know one thing, Miss Dove? It strikes me as very odd that even though there are three golf courses in the immediate neighbourhood, it has yet not been possible to find Mrs. Fortescue on one of them before now?”

“It would not be so odd, Inspector, if she did not actually happen to be playing golf at all.”

Mary’s voice was dry. The inspector said sharply:

“I was distinctly informed that she was playing golf.”

“She took her golf clubs and announced her intention of doing so. She was driving her own car, of course.”

He looked at her steadily, perceiving the inference.

“Who was she playing with? Do you know?”

“I think it possible that it might be Mr. Vivian Dubois.”

Neele contented himself by saying: “I see.”

“I’ll send Gladys in to you. She’ll probably be scared to death.” Mary paused for a moment by the door, then she said:

“I should hardly advise you to go too much by all I’ve told you. I’m a malicious creature.”

She went out. Inspector Neele looked at the closed door and wondered. Whether actuated by malice or not, what she had told him could not fail to be suggestive. If Rex Fortescue had been deliberately poisoned, and it seemed almost certain that that was the case, then the setup at Yewtree Lodge seemed highly promising. Motives appeared to be lying thick on the ground.

Chapter Five

The girl who entered the room with obvious unwillingness was an unattractive, frightened-looking girl, who managed to look faintly sluttish in spite of being tall and smartly dressed in a claret-coloured uniform.

She said at once, fixing imploring eyes upon him:

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t really. I don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s all right,” said Neele heartily. His voice had changed slightly. It sounded more cheerful and a good deal commoner in intonation. He wanted to put the frightened rabbit Gladys at her ease.

“Sit down here,” he went on. “I just want to know about breakfast this morning.”

“I didn’t do anything at all.”

“Well, you laid the breakfast, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did that.” Even that admission came unwillingly. She looked both guilty and terrified, but Inspector Neele was used to witnesses who looked like that. He went on cheerfully, trying to put her at her ease, asking questions: who had come down first? And who next?

Elaine Fortescue had been the first down to breakfast. She’d come in just as Crump was bringing in the coffee pot. Mrs. Fortescue was down next, and then Mrs. Val, and the master last. They waited on themselves. The tea and coffee and the hot dishes were all on hot plates on the sideboard.

He learnt little of importance from her that he did not know already. The food and drink was as Mary Dove had described it. The master and Mrs. Fortescue and Miss Elaine took coffee and Mrs. Val took tea. Everything had been quite as usual.

Neele questioned her about herself and here she answered more readily. She’d been in private service first and after that in various cafés. Then she thought she’d like to go back to private service and had come to Yewtree Lodge last September. She’d been there two months.

“And you like it?”

“Well, it’s all right, I suppose.” She added: “It’s not so hard on your feet—but you don’t get so much freedom. . . .”

“Tell me about Mr. Fortescue’s clothes—his suits. Who looked after them? Brushed them and all that?”

Gladys looked faintly resentful.

“Mr. Crump’s supposed to. But half the time he makes me do it.”

“Who brushed and pressed the suit Mr. Fortescue had on today?”

“I don’t remember which one he wore. He’s got ever so many.”

“Have you ever found grain in the pocket of one of his suits?”

“Grain?” She looked puzzled.

“Rye, to be exact.”

“Rye? That’s bread, isn’t it? A sort of black bread—got a nasty taste, I always think.”

“That’s bread made from rye. Rye is the grain itself. There was some found in the pocket of your master’s coat.”

“In his coat pocket?”

“Yes. Do you know how it got there?”

“I couldn’t say I’m sure. I never saw any.”

He could get no more from her. For a moment or two he wondered if she knew more about the matter than she was willing to admit. She certainly seemed embarrassed and on the defensive—but on the whole he put it down to a natural fear of the police.

When he finally dismissed her, she asked:

“It’s really true, is it. He’s dead?”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“Very sudden, wasn’t it? They said when they rang up from the office that he’d had a kind of fit.”

“Yes—it was a kind of fit.”

Gladys said: “A girl I used to know had fits. Come on anytime, they did. Used to scare me.”

For the moment this reminiscence seemed to overcome her suspicions.

Inspector Neele made his way to the kitchen.

His reception was immediate and alarming. A woman of vast proportions, with a red face armed with a rolling pin stepped towards him in a menacing fashion.

“Police, indeed,” she said. “Coming here and saying things like that! Nothing of the kind, I’d have you know. Anything I’ve sent in the dining room has been just what it should be. Coming here and saying I poisoned the master. I’ll have the law on you, police or no police. No bad food’s ever been served in this house.”

It was sometime before Inspector Neele could appease the irate artist. Sergeant Hay looked in grinning from the pantry and Inspector Neele

gathered that he had already run the gauntlet of Mrs. Crump’s wrath.

The scene was terminated by the ringing of the telephone.

Neele went out into the hall to find Mary Dove taking the call. She was writing down a message on a pad. Turning her head over her shoulder she said: “It’s a telegram.”