4:50 From Paddington (Miss Marple 8)

“Alfred?” said Craddock as he laid the report down. “Alfred? I wonder.”

“Puts him right on the spot, there,” Wetherall pointed out.

Craddock nodded. Yes, Alfred could have travelled down by the 4:33 to Brackhampton committing murder on the way. Then he could have gone out by bus to the Load of Bricks. He could have left there at nine-thirty and would have had plenty of time to go to Rutherford Hall, move the body from the embankment to the sarcophagus, and get into Brackhampton in time to catch the 11:55 back to London. One of the Dicky Rogers gang might even have helped move the body, though Craddock doubted this. An unpleasant lot, but not killers.

“Alfred?” he repeated speculatively.

II

At Rutherford Hall there had been a gathering of the Crackenthorpe family. Harold and Alfred had come down from London and very soon voices were raised and tempers were running high.

On her own initiative, Lucy mixed cocktails in a jug with ice and then took them towards the library. The voices sounded clearly in the hall, and indicated that a good deal of acrimony was being directed towards Emma.

“Entirely your fault, Emma,” Harold’s bass voice rang out angrily. “How you could be so shortsighted and foolish beats me. If you hadn’t taken that letter to Scotland Yard—and started all this—”

Alfred’s high-pitched voice said: “You must have been out of your senses!”

“Now don’t bully her,” said Cedric. “What’s done is done. Much more fishy if they’d identified the woman as the missing Martine and we’d all kept mum about having heard from her.”

“It’s all very well for you, Cedric,” said Harold angrily. “You were out of the country on the 20th which seems to be the day they are inquiring about. But it’s very embarrassing for Alfred and myself. Fortunately, I can remember where I was that afternoon and what I was doing.”

“I bet you can,” said Alfred. “If you’d arranged a murder, Harold, you’d arrange your alibi very carefully, I’m sure.”

“I gather you are not so fortunate,” said Harold coldly.

“That depends,” said Alfred. “Anything’s better than presenting a cast-iron alibi to the police if it isn’t really cast-iron. They’re so clever at breaking these things down.”

“If you are insinuating that I killed the woman—”

“Oh, do stop, all of you,” cried Emma. “Of course none of you killed the woman.”

“And just for your information, I wasn’t out of England on the 20th,” said Cedric. “And the police are wise to it! So we’re all under suspicion.”

“If it hadn’t been for Emma—”

“Oh, don’t begin again, Harold,” cried Emma.

Dr. Quimper came out of the study where he had been closeted with old Mr. Crackenthorpe. His eye fell on the jug in Lucy’s hand.

“What’s this? A celebration?”

“More in the nature of oil on troubled waters. They’re at it hammer and tongs in there.”

“Recriminations?”

“Mostly abusing Emma.”

Dr. Quimper’s eyebrows rose.

“Indeed?” He took the jug from Lucy’s hand, opened the library door and went in.

“Good evening.”

“Ah, Dr. Quimper, I should like a word with you.” It was Harold’s voice, raised and irritable. “I should like to know what you meant by interfering in a private and family matter, and telling my sister to go to Scotland Yard about it.”

Dr. Quimper said calmly:

“Miss Crackenthorpe asked my advice. I gave it to her. In my opinion she did perfectly right.”

“You dare to say—”

“Girl!”

It was old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s familiar salutation. He was peering out of the study door just behind Lucy.

Lucy turned rather reluctantly.

“Yes, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”

“What are you giving us for dinner tonight? I want curry. You make a very good curry. It’s ages since we’ve had curry.”

“The boys don’t care much for curry, you see.”

“The boys—the boys. What do the boys matter? I’m the one who matters. And, anyway, the boys have gone—good riddance. I want a nice hot curry, do you hear?”

“All right, Mr. Crackenthorpe, you shall have it.”

“That’s right. You’re a good girl, Lucy. You look after me and I’ll look after you.”

Lucy went back to the kitchen. Abandoning the fricassée of chicken which she had planned, she began to assemble the preparations for curry. The front door banged and from the window she saw Dr. Quimper stride angrily from the house to his car and drive away.

Lucy sighed. She missed the boys. And in a way she missed Bryan, too.

Oh, well. She sat down and began to peel mushrooms.

At any rate she’d give the family a rattling good dinner.

Feed the brutes!

III

It was 3 a.m. when Dr. Quimper drove his car into the garage, closed the doors and came in pulling the front door behind him rather wearily. Well, Mrs. Josh Simpkins had a fine healthy pair of twins to add to her present family of eight. Mr. Simpkins had expressed no elation over the arrival. “Twins,” he had said gloomily. “What’s the good of they? Quads now, they’re good for something. All sorts of things you get sent, and the Press comes round and there’s pictures in the paper, and they do say as Her Majesty sends you a telegram. But what’s twins except two mouths to feed instead of one? Never been twins in our family, nor in the missus’s either. Don’t seem fair, somehow.”

Dr. Quimper walked upstairs to his bedroom and started throwing off his clothes. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes past three. It had proved an unexpectedly tricky business bringing those twins into the world, but all had gone well. He yawned. He was tired—very tired. He looked appreciatively at his bed.

Then the telephone rang.

Dr. Quimper swore, and picked up the receiver.

“Dr. Quimper?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Lucy Eyelesbarrow from Rutherford Hall. I think you’d better come over. Everybody seems to have taken ill.”

“Taken ill? How? What symptoms?”

Lucy detailed them.

“I’ll be over straight away. In the meantime…” He gave her short sharp instructions.

Then he quickly resumed his clothes, flung a few extra things into his emergency bag, and hurried down to his car.

IV

It was some three hours later when the doctor and Lucy, both of them somewhat exhausted, sat down by the kitchen table to drink large cups of black coffee.

“Ha,” Dr. Quimper drained his cup, set it down with a clatter on the saucer. “I needed that. Now, Miss Eyelesbarrow, let’s get down to brass tacks.”

Lucy looked at him. The lines of fatigue showed clearly on his face making him look older than his forty-four years, the dark hair on his temples was flecked with grey, and there were lines under his eyes.

“As far as I can judge,” said the doctor, “they’ll be all right now. But how come? That’s what I want to know. Who cooked the dinner?”

“I did,” said Lucy.

“And what was it? In detail.”

“Mushroom soup. Curried chicken and rice. Syllabubs. A savoury of chicken livers and bacon.”

“Canapés Diane,” said Dr. Quimper unexpectedly.

Lucy smiled faintly.

“Yes, Canapés Diane.”

“All right—let’s go through it. Mushroom soup—out of a tin, I suppose?”

“Certainly not. I made it.”

“You made it. Out of what?”

“Half a pound of mushrooms, chicken stock, milk, a roux of butter and flour, and lemon juice.”

“Ah. And one’s supposed to say ‘It must have been the mushrooms.’”

“It wasn’t the mushrooms. I had some of the soup myself and I’m quite all right.”

“Yes, you’re quite all right. I hadn’t forgotten that.”

Lu

cy flushed.

“If you mean—”

“I don’t mean. You’re a highly intelligent girl. You’d be groaning upstairs, too, if I’d meant what you thought I meant. Anyway, I know all about you. I’ve taken the trouble to find out.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

Dr. Quimper’s lips were set in a grim line.

“Because I’m making it my business to find out about the people who come here and settle themselves in. You’re a bona fide young woman who does this particular job for a livelihood and you seem never to have had any contact with the Crackenthorpe family previous to coming here. So you’re not a girl-friend of either Cedric, Harold or Alfred—helping them to do a bit of dirty work.”

“Do you really think—?”

“I think quite a lot of things,” said Quimper. “But I have to be careful. That’s the worst of being a doctor. Now let’s get on. Curried chicken. Did you have some of that?”

“No. When you’ve cooked a curry, you’ve dined off the smell, I find. I tasted it, of course. I had soup and some syllabub.”

“How did you serve the syllabub?”