Miss Marple's Final Cases (Miss Marple 14)

> ‘I wish I knew,’ said Alicia Coombe, ‘why it scares us so much…’

‘My goodness, who wouldn’t be scared?’

‘Well, I mean, what happens, after all? It’s nothing really—just a kind of puppet that gets moved around the room. I expect it isn’t the puppet itself—it’s a poltergeist.’

‘Now that is a good idea.’

‘Yes, but I don’t really believe it. I think it’s—it’s that doll.’

‘Are you sure you don’t know where she really came from?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Alicia. ‘And the more I think of it the more I’m perfectly certain that I didn’t buy her, and that nobody gave her to me. I think she—well, she just came.’

‘Do you think she’ll—ever go?’

‘Really,’ said Alicia, ‘I don’t see why she should…She’s got all she wants.’

But it seemed that the doll had not got all she wanted. The next day, when Sybil went into the showroom, she drew in her breath with a sudden gasp. Then she called up the stairs.

‘Miss Coombe, Miss Coombe, come down here.’

‘What’s the matter?’

Alicia Coombe, who had got up late, came down the stairs, hobbling a little precariously for she had rheumatism in her right knee.

‘What is the matter with you, Sybil?’

‘Look. Look what’s happened now.’

They stood in the doorway of the showroom. Sitting on a sofa, sprawled easily over the arm of it, was the doll.

‘She’s got out,’ said Sybil, ‘She’s got out of that room! She wants this room as well.’

Alicia Coombe sat down by the door. ‘In the end,’ she said, ‘I suppose she’ll want the whole shop.’

‘She might,’ said Sybil.

‘You nasty, sly, malicious brute,’ said Alicia, addressing the doll. ‘Why do you want to come and pester us so? We don’t want you.’

It seemed to her, and to Sybil too, that the doll moved very slightly. It was as though its limbs relaxed still further. A long limp arm was lying on the arm of the sofa and the half-hidden face looked as if it were peering from under the arm. And it was a sly, malicious look.

‘Horrible creature,’ said Alicia. ‘I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it any longer.’

Suddenly, taking Sybil completely by surprise, she dashed across the room, picked up the doll, ran to the window, opened it, and flung the doll out into the street. There was a gasp and a half cry of fear from Sybil.

‘Oh, Alicia, you shouldn’t have done that! I’m sure you shouldn’t have done that!’

‘I had to do something,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘I just couldn’t stand it any more.’

Sybil joined her at the window. Down below on the pavement the doll lay, loose-limbed, face down.

‘You’ve killed her,’ said Sybil.

‘Don’t be absurd…How can I kill something that’s made of velvet and silk, bits and pieces. It’s not real.’

‘It’s horribly real,’ said Sybil.

Alicia caught her breath.

‘Good heavens. That child—’

A small ragged girl was standing over the doll on the pavement. She looked up and down the street—a street that was not unduly crowded at this time of the morning though there was some automobile traffic; then, as though satisfied, the child bent, picked up the doll, and ran across the street.

‘Stop, stop!’ called Alicia.

She turned to Sybil.

‘That child mustn’t take the doll. She mustn’t! That doll is dangerous—it’s evil. We’ve got to stop her.’

It was not they who stopped her. It was the traffic. At that moment three taxis came down one way and two tradesmen’s vans in the other direction. The child was marooned on an island in the middle of the road. Sybil rushed down the stairs, Alicia Coombe following her. Dodging between a tradesman’s van and a private car, Sybil, with Alicia Coombe directly behind her, arrived on the island before the child could get through the traffic on the opposite side.

‘You can’t take that doll,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Give her back to me.’

The child looked at her. She was a skinny little girl about eight years old, with a slight squint. Her face was defiant.

‘Why should I give ’er to you?’ she said. ‘Pitched her out of the window, you did—I saw you. If you pushed her out of the window you don’t want her, so now she’s mine.’

‘I’ll buy you another doll,’ said Alicia frantically. ‘We’ll go to a toy shop—anywhere you like—and I’ll buy you the best doll we can find. But give me back this one.’

‘Shan’t,’ said the child.

Her arms went protectingly round the velvet doll.

‘You must give her back,’ said Sybil. ‘She isn’t yours.’

She stretched out to take the doll from the child and at that moment the child stamped her foot, turned, and screamed at them.

‘Shan’t! Shan’t! Shan’t! She’s my very own. I love her. You don’t love her. You hate her. If you didn’t hate her you wouldn’t have pushed her out of the window. I love her, I tell you, and that’s what she wants. She wants to be loved.’

And then like an eel, sliding through the vehicles, the child ran across the street, down an alleyway, and out of sight before the two older women could decide to dodge the cars and follow.

‘She’s gone,’ said Alicia.

‘She said the doll wanted to be loved,’ said Sybil.

‘Perhaps,’ said Alicia, ‘perhaps that’s what she wanted all along…to be loved…’

In the middle of the London traffic the two frightened women stared at each other.

In A Glass Darkly

‘I’ve no explanation of this story. I’ve no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It’s just a thing—that happened.

All the same, I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I’d noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it—well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered. Somehow—that’s a very frightening thought.

For the beginning of it all, I’ve got to go back to the summer of 1914—just before the war—when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I’d known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I’d never met. She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school together, I’d been going to spend part of the holidays with Neil at Badgeworthy and twice something had intervened. So it came about that I was twenty-three when I first saw Neil and Alan’s home.

We were to be quite a big party there. Neil’s sister Sylvia had just got engaged to a fellow called Charles Crawley. He was, so Neil said, a good deal older than she was, but a thoroughly decent chap and quite reasonably well-off.

We arrived, I remember, about seven o’clock in the evening. Everyone had gone to his room to dress for dinner. Neil took me to mine. Badgeworthy was an attractive, rambling old house. It had been added to freely in the last three centuries and was full of little steps up and down, and unexpected staircases. It was the sort of house in which it’s not easy to find your way about. I remember Neil promised to come and fetch me on his way down to dinner. I was feeling a little shy at the prospect of meeting his people for the first time. I remember saying with a laugh that it was the kind of house one expected to meet ghosts in the passages, and he said carelessly that he believed the place was said to be haunted but that none of them had ever seen anything, and he didn’t even know what form the ghost was supposed to take.

Then he hurried away and I set to work to dive into my suitcases for my evening clothes. The Carslakes weren’t well-off; they clung on to their old home, but there were no menservants to unpack for you or valet you.

Well, I’d just got to the stage of tying my tie. I was standing in front of the glass. I could see my own face and shoulders and behind them the wall of the room

—a plain stretch of wall just broken in the middle by a door—and just as I finally settled my tie I noticed that the door was opening.

I don’t know why I didn’t turn around—I think that would have been the natural thing to do; anyway, I didn’t. I just watched the door swing slowly open—and as it swung I saw into the room beyond.

It was a bedroom—a larger room than mine—with two bedsteads in it, and suddenly I caught my breath.

For at the foot of one of those beds was a girl and round her neck were a pair of man’s hands and the man was slowly forcing her backwards and squeezing her throat as he did so, so that the girl was being slowly suffocated.

There wasn’t the least possibility of a mistake. What I saw was perfectly clear. What was being done was murder.

I could see the girl’s face clearly, her vivid golden hair, the agonized terror of her beautiful face, slowly suffusing with blood. Of the man I could see his back, his hands, and a scar that ran down the left side of his face towards his neck.

It’s taken some time to tell, but in reality only a moment or two passed while I stared dumbfounded. Then I wheeled round to the rescue…

And on the wall behind me, the wall reflected in the glass, there was only a Victorian mahogany wardrobe. No door open—no scene of violence. I swung back to the mirror. The mirror reflected only the wardrobe…

I passed my hands across my eyes. Then I sprang across the room and tried to pull forward the wardrobe and at that moment Neil entered by the other door from the passage and asked me what the hell I was trying to do.

He must have thought me slightly barmy as I turned on him and demanded whether there was a door behind the wardrobe. He said, yes, there was a door, it led into the next room. I asked him who was occupying the next room and he said people called Oldam—a Major Oldam and his wife. I asked him then if Mrs Oldam had very fair hair and when he replied dryly that she was dark I began to realize that I was probably making a fool of myself. I pulled myself together, made some lame explanation and we went downstairs together. I told myself that I must have had some kind of hallucination—and felt generally rather ashamed and a bit of an ass.