“Just like this,” said Lucy. “We’ve had three murders now. The woman who impersonated Martine and who would have been able to claim a share for her son, and then Alfred, and then Harold. And now it only leaves two, doesn’t it?”
“You mean,” said Miss Marple, “there are only Cedric and Emma left?”
“Not Emma. Emma isn’t a tall dark man. No. I mean Cedric and Bryan Eastley. I never thought of Bryan because he’s fair. He’s got a fair moustache and blue eyes, but you see—the other day…” She paused.
“Yes, go on,” said Miss Marple. “Tell me. Something has upset you very badly, hasn’t it?”
“It was when Lady Stoddart-West was going away. She had said good-bye and then suddenly turned to me just as she was getting into the car and asked: ‘Who was that tall dark man who was standing on the terrace as I came in?’
“I couldn’t imagine who she meant at first, because Cedric was still laid up. So I said, rather puzzled, ‘You don’t mean Bryan Eastley?’ and she said, ‘Of course, that’s who it was, Squadron Leader Eastley. He was hidden in our loft once in France during the Resistance. I remembered the way he stood, and the set of his shoulders,’ and she said, ‘I should like to meet him again,’ but we couldn’t find him.”
Miss Marple said nothing, just waited.
“And then,” said Lucy, “later I looked at him… He was standing with his back to me and I saw what I ought to have seen before. That even when a man’s fair his hair looks dark because he plasters it down with stuff. Bryan’s hair is a sort of medium brown, I suppose, but it can look dark. So you see, it might have been Bryan that your friend saw in the train. It might….”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I had thought of that.”
“I suppose you think of everything!” said Lucy bitterly.
“Well, dear, one has to really.”
“But I can’t see what Bryan would get out of it. I mean the money would come to Alexander, not to him. I suppose it would make an easier life, they could have a bit more luxury, but he wouldn’t be able to tap the capital for his schemes, or anything like that.”
“But if anything happened to Alexander before he was twenty-one, then Bryan would get the money as his father and next of kin,” Miss Marple pointed out.
Lucy cast a look of horror at her.
“He’d never do that. No father would ever do that just—just to get the money.”
Miss Marple sighed. “People do, my dear. It’s very sad and very terrible, but they do.
“People do very terrible things,” went on Miss Marple. “I know a woman who poisoned three of her children just for a little bit of insurance money. And then there was an old woman, quite a nice old woman apparently, who poisoned her son when he came home on leave. Then there was that old Mrs. Stanwich. That case was in the papers. I dare say you read about it. Her daughter died and her son, and then she said she was poisoned herself. There was poison in the gruel, but it came out, you know, that she’d put it there herself. She was just planning to poison the last daughter. That wasn’t exactly for money. She was jealous of them for being younger than she was and alive, and she was afraid—it’s a terrible thing to say but it’s true—they would enjoy themselves after she was gone. She’d always kept a very tight hold on the purse strings. Yes, of course she was a little peculiar, as they say, but I never see myself that that’s any real excuse. I mean you can be a little peculiar in so many different ways. Sometimes you just go about giving all your possessions away and writing cheques on bank accounts that don’t exist, just so as to benefit people. It shows, you see, that behind being peculiar you have quite a nice disposition. But of course if you’re peculiar and behind it you have a bad disposition—well, there you are. Now, does that help you at all, my dear Lucy?”
“Does what help me?” asked Lucy, bewildered.
“What I’ve been telling you,” said Miss Marple. She added gently, “You mustn’t worry, you know. You really mustn’t worry. Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here any day now.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“No, dear, perhaps not. But I think it’s important myself.”
“I can’t help worrying,” said Lucy. “You see, I’ve got interested in the family.”
“I know, dear, it’s very difficult for you because you are quite strongly attracted to both of them, aren’t you, in very different ways.”
“What do you mean?” said Lucy. Her tone was sharp.
“I was talking about the two sons of the house,” said Miss Marple. “Or rather the son and the son-in-law. It’s unfortunate that the two more unpleasant members of the family have died and the two more attractive ones are left. I can see that Cedric Crackenthorpe is very attractive. He is inclined to make himself out worse than he is and has a provocative way with him.”
“He makes me fighting mad sometimes,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “and you enjoy that, don’t you? You’re a girl with a lot of spirit and you enjoy a battle. Yes, I can see where that attraction lies. And then Mr. Eastley is a rather plaintive type, rather like an unhappy little boy. That, of course, is attractive, too.”
“And one of them’s a murderer,” said Lucy bitterly, “and it may be either of them. There’s nothing to choose between them really. There’s Cedric, not caring a bit about his brother Alfred’s death or about Harold’s. He just sits back looking thoroughly pleased making plans for what he’ll do with Rutherford Hall, and he keeps saying that it’ll need a lot of money to develop it in the way he wants to do. Of course I know he’s the sort of person who exaggerates his own callousness and all that. But that could be a cover, too. I mean everyone says that you’re more callous than you really are. But you mightn’t be. You might be even more callous than you seem!”
“Dear, dear Lucy, I’m so sorry about all this.”
“And then Bryan,” went on Lucy. “It’s extraordinary, but Bryan really seems to want to live there. He thinks he and Alexander could find it awfully jolly and he’s full of schemes.”
“He’s always full of schemes of one kind or another, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I think he is. They all sound rather wonderful—but I’ve got an uneasy feeling that they’d never really work. I mean, they’re not practical. The idea sounds all right—but I don’t think he ever considers the actual working difficulties.”
“They are up in the air, so to speak?”
“Yes, in more ways than one. I mean they are usually literally up in the air. They are all air schemes. Perhaps a really good fighter pilot never does quite come down to earth again….”
She added: “And he likes Rutherford Hall so much because it reminds him of the big rambling Victorian house he lived in when he was a child.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully. “Yes, I see….”
Then, with a quick sideways glance at Lucy, she said with a kind of verbal pounce, “But that isn’t all of it, is it, dear? There’s something else.”
“Oh, yes, there’s something else. Just something that I didn’t realize until just a couple of days ago. Bryan could actually have been on that train.”
“On the 4:33 from Paddington?”
“Yes. You see Emma thought she was required to account for her movements on 20th December and she went over it all very carefully—a committee meeting in the morning, and then shopping in the afternoon and tea at the Green Shamrock, and then, she said, she went to meet Bryan at the station. The train she met was the 4:50 from Paddington, but he could have been on the earlier train and pretended to come by the later one. He told me quite casually that his car had had a biff and was being repaired and so he had to come down by train—an awful bore, he said, he hates trains. He seemed quite natural about it all… It may be quite all right—but I wish, somehow, he hadn’t come down by train.”
“Actually on the train,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t really prove anything. The awful thing is all this s
uspicion. Not to know. And perhaps we never shall know!”
“Of course we shall know, dear,” said Miss Marple briskly. “I mean—all this isn’t going to stop just at this point. The one thing I do know about murderers is that they can never let well alone. Or perhaps one should say—ill alone. At any rate,” said Miss Marple with finality, “they can’t once they’ve done a second murder. Now don’t get too upset, Lucy. The police are doing all they can, and looking after everybody—and the great thing is that Elspeth McGillicuddy will be here very soon now!”
Twenty-six
I
“Now, Elspeth, you’re quite clear as to what I want you to do?”
“I’m clear enough,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “but what I say to you is, Jane, that it seems very odd.”
“It’s not odd at all,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, I think so. To arrive at the house and to ask almost immediately whether I can—er—go upstairs.”
“It’s very cold weather,” Miss Marple pointed out, “and after all, you might have eaten something that disagreed with you and—er—have to ask to go upstairs. I mean, these things happen. I remember poor Louisa Felby came to see me once and she had to ask to go upstairs five times during one little half hour. That,” added Miss Marple parenthetically, “was a bad Cornish pasty.”
“If you’d just tell me what you’re driving at, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“That’s just what I don’t want to do,” said Miss Marple.
“How irritating you are, Jane. First you make me come all the way back to England before I need—”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Miss Marple; “but I couldn’t do anything else. Someone, you see, may be killed at any moment. Oh, I know they’re all on their guard and the police are taking all the precautions they can, but there’s always the outside chance that the murderer might be too clever for them. So you see, Elspeth, it was your duty to come back. After all, you and I were brought up to do our duty, weren’t we?”