Bess stared at her for a moment, then she nodded her head slowly.
“Fair enough,” she said. “Yes, I see. But all the same you misunderstood what you heard. Micky didn’t blackmail me. He might have thought of it—but I warned him off before he could try!” Her lips curled up again in that wide generous smile that made her face so attractive. “I frightened him off.”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Marple. “I think you probably did. You threatened to shoot him. You handled it—if you won’t think it impertinent of me to say so—very well indeed.”
Bess Sedgwick’s eyebrows rose in some amusement.
“But I wasn’t the only person to hear you,” Miss Marple went on.
“Good gracious! Was the whole hotel listening?”
“The other armchair was also occupied.”
“By whom?”
Miss Marple closed her lips. She looked at Chief-Inspector Davy, and it was almost a pleading glance. “If it must be done, you do it,” the glance said, “but I can’t….”
“Your daughter was in the other chair,” said Chief-Inspector Davy.
“Oh no!” The cry came out sharply. “Oh no. Not Elvira! I see—yes, I see. She must have thought—”
“She thought seriously enough of what she had overheard to go to Ireland and search for the truth. It wasn’t difficult to discover.”
Again Bess Sedgwick said softly: “Oh no…” And then: “Poor child…Even now, she’s never asked me a thing. She’s kept it all to herself. Bottled it up inside herself. If she’d only told me I could have explained it all to her—showed her how it didn’t matter.”
“She mightn’t have agreed with you there,” said Chief-Inspector Davy. “It’s a funny thing, you know,” he went on, in a reminiscent, almost gossipy manner, looking like an old farmer discussing his stock and his land, “I’ve learnt after a great many years’ trial and error—I’ve learned to distrust a pattern when it’s simple. Simple patterns are often too good to be true. The pattern of this murder the other night was like that. Girl says someone shot at her and missed. The commissionaire came running to save her, and copped it with a second bullet. That may be all true enough. That may be the way the girl saw it. But actually behind the appearances, things might be rather different.
“You said pretty vehemently just now, Lady Sedgwick, that there could be no reason for Ladislaus Malinowski to attempt your daughter’s life. Well, I’ll agree with you. I don’t think there was. He’s the sort of young man who might have a row with a woman, pull out a knife and stick it into her. But I don’t think he’d hide in an area, and wait cold-bloodedly to shoot her. But supposing he wanted to shoot someone else. Screams and shots—but what actually has happened is that Michael Gorman is dead. Suppose that was actually what was meant to happen. Malinowski plans it very carefully. He chooses a foggy night, hides in the area and waits until your daughter comes up the street. He knows she’s coming because he has managed to arrange it that way. He fires a shot. It’s not meant to hit the girl. He’s careful not to let the bullet go anywhere near her, but she thinks it’s aimed at her all right. She screams. The porter from the hotel, hearing the shot and the scream, comes rushing down the street and then Malinowski shoots the person he’s come to shoot. Michael Gorman.”
“I don’t believe a word of it! Why on earth should Ladislaus want to shoot Micky Gorman?”
“A little matter of blackmail, perhaps,” said Father.
“Do you mean that Micky was blackmailing Ladislaus? What about?”
“Perhaps,” said Father, “about the things that go on at Bertram’s Hotel. Michael Gorman might have found out quite a lot about that.”
“Things that go on at Bertram’s Hotel? What do you mean?”
“It’s been a good racket,” said Father. “Well planned, beautifully executed. But nothing lasts forever. Miss Marple here asked me the other day what was wrong with this place. Well, I’ll answer that question now. Bertram’s Hotel is to all intents and purposes the headquarters of one of the best and biggest crime syndicates that’s been known for years.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
There was silence for about a minute and a half. Then Miss Marple spoke.
“How very interesting,” she said conversationally.
Bess Sedgwick turned on her. “You don’t seem surprised, Miss Marple.”
“I’m not. Not really. There were so many curious things that didn’t seem quite to fit in. It was all too good to be true—if you know what I mean. What they call in theatrical circles, a beautiful performance. But it was a performance—not real.
“And there were a lot of little things, people claiming a friend or an acquaintance—and turning out to be wrong.”
“These things happen,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “but they happened too often. Is that right, Miss Marple?”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Marple. “People like Selina Hazy do make that kind of mistake. But there were so many other people doing it too. One couldn’t help noticing it.”
“She notices a lot,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, speaking to Bess Sedgwick as though Miss Marple was his pet performing dog.
Bess Sedgwick turned on him sharply.
“What did you mean when you said this place was the headquarters of a Crime Syndicate? I should have said that Bertram’s Hotel was the most respectable place in the world.”
“Naturally,” said Father. “It would have to be. A lot of money, time, and thought has been spent on making it just what it is. The genuine and the phony are mixed-up very cleverly. You’ve got a superb actor manager running the show in Henry. You’ve got that chap, Humfries, wonderfully plausible. He hasn’t got a record in this country but he’s been mixed-up in some rather curious hotel dealings abroad. There are some very good character actors playing various parts here. I’ll admit, if you like, that I can’t help feeling a good deal of admiration for the whole setup. It has cost this country a mint of money. It’s given the CID and the provincial police forces constant headaches. Every time we seemed to be getting somewhere, and put our finger on some particular incident—it turned out to be the kind of incident that had nothing to do with anything else. But we’ve gone on working on it, a piece there, a piece here. A garage where stacks of number plates were kept, transferable at a moment’s notice to certain cars. A firm of furniture vans, a butcher’s van, a grocer’s van, even one or two phony postal vans. A racing driver with a racing car covering incredible distances in incredibly few minutes, and at the other end of the scale an old clergyman jogging along in his old Morris Oxford. A cottage with a market gardener in it who lends first aid if necessary and who is in touch with a useful doctor. I needn’t go into it all. The ramifications seem unending. That’s one half of it. The foreign visitors who come to Bertram’s are the other half. Mostly from America, or from the Dominions. Rich people above suspicion, coming here with a good lot of luxury luggage, leaving here with a good lot of luxury luggage which looks the same but isn’t. Rich tourists arriving in France and not worried unduly by the Customs because the Customs don’t worry tourists when they’re bringing money into the country. Not the same tourists too many times. The pitcher mustn’t go to the well too often. None of it’s going to be easy to prove or to tie up, but it will all tie up in the end. We’ve made a beginning. The Cabots, for instance—”
“What about the Cabots?” asked Bess sharply.
“You remember them? Very nice Americans. Very nice indeed. They stayed here last year and they’ve been here again this year. They wouldn’t have come a third time. Nobody ever comes here more than twice on the same racket. Yes, we arrested them when they arrived at Calais. Very well-made job, that wardrobe case they had with them. It had over three hundred thousand pounds neatly stashed. Proceeds of the Bedhampton train robbery. Of course, that’s only a drop in the ocean.
“Bertram’s Hotel, let me tell you, is the headquarters of the whole thing! Half the staff are in on it. Some of the guests are in on it. Some of the gues
ts are who they say they are—some are not. The real Cabots, for instance, are in Yucatan just now. Then there was the identification racket. Take Mr. Justice Ludgrove. A familiar face, bulbous nose and a wart. Quite easy to impersonate. Canon Pennyfather. A mild country clergyman, with a great white thatch of hair and notable absentminded behaviour. His mannerisms, his way of peering over his spectacles—all very easily imitated by a good character actor.”
“But what was the use of all that?” asked Bess.