THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS


Stonygates had been built originally as a kind of Temple
to Victorian Plutocracy--Philanthrophy had made of it a
Home for Juvenile Delinquents. Over the entrance were
inscribed the words Recover Hope All Ye Who Enter Here]

But Miss Jane Marple came to Stonygates in fulfilment of
a promise to an old school friend to find out what was wrong
at this most unusual college, now being run by the friend's
third husband and housing, besides two hundred juvenile
delinquents, the stepchildren of her previous marriages.

As soon as she arrived Jane Marple knew that her friend
was right: something was wrong at Stonygates. What she saw
around her was illusion, not reality. In the words of the
conjurer, Thoy Do It With Mirrors. But who? And why?


BOOKS BY AGATHA CHRISTIE


Appointment with Death
The Body in the Library

By the Pricking of My Thumbs
A Caribbean Mystery
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
Dead Man's Folly
Death Conies as the End
Dumb Witness

Elephants Can Remember
Endless Night

Evil Under the Sun

Five Little Pigs

4.50 From Paddington
Hallowe'en Party
The Hollow

The Mirror Crack'd from Side

to Side

Murder on the Orient Express
Nemesis

One Two Buckle My Shoe
Ordeal by Innocence
Partners in Crime
Passenger to Frankfurt
Poirot's Early Cases
The Postern of Fate
Sad Cypress
Sparkling Cyanide
Sleeping Murder
Three-Act Tragedy
The Third Girl


ABC Murders

At Bertram's Hotel

Cards on the Table

Crooked House

Destination Unknown

Death ih the Clouds

Death on the Nile

Hercule Poirot's Christmas
The Labours of Hercules
Lord Edgware Dies

The Moving Finger

Murder at the Vicarage

A Murder is Announced

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Mystery of the Blue Train
N or M?

And Then There Were None
They Came to Baghdad

They Do It With Mirrors
Towards Zero

The Thirteen Problems

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?


ETC. ETC.


Biography


Come Tell Me How You Live
Agatha Christie: An

Autobiography


They Do It With

Mirrors


AGATHA
CHRISTIE


Collins

8 Grafton Street, London 1


William Collins Sons and Co Ltd
London · Glasgow' Sydney
Toronto' Johannesburg


To

Mathew Prichard


su, o oo 2383 x


First published 952

This reprint 987


© Agatha Christie t95


Made and Printed in Great Britain

by William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd, Glasgow


To Matthew Prichard


S'FUDY



DINING FROM

ROOM ,,GREAT


HALL


NO

LIBRARY

BAIZE
DOOR

KITCHEN



Plan of Stonygates


CHAPTER 1


Mrs Van Rydock moved a little back from the mirror and
sighed.

'Well, that'll have to do,' she murmured. 'Think it's all
right, Jane?'

Miss Marple eyed the Lanvanelli creation
appraisingly.

'It seems to me a very beautiful gown,' she said.

'The gown's all right,' said Mrs Van Rydock and
sighed.

'Take if off, Stephanie,' she said.

The elderly maid with the grey hair and the small
pinched mouth eased the gown carefully up over Mrs
Van Rydock's upstretched arms.

Mrs Van Rydock stood in front of the glass in her
peach satin slip. She was exquisitely corseted. Her still
shapely legs were encased in fine nylon stockings. Her
face, beneath a layer of cosmetics and constantly toned up
by massage, appeared almost girlish at a slight distance.
Her hair was less grey than tending to hydrangea blue and
was perfectly set. It was practically impossible when
looking at Mrs Van Rydock to imagine what she would be
like in a natural state. Everything that money could do
had been done for her - reinforced by diet, massage, and
constant exercises.

Ruth Van Rydock looked humorously at her friend.

'Do you think most people would guess, Jane, that you
and I are practically the same age?'


Miss Marple responded loyally.
'Not for a moment, I'm sure,' she said reassuringly.
'I'm afraid, you know, that I look every minute of my age!'
Miss Marple was white-haired, with a soft pink and
white wrinkled face and innocent china blue eyes. She
looked a very sweet old lady. Nobody would have called
Mrs Van Rydock a sweet old lady.
'I guess you do, Jane,' said Mrs Van Rydock. She
grinned suddenly, 'And so do I. Only not in the same
way. "Wonderful how that old hag keeps her figure."
That's what they say of me. But they know I'm an old hag
all right! And, my God, do I feel like one?
She dropped heavily on to the satin quilted chair.
'That's all right, Stephanie,' she said. 'You can go.'
Stephanie gathered up the dress and went out.
'Good old Stephanie,' said Ruth Van Rydock. 'She's
been with me for over thirty years now. She's the only
woman who knows what I really look like I Jane, I want to
talk to you.'
Miss Marple leant forward a little. Her face took on a
receptive expression. She looked, somehow, an incongruous
figure in the ornate bedroom of the expensive
hotel suite. She was dressed in rather dowdy black,
carried a large shopping bag and looked every inch a lady.
'I'm worried, Jane. About Carrie Louise.'
'Carrie Louise?' Miss Marple repeated the name
musingly. The sound of it took her a long way back.
The pensionnat in Florence. Herself, the pink and
white English girl from a Cathedral Close. The two
Martin girls, Americans, exciting to the English girl
because of their quaint ways of speech and their for10



thright manner and vitality. Ruth, tall, eager, on top of

the world; Carrie Louise, small, dainty, wistful.
'When did you see her last, Jane?'

'Oh! not for many many years. It must be twenty-five
at least. Of course we still send cards at Christmas.'

Such an odd thing, friendship! She, young Jane
Marple, and the two Americans. Their ways diverging
almost at once, and yet the old affection persisting;
occasional letters, remembrances at Christmas. Strange
that Ruth whose home - or rather homes - had been in
America should be the sister whom she had seen the more
often of the two. No, perhaps not strange. Like most
Americans of her class, Ruth had been cosmopolitan,
every year or two she had come over to Europe, rushing
from London to Paris, on to the Riviera, and back again,
and always keen to snatch a few moments wherever she
was with her old friends. There had been many meetings
like this one. In Claridge's, or the Savoy, or the Berkeley,
or the Dorchester. A recherchmeal, affectionate remin-iscences,
and a hurried and affectionate goodbye. Ruth
had never had time to visit St Mary Mead. Miss Marple
had not, indeed, ever expected it. Everyone's life has a
tempo. Ruth's was presto whereas Miss Marple's was
content to be adagio.

So it was American Ruth whom she had seen most of,
whereas Carrie Louise who lived in England, she had not
now seen for over twenty years. Odd, but quite natural,
because when one lives in the same country there is no
need to arrange meetings with old friends. One assumes
that, sooner or later, one will see them without contri-vance.
Only, if you move in different spheres, that does
not happen. The paths of Jane Marple and Carrie Louise
did not cross. It was as simple as that.


11


'Why are you worried about Carrie Louise, Ruth?'
asked Miss Marple.
'In a way that's what worries me most! I just don't
know.'
'She's not ill?'
'She's very delicate - always has been. I wouldn't say
she'd been any worse than usual - considering that she's
getting on just as we all are.'
'Unhappy?'
'Oh no.'
No, it wouldn't be that, thought Miss Marple. It
would be difficult to imagine Carrie Louise unhappy and
yet there were times in her life when she must have
been. Only - the picture did not come clearly. Bewildered
- yes - incredulous - yes - but violent grief - no.
Mrs Van Rydock's words came appositely.
'Carrie Louise,' she said, 'has always lived right out of
this world. She doesn't know what it's like. Maybe it's that that worries me.'
'Her circumstances,' began Miss Marple, then
stopped, shaking her head. 'No,' she said.
'No, it's she herself,' said Ruth Van Rydock. 'Carrie
Louise was always the one of us who had ideals. Of course
it was the fashion when we were young to have ideals - we
all had them, it was the proper thing for young girls. You
were going to nurse lepers, Jane, and I was going to be a
nun. One gets over all that nonsense. Marriage, I suppose
one might say, knocks it out of one. Still, take it by and
large, I haven't done badly out of marriage.'
Miss Marple thought that Ruth was expressing it
mildly. Ruth had been married three times, each time to
an extremely wealthy man, and the resultant divorces had

12


increased her bank balance without in the least souring
her disposition.
'Of course,' said Mrs Van Rydock, 'I've always been
tough. Things don't get me down. I've not expected too
much of life and certainly not expected too much of men
- and I've done very well out of it - and no hard feelings.
Tommy and I are still excellent friends, and Julius often
asks me my opinion about the market.' Her face darkened.
'I believe that's what worries me about Carrie
Louise - she's always had a tendency, you know, to marry cranks.'
'Cranks?'
'People with ideals. Carrie Louise was always a
pushover for ideals. There she was, as pretty as they make
them, just seventeen and listening with her eyes as big as
saucers to old Gulbrandsen holding forth about his plans
for the human race. Over fifty, and she married him, a
widower with a familyof grown-up children - all because
of his philanthropic ideas. She used to sit listening to him
spellbound. Just like Desdemona and Othello. Only
fortunately there was no Iago about to mess things up and
anyway Gulbrandsen wasn't coloured. He was a
Swede or a Norwegian or something.'
Miss Marple nodded thoughtfully. The name of
Gulbrandsen had an international significance. A man
who with shrewd business acumen and perfect honesty
had built up a fortune so colossal that really philanthropy
had been the only solution to the disposal of it. The name
still held significance. The Gulbrandsen Trust, the
Gulbrandsen Research Fellowships, the Gulbrandsen
Administrative Almshouses, and best known of all the
vast educational College for the sons of working men.
'She didn't marry him for his money, you know,' said

13


Ruth, 'I should have if I'd married him at all. But not
Carrie Louise. I don't know what would have happened
if he hadn't died when she was thirty-two. Thirty-two's
a very nice age for a widow. She's got experience, but
she's still adaptable.'

The spinster listening to her, nodded gently whilst her
mind revived, tentatively, widows she had known in the
village of St Mary Mead.

'I was really happiest about Carrie Louise when she
was married to Johnnie Restarick. Of course he married
her for her money - or if not exactly that, at any rate he
wouldn't have married her if she hadn't had any. Johnnie
was a selfish, pleasure-loving, lazy hound, but that's so
much safer than a crank. All Johnnie wanted was to live
soft. He wanted Carrie Louise to go to the best dressmak-ers
and have yachts and cars and enjoy herself with him.
That kind of man is so very safe. Give him comfort and
luxury and he'll purr like a cat and be absolutely
charming to you. I never took that scene designing and
theatrical stuff of his very seriously. But Carrie Louise
was thrilled by it - saw it all as Art with a capital A and
really forced him back into those surroundings, and then
that dreadful Yugoslavian woman got hold of him and
just swept him off with her. He didn't really want to go.
If Carrie Louise had waited and been sensible, he would
have come back to her.'

'Did she care very much?' asked Miss Marple.
'That's the funny thing. I don't really believe she did.
She was absolutely sweet about it all - but then she would
be. She is sweet. Quite anxious to divorce him so that he
and that creature could get married. And offering to give
those two boys of his by his first marriage a home with her
because it would be more settled for them. So there poor


14


Johnrie was - he had to marry the woman and she led
him da awful six months and then drove him over a
precipice in a car in a fit of rage. They said it was an
accident, but I think it was just temper!'
Mrs Van Rydock paused, took up a mirror and gazed
at her face searchingly. She picked up her eyebrow
tweezers and pulled out a hair.
'Arid what does Carrie Louise do next but marry this
man Lewis Serrocold. Another crank! Another man with
ideals! Oh, I don't say he isn't devoted to her - I think he
is - lput he's bitten by that same bug of wanting to
improve everybody's lives for them. And really, you
know, nobody can do that but yourself.'
'I vonder,' said Miss Marple.
'Orfly, of course, there's a fashion in these things, just
like tlaere is in clothes. (My dear, have you seen what
Christian Dior is trying to make us wear in the way of
skirts?) Where was I? Oh yes, Fashion. Well there's a
fashion in philanthropy too. It used to be education in
Gulbfandsen's day. But that's out of date now. The State
has stepped in. Everyone expects education as a matter of
right - and doesn't think much of it when they get it!
Juvenile Delinquency - that's what is the rage nowadays.
All these young criminals and potential criminals. Everyone'S
mad about them. You should see Lewis Serro-cold's
eyes sparkle behind those thick glasses of his.
Crazy with enthusiasm! One of those men of enormous
will power who like living on a banana and a piece of toast
and pm all their energies into a Cause. And Carrie Louise
eats it up - just as she always did. But I don't like it, Jane.
They've had meetings of the Trustees and the whole
place has been turned over to this new idea. It's a training
establishment now for these juvenile criminals, complete

15


with psychiatrists and psychologists and all the rest of it.
There Lewis and Carrie Louise are, living there, surrounded
by these boys - who aren't perhaps quite
normal. And the place stiff with occupational therapists
and teachers and enthusiasts, half of them quite mad.
Cranks, all the lot of them, and my little Carrie Louise in
the middle of it all!'
She paused - and stared helplessly at Miss Marple.
Miss Marple said in a faintly puzzled voice:
'But you haven't told me yet, Ruth, what you are really
afraid of.'
'I tell you, I don't know! And that's what worries me.
I've just been down there - for a flying visit. And I felt all
along that there was something wrong. In the atmosphere - in the house - I know I'm not mistaken. I'm sensitive
to atmosphere, always have been. Did I ever tell you how
I urged Julius to sell out of Amalgamated Cereals before
the crash came? And wasn't I right? Yes, something is wrong down there. But I don't know why or what - if it's
these dreadful young jailbirds - or if it's nearer home. I
can't say what it is. There's Lewis just living for his ideas
and not noticing anything else, and Carrie Louise, bless
her, never seeing or hearing or thinking anything except
what's a lovely sight, or a lovely sound, or a lovely
thought. It's sweet but it isn't practical. There is such a
thing as evil - and I want you, Jane, to go down there
right away and find out just exactly what's the matter.' The ?' exclaimed Miss Marple. 'Why me?'
'Because you've got a nose for that sort of thing. You
always had. You've always been a sweet innocent-looking
creature, Jane, and all the time underneath nothing has
ever surprised you, you always believe the worst.'
"The worst is so often true,' murmured Miss Marple.

16


'Why you have such a poor idea of human nature, I
can't think - living in that sweet peaceful village of yours,
so old world and pure.'

'You have never lived in a village, Ruth. The things
that go on in a pure peaceful village would probably
surprise you.'

'Oh I daresay. My point is that they don't surprise you.
So you will go down to Stonygates and find out what's
wrong, won't you?'

'But, Ruth dear, that would be a most difficult thing to
do.'

'No, it wouldn't. I've thought it all out. If you won't be
absolutely mad at me, I've prepared the ground already.'

Mrs Van Rydock paused, eyed Miss Marple rather
uneasily, lighted a cigarette, and plunged rather ner-vously
into explanation.

'You'll admit, I'm sure, that things have been difficult
in this country since the war, for people with small fixed
incomes - for people like you, that is to say, Jane.'

'Oh yes, indeed. But for the kindness, the really great
kindness of my nephew Raymond, I don't know really
where I should be.'

'Never mind your nephew,' said Mrs Van Rydock.
'Carrie Louise knows nothing about your nephew - or if
she does, she knows him as a writer and has no idea that
he's your nephew. The point, as I put it to Carrie Louise,
is that it's just too bad about dear Jane. Really sometimes
hardly enough to eat, and of course, far too proud ever to
appeal to old friends. One couldn't, I said, suggest money
- but a nice long rest in lovely surroundings, with an old
friend and with plenty of nourishing food, and no cares or
worries' - Ruth Van Rydock paused and then added
defiantly, 'Now go on - be mad at me if you want to be.'


17


Miss Marple opened her china blue eyes in gentle
.surprise.
'But why should I be mad at you, Ruth? A very
ingenious and plausible approach. I'm sure Carrie Louise
responded.'
'She's writing to you. You'll find the letter when you
get back. Honestly, Jane, you don't feel that I've taken an
unpardonable liberty? You won't mind '
She hesitated and Miss Marple put her thoughts deftly
into words.
'Going to Stonygates as an object of charity - more or
less under false pretences? Not in the least - if it is necessary. You think it is necessary - and I am inclined to
agree with you.'
Mrs Van Rydock stared at her.
'But why? What have you heard?'
'I haven't heard anything. It's just your conviction.
You're not a fanciful woman, Ruth.'
'No, but I haven't anything definite to go upon.'
'I remember,' said Miss Marple thoughtfully, 'one
Sunday morning at church - it was the second Sunday in
Advent - sitting behind Grace Lamble and feeling more
and more worried about her. Quite sure, you know, that
something was wrong - badly wrong - and yet being
quite unable to say why. A most disturbing feeling and
very very definite.'
'And was there something wrong?'
'Oh yes. Her father, the old Admiral, had been very peculiar for some time, and the very next day he went for
her with the coal hammer, roaring Out that she was
Antichrist masquerading as his daughter. He nearly
killed her. They took him away to the asylum and she

18


eventually recovered after months in hospital - but it was
a very near thing.'

'And you'd actually had a premonition that day in
church?'

'I wouldn't call it a premonition. It was founded on
fact - these things usually are, though one doesn't always
recognize it at the time. She was wearing her Sunday hat
the wrong way round. Very significant, really, because
Grace Lamble was a most precise woman, not at all vague
or absent-minded - and the circumstances under which
she would not notice which way her hat was put on to go
to church were really extremely limited. Her father, you
see, had thrown a marble paperweight at her and it had
shattered the looking-glass. She had caught up her hat,
put it on, and hurried out of the house. Anxious to keep
up appearances and for the servants not to hear anything.
She put down these actions, you see, to "dear Papa's
Naval temper," she didn't realize that his mind was
definitely unhinged. Though she ought to have realized it
clearly enough. He was always complaining to her of
being spied upon and of enemies - all the usual
symptoms, in fact.'

Mrs Van Rydock gazed respectfully at her friend.

'Maybe, Jane,' she said, 'that St Mary Mead of yours
isn't quite the idyllic retreat that I've always imagined it.'

'Human nature, dear, is very much the same every-where.
It is more difficult to observe it closely in a city,
that is all.'

'And you'll go to Stonygates?'

'I'll go to Stonygates. A little unfair, perhaps, on my
nephew Raymond.. To let it be thought that he does not
assist me, I mean. Still, the dear boy is in Mexico for six
months. And by that time it should all be over.'


19


'What should all be over?'

'Carrie Louise's invitation will hardly be for an
indefinite stay. Three weeks, perhaps - a month. That
should be ample.'

'For you to find out what is wrong?'

'For me to find out what is wrong.'

'My, Jane,' said Mrs Van Rydock, 'you've got a lot of
confidence in yourself, haven't you?'

Miss Marple looked faintly reproachful.

'You have confidence in me, Ruth. Or so you say... I
can only assure you that I shall endeavour to justify your
confidence.'


20


CHAPTER 2


Before catching her train back to St Mary Mead
(Wednesday special cheap day return), Miss Marple, in a
precise and businesslike fashion, collected certain data.

'Carrie Louise and I have corresponded after a fashion,
but it has largely been a matter of Christmas cards or
calendars. It's just the facts I should like, Ruth dear - and
also some idea as to whom exactly I shall encounter in the
household at Stonygates.'

'Well, you know about Carrie Louise's marriage to
Gulbrandsen. There were no children and Carrie Louise
took that very much to heart. Gulbrandsen was a
widower, and had three grown-up sons. Eventually they
adopted a child. Pippa, they called her - a lovely little
creature. She was just two years old when they got her.'

'Where did she come from? What was her
background?'

'Really, now, Jane, I can't remember - if I ever heard,
that is. An Adoption Society, maybe? Or some unwanted
child that Gulbrandsen had heard about. Why? Do you
think it's important?'

'Well, one always likes to know the background, so to
speak. But please go on.'

'The next thing that happened was that Carrie Louise
found that she was going to have a baby after all. I

understand from doctors that that quite often happens.'
Miss Marple nodded.
'I believe so.'


21


'Anyway, it did happen, and in a funny kind of way, Carrie Louise was almost disconcerted, if you can
understand what I mean. Earlier, of course, she'd have
been wild with joy. As it was, she'd given such a devoted
love to Pippa that she felt quite apologetic to Pippa for
putting her nose out of joint, so to speak. And then
Mildred, when she arrived, was really a very unattractive
child. Took after the Gulbrandsens - who were solid and
worthy - but definitely homely. Carrie Louise was always
so anxious to make no difference between the adopted
child and her own child that I think she rather tended to
overindulge Pippa and pass over Mildred. Sometimes I
think that Mildred resented it. However I didn't see them
often. Pippa grew up a very beautiful girl and Mildred
grew up a plain one. Eric Gulbrandsen died when
Mildred was fifteen and Pippa eighteen. At twenty Pippa
married an Italian, the Marchese di San Severiano - oh,
quite a genuine Marchese - not an adventurer, or
anything like that. She was by way of being an heiress
(naturally, or San Severiano wouldn't have married her you
know what Italians are!). Gulbrandsen left an equal
sum in trust for both his own and his adopted daughter.
Mildred married a Canon Strete - a nice man but given
to colds in the head. About ten or fifteen years older than
she was. Quite a happy marriage, I believe.
'He died a year ago and Mildred has come back to
Stonygates to live with her mother. But that's getting on
too fast, I've skipped a marriage or two. I'll go back to
them. Pippa married her Italian. Carrie Louise was quite
pleased about the marriage. Guido had beautiful
manners and was very handsome, and he was a fine
sportsman. A year later Pippa had a daughter and died in
childbirth. It was a terrible tragedy and Guido San

22


Severiano was very cut up. Carrie Louise went to and fro between Italy and England a good deal, and it was in
Rome that she met Johnnie Restarick and married him.
The Marchese married again and he was quite willing for
his little daughter to be brought up in England by her
exceedingly wealthy grandmother. So they all settled
down at Stonygates, Johnnie Restarick and Carrie
Louise, and Johnnie's two boys, Alexis and Stephen
(Johnnie's first wife was a Russian) and the baby Gina.
Mildred married her Canon soon afterwards. Then came
all this business of Johnnie and the Yugoslavian woman
and the divorce. The boys still came to Stonygates for
their holidays and were devoted to Carrie Louise, and
then in 1938, I think it was, Carrie Louise married
Lewis.'
Mrs Van Rydock paused for breath.
'You've not met Lewis?'
Miss Marple shook her head.
'No, I think I last saw Carrie Louise in 1928. She very
sweetly took me to Covent Garden - to the Opera.'
'Oh yes. Well, Lewis was a very suitable person for her
to marry. He was the head of a very celebrated firm of
chartered accountants. I think he met her first over some
questions of the finances of the Gulbrandsen Trust and
the College. He was well off, just about her own age, and
a man of absolutely upright life. But he was a crank. He
was absolutely rabid on the subject of the redemption of
young criminals.'
Ruth Van Rydock sighed.
'As I said just now, Jane, there are fashions in philanthropy. In Gulbrandsen's time it was education.
Before that it was soup kitchens '
Miss Marple nodded.

23


'Yes, indeed. Port wine jelly and calf's head broth taken to the sick. My mother used to do it.'
'That's right. Feeding the body gave way to feeding the
mind. Everyone went mad on educating the lower classes.
Well, that's passed. Soon, I expect, the fashionable thing
to do will be not to educate your children, preserve their
illiteracy carefully until they're eighteen. Anyway the
Gulbrandsen Trust and Education Fund was in some
difficulties because the State was taking over its functions.
Then Lewis came along with his passionate
enthusiasm about constructive training for juvenile
delinquents. His attention had been drawn to the subject
first in the course of his profession - auditing accounts
where ingenious young men had perpetrated frauds. He
was more and more convinced that juvenile delinquents
were not subnormal - that they had excellent brains and
abilities and only needed right direction.'
'There is something in that,' said Miss Marple. 'But it
is not entirely true. I remember '
She broke off and glanced at her watch.
'Oh dear - I mustn't miss the 6.30.'
Ruth Van Rydock said urgently:
'And you will go to Stonygates?'
Gathering up her shopping bag and her umbrella Miss
Marple said:
'If Carrie Louise asks me '
'She will ask you. You'll go? Promise, Jane?'
Jane Marple promised.

24


CHAPTER 3

Miss Marple got out of the train at Market Kindle
station. A kindly fellow passenger handed out her suitcase
after her, and Miss Marple, clutching a string bag, a
faded leather handbag and some miscellaneous wraps,
uttered appreciative twitters of thanks.
'So kind of you, I'm sure ... So difficult nowadays not
many porters. I get so flustered when I travel.'
The twitters were drowned by the booming noise of
the station announcer saying loudly but indistinctly that
the 3.18 was standing at Platform 1, and was about to
proceed to various unidentifiable stations.
Market Kindle was a large empty windswept station
with hardly any passengers or railway staff to be seen on
it. Its claim to distinction lay in having six platforms and
a bay where a very small train of one carriage was puffing
importantly.
Miss Marple, rather more shabbily dressed than was
her custom (so lucky that she hadn't given away the old
speckledy), was peering around her uncertainly when a
young man came up to her.
'Miss Marple?' he said. His voice had an unexpectedly
dramatic quality about it, as though the utterance of her
name were the first words of a part he was playing in
amateur theatricals. 'I've come to meet you - from
Stonygates.'
Miss Marple looked gratefully at him, a charming
helpless-looking old lady with, if he had chanced to notice

25


it, very shrewd blue eyes. The personality of the young
man did not quite match his voice. It was less important,
one might almost say insignificant. His eyelids had a trick
of fluttering nervously.
'Oh thank you,' said Miss Marple. 'There's just this
suitcase.'
She noticed that the young man did not pick up her
suitcase himself. He flipped a finger at a porter who was
trundling some packing cases past on a trolley.
'Bring it out, please,' he said, and added importantly,
'for Stonygates.'
The porter said cheerfully:
'Rightyho. Shan't be long.'
Miss Marple fancied that her new acquaintance was
not too pleased about this. It was as if Buckingham Palace
had been dismissed as no more important than 3
Laburnum Road.
He said, 'The railways get more impossible every day!'
Guiding Miss Marple towards the exit,' he said: 'I'm
Edgar Lawson. Mrs Serrocold asked me to meet you. I
help Mr Serrocold in his work.'
There was again the faint insinuation that a busy and
important man had, very charmingly, put important
affairs on one side out of chivalry to his employer's wife.
And again the impression was not wholly convincing it
had a theatrical fiavour.
Miss Marple began to wonder about Edgar Lawson.
They came out of the station and Edgar guided the old
lady to where a rather elderly Ford V. 8 was standing.
He was just saying 'Will you come in front with me, or
would you prefer the back?' when there was a diversion.
A new gleaming two-seater Rolls Bentley came purring
into the station yard and drew up in front of,, the

26


Ford. A very beautiful young woman jumped out of it
and came across to them. The fact that she wore dirty
corduroy slacks and a simple shirt open at the neck
seemed somehow to enhance the fact that she was not
only beautiful but expensive.
'There you are, Edgar. I thought I wouldn't make it in
time. I see you've got Miss Marple. I came to meet her.'
She smiled dazzingly at Miss Marple, showing a row of
lovely teeth in a sunburnt southern face. 'I'm Gina,' she
said. 'Carrie Louise's granddaughter. What was your
journey like? Simply foul? What a nice string bag. I love string bags. I'll take it and the coats and then you can get
in better.'
Edgar's face flushed. He protested.
'Look here, Gina, I came to meet Miss Marple. It was
all arranged ...'
Again the teeth flashed in that wide lazy smile.
'Oh I know, Edgar, but I suddenly thought it would be
nice if I came along. I'lltake her with me and you can wait
and bring her cases up.'
She slammed the door on Miss Marple, ran round to
the other side, jumped in the driving seat, and they
purred swiftly out of the station.
Looking back, Miss Marple noticed Edgar Lawson's
face.
'I don't think, my dear,' she said, 'that Mr Lawson is
very pleased.'
Gina laughed.
'Edgar's a frightful idiot,' she said. 'Always so pompous
about things. You'd really think he rnarrered!' Miss Marple asked, 'Doesn't he matter?'
'Edgar?' There was an unconscious note of cruelty in
Gina's scornful laugh. 'Oh, he's bats anyway.'


'Bats?'

'They're all bats at Stonygates,' said Gina. 'I don't
mean Lewis and Grandam and me and the boys - and not
Miss Believer, of course. But the others. Sometimes I feel
/'m going a bit bats myself living there. Even Aunt
Mildred goes out on walks and mutters to herself all the
time - and you don't expect a Canon's widow to do that,
do you?'

They swung out of the station approach and acceler-ated
up the smooth surfaced empty road. Gina shot a
swift sideways glance at her companion.

'You were at school with Grandam, weren't you? It
seems so queer.'

Miss Marple knew perfectly what she meant. To youth
it seems very odd to think that age was once young and
pigtailed and struggled with decimals and English
literature.

'It must,' said Gina with awe in her voice, and
obviously not meaning to be rude, 'have been a very long
time ago.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Miss Marple. 'You feel that more
with me than you do with your grandmother, I expect?'

Gina nodded. 'It's cute of you saying that. Grandam,
you know, gives one a curiously ageless feeling.'

'It is a long time since I've seen her. I wonder if I shall
find her much changed.'

'Her hair's grey, of course,' said Gina vaguely. 'And
she walks with a stick because of her arthritis. It's got
much worse lately. I suppose that -' she broke off, and
then asked: 'Have you been to Stonygates before?'

'No, never. I've heard a great deal about it, of course.'

'It's pretty ghastly, really,' said Gina cheerfully. 'A
sort of Gothic monstrosity. What Steve calls Best


28


Victorian Lavatory period. But it's fun, too, in a way.
Only of course everything's madly earnest, and you
tumble over psychiatrists everywhere underfoot. Enjoy-ing
themselves madly. Rather like Scout-masters, only
worse. The young criminals are rather pets, some of
them. One showed me how to diddle locks with a bit of
wire and one angelic-faced boy gave me a lot of points
about coshing people.'

Miss Marple considered this information
thoughtfully.

'It's the thugs I like best,' said Gina. 'I don't fancy the
queers so much. Of course Lewis and Dr Maverick think
they're all queer - I mean they think it's repressed desires
and disordered home life and their mothers getting off
with soldiers and all that. I don't really see it myself
because some people have had awful home lives and yet
have managed to turn out quite all right.'

'I'm sure it is all a very difficult problem,' said Miss
Marple.

Gina laughed, again showing her magnificent teeth.
'It doesn't worry me much. I suppose some people
have these sort of urges to make the world a better place.
Lewis is quite dippy about it all - he's going to Aberdeen
next week because there's a case coming up in the police
court - a boy with five previous convictions.'

'The young man who met me at the station? Mr
Lawson. He helps Mr Serrocold, he told me. Is he his
secretary?'

'Oh Edgar hasn't brains enough to be a secretary. He's
a case, really. He used to stay at hotels and pretend he was
a V.C. or a fighter pilot and borrow money and then do a
flit. I think he's just a rotter. But Lewis goes through a
routine with them all. Makes them feel one of the family


29


and gives them jobs to do and all that to encourage their
sense of responsibility. I daresay we shall be murdered by

one of them one of these days.' Gina laughed merrily.
Miss Marple did not laugh.

They turned in through some imposing gates where a
Commissionaire was standing on duty in a military
manner and drove up a drive flanked with rhododen-drons.
The drive was badly kept and the grounds seemed
neglected.

Interpreting her companion's glance, Gina said, 'No
gardeners during the war, and since we haven't bothered.
But it does look rather terrible.'

They came round a curve and Stonygates appeared in
its full gloryl It was, as Gina had said, a vast edifice of
Victorian Gothic - a kind of temple to Plutocracy.
Philanthropy had added to it in various wings and out-buildings
which, while not positively dissimilar in style,
had robbed the structure as a whole of any cohesion or
purpose.

'Hideous, isn't it?' said Gina affectionately. 'There's
Grandam on the terrace. I'll stop here and you can go and
meet her.'

Miss Marple advanced along the terrace towards her
old friend.

From a distance, the slim little figure looked curiously
girlish in spite of the stick on which she leaned and her
slow and obviously rather painful progress. It was as
though a young girl was giving an exaggerated imitation
of old age.

'Jane,' said Mrs Serrocold.

'Dear Carrie Louise.'

Yes, unmistakably Carrie Louise. Strangely
unchanged, strangely youthful still, although, unlike her


30


sister, she used no cosmetics or artificial aids to youth.
Her hair was grey, but it had always been of a silvery
fairness and the colour had changed very little. Her skin
had still a rose leaf pink and white appearance, though
now it was a crumpled rose leaf. Her eyes had still their
starry innocent glance. She had the slender youthful
figure of a girl and her head kept its eager birdlike tilt.
'I do blame myself,' said Carrie Louise in her sweet
voice, 'for letting it be so long. Years since I saw you, Jane
dear. It's just lovely that you've come at last to pay us a
visit here.'
From the end of the terrace Gina called:
'You ought to come in, Grandam. It's getting cold and
Jolly will be furious.'
Carrie Louise gave her little silvery laugh.
'They all fuss about me so,' she said. 'They rub it in
that I'm an old woman.'
'And you don't feel like one.'
'No, I don't, Jane. In spite of all my aches and pains
and I've got plenty. Inside I go on feeling just a chit like
Gina. Perhaps everyone does. The glass shows them how
old they are and they just don't believe it. It seems only
a few months ago that we were at Florence. Do you
remember Fraulein Schweich and her boots?'
The two elderly women laughed together at events that
had happened nearly half a century ago.
They walked together to a side door. In the doorway a
gaunt elderly lady met them. She had an arrogant nose, a
short haircut and wore stout well-cut tweeds.
She said fiercely:
'It's absolutely crazy of you, Cara, to stay out so late.
You're absolutely incapable of taking care of yourself.
What will Mr Serrocold say?'

31


'Don't scold me, Jolly,' said Carrie Louise pleadingly.
She introduced Miss Believer to Miss Marple.
'This is Miss Bellever, who is simply everything to me.
Nurse, dragon, watchdog, secretary, housekeeper and
very faithful friend.'
Juliet Bellever sniffed, and the end of her big nose
turned rather pink, a sign of emotion.
'I do what I can,' she said gruffly. 'This is a crazy
household. You simply can't arrange any kind of planned
routine.'
'Darling Jolly, of course you can't. I wonder why you
ever try. Where are you putting Miss Marple?'
'In the Blue Room. Shall I take her up?' asked Miss
Believer.
'Yes, please do, Jolly. And then bring her down to tea.
It's in the library today, I think.'
The Blue Room had heavy curtains of a rich faded blue
brocade that must have been, Miss Marple thought,
about fifty years old. The furniture was mahogany, big
and solid, and the bed was a vast mahogany fourposter.
Miss Bellever opened a door into a connecting bathroom.
This was unexpectedly modern, orchid in colouring and
with much dazzling chromium.
She observed grimly:
'John Restarick had ten bathrooms put into the house
when he married Cara. The plumbing is about the only
thing that's ever been modernized. He wouldn't hear of
the rest being altered - said the whole place was a perfect
Period Piece. Did you ever know him at all?'
'No, I never met him. Mrs Serrocold and I have met
very seldom though we have always corresponded.'
'He was an agreeable fellow,' said Miss Believer. 'No
good, of course! A complete rotter. But pleasant to have

32


about the house. Great charm. Women liked him far too
much. That was his undoing in the end. Not really Cara's
type.'

She added with a brusque resumption of her practical
manner:

'The housemaid will unpack for you. Do you want a
wash before tea?'

Receiving an affirmative answer, she said that Miss
Marple would find her waiting at the top of the stairs.

Miss Marple went into the bathroom and washed her
hands and dried them a little nervously on a very
beautiful orchid-coloured face towel. Then she removed
her hat and patted her soft white hair into place.

Opening her door, she found Miss Bellever waiting for
her, and was conducted down the big gloomy staircase
and across a vast dark hall and into a room where
bookshelves went up to the ceiling and a big window
looked out over an artificial lake.

Carrie Louise was standing by the window and Miss
Marple joined her.

'What a very imposing house this is,' said Miss
Marple. 'I feel quite lost in it.'

'Yes, I know. It's ridiculous, really. It was built by a
prosperous iron master - or something of that kind. He
went bankrupt not long after. I don't wonder really.
There were about fourteen living-rooms - all enormous.
I've never seen what people can want with more than one
sitting-room. And all those huge bedrooms. Such a lot of
unnecessary space. Mine is terribly overpowering - and
quite a long way to walk from the bed to the dressing
table. And great heavy dark crimson curtains.'

'You haven't had it modernized and redecorated?'
Carrie Louise looked vaguely surprised.


33


'No. On the whole it's very much as it was when I first
lived here with Eric. It's been repainted, of course, but
they always do it the same colour. Those things don't
really matter, do they? I mean I shouldn't have felt
justified in spending a lot of money on that kind of thing
when there are so many things that are so much more
important.'

'Have there been no changes at all in the house?,
'Oh - yes - heaps of them. We've just kept a kind of
block in the middle of the house as it was - the Great Hall
and the rooms off and over. They're the best ones and
Johnnie - my second husband - was lyrical over them and
said they should never be touched or altered - and of
course he was an artist and a designer and he knew about
these things. But the East and West wings have been
completely remodelled. All the rooms partitioned off and
divided up, so that we have offices, and bedrooms for the
teaching staff, and all that. The boys are all in the College
building - you can see it from here.'

Miss Marple looked out towards where large red brick
buildings showed through a belt of sheltered trees. Then
her eyes fell on something nearer at hand, and she smiled
a little.

'What a very beautiful girl Gina is,' she said.

Carrie Louise's face lit up.

'Yes, isn't she?' she said softly. 'It's so lovely to have
her back here again. I sent her to America at the
beginning of the war - to Ruth. Did Ruth talk about her
at all?'

'No. At least she did just mention her.'

Carrie Louise sighed.

'Poor Ruth! She was frightfully upset over Gina's
marriage. But I've told her again and again that I don't


34


blame her in the least. Ruth doesn't realize, as I do, that
the old barriers and class shibboleths are gone - or at any
rate are going.

'Gina was doing her war work- and she met this young
man. He was a Marine and had a very good war record.
And a week later they were married. It was all far too
quick, of course, no time to find out if they were really
suited to each other - but that's the way of things
nowadays. Young people belong to their generation. We
may think they're unwise in many of their doings, but we
have to accept their decisions. Ruth, though, was terribly
upset.'

'She didn't consider the young man suitable?'

'She kept saying that one didn't know anything about
him. He came from the Middle West and he hadn't any
money - and naturally no profession. There are hundreds
of boys like that everywhere - but it wasn't Ruth's idea of
what was right for Gina. However, the thing was done. I
was so glad when Gina accepted my invitation to come
over here with her husband. There's so much going on
here - jobs of every kind, and if Walter wants to specialize
in medicine or get a degree or anything he could do it in
this country. After all, this is Gina's home. It's delightful
to have her back, to have someone so warm and gay and
alive in the house.'

Miss Marple nodded and looked out of the window
again at the two young people standing near the lake.

'They're a remarkably handsome couple, tOO,' she said.
'I don't wonder Gina fell in love with him!'

'Oh, but that - that isn't Wally.' There was, quite
suddenly, a touch of embarrassment, or restraint, in Mrs
Serrocold's voice. 'That's Steve - the younger of Johnnie
Restarick's two boys. When Johnnie - when he went


35


away, he'd no place for the boys in the holidays, so I
always had them here. They look on this as their home.
And Steve's here permanently now. He runs our dramatic
branch. We have a theatre, you know, and plays we
encourage all the artistic instincts. Lewis says that so
much of this juvenile crime is due to exhibitionism, most
of the boys have had such a thwarted unhappy home life,
and these hold-ups and burglaries make them feel heroes.
We urge them to write their own plays and act in them
and design and paint their own scenery. Steve is in charge
of the theatre. He's so keen and enthusiastic. It's
wonderful what life he's put into the whole thing.'
'I see,' said Miss Marple slowly.
Her long-distance sight was good (as many of her
neighbours knew to their cost in the village of St Mary
Mead) and she saw very clearly the dark handsome face of
Stephen Restarick as he stood facing Gina, talking
eagerly. Gina's face she could not see, since the girl had
her back to them, but there was no mistaking the
expression in Stephen Restarick's face.
'It isn't any business of mine,' said Miss Marple, 'but
I suppose you realize, Carrie Louise, that he's in love
with her.'
'Oh no -' Carrie Louise looked troubled. 'Oh no, I do
hope not.'
'You were always up in the clouds, Carrie Louise.
There's not the least doubt about it.'

36


CHAPTER 4

Before Mrs Serrocold could say anything, her husband
came in from the hall carrying some open letters in his
hand.
Lewis Serrocold was a short man, not particularly
impressive in appearance, but with a personality that
immediately marked him out. Ruth had once said of him
that he was more like a dynamo than a human being. He
usually concentrated entirely on what was immediately
occupying his attention and paid no attention to the
objects or persons who were surrounding them.
'A bad blow, dearest,' he said. 'That boy, Jackie Flint.
Back at his tricks again. And I really did think he meant
to go straight this time if he got a proper chance. He was
most earnest about it. You know we found he'd always
been keen on railways - and both Maverick and I thought
that if he got a job on the railways he'd stick to it and make
good. But it's the same story. Petty thieving from the
parcels office. Not even stuff he could want or sell. That
shows that it must be psychological. We haven't really got
to the root of the trouble. But I'm not giving up.'
'Lewis - this is my old friend, Jane Marple.'
'Oh how d'you do,' said Mr Serrocold absently. 'So
glad - they'll prosecute, of course. A nice lad, too, not too
many brains, but a really nice boy. Unspeakable home he
came from. I '
He suddenly broke off, and the dynamo was switched
on to the guest.

37


'Why, Miss Marple, I'm so delighted you've come to
stay with us for a while. It will make such a great
difference to Caroline to have a friend of old days with
whom she can exchange memories. She has in many ways
a grim time here - so much sadness in the stories of these
poor children. We do hope you'll stay with us a very long
time.'
Miss Marple felt the magnetism and realized how
attractive it would have been to her friend. That Lewis
Serrocold was a man who would always put causes before
people she did not doubt for a moment. It might have
irritated some women, but not Carrie Louise.
Lewis Serrocold sorted out another letter.
'At any rate we've some good news. This is from the
Wiltshire and Somerset Bank. Young Morris is doing
extremely well. They're thoroughly satisfied with him
and in fact are promoting him next month. I always knew
that all he needed was responsibility - that, and a
thorough grasp of the handling of money and what it
means.'
He turned to Miss Marple.
'Half these boys don't know what money is. It
represents to them going to the pictures or to the dogs, or
buying cigarettes - and they're clever with figures and
find it exciting to juggle them round. Well, I believe in what
shall I say? - rubbing their noses in the stuff- train
them in accountancy, in figures - show them the whole
inner romance of money, so to speak. Give them skill and
then responsibility - let them handle it officially. Our
greatest successes have been that way - only two out of
thirty-eight have let us down. One's head cashier in a
firm of druggists - a really responsible position '
He broke off to say: 'Tea's in, dearest,' to his Wife.

38


'I thought we were having it here. I told Jolly.'
'No, it's in the Hall. The others are there.'
'I thought they were all going to be out.'

Carrie Louise linked her arm through Miss Marple's
and they went into the Great Hall. Tea seemed a rather
incongruous meal in its surroundings. The tea things
were piled haphazard on a tray - white utility cups mixed
with the remnants of what had been Rockingham and
Spode tea services. There was a loaf of bread, two pots of
jam, and some cheap and unwholesome-looking cakes.

A plump middle-aged woman with grey hair sat
behind the tea table and Mrs Serrocold said:

'This is Mildred, Jane. My daughter Mildred. You
haven't seen her since she was a tiny girl.'

Mildred Strete was the person most in tune with the
house that Miss Marple had so far seen. She looked
prosperous and dignified. She had married late in her
thirties a Canon of the Church of England and was now
a widow. She looked exactly like a Canon's widow,
respectable and slightly dull. She was a plain woman with
a large unexpressive face and dull eyes. She had been,
Miss Marple reflected, a very plain little girl.

'And this is Wally Hudd - Gina's husband.'

Wally was a big young man with hair brushed up on his
head and a sulky expression. He nodded awkwardly and
went on cramming cake into his mouth.

Presently Gina came in with Stephen Restarick. They
were both very animated.

'Gina's got a wonderful idea for that backcloth,' said
Stephen. 'You know, Gina, you've got a very definite
flair for theatrical designing.'

Gina laughed and looked pleased. Edgar Lawson came


39


in and sat down by Lewis Serrocold. When Gina spoke to
him, he made a pretence of not answering.

Miss Marple found it all a little bewildering and was
glad to go to her room and lie down after tea.

There were more people still at dinner, a young Dr
Maverick who was either a psychiatrist or a psychologist
- Miss Marple was rather hazy about the difference - and
whose conversation, dealing almost entirely with the
jargon of his trade, was practically unintelligible to her.
There were also two spectacled young men who held
posts on the teaching side, and a Mr Baumgarten, who
was an occupational therapist, and three intensely bashful
youths who were doing their 'house guest' week. One of
them, a fairhaired lad with very blue eyes was, Gina
informed her in a whisper, the expert with the 'cosh.'

The meal was not a particularly appetizing one. It was
indifferently cooked and indifferently served. A variety of
costumes were worn. Miss Bellever wore a high black
dress, Mildred Strete wore evening dress and a woollen
cardigan over it. Carrie Louise had on a short dress of
grey wool - Gina was resplendent in a kind of peasant get
up. Wally had not changed, nor had Stephen Restarick,
Edgar Lawson had on a neat dark blue suit. Lewis
Serrocold wore the conventional dinner jacket. He ate
very little and hardly seemed to notice what was on his
plate.

After dinner Lewis Serrocold and Dr Maverick went
away to the latter's office. The occupational therapist and
the schoolmasters went away to some lair of their own.
The three 'cases' went back to the college. Gina and
Stephen went to the theatre to discuss Gina's idea for a
set. Mildred knitted an indeterminate garment and Miss
Bellever darned socks. Wally sat in a chair gently tilted


4O


backwards and stared into space. Carrie Louise and Miss
Marple talked about old days. The conversation seemed
strangely unreal.
Edgar Lawson alone seemed unable to find a niche. He
sat down and then got up restlessly.
'I wonder if I ought to go to Mr Serrocold,' he said
rather loudly. 'He may need me.'
Carrie Louise said gently, 'Oh I don't think so. He was
going to talk over one or two points with Dr Maverick this
evening.'
'Then I certainly won't butt in! I shouldn't dream of
going where I wasn't wanted. I've already wasted time
today going down to the station when Mrs Hudd meant
to go herself.'
'She ought to have told you,' said Carrie Louise. 'But
I think she just decided at the last moment.'
'You do realize, Mrs Serrocold, that she made me look
a complete fool! A complete fool!'
'No, no,' said Carrie Louise, smiling. 'You mustn't
have these ideas.'
'I know I'm not needed or wanted ... I'm perfectly
aware of that. If things had been different - if I'd had my
proper place in life it would be very different. Very
different indeed. It's no fault of mine that I haven't got
my proper place in life.'
'Now, Edgar,' said Carrie Louise. 'Don't work yourself
up about nothing. Jane thinks it was very kind of you
to meet her. Gina always has these sudden impulses - she
didn't mean to upset you.'
'Oh yes, she did. It was done on purpose - to humiliate me '
'Oh Edgar '
'You don't know half of what's going on, Mrs

41


Serrocold. Well, I won't say any more now except
goodnight.'

Edgar went out, shutting the door with a slam behind
him.

Miss Bellever snorted:

'Atrocious manners.'

'He's so sensitive,' said Carrie Louise vaguely.
Mildred Strete clicked her needles and said sharply:

'He really is a most odious young man. You shouldn't

put up with such behaviour, Mother.'
'Lewis says he can't help it.'
Mildred said sharply:

'Everyone can help behaving rudely. Of course I
blame Gina very much. She's so completely scatter-brained
in everything she undertakes. She does nothing
but make trouble. One day she encourages the young
man and the next day she snubs him. What can you
expect?'

Wally Hudd spoke for the first time that evening.
He said:

'That guy's crackers. That's all there is to it! Crackers!'


II


In her bedroom that night Miss Marple tried to review
the pattern of Stonygates, but it was as yet too confused.
There were currents and cross-currents here - but
whether they could account for Ruth Van Rydock's
uneasiness it was impossible to tell. It did not seem to
Miss Marple that Carrie Louise was affected in any way
by what was going on round her. Stephen was in love
with Gina. Gina might or might not be in love with


42


Stephen. Walter Hudd was clearly not enjoyinl himself.
These were incidents that might and did OCCur in all
places and at most times. There was, unfortunately,
nothing exceptional about them. They ended in the
divorce court and everybody hopefully startecl again when
fresh tangles were created. Mildred Strete was
clearly jealous of Gina and disliked her. That, bliss
Marple thought, was very natural.
She thought over what Ruth Van Rydock had told her.
Carrie Louise's disappointment at not having a child the
adoption of little Pippa - and then the discovery that,
after all, a child was on the way.
'Often happens like that,' Miss Marple's doctor had
told her. Relief of tension, maybe, and then Nature can
do its work.'
He had added that it was usually hard lines on the
adopted child.
But that had not been so in this case. Both Glbrand- sen
and his wife had adored little Pippa. She had made
her place too firmly in their hearts to be lightly set aside.
Gulbrandsen was already a father. Paternity meant
nothing new to him. Carrie Louise's maternal Yearnings
had been assuaged by Pippa. Her pregnancy had been
uncomfortable and the actual birth difficult d prolonged.
Possibly Carrie Louise, who had never cared for
reality, did not enjoy her first brush with it.
There remained two little girls growing up, One pretty
and amusing, the other plain and dull. Which again, Miss
Marple thought, was quite natural. For when people
adopt a baby girl, they choose a pretty one. And though
Mildred might have been lucky and taken after the
Martins who had produced handsome Ruth ard dainty
Carrie Louise, Nature elected that she should take after

43


the Gulbrandsens, who were large and stolid and uncom-promisingly
plain.

Moreover, Carrie Louise was determined that the
adopted child should never feel her position, and in
making sure of this she was over-indulgent to Pippa and
sometimes less than fair to Mildred.

Pippa had married and gone away to Italy, and
Mildred for a time had been the only daughter of the
house. But then Pippa had died and Carrie Louise had
brought Pippa's baby back to Stonygates, and once more
Mildred had been out of it. There had been the new
marriage - the Restarick boys. In 1934 Mildred had
married Canon Strete, a scholarly antiquarian about
fifteen years her senior and had gone away to live in the
South of England. Presumably she had been happy - but
one did not really know. There had been no children.
And now here she was, back again in the same house
where she had been brought up. And once again, Miss
Marple thought, not particularly happy in it.

Gina, Stephen, Wally, Mildred, Miss Bellever who
liked an ordered routine and was unable to enforce it.
Lewis Serrocold who was clearly blissfully and whole-heartedly
happy; an idealist able to translate his ideals
into practical measures. In none of these personalities did
Miss Marple find what Ruth's words had led her to
believe she might find. Carrie Louise seemed secure,
remote at the heart of the whirlpool - as she had been all
her life. What then, in that atmosphere, had Ruth felt to
be wrong ...? Did she, Jane Marple, feel it also?

What of the outer personalities of the whirlpool - the
occupational therapists, the schoolmasters, earnest,
harmless young men, confident young Dr Maverick, the


three pink-faced innocent-eyed young delinquents -Edgar
Lawson ...

And here, just before she fell asleep, Miss Marple's
thoughts stopped and revolved speculatively round the
figure of Edgar Lawson. Edgar Lawson reminded her of
someone or something. There was something a little
wrong about Edgar Lawson - perhaps more than a little.
Edgar Lawson was maladjusted - that was the phrase,
wasn't it? But surely that didn't, and couldn't touch
Carrie Louise?'

Mentally, Miss Marple shook her head.

What worried her was something more than that.


45


the Gulbrandsens, who were large and stolid and uncom-promisingly
plain.

Moreover, Carrie Louise was determined that the
adopted child should never feel her position, and in
making sure of this she was over-indulgent to Pippa and
sometimes less than fair to Mildred.

Pippa had married and gone away to Italy, and
Mildred for a time had been the only daughter of the
house. But then Pippa had died and Carrie Louise had
brought Pippa's baby back to Stonygates, and once more
Mildred had been out of it. There had been the new
marriage - the Restarick boys. In 1934 Mildred had
married Canon Strete, a scholarly antiquarian about
fifteen years her senior and had gone away to live in the
South of England. Presumably she had been happy - but
one did not really know. There had been no children.
And now here she was, back again in the same house
where she had been brought up. And once again, Miss
Marple thought, not particularly happy in it.

Gina, Stephen, Wally, Mildred, Miss Believer who
liked an ordered routine and was unable to enforce it.
Lewis Serrocold who was clearly blissfully and whole-heartedly
happy; an idealist able to translate his ideals
into practical measures. In none of these personalities did
Miss Marple find what Ruth's words had led her to
believe she might find. Carrie Louise seemed secure,
remote at the heart of the whirlpool - as she had been all
her life. What then, in that atmosphere, had Ruth felt to
be wrong ...? Did she, Jane Marple, feel it also?

What of the outer personalities of the whirlpool - the
occupational therapists, the schoolmasters, earnest,
harmless young men, confident young Dr Maverick, the


three pink-faced innocent-eyed young delinquents -Edgar
Lawson ...

And here, just before she fell asleep, Miss Marple's
thoughts stopped and revolved speculatively round the
figure of Edgar Lawson. Edgar Lawson reminded her of
someone or something. There was something a little
wrong about Edgar Lawson - perhaps more than a little.
Edgar Lawson was maladjusted - that was the phrase,
wasn't it? But surely that didn't, and couldn't touch
Carrie Louise?'

Mentally, Miss Marple shook her head.

What worried her was something more than that.


45


CHAPTER 5


Gently eluding her hostess the next morning, Miss
Marple went out into the gardens. Their condition
distressed her. They had once been an ambitiously set out
achievement. Clumps of rhododendrons, smooth slopes
of lawns, massed borders of herbaceous plants, clipped
boxhedges surrounding a formal rose garden. Now all
was largely derelict, the lawns raggedly mown, the
borders full of weeds with tangled flowers struggling
through them, the paths moss-covered and neglected.
The kitchen gardens, on the other hand, enclosed by red
brick walls, were prosperous and well stocked. That,
presumably, was because they had a utility value. So,
also, a large portion of what had once been lawn and
flower garden, was now fenced off and laid out in tennis
courts and a bowling green.

Surveying the herbaceous border, Miss Marple
clicked her tongue vexedly and pulled up a flourishing
plant of groundsel.

As she stood with it in her hand, Edgar Lawson came
into view. Seeing Miss Marple, he stopped and hesitated.
Miss Marple had no mind to let him escape. She called
him briskly. When he came, she asked him if he knew
where any gardening tools were kept.

Edgar said vaguely that there was a gardener some-where
who would know.

'It's such a pity to see this border so neglected,'
twittered Miss Marple. 'I'm so fond of gardens.' And


46


since it was not her intention that Edgar should go in
search of any necessa'y implement she went on quickly:
'It's about all an old and useless woman can find to do.
Now I don't suppose you ever bother your head about
gardens, Mr Lawson. You have so much real and
important work to do. Being in a responsible position
here, with Mr Serrocold. You must find it all most
interesting.'
He answered quickly, almost eagerly:
'Yes - yes - it is interesting.'
'And you must be of the greatest assistance to Mr
Serrocold.'
His face darkened.
'I don't know. I can't be sure. It's what's behind it all '
He broke off. Miss Marple watched him thoughtfully.
A pathetic undersized young man in a neat dark suit. A
young man that few people would look at twice, or
remember if they did look ...
There was a garden seat nearby and Miss Marple
drifted towards it and sat. Edgar stood frowning in front
of her.
'I'm sure,' said Miss Marple brightly, 'that Mr Serrocold relies on you a great deal.'
'I don't know,' said Edgar. 'I really don't know.' He
frowned and almost absently sat down beside her. 'I'm in
a very difficult position.'
'Of course,' said Miss Marple.
The young man Edgar sat staring in front of him.
'This is all highly confidential,' he said suddenly.
'Of course,' said Miss Marple.
'If I had my rights '
'Yes?'

47


'I might as well tell you ... You won't let it go any
further I'm sure?'
'Oh no.' She noticed he did not wait for her disclaimer.
'My father - actually, my father is a very important
man.'
This time there was no need to say anything. She had
only to listen.
'Nobody knows except Mr Serrocold. You see, it
might prejudice my father's position if the story got out.'
He turned to her. He smiled. A sad dignified smile. 'You
see, I'm Winston Churchill's son.'
'Oh,' said Miss Marple. 'I see.'
And she did see. She remembered a rather sad story in
St Mary Mead - and the way it had gone.
Edgar Lawson went on, and what he said had the
familiarity of a stage scene.
'There were reasons. My mother wasn't free. Her own
husband was in an asylum - there could be no divorce no
question of marriage. I don't really blame them. At
least, I think I don't... He's done, always, everything he
could. Discreetly, of course. And that's where the trouble
has arisen. He's got enemies - and they're against me, too.
They've managed to keep us apart. They watch me.
Wherever I go, they spy on me. And they make things go
wrong for me.'
Miss Marple shook her head.
'Dear, dear,' she said.
'In London I was studying to be a doctor. They
tampered with my exams - they altered the answers.
They wanted me to fail. They followed me about the
streets. They told things about me to my andlady. They
hound me wherever I go.'

48


'Oh, but you can't be sure of that,' said Miss Marple
soothingly.
'I tell you I know! Oh they're very cunning. I never get
a glimpse of them or find out who they are. But I shall
find out... Mr Serrocold took me away from London and
brought me down here. He was kind - very kind. But
even here, you know, I'm not safe. They're here too.
Working against me. Making the others dislike me. Mr
Serrocold says that isn't true - but Mr Serrocold doesn't
know. Or else - I wonder - sometimes I've thought '
He broke off. He got up.
'This is all confidential,' he said. 'You do understand
that, don't you? But if you notice anyone following me spying, I mean - you might let me know who it is!'
He went away, then - neat, pathetic, insignificant.
Miss Marple watched him and wondered ...
A voice spoke.
'Nuts,' it said. 'Just nuts.'
Walter Hudd was standing beside her. His hands were
thrust deep in his pockets and he was frowning as he
stared after Edgar's retreating figure.
'What kind of a joint is this, anyway?' he said. 'They're
all bughouse, the whole lot of them.'
Miss Marple said nothing and Walter went on:
'That Edgar guy - what do you make of him? Says his
father's really Lord Montgomery. Doesn't seem likely to
me. Not Monty! Not from all I've heard about him.'
'No,' said Miss Marple. 'It doesn't seem very likely.'
'He told Gina something quite different - some bunk
about being really the heir to the Russian throne - said he
was some Grand Duke's son or other. Hell, doesn't the
chap know who his father really was?'

49


'I should imagine not,' said Miss Marple. 'That is
probably just the trouble.'
Walter sat down beside her, dropping his body on to
the seat with a slack movement. He repeated his former
statement.
'They're all bughouse here.'
'You don't like being at Stonygates?'
The young man frowned.
'I simply don't get it - that's all! I don't get it. Take this
place - the house - the whole set-up. They're rich, these
people. They don't need dough - they've got it. And look
at the way they live. Cracked antique china and cheap
plain stuff all mixed up. No proper upper-class servants - just some casual hired help. Tapestries and drapes and
chair-covers all satin and brocade and stuff- and it's
falling to pieces I Big silver tea urns and what do you know
- all yellow and tarnished for want of cleaning. Mrs
Serrocold just doesn't care. Look at that dress she had on
last night. Darned under the arms, nearly worn out - and
yet she could go to a store and order what she liked. Bond
Street or wherever it is. Dough? They're rolling in
dough.'
He paused and sat, deliberating.
'I understand being poor. There's nothing much
wrong with it. If you're young and strong and ready to
work. I never had much money, but I was all set to get
where I wanted. I was going to open a garage. I'd got a bit
of money put by. I talked to Gina about it. She listened.
She seemed to understand. I didn't know much about
her. All those girls in uniform, they look about the same.
I mean you can't tell from looking at them who's got
dough and who hasn't. I thought she was a cut above me,
perhaps, education and all that. But it didn't seem to

50


matter: We fell for each other. We got married. I'd got
my bit put by and Gina had some too, she told me. We
were going to set up a gas station back home - Gina was
willing. Just a couple of crazy kids we were - mad about
each other. Then that snooty aunt of Gina's started
making trouble ... And Gina wanted to come here to
England to see her grandmother. Well, that seemed fair
enough. It was her home, and I was curious to see
England anyway. I'd heard a lot about it. So we came.

Just a visit - that's what I thought.'

The frown became a scowl.

'But it hasn't turned out like that. We're caught up in
this crazy business. Why don't we stay here - make our
home here - that's what they say? Plenty of jobs for me.
Jobs! I don't want a job feeding candy to gangster kids
and helping them play at kids' games.., what's the sense
of it all? This place could be swell - really swell. Don't
people who've got money understand their luck? Don't
they understand that most of the world can't have a swell
place like this and that they've got one? Isn't it plain crazy
to kick your luck when you've got it? I don't mind
working if I've got to. But I'll work the way I like and at
what I like - and I'll work to get somewhere. This place
makes me feel I'm tangled up in a spider's web. And Gina
- I can't make Gina out. She's not the same girl I married
over in the States. I can't - dang it all - I can't even talk
to her now. Oh hell!'

Miss Marple said gently:

'I quite see your point of view.'

Wally shot a swift glance at her.

'You're the only one I've shot my mouth offto so far.
Most of the time I shut up like a clam. Don't know what
it is about you - you're English right enough, really


51


English - but in the durndest way you remind me of my
Aunt Betsy back home.'

'Now that's very nice.'

'A lot of sense she had,' Wally continued reflectively.
'Looked as frail as though you could snap her in two, but

actually she was tough - yes, sir, I'll say she was tough.'
He got up.

'Sorry talking to you this way,' he apologized. For the
first time, Miss Marple saw him smile. It was a very
attractive smile, and Wally Hudd was suddenly transfig-ured
from an awkward sulky boy into a handsome and
appealing young man. 'Had to get things off my chest, I
suppose. But too bad picking on you.'

'Not at all, my dear boy,' said Miss Marple. 'I have a
nephew of my own - only, of course, a great deal older
than you are.'

Her mind dwelt for a moment on the sophisticated
modern writer Raymond West. A greater contrast to
Walter Hudd could not have been imagined.

'You've got other company coming,' said Walter
Hudd. 'That dame doesn't like me. So I'll quit. So long,
ma'am. Thanks for the talk.'

He strode away and Miss Marple watched Mildred
Strete coming across the lawn to join her.


II


'I see you've been victimized by that terrible young man,'
said Mrs Strete, rather breathlessly, as she sank down on

the seat. 'What a tragedy that is.'

'A tragedy?'

'Gina's marriage. It all case about from sending her


52


off to America. I told mother at the time it was most
unwise. After all, this is quite a quiet district. We had
hardly any raids here. I do so dislike the way many people
gave way to panic about their families - and themselves,
too, very often.'

'It must have been difficult to decide what was right to
do,' said Miss Marple thoughtfully. 'Where children
were concerned, I mean. With the prospect of possible
invasion, it might have meant their being brought up
under a German rgime - as well as the danger of bombs.'

'All nonsense,' said Mrs Strete. 'I never had the least
doubt that we should win. But mother has always been
quite unreasonable where Gina is concerned. The child
was always spoilt and indulged in every way. There was
absolutely no need to take her away from Italy in the first
place.'

'Her father raised no objection, I understand?'

'Oh San Severiano! You know what Italians are.
Nothing matters to them but money. He married Pippa
for her money, of course.'

'Dear me. I always understood he was very devoted to
her and was quite inconsolable at her death.'

'He pretended to be, no doubt. Why mother ever
countenanced her marrying a foreigner, I can't imagine.

Just the usual American pleasure in a title, I suppose.'
Miss Marple said mildly:

'I always thought that dear Carrie Louise was almost
too unworldly in her attitude to life.'

'Oh, I know. I've no patience with it. Mother's fads
and whims and idealistic projects. You've no idea, Aunt
Jane, of all that it has meant. I can speak with knowledge,
of course. I was brought up in the middle of it all.'

It was with a very faint shock that Miss Marple heard


53


herself addressed as Aunt Jane. And yet that had been the
convention of those times. Her Christmas presents to
Carrie Louise's children were always labelled 'With love
from Aunt Jane,' and as 'Aunt Jane' they thought of her,
when they thought of her at all. Which was not, Miss
Marple supposed, very often.

She looked thoughtfully at the middle-aged woman
sitting beside her. At the pursed tight mouth, the deep
lines from the nose down, the hands tightly pressed
together.

She said gently:

'You must have had - a difficult childhood.'
Mildred Strete turned eager grateful eyes to her.
'Oh I'm so glad that somebody appreciates that.
People don't really know what children go through.
Pippa, you see, was the pretty one. She was older than I
was, too. It was always she who got all the attention. Both
father and mother encouraged her to push herself
forward - not that she needed any encouragement - to
show off. I was always the quiet one. I was shy - Pippa
didn't know what shyness was. A child can suffer a great
deal, Aunt Jane.'

'I know that,' said Miss Marple.

'"Mildred's so stupid" - that's what Pippa used to say.
But I was younger than she was. Naturally I couldn't be
expected to keep up with her in lessons. And it's very
unfair on a child when her sister is always put in front of
her.

'"What a lovely little girl," people used to say to
Mamma. They never noticed me. And it was Pippa that
Papa used to joke and play with. Someone ought to have
seen how hard it was on me. All the notice and attention


54


going to her. I wasn't old enough to realize that it's character that matters.'
Her lips trembled, then hardened again.
'And it was unfair - really unfair - I was their own
child. Pippa was only adopted. I was the daughter of the
house. She was - nobody.'
'Probably they were extra indulgent to her on that
account,' said Miss Marple.
'They liked her best,' said Mildred Strete. And added:
'A child whose own parents didn't want her - or more
probably illegitimate.'
She went on:
'It's come out in Gina. There's bad blood there. Blood
will tell. Lewis can have what theories he likes about
environment. Bad blood does tell. Look at Gina.'
'Gina is a very lovely girl,' said Miss Marple.
'Hardly in behaviour,' said Mrs Strete. 'Everyone but
mother notices how she is carrying on with Stephen
Restarick. Quite disgusting, I call it. Admittedly she
made a very unfortunate marriage, but marriage is
marriage and one should be prepared to abide by it. After
all, she chose to marry that dreadful young man.'
'Is he so dreadful?'
'Oh dear Aunt Jane! He really looks to me quite like a
gangster. And so surly and rude. He hardly opens his
mouth. And he always looks so raw and uncouth.'
'He is unhappy, I think,' said Miss Marple mildly.
'I really don't know why he should be - apart from
Gina's behaviour, I mean. Everything has been done for
him here. Lewis has suggested several ways in which he
could try to make himself useful - but he prefers to skulk
about doing nothing.'
She burst out: 'Oh this whole place is impossible 55



quite impossible. Lewis thinks of nothing but these
horrible young criminals. And mother thinks of nothing
but him. Everything Lewis does is right. Look at the state
of the garden - the weeds - the overgrowth. And the
house - nothing properly done. Oh I know a domestic
staff is difficult nowadays, but it can be got. It's not as
though there were any shortage of money. It's just that
nobody cares. If it were my house -' She stopped.

'I'm afraid,' said Miss Marple, 'that we have all to face
the fact that conditions are different. These large estab-lishments
are a great problem. It must be sad for you, in
a way, to come back here and find everything so different.
Do you really prefer living here to - well - somewhere of
your own?'

Mildred Strete flushed.

'After all, it's my home,' she said. 'It was my father's
house. Nothing can alter that. I've a right to be here if I
choose. And I do choose. If only mother were not so
impossible! She won't even buy herself proper clothes. It
worries Jolly a lot.'

'I was going to ask you about Miss Believer.'

'Such a comfort having her here. She adores mother.
She's been with her a long time now - she came in John
Restarick's time. And was wonderful, I believe, during
the whole sad business. I expect you heard that he ran
away with a dreadful Yugoslavian woman - a most
abandoned creature. She'd had any amount of lovers, I
believe. Mother was very fine and dignified about it all.
Divorced him as quietly as possible. Even went so far as
to have the Restarick boys for their holidays - quite
unnecessary, really, other arrangements could have been
made. It would have been unthinkable, of course, to have
let them go to their father and that woman. Anyway,


56


mother had them here... And Miss Bellever stood by all
through things and was a tower of strength. I sometimes
think she makes mother even more vague than she need
be, by doing all the practical things herself. But I really
don't know what mother would do without her.'
She paused and then remarked in a tone of surprise:
'Here is Lewis. How odd. He seldom comes out in the
garden.'
Mr Serrocold came towards them in the same single-minded
way that he did everything. He appeared not to
notice Mildred, because it was only Miss Marple who
was in his mind.
'I'm so sorry,' he said. 'I wanted to take you round our
institution and show you everything. Caroline asked me
to. Unfortunately I have to go off to Liverpool. The case
of that boy and the railway parcels office. But Maverick
will take you. He'll be here in a few minutes. I shan't be
back until the day after tomorrow. It will be splendid if
we can get them not to prosecute.'
Mildred Strete got up and walked away. Lewis
Serrocold did not notice her go. His earnest eyes gazed at
Miss Marple through thick glasses.
'You see,' he said, 'the Magistrates nearly always take
the wrong view. Sometimes they're too severe, but
sometimes they're too lenient. If these boys get a sentence
of a few months it's no deterrent - they get a kind of a kick
out of it, even. Boast about it to their girl friends. But a
severe sentence often sobers them. They realize that the
game isn't worth it. Or else it's better not to serve a prison
sentence at all. Corrective training - constructional
training like we have here '
Miss Marple interrupted him.

57


'Mr Serrocold,' she said. 'Are you quite satisfied about
young Mr Lawson. Is he - is he quite normal?'
A disturbed expression appeared on Lewis Serrocold's
face.
'I do hope he's not relapsing. What has he been
saying?'
'He told me that he was Winston Churchill's son '
'Of course - of course. The usual statements. He's
illegitimate, as you've probably guessed, poor lad, and of
very humble beginnings. He was a case recommended to
me by a Society in London. He'd assaulted a man in the
street who he said was spying on him. All very typical Dr
Maverick will tell you. I went into his case history.
Mother was of a poor class but a respectable family in
Plymouth. Father a sailor - she didn't even know his
name ... Child brought up in difficult circumstances.
Started romancing about his father and later about
himself. Wore uniform and decorations he wasn't
entitled to - all quite typical. But Maverick considers the
prognosis hopeful. If we can give him confidence in
himself. I've given him responsibility here, tried to make
him appreciate that it's not a man's birth that matters but
what he is. I've tried to give him confidence in his own
ability. The improvement was marked. I was very happy
about him. And now you say '
He shook his head.
'Mightn't he be dangerous, Mr Serrocold?'
'Dangerous? I don't think he has shown any suicidal
tendencies.'
'I wasn't thinking of suicide. He talked to me of
enemies - of persecution. Isn't that, forgive me - a
dangerous sign?'
'I don't really think it has reached such a pitch. But I'll

58


speak to Maverick. So far, he has been hopeful - very
hopeful.'

He looked at his watch.

'I must go. Ah, here is our dear Jolly. She will take
charge of you.'

Miss Believer, arriving briskly, said, 'The car is at the
door, Mr Serrocold. Dr Maverick rang through from the
Institute. I said I would bring Miss Marple over. He will
meet us at the gates.'

'Thank you. I must go. My brief case?'

'In the car, Mr Serrocold.'

Lewis Serrocold hurried away. Looking after him,
Miss Believer said:

'Some day that man will drop dead in his tracks. It's
against human nature never to relax or rest. He only
sleeps four hours a night.'

'He is very devoted to this cause,' said Miss Marple.
'Never thinks of anything else,' said Miss Bellever
grimly. 'Never dreams of looking after his wife or
considering her in any way. She's a sweet creature, as you
know, Miss Marple, and she ought to .have love and
attention. But nothing's thought of or considered here
except a lot of whining boys and young men who want to
live easily and dishonestly and don't care about the idea of
doing a little hard work. What about the decent boys
from decent homes? Why isn't something done for them?
Honesty just isn't interesting to cranks like Mr Serrocold
and Dr Maverick and all the bunch of half-baked
sentimentalists we've got here. I and my brothers were
brought up the hard way, Miss Marple, and we weren't
encouraged to whine. Soft, that's what the world is
nowadays?

They had crossed the garden and passed through a


59


palisaded gate and had come to the arched gate which
Eric Gulbrandsen had erected as an entrance to his
College, a sturdily built, hideous, red brick building.
Dr Maverick, looking, Miss Marple decided, distinctly
abnormal himself, came out to meet them.
'Thank you, Miss Believer,' he said. 'Now, Miss - er oh
yes, Miss Marple - I'm sure you're going to be
interested in what we're doing here. In our splendid
approach to this great problem. Mr Serrocold is a man of
great insight - great vision. And we've got Sir John
Stillwell behind us - my old chief. He was at the Home
Office until he retired and his influence turned the scales
in getting this started. It's a medical problem - that's what
we've got to get the legal authorities to understand.
Psychiatry came into its own in the war. The one positive
good that did come out of it - Now first of all I want you
to see our initial approach to the problem. Look up '
Miss Marple looked up at the words carved over the
large arched doorway:

RECOVER HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

'Isn't that splendid! Isn't that just the right note to
strike. You don't want to scold these lads - or punish
them. That's what they're hankering after half the time,
punishment. We want to make them feel what fine
fellows they are.'
'Like Edgar Lawson?' said Miss Marple.
'Interesting case, that. Have you been talking to him?'
'He has been talking to me,' said Miss Marple. She
added apologetically, 'I wondered if, perhaps, he isn't a
little mad?.'
Dr Maverick laughed cheerfully.

60


'We're all mad, dear lady,' he said as he ushered her in
through the door. 'That's the secret of existence. We're
all a little mad.'


61


CHAPTER6

On the whole it was rather an exhausting day.
Enthusiasm in itself can be extremely wearing, Miss
Marple thought. She felt vaguely dissatisfied with herself
and her own reactions. There was a pattern here perhaps
several patterns, and yet she herself could obtain
no clear glimpse of it or them. Any vague disquietude she
felt centred round the pathetic but inconspicuous personality
of Edgar Lawson. If she could only find in her
memory the right parallel.
Painstakingly she rejected the curious behaviour of Mr
Selkirk's delivery van - the absent-minded postman - the
gardener who worked on Whit Monday - and that very
curious affair of the summer weight combinations.
Something that she could not quite put her finger on
was wrong about Edgar Lawson - something that went
beyond the observed and admitted facts. But for the life
of her, Miss Marple did not see how that wrongness,
whatever it was, affected her friend Carrie Louise. In the
confused patterns of life at Stonygates people's troubles
and desires impinged on each other. But none of them
(again as far as she could see) impinged on Carrie Louise.
Carrie Louise... Suddenly Miss Marple realized that
it was she alone, except for the absent Ruth, who used
that name. To her husband, she was Caroline. To Miss Believer, Cara. Stephen Restarick usually addressed her
as Madonna. To Wally she was formally Mrs Serrocold,

62


and Gina elected to address her as Grandam - a mixture,
she had explained, of Grande Dame and Grandmamma.

Was there some significance, perhaps, in the various
names that were found for Caroline Louise Serrocold?
Was she to all of them a symbol and not quite a real
person?

When on the following morning Carrie Louise, drag-ging
her feet a little as she walked, came and sat down on
the garden seat beside her friend and asked her what she

was thinking about, Miss Marple replied promptly:
'You, Carrie Louise.'
'What about me?'

'Tell me honestly - is there anything here that worries
you?'

'Worries me?' The woman raised wondering clear blue
eyes. 'But Jane, what should worry me?'

'Well, most of us have worries.' Miss Marple's eyes
twinkled a little. 'I have. Slugs, you know - and the
difficulty of getting linen properly darned - and not being
able to get sugar candy for making my damson gin. Oh,
lots of little things - it seems unnatural that you shouldn't
have any worries at all.'

'I. suppose I must have really,' said Mrs Serrocold
vaguely. 'Lewis works too hard, and Stephen forgets his
meals slaving at the theatre, and Gina is very jumpy - but
I've never been able to alter people - I don't see how you

can. So it wouldn't be any good worrying, would it?'
'Mildred's not very happy, either, is she?'

'Oh no,' said Carrie Louise. 'Mildred never is happy.
She wasn't as a child. Quite unlike Pippa, who was always
radiant.'

'Perhaps,' suggested Miss Marple, 'Mildred had cause
not to be happy?'


63


Carrie Louise said quietly:
'Because of being jealous? Yes, I daresay. But people
don't really need a cause for feeling what they do feel.
They're just made that way. Don't you think so, Jane?'
Miss Marple thought briefly of Miss Moncrieff, a slave
to a tyrannical invalid mother. Poor Miss Moncrieff who
longed for travel and to see the world. And of how St
Mary Mead in a decorous way had rejoiced when Mrs
Moncrieff was laid in the churchyard and Miss Moncrieff,
with a nice little income, was free at last. And of
how Miss Moncrieff, starting on her travels, had got no
farther than Hyres where, calling to see one of'mother's
oldest friends,' she had been so moved by the plight of an
elderly hypochondriac that she had cancelled her travel
reservations and taken up her abode in the villa to be
bullied, over-worked, and to long wistfully, once more,
for the joys of a wider horizon.
Miss Marple said:
'I expect you're right, Carrie Louise.'
'Of course my being so free from cares is partly due to
Jolly. Dear Jolly. She came to me when Johnnie and I
were just married and was wonderful from the first. She
takes care of me as though I were a baby and quite
helpless. She'd do anything for me. I feel quite ashamed
sometimes. I really believe Jolly would murder someone
for me, Jane. Isn't that an awful thing to say?'
'She's certainly very devoted,' agreed Miss Marple.
'She gets so indignant.' Mrs Serrocold's silvery laugh
rang out. 'She'd like me to be always ordering wonderful
clothes, and surrounding myself with luxuries, and she
thinks everybody ought to put me first and to dance
attendance on me. She's the one person who's absolutely
unimpressed by Lewis's enthusiasm. All our poor boys

64


'l


are in her view pampered young criminals and not worth
taking trouble over. She thinks this place is damp and bad
for my rheumatism, and that I ought to go to Egypt or
somewhere warm and dry.'

'Do you suffer much from rheumatism?'

'It's got much worse lately. I find it difficult to walk.
Horrid cramps in my legs. Oh well -' gain there came
that bewitching elfin smile, 'age must tell.'

Miss Believer came out of the french windows and
hurried across to them.

'A telegram, Cara, just come over the telephone.
Arriving this afternoon, Christian Gulbrandsen.'

'hristian?' Carrie Louise looked very surprised. 'I'd
no i!ea he was in England.'

'The oak suite, I suppose?'

'Yes,%p!ase, Jolly. Then there will be no stairs.'
Miss Believer nodded and turned back to the house.
'Christian Gulbrandsen is my stepson,' said Carrie
Louise. 'Eric's eldest son. Actually he's two years older
than I am. FIe's one of the trustees of the Institute - the
principal trustee. How very annoying that Lewis is away.
Christian hardly ever stays longer than ode night. He's an
immensely busy man. And there are sure to be so many
things they would want to discuss.'

Christian Gulbrandsen arrived that afternoon in time
for tea. He was a big heavy-featured ma, with a slow
methodical way of talking. He greeted Crrie Louise with
every sign of affection.

'And how is our little Carrie Louise? You do not look
a day older. Not a day.'

His hands on her shoulders - he stood smiling down at
her. A hand tugged his sleeve.

'Christian!'


65


'Ah,' he turned - 'it is Mildred? How are you,
Mildred?'

'I've not really been at all well lately.'

'That is bad. That is bad.'

There was a strong resemblance between Christian
Gulbrandsen and his half-sister Mildred. There was
nearly thirty years' difference in age and they might easily
have been taken for father and daughter. Mildred herself
seemed particularly pleased by his arrival. She was
flushed and talkative, and had talked repeatedly during
the day of 'my brother,' 'my brother Christian,' 'my
brother Mr Gulbrandsen.'

'And how is little Gina?' said Gulbrandsen, turning to
that young woman. 'You and your husband are still here,
then?'

'Yes. We've quite settled down, haven't we, Wally?'
'Looks like it,' said Wally.

Gulbrandsen's small shrewd eyes seemed to sum up
Wally quickly. Wally, as usual, looked sullen and
unfriendly.

'So here I am with all the family again,' said
Gulbrandsen.

His voice displayed a rather determined geniality - but
in actual fact, Miss Marple thought, he was not feeling
particularly genial. There was a grim set to his lips and a
certain preoccupation in his manner.

Introduced to Miss Marple, he swept a keen look over
her as though measuring and appraising this newcomer.

'We'd no idea you were in England, Christian,' said
Mrs Serrocold.

'No, I came over rather unexpectedly.'

'It is too bad that Lewis is away. How long can you
stay?'


66


'I meant to go tomorrow. When will Lewis be back?'
'Tomorrow afternoon or evening.'
'It seems then that I must stay another night.'
'If you'd only let us know '
'My dear Carrie Louise, my arrangements, they were
made very suddenly.'
'You will stay to see Lewis?'
'Yes, it is necessary that I see Lewis.'
Miss Bellever said to Miss Marple: 'Mr Gulbrandsen
and Mr Serrocold are both trustees of the Gulbrandsen
Institute. The others are the Bishop of Cromer and Mr
Gilfoy.'
Presumably, then, it was on business concerned with
the Gulbrandsen Institute that Christian Gulbrandsen
had come to Stonygates. It seemed to be assumed so by
Miss Believer and everyone else. And yet Miss Marple
wondered.
Once or twice the old man cast a thoughtful puzzled
look at Carrie Louise Whenhe was not aware of it - a look
that puzzled Carrie Louis'xs watching friend. From
Carrie Louise he shifted his gae to the others, examining
them one and all with a kind of covert appraisal that
seemed distinctly odd.
After tea, Miss Marple withdrew tactfully from the
others to the library, but rather to her surprise when she
had settled herself with her knitting, Christian Gulo
brandsen came in and sat down beside her.
'You are a very old friend, I think, of our dear Carrie
Louise?' he said.
'We were at school together in Italy, Mr Gulbrandsen.
Many many years ago.'
'Ah yes. And you are fond of her?'
'Yes, indeed,' said Miss Marple warmly.

67


'So, I think, is everyone. Yes, I truly think that. It
should be so. For she is a very dear and enchanting
person. Always, since my father married her, I and my
brothers have loved her very much. She has been to us
like a very dear sister. She was a faithful wife to my father
and loyal to all his ideas. She has never thought of herself,
but put the welfare of others first.'

'She has always been an idealist,' said Miss Marple.
'An idealist? Yes. Yes, that is so. And therefore it may
be that she does not truly appreciate the evil that there is
in the world.'

Miss Marple looked at him, surprised. His face was
very steru.

'Tell me,' he said. 'How is her health?'

Again Miss Marple felt surprised.

'She seems to me very well - apart from arthritis - or
rheumatism.'

'Rheumatism? Yes. And her heart? Her heart is good?'
'As far as I know.' Miss Marple was still more
surprised. 'But until yesterday I had not seen her for
many years. If you want to know the state of her health,
you should ask somebody in the house here. Miss
Believer, for instance.'

'Miss Bellever - Yes, Miss Believer. Or Mildred?'
'Or, as you say, Mildred.'

Miss Marple was faintly embarrassed.

Christian Gulbrandsen was staring at her very hard.

'There is not between the mother and daughter a very

great sympathy, would you say?'

'No, I don't think there is.'

'I agree. It is a pity - her only child, but there it is. Now
this Miss Believer, you think, is really attached to her?'

'Very much so.'


68


'And Carrie Louise leans on this Miss Believer?'
'I think so.'
Christian Gulbrandsen was frowning. He spoke as
though more to himself than to Miss Marple.
'There is the little Gina - but she is so young. It is difficult
-' He broke off. 'Sometimes,' he said simply, 'it is
hard to know what is best to be done. I wish very much
to act for the best. I am particularly anxious that no harm
and no unhappiness should come to that dear lady. But it
is not easy - not easy at all.'
Mrs Strete came into the room at that moment.
'Oh, there you are, Christian. We were wondering
where you were. Dr Maverick wants to know if you
would like to go over anything with him.'
'That is the new young doctor here? No - no, I will
wait until Lewis returns.'
'He's waiting in Lewis's study, gh-tell him '
'I will have a word with him myself.'
Gulbrandsen hurried out. Mildred Strete stared after
him and then stared at Miss Marple.
'I wonder if anything is wrong. Christian is very unlike
himself... Did he say anything '
'He only asked me about your mother's health.'
'Her health? Why should he ask you about that?'
Mildred spoke sharply, her large square face flushing
unbecomingly.
'I really don't know.'
'Mother's health is perfectly good. Surprisingly so for
a woman of her age. Much better than mine as far as that
goes.' She paused a moment before saying: 'I hope you
told him so?'
'I don't really know anything about it,' said Miss
Marple. 'He asked me about her heart.'

69


'Her heart?'

'Yes.'

'There's nothing wrong with mother's heart. Nothing
at all!'

'I'm delighted to hear you say so, my dear.'

'What on earth put all these queer ideas into Chris-tian's
head?'

'I've no idea,' said Miss Marple.


70


,!


CHAPTER 7


The next day passed uneventfully to all appearances, yet
to Miss Marple it seemed that there were signs of an inner
tension. Christian Gulbrandsen spent his morning with
Dr Maverick in going round the Institute and in
discussing the general results of the Institute's policy. In
the early afternoon Gina took him for a drive, and after
that Miss Marple noticed that he induced Miss Bellever
to show him something in the gardens. It seemed to her
that it was a pretext for ensuring a tte-d-tte with that
grim woman. And yet, if Christian Gulbrandsen's unex-pected
visit had only to do with business matters, why
this wish for Miss Believer's company, since the latter
dealt only with the domestic side of Stonygates?

But in all this, Miss Marple could tell herself that she
was being fanciful. The one really disturbing incident of
the day happened about four o'clock. She hadzrotkd up
her knitting and had gone out in the garden to take alittle
stroll before tea. Rounding a straggling rhododendron
she came upon Edgar Lawson, who was striding along
muttering to himself and who nearly ran into her.

He said, 'I beg your pardon,' hastily, but Miss Marple

was startled by the queer staring expression of his eyes.
'Aren't you feeling well, Mr Lawson?'

'Well? How should I be feeling well? I've had a shock
- a terrible shock.'

'What kind of a shock?'

The young man gave a swift glance past her, and then


71


a sharp uneasy glance to either side. His doing so gave
Miss Marple a nervous feeling.

'Shall I tell you?' He looked at her doubtfully. 'I don't
know. I don't really know. I've been so spied upon.'

Miss Marple made up her mind. She took him firmly
by the arm.

'If we walk down this path... There, now, there are no
trees or bushes near. Nobody can overhear.'

'No - no, you're right.' He drew a deep breath, bent his
head and almost whispered his next words. 'I've made a
discovery. A terrible discovery.'

Edgar Lawson began to shake all over. He was almost
weeping.

'To have trusted someone! To have believed ... and it
was lies - all lies. Lies to keep me from finding out the
truth. I can't bear it. It's too wicked. You see, he was the
one person I trusted, and now to find out that all the time
he's been at the bottom of it all. It's he who's been my
enemy! It's he who has been having me followed about
and spied upon. But he can't get away with it any more.
I shall speak out. I shall tell him I know what he has been
doing.'

'Who is "he"?' demanded Miss Marple.

Edgar Lawson drew himself up to his full height. He
might have looked pathetic and dignified. But actually he
only looked ridiculous.

'I'm speaking of my father.'

'Viscount Montgomery - or do you mean Winston
Churchill?'

Edgar threw her a glance of scorn.

'They let me think that - just to keep me from guessing
the truth. But I know now. I've got a friend - a real friend.
A friend who tells me the truth and lets me know just how


72


I've been deceived. Well, my father will have to reckon
with me. I'll throw his lies in his face! I'll challenge him
with the truth. We'll see what he's got to say to that.'

And suddenly breaking away, Edgar went off at a run
and disappeared in the park.

Her face grave, Miss Marple went back to the house.

'We're all a little mad, dear lady,' Dr Maverick had
said.

But it seemed to her that in Edgar's case it went rather
further than that.


II


Lewis Serrocold arrived back at six-thirty. He stopped
the car at the gates and walked to the house through the
park. Looking out of her window, Miss Marple saw
Christian Gulbrandsen go out to meet him and the two
men, having greeted one another, turned and paced to
and fro up and down the terrace.

Miss Marple had been careful to bring her bird glasses
with her. At this moment she brought them into action.
Was there, or was there not, a flight of siskins by that far
clump of trees?

She noted as the glasses swept down before rising that
both men were looking seriously disturbed. Miss Marple
leant out a little farther. Scraps of conversation floated up
to her now and then. If either of the men should look up,
it would be quite clear that an enraptured bird watcher
had her attention luted on a point far removed from their
conversation.

' ... how to spare Carrie Louise the knowledge -'
Gulbrandsen was saying.


73


The next time they passed below, Lewis Serrocold was
speaking.
' if it can be kept from her. I agree that it is she who
must be considered ...'
Other faint snatches came to the listener.
' - Really serious -' '- not justified -' '- too big a
responsibility to take -' '- we should, perhaps, take
outside advice '
Finally Miss Marple heard Christian Gulbrandsen
say:
'Ach, it grows cold. We must go inside.'
Miss Marple drew her head in through the window
with a puzzled expression. What she had heard was too
fragmentary to be easily pieced together - but it served to
confirm that vague apprehension that had been gradually
growing upon her and about which Ruth Van Rydock
had been so positive.
Whatever was wrong at Stonygates, it definitely
affected Carrie Louise.

III

Dinner that evening was a somewhat constrained meal.
Both Gulbrandsen and Lewis were absent-minded and
absorbed in their own thoughts. Walter Hudd glowered
even more than usual, and for once Gina and Stephen
seemed to have little to say either to each other or to the
company at large. Conversation was mostly sustained by
Dr Maverick, who had a lengthy technical discussion
with Mr Baumgarten, one of the Occupational
Therapists.
When they moved into the hall after dinner, Christian

74


Gulbrandsen excused himself almost at once. He said he
had an important letter to write.

'So if you will forgive me, dear Carrie Louise, I will go
now to my room.'

'You have all you want there? Jolly?'

'Yes, yes. Everything. A typewriter, I asked, and one
has been put there. Miss Bellever has been most kind and
attentive.'

He left the Great Hall by the door on the left which led
past the foot of the main staircase and along a corridor, at

the end of which was a suite of bedroom and bathroom.
When he had gone out Carrie Louise said:
'Not going down to the theatre tonight, Gina?'

The girl shook her head. She went over and sat by the
window overlooking the front drive and the court.

Stephen glanced at her, then strolled over to the big
grand piano. He sat down at it and strummed very softly
- a queer melancholy little tune. The two Occupational
Therapists, Mr Baumgarten and Mr Lacy, and Dr
Maverick, said goodnight and left. Walter turned on the
switch of a reading lamp and with a crackling noise half

the lights in the hall went out.

He growled.

'That darned switch is always faulty. I'll go and put a
new fuse in.'

He left the Hall and Carrie Louise murmured, 'Wally's
so clever with electrical gadgets and things like that. You
remember how he fixed that toaster?'

'It seems to be all he does do here,' said Mildred Strete.

'Mother, have you taken your tonic?'

Miss Bellever looked annoyed.

'I declare I completely forgot tonight.' She jumped up


75


and went into the dining-room, returning presently with
a small glass containing a little rose-coloured fluid.
Smiling a little, Carrie Louise held out an obedient
hand.
'Such horrid stuff and nobody lets me forget it,' she
said, making a wry face.
And then, rather unexpectedly, Lewis Serrocold said:
'I don't think I should take it tonight, my dear. I'm not
sure it really agrees with you.'
Quietly, but with that controlled energy always so
apparent in him, he took the glass from Miss Believer and
put it down on the big oak Welsh dresser.
Miss Believer said sharply:
'Really, Mr Serrocold, I can't agree with you there.
Mrs Serrocold has been very much better since '
She broke off and turned sharply.
The front door was pushed violently open and allowed
to swing to with a crash. Edgar Lawson came into the big
dim Hall with the air of a star performer making a
triumphal entry.
He stood in the middle of the floor and struck an
attitude.
It was almost ridiculous - but not quite ridiculous.
Edgar sid theatrically:
'So I have found you, O mine enemy!'
He said it to Lewis Serrocold.
Mr Serrocold looked mildly astonished.
'Why, Edgar, what is the matter?'
'You can say that to me - you!' You know what's the
matter. You've been deceiving me, spying on me,
working with my enemies against me.'
Lewis took him by the arm.

7t5


'Now, now, my dear lad, don't excite yourself. Tell me
all about it quietly. Come into my office.'
He led him across the Hall and through a door on the
right, closing it behind him. After he had done so, there
was another sound, the sharp sound of a key being turned
in the lock.
Miss Believer looked at Miss Marple, the same idea in
both their minds. It was not Lewis Serrocold who had
turned the key.
Miss Bellever said sharply: 'That young man is just
about to go off his head in my opinion. It isn't safe.'
Mildred said: 'He's a most unbalanced young man and
absolutely ungrateful for everything that's been done
for him - you ought to put your foot down, Mother.'
With a faint sigh Carrie Louise murmured:
'There's no harm in him really. He's fond of Lewis.
He's very fond of him.'
Miss Marple looked at her curiously. There had been
no fondness in the expression that Edgar had turned on
Lewis Serrocold a few moments previously, very far from
it. She wondered, as she wondered before, if Carrie
Louise deliberately turned her back on reality.
Gina said sharply:
'He had something in his pocket. Edgar, I mean.
Playing with it.'
Stephen murmured as he took his hands from the keys:
'In a film it would certainly have been a revolver.'
Miss Marple coughed.
'I think you know,' she said apologetically, 'it was a revolver.'
From behind the closed door of Lewis's office the
sound of voices had been plainly discernible. Now,
suddenly, they became clearly audible. Edgar Lawson

77


shouted whilst Lewis Serrocold's voice kept its even
reasonable note.
'Lies - lies - lies, all lies. You're my father. I'm your son. You've deprived me of my rights. I ought to own this
place. You hate me - you want to get rid of me!'
There was a soothing murmur from Lewis and then
the hysterical voice rose still higher. It screamed out foul
epithets. Edgar seemed rapidly losing control of himself.
Occasional words came from Lewis - 'calm -just be calm - you know none of this is true -' But they seemed not to
soothe, but on the contrary to enrage the young man still
further.
Insensibly everyone in the hall was silent, listening
intently to what went on behind the locked door of
Lewis's study.
'I'll make you listen to me,' yelled Edgar. 'I'll take that
supercilious expression off your face. I'll have revenge, I
tell you. Revenge for all you've made me suffer.'
The other voice came curtly, unlike Lewis's usual
unemotional tones.
'Put that revolver down!'
Gina cried sharply:
'Edgar will kill him. He's crazy. Can't we get the police
or something?'
Carrie Louise, still unmoved, said softly:
'There's no need to worry, Gina. Edgar loves Lewis.
He's just dramatizing himself, that's all.'
Edgar's voice sounded through the door in a laugh that
Miss Marple had to admit sounded definitely insane.
'Yes, I've got a revolver - and it's loaded. No, don't
speak, don't move. You're going to hear me out. It's you
who started this conspiracy against me and now you're
going to pay for it.'

78


What sounded like the report of a firearm made them
all start, but Carrie Louise said:
'It's all right, it's outside - in the park somewhere.'
Behind the locked door, Edgar was raving in a high
screaming voice.
'You sit there looking at me - looking at me pretending
to be unmoved. Why don't you get down on
your knees and beg for mercy? I'm going to shoot, I tell
you. I'm going to shoot you dead! I'm your son - your
unacknowledged despised son - you wanted me hidden
away, out of the world altogether, perhaps. You set your
spies to follow me - to hound me down - you plotted
against me. You, my father! My father. I'm only a
bastard, aren't I? Only a bastard. You went on filling me
up with lies. Pretending to be kind to me, and all the time
- all the time - You're not fit to live. I won't let you live.'
Again there came a stream of obscene profanity.
Somewhere during the scene Miss Marple was conscious
of Miss Believer saying:
'We must do something,' and leaving the Hall.
Edgar seemed to pause for breath and then he shouted
out:
'You're going to die - to die. You're going to die now. Take that, you devil, and that?
Two sharp cracks rang out - not in the park this time,
but definitely behind the locked door.
Somebody, Miss Marple thought it was Mildred, cried
OUt:
'Oh God, what shall we do?'
There was a thud from inside the room and then a
sound, almost more terrible than what had gone before,
the sound of slow heavy sobbing.

79


Somebody strode past Miss Marple and started shak-ing
and rattling the door.

It was Stephen Restarick.

'Open the door. Open the door,' he shouted.

Miss Bellever came back into the Hall. In her hand she
held an assortment of keys.

'Try some of these,' she said breathlessly.

At that moment the fused lights came on again. The

Hall sprang into life again after its eerie dimness.
Stephen Restarick began trying the keys.
They heard the inside key fall out as he did so.
Inside that wild desperate sobbing went on.

Walter Hudd, coming lazily back into the Hall,
stopped dead and demanded:

'Say, what's going on round here?'

Mildred said tearfully:

'That awful crazy young man has shot Mr Serrocold.'
'Please.' It was Carrie Louise who spoke. She got up
and came across to the study door. Very gently she
pushed Stephen Restarick aside. 'Let me speak to him.'

She called- very softly - 'Edgar... Edgar... let me in,
will you? Please, Edgar.'

They heard the key fitted into the lock. It turned and
the door was slowly opened.

But it was not Edgar who opened it. It was Lewis
Serrocold. He was breathing hard as though he had been
running, but otherwise he was unmoved.

'It's all right, dearest,' he said. 'Dearest, it's quite all
right.'

'We thought you'd been shot,' said Miss Bellever
gruffly.

Lewis Serrocold frowned. He said with a trifle of
asperity:


80


'Of course I haven't been shot.'

They could see into the study by now. Edgar Lawson
had collapsed by the desk. He was sobbing and gasping.
The revolver lay on the floor where it had dropped from
his hand.

'But we heard the shots,' said Mildred.
'Oh yes, he fired twice.'
'And he missed you?'

'Of course he missed me,' snapped Lewis.

Miss Marple did not consider that there was any of
course about it. The shots must have been fired at fairly
close range.

Lewis Serrocold said irritably:

'Where's Maverick? It's Maverick we need.'

Miss Bellever said:

'I'll get him. Shall I ring up the police as well?'
'Police? Certainly not.'

'Of course we must ring up the police,' said Mildred.
'He's dangerous.'

'Nonsense,' said Lewis Serrocold. 'Poor lad. Does he
look dangerous?'

At the moment he did not look dangerous. He looked
young and pathetic and rather repulsive.

His voice had lost its carefully acquired accent.

'I didn't mean to do it,' he groaned. 'I dunno what
came over me - talking all that stuff- I must have been
mad.'

Mildred sniffed.

'I really must have been mad. I didn't mean to. Please,
Mr Serrocold, I really didn't mean to.'

Lewis Serrocold patted him on the shoulder.
'That's all right, my boy. No damage done.'
'I might have killed you, Mr Serrocold.'


81


Walter Hudd walked across the room and peered at the
wall behind the desk.
'The bullets went in here,' he said. His eye dropped to
the desk and the chair behind it. 'Must have been a near
miss,' he said grimly.
'I lost my head. I didn't rightly know what I was doing.
I thought he'd done me out of my rights. I thought '
Miss Marple put in the question she had been wanting
to ask for some time.
'Who told you,' she asked, 'that Mr Serrocold was
your father?'
Just for a second a sly expression peeped out of Edgar's
distracted face. It was there and gone in a flash.
'Nobody,' he said. 'I just got it into my head.'
Walter Hudd was staring down at the revolver where it
lay on the floor.
'Where the hell did you get that gun?' he demanded.
'Gun?' Edgar stared down at it.
'Looks mighty like my gun,' said Walter. He stooped
down and picked it up. 'By heck, it is! You took it out of
my room, you creeping louse, you.'
Lewis Serrocold interposed between the cringing
Edgar and the menacing American.
'All this can be gone into later,' he said. 'Ah, here's
Maverick. Take a look at him, will you, Maverick?'
Dr Maverick advanced upon Edgar with a kind of
professional zest.
'This won't do, Edgar,' he said. 'This won't do, you
knOW.'
'He's a dangerous lunatic,' said Mildred sharply. 'He's
been shooting off a revolver and raving. He only just
missed my stepfather.'

82


Edgar gave a little yelp and Dr Maverick said
reprovingly:
'Careful, please, Mrs Strete.'
'I'm sick of all this. Sick of the way you all go on here!
I tell you this man's a lunatic.'
With a bound Edgar wrenched himself away from Dr
Maverick and fell to the floor at Serrocold's feet.
'Help me. Help me. Don't let them take me away and
shut me up. Don't let them ...'
An unpleasing scene, Miss Marple thought.
Mildred said angrily, 'I tell you he's '
Her mother said soothingly:
'Please Mildred. Not now. He's suffering.'
Walter muttered:
'Suffering cripes. They're all cuckoo round here.'
'I'll take charge of him,' said Dr Maverick. 'You come
with me, Edgar. Bed and a sedative - and we'll talk
everything out in the morning. Now you trust me, don't/
you?'
Rising to his feet and trembling a little, Edgar looked ',
doubtfully at the young doctor and then at Mildred
Strete.
'She said - I was a lunatic.'
'No, no, you're not a lunatic.'
Miss Believer's footsteps rang purposefully across the
Hall. She came in with her lips pursed together and a
flushed face.
'I've telephoned the police,' she said grimly. 'They will
be here in a few minutes.'
Carrie Louise cried, 'Jolly!' in tones of dismay.
Edgar uttered a wail.
Lewis Serrocold frowned angrily.

83


'I told you, Jolly, I did not want the police summoned.
This is a medical matter.'

'That's as may be,' said Miss Believer. 'I've my own
opinion. But I had to call the police. Mr Gulbrandsen's
been shot dead.'


84


CHAPTER 8


It was a moment or two before anyone took in what she
was saying.

Carrie Louise said incredulously:

'Christian shot? Dead? Oh, surely, that's impossible.'
'If you don't believe me,' said Miss Believer, pursing
her lips, and addressing not so much Carrie Louise, as the
assembled company, 'go and look for yourselves.'

She was angry. And her anger sounded in the crisp
sharpness of her voice.

Slowly, unbelievingly, Carrie Louise took a step
towards the door. Lewis Serrocold put a hand on her
shoulder.

'No, dearest, let me go.'

He went out through the doorway. Dr Maverick, with
a doubtful glance at Edgar, followed him. Miss Bellever
went with them.

Miss Marple gently urged Carrie Louise into a chair.

She sat down, her eyes looking hurt and stricken.
'Christian - shot?' she said again.

It was the bewildered hurt tone of a child.

Walter Hudd remained close to Edgar Lawson, glow-ering
down at him. In his hand he held the gun that he
had picked up from the floor.

Mrs Serrocold said in a wondering voice:

'But who could possibly want to shoot Christian?'
It was not a question that demanded an answer.
Walter muttered under his breath:


85


'Nuts! The whole lot of them.'
Stephen had moved protectively closer to Gina. Her
young startled face was the most vivid thing in the room.
Suddenly the front door opened and a rush of cold air
together with a man in a big overcoat came in.
The heartiness of his greeting seemed incredibly
shocking.
'Hallo, everybody, what's going on tonight? A lot of
fog on the road. I had to go dead slow.'
For a startled moment, Miss Marple thought that she
was seeing double. Surely the same man could not be
standing by Gina and coming in by the door. Then she
realized that it was only a likeness and not, when you
looked closely, such a very strong likeness. The two men
were clearly brothers with a strong family resemblance,
but no more.
Where Stephen Restarick was thin to the point of
emaciation the newcomer was sleek. The big coat with
the astrakhan collar fitted the sleekness of body snugly. A
handsome young man, and one who bore upon him the
authority and good humour of success.
But Miss Marple noted one thing about him. His eyes,
as he entered the hall, looked immediately at Gina.
He said, a little doubtfully:
'You did expect me? You got my wire?'
He was speaking now to Carrie Louise. He came
towards her.
Almost mechanically, she put her hand out to him. He
took it and kissed it gently. It was an affectionate act of
homage, not a mere theatrical courtesy.
She murmured:
'Of course, Alex dear - of course. Only, you see things
have been happening '

86


'Happening?'
Mildred gave the information, gave it with a kind of
grim relish that Miss Marple found distasteful.
'Christian Gulbrandsen,' she said. 'My brother Christian
Gulbrandsen has been found shot dead.'
'Good God,' Alex registered a more than life-size
dismay. 'Suicide, do you mean?'
Carrie Louise moved swiftly.
'Oh no,' she said. 'It couldn't be suicide. Not Christian! Oh no.'
'Uncle Christian would never shoot himself, I'm sure,'
said Gina.
Alex Restarick looked from one person to the other.
From his brother Stephen he received a short confirmative
nod. Walter Hudd stared back at him with faint
resentment. Alex's eyes rested on Miss Marple with a
sudden frown. It was as though he had found some
unwanted prop on a stage set.
He looked as though he would like her explained. But
nobody explained her, and Miss Marple continued to
look an old, fluffy and sweetly bewildered old lady.
'When? asked Alex. 'When did this happen, I mean?'
'Just before you arrived,' said Gina. 'About - oh three
or four minutes ago, I suppose. Why, of course, we
actually heard the shot. Only we didn't notice it - not
really.'
'Didn't notice it? Why not?'
'Well, you see, there were other things going on ...'
Gina spoke rather hesitantly.
'Sure were,' said Walter with emphasis.
Juliet Bellever came into the Hall by the door from the
library.
'Mr Serrocold suggests that we should all wait in the

87


library. It would be convenient for the police. Except for
Mrs Serrocold. You've had a shock, Cara. I've ordered
some hot bottles to be put in your bed. I'll take you up
and '
Rising to her feet, Carrie Louise shook her head.
'I must see Christian first,' she said.
'Oh no, dear. Don't upset yourself-'
Carrie Louise put her very gently to one side.
'Dear Jolly - you don't understand.' She looked round
and said, 'Jane?'
Miss Marple had already moved towards her.
'Come with me, will you, Jane.'
They moved together towards the door. Dr Maverick,
coming in, almost collided with them.
Miss Believer exclaimed:
'Dr Maverick. Do stop her. So foolish.'
Carrie Louise looked calmly at the young doctor. She
even gave a tiny smile.
Dr Maverick said: 'You want to go and - see him?'
'I must.'
'I see.' He stood aside. 'If you feel you must, Mrs
Serrocold. But afterwards, please go and lie down and let
Miss Believer look after you. At the moment you do not
feel the shock, but I assure you that you will do so.'
'Yes. I expect you are right. I will be quite sensible.
Come, Jane.'
The two women moved out through the door, past the
foot of the main staircase and along the corridor, past the
dining-room on the right and the double doors leading to
the kitchen quarters on the left, past the side door to the
terrace and on to the door that gave admission to the Oak
suite that had been allotted to Christian Gulbrandsen. It
was a room furnished as a sitting-room more than a

88


bedroom, with a bed in an alcove to one side and a door
leading into a dressing-room and bathroom.

Carrie Louise stopped on the threshold. Christian
Gulbrandsen had been sitting at the big mahogany desk
with a small portable typewriter open in front of him. He
sat there now, but slumped sideways in the chair. The
high arms of the chair prevented him from slipping to the
floor.

Lewis Serrocold was standing by the window. He had
pulled the curtain a little aside and was gazing out into the
night.

He looked round and frowned.

'My dearest, you shouldn't have come.'

He came towards her and she stretched out a hand to
him. Miss Marple retreated a step or two.

'Oh yes, Lewis. I had to - see him. One has to know
just exactly how things are.'

She walked slowly towards the desk.

Lewis said warningly:

'You mustn't touch anything. The police must have
things left exactly as we found them.'

'Of course. He was shot deliberately by someone,
then?'

'Oh yes.' Lewis Serrocold looked a little surprised that
the question had even been asked. 'I thought - you knew
that?'

'I did really. Christian would not commit suicide, and
he was such a competent person that it could not possibly
have been an accident. That only leaves' - she hesitated a
moment - 'murder.'

She walked up behind the desk and stood looking
down at the dead man. There was sorrow and affection in
her face.


89


'Dear Christian,' she said. 'He was always good to me.'
Softly, she touched the top of his head with her fingers.
'Bless you and thank you, dear Christian,' she said.

Lewis Serrocold said with something more like emo-tion
than Miss Marple had ever seen in him before:
'I wish to God I could have spared you this, Caroline.'
His wife shook her head gently.

'You can't really spare anyone anything,' she said.
'Things always have to be faced sooner or later. And
therefore it had better be sooner. I'll go and lie down now.
I suppose you'll stay here, Lewis, until the police come?'
'Yes.'

Carrie Louise turned away and Miss Marple slipped
an arm round her,


90


CHAPTER 9

Inspector Curry and his entourage found Miss Bellever
alone in the Great Hall when they arrived.
She came forward efficiently.
'I am Juliet Believer, companion and secretary to Mrs
Serrocold.'
'It was you who found the body and telephoned to us?'
'Yes. Most of the household are in the library through
that door there. Mr Serrocold remained in Mr
Gulbrandsen's room to see that nothing was disturbed.
Dr Maverick, who first examined the body, will be here
very shortly. He had to take a - case over to the other
wing. Shall I lead the way?'
'If you please.'
'Competent woman,' thought the Inspector to himself.
'Seems to have got the whole thing taped.'
He followed her along the corridor.
For the next twenty minutes the routine of police
procedure was duly set in motion. The photographer
took the necessary pictures. The police surgeon arrived
and was joined by Dr Maverick. Half an hour later, the
ambulance had taken away the mortal remains of Christian
Gulbrandsen, and Inspector Curry started his
official interrogation.
Lewis Serrocold took him into the library, and he
glanced keenly round the assembled people, making brief
notes in his mind. An old lady with white hair, a middle-aged
lady, the good looking girl he'd seen driving her car

91


round the countryside, that sulky looking American
husband of hers. A couple of young men who were mixed
up in the outfit somewhere or other and the capable
woman, Miss Believer, who'd phoned him and met him
on arrival.

Inspector Curry had already thought out a little speech
and he now delivered it as planned.

'I'm afraid this is all very upsetting to you,' he said,
'and I hope not to keep you too long this evening. We can
go into things more thoroughly tomorrow. It was Miss
Bellever who found Mr Gulbrandsen dead, and I'll ask
Miss Believer to give me an outline of the general
situation as that will save too much repetition. Mr
Serrocold, if you want to go up to your wife, please do,
and when I have finished with Miss Believer, I should
like to talk to you. Is that all quite clear? Perhaps there is
some small room where -'

Lewis Serrocold said: 'My office, Jolly?'

Miss Believer nodded, and said: 'I was just going to
suggest it.'

She led the way across the Great Hall, and Inspector
Curry and his attendant Sergeant followed her.

Miss Believer arranged them and herself suitably. It
might have been she and not Inspector Curry who was in
charge of the investigation.

The moment had come, however, when the initiative
passed to him. Inspector Curry had a pleasant voice and
manner. He looked quiet and serious and just a little
apologetic. Some people made the mistake of under-rating
him. Actually he was as competent in his way as
Miss Believer was in hers. But he preferred not to make
a parade of the fact.

He cleared his throat.


'I've had the main facts from Mr Serrocold. Mr
Christian Gulbrandsen was the eldest son of the late Eric
Gulbrandsen, the founder of the Gulbrandsen Trust and
Fellowships ... and all the rest of it. He was one of the
trustees of this place and he arrived here unexpectedly

yesterday. That is correct?'

'Yes.'

Inspector Curry was pleased by her conciseness. He
went on:

'Mr Serrocold was away in Liverpool. He returned this

evening by the 6.30 train.'

'Yes.'

'After dinner this evening, Mr Gulbrandsen
announced his intention of working in his own room and
left the rest of the party here after coffee had been served.

Correct?'

'Yes.'

'Now, Miss Believer, please tell me in your own words
how you came to discover him dead.'

'There was a rather unpleasant incident this evening. A
young man, a psychopathic case, became very unbal-anced
and threatened Mr Serrocold with a revolver.
They were locked in this room. The young man eventu-ally
fired the revolver - you can see the bullet holes in the
wall there. Fortunately Mr $errocold was unhurt. After
firing the shots, this young man went completely to
pieces. Mr Serrocold sent me to find Dr Maverick. I got
through on the house phone but he was not in his room.
I found him with one of his colleagues and gave him the
message and he came here at once. On my own way back
I went to Mr Gulbrandsen's room. I wanted to ask him if
there was anything he would like - hot milk, or whisky,
before settling for the night. I knocked, but there was no


93


response, so I opened the door. I saw that Mr Gulbrandsen was dead. I then rang you up.'
'What entrances and exits are there to the house? And
how are they secured? Could anyone have come in from
outside without being heard or seen?'
'Anyone could have come in by the side door to the
terrace. That is not locked until we all go to bed, as people
come in and out that way to go to the College buildings.'
'And you have, I believe, between two hundred and
two hundred and fifty juvenile delinquents in the
College?'
'Yes. But the College buildings are well secured and
patrolled. I should say it was most unlikely that anyone
could leave the College unsponsored.'
'We shall have to check up on that, of course. Had Mr
Gulbrandsen given any cause for - shall we say, rancour?
Any unpopular decisions as to policy?'
Miss Believer shook her head.
'Oh no, Mr Gulbrandsen had nothing whatever to do
with the running of the College, or with administrative
matters.'
'What was the purpose of his visit?'
'I have no idea.'
'But he was annoyed to find Mr Serrocold absent, and
immediately decided to wait until he returned?'
'Yes.'
'So his business here was definitely with Mr
Serrocold?'
'Yes. But it would be - because it would be almost
certainly business to do with the Institute.'
'Yes, presumably that is so. Did he have a conference
with Mr Serrocold?'

94


'No, there was no time. Mr Serrocold only arrived just
before dinner this evening.'

'But after dinner, Mr Gulbrandsen said he had
important letters to write and went away to do so. He

didn't suggest a session with Mr Serrocold?'
Miss Believer hesitated.
'No. No, he didn't.'

'Surely that was rather odd - if he had waited on at

inconvenience to himself to see Mr Serrocold?'

'Yes, it was odd.'

The oddness of it seemed to strike Miss Bellever for the
first time.

'Mr Serrocold did not accompany him to his room?'
'No. Mr Serrocold remained in the Hall.'

'And you have no idea at what time Mr Gulbrandsen
was killed?'

'I think it is possible that we heard the shot. If so, it was
at twenty-three minutes past nine.'

'You heard a shot? And it did not alarm you?'

'The circumstances were peculiar.'

She explained in rather more detail the scene between
Lewis Serrocold and Edgar Lawson which had been in
progress.

'So it occurred to no one that the shot might actually
have come from within the house?'

'No. No, I certainly don't think so. We were all so
relieved, you know, that the shot didn't come from in
here.'

Miss Bellever added rather grimly:

'You don't expect murder and attempted murder in
the same house on the same night.'

Inspector Curry acknowledged the truth of that.

'All the same,' said Miss Believer, suddenly, 'you


95


know, I believe that's what made me go along to Mr
Gulbrandsen's room later. I did mean to ask him if he
would like anything, but it was a kind of excuse to
reassure myself that everything was all right.'
Inspector Curry stared at her for a moment.
'What made you think it mightn't be all right?'
'I don't know. I think it was the shot outside. It hadn't
meant anything at the time. But afterwards it came back
into my mind. I told myself that it was only a backfire
from Mr Restarick's car '
'Mr Restarick's car?'
'Yes. Alex Restarick. He arrived by car this evening he
arrived just after all this happened.'
'I see. When you discovered Mr Gulbrandsen's body,
did you touch anything in the room?'
'Of course not.' Miss Bellever sounded reproachful.
'Naturally I knew that nothing must be touched or
moved. Mr Gulbrandsen had been shot through the head
but there was no firearm to be seen, so I knew it was
murder.'
'And just now, when you took us into the room,
everything was exactly as it had been when you found the
body?'
Miss Bellever considered. She sat back screwing up
her eyes. She had Inspector Curry thought, one of those
photographic memories.
'One thing was different,' she said. 'There was nothing
in the typewriter.'
'You mean,' said Inspector Curry, 'that when you first
went in Mr Gulbrandsen had been writing a letter on the
typewriter, and that that letter had since been removed?'
'Yes, I'm almost sure that I saw the white edge of the
paper sticking up.'

96


'Thank you, Miss Believer. Who else went into that
room before we arrived?'

'Mr Serrocold, of course. He remained there when I
came to meet you. And Mrs Serrocold and Miss Marple
went there. Mrs Serrocold insisted.'

'Mrs Serrocold and Miss Marple,' said Inspector
Curry. 'Which is Miss Marple?'

'The old lady with white hair. She was a school friend
of Mrs Serrocold's. She came on a visit about four days
ago.'

'Well, thank you, Miss Believer. All that you have told
us is quite clear. I'll go into things with Mr Serrocold
now. Ah, but perhaps - Miss Marple's an old lady, isn't
she? I'll just have a word with her first and then she can
go off to bed. Rather cruel to keep an old lady like that
up,' said Inspector Curry virtuously. 'This must have
been a shock to her.'

'I'll tell her, shall I?'

'If you please.'

Miss Bellever went out. Inspector Curry looked at the
ceiling.

'Gulbrandsen?' he said. 'Why Gulbrandsen? Two
hundred odd maladjusted youngsters on the premises.
No reason any of them shouldn't have done it. Probably
one of them did. But why Gulbrandsen? The stranger
within the gates.'

Sergeant Lake said: 'Of course we don't know every-thing
yet.'

Inspector Curry said:

'So far, we don't know anything at all.'

He jumped up and was gallant when Miss Marple
came in. She seemed a little flustered and he hurried to
put her at her ease.


97


know, I believe that's what made me go along to Mr
Gulbrandsen's room later. I did mean to ask him if he
would like anything, but it was a kind of excuse to
reassure myself that everything was all right.'
Inspector Curry stared at her for a moment.
'What made you think it mightn't be all right?'
'I don't know. I think it was the shot outside. It hadn't
meant anything at the time. But afterwards it came back
into my mind. I told myself that it was only a backfire
from Mr Restarick's car '
'Mr Restarick's car?'
'Yes. Alex Restarick. He arrived by car this evening he
arrived just after all this happened.'
'I see. When you discovered Mr Gulbrandsen's body,
did you touch anything in the room?'
'Of course not.' Miss Bellever sounded reproachful.
'Naturally I knew that nothing must be touched or
moved. Mr Gulbrandsen had been shot through the head
but there was no firearm to be seen, so I knew it was
murder.'
'And just now, when you took us into the room,
everything was exactly as it had been when you found the
body?'
Miss Bellever considered. She sat back screwing up
her eyes. She had Inspector Curry thought, one of those
photographic memories.
'One thing was different,' she said. 'There was nothing
in the typewriter.'
'You mean,' said Inspector Curry, 'that when you first
went in Mr Gulbrandsen had been writing a letter on the
typewriter, and that that letter had since been removed?'
'Yes, I'm almost sure that I saw the white edge of the
paper sticking up.'

96


'Thank you, Miss Believer. Who else went into that
room before we arrived?'
'Mr Serrocold, of course. He remained there when I
came to meet you. And Mrs Serrocold and Miss Marple
went there. Mrs Serrocold insisted.'
'Mrs Serrocold and Miss Marple,' said Inspector
Curry. 'Which is Miss Marple?'
'The old lady with white hair. She was a school friend
of Mrs Serrocold's. She came on a visit about four days
ago.'
'Well, thank you, Miss Believer. All that you have told
us is quite clear. I'll go into things with Mr Serrocold
now. Ah, but perhaps - Miss Marple's an old lady, isn't
she? I'll just have a word with her first and then she can
go off to bed. Rather cruel to keep an old lady like that
up,' said Inspector Curry virtuously. 'This must have
been a shock to her.'
'I'll tell her, shall I?'
'If you please.'
Miss Believer went out. Inspector Curry looked at the
ceiling.
'Gulbrandsen?' he said. 'Why Gulbrandsen? Two
hundred odd maladjusted youngsters on the premises.
No reason any of them shouldn't have done it. Probably
one of them did. But why Gulbrandsen? The stranger
within the gates.'
Sergeant Lake said: 'Of course we don't know everything
yet.'
Inspector Curry said:
'So far, we don't know anything at all.'
He jumped up and was gallant when Miss Marple
came in. She seemed a little flustered and he hurried to
put her at her ease.

97


'Now don't upset yourself, m'am.' The old ones like M'am, he thought. To them, police officers were definitely
of the lower classes and should show respect to
their betters. 'This is all very distressing, I know. But
we've just got to get the facts clear. Get it all clear.'
'Oh yes, I know,' said Miss Marple. 'So difficult, isn't
it? To be clear about anything, I mean. Because if you're
looking at one thing, you can't be looking at another. And
one so often looks at the wrong thing, though whether
because one happens to do so or because you're meant to,
it's very hard to say. Misdirection, the conjurers call it. So
clever, aren't they? And I never have known how they
manage with a bowl of goldfish - because really that
cannot fold up small, can it?'
Inspector Curry blinked a little and said soothingly:
'Quite so. Now, m'am, I've had an account of this
evening's events from Miss Believer. A most anxious
time for all of you, I'm sure.'
'Yes, indeed. It was all so dramatic, you know.'
'First this to-do between Mr Serrocold and' - he
looked down at a note he had made - 'this Edgar
Lawson.'
'A very odd young man,' said Miss Marple. 'I have felt
all along that there was something wrong about him.'
'I'm sure you have,' said Inspector Curry. 'And then,
after that excitement was over, there came Mr Gulbrandsen's
death. I understand that you went with Mrs
Serrocold to see the - er - the body.'
'Yes, I did. She asked me to come with her. We are
very old friends.'
'Quite so. And you went along to Mr Gulbrandsen's
room. Did you touch anything while you were in the
room, either of you?'

98


'Oh no. Mr Serrocold warned us not to.'
'Did you happen to notice, ma'm, whether there was a
letter or a piece of paper, say, in the typewriter?'
'There wasn't,' said Miss Marple promptly. 'I noticed
that at once because it seemed to me odd. Mr Gulbrandsen
was sitting there at the typewriter so he must have
been typing something. Yes, I thought it very odd.'
Inspector Curry looked at her sharply. He said:
'Did you have much conversation with Mr Gulbrandsen
while he was here?'
'Very little.'
'There is nothing especial - or significant that you can
remember?'
Miss Marple considered.
'He asked me about Mrs Serrocold's health. In
particular, about her heart.'
'Her heart? Is there something wrong with her heart?'
'Nothing whatever, I understand.'
Inspector Curry was silent for a moment or two, then
he said:
'You heard a shot this evening during the quarrel
between Mr Serrocold and Edgar Lawson?'
'I didn't actually hear it myself. I am a little deaf, you
know. But Mrs Serrocold mentioned it as being outside
in the park.'
'Mr Gulbrandsen left the party immediately after
dinner, I understand?'
'Yes, he said he had letters to write.'
'He didn't show any wish for a business conference
with Mr Serrocold?'
'No.'
Miss Marple added:
'You see, they'd already had one little talk.'

99


'They had? When? I understood that Mr Serrocold
only returned home just before dinner.'
'That's quite true, but he walked up through the park,
and Mr Gulbrandsen went out to meet him and they
walked up and down the terrace together.'
'Who else knows this?'
'I shouldn't think anybody else,' said Miss Marple.
'Unless, of course, Mr Serrocold told Mrs Serrocold. I
just happened to be looking out of my window - at some
birds.'
'Birds?'
'Birds,' Miss Marple added after a moment or two: 'I
thought, perhaps, they might be siskins.'
Inspector Curry was uninterested in siskins.
'You didn't,' he said delicately, 'happen to - er overhear
anything of what they said?'
Innocent china blue eyes met his.
'Only fragments, I'm afraid,' said Miss Marple gently.
'And those fragments?'
Miss Marple was silent for a moment, then she said:
'I do not know the actual subject of their conversation,
but their immediate concern was to keep whatever it was
from the knowledge of Mrs Serrocold. To spare her - that
was how Mr Gulbrandsen put it, and Mr Serrocold said,
"I agree that it is she who must be considered." They also
mentioned a "big responsibility" and that they should,
perhaps, "take outside advice."'
She paused.
'I think you know, you had better ask Mr Serrocold
himself about all this.'
'We shall do so, m'am. Now there is nothing else that
struck you as unusual this evening?'
Miss Marple considered.

100


'It was all so unusual if you know what I mean '
'Quite so. Quite so.'
Something flickered into Miss Marple's memory.
'There was one rather unusual incident. Mr Serrocold
stopped Mrs Serrocold from taking her medicine. Miss
Bellever was quite put out about it.'
She smiled in a deprecating fashion.
'But that, of course, is such a little thing ...'
'Yes, of course. Well, thank you, Miss Marple.'
As Miss Marple went out of the room, Sergeant Lake
said:
'She's old, but she's sharp ...'

101


CHAPTER 10


Lewis Serrocold came into the office and immediately the
whole focus of the room shifted. He turned to close the
door behind him, and in doing so he created an
atmosphere of privacy. He walked over and sat down, not
in the chair Miss Marple had just vacated, but in his own
chair behind the desk. Miss Bellever had settled Inspec-tor
Curry in a chair drawn up to one side of the desk, as
though unconsciously she had reserved Lewis Serro-cold's
chair against his coming.

When he had sat down, Lewis Serrocold looked at the
two police officers thoughtfully. His face looked drawn
and tired. It was the face of a man who was passing
through a severe ordeal, and it surprised Inspector Curry
a little because, though Christian Gulbrandsen's death
must undeniably have been a shock to Lewis Serrocold,
yet Gulbrandsen had not been a close friend or relation,
only a rather remote connection by marriage.

In an odd way, the tables seemed to have been turned.
It did not seem as though Lewis Serrocold had come into
the room to answer police questioning. It seemed rather
that Lewis Serrocold had arrived to preside over a court

of inquiry. It irritated Inspector Curry a little.

He said briskly:

'Now, Mr Serrocold -'

Lewis Serrocold still seemed lost in thought. He said
with a sigh: 'How difficult it is to know the right thing to

do.'


102


I

I

Inspector Curry said:
'I think we will be the judges of that, Mr Serrocold.
Now about Mr Gulbrandsen, he arrived unexpectedly, I
understand?'
'Quite unexpectedly.'
'You did not know he was coming.'
'I had not the least idea of it.'
'And you have no idea of why he came?'
Lewis Serrocold said quietly:
'Oh yes, I know why he came. He told me.'
'When?'
'I walked up from the station. He was watching from
the house and came out to meet me. It was then that he
explained what had brought him here.'
'Business connected with the Gulbrandsen Institute, I
suppose?'
'Oh no, it was nothing to do with the Gulbrandsen
Institute.'
'Miss Bellever seemed to think it was.'
'Naturally. That would be the assumption. Gulbrandsen
did nothing to correct that impression. Neither did I.'
'Why, Mr Serrocold?'
Lewis Serrocold said slowly:
'Because it seemed to both of us important that no hint
should arise as to the real purpose of his visit.'
'What was the real purpose?'
Lewis Serrocold was silent for a minute or two. He
sighed.
'Gulbrandsen came over here regularly twice a year for
meetings of the trustees. The last meeting was only a
month ago. Consequently he was not due to come over
again for another five months. I think, therefore, that
anyone might realize that the business that brought him

103


must definitely be urgent business, but I still think that
the normal assumption would be that it was a business
visit, and that the matter, however urgent - would be a
Trust matter. As far as I know, Gulbrandsen did nothing
to contradict that impression - or thought he didn't. Yes,
perhaps that is nearer the truth - he thought he didn't.'
'I'm afraid, Mr Serrocold, that I don't quite follow
you.'
Lewis Serrocold did not answer at once. Then he said
gravely:
'I fully realize that with Gulbrandsen's death - Which
was murder, undeniably murder, I have got to put all the
facts before you. But frankly, I am concerned for my
wife's happiness and peace of mind. It is not for me to
dictate to you, Inspector, but if you can see your way to
keeping certain things from her as far as possible I shall
be grateful. You see, Inspector Curry, Christian Gulbrandsen
came here expressly to tell me that he believed
my wife was being slowly and cold-bloodedly poisoned.'
'What?'
Curry leaned forward incredulously.
Serrocold nodded.
'Yes, it was, as you can imagine, a tremendous shock to
me. I had had no suspicion of such a thing myself, but as
soon as Christian told me, I realized that certain
symptoms my wife had complained of lately were quite
compatible with that belief. What she took to be
rheumatism, leg cramps, pain, and occasional sickness.
All that fits in very well with the symptoms of arsenical
poisoning.'
'Miss Marple told us that Christian Gulbrandsen
asked her about the condition of Mrs Serrocold's heart.'
'Did he now? That's interesting. I suppose he thought

104


that a heart poison would be used since it paved the way to a sudden death without undue suspicion. But I think
myself that arsenic is more likely.'
'You definitely think, then, that Christian Gulbrandsen's
suspicions were well founded?'
'Oh yes, I think so. For one thing, Gulbrandsen would
hardly come to me with such a suggestion unless he was
fairly sure of his facts. He was a cautious and hardheaded
man, difficult to convince, but very shrewd.'
'What was his evidence?'
'We had no time to go into that. Our interview was a
hurried one. It served only the purpose of explaining his
visit, and a mutual agreement that nothing whatever
should be said to my wife about the matter until we were
sure of our facts.'
'And whom did he suspect of administering poison?'
'He did not say, and actually I don't think he knew. He may have suspected. I think now that he probably did
suspect - otherwise why should he be killed?'
'But he mentioned no name to you?'
'He mentioned no name. We agreed that we must
investigate the matter thoroughly, and he suggested
inviting the advice and co-operation of Dr Galbraith, the
Bishop of Cromer. Dr Galbraith is a very old friend of the
Gulbrandsens and is one of the trustees of the Institute.
He is a man of great wisdom and experience and would be
of infinite help and comfort to my wife if - if it was
necessary to tell her of our suspicions. We meant to rely
on his advice as to whether or not to consult the police.'
'Quite extraordinary,' said Curry.
'Gulbrandsen left us after dinner to write to Dr
Galbraith. He was actually in the act of typing a letter to
him when he was shot.'

105


'How do you know?'
Lewis said calmly:
'Because I took the letter out of the typewriter. I have
it here.'
From his breast pocket, he drew out a folded typewritten
sheet of paper and handed it to Curry.
The latter said sharply:
'You shouldn't have taken this, or touched anything in
the room.'
'I touched nothing else. I know that I committed an
unpardonable offence in your eyes in moving this, but I
had a very strong reason. I felt certain that my wife would
insist on coming into the room and I was afraid that she
might read something of what is written here. I admit
myself in the wrong, but I am afraid I would do the same
again. I would do anything - anything - to save my wife
unhappiness.'
Inspector Curry said no more for the moment. He read
the typewritten sheet.
Dear Dr Galbraith. If it is at all possible, I beg that you
will come to Stonygates as soon as you receive this. ,4 crisis
of extraordinary gravity has arisen and I am at a loss how to
deal with it. I know how deep your affection is for our dear
Carrie Louise, and how grave your concern will be for
anything that affects her. How much has she got to know?
How much can we keep from her? Those are the questions
that I find difficult to answer.
Not to beat about the bush, I have reason to believe that
that sweet and innocent lady is being slowly poisoned. I first
suspected this when Here
the letter broke off abruptly.
Curry said:

106


I


'And when he had reached this point Christian

Gulbrandsen was shot?'

'Yes.'

'But why on earth was this letter in the typewriter?'
'I can only conceive of two reasons - one, that the
murderer had no idea to whom Gulbrandsen was writing
and what was the subject of the letter. Secondly - he may
not have had time. He may have heard someone coming
and only had just time to escape unobserved.'

'And Gulbrandsen gave you no hint as to whom he
suspected - if he did suspect anyone?'

There was, perhaps, a very slight pause before Lewis
answered.

'None whatever.'

He added, rather obscurely:

'Christian was a very fair man.'

'How do you think this poison, arsenic or whatever it
may be - was or is being administered?'

'I thought over that whilst I was changing for dinner
and it seemed to me that the most likely vehicle was some
medicine, a tonic, that my wife was taking. As regards
food, we all partake of the same dishes and my wife has
nothing specially prepared for her. But anyone could add
arsenic to the medicine bottle.'

'We must take the medicine and have it analysed.'
Lewis said quietly:

'I already have a sample of it. I took it this evening
before dinner.'

From a drawer {n the desk he took out a small corked
bottle with a red fluid in it.

Inspector Curry said with a curious glance:

'You think of everything, Mr Serrocold.'

'I believe in acting promptly. Tonight, I stopped my


107


wife from taking her usual dose. It is still in a glass on the
oak dresser in the Hall - the bottle of tonic itself is in the
dining-room.'
Curry leaned forward across the desk. He lowered his
voice and spoke confidentially and without officialdom.
'You'll excuse me, Mr Serrocold, but just why are you
so anxious to keep this from your wife? Are you afraid
she'd panic? Surely, for her own sake, it would be as well
if she were warned.'
'Yes - yes, that may well be so. But I don't think you
quite understand. Without knowing my wife Caroline, it
would be difficult. My wife, Inspector Curry, is an
idealist, a completely trustful person. Of her it may truly
be said that she sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no
evil. It would be inconceivable to her that anyone could
wish to kill her. But we have to go farther than that. It is
not just "anyone." It is a case - surely you see that - of
someone possibly very near and dear to her ...'
'So that's what you think?'
'We have got to face facts. Close at hand we have a
couple of hundred warped and stunted personalities who
have expressed themselves often enough by crude and
senseless violence. But by the very nature of things, none
of them can be suspect in this case. A slow poisoner is
someone living in the intimacy of family life. Think of the
people who are here in this house; her husband, her
daughter, her granddaughter, her granddaughter's husband,
her stepson whom she regards as her own son, Miss
Believer her devoted companion and friend of many
years. All very near and dear to her - and yet the suspicion
must arise - is it one of them?'
Curry said slowly:
'There are outsiders '

108


'Yes, in a sense. There is Dr Maverick, one or two of
the staff are often with us, there are the servants - but

frankly, what possible motive could they have?'
Inspector Curry said:

'And there's young - what is his name again - Edgar
Lawson?.'

'Yes. But he has only been down here as a casual visitor
just lately. He has no possible motive. Besides, he is
deeply attached to Caroline - just as everyone is.'

'But he's unbalanced. What about this attack on you
tonight?'

Serrocold waved it aside impatiently.

'Sheer childishness. He had no intention of harming
me.'

'Not with these two bullet holes in the wall? He shot at
you, didn't he?'

'He didn't mean to hit me. It was play-acting, no
more.'

'Rather a dangerous form of play-acting, Mr
Serrocold.'

'You don't understand. You must talk to our psychia-trist,
Dr Maverick. Edgar is an illegitimate child. He has
consoled himself for his lack of a father and a humble
origin by pretending to himself that he is the son of a
celebrated man. It's a well-known phenomenon, I assure
you. He was improving, improving very much. Then, for
some reason, he had a set-back. He identified me as his
"father" and made a melodramatic attack, waving a
revolver and uttering threats. I was not in the least
alarmed. When he had actually fired the revolver, he
broke down and sobbed and Dr Maverick took him away
and gave him a sedative. He'll probably be quite normal
tomorrow morning.'


109


'You don't wish to bring a charge against him?'
'That would be the worst thing possible - for him, I
mean.'
'Frankly, Mr Serrocold, it seems to me he ought to be
under restraint. People who go about firing off revolvers
to bolster up their egos -I One has to think of the
community, you know.'
'Talk to Dr Maverick on the subject,' urged Lewis.
'He'll give you the professional point of view. In any
case,' he added, 'poor Edgar certainly did not shoot
Gulbrandsen. He was in here threatening to shoot me.'
'That's the point I was coming to, Mr Serrocold.
We've covered the outside. Anyone, it seems, could have
come in from outside, and shot Mr Gulbrandsen, since
the terrace door was unlocked. But there is a narrower
field inside the house, and in view of what you have been
telling me, it seems to me that very close attention must
be paid to that. It seems possible that, with the exception
of old Miss - er - yes, Marple, who happened to be
looking out of her bedroom window, no one was aware
that you and Christian Gulbrandsen had already had a
private interview. If so, Gulbrandsen may have been shot
to prevent him communicating his suspicions to you. Of
course it is too early to say as yet what other motives may
exist. Mr Gulbrandsen was a wealthy man, I presume?'
'Yes, he was a very wealthy man. He has sons and
daughters and grandchildren - all of them will probably
benefit by his death. But I do not think that any of his
family are in this country, and they are all solid and highly
respectable people. As far as I know, there are no black
sheep amongst them.'
'Had he any enemies?'

I10


'I should think it most unlikely. He was - really, he was
not that type of man.'

'So it boils down, doesn't it, to this house and the
people in it? Who from inside the house could have killed
him?'

Lewis Serrocold said slowly:

'That is difficult for me to say. There are the servants
and the members of my household and our guests. They
are, from your point of view, all possibilities, I suppose.
I can only tell you that, as far as I know, everyone except
the servants was in the Great Hall when Christian left it,

and whilst I was there, nobody left it.'

'Nobody at all?'

'I think' - Lewis frowned in an effort of remembrance
- 'oh yes. Some of the lights fused - Mr Walter Hudd
went to see to it.'

'That's the young American gentleman?'

'Yes - of course I don't know what took place after
Edgar and I came in here.'

'And you can't give me anything nearer than that, Mr
Serrocold?'

Lewis Serrocold shook his head.

'No, I'm afraid I can't help you. It's - it's all quite
inconceivable.'

Inspector Curry sighed. He said: 'Mr Gulbrandsen
was shot with a small automatic pistol. Do you know if
anyone in the house has such a weapon?'

'I have no idea, I should think it most unlikely.'
Inspector Curry sighed again. He said:

'You can tell the party that they can all go to bed. I'll
talk to them tomorrow.'

When Serrocold had left the room, Inspector Curry
said to Lake:


111


'Well - what do you think?'

'Knows - or thinks he knows, whq did it,' said L,
'Yes. I agree with you. And he doesn't lille it a bit7e',

oo


112


CHAPTER 1 1


Gina greeted Miss Marple with a rush as the latter came
down to breakfast the next morning.

'The police are here again,' she said. 'They're in the
library this time. Wally is absolutely fascinated by them.
He can't understand their being so quiet and so remote.
I think he's really quite thrilled by the whole thing. I'm
not. I hate it. I think it's horrible. Why do you think I'm
so upset? Because I'm half Italian?'

'Very possibly. At least perhaps it explains why you
don't mind showing what you feel.'

Miss Marple smiled just a little as she said this.
'Jolly's frightfully cross,' said Gina, hanging on Miss
Marple's arm and propelling her into the dining-room. 'I
think really because the police are in charge and she can't
exactly "run" them like she runs everybody else.

'Alex and Stephen,' continued Gina severely, as they
came into the dining-room where the two brothers were
finishing their breakfast, 'just don't care.'

'Gina dearest,' said Alex, 'you are most unkind. Good
morning, Miss Marple. I care intensely. Except for the
fact that I hardly knew your Uncle Christian, I'm far and

away the best suspect. You do realize that, I hope.'
'Why?'

'Well, I was driving up to the house at about the right
time, it seems. And they've been checking up on things,
and it seems that I took too much time between the lodge
and the house - time enough, the implication is, to leave


113


the car, run round the house, go in through the side door,

shoot Christian and rush out and back to the car again.'
'And what were you really doing?'

'I thought little girls were taught quite young not to ask
indelicate questions. Like an idiot, I stood for several
minutes taking in the fog effect in the headlights and
thinking what I'd use to get that effect on a stage. For my
new "Limehouse" ballet.'

'But you can tell them that!'

'Naturally. But you know what policemen are like.
They say "thank you" very civilly and write it all down,
and you've no idea what they are thinking except that one
does feel they have rather sceptical minds.'

'It would amuse me to see you in a spot, Alex,' said
Stephen with his thin, rather cruel smile. 'Now,/'m quite
all right! I never left the Hall last night.'

Gina cried, 'But they couldn't possibly think it was one
of us!'

Her dark eyes were round and dismayed.

'Don't say it must have been a tramp, dear,' said Alex,
helping himself lavishly to marmalade. 'It's so
hackneyed.'

Miss Believer looked in at the door and said:

'Miss Marple, when you have finished your breakfast,
will you go to the library?'

'You again,' said Gina. 'Before any of us.'
She seemed a little injured.
'Hi, what was that?' asked Alex.
'Didn't hear anything,' said Stephen.
'It was a pistol shot.'

'They've been firing shots in the room where Uncle
Christian was killed,' said Gina. 'I don't know why. And
outside too.'


114


The door opened again and Mildred Strete came in.
She was wearing black with some onyx beads.

She murmured good morning without looking at
anyone and sat down.

In a hushed voice she said:

'Some tea, please, Gina. Nothing much to eat - just
some toast.'

She touched her nose and her eyes delicately with the
handkerchief she held in one hand. Then she raised her
eyes and looked in an unseeing way at the two brothers.
Stephen and Alex became uncomfortable. Their voices
dropped to almost a whisper and presently they got up
and left.

Mildred Strete said, whether to the universe or Miss
Marple was not quite certain, 'Not even a black tie!'

'I don't suppose,' said Miss Marple apologetically,
'that they knew beforehand that a murder was going to
happen.'

Gina made a smothered sound and Mildred Strete
looked sharply at her.

'Where's Walter this morning?' she asked.

Gina flushed.

'I don't know. I haven't seen him.'

She sat there uneasily like a guilty child.

Miss Marple got up.

'I'll go to the library now,' she said.


II


Lewis Serrocold was standing by the window in the
library.

There was no one else in the room.


115


He turned as Miss Marple came in and came forward
to meet her, taking her hand in his.

'I hope,' he said, 'that you are not feeling the worse for
the shock. To be at close quarters with what is undoubt-edly
murder must be a great strain on anyone who has not
come in contact with such a thing before.'

Modesty forbade Miss Marple to reply that she was,
by now, quite at home with murder. She merely said that
life in St Mary Mead was not quite so sheltered as outside
people believed.

'Very nasty things go on in a village, I assure you,' she
said. 'One has an opportunity of studying things there
that one would never have in a town.'

Lewis Serrocold listened indulgently, but with only
half an ear.

He said very simply: 'I want your help.'

'But of course, Mr Serrocold.'

'It is a matter that affects my wife - affects Caroline. I

think that you are really attached to her?'

'Yes, indeed. Everyone is.'

'That is what I believed. It seems that I am wrong.
With the permission of Inspector Curry, I am going to
tell you something that no one else as yet knows. Or
perhaps I should say what only one person knows.'

Briefly, he told her what he had told Inspector Curry
the night before.

Miss Marple looked horrified.

'I can't believe it, Mr Serrocold. I really can't believe
it.'

'That is what I felt when Christian Gulbrandsen told

me.'

'I should have said that dear Carrie Louise had not got
an enemy in the world.'


116


'It seems incredible that she should have. But you see
the implication? P6isoning - slow poisoning - is an
intimate family matter. It must be one of our closely-knit
little household '
'If it is true. Are you sure that Mr Gulbrandsen was not
mistaken?'
'Christian was not mistaken. He is too cautious a man
to make such a statement without foundation. Besides,
the police took away Caroline's medicine bottle and a separate sample of its contents. There was arsenic in both
of them - and arsenic was not prescribed. The actual
quantitative tests will take longer - but the actual fact of
arsenic being present is established.'
'Then her rheumatism - the difficulty in walking - all
that '
'Yes, leg cramps are typical, I understand. Also, before
you came, Caroline has had one or two severe attacks of
a gastric nature - I never dreamed until Christian came '
.He broke off. Miss Marple said softly: 'So Ruth was
right!'
'Ruth?'
Lewis Serrocold sounded surprised. Miss Marple
flushed.
'There is something I have not told you. My coming
here was not entirely fortuitous. If you will let me explain - I'm afraid I tell things so badly. Please have patience.'
Lewis Serrocold listened whilst Miss Marple told him
of Ruth's unease and urgency.
'Extraordinary,' he commented. 'I had no idea of this.'
'It was all so vague,' said Miss Marple. 'Ruth herself
didn't know why she had this feeling. There must be a
reason - in my experience there always is - but "something
wrong" was as near as she could get.'

117


Lewis Serrocold said grimly:
'Well, it seems that she was right. Now, Miss Marple,
you see how I am placed. Am I to tell Carrie Louise of
this?'
Miss Marple said quickly: 'Oh no,' in a distressed
voice, and then flushed and stared doubtfully at Lewis.
He nodded.
'So you feel as I do? As Christian Gulbrandsen did.
Should we feel like that with an ordinary woman?'
'Carrie Louise is not an ordinary woman. She lives by
her trust, by her belief in human nature - oh dear, I am
expressing myself very badly. But I do feel that until we
know who '
'Yes, that is the crux. But you do see, Miss Marple,
that there is a risk in saying nothing '
'And so you want me to - how shall I put it? - watch
over her?'
'You see, you are the only person whom I can trust,'
said Lewis Serrocold simply. 'Everyone here seems devoted. But are they? Now your attachment goes back
many years.'
'And also I only arrived a few days ago,' said Miss
Marple pertinently.
Lewis Serrocold smiled.
'Exactly.'
'It is a very mercenary question,' said Miss Marple
apologetically. 'But who exactly would benefit if dear
Carrie Louise were to die?'
'Money!' said Lewis bitterly. 'It always boils down to
money, doesn't it?'
'Well, I really think it must be in this case. Because
Carrie Louise is a very sweet person with a great deal of
charm, and one cannot really imagine anyone disliking

118


her. She couldn't, I mean, have an enemy. So then it does
boil down, as you put it, to a question of money, because
as you don't need me to tell you, Mr Serrocold, people
will quite often do anything for money.'
'I suppose so, yes.'
He went on: 'Naturally Inspector Curry has already
taken up that point. Mr Gilfoy is coming down from
London today and can give detailed information. Gilfoy,
Gilfoy, Jaimes and Gilfoy are a very eminent firm of
lawyers. This Gilfoy's father was one of the original
trustees, and they drew up both Caroline's will and the
original will of Eric Gulbrandsen. I will put it in simple
terms for you '
'Thank you,' said Miss Marple gratefully. 'So mystifying
the law, I always think.'
'Eric Gulbrandsen, after endowment of the College
and various fellowships and trusts and other charitable
bequests, and having settled an equal sum on his
daughter Mildred and on his adopted daughter Pippa
(Gina's mother), left the remainder of his vast fortune in
trust, the income from it to be paid to Caroline for her
lifetime.'
'And after her death?'
'After her death it was to be divided equally between
Mildred and Pippa - or their children if they themselves
had predeceased Caroline.'
'So that in fact it goes to Mrs Strete and to Gina.'
'Yes. Caroline has also quite a considerable fortune of
her own - though not in the Gulbrandsen class. Half of
this she made over to me four years ago. Of the remaining
amount, she left ten thousand pounds to Juliet Believer,
and the rest equally divided between Alex and Stephen
Restarick, her two stepsons.'

119


'Oh dear,' said Miss Marple. 'That's bad. That's very
bad.'

'You mean?'

'It means everyone in the house had a financial
motive.'

'Yes. And yet, you know, I can't believe that any of
these people would do murder. I simply can't... Mildred
is her daughter - and already quite well provided for.
Gina is devoted to her grandmother. She is generous and
extravagant, but has no acquisitive feelings. Jolly Bellever
is fanatically devoted to Caroline. The two Restaricks
care for Caroline as though she were really their mother.
They have no money of their own to speak of, but quite
a lot of Caroline's income has gone towards financing
their enterprises - especially so with Alex. I simply can't
believe either of those two would deliberately poison her
for the sake of inheriting money at her death. I just can't
· believe any of it, Miss Marple.'

'There's Gina's husband, isn't there?'

'Yes,' said Lewis gravely. 'There is Gina's husband.'

'You don't really know much about him. And one can't

help seeing that he's a very unhappy young man.'
Lewis sighed.

'He hasn't fitted in here - no. He's no interest in or
sympathy for what we're trying to do. But after all, why
should he? He's young, crude, and he comes from a
country where a man is esteemed by the success he makes
of life.'

'Whilst here we are so very fond of failures,' said Miss
Marpl'e.'

Lewis Serrocold looked at her sharply and
suspiciously.

She flushed a little and murmured rather incoherently:


120


'I think sometimes, you know, one can overdo things
the other way ... I mean the young people with a good
heredity, and brought up wisely in a good home - and
with grit and pluck and the ability to get on in life - well,
they are really, when one comes down to it - the sort of
people a country needs.'
Lewis frowned and Miss Marple hurried on, getting
pinker and pinker and more and more incoherent.
'Not that I don't appreciate - I do indeed - you and
Carrie Louise - a really noble work - real compassion and
one should have compassion - because after all it's
what people are that counts - good and bad luck - and
much more expected (and rightly) of the lucky ones. But
I do think sometimes one's sense of proportion - oh, I
don't meanyou, Mr Serrocold. Really I don't know what I mean - but the English are rather odd that way. Even in
war, so much prouder of their defeats and their retreats
than of their victories. Foreigners never can understand
why we're so proud of Dunkirk. It's the sort of thing
they'd prefer not to mention themselves. But we always
seem to be almost embarrassed by a victory - and treat it
as though it weren't quite nice to boast about it. And look
at all our poets! The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the
little Revenge went down in the Spanish Main. It's really
a very odd characteristic when you come to think of it!'
Miss Marple drew a fresh breath.
'What I really mean is that everything here must seem
rather peculiar to young Walter Hudd.'
'Yes,' Lewis allowed. 'I see your point. And Walter has
certainly a fine war record. There's no doubt about his
bravery.'
'Not that that helps,' said Miss Marple candidly.
'Because war is one thing, and everyday life is quite

121


another. And actually to commit a murder, I think you do
need bravery - or perhaps, more often, just conceit. Yes,
conceit.'
'But I would hardly say that Walter Hudd had a
sufficient motive.'
'Wouldn't you?' said Miss Marple. 'He hates it here.
He wants to get away. He wants to get Gina away. And if
it's really money he wants, it would be important for Gina
to get all the money before she - er - definitely forms an
attachment to someone else.'
'An attachment to someone else,' said Lewis, in an
astonished voice.
Miss Marple wondered at the blindness of enthusiastic
social reformers.
'That's what I said. BOth the Restaricks are in love with
her, you know.'
'Oh, I don't think so,' said Lewis absently.
He went on:
'Stephen's invaluable to us - quite invaluable. The way
he's got those lads coming along - keen - interested. They
gave a splendid show last month. Scenery, costumes,
everything. It just shows, as I've always said to Maverick,
that it's lack of drama in their lives that leads these boys
to crime. To dramatize yourself is a child's natural
instinct. Ma.erick says - ah yes, Maverick -'
Lewis broke off.
'I want Maverick to see Inspector Curry about Edgar.
The whole thing is so ridiculous really.'
'What do you really know about Edgar Lawson, Mr
Serrocold?'
'Everything,' said Lewis positively. 'Everything, that
is, that one needs to know. His background, upbringing - his deep-seated lack of confidence in himself '

122


Miss Marple interrupted.

'Couldn't Edgar Lawson have poisoned Mrs Serro-cold?'
she asked.

'Hardly. He's only been here a few weeks. And
anyway, it's ridiculous! Why should Edgar want to
poison my wife? What could he possibly gain by doing
SO?'

'Nothing material, I know. But he might have - some

odd reason. He is odd, you know.'

'You mean unbalanced?'

'I suppose so. No, I don't - not quite. What I mean is,
he's all wrong.'

It was not a very lucid exposition of what she felt.
Lewis Serrocold accepted the words at their face value.

'Yes,' he said with a sigh. 'He's all wrong, poor lad.
And he was showing such marked improvement. I can't

really understand why he had this sudden set-back ...'
Miss Marple leaned forward eagerly.
'Yes, that's what I wondered. If-'

She broke off as Inspector Curry came into the room.


123


CHAPTER 12

Lewis Serrocold went away, and Inspector Curry sat
down and gave Miss Marple a rather peculiar smile.
'So Mr Serrocold has been asking you to act as Watch
dog,' he said.
'Well, yes,' she added apologetically: 'I hope you don't
mind '
'I don't mind. I think it's a very good idea. Does Mr
Serrocold know just how well qualified you are for the
post?'
'I don't quite understand, Inspector.'
'I see. He thinks you're just a very nice elderly lady
who was at school with his wife.' He shook his head at
her. 'We know you're a bit more than that, Miss Marple,
aren't you? Crime is right down your street. Mr Serro-cold
only knows one aspect of crime - the promising
beginners. Makes me a bit sick, sometimes. Daresay I'm
wrong and old-fashioned. But there are plenty of good
decent lads about, lads who could do with a start in life.
But there, honesty has to be its own reward - millionaires
don't leave trust funds to help the worthwhile. Well well,
don't pay any attention to me. I'm old-fashioned.
I've seen boys - and girls - with everything against them,
bad homes, bad luck, every disadvantage, and they've
had the grit to win through. That's the kind I shall leave
my packet to, if I ever have one. But then, of course,
that's what I never shall have. Just my pension and a nice
bit of garden.'

124


He nodded his head at Miss Marple.
'Superintendent Blacker told me about you last night.
Said you'd had a lot of experience of the seamy side of
human nature. Well now, let's have your point of view.
Who's the nigger in the woodpile? The G.I. husband?'
'That,' said Miss Marple, 'would be very convenient
for everybody.'
Inspector Curry smiled softly to himself.
'A G.I. pinched my best girl,' he said reminiscently.
'Naturally, I'm prejudiced. His manner doesn't help.
Let's have the amateur point of view. Who's been secretly
and systematically poisoning Mrs Serrocold?'
'Well,' said Miss Marple judicially, 'one is always
inclined, human nature being what it is, to think of the husband. Or if it's the other way round, the wife. That's
the first assumption, don't you think, in a poisoning
case?'
'I agree with you every time,' said Inspector Curry.
'But really - in this case -' Miss Marple shook her
head. 'No, frankly - I can not seriously consider Mr
Serrocold. Because you see, Inspector, he really is devoted to his wife. Naturally he would make a parade of
being so - but it isn't a parade. It's very quiet, but it's
genuine. He loves his wife, and I'm quite certain that he
wouldn't poison her.'
'To say nothing of the fact that he wouldn't have any
motive for doing so. She's made over her money to him
already.'
'Of course,' said Miss Marple primly, 'there are other
reasons for a gentleman wanting his wife out of the way.
An attachment to a young woman, for instance. But I
really don't see any signs of it in this case. Mr Serrocold
does not act as though he had any romantic preoccupa-

125


tion. I'm really afraid,' she sounded quite regretful about
it, 'we shall have to wash him out.'
'Regrettable, isn't it?' said the Inspector. He grinned. 'And anyway, he couldn't have killed Gulbrandsen. It
seems to me that there's no doubt that the one thing
hinges on the other. Whoever is poisoning Mrs Serrocold
killed Gulbrandsen to prevent him spilling the beans.
What we've got to get at now is who had an opportunity
to kill Gulbrandsen last night. And our prize suspect -there's
no doubt about it - is young Walter Hudd. It was
he who switched on a reading lamp which resulted in a
fuse going, thereby giving him the opportunity to leave
the Hall and go to the fuse box. The fuse box is in the
kitchen passage which opens off from the main corridor.
It was during his absence from the Great Hall that the
shot was heard. So that's suspect No. 1 perfectly placed
for committing the crime.'
'And suspect No. 2?' asked Miss Marple.
'Suspect No. 2 is Alex Restarick, who was alone in his
car between the lodge and the house and took too long
getting there.'
'Anybody else?' Miss Marple leaned forward eagerly remembering
to add: 'It's very kind of you to tell me all
this.'
'It's not kindness,' said Inspector Curry. 'I've got to
have your help. You put your finger on the spot when you
said "Anybody else?" Because there I've got to depend onyou. You were there, in the Hall last night, and you can
tell me who left it...'
'Yes - yes, I ought to be able to tell you... But can I?
You see - the circumstances '
'You mean that you were all listening to the argument
going on behind the door of Mr Serrocold's study.'

126


Miss Marple nodded vehemently.
'Yes, you see we were all really very frightened. Mr
Lawson looked - he really did - quite demented. Apart
from Mrs Serrocold, who seemed quite unaffected, we all
feared that he would do a mischief to Mr Serrocold. He
was shouting, you know, and saying the most terrible
things - we could hear them quite plainly - and what with
that and with most of the lights being out - I didn't really
notice anything else.'
'You mean that whilst that scene was going on,
anybody could have slipped out of the Hall, gone along
the corridor, shot Mr Gulbrandsen and slipped back
again?'
'I think it would have been possible ...'
'Could you say definitely that anybody was in the
Great Hall the whole time?'
Miss Marple considered.
'I could say that Mrs Serrocold was - because I was
watching her. She was sitting quite close to the study
door, and she never moved from her seat. It surprised
me, you know, that she was able to remain so calm.'
'And the others?'
'Miss Bellever went out - but I think - I am almost
sure - that that was after the shot. Mrs Strete? I really
don't know. She was sitting behind me, you see. Gina was
over by the far window. I think she remained there the
whole time but of course I cannot be sure. Stephen was
at the piano. He stopped playing when the quarrel began
to get heated '
'We mustn't be misled by the time you heard the shot,'
said Inspector Curry. 'That's a trick that's been done
before now, you know. Fake up a shot so as to fix the time
of a crime, and fix it wrong. If Miss Bellever had cooked

127


up something of that kind (far fetched - but you never
know) then she'd leave as she did, openly, after the shot
was heard. No, we can't go by the shot. The limits are
between when Christian Gulbrandsen left the Hall to the
moment when Miss Believer found him dead, and we can
only eliminate those people who were known not to have
had opportunity. That gives us Lewis Serrocold and
young Edgar Lawson in the study, and Mrs Serrocold in
the Hall. It's very unfortunate, of course, that Gulbrandsen
should be shot on the same evening that this
schemozzle happened between Serrocold and this young
Lawson.'
'Just unfortunate, you think?' murmured Miss
Marple.
'Oh? What do you think?'
'It occurred to me,' murmured Miss Marple, 'that it
might have been contrived.'
'So that's your idea?'
'Well, everybody seems to think it very odd that Edgar
Lawson should quite suddenly have a relapse, so to speak.
He'd got this curious complex, or whatever the term is,
about his unknown father. Winston Churchill and
Viscount Montgomery - all quite likely in his state of
mind. Just any famous man he happened to think of. But
suppose somebody puts it into his head that it's Lewis
Serrocold who is really his father, that it's Lewis
Serrocold who has been persecuting him - that he ought
by rights to be the Crown Prince as it were of Stonygates.
In his weak mental state he'll accept the idea - work
himself up into a frenzy, and sooner or later will make the
kind of scene he did make. And what a wonderful cover that will be! Everybody will have their attention fixed on
the dangerous situation that is developing'- especially if

128


somebody has thoughtfully supplied him with a
revolver.'

'Hm, yes. Walter Hudd's revolver.'

'Oh yes,' said Miss Marple, 'I'd thought of that. But
you know, Walter is uncommunicative and he's certainly
sullen and ungracious, but I don't really think he's
stupid.'

'So you don't think it's Walter?'

'I think everybody would be very relieved if it was
Walter. That sounds very unkind, but it's because he is an
outsider.'

'What about his wife?' asked Inspector Curry. 'Would
she be relieved?'

Miss Marple did not answer. She was thinking of Gina
and Stephen Restarick standing together as she had seen
them on her first day. And she thought of the way Alex
Restarick's eyes had gone straight to Gina as he had
entered the Hall last night. What was Gina's own
attitude?


II


Two hours later Inspector Curry tilted back his chair,
stretched himself and sighed.

'Well,' he said, 'we've cleared a good deal of ground.'
Sergeant Lake agreed.

'The servants are out,' he said. 'They were together all
through the critical period - those that sleep here. The
ones that don't live in had gone home.'

Curry nodded. He was suffering from mental fatigue.

He had interviewed physio-therapists, members of the
teaching staff, and what he called to himself the 'two


129


young lags,' whose turn it had been to dine with the
family that night. All their stories dovetailed and
checked. He could write them off. Their activities and
habits were communal. Them were no lonely souls
among them. Which was useful for the purposes of alibis.
Curry had kept Dr Maverick, who was, as far as he could
judge, the chief person in charge of the Institute, to the
end.
'But we'll have him in now, Lake.'
So the young doctor bustled in, neat and spruce and
rather inhuman looking behind his pincenez.
Maverick confirmed the statements of his staff, and
agreed with Curry's findings. There had been no slackness,
no loophole in the College impregnability. Christian
Gulbrandsen's death could not be laid to the account
of the 'young patients,' as Curry almost called them, so
hypnotized had he become by the fervent medical
atmosphere.
'But patients are exactly what they are, Inspector,' said
Dr Maverick with a little smile.
It was a superior smile, and Inspector Curry would not
have been human if he had not resented it just a little.
He said professionally:
'Now as regards your own movements, Dr Maverick?
Can you give me an account of them?'
'Certainly. I have jotted them down for you with
approximate times.'
Dr Maverick had left the Great Hall at fifteen minutes
after nine, with Mr Lacy and Dr Baumgarten. They had
gone to Dr Baumgarten's rooms, where they had all three
remained discussing certain courses of treatment until
Miss Believer had come hurrying in and asked Dr
Maverick to go to the Great Hall. That was at approxi-

130


mately half-past nine. He had gone at once to the Hall

and had found Edgar Lawson in a state of collapse.
Inspector Curry stirred a little.

'Just a minute, Dr Maverick. Is this young man, in
your opinion, definitely a mental case?'

Dr Maverick smiled the superior smile again.

'We are all mental cases, Inspector Curry.'

Tomfool answer, thought the Inspector. He knew
quite well he wasn't a mental case, whatever Dr Maverick
might be!

'Is he responsible for his actions? He knows what he is

doing, I suppose?'

'Perfectly.'

'Then when he fired that revolver at Mr Serrocold it
was definitely attempted murder.'

'No, no, Inspector Curry. Nothing of that kind.'
'Come now, Dr Maverick. I've seen the two bullet
holes in the wall. They must have gone dangerously near
to Mr Serrocold's head.'

'Perhaps. But Lawson had no intention of killing Mr
Serrocold or even of wounding him. He is very fond of
Mr Serrocold.'

'It seems a curious way of showing it.'

Dr Maverick smiled again. Inspector Curry found that
smile very trying.

'Everything one does is intentional. Every time you,
Inspector, forget a name or a face it is because, uncons-ciously,
you wish to forget it.'

Inspector Curry looked unbelieving.

'Every time you make a slip of the tongue, that slip has
a meaning. Edgar Lawson was standing a few feet away
from Mr Serrocold. He could easily have shot him dead.
Instead, he missed him. Why did he miss him? Because


131


he wanted to miss him. It is as simple as that. Mr Serrocold was never in any danger - and Mr Serrocold
himself was quite aware of that fact. He understood
Edgar's gesture for exactly what it was - a gesture of
defiance and resentment against a universe that has
denied him the simple necessities of a child's life security
and affection.'
'I think I'd like to see this young man.'
'Certainly if you wish. His outburst last night has had
a cathartic effect. There is a great improvement today.
Mr Serrocold will be very pleased.'
Inspector Curry stared hard at him, but Dr Maverick
was serious as always.
Curry sighed.
'Do you have any arsenic?' he asked.
'Arsenic?' The question took Dr Maverick by surprise.
It was clearly unexpected. 'What a very curious question.
Why arsenic?'
'Just answer the question, please.'
'No, I have no arsenic of any kind in my possession.'
'But you have some drugs?'
'Oh certainly. Sedatives. Morphia - the barbiturates.
The usual things.'
'Do you attend Mrs Serrocold?'
'No. Dr Gunter of Market Kimble is the family
physician. I hold a medical degree, of course, but I
practise purely as a psychiatrist.'
'I see. Well, thank you very much, Dr Maverick.'
As Dr Maverick went out, Inspector Curry murmured
to Lake that psychiatrists gave him a pain in the neck.
'We'll get on to the family now,' he said. 'I'll see young
Walter Hudd first.'
Walter Hudd's attitude was cautious. He seemed to be

132


studying the police officer with a slightly wary expression.
But he was quite cooperative.
There was a good deal of defective wiring in Stony-gates
- the whole electric system was very old-fashioned.
They wouldn't stand for a system like that in the States.
'It was installed, I believe, by the late Mr Gulbrandsen
when electric light was a novelty,' said Inspector Curry
with a faint smile.'
'I'll say so! Sweet old feudal English and never been
brought up to date.'
The fuse which controlled most of the lights in the
Great Hall had gone, and he had gone out to the fuse-box
to see about it. In due course he got it repaired and came
back.
'How long were you away?'
'Why that I couldn't say for sure. The fuse-box is in an
awkward place. I had to get steps and a candle. I was
maybe ten minutes - perhaps a quarter of an hour.'
'Did you hear a shot?'
'Why no, I didn't hear anything like that. There are
double doors through to the kitchen quarters and one of
them is lined with a kind of felt.'
'I see. And when you came back into the Hall, what did
you see?'
'They were all crowded round the door into Mr
Serrocold's study. Mrs Strete said that Mr Serrocold had
been shot - but actually that wasn't so. Mr Serrocold was
quite all right. The boob had missed him.'
'You recognized the revolver?'
'Sure I recognized it! It was mine.'
'When did you see it last?'
'Two or three days ago.'
'Where did you keep it?'

133


'In the drawer in my room.'
'Who knew that you kept it there?'
'I wouldn't know who knows what in this house.'
'What do you mean by that, Mr Hudd?'
'Aw, they're all nuts?
'When you came into the Hall, was everybody else
there?'
'What d'you mean by everybody?'
'The same people who were there when you went to
repair the fuse.'
'Gina was there ... and the old lady with white hair and
Miss Bellever ... I didn't notice particularly - but I
should say so.'
'Mr Gulbrandsen arrived quite unexpectedly the day
before yesterday, did he not?'
'I guess so. It wasn't his usual routine, I understand.'
'Did anyone seem upset by his arrival?'
Walter Hudd took a moment or two before he
answered:
'Why no, I wouldn't say so.'
Once more there was a touch of caution in his manner.
'Have you any idea why he came?'
'Their precious Gulbrandsen Trust I suppose. The
whole set-up here is crazy.'
'You have these "set-ups" as you call it, in the States.'
'It's one thing to endow a scheme, and another to give
it the personal touch as they do here. I had enough of
psychiatrists in the Army. This place is stiff with them.
Teaching young thugs to make raffia baskets and carve
pipe-racks. Kids' games! It's sissy?
Inspector Curry did not comment on this criticism.
Possibly he agreed with it.
He said, eying Walter carefully:

134


'So you have no idea who could have killed Mr
Gulbrandsen?'
'One of the bright boys from the College practising his
technique, I'd say.'
'No, Mr Hudd, that's out. The College, in spite of its
carefully produced atmosphere of freedom, is none the
less a place of detention and is run on those lines. Nobody
can run in and out of it after dark and commit murders.'
'I wouldn't put it past them! Well - if you want to fix
it nearer home, I'd say your best bet was Alex Restarick.'
'Why do you say that?'
'He had the opportunity. He drove up through the
grounds alone in his car.'
'And why should he kill Christian Gulbrandsen?'
Walter shrugged his shoulders.
'I'm a stranger. I don't know the family setups.
Maybe the old boy had heard something about Alex and
was going to spill the beans to the Serrocolds.'
'With what results?'
'They might cut off the dough. He can use dough uses
a good deal of it by all accounts.'
'You mean - in theatrical enterprises?'
'That's what he calls it?'
'Do you suggest it was otherwise?'
Again Walter Hudd shrugged his shoulders.
'I wouldn't know,' he said.

135


CHAPTER 13

Alex Restarick was voluble. He also gestured with his
hands.
'I know, I know! I'm the ideal suspect. I drive down
here alone and on the way to the house, I get a creative fit,
I can't expect you to understand. How should you?'
'I might,' Curry put in drily, but Alex Restarick swept
on.
'It's just one of those things! They come upon you
there's no knowing when or how. An effect - an idea and everything else goes to the winds! I'm producing Limehouse Nights next month. Suddenly - last night - the
set-up was wonderful... The perfect lighting. Fog -and
the headlights cutting through the fog and being thrown
back - and reflecting dimly a tall pile of buildings.
Everything helped! The shots - the running footsteps and the chug-chugging of the electric power engine
could have been a launch on the Thames. And I thought - that's it - but what am I going to use to get just these
effects? - and '
Inspector Curry broke in.
'You heard shots? Where?'
'Out of the fog, Inspector.' Alex waved his hands in the
air - plump well-kept hands. 'Out of the fog. That was
the wonderful part about it.'
'It didn't occur to you that anything was wrong?'
'Wrong? Why should it?'
'Are shots such a usual occurrence?'

136


'Ah, I knew you wou!dn't understand! The shots fitted
into the scene I was creating. I wanted shots. Danger opium
- crazy business. What did I care what they were
really? Backfires from a lorry on the road? A poacher
after rabbits?'
'They snare rabbits mostly round here.'
Alex swept on:
'A child letting off fireworks? I didn't even think about
them as - shots. I was in Limehouse - or rather at the
back of the stalls - looking at Limehouse.'
'How many shots?'
'I don't know,' said Alex petulantly. 'Two or three.
Two close together, I do remember that.'
Inspector Curry nodded.
'And the sound of running footsteps, I think you said?
Where were they?'
'They came to me out of the fog. Somewhere near the
house.'
Inspector Curry said gently:
'That would suggest that the murderer of Christian
Gulbrandsen came from outside.'
'Of course. Why not? You don't really suggest, do you,
that he came from inside the house?'
Still very gently Inspector Curry said:
'We have to think of everything.'
'I suppose so,' said Alex Restarick generously. 'What a
soul-destroying job yours must be, Inspector! The
details, the times and places, the pettifogging pettiness of
it. And in the end - what good is it all? Does.it bring the
wretched Christian Gulbrandsen back to life?'
'There's quite a satisfaction in getting your man, Mr
Restarick.'
'The Wild Western touch!'

137


'Did you know Mr Gulbrandsen well?'
'Not well enough to murder him, Inspector. I had met
him, off and on, since I lived here as a boy. He made brief
appearances from time to time. One of our captains of
industry. The type does not interest me. He has quite a
collection, I believe, of Thorwaldsen's statuary -' Alex
shuddered. 'That speaks for itself, does it not? My God,
these rich men!'
Inspector Curry eyed him meditatively. Then he said:
'Do you take any interest in poisons, Mr Restarick?'
'In poisons? My dear man, he was surely not poisoned
first and shot afterwards. That would be too madly
detective story.'
'He was not poisoned. But you haven't answered my
question.'
'Poison has a certain appeal... It has not the crudeness
of the revolver bullet or the blunt weapon. I have no
special knowledge of the subject, if that is what you
me an. '
'Have you ever had arsenic in your possession?'
'In sandwiches - after the show? The idea has its
allurements. You don't know Rose Glidon? These
actresses who think they have a name! No I have never
thought of arsenic. One extracts it from weed killer or
flypapers, I believe.'
'How often are you down here, Mr Restarick?'
'It varies, Inspector. Sometimes not for several weeks.
But I try to get down for weekends whenever I can. I
always regard Stonygates as my true home.'
'Mrs Serrocold has encouraged you to do so?'
'What I owe Mrs Serrocold can ney. er be repaid.
Sympathy, understanding, affection '
'And quite a lot of solid cash as well, I believe?'

138


Alex looked faintly disgusted.

'She treats me as a son, and she has belief in my work.'
'Has she ever spoken to you about her will?'
'Certainly. But may I ask what is the point of all these
questions, Inspector? There is nothing wrong with Mrs
Serroc01d.'

'There had better not be,' said Inspector Curry grimly.
'Now what can you possibly mean by that?'

'If you don't know, so much the better,' said Inspector
Curry. 'And if you do - I'm warning you.'

When Alex had gone Sergeant Lake said:
'Pretty bogus, would you say?'
Curry shook his head.

'Difficult to say. He may have genuine creative talent.
He may just like living soft and talking big. One doesn't
know. Heard running footsteps, did he? I'd be prepared
to bet he made that up.'

'For any particular reason?'

'Definitely for a particular reason. We haven't come to
it yet, but we will.'

'After all, sir, one of those smart lads may have got out
of the College buildings unbeknownst. Probably a few cat
burglars amongst them, and if so -'

'That's what we're meant to think. Very convenient.
But if that's so, Lake, I'll eat my new soft hat.'


II


'I was at the piano,' said Stephen Restarick. 'I'd been
strumming softly when the row blew up. Between Lewis
and Edgar.'

'What did you think of it?'


139


'Well - to tell the truth I didn't really take it seriously.
The poor beggar has these fits of venom. He's not really
loopy, you know. All this nonsense is a kind of blowing off
steam. The truth is, we all get under his skin particularly
Gina, of course.'
'Gina? You mean Mrs Hudd? Why does she get under
his skin?'
'Because she's a woman - and a very beautiful woman,
and because she thinks he's funny! She's half Italian, you
know, and the Italians have that unconscious vein of
cruelty. They've no compassion for anyone who's old or
ugly, or peculiar in any way. They point with their fingers
and jeer. That's what Gina did, metaphorically speaking.
She'd no use for young Edgar. He was ridiculous,
pompous, and at bottom fundamentally unsure of himself.
He wanted to impress, and he only succeeded in
looking silly. It wouldn't mean anything to her that the
poor fellow suffered a lot.'
'Are you suggesting that Edgar Lawson is in love with
Mrs Hudd?' asked Inspector Curry.
Stephen replied cheerfully:
'Oh yes. As a matter of fact we all are, more or less! She
likes us that way.'
'Does her husband like it?'
'He takes a dim view. He suffers, too, poor fellow. The
thing can't last, you know. Their marriage, I mean. It will
break up before long. It was just one of these war affairs.'
'This is all very interesting,' said the Inspector. 'But
we're getting away from our subject, which is the murder
of Christian Gulbrandsen.'
'Quite,' said Stephen. 'But I can't tell you anything
about it. I sat at the piano, and I didn't leave the piano

140


until dear Jolly came in with some rusty old keys and tried
to fit one to the lock of the study door.'

'You stayed at the piano. Did you continue to play the
piano?'

'A gentle obbligato to the life and death struggle in
Lewis's study? No, I stopped playing when the tempo
rose. Not that I had any doubts as to the outcome. Lewis
has what I can only describe as a dynamic eye. He could
easily break up Edgar just by looking at him.'

'Yet Edgar Lawson fired two shots at him.'
Stephen shook his head gently.

'Just putting on an act, that was. Enjoying himself. My
dear mother used to do it. She died or ran away with
someone when I was four, but I remember her blazing off
with a pistol if anything upset her. She did it at a night
club once. Made a pattern on the wall. She was an
excellent shot. Quite a bit of trouble she caused. She was
a Russian dancer, you know.'

'Indeed. Can you tell me, Mr Restarick, who left the
Hall yesterday evening whilst you were there - during the
relevant time?'

'Wally - to fzx the lights. Juliet Believer to find a key to

fit the study door. Nobody else, as far as I know.'
'Would you have noticed if somebody did?'
Stephen considered.

'Probably not. That is, if they just tiptoed out and back
again. It was so dark in the Hall - and there was the fight
to which we were all listening avidly.'

'Is there anyone you are sure was there the whole
time?'

'Mrs Serrocold - yes, and Gina. I'd swear to them.'
'Thank you, Mr Restarick.'


141


Stephen went towards the door. Then he hesitated and
came back.
'What's all this,' he said, 'about arsenic?'
'Who mentioned arsenic to you?'
'My brother.'
'Ah - yes.'
Stephen said:
'Has somebody been giving Mrs Serrocold arsenic?'
'Why should you mention Mrs Serrocold?'
'I've read of the symptoms of arsenical poisoning.
Peripheral neuritis, isn't it? It would square more or less
with what she's been suffering from lately. And then
Lewis snatching away her tonic last night. Is that what's
been going on here?'
'The matter is under investigation,' said Inspector
Curry in his most official manner.
'Does she know about it herself?.'
'Mr Serrocold was particularly anxious that she should
not be - alarmed.'
'Alarmed isn't the right word, Inspector. Mrs Serro-cold
is never alarmed ... Is that what lies behind
Christian Gulbrandsen's death? Did he find out she was
being poisoned - but how could he find out? Anyway, [he
whole thing seems most improbable. It doesn't make
sense.'
'It surprises you very much, does it, Mr Restarick?'
'Yes, indeed. When Alex spoke to me I could hardly
believe it.'
'Who, in your opinion, would be likely to administer
arsenic to Mrs Serrocold?'
For a moment a grin appeared upon Stephen Restarick's
handsome face.
'Not the usual person. You can wash out the husband.

142


Lewis Serrocold's got nothing to gain. And also he
worships that woman. He can't bear her to have an ache
in her little finger.'
'Who then? Have you any idea?'
'Oh yes. I'd say it was a certainty.'
'Explain, please.'
Stephen shook his head.
'It's a certainty psychologically speaking. Not in any
other way. No evidence of any kind. And you probably
wouldn't agree.'
Stephen Restarick went out nonchalantly, and Inspector
Curry drew cats on the sheet of paper in front of him.
He was thinking three things. A, that Stephen Restarick
thought a good deal of himself; B, that Stephen
Restarick and his brother presented a united front; and C,
that Stephen Restarick was a handsome man where
Walter Hudd was a plain one.
He wondered about two other things - what Stephen
meant by 'psychologically speaking' and whether Stephen
could possibly have seen Gina from his seat at the
piano. He rather thought not.

III

Into the Gothic gloom of the library, Gina brought an
exotic glow. Even Inspector Curry blinked a little at the
radiant young woman who sat down, leaned forward over
the table and said expectantly, 'Well?'
Inspector Curry, observing her scarlet shirt and dark
green slacks, said drily:
'I see you're not wearing mourning, Mrs Hudd?'
'I haven't got any,' said Gina. 'I know everyone is

143


supposed to have a little black number and wear it with
pearls. But I don't. I hate black. I think it's hideous, and
only receptionists and housekeepers and people like that
ought to wear it. Anyway Christian Gulbrandsen wasn't
really a relation. He's my grandmother's stepson.'
'And I suppose you didn't know him very well?'
Gina shook her head.
'He came here three or four times when I was a child,
but then in the war I went to America, and I only came
back here to live about six months ago.'
'You have definitely come back here to live? You're not
just on a visit?'
'I haven't really thought,' said Gina.
'You were in the Great Hall last night, when Mr
Gulbrandsen went to his room?'
'Yes. He said goodnight and went away. Grandam
asked if he had everything he wanted and he said yes that
Jolly had fixed him up fine. Not those words, but
that kind of thing. He said he had letters to write.'
'And then?'
Gina described the scene between Lewis and Edgar
Lawson. It was the same story that Inspector Curry had
by now heard many times, but it took an added colour, a
new gusto, under Gina's handling. It became drama.
'It was Wally's revolver,' she said. 'Fancy Edgar's
having the guts to go and pinch it out of his room. I'd
never have believed he'd have the guts.'
'Were you alarmed when they went into the study and Edgar Lawson locked the door?'
'Oh no,' said Gina, opening her enormous brown eyes
very wide. 'I loved it. It was so ham, you know, and so
madly theatrical. Everything Edgar does is always ridiculous.
One can't take him seriously for a moment.'

144


'He did fire the revolver, though?'

'Yes. We all thought then that he'd shot Lewis after


'And did you enjoy that?' Inspector Curry could not
refrain from asking.

'Oh no, I was terrified, then. Everyone was, except

Grandam. She never turned a hair.'

'That seems rather remarkable.'

'Not really. She's that kind of person. Not quite in this
world. She's the sort of person who never believes
anything bad can happen. She's sweet.'

'During all this scene, who was in the Hall?'

'Oh we were all there. Except Uncle Christian, of
course.'

'Not all, Mrs Hudd. People went in and out.'

'Did they?' asked Gina vaguely.

'Your husband, for instance, went out to fLx the lights.'
'Yes. Wally's great at fixing things.'

'During his absence, a shot was heard, I understand. A
shot that you all thought came from the Park?'

'I don't remember that... Oh yes, it was just after the

lights had come on again and Wally had come back.'
'Did anyone else leave the Hall?'

'I don't think so. I don't remember.'
'Where were you sitting, Mrs Hudd?'
'Over by the window.'

'Near the door to the library?'

'Yes.'

'Did you yourself leave the Hall at all?'

'Leave? With all the excitement? Of course not.'
Gina sounded scandalized by the idea.
'Where were the others sitting?'

'Mostly round the fireplace, I think. Aunt Mildred was


145


knitting and so was Aunt Jane - Miss Marple, I mean Grandam
was just sitting.'
'And Mr Stephen Restarick?'
'Stephen? He was playing the piano to begin with. I
don't know where he went later.'
'And Miss Believer?'
'Fussing about, as usual. She practically never sits
down. She was looking for keys or something.'
She said suddenly:
'What's all this about Grandam's tonic? Did the
chemist make a mistake in making it up or something?'
'Why should you think that?'
'Because the bottle's disappeared, and Jolly's been
fussing round madly looking for it, in no end of a stew.
Alex told her the police had taken it away. Did you?'
Instead of replying to the question, Inspector Curry
said:
'Miss Bellever was upset, you say?'
'Oh! Jolly always fusses,' said Gina carelessly. 'She
likes fussing. Sometimes I wonder how Grandam can
stand it.'
'Just one last question, Mrs Hudd. You've no ideas
yourself as to who killed Christian Gulbrandsen and
why?'
'One of the queers did it, I should think. The thug ones
are really quite sensible. I mean they only cosh people so
as to rob a till or get money or jewellery - not just for fun.
But one of the queers - you know, what they call mentally
maladjusted - might do it for fun, don't you think?
Because I can't see what other reason there could be for
killing Uncle Christian except fun, do you? At least I
don't mean fun, exactly - but '
'You can't think of a motive?'

146


'Yes, that's what I mean,' said Gina gratefully. 'He
wasn't robbed or anything, was he?'

'But you know, Mrs Hudd, the College buildings were
locked and barred. Nobody could get out from there
without a pass.'

'Don't you believe it,' Gina laughed merrily. 'Those
boys could get out from anywhere! They've taught me a
lot of tricks.'

'She's a lively one,' said Lake when Gina had departed.
'First time I've seen her close to. Lovely figure, hasn't
she. Sort of a foreign figure, if you know what I mean.'

Inspector Curry threw him a cold glance. Sergeant
Lake said hastily that she was a merry one. 'Seems to have
enjoyed it all, as you might say.'

'Whether Stephen Restarick is right or not about her
marriage breaking up, I notice that she went out of her
way to mention that Walter Hudd was back in the Great
Hall before that shot was heard.'

'Which, according to everyone else, isn't so?'
'Exactly.'

'She didn't mention Miss Believer leaving the Hall to
look for keys, either.'

'No,' said the Inspector thoughtfully, 'she didn't ...'


147


CHAPTER 14


Mrs Strete fitted into the library very much better than
Gina Hudd had done. There was nothing exotic about
Mrs Strete. She wore black with an onyx brooch, and she
wore a hairnet over carefully arranged grey hair.

She looked, Inspector Curry reflected, exactly as the
relict of a Canon of the Established Church should look
- which was almost odd, because so few people ever did
look like what they really were.

Even the tight line of her lips had an ascetic ecclesias-tical
flavour. She expressed Christian Endurance, and
possibly Christian Fortitude. But not, Curry thought,
Christian Charity.

Moreover it was clear that Mrs Strete was offended.
'I should have thought that you could have given me
some idea of when you would want me, Inspector. I have
been forced to sit around waiting all the morning.'

It was, Curry judged, her sense of importance that was
hurt. He hastened to pour oil on the troubled waters.

'I'm very sorry, Mrs Strete. Perhaps you don't quite
know how we set about these things. We start, you know,
with the less important evidence - get it out of the way, so
to speak. It's valuable to keep to the last a person on
whose judgment we can rely - a good observer - by whom

we can check what has been told us up to date.'

Mrs Strete softened visibly.

'Oh I see. I hadn't quite realized ...'

'Now you're a woman of mature judgment, Mrs


148


Strete. A woman of the world. And then this is your home - you're the daughter of the house, and you can tell me all
about the people who are in it.'
'I can certainly do that,' said Mildred Strete.
'So you see that when we come to the question of who
killed Christian Gulbrandsen, you can help us a great
deal.'
'But is there any question? Isn't it perfectly obvious
who killed my brother?'
Inspector Curry leant back in his chair. His hand
stroked his small neat moustache.
'Well - we have to be careful,' he said. 'You think it's
obvious?'
'Of course. That dreadful American husband of poor
Gina's. He's the only stranger here. We know absolutely
nothing about him. He's probably one of these dreadful
American gangsters.'
'But that wouldn't quite account for his killing Christian
Gulbrandsen, would it? Why should he?'
'Because Christian had found out something about
him. That's what he came here for so soon after his last
visit.'
'Are you sure of that, Mrs Strete?'
'Again it seems to me quite obvious. He let it be
thought his visit was in connection with the Trust - but
that's nonsense. He was here for that only a month ago.
And nothing of importance has arisen since. So he must
have come on some private business. He saw Walter on
his last visit, and he may have recognized him - or
perhaps made inquiries about him in the States naturally
he has agents all over the world - and found out
something really damaging. Gina is a very silly girl. She
always has been. It is just like her to marry a man she

149


knows nothing about - she's always been man mad! A
man wanted by the police, perhaps, or a man who's
already married, or some bad character in the underworld.
But my brother Christian wasn't an easy man to
deceive. He came here, I'm sure, to settle the whole
business. Expose Walter and show him up for what he is.
And so, naturally, Walter shot him.'
Inspector Curry, adding some out-sized whiskers to
one of the cats on his blotting pad, said:
'Ye - es.'
'Don't you agree with me that that's what must have
happened?'
'It could be - yes,' admitted the Inspector.
'What other solution could there be? Christian had no
enemies. What I can't understand is why you haven't
already arrested Walter?'
'Well, you see, Mrs Strete, we have to have evidence.'
'You could probably get that easily enough. If you
wired to America '
'Oh yes, we shall check up on Mr Walter Hudd. You
can be sure of that. But until we can prove motive, there's
not very much to go upon. There's opportunity, of
course '
'He went out just after Christian, pretending the lights
had fused '
'They did fuse.'
'He could easily arrange that.'
'True.'
'That gave him his excuse. He followed Christian to his
room, shot him and then repaired the fuse and came back
to the Hall.'
'His wife says he came back before you heard the shot
from outside.'

150


'Not a bit of it! Gina would say anything. The Italians
are never truthful. And she's a Roman Catholic, of
course.'

Inspector Curry side-stepped the ecclesiastical angle.
'You think his wife was in it with him?'
Mildred Strete hesitated for a moment.

'No - no, I don't think that.' She seemed rather
disappointed not to think so. She went on: 'That must
have been partly the motive - to prevent Gina's learning
the truth about him. After all, Gina is his bread and
butter.'

'And a very beautiful girl.'

'Oh yes. I've always said Gina is good looking. A very
common type in Italy, of course. But if you ask me, it's
money that Walter Hudd is after. That's why he came

over here and has settled down living on the Serrocolds.'
'Mrs Hudd is very well off, I understand?'

'Not at present. My father settled the same sum on
Gina's mother as he did on me. But of course she took her
husband's nationality (I believe the law is altered now)
and what with the war and his being a Fascist, Gina has
very little of her own. My mother spoils her, and her
American aunt, Mrs Van Rydock, spent fabulous sums
on her and bought her everything she wanted during the
war years. Nevertheless, from Waiter's point of view, he
can't lay his hands on much until my mother's death,

when a very large fortune will come to Gina.'

'And to you, Mrs Strete.'

A faint colour came into Mildred Strete's cheek.
'And to me, as you say. My husband and myself always
lived quietly. He spent very little money except on books
- he was a great scholar. My own money has almost
doubled itself. It is more than enough for my simple


151


needs. Still one can always use money for the benefit of
others. Any money that comes to me, I shall regard as a
sacred trust.'

'But it won't be in a Trust, will it?' said Curry, wilfully
misunderstanding. 'It will come to you absolutely.'

'Oh yes - in that sense. Yes, it will be mine absolutely.'
Something in the ring of that last word made Inspector
Curry raise his head sharply. Mrs Strete was not looking
at him. Her eyes were shining, and her long thin mouth
was curved in a triumphant smile.

Inspector said in a considering voice:

'So in your view - and of course you've had ample
opportunities of judging - Master Walter Hudd wants
the money that will come to his wife when Mrs Serrocold
dies. By the way, she's not very strong, is she, Mrs
Strete?'

'My mother has always been delicate.'

'Quite so. But delicate people ' often live as long or

longer than people who have robust health.'

'Yes, I suppose they do.'

'You haven't noticed your mother's health failing just
lately?'

'She suffers from rheumatism. But then one must have
something as one grows older. I've no sympathy with

people who make a fuss over inevitable aches and pains.'
'Does Mrs Serrocold make a fuss?'

Mildred Strete was silent for a moment. She said at
last:

'She does not make a fuss herself, but she is used to
being made a fuss of. My stepfather is far too solicitous.
And as for Miss Believer, she makes herself positively
ridiculous. In any case, Miss Believer has had a very bad
influence in this house. She came here many years ago,


152


and her devotion to my mother, though admirable in
itself, has really become somewhat of an infliction. She
literally tyrannizes over my mother. She runs the whole
house and takes far too much upon herself. I think it
annoys Lewis sometimes. I should never be surprised if
he told her to go. She has no tact - no tact whatever, and
it is trying for a man to fred his wife completely
dominated by a bossy woman.'
Inspector Curry nodded his head gently.
'I see ... I see...'
He watched her speculatively.
'There's one thing I don't quite get, Mrs Strete. The
position of the two Restarick brothers?'
'More foolish sentiment. Their father married my poor
mother for her money. Two years afterwards he ran away
with a Jugoslavian singer of the lowest morals. He was a
very unworthy person. My mother was softhearted
enough to be sorry for these two boys. Since it was out of
the question for them to spend their holidays with a
woman of such notorious morals, she more or less
adopted them. They have been hangers-on here ever
since. Oh yes, we've plenty of spongers in this house, I
can tell you that.'
'Alex Restarick had an opportunity of killing Christian
Gulbrandsen. He was in his car alone - driving from the
Lodge to the house - what about Stephen?'
'Stephen was in the Hall with us. I don't approve of
Alex Restarick - he is getting to look very coarse, and I
imagine he leads an irregular life - but I don't really see
him as a murderer. Besides, why should he kill my
brother?'
'That's what we always come back to, isn't it?' said
Inspector Curry genially. 'What did Christian Gul-

153


brandsen know - about someone - that made it necessary
for that someone to kill him?'
'Exactly,' said Mrs Strete triumphantly. 'It must be
Walter Hudd.'
'Unless it's someone nearer home.'
Mildred said sharply:
'What did you mean by that?'
Inspector Curry said slowly:
'Mr Gulbrandsen seemed very concerned about Mrs
Serrocold's health whilst he was here.'
Mrs Strete frowned.
Then always fuss over mother because she looks
fragile. I think she likes them to! Or else Christian had
been listening to Juliet Believer.'
'You're not worried about your mother's health
yourself, Mrs Strete?'
'No. I hope I'm sensible. Naturally mother is not
young '
'And death comes to all of us,' said Inspector Curry.
'But not ahead of its appointed time. That's what we have
to prevent.'
He spoke meaningly. Mildred Strete flared into sudden
animation.
'Oh it's wicked - wicked. No one else here really seems
to care. Why should they? I'm the only person who was
a blood relation to Christian. To mother, he was only a
grown-up stepson. To Gina, he isn't really any relation at
all. But he was my own brother.'
'Half-brother,' suggested Inspector Curry.
'Half-brother, yes. But we were both Gulbrandsens in
spite of the difference in age.'
Curry said gently:
'Yes - yes, I see your point ...'

154


Tears in her eyes, Mildred Strete marched out. Curry
looked at Lake.

'So she's quite sure it's Walter Hudd,' he said. 'Won't

entertain for a moment the idea of its being anybody else.'
'And she may be right.'

'She certainly may. Wally fits. Opportunity - and
motive. Because if he wants money quick, his wife's
mother would have to die. So Wally tampers with her
tonic, and Christian Gulbrandsen sees him do it - or

hears about it in some way. Yes, it fits very nicely.'
He paused and said:

'By the way, Mildred Strete likes money ... She
mayn't spend it, but she likes it. I'm not sure why... She
may be a miser - with a miser's passion. Or she may like
the power that money gives. Money for benevolence,
perhaps? She's a Gulbrandsen. She may want to emulate
Father.'

'Complex, isn't it?' said Sergeant Lake, and scratched
his head.

Inspector Curry said:

'We'd better see this screwy young man Lawson, and
after that we'll go to the Great Hall and work out who was
where - and if- and why - and when... We've heard one
or two rather interesting things this morning.'


II


It was very difficult, Inspector Curry thought, to get a
true estimate of someone from what other people said.

Edgar Lawson had been described by a good many
different people that morning, but looking at him now,


155


Curry's own impressions were almost ludicrously
different.

Edgar did not impress him as 'queer' or 'dangerous,' or
'arrogant' or even as 'abnormal.' He seemed a very
ordinary young man, very much cast down and in a state
of humility approaching that of Uriah Heep's. He looked
young and slightly common and rather pathetic.

He was only too anxious to talk and to apologize.

'I know I've done very wrong. I don't know what came
over me - really I don't. Making that scene and kicking
up such a row. And actually shooting off a pistol. At Mr
Serrocold too, who's been so good to me and so patient,

tOO.'

He twisted his hands nervously. They were rather
pathetic hands, with bony wrists.

'If I've got to be had up for it, I'll come with you at
once. I deserve it. I'll plead guilty.'

'No charge has been made against you,' said Inspector
Curry crisply. 'So we've no evidence on which to act.
According to Mr Serrocold, letting off the pistol was an
accident.'

'That's because he's so good. There never was a man as
good as Mr Serrocold! He's done everything for me. And

I go and repay him by acting like this.'
'What made you act as you did?'
Edgar looked embarrassed.
'I made a fool of myself.'
Inspector Curry said drily:

'So it seems. You told Mr Serrocold in the presence of
witnesses that you had discovered that he was your
father. Was that true?'

'No, it wasn't.'


156


'What put that idea into your head? Did someone
suggest it to you?'
'Well, it's a bit hard to explain.'
Inspector Curry looked at him thoughtfully, then said
in a kindly voice:
'Suppose you try. We don't want to make things hard
for you.'
'Well, you see, I had a rather hard time of it as a kid.
The other boys jeered at me. Because I hadn't got a
father. Said I was a little bastard - which I was, of course.
Mum was usually drunk and she had men coming in all
the time. My father was a foreign seaman, I believe. The
house was always filthy, and it was all pretty fair hell. And
then I got to thinking, supposing my Dad had been not
just some foreign sailor, but someone important - and I
used to make up a thing or two. Kid stuff first - changed
at birth - really the rightful heir - that sort of thing. And
then I went to a new school and I tried it on once or twice
hinting things. Said my father was really an Admiral in
the Navy. I got to believing it myself. I didn't feel so bad
then.'
He paused and then went on:
'And then - later - I thought up some other ideas. I
used to stay at hotels and told a lot of silly stories about
being a fighter pilot - or about being in Military
Intelligence. I got all sort of mixed up. I didn't seem able to stop telling lies.
'Only I didn't really try to get money by it. It was just
swank so as to make people think a bit more of me. I
didn't want to be dishonest. Mr Serrocold will tell you and
Dr Maverick - they've got all the stuff about it.'
Inspector Curry nodded. He had already studied
Edgar's case history and his police record.

157


'Mr Serrocold got me clear in the end and brought me
down here. He said he needed a secretary to help him and I did help him! I really did. Only the others laughed
at me. They were always laughing at me.'
'What others? Mrs Serrocold?'
'No, not Mrs Serrocold. She's a lady - she's always
gentle and kind. No, but Gina treated me like dirt. And
Stephen Restarick. And Mrs Strete looked down on me
for not being a gentleman. So did Miss Bellever - and
what's she? She's a paid companion, isn't she?'
Curry noted the signs of rising excitement.
'So you didn't find them very sympathetic?'
Edgar said passionately:
'It was because of me being a bastard. If I'd had a
proper father they wouldn't have gone on like that.'
'So you appropriated a couple of famous fathers?'
Edgar blushed.
'I always seem to get to telling lies,' he muttered.
'And finally you said Mr Serrocold was your father.
Why?'
'Because that would stop them once for all, wouldn't
it? If he was my father they couldn't do anything to me.'
'Yes. But you accused him of being your enemy - of
persecuting you.'
'I know -' He rubbed his forehead. 'I got things all
wrong. There are times when I don't - when I don't get
things quite right. I get muddled.'
'And you took the revolver from Mr Walter Hudd's
room?'
Edgar looked puzzled.
'Did I? Is that where I got it?'
'Don't you remember where you got it?'
Edgar said:

158


'I meant to threaten Mr Serrocold with it. I meant to
frighten him. It was kid stuff all over again.'
Inspector Curry said patiently:
'How did you get the revolver?'
'You just said - out of Waiter's room.'
'You remember doing that now?'
'I must have got it from his room. I couldn't have got
hold of it any other way, could I?'
'I don't know,' said Inspector Curry. 'Somebody might
have given it to you?'
Edgar was silent - his face a blank.
'Is that how it happened?'
Edgar said passionately:
'I don't remember. I was so worked up. I walked about
the garden in a red mist of rage. I thought people were
spying on me, watching me, trying to hound me down.
Even that nice white-haired old lady ... I can't understand
it all now. I feel I must have been mad. I don't
remember where I was and what I was doing half the
time!'
'Surely you remember who told you Mr Serrocold was
your father?'
Edgar gave the same blank stare.
'Nobody told me,' he said sullenly. 'It just came to me.'
Inspector Curry sighed. He was not satisfied. But he
judged he could make no further progress at present.
'Well, watch your step in future,' he said.
'Yes, sir. Yes indeed I wi//.'
As Edgar went, Inspector Curry slowly shook his head.
'These pathological cases are the devil!'
'D'you think he's mad, sir?'
'Much less mad than I'd imagined. Weak-headed,

159


boastful, a liar - yet a certain pleasant simplicity about
him. Highly suggestible I should imagine ...'

'You think someone did suggest things to him?'

'Oh yes, old Miss Marple was right there. She's a
shrewd old bird. But I wish I knew who it was. He won't
tell. If we only knew that... Come on, Lake, let's have a
thorough reconstruction of the scene in the Hall.'


III


'That faxes it pretty well.'

Inspector Curry was sitting at the piano. Sergeant

Lake was in a chair by the window overlooking the lake.
Curry went on:

'If I'm half-turned on the piano stool, watching the
study door, I can't see you.'

Sergeant Lake rose softly and edged quietly through
the door to the library.

'All this side of the room was dark. The only lights that
were on were the ones beside the study door. No, Lake,
I didn't see you go. Once in the library, you could go out
through the other door to the corridor - two minutes to
run along to the oak suite, shoot Gulbrandsen and come
back through the library to your chair by the window.

'The women by the fire have their backs to you. Mrs
Serrocold was sitting here - on the right of the fireplace,
near the study door. Everyone agrees she didn't move
and she's the only one who's in the line of direct vision.
Miss Marple was here. She was looking past Mrs
Serrocold to the study. Mrs Strete was on the left of the
fireplace - close to the door out of the Hall to the lobby,


160


and it's a very dark corner. She could have gone and come
back. Yes, it's possible.'
Curry grinned suddenly.
'And I could go.' He slipped off the music stool and
sidled along the wall and out through the door. 'The only
person who might notice I wasn't still at the piano would
be Gina Hudd. And you remember what Gina said:
"Stephen was at the piano to begin with. I don't know
where he was later."'
'So you think it's Stephen?'
'I don't know who it is,' said Curry. 'It wasn't Edgar
Lawson or Lewis Serrocold or Mrs Serrocold or Miss
Jane Marple. But for the rest -' He sighed. 'It's probably
the American. Those fused lights were a bit too convenient
- a coincidence. And yet, you know, I rather like the
chap. Still, that isn't evidence.'
He peered thoughtfully at some music on the side of
the piano. 'Hindemith? Who's he? Never heard of him.
Shostakovitch! What names these people have.' He got
up and then looked down at the old-fashioned music
stool. He lifted the top of it.
'Here's the old-fashioned stuff. Handel's Largo, Czerny's
Exercises. Dates back to old Gulbrandsen, most of
this. "I know a lovely Garden" - Vicar's wife used to sing
that when I was a boy '
He stopped - the yellow pages of the song in his hand.
Beneath them, reposing on Chopin's Preludes, was a
small automatic pistol.
'Stephen Restarick,' exclaimed Sergeant Lake
joyfully.
'Now don't jump to conclusions,' Inspector Curry
warned him. 'Ten to one that's what we're meant to
think.'

161


CHAPTER 15


Miss Marple climbed the stairs and tapped on the door of
Mrs Serrocold's bedroom.

'May I come in, Carrie Louise?'

'Of course, Jane dear.'

Carrie Louise was sitting in front of the dressing table,
brushing her silvery hair. She turned her head over her
shoulder.

'Is it the police? I'll be ready in a few minutes.'
'Are you all right?'

'Yes, of course. Jolly insisted on my having my
breakfast in bed. And Gina came into the room with it on
tiptoe as though I might be at death's door! I don't think
people realize that tragedies like Christian's death are
much less shock to someone old. Because one knows by
then how anything may happen - and how little anything

really matters that happens in this world.'

'Ye - es,' said Miss Marple dubiously.

'Don't you feel the same, Jane? I should have thought
you would.'

Miss Marple said slowly:

'Christian was murdered.'

'Yes ... I see what you mean. You think that does
matter?'

'Don't you?'

'Not to Christian,' said Carrie Louise simply. 'It
matters, of course, to whoever murdered him.'

'Have you any idea who murdered him?'


162


Mrs Serrocold shook her head in a bewildered fashion.
'No, I've absolutely no idea. I can't even think of a
reason. It must have been something to do with his being
here before - just over a month ago. Because otherwise I
don't think he would have come here suddenly again for
no particular reason. Whatever it was must have started
off then. I've thought and I've thought, but I can't
remember anything unusual.'

'Oh! The same people who are here now - yes, Alex
was down from London about then. And - oh yes, Ruth

was here.'

'Ruth?'

'Her usual flying visit.'

'Ruth,' said Miss Marple again. Her mind was active.
Christian Gulbrandsen and Ruth? Ruth had come away
worried and apprehensive, but had not known why.
Something was wrong was all that Ruth could say.
Christian Gulbrandsen had known or suspected some-thing
that Ruth did not. He had known or suspected that
someone was trying to poison Carrie Louise. How had
Christian Gulbrandsen come to entertain those suspi-cions?
What had he seen or heard? Was it something that
Ruth also had seen or heard but which she had failed to
appreciate at its rightful significance? Miss Marple
wished that she knew what it could possibly have been.
Her own vague hunch that it (whatever it was) had to do
with Edgar Lawson seemed unlikely since Ruth had not

mentioned him.

She sighed.

'You're all keeping something from me, aren't you?'
asked Carrie Louise.

Miss Marple jumped a little as the quiet voice spoke.
'Why do you say that?'


163


'Because you are. Not Jolly. But everyone else. Even
Lewis. He came in while I was having my breakfast, and
he acted very oddly. He drank some of my coffee and
even had a bit of toast and marmalade. That's so unlike
him, because he always has tea and he doesn't like
marmalade, so he must have been thinking of something
else - and I suppose he must have forgotten to have his
own breakfast. He does forget things like meals, and he
looked so concerned and preoccupied.'
'Murder -' began Miss Marple.
Carrie Louise said quickly:
'Oh I know. It's a terrible thing. I've never been mixed
up in it before. You have, haven't you, Jane?'
'Well - yes - actually I have,' Miss Marple admitted.
'So Ruth told me.'
'Did she tell you that last time she was down here?'
asked Miss Marple curiously.
'No, I don't think it was then. I can't really remember.'
Carrie Louise spoke vaguely, almost absentmindedly.
'What are you thinking about, Carrie Louise?'
Mrs Serrocold smiled and seemed to come back from
a long way away.
'I was thinking of Gina,' she said. 'And of what you
said about Stephen Restarick. Gina's a dear girl, you
know, and she does really love Wally. I'm sure she does.'
Miss Marple said nothing.
'Girls like Gina like to kick up their heels a bit.' Mrs
Serrocold spoke in an almost pleading voice. 'They're
young and they like to feel their power. It's natural,
really. I know Wally Hudd isn't the sort of man we
imagined Gina marrying. Normally she'd never have met
him. But she did meet him, and fell in love with him - and
presumably she knows her own business best.'

164


'Probably she does,' said Miss Marple.
'But it's so very important that Gina should be happy.'
Miss Marple looked curiously at her friend.
'It's important, I suppose, that everyone should be
happy.'
'Oh yes. But Gina's a very special case. When we took
her mother - when we took Pippa - we felt that it was an
experiment that had simply got to succeed. You see,
Pippa's mother -'
Carrie Louise paused.
Miss Marple said:
'Who was Pippa's mother?'
Carrie Louise said: 'Eric and I agreed that we should
never tell anybody that. She never knew herself.'
'I'd like to know,' said Miss Marple.
Mrs Serrocold looked at her doubtfully.
'It isn't just curiosity,' said Miss Marple. 'I really well
- need to know. I can hold my tongue, you know.'
'You could always keep a secret, Jane,' said Carrie
Louise with a reminiscent smile. 'Dr Galbraith - he's the
Bishop of Cromer now - he knows. But no one else.
Pippa's mother was Katherine Elsworth.'
'Elsworth? Wasn't that the woman who administered
arsenic to her husband? Rather a celebrated case.'
'Yes.'
'She was hanged?'
'Yes. But you know it's not at all sure that she did it.
The husband was an arsenic eater - they didn't understand
so much about those things then.'
'She soaked flypapers.'
'The maid's evidence, we always thought, was deft-nitely
malicious.'
'And Pippa was her daughter?'

165


'Yes. Eric and I determined to give the child a fresh
start in life - with love and care and all the things a child
needs. We succeeded. Pippa was - herself. The sweetest,
happiest creature imaginable.'
Miss Marple was silent a long time.
Carrie Louise turned away from the dressing table.
'I'm ready now. Perhaps you'll ask the Inspector or
whatever he is to come up to my sitting-room. He won't
mind, I'm sure.'

II

Inspector Curry did not mind. In fact he rather welcomed
the chance of seeing Mrs Serrocold on her own
territory.
As he stood there waiting for her, he looked round him
curiously. It was not his idea of what he termed to himself
'a rich woman's boudoir.'
It had an old-fashioned couch and some rather
uncomfortable looking Victorian chairs with twisted
woodwork backs. The chintzes were old and faded but of
an attractive pattern displaying the Crystal Palace. It was
one of the smaller rooms, though even then it was larger
than the drawing-room of most modem houses. But it
had a cosy rather crowded appearance with its little
tables, its bric-t-brac, and its photographs. Curry looked
at an old snapshot of two little girls, one dark and lively,
the other plain and staring out sulkily on the world from
under a heavy fringe. He had seen that same expression
that morning. 'Pippa and Mildred' was written on the
photograph. There was a photograph of Eric Gulbrandsen
hanging on the wall, with a gold mount and a heavy

166


ebony frame. Curry had just found a photograph of a
good-looking man with eyes crinkling with laughter who
he presumed was John Restarick when the door opened
and Mrs Serrocold came in.

She wore black, a floating and diaphanous black. Her
little pink and white face looked unusually small under its
crown of silvery hair, and there was a frailness about her
that caught sharply at Inspector Curry's heart. He
understood at that moment a good deal that had per-plexed
him earlier in the morning. He understood why
people were so anxious to spare Caroline Louise Serro-cold
everything that could be spared her.

And yet, he thought, she isn't the kind that would ever
make a fuss ...

She greeted him, asked him to sit down, and took a
chair near him. It was less he who put her at her ease than
she who put him at his. He started to ask his questions
and she answered them readily and without hesitation.
The failure of the lights, the quarrel between Edgar
Lawson and her husband, the shot they had heard...

'It did not seem to you that the shot was in the house?'

'No, I thought it came from outside. I thought it might
have been the backfire of a car.'

'During the quarrel between your husband and this
young fellow Lawson in the study, did you notice
anybody leaving the Hall?'

'Wally had already gone to see about the lights. Miss
Bellever went out shortly afterwards - to get something,

but I can't remember what.'
'Who else left the Hall?'
'Nobody, so far as I know.'
'Would you know, Mrs Serrocold?'
She reflected a moment.


167


'No, I don't think I should.'

'You were completely absorbed in what you could hear

going on in the study?'

'Yes.'

'And you were apprehensive as to what might happen
there?'

'No - no, I wouldn't say that. I didn't think anything
would really happen.'

'But Lawson had a revolver?'

'Yes.'

'And was threatening your husband with it?'

'Yes. But he didn't mean it.'

Inspector Curry felt his usual slight exasperation at
this statement. So she was another of them!

'You can't possibly have been sure of that, Mrs
Serrocold.'

'Well, but I was sure. In my own mind, I mean. What
is it the young people say - putting on an act? That's what
I felt it was. Edgar's only a boy. He was being
melodramatic and silly and fancying himself as a bold
desperate character. Seeing himself as the wronged hero
in a romantic story. I was quite sure he would never fire
that revolver.'

'But he did f'Lre it, Mrs Serrocold.'

Carrie Louise smiled.

'I expect it went off by accident.'

Again exasperation mounted in Inspector Curry.

'It was not an accident. Lawson fired that revolver
twice - and fired it at your husband. The bullets only just
missed him.'

Carrie Louise looked startled and then'grave.

'I can't really believe that. Oh yes' - she hurried on to
forestall the Inspector's protest - 'of course I have to


168


believe it if you tell me so. But I still feel there must be a
simple explanation. Perhaps Dr Maverick can explain it
to me.'

'Oh yes, Dr Maverick will explain it all right,' said
Curry grimly. 'Dr Maverick can explain anything. I'm
sure of that.'

Unexpectedly Mrs Serrocold said:

'I know that a lot of what we do here seems to you
foolish and pointless, and psychiatrists can be very
irritating sometimes. But we do achieve results, you
know. We have our failures, but we have successes too.
And what we try to do is worth doing. And though you
probably won't believe it, Edgar is really devoted to my
husband. He started this silly business about Lewis's
being his father because he wants so much to have a
father like Lewis. But what I can't understand is why he
should suddenly get violent. He had been so very much
better - really practically normal. Indeed he has always
seemed normal to me.'

The Inspector did not argue the point.

He said: 'The revolver that Edgar Lawson had was one
belonging to your granddaughter's husband. Presumably
Lawson took it from Walter Hudd's room. Now tell me,
have you ever seen this weapon before?'

On the palm of his hand he held out the small black
automatic.

Carrie Louise looked at it.

'No, I don't think so.'

'I found it in the piano stool. It has recently been fired.
We haven't had time to check on it fully yet, but I should
say that it is almost certainly the weapon with which Mr
Gulbrandsen was shot.'

She frowned.


169


'And you found it in the piano stool?'

'Under some very old music. Music that I should say

had not been played for years.'

'Hidden, then?'

'Yes. You remember who was at the piano last night?'
'Stephen Restarick.'
'He was playing?'

'Yes. Just softly. A funny melancholy little tune.'
'When did he stop playing, Mrs Serrocold?'
'When did he stop? I don't know.'

'But he did stop? He didn't go on playing all through
the quarrel.'

'No. The music just died down.'

'Did he get up from the piano stool?'

'I don't know. I've no idea what he did until he came
over to the study door to try and fit a key to it.'

'Can you think of any reason why Stephen Restarick
should shoot Mr Gulbrandsen?'

'None whatever.' She added thoughtfully, 'I don't
believe he did.'

'Gulbrandsen might have found out something dis-creditable
about him.'

'That seems to me very unlikely.'

Inspector Curry had a wild wish to reply:

'Pigs may fly but they're very unlikely birds.' It had
been a saying of his grandmother's. Miss Marple, he
thought, was sure to know it.


III


Carrie Louise came down the broad stairway and three
people converged upon her from different directions,


170


Gina from the long corridor, Miss Marple from the

library, and Juliet Be[lever from the Great Hall.

Gina spoke first.

'Darling!' she exclaimed passionately. 'Are you all
right? They haven't bullied you or given you third degree
or anything?'

'Of course not, Gina. What odd ideas you have!
Inspector Curry was charming and most considerate.'

'So he ought to be,' said Miss Believer. 'Now, Carrie,
I've got all your letters here and a parcel. I was going to
bring them up to you.'

'Bring them into the library,' said Carrie Louise.
All four of them went into the library.

Carrie Louise sat down and began opening her letters.
There were about twenty or thirty of them.

As she opened them, she handed them to Miss
Believer, who sorted them into heaps, explaining to Miss
Marple as she did so:

'Three main categories. One - from relations of the
boys. Those I hand over to Dr Maverick. Begging letters
I deal with myself. And the rest are personal - and Cara
gives me notes on how to deal with them.'

The correspondence once disposed of, Mrs Serrocold
turned her attention to the parcel, cutting the string with
scissors.

Out of the neat wrappings there appeared an attractive
box of chocolates tied up with gold ribbon.

'Someone must think it's my birthday,' said Mrs
Serrocold with a smile.

She slipped offthe ribbon and opened the box. Inside
was a visiting card. Carrie Louise looked at it with slight
surprise.

'With love from Alex,' she said. 'How odd of him to


171


send me a box of chocolates by post on the same day he
was coming down here.'

Uneasiness stirred in Miss Marple's mind.

She said quickly:

'Wait a minute, Carrie Louise. Don't eat one yet.'
Mrs Serrocold looked faintly surprised.
'I was going to hand them round.'

'Well, don't. Wait while I ask - Is Alex about the
house, do you know, Gina?'

Gina said quickly: 'Alex was in the Hall just now, I
think.'

She went across, opened the door, and called him.

Alex Restarick appeared in the doorway a moment
later.

'Madonna darling! So you're up. None the worse?'

He came across to Mrs Serrocold and kissed her gently
on both cheeks.

Miss Marple said:

'Carrie Louise wants to thank you for the chocolates.'
Alex looked surprised.
'What chocolates?'

'These chocolates,' said Carrie Louise.

'But I never sent you any chocolates, darling.'
'The box has got your card in,' said Miss Believer.
Alex peered down.

'So it has. How odd. How very odd ... I certainly
didn't send them.'

'What a very extraordinary thing,' said Miss Believer.
'They look absolutely scrumptious,' said Gina, peering
into the box. 'Look, Grandam, there are your favourite
Kirsch ones in the middle.'

Miss Marple gently but firmly took the box away from
her. Without a word she took it out of the room and went


172


to find Lewis Serrocold. It took her some time because he
had gone over to the College - she found him in Dr
Maverick's room there. She put the box on the table in
front of him. He listened to her brief account of the
circumstances. His face grew suddenly stem and hard.

Carefully, he and the doctor lifted out chocolate after
chocolate and examined them.

'I think,' said Dr Maverick, 'that these ones I have put
aside have almost certainly been tampered with. You see
the unevenness of the chocolate coating underneath? The
next thing to do is to get them analysed.'

'But it seems incredible,' said Miss Marple. 'Why,
everyone in the house might have been poisoned?

Lewis nodded. His face was still white and hard.
'Yes. There is a ruthlessness - a disregard -' he broke
off. 'Actually I think all these particular chocolates are
Kirsch flavouring. That is Caroline's favourite. So, you

see, there is knowledge behind this.'

Miss Marple said quietly:

'If it is as you suspect - if there is - poison - in these
chocolates, then I'm afraid Carrie Louise will have to

know what is going on. She must be put upon her guard.'
Lewis Serrocold said heavily:

'Yes. She will have to know that someone wants to kill
her. I think that she will find it almost impossible to
believe.'


173


CHAPTER 16


"Ere, Miss. Is it true as there's an 'ideous poisoner at
work?'

Gina pushed the hair back from her forehead and
jumped as the hoarse whisper reached her. There was
paint on her cheek and paint on her slacks. She and her
selected helpers had been busy on the backcloth of the
Nile at Sunset for their next theatrical production.

It was one of these helpers who was now asking the
question. Ernie, the boy who had given her such valuable
lessons in the manipulation of locks. Ernie's fingers were
equally dexterous at stage carpentry, and he was one of
the most enthusiastic theatrical assistants.

His eyes now were bright and beady with pleasurable
anticipation.

Ernie shut one eye.

'It's all round the dorms,' he said. 'But look 'ere, Miss,
it wasn't one of us. Not a thing like that. And nobody
wouldn't do a thing to Mrs Serrocold. Even Jenkins
wouldn't cosh her. 'Tisn't as though it was the old bitch.
Wouldn't 'alf like to poison 'er, I wouldn't.'

'Don't talk like that about Miss Believer.'

'Sorry, Miss. It slipped out. What poison was it, Miss?
Strickline, was it? Makes you arch your back and die in
agonies, that does. Or was it Prussian acid?'

'I don't know what you're talking about, Ernie.'
Ernie winked again.

'Not 'alfyou don't! Mr Alex it was done it, so they say.


174


Brought them chocs down from London. But that's a lie.

Mr Alex wouldn't do a thing like that, would he, Miss?'
'Of course he wouldn't,' said Gina.

'Much more likely to be Mr Baumgarten. When he's
giving us P.T. he makes the most awful faces, and Don
and I think as he's batty.'

'Just move that turpentine out of the way.'

Ernie obeyed, murmuring to himself:

'Don't 'arf see life 'ere! Old Gulbrandsen done in
yesterday and now a secret poisoner. D'you think it's the
same person doing both? What 'ud you say, Miss, if I told
you as I know oo it was done 'im in?'

'You can't possibly know anything about it.'

'Coo, carn't I neither? Supposin' I was outside last
night and aw something.'

'How could you have been out? The College is locked
up after roll call at seven.'

'Roll call... I can get out whenever I likes, Miss. Locks
don't mean nothing to me. Get out and walk around the

grounds just for the fun of it, I do.'

Gina said:

'I wish you'd stop telling lies, Ernie.'

'Who's telling lies?'

'You are. You tell lies and you boast about things that
you've never done at all.'

'That's what you say, Miss. You wait till the coppers

come round and arsk me all about what I saw last night.'
'Well, what did you see?'

'Ah,' said Ernie, 'wouldn't you like to know?'

Gina made a rush at him and he beat a strategic retreat.
Stephen came over from the other side of the theatre and
joined Gina. They discussed various tehnical matters and
then, side by side, they walked back towards the house.


175


'Is this about the place where you stopped your car last
night?' he asked.

Alex Restarick stood back a little as though
considering.

'Near enough,' he said. 'It's difficult to tell exactly
because of the fog. Yes, I should say this was the place.'

Inspector Curry stood looking round with an apprais
ing eye.

The gravelled sweep of drive swept round in a slow
curve, and at this point, emerging from a screen of
rhododendrons, the west facade of the house came
suddenly into view with its terrace and yew hedges and
steps leading down to the lawns. Thereafter the drive
continued in its curving progress, sweeping through a
belt of trees and round between the lake and the house
until it ended in the big gravel sweep at the east side of the
house.

'Dodgett,' said Inspector Curry.

Police Constable Dodgett, who had been holding
himself at the ready, started spasmodically into motion.
He hurled himself across the intervening space of lawn in
a diagonal line towards the house, reached the terrace,
went in by the side door. A few moments later the
curtains of one of the windows were violently agitated.
Then Constable Dodgett reappeared out of the garden
door, and ran back to rejoin them, breathing like a steam
engine.

'Two minutes and forty-two seconds,' said Inspector
Curry, clicking the stop watch with which he had been

timing him. 'They don't take long, these things, do they?'
His tone was pleasantly conversational.

'I don't run as fast as your constable,' said Alex. 'I


178


presume it is my supposed movements you have been
timing?'
'I'm just pointing out that you hact the opportunity to
do murder. That's all, Mr Restarick. I'm not making any
accusations - as yet.'
Alex Restarick said kindly to Constable Dodgett, who
was still panting:
'I can't run as fast as you can, but I believe I'm in
better training.'
'It's since 'having the bronchitis last winter,' said
Dodgett.
Alex turned back to the Inspector.
'Seriously, though, in spite of crying to make me
uncomfortable and observing my reactions - and you
must remember that we artistic folk are oh! so sensitive,
such tender plants? - his voice took on a mocking note 'you
can't really believe I had anythirg to do with all this?
I'd hardly send a box of poisoned chocolates to Mrs
Serrocold and put my card inside, would I?'
'That might be what we are meatat to think. There's
such a thing as a double bluff, Mr lestarick.'
'Oh, I see. How ingenious you ar. By the way, those
chocolates were poisoned?'
'The six chocolates containing Kirsch flavouring in the
top layer were poisoned, yes. They contained aconitine.'
'Not one of my favourite poisons, Inspector. Personally,
I have a weakness for curare.'
'Curare has to be introduced into tlae bloodstream, Mr
Restarick,'not into the stomach.'
'How wonderfully knowledgeable the police force are,'
said Alex admiringly.
Inspector Curry cast a quiet sideways glance at the
young man. He noted the slightly pointed ears, the un179



English Mongolian type of face. The eyes that danced
with mischievous mockery. It would have been hard at
any time to know what Alex Restarick was thinking. A
satyr - or did he mean a faun? An overfed faun, Inspector
Curry thought suddenly, and somehow there was an
unpleasantness about that idea.

A twister with brains - that's how he would sum up
Alex Restarick. Cleverer than his brother. Mother had
been a Russian or so he had heard. 'Russians' to
Inspector Curry were what 'Bony' had been in the early
days of the nineteenth century, and what 'the Huns' had
been in the early twentieth century. Anything to do with
Russia was bad in Inspector Curry's opinion, and if Alex
Restarick had murdered Gulbrandsen he would be a very
satisfactory criminal. But unfortunately Curry was by no
means convinced that he had.

Constable Dodgett, having recovered his breath, now
spoke.

'I moved the curtains as you told me, sir,' he said. 'And
counted thirty. I noticed that the curtains have a hook
torn off at the top. Means that there's a gap. You'd see the
light in the room from outside.'

Inspector Curry said to Alex:

'Did you notice light streaming out from that window
last night?'

'I couldn't see the house at all because of the fog. I told
you so.'

'Fog's patchy, though. Sometimes it clears for a
minute here and there.'

'It never cleared so that I could see the house - the
main part, that is. The gymnasium building close at hand
loomed up out of the mist in a deliciously unsubstantial


180


way. It gave a perfect illusion of dock warehouses. As I
told you, I am putting on a Limehouse Ballet and '
'You told me,' agreed Inspector Curry.
'One gets in the habit, you know, of looking at things
from the point of view of a stage set, rather than from the
point of view of reality.'
'I daresay. And yet a stage set's real enough, isn't it, Mr
Restarick?'
'I don't see exactly what you mean, Inspector.'
'Well, it's made of real materials - canvas and wood
and paint and cardboard. The illusion is in the eye of the
beholder, not in the set itself. That, as I say, is real
enough, as real behind the scenes as it is in front.'
Alex stared at him.
'Now that, you know, is a very penetrating remark,
Inspector. It's given me an idea.'
'For another ballet?'
'No, not for another ballet ... Dear me, I wonder if
we've all been rather stupid?'

III

The Inspector and Dodgett went back to the house across
the lawn. (Looking for footprints, Alex said to himself.
But here he was wrong. They had looked for footprints
very early that morning and had been unsuccessful
because it had rained heavily at 2 a.m.) Alex walked
slowly up the drive, turning over in his mind the
possibilities of his new idea.
He was diverted from this, however, by the sight of
Gina walking on the path by the lake. The house was on
a slight eminence, and the ground sloped gently down

181


from the from sweeps of gravel to the lake, which was
bordered by rhododendrons and other shrubs. Alex ran
down the gravel and found Gina.
'If you could black out that absurd Victorian monstrosity,'
he said, screwing up his eyes, 'this would make
a very good Swan Lake, with you, Gina, as the Swan
Maiden. You are more like the Snow Queen though,
when I come to think of it. Ruthless, determined to have
your own way, quite without pity or kindliness or the
rudiments of compassion. You are very, very feminine,
Gina dear.'
'How malicious you are, Alex dear!'
'Because I refuse to be taken in by you? You're very
pleased with yourself, aren't you, Gina? You've got us all
where you want us. Myself, Stephen, and that large
simple husband of yours.'
'You're talking nonsense.'
'Oh no, I'm not. Stephen's in love with you. I'm in
love with you, and Wally's desperately miserable. What
more could a woman want?'
Gina looked at him and laughed.
Alex nodded his head vigorously.
'You have the rudiments of honesty, I'm glad to see.
That's the Latin in you. You don't go to the trouble of
pretending that you're not attractive to men - and that
you're terribly sorry about it if they are attracted to you.
You like having men in love with you, don't you, cruel
Gina? Even miserable little Edgar Lawson?
Gina looked at him steadily.
She said in a quiet serious tone:
'It doesn't last very long, you know. Women have a
much worse time of it in the world than men do. They're
more vulnerable. They have children, and they mind 182



terribly - about their children. As soon as they lose their
looks, the men they love don't love them any more.
They're betrayed and deserted and pushed aside. I don't
blame men. I'd be the same myself. I don't like people
who are old or ugly or ill or who whine about their
troubles or who are ridiculous like Edgar, strutting about
and pretending he's important and worthwhile. You say
I'm cruel? It's a cruel world! Sooner or later it will be
cruel to me! But now I'm young and I'm nice looking and
people find me attractive.' Her teeth flashed out in her
peculiar warm sunny smile. 'Yes, I enjoy it, Alex. Why
shouldn't I?'
'Why indeed?' said Alex. 'What I want to know is what
are you going to do about it. Are you going to marry
Stephen or are you going to marry me?'
'I'm married to Wally.'
'Temporarily. Every woman should make one mistake
matrimonially - but there's no need to dwell on it.
Having tried out the show in the provinces, the time has
come to bring it to the West End.'
'And you're the West End?'
'Indubitably.'
'Do you really want to marry me? I can't imagine you
married.'
'I insist on marriage. Affaires, I always think, are so
very old-fashioned. Difficulties with passports and hotels
and all that. I shall never have a mistress unless I can't get
her any other way!'
Gina's laugh rang out fresh and clear.
'You do amuse me, Alex.'
'It is my principal asset. Stephen is much better
looking than I am. He's extremely handsome and very
intense which, of course, women adore. But intensity is

183


fatiguing in the home. With me, Gina, you will find life
entertaining.'

'Aren't you going to say you love me madly?'
'However true that may be, I shall certainly not say it.
It would be one up to you and one down to me if I did.
No, all I am prepared to do is to make you a businesslike
offer of marriage.'

'I shall have to think about it,' said Gina smiling.
'Naturally. Besides, you've got to put Wally out of his
misery first. I've a lot of sympathy with Wally. It must be
absolute hell for him to be married to you and trailed
along at your chariot wheels into this heavy family
atmosphere of philanthropy.'

'What a beast you are, Alex?

'A perceptive beast.'

'Sometimes,' said Gina, 'I don't think Wally cares for
me one little bit. He just doesn't notice me any more.'

'You've stirred him up with a stick and he doesn't
respond? Most annoying.'

Like a flash Gina swung her palm and delivered a

ringing slap on Alex's smooth cheek.

'Touch!' cried Alex.

With a quick deft movement he gathered her into his
arms and before she could resist, his lips fastened on hers
in a long ardent kiss. She struggled a moment and then

relaxed ...

'Gina!'

They sprang apart. Mildred Strete, her face red, her
lips quivering, glared at them balefully. For a moment
the eagerness of her words choked their utterance.

'Disgusting ... disgusting ... you abandoned beastly
girl.., you're just like your mother... You're a bad lot...
I always knew you were a bad lot.., utterly depraved...


184


and you're not only an adulteress - you're a murderess
too. Oh yes, you are. I know what I know!'

'And what do you know? Don't be ridiculous, Aunt
Mildred.'

'I'm no aunt of yours, thank goodness. No blood
relation to you. Why, you don't even know who your
mother was or where she came from! But you know well
enough what my father was like and my mother. What
sort of a child do you think they would adopt? A
criminal's child or prostitute's probably! That's the sort
of people they were. They ought to have remembered
that bad blood will tell. Though I daresay that it's the

Italian in you that makes you turn to poison.'

'How dare you say that?'

'I shall say what I like. You can't deny now, can you,
that somebody tried to poison mother? And who's the
most likely person to do that? Who comes into an
enormous fortune if mother dies? You do, Gina, and you

may be sure that the police have not overlooked that fact.'
Still trembling, Mildred moved rapidly away.
'Pathological,' said Alex. 'Definitely pathological.
Really most interesting. It makes one wonder about the
late Canon Strete ... religious scruples, perhaps? ... Or
would you say impotent?'

'Don't be disgusting, Alex. Oh I hate her, I hate her, I
hate her.'

Gina clenched her hands and shook with fury.
'Lucky you hadn't got a knife in your stocking,' said
Alex. 'If you had, dear Mrs Strete might have known
something about murder from the point of view of the
victim. Calm down, Gina. Don't look so melodramatic
and like Italian Opera.'

'How dare she say I tried to poison Grandam?'


185


'Well, darling, somebody tried to poison her. And from
the point of view of motive you're well in the picture,
aren't you?'
'Alex!' Gina stared at him, dismayed. 'Do the police
think so?'
'It's extremely difficult to know what the police think.
... They keep their own counsel remarkably well.
They're by no means fools, you know. That reminds
me '
'Where are you going?'
'To work out an idea of mine.'

186


CHAPTER 1 7


'You say somebody has been trying to poison me?'
Carrie Louise's voice held bewilderment and disbelief.
'You know,' she said, 'I can't really believe it ...'
She waited a few moments, her eyes half closed.

Lewis said gently, 'I wish I could have spared you this,
dearest.'

Almost absently she stretched out a hand to him and he
took it.

Miss Marple, sitting close by, shook her head
sympathetically.

Carrie Louise opened her eyes.
'Is it really true, Jane?' she asked.
'I'm afraid so, my dear.'

'Then everything -' Carrie Louise broke off.

She went on:

'I've always thought I knew what was real and what
wasn't ... This doesn't seem real - but it is ... So I may
be wrong everywhere ... But who could want to do such
a thing to me? Nobody in this house could want to - kill
me?'

Her voice still held incredulity.

'That's what I would have thought,' said Lewis. 'I was
wrong.'

'And Christian knew about it? That explains it.'
'Explains what?' asked Lewis.

'His manner,' said Carrie Louise. 'It was very odd, you
know. Not at all his usual self. He seemed - upset about


187


me - as though he was wanting to say something to me and
then not saying it. And he asked me if my heart was
strong? And if I'd been well lately? Trying to hint to me,
perhaps. But why not say something straight out? It's so
much simpler just to say it straight out.'
'He didn't want to - cause you pain, Caroline.'
'Pain? But why - Oh I see ...' Her eyes widened. 'So that's what you believe. But you're wrong, Lewis, quite
wrong. I can assure you of that.'
Her husband avoided her eyes.
'I'm sorry,' said Mrs Serrocold after a moment or two.
'But I can't believe anything of what has happened lately
is true. Edgar shooting at you. Gina and Stephen. That
ridiculous box of chocolates. It just isn't true.' ' Nobody spoke.
Caroline Louise Serrocold sighed.
'I suppose,' she said, 'that I must have lived outside
reality for a long time ... Please, both of you, I think I
would like to be alone ... I've got to try and understand
...'

II

Miss Marple came down the stairs and into the Great
Hall to find Alex Restarick standing near the large arched
entrance door with his hand flung out in a somewhat
flamboyant gesture.
'Come in, come in,' said Alex happily and as though he
were the owner of the Great Hall. 'I'm just thinking
about last night.'
Lewis Serrocold, who had followed Miss Marple

188


down from Carrie Louise's sitting-room, crossed the
Great Hall to his study and went in and shut the door.

'Are you trying to reconstruct the crime?' asked Miss
Marple with subdued eagerness.

'Eh?' Alex looked at her with a frown. Then his brow
cleared.

'Oh that,' he said. 'No, not exactly. I was looking at the
whole thing from an entirely different point of view. I was
thinking of this place in the terms of the theatre. Not
reality, but artificiality! Just come over here. Think of it
in the terms of a stage set. Lighting, entrances, exits.
Dramatis Personae. Noises off. All very interesting. Not
all my own idea. The Inspector gave it to me. I think he's
rather a cruel man. He did his best to frighten me this
morning.'

'And did he frighten you?'

'I'm not sure.'

Alex described the Inspector's experiment and the
timing of the performance of the puffing Constable
Dodgett.

'Time,' he said, 'is so very misleading. One thinks
things take such a long time, but really, of course, they
don't.'

'No,' said Miss Marple.

Representing the audience, she moved to a different
position. The stage set now consisted of a vast tapestry
covered wall going up to dimness, with a grand piano up
L. and a window and window seat up R. Very near the
window seat was the door into the library. The piano stool
was only about eight feet from the door into the square
lobby which led to the corridor. Two very convenient
exits! The audience, of course, had an excellent view of
both of them ...


189


But last night, there had been no audience. NObody,
that is to say, had been facing the stage set that Miss
Marple was now facing. The audience, last night, had
been sitting with their backs to that particular stage.

How long, Miss Marple wondered, would it have
taken to slip out of the room, run along the corridor,
shoot Gulbrandsen and come back? Not nearly so long as
one would think. Measured in minutes and seconds a
very short time indeed ...

What had Carrie Louise meant when she had said to
her husband: 'So that's what you believe - but you're
wrong, Lewis!'

'I must say that that was a very penetrating remark of
the Inspector's,' Alex's voice cut in on her meditations.
'About a stage set being real. Made of wood and
cardboard and stuck together with glue and as real on the
unpainted as on the painted side. "The illusion," he
pointed out, "is in the.eyes of the audience."'

'Like conjurers,' Miss Marple murmured vaguely.

'They do it with mirrors is, I believe, the slang phrase.'
Stephen Restarick came in, slightly out of breath.

'Hallo, Alex,' he said. 'That little rat, Ernie Gregg - I
don't know if you remember him?'

'The one who played Feste when you did Twelfth
Night? Quite a bit of talent there, I thought.'

'Yes, he's got talent of a sort. Very good with his hands
too. Does a lot of our carpentry. H°wever, that's neither
here nor there. He's been boasting to Gina that he gets
out at night and wanders about the grounds. Says he was

wandering round last night and boasts he saw something.'
Alex spun round.
'Saw what?'

'Says he's not going to tell. Actually I'm pretty certain


190


he's only trying to show off and get into the limelight. He's an awful liar, but I thought perhaps he ought to be
questioned.'
Alex said sharply: 'I should leave him for a bit. Don't
let him think 'we're too interested.'
'Perhaps - yes, I think you may be right there. This
evening, perhaps.'
Stephen went on into the library.
Miss Marple, moving gently round the Hall in her
character of mobile audience, collided with Alex Restarick
as he steptied back suddenly.
Miss Marple said, 'I'm so sorry.'
Alex frowned at her, said in an absent sort of way:
'I beg your pardon,' and then added in a surprised
voice: 'Oh, it's you.'
It seemed to Miss Marple an odd remark for someone
with whom she had been conversing for some considerable
time.
'I was thinking of something else,' said Alex Restarick.
'That boy Ernie -' He made vague motions with both
hands.
Then, with a sudden change of manner, he crossed the
Hall and went through the library door, shutting it
behind him.
The murmur of voices came from behind the closed
door, but Miss Marple hardly noticed them. She was
uninterested in the versatile Ernie and what he had seen
or pretended to see. She had a shrewd suspicion that
Ernie had seen nothing at all. She did not believe for a
moment that on a cold raw foggy night like last night,
Ernie would have troubled to use his lockpicking activities
and wander about in the Park. In all probability he

191


never had got out at night. Boasting, that was all it had been.
'Like Johnnie Backhouse,' thought Miss Marple, who
always had a good storehouse of parallels to draw upon
selected from inhabitants of St Mary Mead.
'I seen you last night,' had been Johnnie Backhouse's
unpleasant taunt to all he thought it might affect.
It had been a surprisingly successful remark. So many
people, Miss Marple reflected, have been in places where
they are anxious not to be seen!
She dismissed Johnnie from her mind and concentrated
on a vague something which Alex's account of
Inspector Curry's remarks had stirred to life. Those
remarks had given Alex an idea. She was not sure that
they had not given her an idea, too. The same idea? Or a
different one?
She stood where Alex Restarick had stood. She
thought to herself, 'This is not a real Hall. This is only
cardboard and canvas and wood. This is a stage scene...'
Scrappy phrases flashed across her mind. 'Illusion -' 'In
the eyes of the audience.' 'They do it with mirrors...' Bowls of goldfish ... yards of coloured ribbon ...
vanishing ladies ... all the panoply and misdirection of
the conjurer's art ...
Something stirred in her consciousness - a picture something
that Alex had said ... something that he had
described to her ... Constable Dodgett puffing and
panting ... Panting ... Something shifted in her mind came
into sudden focus ...
'Why of course!' said Miss Marple. 'That must be it...'

192


CHAPTER 18

'Oh, Wally, how you startled me!'
Gina, emerging from the shadows by the theatre,
jumped back a little, as the figure of Wally Hudd
materialized out of the gloom. It was not yet quite dark,
but had that eerie half light when objects lose their reality
and take on the fantastic shapes of nightmare.
'What are you doing down here? You never come near
the theatre as a rule.'
'Maybe I was looking for you, Gina. It's usually the
best place to find you, isn't it?'
Wally's soft, faintly drawling voice held no special
insinuation, and yet Gina flinched a little.
'It's a job and I'm keen on it. I like the atmosphere of
paint and canvas, and back stage generally.'
'Yes. It means a lot to you. I've seen that. Tell me,
Gina, how long do you think it will be before this
business is all cleared up?'
'The inquest's tomorrow. It will just be adjourned for
a fortnight or something like that. At least, that's what
Inspector Curry gave us to understand.'
'A fortnight,' said Wally thoughtfully. 'I see. Say three
weeks, perhaps. And after that - we're free. I'm going
back to the States then.'
'Oh! but I can't rush off like that,' cried Gina. 'I
couldn't leave Grandam. And we've got these two new
productions we're working on '
'I didn't say "we." I said I was going.'

193


Gina stopped and looked up at her husband. Some-thing
in the effect of the shadows made him seem very
big. A big, quiet figure - and in some way, or so it seemed
to her, faintly menacing... Standing over her. Threaten-ing
- what?

'Do you mean' - she hesitated - 'you don't want me to
come?'

'Why, no - I didn't say that.'

'You don't care if I come or not? Is that it?'

She was suddenly angry.

'See here, Gina. This is where we've got to have a
showdown. We didn't know much about each other
when we got married - not much about each other's
backgrounds, not much about the other one's folks. We
thought it didn't matter. We thought nothing mattered
except having a swell time together. Well, stage one is
over. Your folks didn't - and don't - think much of me.
Maybe they're right. I'm not their kind. But if you think
I'm staying on here, kicking my heels, and doing odd jobs
in what I consider is just a crazy set-up - well, think
again! I want to live in my own country, doing the kind of
job I want to do, and can do. My idea of a wife is the kind
of wife who used to go along with the old pioneers, ready
for anything, hardship, unfamiliar country, danger,
strange surroundings ... Perhaps that's too much to ask
of you, but it's that or nothing! Maybe I hustled you into
marriage. If so, you'd better get free of me and start again.
It's up to you. If you prefer one of these arty boys - it's
your life and you've got to choose. But I'm going home.'

'I think you're an absolute pig,' said Gina. 'I'm
enjoying myself here.'

'Is that so? Well, I'm not. You even enjoy murder, I
suppose?'


194


Gina drew in her breath sharply.
'That's a cruel wicked thing to say. I was very fond of
Uncle Christian. And don't you realize that someone has
been quietly poisoning Grandam for months? It's
horrible?
'I told you I didn't like it here. I don't like the kind of
things that go on. I'm quitting.'
'If you're allowed to! Don't you realize you'll probably
be arrested for Uncle Christian's murder? I hate the way
Inspector Curry looks at you. He's just like a cat watching
a mouse with a nasty sharp-clawed paw all ready to
pounce. Just because you were out of the Hall fixing
those lights, and because you're not English, I'm sure
they'll go fastening it on you.'
'They'll need some evidence first.'
Gina wailed:
'I'm frightened for you, Wally. I've been frightened all
along.'
'No good being scared. I tell you they've got nothing
on me!'
They walked in silence towards the house.
Gina said:
'I don't believe you really want me to come back to
America with you ...'
Walter Hudd did not answer.
Gina Hudd turned on him and stamped her foot.
'I hate you. I hate you. You are horrible - a beast - a
cruel unfeeling beast. After all I've tried to do for you!
You want to be rid of me. You don't care if you never see
me again. Well, I don't care if/never seeyou again! I was
a stupid little fool ever to marry you, and I shall get a
divorce as soon as possible, and I shall marry Stephen or
Alexis and be much happier than I ever could be with

195


you. And I hope you go back to the States and marry
some horrible girl who makes you really miserable?

'Fine!' said Wally. 'Now we know where we are?


II


Miss Marple saw Gina and Wally go into the house
together.

She was standing at the spot where Inspector Curry
had made his experiment with Constable Dodgett earlier
in the afternoon.

Miss Believer's voice behind her made her jump.

'You'll get a chill, Miss Marple, standing about like
that after the sun's gone down.'

Miss Marple fell meekly into step with her and they
walked briskly through the house.

'I was thinking about conjuring tricks,' said Miss
Marple. 'So difficult when you're watching them to see
how they're done, and yet, once they are explained, so
absurdly simple. (Although, even now, I can't imagine
how conjurers produce bowls of goldfish!) Did you ever
see the Lady who is Sawn in Half- such a thrilling trick.
It fascinated me when I was eleven years old, I
remember. And I never could think how it was done. But
the other day there was an article in some paper giving the
whole thing away. I don't think a newspaper should do
that, do you? It seems it's not one girl - but two. The head
of one and the feet of the other. You think it's one girl and
it's really two - and the other way round would work
equally well, wouldn't it?'

Miss Believer looked at her with faint surprise.


196


Miss Marple was not often so fluffy and incoherent as
this. 'It's all been too much for the old lady,' she thought.
'When you only look at one side of a thing, you only see
one side,' continued Miss Marple. 'But everything fits in
perfectly well if you can only make up your mind what is
reality and what is illusion.' She added abruptly, 'Is
Carrie Louise - all right?'
'Yes,' said Miss Believer. 'She's all right, but it must
have been a shock, you know - finding out that someone
wanted to kill her. I mean particularly a shock to her,
because she doesn't understand violence.'
'Carrie Louise understands some things that we don't,'
said Miss Marple thoughtfully. 'She always has.'
'I know what you mean - but she doesn't live in the real
world.'
'Doesn't she?'
Miss Believer looked at her in surprise.
'There never was a more unworldly person than
Cara '
'You don't think that perhaps -' Miss Marple broke
off, as Edgar Lawson passed them, swinging along at a
great pace. He gave a kind of shamefaced nod, but
averted his face as he passed.
'I've remembered now who he reminds me of,' said
Miss Marple. 'It came to me suddenly just a few
moments ago. He reminds me of a young man called
Leonard Wylie. His father was a dentist, but he got old
and blind and his hand used to shake, and so people
preferred to go to the son. But the old man was very
miserable about it, and moped, said he was no good for
anything any more, and Leonard who was very softhearted
and rather foolish, began to pretend he drank
more than he should. He always smelt of whisky and he

197


used to sham being rather fuddled when his patients
came. His idea was that they'd go back to the father again

and say the younger man was no good.'

'And did they?'

'Of course not,' said Miss Marple. 'What happened
was what anybody with any sense could have told him
would happen! The patients went to Mr Reilly, the rival
dentist. So many people with good hearts have no sense.
Besides, Leonard Wylie was so unconvincing... His idea
of drunkenness wasn't in the least like real drunkenness,
and he overdid the whisky - spilling it on his clothes, you
know, to a perfectly impossible extent.'

They went into the house by the side door.


198


CHAPTER 19


Inside the house, they found the family assembled in the
library. Lewis was walking up and down, and there was
an air of general tension in the atmosphere.

'Is anything the matter?' asked Miss Believer.

Lewis said shortly: 'Ernie Gregg is missing from roll
call tonight.'

'Has he run away?'

'We don't know. Maverick and some of the staff are
searching the grounds. If we cannot find him we must
communicate with the police.'

'Grandam!' Gina ran over to Carrie Louise, startled by

the whiteness of her face. 'You look ill.'

'I am unhappy. The poor boy ...'

Lewis said: 'I was going to question him this evening
as to whether he had seen anything noteworthy last night.
I have the offer of a good post for him and I thought that
after discussing that, I would bring up the other topic.
Now -' he broke off.

Miss Marple murmured softly:

'Foolish boy ... Poor foolish boy ...'

She shook her head, and Mrs Serrocold said gently:
'So you think so too, Jane ...?'

Stephen Restarick came in. He said, 'I missed you at
the theatre, Gina. I thought you said you would - Hallo,
what's up?'

Lewis repeated his information, and as he finished
speaking, Dr Maverick came in with a fair-haired boy


199


with pink cheeks and a suspiciously angelic expression.
Miss Marple remembered his being at dinner on the
night she had arrived at Stonygates.

'I've brought Arthur Jenkins along,' said Dr Maver-ick.
'He seems to have been the last person to talk to
Ernie.'

'Now, Arthur,' said Lewis Serrocold, 'please help us if
you can. Where has Ernie gone? Is this just a prank?'

'I dunno, sir. Straight, I don't. Didn't say nothing to
me, he didn't. All full of the play at the theatre he was,
that's all. Said as how he'd had a smashing idea for the
scenery, what Mrs Hudd and Mr Stephen thought was
first class.'

'There's another thing, Arthur. Ernie claims he was
prowling about the grounds after lock-up last night. Was
that true?'

"Course it ain't. Just boasting, that's all. Perishing liar,
Ernie. He never got out at night. Used to boast he could,
but he wasn't that good with locks! He couldn't do
anything with a lock as was a lock. Anyway 'e was in larst
night, that I do know.'

'You're not saying that just to satisfy us, Arthur?'
'Cross my heart,' said Arthur virtuously.
Lewis did not look quite satisfied.
'Listen,' said Dr Maverick. 'What's that?'

A murmur of voices was approaching. The door was
flung open and looking very pale and ill, the spectacled
Mr Baumgarten staggered in.

He gasped out: 'We've found him - them. It's hor-rible
...'

He sank down on a chair and mopped his forehead.
Mildred Strete said sharply:
'What do you mean - found them?'


200


Baumgarten was shaking all over.
'Down at the theatre,' he said. 'Their heads crushed in
- the big counterweight must have fallen on them. Alexis
Restarick and that boy Ernie Gregg. They're both
dead ...'

201


CHAPTER 20

'I've brought you a cup of strong soup, Carrie Louise,'
said Miss Marple. 'Now please drink it.'
Mrs Serrocold sat up in the big carved oak four-poster
bed. She looked very small and childlike. Her cheeks had
lost their pink flush, and her eyes had a curiously absent
look.
She took the soup obediently from Miss Marple. As
she sipped it, Miss Marple sat down in a chair beside the
bed.
'First, Christian,' said Carrie Louise, 'and now Alex and
poor, sharp, silly little Ernie. Did he really - know
anything?'
'I don't think so,' said Miss Marple. 'He was just
telling lies - making himself important by hinting that he
had seen or knew something. The tragedy is that
somebody believed his lies ...'
Carrie Louise shivered. Her eyes went back to their far
away look.
'We meant to do so much for these boys... We did do
something. Some of them have done wonderfully well.
Several of them are in really responsible positions. A few
slid back - that can't be helped. Modem civilized
conditions are so complex - too complex for some simple
and undeveloped natures. You know Lewis's great
scheme? He always felt that transportation was a thing
that had saved many a potential criminal in the past. They
were shipped overseas - and they made new lives in

202


simpler surroundings. He wants to start a modern
scheme on that basis. To buy up a great tract of territory
- or a group of islands. Finance it for some years, make it
a co-operative self-supporting community - with eve-ryone
taking a stake in it. But cut off so that the early
temptation to go back to cities and the bad old days can be
neutralized. It's his dream. But it will take a lot of money,
of course, and there aren't many philanthropists with
vision now. We want another Eric. Eric would have been
enthusiastic.'

Miss Marple picked up a little pair of scissors and
looked at them curiously.

'What an odd pair of scissors,' she said. 'They've got
two fingers holes on one side and one on the other.'

Carrie Louise's eyes came back from that frightening
far distance.

'Alex gave them to me this morning,' she said. 'They're
supposed to make it easier to cut your right hand nails.
Dear boy, he was so enthusiastic. He made me try them
then and there.'

'And I suppose he gathered up the nail clippings and
took them tidily away,' said Miss Marple.

'Yes,' said Carrie Louise. 'He -' She broke off. 'Why
did you say that?'

'I was thinking about Alex. He had brains. Yes, he had
brains.'

'You mean - that's why he died?'

'I think so - yes.'

'He and Ernie - it doesn't bear thinking about. When
do they think it happened?'

'Late this evening. Between six and seven o'clock
probably ...'

'After they'd knocked off work for the day?'


203


'Yes.'
Gina had been down there that evening - and XXTally
Hudd. Stephen, too, said he had been down to look for
Gina ...
But as far as that went, anybody could have Miss
Marple's train of thought was interrupted.
Carrie Louise said quietly and unexpectedly:
'How much do you know, Jane?'
Miss Marple looked up sharply. The eyes of the two
women met.
Miss Marple said slowly: 'If I was quite sure ...'
'I think you are sure, Jane.'
Jane Marple said slowly, 'XXThat do you want me to do?'
Carrie leaned back against her pillows.
'It is in your hands, Jane - You'll do what you think
right.'
She closed her eyes.
'Tomorrow' - Miss Marple hesitated - 'I shall have to
try and talk to Inspector Curry - if he'll listen ...'

204


CHAPTER 21

Inspector Curry said rather impatiently:
'Yes, Miss Marple?'
'Could we, do you think, go into the Great Hall.'
Inspector Curry looked faintly surprised,
'Is that your idea of privacy? Surely in here '
He looked round the study.
'It's not privacy I'm thinking of so much. It's
something I want to show you. Something Alex Restarick
made me see.'
Inspector Curry, stifling a sigh, got up and followed
Miss Marple.
'Somebody has been talking to you?' he suggested
hopefully.
'No,' said Miss Marple. 'It's not a question of what
people have said. It's really a question of conjuring tricks.
They do it with mirrors, you know - that sort of thing if
you understand me.'
Inspector Curry did not understand. He stared and
wondered if Miss Marple was quite right in the head.
Miss Marple took up her stand and beckoned the
Inspector to stand beside her.
'I want you to think of this place as at stage set,
Inspector. As it was on the night Christian 3ulbrandsen
was killed. You're here in the audience looking at the
people on the stage. Mrs Serrocold and myself and Mrs
Strete, and Gina and Stephen - and just likeon the stage
there are entrances and exits and the characters go out to

205


different places. Only you don't think when you're in the audience where they are really going to. They go out "to
the front door" or "to the kitchen" and when the door
opens you see a little bit of painted backcloth. But really of course they go out to the wings - or the back of the
stage with carpenters and electricians, and other characters
waiting to come on - they go out - to a different
world.'
'I don't quite see, Miss Marple '
'Oh, I know - I daresay it sounds very silly - but if you
think of this as a play and the scene is "the Great Hall at
Stonygates" - what exactly is behind the scene? - I mean
- what is back stage? The terrace - isn't it? - the terrace and a lot of windows opening on to it.
'And that, you see, is how the conjuring trick was done.
It was the trick of the Lady Sawn in Half that made me
think of it.'
'The Lady Sawn in Half?.' Inspector Curry was now
quite sure that Miss Marple was a mental case.
'A most thrilling conjuring trick. You must have seen
it - only not really one girl but two girls. The head of one
and the feet of the other. It looks like one person and is
really two. And so I thought it could just as well be the
other way about. Two people could be really one person.'
'Two people really one?' Inspector Curry looked
desperate.
'Yes. Not for long. How long did your constable take in
the Park to run to this house and back? Two minutes and
forty-five seconds, wasn't it? This would be less than
that. Well under two minutes.'
'What was under two minutes?'
'The conjuring trick. The trick when it wasn't two
people but one person. In there - in the study. We're only

206


looking at the visible part of the stage. Behind the scenes
there is the terrace and a row of windows. So easy when
there are two people in the study to open the study
window, get out, run along the terrace (those footsteps
Alex heard), in at the side door, shoot Christian Gulbrandsen
and run back, and during that time, the other
person in the study does both voices so that we're all quite
sure there are two people in there. And so there were most
of the time, but not for that little period of under two
minutes.'
Inspector Curry found his breath and his voice.
'Do you mean that it was Edgar Lawson who ran along
the terrace and shot Gulbrandsen? Edgar Lawson who
poisoned Mrs Serrocold?'
'But you see, Inspector, no one has been poisoning Mrs
Serrocold at all. That's where the misdirection comes in.
Someone very cleverly used the fact that Mrs Serrocold's
sufferings from arthritis were not unlike the symptoms of
arsenical poisoning. It's the old conjurer's trick of forcing
a card on you. Quite easy to add arsenic to a bottle of tonic - quite easy to add a few lines to a typewritten letter. But
the real reason for Mr Gulbrandsen's coming here was
the most likely reason - something to do with the
Gulbrandsen Trust. Money, in fact. Suppose that there
had been embezzlement - embezzlement on a very big
scale - you see where that points? To just one person '
Inspector Curry gasped: 'Lewis Serrocold?' he murmured
incredulously.
'Lewis Serrocold...' said Miss Marple.

207


CHAPTER 22


Part of letter from Gina Hudd to her aunt Mrs Van
Rydock:

- and so you see, darling Aunt Ruth, the whole thing has
been just like a nightmare - especially the end of it. I've told
you all about this funny man Edgar Lawson. He always was
a complete rabbit - and when the Inspector began questioning
him and breaking him dowr6 he lost his nerve completely and
scuttled like a rabbit. Just lost his nerve and ran - literally
ran. Jumped out of the window and round the house and
down the drive and then there was a policeman coming to
head him off, and he swerved and ran full tilt for the lake. He
leaped into a rotten old punt that's mouldered therefor years
and pushed off. Quite a mad senseless thing to do, of course,
but as I say he was just a panic-stricken rabbit. And then
LeWis gave a great shout and said 'That punt's rotten,' and
raced off to the lake too. The punt went down and there was
Edgar struggling in the water. He couldn't swim. Lewis
jumped in and swam out to him. He got to him but they were
both in difficulty because they'd got among the reeds. One of
the Inspector's men went in with a rope round him but he got
entangled too and they had to pull him in. Aunt Mildred said
'They'll drown - they'll drown - they'll both drown...' in
a silly sort of way, and Grandam just said 'Yes.' I can't
describe to you just how she made that one word sound. Just
'YES' and it went through you like - like a sword.

Am I being just silly and melodramatic? I suppose I am.
But it did sound like that...


208


And then - when it was all oer, and they'd got A out
and tried artificial respiration (but it was no go,t

	Inspector came to us and said to Grandam:
	, the

	'I'm afraid, Mrs Serrocold, there's no hope.'
		:(),

	Grandam said very quietly:

	'Thank you, Inspector.'

Then she looked at us all. 24e longing to help 6

knowing how, and Jolly, looking grtm and tender anct f,dv

to minister as usual, and Stephn stretching out his rt

	·
	.
	. 'g!

and funny old Mss Marple loo,kzng so sad, and tzre,

	·
	-'1{"

doeVenSOMETHING.Wally Iookng upset. A ll so fond of her and wart

	But Grandam just said 'Mildred.' And Aunt ME

	/ed

said 'Mother. 'And they went aoay together into the la rlfe,

Grandam looking so small and .frail and leaning on

Mildred· I never realized, until then, how fond of eaclf /er

they were· It didn't show much, .you know, but it wa

all the time.

Gina paused and sucked the end of her fountair

She resumed:

A bout me and Wally - we're coming back to the Statas

soon as we can ...


209


CHAPTER 23


'What made you guess, Jane?'

Miss Marple took her time about replying. She looked
thoughtfully at the other two - Carrie Louise thinner and
frailer and yet curiously untouched - and the old man
with the sweet smile and the thick white hair. Dr
Galbraith, Bishop of Cromer.

The Bishop took Carrie Louise's hand in his.

'This has been a great sorrow to you, my poor child,
and a great shock.'

'A sorrow, yes, but not really a shock.'

'No,' said Miss Marple. 'That's what I discovered, you
.know. Everyone kept saying how Carrie Louise lived in
another world from this and was out of touch with reality.
But actually, Carrie Louise, it was reality you were in
touch with, and not the illusion. You are never deceived
by illusion like most of us are. When I suddenly realized
that, I saw that I must go by what you thought and felt.
You were quite sure that no one would try to poison you,
you couldn't believe it - and you were quite right not to
believe it, because it wasn't so! You never believed that
Edgar would harm Lewis - and again you were right. He
never would have harmed Lewis. You were sure that
Gina did not love anyone but her husband - and that
again was quite true.

'So therefore, if I was to go by you, all the things that
seemed to be true were only illusions. Illusions created for


210


a definite purpose - in the same way that conjurers create
illusions, to deceive an audience. We were the audience.
'Alex Restarick got an inkling of the truth first because
he had the chance of seeing things from a different angle - from the outside angle. He was with the Inspector in the
drive, and he looked at the house and realized the
possibilities of the windows - and he remembered the
sound of running feet he had heard that night, and then
the timing of the constable showed him what a very short
time things take to what we should imagine they would
take. The constable panted a lot, and later, thinking of a
puffing constable, I remembered that Lewis Serrocold
was out of breath that night when he opened the study
door. He'd just been running hard, you see ...
'But it was Edgar Lawson that was the pivot of it all to
me. There was always something wrong to me about
Edgar Lawson. All the things he said and did were exactly
right for what he was supposed to be, but he himself
wasn't right. Because he was actually a normal young
man playing the part of a schizophrenic - and he was
always, as it were, a little larger than life. He was always
theatrical.
'It must have all been very carefully planned and
thought out. Lewis must have realized on the occasion of
Christian's last visit that something had aroused his
suspicions. And he knew Christian well enough to know
that if he suspected he would not rest until he had
satisfied himself that his suspicions were either justified
or unfounded.'
Carrie Louise stirred.
'Yes,' she said. 'Christian was like that. Slow and
painstaking, but actually very shrewd. I don't know what

211


it was aroused his suspicions but he started investigating - and he found out the truth.'
The Bishop said: 'I blame myself for not having been
a more conscientious trustee.'
'It was never expected of you to understand finance,'
said Carrie Louise. 'That was originally Mr Gilfoy's
province. Then, when he died, Lewis's great experience
put him in what amounted to complete control. And that,
of course, was what went to his head.'
The pink colour came up in her cheeks.
'Lewis was a great man,' she said. 'A man of great
vision, and a passionate believer in what could be
accomplished - with money. He didn't want it for himself - or at least not in the greedy vulgar sense - he did want
the power of it - he wanted the power to do great good
with it '
'He wanted,' said the Bishop, 'to be God.' His voice
was suddenly stem. 'He forgot that man is only the
humble instrument of God's will.'
'And so he embezzled the Trust funds?' said Miss
Marple.
Dr Galbraith hesitated.
'It wasn't only that ...'
'Tell her,' said Carrie Louise. 'She is my oldest friend.'
The Bishop said:
'Lewis Serrocold was what one might call a financial
wizard. In his years of highly technical accountancy, he
had amused himself by working out various methods of
swindling which were practically foolproof. This had
been merely an academic study, but when he once began
to envisage the possibilities that a vast sum of money
could encompass, he put these methods into practice.
You see, he had at his disposal some first-class material.

212


Amongst the boys who passed through here, he chose out
a small select band. They were boys whose bent was
naturally criminal, who loved excitement and who had a
very high order of intelligence. We've not got nearly to
the bottom of it all, but it seems clear that this esoteric
circle was secret and specially trained and were later
placed in key positions, where, by carrying out Lewis's
directions, books were falsified in such a way that large
sums of money were converted without any suspicion
being aroused. I gather that the operations and the
ramifications are so complicated that it will be months
before the auditors can Unravel it all. But the net result
seems to be that under various names and banking
accounts and companies Lewis Serrocold would have
been able to dispose of a colossal sum with which he
intended to establish an overseas colony for a cooperative
experiment in which juvenile delinquents
should eventually own this territory and administer it. It
may have been a fantastic dream '
'It was a dream that might have come true,' said Carrie
Louise.
'Yes, it might have come true. But the means Lewis
Serrocold adopted were dishonest means, and Christian
Gulbrandsen discovered that. He was very upset, particularly
by the realization of what the discovery and the
probable prosecution of Lewis would mean to you,
Carrie Louise.'
'That's why he asked me if my heart was strong, and
seemed so worried about my health,' said Carrie Louise.
'I couldn't understand it.'
'Then Lewis Serrocold arrived back from the North
and Christian met him outside the house and told him
that he knew what was going on. Lewis took it calmly, I

213


think. Both men agreed they must do all they could to
spare you. Christian said he would write to me and ask me
to come here, as a co-trustee, to discuss the position.'
'But of course,' said Miss Marple, 'Lewis Serrocold
had already prepared for this emergency. It was all
planned. He had brought the young man who was to play
the part of Edgar Lawson to the house. There was a real
Edgar Lawson - of course - in case the police looked up
his record. This false Edgar knew exactly what he had to
do - act the part of a schizophrenic victim of persecution
- and give Lewis Serrocold an alibi for a few vital
minutes.
'The next step had been thought out too. Lewis's story
that you, Carrie Louise, were being slowly poisoned when
one actually came to think of it there was only
Lewis's story of what Christian had told him - that, and
a few lines added on the typewriter whilst he was waiting
for the police. It was easy to add arsenic to the tonic. No
danger for you there - since he was on the spot to prevent you drinking it. The chocolates were just an added touch - and of course the original chocolates weren't poisoned
- only those he substituted before turning them over to
Inspector Curry.'
'And Alex guessed,' said Carrie Louise.
'Yes - that's why he collected your nail parings. They
would show if arsenic actually had been administered
over a long period.'
'Poor Alex - poor Ernie.'
There was a moment's silence as the other two thought
of Christian Gulbrandsen, of Alexis Restarick, and of the
boy Ernie - and of how quickly the act of murder could
distort and deform.
'But surely,' said the Bishop, 'Lewis was taking a big

214


risk in persuading Edgar to be his accomplice - even if he

had some hold over him -'

Carrie shook her head.

'It wasn't exactly a hold over him. Edgar was devoted
to Lewis.'

'Yes,' said Miss Marple. 'Like Leonard Wylie and his

father. I wonder perhaps if-'

She paused delicately.

'You saw the likeness, I suppose?' said Carrie Louise.
'So you knew that all along?'

'I guessed. I knew Lewis had once had a short
infatuation for an actress, before he met me. He told me
about it. It wasn't serious, she was a gold-digging type of
woman and she didn't care for him, but I've no doubt at
all that Edgar was actually Lewis's son ...'

'Yes,' said Miss Marple. 'That explains everything...'
'And he gave his life for him in the end,' said Carrie
Louise. She looked pleadingly at the Bishop. 'He did, you
knOW.'

There was a silence and then Carrie Louise said:
'I'm glad it ended that way.., with his life given in the
hope of saving the boy ... People who can be very good
can be very bad, too. I always knew that was true about
Lewis ... But - he loved me very much - and I loved
him.'

'Did you - ever suspect him?' asked Miss Marple.
'No,' s,aid Carrie Louise. 'Because I was puzzled by the
poisoning. I knew Lewis would never poison me and yet
that letter of Christian's said definitely that someone was
poisoning me - so I thought that everything I thought I
knew about people must be wrong ...'

Miss Marple said: 'But when Alex and Ernie were
found killed. You suspected then?'


215


'Yes,' said Carrie Louise. 'Because I didn't think
anyone else but Lewis would have dared. And I began to
be afraid of what he might do next ...'
She shivered slightly.
'I admired Lewis. I admired his - what shall I call it his
goodness? But I do see that if you're - good, you have
to be humble as well.'
Dr Galbraith said gently:
'That, Carrie Louise, is what I have always admired in
you - your humility.'
The lovely blue eyes opened wide in surprise.
'But I'm not clever - and not particularly good. I can
only admire goodness in other people.'
'Dear Carrie Louise,' said Miss Marple.

216


EPILOGUE


'I think Grandam will be quite all right with Aunt
Mildred,' said Gina. 'Aunt Mildred seems much nicer

now - not so peculiar, if you know what I mean?'

'I know what you mean,' said Miss Marple.

'So Wally and I will go back to the States in a
fortnight's time.'

Gina cast a look sideways at her husband.

'I shall forget all about Stonygates and Italy and all my
girlish past and become a hundred per cent American.
Our son will be always addressed as Junior. I can't say
fairer than that, can I, Wally?'

'You certainly cannot, Kate,' said Miss Marple.

Wally, smiling indulgently at an old lady who got

names wrong, corrected her gently:
'Gina, not Kate.'
But Gina laughed.

'She knows what she's saying! You see - she'll callyou
Petruchio in a moment!'

'I just think,' said Miss Marple to Walter, 'that you
have acted very wisely, my dear boy.'

'She thinks you're just the right husband for me,' said
Gina.

Miss Marple looked from one to the other. It was very
nice, she thought, to see two young people so much in
love, and Walter Hudd was completely transformed from
the sulky young man she had first encountered into a
good-humoured smiling giant ...


217


'You two remind me,' she said, 'of-'

Gina rushed forward and placed a hand firmly over
Miss Marple's mouth.

'No, darling,' she exclaimed. 'Don't say it. I'm
suspicious of these village parallels. They've always got a
sting in the tail. You really are a wicked old woman, you

know.'

Her eyes went misty.

'When I think of you, and Aunt Ruth and Grandam all
being young together... How I wonder what you were all
like! I can't imagine it somehow ...'

'I don't suppose you can,' said Miss Marple. 'It was all
a long time ago ...'


218