A Pocket Full of Rye: A Miss Marple Mystery (Miss Marple Mysteries)

by Agatha Christie

  “And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes-peg clipped on her nose,” murmured Miss Marple to herself.

  “Yes, that’s a nasty touch. A nasty, sneering sort of touch. Just a nasty bit of unnecessary bravado.”

  Miss Marple shook her head.

  “Hardly unnecessary. It does all make a pattern, doesn’t it?”

  Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.

  “I don’t quite follow you, Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?”

  Miss Marple immediately became flustered.

  “Well, I mean it does seem—I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you understand—well, one can’t get away from facts, can one?”

  “I don’t think I quite understand.”

  “Well, I mean—first we have Mr. Fortescue. Rex Fortescue. Killed in his office in the city. And then we have Mrs. Fortescue, sitting here in the library and having tea. There were scones and honey. And then poor Gladys with the clothes-peg on her nose. Just to point the whole thing. That very charming Mrs. Lance Fortescue said to me that there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in it, but I couldn’t agree with her, because it’s the rhyme that strikes one, isn’t it?”

  Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don’t think—”

  Miss Marple went on quickly:

  “I expect you’re about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren’t you, Inspector Neele? I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose—I mean it is really highly significant, isn’t it? What I wondered was,” Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage in her hands went on bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this sort of thing to you.”

  “Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddleheaded, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you gone into the question of blackbirds?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I

  For about ten seconds Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple with the utmost bewilderment. His first idea was that the old lady had gone off her head.

  “Blackbirds?” he repeated.

  Miss Marple nodded her head vigorously.

  “Yes,” she said, and forwith recited:

  “ ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye,

  Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

  When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.

  Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?

  “ ‘The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,

  The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey,

  The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

  When there came a little dickey bird and nipped off her nose.’ ”

  “Good Lord,” Inspector Neele said.

  “I mean, it does fit,” said Miss Marple. “It was rye in his pocket, wasn’t it? One newspaper said so. The others just said cereal, which might mean anything. Farmer’s Glory or Cornflakes—or even maize—but it was rye?”

  Inspector Neele nodded.

  “There you are,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “Rex Fortescue. Rex means King. In his Counting House. And Mrs. Fortescue the Queen in the parlour, eating bread and honey. And so, of course, the murderer had to put that clothes-peg on poor Gladys’s nose.”

  Inspector Neele said:

  “You mean the whole setup is crazy?”

  “Well, one mustn’t jump to conclusions—but it is certainly very odd. But you really must make inquiries about blackbirds. Because there must be blackbirds!”

  It was at this point that Sergeant Hay came into the room saying urgently, “Sir.”

  He broke off at sight of Miss Marple. Inspector Neele, recovering himself, said:

  “Thank you, Miss Marple. I’ll look into the matter. Since you are interested in the girl, perhaps you would care to look over the things from her room. Sergeant Hay will show you them presently.”

  Miss Marple, accepting her dismissal, twittered her way out.

  “Blackbirds!” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

  Sergeant Hay stared.

  “Yes, Hay, what is it?”

  “Sir,” said Sergeant Hay, urgently again. “Look at this.”

  He produced an article wrapped in a somewhat grubby handkerchief.

  “Found it in the shrubbery,” said Sergeant Hay. “Could have been chucked there from one of the back windows.”

  He tipped the object down on the desk in front of the inspector, who leaned forward and inspected it with rising excitement. The exhibit was a nearly full pot of marmalade.

  The inspector stared at it without speech. His face assumed a peculiarly wooden and stupid appearance. In actual fact this meant that Inspector Neele’s mind was racing once more round an imaginary track. A moving picture was enacting itself before the eyes of his mind. He saw a new pot of marmalade, he saw hands carefully removing its cover, he saw a small quantity of marmalade removed, mixed with a preparation of taxine and replaced in the pot, the top smoothed over and the lid carefully replaced. He broke off at this point to ask Sergeant Hay:

  “They don’t take marmalade out of the pot and put it into fancy pots?”

  “No, sir. Got into the way of serving it in its own pot during the war when things were scarce, and it’s gone on like that ever since.”

  Neele murmured:

  “That made it easier, of course.”

  “What’s more,” said Sergeant Hay, “Mr. Fortescue was the only one that took marmalade for breakfast (and Mr. Percival when he was at home). The others had jam or honey.”

  Neele nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “That made it very simple, didn’t it?”

  After a slight gap the moving picture went on in his mind. It was the breakfast table now. Rex Fortescue stretching out his hand for the marmalade pot, taking out a spoonful of marmalade and spreading it on his toast and butter. Easier, far easier that way than the risk and difficulty of insinuating it into his coffee cup. A foolproof method of administering the poison! And afterwards? Another gap and a picture that was not quite so clear. The replacing of that pot of marmalade by another with exactly the same amount taken from it. And then an open window. A hand and an arm flinging out that pot into the shrubbery. Whose hand and arm?

  Inspector Neele said in a businesslike voice:

  “Well, we’ll have of course to get this analysed. See if there are any traces of taxine. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

  “No, sir. There may be fingerprints too.”

  “Probably not the ones we want,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “There’ll be Gladys’s, of course, and Crump’s and Fortescue’s own. Then probably Mrs. Crump’s, the grocer’s assistant and a few others! If anyone put taxine in here they’d take care not to go playing about with their own fingers all over the pot. Anyway, as I say, we mustn’t jump to conclusions. How do they order marmalade and where is it kept?”

  The industrious Sergeant Hay had his answer pat for all these questions.

  “Marmalade and jams comes in in batches of six at a time. A new pot would be taken into the pantry when the old one was getting low.”

  “That means,” said Neele, “that it could have been tampered with several days before it was actually brought onto the breakfast table. And anyone who was in the house or had access to the house could have tampered with it.”

  The term “access to the house” puzzled Sergeant Hay slightly. He did not see in what way his superior’s mind was working.

  But Neele was postulating what seemed to him a logical assumption.

  If the marmalade had been tampered with beforehand—then surely that ruled out those persons who were actually at the breakfast table on the fatal morning.

  Which opened up some interesting new po
ssibilities.

  He planned in his mind interviews with various people—this time with rather a different angle of approach.

  He’d keep an open mind. . . .

  He’d even consider seriously that old Miss Whatshername’s suggestions about the nursery rhyme. Because there was no doubt that that nursery rhyme fitted in a rather startling way. It fitted with a point that had worried him from the beginning. The pocketful of rye.

  “Blackbirds?” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

  Sergeant Hay stared.

  “It’s not blackberry jelly, sir,” he said. “It’s marmalade.”

  II

  Inspector Neele went in search of Mary Dove.

  He found her in one of the bedrooms on the first floor superintending Ellen, who was denuding the bed of what seemed to be clean sheets. A little pile of clean towels lay on a chair.

  Inspector Neele looked puzzled.

  “Somebody coming to stay?” he asked.

  Mary Dove smiled at him. In contrast to Ellen, who looked grim and truculent, Mary was her usual imperturbable self.

  “Actually,” she said, “the opposite is the case.”

  Neele looked inquiringly at her.

  “This is the guest room we had prepared for Mr. Gerald Wright.”

  “Gerald Wright? Who is he?”

  “He’s a friend of Miss Elaine Fortescue’s.” Mary’s voice was carefully devoid of inflection.

  “He was coming here—when?”

  “I believe he arrived at the Golf Hotel the day after Mr. Fortescue’s death.”

  “The day after.”

  “So Miss Fortescue said.” Mary’s voice was still impersonal: “She told me she wanted him to come and stay in the house—so I had a room prepared. Now—after these other two—tragedies—it seems more suitable that he should remain at the hotel.”

  “The Golf Hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite,” said Inspector Neele.

  Ellen gathered up the sheets and towels and went out of the room.

  Mary Dove looked inquiringly at Neele.

  “You wanted to see me about something?”

  Neele said pleasantly:

  “It’s becoming important to get exact times very clearly stated. Members of the family all seem a little vague about time—perhaps understandably. You, on the other hand, Miss Dove, I have found extremely accurate in your statements as to times.”

  “Again understandably!”

  “Yes—perhaps—I must certainly congratulate you on the way you have kept this house going in spite of the—well, panic—these last deaths must have caused.” He paused and then asked curiously: “How did you do it?”

  He had realized, astutely, that the one chink in the armour of Mary Dove’s inscrutability was her pleasure in her own efficiency. She unbent slightly now as she answered.

  “The Crumps wanted to leave at once, of course.”

  “We couldn’t have allowed that.”

  “I know. But I also told them that Mr. Percival Fortescue would be more likely to be—well—generous—to those who had spared him inconvenience.”

  “And Ellen?”

  “Ellen does not wish to leave.”

  “Ellen does not wish to leave,” Neele repeated. “She has good nerves.”

  “She enjoys disasters,” said Mary Dove. “Like Mrs. Percival, she finds in disaster a kind of pleasurable drama.”

  “Interesting. Do you think Mrs. Percival has—enjoyed the tragedies?”

  “No—of course not. That is going too far. I would merely say that it has enabled her to—well—stand up to them—”

  “And how have you yourself been affected, Miss Dove?”

  Mary Dove shrugged her shoulders.

  “It has not been a pleasant experience,” she said dryly.

  Inspector Neele felt again a longing to break down this cool young woman’s defences—to find out what was really going on behind the careful and efficient understatement of her whole attitude.

  He merely said brusquely:

  “Now—to recapitulate times and places: the last time you saw Gladys Martin was in the hall before tea, and that was at twenty minutes to five?”

  “Yes—I told her to bring in tea.”

  “You yourself were coming from where?”

  “From upstairs—I thought I had heard the telephone a few minutes before.”

  “Gladys, presumably, had answered the telephone?”

  “Yes. It was a wrong number. Someone who wanted the Baydon Heath Laundry.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her?”

  “She brought the tea tray into the library about ten minutes or so later.”

  “After that Miss Elaine Fortescue came in?”

  “Yes, about three or four minutes later. Then I went up to tell Mrs. Percival tea was ready.”

  “Did you usually do that?”

  “Oh no—people came in to tea when they pleased—but Mrs. Fortescue asked where everybody was. I thought I heard Mrs. Percival coming—but that was a mistake—”

  Neele interrupted. Here was something new.

  “You mean you heard someone upstairs moving about?”

  “Yes—at the head of the stairs, I thought. But no one came down so I went up. Mrs. Percival was in her bedroom. She had just come in. She had been out for a walk—”

  “Out for a walk—I see. The time being then—”

  “Oh—nearly five o’clock, I think—”

  “And Mr. Lancelot Fortescue arrived—when?”

  “A few minutes after I came downstairs again—I thought he had arrived earlier—but—”

  Inspector Neele interrupted:

  “Why did you think he had arrived earlier?”

  “Because I thought I had caught sight of him through the landing window.”

  “In the garden, you mean?”

  “Yes—I caught a glimpse of someone through the yew hedge—and I thought it would probably be him.”

  “This was when you were coming down after telling Mrs. Percival Fortescue tea was ready?”

  Mary corrected him.

  “No—not then—it was earlier—when I came down the first time.”

  Inspector Neele stared.

  “Are you sure about that, Miss Dove?”

  “Yes, I’m perfectly sure. That’s why I was surprised to see him—when he actually did ring the bell.”

  Inspector Neele shook his head. He kept his inner excitement out of his voice as he said:

  “It couldn’t have been Lancelot Fortescue you saw in the garden. His train—which was due at 4:28, was nine minutes late. He arrived at Baydon Heath Station at 4:37. He had to wait a few minutes for a taxi—that train is always very full. It was actually nearly a quarter to five (five minutes after you had seen the man in the garden) when he left the station and it is a ten-minute drive. He paid off the taxi at the gate here at about five minutes to five at the earliest. No—it wasn’t Lancelot Fortescue you saw.”

  “I’m sure I did see someone.”

  “Yes, you saw someone. It was getting dark. You couldn’t have seen the man clearly?”

  “Oh no—I couldn’t see his face or anything like that—just his build—tall and slender. We were expecting Lancelot Fortescue—so I jumped to the conclusion that that’s who it was.”

  “He was going—which way?”

  “Along behind the yew hedge towards the east side of the house.”

  “There is a side door there. Is it kept locked?”

  “Not until the house is locked up for the night.”

  “Anyone could have come in by that side door without being observed by any of the household.”

  Mary Dove considered.

  “I think so. Yes.” She added quickly: “You mean—the person I heard later upstairs could have come in that way? Could have been hiding—upstairs?”

  “Something of the kind.”

  “But who—?”

  “That remains to be seen. Thank y
ou, Miss Dove.”

  As she turned to go away Inspector Neele said in a casual voice: “By the way, you can’t tell me anything about blackbirds, I suppose?”

  For the first time, so it seemed, Mary Dove was taken aback. She turned back sharply.

  “I—what did you say?”

  “I was just asking you about blackbirds.”

  “Do you mean—”

  “Blackbirds,” said Inspector Neele.

  He had on his most stupid expression.

  “You mean that silly business last summer? But surely that can’t . . .” She broke off.

  Inspector Neele said pleasantly:

  “There’s been a bit of talk about it, but I was sure I’d get a clear account from you.”

  Mary Dove was her calm, practical self again.

  “It must, I think, have been some silly, spiteful joke,” she said. “Four dead blackbirds were on Mr. Fortescue’s desk in his study here. It was summer and the windows were open, and we rather thought it must have been the gardener’s boy, though he insisted he’d never done anything of the kind. But they were actually blackbirds the gardener had shot which had been hanging up by the fruit bushes.”

  “And somebody had cut them down and put them on Mr. Fortescue’s desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any sort of reason behind it—any association with blackbirds?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did Mr. Fortescue take it? Was he annoyed?”

  “Naturally he was annoyed.”

  “But not upset in any way?”

  “I really can’t remember.”

  “I see,” said Inspector Neele.

  He said no more. Mary Dove once more turned away, but this time, he thought, she went rather unwillingly as though she would have liked to know more of what was in his mind. Ungratefully, all that Inspector Neele felt was annoyance with Miss Marple. She had suggested to him that there would be blackbirds and, sure enough, there the blackbirds were! Not four and twenty of them, that was true. What might be called a token consignment.

  That had been as long ago as last summer and where it fitted in Inspector Neele could not imagine. He was not going to let this blackbird bogey divert him from the logical and sober investigation of murder by a sane murderer for a sane reason, but he would be forced from now on to keep the crazier possibilities of the case in mind.