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

by Agatha Christie

  “I think, you know,” said Miss Marple, “that you’re being a little too dogmatic.”

  Inspector Neele paid no attention.

  “Just one person,” he said grimly.

  He got up and went out of the room.

  II

  Mary Dove was in her sitting room. It was a small, rather austerely furnished room, but comfortable. That is to say Miss Dove herself had made it comfortable. When Inspector Neele tapped at the door Mary Dove raised her head, which had been bent over a pile of tradesmen’s books, and said in her clear voice:

  “Come in.”

  The inspector entered.

  “Do sit down, Inspector.” Miss Dove indicated a chair. “Could you wait just one moment? The total of the fishmonger’s account does not seem to be correct and I must check it.”

  Inspector Neele sat in silence watching her as she totted up the column. How wonderfully calm and self-possessed the girl was, he thought. He was intrigued, as so often before, by the personality that underlay that self-assured manner. He tried to trace in her features any resemblance to those of the woman he had talked to at the Pinewood Sanatorium. The colouring was not unlike, but he could detect no real facial resemblance. Presently Mary Dove raised her head from her accounts and said:

  “Yes, Inspector? What can I do for you?”

  Inspector Neele said quietly:

  “You know, Miss Dove, there are certain very peculiar features about this case.”

  “Yes?”

  “To begin with there is the odd circumstance of the rye found in Mr. Fortescue’s pocket.”

  “That was very extraordinary,” Mary Dove agreed. “You know I really cannot think of any explanation for that.”

  “Then there is the curious circumstance of the blackbirds. Those four blackbirds on Mr. Fortescue’s desk last summer, and also the incident of the blackbirds being substituted for the veal and ham in the pie. You were here, I think, Miss Dove, at the time of both those occurrences?”

  “Yes, I was. I remember now. It was most upsetting. It seemed such a very purposeless, spiteful thing to do, especially at the time.”

  “Perhaps not entirely purposeless. What do you know, Miss Dove, about the Blackbird Mine?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Blackbird Mine.”

  “Your name, you told me, is Mary Dove. Is that your real name, Miss Dove?”

  Mary raised her eyebrows. Inspector Neele was almost sure that a wary expression had come into her blue eyes.

  “What an extraordinary question, Inspector. Are you suggesting that my name is not Mary Dove?”

  “That is exactly what I am suggesting. I’m suggesting,” said Neele pleasantly, “that your name is Ruby MacKenzie.”

  She stared at him. For a moment her face was entirely blank with neither protest on it nor surprise. There was, Inspector Neele thought, a very definite effect of calculation. After a minute or two she said in a quiet, colourless voice:

  “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Please answer me. Is your name Ruby MacKenzie?”

  “I have told you my name is Mary Dove.”

  “Yes, but have you proof of that, Miss Dove?”

  “What do you want to see? My birth certificate?”

  “That might be helpful or it might not. You might, I mean, be in possession of the birth certificate of a Mary Dove. That Mary Dove might be a friend of yours or might be someone who had died.”

  “Yes, there are a lot of possibilities, aren’t there?” Amusement had crept back into Mary Dove’s voice. “It’s really quite a dilemma for you, isn’t it, Inspector?”

  “They might possibly be able to recognize you at Pinewood Sanatorium,” said Neele.

  “Pinewood Sanatorium!” Mary raised her eyebrow. “What or where is Pinewood Sanatorium?”

  “I think you know very well, Miss Dove.”

  “I assure you I am quite in the dark.”

  “And you deny categorically that you are Ruby MacKenzie?”

  “I shouldn’t really like to deny anything. I think, you know, Inspector, that it’s up to you to prove I am this Ruby MacKenzie, whoever she is.” There was a definite amusement now in her blue eyes, amusement and challenge. Looking him straight in the eyes, Mary Dove said, “Yes, it’s up to you, Inspector. Prove that I’m Ruby MacKenzie if you can.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I

  “The old tabby’s looking for you, sir,” said Sergeant Hay in a conspiratorial whisper, as Inspector Neele descended the stairs. “It appears as how she’s got a lot more to say to you.”

  “Hell and damnation,” said Inspector Neele.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Hay, not a muscle of his face moving.

  He was about to move away when Neele called him back.

  “Go over those notes given us by Miss Dove, Hay, notes as to her former employment and situations. Check up on them—and, yes, there are just one or two other things that I would like to know. Put these inquiries in hand, will you?”

  He jotted down a few lines on a sheet of paper and gave them to Sergeant Hay, who said:

  “I’ll get onto it at once, sir.”

  Hearing a murmur of voices in the library as he passed, Inspector Neele looked in. Whether Miss Marple had been looking for him or not, she was now fully engaged talking to Mrs. Percival Fortescue while her knitting needles clicked busily. The middle of the sentence which Inspector Neele caught was:

  “. . . I have really always thought it was a vocation you needed for nursing. It certainly is very noble work.”

  Inspector Neele withdrew quietly. Miss Marple had noticed him, he thought, but she had taken no notice of his presence.

  She went on in her gentle, soft voice:

  “I had such a charming nurse looking after me when I once broke my wrist. She went on from me to nurse Mrs. Sparrow’s son, a very nice young naval officer. Quite a romance, really, because they became engaged. So romantic I thought it. They were married and were very happy and had two dear little children.” Miss Marple sighed sentimentally. “It was pneumonia, you know. So much depends on nursing in pneumonia, does it not.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Jennifer Fortescue, “nursing is nearly everything in pneumonia, though of course nowadays M and B works wonders, and it’s not the long, protracted battle it used to be.”

  “I’m sure you must have been an excellent nurse, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “That was the beginning of your romance, was it not? I mean you came here to nurse Mr. Percival Fortescue, did you not?”

  “Yes,” said Jennifer. “Yes, yes—that’s how it did happen.”

  Her voice was not encouraging, but Miss Marple seemed to take no notice.

  “I understand. One should not listen to servants’ gossip, of course, but I’m afraid an old lady like myself is always interested to hear about the people in the house. Now what was I saying? Oh, yes. There was another nurse at first, was there not, and she got sent away—something like that. Carelessness, I believe.”

  “I don’t think it was carelessness,” said Jennifer. “I believe her father or something was desperately ill, and so I came to replace her.”

  “I see,” said Miss Marple. “And you fell in love and that was that. Yes, very nice indeed, very nice.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Jennifer Fortescue. “I often wish”—her voice trembled—“I often wish I was back in the wards again.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. You were keen on your profession.”

  “I wasn’t so much at the time, but now when I think of it—life’s so monotonous, you know. Day after day with nothing to do, and Val so absorbed in business.”

  Miss Marple shook her head.

  “Gentlemen have to work so hard nowadays,” she said. “There really doesn’t seem any leisure, no matter how much money there is.”

  “Yes, it makes it very lonely and dull for a wife sometimes. I often wish I’d never come here,” said Jennifer. “Oh, well, I dare say
it serves me right. I ought never to have done it.”

  “Ought never to have done what, my dear?”

  “I ought never to have married Val. Oh, well—” she sighed abruptly. “Don’t let’s talk of it anymore.”

  Obligingly Miss Marple began to talk about the new skirts that were being worn in Paris.

  II

  “So kind of you not to interrupt just now,” said Miss Marple when, having tapped at the door of the study, Inspector Neele had told her to come in. “There were just one or two little points, you know, that I wanted to verify.” She added reproachfully: “We didn’t really finish our talk just now.”

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Marple.” Inspector Neele summoned up a charming smile. “I’m afraid I was rather rude. I summoned you to a consultation and did all the talking myself.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Miss Marple immediately, “because, you see, I wasn’t really quite ready then to put all my cards on the table. I mean I wouldn’t like to make any accusation unless I was absolutely sure about it. Sure, that is, in my own mind. And I am sure, now.”

  “You’re sure about what, Miss Marple?”

  “Well, certainly about who killed Mr. Fortescue. What you told me about the marmalade, I mean, just clinches the matter. Showing how, I mean, as well as who, and well within the mental capacity.”

  Inspector Neele blinked a little.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Miss Marple, perceiving this reaction on his part, “I’m afraid I find it difficult sometimes to make myself perfectly clear.”

  “I’m not quite sure yet, Miss Marple, what we’re talking about.”

  “Well, perhaps,” said Miss Marple, “we’d better begin all over again. I mean if you could spare the time. I would rather like to put my own point of view before you. You see, I’ve talked a good deal to people, to old Miss Ramsbottom and to Mrs. Crump and to her husband. He, of course, is a liar, but that doesn’t really matter because, if you know liars are liars, it comes to the same thing. But I did want to get the telephone calls clear and the nylon stockings and all that.”

  Inspector Neele blinked again and wondered what he had let himself in for and why he had ever thought that Miss Marple might be a desirable and clearheaded colleague. Still, he thought to himself, however muddleheaded she was, she might have picked up some useful bits of information. All Inspector Neele’s success in his profession had come from listening well. He was prepared to listen now.

  “Please tell me all about it, Miss Marple,” he said, “but start at the beginning, won’t you.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Miss Marple, “and the beginning is Gladys. I mean I came here because of Gladys. And you very kindly let me look through all her things. And what with that and the nylon stockings and the telephone calls and one thing and another, it did come out perfectly clear. I mean about Mr. Fortescue and the taxine.”

  “You have a theory?” asked Inspector Neele, “as to who put the taxine into Mr. Fortescue’s marmalade.”

  “It isn’t a theory,” said Miss Marple. “I know.”

  For the third time Inspector Neele blinked.

  “It was Gladys, of course,” said Miss Marple.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple and slowly shook his head.

  “Are you saying,” he said incredulously, “that Gladys Martin deliberately murdered Rex Fortescue? I’m sorry, Miss Marple, but I simply don’t believe it.”

  “No, of course she didn’t mean to murder him,” said Miss Marple, “but she did it all the same! You said yourself that she was nervous and upset when you questioned her. And that she looked guilty.”

  “Yes, but not guilty of murder.”

  “Oh, no, I agree. As I say, she didn’t mean to murder anybody, but she put the taxine in the marmalade. She didn’t think it was poison, of course.”

  “What did she think it was?” Inspector Neele’s voice still sounded incredulous.

  “I rather imagine she thought it was a truth drug,” said Miss Marple. “It’s very interesting, you know, and very instructive—the things these girls cut out of papers and keep. It’s always been the same, you know, all through the ages. Recipes for beauty, for attracting the man you love. And witchcraft and charms and marvellous happenings. Nowadays they’re mostly lumped together under the heading of Science. Nobody believes in magicians anymore, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you’ll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that. And having read in the papers about truth drugs, of course Gladys would believe it absolutely when he told her that that’s what it was.”

  “When who told her?” said Inspector Neele.

  “Albert Evans,” said Miss Marple. “Not of course that that is really his name. But anyway he met her last summer at a holiday camp, and he flattered her up and made love to her, and I should imagine told her some story of injustice or persecution, or something like that. Anyway, the point was that Rex Fortescue had to be made to confess what he had done and make restitution. I don’t know this, of course, Inspector Neele, but I’m pretty sure about it. He got her to take a post here, and it’s really very easy nowadays with the shortage of domestic staff, to obtain a post where you want one. Staffs are changing the whole time. They then arranged a date together. You remember on that last postcard he said: ‘Remember our date.’ That was to be the great day they were working for. Gladys would put the drug that he gave her into the top of the marmalade, so that Mr. Fortescue would eat it at breakfast and she would also put the rye in his pocket. I don’t know what story he told her to account for the rye, but as I told you from the beginning, Inspector Neele, Gladys Martin was a very credulous girl. In fact, there’s hardly anything she wouldn’t believe if a personable young man put it to her the right way.”

  “Go on,” said Inspector Neele in a dazed voice.

  “The idea probably was,” continued Miss Marple, “that Albert was going to call upon him at the office that day, and that by that time the truth drug would have worked, and that Mr. Fortescue would have confessed everything and so on and so on. You can imagine the poor girl’s feelings when she heard that Mr. Fortescue was dead.”

  “But, surely,” Inspector Neele objected, “she would have told?”

  Miss Marple asked sharply:

  “What was the first thing she said to you when you questioned her?”

  “She said: ‘I didn’t do it,’ ” Inspector Neele said.

  “Exactly,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “Don’t you see that’s exactly what she would say? If she broke an ornament, you know, Gladys would always say: ‘I didn’t do it, Miss Marple. I can’t think how it happened.’ They can’t help it, poor dears. They’re very upset at what they’ve done and their great idea is to avoid blame. You don’t think that a nervous young woman who had murdered someone when she didn’t mean to murder him is going to admit it, do you? That would have been quite out of character.”

  “Yes,” Neele said, “I suppose it would.”

  He ran his mind back over his interview with Gladys. Nervous, upset, guilty, shifty-eyed, all those things. They might have had a small significance, or a big one. He could not really blame himself for having failed to come to the right conclusion.

  “Her first idea, as I say,” went on Miss Marple, “would be to deny it all. Then in a confused way she would try to sort it all out in her mind. Perhaps Albert hadn’t known how strong the stuff was, or he’d made a mistake and given her too much of it. She’d think of excuses for him and explanations. She’d hope he’d get in touch with her, which, of course, he did. By telephone.”

  “Do you know that?” asked Neele sharply.

  Miss Marple shook her head.

  “No. I admit I’m assuming it. But there were unexplained calls that day. That is to say, people rang up and, when Crump or Mrs. Crump a
nswered, the phone was hung up. That’s what he’d do, you know. Ring up and wait until Gladys answered the phone, and then he’d make an appointment with her to meet him.”

  “I see,” said Neele. “You mean she had an appointment to meet him on the day she died.”

  Miss Marple nodded vigorously.

  “Yes, that was indicated. Mrs. Crump was right about one thing. The girl had on her best nylon stockings and her good shoes. She was going to meet someone. Only she wasn’t going out to meet him. He was coming to Yewtree Lodge. That’s why she was on the look out that day and flustered and late with tea. Then, as she brought the second tray into the hall, I think she looked along the passage to the side door, and saw him there, beckoning to her. She put the tray down and went out to meet him.”

  “And then he strangled her,” said Neele.

  Miss Marple pursed her lips together. “It would only take a minute,” she said, “but he couldn’t risk her talking. She had to die, poor, silly, credulous girl. And then—he put a clothes-peg on her nose!” Stern anger vibrated the old lady’s voice. ‘To make it fit in with the rhyme. The rye, the blackbirds, the countinghouse, the bread and honey, and the clothes-peg—the nearest he could get to a little dickey bird that nipped off her nose—”

  “And I suppose at the end of it all he’ll go to Broadmoor and we shan’t be able to hang him because he’s crazy!” said Neele slowly.

  “I think you’ll hang him all right,” said Miss Marple. “And he’s not crazy, Inspector, not for a moment!”

  Inspector Neele looked hard at her.

  “Now see here, Miss Marple, you’ve outlined a theory to me. Yes—yes—although you say you know, it’s only a theory. You’re saying that a man is responsible for these crimes, who called himself Albert Evans, who picked up the girl Gladys at a holiday camp and used her for his own purposes. This Albert Evans was someone who wanted revenge for the old Blackbird Mine business. You’re suggesting, aren’t you, that Mrs. MacKenzie’s son, Don MacKenzie, didn’t die at Dunkirk. That he’s still alive, that he’s behind all this?”