By the Pricking of My Thumbs

by Agatha Christie

  Wanting everything fully discussed, you know, and wondering whether we'd got enough different prices from different Ctrms.

  I mean, the whole thing is such a small cost anyway, that really a few shillings here or there can't make much difference. And Burkenheads have always been most reliable. I don't think really, Vicar, you know, that you ought to sit on that tombstone.' 'Irreverent, perhaps?' suggested the vicar.

  'Oh no, no, of course I didn't mean that at all, Vicar. I meant the stone, you know, the damp does come through and with your rheumatism -' Her eyes slid sideways to Tuppence questioningly.

  'Let me introduce you to Miss Bligh,' said the vicar. 'This is - this is -' he hesitated.

  'Mrs Beresford,' said Tuppence.

  'Ah yes,' said Miss Bligh. 'I saw you in the church, didn't I, just now, looking round it. I would have come and spoken to you, called your attention to one or two interesting points, but I was in such a hurry to £mish my job.' 'I ought to have come and helped you,' said Tuppence, in ' her sweetest voice. 'But it wouldn't have been much use, would it, because I could see you knew so exactly where every flower ought to go.'

  'Well now, it's very nice of you to say so, but it's quite true.

  I've done the flowers in the church for - oh, I don't know ho many years it is. We let the school children arrange their own particular pots of wild flowers for festivals, though of course they haven't the least idea, poor little things. I do think a little instruction, but Mrs Peake will never have any instruction.

  She's so particular. She says it spoils their initiative. Are you staying down here?' she asked Tuppence.

  'I was going on to Market Basing,' said Tuppence. 'Perhaps you can tell me a nice quiet hotel to stay there?'

  'Well, I expect you'll pounds d it a little disappointing. It's just a market town, you know. It doesn't cater at all for the motoring trade. The Blue Dragon is a two-star but really I don't think these stars mean anything at all sometimes. I think you'd f'md The Lamb better. Quieter, you know. Are you staying there for long?'

  'Oh no,' said Tuppence, 'just a day or two while I'm looking round the neighbourhood.'

  'Not very much to see, I'm afraid. No interesting antiquities or anything like that. We're purely a rural and agricultural district,' said the vicar. 'But peaceful, you know, very peaceful.

  As I told you, some interesting wild flowers.'

  'Ah yes,' said Tuppence, 'I've heard that and I'm anxious to collect a few specimens in the intervals of doing a little mild house hunting,' she added.

  'Oh dear, how interesting,' said Miss Bligh. 'Are you thinking of settling in this neighbourhood?'

  'Well, my husband and I haven't decided very def'mitely on any one neighbourhood in particular,' said Tuppence. 'And we're in no hurry. He won't be retiring for another eighteen months. But it's always as well, I think, to look about.

  Personally, what I prefer to do is to stay in one neighbourhood for four or five days, get a list of likely small properties and drive about to see them. Coming down for one day from London to see one particular house is very tiring, I fred.'

  'Oh yes, you've got your car here, have you?' 'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'I shall have to go to a house agent in Market Basing tomorrow morning. There's nowhere, I sup-pose, to stay in the village here, is there?'

  'Of course, there's Mrs Copleigh,' said Miss Bligh. 'She takes people in the summer, you know. Summer visitors. She's beautifully clean. All her rooms are. Of course, she only does bed and brealffast and perhaps a light meal in the evening. But I don't think she takes anyone in much before August or July at the earliest.'

  'Perhaps I could go and see her and fred out,' said Tuppence.

  'She's a very worthy woman,' said the vicar. 'Her tongue wags a good deal,' he added. 'She never stops talking, not for one single minute.'

  'A lot of gossip and chattering is always going on in these small villages,' said Miss Bligh. 'I think it would be a very good idea if I helped Mrs Beresford. I could take her along to Mrs Copleigh and just see what chances there are.'

  'That would be very kind of you,' said Tuppence.

  'Then we'll be off,' said Miss Bligh briskly. 'Goodbye, Vicar. Still on your quest? A sad task and so unlikely to meet with success. I really think it was a most unreasonable request tO make.'

  Tuppence said goodbye to the vicar and said she would be glad to help him if she could.

  'I could easily spend an hour or two looking at the various gravestones. I've got very good eyesight for my age. It's just the name Waters you are looking for?'

  'Not really,' said the vicar. 'It's the age that matters, I think.

  A child of perhaps seven, it would be. A girl. Major Waters thinks that his wife might have changed her name and that probably the child might be known by the name she had taken.

  And as he doesn't know what that name is, it makes it all very difficult.'

  'The whole thing's impossible, so far as I can see,' said Miss Bligh. 'You ought never to have said you would do such a thing, Vicar. It's monstrous, suggesting anything of the kind.'

  'The poor fellow seems very upset,' said the vicar. 'A sad history altogether, so far as I can make out. But I mustn't keep you.' Tuppence thought to herself as she was shepherded by Miss Bligh that no matter what the reputation of Mrs Gopleigh for talking, she could hardly talk more than Miss Bhgh did. A stream of pronouncements both rapid and dictatorial poured from her lips.

  Mrs Copleigh's cottage proved to be a pleasant and roomy one set back from the village street with a neat garden of flowers in front, a whitened doorstep and a brass handle well polished. Mrs Gopleigh herself seemed to Tuppence like a character straight out of the pages of Dickens. She was very small and very round, so that she came rolling towards you rather like a rubber ball. She had bright twinkling eyes, blonde hair rolled up in sausage curls on her head and an air of tremendous vigour. After displaying a little doubt to begin with - 'Well, I don't usually, you know. No. My husband and I say "summer visitors, that's different". Everyone does that if they can nowadays. And have to, I'm sure. But not this time of year so much, we don't. Not until July. However, if it's just for a few days and the lady wouldn't mind things being a bit rough, perhaps ' Tuppence said she didn't mind things being rough and Mrs Gopleigh, having surveyed her with close attention, whilst not stopping her flow of conversation, said perhaps the lady would like to come up and see the room, and then things might be arranged.

  At that poin Miss Blightore herself away with some regret because she had not so far been able to extract all the information she wanted from Tuppence, as to where she came from, what her husband did, how old she was, if she had any children and other matters of interest. But it appeared that she had a meeting at her house over which she was going to preside and was terrified at the risk that someone else might seize that coveted post.

  'You'll be quite all right with Mm Gopleigh,' she assured Tuppence, 'she'll look after you, I'm sure. Now what about your car?'

  'Oh, I'll fetch it presently,' said Tuppence. 'Mrs Copleigh will tell me where I had better put it. I can leave it outside here really because it isn't a very narrow street, is it?' 'Oh, my husband can do better than that for you,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'He'll put it in the field for you. Just round the side lane here, and it'll be quite all right, there. There's a shed he can drive it into.' Things were arranged amicably on that basis and Miss Bligh hurried away to her appointment. The question of an evening meal was next raised. Tuppence asked if there was a pub in the villsge.

  'Oh, we have nothing as a lady could go to,' said Mrs Copleigh, 'but if you'd be satisfied with a couple of eggs and a slice of ham and maybe some bread and homemade iam ' Tuppence said that would be splendid. Her room was small but cheerful and pleasant with a rosebud wallpaper and a comfortable looking bed maA a general air of spotless cleanliness.

  'Yes, it's a nice wallpaper, miss,' said Mrs Copleigh, who seemed determined to accord Tuppence single status. 'Chose it we did so that any newly married couple shoul
d come here on honeymoon. Romantic, if you know what I mean.' Tuppence agreed that romance was a very desirable thing.

  'They haven't got so much to spend nowadays, newly marrieds. Not what they used to. Most of them you see are saving for a house or are making down payments already. Or they've got to buy some furniture on the hire purchase and it doesn't leave anything over for having a posh honeymoon or anything of that kind. They're careful, you know, most of the young folk. They don't go bashing all their money.' She clattered downstairs again talking briskly as she went.

  Tuppence lay down on the bed to have half an hour's sleep after a somewhat tiring day. She had, however, great hopes of Mrs Copleigh, and felt that once thoroughly rested herself, she would be able to lead the conversation to the most fruitful subjects possible. She would hear, she was sure, all about the house by the bridge, who had lived there, who had been of evil or good repute in the neighbourhood, what scandals there were and other such likely topics. She was more convinced of this than ever when she had been introduced to Mr Copleigh, a man who barely opened his mouth. His conversation was mostly made up of amiable grunts, usually signifying an affirmative. Sometimes, in more muted tones, a disagreement.

  He was content so far as Tuppence could see, to let his wife talk. He himself more or less abstracted his attention, part of the time busy with his plans for the next day which appeared to be market day.

  As far as Tuppence was concerned nothing could have turned out better. It could have been distinguished by a slogan - 'You want information, we have it'. Mrs Copleigh was as good as a wireless set or a television. You had only to turn the button and words poured out accompanied by gestures and lots of facial expression. Not only was her figure like a child's rubber ball, her face might also have been made ofindiarubber.

  The various people she was talking about almost came alive in caricature before Tuppence's eyes.

  Tuppence ate bacon and eggs and had slices of thick bread and butter and praised the blackberry jelly, home-made, her favourite kind, she trutlffully announced, and did her best to absorb the flood of information so that she could write notes down in her notebook later. A whole panorama of the past in this country district seemed to be spread out before her.

  There was no chronological sequence which occasionally made things difficult. Mrs Copleigh jumped from fifteen years ago to two years ago to last month, and then back to somewhere in the twenties. All this would want a lot of sorting out. And Tuppence wondered whether in the end she would get anything.

  The first button she had pressed had not given her any result. That was a mention of Mrs Lancaster.

  'I think she came from hereabouts,' said Tuppence, allowing a good deal of vagueness to appear in her voice. 'She had a picture - a very nice picture done by an artist who I believe was known down here.'

  'Who did you say now?'

  'A Mrs Lancaster.' 'No, I don't remember any Lancasters in these parts.

  Lancaster. Lancaster. A genfieman had a car accident, I remember. No, it's the car I'm thinking of. A Lancaster that was. No Mrs Lancaster. It wouldn't be Miss Bolton, would it?

  She'd be about seventy now I think. She might have married a Mr Lancaster. She went away and travelled abroad and I do hear she married someone.' 'The picture she gave my aunt was by a Mr Boscobel - I think the name was,' said Tuppence. 'What a lovely jelly.' 'I don't put no apple in it either, like most people do. Makes it jell better, they say, but it takes all the fiavour out.' 'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'I quite agree with you. It does.' 'Who did you say now? It began with a B but I didn't quite catch it.' 'Boscobel, I think.' 'Oh, I remember Mr Boscowan well. Let's see now. That must have been - fifteen years ago it was at least that he came down here. He came several years running, he did. He liked the place. Actually rented a cottage. One of Farmer Hart's cottages it was, that he kept for his labourer. But they built a new one, they did, the Council. Four new cottages specially for labourers.

  'Regular artist, Mr B was,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'Funny kind of coat he used to wear. Sort of velvet or corduroy. It used to have holes in the elbows and he wore green and yellow shirts, he did. Oh, very coloufful, he was. I liked his pictures, I did.

  He had a showing of them one year. Round about Christmas time it was, I think. No, of course not, it must have been in the summer. He wasn't here in the winter. Yes, very nice. Nothing exciting, if you know what I mean. Just a house with a couple of trees or two cows looking over a fence. But all nice and quiet and pretty colours. Not like some of these young chaps nowadays.' 'Do you have a lot of artists down here?' 'Not really. Oh no, not m speak of. One or two ladies comes down in the summer and does sketching sometimes, but I don't think much of them. We had a young fellow a year ago, called himself an artist. Didn't shave properly. I can't say I liked any of his pictures much. Funny colours all swirled round anyhow.

  Nothing you could recognize a bit. Sold a lot of his pictures, he did at that. And they weren't cheap, mind you.'

  'Ought to have been five pounds,' said Mr Copleigh entering the conversation for the first time so suddenly that Tuppence jumped.

  'What my husband thinks is,' said Mrs Copleigh, resuming her place as interpreter to him. 'He thinks no picture ought to cost more than five pounds. Paints wouldn't cost as much as that. That's what he says, don't you, George?'

  'Ah,' said George.

  'Mr Boscowan painted a picture of that house by the bridge and the canal - Waterside or Watermead, isn't it called? I came that way today.'

  'Oh, you came along that road, did you? It's not much of a road, is it? Very narrow. Lonely that house is, I always think.

  I wouldn't like to live in that house. Too lonely. Don't you agree, George?'

  George made the noise that expressed faint disagreement and possibly contempt at the cowardice of women.

  'That's where Alice Perry lives, that is,' said Mrs Copleigh.

  Tuppence abandoned her researches on Mr Boscowan to go along with an opinion on the Perrys. It was, she perceived, always better to go along with Mrs Copleigh who was a jumper from subject to subject.

  'Queer couple they are,' said Mrs Copleigh.

  George made his agreeing sound.

  'Keep themselves to themselves, they do. Don't mingle much, as you'd say. And she goes about looking like nothing on earth, Alice Perry does.'

  'Mad,' said Mr Copleigh.

  'Well, I don't know as I'd say that. She looks mad all right.

  All that scatty hair flying about. And she wears men's coats and great rubber boots most of the time. And she says odd things and doesn't sometimes answer you right when you ask her a question. But I wouldn't say she was mad. Peculiar, that's all.' 'Do people like her?'

  'Nobody knows her hardly, although they've been there several years. There's all sorts of tales about her but then, there's always tales.'

  'What sort of tales?'

  Direct questions were never resented by Mrs Copleigh, who welcomed them as one who was only too eager to answer.

  'Calls up spirits, they say, at night. Sitting round a table.

  And there's stories of lights moving about the house at night.

  · And she reads a lot of clever books, they say. With things drawn in them - circles and stars. If you ask me, it's Amos Perry as is the one that's not quite all right.'

  'He's just simple,' said Mr Copleigh indulgently.

  'Well, you may be right about that. But there were tales said of him once. Fond of his garden, but doesn't know much.'

  'It's only halfa house though, isn't it?' said Tuppence. 'Mrs Perry asked me in very kindly.'

  'Did she now? Did she really? I don't know as I'd have liked to go into that house,' said Mrs Copleigh.

  'Their part of it's all right,' said Mr Copleigh.

  'Isn't the other part all right?' said Tuppence. 'The front part that gives on the canal.'

  'Well, there used to be a lot of stories about it. Of course, nobody's lived in it for years. They say there's something queer about it. Lot of stories
told. But when you come down to it, it's not stories.in anybody's memory here. It's all long ago. It was built over a hundred years ago, you know. They say as there was a pretty lady kept there first, built for her, it was, by one of the gentlemen at Court.'

  'Queen Victoria's Court?' asked Tuppence with interest.

  'I don't think it would be her. She was particular, the old Queen was. No, I'd say it was before that. Time of one of them Georges. This gentlemen, he used to come down and see her and the story goes that they had a quarrel and he cut her throat one night.'

  'How terrible!' said Tuppence. 'Did they hang him for it?' 'No. Oh no, there was nothing of that sort. The story is, you see, that he had to get rid of the body and he walled her up in the fireplace.'

  'Wailed her up in the fireplace!' 'Some ways they tell it, they say she was a nun, and she had run away from a convent and that's why she had to be wailed up. That's what they do at convents.'