The Complete Miss Marple Collection

by Agatha Christie

  “You understand, Florence, that it’s of the utmost importance that everything about poor Pamela’s doings on the day of her death should be known?”

  Florence murmured that she quite understood.

  “And I’m sure you want to do your best to help?”

  Florence’s eyes were wary as she said, of course she did.

  “To keep back any piece of information is a very serious offence,” said Miss Marple.

  The girl’s fingers twisted nervously in her lap. She swallowed once or twice.

  “I can make allowances,” went on Miss Marple, “for the fact that you are naturally alarmed at being brought into contact with the police. You are afraid, too, that you may be blamed for not having spoken sooner. Possibly you are afraid that you may also be blamed for not stopping Pamela at the time. But you’ve got to be a brave girl and make a clean breast of things. If you refuse to tell what you know now, it will be a very serious matter indeed—very serious—practically perjury, and for that, as you know, you can be sent to prison.”

  “I—I don’t—”

  Miss Marple said sharply:

  “Now don’t prevaricate, Florence! Tell me all about it at once! Pamela wasn’t going to Woolworth’s, was she?”

  Florence licked her lips with a dry tongue and gazed imploringly at Miss Marple like a beast about to be slaughtered.

  “Something to do with the films, wasn’t it?” asked Miss Marple.

  A look of intense relief mingled with awe passed over Florence’s face. Her inhibitions left her. She gasped:

  “Oh, yes!”

  “I thought so,” said Miss Marple. “Now I want all the details, please.”

  Words poured from Florence in a gush.

  “Oh! I’ve been ever so worried. I promised Pam, you see, I’d never say a word to a soul. And then when she was found all burnt up in that car—oh! it was horrible and I thought I should die—I felt it was all my fault. I ought to have stopped her. Only I never thought, not for a minute, that it wasn’t all right. And then I was asked if she’d been quite as usual that day and I said ‘Yes’ before I’d had time to think. And not having said anything then I didn’t see how I could say anything later. And, after all, I didn’t know anything—not really—only what Pam told me.”

  “What did Pam tell you?”

  “It was as we were walking up the lane to the bus—on the way to the rally. She asked me if I could keep a secret, and I said ‘Yes,’ and she made me swear not to tell. She was going into Danemouth for a film test after the rally! She’d met a film producer—just back from Hollywood, he was. He wanted a certain type, and he told Pam she was just what he was looking for. He warned her, though, not to build on it. You couldn’t tell, he said, not until you saw a person photographed. It might be no good at all. It was a kind of Bergner part, he said. You had to have someone quite young for it. A schoolgirl, it was, who changes places with a revue artist and has a wonderful career. Pam’s acted in plays at school and she’s awfully good. He said he could see she could act, but she’d have to have some intensive training. It wouldn’t be all beer and skittles, he told her, it would be damned hard work. Did she think she could stick it?”

  Florence Small stopped for breath. Miss Marple felt rather sick as she listened to the glib rehash of countless novels and screen stories. Pamela Reeves, like most other girls, would have been warned against talking to strangers—but the glamour of the films would obliterate all that.

  “He was absolutely businesslike about it all,” continued Florence. “Said if the test was successful she’d have a contract, and he said that as she was young and inexperienced she ought to let a lawyer look at it before she signed it. But she wasn’t to pass on that he’d said that. He asked her if she’d have trouble with her parents, and Pam said she probably would, and he said: ‘Well, of course, that’s always a difficulty with anyone as young as you are, but I think if it was put to them that this was a wonderful chance that wouldn’t happen once in a million times, they’d see reason.’ But, anyway, he said, it wasn’t any good going into that until they knew the result of the test. She mustn’t be disappointed if it failed. He told her about Hollywood and about Vivien Leigh—how she’d suddenly taken London by storm—and how these sensational leaps into fame did happen. He himself had come back from America to work with the Lemville Studios and put some pep into the English film companies.”

  Miss Marple nodded.

  Florence went on:

  “So it was all arranged. Pam was to go into Danemouth after the rally and meet him at his hotel and he’d take her along to the studios (they’d got a small testing studio in Danemouth, he told her). She’d have her test and she could catch the bus home afterwards. She could say she’d been shopping, and he’d let her know the result of the test in a few days, and if it was favourable Mr. Harmsteiter, the boss, would come along and talk to her parents.

  “Well, of course, it sounded too wonderful! I was green with envy! Pam got through the rally without turning a hair—we always call her a regular poker face. Then, when she said she was going into Danemouth to Woolworth’s she just winked at me.

  “I saw her start off down the footpath.” Florence began to cry. “I ought to have stopped her. I ought to have stopped her. I ought to have known a thing like that couldn’t be true. I ought to have told someone. Oh dear, I wish I was dead!”

  “There, there.” Miss Marple patted her on the shoulder. “It’s quite all right. No one will blame you. You’ve done the right thing in telling me.”

  She devoted some minutes to cheering the child up.

  Five minutes later she was telling the story to Superintendent Harper. The latter looked very grim.

  “The clever devil!” he said. “By God, I’ll cook his goose for him. This puts rather a different aspect on things.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  Harper looked at her sideways.

  “It doesn’t surprise you?”

  “I expected something of the kind.”

  Superintendent Harper said curiously:

  “What put you on to this particular girl? They all looked scared to death and there wasn’t a pin to choose between them as far as I could see.”

  Miss Marple said gently:

  “You haven’t had as much experience with girls telling lies as I have. Florence looked at you very straight, if you remember, and stood very rigid and just fidgeted with her feet like the others. But you didn’t watch her as she went out of the door. I knew at once then that she’d got something to hide. They nearly always relax too soon. My little maid Janet always did. She’d explain quite convincingly that the mice had eaten the end of a cake and give herself away by smirking as she left the room.”

  “I’m very grateful to you,” said Harper.

  He added thoughtfully: “Lemville Studios, eh?”

  Miss Marple said nothing. She rose to her feet.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, “I must hurry away. So glad to have been able to help you.”

  “Are you going back to the hotel?”

  “Yes—to pack up. I must go back to St. Mary Mead as soon as possible. There’s a lot for me to do there.”

  Fifteen

  I

  Miss Marple passed out through the french windows of her drawing room, tripped down her neat garden path, through a garden gate, in through the vicarage garden gate, across the vicarage garden, and up to the drawing room window, where she tapped gently on the pane.

  The vicar was busy in his study composing his Sunday sermon, but the vicar’s wife, who was young and pretty, was admiring the progress of her offspring across the hearthrug.

  “Can I come in, Griselda?”

  “Oh, do, Miss Marple. Just look at David! He gets so angry because he can only crawl in reverse. He wants to get to something and the more he tries the more he goes backwards into the coal box!”

  “He’s looking very bonny, Griselda.”

  “He’s not bad, is he?” said the young mother, e
ndeavouring to assume an indifferent manner. “Of course I don’t bother with him much. All the books say a child should be left alone as much as possible.”

  “Very wise, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Ahem, I came to ask if there was anything special you are collecting for at the moment.”

  The vicar’s wife turned somewhat astonished eyes upon her.

  “Oh, heaps of things,” she said cheerfully. “There always are.”

  She ticked them off on her fingers.

  “There’s the Nave Restoration Fund, and St. Giles’s Mission, and our Sale of Work next Wednesday, and the Unmarried Mothers, and a Boy Scouts’ Outing, and the Needlework Guild, and the Bishop’s Appeal for Deep Sea Fishermen.”

  “Any of them will do,” said Miss Marple. “I thought I might make a little round—with a book, you know—if you would authorize me to do so.”

  “Are you up to something? I believe you are. Of course I authorize you. Make it the Sale of Work; it would be lovely to get some real money instead of those awful sachets and comic pen-wipers and depressing children’s frocks and dusters all done up to look like dolls.

  “I suppose,” continued Griselda, accompanying her guest to the window, “you wouldn’t like to tell me what it’s all about?”

  “Later, my dear,” said Miss Marple, hurrying off.

  With a sigh the young mother returned to the hearthrug and, by way of carrying out her principles of stern neglect, butted her son three times in the stomach so that he caught hold of her hair and pulled it with gleeful yells. Then they rolled over and over in a grand rough-and-tumble until the door opened and the vicarage maid announced to the most influential parishioner (who didn’t like children):

  “Missus is in here.”

  Whereupon Griselda sat up and tried to look dignified and more what a vicar’s wife should be.

  II

  Miss Marple, clasping a small black book with pencilled entries in it, walked briskly along the village street until she came to the crossroads. Here she turned to the left and walked past the Blue Boar until she came to Chatsworth, alias “Mr. Booker’s new house.”

  She turned in at the gate, walked up to the front door and knocked briskly.

  The door was opened by the blonde young woman named Dinah Lee. She was less carefully made-up than usual, and in fact looked slightly dirty. She was wearing grey slacks and an emerald jumper.

  “Good morning,” said Miss Marple briskly and cheerfully. “May I just come in for a minute?”

  She pressed forward as she spoke, so that Dinah Lee, who was somewhat taken aback at the call, had no time to make up her mind.

  “Thank you so much,” said Miss Marple, beaming amiably at her and sitting down rather gingerly on a “period” bamboo chair.

  “Quite warm for the time of year, is it not?” went on Miss Marple, still exuding geniality.

  “Yes, rather. Oh, quite,” said Miss Lee.

  At a loss how to deal with the situation, she opened a box and offered it to her guest. “Er—have a cigarette?”

  “Thank you so much, but I don’t smoke. I just called, you know, to see if I could enlist your help for our Sale of Work next week.”

  “Sale of Work?” said Dinah Lee, as one who repeats a phrase in a foreign language.

  “At the vicarage,” said Miss Marple. “Next Wednesday.”

  “Oh!” Miss Lee’s mouth fell open. “I’m afraid I couldn’t—”

  “Not even a small subscription—half a crown perhaps?”

  Miss Marple exhibited her little book.

  “Oh—er—well, yes, I dare say I could manage that.”

  The girl looked relieved and turned to hunt in her handbag.

  Miss Marple’s sharp eyes were looking round the room.

  She said:

  “I see you’ve no hearthrug in front of the fire.”

  Dinah Lee turned round and stared at her. She could not but be aware of the very keen scrutiny the old lady was giving her, but it aroused in her no other emotion than slight annoyance. Miss Marple recognized that. She said:

  “It’s rather dangerous, you know. Sparks fly out and mark the carpet.”

  “Funny old Tabby,” thought Dinah, but she said quite amiably if somewhat vaguely:

  “There used to be one. I don’t know where it’s got to.”

  “I suppose,” said Miss Marple, “it was the fluffy, woolly kind?”

  “Sheep,” said Dinah. “That’s what it looked like.”

  She was amused now. An eccentric old bean, this.

  She held out a half crown. “Here you are,” she said.

  “Oh, thank you, my dear.”

  Miss Marple took it and opened the little book.

  “Er—what name shall I write down?”

  Dinah’s eyes grew suddenly hard and contemptuous.

  “Nosey old cat,” she thought, “that’s all she came for—prying around for scandal!”

  She said clearly and with malicious pleasure:

  “Miss Dinah Lee.”

  Miss Marple looked at her steadily.

  She said:

  “This is Mr. Basil Blake’s cottage, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and I’m Miss Dinah Lee!”

  Her voice rang out challengingly, her head went back, her blue eyes flashed.

  Very steadily Miss Marple looked at her. She said:

  “Will you allow me to give you some advice, even though you may consider it impertinent?”

  “I shall consider it impertinent. You had better say nothing.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Miss Marple, “I am going to speak. I want to advise you, very strongly, not to continue using your maiden name in the village.”

  Dinah stared at her. She said:

  “What—what do you mean?”

  Miss Marple said earnestly:

  “In a very short time you may need all the sympathy and goodwill you can find. It will be important to your husband, too, that he shall be thought well of. There is a prejudice in old-fashioned country districts against people living together who are not married. It has amused you both, I dare say, to pretend that that is what you are doing. It kept people away, so that you weren’t bothered with what I expect you would call ‘old frumps.’ Nevertheless, old frumps have their uses.”

  Dinah demanded:

  “How did you know we are married?”

  Miss Marple smiled a deprecating smile.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said.

  Dinah persisted.

  “No, but how did you know? You didn’t—you didn’t go to Somerset House?”

  A momentary flicker showed in Miss Marple’s eyes.

  “Somerset House? Oh, no. But it was quite easy to guess. Everything, you know, gets round in a village. The—er—the kind of quarrels you have—typical of early days of marriage. Quite—quite unlike an illicit relationship. It has been said, you know (and, I think, quite truly), that you can only really get under anybody’s skin if you are married to them. When there is no—no legal bond, people are much more careful, they have to keep assuring themselves how happy and halcyon everything is. They have, you see, to justify themselves. They dare not quarrel! Married people, I have noticed, quite enjoy their battles and the—er—appropriate reconciliations.”

  She paused, twinkling benignly.

  “Well, I—” Dinah stopped and laughed. She sat down and lit a cigarette. “You’re absolutely marvellous!” she said.

  Then she went on:

  “But why do you want us to own up and admit to respectability?”

  Miss Marple’s face was grave. She said:

  “Because, any minute now, your husband may be arrested for murder.”

  III

  For several moments Dinah stared at her. Then she said incredulously:

  “Basil? Murder? Are you joking?”

  “No, indeed. Haven’t you seen the papers?”

  Dinah caught her breath.

  “You mean—that girl at the Majestic Hotel. Do you mean they sus
pect Basil of killing her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s nonsense!”

  There was the whir of a car outside, the bang of a gate. Basil Blake flung open the door and came in, carrying some bottles. He said:

  “Got the gin and the vermouth. Did you—?”

  He stopped and turned incredulous eyes on the prim, erect visitor.

  Dinah burst out breathlessly:

  “Is she mad? She says you’re going to be arrested for the murder of that girl Ruby Keene.”

  “Oh, God!” said Basil Blake. The bottles dropped from his arms on to the sofa. He reeled to a chair and dropped down in it and buried his face in his hands. He repeated: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Dinah darted over to him. She caught his shoulders.

  “Basil, look at me! It isn’t true! I know it isn’t true! I don’t believe it for a moment!”

  His hand went up and gripped hers.

  “Bless you, darling.”

  “But why should they think—You didn’t even know her, did you?”

  “Oh, yes, he knew her,” said Miss Marple.

  Basil said fiercely:

  “Be quiet, you old hag. Listen, Dinah darling, I hardly knew her at all. Just ran across her once or twice at the Majestic. That’s all, I swear that’s all.”

  Dinah said, bewildered:

  “I don’t understand. Why should anyone suspect you, then?”

  Basil groaned. He put his hands over his eyes and rocked to and fro.

  Miss Marple said:

  “What did you do with the hearthrug?”

  His reply came mechanically:

  “I put it in the dustbin.”

  Miss Marple clucked her tongue vexedly.

  “That was stupid—very stupid. People don’t put good hearthrugs in dustbins. It had spangles in it from her dress, I suppose?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t get them out.”

  Dinah cried: “But what are you both talking about?”

  Basil said sullenly:

  “Ask her. She seems to know all about it.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think happened, if you like,” said Miss Marple. “You can correct me, Mr. Blake, if I go wrong. I think that after having had a violent quarrel with your wife at a party and after having had, perhaps, rather too much—er—to drink, you drove down here. I don’t know what time you arrived—”