“Three weeks should be ample,” said Miss Marple. “If we can’t find out anything in three weeks, we might as well give up the whole thing as a mare’s nest.”
Miss Marple departed, and Lucy, after a moment’s reflection, rang up a Registry Office in Brackhampton, the manageress of which she knew very well. She explained her desire for a post in the neighbourhood so as to be near her “aunt.” After turning down, with a little difficulty and a good deal of ingenuity, several more desirable places, Rutherford Hall was mentioned.
“That sounds exactly what I want,” said Lucy firmly.
The Registry Office rang up Miss Crackenthorpe, Miss Crackenthorpe rang up Lucy.
Two days later Lucy left London en route for Rutherford Hall.
II
Driving her own small car, Lucy Eyelesbarrow drove through an imposing pair of vast iron gates. Just inside them was what had originally been a small lodge which now seemed completely derelict, whether through war damage, or merely through neglect, it was difficult to be sure. A long winding drive led through large gloomy clumps of rhododendrons up to the house. Lucy caught her breath in a slight gasp when she saw the house which was a kind of miniature Windsor Castle. The stone steps in front of the door could have done with attention and the gravel sweep was green with neglected weeds.
She pulled an old-fashioned wrought-iron bell, and its clamour sounded echoing away inside. A slatternly woman, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the door and looked at her suspiciously.
“Expected, aren’t you?” she said. “Miss Somethingbarrow, she told me.”
“Quite right,” said Lucy.
The house was desperately cold inside. Her guide led her along a dark hall and opened a door on the right. Rather to Lucy’s surprise, it was quite a pleasant sitting room, with books and chintz-covered chairs.
“I’ll tell her,” said the woman, and went away shutting the door after having given Lucy a look of profound disfavour.
After a few minutes the door opened again. From the first moment Lucy decided that she liked Emma Crackenthorpe.
She was a middle-aged woman with no very outstanding characteristics, neither good-looking nor plain, sensibly dressed in tweeds and pullover, with dark hair swept back from her forehead, steady hazel eyes and a very pleasant voice.
She said: “Miss Eyelesbarrow?” and held out her hand.
Then she looked doubtful.
“I wonder,” she said, “if this post is really what you’re looking for? I don’t want a housekeeper, you know, to supervise things. I want someone to do the work.”
Lucy said that that was what most people needed.
Emma Crackenthorpe said apologetically:
“So many people, you know, seem to think that just a little light dusting will answer the case—but I can do all the light dusting myself.”
“I quite understand,” said Lucy. “You want cooking and washing-up, and housework and stoking the boiler. That’s all right. That’s what I do. I’m not at all afraid of work.”
“It’s a big house, I’m afraid, and inconvenient. Of course we only live in a portion of it—my father and myself, that is. He is rather an invalid. We live quite quietly, and there is an Aga stove. I have several brothers, but they are not here very often. Two women come in, a Mrs. Kidder in the morning, and Mrs. Hart three days a week to do brasses and things like that. You have your own car?”
“Yes. It can stand out in the open if there’s nowhere to put it. It’s used to it.”
“Oh, there are any amount of old stables. There’s no trouble about that.” She frowned a moment, then said, “Eyelesbarrow—rather an unusual name. Some friends of mine were telling me about a Lucy Eyelesbarrow—the Kennedys?”
“Yes. I was with them in North Devon when Mrs. Kennedy was having a baby.”
Emma Crackenthorpe smiled.
“I know they said they’d never had such a wonderful time as when you were there seeing to everything. But I had the idea that you were terribly expensive. The sum I mentioned—”
“That’s quite all right,” said Lucy. “I want particularly, you see, to be near Brackhampton. I have an elderly aunt in a critical state of health and I want to be within easy distance of her. That’s why the salary is a secondary consideration. I can’t afford to do nothing. If I could be sure of having some time off most days?”
“Oh, of course. Every afternoon, till six, if you like?”
“That seems perfect.”
Miss Crackenthorpe hesitated a moment before saying: “My father is elderly and a little—difficult sometimes. He is very keen on economy, and he says things sometimes that upset people. I wouldn’t like—”
Lucy broke in quickly:
“I’m quite used to elderly people, of all kinds,” she said. “I always manage to get on well with them.” Emma Crackenthorpe looked relieved.
“Trouble with father!” diagnosed Lucy. “I bet he’s an old tartar.”
She was apportioned a large gloomy bedroom which a small electric heater did its inadequate best to warm, and was shown round the house, a vast uncomfortable mansion. As they passed a door in the hall a voice roared out:
“That you, Emma? Got the new girl there? Bring her in. I want to look at her.”
Emma flushed, glanced at Lucy apologetically.
The two women entered the room. It was richly upholstered in dark velvet, the narrow windows let in very little light, and it was full of heavy mahogany Victorian furniture.
Old Mr. Crackenthorpe was stretched out in an invalid chair, a silver-headed stick by his side.
He was a big gaunt man, his flesh hanging in loose folds. He had a face rather like a bulldog, with a pugnacious chin. He had thick dark hair flecked with grey, and small suspicious eyes.
“Let’s have a look at you, young lady.”
Lucy advanced, composed and smiling.
“There’s just one thing you’d better understand straight away. Just because we live in a big house doesn’t mean we’re rich. We’re not rich. We live simply—do you hear?—simply! No good coming here with a lot of high-falutin ideas. Cod’s as good a fish as turbot any day, and don’t you forget it. I don’t stand for waste. I live here because my father built the house and I like it. After I’m dead they can sell it up if they want to—and I expect they will want to. No sense of family. This house is well built—it’s solid, and we’ve got our own land around us. Keeps us private. It would bring in a lot if sold for building land but not while I’m alive. You won’t get me out of here until you take me out feet first.”
He glared at Lucy.
“Your home is your castle,” said Lucy.
“Laughing at me?”
“Of course not. I think it’s very exciting to have a real country place all surrounded by town.”
“Quite so. Can’t see another house from here, can you? Fields with cows in them—right in the middle of Brackhampton. You hear the traffic a bit when the wind’s that way—but otherwise it’s still country.”
He added, without pause or change of tone, to his daughter:
“Ring up that damn’ fool of a doctor. Tell him that last medicine’s no good at all.”
Lucy and Emma retired. He shouted after them:
“And don’t let that damned woman who sniffs dust in here. She’s disarranged all my books.”
Lucy asked:
“Has Mr. Crackenthorpe been an invalid long?”
Emma said, rather evasively:
“Oh, for years now… This is the kitchen.”
The kitchen was enormous. A vast kitchen range stood cold and neglected. An Aga stood demurely beside it.
Lucy asked times of meals and inspected the larder. Then she said cheerfully to Emma Crackenthorpe:
“I know everything now. Don’t bother. Leave it all to me.”
Emma Crackenthorpe heaved a sigh of relief as she went up to bed that night.
“The Kennedys were quite right,” she said. “She’s wonderful.”
“Regular old skinflint he is. What she has to put up with! All the same, she’s not what I call down-trodden. Can hold her own all right when she has to. When the gentlemen come down she sees to it there’s something decent to eat.”
“The gentlemen?”
“Yes. Big family it was. The eldest, Mr. Edmund, he was killed in the war. Then there’s Mr. Cedric, he lives abroad somewhere. He’s not married. Paints pictures in foreign parts. Mr. Harold’s in the City, lives in London—married an earl’s daughter. Then there’s Mr. Alfred, he’s got a nice way with him, but he’s a bit of a black-sheep, been in trouble once or twice—and there’s Miss Edith’s husband, Mr. Bryan, ever so nice, he is—she died some years ago, but he’s always stayed one of the family, and there’s Master Alexander, Miss Edith’s little boy. He’s at school, comes here for part of the holidays always; Miss Emma’s terribly set on him.”
Lucy digested all this information, continuing to press tea on her informant. Finally, reluctantly, Mrs. Kidder rose to her feet.
“Seem to have got along a treat, we do, this morning,” she said wonderingly. “Want me to give you a hand with the potatoes, dear?”
“They’re all done ready.”
“Well, you are a one for getting on with things! I might as well be getting along myself as there doesn’t seem anything else to do.”
Mrs. Kidder departed and Lucy, with time on her hands, scrubbed the kitchen table which she had been longing to do, but which she had put off so as not to offend Mrs. Kidder whose job it properly was. Then she cleaned the silver till it shone radiantly. She cooked lunch, cleared it away, washed it up, and at two-thirty was ready to start exploration. She had set out the tea things ready on a tray, with sandwiches and bread and butter covered with a damp napkin to keep them moist.
She strolled round the gardens which would be the normal thing to do. The kitchen garden was sketchily cultivated with a few vegetables. The hot-houses were in ruins. The paths everywhere were overgrown with weeds. A herbaceous border near the house was the only thing that showed free of weeds and in good condition and Lucy suspected that that had been Emma’s hand. The gardener was a very old man, somewhat deaf, who was only making a show of working. Lucy spoke to him pleasantly. He lived in a cottage adjacent to the big stableyard.
Leading out of the stableyard a back drive led through the park which was fenced off on either side of it, and under a railway arch into a small back lane.
Every few minutes a train thundered along the main line over the railway arch. Lucy watched the trains as they slackened speed going round the sharp curve that encircled the Crackenthorpe property. She passed under the railway arch and out into the lane. It seemed a little-used track. On the one side was the railway embankment, on the other was a high wall which enclosed some tall factory buildings. Lucy followed the lane until it came out into a street of small houses. She could hear a short distance away the busy hum of main road traffic. She glanced at her watch. A woman came out of a house nearby and Lucy stopped her.
“Excuse me, can you tell me if there is a public telephone near here?”
“Post office just at the corner of the road.”
Lucy thanked her and walked along until she came to the Post Office which was a combination shop and post office. There was a telephone box at one side. Lucy went into it and made a call. She asked to speak to Miss Marple. A woman’s voice spoke in a sharp bark.
“She’s resting. And I’m not going to disturb her!! She needs her rest—she’s an old lady. Who shall I say called?”
“Miss Eyelesbarrow. There’s no need to disturb her. Just tell her that I’ve arrived and everything is going on well and that I’ll let her know when I’ve any news.”
She replaced the receiver and made her way back to Rutherford Hall.
Five
“I suppose it will be all right if I just practise a few iron shots in the park?” asked Lucy.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Are you fond of golf?”
“I’m not much good, but I like to keep in practice. It’s a more agreeable form of exercise than just going for a walk.”
“Nowhere to walk outside this place,” growled Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Nothing but pavements and miserable little band boxes of houses. Like to get hold of my land and build more of them. But they won’t until I’m dead. And I’m not going to die to oblige anybody. I can tell you that! Not to oblige anybody!”
Emma Crackenthorpe said mildly:
“Now, Father.”
“I know what they think—and what they’re waiting for. All of ’em. Cedric, and that sly fox Harold with his smug face. As for Alfred, I wonder he hasn’t had a shot at bumping me off himself. Not sure he didn’t, at Christmas-time. That was a very odd turn I had. Puzzled old Quimper. He asked me a lot of discreet questions.”
“Everyone gets these digestive upsets now and again, Father.”
“All right, all right, say straight out that I ate too much! That’s what you mean. And why did I eat too much? Because there was too much food on the table, far too much. Wasteful and extravagant. And that reminds me—you, young woman. Five potatoes you sent in for lunch—good-sized ones too. Two potatoes are enough for anybody. So don’t send in more than four in future. The extra one was wasted today.”
“It wasn’t wasted, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I’ve planned to use it in a Spanish omelette tonight.”
“Urgh!” As Lucy went out of the room carrying the coffee tray she heard him say, “Slick young woman, that, always got all the answers. Cooks well, though—and she’s a handsome kind of girl.”
Lucy Eyelesbarrow took a light iron out of the set of golf clubs she had had the forethought to bring with her, and strolled out into the park, climbing over the fence.
She began playing a series of shots. After five minutes or so, a ball, apparently sliced, pitched on the side of the railway embankment. Lucy went up and began to hunt about for it. She looked back towards the house. It was a long way away and nobody was in the least interested in what she was doing. She continued to hunt for the ball. Now and then she played shots from the embankment down into the grass. During the afternoon she searched about a third of the embankment. Nothing. She played her ball back towards the house.
Then, on the next day, she came upon something. A thorn bush growing about halfway up the bank had been snapped off. Bits of it lay scattered about. Lucy examined the tree itself. Impaled on one of the thorns was a torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour. Lucy looked at it for a moment, then she took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and snipped it carefully in half. The half she had snipped off she put in an envelope which she had in her pocket. She came down the steep slope searching about for anything else. She looked carefully at the rough grass of the field. She thought she could distinguish a kind of track which someone had made walking through the long grass. But it was very faint—not nearly so clear as her own tracks were. It must have been made some time ago and it was too sketchy for her to be sure that it was not merely imagination on her part.
She began to hunt carefully down in the grass at the foot of the embankment just below the broken thorn bush. Presently her search was rewarded. She found a powder compact, a small cheap enamelled affair. She wrapped it in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket. She searched on but did not find anything more.
On the following afternoon, she got into her car and went to see her invalid aunt. Emma Crackenthorpe said kindly, “Don’t hurry back. We shan’t want you until dinner-time.”
“Thank you, but I shall be back by six at the
latest.”
No. 4 Madison Road was a small drab house in a small drab street. It had very clean Nottingham lace curtains, a shining white doorstep and a well-polished brass door handle. The door was opened by a tall, grim-looking woman, dressed in black with a large knob of iron-grey hair.
She eyed Lucy in suspicious appraisal as she showed her in to Miss Marple.
Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting room which looked out on to a small tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of mats and doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean suite and two ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the fire busily engaged in crocheting.
Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss Marple.
“Well!” she said. “It looks as though you were right.”
She produced her finds and gave details of their finding.
A faint flush of achievement came into Miss Marple’s cheeks.
“Perhaps one ought not to feel so,” she said, “but it is rather gratifying to form a theory and get proof that it is correct!”
She fingered the small tuft of fur. “Elspeth said the woman was wearing a light-coloured fur coat. I suppose the compact was in the pocket of the coat and fell out as the body rolled down the slope. It doesn’t seem distinctive in any way, but it may help. You didn’t take all the fur?”
“No, I left half of it on the thorn bush.”
Miss Marple nodded approval.
“Quite right. You are very intelligent, my dear. The police will want to check exactly.”
“You are going to the police—with these things?”
“Well—not quite yet…” Miss Marple considered: “It would be better, I think, to find the body first. Don’t you?”
“Yes, but isn’t that rather a tall order? I mean, granting that your estimate is correct. The murderer pushed the body out of the train, then presumably got out himself at Brackhampton and at some time—probably that same night—came along and removed the body. But what happened after that? He may have taken it anywhere.”
4.50 From Paddington Page 4
