Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple Part 3

'He went on in his soft voice, Cornish in intonation, but unconsciously smooth and well-bred in its p.r.o.nunciation, and completely free from Cornish turns of speech.

'They do say, lady, that if anyone sees those bloodstains, there will be a death within twenty-four hours.'

'Creepy! It gave me a nasty feeling all down my spine.

'He went on persuasively. 'There is a very interesting tablet in the church, lady, about a death '

'No, thanks,' I said decisively, and I turned sharply on my heel and walked up the street toward the cottage where I was lodging. Just as I got there I saw in the distance the woman called Carol coming along the cliff path. She was hurrying. Against the grey of the rocks she looked like some poisonous scarlet flower. Her hat was the colour of blood...

'I shook myself. Really, I had blood on the brain.

'Later I heard the sound of her car. I wondered whether she, too, was going to Penrithar, but she took the road to the left in the opposite direction. I watched the car crawl up the hill and disappear, and I breathed somehow more easily. Rathole seemed its quiet sleepy self once more.'

'If that is all,' said Raymond West as Joyce came to a stop, 'I will give my verdict at once. Indigestion, spots before the eyes after meals.'

'It isn't all,' said Joyce. 'You have got to hear the sequel. I read it in the paper two days later, under the heading of 'Sea Bathing Fatality.' It told how Mrs. Dacre, the wife of Captain Denis Dacre, was unfortunately drowned at Landeer Cove, just a little farther along the coast. She and her husband were staying at the time at the hotel there and had declared their intention of bathing, but a cold wind sprang up. Captain Dacre had declared it was too cold, so he and some other people in the hotel had gone off to the golf links nearby. Mrs. Dacre, however, had said it was not too cold for her and she went off alone down to the cove. As she didn't return, her husband became alarmed and in company with his friend went down to the beach. They found her clothes lying beside a rock but no trace of the unfortunate lady. Her body was not found until nearly a week later, when it was washed ash.o.r.e at a point some distance down the coast. There was a bad blow on her head which had occurred before death, and the theory was that she must have dived into the sea and hit her head on a rock. As far as I could make out, her death would have occurred just twenty-four hours after the time I saw the bloodstains.'

Joyce stared at Miss Marple.

'Aunt Jane,' she said. 'Miss Marple, I mean, I believe I do really believe you know the truth.'

'Well, dear,' said Miss Marple, 'it is much easier for me sitting here quietly than it was for you and being an artist, you are so susceptible to atmosphere, aren't you? Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. Bloodstains dropped on the pavement from the bathing dress hanging above, and being a red bathing dress, of course, the criminals themselves did not realize it was bloodstained. Poor thing, poor young thing!'

'Excuse me, Miss Marple,' said Sir Henry, 'but do you know that I am entirely in the dark still. You and Miss Lumpier seem to know what you are talking about, but we mere men are still in utter darkness.'

'I will tell you the end of the story now,' said Joyce.

'It was a year later. I was at a little east-coast resort, and I was sketching, when suddenly I had that queer feeling one has of something having happened before. There were two people, a man and a woman, on the pavement in front of me, and they were greeting a third person, a woman dressed in a scarlet poinsettia chintz dress. 'Carol, by all that is wonderful! Fancy meeting you after all these years. You don't know my wife? Joan, this is an old friend of mine, Miss Harding.'

'I recognized the man at once. It was the same Denis I had seen in Rathole. The wife was different that is, she was a Joan instead of a Margery; but she was the same type, young and rather dowdy and very inconspicuous. I thought for a minute I was going mad. They began to talk of going bathing. I will tell you what I did. I marched straight then and there to the police station. I thought they would probably think I was off my head, but I didn't care. And, as it happened, everything was quite all right. There was a man from Scotland Yard there, and he had come down just about this very thing. It seems oh, it's horrible to talk about that the police had got suspicious of Denis Dacre. That wasn't his real name he took different names on different occasions. He got to know girls, usually quiet, inconspicuous girls without many relatives or friends; he married them and insured their lives for large sums, and then oh, it's horrible! The woman called Carol was his real wife, and they always carried out the same plan. That is really how they came to catch him. The insurance companies became suspicious. He would come to some quiet seaside place with his new wife. Then the other woman would turn up and they would all go bathing together. Then the wife would be murdered and Carol would put on her clothes and go back in the boat with him. Then they would leave the place, wherever it was, after inquiring for the supposed Carol, and when they got outside the village Carol would hastily change back into her own flamboyant clothes and her vivid make-up and would go back there and drive off in her own car. They would find out which way the current was flowing and the supposed death would take place at the next bathing place along the coast that way. Carol would play the part of the wife and would go down to some lonely beach and would leave the wife's clothes there by a rock and depart in her flowery chintz dress to wait quietly until her husband could rejoin her.

'I suppose when they killed poor Margery some of the blood must have spurted over Carol's bathing suit, and being a red one, they didn't notice it, as Miss Marple says. But when they hung it over the balcony it dripped. Ugh!' She gave a shiver. 'I can see it still.'

'Of course,' said Sir Henry, 'I remember very well now. Davis was the man's real name. It had quite slipped my memory that one of his many aliases was Dacre. They were an extraordinarily cunning pair. It always seemed so amazing to me that no one spotted the change of ident.i.ty. I suppose, as Miss Marple says, clothes are more easily identified than faces; but it was a very clever scheme, for although we suspected Davis, it was not easy to bring the crime home to him as he always seemed to have an unimpeachable alibi.'

'Aunt Jane,' said Raymond, looking at her curiously, 'how do you do it? You have lived such a peaceful life and yet nothing seems to surprise you.'

'I always find one thing very like another in this world,' said Miss Marple. 'There was Mrs. Green, you know. She buried five children and every one of them insured. Well, naturally, one began to get suspicious.'

She shook her head.

'There is a great deal of wickedness in village life. I hope you dear young people will never realize how very wicked the world is.'

Motive vs. Opportunity

Mr. Petherick cleared his throat rather more importantly than usual.

'I am afraid my little problem will seem rather tame to you all,' he said apologetically, 'after the sensational stories we have been hearing. There is no bloodshed in mine, but it seems to me an interesting and rather ingenious little problem, and fortunately I am in the position to know the right answer to it. '

'It isn't terribly legal, is it?' asked Joyce Lumpier. 'I mean points of law and lots of Barnaby v. Skinner in the year 1881, and things like that.'

Mr. Petherick beamed appreciatively at her over his eyegla.s.ses.

'No, no, my dear young lady. You need have no fears on that score. The story I am about to tell is a perfectly simple and straightforward one and can be followed by any layman.

'It concerns a former client of mine. I will call him Mr. Clode Simon Clode. He was a man of considerable wealth and lived in a large house not very far from here. He had had one son killed in the War and this son had left one child, a little girl. Her mother had died at her birth, and on her father's death she had come to live with her grandfather who at once became pa.s.sionately attached to her. Little Chris could do anything she liked with her grandfather. I have never seen a man more completely wrapped up in a child, and I cannot describe to you his grief and despair when, at the age of eleven, the child contracted pneumonia and died.

'Poor Simon Clode was inconsolable. A brother of his had recently died in poor circ.u.mstances and Simon Clode had generously offered a home to his brother's children two girls, Grace and Mary, and a boy, George. But though kind and generous to his nephew and nieces, the old man never expended on them any of the love and devotion he had accorded to his little grandchild. Employment was found for George Clode in a bank near by, and Grace married a clever young research chemist of the name of Philip Garrod. Mary, who was a quiet, self-contained girl, lived at home and looked after her uncle. She was, I think, fond of him in her quiet undemonstrative way. And to all appearances things went on very peacefully. I may say that after the death of little Christobel, Simon Clode came to me and instructed me to draw up a new will. By this will, his fortune, a very considerable one, was divided equally between his nephew and nieces, a third share to each.

'Time went on. Chancing to meet George Clode one day I inquired for his uncle, whom I had not seen for some time. To my surprise George's face clouded over. 'I wish you could put some sense into Uncle Simon,' he said ruefully. His honest but not very brilliant countenance looked puzzled and worried. 'This spirit business is getting worse and worse.'

'What spirit business?' I asked, very much surprised.

'Then George told me the whole story. How Mr. Clode had gradually got interested in the subject and how on the top of this interest he had chanced to meet an American medium, a Mrs. Eurydice Spragg. This woman, whom George did not hesitate to characterise as an out and out swindler, had gained an immense ascendency over Simon Clode. She was practically always in the house and many seances were held in which the spirit of Christobel manifested itself to the doting grandfather.

'I may say here and now that I do not belong to the ranks of those who cover spiritualism with ridicule and scorn. I am neither a believer nor an unbeliever.

'On the other hand, spiritualism lends itself very easily to fraud and imposture, and from all young George Clode told me about this Mrs. Eurydice Spragg I felt more and more convinced that Simon Clode was in bad hands and that Mrs. Spragg was probably an impostor of the worst type. The old man, shrewd as he was in practical matters, would be easily imposed on where his love for his dead grandchild was concerned.

'Turning things over in my mind I felt more and more uneasy. I was fond of the young Clodes, Mary and George, and I realised that this Mrs. Spragg and her influence over their uncle might lead to trouble in the future.

'At the earliest opportunity I made a pretext for calling on Simon Clode. I found Mrs. Spragg installed as an honoured and friendly guest. As soon as I saw her my worst apprehensions were fulfilled. She was a stout woman of middle-age, dressed in a flamboyant style. Very full of cant phrases about 'Our dear ones who have pa.s.sed over,' and other things of the kind.

'Her husband was also staying in the house, Mr. Absalom Spragg, a thin lank man with a melancholy expression and extremely furtive eyes. As soon as I could, I got Simon Clode to myself and sounded him tactfully on the subject. He was full of enthusiasm. Eurydice Spragg was wonderful! She had been sent to him directly in answer to prayer! She cared nothing for money, the joy of helping a heart in affliction was enough for her. She had quite a mother's feeling for little Chris. He was beginning to regard her almost as a daughter. Then he went on to give me details-how he had heard his Chris's voice speaking how she was well and happy with her father and mother. He went on to tell other sentiments expressed by the child, which in my remembrance of little Christobel seemed to me highly unlikely. She laid stress on the fact 'Father and Mother loved dear Mrs. Spragg.'

'But, of course,' he broke off, 'you are a scoffer, Petherick.'

'No, I am not a scoffer. Very far from it. Some of the men who have written on the subject are men whose testimony I would accept unhesitatingly, and I should accord any medium recommended by them respect and credence. I presume that this Mrs. Spragg is well vouched for?'

'Simon went into ecstasies over Mrs. Spragg. She had been sent to him by Heaven. He had come across her at the watering place where he had spent two months in the summer. A chance meeting, with what a wonderful result!

'I went away very dissatisfied. My worst fears were realised, but I did not see what I could do. After a good deal of thought and deliberation I wrote to Philip Garrod who had, as I mentioned, just married the eldest Clode girl, Grace. I set the case before him of course, in the most carefully guarded language. I pointed out the danger of such a woman gaining ascendency over the old man's mind. And I suggested that Mr. Clode should be brought into contact if possible with some reputable spiritualistic circles. This, I thought, would not be a difficult matter for Philip Garrod to arrange.

'Garrod was prompt to act. He realised, which I did not, that Simon Clode's health was in a very precarious condition, and as a practical man he had no intention of letting his wife or her sister and brother be despoiled of the inheritance which was so rightly theirs. He came down the following week, bringing with him as a guest no other than the famous Professor Longman. Longman was a scientist of the first order, a man whose a.s.sociation with spiritualism compelled the latter to be treated with respect. Not only a brilliant scientist; he was a man of the utmost uprightness and probity.

'The result of the visit was most unfortunate. Longman, it seemed, had said very little while he was there. Two seances were held under what conditions I do not know. Longman was noncommittal all the time he was in the house, but after his departure he wrote a letter to Philip Garrod. In it he admitted that he had not been able to detect Mrs. Spragg in fraud, nevertheless his private opinion was that the phenomena were not genuine. Mr. Garrod, he said, was at liberty to show this letter to his uncle if he thought fit, and he suggested that he himself should put Mr. Clode in touch with a medium of perfect integrity.

'Philip Garrod had taken this letter straight to his uncle, but the result was not what he had antic.i.p.ated. The old man flew into a towering rage. It was all a plot to discredit Mrs. Spragg who was a maligned and injured saint! She had told him already what bitter jealousy there was of her in this country. He pointed out that Longman was forced to say he had not detected fraud. Eurydice Spragg had come to him in the darkest hour of his life, had given him help and comfort, and he was prepared to espouse her cause even if it meant quarrelling with every member of his family. She was more to him than anyone else in the world.

'Philip Garrod was turned out of the house with scant ceremony; but as a result of his rage Clode's own health took a decided turn for the worst. For the last month he had kept to his bed pretty continuously, and now there seemed every possibility of his being a bedridden invalid until such time as death should release him. Two days after Philip's departure I received an urgent summons and went hurriedly over. Clode was in bed and looked even to my layman's eye very ill indeed. He was gasping for breath.

'This is the end of me,' he said. 'I feel it. Don't argue with me, Petherick. But before I die I am going to do my duty by the one human being who has done more for me than anyone else in the world. I want to make a fresh will.'

'Certainly,' I said, 'if you will give me your instructions now I will draft out a will and send it to you.'

'That won't do,' he said. 'Why, man, I might not live through the night. I have written out what I want here,' he fumbled under the pillow, 'and you can tell me if it is right.'

'He produced a sheet of paper with a few words roughly scribbled on it in pencil. It was quite simple and clear. He left 5000 to each of his nieces and nephew, and the residue of his vast property outright to Eurydice Spragg 'in grat.i.tude and admiration.'

'I didn't like it, but there it was. There was no question of unsound mind, the old man was as sane as anybody.

'He rang the bell for two of the servants. They came promptly. The housemaid, Emma Gaunt, was a tall middle-aged woman who had been in service there for many years and who had nursed Clode devotedly. With her came the cook, a fresh buxom young woman of thirty. Simon Clode glared at them both from under his bushy eyebrows.

'I want you to witness my will. Emma, get me my fountain pen.'

'Emma went over obediently to the desk.

'Not that left-hand drawer, girl,' said old Simon irritably. 'Don't you know it is in the right-hand one?'

'No, it is here, sir,' said Emma, producing it.

'Then you must have put it away wrong last time,' grumbled the old man. 'I can't stand things not being kept in their proper places.'

'Still grumbling he took the pen from her and copied his own rough draft, amended by me, onto a fresh piece of paper. Then he signed his name. Emma Gaunt and the cook, Lucy David, also signed. I folded the will up and put it into a long blue envelope.

'Just as the servants were turning to leave the room Clode lay back on the pillows with a gasp and a distorted face. I bent over him anxiously and Emma Gaunt came quickly back. However, the old man recovered and smiled weakly.

'It is all right, Petherick, don't be alarmed. At any rate I shall die easy now having done what I wanted to.'

'Emma Gaunt looked inquiringly at me as if to know whether she could leave the room. I nodded rea.s.suringly and she went out first stopping to pick up the blue envelope which I had let slip to the ground in my moment of anxiety. She handed it to me and I slipped it into my coat pocket and then she went out.

'You are annoyed, Petherick,' said Simon Clode. 'You are prejudiced, like everybody else.'

'It is not a question of prejudice,' I said. 'Mrs. Spragg may be all that she claims to be. I should see no objection to you leaving her a small legacy as a memento of grat.i.tude; but I tell you frankly, Clode, that to disinherit your own flesh and blood in favour of a stranger is wrong.'

'With that I turned to depart. I had done what I could and made my protest.

'Mary Clode came out of the drawing-room and met me in the hall.

'You will have tea before you go, won't you? Come in here,' and she led me into the drawing-room.

'A fire was burning on the hearth and the room looked cosy and cheerful. She relieved me of my overcoat just as her brother, George, came into the room. He took it from her and laid it across a chair at the far end of the room, then he came back to the fireside where we drank tea. During the meal a question arose about some point concerning the estate. Simon Clode said he didn't want to be bothered with it and had left it to George to decide. George was rather nervous about trusting to his own judgment. At my suggestion, we adjourned to the study after tea and I looked over the papers in question. Mary Clode accompanied us.

'A quarter of an hour later I prepared to take my departure. Remembering that I had left my overcoat in the drawing-room, I went there to fetch it. The only occupant of the room was Mrs. Spragg, who was kneeling by the chair on which the overcoat lay. She seemed to be doing something rather unnecessary to the chair's slipcover. She rose with a very red face as we entered.

'That cover never did sit right,' she complained. 'My! I could make a better fit myself.'

'I took up my overcoat and put it on. As I did so I noticed that the envelope containing the will had fallen out of the pocket and was lying on the floor. I replaced it in my pocket, said good-bye, and took my departure.

'On arrival at my office, I will describe my next actions carefully. I removed my overcoat and took the will from the pocket. I had it in my hand and was standing by the table when my clerk came in. Somebody wished to speak to me on the telephone, and the extension to my desk was out of order. I accordingly accompanied him to the outer office and remained there for about five minutes engaged in conversation over the telephone.

'When I emerged I found my clerk waiting for me.

'Mr. Spragg has called to see you, sir. I showed him into your office.'

'I went there to find Mr. Spragg sitting by the table. He rose and greeted me in a somewhat unctuous manner, then proceeded to a long discursive speech. In the main it seemed to be an uneasy justification of himself and his wife. He was afraid people were saying, etc., etc. His wife had been known from her babyhood upwards for the pureness of her heart and her motives . . . and so on and so on. I was, I am afraid, rather curt with him. In the end I think he realised that his visit was not being a success and left somewhat abruptly. I then remembered that I had left the will lying on the table. I took it, sealed the envelope, and wrote on it and put it away in the safe.

'Now I come to the crux of my story. Two months later Mr. Simon Clode died. I will not go into long-winded discussions, I will just state the bare facts. When the sealed envelope containing the will was opened it was found to contain a sheet of blank paper.'

He paused, looking around the circle of interested faces. He smiled himself with a certain enjoyment.

'You appreciate the point, of course? For two months the sealed envelope had lain in my safe. It could not have been tampered with then. No, the time limit was a very short one. Between the moment the will was signed and my locking it away in the safe. Now who had had the opportunity, and to whose interest would it be to do so?

'I will recapitulate the vital points in a brief summary: The will was signed by Mr. Clode, placed by me in an envelope so far so good. It was then put by me in my overcoat pocket. That overcoat was taken from me by Mary and handed by her to George, who was in full sight of me whilst handling the coat. During the time that I was in the study Mrs. Eurydice Spragg would have had plenty of time to extract the envelope from the coat pocket and read its contents and, as a matter of fact, finding the envelope on the ground and not in the pocket seemed to point to her having done so.

'But here we come to a curious point: she had the opportunity of subst.i.tuting the blank paper, but no motive. The will was in her favour, and by subst.i.tuting a blank piece of paper she despoiled herself of the heritage she had been so anxious to gain. The same applies to Mr. Spragg. He, too, had the opportunity. He was left alone with the doc.u.ment in question for some two or three minutes in my office. But again, it was not to his advantage to do so. So we are faced with the curious problem: the two people who had the opportunity of subst.i.tuting a blank piece of paper had no motive for doing so, and the two people who had a motive had no opportunity. By the way, I would not exclude the housemaid, Emma Gaunt, from suspicion. She was devoted to her young master and mistress and detested the Spraggs. She would, I feel sure, have been quite equal to attempting the subst.i.tution if she had thought of it. But although she actually handled the envelope when she picked it up from the floor and handed it to me, she certainly had no opportunity of tampering with its contents and she could not have subst.i.tuted another envelope by some sleight of hand (of which anyway she would not be capable) because the envelope in question was brought into the house by me and no one there would be likely to have a duplicate.'

He looked round, beaming on the a.s.sembly.

'Now, there is my little problem. I have, I hope, stated it clearly. I should be interested to hear your views.'

To everyone's astonishment Miss Marple gave vent to a long and prolonged chuckle. Something seemed to be amusing her immensely.

'What is the matter, Aunt Jane? Can't we share the joke?' said Raymond.

'Mr. Petherick's story is a catch. So like a lawyer! Ah, my dear old friend!' She shook a reproving head at him.

'I wonder if you really know,' said the lawyer with a twinkle.

Miss Marple wrote a few words on a piece of paper, folded them up and pa.s.sed them across to him.

Mr. Petherick unfolded the paper, read what was written on it and looked across at her appreciatively.

'My dear friend,' he said, 'is there anything you do not know?'

'I knew that as a child,' said Miss Marple. 'Played with it too. '

' I feel rather out of this, ' said Sir Henry. 'I feel sure that Mr. Petherick has some clever legal legerdemain up his sleeve. '

'Not at all,' said Mr. Petherick. 'Not at all. It is a perfectly fair straightforward proposition. You must not pay any attention to Miss Marple. She has her own way of looking at things.'

The lawyer shook his head.

'I will go on where I left off. I was dumbfounded and quite as much at sea as all of you are. I don't think I should ever have guessed the truth probably not but I was enlightened. It was cleverly done too.

'I went and dined with Philip Garrod about a month later, and in the course of our after dinner conversation, he mentioned an interesting case that had recently come to his notice.

'I should like to tell you about it, Petherick, in confidence, of course.'

'Quite so,' I replied.

'A friend of mine who had expectations from one of his relatives was greatly distressed to find that that relative had thoughts of benefiting a totally unworthy person. My friend, I am afraid, is a trifle unscrupulous in his methods. There was a maid in the house who was greatly devoted to the interests of what I may call the legitimate party. My friend gave her very simple instructions. He gave her a fountain pen, duly filled. She was to place this in a drawer in the writing-table in her master's room, but not the usual drawer where the pen was generally kept. If her master asked her to witness his signature to any doc.u.ment and asked her to bring him his pen, she was to bring him not the right one, but this one which was an exact duplicate of it. That was all she had to do. He gave her no other information. She was a devoted creature and she carried out his instructions faithfully.'