A Murder Is Announced

‘Miss Marple kindly came up with a note from the Vicar.’

Miss Marple said in a flurried manner:

‘I am going at once-at once. Please don’t let me hamper you inany way.’

‘Were you at the tea party here yesterday afternoon?’

Miss Marple said, nervously:

‘No-no, I wasn’t. Bunch drove me over to call on some friends.’

‘Then there’s nothing you can tell me.’ Craddock held the door open in a pointed manner, and Miss Marple scuttled out in a somewhat abashed fashion.

‘Nosey Parkers, these old women,’ said Craddock.

‘I think you’re being unfair to her,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘She really did come with a note from the Vicar.’

‘I bet she did.’

‘I don’t think it was idle curiosity.’

‘Well, perhaps you’re right, Miss Blacklock, but my own diagnosis would be a severe attack of Nosey Parkeritis…’

‘She’s a very harmless old creature,’ said Miss Blacklock.

‘Dangerous as a rattlesnake if you only knew,’ the Inspector thought grimly. But he had no intention of taking anyone into his confidence unnecessarily. Now that he knew definitely there was a killer at large, he felt that the less said the better. He didn’t want the next person bumped off to be Jane Marple.

Somewhere-a killer…Where?

‘I won’t waste time offering sympathy, Miss Blacklock,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I feel pretty bad about Miss Bunner’s death. We ought to have been able to prevent it.’

‘I don’t see what you could have done.’

‘No-well, it wouldn’t have been easy. But now we’ve got to work fast. Who’s doing this, Miss Blacklock? Who’s had two shots at killing you, and will probably, if we don’t work fast enough, soon have another?’

Letitia Blacklock shivered. ‘I don’t know, Inspector-I don’t knowat all!’

‘I’ve checked up with Mrs Goedler. She’s given me all the help she can. It wasn’t very much. There are just a few people who would definitely profit by your death. First Pip and Emma. Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age, but their background seems clear enough. Anyway, we can’t concentrate on these two alone. Tell me, Miss Blacklock, would you recognize Sonia Goedler if you saw her?’

‘Recognize Sonia? Why, of course-’ She stopped suddenly. ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t know that I would. It’s a long time. Thirty years…She’d be an elderly woman now.’

‘What was she like when you remember her?’

‘Sonia?’ Miss Blacklock considered for some moments. ‘She was rather small, dark…’

‘Any special peculiarities? Mannerisms?’

‘No-no, I don’t think so. She was gay-very gay.’

‘She mayn’t be so gay now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Have you got a photograph of her?’

‘Of Sonia? Let me see-not a proper photograph. I’ve got some old snapshots-in an album somewhere-at least I think there’s one of her.’

‘Ah. Can I have a look at it?’

‘Yes, of course. Now where did I put that album?’

‘Tell me, Miss Blacklock, do you consider it remotely possible that Mrs Swettenham might be Sonia Goedler?’

‘Mrs Swettenham?’ Miss Blacklock looked at him in lively atonishment. ‘But her husband was in the Government Service-in India first, I think, and then in Hong Kong.’

‘What you mean is, that that’s the story she’s told you. You don’t, as we say in the Courts, know it of your own knowledge, do you?’

‘No,’ said Miss Blacklock slowly. ‘When you put it like that, I don’t…But Mrs Swettenham? Oh, it’s absurd!’

‘Did Sonia Goedler ever do any acting? Amateur theatricals?’

‘Oh, yes. She was good.’

‘There you are! Another thing, Mrs Swettenham wears a wig. At least,’ the Inspector corrected himself, ‘Mrs Harmon says she does.’

‘Yes-yes, I suppose it might be a wig. All those little grey curls. But I still think it’s absurd. She’s really very nice and exceedingly funny sometimes.’

‘Thenthere’s Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Could either of them be Sonia Goedler?’

‘Miss Hinchcliffe is too tall. She’s as tall as a man.’

‘Miss Murgatroyd then?’

‘Oh, but-oh no, I’m sure Miss Murgatroyd couldn’t be Sonia.’

‘You don’t see very well, do you, Miss Blacklock?’

‘I’m shortsighted; is that what you mean?’

‘Yes. What I’d like to see is a snapshot of this Sonia Goedler, even if it’s a long time ago and not a good likeness. We’re trained, you know, to pick out resemblances, in a way no amateur can ever do.’

‘I’ll try and find it for you.’

‘Now?’

‘What, at once?’

‘I’d prefer it.’

‘Very well. Now, let me see. I saw that album when we were tidying a lot of books out of the cupboard. Julia was helping me. She laughed, I remember, at the clothes we used to wear in those days…The books we put in the shelf in the drawing-room. Where did we put the albums and the big bound volumes of the Art Journal? What a wretched memory I have! Perhaps Julia will remember. She’s at home today.’

‘I’ll find her.’

The Inspector departed on his quest. He did not find Julia in any of the downstairs rooms. Mitzi, asked where Miss Simmons was, said crossly that it was not her affair.

‘Me! I stay in my kitchen and concern myself with the lunch. And nothing do I eat that I have not cooked myself. Nothing, do you hear?’