A Murder Is Announced

‘No, dear, don’t bother. You’ll miss your bus. I don’t want any more light. I just want to sit quietly and-think about something. Hurry dear, or you won’t catch your bus.’

When Bunch had gone, Miss Marple sat quite still for about two minutes. The air of the room was heavy and menacing with the gathering storm outside.

Miss Marple drew a sheet of paper towards her.

She wrote first:Lamp? and underlined it heavily.

After a moment or two, she wrote another word.

Her pencil travelled down the paper, making brief cryptic notes…

***

In the rather dark living-room of Boulders with its low ceiling and latticed window panes, Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd were having an argument.

‘The trouble with you, Murgatroyd,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe, ‘is that you won’ttry.’

‘But I tell you, Hinch, I can’t remember a thing.’

‘Now look here, Amy Murgatroyd, we’re going to do some constructive thinking. So far we haven’t shone on the detective angle. I was quite wrong over that door business. You didn’t hold the door open for the murderer after all. You’re cleared, Murgatroyd!’

Miss Murgatroyd gave a rather watery smile.

‘It’s just our luck to have the only silent cleaning woman in Chipping Cleghorn,’ continued Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘Usually I’m thankful for it, but this time it means we’ve got off to a bad start. Everybody else in the place knows about that second door in the drawing-room being used-and we only heard about it yesterday-’

‘I still don’t quite understand how-’

‘It’s perfectly simple. Our original premises were quite right. You can’t hold open a door, wave a torch and shoot with a revolver all at the same time. We kept in the revolver and the torch and cut out the door. Well, we were wrong. It was the revolver we ought to have cut out.’

‘But hedid have a revolver,’ said Miss Murgatroyd. ‘I saw it. It was there on the floor beside him.’

‘When he was dead, yes. It’s all quite clear.He didn’t fire that revolver-’

‘Then who did?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out. But whoever did it, the same person put a couple of poisoned aspirin tablets by Letty Blacklock’s bed-and thereby bumped off poor Dora Bunner. And that couldn’t have been Rudi Scherz, because he’s as dead as a doornail. It was someone who was in the room that night of the hold-up and probably someone who was at the birthday party, too. And the only personthat lets out is Mrs Harmon.’

‘You think someone put those aspirins there the day of the birthday party?’

‘Why not?’

‘But how could they?’

‘Well, we all went to the loo, didn’t we?’ said Miss Hinchcliffe coarsely. ‘And I washed my hands in the bathroom because of that sticky cake. And little Sweetie Easterbrook powdered her grubby little face in Blacklock’s bedroom, didn’t she?’

‘Hinch! Do you thinkshe -?’

‘I don’t know yet. Rather obvious, if she did. I don’t think if you were going to plant some tablets, that you’d want to be seen in the bedroom at all. Oh, yes, there were plenty of opportunities.’

‘The men didn’t go upstairs.’

‘There are back stairs. After all, if a man leaves the room, you don’t follow him to see if he really is going where you think he is going. It wouldn’t be delicate! Anyway, don’targue, Murgatroyd. I want to get back to the original attempt on Letty Blacklock. Now, to begin with, get the facts firmly into your head, because it’s all going to depend upon you.’

Miss Murgatroyd looked alarmed.

‘Oh, dear, Hinch, you know what a muddle I get into!’

‘It’s not a question of your brains, or the grey fluff that passes for brains with you. It’s a question ofeyes. It’s a question of what yousaw.’

‘But I didn’t seeanything.’