A Murder Is Announced

I hope it will be all right for me to come to you on Tuesday? I wrote to Patrick two days ago but he hasn’t answered. So I presume it’s all right. Mother is coming to England next month and hopes to see you then.

My train arrives at Chipping Cleghorn at 6.15 if that’s convenient?

Yours affectionately,

Julia Simmons.

Miss Blacklock read the letter once with astonishment pure and simple, and then again with a certain grimness. She looked up at Phillipa who was smiling over her son’s letter.

‘Are Julia and Patrick back, do you know?’

Phillipa looked up.

‘Yes, they came in just after I did. They went upstairs to change. They were wet.’

‘Perhaps you’d not mind going and calling them.’

‘Of course I will.’

‘Wait a moment-I’d like you to read this.’

She handed Phillipa the letter she had received.

Phillipa read it and frowned. ‘I don’t understand…’ 

‘Nor do I, quite…I think it’s about time I did. Call Patrick and Julia, Phillipa.’

Phillipa called from the bottom of the stairs:

‘Patrick! Julia! Miss Blacklock wants you.’

Patrick came running down the stairs and entered the room.

‘Don’t go, Phillipa,’ said Miss Blacklock.

‘Hallo, Aunt Letty,’ said Patrick cheerfully. ‘Want me?’

‘Yes, I do. Perhaps you’ll give me an explanation ofthis?’

Patrick’s face showed an almost comical dismay as he read.

‘I meant to telegraph her! What an ass I am!’

‘This letter, I presume, is from your sister Julia?’

‘Yes-yes, it is.’

Miss Blacklock said grimly:

‘Then who, may I ask, is the young woman whom you brought here as Julia Simmons, and whom I was given to understand was your sister and my cousin?’

‘Well-you see-Aunt Letty-the fact of the matter is-I can explain it all-I know I oughtn’t to have done it-but it really seemed more of a lark than anything else. If you’ll just let me explain-’

‘I am waiting for you to explain.Who is this young woman? ’

‘Well, I met her at a cocktail party soon after I got demobbed. We got talking and I said I was coming here and then-well, we thought it might be rather a good wheeze if I brought her along…You see, Julia, the real Julia, was mad to go on the stage and Mother had seven fits at the idea-however, Julia got a chance to join a jolly good repertory company up in Perth or somewhere and she thought she’d give it a try-but she thought she’d keep Mum calm by letting Mum think that she was here with me studying to be a dispenser like a good little girl.’

‘I still want to know who this other young womanis.’

Patrick turned with relief as Julia, cool and aloof, came into the room.

‘The balloon’s gone up,’ he said.

Julia raised her eyebrows. Then, still cool, she came forward and sat down.

‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘That’s that. I suppose you’re very angry?’ She studied Miss Blacklock’s face with almost dispassionate interest. ‘I should be if I were you.’

‘Who are you?’

Julia sighed.

‘I think the moment’s come when I make a clean breast of things. Here we go. I’m one half of the Pip and Emma combination. To be exact, my christened name is Emma Jocelyn Stamfordis-only Father soon dropped the Stamfordis. I think he called himself De Courcy next. 

‘My father and mother, let me tell you, split up about three years after Pip and I were born. Each of them went their own way. And they split us up. I was Father’s part of the loot. He was a bad parent on the whole, though quite a charming one. I had various desert spells of being educated in convents-when Father hadn’t any money, or was preparing to engage in some particularly nefarious deal. He used to pay the first term with every sign of affluence and then depart and leave me on the nuns’ hands for a year or two. In the intervals, he and I had some very good times together, moving in cosmopolitan society. However, the war separated us completely. I’ve no idea of what’s happened to him. I had a few adventures myself. I was with the French Resistance for a time. Quite exciting. To cut a long story short, I landed up in London and began to think about my future. I knew that Mother’s brother with whom she’d had a frightful row had died a very rich man. I looked up his will to see if there was anything for me. There wasn’t-not directly, that is to say. I made a few inquiries about his widow-it seemed she was quite ga-ga and kept under drugs and was dying by inches. Frankly, it looked as thoughyou were my best bet. You were going to come into a hell of a lot of money and from all I could find out, you didn’t seem to have anyone much to spend it on. I’ll be quite frank. It occurred to me that if I could get to know you in a friendly kind of way, and if you took a fancy to me-well, after all, conditions have changed a bit, haven’t they, since Uncle Randall died? Imean any money we ever had has been swept away in the cataclysm of Europe. I thought you might pity a poor orphan girl, all alone in the world, and make her, perhaps, a small allowance.’

‘Oh, you did, did you?’ said Miss Blacklock grimly.