A Murder Is Announced

‘Yes. Of course, I hadn’t seen you then…I visualized a kind of sob stuff approach…Then, by a marvellous stroke of luck, I met Patrick here-and he turned out to be your nephew or your cousin, or something. Well, that struck me as a marvellous chance. I went bull-headed for Patrick and he fell for me in a most gratifying way. The real Julia was all wet about this acting stuff and I soon persuaded her it was her duty to Art to go and fix herself up in some uncomfortable lodgings in Perth and train to be the new Sarah Bernhardt.

‘You mustn’t blame Patrick too much. He felt awfully sorry for me, all alone in the world-and he soon thought it would be a really marvellous idea for me to come here as his sister and do my stuff.’

‘And he also approved of your continuing to tell a tissue of lies to the police?’

‘Have a heart, Letty. Don’t you see that when that ridiculous hold-up business happened-or rather after it happened-I began to feel I was in a bit of a spot. Let’s face it, I’ve got a perfectly good motive for putting you out of the way. You’ve only got my word for it now that I wasn’t the one who tried to do it. You can’t expect me deliberately to go and incriminate myself. Even Patrick got nasty ideas about me from time to time, and if evenhe could think things like that, what on earth would the police think? That Detective-Inspector struck me as a man of singularly sceptical mind. No, I figured out the only thing for me to do was to sit tight as Julia and just fade away when term came to an end.

‘How was I to know that fool Julia, the real Julia, would go and have a row with the producer, and fling the whole thing up in a fit of temperament? She writes to Patrick and asks if she can come here, and instead of wiring her “Keep away” he goes and forgets to do anything at all!’ She cast an angry glance at Patrick. ‘Of all the utteridiots!’

She sighed.

‘You don’t know the straits I’ve been put to in Milchester! Of course, I haven’t been to the hospital at all. But I had to gosomewhere. Hours and hours I’ve spent in the pictures seeing the most frightful films over and over again.’

‘Pip and Emma,’ murmured Miss Blacklock. ‘I never believed, somehow, in spite of what the Inspector said, that they werereal -’ 

She looked searchingly at Julia.

‘You’re Emma,’ she said. ‘Where’s Pip?’

Julia’s eyes, limpid and innocent, met hers.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t the least idea.’

‘I think you’re lying, Julia. When did you see him last?’

Was there a momentary hesitation before Julia spoke?

She said clearly and deliberately:

‘I haven’t seen him since we were both three years old-when my mother took him away. I haven’t seen either him or my mother. I don’t know where they are.’

‘And that’s all you have to say?’

Julia sighed.

‘I could say I was sorry. But it wouldn’t really be true; because actually I’d do the same thing again-though not if I’d known about this murder business, of course.’

‘Julia,’ said Miss Blacklock, ‘I call you that because I’m used to it. You were with the French Resistance, you say?’

‘Yes. For eighteen months.’

‘Then I suppose you learned to shoot?’

Again those cool blue eyes met hers.

‘I can shoot all right. I’m a first-class shot. I didn’t shoot at you, Letitia Blacklock, though you’ve only got my word for that. But I can tell you this, that ifI had shot at you, I wouldn’t have been likely to miss.’

The sound of a car driving up to the door broke through the tenseness of the moment.

‘Who can that be?’ asked Miss Blacklock.

Mitzi put a tousled head in. She was showing the whites of her eyes.

‘It is the police come again,’ she said. ‘This, it is persecution! Why will they not leave us alone? I will not bear it. I will write to the Prime Minister. I will write to your King.’

Craddock’s hand put her firmly and not too kindly aside. He came in with such a grim set to his lips that they all looked at him apprehensively. This was a new Inspector Craddock.

He said sternly:

‘Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered. She was strangled-not more than an hour ago.’ His eye singled out Julia. ‘You-Miss Simmons-where have you been all day?’

Julia said warily:

‘In Milchester. I’ve just got in.’

‘And you?’ The eye went on to Patrick. 

‘Yes.’

‘Did you both come back here together?’

‘Yes-yes, we did,’ said Patrick.

‘No,’ said Julia. ‘It’s no good, Patrick. That’s the kind of lie that will be found out at once. The bus people know us well. I came back on the earlier bus, Inspector-the one that gets here at four o’clock.’

‘And what did you do then?’

‘I went for a walk.’

‘In the direction of Boulders?’

‘No. I went across the fields.’

He stared at her. Julia, her face pale, her lips tense, stared back.

Before anyone could speak, the telephone rang.

Miss Blacklock, with an inquiring glance at Craddock, picked up the receiver.

‘Yes. Who? Oh, Bunch. What? No. No, she hasn’t. I’ve no idea…Yes, he’s here now.’

She lowered the instrument and said:

‘Mrs Harmon would like to speak to you, Inspector. Miss Marple has not come back to the Vicarage and Mrs Harmon is worried about her.’