A Murder Is Announced

‘She must have spent a very miserable day. You see, it still wasn’t too late to draw back…Dora Bunner told us that Letty was frightened that day and she must have been frightened. Frightened of what she was going to do, frightened of the plan going wrong-but not frightened enough to draw back.

‘It had been fun, perhaps, getting the revolver out of Colonel Easterbrook’s collar drawer. Taking along eggs, or jam-slipping upstairs in the empty house. It had been fun getting the second door in the drawing-room oiled, so that it would open and shut noiselessly. Fun suggesting the moving of the table outside the door so that Phillipa’s flower arrangements would show to better advantage. It may have all seemed like a game. But what was going to happen next definitely wasn’t a game any longer. Oh, yes, she was frightened…Dora Bunner was right about that.’

‘All the same, she went through with it,’ said Craddock. ‘And it all went according to plan. She went out just after six to “shut up the ducks”, and she let Scherz in then and gave him the mask and cloak and gloves and the torch. Then, at 6.30, when the clock begins to chime, she’s ready by that table near the archway with her hand on the cigarette-box. It’s all so natural. Patrick, acting as host, has gone for the drinks. She, the hostess, is fetching the cigarettes. She’d judged, quite correctly, that when the clock begins to chime, everyone will look at the clock. They did. Only one person, the devoted Dora, kept her eyes fixed on her friend. And she told us, in her very first statement, exactly what Miss Blacklock did. She said that Miss Blacklock had picked up the vase of violets.

‘She’d previously frayed the cord of the lamp so that the wires were nearly bare. The whole thing only took a second. The cigarette-box, the vase and the little switch were all close together. She picked up the violets, spilt the water on the frayed place and switched on the lamp. Water’s a good conductor of electricity. The wires fused.’

‘Just like the other afternoon at the Vicarage,’ said Bunch. ‘That’s what startled you so, wasn’t it, Aunt Jane?’

‘Yes, my dear. I’ve been puzzling about those lights. I’d realized that there were two lamps, a pair, and that one had been changed for the other-probably during the night.’

‘That’s right,’ said Craddock. ‘When Fletcher examined that lamp the next morning it was, like all the others, perfectly in order, no frayed flex or fused wires.’

‘I’d understood what Dora Bunner meant by saying it had been theshepherdess the night before,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but I fell into the error of thinking, as she thought, thatPatrick had been responsible. The interesting thing about Dora Bunner was that she was quite unreliable in repeating things she had heard-she always used her imagination to exaggerate or distort them, and she was usually wrong in what shethought -but she was quite accurate about the things shesaw. She saw Letitia pick up the violets-’

‘And she saw what she described as a flash and a crackle,’ put in Craddock.

‘And, of course, when dear Bunch spilt the water from the Christmas roses on to the lamp wire-I realized at once that only Miss Blacklock herself could have fused the lights because only she was near that table.’

‘I could kick myself,’ said Craddock. ‘Dora Bunner even prattled about a burn on the table where someone had “put their cigarette down”-but nobody had even lit a cigarette…And the violets were dead because there was no water in the vase-a slip on Letitia’s part-she ought to have filled it up again. But I suppose she thought nobody would notice and as a matter of fact Miss Bunner was quite ready to believe that she herself had put no water in the vase to begin with.’

He went on:

‘She was highly suggestible, of course. And Miss Blacklock took advantage of that more than once. Bunny’s suspicions of Patrick were, I think, induced by her.’

‘Why pick on me?’ demanded Patrick in an aggrieved tone.

‘It was not, I think, a serious suggestion-but it would keep Bunny distracted from any suspicion that Miss Blacklock might be stage managering the business. Well, we know what happened next. As soon as the lights went and everyone was exclaiming, she slipped out through the previously oiled door and up behind Rudi Scherz who was flashing his torch round the room and playing his part with gusto. I don’t suppose he realized for a moment she was there behind him with her gardening gloves pulled on and the revolver in her hand. She waits till the torch reaches the spot she must aim for-the wall near which she is supposed to be standing. Then she fires rapidly twice and as he swings round startled, she holds the revolver close to his body and fires again. She lets the revolver fall by his body, throws her gloves carelessly on the hall table, then back through the other door and across to where she had been standing when the lights went out. She nicked her ear-I don’t quite know how-’