A Murder Is Announced

‘Nail scissors, I expect,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Just a snip on the lobe of the ear lets out a lot of blood. That was very good psychology, of course. The actual blood running down over her white blouse made it seem certain that shehad been shot at, and that it had been a near miss.’

‘It ought to have gone off quite all right,’ said Craddock. ‘Dora Bunner’s insistence that Scherz had definitely aimed at Miss Blacklock had its uses. Without meaning it, Dora Bunner conveyed the impression that she’d actually seen her friend wounded. It might have been brought in Suicide or Accidental Death. And the case would have been closed. That it was kept open is due to Miss Marple here.’

‘Oh, no, no.’ Miss Marple shook her head energetically. ‘Any little efforts on my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren’t satisfied, Mr Craddock. It wasyou who wouldn’t let the case be closed.’

‘I wasn’t happy about it,’ said Craddock. ‘I knew it was all wrong somewhere. But I didn’t seewhere it was wrong, till you showed me. And after that Miss Blacklock had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that that second door had been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever we agreedmight have happened-we’d nothing to go upon but a pretty theory. But that oiled door wasevidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance-by catching hold of a handle by mistake.’

‘I think you wereled to it, Inspector,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But then I’m old-fashioned.’

‘So the hunt was up again,’ said Craddock. ‘But this time with a difference. We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill Letitia Blacklock.’

‘And therewas someone with a motive, and Miss Blacklock knew it,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I think she recognized Phillipa almost at once. Because Sonia Goedler seems to have been one of the very few people who had been admitted to Charlotte’s privacy. And when one is old (you wouldn’t know this yet, Mr Craddock) one has a much better memory for a face you’ve seen when you were young than you have for anyone you’ve only met a year or two ago. Phillipa must have been just about the same age as her mother was when Charlotte remembered her, and she was very like her mother. The odd thing is that I think Charlotte was very pleased to recognize Phillipa. She became very fond of Phillipa and I think, unconsciously, it helped to stifle any qualms of conscience she may have had. She told herself that when she inherited the money, she was going to look after Phillipa. She would treat her as a daughter. Phillipa and Harry should live with her. She felt quite happy and beneficent about it. But once the Inspector began asking questions and finding out about “Pip and Emma” Charlotte became very uneasy. She didn’t want to make a scapegoat of Phillipa. Her whole idea had been to make the business look like a hold-up by a young criminal and his accidental death. But now, with the discovery of the oiled door, the whole viewpoint was changed. And, except for Phillipa, there wasn’t (as far asshe knew, for she had absolutely no idea of Julia’s identity) anyone with the least possible motive for wishing to kill her. She did her best to shield Phillipa’s identity. She was quick-witted enough to tell you when you asked her, that Sonia was small and dark and she took the old snapshots out of the album so that you shouldn’t notice any resemblance at the same time as she removed snapshots of Letitia herself.’

‘And to think I suspected Mrs Swettenham of being Sonia Goedler,’ said Craddock disgustedly.

‘My poor mamma,’ murmured Edmund. ‘A woman of blameless life-or so I have always believed.’

‘But of course,’ Miss Marple went on, ‘it was Dora Bunner who was the real danger. Every day Dora got more forgetful and more talkative. I remember the way Miss Blacklock looked at her the day we went to tea there. Do you know why? Dora had just called her Lotty again. It seemed to us a mere harmless slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte. And so it went on. Poor Dora could not stop herself talking. That day we had coffee together in the Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora was talking abouttwo people, not one-and so, of course, she was. At one moment she spoke of her friend as not pretty but having so much character-but almost at the same moment she described her as a pretty light-hearted girl. She’d talk of Letty as so clever and so successful-and then say what a sad life she’d had, and then there was that quotation about stern affliction bravely borne-which really didn’t seem to fit Letitia’s life at all. Charlotte must, I think, have overheard a good deal that morning she came into the cafe. She certainly must have heard Dora mention about the lamp having been changed-about its being the shepherd and not the shepherdess. And she realized then what a very real danger to her security poor devoted Dora Bunner was.