A Murder Is Announced

‘“I go there and if they say to me you have to register with the police-you are an alien, I say to them, ‘Yes, Iwill register! The police, they know me very well. I assist the police! Without me the police never would they have made the arrest of a very dangerous criminal. I risked my life because I am brave-brave like a lion-I do not care about risks.’ ‘Mitzi,’ they say to me, ‘you are aheroine, you are superb.’ ‘Ach, it is nothing, I say.’”’

Julia stopped.

‘And a great deal more,’ she added.

‘I think,’ said Edmund thoughtfully, ‘that soon Mitzi will have assisted the police in not one but hundreds of cases!’

‘She’s softened towards me,’ said Phillipa. ‘She actually presented me with the recipe for Delicious Death as a kind of wedding present. She added that I was on no account to divulge the secret to Julia, because Julia had ruined her omelette pan.’

‘Mrs Lucas,’ said Edmund, ‘is all over Phillipa now that since Belle Goedler’s death Phillipa and Julia have inherited the Goedler millions. She sent us some silver asparagus tongs as a wedding present. I shall have enormous pleasure innot asking her to the wedding!’

‘And so they lived happily ever after,’ said Patrick. ‘Edmund and Phillipa-and Julia and Patrick?’ he added tentatively.

‘Not with me, you won’t live happily ever after,’ said Julia. ‘The remarks that Inspector Craddock improvised to address to Edmund apply far more aptly to you. Youare the sort of soft young man who would like a rich wife. Nothing doing!’

‘There’s gratitude for you,’ said Patrick. ‘After all I did for that girl.’

‘Nearly landed me in prison on a murder charge -that’s what your forgetfulness nearly did for me,’ said Julia. ‘I shall never forget that evening when your sister’s letter came. I really thought I was for it. I couldn’t see any way out.’

‘As it is,’ she added musingly, ‘I think I shall go on the stage.’

‘What? You, too?’ groaned Patrick.

‘Yes. I might go to Perth. See if I can get your Julia’s place in the Rep there. Then, when I’ve learnt my job, I shall go into theatre management-and put on Edmund’s plays, perhaps.’

‘I thought you wrote novels,’ said Julian Harmon.

‘Well, so did I,’ said Edmund. ‘I began writing a novel. Rather good it was. Pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smelt like, and the grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy and a vicious young tart who dribbled down her chin-and they all talked interminably about the state of the world and wondered what they were alive for. And suddenly I began to wonder too…And then a rather comic idea occurred to me…and I jotted it down-and then I worked up rather a good little scene…All very obvious stuff. But somehow, I got interested…And before I knew what I was doing I’d finished a roaring farce in three acts.’

‘What’s it called?’ asked Patrick. ‘What the Butler Saw?’

‘Well, it easily might be…As a matter of I’ve called itElephants Do Forget. What’s more, it’s been accepted and it’s going to be produced!’

‘Elephants Do Forget,’ murmured Bunch. ‘I thought they didn’t?’

The Rev. Julian Harmon gave a guilty start.

‘My goodness. I’ve been so interested. Mysermon!’

‘Detective stories again,’ said Bunch. ‘Real-life ones this time.’

‘You might preach on Thou Shall Do No Murder,’ suggested Patrick.

‘No,’ said Julian Harmon quietly. ‘I shan’t take that as my text.’

‘No,’ said Bunch. ‘You’re quite right, Julian. I know a much nicer text, a happy text.’ She quoted in a fresh voice, ‘For lo the Spring is here and the Voice of the Turtle is heard in the Land-I haven’t got it quite right-but you know the one I mean. Though why aturtle I can’t think. I shouldn’t think turtles have got nice voices at all.’

‘The word turtle,’ explained the Rev. Julian Harmon, ‘is not very happily translated. It doesn’t mean a reptile but the turtle dove. The Hebrew word in the original is-’

Bunch interrupted him by giving him a hug and saying:

‘I know one thing-Youthink that the Ahasuerus of the Bible is Artaxerxes the Second, but between you and me it was Artaxerxes the Third.’

As always, Julian Harmon wondered why his wife should think that story so particularly funny.

‘Tiglath Pileser wants to go and help you,’ said Bunch. ‘He ought to be a very proud cat.He showed us how the lights fused.’

Epilogue

‘We ought to order some papers,’ said Edmund to Phillipa upon the day of their return to Chipping Cleghorn after the honeymoon. ‘Let’s go along to Totman’s.’

Mr Totman, a heavy-breathing, slow-moving man, received them with affability.

‘Glad to see you back, sir.And madam.’

‘We want to order some papers.’

‘Certainly sir. And your mother is keeping well, I hope? Quite settled down at Bournemouth?’

‘She loves it,’ said Edmund, who had not the faintest idea whether this was so or not, but like most sons, preferred to believe that all was well with those loved, but frequently irritating beings, parents.

‘Yes, sir. Very agreeable place. Went there for my holiday last year. Mrs Totman enjoyed it very much.’

‘I’m glad. About papers, we’d like-’