The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

making up this unconvincing tale in order to avert

suspicion from himself.

I asked if there had been any women staying by themselves in the Hotel. It seems there were two --a Mrs. Granby, an Anglo-Indian widow, and a Miss Carruthers, rather a horsey spinster who dropped her g's. Mr. Petherick added that the most minute inquiries had failed to elicit anyone who had seen either of them near the scene of the crime and there was nothing to connect either of them with it in any way. I asked him to describe their personal appearance. He said that Mrs. Granby had reddish hair rather untidily done, was sallow-faced and about fifty years of age. Her clothes were rather picturesque, being made mostly of native silks, etc. Miss Carruthers was about forty, wore pince-nez, had close-cropped hair like a man and wore mannish coats and skirts.

"Dear me," I said, "that makes it very dif-ficult.''

MISS MARPLE TELLS A STORY 137

Mr. Petherick looked inquiringly at me, but I didn't want to say any more just then, so I asked what Sir Malcolm Olde had said.

Sir Malcolm Olde, it seemed, was going all out for suicide. Mr. Petherick said the medical evi-dence was dead against this, and there was the ab-sence of fingerprints, but Sir Malcolm was confi-dent of being able to call conflicting medical testi-mony and to suggest some way of getting over the fingerprint difficulty. I asked Mr. Rhodes what he thought and he said all doctors were fools but he himself couldn't really believe his wife had killed herself. "She wasn't that kind of woman," he said simply--and I believed him. Hysterical people don't usually commit suicide.

I thought a minute and then I asked if the door from Mrs. Rhodes' room led straight into the cor-ridor. Mr. Rhodes said no--there was a little hall-way with bathroom and lavatory. It was the door from the bedroom to the hallway that was locked and bolted on the inside.

"In that case," I said, "the whole thing seems

to me remarkably simple."

And really, you know, it did .... The simplest thing in the world. And yet no one seemed to have seen it that way.

Both Mr. Petherick and Mr. Rhodes were star-ing at me so that I felt quite embarrassed.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Rhodes, "Miss Marple hasn't quite appreciated the difficulties."

"Yes," I said, "I think I have. There are four possibilities. Either Mrs. Rhodes was killed by her husband, or by the chambermaid, or she com-mitted suicide, or she was killed by an outsider whom nobody saw enter or leave."

138 Agatha Christie

"And that's impossible," Mr. Rhodes broke in.

"Nobody could come in or go out through my

room without my seeing them, and even if anyone did manage to come in through my wife's room without the electrician seeing them, how the devil could they get out again leaving the door locked and bolted on the inside?"

Mr. Petherick looked at me and said: "Well, Miss Marple?" in an encouraging manner.

"I should like," I said, "to ask a question. Mr. Rhodes, what did the chambermaid look like?"

He said he wasn't sure--she was tallish, he thought--he didn't remember if she was fair or dark. I turned to Mr. Petherick and asked him the same question.

He said she was of medium height, had fairish hair and blue eyes and rather a high color.

Mr. Rhodes said: "You are a better observer than I am, Petherick."

I ventured to disagree. I then asked Mr. Rhodes if he could describe the maid in my house. Neither

he nor Mr. Petherick could do so.

"Don't you see what that means?" I said. "You both came here full of your own affairs and the person who let you in was only a parlorrnaid. The same applies to Mr. Rhodes at the Hotel. He saw only a chambermaid. He saw her uniform and her apron. He was engrossed by his work. But Mr. Petherick has interviewed the same woman in a different capacity. He has looked at her as a person.

"That's what the woman who did the murder counted upon."

As they still didn't see, I had to explain.

MISS MARPLE TELLS A STORY 139

"I think," I said, "that this is how it went. The chambermaid came in by door A, passed through Mr. Rhodes' room into Mrs. Rhodes' room with

the hot water bottle and went out through the hall-way

into passage B. X--as I will call our murder-ess--came in by door B into the little hallway, concealed herself in--well, in a certain apartment, ahem--and waited until the chambermaid had passed out. Then she entered Mrs. Rhodes' room, took the stiletto from the dressing-table--(she had doubtless explored the room earlier in the day) went up to the bed, stabbed the dozing woman, wiped the handle of the stiletto, locked and bolted the door by which she had entered, and then passed out through the room where Mr. Rhodes was working."

Mr. Rhodes cried out: "But I should have seen her. The electrician would have seen her go in."