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“Aunt Jane!”
Miss Marple sighed and then smiled brightly.
“It’s nothing, dear,” she said.
“Did you think you knew who did the murder?” asked Bunch. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know at all,” said Miss Marple. “I got an idea for a moment—but it’s gone. I wish I did know. Time’s so short. So terribly short.”
“What do you mean short?”
“That old lady up in Scotland may die any moment.”
Bunch said, staring:
“Then you really do believe in Pip and Emma. You think it was them—and that they’ll try again?”
“Of course they’ll try again,” said Miss Marple, almost absentmindedly. “If they tried once, they’ll try again. If you’ve made up your mind to murder someone, you don’t stop because the first time it didn’t come off. Especially if you’re fairly sure you’re not suspected.”
“But if it’s Pip and Emma,” said Bunch, “there are only two people it could be. It must be Patrick and Julia. They’re brother and sister and they’re the only ones who are the right age.”
“My dear, it isn’t nearly as simple as that. There are all sorts of ramifications and combinations. There’s Pip’s wife if he’s married, or Emma’s husband. There’s their mother—she’s an interested party even if she doesn’t inherit direct. If Letty Blacklock hasn’t seen her for thirty years, she’d probably not recognize her now. One elderly woman is very like another. You remember Mrs. Wotherspoon drew her own and Mrs. Bartlett’s Old Age Pension although Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for years. Anyway, Miss Blacklock’s shortsighted. Haven’t you noticed how she peers at people? And then there’s the father. Apparently he was a real bad lot.”
“Yes, but he’s a foreigner.”
“By birth. But there’s no reason to believe he speaks broken English and gesticulates with his hands. I dare say he could play the part of—of an Anglo-Indian Colonel as well as anybody else.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t indeed, dear. I just think that there’s a great deal of money at stake, a great deal of money. And I’m afraid I know only too well the really terrible things that people will do to lay their hands on a lot of money.”
“I suppose they will,” said Bunch. “It doesn’t really do them any good, does it? Not in the end?”
“No—but they don’t usually know that.”
“I can understand it.” Bunch smiled suddenly, her sweet rather crooked smile. “One feels it would be different for oneself … Even I feel that.” She considered: “You pretend to yourself that you’d do a lot of good with all that money. Schemes … Homes for Unwanted Children … Tired Mothers … A lovely rest abroad somewhere for elderly women who have worked too hard….”
Her face grew sombre. Her eyes were suddenly dark and tragic.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said to Miss Marple. “You’re thinking that I’d be the worst kind. Because I’d kid myself. If you just wanted the money for selfish reasons you’d at any rate see what you were like. But once you began to pretend about doing good with it, you’d be able to persuade yourself, perhaps, that it wouldn’t very much matter killing someone….”
Then her eyes cleared.
“But I shouldn’t,” she said. “I shouldn’t really kill anyone. Not even if they were old, or ill, or doing a lot of harm in the world. Not even if they were blackmailers or—or absolute beasts.” She fished a fly carefully out of the dregs of the coffee and arranged it on the table to dry. “Because people like living, don’t they? So do flies. Even if you’re old and in pain and can just crawl out in the sun. Julian says those people like living even more than young strong people do. It’s harder, he says, for them to die, the struggle’s greater. I like living myself—not just being happy and enjoying myself and having a good time. I mean living—waking up and feeling, all over me, that I’m there—ticking over.”
She blew on the fly gently; it waved its legs, and flew rather drunkenly away.
“Cheer up, darling Aunt Jane,” said Bunch. “I’d never kill anybody.”
Fourteen
EXCURSION INTO THE PAST
After a night in the train, Inspector Craddock alighted at a small station in the Highlands.
It struck him for a moment as strange that the wealthy Mrs. Goedler—an invalid—with a choice of a London house in a fashionable square, an estate in Hampshire, and a villa in the South of France, should have selected this remote Scottish home as her residence. Surely she was cut off here from many friends and distractions. It must be a lonely life—or was she too ill to notice or care about her surroundings?
A car was waiting to meet him. A big old-fashioned Daimler with an elderly chauffeur driving it. It was a sunny morning and the Inspector enjoyed the twenty-mile drive, though he marvelled anew at this preference for isolation. A tentative remark to the chauffeur brought partial enlightenment.
“It’s her own home as a girl. Ay, she’s the last of the family. And she and Mr. Goedler were always happier here than anywhere, though it wasn’t often he could get away from London. But when he did they enjoyed themselves like a couple of bairns.”
When the grey walls of the old keep came in sight, Craddock felt that time was slipping backwards. An elderly butler received him, and after a wash and a shave he was shown into a room with a huge fire burning in the grate, and breakfast was served to him.
After breakfast, a tall, middle-aged woman in nurse’s dress, with a pleasant and competent manner, came in and introduced herself as Sister McClelland.
“I have my patient all ready for you, Mr. Craddock. She is, indeed, looking forward to seeing you.”
“I’ll do my best not to excite her,” Craddock promised.
“I had better warn you of what will happen. You will find Mrs. Goedler apparently quite normal. She will talk and enjoy talking and then—quite suddenly—her powers will fail. Come away at once, then, and send for me. She is, you see, kept almost entirely under the influence of morphia. She drowses most of the time. In preparation for your visit, I have given her a strong stimulant. As soon as the effect of the stimulant wears off, she will relapse into semiconsciousness.”
“I quite understand, Miss McClelland. Would it be in order for you to tell me exactly what the state of Mrs. Goedler’s health is?”
“Well, Mr. Craddock, she is a dying woman. Her life cannot be prolonged for more than a few weeks. To say that she should have been dead years ago would strike you as odd, yet it is the truth. What has kept Mrs. Goedler alive is her intense enjoyment and love of being alive. That sounds, perhaps, an odd thing to say of someone who has lived the life of an invalid for many years and has not left her home here for fifteen years, but it is true. Mrs. Goedler has never been a strong woman—but she has retained to an astonishing degree the will to live.” She added with a smile, “She is a very charming woman, too, as you will find.”
Craddock was shown into a large bedroom where a fire was burning and where an old lady lay in a large canopied bed. Though she was only about seven or eight years older than Letitia Blacklock, her fragility made her seem older than her years.
Her white hair was carefully arranged, a froth of pale blue wool enveloped her neck and shoulders. There were lines of pain on the face, but lines of sweetness, too. And there was, strangely enough, what Craddock could only describe as a roguish twinkle in her faded blue eyes.
“Well, this is interesting,” she said. “It’s not often I receive a visit from the police. I hear Letitia Blacklock wasn’t much hurt by this attempt on her? How is my dear Blackie?”
“She’s very well, Mrs. Goedler. She sent you her love.”
“It’s a long time since I’ve seen her … For many years now, it’s been just a card at Christmas. I asked her to come up here when she came back to England after Charlotte’s death, but she said it would be painful after so long and perhaps she was right … Blackie always had a lot of sense.
I had an old school friend to see me about a year ago, and, lor!”—she smiled—“we bored each other to death. After we’d finished all the ‘Do you remembers?’ there wasn’t anything to say. Most embarrassing.”
Craddock was content to let her talk before pressing his questions. He wanted, as it were, to get back into the past, to get the feel of the Goedler-Blacklock ménage.
“I suppose,” said Belle shrewdly, “that you want to ask about the money? Randall left it all to go to Blackie after my death. Really, of course, Randall never dreamed that I’d outlive him. He was a big strong man, never a day’s illness, and I was always a mass of aches and pains and complaints and doctors coming and pulling long faces over me.”
“I don’t think complaints would be the right word, Mrs. Goedler.”
The old lady chuckled.
“I didn’t mean it in the complaining sense. I’ve never been too sorry for myself. But it was always taken for granted that I, being the weakly one, would go first. It didn’t work out that way. No—it didn’t work out that way….”
“Why, exactly, did your husband leave his money the way he did?”
“You mean, why did he leave it to Blackie? Not for the reason you’ve probably been thinking.” The roguish twinkle was very apparent. “What minds you policemen have! Randall was never in the least in love with her and she wasn’t with him. Letitia, you know, has really got a man’s mind. She hasn’t any feminine feelings or weaknesses. I don’t believe she was ever in love with any man. She was never particularly pretty and she didn’t care for clothes. She used a little makeup in deference to prevailing custom, but not to make herself look prettier.” There was pity in the old voice as she went on: “She never knew any of the fun of being a woman.”
Craddock looked at the frail little figure in the big bed with interest. Belle Goedler, he realized, had enjoyed—still enjoyed—being a woman. She twinkled at him.
