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“How was I to know that fool Julia, the real Julia, would go and have a row with the producer, and fling the whole thing up in a fit of temperament? She writes to Patrick and asks if she can come here, and instead of wiring her ‘Keep away’ he goes and forgets to do anything at all!” She cast an angry glance at Patrick. “Of all the utter idiots!”
She sighed.
“You don’t know the straits I’ve been put to in Milchester! Of course, I haven’t been to the hospital at all. But I had to go somewhere. Hours and hours I’ve spent in the pictures seeing the most frightful films over and over again.”
“Pip and Emma,” murmured Miss Blacklock. “I never believed, somehow, in spite of what the Inspector said, that they were real—”
She looked searchingly at Julia.
“You’re Emma,” she said. “Where’s Pip?”
Julia’s eyes, limpid and innocent, met hers.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t the least idea.”
“I think you’re lying, Julia. When did you see him last?”
Was there a momentary hesitation before Julia spoke?
She said clearly and deliberately:
“I haven’t seen him since we were both three years old—when my mother took him away. I haven’t seen either him or my mother. I don’t know where they are.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
Julia sighed.
“I could say I was sorry. But it wouldn’t really be true; because actually I’d do the same thing again—though not if I’d known about this murder business, of course.”
“Julia,” said Miss Blacklock, “I call you that because I’m used to it. You were with the French Resistance, you say?”
“Yes. For eighteen months.”
“Then I suppose you learned to shoot?”
Again those cool blue eyes met hers.
“I can shoot all right. I’m a first-class shot. I didn’t shoot at you, Letitia Blacklock, though you’ve only got my word for that. But I can tell you this, that if I had shot at you, I wouldn’t have been likely to miss.”
II
The sound of a car driving up to the door broke through the tenseness of the moment.
“Who can that be?” asked Miss Blacklock.
Mitzi put a tousled head in. She was showing the whites of her eyes.
“It is the police come again,” she said. “This, it is persecution! Why will they not leave us alone? I will not bear it. I will write to the Prime Minister. I will write to your King.”
Craddock’s hand put her firmly and not too kindly aside. He came in with such a grim set to his lips that they all looked at him apprehensively. This was a new Inspector Craddock.
He said sternly:
“Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered. She was strangled—not more than an hour ago.” His eye singled out Julia. “You—Miss Simmons—where have you been all day?”
Julia said warily:
“In Milchester. I’ve just got in.”
“And you?” The eye went on to Patrick.
“Yes.”
“Did you both come back here together?”
“Yes—yes, we did,” said Patrick.
“No,” said Julia. “It’s no good, Patrick. That’s the kind of lie that will be found out at once. The bus people know us well. I came back on the earlier bus, Inspector—the one that gets here at four o’clock.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I went for a walk.”
“In the direction of Boulders?”
“No. I went across the fields.”
He stared at her. Julia, her face pale, her lips tense, stared back.
Before anyone could speak, the telephone rang.
Miss Blacklock, with an inquiring glance at Craddock, picked up the receiver.
“Yes. Who? Oh, Bunch. What? No. No, she hasn’t. I’ve no idea … Yes, he’s here now.”
She lowered the instrument and said:
“Mrs. Harmon would like to speak to you, Inspector. Miss Marple has not come back to the Vicarage and Mrs. Harmon is worried about her.”
Craddock took two strides forward and gripped the telephone.
“Craddock speaking.”
“I’m worried, Inspector.” Bunch’s voice came through with a childish tremor in it. “Aunt Jane’s out somewhere—and I don’t know where. And they say that Miss Murgatroyd’s been killed. Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true, Mrs. Harmon. Miss Marple was there with Miss Hinchcliffe when they found the body.”
“Oh, so that’s where she is.” Bunch sounded relieved.
“No—no, I’m afraid she isn’t. Not now. She left there about—let me see—half an hour ago. She hasn’t got home?”
“No—she hasn’t. It’s only ten minutes’ walk. Where can she be?”
“Perhaps she’s called in on one of your neighbours?”
“I’ve rung them up—all of them. She’s not there. I’m frightened, Inspector.”
“So am I,” thought Craddock.
He said quickly:
“I’ll come round to you—at once.”
“Oh, do—there’s a piece of paper. She was writing on it before she went out. I don’t know if it means anything … It just seems gibberish to me.”
Craddock replaced the receiver.
Miss Blacklock said anxiously:
“Has something happened to Miss Marple? Oh, I hope not.”
“I hope not, too.” His mouth was grim.
“She’s so old—and frail.”
“I know.”
Miss Blacklock, standing with her hand pulling at the choker of pearls round her neck, said in a hoarse voice:
“It’s getting worse and worse. Whoever’s doing these things must be mad, Inspector—quite mad….”
“I wonder.”
The choker of pearls round Miss Blacklock’s neck broke under the clutch of her nervous fingers. The smooth white globules rolled all over the room.
Letitia cried out in an anguished tone.
“My pearls—my pearls—” The agony in her voice was so acute that they all looked at her in astonishment. She turned, her hand to her throat, and rushed sobbing out of the room.
Phillipa began picking up the pearls.
“I’ve never seen her so upset over anything,” she said. “Of course—she always wears them. Do you think, perhaps, that someone special gave them to her? Randall Goedler, perhaps?”
“It’s possible,” said the Inspector slowly.
“They’re not—they couldn’t be—real by any chance?” Phillipa asked from where, on her knees, she was still collecting the white shining globules.
Taking one in his hand, Craddock was just about to reply contemptuously, “Real? Of course not!” when he suddenly stifled the words.
After all, could the pearls be real?
They were so large, so even, so white that their falseness seemed palpable, but Craddock remembered suddenly a police case where a string of real pearls had been bought for a few shillings in a pawnbroker’s shop.
Letitia Blacklock had assured him that there was no jewellery of value in the house. If these pearls were, by any chance, genuine, they must be worth a fabulous sum. And if Randall Goedler had given them to her—then they might be worth any sum you cared to name.
They looked false—they must be false, but—if they were real?
Why not? She might herself be unaware of their value. Or she might choose to protect her treasure by treating it as though it were a cheap ornament worth a couple of guineas at most. What would they be worth if real? A fabulous sum … Worth doing murder for—if anybody knew about them.
With a start, the Inspector wrenched himself away from his speculations. Miss Marple was missing. He must go to the Vicarage.
III
He found Bunch and her husband waiting for him, their faces anxious and drawn.
“She hasn’t come back,” said Bunch.
“Did she say she was coming back
here when she left Boulders?” asked Julian.
“She didn’t actually say so,” said Craddock slowly, throwing his mind back to the last time he had seen Jane Marple.
