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III
“Well?” demanded Inspector Neele impatiently.
The doctor said promptly:
“Cyanide—potassium cyanide probably—in the tea.”
“Cyanide,” muttered Neele.
The doctor looked at him with slight curiosity.
“You’re taking this hard—any special reason—”
“She was cast as a murderess,” said Neele.
“And she turns out to be a victim. Hm. You’ll have to think again, won’t you?”
Neele nodded. His face was bitter and his jaw was grimly set.
Poisoned! Right under his nose. Taxine in Rex Fortescue’s breakfast coffee, cyanide in Adele Fortescue’s tea. Still an intimate family affair. Or so it seemed.
Adele Fortescue, Jennifer Fortescue, Elaine Fortescue and the newly arrived Lance Fortescue had had tea together in the library. Lance had gone up to see Miss Ramsbottom, Jennifer had gone to her own sitting room to write letters, Elaine had been the last to leave the library. According to her Adele had then been in perfect health and had just been pouring herself out a last cup of tea.
A last cup of tea! Yes, it had indeed been her last cup of tea.
And after that a blank twenty minutes, perhaps, until Mary Dove had come into the room and discovered the body.
And during that twenty minutes—
Inspector Neele swore to himself and went out into the kitchen.
Sitting in a chair by the kitchen table, the vast figure of Mrs. Crump, her belligerence pricked like a balloon, hardly stirred as he came in.
“Where’s that girl? Has she come back yet?”
“Gladys? No—she’s not back—Won’t be, I suspect, until eleven o’clock.”
“She made the tea, you say, and took it in.”
“I didn’t touch it, sir, as God’s my witness. And what’s more I don’t believe Gladys did anything she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t do a thing like that—not Gladys. She’s a good enough girl, sir—a bit foolish like, that’s all—not wicked.”
No, Neele did not think that Gladys was wicked. He did not think that Gladys was a poisoner. And in any case the cyanide had not been in the teapot.
“But what made her go off suddenly—like this? It wasn’t her day out, you say.”
“No, sir, tomorrow’s her day out.”
“Does Crump—”
Mrs. Crump’s belligerence suddenly revived. Her voice rose wrathfully.
“Don’t you go fastening anything on Crump. Crump’s out of it. He went off at three o’clock—and thankful I am now that he did. He’s as much out of it as Mr. Percival himself.”
Percival Fortescue had only just returned from London—to be greeted by the astounding news of this second tragedy.
“I wasn’t accusing Crump,” said Neele mildly. “I just wondered if he knew anything about Gladys’s plans.”
“She had her best nylons on,” said Mrs. Crump. “She was up to something. Don’t tell me! Didn’t cut any sandwiches for tea, either. Oh yes, she was up to something. I’ll give her a piece of my mind when she comes back.”
When she comes back—
A faint uneasiness possessed Neele. To shake it off he went upstairs to Adele Fortescue’s bedroom. A lavish apartment—all rose brocade hanging and a vast gilt bed. On one side of the room was a door into a mirror-lined bathroom with a sunk orchid-pink porcelain bath. Beyond the bathroom, reached by a communicating door, was Rex Fortescue’s dressing room. Neele went back into Adele’s bedroom, and through the door on the farther side of the room into her sitting room.
The room was furnished in Empire style with a rose pile carpet. Neele only gave it a cursory glance for that particular room had had his close attention on the preceding day—with special attention paid to the small elegant desk.
Now, however, he stiffened to sudden attention. On the centre of the rose pile carpet was a small piece of caked mud.
Neele went over to it and picked it up. The mud was still damp.
He looked round—there were no footprints visible—only this one isolated fragment of wet earth.
IV
Inspector Neele looked round the bedroom that belonged to Gladys Martin. It was past eleven o’clock—Crump had come in half an hour ago—but there was still no sign of Gladys. Inspector Neele looked round him. Whatever Gladys’s training had been, her own natural instincts were slovenly. The bed, Inspector Neele judged, was seldom made, the windows seldom opened. Gladys’s personal habits, however, were not his immediate concern. Instead, he went carefully through her possessions.
They consisted for the most part of cheap and rather pathetic finery. There was little that was durable or of good quality. The elderly Ellen, whom he had called upon to assist him, had not been helpful. She didn’t know what clothes Gladys had or hadn’t. She couldn’t say what, if anything, was missing. He turned from the clothes and the underclothes to the contents of the chest of drawers. There Gladys kept her treasures. There were picture postcards and newspaper cuttings, knitting patterns, hints on beauty culture, dressmaking and fashion advice.
Inspector Neele sorted them neatly into various categories. The picture postcards consisted mainly of views of various places where he presumed Gladys had spent her holidays. Amongst them were three picture postcards signed “Bert.” Bert, he took to be the “young man” referred to by Mrs. Crump. The first postcard said—in an illiterate hand: “All the best. Missing you a lot. Yours ever, Bert.” The second said: “Lots of nice-looking girls here but not one that’s a patch on you. Be seeing you soon. Don’t forget our date. And remember after that—it’s thumbs up and living happy ever after.” The third said merely: “Don’t forget. I’m trusting you. Love, B.”
Next, Neele looked through the newspaper cuttings and sorted them into three piles. There were the dressmaking and beauty hints, there were items about cinema stars to which Gladys had appeared greatly addicted and she had also, it appeared, been attracted by the latest marvels of science. There were cuttings about flying saucers, about secret weapons, about truth drugs used by Russians, and claims for fantastic drugs discovered by American doctors. All the witchcraft, so Neele thought, of our twentieth century. But in all the contents of the room there was nothing to give him a clue to her disappearance. She had kept no diary, not that he had expected that. It was a remote possibility. There was no unfinished letter, no record at all of anything she might have seen in the house which could have had a bearing on Rex Fortescue’s death. Whatever Gladys had seen, whatever Gladys had known, there was no record of it. It would still have to be guesswork why the second tea tray had been left in the hall, and Gladys herself had so suddenly vanished.
Sighing, Neele left the room, shutting the door behind him.
As he prepared to descend the small winding stairs he heard a noise of running feet coming along the landing below.
The agitated face of Sergeant Hay looked up at him from the bottom of the stairs. Sergeant Hay was panting a little.
“Sir,” he said urgently. “Sir! We’ve found her—”
“Found her?”
“It was the housemaid, sir—Ellen—remembered as she hadn’t brought the clothes in from where they were hanging on the line—just round the corner from the back door. So she went out with a torch to take them in and she a
lmost fell over the body—the girl’s body—strangled, she was, with a stocking round her throat—been dead for hours, I’d say. And, sir, it’s a wicked kind of joke—there was a clothes-peg clipped on her nose—”
Chapter Thirteen
An elderly lady travelling by train had bought three morning papers, and each of them as she finished it, folded it and laid it aside, showed the same headline. It was no longer a question now of a small paragraph hidden away in the corner of the papers. There were headlines with flaring announcements of Triple Tragedy at Yewtree Lodge.
The old lady sat very upright, looking out of the window of the train, her lips pursed together, an expression of distress and disapproval on her pink and white wrinkled face. Miss Marple had left St. Mary Mead by the early train, changing at the junction and going on to London, where she took a Circle train to another London terminus and thence on to Baydon Heath.
At the station she signalled a taxi and asked to be taken to Yewtree Lodge. So charming, so innocent, such a fluffy and pink and white old lady was Miss Marple that she gained admittance to what was now practically a fortress in a state of siege far more easily than could have been believed possible. Though an army of reporters and photographers were being kept at bay by the police, Miss Marple was allowed to drive in without question, so impossible would it have been to believe that she was anyone but an elderly relative of the family.
Miss Marple paid off the taxi in a careful assortment of small change, and rang the front doorbell. Crump opened it and Miss Marple summed him up with an experienced glance. “A shifty eye,” she said to herself. “Scared to death, too.”
Crump saw a tall, elderly lady wearing an old-fashioned tweed coat and skirt, a couple of scarves and a small felt hat with a bird’s wing. The old lady carried a capacious handbag and an aged but good-quality suitcase reposed by her feet. Crump recognized a lady when he saw one and said:
“Yes, madam?” in his best and most respectful voice.
“Could I see the mistress of the house, please?” said Miss Marple.
Crump drew back to let her in. He picked up the suitcase and put it carefully down in the hall.
