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girl. Not in connection with the murder. I don’t mean that. But about her spirits lately and the odd things she said. I don’t mean odd in the sense of peculiar. I mean just the odds and ends of conversation.”
“Did you find it helpful?” asked Inspector Neele.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I found it very helpful indeed. I really think, you know, that things are becoming very much clearer, don’t you?”
“I do and I don’t,” said Inspector Neele.
Sergeant Hay, he noticed, had left the room. He was glad of it because what he was about to do now was, to say the least of it, slightly unorthodox.
“Look here, Miss Marple,” he said, “I want to talk to you seriously.”
“Yes, Inspector Neele?”
“In a way,” said Inspector Neele, “you and I represent different points of view. I admit, Miss Marple, that I’ve heard something about you at the Yard.” He smiled: “It seems you’re fairly well-known there.”
“I don’t know how it is,” fluttered Miss Marple, “but I so often seem to get mixed-up in the things that are really no concern of mine. Crimes, I mean, and peculiar happenings.”
“You’ve got a reputation,” said Inspector Neele.
“Sir Henry Clithering, of course,” said Miss Marple, “is a very old friend of mine.”
“As I said before,” Neele went on, “you and I represent opposite points of view. One might almost call them sanity and insanity.”
Miss Marple put her head a little on one side.
“Now what exactly do you mean by that, I wonder, Inspector?”
“Well, Miss Marple, there’s a sane way of looking at things. This murder benefits certain people. One person, I may say, in particular. The second murder benefits the same person. The third murder one might call a murder for safety.”
“But which do you call the third murder?” Miss Marple asked.
Her eyes, a very bright china blue, looked shrewdly at the inspector. He nodded.
“Yes. You’ve got something there perhaps. You know, the other day when the AC was speaking to me of these murders, something that he said seemed to me to be wrong. That was it. I was thinking, of course, of the nursery rhyme. The King in his counting-house, the Queen in the parlour and the maid hanging out the clothes.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “A sequence in that order, but actually Gladys must have been murdered before Mrs. Fortescue, mustn’t she?”
“I think so,” said Neele. “I take it it’s quite certainly so. Her body wasn’t discovered till late that night, and of course it was difficult then to say exactly how long she’d been dead. But I think myself that she must almost certainly have been murdered round about five o’clock, because otherwise. . . .”
Miss Marple cut in. “Because otherwise she would certainly have taken the second tray into the drawing room?”
“Quite so. She took one tray in with the tea on it, she brought the second tray into the hall, and then something happened. She saw something or heard something. The question is what that something was. It might have been Dubois coming down the stairs from Mrs. Fortescue’s room. It might have been Elaine Fortescue’s young man, Gerald Wright, coming in at the side door. Whoever it was lured her away from the tea tray and out into the garden. And once that had happened I don’t see any possibility of her death being long delayed. It was cold out and she was only wearing her thin uniform.”
“Of course you’re quite right,” said Miss Marple. “I mean it was never a case of ‘the maid was in the garden hanging up the clothes.’ She wouldn’t be hanging up clothes at that time of the evening and she wouldn’t go out to the clothesline without putting a coat on. That was all camouflage, like the clothes-peg, to make the thing fit in with the rhyme.”
“Exactly,” said Inspector Neele, “crazy. That’s where I can’t yet see eye to eye with you. I can’t—I simply can’t swallow this nursery rhyme business.”
“But it fits, Inspector. You must agree it fits.”
“It fits,” said Neele heavily, “but all the same the sequence is wrong. I mean the rhyme definitely suggests that the maid was the third murder. But we know that the Queen was the third murder. Adele Fortescue was not killed until between twenty-five past five and five minutes to six. By then Gladys must already have been dead.”
“And that’s all wrong, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple. “All wrong for the nursery rhyme—that’s very significant, isn’t it?”
Inspector Neele shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s probably splitting hairs. The deaths fulfil the conditions of the rhyme, and I suppose that’s all that was needed. But I’m talking now as though I were on your side. I’m going to outline my side of the case now, Miss Marple. I’m washing out the blackbirds and the rye and all the rest of it. I’m going by sober facts and common sense and the reasons for which sane people do murders. First, the death of Rex Fortescue, and who benefits by his death. Well, it benefits quite a lot of people, but most of all it benefits his son, Percival. His son Percival wasn’t at Yewtree Lodge that morning. He couldn’t have put poison in his father’s coffee or in anything that he ate for breakfast. Or that’s what we thought at first.”
“Ah,” Miss Marple’s eyes brightened. “So there was a method, was there? I’ve been thinking about it, you know, a good deal, and I’ve had several ideas. But of course no evidence or proof.”
“There’s no harm in my letting you know,” said Inspector Neele. “Taxine was added to a new jar of marmalade. That jar of marmalade was placed on the breakfast table and the top layer of it was eaten by Mr. Fortescue at breakfast. Later that jar of marmalade was thrown out into the bushes and a similar jar with a similar amount taken out of it was placed in the pantry. The jar in the bushes was found and I’ve just had the result of the analysis. It shows definite evidence of taxine.”
“So that was it,” murmured Miss Marple. “So simple and easy to do.”
“Consolidated Investments,” Neele went on, “was in a bad way. If the firm had had to pay out a hundred thousand pounds to Adele Fortescue under her husband’s will, it would, I think, have crashed. If Mrs. Fortescue had survived her husband for a month that money would have had to be paid out to her. She would have had no feeling for the firm or its difficulties. But she didn’t survive her husband for a month. She died, and as a result of her death the gainer was the residuary legatee of Rex Fortescue’s will. In other words, Percival Fortescue again.
“Always Percival Fortescue,” the inspector continued bitterly. “And though he could have tampered with the marmalade, he couldn’t have poisoned his stepmother or strangled Gladys. According to his secretary he was in his city office at five o’clock that afternoon, and he didn’t arrive back here until nearly seven.”
“That makes it very difficult, doesn’t it?” said Miss Marple.
“It makes it impossible,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “In other words, Percival is out.” Abandoning restraint and prudence, he spoke with some bitterness, almost unaware of his listener. “Wherever I go, wherever I turn, I always come up against the same person. Percival Fortescue! Yet it can’t be Percival Fortescue.” Calming himself a little he said: “Oh, there are other possibilities, other people who had a perfectly good motive.”
“Mr. Dubois, of course,” said Miss Marple sharply. “And that young Mr. Wright. I do so agree with you, Inspector. Wherever there is a question of gain, one has to be very suspicious. The great thing to avoid is having in any way a trustful mind.”
In spite of himself, Neele smiled.
“Always think the worst, eh?” he asked.
It seemed a curious doctrine to be proceeding from this charming and fragile-looking old lady.
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple fervently. “I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.”
“All right,” said Neele, “let’s think the worst. Dubois could have done it, Gerald Wright could have done it (that is to say if he’d been
acting in collusion with Elaine Fortescue and she tampered with the marmalade), Mrs. Percival could have done it, I suppose. She was on the spot. But none of the people I have mentioned tie up with the crazy angle. They don’t tie up with blackbirds and pockets full of rye. That’s your theory and it may be that you’re right. If so, it boils down to one person, doesn’t it? Mrs. MacKenzie’s in a mental home and has been for a good number of years. She hasn’t been messing about with marmalade pots or putting cyanide in the drawing room afternoon tea. Her son Donald was killed at Dunkirk. That leaves the daughter, Ruby MacKenzie. And if your theory is correct, if this whole series of murders arises out of the old Blackbird Mine business, then Ruby MacKenzie must be here in this house, and there’s only one person that Ruby MacKenzie could be.”
“I think, you know,” said Miss Marple, “that you’re being a little too dogmatic.”
Inspector Neele paid no attention.
“Just one person,” he said grimly.
He got up and went out of the room.
II
Mary Dove was in her sitting room. It was a small, rather austerely furnished room, but comfortable. That is to say Miss Dove herself had made it comfortable. When Inspector Neele tapped at the door Mary Dove raised her head, which had been bent over a pile of tradesmen’s books, and said in her clear voice:
“Come in.”
The inspector entered.
“Do sit down, Inspector.” Miss Dove indicated a chair. “Could you wait just one moment? The total of the fishmonger’s account does not seem to be correct and I must check it.”
Inspector Neele sat in silence watching her as she totted up the column. How wonderfully calm and self-possessed the girl was, he thought. He was intrigued, as so often before, by the personality that underlay that self-assured manner. He tried to trace in her features any resemblance to those of the woman he had talked to at the Pinewood Sanatorium. The colouring was not unlike, but he could detect no real facial resemblance. Presently Mary Dove raised her head from her accounts and said:
“Yes, Inspector? What can I do for you?”
