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Inspector Neele said quietly:
“You know, Miss Dove, there are certain very peculiar features about this case.”
“Yes?”
“To begin with there is the odd circumstance of the rye found in Mr. Fortescue’s pocket.”
“That was very extraordinary,” Mary Dove agreed. “You know I really cannot think of any explanation for that.”
“Then there is the curious circumstance of the blackbirds. Those four blackbirds on Mr. Fortescue’s desk last summer, and also the incident of the blackbirds being substituted for the veal and ham in the pie. You were here, I think, Miss Dove, at the time of both those occurrences?”
“Yes, I was. I remember now. It was most upsetting. It seemed such a very purposeless, spiteful thing to do, especially at the time.”
“Perhaps not entirely purposeless. What do you know, Miss Dove, about the Blackbird Mine?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Blackbird Mine.”
“Your name, you told me, is Mary Dove. Is that your real name, Miss Dove?”
Mary raised her eyebrows. Inspector Neele was almost sure that a wary expression had come into her blue eyes.
“What an extraordinary question, Inspector. Are you suggesting that my name is not Mary Dove?”
“That is exactly what I am suggesting. I’m suggesting,” said Neele pleasantly, “that your name is Ruby MacKenzie.”
She stared at him. For a moment her face was entirely blank with neither protest on it nor surprise. There was, Inspector Neele thought, a very definite effect of calculation. After a minute or two she said in a quiet, colourless voice:
“What do you expect me to say?”
“Please answer me. Is your name Ruby MacKenzie?”
“I have told you my name is Mary Dove.”
“Yes, but have you proof of that, Miss Dove?”
“What do you want to see? My birth certificate?”
“That might be helpful or it might not. You might, I mean, be in possession of the birth certificate of a Mary Dove. That Mary Dove might be a friend of yours or might be someone who had died.”
“Yes, there are a lot of possibilities, aren’t there?” Amusement had crept back into Mary Dove’s voice. “It’s really quite a dilemma for you, isn’t it, Inspector?”
“They might possibly be able to recognize you at Pinewood Sanatorium,” said Neele.
“Pinewood Sanatorium!” Mary raised her eyebrow. “What or where is Pinewood Sanatorium?”
“I think you know very well, Miss Dove.”
“I assure you I am quite in the dark.”
“And you deny categorically that you are Ruby MacKenzie?”
“I shouldn’t really like to deny anything. I think, you know, Inspector, that it’s up to you to prove I am this Ruby MacKenzie, whoever she is.” There was a definite amusement now in her blue eyes, amusement and challenge. Looking him straight in the eyes, Mary Dove said, “Yes, it’s up to you, Inspector. Prove that I’m Ruby MacKenzie if you can.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I
“The old tabby’s looking for you, sir,” said Sergeant Hay in a conspiratorial whisper, as Inspector Neele descended the stairs. “It appears as how she’s got a lot more to say to you.”
“Hell and damnation,” said Inspector Neele.
“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Hay, not a muscle of his face moving.
He was about to move away when Neele called him back.
“Go over those notes given us by Miss Dove, Hay, notes as to her former employment and situations. Check up on them—and, yes, there are just one or two other things that I would like to know. Put these inquiries in hand, will you?”
He jotted down a few lines on a sheet of paper and gave them to Sergeant Hay, who said:
“I’ll get onto it at once, sir.”
Hearing a murmur of voices in the library as he passed, Inspector Neele looked in. Whether Miss Marple had been looking for him or not, she was now fully engaged talking to Mrs. Percival Fortescue while her knitting needles clicked busily. The middle of the sentence which Inspector Neele caught was:
“. . . I have really always thought it was a vocation you needed for nursing. It certainly is very noble work.”
Inspector Neele withdrew quietly. Miss Marple had noticed him, he thought, but she had taken no notice of his presence.
She went on in her gentle, soft voice:
“I had such a charming nurse looking after me when I once broke my wrist. She went on from me to nurse Mrs. Sparrow’s son, a very nice young naval officer. Quite a romance, really, because they became engaged. So romantic I thought it. They were married and were very happy and had two dear little children.” Miss Marple sighed sentimentally. “It was pneumonia, you know. So much depends on nursing in pneumonia, does it not.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jennifer Fortescue, “nursing is nearly everything in pneumonia, though of course nowadays M and B works wonders, and it’s not the long, protracted battle it used to be.”
“I’m sure you must have been an excellent nurse, my dear,” said Miss Marple. “That was the beginning of your romance, was it not? I mean you came here to nurse Mr. Percival Fortescue, did you not?”
“Yes,” said Jennifer. “Yes, yes—that’s how it did happen.”
Her voice was not encouraging, but Miss Marple seemed to take no notice.
“I understand. One should not listen to servants’ gossip, of course, but I’m afraid an old lady like myself is always interested to hear about the people in the house. Now what was I saying? Oh, yes. There was another nurse at first, was there not, and she got sent away—something like that. Carelessness, I believe.”
“I don’t think it was carelessness,” said Jennifer. “I believe her father or something was desperately ill, and so I came to replace her.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple. “And you fell in love and that was that. Yes, very nice indeed, very nice.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Jennifer Fortescue. “I often wish”—her voice trembled—“I often wish I was back in the wards again.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. You were keen on your profession.”
“I wasn’t so much at the time, but now when I think of it—life’s so monotonous, you know. Day after day with nothing to do, and Val so absorbed in business.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Gentlemen have to work so hard nowadays,” she said. “There really doesn’t seem any leisure, no matter how much money there is.”
“Yes, it makes it very lonely and dull for a wife sometimes. I often wish I’d never come here,” said Jennifer. “Oh, well, I dare say it serves me right. I ought never to have done it.”
“Ought never to have done what, my dear?”
“I ought never to have married Val. Oh, well—” she sighed abruptly. “Don’t let’s talk of it anymore.”
Obligingly Miss Marple began to talk about the new skirts that were being worn in Paris.
