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“She certainly does,” said Giles.
“Fond of flowers, I am,” said Mr. Afflick. “Daffodils, buttercups, calceolarias—they’re all my fancy. Here’s your scarf, Mrs. Reed. It had slipped down behind the table. Good-bye. Pleased to have met you.”
“Do you think he heard us calling his car a yellow peril?” asked Gwenda as they drove away.
“Oh, I don’t think so. He seemed quite amiable, didn’t he?”
Giles looked slightly uneasy.
“Ye-es—but I don’t think that means much … Giles, that wife of his—she’s frightened of him, I saw her face.”
“What? That jovial pleasant chap?”
“Perhaps he isn’t so jovial and pleasant underneath … Giles, I don’t think I like Mr. Afflick … I wonder how long he’d been there behind us listening to what we were saying … Just what did we say?”
“Nothing much,” said Giles.
But he still looked uneasy.
Twenty-two
LILY KEEPS AN APPOINTMENT
I
“Well, I’m damned,” exclaimed Giles.
He had just torn open a letter that had arrived by the after-lunch post and was staring in complete astonishment at its contents.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s the report of the handwriting experts.”
Gwenda said eagerly: “And she didn’t write that letter from abroad?”
“That’s just it, Gwenda. She did.”
They stared at each other.
Gwenda said incredulously: “Then those letters weren’t a fake. They were genuine. Helen did go away from the house that night. And she did write from abroad. And she wasn’t strangled at all?”
Giles said slowly: “It seems so. But it really is very upsetting. I don’t understand it. Just as everything seems to be pointing the other way.”
“Perhaps the experts are wrong?”
“I suppose they might be. But they seem quite confident. Gwenda, I really don’t understand a single thing about all this. Have we been making the most colossal idiots of ourselves?”
“All based on my silly behaviour at the theatre? I tell you what, Giles, let’s call round on Miss Marple. We’ll have time before we get to Dr. Kennedy’s at four thirty.”
Miss Marple, however, reacted rather differently from the way they had expected. She said it was very nice indeed.
“But darling Miss Marple,” said Gwenda, “what do you mean by that?”
“I mean, my dear, that somebody hasn’t been as clever as they might have been.”
“But how—in what way?”
“Slipped up,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head with satisfaction.
“But how?”
“Well, dear Mr. Reed, surely you can see how it narrows the field.”
“Accepting the fact that Helen actually wrote the letters—do you mean that she might still have been murdered?”
“I mean that it seemed very important to someone that the letters should actually be in Helen’s handwriting.”
“I see … At least I think I see. There must be certain possible circumstances in which Helen could have been induced to write those particular letters … That would narrow things down. But what circumstances exactly?”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Reed. You’re not really thinking. It’s perfectly simple, really.”
Giles looked annoyed and mutinous.
“It’s not obvious to me, I can assure you.”
“If you’d just reflect a little—”
“Come on, Giles,” said Gwenda. “We’ll be late.”
They left Miss Marple smiling to herself.
“That old woman annoys me sometimes,” said Giles. “I don’t know now what the hell she was driving at.”
They reached Dr. Kennedy’s house in good time.
The doctor himself opened the door to them.
“I’ve let my housekeeper go out for the afternoon,” he explained. “It seemed to be better.”
He led the way into the sitting room where a tea tray with cups and saucers, bread and butter and cakes was ready.
“Cup of tea’s a good move, isn’t it?” he asked rather uncertainly of Gwenda. “Put this Mrs. Kimble at her ease and all that.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Gwenda.
“Now what about you two? Shall I introduce you straight away? Or will it put her off?”
Gwenda said slowly: “Country people are very suspicious. I believe it would be better if you received her alone.”
“I think so too,” said Giles.
Dr. Kennedy said, “If you were to wait in the room next door, and if this communicating door were slightly ajar, you would be able to hear what went on. Under the circumstances of the case, I think that you would be justified.”
“I suppose it’s eavesdropping, but I really don’t care,” said Gwenda.
Dr. Kennedy smiled faintly and said: “I don’t think any ethical principle is involved. I do not propose, in any case, to give a promise of secrecy—though I am willing to give my advice if I am asked for it.”
He glanced at his watch.
“The train is due at Woodleigh Road at four thirty-five. It should arrive in a few minutes now. Then it will take her about five minutes to walk up the hill.”
He walked restlessly up and down the room. His face was lined and haggard.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand in the least what it all means. If Helen never left that house, if her letters to me were forgeries.” Gwenda moved sharply—but Giles shook his head at her. The doctor went on: “If Kelvin, poor fellow, didn’t kill her, then what on earth did happen?”
“Somebody else killed her,” said Gwenda.
“But my dear child, if somebody else killed her, why on earth should Kelvin insist that he had done so?”
“Because he thought he had. He found her there on the bed and he thought he had done it. That could happen, couldn’t it?”
Dr. Kennedy rubbed his nose irritably.
“How should I know? I’m not a psychiatrist. Shock? Nervous condition already? Yes, I suppose it’s possible. But who would want to kill Helen?”
“We think one of three people,” said Gwenda.
“Three people? What three people? Nobody could have any possible reason for killing Helen—unless they were completely off their heads. She’d no enemies. Everybody liked her.”
He went to the desk drawer and fumbled through its contents.
He held out a faded snapshot. It showed a tall schoolgirl in a gym tunic, her hair tied back, her face radiant. Kennedy, a younger, happy-looking Kennedy, stood beside her, holding a terrier pupp
y.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately,” he said indistinctly. “For many years I hadn’t thought about her at all—almost managed to forget … Now I think about her all the time. That’s your doing.”
His words sounded almost accusing.
“I think it’s her doing,” said Gwenda.
He wheeled round on her sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I can’t explain. But it’s not really us. It’s Helen herself.”
The faint melancholy scream of an engine came to their ears. Dr. Kennedy stepped out of the window and they followed him. A trail of smoke showed itself retreating slowly along the valley.
“There goes the train,” said Kennedy.
“Coming into the station?”
“No, leaving it.” He paused. “She’ll be here any minute now.”
But the minutes passed and Lily Kimble did not come.
II
Lily Kimble got out of the train at Dillmouth Junction and walked across the bridge to the siding where the little local train was waiting. There were few passengers—a half-dozen at most. It was a slack time of day and in any case it was market day at Helchester.
Presently the train started—puffing its way importantly along a winding valley. There were three stops before the terminus at Lonsbury Bay: Newton Langford, Matchings Halt (for Woodleigh Camp) and Woodleigh Bolton.
Lily Kimble looked out of the window with eyes that did not see the lush countryside, but saw instead a Jacobean suite upholstered in jade green….
She was the only person to alight at the tiny station of Matchings Halt. She gave up her ticket and went out through the booking office. A little way along the road a signpost with “To Woodleigh Camp” indicated a footpath leading up a steep hill.
Lily Kimble took the footpath and walked briskly uphill. The path skirted the side of a wood, on the other side the hill rose steeply covered with heather and gorse.
Someone stepped out from the trees and Lily Kimble jumped.
“My, you did give me a start,” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting to meet you here.”
“Gave you a surprise, did I? I’ve got another surprise for you.”
