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‘A bit fussy, but there, poor dear, she didn’t often get out, and staying cooped up she had to have something to amuse herself like. She was pernickety but kind hearted – never a beggar sent away from the door without something. Fussy she may have been, but a real charitable lady.’
‘I am glad, Martha, that she leaves one person to regret her.’
The old servant caught her breath. ‘You mean – oh, but they were all fond of her – really – underneath. They all had words with her now and again, but it didn’t mean anything.’
Sir Edward lifted his head. There was a creak above.
‘That’s Miss Magdalen coming down.’
‘How do you know?’ he shot at her.
The old woman flushed. ‘I know her step,’ she muttered.
Sir Edward left the kitchen rapidly. Martha had been right. Magdalen had just reached the bottom stair. She looked at him hopefully.
‘Not very far on as yet,’ said Sir Edward, answering her look, and added, ‘You don’t happen to know what letters your aunt received on the day of her death?’
‘They are all together. The police have been through them, of course.’ She led the way to the big double drawing-room, and unlocking a drawer took out a large black velvet bag with an old-fashioned silver clasp.
‘This is Aunt’s bag. Everything is in here just as it was on the day of her death. I’ve kept it like that.’
Sir Edward thanked her and proceeded to turn out the contents of the bag on the table. It was, he fancied, a fair specimen of an eccentric elderly lady’s handbag.
There was some odd silver change, two ginger nuts, three newspaper cuttings about Joanna Southcott’s box, a trashy printed poem about the unemployed, an Old Moore’s Almanack, a large piece of camphor, some spectacles and three letters. A spidery one from someone called ‘Cousin Lucy’, a bill for mending a watch, and an appeal from a charitable institution.
Sir Edward went through everything very carefully, then repacked the bag and handed it to Magdalen with a sigh.
‘Thank you, Miss Magdalen. I’m afraid there isn’t much there.’
He rose, observed that from the window you commanded a good view of the front door steps, then took Magdalen’s hand in his.
‘You are going?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s – it’s going to be all right?’
‘Nobody connected with the law ever commits himself to a rash statement like that,’ said Sir Edward solemnly, and made his escape.
He walked along the street lost in thought. The puzzle was there under his hand – and he had not solved it. It needed something – some little thing. Just to point the way.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he started. It was Matthew Vaughan, somewhat out of breath.
‘I’ve been chasing you, Sir Edward. I want to apologize. For my rotten manners half an hour ago. But I’ve not got the best temper in the world, I’m afraid. It’s awfully good of you to bother about this business. Please ask me whatever you like. If there’s anything I can do to help –’
Suddenly Sir Edward stiffened. His glance was fixed – not on Matthew – but across the street. Somewhat bewildered, Matthew repeated:
‘If there’s anything I can do to help –’
‘You have already done it, my dear young man,’ said Sir Edward. ‘By stopping me at this particular spot and so fixing my attention on something I might otherwise have missed.’
He pointed across the street to a small restaurant opposite. ‘The Four and Twenty Blackbirds?’ asked Matthew in a puzzled voice. ‘Exactly.’
‘It’s an odd name – but you get quite decent food there, I believe.’
‘I shall not take the risk of experimenting,’ said Sir Edward. ‘Being further from my nursery days than you are, my friend, I probably remember my nursery rhymes better. There is a classic that runs thus, if I remember rightly: Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie – and so on. The rest of it does not concern us.’
He wheeled round sharply. ‘Where are you going?’ asked Matthew Vaughan. ‘Back to your house, my friend.’
They walked there in silence, Matthew Vaughan shooting puzzled glances at his companion. Sir Edward entered, strode to a drawer, lifted out a velvet bag and opened it. He looked at Matthew and the young man reluctantly left the room.
Sir Edward tumbled out the silver change on the table. Then he nodded. His memory had not been at fault.
He got up and rang the bell, slipping something into the palm of his hand as he did so.
Martha answered the bell. ‘You told me, Martha, if I remember rightly, that you had a slight altercation with your late mistress over one of the new sixpences.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ah! but the curious thing is, Martha, that among this loose change, there is no new sixpence. There are two sixpences, but they are both old ones.’
She stared at him in a puzzled fashion. ‘You see what that means? Someone did come to the house that evening
– someone to whom your mistress gave sixpence . . . I think she gave it him in exchange for this . . .’
With a swift movement, he shot his hand forward, holding out the doggerel verse about unemployment.
One glance at her face was enough.
‘The game is up, Martha – you see, I know. You may as well tell me everything.’
She sank down on a chair – the tears raced down her face. ‘It’s true – it’s true – the bell didn’t ring properly – I wasn’t sure, and then I thought I’d better go and see. I got to the door just as he struck her down. The roll of five-pound notes was on the table in front of her – it was the sight of them as made him do it – that and thinking she was alone in the house as she’d let him in. I couldn’t scream. I was too paralysed and then he turned – and I saw it was my boy . . .
‘Oh, he’s been a bad one always. I gave him all the money I could. He’s been in gaol twice. He must have come around to see me, and then Miss Crabtree, seeing as I didn’t answer the door, went to answer it herself, and he was taken aback and pulled out one of those unemployment leaflets, and the mistress being kind of charitable, told him to come in and got out a sixpence. And all the time that roll of notes was lying on the table where it had been when I was giving her the change. And the devil got into my Ben and he got behind her and struck her down.’
‘And then?’ asked Sir Edward.
‘Oh, sir, what could I do? My own flesh and blood. His father was a bad one, and Ben takes after him – but he was my own son. I hustled him out, and I went back to the kitchen and I went to lay for supper at the usual time. Do you think it was very wicked of me, sir? I tried to tell you no lies when you was asking me questions.’
Sir Edward rose.
‘My poor woman,’ he said with feeling in his voice, ‘I am very sorry for you. All the same, the law will have to take its course, you know.’
‘He’s fled the country, sir. I don’t know where he is.’
‘There’s a chance, then, that he may escape the gallows, but don’t build upon it. Will you send Miss Magdalen to me.’
‘Oh, Sir Edward. How wonderful of you – how wonderful you are,’ said Magdalen when he had finished his brief recital. ‘You’ve saved us all. How can I ever thank you?’
Sir Edward smiled down at her and patted her hand gently. He was very much the great man. Little Magdalen had been very charming on the Siluric. That bloom of seventeen – wonderful! She had completely lost it now, of course.
‘Next time you need a friend –’ he said.
‘I’ll come straight to you.’
‘No, no,’ cried Sir Edward in alarm. ‘That’s just what I don’t want you to do. Go to a younger man.’
He extricated himself with dexterity from the grateful household and hailing a taxi sank into it with a sigh of relief.
Even the charm of a dewy seventeen seemed doubtful.
It could not really compare with a really well-stocked library on criminology.
The taxi turned into Queen Anne’s Close.
His cul-de-sac.
Chapter 34
The Blue Geranium
‘The Blue Geranium’ was first published in The Christmas Story-Teller, December 1929.
‘When I was down here last year –’ said Sir Henry Clithering, and stopped.
His hostess, Mrs Bantry, looked at him curiously.
The Ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard was staying with old friends of his, Colonel and Mrs Bantry, who lived near St Mary Mead.
Mrs Bantry, pen in hand, had just asked his advice as to who should be invited to make a sixth guest at dinner that evening.
‘Yes?’ said Mrs Bantry encouragingly. ‘When you were here last year?’
‘Tell me,’ said Sir Henry, ‘do you know a Miss Marple?’
Mrs Bantry was surprised. It was the last thing she had expected.
‘Know Miss Marple? Who doesn’t! The typical old maid of fiction. Quite a dear, but hopelessly behind the times. Do you mean you would like me to ask her to dinner?’
‘You are surprised?’
‘A little, I must confess. I should hardly have thought you – but perhaps there’s an explanation?’
