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‘The fish, madam,’ said Mrs Cresswell, ‘the slice of cod. It has not arrived. I have asked Alfred to go down for it and he refuses to do so.’
Rather unexpectedly, Miss Greenshaw gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Refuses, does he?’
‘Alfred, madam, has been most disobliging.’
Miss Greenshaw raised two earth-stained fingers to her lips, suddenly produced an ear-splitting whistle and at the same time yelled:
‘Alfred. Alfred, come here.’
Round the corner of the house a young man appeared in answer to the summons, carrying a spade in his hand. He had a bold, handsome face and as he drew near he cast an unmistakably malevolent glance towards Mrs Cresswell.
‘You wanted me, miss?’ he said. ‘Yes, Alfred. I hear you’ve refused to go down for the fish. What about it, eh?’
Alfred spoke in a surly voice. ‘I’ll go down for it if you wants it, miss. You’ve only got to say.’
‘I do want it. I want it for my supper.’
‘Right you are, miss. I’ll go right away.’
He threw an insolent glance at Mrs Cresswell, who flushed and murmured below her breath:
‘Really! It’s unsupportable.’
‘Now that I think of it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, ‘a couple of strange visitors are just what we need aren’t they, Mrs Cresswell?’
Mrs Cresswell looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, madam –’
‘For you-know-what,’ said Miss Greenshaw, nodding her head. ‘Beneficiary to a will mustn’t witness it. That’s right, isn’t it?’ She appealed to Raymond West.
‘Quite correct,’ said Raymond.
‘I know enough law to know that,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘And you two are men of standing.’
She flung down her trowel on her weeding-basket. ‘Would you mind coming up to the library with me?’
‘Delighted,’ said Horace eagerly.
She led the way through french windows and through a vast yellow and gold drawing-room with faded brocade on the walls and dust covers arranged over the furniture, then through a large dim hall, up a staircase and into a room on the first floor.
‘My grandfather’s library,’ she announced.
Horace looked round the room with acute pleasure. It was a room, from his point of view, quite full of monstrosities. The heads of sphinxes appeared on the most unlikely pieces of furniture, there was a colossal bronze representing, he thought, Paul and Virginia, and a vast bronze clock with classical motifs of which he longed to take a photograph.
‘A fine lot of books,’ said Miss Greenshaw.
Raymond was already looking at the books. From what he could see from a cursory glance there was no book here of any real interest or, indeed, any book which appeared to have been read. They were all superbly bound sets of the classics as supplied ninety years ago for furnishing a gentleman’s library. Some novels of a bygone period were included. But they too showed little signs of having been read.
Miss Greenshaw was fumbling in the drawers of a vast desk. Finally she pulled out a parchment document.
‘My will,’ she explained. ‘Got to leave your money to someone – or so they say. If I died without a will I suppose that son of a horse-coper would get it. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but a rogue if there ever was one. Don’t see why his son should inherit this place. No,’ she went on, as though answering some unspoken objection, ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving it to Cresswell.’
‘Your housekeeper?’
‘Yes. I’ve explained it to her. I make a will leaving her all I’ve got and then I don’t need to pay her any wages. Saves me a lot in current expenses, and it keeps her up to the mark. No giving me notice and walking off at any minute. Very la-di-dah and all that, isn’t she? But her father was a working plumber in a very small way. She’s nothing to give herself airs about.’
She had by now unfolded the parchment. Picking up a pen she dipped it in the inkstand and wrote her signature, Katherine Dorothy Green-shaw.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen me sign it, and then you two sign it, and that makes it legal.’
She handed the pen to Raymond West. He hesitated a moment, feeling an unexpected repulsion to what he was asked to do. Then he quickly scrawled the well-known signature, for which his morning’s mail usually brought at least six demands a day.
Horace took the pen from him and added his own minute signature. ‘That’s done,’ said Miss Greenshaw.
She moved across to the bookcase and stood looking at them uncertainly, then she opened a glass door, took out a book and slipped the folded parchment inside.
‘I’ve my own places for keeping things,’ she said. ‘Lady Audley’s Secret,’ Raymond West remarked, catching sight of the title as she replaced the book.
Miss Greenshaw gave another cackle of laughter. ‘Best-seller in its day,’ she remarked. ‘Not like your books, eh?’
She gave Raymond a sudden friendly nudge in the ribs. Raymond was rather surprised that she even knew he wrote books. Although Raymond West was quite a name in literature, he could hardly be described as a best-seller. Though softening a little with the advent of middle-age, his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life.
‘I wonder,’ Horace demanded breathlessly, ‘if I might just take a photograph of the clock?’
‘By all means,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘It came, I believe, from the Paris exhibition.’
‘Very probably,’ said Horace. He took his picture. ‘This room’s not been used much since my grandfather’s time,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘This desk’s full of old diaries of his. Interesting, I should think. I haven’t the eyesight to read them myself. I’d like to get them published, but I suppose one would have to work on them a good deal.’
‘You could engage someone to do that,’ said Raymond West. ‘Could I really? It’s an idea, you know. I’ll think about it.’ Raymond West glanced at his watch. ‘We mustn’t trespass on your kindness any longer,’ he said. ‘Pleased to have seen you,’ said Miss Greenshaw graciously. ‘Thought you were the policeman when I heard you coming round the corner of the house.’
‘Why a policeman?’ demanded Horace, who never minded asking questions.
Miss Greenshaw responded unexpectedly. ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,’ she carolled, and with this example of Victorian wit, nudged Horace in the ribs and roared with laughter.
‘It’s been a wonderful afternoon,’ sighed Horace as they walked home. ‘Really, that place has everything. The only thing the library needs is a body. Those old-fashioned detective stories about murder in the library – that’s just the kind of library I’m sure the authors had in mind.’
‘If you want to discuss murder,’ said Raymond, ‘you must talk to my Aunt Jane.’
‘Your Aunt Jane? Do you mean Miss Marple?’ He felt a little at a loss. The charming old-world lady to whom he had been introduced the night before seemed the last person to be mentioned in connection with murder.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Raymond. ‘Murder is a speciality of hers.’
‘But my dear, how intriguing. What do you really mean?’
‘I mean just that,’ said Raymond. He paraphrased: ‘Some commit murder, some get mixed up in murders, others have murder thrust upon them. My Aunt Jane comes into the third category.’
‘You are joking.’
‘Not in the least. I can refer you to the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard, several Chief Constables and one or two hard-working inspectors of the CID.’
Horace said happily that wonders would never cease. Over the tea table they gave Joan West, Raymond’s wife, Lou Oxley her niece, and old Miss Marple, a résumé of the afternoon’s happenings, recounting in detail everything that Miss Greenshaw had said to them.
‘But I do think,’ said Horace, ‘that there is something a little sinister about the whole set-up. That duchess-like creature, the housekeeper – arsenic, perhaps, in the teapot, now that she knows her mistress has made the will in her fav
