A Murder Is Announced - Christie Agatha (читать книги онлайн бесплатно серию книг TXT) 📗

I’ve done my best. I’ve talked to Sonia and I’ve talked to R.G. and I’ve got them both into a more reasonable frame of mind and then they come together and it all starts over again! You’ve no idea howtiringit is. R.G. has been making enquiries-and it does really seem as though this Stamfordis man was thoroughly undesirable.

In the meantime business is being neglected. I carry on at the office and in a way it’s rather fun because R.G. gives me a free hand. He said to me yesterday: ‘Thank Heaven, there’s one sane person in the world. You’re never likely to fall in love with a crook, Blackie, are you?’ I said I didn’t think I was likely to fall in love with anybody. R.G. said: ‘Let’s start a few new hares in the City.’ He’s really rather a mischievous devil sometimes and he sails terribly near the wind. ‘You’re quite determined to keep me on the straight and narrow path aren’t you, Blackie?’ he said the other day. And I shall too! I can’t understand how people can’t see when a thing’s dishonest-but R.G. really and truly doesn’t. He only knows what is actually against the law.

Belle only laughs at all this. She thinks the fuss about Sonia is all nonsense. ‘Sonia has her own money,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t she marry this man if she wants to?’ I said it might turn out to be a terrible mistake and Belle said, ‘It’s never a mistake to marry a man you want to marry-even if you regret it.’ And then she said, ‘I suppose Sonia doesn’t want to break with Randall because of money. Sonia’s very fond of money.’

No more now. How is father? I won’t say Give him my love. But you can if you think it’s better to do so. Have you seen more people? You really must not bemorbid,darling.

Sonia asks to be remembered to you. She has just come in and is closing and unclosing her hands like an angry cat sharpening its claws. I think she and R.G. have had another row. Of course Sonia can be very irritating. She stares you down with that cool stare of hers.

Lots of love, darling, and buck up. This iodine treatment may make a lot of difference. I’ve been enquiring about it and it really does seem to have good results.

Your loving sister,

Letitia.

Miss Marple folded the letter and handed it back. She looked abstracted.

‘Well, what do you think about her?’ Craddock urged. ‘What picture do you get of her?’

‘Of Sonia? It’s difficult, you know, to see anyone through another person’s mind…Determined to get her own way-that, definitely, I think. And wanting the best of two worlds…’

‘Closing and unclosing her hands like an angry cat,’ murmured Craddock. ‘You know, that reminds me of someone…’

He frowned.

‘Making enquiries…’ murmured Miss Marple.

‘If we could get hold of the result of those inquiries,’ said Craddock.

‘Does that letter remind you of anything in St Mary Mead?’ asked Bunch, rather indistinctly since her mouth was full of pins.

‘I really can’t say it does, dear…Dr Blacklock is, perhaps, a little like Mr Curtiss the Wesleyan Minister. He wouldn’t let his child wear a plate on her teeth. Said it was the Lord’s Will if her teeth stuck out. “After all,” I said to him, “you do trim your beard and cut your hair. It might be the Lord’s Will that your hair should grow out.” He said that was quite different. So like a man. But that doesn’t help us with our present problem.’

‘We’ve never traced that revolver, you know. It wasn’t Rudi Scherz. If I knew who had had a revolver in Chipping Cleghorn-’

‘Colonel Easterbrook has one,’ said Bunch. ‘He keeps it in his collar drawer.’

‘How do you know, Mrs Harmon?’

‘Mrs Butt told me. She’s my daily. Or rather, my twice weekly. Being a military gentleman, she said, he’d naturally have a revolver and very handy it would be if burglars were to come along.’

‘When did she tell you this?’

‘Ages ago. About six months ago, I should think.’

‘Colonel Easterbrook?’ murmured Craddock.

‘It’s like those pointer things at fairs, isn’t it?’ said Bunch, still speaking through a mouthful of pins.

‘Go round and round and stop at something different every time.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Craddock and groaned.

‘Colonel Easterbrook was up at Little Paddocks to leave a book there one day. He could have oiled that door then. He was quite straightforward about being there though. Not like Miss Hinchcliffe.’

Miss Marple coughed gently. ‘You must make allowances for the times we live in, Inspector,’ she said.

Craddock looked at her, uncomprehendingly.

‘After all,’ said Miss Marple. ‘youare the Police, aren’t you? People can’t say everything they’d like to say to the Police, can they?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Craddock. ‘Unless they’ve got some criminal matter to conceal.’

‘She means butter,’ said Bunch, crawling actively round a table leg to anchor a floating bit of paper.

‘Butter and corn for hens, and sometimes cream-and sometimes, even, a side of bacon.’

‘Show him that note from Miss Blacklock,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It’s some time ago now, but it reads like a first-class mystery story.’

‘What have I done with it? Is this the one you mean, Aunt Jane?’

Miss Marple took it and looked at it.

‘Yes,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘That’s the one.’

She handed it to the Inspector.

‘I have made inquiries-Thursday is the day,’Miss Blacklock had written.‘Any time after three. If there is any for me leave it in the usual place.’

Bunch spat out her pins and laughed. Miss Marple was watching the Inspector’s face.

The Vicar’s wife took upon herself to explain.

‘Thursday is the day one of the farms round here makes butter. They let anybody they like have a bit. It’s usually Miss Hinchcliffe who collects it. She’s very much in with all the farmers-because of her pigs, I think. But it’s all a bit hush hush, you know, a kind of local scheme of barter. One person gets butter, and sends along cucumbers, or something like that-and a little something when a pig’s killed. And now and then an animal has an accident and has to be destroyed. Oh, you know the sort of thing. Only one can’t, very well, say it right out to the Police. Because I suppose quite a lot of this barter is illegal-only nobody really knows because it’s all so complicated. But I expect Hinch had slipped into Little Paddocks with a pound of butter or something and had put it in theusual place. That’s a flour bin under the dresser, by the way. It doesn’t have flour in it.’

Craddock sighed.

‘I’m glad I came here to you ladies,’ he said.

‘There used to be clothing coupons, too,’ said Bunch. ‘Not usually bought-that wasn’t considered honest. No money passes. But people like Mrs Butt or Mrs Finch or Mrs Huggins like a nice woollen dress or a winter coat that hasn’t seen too much wear and they pay for it with coupons instead of money.’

‘You’d better not tell me any more,’ said Craddock.

‘It’s all against the law.’

‘Then there oughtn’t to be such silly laws,’ said Bunch, filling her mouth up with pins again. ‘Idon’t do it, of course, because Julian doesn’t like me to, so I don’t. But I know what’s going on, of course.’

A kind of despair was coming over the Inspector.

‘It all sounds so pleasant and ordinary,’ he said. ‘Funny and petty and simple. And yet one woman and a man have been killed, and another woman may be killed before I can get anything definite to go on. I’ve left off worrying about Pip and Emma for the moment. I’m concentrating on Sonia. I wish I knew what she looked like. There was a snapshot or two in with these letters, but none of the snaps could have been of her.’

‘How do you know it couldn’t have been her? Do you know what she looked like?’

‘She was small and dark, Miss Blacklock said.’

‘Really,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that’svery interesting.’

‘There was one snap that reminded me vaguely of someone. A tall fair girl with her hair all done up on top of her head. I don’t know who she could have been. Anyway, it can’t have been Sonia. Do you think Mrs Swettenham could have been dark when she was a girl?’

‘Not very dark,’ said Bunch. ‘She’s got blue eyes.’

‘I hoped there might be a photo of Dmitri Stamfordis-but I suppose that was too much to hope for…Well’-he took up the letter-‘I’m sorry this doesn’t suggest anything to you, Miss Marple.’

‘Oh! but it does,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It suggests a good deal. Just read it through again, Inspector-especially where it says that Randall Goedler was making inquiries about Dmitri Stamfordis.’

Craddock stared at her.

The telephone rang.

Bunch got up from the floor and went out into the hall where, in accordance with the best Victorian traditions, the telephone had originally been placed and where it still was.

She re-entered the room to say to Craddock:

‘It’s for you.’

Slightly surprised, the Inspector went out to the instrument-carefully shutting the door of the living-room behind him.

‘Craddock? Rydesdale here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ve been looking through your report. In the interview you had with Phillipa Haymes I see she states positively that she hasn’t seen her husband since his desertion from the Army?’

‘That’s right, sir-she was most emphatic. But in my opinion she wasn’t speaking the truth.’

‘I agree with you. Do you remember a case about ten days ago-man run over by a lorry-taken to Milchester General with concussion and a fractured pelvis?’

‘The fellow who snatched a child practically from under the wheels of a lorry, and got run down himself?’

‘That’s the one. No papers of any kind on him and nobody came forward to identify him. Looked as though he might be on the run. He died last night without regaining consciousness. But he’s been identified-deserter from the Army-Ronald Haymes, ex-Captain in the South Loamshires.’

‘Phillipa Haymes’ husband?’

‘Yes. He’d got an old Chipping Cleghorn bus ticket on him, by the way-and quite a reasonable amount of money.’

‘So he did get money from his wife? I always thought he was the man Mitzi overheard talking to her in the summerhouse. She denied it flatly, of course. But surely, sir, that lorry accident was before-’