Miss Marple and Mystery (52 page)

‘You trust Martha?’

‘Oh, absolutely. She was with Aunt Lily for – oh! thirty years, I suppose. She’s honest as the day.’

Sir Edward nodded.

‘Another question. Why did your cousin, Mrs Crabtree, take a headache powder?’

‘Well, because she had a headache.’

‘Naturally, but was there any particular reason why she
should
have a headache?’

‘Well, yes, in a way. There was rather a scene at lunch. Emily is very excitable and highly strung. She and Aunt Lily used to have rows sometimes.’

‘And they had one at lunch?’

‘Yes. Aunt Lily was rather trying about little things. It all started out of nothing – and then they were at it hammer and tongs – with Emily saying all sorts of things she couldn’t possibly have meant – that she’d leave the house and never come back – that she was grudged every mouthful she ate – oh! all sorts of silly things. And Aunt Lily said the sooner she and her husband packed their boxes and went the better. But it all meant nothing, really.’

‘Because Mr and Mrs Crabtree couldn’t afford to pack up and go?’

‘Oh, not only that. William was fond of Aunt Emily. He really was.’

‘It wasn’t a day of quarrels by any chance?’

Magdalen’s colour heightened. ‘You mean me? The fuss about my wanting to be a mannequin?’

‘Your aunt wouldn’t agree?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you want to be a mannequin, Miss Magdalen? Does the life strike you as a very attractive one?’

‘No, but anything would be better than going on living here.’

‘Yes, then. But now you will have a comfortable income, won’t you?’

‘Oh! yes, it’s quite different
now
.’

She made the admission with the utmost simplicity.

He smiled but pursued the subject no further. Instead he said: ‘And your brother? Did he have a quarrel too?’

‘Matthew? Oh, no.’

‘Then no one can say he had a motive for wishing his aunt out of the way.’

He was quick to seize on the momentary dismay that showed in her face.

‘I forgot,’ he said casually. ‘He owed a good deal of money, didn’t he?’

‘Yes; poor old Matthew.’

‘Still, that will be all right now.’

‘Yes –’ She sighed. ‘It
is
a relief.’

And still she saw nothing! He changed the subject hastily. ‘Your cousins and your brother are at home?’

‘Yes; I told them you were coming. They are all so anxious to help. Oh, Sir Edward – I feel, somehow, that you are going to find out that everything is all right – that none of us had anything to do with it – that, after all, it
was
an outsider.’

‘I can’t do miracles. I may be able to find out the truth, but I can’t make the truth be what you want it to be.’

‘Can’t you? I feel that you could do anything – anything.’

She left the room. He thought, disturbed, ‘What did she mean by that? Does she want me to suggest a line of defence? For whom?’

His meditations were interrupted by the entrance of a man about fifty years of age. He had a naturally powerful frame, but stooped slightly. His clothes were untidy and his hair carelessly brushed. He looked good-natured but vague.

‘Sir Edward Palliser? Oh, how do you do. Magdalen sent me along. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to wish to help us. Though I don’t think anything will ever be really discovered. I mean, they won’t catch the fellow.’

‘You think it was a burglar then – someone from outside?’

‘Well, it must have been. It couldn’t be one of the family. These fellows are very clever nowadays, they climb like cats and they get in and out as they like.’

‘Where were you, Mr Crabtree, when the tragedy occurred?’

‘I was busy with my stamps – in my little sitting-room upstairs.’

‘You didn’t hear anything?’

‘No – but then I never do hear anything when I’m absorbed. Very foolish of me, but there it is.’

‘Is the sitting-room you refer to over this room?’

‘No, it’s at the back.’

Again the door opened. A small fair woman entered. Her hands were twitching nervously. She looked fretful and excited.

‘William, why didn’t you wait for me? I said “wait”.’

‘Sorry, my dear, I forgot. Sir Edward Palliser – my wife.’

‘How do you do, Mrs Crabtree? I hope you don’t mind my coming here to ask a few questions. I know how anxious you must all be to have things cleared up.’

‘Naturally. But I can’t tell you anything – can I, William? I was asleep – on my bed – I only woke up when Martha screamed.’

Her hands continued to twitch. ‘Where is your room, Mrs Crabtree?’

‘It’s over this. But I didn’t hear anything – how could I? I was asleep.’ He could get nothing out of her but that. She knew nothing – she had heard nothing – she had been asleep. She reiterated it with the obstinacy of a frightened woman. Yet Sir Edward knew very well that it might easily be – probably was – the bare truth.

He excused himself at last – said he would like to put a few questions to Martha. William Crabtree volunteered to take him to the kitchen. In the hall, Sir Edward nearly collided with a tall dark young man who was striding towards the front door.

‘Mr Matthew Vaughan?’

‘Yes – but look here, I can’t wait. I’ve got an appointment.’

‘Matthew!’ It was his sister’s voice from the stairs. ‘Oh! Matthew, you promised –’

‘I know, sis. But I can’t. Got to meet a fellow. And, anyway, what’s the good of talking about the damned thing over and over again. We have enough of that with the police. I’m fed up with the whole show.’

The front door banged. Mr Matthew Vaughan had made his exit.

Sir Edward was introduced into the kitchen. Martha was ironing. She paused, iron in hand. Sir Edward shut the door behind him.

‘Miss Vaughan has asked me to help her,’ he said. ‘I hope you won’t object to my asking you a few questions.’

She looked at him, then shook her head.

‘None of them did it, sir. I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t so. As nice a set of ladies and gentlemen as you could wish to see.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it. But their niceness isn’t what we call evidence, you know.’

‘Perhaps not, sir. The law’s a funny thing. But there is evidence – as you call it, sir. None of them could have done it without
my
knowing.’

‘But surely –’

‘I know what I’m talking about sir. There, listen to that –’

‘That’ was a creaking sound above their heads.

‘The stairs, sir. Every time anyone goes up or down, the stairs creak something awful. It doesn’t matter how quiet you go. Mrs Crabtree, she was lying on her bed, and Mr Crabtree was fiddling about with them wretched stamps of his, and Miss Magdalen she was up above again working her machine, and if any one of those three had come down the stairs I should have known it. And they didn’t!’

She spoke with a positive assurance which impressed the barrister. He thought: ‘A good witness. She’d carry weight.’

‘You mightn’t have noticed.’

‘Yes, I would. I’d have noticed without noticing, so to speak. Like you notice when a door shuts and somebody goes out.’

Sir Edward shifted his ground.

‘That is three of them acounted for, but there is a fourth. Was Mr Matthew Vaughan upstairs also?’

‘No, but he was in the little room downstairs. Next door. And he was typewriting. You can hear it plain in here. His machine never stopped for a moment. Not for a moment, sir, I can swear to it. A nasty irritating tap tapping noise it is, too.’

Sir Edward paused a minute. ‘It was you who found her, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir, it was. Lying there with blood on her poor hair. And no one hearing a sound on account of the tap-tapping of Mr Matthew’s typewriter.’

‘I understand you are positive that no one came into the house?’

‘How could they, sir, without my knowing? The bell rings in here. And there’s only the one door.’

He looked at her straight in the face. ‘You were attached to Miss Crabtree?’

A warm glow – genuine – unmistakable – came into her face. ‘Yes, indeed, I was, sir. But for Miss Crabtree – well, I’m getting on and I don’t mind speaking of it now. I got into trouble, sir, when I was a girl, and Miss Crabtree stood by me – took me back into her service, she did, when it was all over. I’d have died for her – I would indeed.’

Sir Edward knew sincerity when he heard it. Martha was sincere.

‘As far as you know, no one came to the door –?’

‘No one could have come.’

‘I said
as far as you
know. But if Miss Crabtree had been expecting someone – if she opened the door to that someone herself . . .’

‘Oh!’ Martha seemed taken aback.

‘That’s possible, I suppose?’ Sir Edward urged. ‘It’s possible – yes – but it isn’t very likely. I mean . . .’

She was clearly taken aback. She couldn’t deny and yet she wanted to do so. Why? Because she knew that the truth lay elsewhere. Was that it? The four people in the house – one of them guilty? Did Martha want to shield that guilty party?
Had
the stairs creaked? Had someone come stealthily down and did Martha know who that someone was?

She herself was honest – Sir Edward was convinced of that.

He pressed his point, watching her.

‘Miss Crabtree might have done that, I suppose? The window of that room faces the street. She might have seen whoever it was she was waiting for from the window and gone out into the hall and let him – or her – in. She might even have wished that no one should see the person.’

Martha looked troubled. She said at last reluctantly:

‘Yes, you may be right, sir. I never thought of that. That she was expecting a gentleman – yes, it well might be.’

It was though she began to perceive advantages in the idea. ‘You were the last person to see her, were you not?’

‘Yes, sir. After I’d cleared away the tea. I took the receipted books to her and the change from the money she’d given me.’

‘Had she given the money to you in five-pound notes?’

‘A five-pound note, sir,’ said Martha in a shocked voice. ‘The book never came up as high as five pounds. I’m very careful.’

‘Where did she keep her money?’

‘I don’t rightly know, sir. I should say that she carried it about with her – in her black velvet bag. But of course she may have kept it in one of the drawers in her bedroom that were locked. She was very fond of locking up things, though prone to lose her keys.’

Sir Edward nodded.

‘You don’t know how much money she had – in five-pound notes, I mean?’

‘No, sir, I couldn’t say what the exact amount was.’

‘And she said nothing to you that could lead you to believe that she was expecting anybody?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’re quite sure? What exactly did she say?’

‘Well,’ Martha considered, ‘she said the butcher was nothing more than a rogue and a cheat, and she said I’d had in a quarter of a pound of tea more than I ought, and she said Mrs Crabtree was full of nonsense for not liking to eat margarine, and she didn’t like one of the sixpences I’d brought her back – one of the new ones with oak leaves on it – she said it was bad, and I had a lot of trouble to convince her. And she said – oh, that the fishmonger had sent haddocks instead of whitings, and had I told him about it, and I said I had – and, really, I think that’s all, sir.’

Martha’s speech had made the deceased lady loom clear to Sir Edward as a detailed description would never have done. He said casually:

‘Rather a difficult mistress to please, eh?’

‘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.