A Murder is Announced

Chapter 17
The Album

Standing by the Vicarage gate, well wrapped up, Miss Marple took the note from Bunch's hand.

'Tell Miss Blacklock,' said Bunch, 'that Julian is terribly sorry he can't come up himself. He's got a parishioner dying out at Locke Hamlet. He'll come up after lunch if Miss Blacklock would like to see him. The note's about the arrangements for the funeral. He suggests Wednesday if the inquest's on Tuesday. Poor old Bunny. It's so typical of her, somehow, to get hold of poisoned aspirin meant for someone else. Goodbye, darling. I hope the walk won't be too much for you. But I've simply got to get that child to hospital at once.'

Miss Marple said the walk wouldn't be too much for her, and Bunch rushed off.

Whilst waiting for Miss Blacklock, Miss Marple looked round the drawing-room, and wondered just exactly what Dora Bunner had meant that morning in the Bluebird by saying that she believed Patrick had 'tampered with the lamp' to 'make the lights go out'. What lamp? And how had he 'tampered' with it?

She must, Miss Marple decided, have meant the small lamp that stood on the table by the archway. She had said something about a shepherdess or a shepherd - and this was actually a delicate piece of Dresden china, a shepherd in a blue coat and pink breeches holding what had originally been a candlestick and had now been adapted to electricity. The shade was of plain vellum and a little too big so that it almost masked the figure. What else was it that Dora Bunner had said? 'I remember distinctly that it was the shepherdess. And the next day - ' Certainly it was a shepherd now.

Miss Marple remembered that when she and Bunch had come to tea, Dora Bunner had said something about the lamp being one of a pair. Of course - a shepherd and a shepherdess. And it had been the shepherdess on the day of the hold-up - and the next morning it had been the other lamp - the lamp that was here now, the shepherd. The lamps had been changed over during the night. And Dora Bunner had had reason to believe (or had believed without reason) that it was Patrick who had changed them.

Why? Because, if the original lamp were examined, it would show just how Patrick had managed to 'make the lights go out'. How had he managed? Miss Marple looked earnestly at the lamp in front of her. The flex ran along the table over the edge and was plugged into the wall. There was a small pear-shaped switch half-way along the flex. None of it suggested anything to Miss Marple because she knew very little about electricity.

Where was the shepherdess lamp? she wondered. In the 'spare room' or thrown away, or - where was it Dora Bunner had come upon Patrick Simmons with a feather and an oily cup? In the shrubbery? Miss Marple made up her mind to put all these points to Inspector Craddock.

At the very beginning Miss Blacklock had leaped to the conclusion that her nephew Patrick had been behind the insertion of that advertisement. That kind of instinctive belief was often justified, or so Miss Marple believed. Because, if you knew people fairly well, you knew the kind of things they thought of...

Patrick Simmons...

A handsome young man. An engaging young man. A young man whom women liked, both young women and old women. The kind of man, perhaps, that Randall Goedler's sister had married. Could Patrick Simmons be 'Pip'? But he'd been in the Navy during the war. The police could soon check up on that.

Only - sometimes - the most amazing impersonations did happen.

You could get away with a great deal if you had enough audacity...

The door opened and Miss Blacklock came in. She looked, Miss Marple thought, many years older. All the life and energy had gone out of her.

'I'm very sorry, disturbing you like this,' said Miss Marple. 'But the Vicar had a dying parishioner and Bunch had to rush a sick child to hospital. The Vicar wrote you a note.'

She held it out and Miss Blacklock took it and opened it.

'Do sit down, Miss Marple,' she said. 'It's very kind of you to have brought this.'

She read the note through.

'The Vicar's a very understanding man,' she said quietly. 'He doesn't offer one fatuous consolation...Tell him that these arrangements will do very well. Her - her favourite hymn was Lead Kindly Light.'

Her voice broke suddenly.

Miss Marple said gently:

'I am only a stranger, but I am so very very sorry.'

And suddenly, uncontrollably, Letitia Blacklock wept. It was a piteous overmastering grief, with a kind of hopelessness about it. Miss Marple sat quite still.

Miss Blacklock sat up at last. Her face was swollen and blotched with tears.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It - it just came over me. What I've lost. She - she was the only link with the past, you see. The only one who - who remembered. Now that she's gone I'm quite alone.'

'I know what you mean,' said Miss Marple. 'One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends - but there's no one who knew me as a young girl - no one who belongs to the old days. I've been alone for quite a long time now.'

Both women sat silent for some moments.

'You understand very well,' said Letitia Blacklock. She rose and went over to her desk. 'I must write a few words to the Vicar.' She held the pen rather awkwardly and wrote slowly.

'Arthritic,' she explained. 'Sometimes I can hardly write at all.'

She sealed up the envelope and addressed it.

'If you wouldn't mind taking it, it would be very kind.'

Hearing a man's voice in the hall she said quickly:

'That's Inspector Craddock.'

She went to the mirror over the fireplace and applied a small powder puff to her face.

Craddock came in with a grim, angry face.

He looked at Miss Marple with disapprobation.

'Oh,' he said. 'So you're here.'

Miss Blacklock turned from the mantelpiece.

'Miss Marple kindly came up with a note from the Vicar.'

Miss Marple said in a flurried manner:

'I am going at once - at once. Please don't let me hamper you in any way.'

'Were you at the tea party here yesterday afternoon?'

Miss Marple said, nervously:

'No - no, I wasn't. Bunch drove me over to call on some friends.'

'Then there's nothing you can tell me.' Craddock held the door open in a pointed manner, and Miss Marple scuttled out in a somewhat abashed fashion.

'Nosey Parkers, these old women,' said Craddock.

'I think you're being unfair to her,' said Miss Blacklock. 'She really did come with a note from the Vicar.'

'I bet she did.'

'I don't think it was idle curiosity.'

'Well, perhaps you're right, Miss Blacklock, but my own diagnosis would be a severe attack of Nosey Parkeritis...'

'She's a very harmless old creature,' said Miss Blacklock.

'Dangerous as a rattlesnake if you only knew,' the Inspector thought grimly. But he had no intention of taking anyone into his confidence unnecessarily. Now that he knew definitely there was a killer at large, he felt that the less said the better. He didn't want the next person bumped off to be Jane Marple.

Somewhere - a killer...Where?

'I won't waste time offering sympathy, Miss Blacklock,' he said. 'As a matter of fact I feel pretty bad about Miss Bunner's death. We ought to have been able to prevent it.'

'I don't see what you could have done.'

'No - well, it wouldn't have been easy. But now we've got to work fast. Who's doing this, Miss Blacklock? Who's had two shots at killing you, and will probably, if we don't work fast enough, soon have another?'

Letitia Blacklock shivered. 'I don't know, Inspector - I don't know at all!'

'I've checked up with Mrs Goedler. She's given me all the help she can. It wasn't very much. There are just a few people who would definitely profit by your death. First Pip and Emma. Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age, but their background seems clear enough. Anyway, we can't concentrate on these two alone. Tell me, Miss Blacklock, would you recognize Sonia Goedler if you saw her?'

'Recognize Sonia? Why, of course - ' She stopped suddenly. 'No,' she said slowly, 'I don't know that I would. It's a long time. Thirty years...She'd be an elderly woman now.'

'What was she like when you remember her?'

'Sonia?' Miss Blacklock considered for some moments. 'She was rather small, dark...'

'Any special peculiarities? Mannerisms?'

'No - no, I don't think so. She was gay - very gay.'

'She mayn't be so gay now,' said the Inspector. 'Have you got a photograph of her?'

'Of Sonia? Let me see - not a proper photograph. I've got some old snapshots - in an album somewhere - at least I think there's one of her.'

'Ah. Can I have a look at it?'

'Yes, of course. Now where did I put that album?'

'Tell me, Miss Blacklock, do you consider it remotely possible that Mrs Swettenham might be Sonia Goedler?'

'Mrs Swettenham?' Miss Blacklock looked at him in lively atonishment. 'But her husband was in the Government Service - in India first, I think, and then in Hong Kong.'

'What you mean is, that that's the story she's told you. You don't, as we say in the Courts, know it of your own knowledge, do you?'

'No,' said Miss Blacklock slowly. 'When you put it like that, I don't...But Mrs Swettenham? Oh, it's absurd!'

'Did Sonia Goedler ever do any acting? Amateur theatricals?'

'Oh, yes. She was good.'

'There you are! Another thing, Mrs Swettenham wears a wig. At least,' the Inspector corrected himself, 'Mrs Harmon says she does.'

'Yes - yes, I suppose it might be a wig. All those little grey curls. But I still think it's absurd. She's really very nice and exceedingly funny sometimes.'

'Thenthere's Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Could either of them be Sonia Goedler?'

'Miss Hinchcliffe is too tall. She's as tall as a man.'

'Miss Murgatroyd then?'

'Oh, but - oh no, I'm sure Miss Murgatroyd couldn't be Sonia.'

'You don't see very well, do you, Miss Blacklock?'

'I'm shortsighted; is that what you mean?'

'Yes. What I'd like to see is a snapshot of this Sonia Goedler, even if it's a long time ago and not a good likeness. We're trained, you know, to pick out resemblances, in a way no amateur can ever do.'

'I'll try and find it for you.'

'Now?'

'What, at once?'

'I'd prefer it.'

'Very well. Now, let me see. I saw that album when we were tidying a lot of books out of the cupboard. Julia was helping me. She laughed, I remember, at the clothes we used to wear in those days...The books we put in the shelf in the drawing-room. Where did we put the albums and the big bound volumes of the Art Journal? What a wretched memory I have! Perhaps Julia will remember. She's at home today.'

'I'll find her.'

The Inspector departed on his quest. He did not find Julia in any of the downstairs rooms. Mitzi, asked where Miss Simmons was, said crossly that it was not her affair.

'Me! I stay in my kitchen and concern myself with the lunch. And nothing do I eat that I have not cooked myself. Nothing, do you hear?'

The Inspector called up the stairs 'Miss Simmons,' and getting no response, went up.

He met Julia face to face just as he turned the corner of the landing. She had just emerged from a door that showed behind it a small twisty staircase.

'I was up in the attic,' she explained. 'What is it?'

Inspector Craddock explained.

'Those old photograph albums? Yes, I remember them quite well. We put them in the big cupboard in the study, I think. I'll find them for you.'

She led the way downstairs and pushed open the study door. Near the window there was a large cupboard. Julia pulled it open and disclosed a heterogenous mass of objects.

'Junk,' said Julia. 'All junk. But elderly people simply will not throw things away.'

The Inspector knelt down and took a couple of old-fashioned albums from the bottom shelf.

'Are these they?'

'Yes.'

Miss Blacklock came in and joined them.

'Oh, so that's where we put them. I couldn't remember.'

Craddock had the books on the table and was turning the pages.

Women in large cartwheel hats, women with dresses tapering down to their feet so that they could hardly walk. The photos had captions neatly printed underneath them, but the ink was old and faded.

'It would be in this one,' said Miss Blacklock. 'On about the second or third page. The other book is after Sonia had married and gone away.' She turned a page. 'It ought to be here.' She stopped.

There were several empty spaces on the page. Craddock bent down and deciphered the faded writing. 'Sonia...Self...R.G.' A little further along, 'Sonia and Belle on beach'. And again on the opposite page, 'Picnic at Skeyne'. He turned over another page, 'Charlotte, Self, Sonia, R.G.'

Craddock stood up. His lips were grim.

'Somebody has removed these photographs - not long ago, I should say.'

'There weren't any blank spaces when we looked at them the other day. Were there, Julia?'

'I didn't look very closely - only at some of the dresses. But no...you're right, Aunt Letty, there weren't any blank spaces.'

Craddock looked grimmer still.

'Somebody,' he said, 'has removed every photo of Sonia Goedler from this album.'