A Murder is Announced

Chapter 20
Miss Marple Is Missing

I

The postman, rather to his disgust, had lately been given orders to make an afternoon delivery of letters in Chipping Cleghorn as well as a morning one.

On this particular afternoon he left three letters at Little Paddocks at exactly ten minutes to five.

One was addressed to Phillipa Haymes in a schoolboy's hand; the other two were for Miss Blacklock. She opened them as she and Phillipa sat down at the tea table. The torrential rain had enabled Phillipa to leave Dayas Hall early today, since once she had shut up the greenhouses there was nothing more to do.

Miss Blacklock tore open her first letter which was a bill for repairing a kitchen boiler. She snorted angrily.

'Dymond's prices are preposterous - quite preposterous. Still, I suppose all the other people are just as bad.'

She opened the second letter which was in a handwriting quite unknown to her.

Dear Cousin Letty (it said),

I hope it will be all right for me to come to you on Tuesday? I wrote to Patrick two days ago but he hasn't answered. So I presume it's all right. Mother is coming to England next month and hopes to see you then.

My train arrives at Chipping Cleghorn at 6.15 if that's convenient?

Yours affectionately,

Julia Simmons.

Miss Blacklock read the letter once with astonishment pure and simple, and then again with a certain grimness. She looked up at Phillipa who was smiling over her son's letter.

'Are Julia and Patrick back, do you know?'

Phillipa looked up.

'Yes, they came in just after I did. They went upstairs to change. They were wet.'

'Perhaps you'd not mind going and calling them.'

'Of course I will.'

'Wait a moment - I'd like you to read this.'

She handed Phillipa the letter she had received.

Phillipa read it and frowned. 'I don't understand...'

'Nor do I, quite...I think it's about time I did. Call Patrick and Julia, Phillipa.'

Phillipa called from the bottom of the stairs:

'Patrick! Julia! Miss Blacklock wants you.'

Patrick came running down the stairs and entered the room.

'Don't go, Phillipa,' said Miss Blacklock.

'Hallo, Aunt Letty,' said Patrick cheerfully. 'Want me?'

'Yes, I do. Perhaps you'll give me an explanation of this?'

Patrick's face showed an almost comical dismay as he read.

'I meant to telegraph her! What an ass I am!'

'This letter, I presume, is from your sister Julia?'

'Yes - yes, it is.'

Miss Blacklock said grimly:

'Then who, may I ask, is the young woman whom you brought here as Julia Simmons, and whom I was given to understand was your sister and my cousin?'

'Well - you see - Aunt Letty - the fact of the matter is - I can explain it all - I know I oughtn't to have done it - but it really seemed more of a lark than anything else. If you'll just let me explain - '

'I am waiting for you to explain. Who is this young woman?'

'Well, I met her at a cocktail party soon after I got demobbed. We got talking and I said I was coming here and then - well, we thought it might be rather a good wheeze if I brought her along...You see, Julia, the real Julia, was mad to go on the stage and Mother had seven fits at the idea - however, Julia got a chance to join a jolly good repertory company up in Perth or somewhere and she thought she'd give it a try - but she thought she'd keep Mum calm by letting Mum think that she was here with me studying to be a dispenser like a good little girl.'

'I still want to know who this other young woman is.'

Patrick turned with relief as Julia, cool and aloof, came into the room.

'The balloon's gone up,' he said.

Julia raised her eyebrows. Then, still cool, she came forward and sat down.

'O.K.,' she said. 'That's that. I suppose you're very angry?' She studied Miss Blacklock's face with almost dispassionate interest. 'I should be if I were you.'

'Who are you?'

Julia sighed.

'I think the moment's come when I make a clean breast of things. Here we go. I'm one half of the Pip and Emma combination. To be exact, my christened name is Emma Jocelyn Stamfordis - only Father soon dropped the Stamfordis. I think he called himself De Courcy next.

'My father and mother, let me tell you, split up about three years after Pip and I were born. Each of them went their own way. And they split us up. I was Father's part of the loot. He was a bad parent on the whole, though quite a charming one. I had various desert spells of being educated in convents - when Father hadn't any money, or was preparing to engage in some particularly nefarious deal. He used to pay the first term with every sign of affluence and then depart and leave me on the nuns' hands for a year or two. In the intervals, he and I had some very good times together, moving in cosmopolitan society. However, the war separated us completely. I've no idea of what's happened to him. I had a few adventures myself. I was with the French Resistance for a time. Quite exciting. To cut a long story short, I landed up in London and began to think about my future. I knew that Mother's brother with whom she'd had a frightful row had died a very rich man. I looked up his will to see if there was anything for me. There wasn't - not directly, that is to say. I made a few inquiries about his widow - it seemed she was quite ga-ga and kept under drugs and was dying by inches. Frankly, it looked as though you were my best bet. You were going to come into a hell of a lot of money and from all I could find out, you didn't seem to have anyone much to spend it on. I'll be quite frank. It occurred to me that if I could get to know you in a friendly kind of way, and if you took a fancy to me - well, after all, conditions have changed a bit, haven't they, since Uncle Randall died? Imean any money we ever had has been swept away in the cataclysm of Europe. I thought you might pity a poor orphan girl, all alone in the world, and make her, perhaps, a small allowance.'

'Oh, you did, did you?' said Miss Blacklock grimly.

'Yes. Of course, I hadn't seen you then...I visualized a kind of sob stuff approach...Then, by a marvellous stroke of luck, I met Patrick here - and he turned out to be your nephew or your cousin, or something. Well, that struck me as a marvellous chance. I went bull-headed for Patrick and he fell for me in a most gratifying way. The real Julia was all wet about this acting stuff and I soon persuaded her it was her duty to Art to go and fix herself up in some uncomfortable lodgings in Perth and train to be the new Sarah Bernhardt.

'You mustn't blame Patrick too much. He felt awfully sorry for me, all alone in the world - and he soon thought it would be a really marvellous idea for me to come here as his sister and do my stuff.'

'And he also approved of your continuing to tell a tissue of lies to the police?'

'Have a heart, Letty. Don't you see that when that ridiculous hold-up business happened - or rather after it happened - I began to feel I was in a bit of a spot. Let's face it, I've got a perfectly good motive for putting you out of the way. You've only got my word for it now that I wasn't the one who tried to do it. You can't expect me deliberately to go and incriminate myself. Even Patrick got nasty ideas about me from time to time, and if even he could think things like that, what on earth would the police think? That Detective-Inspector struck me as a man of singularly sceptical mind. No, I figured out the only thing for me to do was to sit tight as Julia and just fade away when term came to an end.

'How was I to know that fool Julia, the real Julia, would go and have a row with the producer, and fling the whole thing up in a fit of temperament? She writes to Patrick and asks if she can come here, and instead of wiring her "Keep away" he goes and forgets to do anything at all!' She cast an angry glance at Patrick. 'Of all the utter idiots!'

She sighed.

'You don't know the straits I've been put to in Milchester! Of course, I haven't been to the hospital at all. But I had to go somewhere. Hours and hours I've spent in the pictures seeing the most frightful films over and over again.'

'Pip and Emma,' murmured Miss Blacklock. 'I never believed, somehow, in spite of what the Inspector said, that they were real - '

She looked searchingly at Julia.

'You're Emma,' she said. 'Where's Pip?'

Julia's eyes, limpid and innocent, met hers.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I haven't the least idea.'

'I think you're lying, Julia. When did you see him last?'

Was there a momentary hesitation before Julia spoke?

She said clearly and deliberately:

'I haven't seen him since we were both three years old - when my mother took him away. I haven't seen either him or my mother. I don't know where they are.'

'And that's all you have to say?'

Julia sighed.

'I could say I was sorry. But it wouldn't really be true; because actually I'd do the same thing again - though not if I'd known about this murder business, of course.'

'Julia,' said Miss Blacklock, 'I call you that because I'm used to it. You were with the French Resistance, you say?'

'Yes. For eighteen months.'

'Then I suppose you learned to shoot?'

Again those cool blue eyes met hers.

'I can shoot all right. I'm a first-class shot. I didn't shoot at you, Letitia Blacklock, though you've only got my word for that. But I can tell you this, that if I had shot at you, I wouldn't have been likely to miss.'

II

The sound of a car driving up to the door broke through the tenseness of the moment.

'Who can that be?' asked Miss Blacklock.

Mitzi put a tousled head in. She was showing the whites of her eyes.

'It is the police come again,' she said. 'This, it is persecution! Why will they not leave us alone? I will not bear it. I will write to the Prime Minister. I will write to your King.'

Craddock's hand put her firmly and not too kindly aside. He came in with such a grim set to his lips that they all looked at him apprehensively. This was a new Inspector Craddock.

He said sternly:

'Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered. She was strangled - not more than an hour ago.' His eye singled out Julia. 'You - Miss Simmons - where have you been all day?'

Julia said warily:

'In Milchester. I've just got in.'

'And you?' The eye went on to Patrick.

'Yes.'

'Did you both come back here together?'

'Yes - yes, we did,' said Patrick.

'No,' said Julia. 'It's no good, Patrick. That's the kind of lie that will be found out at once. The bus people know us well. I came back on the earlier bus, Inspector - the one that gets here at four o'clock.'

'And what did you do then?'

'I went for a walk.'

'In the direction of Boulders?'

'No. I went across the fields.'

He stared at her. Julia, her face pale, her lips tense, stared back.

Before anyone could speak, the telephone rang.

Miss Blacklock, with an inquiring glance at Craddock, picked up the receiver.

'Yes. Who? Oh, Bunch. What? No. No, she hasn't. I've no idea...Yes, he's here now.'

She lowered the instrument and said:

'Mrs Harmon would like to speak to you, Inspector. Miss Marple has not come back to the Vicarage and Mrs Harmon is worried about her.'

Craddock took two strides forward and gripped the telephone.

'Craddock speaking.'

'I'm worried, Inspector.' Bunch's voice came through with a childish tremor in it. 'Aunt Jane's out somewhere  - and I don't know where. And they say that Miss Murgatroyd's been killed. Is it true?'

'Yes, it's true, Mrs Harmon. Miss Marple was there with Miss Hinchcliffe when they found the body.'

'Oh, so that's where she is.' Bunch sounded relieved.

'No - no, I'm afraid she isn't. Not now. She left there about - let me see - half an hour ago. She hasn't got home?'

'No - she hasn't. It's only ten minutes' walk. Where can she be?'

'Perhaps she's called in on one of your neighbours?'

'I've rung them up - all of them. She's not there. I'm frightened, Inspector.'

'So am I,' thought Craddock.

He said quickly:

'I'll come round to you - at once.'

'Oh, do - there's a piece of paper. She was writing on it before she went out. I don't know if it means anything...It just seems gibberish to me.'

Craddock replaced the receiver.

Miss Blacklock said anxiously:

'Has something happened to Miss Marple? Oh, I hope not.'

'I hope not, too.' His mouth was grim.

'She's so old - and frail.'

'I know.'

Miss Blacklock, standing with her hand pulling at the choker of pearls round her neck, said in a hoarse voice:

'It's getting worse and worse. Whoever's doing these things must be mad, Inspector - quite mad...'

'I wonder.'

The choker of pearls round Miss Blacklock's neck broke under the clutch of her nervous fingers. The smooth white globules rolled all over the room.

Letitia cried out in an anguished tone.

'My pearls - my pearls - ' The agony in her voice was so acute that they all looked at her in astonishment. She turned, her hand to her throat, and rushed sobbing out of the room.

Phillipa began picking up the pearls.

'I've never seen her so upset over anything,' she said. 'Of course - she always wears them. Do you think, perhaps, that someone special gave them to her? Randall Goedler, perhaps?'

'It's possible,' said the Inspector slowly.

'They're not - they couldn't be - real by any chance?' Phillipa asked from where, on her knees, she was still collecting the white shining globules.

Taking one in his hand, Craddock was just about to reply contemptuously, 'Real? Of course not!' when he suddenly stifled the words.

After all, could the pearls be real?

They were so large, so even, so white that their falseness seemed palpable, but Craddock remembered suddenly a police case where a string of real pearls had been bought for a few shillings in a pawnbroker's shop.

Letitia Blacklock had assured him that there was no jewellery of value in the house. If these pearls were, by any chance, genuine, they must be worth a fabulous sum. And if Randall Goedler had given them to her - then they might be worth any sum you cared to name.

They looked false - they must be false, but - if they were real?

Why not? She might herself be unaware of their value. Or she might choose to protect her treasure by treating it as though it were a cheap ornament worth a couple of guineas at most. What would they be worth if real? A fabulous sum...Worth doing murder for - if anybody knew about them.

With a start, the Inspector wrenched himself away from his speculations. Miss Marple was missing. He must go to the Vicarage.

III

He found Bunch and her husband waiting for him, their faces anxious and drawn.

'She hasn't come back,' said Bunch.

'Did she say she was coming back here when she left Boulders?' asked Julian.

'She didn't actually say so,' said Craddock slowly, throwing his mind back to the last time he had seen Jane Marple.

He remembered the grimness of her lips and the severe frosty light in those usually gentle blue eyes.

Grimness, an inexorable determination...to do what? To go where?

'She was talking to Sergeant Fletcher when I last saw her,' he said. 'Just by the gate. And then she went through it and out. I took it she was going straight home to the Vicarage. I would have sent her in the car - but there was so much to attend to, and she slipped away very quietly. Fletcher may know something! Where's Fletcher?'

But Sergeant Fletcher, it seemed, as Craddock learned when he rang up Boulders, was neither to be found there nor had he left any message where he had gone. There was some idea that he had returned to Milchester for some reason.

The Inspector rang up headquarters in Milchester, but no news of Fletcher was to be found there.

Then Craddock turned to Bunch as he remembered what she had told him over the telephone.

'Where's that paper? You said she'd been writing something on a bit of paper.'

Bunch brought it to him. He spread it out on the table and looked down on it. Bunch leant over his shoulder and spelled it out as he read. The writing was shaky and not easy to read:

Lamp.

Then came the word 'Violets.'

Then after a space: Where is bottle of aspirin?

The next item in this curious list was more difficult to make out. 'Delicious death,' Bunch read. 'That's Mitzi's cake.'

'Making enquiries,' read Craddock.

'Inquiries? What about, I wonder? What's this? Severe affliction bravely borne...What on earth - !'

'Iodine,' read the Inspector. 'Pearls. Ah, pearls.'

'And then Lotty - no, Letty. Her e's look like o's. And then Berne. And what's this? Old Age Pension...'

They looked at each other in bewilderment.

Craddock recapitulated swiftly:

'Lamp. Violets. Where is bottle of aspirin? Delicious Death. Making enquiries. Severe affliction bravely borne. Iodine. Pearls. Letty. Berne. Old Age Pension.'

Bunch asked: 'Does it mean anything? Anything at all? I can't see any connection.'

Craddock said slowly: 'I've just a glimmer - but I don't see. It's odd that she should have put down that about pearls.'

'What about pearls? What does it mean?'

'Does Miss Blacklock always wear that three-tier choker of pearls?'

'Yes, she does. We laugh about it sometimes. They're so dreadfully false-looking, aren't they? But I suppose she thinks it's fashionable.'

'There might be another reason,' said Craddock slowly.

'You don't mean that they're real. Oh! they couldn't be!'

'How often have you had an opportunity of seeing real pearls of that size, Mrs Harmon?'

'But they're so glassy.'

Craddock shrugged his shoulders.

'Anyway, they don't matter now. It's Miss Marple that matters. We've got to find her.'

They'd got to find her before it was too late - but perhaps it was already too late? Those pencilled words showed that she was on the track...But that was dangerous - horribly dangerous. And where the hell was Fletcher?

Craddock strode out of the Vicarage to where he'd left his car. Search - that was all he could do - search.

A voice spoke to him out of the dripping laurels.

'Sir!' said Sergeant Fletcher urgently. 'Sir...'