The ticket collector sighed reluctantly and glanced at his watch.
'We shall be in Brackhampton in exactly seven minutes. I'll report what you've told me. In what direction was the train you mention going?'
'This direction, of course. You don't suppose I'd have been able to see all this if a train had flashed past going in the other direction?'
The ticket collector looked as though he thought Mrs. McGillicuddy was quite capable of seeing anything anywhere as the fancy took her. But he remained polite.
'You can rely on me, madam,' he said. 'I will report your statement. Perhaps I might have your name and address – just in case…'
Mrs. McGillicuddy gave him the address where she would be staying for the next few days and her permanent address in Scotland , and he wrote them down. Then he withdrew with the air of a man who has done his duty and dealt successfully with a tiresome member of the travelling public.
Mrs. McGillicuddy remained frowning and vaguely unsatisfied. Would the ticket collector really report her statement? Or had he just been soothing her down?
There were, she supposed vaguely, a lot of elderly women travelling around, fully convinced that they had unmasked communist plots, were in danger of being murdered, saw flying saucers and secret space ships, and reported murders that had never taken place. If the man dismissed her as one of those…
The train was slowing down now, passing over points, and running through the bright lights of a large town. Mrs. McGillicuddy opened her handbag, pulled out a receipted bill which was all she could find, wrote a rapid note on the back of it with her ball-point pen, put it into a spare envelope that she fortunately happened to have, stuck the envelope down and wrote on it.
The train drew slowly into a crowded platform. The usual ubiquitous voice was intoning:
'The train now arriving at Platform 1 is the 5:38 for Milchester, Waverton, Roxeter, and stations to Chadmouth. Passengers for Market Basing take the train now waiting at No.3 platform. No.1 bay for stopping train to Carbury.'
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked anxiously along the platform. So many passengers and so few porters. Ah, there was one! She hailed him authoritatively.
'Porter! Please take this at once to the Stationmaster's office.'
She handed him the envelope, and with it a shilling.
Then, with a sigh, she leaned back.
Well, she had done what she could. Her mind lingered with an instant's regret on the shilling… Sixpence would really have been enough…
Her mind went back to the scene she had witnessed. Horrible, quite horrible…
She was a strong-nerved woman, but she shivered. What a strange – what a fantastic thing to happen to her, Elspeth McGillicuddy! If the blind of the carriage had not happened to fly up… But that, of course, was Providence .
Providence had willed that she, Elspeth McGillicuddy, should be a witness of the crime. Her lips set grimly.
Voices shouted, whistles blew, doors were banged shut. The 5:38 drew slowly out of Brackhampton station. An hour and five minutes later it stopped at Milchester.
Mrs. McGillicuddy collected her parcels and her suitcase and got out. She peered up and down the platform. Her mind reiterated its former judgement: not enough porters. Such porters as there were seemed to be engaged with mail bags and luggage vans. Passengers nowadays seemed always expected to carry their own cases. Well, she couldn't carry her suitcase and her umbrella and all her parcels. She would have to wait. In due course she secured a porter.
'Taxi?'
'There will be something to meet me, I expect.'
Outside Milchester station, a taxi-driver who had been watching the exit came forward. He spoke in a soft local voice.
'Is it Mrs. McGillicuddy? For St. Mary Mead?'
Mrs. McGillicuddy acknowledged her identity. The porter was recompensed, adequately if not handsomely. The car, with Mrs. McGillicuddy, her suitcase, and her parcels drove off into the night. It was a nine-mile drive. Sitting bolt upright in the car, Mrs. McGillicuddy was unable to relax. Her feelings yearned for expression.
At last the taxi drove along the familiar village street and finally drew up at its destination; Mrs. McGillicuddy got out and walked up the brick path to the door.
The driver deposited the cases inside as the door was opened by an elderly maid.
Mrs. McGillicuddy passed straight through the hall to where, at the open sitting-room door, her hostess awaited her; an elderly frail old lady.
'Elspeth!'
'Jane!'
They kissed and, without preamble or circumlocution, Mrs. McGillicuddy burst into speech.
'Oh, Jane!' she wailed. 'I've just seen a murder!'
Chapter 2
I
Mrs. McGillicuddy acquiescing in these arrangements, Miss Marple poured out the wine.
'Jane,' said Mrs. McGillicuddy, as she took an appreciative sip, 'you don't think, do you, that I dreamt it, or imagined it?'
'Certainly not,' said Miss Marple with warmth.
Mrs. McGillicuddy heaved a sigh of relief.
'That ticket collector,' she said, 'he thought so. Quite polite, but all the same –'
'I think, Elspeth, that that was quite natural under the circumstances. It sounded – and indeed was – a most unlikely story. And you were a complete stranger to him. No, I have no doubt at all that you saw what you've told me you saw. It's very extraordinary – but not at all impossible. I recollect myself being interested when a train ran parallel to one in which I was travelling, to notice what a vivid and intimate picture one got of what was going on in one or two of the carriages. A little girl, I remember once, playing with a teddy bear, and suddenly she threw it deliberately at a fat man who was asleep in the corner and he bounced up and looked most indignant, and the other passenger looked so amused. I saw them all quite vividly. I could have described afterwards exactly what they looked like and what they had on.'
Mrs. McGillicuddy nodded gratefully. 'That's just how it was.'
'The man had his back to you, you say. So you didn't see his face?'
'No.'
'And the woman, you can describe her? Young, old?'
'Youngish. Between thirty and thirty-five, I should think. I couldn't say closer than that.'
'Good-looking?'
'That again, I couldn't say. Her face, you see, was all contorted and –'
Miss Marple said quickly:
'Yes, yes, I quite understand. How was she dressed?'
'She had on a fur coat of some kind, a palish fur. No hat. Her hair was blond.'
'And there was nothing distinctive that you can remember about the man?'
'I?' Mrs. McGillicuddy took a little time to think carefully before she replied.
'He was tallish – and dark, I think. He had a heavy coat on so that I couldn't judge his build very well.' She added despondently, 'It's not really very much to go on.'
