said. What he himself felt with increasing force. It didn't make sense. And now Sir Henry's old Pussy was saying it, too, with complete certainty in her fluting old lady's voice.
'Perhaps you'll tell us, Miss Marple,' he said, and his voice was suddenly aggressive, 'what did happen, then?'
She turned on him in surprise.
'But how should I know what happened? There was an account in the paper – but it says so little. One can make conjectures, of course, but one has no accurate information.'
'George,' said Sir Henry. 'Would it be very unorthodox if Miss Marple were allowed to read the notes of the interviews Craddock had with these people at Chipping Cleghorn.'
'It may be unorthodox,' said Rydesdale, 'but I've not got where I am by being orthodox. She can read them. I'd be curious to hear what she has to say.'
Miss Marple was all embarrassment.
'I'm afraid you've been listening to Sir Henry. Sir Henry is always too kind. He thinks too much of any little observations I may have made in the past. Really, I have no gifts – no gifts at all – except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature. People, I find, are apt to be far too trustful. I'm afraid that I have a tendency always to believe the worst. Not a nice trait. But so often justified by subsequent events.'
'Read these,' said Rydesdale, thrusting the typewritten sheets upon her. 'They won't take you long. After all, these people are your kind – you must know a lot of people like them. You may be able to spot something that we haven't. The case is just going to be closed. Let's have an amateur's opinion on it before we shut up the files. I don't mind telling you that Craddock here isn't satisfied. He says, like you, that it doesn't make sense.'
There was silence whilst Miss Marple read. She put the typewritten sheets down at last.
'It's very interesting,' she said with a sigh. 'All the different things that people say – and think. The things they see – or think that they see. And all so complex, nearly all so trivial and if one thing isn't trivial, it's so hard to spot which one – like a needle in a haystack.'
Craddock felt a twinge of disappointment. Just for a moment or two, he had wondered if Sir Henry might be right about this funny old lady. She might have put her finger on something – old people were often very sharp. He'd never, for instance, been able to conceal anything from his own great aunt Emma. She had finally told him that his nose twitched when he was about to tell a lie.
But just a few fluffy generalities, that was all that Sir Henry's famous Miss Marple could produce. He felt annoyed with her and said rather curtly:
'The truth of the matter is that the facts are indisputable. Whatever conflicting details these people give, they all saw one thing. They saw a masked man with a revolver and a torch open the door and hold them up, and whether they think he said 'Stick 'em up' or 'Your money or your life,' or whatever phrase is associated with a hold-up in their minds, they saw him.'
'But surely,' said Miss Marple gently. 'They couldn't – actually – have seen anything at all…'
Craddock caught his breath. She'd got it! She was sharp, after all. He was testing her by that speech of his, but she hadn't fallen for it. It didn't actually make any difference to the facts, or to what happened, but she'd realised, as he'd realised, that those people who had seen a masked man holding them up couldn't really have seen him at all.
'If I understand rightly,' Miss Marple had a pink flush on her cheeks, her eyes were bright and pleased as a child's, 'there wasn't any light in the hall outside – and not on the landing upstairs either?'
'That's right,' said Craddock.
'And so, if a man stood in the doorway and flashed a powerful torch into the room, nobody could see anything but the torch, could they?'
'No, they couldn't. I tried it out.'
'And so when some of them say they saw a masked man, etc., they are really, though they don't realise it, recapitulating from what they saw afterwards – when the lights came on. So it really all fits in very well, doesn't it, on the assumption that Rudi Scherz was the – I think 'fall guy' is the expression I mean?'
Rydesdale stared at her in such surprise that she grew pinker still.
'I may have got the term wrong,' she murmured. 'I am not very clever about Americanisms – and I understand they change very quickly. I got it from one of Mr. Dashiel Hammett's stories. (I understand from my nephew Raymond that he is considered at the top of the tree in what is called the 'tough' style of literature.) A 'fall guy,' if I understand it rightly, means someone who will be blamed for a crime really committed by someone else. This Rudi Scherz seems to me exactly the right type for that. Rather stupid really, you know, but full of cupidity and probably extremely credulous.'
Rydesdale said, smiling tolerantly: 'Are you suggesting that he was persuaded by someone to go out and take pot shots at a room full of people? Rather a tall order.'
'I think he was told that it was a joke,' said Miss Marple. 'He was paid for doing it, of course. Paid, that is, to put an advertisement in the newspaper, to go out and spy out the household premises, and then, on the night in question, he was to go there, assume a mask and a black cloak and throw open a door, brandishing a torch, and cry 'Hands up!''
'And fire off a revolver?'
'No, no,' said Miss Marple. 'He never had a revolver.'
'But everyone says-' began Rydesdale, and stopped.
'Exactly,' said Miss Marple. 'Nobody could possibly have seen a revolver even if he had one. And I don't think he had. I think that after he'd called 'Hands up' somebody came up quietly behind him in the darkness and fired those two shots over his shoulder. It frightened him to death. He swung round and as he did so, that other person shot him and then let the revolver drop beside him…'
The three men looked at her. Sir Henry said softly:
'It's a possible theory.'
'But who is Mr. X. who came up in the darkness?' asked the Chief Constable.
Miss Marple coughed.
'You'll have to find out from Miss Blacklog who wanted to kill her.'
Good for old Dora Bunner, thought Craddock. Instinct against intelligence every time.
'So you think it was a deliberate attempt on Miss Blacklog's life,' asked Rydesdale.
'It certainly has that appearance,' said Miss Marple. 'Though there are one or two difficulties. But what I was really wondering about was whether there mightn't be a short cut. I've no doubt that whoever arranged this with Rudi Scherz took pains to tell him to keep his mouth shut about it, and perhaps he did keep his mouth shut, but if he talked to anybody it would probably be to that girl, Myrna Harris. And he may – he just may – have dropped some hint as to the kind of person who'd suggested the whole thing.'
'I'll see her now,' said Craddock, rising.
Miss Marple nodded.
'Yes, do, Inspector Craddock. I'll feel happier when you have. Because once she's told you anything she knows she'll be much safer.'
'Safer?… Yes, I see.'
He left the room. The Chief Constable said doubtfully, but tactfully: 'Well, Miss Marple, you've certainly given us something to think about.'
III
'I'm sorry about it, I am really,' said Myrna Harris. 'It's ever so nice of you not to be ratty about it. But you see Mum's the sort of person who fusses like anything. And it did look as though I'd – what's the phrase – been an accessory before the fact' (the words ran glibly off her tongue). 'I mean, I was afraid you'd never take my word for it that I only thought it was just a bit of fun.'
Inspector Craddock repeated the reassuring phrases with which he had broken down Myrna's resistance.
'I will. I'll tell you all about it. But you will keep me out of it if you can because of Mum? It all started with
