When the Inspector turned on Edmund Swettenham, Mitzi had crept quietly out of the room and back to the kitchen. She was running water into the sink when Miss Blacklog entered.
Mitzi gave her a shame-faced sideways look. 'What a liar you are, Mitzi,' said Miss Blacklog pleasantly. 'Here – that isn't the way to wash up. The silver first, and fill the sink right up. You can't wash up in about two inches of water.'
Mitzi turned the taps on obediently.
'You are not angry at what I say, Miss Blacklog?' she asked.
'If I were to be angry at all the lies you tell, I should never be out of a temper,' said Miss Blacklog.
'I will go and say to the Inspector that I make it all up, shall I?' asked Mitzi.
'He knows that already,' said Miss Blacklog, pleasantly.
Mitzi turned off the taps and as she did so two hands came up behind her head and with one swift movement forced it down into the water-filled sink.
'Only I know that you're telling the truth for once,' said Miss Blacklog viciously.
Mitzi thrashed and struggled but Miss Blacklog was strong and her hands held the girl's head firmly under water.
Then, from somewhere quite close behind her, Dora Bunner's voice rose piteously on the air:
'Oh Lotty – Lotty – don't do it… Lotty.'
Miss Blacklog screamed. Her hands flew up in the air, and Mitzi, released, came up choking and spluttering.
Miss Blacklog screamed again and again. For there was no one, except Mitzi, there in the kitchen with her…
'Dora, Dora, forgive me. I had to… I had to-'
She rushed distractedly towards the scullery door – and the bulk of Sergeant Fletcher barred her way, just as Miss Marple stepped, flushed and triumphant, out of the broom cupboard.
'I could always mimic people's voices,' said Miss Marple.
'You'll have to come with me, madam,' said Sergeant Fletcher. 'I was a witness of your attempt to drown this girl. And there will be other charges. I must warn you, Letitia Blacklog-'
'Charlotte Blacklog,' corrected Miss Marple. 'That's who she is, you know. Under that choker of pearls she always wears you'll find the scar of the operation.'
'Operation?'
'Operation for goitre.'
Miss Blacklog, quite calm now, looked at Miss Marple.
'So you know all about it?' she said.
'Yes, I've known for some time.'
Charlotte Blacklog sat down by the table and began to cry.
'You shouldn't have done that,' she said. 'Not made Dora's voice come. I loved Dora. I really loved Dora.'
Inspector Craddock and the others had crowded in the doorway.
Constable Edwards, who added a knowledge of first-aid and artificial respiration to his other accomplishments, was busy with Mitzi. As soon as Mitzi could speak she was lyrical with self-praise.
'I do that good, do I not? I am clever! And I am brave! Oh, I am brave! Very very nearly was I murdered, too. But I am so brave I risk everything.'
With a rush Miss Hinchliffe thrust aside the others and leapt upon the weeping figure of Charlotte Blacklog by the table.
It took all Sergeant Fletcher's strength to hold her off.
'Now then-' he said. 'Now then – no, no, Miss Hinchliffe-'
Between clenched teeth Miss Hinchliffe was muttering;
'Let me get at her. Just let me get at her. It was she who killed Amy Murgatroyd.'
Charlotte Blacklog looked up and sniffed.
'I didn't want to kill her. I didn't want to kill anybody – I had to – but it's Dora I mind about – after Dora was dead, I was all alone – ever since she died – I've been alone – oh, Dora – Dora-'
And once again she dropped her head on her hands and wept.
Chapter 23
EVENING AT THE VICARAGE
Miss Marple sat in the tall arm-chair. Bunch was on the floor in front of the fire with her arms round her knees.
The Reverend Julian Harmon was leaning forward and was for once looking more like a schoolboy than a man foreshadowing his own maturity. And Inspector Craddock was smoking his pipe and drinking a whisky and soda and was clearly very much off duty. An outer circle was composed of Julia, Patrick, Edmund and Phillipa.
'I think it's your story, Miss Marple,' said Craddock.
'Oh no, my dear boy. I only just helped a little, here and there. You were in charge of the whole thing, and conducted it all, and you know so much that I don't.'
'Well, tell it together,' said Bunch impatiently. 'Bit each. Only let Aunt Jane start because I like the muddly way her mind works. When did you first think that the whole thing was a put up job by the Blacklog?'
'Well, my dear Bunch, it's hard to say. Of course, right at the very beginning, it did seem as though the ideal person – or rather the obvious person, I should say to have arranged the hold-up was Miss Blacklog herself. She was the only person who was known to have been in contact with Rudi Scherz, and how much easier to arrange something like that when it's your own house. The central heating, for instance. No fires – because that would have meant light in the room. But the only person who could have arranged not to have a fire was the mistress of the house herself.
'Not that I thought of all that at the time – it just seemed to me that it was a pity it couldn't be as simple as that! Oh, no, I was taken in like everyone else, I thought that someone really did want to kill Letitia Blacklog.'
'I think I'd like to get clear first on what really happened,' said Bunch. 'Did this Swiss boy recognise her?'
'Yes. He'd worked in-'
She hesitated and looked at Craddock.
'In Dr. Adolf Koch's clinic in Berne,' said Craddock. 'Koch was a world famous specialist on operations for goitre. Charlotte Blacklog went there to have her goitre removed and Rudi Scherz was one of the orderlies. When he came to England he recognised in the hotel a lady who had been a patient and on the spur of the moment he spoke to her. I dare say he mightn't have done that if he'd paused to think, because he left the place under a cloud, but that was sometime after Charlotte had been there, so she wouldn't know anything about it.'
'So he never said anything to her about Montreux and his father being a hotel proprietor?'
'Oh, no, she made that up to account for his having spoken to her.'
'It must have been a great shock to her,' said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. 'She felt reasonably safe – and then – the almost impossible mischance of somebody turning up who had known her – not as one of the two Miss Blacklogs – she was prepared for that – but definitely as Charlotte Blacklog, a patient who'd been operated on for goitre.
'But you wanted to go through it all from the beginning. Well, the beginning, I think – if Inspector Craddock agrees with me – was when Charlotte Blacklog, a pretty, light-hearted, affectionate girl, developed that enlargement of the thyroid gland that's called a goitre. It ruined her life, because she was a very sensitive girl. A girl, too, who had always set a lot of stress on her personal appearance. And girls just at that age in their teens, are particularly sensitive about themselves. If she'd had a mother, or a reasonable father, I don't think she would have got into the morbid state she undoubtedly did get into. She had no one, you see, to take her out of herself, and force her to see people and lead a normal life and not think too much about her infirmity. And, of course, in a
