their entire time looking for clues. They looked all through the dustbins yesterday. Most unsavoury – and they hadn't really the faintest idea what they were looking for. If they come to you in triumph, Inspector Craddock, bearing a torn scrap of paper with 'Martine – if you value your life keep away from the Long Barn!' on it, you'll know that I've taken pity on them and concealed it in the pigsty!'
'Why the pigsty, dear?' asked Miss Marple with interest. 'Do they keep pigs?'
'Oh, no, not nowadays. It's just – I go there sometimes.'
For some reason Lucy blushed. Miss Marple looked at her with increased interest.
'Who's at the house now?' asked Craddock.
'Cedric's there, and Bryan's down for the weekend. Harold and Alfred are coming down tomorrow. They rang up this morning. I somehow got the impression that you had been putting the cat among the pigeons, Inspector Craddock.'
Craddock smiled.
'I shook them up a little. Asked them to account for their movements on Friday, 20th December.'
'And could they?'
'Harold could. Alfred couldn't – or wouldn't.'
'I think alibis must be terribly difficult,' said Lucy. 'Times and places and dates. They must be hard to check up on, too.'
'It takes time and patience – but we manage.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'll be coming along to Rutherford Hall presently to have a word with Cedric, but I want to get hold of Dr. Quimper first.'
'You'll be just about right. He has his surgery at six and he's usually finished about half past. I must get back and deal with dinner.'
'I'd like your opinion on one thing, Miss Eyelesbarrow. What's the family view about this Martine business – amongst themselves?'
Lucy replied promptly.
'They're all furious with Emma for going to you about it – and with Dr. Quimper who, it seemed, encouraged her to do so. Harold and Alfred think it was a try on and not genuine. Emma isn't sure. Cedric thinks it was phoney, too, but he doesn't take it as seriously as the other two. Bryan , on the other hand, seems quite sure that it's genuine.'
'Why, I wonder?'
'Well, Bryan 's rather like that. Just accepts things at their face value. He thinks it was Edmund's wife – or rather widow – and that she had suddenly to go back to France , but that they'll hear from her again sometime. The fact that she hasn't written, or anything, up to now, seems to him to be quite natural because he never writes letters himself. Bryan 's rather sweet. Just like a dog that wants to be taken for a walk.'
'And do you take him for a walk, dear?' asked Miss Marple. 'To the pigsties, perhaps?'
Lucy shot a keen glance at her.
'So many gentlemen in the house, coming and going,' mused Miss Marple.
When Miss Marple uttered the word 'gentlemen' she always gave it its full Victorian flavour – an echo from an era actually before her own time. You were conscious at once of dashing full-blooded (and probably whiskered) males, sometimes wicked, but always gallant.
'You're such a handsome girl,' pursued Miss Marple, appraising Lucy. 'I expect they pay you a good deal of attention, don't they?'
Lucy flushed slightly. Scrappy remembrances passed across her mind. Cedric, leaning against the pigsty wall. Bryan sitting disconsolately on the kitchen table. Alfred's fingers touching hers as he helped her collect the coffee cups.
'Gentlemen,' said Miss Marple, in the tone of one speaking of some alien and dangerous species, 'are all very much alike in some ways – even if they are quite old…'
'Darling,' cried Lucy. 'A hundred years ago you would certainly have been burned as a witch!'
And she told her story of old Mr. Crackenthorpe's conditional proposal of marriage.
'In fact,' said Lucy, 'they've all made what you might call advances to me in a way. Harold's was very correct – an advantageous financial position in the City. I don't think it's my attractive appearance – they must think I know something.'
She laughed.
But Inspector Craddock did not laugh.
'Be careful,' he said. 'They might murder you instead of making advances to you.'
'I suppose it might be simpler,' Lucy agreed.
Then she gave a slight shiver.
'One forgets,' she said. 'The boys have been having such fun that one almost thought of it all as a game. But it's not a game.'
'No,' said Miss Marple. 'Murder isn't a game.'
She was silent for a moment or two before she said:
'Don't the boys go back to school soon?'
'Yes, next week. They go tomorrow to James Stoddart-West's home for the last few days of the holidays.'
'I'm glad of that,' said Miss Marple gravely. 'I shouldn't like anything to happen while they're there.'
'You mean to old Mr. Crackenthorpe. Do you think he's going to be murdered next?'
'Oh, no,' said Miss Marple. 'He'll be all right. I meant to the boys.'
'To the boys?'
'Well, to Alexander.'
'But surely –'
'Hunting about, you know – looking for clues. Boys love that sort of thing – but it might be very dangerous.'
Craddock looked at her thoughtfully.
'You're not prepared to believe, are you, Miss Marple, that it's a case of an unknown woman murdered by an unknown man? You tie it up definitely with Rutherford Hall?'
'I think there's a definite connection, yes.'
'All we knew about the murderer is that he's a tall dark man. That's what your friend says and all she can say. There are three tall dark men at Rutherford Hall. On the day of the inquest, you know, I came out to see the three brothers standing waiting on the pavement for the car to draw up. They had their backs to me and it was astonishing how, in their heavy overcoats, they looked all alike. Three tall dark men. And yet, actually, they're all three quite different types.' He sighed. 'It makes it very difficult.'
'I wonder,' murmured Miss Marple. 'I have been wondering – whether it might perhaps be all much simpler than we suppose. Murders so often are quite simple – with an obvious rather sordid motive…'
'Do you believe in the mysterious Martine, Miss Marple?'
'I'm quite ready to believe that Edmund Crackenthorpe either married, or meant to marry, a girl called Martine. Emma Crackenthorpe showed you his letter, I understand, and from what I've seen of her and from what Lucy tells me, I should say Emma Crackenthorpe is quite incapable of making up a thing of that kind – indeed, why should she?'
'So granted Martine,' said Craddock thoughtfully, 'there is a motive of a kind. Martine's reappearance with a son would diminish the Crackenthorpe inheritance – though hardly to a point, one would think, to activate murder. They're all very hard-up –'
'Even Harold?' Lucy demanded incredulously.
'Even the prosperous-looking Harold Crackenthorpe is not the sober and conservative financier he appears to be. He's been plunging heavily and mixing himself up in some rather undesirable ventures. A large sum of money, soon, might avoid a crash.'
'But if so –' said Lucy, and stopped.
'Yes, Miss Eyelesbarrow –'
'I know, dear,' said Miss Marple. 'The wrong murder, that's what you mean.'
'Yes. Martine's death wouldn't do Harold – or any of the others – any good. Not until –'
'Not until Luther Crackenthorpe died. Exactly. That occurred to me. And Mr. Crackenthorpe, senior, I gather
