'That's very, very nice of you,' said Miss Marple, 'and I do appreciate it. I feel towards you, as Sir Henry's godson, quite differently from the way I should feel to any ordinary detective-inspector.'
Dermot Craddock gave her a fleeting grin. 'But the fact remains that I've made the most ghastly mess of things all along the line,' he said. 'The Chief Constable down here calls in Scotland Yard, and what do they get? They get me making a prize ass of myself!'
'No, no,' said Miss Marple.
'Yes, yes. I don't know who poisoned Alfred, I don't know who poisoned Harold, and, to cap it all, I haven't the least idea now who the original murdered woman was! This Martine business seemed a perfectly safe bet. The whole thing seemed to tie up. And now what happens? The real Martine shows up and turns out, most improbably, to be the wife of Sir Robert Stoddart-West. So who's the woman in the barn now? Goodness knows. First I go all out on the idea she's Anna Stravinska, and then she's out of it –'
He was arrested by Miss Marple giving one of her small peculiarly significant coughs.
'But is she?' she murmured.
Craddock stared at her. 'Well, that postcard from Jamaica –'
'Yes,' said Miss Marple; 'but that isn't really evidence, is it? I mean, anyone can get a postcard sent from almost anywhere, I suppose. I remember Mrs. Brierly, such a very bad nervous breakdown. Finally, they said she ought to go to the mental hospital for observation, and she was so worried about the children knowing about it and so she wrote about fourteen postcards and arranged that they should be posted from different places abroad, and told them that Mummy was going abroad on a holiday.' She added, looking at Dermot Craddock, 'You see what I mean.'
'Yes, of course,' said Craddock, staring at her. 'Naturally we'd have checked that postcard if it hadn't been for the Martine business fitting the bill so well.'
'So convenient,' murmured Miss Marple.
'It tied up,' said Craddock. 'After all, there's the letter Emma received signed Martine Crackenthorpe. Lady Stoddart-West didn't send that, but somebody did. Somebody who was going to pretend to be Martine, and who was going to cash in, if possible, on being Martine. You can't deny that.'
'No, no.'
'And then, the envelope of the letter
Emma wrote to her with the London address on it. Found at Rutherford Hall, showing she'd actually been there.'
'But the murdered woman hadn't been there!' Miss Marple pointed out. 'Not in the sense you mean. She only came to Rutherford Hall after she was dead. Pushed out of a train on to the railway embankment.'
'Oh, yes.'
'What the envelope really proves is that the murderer was there. Presumably he took that envelope off her with her other papers and things, and then dropped it by mistake – or – I wonder now, was it a mistake? Surely Inspector Bacon, and your men too, made a thorough search of the place, didn't they, and didn't find it. It only turned up later in the boiler house.'
'That's understandable,' said Craddock. 'The old gardener chap used to spear up any odd stuff that was blowing about and shove it in there.'
'Where it was very convenient for the boys to find,' said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
'You think we were meant to find it?'
'Well, I just wonder. After all, it would be fairly easy to know where the boys were going to look next, or even to suggest to them… Yes, I do wonder. It stopped you thinking about Anna Stravinska any more, didn't it?'
Craddock said: 'And you think it really may be her all the time?'
'I think someone may have got alarmed when you started making inquiries about her, that's all… I think somebody didn't want those inquiries made.'
'Let's hold on to the basic fact that someone was going to impersonate Martine,' said Craddock. 'And then for some reason – didn't. Why?'
'That's a very interesting question,' said Miss Marple.
'Somebody sent a wire saying Martine was going back to France , then arranged to travel down with the girl and kill her on the way. You agree so far?'
'Not exactly,' said Miss Marple. 'I don't think, really, you're making it simple enough.'
'Simple!' exclaimed Craddock. 'You're mixing me up,' he complained.
Miss Marple said in a distressed voice that she wouldn't think of doing anything like that.
'Come, tell me,' said Craddock, 'do you or do you not think you know who the murdered woman was?'
Miss Marple sighed. 'It's so difficult,' she said, 'to put it the right way. I mean, I don't know who she was, but at the same time I'm fairly sure who she was, if you know what I mean.'
Craddock threw up his head. 'Know what you mean? I haven't the faintest idea.' He looked out through the window.
'There's your Lucy Eyelesbarrow coming to see you,' he said. 'Well, I'll be off. My amour propre is very low this afternoon and having a young woman coming in, radiant with efficiency and success, is more than I can bear.'
Chapter 25
'I looked up tontine in the dictionary,' said Lucy.
The first greetings were over and now Lucy was wandering rather aimlessly round the room, touching a china dog here, an antimacassar there, the plastic workbox in the window.
'I thought you probably would,' said Miss Marple equably.
Lucy spoke slowly, quoting the words. 'Lorenzo Tonti, Italian banker, originator, 1653, of a form of annuity in which the shares of subscribers who die are added to the profit shares of the survivors.' She paused. 'That's it, isn't it? That fits well enough, and you were thinking of it even then before the last two deaths.'
She took up once more her restless, almost aimless prowl round the room. Miss Marple sat watching her. This was a very different Lucy Eyelesbarrow from the one she knew.
'I suppose it was asking for it really,' said Lucy. 'A will of that kind, ending so that if there was only one survivor left he'd get the lot. And yet – there was quite a lot of money, wasn't there? You'd think it would be enough shared out…' She paused, the words trailing off.
'The trouble is,' said Miss Marple, 'that people are greedy. Some people. That's so often, you know, how things start. You don't start with murder, with wanting to do murder, or even thinking of it. You just start by being greedy, by wanting more than you're going to have.'
She laid her knitting down on her knee and stared ahead of her into space. 'That's how I came across Inspector Craddock first, you know. A case in the country. Near Medenham Spa. That began the same way, just a weak amiable character who wanted a great deal of money. Money that that person wasn't entitled to, but there seemed an easy way to get it. Not murder then. Just something so easy and simple that it hardly seemed wrong. That's how things begin… But it ended with three murders.'
'Just like this,' said Lucy. 'We've had three murders now. The woman who impersonated Martine and who would have been able to claim a share for her son, and then Alfred, and then Harold. And now it only leaves two, doesn't it?'
'You mean,' said Miss Marple, 'there are only Cedric and Emma left?'
'Not Emma. Emma isn't a tall dark man. No. I mean Cedric and Bryan Eastley. I never thought of Bryan because he's fair. He's got a fair moustache and blue eyes, but you see – the other day…' She paused.
'Yes, go on,' said Miss Marple. 'Tell me. Something has upset you very badly, hasn't it?'
'It was when Lady Stoddart-West was going away. She had said good-bye and then suddenly turned to me just as she was getting into the car and asked: 'Who was that tall dark man who was standing on the terrace as I came in?'
