‘An earlier train?’ Dr Kennedy looked astonished.
‘Because that’s what she did. She left Coombeleigh, not at three-thirty but at one-thirty-caught the two-five from Dillmouth Junction and got out, not at Woodleigh Bolton, but at Matchings Halt, the station before it.’
‘But that’s extraordinary!’
‘Was she consulting you professionally, Doctor?’
‘No. I retired from practice some years ago.’
‘That’s what I thought. You knew her well?’
Kennedy shook his head.
‘I hadn’t seen her for nearly twenty years.’
‘But you-er-recognized her just now?’
Gwenda shivered, but dead bodies did not affect a doctor and Kennedy replied thoughtfully: ‘Under the circumstances it is hard to say if I recognized her or not. She was strangled, I presume?’
‘She was strangled. The body was found in a copse a short way along the track leading from Matchings Halt to Woodleigh Camp. It was found by a hiker coming down from the Camp at about ten minutes to four. Our police surgeon puts the time of death at between two-fifteen and three o’clock. Presumably she was killed shortly after she left the station. No other passenger got out at Matchings Halt. She was the only person to get out of the train there.
‘Now why did she get out at Matchings Halt? Did she mistake the station? I hardly think so. In any case she was two hours early for her appointment with you, and had not come by the train you suggested, although she had your letter with her.
‘Now just what was her business with you, Doctor?’
Dr Kennedy felt in his pocket and brought out Lily’s letter.
‘I brought this with me. The enclosed cutting and the insertion put in the local paper by Mr and Mrs Reed here.’
Inspector Last read Lily Kimble’s letter and the enclosure. Then he looked from Dr Kennedy to Giles and Gwenda.
‘Can I have the story behind all this? It goes back a long way, I gather?’
‘Eighteen years,’ said Gwenda.
Piecemeal, with additions, and parentheses, the story came out. Inspector Last was a good listener. He let the three people in front of him tell things in their own way. Kennedy was dry, and factual, Gwenda was slightly incoherent, but her narrative had imaginative power. Giles gave, perhaps, the most valuable contribution. He was clear and to the point, with less reserve than Kennedy, and with more coherence than Gwenda. It took a long time.
Then Inspector Last sighed and summed up.
‘Mrs Halliday was Dr Kennedy’s sister and your stepmother, Mrs Reed. She disappeared from the house you are at present living in eighteen years ago. Lily Kimble (whose maiden name was Abbott) was a servant (house- parlourmaid) in the house at the time. For some reason Lily Kimble inclines (after the passage of years) to the theory that there was foul play. At the time it was assumed that Mrs Halliday had gone away with a man (identity unknown). Major Halliday died in a mental establishment fifteen years ago still under the delusion that he had strangled his wife-if it was a delusion-’
He paused.
‘These are all interesting but somewhat unrelated facts. The crucial point seems to be, is Mrs Halliday alive or dead? If dead, when did she die? And what did Lily Kimble know?’
‘It seems, on the face of it, that she must have known something rather important. So important that she was killed in order to prevent her talking about it.’
Gwenda cried, ‘But how could anyone possibly know she was going to talk about it-except us?’
Inspector Last turned his thoughtful eyes on her.
‘It is a signifiant point, Mrs Reed, that she took the two-five instead of the four- five train from Dillmouth Junction. There must be some reason for that. Also, she got out at the station before Woodleigh Bolton. Why? It seems possible to me that, after writing to the doctor, she wrote tosomeone else, suggesting a rendezvous at Woodleigh Camp, perhaps, and that she proposed after that rendezvous, if it was unsatisfactory, to go on to Dr Kennedy and ask his advice. It is possible that she had suspicions of some definite person, and she may have written to that person hinting at her knowledge and suggesting a rendezvous.’
‘Blackmail,’ said Giles bluntly.
‘I don’t suppose she thought of it that way,’ said Inspector Last. ‘She was just greedy and hopeful-and a little muddled about what she could get out of it all. We’ll see. Maybe the husband can tell us more.’
‘Warned her, I did,’ said Mr Kimble heavily. ‘ “Don’t have nought to do with it,” them were my words. Went behind my back, she did. Thought as she knew best. That were Lily all over. Too smart by half.’
Questioning revealed that Mr Kimble had little to contribute.
Lily had been in service at St Catherine’s before he met her and started walking out with her. Fond of the pictures, she was, and told him that likely as not, she’d been in a house where there’d been a murder.
‘Didn’t pay much account, I didn’t. All imagination, I thought. Never content with plain fact, Lily wasn’t. Long rigmarole she told me, about the master doing in the missus and maybe putting the body in the cellar-and something about a French girl what had looked out of the window and seen something or somebody. “Don’t you pay no attention to foreigners, my girl,” I said. “One and all they’re liars. Not like us.” And when she run on about it, I didn’t listen because, mark you, she was working it all up out of nothing. Liked a bit of crime, Lily did. Used to take the Sunday News what was running a series about Famous Murderers. Full of it, she was, and if she liked to think she’d been in a house where there was a murder, well, thinking don’t hurt nobody. But when she was on at me about answering this advertisement-“You leave it alone,” I says to her. “It’s no good stirring up trouble.” And if she’d done as I telled her, she’d be alive today.’
He thought for a moment or two.
‘Ar,’ he said. ‘She’d be alive right now. Too smart by half, that was Lily.’
Chapter 23. Which of Them?
Giles and Gwenda had not gone with Inspector Last and Dr Kennedy to interview Mr Kimble. They arrived home about seven o’clock. Gwenda looked white and ill. Dr Kennedy had said to Giles: ‘Give her some brandy and make her eat something, then get her to bed. She’s had a bad shock.’
‘It’s so awful, Giles,’ Gwenda kept saying. ‘So awful. That silly woman, making an appointment with the murderer, and going along so confidently-to be killed. Like a sheep to the slaughter.’
‘Well, don’t think about it, darling. After all, we did know there was someone-a killer.’
‘No, we didn’t. Not a killer now. I mean, it was then - eighteen years ago. It wasn’t, somehow, quite real…It might all have been a mistake.’
‘Well, this proves that it wasn’t a mistake. You were right all the time, Gwenda.’
Giles was glad to find Miss Marple at Hillside. She and Mrs Cocker between them fussed over Gwenda who refused brandy because she said it always reminded her of Channel steamers, but accepted some hot whisky and lemon, and then, coaxed by Mrs Cocker, sat down and ate an omelette.
Giles would have talked determinedly of other things, but Miss Marple, with what Giles admitted to be superior tactics, discussed the crime in a gentle aloof manner.
‘Very dreadful, my dear,’ she said. ‘And of course a great shock, but interesting, one must admit. And of course I am so old that death doesn’t shock me as much as it does you-only something lingering and painful like cancer really distresses me. The really vital thing is that this proves definitely and beyond any possible doubt that poor
