taxi.
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II
Miss Marple reached home late that evening.
Kitty–the latest graduate from St. Faith’s
Home–let her in and greeted her with a
beaming face.
“I’ve got a herring for your supper, miss.
I’m so glad to see you home–you’ll find
everything very nice in the house. Regular
spring cleaning I’ve had.”
“That’s very nice, Kitty–I’m glad to be
home.”
Six spider webs on the cornice. Miss
Marple noted. These girls never raised their
heads! She was none the less too kind to say
so.
“Your letters is on the hall table, miss. And
there’s one as went to Daisymead by mistake.
Always doing that, aren’t they? Does look a
bit alike, Dane and Daisy, and the writing’s
so bad I don’t wonder this time. They’ve
been away there and the house shut up, they
only got back and sent it round to-day. Said as
how they hoped it wasn’t important.”
Miss Marple picked up her correspondence.
The letter to which Kitty had referred was on
top of the others. A faint chord of remembrance
stirred in Miss Marple’s mind at the
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sight of the blotted scrawled handwriting.
She tore it open.
Dear Madam,
I hope as you’ll forgive me writing this but
I really don’t know what to do indeed I don’t
and I never meant no harm. Dear madam,
you’ll have seen the newspapers it was
murder they say but it wasn’t me that did it,
not really, because I would never do anything
wicked like that and I know as how he
wouldn’t either. Albert, I mean. I’m telling
this badly, but you see we met last summer
and was going to be married only Bert hadn’t
got his rights, he’d been done out of them,
swindled by this Mr. Fortescue who’s dead.
And Mr. Fortescue he just denied everything
and of course everybody believed him and not
Bert because he was rich and Bert was poor.
But Bert had a friend who works in a place
where they make these new drugs and there’s
what they call a truth drug you’ve read about
it perhaps in the paper and it makes people
speak the truth whether they want to or not.
Bert was going to see Mr. Fortescue in his
office on Nov. 5th and taking a lawyer with
him and I was to be sure to give him the drug
at breakfast that morning and then it would
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work just right for when they came and he’d
admit as all what Bert said was quite true.
Well, madam, I put it in the marmalade but
now he’s dead and I think as how it must
have been too strong but it wasn’t Bert’s fault
because Bert would never do a thing like that
but I can’t tell the police because maybe
they’d think Bert did it on purpose which I
know he didn’t. Oh, madam, I don’t know
what to do or what to say and the police are
here in the house and it’s awful and they ask
you questions and look at you so stern and I
don’t know what to do and I haven’t heard
from Bert. Oh, madam, I don’t like to ask it
of you but if you could only come here and
help me they’d listen to you and you were
always so kind to me, and I didn’t mean anything
wrong and Bert didn’t either. If you
could only help us. Yours respectfully,
gladys martin.
P.S.–Vm enclosing a snap of Bert and me.
One of the boys took it at the camp and give it
me. Bert doesn’t know I’ve got it–he hates
being snapped. But you can see, madam, what a nice boy he is.
Miss Marple, her lips pursed together, stared down at the photograph. The pair
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pictured there were looking at each other.
Miss Marple’s eyes went from Gladys’s
pathetic adoring face, the mouth slightly
open, to the other face–the dark handsome
smiling face of Lance Fortescue.
The last words of the pathetic letter echoed
in her mind:
You can see what a nice boy he is.
The tears rose in Miss Marple’s eyes. Succeeding
pity, there came anger–anger against
a heartless killer.