Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

He said:

‘I take it, Miss Blacklock, that this is the room in which the—incident occurred?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you should have seen it last night,’ Miss Bunner exclaimed. ‘Such a mess. Two little tables knocked over, and the leg off one—people barging about in the dark—and someone put down a lighted cigarette and burnt one of the best bits of furniture. People—young people especially—are so careless about these things…Luckily none of the china got broken—’

Miss Blacklock interrupted gently but firmly:

‘Dora, all these things, vexatious as they may be, are only trifles. It will be best, I think, if we just answer Inspector Craddock’s questions.’

‘Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I shall come to what happened last night, presently. First of all I want you to tell me when you first saw the dead man—Rudi Scherz.’

‘Rudi Scherz?’ Miss Blacklock looked slightly surprised. ‘Is that his name? Somehow, I thought…Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. My first encounter with him was when I was in Medenham Spa for a day’s shopping about—let me see, about three weeks ago. We—Miss Bunner and I—were having lunch at the Royal Spa Hotel. As we were just leaving after lunch, I heard my name spoken. It was this young man. He said: “It is Miss Blacklock, is it not?” And went on to say that perhaps I did not remember him, but that he was the son of the proprietor of the Hotel des Alpes at Montreux where my sister and I had stayed for nearly a year during the war.’

‘The Hotel des Alpes, Montreux,’ noted Craddock. ‘And did you remember him, Miss Blacklock?’

‘No, I didn’t. Actually I had no recollection of ever having seen him before. These boys at hotel reception desks all look exactly alike. We had had a very pleasant time at Montreux and the proprietor there had been extremely obliging, so I tried to be as civil as possible and said I hoped he was enjoying being in England, and he said, yes, that his father had sent him over for six months to learn the hotel business. It all seemed quite natural.’

‘And your next encounter?’

‘About—yes, it must have been ten days ago, he suddenly turned up here. I was very surprised to see him. He apologized for troubling me, but said I was the only person he knew in England. He told me that he urgently needed money to return to Switzerland as his mother was dangerously ill.’

‘But Letty didn’t give it to him,’ Miss Bunner put in breathlessly.

‘It was a thoroughly fishy story,’ said Miss Blacklock, with vigour. ‘I made up my mind that he was definitely a wrong ’un. That story about wanting the money to return to Switzerland was nonsense. His father could easily have wired for arrangements to have been made in this country. These hotel people are all in with each other. I suspected that he’d been embezzling money or something of that kind.’ She paused and said dryly: ‘In case you think I’m hardhearted, I was secretary for many years to a big financier and one becomes wary about appeals for money. I know simply all the hard-luck stories there are.

‘The only thing that did surprise me,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘was that he gave in so easily. He went away at once without any more argument. It’s as though he had never expected to get the money.’

‘Do you think now, looking back on it, that his coming was really by way of a pretext to spy out the land?’

Miss Blacklock nodded her head vigorously.

‘That’s exactly what I do think—now. He made certain remarks as I let him out—about the rooms. He said, “You have a very nice dining-room” (which of course it isn’t—it’s a horrid dark little room) just as an excuse to look inside. And then he sprang forward and unfastened the front door, said, “Let me.” I think now he wanted to have a look at the fastening. Actually, like most people round here, we never lock the front door until it gets dark. Anyone could walk in.’

‘And the side door? There is a side door to the garden, I understand?’

‘Yes. I went out through it to shut up the ducks not long before the people arrived.’