Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘Randall Goedler cut his sister out of his will when she married this man?’

‘Oh, Sonia was a very wealthy woman in her own right. Randall had already settled packets of money on her, as far as possible in a way so that her husband couldn’t touch it. But I believe that when the lawyers urged him to put in someone in case I predeceased Belle, he reluctantly put down Sonia’s offspring, simply because he couldn’t think of anyone else and he wasn’t the sort of man to leave money to charities.’

‘And there were children of the marriage?’

‘Well, there are Pip and Emma.’ She laughed. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous. All I know is that Sonia wrote once to Belle after her marriage, telling her to tell Randall that she was extremely happy and that she had just had twins and was calling them Pip and Emma. As far as I know she never wrote again. But Belle, of course, may be able to tell you more.’

Miss Blacklock had been amused by her own recital. The Inspector did not look amused.

‘It comes to this,’ he said. ‘If you had been killed the other night, there are presumably at least two people in the world who would have come into a very large fortune. You are wrong, Miss Blacklock, when you say that there is no one who has a motive for desiring your death. There are two people, at least, who are vitally interested. How old would this brother and sister be?’

Miss Blacklock frowned.

‘Let me see…1922…no—it’s difficult to remember…I suppose about twenty-five or twenty-six.’ Her face had sobered. ‘But you surely don’t think—?’

‘I think somebody shot at you with the intent to kill you. I think it possible that that same person or persons might try again. I would like you, if you will, to be very very careful, Miss Blacklock. One murder has been arranged and did not come off. I think it possible that another murder may be arranged very soon.’

II

Phillipa Haymes straightened her back and pushed back a tendril of hair from her damp forehead. She was cleaning a flower border.

‘Yes, Inspector?’

She looked at him inquiringly. In return he gave her a rather closer scrutiny than he had done before. Yes, a good-looking girl, a very English type with her pale ash-blonde hair and her rather long face. An obstinate chin and mouth. Something of repression—of tautness about her. The eyes were blue, very steady in their glance, and told you nothing at all. The sort of girl, he thought, who would keep a secret well.

‘I’m sorry always to bother you when you’re at work, Mrs Haymes,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want to wait until you came back for lunch. Besides, I thought it might be easier to talk to you here, away from Little Paddocks.’

‘Yes, Inspector?’

No emotion and little interest in her voice. But was there a note of wariness—or did he imagine it?

‘A certain statement has been made to me this morning. This statement concerns you.’

Phillipa raised her eyebrows very slightly.

‘You told me, Mrs Haymes, that this man, Rudi Scherz, was quite unknown to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That when you saw him there, dead, it was the first time you had set eyes on him. Is that so?’

‘Certainly. I had never seen him before.’

‘You did not, for instance, have a conversation with him in the summerhouse of Little Paddocks?’

‘In the summer house?’

He was almost sure he caught a note of fear in her voice.

‘Yes, Mrs Haymes.’

‘Who says so?’

‘I am told that you had a conversation with this man, Rudi Scherz, and that he asked you where he could hide and you replied that you would show him, and that a time, a quarter-past six, was definitely mentioned. It would be a quarter-past six, roughly, when Scherz would get here from the bus stop on the evening of the hold-up.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Phillipa gave a short scornful laugh. She looked amused.

‘I don’t know who told you that,’ she said. ‘At least I can guess. It’s a very silly, clumsy story—spiteful, of course. For some reason Mitzi dislikes me even more than she dislikes the rest of us.’