Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

Mrs Swettenham gave a faint scream.

‘Oh! how you startled me. I thought it might be another burglar.’

Fletcher came down the stairs.

‘This house doesn’t seem very well protected against burglars,’ he said. ‘Can anybody always walk in and out just as they like?’

‘I just brought up some of my quinces,’ explained Mrs Swettenham. ‘Miss Blacklock wants to make quince jelly and she hasn’t got a quince tree here. I left them in the dining-room.’

Then she smiled.

‘Oh, I see, you mean how did I get in? Well, I just came in through the side door. We all walk in and out of each other’s houses, Sergeant. Nobody dreams of locking a door until it’s dark. I mean it would be so awkward, wouldn’t it, if you brought things and couldn’t get in to leave them? It’s not like the old days when you rang a bell and a servant always came to answer it.’ Mrs Swettenham sighed. ‘In India, I remember,’ she said mournfully, ‘we had eighteen servants—eighteen. Not counting the ayah. Just as a matter of course. And at home, when I was a girl, we always had three—though Mother always felt it was terribly poverty-stricken not to be able to afford a kitchen-maid. I must say that I find life very odd nowadays, Sergeant, though I know one mustn’t complain. So much worse for the miners always getting psitticosis (or is that parrot disease?) and having to come out of the mines and try to be gardeners though they don’t know weeds from spinach.’

She added, as she tripped towards the door, ‘I mustn’t keep you. I expect you’re very busy. Nothing else is going to happen, is it?’

‘Why should it, Mrs Swettenham?’

‘I just wondered, seeing you here. I thought it might be a gang. You’ll tell Miss Blacklock about the quinces, won’t you?’

Mrs Swettenham departed. Fletcher felt like a man who has received an unexpected jolt. He had been assuming—erroneously, he now perceived—that it must have been someone in the house who had done the oiling of the door. He saw now that he was wrong. An outsider had only to wait until Mitzi had departed by bus and Letitia Blacklock and Dora Bunner were both out of the house. Such an opportunity must have been simplicity itself. That meant that he couldn’t rule out anybody who had been in the drawing-room that night.

III

‘Murgatroyd!’

‘Yes, Hinch?’

‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking.’

‘Have you, Hinch?’

‘Yes, the great brain has been working. You know, Murgatroyd, the whole set-up the other evening was decidedly fishy.’

‘Fishy?’

‘Yes. Tuck your hair up, Murgatroyd, and take this trowel. Pretend it’s a revolver.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Murgatroyd, nervously.

‘All right. It won’t bite you. Now come along to the kitchen door. You’re going to be the burglar. You stand here. Now you’re going into the kitchen to hold up a lot of nit-wits. Take the torch. Switch it on.’

‘But it’s broad daylight!’

‘Use your imagination, Murgatroyd. Switch it on.’

Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm while she did so.

‘Now then,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe, ‘off you go. Remember the time you played Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Women’s Institute? Act. Give it all you’ve got. “Stick ’em up!” Those are your lines—and don’t ruin them by saying “Please.”’

Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and advanced on the kitchen door.

Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.

‘Stick ’em up!’ she fluted, adding vexedly: ‘Dear me, this is very difficult, Hinch.’

‘Why?’

‘The door. It’s a swing door, it keeps coming back and I’ve got both hands full.’

‘Exactly,’ boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘And the drawing-room door at Little Paddocks always swings to. It isn’t a swing door like this, but it won’t stay open. That’s why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass doorstop from Elliot’s in the High Street. I don’t mind saying I’ve never forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute down most successfully. He’d come down from eight guineas to six pound ten, and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I’d never seen as attractive a doorstop, you don’t often get those glass bubbles in that big size.’