Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

When the grey walls of the old keep came in sight, Craddock felt that time was slipping backwards. An elderly butler received him, and after a wash and a shave he was shown into a room with a huge fire burning in the grate, and breakfast was served to him.

After breakfast, a tall, middle-aged woman in nurse’s dress, with a pleasant and competent manner, came in and introduced herself as Sister McClelland.

‘I have my patient all ready for you, Mr Craddock. She is, indeed, looking forward to seeing you.’

‘I’ll do my best not to excite her,’ Craddock promised.

‘I had better warn you of what will happen. You will find Mrs Goedler apparently quite normal. She will talk and enjoy talking and then—quite suddenly—her powers will fail. Come away at once, then, and send for me. She is, you see, kept almost entirely under the influence of morphia. She drowses most of the time. In preparation for your visit, I have given her a strong stimulant. As soon as the effect of the stimulant wears off, she will relapse into semi-consciousness.’

‘I quite understand, Miss McClelland. Would it be in order for you to tell me exactly what the state of Mrs Goedler’s health is?’

‘Well, Mr Craddock, she is a dying woman. Her life cannot be prolonged for more than a few weeks. To say that she should have been dead years ago would strike you as odd, yet it is the truth. What has kept Mrs Goedler alive is her intense enjoyment and love of being alive. That sounds, perhaps, an odd thing to say of someone who has lived the life of an invalid for many years and has not left her home here for fifteen years, but it is true. Mrs Goedler has never been a strong woman—but she has retained to an astonishing degree the will to live.’ She added with a smile, ‘She is a very charming woman, too, as you will find.’

Craddock was shown into a large bedroom where a fire was burning and where an old lady lay in a large canopied bed. Though she was only about seven or eight years older than Letitia Blacklock, her fragility made her seem older than her years.

Her white hair was carefully arranged, a froth of pale blue wool enveloped her neck and shoulders. There were lines of pain on the face, but lines of sweetness, too. And there was, strangely enough, what Craddock could only describe as a roguish twinkle in her faded blue eyes.

‘Well, this is interesting,’ she said. ‘It’s not often I receive a visit from the police. I hear Letitia Blacklock wasn’t much hurt by this attempt on her? How is my dear Blackie?’

‘She’s very well, Mrs Goedler. She sent you her love.’

‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen her…For many years now, it’s been just a card at Christmas. I asked her to come up here when she came back to England after Charlotte’s death, but she said it would be painful after so long and perhaps she was right…Blackie always had a lot of sense. I had an old school friend to see me about a year ago, and, lor!’—she smiled—‘we bored each other to death. After we’d finished all the “Do you remembers?” there wasn’t anything to say. Most embarrassing.’

Craddock was content to let her talk before pressing his questions. He wanted, as it were, to get back into the past, to get the feel of the Goedler-Blacklock ménage.

‘I suppose,’ said Belle shrewdly, ‘that you want to ask about the money? Randall left it all to go to Blackie after my death. Really, of course, Randall never dreamed that I’d outlive him. He was a big strong man, never a day’s illness, and I was always a mass of aches and pains and complaints and doctors coming and pulling long faces over me.’

‘I don’t think complaints would be the right word, Mrs Goedler.’

The old lady chuckled.

‘I didn’t mean it in the complaining sense. I’ve never been too sorry for myself. But it was always taken for granted that I, being the weakly one, would go first. It didn’t work out that way. No—it didn’t work out that way…’