Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘Not long now—until I’m dead—dangerous for her—Take care…’

Sister McClelland passed him as he went out. He said, uneasily:

‘I hope I haven’t done her harm.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mr Craddock. I told you she would tire quite suddenly.’

Later, he asked the nurse:

‘The only thing I hadn’t time to ask Mrs Goedler was whether she had any old photographs? If so, I wonder—’

She interrupted him.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing of that kind. All her personal papers and things were stored with their furniture from the London house at the beginning of the war. Mrs Goedler was desperately ill at the time. Then the storage despository was blitzed. Mrs Goedler was very upset at losing so many personal souvenirs and family papers. I’m afraid there’s nothing of that kind.’

So that was that, Craddock thought.

Yet he felt his journey had not been in vain. Pip and Emma, those twin wraiths, were not quite wraiths.

Craddock thought, ‘Here’s a brother and sister brought up somewhere in Europe. Sonia Goedler was a rich woman at the time of her marriage, but money in Europe hasn’t remained money. Queer things have happened to money during these war years. And so there are two young people, the son and daughter of a man who had a criminal record. Suppose they came to England, more or less penniless. What would they do? Find out about any rich relatives. Their uncle, a man of vast fortune, is dead. Possibly the first thing they’d do would be to look up their uncle’s will. See if by any chance money had been left to them or to their mother. So they go to Somerset House and learn the contents of his will, and then, perhaps, they learn of the existence of Miss Letitia Blacklock. Then they make inquiries about Randall Goedler’s widow. She’s an invalid, living up in Scotland, and they find out she hasn’t long to live. If this Letitia Blacklock dies before her, they will come into a vast fortune. What then?’

Craddock thought, ‘They wouldn’t go to Scotland. They’d find out where Letitia Blacklock is living now. And they’d go there—but not as themselves…They’d go together—or separately? Emma…I wonder?…Pip and Emma…I’ll eat my hat if Pip, or Emma, or both of them, aren’t in Chipping Cleghorn now…’

Chapter 15

Delicious Death

I

In the kitchen at Little Paddocks, Miss Blacklock was giving instructions to Mitzi.

‘Sardine sandwiches as well as the tomato ones. And some of those little scones you make so nicely. And I’d like you to make that special cake of yours.’

‘Is it a party then, that you want all these things?’

‘It’s Miss Bunner’s birthday, and some people will be coming to tea.’

‘At her age one does not have birthdays. It is better to forget.’

‘Well, she doesn’t want to forget. Several people are bringing her presents—and it will be nice to make a little party of it.’

‘That is what you say last time—and see what happened!’

Miss Blacklock controlled her temper.

‘Well, it won’t happen this time.’

‘How do you know what may happen in this house? All day long I shiver and at night I lock my door and I look in the wardrobe to see no one is hidden there.’

‘That ought to keep you nice and safe,’ said Miss Blacklock, coldly.

‘The cake that you want me to make, it is the—?’ Mitzi uttered a sound that to Miss Blacklock’s English ear sounded like Schwitzebzr or alternatively like cats spitting at each other.

‘That’s the one. The rich one.’

‘Yes. It is rich. For it I have nothing! Impossible to make such a cake. I need for it chocolate and much butter, and sugar and raisins.’

‘You can use this tin of butter that was sent us from America. And some of the raisins we were keeping for Christmas, and here is a slab of chocolate and a pound of sugar.’

Mitzi’s face suddenly burst into radiant smiles.

‘So, I make him for you good—good,’ she cried, in an ecstasy. ‘It will be rich, rich, of a melting richness! And on top I will put the icing—chocolate icing—I make him so nice—and write on it Good Wishes. These English people with their cakes that tastes of sand, never never, will they have tasted such a cake. Delicious, they will say—delicious—’