Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

Miss Marple said the walk wouldn’t be too much for her, and Bunch rushed off.

Whilst waiting for Miss Blacklock, Miss Marple looked round the drawing-room, and wondered just exactly what Dora Bunner had meant that morning in the Bluebird by saying that she believed Patrick had ‘tampered with the lamp’ to ‘make the lights go out’. What lamp? And how had he ‘tampered’ with it?

She must, Miss Marple decided, have meant the small lamp that stood on the table by the archway. She had said something about a shepherdess or a shepherd—and this was actually a delicate piece of Dresden china, a shepherd in a blue coat and pink breeches holding what had originally been a candlestick and had now been adapted to electricity. The shade was of plain vellum and a little too big so that it almost masked the figure. What else was it that Dora Bunner had said? ‘I remember distinctly that it was the shepherdess. And the next day—’ Certainly it was a shepherd now.

Miss Marple remembered that when she and Bunch had come to tea, Dora Bunner had said something about the lamp being one of a pair. Of course—a shepherd and a shepherdess. And it had been the shepherdess on the day of the hold-up—and the next morning it had been the other lamp—the lamp that was here now, the shepherd. The lamps had been changed over during the night. And Dora Bunner had had reason to believe (or had believed without reason) that it was Patrick who had changed them.

Why? Because, if the original lamp were examined, it would show just how Patrick had managed to ‘make the lights go out’. How had he managed? Miss Marple looked earnestly at the lamp in front of her. The flex ran along the table over the edge and was plugged into the wall. There was a small pear-shaped switch half-way along the flex. None of it suggested anything to Miss Marple because she knew very little about electricity.

Where was the shepherdess lamp? she wondered. In the ‘spare room’ or thrown away, or—where was it Dora Bunner had come upon Patrick Simmons with a feather and an oily cup? In the shrubbery? Miss Marple made up her mind to put all these points to Inspector Craddock.

At the very beginning Miss Blacklock had leaped to the conclusion that her nephew Patrick had been behind the insertion of that advertisement. That kind of instinctive belief was often justified, or so Miss Marple believed. Because, if you knew people fairly well, you knew the kind of things they thought of…

Patrick Simmons…

A handsome young man. An engaging young man. A young man whom women liked, both young women and old women. The kind of man, perhaps, that Randall Goedler’s sister had married. Could Patrick Simmons be ‘Pip’? But he’d been in the Navy during the war. The police could soon check up on that.

Only—sometimes—the most amazing impersonations did happen.

You could get away with a great deal if you had enough audacity…

The door opened and Miss Blacklock came in. She looked, Miss Marple thought, many years older. All the life and energy had gone out of her.

‘I’m very sorry, disturbing you like this,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But the Vicar had a dying parishioner and Bunch had to rush a sick child to hospital. The Vicar wrote you a note.’

She held it out and Miss Blacklock took it and opened it.

‘Do sit down, Miss Marple,’ she said. ‘It’s very kind of you to have brought this.’

She read the note through.

‘The Vicar’s a very understanding man,’ she said quietly. ‘He doesn’t offer one fatuous consolation…Tell him that these arrangements will do very well. Her—her favourite hymn was Lead Kindly Light.’

Her voice broke suddenly.

Miss Marple said gently:

‘I am only a stranger, but I am so very very sorry.’

And suddenly, uncontrollably, Letitia Blacklock wept. It was a piteous overmastering grief, with a kind of hopelessness about it. Miss Marple sat quite still.

Miss Blacklock sat up at last. Her face was swollen and blotched with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It—it just came over me. What I’ve lost. She—she was the only link with the past, you see. The only one who—who remembered. Now that she’s gone I’m quite alone.’