Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘I know what you mean,’ said Miss Marple. ‘One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends—but there’s no one who knew me as a young girl—no one who belongs to the old days. I’ve been alone for quite a long time now.’

Both women sat silent for some moments.

‘You understand very well,’ said Letitia Blacklock. She rose and went over to her desk. ‘I must write a few words to the Vicar.’ She held the pen rather awkwardly and wrote slowly.

‘Arthritic,’ she explained. ‘Sometimes I can hardly write at all.’

She sealed up the envelope and addressed it.

‘If you wouldn’t mind taking it, it would be very kind.’

Hearing a man’s voice in the hall she said quickly:

‘That’s Inspector Craddock.’

She went to the mirror over the fireplace and applied a small powder puff to her face.

Craddock came in with a grim, angry face.

He looked at Miss Marple with disapprobation.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘So you’re here.’

Miss Blacklock turned from the mantelpiece.

‘Miss Marple kindly came up with a note from the Vicar.’

Miss Marple said in a flurried manner:

‘I am going at once—at once. Please don’t let me hamper you in any way.’

‘Were you at the tea party here yesterday afternoon?’

Miss Marple said, nervously:

‘No—no, I wasn’t. Bunch drove me over to call on some friends.’

‘Then there’s nothing you can tell me.’ Craddock held the door open in a pointed manner, and Miss Marple scuttled out in a somewhat abashed fashion.

‘Nosey Parkers, these old women,’ said Craddock.

‘I think you’re being unfair to her,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘She really did come with a note from the Vicar.’

‘I bet she did.’

‘I don’t think it was idle curiosity.’

‘Well, perhaps you’re right, Miss Blacklock, but my own diagnosis would be a severe attack of Nosey Parkeritis…’

‘She’s a very harmless old creature,’ said Miss Blacklock.

‘Dangerous as a rattlesnake if you only knew,’ the Inspector thought grimly. But he had no intention of taking anyone into his confidence unnecessarily. Now that he knew definitely there was a killer at large, he felt that the less said the better. He didn’t want the next person bumped off to be Jane Marple.

Somewhere—a killer…Where?

‘I won’t waste time offering sympathy, Miss Blacklock,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I feel pretty bad about Miss Bunner’s death. We ought to have been able to prevent it.’

‘I don’t see what you could have done.’

‘No—well, it wouldn’t have been easy. But now we’ve got to work fast. Who’s doing this, Miss Blacklock? Who’s had two shots at killing you, and will probably, if we don’t work fast enough, soon have another?’

Letitia Blacklock shivered. ‘I don’t know, Inspector—I don’t know at all!’

‘I’ve checked up with Mrs Goedler. She’s given me all the help she can. It wasn’t very much. There are just a few people who would definitely profit by your death. First Pip and Emma. Patrick and Julia Simmons are the right age, but their background seems clear enough. Anyway, we can’t concentrate on these two alone. Tell me, Miss Blacklock, would you recognize Sonia Goedler if you saw her?’

‘Recognize Sonia? Why, of course—’ She stopped suddenly. ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t know that I would. It’s a long time. Thirty years…She’d be an elderly woman now.’

‘What was she like when you remember her?’

‘Sonia?’ Miss Blacklock considered for some moments. ‘She was rather small, dark…’

‘Any special peculiarities? Mannerisms?’

‘No—no, I don’t think so. She was gay—very gay.’

‘She mayn’t be so gay now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Have you got a photograph of her?’

‘Of Sonia? Let me see—not a proper photograph. I’ve got some old snapshots—in an album somewhere—at least I think there’s one of her.’

‘Ah. Can I have a look at it?’

‘Yes, of course. Now where did I put that album?’

‘Tell me, Miss Blacklock, do you consider it remotely possible that Mrs Swettenham might be Sonia Goedler?’

‘Mrs Swettenham?’ Miss Blacklock looked at him in lively atonishment. ‘But her husband was in the Government Service—in India first, I think, and then in Hong Kong.’