Agatha Christie – A Murder Is Announced

‘And I have had Fletcher on the carpet for it!’ said Craddock. ‘He’d no business to go agreeing to your plans without reporting first to me.’

‘He didn’t like it, but I talked him into it,’ said Miss Marple. ‘We went up to Little Paddocks and I got hold of Mitzi.’

Julia drew a deep breath and said, ‘I can’t imagine how you ever got her to do it.’

‘I worked on her, my dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘She thinks far too much about herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done something for others. I flattered her up, of course, and said I was sure if she’d been in her own country she’d have been in the Resistance movement, and she said, “Yes, indeed.” And I said I could see she had got just the temperament for that sort of work. She was brave, didn’t mind taking risks, and could act a part. I told her stories of deeds done by girls in the Resistance movements, some of them true, and some of them, I’m afraid, invented. She got tremendously worked up!’

‘Marvellous,’ said Patrick.

‘And then I got her to agree to do her part. I rehearsed her till she was word perfect. Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not come down until Inspector Craddock came. The worst of these excitable people is that they’re apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing before the time.’

‘She did it very well,’ said Julia.

‘I don’t quite see the point,’ said Bunch. ‘Of course, I wasn’t there—’ she added apologetically.

‘The point was a little complicated—and rather touch and go. The idea was that Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail had been in her mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was willing to come out with the truth. She’d seen, through the keyhole of the dining-room, Miss Blacklock in the hall with a revolver behind Rudi Scherz. She’d seen, that is, what had actually taken place. Now the only danger was that Charlotte Blacklock might have realized that, as the key was in the keyhole, Mitzi couldn’t possibly have seen anything at all. But I banked on the fact that you don’t think of things like that when you’ve just had a bad shock. All she could take in was that Mitzi had seen her.’

Craddock took over the story.

‘But—and this was essential—I pretended to receive this with scepticism, and I made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteries at last, upon someone who had not been previously suspected. I accused Edmund—’

‘And very nicely I played my part,’ said Edmund. ‘Hot denial. All according to plan. What wasn’t according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was you throwing in your little chirp and coming out into the open as “Pip”. Neither the Inspector nor I had any idea you were Pip. I was going to be Pip! It threw us off our stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterly comeback and made some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wanting a rich wife which will probably stick in your subconscious and make irreparable trouble between us one day.’

‘I don’t see why that was necessary?’

‘Don’t you? It meant that, from Charlotte Blacklock’s point of view, the only person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi. The suspicious of the police were elsewhere. They had treated Mitzi for the moment as a liar. But if Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seriously. So Mitzi had got to be silenced.’

‘Mitzi went straight out of the room and back to the kitchen—just like I had told her,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Miss Blacklock came out after her almost immediately. Mitzi was apparently alone in the kitchen. Sergeant Fletcher was behind the scullery door. And I was in the broom cupboard in the kitchen. Luckily I’m very thin.’

Bunch looked at Miss Marple.

‘What did you expect to happen, Aunt Jane?’

‘One of two things. Either Charlotte would offer Mitzi money to hold her tongue—and Sergeant Fletcher would be a witness to that offer, or else—or else I thought she’d try to kill Mitzi.’