That were Lily all over. Too smart by half.” Questioning revealed that Mr. Kimble had little to contribute.
Lily had been in service at St. Catherine’s before he met her and started walking out with her. Fond of the pictures, she was, and told him that likely as not, she’d been in a house where there’d been a murder.
“Didn’t pay much account, I didn’t.
All imagination, I thought. Never content with plain fact. Lily wasn’t. Long rigmarole she told me, about the master doing in the missus and maybe putting the body in the cellar — and something about a French girl what had looked out of the window and seen something or somebody. ‘Don’t you pay no attention to foreigners, my girl,’ I said. ‘One and all they’re liars. Not like us.
And when she run on about it, I didn’t listen because, mark you, she was working it all up out of nothing. Liked a bit of crime, Lily did. Used to take the Sunday News what was running a series about Famous Murderers. Full of it, she was, and if she liked to think she’d been in a house where there was a murder, well, thinking don’t hurt nobody. But when she was on at me about answering this advertisement — ‘You leave it alone,’ I says to her. ‘It’s no good stirring up trouble.’ And if she’d done as I telled her, she’d be alive today.” He thought for a moment or two.
“Ar,” he said. “She’d be alive right now.
Too smart by half, that was Lily.”
23 WHICH OF THEM
GILES and Gwenda had not gone with Inspector Last and Dr. Kennedy to interview Mr. Kimble.
They arrived home about seven o’clock.
Gwenda looked white and ill. Dr. Kennedy had said to Giles: “Give her some brandy and make her eat something, then get her to bed. She’s had a bad shock.” “It’s so awful, Giles,” Gwenda kept saying. “So awful. That silly woman, making an appointment with the murderer, and going along so confidently–to be killed. Like a sheep to the slaughter.” “Well, don’t think about it, darling.
After all, we did know there was someone –a killer.” “No, we didn’t. Not a killer now. I mean, it was then — eighteen years ago. It wasn’t, somehow, quite real…. It might all have been a mistake.” “Well, this proves that it wasn’t a mistake.
You were right all the time, Gwenda.”
Giles was glad to find Miss Marple at Hillside. She and Mrs. Cocker between them fussed over Gwenda who refused brandy because she said it always reminded her of Channel steamers, but accepted some hot whisky and lemon, and then, coaxed by Mrs. Cocker, sat down and ate an omelette.
Giles would have talked determinedly of other things, but Miss Marple, with what Giles admitted to be superior tactics, discussed the crime in a gentle aloof manner.
“Very dreadful, my dear,” she said. “And of course a great shock, but interesting, one must admit. And of course I am so old that death doesn’t shock me as much as it does you–only something lingering and painful like cancer really distresses me.
The really vital thing is that this proves definitely and beyond any possible doubt that poor young Helen Halliday was killed. We’ve thought so all along and now we know.” “And according to you we ought to know where the body is,” said Giles. “The cellar, I suppose.” “No, no, Mr. Reed. You remember Edith Pagett said she went down there on the morning after because she was disturbed by what Lily had said, and she found no signs of anything of the kind — and there would be signs, you know, if somebody was really looking for them.” “Then what happened to it? Taken away in a car and thrown over a cliff into the sea?” “No. Come now, my dears, what struck you first of all when you came here — struck you, Gwenda, I should say. The fact that from the drawing-room window, you had no view down to the sea. Where you felt, very properly, that steps should lead down to the lawn — there was instead a plantation of shrubs. The steps, you found subsequently, had been there originally, but had at some time been transferred to the end of the terrace. Why were they moved?” Gwenda stared at her with dawning comprehension.