Dinah said, bewildered, “I don’t understand. Why should anyone suspect you, then?”
Basil groaned. He put his hands over his eyes and rocked to and fro.
Miss Marple said, “What did you do with the hearth rug?”
His reply came mechanically. “I put it in the dustbin.”
Miss Marple clucked her tongue vexedly. “That was stupid, very stupid. People don’t put good hearth rugs in dustbins. It had spangles in it from her dress, I suppose?”
“Yes, I couldn’t get them out.”
Dinah cried, “What are you talking about?”
Basil said sullenly, “Ask her. She seems to know all about it.”
“I’ll tell you what I think happened, if you like,” said Miss Marple. “You can correct me, Mr. Blake, if I go wrong. I think that after having had a violent quarrel with your wife at a party and after having had, perhaps, rather too much er… to drink, you drove down here. I don’t know what time you arrived.”
Basil Blake said sullenly, “About two in the morning. I meant to go up to town first; then, when I got to the suburbs, I changed my mind. I thought Dinah might come down here after me. So I drove down here. The place was all dark. I opened the door and turned on the light and I saw — and I saw-” He gulped and stopped.
Miss Marple went on, “You saw a girl lying on the hearth rug. A girl in a white evening dress, strangled. I don’t know whether you recognized her then-”
Basil Blake shook his head violently. “I couldn’t look at her after the first glance; her face was all blue, swollen; she’d been dead some time and she was there in my living room!” He shuddered.
Miss Marple said gently, “You weren’t, of course, quite yourself. You were in a fuddled state and your nerves are not good. You were, I think, panic-stricken. You didn’t know what to do.”
“I thought, Dinah might turn up any minute. And she’d find me there with a dead body, a girl’s dead body, and she’d think I’d killed her. Then I got an idea. It seemed, I don’t know why, a good idea at the time. I thought: ‘I’ll put her in old Bantry’s library. Damned pompous old stick, always looking down his nose; sneering at me as artistic and effeminate. Serve the pompous old brute right,’ I thought. ‘He’ll look a fool when a dead lovely is found on his hearth rug.'” He added with a pathetic eagerness to explain,”I was a bit drunk, you know, at the time. It really seemed positively amusing to me. Old Bantry with a dead blonde.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Marple. “Little Tommy Bond had very much the same idea. Rather a sensitive boy, with an inferiority complex, he said teacher was always picking on him. He put a frog in the clock and it jumped out at her. You were just the same,” went on Miss Marple, “only, of course, bodies are more serious matters than frogs.”
Basil groaned again. “By the morning I’d sobered up. I realized what I’d done. I was scared stiff. And then the police came here. Another damned pompous ass of a chief constable. I was scared of him, and the only way I could hide it was by being abominably rude. In the middle of it all, Dinah drove up.”
Dinah looked out of the window. She said, “There’s a car driving up now. There are men in it.”
“The police, I think,” said Miss Marple.
Basil Blake got up. Suddenly he became quite calm and resolute. He even smiled. He said, “So I’m in for it, am I? All right, Dinah, sweet, keep your head. Get onto old Sims, he’s the family lawyer, and go to mother and tell her about our marriage. She won’t bite. And don’t worry. I didn’t do it. So it’s bound to be all right, see, sweetheart?”
There was a tap on the cottage door. Basil called, “Come in.”
Inspector Slack entered with another man. He said, “Mr. Basil Blake?”
“Yes.”
“I have a warrant here for your arrest on the charge of murdering Ruby Keene on the night of September twentieth last. I warn you that anything you say may be used at your trial. You will please accompany me now. Full facilities will be given you for communicating with your solicitor.”