‘Oh? What do you think?’ ‘It occurred to me,’ murmured Miss Marple, ‘that it might have been contrived.’ ‘So that’s your idea?’ ‘Well, everybody seems to think it very odd that Edgar Lawson should quite suddenly have a relapse, so to speak.
He’d got this curious complex, or whatever the term is, about his unknown father. Winston Churchill and Viscount Montgomery – all quite likely in his state of mind. Just any famous man he happened to think of. But suppose somebody puts it into his head that it’s Lewis Serrocold who is really his father, that it’s Lewis Serrocold who has been persecuting him – that he ought by rights to be the Crown Prince as it were of Stonygates.
In his weak mental state he’ll accept the idea – work himself up into a frenzy, and sooner or later will make the kind of scene he did make. And what a wonderful cover that will be! Everybody will have their attention fixed on the dangerous situation that is developing’- especially if somebody has thoughtfully supplied him with a revolver.’
‘Hm, yes. Walter Hudd’s revolver.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I’d thought of that. But you know, Walter is uncommunicative and he’s certainly sullen and ungracious, but I don’t really think he’s stupid.’
‘So you don’t think it’s Walter?’
‘I think everybody would be very relieved if it was Walter. That sounds very unkind, but it’s because he is an outsider.’
‘What about his wife?’ asked Inspector Curry. ‘Would she be relieved?’
Miss Marple did not answer. She was thinking of Gina and Stephen Restarick standing together as she had seen them on her first day. And she thought of the way Alex Restarick’s eyes had gone straight to Gina as he had entered the Hall last night. What was Gina’s own attitude?
II Two hours later Inspector Curry tilted back his chair, stretched himself and sighed.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve cleared a good deal of ground.’ Sergeant Lake agreed.
‘The servants are out,’ he said. ‘They were together all through the critical period – those that sleep here. The ones that don’t live in had gone home.’
Curry nodded. He was suffering from mental fatigue.
He had interviewed physio-therapists, members of the teaching staff, and what he called to himself the ‘two young lags,’ whose turn it had been to dine with the family that night. All their stories dovetailed and checked. He could write them off. Their activities and habits were communal. Them were no lonely souls among them. Which was useful for the purposes of alibis.
Curry had kept Dr Maverick, who was, as far as he could judge, the chief person in charge of the Institute, to the end.
‘But we’ll have him in now, Lake.’ So the young doctor bustled in, neat and spruce and rather inhuman looking behind his pincenez.
Maverick confirmed the statements of his staff, and agreed with Curry’s findings. There had been no slackness, no loophole in the College impregnability. Christian Gulbrandsen’s death could not be laid to the account of the ‘young patients,’ as Curry almost called them, so hypnotized had he become by the fervent medical atmosphere.
‘But patients are exactly what they are, Inspector,’ said Dr Maverick with a little smile.
It was a superior smile, and Inspector Curry would not have been human if he had not resented it just a little.
He said professionally: ‘Now as regards your own movements, Dr Maverick?
Can you give me an account of them?’ ‘Certainly. I have jotted them down for you with approximate times.’ Dr Maverick had left the Great Hall at fifteen minutes after nine, with Mr Lacy and Dr Baumgarten. They had gone to Dr Baumgarten’s rooms, where they had all three remained discussing certain courses of treatment until Miss Believer had come hurrying in and asked Dr Maverick to go to the Great Hall. That was at approximately half-past nine. He had gone at once to the Hall and had found Edgar Lawson in a state of collapse.
Inspector Curry stirred a little.
‘Just a minute, Dr Maverick. Is this young man, in your opinion, definitely a mental case?’
Dr Maverick smiled the superior smile again.