AGATHA CHRISTIE. By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Fat lot of good that was likely to do. She was a silly woman in some ways. Like a lot of those army officers’ wives were, you know. She thought girls would do as they were told. Behind the times, she was. Been out in India and those parts, but when it’s a question of a good-looking young fellow and you take your eye offa gift, you won’t f’md she’s doing what you told her. Not her. He used to come down here now and then and they used to meet outside.’

‘And then she got into trouble, did she?’ Tuppence said, using the well-known euphemism, hoping that under that form it would not offend Mr Copleigh’s sense of propriety.

‘Must have been him, I suppose. Anyway, there it was plain as plain. I saw how it was long before her own mother did.

Beautiful creature, she was. Big and tall and handsome. But I don’t think, you know, that she was one that could stand up to things. She’d break up, you know. She used to walk about rather wild-like, muttering to herself. If you ask me he treated her bad, that fellow did. Went away and left her when he found out what was happening. Of course, a mother as was a mother would have gone and talked to him and made him see where his duty lay, but Mrs Charrington, she wouldn’t have had the spirit to do that. Anyway, her mother got wise, and she took the girl away. Shut up the house, she did and afterwards it was put up for sale. They came back to pack up, I believe, but they never came to the village or said anything to anyone. They never come back here, neither of them. There was some story got around. I never knew if there was any truth in it.’ ‘Some folk’Il make up anything,’ said Mr Copleigh unexpectedly.

‘Well, you’re right there, George. Still they may have been true. Such things happen. And as you say, that girl didn’t look quite right in the head to me.’ ‘What was the story?’ demanded Tuppence.

‘Well, really, I don’t like to say. It’s a long time since and I wouldn’t like to say anything as I wasn’t sure of it. It was Mrs Badcock’s Louise who put it about. Awful liar that girl was.

The things she’d say. Anything to make up a good story.’ ‘But what was it?’ said Tuppence.

‘Said this Charrington girl had killed the baby and after that killed herself. Said her mother went half mad with grief and her relations had to put her in a nursing home.’ Again Tuppence felt confusion mounting in her head. She felt almost as though she was swaying in her chair. Could Mrs Charrington be Mrs Lancaster? Changed her name, gone slightly batty, obsessed about her daughter’s fate. Mrs Copleigh’s voice was going on remorselessly.

‘I never believed a word of that myself. That Badcock girl would say anything. We weren’t listening much to hearsay and stories just then – we’d had other things to worry about. Scared stiffwe’d been, all over the countryside on account of the things that had been going on – ^L things ‘ ‘Why? What had been happening?’ asked Tuppence, mar-veiling at the things that seemed to happen, and to centre round the peaceful looking village of Sutton Chancellor.

‘I daresay as you’ll have read about it all in the papers at the time. Let’s see, near as possible it would have been twenty years ago. You’ll have read about it for sure. Child murders.

Little girl of nine years old first. Didn’t come home from school one day. Whole neighbourhood was out searching for her. Dingley Copse she was found in. Strangled, she’d been. It makes me shiver still to think of it. Well, that was the fn’st, then about three weeks later another. The other side of Market

Basing, that was. But within the district, as you might say. A man with a car could have done k easy enough.

‘And then there were others. Not for a month or two sometimes. And then there’d be another one. Not more than a couple of miles from here, one was; almost in the village, though.’ ‘Didn’t the police – didn’t anyone know who’d done it?’ ‘They tried hard enough,’ said Mrs Copleigh. ‘Detained a man quite soon, they did. Someone from t’other side of Market Basing. Said he was helping them in their inquiries. You know what that always means. They think they’ve got him. They pulled in f’trst one and then another but always after twenty-four hours or so they had to let him go again. Found out he couldn’t have done it or wasn’t in these parts or somebody gave him an alibi.’ ‘You don’t know, Liz,’ said Mr Copleigh. ‘They may have known quite well who done it. I’d say they did. That’s often the way of it, or so I’ve heard. The police know who it is but they can’t get the evidence.’ ‘That’s wives, that is,’ said Mrs Copleigh, ‘wives or mothers or fathers even. Even the police can’t do much no matter what they may think. A mother says “my boy was here that night at dinner” or his young lady says she went to the pictures with him that night, and he was with her the whole time, or a father says that he and his son were out in the far field together doing something – well, you can’t do anything against it. They may think the father or the mother or his sweetheart’s lying, but unless someone else come along and say they saw the boy or the man or whatever it is in some other place, there’s not much they can do. It was a terrible time. Right bet up we all were round here. When we heard another child was missing we’d make parties up.’ ‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Mr Copleigh.

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