Best Detective Stories of Agatha Christie

“In what?”

“The robbery. Long ago. Very valuable emeralds, so I’ve heard. The lady’s maid and the tweeny. Because one thing hasn’t been explained – how, when the tweeny married the gardener, did they have enough money to set up a flower shop?

“The answer is, it was her share of the – the swag, I think is the right expression. Everything she did turned out well. Money made money. But the other one, the lady’s maid, must have been unlucky. She came down to being just a village dressmaker. Then they met again. Quite all right at first, I expect, until Mr Ted Gerard came on the scene.

“Mrs Spenlow, you see, was already suffering from conscience, and was inclined to be emotionally religious. This young man no doubt urged her to ‘face up’ and to ‘come clean’ and I dare say she was strung up to do it. But Miss Politt didn’t see it that way. All she saw was that she might go to prison for a robbery she had committed years ago. So she made up her mind to put a stop to it all. I’m afraid, you know, that she was always rather a wicked woman. I don’t believe she’d have turned a hair if that nice, stupid Mr Spenlow had been hanged.”

Colonel Melchett said slowly, “We can – er – verify your theory – up to a point. The identity of the Politt woman with the lady’s maid at the Abercrombies’, but -”

Miss Marple reassured him. “It will be all quite easy. She’s the kind of woman who will break down at once when she’s taxed with the truth. And then, you see, I’ve got her tape measure. I – er – abstracted it yesterday when I was trying on. When she misses it and thinks the police have got it – well, she’s quite an ignorant woman and she’ll think it will prove the case against her in some way.”

She smiled at him encouragingly. “You’ll have no trouble, I can assure you.” It was the tone in which his favourite aunt had once assured him that he could not fail to pass his entrance examination into Sandhurst.

And he had passed.

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