Inspector Neele blinked again and wondered what he had let himself in for and why he had ever thought that Miss Marple might be a desirable and clear-headed colleague. Still, he thought to himself, however muddle-headed she was, she might have picked up some useful bits of information. All Inspector Neele's successes in his profession had come from listening well. He was prepared to listen now.
"Please tell me all about it. Miss Marple," he said, "but start at the beginning, won't you."
"Yes, of course," said Miss Marple, "and the beginning is Gladys. I mean I came here because of Gladys. And you very kindly let me look through all her things. And what with that and the nylon stockings and the telephone calls and one thing and another, it did come out perfectly clear. I mean about Mr Fortescue and the taxine."
"You have a theory?" asked Inspector Neele, "as to who put the taxine into Mr Fortescue's marmalade."
"It isn't a theory," said Miss Marple. "I know."
For the third time Inspector Neele blinked.
"It was Gladys, of course," said Miss Marple.
Chapter 26
Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple and slowly shook his head.
"Are you saying," he said incredulously, "that Gladys Martin deliberately murdered Rex Fortescue? I'm sorry, Miss Marple, but I simply don't believe it."
"No, of course she didn't mean to murder him," said Miss Marple, "but she did it all the same! You said yourself that she was nervous and upset when you questioned her. And that she looked guilty."
"Yes, but not guilty of murder."
"Oh, no, I agree. As I say, she didn't mean to murder anybody, but she put the taxine in the marmalade. She didn't think it was poison, of course."
"What did she think it was?" Inspector Neele's voice still sounded incredulous.
"I rather imagine she thought it was a truth drug," said Miss Marple. "It's very interesting, you know, and very instructive - the things these girls cut out of papers and keep. It's always been the same, you know, all through the ages. Recipes for beauty, for attracting the man you love. And witchcraft and charms and marvellous happenings. Nowadays they're mostly lumped together under the heading of Science. Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that. And having read in the papers about truth drugs, of course Gladys would believe it absolutely when he told her that that's what it was."
"When who told her?" asked Inspector Neele.
"Albert Evans," said Miss Marple. "Not of course that that is really his name. But anyway he met her last summer at a holiday camp, and he flattered her up and made love to her, and I should imagine told her some story of injustice or persecution, or something like that. Anyway, the point was that Rex Fortescue had to be made to confess what he had done and make restitution. I don't know this, of course. Inspector Neele, but I'm pretty sure about it. He got her to take a post here, and it's really very easy nowadays with the shortage of domestic staff, to obtain a post where you want one. Staffs are changing the whole time. Then they arranged a date together. You remember on that last postcard he said, 'Remember our date.' That was to be the great day they were working for. Gladys would put the drug that he gave her into the top of the marmalade, so that Mr Fortescue would eat it at breakfast and she would also put the rye in his pocket. I don't know what story he told her to account for the rye, but as I told you from the beginning, Inspector Neele, Gladys Martin was a very credulous girl. In fact, there's hardly anything she wouldn't believe if a personable young man put it to her the right way."
"Go on," said Inspector Neele in a dazed voice.
"The idea probably was," continued Miss Marple, "that Albert was going to call upon him at the office that day, and that by that time the truth drug would have worked, and that Mr Fortescue would have confessed everything and so on and so on. You can imagine the poor girl's feelings when she hears that Mr Fortescue is dead."
"But, surely," Inspector Neele objected, "she would have told?"
Miss Marple asked sharply:
"What was the first thing she said to you when you questioned her?"
"She said 'I didn't do it,'" Inspector Neele said.
"Exactly," said Miss Marple, triumphantly. "Don't you see that's exactly what she would say? If she broke an ornament, you know, Gladys would always say, 'I didn't do it, Miss Marple. I can't think how it happened.' They can't help it, poor dears. They're very upset at what they've done and their great idea is to avoid blame. You don't think that a nervous young woman who had murdered someone when she didn't mean to murder him, is going to admit it, do you? That would have been quite out of character."
"Yes," Neele said, "I suppose it would."
He ran his mind back over his interview with Gladys. Nervous, upset, guilty, shifty-eyed, all those things. They might have had small significance, or a big one. He could not really blame himself for having failed to come to the right conclusion.
"Her first idea, as I say," went on Miss Marple, "would be to deny it all. Then in a confused way she would try to sort it all out in her mind. Perhaps Albert hadn't known how strong the stuff was, or he'd made a mistake and given her too much of it. She'd think of excuses for him and explanations. She'd hope he'd get in touch with her, which, of course, he did. By telephone."
"Do you know that?" asked Neele sharply. Miss Marple shook her head.
"No. I admit I'm assuming it. But there were unexplained calls that day. That is to say, people rang up and when Crump, or Mrs Crump answered, the phone was hung up. That's what he'd do, you know. Ring up and wait until Gladys answered the phone, and then he'd make an appointment with her to meet him."
"I see," said Neele. "You mean she had an appointment to meet him on the day she died."
Miss Marple nodded vigorously.
"Yes, that was indicated. Mrs Crump was right about one thing. The girl had on her best nylon stockings and her good shoes. She was going to meet someone. Only she wasn't going out to meet him. He was coming to Yewtree Lodge. That's why she was on the look out that day and flustered and late with tea. Then, as she brought the second tray into the hall, I think she looked along the passage to the side door, and saw him there, beckoning to her. She put the tray down and went out to meet him."
"And then he strangled her," said Neele.
Miss Marple pursed her lips together. "It would only take a minute," she said, "but he couldn't risk her talking. She had to die, poor, silly, credulous girl. And then - he put a clothes peg on her nose!" Stern anger vibrated the old lady's voice. "To make it fit in with the rhyme. The rye, the blackbirds, the counting-house, the bread and honey, and the clothes peg - the nearest he could get to a little dicky bird that nipped off her nose -"
"And I suppose at the end of it all he'll go to Broadmoor and we shan't be able to hang him because he's crazy!" said Neele slowly.
"I think you'll hang him all right," said Miss Marple. "And he's not crazy. Inspector, not for a moment!"
Inspector Neele looked hard at her.
"Now see here. Miss Marple, you've outlined a theory to me. Yes - yes - although you say you know, it's only a theory. You're saying that a man is responsible for these crimes, who called himself Albert Evans, who picked up the girl Gladys at a holiday camp and used her for his own purposes. This Albert Evans was someone who wanted revenge for the old Blackbird Mine business. You're suggesting, aren't you, that Mrs MacKenzie's son, Don MacKenzie, didn't die at Dunkirk. That he's still alive, that he's behind all this?"
But to Inspector Neele's surprise. Miss Marple was shaking her head violently.
"Oh no!" she said, "oh no! I'm not suggesting that at all. Don't you see, Inspector Neele, all this blackbird business is really a complete fake. It was used, that was all, used by somebody who heard about the blackbirds - the ones in the library and in the pie. The blackbirds were genuine enough. They were put there by someone who knew about the old business, who wanted revenge for it. But only the revenge of trying to frighten Mr Fortescue or to make him uncomfortable. I don't believe, you know, Inspector Neele, that children can really be brought up and taught to wait and brood and carry out revenge. Children, after all, have got a lot of sense. But anyone whose father had been swindled and perhaps left to die, might be willing to play a malicious trick on the person who was supposed to have done it. That's what happened, I think. And the killer used it."
"The killer," said Inspector Neele. "Come now, Miss Marple, let's have your ideas about the killer. Who was he?"
"You won't be surprised," said Miss Marple. "Not really. Because you'll see, as soon as I tell you who he is, or rather who I think he is, for one must be accurate must one not? - you'll see that he's just the type of person who would commit these murders. He's sane, brilliant and quite unscrupulous. And he did it, of course, for money, probably for a good deal of money."
"Percival Fortescue?" Inspector Neele spoke almost imploringly, but he knew as he spoke that he was wrong. The picture of the man that Miss Marple had built up for him had no resemblance to Percival Fortescue.
"Oh, no," said Miss Marple. "Not Percival. Lance."
Chapter 27
"It's impossible," said Inspector Neele.
He leaned back in his chair and watched Miss Marple with fascinated eyes. As Miss Marple had said, he was not surprised. His words were a denial, not of probability, but of possibility. Lance Fortescue fitted the description: Miss Marple had outlined it well enough. But Inspector Neele simply could not see how Lance could be the answer.
Miss Marple leaned forward in her chair and gently, persuasively, and rather in the manner of someone explaining the simple facts of arithmetic to a small child, outlined her theory.
"He's always been like that, you see. I mean, he's always been bad. Bad all through, although with it he's always been attractive. Especially attractive to women. He's got a brilliant mind and he'll take risks. He's always taken risks and because of his charm people have always believed the best and not the worst about him. He came home in the summer to see his father. I don't believe for a moment that his father wrote to him or sent for him - unless, of course, you've got actual evidence to that effect." She paused inquiringly.
Neele shook his head. "No," he said, "I've no evidence of his father sending for him. I've got a letter that Lance is supposed to have written to him after being here. But Lance could quite easily have slipped that among his father's papers in the study here the day he arrived."
"Sharp of him," said Miss Marple, nodding her head. "Well, as I say, he probably flew over here and attempted a reconciliation with his father, but Mr Fortescue wouldn't have it. You see, Lance had recently got married and the small pittance he was living on and which he had doubtless been supplementing in various dishonest ways, was not enough for him any more. He was very much in love with Pat (who is a dear, sweet girl) and he wanted a respectable, settled life with her - nothing shifty. And that, from his point of view, meant having a lot of money. When he was at Yewtree Lodge he must have heard about these blackbirds. Perhaps his father mentioned them. Perhaps Adele did. He jumped to the conclusion that MacKenzie's daughter was established in the house and it occurred to him that she would make a very good scapegoat for murder. Because, you see, when he realised that he couldn't get his father to do what he wanted, he must have cold-bloodedly decided that murder it would have to be. He may have realised that his father wasn't - er, very well - and have feared that by the time his father died there would have been a complete crash."
"He knew about his father's health all right," said the Inspector.
"Ah - that explains a good deal. Perhaps the coincidence of his father's Christian name being Rex together with the blackbird incident suggested the idea of the nursery rhyme. Make a crazy business of the whole thing - and tie it up with that old revenge threat of the MacKenzies. Then, you see, he could dispose of Adele, too, and that hundred thousand pounds going out of the firm. But there would have to be a third character, the 'maid in the garden hanging out the clothes' - and I suppose that suggested the whole wicked plan to him. An innocent accomplice whom he could silence before she could talk. And that would give him what he wanted - a genuine alibi for the first murder. The rest was easy. He arrived here from the station just before five o'clock, which was the time when Gladys brought the second tray into the hall. He came to the side door, saw her and beckoned to her. Strangling her and carrying her body round the house to where the clothes lines were would only have taken three or four minutes. Then he rang the front-door bell, was admitted to the house, and joined the family for tea. After tea he went up to see Miss Ramsbottom. When he came down, he slipped into the drawing-room, found Adele alone there drinking a last cup of tea and sat down by her on the sofa, and while he was talking to her, he managed to slip the cyanide into her tea. It wouldn't be difficult, you know. A little piece of white stuff, like sugar. He might have stretched out his hand to the sugar basin and taken a lump and apparently dropped it into her cup. He'd laugh and say 'Look, I've dropped more sugar into your tea.' She'd say she didn't mind, stir it and drink it. It would be as easy and audacious as that. Yes, he's an audacious fellow."
