'That's what we always come back to, isn't it?' said Inspector Curry genially. 'What did Christian Gulbrandsen know - about someone - that made it necessary for that someone to kill him?'
'Exactly,' said Mrs Strete triumphantly. 'It must be Walter Hudd.'
'Unless it's someone nearer home.'
Mildred said sharply:
'What did you mean by that?'
Inspector Curry said slowly:
'Mr Gulbrandsen seemed very concerned about Mrs Serrocold's health whilst he was here.'
Mrs Strete frowned.
'They always fuss over mother because she looks fragile. I think she likes them to! Or else Christian had been listening to Juliet Bellever.'
'You're not worried about your mother's health yourself, Mrs Strete?'
'No. I hope I'm sensible. Naturally mother is not young -'
'And death comes to all of us,' said Inspector Curry. 'But not ahead of its appointed time. That's what we have to prevent.'
He spoke meaningly. Mildred Strete flared into sudden animation.
'Oh it's wicked - wicked. No one else here really seems to care. Why should they? I'm the only person who was a blood relation to Christian. To mother, he was only a grown-up stepson. To Gina, he isn't really any relation at all. But he was my own brother.'
'Half-brother,' suggested Inspector Curry.
'Half-brother, yes. But we were both Gulbrandsens in spite of the difference in age.'
Curry said gently:
'Yes - yes, I see your point...'
Tears in her eyes, Mildred Strete marched out. Curry looked at Lake.
'So she's quite sure it's Walter Hudd,' he said. 'Won't entertain for a moment the idea of its being anybody else.'
'And she may be right.'
'She certainly may. Wally fits. Opportunity - and motive. Because if he wants money quick, his wife's mother would have to die. So Wally tampers with her tonic, and Christian Gulbrandsen sees him do it - or hears about it in some way. Yes, it fits very nicely.'
He paused and said:
'By the way, Mildred Strete likes money... She mayn't spend it, but she likes it. I'm not sure why... She may be a miser - with a miser's passion. Or she may like the power that money gives. Money for benevolence, perhaps? She's a Gulbrandsen. She may want to emulate Father.'
'Complex, isn't it?' said Sergeant Lake, and scratched his head.
Inspector Curry said:
'We'd better see this screwy young man Lawson, and after that we'll go to the Great Hall and work out who was where - and if - and why - and when... We've heard one or two rather interesting things this morning.'
II
It was very difficult, Inspector Curry thought, to get a true estimate of someone from what other people said.
Edgar Lawson had been described by a good many different people that morning, but looking at him now, Curry's own impressions were almost ludicrously different.
Edgar did not impress him as 'queer' or 'dangerous,' or 'arrogant' or even as 'abnormal.' He seemed a very ordinary young man, very much cast down and in a state of humility approaching that of Uriah Heep's. He looked young and slightly common and rather pathetic.
He was only too anxious to talk and to apologize.
'I know I've done very wrong. I don't know what came over me - really I don't. Making that scene and kicking up such a row. And actually shooting off a pistol. At Mr Serrocold too, who's been so good to me and so patient, too.'
He twisted his hands nervously. They were rather pathetic hands, with bony wrists.
'If I've got to be had up for it, I'll come with you at once. I deserve it. I'll plead guilty.'
'No charge has been made against you,' said Inspector Curry crisply. 'So we've no evidence on which to act. According to Mr Serrocold, letting off the pistol was an accident.'
'That's because he's so good. There never was a man as good as Mr Serrocold! He's done everything for me. And I go and repay him by acting like this.'
'What made you act as you did?'
Edgar looked embarrassed.
'I made a fool of myself.'
Inspector Curry said drily:
'So it seems. You told Mr Serrocold in the presence of witnesses that you had discovered that he was your father. Was that true?'
'No, it wasn't.'
'What put that idea into your head? Did someone suggest it to you?'
'Well, it's a bit hard to explain.'
Inspector Curry looked at him thoughtfully, then said in a kindly voice:
'Suppose you try. We don't want to make things hard for you.'
'Well, you see, I had a rather hard time of it as a kid. The other boys jeered at me. Because I hadn't got a father. Said I was a little bastard - which I was, of course. Mum was usually drunk and she had men coming in all the time. My father was a foreign seaman, I believe. The house was always filthy, and it was all pretty fair hell. And then I got to thinking, supposing my Dad had been not just some foreign sailor, but someone important - and I used to make up a thing or two. Kid stuff first - changed at birth - really the rightful heir - that sort of thing. And then I went to a new school and I tried it on once or twice hinting things. Said my father was really an Admiral in the Navy. I got to believing it myself. I didn't feel so bad then.'
He paused and then went on:
'And then - later - I thought up some other ideas. I used to stay at hotels and told a lot of silly stories about being a fighter pilot - or about being in Military Intelligence. I got all sort of mixed up. I didn't seem able to stop telling lies.
'Only I didn't really try to get money by it. It was just swank so as to make people think a bit more of me. I didn't want to be dishonest. Mr Serrocold will tell you and Dr Maverick - they've got all the stuff about it.'
Inspector Curry nodded. He had already studied Edgar's case history and his police record.
'Mr Serrocold got me clear in the end and brought me down here. He said he needed a secretary to help him and I did help him! I really did. Only the others laughed at me. They were always laughing at me.'
'What others? Mrs Serrocold?'
'No, not Mrs Serrocold. She's a lady - she's always gentle and kind. No, but Gina treated me like dirt. And Stephen Restarick. And Mrs Strete looked down on me for not being a gentleman. So did Miss Bellever - and what's she? She's a paid companion, isn't she?'
Curry noted the signs of rising excitement.
'So you didn't find them very sympathetic?'
Edgar said passionately:
'It was because of me being a bastard. If I'd had a proper father they wouldn't have gone on like that.'
'So you appropriated a couple of famous fathers?'
Edgar blushed.
'I always seem to get to telling lies,' he muttered.
'And finally you said Mr Serrocold was your father. Why?'
'Because that would stop them once for all, wouldn't it? If he was my father they couldn't do anything to me.'
'Yes. But you accused him of being your enemy - of persecuting you.'
'I know -' He rubbed his forehead. 'I got things all wrong. There are times when I don't - when I don't get things quite right. I get muddled.'
'And you took the revolver from Mr Walter Hudd's room?'
Edgar looked puzzled.
'Did I? Is that where I got it?'
'Don't you remember where you got it?'
Edgar said:
'I meant to threaten Mr Serrocold with it. I meant to frighten him. It was kid stuff all over again.'
Inspector Curry said patiently:
'How did you get the revolver?'
'You just said - out of Walter's room.'
'You remember doing that now?'
'I must have got it from his room. I couldn't have got hold of it any other way, could I?'
'I don't know,' said Inspector Curry. 'Somebody might have given it to you?'
Edgar was silent - his face a blank.
'Is that how it happened?'
Edgar said passionately:
'I don't remember. I was so worked up. I walked about the garden in a red mist of rage. I thought people were spying on me, watching me, trying to hound me down. Even that nice white-haired old lady... I can't understand it all now. I feel I must have been mad. I don't remember where I was and what I was doing half the time!'
'Surely you remember who told you Mr Serrocold was your father?'
Edgar gave the same blank stare.
'Nobody told me,' he said sullenly. 'It just came to me.'
Inspector Curry sighed. He was not satisfied. But he judged he could make no further progress at present.
'Well, watch your step in future,' he said.
'Yes, sir. Yes indeed I will.'
As Edgar went, Inspector Curry slowly shook his head.
'These pathological cases are the devil!'
'D'you think he's mad, sir?'
'Much less mad than I'd imagined. Weak-headed, boastful, a liar - yet a certain pleasant simplicity about him. Highly suggestible I should imagine...'
'You think someone did suggest things to him?'
'Oh yes, old Miss Marple was right there. She's a shrewd old bird. But I wish I knew who it was. He won't tell. If we only knew that... Come on, Lake, let's have a thorough reconstruction of the scene in the Hall.'
III
'That fixes it pretty well.'
Inspector Curry was sitting at the piano. Sergeant Lake was in a chair by the window overlooking the lake. Curry went on:
'If I'm half-turned on the piano stool, watching the study door, I can't see you.'
Sergeant Lake rose softly and edged quietly through the door to the library.
'All this side of the room was dark. The only lights that were on were the ones beside the study door. No, Lake, I didn't see you go. Once in the library, you could go out through the other door to the corridor - two minutes to run along to the oak suite, shoot Gulbrandsen and come back through the library to your chair by the window.
'The women by the fire have their backs to you. Mrs Serrocold was sitting here - on the right of the fireplace, near the study door. Everyone agrees she didn't move and she's the only one who's in the line of direct vision. Miss Marple was here. She was looking past Mrs Serrocold to the study. Mrs Strete was on the left of the fireplace - close to the door out of the Hall to the lobby, and it's a very dark corner. She could have gone and come back. Yes, it's possible.'
Curry grinned suddenly.
'And I could go.' He slipped off the music stool and sidled along the wall and out through the door. 'The only person who might notice I wasn't still at the piano would be Gina Hudd. And you remember what Gina said: "Stephen was at the piano to begin with. I don't know where he was later."'
'So you think it's Stephen?'
'I don't know who it is,' said Curry. 'It wasn't Edgar Lawson or Lewis Serrocold or Mrs Serrocold or Miss Jane Marple. But for the rest -' He sighed. 'It's probably the American. Those fused lights were a bit too convenient - a coincidence. And yet, you know, I rather like the chap. Still, that isn't evidence.'
He peered thoughtfully at some music on the side of the piano. 'Hindemith? Who's he? Never heard of him. Shostakovitch! What names these people have.' He got up and then looked down at the old-fashioned music stool. He lifted the top of it.
'Here's the old-fashioned stuff. Handel's Largo, Czerny's Exercises. Dates back to old Gulbrandsen, most of this. "I know a lovely Garden" - Vicar's wife used to sing that when I was a boy -'
He stopped - the yellow pages of the song in his hand. Beneath them, reposing on Chopin's Preludes, was a small automatic pistol.
'Stephen Restarick,' exclaimed Sergeant Lake joyfully.
'Now don't jump to conclusions,' Inspector Curry warned him. 'Ten to one that's what we're meant to think.'
Chapter 15
Miss Marple climbed the stairs and tapped on the door of Mrs Serrocold's bedroom.
'May I come in, Carrie Louise?'
'Of course, Jane dear.'
Carrie Louise was sitting in front of the dressing table, brushing her silvery hair. She turned her head over her shoulder.
'Is it the police? I'll be ready in a few minutes.'
'Are you all right?'
'Yes, of course. Jolly insisted on my having my breakfast in bed. And Gina came into the room with it on tiptoe as though I might be at death's door! I don't think people realize that tragedies like Christian's death are much less shock to someone old. Because one knows by then how anything may happen - and how little anything really matters that happens in this world.'
'Ye-es,' said Miss Marple dubiously.
'Don't you feel the same, Jane? I should have thought you would.'
Miss Marple said slowly:
'Christian was murdered.'
'Yes... I see what you mean. You think that does matter?'
'Don't you?'
'Not to Christian,' said Carrie Louise simply. 'It matters, of course, to whoever murdered him.'
'Have you any idea who murdered him?'
Mrs Serrocold shook her head in a bewildered fashion.
'No, I've absolutely no idea. I can't even think of a reason. It must have been something to do with his being here before - just over a month ago. Because otherwise I don't think he would have come here suddenly again for no particular reason. Whatever it was must have started off then. I've thought and I've thought, but I can't remember anything unusual.'
'Who was here then?'
'Oh! The same people who are here now - yes, Alex was down from London about then. And - oh yes, Ruth was here.'
'Ruth?'
