Chapter 24

“Nobody could have made more of a muck of it than I seem to have done, ” said Dermot

Craddock gloomily.

He sat, his long legs stretched out, looking somehow incongruous in faithful Florence’s somewhat over‐ furnished parlour.

He was thoroughly tired, upset and dispirited.

Miss. Marple made soft, soothing noises of dissent. “No, no, you’ve done very good work, my dear boy. Very good work indeed. ”

“I’ve done very good work, have I? I’ve let a whole family be poisoned, Alfred Crackenthorpe’s dead and now Harold’s dead too. What the hell’s going on there? That’s what I should like to know. ”

“Poisoned tablets, ” said Miss. Marple thoughtfully.

“Yes. Devilishly cunning, really. They looked just like the tablets that he’d been having. There was a printed slip sent in with them ‘by Doctor Quimper’s instructions’. Well, Quimper never ordered them. There were chemist’s labels used. The chemist knew nothing about it, either. No. That box of tablets came from Rutherford Hall. ”

“Do you actually know it came from Rutherford Hall? ”

“Yes. We’ve had a thorough check up. Actually, it’s the box that held the sedative tablets prescribed for Emma. ”

“Oh, I see. For Emma... ”

“Yes. It’s got her fingerprints on it and the fingerprints of both the nurses and the fingerprint of the chemist who made it up. Nobody else’s, naturally. The person who sent them was careful. ”

“And the sedative tablets were removed and something else substituted? ”

“Yes. That of course is the devil with tablets. One tablet looks exactly like another. ”

“You are so right, ” agreed Miss. Marple. “I remember so very well in my young days, the black mixture and the brown mixture (the cough mixture that was) and the white mixture, and Doctor So‐ and‐ So’s pink mixture. People didn’t mix those up nearly as much. In fact, you know, in my village of St. Mary Mead we still like that kind of medicine. It’s a bottle they always want, not tablets. What were the tablets? ” she asked.

“Aconite. They were the kind of tablets that are usually kept in a poison bottle, diluted one in a hundred for outside application. ”

“And so Harold took them, and died, ” Miss. Marple said thoughtfully. Dermot Craddock uttered something like a groan.

“You mustn’t mind my letting off steam to you, ” he said. “Tell it all to Aunt Jane, that’s how I feel! ”

“That’s very, very nice of you, ” said Miss. Marple, “and I do appreciate it. I feel towards you, as Sir Henry’s godson, quite differently from the way I should feel to any ordinary detective‐ inspector. ”

Dermot Craddock gave her a fleeting grin. “But the fact remains that I’ve made the most ghastly mess of things all along the line, ” he said. “The Chief Constable down here calls in Scotland Yard, and what do they get? They get me making a prize ass of myself! ”

“No, no, ” said Miss. Marple.

“Yes, yes. I don’t know who poisoned Alfred, I don’t know who poisoned Harold, and, to cap it all, I haven’t the least idea now who the original murdered woman was! This

Martine business seemed a perfectly safe bet. The whole thing seemed to tie up. And now what happens? The real Martine shows up and turns out, most improbably, to be the wife of Sir Robert Stoddart‐ West. So who’s the woman in the barn now? Goodness knows. First I go all out on the idea she’s Anna Stravinska, and then she’s out of it ‐ ”

He was arrested by Miss. Marple giving one of her small peculiarly significant coughs. “But is she? ” she murmured.

Craddock stared at her. “Well, that postcard from Jamaica ‐ ”

“Yes, ” said Miss. Marple; “but that isn’t really evidence, is it? I mean, anyone can get a postcard sent from almost anywhere, I suppose. I remember Mrs. Brierly, such a very bad nervous breakdown. Finally, they said she ought to go to the mental hospital for observation, and she was so worried about the children knowing about it and so she wrote about fourteen postcards and arranged that they should be posted from different places abroad, and told them that Mummy was going abroad on a holiday. ” She added, looking at Dermot Craddock, “You see what I mean. ”

“Yes, of course, ” said Craddock, staring at her. “Naturally we’d have checked that postcard if it hadn’t been for the Martine business fitting the bill so well. ”

“So convenient, ” murmured Miss. Marple.

“It tied up, ” said Craddock. “After all, there’s the letter Emma received signed Martine Crackenthorpe. Lady Stoddart‐ West didn’t send that, but somebody did. Somebody who was going to pretend to be Martine, and who was going to cash in, if possible, on being Martine. You can’t deny that. ”

“No, no. ”

“And then, the envelope of the letter Emma wrote to her with the London address on it. Found at Rutherford Hall, showing she’d actually been there. ”

“But the murdered woman hadn’t been there! ” Miss. Marple pointed out. “Not in the sense you mean. She only came to Rutherford Hall after she was dead. Pushed out of a train on to the railway embankment. ”

“Oh, yes. ”

“What the envelope really proves is that the murderer was there. Presumably he took that envelope off her with her other papers and things, and then dropped it by mistake ‐ or ‐ I wonder now, was it a mistake? Surely Inspector Bacon, and your men too, made a thorough search of the place, didn’t they, and didn’t find it. It only turned up later in the boiler house. ”

“That’s understandable, ” said Craddock. “The old gardener chap used to spear up any odd stuff that was blowing about and shove it in there. ”

“Where it was very convenient for the boys to find, ” said Miss. Marple thoughtfully. “You think we were meant to find it? ”

“Well, I just wonder. After all, it would be fairly easy to know where the boys were going

to look next, or even to suggest to them... Yes, I do wonder. It stopped you thinking about

Anna Stravinska any more, didn’t it? ”

Craddock said: “And you think it really may be her all the time? ”

“I think someone may have got alarmed when you started making inquiries about her, that’s all... I think somebody didn’t want those inquiries made. ”

“Let’s hold on to the basic fact that someone was going to impersonate Martine, ” said

Craddock. “And then for some reason ‐ didn’t. Why? ” “That’s a very interesting question, ” said Miss. Marple.

“Somebody sent a wire saying Martine was going back to France, then arranged to travel

down with the girl and kill her on the way. You agree so far? ”

“Not exactly, ” said Miss. Marple. “I don’t think, really, you’re making it simple enough. ” “Simple! ” exclaimed Craddock. “You’re mixing me up, ” he complained.

Miss. Marple said in a distressed voice that she wouldn’t think of doing anything like that.

“Come, tell me, ” said Craddock, “do you or do you not think you know who the murdered woman was? ”

Miss. Marple sighed. “It’s so difficult, ” she said, “to put it the right way. I mean, I don’t know who she was, but at the same time I’m fairly sure who she was, if you know what I mean. ”

Craddock threw up his head. “Know what you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea. ” He looked out through the window.

“There’s your Lucy Eyelesbarrow coming to see you, ” he said. “Well, I’ll be off. My amour propre is very low this afternoon and having a young woman coming in, radiant with efficiency and success, is more than I can bear. ”

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