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‘And because she knew that Dora would look at the matter in exactly the same way as she did herself, she told Dora what she had done. Dora approved wholeheartedly. In her confused muddle-headed mind it seemed only right that dear Lotty should not be done out of her inheritance by Letty’s untimely death. Lottydeserved a reward for all the patient suffering she had borne so bravely. It would have been most unfair if all that money should have gone to somebody nobody had ever heard of.
‘She quite understood that nothing must be allowed to get out. It was like an extra pound of butter. You couldn’t talk about it but there was nothing wrong about having it. So Dora came to Little Paddocks-and very soon Charlotte began to understand that she had made a terrible mistake. It was not merely the fact that Dora Bu
‘Still, nobody was likely to pay attention to Dora’s inconsistencies. The real blow to Charlotte’s security came, as I say, when she was recognized and spoken to by Rudi Scherz at the Royal Spa Hotel.
‘I think that the money Rudi Scherz used to replace his earlier defalcations at the hotel may have come from Charlotte Blacklock. Inspector Craddock doesn’t believe-and I don’t either-that Rudi Scherz applied to her for money with any idea of blackmail in his head.’
‘He hadn’t the faintest idea he knew anything to blackmail her about,’ said Inspector Craddock. ‘He knew that he was quite a personable young man-and he was aware by experience that personable young men sometimes can get money out of elderly ladies if they tell a hard-luck story convincingly enough.
‘But she may have seen it differently. She may have thought that it was a form of insidious blackmail, that perhaps he suspected something-and that later, if there was publicity in the papers as there might be after Belle Goedler’s death, he would realize that in her he had found a gold mine.
‘And she was committed to the fraud now. She’d established herself as Letitia Blacklock. With the Bank. With Mrs Goedler. The only snag was this rather dubious Swiss hotel clerk, an unreliable character, and possibly a blackmailer. If only he were out of the way-she’d be safe.
‘Perhaps she made it all up as a kind of fantasy first. She’d been starved of emotion and drama in her life. She pleased herself by working out the details. How would she go about getting rid of him?
‘She made her plan. And at last she decided to act on it. She told her story of a sham hold-up at a party to Rudi Scherz, explained that she wanted a stranger to act the part of the “gangster”, and offered him a generous sum for his co-operation.
‘And the fact that he agreed without any suspicion is what makes me quite certain that Scherz had no idea that he had any kind of hold over her. To him she was just a rather foolish old woman, very ready to part with money.
‘She gave him the advertisement to insert, arranged for him to pay a visit to Little Paddocks to study the geography of the house, and showed him the spot where she would meet him and let him into the house on the night in question. Dora Bu
‘The day came-’ He paused.
Miss Marple took up the tale in her gentle voice.
‘She must have spent a very miserable day. You see, it still wasn’t too late to draw back…Dora Bu
‘It had been fun, perhaps, getting the revolver out of Colonel Easterbrook’s collar drawer. Taking along eggs, or jam-slipping upstairs in the empty house. It had been fun getting the second door in the drawing-room oiled, so that it would open and shut noiselessly. Fun suggesting the moving of the table outside the door so that Phillipa’s flower arrangements would show to better advantage. It may have all seemed like a game. But what was going to happen next definitely wasn’t a game any longer. Oh, yes, she was frightened…Dora Bu
‘All the same, she went through with it,’ said Craddock. ‘And it all went according to plan. She went out just after six to “shut up the ducks”, and she let Scherz in then and gave him the mask and cloak and gloves and the torch. Then, at 6.30, when the clock begins to chime, she’s ready by that table near the archway with her hand on the cigarette-box. It’s all so natural. Patrick, acting as host, has gone for the drinks. She, the hostess, is fetching the cigarettes. She’d judged, quite correctly, that when the clock begins to chime, everyone will look at the clock. They did. Only one person, the devoted Dora, kept her eyes fixed on her friend. And she told us, in her very first statement, exactly what Miss Blacklock did. She said that Miss Blacklock had picked up the vase of violets.
‘She’d previously frayed the cord of the lamp so that the wires were nearly bare. The whole thing only took a second. The cigarette-box, the vase and the little switch were all close together. She picked up the violets, spilt the water on the frayed place and switched on the lamp. Water’s a good conductor of electricity. The wires fused.’
‘Just like the other afternoon at the Vicarage,’ said Bunch. ‘That’s what startled you so, wasn’t it, Aunt Jane?’
‘Yes, my dear. I’ve been puzzling about those lights. I’d realized that there were two lamps, a pair, and that one had been changed for the other-probably during the night.’
‘That’s right,’ said Craddock. ‘When Fletcher examined that lamp the next morning it was, like all the others, perfectly in order, no frayed flex or fused wires.’
‘I’d understood what Dora Bu
‘And she saw what she described as a flash and a crackle,’ put in Craddock.
‘And, of course, when dear Bunch spilt the water from the Christmas roses on to the lamp wire-I realized at once that only Miss Blacklock herself could have fused the lights because only she was near that table.’
‘I could kick myself,’ said Craddock. ‘Dora Bu
He went on:
‘She was highly suggestible, of course. And Miss Blacklock took advantage of that more than once. Bu
‘Why pick on me?’ demanded Patrick in an aggrieved tone.
‘It was not, I think, a serious suggestion-but it would keep Bu
‘Nail scissors, I expect,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Just a snip on the lobe of the ear lets out a lot of blood. That was very good psychology, of course. The actual blood ru
‘It ought to have gone off quite all right,’ said Craddock. ‘Dora Bu
‘Oh, no, no.’ Miss Marple shook her head energetically. ‘Any little efforts on my part were quite incidental. It was you who weren’t satisfied, Mr Craddock. It wasyou who wouldn’t let the case be closed.’
‘I wasn’t happy about it,’ said Craddock. ‘I knew it was all wrong somewhere. But I didn’t seewhere it was wrong, till you showed me. And after that Miss Blacklock had a real piece of bad luck. I discovered that that second door had been tampered with. Until that moment, whatever we agreedmight have happened-we’d nothing to go upon but a pretty theory. But that oiled door wasevidence. And I hit upon it by pure chance-by catching hold of a handle by mistake.’
‘I think you wereled to it, Inspector,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But then I’m old-fashioned.’
‘So the hunt was up again,’ said Craddock. ‘But this time with a difference. We were looking now for someone with a motive to kill Letitia Blacklock.’