Adventure of the Christmas Pudding Part 28

"I'll write to her," said Raymond.

"I wonder," said Miss Marple thoughtfully, "what the old lady meant by that remark about a policeman?"

"Oh, it was just a joke."

"It reminded me," said Miss Marple, nodding her head vigorously, "yes, it reminded me very much of Mr Naysmith."

"Who was Mr Naysmith?" asked Raymond curiously.

"He kept bees," said Miss Marple, "and was very good at doing the acrostics in the Sunday papers. And he liked giving people false impressions just for fun. But sometimes it led to trouble."

Everybody was silent for a moment, considering Mr Naysmith, but as there did not seem to be any points of resemblance between him and Miss Greenshaw, they decided that dear Aunt Jane was perhaps getting a little bit disconnected in her old age.

Horace Bindler went back to London without having collected any more monstrosities, and Raymond West wrote a letter to Miss Greenshaw telling her that he knew of a Mrs Louise Oxley who would be competent to undertake work on the diaries. After a lapse of some days a letter arrived, written in spidery old-fas.h.i.+oned handwriting, in which Miss Greenshaw declared herself anxious to avail herself of the services of Mrs Oxley, and making an appointment for Mrs Oxley to come and see her.

Louise duly kept the appointment, generous terms were arranged, and she started work the following day.

"I'm awfully grateful to you," she said to Raymond. "It will fit in beautifully. I can take the children to school, go on to Greenshaw's Folly, and pick them up on my way back. How fantastic the whole setup is! That old woman has to be seen to be believed."

On the evening of her first day at work she returned and described her day.

"I've hardly seen the housekeeper," she said. "She came in with coffee and biscuits at half-past eleven, with her mouth pursed up very prunes and prisms, and would hardly speak to me. I think she disapproves deeply of my having been engaged." She went on, "It seems there's quite a feud between her and the gardener, Alfred. He's a local boy and fairly lazy, I should imagine, and he and the housekeeper won't speak to each other. Miss Greenshaw said in her rather grand way, 'There have always been feuds as far as I can remember between the garden and the house staff. It was so in my grandfather's time. There were three men and a boy in the garden then, and eight maids in the house, but there was always friction.'"

On the next day Louise returned with another piece of news.

"Just fancy," she said, "I was asked to ring up the nephew today."

"Miss Greenshaw's nephew?"

"Yes. It seems he's an actor playing in the stock company that's doing a summer season at Boreham-on-Sea. I rang up the theater and left a message asking him to lunch tomorrow. Rather fun, really. The old girl didn't want the housekeeper to know. I think Mrs Cresswell has done something that's annoyed her."

"Tomorrow another installment of this thrilling serial," murmured Raymond.

"It's exactly like a serial, isn't it? Reconciliation with the nephew, blood is thicker than water - another will to be made and the old will destroyed.

"Aunt Jane, you're looking very serious."

"Was I, my dear? Have you heard any more about the policeman?"

Louise looked bewildered. "I don't know anything about a policeman."

"That remark of hers, my dear," said Miss Marple, "must have meant something."

Louise arrived, at her work the following day in a cheerful mood. She pa.s.sed through the open front door - the doors and windows of the house were always open. Miss Greenshaw appeared to have no fear of burglars, and was probably justified, as most things in the house weighed several tons and were of no marketable value. Louise had pa.s.sed Alfred in the drive. When she first noticed him he had been leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette, but as soon as he had caught sight of her he had seized a broom and begun diligently to sweep leaves. An idle young man, she thought, but good-looking. His features reminded her of someone. As she pa.s.sed through the hall on the way upstairs to the library, she glanced at the large picture of Nathaniel Greenshaw which presided over the mantelpiece, showing him in the acme of Victorian prosperity, leaning back in a large armchair, his hands resting on the gold Albert chain across his capacious stomach. As her glance swept up from the stomach to the face with its heavy jowls, its bushy eyebrows and its flouris.h.i.+ng black moustache, the thought occurred to her that Nathaniel Greenshaw must have been handsome as a young man. He had looked, perhaps, a little like Alfred...

She went into the library on the second floor, shut the door behind her, opened her typewriter, and got out the diaries from the drawer at the side of her desk. Through the open window she caught a glimpse of Miss Greenshaw below, in a pure-coloured sprigged print, bending over the rockery, weeding a.s.siduously. They had had two wet days, of which the weeds had taken full advantage.

Louise, a town-bred girl, decided that if she ever had a garden, it would never contain a rockery which needed weeding by hand. Then she settled down to her work.

When Mrs Cresswell entered the library with the coffee tray at half- past eleven, she was clearly in a very bad temper. She banged the tray down on the table and observed to the universe: "Company for lunch - and nothing in the house! What am I supposed to do, I should like to know? And no sign of Alfred."

"He was sweeping the drive when I got here," Louise offered.

"I daresay. A nice soft job."

Mrs Cresswell swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Louise grinned to herself. She wondered what "the nephew" would be like.

She finished her coffee and settled down to her work again. It was so absorbing that time pa.s.sed quickly. Nathaniel Greenshaw, when he started to keep a diary, had succ.u.mbed to the pleasures of frankness. Typing out a pa.s.sage relating to the personal charms of a barmaid in the neighbouring town, Louise reflected that a good deal of editing would be necessary.

As she was thinking this, she was startled by the scream from the garden. Jumping up, she ran to the open window. Below her Miss Greenshaw was staggering away from the rockery toward the house. Her hands were clasped to her breast, and between her hands there protruded a feathered shaft that Louise recognised with stupefaction to be the shaft of an arrow.

Miss Greenshaw's head, in its battered straw hat, fell forward on her breast. She called up to Louise in a failing voice: "... shot... he shot me... with an arrow... get help..."

Louise rushed to the door. She turned the handle, but the door would not open. It took her a moment or two of futile endeavour to realize that she was locked in. She ran back to the window and called down.

"I'm locked in!"

Miss Greenshaw, her back toward Louise and swaying a little on her feet, was calling up to the housekeeper at a window farther along.

"Ring police... telephone..."

Then, lurching from side to side like a drunkard, Miss Greenshaw disappeared from Louise's view through the window and staggered into the drawing-room on the ground floor. A moment later Louise heard a crash of broken china, a heavy fall, and then silence. Her imagination reconstructed the scene. Miss Greenshaw must have stumbled blindly into a small table with a Sevres tea set on it.

Desperately Louise pounded on the library door, calling and shouting. There was no creeper or drainpipe outside the window that could help her to get out that way.

Tired at last of beating on the door, Louise returned to the window. From the window of her sitting-room farther along the housekeeper's head appeared.

"Come and let me out, Mrs Oxley. I'm locked in."

"So am I," said Louise.

"Oh, dear, isn't it awful? I've telephoned the police. There's an extension in this room, but what I can't understand, Mrs Oxley, is our being locked in. I never heard a key turn, did you?"

"No, I didn't hear anything at all. Oh, dear, what shall we do? Perhaps Alfred might hear us." Louise shouted at the top of her voice, "Alfred, Alfred."

"Gone to his dinner as likely as not. What time is it?"

Louise glanced at her watch.

"Twenty-five past twelve."

"He's not supposed to go until half-past, but he sneaks off earlier whenever he can."

"Do you think - do you think -"

Louise meant to ask, "Do you think she's dead?" - but the words stuck in her throat.

There was nothing to do but wait. She sat down on the window sill. It seemed an eternity before the stolid helmeted figure of a police constable came round the corner of the house. She leaned out of the window and he looked up at her, shading his eyes with his hand.

"What's going on here?" he demanded.

From their respective windows Louise and Mrs Cresswell poured a flood of excited information down on him.

The constable produced a notebook and pencil. "You ladies ran upstairs and locked yourselves in? Can I have your names, please?"

"Somebody locked us in. Come and let us out."

The constable said reprovingly, "All in good time," and disappeared through the French window below.

Once again time seemed infinite. Louise heard the sound of a car arriving, and after what seemed an hour, but was actually only three minutes, first Mrs Cresswell and then Louise were released by a police sergeant more alert than the original constable.

"Miss Greenshaw?" Louise's voice faltered. "What - what's happened?"

The sergeant cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, madam," he said, "what I've already told Mrs Cresswell here. Miss Greenshaw is dead."

"Murdered," said Mrs Cresswell. "That's what it is - murder?

The sergeant said dubiously, "Could have been an accident - some country lads shooting arrows."

Again there was the sound of a car arriving.

The sergeant said, "That'll be the M.O.," and he started downstairs.

But it was not the M.O. As Louise and Mrs Cresswell came down the stairs, a young man stepped hesitatingly through the front door and paused, looking around him with a somewhat bewildered air.

Then, speaking in a pleasant voice that in some way seemed familiar to Louise - perhaps it reminded her of Miss Greenshaw's - he asked, "Excuse me, does - er - does Miss Greenshaw live here?"

"May I have your name if you please?" said the sergeant, advancing upon him.

"Fletcher," said the young man. "Nat Fletcher. I'm Miss Greenshaw's nephew, as a matter of fact."

"Indeed, sir, well - I'm sorry -"

"Has anything happened?" asked Nat Fletcher.

"There's been an - accident. Your aunt was shot with an arrow - penetrated the jugular vein -"

Mrs Cresswell spoke hysterically and without her usual refinement: "Your h'aunt's been murdered, that's what's happened. Your h'aunt's been murdered."

Inspector Welch drew his chair a little nearer to the table and let his gaze wander from one to the other of the four people in the room. It was evening of the same day. He had called at the Wests' house to take Louise Oxley once more over her statement.

"You are sure of the exact words? Shot - he shot me - with an arrow - get help?"

Louise nodded.

"And the time?"

"I looked at my watch a minute or two later - it was then twelve twenty-five -"

"Your watch keeps good time?"

"I looked at the clock as well." Louise left no doubt of her accuracy.

The inspector turned to Raymond West.

"It appears, sir, that about a week ago you and a Mr Horace Bindler were witnesses to Miss Greenshaw's will?"

Briefly Raymond recounted the events of the afternoon visit he and Horace Bindler had paid to Greenshaw's Folly.

"This testimony of yours may be important," said Welch. "Miss Greenshaw distinctly told you, did she, that her will was being made in favour of Mrs Cresswell, the housekeeper, and that she was not paying Mrs Cresswell any wages in view of the expectations Mrs Cresswell had of profiting by her death?"

"That is what she told me - yes."

"Would you say that Mrs Cresswell was definitely aware of these facts?"

"I should say undoubtedly. Miss Greenshaw made a reference in my presence to beneficiaries not being able to witness a will, and Mrs Creswell clearly understood what she meant by it. Moreover, Miss Greenshaw herself told me that she had come to this arrangement with Mrs Cresswell."

"So Mrs Cresswell had reason to believe she was an interested party. Motive clear enough in her case, and I daresay she'd be our chief suspect now if it wasn't for the fact that she was securely locked in her room like Mrs Oxley here, and also that Miss Greenshaw definitely said a man shot her -"

"She definitely was locked in her room?"

"Oh yes. Sergeant Cayley let her out. It's a big old-fas.h.i.+oned lock with a big old-fas.h.i.+oned key. The key was in the lock and there's not a chance that it could have been turned from inside or any hanky-panky of that kind. No, you can take it definitely that Mrs Cresswell was locked inside that room and couldn't get out. And there were no bows and arrows in the room and Miss Greenshaw couldn't in any case have been shot from her window - the angle forbids it. No, Mrs Cresswell's out." He paused, then went on: "Would you say that Miss Greenshaw, in your opinion, was a practical joker?"

Miss Marple looked up sharply from her corner.

"So the will wasn't in Mrs Cresswell's favour after all?" she said.

Inspector Welch looked over at her in a rather surprised fas.h.i.+on.

"That's a very clever guess of yours, madam," he said. "No, Mrs Cresswell isn't named as beneficiary."

"Just like Mr Naysmith," said Miss Marple, nodding her head. "Miss Greenshaw told Mrs Cresswell she was going to leave her everything and so got out of paying her wages, and then she left her money to somebody else. No doubt she was vastly pleased with herself. No wonder she chortled when she put the will away in Lady Audley's Secret."

"It was lucky Mrs Oxley was able to tell us about the will and where it was put," said the inspector. "We might have had a long hunt for it otherwise."

"A Victorian sense of humour," murmured Raymond West.

"So she left her money to her nephew after all," said Louise.

The inspector shook his head.

"No," he said, "she didn't leave it to Nat Fletcher. The story goes around here - of course, I'm new to the place and I only get the gossip that's secondhand but it seems that in the old days both Miss Greenshaw and her sister were set on the handsome young riding master, and the sister got him. No, she didn't leave the money to her nephew -" Inspector Welch paused, rubbing his chin. "She left it to Alfred," he said.

"Alfred - the gardener?" Joan spoke in a surprised voice.

"Yes, Mrs West. Alfred Pollock."