“Canon Pennyfather hasn’t been in, I suppose?” he said in a light voice.
“Canon Pennyfather?”
“You know he’s turned up again?”
“No indeed. Nobody has told me. Where?”
“Some place in the country. Car accident it seems. Wasn’t reported to us. Some good Samaritan just picked him up and looked after him.”
“Oh! I am pleased. Yes, I really am very pleased. I was worried about him.”
“So were his friends,” said Father. “Actually I was looking to see if one of them might be staying here now. Archdeacon—Archdeacon—I can’t remember his name now, but I’d know it if I saw it.”
“Tomlinson?” said Miss Gorringe helpfully. “He is due next week. From Salisbury.”
“No, not Tomlinson. Well, it doesn’t matter.” He turned away.
It was quiet in the lounge tonight.
An ascetic-looking middle-aged man was reading through a badly typed thesis, occasionally writing a comment in the margin in such small crabbed handwriting as to be almost illegible. Every time he did this, he smiled in vinegary satisfaction.
There were one or two married couples of long-standing who had little need to talk to each other. Occasionally two or three people were gathered together in the name of the weather conditions, discussing anxiously how they or their families were going to get where they wanted to be.
“—I rang up and begged Susan not to come by car…it means the M1 and always so dangerous in fog—”
“They say it’s clearer in the Midlands….”
Chief-Inspector Davy noted them as he passed. Without haste, and with no seeming purpose, he arrived at his objective.
Miss Marple was sitting near the fire and observing his approach.
“So you’re still here, Miss Marple. I’m glad.”
“I go tomorrow,” said Miss Marple.
That fact had, somehow, been implicit in her attitude. She had sat, not relaxed, but upright, as one sits in an airport lounge, or a railway waiting room. Her luggage, he was sure, would be packed, only toilet things and night wear to be added.
“It is the end of my fortnight’s holiday,” she explained.
“You’ve enjoyed it, I hope?”
Miss Marple did not answer at once.
“In a way—yes….” She stopped.
“And in another way, no?”
“It’s difficult to explain what I mean—”
“Aren’t you, perhaps, a little too near the fire? Rather hot, here. Wouldn’t you like to move—into that corner perhaps?”
Miss Marple looked at the corner indicated, then she looked at Chief-Inspector Davy.
“I think you are quite right,” she said.
He gave her a hand up, carried her handbag and her book for her and established her in the quiet corner he had indicated.
“All right?”
“Quite all right.”
“You know why I suggested it?”
“You thought—very kindly—that it was too hot for me by the fire. Besides,” she added, “our conversation cannot be overheard here.”
“Have you got something you want to tell me, Miss Marple?”
“Now why should you think that?”
“You looked as though you had,” said Davy.
“I’m sorry I showed it so plainly,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Well, what about it?”
“I don’t know if I ought to do so. I would like you to believe, Inspector, that I am not really fond of interfering. I am against interference. Though often well-meant, it can cause a great deal of harm.”
“It’s like that, is it? I see. Yes, it’s quite a problem for you.”
“Sometimes one sees people doing things that seem to one unwise—even dangerous. But has one any right to interfere? Usually not, I think.”
“Is this Canon Pennyfather you’re talking about?”
“Canon Pennyfather?” Miss Marple sounded very surprised. “Oh no. Oh dear me no, nothing whatever to do with him. It concerns—a girl.”
“A girl, indeed? And you thought I could help?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Marple. “I simply don’t know. But I’m worried, very worried.”
Father did not press her. He sat there looking large and comfortable and rather stupid. He let her take her time. She had been willing to do her best to help him, and he was quite prepared to do anything he could to help her. He was not, perhaps, particularly interested. On the other hand, one never knew.
“One reads in the papers,” said Miss Marple in a low clear voice, “accounts of proceedings in court; of young people, children or girls ‘in need of care and protection.’ It’s just a sort of legal phrase, I suppose, but it could mean something real.”
“This girl you mentioned, you feel she is in need of care and protection?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“Alone in the world?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “Very much not so, if I may put it that way. She is to all outward appearances very heavily protected and very well cared for.”
“Sounds interesting,” said Father.
“She was staying in this hotel,” said Miss Marple, “with a Mrs. Carpenter, I think. I looked in the register to see the name. The girl’s name is Elvira Blake.”
Father looked up with a quick air of interest.
“She was a lovely girl. Very young, very much, as I say, sheltered and protected. Her guardian was a Colonel Luscombe, a very nice man. Quite charming. Elderly of course, and I am afraid terribly innocent.”
“The guardian or the girl?”
“I meant the guardian,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t know about the girl. But I do think she is in danger. I came across her quite by chance in Battersea Park. She was sitting at a refreshment place there with a young man.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Father. “Undesirable, I suppose. Beatnik—spiv—thug—”
“A very handsome man,” said Miss Marple. “Not so very young. Thirty-odd, the kind of man that I should say is very attractive to women, but his face is a bad face. Cruel, hawklike, predatory.”
“He mayn’t be as bad as he looks,” said Father soothingly.
“If anything he is worse than he looks,” said Miss Marple. “I am convinced of it. He drives a large racing car.”
Father looked up quickly.
“Racing car?”
“Yes. Once or twice I’ve seen it standing near this hotel.”
“You don’t remember the number, do you?”
“Yes, indeed I do. FAN 2266. I had a cousin who stuttered,” Miss Marple explained. “That’s how I remember it.”
Father looked puzzled.
“Do you know who he is?” demanded Miss Marple.
“As a matter of fact I do,” said Father slowly. “Half French, half Polish. Very well-known racing driver, he was world champion three years ago. His name is Ladislaus Malinowski. You’re quite right in some of your views about him. He has a bad reputation where women are concerned. That is to say, he is not a suitable friend for a young girl. But it’s not easy to do anything about that sort of thing. I suppose she is meeting him on the sly, is that it?”
“Almost certainly,” said Miss Marple.
“Did you approach her guardian?”
“I don’t know him,” said Miss Marple. “I’ve only just been introduced to him once by a mutual friend. I don’t like the idea of going to him in a tale-bearing way. I wondered if perhaps in some way you could do something about it.”
“I can try,” said Father. “By the way, I thought you might like to know that your friend, Canon Pennyfather, has turned up all right.”
“Indeed!” Miss Marple looked animated. “Where?”
“A place called Milton St. John.”
“How very odd. What was he doing there? Did he know?”
“Apparently—” Chief-Inspector Davy stressed the word—“he had had an accident.”
“What kind of an accident?”
“Knocked down by a car—concussed—or else, of course, he might have been conked on the head.”
“Oh! I see.” Miss Marple considered the point. “Doesn’t he know himself?”
“He says—” again the Chief-Inspector stressed the word—“that he does not know anything.”
“Very remarkable.”
“Isn’t it? The last thing he remembers is driving in a taxi to Kensington Air Station.”
Miss Marple shook her head perplexedly.
“I know it does happen that way in concussion,” she murmured. “Didn’t he say anything—useful?”
“He murmured something about the Walls of Jericho.”
“Joshua?” hazarded Miss Marple, “or Archaeology—excavations?—or I remember, long ago, a play—by Mr. Sutro, I think.”
“And all this week north of the Thames, Gaumont Cinemas—The Walls of Jericho, featuring Olga Radbourne and Bart Levinne,” said Father.
Miss Marple looked at him suspiciously.
“He could have gone to that film in the Cromwell Road. He could have come out about eleven and come back here—though if so, someone ought to have seen him—it would be well before midnight—”
“Took the wrong bus,” Miss Marple suggested. “Something like that—”
“Say he got back here after midnight,” Father said—“he could have walked up to his room without anyone seeing him—But if so, what happened then—and why did he go out again three hours later?”
Miss Marple groped for a word.
“The only idea that occurs to me is—oh!”
She jumped as a report sounded from the street outside.
“Car backfiring,” said Father soothingly.
“I’m sorry to be so jumpy—I am nervous tonight—that feeling one has—”
“That something’s going to happen? I don’t think you need worry.”
“I have never liked fog.”
“I wanted to tell you,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “that you’ve given me a lot of help. The things you’ve noticed here—just little things—they’ve added up.”
“So there was something wrong with this place?”
“There was and is everything wrong with it.”
Miss Marple sighed.
“It seemed wonderful at first—unchanged you know—like stepping back into the past—to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed.”
She paused.
“But of course, it wasn’t really like that. I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn’t it?”
“Something of the sort,” agreed Father.
“I remember,” said Miss Marple, diverging from her main topic in a characteristic way, “I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysée Hotel. And my grandmother looked round, and she said suddenly, ‘Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!’ And she was, too! When she got home she packed up all her bonnets, and her headed mantles too—and sent them off—”
“To the Jumble Sale?” inquired Father, sympathetically.
“Oh no. Nobody would have wanted them at a jumble sale. She sent them to a theatrical Repertory Company. They appreciated them very much. But let me see—” Miss Marple recovered her direction. “—Where was I?”
“Summing up this place.”
“Yes. It seemed all right—but it wasn’t. It was mixed-up—real people and people who weren’t real. One couldn’t always tell them apart.”
“What do you mean by not real?”
“There were retired military men, but there were also what seemed to be military men but who had never been in the Army. And clergymen who weren’t clergymen. And admirals and sea captains who’ve never been in the Navy. My friend, Selina Hazy—it amused me at first how she was always so anxious to recognize people she knew (quite natural, of course) and how often she was mistaken and they weren’t the people she thought they were. But it happened too often. And so—I began to wonder. Even Rose, the chambermaid—so nice—but I began to think that perhaps she wasn’t real, either.”
“If it interests you to know, she’s an ex-actress. A good one. Gets a better salary here than she ever drew on the stage.”
“But—why?”
“Mainly, as part of the décor. Perhaps there’s more than that to it.”
“I’m glad to be leaving here,” said Miss Marple. She gave a little shiver. “Before anything happens.”
Chief-Inspector Davy looked at her curiously.
“What do you expect to happen?” he asked.
“Evil of some kind,” said Miss Marple.
“Evil is rather a big word—”
“You think it is too melodramatic? But I have some experience—seem to have been—so often—in contact with murder.”
“Murder?” Chief-Inspector Davy shook his head. “I’m not suspecting murder. Just a nice cosy round-up of some remarkably clever criminals—”
“That’s not the same thing. Murder—the wish to do murder—is something quite different. It—how shall I say?—it defies God.”
He looked at her and shook his head gently and reassuringly.
“There won’t be any murders,” he said.
A sharp report, louder than the former one, came from outside. It was followed by a scream and another report.
Chief-Inspector Davy was on his feet, moving with a speed surprising in such a bulky man. In a few seconds he was through the swing doors and out in the street.
II
The screaming—a woman’s—was piercing the mist with a note of terror. Chief-Inspector Davy raced down Pond Street in the direction of the screams. He could dimly visualize a woman’s figure backed against a railing. In a dozen strides he had reached her. She wore a long pale fur coat, and her shining blonde hair hung down each side of her face. He thought for a moment that he knew who she was, then he realized that this only a slip of a girl. Sprawled on the pavement at her feet was the body of a man in uniform. Chief-Inspector Davy recognized him. It was Michael Gorman.
As Davy came up to the girl, she clutched at him, shivering all over, stammering out broken phrases.
“Someone tried to kill me…Someone…they shot at me…If it hadn’t been for him—” She pointed down at the motionless figure at her feet. “He pushed me back and got in front of me—and then the second shot came…and he fell…He saved my life. I think he’s hurt—badly hurt….”
Chief-Inspector Davy went down on one knee. His torch came out. The tall Irish commissionaire had fallen like a soldier. The left-hand side of his tunic showed a wet patch that was growing wetter as the blood oozed out into the cloth. Davy rolled up an eyelid, touched a wrist. He rose to his feet again.
“He’s had it all right,” he said.
The girl gave a sharp cry. “Do you mean he’s dead? Oh no, no! He can’t be dead.”
“Who was it shot at you?”
“I don’t know…I’d left my car just round the corner and was feeling my way along by the railings—I was going to Bertram’s Hotel. And then suddenly there was a shot—and a bullet went past my cheek and then—he—the porter from Bertram’s—came running down the street towards me, and shoved me behind him, and then another shot came…I think—I think whoever it was must have been hiding in that area there.”
Chief-Inspector Davy looked where she pointed. At this end of Bertram’s Hotel there was an old-fashioned area below the level of the street, with a gate and some steps down to it. Since it gave only on some storerooms it was not much used. But a man could have hidden there easily enough.
“You didn’t see him?”
“Not properly. He rushed past me like a shadow. It was all thick fog.”
Davy nodded.
The girl began to sob hysterically.
“But who could possibly w
ant to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me? That’s the second time. I don’t understand…why….”
One arm round the girl, Chief-Inspector Davy fumbled in his pocket with the other hand.
The shrill notes of a police whistle penetrated the mist.
III
In the lounge of Bertram’s Hotel, Miss Gorringe had looked up sharply from the desk.
One or two of the visitors had looked up also. The older and deafer did not look up.
Henry, about to lower a glass of old brandy to a table, stopped poised with it still in his hand.
Miss Marple sat forward, clutching the arms of her chair. A retired admiral said derisively:
“Accident! Cars collided in the fog, I expect.”
The swing doors from the street were pushed open. Through them came what seemed like an outsize policeman, looking a good deal larger than life.
He was supporting a girl in a pale fur coat. She seemed hardly able to walk. The policeman looked round for help with some embarrassment.
Miss Gorringe came out from behind the desk, prepared to cope. But at that moment the lift came down. A tall figure emerged, and the girl shook herself free from the policeman’s support, and ran frantically across the lounge.
“Mother,” she cried. “Oh Mother, Mother…” and threw herself, sobbing, into Bess Sedgwick’s arms.
Chapter Twenty-one
Chief-Inspector Davy settled himself back in his chair and looked at the two women sitting opposite him. It was past midnight. Police officials had come and gone. There had been doctors, fingerprint men, an ambulance to remove the body; and now everything had narrowed to this one room dedicated for the purposes of the law by Bertram’s Hotel. Chief-Inspector Davy sat one side of the table. Bess Sedgwick and Elvira sat the other side. Against the wall a policeman sat unobtrusively writing. Detective-Sergeant Wadell sat near the door.
Father looked thoughtfully at the two women facing him. Mother and daughter. There was, he noted, a strong superficial likeness between them. He could understand how for one moment in the fog he had taken Elvira Blake for Bess Sedgwick. But now, looking at them, he was more struck by the points of difference than the points of resemblance. They were not really alike save in colouring, yet the impression persisted that here he had a positive and a negative version of the same personality. Everything about Bess Sedgwick was positive. Her vitality, her energy, her magnetic attraction. He admired Lady Sedgwick. He always had admired her. He had admired her courage and had always been excited over her exploits; had said, reading his Sunday papers: “She’ll never get away with that,” and invariably she had got away with it! He had not thought it possible that she would reach journey’s end and she had reached journey’s end. He admired particularly the indestructible quality of her. She had had one air crash, several car crashes, had been thrown badly twice from her horse, but at the end of it here she was. Vibrant, alive, a personality one could not ignore for a moment. He took off his hat to her mentally. Some day, of course, she would come a cropper. You could only bear a charmed life for so long. His eyes went from mother to daughter. He wondered. He wondered very much.