“And after her death?”
“After her death it was to be divided equally between Mildred and Pippa—or their children, if they themselves had predeceased Caroline.”
“So that, in fact, it goes to Mrs. Strete and to Gina.”
“Yes. Caroline has also quite a considerable fortune of her own—though not in the Gulbrandsen class. Half of this she made over to me four years ago. Of the remaining amount, she left ten thousand pounds to Juliet Bellever, and the rest equally divided between Alex and Stephen Restarick, her two stepsons.”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “That’s bad. That’s very bad.”
“You mean?”
“It means everyone in the house had a financial motive.”
“Yes. And yet, you know, I can’t believe that any of these people would do murder. I simply can’t … Mildred is her daughter—and already quite well provided for. Gina is devoted to her grandmother. She is generous and extravagant, but has no acquisitive feelings. Jolly Bellever is fanatically devoted to Caroline. The two Restaricks care for Caroline as though she were really their mother. They have no money of their own to speak of, but quite a lot of Caroline’s income has gone towards financing their enterprises—especially so with Alex. I simply can’t believe either of those two would deliberately poison her for the sake of inheriting money at her death. I just can’t believe any of it, Miss Marple.”
“There’s Gina’s husband, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” said Lewis gravely. “There is Gina’s husband.”
“You don’t really know much about him. And one can’t help seeing that he’s a very unhappy young man.”
Lewis sighed.
“He hasn’t fitted in here—no. He’s no interest in or sympathy for what we’re trying to do. But after all, why should he? He’s young, crude, and he comes from a country where a man is esteemed by the success he makes of life.”
“Whilst here we are so very fond of failures,” said Miss Marple.
Lewis Serrocold looked at her sharply and suspiciously.
She flushed a little and murmured rather incoherently:
“I think sometimes, you know, one can overdo things the other way … I mean the young people with a good heredity, and brought up wisely in a good home—and with grit and pluck and the ability to get on in life—well, they are really, when one comes down to it—the sort of people a country needs.”
Lewis frowned and Miss Marple hurried on, getting pinker and pinker and more and more incoherent.
“Not that I don’t appreciate—I do indeed—you and Carrie Louise—a really noble work—real compassion—and one should have compassion—because after all it’s what people are that counts—good and bad luck—and much more expected (and rightly) of the lucky ones. But I do think sometimes one’s sense of proportion—oh, I don’t mean you, Mr. Serrocold. Really I don’t know what I mean—but the English are rather odd that way. Even in war, so much prouder of their defeats and their retreats than of their victories. Foreigners never can understand why we’re so proud of Dunkerque. It’s the sort of thing they’d prefer not to mention themselves. But we always seem to be almost embarrassed by a victory—and treat it as though it weren’t quite nice to boast about it. And look at all our poets! ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ And the little Revenge went down in the Spanish Main. It’s really a very odd characteristic when you come to think of it!”
Miss Marple drew a fresh breath.
“What I really mean is that everything here must seem rather peculiar to young Walter Hudd.”
“Yes,” Lewis allowed. “I see your point. And Walter has certainly a fine war record. There’s no doubt about his bravery.”
“Not that that helps,” said Miss Marple candidly. “Because war is one thing, and everyday life is quite another. And actually to commit a murder, I think you do need bravery—or perhaps, more often, just conceit. Yes, conceit.”
“But I would hardly say that Walter Hudd had a sufficient motive.”
“Wouldn’t you?” said Miss Marple. “He hates it here. He wants to get away. He wants to get Gina away. And if it’s really money he wants, it would be important for Gina to get all the money before she—er—definitely forms an attachment to someone else.”
“An attachment to someone else,” said Lewis, in an astonished voice.
Miss Marple wondered at the blindness of enthusiastic social reformers.
“That’s what I said. Both the Restaricks are in love with her, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Lewis absently.
He went on:
“Stephen’s invaluable to us—quite invaluable. The way he’s got those lads coming along—keen—interested. They gave a splendid show last month. Scenery, costumes, everything. It just shows, as I’ve always said to Maverick, that it’s lack of drama in their lives that leads these boys to crime. To dramatise yourself is a child’s natural instinct. Maverick says—ah yes, Maverick—”
Lewis broke off.
“I want Maverick to see Inspector Curry about Edgar. The whole thing is so ridiculous really.”
“What do you really know about Edgar Lawson, Mr. Serrocold?”
“Everything,” said Lewis positively. “Everything, that is, that one needs to know. His background, upbringing—his deep-seated lack of confidence in himself—”
Miss Marple interrupted.
“Couldn’t Edgar Lawson have poisoned Mrs. Serrocold?” she asked.
“Hardly. He’s only been here a few weeks. And anyway, it’s ridiculous! Why should Edgar want to poison my wife? What could he possibly gain by doing so?”
“Nothing material, I know. But he might have—some odd reason. He is odd, you know.”
“You mean unbalanced?”
“I suppose so. No, I don’t—not quite. What I mean is, he’s all wrong.”
It was not a very lucid exposition of what she felt. Lewis Serrocold accepted the words at their face value.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “He’s all wrong, poor lad. And he was showing such marked improvement. I can’t really understand why he had this sudden setback….”
Miss Marple leaned forward eagerly.
“Yes, that’s what I wondered. If—”
She broke off as Inspector Curry came into the room.
Twelve
1
Lewis Serrocold went away and Inspector Curry sat down and gave Miss Marple a rather peculiar smile.
“So Mr. Serrocold has been asking you to act as watchdog,” he said.
“Well, yes,” she added apologetically. “I hope you don’t mind—”
“I don’t mind. I think it’s a very good idea. Does Mr. Serrocold know just how well qualified you are for the post?”
“I don’t quite understand, Inspector.”
“I see. He thinks you’re just a very nice, elderly lady who was at school with his wife.” He shook his head at her. “We know you’re a bit more than that, Miss Marple, aren’t you? Crime is right down your street. Mr. Serrocold only knows one aspect of crime—the promising beginners. Makes me a bit sick, sometimes. Daresay I’m wrong and old-fashioned. But there are plenty of good decent lads about, lads who could do with a start in life. But there, honesty has to be its own reward—millionaires don’t leave trust funds to help the worthwhile. Well—well, don’t pay any attention to me. I’m old-fashioned. I’ve seen boys—and girls—with everything against them, bad homes, bad luck, every disadvantage, and they’ve had the grit to win through. That’s the kind I shall leave my packet to, if I ever have one. But then, of course, that’s what I never shall have. Just my pension and a nice bit of garden.”
He nodded his head at Miss Marple.
“Superintendent Blacker told me about you last night. Said you’d had a lot of experience of the seamy side of human nature. Well now, let’s have your point of view. Who’s the nigger in the woodpile? The G.I. husband?”
“That,” said Miss Marple, “would be very convenient
for everybody.”
Inspector Curry smiled softly to himself.
“A G.I. pinched my best girl,” he said reminiscently. “Naturally, I’m prejudiced. His manner doesn’t help. Let’s have the amateur point of view. Who’s been secretly and systematically poisoning Mrs. Serrocold?”
“Well,” said Miss Marple judicially, “one is always inclined, human nature being what it is, to think of the husband. Or if it’s the other way round, the wife. That’s the first assumption, don’t you think, in a poisoning case?”
“I agree with you every time,” said Inspector Curry.
“But really—in this case—” Miss Marple shook her head. “No, frankly—I cannot seriously consider Mr. Serrocold. Because you see, Inspector, he really is devoted to his wife. Naturally he would make a parade of being so—but it isn’t a parade. It’s very quiet, but it’s genuine. He loves his wife, and I’m quite certain he wouldn’t poison her.”
“To say nothing of the fact that he wouldn’t have any motive for doing so. She’s made over her money to him already.”
“Of course,” said Miss Marple primly, “there are other reasons for a gentleman wanting his wife out of the way. An attachment to a young woman, for instance. But I really don’t see any signs of it in this case. Mr. Serrocold does not act as though he had any romantic preoccupation. I’m really afraid,” she sounded quite regretful about it, “we shall have to wash him out.”
“Regrettable, isn’t it?” said the Inspector. He grinned. “And anyway, he couldn’t have killed Gulbrandsen. It seems to me that there’s no doubt that the one thing hinges on the other. Whoever is poisoning Mrs. Serrocold killed Gulbrandsen to prevent him spilling the beans. What we’ve got to get at now is who had an opportunity to kill Gulbrandsen last night. And our prize suspect—there’s no doubt about it—is young Walter Hudd. It was he who switched on a reading lamp which resulted in a fuse going, thereby giving him the opportunity to leave the Hall and go to the fuse box. The fuse box is in the kitchen passage which opens off from the main corridor. It was during his absence from the Great Hall that the shot was heard. So that’s suspect No 1 perfectly placed for committing the crime.”
“And suspect No 2?” asked Miss Marple.
“Suspect 2 is Alex Restarick who was alone in his car between the lodge and the house and took too long getting there.”
“Anybody else?” Miss Marple leaned forward eagerly—remembering to add, “It’s very kind of you to tell me all this.”
“It’s not kindness,” said Inspector Curry. “I’ve got to have your help. You put your finger on the spot when you said ‘Anybody else?’ Because there I’ve got to depend on you. You were there, in the Hall last night, and you can tell me who left it….”
“Yes—yes, I ought to be able to tell you … but can I? You see—the circumstances—”
“You mean that you were all listening to the argument going on behind the door of Mr. Serrocold’s study.”
Miss Marple nodded vehemently.
“Yes, you see we were all really very frightened. Mr. Lawson looked—he really did—quite demented. Apart from Mrs. Serrocold who seemed quite unaffected, we all feared that he would do a mischief to Mr. Serrocold. He was shouting, you know, and saying the most terrible things—we could hear them quite plainly—and what with that and with most of the lights being out—I didn’t really notice anything else.”
“You mean that whilst that scene was going on, anybody could have slipped out of the Hall, gone along the corridor, shot Mr. Gulbrandsen, and slipped back again?”
“I think it would have been possible….”
“Could you say definitely that anybody was in the Great Hall the whole time?”
Miss Marple considered.
“I could say that Mrs. Serrocold was—because I was watching her. She was sitting quite close to the study door, and she never moved from her seat. It surprised me, you know, that she was able to remain so calm.”
“And the others?”
“Miss Bellever went out—but I think—I am almost sure—that that was after the shot. Mrs. Strete? I really don’t know. She was sitting behind me, you see. Gina was over by the far window. I think she remained there the whole time but, of course, I cannot be sure. Stephen was at the piano. He stopped playing when the quarrel began to get heated—”
“We mustn’t be misled by the time you heard the shot,” said Inspector Curry. “That’s a trick that’s been done before now, you know. Fake up a shot so as to fix the time of a crime, and fix it wrong. If Miss Bellever had cooked up something of that kind (farfetched—but you never know) then she’d leave as she did, openly, after the shot was heard. No, we can’t go by the shot. The limits are between when Christian Gulbrandsen left the Hall to the moment when Miss Bellever found him dead, and we can only eliminate those people who were known not to have had opportunity. That gives us Lewis Serrocold and young Edgar Lawson in the study, and Mrs. Serrocold in the Hall. It’s very unfortunate, of course, that Gulbrandsen should be shot on the same evening that this schemozzle happened between Serrocold and this young Lawson.”
“Just unfortunate, you think?” murmured Miss Marple.
“Oh? What do you think?”
“It occurred to me,” murmured Miss Marple, “that it might have been contrived.”
“So that’s your idea?”
“Well, everybody seems to think it very odd that Edgar Lawson should quite suddenly have a relapse, so to speak. He’d got this curious complex, or whatever the term is, about his unknown father. Winston Churchill and Viscount Montgomery—all quite likely in his state of mind. Just any famous man he happened to think of. But suppose somebody puts it into his head that it’s Lewis Serrocold who is really his father, that it’s Lewis Serrocold who has been persecuting him—that he ought, by rights, to be the crown prince, as it were, of Stonygates. In his weak mental state he’ll accept the idea—work himself up into a frenzy, and sooner or later will make the kind of scene he did make. And what a wonderful cover that will be! Everybody will have their attention fixed on the dangerous situation that is developing—especially if somebody has thoughtfully supplied him with a revolver.”
“Hm, yes. Walter Hudd’s revolver.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I’d thought of that. But you know, Walter is uncommunicative and he’s certainly sullen and ungracious, but I don’t really think he’s stupid.”
“So you don’t think it’s Walter?”
“I think everybody would be very relieved if it was Walter. That sounds very unkind, but it’s because he is an outsider.”
“What about his wife?” asked Inspector Curry. “Would she be relieved?”
Miss Marple did not answer. She was thinking of Gina and Stephen Restarick standing together as she had seen them on her first day. And she thought of the way Alex Restarick’s eyes had gone straight to Gina as he had entered the Hall last night. What was Gina’s own attitude?
2
Two hours later Inspector Curry tilted back his chair, stretched himself, and sighed.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve cleared a good deal of ground.”
Sergeant Lake agreed.
“The servants are out,” he said. “They were together all through the critical period—those that sleep here. The ones that don’t live in had gone home.”
Curry nodded. He was suffering from mental fatigue.
He had interviewed physiotherapists, members of the teaching staff, and what he called to himself, the “two young lags” whose turn it had been to dine with the family that night. All their stories dovetailed and checked. He could write them off. Their activities and habits were communal. There were no lonely souls among them. Which was useful for the purposes of alibis. Curry had kept Dr. Maverick who was, as far as he could judge, the chief person in charge of the Institute, to the end.
“But we’ll have him in now, Lake.”
So the young doctor bustled in, neat and spruce and rather inhuman-looking behin
d his pince-nez.
Maverick confirmed the statements of his staff, and agreed with Curry’s findings. There had been no slackness, no loophole in the College impregnability. Christian Gulbrandsen’s death could not be laid to the account of the “young patients” as Curry almost called them—so hypnotized had he become by the fervent medical atmosphere.
“But patients is exactly what they are, Inspector,” said Dr. Maverick with a little smile.
It was a superior smile, and Inspector Curry would not have been human if he had not resented it just a little.
He said professionally:
“Now as regards your own movements, Dr. Maverick? Can you give me an account of them?”
“Certainly. I have jotted them down for you with the approximate times.”
Dr. Maverick had left the Great Hall at fifteen minutes after nine with Mr. Lacy and Mr. Baumgarten. They had gone to Mr. Baumgarten’s rooms where they had all three remained discussing certain courses of treatment until Miss Bellever had come hurrying in and asked Dr. Maverick to go to the Great Hall. That was at approximately half past nine. He had gone at once to the Hall and had found Edgar Lawson in a state of collapse.
Inspector Curry stirred a little.
“Just a minute, Dr. Maverick. Is this young man, in your opinion, definitely a mental case?”
Dr. Maverick smiled the superior smile again.
“We are all mental cases, Inspector Curry.”
Tomfool answer, thought the Inspector. He knew quite well he wasn’t a mental case, whatever Dr. Maverick might be!
“Is he responsible for his actions? He knows what he is doing, I suppose?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then when he fired that revolver at Mr. Serrocold it was definitely attempted murder.”
“No, no, Inspector Curry. Nothing of that kind.”
“Come now, Dr. Maverick. I’ve seen the two bullet holes in the wall. They must have gone dangerously near to Mr. Serrocold’s head.”
“Perhaps. But Lawson had no intention of killing Mr. Serrocold or even of wounding him. He is very fond of Mr. Serrocold.”