“She has always been an idealist,” said Miss Marple.
“An idealist? Yes. Yes, that is so. And therefore it may be that she does not truly appreciate the evil that there is in the world.”
Miss Marple looked at him, surprised. His face was very stern.
“Tell me,” he said. “How is her health?”
Again Miss Marple felt surprised.
“She seems to me very well—apart from arthritis—or rheumatism.”
“Rheumatism? Yes. And her heart? Her heart is good?”
“As far as I know.” Miss Marple was still more surprised. “But until yesterday I had not seen her for many years. If you want to know the state of her health, you should ask somebody in the house here. Miss Bellever, for instance.”
“Miss Bellever—Yes, Miss Bellever. Or Mildred?”
“Or, as you say, Mildred.”
Miss Marple was faintly embarrassed.
Christian Gulbrandsen was staring at her very hard.
“There is not between the mother and daughter, a very great sympathy, would you say?”
“No, I don’t think there is.”
“I agree. It is a pity—her only child, but there it is. Now this Miss Bellever, you think, is really attached to her?”
“Very much so.”
“And Carrie Louise leans on this Miss Bellever?”
“I think so.”
Christian Gulbrandsen was frowning. He spoke as though more to himself than to Miss Marple.
“There is the little Gina—but she is so young. It is difficult—” He broke off. “Sometimes,” he said simply, “it is hard to know what is best to be done. I wish very much to act for the best. I am particularly anxious that no harm and no unhappiness should come to that dear lady. But it is not easy—not easy at all.”
Mrs. Strete came into the room at that moment.
“Oh there you are, Christian. We were wondering where you were. Dr. Maverick wants to know if you would like to go over anything with him.”
“That is the new young doctor here? No—no, I will wait until Lewis returns.”
“He’s waiting in Lewis’ study. Shall I tell him—”
“I will have a word with him myself.”
Gulbrandsen hurried out. Mildred Strete stared after him and then stared at Miss Marple.
“I wonder if anything is wrong. Christian is very unlike himself … Did he say anything—”
“He only asked me about your mother’s health.”
“Her health? Why should he ask you about that?”
Mildred spoke sharply, her large square face flushing unbecomingly.
“I really don’t know.”
“Mother’s health is perfectly good. Surprisingly so for a woman of her age. Much better than mine as far as that goes.” She paused a moment before saying, “I hope you told him so?”
“I don’t really know anything about it,” said Miss Marple. “He asked me about her heart.”
“Her heart?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Mother’s heart. Nothing at all!”
“I’m delighted to hear you say so, my dear.”
“What on earth put all these queer ideas into Christian’s head?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Miss Marple.
Seven
1
The next day passed uneventfully to all appearances, yet to Miss Marple it seemed that there were signs of an inner tension. Christian Gulbrandsen spent his morning with Dr. Maverick in going round the Institute and in discussing the general results of the Institute’s policy. In the early afternoon Gina took him for a drive and after that Miss Marple noticed that he induced Miss Bellever to show him something in the gardens. It seemed to her that it was a pretext for ensuring a tête-à-tête with that grim woman. And yet, if Christian Gulbrandsen’s unexpected visit had only to do with business matters, why this wish for Miss Bellever’s company, since the latter dealt only with the domestic side of matters?
But in all this, Miss Marple could tell herself that she was being fanciful. The only really disturbing incident of the day happened about four o’clock. She had rolled up her knitting and had gone out in the garden to take a little stroll before tea. Rounding a straggling rhododendron she came upon Edgar Lawson who was striding along muttering to himself and who nearly ran into her.
He said, “I beg your pardon,” hastily, but Miss Marple was startled by the queer staring expression of his eyes.
“Aren’t you feeling well, Mr. Lawson?”
“Well? How should I be feeling well? I’ve had a shock—a terrible shock.”
“What kind of a shock?”
The young man gave a swift glance past her, and then a sharp uneasy glance to either side. His doing so gave Miss Marple a nervous feeling.
“Shall I tell you?” He looked at her doubtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t really know. I’ve been so spied upon.”
Miss Marple made up her mind. She took him firmly by the arm.
“If we walk down this path … there, now, there are no trees or bushes near. Nobody can overhear.”
“No—no, you’re right.” He drew a deep breath, bent his head and almost whispered his next words. “I’ve made a discovery. A terrible discovery.”
“What kind of a discovery?”
Edgar Lawson began to shake all over. He was almost weeping.
“To have trusted someone! To have believed … and it was lies—all lies. Lies to keep me from finding out the truth. I can’t bear it. It’s too wicked. You see, he was the one person I trusted, and now to find out that all the time he’s been at the bottom of it all. It’s he who’s been my enemy! It’s he who has been having me followed about and spied upon. But he can’t get away with it anymore. I shall speak out. I shall tell him I know what he has been doing.”
“Who is ‘he’?” demanded Miss Marple.
Edgar Lawson drew himself up to his full height. He might have looked pathetic and dignified. But actually he only looked ridiculous.
“I’m speaking of my father.”
“Viscount Montgomery—or do you mean Winston Churchill?”
Edgar threw her a glance of scorn.
“They let me think that—just to keep me from guessing the truth. But I know now. I’ve got a friend—a real friend. A friend who tells me the truth and lets me know just how I’ve been deceived. Well, my father will have to reckon with me. I’ll throw his lies in his face! I’ll challenge him with the truth. We’ll see what he’s got to say to that.”
And suddenly breaking away, Edgar went off at a run and disappeared in the park.
Her face grave, Miss Marple went back to the house.
“We’re all a little mad, dear lady,” Dr. Maverick had said.
But it seemed to her that in Edgar’s case it went rather further than that.
2
Lewis Serrocold arrived back at six thirty. He stopped the car at the gates and walked to the house through the park. Looking out of her window, Miss Marple saw Christian Gulbrandsen go out to meet him and the two men, having greeted one another, turned and paced to and fro, up and down the terrace.
Miss Marple had been careful to bring her bird glasses with her. At this moment she brought them into action. Was there, or was there not, a flight of siskins by that far clump of trees?
She noted as the glasses swept down before rising that both men were looking seriously disturbed. Miss Marple leant out a little further. Scraps of conversation floated up to her now and then. If either of the men should look up, it would be quite clear that an enraptured bird-watcher had her attention fixed on a point far removed from their conversation.
“—how to spare Carrie Louise the knowledge—” Gulbrandsen was saying.
The next time they passed below, Lewis Serrocold was speaking.
“—if it can be kept from her. I agree that it is she who must be considered….”
Other faint snatches came to the listener.
“—Really serious—” “—not justified—” “too big a responsibility to take—” “we should, perhaps, take outside advice—”
Finally Miss Marple heard Christian Gulbrandsen say, “Ach, it grows cold. We must go inside.”
Miss Marple drew her head in through the window with a puzzled expression. What she had heard was too fragmentary to be easily pieced together—but it served to confirm that vague apprehension that had been gradually growing upon her and about which Ruth Van Rydock had been so positive.
Whatever was wrong at Stonygates, it definitely affected Carrie Louise.
3
Dinner that evening was a somewhat constrained meal. Both Gulbrandsen and Lewis were absentminded and absorbed in their own thoughts. Walter Hudd glowered even more than usual and, for once, Gina and Stephen seemed to have little to say either to each other or to the company at large. Conversation was mostly sustained by Dr. Maverick who had a lengthy, technical discussion with Mr. Baumgarten, the occupational therapist.
When they moved into the Hall after dinner, Christian Gulbrandsen excused himself almost at once. He said he had an important letter to write.
“So if you will forgive me, dear Carrie Louise, I will go now to my room.”
“You have all you want there? Jolly?”
“Yes, yes. Everything. A typewriter, I asked, and one has been put there. Miss Bellever has been most kind and attentive.”
He left the Great Hall by the door on the left which led past the foot of the main staircase and along a corridor, at the end of which was a suite of bedroom and bathroom.
When he had gone out, Carrie Louise said:
“Not going down to the theatre tonight, Gina?”
The girl shook her head. She went over and sat by the window overlooking the front drive and the court.
Stephen glanced at her, then strolled over to the big grand piano. He sat down at it and strummed very softly—a queer melancholy little tune. The two occupational therapists, Mr. Baumgarten and Mr. Lacy, and Dr. Maverick, said good night and left. Walter turned the switch of a reading lamp and with a crackling noise half the lights in the Hall went out.
He growled.
“That darned switch is always faulty. I’ll go and put a new fuse in.”
He left the Hall and Carrie Louise murmured, “Wally’s so clever with electrical gadgets and things like that. You remember how he fixed that toaster?”
“It seems to be all he does do here,” said Mildred Strete. “Mother, have you taken your tonic?”
Miss Bellever looked annoyed.
“I declare I completely forgot tonight.” She jumped up and went into the dining room, returning presently with a small glass containing a little rose-coloured fluid.
Smiling a little, Carrie Louise held out an obedient hand.
“Such horrid stuff and nobody lets me forget it,” she said, making a wry face.
And then, rather unexpectedly, Lewis Serrocold said: “I don’t think I should take it tonight, my dear. I’m not sure it really agrees with you.”
Quietly, but with that controlled energy always so apparent in him, he took the glass from Miss Bellever and put it down on the big oak Welsh dresser.
Miss Bellever said sharply:
“Really, Mr. Serrocold, I can’t agree with you there. Mrs. Serrocold has been very much better since—”
She broke off and turned sharply:
The front door was pushed violently open and allowed to swing to with a crash. Edgar Lawson came into the big dim Hall with the air of a star performer making a triumphal entry.
He stood in the middle of the floor and struck an attitude.
It was almost ridiculous—but not quite ridiculous.
Edgar said theatrically:
“So I have found you, O mine enemy!”
He said it to Lewis Serrocold.
Mr. Serrocold looked mildly astonished.
“Why, Edgar, what is the matter?”
“You can say that to me—you! You know what’s the matter. You’ve been deceiving me, spying on me, working with my enemies against me.”
Lewis took him by the arm.
“Now, now, my dear lad, don’t excite yourself. Tell me all about it quietly. Come into my office.”
He led him across the Hall and through a door on the right closing it behind him. After he had done so, there was another sound, the sharp sound of a key being turned in the lock.
Miss Bellever looked at Miss Marple, the same idea in both their minds. It was not Lewis Serrocold who had turned the key.
Miss Bellever said sharply: “That young man is just about to go off his head in my opinion. It isn’t safe.”
Mildred said, “He’s a most unbalanced young man—and absolutely ungrateful for everything that’s been done for him—you ought to put your foot down, Mother.”
With a faint sigh Carrie Louise murmured:
“There’s no harm in him really. He’s fond of Lewis. He’s very fond of him.”
Miss Marple looked at her curiously. There had been no fondness in the expression that Edgar had turned on Lewis Serrocold a few moments previously, very far from it. She wondered, as she had wondered before, if Carrie Louise deliberately turned her back on reality.
Gina said sharply:
“He had something in his pocket. Edgar, I mean. Playing with it.”
Stephen murmured as he took his hands from the keys:
“In a film it would certainly have been a revolver.”
Miss Marple coughed.
“I think, you know,” she said apologetically, “it was a revolver.”
From behind the closed doors of Lewis’ office the sound of voices had been plainly discernible. Now, suddenly, they became clearly audible. Edgar Lawson shouted whilst Lewis Serrocold’s voice kept its even, reasonable note.
“Lies—lies—lies, all lies. You’re my father. I’m your son. You’ve deprived me of my rights. I ought to own this place. You hate me—you want to get rid of me!”
There was a soothing murmur from Lewis and then the hysterical voice rose still higher. It screamed out foul epithets. Edgar seemed rapidly losing control of himself. Occasional words came from Lewis—“calm—just be calm—you know none of this is true—” But they seemed not to soothe, but on the contrary to enrage the young man still further.
Insensibly everyone in the Hall was silent, listening intently to what went on behind the locked door of Lewis’ study.
“I’ll make you listen to me,” yelled Edgar. “I’ll take that supercilious expression off your face. I’ll have revenge, I tell you. Revenge for all you’ve made me suffer.”
The other voice came curtly, unlike Lewis’ usual unemotional tones.
“Put that revolver down!”
Gina cried sharply:
“Edgar will kill him. He’s crazy. Can’t we get the police or something?”
Carrie Louise, still unmoved, said softly:
“There’s no need to worry, Gina. Edgar loves Lewis. He’s just dramatising himself, that’s all.”
Edgar’s voice sounded through the door in a laugh that Miss Marple had to admit sounded definitely insane.
“Yes, I’ve got a revolver—and it’s loaded. No, don’t speak, don’t move. You’re going to hear me out. It’s you who started this conspiracy against me and now you’re going to pay for it.”
What sounded like the report of a firearm made them all start, but Carrie Louise said:
“It’s all right, it’s outside—in the park somewhere.”
Behind the locked door, Edgar was raving in a high screaming voice.
“You sit there looking at me—looking at me—pretending to be unmoved. Why don’t you get down on your knees and beg for mercy? I’m going to shoot, I tell you. I’m going to shoot you dead! I’m your son—your unacknowledged despised son—you wanted me hidden away, out of the world altogether, perhaps. You set your spies to follow me—to hound me down—you plotted against me. You, my father! My father. I’m onl
y a bastard, aren’t I? Only a bastard. You went on filling me up with lies. Pretending to be kind to me, and all the time—all the time … you’re not fit to live. I won’t let you live.”
Again there came a stream of obscene profanity. Somewhere during the scene Miss Marple was conscious of Miss Bellever saying:
“We must do something,” and leaving the Hall.
Edgar seemed to pause for breath and then he shouted out,
“You’re going to die—to die. You’re going to die now. Take that, you devil, and that!”
Two sharp cracks rang out—not in the park this time, but definitely behind the locked door.
Somebody, Miss Marple thought it was Mildred, cried out:
“Oh God, what shall we do?”
There was a thud from inside the room and then a sound, almost more terrible than what had gone before, the sound of slow, heavy sobbing.
Somebody strode past Miss Marple and started shaking and rattling the door.
It was Stephen Restarick.
“Open the door. Open the door,” he shouted.
Miss Bellever came back into the Hall. In her hand she held an assortment of keys.
“Try some of these,” she said breathlessly.
At that moment the fused lights came on again. The Hall sprang into life again after its eerie dimness.
Stephen Restarick began trying the keys.
They heard the inside key fall out as he did so.
Inside, that wild desperate sobbing went on.
Walter Hudd, coming lazily back into the Hall, stopped dead and demanded:
“Say, what’s going on round here?”
Mildred said tearfully,
“That awful crazy young man has shot Mr. Serrocold.”
“Please.” It was Carrie Louise who spoke. She got up and came across to the study door. Very gently she pushed Stephen Restarick aside. “Let me speak to him.”
She called—very softly—“Edgar … Edgar … let me in, will you? Please, Edgar.”
They heard the key fitted into the lock. It turned and the door was slowly opened.
But it was not Edgar who opened it. It was Lewis Serrocold. He was breathing hard as though he had been running, but otherwise he was unmoved.