The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Greenshaw's Folly

The two men rounded the corner of the shrubbery.

‘Well, there you are,’ said Raymond West. ‘That's it.’

Horace Bindler took a deep, appreciative breath.

‘But my dear,’ he cried, ‘how wonderful.’ His voice rose in a high screech of æsthetic delight, then deepened in reverent awe. ‘It's unbelievable. Out of this world! A period piece of the best.’

‘I thought you'd like it,’ said Raymond West complacently.

‘Like it?’ Words failed Horace. He unbuckled the strap of his camera and got busy. ‘This will be one of the gems of my collection,’ he said happily. ‘I do think, don't you, that it's rather amusing to have a collection of monstrosities? The idea came to me one night seven years ago in my bath. My last real gem was in the Campo Santo at Genoa, but I really think this beats it. What's it called?’

‘I haven't the least idea,’ said Raymond.

‘I suppose it's got a name?’

‘It must have. But the fact is that it's never referred to round here as anything but Greenshaw's Folly.’

‘Greenshaw being the man who built it?’

‘Yes. In eighteen-sixty or seventy or thereabouts. The local success story of the time. Barefoot boy who had risen to immense prosperity. Local opinion is divided as to why he built this house, whether it was sheer exuberance of wealth or whether it was done to impress his creditors. If the latter, it didn't impress them. He either went bankrupt or the next thing to it. Hence the name, Greenshaw's Folly.’

Horace's camera clicked. ‘There,’ he said in a satisfied voice. ‘Remind me to show you No. 310 in my collection. A really incredible marble mantelpiece in the Italian manner.’ He added, looking at the house, ‘I can't conceive of how Mr Greenshaw thought of it all.’

‘Rather obvious in some ways,’ said Raymond. ‘He had visited the châteaux of the Loire, don't you think? Those turrets. And then, rather unfortunately, he seems to have travelled in the Orient. The influence of the Taj Mahal is unmistakable. I rather like the Moorish wing,’ he added, ‘and the traces of a Venetian palace.’

‘One wonders how he ever got hold of an architect to carry out these ideas.’

Raymond shrugged his shoulders.

‘No difficulty about that, I expect,’ he said. ‘Probably the architect retired with a good income for life while poor old Greenshaw went bankrupt.’

‘Could we look at it from the other side?’ asked Horace, ‘or are we trespassing!’

‘We're trespassing all right,’ said Raymond, ‘but I don't think it will matter.’

He turned towards the corner of the house and Horace skipped after him.

‘But who lives here, my dear? Orphans or holiday visitors? It can't be a school. No playing fields or brisk efficiency.’

‘Oh, a Greenshaw lives here still,’ said Raymond over his shoulder. ‘The house itself didn't go in the crash. Old Greenshaw's son inherited it. He was a bit of a miser and lived here in a corner of it. Never spent a penny. Probably never had a penny to spend. His daughter lives here now. Old lady — very eccentric.’

As he spoke Raymond was congratulating himself on having thought of Greenshaw's Folly as a means of entertaining his guest. These literary critics always professed themselves as longing for a week-end in the country, and were wont to find the country extremely boring when they got there. Tomorrow there would be the Sunday papers, and for today Raymond West congratulated himself on suggesting a visit to Greenshaw's Folly to enrich Horace Bindler's well-known collection of monstrosities.

They turned the corner of the house and came out on a neglected lawn. In one corner of it was a large artificial rockery, and bending over it was a figure at the sight of which Horace clutched Raymond delightedly by the arm.

‘My dear,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see what she's got on? A sprigged print dress. Just like a housemaid — when there were housemaids. One of my most cherished memories is staying at a house in the country when I was quite a boy where a real housemaid called you in the morning, all crackling in a print dress and a cap. Yes, my boy, really — a cap. Muslin with streamers. No, perhaps it was the parlourmaid who had the streamers. But anyway, she was a real housemaid and she brought in an enormous brass can of hot water. What an exciting day we're having.’

The figure in the print dress had straightened up and turned towards them, trowel in hand. She was a sufficiently startling figure. Unkempt locks of iron-grey fell wispily on her shoulders, a straw hat rather like the hats that horses wear in Italy was crammed down on her head. The coloured print dress she wore fell nearly to her ankles. Out of a weather-beaten, not too clean face, shrewd eyes surveyed them appraisingly.

‘I must apologize for trespassing, Miss Greenshaw,’ said Raymond West, as he advanced towards her, ‘but Mr Horace Bindler who is staying with me —’

Horace bowed and removed his hat.

‘— is most interested in — er — ancient history and — er — fine buildings.’

Raymond West spoke with the ease of a well-known author who knows that he is a celebrity, that he can venture where other people may not.

Miss Greenshaw looked up at the sprawling exuberance behind her.

‘It is a fine house,’ she said appreciatively. ‘My grandfather built it — before my time, of course. He is reported as having said that he wished to astonish the natives.’

‘I'll say he did that, ma'am,’ said Horace Bindler.

‘Mr Bindler is the well-known literary critic,’ said Raymond West.

Miss Greenshaw had clearly no reverence for literary critics. She remained unimpressed.

‘I consider it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, referring to the house, ‘as a monument to my grandfather's genius. Silly fools come here, and ask me why I don't sell it and go and live in a flat. What would I do in a flat? It's my home and I live in it,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘Always have lived here.’ She considered, brooding over the past. ‘There were three of us. Laura married the curate. Papa wouldn't give her any money, said clergymen ought to be unworldly. She died, having a baby. Baby died too. Nettie ran away with the riding master. Papa cut her out of his will, of course. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but no good. Don't think Nettie was happy with him. Anyway, she didn't live long. They had a son. He writes to me sometimes, but of course he isn't a Greenshaw. I'm the last of the Greenshaws.’ She drew up her bent shoulders with a certain pride, and readjusted the rakish angle of the straw hat. Then, turning, she said sharply,

‘Yes, Mrs Cresswell, what is it?’

Approaching them from the house was a figure that, seen side by side with Miss Greenshaw, seemed ludicrously dissimilar. Mrs Cresswell had a marvellously dressed head of well-blued hair towering upward in meticulously arranged curls and rolls. It was as though she had dressed her head to go as a French marquise to a fancy dress party. The rest of her middle-aged person was dressed in what ought to have been rustling black silk but was actually one of the shinier varieties of black rayon. Although she was not a large woman, she had a well-developed and sumptuous bust. Her voice when she spoke, was unexpectedly deep. She spoke with exquisite diction, only a slight hesitation over words beginning with ‘h’ and the final pronunciation of them with an exaggerated aspirate gave rise to a suspicion that at some remote period in her youth she might have had trouble over dropping her h's.

‘The fish, madam,’ said Mrs Cresswell, ‘the slice of cod. It has not arrived. I have asked Alfred to go down for it and he refuses to do so.’

Rather unexpectedly, Miss Greenshaw gave a cackle of laughter.

‘Refuses, does he?’

‘Alfred, madam, has been most disobliging.’

Miss Greenshaw raised two earth-stained fingers to her lips, suddenly produced an earsplitting whistle and at the same time yelled:

‘Alfred, Alfred, come here.’

Round the corner of the house a young man appeared in answer to the summons, carrying a spade in his hand. He had a bold, handsome face and as he drew near he cast an unmistakably malevolent glance towards Mrs Cresswell.

‘You wanted me, miss?’ he said.

‘Yes, Alfred. I hear you've refused to go down for the fish. What about it, eh?’

Alfred spoke in a surly voice.

‘I'll go down for it if you wants it, miss. You've only got to say.’

‘I do want it. I want it for my supper.’

‘Right you are, miss. I'll go right away.’

He threw an insolent glance at Mrs Cresswell, who flushed and murmured below her breath:

‘Really! It's unsupportable.’

‘Now that I think of it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, ‘a couple of strange visitors are just what we need, aren't they, Mrs Cresswell?’

Mrs Cresswell looked puzzled.

‘I'm sorry, madam —’

‘For you-know-what,’ said Miss Greenshaw, nodding her head. ‘Beneficiary to a will mustn't witness it. That's right, isn't it?’ She appealed to Raymond West.

‘Quite correct,’ said Raymond.

‘I know enough law to know that,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘And you two are men of standing.’

She flung down the trowel on her weeding basket.

‘Would you mind coming up to the library with me?’

‘Delighted,’ said Horace eagerly.

She led the way through French windows and through a vast yellow-and-gold drawing-room with faded brocade on the walls and dust covers arranged over the furniture, then through a large dim hall, up a staircase and into a room on the second floor.

‘My grandfather's library,’ she announced.

Horace looked round with acute pleasure. It was a room, from his point of view, quite full of monstrosities. The heads of sphinxes appeared on the most unlikely pieces of furniture, there was a colossal bronze representing, he thought, Paul and Virginia, and a vast bronze clock with classical motifs of which he longed to take a photograph.

‘A fine lot of books,’ said Miss Greenshaw.

Raymond was already looking at the books. From what he could see from a cursory glance there was no book here of any real interest or, indeed, any book which appeared to have been read. They were all superbly bound sets of the classics as supplied ninety years ago for furnishing a gentleman's library. Some novels of a bygone period were included. But they too showed little signs of having been read.

Miss Greenshaw was fumbling in the drawers of a vast desk. Finally she pulled out a parchment document.

‘My will,’ she explained. ‘Got to leave your money to someone — or so they say. If I died without a will I suppose that son of a horse-coper would get it. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but a rogue if ever there was one. Don't see why his son should inherit this place. No,’ she went on, as though answering some unspoken objection, ‘I've made up my mind. I'm leaving it to Cresswell.’

‘Your housekeeper?’

‘Yes. I've explained it to her. I make a will leaving her all I've got and then I don't need to pay her any wages. Saves me a lot in current expenses, and it keeps her up to the mark. No giving me notice and walking off at any minute. Very la-di-dah and all that, isn't she? But her father was a working plumber in a very small way. She's nothing to give herself airs about.’

She had by now unfolded the parchment. Picking up a pen she dipped it in the inkstand and wrote her signature, Katherine Dorothy Greenshaw.

‘That's right,’ she said. ‘You've seen me sign it, and then you two sign it, and that makes it legal.’

She handed the pen to Raymond West. He hesitated a moment, feeling an unexpected repulsion to what he was asked to do. Then he quickly scrawled the well-known signature, for which his morning's mail usually brought at least six demands a day.

Horace took the pen from him and added his own minute signature.

‘That's done,’ said Miss Greenshaw.

She moved across the bookcases and stood looking at them uncertainly, then she opened a glass door, took out a book and slipped the folded parchment inside.

‘I've my own places for keeping things,’ she said.

‘Lady Audley's Secret,’ Raymond West remarked, catching sight of the title as she replaced the book.

Miss Greenshaw gave another cackle of laughter.

‘Best-seller in its day,’ she remarked. ‘Not like your books, eh?’

She gave Raymond a sudden friendly nudge in the ribs. Raymond was rather surprised that she even knew he wrote books. Although Raymond West was quite a name in literature, he could hardly be described as a best-seller. Though softening a little with the advent of middle age, his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life.

‘I wonder,’ Horace demanded breathlessly, ‘if I might just take a photograph of the clock.’

‘By all means,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘It came, I believe, from the Paris Exhibition.’

‘Very probably,’ said Horace. He took his picture.

‘This room's not been used much since my grandfather's time,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘This desk's full of old diaries of his. Interesting, I should think. I haven't the eyesight to read them myself. I'd like to get them published, but I suppose one would have to work on them a good deal.’

‘You could engage someone to do that,’ said Raymond West.

‘Could I really? It's an idea, you know. I'll think about it.’

Raymond West glanced at his watch.

‘We mustn't trespass on your kindness any longer,’ he said.

‘Pleased to have seen you,’ said Miss Greenshaw graciously. ‘Thought you were the policeman when I heard you coming round the corner of the house.’

‘Why a policeman?’ demanded Horace, who never minded asking questions.

Miss Greenshaw responded unexpectedly.

‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,’ she carolled, and with this example of Victorian wit, nudged Horace in the ribs and roared with laughter.

‘It's been a wonderful afternoon,’ sighed Horace as they walked home. ‘Really, that place has everything. The only thing the library needs is a body. Those old-fashioned detective stories about murder in the library — that's just the kind of library I'm sure the authors had in mind.’

‘If you want to discuss murder,’ said Raymond, ‘you must talk to my Aunt Jane.’

‘Your Aunt Jane? Do you mean Miss Marple?’ He felt a little at a loss.

The charming old-world lady to whom he had been introduced the night before seemed the last person to be mentioned in connection with murder.

‘Oh yes,’ said Raymond. ‘Murder is a specialty of hers.’

‘How intriguing! What do you really mean?’

‘I mean just that,’ said Raymond. He paraphrased: ‘Some commit murder, some get mixed up in murders, others have murder thrust upon them. My Aunt Jane comes into the third category.’

‘You are joking.’

‘Not in the least. I can refer you to the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard, several chief constables and one or two hard-working inspectors of the CID.’

Horace said happily that wonders would never cease. Over the tea table they gave Joan West, Raymond's wife, Lou Oxley her niece, and old Miss Marple a résumé of the afternoon's happenings, recounting in detail everything that Miss Greenshaw had said to them.

‘But I do think,’ said Horace, ‘that there is something a little sinister about the whole setup. That duchess-like creature, the housekeeper — arsenic, perhaps, in the teapot, now that she knows her mistress has made the will in her favour?’

‘Tell us, Aunt Jane,’ said Raymond, ‘will there be murder or won't there? What do you think?’

‘I think,’ said Miss Marple, winding up her wool with a rather severe air, ‘that you shouldn't joke about these things as much as you do, Raymond. Arsenic is, of course, quite a possibility. So easy to obtain. Probably present in the toolshed already in the form of weed killer.’

‘Oh, really, darling,’ said Joan West affectionately. ‘Wouldn't that be rather too obvious?’

‘It's all very well to make a will,’ said Raymond, ‘I don't suppose really the poor old thing has anything to leave except that awful white elephant of a house, and who would want that?’

‘A film company possibly,’ said Horace, ‘or a hotel or an institution?’

‘They'd expect to buy it for a song,’ said Raymond, but Miss Marple was shaking her head.

‘You know, dear Raymond, I cannot agree with you there. About the money, I mean. The grandfather was evidently one of those lavish spenders who make money easily, but can't keep it. He may have gone broke, as you say, but hardly bankrupt or else his son would not have had the house. Now the son, as is so often the case, was of an entirely different character to his father. A miser. A man who saved every penny. I should say that in the course of his lifetime he probably put by a very good sum. This Miss Greenshaw appears to have taken after him, to dislike spending money, that is. Yes, I should think it quite likely that she had quite a good sum tucked away.’

‘In that case,’ said Joan West, ‘I wonder now — what about Lou?’

They looked at Lou as she sat, silent, by the fire.

Lou was Joan West's niece. Her marriage had recently, as she herself put it, come unstuck, leaving her with two young children and a bare sufficiency of money to keep them on.

‘I mean,’ said Joan, ‘if this Miss Greenshaw really wants someone to go through diaries and get a book ready for publication…’

‘It's an idea,’ said Raymond.

Lou said in a low voice:

‘It's work I could do — and I think I'd enjoy it.’

‘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 Louisa Oxley who would be competent to undertake work on the diaries. After a lapse of some days, a letter arrived, written in spidery old-fashioned 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.

Lou duly kept the appointment, generous terms were arranged and she started work on 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 set-up 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 Lou returned with another piece of news.

‘Just fancy,’ she said, ‘I was asked to ring up the nephew this morning.’

‘Miss Greenshaw's nephew?’

‘Yes. It seems he's an actor playing in the company that's doing a summer season at Boreham on Sea. I rang up the theatre 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 instalment 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?’

Lou looked bewildered. ‘I don't know anything about a policeman.’

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

Lou arrived at her work the next day in a cheerful mood. She passed 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.

Lou had passed Alfred in the drive. When she first caught sight 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 passed 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 arm-chair, his hands resting on the gold albert across his capacious stomach. As her glance swept up from the stomach to the face with its heavy jowls, its bushy eyebrows and its flourishing 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 the desk. Through the open window she caught a glimpse of Miss Greenshaw in a puce-coloured sprigged print, bending over the rockery, weeding assiduously. They had had two wet days, of which the weeds had taken full advantage.

Lou, a town-bred girl, decided that if she ever had a garden it would never contain a rockery which needed hand weeding. 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 in the drive when I got here,’ Lou offered.

‘I daresay. A nice soft job.’

Mrs Cresswell swept out of the room and banged the door behind her. Lou 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 passed quickly. Nathaniel Greenshaw, when he started to keep a diary, had succumbed to the pleasure of frankness. Typing out a passage relating to the personal charms of a barmaid in the neighbouring town, Lou 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. Miss Greenshaw was staggering away from the rockery towards the house. Her hands were clasped to her breast and between them there protruded a feathered shaft that Lou recognized 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 Lou in a failing voice: ‘… shot… he shot me… with an arrow… get help…’

Lou 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 rushed back to the window.

‘I'm locked in!’

Miss Greenshaw, her back towards Lou, 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 she disappeared from Lou's view through the window below into the drawing-room. A moment later Lou 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 Sévres teaset on it.

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

Tired at last of beating on the door, she 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.’

‘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.’ Lou shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Alfred, Alfred.’

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

Lou 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 —’

Lou 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 leant out of the window and he looked up at her, shading his eyes with his hand. When he spoke his voice held reproof.

‘What's going on here?’ he asked disapprovingly.

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

The constable produced a note-book and pencil. ‘You ladies ran upstairs and locked yourselves in? Can I have your names, please?’

‘No. Somebody else locked us in. Come and let us out.’

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

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

‘Miss Greenshaw?’ Lou'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 with bows and arrows.’

Again there was the sound of a car arriving. The sergeant said:

‘That'll be the MO,’ and he started downstairs.

But it was not the MO. As Lou 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 Lou — perhaps it had a family resemblance to 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 — I'm sure —’

‘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'aunts been murdered, that's what's happened. Your h'aunts 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 Lou Oxley once more over her statement.

‘You are sure of the exact words? Shot — he shot me — with an arrow — get help?’

Lou 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.’

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, 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 Cresswell 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's clear enough in her case, and I dare say 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-fashioned lock with a big old-fashioned 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 a window — the angle forbids it — no, Mrs Cresswell's out of it.’

He paused and 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 fashion.

‘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 Lou.

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 second-hand — 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 —’ He 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.’

‘But why?’ cried Lou.

Miss Marple coughed and murmured:

I should imagine, though perhaps I am wrong, that there may have been — what we might call family reasons.

‘You could call them that in a way,’ agreed the inspector. ‘It's quite well known in the village, it seems, that Thomas Pollock, Alfred's grandfather, was one of the old Mr Greenshaw's by-blows.’

‘Of course,’ cried Lou, ‘the resemblance! I saw it this morning.’

She remembered how after passing Alfred she had come into the house and looked up at old Greenshaw's portrait.

‘I dare say,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that she thought Alfred Pollock might have a pride in the house, might even want to live in it, whereas her nephew would almost certainly have no use for it whatever and would sell it as soon as he could possibly do so. He's an actor, isn't he? What play exactly is he acting in at present?’

Trust an old lady to wander from the point, thought Inspector Welch, but he replied civilly:

‘I believe, madam, they are doing a season of Sir James Barrie's plays.’

‘Barrie,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.

‘What Every Woman Knows,’ said Inspector Welch, and then blushed. ‘Name of a play,’ he said quickly. ‘I'm not much of a theatre-goer myself,’ he added, ‘but the wife went along and saw it last week. Quite well done, she said it was.’

‘Barrie, wrote some very charming plays,’ said Miss Marple, ‘though I must say that when I went with an old friend of mine, General Easterly, to see Barrie's Little Mary —’ she shook her head sadly — ‘neither of us knew where to look.’

The inspector, unacquainted with the play Little Mary looked completely fogged. Miss Marple explained:

‘When I was a girl, Inspector, nobody ever mentioned the word stomach.’

The inspector looked even more at sea. Miss Marple was murmuring titles under her breath.

‘The Admirable Crichton. Very clever. Mary Rose — a charming play. I cried, I remember. Quality Street I didn't care for so much. Then there was A Kiss for Cinderella. Oh, of course!’

Inspector Welch had no time to waste on theatrical discussion. He returned to the matter at hand.

‘The question is,’ he said, ‘did Alfred Pollock know the old lady had made a will in his favour? Did she tell him?’ He added, ‘You see — there's an archery club over at Boreham Lovell and Alfred Pollock's a member. He's a very good shot indeed with a bow and arrow.’

‘Then isn't your case quite clear?’ asked Raymond West. ‘It would fit in with the doors being locked on the two women — he'd know just where they were in the house.’

The inspector looked at him. He spoke with deep melancholy.

‘He's got an alibi,’ said the inspector.

‘I always think alibis are definitely suspicious.’

‘Maybe, sir,’ said Inspector Welch. ‘You're talking as a writer.’

‘I don't write detective stories,’ said Raymond West, horrified at the mere idea.

‘Easy enough to say that alibis are suspicious,’ went on Inspector Welch, ‘but unfortunately we've got to deal with facts.’

He sighed.

‘We've got three good suspects,’ he said. ‘Three people who, as it happened, were very close upon the scene at the time. Yet the odd thing is that it looks as though none of the three could have done it. The housekeeper I've already dealt with — the nephew, Nat Fletcher, at the moment Miss Greenshaw was shot, was a couple of miles away filling up his car at a garage and asking his way — as for Alfred Pollock six people will swear that he entered the Dog and Duck at twenty past twelve and was there for an hour having his usual bread and cheese and beer.’

‘Deliberately establishing an alibi,’ said Raymond West hopefully.

‘Maybe,’ said Inspector Welch, ‘but if so, he did establish it.’

There was a long silence. Then Raymond turned his head to where Miss Marple sat upright and thoughtful.

‘It's up to you, Aunt Jane,’ he said. ‘The inspector's baffled, the sergeant's baffled, I'm baffled, Joan's baffled, Lou is baffled. But to you, Aunt Jane, it is crystal clear. Am I right?’

‘I wouldn't say that, dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘not crystal clear, and murder, dear Raymond, isn't a game. I don't suppose poor Miss Greenshaw wanted to die, and it was a particularly brutal murder. Very well-planned and quite cold blooded. It's not a thing to make jokes about!’

‘I'm sorry,’ said Raymond, abashed. ‘I'm not really as callous as I sound. One treats a thing lightly to take away from the — well, the horror of it.’

‘That is, I believe, the modern tendency,’ said Miss Marple, ‘All these wars, and having to joke about funerals. Yes, perhaps I was thoughtless when I said you were callous.’

‘It isn't,’ said Joan, ‘as though we'd known her at all well.’

‘That is very true,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You, dear Joan, did not know her at all. I did not know her at all. Raymond gathered an impression of her from one afternoon's conversation. Lou knew her for only two days.’

‘Come now, Aunt Jane,’ said Raymond, ‘tell us your views. You don't mind, Inspector?’

‘Not at all,’ said the inspector politely.

‘Well, my dear, it would seem that we have three people who had, or might have thought they had, a motive to kill the old lady. And three quite simple reasons why none of the three could have done so. The housekeeper could not have done so because she was locked in her room and because her mistress definitely stated that a man shot her. The gardener could not have done it because he was inside the Dog and Duck at the time the murder was committed, the nephew could not have done it because he was still some distance away in his car at the time of the murder.’

‘Very clearly put, madam,’ said the inspector.

‘And since it seems most unlikely that any outsider should have done it, where, then, are we?’

‘That's what the inspector wants to know,’ said Raymond West.

‘One so often looks at a thing the wrong way round,’ said Miss Marple apologetically. ‘If we can't alter the movements or the positions of those three people, then couldn't we perhaps alter the time of the murder?’

‘You mean that both my watch and the clock were wrong?’ asked Lou.

‘No dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I didn't mean that at all. I mean that the murder didn't occur when you thought it occurred.’

‘But I saw it,’ cried Lou.

‘Well, what I have been wondering, my dear, was whether you weren't meant to see it. I've been asking myself, you know, whether that wasn't the real reason why you were engaged for this job.’

‘What do you mean, Aunt Jane?’

‘Well, dear, it seems odd. Miss Greenshaw did not like spending money, and yet she engaged you and agreed quite willingly to the terms you asked. It seems to me that perhaps you were meant to be there in that library on the first floor, looking out of the window so that you could be the key witness — someone from outside of irreproachably good faith — to fix a definite time and place for the murder.’

‘But you can't mean,’ said Lou incredulously, ‘that Miss Greenshaw intended to be murdered.’

‘What I mean, dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘is that you didn't really know Miss Greenshaw. There's no real reason, is there, why the Miss Greenshaw you saw when you went up to the house should be the same Miss Greenshaw that Raymond saw a few days earlier? Oh yes, I know,’ she went on, to prevent Lou's reply, ‘she was wearing the peculiar old-fashioned print dress and the strange straw hat, and had unkempt hair. She corresponded exactly to the description Raymond gave us last week-end. But those two women, you know, were much the same age and height and size. The housekeeper, I mean, and Miss Greenshaw.’

‘But the housekeeper is fat!’ Lou exclaimed. ‘She's got an enormous bosom.’

Miss Marple coughed.

‘But, my dear, surely, nowadays I have seen — er — them myself in shops most indelicately displayed. It is very easy for anyone to have a — a bust — of any size and dimension.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ demanded Raymond.

‘I was just thinking, dear, that during the two or three days Lou was working there, one woman could have played the two parts. You said yourself, Lou, that you hardly saw the housekeeper, except for the one moment in the morning when she brought you the tray with coffee. One sees those clever artists on the stage coming in as different characters with only a minute or two to spare, and I am sure the change could have been effected quite easily. That marquise head-dress could be just a wig slipped on and off.’

‘Aunt Jane! Do you mean that Miss Greenshaw was dead before I started work there?’

‘Not dead. Kept under drugs, I should say. A very easy job for an unscrupulous woman like the housekeeper to do. Then she made the arrangements with you and got you to telephone to the nephew to ask him to lunch at a definite time. The only person who would have known that this Miss Greenshaw was not Miss Greenshaw would have been Alfred. And if you remember, the first two days you were working there it was wet, and Miss Greenshaw stayed in the house. Alfred never came into the house because of his feud with the housekeeper. And on the last morning Alfred was in the drive, while Miss Greenshaw was working on the rockery — I'd like to have a look at that rockery.’

‘Do you mean it was Mrs Cresswell who killed Miss Greenshaw?’

‘I think that after bringing you your coffee, the woman locked the door on you as she went out, carried the unconscious Miss Greenshaw down to the drawing-room, then assumed her “Miss Greenshaw” disguise and went out to work on the rockery where you could see her from the window. In due course she screamed and came staggering to the house clutching an arrow as though it had penetrated her throat. She called for help and was careful to say “he shot me” so as to remove suspicion from the housekeeper. She also called up to the housekeeper's window as though she saw her there. Then, once inside the drawing-room, she threw over a table with porcelain on it — and ran quickly upstairs, put on her marquise wig and was able a few moments later to lean her head out of the window and tell you that she, too, was locked in.’

‘But she was locked in,’ said Lou.

‘I know. That is where the policeman comes in.’

‘What policeman?’

‘Exactly — what policeman? I wonder, Inspector, if you would mind telling me how and when you arrived on the scene?’

The inspector looked a little puzzled.

‘At twelve twenty-nine we received a telephone call from Mrs Cresswell, housekeeper to Miss Greenshaw, stating that her mistress had been shot. Sergeant Cayley and myself went out there at once in a car and arrived at the house at twelve thirty-five. We found Miss Greenshaw dead and the two ladies locked in their rooms.’

‘So, you see, my dear,’ said Miss Marple to Lou. ‘The police constable you saw wasn't a real police constable. You never thought of him again — one doesn't — one just accepts one more uniform as part of the law.’

‘But who — why?’

‘As to who — well, if they are playing A Kiss for Cinderella, a policeman is the principal character. Nat Fletcher would only have to help himself to the costume he wears on the stage. He'd ask his way at a garage being careful to call attention to the time — twelve twenty-five, then drive on quickly, leave his car round a corner, slip on his police uniform and do his “act”.’

‘But why? — why?’

‘Someone had to lock the housekeeper's door on the outside, and someone had to drive the arrow through Miss Greenshaw's throat. You can stab anyone with an arrow just as well as by shooting it — but it needs force.’

‘You mean they were both in it?’

‘Oh yes, I think so. Mother and son as likely as not.’

‘But Miss Greenshaw's sister died long ago.’

‘Yes, but I've no doubt Mr Fletcher married again. He sounds like the sort of man who would, and I think it possible that the child died too, and that this so-called nephew was the second wife's child, and not really a relation at all. The woman got the post as housekeeper and spied out the land. Then he wrote as her nephew and proposed to call upon her — he may have made some joking reference to coming in his policeman's uniform — or asked her over to see the play. But I think she suspected the truth and refused to see him. He would have been her heir if she had died without making a will — but of course once she had made a will in the housekeeper's favour (as they thought) then it was clear sailing.’

‘But why use an arrow?’ objected Joan. ‘So very far fetched.’

‘Not far fetched at all, dear. Alfred belonged to an archery club — Alfred was meant to take the blame. The fact that he was in the pub as early as twelve twenty was most unfortunate from their point of view. He always left a little before his proper time and that would have been just right —’ she shook her head. ‘It really seems all wrong — morally, I mean, that Alfred's laziness should have saved his life.’

The inspector cleared his throat.

‘Well, madam, these suggestions of yours are very interesting. I shall, of course, have to investigate —’

Miss Marple and Raymond West stood by the rockery and looked down at a gardening basket full of dying vegetation.

Miss Marple murmured:

‘Alyssum, saxifrage, cytisus, thimble campanula… Yes, that's all the proof I need. Whoever was weeding here yesterday morning was no gardener — she pulled up plants as well as weeds. So now I know I'm right. Thank you, dear Raymond, for bringing me here. I wanted to see the place for myself.’

She and Raymond both looked up at the outrageous pile of Greenshaw's Folly.

A cough made them turn. A handsome young man was also looking at the monstrous house.

‘Plaguey big place,’ he said. ‘Too big for nowadays — or so they say. I dunno about that. If I won a football pool and made a lot of money, that's the kind of house I'd like to build.’

He smiled bashfully at them.

‘Reckon I can say so now — that there house was built by my great-grandfather,’ said Alfred Pollock. ‘And a fine house it is, for all they call it Greenshaw's Folly!’