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Bunch arrived, panting, from the station. ‘He snatched my suitcase,’ she said.
‘Nonsense,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know what this lady means. It’s my suitcase. I just got out of the train with it.’
‘Now, let’s get this clear,’ said Police Constable Abel.
He looked at Bunch with a bovine and impartial stare. Nobody would have guessed that Police Constable Abel and Mrs Harmon spent long half-hours in Police Constable Abel’s off-time discussing the respective merits of manure and bone meal for rose bushes.
‘You say, madam, that this is your suitcase?’ said Police Constable Abel.
‘Yes,’ said Bunch. ‘Definitely.’
‘And you, sir?’
‘I say this suitcase is mine.’
The man was tall, dark and well dressed, with a drawling voice and a superior manner. A feminine voice from inside the car said, ‘Of course it’s your suitcase, Edwin. I don’t know what this woman means.’
‘We’ll have to get this clear,’ said Police Constable Abel. ‘If it’s your suitcase, madam, what do you say is inside it?’
‘Clothes,’ said Bunch. ‘A long speckled coat with a beaver collar, two wool jumpers and a pair of shoes.’
‘Well, that’s clear enough,’ said Police Constable Abel. He turned to the other.
‘I am a theatrical costumer,’ said the dark man importantly. ‘This suitcase contains theatrical properties which I brought down here for an amateur performance.’
‘Right, sir,’ said Police Constable Abel. ‘Well, we’ll just look inside, shall we, and see? We can go along to the police station, or if you’re in a hurry we’ll take the suitcase back to the station and open it there.’
‘It’ll suit me,’ said the dark man. ‘My name is Moss, by the way, Edwin Moss.’
The police constable, holding the suitcase, went back into the station. ‘Just taking this into the parcels office, George,’ he said to the ticket collector.
Police Constable Abel laid the suitcase on the counter of the parcels office and pushed back the clasp. The case was not locked. Bunch and Mr Edwin Moss stood on either side of him, their eyes regarding each other vengefully.
‘Ah!’ said Police Constable Abel, as he pushed up the lid.
Inside, neatly folded, was a long rather shabby tweed coat with a beaver fur collar. There were also two wool jumpers and a pair of country shoes.
‘Exactly as you say, madam,’ said Police Constable Abel, turning to Bunch.
Nobody could have said that Mr Edwin Moss underdid things. His dismay and compunction were magnificent.
‘I do apologize,’ he said. ‘I really do apologize. Please believe me, dear lady, when I tell you how very, very sorry I am. Unpardonable—quite unpardonable—my behaviour has been.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must rush now. Probably my suitcase has gone on the train.’ Raising his hat once more, he said meltingly to Bunch, ‘Do, do forgive me,’ and rushed hurriedly out of the parcels office.
‘Are you going to let him get away?’ asked Bunch in a conspiratorial whisper to Police Constable Abel.
The latter slowly closed a bovine eye in a wink.
‘He won’t get too far, ma’am,’ he said. ‘That’s to say he won’t get far unobserved, if you take my meaning.’
‘Oh,’ said Bunch, relieved.
‘That old lady’s been on the phone,’ said Police Constable Abel, ‘the one as was down here a few years ago. Bright she is, isn’t she? But there’s been a lot cooking up all today. Shouldn’t wonder if the inspector or sergeant was out to see you about it tomorrow morning.’
It was the inspector who came, the Inspector Craddock whom Miss Marple remembered. He greeted Bunch with a smile as an old friend.
‘Crime in Chipping Cleghorn again,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You don’t lack for sensation here, do you, Mrs Harmon?’
‘I could do with rather less,’ said Bunch. ‘Have you come to ask me questions or are you going to tell me things for a change?’
‘I’ll tell you some things first,’ said the inspector. ‘To begin with, Mr and Mrs Eccles have been having an eye kept on them for some time. There’s reason to believe they’ve been connected with several robberies in this part of the world. For another thing, although Mrs Eccles has a brother called Sandbourne who has recently come back from abroad, the man you found dying in the church yesterday was definitely not Sandbourne.’
‘I knew that he wasn’t,’ said Bunch. ‘His name was Walter, to begin with, not William.’
The inspector nodded. ‘His name was Walter St John, and he escaped forty-eight hours ago from Charrington Prison.’
‘Of course,’ said Bunch softly to herself, ‘he was being hunted down by the law, and he took sanctuary.’ Then she asked, ‘What had he done?’
‘I’ll have to go back rather a long way. It’s a complicated story. Several years ago there was a certain dancer doing turns at the music halls. I don’t expect you’ll have ever heard of her, but she specialized in an Arabian Night turn, “Aladdin in the Cave of Jewels” it was called. She wore bits of rhinestone and not much else.
‘She wasn’t much of a dancer, I believe, but she was—well—attractive. Anyway, a certain Asiatic royalty fell for her in a big way. Amongst other things he gave her a very magnificent emerald necklace.’
‘The historic jewels of a Rajah?’ murmured Bunch ecstatically.
Inspector Craddock coughed. ‘Well, a rather more modern version, Mrs Harmon. The affair didn’t last very long, broke up when our potentate’s attention was captured by a certain film star whose demands were not quite so modest.
‘Zobeida, to give the dancer her stage name, hung on to the necklace, and in due course it was stolen. It disappeared from her dressing-room at the theatre, and there was a lingering suspicion in the minds of the authorities that she herself might have engineered its disappearance. Such things have been known as a publicity stunt, or indeed from more dishonest motives.
‘The necklace was never recovered, but during the course of the investigation the attention of the police was drawn to this man, Walter St John. He was a man of education and breeding who had come down in the world, and who was employed as a working jeweller with a rather obscure firm which was suspected of acting as a fence for jewel robberies.
‘There was evidence that this necklace had passed through his hands. It was, however, in connection with the theft of some other jewellery that he was finally brought to trial and convicted and sent to prison. He had not very much longer to serve, so his escape was rather a surprise.’
‘But why did he come here?’ asked Bunch.
‘We’d like to know that very much, Mrs Harmon. Following up his trial, it seems that he went first to London. He didn’t visit any of his old associates but he visited an elderly woman, a Mrs Jacobs who had formerly been a theatrical dresser. She won’t say a word of what he came for, but according to other lodgers in the house he left carrying a suitcase.’
‘I see,’ said Bunch. ‘He left it in the cloakroom at Paddington and then he came down here.’
‘By that time,’ said Inspector Craddock, ‘Eccles and the man who calls himself Edwin Moss were on his trail. They wanted that suitcase. They saw him get on the bus. They must have driven out in a car ahead of him and been waiting for him when he left the bus.’
‘And he was murdered?’ said Bunch.
‘Yes,’ said Craddock. ‘He was shot. It was Eccles’s revolver, but I rather fancy it was Moss who did the shooting. Now, Mrs Harmon, what we want to know is, where is the suitcase that Walter St John actually deposited at Paddington Station?’
Bunch grinned. ‘I expect Aunt Jane’s got it by now,’ she said. ‘Miss Marple, I mean. That was her plan. She sent a former maid of hers with a suitcase packed with her things to the cloakroom at Paddington and we exchanged tickets. I collected her suitcase and brought it down by train. She seemed to expect that an attempt would be made to get it from me.’
It was Inspector Craddock’s turn to grin. ‘So she said when she rang up. I’m driving up to London to see her. Do you want to come, too, Mrs Harmon?’
‘Wel-l,’ said Bunch, considering. ‘Wel-l, as a matter of fact, it’s very fortunate. I had a toothache last night so I really ought to go to London to see the dentist, oughtn’t I?’
‘Definitely,’ said Inspector Craddock …
Miss Marple looked from Inspector Craddock’s face to the eager face of Bunch Harmon. The suitcase lay on the table. ‘Of course, I haven’t opened it,’ the old lady said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing till somebody official arrived. Besides,’ she added, with a demurely mischievous Victorian smile, ‘it’s locked.’
‘Like to make a guess at what’s inside, Miss Marple?’ asked the inspector.
‘I should imagine, you know,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that it would be Zobeida’s theatrical costumes. Would you like a chisel, Inspector?’
The chisel soon did its work. Both women gave a slight gasp as the lid flew up. The sunlight coming through the window lit up what seemed like an inexhaustible treasure of sparkling jewels, red, blue, green, orange.
‘Aladdin’s Cave,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The flashing jewels the girl wore to dance.’
‘Ah,’ said Inspector Craddock. ‘Now, what’s so precious about it, do you think, that a man was murdered to get hold of it?’
‘She was a shrewd girl, I expect,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she, Inspector?’
‘Yes, died three years ago.’
‘She had this valuable emerald necklace,’ said Miss Marple, musingly. ‘Had the stones taken out of their setting and fastened here and there on her theatrical costume, where everyone would take them for merely coloured rhinestones. Then she had a replica made of the real necklace, and that, of course, was what was stolen. No wonder it never came on the market. The thief soon discovered the stones were false.’
‘Here is an envelope,’ said Bunch, pulling aside some of the glittering stones.
Inspector Craddock took it from her and extracted two official-looking papers from it. He read aloud, ‘“Marriage Certificate between Walter Edmund St John and Mary Moss.” That was Zobeida’s real name.’
‘So they were married,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I see.’
‘What’s the other?’ asked Bunch.
‘A birth certificate of a daughter, Jewel.’
‘Jewel?’ cried Bunch. ‘Why, of course. Jewel! Jill! That’s it. I see now why he came to Chipping Cleghorn. That’s what he was trying to say to me. Jewel. The Mundys, you know. Laburnum Cottage. They look after a little girl for someone. They’re devoted to her. She’s been like their own granddaughter. Yes, I remember now, her name was Jewel, only, of course, they call her Jill.
‘Mrs Mundy had a stroke about a week ago, and the old man’s been very ill with pneumonia. They were both going to go to the infirmary. I’ve been trying hard to find a good home for Jill somewhere. I didn’t want her taken away to an institution.
‘I suppose her father heard about it in prison and he managed to break away and get hold of this suitcase from the old dresser he or his wife left it with. I suppose if the jewels really belonged to her mother, they can be used for the child now.’
‘I should imagine so, Mrs Harmon. If they’re here.’
‘Oh, they’ll be here all right,’ said Miss Marple cheerfully …
‘Thank goodness you’re back, dear,’ said the Reverend Julian Harmon, greeting his wife with affection and a sigh of content. ‘Mrs Burt always tries to do her best when you’re away, but she really gave me some very peculiar fish-cakes for lunch. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I gave them to Tiglath Pileser, but even he wouldn’t eat them so I had to throw them out of the window.’
‘Tiglath Pileser,’ said Bunch, stroking the vicarage cat, who was purring against her knee, ‘is very particular about what fish he eats. I often tell him he’s got a proud stomach!’
‘And your tooth, dear? Did you have it seen to?’
‘Yes,’ said Bunch. ‘It didn’t hurt much, and I went to see Aunt Jane again, too …’
‘Dear old thing,’ said Julian. ‘I hope she’s not failing at all.’
‘Not in the least,’ said Bunch, with a grin.
The following morning Bunch took a fresh supply of chrysanthemums to the church. The sun was once more pouring through the east window, and Bunch stood in the jewelled light on the chancel steps. She said very softly under her breath, ‘Your little girl will be all right. I’ll see that she is. I promise.’
Then she tidied up the church, slipped into a pew and knelt for a few moments to say her prayers before returning to the vicarage to attack the piled-up chores of two neglected days.
Strange Jest (#u58b332de-96dd-5517-b560-f5fa69ee6ef9)
‘And this,’ said Jane Helier, completing her introductions, ‘is Miss Marple!’
Being an actress, she was able to make her point. It was clearly the climax, the triumphant finale! Her tone was equally compounded of reverent awe and triumph.
The odd part of it was that the object thus proudly proclaimed was merely a gentle, fussy-looking, elderly spinster. In the eyes of the two young people who had just, by Jane’s good offices, made her acquaintance, there showed incredulity and a tinge of dismay. They were nice-looking people; the girl, Charmian Stroud, slim and dark—the man, Edward Rossiter, a fair-haired, amiable young giant.
Charmian said a little breathlessly. ‘Oh! We’re awfully pleased to meet you.’ But there was doubt in her eyes. She flung a quick, questioning glance at Jane Helier.
‘Darling,’ said Jane, answering the glance, ‘she’s absolutely marvellous. Leave it all to her. I told you I’d get her here and I have.’ She added to Miss Marple, ‘You’ll fix it for them, I know. It will be easy for you.’
Miss Marple turned her placid, china-blue eyes towards Mr Rossiter. ‘Won’t you tell me,’ she said, ‘what all this is about?’
‘Jane’s a friend of ours,’ Charmian broke in impatiently. ‘Edward and I are in rather a fix. Jane said if we would come to her party, she’d introduce us to someone who was—who would—who could—’
Edward came to the rescue. ‘Jane tells us you’re the last word in sleuths, Miss Marple!’
The old lady’s eyes twinkled, but she protested modestly. ‘Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind. It’s just that living in a village as I do, one gets to know so much about human nature. But really you have made me quite curious. Do tell me your problem.’
‘I’m afraid it’s terribly hackneyed—just buried treasure,’ said Edward.
‘Indeed? But that sounds most exciting!’
‘I know. Like Treasure Island. But our problem lacks the usual romantic touches. No point on a chart indicated by a skull and crossbones, no directions like “four paces to the left, west by north”. It’s horribly prosaic—just where we ought to dig.’
‘Have you tried at all?’
‘I should say we’d dug about two solid square acres! The whole place is ready to be turned into a market garden. We’re just discussing whether to grow vegetable marrows or potatoes.’
Charmian said rather abruptly, ‘May we really tell you all about it?’
‘But, of course, my dear.’
‘Then let’s find a peaceful spot. Come on, Edward.’ She led the way out of the overcrowded and smoke-laden room, and they went up the stairs, to a small sitting-room on the second floor.
When they were seated, Charmian began abruptly. ‘Well, here goes! The story starts with Uncle Mathew, uncle—or rather, great-great-uncle—to both of us. He was incredibly ancient. Edward and I were his only relations. He was fond of us and always declared that when he died he would leave his money between us. Well, he died last March and left everything he had to be divided equally between Edward and myself. What I’ve just said sounds rather callous—I don’t mean that it was right that he died—actually we were very fond of him. But he’d been ill for some time.
‘The point is that the “everything” he left turned out to be practically nothing at all. And that, frankly, was a bit of a blow to us both, wasn’t it, Edward?’
The amiable Edward agreed. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’d counted on it a bit. I mean, when you know a good bit of money is coming to you, you don’t—well—buckle down and try to make it yourself. I’m in the army—not got anything to speak of outside my pay—and Charmian herself hasn’t got a bean. She works as a stage manager in a repertory theatre—quite interesting, and she enjoys it—but no money in it. We’d counted on getting married, but weren’t worried about the money side of it because we both knew we’d be jolly well off some day.’
‘And now, you see, we’re not!’ said Charmian. ‘What’s more, Ansteys—that’s the family place, and Edward and I both love it—will probably have to be sold. And Edward and I feel we just can’t bear that! But if we don’t find Uncle Mathew’s money, we shall have to sell.’
