Mrs. McGillicuddy took a little time to think carefully before she replied.
“He was tallish—and dark, I think. He had a heavy coat on so that I couldn’t judge his build very well.” She added despondently, “It’s not really very much to go on.”
“It’s something,” said Miss Marple. She paused before saying: “You feel quite sure, in your own mind, that the girl was—dead?”
“She was dead, I’m sure of it. Her tongue came out and—I’d rather not talk about it….”
“Of course not. Of course not,” said Miss Marple quickly. “We shall know more, I expect, in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“I should imagine it will be in the morning papers. After this man had attacked and killed her, he would have a body on his hands. What would he do? Presumably he would leave the train quickly at the first station—by the way, can you remember if it was a corridor carriage?”
“No, it was not.”
“That seems to point to a train that was not going far afield. It would almost certainly stop at Brackhampton. Let us say he leaves the train at Brackhampton, perhaps arranging the body in a corner seat, with her face hidden by the fur collar to delay discovery. Yes—I think that that is what he would do. But of course it will be discovered before very long—and I should imagine that the news of a murdered woman discovered on a train would be almost certain to be in the morning papers—we shall see.”
II
But it was not in the morning papers.
Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy, after making sure of this, finished their breakfast in silence. Both were reflecting.
After breakfast, they took a turn round the garden. But this, usually an absorbing pastime, was today somewhat halfhearted. Miss Marple did indeed call attention to some new and rare species she had acquired for her rock-garden but did so in an almost absentminded manner. And Mrs. McGillicuddy did not, as was customary, counter-attack with a list of her own recent acquisitions.
“The garden is not looking at all as it should,” said Miss Marple, but still speaking absentmindedly. “Doctor Haydock has absolutely forbidden me to do any stooping or kneeling—and really, what can you do if you don’t stoop or kneel? There’s old Edwards, of course—but so opinionated. And all this jobbing gets them into bad habits, lots of cups of tea and so much pottering—not any real work.”
“Oh, I know,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Of course, there’s no question of my being forbidden to stoop, but really, especially after meals—and having put on weight”—she looked down at her ample proportions—“it does bring on heartburn.”
There was a silence and then Mrs. McGillicuddy planted her feet sturdily, stood still, and turned on her friend.
“Well?” she said.
It was a small insignificant word, but it acquired full significance from Mrs. McGillicuddy’s tone, and Miss Marple understood its meaning perfectly.
“I know,” she said.
The two ladies looked at each other.
“I think,” said Miss Marple, “we might walk down to the police station and talk to Sergeant Cornish. He’s intelligent and patient, and I know him very well, and he knows me. I think he’ll listen—and pass the information on to the proper quarter.”
Accordingly, some three-quarters of an hour later, Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy were talking to a fresh-faced grave man between thirty and forty who listened attentively to what they had to say.
Frank Cornish received Miss Marple with cordiality and even deference. He set chairs for the two ladies, and said: “Now what can we do for you, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple said: “I would like you, please, to listen to my friend Mrs. McGillicuddy’s story.”
And Sergeant Cornish had listened. At the close of the recital he remained silent for a moment or two.
Then he said:
“That’s a very extraordinary story.” His eyes, without seeming to do so, had sized Mrs. McGillicuddy up whilst she was telling it.
On the whole, he was favourably impressed. A sensible woman, able to tell a story clearly; not, so far as he could judge, an over-imaginative or a hysterical woman. Moreover, Miss Marple, so it seemed, believed in the accuracy of her friend’s story and he knew all about Miss Marple. Everybody in St. Mary Mead knew Miss Marple; fluffy and dithery in appearance, but inwardly as sharp and as shrewd as they make them.
He cleared his throat and spoke.
“Of course,” he said, “you may have been mistaken—I’m not saying you were, mind—but you may have been. There’s a lot of horse-play goes on—it mayn’t have been serious or fatal.”
“I know what I saw,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy grimly.
“And you won’t budge from it,” thought Frank Cornish, “and I’d say that, likely or unlikely, you may be right.”
Aloud he said: “You reported it to the railway officials, and you’ve come and reported it to me. That’s the proper procedure and you may rely on me to have inquiries instituted.”
He stopped. Miss Marple nodded her head gently, satisfied. Mrs. McGillicuddy was not quite so satisfied, but she did not say anything. Sergeant Cornish addressed Miss Marple, not so much because he wanted her ideas, as because he wanted to hear what she would say.
“Granted the facts are as reported,” he said, “what do you think has happened to the body?”
“There seems to be only two possibilities,” said Miss Marple without hesitation. “The most likely one, of course, is that the body was left in the train, but that seems improbable now, for it would have been found some time last night, by another traveller, or by the railway staff at the train’s ultimate destination.”
Frank Cornish nodded.
“The only other course open to the murderer would be to push the body out of the train on to the line. It must, I suppose, be still on the track somewhere as yet undiscovered—though that does seem a little unlikely. But there would be, as far as I can see, no other way of dealing with it.”
“You read about bodies being put in trunks,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “but no-one travels with trunks nowadays, only suitcases, and you couldn’t get a body into a suitcase.”
“Yes,” said Cornish. “I agree with you both. The body, if there is a body, ought to have been discovered by now, or will be very soon. I’ll let you know any developments there are—though I dare say you’ll read about them in the papers. There’s the possibility, of course, that the woman, though savagely attacked, was not actually dead. She may have been able to leave the train on her own feet.”
“Hardly without assistance,” said Miss Marple. “And if so, it will have been noticed. A man, supporting a woman whom he says is ill.”
“Yes, it will have been noticed,” said Cornish. “Or if a woman was found unconscious or ill in a carriage and was removed to hospital, that, too, will be on record. I think you may rest assured that you’ll hear about it all in a very short time.”
But that day passed and the next day. On that evening Miss Marple received a note from Sergeant Cornish.
In regard to the matter on which you consulted me, full inquiries have been made, with no result. No woman’s body has been found. No hospital has administered treatment to a woman such as you describe, and no case of a woman suffering from shock or taken ill, or leaving a station supported by a man has been observed. You may take it that the fullest inquiries have been made. I suggest that your friend may have witnessed a scene such as she described but that it was much less serious than she supposed.
Three
“Less serious? Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “It was murder!”
She looked defiantly at Miss Marple and Miss Marple looked back at her.
“Go on, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Say it was all a mistake! Say I imagined the whole thing! That’s what you think now, isn’t it?”
“Anyone can be mistaken,” Miss Marple pointed out gently. “Anybody, Elspeth—even you. I think we must bear that in mind. But I sti
ll think, you know, that you were most probably not mistaken… You use glasses for reading, but you’ve got very good far sight—and what you saw impressed you very powerfully. You were definitely suffering from shock when you arrived here.”
“It’s a thing I shall never forget,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy with a shudder. “The trouble is, I don’t see what I can do about it!”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that there’s anything more you can do about it.” (If Mrs. McGillicuddy had been alert to the tones of her friend’s voice, she might have noticed a very faint stress laid on the you.) “You’ve reported what you saw—to the railway people and to the police. No, there’s nothing more you can do.”
“That’s a relief, in a way,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “because as you know, I’m going out to Ceylon immediately after Christmas—to stay with Roderick, and I certainly do not want to put that visit off— I’ve been looking forward to it so much. Though of course I would put it off if I thought it was my duty,” she added conscientiously.
“I’m sure you would, Elspeth, but as I say, I consider you’ve done everything you possibly could do.”
“It’s up to the police,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “And if the police choose to be stupid—”
Miss Marple shook her head decisively.
“Oh, no,” she said, “the police aren’t stupid. And that makes it interesting, doesn’t it?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her without comprehension and Miss Marple reaffirmed her judgment of her friend as a woman of excellent principles and no imagination.
“One wants to know,” said Miss Marple, “what really happened.”
“She was killed.”
“Yes, but who killed her, and why, and what happened to her body? Where is it now?”
“That’s the business of the police to find out.”
“Exactly—and they haven’t found out. That means, doesn’t it, that the man was clever—very clever. I can’t imagine, you know,” said Miss Marple, knitting her brows, “how he disposed of it… You kill a woman in a fit of passion—it must have been unpremeditated, you’d never choose to kill a woman in such circumstances just a few minutes before running into a big station. No, it must have been a quarrel—jealousy—something of that kind. You strangle her—and there you are, as I say, with a dead body on your hands and on the point of running into a station. What could you do except as I said at first, prop the body up in a corner as though asleep, hiding the face, and then yourself leave the train as quickly as possible. I don’t see any other possibility—and yet there must have been one….”
Miss Marple lost herself in thought.
Mrs. McGillicuddy spoke to her twice before Miss Marple answered.
“You’re getting deaf, Jane.”
“Just a little, perhaps. People do not seem to me to enunciate their words as clearly as they used to do. But it wasn’t that I did not hear you. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I just asked about the trains to London tomorrow. Would the afternoon be all right? I’m going to Margaret’s and she isn’t expecting me before teatime.”
“I wonder, Elspeth, if you would mind going up by the 12:15? We could have an early lunch.”
“Of course and—” Miss Marple went on, drowning her friend’s words:
“And I wonder, too, if Margaret would mind if you didn’t arrive for tea—if you arrived about seven, perhaps?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her friend curiously.
“What’s on your mind, Jane?”
“I suggest, Elspeth, that I should travel up to London with you, and that we should travel down again as far as Brackhampton in the train you travelled by the other day. You would then return to London from Brackhampton and I would come on here as you did. I, of course, would pay the fares,” Miss Marple stressed this point firmly.
Mrs. McGillicuddy ignored the financial aspect.
“What on earth do you expect, Jane?” she asked. “Another murder?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple shocked. “But I confess I should like to see for myself, under your guidance, the—the—really it is most difficult to find the correct term—the terrain of the crime.”
So accordingly on the following day Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy found themselves in two opposite corners of a first-class carriage speeding out of London by the 4:50 from Paddington. Paddington had been even more crowded than on the preceding Friday—as there were now only two days to go before Christmas, but the 4:50 was comparatively peaceful—at any rate, in the rear portion.
On this occasion no train drew level with them, or they with another train. At intervals trains flashed past them towards London. On two occasions trains flashed past them the other way going at high speed. At intervals Mrs. McGillicuddy consulted her watch doubtfully.
“It’s hard to tell just when—we’d passed through a station I know…” But they were continually passing through stations.
“We’re due in Brackhampton in five minutes,” said Miss Marple.
A ticket collector appeared in the doorway. Miss Marple raised her eyes interrogatively. Mrs. McGillicuddy shook her head. It was not the same ticket collector. He clipped their tickets, and passed on staggering just a little as the train swung round a long curve. It slackened speed as it did so.
“I expect we’re coming into Brackhampton,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“We’re getting into the outskirts, I think,” said Miss Marple.
There were lights flashing past outside, buildings, an occasional glimpse of streets and trams. Their speed slackened further. They began crossing points.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “and I can’t really see this journey has been any good at all. Has it suggested anything to you, Jane?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple in a rather doubtful voice.
“A sad waste of good money,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, but with less disapproval than she would have used had she been paying for herself. Miss Marple had been quite adamant on that point.
“All the same,” said Miss Marple, “one likes to see with one’s own eyes where a thing happened. This train’s just a few minutes late. Was yours on time on Friday?”
“I think so. I didn’t really notice.”
The train drew slowly into the busy length of Brackhampton station. The loudspeaker announced hoarsely, doors opened and shut, people got in and out, milled up and down the platform. It was a busy crowded scene.
Easy, thought Miss Marple, for a murderer to merge into that crowd, to leave the station in the midst of that pressing mass of people, or even to select another carriage and go on in the train wherever its ultimate destination might be. Easy to be one male passenger amongst many. But not so easy to make a body vanish into thin air. That body must be somewhere.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had descended. She spoke now from the platform, through the open window.
“Now take care of yourself, Jane,” she said. “Don’t catch a chill. It’s a nasty treacherous time of year, and you’re not so young as you were.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple.
“And don’t let’s worry ourselves anymore over all this. We’ve done what we could.”
Miss Marple nodded, and said:
“Don’t stand about in the cold, Elspeth. Or you’ll be the one to catch a chill. Go and get yourself a good hot cup of tea in the Restaurant Room. You’ve got time, twelve minutes before your train back to town.”
“I think perhaps I will. Good-bye, Jane.”
“Good-bye, Elspeth. A happy Christmas to you. I hope you find Margaret well. Enjoy yourself in Ceylon, and give my love to dear Roderick—if he remembers me at all, which I doubt.”
“Of course he remembers you—very well. You helped him in some way when he was at school—something to do with money that was disappearing from a locker—he’s never forgotten it.”
“Oh, that!” said Miss Marple.
M
rs. McGillicuddy turned away, a whistle blew, the train began to move. Miss Marple watched the sturdy thickset body of her friend recede. Elspeth could go to Ceylon with a clear conscience—she had done her duty and was freed from further obligation.
Miss Marple did not lean back as the train gathered speed. Instead she sat upright and devoted herself seriously to thought. Though in speech Miss Marple was woolly and diffuse, in mind she was clear and sharp. She had a problem to solve, the problem of her own future conduct; and, perhaps strangely, it presented itself to her as it had to Mrs. McGillicuddy, as a question of duty.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had said that they had both done all that they could do. It was true of Mrs. McGillicuddy but about herself Miss Marple did not feel so sure.
It was a question, sometimes, of using one’s special gifts… But perhaps that was conceited… After all, what could she do? Her friend’s words came back to her, “You’re not so young as you were….”
Dispassionately, like a general planning a campaign, or an accountant assessing a business, Miss Marple weighed up and set down in her mind the facts of and against further enterprise. On the credit side were the following:
1. My long experience of life and human nature.
2. Sir Henry Clithering and his godson (now at Scotland Yard, I believe), who was so very nice in the Little Paddocks case.
3. My nephew Raymond’s second boy, David, who is, I am almost sure, in British Railways.
4. Griselda’s boy Leonard who is so very knowledgeable about maps.
Miss Marple reviewed these assets and approved them. They were all very necessary, to reinforce the weaknesses on the debit side—in particular her own bodily weakness.
“It is not,” thought Miss Marple, “as though I could go here, there and everywhere, making inquiries and finding out things.”
Yes, that was the chief objection, her own age and weakness. Although, for her age, her health was good, yet she was old. And if Dr. Haydock had strictly forbidden her to do practical gardening he would hardly approve of her starting out to track down a murderer. For that, in effect, was what she was planning to do—and it was there that her loophole lay. For if heretofore murder had, so to speak, been forced upon her, in this case it would be that she herself set out deliberately to seek it. And she was not sure that she wanted to do so… She was old—old and tired. She felt at this moment, at the end of a tiring day, a great reluctance to enter upon any project at all. She wanted nothing at all but to march home and sit by the fire with a nice tray of supper, and go to bed, and potter about the next day just snipping off a few things in the garden, tidying up in a very mild way, without stooping, without exerting herself….