4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [83]
“So convenient,” murmured Miss Marple.
“It tied up,” said Craddock. “After all, there’s the letter Emma received signed Martine Crackenthorpe. Lady Stoddart-West didn’t send that, but somebody did. Somebody who was going to pretend to be Martine, and who was going to cash in, if possible, on being Martine. You can’t deny that.”
“No, no.”
“And then, the envelope of the letter Emma wrote to her with the London address on it. Found at Rutherford Hall, showing she’d actually been there.”
“But the murdered woman hadn’t been there!” Miss Marple pointed out. “Not in the sense you mean. She only came to Rutherford Hall after she was dead. Pushed out of a train on to the railway embankment.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What the envelope really proves is that the murderer was there. Presumably he took that envelope off her with her other papers and things, and then dropped it by mistake—or—I wonder now, was it a mistake? Surely Inspector Bacon, and your men too, made a thorough search of the place, didn’t they, and didn’t find it. It only turned up later in the boiler house.”
“That’s understandable,” said Craddock. “The old gardener chap used to spear up any odd stuff that was blowing about and shove it in there.”
“Where it was very convenient for the boys to find,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
“You think we were meant to find it?”
“Well, I just wonder. After all, it would be fairly easy to know where the boys were going to look next, or even to suggest to them… Yes, I do wonder. It stopped you thinking about Anna Stravinska anymore, didn’t it?”
Craddock said: “And you think it really may be her all the time?”
“I think someone may have got alarmed when you started making inquiries about her, that’s all… I think somebody didn’t want those inquiries made.”
“Let’s hold on to the basic fact that someone was going to impersonate Martine,” said Craddock. “And then for some reason—didn’t. Why?”
“That’s a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple.
“Somebody sent a note saying Martine was going back to France, then arranged to travel down with the girl and kill her on the way. You agree so far?”
“Not exactly,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think, really, you’re making it simple enough.”
“Simple!” exclaimed Craddock. “You’re mixing me up,” he complained.
Miss Marple said in a distressed voice that she wouldn’t think of doing anything like that.
“Come, tell me,” said Craddock, “do you or do you not think you know who the murdered woman was?” Miss Marple sighed. “It’s so difficult,” she said, “to put it the right way. I mean, I don’t know who she was, but at the same time I’m fairly sure who she was, if you know what I mean.”
Craddock threw up his head. “Know what you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea.” He looked out through the window. “There’s your Lucy Eyelesbarrow coming to see you,” he said. “Well, I’ll be off. My amour propre is very low this afternoon and having a young woman coming in, radiant with efficiency and success, is more than I can bear.”
Twenty-five
“I looked up tontine in the dictionary,” said Lucy.
The first greetings were over and now Lucy was wandering rather aimlessly round the room, touching a china dog here, an antimacassar there, the plastic work-box in the window.
“I thought you probably would,” said Miss Marple equably.
Lucy spoke slowly, quoting the words. “Lorenzo Tonti, Italian banker, originator, 1653, of a form of annuity in which the shares of subscribers who die are added to the profit shares of the survivors.” She paused. “That’s it, isn’t it? That fits well enough, and you were thinking of it even then before the last two deaths.”
She took up once more her restless, almost aimless prowl round the room. Miss Marple sat watching her. This was a very different Lucy Eyelesbarrow from the one she knew.
“I suppose it was asking for it really,” said Lucy. “A will of that kind, ending so that if there was only one survivor left he’d get the lot. And