4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [89]
“I do think it’s so brave of you all to make these jokes. Yes, really, I think it’s very brave indeed. I do admire bravery so much.”
She gave a sudden gasp and began to choke. “A fish bone,” she gasped out, “in my throat.”
Quimper rose quickly. He went across to her, moved her backwards towards the window and told her to open her mouth. He pulled out a case from his pocket, selecting some forceps from it. With quick professional skill he peered down the old lady’s throat. At that moment the door opened and Mrs. McGillicuddy, followed by Lucy, came in. Mrs. McGillicuddy gave a sudden gasp as her eyes fell on the tableau in front of her, Miss Marple leaning back and the doctor holding her throat and tilting up her head.
“But that’s him,” cried Mrs. McGillicuddy. “That’s the man in the train….”
With incredible swiftness Miss Marple slipped from the doctor’s grasp and came towards her friend.
“I thought you’d recognize him, Elspeth!” she said. “No. Don’t say another word.” She turned triumphantly round to Dr. Quimper. “You didn’t know, did you, Doctor, when you strangled that woman in the train, that somebody actually saw you do it? It was my friend here. Mrs. McGillicuddy. She saw you. Do you understand? Saw you with her own eyes. She was in another train that was running parallel with yours.”
“What the hell?” Dr. Quimper made a quick step towards Mrs. McGillicuddy but again, swiftly, Miss Marple was between him and her.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “She saw you, and she recognizes you, and she’ll swear to it in court. It’s not often, I believe,” went on Miss Marple in her gentle plaintive voice, “that anyone actually sees a murder committed. It’s usually circumstantial evidence of course. But in this case the conditions were very unusual. There was actually an eyewitness to murder.”
“You devilish old hag,” said Dr. Quimper. He lunged forward at Miss Marple but this time it was Cedric who caught him by the shoulder.
“So you’re the murdering devil, are you?” said Cedric as he swung him round. “I never liked you and I always thought you were a wrong ’un, but lord knows, I never suspected you.”
Bryan Eastley came quickly to Cedric’s assistance. Inspector Craddock and Inspector Bacon entered the room from the farther door.
“Dr. Quimper,” said Bacon, “I must caution you that….”
“You can take your caution to hell,” said Dr. Quimper. “Do you think anyone’s going to believe what a couple of old women say? Who’s ever heard of all this rigmarole about a train!”
Miss Marple said: “Elspeth McGillicuddy reported the murder to the police at once on the 20th December and gave a description of the man.”
Dr. Quimper gave a sudden heave of the shoulders. “If ever a man had the devil’s own luck,” said Dr. Quimper.
“But—” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“Be quiet, Elspeth,” said Miss Marple.
“Why should I want to murder a perfectly strange woman?” said Dr. Quimper.
“She wasn’t a strange woman,” said Inspector Craddock. “She was your wife.”
Twenty-seven
“So you see,” said Miss Marple, “it really turned out to be, as I began to suspect, very, very simple. The simplest kind of crime. So many men seem to murder their wives.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at Miss Marple and Inspector Craddock. “I’d be obliged,” she said, “if you’d put me a little more up to date.”
“He saw a chance, you see,” said Miss Marple, “of marrying a rich wife, Emma Crackenthorpe. Only he couldn’t marry her because he had a wife already. They’d been separated for years but she wouldn’t divorce him. That fitted in very well with what Inspector Craddock told me of this girl who called herself Anna Stravinska. She had an English husband, so she told one of her friends, and it was also said she was a very devout Catholic. Dr. Quimper couldn’t risk marrying Emma bigamously, so he decided, being a very ruthless and cold-blooded man, that he would get rid of his wife. The idea of murdering her in the train and later putting her body in the sarcophagus in the barn was really