A Murder Is Announced_ A Miss Marple Mystery - Agatha Christie [33]
Rydesdale said, smiling tolerantly:
“Are you suggesting that he was persuaded by someone to go out and take pot shots at a room full of people? Rather a tall order.”
“I think he was told that it was a joke,” said Miss Marple. “He was paid for doing it, of course. Paid, that is, to put an advertisement in the newspaper, to go out and spy out the household premises, and then, on the night in question, he was to go there, assume a mask and a black cloak and throw open a door, brandishing a torch, and cry ‘Hands up!’”
“And fire off a revolver?”
“No, no,” said Miss Marple. “He never had a revolver.”
“But everyone says—” began Rydesdale, and stopped.
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “Nobody could possibly have seen a revolver even if he had one. And I don’t think he had. I think that after he’d called ‘Hands up’ somebody came up quietly behind him in the darkness and fired those two shots over his shoulder. It frightened him to death. He swung round and as he did so, that other person shot him and then let the revolver drop beside him….”
The three men looked at her. Sir Henry said softly:
“It’s a possible theory.”
“But who is Mr. X who came up in the darkness?” asked the Chief Constable.
Miss Marple coughed.
“You’ll have to find out from Miss Blacklock who wanted to kill her.”
Good for old Dora Bunner, thought Craddock. Instinct against intelligence every time.
“So you think it was a deliberate attempt on Miss Blacklock’s life,” asked Rydesdale.
“It certainly has that appearance,” said Miss Marple. “Though there are one or two difficulties. But what I was really wondering about was whether there mightn’t be a short cut. I’ve no doubt that whoever arranged this with Rudi Scherz took pains to tell him to keep his mouth shut, but if he talked to anybody it would probably be to that girl, Myrna Harris. And he may—he just may—have dropped some hint as to the kind of person who’d suggested the whole thing.”
“I’ll see her now,” said Craddock, rising.
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes, do, Inspector Craddock. I’ll feel happier when you have. Because once she’s told you anything she knows she’ll be much safer.”
“Safer?… Yes, I see.”
He left the room. The Chief Constable said doubtfully, but tactfully:
“Well, Miss Marple, you’ve certainly given us something to think about.”
III
“I’m sorry about it, I am really,” said Myrna Harris. “It’s ever so nice of you not to be ratty about it. But you see Mum’s the sort of person who fusses like anything. And it did look as though I’d—what’s the phrase?—been an accessory before the fact” (the words ran glibly off her tongue). “I mean, I was afraid you’d never take my word for it that I only thought it was just a bit of fun.”
Inspector Craddock repeated the reassuring phrase with which he had broken down Myrna’s resistance.
“I will. I’ll tell you all about it. But you will keep me out of it if you can because of Mum? It all started with Rudi breaking a date with me. We were going to the pictures that evening and then he said he wouldn’t be able to come and I was a bit standoffish with him about it—because after all, it had been his idea and I don’t fancy being stood up by a foreigner. And he said it wasn’t his fault, and I said that was a likely story, and then he said he’d got a bit of a lark on that night—and that he wasn’t going to be out of pocket by it and how would I fancy a wristwatch? So I said, what do you mean by a lark? And he said not to tell anyone, but there was to be a party somewhere and he was to stage a sham hold-up. Then he showed me the advertisement he’d put in and I had to laugh. He was a bit scornful about it all. Said it was kid’s stuff, really—but that was