A Murder Is Announced_ A Miss Marple Mystery - Agatha Christie [44]
“Oh, yes,” said Bunch. “We won’t breathe a word, will we, Aunt Jane. But I wonder why he—”
She relapsed into thought. Miss Bunner fidgeted and looked miserable, bursting out at last: “I always say the wrong thing—Oh, dear, I’m nothing but a trial to you, Letty.”
Miss Blacklock said quickly, “You’re my great comfort, Dora. And anyway in a small place like Chipping Cleghorn there aren’t really any secrets.”
“Now that is very true,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid, you know, that things do get round in the most extraordinary way. Servants, of course, and yet it can’t only be that, because one has so few servants nowadays. Still, there are the daily women and perhaps they are worse, because they go to everybody in turn and pass the news round.”
“Oh!” said Bunch Harmon suddenly. “I’ve got it! Of course, if that door could open too, someone might have gone out of here in the dark and done the hold-up—only of course they didn’t—because it was the man from the Royal Spa Hotel. Or wasn’t it?… No, I don’t see after all …” She frowned.
“Did it all happen in this room then?” asked Miss Marple, adding apologetically: “I’m afraid you must think me sadly curious, Miss Blacklock—but it really is so very exciting—just like something one reads about in the paper—I’m just longing to hear all about it and to picture it all, if you know what I mean—”
Immediately Miss Marple received a confused and voluble account from Bunch and Miss Bunner—with occasional emendations and corrections from Miss Blacklock.
In the middle of it Patrick came in and good-naturedly entered into the spirit of the recital—going so far as to enact himself the part of Rudi Scherz.
“And Aunt Letty was there—in the corner by the archway … Go and stand there, Aunt Letty.”
Miss Blacklock obeyed, and then Miss Marple was shown the actual bullet holes.
“What a marvellous—what a providential escape,” she gasped.
“I was just going to offer my guests cigarettes—” Miss Blacklock indicated the big silver box on the table.
“People are so careless when they smoke,” said Miss Bunner disapprovingly. “Nobody really respects good furniture as they used to do. Look at the horrid burn somebody made on this beautiful table by putting a cigarette down on it. Disgraceful.”
Miss Blacklock sighed.
“Sometimes, I’m afraid, one thinks too much of one’s possessions.”
“But it’s such a lovely table, Letty.”
Miss Bunner loved her friend’s possessions with as much fervour as though they had been her own. Bunch Harmon had always thought it was a very endearing trait in her. She showed no sign of envy.
“It is a lovely table,” said Miss Marple politely. “And what a very pretty china lamp on it.”
Again it was Miss Bunner who accepted the compliment as though she and not Miss Blacklock was the owner of the lamp.
“Isn’t it delightful? Dresden. There is a pair of them. The other’s in the spare room, I think.”
“You know where everything in this house is, Dora—or you think you do,” said Miss Blacklock, good-humouredly. “You care far more about my things than I do.”
Miss Bunner flushed.
“I do like nice things,” she said. Her voice was half defiant—half wistful.
“I must confess,” said Miss Marple, “that my own few possessions are very dear to me, too—so many memories, you know. It’s the same with photographs. People nowadays have so few photographs about. Now I like to keep all the pictures of my nephews and nieces as babies—and then as children—and so on.”
“You’ve got a horrible one of me, aged three,” said Bunch. “Holding a fox terrier and squinting.”
“I expect your aunt has many photographs of you,” said Miss Marple, turning to Patrick.
“Oh, we’re only distant cousins,” said Patrick.
“I believe Elinor did send me one of you as a baby, Pat,” said Miss Blacklock. “But I’m afraid I didn’t keep it. I’d really forgotten how many children she’d had or what their names were until she wrote me about you two being over here.”
“Another sign of the times,” said Miss Marple. “Nowadays one so often doesn’t know one’s younger relations at all. In