A Murder Is Announced_ A Miss Marple Mystery - Agatha Christie [48]
“Oh,” said Miss Murgatroyd, nervously.
“All right. It won’t bite you. Now come along to the kitchen door. You’re going to be the burglar. You stand here. Now you’re going into the kitchen to hold up a lot of nit-wits. Take the torch. Switch it on.”
“But it’s broad daylight!”
“Use your imagination, Murgatroyd. Switch it on.”
Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm while she did so.
“Now then,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “off you go. Remember the time you played Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Women’s Institute? Act. Give it all you’ve got. ‘Stick ’em up!’ Those are your lines—and don’t ruin them by saying ‘Please.’”
Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and advanced on the kitchen door.
Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.
“Stick ’em up!” she fluted, adding vexedly: “Dear me, this is very difficult, Hinch.”
“Why?”
“The door. It’s a swing door, it keeps coming back and I’ve got both hands full.”
“Exactly,” boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. “And the drawing room door at Little Paddocks always swings to. It isn’t a swing door like this, but it won’t stay open. That’s why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass doorstop from Elliot’s in the High Street. I don’t mind saying I’ve never forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute down most successfully. He’d come down from eight guineas to six pound ten, and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I’d never seen as attractive a doorstop, you don’t often get those glass bubbles in that big size.”
“Perhaps the burglar put the doorstop against the door to keep it open,” suggested Miss Murgatroyd.
“Use your common sense, Murgatroyd. What does he do? Throw the door open, say ‘Excuse me a moment,’ stoop and put the stop into position and then resume business by saying ‘Hands up’? Try holding the door with your shoulder.”
“It’s still very awkward,” complained Miss Murgatroyd.
“Exactly,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “A revolver, a torch and a door to hold open—a bit too much, isn’t it? So what’s the answer?”
Miss Murgatroyd did not attempt to supply an answer. She looked inquiringly and admiringly at her masterful friend and waited to be enlightened.
“We know he’d got a revolver, because he fired it,” said Miss Hinchcliffe. “And we know he had a torch because we all saw it—that is unless we’re all victims of mass hypnotism like explanations of the Indian Rope Trick (what a bore that old Easterbrook is with his Indian stories) so the question is, did someone hold that door open for him?”
“But who could have done that?”
“Well, you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were standing directly behind it when the lights went out.” Miss Hinchcliffe laughed heartily. “Highly suspicious character, aren’t you, Murgatroyd? But who’d think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel—thank heavens it isn’t really a revolver. You’d have shot yourself by now!”
IV
“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” muttered Colonel Easterbrook. “Most extraordinary. Laura.”
“Yes, darling?”
“Come into my dressing room a moment.”
“What is it, darling?”
Mrs. Easterbrook appeared through the open door.
“Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?”
“Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horrid black thing.”
“Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well, it’s not there now.”
“Archie, how extraordinary!”
“You haven’t moved it or anything?”
“Oh, no, I’d never dare to touch the horrid thing.”
“Think old mother whatsername did?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Mrs. Butt would never do a thing like that. Shall I ask her?”
“No—no, better not. Don’t want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you remember when it was I showed it to you?”
“Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked