A Murder Is Announced_ A Miss Marple Mystery - Agatha Christie [6]
She and Dora Bunner had been at school together. Dora then had been a pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed rather stupid girl. Her being stupid hadn’t mattered, because her gaiety and high spirits and her prettiness had made her an agreeable companion. She ought, her friend thought, to have married some nice Army officer, or a country solicitor. She had so many good qualities—affection, devotion, loyalty. But life had been unkind to Dora Bunner. She had had to earn her living. She had been painstaking but never competent at anything she undertook.
The two friends had lost sight of each other. But six months ago a letter had come to Miss Blacklock, a rambling, pathetic letter. Dora’s health had given way. She was living in one room, trying to subsist on her old age pension. She endeavoured to do needlework, but her fingers were stiff with rheumatism. She mentioned their schooldays—since then life had driven them apart—but could—possibly—her old friend help?
Miss Blacklock had responded impulsively. Poor Dora, poor pretty silly fluffy Dora. She had swooped down upon Dora, had carried her off, had installed her at Little Paddocks with the comforting fiction that “the housework is getting too much for me. I need someone to help me run the house.” It was not for long—the doctor had told her that—but sometimes she found poor old Dora a sad trial. She muddled everything, upset the temperamental foreign “help,” miscounted the laundry, lost bills and letters—and sometimes reduced the competent Miss Blacklock to an agony of exasperation. Poor old muddle-headed Dora, so loyal, so anxious to help, so pleased and proud to think she was of assistance—and, alas, so completely unreliable.
She said sharply:
“Don’t, Dora. You know I asked you—”
“Oh,” Miss Bunner looked guilty. “I know. I forgot. But—but you are, aren’t you?”
“Worried? No. At least,” she added truthfully, “not exactly. You mean about that silly notice in the Gazette?”
“Yes—even if it’s a joke, it seems to me it’s a—a spiteful sort of joke.”
“Spiteful?”
“Yes. It seems to me there’s spite there somewhere. I mean—it’s not a nice kind of joke.”
Miss Blacklock looked at her friend. The mild eyes, the long obstinate mouth, the slightly upturned nose. Poor Dora, so maddening, so muddle-headed, so devoted and such a problem. A dear fussy old idiot and yet, in a queer way, with an instinctive sense of value.
“I think you’re right, Dora,” said Miss Blacklock. “It’s not a nice joke.”
“I don’t like it at all,” said Dora Bunner with unsuspected vigour. “It frightens me.” She added, suddenly: “And it frightens you, Letitia.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Blacklock with spirit.
“It’s dangerous. I’m sure it is. Like those people who send you bombs done up in parcels.”
“My dear, it’s just some silly idiot trying to be funny.”
“But it isn’t funny.”
It wasn’t really very funny … Miss Blacklock’s face betrayed her thoughts, and Dora cried triumphantly, “You see. You think so, too!”
“But Dora, my dear—”
She broke off. Through the door there surged a tempestuous young woman with a well-developed bosom heaving under a tight jersey. She had on a dirndl skirt of a bright colour and had greasy dark plaits wound round and round her head. Her eyes were dark and flashing.
She said gustily:
“I can speak to you, yes, please, no?”
Miss Blacklock sighed.
“Of course, Mitzi, what is it?”
Sometimes she thought it would be preferable to do the entire work of the house as well as the cooking rather than be bothered with the eternal nerve storms of her refugee “lady help.”
“I tell you at once—it is in order, I hope? I give you my notices and I go—I go at once!”
“For what reason? Has somebody upset you?”
“Yes, I am upset,” said Mitzi dramatically. “I do not wish to die! Already in Europe I escape. My family they all die—they are all killed—my mother, my little brother, my so sweet little niece—all, all they are killed. But me I run away—I hide. I get to England. I work. I do work that never—never would I do in my own country—I—”
“I know all that,” said Miss Blacklock