At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [77]
“Well?” said Chief-Inspector Davy.
“The man I saw that night can’t have been Canon Pennyfather,” said Miss Marple. “Not if that’s Canon Pennyfather now.”
“I thought you said—”
“I know. He looked like Canon Pennyfather. His hair and his clothes and everything. But he didn’t walk the same way. I think—I think he must have been a younger man. I’m sorry, very sorry, to have misled you, but it wasn’t Canon Pennyfather that I saw that night. I’m quite sure of it.”
“You really are quite sure this time, Miss Marple?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’m sorry,” she added again, “to have misled you.”
“You were very nearly right. Canon Pennyfather did come back to the hotel that night. Nobody saw him come in—but that wasn’t remarkable. He came in after midnight. He came up the stairs, he opened the door of his room next door and he went in. What he saw or what happened next we don’t know, because he can’t or won’t tell us. If there was only some way we could jog his memory….”
“There’s that German word of course,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully.
“What German word?”
“Dear me, I’ve forgotten it now, but—”
There was a knock at the door.
“May I come in?” said Canon Pennyfather. He entered. “Was it satisfactory?”
“Most satisfactory,” said Father. “I was just telling Miss Marple—you know Miss Marple?”
“Oh yes,” said Canon Pennyfather, really slightly uncertain as to whether he did or not.
“I was just telling Miss Marple how we have traced your movements. You came back to the hotel that night after midnight. You came upstairs and you opened the door of your room and went in—” He paused.
Miss Marple gave an exclamation.
“I remember now,” she said, “what the German word is. Doppelgänger!”
Canon Pennyfather uttered an exclamation. “But of course,” he said, “of course! How could I have forgotten? You’re quite right, you know. After that film, The Walls of Jericho, I came back here and I came upstairs and I opened my room and I saw—extraordinary, I distinctly saw myself sitting in a chair facing me. As you say, dear lady, a doppelgänger. How very remarkable! And then—let me see—” He raised his eyes, trying to think.
“And then,” said Father, “startled out of their lives to see you, when they thought you were safely in Lucerne, somebody hit you on the head.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Canon Pennyfather had been sent on his way in a taxi to the British Museum. Miss Marple had been ensconced in the lounge by the Chief-Inspector. Would she mind waiting for him there for about ten minutes? Miss Marple had not minded. She welcomed the opportunity to sit and look around her and think.
Bertram’s Hotel. So many memories…The past fused itself with the present. A French phrase came back to her. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. She reversed the wording. Plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change. Both true, she thought.
She felt sad—for Bertram’s Hotel and for herself. She wondered what Chief-Inspector Davy wanted of her next. She sensed in him the excitement of purpose. He was a man whose plans were at last coming to fruition. It was Chief-Inspector Davy’s D-Day.
The life of Bertram’s went on as usual. No, Miss Marple decided, not as usual. There was a difference, though she could not have defined where the difference lay. An underlying uneasiness, perhaps?
“All set?” he inquired genially.
“Where are you taking me now?”
“We’re going to pay a call on Lady Sedgwick.”
“Is she staying here?”
“Yes. With her daughter.”
Miss Marple rose to her feet. She cast a glance round her and murmured: “Poor Bertram’s.”
“What do you mean—poor Bertram’s?”
“I think you know quite well what I mean.”
“Well—looking at it from your point of view, perhaps I do.”
“It is always sad when a work of art has to be destroyed.”
“You call this place a work of art?