Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [41]
As the two men went towards the door, Reeves said, pointing to a photograph:
“There she is.”
Harper looked at it attentively. It was a hockey group. Reeves pointed out Pamela in the centre of the team.
“A nice kid,” Harper thought, as he looked at the earnest face of the pigtailed girl.
His mouth set in a grim line as he thought of the charred body in the car.
He vowed to himself that the murder of Pamela Reeves should not remain one of Glenshire’s unsolved mysteries.
Ruby Keene, so he admitted privately, might have asked for what was coming to her, but Pamela Reeves was quite another story. A nice kid, if he ever saw one. He’d not rest until he’d hunted down the man or woman who’d killed her.
Eleven
A day or two later Colonel Melchett and Superintendent Harper looked at each other across the former’s big desk. Harper had come over to Much Benham for a consultation.
Melchett said gloomily:
“Well, we know where we are—or rather where we aren’t!”
“Where we aren’t expresses it better, sir.”
“We’ve got two deaths to take into account,” said Melchett. “Two murders. Ruby Keene and the child Pamela Reeves. Not much to identify her by, poor kid, but enough. That shoe that escaped burning has been identified positively as hers by her father, and there’s this button from her Girl Guide uniform. A fiendish business, Superintendent.”
Superintendent Harper said very quietly:
“I’ll say you’re right, sir.”
“I’m glad it’s quite certain she was dead before the car was set on fire. The way she was lying, thrown across the seat, shows that. Probably knocked on the head, poor kid.”
“Or strangled, perhaps,” said Harper.
Melchett looked at him sharply.
“You think so?”
“Well, sir, there are murderers like that.”
“I know. I’ve seen the parents—the poor girl’s mother’s beside herself. Damned painful, the whole thing. The point for us to settle is—are the two murders connected?”
“I’d say definitely yes.”
“So would I.”
The Superintendent ticked off the points on his fingers.
“Pamela Reeves attended rally of Girl Guides on Danebury Downs. Stated by companions to be normal and cheerful. Did not return with three companions by the bus to Medchester. Said to them that she was going into Danemouth to Woolworth’s and would take the bus home from there. The main road into Danemouth from the downs does a big round inland. Pamela Reeves took a shortcut over two fields and a footpath and lane which would bring her into Danemouth near the Majestic Hotel. The lane, in fact, actually passes the hotel on the west side. It’s possible, therefore, that she overheard or saw something—something concerning Ruby Keene—which would have proved dangerous to the murderer—say, for instance, that she heard him arranging to meet Ruby Keene at eleven that evening. He realizes that this schoolgirl has overheard, and he has to silence her.”
Colonel Melchett said:
“That’s presuming, Harper, that the Ruby Keene crime was premeditated—not spontaneous.”
Superintendent Harper agreed.
“I believe it was, sir. It looks as though it would be the other way—sudden violence, a fit of passion or jealousy—but I’m beginning to think that that’s not so. I don’t see otherwise how you can account for the death of the Reeves child. If she was a witness of the actual crime, it would be late at night, round about eleven p.m., and what would she be doing round about the Majestic at that time? Why, at nine o’clock her parents were getting anxious because she hadn’t returned.”
“The alternative is that she went to meet someone in Danemouth unknown to her family and friends, and that her death is quite unconnected with the other death.”
“Yes, sir, and I don’t believe that’s so. Look how even the old lady, old Miss Marple, tumbled to it at once that there was a connection. She asked at once if the body in the burnt car was the body of the missing Girl Guide. Very smart old lady, that. These old ladies are sometimes. Shrewd, you know. Put their fingers on the vital spot.”
“Miss Marple has