Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [65]
There was no breeze to stir the curtains at the window, but they stirred … For a moment they parted, and a figure was silhouetted against the moonlight. Then they fell back into place. Everything was quiet again, but there was someone else inside the room.
Nearer and nearer to the bed the intruder stole. The deep breathing on the pillow did not relax.
There was no sound, or hardly any sound. A finger and thumb were ready to pick up a fold of skin, in the other hand the hypodermic was ready.
And then, suddenly, out of the shadows a hand came and closed over the hand that held the needle, the other arm held the figure in an iron grasp.
An unemotional voice, the voice of the law, said:
“No, you don’t. I want that needle!”
The light switched on and from his pillows Conway Jefferson looked grimly at the murderer of Ruby Keene.
Eighteen
I
Sir Henry Clithering said:
“Speaking as Watson, I want to know your methods, Miss Marple.”
Superintendent Harper said:
“I’d like to know what put you on to it first.”
Colonel Melchett said:
“You’ve done it again, by Jove! I want to hear all about it from the beginning.”
Miss Marple smoothed the puce silk of her best evening gown. She flushed and smiled and looked very self-conscious.
She said: “I’m afraid you’ll think my ‘methods,’ as Sir Henry calls them, are terribly amateurish. The truth is, you see, that most people—and I don’t exclude policemen—are far too trusting for this wicked world. They believe what is told them. I never do. I’m afraid I always like to prove a thing for myself.”
“That is the scientific attitude,” said Sir Henry.
“In this case,” continued Miss Marple, “certain things were taken for granted from the first—instead of just confining oneself to the facts. The facts, as I noted them, were that the victim was quite young and that she bit her nails and that her teeth stuck out a little—as young girls’ so often do if not corrected in time with a plate—(and children are very naughty about their plates and taking them out when their elders aren’t looking).
“But that is wandering from the point. Where was I? Oh, yes, looking down at the dead girl and feeling sorry, because it is always sad to see a young life cut short, and thinking that whoever had done it was a very wicked person. Of course it was all very confusing her being found in Colonel Bantry’s library, altogether too like a book to be true. In fact, it made the wrong pattern. It wasn’t, you see, meant, which confused us a lot. The real idea had been to plant the body on poor young Basil Blake (a much more likely person), and his action in putting it in the Colonel’s library delayed things considerably, and must have been a source of great annoyance to the real murderer.
“Originally, you see, Mr. Blake would have been the first object of suspicion. They’d have made inquiries at Danemouth, found he knew the girl, then found he had tied himself up with another girl, and they’d have assumed that Ruby came to blackmail him, or something like that, and that he’d strangled her in a fit of rage. Just an ordinary, sordid, what I call nightclub type of crime!
“But that, of course, all went wrong, and interest became focused much too soon on the Jefferson family—to the great annoyance of a certain person.
“As I’ve told you, I’ve got a very suspicious mind. My nephew Raymond tells me (in fun, of course, and quite affectionately) that I have a mind like a sink. He says that most Victorians have. All I can say is that the Victorians knew a good deal about human nature.
“As I say, having this rather insanitary—or surely sanitary?—mind, I looked at once at the money angle of it. Two people stood to benefit by this girl’s death—you couldn’t get away from that. Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money—especially when you are in financial difficulties, as both these people were. Of course they both seemed very nice, agreeable people—they didn’t seem likely people—but one never can tell, can one?
“Mrs. Jefferson, for instance—everyone liked