Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [66]
“Mr. Mark Gaskell, of course, was a much more likely starter, if I may use such a sporting expression. He was a gambler and had not, I fancied, a very high moral code. But, for certain reasons, I was of the opinion that a woman was concerned in this crime.
“As I say, with my eye on motive, the money angle seemed very suggestive. It was annoying, therefore, to find that both these people had alibis for the time when Ruby Keene, according to the medical evidence, had met her death.
“But soon afterwards there came the discovery of the burnt-out car with Pamela Reeves’s body in it, and then the whole thing leaped to the eye. The alibis, of course, were worthless.
“I now had two halves of the case, and both quite convincing, but they did not fit. There must be a connection, but I could not find it. The one person whom I knew to be concerned in the crime hadn’t got a motive.
“It was stupid of me,” said Miss Marple meditatively. “If it hadn’t been for Dinah Lee I shouldn’t have thought of it—the most obvious thing in the world. Somerset House! Marriage! It wasn’t a question of only Mr. Gaskell or Mrs. Jefferson—there were the further possibilities of marriage. If either of those two was married, or even was likely to marry, then the other party to the marriage contract was involved too. Raymond, for instance, might think he had a pretty good chance of marrying a rich wife. He had been very assiduous to Mrs. Jefferson, and it was his charm, I think, that awoke her from her long widowhood. She had been quite content just being a daughter to Mr. Jefferson—like Ruth and Naomi—only Naomi, if you remember, took a lot of trouble to arrange a suitable marriage for Ruth.
“Besides Raymond there was Mr. McLean. She liked him very much and it seemed highly possible that she would marry him in the end. He wasn’t well off—and he was not far from Danemouth on the night in question. So it seemed, didn’t it,” said Miss Marple, “as though anyone might have done it?”
“But, of course, really, in my mind, I knew. You couldn’t get away, could you, from those bitten nails?”
“Nails?” said Sir Henry. “But she tore her nail and cut the others.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Marple. “Bitten nails and close cut nails are quite different! Nobody could mistake them who knew anything about girl’s nails—very ugly, bitten nails, as I always tell the girls in my class. Those nails, you see, were a fact. And they could only mean one thing. The body in Colonel Bantry’s library wasn’t Ruby Keene at all.
“And that brings you straight to the one person who must be concerned. Josie! Josie identified the body. She knew, she must have known, that it wasn’t Ruby Keene’s body. She said it was. She was puzzled, completely puzzled, at finding that body where it was. She practically betrayed that fact. Why? Because she knew, none better, where it ought to have been found! In Basil Blake’s cottage. Who directed our attention to Basil? Josie, by saying to Raymond that Ruby might have been with the film man. And before that, by slipping a snapshot of him into Ruby’s handbag. Who cherished such bitter anger against the dead girl that she couldn’t hide it even when she looked down at her dead? Josie! Josie, who was shrewd, practical, hard as nails, and all out for money.
“That is what I meant about believing too readily. Nobody thought of disbelieving Josie’s statement that the