Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [67]
“Marriage! If Josie and Mark Gaskell were actually married—then the whole thing was clear. As we know now, Mark and Josie were married a year ago. They were keeping it dark until Mr. Jefferson died.
“It was really quite interesting, you know, tracing out the course of events—seeing exactly how the plan had worked out. Complicated and yet simple. First of all the selection of the poor child, Pamela, the approach to her from the film angle. A screen test—of course the poor child couldn’t resist it. Not when it was put up to her as plausibly as Mark Gaskell put it. She comes to the hotel, he is waiting for her, he takes her in by the side door and introduces her to Josie—one of their makeup experts! That poor child, it makes me quite sick to think of it! Sitting in Josie’s bathroom while Josie bleaches her hair and makes up her face and varnishes her fingernails and toenails. During all this, the drug was given. In an ice cream soda, very likely. She goes off into a coma. I imagine that they put her into one of the empty rooms opposite—they were only cleaned once a week, remember.
“After dinner Mark Gaskell went out in his car—to the seafront, he said. That is when he took Pamela’s body to the cottage dressed in one of Ruby’s old dresses and arranged it on the hearthrug. She was still unconscious, but not dead, when he strangled her with the belt of the frock … Not nice, no—but I hope and pray she knew nothing about it. Really, I feel quite pleased to think of him being hanged … That must have been just after ten o’clock. Then he drove back at top speed and found the others in the lounge where Ruby Keene, still alive, was dancing her exhibition dance with Raymond.
“I should imagine that Josie had given Ruby instructions beforehand. Ruby was accustomed to doing what Josie told her. She was to change, go into Josie’s room and wait. She, too, was drugged, probably in after-dinner coffee. She was yawning, remember, when she talked to young Bartlett.
“Josie came up later to ‘look for her’—but nobody but Josie went into Josie’s room. She probably finished the girl off then—with an injection, perhaps, or a blow on the back of the head. She went down, danced with Raymond, debated with the Jeffersons where Ruby could be, and finally went to bed. In the early hours of the morning she dressed the girl in Pamela’s clothes, carried the body down the side stairs—she was a strong muscular young woman—fetched George Bartlett’s car, drove two miles to the quarry, poured petrol over the car and set it alight. Then she walked back to the hotel, probably timing her arrival there for eight or nine o’clock—up early in her anxiety about Ruby!”
“An intricate plot,” said Colonel Melchett.
“Not more intricate than the steps of a dance,” said Miss Marple.
“I suppose not.”
“She was very thorough,” said Miss Marple. “She even foresaw the discrepancy of the nails. That’s why she managed to break one of Ruby’s nails on her shawl. It made an excuse for pretending that Ruby had clipped her nails close.”
Harper said: “Yes, she thought of everything. And the only real proof you had, Miss Marple, was a schoolgirl’s bitten nails.”
“More than that,” said Miss Marple. “People will talk too much. Mark Gaskell talked too much. He was speaking of Ruby and he said ‘her teeth ran down her throat.’ But the dead girl in Colonel Bantry’s library had teeth that stuck out.”
Conway Jefferson said rather grimly:
“And was the last dramatic finale your idea, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple confessed. “Well, it was, as a matter of fact. It’s so nice to be sure, isn’t it?”
“Sure is the word,” said Conway Jefferson grimly.
“You see,” said Miss Marple, “once Mark and Josie knew that you were going to make a new will, they’d have to do something. They’d already committed