Dead Man's Folly - Agatha Christie [28]
‘What about time of death?’ he asked.
The doctor glanced over at the clock and his own watch.
‘Just after half-past five now,’ he said. ‘Say I saw her about twenty past five – she’d been dead about an hour. Roughly, that is to say. Put it between four o’clock and twenty to five. Let you know if there’s anything more after the autopsy.’ He added: ‘You’ll get the proper report with the long words in due course. I’ll be off now. I’ve got some patients to see.’
He left the room and Inspector Bland asked Hoskins to fetch Miss Brewis. His spirits rose a little when Miss Brewis came into the room. Here, as he recognized at once, was efficiency. He would get clear answers to his questions, definite times and no muddle-headedness.
‘Mrs Tucker’s in my sitting-room,’ Miss Brewis said as she sat down. ‘I’ve broken the news to her and given her some tea. She’s very upset, naturally. She wanted to see the body but I told her it was much better not. Mr Tucker gets off work at six o’clock and was coming to join his wife here. I told them to look out for him and bring him along when he arrives. The younger children are at the fête still, and someone is keeping an eye on them.’
‘Excellent,’ said Inspector Bland, with approval. ‘I think before I see Mrs Tucker I would like to hear what you and Lady Stubbs can tell me.’
‘I don’t know where Lady Stubbs is,’ said Miss Brewis acidly. ‘I rather imagine she got bored with the fête and has wandered off somewhere, but I don’t expect she can tell you anything more than I can. What exactly is it that you want to know?’
‘I want to know all the details of this murder hunt first and of how this girl, Marlene Tucker, came to be taking a part in it.’
‘That’s quite easy.’
Succinctly and clearly Miss Brewis explained the idea of the murder hunt as an original attraction for the fête, the engaging of Mrs Oliver, the well-known novelist, to arrange the matter, and a short outline of the plot.
‘Originally,’ Miss Brewis explained, ‘Mrs Alec Legge was to have taken the part of the victim.’
‘Mrs Alec Legge?’ queried the inspector.
Constable Hoskins put in an explanatory word.
‘She and Mr Legge have the Lawders’ cottage, the pink one down by Mill Creek. Came here a month ago, they did. Two or three months they got it for.’
‘I see. And Mrs Legge, you say, was to be the original victim? Why was that changed?’
‘Well, one evening Mrs Legge told all our fortunes and was so good at it that it was decided we’d have a fortune teller’s tent as one of the attractions and that Mrs Legge should put on Eastern dress and be Madame Zuleika and tell fortunes at half a crown a time. I don’t think that’s really illegal, is it, Inspector? I mean it’s usually done at these kind of fêtes?’
Inspector Bland smiled faintly.
‘Fortune telling and raffles aren’t always taken too seriously, Miss Brewis,’ he said. ‘Now and then we have to – er – make an example.’
‘But usually you’re tactful? Well, that’s how it was. Mrs Legge agreed to help us that way and so we had to find somebody else to do the body. The local Guides were helping us at the fête, and I think someone suggested that one of the Guides would do quite well.’
‘Just who was it who suggested that, Miss Brewis?’
‘Really, I don’t quite know…I think it may have been Mrs Masterton, the Member’s wife. No, perhaps it was Captain Warburton…Really, I can’t be sure. But, anyway, it was suggested.’