Miss Marple's final cases - Agatha Christie [39]
‘I tell you, Mrs Fox, it gives me the creeps,’ said the cleaning woman. ‘It ain’t natural, if you know what I mean. All those long hanging legs and the way she’s slouched down there and the cunning look she has in her eye. It doesn’t look healthy, that’s what I say.’
‘You’ve never said anything about her before,’ said Sybil.
‘I tell you, I never noticed her—not till this morning… Of course I know she’s been here some time but—’ She stopped and a puzzled expression flitted across her face. ‘Sort of thing you might dream of at night,’ she said, and gathering up various cleaning implements she departed from the fitting-room and walked across the landing to the room on the other side.
Sybil stared at the relaxed doll. An expression of bewilderment was growing on her face. Alicia Coombe entered and Sybil turned sharply.
‘Miss Coombe, how long have you had this creature?’
‘What, the doll? My dear, you know I can’t remember things. Yesterday—why, it’s too silly!—I was going out to that lecture and I hadn’t gone halfway down the street when I suddenly found I couldn’t remember where I was going. I thought and I thought. Finally I told myself it must be Fortnums. I knew there was something I wanted to get at Fortnums. Well, you won’t believe me, it wasn’t till I actually got home and was having some tea that I remembered about the lecture. Of course, I’ve always heard that people go gaga as they get on in life, but it’s happening to me much too fast. I’ve forgotten now where I’ve put my handbag—and my spectacles, too. Where did I put those spectacles? I had them just now—I was reading something in The Times.’
‘The spectacles are on the mantelpiece here,’ said Sybil, handing them to her. ‘How did you get the doll? Who gave her to you?’
‘That’s a blank, too,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Somebody gave her to me or sent her to me, I suppose…However, she does seem to match the room very well, doesn’t she?’
‘Rather too well, I think,’ said Sybil. ‘Funny thing is, I can’t remember when I first noticed her here.’
‘Now don’t you get the same way as I am,’ Alicia Coombe admonished her. ‘After all, you’re young still.’
‘But really, Miss Coombe, I don’t remember. I mean, I looked at her yesterday and thought there was something—well, Mrs Groves is quite right—something creepy about her. And then I thought I’d already thought so, and then I tried to remember when I first thought so, and—well, I just couldn’t remember anything! In a way, it was as if I’d never seen her before—only it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though she’d been here a long time but I’d only just noticed her.’
‘Perhaps she flew in through the window one day on a broomstick,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Anyway, she belongs here now all right.’ She looked round. ‘You could hardly imagine the room without her, could you?’
‘No,’ said Sybil, with a slight shiver, ‘but I rather wish I could.’
‘Could what?’
‘Imagine the room without her.’
‘Are we all going barmy about this doll?’ demanded Alicia Coombe impatiently. ‘What’s wrong with the poor thing? Looks like a decayed cabbage to me, but perhaps,’ she added, ‘that’s because I haven’t got spectacles on.’ She put them on her nose and looked firmly at the doll. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I see what you mean. She is a little creepy…Sad-looking but—well, sly and rather determined, too.’
‘Funny,’ said Sybil, ‘Mrs Fellows-Brown taking such a violent dislike to her.’
‘She’s one who never minds speaking her mind,’ said Alicia Coombe.
‘But it’s odd,’ persisted Sybil, ‘that this doll should make such an impression on her.’
‘Well, people do take dislikes very suddenly sometimes.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Sybil with a little laugh, ‘that doll never was here until yesterday…Perhaps she just—flew in through the window, as you say, and settled herself here.’ ‘No,’ said Alicia Coombe, ‘I’m sure she’s been here some time. Perhaps she only became visible yesterday.’
‘That’s what I feel, too,’ said Sybil, ‘that she’s been here some time…but all the same I don’t remember really seeing her till yesterday.’
‘Now, dear,’ said Alicia