Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [69]
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “A sequence in that order, but actually Gladys must have been murdered before Mrs. Fortescue, mustn’t she?”
“I think so,” said Neele. “I take it it’s quite certainly so. Her body wasn’t discovered till late that night, and of course it was difficult then to say exactly how long she’d been dead. But I think myself that she must almost certainly have been murdered round about five o’clock, because otherwise. . . .”
Miss Marple cut in. “Because otherwise she would certainly have taken the second tray into the drawing room?”
“Quite so. She took one tray in with the tea on it, she brought the second tray into the hall, and then something happened. She saw something or heard something. The question is what that something was. It might have been Dubois coming down the stairs from Mrs. Fortescue’s room. It might have been Elaine Fortescue’s young man, Gerald Wright, coming in at the side door. Whoever it was lured her away from the tea tray and out into the garden. And once that had happened I don’t see any possibility of her death being long delayed. It was cold out and she was only wearing her thin uniform.”
“Of course you’re quite right,” said Miss Marple. “I mean it was never a case of ‘the maid was in the garden hanging up the clothes.’ She wouldn’t be hanging up clothes at that time of the evening and she wouldn’t go out to the clothesline without putting a coat on. That was all camouflage, like the clothes-peg, to make the thing fit in with the rhyme.”
“Exactly,” said Inspector Neele, “crazy. That’s where I can’t yet see eye to eye with you. I can’t—I simply can’t swallow this nursery rhyme business.”
“But it fits, Inspector. You must agree it fits.”
“It fits,” said Neele heavily, “but all the same the sequence is wrong. I mean the rhyme definitely suggests that the maid was the third murder. But we know that the Queen was the third murder. Adele Fortescue was not killed until between twenty-five past five and five minutes to six. By then Gladys must already have been dead.”
“And that’s all wrong, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple. “All wrong for the nursery rhyme—that’s very significant, isn’t it?”
Inspector Neele shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s probably splitting hairs. The deaths fulfil the conditions of the rhyme, and I suppose that’s all that was needed. But I’m talking now as though I were on your side. I’m going to outline my side of the case now, Miss Marple. I’m washing out the blackbirds and the rye and all the rest of it. I’m going by sober facts and common sense and the reasons for which sane people do murders. First, the death of Rex Fortescue, and who benefits by his death. Well, it benefits quite a lot of people, but most of all it benefits his son, Percival. His son Percival wasn’t at Yewtree Lodge that morning. He couldn’t have put poison in his father’s coffee or in anything that he ate for breakfast. Or that’s what we thought at first.”
“Ah,” Miss Marple’s eyes brightened. “So there was a method, was there? I’ve been thinking about it, you know, a good deal, and I’ve had several ideas. But of course no evidence or proof.”
“There’s no harm in my letting you know,” said Inspector Neele. “Taxine was added to a new jar of marmalade. That jar of marmalade was placed on the breakfast table and the top layer of it was eaten by Mr. Fortescue at breakfast. Later that jar of marmalade was thrown out into the bushes and a similar jar with a similar amount taken out of it was placed in the pantry. The jar in the bushes was found and I’ve just had the result of the analysis. It shows definite evidence of taxine.”
“So that was it,” murmured Miss Marple. “So simple and easy to do.”
“Consolidated Investments,” Neele went on, “was in a bad way. If the firm had had to pay out a hundred thousand pounds to Adele Fortescue under her husband’s will, it would, I think, have crashed. If Mrs. Fortescue had survived her husband for a month that money would have had to be paid out