Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [75]
“The killer,” said Inspector Neele. “Come now, Miss Marple, let’s have your ideas about the killer. Who was he?”
“You won’t be surprised,” said Miss Marple. “Not really. Because you’ll see, as soon as I tell you who he is, or rather who I think he is, for one must be accurate must one not?—you’ll see that he’s just the type of person who would commit these murders. He’s sane, brilliant and quite unscrupulous. And he did it, of course, for money, probably for a good deal of money.”
“Percival Fortescue?” Inspector Neele spoke almost imploringly, but he knew as he spoke that he was wrong. The picture of the man that Miss Marple had built up for him had no resemblance to Percival Fortescue.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “Not Percival. Lance.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I
“It’s impossible,” said Inspector Neele.
He leaned back in his chair and watched Miss Marple with fascinated eyes. As Miss Marple had said, he was not surprised. His words were a denial, not of probability, but of possibility. Lance Fortescue fitted the description: Miss Marple had outlined it well enough. But Inspector Neele simply could not see how Lance could be the answer.
Miss Marple leaned forward in her chair and gently, persuasively, and rather in the manner of someone explaining the simple facts of arithmetic to a small child, outlined her theory.
“He’s always been like that, you see. I mean, he’s always been bad. Bad all through, although with it he’s always been attractive. Especially attractive to women. He’s got a brilliant mind and he’ll take risks. He’s always taken risks and because of his charm people have always believed the best and not the worst about him. He came home in the summer to see his father. I don’t believe for a moment that his father wrote to him or sent for him—unless, of course, you’ve got actual evidence to that effect.” She paused inquiringly.
Neele shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve no evidence of his father sending for him. I’ve got a letter that Lance is supposed to have written to him after being here. But Lance could quite easily have slipped that among his father’s papers in the study here the day he arrived.”
“Sharp of him,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head. “Well, as I say, he probably flew over here and attempted a reconciliation with his father, but Mr. Fortescue wouldn’t have it. You see, Lance had recently got married and the small pittance he was living on, and which he had doubtless been supplementing in various dishonest ways, was not enough for him anymore. He was very much in love with Pat (who is a dear, sweet girl) and he wanted a respectable, settled life with her—nothing shifty. And that, from his point of view, meant having a lot of money. When he was at Yewtree Lodge he must have heard about these blackbirds. Perhaps his father mentioned them. Perhaps Adele did. He jumped to the conclusion that MacKenzie’s daughter was established in the house and it occurred to him that she would make a very good scapegoat for murder. Because, you see, when he realized that he couldn’t get his father to do what he wanted, he must have cold-bloodedly decided that murder it would have to be. He may have realized that his father wasn’t—er, very well—and have feared that by the time his father died there would have been a complete crash.”
“He knew about his father’s health all right,” said the inspector.
“Ah—that explains a good deal. Perhaps the coincidence of his father’s Christian name being Rex together with the blackbird incident suggested the