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By Root 363 0

idea of the nursery rhyme. Make a crazy business of the whole thing—and tie it up with that old revenge threat of the MacKenzies. Then, you see, he could dispose of Adele, too, and that hundred thousand pounds going out of the firm. But there would have to be a third character, the ‘maid in the garden hanging up the clothes’—and I suppose that suggested the whole wicked plan to him. An innocent accomplice whom he could silence before she could talk. And that would give him what he wanted—a genuine alibi for the first murder. The rest was easy. He arrived here from the station just before five o’clock, which was the time when Gladys brought the second tray into the hall. He came to the side door, saw her and beckoned to her. Strangling her and carrying her body round the house to where the clotheslines were would only have taken three or four minutes. Then he rang the front doorbell, was admitted to the house, and joined the family for tea. After tea he went up to see Miss Ramsbottom. When he came down, he slipped into the drawing room, found Adele alone there drinking a last cup of tea and sat down by her on the sofa, and while he was talking to her, he managed to slip the cyanide into her tea. It wouldn’t be difficult, you know. A little piece of white stuff, like sugar. He might have stretched out his hand to the sugar basin and taken a lump and apparently dropped it into her cup. He’d laugh and say: ‘Look, I’ve dropped more sugar into your tea.’ She’d say she didn’t mind, stir it and drink it. It would be as easy and audacious as that. Yes, he’s an audacious fellow.”

Inspector Neele said slowly:

“It’s actually possible—yes. But I cannot see—really, Miss Marple, I cannot see—what he stood to gain by it. Granted that unless old Fortescue died the business would soon be on the rocks, is Lance’s share big enough to cause him to plan three murders? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.”

“That is a little difficult,” admitted Miss Marple. “Yes, I agree with you. That does present difficulties. I suppose . . .” She hesitated, looking at the inspector. “I suppose—I am so very ignorant in financial matters—but I suppose it is really true that the Blackbird Mine is worthless?”

Neele reflected. Various scraps fitted together in his mind. Lance’s willingness to take the various speculative or worthless shares off Percival’s hands. His parting words today in London that Percival had better get rid of the Blackbird and its hoodoo. A gold mine. A worthless gold mine. But perhaps the mine had not been worthless. And yet, somehow, that seemed unlikely. Old Rex Fortescue was hardly likely to have made a mistake on that point, although of course there might have been soundings recently. Where was the mine? West Africa, Lance had said. Yes but somebody else—was it Miss Ramsbottom—had said it was in East Africa. Had Lance been deliberately misleading when he said West instead of East? Miss Ramsbottom was old and forgetful, and yet she might have been right and not Lance. East Africa. Lance had just come from East Africa. Had he perhaps some recent knowledge?

Suddenly with a click another piece fitted into the inspector’s puzzle. Sitting in the train, reading The Times. Uranium deposits found in Tanganyika. Supposing that the uranium deposits were on the site of the old Blackbird? That would explain everything. Lance had come to have knowledge of that, being on the spot, and with uranium deposits there, there was a fortune to be grasped. An enormous fortune! He sighed. He looked at Miss Marple.

“How do you think,” he asked reproachfully, “that I’m ever going to be able to prove all this?”

Miss Marple nodded at him encouragingly, as an aunt might have encouraged a bright nephew who was going in for a scholarship exam.

“You’ll prove it,” she said. “You’re a very, very clever man, Inspector Neele. I’ve seen that from the first. Now you know who it is you ought to be able to get the evidence. At that holiday camp, for instance, they’ll recognize his photograph. He’ll find it hard to explain why he stayed there for a week calling himself