The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [81]
‘Yes,’ said Craddock, ‘that certainly seems indicated. And of course it doesn’t always show.’
‘Oh, I know,’ agreed Miss Marple, fervently. ‘Old Mrs Pike’s second boy, Alfred, seemed perfectly rational and normal. Almost painfully prosaic, if you know what I mean, but actually, it seems, he had the most abnormal psychology, or so I understand. Really positively dangerous. He seems quite happy and contented, so Mrs Pike told me, now that he is in Fairways Mental Home. They understand him there, and the doctors think him a most interesting case. That of course pleases him very much. Yes, it all ended quite happily, but she had one or two very near escapes.’
Craddock revolved in his mind the possibility of a parallel between someone in Marina Gregg’s entourage and Mrs Pike’s second son.
‘The Italian butler,’ continued Miss Marple, ‘the one who was killed. He went to London, I understand, on the day of his death. Does anyone know what he did there — if you are allowed to tell me, that is,’ she added conscientiously.
‘He arrived in London at eleven-thirty in the morning,’ said Craddock, ‘and what he did in London nobody knows until a quarter to two he visited his bank and made a deposit of five hundred pounds in cash. I may say that there was no confirmation of his story that he went to London to visit an ill relative or a relative who had got into trouble. None of his relatives there had seen him.’
Miss Marple nodded her head appreciatively.
‘Five hundred pounds,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s quite an interesting sum, isn’t it? I should imagine it would be the first instalment of a good many other sums, wouldn’t you?’
‘It looks that way,’ said Craddock.
‘It was probably all the ready money the person he was threatening could raise. He may even have pretended to be satisfied with that or he may have accepted it as a down payment and the victim may have promised to raise further sums in the immediate future. It seems to knock out the idea that Marina Gregg’s killer could have been someone in humble circumstances who had a private vendetta against her. It would also knock out, I should say, the idea of someone who’d obtained work as a studio helper or attendant or a servant or a gardener. Unless’ — Miss Marple pointed out — ‘such a person may have been the active agent whereas the employing agent may not have been in the neighbourhood. Hence the visit to London.’
‘Exactly. We have in London Ardwyck Fenn, Lola Brewster and Margot Bence. All three were present at the party. All three of them could have met Giuseppe at an arranged meeting-place somewhere in London between the hours of eleven and a quarter to two. Ardwyck Fenn was out of his office during those hours. Lola Brewster had left her suite to go shopping. Margot Bence was not in her studio. By the way —’
‘Yes?’ said Miss Marple. ‘Have you something to tell me?’
‘You asked me,’ said Dermot, ‘about the children. The children that Marina Gregg adopted before she knew she could have a child of her own.’
‘Yes I did.’
Craddock told her what he had learned.
‘Margot Bence,’ said Miss Marple softly. ‘I had a feeling, you know, that it had something to do with children…’
‘I can’t believe that after all these years —’
‘I know, I know. One never can. But do you really, my dear Dermot, know very much about children? Think back to your own childhood. Can’t you remember some incident, some happening that caused you grief, or a passion quite incommensurate with its real importance? Some sorrow or passionate resentment that has really never been equalled since? There was