The Thirteen Problems - Agatha Christie [64]
‘There was just one other little point that came up. It seems that while bridge was going on Mrs Sanders was called to the telephone. A Mr Littleworth wanted to speak to her. She seemed both excited and pleased about something—and incidentally made one or two bad mistakes. She left rather earlier than they had expected her to do.
‘Mr Sanders was asked whether he knew the name of Littleworth as being one of his wife’s friends, but he declared he had never heard of anyone of that name. And to me that seems borne out by his wife’s attitude—she too, did not seem to know the name of Littleworth. Nevertheless she came back from the telephone smiling and blushing, so it looks as though whoever it was did not give his real name, and that in itself has a suspicious aspect, does it not?
‘Anyway, that is the problem that was left. The burglar story, which seems unlikely—or the alternative theory that Mrs Sanders was preparing to go out and meet somebody. Did that somebody come to her room by means of the fire escape? Was there a quarrel? Or did he treacherously attack her?’
Miss Marple stopped.
‘Well?’ said Sir Henry. ‘What is the answer?’
‘I wondered if any of you could guess.’
‘I’m never good at guessing,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘It seems a pity that Sanders had such a wonderful alibi; but if it satisfied you it must have been all right.’
Jane Helier moved her beautiful head and asked a question.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘was the hat cupboard locked?’
‘How very clever of you, my dear,’ said Miss Marple, beaming. ‘That’s just what I wondered myself. Though the explanation was quite simple. In it were a pair of embroidered slippers and some pocket handkerchiefs that the poor girl was embroidering for her husband for Christmas. That’s why she locked the cupboard. The key was found in her handbag.’
‘Oh!’ said Jane. ‘Then it isn’t very interesting after all.’
‘Oh! but it is,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It’s just the one really interesting thing—the thing that made all the murderer’s plans go wrong.’
Everyone stared at the old lady.
‘I didn’t see it myself for two days,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I puzzled and puzzled—and then suddenly there it was, all clear. I went to the Inspector and asked him to try something and he did.’
‘What did you ask him to try?’
‘I asked him to fit that hat on the poor girl’s head—and of course he couldn’t. It wouldn’t go on. It wasn’t her hat, you see.’
Mrs Bantry stared.
‘But it was on her head to begin with?’
‘Not on her head—’
Miss Marple stopped a moment to let her words sink in, and then went on.
‘We took it for granted that it was poor Gladys’s body there; but we never looked at the face. She was face downwards, remember, and the hat hid everything.’
‘But she was killed?’
‘Yes, later. At the moment that we were telephoning to the police, Gladys Sanders was alive and well.’
‘You mean it was someone pretending to be her? But surely when you touched her—’
‘It was a dead body, right enough,’ said Miss Marple gravely.
‘But, dash it all,’ said Colonel Bantry, ‘you can’t get hold of dead bodies right and left. What did they do with the—the first corpse afterwards?’
‘He put it back,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It was a wicked idea—but a very clever one. It was our talk in the drawing-room that put it into his head. The body of poor Mary, the housemaid—why not use it? Remember, the Sanders’ room was up amongst the servants’ quarters. Mary’s room was two doors off. The undertakers wouldn’t come till after dark—he counted on that. He carried the body along the balcony (it was dark at five), dressed it in one of his wife’s dresses and her big red coat. And then he found the hat cupboard locked! There was only one thing to be done, he fetched one of the poor girl’s own hats. No one would notice. He put the sandbag down beside her. Then he went off to establish his alibi.
‘He telephoned to his wife—calling himself Mr Littleworth. I don’t know what he said to her—she was