They do it with mirrors - Agatha Christie [36]
‘Gina dearest,’ said Alex, ‘you are most unkind. Good morning, Miss Marple. I care intensely. Except for the fact that I hardly knew your Uncle Christian, I’m far and away the best suspect. You do realize that, I hope.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I was driving up to the house at about the right time, it seems. And they’ve been checking up on things, and it seems that I took too much time between the lodge and the house — time enough, the implication is, to leave the car, run round the house, go in through the side door, shoot Christian and rush out and back to the car again.’
‘And what were you really doing?’
‘I thought little girls were taught quite young not to ask indelicate questions. Like an idiot, I stood for several minutes taking in the fog effect in the headlights and thinking what I’d use to get that effect on a stage. For my new “Limehouse” ballet.’
‘But you can tell them that!’
‘Naturally. But you know what policemen are like. They say “thank you” very civilly and write it all down, and you’ve no idea what they are thinking except that one does feel they have rather sceptical minds.’
‘It would amuse me to see you in a spot, Alex,’ said Stephen with his thin, rather cruel smile. ‘Now, I’m quite all right! I never left the Hall last night.’
Gina cried, ‘But they couldn’t possibly think it was one of us!’
Her dark eyes were round and dismayed.
‘Don’t say it must have been a tramp, dear,’ said Alex, helping himself lavishly to marmalade. ‘It’s so hackneyed.’
Miss Bellever looked in at the door and said:
‘Miss Marple, when you have finished your breakfast, will you go to the library?’
‘You again,’ said Gina. ‘Before any of us.’
She seemed a little injured.
‘Hi, what was that?’ asked Alex.
‘Didn’t hear anything,’ said Stephen.
‘It was a pistol shot.’
‘They’ve been firing shots in the room where Uncle Christian was killed,’ said Gina. ‘I don’t know why. And outside too.’
The door opened again and Mildred Strete came in. She was wearing black with some onyx beads.
She murmured good morning without looking at anyone and sat down.
In a hushed voice she said:
‘Some tea, please, Gina. Nothing much to eat — just some toast.’
She touched her nose and her eyes delicately with the handkerchief she held in one hand. Then she raised her eyes and looked in an unseeing way at the two brothers. Stephen and Alex became uncomfortable. Their voices dropped to almost a whisper and presently they got up and left.
Mildred Strete said, whether to the universe or Miss Marple was not quite certain, ‘Not even a black tie!’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Miss Marple apologetically, ‘that they knew beforehand that a murder was going to happen.’
Gina made a smothered sound and Mildred Strete looked sharply at her.
‘Where’s Walter this morning?’ she asked.
Gina flushed.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’
She sat there uneasily like a guilty child.
Miss Marple got up.
‘I’ll go to the library now,’ she said.
II
Lewis Serrocold was standing by the window in the library.
There was no one else in the room.
He turned as Miss Marple came in and came forward to meet her, taking her hand in his.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are not feeling the worse for the shock. To be at close quarters with what is undoubtedly murder must be a great strain on anyone who has not come in contact with such a thing before.’
Modesty forbade Miss Marple to reply that she was, by now, quite at home with murder. She merely said that life in St Mary Mead was not quite so sheltered as outside people believed.
‘Very nasty things go on in a village, I assure you,’ she said. ‘One has an opportunity of studying things there that one would never have in a town.’
Lewis Serrocold listened indulgently, but with only half an ear.
He said very simply: ‘I want your help.’
‘But of course, Mr Serrocold.’
‘It is a matter that affects my wife — affects Caroline. I think that you are really attached to her?’
‘Yes, indeed. Everyone is.’
‘That