4.50 from Paddington. Агата Кристи
and on the following day the meeting took place.
Greetings were exchanged; Lucy Eyelesbarrow led her guest to the gloomiest of the writing-rooms, and said: ‘I’m afraid I’m rather booked up just at present, but perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want me to undertake?’
‘It’s very simple, really,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Unusual, but simple. I want you to find a body.’
For a moment the suspicion crossed Lucy’s mind that Miss Marple was mentally unhinged, but she rejected the idea. Miss Marple was eminently sane. She meant exactly what she had said.
‘What kind of a body?’ asked Lucy Eyelesbarrow with admirable composure.
‘A woman’s body,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The body of a woman who was murdered—strangled actually—in a train.’
Lucy’s eyebrows rose slightly.
‘Well, that’s certainly unusual. Tell me about it.’
Miss Marple told her. Lucy Eyelesbarrow listened attentively, without interrupting. At the end she said:
‘It all depends on what your friend saw—or thought she saw –?’
She left the sentence unfinished with a question in it.
‘Elspeth McGillicuddy doesn’t imagine things,’ said Miss Marple. ‘That’s why I’m relying on what she said. If it had been Dorothy Cartwright, now—it would have been quite a different matter. Dorothy always has a good story, and quite often believes it herself, and there is usually a kind of basis of truth but certainly no more. But Elspeth is the kind of woman who finds it very hard to make herself believe that anything at all extraordinary or out of the way could happen. She’s almost unsuggestible, rather like granite.’
‘I see,’ said Lucy thoughtfully. ‘Well, let’s accept it all. Where do I come in?’
‘I was very much impressed by you,’ said Miss Marple, ‘and you see, I haven’t got the physical strength nowadays to get about and do things.’
‘You want me to make inquiries? That sort of thing? But won’t the police have done all that? Or do you think they have been just slack?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Marple. ‘They haven’t been slack. It’s just that I’ve got a theory about the woman’s body. It’s got to be somewhere. If it wasn’t found in the train, then it must have been pushed or thrown out of the train—but it hasn’t been discovered anywhere on the line. So I travelled down the same way to see if there was anywhere where the body could have been thrown off the train and yet wouldn’t have been found on the line—and there was. The railway line makes a big curve before getting into Brackhampton, on the edge of a high embankment. If a body were thrown out there, when the train was leaning at an angle, I think it would pitch right down the embankment.’
‘But surely it would still be found—even there?’
‘Oh, yes. It would have to be taken away … But we’ll come to that presently. Here’s the place—on this map.’
Lucy bent to study where Miss Marple’s finger pointed.
‘It is right in the outskirts of Brackhampton now,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but originally it was a country house with extensive park and grounds and it’s still there, untouched—ringed round with building estates and small suburban houses. It’s called Rutherford Hall. It was built by a man called Crackenthorpe, a very rich manufacturer, in 1884. The original Crackenthorpe’s son, an elderly man, is living there still with, I understand, a daughter. The railway encircles quite half of the property.’
‘And you want me to do—what?’
Miss Marple replied promptly.
‘I want you to get a post there. Everyone is crying out for efficient domestic help—I should not imagine it would be difficult.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it would be difficult.’
‘I understand that Mr Crackenthorpe is said locally to be somewhat of a miser. If you accept a low salary, I will make it up to the proper figure which should, I think, be rather more than the current rate.’
‘Because of the difficulty?’
‘Not the difficulty so much as the danger. It might, you know, be dangerous. It’s only right to warn you of that.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lucy pensively, ‘that the idea of danger would deter me.’
‘I didn’t think it would,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You’re not that kind of person.’
‘I dare say you thought it might even attract me? I’ve encountered very little danger in my life. But do you really believe it might be dangerous?’
‘Somebody,’ Miss Marple pointed out, ‘has committed a very successful crime. There has been no hue-and-cry, no real suspicion. Two elderly ladies have told a rather improbable story, the police have investigated it and found nothing in it. So everything is nice and quiet. I don’t think that this somebody, whoever he may be, will care about the matter being raked up—especially if you are successful.’
‘What do I look for exactly?’
‘Any signs along the embankment, a scrap of clothing, broken bushes—that kind of thing.’
Lucy nodded.
‘And then?’
‘I shall be quite close at hand,’ said Miss Marple. ‘An old maidservant of mine, my faithful Florence, lives in Brackhampton. She has looked after her old parents for years. They are now both dead, and she takes in lodgers—all most respectable people. She has arranged for me to have rooms with her. She will look after me most devotedly, and I feel I should like to be close at hand. I would suggest that you mention you have an elderly aunt living in the neighbourhood, and that you want a post within easy distance of her, and also that you stipulate for a reasonable amount of spare time so that you can go and see her often.’
Again Lucy nodded.
‘I was going to Taormina the day after to-morrow,’ she said. ‘The holiday can wait. But I can only promise three weeks. After that, I am booked up.’
‘Three weeks should be ample,’ said Miss Marple. ‘If we can’t find out anything in three weeks, we might as well give up the whole thing as a mare’s nest.’
Miss Marple departed, and Lucy, after a moment’s reflection, rang up a Registry Office in Brackhampton, the manageress of which she knew very well. She explained her desire for a post in the neighbourhood so as to be near her ‘aunt’. After turning down, with a little difficulty and a good deal of ingenuity, several more desirable places, Rutherford Hall was mentioned.
‘That sounds exactly what I want,’ said Lucy firmly.
The Registry Office rang up Miss Crackenthorpe, Miss Crackenthorpe rang up Lucy.
Two days later Lucy left London en route for Rutherford Hall.
Driving her own small car, Lucy Eyelesbarrow drove through an imposing pair of vast iron gates. Just inside them was what had originally been a small lodge which now seemed completely derelict, whether through war damage, or merely through neglect, it was difficult to be sure. A long winding drive led through large gloomy clumps of rhododendrons up to the house. Lucy caught her breath in a slight gasp when she saw the house which was a kind of miniature Windsor Castle. The stone steps in front of the door could have done with attention and the gravel sweep was green with neglected weeds.
She pulled an old-fashioned wrought-iron bell, and its clamour sounded echoing away inside. A slatternly woman, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the door and looked at her suspiciously.
‘Expected, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Miss Something-barrow, she told me.’
‘Quite right,’ said Lucy.
The