A Pocket Full of Rye (9 page)

“That's an unfashionable belief nowadays, Miss Marple,” Inspector Neele said rather grimly. “Not that I don't agree with you.”

“There is an hotel near the station, or there's the Golf Hotel,” said Miss Marple tentatively, “and I believe there's a Miss Ramsbottom in this house who is interested in foreign missions.”

Inspector Neele looked at Miss Marple appraisingly.

“Yes,” he said. “You've got something there, maybe. I can't say that I've had great success with the lady.”

“It's really very kind of you, Inspector Neele,” said Miss Marple. “I'm so glad you don't think I'm just a sensation hunter.”

Inspector Neele gave a sudden, rather unexpected smile. He was thinking to himself that Miss Marple was very unlike the popular idea of an avenging fury. And yet, he thought that was perhaps exactly what she was.

“Newspapers,” said Miss Marple, “are often so sensational in their accounts. But hardly, I fear, as accurate as one might wish.” She looked inquiringly at Inspector Neele. “If one could be sure of having just the sober facts.”

“They're not particularly sober,” said Neele. “Shorn of undue sensation, they're as follows. Mr. Fortescue died in his office as a result of taxine poisoning. Taxine is obtained from the berries and leaves of yew trees.”

“Very convenient,” Miss Marple said.

“Possibly,” said Inspector Neele, “but we've no evidence as to that. As yet, that is.” He stressed the point because it was here that he thought Miss Marple might be useful. If any brew or concoction of yewberries had been made in the house, Miss Marple was quite likely to come upon traces of it. She was the sort of old pussy who would make homemade liqueurs, cordials and herb teas herself. She would know methods of making and methods of disposal.

“And Mrs. Fortescue?”

“Mrs. Fortescue had tea with the family in the library. The last person to leave the room and the tea table was Miss Elaine Fortescue, her stepdaughter. She states that as she left the room Mrs. Fortescue was pouring herself out another cup of tea. Some twenty minutes or half hour later Miss Dove, who acts as housekeeper, went in to remove the tea tray. Mrs. Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa, dead. Beside her was a tea cup a quarter full and in the dregs of it was potassium cyanide.”

“Which is almost immediate in its action, I believe,” said Miss Marple.

“Exactly.”

“Such dangerous stuff,” murmured Miss Marple. “One has it to take wasps' nests but I'm always very, very careful.”

“You're quite right,” said Inspector Neele. “There was a packet of it in the gardener's shed here.”

“Again very convenient,” said Miss Marple. She added, “Was Mrs. Fortescue eating anything?”

“Oh, yes. They'd had quite a sumptuous tea.”

“Cake, I suppose? Bread and butter? Scones, perhaps? Jam? Honey?”

“Yes, there was honey and scones, chocolate cake and swiss roll and various other plates of things.” He looked at her curiously. “The potassium cyanide was in the tea, Miss Marple.”

“Oh, yes, yes. I quite understand that. I was just getting the whole picture, so to speak. Rather significant, don't you think?”

He looked at her in a slightly puzzled fashion. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright.

“And the third death, Inspector Neele?”

“Well, the facts there seem clear enough, too. The girl, Gladys, took in the tea tray, then she brought the next tray into the hall, but left it there. She'd been rather absentminded all the day, apparently. After that no one saw her. The cook, Mrs. Crump, jumped to the conclusion that the girl had gone out for the evening without telling anybody. She based her belief, I think, on the fact that the girl was wearing a good pair of nylon stockings and her best shoes. There, however, she was proved quite wrong. The girl had obviously remembered suddenly that she had not taken in some clothes that were drying outside on the clothesline. She ran out to fetch them in, had taken down half of them apparently, when somebody took her unawares by slipping a stocking round her neck and—well, that was that.”

“Someone from outside?” said Miss Marple.

“Perhaps,” said Inspector Neele. “But perhaps someone from inside. Someone who'd been waiting his or her opportunity to get the girl alone. The girl was upset, nervous, when we first questioned her, but I'm afraid we didn't quite appreciate the importance of that.”

“Oh, but how could you,” cried Miss Marple, “because people so often do look guilty and embarrassed when they are questioned by the police.”

“That's just it. But this time, Miss Marple, it was rather more than that. I think the girl Gladys had seen someone performing some action that seemed to her needed explanation. It can't, I think, have been anything very definite. Otherwise she
would
have spoken out. But I think she did betray the fact to the person in question. That person realized that Gladys was a danger.”

“And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes-peg clipped on her nose,” murmured Miss Marple to herself.

“Yes, that's a nasty touch. A nasty, sneering sort of touch. Just a nasty bit of unnecessary bravado.”

Miss Marple shook her head.

“Hardly
unnecessary.
It does all make a pattern, doesn't it?”

Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.

“I don't quite follow you, Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?”

Miss Marple immediately became flustered.

“Well, I mean it does seem—I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you understand—well, one can't get away from facts, can one?”

“I don't think I quite understand.”

“Well, I mean—first we have Mr. Fortescue.
Rex
Fortescue. Killed in his office in the city. And then we have Mrs. Fortescue, sitting here in the library and having tea. There were scones and
honey.
And then poor Gladys with the clothes-peg on her nose. Just to
point
the whole thing. That very charming Mrs. Lance Fortescue said to me that there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason in it, but I couldn't agree with her, because it's the rhyme that strikes one, isn't it?”

Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don't think—”

Miss Marple went on quickly:

“I expect you're about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren't you, Inspector Neele? I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose—I mean it is really highly significant, isn't it? What I wondered was,” Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage in her hands went on bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this sort of thing to you.”

“Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”

“Well, that's very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddleheaded, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you gone into the question of blackbirds?”

I

F
or about ten seconds Inspector Neele stared at Miss Marple with the utmost bewilderment. His first idea was that the old lady had gone off her head.

“Blackbirds?” he repeated.

Miss Marple nodded her head vigorously.

“Yes,” she said, and forwith recited:

“ ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.

Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

“ ‘The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,

The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey,

The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

When there came a little dickey bird and nipped off her nose.' ”

“Good Lord,” Inspector Neele said.

“I mean, it does fit,” said Miss Marple. “It
was
rye in his pocket, wasn't it? One newspaper said so. The others just said cereal, which might mean anything. Farmer's Glory or Cornflakes—or even maize—but it
was
rye?”

Inspector Neele nodded.

“There you are,” said Miss Marple, triumphantly. “
Rex
Fortescue. Rex means
King.
In his
Counting House.
And Mrs. Fortescue the Queen in the parlour, eating bread and honey. And so, of course, the murderer had to put that clothes-peg on poor Gladys's nose.”

Inspector Neele said:

“You mean the whole setup is crazy?”

“Well, one mustn't jump to conclusions—but it is certainly very
odd.
But you really must make inquiries about blackbirds. Because there must
be
blackbirds!”

It was at this point that Sergeant Hay came into the room saying urgently, “Sir.”

He broke off at sight of Miss Marple. Inspector Neele, recovering himself, said:

“Thank you, Miss Marple. I'll look into the matter. Since you are interested in the girl, perhaps you would care to look over the things from her room. Sergeant Hay will show you them presently.”

Miss Marple, accepting her dismissal, twittered her way out.

“Blackbirds!” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

Sergeant Hay stared.

“Yes, Hay, what is it?”

“Sir,” said Sergeant Hay, urgently again. “Look at this.”

He produced an article wrapped in a somewhat grubby handkerchief.

“Found it in the shrubbery,” said Sergeant Hay. “Could have been chucked there from one of the back windows.”

He tipped the object down on the desk in front of the inspector, who leaned forward and inspected it with rising excitement. The exhibit was a nearly full pot of marmalade.

The inspector stared at it without speech. His face assumed a peculiarly wooden and stupid appearance. In actual fact this meant that Inspector Neele's mind was racing once more round an imaginary track. A moving picture was enacting itself before the eyes of his mind. He saw a new pot of marmalade, he saw hands carefully removing its cover, he saw a small quantity of marmalade removed, mixed with a preparation of taxine and replaced in the pot, the top smoothed over and the lid carefully replaced. He broke off at this point to ask Sergeant Hay:

“They don't take marmalade out of the pot and put it into fancy pots?”

“No, sir. Got into the way of serving it in its own pot during the war when things were scarce, and it's gone on like that ever since.”

Neele murmured:

“That made it easier, of course.”

“What's more,” said Sergeant Hay, “Mr. Fortescue was the only one that took marmalade for breakfast (and Mr. Percival when he was at home). The others had jam or honey.”

Neele nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “That made it very simple, didn't it?”

After a slight gap the moving picture went on in his mind. It was the breakfast table now. Rex Fortescue stretching out his hand for the marmalade pot, taking out a spoonful of marmalade and spreading it on his toast and butter. Easier, far easier that way than the risk and difficulty of insinuating it into his coffee cup. A foolproof method of administering the poison! And afterwards? Another gap and a picture that was not quite so clear. The replacing of that pot of marmalade by another with exactly the same amount taken from it. And then an open window. A hand and an arm flinging out that pot into the shrubbery. Whose hand and arm?

Inspector Neele said in a businesslike voice:

“Well, we'll have of course to get this analysed. See if there are any traces of taxine. We can't jump to conclusions.”

“No, sir. There may be fingerprints too.”

“Probably not the ones we want,” said Inspector Neele gloomily. “There'll be Gladys's, of course, and Crump's and Fortescue's own. Then probably Mrs. Crump's, the grocer's assistant and a few others! If anyone put taxine in here they'd take care not to go playing about with their own fingers all over the pot. Anyway, as I say, we mustn't jump to conclusions. How do they order marmalade and where is it kept?”

The industrious Sergeant Hay had his answer pat for all these questions.

“Marmalade and jams comes in in batches of six at a time. A new pot would be taken into the pantry when the old one was getting low.”

“That means,” said Neele, “that it could have been tampered with several days before it was actually brought onto the breakfast table. And anyone who was in the house or had access to the house could have tampered with it.”

The term “access to the house” puzzled Sergeant Hay slightly. He did not see in what way his superior's mind was working.

But Neele was postulating what seemed to him a logical assumption.

If the marmalade had been tampered with
beforehand
—then surely that ruled out
those persons who were actually at the breakfast table on the fatal morning.

Which opened up some interesting new possibilities.

He planned in his mind interviews with various people—this time with rather a different angle of approach.

He'd keep an open mind. . . .

He'd even consider seriously that old Miss Whatshername's suggestions about the nursery rhyme. Because there was no doubt that that nursery rhyme fitted in a rather startling way. It fitted with a point that had worried him from the beginning. The pocketful of rye.

“Blackbirds?” murmured Inspector Neele to himself.

Sergeant Hay stared.

“It's not blackberry jelly, sir,” he said. “It's
marmalade.
”

II

Inspector Neele went in search of Mary Dove.

He found her in one of the bedrooms on the first floor superintending Ellen, who was denuding the bed of what seemed to be clean sheets. A little pile of clean towels lay on a chair.

Inspector Neele looked puzzled.

“Somebody coming to stay?” he asked.

Mary Dove smiled at him. In contrast to Ellen, who looked grim and truculent, Mary was her usual imperturbable self.

“Actually,” she said, “the opposite is the case.”

Neele looked inquiringly at her.

“This is the guest room we had prepared for Mr. Gerald Wright.”

“Gerald Wright? Who is he?”

“He's a friend of Miss Elaine Fortescue's.” Mary's voice was carefully devoid of inflection.

“He was coming here—when?”

“I believe he arrived at the Golf Hotel the day after Mr. Fortescue's death.”

“The day
after.
”

“So Miss Fortescue said.” Mary's voice was still impersonal: “She told me she wanted him to come and stay in the house—so I had a room prepared. Now—after these other two—tragedies—it seems more suitable that he should remain at the hotel.”

“The Golf Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Quite,” said Inspector Neele.

Ellen gathered up the sheets and towels and went out of the room.

Mary Dove looked inquiringly at Neele.

“You wanted to see me about something?”

Neele said pleasantly:

“It's becoming important to get exact times very clearly stated. Members of the family all seem a little vague about time—perhaps understandably. You, on the other hand, Miss Dove, I have found extremely accurate in your statements as to times.”

“Again understandably!”

“Yes—perhaps—I must certainly congratulate you on the way you have kept this house going in spite of the—well, panic—these last deaths must have caused.” He paused and then asked curiously: “How did you do it?”

He had realized, astutely, that the one chink in the armour of Mary Dove's inscrutability was her pleasure in her own efficiency. She unbent slightly now as she answered.

“The Crumps wanted to leave at once, of course.”

“We couldn't have allowed that.”

“I know. But I also told them that Mr. Percival Fortescue would be more likely to be—well—generous—to those who had spared him inconvenience.”

“And Ellen?”

“Ellen does not wish to leave.”

“Ellen does not wish to leave,” Neele repeated. “She has good nerves.”

“She enjoys disasters,” said Mary Dove. “Like Mrs. Percival, she finds in disaster a kind of pleasurable drama.”

“Interesting. Do you think Mrs. Percival has—enjoyed the tragedies?”

“No—of course not. That is going too far. I would merely say that it has enabled her to—well—stand up to them—”

“And how have you yourself been affected, Miss Dove?”

Mary Dove shrugged her shoulders.

“It has not been a pleasant experience,” she said dryly.

Inspector Neele felt again a longing to break down this cool young woman's defences—to find out what was really going on behind the careful and efficient understatement of her whole attitude.

He merely said brusquely:

“Now—to recapitulate times and places: the last time you saw Gladys Martin was in the hall before tea, and that was at twenty minutes to five?”

“Yes—I told her to bring in tea.”

“You yourself were coming from where?”

“From upstairs—I thought I had heard the telephone a few minutes before.”

“Gladys, presumably, had answered the telephone?”

“Yes. It was a wrong number. Someone who wanted the Baydon Heath Laundry.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

“She brought the tea tray into the library about ten minutes or so later.”

“After that Miss Elaine Fortescue came in?”

“Yes, about three or four minutes later. Then I went up to tell Mrs. Percival tea was ready.”

“Did you usually do that?”

“Oh no—people came in to tea when they pleased—but Mrs. Fortescue asked where everybody was. I thought I heard Mrs. Percival coming—but that was a mistake—”

Neele interrupted. Here was something new.

“You mean you heard someone upstairs moving about?”

“Yes—at the head of the stairs, I thought. But no one came down so I went up. Mrs. Percival was in her bedroom. She had just come in. She had been out for a walk—”

“Out for a walk—I see. The time being then—”

“Oh—nearly five o'clock, I think—”

“And Mr. Lancelot Fortescue arrived—when?”

“A few minutes after I came downstairs again—I thought he had arrived earlier—but—”

Inspector Neele interrupted:

“Why did you think he had arrived earlier?”

“Because I thought I had caught sight of him through the landing window.”

“In the garden, you mean?”

“Yes—I caught a glimpse of someone through the yew hedge—and I thought it would probably be him.”

“This was when you were coming down after telling Mrs. Percival Fortescue tea was ready?”

Mary corrected him.

“No—not then—it was earlier—when I came down the first time.”

Inspector Neele stared.

“Are you sure about that, Miss Dove?”

“Yes, I'm perfectly sure. That's why I was surprised to see him—when he actually did ring the bell.”

Inspector Neele shook his head. He kept his inner excitement out of his voice as he said:

“It couldn't have been Lancelot Fortescue you saw in the garden. His train—which was due at 4:28, was nine minutes late. He arrived at Baydon Heath Station at 4:37. He had to wait a few minutes for a taxi—that train is always very full. It was actually nearly a quarter to five (five minutes
after
you had seen the man in the garden) when he left the station and it is a ten-minute drive. He paid off the taxi at the gate here at about five minutes to five at the earliest. No—it wasn't Lancelot Fortescue you saw.”

“I'm sure I did see someone.”

“Yes, you saw someone. It was getting dark. You couldn't have seen the man clearly?”

“Oh no—I couldn't see his face or anything like that—just his build—tall and slender. We were expecting Lancelot Fortescue—so I jumped to the conclusion that that's who it was.”

“He was going—which way?”

“Along behind the yew hedge towards the east side of the house.”

“There is a side door there. Is it kept locked?”

“Not until the house is locked up for the night.”

“Anyone could have come in by that side door without being observed by any of the household.”

Mary Dove considered.

“I think so. Yes.” She added quickly: “You mean—the person I heard later upstairs could have come in that way? Could have been hiding—upstairs?”

“Something of the kind.”

“But who—?”

“That remains to be seen. Thank you, Miss Dove.”

As she turned to go away Inspector Neele said in a casual voice: “By the way, you can't tell me anything about
blackbirds,
I suppose?”