A Murder Is Announced, стр. 44

The postman, rather to his disgust, had lately been given orders to make an afternoon delivery of letters in Chipping Cleghorn as well as a morning one.

On this particular afternoon he left three letters at Little Paddocks at exactly ten minutes to five.

One was addressed to Phillipa Haymes in a schoolboy’s hand; the other two were for Miss Blacklock. She opened them as she and Phillipa sat down at the tea table. The torrential rain had enabled Phillipa to leave Dayas Hall early today, since once she had shut up the greenhouses there was nothing more to do.

Miss Blacklock tore open her first letter which was a bill for repairing a kitchen boiler. She snorted angrily.

‘Dymond’s prices arepreposterous -quite preposterous. Still, I suppose all the other people are just as bad.’ 

She opened the second letter which was in a handwriting quite unknown to her.

Dear Cousin Letty(it said),

I hope it will be all right for me to come to you on Tuesday? I wrote to Patrick two days ago but he hasn’t answered. So I presume it’s all right. Mother is coming to England next month and hopes to see you then.

My train arrives at Chipping Cleghorn at 6.15 if that’s convenient?

Yours affectionately,

Julia Simmons.

Miss Blacklock read the letter once with astonishment pure and simple, and then again with a certain grimness. She looked up at Phillipa who was smiling over her son’s letter.

‘Are Julia and Patrick back, do you know?’

Phillipa looked up.

‘Yes, they came in just after I did. They went upstairs to change. They were wet.’

‘Perhaps you’d not mind going and calling them.’

‘Of course I will.’

‘Wait a moment-I’d like you to read this.’

She handed Phillipa the letter she had received.

Phillipa read it and frowned. ‘I don’t understand…’ 

‘Nor do I, quite…I think it’s about time I did. Call Patrick and Julia, Phillipa.’

Phillipa called from the bottom of the stairs:

‘Patrick! Julia! Miss Blacklock wants you.’

Patrick came running down the stairs and entered the room.

‘Don’t go, Phillipa,’ said Miss Blacklock.

‘Hallo, Aunt Letty,’ said Patrick cheerfully. ‘Want me?’

‘Yes, I do. Perhaps you’ll give me an explanation ofthis?’

Patrick’s face showed an almost comical dismay as he read.

‘I meant to telegraph her! What an ass I am!’

‘This letter, I presume, is from your sister Julia?’

‘Yes-yes, it is.’

Miss Blacklock said grimly:

‘Then who, may I ask, is the young woman whom you brought here as Julia Simmons, and whom I was given to understand was your sister and my cousin?’

‘Well-you see-Aunt Letty-the fact of the matter is-I can explain it all-I know I oughtn’t to have done it-but it really seemed more of a lark than anything else. If you’ll just let me explain-’

‘I am waiting for you to explain.Who is this young woman? ’

‘Well, I met her at a cocktail party soon after I got demobbed. We got talking and I said I was coming here and then-well, we thought it might be rather a good wheeze if I brought her along…You see, Julia, the real Julia, was mad to go on the stage and Mother had seven fits at the idea-however, Julia got a chance to join a jolly good repertory company up in Perth or somewhere and she thought she’d give it a try-but she thought she’d keep Mum calm by letting Mum think that she was here with me studying to be a dispenser like a good little girl.’

‘I still want to know who this other young womanis.’

Patrick turned with relief as Julia, cool and aloof, came into the room.

‘The balloon’s gone up,’ he said.

Julia raised her eyebrows. Then, still cool, she came forward and sat down.

‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘That’s that. I suppose you’re very angry?’ She studied Miss Blacklock’s face with almost dispassionate interest. ‘I should be if I were you.’

‘Who are you?’

Julia sighed.

‘I think the moment’s come when I make a clean breast of things. Here we go. I’m one half of the Pip and Emma combination. To be exact, my christened name is Emma Jocelyn Stamfordis-only Father soon dropped the Stamfordis. I think he called himself De Courcy next. 

‘My father and mother, let me tell you, split up about three years after Pip and I were born. Each of them went their own way. And they split us up. I was Father’s part of the loot. He was a bad parent on the whole, though quite a charming one. I had various desert spells of being educated in convents-when Father hadn’t any money, or was preparing to engage in some particularly nefarious deal. He used to pay the first term with every sign of affluence and then depart and leave me on the nuns’ hands for a year or two. In the intervals, he and I had some very good times together, moving in cosmopolitan society. However, the war separated us completely. I’ve no idea of what’s happened to him. I had a few adventures myself. I was with the French Resistance for a time. Quite exciting. To cut a long story short, I landed up in London and began to think about my future. I knew that Mother’s brother with whom she’d had a frightful row had died a very rich man. I looked up his will to see if there was anything for me. There wasn’t-not directly, that is to say. I made a few inquiries about his widow-it seemed she was quite ga-ga and kept under drugs and was dying by inches. Frankly, it looked as thoughyou were my best bet. You were going to come into a hell of a lot of money and from all I could find out, you didn’t seem to have anyone much to spend it on. I’ll be quite frank. It occurred to me that if I could get to know you in a friendly kind of way, and if you took a fancy to me-well, after all, conditions have changed a bit, haven’t they, since Uncle Randall died? Imean any money we ever had has been swept away in the cataclysm of Europe. I thought you might pity a poor orphan girl, all alone in the world, and make her, perhaps, a small allowance.’

‘Oh, you did, did you?’ said Miss Blacklock grimly.

‘Yes. Of course, I hadn’t seen you then…I visualized a kind of sob stuff approach…Then, by a marvellous stroke of luck, I met Patrick here-and he turned out to be your nephew or your cousin, or something. Well, that struck me as a marvellous chance. I went bull-headed for Patrick and he fell for me in a most gratifying way. The real Julia was all wet about this acting stuff and I soon persuaded her it was her duty to Art to go and fix herself up in some uncomfortable lodgings in Perth and train to be the new Sarah Bernhardt.

‘You mustn’t blame Patrick too much. He felt awfully sorry for me, all alone in the world-and he soon thought it would be a really marvellous idea for me to come here as his sister and do my stuff.’

‘And he also approved of your continuing to tell a tissue of lies to the police?’

‘Have a heart, Letty. Don’t you see that when that ridiculous hold-up business happened-or rather after it happened-I began to feel I was in a bit of a spot. Let’s face it, I’ve got a perfectly good motive for putting you out of the way. You’ve only got my word for it now that I wasn’t the one who tried to do it. You can’t expect me deliberately to go and incriminate myself. Even Patrick got nasty ideas about me from time to time, and if evenhe could think things like that, what on earth would the police think? That Detective-Inspector struck me as a man of singularly sceptical mind. No, I figured out the only thing for me to do was to sit tight as Julia and just fade away when term came to an end.

‘How was I to know that fool Julia, the real Julia, would go and have a row with the producer, and fling the whole thing up in a fit of temperament? She writes to Patrick and asks if she can come here, and instead of wiring her “Keep away” he goes and forgets to do anything at all!’ She cast an angry glance at Patrick. ‘Of all the utteridiots!’

She sighed.

‘You don’t know the straits I’ve been put to in Milchester! Of course, I haven’t been to the hospital at all. But I had to gosomewhere. Hours and hours I’ve spent in the pictures seeing the most frightful films over and over again.’

‘Pip and Emma,’ murmured Miss Blacklock. ‘I never believed, somehow, in spite of what the Inspector said, that they werereal -’ 

She looked searchingly at Julia.

‘You’re Emma,’ she said. ‘Where’s Pip?’

Julia’s eyes, limpid and innocent, met hers.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t the least idea.’

‘I think you’re lying, Julia. When did you see him last?’

Was there a momentary hesitation before Julia spoke?

She said clearly and deliberately:

‘I haven’t seen him since we were both three years old-when my mother took him away. I haven’t seen either him or my mother. I don’t know where they are.’

‘And that’s all you have to say?’

Julia sighed.

‘I could say I was sorry. But it wouldn’t really be true; because actually I’d do the same thing again-though not if I’d known about this murder business, of course.’

‘Julia,’ said Miss Blacklock, ‘I call you that because I’m used to it. You were with the French Resistance, you say?’

‘Yes. For eighteen months.’

‘Then I suppose you learned to shoot?’

Again those cool blue eyes met hers.

‘I can shoot all right. I’m a first-class shot. I didn’t shoot at you, Letitia Blacklock, though you’ve only got my word for that. But I can tell you this, that ifI had shot at you, I wouldn’t have been likely to miss.’

The sound of a car driving up to the door broke through the tenseness of the moment.

‘Who can that be?’ asked Miss Blacklock.

Mitzi put a tousled head in. She was showing the whites of her eyes.

‘It is the police come again,’ she said. ‘This, it is persecution! Why will they not leave us alone? I will not bear it. I will write to the Prime Minister. I will write to your King.’

Craddock’s hand put her firmly and not too kindly aside. He came in with such a grim set to his lips that they all looked at him apprehensively. This was a new Inspector Craddock.

He said sternly:

‘Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered. She was strangled-not more than an hour ago.’ His eye singled out Julia. ‘You-Miss Simmons-where have you been all day?’