A Murder is Announced

Inspector Craddock examined the wall behind her. The two bullet holes showed plainly. The bullets themselves had been extracted and had been sent for comparison with the revolver.

He said quietly:

‘You had a very near escape, Miss Blacklock.’

‘He did shoot at her,’ said Miss Bunner. ‘Deliberately at her! I saw him. He turned the flash round on everybody until he found her and then he held it right at her and just fired at her. He meant to kill you, Letty.’

‘Dora dear, you’ve just got that into your head from mulling the whole thing over and over.’

‘He shot at you,’ repeated Dora stubbornly. ‘He meant to shoot you and when he’d missed, he shot himself. I’m certain that’s the way it was!’

‘I don’t think he meant to shoot himself for a minute,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘He wasn’t the kind of man who shoots himself.’

‘You tell me, Miss Blacklock, that until the revolver was fired you thought the whole business was a joke?’

‘Naturally. What else could I think it was?’

‘Who do you think was the author of this joke?’

‘You thought Patrick had done it at first,’ Dora Bunner reminded her.

‘Patrick?’ asked the Inspector sharply.

‘My young cousin, Patrick Simmons,’ Miss Blacklock continued sharply, annoyed with her friend. ‘It did occur to me when I saw this advertisement that it might be some attempt at humour on his part, but he denied it absolutely.’

‘And then you were worried, Letty,’ said Miss Bunner. ‘You were worried, although you pretended not to be. And you were quite right to be worried. It said a murder is announced—and it was announced—your murder! And if the man hadn’t missed, you would have been murdered. And then where should we all be?’

Dora Bunner was trembling as she spoke. Her face was puckered up and she looked as though she were going to cry.

Miss Blacklock patted her on the shoulder.

‘It’s all right, Dora dear—don’t get excited. It’s so bad for you. Everything’s quite all right. We’ve had a nasty experience, but it’s over now.’ She added, ‘You must pull yourself together for my sake, Dora. I rely on you, you know, to keep the house going. Isn’t it the day for the laundry to come?’

‘Oh, dear me, Letty, how fortunate you reminded me! I wonder if they’ll return that missing pillowcase. I must make a note in the book about it. I’ll go and see to it at once.’

‘And take those violets away,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘There’s nothing I hate more than dead flowers.’

‘What a pity. I picked them fresh yesterday. They haven’t lasted at all—oh, dear, I must have forgotten to put any water in the vase. Fancy that! I’m always forgetting things. Now I must go and see about the laundry. They might be here any moment.’

She bustled away, looking quite happy again.

‘She’s not very strong,’ said Miss Blacklock, ‘and excitements are bad for her. Is there anything more you want to know, Inspector?’

‘I just want to know exactly how many people make up your household here and something about them.’

‘Yes, well in addition to myself and Dora Bunner, I have two young cousins living here at present, Patrick and Julia Simmons.’

‘Cousins? Not a nephew and niece?’

‘No. They call me Aunt Letty, but actually they are distant cousins. Their mother was my second cousin.’

‘Have they always made their home with you?’

‘Oh, dear no, only for the last two months. They lived in the South of France before the war. Patrick went into the Navy and Julia, I believe, was in one of the Ministries. She was at Llandudno. When the war was over their mother wrote and asked me if they could possibly come to me as paying guests—Julia is training as a dispenser in Milchester General Hospital, Patrick is studying for an engineering degree at Milchester University. Milchester, as you know, is only fifty minutes by bus, and I was very glad to have them here. This house is really too large for me. They pay a small sum for board and lodging and it all works out very well.’ She added with a smile, ‘I like having somebody young about the place.’

‘Then there is a Mrs Haymes, I believe?’

‘Yes. She works as an assistant gardener at Dayas Hall, Mrs Lucas’s place. The cottage there is occupied by the old gardener and his wife and Mrs Lucas asked if I could billet her here. She’s a very nice girl. Her husband was killed in Italy, and she has a boy of eight who is at a prep school and whom I have arranged to have here in the holidays.’

‘And by way of domestic help?’

‘A jobbing gardener comes in on Tuesdays and Fridays. A Mrs Huggins from the village comes up five mornings a week and I have a foreign refugee with a most unpronounceable name as a kind of lady cook help. You will find Mitzi rather difficult, I’m afraid. She has a kind of persecution mania.’

Craddock nodded. He was conscious in his own mind of yet another of Constable Legg’s invaluable commentaries. Having appended the word ‘Scatty’ to Dora Bunner, and ‘All right’ to Letitia Blacklock, he had embellished Mitzi’s record with the one word ‘Liar’.

As though she had read his mind Miss Blacklock said:

‘Please don’t be too prejudiced against the poor thing because she’s a liar. I do really believe that, like so many liars, there is a real substratum of truth behind her lies. I mean that though, to take an instance, her atrocity stories have grown and grown until every kind of unpleasant story that has ever appeared in print has happened to her or her relations personally, she did have a bad shock initially and did see one, at least, of her relations killed. I think a lot of these displaced persons feel, perhaps justly, that their claim to our notice and sympathy lies in their atrocity value and so they exaggerate and invent.’

She added: ‘Quite frankly, Mitzi is a maddening person. She exasperates and infuriates us all, she is suspicious and sulky, is perpetually having “feelings” and thinking herself insulted. But in spite of it all, I really am sorry for her.’ She smiled. ‘And also, when she wants to, she can cook very nicely.’

‘I’ll try not to ruffle her more than I can help,’ said Craddock soothingly. ‘Was that Miss Julia Simmons who opened the door to me?’

‘Yes. Would you like to see her now? Patrick has gone out. Phillipa Haymes you will find working at Dayas Hall.’

‘Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I’d like to see Miss Simmons now if I may.’

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_de919b4d-a975-59be-8dec-f6b4bffa8a9b)

Julia, Mitzi and Patrick (#ulink_de919b4d-a975-59be-8dec-f6b4bffa8a9b)

Julia, when she came into the room, and sat down in the chair vacated by Letitia Blacklock, had an air of composure that Craddock for some reason found annoying. She fixed a limpid gaze on him and waited for his questions.

Miss Blacklock had tactfully left the room.

‘Please tell me about last night, Miss Simmons.’

‘Last night?’ murmured Julia with a blank stare. ‘Oh, we all slept like logs. Reaction, I suppose.’

‘I mean last night from six o’clock onwards.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, a lot of tiresome people came—’

‘They were?’

She gave him another limpid stare.

‘Don’t you know all this already?’