4.50 from Paddington

‘Has Mr Crackenthorpe been an invalid long?’

Emma said, rather evasively:

‘Oh, for years now … This is the kitchen.’

The kitchen was enormous. A vast kitchen range stood cold and neglected. An Aga stood demurely beside it.

Lucy asked times of meals and inspected the larder. Then she said cheerfully to Emma Crackenthorpe:

‘I know everything now. Don’t bother. Leave it all to me.’

Emma Crackenthorpe heaved a sigh of relief as she went up to bed that night.

‘The Kennedys were quite right,’ she said. ‘She’s wonderful.’

Lucy rose at six the next morning. She did the house, prepared vegetables, assembled, cooked and served breakfast. With Mrs Kidder she made the beds and at eleven o’clock they sat down to strong tea and biscuits in the kitchen. Mollified by the fact that Lucy ‘had no airs about her’, and also by the strength and sweetness of the tea, Mrs Kidder relaxed into gossip. She was a small spare woman with a sharp eye and tight lips.

‘Regular old skinflint he is. What she has to put up with! All the same, she’s not what I call down-trodden. Can hold her own all right when she has to. When the gentlemen come down she sees to it there’s something decent to eat.’

‘The gentlemen?’

‘Yes. Big family it was. The eldest, Mr Edmund, he was killed in the war. Then there’s Mr Cedric, he lives abroad somewhere. He’s not married. Paints pictures in foreign parts. Mr Harold’s in the City, lives in London—married an earl’s daughter. Then there’s Mr Alfred, he’s got a nice way with him, but he’s a bit of a black sheep, been in trouble once or twice—and there’s Miss Edith’s husband, Mr Bryan, ever so nice, he is—she died some years ago, but he’s always stayed one of the family, and there’s Master Alexander, Miss Edith’s little boy. He’s at school, comes here for part of the holidays always; Miss Emma’s terribly set on him.’

Lucy digested all this information, continuing to press tea on her informant. Finally, reluctantly, Mrs Kidder rose to her feet.

‘Seem to have got along a treat, we do, this morning,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Want me to give you a hand with the potatoes, dear?’

‘They’re all done ready.’

‘Well, you are a one for getting on with things! I might as well be getting along myself as there doesn’t seem anything else to do.’

Mrs Kidder departed and Lucy, with time on her hands, scrubbed the kitchen table which she had been longing to do, but which she had put off so as not to offend Mrs Kidder whose job it properly was. Then she cleaned the silver till it shone radiantly. She cooked lunch, cleared it away, washed it up, and at two-thirty was ready to start exploration. She had set out the tea things ready on a tray, with sandwiches and bread and butter covered with a damp napkin to keep them moist.

She strolled round the gardens which would be the normal thing to do. The kitchen garden was sketchily cultivated with a few vegetables. The hot-houses were in ruins. The paths everywhere were overgrown with weeds. A herbaceous border near the house was the only thing that showed free of weeds and in good condition and Lucy suspected that that had been Emma’s hand. The gardener was a very old man, somewhat deaf, who was only making a show of working. Lucy spoke to him pleasantly. He lived in a cottage adjacent to the big stableyard.

Leading out of the stableyard a back drive led through the park which was fenced off on either side of it, and under a railway arch into a small back lane.

Every few minutes a train thundered along the main line over the railway arch. Lucy watched the trains as they slackened speed going round the sharp curve that encircled the Crackenthorpe property. She passed under the railway arch and out into the lane. It seemed a little-used track. On the one side was the railway embankment, on the other was a high wall which enclosed some tall factory buildings. Lucy followed the lane until it came out into a street of small houses. She could hear a short distance away the busy hum of main road traffic. She glanced at her watch. A woman came out of a house nearby and Lucy stopped her.

‘Excuse me, can you tell me if there is a public telephone near here?’

‘Post office just at the corner of the road.’

Lucy thanked her and walked along until she came to the post office which was a combination shop and post office. There was a telephone box at one side. Lucy went into it and made a call. She asked to speak to Miss Marple. A woman’s voice spoke in a sharp bark.

‘She’s resting. And I’m not going to disturb her! She needs her rest—she’s an old lady. Who shall I say called?’

‘Miss Eyelesbarrow. There’s no need to disturb her. Just tell her that I’ve arrived and everything is going on well and that I’ll let her know when I’ve any news.’

She replaced the receiver and made her way back to Rutherford Hall.

CHAPTER 5 (#ua0aa7b7f-2d2b-556b-9e91-3606a936ac35)

‘I suppose it will be all right if I just practise a few iron shots in the park?’ asked Lucy.

‘Oh, yes, certainly. Are you fond of golf?’

‘I’m not much good, but I like to keep in practice. It’s a more agreeable form of exercise than just going for a walk.’

‘Nowhere to walk outside this place,’ growled Mr Crackenthorpe. ‘Nothing but pavements and miserable little band boxes of houses. Like to get hold of my land and build more of them. But they won’t until I’m dead. And I’m not going to die to oblige anybody. I can tell you that! Not to oblige anybody!’

Emma Crackenthorpe said mildly:

‘Now, Father.’

‘I know what they think—and what they’re waiting for. All of ’em. Cedric, and that sly fox Harold with his smug face. As for Alfred, I wonder he hasn’t had a shot at bumping me off himself. Not sure he didn’t, at Christmas-time. That was a very odd turn I had. Puzzled old Quimper. He asked me a lot of discreet questions.’

‘Everyone gets these digestive upsets now and again, Father.’

‘All right, all right, say straight out that I ate too much! That’s what you mean. And why did I eat too much? Because there was too much food on the table, far too much. Wasteful and extravagant. And that reminds me—you, young woman. Five potatoes you sent in for lunch—good-sized ones too. Two potatoes are enough for anybody. So don’t send in more than four in future. The extra one was wasted to-day.’

‘It wasn’t wasted, Mr Crackenthorpe. I’ve planned to use it in a Spanish omelette to-night.’

‘Urgh!’ As Lucy went out of the room carrying the coffee tray she heard him say, ‘Slick young woman, that, always got all the answers. Cooks well, though—and she’s a handsome kind of girl.’

Lucy Eyelesbarrow took a light iron out of the set of golf clubs she had had the forethought to bring with her, and strolled out into the park, climbing over the fence.

She began playing a series of shots. After five minutes or so, a ball, apparently sliced, pitched on the side of the railway embankment. Lucy went up and began to hunt about for it. She looked back towards the house. It was a long way away and nobody was in the least interested in what she was doing. She continued to hunt for the ball. Now and then she played shots from the embankment down into the grass. During the afternoon she searched about a third of the embankment. Nothing. She played her ball back towards the house.

Then, on the next day, she came upon something. A thorn bush growing about half-way up the bank had been snapped off. Bits of it lay scattered about. Lucy examined the tree itself. Impaled on one of the thorns was a torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour. Lucy looked at it for a moment, then she took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and snipped it carefully in half. The half she had snipped off she put in an envelope which she had in her pocket. She came down the steep slope searching about for anything else. She looked carefully at the rough grass of the field. She thought she could distinguish a kind of track which someone had made walking through the long grass. But it was very faint—not nearly so clear as her own tracks were. It must have been made some time ago and it was too sketchy for her to be sure that it was not merely imagination on her part.

She began to hunt carefully down in the grass at the foot of the embankment just below the broken thorn bush. Presently her search was rewarded. She found a powder compact, a small cheap enamelled affair. She wrapped it in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket. She searched on but did not find anything more.

On the following afternoon, she got into her car and went to see her invalid aunt. Emma Crackenthorpe said kindly, ‘Don’t hurry back. We shan’t want you until dinner-time.’

‘Thank you, but I shall be back by six at the latest.’

No. 4 Madison Road was a small drab house in a small drab street. It had very clean Nottingham lace curtains, a shining white doorstep and a well-polished brass door handle. The door was opened by a tall, grim-looking woman, dressed in black with a large knob of iron-grey hair.

She eyed Lucy in suspicious appraisal as she showed her in to Miss Marple.

Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting-room which looked out on to a small tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of mats and doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean suite and two ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the fire busily engaged in crocheting.

Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss Marple.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘It looks as though you were right.’

She produced her finds and gave details of their finding.