"He mayn't be as bad as he looks," said Father soothingly.
"If anything he is worse than he looks," said Miss Marple. "I am convinced of it. He drives a large racing car."
Father looked up quickly. "Racing car?"
"Yes. Once or twice I've seen it standing near this hotel."
"You don't remember the number, do you?"
"Yes, indeed I do. FAN 2266. I had a cousin who stuttered," Miss Marple explained. "That's how I remember it."
Father looked puzzled.
"Do you know who he is?" demanded Miss Marple. "As a matter of fact I do," said Father slowly. "Half French, half Polish. Very well-known racing driver, he was world champion three years ago. His name is Ladislaus Malinowski. You're quite right in some of your views about him. He has a bad reputation where women are concerned. That is to say, he is not a suitable friend for a young girl. But it's not easy to do anything about that sort of thing. I suppose she is meeting him on the sly, is that it?"
"Almost certainly," said Miss Marple.
"Did you approach her guardian?"
"I don't know him," said Miss Marple. "I've only just been introduced to him once by a mutual friend. I don't like the idea of going to him in a tale-bearing way. I wondered if perhaps in some way you could do something about it."
"I can try," said Father. "By the way, I thought you might like to know that your friend Canon Pennyfather has turned up all right."
"Indeed!" Miss Marple looked animated. "Where?"
"A place called Milton St. John."
"How very odd. What was he doing there? Did he know?"
"Apparently "-Chief Inspector Davy stressed the word-"he had had an accident."
"What kind of an accident?"
"Knocked down by a car-concussed-or else, of course, he might have been conked on the head."
"Oh, I see." Miss Marple considered the point. "Doesn't he know himself?"
"He says"-again the Chief Inspector stressed the word-"that he does not know anything."
"Very remarkable."
"Isn't it? The last thing he remembers is driving in a taxi to Kensington Air Station."
Miss Marple shook her head perplexedly.
"I know it does happen that way in concussion," she murmured. "Didn't he say anything-useful?"
"He murmured something about the walls of Jericho."
"Joshua?" hazarded Miss Marple, "or archaeology-excavations?--or I remember, long ago, a play- by Mr. Sutro, I think."
"And all this week north of the Thames, Gaumont Cinemas-The Walls of Jericho, featuring Olga Radbourne and Bart Levinne," said Father.
Miss Marple looked at him suspiciously.
"He could have gone to that film in the Cromwell Road. He could have come out about eleven and come back here-though if so, someone ought to have seen him-it would be well before midnight-"
"Took the wrong bus," Miss Marple suggested. "Something like that-"
"Say he got back here after midnight," Father said. "He could have walked up to his room without anyone seeing him. But if so, what happened then-and why did he go out again three hours later?"
Miss Marpie groped for a word. "The only idea that occurs to me is-oh!"
She jumped as a report sounded from the street outside.
"Car backfiring," said Father soothingly.
"I'm sorry to be so jumpy. I am nervous tonight- that feeling one has-"
"That something's going to happen? I don't think you need worry."
"I have never liked fog."
"I wanted to tell you," said Chief inspector Davy, "that you've given me a lot of help. The things you've noticed here-just little things-they've added up."
"So there was something wrong with this place?"
"There was and is everything wrong with it." Miss Marple sighed. "It seemed wonderful at first- unchanged you know-like stepping back into the past-to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed."
She paused. "But of course, it wasn't really like that, I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back-that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one way street, isn't it?"
"Something of the sort," agreed Father.
"I remember," said Miss Marple, diverging from her main topic in a characteristic way, "I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysee Hotel. And my grandmother looked round, and she said suddenly, 'Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!' And she was, too! When she got home she packed up all her bonnets and her beaded mantles, too, and sent them off-"
"To the jumble sale?" inquired Father sympathetically.
"Oh no. Nobody would have wanted them at a jumble sale. She sent them to a theatrical repertory company. They appreciated them very much. But let me see-" Miss Marple recovered her direction. "Where was I?"
"Summing up this place."
"Yes. It seemed all right, but it wasn't. It was mixed up-real people and people who weren't real. One couldn't always tell them apart."
"What do you mean by not real?"
"There were retired military men, but there were also what seemed to be military men but who had never been in the Army. And clergymen who weren't clergymen. And admirals and sea captains who've never been in the Navy. My friend Selina Hazy-it amused me at first how she was always so anxious to recognize people she knew (quite natural, of course) and how often she was mistaken and they weren't the people she thought they were. But it happened too often. And so-I began to wonder. Even Rose, the chambermaid-so nice-but I began to think that perhaps she wasn't real, either."
"If it interests you to know, she's an ex-actress. A good one. Gets a better salary here than she ever drew on the stage."
"But-why?"
"Mainly, as part of the decor. Perhaps there's more than that to it."
"I'm glad to be leaving here," said Miss Marple. She gave a little shiver. "Before anything happens."
Chief Inspector Davy looked at her curiously.
"What do you expect to happen?" he asked.
"Evil of some kind," said Miss Marple.
"Evil is rather a big word-"
"You think it is too melodramatic? But I have some experience. I seem to have been-so often-in contact with murder."
"Murder?" Chief Inspector Davy shook his head. "I'm not suspecting murder. Just a nice cozy roundup of some remarkably clever criminals-"
"That's not the same thing. Murder-the wish to do murder-is something quite different. It-how shall I say?-it defies God."
He looked at her and shook his head gently and reassuringly.
"There won't be any murders," he said.
A sharp report, louder than the former one, came from outside. It was followed by a scream and another report.
Chief Inspector Davy was on his feet, moving with a speed surprising in such a bulky man. In a few sec onds he was through the swing doors and out in the street.
The screaming-a woman's-was piercing the mist with a note of terror. Chief Inspector Davy raced down Pond Street in the direction of the screams. He could dimly visualize a woman's figure backed against a railing. In a dozen strides he had reached her. She wore a long pale fur coat, and her shining blonde hair hung down each side of her face. He thought for a moment that he knew who she was, then he realized that this was only a slip of a girl. Sprawled on the pavement at her feet was the body of a man in uniform. Chief Inspector Davy recognized him. It was Michael Gorman.
As Davy came up to the girl, she clutched at him, shivering all over, stammering out broken phrases.
"Someone tried to kill me… Someone… they shot at me… If it hadn't been for him-" She pointed down at the motionless figure at her feet. "He pushed me back and got in front of me-and then the second shot came… and he fell… He saved my life. I think he's hurt-badly hurt…"
Chief Inspector Davy went down on one knee. His torch came out. The tall hish commissionaire had fallen like a soldier. The left-hand side of his tunic showed a wet patch that was growing wetter as the blood oozed out into the cloth. Davy rolled up an eyelid, touched a wrist. He rose to his feet again.
"He's had it all right," he said.
The girl gave a sharp cry. "Do you mean he's dead? Oh no, no! He can't be dead."
"Who was it shot at you?"
"I don't know… I'd left my car just round the corner and was feeling my way along by the railings- I was going to Bertram's Hotel. And then suddenly there was a shot-and a bullet went past my cheek and then-he-the doorman from Bertram's-came running down the street towards me, and shoved me behind him, and then another shot came…. I think- I think whoever it was must have been hiding in that area there."
Chief Inspector Davy looked where she pointed. At this end of Bertram's Hotel there was an old-fashioned area below the level of the street, with a gate and some steps down to it. Since it gave only on some store rooms it was not much used. But a man could have hidden there easily enough.
"You didn't see him?"
"Not properly. He rushed past me like a shadow. It was all thick fog."
Davy nodded.
The girl began to sob hysterically.
"But who could possibly want to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me? That's the second time. I don't understand… Why?"
One arm round the girl, Chief Inspector Davy fumbled in his pocket with the other hand.
The shrill notes of a police whistle penetrated the mist.
In the lounge of Bertram's Hotel, Miss Gorringe had looked up sharply from the desk.
One or two of the visitors had looked up also. The older and deafer did not look up.
Henry, about to lower a glass of old brandy to a table, stopped poised with it still in his hand.
Miss Marple sat forward, clutching the arms of her chair.
"Accident!" a retired admiral said decisively. "Cars collided in the fog, I expect."
The swing doors from the street were pushed open. Through them came what seemed like an outsize policeman, looking a good deal larger than life.
He was supporting a girl in a pale fur coat. She seemed hardly able to walk. The policeman looked round for help with some embarrassment.
Miss Gorringe came out from behind the desk, prepared to cope. But at that moment the elevator came down. A tall figure emerged, and the girl shook herself free from the policeman's support, and ran frantically across the lounge.
"Mother," she cried. "Oh Mother, Mother…" and threw herself, sobbing, into Bess Sedgwick's arms.
21
Chief Inspector Davy settled himself back in his chair and looked at the two women sitting opposite him. It was past midnight. Police officials had come and gone. There had been doctors, fingerprint men, an ambulance to remove the body; and now everything had narrowed to this one room dedicated for the purposes of the Law by Bertram's Hotel. Chief Inspector Davy sat one side of the table. Bess Sedgwick and Elvira sat the other side. Against the wall a policeman sat unobtrusively writing. Detective Sergeant Wadell sat near the door.
Father looked thoughtfully at the two women facing him. Mother and daughter. There was, he noted, a strong superficial likeness between them. He could understand how for one moment in the fog he had taken Elvira Blake for Bess Sedgwick. But now, looking at them, he was more struck by the points of difference than the points of resemblance. They were not really alike save in colouring, yet the impression persisted that here he had a positive and a negative version of the same personality. Everything about Bess Sedgwick was positive. Her vitality, her energy, her magnetic attraction. He admired Lady Sedgwick. He always had admired her. He had admired her courage and had always been excited over her exploits; had said, reading his Sunday papers: "She'll never get away with that," and invariably she had got away with it! He had not thought it possible that she would reach journey's end and she had reached journey's end. He admired particularly the indestructible quality of her. She had had one air crash, several car crashes, had been thrown badly twice from her horse, but at the end of it here she was. Vibrant, alive, a personality one could not ignore for a moment. He took off his hat to her mentally. Some day, of course, she would come a cropper. You could only bear a charmed life for so long. His eyes went from mother to daughter. He wondered. He wondered very much.
In Elvira Blake, he thought, everything had been driven inward. Bess Sedgwick had got through life by imposing her will on it. Elvira, he guessed, had a different way of getting through life. She submitted, he thought. She obeyed. She smiled in compliance and behind that, he thought, she slipped away through your fingers. "Sly," he said to himself, appraising that fact. "That's the only way she can manage, I expect. She can never brazen things out or impose herself. That's why, I expect, the people who've looked after her have never had the least idea of what she might be up to."
He wondered what she had been doing slipping along the street to Bertram's Hotel on a late foggy evening. He was going to ask her presently. He thought it highly probable that the answer he would get would not be the true one. That's the way, he thought, that the poor child defends herself. Had she come here to meet her mother or to find her mother? It was perfectly possible, but he didn't think so. Not for a moment. Instead he thought of the big sports car tucked away round the corner-the car with the number plate FAN 2266. Ladislaus Malinowski must be somewhere in the neighbourhood since his car was there.
"Well," said Father, addressing Elvira in his most kindly and fatherlike manner, "well, and how are you feeling now?"
"I'm quite all right," said Elvira.
"Good. I'd like you to answer a few questions if you feel up to it; because, you see, time is usually the essence of these things. You were shot at twice and a man was killed. We want as many clues as we can get to the person who killed him."
"I'll tell you everything I can, but it all came so suddenly. And you can't see anything in a fog. I've no idea myself who it could have been-or even what he looked like. That's what was so frightening."
"You said this was the second time somebody had tried to kill you. Does that mean there was an attempt on your life before?"
"Did I say that? I can't remember." Her eyes moved uneasily. "I don't think I said that."
"Oh, but you did, you know," said Father.
"I expect I was just being-being hysterical."
"No," said Father, "I don't think you were. I think you meant just what you said."
"I might have been imagining things," said Elvira. Her eyes shifted again.
Bess Sedgwick moved. "You'd better tell him, Elvira," she said quietly.
Elvira shot a quick, uneasy look at her mother.
"You needn't worry," said Father reassuringly. "We know quite well in the police force that girls don't tell their mothers or their guardians everything. We don't take those things too seriously, but we've got to know about them, because, you see, it all helps."
"Was it in Italy?" Bess Sedgwick said.
"Yes," said Elvira.
Father said, "That's where you've been at school, isn't it, or to a finishing place or whatever they call it nowadays?"
"Yes. I was at Contessa Martinelli's. There were about eighteen or twenty of us."
"And you thought that somebody tried to kill you. How was that?"
"Well, a big box of chocolates and sweets and things came for me. There was a card with it written in Italian in a flowery hand. The sort of thing they say, you know, 'To the bellissiina Signorina.' Something like that. And my friends and I-well, we laughed about it a bit, and wondered who'd sent it."