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One of her rules was never to accept an engagement for any long length of time. A fortnight was her usual period—a month at most under exceptional circumstances. For that fortnight you had to pay the earth! But, during that fortnight, your life was heaven. You could relax completely, go abroad, stay at home, do as you pleased, secure that all was going well on the home front in Lucy Eyelesbarrow’s capable hands.
Naturally the demand for her services was enormous. She could have booked herself up if she chose for about three years ahead. She had been offered enormous sums to go as a permanency. But Lucy had no intention of being a permanency, nor would she book herself for more than six months ahead. And within that period, unknown to her clamouring clients, she always kept certain free periods which enabled her either to take a short luxurious holiday (since she spent nothing otherwise and was handsomely paid and kept) or to accept any position at short notice that happened to take her fancy, either by reason of its character, or because she ‘liked the people’. Since she was now at liberty to pick and choose amongst the vociferous claimants for her services, she went very largely by personal liking. Mere riches would not buy you the services of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. She could pick and choose and she did pick and choose. She enjoyed her life very much and found in it a continual source of entertainment.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow read and re-read the letter from Miss Marple. She had made Miss Marple’s acquaintance two years ago when her services had been retained by Raymond West, the novelist, to go and look after his old aunt who was recovering from pneumonia. Lucy had accepted the job and had gone down to St Mary Mead. She had liked Miss Marple very much. As for Miss Marple, once she had caught a glimpse out of her bedroom window of Lucy Eyelesbarrow really trenching for sweet peas in the proper way, she had leaned back on her pillows with a sigh of relief, eaten the tempting little meals that Lucy Eyelesbarrow brought to her, and listened, agreeably surprised, to the tales told by her elderly irascible maidservant of how ‘I taught that Miss Eyelesbarrow a crochet pattern what she’d never heard of! Proper grateful, she was.’ And had surprised her doctor by the rapidity of her convalescence.
Miss Marple wrote asking if Miss Eyelesbarrow could undertake a certain task for her—rather an unusual one. Perhaps Miss Eyelesbarrow could arrange a meeting at which they could discuss the matter.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow frowned for a moment or two as she considered. She was in reality fully booked up. But the word unusual, and her recollection of Miss Marple’s personality, carried the day and she rang up Miss Marple straight away explaining that she could not come down to St Mary Mead as she was at the moment working, but that she was free from 2 to 4 on the following afternoon and could meet Miss Marple anywhere in London. She suggested her own club, a rather nondescript establishment which had the advantage of having several small dark writing-rooms which were usually empty.
Miss Marple accepted the suggestion and on the following day the meeting took place.
Greetings were exchanged; Lucy Eyelesbarrow led her guest to the gloomiest of the writing-rooms, and said: ‘I’m afraid I’m rather booked up just at present, but perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want me to undertake?’
‘It’s very simple, really,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Unusual, but simple. I want you to find a body.’
For a moment the suspicion crossed Lucy’s mind that Miss Marple was mentally unhinged, but she rejected the idea. Miss Marple was eminently sane. She meant exactly what she had said.
‘What kind of a body?’ asked Lucy Eyelesbarrow with admirable composure.
‘A woman’s body,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The body of a woman who was murdered—strangled actually—in a train.’
Lucy’s eyebrows rose slightly.
‘Well, that’s certainly unusual. Tell me about it.’
Miss Marple told her. Lucy Eyelesbarrow listened attentively, without interrupting. At the end she said:
‘It all depends on what your friend saw—or thought she saw –?’
She left the sentence unfinished with a question in it.
‘Elspeth McGillicuddy doesn’t imagine things,’ said Miss Marple. ‘That’s why I’m relying on what she said. If it had been Dorothy Cartwright, now—it would have been quite a different matter. Dorothy always has a good story, and quite often believes it herself, and there is usually a kind of basis of truth but certainly no more. But Elspeth is the kind of woman who finds it very hard to make herself believe that anything at all extraordinary or out of the way could happen. She’s almost unsuggestible, rather like granite.’
‘I see,’ said Lucy thoughtfully. ‘Well, let’s accept it all. Where do I come in?’
‘I was very much impressed by you,’ said Miss Marple, ‘and you see, I haven’t got the physical strength nowadays to get about and do things.’
‘You want me to make inquiries? That sort of thing? But won’t the police have done all that? Or do you think they have been just slack?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Marple. ‘They haven’t been slack. It’s just that I’ve got a theory about the woman’s body. It’s got to be somewhere. If it wasn’t found in the train, then it must have been pushed or thrown out of the train—but it hasn’t been discovered anywhere on the line. So I travelled down the same way to see if there was anywhere where the body could have been thrown off the train and yet wouldn’t have been found on the line—and there was. The railway line makes a big curve before getting into Brackhampton, on the edge of a high embankment. If a body were thrown out there, when the train was leaning at an angle, I think it would pitch right down the embankment.’
‘But surely it would still be found—even there?’
‘Oh, yes. It would have to be taken away … But we’ll come to that presently. Here’s the place—on this map.’
Lucy bent to study where Miss Marple’s finger pointed.
‘It is right in the outskirts of Brackhampton now,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but originally it was a country house with extensive park and grounds and it’s still there, untouched—ringed round with building estates and small suburban houses. It’s called Rutherford Hall. It was built by a man called Crackenthorpe, a very rich manufacturer, in 1884. The original Crackenthorpe’s son, an elderly man, is living there still with, I understand, a daughter. The railway encircles quite half of the property.’
‘And you want me to do—what?’
Miss Marple replied promptly.
‘I want you to get a post there. Everyone is crying out for efficient domestic help—I should not imagine it would be difficult.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it would be difficult.’
‘I understand that Mr Crackenthorpe is said locally to be somewhat of a miser. If you accept a low salary, I will make it up to the proper figure which should, I think, be rather more than the current rate.’
‘Because of the difficulty?’
‘Not the difficulty so much as the danger. It might, you know, be dangerous. It’s only right to warn you of that.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lucy pensively, ‘that the idea of danger would deter me.’
‘I didn’t think it would,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You’re not that kind of person.’
‘I dare say you thought it might even attract me? I’ve encountered very little danger in my life. But do you really believe it might be dangerous?’
‘Somebody,’ Miss Marple pointed out, ‘has committed a very successful crime. There has been no hue-and-cry, no real suspicion. Two elderly ladies have told a rather improbable story, the police have investigated it and found nothing in it. So everything is nice and quiet. I don’t think that this somebody, whoever he may be, will care about the matter being raked up—especially if you are successful.’
‘What do I look for exactly?’
‘Any signs along the embankment, a scrap of clothing, broken bushes—that kind of thing.’
Lucy nodded.
‘And then?’
‘I shall be quite close at hand,’ said Miss Marple. ‘An old maidservant of mine, my faithful Florence, lives in Brackhampton. She has looked after her old parents for years. They are now both dead, and she takes in lodgers—all most respectable people. She has arranged for me to have rooms with her. She will look after me most devotedly, and I feel I should like to be close at hand. I would suggest that you mention you have an elderly aunt living in the neighbourhood, and that you want a post within easy distance of her, and also that you stipulate for a reasonable amount of spare time so that you can go and see her often.’
Again Lucy nodded.
‘I was going to Taormina the day after to-morrow,’ she said. ‘The holiday can wait. But I can only promise three weeks. After that, I am booked up.’
‘Three weeks should be ample,’ said Miss Marple. ‘If we can’t find out anything in three weeks, we might as well give up the whole thing as a mare’s nest.’
Miss Marple departed, and Lucy, after a moment’s reflection, rang up a Registry Office in Brackhampton, the manageress of which she knew very well. She explained her desire for a post in the neighbourhood so as to be near her ‘aunt’. After turning down, with a little difficulty and a good deal of ingenuity, several more desirable places, Rutherford Hall was mentioned.
‘That sounds exactly what I want,’ said Lucy firmly.
The Registry Office rang up Miss Crackenthorpe, Miss Crackenthorpe rang up Lucy.
Two days later Lucy left London en route for Rutherford Hall.
Driving her own small car, Lucy Eyelesbarrow drove through an imposing pair of vast iron gates. Just inside them was what had originally been a small lodge which now seemed completely derelict, whether through war damage, or merely through neglect, it was difficult to be sure. A long winding drive led through large gloomy clumps of rhododendrons up to the house. Lucy caught her breath in a slight gasp when she saw the house which was a kind of miniature Windsor Castle. The stone steps in front of the door could have done with attention and the gravel sweep was green with neglected weeds.
She pulled an old-fashioned wrought-iron bell, and its clamour sounded echoing away inside. A slatternly woman, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the door and looked at her suspiciously.
‘Expected, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Miss Something-barrow, she told me.’
‘Quite right,’ said Lucy.
The house was desperately cold inside. Her guide led her along a dark hall and opened a door on the right. Rather to Lucy’s surprise, it was quite a pleasant sitting-room, with books and chintz-covered chairs.
‘I’ll tell her,’ said the woman, and went away shutting the door after having given Lucy a look of profound disfavour.
After a few minutes the door opened again. From the first moment Lucy decided that she liked Emma Crackenthorpe.
She was a middle-aged woman with no very outstanding characteristics, neither good-looking nor plain, sensibly dressed in tweeds and pullover, with dark hair swept back from her forehead, steady hazel eyes and a very pleasant voice.
She said: ‘Miss Eyelesbarrow?’ and held out her hand.
Then she looked doubtful.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if this post is really what you’re looking for? I don’t want a housekeeper, you know, to supervise things. I want someone to do the work.’
Lucy said that that was what most people needed.
Emma Crackenthorpe said apologetically:
‘So many people, you know, seem to think that just a little light dusting will answer the case—but I can do all the light dusting myself.’
‘I quite understand,’ said Lucy. ‘You want cooking and washing-up, and housework and stoking the boiler. That’s all right. That’s what I do. I’m not at all afraid of work.’
‘It’s a big house, I’m afraid, and inconvenient. Of course we only live in a portion of it—my father and myself, that is. He is rather an invalid. We live quite quietly, and there is an Aga stove. I have several brothers, but they are not here very often. Two women come in, a Mrs Kidder in the morning, and Mrs Hart three days a week to do brasses and things like that. You have your own car?’
‘Yes. It can stand out in the open if there’s nowhere to put it. It’s used to it.’
‘Oh, there are any amount of old stables. There’s no trouble about that.’ She frowned a moment, then said, ‘Eyelesbarrow—rather an unusual name. Some friends of mine were telling me about a Lucy Eyelesbarrow—the Kennedys?’
‘Yes. I was with them in North Devon when Mrs Kennedy was having a baby.’
Emma Crackenthorpe smiled.
‘I know they said they’d never had such a wonderful time as when you were there seeing to everything. But I had the idea that you were terribly expensive. The sum I mentioned—’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Lucy. ‘I want particularly, you see, to be near Brackhampton. I have an elderly aunt in a critical state of health and I want to be within easy distance of her. That’s why the salary is a secondary consideration. I can’t afford to do nothing. If I could be sure of having some time off most days?’
‘Oh, of course. Every afternoon, till six, if you like?’
‘That seems perfect.’
Miss Crackenthorpe hesitated a moment before saying: ‘My father is elderly and a little—difficult sometimes. He is very keen on economy, and he says things sometimes that upset people. I wouldn’t like—’
Lucy broke in quickly:
‘I’m quite used to elderly people, of all kinds,’ she said. ‘I always manage to get on well with them.’
Emma Crackenthorpe looked relieved.
‘Trouble with father!’ diagnosed Lucy. ‘I bet he’s an old tartar.’
She was apportioned a large gloomy bedroom which a small electric heater did its inadequate best to warm, and was shown round the house, a vast uncomfortable mansion. As they passed a door in the hall a voice roared out:
‘That you, Emma? Got the new girl there? Bring her in. I want to look at her.’
Emma flushed, glanced at Lucy apologetically.
The two women entered the room. It was richly upholstered in dark velvet, the narrow windows let in very little light, and it was full of heavy mahogany Victorian furniture.
Old Mr Crackenthorpe was stretched out in an invalid chair, a silver-headed stick by his side.
He was a big gaunt man, his flesh hanging in loose folds. He had a face rather like a bulldog, with a pugnacious chin. He had thick dark hair flecked with grey, and small suspicious eyes.
‘Let’s have a look at you, young lady.’
Lucy advanced, composed and smiling.
‘There’s just one thing you’d better understand straight away. Just because we live in a big house doesn’t mean we’re rich. We’re not rich. We live simply—do you hear?—simply! No good coming here with a lot of high-falutin ideas. Cod’s as good a fish as turbot any day, and don’t you forget it. I don’t stand for waste. I live here because my father built the house and I like it. After I’m dead they can sell it up if they want to—and I expect they will want to. No sense of family. This house is well built—it’s solid, and we’ve got our own land around us. Keeps us private. It would bring in a lot if sold for building land but not while I’m alive. You won’t get me out of here until you take me out feet first.’
He glared at Lucy.
‘Your home is your castle,’ said Lucy.
‘Laughing at me?’
‘Of course not. I think it’s very exciting to have a real country place all surrounded by town.’
‘Quite so. Can’t see another house from here, can you? Fields with cows in them—right in the middle of Brackhampton. You hear the traffic a bit when the wind’s that way—but otherwise it’s still country.’
He added, without pause or change of tone, to his daughter:
‘Ring up that damn’ fool of a doctor. Tell him that last medicine’s no good at all.’
Lucy and Emma retired. He shouted after them:
‘And don’t let that damned woman who sniffs dust in here. She’s disarranged all my books.’
Lucy asked:
‘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
‘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.