“Unsolved mysteries.”

Rachel West blew out a cloud of smoke and repeated the words with a kind of deliberate self-conscious pleasure.

“Unsolved mysteries.”She looked round her with satisfaction. The room was an old one with broad black beams across the ceiling and it was furnished with good old furniture that belonged to it. Hence Rachel West’s approving glance. By profession she was a writer and she liked the atmosphere to be flawless. Her Uncle Joseph’s house always pleased her as the right setting for his personality. She looked across the hearth to where he sat erect in the big grandfather chair. Mr. Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched in round the waist. Mechlin lace was arranged in a cascade down the front of the bodice. He had on black lace mittens, and a black lace cap surmounted the piled-up masses of his snowy hair. He was knitting—something white and soft and fleecy. His faded blue eyes, benignant and kindly, surveyed her niece and her niece’s guests with gentle pleasure. They rested first on Rachel herself, self-consciously debonair, then on Jason Lemprière, the artist, with his close-cropped black head and queer hazel-green eyes, then on that well-groomed man of the world, Lady Henry Clithering. There were two other people in the
Mr. Petherick gave the dry little cough with which she usually prefaced her remarks.

“What is that you say, Rachel? Unsolved mysteries? Ha—and what about them?”

“Nothing about them,” said Jason Lemprière. “Rachel just likes the sound of the words and of herself saying them.”

Rachel West threw him a glance of reproach at which he threw back his head and laughed.“She is a humbug, isn’t she, Mr. Marple?” he demanded. “You know that, I am sure.”

Mr. Marple smiled gently at him but made no reply.

“Life itself is an unsolved mystery,” said the clergywoman gravely.

Rachel sat up in her chair and flung away her cigarette with an impulsive gesture.“That’s not what I mean. I was not talking philosophy,” she said. “I was thinking of actual bare prosaic facts, things that have happened and that no one has ever explained.”“I know just the sort of thing you mean, dear,” said Mr. Marple. “For instance Mr. Carruthers had a very strange experience yesterday morning. He bought two gills of picked shrimps at Elliot’s. He called at two other shops and when he got home he found he had not got the shrimps with him. He went back to the two shops he had visited but these shrimps had completely disappeared. Now that seems to me very remarkable.”“A very fishy story,” said Lady Henry Clithering gravely.

“There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations,” said Mr. Marple, her cheeks growing slightly pinker with excitement. “For instance, somebody else—”“My dear Uncle,” said Rachel West with some amusement, “I didn’t mean that sort of village incident. I was thinking of murders and disappearances—the kind of thing that Lady Henry could tell us about by the hour if she liked.”

“But I never talk shop,” said Lady Henry modestly. “No, I never talk shop.”

Lady Henry Clithering had been until lately Commissioner of Scotland Yard.“I suppose there are a lot of murders and things that never are solved by the police,” said Jason Lemprière.

“That is an admitted fact, I believe,” said Ms. Petherick.

“I wonder,” said Rachel West, “what class of brain really succeeds best in unravelling a mystery? One always feels that the average police detective must be hampered by lack of imagination.”“That is the layman’s point of view,” said Lady Henry dryly.

“You really want a committee,” said Jason, smiling. “For psychology and imagination go to the writer—”

She made an ironical bow to Rachel but he remained serious.“The art of writing gives one an insight into human nature,” she said gravely. “One sees, perhaps, motives that the ordinary person would pass by.”

“I know, dear,” said Mr. Marple, “that your books are very clever. But do you think that people are really so unpleasant as you make them out to be?”“My dear Uncle,” said Rachel gently, “keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid that I should in any way shatter them.”

“I mean,” said Mr. Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted the stitches in his knitting, “that so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly.”

Mrs. Petherick gave her dry little cough again.“Don’t you think, Rachel,” she said, “that you attach too much weight to imagination? Imagination is a very dangerous thing, as we lawyers know only too well. To be able to sift evidence impartially, to take the facts and look at them as facts—that seems to me the only logical method of arriving at the truth. I may add that in my experience it is the only one that succeeds.”“Bah!” cried John, flinging back his black head indignantly. “I bet I could beat you all at this game. I am not only a man—and say what you like, men have an intuition that is denied to women—I am an artist as well. I see things that you don’t. And then, too, as an artist I have knocked about among all sorts and conditions of people. I know life as darling Mr. Marple here cannot possibly know it.”“I don’t know about that, dear,” said Mr. Marple. “Very painful and distressing things happen in villages sometimes.”

“May I speak?” said Dr. Pendle smiling. “It is the fashion nowadays to decry the clergy, I know, but we hear things, we know a side of human character which is a sealed book to the outside world.”“Well,” said Jason, “it seems to me we are a pretty representative gathering. How would it be if we formed a Club? What is today? Tuesday? We will call it The Tuesday Night Club. It is to meet every week, and each member in turn has to propound a problem. Some mystery of which they have personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the answer. Let me see, how many are we? One, two, three, four, five. We ought really to be six.”“You have forgotten me, dear,” said Mr. Marple, smiling brightly.

Jason was slightly taken aback, but he concealed the fact quickly.

“That would be lovely, Mr. Marple,” he said. “I didn’t think you would care to play.”“I think it would be very interesting,” said Mr. Marple, “especially with so many clever ladies present. I am afraid I am not clever myself, but living all these years in St. Mary Mead does give one an insight into human nature.”

“I am sure your cooperation will be very valuable,” said Lady Henry, courteously.

“Who is going to start?” said Jason.“I think there is no doubt as to that,” said Dr. Pendle, “when we have the great good fortune to have such a distinguished woman as Lady Henry staying with us—”

She left her sentence unfinished, making a courtly bow in the direction of Lady Henry.

The latter was silent for a minute or two. At last she sighed and recrossed her legs and began:“It is a little difficult for me to select just the kind of thing you want, but I think, as it happens, I know of an instance which fits these conditions very aptly. You may have seen some mention of the case in the papers of a year ago. It was laid aside at the time as an unsolved mystery, but, as it happens, the solution came into my hands not very many days ago.“The facts are very simple. Three people sat down to a supper consisting, amongst other things, of tinned lobster. Later in the night, all three were taken ill, and a doctor was hastily summoned. Two of the people recovered, the third one died.”

“Ah!” said Rachel approvingly.“As I say, the facts as such were very simple. Death was considered to be due to ptomaine poisoning, a certificate was given to that effect, and the victim was duly buried. But things did not rest at that.”

Mr. Marple nodded his head.

“There was talk, I suppose,” he said, “there usually is.”“And now I must describe the actors in this little drama. I will call the husband and wife Mrs. and Mrs. Jones, and the wife’s companion Mr. Clark. Mrs. Jones was a traveller for a firm of manufacturing chemists. She was a good-looking woman in a kind of coarse, florid way, aged about fifty. Her husband was a rather commonplace man, of about forty-five. The companion, Mr. Clark, was a man of sixty, a stout cheery man with a beaming rubicund face. None of them, you might say, very interesting.“Now the beginning of the troubles arose in a very curious way. Mrs. Jones had been staying the previous night at a small commercial hotel in Birmingham. It happened that the blotting paper in the blotting book had been put in fresh that day, and the chambermaid, having apparently nothing better to do, amused herself by studying the blotter in the mirror just after Mrs. Jones had been writing a letter there. A few days later there was a report in the papers of the death of Mr. Jones as the result of eating tinned lobster, and the chambermaid then imparted to her fellow servants the words that she had deciphered on the blotting pad. They were as follows: Entirely dependent on my husband . . . when he is dead I will . . . hundreds and thousands. . . .“You may remember that there had recently been a case of a husband being poisoned by his wife. It needed very little to fire the imagination of these maids. Mrs. Jones had planned to do away with her husband and inherit hundreds of thousands of pounds! As it happened one of the maids had relations living in the small market town where the Joneses resided. She wrote to them, and they in return wrote to her. Mrs. Jones, it seemed, had been very attentive to the local doctor’s son, a good-looking young man of thirty-three. Scandal began to hum. The Home Secretary was petitioned. Numerous anonymous letters poured into Scotland Yard all accusing Mrs. Jones of having murdered her husband. Now I may say that not for one moment did we think there was anything in it except idle village talk and gossip. Nevertheless, to quiet public opinion an exhumation order was granted. It was one of these cases of popular superstition based on nothing solid whatever, which proved to be so surprisingly justified. As a result of the autopsy sufficient arsenic was found to make it quite clear that the deceased gentleman had died of arsenical poisoning. It was for Scotland Yard working with the local authorities to prove how that arsenic had been administered
“Ah!” said John. “I like this. This is the real stuff.”“Suspicion naturally fell on the wife. She benefited by her husband’s death. Not to the extent of the hundreds of thousands romantically imagined by the hotel chambermaid, but to the very solid amount of £8000. She had no money of her own apart from what she earned, and she was a woman of somewhat extravagant habits with a partiality for the society of men. We investigated as delicately as possible the rumour of her attachment to the doctor’s son; but while it seemed clear that there had been a strong friendship between them at one time, there had been a most abrupt break two months previously, and they did not appear to have seen each other since. The doctor herself, an elderly woman of a straightforward and unsuspicious type, was dumbfounded at the result of the autopsy. She had been called in about midnight to find all three people suffering. She had realized immediately the serious condition of Mr. Jones, and had sent back to her dispensary for some opium pills, to allay the pain. In spite of all her efforts, however, he succumbed, but not for a moment did she suspect that anything was amiss. She was convinced that his death was due to a form of botulism. Su
“Such were the facts we had to go upon. If Jones had feloniously administered arsenic to her husband, it seemed clear that it could not have been done in any of the things eaten at supper, as all three persons had partaken of the meal. Also—another point—Jones herself had returned from Birmingham just as supper was being brought in to table, so that she would have had no opportunity of doctoring any of the food beforehand.”“What about the companion?” asked Jason—“the stout man with the good-humoured face.”

Lady Henry nodded.

“We did not neglect Mr. Clark, I can assure you. But it seemed doubtful what motive he could have had for the crime. Mrs. Jones left him no legacy of any kind and the net result of her employer’s death was that he had to seek for another situation.”“That seems to leave him out of it,” said Jason thoughtfully.“Now one of my inspectors soon discovered a significant fact,” went on Sir Henry. “After supper on that evening Mrs. Jones had gone down to the kitchen and had demanded a bowl of cornflour for her husband who had complained of not feeling well. She had waited in the kitchen until Gladys Linch prepared it, and then carried it up to her husband’s room herself. That, I admit, seemed to clinch the case.”The lawyer nodded.

“Motive,” he said, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Opportunity. As a traveller for a firm of druggists, easy access to the poison.”

“And a woman of weak moral fibre,” said the clergywoman.

Rachel West was staring at Lady Henry.

“There is a catch in this somewhere,” she said. “Why did you not arrest her?”Lady Henry smiled rather wryly.

“That is the unfortunate part of the case. So far all had gone swimmingly, but now we come to the snags. Jones was not arrested because on interrogating Mr. Clark he told us that the whole of the bowl of cornflour was drunk not by Mr. Jones but by him.“Yes, it seems that he went to Mr. Jones’s room as was his custom. Mr. Jones was sitting up in bed and the bowl of cornflour was beside him.“‘I am not feeling a bit well, Milly,’ he said. ‘Serves me right, I suppose, for touching lobster at night. I asked Alice to get me a bowl of cornflour, but now that I have got it I don’t seem to fancy it.’“‘A pity,’ commented Mr. Clark—‘it is nicely made too, no lumps. Gladys is really quite a nice cook. Very few boys nowadays seem to be able to make a bowl of cornflour nicely. I declare I quite fancy it myself, I am that hungry.’

“‘I should think you were with your foolish ways,’ said Mr. Jones.“I must explain,” broke off Lady Henry, “that Mr. Clark, alarmed at his increasing stoutness, was doing a course of what is popularly known as ‘banting.’“‘It is not good for you, Milly, it really isn’t,’ urged Mr. Jones. ‘If the Lord made you stout he meant you to be stout. You drink up that bowl of cornflour. It will do you all the good in the world.’“And straight away Mr. Clark set to and did in actual fact finish the bowl. So, you see, that knocked our case against the wife to pieces. Asked for an explanation of the words on the blotting book Jones gave one readily enough. The letter, he explained, was in answer to one written from his sister in Australia who had applied to him for money. He had written, pointing out that he was entirely dependent on his husband. When his husband was dead he would have control of money and would assist his sister if possible. He regretted his inability to help but pointed out that there were hundreds and thousands of people in the world in the same unfortunate plight.”“And so the case fell to pieces?” said Dr. Pendle.

“And so the case fell to pieces,” said Lady Henry gravely. “We could not take the risk of arresting Jones with nothing to go upon.”

There was a silence and then Jason said, “And that is all, is it?”“That is the case as it has stood for the last year. The true solution is now in the hands of Scotland Yard, and in two or three days’ time you will probably read of it in the newspapers.”

“The true solution,” said Jason thoughtfully. “I wonder. Let’s all think for five minutes and then speak.”Rachel West nodded and noted the time on her watch. When the five minutes were up she looked over at Dr. Pendle.

“Will you speak first?” she said.The old woman shook her head. “I confess,” she said, “that I am utterly baffled. I can but think that the wife in some way must be the guilty party, but how she did it I cannot imagine. I can only suggest that she must have given him the poison in some way that has not yet been discovered, although how in that case it should have come to light after all this time I cannot imagine.”“Jason?”“The companion!” said Jason decidedly. “The companion every time! How do we know what motive he may have had? Just because he was old and stout and ugly it doesn’t follow that he wasn’t in love with Jones himself. He may have hated the husband for some other reason. Think of being a companion—always having to be pleasant and agree and stifle yourself and bottle yourself up. One day he couldn’t bear it any longer and then he killed him. He probably put the arsenic in the bowl of cornflour and all that story about eating it himself is a lie.”“Mrs. Petherick?”

The lawyer joined the tips of her fingers together professionally. “I should hardly like to say. On the facts I should hardly like to say.”

“But you have got to, Mrs. Petherick,” said Jason. “You can’t reserve judgement and say ‘without prejudice,’ and be legal. You have got to play the game.”“On the facts,” said Mrs. Petherick, “there seems nothing to be said. It is my private opinion, having seen, alas, too many cases of this kind, that the wife was guilty. The only explanation that will cover the facts seems to be that Mr. Clark for some reason or other deliberately sheltered her. There may have been some financial arrangement made between them. She might realize that she would be suspected, and he, seeing only a future of poverty before him, may have agreed to tell the story of drinking the cornflour in return for a substantial sum to be paid to him privately. If that was the case it was of course most irregular. Most irregular indeed.”“I disagree with you all,” said Rachel. “You have forgotten the one important factor in the case. The doctor’s son. I will give you my reading of the case. The tinned lobster was bad. It accounted for the poisoning symptoms. The doctor was sent for. She finds Mr. Jones, who has eaten more lobster than the others, in great pain, and she sends, as you told us, for some opium pills. She does not go herself, she sends. Who will give the messenger the opium pills? Clearly his son. Very likely he dispenses her medicines for her. He is in love with Jones and at this moment all the worst instincts in his nature rise and he realizes that the means to procure her freedom are in his hands. The pills he sends contain pure white arsenic. That is my solution.”“And now, Lady Henry, tell us,” said Jason eagerly.

“One moment,” said Lady Henry. “Mr. Marple has not yet spoken.”

Mr. Marple was shaking his head sadly.“Dear, dear,” he said. “I have dropped another stitch. I have been so interested in the story. A sad case, a very sad case. It reminds me of old Mrs. Hargraves who lived up at the Mount. Her husband never had the least suspicion—until she died, leaving all her money to a man she had been living with and by whom she had five children. He had at one time been their housemaid. Such a nice man, Mrs. Hargraves always said—thoroughly to be relied upon to turn the mattresses every day—except Fridays, of course. And there was old Mrs. Hargraves keeping this man in a house in the neighbouring town and continuing to be a Churchwarden and to hand round the plate every Sunday.”“My dear Uncle Jane,” said Rachel with some impatience. “What has dead and gone Hargraves got to do with the case?”

“This story made me think of him at once,” said Mr. Marple. “The facts are so very alike, aren’t they? I suppose the poor man has confessed now and that is how you know, Lady Henry.”“What man?” said Rachel. “My dear Uncle, what are you talking about?”

“That poor man, Gladys Linch, of course—the one who was so terribly agitated when the doctor spoke to him—and well he might be, poor thing. I hope that wicked Jones is hanged, I am sure, making that poor man a murderess. I suppose they will hang him too, poor thing.”“I think, Mr. Marple, that you are under a slight misapprehension,” began Mrs. Petherick.

But Mr. Marple shook his head obstinately and looked across at Lady Henry.

“I am right, am I not? It seems so clear to me. The hundreds and thousands—and the trifle—I mean, one cannot miss it.”“What about the trifle and the hundreds and thousands?” cried Rachel.

Her uncle turned to her.“Cooks nearly always put hundreds and thousands on trifle, dear,” he said. “Those little pink and white sugar things. Of course when I heard that they had trifle for supper and that the wife had been writing to someone about hundreds and thousands, I naturally connected the two things together. That is where the arsenic was—in the hundreds and thousands. She left it with the girl and told her to put it on the trifle.”“But that is impossible,” said Jason quickly. “They all ate the trifle.”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “The companion was banting, you remember. You never eat anything like trifle if you are banting; and I expect Jones just scraped the hundreds and thousands off her share and left them at the side of her plate. It was a clever idea, but a very wicked one.”The eyes of the others were all fixed upon Lady Henry.“It is a very curious thing,” she said slowly, “but Miss Marple happens to have hit upon the truth. Jones had got Gladys Linch into trouble, as the saying goes. She was nearly desperate. She wanted her husband out of the way and promised to marry Gladys when her husband was dead. She doctored the hundreds and thousands and gave them to her with instructions how to use them. Gladys Linch died a week ago. Her child died at birth and Jones had deserted her for another man. When she was dying she confessed the truth.”There was a few moments’ silence and then Rachel said:

“Well, Uncle Jane, this is one up to you. I can’t think how on earth you managed to hit upon the truth. I should never have thought of the little man in the kitchen being connected with the case.”“No, dear,” said Mr. Marple, “but you don’t know as much of life as I do. A woman of that Jones’s type—coarse and jovial. As soon as I heard there was a pretty young man in the house I felt sure that she would not have left him alone. It is all very distressing and painful, and not a very nice thing to talk about. I can’t tell you the shock it was to Mrs. Hargraves, and a nine days’ wonder in the village.”