4.50 from Paddington. Agatha Christie
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sighed reluctantly and glanced at his watch.
‘We shall be in Brackhampton in exactly seven minutes. I’ll report what you’ve told me. In what direction was the train you mention going?’
‘This direction, of course. You don’t suppose I’d have been able to see this if a train had flashed past going in the other direction?’
The ticket collector looked as though he thought Mrs McGillicuddy was quite capable of seeing anything anywhere as the fancy took her. But he remained polite.
‘You can rely on me, madam,’ he said. ‘I will report your statement. Perhaps I might have your name and address—just in case …’
Mrs McGillicuddy gave him the address where she would be staying for the next few days and her permanent address in Scotland, and he wrote them down. Then he withdrew with the air of a man who has done his duty and dealt successfully with a tiresome member of the travelling public.
Mrs McGillicuddy remained frowning and vaguely unsatisfied. Would the ticket collector report her statement? Or had he just been soothing her down? There were, she supposed vaguely, a lot of elderly women travelling around, fully convinced that they had unmasked communist plots, were in danger of being murdered, saw flying saucers and secret space ships, and reported murders that had never taken place. If the man dismissed her as one of those …
The train was slowing down now, passing over points and running through the bright lights of a large town.
Mrs McGillicuddy opened her handbag, pulled out a receipted bill which was all she could find, wrote a rapid note on the back of it with her ball-pen, put it into a spare envelope that she fortunately happened to have, stuck the envelope down and wrote on it.
The train drew slowly into a crowded platform. The usual ubiquitous Voice was intoning:
‘The train now arriving at Platform 1 is the 5.38 for Milchester, Waverton, Roxeter, and stations to Chadmouth. Passengers for Market Basing take the train now waiting at No. 3 platform. No. 1 bay for stopping train to Carbury.’
Mrs McGillicuddy looked anxiously along the platform. So many passengers and so few porters. Ah, there was one! She hailed him authoritatively.
‘Porter! Please take this at once to the Stationmaster’s office.’
She handed him the envelope, and with it a shilling.
Then, with a sigh, she leaned back. Well, she had done what she could. Her mind lingered with an instant’s regret on the shilling … Sixpence would really have been enough …
Her mind went back to the scene she had witnessed. Horrible, quite horrible … She was a strong-nerved woman, but she shivered. What a strange—what a fantastic thing to happen to her, Elspeth McGillicuddy! If the blind of the carriage had not happened to fly up … But that, of course, was Providence.
Providence had willed that she, Elspeth McGillicuddy, should be a witness of the crime. Her lips set grimly.
Voices shouted, whistles blew, doors were banged shut. The 5.38 drew slowly out of Brackhampton station. An hour and five minutes later it stopped at Milchester.
Mrs McGillicuddy collected her parcels and her suitcase and got out. She peered up and down the platform. Her mind reiterated its former judgment: not enough porters. Such porters as there were seemed to be engaged with mail bags and luggage vans. Passengers nowadays seemed always expected to carry their own cases. Well, she couldn’t carry her suitcase and her umbrella and all her parcels. She would have to wait. In due course she secured a porter.
‘Taxi?’
‘There will be something to meet me, I expect.’
Outside Milchester station, a taxi-driver who had been watching the exit came forward. He spoke in a soft local voice.
‘Is it Mrs McGillicuddy? For St Mary Mead?’
Mrs McGillicuddy acknowledged her identity. The porter was recompensed, adequately if not handsomely. The car, with Mrs McGillicuddy, her suitcase, and her parcels drove off into the night. It was a nine-mile drive. Sitting bolt upright in the car, Mrs McGillicuddy was unable to relax. Her feelings yearned for expression. At last the taxi drove along the familiar village street and finally drew up at its destination; Mrs McGillicuddy got out and walked up the brick path to the door. The driver deposited the cases inside as the door was opened by an elderly maid. Mrs McGillicuddy passed straight through the hall to where, at the open sitting-room door, her hostess awaited her; an elderly frail old lady.
‘Elspeth!’
‘Jane!’
They kissed and, without preamble or circumlocution, Mrs McGillicuddy burst into speech.
‘Oh, Jane!’ she wailed. ‘I’ve just seen a murder!’
True to the precepts handed down to her by her mother and grandmother—to wit: that a true lady can neither be shocked nor surprised—Miss Marple merely raised her eyebrows and shook her head, as she said:
‘Most distressing for you, Elspeth, and surely most unusual. I think you had better tell me about it at once.’
That was exactly what Mrs McGillicuddy wanted to do. Allowing her hostess to draw her nearer to the fire, she sat down, pulled off her gloves and plunged into a vivid narrative.
Miss Marple listened with close attention. When Mrs McGillicuddy at last paused for breath, Miss Marple spoke with decision.
‘The best thing, I think, my dear, is for you to go upstairs and take off your hat and have a wash. Then we will have supper—during which we will not discuss this at all. After supper we can go into the matter thoroughly and discuss it from every aspect.’
Mrs McGillicuddy concurred with this suggestion. The two ladies had supper, discussing, as they ate, various aspects of life as lived in the village of St Mary Mead. Miss Marple commented on the general distrust of the new organist, related the recent scandal about the chemist’s wife, and touched on the hostility between the schoolmistress and the village institute. They then discussed Miss Marple’s and Mrs McGillicuddy’s gardens.
‘Paeonies,’ said Miss Marple as she rose from table, ‘are most unaccountable. Either they do—or they don’t do. But if they do establish themselves, they are with you for life, so to speak, and really most beautiful varieties nowadays.’
They settled themselves by the fire again, and Miss Marple brought out two old Waterford glasses from a corner cupboard, and from another cupboard produced a bottle.
‘No coffee to-night for you, Elspeth,’ she said. ‘You are already over-excited (and no wonder!) and probably would not sleep. I prescribe a glass of my cowslip wine, and later, perhaps, a cup of camomile tea.’
Mrs McGillicuddy acquiescing in these arrangements, Miss Marple poured out the wine.
‘Jane,’ said Mrs McGillicuddy, as she took an appreciative sip, ‘you don’t think, do you, that I dreamt it, or imagined it?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Marple with warmth.
Mrs McGillicuddy heaved a sigh of relief.
‘That ticket collector,’ she said, ‘he thought so. Quite polite, but all the same—’
‘I think, Elspeth, that that was quite natural under the circumstances. It sounded—and indeed was—a most unlikely story. And you were a complete stranger to him. No, I have no doubt at all that you saw what you’ve told me you saw. It’s very extraordinary—but not at all impossible. I recollect myself being interested when a train ran parallel to one on which I was travelling, to notice what a vivid and intimate picture one got of what was going on in one or two of the carriages. A little girl, I remember once,