4.50 from Paddington. Agatha Christie
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the same,’ said Miss Marple, ‘one likes to see with one’s own eyes where a thing happened. This train’s just a few minutes late. Was yours on time on Friday?’
‘I think so. I didn’t really notice.’
The train drew slowly into the busy length of Brackhampton station. The loudspeaker announced hoarsely, doors opened and shut, people got in and out, milled up and down the platform. It was a busy crowded scene.
Easy, thought Miss Marple, for a murderer to merge into that crowd, to leave the station in the midst of that pressing mass of people, or even to select another carriage and go on in the train wherever its ultimate destination might be. Easy to be one male passenger amongst many. But not so easy to make a body vanish into thin air. That body must be somewhere.
Mrs McGillicuddy had descended. She spoke now from the platform, through the open window.
‘Now take care of yourself, Jane,’ she said. ‘Don’t catch a chill. It’s a nasty treacherous time of year, and you’re not so young as you were.’
‘I know,’ said Miss Marple.
‘And don’t let’s worry ourselves any more over all this. We’ve done what we could.’
Miss Marple nodded, and said:
‘Don’t stand about in the cold, Elspeth. Or you’ll be the one to catch a chill. Go and get yourself a good hot cup of tea in the Restaurant Room. You’ve got time, twelve minutes before your train back to town.’
‘I think perhaps I will. Good-bye, Jane.’
‘Good-bye, Elspeth. A happy Christmas to you. I hope you find Margaret well. Enjoy yourself in Ceylon, and give my love to dear Roderick—if he remembers me at all, which I doubt.’
‘Of course he remembers you—very well. You helped him in some way when he was at school—something to do with money that was disappearing from a locker—he’s never forgotten it.’
‘Oh, that!’ said Miss Marple.
Mrs McGillicuddy turned away, a whistle blew, the train began to move. Miss Marple watched the sturdy thickset body of her friend recede. Elspeth could go to Ceylon with a clear conscience—she had done her duty and was freed from further obligation.
Miss Marple did not lean back as the train gathered speed. Instead she sat upright and devoted herself seriously to thought. Though in speech Miss Marple was woolly and diffuse, in mind she was clear and sharp. She had a problem to solve, the problem of her own future conduct; and, perhaps strangely, it presented itself to her as it had to Mrs McGillicuddy, as a question of duty.
Mrs McGillicuddy had said that they had both done all that they could do. It was true of Mrs McGillicuddy but about herself Miss Marple did not feel so sure.
It was a question, sometimes, of using one’s special gifts … But perhaps that was conceited … After all, what could she do? Her friend’s words came back to her, ‘You’re not so young as you were …’
Dispassionately, like a general planning a campaign, or an accountant assessing a business, Miss Marple weighed up and set down in her mind the facts for and against further enterprise. On the credit side were the following:
1. My long experience of life and human nature.
2. Sir Henry Clithering and his godson (now at Scotland Yard, I believe), who was so very nice in the Little Paddocks case.
3. My nephew Raymond’s second boy, David, who is, I am almost sure, in British Railways.
4. Griselda’s boy Leonard who is so very knowledgeable about maps.
Miss Marple reviewed these assets and approved them. They were all very necessary, to reinforce the weaknesses on the debit side—in particular her own bodily weakness.
‘It is not,’ thought Miss Marple, ‘as though I could go here, there and everywhere, making inquiries and finding out things.’
Yes, that was the chief objection, her own age and weakness. Although, for her age, her health was good, yet she was old. And if Dr Haydock had strictly forbidden her to do practical gardening he would hardly approve of her starting out to track down a murderer. For that, in effect, was what she was planning to do—and it was there that her loophole lay. For if heretofore murder had, so to speak, been forced upon her, in this case it would be that she herself set out deliberately to seek it. And she was not sure that she wanted to do so … She was old—old and tired. She felt at this moment, at the end of a tiring day, a great reluctance to enter upon any project at all. She wanted nothing at all but to march home and sit by the fire with a nice tray of supper, and go to bed, and potter about the next day just snipping off a few things in the garden, tidying up in a very mild way, without stooping, without exerting herself …
‘I’m too old for any more adventures,’ said Miss Marple to herself, watching absently out of the window the curving line of an embankment …
A curve …
Very faintly something stirred in her mind … Just after the ticket collector had clipped their tickets …
It suggested an idea. Only an idea. An entirely different idea …
A little pink flush came into Miss Marple’s face. Suddenly she did not feel tired at all!
‘I’ll write to David to-morrow morning,’ she said to herself.
And at the same time another valuable asset flashed through her mind.
‘Of course. My faithful Florence!’
Miss Marple set about her plan of campaign methodically and making due allowance for the Christmas season which was a definitely retarding factor.
She wrote to her great-nephew, David West, combining Christmas wishes with an urgent request for information.
Fortunately she was invited, as on previous years, to the vicarage for Christmas dinner, and here she was able to tackle young Leonard, home for the Christmas season, about maps.
Maps of all kinds were Leonard’s passion. The reason for the old lady’s inquiry about a large-scale map of a particular area did not rouse his curiosity. He discoursed on maps generally with fluency, and wrote down for her exactly what would suit her purpose best. In fact, he did better. He actually found that he had such a map amongst his collection and he lent it to her, Miss Marple promising to take great care of it and return it in due course.
‘Maps,’ said his mother, Griselda, who still, although she had a grown-up son, looked strangely young and blooming to be inhabiting the shabby old vicarage. ‘What does she want with maps? I mean, what does she want them for?’
‘I don’t know,’ said young Leonard, ‘I don’t think she said exactly.’
‘I wonder now …’ said Griselda. ‘It seems very fishy to me … At her age the old pet ought to give up that sort of thing.’
Leonard asked what sort of thing, and Griselda said elusively:
‘Oh, poking her nose into things. Why maps, I wonder?’
In due course Miss Marple received a letter from her great-nephew David West. It ran affectionately:
‘Dear Aunt Jane,—Now what are you up to? I’ve got the information you wanted. There are only two trains that can possibly apply—the 4.33 and the 5 o’clock. The former is a slow train and stops at Haling Broadway, Barwell Heath, Brackhampton and then stations to Market Basing. The 5 o’clock is the Welsh express for Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. The former might be overtaken somewhere by the 4.50, although it is due in Brackhampton five minutes earlier and the latter passes the 4.50 just before Brackhampton.
In all this do I smell some village scandal of a fruity character? Did you, returning from a shopping spree in town by the 4.50,