A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
Now I do hope you don’t think I’ve been running on too long . . .
Chapter 49
Strange Jest
‘Strange Jest’ was first published in the USA in This Week, 2 November 1941, and then as ‘A Case of Buried Treasure’ in Strand Magazine, July 1944 (sic).
‘And this,’ said Jane Helier, completing her introductions, ‘is Miss Marple!’
Being an actress, she was able to make her point. It was clearly the climax, the triumphant finale! Her tone was equally compounded of reverent awe and triumph.
The odd part of it was that the object thus proudly proclaimed was merely a gentle, fussy-looking, elderly spinster. In the eyes of the two young people who had just, by Jane’s good offices, made her acquaintance, there showed incredulity and a tinge of dismay. They were nice-looking people; the girl, Charmian Stroud, slim and dark – the man, Edward Rossiter, a fair-haired, amiable young giant.
Charmian said a little breathlessly. ‘Oh! We’re awfully pleased to meet you.’ But there was doubt in her eyes. She flung a quick, questioning glance at Jane Helier.
‘Darling,’ said Jane, answering the glance, ‘she’s absolutely marvellous. Leave it all to her. I told you I’d get her here and I have.’ She added to Miss Marple, ‘You’ll fix it for them, I know. It will be easy for you.’
Miss Marple turned her placid, china-blue eyes towards Mr Rossiter. ‘Won’t you tell me,’ she said, ‘what all this is about?’
‘Jane’s a friend of ours,’ Charmian broke in impatiently. ‘Edward and I are in rather a fix. Jane said if we would come to her party, she’d introduce us to someone who was – who would – who could –’
Edward came to the rescue. ‘Jane tells us you’re the last word in sleuths, Miss Marple!’
The old lady’s eyes twinkled, but she protested modestly. ‘Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind. It’s just that living in a village as I do, one gets to know so much about human nature. But really you have made me quite curious. Do tell me your problem.’
‘I’m afraid it’s terribly hackneyed – just buried treasure,’ said Edward. ‘Indeed? But that sounds most exciting!’
‘I know. Like Treasure Island. But our problem lacks the usual romantic touches. No point on a chart indicated by a skull and crossbones, no directions like “four paces to the left, west by north”. It’s horribly prosaic – just where we ought to dig.’
‘Have you tried at all?’
‘I should say we’d dug about two solid square acres! The whole place is ready to be turned into a market garden. We’re just discussing whether to grow vegetable marrows or potatoes.’
Charmian said rather abruptly, ‘May we really tell you all about it?’
‘But, of course, my dear.’
‘Then let’s find a peaceful spot. Come on, Edward.’ She led the way out of the overcrowded and smoke-laden room, and they went up the stairs, to a small sitting-room on the second floor.
When they were seated, Charmian began abruptly. ‘Well, here goes! The story starts with Uncle Mathew, uncle – or rather, great-great-uncle – to both of us. He was incredibly ancient. Edward and I were his only relations. He was fond of us and always declared that when he died he would leave his money between us. Well, he died last March and left everything he had to be divided equally between Edward and myself. What I’ve just said sounds rather callous – I don’t mean that it was right that he died – actually we were very fond of him. But he’d been ill for some time.
‘The point is that the “everything” he left turned out to be practically nothing at all. And that, frankly, was a bit of a blow to us both, wasn’t it, Edward?’
The amiable Edward agreed. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’d counted on it a bit. I mean, when you know a good bit of money is coming to you, you don’t – well – buckle down and try to make it yourself. I’m in the army – not got anything to speak of outside my pay – and Charmian herself hasn’t got a bean. She works as a stage manager in a repertory theatre – quite interesting, and she enjoys it – but no money in it. We’d counted on getting married, but weren’t worried about the money side of it because we both knew we’d be jolly well off some day.’
‘And now, you see, we’re not!’ said Charmian. ‘What’s more, Ansteys – that’s the family place, and Edward and I both love it – will probably have to be sold. And Edward and I feel we just can’t bear that! But if we don’t find Uncle Mathew’s money, we shall have to sell.’
Edward said, ‘You know, Charmian, we still haven’t come to the vital point.’
‘Well, you talk, then.’
Edward turned to Miss Marple. ‘It’s like this, you see. As Uncle Mathew grew older, he got more and more suspicious. He didn’t trust anybody.’
‘Very wise of him,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The depravity of human nature is unbelievable.’
‘Well, you may be right. Anyway, Uncle Mathew thought so. He had a friend who lost his money in a bank, and another friend who was ruined by an absconding solicitor, and he lost some money himself in a fraudulent company. He got so that he used to hold forth at great length that the only safe and sane thing to do was to convert your money into solid bullion and bury it.’
‘Ah,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I begin to see.’
‘Yes. Friends argued with him, pointed out that he’d get no interest that way, but he held that that didn’t really matter. The bulk of your money, he said, should be “kept in a box under the bed or buried in the garden”. Those were his words.’
Charmian went on.
‘And when he died, he left hardly anything at all in securities, though he was very rich. So we think that that’s what he must have done.’
Edward explained. ‘We found that he had sold securities and drawn out large sums of money from time to time, and nobody knows what he did with them. But it seems probable that he lived up to his principles, and that he did buy gold and bury it.’
‘He didn’t say anything before he died? Leave any paper? No letter?’
‘That’s the maddening part of it. He didn’t. He’d been unconscious for some days, but he rallied before he died. He looked at us both and chuckled – a faint, weak little chuckle. He said, “You’ll be all right, my pretty pair of doves.” And then he tapped his eye – his right eye – and winked at us. And then – he died. Poor old Uncle Mathew.’
‘He tapped his eye,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
Edward said eagerly.
‘Does that convey anything to you? It made me think of an Arsene Lupin story where there was something hidden in a man’s glass eye. But Uncle Mathew didn’t have a glass eye.’
Miss Marple shook her head. ‘No – I can’t think of anything at the moment.’
Charmian said disappointedly, ‘Jane told us you’d say at once where to dig!’
Miss Marple smiled.
‘I’m not quite a conjurer, you know. I didn’t know your uncle, or what sort of man he was, and I don’t know the house or the grounds.’
Charmian said, ‘If you did know them?’
‘Well, it must be quite simple, really, mustn’t it?’ said Miss Marple.
‘Simple!’ said Charmian. ‘You come down to Ansteys and see if it’s simple!’
It is possible that she did not mean the invitation to be taken seriously, but Miss Marple said briskly, ‘Well, really, my dear, that’s very kind of you. I’ve always wanted to have the chance of looking for buried treasure. And,’ she added, looking at them with a beaming, late-Victorian smile, ‘with a love interest, too!’
‘You see!’ said Charmian, gesturing dramatically.
They had just completed a grand tour of Ansteys. They had been round the kitchen garden – heavily trenched. They had been through the little woods, where every important tree had been dug round, and had gazed sadly on the pitted surface of the once smooth lawn. They had been up to the attic, where old trunks and chests had been rifled of their contents. They had been down to the cellars, where flagstones had been
On a table in the morning-room there was a heap of papers – all the papers that the late Mathew Stroud had left. Not one had been destroyed, and Charmian and Edward were wont to return to them again and again, earnestly perusing bills, invitations, and business correspondence in the hope of spotting a hitherto unnoticed clue.
‘Can you think of anywhere we haven’t looked?’ demanded Charmian hopefully.
Miss Marple shook her head. ‘You seem to have been very thorough, my dear. Perhaps, if I may say so, just a little too thorough. I always think, you know, that one should have a plan. It’s like my friend, Mrs Eldritch, she had such a nice little maid, polished linoleum beautifully, but she was so thorough that she polished the bathroom floor too much, and as Mrs Eldritch was stepping out of the bath the cork mat slipped from under her, and she had a very nasty fall and actually broke her leg! Most awkward, because the bathroom door was locked, of course, and the gardener had to get a ladder and come in through the window – terribly distressing to Mrs Eldritch, who had always been a very modest woman.’
Edward moved restlessly.
Miss Marple said quickly, ‘Please forgive me. So apt, I know, to fly off at a tangent. But one thing does remind one of another. And sometimes that is helpful. All I was trying to say was that perhaps if we tried to sharpen our wits and think of a likely place –’
Edward said crossly, ‘You think of one, Miss Marple. Charmian’s brains and mine are now only beautiful blanks!’
‘Dear, dear. Of course – most tiring for you. If you don’t mind I’ll just look through all this.’ She indicated the papers on the table. ‘That is, if there’s nothing private – I don’t want to appear to pry.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. But I’m afraid you won’t find anything.’
She sat down by the table and methodically worked through the sheaf of documents. As she replaced each one, she sorted them automatically into tidy little heaps. When she had finished she sat staring in front of her for some minutes.
Edward asked, not without a touch of malice, ‘Well, Miss Marple?’ Miss Marple came to herself with a little start. ‘I beg your pardon. Most helpful.’
‘You’ve found something relevant?’
‘Oh, no, nothing like that, but I do believe I know what sort of man your Uncle Mathew was. Rather like my own Uncle Henry, I think. Fond of rather obvious jokes. A bachelor, evidently – I wonder why – perhaps an early disappointment? Methodical up to a point, but not very fond of being tied up – so few bachelors are!’
Behind Miss Marple’s back, Charmian made a sign to Edward. It said, She’s ga-ga.
Miss Marple was continuing happily to talk of her deceased Uncle Henry. ‘Very fond of puns, he was. And to some people, puns are most annoying. A mere play upon words may be very irritating. He was a suspicious man, too. Always was convinced the servants were robbing him. And sometimes, of course, they were, but not always. It grew upon him, poor man. Towards the end he suspected them of tampering with his food, and finally refused to eat anything but boiled eggs! Said nobody could tamper with the inside of a boiled egg. Dear Uncle Henry, he used to be such a merry soul at one time – very fond of his coffee after dinner. He always used to say, “This coffee is very Moorish,” meaning, you know, that he’d like a little more.’
Edward felt that if he heard any more about Uncle Henry he’d go mad.
‘Fond of young people, too,’ went on Miss Marple, ‘but inclined to tease them a little, if you know what I mean. Used to put bags of sweets where a child just couldn’t reach them.’
Casting politeness aside, Charmian said, ‘I think he sounds horrible!’
‘Oh, no, dear, just an old bachelor, you know, and not used to children. And he wasn’t at all stupid, really. He used to keep a good deal of money in the house, and he had a safe put in. Made a great fuss about it – and how very secure it was. As a result of his talking so much, burglars broke in one night and actually cut a hole in the safe with a chemical device.’
‘Served him right,’ said Edward. ‘Oh, but there was nothing in the safe,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You see, he really kept the money somewhere else – behind some volumes of sermons in the library, as a matter of fact. He said people never took a book of that kind out of the shelf!’
Edward interrupted excitedly.
‘I say, that’s an idea. What about the library?’
But Charmian shook a scornful head. ‘Do you think I hadn’t thought of that? I went through all the books Tuesday of last week, when you went off to Portsmouth. Took them all out, shook them. Nothing there.’
Edward sighed. Then, rousing himself, he endeavoured to rid himself tactfully of their disappointing guest. ‘It’s been awfully good of you to come down as you have and try to help us. Sorry it’s been all a wash-out. Feel we trespassed a lot on your time. However – I’ll get the car out, and you’ll be able to catch the three-thirty –’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but we’ve got to find the money, haven’t we? You mustn’t give up, Mr Rossiter. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”’
‘You mean you’re going to – go on trying?’
‘Strictly speaking,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I haven’t begun yet. “First catch your hare –” as Mrs Beaton says in her cookery book – a wonderful book but terribly expensive; most of the recipes begin, “Take a quart of cream and a dozen eggs.” Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, we have, so to speak, caught our hare – the hare being, of course, your Uncle Mathew, and we’ve only got to decide now where he would have hidden the money. It ought to be quite simple.’
‘Simple?’ demanded Charmian. ‘Oh, yes, dear. I’m sure he would have done the obvious thing. A secret drawer – that’s my solution.’
Edward said dryly, ‘You couldn’t put bars of gold in a secret drawer.’
‘No, no, of course not. But there’s no reason to believe the money is in gold.’
‘He always used to say –’
‘So did my Uncle Henry about his safe! So I should strongly suspect that that was just a blind. Diamonds – now they could be in a secret drawer quite easily.’
‘But we’ve looked in all the secret drawers. We had a cabinetmaker over to examine the furniture.’
‘Did you, dear? That was clever of you. I should suggest your uncle’s own desk would be the most likely. Was it the tall escritoire against the wall there?’
‘Yes. And I’ll show you.’ Charmian went over to it. She took down the flap. Inside were pigeonholes and little drawers. She opened a small door in the centre and touched a spring inside the left-hand drawer. The bottom of the centre recess clicked and slid forward. Charmian drew it out, revealing a shallow well beneath. It was empty.
‘Now isn’t that a coincidence?’ exclaimed Miss Marple. ‘Uncle Henry had a desk just like this, only his was burr walnut and this is mahogany.’
‘At any rate,’ said Charmian, ‘there’s nothing there, as you can see.’
‘I expect,’ said Miss Marple, ‘your cabinetmaker was a young man. He didn’t know everything. People were very artful when they made hiding-places in those days. There’s such a thing as a secret inside a secret.’
She extracted a hairpin from her neat bun of grey hair. Straightening it out, she stuck the point into what appeared to be a tiny wormhole in one side of the secret recess. With a little difficulty she pulled out a small drawer. In it was a bundle of faded letters and a folded paper.
Edward and Charmian pounced on the find together. With trembling fingers Edward unfolded the paper. He dropped it with an exclamation of disgust.
‘A damned cookery recipe. Baked ham!’
Charmian was untying a ribbon that held the letters together. She drew one out and glanced at it. ‘Love letters!’
Miss Marple reac
Charmian read aloud:
‘“My ever dear Mathew, I must confess that the time seems long indeed since I received your last letter. I try to occupy myself with the various tasks allotted to me, and often say to myself that I am indeed fortunate to see so much of the globe, though little did I think when I went to America that I should voyage off to these far islands!”’
Charmain broke off. ‘Where is it from? Oh! Hawaii!’ She went on:
‘“Alas, these natives are still far from seeing the light. They are in an unclothed and savage state and spend most of their time swimming and dancing, adorning themselves with garlands of flowers. Mr Gray has made some converts but it is uphill work, and he and Mrs Gray get sadly discouraged. I try to do all I can to cheer and encourage him, but I, too, am often sad for a reason you can guess, dear Mathew. Alas, absence is a severe trial for a loving heart. Your renewed vows and protestations of affection cheered me greatly. Now and always you have my faithful and devoted heart, dear Mathew, and I remain – Your true love, Betty Martin.
‘“PS – I address my letter under cover to our mutual friend, Matilda Graves, as usual. I hope heaven will pardon this little subterfuge.”’
Edward whistled. ‘A female missionary! So that was Uncle Mathew’s romance. I wonder why they never married?’
‘She seems to have gone all over the world,’ said Charmian, looking through the letters. ‘Mauritius – all sorts of places. Probably died of yellow fever or something.’
A gentle chuckle made them start. Miss Marple was apparently much amused. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Fancy that, now!’
She was reading the recipe for baked ham. Seeing their enquiring glances, she read out: ‘“Baked ham with spinach. Take a nice piece of gammon, stuff with cloves, and cover with brown sugar. Bake in a slow oven. Serve with a border of pureed spinach.” What do you think of that, now?’