"He's looking for the old lady - for Miss Marple," said Miss Blacklog.
"Do you think she's been murdered, too?" Patrick asked with scientific curiosity.
"But why?
What could she know?"
"I don't know," said Miss Blacklog dully.
"Perhaps Miss Murgatroyd told her something."
"If she's been murdered too," said Patrick, "there seems to be logically only one person who could have done it."
"Who?"
"Hinchliffe, of course," said Patrick triumphantly.
"That's where she was last seen alive - at Boulders.
My solution would be that she never left Boulders."
"My head aches," said Miss Blacklog in a dull voice.
She pressed her fingers to her forehead.
"Why should Hinch murder Miss Marple?
It doesn't make sense."
"It would if Hinch had really murdered Murgatroyd," said Patrick triumphantly.
Phillipa came out of her apathy to say:
"Hinch wouldn't murder Murgatroyd."
Patrick was in an argumentative mood.
"She might have if Murgatroyd had blundered on something to show that - she - Hinch - was the criminal."
"Anyway, Hinch was at the station when Murgatroyd was killed."
"She could have murdered Murgatroyd before she left."
Startling them all, Letitia Blacklog suddenly screamed out:
"Murder, murder, murder - Can't you talk of anything else?
I'm frightened, don't you understand?
I'm frightened.
I wasn't before. I thought I could take care of myself... But what can you do against a murderer who's waiting - and watching - and biding his time! Oh, God!"
She dropped her head forward on her hands.
A moment later she looked up and apologised stiffly.
"I'm sorry. I - I lost control."
"That's all right, Aunt Letty," said Patrick affectionately.
"I'll look after you."
"You?" was all Letitia Blacklog said, but the disillusionment behind the word was almost an accusation.
That had been shortly before dinner, and Mitzi had then created a diversion by coming and declaring that she was not going to cook the dinner.
"I do not do anything more in this house.
I go to my room.
I lock myself in.
I stay there until it is daylight.
I am afraid - people are being killed - that Miss Murgatroyd with her stupid English face - who would want to kill her?
Only a maniac!
Then it is a maniac that is about!
And a maniac does not care who he kills.
But me, I do not want to be killed!
There are shadows in that kitchen - and I hear noises - I think there is someone out in the yard and then I think I see a shadow by the larder door and then it is footsteps I hear.
So I go now to my room and I lock the door and perhaps even I put the chest of drawers against it.
And in the morning I tell that cruel hard policeman that I go away from here.
And if he will not let me I say:
'I scream and I scream and I scream until you have to let me go!'" Everybody, with a vivid recollection of what Mitzi could do in the screaming line, shuddered at the threat.
"So I go to my room," said Mitzi, repeating the statement once more to make her intentions quite clear. With a symbolic action she cast off the cretonne apron she had been wearing.
"Good night, Miss Blacklog.