Do you know why?
Dora had just called her Lotty again.
It seemed to us a mere harmless slip of the tongue. But it frightened Charlotte.
And so it went on.
Poor Dora could not stop herself talking.
That day we had coffee together in the Bluebird, I had the oddest impression that Dora was talking about two people, not one - and so, of course, she was.
At one moment she spoke of her friend as not pretty but having so much character - but almost at the same moment she described her as a pretty light-hearted girl.
She'd talk of Letty as so clever and so successful - and then say what a sad life she'd had, and then there was that quotation about stern affliction bravely borne - which really didn't seem to fit Letitia's life at all.
Charlotte must, I think, have overheard a good deal that morning she came into the cafe.
She certainly must have heard Dora mention about the lamp having been changed - about its being the shepherd and not the shepherdess.
And she realised then what a very real danger to her security poor devoted Dora Bunner was.
"I'm afraid that that conversation with me in the cafe really sealed Dora's fate - if you'll excuse such a melodramatic expression.
But I think it would have come to the same in the end...
Because life couldn't be safe for Charlotte while Dora Bunner was alive.
She loved Dora - she didn't want to kill Dora - but she couldn't see any other way.
And, I expect (like Nurse Ellerton that I was telling you about, Bunch) she persuaded herself that it was really almost a kindness.
Poor Bunny - not long to live anyway and perhaps a painful end.
The queer thing is that she did her best to make Bunny's last day a happy day.
The birthday party - and the special cake..."
"Delicious Death," said Phillipa with a shudder.
"Yes - yes, it was rather like that... she tried to give her friend a delicious death...
The party, and all the things she liked to eat, and trying to stop people saying things to upset her.
And then the tablets, whatever they were, in the aspirin bottle by her own bed so that Bunny, when she couldn't find the new bottle of aspirin she'd just bought, would go there to get some.
And it would look, as it did look, that the tablets had been meant for Letitia...
"And so Bunny died in her sleep, quite happily, and Charlotte felt safe again.
But she missed Dora Bunner - she missed her affection and her loyalty, the missed being able to talk to her about the old days... She cried bitterly the day I came up with that note from Julian - and her grief was quite genuine.
She'd killed her own dear friend..."
"That's horrible," said Bunch.
"Horrible."
"But it's very human," said Julian Harmon.
"One forgets how human murderers are."
"I know," said Miss Marple.
"Human.
And often very much to be pitied.
But very dangerous, too.
Especially a weak kindly murderer like Charlotte Blacklog.
Because, once a weak person gets realty frightened, they get savage with terror and they've no self-control at all."
"Murgatroyd?" said Julian.
"Yes, poor Miss Murgatroyd.
Charlotte must have come up to the cottage and heard them rehearsing the murder.
The window was open and she listened.
It had never occurred to her until that moment that there was anyone else who could be a danger to her.
Miss Hinchliffe was urging her friend to remember what she'd seen and until that moment Charlotte hadn't realised that anyone could have seen anything at all. She'd assumed that everybody would automatically be looking at Rudi Scherz.
She must have held her breath outside the window and listened.
Was it going to be all right?
And then, just as Miss Hinchliffe rushed off to the station Miss Murgatroyd got to a point which showed that she had stumbled on the truth.
She called after Miss Hinchliffe:
'She wasn't there...'
"I asked Miss Hinchliffe, you know, if that was the way she said it...
Because if she'd said