Then I told her to go upstairs to her room and not come down until Inspector Craddock came.
The worst of these excitable people is that they're apt to go off half-cocked and start the whole thing before the time."
"She did it very well," said Julia.
"I don't quite see the point," said Bunch.
"Of course, I wasn't there -" she added apologetically.
"The point was a little complicated - and rather touch and go.
The idea was that Mitzi whilst admitting, as though casually, that blackmail had been in her mind, was now so worked up and terrified that she was willing to come out with the truth.
She'd seen, through the keyhole of the dining-room, Miss Blacklog in the hall with a revolver behind Rudi Scherz. She'd seen, that is, what had actually taken place.
Now the only danger was that Charlotte Blacklog might have realised that, as the key was in the keyhole, Mitzi couldn't possibly have seen anything at all.
But I banked on the fact that you don't think of things like that when you've just had a bad shock.
All she could take in was that Mitzi had seen her."
Craddock took over the story. "But - and this was essential - I pretended to receive this with scepticism, and I made an immediate attack as though unmasking my batteries at last, upon someone who had not been previously suspected. I accused Edmund -"
"And very nicely I played my part," said Edmund.
"Hot denial.
All according to plan.
What wasn't according to plan, Phillipa, my love, was you throwing in your little chirp and coming out into the open as 'Pip.' Neither the Inspector nor I had any idea you were Pip.
I was going to be Pip!
It threw us off our stride for the moment, but the Inspector made a masterly comeback and made some perfectly filthy insinuations about my wanting a rich wife which will probably stick in your subconscious and make irreparable trouble between us one day."
"I don't see why that was necessary?"
"Don't you?
It meant that, from Charlotte Blacklog's point of view, the only person who suspected or knew the truth, was Mitzi.
The suspicions of the police were elsewhere.
They had treated Mitzi for the moment as a liar.
But if Mitzi were to persist, they might listen to her and take her seriously.
So Mitzi had got to be silenced."
"Mitzi went straight out of the room and back to the kitchen - just like I had told her," said Miss Marple.
"Miss Blacklog came out after her almost immediately.
Mitzi was apparently alone in the kitchen.
Sergeant Fletcher was behind the scullery door. And I was in the broom cupboard in the kitchen.
Luckily I'm very thin."
Bunch looked at Miss Marple.
"What did you expect to happen, Aunt Jane?"
"One of two things.
Either Charlotte would offer Mitzi money to hold her tongue - and Sergeant Fletcher would be a witness to that offer, or else I thought she'd try to kill Mitzi."
"But she couldn't hope to get away with that!
She'd have been suspected at once."
"Oh, my dear, she was past reasoning.
She was just a snapping terrified cornered rat.
Think what had happened that day.
The scene between Miss Hinchliffe and Miss Murgatroyd.
Miss Hinchliffe driving off to the station.
As soon as she comes back Miss Murgatroyd will explain that Letitia Blacklog wasn't in the room that night.
There's just a few minutes in which to make sure Miss Murgatroyd can't tell anything.
No time to make a plan or set a stage.
Just crude murder. She greets the poor woman and strangles her.
Then a quick rush home, to change, to be sitting by the fire when the others come in, as though she'd never been out.
"And then came the revelation of Julia's identity.
She breaks her pearls and is terrified they may notice her scar.
Later, the Inspector telephones that he's bringing everyone there.
No time to think, to rest. Up to her neck in murder now, no mercy killing - or undesirable young man to be put out of the way. Crude plain murder.