"Oh, Hinch, was I very awful?
I do get so flustered!"
"Not at all." Miss Hinchliffe smiled.
"On the whole, I should say you did very well."
Inspector Craddock looked round the big shabby room with a sense of pleasure.
It reminded him a little of his own Cumberland home.
Faded chintz, big shabby chairs, flowers and books strewn about, and a spaniel in a basket.
Mrs. Harmon, too, with her distraught air, and her general disarray and her eager face he found sympathetic.
But she said at once, frankly,
"I shan't be any help to you. Because I shut my eyes.
I hate being dazzled.
And then there were shots and I screwed them up tighter than ever.
And I did wish, oh, I did wish, that it had been a quiet murder.
I don't like bangs."
"So you didn't see anything." The Inspector smiled at her.
"But you heard?"
"Oh, my goodness yes, there was plenty to hear.
Doors opening and shutting, and people saying silly things and gasping and old Mitzi screaming like a steam engine - and poor Bunny squealing like a trapped rabbit.
And everyone pushing and falling over everyone else.
However, when there really didn't seem to be any more bangs coming, I opened my eyes.
Everyone was out in the hall then, with candles.
And then the lights came on and suddenly it was all as usual - I don't mean really as usual, but we were ourselves again, not just - people in the dark.
People in the dark are quite different, aren't they?"
"I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Harmon."
Mrs. Harmon smiled at him.
"And there he was," she said. "A rather weaselly-looking foreigner - all pink and surprised looking - lying there dead - with a revolver beside him.
It didn't - oh, it didn't seem to make sense, somehow."
It did not make sense to the Inspector, either...
The whole business worried him.
Chapter 8 ENTER MISS MARPLE
Craddock laid the typed transcript of the various interviews before the Chief Constable.
The latter had just finished reading the wire received from the Swiss Police.
"So he had a police record all right," said Rydesdale.
"H'm - very much as one thought."
"Yes, sir."
"Jewellery... h'm, yes... falsified entries... yes... cheque... Definitely a dishonest fellow."
"Yes, sir - in a small way."
"Quite so.
And small things lead to large things."
"I wonder, sir."
The Chief Constable looked up.
"Worried, Craddock?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?
It's a straightforward story.
Or isn't it?
Let's see what all these people you've been talking to have to say."
He drew the report towards him and read it through rapidly.
"The usual thing - plenty of inconsistencies and contradictions.
Different people's accounts of a few moments of stress never agree.