4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page A

she showed her in to Miss Marple.
    Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting-room which looked out on to a small tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of mats and doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean suite and two ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the fire busily engaged in crocheting.
    Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss Marple.
    “Well!” she said. “It looks as though you were right.”
    She produced her finds and gave the details of their finding.
    A faint flush of achievement came into Miss Marple's cheeks.
    “Perhaps one ought not to feel so,” she said, “but it is rather gratifying to form a theory and get proof that it is correct!”
    She fingered the small tuft of fur.
    “Elspeth said the woman was wearing a light-coloured fur coat. I suppose the compact was in the pocket of the coat and fell out as the body rolled down the slope. It doesn't seem distinctive in any way, but it may help. You didn't take all the fur?”
    “No, I left half of it on the thorn bush.” Miss Marple nodded approval.
    “Quite right. You are very intelligent, my dear. The police will want to check exactly.”
    “You are going to the police - with these things?”
    “Well - not quite yet...” Miss Marple considered: “It would be better, I think, to find the body first. Don't you?”
    “Yes, but isn't that rather a tall order? I mean, granting that your estimate is correct. The murderer pushed the body out of the train, then presumably got out himself at Brackhampton and at some time - probably that same night - came along and removed the body. But what happened after that? He may have taken it anywhere.”
    “Not anywhere,” said Miss Marple. “I don't think you've followed the thing to its logical conclusion, my dear Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
    “Do call me Lucy. Why not anywhere?”
    “Because, if so, he might much more easily have killed the girl in some lonely spot and driven the body away from there. You haven't appreciated -”
    Lucy interrupted.
    “Are you saying - do you mean - that this was a premeditated crime?”
    “I didn't think so at first,” said Miss Marple. “One wouldn't - naturally. It seemed like a quarrel and a man losing control and strangling the girl and then being faced with the problem of disposing of his victim - a problem which he had to solve within a very few minutes. But it really is too much of a coincidence that he should kill the girl in a fit of passion, and then look out of the window and find the train was going round a curve exactly at a spot where he could tip the body out, and where he could be sure of finding his way later and removing it! If he'd just thrown her out there by chance, he'd have done no more about it, and the body would, long before now, have been found.”
    She paused. Lucy stared at her.
    “You know,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, "It's really quite a clever way to have planned a crime - and I think it was very carefully planned. There's something so anonymous about a train. If he'd killed her in the place where she lived, or was staying, somebody might have noticed him come or go. Or if he'd driven her out in the country somewhere, someone might have noticed the car and its number and make. But a train is full of strangers coming and going.
    In a non-corridor carriage, alone with her, it was quite easy - especially if you realise that he knew exactly what he was going to do next. He knew - he must have known - all about Rutherford Hall - its geographical position, I mean, its queer isolation - an island bounded by railway lines."
    “It is exactly like that,” said Lucy. “It's an anachronism out of the past. Bustling urban life goes on all around it, but doesn't touch it. The tradespeople deliver in the mornings and that's all.”
    “So we assume, as you said, that the murderer comes to Rutherford Hall that night. It is already dark when the body falls and