Diana Glass
The Help
‘What can you mean, Jane?’ Mrs Bantry asks, ‘that he was not a policeman?’
I am glad that she has asked the question because it is the one I too want to ask, only I don’t seem to be able to form the words.
‘Just that, Dolly. Perhaps he was really called Moreau. But he was not an inspector with the Paris Judiciaire as he told us, I am quite positive of that. What I do not know – and perhaps we will never know – is whether his killer knew that, or whether it was the disguise that cost him his life.’
‘But how have you decided all of this?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘I have suspected it for a while,’ Miss Marple says.
‘Probably even since the moment he introduced himself. It was too convenient, too much of a neat coincidence, him simply appearing like that. But more than that, I thought it strange that he didn’t want to prove his identity to us from the outset.
Policemen I have known seem to have such a fetish for badges and other pieces of official regalia.
‘And now there is this note, which certainly proves he is no detective, because even though this is written in lower case and the one Bruno Crane received was in upper, it is clear to me that it is the same hand. Even the same pen. And finally, there are these photographs,’ she says, looking at me now.
‘He took the film from you without asking.’
‘How did you know?’ I ask her.
‘He asked you for the film in that first meeting and you seemed to me extremely reluctant to share it with him. I thought then, watching you, that there was no way you would part with it unless forced to do so. I’ve seen how you carry that camera bag around with you as though it is something very precious.
So I assume he took the film against your will. That is what has really decided me.’
‘Why?’ I manage to ask, finally finding my voice.
‘Because it was duplicitous. It was an underhand trick – ungentlemanly, too. A policeman should not stoop to such measures, even in the pursuit of truth. It was, really, theft. In my experience even those police officers who sometimes use rather wrong-headed methodology and jump to wild conclusions – Inspector Slack comes to mind, Dolly – follow basic laws of decency in their investigations and certainly do not break the law. The French are different from us in many ways, but I am certain their morals on such a matter would be the same. Stealing a piece of property from your room seemed beyond the pale.’
‘But you didn’t say anything, Jane!’ Mrs Bantry exclaims. ‘You didn’t ask to see any badge or anything like that.’
‘No, Dolly, I didn’t,’ Miss Marple says.
‘I’m afraid to say that I myself was a little duplicitous in that respect.
Though I assure you I did so with the best of intentions and my conscience is somewhat salved by knowing that.
I realised, you see, that by staying close with Inspector Moreau I myself could try and stay close to the investigation, could hear the interviews, and perhaps bring my own – of course very amateurish – experience to bear.
If I had revealed that I knew he was a fraud none of that would have been possible. ’
‘Jane!’ Mrs Bantry sounds partly admiring, partly scandalised.
Miss Marple opens the drawer of the desk and draws out a large leather wallet. ‘Ah!’ she says, pulling something out. ‘His passport.’ She opens it. ‘Not even French. He was Swiss. And the name, look …’
I do. Kristoph Mauer. Inspector Christophe Moreau was a phantom, a cipher.
Miss Marple gives me a quick glance, then continues. ‘And as you’ll see here, in the “profession” section it says “banquier”.’
‘A banker?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘Yes. Whereas if he were really a detective for the Paris or indeed any Judiciaire, as he claimed, it would of course tell us as much. Diana, perhaps you can continue to look through this.’ She hands me the wallet. ‘My rheumatic fingers – you will be quicker.’
I continue to rifle through the rest of the wallet. I pull out scraps of paper and documents and spread them on top of the desk: an edition of the Swiss daily Die Tat, a train timetable for the Zürich–Bern line, even – it falls onto the desk with a metallic clank – a small pistol.
‘What dupes he made of us all!’ Mrs Bantry says.
‘Well, not you, Jane. But I wonder what he can have been up to, pretending to be a policeman? And talking to everyone in such detail … he must have wanted to get something out of it. If he were still alive and we’d learned all of this I might have thought we’d found our murderer, but as it is … ’
‘I think,’ Miss Marple says, ‘he was pretending to be a policeman in order to seek information.’
‘But why? He had some kind of … what, hero complex? Wanted to help?’
‘It is natural to want to help in some way,’ Miss Marple says.
‘When something dreadful occurs. I know the instinct very well myself. But no … I think his reasons were perhaps more mercenary. “Banker” is the clue, I think.’ Her eyes go to the pistol on the desk.
‘I wonder what sort of banker he really was—’
‘Here,’ I say. ‘I’ve found something.’
A telegram. I show the others:
Arrived Switzerland. Await instructions for meeting at Grand Alpine to make transfer. Swiss Bonds preferred. AN
‘AN must be Anthony Narracott, of course,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘But what does all this mean?’
‘This, I think, is our answer,’ Miss Marple says. ‘Inspector M— sorry, this Kristoph Mauer – was trying to find the treasure.’
A stunned silence.
‘The treasure?’ Mrs Bantry asks. ‘What can you mean?’
‘Treasure,’ Miss Marple nods. ‘The same thing that Anthony Narracott came here for. Oh, I think it very clear that Mr Narracott did not just come here for a skiing holiday with his wife. From that first meeting, Bruno Crane seemed confused as to why Catherine Narracott was here too – even rather put out, as though the men had some other prearrangement between themselves. I think he had come for the same thing Narracott had. There was the time he barged into Catherine Narracott’s room, searching frantically for something.
And finally the note he received, “silence is golden …” Of course it is a turn of phrase, but there was something about how the “golden” was underlined, don’t you think?
And we know he was a desperate and frightened man, so whatever drew him up the mountain that day was something that had a powerful hold over him. ’
‘And the “inspector”?’
‘This telegram suggests Mauer was supposed to make some sort of transfer, no doubt in exchange for the treasure. After the other men’s deaths, of course, he was probably even more interested in finding it.
Once they had been killed he wouldn’t have had to give anything in return.
Posing as a detective was a clever way to try and gain information as to its whereabouts: through his “investigations” of the hotel, through his lines of questioning. ’
‘But he seemed so nice!’ Mrs Bantry says.
‘He was very attractive and very charming, I suppose,’ Miss Marple says. ‘But that is not necessarily the same thing, unfortunately. In fact: often quite the opposite.’
‘But treasure?’ says Mrs Bantry faintly. ‘It – it seems like something from a book by Hammond Innes! Don’t you think it’s all a little far-fetched?’
Miss Marple shakes her head. ‘One only has to pick up a paper these days to learn of gold hidden inside salt mines, or on trains hidden deep inside mountain tunnels, or sunk in Austrian lakes. I have learned all of this from an armchair in St Mary Mead. I think perhaps whoever is now in possession of the treasure – I have no doubt that someone is in possession of it – decided Mauer had become a danger in some way. That he had to be stopped.’ She turns and looks at me. ‘Do you agree?’
I’m suddenly finding it hard to swallow. ‘I suppose …’ I clear my throat. ‘I suppose that all makes sense.’
Miss Marple nods and then says, almost kindly: ‘And now, Diana, I think we need to have a little talk.’