Miss Marple – Miss Marple and Mystery: The Complete Short Stories. Агата Кристи

      ‘In what way, sir?’

      ‘Come now, don’t you realize that I’m devoured by curiousity? Who was Anna Rosenburg, and why did I murder her?’

      ‘You’ll read all about it in the newspapers tomorrow, sir.’

      ‘Tomorrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s ten thousand years,’ quoted Anthony. ‘I really think you might satisfy my perfectly legitimate curiosity, inspector. Cast aside your official reticence, and tell me all.’

      ‘It’s quite irregular, sir.’

      ‘My dear inspector, when we are becoming such fast friends?’

      ‘Well, sir, Anna Rosenburg was a German-Jewess who lived at Hampstead. With no visible means of livelihood, she grew yearly richer and richer.’

      ‘I’m just the opposite,’ commented Anthony. ‘I have a visible means of livelihood and I get yearly poorer and poorer. Perhaps I should do better if I lived in Hampstead. I’ve always heard Hampstead is very bracing.’

      ‘At one time,’ continued Verrall, ‘she was a secondhand clothes dealer –’

      ‘That explains it,’ interrupted Anthony. ‘I remember selling my uniform after the war – not khaki, the other stuff. The whole flat was full of red trousers and gold lace, spread out to best advantage. A fat man in a check suit arrived in a Rolls-Royce with a factotum complete with bag. He bid one pound ten for the lot. In the end I threw in a hunting coat and some Zeiss glasses to make up the two pounds, at a given signal the factotum opened the bag and shovelled the goods inside, and the fat man tendered me a ten-pound note and asked me for change.’

      ‘About ten years ago,’ continued the inspector, ‘there were several Spanish political refugees in London – amongst them a certain Don Fernando Ferrarez with his young wife and child. They were very poor, and the wife was ill. Anna Rosenburg visited the place where they were lodging and asked if they had anything to sell. Don Fernando was out, and his wife decided to part with a very wonderful Spanish shawl, embroidered in a marvellous manner, which had been one of her husband’s last presents to her before flying from Spain. When Don Fernando returned, he flew into a terrible rage on hearing the shawl had been sold, and tried vainly to recover it. When he at last succeeded in finding the secondhand clothes woman in question, she declared that she had resold the shawl to a woman whose name she did not know. Don Fernando was in despair. Two months later he was stabbed in the street and died as a result of his wounds. From that time onward, Anna Rosenburg seemed suspiciously flush of money. In the ten years that followed, her house was burgled no less than eight times. Four of the attempts were frustrated and nothing was taken, on the other four occasions, an embroidered shawl of some kind was amongst the booty.’

      The inspector paused, and then went on in obedience to an urgent gesture from Anthony.

      ‘A week ago, Carmen Ferrarez, the young daughter of Don Fernando, arrived in this country from a convent in France. Her first action was to seek out Anna Rosenburg at Hampstead. There she is reported to have had a violent scene with the old woman, and her words at leaving were overheard by one of the servants.

      ‘“You have it still,” she cried. “All these years you have grown rich on it – but I say to you solemnly that in the end it will bring you bad luck. You have no moral right to it, and the day will come when you will wish you had never seen the Shawl of the Thousand Flowers.”

      ‘Three days after that, Carmen Ferrarez disappeared mysteriously from the hotel where she was staying. In her room was found a name and address – the name of Conrad Fleckman, and also a note from a man purporting to be an antique dealer asking if she were disposed to part with a certain embroidered shawl which he believed she had in her possession. The address given on the note was a false one.

      ‘It is clear that the shawl is the centre of the whole mystery. Yesterday morning Conrad Fleckman called upon Anna Rosenburg. She was shut up with him for an hour or more, and when he left she was obliged to go to bed, so white and shaken was she by the interview. But she gave orders that if he came to see her again he was always to be admitted. Last night she got up and went out about nine o’clock, and did not return. She was found this morning in the house occupied by Conrad Fleckman, stabbed through the heart. On the floor beside her was – what do you think?’

      ‘The shawl?’ breathed Anthony. ‘The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers.’

      ‘Something far more gruesome than that. Something which explained the whole mysterious business of the shawl and made its hidden value clear … Excuse me, I fancy that’s the chief –’

      There had indeed been a ring at the bell. Anthony contained his impatience as best he could and waited for the inspector to return. He was pretty well at ease about his own position now. As soon as they took the fingerprints they would realise their mistake.

      And then, perhaps, Carmen would ring up …

      The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers! What a strange story – just the kind of story to make an appropriate setting for the girl’s exquisite dark beauty.

      Carmen Ferrarez …

      He jerked himself back from day dreaming. What a time that inspector fellow was. He rose and pulled the door open. The flat was strangely silent. Could they have gone? Surely not without a word to him.

      He strode out into the next room. It was empty – so was the sitting-room. Strangely empty! It had a bare dishevelled appearance. Good heavens! His enamels – the silver!

      He rushed wildly through the flat. It was the same tale everywhere. The place had been denuded. Every single thing of value, and Anthony had a very pretty collector’s taste in small things, had been taken.

      With a groan Anthony staggered to a chair, his head in his hands. He was aroused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened it to confront Rogers.

      ‘You’ll excuse me, sir,’ said Rogers. ‘But the gentlemen fancied you might be wanting something.’

      ‘The gentlemen?’

      ‘Those two friends of yours, sir. I helped them with the packing as best I could. Very fortunately I happened to have them two good cases in the basement.’ His eyes dropped to the floor. ‘I’ve swept up the straw as best I could, sir.’

      ‘You packed the things in here?’ groaned Anthony.

      ‘Yes, sir. Was that not your wishes, sir? It was the tall gentleman told me to do so, sir, and seeing as you were busy talking to the other gentleman in the little end room, I didn’t like to disturb you.’

      ‘I wasn’t talking to him,’ said Anthony. ‘He was talking to me – curse him.’

      Rogers coughed.

      ‘I’m sure I’m very sorry for the necessity, sir,’ he murmured.

      ‘Necessity?’

      ‘Of parting with your little treasures, sir.’

      ‘Eh? Oh, yes. Ha, ha!’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘They’ve driven off by now, I suppose. Those – those friends of mine, I mean?’

      ‘Oh, yes, sir, some time ago. I put the cases on the taxi and the tall gentleman went upstairs again, and then they both came running down and drove off at once … Excuse me, sir, but is anything wrong, sir?’

      Rogers might well ask. The hollow groan which Anthony emitted would have aroused surmise anywhere.

      ‘Everything is wrong, thank you, Rogers. But I see clearly that you were not to blame. Leave me, I would commune a while with my telephone.’

      Five minutes later saw Anthony pouring his tale into the ears of Inspector Driver, who sat opposite to him, note-book in hand. An unsympathetic man, Inspector Driver, and not (Anthony reflected) nearly so like a real inspector! Distinctly stagey, in fact. Another striking example of the superiority of Art over Nature.

      Anthony reached the end of his