Here 'tis 
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“I knew it!” repeated Miss Bubb. “Saying she was looking for a book
on medicines. Well that was fishy to start with. Chalet School girls
aren't supposed to become doctors.”
“Oh very well, I’ll fess up. The whole thing was a red herring,”
admitted Mary-Lou. “Well, a red geranium, anyway – I couldn’t very well
put a pot of herrings on the table, could I? That would have given it
away. Flowers are more subtle. Yes, I stole Jem’s paper.”
“Why, what was it?” rose an eager chorus.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” said Jem heavily. “It never
does, in stories. But it was top secret and it was stolen. That’s what
matters.”
“Don’t make a fuss,” said Mary-Lou. “You’ll get the paper back after I’ve made myself a copy and patented the idea.”
“And after you stole the paper,” Miss Marple went on triumphantly, “you left the room and killed Mrs Maynard.”
“No I didn’t,” said Mary-Lou. “I was in this room the entire time
after Joey left. We all were. We were busy looking for the paper. I
only left a red herring - someone else must have done the real crime.”
Miss Marple looked crestfallen.
“Ha!” cried Poirot. He stepped forward and clapped his hands. “And
so Miss Marple is incorrect. I say one must always use the leetle grey
cells. It is the pseechology!” Here he made a flamboyant, beautifully
frustrated gesture, and Miss Marple nearly lost an eye.
“The thing that all of you forget," continued Poirot solemnly, "is
that the heroine of the stories is never supposed to be murdered."
“What do you mean, man?” said Jack.
“If you will permit me to make a little experiment? Yes? Follow me,
I beg of you,” said Poirot, and left the room. Unwillingly they all
followed him back to the library, where Joey’s body still lay
artistically draped across the carpet.
“As I say,” said Poirot, “the heroine.”
“But she HAS been murdered,” said Miss Bubb, confused. “Right there. Dead as a doorpost.”
“But I say non!” said Poirot. “I say that the murder of Josephine
Maynard was executed by this woman who you see lying before you.”
“Ah, I catch your drift,” said Miss Bubb. “Suicide, was it? Well her last book didn’t do very well, as I understand it …”
“But – but how is all this possible?” butted in Jack. “What about
all the knives? She couldn’t possibly stab herself more than once.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Jack. It’s Joey,” said Madge. “You know she’d
do anything to beat anyone, even if she had to stab herself multiple
times to prove it.” There was a lot of nodding over this.
“But now I show you that these are treek knives, of the type
commonly used by the stage magicians,” said Poirot, striding over to
the body and pulling out one of the obviously plastic weapons with a
flourish and uncollapsing it.
“Well I’ll be damned,” said Miss Bubb, as everyone else’s mouths fell open in shock. “Just how did you figure that, Mr Poirot?”
“It seems to me,” said Poirot politely, “that there is a lot here
that is not known by anyone. Did anyone here really know Josephine, for
instance? Let us present the denouement! Ah, you see, we remove the
earphones … it is a wig! We remove the lime green twin set …” (“No,
no,” uttered Miss Marple with a sense of Victorian propriety - starting
from the top, she had it all buttoned up again by the time Poirot got
to the bottom). "We scrub off the rouge …” – what looked like half of
Joey’s face fell away. “And we remove the orthopaedic shoes … so!” He
pulled off what looked like a pair of stilts and brandished them … all
this revealing a face, a figure ... |
. Last bit for the moment!
