A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie Page A

ga-ga,” thought the disgusted Detective-Inspector Craddock.
    â€œCome into the Manager’s private room,” said Rydesdale. “We can talk better there.”
    When Miss Marple had been disentangled from her wool, and her spare knitting pins collected, she accompanied them, fluttering and protesting, to Mr. Rowlandson’s comfortable sitting-room.
    â€œNow, Miss Marple, let’s hear what you have to tell us,” said the Chief Constable.
    Miss Marple came to the point with unexpected brevity.
    â€œIt was a cheque,” she said. “He altered it.”
    â€œHe?”
    â€œThe young man at the desk here, the one who is supposed to have staged that hold-up and shot himself.”
    â€œHe altered a cheque, you say?”
    Miss Marple nodded.
    â€œYes. I have it here.” She extracted it from her bag and laid it on the table. “It came this morning with my others from the Bank. You can see, it was for seven pounds, and he altered it to seventeen. A stroke in front of the 7, and teen added after the word seven with a nice artistic little blot just blurring the whole word. Really very nicely done. A certain amount of practice, I should say. It’s the sameink, because I wrote the cheque actually at the desk. I should think he’d done it quite often before, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œHe picked the wrong person to do it to, this time,” remarked Sir Henry.
    Miss Marple nodded agreement.
    â€œYes. I’m afraid he would never have gone very far in crime. I was quite the wrong person. Some busy young married woman, or some girl having a love affair—that’s the kind who write cheques for all sorts of different sums and don’t really look through their passbooks carefully. But an old woman who has to be careful of the pennies, and who has formed habits—that’s quite the wrong person to choose. Seventeen pounds is a sum I never write a cheque for. Twenty pounds, a round sum, for the monthly wages and books. And as for my personal expenditure, I usually cash seven—it used to be five, but everything has gone up so.”
    â€œAnd perhaps he reminded you of someone?” prompted Sir Henry, mischief in his eye.
    Miss Marple smiled and shook her head at him.
    â€œYou are very naughty, Sir Henry. As a matter of fact he did. Fred Tyler, at the fish shop. Always slipped an extra 1 in the shillings column. Eating so much fish as we do nowadays, it made a long bill, and lots of people never added it up. Just ten shillings in his pocket every time, not much but enough to get himself a few neckties and take Jessie Spragge (the girl in the draper’s) to the pictures. Cut a splash, that’s what these young fellows want to do. Well, the very first week I was here, there was a mistake in my bill. I pointed it out to the young man and he apologized very nicely and looked very much upset, but I thought to myself then: ‘You’ve got a shifty eye, young man.’
    â€œWhat I mean by a shifty eye,” continued Miss Marple, “is the kind that looks very straight at you and never looks away or blinks.”
    Craddock gave a sudden movement of appreciation. He thought to himself “Jim Kelly to the life,” remembering a notorious swindler he had helped to put behind bars not long ago.
    â€œRudi Scherz was a thoroughly unsatisfactory character,” said Rydesdale. “He’s got a police record in Switzerland, we find.”
    â€œMade the place too hot for him, I suppose, and came over here with forged papers?” said Miss Marple.
    â€œExactly,” said Rydesdale.
    â€œHe was going about with the little red-haired waitress from the dining room,” said Miss Marple. “Fortunately I don’t think her heart’s affected at all. She just liked to have someone a bit ‘different,’ and he used to give her flowers and chocolates which the English boys don’t do much. Has she told you all she