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- Herausgeber: BookThug
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In this short story, Agatha Christie presents the problem of unpunished crimes. During one meeting of the Tuesday Night Club. Henry Clithering, former commissioner of Scotland Yard, exposes an unsolved case. The mystery involves a murder with four suspects. It is only known that one of them worked in a terrorist organization bent on murdering the victim. Thanks to a series of clues, Miss Marple will be able to identify the true culprit and unravel the mystery.
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Seitenzahl: 26
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Chapter 1
The conversation hovered round undiscovered and unpunished crimes. Everyone in turn vouchsafed their opinion: Colonel Bantry, his plump amiable wife, Jane Helier, Dr. Lloyd, and even old Miss Marple. The one person who did not speak was the one best fitted in most people’s opinion to do so. Sir Henry Clithering, ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, sat silent, twisting his moustache—or rather stroking it—and half smiling, as though at some inward thought that amused him.
“Sir Henry,” said Mrs. Bantry at last. “If you don’t say something I shall scream. Are there a lot of crimes that go unpunished, or are there not?”
“You’re thinking of newspaper headlines, Mrs. Bantry. SCOTLAND YARD AT FAULT AGAIN. And a list of unsolved mysteries to follow.”
“Which really, I suppose, form a very small percentage of the whole?” said Dr. Lloyd.
“Yes; that is so. The hundreds of crimes that are solved and the perpetrators punished are seldom heralded and sung. But that isn’t quite the point at issue, is it? When you talk of undiscovered crimes and unsolved crimes, you are talking of two different things. In the first category come all the crimes that Scotland Yard never hears about, the crimes that no one even knows have been committed.”
“But I suppose there aren’t very many of those?” said Mrs. Bantry.
“Aren’t there?”
“Sir Henry! You don’t mean there are?”
“I should think,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that there must be a very large number.” The charming old lady, with her old-world unruffled air, made her statement in a tone of the utmost placidity.
“My dear Miss Marple,” said Colonel Bantry.
“Of course,” said Miss Marple, “a lot of people are stupid. And stupid people get found out, whatever they do. But there are quite a number of people who aren’t stupid, and one shudders to think of what they might accomplish unless they had very strongly rooted principles.”
“Yes,” said Sir Henry, “there are a lot of people who aren’t stupid. How often does some crime come to light simply by reason of a bit of unmitigated bungling, and each time one asks oneself the question: If this hadn’t been bungled, would anyone ever have known?”
“But that’s very serious, Clithering,” said Colonel Bantry. “Very serious, indeed.”
“Is it?”
“What do you mean! It is! Of course it’s serious.”
“You say crime goes unpunished; but does it? Unpunished by the law perhaps; but cause and effect works outside the law. To say that every crime brings its own punishment is by way of being a platitude, and yet in my opinion nothing can be truer.”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Colonel Bantry. “But that doesn’t alter the seriousness—the—er—seriousness—” He paused, rather at a loss.
Sir Henry Clithering smiled. “Ninety-nine people out of a hundred are doubtless of your way of thinking,” he said. “But you know, it isn’t really guilt that is important— it’s innocence. That’s the thing that nobody will realize.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jane Helier.
