Miss+Blacklock+and+Miss+Bunner

Chapter 5: Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner
 * The scene opens with Detective Inspector Craddock arriving at Little Paddocks and immediately noticing the lousy shape of the garden which "showed a last dying splash of purple beauty" (36).
 * He is greeted by Sergeant Fletcher who is already inspecting the house and finds that Scherz was one smart criminal and didn't leave fingerprints anywhere.
 * It is said that Scherz seemed to have "come out from Medenham on the bus" and "walked in through the front door" as the occupants of the house don't look the door until they get ready for bed (37).
 * Both Craddock and Scherz suspect that Mitzi is involved with the crime because of her suspicious, temperamental, and foreign ways (stereotyping at its best).
 * Craddock and Fletcher find their way inside Little Paddocks and learn that Mitzi won't come to the door because "she doesn't like the police," (Christie 38).
 * The reader then receives a description of Miss Blacklock through Craddock's eyes, "a tall active-looking woman of about sixty...she wore, rather unexpectedly, a set of old-fashioned cameos" (38).
 * Craddock scans the drawing room, the room that they are currently standing in, and notices that there is a vase with dead violets in it--the only discordant thing.
 * When Craddock asks Blacklock if that's the room the incident took place in, Miss Bunner becomes very hyper and talkative, explaining unnecessary details from the previous night.
 * Blacklock explains that she had initially been noticed by Scherz at the Hotel des Alpes at Montreux because he was the son of the proprietor. However, her first encounter with him was at the Royal Spa Hotel when she was having lunch with Miss Bunner.
 * She had another strange encounter with him when he showed up to her house asking for money to visit his sick mother in Switzerland.
 * Craddock brings up the idea that that was an excuse and that his main reason for stopping by was to spy out the land.
 * Blacklock points out that he let himself out of the house on purpose in order to take a look at the fastening of the lock.
 * The inspector questions the amount of money and jewelry kept in the house when Miss Bunner exclaims that it wasn't a burglary but in fact revenge since Miss Blacklock had not given him the money he wanted.
 * Scherz had shot at Blacklock twice.
 * When the incident occurred, the "standard lamp and the two small reading lamps" went off (41).
 * Blacklock goes on to explain that she was shot at twice and her ear was injured in the process, and Miss Bunner asserts once again that Scherz was deliberately out to kill Blacklock.
 * Miss Bunner takes the dead violets away claiming that she "picked them fresh yesterday" and is "always forgetting things" (44).
 * Little Paddocks consists of Miss Blacklock, Miss Bunner, and Patrick and Julia Simmons.
 * Miss Blacklock pleads with Craddock to not drill Mitzi too hard because of her dishonesty because her husband was killed in Italy and she has an eight year old son. Blacklock believes that Mitzi isn't a crook and can cook well when she feels like it.
 * The chapter closes with Detective Inspector Craddock asking to see Julia Simmons.

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