Charlotte Blacklock murders Miss Murgatroyd

Charlotte Blacklock murders Miss Murgatroyd to prevent her from revealing the observation that could expose Charlotte’s deception. The killing follows Miss Murgatroyd’s belated recognition that Letitia Blacklock was absent from the place where she was believed to have been shot, turning a fragment of remembered detail into an immediate threat to Charlotte.

Background and Recognition

Charlotte learns of the danger by listening outside Miss Murgatroyd’s cottage window. Miss Hinchcliffe is urging Miss Murgatroyd to recall what she saw during the staged shooting. Until then, Charlotte has assumed that everyone present would have focused on Rudi Scherz, rather than noticing anything that might contradict the account of the shooting.

As Miss Murgatroyd works through her memory, she calls after Miss Hinchcliffe, “She wasn’t there…” Charlotte hears the remark and understands that Miss Murgatroyd may have discovered something decisive. The danger is not an accusation already fully explained, but the possibility that a witness is close to making sense of what she saw.

The Recalled Clue

Miss Marple later reconstructs the memory Miss Murgatroyd was trying to recover. Miss Murgatroyd mentally follows the torchlight from the mantelpiece across the windows and the people between them. She recalls Mrs Harmon covering her eyes, then Miss Bunner staring with her mouth open, before her attention reaches the wall beside a table holding a lamp and cigarette box.

The shots had left two bullet holes in that wall. Miss Murgatroyd remembered that Letitia Blacklock had been standing there when she was supposedly shot, but that at the moment the revolver went off, Letitia was not there. Her words referred not to one of the women she had been prompted to consider, but to an unoccupied place where a person should have been. That distinction made the remembered absence a clue to the staging of the shooting and to Charlotte’s assumed identity.

The Murder and Its Immediate Aftermath

Charlotte acts within a brief window. Miss Hinchcliffe has left for the station, and Miss Murgatroyd is about to explain that Letitia Blacklock was not in the room that night. Charlotte has no time to construct another elaborate scene: she greets Miss Murgatroyd and strangles her, then hurries home and changes before sitting by the fire as if she had not been away.

The speed and simplicity of the killing contrast with the carefully staged shooting that preceded it. Charlotte’s attempt to stop the clue from being spoken creates another murder and deepens the danger surrounding her. By the time Miss Marple explains how the memory fits together, Miss Murgatroyd’s recognition has become the hinge connecting the apparent shooting to the truth about Letitia’s absence.