Twenty-five
“I looked up tontine in the dictionary,” said Lucy.
The first greetings were over and now Lucy was wandering rather aimlessly round the room, touching¹ a china doghere, an antimacassar there, the plastic work-box in the window.
“I thought you probably would,” said Miss Marple equably.
Lucy spoke² slowly, quoting the words. “Lorenzo Tonti, Italian banker, originator, 1653, of a form of annuity³ inwhich the shares of subscribers who die are added to the profit shares of the survivors⁴.” She paused. “That’s it, isn’t it?
That fits well enough, and you were thinking of it even then before the last two deaths.”
She took up once more her restless, almost aimless prowl round the room. Miss Marple sat watching her. This wasa very different Lucy Eyelesbarrow from the one she knew.
“I suppose it was asking for it really,” said Lucy. “A will of that kind, ending so that if there was only one survivorleft he’d get the lot. And yet—there was quite a lot of money, wasn’t there? You’d think it would be enough sharedout…” She paused, the words trailing off.
“The trouble is,” said Miss Marple, “that people are greedy. Some people. That’s so often, you know, how thingsstart. You don’t start with murder, with wanting to do murder, or even thinking of it. You just start by being greedy,by wanting more than you’re going to have.” She laid her knitting down on her knee and stared ahead of her intospace. “That’s how I came across Inspector⁵ Craddock first, you know. A case in the country. Near Medenham Spa.
That began the same way, just a weak amiable⁶ character who wanted a great deal of money. Money that that personwasn’t entitled to, but there seemed an easy way to get it. Not murder then. Just something so easy and simple that ithadn’t seemed wrong. That’s how things begin… But it ended with three murders.”
“Just like this,” said Lucy. “We’ve had three murders now. The woman who impersonated Martine and who wouldhave been able to claim a share for her son, and then Alfred, and then Harold. And now it only leaves two, doesn’t it?”

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