The Murder at the Vicarage mm-1 Read online

  And so - no more Protheroe…

  Here was the pen his fingers had held.

  On the floor was a faint dark stain - the rug had been sent to the cleaners, but the blood had soaked through.

  I shivered.

  "I can't use this room," I said aloud. "I can't use it."

  Then my eye was caught by something - a mere speck of bright blue. I bent down. Between the floor and the desk I saw a small object. I picked it up.

  I was standing staring at it in the palm of my hand when Griselda came in.

  "I forgot to tell you, Len. Miss Marple wants us to go over to-night after dinner. To amuse the nephew. She's afraid of his being dull. I said we'd go."

  "Very well, my dear."

  "What are you looking at?"

  "Noting."

  I closed my hand, and looking at my wife, observed:

  "If you don't amuse Master Raymond West, my dear, he must be very hard to please."

  My wife said: "Don't be ridiculous, Len," and turned pink.

  She went out again, and I unclosed my hand.

  In the palm of my hand was a blue lapis lazuli ear-ring set in seed pearls.

  It was rather an unusual jewel, and I knew very well where I had seen it last.

  Chapter XXI

  I cannot say that I have at any time a great admiration for Mr. Raymond West. He is, I know, supposed to be a brilliant novelist and has made quite a flame as a poet. His poems have no capital letters in them, which is, I believe, the essence of modernity. His books are about unpleasant people leading lives of surpassing dullness.

  He has a tolerant affection for "Aunt Jane," whom he alludes to in her presence as a "survival."

  She listens to his talk with a flattering interest, and if there is sometimes an amused twinkle in her eye I am sure he never notices it.

  He fastened on Griselda at once with flattering abruptness. They discussed modern plays and from there went on to modern schemes of decoration. Griselda affects to laugh at Raymond West, but she is, I think, susceptible to his conversation.

  During my (dull) conversation with Miss Marple, I heard at intervals the reiteration "buried as you are down here."

  It began at last to irritate me. I said suddenly:

  "I suppose you consider us very much out of things down here?"

  Raymond West waved his cigarette.

  "I regard St. Mary Mead," he said authoritatively, "as a stagnant pool."

  He looked at us, prepared for resentment at his statement, but somewhat, I think, to his chagrin, no one displayed annoyance.

  "That is really not a very good simile, dear Raymond," said Miss Marple briskly. "Nothing, I believe, is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pool."

  "Life - of a kind," admitted the novelist.

  "It's all much the same kind, really, isn't it?" said Miss Marple.

  "You compare yourself to a denizen of a stagnant pond, Aunt Jane?"

  "My dear, you said something of the sort in your last book I remember."

  No clever young man likes having his works quoted against himself. Raymond West was no exception.

  "That was entirely different," he snapped.

  "Life is, after all, very much the same everywhere," said Miss Marple in her placid voice. "Getting born, you know, and growing up - and coming into contact with other people - getting jostled - and then marriage and more babies -"

  "And finally death," said Raymond West. "And not death with a death certificate always. Death in life."

  "Talking of death," said Griselda. "You know we've had a murder here?"

  Raymond West waved murder away with his cigarette.

  "Murder is so crude," he said. "I take no interest in it."

  That statement did not take me in for a moment. They say all the world loves a lover - apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth. No one can fail to be interested in a murder. Simple people like Griselda and myself can admit the fact, but any one like Raymond West has to pretend to be bored - at anyrate for the first five minutes.

  Miss Marple, however, gave her nephew away by remarking:

  "Raymond and I have been discussing nothing else all through dinner."

  "I take a great interest in all the local news," said Raymond hastily. He smiled benignly and tolerantly at Miss Marple.

  "Have you a theory, Mr. West?" asked Griselda.

  "Logically," said Raymond West, again flourishing his cigarette, "only one person could have killed Protheroe."

  "Yes?" said Griselda.

  We hung upon his words with flattering attention.

  "The vicar," said Raymond, and pointed an accusing finger at me.

  I gasped.

  "Of course," he reassured me, "I know you didn't do it. Life is never what it should be. But think of the drama - the fitness - churchwarden murdered in the vicar's study by the vicar. Delicious!"

  "And the motive?" I inquired.

  "Oh! that's interesting." He sat up - allowed his cigarette to go out. "Inferiority complex, I think. Possibly too many inhibitions. I should like to write the story of the affair. Amazingly complex. Week after week, year after year, he's seen the man - at vestry meetings - at choir-boys' outings - handing round the bag in church - bringing it to the altar. Always he dislikes the man - always he chokes down his dislike. It's un-Christian, he won't encourage it. And so it festers underneath, and one day -"

  He made a graphic gesture.

  Griselda turned to me.

  "Have you ever felt like that, Len?"

  "Never," I said truthfully.

  "Yet I hear you were wishing him out of the world not so long ago," remarked Miss Marple.

  (That miserable Dennis! But my fault, of course, for ever making the remark.)

  "I'm afraid I was," I said. "It was a stupid remark to make, but really I'd had a very trying morning with him."

  "That's disappointing," said Raymond West. "Because, of course, if your subconscious were really planning to do him in, it would never have allowed you to make that remark."

  He sighed.

  "My theory falls to the ground. This is probably a very ordinary murder - a revengeful poacher or something of that sort."

  "Miss Cram came to see me this afternoon,'' said Miss Marple. "I met her in the village and I asked her if she would like to see my garden."

  "Is she fond of gardens?" asked Griselda.

  "I don't think so," said Miss Marple, with a faint twinkle. "But it makes a very useful excuse for talk, don't you think?"

  "What did you make of her?" asked Griselda. "I don't believe she's really so bad."

  "She volunteered a lot of information - really a lot of information," said Miss Marple. "About herself, you know, and her people. They all seem to be dead or in India. Very sad. By the way, she has gone to Old Hall for the week-end."

  "What?"

  "Yes, it seems Mrs. Protheroe asked her - or she suggested it to Mrs. Protheroe - I don't quite know which way about it was. To do some secretarial work for her - there are so many letters to cope with. It turned out rather fortunately. Dr. Stone being away, she has nothing to do. What an excitement this barrow has been."

  "Stone?" said Raymond. "Is that the archжologist fellow?"

  "Yes, he is excavating a barrow. On the Protheroe property."

  "He's a good man," said Raymond. "Wonderfully keen on his job. I met him at a dinner not long ago and we had a most interesting talk. I must look him up."

  "Unfortunately," I said, "he's just gone to London for the week-end. Why, you actually ran into him at the station this afternoon."

  "I ran into you. You had a little fat man with you - with glasses on."

  "Yes - Dr. stone."

  "But, my dear fellow - that wasn't Stone."

  "Not Stone?"

  "Not the archжologist. I know him quite well. The man wasn't Stone - not the faintest resemblance."

  We stared at each other. In particular I stared at Miss Marp
le.

  "Extraordinary," I said.

  "The suit-case," said Miss Marple.

  "But why?" said Griselda.

  "It reminds me of the time the man went round pretending to be the gas inspector," murmured Miss Marple. "Quite a little haul, he got."

  "An impostor," said Raymond West. "Now this is really interesting."

  "The question is, has it anything to do with the murder?" said Griselda.

  "Not necessarily," I said. "But -" I looked at Miss Marple.

  "It is," she said, "a Peculiar Thing. Another Peculiar Thing."

  "Yes," I said, rising. "I rather feel the inspector ought to be told about this at once."

  Chapter XXII

  Inspector Slack's orders, once I had got him on the telephone, were brief and emphatic. Nothing was to "get about." In particular, Miss Cram was not to be alarmed. In the meantime, a search was to be instituted for the suit-case in the neighbourhood of the barrow.

  Griselda and I returned home very excited over this new development. We could not say much with Dennis present, as we had faithfully promised Inspector Slack to breathe no word to anybody.

  In any case, Dennis was full of his own troubles. He came into my study and began fingering things and shuffling his feet and looking thoroughly embarrassed.

  "What is it, Dennis?" I said at last.

  "Uncle Len, I don't want to go to sea."

  I was astonished. The boy had been so very decided about his career up to now.

  "But you were so keen on it."

  "Yes, but I've changed my mind."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "I want to go into finance."

  I was even more surprised.

  "What do you mean - finance?"

  "Just that. I want to go into the city."

  "But, my dear boy, I am sure you would not like the life. Even if I obtained a post for you in a bank."

  Dennis said that wasn't what he meant. He didn't want to go into a bank. I asked him what exactly he did mean, and of course, as I suspected, the boy didn't really know.

  By "going into finance," he simply meant getting rich quickly, which with the optimism of youth he imagined was a certainty if one "went into the city." I disabused him of this notion as gently as I could.

  "What's put it into your head?" I asked. "You were so satisfied with the idea of going to sea."

  "I know, Uncle Len, but I've been thinking. I shall want to marry some day - and, I mean, you've got to be rich to marry a girl."

  "Facts disprove your theory," I said.

  "I know - but a real girl. I mean, a girl who's used to things."

  It was very vague, but I thought I knew what he meant.

  "You know," I said gently, "all girls aren't like Lettice Protheroe."

  He fired up at once.

  "You're awfully unfair to her. You don't like her. Griselda doesn't either. She says she's tiresome."

  From the feminine point of view Griselda is quite right. Lettice is tiresome. I could quite realise, however, that a boy would resent the adjective.

  "If only people made a few allowances. Why even the Hartley Napiers are going about grousing about her at a time like this! Just because she left their old tennis party a bit early. Why should she stay if she was bored? Jolly decent of her to go at all, I think."

  "Quite a favour," I said, but Dennis suspected no malice. He was full of his own grievance on Lettice's behalf.

  "She's awfully unselfish really. Just to show you, she made me stay. Naturally I wanted to go too. But she wouldn't hear of it. Said it was too bad on the Napiers. So, just to please her, I stopped on a quarter of an hour."

  The young have very curious views on unselfishness.

  "And now I hear Susan Hartley Napier is going about everywhere saying Lettice has rotten manners."

  "If I were you," I said, "I shouldn't worry."

  "It's all very well, but -"

  He broke off.

  "I'd - I'd do anything for Lettice."

  "Very few of us can do anything for any one else," I said. "However much we wish it, we are powerless."

  "I wish I were dead," said Dennis.

  Poor lad. Calf love is a virulent disease. I forebore to say any of the obvious and probably irritating things which come so easily to one's lips. Instead, I said good-night, and went up to bed.

  I took the eight o'clock service the following morning and when I returned found Griselda sitting at the breakfast table with an open note in her hand. It was from Anne Protheroe.

  "DEAR GRISELDA - If you and the vicar could come up and lunch here quietly to-day, I should be so very grateful. Something very strange has occurred, and I should like Mr. Clement's advice.

  Please don't mention this when you come, as I have said nothing to any one.

  With love, Yours affectionately,

  ANNE PROTHEROE."

  "We must go, of course," said Griselda.

  I agreed.

  "I wonder what can have happened?"

  I wondered too.

  "You know," I said to Griselda, "I don't feel we are really at the end of this case yet."

  "You mean not till someone has really been arrested?"

  "No," I said, "I didn't mean that. I mean that there are ramifications, under-currents, that we know nothing about. There are a whole lot of things to clear up before we get at the truth."

  "You mean things that don't really matter, but that get in the way?"

  "Yes, I think that expresses my meaning very well."

  "I think we're all making a great fuss," said Dennis, helping himself to marmalade. "It's a jolly good thing old Protheroe is dead. Nobody liked him. Oh! I know the police have got to worry - it's their job. But I rather hope myself they'll never find out. I should hate to see Slack promoted going about swelling with importance over his cleverness."

  I am human enough to feel that I agree over the matter of Slack's promotion. A man who goes about systematically rubbing people up the wrong way cannot hope to be popular.

  "Dr. Haydock thinks rather like I do," went on Dennis. "He'd never give a murderer up to justice. He said so."

  I think that that is the danger of Haydock's views. They may be sound in themselves - it is not for me to say - but they produce an impression on the young, careless mind which I am sure Haydock himself never meant to convey.

  Griselda looked out of the window and remarked that there were reporters in the garden.

  "I suppose they're photographing the study windows again," she said, with a sigh.

  We had suffered a good deal in this way. There was first the idle curiosity of the village - every one had come to gape and stare. There were next the reporters armed with cameras, and the village again to watch the reporters. In the end we had to have a constable from Much Benham on duty outside the window.

  "Well," I said, "the funeral is tomorrow morning. After that, surely, the excitement will die down."

  I noticed a few reporters hanging about Old Hall when we arrived there. They accosted me with various queries to which I gave the invariable answer (we had found it the best), that, "I had nothing to say."

  We were shown by the butler into the drawing-room, the sole occupant of which turned out to be Miss Cram - apparently in a state of high enjoyment.

  "This is a surprise, isn't it?" she said, as she shook hands. "I never should have thought of such a thing, but Mrs. Protheroe is kind, isn't she? And, of course, it isn't what you might call nice for a young girl to be staying alone at a place like the Blue Boar, reporters about and all. And, of course, it's not as though I haven't been able to make myself useful - you really need a secretary at a time like this, and Miss Protheroe doesn't do anything to help, does she?"

  I was amused to notice that the old animosity against Lettice persisted, but that the girl had apparently become a warm partisan of Anne's. At the same time I wondered if the story of her coming here was strictly accurate. In her account the initiative had come from Anne, but I wondered if that
were really so. The first mention of disliking to be at the Blue Boar alone might have easily come from the girl herself. Whilst keeping an open mind on the subject, I did not fancy that Miss Cram was strictly truthful.

  At that moment Anne Protheroe entered the room.

  She was dressed very quietly in black. She carried in her hand a Sunday paper which she held out to me with a rueful glance.

  "I've never had any experience of this sort of thing. It's pretty ghastly, isn't it? I saw a reporter at the inquest. I just said that I was terribly upset and had nothing to say, and then he asked me if I wasn't very anxious to find my husband's murderer, and I said 'Yes.' And then whether I had any suspicions, and I said 'No.' And whether I didn't think the crime showed local knowledge, and I said it seemed to certainly. And that was all. And now look at this!"

  In the middle of the page was a photograph, evidently taken at least ten years ago - Heaven knows where they had dug it out. There were large headlines:

  "WIDOW DECLARES SHE WILL NEVER REST TILL SHE HAS HUNTED DOWN HUSBAND'S MURDERER."

  "Mrs. Protheroe, the widow of the murdered man, is certain that the murderer must be looked for locally. She has suspicions, but no certainty. She declared herself prostrated with grief, but reiterated her determination to hunt down the murderer.''

  "It doesn't sound like me, does it?" said Anne.

  "I dare say it might have been worse," I said, handing back the paper.

  "Impudent, aren't they?" said Miss Cram. "I'd like to see one of those fellows trying to get something out of me."

  By the twinkle in Griselda's eye, I was convinced that she regarded this statement as being more literally true than Miss Cram intended it to appear.

  Luncheon was announced, and we went in. Lettice did not come in till half-way through the meal, when she drifted into the empty place with a smile for Griselda and a nod for me. I watched her with some attention, for reasons of my own, but she seemed much the same vague creature as usual. Extremely pretty - that in fairness I had to admit. She was still not wearing mourning, but was dressed in a shade of pale green that brought out all the delicacy of her fair colouring.