Murder at the Vicarage Read online

  It occurred to me that Lettice Protheroe was something of a minx. I wondered how she would get on with the archaeologist’s secretary, Miss Cram. Miss Cram is a healthy young woman of twenty-five, noisy in manner, with a high colour, fine animal spirits and a mouth that always seems to have more than its full share of teeth.

  Village opinion is divided as to whether she is no better than she should be, or else a young woman of iron virtue who purposes to become Mrs. Stone at an early opportunity. She is in every way a great contrast to Lettice.

  I could imagine that the state of things at Old Hall might not be too happy. Colonel Protheroe had married again some five years previously. The second Mrs. Protheroe was a remarkably handsome woman in a rather unusual style. I had always guessed that the relations between her and her stepdaughter were not too happy.

  I had one more interruption. This time, it was my curate, Hawes. He wanted to know the details of my interview with Protheroe. I told him that the Colonel had deplored his “Romish tendencies” but that the real purpose of his visit had been on quite another matter. At the same time, I entered a protest of my own, and told him plainly that he must conform to my ruling. On the whole, he took my remarks very well.

  I felt rather remorseful when he had gone for not liking him better. These irrational likes and dislikes that one takes to people are, I am sure, very unChristian.

  With a sigh, I realized that the hands of the clock on my writing table pointed to a quarter to five, a sign that it was really half past four, and I made my way to the drawing room.

  Four of my parishioners were assembled there with teacups. Griselda sat behind the tea table trying to look natural in her environment, but only succeeded in looking more out of place than usual.

  I shook hands all round and sat down between Miss Marple and Miss Wetherby.

  Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner—Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is much the more dangerous.

  “We were just talking,” said Griselda in a honeysweet voice, “about Dr. Stone and Miss Cram.”

  A ribald rhyme concocted by Dennis shot through my head.

  “Miss Cram doesn’t give a damn.”

  I had a sudden yearning to say it out loud and observe the effect, but fortunately I refrained. Miss Wetherby said tersely:

  “No nice girl would do it,” and shut her thin lips disapprovingly.

  “Do what?” I inquired.

  “Be a secretary to an unmarried man,” said Miss Wetherby in a horrified tone.

  “Oh! my dear,” said Miss Marple. “I think married ones are the worst. Remember poor Mollie Carter.”

  “Married men living apart from their wives are, of course, notorious,” said Miss Wetherby.

  “And even some of the ones living with their wives,” murmured Miss Marple. “I remember….”

  I interrupted these unsavoury reminiscences.

  “But surely,” I said, “in these days a girl can take a post in just the same way as a man does.”

  “To come away to the country? And stay at the same hotel?” said Mrs. Price Ridley in a severe voice.

  Miss Wetherby murmured to Miss Marple in a low voice:

  “And all the bedrooms on the same floor….”

  Miss Hartnell, who is weather-beaten and jolly and much dreaded by the poor, observed in a loud, hearty voice:

  “The poor man will be caught before he knows where he is. He’s as innocent as a babe unborn, you can see that.”

  Curious what turns of phrase we employ. None of the ladies present would have dreamed of alluding to an actual baby till it was safely in the cradle, visible to all.

  “Disgusting, I call it,” continued Miss Hartnell, with her usual tactlessness. “The man must be at least twenty-five years older than she is.”

  Three female voices rose at once making disconnected remarks about the Choir Boys’ Outing, the regrettable incident at the last Mother’s Meeting, and the draughts in the church. Miss Marple twinkled at Griselda.

  “Don’t you think,” said my wife, “that Miss Cram may just like having an interesting job? And that she considers Dr. Stone just as an employer?”

  There was a silence. Evidently none of the four ladies agreed. Miss Marple broke the silence by patting Griselda on the arm.

  “My dear,” she said, “you are very young. The young have such innocent minds.”

  Griselda said indignantly that she hadn’t got at all an innocent mind.

  “Naturally,” said Miss Marple, unheeding of the protest, “you think the best of everyone.”

  “Do you really think she wants to marry that baldheaded dull man?”

  “I understand he is quite well off,” said Miss Marple. “Rather a violent temper, I’m afraid. He had quite a serious quarrel with Colonel Protheroe the other day.”

  Everyone leaned forward interestingly.

  “Colonel Protheroe accused him of being an ignoramus.”

  “How like Colonel Protheroe, and how absurd,” said Mrs. Price Ridley.

  “Very like Colonel Protheroe, but I don’t know about it being absurd,” said Miss Marple. “You remember the woman who came down here and said she represented Welfare, and after taking subscriptions she was never heard of again and proved to having nothing whatever to do with Welfare. One is so inclined to be trusting and take people at their own valuation.”

  I should never have dreamed of describing Miss Marple as trusting.

  “There’s been some fuss about that young artist, Mr. Redding, hasn’t there?” asked Miss Wetherby.

  Miss Marple nodded.

  “Colonel Protheroe turned him out of the house. It appears he was painting Lettice in her bathing dress.”

  “I always thought there was something between them,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “That young fellow is always mouching off up there. Pity the girl hasn’t got a mother. A stepmother is never the same thing.”

  “I dare say Mrs. Protheroe does her best,” said Miss Hartnell.

  “Girls are so sly,” deplored Mrs. Price Ridley.

  “Quite a romance, isn’t it?” said the softerhearted Miss Wetherby. “He’s a very good-looking young fellow.”

  “But loose,” said Miss Hartnell. “Bound to be. An artist! Paris! Models! The Altogether!”

  “Painting her in her bathing dress,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “Not quite nice.”

  “He’s painting me too,” said Griselda.

  “But not in your bathing dress, dear,” said Miss Marple.

  “It might be worse,” said Griselda solemnly.

  “Naughty girl,” said Miss Hartnell, taking the joke broad-mindedly. Everybody else looked slightly shocked.

  “Did dear Lettice tell you of the trouble?” asked Miss Marple of me.

  “Tell me?”

  “Yes. I saw her pass through the garden and go round to the study window.”

  Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.

  “She mentioned it, yes,” I admitted.

  “Mr. Hawes looked worried,” said Miss Marple. “I hope he hasn’t been working too hard.”

  “Oh!” cried Miss Wetherby excitedly. “I quite forgot. I knew I had some news for you. I saw Dr. Haydock coming out of Mrs. Lestrange’s cottage.”

  Everyone looked at each other.

  “Perhaps she’s ill,” suggested Mrs. Price Ridley.

  “It must have been very sudden, if so,” said Miss Hartnell. “For I saw her walking round her garden at three o’clock this afternoon, and she seemed in perfect health.”

  “She and Dr. Haydock must be old acquaintances,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “He’s been very quiet about it.”

  “It’s curious,” said Miss Wetherby, “that he’s never mentioned it.”

  “As a matter of fact—” said Griselda in a low, mysterious voice, and stopped. Everyone leaned fo
rward excitedly.

  “I happen to know,” said Griselda impressively. “Her husband was a missionary. Terrible story. He was eaten, you know. Actually eaten. And she was forced to become the chief’s head wife. Dr. Haydock was with an expedition and rescued her.”

  For a moment excitement was rife, then Miss Marple said reproachfully, but with a smile: “Naughty girl!”

  She tapped Griselda reprovingly on the arm.

  “Very unwise thing to do, my dear. If you make up these things, people are quite likely to believe them. And sometimes that leads to complications.”

  A distinct frost had come over the assembly. Two of the ladies rose to take their departure.

  “I wonder if there is anything between young Lawrence Redding and Lettice Protheroe,” said Miss Wetherby. “It certainly looks like it. What do you think, Miss Marple?”

  Miss Marple seemed thoughtful.

  “I shouldn’t have said so myself. Not Lettice. Quite another person I should have said.”

  “But Colonel Protheroe must have thought….”

  “He has always struck me as rather a stupid man,” said Miss Marple. “The kind of man who gets the wrong idea into his head and is obstinate about it. Do you remember Joe Bucknell who used to keep the Blue Boar? Such a to-do about his daughter carrying on with young Bailey. And all the time it was that minx of a wife of his.”

  She was looking full at Griselda as she spoke, and I suddenly felt a wild surge of anger.

  “Don’t you think, Miss Marple,” I said, “that we’re all inclined to let our tongues run away with us too much. Charity thinketh no evil, you know. Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip.”

  “Dear Vicar,” said Miss Marple, “You are so unworldly. I’m afraid that observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it. I dare say the idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn’t it?”

  That last Parthian shot went home.

  Three

  “Nasty old cat,” said Griselda, as soon as the door was closed.

  She made a face in the direction of the departing visitors and then looked at me and laughed.

  “Len, do you really suspect me of having an affair with Lawrence Redding?”

  “My dear, of course not.”

  “But you thought Miss Marple was hinting at it. And you rose to my defence simply beautifully. Like—like an angry tiger.”

  A momentary uneasiness assailed me. A clergyman of the Church of England ought never to put himself in the position of being described as an angry tiger.

  “I felt the occasion could not pass without a protest,” I said. “But Griselda, I wish you would be a little more careful in what you say.”

  “Do you mean the cannibal story?” she asked. “Or the suggestion that Lawrence was painting me in the nude! If they only knew that he was painting me in a thick cloak with a very high fur collar—the sort of thing that you could go quite purely to see the Pope in—not a bit of sinful flesh showing anywhere! In fact, it’s all marvellously pure. Lawrence never even attempts to make love to me—I can’t think why.”

  “Surely knowing that you’re a married woman—”

  “Don’t pretend to come out of the ark, Len. You know very well that an attractive young woman with an elderly husband is a kind of gift from heaven to a young man. There must be some other reason—it’s not that I’m unattractive—I’m not.”

  “Surely you don’t want him to make love to you?”

  “N-n-o,” said Griselda, with more hesitation than I thought becoming.

  “If he’s in love with Lettice Protheroe—”

  “Miss Marple didn’t seem to think he was.”

  “Miss Marple may be mistaken.”

  “She never is. That kind of old cat is always right.” She paused a minute and then said, with a quick sidelong glance at me: “You do believe me, don’t you? I mean, that there’s nothing between Lawrence and me.”

  “My dear Griselda,” I said, surprised. “Of course.”

  My wife came across and kissed me.

  “I wish you weren’t so terribly easy to deceive, Len. You’d believe me whatever I said.”

  “I should hope so. But, my dear, I do beg of you to guard your tongue and be careful of what you say. These women are singularly deficient in humour, remember, and take everything seriously.”

  “What they need,” said Griselda, “is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn’t be so busy looking for it in other people’s.”

  And on this she left the room, and glancing at my watch I hurried out to pay some visits that ought to have been made earlier in the day.

  The Wednesday evening service was sparsely attended as usual, but when I came out through the church, after disrobing in the vestry, it was empty save for a woman who stood staring up at one of our windows. We have some rather fine old stained glass, and indeed the church itself is well worth looking at. She turned at my footsteps, and I saw that it was Mrs. Lestrange.

  We both hesitated a moment, and then I said:

  “I hope you like our little church.”

  “I’ve been admiring the screen,” she said.

  Her voice was pleasant, low, yet very distinct, with a clearcut enunciation. She added:

  “I’m so sorry to have missed your wife yesterday.”

  We talked a few minutes longer about the church. She was evidently a cultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture. We left the building together and walked down the road, since one way to the Vicarage led past her house. As we arrived at the gate, she said pleasantly:

  “Come in, won’t you? And tell me what you think of what I have done.”

  I accepted the invitation. Little Gates had formerly belonged to an Anglo-Indian colonel, and I could not help feeling relieved by the disappearance of the brass tables and Burmese idols. It was furnished now very simply, but in exquisite taste. There was a sense of harmony and rest about it.

  Yet I wondered more and more what had brought such a woman as Mrs. Lestrange to St. Mary Mead. She was so very clearly a woman of the world that it seemed a strange taste to bury herself in a country village.

  In the clear light of her drawing room I had an opportunity of observing her closely for the first time.

  She was a very tall woman. Her hair was gold with a tinge of red in it. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, whether by art or by nature I could not decide. If she was, as I thought, made up, it was done very artistically. There was something Sphinxlike about her face when it was in repose and she had the most curious eyes I have ever seen—they were almost golden in shade.

  Her clothes were perfect and she had all the ease of manner of a well-bred woman, and yet there was something about her that was incongruous and baffling. You felt that she was a mystery. The word Griselda had used occurred to me—sinister. Absurd, of course, and yet—was it so absurd? The thought sprang unbidden into my mind: “This woman would stick at nothing.”

  Our talk was on most normal lines—pictures, books, old churches. Yet somehow I got very strongly the impression that there was something else—something of quite a different nature that Mrs. Lestrange wanted to say to me.

  I caught her eye on me once or twice, looking at me with a curious hesitancy, as though she were unable to make up her mind. She kept the talk, I noticed, strictly to impersonal subjects. She made no mention of a husband or relations.

  But all the time there was that strange urgent appeal in her glance. It seemed to say: “Shall I tell you? I want to. Can’t you help me?”

  Yet in the end it died away—or perhaps it had all been my fancy. I had the feeling that I was being dismissed. I rose and took my leave. As I went out of the room, I glanced back and saw her staring after me with a puzzled, doubtful expression. On an impulse I came back:

  “If there is anything I can do—”

  She said doubtfully: “It’s very kind of
you—”

  We were both silent. Then she said:

  “I wish I knew. It’s difficult. No, I don’t think anyone can help me. But thank you for offering to do so.”

  That seemed final, so I went. But as I did so, I wondered. We are not used to mysteries in St. Mary Mead.

  So much is this the case that as I emerged from the gate I was pounced upon. Miss Hartnell is very good at pouncing in a heavy and cumbrous way.

  “I saw you!” she exclaimed with ponderous humour. “And I was so excited. Now you can tell us all about it.”

  “About what?”

  “The mysterious lady! Is she a widow or has she a husband somewhere?”

  “I really couldn’t say. She didn’t tell me.”

  “How very peculiar. One would think she would be certain to mention something casually. It almost looks, doesn’t it, as though she had a reason for not speaking?”

  “I really don’t see that.”

  “Ah! But as dear Miss Marple says, you are so unworldly, dear Vicar. Tell me, has she known Dr. Haydock long?”

  “She didn’t mention him, so I don’t know.”

  “Really? But what did you talk about then?”

  “Pictures, music, books,” I said truthfully.

  Miss Hartnell, whose only topics of conversation are the purely personal, looked suspicious and unbelieving. Taking advantage of a momentary hesitation on her part as to how to proceed next, I bade her good night and walked rapidly away.

  I called in at a house farther down the village and returned to the Vicarage by the garden gate, passing, as I did so, the danger point of Miss Marple’s garden. However, I did not see how it was humanly possible for the news of my visit to Mrs. Lestrange to have yet reached her ears, so I felt reasonably safe.

  As I latched the gate, it occurred to me that I would just step down to the shed in the garden which young Lawrence Redding was using as a studio, and see for myself how Griselda’s portrait was progressing.