The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 8

  “She’d make a very good mannequin,” said Griselda. “She’s got such a lovely figure.” There’s nothing of the cat about Griselda. “When was she talking of earning her own living?”

  Miss Cram seemed momentarily discomfited, but recovered herself with her usual archness.

  “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” she said. “But she did say so. Things not very happy at home, I fancy. Catch me living at home with a stepmother. I wouldn’t sit down under it for a minute.”

  “Ah! but you’re so high spirited and independent,” said Griselda gravely, and I looked at her with suspicion.

  Miss Cram was clearly pleased.

  “That’s right. That’s me all over. Can be led, not driven. A palmist told me that not so very long ago. No. I’m not one to sit down and be bullied. And I’ve made it clear all along to Dr. Stone that I must have my regular times off. These scientific gentlemen, they think a girl’s a kind of machine—half the time they just don’t notice her or remember she’s there. Of course, I don’t know much about it,” confessed the girl.

  “Do you find Dr. Stone pleasant to work with? It must be an interesting job if you are interested in archaeology.”

  “It still seems to me that digging up people that are dead and have been dead for hundreds of years isn’t—well, it seems a bit nosy, doesn’t it? And there’s Dr. Stone so wrapped up in it all, that half the time he’d forget his meals if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Is he at the barrow this morning?” asked Griselda.

  Miss Cram shook her head.

  “A bit under the weather this morning,” she explained. “Not up to doing any work. That means a holiday for little Gladys.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Oh! It’s nothing much. There’s not going to be a second death. But do tell me, Mr. Clement, I hear you’ve been with the police all morning. What do they think?”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “there is still a little—uncertainty.”

  “Ah!” cried Miss Cram. “Then they don’t think it is Mr. Lawrence Redding after all. So handsome, isn’t he? Just like a movie star. And such a nice smile when he says good morning to you. I really couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the police had arrested him. Still, one has always heard they’re very stupid—the county police.”

  “You can hardly blame them in this instance,” I said. “Mr. Redding came in and gave himself up.”

  “What?” the girl was clearly dumbfounded. “Well—of all the poor fish! If I’d committed a murder, I wouldn’t go straight off and give myself up. I should have thought Lawrence Redding would have had more sense. To give in like that! What did he kill Protheroe for? Did he say? Was it just a quarrel?”

  “It’s not absolutely certain that he did kill him,” I said.

  “But surely—if he says he has—why really, Mr. Clement, he ought to know.”

  “He ought to, certainly,” I agreed. “But the police are not satisfied with his story.”

  “But why should he say he’d done it if he hasn’t?”

  That was a point on which I had no intention of enlightening Miss Cram. Instead I said rather vaguely:

  “I believe that in all prominent murder cases, the police receive numerous letters from people accusing themselves of the crime.”

  Miss Cram’s reception of this piece of information was:

  “They must be chumps!” in a tone of wonder and scorn.

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I suppose I must be trotting along.” She rose. “Mr. Redding accusing himself of the murder will be a bit of news of Dr. Stone.”

  “Is he interested?” asked Griselda.

  Miss Cram furrowed her brows perplexedly.

  “He’s a queer one. You never can tell with him. All wrapped up in the past. He’d a hundred times rather look at a nasty old bronze knife out of those humps of ground than he would see the knife Crippen cut up his wife with, supposing he had a chance to.”

  “Well,” I said, “I must confess I agree with him.”

  Miss Cram’s eyes expressed incomprehension and slight contempt. Then, with reiterated good-byes, she took her departure.

  “Not such a bad sort, really,” said Griselda, as the door closed behind her. “Terribly common, of course, but one of those big, bouncing, good-humoured girls that you can’t dislike. I wonder what really brought her here?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Now, Len, tell me all about it. I’m simply dying to hear.”

  I sat down and recited faithfully all the happenings of the morning, Griselda interpolating the narrative with little exclamations of surprise and interest.

  “So it was Anne Lawrence was after all along! Not Lettice. How blind we’ve all been! That must have been what old Miss Marple was hinting at yesterday. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” I said, averting my eyes.

  Mary entered.

  “There’s a couple of men here—come from a newspaper, so they say. Do you want to see them?”

  “No,” I said, “certainly not. Refer them to Inspector Slack at the police station.”

  Mary nodded and turned away.

  “And when you’ve got rid of them,” I said, “come back here. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  Mary nodded again.

  It was some few minutes before she returned.

  “Had a job getting rid of them,” she said. “Persistent. You never saw anything like it. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “I expect we shall be a good deal troubled with them,” I said. “Now, Mary, what I want to ask you is this: Are you quite certain you didn’t hear the shot yesterday evening?”

  “The shot what killed him? No, of course I didn’t. If I had of done, I should have gone in to see what had happened.”

  “Yes, but—” I was remembering Miss Marple’s statement that she had heard a shot “in the woods.” I changed the form of my question. “Did you hear any other shot—one down in the wood, for instance?”

  “Oh! That.” The girl paused. “Yes, now I come to think of it, I believe I did. Not a lot of shots, just one. Queer sort of bang it was.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Now what time was that?”

  “Time?”

  “Yes, time.”

  “I couldn’t say, I’m sure. Well after teatime. I do know that.”

  “Can’t you get a little nearer than that?”

  “No, I can’t. I’ve got my work to do, haven’t I? I can’t go on looking at clocks the whole time—and it wouldn’t be much good anyway—the alarm loses a good three-quarters every day, and what with putting it on and one thing and another, I’m never exactly sure what time it is.”

  This perhaps explains why our meals are never punctual. They are sometimes too late and sometimes bewilderingly early.

  “Was it long before Mr. Redding came?”

  “No, it wasn’t long. Ten minutes—a quarter of an hour—not longer than that.”

  I nodded my head, satisfied.

  “Is that all?” said Mary. “Because what I mean to say is, I’ve got the joint in the oven and the pudding boiling over as likely as not.”

  “That’s all right. You can go.”

  She left the room, and I turned to Griselda.

  “Is it quite out of the question to induce Mary to say sir or ma’am?”

  “I have told her. She doesn’t remember. She’s just a raw girl, remember?”

  “I am perfectly aware of that,” I said. “But raw things do not necessarily remain raw for ever. I feel a tinge of cooking might be induced in Mary.”

  “Well, I don’t agree with you,” said Griselda. “You know how little we can afford to pay a servant. If once we got her smartened up at all, she’d leave. Naturally. And get higher wages. But as long as Mary can’t cook and has those awful manners—well, we’re safe, nobody else would have her.”

  I perceived that my wife’s methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had i
magined. A certain amount of reasoning underlay them. Whether it was worthwhile having a maid at the price of her not being able to cook, and having a habit of throwing dishes and remarks at one with the same disconcerting abruptness, was a debatable matter.

  “And anyway,” continued Griselda, “you must make allowances for her manners being worse than usual just now. You can’t expect her to feel exactly sympathetic about Colonel Protheroe’s death when he jailed her young man.”

  “Did he jail her young man?”

  “Yes, for poaching. You know, that man, Archer. Mary has been walking out with him for two years.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Darling Len, you never know anything.”

  “It’s queer,” I said, “that everyone says the shot came from the woods.”

  “I don’t think it’s queer at all,” said Griselda. “You see, one so often hears shots in the wood. So naturally, when you do hear a shot, you just assume as a matter of course that it is in the wood. It probably just sounds a bit louder than usual. Of course, if one were in the next room, you’d realize that it was in the house, but from Mary’s kitchen with the window right the other side of the house, I don’t believe you’d ever think of such a thing.”

  The door opened again.

  “Colonel Melchett’s back,” said Mary. “And that police inspector with him, and they say they’d be glad if you’d join them. They’re in the study.”

  Eleven

  I saw at a glance that Colonel Melchett and Inspector Slack had not been seeing eye to eye about the case. Melchett looked flushed and annoyed and the Inspector looked sulky.

  “I’m sorry to say,” said Melchett, “that Inspector Slack doesn’t agree with me in considering young Redding innocent.”

  “If he didn’t do it, what does he go and say he did it for?” asked Slack sceptically.

  “Mrs. Protheroe acted in an exactly similar fashion, remember, Slack.”

  “That’s different. She’s a woman, and women act in that silly way. I’m not saying she did it for a moment. She heard he was accused and she trumped up a story. I’m used to that sort of game. You wouldn’t believe the fool things I’ve known women do. But Redding’s different. He’s got his head screwed on all right. And if he admits he did it, well, I say he did do it. It’s his pistol—you can’t get away from that. And thanks to this business of Mrs. Protheroe, we know the motive. That was the weak point before, but now we know it—why, the whole thing’s plain sailing.”

  “You think he can have shot him earlier? At six thirty, say?”

  “He can’t have done that.”

  “You’ve checked up his movements?”

  The Inspector nodded.

  “He was in the village near the Blue Boar at ten past six. From there he came along the back lane where you say the old lady next door saw him—she doesn’t miss much, I should say—and kept his appointment with Mrs. Protheroe in the studio in the garden. They left there together just after six thirty, and went along the lane to the village, being joined by Dr. Stone. He corroborates that all right—I’ve seen him. They all stood talking just by the post office for a few minutes, then Mrs. Protheroe went into Miss Hartnell’s to borrow a gardening magazine. That’s all right too. I’ve seen Miss Hartnell. Mrs. Protheroe remained there talking to her till just on seven o’clock when she exclaimed at the lateness of the hour and said she must get home.”

  “What was her manner?”

  “Very easy and pleasant, Miss Hartnell said. She seemed in good spirits—Miss Hartnell is quite sure there was nothing on her mind.”

  “Well, go on.”

  “Redding, he went with Dr. Stone to the Blue Boar and they had a drink together. He left there at twenty minutes to seven, went rapidly along the village street and down the road to the Vicarage. Lots of people saw him.”

  “Not down the back lane this time?” commented the Colonel.

  “No—he came to the front, asked for the Vicar, heard Colonel Protheroe was there, went in—and shot him—just as he said he did! That’s the truth of it, and we needn’t look further.”

  Melchett shook his head.

  “There’s the doctor’s evidence. You can’t get away from that. Protheroe was shot not later than six thirty.”

  “Oh, doctors!” Inspector Slack looked contemptuous. “If you’re going to believe doctors. Take out all your teeth—that’s what they do nowadays—and then say they’re very sorry, but all the time it was appendicitis. Doctors!”

  “This isn’t a question of diagnosis. Dr. Haydock was absolutely positive on the point. You can’t go against the medical evidence, Slack.”

  “And there’s my evidence for what it is worth,” I said, suddenly recalling a forgotten incident. “I touched the body and it was cold. That I can swear to.”

  “You see, Slack?” said Melchett.

  “Well, of course, if that’s so. But there it was—a beautiful case. Mr. Redding only too anxious to be hanged, so to speak.”

  “That, in itself, strikes me as a little unnatural,” observed Colonel Melchett.

  “Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” said the Inspector. “There’s a lot of gentlemen went a bit balmy after the war. Now, I suppose, it means starting again at the beginning.” He turned on me. “Why you went out of your way to mislead me about the clock, sir, I can’t think. Obstructing the ends of justice, that’s what that was.”

  “I tried to tell you on three separate occasions,” I said. “And each time you shut me up and refused to listen.”

  “That’s just a way of speaking, sir. You could have told me perfectly well if you had had a mind to. The clock and the note seemed to tally perfectly. Now, according to you, the clock was all wrong. I never knew such a case. What’s the sense of keeping a clock a quarter of an hour fast anyway?”

  “It is supposed,” I said, “to induce punctuality.”

  “I don’t think we need go further into that now, Inspector,” said Colonel Melchett tactfully. “What we want now is the true story from both Mrs. Protheroe and young Redding. I telephoned to Haydock and asked him to bring Mrs. Protheroe over here with him. They ought to be here in about a quarter of an hour. I think it would be as well to have Redding here first.”

  “I’ll get on to the station,” said Inspector Slack, and took up the telephone.

  “And now,” he said, replacing the receiver, “we’ll get to work on this room.” He looked at me in a meaningful fashion.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “you’d like me out of the way.”

  The Inspector immediately opened the door for me. Melchett called out:

  “Come back when young Redding arrives, will you, Vicar? You’re a friend of his and you may have sufficient influence to persuade him to speak the truth.”

  I found my wife and Miss Marple with their heads together.

  “We’ve been discussing all sorts of possibilities,” said Griselda. “I wish you’d solve the case, Miss Marple, like you did the time Miss Wetherby’s gill of picked shrimps disappeared. And all because it reminded you of something quite different about a sack of coals.”

  “You’re laughing, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “but after all, that is a very sound way of arriving at the truth. It’s really what people call intuition and make such a fuss about. Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. But a grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before. You catch my meaning, Vicar?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, “I think I do. You mean that if a thing reminds you of something else—well, it’s probably the same kind of thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what precisely does the murder of Colonel Protheroe remind you of?”

  Miss Marple sighed.

  “That is just the difficulty. So many parallels come to the mind. For instance, there was Major Hargreaves, a churchwarden and a man highly respected in every way. And all the tim
e he was keeping a separate second establishment—a former housemaid, just think of it! And five children—actually five children—a terrible shock to his wife and daughter.”

  I tried hard to visualize Colonel Protheroe in the rôle of secret sinner and failed.

  “And then there was that laundry business,” went on Miss Marple. “Miss Hartnell’s opal pin—left most imprudently in a frilled blouse and sent to the laundry. And the woman who took it didn’t want it in the least and wasn’t by any means a thief. She simply hid it in another woman’s house and told the police she’d seen this other woman take it. Spite, you know, sheer spite. It’s an astonishing motive—spite. A man in it, of course. There always is.”

  This time I failed to see any parallel, however remote.

  “And then there was poor Elwell’s daughter—such a pretty ethereal girl—tried to stifle her little brother. And there was the money for the Choir Boys’ Outing (before your time, Vicar) actually taken by the organist. His wife was sadly in debt. Yes, this case makes one think so many things—too many. It’s very hard to arrive at the truth.”

  “I wish you would tell me,” I said, “who were the seven suspects?”

  “The seven suspects?”

  “You said you could think of seven people who would—well, be glad of Colonel Protheroe’s death.”

  “Did I? Yes, I remember I did.”

  “Was that true?”

  “Oh! Certainly it was true. But I mustn’t mention names. You can think of them quite easily yourself. I am sure.”

  “Indeed I can’t. There is Lettice Protheroe, I suppose, since she probably comes into money on her father’s death. But it is absurd to think of her in such a connection, and outside her I can think of nobody.”

  “And you, my dear?” said Miss Marple, turning to Griselda.

  Rather to my surprise Griselda coloured up. Something very like tears started into her eyes. She clenched both her small hands.

  “Oh!” she cried indignantly. “People are hateful—hateful. The things they say! The beastly things they say….”