“They were smiling and talking,” said Miss Marple. “They seemed very happy to be together, if you know what I mean.”
“They didn’t seem upset or disturbed in any way?”
“Oh, no! Just the opposite.”
“Deuced odd,” said the Colonel. “There’s something deuced odd about the whole thing.”
Miss Marple suddenly took our breath away by remarking in a placid voice:
“Has Mrs. Protheroe been saying that she committed the crime now?”
“Upon my soul,” said the Colonel, “how did you come to guess that, Miss Marple?”
“Well, I rather thought it might happen,” said Miss Marple. “I think dear Lettice thought so, too. She’s really a very sharp girl. Not always very scrupulous, I’m afraid. So Anne Protheroe says she killed her husband. Well, well. I don’t think it’s true. No, I’m almost sure it isn’t true. Not with a woman like Anne Protheroe. Although one never can be quite sure about anyone, can one? At least that’s what I’ve found. When does she say she shot him?”
“At twenty minutes past six. Just after speaking to you.”
Miss Marple shook her head slowly and pityingly. The pity was, I think, for two full-grown men being so foolish as to believe such a story. At least that is what we felt like.
“What did she shoot him with?”
“A pistol.”
“Where did she find it?”
“She brought it with her.”
“Well, that she didn’t do,” said Miss Marple, with unexpected decision. “I can swear to that. She’d no such thing with her.”
“You mightn’t have seen it.”
“Of course I should have seen it.”
“If it had been in her handbag.”
“She wasn’t carrying a handbag.”
“Well, it might have been concealed—er—upon her person.”
Miss Marple directed a glance of sorrow and scorn upon him.
“My dear Colonel Melchett, you know what young women are nowadays. Not ashamed to show exactly how the creator made them. She hadn’t so much as a handkerchief in the top of her stocking.”
Melchett was obstinate.
“You must admit that it all fits in,” he said. “The time, the overturned clock pointing to 6:22—”
Miss Marple turned on me.
“Do you mean you haven’t told him about that clock yet?”
“What about the clock, Clement?”
I told him. He showed a good deal of annoyance.
“Why on earth didn’t you tell Slack this last night?”
“Because,” I said, “he wouldn’t let me.”
“Nonsense, you ought to have insisted.”
“Probably,” I said, “Inspector Slack behaves quite differently to you than he does to me. I had no earthly chance of insisting.”
“It’s an extraordinary business altogether,” said Melchett. “If a third person comes along and claims to have done this murder, I shall go into a lunatic asylum.”
“If I might be allowed to suggest—” murmured Miss Marple.
“Well?”
“If you were to tell Mr. Redding what Mrs. Protheroe has done and then explain that you don’t really believe it is her. And then if you were to go to Mrs. Protheroe and tell her that Mr. Redding is all right—why then, they might each of them tell you the truth. And the truth is helpful, though I dare say they don’t know very much themselves, poor things.”
“It’s all very well, but they are the only two people who had a motive for making away with Protheroe.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Colonel Melchett,” said Miss Marple.
“Why, can you think of anyone else?”
“Oh! yes, indeed. Why,” she counted on her fingers, “one, two, three, four, five, six—yes, and a possible seven. I can think of at least seven people who might be very glad to have Colonel Protheroe out of the way.”
The Colonel looked at her feebly.
“Seven people? In St. Mary Mead?”
Miss Marple nodded brightly.
“Mind you I name no names,” she said. “That wouldn’t be right. But I’m afraid there’s a lot of wickedness in the world. A nice honourable upright soldier like you doesn’t know about these things, Colonel Melchett.”
I thought the Chief Constable was going to have apoplexy.
Ten
His remarks on the subject of Miss Marple as we left the house were far from complimentary.
“I really believe that wizened-up old maid thinks she knows everything there is to know. And hardly been out of this village all her life. Preposterous. What can she know of life?”
I said mildly that though doubtless Miss Marple knew next to nothing of Life with a capital L, she knew practically everything that went on in St. Mary Mead.
Melchett admitted that grudgingly. She was a valuable witness—particularly valuable from Mrs. Protheroe’s point of view.
“I suppose there’s no doubt about what she says, eh?”
“If Miss Marple says she had no pistol with her, you can take it for granted that it is so,” I said. “If there was the least possibility of such a thing, Miss Marple would have been on to it like a knife.”
“That’s true enough. We’d better go and have a look at the studio.”
The so-called studio was a mere rough shed with a skylight. There were no windows and the door was the only means of entrance or egress. Satisfied on this score, Melchett announced his intention of visiting the Vicarage with the Inspector.
“I’m going to the police station now.”
As I entered through the front door, a murmur of voices caught my ear. I opened the drawing room door.
On the sofa beside Griselda, conversing animatedly, sat Miss Gladys Cram. Her legs, which were encased in particularly shiny pink stockings, were crossed, and I had every opportunity of observing that she wore pink striped silk knickers.
“Hullo, Len,” said Griselda.
“Good morning, Mr. Clement,” said Miss Cram. “Isn’t the news about the Colonel really too awful? Poor old gentleman.”
“Miss Cram,” said my wife, “very kindly came in to offer to help us with the Guides. We asked for helpers last Sunday, you remember.”
I did remember, and I was convinced, and so, I knew from her tone, was Griselda, that the idea of enrolling herself among them would never have occurred to Miss Cram but for the exciting incident which had taken place at the Vicarage.
“I was only just saying to Mrs. Clement,” went on Miss Cram, “you could have struck me all of a heap when I heard the news. A murder? I said. In this quiet one-horse village—for quiet it is, you must admit—not so much as a picture house, and as for Talkies! And then when I heard it was Colonel Protheroe—why, I simply couldn’t believe it. He didn’t seem the kind, somehow, to get murdered.”
“And so,” said Griselda, “Miss Cram came round to find out all about it.”
I feared this plain speaking might offend the lady, but she merely flung her head back and laughed uproariously, showing every tooth she possessed.
“That’s too bad. You’re a sharp one, aren’t you, Mrs. Clement? But it’s only natural, isn’t it, to want to hear the ins and outs of a case like this? And I’m sure I’m willing enough to help with the Guides in any way you like. Exciting, that’s what it is. I’ve been stagnating for a bit of fun. I have, really I have. Not that my job isn’t a very good one, well paid, and Dr. Stone quite the gentleman in every way. But a girl wants a bit of life out of office hours, and except for you, Mrs. Clement, who is there in the place to talk to except a lot of old cats?”
“There’s Lettice Protheroe,” I said.
Gladys Cram tossed her head.
“She’s too high and mighty for the likes of me. Fancies herself the country, and wouldn’t demean herself by noticing a girl who had to work for her living. Not but what I did hear her talking of earning her living herself. And who’d employ her, I should like to know? Why, she’d be fired i
n less than a week. Unless she went as one of those mannequins, all dressed up and sidling about. She could do that, I expect.”
“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.”