Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple 1)

“There’s Dr. Stone,” said Griselda, her eyes dancing.

“He asked her to come and see the barrow the other day,” I admitted.

“Of course he did,” said Griselda. “She is attractive, Len. Even baldheaded archaeologists feel it.”

“Lots of S.A.,” said Dennis sapiently.

And yet Lawrence Redding is completely untouched by Lettice’s charm. Griselda, however, explained that with the air of one who knew she was right.

“Lawrence has got lots of S.A. himself. That kind always likes the—how shall I put it—the Quaker type. Very restrained and diffident. The kind of woman whom everybody calls cold. I think Anne is the only woman who could ever hold Lawrence. I don’t think they’ll ever tire of each other. All the same, I think he’s been rather stupid in one way. He’s rather made use of Lettice, you know. I don’t think he ever dreamed she cared—he’s awfully modest in some ways—but I have a feeling she does.”

“She can’t bear him,” said Dennis positively. “She told me so.”

I have never seen anything like the pitying silence with which Griselda received this remark.

I went into my study. There was, to my fancy, still a rather eerie feeling in the room. I knew that I must get over this. Once give in to that feeling, and I should probably never use the study again. I walked thoughtfully over to the writing table. Here Protheroe had sat, red-faced, hearty, self-righteous, and here, in a moment of time, he had been struck down. Here, where I was standing, an enemy had stood….

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 tonight 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?”

“Nothing.”

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 earring set in seed pearls.

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

Twenty-one

I cannot say that I have at any time had a great admiration for Mr. Raymond West. He is, I know, supposed to be a brilliant novelist and has made quite a name 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 the 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 anyone like Raymond West has to pretend to be bored—at any rate 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 choirboys’ 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 unChristian, 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.”