The Body in the Library (Miss Marple 3)

Miss Marple nodded.

Florence went on:

“So it was all arranged. Pam was to go into Danemouth after the rally and meet him at his hotel and he’d take her along to the studios (they’d got a small testing studio in Danemouth, he told her). She’d have her test and she could catch the bus home afterwards. She could say she’d been shopping, and he’d let her know the result of the test in a few days, and if it was favourable Mr. Harmsteiter, the boss, would come along and talk to her parents.

“Well, of course, it sounded too wonderful! I was green with envy! Pam got through the rally without turning a hair—we always call her a regular poker face. Then, when she said she was going into Danemouth to Woolworth’s she just winked at me.

“I saw her start off down the footpath.” Florence began to cry. “I ought to have stopped her. I ought to have stopped her. I ought to have known a thing like that couldn’t be true. I ought to have told someone. Oh dear, I wish I was dead!”

“There, there.” Miss Marple patted her on the shoulder. “It’s quite all right. No one will blame you. You’ve done the right thing in telling me.”

She devoted some minutes to cheering the child up.

Five minutes later she was telling the story to Superintendent Harper. The latter looked very grim.

“The clever devil!” he said. “By God, I’ll cook his goose for him. This puts rather a different aspect on things.”

“Yes, it does.”

Harper looked at her sideways.

“It doesn’t surprise you?”

“I expected something of the kind.”

Superintendent Harper said curiously:

“What put you on to this particular girl? They all looked scared to death and there wasn’t a pin to choose between them as far as I could see.”

Miss Marple said gently:

“You haven’t had as much experience with girls telling lies as I have. Florence looked at you very straight, if you remember, and stood very rigid and just fidgeted with her feet like the others. But you didn’t watch her as she went out of the door. I knew at once then that she’d got something to hide. They nearly always relax too soon. My little maid Janet always did. She’d explain quite convincingly that the mice had eaten the end of a cake and give herself away by smirking as she left the room.”

“I’m very grateful to you,” said Harper.

He added thoughtfully: “Lemville Studios, eh?”

Miss Marple said nothing. She rose to her feet.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “I must hurry away. So glad to have been able to help you.”

“Are you going back to the hotel?”

“Yes—to pack up. I must go back to St. Mary Mead as soon as possible. There’s a lot for me to do there.”

Fifteen

I

Miss Marple passed out through the french windows of her drawing room, tripped down her neat garden path, through a garden gate, in through the vicarage garden gate, across the vicarage garden, and up to the drawing room window, where she tapped gently on the pane.

The vicar was busy in his study composing his Sunday sermon, but the vicar’s wife, who was young and pretty, was admiring the progress of her offspring across the hearthrug.

“Can I come in, Griselda?”

“Oh, do, Miss Marple. Just look at David! He gets so angry because he can only crawl in reverse. He wants to get to something and the more he tries the more he goes backwards into the coal box!”

“He’s looking very bonny, Griselda.”

“He’s not bad, is he?” said the young mother, endeavouring to assume an indifferent manner. “Of course I don’t bother with him much. All the books say a child should be left alone as much as possible.”

“Very wise, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Ahem, I came to ask if there was anything special you are collecting for at the moment.”

The vicar’s wife turned somewhat astonished eyes upon her.

“Oh, heaps of things,” she said cheerfully. “There always are.”

She ticked them off on her fingers.

“There’s the Nave Restoration Fund, and St. Giles’s Mission, and our Sale of Work next Wednesday, and the Unmarried Mothers, and a Boy Scouts’ Outing, and the Needlework Guild, and the Bishop’s Appeal for Deep Sea Fishermen.”

“Any of them will do,” said Miss Marple. “I thought I might make a little round—with a book, you know—if you would authorize me to do so.”

“Are you up to something? I believe you are. Of course I authorize you. Make it the Sale of Work; it would be lovely to get some real money instead of those awful sachets and comic pen-wipers and depressing children’s frocks and dusters all done up to look like dolls.

“I suppose,” continued Griselda, accompanying her guest to the window, “you wouldn’t like to tell me what it’s all about?”

“Later, my dear,” said Miss Marple, hurrying off.

With a sigh the young mother returned to the hearthrug and, by way of carrying out her principles of stern neglect, butted her son three times in the stomach so that he caught hold of her hair and pulled it with gleeful yells. Then they rolled over and over in a grand rough-and-tumble until the door opened and the vicarage maid announced to the most influential parishioner (who didn’t like children):

“Missus is in here.”

Whereupon Griselda sat up and tried to look dignified and more what a vicar’s wife should be.

II

Miss Marple, clasping a small black book with pencilled entries in it, walked briskly along the village street until she came to the crossroads. Here she turned to the left and walked past the Blue Boar until she came to Chatsworth, alias “Mr. Booker’s new house.”

She turned in at the gate, walked up to the front door and knocked briskly.

The door was opened by the blonde young woman named Dinah Lee. She was less carefully made-up than usual, and in fact looked slightly dirty. She was wearing grey slacks and an emerald jumper.

“Good morning,” said Miss Marple briskly and cheerfully. “May I just come in for a minute?”

She pressed forward as she spoke, so that Dinah Lee, who was somewhat taken aback at the call, had no time to make up her mind.

“Thank you so much,” said Miss Marple, beaming amiably at her and sitting down rather gingerly on a “period” bamboo chair.

“Quite warm for the time of year, is it not?” went on Miss Marple, still exuding geniality.

“Yes, rather. Oh, quite,” said Miss Lee.

At a loss how to deal with the situation, she opened a box and offered it to her guest. “Er—have a cigarette?”

“Thank you so much, but I don’t smoke. I just called, you know, to see if I could enlist your help for our Sale of Work next week.”

“Sale of Work?” said Dinah Lee, as one who repeats a phrase in a foreign language.

“At the vicarage,” said Miss Marple. “Next Wednesday.”

“Oh!” Miss Lee’s mouth fell open. “I’m afraid I couldn’t—”

“Not even a small subscription—half a crown perhaps?”

Miss Marple exhibited her little book.

“Oh—er—well, yes, I dare say I could manage that.”

The girl looked relieved and turned to hunt in her handbag.

Miss Marple’s sharp eyes were looking round the room.

She said:

“I see you’ve no hearthrug in front of the fire.”

Dinah Lee turned round and stared at her. She could not but be aware of the very keen scrutiny the old lady was giving her, but it aroused in her no other emotion than slight annoyance. Miss Marple recognized that. She said:

“It’s rather dangerous, you know. Sparks fly out and mark the carpet.”

“Funny old Tabby,” thought Dinah, but she said quite amiably if somewhat vaguely:

“There used to be one. I don’t know where it’s got to.”

“I suppose,” said Miss Marple, “it was the fluffy, woolly kind?”

“Sheep,” said Dinah. “That’s what it looked like.”

She was amused now. An eccentric old bean, this.

She held out a half crown. “Here you are,” she said.

“Oh, thank you, my dear.”

Miss Marple took it and opened the little book.

“Er—what name shall I write down?”

Dinah’s eyes grew suddenly hard and contemptuous.

“Nosey old cat,” she thought, “that’s all she came for—prying around for scandal!”

She said clearly and with malicious pleasure:

“Miss Dinah Lee.”

Miss Marple looked at her steadily.

She said:

“This is Mr. Basil Blake’s cottage, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’m Miss Dinah Lee!”

Her voice rang out challengingly, her head went back, her blue eyes flashed.

Very steadily Miss Marple looked at her. She said:

“Will you allow me to give you some advice, even though you may consider it impertinent?”

“I shall consider it impertinent. You had better say nothing.”