Miss Marple went into the shop, went along the counter to a seat opposite the elderly woman, and produced a sample of pink wool. She had run out, she explained, of this particular brand of wool and had a little jacket she needed to finish. The match was soon made, some more samples of wool that Miss Marple had admired were brought out for her to look at, and soon she was in conversation. Starting with the sadness of the accident which had just taken place. Mrs. Merrypit, if her name was identical with that which was written up outside the shop, was full of the importance of the accident, and the general difficulties of getting local governments to do anything about the dangers of footpaths and public rights of way.
“After the rain, you see, you get all the soil washed off and then the boulders get loose and then down they comes. I remember one year they had three falls—three accidents there was. One boy nearly killed, he was, and then later that year, oh six months later, I think, there was a man got his arm broken, and the third time it was poor old Mrs. Walker. Blind she was and pretty well deaf too. She never heard nothing or she could have got out of the way, they say. Somebody saw it and they called out to her, but they was too far away to reach her or to run to get her. And so she was killed.”
“Oh how sad,” said Miss Marple, “how tragic. The sort of thing that’s not easily forgotten, is it.”
“No indeed. I expect the Coroner’ll mention it today.”
“I expect he will,” said Miss Marple. “In a terrible way it seems quite a natural thing to happen, doesn’t it, though of course there are accidents sometimes by pushing things about, you know. Just pushing, making stones rock. That sort of thing.”
“Ah well, there’s boys as be up to anything. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them up that way, fooling about.”
Miss Marple went on to the subject of pullovers. Bright coloured pullovers.
“It’s not for myself,” she said, “it’s for one of my great-nephews. You know he wants a polo-necked pullover and very bright colours he’d like.”
“Yes, they do like bright colours nowadays, don’t they?” agreed Mrs. Merrypit. “Not in jeans. Black jeans they like. Black or dark blue. But they like a bit of brightness up above.”
Miss Marple described a pullover of check design in bright colours. There appeared to be quite a good stock of pullovers and jerseys, but anything in red and black did not seem to be on display, nor even was anything like it mentioned as having been lately in stock. After looking at a few samples Miss Marple prepared to take her departure, chatting first about the former murders she had heard about which had happened in this part of the world.
“They got the fellow in the end,” said Mrs. Merrypit. “Nice looking boy, hardly have thought it of him. He’d been well brought up, you know. Been to university and all that. Father was very rich, they say. Touched in the head, I suppose. Not that they sent him to Broadway, or whatever the place is. No, they didn’t do that, but I think myself he must have been a mental case—there was five or six other girls, so they said. The police had one after another of the young men round hereabouts to help them. Geoffrey Grant they had up. They were pretty sure it was him to begin with. He was always a bit queer, ever since he was a boy. Interfered with little girls going to school, you know. He used to offer them sweets and get them to come down the lanes with him and see the primroses, or something like that. Yes, they had very strong suspicions about him. But it wasn’t him. And then there was another one. Bert Williams, but he’d been far away on two occasions, at least—what they call an alibi, so it couldn’t be him. And then at last it came to this—what’sis-name, I can’t remember him now. Luke I think his name was—no Mike something. Very nice looking, as I say, but he had a bad record. Yes, stealing, forging cheques, all sorts of things like that. And two what-you-call ’em paternity cases, no, I don’t mean that, but you know what I mean. When a girl’s going to have a baby. You know and they make an order and make the fellow pay. He’d got two girls in the family way before this.”
“Was this girl in the family way?”
“Oh yes, she was. At first we thought when the body was found it might have been Nora Broad. That was Mrs. Broad’s niece, down at the mill shop. Great one for going with the boys, she was. She’d gone away missing from home in the same way. Nobody knew where she was. So when this body turned up six months later they thought at first it was her.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“No—someone quite different.”
“Did her body ever turn up?”
“No. I suppose it might some day, but they think on the whole it was pushed into the river. Ah well, you never know, do you? You never know what you may dig up off a ploughed field or something like that. I was taken once to see all that treasure. Luton Loo was it—some name like that? Somewhere in the East Counties. Under a ploughed field it was. Beautiful. Gold ships and Viking ships and gold plate, enormous great platters. Well, you never know. Any day you may turn up a dead body or you may turn up a gold platter. And it may be hundreds of years old like that gold plate was, or it may be a three-or four-years-old body, like Mary Lucas who’d been missing for four years, they say. Somewhere near Reigate she was found. Ah well, all these things! It’s a sad life. Yes, it’s a very sad life. You never know what’s coming.”
“There was another girl who’d lived here, wasn’t there?” said Miss Marple, “who was killed.”
“You mean the body they thought was Nora Broad’s but it wasn’t? Yes. I’ve forgotten her name now. Hope, it was, I think. Hope or Charity. One of those sort of names, if you know what I mean. Used to be used a lot in Victorian times but you don’t hear them so much nowadays. Lived at the Manor House, she did. She’d been there for some time after her parents were killed.”
“Her parents died in an accident, didn’t they?”
“That’s right. In a plane going to Spain or Italy, one of those places.”
“And you say she came to live here? Were they relations of hers?”
“I don’t know if they were relations, but Mrs. Glynne as she is now, was I think a great friend of her mother’s or something that way. Mrs. Glynne, of course, was married and gone abroad but Miss Clotilde—that’s the eldest one, the dark one—she was very fond of the girl. She took her abroad, to Italy and France and all sorts of places, and she had her trained a bit of typewriting and shorthand and that sort of thing, and art classes too. She’s very arty, Miss Clotilde is. Oh, she was mighty fond of the girl. Brokenhearted she was when she disappeared. Quite different to Miss Anthea—”
“Miss Anthea is the youngest one, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Not quite all there, some people say. Scatty like, you know, in her mind. Sometimes you see her walking along, talking to herself, you know, and tossing her head in a very queer way. Children get frightened of her sometimes. They say she’s a bit queer about things. I don’t know. You hear everything in a village, don’t you? The great-uncle who lived here before, he was a bit peculiar too. Used to practise revolver shooting in the garden. For no reason at all so far as anyone could see. Proud of his marksmanship, he said he was, whatever marksmanship is.”
“But Miss Clotilde is not peculiar?”
“Oh no, she’s clever, she is. Knows Latin and Greek, I believe. Would have liked to go to university but she had to look after her
mother who was an invalid for a long time. But she was very fond of Miss—now, what was her name?—Faith perhaps. She was very fond of her and treated her like a daughter. And then along comes this young what’s-his-name, Michael I think it was—and then one day the girl just goes off without saying a word to anyone. I don’t know if Miss Clotilde knew as she was in the family way.”
“But you knew,” said Miss Marple.
“Ah well, I’ve got a lot of experience. I usually know when a girl’s that way. It’s plain enough to the eye. It’s not only the shape, as you might say, you can tell by the look in their eyes and the way they walk and sit, and the sort of giddy fits they get and sick turns now and again. Oh yes, I thought to myself, here’s another one of them. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify the body. Nearly broke her up, it did. She was like a different woman for weeks afterwards. Fairly loved that girl, she did.”
“And the other one—Miss Anthea?”
“Funnily enough, you know, I thought she had a kind of pleased look as though she was—yes, just pleased. Not nice, eh? Farmer Plummer’s daughter used to look like that. Always used to go and see pigs killed. Enjoyed it. Funny things goes on in families.”
Miss Marple said good-bye, saw she had another ten minutes to go and passed on to the post office. The post office and general store of Jocelyn St. Mary was just off the Market Square.
Miss Marple went into the post office, bought some stamps, looked at some of the postcards and then turned her attention to various paperback books. A middle-aged woman with rather a vinegary face presided behind the postal counter. She assisted Miss Marple to free a book from the wire support in which the books were.
“Stick a bit sometimes, they do. People don’t put them back straight, you see.”