“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 wou
ld have her.”
I perceived that my wife’s methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had imagined. 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.”