A distinct frost had come over the assembly. Two of the ladies rose to take their departure.
“I wonder if there is anything between young Lawrence Redding and Lettice Protheroe,” said Miss Wetherby. “It certainly looks like it. What do you think, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple seemed thoughtful.
“I shouldn’t have said so myself. Not Lettice. Quite another person I should have said.”
“But Colonel Protheroe must have thought….”
“He has always struck me as rather a stupid man,” said Miss Marple. “The kind of man who gets the wrong idea into his head and is obstinate about it. Do you remember Joe Bucknell who used to keep the Blue Boar? Such a to-do about his daughter carrying on with young Bailey. And all the time it was that minx of a wife of his.”
She was looking full at Griselda as she spoke, and I suddenly felt a wild surge of anger.
“Don’t you think, Miss Marple,” I said, “that we’re all inclined to let our tongues run away with us too much. Charity thinketh no evil, you know. Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip.”
“Dear Vicar,” said Miss Marple, “You are so unworldly. I’m afraid that observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it. I dare say the idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn’t it?”
That last Parthian shot went home.
Three
“Nasty old cat,” said Griselda, as soon as the door was closed.
She made a face in the direction of the departing visitors and then looked at me and laughed.
“Len, do you really suspect me of having an affair with Lawrence Redding?”
“My dear, of course not.”
“But you thought Miss Marple was hinting at it. And you rose to my defence simply beautifully. Like—like an angry tiger.”
A momentary uneasiness assailed me. A clergyman of the Church of England ought never to put himself in the position of being described as an angry tiger.
“I felt the occasion could not pass without a protest,” I said. “But Griselda, I wish you would be a little more careful in what you say.”
“Do you mean the cannibal story?” she asked. “Or the suggestion that Lawrence was painting me in the nude! If they only knew that he was painting me in a thick cloak with a very high fur collar—the sort of thing that you could go quite purely to see the Pope in—not a bit of sinful flesh showing anywhere! In fact, it’s all marvellously pure. Lawrence never even attempts to make love to me—I can’t think why.”
“Surely knowing that you’re a married woman—”
“Don’t pretend to come out of the ark, Len. You know very well that an attractive young woman with an elderly husband is a kind of gift from heaven to a young man. There must be some other reason—it’s not that I’m unattractive—I’m not.”
“Surely you don’t want him to make love to you?”
“N-n-o,” said Griselda, with more hesitation than I thought becoming.
“If he’s in love with Lettice Protheroe—”
“Miss Marple didn’t seem to think he was.”
“Miss Marple may be mistaken.”
“She never is. That kind of old cat is always right.” She paused a minute and then said, with a quick sidelong glance at me: “You do believe me, don’t you? I mean, that there’s nothing between Lawrence and me.”
“My dear Griselda,” I said, surprised. “Of course.”
My wife came across and kissed me.
“I wish you weren’t so terribly easy to deceive, Len. You’d believe me whatever I said.”
“I should hope so. But, my dear, I do beg of you to guard your tongue and be careful of what you say. These women are singularly deficient in humour, remember, and take everything seriously.”
“What they need,” said Griselda, “is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn’t be so busy looking for it in other people’s.”
And on this she left the room, and glancing at my watch I hurried out to pay some visits that ought to have been made earlier in the day.
The Wednesday evening service was sparsely attended as usual, but when I came out through the church, after disrobing in the vestry, it was empty save for a woman who stood staring up at one of our windows. We have some rather fine old stained glass, and indeed the church itself is well worth looking at. She turned at my footsteps, and I saw that it was Mrs. Lestrange.
We both hesitated a moment, and then I said:
“I hope you like our little church.”
“I’ve been admiring the screen,” she said.
Her voice was pleasant, low, yet very distinct, with a clearcut enunciation. She added:
“I’m so sorry to have missed your wife yesterday.”
We talked a few minutes longer about the church. She was evidently a cultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture. We left the building together and walked down the road, since one way to the Vicarage led past her house. As we arrived at the gate, she said pleasantly:
“Come in, won’t you? And tell me what you think of what I have done.”
I accepted the invitation. Little Gates had formerly belonged to an Anglo-Indian colonel, and I could not help feeling relieved by the disappearance of the brass tables and Burmese idols. It was furnished now very simply, but in exquisite taste. There was a sense of harmony and rest about it.
Yet I wondered more and more what had brought such a woman as Mrs. Lestrange to St. Mary Mead. She was so very clearly a woman of the world that it seemed a strange taste to bury herself in a country village.
In the clear light of her drawing room I had an opportunity of observing her closely for the first time.
She was a very tall woman. Her hair was gold with a tinge of red in it. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, whether by art or by nature I could not decide. If she was, as I thought, made up, it was done very artistically. There was something Sphinxlike about her face when it was in repose and she had the most curious eyes I have ever seen—they were almost golden in shade.
Her clothes were perfect and she had all the ease of manner of a well-bred woman, and yet there was something about her that was incongruous and baffling. You felt that she was a mystery. The word Griselda had used occurred to me—sinister. Absurd, of course, and yet—was it so absurd? The thought sprang unbidden into my mind: “This woman would stick at nothing.”
Our talk was on most normal lines—pictures, books, old churches. Yet somehow I got very strongly the impression that there was something else—something of quite a different nature that Mrs. Lestrange wanted to say to me.
I caught her eye on me once or twice, looking at me with a curious hesitancy, as though she were unable to make up her mind. She kept the talk, I noticed, strictly to impersonal subjects. She made no mention of a husband or relations.
But all the time there was that strange urgent appeal in her glance. It seemed to say: “Shall I tell you? I want to. Can’t you help me?”
Yet in the end it died away—or perhaps it had all been my fancy. I had the feeling that I was being dismissed. I rose and took my leave. As I went out of the room, I glanced back and saw her staring after me with a puzzled, doubtful expression. On an impulse I came back:
“If there is anything I can do—”
She said doubtfully: “It’s very kind of
you—”
We were both silent. Then she said:
“I wish I knew. It’s difficult. No, I don’t think anyone can help me. But thank you for offering to do so.”
That seemed final, so I went. But as I did so, I wondered. We are not used to mysteries in St. Mary Mead.
So much is this the case that as I emerged from the gate I was pounced upon. Miss Hartnell is very good at pouncing in a heavy and cumbrous way.
“I saw you!” she exclaimed with ponderous humour. “And I was so excited. Now you can tell us all about it.”
“About what?”
“The mysterious lady! Is she a widow or has she a husband somewhere?”
“I really couldn’t say. She didn’t tell me.”
“How very peculiar. One would think she would be certain to mention something casually. It almost looks, doesn’t it, as though she had a reason for not speaking?”
“I really don’t see that.”
“Ah! But as dear Miss Marple says, you are so unworldly, dear Vicar. Tell me, has she known Dr. Haydock long?”
“She didn’t mention him, so I don’t know.”
“Really? But what did you talk about then?”
“Pictures, music, books,” I said truthfully.
Miss Hartnell, whose only topics of conversation are the purely personal, looked suspicious and unbelieving. Taking advantage of a momentary hesitation on her part as to how to proceed next, I bade her good night and walked rapidly away.
I called in at a house farther down the village and returned to the Vicarage by the garden gate, passing, as I did so, the danger point of Miss Marple’s garden. However, I did not see how it was humanly possible for the news of my visit to Mrs. Lestrange to have yet reached her ears, so I felt reasonably safe.
As I latched the gate, it occurred to me that I would just step down to the shed in the garden which young Lawrence Redding was using as a studio, and see for myself how Griselda’s portrait was progressing.