Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple 1)

“It’s a very simple matter,” she continued. “My maid, Clara, was standing at the front gate, she went down there for a minute or two—she says to get a breath of fresh air. Most unlikely, I should say. Much more probable that she was looking out for the fishmonger’s boy—if he calls himself a boy—impudent young jackanapes, thinks because he’s seventeen he can joke with all the girls. Anyway, as I say, she was standing at the gate and she heard a sneeze.”

“Yes,” I said, waiting for more.

“That’s all. I tell you she heard a sneeze. And don’t start telling me I’m not so young as I once was and may have made a mistake, because it was Clara who heard it and she’s only nineteen.”

“But,” I said, “why shouldn’t she have heard a sneeze?”

Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me in obvious pity for my poorness of intellect.

“She heard a sneeze on the day of the murder at a time when there was no one in your house. Doubtless the murderer was concealed in the bushes waiting his opportunity. What you have to look for is a man with a cold in his head.”

“Or a sufferer from hay fever,” I suggested. “But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Price Ridley, I think that mystery has a very easy solution. Our maid, Mary, has been suffering from a severe cold in the head. In fact, her sniffing has tried us very much lately. It must have been her sneeze your maid heard.”

“It was a man’s sneeze,” said Mrs. Price Ridley firmly. “And you couldn’t hear your maid sneeze in your kitchen from our gate.”

“You couldn’t hear anyone sneezing in the study from your gate,” I said. “Or at least, I very much doubt it.”

“I said the man might have been concealed in the shrubbery,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “Doubtless when Clara had gone in, he effected an entrance by the front door.”

“Well, of course, that’s possible,” I said.

I tried not to make my voice consciously soothing, but I must have failed, for Mrs. Price Ridley glared at me suddenly.

“I am accustomed not to be listened to, but I might mention also that to leave a tennis racquet carelessly flung down on the grass without a press completely ruins it. And tennis racquets are very expensive nowadays.”

There did not seem to be rhyme or reason in this flank attack. It bewildered me utterly.

“But perhaps you don’t agree,” said Mrs. Price Ridley.

“Oh! I do—certainly.”

“I am glad. Well, that is all I have to say. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes like one weary of this world. I thanked her and said good-bye.

On the doorstep, I ventured to ask Clara about her mistress’s statement.

“It’s quite true, sir, I heard a sneeze. And it wasn’t an ordinary sneeze—not by any means.”

Nothing about a crime is ever ordinary. The shot was not an ordinary kind of shot. The sneeze was not a usual kind of sneeze. It was, I presume, a special murderer’s sneeze. I asked the girl what time this had been, but she was very vague, some time between a quarter and half past six she thought. Anyway, “it was before the mistress had the telephone call and was took bad.”

I asked her if she had heard a shot of any kind. And she said the shots had been something awful. After that, I placed very little credence in her statements.

I was just turning in at my own gate when I decided to pay a friend a visit.

Glancing at my watch, I saw that I had just time for it before taking Evensong. I went down the road to Haydock’s house. He came out on the doorstep to meet me.

I noticed afresh how worried and haggard he looked. This business seemed to have aged him out of all knowledge.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “What’s the news?”

I told him the latest Stone development.

“A high-class thief,” he commented. “Well, that explains a lot of things. He’d read up his subject, but he made slips from time to time to me. Protheroe must have caught him out once. You remember the row they had. What do you think about the girl? Is she in it too?”

“Opinion as to that is undecided,” I said. “For my own part, I think the girl is all right.

“She’s such a prize idiot,” I added.

“Oh! I wouldn’t say that. She’s rather shrewd, is Miss Gladys Cram. A remarkably healthy specimen. Not likely to trouble members of my profession.”

I told him that I was worried about Hawes, and that I was anxious that he should get away for a real rest and change.

Something evasive came into his manner when I said this. His answer did not ring quite true.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose that would be the best thing. Poor chap. Poor chap.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t—not much. But I’m sorry for a lot of people I don’t like.” He added after a minute or two: “I’m even sorry for Protheroe. Poor fellow—nobody ever liked him much. Too full of his own rectitude and too self-assertive. It’s an unlovable mixture. He was always the same—even as a young man.”

“I didn’t know you knew him then.”

“Oh, yes! When we lived in Westmorland, I had a practice not far away. That’s a long time ago now. Nearly twenty years.”

I sighed. Twenty years ago Griselda was five years old. Time is an odd thing….

“Is that all you came to say to me, Clement?”

I looked up with a start. Haydock was watching me with keen eyes.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said.

I nodded.

I had been uncertain whether to speak or not when I came in, but now I decided to do so. I like Haydock as well as any man I know. He is a splendid fellow in every way. I felt that what I had to tell might be useful to him.

I recited my interviews with Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby.

He was silent for a long time after I’d spoken.

“It’s quite true, Clement,” he said at last. “I’ve been trying to shield Mrs. Lestrange from any inconvenience that I could. As a matter of fact, she’s an old friend. But that’s not my only reason. That medical

certificate of mine isn’t the put-up job you all think it was.”

He paused, and then said gravely:

“This is between you and me, Clement. Mrs. Lestrange is doomed.”

“What?”

“She’s a dying woman. I give her a month at longest. Do you wonder that I want to keep her from being badgered and questioned?”

He went on:

“When she turned into this road that evening it was here she came—to this house.”

“You haven’t said so before.”

“I didn’t want to create talk. Six to seven isn’t my time for seeing patients, and everyone knows that. But you can take my word for it that she was here.”

“She wasn’t here when I came for you, though. I mean, when we discovered the body.”

“No,” he seemed perturbed. “She’d left—to keep an appointment.”

“In what direction was the appointment? In her own house?”

“I don’t know, Clement. On my honour, I don’t know.”

I believed him, but—

“And supposing an innocent man is hanged?” I said.

“No,” he said. “No one will be hanged for the murder of Colonel Protheroe. You can take my word for that.”

But that is just what I could not do. And yet the certainty in his voice was very great.

“No one will be hanged,” he repeated.

“This man, Archer—”

He made an impatient movement.

“Hasn’t got brains enough to wipe his fingerprints off the pistol.”

“Perhaps not,” I said dubiously.

Then I remembered something, and taking the little brownish crystal I had found in the wood from my pocket, I held it out to him and asked him what it was.

“H’m,” he hesitated. “Looks like picric acid. Where did you find it?”

“That,” I replied, “is Sherlock Holmes’s secret.”

He smiled.

“What is picric acid?”

“Well, it’s an explosive.”

“Yes, I know that, but it’s got another use, hasn’t it?”

He nodded.

“It’s used medically—in solution for burns. Wonderful stuff.”

I held out my hand, and rather reluctantly he handed it back to me.

“It’s of no consequence probably,” I said. “But I found it in rather an unusual place.”