Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple 1)

I append a rough sketch here which will be useful in the light of after happenings, only sketching in such details as are necessary.

I had no idea there was anyone in the studio. There had been no voices from within to warn me, and I suppose that my own footsteps made no noise upon the grass.

I opened the door and then stopped awkwardly on the threshold. For there were two people in the studio, and the man’s arms were round the woman and he was kissing her passionately.

The two people were the artist, Lawrence Redding, and Mrs. Protheroe.

I backed out precipitately and beat a retreat to my study. There I sat down in a chair, took out my pipe, and thought things over. The discovery had come as a great shock to me. Especially since my conversation with Lettice that afternoon, I had felt fairly certain that there was some kind of understanding growing up between her and the young man. Moreover, I was convinced that she herself thought so. I felt positive that she had no idea of the artist’s feelings for her stepmother.

A nasty tangle. I paid a grudging tribute to Miss Marple. She had not been deceived but had evidently suspected the true state of things with a fair amount of accuracy. I had entirely misread her meaning glance at Griselda.

I had never dreamt of considering Mrs. Protheroe in the matter. There has always been rather a suggestion of Caesar’s wife about Mrs. Protheroe—a quiet, self-contained woman whom one would not suspect of any great depths of feeling.

I had got to this point in my meditations when a tap on my study window aroused me. I got up and went to it. Mrs. Protheroe was standing outside. I opened the window and she came in, not waiting for an invitation on my part. She crossed the room in a breathless sort of way and dropped down on the sofa.

I had the feeling that I had never really seen her before. The quiet self-contained woman that I knew had vanished. In her place was a quick-breathing, desperate creature. For the first time I realized that Anne Protheroe was beautiful.

She was a brown-haired woman with a pale face and very deep set grey eyes. She was flushed now and her breast heaved. It was as though a statue had suddenly come to life. I blinked my eyes at the transformation.

“I thought it best to come,” she said. “You—you saw just now?” I bowed my head.

She said very quietly: “We love each other….”

And even in the middle of her evident distress and agitation she could not keep a little smile from her lips. The smile of a woman who sees something very beautiful and wonderful.

I still said nothing, and she added presently:

“I suppose to you that seems very wrong?”

“Can you expect me to say anything else, Mrs. Protheroe?”

“No—no, I suppose not.”

I went on, trying to make my voice as gentle as possible:

“You are a married woman—”

She interrupted me.

“Oh! I know—I know. Do you think I haven’t gone over all that again and again? I’m not a bad woman really—I’m not. And things aren’t—aren’t—as you might think they are.”

I said gravely: “I’m glad of that.”

She asked rather timorously:

“Are you going to tell my husband?”

I said rather dryly:

“There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.”

She threw me a grateful glance.

“I’m so unhappy. Oh! I’m so dreadfully unhappy. I can’t go on. I simply can’t go on. And I don’t know what to do.” Her voice rose with a slightly hysterical note in it. “You don’t know what my life is like. I’ve been miserable with Lucius from the beginning. No woman could be happy with him. I wish he were dead … It’s awful, but I do … I’m desperate. I tell you, I’m desperate.” She started and looked over at the window.

“What was that? I thought I heard someone? Perhaps it’s Lawrence.”

I went over to the window which I had not closed as I had thought. I stepped out and looked down the garden, but there was no one in sight. Yet I was almost convinced that I, too, had heard someone. Or perhaps it was her certainty that had convinced me.

When I reentered the room she was leaning forward, drooping her head down. She looked the picture of despair. She said again:

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

I came and sat down beside her. I said the things I thought it was my duty to say, and tried to say them with the necessary conviction, uneasily conscious all the time that that same morning I had given voice to the sentiment that a world without Colonel Protheroe in it would be improved for the better.

Above all, I begged her to do nothing rash. To leave her home and her husband was a very serious step.

I don’t suppose I convinced her. I have lived long enough in the world to know that arguing with anyone in love is next door to useless, but I do think my words brought to her some measure of comfort.

When she rose to go, she thanked me, and promised to think over what I had said.

Nevertheless, when she had gone, I felt very uneasy. I felt that hitherto I had misjudged Anne Protheroe’s character. She impressed me now as a very desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothing once her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately, wildly, madly in love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself. I didn’t like it.

Four

I had entirely forgotten that we had asked Lawrence Redding to dinner that night. When Griselda burst in and scolded me, pointing out that it lacked two minutes to dinner time, I was quite taken aback.

“I hope everything will be all right,” Griselda called up the stairs after me. “I’ve thought over what you said at lunch, and I’ve really thought of some quite good things to eat.”

I may say, in passing, that our evening meal amply bore out Griselda’s assertion that things went much worse when she tried than when she didn’t. The menu was ambitious in conception, and Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking. Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with—an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived.

I had rather doubted whether Lawrence Redding would put in an appearance. He might very easily have sent an excuse.

However, he arrived punctually enough, and the four of us went in to dinner.

Lawrence Redding has an undeniably attractive personality. He is, I suppose, about thirty years of age. He has dark hair, but his eyes are of a brilliant, almost startling blue. He is the kind of young man who does everything well. He is good at games, an excellent shot, a good amateur actor, and can tell a first-rate story. He is capable of making any party go. He has, I think, Irish blood in his veins. He is not, at all, one’s idea of the typical artist. Yet I believe he is a clever painter in the modern style. I know very little of painting myself.

It was only natural that on this particular evening he should appear a shade distrait. On the whole, he carried off things very well. I don’t think Griselda or Dennis noticed anything wrong. Probably I should not have noticed anything myself if I had not known beforehand.

Griselda and Dennis were particularly gay—full of jokes about Dr. Stone and Miss Cram—the Local Scandal! It suddenly came home to me with something of a pang that Dennis is nearer Griselda’s age than I am. He calls me Uncle Len, but her Griselda. It gave me, somehow, a lonely feeling.

I must, I think, have been upset by Mrs. Protheroe. I’m not usually given to such unprofitable reflections.

Griselda and Dennis went rather far now and then, but I hadn’t the heart to check them. I have always thought it a pity that the mere presence of a clergyman should have a dampening effect.

Lawrence took a gay part in the conversation. Nevertheless I was aware of his eyes co

ntinually straying to where I sat, and I was not surprised when after dinner he manoeuvred to get me into the study.

As soon as we were alone his manner changed.

“You’ve surprised our secret, sir,” he said. “What are you going to do about it?”

I could speak far more plainly to Redding than I could to Mrs. Protheroe, and I did so. He took it very well.

“Of course,” he said, when I had finished, “you’re bound to say all this. You’re a parson. I don’t mean that in any way offensively. As a matter of fact I think you’re probably right. But this isn’t the usual sort of thing between Anne and me.”

I told him that people had been saying that particular phrase since the dawn of time, and a queer little smile creased his lips.

“You mean everyone thinks their case is unique? Perhaps so. But one thing you must believe.”

He assured me that so far—“there was nothing wrong in it.” Anne, he said, was one of the truest and most loyal women that ever lived. What was going to happen he didn’t know.

“If this were only a book,” he said gloomily, “the old man would die—and a good riddance to everybody.”

I reproved him.

“Oh! I didn’t mean I was going to stick him in the back with a knife, though I’d offer my best thanks to anyone else who did so. There’s not a soul in the world who’s got a good word to say for him. I rather wonder the first Mrs. Protheroe didn’t do him in. I met her once, years ago, and she looked quite capable of it. One of those calm dangerous women. He goes blustering along, stirring up trouble everywhere, mean as the devil, and with a particularly nasty temper. You don’t know what Anne has had to stand from him. If I had a penny in the world I’d take her away without any more ado.”