The Body in the Library (Miss Marple 3)

“Where did you get it?” asked Miss Marple.

“Well, it was a bit of luck, really. Because, of course, I didn’t know she was going to be murdered then. It was before dinner last night. Ruby caught her nail in Josie’s shawl and it tore it. Mums cut it off for her and gave it to me and said put it in the wastepaper basket, and I meant to, but I put it in my pocket instead, and this morning I remembered and looked to see if it was still there and it was, so now I’ve got it as a souvenir.”

“Disgusting,” said Mrs. Bantry.

Peter said politely: “Oh, do you think so?”

“Got any other souvenirs?” asked Sir Henry.

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve got something that might be.”

“Explain yourself, young man.”

Peter looked at him thoughtfully. Then he pulled out an envelope. From the inside of it he extracted a piece of browny tapey substance.

“It’s a bit of that chap George Bartlett’s shoe-lace,” he explained. “I saw his shoes outside the door this morning and I bagged a bit just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case he should be the murderer, of course. He was the last person to see her and that’s always frightfully suspicious, you know. Is it nearly dinner time, do you think? I’m frightfully hungry. It always seems such a long time between tea and dinner. Hallo, there’s Uncle Hugo. I didn’t know Mums had asked him to come down. I suppose she sent for him. She always does if she’s in a jam. Here’s Josie coming. Hi, Josie!”

Josephine Turner, coming along the terrace, stopped and looked rather startled to see Mrs. Bantry and Miss Marple.

Mrs. Bantry said pleasantly:

“How d’you do, Miss Turner. We’ve come to do a bit of sleuthing!”

Josie cast a guilty glance round. She said, lowering her voice:

“It’s awful. Nobody knows yet. I mean, it isn’t in the papers yet. I suppose everyone will be asking me questions and it’s so awkward. I don’t know what I ought to say.”

Her glance went rather wistfully towards Miss Marple, who said: “Yes, it will be a very difficult situation for you, I’m afraid.”

Josie warmed to this sympathy.

“You see, Mr. Prestcott said to me: ‘Don’t talk about it.’ And that’s all very well, but everyone is sure to ask me, and you can’t offend people, can you? Mr. Prestcott said he hoped I’d feel able to carry on as usual—and he wasn’t very nice about it, so of course I want to do my best. And I really don’t see why it should all be blamed on me.”

Sir Henry said:

“Do you mind me asking you a frank question, Miss Turner?”

“Oh, do ask me anything you like,” said Josie, a little insincerely.

“Has there been any unpleasantness between you and Mrs. Jefferson and Mr. Gaskell over all this?”

“Over the murder, do you mean?”

“No, I don’t mean the murder.”

Josie stood twisting her fingers together. She said rather sullenly:

“Well, there has and there hasn’t, if you know what I mean. Neither of them have said anything. But I think they blamed it on me—Mr. Jefferson taking such a fancy to Ruby, I mean. It wasn’t my fault, though, was it? These things happen, and I never dreamt of such a thing happening beforehand, not for a moment. I—I was quite dumbfounded.”

Her words rang out with what seemed undeniable sincerity.

Sir Henry said kindly:

“I’m quite sure you were. But once it had happened?”

Josie’s chin went up.

“Well, it was a piece of luck, wasn’t it? Everyone’s got the right to have a piece of luck sometimes.”

She looked from one to the other of them in a slightly defiant questioning manner and then went on across the terrace and into the hotel.

Peter said judicially:

“I don’t think she did it.”

Miss Marple murmured:

“It’s interesting, that piece of fingernail. It had been worrying me, you know—how to account for her nails.”

“Nails?” asked Sir Henry.

“The dead girl’s nails,” explained Mrs. Bantry. “They were quite short, and now that Jane says so, of course it was a little unlikely. A girl like that usually has absolute talons.”

Miss Marple said:

“But of course if she tore one off, then she might clip the others close, so as to match. Did they find nail parings in her room, I wonder?”

Sir Henry looked at her curiously. He said:

“I’ll ask Superintendent Harper when he gets back.”

“Back from where?” asked Mrs. Bantry. “He hasn’t gone over to Gossington, has he?”

Sir Henry said gravely:

“No. There’s been another tragedy. Blazing car in a quarry—”

Miss Marple caught her breath.

“Was there someone in the car?”

“I’m afraid so—yes.”

Miss Marple said thoughtfully:

“I expect that will be the Girl Guide who’s missing—Patience—no, Pamela Reeves.”

Sir Henry stared at her.

“Now why on earth do you think that, Miss Marple?”

Miss Marple got rather pink.

“Well, it was given out on the wireless that she was missing from her home—since last night. And her home was Daneleigh Vale; that’s not very far from here. And she was last seen at the Girl-Guide Rally up on Danebury Downs. That’s very close indeed. In fact, she’d have to pass through Danemouth to get home. So it does rather fit in, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks as though she might have seen—or perhaps heard—something that no one was supposed to see and hear. If so, of course, she’d be a source of danger to the murderer and she’d have to be—removed. Two things like that must be connected, don’t you think?”

Sir Henry said, his voice dropping a little:

“You think—a second murder?”

“Why not?” Her quiet placid gaze met his. “When anyone has committed one murder, they don’t shrink from another, do they? Nor even from a third.”

“A third? You don’t think there will be a third murder?”

“I think it’s just possible … Yes, I think it’s highly possible.”

“Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry, “you frighten me. Do you know who is going to be murdered?”

Miss Marple said: “I’ve a very good idea.”

Ten

I

Superintendent Harper stood looking at the charred and twisted heap of metal. A burnt-up car was always a revolting object, even without the additional gruesome burden of a charred and blackened corpse.

Venn’s Quarry was a remote spot, far from any human habitation. Though actually only two miles as the crow flies from Danemouth, the approach to it was by one of those narrow, twisted, rutted roads, little more than a cart track, which led nowhere except to the quarry itself. It was a long time now since the quarry had been worked, and the only people who came along the lane were the casual visitors in search of blackberries. As a spot to dispose of a car it was ideal. The car need not have been found for weeks but for the accident of the glow in the sky having been seen by Albert Biggs, a labourer, on his way to work.

Albert Biggs was still on the scene, though all he had to tell had been heard some time ago, but he continued to repeat the thrilling story with such embellishments as occurred to him.

“Why, dang my eyes, I said, whatever be that? Proper glow it was, up in the sky. Might be a bonfire, I says, but who’d be having bonfire over to Venn’s Quarry? No, I says, ’tis some mighty big fire, to be sure. But whatever would it be, I says? There’s no house or farm to that direction. ’Tis over by Venn’s, I says, that’s where it is, to be sure. Didn’t rightly know what I ought to do about it, but seeing as Constable Gregg comes along just then on his bicycle, I tells him about it. ’Twas all died down by then, but I tells him just where ’twere. ’Tis over that direction, I says. Big glare in the sky, I says. Mayhap as it’s a rick, I says.

One of them tramps, as likely as not, set alight of it. But I did never think as how it might be a car—far less as someone was being burnt up alive in it. ’Tis a terrible tragedy, to be sure.”

The Glenshire police had been busy. Cameras had clicked and the position of the charred body had been carefully noted before the police surgeon had started his own investigation.

The latter came over now to Harper, dusting black ash off his hands, his lips set grimly together.

“A pretty thorough job,” he said. “Part of one foot and shoe are about all that has escaped. Personally I myself couldn’t say if the body was a man’s or a woman’s at the moment, though we’ll get some indication from the bones, I expect. But the shoe is one of the black strapped affairs—the kind schoolgirls wear.”

“There’s a schoolgirl missing from the next county,” said Harper; “quite close to here. Girl of sixteen or so.”

“Then it’s probably her,” said the doctor. “Poor kid.”

Harper said uneasily: “She wasn’t alive when—?”

“No, no, I don’t think so. No signs of her having tried to get out. Body was just slumped down on the seat—with the foot sticking out. She was dead when she was put there, I should say. Then the car was set fire to in order to try and get rid of the evidence.”

He paused, and asked:

“Want me any longer?”

“I don’t think so, thank you.”

“Right. I’ll be off.”

He strode away to his car. Harper went over to where one of his sergeants, a man who specialized in car cases, was busy.

The latter looked up.

“Quite a clear case, sir. Petrol poured over the car and the whole thing deliberately set light to. There are three empty cans in the hedge over there.”

A little farther away another man was carefully arranging small objects picked out of the wreckage. There was a scorched black leather shoe and with it some scraps of scorched and blackened material. As Harper approached, his subordinate looked up and exclaimed:

“Look at this, sir. This seems to clinch it.”

Harper took the small object in his hand. He said:

“Button from a Girl Guide’s uniform?”

“Yes, sir.”