The vicar star
ed. He said:
“You—you are feeling quite well?”
“No wonder you can’t believe it! I couldn’t at first. The hypocrisy of the man! All these years!”
“Please tell me exactly what all this is about.”
Mrs. Price Ridley plunged into a full-swing narrative. When she had finished Mr. Clement said mildly:
“But there is nothing, is there, to point to Colonel Bantry’s being involved in this?”
“Oh, dear vicar, you are so unworldly! But I must tell you a little story. Last Thursday—or was it the Thursday before? well, it doesn’t matter—I was going up to London by the cheap day train. Colonel Bantry was in the same carriage. He looked, I thought, very abstracted. And nearly the whole way he buried himself behind The Times. As though, you know, he didn’t want to talk.”
The vicar nodded with complete comprehension and possible sympathy.
“At Paddington I said good-bye. He had offered to get me a taxi, but I was taking the bus down to Oxford Street—but he got into one, and I distinctly heard him tell the driver to go to—where do you think?”
Mr. Clement looked inquiring.
“An address in St. John’s Wood!”
Mrs. Price Ridley paused triumphantly.
The vicar remained completely unenlightened.
“That, I consider, proves it,” said Mrs. Price Ridley.
IV
At Gossington, Mrs. Bantry and Miss Marple were sitting in the drawing room.
“You know,” said Mrs. Bantry, “I can’t help feeling glad they’ve taken the body away. It’s not nice to have a body in one’s house.”
Miss Marple nodded.
“I know, dear. I know just how you feel.”
“You can’t,” said Mrs. Bantry; “not until you’ve had one. I know you had one next door once, but that’s not the same thing. I only hope,” she went on, “that Arthur won’t take a dislike to the library. We sit there so much. What are you doing, Jane?”
For Miss Marple, with a glance at her watch, was rising to her feet. “Well, I was thinking I’d go home. If there’s nothing more I can do for you?”
“Don’t go yet,” said Mrs. Bantry. “The fingerprint men and the photographers and most of the police have gone, I know, but I still feel something might happen. You don’t want to miss anything.”
The telephone rang and she went off to answer. She returned with a beaming face.
“I told you more things would happen. That was Colonel Melchett. He’s bringing the poor girl’s cousin along.”
“I wonder why,” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, I suppose, to see where it happened and all that.”
“More than that, I expect,” said Miss Marple.
“What do you mean, Jane?”
“Well, I think—perhaps—he might want her to meet Colonel Bantry.”
Mrs. Bantry said sharply:
“To see if she recognizes him? I suppose—oh, yes, I suppose they’re bound to suspect Arthur.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“As though Arthur could have anything to do with it!”
Miss Marple was silent. Mrs. Bantry turned on her accusingly.
“And don’t quote old General Henderson—or some frightful old man who kept his housemaid—at me. Arthur isn’t like that.”
“No, no, of course not.”
“No, but he really isn’t. He’s just—sometimes—a little silly about pretty girls who come to tennis. You know—rather fatuous and avuncular. There’s no harm in it. And why shouldn’t he? After all,” finished Mrs. Bantry rather obscurely, “I’ve got the garden.”
Miss Marple smiled.
“You must not worry, Dolly,” she said.
“No, I don’t mean to. But all the same I do a little. So does Arthur. It’s upset him. All these policemen prowling about. He’s gone down to the farm. Looking at pigs and things always soothes him if he’s been upset. Hallo, here they are.”
The Chief Constable’s car drew up outside.
Colonel Melchett came in accompanied by a smartly dressed young woman.
“This is Miss Turner, Mrs. Bantry. The cousin of the—er—victim.”
“How do you do,” said Mrs. Bantry, advancing with outstretched hand. “All this must be rather awful for you.”
Josephine Turner said frankly: “Oh, it is. None of it seems real, somehow. It’s like a bad dream.”
Mrs. Bantry introduced Miss Marple.
Melchett said casually: “Your good man about?”
“He had to go down to one of the farms. He’ll be back soon.”
“Oh—” Melchett seemed rather at a loss.
Mrs. Bantry said to Josie: “Would you like to see where—where it happened? Or would you rather not?”
Josephine said after a moment’s pause:
“I think I’d like to see.”
Mrs. Bantry led her to her library with Miss Marple and Melchett following behind.
“She was there,” said Mrs. Bantry, pointing dramatically; “on the hearthrug.”
“Oh!” Josie shuddered. But she also looked perplexed. She said, her brow creased: “I just can’t understand it! I can’t!”
“Well, we certainly can’t,” said Mrs. Bantry.
Josie said slowly:
“It isn’t the sort of place—” and broke off.
Miss Marple nodded her head gently in agreement with the unfinished sentiment.
“That,” she murmured, “is what makes it so very interesting.”
“Come now, Miss Marple,” said Colonel Melchett goodhumouredly, “haven’t you got an explanation?”
“Oh yes, I’ve got an explanation,” said Miss Marple. “Quite a feasible one. But of course it’s only my own idea. Tommy Bond,” she continued, “and Mrs. Martin, our new schoolmistress. She went to wind up the clock and a frog jumped out.”
Josephine Turner looked puzzled. As they all went out of the room she murmured to Mrs. Bantry: “Is the old lady a bit funny in the head?”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Bantry indignantly.
Josie said: “Sorry; I thought perhaps she thought she was a frog or something.”
Colonel Bantry was just coming in through the side door. Melchett hailed him, and watched Josephine Turner as he introduced them to each other. But there was no sign of interest or recognition in her face. Melchett breathed a sigh of relief. Curse Slack and his insinuations!
In answer to Mrs. Bantry’s questions Josie was pouring out the story of Ruby Keene’s disappearance.
“Frightfully worrying for you, my dear,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“I was more angry than worried,” said Josie. “You see, I didn’t know then that anything had happened to her.”
“And yet,” said Miss Marple, “you went to the police. Wasn’t that—excuse me—rather premature?”
Josie said eagerly:
“Oh, but I didn’t. That was Mr. Jefferson—”
Mrs. Bantry said: “Jefferson?”
“Yes, he’s an invalid.”
“Not Conway Jefferson? But I know him well. He’s an old friend of ours. Arthur, listen—Conway Jefferson. He’s staying at the Majestic, and it was he who went to the police! Isn’t that a coincidence?”
Josephine Turner said:
“Mr. Jefferson was here last summer too.”
“Fancy! And we never knew. I haven’t seen him for a long time.” She turned to Josie. “How—how is he, nowadays?”
Josie considered.
“I think he’s wonderful, really—quite wonderful. Considering, I mean. He’s always cheerful—always got a joke.”
“Are the family there with him?”
“Mr. Gaskell, you mean? And young Mrs. Jefferson? And Peter? Oh, yes.”
There was something inhibiting Josephine Turner’s usual attractive frankness of manner. When she spoke of the Jeffersons there was something not quite natural in her voice.
Mrs. Bantry said: “They’re both very nice, aren’t they? The young ones, I me
an.”
Josie said rather uncertainly:
“Oh yes—yes, they are. I—we—yes, they are, really.”
V
“And what,” demanded Mrs. Bantry as she looked through the window at the retreating car of the Chief Constable, “did she mean by that? ‘They are, really.’ Don’t you think, Jane, that there’s something—”
Miss Marple fell upon the words eagerly.
“Oh, I do—indeed I do. It’s quite unmistakable! Her manner changed at once when the Jeffersons were mentioned. She had seemed quite natural up to then.”
“But what do you think it is, Jane?”
“Well, my dear, you know them. All I feel is that there is something, as you say, about them which is worrying that young woman. Another thing, did you notice that when you asked her if she wasn’t anxious about the girl being missing, she said that she was angry! And she looked angry—really angry! That strikes me as interesting, you know. I have a feeling—perhaps I’m wrong—that that’s her main reaction to the fact of the girl’s death. She didn’t care for her, I’m sure. She’s not grieving in any way. But I do think, very definitely, that the thought of that girl, Ruby Keene, makes her angry. And the interesting point is—why?”
“We’ll find out!” said Mrs. Bantry. “We’ll go over to Danemouth and stay at the Majestic—yes, Jane, you too. I need a change for my nerves after what has happened here. A few days at the Majestic—that’s what we need. And you’ll meet Conway Jefferson. He’s a dear—a perfect dear. It’s the saddest story imaginable. Had a son and daughter, both of whom he loved dearly. They were both married, but they still spent a lot of time at home. His wife, too, was the sweetest woman, and he was devoted to her. They were flying home one year from France and there was an accident. They were all killed: the pilot, Mrs. Jefferson, Rosamund, and Frank. Conway had both legs so badly injured they had to be amputated. And he’s been wonderful—his courage, his pluck! He was a very active man and now he’s a helpless cripple, but he never complains. His daughter-in-law lives with him—she was a widow when Frank Jefferson married her and she had a son by her first marriage—Peter Carmody. They both live with Conway. And Mark Gaskell, Rosamund’s husband, is there too most of the time. The whole thing was the most awful tragedy.”
“And now,” said Miss Marple, “there’s another tragedy—”