“To my mind it is a complete stumbling block to Archer’s having committed the crime,” I said.
In face of my positive assertion, Hawes said no more. He thanked me again and left.
I had gone as far as the front door with him, and on the hall table I saw four notes. They had certain characteristics in common. The handwriting was almost unmistakably feminine, they all bore the words, “By hand, Urgent,” and the only difference I could see was that one was noticeably dirtier than the rest.
Their similarity gave me a curious feeling of seeing—not double but quadruple.
Mary came out of the kitchen and caught me staring at them.
“Come by hand since lunchtime,” she volunteered. “All but one. I found that in the box.”
I nodded, gathered them up and took them into the study.
The first one ran thus:
“Dear Mr. Clement,—Something has come to my knowledge which I feel you ought to know. It concerns the death of poor Colonel Protheroe. I should much appreciate your advice on the matter—whether to go to the police or not. Since my dear husband’s death, I have such a shrinking from every kind of publicity. Perhaps you could run in and see me for a few minutes this afternoon.
Yours sincerely,
Martha Price Ridley.”
I opened the second:
“Dear Mr. Clement,—I am so troubled—so excited in my mind—to know what I ought to do. Something has come to my ears that I feel may be important. I have such a horror of being mixed up with the police in any way. I am so disturbed and distressed. Would it be asking too much of you, dear Vicar, to drop in for a few minutes and solve my doubts and perplexities for me in the wonderful way you always do?
Forgive my troubling you,
Yours very sincerely,
Caroline Wetherby.”
The third, I felt, I could almost have recited beforehand.
“Dear Mr. Clement,—Something most important has come to my ears. I feel you should be the first to know about it. Will you call in and see me this afternoon some time? I will wait in for you.”
This militant epistle was signed “Amanda Hartnell.”
I opened the fourth missive. It has been my good fortune to be troubled with very few anonymous letters. An anonymous letter is, I think, the meanest and cruellest weapon there is. This one was no exception. It purported to be written by an illiterate person, but several things inclined me to disbelieve that assumption.
“Dear Vicar,—I think you ought to know what is Going On. Your lady has been seen coming out of Mr. Redding’s cottage in a surreptitious manner. You know wot i mean. The two are Carrying On together. i think you ought to know.
A Friend.”
I made a faint exclamation of disgust and crumpling up the paper tossed it into the open grate just as Griselda entered the room.
“What’s that you’re throwing down so contemptuously?” she asked.
“Filth,” I said.
Taking a match from my pocket, I struck it and bent down. Griselda, however, was too quick for me. She had stooped down and caught up the crumpled ball of paper and smoothed it out before I could stop her.
She read it, gave a little exclamation of disgust, and tossed it back to me, turning away as she did so. I lighted it and watched it burn.
Griselda had moved away. She was standing by the window looking out into the garden.
“Len,” she said, without turning round.
“Yes, my dear.”
“I’d like to tell you something. Yes, don’t stop me. I want to, please. When—when Lawrence Redding came here, I let you think that I had only known him slightly before. That wasn’t true. I—had known him rather well. In fact, before I met you, I had been rather in love with him. I think most people are with Lawrence. I was—well, absolutely silly about him at one time. I don’t mean I wrote him compromising letters or anything idiotic like they do in books. But I was rather keen on him once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Oh! Because! I don’t know exactly except that—well, you’re foolish in some ways. Just because you’re so much older than I am, you think that I—well, that I’m likely to like other people. I thought you’d be tiresome, perhaps, about me and Lawrence being friends.”
“You’re very clever at concealing things,” I said, remembering what she had told me in that room less than a week ago, and the ingenuous way she had talked.
“Yes, I’ve always been able to hide things. In a way, I like doing it.”
Her voice held a childlike ring of pleasure to it.
“But it’s quite true what I said. I didn’t know about Anne, and I wondered why Lawrence was so different, not—well, really not noticing me. I’m not used to it.”
There was a pause.
“You do understand, Len?” said Griselda anxiously.
“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”
But did I?
Twenty-five
I found it hard to shake off the impression left by the anonymous letter. Pitch soils.
However, I gathered up the other three letters, glanced at my watch, and started out.
I wondered very much what this might be that had “come to the knowledge” of three ladies simultaneously. I took it to be the same piece of news. In this, I was to realize that my psychology was at fault.
I cannot pretend that my calls took me past the police station. My feet gravitated there of their own accord. I was anxious to know whether Inspector Slack had returned from Old Hall.
I found that he had, and further, that Miss Cram had returned with him. The fair Gladys was seated in the police station carrying off matters with a high hand. She denied absolutely having taken the suitcase to the woods.
“Just because one of these gossiping old cats had nothing better to do than look out of her window all night you go and pitch upon me. She’s been mistaken once, remember, when she said she saw me at the end of the lane on the afternoon of the murder, and if she was mistaken then, in daylight, how can she possibly have recognized me by moonlight?
“Wicked it is, the way these old ladies go on down here. Say anything, they will. And me asleep in my bed as innocent as can be. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the lot of you.”
“And supposing the landlady of the Blue Boar identifies the suitcase as yours, Miss Cram?”
“If she says anything of the kind, she’s wrong. There’s no name on it. Nearly everybody’s got a suitcase like that. As for poor Dr. Stone, accusing him of being a common burglar! And he has a lot of letters after his name.”
“You refuse to give us any explanation, then, Miss Cram?”
“No refusing about it. You’ve made a mistake, that’s all. You and your meddlesome Marples. I won’t say a word more—not without my solicitor present. I’m going this minute—unless you’re going to arrest me.”
For answer, the Inspector rose and opened the door for her, and with a toss of the head, Miss Cram walked out.
“That’s the line she takes,” said Slack, coming back to his chair. “Absolute denial. And, of course, the old lady may have been mistaken. No jury would believe you could recognize anyone from that distance on a moonlit night. And, of course, as I say, the old lady may have made a mistake.”
“She may,” I said, “but I don’t think she did. Miss Marple is usually right. That’s what makes her unpopular.”
The Inspector grinned.
“That’s what Hurst says. Lord, these villages!”
“What about the silver, Inspector?”
“Seemed to be perfectly in order. Of course, that meant one lot or the other must be a fake. There’s a very good man in Much Benham, an authority on old silver. I’ve phoned over to him and sent a car to fetch him. We’ll soon know which is which. Either the burglary was an accomplished fact, or else it was only planned. Doesn’t make a frightful lot of difference either way—I mean as far as we’re concerned. Robbery’s a small business compared with murder. These t
wo aren’t concerned with the murder. We’ll maybe get a line on him through the girl—that’s why I let her go without any more fuss.”
“I wondered,” I said.
“A pity about Mr. Redding. It’s not often you find a man who goes out of his way to oblige you.”
“I suppose not,” I said, smiling slightly.
“Women cause a lot of trouble,” moralized the Inspector.
He sighed and then went on, somewhat to my surprise: “Of course, there’s Archer.”
“Oh!” I said, “You’ve thought of him?”
“Why, naturally, sir, first thing. It didn’t need any anonymous letters to put me on his track.”
“Anonymous letters,” I said sharply. “Did you get one, then?”
“That’s nothing new, sir. We get a dozen a day, at least. Oh, yes, we were put wise to Archer. As though the police couldn’t look out for themselves! Archer’s been under suspicion from the first. The trouble of it is, he’s got an alibi. Not that it amounts to anything, but it’s awkward to get over.”
“What do you mean by its not amounting to anything?” I asked.
“Well, it appears he was with a couple of pals all the afternoon. Not, as I say, that that counts much. Men like Archer and his pals would swear to anything. There’s no believing a word they say. We know that. But the public doesn’t, and the jury’s taken from the public, more’s the pity. They know nothing, and ten to one believe everything that’s said in the witness box, no matter who it is that says it. And of course Archer himself will swear till he’s black in the face that he didn’t do it.”
“Not so obliging as Mr. Redding,” I said with a smile.
“Not he,” said the Inspector, making the remark as a plain statement of fact.
“It is natural, I suppose, to cling to life,” I mused.
“You’d be surprised if you knew the murderers that have got off through the softheartedness of the jury,” said the Inspector gloomily.
“But do you really think that Archer did it?” I asked.
It has struck me as curious all along that Inspector Slack never seems to have any personal views of his own on the murder. The easiness or difficulty of getting a conviction are the only points that seem to appeal to him.
“I’d like to be a bit surer,” he admitted. “A fingerprint now, or a footprint, or seen in the vicinity about the time of the crime. Can’t risk arresting him without something of that kind. He’s been seen round Mr. Redding’s house once or twice, but he’d say that was to speak to his mother. A decent body, she is. No, on the whole, I’m for the lady. If I could only get definite proof of blackmail—but you can’t get definite proof of anything in this crime! It’s theory, theory, theory. It’s a sad pity that there’s not a single spinster lady living along your road, Mr. Clement. I bet she’d have seen something if there had been.”
His words reminded me of my calls, and I took leave of him. It was about the solitary instance when I had seen him in a genial mood.
My first call was on Miss Hartnell. She must have been watching me from the window, for before I had time to ring she had opened the front door, and clasping my hand firmly in hers, had led me over the threshold.
“So good of you to come. In here. More private.”
We entered a microscopic room, about the size of a hencoop. Miss Hartnell shut the door and with an air of deep secrecy waved me to a seat (there were only three). I perceived that she was enjoying herself.
“I’m never one to beat about the bush,” she said in her jolly voice, the latter slightly toned down to meet the requirements of the situation. “You know how things go the rounds in a village like this.”
“Unfortunately,” I said, “I do.”
“I agree with you. Nobody dislikes gossip more than I do. But there it is. I thought it my duty to tell the police inspector that I’d called on Mrs. Lestrange the afternoon of the murder and that she was out. I don’t expect to be thanked for doing my duty, I just do it. Ingratitude is what you meet with first and last in this life. Why, only yesterday that impudent Mrs. Baker—”
“Yes, yes,” I said, hoping to avert the usual tirade. “Very sad, very sad. But you were saying.”
“The lower classes don’t know who are their best friends,” said Miss Hartnell. “I always say a word in season when I’m visiting. Not that I’m ever thanked for it.”
“You were telling the Inspector about your call upon Mrs. Lestrange,” I prompted.
“Exactly—and by the way, he didn’t thank me. Said he’d ask for information when he wanted it—not those words exactly, but that was the spirit. There’s a different class of men in the police force nowadays.”
“Very probably,” I said. “But you were going on to say something?”
“I decided that this time I wouldn’t go near any wretched inspector. After all, a clergyman is a gentleman—at least some are,” she added.
I gathered that the qualification was intended to include me.
“If I can help you in any way,” I began.
“It’s a matter of duty,” said Miss Hartnell, and closed her mouth with a snap. “I don’t want to have to say these things. No one likes it less. But duty is duty.”
I waited.
“I’ve been given to understand,” went on Miss Hartnell, turning rather red, “that Mrs. Lestrange gives out that she was at home all the time—that she didn’t answer the door because—well, she didn’t choose. Such airs and graces. I only called as a matter of duty, and to be treated like that!”
“She has been ill,” I said mildly.
“Ill? Fiddlesticks. You’re too unworldly, Mr. Clement. There’s nothing the matter with that woman. Too ill to attend the inquest indeed! Medical certificate from Dr. Haydock! She can wind him round her little finger, everyone knows that. Well, where was I?”
I didn’t quite know. It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins.
“Oh, about calling on her that afternoon. Well, it’s fiddlesticks to say she was in the house. She wasn’t. I know.”
“How can you possibly know?”
Miss Hartnell’s face turned redder. In someone less truculent, her demeanour might have been called embarrassed.
“I’d knocked and rung,” she explained. “Twice. If not three times. And it occurred to me suddenly that the bell might be out of order.”
She was, I was glad to note, unable to look me in the face when saying this. The same builder builds all our houses and the bells he installs are clearly audible when standing on the mat outside the front door. Both Miss Hartnell and I knew this perfectly well, but I suppose decencies have to be preserved.
“Yes?” I murmured.
“I didn’t want to push my card through the letter box. That would seem so rude, and whatever I am, I am never rude.”
She made this amazing statement without a tremor.
“So I thought I would just go round the house and—and tap on the window pane,” she continued unblushingly. “I went all round the house and looked in at all the windows, but there was no one in the house at all.”
I understood her perfectly. Taking advantage of the fact that the house was empty, Miss Hartnell had given unbridled rein to her curiosity and had gone round the house examining the garden and peering in at all the windows to see as much as she could of the interior. She had chosen to tell her story to me, believing that I should be a more sympathetic and lenient audience than the police. The clergy are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to their parishioners.
I made no comment on the situation. I merely asked a question.
“What time was this, Miss Hartnell?”
“As far as I can remember,” said Miss Hartnell, “it must have been close on six o’clock. I went straight home afterwards, and I got in about ten past six, and Mrs. Protheroe came in somewhere round about the half hour, leaving Dr. Stone and Mr. Redding outside, and we talked about bulbs. And all the time the poor Colonel lying
murdered. It’s a sad world.”
“It is sometimes a rather unpleasant one,” I said.
I rose.
“And that is all you have to tell me?”
“I just thought it might be important.”
“It might,” I agreed.
And refusing to be drawn further, much to Miss Hartnell’s disappointment, I took my leave.
Miss Wetherby, whom I visited next, received me in a kind of flutter.
“Dear Vicar, how truly kind. You’ve had tea? Really, you won’t? A cushion for your back? It is so kind of you to come round so promptly. Always willing to put yourself out for others.”
There was a good deal of this before we came to the point, and even then it was approached with a good deal of circumlocution.
“You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.”
In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.
“You can’t tell me who told you?”
“I promised, dear Mr. Clement. And I always think a promise should be a sacred thing.”
She looked very solemn.
“Shall we say a little bird told me? That is safe isn’t it?”
I longed to say, “It’s damned silly.” I rather wish I had. I should have liked to observe the effect on Miss Wetherby.
“Well, this little bird told that she saw a certain lady, who shall be nameless.”
“Another kind of bird?” I inquired.
To my great surprise Miss Wetherby went off into paroxysms of laughter and tapped me playfully on the arm saying:
“Oh, Vicar, you must not be so naughty!”
When she had recovered, she went on.
“A certain lady, and where do you think this certain lady was going? She turned into the Vicarage road, but before she did so, she looked up and down the road in a most peculiar way—to see if anyone she knew were noticing her, I imagine.”
“And the little bird—” I inquired.
“Paying a visit to the fishmonger’s—in the room over the shop.”
I know where maids go on their days out. I know there is one place they never go if they can help—anywhere in the open air.
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 19