“Miss Cram came to see me this afternoon,” said Miss Marple. “I met her in the village and I asked her if she would like to see my garden.”
“Is she fond of gardens?” asked Griselda.
“I don’t think so,” said Miss Marple, with a faint twinkle. “But it makes a very useful excuse for talk, don’t you think?”
“What did you make of her?” asked Griselda. “I don’t believe she’s really so bad.”
“She volunteered a lot of information—really a lot of information,” said Miss Marple. “About herself, you know, and her people. They all seem to be dead or in India. Very sad. By the way, she has gone to Old Hall for the weekend.”
“What?”
“Yes, it seems Mrs. Protheroe asked her—or she suggested it to Mrs. Protheroe—I don’t quite know which way about it was. To do some secretarial work for her—there are so many letters to cope with. It turned out rather fortunately. Dr. Stone being away, she has nothing to do. What an excitement this barrow has been.”
“Stone?” said Raymond. “Is that the archaeologist fellow?”
“Yes, he is excavating a barrow. On the Protheroe property.”
“He’s a good man,” said Raymond. “Wonderfully keen on his job. I met him at a dinner not long ago and we had a most interesting talk. I must look him up.”
“Unfortunately,” I said, “he’s just gone to London for the weekend. Why, you actually ran into him at the station this afternoon.”
“I ran into you. You had a little fat man with you—with glasses on.”
“Yes—Dr. Stone.”
“But, my dear fellow—that wasn’t Stone.”
“Not Stone?”
“Not the archaeologist. I know him quite well. The man wasn’t Stone—not the faintest resemblance.”
We stared at each other. In particular I stared at Miss Marple.
“Extraordinary,” I said.
“The suitcase,” said Miss Marple.
“But why?” said Griselda.
“It reminds me of the time the man went round pretending to be the Gas Inspector,” murmured Miss Marple. “Quite a little haul, he got.”
“An impostor,” said Raymond West. “Now this is really interesting.”
“The question is, has it anything to do with the murder?” said Griselda.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “But—” I looked at Miss Marple.
“It is,” she said, “a Peculiar Thing. Another Peculiar Thing.”
“Yes,” I said, rising. “I rather feel the Inspector ought to be told about this at once.”
Twenty-two
Inspector Slack’s orders, once I had got him on the telephone, were brief and emphatic. Nothing was to “get about.” In particular, Miss Cram was not to be alarmed. In the meantime, a search was to be instituted for the suitcase in the neighbourhood of the barrow.
Griselda and I returned home very excited over this new development. We could not say much with Dennis present, as we had faithfully promised Inspector Slack to breath no word to anybody.
In any case, Dennis was full of his own troubles. He came into my study and began fingering things and shuffling his feet and looking thoroughly embarrassed.
“What is it, Dennis?” I said at last.
“Uncle Len, I don’t want to go to sea.”
I was astonished. The boy had been so very decided about his career up to now.
“But you were so keen on it.”
“Yes, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to go into finance.”
I was even more surprised.
“What do you mean—finance?”
“Just that. I want to go into the city.”
“But, my dear boy, I am sure you would not like the life. Even if I obtained a post for you in a bank—”
Dennis said that wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t want to go into a bank. I asked him what exactly he did mean, and of course, as I suspected, the boy didn’t really know.
By “going into finance,” he simply meant getting rich quickly, which with the optimism of youth he imagined was a certainty if one “went into the city.” I disabused him of this notion as gently as I could.
“What’s put it into your head?” I asked. “You were so satisfied with the idea of going to sea.”
“I know, Uncle Len, but I’ve been thinking. I shall want to marry some day—and, I mean, you’ve got to be rich to marry a girl.”
“Facts disprove your theory,” I said.
“I know—but a real girl. I mean, a girl who’s used to things.”
It was very vague, but I thought I knew what he meant.
“You know,” I said gently, “all girls aren’t like Lettice Protheroe.”
He fired up at once.
“You’re awfully unfair to her. You don’t like her. Griselda doesn’t either. She says she’s tiresome.”
From the feminine point of view Griselda is quite right. Lettice is tiresome. I could quite realize, however, that a boy would resent the adjective.
“If only people made a few allowances. Why even the Hartley Napiers are going about grousing about her at a time like this! Just because she left their old tennis party a bit early. Why should she stay if she was bored? Jolly decent of her to go at all, I think.”
“Quite a favour,” I said, but Dennis suspected no malice. He was full of his own grievances on Lettice’s behalf.
“She’s awfully unselfish really. Just to show you, she made me stay. Naturally I wanted to go too. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was too bad on the Napiers. So, just to please her, I stopped on a quarter of an hour.”
The young have very curious views on unselfishness.
“And now I hear Susan Hartley Napier is going about everywhere saying Lettice has rotten manners.”
“If I were you,” I said, “I shouldn’t worry.”
“It’s all very well, but—”
He broke off.
“I’d—I’d do anything for Lettice.”
“Very few of us can do anything for anyone else,” I said. “However much we wish it, we are powerless.”
“I wish I were dead,” said Dennis.
Poor lad. Calf love is a virulent disease. I forebore to say any of the obvious and probably irritating things which come so easily to one’s lips. Instead, I said goodnight, and went up to bed.
I took the eight o’clock service the following morning and when I returned found Griselda sitting at the breakfast table with an open note in her hand. It was from Anne Protheroe.
“Dear Griselda,—If you and the Vicar could come up and lunch here quietly today, I should be so very grateful. Something very strange has occurred, and I should like Mr. Clement’s advice.
Please don’t mention this when you come, as I have said nothing to anyone.
With love,
Yours affectionately,
Anne Protheroe.”
“We must go, of course,” said Griselda.
I agreed.
“I wonder what can have happened?”
I wondered too.
“You know,” I said to Griselda, “I don’t feel we are really at the end of this case yet.”
“You mean not till someone has really been arrested?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t mean that. I mean that there are ramifications, undercurrents, that we know nothing about. There are a whole lot of things to clear up before we get at the truth.”
“You mean things that don’t really matter, but that get in the way?”
“Yes, I think that expresses my meaning very well.”
“I think we’re all making a great fuss,” said Dennis, helping himself to marmalade. “It’s a jolly good thing old Protheroe is dead. Nobody liked him. Oh! I know the police have got to worry—it’s their job. But I rather hope myself they’ll never find out. I should hate to see Slack promoted going about swelling with importance over his cleverness.”
&nbs
p; I am human enough to feel that I agree over the matter of Slack’s promotion. A man who goes about systematically rubbing people up the wrong way cannot hope to be popular.
“Dr. Haydock thinks rather like I do,” went on Dennis. “He’d never give a murderer up to justice. He said so.”
I think that that is the danger of Haydock’s views. They may be sound in themselves—it is not for me to say—but they produce an impression on the young careless mind which I am sure Haydock himself never meant to convey.
Griselda looked out of the window and remarked that there were reporters in the garden.
“I suppose they’re photographing the study windows again,” she said, with a sigh.
We had suffered a good deal in this way. There was first the idle curiosity of the village—everyone had come to gape and stare. There were next the reporters armed with cameras, and the village again to watch the reporters. In the end we had to have a constable from Much Benham on duty outside the window.
“Well,” I said, “the funeral is tomorrow morning. After that, surely, the excitement will die down.”
I noticed a few reporters hanging about Old Hall when we arrived there. They accosted me with various queries to which I gave the invariable answer (we had found it the best), that, “I had nothing to say.”
We were shown by the butler into the drawing room, the sole occupant of which turned out to be Miss Cram—apparently in a state of high enjoyment.
“This is a surprise, isn’t it?” she said, as she shook hands. “I never should have thought of such a thing, but Mrs. Protheroe is kind, isn’t she? And, of course, it isn’t what you might call nice for a young girl to be staying alone at a place like the Blue Boar, reporters about and all. And, of course, it’s not as though I haven’t been able to make myself useful—you really need a secretary at a time like this, and Miss Protheroe doesn’t do anything to help, does she?”
I was amused to notice that the old animosity against Lettice persisted, but that the girl had apparently become a warm partisan of Anne’s. At the same time I wondered if the story of her coming here was strictly accurate. In her account the initiative had come from Anne, but I wondered if that were really so. The first mention of disliking to be at the Blue Boar alone might have easily come from the girl herself. Whilst keeping an open mind on the subject, I did not fancy that Miss Cram was strictly truthful.
At that moment Anne Protheroe entered the room.
She was dressed very quietly in black. She carried in her hand a Sunday paper which she held out to me with a rueful glance.
“I’ve never had any experience of this sort of thing. It’s pretty ghastly, isn’t it? I saw a reporter at the inquest. I just said that I was terribly upset and had nothing to say, and then he asked me if I wasn’t very anxious to find my husband’s murderer, and I said ‘Yes.’ And then whether I had any suspicions, and I said ‘No.’ And whether I didn’t think the crime showed local knowledge, and I said it seemed to certainly. And that was all. And now look at this!”
In the middle of the page was a photograph, evidently taken at least ten years ago—Heaven knows where they had dug it out. There were large headlines:
WIDOW DECLARES SHE WILL NEVER REST TILL SHE HAS HUNTED DOWN HUSBAND’S MURDERER.
Mrs. Protheroe, the widow of the murdered man, is certain that the murderer must be looked for locally. She has suspicions, but no certainty. She declared herself prostrated with grief, but reiterated her determination to hunt down the murderer.
“It doesn’t sound like me, does it?” said Anne.
“I dare say it might have been worse,” I said, handing back the paper.
“Impudent, aren’t they?” said Miss Cram. “I’d like to see one of those fellows trying to get something out of me.”
By the twinkle in Griselda’s eye, I was convinced that she regarded this statement as being more literally true than Miss Cram intended it to appear.
Luncheon was announced, and we went in. Lettice did not come in till halfway through the meal, when she drifted into the empty place with a smile for Griselda and a nod for me. I watched her with some attention, for reasons of my own, but she seemed much the same vague creature as usual. Extremely pretty—that in fairness I had to admit. She was still not wearing mourning, but was dressed in a shade of pale green that brought out all the delicacy of her fair colouring.
After we had had coffee, Anne said quietly:
“I want to have a little talk with the Vicar. I will take him up to my sitting room.”
At last I was to learn the reason of our summons. I rose and followed her up the stairs. She paused at the door of the room. As I was about to speak, she stretched out a hand to stop me. She remained listening, looking down towards the hall.
“Good. They are going out into the garden. No—don’t go in there. We can go straight up.”
Much to my surprise she led the way along the corridor to the extremity of the wing. Here a narrow ladder-like staircase rose to the floor above, and she mounted it, I following. We found ourselves in a dusty boarded passage. Anne opened a door and led me into a large dim attic which was evidently used as a lumber room. There were trunks there, old broken furniture, a few stacked pictures, and the many countless odds and ends which a lumber room collects.
My surprise was so evident that she smiled faintly.
“First of all, I must explain. I am sleeping very lightly just now. Last night—or rather this morning about three o’clock, I was convinced that I heard someone moving about the house. I listened for some time, and at last got up and came out to see. Out on the landing I realized that the sounds came, not from down below, but from up above. I came along to the foot of these stairs. Again I thought I heard a sound. I called up, ‘Is anybody there?’ But there was no answer, and I heard nothing more, so I assumed that my nerves had been playing tricks on me, and went back to bed.
“However, early this morning, I came up here—simply out of curiosity. And I found this!”
She stooped down and turned round a picture that was leaning against the wall with the back of the canvas towards us.
I gave a gasp of surprise. The picture was evidently a portrait in oils, but the face had been hacked and cut in such a savage way as to render it unrecognizable. Moreover, the cuts were clearly quite fresh.
“What an extraordinary thing,” I said.
“Isn’t it? Tell me, can you think of any explanation?”
I shook my head.
“There’s a kind of savagery about it,” I said, “that I don’t like. It looks as though it had been done in a fit of maniacal rage.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought.”
“What is the portrait?”
“I haven’t the least idea. I have never seen it before. All these things were in the attic when I married Lucius and came here to live. I have never been through them or bothered about them.”
“Extraordinary,” I commented.
I stooped down and examined the other pictures. They were very much what you would expect to find—some very mediocre landscapes, some oleographs and a few cheaply-framed reproductions.
There was nothing else helpful. A large old-fashioned trunk, of the kind that used to be called an “ark,” had the initials E.P. upon it. I raised the lid. It was empty. Nothing else in the attic was the least suggestive.
“It really is a most amazing occurrence,” I said. “It’s so—senseless.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “That frightens me a little.”
There was nothing more to see. I accompanied her down to her sitting room where she closed the door.
“Do you think I ought to do anything about it? Tell the police?”
I hesitated.
“It’s hard to say on the face of it whether—”
“It has anything to do with the murder or not,” finished Anne. “I know. That’s what is so difficult. On the face of it, there seems no connection whatever.”
“No,” I said, “but it is anot
her Peculiar Thing.”
We both sat silent with puzzled brows.
“What are your plans, if I may ask?” I said presently.
She lifted her head.
“I’m going to live here for at least another six months!” She said it defiantly. “I don’t want to. I hate the idea of living here. But I think it’s the only thing to be done. Otherwise people will say that I ran away—that I had a guilty conscience.”
“Surely not.”
“Oh! Yes, they will. Especially when—” She paused and then said: “When the six months are up—I am going to marry Lawrence.” Her eyes met mine. “We’re neither of us going to wait any longer.”
“I supposed,” I said, “that that would happen.”
Suddenly she broke down, burying her head in her hands.
“You don’t know how grateful I am to you—you don’t know. We’d said good-bye to each other—he was going away. I feel—I feel so awful about Lucius’s death. If we’d been planning to go away together, and he’d died then—it would be so awful now. But you made us both see how wrong it would be. That’s why I’m grateful.”
“I, too, am thankful,” I said gravely.
“All the same, you know,” she sat up. “Unless the real murderer is found they’ll always think it was Lawrence—oh! Yes, they will. And especially when he marries me.”
“My dear, Dr. Haydock’s evidence made it perfectly clear—”
“What do people care about evidence? They don’t even know about it. And medical evidence never means anything to outsiders anyway. That’s another reason why I’m staying on here. Mr. Clement, I’m going to find out the truth.”
Her eyes flashed as she spoke. She added:
“That’s why I asked that girl here.”
“Miss Cram?”
“Yes.”
“You did ask her, then. I mean, it was your idea?”
“Entirely. Oh! As a matter of fact, she whined a bit. At the inquest—she was there when I arrived. No, I asked her here deliberately.”
“But surely,” I cried, “you don’t think that that silly young woman could have anything to do with the crime?”
Murder at the Vicarage Page 16