"But with what object?"
"Well, that's what we've got to find out. There seems no particular point in the second one, but there must be a point somewhere. And you see the significance? Mr. Redding's house used to telephone from. Mr. Redding's pistol. All throwing suspicion on Mr. Redding."
"It would be more to the point to have put through the first call from his house," I objected.
"Ah! but I've been thinking that out. What did Mr. Redding do most afternoons? He went up to Old Hall and painted Miss Protheroe. And from his cottage he'd go on his motor bicycle, passing through the North Gate. Now you see the point of the call being put through from there. The murderer is someone who didn't know about the quarrel and that Mr. Redding wasn't going up to Old Hall any more."
I reflected a moment to let the inspector's points sink into my brain. They seemed to me logical and unavoidable.
"Were there any fingerprints on the receiver in Mr. Redding's cottage?" I asked.
"There were not," said the inspector bitterly. "That drafted old woman who goes and does for him had been and dusted them off yesterday morning." He reflected wrathfully for a few minutes. "She's a stupid old fool, anyway. Can't remember when she saw the pistol last. It might have been there on the morning of the crime or it might not. 'She couldn't say, she's sure.' They're all alike!"
"Just as a matter of form, I went round and saw Dr. Stone," he went on. "I must say he was pleasant as could be about it. He and Miss Cram went up to that mound - or barrow - or whatever you call it, about half-past two yesterday, and stayed there all the afternoon. Dr. Stone came back alone, and she came later. He says he didn't hear any shot, but admits he's absent-minded. But it all bears out what we think."
"Only," I said, "you haven't caught the murderer."
"H'm," said the inspector. "It was a woman's voice you heard through the telephone. It was in all probability a woman's voice Mrs. Price Ridley heard. If only that shot hadn't come hard on the close of the telephone call - well, I'd know where to look."
"Where?"
"Ah! that's just what it's best not to say, sir."
Unblushingly, I suggested a glass of old port. I have some very fine old vintage port. Eleven o'clock in the morning is not the usual time for drinking port, but I did not think that mattered with Inspector Slack. It was, of course, cruel abuse of the vintage port, but one must not be squeamish about such things.
When Inspector Slack had polished off the second glass, he began to unbend and become genial. Such is the effect of that particular port.
"I don't suppose it matters with you, sir," he said. "You'll keep it to yourself? No letting it get round the parish."
I reassured him.
"Seeing as the whole thing happened in your house, it almost seems as though you had a right to know."
"Just what I feel myself," I said.
"Well, then, sir, what about the lady who called on Colonel Protheroe the night before the murder?"
"Mrs. Lestrange," I cried, speaking rather loud in my astonishment.
The inspector threw me a reproachful glance.
"Not so loud, sir. Mrs. Lestrange is the lady I've got my eye on. You remember what I told you - blackmail."
"Hardly a reason for murder. Wouldn't it be a case of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs? That is, assuming that your hypothesis is true, which I don't for a minute admit."
The inspector winked at me in a common manner.
"Ah! she's the kind the gentlemen will always stand up for. Now look here, sir. Suppose she's successfully blackmailed the old gentleman in the past. After a lapse of years, she gets wind of him, comes down here and tries it on again. But, in the meantime, things have changed. The law has taken up a very different stand. Every facility is given nowadays to people prosecuting for blackmail - names are not allowed to be reported in the press. Suppose Colonel Protheroe turns round and says he'll have the law on her. She's in a nasty position. They give a very severe sentence for blackmail. The boot's on the other leg. The only thing to do to save herself is to put him out good and quick."
I was silent. I had to admit that the case the inspector had built up was plausible. Only one thing to my mind made it inadmissible - the personality of Mrs. Lestrange.
"I don't agree with you, inspector," I said. "Mrs. Lestrange doesn't seem to me to be a potential blackmailer. She's - well, it's an old-fashioned word, but she's a - lady."
He threw me a pitying glance.
"Ah! well, sir," he said tolerantly, "you're a clergyman. You don't know half of what goes on. Lady indeed! You'd be surprised if you knew some of the things I know."
"I'm not referring to mere social position. Anyway, I should imagine Mrs. Lestrange to be a declassée. What I mean is a question of - personal refinement."
"You don't see her with the same eyes as I do, sir. I may be a man - but I'm a police officer, too. They can't get over me with their personal refinement. Why, that woman is the kind who could stick a knife into you without turning a hair."
Curiously enough, I could believe Mrs. Lestrange guilty of murder much more easily than I could believe her capable of blackmail.
"But, of course, she can't have been telephoning to the old lady next door and shooting Colonel Protheroe at one and the same time," continued the inspector.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when he slapped his leg ferociously.
"Got it," he exclaimed. "That's the point of the telephone call. Kind of alibi. Knew we'd connect it with the first one. I'm going to look into this. She may have bribed some village lad to do the phoning for her. He'd never think of connecting it with the murder."
The inspector hurried off.
"Miss Marple wants to see you," said Griselda, putting her head in. "She sent over a very incoherent note - all spidery and underlined. I couldn't read most of it. Apparently she can't leave home herself. Hurry up and go across and see her and find out what it is. I've got my old women coming in two minutes or I'd come myself. I do hate old women - they tell you about their bad legs and sometimes insist on showing them to you, What luck that the inquest is this afternoon! You won't have to go and watch the Boys' Club Cricket Match."
I hurried off, considerably exercised in my mind as to the reason for this summons.
I found Miss Marple in what, I believe, is described as a fluster. She was very pink and slightly incoherent.
"My nephew," she explained. "My nephew, Raymond West, the author. He is coming down to-day. Such a to-do. I have to see to everything myself. You cannot trust a maid to air a bed properly, and we must, of course, have a meat meal to-night. Gentlemen require such a lot of meat, do they not? And drink. There certainly should be some drink in the house - and a siphon."
"If I can do anything -" I began.
"Oh! how very kind. But I did not mean that. There is plenty of time really. He brings his own pipe and tobacco, I am glad to say. Glad because it saves me from knowing which kind of cigarettes are right to buy. But rather sorry, too, because it takes so long for the smell to get out of the curtains. Of course, I open the window and shake them well very early every morning. Raymond gets up very late - I think writers often do. He writes very clever books, I believe, though people are not really nearly so unpleasant as he makes out. Clever young men know so little of life, don't you think?"
"Would you like to bring him to dinner at the Vicarage?" I asked, still unable to gather why I had been summoned.
"Oh! no, thank you," said Miss Marple. "It's very kind of you," she added.
"There was - er - something you wanted to see me about, I think," I suggested desperately.
"Oh! of course. In all the excitement it had gone right out of my head." She broke off and called to her maid. "Emily - Emily. Not those sheets. The frilled ones with the monogram and don't put them too near the fire."
She closed the door and returned to me on tiptoe.
"It's just rather a curious thing that happened last night," she explained. "I thought you wo
uld like to hear about it, though at the moment it doesn't seem to make sense. I felt very wakeful last night - wondering about all this sad business. And I got up and looked out of my window. And what do you think I saw?"
I looked, inquiring.
"Gladys Cram," said Miss Marple, with great emphasis. "As I live, going into the wood with a suit-case."
"A suit-case?"
"Isn't it extraordinary? What should she want with a suitcase in the wood at twelve o'clock at night?"
"You see," said Miss Marple. "I daresay it has nothing to do with the murder. But it is a Peculiar Thing. And just at present we all feel we must take notice of Peculiar Things."
"Perfectly amazing," I said. "Was she going to - er - sleep in the barrow by any chance?"
"She didn't, at any rate," said Miss Marple. "Because quite a short time afterwards she came back, and she hadn't got the suit-case with her."
CHAPTER XVIII
The inquest was held that afternoon (Saturday) at two o'clock at the Blue Boar. The local excitement was, I need hardly say, tremendous. There had been no murder in St. Mary Mead for at least fifteen years. And to have someone like Colonel Protheroe murdered actually in the Vicarage study is such a feast of sensation as rarely falls to the lot of a village population.
Various comments floated to my ears which I was probably not meant to hear.
"There's vicar. Looks pale, don't he? I wonder if he had a hand in it. 'Twas done at Vicarage, after all." "How can you, Mary Adams? And him visiting Henry Abbott at the time." "Oh! but they do say him and the colonel had words. There's Mary Hill. Giving herself airs, she is, on account of being in service there. Hush, here's coroner."
The coroner was Dr. Roberts of our adjoining town of Much Benham. He cleared his throat, adjusted his eyeglasses, and looked important.
To recapitulate all the evidence would be merely tiresome. Lawrence Redding gave evidence of finding the body, and identified the pistol as belonging to him. To the best of his belief he had seen it on the Tuesday, two days previously. It was kept on a shelf in his cottage, and the door of the cottage was habitually unlocked.
Mrs. Protheroe gave evidence that she had last seen her husband at about a quarter to six when they separated in the village street. She agreed to call for him at the Vicarage later. She had gone to the Vicarage about a quarter past six, by way of the back lane and the garden gate. She had heard no voices in the study and had imagined that the room was empty, but her husband might have been sitting at the writing-table, in which case she would not have seen him. As far as she knew, he had been in his usual health and spirits. She knew of no enemy who might have had a grudge against him.
I gave evidence next, told of my appointment with Protheroe and my summons to the Abbotts. I described how I had found the body and my summoning of Dr. Haydock.
"How many people, Mr. Clement, were aware that Colonel Protheroe was coming to see you that evening?"
"A good many, I should imagine. My wife knew, and my nephew, and Colonel Protheroe himself alluded to the fact that morning when I met him in the village. I should think several people might have overheard him, as, being slightly deaf, he spoke in a loud voice."
"It was, then, a matter of common knowledge? Any one might know?"
I agreed.
Haydock followed. He was an important witness. He described carefully and technically the appearance of the body and the exact injuries. It was his opinion that deceased had been shot whilst actually in the act of writing. He placed the time of death at approximately 6.20 to 6.30 - certainly not later than 6.35. That was the outside limit. He was positive and emphatic on that point. There was no question of suicide, the wound could not have been self-inflicted.
Inspector Slack's evidence was discreet and abridged. He described his summons and the circumstances under which he had found the body. The unfinished letter was produced and the time on it - 6.20 - noted. Also the clock. It was tacitly assumed that the time of death was 6.22. The police were giving nothing away. Anne Protheroe told me afterwards that she had been told to suggest a slightly earlier period of time than 6.20 for her visit.
Our maid, Mary, was the next witness, and proved a somewhat truculent one. She hadn't heard anything, and didn't want to hear anything. It wasn't as though gentlemen who came to see the vicar usually got shot. They didn't. She'd got her own jobs to look after. Colonel Protheroe had arrived at a quarter past six exactly. No, she didn't look at the clock. She heard the church chime after she had shown him into the study. She didn't hear any shot. If there had been a shot she'd have heard it. Well, of course, she knew there must have been a shot, since the gentleman was found shot - but there it was. She hadn't heard it.
The coroner did not press the point. I realised that he and Colonel Melchett were working in agreement.
Mrs. Lestrange had been subpœnaed to give evidence, but a medical certificate, signed by Dr. Haydock, was produced saying she was too ill to attend.
There was only one other witness, a somewhat doddering old woman. The one who, in Slack's phrase, "did for" Lawrence Redding.
Mrs. Archer was shown the pistol and recognized it as the one she had seen in Mr. Redding's sitting-room "over against the bookcase, he kept it, lying about." She had last seen it on the day of the murder. Yes - in answer to a further question - she was quite sure it was there at lunch time on Thursday - quarter to one when she left.
I remembered what the inspector had told me, and I was mildly surprised. However vague she might have been when he questioned her, she was quite positive about it now.
The coroner summed up in a negative manner, but with a good deal of firmness. The verdict was given almost immediately:
Murder by Person or Persons unknown.
As I left the room I was aware of a small army of young men with bright, alert faces and a kind of superficial resemblance to each other. Several of them were already known to me by sight as having haunted the Vicarage the last few days. Seeking to escape, I plunged back into the Blue Boar and was lucky enough to run straight into the archæologist, Dr. Stone. I clutched at him without ceremony.
"Journalists," I said briefly and expressively. "If you could deliver me from their clutches?"
"Why, certainly, Mr. Clement. Come upstairs with me."
He led the way up the narrow staircase and into his sitting-room, where Miss Cram was sitting rattling the keys of a typewriter with a practiced touch. She greeted me with a broad smile of welcome and seized the opportunity to stop work.
"Awful, isn't it?" she said. "Not knowing who did it, I mean. Not but that I'm disappointed in an inquest. Tame, that's what I call it. Nothing what you might call spicy from beginning to end."
"You were there, then, Miss Cram?"
"I was there all right. Fancy your not seeing me. Didn't you see me? I feel a bit hurt about that. Yes, I do. A gentleman, even if he is a clergyman, ought to have eyes in his head."
"Were you present also?" I asked Dr. Stone, in an effort to escape from this playful badinage. Young women like Miss Cram always make me feel awkward.
"No, I'm afraid I feel very little interest in such things. I am a man very wrapped up in his own hobby."
"It must be a very interesting hobby," I said.
"You know something of it, perhaps?"
I was obliged to confess that I knew next to nothing.
Dr. Stone was not the kind of man whom a confession of ignorance daunts. The result was exactly the same as though I had said that the excavation of barrows was my only relaxation. He surged and eddied into speech. Long barrows, round barrows, stone age, bronze age, paleolithic, neolithic kistvæns and cromlechs it burst forth in a torrent. I had little to do save nod my head and look intelligent - and that last is perhaps over optimistic. Dr. Stone boomed on. He was a little man. His head was round and bald, his face was round and rosy, and he beamed at you through very strong glasses. I have never known a man so enthusiastic on so little encouragement. He went into every argument for a
nd against his own pet theory - which, by the way, I quite failed to grasp!
He detailed at great length his difference of opinion with Colonel Protheroe.
"An opinionated boor," he said with heat. "Yes, yes, I know he is dead, and one should speak no ill of the dead. But death does not alter facts. An opinionated boor describes him exactly. Because he had read a few books, he set himself up as an authority - against a man who has made a lifelong study of the subject. My whole life, Mr. Clement, has been given up to this work. My whole life -"
He was spluttering with excitement. Gladys Cram brought him back to earth with a terse sentence.
"You'll miss your train if you don't look out," she observed.
"Oh!" The little man stopped in mid speech and dragged a watch from his pocket. "Bless my soul. Quarter to? Impossible."
Agatha Christie - Murder at the Vicarage Page 14
