I asked her if she had heard a shot of any kind. And she said the shots had been something awful. After that, I placed very little credence in her statements.
I was just turning in at my own gate when I decided to pay a friend a visit.
Glancing at my watch, I saw that I had just time for it before taking Evensong. I went down the road to Haydock's house. He came out on the doorstep to meet me.
I noticed afresh how worried and haggard he looked. This business seemed to have aged him out of all knowledge.
"I'm glad to see you," he said. "What's the news?"
I told him the latest Stone development.
"A high-class thief," he commented. "Well, that explains a lot of things. He'd read up his subject, but he made slips from time to time to me. Protheroe must have caught him out once. You remember the row they had. What do you think about the girl? Is she in it too?"
"Opinion as to that is undecided," I said. "For my own part, I think the girl is all right."
"She's such a prize idiot," I added.
"Oh! I wouldn't say that. She's rather shrewd is Miss Gladys Cram. A remarkably healthy specimen. Not likely to trouble members of my profession."
I told him that I was worried about Hawes, and that I was anxious that he should get away for a real rest and change.
Something evasive came into his manner when I said this. His answer did not ring quite true.
"Yes," he said slowly. "I suppose that would be the best thing. Poor chap. Poor chap."
"I thought you didn't like him."
"I don't - not much. But I'm sorry for a lot of people I don't like." He added after a minute or two: "I'm even sorry for Protheroe. Poor fellow - nobody ever liked him much. Too full of his own rectitude and too self-assertive. It's an unlovable mixture. He was always the same - even as a young man."
"I didn't know you knew him then?"
"Oh, yes! When he lived in Westmoreland, I had a practice not far away. That's a long time ago now. Nearly twenty years."
I sighed. Twenty years ago Griselda was five years old. Time is an odd thing...
"Is that all you came to say to me, Clement?"
I looked up with a start. Haydock was watching me with keen eyes.
"There's something else, isn't there?" he said.
I nodded.
I had been uncertain whether to speak or not when I came in, but now I decided to do so. I like Haydock as well as any man I know. He is a splendid fellow in every way. I felt that what I had to tell might be useful to him.
I recited my interviews with Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby.
He was silent for a long time after I'd spoken.
"It's quite true, Clement," he said at last. "I've been trying to shield Mrs. Lestrange from any inconvenience that I could. As a matter of fact, she's an old friend. But that's not my only reason. That medical certificate of mine isn't the put-up job you all think it was."
He paused, and then said gravely:
"This is between you and me, Clement. Mrs. Lestrange is doomed."
"What?"
"She's a dying woman. I give her a month at longest. Do you wonder that I want to keep her from being badgered and questioned?"
He went on:
"When she turned into this road that evening it was here she came - to this house."
"You haven't said so before."
"I didn't want to create talk. Six to seven isn't my time for seeing patients, and every one knows that. But you can take my word for it that she was here."
"She wasn't here when I came for you, though. I mean, when we discovered the body."
"No," he seemed perturbed. "She'd left - to keep an appointment."
"In what direction was the appointment? In her own house?"
"I don't know, Clement. On my honour, I don't know."
I believed him, but -
"And supposing an innocent man is hanged?" I said.
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "No one will be hanged for the murder of Colonel Protheroe. You can take my word for that."
But that is just what I could not do. And yet the certainty in his voice was very great.
"No one will be hanged," he repeated.
"This man, Archer -"
He made an impatient movement.
"Hasn't got brains enough to wipe his finger-prints off the pistol."
"Perhaps not," I said dubiously.
Then I remembered something, and taking the little brownish crystal I had found in the wood from my pocket, I held it out to him and asked him what it was.
"H'm," he hesitated. "Looks like picric acid. Where did you find it?"
"That," I replied, "is Sherlock Holmes's secret."
He smiled.
"What is picric acid?"
"Well, it's an explosive."
"Yes, I know that, but it's got another use, hasn't it?"
He nodded.
"It's used medically - in solution for burns. Wonderful stuff."
I held out my hand, and rather reluctantly he handed it back to me.
"It's of no consequence probably," I said. "But I found it in rather an unusual place."
"You won't tell me where?"
Rather childishly, I wouldn't.
He had his secrets. Well, I would have mine.
I was a little hurt that he had not confided in me more fully.
CHAPTER XXVI
I was in a strange mood when I mounted the pulpit that night.
The church was unusually full. I cannot believe that it was the prospect of Hawes preaching which had attracted so many. Hawes's sermons are dull and dogmatic. And if the news had got round that I was preaching instead, that would not have attracted them either. For my sermons are dull and scholarly. Neither, I am afraid, can I attribute it to devotion.
Everybody had come, I concluded, to see who else was there, and possibly to exchange a little gossip in the church porch afterwards.
Haydock was in church, which is unusual, and also Lawrence Redding. And to my surprise, beside Lawrence I saw the white strained face of Hawes. Anne Protheroe was there, but she usually attends Evensong on Sundays, though I had hardly thought she would today. I was far more surprised to see Lettice. Churchgoing was compulsory on Sunday morning - Colonel Protheroe was adamant on that point, but I had never seen Lettice at evening service before.
Gladys Cram was there, looking rather blatantly young and healthy against a background of wizened spinsters, and I fancied that a dim figure at the end of the church who had slipped in late, was Mrs. Lestrange.
I need hardly say that Mrs. Price Ridley, Miss Hartnell, Miss Wetherby, and Miss Marple were there in full force. All the village people were there, with hardly a single exception. I don't know when we have had such a crowded congregation.
Crowds are queer things. There was a magnetic atmosphere that night, and the first person to feel its influence was myself.
As a rule, I prepare my sermons beforehand. I am careful and conscientious over them, but no one is better aware than myself of their deficiencies.
To-night I was of necessity preaching extempore, and as I looked down on the sea of upturned faces, a sudden madness entered my brain. I ceased to be in any sense a Minister of God. I became an actor. I had an audience before me and I wanted to move that audience - and more, I felt the power to move it.
I am not proud of what I did that night. I am an utter disbeliever in the emotional Revivalist spirit. Yet that night I acted the part of a raving, ranting evangelist.
I gave out my text slowly.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I repeated it twice, and I heard my own voice, a resonant, ringing voice unlike the voice of the everyday Leonard Clement.
I saw Griselda from her front pew look up in surprise and Dennis follow her example.
I held my breath for a moment or too, and then I let myself rip.
The congregation in that church were in a state of pent-up emo
tion, ripe to be played upon. I played upon them. I exhorted sinners to repentance. I lashed myself into a kind of emotional frenzy. Again and again I threw out a denouncing hand and reiterated the phrase.
"I am speaking to you..."
And each time, from different parts of the church, a kind of sighing gasp went up.
Mass emotion is a strange and terrible thing.
I finished up with those beautiful and poignant words - perhaps the most poignant words in the whole Bible:
"This night thy soul shall be required of thee..."
It was a strange, brief possession. When I got back to the Vicarage I was my usual faded, indeterminate self. I found Griselda rather pale. She slipped her arm through mine.
"Len," she said, "you were rather terrible to-night. I - I didn't like it. I've never heard you preach like that before."
"I don't suppose you ever will again," I said, sinking down wearily on the sofa. I was tired.
"What made you do it?"
"A sudden madness came over me."
"Oh! it - it wasn't something special?"
"What do you mean - something special?"
"I wondered - that was all. You're very unexpected, Len. I never feel I really know you."
We sat down to cold supper, Mary being out.
"There's a note for you in the hall," said Griselda. "Get it, will you, Dennis?"
Dennis, who had been very silent, obeyed.
I took it and groaned. Across the top left-hand corner was written: By hand - Urgent.
"This," I said, "must be from Miss Marple. There's no one else left."
I had been perfectly correct in my assumption.
"DEAR MR. CLEMENT, - I should so much like to have a little chat with you about one or two things that have occurred to me. I feel we should all try and help in elucidating this sad mystery, I will come over about half-past nine, if I may, and tap on your study window. Perhaps dear Griselda would be so very kind as to run over here and cheer up my nephew. And Mr. Dennis too, of course, if he cares to come. If I do not hear, I will expect them and will come over myself at the time I have stated.
Yours very sincerely,
JANE MARPLE."
I handed the note to Griselda.
"Oh! we'll go," she said cheerfully. "A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it's Mary's blanc mange that is so frightfully depressing. It's like something out of a mortuary."
Dennis seemed less charmed at the prospect.
"It's all very well for you," he grumbled. "You can talk all this highbrow stuff about art and books. I always feel a perfect fool sitting and listening to you."
"That's good for you," said Griselda serenely. "It puts you in your place. Anyway, I don't think Mr. Raymond West is so frightfully clever as he pretends to be."
"Very few of us are," I said.
I wondered very much what exactly it was that Miss Marple wished to talk over. Of all the ladies in my congregation, I consider her by far the shrewdest. Not only does she see and hear practically everything that goes on, but she draws amazingly neat and apposite deductions from the facts that come under her notice.
If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid.
What Griselda called the Nephew Amusing Party started off at a little after nine, and whilst I was waiting for Miss Marple to arrive I amused myself by drawing up a kind of schedule of the facts connected with the crime. I arranged them so far as possible in chronological order. I am not a punctual person, but I am a neat one, and I like things jotted down in a methodical fashion.
At half-past nine punctually, there was a little tap on the window, and I rose and admitted Miss Marple.
She had a very fine Shetland shawl thrown over her head and shoulders and was looking rather old and frail. She came in full of little fluttering remarks.
"So good of you to let me come - and so good of dear Griselda - Raymond admires her so much - the perfect Greuze he always calls her... Shall I sit here? I am not taking your chair? Oh! thank you.... No, I won't have a footstool."
I deposited the Shetland shawl on a chair and returned to take a chair facing my guest. We looked at each other, and a little deprecating smile broke out on her face.
"I feel that you must be wondering why - why I am so interested in all this. You may possibly think it's very unwomanly. No - please - I should like to explain if I may."
She paused a moment, a pink colour suffusing her cheeks.
"You see," she began at last, "living alone, as I do, in a rather out-of-the-way part of the world one has to have a hobby. There is, of course, woolwork, and Guides, and Welfare, and sketching, but my hobby is - and always has been - Human Nature. So varied - and so very fascinating. And, of course, in a small village, with nothing to distract one, one has such ample opportunity for becoming what I might call proficient in one's study. One begins to class people, quite definitely, just as though they were birds or flowers, group so-and-so, genus this, species that. Sometimes, of course, one makes mistakes, but less and less as time goes on. And then, too, one tests on oneself. One takes a little problem - for instance, the gill of picked shrimps that amused dear Griselda so much - a quite unimportant mystery but absolutely incomprehensible unless one solves it right. And then there was that matter of the changed cough drops, and the butcher's wife's umbrella - the last absolutely meaningless unless on the assumption that the greengrocer was not behaving at all nicely with the chemist's wife - which, of course, turned out to be the case. It is so fascinating, you know, to apply one's judgment and find that one is right."
"You usually are, I believe," I said, smiling.
"That, I am afraid, is what has made me a little conceited," confessed Miss Marple. "But I have always wondered whether, if some day a really big mystery came along, I should be able to do the same thing. I mean - just solve it correctly. Logically, it ought to be exactly the same thing. After all, a tiny working model of a torpedo is just the same as a real torpedo."
"You mean it's all a question of relativity," I said slowly. "It should be - logically, I admit. But I don't know whether it really is."
"Surely it must be the same," said Miss Marple. "The - what one used to call the factors at school - are the same. There's money, and mutual attraction between people of an - er - opposite sex - and there's queerness, of course - so many people are a little queer, aren't they? - in fact, most people are when you know them well. And normal people do such astonishing things sometimes, and abnormal people are sometimes so very sane and ordinary. In fact, the only way is to compare people with other people you have known or come across. You'd be surprised if you knew how very few distinct types there are in all."
"You frighten me," I said. "I feel I'm being put under the microscope."
"Of course, I wouldn't dream of saying any of this to Colonel Melchett - such an autocratic man, isn't he? - and poor Inspector Slack - well, he's exactly like the young lady in the boot shop; who wants to sell you patent leather because she's got it in your size, and doesn't take any notice of the fact that you want brown calf."
That, really, is a very good description of Slack.
"But you, Mr. Clement, know, I'm sure, quite as much about the crime as Inspector Slack. I thought, if we could work together -"
"I wonder," I said. "I think each one of us in his secret heart fancies himself as Sherlock Homes."
Then I told her of the three summonses I had received that afternoon. I told her of Anne's discovery of the picture with the slashed face. I also told her of Miss Cram's attitude at the police station, and I described Haydock's identification of the crystal I had picked up.
"Having found that myself," I finished up, "I should like it to be important. But it's probably got nothing to do with the case."
"I have been reading a lot of American detective stories from the library lately," said Miss Marple, "hoping to find them helpful."
"Was the
re anything in them about picric acid?''
"I'm afraid not. I do remember reading a story once, though, in which a man was poisoned by picric acid and lanoline being rubbed on him as an ointment."
Agatha Christie - Murder at the Vicarage Page 21
