During all this, Mary had been extracting eyes from potatoes with such energy that they had been flying round the kitchen like hailstones. At this moment one hit me in the eye and caused a momentary pause in the conversation.
“Don’t you think,” I said, as I dabbed my eye with my handkerchief, “that you have been rather too inclined to take offence where none is meant? You know, Mary, your mistress will be very sorry to lose you.”
“I’ve nothing against the mistress—or against you, sir, for that matter.”
“Well, then, don’t you think you’re being rather silly?”
Mary sniffed.
“I was a bit upset like—after the inquest and all. And a girl has her feelings. But I wouldn’t like to cause the mistress inconvenience.”
“Then that’s all right,” I said.
I left the kitchen to find Griselda and Dennis waiting for me in the hall. “Well?” exclaimed Griselda.
“She’s staying,” I said, and sighed.
“Len,” said my wife, “you have been clever.”
I felt rather inclined to disagree with her. I did not think I had been clever. It is my firm opinion that no servant could be a worse one than Mary. Any change, I consider, would have been a change for the better.
But I like to please Griselda. I detailed the heads of Mary’s grievance.
“How like Lettice,” said Dennis. “She couldn’t have left that yellow beret of hers here on Wednesday. She was wearing it for tennis on Thursday.”
“That seems to me highly probable,” I said.
“She never knows where she’s left anything,” said Dennis, with a kind of affectionate pride and admiration that I felt was entirely uncalled for. “She loses about a dozen things every day.”
“A remarkably attractive trait,” I observed.
Any sarcasm missed Dennis.
“She is attractive,” he said, with a deep sigh. “People are always proposing to her—she told me so.”
“They must be illicit proposals if they’re made to her down here,” I remarked. “We haven’t got a bachelor in the place.”
“There’s Dr. Stone,” said Griselda, her eyes dancing.
“He asked her to come and see the barrow the other day,” I admitted.
“Of course he did,” said Griselda. “She is attractive, Len. Even baldheaded archaeologists feel it.”
“Lots of S.A.,” said Dennis sapiently.
And yet Lawrence Redding is completely untouched by Lettice’s charm. Griselda, however, explained that with the air of one who knew she was right.
“Lawrence has got lots of S.A. himself. That kind always likes the—how shall I put it—the Quaker type. Very restrained and diffident. The kind of woman whom everybody calls cold. I think Anne is the only woman who could ever hold Lawrence. I don’t think they’ll ever tire of each other. All the same, I think he’s been rather stupid in one way. He’s rather made use of Lettice, you know. I don’t think he ever dreamed she cared—he’s awfully modest in some ways—but I have a feeling she does.”
“She can’t bear him,” said Dennis positively. “She told me so.”
I have never seen anything like the pitying silence with which Griselda received this remark.
I went into my study. There was, to my fancy, still a rather eerie feeling in the room. I knew that I must get over this. Once give in to that feeling, and I should probably never use the study again. I walked thoughtfully over to the writing table. Here Protheroe had sat, red-faced, hearty, self-righteous, and here, in a moment of time, he had been struck down. Here, where I was standing, an enemy had stood….
And so—no more Protheroe….
Here was the pen his fingers had held.
On the floor was a faint dark stain—the rug had been sent to the cleaners, but the blood had soaked through.
I shivered.
“I can’t use this room,” I said aloud. “I can’t use it.”
Then my eye was caught by something—a mere speck of bright blue. I bent down. Between the floor and the desk I saw a small object. I picked it up.
I was standing staring at it in the palm of my hand when Griselda came in.
“I forgot to tell you, Len. Miss Marple wants us to go over tonight after dinner. To amuse the nephew. She’s afraid of his being dull. I said we’d go.”
“Very well, my dear.”
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
I closed my hand, and looking at my wife, observed:
“If you don’t amuse Master Raymond West, my dear, he must be very hard to please.”
My wife said: “Don’t be ridiculous, Len,” and turned pink.
She went out again, and I unclosed my hand.
In the palm of my hand was a blue lapis lazuli earring set in seed pearls.
It was rather an unusual jewel, and I knew very well where I had seen it last.
Twenty-one
I cannot say that I have at any time had a great admiration for Mr. Raymond West. He is, I know, supposed to be a brilliant novelist and has made quite a name as a poet. His poems have no capital letters in them, which is, I believe, the essence of modernity. His books are about unpleasant people leading lives of surpassing dullness.
He has a tolerant affection for “Aunt Jane,” whom he alludes to in her presence as a “survival.”
She listens to his talk with a flattering interest, and if there is sometimes an amused twinkle in her eye I am sure he never notices it.
He fastened on Griselda at once with flattering abruptness. They discussed modern plays and from there went on to modern schemes of decoration. Griselda affects to laugh at Raymond West, but she is, I think, susceptible to his conversation.
During my (dull) conversation with Miss Marple, I heard at intervals the reiteration “buried as you are down here.”
It began at last to irritate me. I said suddenly:
“I suppose you consider us very much out of the things down here?”
Raymond West waved his cigarette.
“I regard St. Mary Mead,” he said authoritatively, “as a stagnant pool.”
He looked at us, prepared for resentment at his statement, but somewhat, I think, to his chagrin, no one displayed annoyance.
“That is really not a very good simile, dear Raymond,” said Miss Marple briskly. “Nothing, I believe, is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pool.”
“Life—of a kind,” admitted the novelist.
“It’s all much the same kind, really, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple.
“You compare yourself to a denizen of a stagnant pond, Aunt Jane?”
“My dear, you said something of the sort in your last book, I remember.”
No clever young man likes having his works quoted against himself. Raymond West was no exception.
“That was entirely different,” he snapped.
“Life is, after all, very much the same everywhere,” said Miss Marple in her placid voice. “Getting born, you know, and growing up—and coming into contact with other people—getting jostled—and then marriage and more babies—”
“And finally death,” said Raymond West. “And not death with a death certificate always. Death in life.”
“Talking of death,” said Griselda. “You know we’ve had a murder here?”
Raymond West waved murder away with his cigarette.
“Murder is so crude,” he said. “I take no interest in it.”
That statement did not take me in for a moment. They say all the world loves a lover—apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth. No one can fail to be interested in a murder. Simple people like Griselda and myself can admit the fact, but anyone like Raymond West has to pretend to be bored—at any rate for the first five minutes.
Miss Marple, however, gave her nephew away by remarking:
“Raymond and I have been discussing nothing else all through dinner.”
�
�I take a great interest in all the local news,” said Raymond hastily. He smiled benignly and tolerantly at Miss Marple.
“Have you a theory, Mr. West?” asked Griselda.
“Logically,” said Raymond West, again flourishing his cigarette, “only one person could have killed Protheroe.”
“Yes?” said Griselda.
We hung upon his words with flattering attention.
“The Vicar,” said Raymond, and pointed an accusing finger at me.
I gasped.
“Of course,” he reassured me, “I know you didn’t do it. Life is never what it should be. But think of the drama—the fitness—churchwarden murdered in the Vicar’s study by the Vicar. Delicious!”
“And the motive?” I inquired.
“Oh! That’s interesting.” He sat up—allowed his cigarette to go out. “Inferiority complex, I think. Possibly too many inhibitions. I should like to write the story of the affair. Amazingly complex. Week after week, year after year, he’s seen the man—at vestry meetings—at choirboys’ outings—handing round the bag in church—bringing it to the altar. Always he dislikes the man—always he chokes down his dislike. It’s unChristian, he won’t encourage it. And so it festers underneath, and one day—”
He made a graphic gesture.
Griselda turned to me.
“Have you ever felt like that, Len?”
“Never,” I said truthfully.
“Yet I hear you were wishing him out of the world not so long ago,” remarked Miss Marple.
(That miserable Dennis! But my fault, of course, for ever making the remark.)
“I’m afraid I was,” I said. “It was a stupid remark to make, but really I’d had a very trying morning with him.”
“That’s disappointing,” said Raymond West. “Because, of course, if your subconscious were really planning to do him in, it would never have allowed you to make that remark.”
He sighed.
“My theory falls to the ground. This is probably a very ordinary murder—a revengeful poacher or something of that sort.”
“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.”
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.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 16
