Murder at the Vicarage

by Agatha Christie

  “You think he can have shot him earlier? At six thirty, say?”

  “He can’t have done that.”

  “You’ve checked up his movements?”

  The Inspector nodded.

  “He was in the village near the Blue Boar at ten past six. From there he came along the back lane where you say the old lady next door saw him—she doesn’t miss much, I should say—and kept his appointment with Mrs. Protheroe in the studio in the garden. They left there together just after six thirty, and went along the lane to the village, being joined by Dr. Stone. He corroborates that all right—I’ve seen him. They all stood talking just by the post office for a few minutes, then Mrs. Protheroe went into Miss Hartnell’s to borrow a gardening magazine. That’s all right too. I’ve seen Miss Hartnell. Mrs. Protheroe remained there talking to her till just on seven o’clock when she exclaimed at the lateness of the hour and said she must get home.”

  “What was her manner?”

  “Very easy and pleasant, Miss Hartnell said. She seemed in good spirits—Miss Hartnell is quite sure there was nothing on her mind.”

  “Well, go on.”

  “Redding, he went with Dr. Stone to the Blue Boar and they had a drink together. He left there at twenty minutes to seven, went rapidly along the village street and down the road to the Vicarage. Lots of people saw him.”

  “Not down the back lane this time?” commented the Colonel.

  “No—he came to the front, asked for the Vicar, heard Colonel Protheroe was there, went in—and shot him—just as he said he did! That’s the truth of it, and we needn’t look further.”

  Melchett shook his head.

  “There’s the doctor’s evidence. You can’t get away from that. Protheroe was shot not later than six thirty.”

  “Oh, doctors!” Inspector Slack looked contemptuous. “If you’re going to believe doctors. Take out all your teeth—that’s what they do nowadays—and then say they’re very sorry, but all the time it was appendicitis. Doctors!”

  “This isn’t a question of diagnosis. Dr. Haydock was absolutely positive on the point. You can’t go against the medical evidence, Slack.”

  “And there’s my evidence for what it is worth,” I said, suddenly recalling a forgotten incident. “I touched the body and it was cold. That I can swear to.”

  “You see, Slack?” said Melchett.

  “Well, of course, if that’s so. But there it was—a beautiful case. Mr. Redding only too anxious to be hanged, so to speak.”

  “That, in itself, strikes me as a little unnatural,” observed Colonel Melchett.

  “Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” said the Inspector. “There’s a lot of gentlemen went a bit balmy after the war. Now, I suppose, it means starting again at the beginning.” He turned on me. “Why you went out of your way to mislead me about the clock, sir, I can’t think. Obstructing the ends of justice, that’s what that was.”

  “I tried to tell you on three separate occasions,” I said. “And each time you shut me up and refused to listen.”

  “That’s just a way of speaking, sir. You could have told me perfectly well if you had had a mind to. The clock and the note seemed to tally perfectly. Now, according to you, the clock was all wrong. I never knew such a case. What’s the sense of keeping a clock a quarter of an hour fast anyway?”

  “It is supposed,” I said, “to induce punctuality.”

  “I don’t think we need go further into that now, Inspector,” said Colonel Melchett tactfully. “What we want now is the true story from both Mrs. Protheroe and young Redding. I telephoned to Haydock and asked him to bring Mrs. Protheroe over here with him. They ought to be here in about a quarter of an hour. I think it would be as well to have Redding here first.”

  “I’ll get on to the station,” said Inspector Slack, and took up the telephone.

  “And now,” he said, replacing the receiver, “we’ll get to work on this room.” He looked at me in a meaningful fashion.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “you’d like me out of the way.”

  The Inspector immediately opened the door for me. Melchett called out:

  “Come back when young Redding arrives, will you, Vicar? You’re a friend of his and you may have sufficient influence to persuade him to speak the truth.”

  I found my wife and Miss Marple with their heads together.

  “We’ve been discussing all sorts of possibilities,” said Griselda. “I wish you’d solve the case, Miss Marple, like you did the time Miss Wetherby’s gill of picked shrimps disappeared. And all because it reminded you of something quite different about a sack of coals.”

  “You’re laughing, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “but after all, that is a very sound way of arriving at the truth. It’s really what people call intuition and make such a fuss about. Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. But a grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before. You catch my meaning, Vicar?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, “I think I do. You mean that if a thing reminds you of something else—well, it’s probably the same kind of thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what precisely does the murder of Colonel Protheroe remind you of?”

  Miss Marple sighed.

  “That is just the difficulty. So many parallels come to the mind. For instance, there was Major Hargreaves, a churchwarden and a man highly respected in every way. And all the time he was keeping a separate second establishment—a former housemaid, just think of it! And five children—actually five children—a terrible shock to his wife and daughter.”

  I tried hard to visualize Colonel Protheroe in the rôle of secret sinner and failed.

  “And then there was that laundry business,” went on Miss Marple. “Miss Hartnell’s opal pin—left most imprudently in a frilled blouse and sent to the laundry. And the woman who took it didn’t want it in the least and wasn’t by any means a thief. She simply hid it in another woman’s house and told the police she’d seen this other woman take it. Spite, you know, sheer spite. It’s an astonishing motive—spite. A man in it, of course. There always is.”

  This time I failed to see any parallel, however remote.

  “And then there was poor Elwell’s daughter—such a pretty ethereal girl—tried to stifle her little brother. And there was the money for the Choir Boys’ Outing (before your time, Vicar) actually taken by the organist. His wife was sadly in debt. Yes, this case makes one think so many things—too many. It’s very hard to arrive at the truth.”

  “I wish you would tell me,” I said, “who were the seven suspects?”

  “The seven suspects?”

  “You said you could think of seven people who would—well, be glad of Colonel Protheroe’s death.”

  “Did I? Yes, I remember I did.”

  “Was that true?”

  “Oh! Certainly it was true. But I mustn’t mention names. You can think of them quite easily yourself. I am sure.”

  “Indeed I can’t. There is Lettice Protheroe, I suppose, since she probably comes into money on her father’s death. But it is absurd to think of her in such a connection, and outside her I can think of nobody.”

  “And you, my dear?” said Miss Marple, turning to Griselda.

  Rather to my surprise Griselda coloured up. Something very like tears started into her eyes. She clenched both her small hands.

  “Oh!” she cried indignantly. “People are hateful—hateful. The things they say! The beastly things they say….”

  I looked at her curiously. It is very unlike Griselda to be so upset. She noticed my glance and tried to smile.

  “Don’t look at me as though I were an interesting specimen you didn’t understand, Len. Don’t let’s get heated and wander from the point. I don’t believe that it was Lawrence or Anne, and Lettice is out of the question. There must be some clue or other that would help us.”

  “There is the not
e, of course,” said Miss Marple. “You will remember my saying this morning that that struck me as exceedingly peculiar.”

  “It seems to fix the time of his death with remarkable accuracy,” I said. “And yet, is that possible? Mrs. Protheroe would only have just left the study. She would hardly have had time to reach the studio. The only way in which I can account for it is that he consulted his own watch and that his watch was slow. That seems to me a feasible solution.”

  “I have another idea,” said Griselda. “Suppose, Len, that the clock had already been put back—no, that comes to the same thing—how stupid of me!”

  “It hadn’t been altered when I left,” I said. “I remember comparing it with my watch. Still, as you say, that has no bearing on the present matter.”

  “What do you think, Miss Marple?” asked Griselda.

  “My dear, I confess I wasn’t thinking about it from that point of view at all. What strikes me as so curious, and has done from the first, is the subject matter of that letter.”

  “I don’t see that,” I said. “Colonel Protheroe merely wrote that he couldn’t wait any longer—”

  “At twenty minutes past six?” said Miss Marple. “Your maid, Mary, had already told him that you wouldn’t be in till half past six at the earliest, and he appeared to be quite willing to wait until then. And yet at twenty past six he sits down and says he ‘can’t wait any longer.’”

  I stared at the old lady, feeling an increased respect for her mental powers. Her keen wits had seen what we had failed to perceive. It was an odd thing—a very odd thing.

  “If only,” I said, “the letter hadn’t been dated—”

  Miss Marple nodded her head.

  “Exactly,” she said. “If it hadn’t been dated!”

  I cast my mind back, trying to recall that sheet of notepaper and the blurred scrawl, and at the top that neatly printed 6:20. Surely these figures were on a different scale to the rest of the letter. I gave a gasp.

  “Supposing,” I said, “it wasn’t dated. Supposing that round about 6:30 Colonel Protheroe got impatient and sat down to say he couldn’t wait any longer. And as he was sitting there writing, someone came in through the window—”

  “Or through the door,” suggested Griselda.

  “He’d hear the door and look up.”

  “Colonel Protheroe was rather deaf, you remember,” said Miss Marple.

  “Yes, that’s true. He wouldn’t hear it. Whichever way the murderer came, he stole up behind the Colonel and shot him. Then he saw the note and the clock and the idea came to him. He put 6:20 at the top of the letter and he altered the clock to 6:22. It was a clever idea. It gave him, or so he would think, a perfect alibi.”

  “And what we want to find,” said Griselda, “is someone who has a cast-iron alibi for 6:20, but no alibi at all for—well, that isn’t so easy. One can’t fix the time.”

  “We can fix it within very narrow limits,” I said. “Haydock places 6:30 as the outside limit of time. I suppose one could perhaps shift it to 6:35 from the reasoning we have just been following out, it seems clear that Protheroe would not have got impatient before 6:30. I think we can say we do know pretty well.”

  “Then that shot I heard—yes, I suppose it is quite possible. And I thought nothing about it—nothing at all. Most vexing. And yet, now I try to recollect, it does seem to me that it was different from the usual sort of shot one hears. Yes, there was a difference.”

  “Louder?” I suggested.

  No, Miss Marple didn’t think it had been louder. In fact, she found it hard to say in what way it had been different, but she still insisted that it was.

  I thought she was probably persuading herself of the fact rather than actually remembering it, but she had just contributed such a valuable new outlook to the problem that I felt highly respectful towards her.

  She rose, murmuring that she must really get back—it had been so tempting just to run over and discuss the case with dear Griselda. I escorted her to the boundary wall and the back gate and returned to find Griselda wrapped in thought.

  “Still puzzling over that note?” I asked.

  “No.”

  She gave a sudden shiver and shook her shoulders impatiently.

  “Len, I’ve been thinking. How badly someone must have hated Anne Protheroe!”

  “Hated her?”

  “Yes. Don’t you see? There’s no real evidence against Lawrence—all the evidence against him is what you might call accidental. He just happens to take it into his head to come here. If he hadn’t—well, no one would have thought of connecting him with the crime. But Anne is different. Suppose someone knew that she was here at exactly 6:20—the clock and the time on the letter—everything pointing to her. I don’t think it was only because of an alibi it was moved to that exact time—I think there was more in it than that—a direct attempt to fasten the business on her. If it hadn’t been for Miss Marple saying she hadn’t got the pistol with her and noticing that she was only a moment before going down to the studio—Yes, if it hadn’t been for that …” She shivered again. “Len, I feel that someone hated Anne Protheroe very much. I—I don’t like it.”

  Twelve

  I was summoned to the study when Lawrence Redding arrived. He looked haggard, and, I thought, suspicious. Colonel Melchett greeted him with something approaching cordiality.

  “We want to ask you a few questions—here, on the spot,” he said.

  Lawrence sneered slightly.

  “Isn’t that a French idea? Reconstruction of the crime?”

  “My dear boy,” said Colonel Melchett, “don’t take that tone with us. Are you aware that someone else has also confessed to committing the crime which you pretend to have committed?”

  The effect of these words on Lawrence was painful and immediate.

  “S-s-omeone else?” he stammered. “Who—who?”

  “Mrs. Protheroe,” said Colonel Melchett, watching him.

  “Absurd. She never did it. She couldn’t have. It’s impossible.”

  Melchett interrupted him.

  “Strangely enough, we did not believe her story. Neither, I may say, do we believe yours. Dr. Haydock says positively that the murder could not have been committed at the time you say it was.”

  “Dr. Haydock says that?”

  “Yes, so, you see, you are cleared whether you like it or not. And now we want you to help us, to tell us exactly what occurred.”

  Lawrence still hesitated.

  “You’re not deceiving me about—about Mrs. Protheroe? You really don’t suspect her?”

  “On my word of honour,” said Colonel Melchett.

  Lawrence drew a deep breath.

  “I’ve been a fool,” he said. “An absolute fool. How could I have thought for one minute that she did it—”

  “Suppose you tell us all about it?” suggested the Chief Constable.

  “There’s not much to tell. I—I met Mrs. Protheroe that afternoon—” He paused.

  “We know all about that,” said Melchett. “You may think that your feeling for Mrs. Protheroe and hers for you was a dead secret, but in reality it was known and commented upon. In any case, everything is bound to come out now.”

  “Very well, then. I expect you are right. I had promised the Vicar here (he glanced at me) to—to go right away. I met Mrs. Protheroe that evening in the studio at a quarter past six. I told her of what I had decided. She, too, agreed that it was the only thing to do. We—we said good-bye to each other.

  “We left the studio, and almost at once Dr. Stone joined us. Anne managed to seem marvellously natural. I couldn’t do it. I went off with Stone to the Blue Boar and had a drink. Then I thought I’d go home, but when I got to the corner of this road, I changed my mind and decided to come along and see the Vicar. I felt I wanted someone to talk to about the matter.

  “At the door, the maid told me the Vicar was out, but would be in shortly, but that Colonel Protheroe was in the study waiting for him. Well, I didn’t l
ike to go away again—looked as though I were shirking meeting him. So I said I’d wait too, and I went into the study.”

  He stopped.

  “Well?” said Colonel Melchett.

  “Protheroe was sitting at the writing table—just as you found him. I went up to him—touched him. He was dead. Then I looked down and saw the pistol lying on the floor beside him. I picked it up—and at once saw that it was my pistol.

  “That gave me a turn. My pistol! And then, straightaway I leaped to one conclusion. Anne must have bagged my pistol some time or other—meaning it for herself if she couldn’t bear things any longer. Perhaps she had had it with her today. After we parted in the village she must have come back here and—and—oh! I suppose I was mad to think of it. But that’s what I thought. I slipped the pistol in my pocket and came away. Just outside the Vicarage gate, I met the Vicar. He said something nice and normal about seeing Protheroe—suddenly I had a wild desire to laugh. His manner was so ordinary and everyday and there was I all strung up. I remember shouting out something absurd and seeing his face change. I was nearly off my head, I believe. I went walking—walking—at last I couldn’t bear it any longer. If Anne had done this ghastly thing, I was, at least, morally responsible. I went and gave myself up.”

  There was a silence when he had finished. Then the Colonel said in a businesslike voice:

  “I would like to ask just one or two questions. First, did you touch or move the body in any way?”

  “No, I didn’t touch it at all. One could see he was dead without touching him.”

  “Did you notice a note lying on the blotter half concealed by his body?”