“It’s awfully easy to appear silly, Mr. Clement. It’s one of the easiest things in the world.”
“Then you really think—?”
“No, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t. What I do think is that that girl knows something—or might know something. I wanted to study her at close quarters.”
“And the very night she arrives, that picture is slashed,” I said thoughtfully.
“You think she did it? But why? It seems so utterly absurd and impossible.”
“It seems to me utterly impossible and absurd that your husband should have been murdered in my study,” I said bitterly. “But he was.”
“I know.” She laid her hand on my arm. “It’s dreadful for you. I do realize that, though I haven’t said very much about it.”
I took the blue lapis lazuli earring from my pocket and held it out to her.
“This is yours, I think?”
“Oh, yes!” She held out her hand for it with a pleased smile. “Where did you find it?”
But I did not put the jewel into her outstretched hand.
“Would you mind,” I said, “if I kept it a little longer?”
“Why, certainly.” She looked puzzled and a little inquiring. I did not satisfy her curiosity.
Instead I asked her how she was situated financially.
“It is an impertinent question,” I said, “but I really do not mean it as such.”
“I don’t think it’s impertinent at all. You and Griselda are the best friends I have here. And I like that funny old Miss Marple. Lucius was very well off, you know. He left things pretty equally divided between me and Lettice. Old Hall goes to me, but Lettice is to be allowed to choose enough furniture to furnish a small house, and she is left a separate sum for the purpose of buying one, so as to even things up.”
“What are her plans, do you know?”
Anne made a comical grimace.
“She doesn’t tell them to me. I imagine she will leave here as soon as possible. She doesn’t like me—she never has. I dare say it’s my fault, though I’ve really always tried to be decent. But I suppose any girl resents a young stepmother.”
“Are you fond of her?” I asked bluntly.
She did not reply at once, which convinced me that Anne Protheroe is a very honest woman.
“I was at first,” she said. “She was such a pretty little girl. I don’t think I am now. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t like me. I like being liked, you know.”
“We all do,” I said, and Anne Protheroe smiled.
I had one more task to perform. That was to get a word alone with Lettice Protheroe. I managed that easily enough, catching sight of her in the deserted drawing room. Griselda and Gladys Cram were out in the garden.
I went in and shut the door.
“Lettice,” I said, “I want to speak to you about something.”
She looked up indifferently.
“Yes?”
I had thought beforehand what to say. I held out the lapis earring and said quietly:
“Why did you drop that in my study?”
I saw her stiffen for a moment—it was almost instantaneous. Her recovery was so quick that I myself could hardly have sworn to the movement. Then she said carelessly:
“I never dropped anything in your study. That’s not mine. That’s Anne’s.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Well, why ask me, then? Anne must have dropped it.”
“Mrs. Protheroe has only been in my study once since the murder, and then she was wearing black and so would not have been likely to have had on a blue earring.”
“In that case,” said Lettice, “I suppose she must have dropped it before.” She added: “That’s only logical.”
“It’s very logical,” I said. “I suppose you don’t happen to remember when your stepmother was wearing these earrings last?”
“Oh!” She looked at me with a puzzled, trustful gaze. “Is it very important?”
“It might be,” I said.
“I’ll try and think.” She sat there knitting her brows. I have never seen Lettice Protheroe look more charming than she did at that moment. “Oh, yes!” she said suddenly. “She had them on—on Thursday. I remember now.”
“Thursday,” I said slowly, “was the day of the murder. Mrs. Protheroe came to the study in the garden that day, but if you remember, in her evidence, she only came as far as the study window, not inside the room.”
“Where did you find this?”
“Rolled underneath the desk.”
“Then it looks, doesn’t it,” said Lettice coolly, “as though she hadn’t spoken the truth?”
“You mean that she came right in and stood by the desk?”
“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes met mine serenely.
“If you want to know,” she said calmly, “I never have thought she was speaking the truth.”
“And I know you are not, Lettice.”
“What do you mean?”
She was startled.
“I mean,” I said, “that the last time I saw this earring was on Friday morning when I came up here with Colonel Melchett. It was lying with its fellow on your stepmother’s dressing table. I actually handled them both.”
“Oh—!” She wavered, then suddenly flung herself sideways over the arm of her chair and burst into tears. Her short fair hair hung down almost touching the floor. It was a strange attitude—beautiful and unrestrained.
I let her sob for some moments in silence and then I said very gently:
“Lettice, why did you do it?”
“What?”
She sprang up, flinging her hair wildly back. She looked wild—almost terrified.
“What do you mean?”
“What made you do it? Was it jealousy? Dislike of Anne?”
“Oh!—Oh, yes!” She pushed the hair back from her face and seemed suddenly to regain complete self-possession. “Yes, you can call it jealousy. I’ve always disliked Anne—ever since she came queening it here. I put the damned thing under the desk. I hoped it would get her into trouble. It would have done if you hadn’t been such a Nosey Parker, fingering things on dressing tables. Anyway, it isn’t a clergyman’s business to go about helping the police.”
It was a spiteful, childish outburst. I took no notice of it. Indeed, at that moment, she seemed a very pathetic child indeed.
Her childish attempt at vengeance against Anne seemed hardly to be taken seriously. I told her so, and added that I should return the earring to her and say nothing of the circumstances in which I had found it. She seemed rather touched by that.
“That’s nice of you,” she said.
She paused a minute and then said, keeping her face averted and evidently choosing her words with care:
“You know, Mr. Clement, I should—I should get Dennis away from here soon, if I were you I—think it would be better.”
“Dennis?” I raised my eyebrows in slight surprise but with a trace of amusement too.
“I think it would be better.” She added, still in the same awkward manner: “I’m sorry about Dennis. I didn’t think he—anyway, I’m sorry.”
We left it at that.
Twenty-three
On the way back, I proposed to Griselda that we should make a detour and go round by the barrow. I was anxious to see if the police were at work and if so, what they had found. Griselda, however, had things to do at home, so I was left to make the expedition on my own.
I found Constable Hurst in charge of operations.
“No sign so far, sir,” he reported. “And yet it stands to reason that this is the only place for a cache.”
His use of the word cache puzzled me for a moment, as he pronounced it catch, but his real meaning occurred to me almost at once.
“Whatimeantersay is, sir, where else could the young woman be going starting into the wood by that path? It leads to Old Hall, and it leads here, and that’s about all.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that Inspector Slack would disdain such a simple course as asking the young lady straight out.”
“Anxious not to put the wind up her,” said Hurst. “Anything she writes to Stone or he writes to her may throw light on things—once she knows we’re on to her, she’d shut up like that.”
Like what exactly was left in doubt, but I personally doubted Miss Gladys Cram ever being shut up in the way described. It was impossible to imagine her as other than overflowing with conversation.
“When a man’s an h’impostor, you want to know why he’s an h’impostor,” said Constable Hurst didactically.
“Naturally,” I said.
“And the answer is to be found in this here barrow—or else why was he forever messing about with it?”
“A raison d’être for prowling about,” I suggested, but this bit of French was too much for the constable. He revenged himself for not understanding it by saying coldly:
“That’s the h’amateur’s point of view.”
“Anyway, you haven’t found the suitcase,” I said.
“We shall do, sir. Not a doubt of it.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Miss Marple said it was quite a short time before the girl reappeared empty-handed. In that case, she wouldn’t have had time to get up here and back.”
“You can’t take any notice of what old ladies say. When they’ve seen something curious, and are waiting all eager like, why, time simply flies for them. And anyway, no lady knows anything about time.”
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalize. Generalizations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate. I have a poor sense of time myself (hence the keeping of my clock fast) and Miss Marple, I should say, has a very acute one. Her clocks keep time to the minute and she herself is rigidly punctual on every occasion.
However, I had no intention of arguing with Constable Hurst on the point. I wished him good afternoon and good luck and went on my way.
It was just as I was nearing home that the idea came to me. There was nothing to lead up to it. It just flashed into my brain as a possible solution.
You will remember that on my first search of the path, the day after the murder, I had found the bushes disturbed in a certain place. They proved, or so I thought at the time, to have been disturbed by Lawrence, bent on the same errand as myself.
But I remembered that afterwards he and I together had come upon another faintly marked trail which proved to be that of the Inspector. On thinking it over, I distinctly remembered that the first trail (Lawrence’s) had been much more noticeable than the second, as though more than one person had been passing that way. And I reflected that that was probably what had drawn Lawrence’s attention to it in the first instance. Supposing that it had originally been made by either Dr. Stone or else Miss Cram?
I remembered, or else I imagined remembering, that there had been several withered leaves on broken twigs. If so, the trail could not have been made the afternoon of our search.
I was just approaching the spot in question. I recognized it easily enough and once more forced my way through the bushes. This time I noticed fresh twigs broken. Someone had passed this way since Lawrence and myself.
I soon came to the place where I had encountered Lawrence. The faint trail, however, persisted farther, and I continued to follow it. Suddenly it widened out into a little clearing, which showed signs of recent upheaval. I say a clearing, because the denseness of the undergrowth was thinned out there, but the branches of the trees met overhead and the whole place was not more than a few feet across.
On the other side, the undergrowth grew densely again, and it seemed quite clear that no one had forced a way through it recently. Nevertheless, it seemed to have been disturbed in one place.
I went across and kneeled down, thrusting the bushes aside with both hands. A glint of shiny brown surface rewarded me. Full of excitement, I thrust my arm in and with a good deal of difficulty I extracted a small brown suitcase.
I uttered an ejaculation of triumph. I had been successful. Coldly snubbed by Constable Hurst, I had yet proved right in my reasoning. Here without doubt was the suitcase carried by Miss Cram. I tried the hasp, but it was locked.
As I rose to my feet I noticed a small brownish crystal lying on the ground. Almost automatically, I picked it up and slipped it into my pocket.
Then grasping my find by the handle, I retraced my steps to the path.
As I climbed over the stile into the lane, an agitated voice near at hand called out:
“Oh! Mr. Clement. You’ve found it! How clever of you!”
Mentally registering the fact that in the art of seeing without being seen, Miss Marple had no rival, I balanced my find on the palings between us.
“That’s the one,” said Miss Marple “I’d know it anywhere.”
This, I thought, was a slight exaggeration. There are thousands of cheap shiny suitcases all exactly alike. No one could recognize one particular one seen from such a distance away by moonlight, but I realized that the whole business of the suitcase was Miss Marple’s particular triumph and, as such, she was entitled to a little pardonable exaggeration.
“It’s locked, I suppose, Mr. Clement?”
“Yes. I’m just going to take it down to the police station.”
“You don’t think it would be better to telephone?”
Of course unquestionably it would be better to telephone. To stride through the village, suitcase in hand, would be to court a probably undesirable publicity.
So I unlatched Miss Marple’s garden gate and entered the house by the French window, and from the sanctity of the drawing room with the door shut, I telephoned my news.
The result was that Inspector Slack announced he would be up himself in a couple of jiffies.
When he arrived it was in his most cantankerous mood.
“So we’ve got it, have we?” he said. “You know, sir, you shouldn’t keep things to yourself. If you’d any reason to believe you knew where the article in question was hidden, you ought to have reported it to the proper authorities.”
“It was a pure accident,” I said. “The idea just happened to occur to me.”
“And that’s a likely tale. Nearly three-quarters of a mile of woodland, and you go right to the proper spot and lay your hand upon it.”
I would have given Inspector Slack the steps in reasoning which led me to this particular spot, but he had achieved his usual result of putting my back up. I said nothing.
“Well?” said Inspector Slack, eyeing the suitcase with dislike and would be indifference, “I suppose we might as well have a look at what’s inside.”
He had brought an assortment of keys and wire with him. The lock was a cheap affair. In a couple of seconds the case was open.
I don’t know what we had expected to find—something sternly sensational, I imagine. But the first thing that met our eyes was a greasy plaid scarf. The Inspector lifted it out. Next came a faded dark blue overcoat, very much the worse for wear. A checked cap followed.
“A shoddy lot,” said the Inspector.
A pair of boots very down at heel and battered came next. At the bottom of the suitcase was a parcel done up in newspaper.
“Fancy shirt, I suppose,” said the Inspector bitterly, as he tore it open.
A moment later he had caught his breath in surprise.
For inside the parcel were some demure little silver objects and a round platter of the same metal.
Miss Marple gave a shrill exclamation of recognition.
“The trencher salts,” she exclaimed. “Colonel Protheroe’s trencher salts, and the Charles II tazza. Did you ever hear of such a thing!”
The Inspector had got very red.
“So that was the game,” he muttered. “Robbery. But I can’t make it out. There’s been no mention of these things being missing.”
“Perhaps they haven’t discovered the loss,” I suggest
ed. “I presume these valuable things would not have been kept out in common use. Colonel Protheroe probably kept them locked away in a safe.”
“I must investigate this,” said the Inspector. “I’ll go right up to Old Hall now. So that’s why our Dr. Stone made himself scarce. What with the murder and one thing and another, he was afraid we’d get wind of his activities. As likely as not his belongings might have been searched. He got the girl to hide them in the wood with a suitable change of clothing. He meant to come back by a roundabout route and go off with them one night whilst she stayed here to disarm suspicion. Well, there’s one thing to the good. This lets him out over the murder. He’d nothing to do with that. Quite a different game.”
He repacked the suitcase and took his departure, refusing Miss Marple’s offer of a glass of sherry.
“Well, that’s one mystery cleared up,” I said with a sigh. “What Slack says is quite true; there are no grounds for suspecting him of the murder. Everything’s accounted for quite satisfactorily.”
“It really would seem so,” said Miss Marple. “Although one never can be quite certain, can one?”
“There’s a complete lack of motive,” I pointed out. “He’d got what he came for and was clearing out.”
“Y—es.”
She was clearly not quite satisfied, and I looked at her in some curiosity. She hastened to answer my inquiring gaze with a kind of apologetic eagerness.
“I’ve no doubt I am quite wrong. I’m so stupid about these things. But I just wondered—I mean this silver is very valuable, is it not?”
“A tazza sold the other day for over a thousand pounds, I believe.”
“I mean—it’s not the value of the metal.”
“No, it’s what one might call a connoisseur’s value.”
“That’s what I mean. The sale of such things would take a little time to arrange, or even if it was arranged, it couldn’t be carried through without secrecy. I mean—if the robbery were reported and a hue and cry were raised, well, the things couldn’t be marketed at all.”
“I don’t quite see what you mean?” I said.
“I know I’m putting it badly.” She became more flustered and apologetic. “But it seems to me that—that the things couldn’t just have been abstracted, so to speak. The only satisfactory thing to do would be to replace these things with copies. Then, perhaps, the robbery wouldn’t be discovered for some time.”