III

It was the following afternoon that the Inspector called at the Vicarage.

It was a dark gusty day.

Miss Marple had her chair pulled close to the fire and was knitting.

Bunch was on hands and knees, crawling about the floor, cutting out ma-terial to a pattern.

She sat back and pushed a mop of hair out of her eyes, looking up ex-pectantly at Craddock.

“I don’t know if it’s a breach of confidence,” said the Inspector, address-ing himself to Miss Marple, “but I’d like you to look at this letter.”

He explained the circumstances of his discovery in the attic.

“It’s rather a touching collection of letters,” he said. “Miss Blacklockpoured out everything in the hopes of sustaining her sister’s interest in lifeand keeping her health good. There’s a very clear picture of an old fatherin the background—old Dr. Blacklock. A real old pig-headed bully, abso-lutely set in his ways, and convinced that everything he thought and saidwas right. Probably killed thousands of patients through obstinacy. Hewouldn’t stand for any new ideas or methods.”

“I don’t really know that I blame him there,” said Miss Marple. “I alwaysfeel that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. Afterthey’ve whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very pe-culiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that noth-ing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of bigblack bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down thesink.”

She took the letter that Craddock handed her.

He said: “I want you to read it because I think that that generation ismore easily understood by you than by me. I don’t know really quite howthese people’s minds worked.”

Miss Marple unfolded the fragile paper.

Dearest Charlotte,

I’ve not written for two days because we’ve been having themost terrible domestic complications. Randall’s sister So-nia (you remember her? She came to take you out in thecar that day? How I wish you would go out more). Soniahas declared her intention of marrying one Dmitri Stam-fordis. I have only seen him once. Very attractive—not tobe trusted, I should say. R.G. raves against him and sayshe is a crook and a swindler. Belle, bless her, just smilesand lies on her sofa. Sonia, who though she looks so im-passive has really a terrific temper, is simply wild withR.G. I really thought yesterday she was going to murderhim!

I’ve done my best. I’ve talked to Sonia and I’ve talked toR.G. and I’ve got them both into a more reasonable frameof mind and then they come together and it all starts overagain! You’ve no idea how tiring it is. R.G. has been mak-ing enquiries — and it does really seem as though thisStamfordis man was thoroughly undesirable.

In the meantime business is being neglected. I carry on atthe office and in a way it’s rather fun because R.G. givesme a free hand. He said to me yesterday: “Thank Heaven,there’s one sane person in the world. You’re never likely tofall in love with a crook, Blackie, are you?” I said I didn’tthink I was likely to fall in love with anybody. R.G. said:

“Let’s start a few new hares in the City.” He’s really rathera mischievous devil sometimes and he sails terribly nearthe wind. “You’re quite determined to keep me on thestraight and narrow path aren’t you, Blackie?” he said theother day. And I shall too! I can’t understand how peoplecan’t see when a thing’s dishonest—but R.G. really andtruly doesn’t. He only knows what is actually against thelaw.

Belle only laughs at all this. She thinks the fuss about So-nia is all nonsense. “Sonia has her own money,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t she marry this man if she wants to?” I saidit might turn out to be a terrible mistake and Belle said,“It’s never a mistake to marry a man you want to marry—even if you regret it.” And then she said, “I suppose Soniadoesn’t want to break with Randall because of money. So-nia’s very fond of money.”

No more now. How is father? I won’t say Give him my love.

But you can if you think it’s better to do so. Have you seenmore people? You really must not be morbid, darling.

Sonia asks to be remembered to you. She has just come inand is closing and unclosing her hands like an angry catsharpening its claws. I think she and R.G. have had an-other row. Of course Sonia can be very irritating. Shestares you down with that cool stare of hers.

Lots of love, darling, and buck up. This iodine treatmentmay make a lot of difference. I’ve been enquiring about itand it really does seem to have good results.

Your loving sister,

Letitia.

Miss Marple folded the letter and handed it back. She looked abstracted.

“Well, what do you think about her?” Craddock urged. “What picture doyou get of her?”

“Of Sonia? It’s difficult, you know, to see anyone through another per-son’s mind … Determined to get her own way—that, definitely, I think.

And wanting the best of two worlds….”

“Closing and unclosing her hands like an angry cat,” murmured Craddock.

“You know, that reminds me of someone….”

He frowned.

“Making enquiries …” murmured Miss Marple.

“If we could get hold of the result of those inquiries,” said Craddock.

“Does that letter remind you of anything in St. Mary Mead?” askedBunch, rather indistinctly since her mouth was full of pins.

“I really can’t say it does, dear … Dr. Blacklock is, perhaps, a little likeMr. Curtiss the Wesleyan Minister. He wouldn’t let his child wear a plateon her teeth. Said it was the Lord’s Will if her teeth stuck out. ‘After all,’ Isaid to him, ‘you do trim your beard and cut your hair. It might be theLord’s Will that your hair should grow out.’ He said that was quite differ-ent. So like a man. But that doesn’t help us with our present problem.”

“We’ve never traced that revolver, you know. It wasn’t Rudi Scherz. If Iknew who had had a revolver in Chipping Cleghorn—”

“Colonel Easterbrook has one,” said Bunch. “He keeps it in his collardrawer.”

“How do you know, Mrs. Harmon?”

“Mrs. Butt told me. She’s my daily. Or rather, my twice weekly. Being amilitary gentleman, she said, he’d naturally have a revolver and veryhandy it would be if burglars were to come along.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“Ages ago. About six months ago, I should think.”

“Colonel Easterbrook?” murmured Craddock.

“It’s like those pointer things at fairs, isn’t it?” said Bunch, still speakingthrough a mouthful of pins. “Go round and round and stop at somethingdifferent every time.”

“You’re telling me,” said Craddock and groaned.

“Colonel Easterbrook was up at Little Paddocks to leave a book thereone day. He could have oiled that door then. He was quite straightforwardabout being there though. Not like Miss Hinchcliffe.”

Miss Marple coughed gently. “You must make allowances for the timeswe live in, Inspector,” she said.

Craddock looked at her, uncomprehendingly.

“After all,” said Miss Marple. “you are the Police, aren’t you? Peoplecan’t say everything they’d like to say to the Police, can they?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Craddock. “Unless they’ve got some criminalmatter to conceal.”

“She means butter,” said Bunch, crawling actively round a table leg toanchor a floating bit of paper. “Butter and corn for hens, and sometimescream—and sometimes, even, a side of bacon.”

“Show him that note from Miss Blacklock,” said Miss Marple. “It’s sometime ago now, but it reads like a first-class mystery story.”

“What have I done with it? Is this the one you mean, Aunt Jane?”

Miss Marple took it and looked at it.

“Yes,” she said with satisfaction. “That’s the one.”

She handed it to the Inspector.

“I have made inquiries — Thursday is the day,” MissBlacklock had written. “Any time after three. If there isany for me leave it in the usual place.”

Bunch spat out her pins and laughed. Miss Marple was watching the In-spector’s face.

The Vicar’s wife took it upon herself to explain.

“Thursday is the day one of the farms round here makes butter. They letanybody they like have a bit. It’s usually Miss Hinchcliffe who collects it.

She’s very much in with all the farmers—because of her pigs, I think. Butit’s all a bit hush hush, you know, a kind of local scheme of barter. Oneperson gets butter, and sends along cucumbers, or something like that—and a little something when a pig’s killed. And now and then an animalhas an accident and has to be destroyed. Oh, you know the sort of thing.

Only one can’t, very well, say it right out to the Police. Because I supposequite a lot of this barter is illegal—only nobody really knows because it’sall so complicated. But I expect Hinch had slipped into Little Paddockswith a pound of butter or something and had put it in the usual place.

That’s a flour bin under the dresser, by the way. It doesn’t have flour init.”

Craddock sighed.

“I’m glad I came here to you ladies,” he said.

“There used to be clothing coupons, too,” said Bunch. “Not usuallybought—that wasn’t considered honest. No money passes. But people likeMrs. Butt or Mrs. Finch or Mrs. Huggins like a nice woollen dress or awinter coat that hasn’t seen too much wear and they pay for it withcoupons instead of money.”

“You’d better not tell me any more,” said Craddock. “It’s all against thelaw.”

“Then there oughtn’t to be such silly laws,” said Bunch, filling her mouthup with pins again. “I don’t do it, of course, because Julian doesn’t like meto, so I don’t. But I know what’s going on, of course.”

A kind of despair was coming over the Inspector.

“It all sounds so pleasant and ordinary,” he said. “Funny and petty andsimple. And yet one woman and a man have been killed, and another wo-man may be killed before I can get anything definite to go on. I’ve left offworrying about Pip and Emma for the moment. I’m concentrating on So-nia. I wish I knew what she looked like. There was a snapshot or two inwith these letters, but none of the snaps could have been of her.”

“How do you know it couldn’t have been her? Do you know what shelooked like?”

“She was small and dark, Miss Blacklock said.”

“Really,” said Miss Marple, “that’s very interesting.”

“There was one snap that reminded me vaguely of someone. A tall fairgirl with her hair all done up on top of her head. I don’t know who shecould have been. Anyway, it can’t have been Sonia. Do you think Mrs.

Swettenham could have been dark when she was a girl?”

“Not very dark,” said Bunch. “She’s got blue eyes.”

“I hoped there might be a photo of Dmitri Stamfordis—but I supposethat was too much to hope for … Well”—he took up the letter—“I’m sorrythis doesn’t suggest anything to you, Miss Marple.”

“Oh! but it does,” said Miss Marple. “It suggests a good deal. Just read itthrough again, Inspector—especially where it says that Randall Goedlerwas making inquiries about Dmitri Stamfordis.”

Craddock stared at her.

The telephone rang.

Bunch got up from the floor and went out into the hall where, in accord-ance with the best Victorian traditions, the telephone had originally beenplaced and where it still was.

She reentered the room to say to Craddock:

“It’s for you.”

Slightly surprised, the Inspector went out to the instrument—carefullyshutting the door of the living room behind him.

“Craddock? Rydesdale here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve been looking through your report. In the interview you had withPhillipa Haymes I see she states positively that she hasn’t seen her hus-band since his desertion from the Army?”

“That’s right, sir—she was most emphatic. But in my opinion she wasn’tspeaking the truth.”

“I agree with you. Do you remember a case about ten days ago—manrun over by a lorry—taken to Milchester General with concussion and afractured pelvis?”

“The fellow who snatched a child practically from under the wheels of alorry, and got run down himself?”

“That’s the one. No papers of any kind on him and nobody came for-ward to identify him. Looked as though he might be on the run. He diedlast night without regaining consciousness. But he’s been identified —deserter from the Army—Ronald Haymes, ex-Captain in the South Loam-shires.”

“Phillipa Haymes’ husband?”

“Yes. He’d got an old Chipping Cleghorn bus ticket on him, by the way—and quite a reasonable amount of money.”

“So he did get money from his wife? I always thought he was the manMitzi overheard talking to her in the summerhouse. She denied it flatly, ofcourse. But surely, sir, that lorry accident was before—”

Rydesdale took the words out of his mouth.

“Yes, he was taken to Milchester General on the 28th. The hold-up atLittle Paddocks was on the 29th. That lets him out of any possible connec-tion with it. But his wife, of course, knew nothing about the accident. Shemay have been thinking all along that he was concerned in it. She’d holdher tongue—naturally—after all he was her husband.”

“It was a fairly gallant bit of work, wasn’t it, sir?” said Craddock slowly.

“Rescuing that child from the lorry? Yes. Plucky. Don’t suppose it wascowardice that made Haymes desert. Well, all that’s past history. For aman who’d blotted his copybook, it was a good death.”

“I’m glad for her sake,” said the Inspector. “And for that boy of theirs.”

“Yes, he needn’t be too ashamed of his father. And the young womanwill be able to marry again now.”

Craddock said slowly:

“I was thinking of that, sir … It opens up—possibilities.”

“You’d better break the news to her as you’re on the spot.”

“I will, sir. I’ll push along there now. Or perhaps I’d better wait untilshe’s back at Little Paddocks. It may be rather a shock — and there’ssomeone else I rather want to have a word with first.”