happened to her, I felt–well, I felt that I
ought to come and see if there was anything I
could do about it.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “Of course. I see.”
And she did see. Miss Marple’s action
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appeared to her natural and inevitable.
“I think it’s a very good thing you have
come,” said Pat. “Nobody seems to know
very much about her. I mean relations and all
that.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “of course not.
She hadn’t got any relations. She came to me
from the orphanage. St. Faith’s. A very well run place though sadly short of funds. We do
our best for the girls there, try to give them a
good training and all that. Gladys came to me
when she was seventeen and I taught her how
to wait at table and keep the silver and everything
like that. Of course she didn’t stay long.
They never do. As soon as she got a little
experience, she went and took a job in a cafe.
The girls nearly always want to do that. They
think it’s freer, you know, and a gayer life.
Perhaps it may be. I really don’t know.”
“I never even saw her,” said Pat. “Was she
a pretty girl?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple, “not at all.
Adenoids, and a good many spots. She was
rather pathetically stupid, too. I don’t
suppose,” went on Miss Marple thoughtfully,
“that she ever made many friends anywhere.
She was very keen on men, poor girl. But
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men didn’t take much notice of her and other
girls rather made use of her.”
“It sounds rather cruel,” said Pat.
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “life is
cruel, I’m afraid. One doesn’t really know
what to do with the Gladyses. They enjoy
going to the pictures and all that, but they’re
always thinking of impossible things that
can’t possibly happen to them. Perhaps that’s
happiness of a kind. But they get disappointed.
I think Gladys was disappointed
in cafe and restaurant life. Nothing very
glamorous or interesting happened to her and
it was just hard on the feet. Probably that’s
why she came back into private service. Do
you know how long she’d been here?”
Pat shook her head.
“Not very long, I should think. Only a
month or two.” Pat paused and then went on,
“It seems so horrible and futile that she
should have been caught up in this thing. I
suppose she’d seen something or noticed
something.”
“It was the clothes peg that really worried
me,” said Miss Marple in her gentle voice.
“The clothes peg?”
“Yes. I read about it in the papers. I
suppose it is true? That when she was found
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there was a clothes peg clipped on to her
nose.”
Pat nodded. The colour rose to Miss
Marple’s pink cheeks.
“That’s what made me so very angry, if
you can understand, my dear. It was such a
cruel, contemptuous gesture. It gave me a
kind of picture of the murderer. To do a
thing like that! It’s very wicked, you know, to
affront human dignity. Particularly if you’ve
already killed.”
Pat said slowly:
“I think I see what you mean.” She got up.
“I think you’d better come and see Inspector
Neele. He’s in charge of the case and he’s
here now. You’ll like him, I think. He’s a
very human person.” She gave a sudden, quick shiver. “The whole thing is such a horrible
nightmare. Pointless. Mad. Without
rhyme or reason in it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, you know,” said Miss
Marple. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
Inspector Neele was looking tired and
haggard. Three deaths and the press of the
whole country whooping down the trail. A
case that seemed to be shaping in well-known
fashion had gone suddenly haywire. Adele
Fortescue, that appropriate suspect, was now
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the second victim of an incomprehensible
murder case. At the close of that fatal day the
Assistant Commissioner had sent for Neele
and the two men had talked far into the night.
In spite of his dismay, or rather behind it,
Inspector Neele had felt a faint inward satisfaction.
That pattern of the wife and the
lover. It had been too slick, too easy. He had