A little breathless Miss Marple alighted from the Bantrys’ car, the door of which was held open for her by the chauffeur. Colonel Bantry came out on the steps and looked a little surprised. “Miss Marple? Er very pleased to see you.”
“Your wife telephoned to me,” explained Miss Marple.
“Capital, capital. She ought to have someone with her. She’ll crack up otherwise. She’s putting a good face on things at the moment, but you know what it is.”
At this moment Mrs. Bantry appeared and exclaimed, “Do go back and eat your breakfast, Arthur. Your bacon will get cold.”
“I thought it might be the inspector arriving,” explained Colonel Bantry.
“He’ll be here soon enough,” said Mrs. Bantry. “That’s why it’s important to get your breakfast first. You need it.”
“So do you. Much better come and eat something, Dolly.”
“I’ll come in a minute,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Go on, Arthur.” Colonel Bantry was shooed back into the dining room rather like a recalcitrant hen. “Now!” said Mrs. Bantry with an intonation of triumph. “Come on.”
She led the way rapidly along the long corridor to the east of the house. Outside the library door Constable Palk stood on guard. He intercepted Mrs. Bantry with a show of authority. “I’m afraid nobody is allowed in, madam. Inspector’s orders.”
“Nonsense, Palk,” said Mrs. Bantry. “You know Miss Marple perfectly well.” Constable Palk admitted to knowing Miss Marple. “It’s very important that she should see the body,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Don’t be stupid, Palk. After all, it’s my library, isn’t it?”
Constable Palk gave way. His habit of giving in to the gentry was lifelong. The inspector, he reflected, need never know about it. “Nothing must be touched or handled in any way,” he warned the ladies.
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Bantry impatiently. “We know that. You can come in and watch, if you like.” Constable Palk availed himself of this permission. It had been his intention anyway. Mrs. Bantry bore her friend triumphantly across the library to the big old-fashioned fireplace. She said, with a dramatic sense of climax, “There!”
Miss Marple understood then just what her friend had meant when she said the dead girl wasn’t real. The library was a room very typical of its owners. It was large and shabby and untidy. It had big, sagging armchairs, and pipes and books and estate papers laid out on the big table. There were one or two good old family portraits on the walls, and some bad Victorian water colors, and some would-be-funny hunting scenes. There was a big vase of flowers in the corner. The whole room was dim and mellow and casual. It spoke of long occupation and familiar use and of links with tradition.
And across the old bearskin hearth rug there was sprawled something new and crude and melodramatic. The flamboyant figure of a girl. A girl with unnaturally fair hair dressed up off her face in elaborate curls and rings. Her thin body was dressed in a backless evening dress of white spangled satin; the face was heavily made up, the powder standing out grotesquely on its blue, swollen surface, the mascara of the lashes lying thickly on the distorted cheeks, the scarlet of the lips looking like a gash. The fingernails were enameled a deep blood red, and so were the toenails in their cheap silver sandal shoes. It was a cheap, tawdry, flamboyant figure, most incongruous in the solid, old-fashioned comfort of Colonel Bantry’s library. Mrs. Bantry said in a low voice, “You see what I mean? It just isn’t true?”
The old lady by her side nodded her head. She looked down long and thoughtfully at the huddled figure. She said at last in a gentle voice, “She’s very young.”
“Yes; yes, I suppose she is.” Mrs. Bantry seemed almost surprised, like one making a discovery.
There was the sound of a car crunching on the gravel outside. Constable Palk said with urgency, “That’ll be the inspector.”
True to his ingrained belief that the gentry didn’t let you down, Mrs. Bantry immediately moved to the door. Miss Marple followed her. Mrs. Bantry said, “That’ll be all right, Palk.” Constable Palk was immensely relieved.