Sir Henry Clithering said, “Speaking as Watson, I want to know your methods. Miss Marple.”
Superintendent Harper said, “I’d like to know what put you on to it first.”
Colonel Melchett said, “You’ve done it again, by Jove, Miss Marple. I want to hear all about it from the beginning.”
Miss Marple smoothed the pure silk of her best evening gown. She flushed and smiled and looked very self-conscious. She said, “I’m afraid you’ll think my ‘methods,’ as Sir Henry calls them, are terribly amateurish. The truth is, you see, that most people, and I don’t exclude policemen, are far too trusting for this wicked world. They believe what is told them. I never do. I’m afraid I always like to prove a thing for myself.”
“That is the scientific attitude,” said Sir Henry.
“In this case,” continued Miss Marple, “certain things were taken for granted from the first, instead of just confining oneself to the facts. The facts, as I noted them, were that the victim was quite young and that she bit her nails and that her teeth stuck out a little as young girls’ so often do if not corrected in time with a plate, and children are very naughty about their plates and take them out when their elders aren’t looking.”
“But that is wandering from the point. Where was I? Oh, yes, looking down at the dead girl and feeling sorry, because it is always sad to see a young life cut short, and thinking that whoever had done it was a very wicked person. Of course it was all very confusing, her being found in Colonel Bantry’s library, altogether too like a book to be true. In fact, it made the wrong pattern. It wasn’t, you see, meant, which confused us a lot. The real idea had been to plant the body on poor young Basil Blake, a much more likely person, and his action in putting it in the colonel’s library delayed things considerably and must have been a source of great annoyance to the real murderer. Originally, you see, Mr. Blake would have been the first object of suspicion. They’d have made inquiries at Danemouth, found he knew the girl, then found he had tied himself up with another girl, and they’d have assumed that Ruby came to blackmail him or something like that, and that he’d strangled her in a fit of rage. Just an ordinary, sordid, what I call night-club type of crime!”
“But that, of course, all went wrong, and interest became focused much too soon on the Jefferson family to the great annoyance of a certain person.”
“As I’ve told you, I’ve got a very suspicious mind. My nephew Raymond tells me in fun, of course, that I have a mind like a sink. He says that most Victorians have. All I can say is that the Victorians knew a good deal about human nature. As I say, having this rather insanitary — or surely sanitary? — mind, I looked at once at the money angle of it. Two people stood to benefit by this girl’s death you couldn’t get away from that. Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money; especially when you are in financial difficulties, as both these people were. Of course they both seemed very nice, agreeable people; they didn’t seem likely people, but one never can tell, can one?”
“Mrs. Jefferson, for instance. Everyone liked her. But it did seem clear that she had become very restless that summer and that she was tired of the life she led, completely dependent on her father-in-law. She knew, because the doctor had told her, that he couldn’t live long, so that was all right, to put it callously, or it would have been all right if Ruby Keene hadn’t come along. Mrs. Jefferson was passionately devoted to her son, and some women have a curious idea that crimes committed for the sake of their offspring are almost morally justified. I have come across that attitude once or twice in the village. “Well, ’twas all for Daisy, you see, miss,” they say, and seem to think that that makes doubtful conduct quite all right. Very lax thinking.”