It seems likely to me that Mrs Perry, at least, knows something, or certainly knew something once.’ ‘Do you mean she really is one of the criminals?’ ‘It mightn’t be that. It might be, you know, that they had a hold on her.’ ‘What sort of hold?’ ‘Well, you’ll keep this confidential., I know you can hold your tongue in these things, but the local police have always had the idea that the husband, Amos Perry, might just possibly have been the man who was responsible for a wave of child murders a good many years ago. He is not fully competent mentally. The medical opinion was that he might quite easily have had a compulsion to do away with children. There was never any direct evidence, but his wife was perhaps over° anxious to provide him always with adequate alibis. If so, you see, that might give a gang of unscrupulous people a hold on her and tliey may have put her in as tenant of part of a house where they knew she’d keep her mouth shut. They may really have had some form of damaging evidence against her husband. You met them – what do you feel about them both, Mrs Tommy?’ ‘I liked her,’ said Tuppence. ‘I think she was – well, as I say I summed her up as a friendly witch, given to white magic but not black.’ ‘What about him?’ ‘I was frightened of him,’ said Tuppence. ‘Not all the time.
Just once or twice. He seemed suddenly to go big and terrifying. Just for a minute or two. I couldn’t think what I was frightened of, but I was frightened. I suppose, as you say, I felt that he wasn’t quite right in his head.’
‘A lot of people are like that,’ said Mr Smith.’And very often they’re not dangerous at all. But you can’t tell, and you can’t be ‘What are we going to do at the vicarage tonight?’ ‘Ask some questions. See a few people. Find out things that may give us a little more of the information we need.’ ‘Will Major Waters be there? The man who wrote to the vicar about his child?’ ‘There doesn’t seem to be any such person! There was a coffin buried where the old gravestone had been removed – a child’s coWm, lead lined – And it was full of loot. Jewels and gold objects from a burglary near St Albans. The letter to the vicar was with the object of £mding out what had happened to the grave. The local lads’ sabotage had messed things up.’
III
‘I am so deeply sorry, my dear,’ said the vicar, coming to meet Tuppence with both hands outstretched. ‘Yes, indeed, my dear, I have been so terribly upset that this should happen to you when you have been so kind. When you were doing this to help me. I really felt – yes, indeed I have, that it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have let you go poking among gravestones, though really we had no reason to believe – no reason at all that some band of young hooligans ‘ ‘Now don’t disturb yourself, Vicar,’ said Miss Bligh, suddenly appearing at his elbow. ‘Mrs Beresford knows, I’m sure, that it was nothing to do with you. It was indeed extremely kind of her to offer to help, but it’s all over now, and she’s quite well again. Aren’t you, Mrs Beresford?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Tuppence, faintly annoyed, however, that Miss Bllgh should answer for her health so confidently.
‘Come and sit down here and have a cushion behind your back,’ said Miss Bligh.
‘I don’t need a cushion,’ said Tuppence, refusing to accept the chair that Miss Bligh was officiously pulling forward. Instead, she sat down in an upright and exceedingly uncomfortable chair on the other side of the fireplace.
There was a sharp rap on tlae front door and everyone in the room jumped. Miss Bligh hurried out.
‘Don’t worry, Vicar,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’ ‘Please, ffyou will be so kiod.’ There were low voices outside in the hall, then Miss Bligh came back shepherding a big woman in a brocade shift, and behind her a very tall thitt man, a man of cadaverous appearance. Tuppence stared at him. A black cloak was round his shoulders, and his thin gaunt face was like the face from another century. He might gave come, Tuppence thought, straight out of an El Greco canvas.