The inspector hurried off.
“Miss Marple wants to see you,” said Griselda, putting her head in. “She sent over a very incoherent note – all spidery and underlined. I couldn’t read most of it. Apparently she can’t leave home herself. Hurry up and go across and see her and find out what it is. I’ve got my old women coming in two minutes or I’d come myself. I do hate old women – they tell you about their bad legs and sometimes insist on showing them to you, What luck that the inquest is this afternoon! You won’t have to go and watch the Boys’ Club Cricket Match.”
I hurried off, considerably exercised in my mind as to the reason for this summons.
I found Miss Marple in what, I believe, is described as a fluster. She was very pink and slightly incoherent.
“My nephew,” she explained. “My nephew, Raymond West, the author. He is coming down to-day. Such a to-do. I have to see to everything myself. You cannot trust a maid to air a bed properly, and we must, of course, have a meat meal to-night. Gentlemen require such a lot of meat, do they not? And drink. There certainly should be some drink in the house – and a siphon.”
“If I can do anything -” I began.
“Oh! how very kind. But I did not mean that. There is plenty of time really. He brings his own pipe and tobacco, I am glad to say. Glad because it saves me from knowing which kind of cigarettes are right to buy. But rather sorry, too, because it takes so long for the smell to get out of the curtains. Of course, I open the window and shake them well very early every morning. Raymond gets up very late – I think writers often do. He writes very clever books, I believe, though people are not really nearly so unpleasant as he makes out. Clever young men know so little of life, don’t you think?”
“Would you like to bring him to dinner at the Vicarage?” I asked, still unable to gather why I had been summoned.
“Oh! no, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “It’s very kind of you,” she added.
“There was – er – something you wanted to see me about, I think,” I suggested desperately.
“Oh! of course. In all the excitement it had gone right out of my head.” She broke off and called to her maid. “Emily – Emily. Not those sheets. The frilled ones with the monogram and don’t put them too near the fire.”
She closed the door and returned to me on tiptoe.
“It’s just rather a curious thing that happened last night,” she explained. “I thought you would like to hear about it, though at the moment it doesn’t seem to make sense. I felt very wakeful last night – wondering about all this sad business. And I got up and looked out of my window. And what do you think I saw?”
I looked, inquiring.
“Gladys Cram,” said Miss Marple, with great emphasis. “As I live, going into the wood with a suit-case.”
“A suit-case?”
“Isn’t it extraordinary? What should she want with a suitcase in the wood at twelve o’clock at night?”
“You see,” said Miss Marple. “I daresay it has nothing to do with the murder. But it is a Peculiar Thing. And just at present we all feel we must take notice of Peculiar Things.”
“Perfectly amazing,” I said. “Was she going to – er – sleep in the barrow by any chance?”
“She didn’t, at any rate,” said Miss Marple. “Because quite a short time afterwards she came back, and she hadn’t got the suit-case with her.”
CHAPTER XVIII
The inquest was held that afternoon (Saturday) at two o’clock at the Blue Boar. The local excitement was, I need hardly say, tremendous. There had been no murder in St. Mary Mead for at least fifteen years. And to have someone like Colonel Protheroe murdered actually in the Vicarage study is such a feast of sensation as rarely falls to the lot of a village population.
Various comments floated to my ears which I was probably not meant to hear.