In the palm of my hand was a blue lapis lazuli ear-ring set in seed pearls.
It was rather an unusual jewel, and I knew very well where I had seen it last.
CHAPTER XXI
I cannot say that I have at any time a great admiration for Mr. Raymond West. He is, I know, supposed to be a brilliant novelist and has made quite a flame as a poet. His poems have no capital letters in them, which is, I believe, the essence of modernity. His books are about unpleasant people leading lives of surpassing dullness.
He has a tolerant affection for “Aunt Jane,” whom he alludes to in her presence as a “survival.”
She listens to his talk with a flattering interest, and if there is sometimes an amused twinkle in her eye I am sure he never notices it.
He fastened on Griselda at once with flattering abruptness. They discussed modern plays and from there went on to modern schemes of decoration. Griselda affects to laugh at Raymond West, but she is, I think, susceptible to his conversation.
During my (dull) conversation with Miss Marple, I heard at intervals the reiteration “buried as you are down here.”
It began at last to irritate me. I said suddenly:
“I suppose you consider us very much out of things down here?”
Raymond West waved his cigarette.
“I regard St. Mary Mead,” he said authoritatively, “as a stagnant pool.”
He looked at us, prepared for resentment at his statement, but somewhat, I think, to his chagrin, no one displayed annoyance.
“That is really not a very good simile, dear Raymond,” said Miss Marple briskly. “Nothing, I believe, is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pool.”
“Life – of a kind,” admitted the novelist.
“It’s all much the same kind, really, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple.
“You compare yourself to a denizen of a stagnant pond, Aunt Jane?”
“My dear, you said something of the sort in your last book I remember.”
No clever young man likes having his works quoted against himself. Raymond West was no exception.
“That was entirely different,” he snapped.
“Life is, after all, very much the same everywhere,” said Miss Marple in her placid voice. “Getting born, you know, and growing up – and coming into contact with other people – getting jostled – and then marriage and more babies -”
“And finally death,” said Raymond West. “And not death with a death certificate always. Death in life.”
“Talking of death,” said Griselda. “You know we’ve had a murder here?”
Raymond West waved murder away with his cigarette.
“Murder is so crude,” he said. “I take no interest in it.”
That statement did not take me in for a moment. They say all the world loves a lover – apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth. No one can fail to be interested in a murder. Simple people like Griselda and myself can admit the fact, but any one like Raymond West has to pretend to be bored – at anyrate for the first five minutes.
Miss Marple, however, gave her nephew away by remarking:
“Raymond and I have been discussing nothing else all through dinner.”
“I take a great interest in all the local news,” said Raymond hastily. He smiled benignly and tolerantly at Miss Marple.
“Have you a theory, Mr. West?” asked Griselda.
“Logically,” said Raymond West, again flourishing his cigarette, “only one person could have killed Protheroe.”
“Yes?” said Griselda.
We hung upon his words with flattering attention.
“The vicar,” said Raymond, and pointed an accusing finger at me.
I gasped.
“Of course,” he reassured me, “I know you didn’t do it. Life is never what it should be. But think of the drama – the fitness – churchwarden murdered in the vicar’s study by the vicar. Delicious!”
“And the motive?” I inquired.
“Oh! that’s interesting.” He sat up – allowed his cigarette to go out. “Inferiority complex, I think. Possibly too many inhibitions. I should like to write the story of the affair. Amazingly complex. Week after week, year after year, he’s seen the man – at vestry meetings – at choir-boys’ outings – handing round the bag in church – bringing it to the altar. Always he dislikes the man – always he chokes down his dislike. It’s un-Christian, he won’t encourage it. And so it festers underneath, and one day -“