“Do you think I ought to do anything about it? Tell the police?”
I hesitated.
“It’s hard to say on the face of it whether -”
“It has anything to do with the murder or not,” finished Anne. “I know. That’s what is so difficult. On the face of it, there seems no connection whatever.”
“No,” I said, “but it is another Peculiar Thing.”
We both sat silent with puzzled brows.
“What are your plans, if I may ask?” I said presently.
She lifted her head.
“I’m going to live here for at least another six months!” She said it defiantly. “I don’t want to. I hate the idea of living here. But I think it’s the only thing to be done. Otherwise people will say that I ran away – that I had a guilty conscience.”
“Surely not.”
“Oh! yes, they will. Especially when -” She paused and then said: “When the six months are up – I am going marry Lawrence.” Her eyes met mine. “We’re neither of us going to wait any longer.”
“I supposed,” I said, “that that would happen.”
Suddenly she broke down, burying her head in her hands.
“You don’t know how grateful I am to you – you don’t know. We’d said good-bye to each other – he was going away. I feel – I feel not so awful about Lucius’s death. If we’d been planning to go away together, and he’d died then – it would be so awful now. But you made us both see how wrong it would be. That’s why I’m grateful.”
“I, too, am thankful,” I said gravely.
“All the same, you know,” she sat up. “Unless the real murderer is found they’ll always think it was Lawrence – oh! yes, they will. And especially when he marries me.”
“My dear, Dr. Haydock’s evidence made it perfectly clear -”
“What do people care about evidence? They don’t even know about it. And medical evidence never means anything to outsiders anyway. That’s another reason why I’m staying on here. Mr. Clement, I’m going to find out the truth.”
Her eyes flashed as she spoke. She added:
“That’s why I asked that girl here.”
“Miss Cram?”
“Yes.”
“You did ask her, then. I mean, it was your idea?”
“Entirely. Oh! as a matter of fact, she whined a bit. At the inquest – she was there when I arrived. No, I asked her here deliberately.”
“But surely,” I cried, “you don’t think that that silly young woman could have anything to do with the crime?”
“It’s awfully easy to appear silly, Mr. Clement. It’s one of the easiest things in the world.”
“Then you really think?”
“No, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t. What I do think is that that girl knows something – or might know something. I wanted to study her at close quarters.”
“And the very night she arrives, that picture is slashed,” I said thoughtfully.
“You think she did it? But why? It seems so utterly absurd and impossible.”
“It seems to me utterly impossible and absurd that your husband should have been murdered in my study,” I said bitterly. “But he was.”
“I know.” She laid her hand on my arm. “It’s dreadful for you. I do realise that, though I haven’t said very much about it.”
I took the blue lapis lazuli ear-ring from my pocket and held it out to her.
“This is yours, I think?”
“Oh! yes.” She held out her hand for it with a pleased smile. “Where did you find it?”
But I did not put the jewel into her outstretched hand.
“Would you mind,” I said, “if I kept it a little longer?”
“Why, certainly.” She looked puzzled and a little inquiring. I did not satisfy her curiosity.
Instead I asked her how she was situated financially.
“It is an impertinent question,” I said, “but I really do not mean it as such.”
“I don’t think it’s impertinent at all. You and Griselda are the best friends I have here. And I like that funny old Miss Marple. Lucius was very well off, you know. He left things pretty equally divided between me and Lettice. Old Hall goes to me, but Lettice is to be allowed to choose enough furniture to furnish a small house, and she is left a separate sum for the purpose of buying one, so as to even things up.”