“Dear vicar, how truly kind. You’ve had tea? Really, you won’t? A cushion for your back? It is so kind of you to come round so promptly. Always willing to put yourself out for others.”
There was a good deal of this before we came to the point, and even then it was approached with a good deal of circumlocution.
“You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.”
In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.
“You can’t tell me who told you?”
“I promised, dear Mr. Clement. And I always think a promise should be a sacred thing.”
She looked very solemn.
“Shall we say a little bird told me? That is safe, isn’t it?”
I longed to say, “It’s damned silly.” I rather wish I had. I should have liked to observe the effect on Miss Wetherby.
“Well, this little bird told that she saw a certain lady, who shall be nameless.”
“Another kind of bird?” I inquired.
To my great surprise Miss Wetherby went off into paroxysms of laughter and tapped me playfully on the arm, saying:
“Oh! vicar, you must not be so naughty.”
When she had recovered, she went on.
“A certain lady, and where do you think this certain lady was going? She turned into the Vicarage road, but before she did so, she looked up and down the road in a most peculiar way – to see if any one she knew were noticing her, I imaging.”
“And the little bird -” I inquired.
“Paying a visit to the fishmonger’s – in the room over the shop.”
I now know where maids go on their days out. I know there is one place they never go if they can help – anywhere in the open air.
“And the time,” continued Miss Wetherby, leaning forward mysteriously, “was just before six o’clock.”
“On which day?”
Miss Wetherby gave a little scream.
“The day of the murder, of course; didn’t I say so?”
“I inferred it,” I replied. “And the name of the lady?”
“Begins with an L,” said Wetherby, nodding her head several times.
Feeling that I had got to the end of the information Miss Wetherby had to import, I rose to my feet.
“You won’t let the police cross-question me, will you?” said Miss Wetherby, pathetically, as she clasped my hand in both of hers. “I do shrink from publicity. And to stand up in court!”
“In special cases,” I said, “they let witnesses sit down.”
And I escaped.
There was still Mrs. Price Ridley to see. That lady put me in my place at once.
“I will not be mixed up in any police court business,” she said firmly, after shaking my hand coldly. “You understand that, on the other hand, having come across a circumstance which needs explaining, I think it should be brought to the notice of the authorities.”
“Does it concern Mrs. Lestrange?” I asked.
“Why should it?” demanded Mrs. Price Ridley coldly.
She had me at a disadvantage there.
“It’s a very simple matter,” she continued. “My maid, Clara, was standing at the front gate, she went down there for a minute or two – she says to get a breath of fresh air. Most unlikely, I should say. Much more probable that she was looking out for the fishmonger’s boy – if he calls himself a boy – impudent young jackanapes, thinks because he’s seventeen he can joke with all the girls. Anyway, as I say, she was standing at the gate and she heard a sneeze.”
“Yes,” I said, waiting for more.
“That’s all. I tell you she heard a sneeze. And don’t start telling me I’m not so young as I once was and may have made a mistake, because it was Clara who heard it and she’s only nineteen.”
“But,” I said, “why shouldn’t she have heard a sneeze?”
Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me in obvious pity for my poorness of intellect.
“She heard a sneeze on the day of the murder at a time when there was no one in your house. Doubtless the murderer was concealed in the bushes waiting his opportunity. What you have to look for is a man with a cold in his head.”