Gladys Cram was there, looking rather blatantly young and healthy against a background of wizened spinsters, and I fancied that a dim figure at the end of the church who had slipped in late, was Mrs. Lestrange.
I need hardly say that Mrs. Price Ridley, Miss Hartnell, Miss Wetherby, and Miss Marple were there in full force. All the village people were there, with hardly a single exception. I don’t know when we have had such a crowded congregation.
Crowds are queer things. There was a magnetic atmosphere that night, and the first person to feel its influence was myself.
As a rule, I prepare my sermons beforehand. I am careful and conscientious over them, but no one is better aware than myself of their deficiencies.
To-night I was of necessity preaching extempore, and as I looked down on the sea of upturned faces, a sudden madness entered my brain. I ceased to be in any sense a Minister of God. I became an actor. I had an audience before me and I wanted to move that audience – and more, I felt the power to move it.
I am not proud of what I did that night. I am an utter disbeliever in the emotional Revivalist spirit. Yet that night I acted the part of a raving, ranting evangelist.
I gave out my text slowly.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I repeated it twice, and I heard my own voice, a resonant, ringing voice unlike the voice of the everyday Leonard Clement.
I saw Griselda from her front pew look up in surprise and Dennis follow her example.
I held my breath for a moment or too, and then I let myself rip.
The congregation in that church were in a state of pent-up emotion, ripe to be played upon. I played upon them. I exhorted sinners to repentance. I lashed myself into a kind of emotional frenzy. Again and again I threw out a denouncing hand and reiterated the phrase.
“I am speaking to you…”
And each time, from different parts of the church, a kind of sighing gasp went up.
Mass emotion is a strange and terrible thing.
I finished up with those beautiful and poignant words – perhaps the most poignant words in the whole Bible:
“This night thy soul shall be required of thee…”
It was a strange, brief possession. When I got back to the Vicarage I was my usual faded, indeterminate self. I found Griselda rather pale. She slipped her arm through mine.
“Len,” she said, “you were rather terrible to-night. I – I didn’t like it. I’ve never heard you preach like that before.”
“I don’t suppose you ever will again,” I said, sinking down wearily on the sofa. I was tired.
“What made you do it?”
“A sudden madness came over me.”
“Oh! it – it wasn’t something special?”
“What do you mean – something special?”
“I wondered – that was all. You’re very unexpected, Len. I never feel I really know you.”
We sat down to cold supper, Mary being out.
“There’s a note for you in the hall,” said Griselda. “Get it, will you, Dennis?”
Dennis, who had been very silent, obeyed.
I took it and groaned. Across the top left-hand corner was written: By hand – Urgent.
“This,” I said, “must be from Miss Marple. There’s no one else left.”
I had been perfectly correct in my assumption.
“DEAR MR. CLEMENT, – I should so much like to have a little chat with you about one or two things that have occurred to me. I feel we should all try and help in elucidating this sad mystery, I will come over about half-past nine, if I may, and tap on your study window. Perhaps dear Griselda would be so very kind as to run over here and cheer up my nephew. And Mr. Dennis too, of course, if he cares to come. If I do not hear, I will expect them and will come over myself at the time I have stated.
Yours very sincerely,
JANE MARPLE.”
I handed the note to Griselda.
“Oh! we’ll go,” she said cheerfully. “A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it’s Mary’s blanc mange that is so frightfully depressing. It’s like something out of a mortuary.”