The Thirteen Problems (18 page)

Sir Henry Clithering, Ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, was staying with his friends the Bantrys at their place near the little village of St Mary Mead.

On Saturday morning, coming down to breakfast at the pleasant guestly hour of ten-fifteen, he almost collided with his hostess, Mrs Bantry, in the doorway of the breakfast room. She was rushing from the room, evidently in a condition of some excitement and distress.

Colonel Bantry was sitting at the table, his face rather redder than usual.

‘ ’Morning, Clithering,’ he said. ‘Nice day. Help yourself.’

Sir Henry obeyed. As he took his seat, a plate of kidneys and bacon in front of him, his host went on:

‘Dolly’s a bit upset this morning.’

‘Yes—er—I rather thought so,’ said Sir Henry mildly.

He wondered a little. His hostess was of a placid disposition, little given to moods or excitement. As far as Sir Henry knew, she felt keenly on one subject only—gardening.

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Bantry. ‘Bit of news we got this morning upset her. Girl in the village—Emmott’s daughter—Emmott who keeps the Blue Boar.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Colonel Bantry ruminatively. ‘Pretty girl. Got herself into trouble. Usual story. I’ve been arguing with Dolly about that. Foolish of me. Women never see sense. Dolly was all up in arms for the girl—you know what women are—men are brutes—all the rest of it, etcetera. But it’s not so simple as all that—not in these days. Girls know what they’re about. Fellow who seduces a girl’s not necessarily a villain. Fifty-fifty as often as not. I rather liked young Sandford myself. A young ass rather than a Don Juan, I should have said.’

‘It is this man Sandford who got the girl into trouble?’

‘So it seems. Of course I don’t know anything personally,’ said the Colonel cautiously. ‘It’s all gossip and chat. You know what this place is! As I say, I
know
nothing. And I’m not like Dolly—leaping to conclusions, flinging accusations all over the place. Damn it all, one ought to be careful in what one says. You know—inquest and all that.’

‘Inquest?’

Colonel Bantry stared.

‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? Girl drowned herself. That’s what all the pother’s about.’

‘That’s a nasty business,’ said Sir Henry.

‘Of course it is. Don’t like to think of it myself. Poor pretty little devil. Her father’s a hard man by all accounts. I suppose she just felt she couldn’t face the music.’

He paused.

‘That’s what’s upset Dolly so.’

‘Where did she drown herself?’

‘In the river. Just below the mill it runs pretty fast. There’s a footpath and a bridge across. They think she threw herself off that. Well, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

And with a portentous rustle, Colonel Bantry opened his newspaper and proceeded to distract his mind from painful matters by an absorption in the newest iniquities of the government.

Sir Henry was only mildly interested by the village tragedy. After breakfast, he established himself on a comfortable chair on the lawn, tilted his hat over his eyes and contemplated life from a peaceful angle.

It was about half past eleven when a neat parlourmaid tripped across the lawn.

‘If you please, sir, Miss Marple has called, and would like to see you.’

‘Miss Marple?’

Sir Henry sat up and straightened his hat. The name surprised him. He remembered Miss Marple very well—her gentle quiet old-maidish ways, her amazing penetration. He remembered a dozen unsolved and hypothetical cases—and how in each case this typical ‘old maid of the village’ had leaped unerringly to the right solution of the mystery. Sir Henry had a very deep respect for Miss Marple. He wondered what had brought her to see him.

Miss Marple was sitting in the drawing-room—very upright as always, a gaily coloured marketing basket of foreign extraction beside her. Her cheeks were rather pink and she seemed flustered.

‘Sir Henry—I am so glad. So fortunate to find you. I just happened to hear that you were staying down here…I do hope you will forgive me…’

‘This is a great pleasure,’ said Sir Henry, taking her hand. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Bantry’s out.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I saw her talking to Footit, the butcher, as I passed. Henry Footit was run over yesterday—that was his dog. One of those smooth-haired fox terriers, rather stout and quarrelsome, that butchers always seem to have.’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Henry helpfully.

‘I was glad to get here when she wasn’t at home,’ continued Miss Marple. ‘Because it was you I wanted to see. About this sad affair.’

‘Henry Footit?’ asked Sir Henry, slightly bewildered.

Miss Marple threw him a reproachful glance.

‘No, no. Rose Emmott, of course. You’ve heard?’

Sir Henry nodded.

‘Bantry was telling me. Very sad.’

He was a little puzzled. He could not conceive why Miss Marple should want to see him about Rose Emmott.

Miss Marple sat down again. Sir Henry also sat. When the old lady spoke her manner had changed. It was grave, and had a certain dignity.

‘You may remember, Sir Henry, that on one or two occasions we played what was really a pleasant kind of game. Propounding mysteries and giving solutions. You were kind enough to say that I—that I did not do too badly.’

‘You beat us all,’ said Sir Henry warmly. ‘You displayed an absolute genius for getting to the truth. And you always instanced, I remember, some village parallel which had supplied you with the clue.’

He smiled as he spoke, but Miss Marple did not smile. She remained very grave.

‘What you said has emboldened me to come to you now. I feel that if I say something to you—at least you will not laugh at me.’

He realized suddenly that she was in deadly earnest.

‘Certainly, I will not laugh,’ he said gently.

‘Sir Henry—this girl—Rose Emmott. She did not drown herself—
she was murdered
…And I know who murdered her.’

Sir Henry was silent with sheer astonishment for quite three seconds. Miss Marple’s voice had been perfectly quiet and unexcited. She might have been making the most ordinary statement in the world for all the emotion she showed.

‘This is a very serious statement to make, Miss Marple,’ said Sir Henry when he had recovered his breath.

She nodded her head gently several times.

‘I know—I know—that is why I have come to you.’

‘But, my dear lady, I am not the person to come to. I am merely a private individual nowadays. If you have knowledge of the kind you claim, you must go to the police.’

‘I don’t think I can do that,’ said Miss Marple.

‘But why not?’

‘Because, you see, I haven’t got any—what you call
knowledge
.’

‘You mean it’s only a guess on your part?’

‘You can call it that, if you like, but it’s not really that at all. I
know
. I’m in a position to know; but if I gave my reasons for knowing to Inspector Drewitt—well, he’d simply laugh. And really, I don’t know that I’d blame
him. It’s very difficult to understand what you might call specialized knowledge.’

‘Such as?’ suggested Sir Henry.

Miss Marple smiled a little.

‘If I were to tell you that I know because of a man called Peasegood leaving turnips instead of carrots when he came round with a cart and sold vegetables to my niece several years ago—’

She stopped eloquently.

‘A very appropriate name for the trade,’ murmured Sir Henry. ‘You mean that you are simply judging from the facts in a parallel case.’

‘I know human nature,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It’s impossible not to know human nature living in a village all these years. The question is, do you believe me, or don’t you?’

She looked at him very straight. The pink flush had heightened on her cheeks. Her eyes met his steadily without wavering.

Sir Henry was a man with a very vast experience of life. He made his decisions quickly without beating about the bush. Unlikely and fantastic as Miss Marple’s statement might seem, he was instantly aware that he accepted it.

‘I
do
believe you, Miss Marple. But I do not see what you want me to do in the matter, or why you have come to me.’

‘I have thought and thought about it,’ said Miss Marple. ‘As I said, it would be useless going to the police without any facts. I have no facts. What I would ask you to do is to interest yourself in the matter—Inspector Drewitt would be most flattered, I am sure. And, of course, if the matter went farther, Colonel Melchett, the Chief Constable, I am sure, would be wax in your hands.’

She looked at him appealingly.

‘And what data are you going to give me to work upon?’

‘I thought,’ said Miss Marple, ‘of writing a name—
the
name—on a piece of paper and giving it to you. Then if, on investigation, you decided that the—the
person
—is not involved in any way—well, I shall have been quite wrong.’

She paused and then added with a slight shiver. ‘It would be so dreadful—so very dreadful—if an innocent person were to be hanged.’

‘What on earth—’ cried Sir Henry, startled.

She turned a distressed face upon him.

‘I may be wrong about that—though I don’t think so. Inspector Drewitt, you see, is really an intelligent man. But a mediocre amount of intelligence is sometimes most dangerous. It does not take one far enough.’

Sir Henry looked at her curiously.

Fumbling a little, Miss Marple opened a small reticule, took out a little notebook, tore out a leaf, carefully wrote a name on it and folding it in two, handed it to Sir Henry.

He opened it and read the name. It conveyed nothing to him, but his eyebrows lifted a little. He looked across at Miss Marple and tucked the piece of paper in his pocket.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Rather an extraordinary business, this. I’ve never done anything like it before. But I’m going to back my judgment—of
you
, Miss Marple.’

Sir Henry was sitting in a room with Colonel Melchett, the Chief Constable of the county, and Inspector Drewitt.

The Chief Constable was a little man of aggressively military demeanour. The Inspector was big and broad and eminently sensible.

‘I really do feel I’m butting in,’ said Sir Henry with his pleasant smile. ‘I can’t really tell you why I’m doing it.’ (Strict truth this!)

‘My dear fellow, we’re charmed. It’s a great compliment.’

‘Honoured, Sir Henry,’ said the Inspector.

The Chief Constable was thinking: ‘Bored to death, poor fellow, at the Bantrys. The old man abusing the
government and the old woman babbling on about bulbs.’

The Inspector was thinking: ‘Pity we’re not up against a real teaser. One of the best brains in England, I’ve heard it said. Pity it’s all such plain sailing.’

Aloud, the Chief Constable said:

‘I’m afraid it’s all very sordid and straightforward. First idea was that the girl had pitched herself in. She was in the family way, you understand. However, our doctor, Haydock, is a careful fellow. He noticed the bruises on each arm—upper arm. Caused before death. Just where a fellow would have taken her by the arms and flung her in.’

‘Would that require much strength?’

‘I think not. There would be no struggle—the girl would be taken unawares. It’s a footbridge of slippery wood. Easiest thing in the world to pitch her over—there’s no handrail that side.’

‘You know for a fact that the tragedy occurred there?’

‘Yes. We’ve got a boy—Jimmy Brown—aged twelve. He was in the woods on the other side. He heard a kind of scream from the bridge and a splash. It was dusk you know—difficult to see anything. Presently he saw something white floating down in the water and he ran and got help. They got her out, but it was too late to revive her.’

Sir Henry nodded.

‘The boy saw no one on the bridge?’

‘No. But, as I tell you, it was dusk, and there’s mist always hanging about there. I’m going to question him as to whether he saw anyone about just afterwards or just before. You see he naturally assumed that the girl had thrown herself over. Everybody did to start with.’

‘Still, we’ve got the note,’ said Inspector Drewitt. He turned to Sir Henry.

‘Note in the dead girl’s pocket, sir. Written with a kind of artist’s pencil it was, and all of a sop though the paper was we managed to read it.’

‘And what did it say?’

‘It was from young Sandford. “All right,” that’s how it ran. “I’ll meet you at the bridge at eight-thirty.—R.S.” Well, it was near as might be to eight-thirty—a few minutes after—when Jimmy Brown heard the cry and the splash.’

‘I don’t know whether you’ve met Sandford at all?’ went on Colonel Melchett. ‘He’s been down here about a month. One of these modern day young architects who build peculiar houses. He’s doing a house for Allington. God knows what it’s going to be like—full of new-fangled stuff, I suppose. Glass dinner table and surgical chairs made of steel and webbing. Well, that’s neither here nor there, but it shows the kind of chap Sandford is. Bolshie, you know—no morals.’

‘Seduction,’ said Sir Henry mildly, ‘is quite an old-established crime though it does not, of course, date back so far as murder.’

Colonel Melchett stared.

‘Oh! yes,’ he said. ‘Quite. Quite.’

‘Well, Sir Henry,’ said Drewitt, ‘there it is—an ugly business, but plain. This young Sandford gets the girl into trouble. Then he’s all for clearing off back to London. He’s got a girl there—nice young lady—he’s engaged to be married to her. Well, naturally this business, if she gets to hear of it, may cook his goose good and proper. He meets Rose at the bridge—it’s a misty evening, no one about—he catches her by the shoulders and pitches her in. A proper young swine—and deserves what’s coming to him. That’s my opinion.’

Sir Henry was silent for a minute or two. He perceived a strong undercurrent of local prejudice. A new-fangled architect was not likely to be popular in the conservative village of St Mary Mead.

‘There is no doubt, I suppose, that this man, Sandford, was actually the father of the coming child?’ he asked.

‘He’s the father all right,’ said Drewitt. ‘Rose Emmott let out as much to her father. She thought he’d marry her. Marry her! Not he!’