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“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 realize that, though I haven’t said very much about it.”
I took the blue lapis lazuli earring 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.”
“What are her plans, do you know?”
Anne made a comical grimace.
“She doesn’t tell them to me. I imagine she will leave here as soon as possible. She doesn’t like me—she never has. I dare say it’s my fault, though I’ve really always tried to be decent. But I suppose any girl resents a young stepmother.”
“Are you fond of her?” I asked bluntly.
She did not reply at once, which convinced me that Anne Protheroe is a very honest woman.
“I was at first,” she said. “She was such a pretty little girl. I don’t think I am now. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t like me. I like being liked, you know.”
“We all do,” I said, and Anne Protheroe smiled.
I had one more task to perform. That was to get a word alone with Lettice Protheroe. I managed that easily enough, catching sight of her in the deserted drawing room. Griselda and Gladys Cram were out in the garden.
I went in and shut the door.
“Lettice,” I said, “I want to speak to you about something.”
She looked up indifferently.
“Yes?”
I had thought beforehand what to say. I held out the lapis earring and said quietly:
“Why did you drop that in my study?”
I saw her stiffen for a moment—it was almost instantaneous. Her recovery was so quick that I myself could hardly have sworn to the movement. Then she said carelessly:
“I never dropped anything in your study. That’s not mine. That’s Anne’s.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Well, why ask me, then? Anne must have dropped it.”
“Mrs. Protheroe has only been in my study once since the murder, and then she was wearing black and so would not have been likely to have had on a blue earring.”
“In that case,” said Lettice, “I suppose she must have dropped it before.” She added: “That’s only logical.”
“It’s very logical,” I said. “I suppose you don’t happen to remember when your stepmother was wearing these earrings last?”
“Oh!” She looked at me with a puzzled, trustful gaze. “Is it very important?”
“It might be,” I said.
“I’ll try and think.” She sat there knitting her brows. I have never seen Lettice Protheroe look more charming than she did at that moment. “Oh, yes!” she said suddenly. “She had them on—on Thursday. I remember now.”
“Thursday,” I said slowly, “was the day of the murder. Mrs. Protheroe came to the study in the garden that day, but if you remember, in her evidence, she only came as far as the study window, not inside the room.”
“Where did you find this?”
“Rolled underneath the desk.”
“Then it looks, doesn’t it,” said Lettice coolly, “as though she hadn’t spoken the truth?”
“You mean that she came right in and stood by the desk?”
“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes met mine serenely.
“If you want to know,” she said calmly, “I never have thought she was speaking the truth.”
“And I know you are not, Lettice.”
“What do you mean?”
She was startled.
“I mean,” I said, “that the last time I saw this earring was on Friday morning when I came up here with Colonel Melchett. It was lying with its fellow on your stepmother’s dressing table. I actually handled them both.”
“Oh—!” She wavered, then suddenly flung herself sideways over the arm of her chair and burst into tears. Her short fair hair hung down almost touching the floor. It was a strange attitude—beautiful and unrestrained.
I let her sob for some moments in silence and then I said very gently:
“Lettice, why did you do it?”
“What?”
She sprang up, flinging her hair wildly back. She looked wild—almost terrified.
“What do you mean?”
“What made you do it? Was it jealousy? Dislike of Anne?”
“Oh!—Oh, yes!” She pushed the hair back from her face and seemed suddenly to regain complete self-possession. “Yes, you can call it jealousy. I’ve always disliked Anne—ever since she came queening it here. I put the damned thing under the desk. I hoped it would get her into trouble. It would have done if you hadn’t been such a Nosey Parker, fingering things on dressing tables. Anyway, it isn’t a clergyman’s business to go about helping the police.”
It was a spiteful, childish outburst. I took no notice of it. Indeed, at that moment, she seemed a very pathetic child indeed.
Her childish attempt at vengeance against Anne seemed hardly to be taken seriously. I told her so, and added that I should return the earring to her and say nothing of the circumstances in which I had found it. She seemed rather touched by that.
“That’s nice of you,” she said.
She paused a minute and then said, keeping her face averted and evidently choosing her words with care:
“You know, Mr. Clement, I should—I should get Dennis away from here soon, if I were you I—think it would be better.”
“Dennis?” I raised my eyebrows in slight surprise but with a trace of amusement too.
“I think it would be better.” She added, still in the same awkward manner: “I’m sorry about Dennis. I didn’t think he—anyway, I’m sorry.”
We left it at that.
Twenty-three
On the way back, I proposed to Griselda that we should make a detour and go round by the barrow. I was anxious to see if the police were at work and if so, what they had found. Griselda, however, had things to do at home, so I was left to make the expedition on my own.
I found Constable Hurst in charge of operations.
“No sign so far, sir,” he reported. “And yet it stands to reason that this is the only place for a cache.”
His use of the word cache puzzled me for a moment, as he pronounced it catch, but his real meaning occurred to me almost at once.
