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Miss Marple received Inspector Slack with gratification, especially when she heard that he had been sent by Colonel Melchett.
‘Now, really, that is very kind of Colonel Melchett. I didn’t know he remembered me.’
‘He remembers you, all right. Told me that what you didn’t know of what goes on in St Mary Mead isn’t worth knowing.’
‘Too kind of him, but really I don’t know anything at all. About this murder, I mean.’
‘You know what the talk about it is.’
‘Oh, of course – but it wouldn’t do, would it, to repeat just idle talk?’ Slack said, with an attempt at geniality, ‘This isn’t an official conversation, you know. It’s in confidence, so to speak.’
‘You mean you really want to know what people are saying? Whether there’s any truth in it or not?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Well, of course, there’s been a great deal of talk and speculation. And there are really two distinct camps, if you understand me. To begin with, there are the people who think that the husband did it. A husband or a wife is, in a way, the natural person to suspect, don’t you think so?’
‘Maybe,’ said the inspector cautiously. ‘Such close quarters, you know. Then, so often, the money angle. I hear that it was Mrs Spenlow who had the money, and therefore Mr Spenlow does benefit by her death. In this wicked world I’m afraid the most uncharitable assumptions are often justified.’
‘He comes into a tidy sum, all right.’
‘Just so. It would seem quite plausible, wouldn’t it, for him to strangle her, leave the house by the back, come across the fields to my house, ask for me and pretend he’d had a telephone call from me, then go back and find his wife murdered in his absence – hoping, of course, that the crime would be put down to some tramp or burglar.’
The inspector nodded.
‘What with the money angle – and if they’d been on bad terms lately –’
But Miss Marple interrupted him. ‘Oh, but they hadn’t.’
‘You know that for a fact?’
‘Everyone would have known if they’d quarrelled! The maid, Gladys Brent – she’d have soon spread it round the village.’
The inspector said feebly, ‘She mightn’t have known –’ and received a pitying smile in reply.
Miss Marple went on. ‘And then there’s the other school of thought. Ted Gerard. A good-looking young man. I’m afraid, you know, that good looks are inclined to influence one more than they should. Our last curate but one – quite a magical effect! All the girls came to church – evening service as well as morning. And many older women became unusually active in parish work – and the slippers and scarfs that were made for him! Quite embarrassing for the poor young man.
‘But let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, this young man, Ted Gerard. Of course, there has been talk about him. He’s come down to see her so often. Though Mrs Spenlow told me herself that he was a member of what I think they call the Oxford Group. A religious movement. They are quite sincere and very earnest, I believe, and Mrs Spenlow was impressed by it all.’
Miss Marple took a breath and went on. ‘And I’m sure there was no reason to believe that there was anything more in it than that, but you know what people are. Quite a lot of people are convinced that Mrs Spenlow was infatuated with the young man, and that she’d lent him quite a lot of money. And it’s perfectly true that he was actually seen at the station that day. In the train – the two twenty-seven down train. But of course it would be quite easy, wouldn’t it, to slip out of the other side of the train and go through the cutting and over the fence and round by the hedge and never come out of the station entrance at all. So that he need not have been seen going to the cottage. And, of course, people do think that what Mrs Spenlow was wearing was rather peculiar.’
‘Peculiar?’
‘A kimono. Not a dress.’ Miss Marple blushed. ‘That sort of thing, you know, is, perhaps, rather suggestive to some people.’
‘You think it was suggestive?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so, I think it was perfectly natural.’
‘You think it was natural?’
‘Under the circumstances, yes.’ Miss Marple’s glance was cool and reflective.
Inspector Slack said, ‘It might give us another motive for the husband. Jealousy.’
‘Oh, no, Mr Spenlow would never be jealous. He’s not the sort of man who notices things. If his wife had gone away and left a note on the pincushion, it would be the first he’d know of anything of that kind.’
Inspector Slack was puzzled by the intent way she was looking at him. He had an idea that all her conversation was intended to hint at something he didn’t understand. She said now, with some emphasis, ‘Didn’t you find any clues, Inspector – on the spot?’
‘People don’t leave fingerprints and cigarette ash nowadays, Miss Marple.’
‘But this, I think,’ she suggested, ‘was an old-fashioned crime –’ Slack said sharply, ‘Now what do you mean by that?’
Miss Marple remarked slowly, ‘I think, you know, that Constable Palk could help you. He was the first person on the – on the “scene of the crime”, as they say.’
Mr Spenlow was sitting in a deck chair. He looked bewildered. He said, in his thin, precise voice, ‘I may, of course, be imagining what occurred. My hearing is not as good as it was. But I distinctly think I heard a small boy call after me, “Yah, who’s a Crippen?” It – it conveyed the impression to me that he was of the opinion that I had – had killed my dear wife.’
Miss Marple, gently snipping off a dead rose head, said, ‘That was the impression he meant to convey, no doubt.’
‘But what could possibly have put such an idea into a child’s head?’ Miss Marple coughed. ‘Listening, no doubt, to the opinions of his elders.’
‘You – you really mean that other people think that, also?’
‘Quite half the people in St Mary Mead.’
‘But – my dear lady – what can possibly have given rise to such an idea? I was sincerely attached to my wife. She did not, alas, take to living in the country as much as I had hoped she would do, but perfect agreement on every subject is an impossible idea. I assure you I feel her loss very keenly.’
‘Probably. But if you will excuse my saying so, you don’t sound as though you do.’
Mr Spenlow drew his meagre frame up to its full height. ‘My dear lady, many years ago I read of a certain Chinese philosopher who, when his dearly loved wife was taken from him, continued calmly to beat a gong in the street – a customary Chinese pastime, I presume – exactly as usual. The people of the city were much impressed by his fortitude.’
‘But,’ said Miss Marple, ‘the people of St Mary Mead react rather differently. Chinese philosophy does not appeal to them.’
‘But you understand?’
Miss Marple nodded.
‘My Uncle Henry,’ she explained, ‘was a man of unusual self-control. His motto was “Never display emotion”. He, too, was very fond of flowers.’
‘I was thinking,’ said Mr Spenlow with something like eagerness, ‘that I might, perhaps, have a pergola on the west side of the cottage. Pink roses and, perhaps, wisteria. And there is a white starry flower, whose name for the moment escapes me –’
In the tone in which she spoke to her grandnephew, aged three, Miss Marple said, ‘I have a very nice catalogue here, with pictures. Perhaps you would like to look through it – I have to go up to the village.’
Leaving Mr Spenlow sitting happily in the garden with his catalogue, Miss Marple went up to her room, hastily rolled up a dress in a piece of brown paper, and, leaving the house, walked briskly up to the post office. Miss Politt, the dressmaker, lived in the rooms over the post office.
But Miss Marple did not at once go through the door and up the stairs. It was just two-thirty, and, a minute late, the Much Benham bus drew up outside the post office door. It was one of the events of the day in St Mary Mead. The postmistress hurrie
d out with parcels, parcels connected with the shop side of her business, for the post office also dealt in sweets, cheap books, and children’s toys.
For some four minutes Miss Marple was alone in the post office. Not till the postmistress returned to her post did Miss Marple go upstairs and explain to Miss Politt that she wanted her old grey crepe altered and made more fashionable if that were possible. Miss Politt promised to see what she could do.
* * *
