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Miss Marple & The Note No One Wrote Full Detective Mystery Story · Miss Marple Mystery

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple and the note no one wrote. Suppose you
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: had done it, and done it well. Suppose you had
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: left nothing behind you in the whole world but one
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: sheet of paper that no typewriter for ten miles could
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: be made to match. How much of your life is
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: written down by machines you never look at twice? Which
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: of the things you handle every week could name you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: if somebody sat down and studied them properly? Who in
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a parish knows the wear on a church duplicator better
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: than the man who turns its handle? And if that
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: somebody were an elderly lady with a folding table and
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a flower rota, would you count her as a danger
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: at all? This is an original story inspired by Agatha
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Christie's Miss Marple. No rights claimed. Before the organist plays
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: his last voluntary... Work out for yourself which machine wrote
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the note. If you get there ahead of the old lady,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: put the word ghost in the comments, and tell me
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: honestly whether you would have let him finish the service first.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Subscribe if you like your murders unhurried and your evidence
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: made of paper. It begins on a Tuesday morning in June,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: with a boy too short for the bellows handle, and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a man who was kind to him. Chapter 1. The
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Bellows Boy Learns the Stops Sam Wicks could not reach
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the bellows handle without a box under him, so I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: fetched the box and set his feet where they belonged,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: one forward, one back. He was eleven. He had asked
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: me himself, in front of his mother, whether I would
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: teach him the organ, and a boy who asks a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: thing in front of his mother has already decided he
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: will not be laughed out of it. Long strokes, I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: told him. The wind wants to arrive level. Snatch at
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: it and the pipes will make a fool of you
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: in front of the whole congregation. He pulled again, slower.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: The lead weight on its string climbed the marked stave
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: on the wall and stopped where it should stop. There.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Hold it there and I shall play you something with
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a great deal of noise in it. I gave him
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the last page of a Stanford anthem with both feet
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: on the pedals. and St. Cuthbert's filled up like a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: jug under a tap. Sam laughed out loud in the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: wind chamber, where he thought no one could hear him.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I heard him. The organ carries everything, which is a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: thing worth remembering about churches, and about parishes, and about me.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: When we stopped, the dust was going round and round
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: in the light from the clerestory, and Mrs. Teal was
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: down in the north aisle with the hymn sheets for Sunday,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple was helping her fold them, They had
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the trestle table out and two chairs and the pile
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: between them. Mrs. Teal folded fast and untidily. Miss Marple
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: folded slowly and squared each one at the corner before
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: she laid it down, and her pile was the pile
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that would still be a pile at half-past six.' Mr. Camber,' Mrs.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Teal called up,' these have come out shadowed again.'' I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: came down and looked at one,' Every letter had a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: second self behind it, a hair's breadth to the left, grey,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: where the black should have been alone. The bottom of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the E on organist had gone crooked as well, which
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: had been true since March, and which I had stopped seeing.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: The drum slips, I told her. It has slipped since Whitson.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I shall have Wellers send a man over before the harvest.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: It doesn't spoil them, Miss Marple said. She turned her
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: sheet to the window and held it there a moment.'
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: One can read them perfectly. It is only that they
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: look like something said twice.' Mrs. Teal laughed.' Miss Marple
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: went back to her folding, and I went back up
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to the loft, and if you had asked me that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Tuesday who in Stain Abbas paid attention to the parish duplicator,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I should have said the organist, and not another soul
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: in Stain Abbas. The cupboard in the parish room held
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the machine, the ink, the box of blank stencils, and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the paper.' cream wove, watermarked lime pool bond, bought in
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: reams of four hundred and eighty by the vicar's account
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: at Kesset's in Wells. Miss Marple kept the stationary column
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in the rotor book because she had once found that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the church had been charged twice for candles, and after
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: that the Reverend Ambrose Teal had handed her the counting
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of everything he could decently give her. She counted the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: reams every quarter and wrote the figure in a round
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: hand and never made anything of it. I was cleaning
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the ink off my fingers at the vestry sink when
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Major Fenn came in without knocking, which was his habit,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: with the fund ledger under his arm, which was not.' Camber! Michaelmas!'
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: he said.' The music fund closes at Michaelmas. I've told
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the vicar. The books go to Hurdle and Pring in
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: July for the audit, and after that, the money joins
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the general fund and the organ can whistle for it.''
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Eleven years of it,' I said.' Eleven years of somebody's money,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: going out of this parish every quarter with a bow
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: on it. He put the ledger on the drainer, in
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  Speaker 1: the wet. Tuning. Restoration. Choir welfare. I've read the lot. Twice.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I dried my hands on the roller towel and hung
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: it straight. Then you have read more of it than
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the vicar ever did. I have. He looked at me
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the way he looked at the choir boys who dropped
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: their surpluses. and then he said the thing he said,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the thing I am not going to write down yet,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: because it belongs at the other end of this, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: because I find that I still cannot put it on
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: paper without my hand behaving badly. He said it, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: he tucked the ledger back under his arm, and he
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: told me to think it over, and he went out
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: through the south door and left it swinging. Ned Purchase
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: caught me at the lightgate about the boats. Them boys
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: had the rowlocks out of all four on Saturday, and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: put them back anyhow. Number two's got number four's, and
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I can't be doing with it in this heat. Leave them,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I told him. I go down that way. I'll sort them.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: You never do. I shall this week. He went off satisfied,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: because Ned liked a promise better than a job done.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: The boathouse padlock hung open on its staple as it
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: had hung open all summer, and neither of us mentioned it,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and nobody in the whole business ever did find out
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: who left it that way. The major had given me
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: until July. I took two days. Chapter 2. The Weir.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: At half-past ten. On Thursday evening I let myself into
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the parish room at twenty-past eight with the key I
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: had carried for eleven years, which is not breaking in.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: The typewriter in the parish room is a corona with
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a limp R. The one in the vicar's study is
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: an imperial. The school has two, the doctor has one,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Kessets in Wells will type a letter for you at
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: sixpence a page, and Major Fenn had a Remington that
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: his sister-in-law had given him and that he used with
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: two fingers. I had thought about every one of them,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and every one of them can be found, because a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: typewriter is a machine with a face, and a police
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: laboratory knows how to read faces. So, I did not
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: type the note. I cut the stencil on the corona
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: with the ribbon thrown out of gear. which is how
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a stencil is always cut, and which leaves the typewriter's
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: face on the wax and nowhere else. Then I burned
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the stencil, and there was no face left to read.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Between those two acts I ran off one single sheet.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: The duplicator takes a slow, even turn of the handle,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and if you hurry, it the ink smears and the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: sheet is spoiled. I have turned that handle for eleven
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  Speaker 1: years for the hymn lists and the fate bills and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the parish magazine— and I turned it that night the
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  Speaker 1: way I always turn it, and one sheet of lime-pool
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  Speaker 1: bond came round the drum and lay in the tray
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  Speaker 1: with every letter wearing its shadow behind it. Fen. The Weir.
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  Speaker 1: Half-past ten to-night. Come alone, and we will settle the
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  Speaker 1: fund without the vicar. He would come. Vanity brings a
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  Speaker 1: man out of doors at night far more reliably than fear.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I folded it, put it through his letter-box at half-past nine,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: walked home along the rope-walk in full view of two
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: people who wished me good evening, and left again by
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the garden. The weir-path at that hour in June is
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: not dark, it is blue, and the water makes enough
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: noise on the sill to cover a man's feet entirely,
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  Speaker 1: which is a thing I had known since I was
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  Speaker 1: a boy, and which the Major had known too, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: one of us had thought about it, and one of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: us had not. He was standing where the path widens
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: by the boathouse, at the rail, with his back to
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: me and his stick under his arm, and he was
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: looking at the water and pulling at his moustache. I
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: had taken the rowlock out of No. 2 boat on
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: my way past because Ned Purchase had told half the
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  Speaker 1: parish that the rowlocks were in the wrong boats and
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: because a thing that is already in the wrong place
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  Speaker 1: cannot be put in a wrong place twice.' You came then,'
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  Speaker 1: he said, without turning round.' I thought you'd see sense.'
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  Speaker 1: I have seen sense all week. Then we shall say
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  Speaker 1: ten years, and no more of it, and the auditors
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  Speaker 1: can find what they find. I'm not a hard man, Camber.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I have simply had enough of being taken for a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: fool by a man who plays the organ. He turned
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  Speaker 1: round to say the rest of it to my face,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: and I hit him. Once, above and behind the left ear,
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  Speaker 1: with a brass rowlock, and my hand did not shake.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and I have never been able to decide whether that
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  Speaker 1: is a thing to be glad of. He went down
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  Speaker 1: against the rail, and then off it, and the weir
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  Speaker 1: took him with a sound no louder than a dropped coat,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and turned him twice in the white water below the sill,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: and let him go on down towards the sluice where
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the willows are. There was a moment when his stick
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: floated separately, and I found afterwards that I minded the stick.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I put the rowlock into the tin bath under the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: boathouse bench where they soak the ore leathers, and I
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: worked it about in the water, and then I laid
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: it in number two boat, on the boards, where a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: rowlock lies when a boy has left it there. Number
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: four's was already in number two. Number two's was now
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: in number two also. There were two rowlocks in one boat,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and none in another, and it looked precisely like six
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: choirboys on a Saturday outing. That was my first mistake.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and I did not know it for nineteen days. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: walked home the field way. I put my shoes and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: my socks in the copper and boiled them with a
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: dishcloth so that the copper would smell of dishcloth. I
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: hung my jacket on the line in the dark and
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: took it in at six. I slept, which people will
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: not believe, but I had been sleeping badly for eleven
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: years about something else, and that night the something else
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: was over. At half past seven on Friday morning, I
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: was at the organ with the door open, going through
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the psalm for Sunday, because the man who is missing
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: from his ordinary place is the man they look at,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and I have never in my life been missing from mine.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: At nine, Ned Purchase came up the path, shouting for
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the vicar, and the shouting had the flat sound a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: man's voice gets when he has already been sick once.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I came down from the loft with my music still
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: under my arm and asked him what on earth was
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the row. Chapter 3 The Rota Counts The Paper They
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: found him at the sluice, in the willow roots, face
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: down and one arm out through the branches as though
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: he had reached for them. Ned Purchase had gone down
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: at eight to shift a fallen bough and had seen
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the sleeve. He was no use after that, so I
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: took charge immediately. and I want to be honest about
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: how easily I took charge, because it was not acting.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: It was the thing I am good at. Somebody has
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: to send the choir boys home and mean it. Somebody
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: has to stand in the gateway and tell Mrs. Vane's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: lodgers that there is nothing to see. Somebody has to
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: think of a hurdle and two blankets and go and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: telephone from the vicarage while the vicar sits down on
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a tombstone with his hat in his lap. I telephoned
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the police at Wells, and then I telephoned Dr. Pryne,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and then I went back and helped lift him, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: he was heavier than a man that size has any
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: right to be. Constable Dunnock arrived on his bicycle at
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: twenty to ten, with his tunic unbuttoned, and his notebook
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: already out. Mr. Camber, who's touched him? Purchase turned him
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: enough to see the face, then me and Purchase and Dr.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Pryne lifted him onto the hurdle, and no one else
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: has been within ten feet of him The boys were
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: sent home before they got past the lich gate.' You' re
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a help, sir, and I'll say so.' He did say so,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: twice that day and afterwards to his inspector, and I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: have thought since that the whole thing turned on how
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: much they liked me, and how thoroughly I deserved it,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and how little that is worth. They laid him in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the vestry, which is stone and cool, and Dr. Pryne
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: went over him with the door shut. When the door
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: opened again, Dunnock came out with a tin tray, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: on the tray were the contents of the Major's pockets. Watch.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Two keys on a ring, seven and fourpence, a pipe,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a handkerchief, a leather cigar case, empty, and one sheet
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of cream paper, folded twice, wet through, and going grey
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: at the creases. Dunnock laid it out flat on the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: vestry table, with two hymn books on the corners to
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: hold it. and left it to dry in the light
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: from the east window. I stood eight feet from it
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: with the vicar's arm through mine, because the vicar wanted
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: holding up, and I read it upside down. Fenn. The Weir.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Half-past ten to-night. The wet had spread the ink a trifle,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: but it had spread both inks together, the letter and
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: its shadow, and every character on that sheet still stood
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: there with its second self behind it, and the E
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of settle still had its crooked foot. I remember thinking,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: quite calmly, that it did not signify. A shadow behind
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a letter is not a name. It is not a fingerprint.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: It is a thing that a hundred people in this
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: parish have handled every Sunday for three years without once
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: looking at it, because who looks at a hymn sheet?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: You look at the number and you sing. That was
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: the second mistake, and it was a larger one than
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the rowlock. Poor Fen, said the vicar. Who would write
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: him such a thing? Somebody who knew he would come,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I said. They went off to fetch the county men.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I had the boys' Sunday practice to think about and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a funeral to arrange for a man I had killed
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: on Thursday, and I went through to the parish room
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to write out the notice for the church door. Miss
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Marple was in there with the cupboard open and the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: rota-book on her knee. She had the stationery column in
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: front of her and she was counting the paper, which
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: she did every quarter, and had done in April, and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: would have done in July whether the Major had drowned
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: or not. She had the reams out on the shelf edge,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and she was going through the loose sheets in the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: open one, in fives, with her thumb. Mr. Camber, this
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: is a dreadful morning, and I am doing something perfectly useless,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: which I find is the only way I can be
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in a room at all. No one will grudge you
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the paper, Miss Marple. No. she squared the loose sheets
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and put them back. I have made it out at
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: one short of my April figure, which will be the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: fate bills, or the vicar and his sermon paper, or
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: somebody's shopping list. It is always one short somewhere. I
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: only put down what I count. Put down what you count,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I said. It's more than most people do. She wrote
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: her figure and shut the book, and that was the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: whole of it, and I walked away from that conversation
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and did not think about it again for eleven days.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I wrote the notice for the church door standing at
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the parish room table, in ink, in my own writing,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: because the duplicator was not for such things. Out in
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the churchyard Ned Purchase was telling the milk-boy about the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: sleeve in the willows, and Mrs. Teal was carrying a
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: chair out to the vicar, and the flower-rotor ladies had
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: arrived early and in force, the way they do when
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: there is nothing whatever they can usefully carry. Miss Marple
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: came out with the rotor-book under her arm, and stopped
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: by the trestle-table, where Sunday's hymn-sheets still lay in their
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: two piles, hers squared, Kitty Teal's spilling. She picked up
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the top one from her own pile, and she held
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: it up against the light of the door for a
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: second or two, the way a woman holds a glass
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: she is not sure is clean. Then she put it down,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and went home to her lunch. Chapter 4. What the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: grocer was asked. Inspector Gideon Kell came out from Wells
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: on the Saturday, and by Monday he had the vestry.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: That was my doing. The parish room has a table
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and a stove and a door that locks, and I
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: offered it to him within four minutes of meeting him,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and I found him two chairs that did not wobble,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and I showed him where the tea-things live and how
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the urn must be tipped forward or it will not empty.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: He was a heavy, slow-spoken man of about fifty with
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a wedding ring worn thin, and he had a way
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: of writing down what you said while he looked at
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: your chin. You've saved me a morning, Mr. Camber. I
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: have an interest in it. He was a hard man
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: about the music, but he came to every carol service
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: for eleven years, and he sang the bass line and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: got it right. Kel wrote that down too. He showed
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: me the note on the Tuesday. It had dried out
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: flat and gone the colour of weak tea at the folds,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and he had it between two sheets of glass, and
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: he set it on the table in front of me
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: and asked me what I made of it. I looked
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: at it for as long as an honest man would look,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and I gave him the truth, and the truth was
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: the best thing I had. It's not handwriting, and it's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: not printing. It has been typed. That's our view. Now,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: who in this place has a typewriter?' So I told him.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I told him all of them, and I was thorough,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: because a man who leaves one out is the man
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: who owned it. The corona in the parish room with
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the limpar, the vicar's imperial. Both school machines, the good
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: one and the one Miss Pardot keeps for the register. Dr. Prine's,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the one at the Oxford Arms that the brewery put in,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the major's own Remington. Kessett's in Wells, who will type
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: your letter for sixpence a page and keep no record
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of who asked. Mrs. Vane had one once, and sold
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: it to a man from Shepton before the war. Kell
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: read the list back to me, and added two I
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: had not known about.' We shall have a specimen off
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: every one of them,' he said.' Every machine has its
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: own wear. A police laboratory can tell you which typewriter
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: wrote a letter as surely as a doctor can tell
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: you which hand wrote a signature. It takes time, but
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: it never fails.' It sounds like a fortnight's work. It
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: sounds like a fortnight I'm glad to spend. I want
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to set down exactly what I felt, because it is
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the whole shape of this business. I felt safe. Not clever. Safe.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: The way you feel when you feel. the tide is
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: going the other way. They were going to take a
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: specimen off every typewriter within 10 miles and they were
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: going to find nothing and each machine they cleared would
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: harden their belief that they were looking for a machine.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and the harder they held that belief, the further they
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: would walk from a cupboard in the parish room with
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: a duplicator in it. Every day of that fortnight the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: police did my work for me and thanked me for
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the tea. On the Thursday I went into sedges for
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: candles and a bottle of ink, and Alfie Pruitt, who
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: carries the orders on the trade bicycle and would carry
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the news for nothing, leaned over the sacks and gave
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: me the parish for free. Miss Marple was in Tuesday, Mr. Camber,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: asking Mr. Sedge about paper. Paper? Whether we'd sold the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: church any writing paper since Easter, and whether Kesset's van
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: come out here regular, and who else in the street
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: buys the cream sort. Mr. Sedge told her we don't
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: stock cream, only the blue-lined, and she bought a quarter
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of barley sugar and went off up to the vicarage.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: She keeps the stationery account, I said. She'll be balancing
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: her column. That's what Mr. Sedge said. She's a terror
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: with a column, that one. I bought my ink and
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: went out, and I passed her at the corner by
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the pillar-box, with her basket and her list. She said good-morning,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and asked after Sam Wicks's ear, which had been bad
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: in the spring, and I said it had mended, and
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: she said she was glad, because a boy who cannot
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: hear properly gets called stupid by people who ought to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: know better. Then she went on to the butcher, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I went on to the church.' Here is what I
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: decided about that conversation, and I set it down plainly
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: so that you may measure me. I decided that an
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: old lady who keeps a stationery column had heard that
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a sheet of cream paper was found in a dead
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: man's pocket, and had gone straight to the only part
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: of the affair she understood, which was where cream paper
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: comes from and what it costs. I decided she was
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: doing her accounts at a murder because she could not
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: do anything else at a murder. I even thought it
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: was rather touching. She had not asked Sedge about typewriters.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Nobody in the parish asked about typewriters, except the police,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: who asked about nothing else. One woman in Stain Abbas
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: spent that fortnight asking where the paper came from, and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I heard her do it, and I stood in a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: shop doorway with my bottle of ink and pitied her.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Chapter 5 A Docket from Weller and Sons The fortnight
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: went by exactly as the inspector had promised, and at
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the end of it he had nothing. Fourteen machines, a
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: specimen from each. Three of them fetched in from as
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: far as Oxford Magna. The whole lot sent to the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: laboratory with the note. Fourteen reports came back, and every
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: report said the same thing in careful language. No typewriter
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: examined produced the characters on the document. The document was
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: not written by any of them. Kell told me this
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: in the vestry with his hat on the table and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: his tea going cold. It has been typed. and no
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: machine in the county typed it. I have had a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: great many awkward reports in my time. That one is
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the worst. Could a man have brought a machine in
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: with him? From Bristol, say, written it, and taken it
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: away again? He could, and if he did, I'm beaten,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and I don't care to be beaten by a stranger
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: with a portable. He turned his hat round on the table.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Something in this parish made that paper speak, Mr. Camber,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: and I shall find it if I have to look
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: at every machine that goes round with a handle on it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: He meant nothing by that. He was a tired man,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: saying a thing to fill a silence. I know exactly
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: how long I sat there afterwards, because the church clock
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: went the quarter and then the half. Then I got
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: up and went to the parish room cupboard and opened
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it and looked at the duplicator. Every letter it printed
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: came out with a shadow behind it. Every hymn sheet
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: in the pews on Sunday would have that shadow. Every
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: fate bill on every gate post in the street had it.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: The note in the inspector's glass had it. One person,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: at any moment, for any reason, could lay a hymn
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: sheet beside that note, and the whole thing would be
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: over in the time it takes to draw breath. I
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: had told myself for a fortnight that nobody looks at
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a hymn sheet. It was true, and it had stopped
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: being enough. so I mended it. That is the plain fact,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and there is no dressing it up. On the Friday
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: morning I telephoned Weller and Sons of Wells, who supply
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and service such machines, and I said the parish duplicator
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: was slipping and had been since Whitson, and a man
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: came out that afternoon in a green van. His name
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: was Crowell, and he had a canvas roll of tools
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and a way of sucking his teeth. Drum slack and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: your blanket's gone hard, he said. See there? She takes
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: her impression, and then she rolls a hair's breadth before
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: she lifts. That's your double. Been doing it a good
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: while by the look of the wear. Since the spring,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: you want a new blanket and the tension setting up.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Twelve and six with the parts, and I'll take the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: old blanket back against it. I said something then that
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I have gone over a hundred times since. I said
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I would keep the old blanket, because the vicar liked
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to see what had been paid for. Crowell sucked his
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: teeth and told me that the firm took the old
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: one's back for the rubber and that it came off
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: the price, and that if I wanted it I could
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: have it, but then it would be fifteen shillings and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: he would have to write that on the docket instead.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Two answers, one of them costs half a crown and
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the other one leaves a strip of hard rubber sitting
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: on a shelf in Wells with a date and a
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: parish name against it. I stood in that room and
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I understood the choice perfectly and and I still took
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the wrong one, because a man who insists on keeping
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: a worn rubber blanket is a man who is remembered
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: for it, and I had spent my whole life not
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: being remembered for anything. Take it, I said. The vicar
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: will manage without. He set up the tension, fitted the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: new blanket, ran off six sheets to prove it, and
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the six sheets came out clean and black with never
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a shadow on them. Then he wrote the docket in duplicate,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: top copy for the parish, carbon for the firm, and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he put the date on it, and the date was
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: seventeen days after Major Fenn went into the weir. I
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: paid the twelve and six out of my own pocket,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: because the fund was frozen and the general account wanted
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the vicar's signature, and I left the docket in the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: wire tray on the parish room table for Mrs. Teal
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: to file.' because a man who hides a docket is
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: hiding something, and a man who leaves it in the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: tray has simply had a machine mended. I had begun,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: without knowing it, to do a new kind of work.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: It is the work of keeping a lie in good repair,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and it is exactly like keeping an organ in good repair.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Every part you adjust puts a strain on the next
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: part along. At four o'clock I was up in the
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: loft with the swell box open, and from the loft
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the window shows you the vicarage gate. Miss Marple came
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: through it at ten past, in her garden hat, with
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: the rotor-book under her arm, and Mrs. Teal met her
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: on the step, and the two of them stood there
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: talking for the better part of twenty minutes. I could
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: not hear one word. I could see Mrs. Teal point
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: back into the house twice, in the direction of the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: parish room, and I could see Miss Marple nod in
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the way people nod when they are being told something
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: they already know and do not wish to spoil. I
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: decided she had come about money. The fund was frozen,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I had spent twelve and six of church business without
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a signature, and she kept the columns. I even rehearsed
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: my answer, which was a good answer, and which no
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: one ever asked me for. On the Sunday, the hymn
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: sheets came out of that machine as sharp as a banknote.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Kitty Teal said they looked lovely and that we should
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: have had the man out years ago. Miss Marple took
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: one from the pile and turned it to the light
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: of the south door and held it there. How clean
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they are now, she said. They have stopped saying everything twice.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: When was he here, Mr. Camber, the man who mended it? Friday. Friday. Friday.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: She folded the sheet along its crease and laid it
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: square on her pile. How sensible! Chapter 6 The Curate's
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Night Typing Toby Lound was twenty-six and had been our
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: curate for a year and two months, and I had
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: liked him from the first Sunday, when he preached for
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: nine minutes and stopped because he had finished. He came
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: to me in the loft that week to ask whether
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the choir could learn a talis for the Major's memorial
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and and he stood about afterwards with his hands in
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: his pockets, and he asked me twice, in two different ways,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: whether the police had finished in the parish room.' They
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: come and go,' I told him.' Kell keeps the key
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: on him. Only I use the table sometimes, in the evenings.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Use it. The vicar has never minded.' He went off
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: down the loft stairs and left the door swinging, and
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I sat there and thought about the evenings. I had
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: seen the lamp.' Anybody walking the rope walk after ten
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: could see the lamp, a low light behind the frosted
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: glass of the parish room, twice a week and sometimes
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: three times since the spring. I had thought nothing of it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: A curate has letters to write and a cold bedroom
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: in Mrs. Vane's house with the lodgers arguing under the floor.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: But the corona lives on that table, and I had
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: listened to that machine through the vestry wall for eleven years,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and what I had heard on those evenings was a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: man typing very slowly, in short bursts, and stopping for
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a long time between them, and pulling the sheet out
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and starting again. I gave that to Kel on the Wednesday.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: I gave it to him honestly, and I want to
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: be exact about what honestly means here, because it is
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the ugliest thing in this account until we come to
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the end. I did not lie. Every word I told
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the inspector was true. I told him the lamp burned
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: late in the parish room and had done since before Whitson,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and that the machine there was the Corona, and that Mr.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Lound had asked me twice whether the police had finished
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: with the room. I said I was sure it was nothing.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I said it with a face that was sure it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: was nothing. And I knew, while I said it, that
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the police laboratory had cleared that corona of writing the note,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: and that the police would nevertheless take Toby Lound apart
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: to find out what he had been typing at eleven
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: at night, and that every hour they spent inside his
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: life was an hour they spent somewhere that was not
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the cupboard. Kel wrote it down and looked at my chin.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: He had words with the Major, didn't he? In the porch,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: at Easter. They disagreed about the mission fund. It was
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: loud enough for the back pews. So I'm told they
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: had him in twice. The second time was three hours,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and Mrs. Vane's front step had a fair audience by
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the end of it, and Toby came out white round
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the mouth and walked straight past the Reverend Ambrose Teal
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: without seeing him. He would not say what he had
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: been typing. That was the thing that hanged him in
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: the parish for eleven days. He said it was private,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and he said it had nothing whatever to do with
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Major Fenn, and he said it twice more in that flat,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: obstinate voice young men use when they have decided that
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: being suspected of murder is more bearable than being laughed at.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: A stain Abbas made up its mind by Friday. He
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: was a curate with a temper, and something to hide,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and Sedge's shop had a theory about a woman in
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Bath by Saturday morning. and I heard the theory told
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: to me four separate times, and I said each time
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: that I could not believe it of him, and each
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: time I was believed. The truth came out at the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: end of the month, and it is nothing at all
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: like a murder. He had been typing applications, twenty-two of them,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: one at a time, badly, to twenty-two parishes and two chaplaincies,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and a mission in northern Rhodesia, and he had been
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: doing it at night in the parish room, because his
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: own room has a landlady who tells the shop what
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: is in the post. He wanted to leave. He had
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: wanted to leave since Christmas. And the reason he would
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: not say so, when a policeman sat opposite him with
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: a notebook and a dead man between them, is that
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the Reverend Ambrose Teal had taken him into that parish
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: when no other parish would have him after a bad
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: first year at Taunton, and had said in front of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the whole PCC that Toby Lound would be a fine
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: parish priest and and Toby could not bear for the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: vicar to hear from a constable that he had spent
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the spring trying to get out. He would rather be
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: thought a murderer for a fortnight than an ingrate for
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the rest of his life. I have known older men
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: make worse bargains. On the Thursday of that fortnight I
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: came out through the lich-gate with the hymn-books under my arm,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple was on the path with her basket,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: on her way to the wickses with something in a cloth.'
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Poor Mr. Lound,' she said. They'll clear him. He has
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: done nothing. No, he has done nothing. She moved the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: basket to her other arm. But somebody has, and that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: person is being very comfortable this week. She looked at
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: me while she said it. Not hard, and not long,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: but a second longer than a woman looks at a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: man she is passing on a path, and the second
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: was on the end of the sentence, where a second
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: like that does the most work. I said something about
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the heat, and went on up to the church. and
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I decided, walking, that she had guessed I was the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: one who had told the police about the lamp, and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: that she thought worse of me for it, and that
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: she was letting me know in the way such women
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: let a man know. I have had a long time
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to think about that look, and I am satisfied now
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: that she was not telling me she thought me an informer.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: She was watching to see whether I would say anything
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: at all about the note, and I did not, and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: no innocent man in Stain Abbas that fortnight talked about
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: anything else. Chapter 7 Trout in a Wet Sack Denny
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Vane was nineteen and had a motorcycle in pieces in
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: his mother's wash-house, and on the second Monday in July
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: a courting couple from Oxford told Constable Dunnock that they
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: had seen him on the Weir Path at about eleven
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: o'clock on the night the Major died, coming up from
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the sluice with a sack over his shoulder that was
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: wet at the bottom. Denny told Dunnock he had been
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: home in bed. Then he told him he had been out,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: but nowhere near the water. Then he stopped telling him
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: anything at all, and they took him into wells and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: kept him overnight, and Mrs. Vane came up to the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: church at seven in the morning and cried in the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: porch until the vicar came down without his collar on.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I took Friday supper at Mrs. Vane's every week of
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the year, and had done since her husband died. On
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the Friday after the Major went into the weir, there
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: was trout on the table. Four of them, brown trout,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: none of them a shop fish, and Mrs. Vane said
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: her cousin at Oxford had sent them over, and Denny
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: looked at his plate while she said it, and I
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: looked at mine. No one in the county sends four
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: brown trout across three miles in July. Those fish came
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: out of the pool below the sluice, in the dark,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and the sack was wet at the bottom because a
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: sack that has had trout in it is wet at
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the bottom. and any man who has lived here since
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: he was a boy knows it in the first half second.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I ate two of them. I could have said to Kel,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: in one sentence, on any day of that week, ask Mrs.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Vane where the fish came from. It was true. It
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: was not my secret, it would have cost me nothing whatever,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and it would have taken the county police about four
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: hours to work out that Denny Vane was on the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Weir Path in the dark, for the reason boys have
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: always been on that path in the dark, and to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: let him go home. I did not say it. I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: served the choir. and I answered the inspector's questions, and
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I let a boy of nineteen sit in a cell
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: in Wells for a night and a day, and part
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: of another night, because every hour he was in it
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: was an hour no one spent thinking about the parish room.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: That is the part of this I would take back first.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Not the weir. I have never been able to want
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the weir back. and I shall come to why. But
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I would take back the trout, and I have found
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: that a man can be ashamed of a fish supper
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: in a way he cannot manage about a dead man,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: which tells you something about shame that I do not
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: care for. Miss Marple went to Mrs. Vane's on the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon and stayed for one hour and ten minutes.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I know the times because I was in the loft
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: with the talus, and the loft window shows the rope-walk,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: She went in at three and came out at ten
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: past four with her basket, and she did not go home.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: She went down the hill to Bream's the Fishmonger, which
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: stands at the bottom, and she was in there for
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: four or five minutes, and then she went along to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the sluice-keeper's cottage and knocked, and Enoch Rudd came to
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the door in his shirt-sleeves and stood talking to her
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: on the step. By Wednesday evening, Denny Vane was at home,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: and by Thursday the whole street knew that Bream had
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: sold Mrs. Vane no fish at all that week, nor
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the week before, and that Enoch Rudd had been given
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: two trout on the Friday morning by a boy who
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: wanted his silence, and had eaten them, and had said
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: nothing to the police, because he did not care to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: explain what he had been paid for. Kell told me
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: about it himself, in the vestry, with the tea I
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: had made him, Poaching, Mr. Camber. A murder inquiry held
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: up nine days by four fish. He should have said
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: so at once. They never do. A boy will let
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you think him a murderer sooner than let his mother
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: hear he's a thief. He put his cup down. It
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: was that Miss Marple who took the trouble. She sat
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: with the mother and got at it in the kitchen,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and then she went to the fishmonger to be sure,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: which is more than my constable did. She is a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: great one for making sure. She is. He looked at
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: his notebook rather than at me. She has been in
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: twice about the paper. I said, The paper? And I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: said it well, and I have wondered since whether I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: said it half a beat too soon. That was the
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: week I went down to the boathouse. There was no
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: reason for it. The police had been over that building
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: on the first morning, and had been over it twice since.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: But the rowlocks had begun to keep me awake, and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: lying in the dark I could not remember whether I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: had left two in number two or one, and I
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: could not remember whether Ned Purchase had ever done what
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: he said he would do, and the not remembering got
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: into everything, into the Psalms, into my food. So I
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: walked down at seven in the evening with an oil
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: can in my hand, for the boat chains, which no
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: one had asked me to oil. Two rowlocks lay in
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the bottom boards of number two, exactly as I had
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: left them, and number four had none. I put one
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of them back in number four where it belonged, and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: I hung the chains straight, and I oiled them. and
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I came away feeling steadier than I had felt for
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: a fortnight. Sam Wicks was on the bank above, with
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: a jam jar and a piece of string, and he
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: called out and asked me what I was doing, and
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I told him I was tidying up after his friends,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and he laughed, and said the boys had all been
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: kept off the water since the major. Constable Dunnock had
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: made a list of the contents of that boathouse on
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the Friday morning, in his notebook, in pencil, because he
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: is a careful officer who lists things. He had written
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: down two rowlocks in number two, and none in number four.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Chapter Eight The Ream from Wells Kitty Teal told me
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: about the counting on a Saturday, over the flowers, and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: she told me as a joke, Miss Marple has been
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: at the cupboard again, She says she cannot make the
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: paper come right and it is spoiling her sleep. Ambrose
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: says the church has been standing 500 years and can
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: stand being a sheet out. What does she make it?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: One under, in April, and one under still, which she
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: says is the same one and not a new one
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: and she has written it in the book in red.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Kitty pushed the delphiniums about. She says paper only goes
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: one way. It goes out. And when a cupboard is short,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: it is because somebody took some, and there is nothing
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: wrong in that, and she only likes to know which somebody,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: because then the column comes right. I went up to
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the loft, and sat on the bench with my hands
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: flat on the keys, and did not play anything for
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: about twenty minutes. One sheet. Not fourteen typewriters and a
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: laboratory in Bristol. One sheet of cream wove paper gone
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: out of a cupboard on a Thursday in June, written
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: down in a rota book in a rota book by
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: an elderly lady who counts things because she likes columns
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: to come right. She was not chasing the note. Nobody
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: was chasing the note. She was chasing a sheet of
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: paper that had left her cupboard without permission, and the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: two would meet in the middle whether she had any
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: notion of it or not. I could not take the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: note back out of the inspector's glass.' I could not
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: unprint it. The one part of the sum still lying
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: about loose was the hole in the cupboard, and a
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: hole can be filled. I drove into Wells on the Tuesday.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Kessett's is on the corner by the Market Cross, and
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: they have supplied the parish since before the war, and
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the girl behind the counter is Miss Dorcas Neame, who
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: has a sister in the choir at Oxford, and who
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: knows me by sight.' Limepool Bond, cream-wove, foolscap,' I told her.'
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: A ream, please.' and put it to my own account
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: and not the church's. We've the lime pool in the
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: new making, Mr. Camber. It's a shade whiter than the old,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and Mr. Kessett says, the mill is under new people.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Will it do? It will do. She wrapped it in
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: brown paper and string, and wrote it in the day-book,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: with my name against it, and asked after the organ,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and I said the organ was well. I want to
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: set down that I knew.' standing at that counter, that
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: this was a worse act than the mending of the duplicator,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and that I did it anyway, and that I did
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: it because I could not think of anything else to do,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: and I had come nineteen miles to do it. A
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: man who has done one enormous thing well begins, after
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a few weeks, to do a great many careful things badly,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and cannot see it, and would not believe you if
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: you told him. That afternoon I had my other call
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: to make in Welles, which I made every month, and
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: which I am not ready to write down yet. I
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: will only say that I sat in a room for
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: fifty minutes with a jigsaw puzzle of the harbour at Weymouth,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: between us and eleven pieces of the sky still missing,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: and that I came out of that building steadier than
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I went in, and drove home with a ream of
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: paper on the seat beside me and the whole business
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: plain in my mind again. I let myself into the
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: parish room after evensong with the church empty behind me.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: The box in the cupboard is a shallow deal box
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: with a lid, and the loose paper lies in it
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: under a cardboard weight. I counted out two dozen sheets
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: from the kesset's ream and laid them in at the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: bottom of the box, underneath, so that the used sheets
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: would come off the top for a month before anybody
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: reached them. I put the rest of the ream in
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: the boot of my car and burned the brown paper
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: at home. Two dozen, not one. I have gone over that,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and I can give you my reasoning exactly as I
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: had it that evening, and you may make of it
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: what you like. I did not know her April figure.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: If I put in one sheet and her figure had
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: been two out, the cupboard would still be short and
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: she would go on counting. If I put in two dozen,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the cupboard would be over, and a cupboard that is
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: over is a cupboard no one troubles about, because nobody
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: in this world investigates a surplus. That is what I thought.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I thought it clearly, and it was clean, and it
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: was cool, and it was the stupidest sentence I have
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: ever assembled in my life. The following Thursday the flower
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: rota met at four in the north aisle with the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: trestle table out. I was up in the loft with
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the swell shutters open, marking the tallies for the memorial,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: and I could see the whole of it below me.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Kitty Teal, and Mrs. Pardo from the school, and two
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of the Rudd women, and Miss Marple at the end
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: with the rota-book and a pile of paper in front
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: of her that was not hymn-sheets. She had two sheets
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: of paper up in front of her. She held them
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: up together against the light of the south door, one
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: behind the other, the way you hold a photograph and
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: its negative. Then she separated them, and laid one on
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: her left and one on her right, and she said
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: something to Kitty, and Kitty went off to the cupboard
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and came back with the box. Inspector Kell came into
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: the church at about twenty past five, and I heard
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: the porch door, and I did not go down. From
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: the loft, through the pipe front, you get an odd,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: broken view of the north aisle, in strips. I could
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: see the inspector's shoulder, and the top of his hat,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and I could see the trestle table, and I could
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: see two sheets of cream paper held up to the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: light between them, and the light coming through both, and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I could see that one of the two was whiter
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: than the other. Chapter 9. Twenty-Three Sheets Too Many The
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Rotor Book was read out at the Parochial Church Council
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: on the Monday, because the Rotor Book is always read out,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: and because no one had thought to stop it. Stationery.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: APRIL 479 sheets counted against a figure of 480, one
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: sheet unaccounted. July, 483 sheets counted against a figure of 460,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the fate bills having taken 20, 23 more than the
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: church had ever bought. The vicar laughed. Two of them laughed. Mrs.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Pardoe said that somebody had plainly been generous and that
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: it was a change from the other way about. Miss
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Marple said, in the voice she uses for the flowers,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that paper does not increase in a cupboard, and that
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: when a cupboard is over it is because a person
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: has put paper into it, and that she could not
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: think of any reason on earth for a person to
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: give paper to a church in secret, since giving to
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a church is the one kind of giving people like
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to be seen at. That is the whole of what
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: she said at that meeting. I was there, I was
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: minuting it, because I always minute it, I wrote it
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: down in my own writing in the minute book. I
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: wrote down the words that were going to hang me,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and I wrote them neatly, and I did not blot.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: After that it went quickly. Kell had the box out
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: of the cupboard on the Tuesday and the two makings
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of lime-pool bond separated by the afternoon. The new sheets
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: lie whiter, and the watermark sits nearer the head of
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the sheet. and the mill had gone to new owners
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: in 1949, and the new making has never been sold
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to this parish in its life. Keset's day-book has my
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: name in it. Miss Dorcas Neame remembers me. She remembers
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: me because I asked for it to be put to
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: my own account, and not the church's, and a man
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: who buys paper for a church out of his own pocket,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: and does not want the church told, is a thing
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: she had never come across, and she had mentioned it
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: to her sister at the time, in a kind way,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: as an act of quiet charity. Then the docket. Mrs.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Teal had filed it in the parish room, in the
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: wire tray, and then in the box file, the top copy,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: in duplicate, dated the seventeenth day after the major went
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: into the weir. Weller and Sons of Wells keep the carbon,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: and they keep the old parts in the yard shed
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: for the rubber, in bins, by the month. The old
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: blanket off that drum is a strip of hardened rubber
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: about 18 inches by 24, with the wear of 11
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: years on it, and it was still there, and it
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: prints exactly what it printed for 11 years. The inspector
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: took a hymn sheet from Whitson, and a hymn sheet
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: from the Sunday after the repair, and he laid the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: note between them under the glass. Before the 17th of July,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: everything that came off that machine in this parish said
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: itself twice— After the 17th, nothing did. The note said
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: itself twice. I did not hear this from Kell. I
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: heard it in pieces, over four days, the way a
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: man hears his own affairs in a parish, and each
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: piece came to me from somebody who thought I would
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: be interested. Kitty told me about the box file. Ned
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Purchase told me the police had been to Weller's yard.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Sam Wicks told me, hanging on the loft rail with
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: his feet off the ground, that a policeman had asked
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: him whether he had seen anybody at the boathouse, and
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: that he had said, Yes, Mr. Camber, oiling the chains,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: and that he hoped that was all right. I said
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: it was all right. I said it was all right,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: and I sent him home and I sat down on
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the organ bench. Dunnock's notebook. The Friday morning list, in pencil.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Two rowlocks in number two, none in number four. I
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: put one back. Three weeks after. With an oil can,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: for a job no one asked for. In front of
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: a boy with a jam jar. There is a thing
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: that happens to a man at this point and I
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: have not seen it described. You do not panic. I
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: have never panicked in my life. What happens is that
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: you begin to go over everything you have done since
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the beginning, and you find that all of it is right.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Every piece, every single piece was the correct thing to
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: do at the time, and the total of all the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: correct things is a rope. The mending was right, the
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: paper was right, the typewriters were right, all of it right.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Toby Lound got his check of good character on the Sunday.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: The vicar stood up before the second hymn and said
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: that Mr. Lound had been applying for other work, and
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: that he had been afraid of hurting an old man's feelings,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and that it was one of the nicer reasons for
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: being a fool. Toby went scarlet in his stall, and
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the parish forgave him inside four minutes. Denny Vane was
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: fined two pounds for the trout in September, and his
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: mother has not forgiven him yet. On the Saturday I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: posted a letter in Wells. I drove in to post it,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: which is nineteen miles to avoid the box at the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: corner of the rope-walk, and I have no doubt whatever
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: that this was noticed, because by then everything was noticed.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: It was a letter to a woman called Ellen Rusk,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: and it said that the standing order would go on
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: being paid whatever happened, and that she was not to
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: worry about the summer term. Evensong is at half-past six
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: on a Sunday in Stane Abbas.' I have played it,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: off and on, for eleven years, and there were seventeen
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: in the congregation that evening, which is four more than usual.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Chapter 10 The Last Voluntary Inspector Kell was in the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: churchyard at ten past six, by the Fenn family stone,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: with his hat in his hand and no notebook anywhere
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: about him. Mr. Camber, I'll not keep you from your service.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: There's time. They come in at the last bell. One
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: thing you could help me with— You've helped me the
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: whole way through this, and I've said so to my superintendent.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: He turned his hat over. Why did you buy the
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: parish its paper out of your own pocket and ask
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: the girl at Kesset's not to put it to the church?
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: The answer was ready, and it was a good answer,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: and I gave it. The fund was frozen for the audit.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: The general account wants the vicar's signature, and the vicar
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: had enough on him. Twelve and six for a duplicator
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: blanket and a few shillings for paper is not worth
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: a man's signature in a week when he is burying
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a churchwarden, and a parish officer who cannot carry a
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: pound of his own for the fabric of the place
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: he loves is no use to anybody. It was true
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: in every part. I have never given a better one.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Kel listened to the whole of it, with his head
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: a little on one side. Then he thanked me, and
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: he said it was a great help, and he put
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: his hat on. He did not write it down. For
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: eleven weeks that man had written down everything I said
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: to him. He wrote down the tea and the urn
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and the baseline at the carol service. He wrote it
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: down while he looked at my chin and I had
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: come to find the scratching of it as ordinary as
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: the church clock. He asked me the only question that
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: mattered and he did not take out his book because
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: there was no longer the smallest need to know what
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I would say. I said I must go and get
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: my surplus on He stood aside from the path to
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: let me by. The bell went. I climbed the loft stair.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Seventeen in the congregation, and Constable Dunnock at the back
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: on the aisle end in his own clothes, which I
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: had never once seen him in. Miss Marple was in
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the third pew from the front on the north side,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: which is not where she sits. She sits at the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: back on the south, under the Rudd tablet, because of
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: the draft. She had her hymn-book open at the right
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: place before we began— and her hands still on top
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: of it, and she did not look up at the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: loft at any time during that service, and I have
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: never been more thoroughly looked at in my life. We sang.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Vicar took the versicles rather fast, as he does when
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: there is something on his mind. The psalm was the
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty-ninth, which was on the board, which had
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: been on the board since Tuesday, and which no one
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: had chosen for me. Whither shall I go then from
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: thy spirit, or whither shall I go then from thy presence?
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I played it to the end, and I did not
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: hurry it. At the Nunc Dimittis, my hands were exactly
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: as they had been at the Weir, which is to
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: say that they did what I asked of them without
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: any conversation about it. It is the rest of a
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: man that goes on ahead and starts making arrangements. The
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: arrangements I made, between the Nunc Dimittis and the blessing,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: were these. The talis parts for the memorial were were
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: in the cupboard under the bench, in a folder with
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: a rubber band round it, and I took a pencil
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: and wrote on the folder that the altos were three short.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Sam Wicks was in the wind chamber, because he does
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the blowing now on Sundays and is proud of it,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: and at the last hymn I put my head round
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and told him to run home the moment the singing stopped,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: since his mother wanted him at seven and I would
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: do the last piece on the electric. He said, You
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: never use the electric.' Tonight I do. Go on. And Sam.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Long strokes on the handle. You've never once snatched at
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: it since the first day, and I want you to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: know that I noticed. He went. He was pleased. That
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: is one thing out of this whole business that I
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: got right, and it took four seconds. The voluntary on
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the board was the bark in G, which is nine minutes.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I did not play the bark. I played the Brahms,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: the last of them, the one on the chorale about
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a rose, which is three minutes and a half, and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: which is the piece I would have chosen if anybody
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: had ever asked me what I wanted at my own funeral,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and which needs nothing but a soft flute stop and
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: both hands, and a man who has practised it for
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: thirty years. I played all of it, every bar, at
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the speed it should go, and the last chord held
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: until the church had it and gave it back. Then
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I put the stops in, and shut the swell-box, and
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: closed the lid over the keys, and squared the music
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: on the desk with the edges level, and switched off
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: the blower, and heard it run down the way it
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: always does, like a man letting out his breath. The
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: inspector and Constable Dunnock were at the bottom of the
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: loft stair by the vestry door. Kell said my name.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: I asked whether I might have my coat, which was
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: on the peg inside, and Dunnock fetched it and held
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it for me, which I have thought about since.' He
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: held it the way you hold a coat for the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: choir master. He had done it fifty times. Nobody took
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: hold of me. We stood in the vestry, the three
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: of us, in the place where they had laid the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Major on the table in June, and I found that
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: the thing I most wanted in the world was to
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: say the rest of it while I could still say
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: it in my own order. So I told them about
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Ellen Rusk. She was housemaid at the Major's from 1939.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: and she was put out of that house in the
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: spring of 42 with a suitcase and a month's money,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: and the parish was told she had gone to her
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: aunt at Frome, and she had no aunt at Frome.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: The boy was born in October. His name is Peter,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and he is 12 years old, and he has been
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: deaf since he had scarlet fever at four, and he
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: is at St. Oldhelm's at Wells, where they teach a
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: deaf child to read and to talk with his hands
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: and and to make his way in the world, and
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: where the fees are thirty-one pounds a term. Ellen earns
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: twenty-two shillings a week at the laundry. I have paid
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: those fees for eleven years out of the music fund,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: under the headings of tuning, of restoration, of choir welfare,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: and every figure in that ledger was written by me,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and every one of them is a lie. And the
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: major went through it twice with a pencil.' and on
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the Thursday before he died he stood in that vestry
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: and told me that he had it all, and that
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: he would close the fund and send the books to
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Hurdle and Pring and let the auditors turn it up,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: and that when they turned it up they would find
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the receipts from the home with her name on them
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: beside mine, and she would stand where I stood, and
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the boy would come out of St. Aldhelm's and go
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to the county place at Shepton where they put the
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: deaf in with everybody else, and call it charity. Kel
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: asked me why the man would want that. Because the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: boy is his. Ellen says so, and Ellen has never
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: asked me for one shilling in eleven years, and I
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: believe her, and I have not one scrap of paper
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: to prove it, and neither has she, and neither had he.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: He wanted the whole thing burned down while he was
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: still standing in the middle of it, and he was
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: ready to lose his own name in the fire so
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: long as she lost hers with it. I said I
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: would not have it. He told me to think it over.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: I thought it over for two days, and then I
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: ran off one sheet of paper on a machine I
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: had turned the handle of for eleven years, and I
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: walked down to the Weir. Kell wrote all of that down.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: He had his book out again by then. Constable Dunnock,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: who is twenty-four and has a good ear, and sings
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: second bass, was looking at the vestry floor, and his
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: face was was the face of a man who has
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: been told that the whole of his summer was a stupidity.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: I am sorry about the trout. I want that written
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: down too. Denny Vane sat in a cell for a
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: night and a day, and I ate the evidence at
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: his mother's table on a Friday, and said nothing. They
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: took me out through the porch, and there were perhaps
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: nine people in the churchyard by then, and every one
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: of them stood still. Miss Marple was not among them.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER XI The hymn sheets fold themselves. Two Thursdays later,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the trestle table was out in the north aisle at
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: four o'clock, and there were three hundred sheets to fold
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: for the memorial, and Kitty Teal had brought a flask
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: because the urn had been taken away to be mended.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple squared each sheet at the corner before she
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: laid it down. The letters on them were black and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: single and sharp, and there was no shadow behind any
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: of them.' I keep thinking of him on the bench,'
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Kitty said. Ambrose has had to write to the diocese
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: for a man to come out on Sundays from Wells,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: and he plays the hymns as though he were shifting furniture. Mr.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Camber was very good. That is what everybody says. And
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: then they stop, because they cannot think what to put
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: after it. They folded for a while. The light came
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: along the aisle and went off the brass. Jane, how
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: did you know it was the paper? I did not
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: know anything about the paper. I only knew that my
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: column would not come right, and I am too idle
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: to leave a column that will not come right, so
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I go on picking at it. She took another sheet.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: One sheet had gone out of that cupboard without anybody
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: to own it. I put it in the book in April,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and it sat there being one sheet, and then a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: poor man was fetched to the weir at night by
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a piece of writing on cream paper, and I found
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I did not care for the two of them being
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: in the same parish at the same time. But the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: shadow on the letters, that was the thing, that was
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the thing, and I had folded three thousand of them
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: and never once looked at what I was folding. It
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: took Elsie Rudd's little girl to do it. She held
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: one up in the porch at Whitson, and said the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: hymns had gone all doubled, and I said yes, dear,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: so they have, and I went home and thought about
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: it in the bath. Kitty laughed. Miss Marple did not.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: And then he had it mended, she said. That was
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the sad part. Nobody mends the parish duplicator in July.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: It has been slipping since March, and it would have
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: gone on slipping until Advent, and one morning a man
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: telephones Wells and pays twelve and six out of his
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: own pocket, in the middle of a murder, to stop
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: a machine from saying things twice. I did not want
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: that to be true. I sat with the rotor book
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: in my lap, and I did not want it to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: be true at all. He killed a man, Jane. He did.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: She laid the sheet down and squared it. And he
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: paid for a deaf child for eleven years out of
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: money that was not his, and told no one, not
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: even the child's mother, what it cost him to keep
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: it going. Both of those are the same man. It
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: would be a great deal easier if they were two.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: The vicar had put it to the council on the Tuesday.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: The music fund was closed, as the major had directed,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: and the balance of it, forty-one pounds and some shillings,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: had gone into a memorial fund with Fenn's name on
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: the top of the list, and out of that fund
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: the school fees of one boy at St. Aldhelm's would
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: be paid until he was sixteen. There had been talk
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: about it in the porch afterwards, most of it kind,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: some of it not, and Mrs. Pardoe had asked twice
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: whose boy he was, and had not been answered. Has
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: she written back to you? Kitty said. No. Will she?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: I have written three times, and I shall write again
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: in September, and if she does not want an elderly
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: woman in her affairs, then she is entitled not to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: want it. Miss Marple took the last sheet off the pile.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: She has been paid for by other people for eleven
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: years and never once asked. It is not a thing
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: that makes you fond of the post. They stacked the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: folded sheets in fours, and Kitty carried the box to
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: the west end. Ned Purchase came through with a coil
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: of rope over his shoulder and stopped to say that
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: the boathouse had been put straight at last and the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: padlock seen to, and that he had asked all round
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: to and never yet found out which fool had left
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it hanging open the whole of June, and that he
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: supposed now he never would. Miss Marple said that some
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: things do stay open. She put the rotor-book under her arm,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: and went out through the south door into the sun,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and at the lich-gate she met Sam Wicks with a jam-jar,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: and stopped, and asked him whether he was still doing
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: the blowing on Sundays. He said he was, but that
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the new man used the electric, and that he was
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: only kept on out of kindness. Long strokes, said Miss Marple.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I am told you have never once snatched at it.