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Murder at the Christmas Coffee Shop Morning A Miss Marple Mystery · Miss Marple Mystery

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  Speaker 1: MURDER AT THE CHRISTMAS COFFEE SHOP MORNING 1. A MISS
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  Speaker 1: MARPLE MYSTERY A cup has two sides. Most people never
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  Speaker 1: think about it. But a cup has a side where
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  Speaker 1: the handle sits, and a side where the mouth meets
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  Speaker 1: the rim, and if you have ever watched someone drink
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  Speaker 1: their coffee without knowing you were watching, you will have
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  Speaker 1: noticed that the mark their lips leave is never quite
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  Speaker 1: where you expect it, unless, of course, you already know
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  Speaker 1: which hand they favour. It is Christmas Eve morning in
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  Speaker 1: the small Somerset town of Barrowdean, and sleet is coming
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  Speaker 1: down sideways against the windows of a coffee shop called
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  Speaker 1: The Kettle and Bell, where the counter is three deep
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  Speaker 1: and the till is ringing without pause, and nobody, nobody
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  Speaker 1: at all, has time to notice a woman at the
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  Speaker 1: corner table who has stopped moving. Miss Jane Marple has
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  Speaker 1: come in only to wait out the weather with her niece.
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  Speaker 1: She did not come to look at cups.' but she
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  Speaker 1: is the sort of woman who looks at cups anyway,
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  Speaker 1: out of habit, the way another woman might look at hats.
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  Speaker 1: I do wonder, when you last held a warm cup
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  Speaker 1: on a cold morning, which side did your mouth find,
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  Speaker 1: without your thinking about it at all? Do you know,
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  Speaker 1: without looking down at your own right hand or your
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  Speaker 1: own left, which side of a rim carries the mark
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  Speaker 1: you leave behind? Has anyone in your family ever remarked
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  Speaker 1: on which hand you favour, the way families do, half
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  Speaker 1: a joke and half not, and what do you think
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  Speaker 1: might a stranger learn about you from nothing more than
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  Speaker 1: the cup you left on the table? Steam is rising
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  Speaker 1: off thirty cups at once inside the kettle and bell,
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  Speaker 1: and outside the glass the sleet is turning the whole
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  Speaker 1: high street silver, and in a moment the door is
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  Speaker 1: going to open again, and a small elderly woman in
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  Speaker 1: a damp tweed coat is going to come in stamping
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  Speaker 1: her feet and complaining mildly about the weather. Chapter 1.
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  Speaker 1: Steam on the Glass. The kettle and bell had not
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  Speaker 1: meant to be full. Mrs. Prosser, who owned it, had
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  Speaker 1: put out extra chairs at half-past eight, on the strength
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  Speaker 1: of a forecast that promised the sleet would hold off
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  Speaker 1: until noon, and by twenty to ten the forecast had
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  Speaker 1: proved itself a liar, and the shop had proved itself
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  Speaker 1: the only warm and lit place on the whole of
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  Speaker 1: the High Street. Miss Marple came in first. backwards, holding
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  Speaker 1: the door for her niece and shaking sleet from the
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  Speaker 1: shoulders of her coat with the particular disgust of a
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  Speaker 1: woman who has just had her hat ruined for the
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  Speaker 1: second time that winter. Joan Frail came in after her, laughing,
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  Speaker 1: her scarf soaked through, and steered her aunt toward the
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  Speaker 1: only free table, which was small and stood rather too
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  Speaker 1: close to the counter for comfort.' We shall have to
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  Speaker 1: share the warmth with everyone else in Barrowdean,' Miss Marple said,
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  Speaker 1: settling herself. I don't mind in the least. It is
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  Speaker 1: rather like a railway waiting-room, only with better coffee. It
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  Speaker 1: was not, in fact, very much like a railway waiting-room,
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  Speaker 1: though the crowd had something of that quality, strangers pressed
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  Speaker 1: together by weather rather than choice, each pretending not to
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  Speaker 1: look at the others while looking at nothing else. Miss
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  Speaker 1: Marple looked. She had never in her life managed not to.
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  Speaker 1: At the counter a young woman in a green coat
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  Speaker 1: was arguing pleasantly with Mrs. Prosser about whether the last
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  Speaker 1: mince pie belonged to her or to the gentleman behind her,
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  Speaker 1: and losing the argument with visible good humour. Behind her
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  Speaker 1: stood a heavy-set man with a newspaper folded to the
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  Speaker 1: racing page, tapping one finger against the counter in a
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  Speaker 1: rhythm that had nothing to do with impatience and everything
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  Speaker 1: to do with habit. Near the window Two young people
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  Speaker 1: sat with their heads bent close, not eating, not drinking,
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  Speaker 1: simply talking in the low, urgent way of people who
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  Speaker 1: have not yet decided whether they are quarrelling or falling
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  Speaker 1: in love. And at the corner table, half hidden by
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  Speaker 1: the coat stand, sat a woman alone with a cup
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  Speaker 1: of coffee, her handbag on the chair beside her, as
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  Speaker 1: though she were saving the place for someone who had
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  Speaker 1: not yet come. That poor woman looks as though she
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  Speaker 1: is waiting for the world to end, Joan said, following
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  Speaker 1: her aunt's gaze without meaning to. Do you know her?
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  Speaker 1: I do not, said Miss Marple, though I believe I
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  Speaker 1: have seen her before somewhere, not here, somewhere with better weather.
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  Speaker 1: She said it lightly, and the thought slid away from
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  Speaker 1: her almost before it had finished arriving, the way half-remembered
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  Speaker 1: things do when there is a hot drink in front
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  Speaker 1: of one and a niece talking of Christmas presents. The waitress,
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  Speaker 1: a girl of perhaps nineteen, with a chapped nose and
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  Speaker 1: an apron gone grey at the pocket, moved between the tables,
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  Speaker 1: with a tray held a little too high, the way
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  Speaker 1: the young hold things when they are anxious to seem capable.
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  Speaker 1: Her name, Miss Marple gathered from the way Mrs. Prosser
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  Speaker 1: called across the shop, was Nella. Two coffees, Nella, and
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  Speaker 1: mind the Latchford woman's, she likes it strong and she'll
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  Speaker 1: send it back else, Mrs. Prosser said, not unkindly, in
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  Speaker 1: the tone of an employer who has said the same
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  Speaker 1: thing every morning for a year. So the woman in
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  Speaker 1: the corner had a name, Mrs. Latchford. Miss Marple filed
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  Speaker 1: it away the way she filed most things, without deciding
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  Speaker 1: yet whether it mattered. The heavy-set man with the racing
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  Speaker 1: page bought his coffee and did not sit. He stood
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  Speaker 1: at the counter's end, reading, his cup held in his
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  Speaker 1: left hand while his right kept turning pages, and something
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  Speaker 1: in the economy of the motion, the ease of it,
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  Speaker 1: told Miss Marple before she had consciously thought about it
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  Speaker 1: at all, that here was a man who did most
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  Speaker 1: things with his left hand, and had done so all
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  Speaker 1: his life. It was a small observation, and she set
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  Speaker 1: it down beside the others, the way one sets down
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  Speaker 1: a stitch one may come back to. Nella carried a
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  Speaker 1: tray of three coffees toward the window table and the
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  Speaker 1: corner table together, weaving between chairs with the studied care
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  Speaker 1: of someone new enough at the job to still find
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  Speaker 1: it frightening. She set two cups down at the window
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  Speaker 1: table for the young couple, and one, Mrs. Latchford's, black
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  Speaker 1: and strong as ordered, on the corner table, though for
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  Speaker 1: a moment, caught by someone calling her name from the counter,
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  Speaker 1: she hesitated with the tray tilted, and Miss Marple, watching
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  Speaker 1: only because there was nothing else in her direct line
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  Speaker 1: of sight to watch, saw the cup slide an inch
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  Speaker 1: on its saucer before Nella steadied it and set it down.
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  Speaker 1: It was nothing. A tray, a jostle, a girl too
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  Speaker 1: new to the work. Miss Marple thought no more of it,
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  Speaker 1: and turned back to her niece, who was saying something
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  Speaker 1: about whether they ought to buy the goose from Cudlow's
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  Speaker 1: or the butcher on Four Street, and the shop went
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  Speaker 1: on being warm and crowded and loud with Christmas Eve,
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  Speaker 1: and nobody at all was watching the corner table, where Mrs.
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  Speaker 1: Latchford sat with her handbag on the chair beside her,
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  Speaker 1: waiting for someone who had not yet come. Two CHAPTER II.
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  Speaker 1: THE CORNER TABLE. By half-past ten the sleet had not eased,
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  Speaker 1: and the kettle and bell had, if anything, grown fuller.
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  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, warmed through now, and disinclined to brave the
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  Speaker 1: weather before she had to, allowed herself the pleasure that
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  Speaker 1: came most naturally to her in any crowded room. She watched,
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  Speaker 1: and she listened, and she said very little. The young
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  Speaker 1: woman in the green coat had won her mince pie
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  Speaker 1: after all, and sat two tables along, eating it in
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  Speaker 1: small determined bites, while glancing every so often toward the door,
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  Speaker 1: as if she expected someone, and was not sure whether
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  Speaker 1: she hoped they would come, or hoped they would not.
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  Speaker 1: When Mrs. Prosser passed with a fresh pot, she called
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  Speaker 1: her by name, There you are, Miss Marsh, don't let
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  Speaker 1: it go cold, and the young woman thanked her, without
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  Speaker 1: quite meeting her eye, Delia Marsh. Miss Marple turned the
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  Speaker 1: name over without particular purpose, the way she turned over
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  Speaker 1: most names, and noted only, because it was the sort
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  Speaker 1: of thing she noted, that Miss Marsh held her fork
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  Speaker 1: in her left hand and had signed the chit Mrs.
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  Speaker 1: Prosser brought her with the same hand, the pen slanting
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  Speaker 1: the letters backward, in the manner left-handed writers often have.
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  Speaker 1: It was again nothing. A shop full of Christmas Eve customers,
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  Speaker 1: and two of them left-handed, was no more remarkable than
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  Speaker 1: a shop full of customers who preferred milk in their tea.
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  Speaker 1: At the window the young couple had reached some resolution
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  Speaker 1: of their difficulty. The girl was crying a little and
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  Speaker 1: laughing at the same time, and the young man had
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  Speaker 1: taken her hand across the table in a manner that
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  Speaker 1: suggested the quarrel, whatever it had been, was mended. Miss Marple,
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  Speaker 1: who had watched a great many quarrels mend and a
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  Speaker 1: great many fail to, thought this one would hold. The
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  Speaker 1: heavyset man with the racing page had been joined by
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  Speaker 1: a second man, older, in a good overcoat with a
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  Speaker 1: fur collar gone thin at the edges, the kind of
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  Speaker 1: coat that had once been expensive and had not been
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  Speaker 1: replaced since. They spoke together in low voices near the door,
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  Speaker 1: and once the older man laughed a short unhappy sound
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  Speaker 1: and said something Miss Marple did not catch except for
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  Speaker 1: the words before Christmas said with a particular weight. as
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  Speaker 1: though Christmas were a deadline rather than a feast. At
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  Speaker 1: the corner table Mrs. Latchford had not moved. Her coffee
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  Speaker 1: sat before her, cooling. The cup turned very slightly so
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  Speaker 1: that the handle pointed toward the window rather than toward
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  Speaker 1: her hand, and she had not touched it. She sat
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  Speaker 1: with her gloved hands folded on the table and her
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  Speaker 1: eyes on the door, and when the bell above it
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  Speaker 1: rang for the fourth or fifth time in ten minutes,
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  Speaker 1: she looked up each time with the same brief hopeful flare,
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  Speaker 1: and each time it was not the person she wanted,
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  Speaker 1: and the hope went out of her face like a
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  Speaker 1: candle in a draught. She's been stood up, Joan murmured,
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  Speaker 1: following her aunt's gaze again, poor thing, on Christmas Eve too, Perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, or perhaps she is waiting for someone
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  Speaker 1: who does not know she is here at all. She
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  Speaker 1: said it half to herself, and could not have explained,
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  Speaker 1: if pressed, why the distinction seemed to matter. It was
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  Speaker 1: at this point, she placed it afterward, for the inspector's benefit,
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  Speaker 1: at very nearly a quarter to eleven, that Nella came
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  Speaker 1: again with a laden tray, moving between the window-table and
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  Speaker 1: the corner-table as she had before, and again the crowd
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  Speaker 1: conspired against her. A large woman in an astrakhan collar
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  Speaker 1: backed into her elbow, reaching for her purse, and the
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  Speaker 1: tray dipped, and two cups slid together, and Nella, flustered,
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  Speaker 1: set them both down quickly, one at the window, one
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  Speaker 1: at the corner, and hurried on without a backward look,
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  Speaker 1: because Mrs. Prosser was calling her and the till-cue had
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  Speaker 1: not shortened in twenty minutes. Miss Marple saw the dip
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  Speaker 1: of the tray, She saw two cups nearly change places,
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  Speaker 1: and then, she assumed, resettle themselves correctly, because that was
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  Speaker 1: what cups on trays did. They were clumsy for a moment,
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  Speaker 1: and then behaved. She thought nothing of it at the time.
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  Speaker 1: She would think a great deal of it later, and
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  Speaker 1: reproach herself, mildly, for not thinking of it sooner, though
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  Speaker 1: she would also observe, when she said as much to
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  Speaker 1: the inspector, that a woman cannot be expected to watch
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  Speaker 1: every cup in a crowded shop, and draw conclusions from
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  Speaker 1: each one, or she should never get her own coffee
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  Speaker 1: drunk at all. The heavyset man and the older man
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  Speaker 1: in the good overcoat parted at the door, the older
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  Speaker 1: one going out into the sleet with his collar up
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  Speaker 1: and his shoulders set in the particular defeated line of
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  Speaker 1: a man walking towards something he does not want to face.
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  Speaker 1: The heavyset man remained, bought a second coffee, and this
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  Speaker 1: time sat, two tables from Miss Marple, still reading his
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  Speaker 1: racing page, his cup again in his left hand. Mrs. Latchford,
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  Speaker 1: at the corner table, finally lifted her own cup, or
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  Speaker 1: what Miss Marple took, without examining the matter, to be
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  Speaker 1: her own cup, and drank from it. She set it
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  Speaker 1: down again almost at once, made a small face, as
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  Speaker 1: though the coffee had gone colder or stronger than she liked,
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  Speaker 1: and returned her eyes to the door. It was the
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  Speaker 1: last thing Miss Marple noticed of her for some minutes,
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  Speaker 1: because Joan had begun a determined conversation about whether their
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  Speaker 1: train home would run at all in this weather, and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: it is difficult to watch a stranger and reassure a
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  Speaker 1: niece about British Railways at the same time. When Miss
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  Speaker 1: Marple looked again, some ten minutes later, Mrs. Latchford had
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  Speaker 1: not moved, and her hands, still folded on the table,
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  Speaker 1: had gone very still in a way that hands do
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  Speaker 1: not usually go still, even in waiting. Joan, she said,
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  Speaker 1: and something in her voice, quiet as it was, made
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  Speaker 1: her niece stop talking at once. I think you had
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  Speaker 1: better fetch Mrs. Prosser. Chapter 3 The Untouched Tray Afterward,
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  Speaker 1: everyone in the kettle and bell would remember the moment differently,
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  Speaker 1: the way people always do, and Miss Marple, listening to
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  Speaker 1: the various accounts over the following days, would find herself
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  Speaker 1: less interested in what people said they had seen than
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in the small unconscious things each account revealed about the
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  Speaker 1: person telling it. What had happened, stripped of the different tellings,
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  Speaker 1: was this. Mrs. Prosser, summoned by Joan, had gone to
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  Speaker 1: the corner table with the brisk irritation of a woman
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  Speaker 1: who assumes a customer has fainted from the heat, and
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  Speaker 1: had returned from it a very different colour, and had
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: told Nella, in a voice gone suddenly unsteady, to fetch Dr.
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  Speaker 1: Reeve from two doors along, and to say nothing to
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  Speaker 1: anyone until he came. The shop, which a moment before
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  Speaker 1: had been loud with Christmas Eve, went quiet in stages,
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  Speaker 1: table by table, as the news moved outward from the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: corner like a stain spreading through cloth. The young couple
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: at the window stood without seeming to know they had stood.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: The heavyset man folded his racing page very small and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: put it in his pocket, as though it were suddenly
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the wrong thing to be holding. Delia Marsh, two tables
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  Speaker 1: from Miss Marple, had gone the colour of the tablecloth
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  Speaker 1: and pressed one gloved hand to her mouth. Dr. Reeve,
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  Speaker 1: when he came, was brisk and grey-haired, and asked everyone
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  Speaker 1: to stand well back, and it was he who said,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: after not very long at all, in the flat voice
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  Speaker 1: doctors use for things they do not want repeated as gossip,
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  Speaker 1: that it looked very much like the heart, that she was,
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  Speaker 1: he checked, gently for a name, Mrs. Enid Latchford, of
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  Speaker 1: Cudlow's Farm, and that he was sorry, and that someone
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  Speaker 1: had better ring for the police as a matter of form,
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  Speaker 1: though he did not, in that first moment, say why
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  Speaker 1: the form should be necessary. It was Miss Marple who noticed,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: while the shop rearranged itself around the doctor, and the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: constable who arrived some minutes later dripping sleet onto Mrs.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Prosser's floor, that Mrs. Latchford's cup stood exactly where it
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: had stood before, half drunk, cooling further, its saucer bearing
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the small ring a cup leaves when it has been
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: set down and picked up more than once. She noticed
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  Speaker 1: it because she was standing rather near it, having been
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: asked— with the rest of the shop, to keep clear
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  Speaker 1: of the corner, and because she had never in her
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: life been able to look at a cup without looking
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  Speaker 1: at it properly. The lip-print on the rim was faint,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the coffee having gone cold enough that the colour had settled,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: but it was there, a pale crescent of lipstick just
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: visible against the white china, and it sat, Miss Marple
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was quite sure of this, and would remain sure of
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  Speaker 1: it through every later doubt, on the right-hand side of
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the rim, as one faced the handle. not the left,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: where a right-handed woman lifting a cup by its handle
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: in her right hand would naturally set her mouth. The right.
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  Speaker 1: She did not say anything to the constable, who was
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: young and flustered and mainly occupied with keeping Mrs. Prosser's
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: more excitable customers from leaving before they had given their names.
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  Speaker 1: She said nothing to Dr. Reeve, who had already turned
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: his attention to the practicalities of a body that could not,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: for the moment— be moved. She said, in fact, nothing
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to anyone, because a lip-print on the wrong side of
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a rim was, after all, a very small thing to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: build an accusation on, and because Mrs. Latchford's death, everyone agreed,
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  Speaker 1: looked exactly like a heart failing on a cold morning
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: after a strong coffee, which was not, in itself, a crime.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: But she looked, before the constable thought to cover the table,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: at the position of the cup on its saucer, at
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the untouched slice of shortbread on the plate beside it,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: at the handbag still sitting primly on the chair where
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: it had waited all morning for someone who had never come,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and she thought, not with alarm, for alarm was not
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: in her nature, but with the quiet attentiveness of a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: woman doing a difficult piece of needlework, that something about
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  Speaker 1: the whole small tableau did not sit quite true, the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: way a hem, does not sit true when it has
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: been let out and taken in more than once. Joan,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: she said, when her niece came to find her, white-faced,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: having been asked her name and address by the constable,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: along with everyone else, I think, whatever the doctor says,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that we had better not leave Barrowdean just yet. Outside,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the sleet had turned, without anyone much noticing the moment
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: of the change, into a thin, persistent rain, and the
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  Speaker 1: high street windows of the kettle and bell were opaque
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  Speaker 1: with condensation, so that anyone passing on the pavement could
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: no longer see in, and anyone inside could no longer
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  Speaker 1: see out, and the shop sat sealed in its own
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: steam and its own silence, waiting, like everyone in it,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: for whatever was to come next. 4. Chapter 4. Questions
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: at the Counter. Inspector Holt arrived within the hour. A broad,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: unhurried man, with a Somerset Burr and the manner of
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: someone who had seen a great many Christmas Eves ruined
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: by a great many ordinary tragedies, and had not yet
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: decided whether this one was ordinary. He had Dr. Reeve's report,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: which was cautious in the way medical reports are cautious,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: noting a heart that might have failed on its own,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: and a faint bitter smell about the cup that the doctor,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: to his credit, had not liked at all. He set up,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: with Mrs. Prosser's flustered permission, at the small table by
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: the till, and took names, and asked his questions in
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: a mild, unthreatening way, that Miss Marple, seated at her
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: own table with a fresh pot of tea Joan had
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: insisted upon, found she rather approved of. He had not
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: yet said the word murder. He did not need to.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: The shop had already decided it for itself, in the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: particular quality of the silence that had settled since the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: constable's arrival. a silence with an edge to it that
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: ordinary grief did not have. You'll forgive me starting with
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the practical, Inspector Holt said to Mrs. Prosser, but I'll
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: need to know who was on your books this morning
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and who came and went, as near as you can
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: put it together. Mrs. Prosser, wringing her apron in both hands,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: produced a list of regulars with more confidence than the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: moment seemed to warrant, and it was from this list,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: checked against the shop itself, that the morning's cast assembled
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: itself for the Inspector's benefit and table by table, exactly
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: as it had assembled itself, two hours before, for nobody's
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: benefit at all. Delia Marsh, of the green coat and
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the mince pie, gave her name in a voice that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: shook slightly, and explained, when asked, that she had come
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: in for warmth and coffee like everyone else, that she
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: had known Mrs. Latchford only slightly, from church, and that
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: she was waiting, this morning, for no one in particular.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple. listening without appearing to, noted that this last
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: was not quite true, or not quite the whole truth.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Miss Marsh's eyes had gone to the door twice while
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: she said it, the same brief, hopeful, anxious flick that Mrs.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Latchford's own eyes had made, before Mrs. Latchford stopped making
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: it forever. The heavyset man gave his name as Bert Coombe,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a commercial traveller lodging above the ironmongers for the week,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and said he had known the dead woman not at all,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: had come in for his coffee same as any morning,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and had sat where he always sat. He said it
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: with the flat, unbothered confidence of a man used to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: being questioned by policemen about other men's business, and finding
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: it did not touch him. The older man in the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: good overcoat had gone before the constable arrived, and had
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: not yet been traced. Mrs. Prosser, questioned closely, could only
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: say his name was Palfrey, that he came in most mornings,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and that she believed him to keep an office of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: some kind on 4th Street, though what kind she could
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: not say, and did not from her tone, much wish
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to speculate. The young couple at the window gave their names,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Tom Aldous and his fiancée, Ruth, and their story, which
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: was that they had been quarrelling about a wedding date,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and had not so much as glanced at the corner table,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: a claim the inspector noted, and did not, Miss Marple thought,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: entirely believe. though he wrote it down without comment. And Nella,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the waitress, gave her name last, white and trembling, and
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: when asked directly whether she had served Mrs. Latchford's coffee,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: said yes, she had, she always served the corner table
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: of a morning, and when asked whether anything at all
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: had happened out of the ordinary, burst suddenly into tears,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and said she didn't know, she'd been that busy. She
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: might have set a cup down wrong, she couldn't be
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: sure of anything, and Mrs. Prosser would sack her for
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: certain now, whatever the police decided, and it wasn't fair,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: it wasn't fair at all. Inspector Holt was gentle with her,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: in the practised way of a man who had made
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: young witnesses cry before and did not enjoy it, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: let her go to the back room with Mrs. Prosser's
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: assistant to compose herself. And it was in the small
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: silence that followed that he turned, almost as an afterthought,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to Miss Marple, who had said nothing to anyone and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: had been introduced to him only as a visitor caught
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: by the weather. And you, ma'am, you'll have seen the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: shop as well as anyone sitting where you are. I
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: have seen a good deal of it, Miss Marple admitted,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: though I am not at all sure how much of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it will be useful to you. I did notice, for
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: what it is worth, that the waitress's tray tipped twice
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: this morning, once quite early on and once again not
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: long before poor Mrs. Latchford was taken ill. I don't
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: say it means anything. Trays do tip in a crowd
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: like this. They do, Inspector Holt agreed, writing it down anyway,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: because he was the kind of policeman who wrote everything
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: down and sorted it out later. Anything else? Miss Marple
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: considered and decided, for the moment, not to mention the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: lip print, partly because it seemed a very small and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: possibly foolish thing to raise before a man she had
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: only just met. and partly because she had learned, over
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a great many years of noticing things, that it was
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: generally wiser to be sure of a small fact before
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: handing it to someone who might act on it too quickly. Only,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: she said instead, that Mrs. Latchford seemed to be waiting
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: for someone all morning, and that whoever it was never came.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I should find out who, if I were you. People
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: who fail to arrive are sometimes more interesting than people
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: who do. 5. Chapter 5. What the waitress remembered. The post-mortem,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: when its early findings reached Inspector Holt two days later,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: put an end to any lingering hope that Mrs. Enid
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Latchford had simply died of a weak heart on a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: cold morning. Chloral hydrate, the report said, in a quantity
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a great deal larger than any doctor would have prescribed
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: for a nervous headache, and present in the small remaining
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: dregs of her cup, in a concentration that left no
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: room for accident. Barrow Dean, by then, had stopped pretending
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the death was ordinary. The High Street on the day
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: before Christmas was a place of low, urgent conversations that
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: broke off whenever a stranger passed, and Mrs. Prosser's shop,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: though it reopened out of a kind of defiant necessity,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: did a quarter of its usual trade, most of the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: town preferring for the moment to to take their coffee
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: elsewhere or not at all. Miss Marple, who had told
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Joan with perfect calm that they would stay a few
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: more days to see the thing settled, spent the better
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: part of that morning in a corner of the kettle
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: and bell with her knitting, ostensibly out of the way,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: actually in the best possible position to hear Inspector Holt's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: second round of questioning, which he had, with the faint
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: amusement of a man who suspects he is being managed
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and does not much mind, allowed her to sit in on.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Nella came first, sent for from the back room, still pale,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: her hands twisting in her apron, in a way Miss
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Marple had noticed twice now, and filed carefully away, because
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: a habit that repeats is a habit worth watching. I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: want you to think very carefully, Inspector Holt said, not unkindly,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: about the tray you were carrying when it tipped, the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: second time, not long before Mrs. Latchford was taken ill.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me exactly what was on it? Nella's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: eyes filled at once. Three coffees, sir. Two for the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: young couple at the window, and one for the corner table.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Same as I always did of a morning for Mrs. Latchford.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: She liked it strong and black. No sugar. Same every day.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And when the tray tipped? A lady bumped me, reaching
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: for her purse. I don't know who, there was such
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: a crowd. Two of the cups slid together on the tray,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and I had to catch them before they went over,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and I set them down quick after, because Mrs. Prosser
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: was calling me, and I never... She stopped, and pressed
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: her knuckles to her mouth, and said in a smaller voice,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I never looked to see if I'd set the right
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: one down at the right table. I never thought to.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Why would I? You might have set the window table's
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: cup on the corner table, and the corner table's cup
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: at the window, Inspector Holt said. watching her carefully, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: never known it. I might have, Nella whispered, and if
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I did, sir, if I did, then it's my fault
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: she's dead, isn't it? Whatever was put in that coffee,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: because I gave it to her with my own two
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: hands and never looked twice. She was crying properly now,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and Mrs. Prosser, hovering nearby with the particular helpless anger
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of an employer who cannot decide whether to comfort or dismiss,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: put an arm round her without quite knowing what to say.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, from her corner, watched the girl's hands, which
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: had gone still now that the confession, such as it was,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: had been made, and thought that fright and guilt look
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: very alike from the outside, and are, in her long experience,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: very rarely the same thing underneath.' Tell me,' she said,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: when the inspector, having got what comfort he could into
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the moment, allowed her to speak.' Which hand did you
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: use to catch the sliding cups? Nella looked at her,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: startled out of her tears by the strangeness of the question.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: My right, ma'am. I'm right-handed. I caught them both with
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: my right and set them down quick, one, then the other.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And when you poured the coffee that morning, before ever
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the tray was loaded, did you turn the cups at all?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Some people like the handle to the right, some to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the left.' and a careful girl will sometimes turn a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: cup to suit a regular customer. Mrs. Latchford always had
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: hers handled to the right, ma'am, same as most. She
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: was particular that way, said a cup poured wrong put
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: her off her coffee before she'd even tasted it. Nella's face,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: for a moment, cleared of some of its fright, pleased
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: despite everything to have remembered something correctly. I always turned
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it for her special, Inspector Holt said, Listening to this
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: exchange with the patient expression of a man allowing a
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: witness a little rope to see where she ran with it,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: made a note, and Miss Marple returned to her knitting,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: having learned exactly what she had hoped to learn, and
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: nothing that would yet explain it. That the girl's fright
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: was the fright of a conscientious worker who feared her
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: own clumsiness, not the fright of someone hiding a worse thing,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and that Mrs. Latchford's cup, whoever's hand had finally raised it,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: had been set down that morning turned correctly, handle to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the right, exactly as a right-handed woman would have wanted it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Which made the the lip-print on the wrong side of
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the rim, Miss Marple thought, considerably more interesting than it
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: had seemed even in the coffee-shop's first shocked hour, and
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: she resolved, before the day was out, to find a
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: quiet way of putting the matter to Inspector Holt, once
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: she had satisfied herself a little further than about one
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: or two other small things that continued, in the meantime,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: to nag at her like an unfinished row of stitches. 6.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER VI. THE WOMAN WHO LEFT EARLY. It was Mrs. Prosser,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of all people, who supplied the next thread, offered not
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to the inspector but to Miss Marple directly. Over a
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: pot of tea the shopkeeper insisted on making with her
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: own hands that afternoon, as though the ritual of it
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: might set the world back on its axis. She'd a companion,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you know, Mrs. Latchford. A Miss Rand. Come to live
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: with her up at Cudlow's Farm this past year, after
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: her own people died off and left her nothing much
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to live on. Poor relation, though nobody said it to
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: her face. Mrs. Prosser lowered her voice, though the shop
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: was nearly empty. She was in here that morning too, ma'am,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Miss Rand was, sat with Mrs. Latchford not twenty minutes before,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: before it happened. Left in a temper, she did.' I
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: saw her go myself, out the door and up the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: street like the devil was after her, and Mrs. Latchford
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: sitting thereafter with a face like thunder. Inspector Holt, informed
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: of this within the hour, had Sylvia Rand brought in
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: before evening, a thin, anxious woman of perhaps forty, with
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the permanently apologetic manner of someone who has spent a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: long time being grateful for things she did not particularly want.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: She confirmed the quarrel readily enough. almost with relief, as
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: though glad to have it out in the open rather
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: than waiting to be caught in a lie. We argued
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: about money, Inspector, if you must know. Enid, Mrs. Latchford,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: kept me on an allowance, and a mean one, and
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I asked her that morning, as I had asked her before,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: whether she might see her way to increasing it, seeing
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: as I'd nothing of my own and nowhere else to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: go if she turned me out. She said some hard things,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I said some hard things back, and then I left,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: because I couldn't sit there another minute being looked at
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: like that, in front of half the town. Her hands,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: folded in her lap, trembled slightly. I walked the length
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: of the high street twice in the rain before I
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: went home, and I can't prove it, because nobody saw
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: me who'd remember, and I know how that looks.'' It looks,'
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Inspector Holt said, not unsympathetically.' like a woman with a grievance,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and no alibi. I know it does, Sylvia Rand's voice cracked,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: but I never touched her coffee, Inspector. I never went
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: near that table again. I couldn't have got near enough
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: with the whole shop watching us quarrel, could I, without
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: every soul in Barrowdeen seeing me do it? It was,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple thought, watching from her corner, a fair point,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and one that troubled her a little, because it was
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: true that Sylvia Rand's departure had been public. Witnessed, remarked
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: upon by half the shop, and a woman who has
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: just made a spectacle of herself quarrelling with her benefactress,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: is not, on the whole, in a good position to
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: return unnoticed and tamper with a cup. And yet the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: woman's fear was real, and her account of the quarrel,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: checked afterward against two other witnesses who had half overheard it,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: proved accurate in every particular down to the exact hard
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: words Mrs. Latchford had used about ingratitude and about people
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: who forgot which side their bread was buttered on. What
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: will become of you now? Miss Marple asked her gently,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: when the inspector had finished and stepped away to confer
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: with his constable. With Mrs. Latchford gone, Sylvia Rand looked up,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: surprised to be asked so directly, and something in her
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: face loosened. the way a face loosens when a question
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: is kind rather than accusing. I don't rightly know, ma'am.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: There's no will that I know of that provides for me.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Why should there be? We weren't kin. I dare say
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: I'll go into service somewhere if anyone will have a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: woman my age with no character to speak of beyond
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: poor relation. It isn't much of a prospect, but I
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: never wished her dead for it. I only wished her
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: a little kinder while she lived. She said this last
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: so simply, and with such an absence of calculation, that
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple found herself believing it entirely, and filed the
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: small private shame of it away, a woman ashamed not
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of murder, but of having quarrelled publicly, on the last morning,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: with a woman now dead, and of having nothing to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: say afterward but the truth, which nobody was inclined to
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: find comforting. It confirmed for Miss Marple what she had begun,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: in a tentative way, to suspect that the quarrel, ugly
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: as it had been, was exactly what it appeared, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: that Sylvia Rand's guilt, real enough in its own fashion,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: was the ordinary guilt of the living toward the dead,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and had nothing at all to do with what had
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: gone into the coffee-cup at the corner table, which left,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: as the short winter afternoon closed in and the sleet
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: outside turned once more to rain, a rather smaller field
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of possibility than the shop's crowded morning had first suggested.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: afield Miss Marple found herself narrowing, stitch by stitch, toward
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: a single unremarkable fact she had noted on her very
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: first morning in the kettle and bell, and had very nearly,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: in the business of Christmas and quarrels and cold coffee,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: allowed herself to forget. 7. CHAPTER VII. THE LOCKED TILL.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: On the day after Boxing Day, with the shop's ordinary
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: trade still thin, and the town no nearer, by outward appearance,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: to an arrest, Inspector Holt learned that someone had tried,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the previous evening, to leave Barrowdean on the last train
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: before the branch line closed for engineering works over the holiday,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: and had been quietly prevented from doing so by a
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: constable posted, on the inspector's own instruction, to watch the station.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: The someone was Delia Marsh. She had bought a ticket
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to Bristol, a single, and had carried with her a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: suitcase packed in evident haste. and when the constable, apologetic
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: but firm, had explained that the inspector would be obliged
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: if she stayed in Barrowdean a little longer, she had
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: gone very white and said nothing at all, and had
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: walked back through the rain to her lodgings without argument,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: which Inspector Holt, hearing the account the next morning, found
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: more troubling than if she had protested loudly. He had
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: her brought in at once, and this time Miss Marple,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: present again by his continuing and slightly amused tolerance, watched
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the interview and with particular attention, because a woman who
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: tries to leave a town where a murder has occurred
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: is a woman with something she does not want examined,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: whether or not that something is the murder itself. I
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't running from the police, Delia Marsh said, when the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: inspector put the matter to her plainly. I was running
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: from Barrow Dean, which isn't the same thing, though I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: don't suppose you'll believe me. She twisted her gloves in
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: her lap, the same left hand doing most of the work,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the right merely holding. I have a— a history here, Inspector,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with Mrs. Latchford's death, and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: everything to do with why I'd rather be anywhere else
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: in England than sitting in a coffee shop where half
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: the town has started looking at me sideways. What history?
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Inspector Holt asked, and his voice, though still mild, had
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: lost its patience for evasions. She told it haltingly, in pieces,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the way people tell things they are ashamed of rather
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: than things they are guilty of. A marriage some years before,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: in another town, that had ended badly and left her,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: for a time, dependent on the kindness of a cousin
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: in Barrowdean, a fact she had told nobody in the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: town itself, having come here under her maiden name and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: let it be assumed she had always been Miss Marsh.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't want it known, she said, a divorced woman
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: gets talked about, whatever the reason for it, and I'd
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: had enough of being talked about to last a lifetime.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I thought if I left quietly, before anyone thought to
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: ask too many questions about my own past, nobody would
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: ever need to know at all. It was cowardly. I
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: see that now. But it wasn't murder. Inspector Holt? Checking
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: this account over the following day against the records of
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the town she had named, found it to be entirely
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: true in every particular down to the decree that had
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: ended the marriage and the cousin who confirmed, reluctantly, that
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Miss Marsh had indeed arrived in Barrowdean under circumstances she
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: had preferred kept quiet. It was, in the end, exactly
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: what it appeared. a private shame with no bearing whatever
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: on the death of a woman she had known only slightly,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: from church, and had no discoverable reason to wish dead.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: But the attempt to leave had done one useful thing,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: in Miss Marple's estimation, which was to close, decisively, every
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: route by which the case might yet slip away unsolved
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: into Christmas and be forgotten. Inspector Holt, with the quiet
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: grim satisfaction of a man who does not like loose ends,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: announced that afternoon that nobody who had been in the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: kettle and bell on the morning of the death would
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: be permitted to leave Barrowdean until the matter was resolved. Mrs. Prosser,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Bert Coom The elusive Mr. Palfrey now finally traced and questioned,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: and found to have been discussing, with the heavyset commercial traveller,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: nothing more sinister than a debt of thirty pounds neither
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: cared to have advertised, the young couple Tom and Ruth,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Sylvia Rand, and Delia Marsh, all sitting, in effect, in
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the same small waiting-room the weather had first crowded them into,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: unable now to leave it by any door but the truth.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple— informed of the restriction over tea with Joan
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: that evening, received it with a small satisfied nod, the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: nod of a woman watching a piece of knitting finally
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: begin to take a recognisable shape. It does concentrate the
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: mind wonderfully, she observed, being told one cannot go home
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: for Christmas until a murder is solved. People say a
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: great deal more in that condition than they mean to.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: She paused over her needles and added, almost to herself,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I believe I had better go back to the shop
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: tomorrow and look very carefully, once more, at exactly how Mrs.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Prosser keeps her cups. 8. CHAPTER VIII. A CHRISTMAS CARD
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE It was on the morning after that
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, sitting once more in her corner of the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: kettle and bell, while the shop, half empty still, went
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: through the motions of a normal Christmas trade, found herself
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: watching Delia Marsh take her coffee. Left-handed as always, the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: cup lifted and set down again with the unthinking ease
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: of a habit twenty years old, and felt, quite without warning,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the small cold click of a memory surfacing that she
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: had been circling, without quite catching, for the better part
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: of a week. She went very still over her knitting,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and dropped a stitch, and did not notice she had
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: dropped it.' Do you know,' she said to Joan, who
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: had come to sit with her for the morning, This
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: puts me in mind of a girl I knew years
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: ago in St. Mary Mead, Nancy Thorogood, her name was,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: though nobody ever called her anything but Nan. She kept
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the wool shop on the corner by the church for
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: the better part of thirty years, and everyone in the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: village would have told you Nan Thorogood was right-handed as
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: any of us, because she cut cloth right-handed and and
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: she poured tea right-handed, and she wrote her order-book right-handed too,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: being taught too at the village school, where they were
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: very firm about such things in those days. But she wasn't,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Joan asked, more from politeness than real curiosity, used by
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: now to her aunt's meandering habit of illustration. She wasn't,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: not underneath. She'd been born left-handed and made to change it,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: as so many were, and the change took everywhere and
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: except in the one place nobody ever thought to look.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: She embroidered left-handed, always, every stitch of it, because nobody
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: had ever thought to correct her at her needlework, only
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: at her writing and her scissors and her pouring. I
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: found her out quite by accident one Christmas, watching her
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: hem a tablecloth in the back of the shop, and
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I remember being so struck by it that a person
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: could be trained out of a habit in every part
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of their life but one. and that the one part
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: left untrained would always, always tell the truth about them
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: in the end, if only you happened to be watching
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: at the right moment. She smoothed her knitting, retrieved the
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: dropped stitch with a small tut of self-reproach, and fell silent,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: her eyes on Delia Marsh's cup and its handle, turned,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: as it always was, to the left. Joan, finding nothing
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: very remarkable in a story about a woolshop, let the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: matter drop and returned to her tea, but Miss Marple
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: sat for some minutes more with her needles idle in
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: her lap, turning the memory of Nan Thorogood's left-handed embroidery
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: over beside the memory of a lip-print sitting on the
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: wrong side of a dead woman's cup, and beside that,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the memory of Nella insisting, quite rightly as it had
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: turned out, that she had set Mrs. Latchford's cup down correctly,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: handled to the right, exactly as the dead woman always
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: liked it. If the cup had been set down correctly,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and had still borne a left-handed print, then either Mrs.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Latchford had, for some reason, drunk from it with her
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: left hand on that one morning of all mornings, which
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: nobody who knew her, and several people did, had ever
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: suggested she was in the habit of doing, or the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: cup Mrs. Latchford drank her last coffee from had never
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: been the cup Nella set down before her at all.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: It had been a second cup, arriving by some other route,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and raised— before ever it reached the corner table, by
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: a hand that habitually favoured the left. Miss Marple thought
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: of the tray that had tipped, twice, that first crowded morning.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: She thought of Bert Coombe's cup always in his left hand,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: though his newspaper told her he read right to left
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: as anyone did, which told her nothing useful at all.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: She thought of Delia Marsh's fork and her signature slanting
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: backward across the chit. And she thought with the particular
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: clarity that came to her at such moments, quiet and
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: certain and entirely without drama, of the one detail she
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: had noted on the very first morning, and had not,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: until now, properly weighed, that it had been Delia Marsh,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and only Delia Marsh among the shop's Christmas Eve crowd,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: whose seat that morning had placed her close enough to
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the corner table, and near enough to Nella's overloaded tray
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: at the exact moment of its second tip, to have
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: exchanged one cup for another in the two or three
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: seconds of confusion a laden tray provides, without anyone in
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: a crowded, steaming, Christmas Eve busy coffee shop thinking, even
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: for a moment, to watch her do it. Joan, she
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: said at last, folding her knitting away with sudden decision,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I believe I should like to speak to Inspector Holt
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: this afternoon, and I believe, when I do, I shall
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: ask Mrs. Prosser for the loan of her cups. 9.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Chapter 9. The Cups Reset. Inspector Holt, when Miss Marple
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: laid the matter before him that afternoon, in the small
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: back room Mrs. Prosser had given over for police use,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: listened with the particular stillness of a man deciding, sentence
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: by sentence, whether he was hearing sense or fancy, and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: by the time she had finished, the lip-print, the correctly
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: turned handle, the tray that tipped twice, the left-handed habits
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: she had gathered, almost without meaning to, across a week
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: of watching a shop full of strangers, he had stopped
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: writing altogether and simply sat looking at her.' You' re telling me,'
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: he said slowly,' that the coffee wasn't poisoned in the
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: cup Mrs. Latchford was given. It was poisoned in a
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: second cup, made up separate, and swapped for hers in
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the crowd, during that second spill of the tray. I
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: believe so, Inspector.' it would explain a great deal that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: has puzzled me. It would explain why the print sat
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: on the wrong side of the rim for a woman
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: everybody agrees was right-handed all her life. It would explain
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: why Nella's memory of turning the handle correctly was perfectly
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: accurate and yet told us nothing useful, because the handle
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: she turned belonged to the wrong cup entirely. And it
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: would explain why nobody saw anything out of the ordinary
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: that morning, because in a shop that crowded, One more
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: cup changing hands during a spilled tray is not a
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: thing anyone would think twice about. And you believe it
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: was Miss Marsh? I believe it very probably was, though
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I should be sorry to say so with absolute certainty
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: on the strength of a fork held in one hand
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and a signature that slants the wrong way. Those are
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the sort of things that make one suspect, Inspector, not
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the sort of things that prove. But there is, I think,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: a way to know for certain, if you are willing
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to try it. and if Mrs. Prosser will lend us
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: her crockery for the purpose. What Miss Marple proposed, and
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: what Inspector Holt, after a long considering silence, agreed to attempt,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: was simple enough in its design, though it required, as
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: she was the first to admit, a certain amount of
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: theatre she did not much care for, but judged, on
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: this occasion, necessary. The following morning, with every soul who
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: had been in the kettle and bell on the day
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: of the death, gathered once more at Inspector Holt's request, Nella,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: pale and anxious behind the counter where she had been permitted,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: at her own tearful insistence, to keep working, Mrs. Prosser hovering,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Bert Coombe and the newly cleared Mr. Palfrey seated together
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: near the door, Tom and Ruth by the window, hands linked,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Sylvia Rand small and watchful near the back. and Delia
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Marsh at the same corner table where Mrs. Latchford had
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: once waited for someone who never came, Inspector Holt had
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: six cups set out along the counter, plain white china,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: exactly matching Mrs. Prosser's ordinary stock, each filled with nothing
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: more sinister than weak tea, and asked, in a voice
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: that carried the whole length of the shop, that each
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: person present come forward, in turn, and take up a cup,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: and drink from it as they naturally would, while he
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple watched. There was a murmur of confusion.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: and some protest. Bert Coombe wanted to know what game
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: this was, and was told, not unkindly, that it was
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: police business and he would oblige or explain to a
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: magistrate why not, but one by one they came forward.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Tom drank right-handed, unremarkably, Ruth the same. Mr. Palfrey, fumbling
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: with his good overcoat, right-handed. Sylvia Rand, hands trembling, right-handed.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: The cup set down again almost before it had touched
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: her lips. Bert Coombe took his cup left-handed, exactly as
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple had noted a week before, and set it
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: down again with the same unconscious ease, and Inspector Holt
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: noted it and set it aside. because a man could
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: be left-handed all his life and guilty of nothing more
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: than reading his racing page while he drank. Delia Marsh
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: came forward last and hesitated, just perceptibly, before her hand
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: went out, and it was her left hand, exactly as
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: it had been all week with her fork and her
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: pen and her teacup, and she lifted the cup and drank,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: and set it down, and it was only as she
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: set it down and saw Miss Marple watching the rim
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: with the same close, quiet attention she had once given
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: a dead woman's cup, that something in her face changed,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: all at once, from confusion to a kind of collapsing understanding.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: It's the mark, isn't it? she said, very low, into
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: the silence that had fallen over the whole shop. The
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: mark I leave, that's what you've been watching for, all
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: this time. It is, Miss Marple said gently. A right-handed
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: woman raises a cup and her mouth meets it a
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: little to the left of the handle, as her own
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: hand naturally turns it. A left-handed woman raises it and
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: her mouth meets the other side. It is not a
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: thing anyone thinks about, because it is not a thing
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: anyone chooses. It simply happens, every time, the same way,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: for the whole of a life. Mrs. Latchford was right-handed
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: in everything anyone ever saw her do. but the print
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: on her last cup sat exactly where yours sits now,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Miss Marsh— on the wrong side, for her, on the only side,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: for you. Delia Marsh did not deny it, in the end,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: though she tried, for a moment, to say it proved nothing,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that plenty of people might have left such a mark,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that a mark on a rim was not a signed confession,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Holt, watching her closely, said only that it
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: would be for others to weigh how much a mark
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: on a rim was worth, but that he would like
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: her to account, now, for precisely what she had done
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: in the two or three seconds the tray had tipped
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: a second time, close enough to the corner table for
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: her hand to reach it, and it was this, more
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: than the cup itself, that finally broke her composure entirely,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: because there had been no one, she had been so certain,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: watching closely enough that morning, to have counted the seconds
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: at all. 10. Chapter 10. Sleet turning to rain. She
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: had recognised Mrs Latchford, Delia Marsh said at last, sitting
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: very straight now with her hands still in her lap.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: The fight gone out of her, in the way that
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: people's fight goes when the one thing they have spent
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: years hiding is finally said aloud by someone else and
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: there is nothing left to protect. recognized her not from church,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: not from Barrowdean at all, but from another town, years before,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: where Delia Marsh had lived under a different name entirely,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: before the divorce, before the cousin, before any of it,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: a name Mrs. Latchford had known her by in circumstances
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Delia had spent a decade trying to bury. She said
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: good morning to me that day, in this shop, the
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: week before Christmas, and called me by that other name,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Quite by accident, I think, at first, the way people
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: do when a face reminds them of someone. I laughed
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: it off. I said she'd mistaken me for somebody else.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: But I saw, in her face, that she hadn't mistaken
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: anything at all, and that she meant to think about it,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and remember, and very likely say something to someone, before
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: very much longer, because that was the kind of woman
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: she was, not cruel exactly. but the kind who couldn't
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: keep a good piece of gossip to herself, past Sunday.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Her voice had gone flat, almost wondering, as though she
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: were hearing the story for the first time herself. I
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: couldn't let her, not here, not after everything I'd built
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: to make sure nobody in Barrowdean ever knew. She had
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: made up the second cup the evening before, she said,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: at her own lodgings, using chloral she had kept, unwisely,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and for reasons she would not fully explain, from an
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: old prescription years old, and had carried it into the
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: coffee shop that Christmas Eve morning, wrapped in a scarf
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: inside her bag, waiting only for a moment, crowded enough
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: to make the exchange invisible. Nella's tray, tipping a second
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: time in the press of the crowd, had given her
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: exactly that moment, two or three seconds, in which a
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: cup could change hands, and nobody, in a shop that
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: loud and that full, would think to look. I raised
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: it myself, first, she said. So quietly, the whole shop
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: had to lean to hear her. I don't know why.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: To be sure it looked as though it had been
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: drunk from already, I told myself, so it wouldn't sit
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: there too full and too untouched. That was the reason
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I gave myself. I think, really, I simply couldn't make
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: myself set a cup like that down without touching it first,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: as if that made it less of a... She stopped,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: and did not finish the sentence. and nobody in the
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: shop asked her to. Inspector Holt took her away within
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the hour, and the formal business of arrest and caution
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: passed with a quietness that seemed, to Miss Marple, entirely
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: in keeping with a shop that had spent the better
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: part of a fortnight holding its breath. There would be
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a trial, in time, and newspapers, and Barrow Dean would
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: talk of nothing else for months but that first quiet leaving.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: through the same door the sleet had first blown everyone
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: in through, seemed to Miss Marple the truer ending, however
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: much paperwork was to follow it. The Western Gazette, when
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: it came to report the matter some weeks later, gave
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Inspector Holt the whole of the credit, as was right
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: and proper. describing in admiring terms his patient reconstruction of
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the crime and his careful gathering of evidence, and mentioning,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: only in a single line near the bottom of the column,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: that an elderly visitor to the town had assisted police
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: with certain observations, a sentence Miss Marple read with perfect satisfaction,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: and no wish at all to have it longer. Nella
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: kept her position at the kettle and bell, Mrs. Prosser
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: having decided, once the dust settled, that a girl who
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: could survive being questioned by the police twice over a murder,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and still turn up for her shift each morning, was
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: worth keeping on. Sylvia Rand, to everyone's surprise, including her own,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: was left a small legacy in Mrs. Latchford's will after all,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: not generous, but enough to keep her from service, and
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: she wrote Miss Marple a short awkward letter of thanks,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: some months later, that said more, in its very awkwardness,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: than a more polished letter could have managed. Tom and
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Ruth were married in the spring. Bert Coombe went on
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: reading his racing page left-handed and unbothered by the whole affair,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: as men of his sort generally are. Of the small
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: human thread that did not resolve so neatly, there was this.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Delia Marsh's cousin in Barrowdean, questioned once too often by
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: curious neighbours in the weeks after the arrest, quietly moved
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: away before summer, unable to bear the weight of a
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: connection nobody would now ever let her forget. and something
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: between the two women that had once been, whatever its failings,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: a kind of family, was broken past any mending Miss
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Marple could see, and she thought of it sometimes, afterward,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: with a small private sadness that had nowhere useful to go.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: She and Joan took the train home on a grey
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: morning in early January. The line reopened at last, the
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: fields sliding past white, with old frost rather than sleet now,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Joan had brought a flask of tea for the journey,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and poured two cups, and handed one across without thinking,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple took it in her right hand, as
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: she always had and always would, and drank from the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: rim exactly where sixty years of habit told her to,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: and said nothing at all about cups for the whole
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: of the journey home.