Latest / Miss Marple Sleep Stories / Murder Behind St. Dominic's… Miss Marple Investigates | Miss Marple Sleep…

Transcript

Murder Behind St. Dominic's… Miss Marple Investigates | Miss Marple Sleep… · Miss Marple Sleep Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Death on the lane behind St Dominic's, a Miss Marple mystery, runned.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Section 1. The lamp that went out. Homefield woke to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: its ordinary music on that September morning, the clink of
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Ernie Piggott's milk bottles, the starlings quarrelling in the vicarage elms,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the slow groan of Mr Bunce's shutter coming up on
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the butcher's shop, and it was precisely this ordinariness that
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: made the scream, when it came, seem to tear the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: very fabric of the world. It came from the lane
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: behind St Dominic's Church, that narrow, high-hedged passage the village
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: called the Dead Lane, though nobody remembered why. Ernie Piggott,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: who had taken the shortcut with his last two bottles
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: as he had taken it every morning for eleven years,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: was the man who screamed. He was seventeen, and what
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: he saw by the lich gate turned him, in one instant,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: into an old man. Afterwards, when he had been given
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: brandy in the vicarage kitchen and had stopped shaking enough
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: to speak, He said the same thing over and over,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and the curious thing was that it was not the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: body he spoke of first. The lamp's out, he kept saying.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: The lamp in the church. It's gone out. I could
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: see through the window. The little red light wasn't there.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And then I saw her, lying by the gate. Her
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: was Mrs Adelaide Vane of Homefield Court, Mrs Vane who
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: presided over the Flower Guild and the Women's Institute and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the Harvest Festival Committee, and, indeed, over most of the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: moral life of the village. Mrs. Vane, who had been
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: seen alive at half-past nine the previous evening, walking up
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the lane toward the church with her missile under her
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: arm to check the flowers for Sunday. Mrs. Vane, who
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: now lay on her side in the dew with her
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: grey hair loosened and one gloved hand flung out, as
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: though she had been reaching for something just beyond her grasp.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Her reticule lay open beside her, her brooch was gone,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and in the church behind her For the first time
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: in forty-one years, the sanctuary lamp, the small crimson flame
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: that burned before the altar of St Dominic's day and night,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: tended like a heartbeat, had gone out. The news reached
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the laurels at twenty minutes past eight, borne by Dora,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the Fane's little parlour maid, who was Ernie Piggott's second cousin,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and therefore better informed than the police.' Oh, ma'am!' Dora gasped,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: bursting into the breakfast room with the marmalade still in
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: her hand. They found Mrs. Vane dead in the dead lane,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and the church lamp gone out, and Ernie says her
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: face was... Oh, I daren't say what Ernie says her
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: face was. Mrs. Harriet Vane, who had been buttering toast,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: set down her knife with the air of a woman
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: bracing herself against a wave. She was a handsome, weather-beaten
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: widow of sixty-five, who had buried two husbands and outlived
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: all capacity for astonishment. Dead, she repeated. Adelaide Vane. but
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I played bridge with her on Tuesday. She took every
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: trick and lectured me about my discards. She looked across
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the table at her guest. Jane, you're not eating. Miss
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Jane Marple, who had been staying at the Laurels for
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the past fortnight, a visit timed, as she said, to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: coincide with the Flower Festival, though her friend Harriet suspected
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: it was timed to coincide with Harriet's loneliness, looked up
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: from her egg with mild china-blue eyes. She was a small,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: fluffy old lady with soft white hair and pink cheeks,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and she had been following the account with the gentle
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: attention she might have given to a sermon of moderate interest.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: How very sad, Miss Marple said. Poor Adelaide. She was
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: so very much alive. That is sometimes a dangerous thing
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to be, you know. Very much alive in a small place. Dangerous?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Harriet stared. Jane, the woman's been murdered in a lane,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and you talk as though she'd caught a chill. Did
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Dora say murdered? Miss Marple inquired mildly. Dora, still frozen
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in the doorway with the marmalade, found her voice. Ernie
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: says her head, oh, ma'am, struck, he says. And the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: police are there already, Inspector Rudge up from Market Lavington,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and they've roped off the lane, and Mrs. Tighe at
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the post office says it was robbery because her brooch
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: is missing. That diamond sunburst she wore everywhere, showing off,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: begging your pardon. That will do, Dora, said Harriet. The marmalade,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: if you please, and then you may go and tell
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the kitchen, which is what you're longing to do. Dora went, reluctantly,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: like a prophet dismissed. Harriet pushed back her chair and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: walked to the window, which looked down over the garden
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: wall to the rooftops of the village and, beyond them,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the squat grey tower of St Dominic's rising out of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the mist. From the window of the laurels one could
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: not see the lane. The lane hid behind the church.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Between the churchyard wall— and the high blackthorn hedge of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the court's kitchen garden. But one could see the little
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: police van, drawn up by the west door, and two
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: or three figures in helmeted stillness. Forty years I've lived
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: in this village, Harriet said, with her back to the room.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Nothing has ever happened in Holmfield. Nothing. And now this,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: under our noses, behind the church. She turned. Her face
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: had done something odd. The weather-beaten ease had cracked, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: beneath it was fear. Not of the murderer, Miss Marple
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: noted with interest, but of something vaguer, something to do
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: with the village itself. It's the lamp that frightens me, Jane.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Isn't that absurd? She's dead, and I keep thinking about
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the lamp. The sanctuary lamp, Miss Marple said. It's burned
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: in that church since before I was born. Cannon Ransom
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: endowed it. Adelaide's father. You've seen the plaque. In memory
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of the daughter who died. The light shineth in darkness,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: it says. Harriet's hands moved restlessly along the windowsill. They
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: call it the Eleanor Light. Children in the village leave
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: pennies for it. Tom Brabazon has trimmed that wick every
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: morning of his life since he was a boy. He's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: seventy-two now. And last night it went out. The same night.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: She sat down again, heavily. People will talk, Jane. Not
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: just about murder. About what it means. What does it mean?
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple asked gently. That's just it. I don't know.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Harriet picked up her cup and put it down again.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Adelaide ran this village. I don't think you quite understood
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: being a visitor. She ran it the way her father
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: ran it, and he was vicar here for thirty years.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: The court, the church, the institute, the school. She knew
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: everything about everyone. She had a way of knowing things,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and of letting you know she knew, with a little smile.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Harriet stopped, as if she had said more than she intended.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: She was not an easy woman, but one doesn't expect,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: one doesn't want. No, said Miss Marple. One doesn't. She
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: folded her napkin with precise, unhurried fingers, and her eyes,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: which were as blue and guileless as a baby's, rested
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: thoughtfully on her friend's face. Adelaide had a nephew staying,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: did she not? Gerald. A charming young man, he danced
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: with the Curzon girl at the flower show. Gerald Vane. Yes,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: her heir. He... Harriet hesitated. There was talk of trouble
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: between them. Money. There usually is with Gerald. He came
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: down from London a week ago, and the whole village
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: heard them at it on the terrace on Sunday, after church.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Adelaide's voice carries. She frowned. And there's the companion, Miss March.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Meek little woman, been with her three years, and Lettice
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Crow at the organ, who hated her. Well, that's too strong.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Lettice served her. There's a difference, I suppose, though I'm
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: not sure Adelaide ever noticed it. Harriet gave a short,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: unhappy laugh. Listen to me. The woman isn't cold, and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I'm drawing up a list of her enemies. It is
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: what one does, said Miss Marple placidly. It is quite natural.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: When someone is killed, the mind goes back over every conversation,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: looking for the place where the thread changed colour. It
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: is like knitting, in a way. You do not notice
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the wrong stitch when you make it. You notice it
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: three rows later, and then you must go back. She
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: picked up her work basket. She was never without it.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that capacious basket of wool and needles and innocent tangled skeins,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and settled it on her lap. You say the lamp
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: has burned for forty-one years. Without fail? Without fail. It
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: is the one thing in Holmfield that has never failed.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And it is kept, Miss Marple said, in memory of
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the daughter who died. Eleanor. Eleanor Ransom. She drowned. Oh,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: long ago, before the First War. She was Adelaide's elder sister.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Adelaide never spoke of her. But the lamp burned, and
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the plaque shone, and the pennies came. Harriet rose again,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: unable to be still, and began to gather the breakfast
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: things onto the tray, in abrupt, clattering movements. Tom Brabazon
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: will take it hard. He was a gardener's boy at
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the court in those days. He remembers her. He once
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: told me, she stopped, tray in hand. Yes, nothing, an
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: old man's nonsense. He once told me the lamp kept
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: her alive, somehow. that as long as it burned she
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: wasn't quite dead. Harriet shook her head at herself and
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: set the tray down. Foolish. But it went out, Jane.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: On the night Adelaide died, it went out. The morning
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: was drawing itself together over the village now. The mist
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: was lifting off the church tower, and somewhere below, in
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the lane behind St Dominic's, men in plain clothes were
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: moving about their grim work with tape and cameras and
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: low voices. Miss Marple sat very still by the window.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Her small white hands folded on her knitting, and her eyes,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: which people were so often surprised to find were not
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: foolish at all, dwelt on the squat grey tower with
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: a long, quiet attention. Harriet, she said at last, yes?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I was wondering about the lamp. Miss Marple's voice was soft, apologetic.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the voice of an old lady asking about the weather.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: If it has burned for forty-one years and never failed,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: why did it go out, do you think, on that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: night of all nights? Section 2 What the Village Said
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: The lamp. Harriet stared at her, the tray still between
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: her hands. The sanctuary lamp? Jane, a woman has been killed,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and you are wondering about a lamp. But she set
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the tray down, because after fifteen years of friendship, she
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: had learned that when Jane Marple wondered about a small
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: thing in a soft voice, the small thing was seldom small.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know why it went out. Oil, I suppose.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: A draft. Tom will know. Why does it matter? It
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: probably does not matter at all, said Miss Marple, placidly,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: drawing out a length of pale blue wool. That is
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the interesting thing about it. She began to cast on,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: her needles clicking in a gentle, steady rhythm, like a
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: clock that knows the time, but is in no hurry
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: to tell it. Forty-one years, you said. No draft has
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: blown it out in forty-one years, and no lack of oil.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: And then, on the one night, yes. Well, we shall see.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I think, Harriet, if it is not too much trouble,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: that I should like to walk down to the village
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: this morning. The fresh air, you know. And I want
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: a card of that grey silk for my embroidery, if Mrs.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Tighe has it. Harriet looked at her for a moment,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and then, despite everything, despite the police van and the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: roped-off lane and the woman lying in the mortuary at
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Market Lavington, she nearly laughed. Grey silk, she said. Very well, Jane,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: grey silk. The village, when they came down into it
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: at half-past ten, was in the full flower of its grief,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: which is to say, in the full flower of its excitement.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Homefield had not had a murder in living memory, and
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: it rose to the occasion the way a congregation rises
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to a hymn it knows by heart. Outside the post
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: office a knot of women stood with their marketing baskets,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: speaking in the hushed, rapid voices of people who are
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: enjoying themselves very much and are careful not to show it. Mrs. Tighe,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the postmistress, a little round woman with a face like
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: a worried robin, dispensed information across the counter with her stamps. Robbery.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: she was saying firmly, as Miss Marple and Harriet came in.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: That's what I said from the first. Her brooch is gone,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that diamond sunburst, worth hundreds, and her bag opened and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the money out of it. There's tramps on the roads,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that camp down by the river. I said to my
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: husband only last week, I said, something will happen one
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of these days, walking up that dark lane at night.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And now it has. Her eyes, bright and tragic, found Harriet. Oh, Mrs. Fane,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and to think she was in here Tuesday buying stamps,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: as large as life, larger. She complained about the price
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of the aerograms. Adelaide complained about the price of everything,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: said Harriet. It was her one economy. Ah, well, we
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: mustn't speak ill. Mrs. Tighe sighed, with immense satisfaction, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: turned to weigh a parcel. Old Mrs. Wexford, who was eighty,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and had been waiting half an hour to deliver her theory,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: delivered it. It's my belief, she announced, thumping her stick,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that she knew something and was silenced. Adelaide Vane knew things.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: She came to tea with me last month, and she
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: let fall. She was very clever at letting things fall,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: like a cat with a vase, that she knew about
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the church accounts. The restoration fund. There's money gone astray there,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: mark my words, and the vicar's been putting off the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: audit since Easter. I said to my granddaughter, there's a
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: reason Septimus Dale looks like a man with a toothache.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and it's not his teeth. There was a little silence,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of the kind that follows when someone has said aloud
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: what everyone has been carefully not saying. The vicar, the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Reverend Septimus Dale, was a kindly, anxious man of fifty,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: who had buried two wives and raised four children in
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: that parish, and was loved, in the vague way one
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: loves an old coat. That the restoration fund was in trouble,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: everyone knew. That Adelaide Vane had known it too, and
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: had smiled about it. That, until this moment, no one
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: had said. The vicar, said Mrs. Tighe at last, was
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: at the choir practice until half-past nine. Fifteen people saw him.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: But she said it without conviction, and her hand, as
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: she reached for the grey silk Miss Marple inquired after,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: was not quite steady. Miss Marple bought her silk, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: admired a new tea-cloth, and asked after Mrs. Tighe's lumbago,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and all the while her mild eyes moved about the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: little shop like bees in a garden. resting nowhere long.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: She heard the tramp theory, and the silenced witness theory, and,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: from a red-faced farmer by the door, the nephew theory,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: uttered in the comfortable tones of a man who has
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: never owed money in his life. Young Gerald, the farmer said,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that's where your police will look, and right enough. Up
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to his ears in debt, they say, and she held
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the purse-strings tight as wax. Heard them myself, Sunday, going
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: at it on the terrace like carters. You'll not touch
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: a penny of my money till I'm in my grave,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: she says. And he says, the farmer lowered his voice,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: though it carried to the street, he says, Then I
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: wish you joy of a long life, aunt, for I'll
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: get none of it. Laughing-like. But it wasn't a laughing matter,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: was it? Not now. People say many things when they
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: are angry, said Miss Marple gently, from the tea-cloths. Especially
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the young. It is rather like thunder, it sounds very terrible,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and usually nothing is struck, she paused. Usually, outside, in
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the street, the autumn sun had burned the mist away,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and the lane behind the church was closed off with
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a rope and a young constable who was clearly the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: proudest and most miserable man in England. People were going
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: out of their way, Miss Marple noticed this with interest,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: not to look at the lich gate and then looking
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: at it. She herself stood for a moment and looked
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: at it frankly, the little peaked roof of the gate,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the worn flagstones, the blackthorn hedge beyond it, hung already
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: with the hard, dusty sloughs of autumn. On the gate-post
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: there was a smear of something dark that might have
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: been paint and was not. She looked at it for
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a long moment, and then she looked up at the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: church windows, the dark, ruby-tinged glass of the little lamp-room
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: window above the vestry.' I think,' she said to Harriet,'
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: that we are expected at the vicarage for tea. Did
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: not Mrs. Dale, the present Mrs. Dale, say Thursday, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: this is Thursday?' How fortunate that one always knows where
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: one is with Thursdays. The vicarage tea was a sombre
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: affair that pretended not to be. The vicar sat with
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: his hands wrapped around his cup, as though it were
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the only warm thing in the world, and said, over
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and over, that it was dreadful, dreadful, and that he
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: had known her all his ministry, and that they had
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: had their differences. He had had differences with everyone, he added,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: with a faint, unhappy smile. It was the condition of
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a parish. but that he had respected her, oh yes.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: His wife, a brisk, kind woman, pressed cake on everyone
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and spoke of the funeral. Lettice Crow, the organist, sat
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: bolt upright by the window, in her best black. She
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: had been in black within four hours of the news,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: someone murmured, as though she had had it laid out ready,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and answered questions about the choir in a voice as
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: dry and precise as the turn of a metronome. She
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: had played for St Dominic's for thirty years. She had
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: been— Mrs Wexford had once said, the only person in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Homefield who could make Adelaide Vane sit down. She came
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to the church last night, Lettice said, in her dry voice,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: when the talk turned, as it could not help turning
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to the evening. I was practising until eight, she looked
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: in with her missile. She said, the flowers for Sunday
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: were not to her liking and she would come back
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: after dark and rearrange them, if you please, because she
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: did not trust anyone's eye but her own. A thin,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: bleak smile moved across Lettice's face and was gone. That
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: was Adelaide. Even the delphiniums were afraid of her. And
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the lamp, Miss Marple asked, softly, into her teacup. Everyone
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: looked at her. It was the thing no one had mentioned,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and it had been there, under everything, the whole time.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: The lamp was burning at eight, Lettice said, after a moment.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I saw it. It was always burning, her hands thin
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and strong. a musician's hands, turned her cup in its saucer.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Tom will be heartbroken. He, the lamp was his whole.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: She stopped. It was unlike Lettice Crow not to finish
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: a sentence. It was then that Miss March came in.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: She came in quietly, as she did everything. Adelaide Vane's companion,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the little grey woman whom the village had known for
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: three years without ever quite knowing. She had come to
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: sit with the vicar's wife, she said, in her soft,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: apologetic voice. in case there was anything, any letters, any arrangements,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: anything a woman could do that men could not. She
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was perhaps sixty, perhaps older. She had a gentle worn
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: face and soft grey hair drawn back under an old-fashioned
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: little hat, and she wore, even to a vicarage tea,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a look of having apologised for existing. Harriet made room
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for her. The vicar's wife poured her tea. She took
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the cup with both hands, and Miss Marple, whose needles
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: had never once paused, saw what everyone else had not
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: troubled to see, that the first two fingers of Miss
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: March's right hand were bandaged, neatly and recently, under the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: edge of her grey sleeve. You have hurt your hand,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: my dear, said Miss Marple kindly. Miss March started, very slightly,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: one would have had to be watching closely to see it. Oh,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it is nothing. I burn it on the kettle this morning.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: So stupid of me, she smiled her small, fading smile.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: There has been so much. One is not quite oneself. No,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple gently. One is not. And she looked
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: at the little grey woman for a moment longer, with
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: her kind, blank baby's eyes. and then she looked down
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: at her knitting, and the talk went on, and the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: afternoon wore itself away toward evening. But she had seen
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: two things, had Miss Marple, and she laid them side
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: by side in her mind, like two stitches picked up
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: on a needle, a flame that had burned for forty-one
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: years and had gone out, and a woman who had
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: burned her fingers that morning on a kettle. On the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: way home, in the September dusk, with the rooks settling
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: in the elms, Miss Marple walked very slowly, leaning a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: little on Harriet's arm, An old lady tired after her outing.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: You are very quiet, Jane, said Harriet. I was thinking,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, that I should like to see the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: church tomorrow. The inside of it, if the police have finished.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: She paused on the hill and looked back at the tower,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: black against the last of the light. And I should
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: like to meet Tom Brabazon, the verger. He has trimmed
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that wick every morning for forty-one years, you said. Think
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: of that, Harriet. Forty-one years of mornings. She stood a moment,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a small, soft, fluttering figure in the dusk. He must
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: know more about that lamp than anyone living, she said.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Or almost anyone. Section 3. The Verger's Hands Almost anyone,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Harriet turned to look at her, there on the hill
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: in the gathering dusk. Jane, what can you possibly mean
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: by almost? Nothing, dear, nothing at all. Miss Marple resumed
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: her gentle progress down the lane, a small, contented figure
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: in the autumn twilight. and would say no more, except
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to observe that the evenings were drawing in, and that
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: she feared the dahlias would be caught by an early frost. Harriet,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: who knew that tone, held her peace. But she noticed
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: that her friend turned once more at the gate of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the laurels to look back at the darkening tower of
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: St Dominic's, and that her eyes, in the last of
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the light, were not vague at all, but very bright
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and very thoughtful, like a bird's. The police finished with
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the church the following morning, and by eleven o'clock Miss
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Marple was standing in the cool, dim interior of St Dominic's,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: her embroidery bag over her arm, breathing in the ancient
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: smell of stone and beeswax and dying flowers. The church
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: was very old, Norman at its heart, the vicar was
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: fond of saying, though the rest of it had been
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: pulled about by every century since, and it had that
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: particular stillness of churches that have been prayed in for
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a long time, a stillness that is not empty but full.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: The sun came through the east window in shafts of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: dusty red and gold. The flowers for Sunday stood in
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: their vases by the altar, white and copper-coloured chrysanthemums, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: they had not been arranged well. Miss Marple, who knew
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: a great deal about flower arrangement, noticed this at once,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and with surprise, because Adelaide Vane had been famous for
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: her flowers. Near the little side door, on a stepladder,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: an old man was polishing brass. He worked slowly, with
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: infinite care, as though the brass were alive and could
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: be hurt.' Mr. Brabazon,' said Miss Marple, gently. He turned.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: He was a small, bent man of seventy-two, with a
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: face like an old hedge, all weather and thorn, and
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: his eyes were red-rimmed. He had been crying, she saw,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and was not ashamed of it.' I hope I do
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: not disturb you,' said Miss Marple.' I am staying with Mrs.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Fane at the laurels. I only wish to see the church.'
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: It is a beautiful church. Beautiful enough, said Tom Brabazon,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and turned back to his brass. His hands, she noted,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: were a gardener's hands still, though he had not gardened
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: these thirty years, brown, knotted, with earth so long in
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the seams that no washing would shift it. You'll be
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the lady that's staying with Mrs. Fane. Miss Marple, he
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: said it without interest. The village had told him. The
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: village told everyone everything. Yes, said Miss Marple. How wise
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: of you! She seated herself in a pew, as though
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: she had come expressly to sit, and took out her knitting.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I was so sorry to hear about the lamp. The
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: polishing stopped. It was, she had calculated, the thing he
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: could not resist, not the murder, not Mrs. Vane, but
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the lamp. He came down the stepladder slowly, cloth in hand,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and looked at her, and she looked back at him
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: with mild, sympathetic attention. It burned forty-one years, he said.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Forty-one years, I trimmed her every morning, winter and summer.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I was never but once away, when my wife was dying,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and I left the oil measured and the wick ready,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and young Mr. Dale, the curate he was then, did
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: it for me, and wrote me a letter to say
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: it was done. His voice was low and steady, and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: full of a grief that had nothing to do with
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Adelaide Vane. She never went out. Not once, she never failed.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: It is most remarkable, said Miss Marple. She didn't fail
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the other night neither, He said it suddenly, roughly, as
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: though it had been tearing at him. That's what I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: told the inspector, and he wrote it down, but he
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: didn't heed it. She didn't fail, Miss Marple. She was
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: put out. Put out? Miss Marple's needles paused. How very strange.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: How do you know Mr. Brabazon? He hesitated, and she
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: saw the old, deep caution of a man who has
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: spent his life among the gentry, and learned when silence
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: is safest. Then something in the soft, pink, woolly old
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: lady in the pew, the supreme insignificance of her, perhaps,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: decided him.' The oil,' he said.' I fill her every Sunday, full,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and she burns down to Wednesday, near enough, before she
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: wants more. When I came Thursday morning and found her dark,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I thought first I'd forgotten, me, that never forgot, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I took her down to fill her, and she was full,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: full to the brim, miss.' Not two days burned. And
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the wick, his hands moved, demonstrating. The wick was wet
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and black and bent. A wick that's burned down is
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: dry and white at the end, like ash. This one
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: was drowned, Miss. Someone put their fingers to her, or
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: blew her out, when she was full of oil and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: meant to burn a week. I see, said Miss Marple softly.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you. That is very interesting. She looked up at
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the little lamp where it hung again above the altar.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Lit once more. He had relit her at dawn. he
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: told her, and the red glow showed small and steady
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: against the stone. She burns again now. Aye, I relit her.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: He picked up his cloth again. It seemed fitting, whatever's happened.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: He did not look at the chancel carpet where the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: dustman's powder and the photographer's chalk still marked the floor.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: He looked only at the flame. She was lit for
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the dead, see. Seems wrong she should be dark when
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: there's new dead. The plaque, said Miss Marple. says she
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: was lit for one particular dead. Miss Eleanor Ransom. The
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: cloth stopped again, and this time when he turned, his
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: old face had closed like a door. Forty years ago
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and more, he said. Before your time here, miss. Before
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: anyone's time. That's left. But you remember her? I was
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a lad in the gardens at the court. He climbed
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: his stepladder again, and his voice came down dry and final.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I remember her. There's nothing to tell. She was beautiful.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and she was kind, and she died, and the cannon
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: her father lit the lamp for her, and that is
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: all there is. He rubbed at the brass until it
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: flamed in the window light. That is all there is,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: he repeated, and Miss Marple, watching his bent shoulders and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the hands that trembled very slightly on the brass, knew
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that he was lying, and that the lie was forty
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: years old, and that it had become a kind of truth.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: She thanked him and went out into the sunlight, and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: at the lick gate she met Inspector Rudge. He was
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: a solid, comfortable-looking man, with a sandy moustache, and the patient,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: slightly aggrieved air of a man who has interviewed the
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: same village twice. He knew who she was. The Chief
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Constable's wife had been at school with somebody, and he
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: suffered her questions with the resigned courtesy of a man
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: humouring the gentry.' The lane, madam, yes. She was struck
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: from behind, sometime between half-past nine and ten. A heavy object.'
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: The stone coping of the churchyard wall is loose just there.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And it fits. We're satisfied it was that. Her bag
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: was rifled and the brooch taken. A diamond sunburst. Very valuable.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Very well known. We've the ports watched and every fence
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: in the county. He rocked on his heels. Myself, I
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: look nearer home. I won't conceal it from you, madam.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: There's a young gentleman at the court with debts as
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: long as your arm, who was heard to quarrel with
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: his aunt on Sunday. and who cannot account for half-past
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: nine on Wednesday evening to my satisfaction. Mr. Gerald Vane.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Dear me, said Miss Marple. And the lamp, Inspector. The lamp, madam.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: He looked at her as one looks at a spaniel
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: that has brought a stick of the wrong shape. The
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: verger's lamp. The old fellow mentioned it. A draught, I expect.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: These old churches are full of draughts. No doubt, said
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, though I believe it had not gone out
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in a draught in forty-one years. Then it was overdue.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: said Inspector Rudge comfortably, and touched his hat, and went
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: on down the lane toward his car and his certainties.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple stood for a moment by the lich gate.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: On the gate-post the dark smear had been photographed and measured,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: but she looked at it again, and then at the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: loose coping-stone of the wall, an ugly, heavy wedge of stone,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: streaked where it had been handled, and then at the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: little window above the vestry where the lamp-room was, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: she thought of a flame full of oil, and meant
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: to burn a week, put out by fingers or breath
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in the dark of the night, while a woman lay
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: dying by the gate below. Robbers, she reflected, do not
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: generally stop having killed to put out lights. Robbers want
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: light put out before they kill, if at all. And tramps,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the comfortable, mythical tramps of Mrs. Tighe's imagination, do not
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: trim wicks or measure oil, and would not know a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: sanctuary lamp from a gas bracket. Whoever had stood here
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: on Wednesday night had killed, and then, after, had put
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: out the lamp. That was the order of it. First
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the blow, then the flame. The flame was not precaution,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: it was conclusion. It was, she thought, rather like signing
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: a letter. She walked home slowly up the village street,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: nodding to the women at their doors, a harmless old
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: lady with her embroidery bag, and her mind went round
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and round the thing the way her needles went round
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the blue wool, patiently, stitch by stitch, a woman who
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: ruled a village, dead at the gate of her father's church,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a flame in memory of a drowned girl put out
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: on the same night. an old gardener who lied about
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the past with tears in his eyes, a nephew with debts,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a vicar with a hole in his accounts, an organist
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: in ready black, a companion with a burned hand, burned,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: she thought, on a kettle. On Thursday morning, when there
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: had been so much, and one was not quite oneself, Kettles,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple aloud, to the astonishment of a passing labourer,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: are very hot things, but so, I fancy, is a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: glass chimney that has burned all night. and she went
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: in to lunch. Section 4. The Nephew Luncheon at the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Laurels was a quiet meal, but it had barely been
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: cleared away when the world arrived at the door in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the person of Gerald Vane. He came without ceremony, shown
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: in by a flustered Dora, with the words, Mr. Vane, ma'am,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and a look that said the whole village would know
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of it by tea-time. He was a tall young man
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of twenty-eight, dark and loosely put together. with the sort
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of handsome, careless face that has never had to be careful,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: and he was at this moment very far from careless.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: He was frightened, and trying not to show it, which
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: made him loud. Mrs. Fane, I do beg your pardon,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: barging in. I didn't know where else to come. Aunt
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Adelaide was fond of you, or as fond as she
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: ever was of anyone, and I— They're watching the house, Mrs. Fane.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: There's a man at the lodge gates, pretending to mend
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: a bicycle. My bicycle has never been mended in its
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: life— and he's been at it for an hour. Sit down, Gerald,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: said Harriet, and stop being dramatic. Dora, coffee. Now then,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: why shouldn't they watch the house? They watch everyone. They
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: watch the vicar's hens, Dora tells me, on the grounds
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that a hen might have seen something. It's not funny,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: said Gerald. But he sat, and some of the noise
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: went out of him. He ran a hand through his hair.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: They're going to say I did it. Rudge as good
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: as told me so this morning. He asked me where
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I was at half-past nine on Wednesday, and I... He stopped.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And you, said Harriet. I was walking. He looked at
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the carpet. I went out after dinner. I'd had a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: row with Aunt Adelaide at dinner. Another one, about money,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: they're all about money. And I went out to cool off,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and I walked. Up the chalk hill, and along the ridge.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't see a soul. That's the trouble. I walked
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: for two hours, alone, and no one saw me. And
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: I can't prove a word of it. and when I
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: came back at eleven the house was dark and I
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: thought she'd gone to bed. She hadn't. She was lying
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: in the lane, and I was walking on the hill
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: like a fool in a poem, and no one saw me.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: He lifted his head, and his voice cracked into a
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: sort of angry laughter. It's perfect, isn't it? If I'd
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: planned an alibi I'd have made a better one. That's
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: what they'll say. They'll say it's so bad it must
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: be true. Miss Marple, who had been knitting quietly by
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the window, spoke for the first time. Your aunt refused
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you money that evening, she asked. She'd been refusing me
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: money all week. He turned to her, the famous old
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: lady who solved things, Dora had told the kitchen, and
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the kitchen had told the village, and he looked at
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: her now, with the shameless hope of the drowning. I
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: owed three hundred pounds, Miss Marple, cards and a horse
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that wasn't. Aunt Adelaide had paid my debts twice before,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and sworn she never would again. On Sunday, on the terrace,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: half the parish heard us. She said I could go
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to prison and welcome, it might make a man of me.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I said, I said things. His jaw worked. On Wednesday
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: at dinner I tried again. I was civil, I swear
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I was civil. And she said, it was odd, she
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't even angry. That was the worst of it. She
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: was almost gentle. She said, my dear boy, you will
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: have to learn, as we all learn, that other people's
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: patience is not a crop that comes up every year.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and she looked so strange when she said it, tired,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: as if I were the least of her worries. And
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: then she picked up her missile and went off to
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: her everlasting flowers, and I poured myself a drink and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: went out. What time was that? She went out about
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: a quarter past nine. I left. Oh, twenty minutes later.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Half past, perhaps. The stable clock was striking as I
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: crossed the yard. And you did not pass the church? No.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I went the other way, across the home paddock to
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: the hill. Why would I go to the church? He
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: looked from one woman to the other. You believe me,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: don't you? Oh, God, why should you? Nobody else does.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I believe you, said Miss Marple placidly, because it is
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: a very bad story, and because you told it badly.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: People who lie, Mr. Vane, generally lie better. They have
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: taken trouble. You have not taken trouble. Her needles clicked. Also,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: you said your aunt was almost gentle at dinner, and
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that she looked tired. A young man who had killed
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: his aunt in a rage would not remember, two days later,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: that she looked tired. He would remember that she had
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: been cruel. We are all cruel in the stories we
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: tell about the people we have wronged. It makes the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: wronging easier. Gerald stared at her and his eyes filled,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to his own obvious fury, with tears. She wasn't cruel,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: he said thickly. That's the hell of it. She was
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: hard and she was proud and she liked her own
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: way like a drug. but she wasn't cruel, and she
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: was all the family I had, and everyone in this
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: village thinks I... He got up and went to the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: window and stood with his back to them, shoulders heaving once, twice,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: and then still. There is also the brooch, said Harriet quietly,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to give him time. If they think Gerald took it,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: let them look for it. It hasn't been sold. It
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: can't be sold. It's too well known, and until it
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: turns up, it will turn up, said Miss Marple. They
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: both looked at her. I beg your pardon, dear? I
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: only meant that things put somewhere for a purpose generally
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: do turn up, when their purpose is ripe. That is
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: rather what things are for. She counted stitches under her breath. Four, five, six,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and looked up mildly. Mr. Vane, your aunt was a
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: woman who knew things about people. Harriet says she had
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: a genius for it. Had she lately learned something? Was
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: there anything she knew, this last week or two, that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: she had not known before? Anything she let fall. Your aunt,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I understand, was very clever at letting things fall, like
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a cat with a vase. It was so exactly Adelaide
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that Gerald, in mid-misery, almost smiled. She was always letting
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: things fall, he said. This last fortnight, he frowned, thinking.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: She was odd. Ever since, well, there was the business
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: with the vicar's accounts, she was on about that, the
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: restoration fund, she was going to force an audit, and
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: she said a queer thing at lunch one day. We
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: were talking about Miss March, her companion, and I said
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: something flip, you know, about the poor little grey mouse.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: And Aunt Adelaide looked at me over her glasses and said,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: There are no grey mice, Gerald. There are only people
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: who have decided that being overlooked is safer. He rubbed
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: his forehead. I didn't think anything of it. She was
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: always saying things like that. Arrows into the air. You
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: never knew who they hit. Did she not? said Miss
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Marple softly. How very interesting. She told you that people
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: choose to be overlooked, and this was about Miss March.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: About Miss March, yes. The meekest woman in England. Been
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: with us three years. Reads aloud. Does the flowers. Did
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the flowers. Writes the letters. Aunt bullied her, I suppose.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: The way she bullied everyone. But Miss March never seemed
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: to mind. She never seemed to feel anything much. Even yesterday,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: at the house, with the police everywhere, she went round
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: closing curtains, and her hands were shaking. and she apologised
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: to the curtains. He gave a short, bewildered laugh. You'd
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: think she'd be relieved. Aunt Adelaide was a tartar to
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: her some days, but she just looks extinguished, a host
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: of like a candle gone out. There was a little silence.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: The word hung in the room, small and grey and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: quite dreadful, though Gerald, who had spoken it, plainly heard
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: nothing in it at all. Extinguished, said Miss Marple. It's
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: just a word. Yes, dear. Words usually are. It is
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the people who choose them that are interesting. She rolled
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: her knitting with small, deliberate movements and laid it in
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: her lap. You have been very helpful, Mr. Vane. Go
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: home now and drink the tea your Miss March will
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: make you, and do not run away to London. whatever
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: that inspector of yours says or does not say. Running
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: away is the one thing that would make you look guilty,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: and you are not guilty. You know that, he turned
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: from the window, and there was something raw and young
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and desperate in his face. How can you know that?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: You don't know me. No, said Miss Marple. But I
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: knew a young man very like you once, in St
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Mary Mead. He was accused of stealing the church plate,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: because he had been seen near the vestry, and owed
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: money to his tailor. He was entirely innocent. He was
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: seen near the vestry, because he was meeting the sexton's daughter,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and he owed his tailor, because he had bought a
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: coat to impress her. She looked at him with her
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: mild blue eyes. You went up the hill on Wednesday
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: night to be alone and miserable, and you have not
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: said so, but I expect you smoked a great many
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: cigarettes and thought a great many thoughts about a young woman. Not,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I fancy, the Curzon girl, whatever the flower show may
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: have suggested. The truth is always so much more embarrassing
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: than the lie. That is why innocent people have such
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: bad alibis, Mr. Vane, and murderers such good ones. Gerald went,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: walking lighter than he came. At the door he turned
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: and said, awkwardly, If anything, if I can do anything,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and Harriet said, You can stay out of that inspector's way.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: And he was gone, and the house settled. Harriet poured
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the coffee Dora had long since brought, and looked at
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: her friend, who had resumed her knitting with an air
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: of perfect contentment. You know something, Harriet accused, or you
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: suspect something, N. Jane, I have watched you do this
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: for fifteen years. You sit there like a pink-and-white tea-cosy,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and you turn the village over like a compost heap,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and I never see the fork move, What did you
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: see in the church this morning? What did old Tom
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: tell you? Tom Brabazon told me, said Miss Marple, that
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the lamp was full of oil, and did not fail,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: and was put out, put out by hand, Harriet, on
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the night after the deed, and I saw the flowers.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: The flowers? The chrysanthemums by the altar. Adelaide went to
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the church on Wednesday night to arrange them, because no
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: one's eye was to be trusted but her own. They
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: were not arranged by her, Harriet. They were arranged quite
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: differently from her way. loosely, with the tall stems to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: one side and the little white ones drifting down, in
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: a manner no one has used at St Dominic's for
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: forty years. I asked Mrs Wexford this morning, we met
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: by the fishmongers, and she said, oh yes, that was
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: how the flowers were done when she was a girl,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: the old-fashioned way, and she had wondered who had done it,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: because the last person who arranged flowers like that at
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: St Dominic's was Miss Eleanor Ransom, who died forty-one years ago.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Harriet sat very still, the coffee-pot in her hand. Adelaide
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: died beside an altar she had not finished, said Miss
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Marple gently, and someone finished it for her, in the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: manner of the dead. Section 5 The Flowers of the
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Dead In the manner of the dead, Harriet repeated, the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: coffee-pot came down on the tray with a small, decisive clang. Jane,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: that is the most ghoulish thing I have ever heard
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: you say, and I have heard you say a great many.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: You are telling me that Adelaide Vane was killed, and
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: that the murderer, then, arranged the flowers, tidied up, like
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: a parlourmaid after a guest. Like a parlourmaid, said Miss Marple,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: or like a daughter, or a sister. She gazed out
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: of the window at the garden, where the michaelmas daisies
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: were coming into their purple, and the light had the clear,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: cold gold of September. Flowers are very revealing, you know,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: more revealing than faces. A face can be composed— But
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: when a person arranges flowers, she is not thinking of
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: being watched, she is thinking of the flowers, and her
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: hands do what they were taught to do, long ago,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: before she learned to be careful. My old friend Caroline
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Weatherby had a maid, a very superior girl, who turned
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: out to be the runaway daughter of a dean. Nobody
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: suspected her for a moment until she arranged the altar
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: flowers at the harvest festival, exactly as they are arranged
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: at cathedrals, and the bishop's wife, who was visiting, said
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: at luncheon, where did your little maid learn that? And
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the whole story came out. Miss Marple sighed, a small,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: satisfied sigh. Hands remember, Harriet. That is the thing people forget.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: The mind can be taught to forget anything. The hands remember.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: But Eleanor Ransom has been dead for forty-one years, Harriet said.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Who is left whose hands would remember her way with flowers?
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Tom Brabazon was a garden boy. Lettice Crow is a newcomer.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Thirty years is nothing. The vicar came after. The village
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that knew her is dead or doddering. There's Mrs. Wexford
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: and Tom and... She stopped. And... And Adelaide herself, Harriet
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: said slowly. Her sister, who is dead, she put down
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: her cup. And Miss March, she said, and her voice changed.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Who does the flowers at the court? Who has done
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: them for three years? Jane, are you saying that little
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: grey woman... I am saying nothing at all, dear. I
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: am only sitting here knitting, and wondering. Miss Marple's needles
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: went in and out, in and out, in the sunny
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: silence of the morning room. But I do think I
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: should like to know a little more about Miss March.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Where she came from, three years ago. Who gave her
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: her references. Who, in fact, engaged her. These things are
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: always so interesting, and nobody ever asks. Adelaide engaged her,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: said Harriet, through an agency in London, I believe. She
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: came with beautiful references from a lady somebody in Shropshire.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I remember because Adelaide made a great point of it.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Not one of your village girls, Harriet. A lady who
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: has known better days. She paused. I could write too. No,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know the agency. But Jane, the vicar's wife,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: will know. Adelaide told Septimus everything about the household in
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the way of a patroness. And the vicarage keeps letters.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Septimus never throws anything away. It is one of his crosses. Then,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, rising with the slow deliberation of an
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: old lady who has decided to be active, we shall
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: call on the vicarage again. How fortunate that it is
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: nearly tea-time. They found the vicarage in disarray. The present Mrs. Dale, brisk, kind,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and at this moment flustered, met them in the hall
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: with her hat on. You'll forgive me, Mrs. Fane, Miss Marple.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I'm off to the Mrs. Pritchard, who have taken the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: news very hard and sent for me twice. Septimus is
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: in his study, poor man, with the auditor. She lowered
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: her voice. It has come out, as things do. The
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: restoration fund is short by nearly two hundred pounds, and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the audit Adelaide forced. She pressed her lips together. Well,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: you knew it was coming. Everyone knew. Septimus didn't take it.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Of course he didn't. But it went astray under his nose,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and that is nearly as bad for a clergyman. He
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: is in there with Mr. Hargreaves, going through books that
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: go back to before the war. Do go in, coffee's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: in the pot, and he needs taking out of himself.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: The study was a small, lined, dusty room, smelling of
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: tobacco and old sermons, and Septimus Dale sat at his
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: desk among the ruin of his accounts, like a general
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: on a lost field. He was a tall, loose-jointed man
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: with a kind, harrowed face, and he rose with the
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: automatic courtesy of a man who has been a host
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: for thirty years and could do it in his sleep. Mrs. Fane,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, Forgive the... he gestured at the ledgers. Mr.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Hargreaves has just gone. It is... he sat down again.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: It is very bad. I will not pretend to you.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: A hundred and eighty pounds of the parish's money, gone
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: in small sums over four years, and my signature on
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: the dockets. I signed what was put before me. One does.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: One trusts. He passed a hand over his face. Adelaide knew.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: She had known for a month. She gave me until
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Michaelmas to find it out myself. before the diocese finds
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it out for you, Septimus. And now she is dead,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: and Michaelmas is a fortnight off. And there is a
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: man in my parish who has been robbing the church
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: roof to mend his own, and I do not even
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: know his name. You have a suspicion, though, said Miss
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Marple gently. I have forty suspicions, and every one of
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: them is a man I have christened, or married, or buried.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: The vicar looked up at her, and his eyes were
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: those of a tired dog. You are Miss Marple, Harriet's friend,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: they say. Forgive me. They say you see things. I
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: will tell you what I see, Miss Marple. I see
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: a village I have loved for twenty-three years, and since
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Wednesday night I cannot walk down the street without wondering
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: which of them killed Adelaide Vane, and which of them
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: robbed me, and whether it is the same man, and
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: whether I deserve it. And the lamp, said Miss Marple.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: He went very still. The lamp, he repeated. The sanctuary lamp.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: It went out on Wednesday night. Did you know— Tom, yes,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Tom told me. It was put out. The vicar's hands
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: moved among the papers blindly. You will think me a
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: superstitious fool. I have been vicar here twenty-three years, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I have trimmed that lamp myself more times than I
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: can count, when Tom was ill or away. It is
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: only a lamp, Miss Marple, oil and wick and glass,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: and yet when I heard it had gone out, on
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: that night, I felt, he stopped, and when he went on,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: his voice was lower. The cannon ransom lit it for
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: his daughter. I never knew her, but I have read
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the burial register and the old letters in the parish chest,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and I will tell you something I have never told
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: a soul, because it has weighed on me and because
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: you are a stranger, and strangers are safe. When Eleanor
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Ransom died, drowned, in the mill-pond at the court, in
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the winter of 1904, her father did not light that
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: lamp in grief, he lit it in fury. There is
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: a letter in the chest, from the canon to the bishop,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and in it he writes— I can see the words.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I will keep a light for her in this church
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: until the truth comes to it, though I wait all
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: my life. The truth, Miss Marple, not comfort, not memory, truth.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: He believed his daughter had not died by accident, and
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: he died himself two years later, waiting. Septimus Dale raised
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: his head. Forty-one years the light has burned, and no
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: truth came. And on Wednesday night, when Adelaide, her sister,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: was killed at the gate— The light went out, put out,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: by a human hand. What do you make of that?
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: The room was very quiet. Outside, in the vicarage garden,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: a robin was singing its thin autumn song, and somewhere
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: a door closed, and the ordinary sounds went on, indifferent.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I make of it, said Miss Marple at last, very softly,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: that someone could not bear it any longer. The lamp,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I mean. Burning, shining, forty-one years shining, in memory of
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the daughter who died, and not, you see— In memory
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: of the daughter who lived, she folded her hands in
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: her lap. Tell me, vicar, the letter from the canon
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: to the bishop. It is still in the parish chest?
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: It is. Then, with your kind permission, I should very
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: much like to read it. Miss Marple's blue eyes were
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: as mild and blank as ever. But her voice had changed.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: It had, Harriet thought suddenly, an edge like a needle.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: And the burial register. And the letters, all of them,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: whatever is there. I am an old woman and I
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: have nothing to do, and old papers are my hobby,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: and I am afraid I am going to be a
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: very great nuisance to you. Septimus Dale looked at her
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: for a long moment. Then he rose and took down
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: an iron key from behind the row of commentaries and
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: unlocked the oak chest that stood under the window and
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: lifted out a tin box green with age. Be a nuisance,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: he said. God knows somebody in this parish should be.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: The letters were few and dry and devastating. Miss Marple
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: read them slowly, sitting by the vicarage window in the
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: last of the afternoon light, with Harriet beside her and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: the vicar gone to his evensong. The mill-pond, the ice,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the inquest, accident, always accident, the cannon's handwriting bitter as gall,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: the lamp endowed, the plaque cut, the light shineth in darkness,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: and in the last letter, in a hand that had
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: begun to tremble, a single sentence that Miss Marple read
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: twice— and then sat looking at for a long time,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: while the light died in the window and the robin
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: stopped singing.' Harriet,' she said at last, and her voice
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: was very gentle and very grave.' I was wrong about
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: one thing, and I am glad of it, because it
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: means the poor young man on the hill was telling
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the truth. But I am afraid, I am very much afraid,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: that I was right about the flowers.' Section 6. The
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Letters in the Chest' Right about the flowers?' Harriet said,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: in the dim study. And wrong about? Jane, what were
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: you wrong about? What does that letter say? She leaned forward,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: but Miss Marple had folded the paper with small, careful
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: fingers and returned it to the tin box, and she
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: closed the lid as one closes the door on a
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: sleeping child. It says, said Miss Marple, what I have
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: been afraid of since Thursday morning, and some things, Harriet,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: should be said only once, and at the proper time,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and to the proper people. It is not spite— It
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: is that words, once they are out, cannot be put back,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: like feathers out of a cushion. She rose and smoothed
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: her skirt. We must go home. Dora will be waiting,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: and I have kept you from your dinner, and the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: vicar will want his study. But I should be obliged,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: very much obliged, if you would do three small things
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: for me tomorrow. Harriet, who knew better by now than
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: to argue, fetched her coat. They walked home through the
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: village in the blue dusk, past the lit windows of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the post-office, and the dark windows of the butcher's, past
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: the lich-gate with its rope and its patient constable, up
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: the hill to the laurels, and all the way Miss
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Marple talked pleasantly of other things, of the Michaelmas daisies,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: of a recipe for slow gin, of a nephew's boy
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: who had won a scholarship, and Harriet answered mechanically, and
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: all the while the sentence in the letter burned between them,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: unread by one of them, like the lamp that had
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: burned unread above the altar. The three things, said Harriet
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: at last, as they turned in at the gate, since
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: you will not tell me the rest. What are they? First,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, counting on her fingers in the porch light,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: you will write to that nice canon of yours in Salisbury.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: You have a canon, have you not? Everyone has a canon.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: And ask him, quite casually, what became of the family
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of the old sexton at St Dominic's who died in 1905.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: There is always a sexton in these stories, you know,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: and they always die at the interesting moment, and nobody
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: ever asks what became of their families. Second, you will
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: find out from Mrs. Tighe, she will know, the post-office
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: knows everything, whether Miss March receives letters, and from where,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: and in what hand. And third, she paused, with her
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: hand on the door, and the porch light made two
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: small bright moons of her glasses, third, you will ask
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Lettice Crow to tea on Tuesday, and I shall drop in,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: by accident. at half-past four. Lettuce? Why lettuce? Because, said
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, opening the door, Lettuce Crow has played the
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: organ at St Dominic's for thirty years, and the organ
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: loft looks down into the church, and organists, like cats,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: are always there when no one thinks they are, and
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: see everything, and say nothing. It is what they are for,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: and she went in to her dinner, and ate it
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: with appetite, and talked of the slow gin, and was,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: to all appearances, the serenest woman in England. But the
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: village that weekend was not serene. It is a strange thing,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: the way a small place behaves under suspicion. Homefield had
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: held together for the first two days on the strong
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: wine of sensation, the tramp, the nephew, the robbery. But
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: by Saturday, the wine had turned. People had begun to count.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: The police had been seen at the court again, and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: at the station at Market Lavington with a photograph of
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the brooch, and a man from the County Herald had
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: knocked on eleven doors, and been fed at nine of them,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and lied to at all eleven. At the Women's Institute,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: which met on Saturday afternoon in the village hall, Mrs.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Tighe proposed a collection for a wreath, and the proposal passed,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: and then nobody could agree on the flowers. Chrysanthemums, said
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: old Mrs. Wexford. She always had chrysanthemums. She had chrysanthemums,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: said Mrs. Tighe with meaning, because she ordered them. There's
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: a difference. It was a small thing, but it was
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the first unkindness said aloud. and it went through the
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: hall like a draft. And then, because unkindness, once started,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: feeds itself, the stories began. Small, respectable, miserable stories. How
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Adelaide had stopped the miller girl's engagement to the chemist's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: son by a few well-chosen words to the chemist's wife.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: How she had known about the restoration fund for a month,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and held it over the vicar like a whip, and why.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: He had never crossed her except once. over the churchyard wall.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: How she had dismissed a housemaid in 1938 for a
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: brooch that was later found in her own drawer and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: never apologised. How she kept Miss March like a dog. No,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: worse than a dog, because dogs at least are noticed.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: She gave her a dress, said somebody, for Christmas. Her
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: own old grey one, turned. She gave her a home,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: said somebody else, unexpectedly. It was the doctor's wife, a
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: quiet woman. when the Shropshire lady died and left her nothing.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I nursed the Shropshire lady's sister. Miss March was companion
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: there eleven years, and was left five pounds a year,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: and the furniture of her room. Five pounds a year,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: and she was fifty-six, and had nowhere in the world
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: to go, and Adelaide Vane took her in, and made
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: her pay for it every day, said Mrs. Tighe, in
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the coin of being grateful. There was a silence after that,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: the kind that comes when somebody has said the thing
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: that is exactly true, and should not have been said,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and the tea was poured rather hastily, and the talk
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: turned to the FET. Miss Marple was not at the Institute.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: She was sitting, that Saturday afternoon, in the window of
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: her bedroom at the laurels, looking down over the village
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: with her knitting in her lap, and her eyes half closed,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: like an old cat in the sun. But she was
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: not asleep. She was doing what she had done all
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: her long life, in St. Mary Mead and a dozen
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: other villages— She was laying the people of Homefield out
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: in her mind beside the people she had known, the
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: way one lays out wool of different shades, and waiting
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: for the colours to match. Adelaide Vane, who ruled and
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: knew and let things fall like a cat with a vase,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: she was Mrs Saunders of the manor, all over again,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: who had known about the curate and the choir girl,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: and had died, in the end, of not being able
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to stop herself saying so. Gerald, with his debts and
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: his hill-walking, He was young Dennis, who had been innocent
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and looked guilty, as the innocent so often do. The vicar,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: signing dockets with his kind, tired eyes on something else. Oh,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: the church was full of vicars like that. Men too
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: gentle for the money side of God. Lettice Crow, thirty
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: years at the organ, seeing everything, saying nothing. like the
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: organist at Muchbenham who had watched an elopement, a theft,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: and a christening from her loft in one week, and
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: never turned her head. Tom Brabazon, with his oil and
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: his wick and his forty-year lie, crying for the lamp
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: and not for the mistress. And Miss March, the grey mouse.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: There are no grey mice, Adelaide had said, and Adelaide,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: who let arrows fly into the air, had aimed that one.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: There are only people who have decided that being overlooked
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: is safer. Safer, Miss Marple thought, looking down at the village,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: at the smoke going up from the chimneys in the
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: still September air, at the Tower of St Dominic's with
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: the rookeries black around it. Safer than what? She thought
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: of a woman of fifty-six with five pounds a year,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: and the furniture of her room taken in out of
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: charity and fed on gratitude for three years. She thought
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: of a hand burned on a kettle, on a glass
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: chimney that has burned all night. She thought of chrysanthemums
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: arranged loosely, with the tall stems to one side and
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the little white ones drifting down, in the manner of
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: a girl who had died in 1904. She thought of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: a lamp full of oil, meant to burn a week,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: put out by hand in the dark. The light shineth
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: in darkness. I will keep a light for her, until
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: the truth comes to it. And she thought of the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: last letter in the tin box, the one she had
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: read twice, in the old, trembling hand. My daughters walked
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: together by the pond that evening, and only one came back,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: and the one that came back has never once, in
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: all the years since, spoken her sister's name, the one
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: that came back, Adelaide. The child who came home dry,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: and grew up to rule a village, and never spoke
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: her sister's name, and tended, no, the father tended, the lamp.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: The lamp was the name, the lamp was the speaking
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: of the name, by a father who had no other
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: way to say it, for forty-one years, through his own death,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: into his old verger's hands. A flame of accusation burning
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: above an altar, tended like a heartbeat, in memory of
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: the daughter who died. Not in memory, in accusation. And
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: everyone in the village had read the plaque, and seen
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: only the memory, because a plaque on a church wall
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: is only a wall, and nobody reads it, after the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: first year, at all. The light was going. Down in
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: the lane behind the church the constable's lantern moved along
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: the rope. Miss Marple sat on in the dusk, and
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: her needles had stopped, and her face, in the last
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: of the light, was not serene at all, but very
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: old and very sad. Poor Adelaide, she said aloud to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the empty room. Poor, proud, guilty Adelaide. And poor, she
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: did not finish. She got up and lit the gas,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: and rang for her tray. And when Dora brought it,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: the old lady was knitting again, pink and white and harmless.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: And Dora went down and told the kitchen that Miss Marple,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: at least, wasn't afraid. And the kitchen took comfort from it,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: which was, in its way, a kind of lie. And
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, who had engineered it, knew that it was,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: and was sorry. Section 7 The Second Blow On Monday
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: morning Tom Brabazon fell down the vestry stairs, and the village,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: which had been holding its breath, let it out in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: a scream. He was found at half-past seven by the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: baker's boy, lying at the foot of the narrow stone
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: stair that led down from the lamp-room, with his oil-can
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: beside him, and his left leg under him, and he
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: was alive but not conscious, and the doctor, who was
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: called from his breakfast, looked grave, and used the words
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: fracture and shock and at his age. They carried him
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: to the cottage hospital at Market Lavington, on the ambulance
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: that was kept, until that day, mostly for confinements, and
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: by nine o'clock the village had it that he was dying,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: and by half-past nine it had it that he was dead,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: and by ten it had it that he had been pushed.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: That last, for once, was the truth. He was pushed,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: said Inspector Rudge, standing in the morning room of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: laurels at noon, with his hat in his hands, addressing,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: out of some instinct he did not examine, not Harriet,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: but Miss Marple. There's no doubt of it this time, madam.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: The stair's steep, but he knew it blind. He'd been
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: up and down it forty years, and there's dust on
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the rail where his hand didn't catch it. And, this
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: is not to go further, madam, the lamp-room door was
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: locked when the baker's boy came, and the key was
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: on the inside, and Tom Brabazon had no key on him.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Somebody let him up those stairs, madam, locked the door
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: on him, and waited at the top. He wiped his moustache.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Somebody who knew he'd be there at half-past seven to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: trim the lamp, same as he's been there every morning
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: of his life.' The lamp,' said Miss Marple. Her hands
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: were very still on her knitting.' Was the lamp—'' Burning, madam,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: burning as pretty as you please, with a man lying
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: dying under it. That's what I can't stomach, if you'll
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: forgive me. First Mrs. Vane, dead by the gate.' and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: the lamp out. Now Tom, near dead under the lamp,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and the lamp lit. It's as if the damned thing,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: he caught himself. Forgive me, madam. It's as if it
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: were mocking us. It is not mocking, said Miss Marple quietly.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: It is being used. That is a different thing, and
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: a worse one. May I ask, does anyone know how
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the old man came to the church at all this morning?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: I understood his son comes down from Coventry on Sundays,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: and stays till the Monday train.' Would his father not
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: have waited and gone up with him, as I am
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: told he always does on Mondays? Rudge stared at her.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: That's— As a matter of fact, madam, that's just it.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: The son did stay, and he says his father had
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: a note. A note came to the cottage last evening,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: by hand, no stamp. Tom read it at supper and
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: said little. But he said this, that there was someone
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: would meet him at the church before the morning, about
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the lamp, and it was private, and he'd go up early.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: The son thought nothing of it. The old man had
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: his ways. The inspector's voice flattened. The note's gone, madam.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: We turned the cottage over. There's no note. No, said
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple. There would not be. She was very quiet
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: after Rudge had gone. A small, erect figure in the window-chair,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: looking down at the village. And Harriet, watching her, felt
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: for the first time a touch of fear. Not of
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the murderer. Of her friend. Jane, she said. This changes things.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? This breaks it. He was the one who
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: told you about the oil and the wick. He was
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: the one who lied about the past. And now someone
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: has silenced him. She stopped, hearing herself use Mrs. Wexford's word.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Then he knew. He knew something about Wednesday night, and
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: the murderer knew he knew, and Jane, it proves it,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? The lamp, the letters, the old story, whatever
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: it is, it's all one thing. It was always one thing, Yes,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, it was always one thing. Then this
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: morning narrows it. Who knew Tom would be up that
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: stair at half-past seven? The whole village, but the note,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: the note knew, the note arranged it, and whoever wrote
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: the note, Harriet was pacing now, the way she had
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: paced on the first morning, knew his habits, knew his cottage,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: knew the sun would be there and would think nothing
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: of it. It's someone inside, Jane, it was always someone inside.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Not Tramps. Not, she turned, not Gerald. Gerald couldn't get
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: near the court on Wednesday without half the parish watching,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: and he's been watched since, and he'd no reason on
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: earth to touch Tom Brabazon. The police will say he
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: did it to stop Tom saying something, but Jane, it's nonsense.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Gerald doesn't plan. Gerald falls into things. This morning was planned.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: It was planned like, like a service. The note. The hour.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: The locked door. The key on the inside. She shivered.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: The lit lamp. Who lights a lamp, Jane, and then
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: pushes the man who tends it down the stairs under it?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: There was a long silence. Down in the village a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: bell was ringing. The baker's cart, ordinary as bread, going
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: its rounds as though the world had not split open
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: twice in five days. Harriet, said Miss Marple at last,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: and her voice was odd. You said a strange thing
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: on the first morning. You said it was the lamp
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: that frightened you, not the murder, and I have been
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: thinking about why you were right. Because it was the lamp,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: you see, that was the point. Not Adelaide's death, I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: don't mean that. Her death is the thing itself, the blow,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: the blood, but the meaning of it, the message of it,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: all lay in the lamp, out, then lit. The murderer
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: is not hiding from us, Harriet. The murderer is talking
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: to us, has been talking all along, in the only
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: language she has left Miss Marple's needles began to move again,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: very slowly. And this morning she said something new. This
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: morning she said, Not him. Not the man who tends
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the flame. Whatever else I am, I am not that.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: She pushed him. Yes, she had to. He had begun
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: to talk, to me, in the church, about the past,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: and she could not risk the past. But she made
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: very sure he lived. She made sure. Harriet stared. he
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: fell down a stone stair. Down a stair he had
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: climbed forty years, at an hour when the baker's boy
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: comes past the vestry door at half-past seven exactly, as
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: regular as the sun, with a loaf for the vicarage,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and ears like a hare. She pushed him where he
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: would be found in minutes, Harriet. She locked the door
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: with the key inside, so that he would not be
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: blamed for his own fall, though why she cared for that?
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple stopped. Her needles stopped. For a long moment
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: she sat with her eyes half-closed, and Harriet did not speak,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: because she had seen that stillness before, in St. Mary Mead.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: and it was the stillness of a woman reading a
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: letter that is not there. Though why she cared for that,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple repeated softly, is the whole of it. She cared, Harriet.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: That is the thing I had not understood until this moment.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: She pushed an old man down the stairs, and she
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: was careful, careful, that he should not die of it,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: and that he should not be blamed for it. She
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: has killed once, in hatred forty years old, and she
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: cannot bring herself to kill again, even to save herself.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: especially to save herself. She opened her eyes. Do you
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: know what that means? It means that Adelaide's death was
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: not the beginning of something, it was the end. It
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: was a debt being paid, not a scheme being protected.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: And it means, she drew a long breath, that when
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I am right, and I am nearly sure now that
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: I am right, there will be no running, and no violence,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: and no denial. There will only be a very tired
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: woman and a confession, and the worst part of all
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: of it which is that one will understand exactly why
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: she did it, and one will not be able to
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: forgive her, and one will not be able to blame her, either. She,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: said Harriet. You keep saying she. Yes, dear, Miss March.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: I have not said so. You don't have to. Harriet
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: sat down suddenly, as though her knees had given. The
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: grey mouse, the meekest woman in England, who burned her
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: hand on the— Oh, Jane! Not on a kettle. On
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the lamp. on the glass chimney, putting it out. On
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Wednesday night, after, she put her hand to her mouth.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: But why, why? She had nowhere to go. Adelaide took
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: her in, the doctor's wife said, eleven years in Shropshire,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: and left with five pounds a year. Why would she
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: kill the one person who, tomorrow, said Miss Marple, is Tuesday.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: You will have your tea, and Lettice Crow will come,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: and I shall drop in at half-past four. And tonight, Harriet,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: if you love me, You will not repeat one word
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: of this, not to the canon, not to the cook,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: not in your sleep, because there is one thing more
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: I must know before I am sure, and if the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: village gets hold of it first, it will run through
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: that poor woman's life like fire through thatch, and she
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: has been burned enough. She would say no more. She
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: sat by the window through the long September afternoon, knitting
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: and resting her eyes, a picture of old lady innocence,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: and the village beyond the glass went about its frightened business.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: and the light in the little window above the vestry
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: of St. Dominic's burned on and on over the hospital road,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: lit at dawn by a dying man for the dead.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: And at dusk Miss Marple put on her hat and
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: her gloves and her second-best coat, and took her umbrella
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: though the sky was clear, and walked down alone to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: the village and up the lane behind the church, where
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: the rope was down now and the constable gone, to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: the lich-gate, and stood there for a long time in
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the falling dark, looking at the worn stones where a
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: woman had reached out her gloved hand for something just
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: beyond her grasp, and at the blackthorn hedge with its hard,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: dusty sloughs. Slow gin, she said aloud, to no one,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: in the voice of an old woman talking to herself.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: They say the sloughs must be pricked all over before
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: they are bottled, or the flavour cannot get out. Every
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: one of them pricked and left in the dark for
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: a year, and the gin turns the colour of she
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: looked up at the little window, where the lamp glowed red.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: The colour of that. Exactly the colour of that. Blood
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: and wine and fire. And the longer it stands, the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: stronger it gets. Forty-one years, Harriet would say. A very
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: strong brew. Then she turned and walked home, and dined,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: and played three rubbers of bridge with Harriet and the
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: doctor and the doctor's wife, and played them badly, and apologised,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: and said she was tired and would go up, and did.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: and sat, fully dressed by her bedroom fire until midnight, thinking,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: with her knitting idle in her lap, of a girl
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: who had drowned in 1904, and a sister who had
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: never spoken her name, and a father who had lit
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: a lamp like a curse, and a grey woman who
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: arranged chrysanthemums in the manner of the dead. Section 8.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: The Test Tuesday came up fine and pale, with a
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: sky like washed muslin and a smell of wood-smoke from
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: the cottages. and at half-past three Harriet Fane's best tea
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: service was set out in the drawing-room at the Laurels,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: and at four o'clock Lettice Crow arrived, in her black,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: carrying her gloves and her thirty years of music like
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: a folded umbrella. She was a thin, upright woman of
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: fifty-five with a face that had forgotten how to expect pleasure,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: and she took her tea standing until Harriet made her sit,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: and she answered questions about Tom Brabazon's condition, a shade better,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the hospital said, and he had spoken once one word
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: which the nurse had not caught, in the dry, precise
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: voice that turned the pages of other people's lives without
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: creasing them. The whole village is at sixes and sevens,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Harriet said, pouring. They want to hang someone by Friday.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: The county herald man is staying at the George and
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: drinking too much, and Mrs. Tighe has told him the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: tramps did it, and he has told her, I am
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: sorry to say, that the police know better.' Lettice, you
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: see everyone, from that loft of yours. Who do you think?
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I think, said Lettice Crow, that I am an organist,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and not a detective, and that the dead are dead,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: and the living should be careful. She took her cup.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: It was, Harriet thought, a curiously final little speech, like
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: a chord resolved. And then the door opened, and Dora announced,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: in the special voice she kept for the occasion, Miss Marple,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple came in, pink and white and apologetic,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: with her embroidery bag and her air of having wandered
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: into the wrong room and decided to stay. Miss Crow,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: how nice. I have heard you play, you know, on
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Sunday week, and I have been longing to tell you
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: how beautiful it was. The bark. It is not everyone
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: who dares bark on that organ. The old one at St.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Mary Mead was quite different, so breathless, poor thing, like
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: an elderly lady climbing stairs, but yours has such depth.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: You must know it very well after thirty years.'' I
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: know it,' said Lettice.' Thirty years.' Miss Marple settled herself,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: and took the cup Harriet gave her, and smiled across
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: the room like a child offered cake.' Then you would
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: have been there. Oh, but of course you were, through
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: all the years of Mrs. Vane. Such a loss. Though
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: I dare say a small vague laugh. One may say,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: to another musician, that she was not always easy in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: musical matters.' Mrs. Fane tells me she had strong views
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: about the hymns. She had strong views about everything, said Lettice,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: and she expressed them during the voluntary, but the edge
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: had gone off her voice. It is very hard to
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: be dry with someone who admires your Bach. She even,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: after a while, talked about the organ and the choir
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: and the difficulty of tenors, and Miss Marple listened with
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: her head a little on one side and her needles going,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and made, every so often, a small appreciative sound. and
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: the afternoon drew on and the light turned gold, and
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: it was all so pleasant and so ordinary that Harriet, watching,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: could hardly remember that this was an ambush. It came
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: at a quarter to five, and it came so gently
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: that Harriet, who was waiting for it, nearly missed it.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: You were practising on Wednesday evening, Miss Crow, said Miss Marple,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: in exactly the same soft, social voice, counting a stitch.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Until eight, I think you said, at the vicarage, the choir-anthem,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Such a beautiful thing, that anthem. Lord, thou hast been
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: our refuge. And then you went home, I suppose, through
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: the churchyard, as you always do. As I always do,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: said Lettice. And the lamp was burning when you left.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: You saw it. Miss Marple smiled at her. You told
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: us so. It was always burning. Such a comfort. That
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: little light. One saw it from so far, on a
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: dark night. I saw it myself on Tuesday, from the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: garden at the laurels. Harriet, do you remember? We stood
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: at the window, and I said... She turned back, and
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: her voice did not change at all. But of course
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: one could not see it on Wednesday. After eight o'clock.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Because when you looked back at the church, as you
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: went through the lich gate, one always looks back. It
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: is a habit, like crossing oneself. It had already begun
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: to go out, had it not. The room was utterly silent.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: How strange, said Miss Marple, into the silence, in a
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: voice like falling snow. that you should have told us
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: it was burning when you watched it go dark. Lettuce
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: Crow sat very still with her cup halfway to her lips.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: The colour came up slowly into her thin face and
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: then went away again, leaving it grey, and she set
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: the cup down with a small, precise click, like a note.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: I looked back, she said at last, at half-past eight,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: and the lamp was burning. I have said so to
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: the police, and it was true. At half-past eight, said
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple gently. But you did not leave the church
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: at eight, Miss Crow. You said so at the vicarage,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: and I wondered at the time, because the anthem takes
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: a deal of practice. But the choir did not come
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: that night. The tenor's child was ill, Mrs. Tighe told me,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: and the practice was put off. And yet you stayed,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: alone in the dark church, until what hour? No, no,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: as Lettice half rose. Do not distress yourself. I am
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: not the police. I am an old woman, and I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: am curious, the way old women are, about the little things,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: about why a woman sits alone in a church in
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: the dark for an hour and a half, on the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: night a woman is killed below her window. and says
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: she went home at eight. The needles had stopped. And
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: about what she saw from the loft. Because you were
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: in the loft, Miss Crow, were you not? The organ
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: loft looks down into the church, and out through the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: little window, over the lane, over the lick gate. Lettice
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: Crow's hands lay in her lap, the strong musician's hands,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: and they were trembling, and she looked at them as
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: though they belonged to someone else. And then she looked up,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: and her face had aged ten years, and she said,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: in a voice like dust. I should have told. I
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: have not slept. I want you to know that I
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: have not slept. No, said Miss Marple. I did not
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: think you had. The practice was cancelled, said Lettice. But
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: I went. I often go, in the evenings, when the
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: church is empty. One can play, then for oneself, not
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: for Adelaide Vane, for oneself. The bitterness in the word
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: Adelaide was thirty years deep and as dry as the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: rest of her. I was in the loft at nine.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: The lamp was lit. Mrs. Vane came at a quarter past,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: with her missile, and her flowers. She pushed the door.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: I heard it, and I heard her moving below, taking
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: the Sunday vases, muttering, the way she did. No taste,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: no taste in the parish. Lettice's voice had taken on, horribly,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: the echo of the dead woman's. And then, at half past,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: the church door opened again, very quietly, and someone came in. Who?
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: I could not see. The loft is high, and the
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: church was dark but for the lamp and the candle
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: she had lit at the altar. Whoever it was stayed
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: down by the west end, in the shadow, by the font.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I thought, she stopped, I thought it was the nephew.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: I will be honest. Everyone knew of the quarrel. I thought,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: he has followed her, and there will be a scene,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: and I shall be trapped up here like a hen
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: in a coop while they scream. I sat still. One does.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: And then, she stopped again, and this time the silence
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: went on so long that Harriet moved and Lettice flinched.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Nothing happened, she said. That is the thing I cannot.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Nothing happened, Miss Marple. Mrs. Vane finished her flowers and
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: took her missile and went out. I heard her footsteps
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: go down the lane, and the other one, the one
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: by the font, did not follow. Not then. Waited. A minute,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: two minutes, and then went out, very softly, and I
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: heard the steps go the other way, down the path
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: by the hedge, and I sat in the loft and thought, well,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: that is a strange thing, a follower who does not follow,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: and I was not easy, and I looked out of
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the little window, and the lane was empty, and the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: lamp was burning, and everything was ordinary, and I went
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: home at a quarter to ten. Her voice dropped to
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: a whisper, and at a quarter to ten she had
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: been dead twenty minutes, not two hundred yards from where
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: I sat. and the person by the font had gone
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: the other way, round by the hedge, which comes out,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: you know, Miss Marple, by the far stile, which comes
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: out on the lane, ahead of her, in front of her,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: waiting for her. The room was very still. Outside, the
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: rooks were coming home to the elms in the early dusk,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: and their crying filled the silence like something spilled. You
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: saw no face, said Miss Marple, no face, no height even,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the dark, and the pillar, A shadow. A small shadow,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: I would have said, but the dark makes everything small.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Lettuce Crow drew a long, shaking breath. And one thing more.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: I have turned it over and over, and it is
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: why I have not slept, because I do not know
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: what it means, and I am afraid of it. When Mrs.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: Vane went out, before the other one moved, the church
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: was quiet a moment, and I heard her stop, just
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: inside the door, and she said something, aloud, to no one,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: in the dark, empty church. She said, Lettice closed her
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: eyes to get it exact. Then she said, You needn't wait, Eleanor.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: I shan't be long. Harriet made a small sound. She
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: said it quite calmly, said Lettice, in an ordinary voice,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: the way one speaks to someone in the next room,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: to her sister, to the dead. And then she went out,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: and the door shut, and twenty minutes later she opened
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: her eyes. Now you know why I have not slept.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I sat above a murder and heard a woman speak
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: to a ghost. and I told the police I went
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: home at eight, because I was afraid, I was afraid
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: of being in it, of the newspapers, of the court.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I am a coward, Miss Marple, I have always been
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: a coward. It is why I have been an organist
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: for thirty years, and never a wife or a mother
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: or anything with edges. And now Tom Brabazon is dying
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: in the hospital, and if it is because he knew
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: what I know, then I have killed him with my cowardice,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: and I shall have to live with that, and I
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: do not know how. She put her face in her
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: musician's hands, and sat very straight, and did not weep,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: which was somehow worse than weeping, and Miss Marple rose
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: and crossed the room, and sat down beside her, and
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: took one of the trembling hands in both her own
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: small soft ones, and held it. There, my dear, she said,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: as though Lettice Crow were seven years old, there, you
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: have told it now, and it was not cowardice, it
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: was only the habit of a lifetime, of sitting high
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: up and looking down and not being part of things.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: Habits are very strong. They are almost as strong as guilt.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: She patted the hand. And you are quite wrong about Tom.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Tom was not pushed because of what he saw. He
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: was pushed because of what he said, to me, in
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: the church, on Friday morning. And what he said was
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: only this, that the lamp did not fail, and was
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: put out. So you see, your silence saved no one,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: and endangered no one, and you may put it down.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: She held the hand a moment longer, and her blue
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: eyes were over Lettuce's bent head, met Harriet's, and there
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: was in them something Harriet had never seen there before.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: Not triumph, not even pity, but a great, weary, bottomless sadness.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: You needn't wait, Eleanor, Miss Marple repeated softly. I shan't
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: be long. She knew, you see. She knew she was followed.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: She knew by whom. She had known all week, perhaps,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: ever since the flowers, ever since the arrow she shot
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: at lunch about grey mice. and she went up the
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: lane all the same, in the dark, alone, at half-past nine,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: to meet it. She looked down at the worn, proud
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: head beside her. Poor Adelaide, she said, for the second time.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: She was not running away that night. She was going
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: to keep an appointment, forty-one years old. Section 9. The
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: Threads Draw Together After Lettuce Crow had gone, she refused brandy,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: and accepted, in the end, only a glass of sherry.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple's assurance that she would go to Inspector
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Rudge herself, and that it would be better so, and kinder.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: Harriet sat down opposite her friend, and looked at her
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: for a long time without speaking.' Jane,' she said at last,' enough.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: I have been patient for six days, and I have
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: written to the Canon, and I have gossiped with Mrs. Tighe,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: and I have had Lettice Crow to tea to be ambushed,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: and now you will tell me, all of it, the
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: letter in the chest, the flowers—' What Adelaide said to
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the empty church. All of it. The canon wrote back,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: asked Miss Marple. This morning. I didn't tell you. There
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: was the news about Tom. Harriet went to her desk
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: and brought the letter. The old sexton at St Dominic's.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Josiah March, he was called. He died in 1905, the
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: year after the drowning. Had a wife who died before him,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: and one child. A daughter. Who would have been? Harriet's
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: finger found the line. a girl of about twelve or
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: thirteen at the time of his death, and was taken in,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: it is believed, by an aunt in Shropshire. Shropshire, Jane.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: And her name? Harriet's voice was not quite steady. The
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: sexton's daughter's name was Mercy. Mercy March. Yes, said Miss Marple.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: You knew? I guessed, when Mrs. Tighe told me, this
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: morning you were out, that Miss March receives a letter
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: every month from Shropshire, in a very old-fashioned hand, from
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: a great-aunt who is ninety-one, and that the letter last
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: week was heavier than usual and registered, and that Miss March,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: who never has twopence to spend, insured it. Miss Marple
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: laid down her knitting. A registered letter, Harriet, from a
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: woman of ninety-one. One does not register gossip. One registers documents,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: or money, or both. And there is this, too, from
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: her embroidery bag, from beneath the blue wool and the needles,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: and the innocent tangle of silks, she drew a small
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: folded paper. I asked Mrs. Tighe, very casually, whether she
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: remembered the drowning. She was a girl in the village,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: they were all girls together, and she told me something
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: that no one else thought to mention, because no one
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: else is old enough, and the ones who are, are silent.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: Eleanor Ransom did not go to the Mill Pond alone
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: that evening in 1904. She went with her sister Adelaide,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: and with her greatest friend, they were all three of
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: an age, fifteen, sixteen, the Sexton's daughter, Mercy March. Miss
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Marple's voice was very quiet. Three girls on the ice, Harriet,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: in the winter dusk. And one came home dry, and
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: one came home dead, and one, the Sexton's daughter, whose
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: father buried the dead girl. and lit the candles at
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: the funeral, and died himself within the year, of grief
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: or drink or knowledge, one was sent away, sent away
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: within the fortnight, to an aunt in Shropshire, and was
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: never spoken of in the village again. Mrs. Tighe had
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: forgotten her name. She remembered her only as the little
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: March girl, that Eleanor was so fond of. The drawing-room
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: was very still, the fire had burned low, and the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: curtains were not yet drawn, and beyond the windows the
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: September evening lay over the village like a hand. And
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: three years ago, said Miss Marple, the companion in Shropshire,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: the meek little grey woman who had served a lady
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: for eleven years and been left five pounds a year,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: came to Holmfield Court, engaged through an agency, by Adelaide,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Who made a great point of her references? Who had not,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: I asked Gerald this morning, by a note, and he
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: scribbled back on the back of a bill, the young
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: are so careless, who had not so much as interviewed
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: another candidate. She chose Miss March off a list, Gerald writes,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: without seeing her. I remember because I said it was odd,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: and Aunt said, Miss Marple unfolded the paper and read,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: in her soft, level voice. And Aunt said, It is
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: not odd, Gerald, I know exactly who she is. The
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: fire settled with a small crash of coals. She knew,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Harriet whispered. Adelaide knew. From the beginning. She brought her back.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: The girl who was sent away. She brought her back.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: And kept her. And fed her on gratitude. For three years. Why, Jane? Penance?
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: Or her voice rose? Or worse? To have her there.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: To watch her be grateful. To own her? Because that
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: is what it sounds like. It sounds like Adelaide, at
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: her very worst. It sounds like a cat that has
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: brought a mouse into the house. There are no grey mice, Gerald.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: She said it to Gerald, about her, and she smiled.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Harriet stopped. Oh God! She was tormenting her. For three years,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: in little ways, with little smiles and little arrows, and
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: her own old dress turned for Christmas, she was tormenting
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: the woman who knew, the one person alive who knew
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: what happened on the ice in 1904. Yes, said Miss Marple,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: and that is where you are wrong, there, about the mouse.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: She got up and went to the window, and stood
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: looking down at the village, at the lights coming on
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: one by one in the dusk, at the small red
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: spark above the vestry of St Dominic's. Because a mouse
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: would have run, Harriet, or bitten, long ago, in some
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: small mean way, Miss March did neither. For three years
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: she arranged the flowers and wrote the letters, and closed
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: the curtains and apologised. and wore the turned grey dress,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: and was grateful, genuinely, terribly grateful. Miss Marple turned, and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: her face in the firelight was very grave, because she
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: was waiting, you see. Gratitude was the disguise, meekness was
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the disguise, the burned hand, the small shadow by the font,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: the follower who does not follow but goes round by
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: the hedge to wait by the far stile. None of
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: it was a mouse, Harriet. It was a woman who
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: had waited thirty-eight years to come back, and three more
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: to choose her moment, and who chose it on the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: night the restoration fund and the audit and all Adelaide's
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: little whips came to a head. No. She stopped. She
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: corrected herself, with the scrupulousness that was the core of her. No.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Not chose. I will not say chose even now. It
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: chose itself. It had been chosen in 1904, on the ice,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: and every year since was only the gin standing in
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: the dark, getting stronger. Then Wednesday. Wednesday. said Miss Marple.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: I shall tell you tomorrow, when I tell everyone. Not before.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: Because there is one thing left that I do not know,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: and until I know it, I may be wrong about
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: the worst part. And if I am wrong about the
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: worst part, I would rather be wrong in private. She
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: came back to the fire, and stood with her small
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: soft hands out to the warmth. And she looked, Harriet thought,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: suddenly and dreadfully old. The brooch is missing. The diamond sunburst.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: Rudge thinks it is the key to a robbery, and
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: I think it is the key to everything, and they
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: are not the same thing. Where does a woman hide
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: a brooch she has taken from a corpse, Harriet? A
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: woman with nowhere of her own in the world, whose
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: whole kingdom is a bedroom she does not own, and
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: a gratitude she has to wear like the turned grey dress.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Where does she put it that it will not be found,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: and that it will do its work? She stared into
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: the fire. Things put somewhere for a purpose, I said
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: to Gerald. They turn up when their purpose is ripe.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: I think, I am nearly sure, that the brooch was
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: the purpose, not the money. Adelaide's death was the debt,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: but the brooch was the message, and I cannot read
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: it yet, and until I can read it, I am
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: only a woman with a story, and the story may
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: have the wrong ending. She was silent so long that
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: Harriet thought she had finished. Then she said, very low,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: almost to herself, I will keep a light for her
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: in this church until the truth comes to it. Forty-one years.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: And on Wednesday night the truth came, and the light
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: went out, put out by the hand of the truth itself.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: And on Thursday morning Tom Brabazon lit it again, because
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: he could not bear her to be dark. He loved her,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the garden boy. He has loved her for
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: fifty years, Eleanor, the drowned girl, and he lit her
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: lamp again the morning after her friend, or her murderer,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: put it out. There is a whole other tragedy there, Harriet,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: burning away like oil in a wick, and no one
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: will ever even see the smoke of it. She pinched
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: out the flame of the candle on the mantle with
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: her finger and thumb, absently, as one who has done
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: it ten thousand times, and the room went down to firelight.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: Go to bed, my dear. Tomorrow I shall want the vicar,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Rudge, and Gerald, and Lettice if she will come,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: and one other, in the drawing-room here, at eleven, and
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: tonight I shall sit up a little, and think about
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: a brooch, and about what a woman says to a
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: corpse when she takes the sunburst from its coat and
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: looks at it, in the dark, by the light of
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: a lamp she is about to put out. Jane. Harriet
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: stood in the doorway, and her voice was rough. Whatever
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: she did, whatever happened on that ice, she pushed Tom
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Brabazon down the stairs. Yes, said Miss Marple, carefully, so
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: that he would live, and so that he would not
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: be blamed. She looked up, and the firelight made her
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: eyes very bright. Think what it cost her, Harriet, to
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: do that much harm, and no more. Think how hard
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: she had to hold the reins, on the top of
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: that stair, in the dark, with the lamp lit below,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: and forty-one years screaming in her ears, to hurt him,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: just enough to stop his mouth, and not enough to
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: kill him. A murderer does not do that. A monster
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: does not do that. Only one kind of person does that.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: She turned back to the fire. A person with a conscience,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: she said. The very worst kind of killer. and the
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: very saddest, go to bed. And Harriet went, and left
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: her sitting small and straight by the dying fire, with
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: the blue wool idol in her lap, turning a diamond
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: sunburst over and over in her mind, in the dark,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: by the light of a lamp she could not yet see.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Section 10 The Truth in Daylight They came at eleven,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: as she had asked. Inspector Rudge, solid and sceptical, with
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: a notebook he did not expect to open, the vicar, grey-faced,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: his hands never still, Gerald, defiant and miserable, who had
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: not been told why he was wanted and assumed the worst,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: Lettice Crow, in her black, who sat by the window
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: with her eyes on her folded hands and seemed to
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: be listening to a music no one else could hear,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: and Harriet, by the fire, who had not slept. Miss
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: Marple sat in the wing-chair with her knitting, small and
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: pink and white, and utterly composed, and she let Dora
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: bring the coffee and pour it and go, and then
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: she said, in her gentle, elderly voice, Thank you all
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: for coming. I am afraid I have a rather long
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: story to tell, and it is not a pleasant one,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: and I must ask you to let me tell it
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: in my own way, which is the way of an
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: old woman, round about, and with a great deal of
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: seeming nonsense in it. But I will begin with the lamp,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: because the lamp, you see, is the whole of it.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: And she told them. She told them about the winter
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: of 1904, and the three girls on the ice of
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: the mill-pond at the court, Eleanor Ransom, the vicar's daughter,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: beautiful and kind and fifteen, her sister Adelaide, thirteen, proud
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: and passionate, and, even then, a ruler, and Mercy March,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: the sexton's daughter, Eleanor's dearest friend. She told them what
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: the letters in the parish chest had said, and what
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: they had not said, and what old Mrs. Tighe had
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: remembered without knowing what she remembered. The inquest said accident,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. The ice, and the dusk, and a
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: girl's foot through it, and the pond. But the cannon
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: her father never believed it, and he lit a lamp,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: not in memory, vicar, as you found, but in fury,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: until the truth comes to it. And he died waiting,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: and the village forgot, and the lamp burned on into
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: other hands, and the truth, the truth as truths do,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: went away and grew in the dark. Because here is
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: what happened on the ice, and it is not what
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: anyone has thought, and it is the saddest thing I know.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: There was no quarrel, there was no malice. There was
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a game, the three of them, sliding on the black
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: ice by the far bank where the sallows grow, and
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: a dare, as there always is, and Eleanor went too
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: far out, laughing, the way she did everything, and the
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: ice went, and Mercy March, who loved her, went in
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: after her, fifteen years old, and she went into black
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: water after her friend, and got her to the shelf
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: at the bank, and held her, and screamed for Adelaide, Adelaide,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: who was on the bank, Adelaide, thirteen years old, who
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: could have run for the rope by the boathouse, forty yards,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: and who stood. She stood, on the bank, in the dusk,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: with her sister's hands on the ice, and her sister's
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: friend's voice, screaming her name, and she did not run,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: and she did not come, and she did not move,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: because she was afraid, that is all, that is the
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: whole of the horror. She was a child, and she
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: was afraid, and for two minutes, the two minutes that
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: are forty-one years, she stood still, and by the time
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: she moved and screamed, and the men came with the rope,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the ice had taken them both, and only Mercy March
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: came out of that water alive. The room was utterly silent.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Gerald had gone white. The vicar had his face in
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: his hands. And then, said Miss Marple, the village did
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: what villages do. Adelaide was the vicar's daughter. Mercy was
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: the Sexton's. The cannon, mad with grief, did the mad,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: sane thing. He could not accuse his living child of
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: his dead child's death, but he could not look at
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: her either. And he could not look at Mercy, who
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: had failed where a miracle was needed, and who was
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the living reminder of the two minutes. So Mercy was
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: sent away, within the fortnight, to Shropshire. A girl of fifteen,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: who had done the bravest thing anyone in that village
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: has ever done, sent away in shame to carry it alone,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: so that the vicar's daughter could grow up innocent. And Adelaide,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple's voice did not soften, but it slowed. Adelaide
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: grew up and ruled, and never once, in all the
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: years after, spoke her sister's name. Her father spoke it
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: every day, with his lamp. Adelaide never spoke it at all.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: Think of those two silences, burning side by side, above
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: that altar for forty years. The light shineth in darkness,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: and the darkness comprehended it not. She looked round the room,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: from face to face, gentle and relentless. Three years ago,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: the lady in Shropshire died, and left her companion five
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: pounds a year, and Adelaide Vane, who never did anything
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: by accident, saw a name on an agency list, and
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: knew it, and she sent for her. Now, why did
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: she send for her? I have asked myself that for
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: four days, and I will tell you what I believe,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: and I believe it because it is the only answer
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: that is like Adelaide. Not penance. Adelaide did not do penance.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: Not kindness. She sent for Mercy March to have her,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: to own the one person who knew, to keep her close,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: and keep her grateful, and keep her grey, because as
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: long as Mercy March was a grey mouse at Holmfield Court, dependent, aged,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: with nowhere to go, the two minutes on the ice
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: belonged to Adelaide. She had been paying blackmail to her
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: own conscience for forty years, and this was cheaper. There
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: are no grey mice, Gerald. She said it to you
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: at lunch, and she smiled. She was not afraid of Mercy,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: you see. That was her mistake, and it was the
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: mistake of her whole life. She thought fear was a
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: thing that stayed down, once you had your foot on it.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: She was thirteen when she learned it stayed down. She
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: never learned it comes back. Inspector Rudge had his notebook
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: open now, and his pencil was still. And then, this autumn,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, two things happened. The registered letter from Shropshire,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: the great-aunt of ninety-one, dying and putting her affairs in order,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: and sending mercy the one thing she had left to send,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: the papers, her father's papers, the Sexton's, and among them, Mrs.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: Tighe remembered, when I asked, that old Josiah March was
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: known in his day as a man who kept a diary,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: among them, the diary, with the entry for the 14th
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: of December, 1904, with what the Sexton saw, or what
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: his daughter told him, in the year of his death,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: the truth, in writing, at last, and the lamp, you remember,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: was lit until the truth should come to it. Her
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: needles were quiet in her lap. And the second thing,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: the audit. Adelaide's little whip over the vicar, the restoration fund.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: Adelaide had been letting things fall all autumn, harder and faster.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: About the accounts, about the church, about everyone's small shames.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Because she was frightened, and when Adelaide was frightened, she
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: struck first. She knew the diary had come. Mercy told her, no.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: Mercy showed her. On Wednesday, at dinner, she was almost gentle,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: Gerald said, and tired, and she told him that other
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: people's patience is not a crop that comes up every year.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: She was not speaking to Gerald, she was speaking to herself.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: She had read the diary, or she knew it was
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: in the house, and she knew that the woman she
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: had owned for three years had stopped being owned, and
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: she did the thing she had been walking toward for
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: forty-one years. She picked up her missile and and she
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: went up the dark lane to the church to meet it.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: You needn't wait, Eleanor, I shan't be long, she said
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: it to the lamp, Miss Crow. To the flame, she
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: had been saying it for forty-one years without ever saying
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: it aloud. Lettice Crow made a small sound and pressed
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: her hands together, and Mercy March followed her, said Miss Marple.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: Not to kill her, I believe that, I shall believe
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: it to the end, but to give her the diary, there,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: in the church, before the lamp. where it had all begun,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: to finish it. She waited by the font while Adelaide
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: did her flowers, and Adelaide left them half done, for
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: the first time in her life. Did you notice that? Adelaide,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: who trusted no one's eye but her own, left her
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: flowers and went out into the lane, because mercy had
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: gone out before her, round by the hedge, to the
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: far stile, to wait. And there, on the dark lane,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: behind the church her father had filled with a burning accusation,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: It came to its end. I do not know what
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: was said. I think Adelaide said the things she had
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: said in a hundred drawing rooms. The arrow, the smile,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: the little cruelty that keeps the other person grey. And
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: I think that Mercy March, who had been grey for
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: forty-one years, who had been sent away for being brave
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: and brought back for being harmless, who had in her
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: bag her father's diary and her whole stolen life, I
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: think she picked up the loose coping stone of the
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: churchyard wall and she stopped the voice. Once. She did
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: not strike twice. I have seen the stone. It was
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: struck once. She is not a violent woman. She is
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: a woman who was violent once, in forty-one years, and
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: the once was the size of all of it. The
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: vicar was weeping, silently, without shame. Gerald sat like stone.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: And then, said Miss Marple, she did the thing that
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: told me who she was, before I knew anything else.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: She arranged the flowers. She went back into the church.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: She had the whole night— Who would question her? And
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: she knelt down, and she finished Adelaide's flowers, in her
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: own way, in the old way, in Eleanor's way, the
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: way the three of them had learned as girls at
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: that altar. Because Adelaide was dead, and the debt was paid,
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: and there was no one left to arrange flowers for
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: but the dead. And then she took down the lamp,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: full of oil, meant to burn a week, and she
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: put it out, with her fingers. That is how she
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: burned them, not on a kettle. on a glass chimney
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: that had burned all night, above a woman lying dead
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: by the gate. She put out the accusation. The light
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: that had shone in the darkness for forty-one years, until
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: the truth should come to it, the truth had come,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: she had brought it. So she put the lamp out.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple's voice was almost a whisper. And if that
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: is not the saddest thing I have ever said in
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: a room, I do not know what is. But the brooch,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: said Rudge. His voice was rough. The brooch, madam. The
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: diamond sunburst. If it wasn't robbery. Ah, said Miss Marple.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: The brooch. I thought about the brooch all night. Where
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: does a woman put a thing taken from the dead?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: A woman with nothing of her own. No room she owns.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: No place on earth that is hers to hide a
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: pin in. And then I understood that I had it backwards.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: She did not take the brooch to have it. She
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: took it to return it. The sunburst, Inspector. Diamonds. A sun.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: A blazing, shining thing that Adelaide wore everywhere, showing off. Mrs.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: Tighe said. It was her mother's, was it not? It
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: was the ransom sunburst. It had shone at every fate
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: and every service for forty years, on the breast of
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: the daughter who lived. Miss Marple looked up, at the window,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: toward the tower. There is one place in this parish
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: that belongs to the daughter who died, one place that
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: is Eleanor's, and no one else's. It has been burning
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: for her for forty-one years, and I think that if
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: you take down the sanctuary lamp of St. Dominic's, Inspector— Gently.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: It is very old. And look inside the oil. You
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: will find the diamond sunburst of Adelaide Vane, sunk like
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: a stone in a pond, giving back to the dead
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: girl the light that the living one wore. Rudge was
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: on his feet. And Tom Brabazon? said Harriet in a whisper.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: Tom had begun to talk about the past. To me,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: she could not allow the past, not yet, not until
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: she had. Miss Marple paused. She is not cruel, she said.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: that is the worst of it, and I shall say
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: it once, and then I will not defend her again,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: because there is a woman dead, and an old man broken,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: and the law must have her, and it is right.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: But she pushed him down a stair she knew, at
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: an hour she chose, under a a lamp she had
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: lit herself at dawn. She lit it again, did you know,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: on the Thursday. Before Tom could, she relit the accusation
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: herself for Adelaide. She is the only person in this
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: story who understood that both things were true, that the
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: lamp must go out for Eleanor and burn for Adelaide,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: and she pushed him carefully so that he would live,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: and she locked the door with the key inside so
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: that no one would call it an old man's carelessness
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: and take his lamp from him. She protected his pride
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: while she broke his leg. If you want to understand her, Inspector,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: there it is, entire. She spent forty-one years learning to
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: be grey, and she never once, even at the worst,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: learned to be small. Miss Marple folded her hands over
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: her knitting and looked round the silent room. and her
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: eyes were as mild and blue and merciless as the sky.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: She is at the court, she said. She will be packing,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: though she has nothing to pack. Five pounds a year
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: and the furniture of a room she does not own.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: She will not run. Go gently, Inspector. She has been
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: gone from the world since she was fifteen years old,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: and she has only this week come back to it,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: and it is a great deal older and colder than
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: the one she left. Section 11 the lamp burns on.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: They found the brooch where Miss Marple had said it
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: would be, sunk in the oil of the sanctuary lamp,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: its diamonds dulled and golden, like light seen through pond water,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: and they found Mercy March at the court, in her
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: small room under the eaves, with her one bag packed.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: It took her, the constable said afterwards, no more than
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: ten minutes, because after three years everything she had fitted
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: into it and left room to spare, and she came
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: downstairs quietly, and she asked, before they took her away,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: only one thing. She asked whether Tom Brabazon would live,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: and when they told her he would, she said, Thank you,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: in her soft, apologetic voice, and went out through the
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: hall of the house that had never been hers, past
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: the flowers she had arranged that morning. They were arranged loosely,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: with the tall stems to one side, and nobody in
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Holmfield ever learned what that had meant, except one old
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: lady in a wing-chair, and she did not look back
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: at anything except, once, at the tower of the church.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: She confessed at Market Lavington that evening, fully and clearly,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: in a voice the sergeant said he had to lean
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: forward to hear, and the confession was exactly as Miss
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: Marple had said, with one thing added, one thing no
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: one could have known. She said that at the end,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: on the lane, Adelaide had not struggled, and had not screamed,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: and had not, this was the thing, seemed surprised. She
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: said that when she raised the stone, Adelaide looked at
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: her and said, in the ordinary voice of a woman
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: commenting on a sermon, so it is you then, I
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: have wondered, all these years, which of us it would be.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: And those were the last words of Adelaide Vane, and
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: Mercy March carried them into the dock at the Assizes,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: and said them aloud there, in her grey dress and
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: her grey voice. And the court was very still, and
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: the judge, who was not a sentimental man, took a
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: long time over the sentence. It was manslaughter, in the end,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: the diary helped. old Josiah March's diary, which the canon
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: in Salisbury read with tears running down his face, and
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: forwarded to the defence. And Tom Brabazon helped, for when
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: he could speak, in the hospital, the first full sentence
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: he managed was not about his fall but this. She
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: went into the water after her. I saw it, from
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: the sallows, I was a lad and I hid, and
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: I have been ashamed fifty years, and she went in
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: after her, and the other ones stood on the bank.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: he would not sign a word against her. He said
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: only that he had been pushed, that he had not
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: seen who pushed him, and that if the law wanted
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: more than that, the law could whistle for it. Seven years,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: the sentence was, and everyone in Holmfield understood that she
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: would not serve the half of it, and that it
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: did not matter, because the prison she was leaving was
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: forty-one years deep, and the one she was going to
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: had a door with a date on it. The village,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: being a village, healed in the way villages heal. not
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: by forgetting, but by absorbing. The county herald man filed
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: his story and went away, and was forgotten by Christmas.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: The restoration fund was made good by an anonymous subscription
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: that everyone knew was Gerald Vane selling his car, and
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: the roof was mended, and the vicar, who had been
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: aged ten years by the autumn, seemed to grow younger
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: under it, as men do when the thing they dreaded
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: has finally happened and the world has not ended. Lettuce
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Crow played at the funeral. and it was noticed that
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: she played the Bach she had played the week before
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: the murder, and played it for herself, and it was
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: very beautiful, and she never again told anyone she had
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: gone home at eight. The funeral of Adelaide Vane was
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: very large and very correct, and the wreath from the
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: Women's Institute was chrysanthemums because Mrs. Wexford had her way,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: and because, as she said, thumping her stick, she always
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: had chrysanthemums, and if we cannot speak well of the dead,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: we can at least be accurate about their flowers.' She
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: was buried in the churchyard, not far, though this was
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: an accident of the sexton's plan, and no one remarked
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: on it except one, from the worn stone of her sister,
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: Eleanor Ransom, beloved daughter, and below it, after forty-one years,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: the stone-cutter had had to renew the lettering, and the
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: new letters were brighter than the old, and it looked,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: Harriet said once, as though the name had been waiting
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: to be read. Tom Brabazon came home from the hospital
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: in the spring, lame but whole, and he climbed the
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: vestry stair again, slowly, one step at a time, and
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: the first thing he did was trim the lamp. He
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: had been told everything by then. The village had nothing
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: left to tell him. The past was out of its
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: box at last, like feathers from a burst cushion, and
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: had settled everywhere, and could not be put back, and was,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: in the end, only the past. He was asked, once,
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: by the new young curate, whether he did not think,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: in the circumstances, that the lamp might be allowed to
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: Whether it might not be time to, the young man floundered,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: and Tom Brabazon looked at him with his old, weathered,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: thorn-hedge face, and said, It was lit until the truth came.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: The truth came. It burns now because it burns. And
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: the curate, who was very young, wrote it down, thinking
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: it profound, when it was only an old gardener saying
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: that some things, once tended for fifty years, are tended
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: for love and not for reasons. Miss Marple stayed on
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: at the laurels until the first frost, and on her
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: last morning she walked down through the village alone, leaning
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: a little on her umbrella, saying her goodbyes. To Mrs. Tighe,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: who pressed a card of grey silk on her, and
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: would not take payment. To old Mrs. Wexford, who told
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: her the whole story of the murder in the version
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: the village had now settled on, which was wrong in
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: nearly every particular, and was told with great enjoyment. To
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: Dora's second cousin, Ernie Piggott, who had gone back to
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: his milk round and was beginning, already, to tell the
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: story of the scream with a certain professional pride. She
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: went last to the church. It was empty and very
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: still and full of the ancient smell of stone and beeswax,
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: and the morning sun came through the east window in
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: shafts of dusty red and gold. The flowers by the
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: altar were Michaelmas daisies now, purple and white, arranged, she noticed.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: and smiled her small sad smile, loosely, with the tall
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: stems to one side, in the old way, in the
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: manner of the dead, for Lettuce Crow did the flowers now,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: and Lettuce had watched for thirty years from the loft,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: and hands remember. Miss Marple sat for a while in
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: a pew, an old lady resting, and looked at the
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: small red flame that burned above the altar, steady and
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: small and patient, the colour of slow gin, the colour
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: of blood and wine and fire, the light shineth in darkness.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: It had been lit in fury, and tended in love,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: and put out in the moment of its answering, and
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: lit again by an old man at dawn, because he
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: could not bear her to be dark. It had outlasted
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: the cannon's rage and Adelaide's silence, and Mercy's forty-one grey years,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: and it burned now, Miss Marple thought, for all of them,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: for the girl on the ice, and the girl on
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: the bank, and the girl in the black water, and
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: the old women they had become— or had never been
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: allowed to become. A flame is a very small thing
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: to hold a whole village's guilt and grief and love.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: But then, she reflected, rising and settling her embroidery bag
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: on her arm, so is the human heart, and it manages.
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: She went out through the lych gate, where the worn
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: stones gave no sign of what they had seen, past
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: the blackthorn hedge hung with the hard, dark slows of autumn,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: pricked and bottled, and standing in the dark somewhere now,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: turning slowly the colour of the lamp, growing stronger. Up
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: the hill the sun was warm, and Dora would have packed,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: and there would be a glass of sherry before the train. Villages,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple aloud, to the rooks, in the voice
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: of a woman stating a discovery she had made long ago,
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: and had never found any reason to revise, are very
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: peaceful places. That is why one must never, ever trust
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: the quiet of them. And she walked up the hill
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: to her sherry. a small, fluffy, pink and white old
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: lady with kind blue eyes, and behind her the village
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: went about its business in the sun, ordinary as bread,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: and the lamp burned on above the altar of St. Dominic's,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: day and night, in memory of the daughter who died
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: and the daughter who lived. and the long, long dark
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: between them, in which the truth had stood, and waited,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: and grown strong. The End