Latest / Miss Marple Sleep Stories / A Deadly Drink at the Parish Hall | Miss Marple Sleep Stories

Transcript

A Deadly Drink at the Parish Hall | Miss Marple Sleep Stories · Miss Marple Sleep Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: Poison in the parish hall, punch a Miss Marple mystery.
0:04
Speaker 1: Section 1. The punch is praised. The morning of the
0:07
Speaker 1: harvest fete dawned over St Mary Mead as innocently as
0:10
Speaker 1: a morning well can, a soft gold haze on the
0:13
Speaker 1: church tower, dew on the vicarage lawn, and Miss Jane
0:17
Speaker 1: Marple in her second-best hat, settling herself on a bench
0:21
Speaker 1: outside the parish hall with her knitting and a tolerably
0:24
Speaker 1: good view of everything. It was all exactly as it
0:27
Speaker 1: should be. and that, as Miss Marple often remarked afterwards,
0:31
Speaker 1: was what made it so very strange. For by half-past
0:34
Speaker 1: four that afternoon, with the bunting still stirring and the
0:37
Speaker 1: band of the much-benom Silver Institute still wiping their instruments,
0:41
Speaker 1: Mrs Adella Venner of Danebury Hall would be dead upon
0:45
Speaker 1: the parish hall floor, and nobody for a long while
0:48
Speaker 1: would understand what had really been poured for her. The
0:51
Speaker 1: parish hall smelled of chrysanthemums, damp coats and and the
0:55
Speaker 1: particular dusty warmth of a building used too seldom and
0:58
Speaker 1: scrubbed too hard. Upon the trestle tables lay the produce
1:02
Speaker 1: of the parish, marrows like green torpedoes, sponge-cakes under glass domes,
1:07
Speaker 1: jars of hedgerow jelly glowing ruby and amber in the
1:10
Speaker 1: thin sun, and at the centre of the longest table
1:13
Speaker 1: beneath a paper garland stood the punch-bowl, cut glass, Victorian, enormous,
1:19
Speaker 1: containing Mrs. Venner's own famous Harvest Punch, made up that
1:23
Speaker 1: morning to a recipe she had guarded for thirty years
1:26
Speaker 1: and divulged to no one living. It's the secret, said Mrs.
1:30
Speaker 1: Emmeline Pargeter from the grocer's, inhaling above the bowl with
1:33
Speaker 1: the reverence of a woman at a shrine. That makes it.
1:37
Speaker 1: She never tells. My husband says he'd stock it tomorrow,
1:40
Speaker 1: if she'd only sell him the recipe. Mrs. Venner, said
1:44
Speaker 1: Miss Tilly Bracegirdle, who was thin and bright-eyed and missed nothing,
1:48
Speaker 1: does nothing for nothing, You may depend upon it, the
1:51
Speaker 1: recipe will be in the will. The question is whose
1:54
Speaker 1: name is beside it. At the word will, both ladies glanced,
1:58
Speaker 1: with the synchronised delicacy of long practice, towards the door
2:03
Speaker 1: where Major Hugh Venner had just come in, out of
2:05
Speaker 1: the sunshine, looking as though he had rather be anywhere else.
2:09
Speaker 1: He was a heavily built man of forty-five, with a
2:12
Speaker 1: cavalry moustache and the flushed, restless air of one who
2:16
Speaker 1: has slept badly in several successive towns. He was his
2:20
Speaker 1: aunt's nearest relation. He was also, as the village had
2:24
Speaker 1: known since June, in considerable difficulty at his London club. Mrs.
2:29
Speaker 1: Venner herself held court beside the tombola, upright as a
2:32
Speaker 1: tentpole in heliotrope silk, her white hair dressed high, her
2:37
Speaker 1: voice carrying effortlessly above the hum. Adela Venner chaired the
2:41
Speaker 1: parish council, the fate committee, the flower rota, and, in
2:46
Speaker 1: the opinion of the Reverend Septimus Calthrop, who was a
2:49
Speaker 1: mild man, several things that were not strictly hers to chair.
2:54
Speaker 1: She was generous with money and merciless with facts. She
2:57
Speaker 1: knew everything about everybody, and what she knew she used gently,
3:02
Speaker 1: the way a gardener uses shears. Beside her, as always,
3:07
Speaker 1: moved Miss Dorothy Finch, her companion these twelve years, a small, grey,
3:13
Speaker 1: pleasant woman of perhaps fifty-five, so self-effacing as that the
3:17
Speaker 1: village had collectively forgotten to form an opinion of her.
3:21
Speaker 1: It was Miss Finch who had made the punch that morning,
3:23
Speaker 1: under Mrs. Venner's exact supervision. It was Miss Finch who
3:27
Speaker 1: fetched the shawl, remembered the pills, carried the bag, and
3:31
Speaker 1: anticipated the wish before it was spoken. Dear Dorothy, Mrs.
3:36
Speaker 1: Venner called her, in the tone one uses for a
3:38
Speaker 1: comfortable chair. Dorothy, she said now, my cup, and the sifter,
3:43
Speaker 1: the silver one, You know I cannot abide the bowl sugar.
3:47
Speaker 1: Half of it is dust. Miss Finch brought a cup
3:50
Speaker 1: of the punch, ruby dark and fragrant, and the little
3:53
Speaker 1: Georgian sugar-sifter that lived, during fates, on the hall's side shelf. Mrs.
3:58
Speaker 1: Venner shook in three heaped measures with the lavish unconcern
4:01
Speaker 1: of a woman who had never in her life been
4:03
Speaker 1: asked to economise. You will ruin your constitution, Adela, said Dr. Sandycroft,
4:09
Speaker 1: pausing with his plate of ham. He was a spare,
4:12
Speaker 1: careful man with a country practice— and a countryman's face.
4:16
Speaker 1: Three of sugar, upon my word. At my age, Henry,
4:20
Speaker 1: said Mrs. Venner, one takes one's sweetness where one finds it.
4:24
Speaker 1: She drank, and made a small, surprised face. Sweet, she pronounced,
4:29
Speaker 1: but with a bitter finish. Like most things in life, Dorothy,
4:32
Speaker 1: she smiled her thin, amused smile, and drank again. On
4:36
Speaker 1: her bench by the door, Miss Marple's needles clicked with
4:39
Speaker 1: the soft regularity of a clock. She had seen Major
4:43
Speaker 1: Venner draw his aunt aside near the tombola, had seen
4:46
Speaker 1: the aunt's chin lift and the nephew's hand clench and
4:49
Speaker 1: unclench on his ticket stubs. Miss Bracegirdle, drifting past with
4:53
Speaker 1: a plate, had heard what she later reported as, You
4:56
Speaker 1: would ruin us all, aunt, and the reply, Cool as
5:00
Speaker 1: well water, I shall do as I please with what
5:03
Speaker 1: is mine. I always have. Miss Marple, who heard nothing
5:07
Speaker 1: of this, nevertheless noted the nephew's face as he came away.
5:11
Speaker 1: and the way his eyes went, not to the tombola,
5:14
Speaker 1: not to the door, but to the punch-bowl, and away again, quickly,
5:19
Speaker 1: as a man avoids looking at what he is thinking about.
5:22
Speaker 1: She noted, too, Mrs. Edith Calthrop, the vicar's wife, tallying
5:26
Speaker 1: the fate accounts on a corner table with a pencil
5:29
Speaker 1: gripped like a weapon, while Mrs. Venner, passing, let fall
5:33
Speaker 1: some observation about figures being so very slippery in careless
5:36
Speaker 1: hands that brought a dull red to Edith's neck. She
5:40
Speaker 1: noted Miss Nora Blythe, the schoolmistress, selling raffle tickets with
5:44
Speaker 1: a smile that did not reach her eyes, and the
5:46
Speaker 1: way that smile altered, warmed, trembled, whenever the major happened
5:51
Speaker 1: into her line of sight. And she noted Miss Dorothy Finch,
5:54
Speaker 1: refilling cups, clearing plates, quiet as steam off a teapot,
5:59
Speaker 1: pausing once to look at her employer with an expression
6:02
Speaker 1: Miss Marple could not immediately place. It was not dislike,
6:06
Speaker 1: it was not devotion, it was the look of someone
6:08
Speaker 1: memorising a face. The band had begun the British Grenadiers
6:12
Speaker 1: when Mrs. Venner set down her cup. She said afterwards, no,
6:16
Speaker 1: she said nothing afterwards. What she said at the time
6:19
Speaker 1: was only, Dorothy. She said it quietly, almost inquiringly, as
6:24
Speaker 1: one summons a servant from another room. Then her hand
6:27
Speaker 1: went to her lips. How odd, she said, with the
6:31
Speaker 1: fastidious distaste of a woman finding a floor in a tablecloth.
6:35
Speaker 1: My tongue is quite numb. And she sat down hard
6:38
Speaker 1: upon a folding chair. and the chair went over, and
6:41
Speaker 1: Adela Venner went with it, and the parish hall of St.
6:44
Speaker 1: Mary Mead rose around her like a startled aviary. What
6:48
Speaker 1: followed had the terrible courtesy of village emergencies. Dr. Sandycroft
6:52
Speaker 1: was there in four strides, shouting for space and air
6:55
Speaker 1: and brandy. The vicar herded the children towards the door,
6:59
Speaker 1: with his arms spread like a sheepdog's. Mrs. Pargeter screamed once,
7:03
Speaker 1: and then, recollecting herself, screamed twice more for form's sake.
7:08
Speaker 1: The band stopped on a cracked note. Miss Marple did
7:10
Speaker 1: not rise. She was old, and rising quickly was not
7:14
Speaker 1: among her accomplishments, but her knitting stilled in her lap,
7:18
Speaker 1: and her mild blue eyes went from the fallen woman
7:21
Speaker 1: to the fallen cup, and from the cup to the
7:23
Speaker 1: little silver sifter standing innocent upon its shelf, winking in
7:27
Speaker 1: the lamplight. It was over in twelve minutes. Dr. Sandycroft
7:31
Speaker 1: rose from his knees with his face arranged into the
7:34
Speaker 1: careful blankness doctors keep for such occasions, and drew his
7:38
Speaker 1: handkerchief over Adela Venner's astonished eyes. The heart, murmured Mrs. Pargeter,
7:44
Speaker 1: with the satisfaction of the frequently prophetic. I always said
7:47
Speaker 1: the excitement would be too much. Such a rich diet,
7:50
Speaker 1: and at her time of life. Perhaps, said Miss Marple gently,
7:55
Speaker 1: to no one in particular. The vicar, white-faced, came and
7:59
Speaker 1: stood beside her bench, as the constable's bicycle bell sounded
8:03
Speaker 1: in the lane. A dreadful thing, he said. In the
8:06
Speaker 1: midst of At a fate, Miss Marple. One feels it
8:10
Speaker 1: is somehow an affront, a desecration of— of village life. Village life,
8:16
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, is not so easily desecrated, vicar. It
8:20
Speaker 1: is very much like other life. It has its dark places.
8:24
Speaker 1: One simply keeps them better swept. She rolled her knitting
8:28
Speaker 1: with small, precise movements. She took a great deal of sugar,
8:31
Speaker 1: did she not? Three good measures. I always think that
8:34
Speaker 1: tells one something about a person. The vicar stared at her. I— really,
8:39
Speaker 1: I hardly think sugar can have had anything to do
8:42
Speaker 1: with— No, said Miss Marple placidly. No, I dare say not.
8:47
Speaker 1: And her eyes returned, once, to the little silver sifter,
8:51
Speaker 1: before the constable's shadow fell across the door, and the
8:54
Speaker 1: long afternoon of the first day began to close over St.
8:57
Speaker 1: Mary Mead like the lid of a box. Section 2
9:01
Speaker 1: Gossip at the Greengrocer's The little silver sifter, the punch-bowl,
9:05
Speaker 1: and three inches of ruby dregs went away that evening,
9:09
Speaker 1: in a wicker basket on the carrier's seat of Constable
9:11
Speaker 1: Palk's bicycle, and St Mary Mead, deprived of its evidence,
9:15
Speaker 1: was obliged to make do with its imagination, a commodity
9:19
Speaker 1: of which it had never yet known a shortage. By
9:21
Speaker 1: Sunday morning the village had worn the tragedy smooth with handling,
9:25
Speaker 1: the way one turns a new coin in the pocket.
9:28
Speaker 1: In the pews heads leaned together before the service, and
9:31
Speaker 1: apart again, as the vicar mounted the pulpit, and the vicar,
9:35
Speaker 1: who had chosen his text with agony and changed it
9:38
Speaker 1: three times, preached upon the cup that is put into
9:41
Speaker 1: our hands, and was obliged to notice Mrs. Pargeter nodding
9:46
Speaker 1: at entirely the wrong moments. By Monday the post-office and
9:49
Speaker 1: the greengrocers were doing the trade of a lifetime.' Punt
9:52
Speaker 1: a main,' said Mrs. Pargeter decisively, weighing out bacon as
9:57
Speaker 1: though the scales were the bench of a magistrate. From
10:00
Speaker 1: the trifle. I said so at the time. Custard in
10:03
Speaker 1: this weather is a death-trap, and I told Edith Calthrop
10:06
Speaker 1: as much when I saw the eggs. Foreign eggs, some
10:09
Speaker 1: of them. It was not the trifle, said Miss Bracegirdle,
10:13
Speaker 1: because the Wilkins twins had trifle, and are perfectly well,
10:17
Speaker 1: and greedier children never drew breath. It was the punch.
10:21
Speaker 1: Everyone drank the punch, but she drank it last, and
10:24
Speaker 1: I saw her face, poisoned, if you ask me, by
10:28
Speaker 1: a lunatic. There are more lunatics at large than people suppose.
10:32
Speaker 1: I read it in the paper. Myself, said Mr. Hobbs,
10:35
Speaker 1: the grocer, who was a cautious man, and waited until
10:38
Speaker 1: both ladies had finished. I think it was the heart,
10:41
Speaker 1: same as the doctor said. Only the doctor's said nothing
10:44
Speaker 1: since Saturday, has he? And they've taken the bowl away.
10:48
Speaker 1: And you don't take a bowl away, he concluded, lowering
10:50
Speaker 1: his voice, for a heart. This was felt to be
10:53
Speaker 1: the soundest reasoning yet produced, and it travelled, with improvements,
10:58
Speaker 1: through the village by luncheon. The bowl had been taken away,
11:01
Speaker 1: therefore there was something in the bowl. The something was poison.
11:05
Speaker 1: The poison was meant for Mrs. Venner, and the person
11:08
Speaker 1: who put it there was either the nephew, who had
11:10
Speaker 1: quarrelled with her and inherited, or the vicar's wife, who
11:14
Speaker 1: had quarrelled with her and didn't. or some person unknown
11:17
Speaker 1: with a grudge of whom, everyone agreed, with relish, the
11:21
Speaker 1: late Mrs. Venner had made a considerable number in forty
11:24
Speaker 1: years of chairmanship. She was a remarkable woman, said Mrs. Pargeter,
11:29
Speaker 1: at the mention of grudges, with the piety reserved for
11:32
Speaker 1: the safely dead. She will be very much missed. She will,
11:36
Speaker 1: said Miss Bracegirdle, especially by the people she knew something about.
11:41
Speaker 1: They'll miss her most of all. Relief is a kind
11:44
Speaker 1: of missing. Two figures only stood outside these warm councils,
11:48
Speaker 1: and the village noted them the more sharply for it.
11:51
Speaker 1: Major Venner came down from the hall each morning at
11:53
Speaker 1: eleven for his tobacco. Walking fast, his cap pulled low,
11:57
Speaker 1: returning no greeting, and the postmistress, who had known him
12:01
Speaker 1: in a sailor suit, said it was like watching a
12:03
Speaker 1: man walk through water, and Miss Blythe at the school
12:07
Speaker 1: kept her infants at their letters with a voice so
12:10
Speaker 1: even that the mothers, collecting their children at four, found
12:14
Speaker 1: it more frightening than tears. She never mentions it, said Mrs.
12:18
Speaker 1: Pargeter with regret. You'd think she'd show something. She shows everything,
12:22
Speaker 1: said Miss Bracegirdle. She's gone grey at the temples since Saturday.
12:27
Speaker 1: But some people wear their hearts on their sleeves, and
12:29
Speaker 1: some wear theirs in their faces, and it's the second
12:32
Speaker 1: sort you want to watch. This was generally agreed to
12:35
Speaker 1: be profound, though nobody could afterwards say quite what it meant.
12:39
Speaker 1: Into this mellow atmosphere of surmise there dropped, on Monday afternoon,
12:43
Speaker 1: a fact of the first water. It was brought by Mrs. Hobbs,
12:46
Speaker 1: who had it from her sister, who cooked at the
12:49
Speaker 1: police-house at Muchbenham. The post-mortem had been performed, and the
12:53
Speaker 1: result had been telephoned, and what had been telephoned was
12:56
Speaker 1: not the heart, and was not to main, and was
12:59
Speaker 1: not any ordinary thing at all. A vegetable poison, breathed Mrs. Pargeter,
13:04
Speaker 1: something that grows, in a garden, perhaps. And every lady
13:08
Speaker 1: in the shop looked, in her mind's eye, at her
13:11
Speaker 1: own herbaceous borders and with the pleased horror of a
13:14
Speaker 1: woman who has all along suspected her acquaintances of capabilities.
13:19
Speaker 1: It was at half-past three that Monday that Miss Marple,
13:22
Speaker 1: doing her modest marketing with a string bag and an
13:24
Speaker 1: air of perfect inattention, heard all of this, twice, from
13:28
Speaker 1: both ends of the counter, and bought a quarter of tea,
13:31
Speaker 1: and said nothing, except that the weather was holding beautifully,
13:34
Speaker 1: and that she had always found, in gardens, that the
13:37
Speaker 1: most poisonous things were frequently the prettiest. the aconite, for instance,
13:41
Speaker 1: with its handsome blue hoods, that one planted for ornament
13:45
Speaker 1: and dug up, if one had children or dogs, with
13:47
Speaker 1: such regret. Aconite, said Miss Bracegirdle, sharp as a needle.
13:52
Speaker 1: Is that a poison, then? Oh, yes, said Miss Marple mildly.
13:56
Speaker 1: Monk's hood, they call it, or wolf's bane, the root especially.
14:00
Speaker 1: My uncle the canon would never have it in the garden.
14:03
Speaker 1: There was a case, I believe, in his parish, but
14:06
Speaker 1: no doubt I'm boring you. Nobody was bored. But Miss
14:09
Speaker 1: Marple— with the maddening serenity of the very old, declined
14:13
Speaker 1: to be pressed, paid for her tea, and went out
14:17
Speaker 1: into the sunshine, leaving the greengrocers seething like a pot.
14:21
Speaker 1: She walked home the long way, past the churchyard, where
14:25
Speaker 1: the raw oblong of Adela Venner's coming grave waited between
14:28
Speaker 1: the yews, and past the gates of Danebury Hall, where
14:31
Speaker 1: the blinds were drawn in symmetrical grief. At the gate-lodge
14:35
Speaker 1: she paused, because Miss Dorothy Finch was there, in black already,
14:39
Speaker 1: speaking to the postman with her hands folded and her
14:42
Speaker 1: head a little bowed, the very picture of devoted desolation.
14:46
Speaker 1: The postman touched his cap and cycled on. Miss Finch
14:50
Speaker 1: stood a moment longer, looking after him, not at him,
14:54
Speaker 1: Miss Marple thought, but through him, at some point in
14:57
Speaker 1: the air far beyond the lane, the way one looks
15:00
Speaker 1: down a long corridor. Then she turned and saw Miss Marple,
15:04
Speaker 1: and her face rearranged itself, kindly and blankly, into grief.
15:09
Speaker 1: A sad business, Miss Finch, said Miss Marple. Very sad,
15:13
Speaker 1: said Dorothy. Her voice was low and pleasant, a little flat,
15:17
Speaker 1: like still water. Mrs. Venner was so good to me.
15:21
Speaker 1: I hardly know what I shall do without her. Twelve
15:23
Speaker 1: years is a long time to— to devote oneself to a person.
15:27
Speaker 1: A very long time, agreed Miss Marple. And you were devoted.
15:31
Speaker 1: Everyone says so. Devotion is a rare thing, and not always,
15:35
Speaker 1: I think, a comfortable one. One gives so much of
15:38
Speaker 1: oneself away— She peered, short-sightedly, at the chrysanthemums by the gate.
15:44
Speaker 1: You garden, I believe. These are very fine. A little,
15:47
Speaker 1: said Dorothy. The borders were my care. Mrs. Venner liked
15:51
Speaker 1: them kept old-fashioned. Hollyhocks, flocks, she hesitated, or seemed too
15:56
Speaker 1: aconite even, though I always said it ought to come out. Ah,
16:00
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, the blue monk's hood, pretty but treacherous.
16:04
Speaker 1: You know your plants, I see. One picks things up,
16:08
Speaker 1: said Dorothy Finch, and smiled. and went in through the gates,
16:12
Speaker 1: walking unhurriedly, her hands still folded, and Miss Marple watched
16:16
Speaker 1: her go with the soft, troubled attention of a woman
16:19
Speaker 1: who has dropped a stitch and cannot quite find where.
16:23
Speaker 1: That evening, at half-past six, a mud-splashed car came through
16:27
Speaker 1: the village and turned in at the gates of Danebury Hall,
16:30
Speaker 1: and half of St. Mary Mead, by a coincidence too
16:34
Speaker 1: universal to be innocent, happened to be at its windows.
16:37
Speaker 1: Detective Inspector Slack had arrived to take charge of the case.
16:42
Speaker 1: At her own window, with her knitting and her evening
16:44
Speaker 1: lamp and the little plaid shawl over her shoulders, Miss
16:47
Speaker 1: Marple watched the car's lamps sweep the chestnuts and vanish
16:50
Speaker 1: up the drive. So like a play, she murmured to
16:54
Speaker 1: the empty room. The audience all settled, the curtain just
16:57
Speaker 1: going up. She counted a row, frowning gently, and the
17:01
Speaker 1: needles began again. Act two, said Miss Marple. Section three.
17:07
Speaker 1: The inspector calls. Act Two opened, as Miss Marple had predicted,
17:12
Speaker 1: in the morning room of Danebury Hall, where Detective Inspector
17:16
Speaker 1: Slack sat with his notebook squared before him and the
17:19
Speaker 1: air of a man who has already solved the case
17:22
Speaker 1: in outline and requires only the details to colour it in.
17:26
Speaker 1: He was a hard, energetic officer, with a high colour
17:29
Speaker 1: and a low opinion of villages, which he regarded as
17:33
Speaker 1: towns that had failed. He had the facts from the
17:36
Speaker 1: county men, the post-mortem, the analyst's first report, aconitine, a
17:41
Speaker 1: vegetable alkaloid, rapid and ruthless, tingling of the tongue and lips, numbness,
17:48
Speaker 1: the heart's rhythm faltering into silence. In the dregs of
17:51
Speaker 1: the punch bowl, nothing. In the dregs of the dead
17:54
Speaker 1: woman's cup, enough. The cup, then, or what had gone
17:58
Speaker 1: into the cup? Slack underlined the word cup twice, and
18:02
Speaker 1: sent for the witnesses one by one, like a man
18:05
Speaker 1: dealing cards. Miss Dorothy Finch came first, in her decent black,
18:11
Speaker 1: with her hands folded and her eyes lowered. She had
18:14
Speaker 1: made the punch herself, she said, fruit, wine, brandy, spices,
18:19
Speaker 1: to Mrs. Venner's own recipe, under Mrs. Venner's own eye,
18:23
Speaker 1: in the hall kitchen that morning. She had transported it
18:26
Speaker 1: in the sealed bowl. She had served it all the afternoon. No,
18:31
Speaker 1: no one had tampered with the bowl that she had seen. Yes,
18:35
Speaker 1: Half the village had come and gone around the table. Yes, Mrs.
18:38
Speaker 1: Venner had filled her own cup last, at about twenty
18:41
Speaker 1: past four, and had added sugar from the little sifter,
18:45
Speaker 1: as she always did. Sugar, said Slack, without interest, writing
18:49
Speaker 1: it down. She took a great deal. Three measures. I
18:53
Speaker 1: sometimes thought, Miss Finch paused, with the delicacy of the
18:57
Speaker 1: recently bereaved, I should not say it now. Say it, please,
19:01
Speaker 1: Miss Finch. That she took sweet things, said Dorothy softly.
19:05
Speaker 1: the way she took everything. As her right, she had
19:08
Speaker 1: never in her life, I think, been refused anything. A pause.
19:12
Speaker 1: Except death, said Dorothy Finch. In the end, Slack looked
19:17
Speaker 1: up sharply, but the grey face was mild and empty,
19:20
Speaker 1: and after a moment he wrote eccentric, in the margin,
19:23
Speaker 1: and went on. The sifter, where was it now? It
19:27
Speaker 1: had been taken by the constable, said Dorothy, with the
19:31
Speaker 1: bowl and the cup. She had very nearly washed it first,
19:34
Speaker 1: with the other used things, but the constable had stopped her.
19:38
Speaker 1: I am so used, she said, with a small, sad smile,
19:42
Speaker 1: to clearing up after people. Mrs. Edith Calthrop came next,
19:46
Speaker 1: and was pink and defiant before she had sat down. Yes,
19:49
Speaker 1: she had quarrelled with Mrs. Venner. Everyone quarrelled with Mrs. Venner.
19:54
Speaker 1: It was a form of exercise, like tennis. The fetter counts.
19:58
Speaker 1: Adela had intimated, had dared to intimate, that six pounds
20:02
Speaker 1: of the flower money had gone astray in Edith's keeping,
20:05
Speaker 1: and had promised to raise the matter at the parish council,
20:08
Speaker 1: in public, on Thursday week. And I would have forgiven
20:12
Speaker 1: her the six pounds, said Edith, with a shaking dignity.
20:16
Speaker 1: But she said it in front of the schoolmistress. She
20:19
Speaker 1: said it to diminish me. It was what she lived for, Inspector,
20:22
Speaker 1: diminishing people. You will find that everyone in this room
20:26
Speaker 1: has been diminished by Adela Venner at some time. Ask them.
20:30
Speaker 1: Slack asked Major Hugh Venner third, because he always dealt
20:34
Speaker 1: the ace third. The Major came in tweeds that wanted pressing,
20:38
Speaker 1: with his hands too deep in his pockets. He was,
20:41
Speaker 1: he said, his aunt's heir, and he supposed Slack knew that,
20:45
Speaker 1: and he supposed the whole village had obligingly told Slack
20:48
Speaker 1: the rest, the club, the debts, the little disagreement by
20:52
Speaker 1: the tombola. She was going to change her will, he
20:55
Speaker 1: said bluntly. She told me so. She'd got some notion
20:59
Speaker 1: of leaving the hall to a cat's home, or a
21:01
Speaker 1: cousin in Scotland, or whatever would gall me most. She
21:04
Speaker 1: liked galling people. It kept her young. He lit a
21:08
Speaker 1: cigarette with a hand that was not quite steady. I
21:10
Speaker 1: didn't kill her, Inspector. I was angry enough to, to
21:14
Speaker 1: shout at her, which I did, and half the county
21:17
Speaker 1: heard me. But poison's not my line. Poison's a cold-blooded business.
21:22
Speaker 1: Nothing about Aunt Adela made anyone cold-blooded. It was well said,
21:26
Speaker 1: and Slack, who did not like things well said, noted
21:30
Speaker 1: the hands that were not quite steady, and wrote money, quarrel,
21:34
Speaker 1: opportunity in his private shorthand. and underlined opportunity, because Miss
21:39
Speaker 1: Tilly Bracegirdle had already been to the police house with
21:42
Speaker 1: her testimony. She had seen the Major, at about four o'clock,
21:46
Speaker 1: standing beside the punch table, and she had seen him
21:49
Speaker 1: take up his aunt's cup, I would swear it was hers,
21:52
Speaker 1: it had the gilt rim, and carry it to her
21:55
Speaker 1: across the hall. I carried the old lady's cup because
21:58
Speaker 1: she beckoned me to, said Hugh wearily, when this was
22:02
Speaker 1: put to him. She liked being attended to in public,
22:05
Speaker 1: it was a performance, Inspector, the dutiful nephew. I played
22:08
Speaker 1: my part. I filled it from the bowl she put
22:11
Speaker 1: her own sugar in. She always did. The sifter lived
22:15
Speaker 1: on the shelf. And I handed it over, and twenty
22:18
Speaker 1: minutes later she was dead. If I'd poisoned her, do
22:21
Speaker 1: you think I'd have done it in front of a
22:23
Speaker 1: hundred witnesses with my fingerprints on the china? It was, again,
22:27
Speaker 1: well said. And Slack, closing his notebook, reflected privately that poisoners,
22:33
Speaker 1: in his experience— were always cleverer than their own good,
22:37
Speaker 1: and that the clever ones talked best of all. Dr. Sandycroft,
22:41
Speaker 1: summoned last, gave the medical facts dryly, and added one
22:45
Speaker 1: of his own. A conatine. You'll want to know where
22:48
Speaker 1: a person gets such a thing. I'll save you a journey, Inspector.
22:51
Speaker 1: The herbaceous borders of half the gardens in this parish
22:55
Speaker 1: are full of monkshood, and the hall's borders more than most.
22:58
Speaker 1: It's been there fifty years. The root yields a tincture
23:02
Speaker 1: to anyone with patience and a saucepan. knowledge no rarer
23:05
Speaker 1: than a gardening book. He hesitated. He was an honest man,
23:10
Speaker 1: and honesty sat awkwardly on him. You should know something else.
23:14
Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, when I was new here, there was
23:17
Speaker 1: a death in this parish, a young woman, that was
23:20
Speaker 1: never quite explained. Drowning, we called it, and drowning it was.
23:25
Speaker 1: But there were letters first, anonymous letters, of the kind
23:28
Speaker 1: that villages breed. I never found who wrote them. I
23:31
Speaker 1: had suspicions.' I mention it only because the people concerned
23:36
Speaker 1: are nearly all here still, and because Adela Venner... He stopped. No,
23:41
Speaker 1: he said. I've said too much already, and none of
23:44
Speaker 1: it evidence. Say the rest, Doctor. I'll say this much.
23:48
Speaker 1: Adela collected people the way other women collect china, and
23:51
Speaker 1: she was careless with the shelves. He rose. If you
23:54
Speaker 1: want my professional opinion, Inspector, look for someone who knew
23:57
Speaker 1: her well. Strangers shoot, and burglars bludgeon. Poison is an
24:02
Speaker 1: intimate crime. It's served, like dinner, by someone who knows
24:06
Speaker 1: what you'll eat. Slack dined that night at the Blue Boar,
24:09
Speaker 1: on this and other thoughts, and found they all led
24:12
Speaker 1: one way. The air with debts. The quarrel overheard by
24:15
Speaker 1: a witness of razor-sharp credit. The cup carried across the
24:19
Speaker 1: hall by the air's own hand, in front of a
24:22
Speaker 1: hundred people. Which was either madness, or the cleverness that
24:25
Speaker 1: is cousin to madness. The will. The cat's home. The galling. Motive. Money. Opportunity. proved, means,
24:35
Speaker 1: a parish full of monkshood and a nephew who hunted
24:38
Speaker 1: and shot and knew his estates. It was, he told
24:42
Speaker 1: Sergeant Lake over the cheese, convenient. And it was at
24:45
Speaker 1: that exact word, at that exact moment, across the village
24:49
Speaker 1: in her lamplit drawing-room, that Miss Marple, who had spent
24:52
Speaker 1: the afternoon being told every detail of the morning by
24:55
Speaker 1: three separate visitors, and had listened to all of them
24:58
Speaker 1: with the same gentle wandering attention, put down her knitting
25:02
Speaker 1: and and addressed the empty hearth. Convenient, she repeated softly,
25:06
Speaker 1: tasting the word as though it were something that had
25:08
Speaker 1: been put into her tea. Yes, that is what troubles me,
25:12
Speaker 1: I think. It is also very convenient. And she picked
25:15
Speaker 1: up her needles again, and frowned at her work, for
25:18
Speaker 1: there was a stitch somewhere she had dropped, and until
25:21
Speaker 1: she found it, the pattern would not come right. Section 4.
25:25
Speaker 1: The Obvious Suspect The dropped stitch preyed on Miss Marple's
25:29
Speaker 1: mind all Tuesday morning, and it was still preying on
25:33
Speaker 1: it at eleven o'clock, when Detective Inspector Slack's car drew
25:37
Speaker 1: up outside Danebury Hall for the second time, and this
25:40
Speaker 1: time it did not leave empty. The village knew within
25:43
Speaker 1: the hour. It always did. Mrs. Pargeter's boy, delivering the
25:47
Speaker 1: grocery order, had seen the Major come down the drive
25:50
Speaker 1: in the back of the car with a rug over
25:52
Speaker 1: his knees and his face like a closed door, and
25:55
Speaker 1: by half-past twelve the news was in every kitchen in St.
25:58
Speaker 1: Mary Mead that Hugh Venner had been arrested. or not
26:02
Speaker 1: precisely arrested, said the better informed, but taken to much
26:06
Speaker 1: Benham to assist the police with their inquiries, a phrase
26:09
Speaker 1: the village repeated with the lingering enjoyment of a phrase
26:12
Speaker 1: it intended to use for years. I said it from
26:15
Speaker 1: the first, said Mrs. Pargeter, who had not, the quarrel,
26:18
Speaker 1: at the tombola, in front of everyone. You would ruin
26:21
Speaker 1: us all, Miss Bracegirdle heard it with her own ears,
26:25
Speaker 1: and the will, said Miss Bracegirdle, who had also heard that, second-hand,
26:29
Speaker 1: and had improved it. Twenty thousand pounds, they say, and
26:33
Speaker 1: the hall. He stood at the punch-table at four o'clock.
26:36
Speaker 1: I saw him with my own eyes, holding her cup.
26:39
Speaker 1: The cup, mark you, not a cup, her cup. It
26:43
Speaker 1: does seem, said the vicar unhappily, encountering them both by
26:46
Speaker 1: the lich-gate, very black against him. And yet, I cannot
26:50
Speaker 1: feel it right somehow. One knew him as a boy,
26:53
Speaker 1: a hot-tempered boy, but a poisoner, he shook his head.
26:57
Speaker 1: Poison is so very planned, ladies.' The Major never planned
27:00
Speaker 1: anything in his life. It was his misfortune. The police,
27:04
Speaker 1: said Mrs. Pargeter, with finality, know their business, Vicar. The police,
27:09
Speaker 1: at that moment, were congratulating themselves upon precisely that. Slack
27:14
Speaker 1: had it all in his notebook, tabulated like a grocer's bill. Motive.
27:19
Speaker 1: The inheritance, the debts, the threat of disinheritance, confirmed by
27:23
Speaker 1: the family solicitor, Mr. Harrowby, who had come down from
27:27
Speaker 1: London looking pinched, and had confirmed, with many pained coughs,
27:31
Speaker 1: that Mrs. Venner had instructed him, three weeks previously, to
27:35
Speaker 1: draft a new will cutting out the nephew in favour
27:38
Speaker 1: of a cousin in Scotland. That the draft was unsigned,
27:41
Speaker 1: and that Mrs. Venner had told her nephew of her intention, with,
27:45
Speaker 1: said Mr. Harraby, wincing, characteristic frankness. Opportunity, the cup, carried
27:51
Speaker 1: across the hall by the Major's own hand, with Miss
27:54
Speaker 1: Bracegirdle's testimony like a nail in the coffin. means, the
27:59
Speaker 1: estate ran with monkshood, and the major, as a sporting man,
28:03
Speaker 1: kept a gun-room with a little laboratory of oils and solvents,
28:06
Speaker 1: and had once, said the lodge-keeper, brewed his own sheep-dip.
28:11
Speaker 1: It was a handsome case. It had the beauty, Slack felt,
28:14
Speaker 1: of a thing finished. And yet, Miss Nora Blythe, the school-mistress,
28:20
Speaker 1: had come to the police-house that morning, in a state
28:22
Speaker 1: the sergeant described as hysterical but tidy, and had declared—
28:27
Speaker 1: with her hands clasped so tight the knuckles blanched, that
28:30
Speaker 1: Hugh Venner had done no such thing, and that if
28:33
Speaker 1: they hanged him they would hang an innocent man, and
28:36
Speaker 1: that she, she knew him better than anyone, and knew
28:39
Speaker 1: he was incapable, and here she had broken off in
28:42
Speaker 1: a way that made Slack, who was not a fool
28:44
Speaker 1: about women, look at her with new attention. You know
28:47
Speaker 1: him well, Miss Blythe. Nora Blythe had a thin, ardent face,
28:51
Speaker 1: and the pride of the genteely poor. I have known
28:54
Speaker 1: him since we were children, she said. That is all.
28:57
Speaker 1: It was not all. Slack, making inquiries at the blue
29:01
Speaker 1: boar in his heavy way, learned that it was very
29:03
Speaker 1: far from all, that there had been an understanding, years ago,
29:08
Speaker 1: before the war, that Mrs. Venner had put a stop
29:10
Speaker 1: to it, a schoolmistress's daughter, Hugh? I think not, and
29:16
Speaker 1: that the major had gone abroad, and Nora Blythe had stayed,
29:19
Speaker 1: and taught the infants their letters, and grown a little
29:22
Speaker 1: thinner every year. It was, the barmaid said, ever so sad, really,
29:28
Speaker 1: and everyone had known about it forever. Slack added it
29:31
Speaker 1: to the bill. Old flame. Woman scorned-ish. But which of
29:36
Speaker 1: them resents the old lady more? For a moment the
29:39
Speaker 1: case shimmered. as cases do when they are about to
29:42
Speaker 1: change shape. Then it settled back into its original form,
29:45
Speaker 1: because the analyst's second report came in at tea-time, and
29:48
Speaker 1: it was a beauty. There had been no aconitine in
29:51
Speaker 1: the punch-bowl, none in the ladle, none on the shelf.
29:55
Speaker 1: But on the rim of the dead woman's cup, and
29:57
Speaker 1: in the dregs of it, and, faintly, on the inside
30:01
Speaker 1: of the little silver sugar sifter, in among the sugar crystals,
30:05
Speaker 1: the alkaloid bloomed like a signature. The sugar, said Slack,
30:09
Speaker 1: with enormous satisfaction. Not the punch at all, the sugar.
30:14
Speaker 1: And who filled the sifter, and who put it on
30:16
Speaker 1: the shelf, and who carried the cup that the sugar
30:18
Speaker 1: went into? Find me who touched the sifter, Sergeant, and
30:22
Speaker 1: we've got him. The answer came back before nine o'clock,
30:26
Speaker 1: and it was not entirely the answer he wanted. The
30:28
Speaker 1: sifter had been filled that morning in the hall kitchen
30:31
Speaker 1: by Miss Dorothy Finch. It had stood all afternoon on
30:34
Speaker 1: the public shelf, where anyone might have come and gone,
30:37
Speaker 1: and the cup had been carried, in front of a
30:40
Speaker 1: hundred witnesses, by Major Hugh Venner. It was convenient, Slack
30:44
Speaker 1: told himself again, locking the notebook away. It was all
30:48
Speaker 1: so very convenient. Miss Marple heard all of this on
30:51
Speaker 1: Wednesday morning, from her daily, Rose, who had it from
30:55
Speaker 1: the postman, who had it from the sergeant's young lady,
30:59
Speaker 1: and it lost nothing in the telling. Miss Marple listened,
31:02
Speaker 1: rocking gently, her needles moving, her eyes on the garden
31:06
Speaker 1: where the autumn roses were going over. The sugar sifter,
31:10
Speaker 1: she repeated. Dear me. Yes, that explains the numb tongue.
31:15
Speaker 1: She would taste it in the first sweet sip. How
31:18
Speaker 1: very clever, and how very... I don't quite know the word. Personal,
31:22
Speaker 1: I think, she looked up. Rose, you were in service
31:26
Speaker 1: at the hall once, were you not, as a girl?
31:28
Speaker 1: before Miss Finch's time. Yes, Mum, two years, under old Mrs.
31:32
Speaker 1: Venner's mother, that was. And the sugar sifter, the little
31:36
Speaker 1: silver one, was it in use then? Oh, yes, Mum.
31:39
Speaker 1: It was always her ladyship's own. She wouldn't have the
31:42
Speaker 1: bowl sugar, same as Mrs. Adela. It come down from her,
31:46
Speaker 1: the sifter did, along with the punch recipe and the— the
31:50
Speaker 1: way of doing things. Rose sniffed, half memory, half grievance.
31:55
Speaker 1: Everything come down, at the hall. Nobody ever changed nothing.
32:00
Speaker 1: That's what Mrs. Adela was like, too. We've always done
32:03
Speaker 1: it so, she'd say, if you so much as moved
32:06
Speaker 1: a chair. We've always done it so, Miss Marple repeated softly. Yes,
32:11
Speaker 1: how often that phrase is a comfort, Rose, and how
32:14
Speaker 1: very occasionally, a trap. She smiled her vague, sweet smile.
32:19
Speaker 1: Thank you, that has been most helpful. Rose, who could
32:22
Speaker 1: not see how, went away pleased anyway. and Miss Marple
32:26
Speaker 1: sat on in her rocking-chair, not knitting now, looking at
32:29
Speaker 1: nothing with her mild blue eyes. Miss Bracegirdle saw the
32:33
Speaker 1: Major with the cup, she murmured at last, to the
32:35
Speaker 1: empty room. Miss Bracegirdle sees everything, and that, I think,
32:40
Speaker 1: is what is wrong with it. And she sighed, and
32:43
Speaker 1: took up her knitting, and turned the heel of her
32:46
Speaker 1: sock with the air of a woman who has at
32:48
Speaker 1: last located the dropped stitch, and finds it is not
32:52
Speaker 1: where anyone thought to look. Section 5 The Dropped Stitch
32:56
Speaker 1: Miss Bracegirdle's testimony had troubled Miss Marple from the first,
33:00
Speaker 1: though she would have been hard put to say why,
33:03
Speaker 1: until that Wednesday afternoon, when she encountered Miss Bracegirdle herself,
33:07
Speaker 1: by apparent accident, at the Church Flower Rotor, arranging chrysanthemums
33:12
Speaker 1: in the two great altar vases, with the ferocity of
33:15
Speaker 1: a general disposing troops. They wanted Michaelmas daisies, said Miss Bracegirdle,
33:21
Speaker 1: by way of greeting, but I said no, Poor Adela
33:24
Speaker 1: would have wanted chrysanthemums. She always said they were the
33:27
Speaker 1: only honest flower, the last of the year, and no
33:30
Speaker 1: pretense about them. She stepped back to judge the effect.
33:34
Speaker 1: It is I who must do the vases now, I suppose.
33:37
Speaker 1: There's no one else. Twelve years that Finchwoman was at
33:40
Speaker 1: the hall and never once offered for the rota. Too
33:43
Speaker 1: busy waiting on her mistress, hand and foot. Well, it's
33:47
Speaker 1: a queer household that wants a maid of all work
33:49
Speaker 1: to do the loving. You saw the whole of it,
33:52
Speaker 1: I hear. said Miss Marple mildly, snipping a stem. At
33:56
Speaker 1: the FET, the Cup, and the Major, they say your
33:59
Speaker 1: evidence has been of the utmost value. I see what
34:02
Speaker 1: there is to see, said Miss Bracegirdle, with the complacence
34:05
Speaker 1: of the professional witness. I've always had the knack. I
34:09
Speaker 1: was near the stage with my plate, I'd had the ham,
34:12
Speaker 1: and I looked across, and there he was, large as life,
34:16
Speaker 1: taking up the gilt-rimmed cup off the table by the punch-bowl,
34:19
Speaker 1: and I said to myself, that's Mrs. Venner's cup, for
34:22
Speaker 1: she never uses any other. Dear me, said Miss Marple,
34:26
Speaker 1: from across the hall, how remarkable. The gilt rim is
34:30
Speaker 1: really quite a subtle thing. I had thought, but no,
34:34
Speaker 1: you have young eyes, she paused, her scissors still. You
34:37
Speaker 1: were by the stage, you say, with the ham, just so,
34:42
Speaker 1: and the punch table was by the door, and between
34:44
Speaker 1: the two, let me think, was the produce stall, the marrows,
34:49
Speaker 1: and the tombola crowd, and the band. Miss Marple's voice
34:53
Speaker 1: had the wandering sweetness of a woman doing arithmetic she
34:56
Speaker 1: expects to get wrong. Perhaps forty feet and a hundred
35:00
Speaker 1: people between, all moving, and the cup held down at
35:03
Speaker 1: his side, as a man carries a cup he means
35:06
Speaker 1: to fill, and yet you saw the gilt rim and
35:09
Speaker 1: knew it for hers. She looked up, and for a
35:13
Speaker 1: moment her eyes were not vague at all. You are
35:15
Speaker 1: quite sure, Miss Bracegirdle, that what you saw was not
35:18
Speaker 1: the cup, but what you expected the cup to be.
35:22
Speaker 1: There was a silence in the chilly church, among the
35:24
Speaker 1: bronze flowers. I know what I saw, said Miss Bracegirdle
35:28
Speaker 1: at last, but a dull colour had come up in
35:31
Speaker 1: her thin cheeks, and her hands, for the first time
35:34
Speaker 1: in the memory of the flower rota, were not quite
35:37
Speaker 1: steady on the stems. Of course, said Miss Marple gently.
35:41
Speaker 1: We all do. It is the most dangerous knowledge in
35:44
Speaker 1: the world. She took up her basket. The chrysanthemums are lovely.
35:48
Speaker 1: The last of the year, as you say. but they
35:51
Speaker 1: hold their colour to the end, do they not, long
35:54
Speaker 1: after the leaves have given up? One must admire that
35:57
Speaker 1: in a flower, or in a person, the ones that
36:00
Speaker 1: will not let go. She went out into the churchyard,
36:03
Speaker 1: leaving Miss Bracegirdle staring at the vases as though they
36:06
Speaker 1: had spoken to her. The dropped stitch, Miss Marple reflected,
36:11
Speaker 1: walking home under the yews, had been exactly there. Everyone
36:15
Speaker 1: drank the punch and lived. Mrs. Venner drank the punch
36:18
Speaker 1: with her sugar from her sifter. and died, so the
36:22
Speaker 1: poison had waited for her in the sugar, had been
36:24
Speaker 1: waiting perhaps all through the sunny afternoon, on the public shelf,
36:29
Speaker 1: for the one person in the hall who would certainly, inevitably,
36:33
Speaker 1: use it. Not the nephew's cup at all, the sifter,
36:37
Speaker 1: and the major, poor hot-headed fool, had been no more
36:40
Speaker 1: than the railway train that carries the parcel, chosen because
36:44
Speaker 1: he was certain, on that afternoon of all afternoons, to
36:47
Speaker 1: be sent across the hall with her cup. Miss Bracegirdle
36:50
Speaker 1: had seen the gilt rim because she knew it must
36:52
Speaker 1: be there. The murderer had counted on exactly such knowing eyes.
36:57
Speaker 1: A poison that waits, Miss Marple thought, is a poison
37:00
Speaker 1: for one person only, and a poison for one person
37:03
Speaker 1: only is not hatred of the world. It is, what
37:07
Speaker 1: did she say, devotion that gives so much of oneself away.
37:11
Speaker 1: She stood a moment at her gate, looking up the
37:13
Speaker 1: lane towards the hall, where the blinds were still drawn.
37:17
Speaker 1: The motif of it all was sugar, she decided with
37:20
Speaker 1: gentle grimness, shaking out her thoughts the way one shakes
37:23
Speaker 1: out a cloth. Sweetness laid over bitterness. Three heaped measures,
37:28
Speaker 1: every day for twelve years. At my age one takes
37:32
Speaker 1: one's sweetness where one finds it, and someone, listening year
37:35
Speaker 1: after year, had finally agreed with her. She had scarcely
37:39
Speaker 1: reached her fire when Rose came in with the tea
37:42
Speaker 1: and the evening's news, both piping hot, there was to
37:45
Speaker 1: be a development. The solicitor, Mr. Harabee, had gone to
37:49
Speaker 1: the police with a paper found in Mrs. Venner's desk,
37:52
Speaker 1: not the new will, which was unsigned and void, but
37:56
Speaker 1: a letter, in Mrs. Venner's hand, addressed to the Chief Constable,
38:00
Speaker 1: and marked, to be opened in the event of my
38:02
Speaker 1: death by other than natural causes. Well, said Miss Marple,
38:07
Speaker 1: setting down her cup, poor soul, she knew, or she feared,
38:12
Speaker 1: she must have lived a long time, I think, with
38:14
Speaker 1: her back to a door. She was silent a moment, rocking.
38:18
Speaker 1: And does anyone know, Rose, what the letter said? The
38:20
Speaker 1: sergeant's young lady says as how it names someone, Mum,
38:24
Speaker 1: names the person Mrs. Venner was afraid of. And it isn't,
38:28
Speaker 1: said Rose, with the air of one delivering the punchline
38:31
Speaker 1: of a joke, who everybody thinks. Miss Marple was quiet
38:34
Speaker 1: for some time after Rose had gone. The letter did
38:37
Speaker 1: not surprise her. Adela, she thought, would have enjoyed such
38:41
Speaker 1: a letter. One last audience, captive beyond the grave. What
38:45
Speaker 1: surprised her was that the name should be thought worth
38:47
Speaker 1: telephoning about. Anyone who had watched Nora Blythe for twenty
38:51
Speaker 1: years knew that a hatred of that size and that
38:54
Speaker 1: age had long ago burned down to something steady and cold,
38:58
Speaker 1: like the heart of an old fire, and old fires
39:01
Speaker 1: do not flare up to order on a sunny Saturday
39:04
Speaker 1: in September. She took her walk that evening past the school.
39:08
Speaker 1: The windows were lit. Miss Blythe was working late, or
39:11
Speaker 1: pretending to, with the straight back and bent head of
39:14
Speaker 1: a woman who knows the village is watching her windows.
39:17
Speaker 1: As Miss Marple passed, the schoolmistress came out to empty
39:20
Speaker 1: the teapot on the flowerbed, and the two women looked
39:23
Speaker 1: at one another across the low wall. A sad business,
39:26
Speaker 1: Miss Blythe, said Miss Marple. They say it was poisoned.
39:30
Speaker 1: said Nora. Her voice was quite steady.' They say someone
39:33
Speaker 1: meant it. Yes, they say so.'' Then I am sorry
39:37
Speaker 1: for them both,' said Nora Blythe.' For her, because she
39:41
Speaker 1: is dead. And for whoever it was, because they must
39:44
Speaker 1: have been made to drink something very bitter themselves, a
39:47
Speaker 1: long time ago.' before they could pour it for another.
39:50
Speaker 1: She stood a moment with the empty teapot in her hand,
39:53
Speaker 1: grey at the temples, upright as a candle. Good night,
39:57
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. Miss Marple went home slowly. They must have
40:01
Speaker 1: been made to drink something very bitter themselves, a long
40:04
Speaker 1: time ago. It was, she thought, the most Christian thing
40:08
Speaker 1: said in the parish that week, and the truest, and
40:11
Speaker 1: it was not until she was taking off her hat
40:13
Speaker 1: before the glass that she saw where it led, and
40:16
Speaker 1: stood quite still. and met her own eyes in the
40:19
Speaker 1: mirror with something very like sorrow. All day Sunday the
40:23
Speaker 1: name in the letter, it had leaked, as names do,
40:26
Speaker 1: by way of the sergeant's young lady's aunt, had the
40:28
Speaker 1: parish to itself. It was read out in kitchens and
40:32
Speaker 1: repeated over garden walls. It was felt to be very
40:35
Speaker 1: nearly a message from beyond the grave, which in a
40:37
Speaker 1: manner it was, and the more pious ladies lowered their
40:40
Speaker 1: voices when they spoke of it. The major's name was
40:43
Speaker 1: pronounced cleared by the same mouths that had condemned him,
40:47
Speaker 1: which is a village's way of apologising without the inconvenience
40:50
Speaker 1: of meaning it. Only Miss Marple, hearing the letter's one
40:54
Speaker 1: cold paragraph repeated at her own gate, said, to the postman,
40:58
Speaker 1: of all people, that it was a very characteristic letter,
41:01
Speaker 1: and that poor Adela had never in her life been
41:03
Speaker 1: able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, when the
41:06
Speaker 1: handsaw was polite. Section 6. What the Desk Gave Up
41:11
Speaker 1: The sergeant's young lady had it nearly right, as sergeant's
41:14
Speaker 1: young ladies so often do, The letter found in Adela
41:17
Speaker 1: Venner's desk did name someone, but before St Mary Mead
41:21
Speaker 1: could learn the name, it had first to learn everything else.
41:24
Speaker 1: For Mr Harraby's discoveries in that rosewood desk came out
41:28
Speaker 1: the way village truths always come out, not whole, but
41:32
Speaker 1: in pieces, like a jug broken on a scullery floor,
41:36
Speaker 1: each piece cutting somebody different. The first piece was the will,
41:41
Speaker 1: the draft three weeks old, unsigned, cut out the nephew
41:44
Speaker 1: in favour of the Scottish cousin. that the village had guessed.
41:48
Speaker 1: What it had not guessed was the seventh clause, which Mr. Harraby,
41:52
Speaker 1: in an agony of professional discretion, read aloud to Inspector
41:56
Speaker 1: Slack in the morning room, while outside the windows the
41:59
Speaker 1: hall's autumn boarders nodded in the wind. To my companion,
42:03
Speaker 1: Dorothy Finch, read Harraby, who has attended me for twelve years,
42:08
Speaker 1: I leave my sincere thanks, knowing that she, more than anyone,
42:12
Speaker 1: will understand that I could not insult our friendship with money.
42:16
Speaker 1: he laid the paper down. The will of four years ago,
42:19
Speaker 1: which this was to replace, left Miss Finch the gate
42:22
Speaker 1: lodge and an annuity of two hundred pounds. She was
42:26
Speaker 1: told of the change. My client informed her of it herself.
42:30
Speaker 1: She told me so. In, I gather, some spirit of amusement. Amusement,
42:36
Speaker 1: Slack repeated. My client, said Harrowby carefully, was amused by
42:40
Speaker 1: many things that other people found painful. It was her
42:43
Speaker 1: most marked characteristic— and in my professional opinion, the one
42:47
Speaker 1: most likely to shorten her life. The second piece was
42:50
Speaker 1: the six pounds. It was confessed by Mrs. Edith Calthrop
42:54
Speaker 1: to her husband in the vicarage study on the Thursday evening,
42:57
Speaker 1: and overheard by the vicarage maid, and known in the
43:00
Speaker 1: village by Friday breakfast, as everything in the vicarage study
43:03
Speaker 1: always was. Edith had not stolen it. She had lent it,
43:08
Speaker 1: from the flower fund, meaning to replace it, to her
43:11
Speaker 1: brother in Folkestone, whose business had failed and whose wife
43:14
Speaker 1: was ill. and of whom the village knew nothing because
43:17
Speaker 1: Edith was ashamed of him. I would have put it
43:20
Speaker 1: back before the audit, she said, weeping to the vicar.
43:24
Speaker 1: But she knew Septimus. She'd known for weeks. She kept
43:27
Speaker 1: it like a treat. She was saving it for the
43:29
Speaker 1: parish council, in front of everyone. That was the pleasure
43:33
Speaker 1: of it, don't you see? Not the money. The moment.
43:36
Speaker 1: The vicar, who had married Edith for better or worse,
43:39
Speaker 1: and had lately been shown how much worse there was
43:41
Speaker 1: to weather, held her hands and said what he could.
43:45
Speaker 1: Afterwards he went out and walked up and down the
43:47
Speaker 1: vicarage lawn for a long time, and the village, watching
43:50
Speaker 1: from its windows, mistook his trouble, and whispered that the
43:54
Speaker 1: vicar himself looked queer, and no wonder, with a wife
43:57
Speaker 1: who had dipped into the fund, and a parishioner poisoned
44:01
Speaker 1: at his own fet. The third piece was the oldest,
44:04
Speaker 1: and it was Miss Marple who drew it out, as
44:06
Speaker 1: gently as one draws a splinter. She had called on Dr.
44:09
Speaker 1: Sandycroft on Friday morning. A little dizziness, she said. Nothing, really.
44:14
Speaker 1: At her age one expected no more, and when the
44:17
Speaker 1: surgery talk was done, she sat a moment longer, her
44:20
Speaker 1: hands folded on her bag, and said, You said something
44:24
Speaker 1: to the inspector, I believe, Henry, about a death, twenty
44:27
Speaker 1: years ago, a drowning, and letters. Sandycroft looked at her
44:32
Speaker 1: for a long moment. Nothing escapes this village, he said.
44:36
Speaker 1: One might as well hold a service. One does, said
44:39
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. Every day, in every kitchen, the congregation is
44:43
Speaker 1: very attentive. She waited, with the patience that had outwaited
44:47
Speaker 1: seventy years of silences. Ellen Marsh, he said at last.
44:52
Speaker 1: Parlor maid at the hall, under old Mrs. Venner, Adela's mother,
44:56
Speaker 1: a pretty girl, quick, full of life. The letters began
45:00
Speaker 1: in the spring of that year. She was a thief,
45:02
Speaker 1: they said. She was no better than she should be.
45:05
Speaker 1: She had been seen, all the usual filth, typed, posted
45:09
Speaker 1: in London, and copies sent to her employer, her young
45:13
Speaker 1: man's family, the vicar of the day. Old Mrs. Venner
45:16
Speaker 1: dismissed her without a reference, which was a death sentence
45:20
Speaker 1: of its own kind, and a fortnight later they found
45:23
Speaker 1: her in the mill-pond. The inquest said misadventure. The village said, well,
45:30
Speaker 1: the village had read the letters, hadn't it? The letters
45:32
Speaker 1: had made her drowning almost respectable. That sort of girl,
45:36
Speaker 1: the village said, and put its lips together. He got
45:40
Speaker 1: up and stood at the window. I was new here.
45:43
Speaker 1: I attended her. There was no child, whatever the letters said.
45:47
Speaker 1: There was no theft, only a brooch of the old
45:50
Speaker 1: ladies that turned up a month later behind a drawer.
45:54
Speaker 1: And I formed a view about who wrote those letters,
45:56
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. A person who knew the household's affairs to
45:59
Speaker 1: the hour, who typed, who posted in London, which the
46:03
Speaker 1: Venners visited every spring, who collected other people's pain the
46:07
Speaker 1: way another woman collects teaspoons. I never had a shred
46:11
Speaker 1: of proof. I have never spoken of it until this minute.
46:14
Speaker 1: You believed, said Miss Marple, that it was Adela. I believed,
46:19
Speaker 1: said Sandy Croft, that she watched that girl drown the
46:22
Speaker 1: way she'd watch a play she'd written herself. And I
46:24
Speaker 1: have doctored this parish for twenty years with that belief
46:27
Speaker 1: locked in my chest. Because a belief is not evidence,
46:31
Speaker 1: and a doctor is not a judge. He turned round.
46:35
Speaker 1: Why do you ask me this now? Because, said Miss Marple,
46:38
Speaker 1: rising slowly, a debt like that does not die, Henry.
46:42
Speaker 1: It only waits to be collected. Twenty years is nothing
46:46
Speaker 1: to grief. Grief is the most patient thing in the world.
46:49
Speaker 1: More patient even than me. She pinned her hat before
46:53
Speaker 1: the glass. Ellen Marsh. Had she family? Do you remember?
46:57
Speaker 1: A mother? Brothers? A widowed mother in Kent, I think.
47:01
Speaker 1: And a sister, older by some years. I never saw
47:05
Speaker 1: the sister. She was in service somewhere down south, I believe.
47:08
Speaker 1: She came for the inquest. A quiet creature, grey even then,
47:12
Speaker 1: sat at the back, and nobody spoke to her. She
47:15
Speaker 1: took the mother's address for the effects. I remember thinking...
47:19
Speaker 1: He stopped. Yes? I remember thinking she looked at the
47:22
Speaker 1: Venner pew all through the proceedings. Never at the coroner.
47:26
Speaker 1: Never at the coffin. At the Venner pew. The way...
47:29
Speaker 1: He shook his head, angry at himself. Twenty years, Miss Marple.
47:34
Speaker 1: I don't trust memory that far. Memory, said Miss Marple softly,
47:39
Speaker 1: fastening her coat, is like sugar, Henry. It sweetens what
47:42
Speaker 1: it touches. but only on the top of the cup. Underneath,
47:46
Speaker 1: everything keeps its own taste. Thank you. The dizziness is
47:50
Speaker 1: quite gone. She walked home through the village in the
47:53
Speaker 1: thin autumn sun, past the post office and the church
47:57
Speaker 1: and the drawn blinds of Danebury Hall, and her face,
48:00
Speaker 1: had anyone troubled to read it, was not vague at all,
48:04
Speaker 1: but very sad and very old, like the face of
48:07
Speaker 1: someone who has just turned over the last page of
48:10
Speaker 1: a book and found the ending worse than she feared.
48:13
Speaker 1: That evening Inspector Slack received the laboratory's confirmation and Mr.
48:18
Speaker 1: Harraby's sworn statement, and he sat for a long while
48:22
Speaker 1: over his notebook at the Blue Boar, and at half-past
48:25
Speaker 1: eight the letter from the Rosewood desk, Adela Venner's last
48:29
Speaker 1: testament to posterity, addressed to the Chief Constable in her bold, cruel,
48:33
Speaker 1: upright hand, was opened at County Headquarters, and its single
48:37
Speaker 1: paragraph was read aloud, and telephoned through to Much Benham,
48:41
Speaker 1: and repeated by the sergeant to the sergeant's young lady,
48:44
Speaker 1: and was in the village by Sunday. If I have
48:47
Speaker 1: died by violence, look first to Nora Blythe, the schoolmistress.
48:51
Speaker 1: She has hated me for twenty years with good reason,
48:54
Speaker 1: and she has lately told me to my face that
48:56
Speaker 1: I should be paid in my own coin. I know
48:58
Speaker 1: what she is capable of. Perhaps, by the time this
49:01
Speaker 1: is read, so shall I. SECTION VII. THE SECOND ARREST
49:07
Speaker 1: Nora Blythe was taken to Muchbenham on the Monday morning.
49:10
Speaker 1: in the interval between school assembly and first lesson, which
49:13
Speaker 1: was the kindest hour the police could manage, and still, somehow,
49:17
Speaker 1: the most public one in the entire week. Half the
49:20
Speaker 1: village's children saw her go, white as paper, very upright,
49:25
Speaker 1: between Constable Palk and a policewoman from the county, and
49:28
Speaker 1: the other half were told about it at dinner-time by
49:30
Speaker 1: the first, in the dreadful detail of the very young.
49:34
Speaker 1: She told her to her face, said Mrs. Pargeter, wrapped
49:37
Speaker 1: in the letter's language like a new fur. Paid in
49:40
Speaker 1: her own coin, those were the very words, and poor Mrs.
49:44
Speaker 1: Venner wrote them down in her own hand and sealed
49:46
Speaker 1: them up, knowing, knowing, mark you, what was coming to her.
49:51
Speaker 1: It's the bravest thing I ever heard. She went to
49:53
Speaker 1: her death with her eyes open. She went to her
49:56
Speaker 1: death with her mouth open, said Mr. Hobbs unexpectedly. Same
49:59
Speaker 1: as all of us. That's not bravery. That's not knowing
50:03
Speaker 1: when to stop. And he retired behind his bacon slicer,
50:06
Speaker 1: leaving the shop in the delicious shock of having been
50:08
Speaker 1: spoken to by him at all. The case against the schoolmistress,
50:12
Speaker 1: as it unfolded at Muchbenham, had a dark completeness that
50:16
Speaker 1: even Slack, who had been so sure of the nephew
50:19
Speaker 1: a week before, found impressive. Motive, twenty years of hatred,
50:24
Speaker 1: confessed now by Nora herself, who did not deny it.
50:27
Speaker 1: She sat in the interview room with her hands folded
50:30
Speaker 1: and her head up and said, Yes, I hated her.
50:33
Speaker 1: I have hated her since I was seventeen. If hatred
50:36
Speaker 1: killed Inspector, she would have been dead two decades ago.
50:40
Speaker 1: and there would have been no need of aconite. The
50:42
Speaker 1: confrontation admitted. Three weeks before the fete, she had gone
50:47
Speaker 1: to the hall, about the school grant, which Mrs. Venner's
50:50
Speaker 1: committee had cut, and there had been words. And at
50:53
Speaker 1: the end of the words, Nora had said the thing
50:56
Speaker 1: she had waited twenty years to say. I told her
50:59
Speaker 1: I knew about Ellen Marsh. I told her that a
51:02
Speaker 1: woman who had written those letters would one day be
51:04
Speaker 1: paid in her own coin. I meant that God would
51:07
Speaker 1: pay her. A pause. I find he has employed someone instead,
51:12
Speaker 1: and the means— It came out at the inquest's resumed hearing,
51:16
Speaker 1: offered in a small, reluctant voice by Miss Dorothy Finch,
51:20
Speaker 1: who apologised twice before giving it, that in September, when
51:24
Speaker 1: she had been cutting back the hall borders for winter,
51:27
Speaker 1: she had found Miss Blythe standing by the monkshood bed
51:29
Speaker 1: in the walled garden, quite late one evening, and she
51:32
Speaker 1: asked me, Inspector, I never thought anything of it at
51:36
Speaker 1: the time, indeed I did not— She asked me whether
51:39
Speaker 1: it was true that the root was the dangerous part,
51:42
Speaker 1: and whether a little would really be enough. I thought
51:45
Speaker 1: it was for the school. Nature study, I thought. Children
51:48
Speaker 1: ask such things, and a teacher likes to be sure.
51:52
Speaker 1: And you never mentioned this before, Miss Finch. I never
51:55
Speaker 1: dreamed it could matter, said Dorothy, folding her hands. One
51:58
Speaker 1: hates to say a thing that points at a person.
52:01
Speaker 1: I have been pointed at myself, in my time. It
52:04
Speaker 1: is not pleasant. And she cast down her eyes. the
52:07
Speaker 1: very image of Christian forbearance, and nobody in the room
52:11
Speaker 1: noticed that it was her evidence, only hers, that now
52:14
Speaker 1: closed the last gap around Nora Blythe. The effect on
52:18
Speaker 1: the village was conversion on the scale of a revival meeting.
52:22
Speaker 1: The Major was let out on the Tuesday, his bail
52:24
Speaker 1: a formality, his case, as Mr Hobbs put it, gone
52:28
Speaker 1: all to sugar and water, and Hugh Venner came home
52:31
Speaker 1: through the village in a hired car, and did not
52:33
Speaker 1: look to left or right, and went up to the
52:36
Speaker 1: hall and shut the door, and was not seen for
52:38
Speaker 1: two days. On the third day he walked down to
52:41
Speaker 1: the police house, and asked, formally and in writing, to
52:45
Speaker 1: be told what he could do for Miss Blythe's defence,
52:48
Speaker 1: and the sergeant, who was a romantic, repeated this everywhere,
52:52
Speaker 1: and the village, which had lynched him with its tongues
52:55
Speaker 1: a fortnight earlier, found the gesture so handsome that it
52:59
Speaker 1: forgave him everything, including the debts. Through it all Miss
53:03
Speaker 1: Marple knitted. She attended the resumed inquest, sitting at the
53:06
Speaker 1: back with her bag on her knee, and she heard
53:09
Speaker 1: Dorothy Finch's evidence about the monkshood bed, and her needles
53:13
Speaker 1: never missed a stitch. She called on Edith Calthrop afterwards,
53:17
Speaker 1: and admired the vicarage chrysanthemums, and said nothing about the
53:20
Speaker 1: six pounds, which Edith never forgot. She took a little
53:24
Speaker 1: walk each afternoon, and her walks had a way of
53:27
Speaker 1: ending near the school, or the hall gates, or the
53:30
Speaker 1: mill pond, a green, quiet place under willows, where she
53:34
Speaker 1: stood once for a long time looking at the water.
53:37
Speaker 1: It was at the mill-pond, on the Thursday, that Dr.
53:40
Speaker 1: Sandycroft found her. You shouldn't be out in this wind,
53:43
Speaker 1: he said. No, said Miss Marple, but I wanted to
53:46
Speaker 1: see where she died. Ellen Marsh. It helps me to
53:50
Speaker 1: see the places. People think a place is only a place,
53:53
Speaker 1: but it isn't, Henry. It's where the pattern shows. She
53:57
Speaker 1: drew her shawl closer. Nora Blythe did not kill Adela Venner.
54:01
Speaker 1: Sandycroft looked at her. The letter. The letter, said Miss Marple,
54:05
Speaker 1: is the saddest thing in this whole sad business. Adela
54:09
Speaker 1: sat at her desk and wrote down the name of
54:11
Speaker 1: the person she feared, and sealed it, and felt safe,
54:15
Speaker 1: and she was looking the wrong way entirely. She had
54:18
Speaker 1: an enemy of twenty years standing who told her the
54:21
Speaker 1: truth to her face, and she had someone else who
54:25
Speaker 1: never told her the truth at all. Adela knew everything
54:28
Speaker 1: about everybody, they said. She knew nothing about the one
54:31
Speaker 1: person who mattered. Isn't that always the way? The people
54:35
Speaker 1: who make a hobby of others' secrets are invariably blind
54:38
Speaker 1: to the one under their own roof. I've seen it
54:41
Speaker 1: so often. There was Mrs. Harbottle's butler. But no. She
54:45
Speaker 1: turned from the water. Tell me, Henry. The sifter. The
54:49
Speaker 1: little silver one. When the poison was in the sugar,
54:52
Speaker 1: would she have tasted it at once, in the first sip?
54:55
Speaker 1: Within a minute, tingling, then numbness. She said her tongue
54:59
Speaker 1: was numb. Palk's notes have it. And yet— said Miss Marple,
55:03
Speaker 1: she drank twice. She tasted the bitterness and remarked upon it,
55:08
Speaker 1: a bitter finish, like most things in life, and drank again,
55:12
Speaker 1: because it was in sugar, Henry, in sweetness. She could
55:15
Speaker 1: not believe that anything served to her sweetly could be
55:18
Speaker 1: meant to kill her. That was the whole of her
55:21
Speaker 1: life in one gesture. She sighed. And the whole of
55:25
Speaker 1: someone else's life, too. The person who put it there
55:28
Speaker 1: knew she would drink it to the dregs rather than
55:31
Speaker 1: admit the sweetness had turned against her. Twenty years in
55:34
Speaker 1: this parish, and I have never met a crueler understanding
55:37
Speaker 1: of another human being. You know, said Sandy Croft slowly,
55:41
Speaker 1: who it is. I think, said Miss Marple, that I
55:45
Speaker 1: have always known, since the fete, since I watched a
55:48
Speaker 1: woman's face while her employer drank. But thinking is not proving,
55:53
Speaker 1: and I am an old woman with a fondness for parallels,
55:56
Speaker 1: and the law requires more than parallels. She looked up
55:59
Speaker 1: at him, and her eyes were very blue and very clear.
56:03
Speaker 1: So I shall have to make her show me a
56:05
Speaker 1: little test, Henry. The sort Adela herself would have enjoyed,
56:09
Speaker 1: which is the justice of it, I suppose, though I
56:11
Speaker 1: take no pleasure in it, none at all. The wind
56:15
Speaker 1: moved in the willows, and below them the mill-pond gave
56:18
Speaker 1: back the grey sky, unrippled, holding its twenty-year secret as
56:22
Speaker 1: still water holds everything. Section 8 Miss Marple's Test The
56:27
Speaker 1: test was arranged for Friday afternoon, in the drawing-room at
56:31
Speaker 1: Danebury Hall, and it looked to all the world like
56:34
Speaker 1: nothing but an old lady's condolence call. Miss Marple came
56:37
Speaker 1: up the drive on the vicar's wife's arm. Edith had
56:40
Speaker 1: insisted for the exercise, with a jar of bramble jelly
56:44
Speaker 1: and a card of Berlin woolwork as a present for
56:46
Speaker 1: Miss Finch, since one must take something to the bereaved,
56:50
Speaker 1: and Dorothy is, I suppose, the most bereaved of anyone.
56:54
Speaker 1: The hall was in its winding-up state, trunks in the hall,
56:58
Speaker 1: Holland covers going over the furniture, the solicitor's clerk in
57:01
Speaker 1: the morning room with his lists. Dorothy Finch received them
57:05
Speaker 1: in the drawing room in her black, composed and grateful,
57:08
Speaker 1: pouring tea with the same quiet efficiency with which she
57:12
Speaker 1: had once poured everything else. The room wore its usual
57:15
Speaker 1: look of patient tidiness, but the shelves had begun to empty,
57:19
Speaker 1: the crown derby gone from the whatnot, the photograph frames
57:23
Speaker 1: standing bare as little gallows. Only one frame remained upon
57:27
Speaker 1: the mantle, a studio portrait of old Mrs. Venner, severe
57:31
Speaker 1: in jet, and beneath it, on the tray where the
57:34
Speaker 1: visiting cards had lived, lay a single fresh chrysanthemum, as
57:38
Speaker 1: though someone had set down the last offering of the
57:41
Speaker 1: year and forgotten to say for whom. Miss Marple's eyes
57:45
Speaker 1: rested on it for a moment and passed on and
57:47
Speaker 1: missed nothing. You'll be leaving us soon, I expect, said
57:51
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, settling her bag. The hall will go to
57:54
Speaker 1: the cousin in Scotland, I hear. Once the— The difficulties
57:58
Speaker 1: are resolved. A sad flitting. Where shall you go, my dear?
58:02
Speaker 1: I hardly know, said Dorothy. Somewhere small. I have a
58:06
Speaker 1: little saved. Twelve years in one place. One grows into it,
58:10
Speaker 1: like ivy. It's hard to be pulled off the wall. Ivy,
58:14
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, nodding, is so very tenacious. And it
58:18
Speaker 1: outlives the wall sometimes. You've heard the news, I dare say.
58:22
Speaker 1: about poor Nora. The inspector called this morning, Edith tells me,
58:27
Speaker 1: quite elated. They've had a development. Dorothy's hands were steady
58:31
Speaker 1: on the teapot. A development? The analyst, said Miss Marple,
58:36
Speaker 1: has been at the dregs again. Such clever men they
58:39
Speaker 1: are nowadays. It seems the poison was in the punch-bowl
58:42
Speaker 1: after all. Sunk to the bottom, you know, in the sediment,
58:46
Speaker 1: so that only the last cupful held it. The cup
58:49
Speaker 1: the Major carried. Or, well, Now they think it proves
58:53
Speaker 1: it could have been meant for anyone. A madman's work,
58:56
Speaker 1: the inspector says. Anyone who drank last might have died.
59:00
Speaker 1: Poor Adela was simply unlucky. She took her cup and
59:04
Speaker 1: watched the room over the rim of it with her mild,
59:06
Speaker 1: wandering gaze. There was a little silence. Edith Calthrop opened
59:10
Speaker 1: her mouth to speak of the wickedness of madmen, and
59:13
Speaker 1: got no further, because Dorothy Finch set down the teapot
59:17
Speaker 1: and said, quite quickly and quite clearly, Oh, but that's impossible. Impossible,
59:22
Speaker 1: my dear. I mean, Dorothy's voice caught, corrected itself, softened
59:28
Speaker 1: into its usual grey music. I only meant, the bowl
59:31
Speaker 1: was full until nearly four. I served from it all
59:34
Speaker 1: afternoon myself, cup after cup. The Wilkins twins had some
59:38
Speaker 1: at three, and were sick as cats from oranges, but
59:41
Speaker 1: nothing worse. If the poison had been in the bowl
59:44
Speaker 1: from the start, someone earlier would surely... She stopped. But
59:48
Speaker 1: of course the analyst knows best. I only meant it
59:50
Speaker 1: seems strange. It does, agreed Miss Marple. It seems strange
59:55
Speaker 1: to me too. The dregs tell one story, and the
59:58
Speaker 1: afternoon tells another. and when the two quarrel, I always
1:00:02
Speaker 1: think it is the afternoon one should believe. Don't you?
1:00:05
Speaker 1: You were there, after all, pouring every cup. You'd know
1:00:09
Speaker 1: better than any analyst what was in that bowl. She
1:00:11
Speaker 1: smiled her sweet, empty smile. Milk, my dear? No, sugar.
1:00:17
Speaker 1: Just a little. One lump. Dorothy's hand, lifting the tongs, paused,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: only for a breath, only for the time it takes
1:00:25
Speaker 1: a candle flame to lean and straighten. Then she dropped
1:00:28
Speaker 1: the lump into Miss Marple's cup, and set the tongs down,
1:00:32
Speaker 1: and the tongs rattled against the bowl, and she folded
1:00:35
Speaker 1: her hands in her lap to keep them still. Edith Calthrop,
1:00:39
Speaker 1: to whom this entire exchange had sounded like the weather,
1:00:42
Speaker 1: embarked upon the wickedness of madmen after all, and the
1:00:46
Speaker 1: conversation ran on safely in her keeping. Miss Marple drank
1:00:49
Speaker 1: her tea, and praised the jelly she had herself brought,
1:00:53
Speaker 1: and spoke of the cousin in Scotland, and of Trunk's,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: and of how hard it was, at the end of
1:00:58
Speaker 1: twelve years, to decide what to keep and what to burn. Burn?
1:01:03
Speaker 1: said Dorothy. One always burns so much. In a flitting,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple vaguely. Old letters, old papers. The dead
1:01:12
Speaker 1: leave such a quantity of paper. I noticed the bonfire
1:01:15
Speaker 1: in your garden as we came up. I smelled it
1:01:18
Speaker 1: in the drive. Burning already, I see. One does want
1:01:21
Speaker 1: to be rid of it quickly. Smoke is so cleansing.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: The dead leaves, said Dorothy. It's only the leaves. Of course,
1:01:29
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, only the leaves. Edith, who had lived
1:01:33
Speaker 1: fifteen years in a vicarage and could tell a changed
1:01:36
Speaker 1: subject the way a sailor tells a changed wind, glanced
1:01:39
Speaker 1: at her companion sideways. But Miss Marple's face was bent
1:01:43
Speaker 1: pleasantly over the empty jelly jar and offered nothing, and Edith,
1:01:47
Speaker 1: who had secrets of her own, six pounds worth, knew
1:01:50
Speaker 1: better than anyone in the parish that some jars are
1:01:53
Speaker 1: not opened by asking. It was as they were leaving,
1:01:56
Speaker 1: their wraps being fetched, that Miss Marple delivered the last
1:01:59
Speaker 1: turn of the screw, and she did it with her
1:02:01
Speaker 1: back half turned, adjusting her glove, in the tone of
1:02:04
Speaker 1: a woman apologising for her own foolishness.' Oh, one thing,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: my dear, that the inspector asked me to mention, since
1:02:12
Speaker 1: he knew I was coming up. The sifter, the little
1:02:15
Speaker 1: silver one. It seems there was something on the inside
1:02:18
Speaker 1: of the cap, after all. A mark. They can do
1:02:21
Speaker 1: wonders now with such things.' powders and lights, and I
1:02:25
Speaker 1: don't know what. He'll call tomorrow to go over your
1:02:27
Speaker 1: statement once more. Such a bother for you. But he
1:02:31
Speaker 1: says the case is nearly finished, and it will be
1:02:33
Speaker 1: the last time. She did not look at Dorothy as
1:02:36
Speaker 1: she said it. She did not need to. She heard
1:02:39
Speaker 1: the little silence behind her, and then the even voice saying,
1:02:43
Speaker 1: I shall be glad to help him, of course, if
1:02:45
Speaker 1: there is anything left to say. And Miss Marple, who
1:02:48
Speaker 1: had spent seventy years listening to what voices do when
1:02:51
Speaker 1: they are being careful— heard the fracture in that one
1:02:54
Speaker 1: as plainly as a crack in a teacup. Going down
1:02:57
Speaker 1: the drive, Edith Calthrop talked of the cousin in Scotland
1:03:00
Speaker 1: all the way to the gates, and never noticed that
1:03:03
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, beside her, was counting under her breath, one, two, three,
1:03:08
Speaker 1: like a woman timing something in an oven. At the
1:03:11
Speaker 1: gate lodge, Miss Marple paused and looked back. In the
1:03:15
Speaker 1: garden of the hall, beyond the drawn blinds, the bonfire
1:03:18
Speaker 1: had been lit again. She could see the smoke rising.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: thin and purposeful above the wall, and a small black
1:03:25
Speaker 1: figure beside it, feeding it, patiently, one handful at a time.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: She's burning it to-night, said Miss Marple. Not the leaves.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: There were never any leaves. Jane, said Edith, whatever do
1:03:39
Speaker 1: you mean? I mean, my dear, said Miss Marple, taking
1:03:42
Speaker 1: her arm, that you must walk home with me at once,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: and the vicar must telephone to Inspector Slack, and the
1:03:48
Speaker 1: inspector must be at that bonfire within the hour— before
1:03:52
Speaker 1: the proof of twenty years goes up the chimney, and
1:03:54
Speaker 1: on the way I shall tell you a story about
1:03:57
Speaker 1: a parlour-maid, and a pew at an inquest, and a
1:04:00
Speaker 1: sister who sat at the back, and you must not
1:04:03
Speaker 1: repeat it until to-morrow, when it will no longer matter,
1:04:06
Speaker 1: because by to-morrow the whole of it will be in
1:04:08
Speaker 1: the light where it belongs. Section 9 The Quiet Assembly
1:04:13
Speaker 1: They were nearly all of them at the bonfire in time,
1:04:16
Speaker 1: though what they saved from it would not have filled
1:04:18
Speaker 1: a pocket. Inspector Slack warned by the vicar's telephone call
1:04:22
Speaker 1: and moved by he could not quite have said what,
1:04:25
Speaker 1: the vicar had sounded like a man repeating a lesson
1:04:27
Speaker 1: he did not understand, came up the drive at a
1:04:30
Speaker 1: quarter to six with Sergeant Lake and found Miss Dorothy
1:04:33
Speaker 1: Finch in the walled garden, in her black dress and
1:04:36
Speaker 1: an old gardening apron, feeding papers to the flames with
1:04:40
Speaker 1: the unhurried thoroughness of a woman clearing a grate. She
1:04:43
Speaker 1: did not start at their step on the path. She
1:04:46
Speaker 1: looked up and the firelight moved on her grey face
1:04:49
Speaker 1: and she said, You should have come round by the kitchen, Inspector.
1:04:52
Speaker 1: I would have given you tea. What's burning, Miss Finch? Rubbish.
1:04:56
Speaker 1: The dead woman's rubbish. There is so much of it
1:04:59
Speaker 1: in a house like this. She dropped another handful. The
1:05:02
Speaker 1: sparks went up. Twelve years of it. You'd be surprised.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: Slack had the rake from the wall and was dragging
1:05:09
Speaker 1: the fire apart before she had finished speaking. Most of
1:05:12
Speaker 1: it was ash. Fine, grey, defeated ash. But the fire
1:05:17
Speaker 1: had been fed patiently, not greedily. and the bottom of
1:05:20
Speaker 1: the pile had only charred, and Sergeant Lake, on his
1:05:24
Speaker 1: knees with the kitchen tongs, lifted out into the twilight
1:05:27
Speaker 1: a handful of blackened corners and edges, the fly-leaf of
1:05:31
Speaker 1: a photograph album, the scorched margin of a letter, typed,
1:05:35
Speaker 1: with four words at the bottom, that the flame had spared,
1:05:38
Speaker 1: is no better than she, and a half-burnt photograph, a
1:05:42
Speaker 1: cabinet card of the old kind, showing a young woman
1:05:45
Speaker 1: in a parlour maid's cap and apron, laughing, with her
1:05:49
Speaker 1: head tipped back, and beside her, an older, greyer sister,
1:05:53
Speaker 1: not laughing, looking at the laughing one, with an expression
1:05:57
Speaker 1: of such fierce, anxious, helpless love, that Sergeant Lake, who
1:06:01
Speaker 1: had sisters, put the photograph down as though it were hot.
1:06:05
Speaker 1: Dorothy Finch did not protest. She stood with her hands
1:06:08
Speaker 1: folded under her apron and watched, and her face did
1:06:11
Speaker 1: not change. And that was when Slack first felt the
1:06:14
Speaker 1: hairs rise on his neck, because he had arrested a
1:06:17
Speaker 1: great many people, and the innocent ones always said something.
1:06:21
Speaker 1: Ellen Marsh, said a gentle voice from the garden door.
1:06:25
Speaker 1: Miss Marple stood there, leaning on the vicar's arm, having
1:06:28
Speaker 1: declined to be left out of it, and having walked
1:06:30
Speaker 1: up the drive more slowly than the police. That is Ellen,
1:06:34
Speaker 1: is it not, in the photograph, and the sister beside
1:06:36
Speaker 1: her is you, my dear, Dorothy Marsh that was. I
1:06:40
Speaker 1: wondered about the name, Finch, your mother's second name, I
1:06:43
Speaker 1: dare say, or your grandmother's. One must call oneself something.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: for twelve years. It's my married name, said Dorothy. It
1:06:51
Speaker 1: was the first thing she had said, and she said
1:06:54
Speaker 1: it to Miss Marple, not to the police, as though,
1:06:57
Speaker 1: in all that garden, only the old lady was a person.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: I was married once, for a year, to a man
1:07:03
Speaker 1: named Finch, who died. It was the only kind thing
1:07:06
Speaker 1: that ever happened to me. I kept his name the
1:07:09
Speaker 1: way you'd keep a coat he'd bought you. She looked
1:07:12
Speaker 1: into the fire. I came here twelve years ago to
1:07:14
Speaker 1: find the proof. Ellen was all I had, Our mother
1:07:18
Speaker 1: died the winter after the inquest, of nothing, the way
1:07:21
Speaker 1: mothers do, and I knew whose hand it was. Everyone
1:07:25
Speaker 1: in service in that house knew. The letters knew the
1:07:28
Speaker 1: turn of the stair, they knew what hour the post went,
1:07:31
Speaker 1: they knew the old lady kept her brooches in the bureau.
1:07:34
Speaker 1: Only one person typed in that house, and sat in
1:07:37
Speaker 1: London in the spring, and laughed when the parlourmaid cried
1:07:40
Speaker 1: at table. I came to find the drafts. And do
1:07:43
Speaker 1: you know— her voice stayed level, grey, terrible— It took me
1:07:47
Speaker 1: eleven years. She kept them in the rosewood desk, in
1:07:51
Speaker 1: the false back, with her collection. Drafts of all of them.
1:07:54
Speaker 1: Ellen's and others. There were others, Inspector. Other villages. Other girls.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: Other boys. Going back thirty years. She wrote to a
1:08:04
Speaker 1: curate once about his wife. She wrote to a bank
1:08:07
Speaker 1: manager about his daughter. It was her hobby. When she
1:08:11
Speaker 1: had no one to diminish to her face, she did
1:08:13
Speaker 1: it by post. and kept the drafts the way you'd
1:08:16
Speaker 1: keep pressed flowers. The garden was very quiet. The fire
1:08:20
Speaker 1: settled with a small sound. And when you found them,
1:08:24
Speaker 1: said Slack, a year ago, a year ago last March,
1:08:27
Speaker 1: in the desk, when she had the influenza, and I
1:08:30
Speaker 1: nursed her through it. Something moved in Dorothy's face that might,
1:08:34
Speaker 1: in another woman, have been a smile. I nursed her
1:08:36
Speaker 1: through it, Inspector. I want that understood. I held the
1:08:40
Speaker 1: cup to her lips. I found the drafts, and I
1:08:42
Speaker 1: read them, and I put them back. because by then,
1:08:45
Speaker 1: the strangest thing had happened. I had stopped hating her.
1:08:49
Speaker 1: Twelve years of brushing a person's hair. It's very hard
1:08:53
Speaker 1: to hate a person whose hair you brush. I thought
1:08:55
Speaker 1: my kindness would be my sister's revenge. It would show
1:08:58
Speaker 1: what Ellen was. that we were the ones who could
1:09:01
Speaker 1: be faithful. I even forgave her. She looked down at
1:09:04
Speaker 1: her folded hands and then, three weeks ago, she went
1:09:08
Speaker 1: through my box while I was out. She found Ellen's
1:09:11
Speaker 1: photograph and my mother's letters addressed to Marsh and she
1:09:15
Speaker 1: knew she'd known for a fortnight before she told me
1:09:18
Speaker 1: she'd been saving it. She told me on a Tuesday,
1:09:21
Speaker 1: over her morning chocolate, the way you'd pass the toast.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: So you're Ellen's sister. How very touching, Dorothy. And nobody
1:09:28
Speaker 1: knows but me. And then she told me about the will,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: the thanks instead of the annuity. She laughed until she coughed.
1:09:36
Speaker 1: And she said that as long as I was good,
1:09:38
Speaker 1: my secret was safe with her, and that it would
1:09:41
Speaker 1: be such a comfort to her, in her old age,
1:09:44
Speaker 1: to have someone about the place who belonged to her entirely.
1:09:47
Speaker 1: Body and soul, she said. like the sifter and the punch-bowl.
1:09:51
Speaker 1: Body and soul, Miss Marple repeated softly. She collected people,
1:09:56
Speaker 1: said Dorothy. You know that. Everyone knew that. I was
1:10:00
Speaker 1: to be the prize of the collection, the woman who
1:10:03
Speaker 1: served her sister's murderer, and knew and served her still.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: She could dine out on it forever, in her own drawing-room,
1:10:10
Speaker 1: to an audience of one. She raised her head. Twelve years, Inspector.
1:10:15
Speaker 1: I gave her twelve years and my forgiveness. and she
1:10:18
Speaker 1: spat on both. So I gave her what she had
1:10:21
Speaker 1: given Ellen, something that looked like an accident, and tasted bitter,
1:10:25
Speaker 1: and was served to her with every appearance of devotion.
1:10:29
Speaker 1: The monkshood was her mother's own planting, the sifter was
1:10:32
Speaker 1: her mother's own sifter, the sugar was her own three measures,
1:10:36
Speaker 1: that she took as her right, every day of her life,
1:10:39
Speaker 1: because no one had ever once told her no. I
1:10:42
Speaker 1: only sweetened her cup, as I had done twelve thousand times.
1:10:47
Speaker 1: And Major Venner, said Slack. And Miss Blythe, you let
1:10:52
Speaker 1: us take them both. Dorothy was silent for a moment,
1:10:55
Speaker 1: and when she spoke, it was with the first uncertainty
1:10:58
Speaker 1: she had shown. The Major was her own doing. She
1:11:01
Speaker 1: arranged that scene by the tombola. She wanted the village
1:11:05
Speaker 1: talking about the will. She liked the nephew's fear. I
1:11:08
Speaker 1: only saw that if he carried the cup, everyone's eyes
1:11:11
Speaker 1: would be on his hands and not on the shelf.
1:11:14
Speaker 1: I suggested it to her. Let Hugh feel useful. As
1:11:18
Speaker 1: for Miss Blythe, for the first time her voice thickened.
1:11:22
Speaker 1: That was wrong. I knew it was wrong. She was
1:11:25
Speaker 1: Ellen's friend. She was kind to me at the grave
1:11:28
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, though she never knew me. I told
1:11:31
Speaker 1: myself the evidence would fail, that they couldn't prove it.
1:11:34
Speaker 1: And I think, I think I would have spoken before
1:11:37
Speaker 1: the end. I was only waiting to finish. She looked
1:11:40
Speaker 1: at the fire. This. Whether you'd have spoken, said Slack grimly,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: we'll never know. No, said Dorothy. We'll never know. She
1:11:49
Speaker 1: unfastened the gardening apron, folded it, and hung it over
1:11:53
Speaker 1: her arm, neat as always. Shall we go in by
1:11:55
Speaker 1: the kitchen, Inspector? The front door scares the servants. They
1:11:59
Speaker 1: went in procession through the walled garden and across the yard.
1:12:03
Speaker 1: Slack beside her, Lake behind with his terrible little parcel
1:12:07
Speaker 1: of rescued ash, the vicar white and stricken, and Miss
1:12:10
Speaker 1: Marple last of all, walking slowly, her eyes on the
1:12:14
Speaker 1: monkshood bed by the wall, Cut back now for winter.
1:12:17
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, said the vicar, in a low voice, as
1:12:21
Speaker 1: they reached the door. The sugar. All along, you said.
1:12:25
Speaker 1: The sugar. The sugar was the whole of it, vicar,
1:12:28
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. Sweetness on top, bitterness underneath. And the
1:12:32
Speaker 1: bitterness does not rise until you stir. Adela stirred it herself,
1:12:37
Speaker 1: three times a day, for twelve years. She looked back
1:12:41
Speaker 1: once at the garden, and the fire, and the darkening yews.
1:12:45
Speaker 1: The sad thing is never the poison, you know. It
1:12:47
Speaker 1: is the twelve thousand cups, poured faithfully, that came before it.
1:12:52
Speaker 1: Section 10. The Reveal The full accounting came a week later,
1:12:58
Speaker 1: in the vicarage drawing-room, because the village had reached that
1:13:01
Speaker 1: pitch at which only an explanation would do, and because
1:13:04
Speaker 1: Inspector Slack, who had taken his prisoner to the county,
1:13:08
Speaker 1: and his evidence to the Crown, and had returned oddly subdued, accepted,
1:13:13
Speaker 1: for once in his life, that the case belonged as
1:13:16
Speaker 1: much to an old lady's parlour as to any court.
1:13:19
Speaker 1: They gathered by invitation, which is to say they gathered
1:13:22
Speaker 1: by the most frantic curiosity St. Mary Mead had suffered
1:13:26
Speaker 1: in a generation. The vicar and Edith, Dr. Sandycroft, Major Venner,
1:13:31
Speaker 1: and Miss Nora Blythe, released without stain on a Tuesday
1:13:36
Speaker 1: and greyer about the temples for it. Miss Bracegirdle was there,
1:13:40
Speaker 1: by right of testimony. Mrs. Pargeter was there by right
1:13:43
Speaker 1: of Mrs. Pargeter. and Miss Marple sat by the fire
1:13:46
Speaker 1: with her knitting, and the vicar handed the sherry, and
1:13:49
Speaker 1: when the glasses were filled, the room looked at her,
1:13:52
Speaker 1: and she put her needles down into her lap, and
1:13:55
Speaker 1: folded her hands. You will want to know, she said,
1:13:58
Speaker 1: how one could be sure. I am afraid it is
1:14:00
Speaker 1: not clever. It is only that the facts, from the
1:14:03
Speaker 1: very first afternoon, kept saying one thing, and everyone, the police,
1:14:09
Speaker 1: the village, the letter in the desk, kept saying another.
1:14:13
Speaker 1: One has only to decide which to listen to. The sifter,
1:14:16
Speaker 1: said Slack, in the tone of a man reciting a
1:14:19
Speaker 1: lesson he now respects. Begin with the sifter, Miss Marple.
1:14:23
Speaker 1: The sifter, yes. The poison was never in the punch.
1:14:26
Speaker 1: The analyst proved that. And half the parish proved it too,
1:14:30
Speaker 1: by drinking and living. It was in the sugar. And
1:14:33
Speaker 1: the sugar was the heart of the whole case. Because
1:14:35
Speaker 1: of who used it. Everyone at the FET might have
1:14:38
Speaker 1: taken the punch. Only one person in that hall was certain.
1:14:42
Speaker 1: Not likely. certain, to use the little silver sifter. It
1:14:46
Speaker 1: was Adela's own, kept for her alone, three heaped measures,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: every time, as her right. A poison in the punch
1:14:54
Speaker 1: would have been hatred of the world. A poison in
1:14:56
Speaker 1: her private sugar was something else entirely. It was a message,
1:15:01
Speaker 1: delivered in the one language she could not refuse. I
1:15:04
Speaker 1: knew then that the murderer was not someone who feared her,
1:15:08
Speaker 1: or profited by her, or quarrelled with her once. It
1:15:11
Speaker 1: was someone who knew her, knew her habits to the
1:15:14
Speaker 1: third lump, knew that she would taste bitterness and drink
1:15:18
Speaker 1: on rather than admit it, knew that sweetness served by
1:15:21
Speaker 1: humble hands was the one thing in the world she trusted.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: There are not many people who know another person that well.
1:15:27
Speaker 1: A husband, perhaps? A child? Or a servant of twelve years,
1:15:32
Speaker 1: who has warmed the shawl and poured the cup twelve
1:15:34
Speaker 1: thousand times? Miss Bracegirdle's cup, said the vicar. Miss Bracegirdle's certainty,
1:15:40
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple gently. and Tilly Bracegirdle for once said nothing.
1:15:45
Speaker 1: She saw the Major take up a cup forty feet away,
1:15:47
Speaker 1: through a moving crowd, and knew it for Mrs. Venner's
1:15:50
Speaker 1: by the gilt rim, which no eye could have seen.
1:15:53
Speaker 1: She knew it, because it must be so. The whole
1:15:56
Speaker 1: village was full of such knowing eyes. The murderer had
1:15:59
Speaker 1: counted on them. The Major was chosen to carry that
1:16:02
Speaker 1: cup the way one chooses the ribbon for a parcel,
1:16:05
Speaker 1: for the look of the thing. It was Dorothy, I learned,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: who suggested to Mrs. Venner that Hugh might like to
1:16:10
Speaker 1: feel useful. From that moment every knowing eye in the
1:16:14
Speaker 1: hall was watching his hands, and no eye at all
1:16:17
Speaker 1: was on the shelf. But the letter, said Edith Calthrop,
1:16:20
Speaker 1: Adela's own letter, she named Nora, she feared Nora, and there,
1:16:26
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, is the saddest thing of all. Adela
1:16:29
Speaker 1: had made a collection of human beings, and she prided
1:16:32
Speaker 1: herself on knowing them all, and she did not know
1:16:35
Speaker 1: a single one. She feared the woman who had told
1:16:37
Speaker 1: her the truth to her face. because Adela could not
1:16:40
Speaker 1: conceive of honesty as anything but a threat, and she trusted, utterly,
1:16:44
Speaker 1: the woman who had never told her the truth at all,
1:16:47
Speaker 1: and who had the best reason in the world, and
1:16:49
Speaker 1: twelve years of practice in hiding it. She wrote her
1:16:52
Speaker 1: letter to the chief constable, and sealed it, and slept soundly,
1:16:56
Speaker 1: and all the while, the person she should have feared
1:16:59
Speaker 1: was warming her shawl in the next room. The letter
1:17:02
Speaker 1: was meant to be her revenge from beyond the grave.
1:17:05
Speaker 1: It is instead the proof of her blindness. She watched
1:17:09
Speaker 1: the wrong door all her life. People like Adela always do.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: The enemy who shouts is a comfort to them. It
1:17:15
Speaker 1: is the friend who serves silently that they never see.
1:17:19
Speaker 1: There was a long silence. The fire ticked. Outside, the
1:17:23
Speaker 1: church clock struck. The proof, said Sandy Croft at last.
1:17:27
Speaker 1: When it came, the bonfire. Ah, the bonfire. She had
1:17:31
Speaker 1: kept the drafts for a year. Kept them as Ellen's vindication,
1:17:35
Speaker 1: I think. Proof that her sister died slandered. she could
1:17:39
Speaker 1: not destroy them while Adela lived, because they were all
1:17:42
Speaker 1: the justice Ellen had ever had, and after, she could
1:17:45
Speaker 1: not let them be found, because they were her motive
1:17:48
Speaker 1: in her own keeping. So she burned them, patiently, handful
1:17:52
Speaker 1: by handful. Dorothy never did anything impatiently, that was the
1:17:56
Speaker 1: horror of it, and she would have burned them all
1:17:58
Speaker 1: but for a little test. I told her the poison
1:18:01
Speaker 1: had been found in the punch-bowl after all, and Dorothy,
1:18:05
Speaker 1: who had poured every cup that afternoon— could not stop herself. Oh,
1:18:10
Speaker 1: but that's impossible. She knew, you see. Not suspected, knew
1:18:15
Speaker 1: where the poison had been, and where it had not.
1:18:19
Speaker 1: No one else in England could have corrected the analyst
1:18:21
Speaker 1: with such certainty. And then I mentioned the mark on
1:18:25
Speaker 1: the sifter's cap. There was no mark. There was no
1:18:28
Speaker 1: need of one. And that night she lit the fire.
1:18:31
Speaker 1: She'd have been taken anyway, said Slack. The draft letters
1:18:34
Speaker 1: were all over the desk's false back. Harrowby's clerk found
1:18:38
Speaker 1: the compartment Monday. She'd have been taken, agreed Miss Marple,
1:18:42
Speaker 1: but she would not have been understood, and I think
1:18:44
Speaker 1: understanding is the whole of my trade. She looked round
1:18:48
Speaker 1: the little circle, at the Major. hollow-cheeked, sitting nearer to
1:18:52
Speaker 1: Nora Blythe than he had sat to anyone in twenty years,
1:18:55
Speaker 1: at Edith, who had confessed six pounds and found the
1:18:58
Speaker 1: village loved her better for it, at Sandycroft, who had
1:19:01
Speaker 1: carried his suspicion twenty years like a stone in the pocket.
1:19:05
Speaker 1: Dorothy Finch is not a monster. That is what the
1:19:08
Speaker 1: court will want you to forget. and what I ask
1:19:10
Speaker 1: you to remember. She is a woman who gave her
1:19:13
Speaker 1: life in service, twice over, twelve years to her employer,
1:19:17
Speaker 1: twenty to her sister, and had both lives treated as
1:19:20
Speaker 1: her owner's property. She forgave, and her forgiveness was spat on.
1:19:25
Speaker 1: That does not excuse the sugar, nothing excuses the sugar.
1:19:29
Speaker 1: But when they ask you, as they will ask you,
1:19:31
Speaker 1: in that courtroom, what manner of woman could do such
1:19:34
Speaker 1: a thing, tell them the truth, tell them a faithful one.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: It was her faithfulness that curdled, That is the poison
1:19:40
Speaker 1: this parish should fear, not aconite, not monkshood. Devotion, twelve
1:19:46
Speaker 1: thousand cups of it, with no one ever pouring one back.
1:19:51
Speaker 1: No one spoke. Nora Blythe had taken out her handkerchief,
1:19:55
Speaker 1: and the major had taken out his, and given it
1:19:57
Speaker 1: to her, which was the first thing the village had
1:19:59
Speaker 1: to talk about that was not the murder, and Miss Marple,
1:20:03
Speaker 1: observing it over her knitting, permitted herself the smallest of smiles.
1:20:07
Speaker 1: The rest, she said, picking up her needles. The law
1:20:11
Speaker 1: will do, it will do it thoroughly, and mostly fairly,
1:20:14
Speaker 1: and Dorothy will not deny anything, because denying was never
1:20:17
Speaker 1: her way, serving was her way, and confessing, I find,
1:20:22
Speaker 1: is only the last service one can render, and I
1:20:25
Speaker 1: shall go home and take my tea. One lump, nowadays.
1:20:29
Speaker 1: I have quite gone off three. Section 11. Aftermath. Winter
1:20:34
Speaker 1: came down on St. Mary Mead like a lid being
1:20:37
Speaker 1: gently replaced, and the village, which had been so violently
1:20:41
Speaker 1: open all autumn, every window lit, every door ajar, every
1:20:45
Speaker 1: kitchen an assize, closed itself again by degrees, the way
1:20:49
Speaker 1: water closes over a stone. The trial was held at
1:20:53
Speaker 1: the county assizes in January, and half the village went
1:20:56
Speaker 1: and came back subdued, which disappointed the half that had
1:20:59
Speaker 1: stayed behind. Dorothy Finch pleaded guilty, in that low, level voice,
1:21:04
Speaker 1: to the charge as read. She declined the services of alienists,
1:21:08
Speaker 1: she corrected. twice, small errors of fact in the prosecution's account, politely,
1:21:14
Speaker 1: as she had once corrected the placing of a fork.
1:21:17
Speaker 1: The draft letters were read into the record, all thirty
1:21:19
Speaker 1: years of them, and the courtroom, which had come to
1:21:22
Speaker 1: see a poisoner, sat through them in a silence that
1:21:25
Speaker 1: grew heavier with each one, so that when the judge
1:21:28
Speaker 1: pronounced sentence he pronounced also, and at some length, upon
1:21:32
Speaker 1: the dead woman, in words the newspapers printed and St.
1:21:35
Speaker 1: Mary Mead cut out and kept in its Bibles, though
1:21:39
Speaker 1: nobody could have said exactly why. She was not hanged,
1:21:43
Speaker 1: even the Crown had not asked it in the end.
1:21:45
Speaker 1: The letters stood in the way of that, like thirty
1:21:48
Speaker 1: years of witnesses. She was given imprisonment, and went out
1:21:52
Speaker 1: of the dock with her hands folded and her head up. Looking,
1:21:55
Speaker 1: the sergeant's young lady said, and was much quoted, like
1:21:59
Speaker 1: a parlour maid, leaving a situation in which she had
1:22:02
Speaker 1: given satisfaction. Nora Blythe gave evidence and was not cross-examined.
1:22:06
Speaker 1: The defence counsel, who was kind, asked her only about Ellen,
1:22:11
Speaker 1: and the whole court heard, for the first time, what
1:22:14
Speaker 1: Ellen Marsh had been, quick and fond of dancing, and
1:22:17
Speaker 1: able to imitate the curate so exactly that the kitchen
1:22:20
Speaker 1: staff had wept laughing, and engaged to be married to
1:22:24
Speaker 1: a groom at the hall, who emigrated after the inquest
1:22:27
Speaker 1: and never married anyone. Nora said it all in her
1:22:30
Speaker 1: clear schoolroom voice, and sat down, and the Major was
1:22:33
Speaker 1: waiting at the back of the court and took her
1:22:36
Speaker 1: home in a hired car, and that too went into
1:22:39
Speaker 1: the village's Bibles in its way. In the spring they
1:22:42
Speaker 1: were married, quietly, at a registry office in London, since
1:22:46
Speaker 1: St Mary Mead had seen quite enough of them both
1:22:48
Speaker 1: for one year. But they came back to live at
1:22:50
Speaker 1: the hall, which the Scottish cousin, a practical woman, sold
1:22:54
Speaker 1: to Hugh for a fair price, and with the will's
1:22:57
Speaker 1: seventh clause, read aloud to her first, at her own request.
1:23:01
Speaker 1: so that she should know what manner of house she
1:23:03
Speaker 1: was selling. The blinds went up, the borders were taken
1:23:07
Speaker 1: in hand, the monkshood bed grubbed out to the last
1:23:10
Speaker 1: root by Nora herself, on a wet Saturday, with the
1:23:13
Speaker 1: whole school watching from the wall, which was her way
1:23:16
Speaker 1: of making an end of it. She planted the bed
1:23:19
Speaker 1: with chrysanthemums. The only honest flower, she said, though she
1:23:23
Speaker 1: could not have known she was quoting Tilly Bracegirdle, some
1:23:26
Speaker 1: things a village simply knows. Edith Calthrop's six pounds were
1:23:30
Speaker 1: repaid in full by her brother in Folkestone, whose wife
1:23:33
Speaker 1: recovered and whose business turned, and the vicar preached one
1:23:37
Speaker 1: Sunday on the thing we are ashamed of being often
1:23:39
Speaker 1: the thing that saves us, and Edith sat in the
1:23:42
Speaker 1: front pew and cried quietly, and was not diminished by
1:23:46
Speaker 1: it ever again. Tilly Bracegirdle gave evidence at the trial,
1:23:51
Speaker 1: and was cross-examined about the guilt rim, and came home
1:23:54
Speaker 1: a humbler woman, which is to say, a woman who
1:23:57
Speaker 1: now said I think where she had once said I saw,
1:24:01
Speaker 1: and the village, which had feared her eyes for thirty years,
1:24:05
Speaker 1: found it could almost like her without them, and in
1:24:08
Speaker 1: the long evenings of that first spring, in her little
1:24:11
Speaker 1: drawing-room with the lamp lit and the curtains drawn against
1:24:14
Speaker 1: the last of the cold, Miss Marple sat with her
1:24:16
Speaker 1: knitting and her fire, and took her tea as it came,
1:24:20
Speaker 1: and thought about sugar. She thought about Adela Venner, who
1:24:23
Speaker 1: had collected people and understood none of them, and died
1:24:26
Speaker 1: of the one sweetness she trusted. She thought about Dorothy,
1:24:31
Speaker 1: in a cell with her hands folded, twelve thousand cups
1:24:34
Speaker 1: behind her, and the twelve thousand and first before the judge.
1:24:38
Speaker 1: She thought about Ellen Marsh, dancing somewhere in a scullery
1:24:42
Speaker 1: in 1906, imitating the curate, with thirty years of typed
1:24:46
Speaker 1: letters waiting for her in a false-backed drawer, written by
1:24:50
Speaker 1: a woman who had never met her and would ruin
1:24:53
Speaker 1: her for entertainment. She thought about the village. her village,
1:24:57
Speaker 1: which had swallowed the letters whole, and lynched the nephew
1:25:00
Speaker 1: with its tongues, and convicted the schoolmistress over its bacon,
1:25:04
Speaker 1: and now kept cuttings of the judge's words in its Bibles,
1:25:08
Speaker 1: as though the lesson, having once been missed so completely,
1:25:11
Speaker 1: must be kept where it would be read every day. Dr. Sandycroft,
1:25:15
Speaker 1: dropping in one April evening, found her staring into the
1:25:18
Speaker 1: fire with her needle still. You're thinking of her, he said.
1:25:23
Speaker 1: He did not say which her, there were so many.
1:25:26
Speaker 1: I am thinking, said Miss Marple, that we were all
1:25:28
Speaker 1: of us poisoned a little, Henry, in that punch. The
1:25:32
Speaker 1: village drank suspicion and called it cider. The police drank
1:25:36
Speaker 1: convenience and called it evidence. Adela drank her own sweetness
1:25:40
Speaker 1: and never tasted what was under it until the end.
1:25:43
Speaker 1: And Dorothy, she paused, Dorothy drank grief for twenty years, neat,
1:25:48
Speaker 1: every day, and nobody ever saw her lift the cup.
1:25:51
Speaker 1: That was my failure, you know. I live in this village.'
1:25:55
Speaker 1: I watched that woman pass my gate twelve hundred times.
1:25:59
Speaker 1: I should have seen what she was carrying. You saw
1:26:01
Speaker 1: in the end. In the end, said Miss Marple, when
1:26:05
Speaker 1: it had finished poisoning everyone. She turned her work and
1:26:09
Speaker 1: began a new row. Do you know what I have decided, Henry?
1:26:12
Speaker 1: Bitterness is not the danger. Bitterness declares itself. It is honest.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: One can spit it out. The danger is sweetness. Sweetness
1:26:21
Speaker 1: demanded as a right. Sweetness given as a chain. Sweetness
1:26:25
Speaker 1: spread so thick over a thing that no one can
1:26:28
Speaker 1: taste what is underneath until the cup is empty and
1:26:32
Speaker 1: it is far too late. Watch the sugar, Henry. In
1:26:35
Speaker 1: your practice, in your parish, in your own house. Watch
1:26:39
Speaker 1: who pours it, and who is required to, and who
1:26:42
Speaker 1: has never once in her life been told no. That
1:26:45
Speaker 1: is enough. She took up her cup, one lump. She
1:26:48
Speaker 1: had kept to it all winter. Outside, beyond the curtains— St.
1:26:53
Speaker 1: Mary Mead lay quiet under the spring dark, the church tower,
1:26:57
Speaker 1: the shuttered shops, the vicarage lawn going green again, the
1:27:01
Speaker 1: hall with its blinds up and its lamps lit, and
1:27:04
Speaker 1: its borders new dug, the mill pond holding the stars
1:27:07
Speaker 1: as still water holds everything and gives back only light.
1:27:11
Speaker 1: Somewhere a door shut, somewhere a dog barked, somewhere in
1:27:16
Speaker 1: a hundred kitchens a hundred cups of tea were being sweetened,
1:27:19
Speaker 1: one lump, two lumps, Three heaped measures, as of right.
1:27:24
Speaker 1: The fete would be held again in September, in the
1:27:26
Speaker 1: parish hall, with the bunting and the band, and a
1:27:29
Speaker 1: punch made to a recipe that no one, now, would
1:27:32
Speaker 1: ever quite enjoy. The village would attend in force, and
1:27:36
Speaker 1: praise it loudly, and drink every drop. That, too, Miss
1:27:39
Speaker 1: Marple reflected, was a kind of sugar, and she smiled,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: and turned her work, and knitted on, gentle and implacable,
1:27:47
Speaker 1: an old woman in a soft cap, doing the most
1:27:49
Speaker 1: dangerous thing a village permits, which is paying attention, while
1:27:53
Speaker 1: the fire burned down, and the night drew in, and
1:27:56
Speaker 1: the pattern, stitch by stitch, came right. The End