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A Garden of Secrets: Who Killed Her in the Hollyhocks? | Miss Marple Sleep… · Miss Marple Sleep Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Murder Among the Hollyhocks, a Miss Marple Mystery. Section 1.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: The Hollyhocks by the Vicarage Wall. The bees in St
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Mary Mead had as always an opinion about the weather,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and on this particular Tuesday morning in late June they
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: thought very well of it indeed. The lane that curled
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: past the vicarage lay soft under new sun. The hollyhocks
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: along the wall, pink, cream, and one deep arterial red,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: leaned in a slow, considering way, as though listening to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the gossip of the sparrows. Miss Jane Marple, in a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: lilac cardigan of impeccable but unobtrusive age, stood at her
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: garden gate with a trug over one arm and a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: half-finished thought about her nephew Raymond in the other. It was,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: in short, the sort of morning in which nothing at
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: all should happen, and it was therefore precisely the sort
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of morning on which something did. The disturbance arrived not
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: with a scream, but with a small, embarrassed cough. Young
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Constable Polk, whose helmet always sat a fraction too far back,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: came round the bend at a pace not quite a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: run and not quite a walk, and on seeing Miss Marple,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: lifted his hand as though to touch the brim, and
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: then thought better of it. Miss Marple, he said. Miss Marple,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I wonder if, that is, Dr. Hadock did say you
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: were often out early? He glanced past her, at the hollyhocks.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and something in his face flinched.' Constable Polk,' said Miss
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Marple gently,' what has happened at the vicarage?'' Not the vicarage, miss.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: The old rectory. Miss Lavinia Price,' he swallowed.' She was
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: found this morning in her herbaceous border. Among the— among the hollyhocks, miss. Dr.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Haydock's with her now.' Miss Marple did not, as certain
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of her more excitable neighbours might have done, exclaim, She
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: set the trug down upon the low stone wall, with
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the care of one placing a sleeping infant, adjusted her gloves,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and said only, Ah, then I had better fetch my
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: other hat. Down the lane the news was already travelling,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: as such news does, by a route more efficient than
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: any postal service. Mrs Price Ridley had communicated the essentials
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to her cook by seven. The cook had spoken to
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the fishmonger's boy by ten past. the fishmonger's boy had
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: informed the postman, who, being a professional, had informed no
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: one at all and merely bicycled faster. By the time
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, in her second-best hat, walked with Constable Polk
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: along the lane toward the old rectory, three curtains twitched,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: one child was hushed, and a marmalade cat took offence
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: at their passing. The old rectory stood a little back
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: from the road, behind a low flint wall. and along
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that wall a great procession of hollyhocks, Miss Lavinia's pride,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the object of village envy at each summer fate, swayed
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: above the coping stones. Miss Lavinia Price, sixty-three, unmarried, formidable
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: secretary of no fewer than four committees, had been found
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: lying face down where the pink met the cream. Her
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: secateurs lay open at her right hand, around her head,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in the pale gravel of the path, someone had, but
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: this was surely a trick of the eye, arranged a small,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: deliberate spray of the deep, arterial red. Dr. Hadock straightened
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: as Miss Marple approached, and his eyes met hers over
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the low wall with that particular grave courtesy he reserved
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: for her alone. A blow to the back of the head,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: he said quietly, with something rounded. Not the secateurs. She
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: had been kneeling. He paused. She would not, Miss Marple,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: have known. Beyond the wall, the lane had begun its
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: small business. A curtain in the cottage opposite lifted and,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: with the swiftness of a conscience, dropped again. Somewhere down
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: towards the blue boar a milk cart bell rang once,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: then again more thoughtfully, as though the driver had realised,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: halfway through his round, that the parish had shifted under
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: him without warning. Miss Marple heard it and did not turn.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: She had listened over the years to the sound of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a village discovering a death, and knew that first bell
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: for what it was. Not surprise, but permission. the moment
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: at which curiosity is at last allowed to lift its
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: head above the hedge and look. Thank God for that
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: small mercy, said Miss Marple, and she meant it, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: she did not look away from the hollyhocks. It struck her,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and she noted the striking, that the red blooms had
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: been snapped rather than cut. A gardener as fastidious as
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia would never have snapped a stem. Someone else,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: someone in a hurry or a fury, had gathered that spray.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Inspector Slack arrived from much Benham within the hour, red-faced
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: from the drive, and already impatient with the village and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: its lanes and its opinions. He was accompanied by Sergeant Lake,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: whose spaniel-eyed steadiness had, over the years, learned to withstand
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: his superior's weather. Slack surveyed the garden, the wall, the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: neat lawn beyond, and the hollyhocks, and pronounced at once
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that it was a straightforward matter of an interrupted thief,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: at which Dr. Hadock coughed. and Miss Marple examined the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: toe of her sensible shoe with grave attention. He carried,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: tucked beneath one arm, a black leather folder, and, in
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the folder, three sharpened pencils and a great many opinions.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, who had known inspectors before him and would
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: know inspectors after, made him a small, respectful movement of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the head, which he received without pleasure and without insult,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: as one receives the weather. Behind him, Sergeant Lake, who
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: had a wife at home with a bad chest and
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a daughter learning the piano, took his notebook from his
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: pocket with the resigned air of a man who knows
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that the day will now have very little in it
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: for the piano. There is no sign of forced entry, Inspector,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Lake said carefully. Then she interrupted him in the garden,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Slack said, as one settling a small child. Handbag? On
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the hall table, said Lake, with three pounds and change.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Slack grunted, which in his vocabulary was a concession. He
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: turned to Miss Marple as though only now becoming aware
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of her. Miss Marple, is it? Yes, well, nothing here
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: for a lady, I'm sure. Ghastly business. Best to keep
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to your knitting. Indeed, Inspector, Miss Marple said mildly. One
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: does one's best. He tramped off toward the house. Sergeant
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Lake lingered a moment, adjusted his notebook, and murmured, without
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: quite looking at her, The niece is inside, Miss Marple.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana Price. She came down last night from London.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: She found her aunt at half-past six this morning. Poor child,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, and she did not say what else
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: she thought, which was that Miss Diana Price had been
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: in St Mary Mead only once before, seven years ago,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: and had left in tears after a quarrel about a will.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: She turned back to the border. The bees continued their opinions, undeterred.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Above the pink and the cream, the deep red hollyhocks swayed,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: and one bloom, quite ruined, lay by Miss Lavinia's outstretched hand,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: as though she had, at the last, tried to hold it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: A gardener does not, Miss Marple thought, snap her own flowers.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: There was, Miss Marple observed, something else. Along the flagged path,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: quite near the fallen figure, a faint print of a shoe,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: smaller than Miss Lavinia's own, had been half erased by
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the pass of a broom. Not a garden broom, Mark,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: but a house broom. the one that stood in the
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: scullery corner. Someone, between the striking and the finding, had
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: come out and swept. The sweeping had been done in haste.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: A single soul-mark remained under the edge of a burgenia leaf,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: where the broom had not reached. Miss Marple looked at
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: it a long moment, and did not point to it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: There are, she thought, discoveries one makes for oneself and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: keeps a little while, as one keeps a warm egg
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: in the palm. Constable Polk, she said. Would you be
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: good enough to ask Miss Diana whether her aunt was
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: expecting anyone this morning, and, quite separately, whether the side
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: gate had been left on the latch? I noticed as
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: we came in that the bolt has been recently oiled.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Constable Pork, who had not noticed anything of the sort,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: blinked once, wrote it down, and went. Dr. Hadock, closing
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: his bag, said very softly, Jane, already? Miss Marple smiled
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: at the hollyhocks. It is only, she said, that when
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I was a girl in Little Ambridge, there was a Mrs.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Carmody who kept the most beautiful lupins. She was found
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: in them too. It turned out in the end that
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: she had been the one thing standing between two people
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and what they wanted. It is not, you know, the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: flowers that are the trouble. It is what one is
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: willing to trample to reach them. She looked down. In
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the gravel by her shoe, a single deep red petal
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: had settled, bright as a spot of blood on a
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: christening gown. She did not pick it up. Not yet.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Section 2 Tea, Rumours and the First Faulty Theory The
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: petal was still there in the gravel when Miss Marple
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: turned from the border and she left it where it lay.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Certain things she had long since learned are best allowed
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: to reveal themselves. A petal that had chosen its own
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: ground was not to be tidied by strangers. She followed
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the flagged path to the old rectory door, where Sergeant
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Lake stood aside with a small inclination of the head
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and stepped into the cool hush of Miss Lavinia's hall.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: She paused for the length of one heartbeat upon the
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: threshold of the old rectory. The hall clock ticked with
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the slow, respectable insistence of a clock that had never
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: in fifty years been permitted. to be a minute fast
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: or a minute slow. Upon the umbrella stand hung a stout,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: ash walking-stick which Miss Lavinia carried in dry weather, purely
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: for the sake of tradition, and beside it, at an
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: angle that was not Miss Lavinia's angle, stood a slim,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: mother-of-pearl-handled parasol that Miss Marple did not recognise. She noted
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the parasol as she had noted the bolt and the gloves,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and set the note carefully upon the shelf of her
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: mind where such notes lie until they are needed. The
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: house smelt of beeswax and lavender water, and faintly of
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: last night's roast lamb. On the hall table lay Miss
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Lavinia's handbag, exactly as Lake had said. and beside it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: a pair of gardening gloves so newly laundered they still
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: held the ghost of the wash line. The gloves troubled
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple in a small, definite way. A woman who
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: kneels in a border at half-past six of a Tuesday
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: morning does not put on freshly laundered gloves. She puts
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: on the pair she wore yesterday and left muddy on
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the scullery hook. Miss Diana Price was in the morning
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: room with her back to the window. so that her
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: face lay in shadow and the light showed only the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: lift of her hair, which was very fair. She rose
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: when Miss Marple entered. She was slim, thirty perhaps, with
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the sort of composure that in certain lights looked like
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: grief and in others like calculation. Miss Marple, she said,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Aunt Lavinia spoke of you. She said, she said you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: were kind. Your aunt was very good to me, said
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, which was true in a limited sense. Miss
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Lavinia had been good to the village in the way
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: a bishop is good to a cathedral, which is to say,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: with a firm hand and no illusions. My dear, you
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: must sit down. Have they brought you tea? I can't,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: said Diana. I can't drink it. But she sat. Miss
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Marple sat too, on the low chair by the hearth,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and set her gloves neatly upon her lap. Through the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: window one could see the hollyhocks. From here they looked
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: innocent again. Constable Polk, Miss Marple said, was to ask
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you two small things. May I trouble you for the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: answers now and save him the walk? Diana's eyes, which
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: had been fixed on nothing, flicked to hers. Of course.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Was your aunt expecting anyone this morning? Only Mr. Endicott,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: her solicitor, at eleven. I see. And the side gate,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: was it on the latch last night? There was a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: small pause. Diana said, I latched it myself, at ten.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Aunt Lavinia was particular about that. Yes, said Miss Marple
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: quite gently. She was. She did not add, the bolt
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: is freshly oiled, and one does not oil a bolt
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that one always latches. One oils a bolt one intends,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: at some hour, to open in silence. She rose, patted
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Diana's hand as one pats a young dog of uncertain temperament,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and left her to the shadow. Outside, the village had
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: begun to gather at the wall in the manner of
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: starlings on a telegraph wire. Mrs Price Ridley had established
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: a forward position by the lich gate. The vicar, poor
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Mr Clement, had been dispatched by his wife with the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: express purpose of bringing back the truth of it and
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: not Mrs Price Ridley's. And Miss Weatherby, black-gloved even in June,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: was already explaining to anyone within hearing that she had,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: only last Thursday, remarked upon the peculiar look in Miss
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Lavinia's eye. A tramp, said Mrs Price Ridley, with the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: confidence of one delivering a jury's verdict. Depend upon it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: There has been a tramp along the Newton Road these
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: three weeks. He was seen on Sunday at the crossroads
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: with a shifty aspect. A shifty aspect, dear, murmured Miss Marple.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Distinctly shifty. And what, said Miss Marple, does a shifty
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: aspect look like, exactly? I have always wondered. Mrs Price
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Ridley's mouth opened, considered, and closed. She rallied. One knows,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: she said, when one sees it. Ah, said Miss Marple,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: that must be a great comfort. Miss Weatherby, sensing an opening,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: put in that of course everyone knew about young Mr
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Carew at Mallard's Farm, who had quarrelled with Miss Lavinia
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: over the right of way, and old Mr Bantry, coming
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: up with Colonel Bantry's stick, said stoutly that whatever anyone said,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: it wasn't Carew, because Carew's dog would have barked, and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Carew's dog had not barked, because Carew's dog had been
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: all night on the vicarage porch, waiting for the vicar's
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: cat to make a fool of itself. The vicar, arriving
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: damp with the heat and pink with embarrassment, confirmed the dog. Mrs.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Price Ridley absorbed this with only a small tightening of
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: her mouth, and passed at once to Mr. Endicott the solicitor, whom,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: she said, she had never quite trusted, having heard once
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: that his aunt had married a Belgian. He carried, moreover,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a small posy of Sweet William from Mrs. Clement, wrapped
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: in a twist of newspaper, which he had entirely forgotten
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: upon his arm, and this posy, being observed by Mrs.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Price Ridley, was at once translated by her into evidence
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of the vicar's prior knowledge, so that within a quarter
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of an hour the parish had entertained, and quite rightly rejected,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the notion that Mr Clement himself might have crept up
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the lane in his bicycle clips and dispatched Miss Lavinia
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: between matins and breakfast. Miss Marple did not smile. She
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: only observed, quietly, that a village which could suspect Mr.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Clement of anything at all was a village whose imagination was,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: that morning, in very high working order. Miss Marple listened.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: She listened as she had listened for sixty years, as
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a woman listens who has learned that gossip, though a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: poor mirror of truth, is an excellent mirror of the gossip.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: She watched the faces. She watched, in particular, the corners
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of mouths. Diana Price came out onto the step then,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: pale and self-contained, and the wall of villagers hushed with
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the sudden, guilty hush of a schoolroom when the mistress returns.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Diana looked at them and past them and said, quite steadily,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you all for coming. My aunt would have been
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: very touched. Which, Miss Marple thought, was not remotely true.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia would have been outraged and would have said so.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: The gathering shuffled, murmured, dispersed by inches. Only Mrs. Price Ridley, undefeated,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: moved closer to Miss Marple's elbow. Diana, my dear, she
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: said past her. You were with her only last evening,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: were you not? I arrived at seven. And you dined together? Yes.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And parted friends? There was the smallest possible pause. Diana said,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: We always parted friends. Which, Miss Marple thought, was a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: very careful sentence indeed. It bore the shape of truth
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: without quite touching it. It was the sort of sentence
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: one composed in the small hours in the dark. Inspector
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Slack emerged from the house then, notebook in hand and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: theory in eye. He beckoned Sergeant Lake and, in a
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: voice pitched loud enough for the wall to hear, said, Right, Lake,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the Newton Road. Anyone answering the description of a tramp
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Man of middle height, dark coat, seen Sunday. Bring him in. Mrs.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Price Ridley closed her eyes in beatitude. Miss Marple, who
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: had been mildly interested in the state of Diana's hands,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: which were, she noted, quite clean, but a little too clean,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: as though scrubbed, said nothing. She walked home slowly, past
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the hollyhocks along her own wall, and paused. Her own
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: were only pink and cream. She had never cared for
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the deep red. It always struck her as a colour
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that had made up its mind too definitely. But there,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: at the base of one stem, lay a single fresh petal, deep,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: arterial red, carried perhaps by no more than the wind. Perhaps.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: She picked it up this time, held it a moment
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: in her palm, and folded it into her handkerchief. Then
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: she went in to write two letters and to boil,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: in her particular way, an egg. Section 3 the inspector's
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: straight line. The letters were addressed, the egg was eaten,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: four minutes exactly, with a pinch of salt, and Miss
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Marple was drawing on her gloves for a second walk,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: when Dr. Hadock's Morris drew up at her gate. He
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: came in without ceremony, he had the run of her
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: hall as of few others, and stood a moment in
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: her parlour, looking at the print of Q above the mantelpiece,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: as though it might have answered a question. Slack has
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: his tramp, he said at last. Already? A man called Jarvis.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: He was sleeping in Farmer Coggins's barn. He had a
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: shilling and a bruise, and he denies everything, which is
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: very inconvenient of him, since Slack was hoping for a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: confession before luncheon. Miss Marple smiled without amusement. And the bruise?
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: On the shin. Farmer Coggins's bull. Ah. Hadock sat down.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: He was, she thought, tired in a way that had
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: less to do with the morning than with all the mornings.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: A country doctor at sixty accumulates a certain private freight. Jane,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: he said, what do you make of it? The bolt,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, was oiled. The gloves were washed. The
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: niece parted friends. and the hollyhock stems were snapped, not cut.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: She lifted the folded handkerchief from her sewing table and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: opened it upon her palm. The petal lay upon the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: linen like a small, deliberate wound. Someone gathered these in
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a hurry, Doctor, and someone laid them, quite deliberately, by
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: her head. A signature? Or a message? Or a mask
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: upon a message? She refolded the linen. Miss Lavinia, you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: will remember. was on the Fate Committee, the Church Restoration Committee,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the Cottage Hospital Committee, and the Village Reading Room Committee.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: In three of the four she had quarrelled this year
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: with someone. The fourth she chaired unopposed, which is the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: sort of thing that breeds a different quarrel altogether. Hadock grunted. Motives, then. Oh,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: motives grow in this village, Doctor, as freely as bindweed.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: What is scarce is opportunity. A woman kneels in her
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: border at half-past six. Who is up? Who is out?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Who is unremarked? The milkman, Hadock said, half-smiling. The milkman
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: was late this morning. I heard Mrs Hartnell say so
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: through her window. His round did not reach the old
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: rectory until seven. A pity. He would have made a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: most reliable witness. Now he is only a most reliable absence.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: She rose. Let us go and see the inspector's tramp.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: They found slack at the police house, red as a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: poppy and twice as bristly. Jarvis sat on the bench
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: with the resigned patience of a man who has been
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: arrested before, and knows that Tuesdays are usually the worst
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: of it. He had a face weathered to the colour
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of an old saddle, and eyes that took in Miss
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Marple with a startled, considering respect. Mr Jarvis, Miss Marple said,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I do apologise for troubling you. Would you tell me,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: where were you at half past six this morning? Jarvis
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: looked at Slack. Slack said, Go on, tell the lady
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: what you told me. Coggins's barn, Mrs. Snoring. His boy
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: come out at six to milk and I was still asleep.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: He kicked me out at quarter past. I went down
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the Newton Road. I'll never come near the rectory. You
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: know the rectory? Everyone knows the rectory. Old lady give
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: me a hunk of bread there in April. Told me
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to shift on. Not unkindly, mind. And you did not return? Mrs.,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: said Jarvis with dignity. When a lady tells me to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: shift on, I shift on. It saves trouble. Miss Marple
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: considered him. Slack, unable to contain himself, put in, He
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: was seen Sunday at the crossroads, though. Answer that. Aye, Sunday,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: said Jarvis. I was there. So was half the choir
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: coming back from Newton. So was the postman's brother. So
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: was that young lady in the blue coat waiting for
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the bus that don't run Sunday. I said good afternoon,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and she never answered. Some do, some don't. Miss Marple's hands,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: which had been folded in her lap, unfolded and folded again.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: The young lady in the blue coat, she said. Was
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: she fair? Very fair, missus. Slim? About thirty? Might have been.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr Jarvis, said Miss Marple, and she rose.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: To Slack, she said only, Inspector, I do think you
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: will find Mr Jarvis was where he says he was.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Farmer Coggins's boy will confirm it. Slack's jaw set. I'll
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: speak to Coggins's boy in due course, Miss Marple. Meanwhile... Meanwhile...
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. Meanwhile is a very dangerous word. It
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: has hanged more innocent men than malice has. She smiled
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: at him kindly. Do give my regards to Mrs. Slack.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Out in the lane, Dr. Hadock exhaled. Jane, I know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: he does his best. His best is not, at present,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: quite the point. The young lady in the blue coat sighed.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana Price arrived, she says, from London on the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: evening of Monday, but Mr Jarvis saw a very fair
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: young woman at the crossroads on Sunday afternoon, waiting, one presumes,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: for a bus that does not run on Sunday. That
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is a curious thing to do, Doctor, unless one is
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: waiting for something else, or someone. They walked on in
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: silence a little way. A yellow hammer sang from the hedge.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple thought about the freshly oiled bolt and the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: freshly laundered gloves and the sentence, We always parted friends,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: that had been composed in the dark. At the stile
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: by the water meadow, Miss Marple paused and set her
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: hand upon the top rail as though for balance, though
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: her balance was, as usual, entire. She was thinking of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a young woman standing at a crossroads waiting for a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: bus that did not run, and of what such a
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: young woman might have been doing there waiting, not for
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a bus, but for the sight of the woman she
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: meant presently to meet, taking, perhaps, the measure of a
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: face before knocking at its door. It was a thought,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: she reflected, that did not sit easily. But sit it did,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and refused to be shown out. At the corner of
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the Vicarage Lane they met young Mr Carew of Mallard's Farm,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: who had been fetched by Constable Polk on the strength
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of Miss Weatherby's memory of the right-of-way quarrel. He was
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: a big, brown, honest young man, quite pink at the
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: ears with indignation. Miss Marple, he said, halting, I am
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to be interviewed by the inspector, it seems, on account
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: of my having called Miss Lavinia an interfering old... Well,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: in April, ma'am. In April, and in the King's arms,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and in front of witnesses. More shame to me. You
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: did apologise, Mr Carew? I did. She accepted with a coldness, ma'am,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: that made me feel a worm. And where were you
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: at half-past six this morning? Milking, Miss Marple. My man
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Higgs will tell you. Also the cows, if you can
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: find a language. I do not need to find a language, Mr. Carew.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I know Higgs. She patted his arm. Do not fret.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The inspector will make a small noise and pass on.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: But Mr. Carew, one thing. Have you seen, in the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: lanes these last days, a fair young woman in a
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: blue coat who does not always answer good afternoon? He frowned.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: On Sunday, ma'am. Coming up from the crossroads. I gave
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: her a lift as far as the King's Arms. She
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: said her name was Diana Price and she had come
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to see her aunt. On Sunday. On Sunday, ma'am. Thank you, Mr. Carew.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: He tramped on toward the police house, muttering to himself
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: about interfering old, and stopping short each time upon the word. Dr.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Hadock watched him go. Two days early, he said quietly.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Two days early, said Miss Marple, and in a blue coat,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and silent when spoken to, and the bolt has been oiled.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: She looked at the sky, which was innocent, and at
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the hedges, which were not. The inspector, dear doctor, is
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: drawing a straight line. Straight lines are so seldom what
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: one wants in a garden. Section 4. A Convenient Suspect
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Straight lines, as Miss Marple had observed, are seldom what
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: one wants in a garden. But Inspector Slack loved them dearly,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and by the time she and Dr. Hadock had walked
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: as far as the churchyard … the inspector had drawn
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: one straight through the middle of Mr Carew of Mallard's Farm.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: It was, considered as a line, a masterpiece. It began
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: at the right-of-way quarrel in April, passed through the King's
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Arms and the fray's interfering old woman, went by way
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: of an unlocked gate to Mallard's Farm, and terminated, very tidily,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: at the base of the Hollyhocks. The village, being fond
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of tidiness in others, took to the theory at once.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: By tea-time, Mrs Price Ridley had settled it, Miss Weatherby
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: had improved it. Even the vicar, poor Mr Clement, had
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: been heard to say, in a voice of great distress,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that he had always thought there was something not quite
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: settled about young Carew, and had immediately felt so guilty
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that he took himself off to visit an old woman
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: in Lower Barnstock who did not want visiting. Miss Marple,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: having eaten a small, deliberate luncheon of cold ham and beetroot,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: put on her gardening hat and went to call at
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Mallard's farm. The lane to the farm was deep with
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: cow parsley and older than the Doomsday Book. She met,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: at the gate, Higgs the cowman, whose right eye was
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a cheerful blue and whose left had, for reasons never explained,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: closed at the age of twelve and stayed shut. He
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: touched his cap. Mr Carew in, Higgs? In the milking parlour, missus.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Fair-fashed he is, says the police think he done it.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: And what does Higgs think? Higgs thinks, said Higgs slowly,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that Mr Carew was in this here parlour at half-past
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: six of a morning, on account of I was with him,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: and so were forty-two head of cow, and if the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: police want a statement from all forty-three of us, they
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: can start with the Friesian in the corner, only she kicks. Higgs,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, you are a comfort to the King's peace. Ma'am,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: said Higgs, and moved aside. She found Mr. Carew sitting
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: on an upturned churn with his head in his hands,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and the young man rose so quickly at her entry
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: that he almost overturned the churn and himself with it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple. Sit down, Mr. Carew, and do try to breathe.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Anger does not become a large young man. It makes
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: him look apoplectic. Now, when did Miss Lavinia first speak
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: to you about the right of way? Last October. She
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: wrote a letter. A civil one? Civil. Cold. And when
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: did she next speak of it? In April, ma'am, she
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: stopped me outside the post office and said that if
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I did not move the gate she would be obliged
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to go to law. And you replied? I said what
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I said, in the king's arms, that night. I regret it.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I did not kill her, Miss Marple. No, said Miss Marple,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: you did not. Now attend, Mr. Carew, for this is important.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Between April and now, did Miss Lavinia speak to you
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of the matter? He frowned. Only once, three weeks ago.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: She stopped at the gate as I was mending it,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and she said, she said a curious thing, ma'am. She said,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: It is not the gate I mind, Mr. Carew, it
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: is the principal, and there is another principal in this
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: village that I intend, before Michaelmas, to see honoured. And
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: then she went on. Another principal? Her word, ma'am. Miss
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Marple was silent for a long moment. Higgs's Friesian shifted
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: in the corner and looked at her with a large,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: sceptical eye. Behind the Friesian, in the shadow of the beam,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: a swallow's nest held four small, unafraid heads that opened, hopefully,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: at each footfall and closed again upon disappointment. The parlour
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: smelt of new hay and old iron, a kettle whistled
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: distantly from the farmhouse kitchen, and, further off, a rook
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: considered the morning with the sort of judicial gravity that
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: a country rook reserves for occasions of murder. Mr. Carew,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: having been forbidden by Miss Marple to be apoplectic, was
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: now merely miserable, which was, in a large young man,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: a great improvement. Mr. Carew, Miss Marple said at last,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: thank you. She rose. At the door she turned. When
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the inspector comes, as he will, tell him about the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Friesian and about Higgs. Do not mention the other principal.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: It is not, I think, ready to be spoken of yet.'' Yes, ma'am,'
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: said Mr. Carew, obedient as a schoolboy, and Miss Marple
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: went out into the sunlight. She did not go home.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: She went by the field-path to the old rectory, entered
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: through the kitchen door where she had a small standing
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: with the cook, and asked, with the mildness of one
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: asking for a recipe, whether Miss Lavinia had, in the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: last three weeks, received any letters from London.' Cook, whose
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: name was Mrs. Bunting, and whose loyalty had survived thirty
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: years and two rectors, considered. Two letters, Miss Marple, both
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: in a small hand, both on cream paper. She burned them. Both? Both, ma'am.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: She burned the first in the drawing-room grate on the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: 29th of May. She burned the second in the study
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: grate on the 11th of June. I found the corner
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of the second in the ash-pan. It said only, Not
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a penny more. Not a penny more. said Miss Marple softly.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: That was all, ma'am. And Miss Diana, had she and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: her aunt corresponded? Miss Diana wrote at Christmas, ma'am, and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: on her aunt's birthday, and on no other occasion for
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the seven years I have been here. Not a penny more,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple again, and she thanked Mrs. Bunting for
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the information, and for the very small piece of shortbread
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: that had been pressed upon her, and went out through
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the scullery. In the scullery, upon the hook where a
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: muddy pair of gardening gloves ought to have hung, there
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: hung nothing. The line outside, above the beds of savoy cabbage,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: held a wooden peg where those gloves might, that very
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: morning at some hour before six, have been pegged in
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: a hurry to dry. Ah, said Miss Marple quietly to
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: the cabbages. She walked home the long way by the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: water meadow in order to think. The path took her
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: past the low field where, twenty years before, poor Mrs.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Trumper's second daughter had at last been discovered by the parish,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: sitting on a stile eating a windfall apple, and quite
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: untroubled by having been, for eleven years, a secret. Miss
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Marple remembered the child's face, and the mother's, and how
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the mother, seeing her secret unmasked, had cried not with grief,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: but with an odd relief, as one who has long
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: borne a stone and is at last allowed to set
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: it down. Not every unmasking, Miss Marple reflected, was a punishment.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Some were, in their strange way, a mercy. It remained
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to be seen which sort this one would prove. There were,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: she saw, at least three people in St Mary Mead
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: who had reason to be relieved that Miss Lavinia Price
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: was no longer at the head of a committee, and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: at least two who had reason to be relieved that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia Price was no longer at the head of
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: a family. That the police were about to arrest Mr
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Carew was a great convenience to all five of them, including,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: though he did not know it, Mr Carew himself, whose loud,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: red-faced innocence would exhaust the inspector's patience long before it
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: exhausted the truth. A convenient suspect, Miss Marple thought, is
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: very like a scarecrow. He keeps the crows off the corn,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: He does not, however, tell you which of the crows
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: would have eaten it. At her own gate she paused
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and looked at her hollyhocks, pink and cream, pink and cream,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and one, she had not planted it and could not
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: think when it had rooted, one deep arterial red at
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the very end of the row, half hidden by a
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: spire of larkspur. It had opened since morning a single flower.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: she stood a long time looking at it. Then she
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: went in, put the kettle on, and wrote a third letter,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: this one to a friend in Somerset House. Section 5.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: The Petal in the Prayer Book The letter to Somerset
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: House was in the post by six, the kettle boiled,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple, having composed her thoughts as one composes
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: a bunch of sweet peas, by length and shade rather
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: than by preference, put on her Sunday hat, though it
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: was only Tuesday, and walked to the vicarage to speak
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: to Mr Clement. Poor Mr Clement was writing his sermon
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: in the study, with the air of a man being
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: pursued through it by an angel with sharper opinions than
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: his own. He rose with real gratitude when Miss Marple
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: was shown in. Miss Marple, you will save me. I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: am on original sin, and I have said everything I
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: ever thought about it in nine minutes, and Sunday requires twenty. Pad,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: dear vicar, pad. St. Paul is very good for padding,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and no one will ever check. Bless you, he sat
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: down heavily. You have come about Miss Lavinia. I have
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: come about her prayer book. Mr. Clement blinked. Her prayer book?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: She left it, I believe, in the vestry on Sunday.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: She was rotoclark for the flowers this month, and I
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: remember her putting it down on the vestry table while
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: she counted the vases. She meant to come back for it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: She did not. It will still be there. Will it?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: said Mr Clement doubtfully. But he rose, took his keys,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and led the way through the churchyard to the vestry.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: The yews stood dark and civil. A blackbird considered them
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: from the lich gate. The vestry was cool and smelt
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of stone and old hymnals. And on the table, where
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple had said it would be, lay Miss Lavinia's
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: prayer book, black-bound, gilt-edged, and closed upon a ribbon. Miss
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Marple lifted it, weighed it in her hand, and opened
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: it at the ribbon. Between the pages of the order
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: for the burial of the dead, pressed flat and quite dry,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: lay a single hollyhock petal, deep, arterial red. Mr. Clement
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: made a small sound. Yes, said Miss Marple, quite. She
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: turned the leaves. On the fly-leaf, in a hand she
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: did not know, but that had once been young, was written,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: To Lavinia, upon her confirmation, with love. E.P. 1892 Below,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: in Miss Lavinia's own upright hand, a later note. For
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: my niece Diana upon mine, L.P. Miss Marple, said the vicar,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: what does it mean? It means, dear vicar, that Miss
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Lavinia had, in her orderly way, been putting her house
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: in order. It means that she intended to give her
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: prayer-book to her niece. It means that she pressed a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: petal in it, on Sunday afternoon, from a flower she
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: had cut. Cut, mark, not snapped. and that she intended
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: a message by it, though whether to Diana or to herself,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I do not yet know. A message, said Mr Clement.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: A hollyhock, in the language of flowers, signifies ambition. A
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: red hollyhock, in some older books, signifies ambition unrestrained. Fecundity too,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: but I do not think Miss Lavinia was thinking of fecundity.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: She closed the prayer book and stood, looking at the
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: plain iron cross upon the vestry wall. Mr. Clement, may
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I keep this a few days? Of course. Say nothing
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: to anyone, not to your wife, not to the inspector.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: not to Mrs. Price Ridley, especially not to Mrs. Price Ridley,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and not to Miss Diana. I shall not say a word,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple. Good man, said Miss Marple, and she put
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the prayer-book into her basket beneath a cloth. and covered
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the cloth with a bunch of parsley she had picked
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: from the vicarage bed on the way in. Miss Marple
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: had discovered, over sixty years, that a bunch of parsley
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: discouraged curiosity in a way that a plain cloth did not.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Outside the lich gate she met Mr Endicott, the solicitor
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: from Muchbenham, an elderly gentleman of narrow shoulders and precise umbrella.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: He raised the umbrella an inch in salutation. He had,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: she saw, the small, careful shave of a man who
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: has slept ill, and the umbrella he carried in fine
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: weather betrayed him. A solicitor with settled news carries his
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: umbrella loosely, as an ornament. A solicitor with unsettled news
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: grips it, at the middle, as though it were the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: balance of a difficult argument. Mr. Endicott was gripping his
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: at the middle. Miss Marple, I had hoped to meet you. Mr. Endicott,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: you were to have called on Miss Lavinia this morning
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: at eleven. I was. I had come down last night
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: to Newton and stayed at the George. She had asked
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: me to bring certain documents. A new will? He hesitated. Then,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: with the smallest of professional inclinations, he said, A codicil,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, executed in my office three weeks ago, to
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: be witnessed here today by, I believe, Dr. Haydock and Mrs. Bunting.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: And its effect? I may not, of course. Of course.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: He looked at her over his spectacles. There was in
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: his old face the ghost of a smile that had once,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: forty years before, been mischievous. I will say only, Miss Marple,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: that the codicil substantially altered the disposition of the residuary estate.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: In favour of the niece, or against? Against. Ah, in
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: favour of the cottage hospital, in its entirety. save for
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: certain small bequests, including one to Mr Carew of Mallard's Farm,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: in acknowledgement, as she put it, of an unjust letter.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Mr Carew, said Miss Marple, how very like her, how
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: very like her indeed. The codicil was not, of course, executed.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: She died before the witnessing. So the previous will stands.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: The previous will stands, and Miss Diana Price inherits the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: old rectory, the London property, and the residue, less certain
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: small legacies. I see. Mr. Endicott, one further question. Did
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: anyone besides yourself and Miss Lavinia know that the codicil
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: was to be witnessed this morning? He considered. She said,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: when she wrote to me, that she had informed one
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: person only. Whom? She did not say. She said only,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I have told the person concerned so that no shock
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: may come of it. I owe that much. Miss Marple
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: stood still in the lane. The bees had, at some hour,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: changed their opinion of the weather. There was a thickness
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: in the light now, a warning of thunder later. Somewhere
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: a woodpigeon uttered its slow, complacent trouble. In the hedge
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: beside her a small brown moth mistaking the afternoon for evening,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: blundered out and back and out again, and settled at
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: last upon her sleeve, and she did not brush it off,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: but stood with it there, unregarded, while she assembled the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: last of what she had. A codicil unwitnessed, a niece
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: two days early, a young woman in a blue coat,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: silent when spoken to, a bolt oiled in secret, and
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: gloves washed in a hurry, and a petal pressed in
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: the order for the burial of the dead. Some debts,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia had said, one cannot pay in money, and
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: yet one must find a currency. What Miss Marple had
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: begun to fear was that Miss Lavinia had, on Sunday,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: chosen her currency, and that the choice had cost her
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: more than she was ever to know. Mr. Endicott, she said,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: thank you. Would you be so kind as to keep
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: this conversation between ourselves for one day only? I shall
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: not ask longer. One day, Miss Marple. He raised his
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: umbrella and passed on towards the police house to make
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: his statement to Inspector Slack. Miss Marple walked home with
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: the prayer book in her basket and the parsley over
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: it and the petal pressed between the pages of the
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: burial of the dead. Ambition unrestrained, she thought. and I
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: have told the person concerned so that no shock may
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: come of it. I owe that much. At her own gate,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the deep red hollyhock at the end of the row
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: had shed one bloom onto the path. She stooped and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: picked it up, and set it with a small private
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: grimness beside the petal from the prayer book in her
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: handkerchief drawer, where she kept certain other things she was
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: not yet ready to explain. Then she went to her
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: writing-desk and sat for a long time, looking not at
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: anything in the room but at a memory of Miss
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Lavinia Price, three summers ago, standing at this same gate
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: and saying, with a fierceness that had puzzled Miss Marple
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: then and did not puzzle her now, Some debts, Miss Marple,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: one cannot pay in money, and yet one must find
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: a currency. Section 6. Old Debts and New Faces The currency, then,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: was the question. and Miss Marple, having sat with it
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: as one sits with a difficult child, decided to seek
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the counsel of her oldest and most useful book, which
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: was not the Bible, though she loved it, nor Mrs Beaton,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: though she respected her, but the small red address book
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: in which, over the years, she had noted the names, cousinships, disappointments,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and small dishonours of a great many people who had
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: once lived, or once been unhappy, in St Mary Mead.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Under P, she found what she had come to find. Price, Lavinia,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Old Rectory. Price, Edmund, Brother. D, 1919, Passchendaele. Price, Diana, Niece.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Only child of Edmund. Mother, Elsa Vane, of Ipswich. Married E.P., 1913.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Died childbed, 1919. And beneath, in her own faint pencil,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Elsa Vane, Twin sister Ada Vane, actress, married R. Sturgis
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of Ipswich in 1921. Trouble over an inheritance, 1934. Twin sister.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple set the book down softly. Twin sister. And
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the young woman on the crossroads on Sunday afternoon, silent
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: when spoken to, fair in a blue coat, and the
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: niece in the morning room, composed against the light. Two women, possibly,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: or one woman, twice. She was still considering this when
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Bunting
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the cook was shown in, twisting her apron and pink
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: to the ears. Miss Marple, I hope you'll forgive it.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I couldn't rest. Sit down, Mrs. Bunting. Betsy, bring in
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: the tea. Mrs. Bunting sat, and would not touch her tea,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and after a fashion of small distresses at last put
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: it out. She had, that morning, at a quarter to six,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: opened the scullery door to bring in the milk, and
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: had seen, she thought, a figure at the side gate.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: A figure, Mrs Bunting? A woman's figure, ma'am. Fair-haired, no hat.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: She had the gate open, ma'am, and she saw me,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and she … She smiled, Miss Marple. It wasn't a
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: friendly smile. And then she went on into the garden,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and I thought, Miss Diana is up early, and I
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: went back to the range and put the kettle on.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: and then, at half-past, I heard the mistress cry out.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Cry out? One word, ma'am, only one. She said, she said, you.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Just that, and then nothing, and I thought, she is
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: angry with the gardener's boy, and it will pass, and
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I did not go out. God forgive me, ma'am, I
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: did not go out. Mrs. Bunting, you could not have known.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And when at last I did go out, ma'am, It
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: was Miss Diana coming in from the front, and it
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: was Miss Diana who screamed, and... And by then, she
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: could not finish. Miss Marple laid a hand on hers.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: You will tell the inspector this. He will say I
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: am foolish, ma'am. He will say a woman in a
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: blue coat. He will not. He will say it to himself,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: but he will not say it to you. And you
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: will tell him what you told me. that the figure
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: smiled and that the smile was not a friendly one.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Mrs Bunting nodded and, more calmly, drank her tea. When
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: she had gone, Miss Marple sat with her small red
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: book open at P and thought about smiles. There are,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: she reflected, so many kinds. There is the smile of
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: the child who has taken the jam, the smile of
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the bride at the church door, the smile of the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: man who has decided to lie. the smile of the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: woman who has, at last, remembered where she saw you before. Mrs.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Bunting had known Miss Lavinia thirty years, and had never
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: in that time known the mistress to cry out one word. You.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: It was the smallest of syllables. It was very heavy indeed.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: She was still turning this over when the bell rang
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: a second time, and Dr. Hadock entered, with the small,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: folded expression that in him did duty for excitement. Jane,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: there is news. Slack has released Mr. Carew, You may
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: thank Higgs's Friesian and Mr Endicott's statement, and he has
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: arrested no one. Meanwhile, however... Meanwhile, said Miss Marple, again? Meanwhile,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: a boy from the George at Newton has come in
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: to say that a young lady in a blue coat
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: took a room there on Saturday and paid, in cash,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: for two nights, and left in the morning without her breakfast,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: and has not been seen since. She signed the register D. Sturgis, Ipswich.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple closed her small red book. Ah, she said,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: the vain twin's daughter. The what? Miss Diana Price's cousin, Doctor,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: her only cousin, on her mother's side. There has been,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I gather, a long unpleasantness over some money left by
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: their grandmother, and now, if I am not mistaken, there
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: is a further unpleasantness attached to it, which brought this
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: young woman to St Mary Mead on Saturday, quite unknown
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: to us, and to the crossroads on Sunday. and to
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the side gate at a quarter to six on Tuesday morning.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Then it was she. Perhaps, or perhaps not. A woman's figure, fair,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: no hat. Doctor, if you had a cousin who looked
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: so exactly like you that the parson mistook you at
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Christmas for one another, and Mrs Bunting has told me
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: before that the mistress used to laugh at exactly that
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: of her sister-in-law and her twin, how would you use
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that likeness? He whistled softly. Not well. Not well. Now.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Diana Price came down, she says, on Monday evening. I
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: should like to know where Miss D. Sturgis of Ipswich
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: passed the night of Sunday and the day of Monday.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I should also like to know, and this you can
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: help me with, whether Dr. Newby of Ipswich still practices
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and would remember a set of twins born to a Mrs.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Vane in the summer of 93. I can telephone him. Do.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: He went to her hall and she heard the small
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: crank of the telephone. and his patient, doctor's voice, and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: while he was engaged, she opened Miss Lavinia's prayer book again,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: and read once more the note upon the fly-leaf. For
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: my niece Diana, upon mine. L. P. Upon mine, Miss
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Marple thought, upon her confirmation. Which niece had been confirmed?
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Diana had been confirmed in the parish church at Ipswich
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: in 1913. Miss Lavinia had spoken of it once, with
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: disapproval of the Ipswich vicar, Who had, she said, no chin.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: And this note had been added later, in Miss Lavinia's
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: own hand, but it did not say when. The doctor returned.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: He was, for him, pale. Newby remembers. There were twins.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Not two little girls, Jane. One little girl and one
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: little boy. Elsa and Edwin. The boy died at three
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: days old. The girl grew up to marry your Edmund
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Price and to bear Diana. There was no Ada. No vain, sister.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Your entry is wrong. Miss Marple was silent so long
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: that Dr. Hadock leaned forward. Jane? Then, said Miss Marple slowly,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: either Diana Price is the niece we believe her to be,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and there is no cousin, and the young woman at
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: the George is someone else altogether, using an old family
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: name to muddy the water, or … Or? Or my
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: entry is not wrong at all, and Dr Newby was,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: as country doctors sometimes are, kindly misled forty years ago
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: by a family that had reasons of its own to
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: conceal a second daughter. It has happened. Consider Mrs Trumper
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of Little Ambridge. She had a second daughter for eleven years,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: and no one in the village knew. Hadock said, Jane,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: that is a great deal of theory. It is, said
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple. I am not fond of theory. I prefer facts.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Very well. FACTS. A young woman in a blue coat
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: signing herself D. Sturgis of Ipswich was in Newton on Saturday,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: at the Crossroads on Sunday, at the old rectory side
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: gate on Tuesday morning at quarter to six. FACT. She
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: smiled at Mrs Bunting. FACT. Miss Lavinia's last word spoken
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: to someone in her garden was, YOU! An exclamation, Doctor,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: of recognition. Not of a stranger. of a person known. Now,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: whom did Miss Lavinia recognise? The niece she had breakfasted
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: with the evening before? Or a face, a face she
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: had last seen, perhaps, in a photograph, or across a
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: crowded room, or in a courtroom twenty years ago? Miss Marple.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I am not, she said, folding her hands, fond of theory, doctor,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: but I am, at times, obliged to it. Tomorrow I
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: hope to be obliged less. She stood up. Somewhere over
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: the downs, at last, the thunder that had been promising
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: all afternoon began, very softly, to keep its promise. Section
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: 7 The Second Shock The thunder kept its promise through
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the night, and by the small hours St Mary Mead
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: lay under a soft, insistent rain that drenched the hollyhocks
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: and beat, upon Miss Marple's pain, a rhythm so precise
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: she woke twice to consider it. In the morning the
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: village was clean and bright and slightly stunned, as villages
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: are after storms, and by nine o'clock, when Miss Marple
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: had finished her toast and was drawing on her gloves
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: for the daily walk, the second shock arrived. It arrived,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: as such shocks do, by the mouth of a small boy,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Billy Perkins, the postman's youngest, breathless from the run. Miss Marple!
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, ma'am! There's another! At the George. The lady
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: in the blue coat. Dr. Hadock's there, and Constable Pork
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Slack, and the boots at the George, says
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: she never touched her breakfast Monday, nor her tea yesterday,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: nor nothing today, and when they went in this morning, she, she...
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Sit down, Billy. Breathe. Have a piece of shortbread. Now,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: she what? She were dead in the bed, ma'am, said Billy, awed.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Doctor says a great while dead. Since Monday, they reckon.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple sat down herself. It was, she thought afterwards,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the first time in a great many years that she
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: had done so in the middle of putting on a glove.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Since Monday, she said. Since Monday, ma'am, that's what he said.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Billy. Run to Dr. Haydock and say that
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I shall be at the George in twenty minutes, and
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: would he be good enough to keep the boots away
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: from the register in the meantime? Billy ran. Miss Marple
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: finished her glove and put on the other, and stood
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: a moment at her window. Since Monday. The lady in
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the blue coat had been dead since Monday. Then she
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: had not been at the side gate at a quarter
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: to six on Tuesday morning. She had not been at
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the crossroads on Sunday afternoon. No, there she had been,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: for Mr. Carew had given her a lift and Jarvis
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: had seen her. Sunday afternoon. Alive. Saturday night at the George. Alive.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Suntime Monday. Dead. Tuesday morning at the side gate. Impossible.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Yet Mrs. Bunting had seen a woman's figure, fair, no hat, smiling.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: And Miss Lavinia had cried out, You! Ah, said Miss
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Marple to her window, I see. The George at Newton
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: was a low, kindly, ill-plumbed inn with pigeons in the eaves. Dr.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Hadock met her in the courtyard, his face very grave. Jane,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: it is Miss Sturgis right enough. She has been dead
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: since Monday afternoon, so far as I can judge. There
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: is a bottle of chloral by her bed and a glass.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: There is also, I would like your eye on this
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: before Slack has it, a note. He led her upstairs.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Constable Polk stood at the door and stood aside. Inspector
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Slack was within, red as ever, and, for once, quiet.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple did not look at the bed. She looked
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: at the small, cheap writing table by the window. on
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: which lay a sheet of the Georges' own paper, and read,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: in a hand that was fine and rapid and educated,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: I have done what I came to do. My conscience
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: is my own affair. Do not trouble to find me.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: I have already gone. D. She read it twice. Then
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: she said mildly to Inspector Slack, Inspector, has anyone else
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: seen this? The Boots, Dr. Hadock, myself. then I should
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: be grateful if it did not for the moment travel further.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, Inspector, I ask you a small favour, which
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: will cost you nothing and may spare you a great embarrassment.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: The letter was not written here. Do you see where
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the writer laid her wrist? There is no smudge of
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the George's ink, which is that peculiar and rather runny
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: violet you will find in every inkwell in the place.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: This ink is Stephen's blue-black, from a good pen. Where
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: is Miss Sturgis's pen? Where is her inkpot? And where,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: this is important, is the wet or the drying blot?
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: The paper is quite dry and quite fresh. It was
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: written elsewhere and laid here. Slack's mouth opened and closed
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: and opened and stayed open. Furthermore, said Miss Marple gently,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Observe the signature. D. It is initial only. Miss Sturgis
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: signed her name in the register D. Sturgis in full.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: A woman under her own hand when writing a note
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: of confession will very seldom abbreviate. She may be shy.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: She is not evasive with herself. This D is the
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: signature of someone who wishes to be Diana and does
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: not wish, quite, to be caught being her. Miss Marple,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: said Slack, and this time it was not an interruption,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: but the first note of a conversion. Yes, Inspector? Ma'am,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: if you would, if you would put your view of
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the matter... Presently, said Miss Marple. Presently, Inspector. First, some
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: small things. Sergeant Lake, you have, I hope, the register? Here, Miss.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Would you compare the writing here... D. Sturgis, Ipswich, with
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the writing on this note? They compared. It took only
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: a moment. The register was in a broad, honest hand,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: forward-leaning and unhurried. The note was rapid, small and elegant.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Not the same hand, said Lake. Not the same hand,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. Now, when was Miss Sturgis last seen alive? Monday, ma'am,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: half-past two. She left the George on foot with a
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: small bag, saying she would be back for tea. She
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: did not come back for tea. The chambermaid found her
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in bed Wednesday morning, this morning, when the boots were
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: sent up on account of the smell of chloral. And
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: her room was locked? Locked from within, ma'am. Key on
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: the inside table. Miss Marple looked at the window. She
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: looked at the little iron balcony beyond, and beneath it,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: the flat roof of the coach house. A person of
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: moderate agility, she thought, and reasonable nerve, might well have
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: come out of the window and dropped to that roof,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and thence to the yard, at any hour of Tuesday night,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and returned, again, at any other hour, a key having
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: been arranged. She said none of this to Inspector Slack.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: She said, instead, Inspector. Would you send Constable Pork to
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the old rectory at once, and request Miss Diana Price
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to come here to Newton with him? Say only that Dr.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Hadock wishes her to identify her cousin, and that it
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: will not take long. Her cousin? said Slack. Yes, said
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, quite calmly. Her cousin. Miss Diana Price is not,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: I think. an only child of an only child, nor,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: in the light of the last hour, is she quite
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: the woman she believes herself to be. Miss Marple. Send
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: for her, Inspector. He sent. In the hour that followed,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple made two very quiet inspections. She looked in
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Miss Sturgis's bag and found, as she had expected, a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: folded photograph of two small girls, alike as chestnuts, in
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: white confirmation dresses, taken by a photographer of Ipswich. and
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: a second, older photograph of a young woman with the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: very hair of Miss Diana Price, taken in 1912, and,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: most interestingly, a folded letter, unfinished, in a hand not
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: the writer of the confession and not the register. Dear Aunt,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: You have said you will settle it. I am glad.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: It is not the money, it is the truth. Yours
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: in some hope, D. Miss Marple folded the letter again
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: and laid it back precisely as it had been. To Dr. Haydock,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: at the window, she said only, Doctor, the confession note
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: is not in Diana Price's hand either. He looked up sharply.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Whose then? That, said Miss Marple, is the small remaining question. Now,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: here is Constable Polk in the yard, and here is
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana. It will be interesting to see whether she faints,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: and if so, at what precise point. Below, in the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: sunlit yard, a slim, fair woman in a grey travelling
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: coat was being handed down from the trap by Constable Pork.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: She looked up at the window. Her face, framed by
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: the fair hair, was very calm. She did not faint,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: but her right hand, ungloved, closed once upon the trap's
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: edge with such sudden force that the knuckles went white
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: as a bone. Miss Marple saw it, and turned away
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: from the window, and folded her hands and said softly
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: to Dr. Hadock, There. Section 8. Miss Marple sets a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: small snare. Diana Price came up the stairs of the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: George with an unhurried step, and Miss Marple, waiting on
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the landing with her hands folded upon her reticule, was
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: for a moment struck, as she was so often struck
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: by young women in trouble, by the extreme tidiness of
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: her hair. Grief, in Miss Marple's experience, was a great disarranger.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: and Miss Diana's hair was as neat as though a
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: maid had done it that morning, with pins and a prayer.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, Diana said. She did not offer her hand.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Miss Price, this will be very short. Dr. Hadock only
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: needs a word from you, that this poor lady is,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: or is not, someone you have known. She stood aside.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Diana passed her into the room. She looked at the bed.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: She looked at the hair upon the pillow. She looked,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: for a longer moment, at the pale hand upon the counterpane.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: I do not know her, she said. Dr. Haydock, from
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: the window, said quietly, Miss Price, this lady signed the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: register of this inn, D. Sturgis, Ipswich. You have no
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: relation of that name. I have no relation of any
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: name save my aunt. My mother was an only child.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I have been told so all my life. So you have,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple very kindly. So you have. She stepped forward.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: She was, one would have said, a small, lilac-coloured woman
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: of no consequence, offering solace. From the low table by
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the bed she took up the folded photograph, the two
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: small girls in their white confirmation dresses, and, holding it
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: not as evidence but as one holds a picture one
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: wishes to share, presented it to Diana Price. Do you
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: know these children, my dear? Diana looked. There was a
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: very small silence. Not, Miss Marple noted, a silence of shock,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: a silence of calculation. No, she said. Ah, said Miss Marple.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: I only wondered because, is it not curious, the child
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: on the left has a small mole at the outer
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: corner of her left eye. You have one too, Miss Price.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly there. I noticed it yesterday, in the morning room,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: when the light caught you. Diana's hand rose in a small,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: involuntary way and touched her cheek and fell. A coincidence,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: she said evenly. Very likely, said Miss Marple, and took
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: the photograph back and set it down and lifted from
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: beside it the unfinished letter. And this, my dear? Do
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: you know this hand? Diana looked. This time the silence
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: was different. It was the silence of a person hearing,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: in a distant room, a door being tried. No, she said. Ah!
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: It is only that it is signed D, and it says,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Dear Aunt, you have said you will settle it. I
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: am glad. It is not the money, it is the truth.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: You will forgive me, my dear, but I think you
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: have used those exact words to me in your own
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: drawing room. Only yesterday, when you said, Do you remember
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that your aunt had promised to set the record straight
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: before Michaelmas, and that you were glad, and that it
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: was not the money? Diana said nothing. Now this, said
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, with the same soft, almost apologetic voice, is
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: a note the inspector found on the table. She held
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: out the confession. Diana looked. Her eyes did not widen,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: they narrowed very slightly at the signature. I do not
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: know that hand either, she said. Nor do I, said
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple, yet, but we shall. It is a good hand.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: A schooled hand, the hand, I think, of a person
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: accustomed to writing quickly for others to read, a secretary, perhaps,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: or a professional witness of some kind. Not, in any case,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: a country lady's hand. Diana turned away and made as
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: though to go to the window. Miss Marple, mild as milk,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: moved her small self one half-step so that her lilac
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: cardigan was, quite gently, between Diana and the window, and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Diana stopped. Miss Price, Miss Marple said, there is one
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: further small thing. Would you look, please, at your gloves?
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: My gloves? Yes, the pair you have on. Would you
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: take off the right one? Diana Price took off her
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: right glove. The hand beneath was very white, very slim,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and quite steady. Upon the third finger, however, there was,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: very faint, very old, a shallow scar. no more than
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: a whitened line running across the knuckle. It was the
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: sort of scar left by a child's attempt to reach
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: a jar over her head. Miss Sturgis, said Miss Marple softly,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: had such a scar. On the same finger. On the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: same hand. It is mentioned by the doctor at Ipswich
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: in the Certificate of Confirmation, which I have taken the
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: liberty of asking for by telegram this morning. I have
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: not yet received it. I expect it this afternoon. Diana
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Price put her glove back on. You are mistaken, she said.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Her voice was quite level. I am Diana Price. I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: was born at Ipswich in 1900. My mother died when
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I was three days old. I have no cousin. This
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: poor woman is a stranger to me. Very well, my dear,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, and she stepped aside from the window
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: and let Diana pass. Diana did not go to the window.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: She went to the door and out of it and
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: down the stairs and into the yard and did not
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: look back. Dr. Hadock at the window said, Jane, she
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: never blinked. No, said Miss Marple, she never blinked. That
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: is because, Doctor, she was not lying. She is Diana Price.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: She was born at Ipswich in 1900. Her mother died
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: when she was three days old. She has no cousin.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: All of that is quite true, and she was quite
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: prepared to say it. Then, then the woman on the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: bed is not her cousin. The woman on the bed,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I think, is her sister. He turned from the window. Twins,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: he said. Twins, said Miss Marple. Twins born in 1900
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: at Ipswich. Separated within the week for reasons I do
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: not yet know but suspect. A small scandal. An unmarried aunt.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: An easier arrangement. And never reunited by their family, but
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: never forgotten by one of them. The one who kept
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: the family name. The one who did not. And the aunt?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: The aunt knew, or came in these last weeks to know.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: She was a woman, remember, who put her house in order.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: She had drawn a codicil. She had said, I have
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: told the person concerned so that no shock may come
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: of it. I owe that much. That was not written
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to Diana. That was written to me, or would have
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: been had she lived. But it was said, first, to
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: a young woman in a blue coat at a crossroads
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: on a Sunday afternoon. and that young woman came to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: St Mary Mead, full, I think, of hope, and was
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: killed on Monday in this bed with a bottle of chloral,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: and had a note laid beside her on Tuesday morning,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: in a hand not her own, and a signature abbreviated
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: in a way she would never have used. Jane. Diana
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: killed her sister. I do not, said Miss Marple softly,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: yet know that. I know only that Diana Price did
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: not blink at a scar upon her own hand, and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: did not blink at the sight of her sister upon
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: a bed. That is either very great innocence, or very
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: great wickedness, and in my experience the two are not
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: always as far apart as we like to pretend. She
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: turned to Constable Polk, who had been standing, forgotten, at
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: the door. Constable, would you be so kind as to
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: see that Miss Price is driven safely to the old rectory,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: and once she is there, would you ask Sergeant Lake
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: to set a very quiet watch upon the side gate?
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: the same gate, mark you, whose bolt was so freshly
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: oiled from now until midnight. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, constable.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: She stood a moment longer at the little window of
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: the George, looking down at the yard where Miss Diana
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Price was, with unhurried grace, stepping up again into the trap.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Beyond the yard, the lane climbed towards St Mary Mead.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: Beyond the lane, the downs, wet and shining. And in
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple's reticule, folded quite flat between two receipts and
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: a shopping list, lay a single deep red hollyhock petal,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: which she had picked, that morning, from the base of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: a plant she had not planted, and did not remember
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: rooting at the far end of her own garden. She
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: would set the snare again, she thought, not here, there,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: at the old rectory, to-night, where the gate had been oiled.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Section 9 The Quiet Assembly The trap took Diana away
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: up the lane, and Miss Marple, having thanked the boots
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: at the George with a shilling and the chambermaid with two,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: was driven back to St Mary Mead by Dr. Hadock
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: in his Morris, which smelt, as it always did, of
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: iodine and pipe tobacco. They did not speak until they
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: were past the crossroads, at which Miss Marple looked with
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: a certain grave courtesy as one might look at a battlefield. Jane,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: said Dr. Hadock at last, tell me what you have.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: I have, said Miss Marple, nearly everything. I do not
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: yet have the how of the second death, I do
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: not yet have the why of the pattern of hollyhocks,
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: but I have the shape, Doctor. And when one has
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: the shape, the rest is only patience. The Shape The
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: shape is this. There were two children. One was kept
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: and named Diana Price. and grew up in Ipswich in
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: her Aunt Lavinia's shadow, and came, at last, into an expectation.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: The other was given away, quietly, before the christening, and
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: she grew up under another name, in another town, with
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: another aunt, a Mrs Sturgis of Ipswich, I think, who
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: was some connection of the girl's mother's. She was told
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: she was an orphan. She was not told she had
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: a sister. How did she learn? I do not know.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Perhaps a letter from a dying aunt or from a solicitor.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Perhaps a photograph seen by chance. In any case, some
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: weeks ago she wrote, Do you remember Mrs. Bunting's corner
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: of an ashy paper? Not a penny more. That is
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: not the letter of a woman asking for the truth.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: That is Miss Lavinia's reply, quoted back at her in
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: her own hand. Someone else had been demanding money, and
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: had been refused. Diana Price, my dear doctor. Not the stranger.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Diana had been asking Miss Lavinia for money for some time,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: and had been told, at the end of May, not
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: a penny more. Then Diana. Diana had spent her small fortune.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: Diana lived, as we have all seen at the flower show,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: a little too well. Diana had, I think. been already
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: in London, borrowing at rates that would have made her
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: aunt weep, and had come down to persuade Aunt Lavinia
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: to lend her one more sum. In this she failed,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: and had been failing. Meanwhile the other sister, call her
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Dorothy Sturgis of Ipswich, had come, by whatever chance, upon
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: her own history, and had written to Miss Lavinia. Miss Lavinia,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: in her orderly way, had been shocked, and then softened,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: and then resolute. She would set the record straight. She
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: would divide the estate more justly. Better, she would give
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: the London property to her lost niece, and leave Diana
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: the old rectory and enough to live upon. And the codicil?
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: The codicil, Doctor, was a further step, done in anger.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia had told Diana of her intention, you remember.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: I have told the person concerned so that no shock
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: may come of it. I owe that much. And Diana,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: we may guess, had said something in reply so ugly
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: that Miss Lavinia went the next day to Mr. Endicott
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: and drew up a codicil disinheriting her entirely in favour
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: of the cottage hospital, save for the small kindness to Mr. Carew.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: She then repented. or partly, and arranged that the codicil
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: should be witnessed at the old rectory on Tuesday morning
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: at eleven, to give Diana one last chance to see reason.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: She did not know that Diana had already seen reason
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: of a quite different kind. Diana killed her aunt to
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: prevent the codicil Diana killed her aunt to prevent the codicil, yes,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: but she also killed her sister to prevent the truth.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: That is why the second death, doctor. That is why
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: the note. If the sister had lived, she would have said,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: I wrote to Miss Lavinia. She was going to acknowledge me.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: She said she had told the person concerned. And then
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: all eyes would have turned to that person concerned. So
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: the sister had to die first, on Monday afternoon, in
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: a locked room from which a slim young woman could,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: without difficulty, drop to the coach-house roof, and thence back
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: later by an arranged key. And the aunt had to
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: die second, on Tuesday morning, in her own border, before
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: eleven o'clock, before the witnessing. And Mrs Bunting's figure, the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: fair woman smiling at the gate, was Diana Price, not
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: a stranger, her own niece. Mrs Bunting knew Miss Diana
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: only from Christmas photographs. She has been in the house
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: seven years, but has met her twice. And in the
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: half-light of a quarter to six, a fair woman at
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: the gate becomes, to a startled cook, a stranger. Miss Lavinia's, you,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: was not directed at a stranger. It was directed at Diana.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: She was surprised, surprised, Doctor, and quite unafraid, because she
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: had not expected Diana to be out in the garden
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: at that hour, and had assumed her still in bed.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: She was not afraid, because Diana was her niece. She
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: had time enough only for the program. and then Diana
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: struck her from behind with, I should suppose, the stone
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: weight from the scullery scale, which is round and smooth, and,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: we shall find, has been most recently washed. The petals.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: The petals were a small, cold thought. Diana knew that
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: the village would notice a stranger. She wished, therefore, to
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: write Stranger upon the garden. A deep red hollyhock snapped
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: in a hurry, a scarlet woman, as it were, sketched
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: crudely at her aunt's head, invited the village to say
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: at once, a woman, and by the afternoon, when the
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: young woman in the blue coat should be discovered at
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: the George, indubitably dead by her own hand, with a
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: note confessing, the village would say, the woman. Diana had,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you see, planned to place the note at the George
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: on Monday night, and to have her sister found on
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: Tuesday morning at the very hour her aunt was being examined.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: She was undone in this by two small pieces of
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: ordinary bad luck. The boots at the George does not
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: go up to Miss Sturgis's room on Tuesday, because Miss
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: Sturgis had said she would sleep late, and the note
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: in the wrong ink and the wrong hand and the
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: wrong signature is not laid there until, we shall find,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: sometime Tuesday night. In the meantime, the village finds Miss
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Lavinia at the wrong end of the pattern, and the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: second body does not turn up until Wednesday morning, and
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: the pattern is spoiled. Miss Marple. Yes, Doctor. You are certain?
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: I am certain enough, said Miss Marple, to set my snare.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I do not think I am wrong, but I would like,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: you understand this, to be quite, quite sure before we
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: speak the word. They had come to her gate. She
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: got down. She turned. She said, Tonight, Doctor, at ten o'clock.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: at the old rectory. I have arranged with Inspector Slack
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: that he and Sergeant Lake shall be quietly within the drawing-room,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: and Constable Polk within the scullery, and you and I
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: within the morning-room. I have arranged also that Mr. Endicott
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: shall arrive at nine, in his umbrella, with the papers
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: of the estate. And I have arranged, this is my part,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: that Miss Diana shall, at half-past nine, receive a note.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: It will say only this. The other letter has been
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: found among my aunt's things. E. It will not be
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: signed by Mr. Endicott. It will not be signed by
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: anyone she knows. But she will read it as from Mr. Endicott,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and she will act. And the other letter? The other letter, Doctor,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: is one I shall write this afternoon at my own
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: desk in the hand of a stranger, and place in
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: Miss Lavinia's writing-case in the drawing-room after Mrs. Bunting has
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: gone up to bed. It will be found by Diana
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: at some point after ten. It will say what Miss
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Lavinia would have said to her lost niece, had she
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: lived to say it. It will be a very kind letter.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: It will also be quite untrue. But we shall not
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: need it to be true, Doctor. We shall need it
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: only to be believed for the space of one minute
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: by one woman. Jane, that is a great deal of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: stage management. It is, said Miss Marple. I do not,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: as a rule, care for it. But there is a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: young woman in a bed at the George, and there
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: is an old woman in a border under the Hollyhocks,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: and I do not, upon the whole, feel very kindly
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: towards the person who arranged both. and I am willing,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: this once, to arrange something in return. She stood a moment,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: small and lilac at her gate. The hollyhocks, still wet
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: from the storm, hung heavy along her war. At the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: end of the row, the deep red bloom she had
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: not planted lifted its head, unrepentant, into the sun. And besides, doctor,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: she said more gently, Miss Lavinia was fond of me,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and I was fond of her, and she was, in
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: her way, honourable. She would not, I think, wish us
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: to be less. She went in. The kettle sang. At
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: six she wrote the letter, in a hand not hers,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: upon paper of a make that could be bought in Ipswich,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: but not in St Mary Mead. At seven she ate
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: a small piece of cold chicken. At eight she walked,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: through the last of the light, to the old rectory,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: and slipped the letter into Miss Lavinia's writing-case. beneath a
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: bill from the coal merchant, as she had said she would.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: At nine she was in the morning room, with Dr.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Hadock beside her, and the door open a hand's breadth,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: and Mr. Endicott's voice audible in the hall as he
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: greeted Miss Diana. At half-past nine Constable Pork delivered the note.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: At ten the snare was set, and Miss Marple folded
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: her hands in her lap and waited. Section 10 The
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Reveal Among the Hollyhocks The house at ten o'clock was
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: very still. Somewhere upstairs a clock made its cousinly inquiries
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: of another clock, and was answered. In the kitchen Mrs. Bunting,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: having been told by Miss Marple that she must go
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: to bed and stay in it, was faithfully in it,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: and awake. And in the morning room, behind a door
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: open a hand's breadth, Miss Marple and Dr. Haydock sat,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Slack and Sergeant Lake, behind the drawing-room door opposite, sat,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: and Constable Pork in the scullery sat, and no one
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: at all upon this earth appeared to breathe. They heard, presently,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana come down the stairs. She came down softly.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: She was in her grey travelling coat, and she carried
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: over her arm a small leather bag. She went not
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: to the front door, but to the drawing-room, where she paused,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: and Miss Marple threw the crack. saw her face lifted, listening.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Then she crossed to the writing-desk and lifted the lid
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: of Miss Lavinia's writing-case, and put her hand in and
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: withdrew the letter. She read it standing. Miss Marple, who
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: could not see the letter but knew it very well,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: followed the reading upon Miss Diana's face. My dear child,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: whom I have wronged these thirty years, I have this
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: day set my affairs in order. and named you in
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: my will, that no shock may come of it. I
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: have told the person concerned. Come to me, if you will,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday at eleven. Mr. Endicott will be with me,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: and we shall put the record straight. Your Aunt Lavinia
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: Price Miss Diana finished the letter. For a long moment
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: she did not move. Then, still without a sound, she
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: folded the letter. Not roughly, not tenderly, but with a small,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: business-like crease along its middle, and put it in her pocket.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: She closed the writing-case. She walked, unhurried, to the fireplace,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: and knelt, and struck a match, and set fire to
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: the folded letter, and watched it burn upon the hearthstone.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: While it burned, she said aloud, quite distinctly, though there
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: was no one in the room to hear, No, aunt,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: not this time. Miss Marple's hand tightened upon Dr. Hadock's wrist.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana rose, she turned. She walked with the same slow,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: unhurried grace to the little occasional table by the window,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: and lifted from beneath the aspidistra a small, oiled cloth bundle,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: which she had, at some earlier hour, put there for keeping.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: She unrolled it upon the table. Within lay a stone
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: weight from a scullery scale, freshly washed, and a bottle
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: marked Chloral, half full, and a pair of gardening gloves
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: rinsed to a curious paleness at the fingertips. She looked
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: at these things without emotion as a woman looks at
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: the items in her sewing basket. Then she said in
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: the same distinct voice, There is only Marple now, and
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: she is old. Miss Marple opened the door. She did
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: not open it dramatically. She opened it with the mild
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: social movement of a woman entering to say she has
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: heard the maid go to bed. and is worried about
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: the range. She said, quite kindly, Diana, my dear, would
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: you come and sit down? Diana Price turned. Her face,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: the same face that had not blinked at the sight
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: of her sister on a bed, that had not blinked
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: at a scar upon her own hand, did not blink now.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: But something behind the face, something very deep and cold
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: and small, altered. You, she said. I, said Miss Marple.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: Do come and sit. Mr. Endicott is in the drawing-room,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Slack, and Sergeant Lake, and Dr. Hadock is
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: here beside me, and Constable Polk is in the scullery.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: It will be much easier for us all if we
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: do it, my dear, in one room. Diana looked at
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the oiled cloth. She looked at the door. Then, with
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: a small, courteous inclination of the head, one might have
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: thought her accepting a chair at a fate, she came
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: into the morning-room and sat where Miss Marple pointed. upon
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: the low chair by the hearth. The others came in.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: They did not speak. They arranged themselves like a small congregation. Mr.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: Endicott stood behind Miss Marple's chair. Dr. Haydock closed the door.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: Inspector Slack, for once wordless, sat where he was put.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple laid her hands, palms down, upon her lap. Diana,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: she said gently, I shall tell you the story I know.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: and you may correct me if I am wrong. It
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: will be much easier than my asking questions. You have,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: and here her voice softened further, had a great many
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: questions in a great many rooms in these last days.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Miss Diana said nothing. You were, Miss Marple began, one
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: of two girls born at Ipswich in the summer of 1900.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: Your mother died within the week. Your father was already
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: at the war. Your Aunt Lavinia, unmarried and much occupied,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: made an arrangement that in those days was not uncommon.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: She kept one child and gave the other to your
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: mother's connection, Mrs Sturgis. I have written this afternoon to
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: the parish at St Peter's, Ipswich, and had my answer
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: by wire. Mrs Sturgis was a widow of small means
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: and great kindness, and she raised your sister as her
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: own and told her nothing. Your Aunt Lavinia kept you
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: and told you nothing either. It was a piece of
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Victorian tidiness which she came, in later life, to think
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: a wickedness. But she was not the woman to unpick
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: a knot merely because she had come to dislike the knot.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: She would unpick it only if the knot began to
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: press upon another life. This spring it began to press.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: Your sister Dorothy, for so she was called, wrote to her,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: having discovered by some accident her true parentage. Your aunt
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: was appalled, and then softened, and then resolute. She sent
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: for Mr. Endicott. She drew a new will. She wrote
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: to your sister and named a day. She had, meanwhile,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: been telling you, in a sequence of small conversations, of
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: which I have gathered fragments from Mrs Bunting and Mr Carew,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: that a certain injustice was to be set right, before Michaelmas.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: And you replied to those conversations with such fury that
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: she went at last to Mr. Endicott and drew, in anger,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: a codicil disinheriting you altogether, a codicil she then softened,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: arranging for it to be witnessed at eleven o'clock on Tuesday,
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: in the hope that you would relent. Diana said. She
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: would never have relented. She would have, said Miss Marple quietly.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: She loved you. That is the pity, my dear. She
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: loved you very much. She would have signed the previous
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: will in the end, and split the estate three ways,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: and forgiven you your debts, and made a place at
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: her table for a sister you had never known. She
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: would have been happy in it, Doctor. She would have
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: grown almost sentimental. Only you did not believe it. You
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: believed only what you had always believed. that she was
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: hard and unbending, and that you were the injured party.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: And so, on Monday afternoon, you went by a bicycle
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: from Newton. Mr. Endicott's clerk saw you at the crossroads,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: but did not, then, know why he was noticing, to
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: the George, and up the back stair to your sister's room,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: which she had opened for you because she believed you
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: were her sister, come at last. And you gave her
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: a glass of what she believed to be sherry, and
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: left her sleeping, and you locked the door, and you
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: dropped from the balcony to the coach-house roof, and thence
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: to the yard. And you returned in the small hours
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: of Tuesday morning, by the same route, with a note
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: in a hand you had, over some weeks, taught yourself
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: to write. The hand, I think, of a lady's maid
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: you knew in London, and you laid it upon her table. Yes?
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Diana said nothing, but her mouth had thinned. That was all. Then,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: in the small hours, you went home to the old rectory,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: and slept some, I dare say. and rose at a
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: quarter past five, and dressed, and went out through the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: side gate, the bolt of which you had, some evenings before,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: quietly oiled, and you went round to the front lane,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: and re-entered through the front gate, and you went into
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: the garden, and Mrs. Bunting saw you from the scullery,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: and thought you a stranger, and you smiled at her,
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: my dear, in a way that no woman ever smiles
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: at a woman she does not intend to injure, and
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: your aunt was in the border, kneeling, You came upon
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: her from behind. You had in your hand the stone
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: weight of the scullery scale, that same weight which sits,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: at this moment, in oilcloth upon the table over there,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: and she heard you, and she turned, and she saw you,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: and she said, You, meaning, my dear, you are early,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: and you are here, and you will kiss me now
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: and end this quarrel, and a hundred other things she
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: had no time to say. You struck her once. You
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: picked up her secateurs and let them fall in her
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: hand as though she had dropped them. You broke, you
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: were in haste and did not think, three stems of
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: the deep red hollyhocks she loved best, and you laid
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: them about her, and you left a single bloom under
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: her outstretched fingers, and you went in through the scullery
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: door and up the back stairs, and you were in
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: bed and heard, quite clearly, poor Mrs. Bunting scream in
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: the garden at half-past six. Miss Marple's voice had grown,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: if anything, quieter. I know all this, my dear. I
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: know it because you did not blink at your sister's scar,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: because you burned this evening a letter that offered you
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: your aunt's forgiveness, because you spoke aloud, No, aunt, not
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: this time, and because you have brought down to this room,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: in an oiled cloth, the scale weight and the chloral
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: and the pale gloves that you rinsed with such care.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: It is not that you are wicked, Diana. It is
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: that you are, and always have been, terribly, terribly afraid.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: Afraid of the codicil, afraid of the sister, afraid of
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: the truth. And you have killed two women rather than
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: face what your aunt, in her last week, had at
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: last found the courage to face herself. There was a
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: very long silence. Then Diana Price lifted her head and
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: looked at Miss Marple, and she smiled, a small, bright,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: terrible smile. It was the smile of the child who
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: has taken the jam and does not, now, mind being seen.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: And what, she said, if I had killed her before
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: she wrote me that pretty letter of forgiveness? You did,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: my dear, said Miss Marple. She never wrote it. I did.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: This afternoon. In a hand not her own. On paper
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: bought in Ipswich. Diana Price's smile did not fade. It
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: became fixed. And then... Quite slowly, as ice breaks upon
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: a pond, it fell. Inspector Slack rose. The hollyhocks outside
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: the window moved gently in the night air. Section 11.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: After the Hollyhocks The hollyhocks moved gently in the night air,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and Inspector Slack, being no fool when finally shown the
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: shape of a thing, did what he had to do
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: with a quietness Miss Marple had not previously credited to him.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: There was no cry, no scene. Diana Price rose from
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: the low chair by the hearth, with the same slow,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: unhurried grace with which she had come down the stairs,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: and put on the glove upon her right hand, and
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: said only to Miss Marple, You are a great deal
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: less kind than you look, and to Sergeant Lake, who
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: had opened the door for her, thank you. She went
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: out between them into the hall, and out of the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: hall into the night, and Miss Marple did not watch
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: her go. She sat looking at the hearthstone, upon which
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: the ashes of a burned letter, her own letter, lay,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: and she was, for that first moment, very tired. Dr.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: Hadock put a hand upon her shoulder. He said nothing.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: There was nothing to say that would not have been
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: an interruption of a private, small grief, and he had
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: known her long enough to know it. Mr. Endicott, folding
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: his umbrella beside him though he was indoors, said at last,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: with the softness of a man reading a lesson, Miss Marple,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: I do not think in forty-two years I have ever
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: seen a case brought to a point with so little noise. Noise, Mr. Endicott,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, is very seldom useful. It only frightens
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: the birds and makes the neighbours interested. She smiled at him,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: a tired smile. Do sit a moment. Mrs. Bunting will
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: be down. She will insist upon tea, and we shall
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: need it. Mrs. Bunting was indeed down, having heard through
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: her open door what she had heard, and she made tea,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: and she cried a little into the caddy in a
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: private way, and she brought the tray with the same
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: steady hands with which she had brought Miss Lavinia her
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: breakfast for thirty years, and it was, they all felt,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the most difficult tray of her life, and the most important.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: They sat then in Miss Lavinia Price's morning-room, and drank
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: her tea. Nobody spoke of Diana. Presently Constable Pork, sent
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: by the inspector, returned to say that Miss Price had
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: made her statement without demur, that she had said only
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: the one further thing, she should have let me alone
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: about the truth, and that she was quiet. Dr. Hadock rose. Jane,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I shall walk you home. Thank you, Doctor. They went
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: out through the front hall, past the table where Miss
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: Lavinia's handbag had lain. Mrs. Bunting had put it away now,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: and out into the lane, where the sky was clear
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: and the stars were as many as they are only
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: in the country. The village slept. The vicarage was dark.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: In Mrs. Price Ridley's upper window, a single lamp still burned,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: from behind which no shadow moved, because Mrs. Price Ridley
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: was pretending, with all the passion of a woman who
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: does not know the essential, to be asleep. At Miss
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: Marple's gate they stopped. Jane, said Dr. Haydock. The letter,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: the one you wrote, did she really burn it, believing it?
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: She burned it, Doctor, believing it. For one minute, one
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: minute out of a life she had made so joyless,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: she believed that her aunt had forgiven her, and that
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: everything might be, in some measure, put right. And she
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: said aloud, No, aunt, not this time. It was the
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: only proof I needed, and it was the only proof
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: I could not otherwise have had. It was also, and
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: here Miss Marple's voice was for the first time that evening, unsteady.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: A cruelty. It was a small, precise cruelty. I have
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: done kinder things in my life, Doctor, and I hope,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: before I die, to do many more. It was a
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: necessary cruelty. Necessary, said Miss Marple, is a word one
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: uses to excuse the things one is not proud of.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: I did what I did. It brought us the truth.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: And Miss Lavinia lies quiet, and her lost daughter, for
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: it comes to that at last, Doctor, she was more
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: mother than aunt, lies quiet also at Newton. And the
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: village will have hollyhocks again next year, and my own
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: deep red one at the end of the row will
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: very likely have to be dug up. She looked at it.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: In the starlight it was only dark, no colour at all.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: She put out her hand and touched it briefly. Good night, Doctor.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: Good night, Jane. He walked back down the lane. She
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: watched him go until the sound of his step had
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: passed the vicarage, and then she went in and shut
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: her door and did not sleep. In the days that followed,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: the village performed the small, necessary offices of a village
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: that has been shaken. Mr. Clement preached, upon the Sunday,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: on the text, Judge not that ye be not judged,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: and did not for once need to pad. Mrs. Price
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: Ridley was, for perhaps ten days, unusually quiet, and then
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: perhaps eleven, and then resumed. Miss Weatherby, black-gloved, wrote to
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: a cousin in Torquay a letter she was compelled, in
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: the writing, to tear up twice. and eventually posted a
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: third version, which was rather good. Mr Carew of Mallard's
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: Farm walked on the Wednesday to the churchyard, and stood
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: a long time by Miss Lavinia's freshly turned earth, and
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: said aloud, I was a fool, ma'am, and I am sorry,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: and went home and, upon his own initiative, moved the gate. Mr. Endicott,
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: being a professional, arranged in due course for the estate
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: to go, under the previous will, to a distant cousin
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: at Cheltenham, whom no one in St. Mary Mead had
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: ever seen, and who did not, in the event, come.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: The old rectory stood empty for the rest of the summer,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: its blinds drawn, its garden gone gently wild. Only the
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: hollyhocks kept their appointment, the pink and the cream, and
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: here and there a deep arterial red, which had seeded
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: from the wall as such things do, and could not
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: now be stopped. At the cottage hospital, the matron opened
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: in September a small envelope from Mr Endicott's office. It
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: contained a note in Miss Lavinia Price's own hand, a
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: note that had been kept, unwitnessed, in a drawer for
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a fortnight before her death. It was a note that
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: willed a small sum, in her private capacity, to be
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: spent on curtains for the children's ward. It had, of course,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: no legal force. Nevertheless, in early October, curtains appeared, paid for,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: the matron never asked how, but from a lilac-coloured envelope
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: pushed under her door at some hour of an evening.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: The curtains were of a plain, quiet chintz. There were
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: no hollyhocks upon them. Miss Marple, for her part, had
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: one further duty. She went, at the end of that summer,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: upon the Ipswich train, to the churchyard of St Peter's,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: and she stood a long time beside a small, flat,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: weather-worn stone marked simply Dorothy Sturgis, 1900-1926. There was beside
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: it room. she stood and thought about a young woman
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: in a blue coat at a crossroads on a sunday
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: afternoon silent when spoken to and about a sunday afternoon
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: that had been without her knowing it her last chance
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: at kindness and she felt as she had not felt
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: in some years the small pressure of a very great
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: tenderness for a person she had never met At the
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: parish office she left a sum with the incumbent, and
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: instructions that the stone should be re-lettered before the winter
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: to read Dorothy Sturgis Price, 1900-1926. The loved sister of Diana,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: niece of Lavinia, long lost, at last acknowledged. The incumbent,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: a young man with a chin, said, Was she then
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: a Price? She was, sir, said Miss Marple. She always was.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: She travelled home. At St Mary Mead she got down
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: at the station and walked the lane, in the low
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: September light, past the hedges and the yellow hammers, and
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: the smell of blackberries beginning, and at her own gate
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: she paused, as she always paused, and looked at her hollyhocks.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: They had almost done. The pink and the cream were
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: browning at the edges, the seed pods were forming, in
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: the tight, considering way of things that mean, next year,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: to begin again. Only the deep red one at the
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: end of the row still bore, at its top, a
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: single obstinate bloom. She stood a moment, looking at it. Then,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: quite deliberately, and with the small, gentle firmness with which
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: a lifetime ago she had put down her trug on
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: the stone wall of a Tuesday morning in June, she
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: went into the toolshed, and came out with a spade,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: and dug it up. She carried the plant, root and all,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: to the compost heap, and laid it there. She washed
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: her hands at the pump, Then she went in and
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: put on the kettle, and cut a slice of the
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: seed-cake she had made that morning, and, having sat some
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: time at the window, watching the last of the September
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: sun upon her ordinary, pink and cream, blameless flowers, she
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: took up her knitting. The village equilibrium, as villages do, resumed.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: It resumed a little sadder, a little wiser, a little
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: more inclined, in Mrs Price Ridley at least, to consider
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: before pronouncing. It resumed with a chair empty at the
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: cottage hospital committee, and a stone re-lettered at Ipswich, and
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: a compost heap in Miss Marple's garden, in which one
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: deep red root would, all winter, quietly refuse to rot,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: and would, one morning in April, put up, despite everything,
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: a new green shoot. Miss Marple would see it. She
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: would nod once. And she would leave it, this time,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: to grow. Some things, in a garden as in a life,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: cannot be finally pulled up, and it is not, in
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: the end, the flowers that are the trouble. It is
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: what one is willing to trample to reach them. THE
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: END