Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [38]
Her words rang out with what seemed undeniable sincerity.
Sir Henry said kindly:
“I’m quite sure you were. But once it had happened?”
Josie’s chin went up.
“Well, it was a piece of luck, wasn’t it? Everyone’s got the right to have a piece of luck sometimes.”
She looked from one to the other of them in a slightly defiant questioning manner and then went on across the terrace and into the hotel.
Peter said judicially:
“I don’t think she did it.”
Miss Marple murmured:
“It’s interesting, that piece of fingernail. It had been worrying me, you know—how to account for her nails.”
“Nails?” asked Sir Henry.
“The dead girl’s nails,” explained Mrs. Bantry. “They were quite short, and now that Jane says so, of course it was a little unlikely. A girl like that usually has absolute talons.”
Miss Marple said:
“But of course if she tore one off, then she might clip the others close, so as to match. Did they find nail parings in her room, I wonder?”
Sir Henry looked at her curiously. He said:
“I’ll ask Superintendent Harper when he gets back.”
“Back from where?” asked Mrs. Bantry. “He hasn’t gone over to Gossington, has he?”
Sir Henry said gravely:
“No. There’s been another tragedy. Blazing car in a quarry—”
Miss Marple caught her breath.
“Was there someone in the car?”
“I’m afraid so—yes.”
Miss Marple said thoughtfully:
“I expect that will be the Girl Guide who’s missing—Patience—no, Pamela Reeves.”
Sir Henry stared at her.
“Now why on earth do you think that, Miss Marple?”
Miss Marple got rather pink.
“Well, it was given out on the wireless that she was missing from her home—since last night. And her home was Daneleigh Vale; that’s not very far from here. And she was last seen at the Girl-Guide Rally up on Danebury Downs. That’s very close indeed. In fact, she’d have to pass through Danemouth to get home. So it does rather fit in, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks as though she might have seen—or perhaps heard—something that no one was supposed to see and hear. If so, of course, she’d be a source of danger to the murderer and she’d have to be—removed. Two things like that must be connected, don’t you think?”
Sir Henry said, his voice dropping a little:
“You think—a second murder?”
“Why not?” Her quiet placid gaze met his. “When anyone has committed one murder, they don’t shrink from another, do they? Nor even from a third.”
“A third? You don’t think there will be a third murder?”
“I think it’s just possible … Yes, I think it’s highly possible.”
“Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry, “you frighten me. Do you know who is going to be murdered?”
Miss Marple said: “I’ve a very good idea.”
Ten
I
Superintendent Harper stood looking at the charred and twisted heap of metal. A burnt-up car was always a revolting object, even without the additional gruesome burden of a charred and blackened corpse.
Venn’s Quarry was a remote spot, far from any human habitation. Though actually only two miles as the crow flies from Danemouth, the approach to it was by one of those narrow, twisted, rutted roads, little more than a cart track, which led nowhere except to the quarry itself. It was a long time now since the quarry had been worked, and the only people who came along the lane were the casual visitors in search of blackberries. As a spot to dispose of a car it was ideal. The car need not have been found for weeks but for the accident of the glow in the sky having been seen by Albert Biggs, a labourer, on his way to work.
Albert Biggs was still on the scene, though all he had to tell had been heard some time ago, but he continued to repeat the thrilling story with such embellishments as occurred to him.
“Why, dang my eyes, I said, whatever be that? Proper glow it was, up in the sky. Might be a bonfire, I says, but who’d be having bonfire over to Venn’s Quarry? No, I says, ’tis some mighty big fire, to be sure. But whatever would it be, I says? There’s no house or farm to that direction. ’Tis over by Venn’s, I says, that’s where it is, to be sure. Didn’t rightly know what I ought to do about