By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [88]
She would have liked to examine the spot where the recent excavations had taken place, but that she had undertaken on no account to do.
‘Whosoever shall offend,’ she murmured to herself. ‘It might mean that, but if so it would have to be someone–’
She drove the car the short distance to the vicarage, got out and went up the path to the front door. She rang but could hear no tinkle from inside. ‘Bell’s broken, I expect,’ said Tuppence, knowing the habits of vicarage bells. She pushed the door and it responded to her touch.
She stood inside in the hall. On the hall table a large envelope with a foreign stamp took up a good deal of space. It bore the printed legend of a Missionary Society in Africa.
‘I’m glad I’m not a missionary,’ thought Tuppence.
Behind that vague thought, there lay something else, something connected with some hall table somewhere, something that she ought to remember…Flowers? Leaves? Some letter or parcel?
At that moment the vicar came out from the door on the left.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Do you want me? I–oh, it’s Mrs Beresford, isn’t it?’
‘Quite right,’ said Tuppence. ‘What I really came to ask you was whether by any chance you had a Bible.’
‘Bible,’ said the vicar, looking rather unexpectedly doubtful. ‘A Bible.’
‘I thought it likely that you might have,’ said Tuppence.
‘Of course, of course,’ said the vicar. ‘As a matter of fact, I suppose I’ve got several. I’ve got a Greek Testament,’ he said hopefully. ‘That’s not what you want, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Tuppence. ‘I want,’ she said firmly, ‘the Authorized Version.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the vicar. ‘Of course, there must be several in the house. Yes, several. We don’t use that version in the church now, I’m sorry to say. One has to fall in with the bishop’s ideas, you know, and the bishop is very keen on modernization, for young people and all that. A pity, I think. I have so many books in my library here that some of them, you know, get pushed behind the others. But I think I can find you what you want. I think so. If not, we’ll ask Miss Bligh. She’s here somewhere looking out the vases for the children who arrange their wild flowers for the Children’s Corner in the church.’ He left Tuppence in the hall and went back into the room where he had come from.
Tuppence did not follow him. She remained in the hall, frowning and thinking. She looked up suddenly as the door at the end of the hall opened and Miss Bligh came through it. She was holding up a very heavy metal vase.
Several things clicked together in Tuppence’s head.
‘Of course,’ said Tuppence, ‘of course.’
‘Oh, can I help–I–oh, it’s Mrs Beresford.’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, and added, ‘And it’s Mrs Johnson, isn’t it?’
The heavy vase fell to the floor. Tuppence stooped and picked it up. She stood weighing it in her hand. ‘Quite a handy weapon,’ she said. She put it down. ‘Just the thing to cosh anyone with from behind,’ she said–‘That’s what you did to me, didn’t you, Mrs Johnson.’
‘I–I–what did you say? I–I–I never–’
But Tuppence had no need to stay longer. She had seen the effect of her words. At the second mention of Mrs Johnson, Miss Bligh had given herself away in an unmistakable fashion. She was shaking and panic-stricken.
‘There was a letter on your hall table the other day,’ said Tuppence, ‘addressed to a Mrs Yorke at an address in Cumberland. That’s where you took her, isn’t it, Mrs Johnson, when you took her away from Sunny Ridge? That’s where she is now. Mrs Yorke or Mrs Lancaster–you used either name–York and Lancaster like the striped red and white rose in the Perrys’ garden–’
She turned swiftly and went out of the house leaving Miss Bligh in the hall, still supporting herself on the stair rail, her mouth open, staring after her. Tuppence ran down the path to the gate, jumped into her car and drove away. She looked back towards the front door, but no one emerged. Tuppence drove past the church and back towards Market Basing, but suddenly changed her mind. She turned the car, drove back the way she had come, and took the left-hand road leading to the Canal House bridge. She abandoned