Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie [31]
‘Indeed I can’t. There is Lettice Protheroe, I suppose, since she probably comes into money on her father’s death. But it is absurd to think of her in such a connection, and outside her I can think of nobody.’
‘And you, my dear?’ said Miss Marple, turning to Griselda.
Rather to my surprise Griselda coloured up. Something very like tears started into her eyes. She clenched both her small hands.
‘Oh!’ she cried indignantly. ‘People are hateful – hateful. The things they say! The beastly things they say…’
I looked at her curiously. It is very unlike Griselda to be so upset. She noticed my glance and tried to smile.
‘Don’t look at me as though I were an interesting specimen you didn’t understand, Len. Don’t let’s get heated and wander from the point. I don’t believe that it was Lawrence or Anne, and Lettice is out of the question. There must be some clue or other that would help us.’
‘There is the note, of course,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You will remember my saying this morning that that struck me as exceedingly peculiar.’
‘It seems to fix the time of his death with remarkable accuracy,’ I said. ‘And yet, is that possible? Mrs Protheroe would only have just left the study. She would hardly have had time to reach the studio. The only way in which I can account for it is that he consulted his own watch and that his watch was slow. That seems to me a feasible solution.’
‘I have another idea,’ said Griselda. ‘Suppose, Len, that the clock had already been put back – no, that comes to the same thing – how stupid of me!’
‘It hadn’t been altered when I left,’ I said. ‘I remember comparing it with my watch. Still, as you say, that has no bearing on the present matter.’
‘What do you think, Miss Marple?’ asked Griselda.
‘My dear, I confess I wasn’t thinking about it from that point of view at all. What strikes me as so curious, and has done from the first, is the subject matter of that letter.’
‘I don’t see that,’ I said. ‘Colonel Protheroe merely wrote that he couldn’t wait any longer –’
‘At twenty minutes past six?’ said Miss Marple. ‘Your maid, Mary, had already told him that you wouldn’t be in till half-past six at the earliest, and he appeared to be quite willing to wait until then. And yet at twenty past six he sits down and says he “can’t wait any longer”.’
I stared at the old lady, feeling an increased respect for her mental powers. Her keen wits had seen what we had failed to perceive. It was an odd thing – a very odd thing.
‘If only,’ I said, ‘the letter hadn’t been dated –’
Miss Marple nodded her head.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been dated!’
I cast my mind back, trying to recall that sheet of notepaper and the blurred scrawl, and at the top that neatly printed 6.20. Surely these figures were on a different scale to the rest of the letter. I gave a gasp.
‘Supposing,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t dated. Supposing that round about 6.30 Colonel Protheroe got impatient and sat down to say he couldn’t wait any longer. And as he was sitting there writing, someone came in through the window –’
‘Or through the door,’ suggested Griselda.
‘He’d hear the door and look up.’
‘Colonel Protheroe was rather deaf, you remember,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Yes, that’s true. He wouldn’t hear it. Whichever way the murderer came, he stole up behind the Colonel and shot him. Then he saw the note and the clock and the idea came to him. He put 6.20 at the top of the letter and he altered the clock to 6.22. It was a clever idea. It gave him, or so he would think, a perfect alibi.’
‘And what we want to find,’ said Griselda, ‘is someone who has a cast-iron alibi for 6.20, but no alibi at all for – well, that isn’t so easy. One can’t fix the time.’
‘We can fix it within very narrow limits,’ I said. ‘Haydock places 6.30 as the outside limit of time. I suppose one could perhaps shift it to 6.35 from the reasoning we have just been following out, it seems clear that Protheroe would not have got impatient before 6.30. I think we can say we do know pretty well.’