Nemesis - Agatha Christie [67]
‘No, I didn’t — I’m staying at The Old Manor House — and one of them, Mrs Glynne, I think — said she or her sister would post it. Very kind of her — ’
‘Let me see now. It would have been on Tuesday, would it? It wasn’t Mrs Glynne who brought it in, it was the youngest one, Miss Anthea.’
‘Yes, yes, I think that was the day — ’
‘I remember it quite well. In a good sized dress box — and moderately heavy, I think. But not what you said, Dockyard Association — I can’t recall anything like that. It was the Reverend Matthews — The East Ham Women and Children’s Woollen Clothing Appeal.’
‘Oh yes.’ Miss Marple clasped her hands in an ecstasy of relief. ‘How clever of you — I see now how I came to do it. At Christmas I did send things to the East Ham Society in answer to a special appeal for knitted things, so I must have copied down the wrong address. Can you just repeat it?’ She entered it carefully in a small notebook.
‘I’m afraid the parcel’s gone off, though — ’
‘Oh yes, but I can write, explaining the mistake and ask them to forward the parcel to the Dockyard Association instead. Thank you so much.’
Miss Marple trotted out.
Mrs Vinegar produced stamps for her next customer, remarking in an aside to a colleague — ‘Scatty as they make them, poor old creature. Expect she’s always doing that sort of thing.’
Miss Marple went out of the post office and ran into Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford.
Joanna, she noticed, was very pale and looked upset.
‘I’ve got to give evidence,’ she said. ‘I don’t know — what will they ask me? I’m so afraid. I — I don’t like it. I told the police sergeant, I told him what I thought we saw.’
‘Don’t you worry, Joanna,’ said Emlyn Price. ‘This is just a coroner’s inquest, you know. He’s a nice man, a doctor, I believe. He’ll just ask you a few questions and you’ll say what you saw.’
‘You saw it too,’ said Joanna.
‘Yes, I did,’ said Emlyn. ‘At least I saw there was someone up there. Near the boulders and things. Now come on, Joanna.’
‘They came and searched our rooms in the hotel,’ said Joanna. ‘They asked our permission but they had a search warrant. They looked in our rooms and among the things in our luggage.’
‘I think they wanted to find that check pullover you described. Anyway, there’s nothing for you to worry about. If you’d had a black and scarlet pullover yourself you wouldn’t have talked about it, would you. It was black and scarlet, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Emlyn Price. ‘I don’t really know the colours of things very well. I think it was a sort of bright colour. That’s all I know.’
‘They didn’t find one,’ said Joanna. ‘After all, none of us have very many things with us. You don’t when you go on a coach travel. There wasn’t anything like that among anybody’s things. I’ve never seen anyone — of our lot, I mean, wearing anything like that. Not so far. Have you?’
‘No, I haven’t, but I suppose — I don’t know that I should know if I had seen it,’ said Emlyn Price. ‘I don’t always know red from green.’
‘No, you’re a bit colour blind, aren’t you,’ said Joanna. ‘I noticed that the other day.’
‘What do you mean, you noticed it.’
‘My red scarf. I asked if you’d seen it. You said you’d seen a green one somewhere and you brought me the red one. I’d left it in the dining-room. But you didn’t really know it was red.’
‘Well, don’t go about saying I’m colour blind. I don’t like it. Puts people off in some way.’
‘Men are more often colour blind than women,’ said Joanna. ‘It’s one of those sex-link things,’ she added, with an air of erudition. ‘You know, it passes through the female and comes out in the male.’
‘You make it sound as though it was measles,’ said Emlyn Price. ‘Well, here we are.’
‘You don’t seem to mind,’ said Joanna, as they walked up the steps.
‘Well, I don’t really. I’ve never been to an inquest. Things are rather interesting when you do them for the first time.’
II
Dr Stokes was a middle-aged man with greying hair and spectacles. Police evidence was given first, then the medical evidence with technical details of the concussion injuries which had caused