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marble busts. This one was up on a bracket — suppose it hadn’t been pushed back enough. Anway, a heavy lorry went past out in the road and jarred it off — right on to the chair where Marina sits for her big scene with Count Somebody-or-other. Smashed to smithereens! Lucky they weren’t shooting at the time. Mr Rudd, he said not to say a word to her, and he put another chair there, and when she came yesterday and asked why the chair had been changed, he said the other chair was the wrong period, and this gave a better angle for the camera. But he didn’t half like it — I can tell you that.’

The two girls looked at each other.

‘It’s exciting in a way,’ said Cherry slowly. ‘And yet — it isn’t…’

‘I think I’m going to give up working in the canteen at the studios,’ said Gladys.

‘Why? Nobody wants to poison you or drop marble busts on your head!’

‘No. But it’s not always the person who’s meant to get done in who gets done in. It may be someone else. Like Heather Badcock that day.’

‘True enough,’ said Cherry.

‘You know,’ said Gladys, ‘I’ve been thinking. I was at the Hall that day, helping. I was quite close to them at the time.’

‘When Heather died?’

‘No, when she spilt the cocktail. All down her dress. A lovely dress it was, too, royal blue nylon taffeta. She’d got it quite new for the occasion. And it was funny.’

‘What was funny?’

‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But it does seem funny when I think it over.’

Cherry looked at her expectantly. She accepted the adjective ‘funny’ in the sense that it was meant. It was not intended humorously.

‘For goodness’ sake, what was funny?’ she demanded.

‘I’m almost sure she did it on purpose.’

‘Spilt the cocktail on purpose?’

‘Yes. And I do think that was funny, don’t you?’

‘On a brand new dress? I don’t believe it.’

‘I wonder now,’ said Gladys, ‘what Arthur Badcock will do with all Heather’s clothes. That dress would clean all right. Or I could take out half a breadth, it’s a lovely full skirt. Do you think Arthur Badcock would think it very awful of me if I wanted to buy it off him? It would need hardly any alteration — and it’s lovely stuff.’

‘You wouldn’t —’ Cherry hesitated ‘— mind?’

‘Mind what?’

‘Well — having a dress that a woman had died in — I mean died that way…’

Gladys stared at her.

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she admitted. She considered for a moment or two. Then she cheered up.

‘I can’t see that it really matters,’ she said. ‘After all, every time you buy something second-hand, somebody’s usually worn it who has died, haven’t they?’

‘Yes. But it’s not quite the same.’

‘I think you’re being fanciful,’ said Gladys. ‘It’s a lovely bright shade of blue, and really expensive stuff. About that funny business,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘I think I’ll go up to the hall tomorrow morning on my way to work and have a word with Mr Giuseppe about it.’

‘Is he the Italian butler?’

‘Yes. He’s awfully handsome. Flashing eyes. He’s got a terrible temper. When we go and help there, he chivvies us girls something terrible.’ She giggled. ‘But none of us really mind. He can be awfully nice sometimes…Anyway, I might just tell him about it, and ask him what I ought to do.’

‘I don’t see that you’ve got anything to tell,’ said Cherry.

‘Well, it was funny,’ said Gladys, defiantly clinging to her favourite adjective.

‘I think,’ said Cherry, ‘that you just want an excuse to go and talk to Mr Giuseppe — and you’d better be careful, my girl. You know what these wops are like! Affiliation orders all over the place. Hot-blooded and passionate, that’s what these Italians are.’

Gladys sighed ecstatically.

Cherry looked at her friend’s fat slightly spotted face and decided that her warnings were unnecessary. Mr Giuseppe, she thought, would have better fish to fry elsewhere.

II

‘Aha!’ said Dr Haydock, ‘unravelling, I see.’

He looked from Miss Marple to a pile of fluffy white fleecy wool.

‘You advised me to try unravelling if I couldn’t knit,’ said Miss Marple.

‘You seem to have been very thorough about it.’

‘I made a mistake in the pattern right at the beginning.