Murder at the Vicarage

  “Not he,” said the Inspector, making the remark as a plain statement of fact.

  “It is natural, I suppose, to cling to life,” I mused.

  “You’d be surprised if you knew the murderers that have got off through the softheartedness of the jury,” said the Inspector gloomily.

  “But do you really think that Archer did it?” I asked.

  It has struck me as curious all along that Inspector Slack never seems to have any personal views of his own on the murder. The easiness or difficulty of getting a conviction are the only points that seem to appeal to him.

  “I’d like to be a bit surer,” he admitted. “A fingerprint now, or a footprint, or seen in the vicinity about the time of the crime. Can’t risk arresting him without something of that kind. He’s been seen round Mr. Redding’s house once or twice, but he’d say that was to speak to his mother. A decent body, she is. No, on the whole, I’m for the lady. If I could only get definite proof of blackmail—but you can’t get definite proof of anything in this crime! It’s theory, theory, theory. It’s a sad pity that there’s not a single spinster lady living along your road, Mr. Clement. I bet she’d have seen something if there had been.”

  His words reminded me of my calls, and I took leave of him. It was about the solitary instance when I had seen him in a genial mood.

  My first call was on Miss Hartnell. She must have been watching me from the window, for before I had time to ring she had opened the front door, and clasping my hand firmly in hers, had led me over the threshold.

  “So good of you to come. In here. More private.”

  We entered a microscopic room, about the size of a hencoop. Miss Hartnell shut the door and with an air of deep secrecy waved me to a seat (there were only three). I perceived that she was enjoying herself.

  “I’m never one to beat about the bush,” she said in her jolly voice, the latter slightly toned down to meet the requirements of the situation. “You know how things go the rounds in a village like this.”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I do.”

  “I agree with you. Nobody dislikes gossip more than I do. But there it is. I thought it my duty to tell the police inspector that I’d called on Mrs. Lestrange the afternoon of the murder and that she was out. I don’t expect to be thanked for doing my duty, I just do it. Ingratitude is what you meet with first and last in this life. Why, only yesterday that impudent Mrs. Baker—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, hoping to avert the usual tirade. “Very sad, very sad. But you were saying.”

  “The lower classes don’t know who are their best friends,” said Miss Hartnell. “I always say a word in season when I’m visiting. Not that I’m ever thanked for it.”

  “You were telling the Inspector about your call upon Mrs. Lestrange,” I prompted.

  “Exactly—and by the way, he didn’t thank me. Said he’d ask for information when he wanted it—not those words exactly, but that was the spirit. There’s a different class of men in the police force nowadays.”

  “Very probably,” I said. “But you were going on to say something?”

  “I decided that this time I wouldn’t go near any wretched inspector. After all, a clergyman is a gentleman—at least some are,” she added.

  I gathered that the qualification was intended to include me.

  “If I can help you in any way,” I began.

  “It’s a matter of duty,” said Miss Hartnell, and closed her mouth with a snap. “I don’t want to have to say these things. No one likes it less. But duty is duty.”

  I waited.

  “I’ve been given to understand,” went on Miss Hartnell, turning rather red, “that Mrs. Lestrange gives out that she was at home all the time—that she didn’t answer the door because—well, she didn’t choose. Such airs and graces. I only called as a matter of duty, and to be treated like that!”

  “She has been ill,” I said mildly.

  “Ill? Fiddlesticks. You’re too unworldly, Mr. Clement. There’s nothing the matter with that woman. Too ill to attend the inquest indeed! Medical certificate from Dr. Haydock! She can wind him round her little finger, everyone knows that. Well, where was I?”

  I didn’t quite know. It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins.

  “Oh, about calling on her that afternoon. Well, it’s fiddlesticks to say she was in the house. She wasn’t. I know.”

  “How can you possibly know?”

  Miss Hartnell’s face turned redder. In someone less truculent, her demeanour might have been called embarrassed.

  “I’d knocked and rung,” she explained. “Twice. If not three times. And it occurred to me suddenly that the bell might be out of order.”

  She was, I was glad to note, unable to look me in the face when saying this. The same builder builds all our houses and the bells he installs are clearly audible when standing on the mat outside the front door. Both Miss Hartnell and I knew this perfectly well, but I suppose decencies have to be preserved.

  “Yes?” I murmured.

  “I didn’t want to push my card through the letter box. That would seem so rude, and whatever I am, I am never rude.”

  She made this amazing statement without a tremor.

  “So I thought I would just go round the house and—and tap on the window pane,” she continued unblushingly. “I went all round the house and looked in at all the windows, but there was no one in the house at all.”

  I understood her perfectly. Taking advantage of the fact that the house was empty, Miss Hartnell had given unbridled rein to her curiosity and had gone round the house examining the garden and peering in at all the windows to see as much as she could of the interior. She had chosen to tell her story to me, believing that I should be a more sympathetic and lenient audience than the police. The clergy are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to their parishioners.

  I made no comment on the situation. I merely asked a question.

  “What time was this, Miss Hartnell?”

  “As far as I can remember,” said Miss Hartnell, “it must have been close on six o’clock. I went straight home afterwards, and I got in about ten past six, and Mrs. Protheroe came in somewhere round about the half hour, leaving Dr. Stone and Mr. Redding outside, and we talked about bulbs. And all the time the poor Colonel lying murdered. It’s a sad world.”

  “It is sometimes a rather unpleasant one,” I said.

  I rose.

  “And that is all you have to tell me?”

  “I just thought it might be important.”

  “It might,” I agreed.

  And refusing to be drawn further, much to Miss Hartnell’s disappointment, I took my leave.

  Miss Wetherby, whom I visited next, received me in a kind of flutter.

  “Dear Vicar, how truly kind. You’ve had tea? Really, you won’t? A cushion for your back? It is so kind of you to come round so promptly. Always willing to put yourself out for others.”

  There was a good deal of this before we came to the point, and even then it was approached with a good deal of circumlocution.

  “You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.”

  In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.

  “You can’t tell me who told you?”

  “I promised, dear Mr. Clement. And I always think a promise should be a sacred thing.”

  She looked very solemn.

  “Shall we say a little bird told me? That is safe isn’t it?”

  I longed to say, “It’s damned silly.” I rather wish I had. I should have liked to observe the effect on Miss Wetherby.

  “Well, this little bird told that she saw a certain lady, who shall be nameless.”

  “Another kind of bird?” I inquired.

  To my great surprise Miss Wetherby went off into paroxysms of laughter and tapped me playfully on the arm saying:

  “Oh, Vicar, you must not be so naughty!”

  When she
had recovered, she went on.

  “A certain lady, and where do you think this certain lady was going? She turned into the Vicarage road, but before she did so, she looked up and down the road in a most peculiar way—to see if anyone she knew were noticing her, I imagine.”

  “And the little bird—” I inquired.

  “Paying a visit to the fishmonger’s—in the room over the shop.”

  I know where maids go on their days out. I know there is one place they never go if they can help—anywhere in the open air.

  “And the time,” continued Miss Wetherby, leaning forward mysteriously, “was just before six o’clock.”

  “On which day?”

  Miss Wetherby gave a little scream.

  “The day of the murder, of course, didn’t I say so?”

  “I inferred it,” I replied. “And the name of the lady?”

  “Begins with an L,” said Wetherby, nodding her head several times.

  Feeling that I had got to the end of the information Miss Wetherby had to impart, I rose to my feet.

  “You won’t let the police cross-question me, will you?” said Miss Wetherby, pathetically, as she clasped my hand in both of hers. “I do shrink from publicity. And to stand up in court!”

  “In special cases,” I said, “they let witnesses sit down.”

  And I escaped.

  There was still Mrs. Price Ridley to see. That lady put me in my place at once.

  “I will not be mixed up in any police court business,” she said grimly, after shaking my hand coldly. “You understand that, on the other hand, having come across a circumstance which needs explaining, I think it should be brought to the notice of the authorities.”

  “Does it concern Mrs. Lestrange?” I asked.

  “Why should it?” demanded Mrs. Price Ridley coldly.

  She had me at a disadvantage there.

  “It’s a very simple matter,” she continued. “My maid, Clara, was standing at the front gate, she went down there for a minute or two—she says to get a breath of fresh air. Most unlikely, I should say. Much more probable that she was looking out for the fishmonger’s boy—if he calls himself a boy—impudent young jackanapes, thinks because he’s seventeen he can joke with all the girls. Anyway, as I say, she was standing at the gate and she heard a sneeze.”

  “Yes,” I said, waiting for more.

  “That’s all. I tell you she heard a sneeze. And don’t start telling me I’m not so young as I once was and may have made a mistake, because it was Clara who heard it and she’s only nineteen.”

  “But,” I said, “why shouldn’t she have heard a sneeze?”

  Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me in obvious pity for my poorness of intellect.

  “She heard a sneeze on the day of the murder at a time when there was no one in your house. Doubtless the murderer was concealed in the bushes waiting his opportunity. What you have to look for is a man with a cold in his head.”

  “Or a sufferer from hay fever,” I suggested. “But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Price Ridley, I think that mystery has a very easy solution. Our maid, Mary, has been suffering from a severe cold in the head. In fact, her sniffing has tried us very much lately. It must have been her sneeze your maid heard.”

  “It was a man’s sneeze,” said Mrs. Price Ridley firmly. “And you couldn’t hear your maid sneeze in your kitchen from our gate.”

  “You couldn’t hear anyone sneezing in the study from your gate,” I said. “Or at least, I very much doubt it.”

  “I said the man might have been concealed in the shrubbery,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “Doubtless when Clara had gone in, he effected an entrance by the front door.”

  “Well, of course, that’s possible,” I said.

  I tried not to make my voice consciously soothing, but I must have failed, for Mrs. Price Ridley glared at me suddenly.

  “I am accustomed not to be listened to, but I might mention also that to leave a tennis racquet carelessly flung down on the grass without a press completely ruins it. And tennis racquets are very expensive nowadays.”

  There did not seem to be rhyme or reason in this flank attack. It bewildered me utterly.

  “But perhaps you don’t agree,” said Mrs. Price Ridley.

  “Oh! I do—certainly.”

  “I am glad. Well, that is all I have to say. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

  She leaned back and closed her eyes like one weary of this world. I thanked her and said good-bye.

  On the doorstep, I ventured to ask Clara about her mistress’s statement.

  “It’s quite true, sir, I heard a sneeze. And it wasn’t an ordinary sneeze—not by any means.”

  Nothing about a crime is ever ordinary. The shot was not an ordinary kind of shot. The sneeze was not a usual kind of sneeze. It was, I presume, a special murderer’s sneeze. I asked the girl what time this had been, but she was very vague, some time between a quarter and half past six she thought. Anyway, “it was before the mistress had the telephone call and was took bad.”

  I asked her if she had heard a shot of any kind. And she said the shots had been something awful. After that, I placed very little credence in her statements.

  I was just turning in at my own gate when I decided to pay a friend a visit.

  Glancing at my watch, I saw that I had just time for it before taking Evensong. I went down the road to Haydock’s house. He came out on the doorstep to meet me.

  I noticed afresh how worried and haggard he looked. This business seemed to have aged him out of all knowledge.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “What’s the news?”

  I told him the latest Stone development.

  “A high-class thief,” he commented. “Well, that explains a lot of things. He’d read up his subject, but he made slips from time to time to me. Protheroe must have caught him out once. You remember the row they had. What do you think about the girl? Is she in it too?”

  “Opinion as to that is undecided,” I said. “For my own part, I think the girl is all right.

  “She’s such a prize idiot,” I added.

  “Oh! I wouldn’t say that. She’s rather shrewd, is Miss Gladys Cram. A remarkably healthy specimen. Not likely to trouble members of my profession.”

  I told him that I was worried about Hawes, and that I was anxious that he should get away for a real rest and change.

  Something evasive came into his manner when I said this. His answer did not ring quite true.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose that would be the best thing. Poor chap. Poor chap.”

  “I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “I don’t—not much. But I’m sorry for a lot of people I don’t like.” He added after a minute or two: “I’m even sorry for Protheroe. Poor fellow—nobody ever liked him much. Too full of his own rectitude and too self-assertive. It’s an unlovable mixture. He was always the same—even as a young man.”

  “I didn’t know you knew him then.”

  “Oh, yes! When we lived in Westmorland, I had a practice not far away. That’s a long time ago now. Nearly twenty years.”

  I sighed. Twenty years ago Griselda was five years old. Time is an odd thing….

  “Is that all you came to say to me, Clement?”

  I looked up with a start. Haydock was watching me with keen eyes.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said.

  I nodded.

  I had been uncertain whether to speak or not when I came in, but now I decided to do so. I like Haydock as well as any man I know. He is a splendid fellow in every way. I felt that what I had to tell might be useful to him.

  I recited my interviews with Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby.

  He was silent for a long time after I’d spoken.

  “It’s quite true, Clement,” he said at last. “I’ve been trying to shield Mrs. Lestrange from any inconvenience that I could. As a matter of fact, she’s an old friend. But that’s not my only reason. That medical
certificate of mine isn’t the put-up job you all think it was.”

  He paused, and then said gravely:

  “This is between you and me, Clement. Mrs. Lestrange is doomed.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a dying woman. I give her a month at longest. Do you wonder that I want to keep her from being badgered and questioned?”

  He went on:

  “When she turned into this road that evening it was here she came—to this house.”

  “You haven’t said so before.”

  “I didn’t want to create talk. Six to seven isn’t my time for seeing patients, and everyone knows that. But you can take my word for it that she was here.”

  “She wasn’t here when I came for you, though. I mean, when we discovered the body.”

  “No,” he seemed perturbed. “She’d left—to keep an appointment.”

  “In what direction was the appointment? In her own house?”

  “I don’t know, Clement. On my honour, I don’t know.”

  I believed him, but—

  “And supposing an innocent man is hanged?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “No one will be hanged for the murder of Colonel Protheroe. You can take my word for that.”

  But that is just what I could not do. And yet the certainty in his voice was very great.

  “No one will be hanged,” he repeated.

  “This man, Archer—”

  He made an impatient movement.

  “Hasn’t got brains enough to wipe his fingerprints off the pistol.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said dubiously.

  Then I remembered something, and taking the little brownish crystal I had found in the wood from my pocket, I held it out to him and asked him what it was.

  “H’m,” he hesitated. “Looks like picric acid. Where did you find it?”

  “That,” I replied, “is Sherlock Holmes’s secret.”

  He smiled.

  “What is picric acid?”

  “Well, it’s an explosive.”

  “Yes, I know that, but it’s got another use, hasn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s used medically—in solution for burns. Wonderful stuff.”

  I held out my hand, and rather reluctantly he handed it back to me.

  “It’s of no consequence probably,” I said. “But I found it in rather an unusual place.”