The Complete Miss Marple Collection by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page A

children.
    Hours seemed to have passed—yet it was only a quarter past seven.
    â€œWell,” said Haydock. “That’s that. When that conceited ass wants me, you can send him over to the surgery. So long.”
    â€œThe mistress is back,” said Mary, making a brief appearance from the kitchen. Her eyes were round and agog with excitement. “Come in about five minutes ago.”
    I found Griselda in the drawing room. She looked frightened, but excited.
    I told her everything and she listened attentively.
    â€œThe letter is headed 6:20,” I ended. “And the clock fell over and has stopped at 6:22.”
    â€œYes,” said Griselda. “But that clock, didn’t you tell him that it was always kept a quarter of an hour fast?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I didn’t. He wouldn’t let me. I tried my best.” Griselda was frowning in a puzzled manner.
    â€œBut, Len,” she said, “that makes the whole thing perfectly extraordinary. Because when that clock said twenty past six it was really only five minutes past, and at five minutes past I don’t suppose Colonel Protheroe had even arrived at the house.”

Six
    W e puzzled over the business of the clock for some time, but we could make nothing of it. Griselda said I ought to make another effort to tell Inspector Slack about it, but on that point I was feeling what I can only describe as “mulish.”
    Inspector Slack had been abominably and most unnecessarily rude. I was looking forward to a moment when I could produce my valuable contribution and effect his discomfiture. I would then say in a tone of mild reproach:
    â€œIf you had only listened to me, Inspector Slack….”
    I expected that he would at least speak to me before he left the house, but to our surprise we learned from Mary that he had departed, having locked up the study door and issued orders that no one was to attempt to enter the room.
    Griselda suggested going up to Old Hall.
    â€œIt will be so awful for Anne Protheroe—with the police and everything,” she said. “Perhaps I might be able to do something for her.”
    I cordially approved of this plan, and Griselda set off with instructions that she was to telephone to me if she thought that I could be of any use or comfort to either of the ladies.
    I now proceeded to ring up the Sunday School teachers, who were coming at 7:45 for their weekly preparation class. I thought that under the circumstances it would be better to put them off.
    Dennis was the next person to arrive on the scene, having just returned from a tennis party. The fact that murder had taken place at the Vicarage seemed to afford him acute satisfaction.
    â€œFancy being right on the spot in a murder case,” he exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to be right in the midst of one. Why have the police locked up the study? Wouldn’t one of the other door keys fit it?”
    I refused to allow anything of the sort to be attempted. Dennis gave in with a bad grace. After extracting every possible detail from me he went out into the garden to look for footprints, remarking cheerfully that it was lucky it was only old Protheroe, whom everyone disliked.
    His cheerful callousness rather grated on me, but I reflected that I was perhaps being hard on the boy. At Dennis’s age a detective story is one of the best things in life, and to find a real detective story, complete with corpse, waiting on one’s own front doorstep, so to speak, is bound to send a healthy-minded boy into the seventh heaven of enjoyment. Death means very little to a boy of sixteen.
    Griselda came back in about an hour’s time. She had seen Anne Protheroe, having arrived just after the Inspector had broken the news to her.
    On hearing that Mrs. Protheroe had last seen her husband in the village about a quarter to six, and that she had no light of anykind to throw upon the matter, he had taken his departure,