The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    “Fancy 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 every
     one 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 any kind to throw upon the matter, he had taken his
     departure, explaining that he would return on the morrow for a fuller interview.
    “He was quite decent in his way,” said Griselda grudgingly.
    “How did Mrs. Protheroe take it?” I asked.
    “Well Ñ she was very quiet Ñ but then she always is.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I can't imagine Anne Protheroe going into hysterics.”
    “Of course it was a great shock. You could see that. She thanked me for coming and said
     she was very grateful but that there was nothing I could do.”
    “What about Lettice?”
    “She was out playing tennis somewhere. She hadn't got home yet.” There was a pause, and
     then Griselda said:
    “You know, Len, she was really very queer Ñ very queer indeed.”
    “The shock,” I suggested.
    “Yes Ñ I suppose so. And yet Ñ” Griselda furrowed her brows perplexedly. “It wasn't like
     that, somehow. She didn't seem so much bowled over as Ñ well Ñ terrified.”
    “Terrified?”
    “Yes Ñ not showing it, you know. At least not meaning to show it. But a queer, watchful
     look in her eyes. I wonder if she has a sort of idea who did kill him. She asked again and
     again if any one were suspected.”
    “Did she?” I said thoughtfully.
    “Yes. Of course Anne's got marvellous self?control, but one could see that she was
     terribly upset. More so than I would have thought, for after all it wasn't as though she
     were so devoted to him. I should have said she rather disliked him, if anything.”
    “Death alters one's feelings sometimes,” I said.
    “Yes, I suppose so.”
    Dennis came in and was full of excitement over a footprint he had found in one of the
     flower beds. He was sure that the police had overlooked it and that it would turn out to
     be the turning point of the mystery.
    I spent a troubled night. Dennis was up and about and out of the house long before
     breakfast to “study the latest developments,” as he said.
    Nevertheless it was not he, but Mary, who brought us the morning's sensational bit of news.
    We had just sat down to breakfast when she burst into the room, her cheeks red and her
     eyes shining, and addressed us with her customary lack of ceremony.
    “Would you believe it? The baker's just