Constable Palk gave way. His habit of giving in to the gentry was life-long. The inspector, he reflected, need never know about it.
"Nothing must be touched or handled in any way," he warned the ladies.
"Of course not," said Mrs Bantry impatiently. "We know that. You can come in and watch, if you like."
Constable Palk availed himself of this permission. It had been his intention anyway.
Mrs Bantry bore her friend triumphantly across the library to the big old-fashioned fireplace. She said, with a dramatic sense of climax, "There!"
Miss Marple understood then just what her friend had meant when she said the dead girl wasn't real. The library was a room very typical of its owners. It was large and shabby and untidy. It had big, sagging armchairs, and pipes and books and estate papers laid out on the big table. There were one or two good old family portraits on the walls, and some bad Victorian water colours, and some would-be-funny hunting scenes. There was a big vase of flowers in the corner. The whole room was dim and mellow and casual. It spoke of long occupation and familiar use and of links with tradition.
And across the old bearskin hearth rug there was sprawled something new and crude and melodramatic.
The flamboyant figure of a girl. A girl with unnaturally fair hair dressed up off her face in elaborate curls and rings. Her thin body was dressed in a backless evening dress of white spangled satin; the face was heavily made up, the powder standing out grotesquely on its blue, swollen surface, the mascara of the lashes lying thickly on the distorted cheeks, the scarlet of the lips looking like a gash. The fingernails were enamelled a deep blood red, and so were the toenails in their cheap silver sandal shoes. It was a cheap, tawdry, flamboyant figure, most incongruous in the solid, old-fashioned comfort of Colonel Bantry's library. Mrs Bantry said in a low voice, "You see what I mean? It just isn't true?"
The old lady by her side nodded her head. She looked down long and thoughtfully at the huddled figure. She said at last in a gentle voice, "She's very young."
"Yes, yes, I suppose she is."
Mrs Bantry seemed almost surprised, like one making a discovery.
There was the sound of a car crunching on the gravel outside. Constable Palk said with urgency, "That'll be the inspector."
True to his ingrained belief that the gentry didn't let you down, Mrs Bantry immediately moved to the door. Miss Marple followed her.
Mrs Bantry said, "That'll be all right, Palk" Constable Palk was immensely relieved. VI
Hastily downing the last fragments of toast and marmalade with a drink of coffee Colonel Bantry hurried out into the hall and was relieved to see Colonel Melchett, the chief constable of the county, descending from a car, with Inspector Slack in attendance. Melchett was a friend of the colonel's; Slack he had never very much taken to. An energetic man who belied his name and who accompanied his bustling manner with a good deal of disregard for the feelings of anyone he did not consider important.
"Morning, Bantry," said the chief constable. "Thought I'd better come along myself. This seems an extraordinary business."
"It's - it's -" Colonel Bantry struggled to express himself- "it's incredible -fantastic!"
"No idea who the woman is?"
"Not in the slightest. Never set eyes on her in my life."
"Butler knows anything?" asked Inspector Slack.
"Lorrimer is just as taken aback as I am."
"Ah," said Inspector Slack. "I wonder."
Colonel Bantry said, "There's breakfast in the dining room, Melchett, if you'd like anything."
"No, no, better get on with the job. Haydock ought to be here any minute now... Ah, here he is."
Another car drew up and big, broad-shouldered Doctor Haydock, who was also the police surgeon, got out.
A second police car had disgorged two plain-clothes men, one with a camera.
"All set, eh?" said the chief constable. "Right. We'll go along. In the library, Slack tells me."
Colonel Bantry groaned. "It's incredible! You know, when my wife insisted this morning that the housemaid had come in and said there was a body in the library, I just wouldn't believe her."
"No, no, I can quite understand that. Hope your missus isn't too badly upset by it all."
"She's been wonderful, really wonderful. She's got old Miss Marple up here with her from the village, you know."
"Miss Marple?" The chief constable stiffened. "Why did she send for her?" "Oh, a woman wants another woman don't you think so?"
Colonel Melchett said with a slight chuckle, "If you ask me, your wife's going to try her hand at a little amateur detecting. Miss Marple's quite the local sleuth. Put it over us properly once, didn't she Slack?"
Inspector Slack said, "That was different." "Different from what?"
"That was a local case, that was, sir. The old lady knows everything that goes on in the village, that's true enough. But she'll be out of her depth here."
Melchett said dryly, "You don't know very much about it yourself yet, Slack."
"Ah, you wait, sir. It won't take me long to get down to it."
VII
In the dining room Mrs Bantry and Miss Marple, in their turn, were partaking of breakfast.
After waiting on her guest, Mrs Bantry said urgently, "Well, Jane?"
Miss Marple looked up at her slightly bewildered.
Mrs Bantry said hopefully, "Doesn't it remind you of anything?"
For Miss Marple had attained fame by her ability to link up trivial village happenings with graver problems in such a way as to throw light upon the latter.
"No," said Miss Marple thoughtfully. "I can't say that it does - not at the moment. I was reminded a little of Mrs Chetty's youngest Edie, you know, but I think that was just because this poor girl bit her nails and her front teeth stuck out a little. Nothing more than that. And of course," went on Miss Marple, pursuing the parallel further, "Edie was fond of what I call cheap finery too."
"You mean her dress?" said Mrs Bantry. "Yes, very tawdry satin, poor quality."
Mrs Bantry said, "I know. One of those nasty little shops where everything is a guinea." She went on hopefully, "Let me see. What happened to Mrs Chetty's Edie?"
"She's just gone into her second place, and doing very well, I believe," said Miss Marple.
Mrs Bantry felt slightly disappointed. The village parallel didn't seem to be exactly hopeful.
"What I can't make out," said Mrs Bantry, "is what she could possibly be doing in Arthur's study. The window was forced, Palk tells me. She might have come down here with a burglar, and then they quarrelled. But that seems such nonsense, doesn't it?"
"She was hardly dressed for burglary," said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
"No, she was dressed for dancing or a party of some kind. But there's nothing of that kind down here or anywhere near."
"N-no," said Miss Marple doubtfully.
Mrs Bantry pounced. "Something's in your mind, Jane."
"Well, I was just wondering -"
"Yes?"
"Basil Blake."
Mrs Bantry cried impulsively, "Oh, no!" and added as though in explanation, "I know his mother."
The two women looked at each other.
Miss Marple sighed and shook her head. "I quite understand how you feel about it."
"Selina Blake is the nicest woman imaginable. Her herbaceous borders are simply marvellous; they make me green with envy. And she's frightfully generous with cuttings."
Miss Marple, passing over these claims to consideration on the part of Mrs Blake, said, "All the same, you know, there has been a lot of talk."
"Oh, I know, I know. And of course Arthur goes simply livid when he hears him mentioned. He was really very rude to Arthur, and since then Arthur won't hear a good word for him. He's got that silly slighting way of talking that these boys have nowadays - sneering at people, sticking up for their school or the Empire or that sort of thing. And then, of course, the clothes he wears! People say," continued Mrs Bantry, "that it doesn't matter what you wear in the country. I never heard such nonsense. It's just in the country that everyone notices." She paused and added wistfully, "He was an adorable baby in his bath."
"There was a lovely picture of the Cheviot murderer as a baby in the paper last Sunday," said Miss Marple.
"Oh, but, Jane, you don't think he -"
"No, no, dear, I didn't mean that at all. That would indeed be jumping to conclusions. I was just trying to account for the young woman's presence down here. St Mary Mead is such an unlikely place. And then it seemed to me that the only possible explanation was Basil Blake. He does have parties. People come down from London and from the studios. You remember last July? Shouting and singing, the most terrible noise, everyone very drunk, I'm afraid, and the mess and the broken glass next morning simply unbelievable. So old Mrs Berry told me and a young woman asleep in the bath with practically nothing on!"
Mrs Bantry said indulgently, "I suppose they were young people."
"Very likely. And then what I expect you've heard several weekends lately he's brought down a young woman with him. A platinum blonde."
Mrs Bantry exclaimed, "You don't think it's this one?"
"Well, I wondered. Of course, I've never seen her close, only just getting in and out of the car, and once in the cottage garden when she was sunbathing with just some shorts and a brassiere. I never really saw her face. And all these girls, with their make-up and their hair and their nails, look so alike."
"Yes. Still, it might be. It's an idea, Jane."
Chapter 2
It was an idea that was being at that moment discussed by Colonel Melchett and Colonel Bantry.
The chief constable, after viewing the body and seeing his subordinates set to work on their routine tasks, had adjourned with the master of the house to the study in the other wing.
Colonel Melchett was an irascible-looking man with a habit of tugging at his short red moustache. He did so now, shooting a perplexed sideways glance at the other man. Finally he rapped out, "Look here, Bantry; got to get this off my chest. Is it a fact that you don't know from Adam who this woman is?"
The other's answer was explosive, but the chief constable interrupted him.
"Yes, yes, old man, but look at it like this: might be deuced awkward for you. Married man fond of your missus and all that. But just between ourselves, if you were tied up with this girl in any way, better say so now. Quite natural to want to suppress the fact; should feel the same myself. But it won't do. Murder case. Facts bound to come out. Dash it all, I'm not suggesting you strangled the girl -not the sort of thing you'd do. I know that! But, after all, she came here to this house. Put it, she broke in and was waiting to see you, and some bloke or other followed her down and did her in. Possible, you know. See what I mean?"
"I've never set eyes on that girl in my life! I'm not that sort of man!"
"That's all right then. Shouldn't blame you, you know. Man of the world. Still, if you say so. Question is, what was she doing down here? She doesn't come from these parts, that's quite certain."
"That whole thing's a nightmare," fumed the angry master of the house. "The point is, old man, what was she doing in your library?" "How should I know? I didn't ask her here."
"No, no. But she came here all the same. Looks as though she wanted to see you. You haven't had any odd letters or anything?"
"No, I haven't."
Colonel Melchett inquired delicately, "What were you doing yourself last night?"
"I went to the meeting of the Conservative Association. Nine o'clock, at Much Benham."
"And you got home when?"
"I left Much Benham just after ten. Had a bit of trouble on the way home, had to change a wheel. I got back at a quarter to twelve."
"You didn't go into the library?"
"No."
"Pity."
"I was tired. I went straight up to bed."
"Anyone waiting up for you?"
"No. I always take the latchkey. Lorrimer goes to bed at eleven, unless I give orders to the contrary."
"Who shuts up the library?"
"Lorrimer. Usually about seven-thirty this time of year."
"Would he go in there again during the evening?"
"Not with my being out. He left the tray with whiskey and glasses in the hall."
"I see. What about your wife?"
"She was in bed when I got home, and fast asleep. She may have sat in the library yesterday evening, or in the drawing room. I didn't ask her."
"Oh, well, we shall soon know all the details. Of course it's possible one of the servants may be concerned, eh?"
Colonel Bantry shook his head. "I don't believe it. They're all a most respectable lot. We've had 'em for years."
Melchett agreed. "Yes, it doesn't seem likely that they're mixed up in it. Looks more as though the girl came down from town perhaps with some young fellow. Though why they wanted to break into this house..."
Bantry interrupted. "London. That's more like it. We don't have goings-on down here - at least-"
"Well, what is it?"
"Upon my word!" exploded Colonel Bantry. "Basil Blake!"
"Who's he?"
"Young fellow connected with the film industry. Poisonous young brute. My wife sticks up for him because she was at school with his mother, but of all the decadent useless young Jackanapes he wants his behind kicked. He's taken that cottage on the Lansham Road you know, ghastly modern bit of building. He has parties there shrieking, noisy crowds and he has girls down for the weekend."
"Girls?"
"Yes, there was one last week one of these platinum blondes." The colonel's jaw dropped.
