Complete Short Stories Of Miss Marple

'Aunt Jane, you're looking very serious.'

'Was I, my dear? Have you heard any more about the policeman?'

Louise looked bewildered. 'I don't know anything about a policeman.'

'That remark of hers, my dear,' said Miss Marple, 'must have meant something.'

Louise arrived, at her work the following day in a cheerful mood. She passed through the open front door - the doors and windows of the house were always open. Miss Greenshaw appeared to have no fear of burglars, and was probably justified, as most things in the house weighed several tons and were of no marketable value.

Louise had passed Alfred in the drive. When she first noticed him he had been leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette, but as soon as he had caught sight of her he had seized a broom and begun diligently to sweep leaves. An idle young man, she thought, but good-looking. His features reminded her of someone. As she passed through the hall on the way upstairs to the library, she glanced at the large picture of Nathaniel Greenshaw which presided over the mantelpiece, showing him in the acme of Victorian prosperity, leaning back in a large armchair, his hands resting on the gold Albert chain across his capacious stomach. As her glance swept up from the stomach to the face with its heavy jowls, its bushy eyebrows and its flourishing black moustache, the thought occurred to her that Nathaniel Greenshaw must have been handsome as a young man. He had looked, perhaps, a little like Alfred…

She went into the library on the second floor, shut the door behind her, opened her typewriter, and got out the diaries from the drawer at the side of her desk. Through the open window she caught a glimpse of Miss Greenshaw below, in a puce-coloured sprigged print, bending over the rockery, weeding assiduously. They had had two wet days, of which the weeds had taken full advantage.

Louise, a town-bred girl, decided that if she ever had a garden, it would never contain a rockery which needed weeding by hand. Then she settled down to her work.

When Mrs. Cresswell entered the library with the coffee tray at half-past eleven, she was clearly in a very bad temper. She banged the tray down on the table and observed to the universe: 'Company for lunch - and nothing in the house! What am I supposed to do, I should like to know? And no sign of Alfred.'

'He was sweeping the drive when I got here,' Louise offered.

'I daresay. A nice soft job.'

Mrs. Cresswell swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Louise grinned to herself. She wondered what 'the nephew' would be like. She finished her coffee and settled down to her work again. It was so absorbing that time passed quickly. Nathaniel Greenshaw, when he started to keep a diary, had succumbed to the pleasures of frankness. Typing out a passage relating to the personal charms of a barmaid in the neighbouring town, Louise reflected that a good deal of editing would be necessary.

As she was thinking this, she was startled by the scream from the garden. Jumping up, she ran to the open window. Below her Miss Greenshaw was staggering away from the rockery toward the house. Her hands were clasped to her breast, and between her hands there protruded a feathered shaft that Louise recognized with stupefaction to be the shaft of an arrow. Miss Greenshaw's head, in its battered straw hat, fell forward on her breast. She called up to Louise in a failing voice: '… shot… he shot me… with an arrow… get help…'

Louise rushed to the door. She turned the handle, but the door would not open. It took her a moment or two of futile endeavour to realize that she was locked in. She ran back to the window and called down.

'I'm locked in!'

Miss Greenshaw, her back toward Louise and swaying a little on her feet, was calling up to the housekeeper at a window farther along.

'Ring police… telephone…'

Then, lurching from side to side like a drunkard, Miss Greenshaw disappeared from Louise's view through the window and staggered into the drawing-room on the ground floor. A moment later Louise heard a crash of broken china, a heavy fall, and then silence. Her imagination reconstructed the scene. Miss Greenshaw must have stumbled blindly into a small table with a Sevres tea set on it.

Desperately Louise pounded on the library door, calling and shouting. There was no creeper or drainpipe outside the window that could help her to get out that way. Tired at last of beating on the door, Louise returned to the window. From the window of her sitting-room farther along the housekeeper's head appeared.

'Come and let me out, Mrs. Oxley. I'm locked in.'

'So am I,' said Louise.

'Oh, dear, isn't it awful? I've telephoned the police. There's an extension in this room, but what I can't understand, Mrs. Oxley, is our being locked in. I never heard a key turn, did you?'

'No, I didn't hear anything at all. Oh, dear, what shall we do? Perhaps Alfred might hear us.' Louise shouted at the top of her voice, 'Alfred, Alfred.'

'Gone to his dinner as likely as not. What time is it?' Louise glanced at her watch.

'Twenty-five past twelve.'

'He's not supposed to go until half-past, but he sneaks off earlier whenever he can.'

'Do you think - do you think -' Louise meant to ask, 'Do you think she's dead?' - but the words stuck in her throat.

There was nothing to do but wait. She sat down on the window sill. It seemed an eternity before the stolid helmeted figure of a police constable came round the corner of the house. She leaned out of the window and he looked up at her, shading his eyes with his hand.

'What's going on here?' he demanded.

From their respective windows Louise and Mrs. Cresswell poured a flood of excited information down on him. The constable produced a notebook and pencil. 'You ladies ran upstairs and locked yourselves in? Can I have your names, please?'

'Somebody locked us in. Come and let us out.'

The constable said reprovingly, 'All in good time,' and disappeared through the French window below.

Once again time seemed infinite. Louise heard the sound of a car arriving, and after what seemed an hour, but was actually only three minutes, first Mrs. Cresswell and then Louise were released by a police sergeant more alert than the original constable.

'Miss Greenshaw?' Louise's voice faltered. 'What - what's happened?' The sergeant cleared his throat.

'I'm sorry to have to tell you, madam,' he said, 'what I've already told Mrs. Cresswell here. Miss Greenshaw is dead.'

'Murdered,' said Mrs. Cresswell. 'That's what it is - murder?

The sergeant said dubiously, 'Could have been an accident - some country lads shooting arrows.'

Again there was the sound of a car arriving.

The sergeant said, 'That'll be the M.O.,' and he started downstairs.

But it was not the M.O. As Louise and Mrs. Cresswell came down the stairs, a young man stepped hesitatingly through the front door and paused, looking around him with a somewhat bewildered air. Then, speaking in a pleasant voice that in some way seemed familiar to Louise - perhaps it reminded her of Miss Greenshaw's - he asked, 'Excuse me, does - er - does Miss Greenshaw live here?'

'May I have your name if you please?' said the sergeant, advancing upon him.

'Fletcher,' said the young man. 'Nat Fletcher. I'm Miss Greenshaw's nephew, as a matter of fact.'

'Indeed, sir, well - I'm sorry -'

'Has anything happened?' asked Nat Fletcher.

'There's been an - accident. Your aunt was shot with an arrow - penetrated the jugular vein -'

Mrs. Cresswell spoke hysterically and without her usual refinement: 'Your h'aunt's been murdered, that's what's happened. Your h'aunt's been murdered.'

Inspector Welch drew his chair a little nearer to the table and let his gaze wander from one to the other of the four people in the room. It was evening of the same day. He had called at the Wests' house to take Louise Oxley once more over her statement.