The Murder at the Vicarage

I told her everything and she listened attentively.

‘The letter is headed 6.20,’ I ended. ‘And the clock fell over and has stopped at 6.22.’

‘Yes,’ said Griselda. ‘But that clock, didn’t you tell him that it was always kept a quarter of an hour fast?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t. He wouldn’t let me. I tried my best.’

Griselda was frowning in a puzzled manner.

‘But, 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.’

CHAPTER 6 (#ub74565be-56c8-5526-85af-bbd97bf9b6a1)

We 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:

‘If 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.

‘It 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.

‘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 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 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—she was very quiet—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—very queer indeed.’

‘The shock,’ I suggested.

‘Yes—I suppose so. And yet—’ Griselda furrowed her brows perplexedly. ‘It wasn’t like that, somehow. She didn’t seem so much bowled over as—well—terrified.’

‘Terrified?’

‘Yes—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 anyone 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 told me. They’ve arrested young Mr Redding.’

‘Arrested Lawrence,’ cried Griselda incredulously. ‘Impossible. It must be some stupid mistake.’

‘No mistake about it, mum,’ said Mary with a kind of gloating exultation. ‘Mr Redding, he went there himself and gave himself up. Last night, last thing. Went right in, threw down the pistol on the table, and “I did it,” he says. Just like that.’

She looked at us both, nodded her head vigorously, and withdrew satisfied with the effect she had produced. Griselda and I stared at each other.

‘Oh! It isn’t true,’ said Griselda. ‘It can’t be true.’

She noticed my silence, and said: ‘Len, you don’t think it’s true?’

I found it hard to answer her. I sat silent, thoughts whirling through my head.

‘He must be mad,’ said Griselda. ‘Absolutely mad. Or do you think they were looking at the pistol together and it suddenly went off?’