'Oh, so that's where she is.' Bunch sounded relieved.
'No – no, I'm afraid she isn't. Not now. She left there about – let me see – half an hour ago. She hasn't got home?'
'No – she hasn't. It's only ten minutes' walk. Where can she be?'
'Perhaps she's called in on one of your neighbours?'
'I've rung them up – all of them. She's not there. I'm frightened, Inspector.'
'So am I,' thought Craddock.
He said quickly:
'I'll come round to you – at once.'
'Oh, do – there's a piece of paper. She was writing on it before she went out. I don't know if it means anything… It just seems gibberish to me.'
Craddock replaced the receiver.
Miss Blacklog said anxiously:
'Has something happened to Miss Marple? Oh, I hope not.'
'I hope not, too.' His mouth was grim.
'She's so old – and frail.'
'I know.'
Miss Blacklog, standing with her hand pulling at the choker of pearls round her neck, said in a hoarse voice:
'It's getting worse and worse. Whoever's doing these things must be mad, Inspector – quite mad…'
'I wonder.'
The choker of pearls round Miss Blacklog's neck broke under the clutch of her nervous fingers. The smooth white globules rolled all over the room.
Letitia cried out in an anguished tone.
'My pearls – my pearls-' The agony in her voice was so acute that they all looked at her in astonishment.
She turned, her hand to her throat, and rushed sobbing out of the room.
Phillipa began picking up the pearls.
'I've never seen her so upset over anything,' she said. 'Of course she always wears them. Do you think, perhaps, that someone special gave them to her? Randall Goedler, perhaps.'
'It's possible,' said the Inspector slowly.
'They're not – they couldn't be – real by any chance?' Phillipa asked from where, on her knees, she was still collecting the white shining globes.
Taking one in his hand, Craddock was just about to reply contemptuously, 'Real? Of course not!' when he suddenly stifled the words.
After all, could the pearls be real?
They were so large, so even, so white that their falseness seemed palpable, but Craddock remembered suddenly a police case where a string of real pearls had been bought for a few shillings in a pawnbroker's shop.
Letitia Blacklog had assured him that there was no jewellery of value in the house. If these pearls were, by any chance, genuine, they must be worth a fabulous sum. And if Randall Goedler had given them to her – then they might be worth any sum you cared to name.
They looked false – they must be false, but – if they were real?
Why not? She might herself be unaware of their value. Or she might choose to protect her treasure by treating it as though it were a cheap ornament worth a couple of guineas at most. What would they be worth if real? A fabulous sum… Worth doing murder for – if anybody knew about them.
With a start, the Inspector wrenched himself away from his speculations. Miss Marple was missing. He must go to the Vicarage.
III
He found Bunch and her husband waiting for him, their faces anxious and drawn.
'She hasn't come back,' said Bunch.
'Did she say she was coming back here when she left Boulders?' asked Julian.
'She didn't actually say so,' said Craddock slowly, throwing his mind back to the last time he had seen Jane Marple.
He remembered the grimness of her lips and the severe frosty light in those usually gentle blue eyes. Grimness, an inexorable determination… to do what? To go where?
'She was talking to Sergeant Fletcher when I last saw her,' he said. 'Just by the gate. And then she went through it and out. I took it she was going straight home to the Vicarage. I would have sent her in the car – but there was so much to attend to, and she slipped away very quietly. Fletcher may know something! Where's Fletcher?'
But Sergeant Fletcher, it seemed, as Craddock learned when he rang up Boulders, was neither to be found there nor had he left any message where he had gone. There was some idea that he had returned to Milchester for some reason.
The Inspector rang up headquarters in Milchester, but no news of Fletcher was to be found there.
Then Craddock turned to Bunch as he remembered what she had told him over the telephone.
'Where's that paper? You said she'd been writing something on a bit of paper.'
Bunch brought it to him. He spread it out on the table and looked down on it. Bunch leant over his shoulder and spelled it out as he read. The writing was shaky and not easy to read:
Lamp.
Then came the word 'Violets'.
Then after a space:
Where is bottle of aspirin?
The next item in this curious list was more difficult to make out.
'Delicious Death,' Bunch read. 'That's Mitzi's cake.'
'Making enquiries,' read Craddock.
'Inquiries? What about, I wonder? What's this? Severe affliction bravely borne… What on earth?'
'Iodine,' read the Inspector. 'Pearls. Ah, pearls.'
'And then Lotty – no, Letty. Her e's look like o's. And then Berne. And what's this? Old Age Pension…'
They looked at each other in bewilderment.
Craddock recapitulated swiftly: 'Lamp. Violets. Where is bottle of aspirin? Delicious Death. Making enquiries. Severe affliction bravely borne. Iodine. Pearls. Letty. Berne. Old Age Pension.'
Bunch asked: 'Does it mean anything? Anything at all? I can't see any connection.'
Craddock said slowly: 'I've just a glimmer – but I don't see. It's odd that she should have put down that about pearls.'
'What about pearls? What does it mean?'
'Does Miss Blacklog always wear that three tier choker of pearls?'
'Yes, she does. We laugh about it sometimes. They're so dreadfully false looking, aren't they? But I suppose she thinks it's fashionable.'
'There might be another reason,' said Craddock slowly.
'You don't mean that they're real. Oh! they couldn't be!'
'How often have you had an opportunity of seeing real pearls of that size, Mrs. Harmon?'
'But they're so glassy.'
Craddock shrugged his shoulders.
'Anyway, they don't matter now. It's Miss Marple that matters. We've got to find her.'
They'd got to find her before it was too late – but perhaps it was already too late? Those pencilled words
