check.'
Megan looked at it, then she said, 'Thank you. That will do to go on with.'
She turned and went out of the room. Symmington stared after her and at the closed door, then he turned around and as I saw his face I made a quick uncontrolled movement forward. It was checked in the most extraordinary fashion. The big bush that I had noticed by the wall stopped being a bush.
Superintendent Nash's arms went around me and Superintendent Nash's voice just breathed in my ear:
'Quiet, Burton. For God's sake.'
Then, with infinite caution he beat a retreat, his arm impelling me to accompany him.
Around the side of the house he straightened himself and wiped his forehead.
'Of course,' he said. 'You would have to butt in!'
'That girl isn't safe,' I said urgently. 'You saw his face? We've got to get her out of here.'
Nash took a firm grip of my arm.
'Now, look here, Mr. Burton, you've got to listen.'
Well, I listened.
I didn't like it but I gave in.
But I insisted on being on the spot and I swore to obey orders implicitly.
So that is how I came with Nash and Parkins into the house by the back door, which was already unlocked.
And I waited with Nash on the upstairs landing behind the velvet curtain masking the window alcove until the clocks in the house struck two, and Symmington's door opened and he went across the landing and into Megan's room.
I did not stir or make a move for I knew that Sergeant Parkins was inside masked by the opening door, and I knew that Parkins was a good man and knew his job, and I knew that I couldn't have trusted myself to keep quiet and not break out.
And waiting there, with my heart thudding, I saw Symmington come out with Megan in his arms and carry her downstairs, with Nash and myself a discreet distance behind him.
He carried her through to the kitchen and he had just arranged her comfortably with her head in the gas oven and had turned on the gas when Nash and I came through the kitchen door and switched on the light.
And that was the end of Richard Symmington. He collapsed. Even while I was hauling Megan out and turning off the gas I saw the collapse. He didn't even try to fight. He knew he'd played and lost.
Upstairs I sat by Megan's bed waiting for her to come around and occasionally cursing Nash.
'How do you know she's all right? It was too big a risk.' Nash was very soothing.
'Just a soporific in the milk she always had by her bed. Nothing more. It stands to reason, he couldn't risk her being poisoned. As far as he's concerned the whole business is closed with Miss Griffith's arrest. He can't afford to have any mysterious death. No violence, no poison. But if a rather unhappy type of girl broods over her mother's suicide, and finally goes and puts her head in the gas oven – well, people just say that she was never quite normal and the shock of her mother's death finished her.'
I said, watching Megan, 'She's a long time coming around.'
'You heard what Dr. Griffith said? Heart and pulse quite all right – she'll just sleep and wake naturally. Stuff he gives a lot of his patients, he says.'
Megan stirred. She murmured something.
Superintendent Nash unobtrusively left the room.
Presently Megan opened her eyes.
'Jerry.'
'Hullo, sweet.'
'Did I do it well?'
'You might have been blackmailing ever since your cradle!'
Megan closed her eyes again. Then she murmured:
'Last night – I was writing to you – in case anything went – went wrong. But I was too sleepy to finish. It's over there.'
I went across to the writing table. In a shabby little blotter I found Megan's unfinished letter.
'My dear Jerry,' it began primly: 'I was reading my school Shakespeare and the sonnet that begins:
''So are you to my thoughts as food to life
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground'
and I see that I am in love with you after all, because that is what I feel… '
'So you see,' said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, 'I was quite right to call in an expert.'
I stared at her. We were all at the vicarage. The rain was pouring down outside and there was a pleasant log fire, and Mrs. Dane Calthrop had just wandered around, beat up a sofa cushion and put it for some reason of her own on the top of the grand piano.
'But did you?' I said, surprised. 'Who was it? What did he do?'
'It wasn't a he,' said Mrs. Dane Calthrop.
With a sweeping gesture she indicated Miss Marple. Miss Marple had finished the fleecy knitting and was now engaged with a crochet hook and a ball of cotton.
'That's my expert,' said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. 'Jane Marple. Look at her well. I tell you, that woman knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I've ever known.'
'I don't think you should put it quite like that, dear,' murmured Miss Marple.
'But you do.'
'One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year around,' said Miss Marple placidly.
Then, seeming to feel it was expected of her, she laid down her crochet, and delivered a gentle old-maidish dissertation on murder.
'The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple. This one was. Quite sane and straightforward – and quite understandable – in an unpleasant way, of course.'
'Very unpleasant!'
'The truth was really so very obvious. You saw it, you know, Mr. Burton.'
'Indeed I did not.'
'But you did. You indicated the whole thing to me. You saw perfectly the relationship of one thing to the other, but you just hadn't enough self-confidence to see what those feelings of yours meant. To begin with, that tiresome phrase 'No smoke without fire.' It irritated you; but you proceeded quite correctly to label it for what it was – a smoke screen. Misdirection, you see – everybody looking at the wrong thing – the anonymous letters, but the whole point was that there weren't any anonymous letters!'
'But, my dear Miss Marple, I can assure you that there were. I had one.'
'Oh, yes, but they weren't real at all. Dear Maud here tumbled on that. Even in peaceful Lymstock there are plenty of scandals, and I can assure you any woman living in the place would have known about them and used them. But a man, you see, isn't interested in gossip in the same way – especially a detached logical man like Mr. Symmington. But a genuine woman writer of those letters would have made her letters much more to the point.
'So you see that if you disregard the smoke and come to the fire you know where you are. You just come down to the actual facts of what happened. And putting aside the letters, just one thing happened – Mrs. Symmington died.
'So then, naturally, one thinks of who might have wanted Mrs. Symmington to die, and of course the very first person one thinks of in such a case is, I am afraid, the husband. And one asks oneself is there any reason? – any motive? – for instance, any other woman?
'And the very first thing I hear is that there is a very attractive young governess in the house. So clear, isn't it? Mr. Symmington, a rather dry repressed unemotional man, tied to a querulous and neurotic wife and then suddenly this radiant young creature comes along.
'I'm afraid, you know, that gentlemen, when they fall in love at a certain age, get the disease very badly. It's quite a madness. And Mr. Symmington, as far as I can make out, was never actually a good man – he wasn't very kind or very affectionate or very sympathetic – his qualities were all negative – so he hadn't really the strength to
