Having given the bulletin, Mrs Sandbourne turned the conversation to practical matters. She produced suitable time tables of trains for those who wished to return to London and proposed suitable plans for the resumption of the tour on the morrow or the next day. She had a list of suitable short expeditions in the near neighbourhood for this afternoon, small groups in hired cars.
Professor Wanstead drew Miss Marple aside as they went out of the dining room -
'You may want to rest this afternoon. If not, I will call for you here in an hour's time. There is an interesting church you might care to see?'
'That would be very nice,' said Miss Marple.
II
Miss Marple sat quite still in the car that had come to fetch her. Professor Wanstead had called for her at the time he had said.
'I thought you might enjoy seeing this particular church. And a very pretty village, too,' he explained. 'There's no reason really why one should not enjoy the local sights when one can.'
'It's very kind of you, I'm sure,' Miss Marple had said.
She had looked at him with that slightly fluttery gaze of hers.
'Very kind,' she said. 'It just seems – well, I don't want to say it seems heartless, but well, you know what I mean.'
'My dear lady, Miss Temple is not an old friend of yours or anything like that. Sad as this accident has been.'
'Well,' said Miss Marple again, 'this is very kind of you.'
Professor Wanstead had opened the door of the car and Miss Marple got into it.
It was, she presumed, a hired car. A kindly thought to take an elderly lady to see one of the sights of the neighbourhood.
He might have taken somebody younger, more interesting and certainly better looking. Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully once or twice as they drove through the village. He was not looking at her. He was gazing out of his own window.
When they had left the village behind and were on a second class country road twisting round the hillside, he turned his head and said to her, 'We are not going to a church, I am afraid.'
'No,' said Miss Marple, 'I thought perhaps we weren't.'
'Yes, the idea would have come to you.'
'Where are we going, may I ask?'
'We are going to a hospital, in Carristown.'
'Ah yes, that was where Miss Temple was taken?'
It was a question, though it hardly needed to be one.
'Yes,' he said. 'Mrs Sandbourne saw her and brought me back a letter from the Hospital Authorities. I have just finished talking to them on the telephone.'
'Is she going on well?'
'No. Not going on very well.'
'I see. At least – I hope I don't see,' said Miss Marple.
'Her recovery is very problematical but there is nothing that can be done. She may not recover consciousness again. On the other hand she may have a few lucid intervals.'
'And you are taking me there? Why? I am not a friend of hers, you know. I only just met her for the first time on this trip.'
'Yes, I realise that. I'm taking you there because in one of the lucid intervals she has had, she asked for you.'
'I see,' said Miss Marple. 'I wonder why she should ask for me, why she should have thought that I – that I could be useful in any way to her, or do anything. She is a woman of perception. In her way, you know, a great woman. As Headmistress of Fallowfield she occupied a prominent position in the educational world.'
'The best girls' school there is, I suppose?'
'Yes. She was a great personality. She was herself a woman of considerable scholarship. Mathematics were her speciality, but she was an 'all round' what I should call an educator. Was interested in education, what girls were fitted for, how to encourage them. Oh, many other things. It is sad and very cruel if she dies,' said Miss Marple. 'It will seem such a waste of a life. Although she had retired from her Headmistress-ship she still exercised a lot of power. This accident -' she stopped. 'Perhaps you do not want us to discuss the accident?'
'I think it is better that we should do so. A big boulder crashed down the hillside. It has been known to happen before though only at very long divided intervals of time. However, somebody came and spoke to me about it,' said Professor Wanstead.
'Came and spoke to you about the accident? Who was it?'
'The two young people. Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price.'
'What did they say?'
'Joanna told me that she had the impression there was someone on the hillside. Rather high up. She and Emlyn were climbing up from the lower main path, following a rough track that wound round the curve of the hill. As they turned a corner she definitely saw, outlined against the skyline, a man or a woman who was trying to roll a big boulder forward along the ground. The boulder was rocking – and finally it started to roll, at first slowly and then gathering speed down the hill-side. Miss Temple was walking along the main path below, and had come to a point just underneath it when the boulder hit her. If it was done deliberately it might not, of course, have succeeded; it might have missed her but it did succeed. If what was being attempted was a deliberate attack on the woman walking below it succeeded only too well.'
'Was it a man or a woman they saw?' asked Miss Marple.
'Unfortunately, Joanna Crawford could not say. Whoever it was, was wearing jeans or trousers, and had on a lurid polo-neck pullover in red and black checks. The figure turned and moved out of sight almost immediately. She is inclined to think it was a man but cannot be certain.'
'And she thinks, or you think, that it was a deliberate attempt on Miss Temple 's life?'
'The more she mulls it over, the more she thinks that that was exactly what it was. The boy agrees.'
'You have no idea who it might have been?'
'No idea whatever. No more have they. It might be one of our fellow travellers, someone who went for a stroll that afternoon. It might be someone completely unknown who knew that the coach was making a halt here and chose this place to make an attack on one of the passengers. Some youthful lover of violence for violence's sake. Or it might have been an enemy.'
'It seems very melodramatic if one says 'a secret enemy',' said Miss Marple.
'Yes, it does. Who would want to kill a retired and respected Headmistress? That is a question we want answered. It is possible, faintly possible that Miss Temple herself might be able to tell us. She might have recognised the figure above her or she might more likely have known of someone who bore her ill-will for some special reason.'
'It still seems unlikely.'
'I agree with you,' said Professor Wanstead. 'She seems a totally unlikely person to be a fit victim of attack, but yet when one reflects, a Headmistress knows a great many people. A great many people, shall we put it this way, have passed through her hands.'
'A lot of girls, you mean, have passed through her hands.'
'Yes. Yes, that is what I meant. Girls and their families. A Headmistress must have knowledge of many things. Romances, for instance, that girls might indulge in, unknown to their parents. It happens, you know. It happens very often. Especially in the last ten or twenty years. Girls are said to mature earlier. That is physically true, though in a deeper sense of the word, they mature late. They remain childish longer. Childish in the clothes they like to wear, childish with their floating hair. Even their mini-skirts represent a worship of childishness. Their Baby Doll nightdresses, their gymslips and shorts: all children's fashions. They wish not to become adult not to have to accept
