what's-his-name, Michael I think it was and then one day the girl just goes off without saying a word to anyone. I don't know if Miss Clotilde knew as she was in the family way.
'But you knew,' said Miss Marple.
'Ah well, I've got a lot of experience. I usually know when a girl's that way. It's plain enough to the eye. It's not only the shape, as you might say, you can tell by the look in their eyes and the way they walk and sit, and the sort of giddy fits they get and sick turns now and again. Oh yes, I thought to myself, here's another one of them. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify the body. Nearly broke her up, it did. She was like a different woman for weeks afterwards. Fairly loved that girl, she did.'
'And the other one – Miss Anthea?'
'Funnily enough, you know, I thought she had a kind of pleased look as though she was – yes, just pleased. Not nice, eh? Farmer Plummer's daughter used to look like that. Always used to go and see pigs killed. Enjoyed it. Funny things goes on in families.'
Miss Marple said good-bye, saw she had another ten minutes to go and passed on to the post office. The post office and general store of Jocelyn St Mary was just off the Market Square.
Miss Marple went into the post office, bought some stamps, looked at some of the postcards and then turned her attention to various paper back books. A middle-aged woman with rather a vinegary face presided behind the postal counter. She assisted Miss Marple to free a book from the wire support in which the books were.
'Stick a bit sometimes, they do. People don't put them back straight, you see.'
There was by now no one else in the shop. Miss Marple looked with distaste at the jacket of the book, a naked girl with blood-stained markings on her face and a sinister-looking killer bending over her with a blood-stained knife in his hand.
'Really,' she said, 'I don't like these horrors nowadays.'
'Gone a bit too far with some of their jackets, haven't they,' said Mrs Vinegar. 'Not everyone as likes them. Too fond of violence in every way, I'd say nowadays.'
Miss Marple detached a second book. 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,' she read. 'Oh dear, it's a sad world one lives in.'
'Oh yes, I know. Saw in yesterday's paper, I did, some woman left her baby outside a supermarket and then someone else comes along and wheels it away. And all for no reason as far as one can see. The police found her all right. They all seem to say the same things, whether they steal from a supermarket or take away a baby. Don't know what came over them, they say.'
'Perhaps they really don't,' suggested Miss Marple.
Mrs Vinegar looked even more like vinegar.
'Take me a lot to believe that, it would.' Miss Marple looked round the post office was still empty. She advanced to the window.
'If you are not too busy, I wonder if you could answer a question of mine,' said Miss Marple. 'I have done something extremely stupid. Of late years I make so many mistakes. This was a parcel addressed to a charity. I send them, clothes, pullovers and children's woollies, and I did it up and addressed it and it was sent off, and only this morning it came to me suddenly that I'd made a mistake and written the wrong address. I don't suppose any list is kept of the addresses of parcels but I thought someone might have just happened to remember it. The address I meant to put was The Dockyard and Thames Side Welfare Association.'
Mrs Vinegar was looking quite kindly now, touched by Miss Marple's patent incapacity and general state of senility and dither.
'Did you bring it yourself?'
'No, I didn't – I'm staying at The Old Manor House and one of them, Mrs Glynne, I think said she or her sister would post it. Very kind of her -'
'Let me see now. It would have been on Tuesday, would it? It wasn't Mrs Glynne who brought it in, it was the youngest one, Miss Anthea.'
'Yes, yes, I think that was the day -'
'I remember it quite well. In a good sized dress box and moderately heavy. I think. But not what you said, Dockyard Association I can't recall anything like that. It was the Reverend Matthews, The East Ham Women and Children's Woollen Clothing Appeal.'
'Oh yes.' Miss Marple clasped her hands in an ecstasy of relief. 'How clever of you. I see now how I came to do it. At Christmas I did send things to the East Ham Society in answer to a special appeal for knitted things, so I must have copied down the wrong address. Can you just repeat it?' She entered it carefully in a small notebook.
'I'm afraid the parcel's gone off, though -'
'Oh yes, but I can write, explaining the mistake and ask them to forward the parcel to the Dockyard Association instead. Thank you so much.'
Miss Marple trotted out.
Mrs Vinegar produced stamps for her next customer, remarking in an aside to a colleague 'Scatty as they make them, poor old creature. Expect she's always doing that sort of thing.'
Miss Marple went out of the post office and ran into Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford.
Joanna, she noticed, was very pale and looked upset.
'I've got to give evidence,' she said. 'I don't know what will they ask me? I'm so afraid. I – I don't like it. I told the police sergeant, I told him what I thought we saw.'
'Don't you worry, Joanna,' said Emlyn Price. 'This is just a coroner's inquest, you know. He's a nice man, a doctor, I believe. He'll just ask you a few questions and you'll say what you saw.'
'You saw it too,' said Joanna.
'Yes, I did,' said Emlyn. 'At least I saw there was someone up there. Near the boulders and things. Now come on, Joanna.'
'They came and searched our rooms in the hotel,' said Joanna. 'They asked our permission but they had a search warrant. They looked in our rooms and among the things in our luggage.'
'I think they wanted to find that check pullover you described. Anyway, there's nothing for you to worry about. If you'd had a black and scarlet pullover yourself you wouldn't have talked about it, would you. It was black and scarlet, wasn't it?'
'I don't know,' said Emlyn Price. 'I don't really know the colours of things very well. I think it was a sort of bright colour. That's all I know.'
'They didn't find one,' said Joanna. 'After all, none of us have very many things with us. You don't when you go on a coach travel. There wasn't anything like that among anybody's things. I've never seen anyone – of our lot, I mean, wearing anything like that. Not so far. Have you?'
'No, I haven't, but I suppose I don't know that I should know if I had seen it,' said Emlyn Price. 'I don't always know red from green.'
'No, you're a bit colour blind, aren't you,' said Joanna. 'I noticed that the other day.'
'What do you mean, you noticed it.'
'My red scarf. I asked if you'd seen it. You said you'd seen a green one somewhere and you brought me the red one. I'd left it in the dining room. But you didn't really know it was red.'
'Well, don't go about saying I'm colour blind. I don't like it. Puts people off in some way.'
'Men are more often colour blind than women,' said Joanna. 'It's one of those sex-link things,' she added, with an air of erudition. 'You know, it passes through the female and comes out in the male.'
'You make it sound as though it was measles,' said Emlyn Price. 'Well, here we are.'
'You don't seem to mind,' said Joanna, as they walked up the steps.
'Well, I don't really. I've never been to an inquest. Things are rather interesting when you do them for the first time.'
Dr Stokes was a middle-aged man with greying hair and spectacles. Police evidence was given first, then the medical evidence with technical details of the concussion injuries which had caused death. Mrs Sandbourne gave particulars of the coach tour, the expedition as arranged for that particular afternoon, and particulars of how the fatality had occurred. Miss Temple, she said, although not young, was a very brisk walker. The party were going along a well known footpath which led round the curve of a hill which slowly mounted to the old Moorland Church originally built in Elizabethan times, though repaired and added to later. On an adjoining crest was what was called
