that comes to the same thing—how stupid of me!”
“It hadn’t been altered when I left,” I said. “I remember comparing it with my watch. Still, as you say, that has no bearing on the present matter.”
“What do you think, Miss Marple?” asked Griselda.
The old lady shook her head.
“My dear, I confess I wasn’t thinking about it from that point of view at all. What strikes me as so curious, and has done from the first, is the subject matter of that letter.”
“I don’t see that,” I said. “Colonel Protheroe merely wrote that he couldn’t wait any longer—”
“ At twenty minutes past six? ” said Miss Marple. “Your maid, Mary, had already told him that you wouldn’t be in till half-past six at the earliest, and he appeared to be quite willing to wait until then. And yet at twenty past six he sits down and says he ‘can’t wait any longer.’ ”