She and Haydock left the room together and Lawrence Redding with them.
Colonel Melchett had pursed up his lips and was playing with a paper knife. Slack was looking at the note. It was then that I mentioned Miss Marple’s theory.
Slack looked closely at it.
“My word,” he said, “I believe the old lady’s right. Look here, sir, don’t you see?—these figures are written in different ink. That date was written with a fountain pen or I’ll eat my boots!”
We were all rather excited.
“You’ve examined the note for fingerprints, of course,” said the Chief Constable.
“What do you think, colonel? No fingerprints on the note at all. Fingerprints on the pistol those of Mr. Lawrence Redding. May have been some others once, before he went fooling round with it and carrying it around in his pocket, but there’s nothing clear enough to get hold of now.”
“At first the case looked very black against Mrs. Protheroe,” said the colonel thoughtfully. “Much blacker than against young Redding. There was that old woman Marple’s evidence that she didn’t have the pistol with her, but these elderly ladies are often mistaken.”
I was silent, but I did not agree with him. I was quite sure that Anne Protheroe had had no pistol with her since Miss Marple had said so. Miss Marple is not the type of elderly lady who makes mistakes. She has got an uncanny knack of being always right.
“What did get me was that nobody heard the shot. If it was fired then—somebody must have heard it—wherever they thought it came from.