“As far as I can remember,” said Miss Hartnell, “it must have been close on six o’clock. I went straight home afterwards, and I got in about ten past six, and Mrs. Protheroe came in somewhere round about the half-hour, leaving Dr. Stone and Mr. Redding outside, and we talked about bulbs. And all the time the poor colonel lying murdered. It’s a sad world.”
“It is sometimes a rather unpleasant one,” I said.
I rose.
“And that is all you have to tell me?”
“I just thought it might be important.”
“It might,” I agreed.
And refusing to be drawn further, much to Miss Hartnell’s disappointment, I took my leave.
Miss Wetherby, whom I visited next, received me in a kind of flutter.
“Dear vicar, how truly kind. You’ve had tea? Really, you won’t? A cushion for your back? It is so kind of you to come round so promptly. Always willing to put yourself out for others.”
There was a good deal of this before we came to the point, and even then it was approached with a good deal of circumlocution.
“You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.”
In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.
“You can’t tell me who told you?”
“I promised, dear Mr. Clement. And I always think a promise should be a sacred thing.”