If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid.
What Griselda called the Nephew Amusing Party started off at a little after nine, and whilst I was waiting for Miss Marple to arrive I amused myself by drawing up a kind of schedule of the facts connected with the crime. I arranged them so far as possible in chronological order. I am not a punctual person, but I am a neat one, and I like things jotted down in a methodical fashion.
At half-past nine punctually, there was a little tap on the window, and I rose and admitted Miss Marple.
She had a very fine Shetland shawl thrown over her head and shoulders and was looking rather old and frail. She came in full of little fluttering remarks.
“So good of you to let me come—and so good of dear Griselda—Raymond admires her so much—the perfect Greuze he always calls her … Shall I sit here? I am not taking your chair? Oh! thank you … No, I won’t have a footstool.”
I deposited the Shetland shawl on a chair and returned to take a chair facing my guest. We looked at each other, and a little deprecating smile broke out on her face.
“I feel that you must be wondering why—why I am so interested in all this. You may possibly think it’s very unwomanly. No—please—I should like to explain if I may.”
She paused a moment, a pink colour suffusing her cheeks.
“You see,” she began at last, “living alone, as I do, in a rather out-of-the-way part of the world, one has to have a hobby. There is, of course, woolwork, and Guides, and Welfare, and sketching, but my hobby is—and