always has been—Human Nature. So varied—and so very fascinating. And, of course, in a small village, with nothing to distract one, one has such ample opportunity for becoming what I might call proficient in one’s study. One begins to class people, quite definitely, just as though they were birds or flowers, group so-and-so, genus this, species that. Sometimes, of course, one makes mistakes, but less and less as time goes on. And then, too, one tests oneself. One takes a little problem—for instance, the gill of picked shrimps that amused dear Griselda so much—a quite unimportant mystery but absolutely incomprehensible unless one solves it right. And then there was that matter of the changed cough drops, and the butcher’s wife’s umbrella—the last absolutely meaningless unless on the assumption that the greengrocer was not behaving at all nicely with the chemist’s wife—which, of course, turned out to be the case. It is so fascinating, you know, to apply one’s judgment and find that one is right.”
“You usually are, I believe,” I said smiling.
“That, I am afraid, is what has made me a little conceited,” confessed Miss Marple. “But I have always wondered whether, if some day a really big mystery came along, I should be able to do the same thing. I mean—just solve it correctly. Logically, it ought to be exactly the same thing. After all, a tiny working model of a torpedo is just the same as a real torpedo.”
“You mean it’s all a question of relativity,” I said slowly. “It should be—logically, I admit. But I don’t know whether it really is.”
“Surely it must be the same,” said Miss Marple. “The—what one used to call the factors at school—are the same. There’s money, and the mutual attraction people of an—er—opposite sex—and there’s queerness of course—so many people are a little queer, aren’t they?—in fact, most people are when you know them well. And normal people do such