“Really?”
“I thought it one of those silly remarks women will make. If there seemed one thing sure on earth it was that Protheroe had written that note.”
We looked at each other.
“It’s curious,” I said slowly. “Miss Marple was saying this evening that that note was all wrong.”
“Confound the woman, she couldn’t know more about it if she had committed the murder herself.”
At that moment the telephone bell rang. There is a queer kind of psychology about a telephone bell. It rang now persistently and with a kind of sinister significance.
I went over and took up the receiver.
“This is the Vicarage,” I said. “Who’s speaking?”
A strange, high-pitched hysterical voice came over the wire:
“ I want to confess ,” it said. “ My God, I want to confess. ”
“Hullo,” I said, “hullo. Look here, you’ve cut me off. What number was that?”
A languid voice said it didn’t know. It added that it was sorry I had been troubled.
I put down the receiver, and turned to Melchett.
“You once said,” I remarked, “that you would go mad if anyone else accused themselves of the crime.”