“Nobody knows a thing about it except you, padre.”
“My dear young man, you underestimate the detective instinct of village life. In St. Mary Mead everyone knows your most intimate affairs. There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”
He said easily that that was all right. Everyone thought it was Lettice.
“Has it occurred to you,” I asked, “that possibly Lettice might think so herself?”
He seemed quite surprised by the idea. Lettice, he said, didn’t care a hang about him. He was sure of that.
“She’s a queer sort of girl,” he said. “Always seems in a kind of dream, and yet underneath I believe she’s really rather practical. I believe all that vague stuff is a pose. Lettice knows jolly well what she’s doing. And there’s a funny vindictive streak in her. The queer thing is that she hates Anne. Simply loathes her. And yet Anne’s been a perfect angel to her always.”
I did not, of course, take his word for this last. To infatuated young men, their inamorata always behaves like an angel. Still, to the best of my observation, Anne had always behaved to her stepdaughter with kindness and fairness. I had been surprised myself that afternoon at the bitterness of Lettice’s tone.
We had to leave the conversation there, because Griselda and Dennis burst in upon us and said I was not to make Lawrence behave like an old fogy.
“Oh dear!” said Griselda, throwing herself into an armchair. “How I would like a thrill of some kind. A murder—or even a burglary.”