VA little breathless, Miss Marple alighted from the Bantry’s car, the door ofwhich was held open for her by the chauffeur.

Colonel Bantry came out on the steps, and looked a little surprised.

“Miss Marple?—er—very pleased to see you.”

“Your wife telephoned to me,” explained Miss Marple.

“Capital, capital. She ought to have someone with her. She’ll crack upotherwise. She’s putting a good face on things at the moment, but youknow what it is—”

At this moment Mrs. Bantry appeared, and exclaimed:

“Do go back into the dining room and eat your breakfast, Arthur. Yourbacon will get cold.”

“I thought it might be the Inspector arriving,” explained Colonel Bantry.

“He’ll be here soon enough,” said Mrs. Bantry. “That’s why it’s importantto get your breakfast first. You need it.”

“So do you. Much better come and eat something. Dolly—”

“I’ll come in a minute,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Go on, Arthur.”

Colonel Bantry was shooed back into the dining room like a recalcitranthen.

“Now!” said Mrs. Bantry with an intonation of triumph. “Come on.”

She led the way rapidly along the long corridor to the east of the house.

Outside the library door Constable Palk stood on guard. He interceptedMrs. Bantry with a show of authority.

“I’m afraid nobody is allowed in, madam. Inspector’s orders.”

“Nonsense, Palk,” said Mrs. Bantry. “You know Miss Marple perfectlywell.”

Constable Palk admitted to knowing Miss Marple.

“It’s very important that she should see the body,” said Mrs. Bantry.

“Don’t be stupid, Palk. After all, it’s my library, isn’t it?”

Constable Palk gave way. His habit of giving in to the gentry waslifelong. The Inspector, he reflected, need never know about it.

“Nothing must be touched or handled in any way,” he warned theladies.

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Bantry impatiently. “We know that. You cancome in and watch, if you like.”

Constable Palk availed himself of this permission. It had been his inten-tion, anyway.

Mrs. Bantry bore her friend triumphantly across the library to the bigold- fashioned fireplace. She said, with a dramatic sense of climax:

“There!”

Miss Marple understood then just what her friend had meant when shesaid the dead girl wasn’t real. The library was a room very typical of itsowners. It was large and shabby and untidy. It had big sagging armchairs,and pipes and books and estate papers laid out on the big table. Therewere one or two good old family portraits on the walls, and some bad Vic-torian watercolours, and some would-be-funny hunting scenes. There wasa big vase of Michaelmas daisies in the corner. The whole room was dimand mellow and casual. It spoke of long occupation and familiar use andof links with tradition.

And across the old bearskin hearthrug there was sprawled somethingnew and crude and melodramatic.

The flamboyant figure of a girl. A girl with unnaturally fair hair dressedup off her face in elaborate curls and rings. Her thin body was dressed ina backless evening dress of white spangled satin. The face was heavilymade-up, the powder standing out grotesquely on its blue swollen surface,the mascara of the lashes lying thickly on the distorted cheeks, the scarletof the lips looking like a gash. The fingernails were enamelled in a deepblood-red and so were the toenails in their cheap silver sandal shoes. Itwas a cheap, tawdry, flamboyant figure—most incongruous in the solidold-fashioned comfort of Colonel Bantry’s library.

Mrs. Bantry said in a low voice:

“You see what I mean? It just isn’t true!”

The old lady by her side nodded her head. She looked down long andthoughtfully at the huddled figure.

She said at last in a gentle voice:

“She’s very young.”

“Yes—yes—I suppose she is.” Mrs. Bantry seemed almost surprised—like one making a discovery.

Miss Marple bent down. She did not touch the girl. She looked at the fin-gers that clutched frantically at the front of the girl’s dress, as though shehad clawed it in her last frantic struggle for breath.

There was the sound of a car scrunching on the gravel outside. Con-stable Palk said with urgency:

“That’ll be the Inspector….”

True to his ingrained belief that the gentry didn’t let you down, Mrs.

Bantry immediately moved to the door. Miss Marple followed her. Mrs.

Bantry said:

“That’ll be all right, Palk.”

Constable Palk was immensely relieved.