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2
Miss Marple came down the stairs and into the Great Hall to find Alex Re-
out in a somewhat flamboyant2 gesture.
“Come in, come in,” said Alex happily and as though he were the owner
of the Great Hall. “I’m just thinking about last night.”
Lewis Serrocold, who had followed Miss Marple down from Carrie
Louise’s sitting room, crossed the Great Hall to his study and went in and
shut the door.
“Are you trying to reconstruct the crime?” asked Miss Marple with sub-
dued eagerness.
“Eh?” Alex looked at her with a frown. Then his brow cleared.
“Oh, that,” he said. “No, not exactly. I was looking at the whole thing
terms of the theatre. Not reality, but artificiality! Just come over here.
Personae. Noises off. All very interesting. Not all my own idea. The In-
spector gave it to me. I think he’s rather a cruel man. He did his best to
frighten me this morning.”
“And did he frighten you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Time,” he said, “is so very misleading. One thinks things take such a
long time, but really, of course, they don’t.”
“No,” said Miss Marple.
Representing the audience, she moved to a different position. The stage
set now consisted of a vast, tapestry-covered wall going up to dimness,
with a grand piano up L. and a window and window seat up R. Very near
the window seat was the door into the library. The piano stool was only
about eight feet from the door into the square lobby, which led to the cor-
ridor. Two very convenient exits! The audience, of course, had an excel-
lent view of both of them….
But last night there had been no audience. Nobody, that is to say, had
been facing the stage set that Miss Marple was now facing. The audience,
last night, had been sitting with their backs to that particular stage.
How long, Miss Marple wondered, would it have taken to slip out of the
room, run along the corridor, shoot Gulbrandsen and come back? Not
nearly so long as one would think. Measured in minutes and seconds, a
very short time indeed….
What had Carrie Louise meant when she had said to her husband: “So
that’s what you believe—but you’re wrong, Lewis!”
“I must say that that was a very penetrating9 remark of the Inspector’s,”
Alex’s voice cut in on her meditations10. “About a stage set being real. Made
of wood and cardboard and stuck together with glue and as real on the un-
of the audience.’”
rors is, I believe, the slang phrase.”
Stephen Restarick came in, slightly out of breath.
“Hullo, Alex,” he said. “That little rat, Ernie Gregg—I don’t know if you
remember him?”
“The one who played Feste when you did Twelfth Night? Quite a bit of
talent there I thought.”
“Yes, he’s got talent of a sort. Very good with his hands, too. Does a lot of
our carpentry. However, that’s neither here nor there. He’s been boasting
to Gina that he gets out at night and wanders about the grounds. Says he
was wandering round last night and boasts he saw something.”
“Saw what?”
“Says he’s not going to tell! Actually, I’m pretty certain he’s only trying
Alex said sharply, “I should leave him for a bit. Don’t let him think we’re
too interested.”
“Perhaps—yes I think you may be right there. This evening, perhaps.”
Stephen went on into the library.
Miss Marple, moving gently round the Hall in her character of mobile
audience, collided with Alex Restarick as he stepped back suddenly.
Miss Marple said, “I’m so sorry.”
Alex frowned at her, said in an absent sort of way,
“I beg your pardon,” and then added in a surprised voice, “Oh, it’s you.”
It seemed to Miss Marple an odd remark for someone with whom she
had been conversing17 for some considerable time.
“I was thinking of something else,” said Alex Restarick. “That boy Ernie
—” He made vague motions with both hands.
Then, with a sudden change of manner, he crossed the Hall and went
through the library door shutting it behind him.
and what he had seen or pretended to see. She had a shrewd suspicion
that Ernie had seen nothing at all. She did not believe for a moment that
on a cold raw foggy night like last night, Ernie would have troubled to use
his picklocking activities and wander about in the park. In all probability,
he never had got out at night. Boasting, that was all it had been.
“Like Johnnie Backhouse,” thought Miss Marple who always had a good
storehouse of parallels to draw upon, selected from inhabitants of St.
to all he thought it might affect.
It had been a surprisingly successful remark. So many people, Miss
Marple reflected, have been in places where they are anxious not to be
seen!
She dismissed Johnnie from her mind and concentrated on a vague
something which Alex’s account of Inspector Curry’s remarks had stirred
to life. Those remarks had given Alex an idea. She was not sure that they
had not given her an idea, too. The same idea? Or a different one?
She stood where Alex Restarick had stood. She thought to herself, “This
is not a real hall. This is only cardboard and canvas and wood. This is a
stage scene….” Scrappy phrases flashed across her mind. “Illusion—” “In
the eyes of the audience.” “They do it with mirrors….” Bowls of goldfish …
ection of the conjurer’s art….
Something stirred in her consciousness—a picture—something that Alex
had said … something that he had described to her … Constable Dodgett
puffing and panting … panting … something shifted in her mind—came
into sudden focus….
“Why of course!” said Miss Marple. “That must be it….”
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