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TAPE-MEASURE MURDER
Miss Politt took hold of the knocker and rapped politely on the cottage
left arm shifted a little as she did so, and she readjusted it. Inside the par-
cel was Mrs. Spenlow’s new green winter dress, ready for fitting. From
ure, a pincushion, and a large, practical pair of scissors.
Miss Politt was tall and gaunt, with a sharp nose, pursed lips, and mea-
gre iron-grey hair. She hesitated before using the knocker for the third
time. Glancing down the street, she saw a figure rapidly approaching. Miss
Hartnell, jolly, weather-beaten, fifty-five, shouted out in her usual loud
The dressmaker answered, “Good afternoon, Miss Hartnell.” Her voice
was excessively thin and genteel in its accents. She had started life as a
lady’s maid. “Excuse me,” she went on, “but do you happen to know if by
any chance Mrs. Spenlow isn’t at home?”
“Not the least idea,” said Miss Hartnell.
“It’s rather awkward, you see. I was to fit on Mrs. Spenlow’s new dress
this afternoon. Three thirty, she said.”
Miss Hartnell consulted her wrist watch. “It’s a little past the half hour
now.”
“Yes. I have knocked three times, but there doesn’t seem to be any an-
swer, so I was wondering if perhaps Mrs. Spenlow might have gone out
and forgotten. She doesn’t forget appointments as a rule, and she wants
the dress to wear the day after tomorrow.”
Miss Hartnell entered the gate and walked up the path to join Miss Politt
outside the door of Laburnum Cottage.
“Why doesn’t Gladys answer the door?” she demanded. “Oh, no, of
course, it’s Thursday—Gladys’s day out. I expect Mrs. Spenlow has fallen
asleep. I don’t expect you’ve made enough noise with this thing.”
stentorian8 voice, “What ho, within there!”
There was no response.
Miss Politt murmured, “Oh, I think Mrs. Spenlow must have forgotten
and gone out, I’ll call round some other time.” She began edging away
down the path.
“Nonsense,” said Miss Hartnell firmly. “She can’t have gone out. I’d have
met her. I’ll just take a look through the windows and see if I can find any
signs of life.”
tory because she knew quite well that the front room was seldom used,
Mr. and Mrs. Spenlow preferring the small back sitting room.
Perfunctory as it was, though, it succeeded in its object. Miss Hartnell, it
is true, saw no signs of life. On the contrary, she saw, through the window,
Mrs. Spenlow lying on the hearthrug—dead.
“Of course,” said Miss Hartnell, telling the story afterwards, “I managed
to keep my head. That Politt creature wouldn’t have had the least idea of
what to do. ‘Got to keep our heads,’ I said to her. ‘You stay here, and I’ll go
paid no attention at all. One has to be firm with that sort of person. I’ve al-
ways found they enjoy making a fuss. So I was just going off when, at that
very moment, Mr. Spenlow came round the corner of the house.”
Here Miss Hartnell made a significant pause. It enabled her audience to
ask breathlessly, “Tell me, how did he look?”
Miss Hartnell would then go on, “Frankly, I suspected something at
once! He was far too calm. He didn’t seem surprised in the least. And you
may say what you like, it isn’t natural for a man to hear that his wife is
dead and display no emotion whatever.”
Everybody agreed with this statement.
The police agreed with it, too. So suspicious did they consider Mr. Spen-
low’s detachment, that they lost no time in ascertaining13 how that gentle-
that Mrs. Spenlow had been the monied partner, and that her money went
to her husband under a will made soon after their marriage, they were
more suspicious than ever.
Miss Marple, that sweet-faced—and, some said, vinegar-tongued—eld-
erly spinster who lived in the house next to the rectory, was interviewed
very early—within half an hour of the discovery of the crime. She was ap-
proached by Police Constable Palk, importantly thumbing a notebook. “If
you don’t mind, ma’am, I’ve a few questions to ask you.”
Miss Marple said, “In connection with the murder of Mrs. Spenlow?”
Palk was startled. “May I ask, madam, how you got to know of it?”
“The fish,” said Miss Marple.
rectly that the fishmonger’s boy had brought it, together with Miss
Marple’s evening meal.
Miss Marple continued gently. “Lying on the floor in the sitting room,
strangled—possibly by a very narrow belt. But whatever it was, it was
taken away.”
Palk’s face was wrathful. “How that young Fred gets to know everything
—”
nic.”
Constable Palk looked down, startled. He said, “They do say, ‘See a pin
and pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.’”
“I hope that will come true. Now what is it you want me to tell you?”
Constable Palk cleared his throat, looked important, and consulted his
notebook. “Statement was made to me by Mr. Arthur Spenlow, husband of
the deceased. Mr. Spenlow says that at two thirty, as far as he can say, he
was rung up by Miss Marple, and asked if he would come over at a
quarter past three as she was anxious to consult him about something.
Now, ma’am, is that true?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple.
“You did not ring up Mr. Spenlow at two thirty?”
“Neither at two thirty nor any other time.”
“Ah,” said Constable Palk, and sucked his moustache with a good deal of
satisfaction.
“What else did Mr. Spenlow say?”
“Mr. Spenlow’s statement was that he came over here as requested,
leaving his own house at ten minutes past three; that on arrival here he
was informed by the maidservant that Miss Marple was ‘not at ’ome.’”
“That part of it is true,” said Miss Marple. “He did come here, but I was
at a meeting at the Women’s Institute.”
“Ah,” said Constable Palk again.
Miss Marple exclaimed, “Do tell me, Constable, do you suspect Mr. Spen-
low?”
“It’s not for me to say at this stage, but it looks to me as though some-
body, naming no names, has been trying to be artful.”
Miss Marple said thoughtfully, “Mr. Spenlow?”
She liked Mr. Spenlow. He was a small, spare man, stiff and conven-
have come to live in the country, he had so clearly lived in towns all his
ded, ever since I was a small boy, to live in the country someday and have
a garden of my own. I have always been very much attached to flowers.
My wife, you know, kept a flower shop. That’s where I saw her first.”
tier Mrs. Spenlow, seen against a background of flowers.
Mr. Spenlow, however, really knew nothing about flowers. He had no
idea of seeds, of cuttings, of bedding out, of annuals or perennials21. He had
only a vision — a vision of a small cottage garden thickly planted with
sweet-smelling, brightly coloured blossoms. He had asked, almost pathet-
tions in a little book.
He was a man of quiet method. It was, perhaps, because of this trait,
that the police were interested in him when his wife was found murdered.
With patience and perseverance23 they learned a good deal about the late
The late Mrs. Spenlow had begun life as a between- maid in a large
house. She had left that position to marry the second gardener, and with
the gardener, who before long had sickened and died.
His widow carried on the shop and enlarged it in an ambitious way. She
ness. Not long afterwards, they had sold the business and came down to
St. Mary Mead.
Mrs. Spenlow was a well-to-do woman. The profits from her florist’s es-
tablishment she had invested—“under spirit guidance,” as she explained
All her investments had prospered, some in quite a sensational31 fashion.
Instead, however, of this increasing her belief in spiritualism, Mrs. Spen-
based on various forms of deep breathing. When, however, she arrived at
St. Mary Mead, she had relapsed into a period of orthodox Church-of-Eng-
land beliefs. She was a good deal at the vicarage, and attended church ser-
the local happenings, and played village bridge.
Slack was a positive type of man. When he had made up his mind, he
was sure. He was quite sure now. “Husband did it, sir,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Quite sure of it. You’ve only got to look at him. Guilty as hell. Never
showed a sign of grief or emotion. He came back to the house knowing she
was dead.”
“Wouldn’t he at least have tried to act the part of the distracted hus-
band?”
“Not him, sir. Too pleased with himself. Some gentlemen can’t act. Too
stiff.”
“Any other woman in his life?” Colonel Melchett asked.
“Haven’t been able to find any trace of one. Of course, he’s the artful
kind. He’d cover his tracks. As I see it, he was just fed up with his wife.
She’d got the money, and I should say was a trying woman to live with—
do away with her and live comfortably on his own.”
“Yes, that could be the case, I suppose.”
“Depend upon it, that was it. Made his plans careful. Pretended to get a
phone call—”
Melchett interrupted him. “No call been traced?”
“No, sir. That means either that he lied, or that the call was put through
from a public telephone booth. The only two public phones in the village
are at the station and the post office. Post office it certainly wasn’t. Mrs.
Blade sees everyone who comes in. Station it might be. Train arrives at
he says it was Miss Marple who called him up, and that certainly isn’t true.
The call didn’t come from her house, and she herself was away at the In-
stitute.”
“You’re not overlooking the possibility that the husband was deliber-
ately got out of the way—by someone who wanted to murder Mrs. Spen-
low?”
gain anything.”
“He’s an undesirable41 character, though. Quite a pretty little spot of em-
bezzlement to his credit.”
“I’m not saying he isn’t a wrong ’un. Still, he did go to his boss and own
up to that embezzlement42. And his employers weren’t wise to it.”
“Yes, sir. Became a convert and went off to do the straight thing and
own up to having pinched money. I’m not saying, mind you, that it mayn’t
have been astuteness44. He may have thought he was suspected and decided
to gamble on honest repentance45.”
“You have a sceptical mind, Slack,” said Colonel Melchett. “By the way,
have you talked to Miss Marple at all?”
“What’s she got to do with it, sir?”
“Oh, nothing. But she hears things, you know. Why don’t you go and
have a chat with her? She’s a very sharp old lady.”
Slack changed the subject. “One thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, sir.
That domestic- service job where the deceased started her career — Sir
Robert Abercrombie’s place. That’s where that jewel robbery was—emer-
alds—worth a packet. Never got them. I’ve been looking it up—must have
happened when the Spenlow woman was there, though she’d have been
quite a girl at the time. Don’t think she was mixed up in it, do you, sir?
Spenlow, you know, was one of those little tuppenny-ha’penny jewellers—
just the chap for a fence.”
Melchett shook his head. “Don’t think there’s anything in that. She didn’t
even know Spenlow at the time. I remember the case. Opinion in police
circles was that a son of the house was mixed up in it—Jim Abercrombie—
awful young waster. Had a pile of debts, and just after the robbery they
were all paid off—some rich woman, so they said, but I don’t know—Old
Abercrombie hedged a bit about the case—tried to call the police off.”
“It was just an idea, sir,” said Slack.
Miss Marple received Inspector Slack with gratification, especially when
she heard that he had been sent by Colonel Melchett.
“Now, really, that is very kind of Colonel Melchett. I didn’t know he re-
membered me.”
“He remembers you, all right. Told me that what you didn’t know of
what goes on in St. Mary Mead isn’t worth knowing.”
“Too kind of him, but really I don’t know anything at all. About this
murder, I mean.”
“You know what the talk about it is.”
“Oh, of course—but it wouldn’t do, would it, to repeat just idle talk?”
tion, you know. It’s in confidence, so to speak.”
“You mean you really want to know what people are saying? Whether
there’s any truth in it or not?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Well, of course, there’s been a great deal of talk and speculation47. And
there are really two distinct camps, if you understand me. To begin with,
there are the people who think that the husband did it. A husband or a
wife is, in a way, the natural person to suspect, don’t you think so?”
“Maybe,” said the inspector cautiously.
“Such close quarters, you know. Then, so often, the money angle. I hear
that it was Mrs. Spenlow who had the money, and therefore Mr. Spenlow
does benefit by her death. In this wicked world I’m afraid the most un-
“He comes into a tidy sum, all right.”
her, leave the house by the back, come across the fields to my house, ask
for me and pretend he’d had a telephone call from me, then go back and
find his wife murdered in his absence—hoping, of course, that the crime
would be put down to some tramp or burglar.”
The inspector nodded. “What with the money angle—and if they’d been
on bad terms lately—”
But Miss Marple interrupted him. “Oh, but they hadn’t.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Everyone would have known if they’d quarrelled! The maid, Gladys
Brent—she’d have soon spread it round the village.”
The inspector said feebly, “She mightn’t have known—” and received a
pitying smile in reply.
Miss Marple went on. “And then there’s the other school of thought. Ted
Gerard. A good-looking young man. I’m afraid, you know, that good looks
are inclined to influence one more than they should. Our last curate but
one—quite a magical effect! All the girls came to church—evening service
as well as morning. And many older women became unusually active in
embarrassing for the poor young man.
“But let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, this young man, Ted Gerard. Of
course, there has been talk about him. He’s come down to see her so often.
Though Mrs. Spenlow told me herself that he was a member of what I
think they call the Oxford Group. A religious movement. They are quite
sincere and very earnest, I believe, and Mrs. Spenlow was impressed by it
all.”
Miss Marple took a breath and went on. “And I’m sure there was no
reason to believe that there was anything more in it than that, but you
know what people are. Quite a lot of people are convinced that Mrs. Spen-
low was infatuated with the young man, and that she’d lent him quite a lot
of money. And it’s perfectly true that he was actually seen at the station
that day. In the train—the two twenty-seven down train. But of course it
would be quite easy, wouldn’t it, to slip out of the other side of the train
and go through the cutting and over the fence and round by the hedge and
never come out of the station entrance at all. So that he need not have
been seen going to the cottage. And, of course, people do think that what
“Peculiar?”
“A kimono. Not a dress.” Miss Marple blushed. “That sort of thing, you
know, is, perhaps, rather suggestive to some people.”
“You think it was suggestive?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so, I think it was perfectly natural.”
“You think it was natural?”
“Under the circumstances, yes.” Miss Marple’s glance was cool and re-
flective.
Inspector Slack said, “It might give us another motive for the husband.
“Oh, no, Mr. Spenlow would never be jealous. He’s not the sort of man
who notices things. If his wife had gone away and left a note on the pin-
cushion, it would be the first he’d know of anything of that kind.”
Inspector Slack was puzzled by the intent way she was looking at him.
He had an idea that all her conversation was intended to hint at some-
thing he didn’t understand. She said now, with some emphasis, “Didn’t you
find any clues, Inspector—on the spot?”
“People don’t leave fingerprints53 and cigarette ash nowadays, Miss
Marple.”
“But this, I think,” she suggested, “was an old-fashioned crime—”
Slack said sharply, “Now what do you mean by that?”
Miss Marple remarked slowly, “I think, you know, that Constable Palk
could help you. He was the first person on the—on the ‘scene of the crime,’
as they say.”
Mr. Spenlow was sitting in a deck chair. He looked bewildered. He said, in
his thin, precise voice, “I may, of course, be imagining what occurred. My
hearing is not as good as it was. But I distinctly think I heard a small boy
call after me, ‘Yah, who’s a Crippen?’ It—it conveyed the impression to me
that he was of the opinion that I had—had killed my dear wife.”
impression he meant to convey, no doubt.”
“But what could possibly have put such an idea into a child’s head?”
Miss Marple coughed. “Listening, no doubt, to the opinions of his eld-
ers.”
“You—you really mean that other people think that, also?”
“Quite half the people in St. Mary Mead.”
“But—my dear lady—what can possibly have given rise to such an idea?
country as much as I had hoped she would do, but perfect agreement on
every subject is an impossible idea. I assure you I feel her loss very
keenly.”
“Probably. But if you will excuse my saying so, you don’t sound as
though you do.”
Mr. Spenlow drew his meagre frame up to its full height. “My dear lady,
many years ago I read of a certain Chinese philosopher who, when his
dearly loved wife was taken from him, continued calmly to beat a gong in
the street—a customary Chinese pastime, I presume—exactly as usual. The
“But,” said Miss Marple, “the people of St. Mary Mead react rather dif-
ferently. Chinese philosophy does not appeal to them.”
“But you understand?”
Miss Marple nodded. “My Uncle Henry,” she explained, “was a man of
unusual self-control. His motto was ‘Never display emotion.’ He, too, was
very fond of flowers.”
“I was thinking,” said Mr. Spenlow with something like eagerness, “that
I might, perhaps, have a pergola on the west side of the cottage. Pink roses
the moment escapes me—”
Marple said, “I have a very nice catalogue here, with pictures. Perhaps you
would like to look through it—I have to go up to the village.”
Leaving Mr. Spenlow sitting happily in the garden with his catalogue,
Miss Marple went up to her room, hastily rolled up a dress in a piece of
brown paper, and, leaving the house, walked briskly up to the post office.
Miss Politt, the dressmaker, lived in the rooms over the post office.
But Miss Marple did not at once go through the door and up the stairs. It
was just two thirty, and, a minute late, the Much Ben-ham bus drew up
outside the post office door. It was one of the events of the day in St. Mary
Mead. The postmistress hurried out with parcels, parcels connected with
the shop side of her business, for the post office also dealt in sweets, cheap
books, and children’s toys.
For some four minutes Miss Marple was alone in the post office.
Not till the postmistress returned to her post did Miss Marple go upstairs
and explain to Miss Politt that she wanted her old grey crepe altered and
made more fashionable if that were possible. Miss Politt promised to see
what she could do.
The chief constable was rather astonished when Miss Marple’s name was
brought to him. She came in with many apologies. “So sorry — so very
sorry to disturb you. You are so busy, I know, but then you have always
been so very kind, Colonel Melchett, and I felt I would rather come to you
instead of Inspector Slack. For one thing, you know, I should hate Con-
shouldn’t have touched anything at all.”
Colonel Melchett was slightly bewildered. He said, “Palk? That’s the St.
Mary Mead constable, isn’t it? What has he been doing?”
at the time that it was quite probable he had actually picked it up in Mrs.
Spenlow’s house.”
“Quite, quite. But after all, you know, what’s a pin? Matter of fact he did
pick the pin up just by Mrs. Spenlow’s body. Came and told Slack about it
yesterday—you put him up to that, I gather? Oughtn’t to have touched
anything, of course, but as I said, what’s a pin? It was only a common pin.
Sort of thing any woman might use.”
“Oh, no, Colonel Melchett, that’s where you’re wrong. To a man’s eye,
perhaps, it looked like an ordinary pin, but it wasn’t. It was a special pin, a
very thin pin, the kind you buy by the box, the kind used mostly by dress-
Melchett stared at her, a faint light of comprehension breaking in on
him. Miss Marple nodded her head several times, eagerly.
“Yes, of course. It seems to me so obvious. She was in her kimono be-
cause she was going to try on her new dress, and she went into the front
room, and Miss Politt just said something about measurements and put
the tape measure round her neck—and then all she’d have to do was to
cross it and pull—quite easy, so I’ve heard. And then, of course, she’d go
outside and pull the door to and stand there knocking as though she’d just
arrived. But the pin shows she’d already been in the house.”
“And it was Miss Politt who telephoned to Spenlow?”
“Yes. From the post office at two thirty—just when the bus comes and
the post office would be empty.”
Colonel Melchett said, “But my dear Miss Marple, why? In heaven’s
name, why? You can’t have a murder without a motive.”
“Well, I think, you know, Colonel Melchett, from all I’ve heard, that the
crime dates from a long time back. It reminds me, you know, of my two
cousins, Antony and Gordon. Whatever Antony did always went right for
him, and with poor Gordon it was just the other way about. Race horses
the two women were in it together.”
“In what?”
“The robbery. Long ago. Very valuable emeralds, so I’ve heard. The
lady’s maid and the tweeny. Because one thing hasn’t been explained—
how, when the tweeny married the gardener, did they have enough
money to set up a flower shop?
“The answer is, it was her share of the—the swag, I think is the right ex-
pression. Everything she did turned out well. Money made money. But the
other one, the lady’s maid, must have been unlucky. She came down to be-
ing just a village dressmaker. Then they met again. Quite all right at first, I
expect, until Mr. Ted Gerard came on the scene.
“Mrs. Spenlow, you see, was already suffering from conscience, and was
inclined to be emotionally religious. This young man no doubt urged her
to ‘face up’ and to ‘come clean’ and I dare say she was strung up to do it.
But Miss Politt didn’t see it that way. All she saw was that she might go to
prison for a robbery she had committed years ago. So she made up her
mind to put a stop to it all. I’m afraid, you know, that she was always
rather a wicked woman. I don’t believe she’d have turned a hair if that
nice, stupid Mr. Spenlow had been hanged.”
Colonel Melchett said slowly, “We can—er—verify your theory—up to a
point. The identity of the Politt woman with the lady’s maid at the Aber-
crombies,’ but—”
woman who will break down at once when she’s taxed with the truth. And
then, you see, I’ve got her tape measure. I—er—abstracted it yesterday
when I was trying on. When she misses it and thinks the police have got it
—well, she’s quite an ignorant woman and she’ll think it will prove the
case against her in some way.”
She smiled at him encouragingly. “You’ll have no trouble, I can assure
you.” It was the tone in which his favourite aunt had once assured him
that he could not fail to pass his entrance examination into Sandhurst.
And he had passed.
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