The air of the room was heavy and menacing with the gathering storm outside.
Miss Marple drew a sheet of paper towards her. She wrote first: Lamp? and underlined it heavily.
After a moment or two, she wrote another word.
Her pencil travelled down the paper, making brief cryptic notes...
In the rather dark living-room of Boulders with its low ceiling and latticed window panes, Miss Hinchliffe and Miss Murgatroyd were having an argument.
"The trouble with you, Murgatroyd," said Miss Hinchliffe, "is that you won't try."
"But I tell you, Hinch, I can't remember a thing."
"Now look here, Amy Murgatroyd, we're going to do some constructive thinking. So far we haven't shone on the detective angle.
I was quite wrong over that door business.
You didn't hold the door open for the murderer after all.
You're cleared, Murgatroyd!"
Miss Murgatroyd gave a rather watery smile.
"It's just our luck to have the only silent cleaning woman in Chipping Cleghorn," continued Miss Hinchliffe.
"Usually I'm thankful for it, but this time it means we've got off to a bad start.
Everybody else in the place knows about that second door in the drawing-room being used - and we only heard about it yesterday -"
"I still don't quite understand how -"
"It's perfectly simple.
Our original premises were quite right.
You can't hold open a door, wave a torch and shoot with a revolver all at the same time.
We kept in the revolver and the torch and cut out the door.
Well, we were wrong.
It was the revolver we ought to have cut out."
"But he did have a revolver," said Miss Murgatroyd.
"I saw it.
It was there on the floor beside him."
"When he was dead, yes.
It's all quite clear.
He didn't fire that revolver -"
"Then who did?"
"That's what we're going to find out.
But whoever did it, the same person put a couple of poisoned aspirin tablets by Letty Blacklog's bed - and thereby bumped off poor Dora Bunner.
And that couldn't have been Rudi Scherz, because he's as dead as a doornail.
It was someone who was in the room that night of the holdup and probably someone who was at the birthday party, too.
And the only person that lets out is Mrs. Harmon."
"You think someone put those aspirins there the day of the birthday party?"
"Why not?"
"But how could they?"
"Well, we all went to the loo, didn't we?" said Miss Hinchliffe coarsely.
"And I washed my hands in the bathroom because of that sticky cake.
And little Sweetie Easterbrook powdered her grubby little face in Blacklog's bedroom, didn't she?"
"Hinch!
Do you think she -"
"I don't know yet.
Rather obvious, if she did.
I don't think if you were going to plant some tablets, that you'd want to be seen in the bedroom at all.
Oh, yes, there were plenty of opportunities."
"The men didn't go upstairs."
"There are back stairs.
After all, if a man leaves the room, you don't follow him to see if he really is going where you think he is going.
It wouldn't be delicate!