Delicious Death.
Making enquiries.
Severe affliction bravely borne.
Iodine.
Pearls.
Letty.
Berne.
Old Age Pension."
Bunch asked:
"Does it mean anything?
Anything at all?
I can't see any connection."
Craddock said slowly: "I've just a glimmer - but I don't see. It's odd that she should have put down that about pearls."
"What about pearls?
What does it mean?"
"Does Miss Blacklog always wear that three tier choker of pearls?"
"Yes, she does.
We laugh about it sometimes.
They're so dreadfully false looking, aren't they?
But I suppose she thinks it's fashionable."
"There might be another reason," said Craddock slowly.
"You don't mean that they're real.
Oh! they couldn't be!"
"How often have you had an opportunity of seeing real pearls of that size, Mrs. Harmon?"
"But they're so glassy."
Craddock shrugged his shoulders.
"Anyway, they don't matter now.
It's Miss Marple that matters. We've got to find her."
They'd got to find her before it was too late - but perhaps it was already too late?
Those pencilled words showed that she was on the track...
But that was dangerous - horribly dangerous.
And where the hell was Fletcher?
Craddock strode out of the Vicarage to where he'd left his car.
Search - that was all he could do - search.
A voice spoke to him out of the dripping laurels.
"Sir!" said Sergeant Fletcher urgently.
"Sir..."
Chapter 21 THREE WOMEN
Dinner was over at Little Paddocks.
It had been a silent and uncomfortable meal.
Patrick, uneasily aware of having fallen from grace, only made spasmodic attempts at conversation - and such as he did make were not well received.
Phillipa Haymes was sunk in abstraction.
Miss Blacklog herself had abandoned the effort to behave with her normal cheerfulness.
She had changed for dinner and had come down wearing her necklace of cameos but for the first time fear showed from her darkly circled eyes, and betrayed itself by her twitching hands.
Julia alone, had maintained her air of cynical detachment throughout the evening.
"I'm sorry, Letty," she said, "that I can't pack my bag and go.
But I presume the police wouldn't allow it.
I don't suppose I'll darken your roof - or whatever the expression is - for long.
I should imagine that Inspector Craddock will be round with a warrant and the handcuffs any moment.
In fact, I can't imagine why something of the kind hasn't happened already."