It was an attractive old house and had a big, shabby, comfortable drawing room with faded rose cretonne.
The Dane Calthrops had a guest staying with them, an amiable, elderly lady who was knitting something with white, fleecy wool.
We had very good hot scones for tea, the vicar came in, and beamed placidly on us while he pursued his gentle erudite conversation. It was very pleasant.
I don't mean that we got away from the topic of the murder, because we didn't.
Miss Marple, the guest, was naturally thrilled by the subject.
As she said apologetically:
"We have so little to talk about in the country!"
She had made up her mind that the dead girl must have been just like her Edith.
"Such a nice little maid, and so willing, but sometimes just a little slow to take in things."
Miss Marple also had a cousin whose niece's sister-in-law had had a great deal of annoyance and trouble over some anonymous letters, so that, too, was very interesting to the charming old lady.
"But tell me, dear," she said to Mrs. Dane Calthrop, "what do the village people - I mean the townspeople - say?
What do they think?"
"Mrs. Cleat still, I suppose," said Joanna.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. "Not now."
Miss Marple asked who Mrs. Cleat was.
Joanna said she was the village witch. "That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Dane Calthrop?"
The vicar murmured a long Latin quotation about, I think, the evil power of witches, to which we all listened in respectful and uncomprehending silence.
"She's a very silly woman," said his wife. "Likes to show off.
Goes out to gather herbs and things at the full of the moon and takes care that everybody in the place knows about it."
"And silly girls go and consult her, I suppose?" said Miss Marple.
I saw the vicar getting ready to unload more Latin on us and I asked hastily,
"But why shouldn't people suspect her of the murder now?
They thought the letters were her doing."
Miss Marple said firmly:
"Oh! But the girl was killed with a skewer, so I hear.
Very unpleasant!
Well, naturally, that takes all suspicion away from this Mrs. Cleat.
Because, you see, she could ill-wish her, so that the girl would waste away and die from natural causes."
"Strange how those old beliefs linger," said the vicar.
"In early Christian times, local superstitions were wisely incorporated with Christian doctrines and their most unpleasant attributes gradually eliminated."
"It isn't superstition we've got to deal with here," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, "but facts."
"And very unpleasant facts," I said.
"As you say, Mr. Burton," said Miss Marple.
"Now you - excuse me if I am being too personal - are a stranger here, and have a knowledge of the world and of various aspects of life.
It seems to me that you ought to be able to find a solution to this distasteful problem."
I smiled.
"The best solution I have had was a dream.
In my dream it all fitted in and panned out beautifully.
Unfortunately when I woke up the whole thing was nonsense!"
"How interesting, though.
Do tell me how the nonsense went."
"Oh, it all started with the silly phrase
'No smoke without fire.'
People have been saying that ad nauseam.
And then I got it mixed up with war terms.
Smoke screen, scrap of paper, telephone messages - no, that was another dream."
"And what was that dream?"
The old lady was so eager about it, that I felt sure she was a secret reader of Napoleon's Book of Dreams, which had been the great stand-by of my old nurse.
"Oh! Only Elsie Holland - the Symmingtons' nursery governess, you know, was getting married to Dr. Griffith and the vicar here was reading the service in Latin ('Very appropriate, dear,' murmured Mrs. Dane Calthrop to her spouse) and then Mrs. Dane Calthrop got up and forbade the banns and said it had got to be stopped!
"But that part," I added with a smile, "was true.