I woke up and found you standing over me saying it."
"And I was quite right," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, but quite mildly, I was glad to note.
"But where did a telephone message come in?" asked Miss Marple, crinkling her brows.
"I'm afraid I'm being rather stupid.
That wasn't in the dream. It was just before it.
I came through the hall and noticed Joanna had written down a message to be given to someone if they rang up."
Miss Marple leaned forward. There was a pink spot in each cheek.
"Will you think me very inquisitive and very rude if I ask just what that message was?" She cast a glance at Joanna.
"I do apologise, my dear."
Joanna, however, was highly entertained.
"Oh, I don't mind," she assured the old lady. "I can't remember anything about it myself, but perhaps Jerry can.
It must have been something quite trivial."
Solemnly I repeated the message as best I could remember it, enormously tickled at the old lady's rapt attention.
I was afraid the actual words were going to disappoint her, but perhaps she had some sentimental idea of a romance, for she nodded her head and smiled and seemed pleased.
"I see," she said.
"I thought it might be something like that." Mrs. Dane Calthrop said sharply, "Like what, Jane?" "Something quite ordinary," said Miss Marple.
She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment or two, then she said unexpectedly,
"I can see you are a very clever young man - but with not quite enough confidence in yourself.
You ought to have!"
Joanna gave a loud hoot.
"For goodness' sake don't encourage him to feel like that.
He thinks quite enough of himself as it is."
"Be quiet, Joanna," I said.
"Miss Marple understands me."
Miss Marple had resumed her fleecy knitting.
"You know," she observed pensively, "to commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick."
"The quickness of the hand deceives the eye?"
"Not only that.
You've got to make people look at the wrong thing and in the wrong place - misdirection, they call it, I believe."
"Well," I remarked, "so far everybody seems to have looked in the wrong place for our lunatic at large."
"I should be inclined, myself," said Miss Marple, "to look for somebody very sane."
"Yes," I said thoughtfully, "that's what Nash said.
I remember he stressed respectability, too."
"Yes," agreed Miss Marple.
"That's very important."
Well, we all seemed to agree.
I addressed Mrs. Calthrop. "Nash thinks," I said, "that there will be more anonymous letters.
What do you think?"
"There may be," she said slowly,
"I suppose."
"If the police think that, there will have to be, no doubt," said Miss Marple.
I went on doggedly to Mrs. Dane Calthrop:
"Are you still sorry for the writer?"
She flushed.
"Why not?"
"I don't think I agree with you, dear," said Miss Marple.
"Not in this case."
I said hotly,
"They've driven one woman to suicide, and caused untold misery and heartburnings!"
"Have you had one, Miss Burton?" asked Miss Marple of Joanna.