Stuff he gives a lot of his patients, he says."
Megan stirred. She murmured something.
Superintendent Nash unobtrusively left the room.
Presently Megan opened her eyes.
"Jerry."
"Hullo, sweet."
"Did I do it well?"
"You might have been blackmailing ever since your cradle!"
Megan closed her eyes again. Then she murmured:
"Last night - I was writing to you - in case anything went - went wrong.
But I was too sleepy to finish.
It's over there."
I went across to the writing table.
In a shabby little blotter I found Megan's unfinished letter.
"My dear Jerry," it began primly: "I was reading my school Shakespeare and the sonnet that begins: "'So are you to my thoughts as food to life
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground'
and I see that I am in love with you after all, because that is what I feel... "
"So you see," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, "I was quite right to call in an expert."
I stared at her.
We were all at the vicarage.
The rain was pouring down outside and there was a pleasant log fire, and Mrs. Dane Calthrop had just wandered around, beat up a sofa cushion and put it for some reason of her own on the top of the grand piano.
"But did you?" I said, surprised.
"Who was it?
What did he do?"
"It wasn't a he," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. With a sweeping gesture she indicated Miss Marple.
Miss Marple had finished the fleecy knitting and was now engaged with a crochet hook and a ball of cotton.
"That's my expert," said Mrs. Dane Calthrop.
"Jane Marple.
Look at her well.
I tell you, that woman knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I've ever known."
"I don't think you should put it quite like that, dear," murmured Miss Marple.
"But you do."
"One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year around," said Miss Marple placidly.
Then, seeming to feel it was expected of her, she laid down her crochet, and delivered a gentle old-maidish dissertation on murder.
"The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind.
Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple.
This one was.
Quite sane and straightforward - and quite understandable - in an unpleasant way, of course."
"Very unpleasant!"
"The truth was really so very obvious.
You saw it, you know, Mr. Burton."
"Indeed I did not."
"But you did.
You indicated the whole thing to me.
You saw perfectly the relationship of one thing to the other, but you just hadn't enough self-confidence to see what those feelings of yours meant.
To begin with, that tiresome phrase
'No smoke without fire.'
It irritated you; but you proceeded quite correctly to label it for what it was - a smoke screen.
Misdirection, you see - everybody looking at the wrong thing - the anonymous letters, but the whole point was that there weren't any anonymous letters!"
"But, my dear Miss Marple, I can assure you that there were.