Agatha Christie - By the pricking of my thumbs

'I don't,' said Tommy firmly.

'Well, I mean, there's one way of knowing things. The other way is that you sort of feel them.'

'That's rather the way you go in for, Tuppence.'

'You can say what you like,' said Tuppence, apparently following her own track of thought, 'the whole thing ties up round Sutton Chancellor. Round Ladymead, or Canal House or whatever you like to call it. And all the people who lived there, now and in past times. Some things I think might go back a long way.'

'You're thinking of Mrs Copleigh.'

'On the whole,' said Tuppence, 'I think Mrs Copleigh just put in a lot of things which have made everything more difficult. I think she's got all her times and dates mixed up too.'

'People do' said Tommy, 'in the country.'

'I know that,' said Tuppence, 'I was brought up in a country vicarage, after all. They date things by events, they don't date them by years. They don't say "that happened in 1930" or "that happened in 1925" or things like that. They say "that happened the year after the old mill burned down" or "that happened after the lightning struck the big oak and killed Farmer James" or "that was the year we had the polio epidemic". So naturally, of course, the things they do remember don't go in any particular sequence. Everything's very difficult,' she added. 'There are just bits poking up here and there, if you know what I mean. Of course the point is,' said Tuppence with the air of someone who suddenly makes an important discovery, 'the trouble is that I'm old myself.'

'You are eternally young,' said Ivor gallantly.

'Don't be daft,' said Tuppence, scathingly. 'I'm old because I remember things that same way. I've gone back to being primitive in my aids to memory.'

She got up and walked round the room.

'This is an annoying kind of hotel,' she said.

She went through the door into her bedroom and came back again shaking her head.

'No bible,' she said.

'Bible?'

'Yes. You know, in old-fashioned hotels, they've always got a Gideon bible by your bed. I suppose so that you can get saved any moment of the day or night. Well, they don't have that here.'

'Do you want a bible?'

'Well, I do rather. I was brought up properly and I used to know my bible quite well, as any good clergyman's daughter should. But now, you see, one rather forgets. Especially as they don't read the lessons properly any more in churches. They give you some new version where all the wording, I suppose, is technically right and a proper translation, but sounds nothing like it used to. While you two go to the house agents, I shall drive into Sutton Chancellor,' she added.

'What for? I forbid you,' said Tommy.

'Nonsense - I'm not going to sleuth. I shall just go into the church and look at the Bible. If it's some modern version, I shall go and ask the vicar, he'll have a bible, won't he? The proper kind, I mean. Authorized Version.'

'What do you want the Authorized Version for?'

'I just want to refresh my memory over those words that were scratched on the child's tombstone... They interested me.'

'It's all very well - but I don't trust you, Tuppence - don't trust you not to get into trouble once you're out of my sight.'

'I give you my word I'm not going to prowl about in graveyards anymore. The church on a sunny morning and the vicar's study - that's all - what could be more harmless?'

Tommy looked at his wife doubtfully and gave in.

II

Having left her car by the lych-gate at Sutton Chancellor, Tuppence looked round her carefully before entering the church precincts. She had the natural distrust of one who has suffered grievous bodily harm in a certain geographical spot.

There did not on this occasion seem to be any possible assailants lurking behind the tombstones.

She went into the church, where an elderly woman was on her knees polishing some brasses. Tuppence tiptoed up to the lectern and made a tentative examination of the volume that rested there. The woman cleaning the brasses looked up with a disapproving glance.

'I'm not going to steal it,' said Tuppence reassuringly, and carefully closing it again, she tiptoed out of the church.

She would have liked to examine the spot where the recent excavations had taken place, but that she had undertaken on no account to do.

'Whosoever shall offend,' she murmured to herself. 'It might mean that, but if so it would have to be someone.'

She drove the car the short distance to the vicarage, got out and went up the path to the front door. She rang but could hear no tinkle from inside. 'Bell's broken, I expect,' said Tuppence, knowing the habits of vicarage bells. She pushed the door and it responded to her touch.

She stood inside in the hall. On the hall table a large envelope with a foreign stamp took up a good deal of space. It bore the printed legend of a Missionary Society in Africa.

'I'm glad I'm not a missionary,' thought Tuppence.

Behind that vague thought, there lay something else, something connected with some hall table somewhere, something that she ought to remember... Flowers? Leaves? Some letter or parcel?

At that moment the vicar came out from the door on the left.

'Oh,' he said. 'Do you want me? I - oh, it's Mrs Beresford, isn't it?'

'Quite right,' said Tuppence. 'What I really came to ask you was whether by any chance you had a bible.'

'Bible,' said the vicar, looking rather unexpectedly doubtful. 'A bible.'

'I thought it likely that you might have,' said Tuppence.

'Of course, of course,' said the vicar. 'As a matter of fact, I suppose I've got several. I've got a Greek Testament,' he said hopefully. 'That's not what you want, I suppose?'

'No,' said Tuppence. 'I want,' she said firmly, 'the Authorized Version.'

'Oh dear,' said the vicar. 'Of course, there must be several in the house. Yes, several. We don't use that version in the church now, I'm sorry to say. One has to fall in with the bishop's ideas, you know and the bishop is very keen on modernization, for young people and all that. A pity, I think. I have so many books in my library here that some of them, you know, get pushed behind the others. But I think I can find you what you want. I think so. If not, we'll ask Miss Bligh. She's here somewhere looking out the vases for the children who arrange their wild flowers for the Children's Corner in the church.' He left Tuppence in the hall and went back into the room where he had come from.

Tuppence did not follow him. She remained in the hall, frowning and thinking. She looked up suddenly as the door at the end of the hall opened and Miss Bligh came through it. She was holding up a very heavy metal vase.

Several things ticked together in Tuppence's head.

'Of course,' said Tuppence, 'of course.'

'Oh, can I help - I - oh, it's Mrs Beresford.'

'Yes,' said Tuppence, and added, 'And it's Mrs Johnson, isn't it?'

The heavy vase fell to the floor. Tuppence stooped and picked it up. She stood weighing it in her hand. 'Quite a handy weapon,' she said. She put it down. 'Just the thing to cosh anyone with from behind,' she said - 'That's what you did to me, didn't you, Mrs Johnson.'

'I - I - what did you say? I - I - I never -'

But Tuppence had no need to stay longer. She had seen the effect of her words. At the second mention of Mrs Johnson, Miss Bligh had given herself away in an unmistakable fashion.

She was shaking and panic-stricken.

'There was a letter on your hall table the other day,' said Tuppence, 'addressed to a Mrs Yorke at an address in Cumberland. That's where you took her, isn't it, Mrs Johnson, when you took her away from Sunny Ridge? That's where she is now. Mrs Yorke or Mrs Lancaster - you used either name - York and Lancaster like the striped red and white rose in the Perrys' garden.'