The Murder at the Vicarage

 
Chapter IV
I had entirely forgotten that we had asked Lawrence Redding to dinner that night. When Griselda burst in and scolded me, pointing out that it lacked two minutes to dinner time, I was quite taken aback.
"I hope everything will be all right," Griselda called up the stairs after me. "I've thought over what you said at lunch, and I've really thought of some quite good things to eat."
I may say, in passing, that our evening meal amply bore out Griselda's assertion that things went much worse when she tried than when she didn't. The menu was ambitious in conception, and Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking. Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with - an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived.
I had rather doubted whether Lawrence Redding would put in an appearance. He might very easily have sent an excuse.
However, he arrived punctually enough, and the four of us went in to dinner.
Lawrence Redding has an undeniably attractive personality. He is, I suppose, about thirty years of age. He has dark hair, but his eyes are of a brilliant, almost startling blue. He is the kind of young man who does everything well. He is good at games, an excellent shot, a good amateur actor, and can tell a first-rate story. He is capable of making any party go. He has, I think, Irish blood in his veins. He is not, at all, one's idea of the typical artist. Yet I believe he is a clever painter in the modern style. I know very little of painting myself.
It was only natural that on this particular evening he should appear a shade distrait. On the whole, he carried off things very well. I don't think Griselda or Dennis noticed anything wrong. Probably I should not have noticed anything myself if I had not known beforehand.
Griselda and Dennis were particularly gay - full of jokes about Dr. Stone and Miss Cram - the Local Scandal! It suddenly came home to me with something of a pang that Dennis is nearer Griselda's age than I am. He calls me Uncle Len, but her Griselda. It gave me, somehow, a lonely feeling.
I must, I think, have been upset by Mrs. Protheroe. I'm not usually given to such unprofitable reflections.
Griselda and Dennis went rather far now and then but I hadn't the heart to check them. I have always thought it a pity that the mere presence of a clergyman should have a damping effect.
Lawrence took a gay part in the conversation. Nevertheless I was aware of his eyes continually straying to where I sat, and I was not surprised when after dinner he manњuvred to get me into the study.
As soon as we were alone his manner changed.
"You've surprised our secret, sir," he said. "What are you going to do about it?"
I could speak far more plainly to Redding than I could to Mrs. Protheroe, and I did so. He took it very well.
"Of course," he said, when I had finished, "you're bound to say all this. You're a parson. I don't mean that in any way offensively. As a matter of fact I think you're probably right. But this isn't the usual sort of thing between Anne and me."
I told him that people had been saying that particular phrase since the dawn of time, and a queer little smile creased his lips.
"You mean every one thinks their case is unique? Perhaps so. But one thing you must believe."
He assured me that so far - "there was nothing wrong in it." Anne, he said, was one of the truest and most loyal women that ever lived. What was going to happen he didn't know.
"If this were only a book," he said gloomily, "the old man would die - and a good riddance to everybody."
I reproved him:
"Oh! I didn't mean I was going to stick him in the back with a knife, though I'd offer my best thanks to anyone else who did so. There's not a soul in the world who's got a good word to say for him. I rather wonder the first Mrs. Protheroe didn't do him in. I met her once, years ago, and she looked quite capable of it. One of those calm dangerous women. He goes blustering along, stirring up trouble everywhere, mean as the devil, and with a particularly nasty temper. You don't know what Anne has had to stand from him. If I had a penny in the world I'd take her away without any more ado."
Then I spoke to him very earnestly. I begged him to leave St. Mary Mead. By remaining there, he could only bring greater unhappiness on Anne Protheroe than was already her lot. People would talk, the matter would get to Colonel Protheroe's ears - and things would be made infinitely worse for her.
Lawrence protested.
"Nobody knows a thing about it except you, padre."
"My dear young man, you underestimate the detective instinct of village life. In St. Mary Mead every one knows your most intimate affairs. There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands."
He said easily that that was all right. Every one thought it was Lettice.
"Has it occurred to you," I asked, "that possibly Lettice might think so herself."
He seemed quite surprised by the idea. Lettice, he said, didn't care a hang about him. He was sure of that.
"She's a queer sort of girl," he said. "Always seems in a kind of dream, and yet underneath I believe she's really rather practical. I believe all that vague stuff is a pose. Lettice knows jolly well what she's doing. And there's a funny vindictive streak in her. The queer thing is that she hates Anne. Simply loathes her. And yet Anne's been a perfect angel to her always."
I did not, of course, take his word for this last. To infatuated young men, their inamorata always behaves like an angel. Still, to the best of my observation, Anne had always behaved to her stepdaughter with kindness and fairness. I had been surprised myself that afternoon at the bitterness of Lettice's tone.
We had to leave the conversation there, because Griselda and Dennis burst in upon us and said I was not to make Lawrence behave like an old fogy.
"Oh! dear," said Griselda, throwing herself into an arm-chair.
"How I would like a thrill of some kind. A murder - or even a burglary."
"I don't suppose there's any one much worth burgling," said Lawrence, trying to enter into her mood. "Unless we stole Miss Hartnell's false teeth."
"They do click horribly," said Griselda. "But you're wrong about there being no one worth while. There's some marvellous old silver at Old Hall. Trencher salts and a Charles II. Tazza - all kinds of things like that. Worth thousands of pounds, I believe."
"The old man would probably shoot you with an army revolver," said Dennis. "Just the sort of thing he'd enjoy doing."
"Oh! we'd get in first and hold him up," said Griselda. "Who's got a revolver?"
"I've got a Mauser pistol," said Lawrence.
"Have you? How exciting. Why do you have it?"
"Souvenir of the war," said Lawrence briefly.
"Old Protheroe was showing the silver to Stone to-day," volunteered Dennis. "Old Stone was pretending to be no end interested in it."
"I thought they'd quarrelled about the barrow," said Griselda.
"Oh! they've made that up," said Dennis. "I can't think what people want to grub about in barrows for, anyway."
"That man Stone puzzles me," said Lawrence. "I think he must be very absent-minded. You'd swear sometimes he knew nothing about his own subject."
"That's love," said Dennis. "Sweet Gladys Cram, you are no sham. Your teeth are white and fill me with delight. Come fly with me, my bride to be. And at the Blue Boar, on the bedroom floor -"
"That's enough, Dennis," I said.
"Well," said Lawrence Redding, "I must be off. Thank you very much, Mrs. Clement, for a very pleasant evening."