I was sitting glumly in my cell, wondering what I could do to convince
everyone that I wasn’t the murderer and trying to put two and two
together and work out who was behind it all and getting nowhere. I
sighed.

Constable Benton arrived at the door and coughed by way of
announcement. “You’ve got a visitor.”

*

It was the vicar.

I sat opposite him at the table and hoped that he had something
helpful to offer, or at least that he was going to assure me that he
at least believed my innocence. As it turned out, he’d come to give
me a chance to confess my sins.

“I don’t want to be rude, Reverend,” I said, “but I don’t have any
terrible sins to confess. I didn’t kill Polly and no matter what
everyone thinks, I haven’t been going round blackmailing people. I
don’t know how this happened.”

He paused and turned back to face me. “You claim you didn’t blackmail
anyone? Now that’s interesting, Dr Sullivan. Very interesting.”

“I can’t believe everyone thought I had,” I said. I was feeling hurt
about that, more than anything. Well, aside from Sarah’s current
opinion of me, that is.

Rev. Magister frowned. “But can I trust you?”

“Yes,” I said. “And if not, you might as well go away and give me up
as a lost cause.”

He smiled faintly. “I don’t think I will do that, Dr Sullivan. I
shall have to go home and think about this.”

*

“Well,” said Constable Benton, who sounded much too chirpy for my
liking, “you seem to be the most popular person we’ve had in here for
a while, doctor. You’ve got more visitors. The Inspector was going
to send them away again, but it was a bit of a long way for the old
lady, so we thought we’d better let them in.”

I blinked. “Old lady?” Not Sarah come to tell me that she’d realised
she’d made a stupid mistake and that I wasn’t a murderer, then.

He led me back through to the small room with the wooden table with
uneven legs and then stationed himself at the door as I faced the
unlikely duo of Miss Marple and Ben Jackson.

*

“So when I heard that they had arrested you, I had to come along,”
Miss Marple told me. “So foolish, but then the inspector’s father was
exactly the same, charging off as soon as he had an idea – so
irritating in a grocer, I always felt.”

Ben leant forward. “He’s a prize chump. I wouldn’t trust him to find
out what happened to a stolen bike, let alone who murdered poor
Polly.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Miss Marple continued. “So when I ran into Mr Jackson in the Post
Office, he was kind enough to offer to escort me into Namechester to
tell you.”

“Tell me?”

She twinkled at me. “Well, nothing particular yet, Dr Sullivan, but I
will not allow him to get away with this. Of course with Mr Jackson,
one couldn’t be sure, even if it *did* seem unlikely, but when I heard
that *you* had been arrested, I knew at once he had made a mistake.”

It was reassuring to find that somebody thought so.

“Clearly,” said Miss Marple, “we are dealing with a very clever mind –
a diabolically clever mind.”

I put my head in my hands, as I worked out the implications of that.
“You mean, not a dim-witted fellow like me, I suppose. But what can
you do, Miss Marple? I even told him that I knew Polly was going to
be killed – and then there’s that book. I can’t work it out at all.”

“Tell me,” said Miss Marple and listened attentively. “Hmm,” she said
when I’d finished, “that is revealing. Dr Sullivan, you don’t recall
the book ever being missing or moved or -?”

“I never paid it much account to it,” I said. “I’m sorry. What are
we going to do?”

Miss Marple said, “Well, Mr Jackson has offered to go and look for the
missing Scottish boy. I shall do my best to find someone who can
prove you’re not the murderer. After all, somebody would have seen
something if you’d walked up and down the high street in the middle of
the night. *Much* more likely to be someone out of the way, like the
Pollards or the vicar, or Miss Rumford, or the professor up at Mill
Cottage.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. We can’t have you locked up in here. That won’t
do at all. And, really, somebody has to keep an eye on that Smith
girl.”

“I think she can look after herself,” I said. I couldn’t really blame
Sarah. I suppose she must have seen that book there at some point, or
it was Lady Louisa who shared her suspicions, but I did wish she
hadn’t jumped to the worst possible conclusion quite so quickly.

Miss Marple got to her feet. “Oh, in the normal way of things, I’m
sure she can. But something is terribly wrong here.”

“Too right,” agreed Ben.

The constable opened the door for her and she thanked him with a
flutter and they both left me behind, my hopes pinned on Mackenzie’s
other chief suspect and a little, fluffy old lady who didn’t seem to
question that she was a match for a diabolical murderer.

*

“Heard the news?” asked Benton, bringing me breakfast the next day.

I sat up stiffly. I wondered who he expected to have been telling me
the news. Messenger pigeons? And people didn’t rate *my*
intelligence highly. “No, constable. Funnily enough, I haven’t.”

“Colonel Mace,” he said. “He’s been shot – or he shot himself. We’re
not sure which at present.”

I got to my feet instantly. “Another murder? When did it happen?”

“Last night, apparently,” he said. “Looks like suicide, though, sir.
I wouldn’t get too excited.”

I glared at him. “What sort of ghoul do you take me for? Why should
I get excited about poor old Mace getting killed?”

“Well,” said Benton hesitantly, “some people might have thought that
it sort of proves your innocence, what with you being locked away in
here at the time.”

I took this in. He had a point. “Oh.”

After he left, I sighed and sat back down. None of this made any
sense to me. Why should someone kill Polly and then Colonel Mace (if
it wasn’t suicide)? How had that book suddenly appeared in my
belongings? What secret were the Pollards hiding and what did it have
to do with Polly? How could McCrimmon know anything about it and
where had he run off to? Why, if he wasn’t the killer?

*

Later, I had another visit from the vicar. I wasn’t too pleased to
see him, to be honest, because it’s always depressing to be offered a
chance to confess when one hasn’t done anything sinful and we’d been
through all that yesterday.

He seated himself opposite me. “Dr Sullivan, I’ve been thinking over
what you told me. Now, you claim that you know nothing of what was
written in that book?”

“No idea,” I said.

He coughed lightly, “So I thought. I took the liberty of asking
Inspector Mackenzie if we could quiz you on its contents.”

I thought about that. “And when I don’t know any of it – wait, that
won’t work. You’ve only got my word for it and no one seems to stake
much on that.”

He smiled lightly, “Well, this is where I come in.”

“Yes,” said the inspector, entering and letting the door crash behind
him. He whipped out his notebook. “It’s all very irregular,
Reverend, but this case is beginning to drive me up the wall.”

I said, “Perhaps we should send for Scotland Yard?”

“I don’t think a suspect has any call to be making derogatory comments
about the local constabulary.” Inspector Mackenzie glared at me and
then pulled out the spare chair, scraping it over the stone floor.
“Now, are you going to get on with it, Magister?”

I became apprehensive at this point. “Get on with what?”

*

“I’m sorry,” I said about half an hour later.

The vicar frowned at the inspector, who was snoring again. “Perhaps
if we swapped the inspector for one of his men? He seems to be the
problem, not you.”

“I’d rather we didn’t,” I said. “Miss Marple promises me she’ll get
me out of here and I’m having a bad enough few days without getting
hypnotised. And I’d have thought that was a bit of an odd hobby for a
vicar, anyway.”

He said, “Which again proves that you haven’t read that dratted book
and the inspector has. And look, it hasn’t done him any harm. Wake
up, Mackenzie!”

He started and blinked. “Eh? What? Why can’t you get on with it,
vicar?”

“I’m trying,” said Rev. Magister, “but your snoring keeps ruining any
influence I may have. I think we’ll have to give up on this one.”

*

“So,” said Mackenzie, after he had gone, still clearly taken with the
idea of solving things by a bit of straight-talking. “How did you
arrange to blackmail your victims?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

He read his notes. “You didn’t tell Lady Louisa to leave notes in the
hollow oak tree?”

“Hollow oak tree? Is there really a hollow oak tree round here?”

Mackenzie persevered. “And what about the vicar?”

“I don’t know.”

He tried again. “Colonel Mace, now. He seems to have committed
suicide once he knew the book was in police hands, so he’d have been
desperate to keep you quiet.”

“I hardly know him,” I said. Then I frowned, as something slowly
occurred to me. “But Colonel Mace couldn’t have been in that book –
he didn’t arrive here until recently.”

He said, “Well, he is.”

“Not Lethbridge-Stewart?”

Inspector Mackenzie licked his pencil. “Are you making insinuations
against the Brigadier?”

“No!”

He sighed. “Dr Sullivan, I wish you’d try and be helpful.”

“Look,” I said, “read Colonel Mace’s entry. I didn’t write it and my
uncle couldn’t have done. If it’s in there, it must have been added
by the real blackmailer.”

He stared back at me for a long while and then seemed to see the sense
in my suggestion and left me to myself for a while.

*

“All right,” he said, when he returned. “I’ve sent Benton off to
fetch me your diary or your laundry list or something, so that I can
compare the two, but it’s a small, scribbled note – probably
impossible to tell.”

I leant forward. “You could get in a handwriting expert. Or have you
tested the book for fingerprints? There should only be mine and my
uncle’s, shouldn’t there?”

“Shall I tell you how to treat the measles?” he countered. “For your
information, Dr Sullivan, we don’t have handy experts on this, that
and the other sitting around in Namechester and there’s far too many
fingerprints on the thing for it to be any use – mine, yours,
Benton’s, Miss Smith’s. No use at all.”

I sighed and hoped that the handwriting thing might provide the
answer.

*

“Fascinating!” said the long-haired, sky blue-eyed stranger now
sitting at the table.

The Inspector looked shame-faced. “I remembered about Dr Smith – does
palaeography or what have you. He’s agreed to take a look at your
books for us.”

“I think that’s old handwriting or Latin or something,” I protested
and then gave up. The fellow seemed to be having a whale of a time
reading my diary.

He smiled at me. “Dr Sullivan, the inspector asked my opinion as to
whether the writer of this –,” he held up my diary, “-could also have
written this.” He motioned at the notorious notebook. “I’ve looked
at both under a magnifying glass. Now, I would say that this -,” he
pointed to my diary, “-was written by a right handed person and this
-,” with a wave at the notebook, “-by a left-handed chap. You’re not
ambidextrous, are you?”

“No,” I said.

Mackenzie measured out the room in heavy paces. “So, you’re telling
me that young Sullivan here couldn’t have written that entry and
therefore someone else *did* have their hands on that book?”

“That would be the idea,” he agreed. Then he looked from one of us to
the other. “Oh. Did you believe me?”

Mackenzie arrested him on the spot for wasting police time and being
an accomplice after the fact.

*

“I really must learn to control my sense of humour,” he sighed,
sitting next to me in the cell.

I folded my arms. “Yes, I jolly well think you should. What did you
do that for?”

“I didn’t think you could be serious,” he explained. “Of course, if
you look at it under the magnifying glass, whoever wrote that entry
was careful, but you can see he doesn’t join up his letters in quite
the same way when you study the ‘m’s, but I doubt it’s the sort of
evidence that would hold up in court.”

I stared at him. “Dr Smith -.”

“Call me John.”

I said, “Couldn’t you have told that to the inspector instead of that
nonsense about left-handed writers?”

“You think that would have been more helpful?” He considered it.
“Perhaps you’re right. You were both there, waiting for me to come up
with some marvellous answer and I felt obliged. Joining an ‘m’ from
the top or the bottom really isn’t anything to write home about, is
it?”

I got to my feet and banged on the door repeatedly. “Dr Smith, if it
gets me out of here, I really don’t care.”

“Oh. I was thinking how pleasant this all is,” he returned.
“Compared to some of the cells I’ve been in, this one has a bed, food
and good company – top notch!”

I decided he must be loopy. All the more reason to get out if I
could. “That’s all very well, sir, but I’d like to get back to Nether
St Yorick. And anyway, how many cells have you been in?”

“Well,” he said, “that’s the thing about old documents.”

“Yes?”

He gave me a sorrowful look. “They’re always being kept somewhere in
the dark, nobody reading them. I always feel that someone should take
them home and make use of them for a while, give them a little care
and attention. Half the time, nobody notices if they’re gone.”

“I – what?”

He smiled. “Of course, the other half of the time, I get to see the
inside of a lot of police cells – I’m thinking of writing a book about
it. It’s a very neglected topic, you know. Such a lot of fuss over
nothing, when I always give everything back. I’ve done some perfectly
good restoration work as well, but does anyone ever say thank you?”

“I think,” I said carefully, because, after all, I was locked in with
him, “I *think* that’s called stealing, Dr Smith.”

He leant back against the wall and gave me a disarmingly dazzling
smile. “No, no, no. If it was *stealing*, I wouldn’t give it back,
now would I?”

I banged on the door again, but with less energy. If Inspector
Mackenzie learned about this, he wouldn’t believe Dr Smith’s claims.
(If he really was a doctor of any sort, come to that. I was beginning
to have my doubts.) “If you want to borrow something, you should ask
first.”

“Yes, but they say no,” he said. “I was always told to share things
nicely.”

I looked back at him.

“And I don’t *keep* them,” he added, beginning to sound defensive.
“Well, not after that incident with the 1666 volume of Pepys’ diary.”

*

The inspector listened to Dr Smith’s claim about the writing and then
blew out his moustache. “And is it a joke this time, sir?”

“No. Of course not.”

He glowered at him. “Well, that’s funny, because it sounds exactly
like the other time when it *was*. I don’t know how I’m supposed to
do my job, what with criminals that won’t confess when they’ve been
caught and experts who seem to think jokes and facts are the same
things.”

*

The next visitor was Sarah. She entered the room armed with a set
expression and a notebook and pen.

“Inspector Mackenzie says you’re still claiming you didn’t do any of
it,” she began, without giving me any opportunity to speak. “Perhaps
you’ll tell me?”

I said, “I’m sorry, old girl, but the inconvenient thing is that I
didn’t blackmail anyone and I didn’t murder Polly. If you’d like to
speak to someone who can make up stories, I’ve got a cell mate you’d
get along with famously.”

“Look,” she said, leaning forward, “if you were blackmailing people,
but you didn’t murder Polly, you should say something. Oh, but I
don’t suppose you would care. It’s your little notebook that’s driven
Colonel Mace to suicide – maybe Dr Solon as well!”

I wondered how to convince her, but I couldn’t think of anything that
would get over the problem of the book. “I’m not a blackmailer,” was
all I could say in response. I suppose it wasn’t sensible to add:
“Miss Marple believes me.”

“Well, more fool her!” snapped Sarah and got to her feet again and
marched out on me.

***

And, yes, I *am* sorry, since I don't think Dame Agatha would have
written a word of this, but if you write a first-person narrative and
then arrest the narrator, stuff like this happens. Clearly, Harry
*must* be set free!