Giles said slowly, ‘I’ve been thinking out the alternative. It’s pretty fantastic, you know, and even rather frightening. Because it involves-how can I put it-a kind ofmalevolence…’

‘Yes,’ said Gwenda. ‘Malevolence is just right. Even, I think, something that isn’t quite sane…’ She shivered.

‘Thatis indicated, I think,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You know, there’s a great deal of-well,queerness about-more than people imagine. I have seen some of it…’

Her face was thoughtful.

‘There can’t be, you see, anynormal explanation,’ said Giles. ‘I’m taking now the fantastic hypothesis that Kelvin Hallidaydidn’t kill his wife, but genuinelythought he had done so. That’s what Dr Penrose, who seems a decent sort of bloke, obviously wants to think. His first impression of Halliday was that here was a man who had killed his wife and wanted to give himself up to the police. Then he had to take Kennedy’s word for it that that wasn’t so, so he had perforce to believe that Halliday was a victim of a complex or a fixation or whatever the jargon is-but he didn’t reallylike that solution. He’s had a good experience of the type and Halliday didn’t square with it. However, on knowing Halliday better he became quite genuinely sure that Halliday was not the type of man who would strangle a woman under any provocation. So he accepted the fixation theory, but with misgivings. And that really means that only one theory will fit the case-Halliday was induced to believe that he had killed his wife,by someone else. In other words, we’ve come to X.

‘Going over the facts very carefully, I’d say that that hypothesis is at leastpossible. According to his own account, Halliday came into the house that evening, went into the dining-room, took a drinkas he usually did -and then went into the next room, saw a note on the desk and had a blackout-’

Giles paused and Miss Marple nodded her head in approval. He went on:

‘Say it wasn’t a blackout-that it was just simply dope-knock-out drops in the whisky. The next step is quite clear, isn’t it? X had strangled Helen in the hall, but afterwards he took her upstairs and arranged her artistically as acrime passionel on the bed, and that’s where Kelvin is when he comes to; and the poor devil, who may have been suffering from jealousy where she’s concerned,thinks that he’s done it. What does he do next? Goes off to find his brother-in-law-on the other side of the town and on foot. And that gives X time to do his next trick. Pack and remove a suitcase of clothes and also remove the body-though what he did with the body,’ Giles ended vexedly, ‘beats me completely.’

‘It surprises me you should say that, Mr Reed,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I should say that that problem would present few difficulties. But do please go on.’

‘Who Were The Men In Her Life?’ quoted Giles. ‘I saw that in a newspaper as we came back in the train. It set me wondering, because that’s really the crux of the matter, isn’t it? If thereis an X, as we believe, all we know about him is that he must have been crazy about her-literally crazy about her.’

‘And so he hated my father,’ said Gwenda. ‘And he wanted him to suffer.’

‘So that’s where we come up against it,’ said Giles. ‘We know what kind of a girl Helen was-’ he hesitated.

‘Man mad,’ supplied Gwenda. 

Miss Marple looked up suddenly as though to speak, and then stopped.

‘-and that she was beautiful. But we’ve no clue to what other men there were in her life besides her husband. There may have been any number.’

Miss Marple shook her head.

‘Hardly that. She was quite young, you know. But you are not quite accurate, Mr Reed. We do know something about what you have termed “the men in her life”. There was the man she was going out to marry-

‘Ah yes-the lawyer chap? What was his name?’

‘Walter Fane,’ said Miss Marple.

‘Yes. But you can’t count him. He was out in Malaya or India or somewhere.’

‘But was he? He didn’t remain a tea-planter, you know,’ Miss Marple pointed out. ‘He came back here and went into the firm, and is now the senior partner.’

Gwenda exclaimed: ‘Perhaps he followed her back here?’

‘He may have done. We don’t know.’

Giles was looking curiously at the old lady.

‘How did you find all this out?’

Miss Marple smiled apologetically.

‘I’ve been gossiping a little. In shops-and waiting for buses. Old ladies are supposed to be inquisitive. Yes, one can pick up quite a lot of local news.’

‘Walter Fane,’ said Giles thoughtfully. ‘Helen turned him down. That may have rankled quite a lot. Did he ever marry?’

‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘He lives with his mother. I’m going to tea there at the end of the week.’

‘There’s someone else we know about, too,’ said Gwenda suddenly. ‘You remember there was somebody she got engaged to, or entangled with, when she left school-someone undesirable, Dr Kennedy said. I wonder justwhy he was undesirable…’

‘That’s two men,’ said Giles. ‘Either of them may have had a grudge, may have brooded…Perhaps the first young man may have had some unsatisfactory mental history.’

‘Dr Kennedy could tell us that,’ said Gwenda. ‘Only it’s going to be a little difficult asking him. I mean, it’s all very well for me to go along and ask for news of my stepmother whom I barely remember. But it’s going to take a bit of explaining if I want to know about her early love-affairs. It seems rather excessive interest in a stepmother you hardly knew.’

‘There are probably other ways of finding out,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Oh yes, I think with time and patience, we can gather the information we want.’

‘Anyway, we’ve got two possibilities,’ said Giles.

‘We might, I think, infer a third,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It would be, of course, a pure hypothesis, but justified, I think, by the turn of events.’ 

Gwenda and Giles looked at her in slight surprise.

‘It is just an inference,’ said Miss Marple, turning a little pink. ‘Helen Kennedy went out to India to marry young Fane. Admittedly she was not wildly in love with him, but she must have been fond of him, and quite prepared to spend her life with him. Yet as soon as she gets there, she breaks off the engagement and wires her brother to send her money to get home. Now why?’

‘Changed her mind, I suppose,’ said Giles.

Both Miss Marple and Gwenda looked at him in mild contempt.

‘Of course she changed her mind,’ said Gwenda. ‘We know that. What Miss Marple means is-why?’

‘I suppose girls do change their minds,’ said Giles vaguely.

‘Under certain circumstances,’ said Miss Marple.

Her words held all the pointed innuendo that elderly ladies are able to achieve with the minimum of actual statement.

‘Something he did-’ Giles was suggesting vaguely, when Gwenda chipped in sharply.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Another man!’

She and Miss Marple looked at each other with the assurance of those admitted to a freemasonry from which men were excluded.

Gwenda added with certainty: ‘On the boat! Going out!’ 

‘Propinquity,’ said Miss Marple.

‘Moonlight on the boat deck,’ said Gwenda. ‘All that sort of thing. Only-it must have been serious-not just a flirtation.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I think it was serious.’

‘If so, why didn’t she marry the chap?’ demanded Giles.

‘Perhaps he didn’t really care for her,’ Gwenda said slowly. Then shook her head. ‘No, I think in that case she would still have married Walter Fane. Oh, of course, I’m being stupid. Married man.’

She looked triumphantly at Miss Marple.

‘Exactly,’ said Miss Marple. ‘That’s how I should reconstruct it. They fell in love, probably desperately in love. But if he was a married man-with children, perhaps-and probably an honourable type-well, that would be the end of it.’

‘Only she couldn’t go on and marry Walter Fane,’ said Gwenda. ‘So she wired her brother and went home. Yes, that all fits. And on the boat home, she met my father…’

She paused, thinking it out.

‘Not wildly in love,’ she said. ‘But attracted…and then there was me. They were both unhappy…and they consoled each other. My father told her about my mother, and perhaps she told him about the other man…Yes-of course-’ She flicked over the pages of the diary. 

‘I knew there was someone-she said as much to me on the boat-someone she loved and couldn’t marry.

Yes-that’s it. Helen and my father felt they were alike-and there was me to be looked after, and she thought she could make him happy-and she even thought, perhaps, that she’d be quite happy herself in the end.’

She stopped, nodded violently at Miss Marple, and said brightly: ‘That’s it.’

Giles was looking exasperated.

‘Really, Gwenda, you make a whole lot of things up and pretend that they actually happened.’

‘They did happen. They must have happened. And that gives us a third person for X.’

‘You mean-?’

‘The married man. We don’t know what he was like. He mayn’t have been nice at all. He may have been a little mad. He may have followed her here-’

‘You’ve just placed him as going out to India.’

‘Well, people can come back from India, can’t they? Walter Fane did. It was nearly a year later. I don’t say this mandid come back, but I say he’s a possibility. You keep harping on who the men were in her life. Well, we’ve got three of them. Walter Fane, and some young man whose name we don’t know, and a married man-’ 

‘Whom we don’t know exists,’ finished Giles.

‘We’ll find out,’ said Gwenda. ‘Won’t we, Miss Marple?’

‘With time and patience,’ said Miss Marple, ‘we may find out a great deal. Now for my contribution. As a result of a very fortunate little conversation in the draper’s today, I have discovered that Edith Pagett who was cook at St Catherine’s at the time we are interested in, is still in Dillmouth. Her sister is married to a confectioner here. I think it would be quite natural, Gwenda, for you to want to see her. She may be able to tell us a good deal.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Gwenda. ‘I’ve thought of something else,’ she added. ‘I’m going to make a new will. Don’t look so grave, Giles, I shall still leave my money to you. But I shall get Walter Fane to do it for me.’