‘I should say we’d dug about two solid square acres! The whole place is ready to be turned into a market garden. We’re just discussing whether to grow vegetable marrows or potatoes.’
Charmian said rather abruptly, ‘May we really tell you all about it?’
‘But, of course, my dear.’
‘Then let’s find a peaceful spot. Come on, Edward.’ She led the way out of the overcrowded and smoke-laden room, and they went up the stairs, to a small sitting-room on the second floor.
When they were seated, Charmian began abruptly. ‘Well, here goes! The story starts with Uncle Mathew, uncle—or rather, great-great-uncle—to both of us. He was incredibly ancient. Edward and I were his only relations. He was fond of us and always declared that when he died he would leave his money between us. Well, he died last March and left everything he had to be divided equally between Edward and myself. What I’ve just said sounds rather callous—I don’t mean that it was right that he died—actually we were very fond of him. But he’d been ill for some time.
‘The point is that the “everything” he left turned out to be practically nothing at all. And that, frankly, was a bit of a blow to us both, wasn’t it, Edward?’
The amiable Edward agreed. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’d counted on it a bit. I mean, when you know a good bit of money is coming to you, you don’t—well—buckle down and try to make it yourself. I’m in the army—not got anything to speak of outside my pay—and Charmian herself hasn’t got a bean. She works as a stage manager in a repertory theatre—quite interesting, and she enjoys it—but no money in it. We’d counted on getting married, but weren’t worried about the money side of it because we both knew we’d be jolly well off some day.’
‘And now, you see, we’re not!’ said Charmian. ‘What’s more, Ansteys—that’s the family place, and Edward and I both love it—will probably have to be sold. And Edward and I feel we just can’t bear that! But if we don’t find Uncle Mathew’s money, we shall have to sell.’
Edward said, ‘You know, Charmian, we still haven’t come to the vital point.’
‘Well, you talk, then.’
Edward turned to Miss Marple. ‘It’s like this, you see. As Uncle Mathew grew older, he got more and more suspicious. He didn’t trust anybody.’
‘Very wise of him,’ said Miss Marple. ‘The depravity of human nature is unbelievable.’
‘Well, you may be right. Anyway, Uncle Mathew thought so. He had a friend who lost his money in a bank, and another friend who was ruined by an absconding solicitor, and he lost some money himself in a fraudulent company. He got so that he used to hold forth at great length that the only safe and sane thing to do was to convert your money into solid bullion and bury it.’
‘Ah,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I begin to see.’
‘Yes. Friends argued with him, pointed out that he’d get no interest that way, but he held that that didn’t really matter. The bulk of your money, he said, should be “kept in a box under the bed or buried in the garden”. Those were his words.’
Charmian went on. ‘And when he died, he left hardly anything at all in securities, though he was very rich. So we think that that’s what he must have done.’
Edward explained. ‘We found that he had sold securities and drawn out large sums of money from time to time, and nobody knows what he did with them. But it seems probable that he lived up to his principles, and that he did buy gold and bury it.’
‘He didn’t say anything before he died? Leave any paper? No letter?’
‘That’s the maddening part of it. He didn’t. He’d been unconscious for some days, but he rallied before he died. He looked at us both and chuckled—a faint, weak little chuckle. He said, “You’ll be all right, my pretty pair of doves.” And then he tapped his eye—his right eye—and winked at us. And then—he died. Poor old Uncle Mathew.’
‘He tapped his eye,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
Edward said eagerly. ‘Does that convey anything to you? It made me think of an Arsene Lupin story where there was something hidden in a man’s glass eye. But Uncle Mathew didn’t have a glass eye.’
Miss Marple shook her head. ‘No—I can’t think of anything at the moment.’
Charmian said disappointedly, ‘Jane told us you’d say at once where to dig!’
Miss Marple smiled. ‘I’m not quite a conjurer, you know. I didn’t know your uncle, or what sort of man he was, and I don’t know the house or the grounds.’
Charmian said, ‘If you did know them?’
‘Well, it must be quite simple, really, mustn’t it?’ said Miss Marple.
‘Simple!’ said Charmian. ‘You come down to Ansteys and see if it’s simple!’
It is possible that she did not mean the invitation to be taken seriously, but Miss Marple said briskly, ‘Well, really, my dear, that’s very kind of you. I’ve always wanted to have the chance of looking for buried treasure. And,’ she added, looking at them with a beaming, late-Victorian smile, ‘with a love interest, too!’
‘You see!’ said Charmian, gesturing dramatically.
They had just completed a grand tour of Ansteys. They had been round the kitchen garden—heavily trenched. They had been through the little woods, where every important tree had been dug round, and had gazed sadly on the pitted surface of the once smooth lawn. They had been up to the attic, where old trunks and chests had been rifled of their contents. They had been down to the cellars, where flagstones had been heaved unwillingly from their sockets. They had measured and tapped walls, and Miss Marple had been shown every antique piece of furniture that contained or could be suspected of containing a secret drawer.
On a table in the morning-room there was a heap of papers—all the papers that the late Mathew Stroud had left. Not one had been destroyed, and Charmian and Edward were wont to return to them again and again, earnestly perusing bills, invitations, and business correspondence in the hope of spotting a hitherto unnoticed clue.
‘Can you think of anywhere we haven’t looked?’ demanded Charmian hopefully.
Miss Marple shook her head. ‘You seem to have been very thorough, my dear. Perhaps, if I may say so, just a little too thorough. I always think, you know, that one should have a plan. It’s like my friend, Mrs Eldritch, she had such a nice little maid, polished linoleum beautifully, but she was so thorough that she polished the bathroom floor too much, and as Mrs Eldritch was stepping out of the bath the cork mat slipped from under her, and she had a very nasty fall and actually broke her leg! Most awkward, because the bathroom door was locked, of course, and the gardener had to get a ladder and come in through the window—terribly distressing to Mrs Eldritch, who had always been a very modest woman.’
Edward moved restlessly.
Miss Marple said quickly, ‘Please forgive me. So apt, I know, to fly off at a tangent. But one thing does remind one of another. And sometimes that is helpful. All I was trying to say was that perhaps if we tried to sharpen our wits and think of a likely place—’
Edward said crossly, ‘You think of one, Miss Marple. Charmian’s brains and mine are now only beautiful blanks!’
‘Dear, dear. Of course—most tiring for you. If you don’t mind I’ll just look through all this.’ She indicated the papers on the table. ‘That is, if there’s nothing private—I don’t want to appear to pry.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. But I’m afraid you won’t find anything.’
She sat down by the table and methodically worked through the sheaf of documents. As she replaced each one, she sorted them automatically into tidy