Miss Marple, left standing by me, twinkled a little and said:

“Mrs. Dane Calthrop is a very remarkable woman, you know. She’s nearly always right.”

“It makes her rather alarming,” I said.

“Sincerity has that effect,” said Miss Marple.

Mrs. Dane Calthrop shot out of the fish shop again and rejoined us. She was holding a large red lobster.

“Have you ever seen anything so unlike Mr. Pye?” she said—“very virile and handsome, isn’t it?”

IV

I was a little nervous of meeting Joanna but I found when I got home that I needn’t have worried. She was out and she did not return for lunch. This aggrieved Partridge a good deal, who said sourly as she proffered two loin chops in an entrée dish: “Miss Burton said specially as she was going to be in.”

I ate both chops in an attempt to atone for Joanna’s lapse. All the same, I wondered where my sister was. She had taken to be very mysterious about her doings of late.

It was half past three when Joanna burst into the drawing room. I had heard a car stop outside and I half expected to see Griffith, but the car drove on and Joanna came in alone.

Her face was very red and she seemed upset. I perceived that something had happened.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

Joanna opened her mouth, closed it again, sighed, plumped herself down in a chair and stared in front of her.

She said:

“I’ve had the most awful day.”

“What’s happened?”

“I’ve done the most incredible thing. It was awful—”

“But what—”

“I just started out for a walk, an ordinary walk—I went up over the hill and on to the moor. I walked miles—I felt like it. Then I dropped down into a hollow. There’s a farm there—A God-forsaken lonely sort of spot. I was thirsty and I wondered if they’d got any milk or something. So I wandered into the farmyard and then the door opened and Owen came out.”

“Yes?”

“He thought it might be the district nurse. There was a woman in there having a baby. He was expecting the nurse and he’d sent word to her to get hold of another doctor. It—things were going wrong.”

“Yes?”

“So he said—to me. ‘Come on, you’ll do—better than nobody.’ I said I couldn’t, and he said what did I mean? I said I’d never done anything like that, that I didn’t know anything—