“I have made inquiries—Thursday is the day,” Miss Blacklock had written. “Any time after three. If there is any for me leave it in the usual place.”

Bunch spat out her pins and laughed. Miss Marple was watching the Inspector’s face.

The Vicar’s wife took it upon herself to explain.

“Thursday is the day one of the farms round here makes butter. They let anybody they like have a bit. It’s usually Miss Hinchcliffe who collects it. She’s very much in with all the farmers—because of her pigs, I think. But it’s all a bit hush hush, you know, a kind of local scheme of barter. One person gets butter, and sends along cucumbers, or something like that—and a little something when a pig’s killed. And now and then an animal has an accident and has to be destroyed. Oh, you know the sort of thing. Only one can’t, very well, say it right out to the Police. Because I suppose quite a lot of this barter is illegal—only nobody really knows because it’s all so complicated. But I expect Hinch had slipped into Little Paddocks with a pound of butter or something and had put it in the usual place. That’s a flour bin under the dresser, by the way. It doesn’t have flour in it.”

Craddock sighed.

“I’m glad I came here to you ladies,” he said.

“There used to be clothing coupons, too,” said Bunch. “Not usually bought—that wasn’t considered honest. No money passes. But people like Mrs. Butt or Mrs. Finch or Mrs. Huggins like a nice woollen dress or a winter coat that hasn’t seen too much wear and they pay for it with coupons instead of money.”

“You’d better not tell me any more,” said Craddock. “It’s all against the law.”

“Then there oughtn’t to be such silly laws,” said Bunch, filling her mouth up with pins again. “I don’t do it, of course, because Julian doesn’t like me to, so I don’t. But I know what’s going on, of course.”

A kind of despair was coming over the Inspector.

“It all sounds so pleasant and ordinary,” he said. “Funny and petty and simple. And yet one woman and a man have been killed, and another woman may be killed before I can get anything definite to go on. I’ve left off worrying about Pip and Emma for the moment. I’m concentrating on Sonia. I wish I knew what she looked like. There was a snapshot or two in with these letters, but none of the snaps could have been of her.”

“How do you know it couldn’t have been her? Do you know what she looked like?”

“She was small and dark, Miss Blacklock said.”

“Really,” said Miss Marple, “that’s very interesting.”