Again the red setter nosed at what seemed to be a pile of clothes, and raised her nose high in the air and howled again.

“What’s the matter with the dog?”

Miss Hinchcliffe strode across the grass.

And quickly, apprehensively, Miss Marple ran after her. They stood there, side by side, the rain beating down on them, and the older woman’s arm went round the younger one’s shoulders.

She felt the muscles go stiff and taut as Miss Hinchcliffe stood looking down on the thing lying there, with the blue congested face and the protruding tongue.

“I’ll kill whoever did this,” said Miss Hinchcliffe in a low quiet voice, “if I once get my hands on her….”

Miss Marple said questioningly:

“Her?”

Miss Hinchcliffe turned a ravaged face towards her.

“Yes. I know who it is—near enough … That is, it’s one of three possibles.”

She stood for another moment, looking down at her dead friend, and then turned towards the house. Her voice was dry and hard.

“We must ring up the police,” she said. “And while we’re waiting for them, I’ll tell you. My fault, in a way, that Murgatroyd’s lying out there. I made a game of it … Murder isn’t a game….”

“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game.”

“You know something about it, don’t you?” said Miss Hinchcliffe as she lifted the receiver and dialled.

She made a brief report and hung up.

“They’ll be here in a few minutes … Yes, I heard that you’d been mixed up in this sort of business before … I think it was Edmund Swettenham told me so … Do you want to hear what we were doing, Murgatroyd and I?”

Succinctly she described the conversation held before her departure for the station.

“She called after me, you know, just as I was leaving … That’s how I know it’s a woman and not a man … If I’d waited—if only I’d listened! God dammit, the dog could have stopped where she was for another quarter of an hour.”

“Don’t blame yourself, my dear. That does no good. One can’t foresee.”

“No, one can’t … Something tapped against the window, I remember. Perhaps she was outside there, then—yes, of course, she must have been … coming to the house … and there were Murgatroyd and I shouting at each other. Top of our voices … She heard … She heard it all….”

“You haven’t told me yet what your friend said.”

“Just one sentence! ‘She wasn’t there.’”

She paused. “You see? There were three women we hadn’t eliminated. Mrs. Swettenham, Mrs. Easterbrook, Julia Simmons. And one of those three—wasn’t there … She wasn’t there in the drawing room because she had slipped out through the other door and was out in the hall.”

“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I see.”