In the momentary silence, she seemed to feel an unspoken criticism and went on hastily:

‘You think I’m betraying a confidence—but that isn’t so. I’ve changed all the names. He wasn’t really called Sir Ambrose Bercy. Didn’t you see how Arthur stared stupidly when I said that name to him? He didn’t understand at first. I’ve changed everything. It’s like they say in magazines and in the beginning of books: “All the characters in this story are purely fictitious.” You never know who they really are.’

Chapter 12

The Affair at the Bungalow

‘I’ve thought of something,’ said Jane Helier.

Her beautiful face was lit up with the confident smile of a child expecting approbation. It was a smile such as moved audiences nightly in London, and which had made the fortunes of photographers.

‘It happened,’ she went on carefully, ‘to a friend of mine.’

Everyone made encouraging but slightly hypocritical noises. Colonel Bantry, Mrs Bantry, Sir Henry Clithering, Dr Lloyd and old Miss Marple were one and all convinced that Jane’s ‘friend’ was Jane herself. She would have been quite incapable of remembering or taking an interest in anything affecting anyone else.

‘My friend,’ went on Jane, ‘(I won’t mention her name) was an actress—a very well-known actress.’

No one expressed surprise. Sir Henry Clithering thought to himself: ‘Now I wonder how many sentences it will be before she forgets to keep up the fiction, and says “I” instead of “She”?’

‘My friend was on tour in the provinces—this was a year or two ago. I suppose I’d better not give the name of the place. It was a riverside town not very far from London. I’ll call it—’

She paused, her brows perplexed in thought. The invention of even a simple name appeared to be too much for her. Sir Henry came to the rescue.

‘Shall we call it Riverbury?’ he suggested gravely.

‘Oh, yes, that would do splendidly. Riverbury, I’ll remember that. Well, as I say, this—my friend—was at Riverbury with her company, and a very curious thing happened.’

She puckered her brows again.

‘It’s very difficult,’ she said plaintively, ‘to say just what you want. One gets things mixed up and tells the wrong things first.’

‘You’re doing it beautifully,’ said Dr Lloyd encouragingly. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, this curious thing happened. My friend was sent for to the police station. And she went. It seemed there had been a burglary at a riverside bungalow and they’d arrested a young man, and he told a very odd story. And so they sent for her.

‘She’d never been to a police station before, but they were very nice to her—very nice indeed.’

‘They would be, I’m sure,’ said Sir Henry.

‘The sergeant—I think it was a sergeant—or it may have been an inspector—gave her a chair and explained things, and of course I saw at once that it was some mistake—’

‘Aha,’ thought Sir Henry. ‘I. Here we are. I thought as much.’

‘My friend said so,’ continued Jane, serenely unconscious of her self-betrayal. ‘She explained she had been rehearsing with her understudy at the hotel and that she’d never even heard of this Mr Faulkener. And the sergeant said, “Miss Hel—” ’