‘No. Other way—to village.’

‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves with this unknown man,’ said Melchett. ‘You heard the cry and the splash and a few minutes later you saw the body floating downstream and you ran for help, going back to the bridge, crossing it, and making straight for the village. You didn’t see anyone near the bridge as you ran for help?’

‘I think as there were two men with a wheelbarrow on the river path; but they were some way away and I couldn’t tell if they were going or coming and Mr Giles’s place was nearest—so I ran there.’

‘You did well, my boy,’ said Melchett. ‘You acted very creditably and with presence of mind. You’re a scout, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very good. Very good indeed.’

Sir Henry was silent—thinking. He took a slip of paper from his pocket, looked at it, shook his head. It didn’t seem possible—and yet—

He decided to pay a call on Miss Marple.

She received him in her pretty, slightly overcrowded old-style drawing-room.

‘I’ve come to report progress,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I’m afraid that from our point of view things aren’t going well. They are going to arrest Sandford. And I must say I think they are justified.’

‘You have found nothing in—what shall I say—support of my theory, then?’ She looked perplexed—anxious. ‘Perhaps I have been wrong—quite wrong. You have such wide experience—you would surely detect it if it were so.’

‘For one thing,’ said Sir Henry, ‘I can hardly believe it. And for another we are up against an unbreakable alibi. Joe Ellis was fixing shelves in the kitchen all the evening and Mrs Bartlett was watching him do it.’

Miss Marple leaned forward, taking in a quick breath.

‘But that can’t be so,’ she said. ‘It was Friday night.’

‘Friday night?’

‘Yes—Friday night. On Friday evenings Mrs Bartlett takes the laundry she has done round to the different people.’

Sir Henry leaned back in his chair. He remembered the boy Jimmy’s story of the whistling man and—yes—it would all fit in.

He rose, taking Miss Marple warmly by the hand.

‘I think I see my way,’ he said. ‘At least I can try…’

Five minutes later he was back at Mrs Bartlett’s cottage and facing Joe Ellis in the little parlour among the china dogs.

‘You lied to us, Ellis, about last night,’ he said crisply. ‘You were not in the kitchen here fixing the dresser between eight and eight-thirty. You were seen walking along the path by the river towards the bridge a few minutes before Rose Emmott was murdered.’

The man gasped.

‘She weren’t murdered—she weren’t. I had naught to do with it. She threw herself in, she did. She was desperate like. I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head, I wouldn’t.’

‘Then why did you lie as to where you were?’ asked Sir Henry keenly.

The man’s eyes shifted and lowered uncomfortably.

‘I was scared. Mrs B. saw me around there and when we heard just afterwards what had happened—well, she thought it might look bad for me. I fixed I’d say I was working here, and she agreed to back me up. She’s a rare one, she is. She’s always been good to me.’