A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie Page A

she and Miss Marple looked at each other. Miss Marple was aware of a faint feeling of surprise. She had not expected to see someone like Patricia Fortescue in this particular house. Its interior was much as she had pictured it, but Pat did not somehow match with that interior.
    “It's about Gladys, madam,” said Crump helpfully.
    Pat said rather hesitatingly:
    “Will you come in here? We shall be quite alone.”
    She led the way into the library and Miss Marple followed her.
    “There wasn't anyone specially you wanted to see, was there?” said Pat, “because perhaps I shan't be much good. You see my husband and I only came back from Africa a few days ago. We don't really know anything much about the household. But I can fetch my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law's wife.”
    Miss Marple looked at the girl and liked her. She liked her gravity and her simplicity. For some strange reason she felt sorry for her. A background of shabby chintz and horses and dogs. Miss Marple felt vaguely, would have been much more suitable than this richly furnished interior decor. At the pony show and gymkhanas held locally round St Mary Mead, Miss Marple had met many Pats and knew them well. She felt at home with this rather unhappy looking girl.
    “It's very simple, really,” said Miss Marple, taking off her gloves carefully and smoothing out the fingers of them. “I read in the paper, you see, about Gladys Martin having been killed. And of course I know all about her. She comes from my part of the country. I trained her, in fact, for domestic service. And since this terrible thing has happened to her, I felt - well, I felt that I ought to come and see if there was anything I could do about it.”
    “Yes,” said Pat. “Of course. I see.”
    And she did see. Miss Marple's action appeared to her natural and inevitable.
    “I think it's a very good thing you have come,” said Pat. “Nobody seems to know very much about her. I mean relations and all that.”
    “No,” said Miss Marple, “of course not. She hadn't got any relations. She came to me from the orphanage. St Faith's. A very well run place though sadly short of funds. We do our best for the girls there, try to give them a good training and all that. Gladys came to me when she was seventeen and I taught her how to wait at table and keep the silver and everything like that. Of course she didn't stay long. They never do. As soon as she got a little experience, she went and took a job in a café. The girls nearly always want to do that. They think it's freer, you know, and a gayer life. Perhaps it may be. I really don't know.”
    “I never even saw her,” said Pat. “Was she a pretty girl?”
    “Oh, no,” said Miss Marple, “not at all. Adenoids, and a good many spots. She was rather pathetically stupid, too. I don't suppose,” went on Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that she ever made many friends anywhere. She was very keen on men, poor girl. But men didn't take much notice of her and other girls rather made use of her.”
    “It sounds rather cruel,” said Pat.
    “Yes, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “life is cruel, I'm afraid. One doesn't really know what to do with the Gladyses. They enjoy going to the pictures and all that, but they're always thinking of impossible things that can't possibly happen to them. Perhaps that's happiness of a kind. But they get disappointed. I think Gladys was disappointed in café and restaurant life. Nothing very glamorous or interesting happened to her and it was just hard on the feet. Probably that's why she came back into private service. Do you know how long she'd been here?”
    Pat shook her head.
    “Not very long, I should think. Only a month or two.” Pat paused and then went on, “It seems so horrible and futile that she should have been caught up in this thing. I suppose she'd seen something or noticed something.”
    “It was the clothes peg that really worried me,” said Miss Marple in her gentle voice.
    “The clothes