Eighteen
IS ir Henry Clithering said:
“Speaking as Watson, I want to know your methods, Miss Marple.”
Superintendent¹ Harper said:
“I’d like to know what put you on to it first.”
Colonel Melchett said:
“You’ve done it again, by Jove! I want to hear all about it from the beginning.”
Miss Marple smoothed the puce silk of her best evening gown. She flushed and smiled and looked very self-conscious.
She said: “I’m afraid you’ll think my ‘methods,’ as Sir Henry calls them, are terribly amateurish². The truth is, yousee, that most people—and I don’t exclude policemen—are far too trusting for this wicked world. They believe what istold them. I never do. I’m afraid I always like to prove a thing for myself.”
“That is the scientific attitude,” said Sir Henry.
“In this case,” continued Miss Marple, “certain things were taken for granted from the first—instead of justconfining oneself to the facts. The facts, as I noted³ them, were that the victim was quite young and that she bit hernails and that her teeth stuck out a little—as young girls’ so often do if not corrected in time with a plate—(andchildren are very naughty about their plates and taking them out when their elders aren’t looking).
“But that is wandering from the point. Where was I? Oh, yes, looking down at the dead girl and feeling sorry,because it is always sad to see a young life cut short, and thinking that whoever had done it was a very wicked person.
Of course it was all very confusing her being found in Colonel Bantry’s library, altogether too like a book to be true.
In fact, it made the wrong pattern. It wasn’t, you see, meant, which confused us a lot. The real idea had been to plantthe body on poor young Basil Blake (a much more likely person), and his action in putting it in the Colonel’s librarydelayed things considerably⁴, and must have been a source of great annoyance⁵ to the real murderer.
“Originally, you see, Mr. Blake would have been the first object of suspicion. They’d have made

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