Six
IA few minutes later Lucy, rather pale, left the barn, locked the door and put the key back on the nail.
She went rapidly to the stables, got out her car and drove down the back drive. She stopped at the post office at theend of the road. She went into the telephone box, put in the money and dialled.
“I want to speak to Miss Marple.”
“She’s resting, miss. It’s Miss Eyelesbarrow, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to disturb her and that’s that, miss. She’s an old lady and she needs her rest.”
“You must disturb her. It’s urgent.”
“I’m not—”
“Please do what I say at once.”
When she chose, Lucy’s voice could be as incisive¹ as steel. Florence knew authority when she heard it.
Presently Miss Marple’s voice spoke².
“Yes, Lucy?”
Lucy drew a deep breath.
“You were quite right,” she said. “I’ve found it.”
“A woman’s body?”
“Yes. A woman in a fur coat. It’s a stone sarcophagus in a kind of barn-cum-museum near the house. What do youwant me to do? I ought to inform the police, I think.”
“Yes. You must inform the police. At once.”
“But what about the rest of it? About you? The first thing they’ll want to know is why I was prying³ up a lid thatweighs tons for apparently⁴ no reason. Do you want me to invent a reason? I can.”
“No. I think, you know,” said Miss Marple in her gentle serious voice, “that the only thing to do is to tell the exacttruth.”
“About you?”
“About everything.”
A sudden grin split the whiteness of Lucy’s face.
“That will be quite simple for me,” she said. “But I imagine they’ll find it quite hard to believe!”
She rang off, waited a moment, and then rang and got the police station.
“I have just discovered a dead body in a sarcophagus in the Long Barn at Rutherford Hall.”
“What’s that?”
Lucy repeated her statement and anticipating the next question gave her name.
She drove back, put the car away and entered the house.
She paused in the hall for a moment, thinking.

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