4.50 From Paddington Read Online Free Page B

is due in Brackhampton five minutes earlier and the latter passes the 4:50 just before Brackhampton. In all this do I smell some village scandal of a fruity character? Did you, returning from a shopping spree in town by the 4:50, observe in a passing train the Mayor's wife being embraced by the Sanitary Inspector? But why does it matter which train it was? A weekend at Porthcawl, perhaps? Thank you for the pullover. Just what I wanted. How's the garden? Not very active this time of year, I should imagine.
    Yours ever,
    David"
    Miss Marple smiled a little, then considered the information thus presented to her. Mrs. McGillicuddy had said definitely that the carriage had not been a corridor one. Therefore - not the Swansea express.
    The 4:33 was indicated.
    Also some more travelling seemed unavoidable. Miss Marple sighed, but made her plans.
    She went up to London as before on the 12:15, but this time returned not by the 4:50, but by the 4:33 as far as Brackhampton.
    The journey was uneventful, but she registered certain details. The train was not crowded - 4:33 was before the evening rush hour. Of the first-class carriages only one had an occupant - a very old gentleman reading the New Statesman. Miss Marple travelled in an empty compartment and at the two stops, Haling Broadway and Barwell Heath, leaned out of the window to observe passengers entering and leaving the train.
    A small number of third-class passengers got in at Haling Broadway. At Barwell Heath several third-class passengers got out. Nobody entered or left a first-class carriage except the old gentleman carrying his New Statesman.
    As the train neared Brackhampton, sweeping around a curve of line. Miss Marple rose to her feet and stood experimentally with her back to the window over which she had drawn down the blind.
    Yes, she decided, the impetus of the sudden curving of the line and the slackening of speed did throw one off one's balance back against the window and the blind might, in consequence, very easily fly up. She peered out into the night.
    It was lighter than it had been when Mrs. McGillicuddy had made the same journey - only just dark, but there was little to see. For observation she must make a daylight journey.
    On the next day she went up by the early morning train, purchased four linen pillow-cases (tut-tutting at the price!) so as to combine investigation with the provision of household necessities, and returned by a train leaving Paddington at twelve-fifteen. Again she was alone in a first-class carriage. “This taxation,” thought Miss Marple, "that's what it is.
    No one can afford to travel first class except business men in the rush hours. I suppose because they can charge it to expenses."
    About a quarter of an hour before the train was due at Brackhampton, Miss Marple got out the map with which Leonard had supplied her and began to observe the countryside. She had studied the map very carefully beforehand, and after noting the name of a station they passed through, she was soon able to identify where she was just as the train began to slacken for a curve. It was a very considerable curve indeed. Miss Marple, her nose glued to the window, studied the ground beneath her (the train was running on a fairly high embankment) with close attention. She divided her attention between the country outside and her map until the train finally ran into Brackhampton.
    That night she wrote and posted a letter addressed to Miss Florence Hill, 4 Madison Road, Brackhampton...
    On the following morning, going to the County library, she studied a Brackhampton directory and gazetteer, and a County history.
    Nothing so far had contradicted the very faint and sketchy idea that had come to her. What she had imagined was possible. She would go no further than that.
    But the next step involved action - a good deal of action - the kind of action for which she, herself, was physically unfit.
    If her theory were to be definitely proved or disproved, she must at this