Clues to Christie by Agatha Christie

category.”
    “You are joking.”
    “Not in the least. I can refer you to the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard, several Chief Constables and one or two hard-working inspectors of the CID.”
    Horace said happily that wonders would never cease. Over the tea table they gave Joan West, Raymond’s wife, Lou Oxley her niece, and old Miss Marple, a résumé of the afternoon’s happenings, recounting in detail everything that Miss Greenshaw had said to them.
    “But I do think,” said Horace, “that there is something a little sinister about the whole setup. That duchess-like creature, the housekeeper—arsenic, perhaps, in the teapot, now that she knows her mistress has made the will in her favour?”
    “Tell us, Aunt Jane,” said Raymond. “Will there be murder or won’t there? What do you think?”
    “I think,” said Miss Marple, winding up her wool with a rather severe air, “that you shouldn’t joke about these things as much as you do, Raymond. Arsenic is, of course, quite a possibility. So easy to obtain. Probably present in the toolshed already in the form of weed killer.”
    “Oh, really, darling,” said Joan West, affectionately. “Wouldn’t that be rather too obvious?”
    “It’s all very well to make a will,” said Raymond, “I don’t suppose really the poor old thing has anything to leave except that awful white elephant of a house, and who would want that?”
    “A film company possibly,” said Horace, “or a hotel or an institution?”
    “They’d expect to buy it for a song,” said Raymond, but Miss Marple was shaking her head.
    “You know, dear Raymond, I cannot agree with you there. About the money, I mean. The grandfather was evidently one of those lavish spenders who make money easily, but can’t keep it. He may have gone broke, as you say, but hardly bankrupt or else his son would not have had the house. Now the son, as is so often the case, was an entirely different character to his father. A miser. A man who saved every penny. I should say that in the course of his lifetime he probably put by a very good sum. This Miss Greenshaw appears to have taken after him, to dislike spending money, that is. Yes, I should think it quite likely that she had quite a good sum tucked away.”
    “In that case,” said Joan West, “I wonder now—what about Lou?”
    They looked at Lou as she sat, silent, by the fire.
    Lou was Joan West’s niece. Her marriage had recently, as she herself put it, come unstuck, leaving her with two young children and a bare sufficiency of money to keep them on.
    “I mean,” said Joan, “if this Miss Greenshaw really wants someone to go through diaries and get a book ready for publication. . . .”
    “It’s an idea,” said Raymond.
    Lou said in a low voice: “It’s work I could do—and I’d enjoy it.”
    “I’ll write to her,” said Raymond.
    “I wonder,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “what the old lady meant by that remark about a policeman?”
    “Oh, it was just a joke.”
    “It reminded me,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head vigorously, “yes, it reminded me very much of Mr. Naysmith.”
    “Who was Mr. Naysmith?” asked Raymond, curiously.
    “He kept bees,” said Miss Marple, “and was very good at doing the acrostics in the Sunday papers. And he liked giving people false impressions just for fun. But sometimes it led to trouble.”
    Everybody was silent for a moment, considering Mr. Naysmith, but as there did not seem to be any points of resemblance between him and Miss Greenshaw, they decided that dear Aunt Jane was perhaps getting a little bit disconnected in her old age.
    H orace Bindler went back to London without having collected any more monstrosities and Raymond West wrote a letter to Miss Greenshaw telling her that he knew of a Mrs. Louisa Oxley who would be competent to undertake work on the diaries. After a lapse of some days, a letter arrived, written in spidery old-fashioned handwriting, in which Miss Greenshaw