few months' time."
And then it all came out. There had been a case
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Agatha Christie
of murder lately in Barnchester--a town about
twenty miles away. I'm afraid I hadn't paid much
attention to it at the time, because we had been
having a lot of excitement in the village about our
district nurse, and outside occurrences like an
earthquake in India and a murder in Barnchester,
although of course far more important really--had
given way to our own little local excitements.
I'm afraid villages are like that. Still, I did
remember having read about a woman having
been stabbed in a hotel, though I hadn't remem-bered
her name. But now it seemed that this
woman had been Mr. Rhodes' wife--and as if that
wasn't bad enough--he was actually under suspi-cion
of having murdered her himself.
All this Mr. Petherick explained to me very
clearly, saying that, although the Coroner's jury
had brought in a verdict of murder by a person or
persons unknown, Mr. Rhodes had reason to be-lieve
that he would probably be arrested within a
day or two, and that he had come to Mr. Petherick
and placed himself in his hands. Mr. Petherick
went on to say that they had that afternoon con-suited
Sir Malcolm Olde, K.C., and that in the
event of the case coming to trial Sir Malcolm had
been briefed to defend Mr. Rhodes.