The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

‘Well, madam, these suggestions of yours are very interesting. I shall, of course, have to investigate —’

IV

Miss Marple and Raymond West stood by the rockery and looked down at a gardening basket full of dying vegetation.

Miss Marple murmured:

‘Alyssum, saxifrage, cytisus, thimble campanula... Yes, that's all the proof I need. Whoever was weeding here yesterday morning was no gardener — she pulled up plants as well as weeds. So now I know I'm right. Thank you, dear Raymond, for bringing me here. I wanted to see the place for myself.’

She and Raymond both looked up at the outrageous pile of Greenshaw's Folly.

A cough made them turn. A handsome young man was also looking at the monstrous house.

‘Plaguey big place,’ he said. ‘Too big for nowadays — or so they say. I dunno about that. If I won a football pool and made a lot of money, that's the kind of house I'd like to build.’

He smiled bashfully at them.

‘Reckon I can say so now — that there house was built by my great-grandfather,’ said Alfred Pollock. ‘And a fine house it is, for all they call it Greenshaw's Folly!’