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What about the library?’
    But Charmian shook a scornful head. ‘Do you think I hadn’t thought of that? I went through all the books Tuesday of last week, when you went off to Portsmouth. Took them all out, shook them. Nothing there.’
    Edward sighed. Then, rousing himself, he endeavoured to rid himself tactfully of their disappointing guest. ‘It’s been awfully good of you to come down as you have and try to help us. Sorry it’s been all a wash-out. Feel we trespassed a lot on your time. However—I’ll get the car out, and you’ll be able to catch the three-thirty—’
    ‘Oh,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but we’ve got to find the money, haven’t we? You mustn’t give up, Mr Rossiter. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” ’
    ‘You mean you’re going to—go on trying?’
    ‘Strictly speaking,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I haven’t begun yet. “First catch your hare—” as Mrs Beaton says in her cookery book—a wonderful book but terribly expensive; most of the recipes begin, “Take a quart of cream and a dozen eggs.” Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, we have, so to speak, caught our hare—thehare being, of course, your Uncle Mathew, and we’ve only got to decide now where he would have hidden the money. It ought to be quite simple.’
    ‘Simple?’ demanded Charmian.
    ‘Oh, yes, dear. I’m sure he would have done the obvious thing. A secret drawer—that’s my solution.’
    Edward said dryly, ‘You couldn’t put bars of gold in a secret drawer.’
    ‘No, no, of course not. But there’s no reason to believe the money is in gold.’
    ‘He always used to say—’
    ‘So did my Uncle Henry about his safe! So I should strongly suspect that that was just a blind. Diamonds—now they could be in a secret drawer quite easily.’
    ‘But we’ve looked in all the secret drawers. We had a cabinetmaker over to examine the furniture.’
    ‘Did you, dear? That was clever of you. I should suggest your uncle’s own desk would be the most likely. Was it the tall escritoire against the wall there?’
    ‘Yes. And I’ll show you.’ Charmian went over to it. She took down the flap. Inside were pigeonholes and little drawers. She opened a small door in the centre and touched a spring inside the left-hand drawer. The bottom of the centre recess clicked and slid forward. Charmian drew it out, revealing a shallow well beneath. It was empty.
    ‘Now isn’t that a coincidence?’ exclaimed MissMarple. ‘Uncle Henry had a desk just like this, only his was burr walnut and this is mahogany.’
    ‘At any rate,’ said Charmian, ‘there’s nothing there, as you can see.’
    ‘I expect,’ said Miss Marple, ‘your cabinetmaker was a young man. He didn’t know everything. People were very artful when they made hiding-places in those days. There’s such a thing as a secret inside a secret.’
    She extracted a hairpin from her neat bun of grey hair. Straightening it out, she stuck the point into what appeared to be a tiny wormhole in one side of the secret recess. With a little difficulty she pulled out a small drawer. In it was a bundle of faded letters and a folded paper.
    Edward and Charmian pounced on the find together. With trembling fingers Edward unfolded the paper. He dropped it with an exclamation of disgust.
    ‘A damned cookery recipe. Baked ham!’
    Charmian was untying a ribbon that held the letters together. She drew one out and glanced at it. ‘Love letters!’
    Miss Marple reacted with Victorian gusto. ‘How interesting! Perhaps the reason your uncle never married.’
    Charmian read aloud:
    ‘ “My ever dear Mathew, I must confess that the timeseems long indeed since I received your last letter. I try to occupy myself with the various tasks allotted to me, and often say to myself that I am indeed fortunate to see so much of the globe, though little did I think when I went to America that I should voyage off to these far islands!” ’
    Charmain broke off. ‘Where