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robbery. He was staying at Bertram's Hotel in Pond Street, and he was at the Law Courts at that exact time. All proved up to the hilt. I'm saying the car number and make and the identification by a probation officer who knows old Ludgrove quite well by sight is the kind of coincidence that ought to mean something. Apparently it doesn't. Too bad.”
    Comstock stirred uneasily. “There was another case a bit like that in connection with the jewellery business at Brighton. Some old admiral or other. I've forgotten his name now. Some woman identified him most positively as having been on the scene.”
    “And he wasn't?”
    “No, he'd been in London that night. Went up for some naval dinner or other, I think.”
    “Staying at his club?”
    “No, he was staying at a hotel - I believe it was that one you mentioned just now, Father, Bertram's, isn't it? Quiet place. A lot of old service geezers go there, I believe.”
    “Bertram's Hotel,” said Chief Inspector Davy thoughtfully.

At Bertram's Hotel

Chapter 5
    Miss Marple awoke early because she always woke early. She was appreciative of her bed. Most comfortable.
    She pattered across to the window and pulled the curtains, admitting a little pallid London daylight. As yet, however, she did not try to dispense with the electric light. A very nice bedroom they had given her, again quite in the tradition of Bertram's. A rose-flowered wallpaper, a large well-polished mahogany chest of drawers - a dressing table to correspond. Two upright chairs, one easy chair of a reasonable height from the ground. A connecting door led to a bathroom which was modern but which had a tiled wallpaper of roses and so avoided any suggestion of overfrigid hygiene.
    Miss Marple got back into bed, plumped her pillows up, glanced at her clock, half-past seven, picked up the small devotional book that always accompanied her, and read as usual the page and a half allotted to the day. Then she picked up her knitting and began to knit, slowly at first, since her fingers were stiff and rheumatic when she first awoke, but very soon her pace grew faster, and her fingers lost their painful stiffness.
    “Another day,” said Miss Marple to herself, greeting the fact with her usual gentle pleasure. Another day - and who knew what it might bring forth?
    She relaxed, and abandoning her knitting, let thoughts pass in an idle stream through her head... Selina Hazy... what a pretty cottage she had had in St Mary Mead's - and now someone had put on that ugly green roof... Muffins... very wasteful in butter... but very good... And fancy serving old-fashioned seed cake! She had never expected, not for a moment, that things would be as much like they used to be... because, after all, Time didn't stand still... And to have made it stand still in this way must really have cost a lot of money... Not a bit of plastic in the place!.. It must pay them, she supposed. The out-of-date returns in due course as the picturesque... Look how people wanted old-fashioned roses now, and scorned hybrid teas!.. None of this place seemed real at all... Well, why should it?.. It was fifty - no, nearer sixty years since she had stayed here. And it didn't seem real to her because she was now acclimatized in this present year of Our Lord. Really, the whole thing opened up a very interesting set of problems... The atmosphere and the people... Miss Marple's fingers pushed her knitting farther away from her.
    “Pockets,” she said aloud. “Pockets, I suppose... And quite difficult to find...”
    Would that account for that curious feeling of uneasiness she had had last night? That feeling that something was wrong.
    All those elderly people - really very much like those she remembered when she had stayed here fifty years ago. They had been natural then - but they weren't very natural now. Elderly people nowadays weren't like elderly people then - they had that worried harried look of domestic anxieties with which they are too tired to cope, or