“What ever made you suspect Giles Watson?” Dermot Craddock asked. “He seemed such a pleasant, rather nondescript man.”

Miss Marple turned to Lucy Eyelesbarrow and said, “Do you remember what you told me about the way Giles was playing board games with his nephews and niece?”

“What, how he was as bad as the children and maintained it was his turn, when all the children said it wasn’t. But they had to accept it because their grandmother insisted Giles couldn’t be wrong,” Lucy replied.

“It put me in mind of Tommy Hawkins, a rather unpleasant child. He was always very bad at taking turns. Of course, his teachers soon grew wise to this and ignored his protests and outbursts, but his mother always believed the other children were picking on him. Well, they probably did, children do like to get their own back, but they would have been much nicer to him if he’d taken his turn as they were told to.”

“And what happened to this Tommy Hawkins?” Dermot asked, winking at Lucy.

“I saw that,” Miss Marple said. “You may laugh at my comparisons, but there’s no escaping human nature. Well, Tommy grew up in the way that might have been expected and went to work in an office. Then, when he and another employee applied for the head of department position, and the other was appointed to the post, he was furious. He marched into the manager’s office, complained, and when he was informed that the post had been awarded on merit, screamed at the manager and went to punch him. He was dismissed instantly, of course.”

“And therefore you decided Giles Watson had to be the one who caused the accident to his younger brother?”

“Shall we say he was the person I would consider first. The younger brother had just got engaged to a young lady who Giles had been hoping to marry. He’d already been thwarted once, when his older brother had married, and now he was determined it should be his turn, regardless of the lady’s preferences.”

“His mother is still maintaining it couldn’t possibly have been Giles,” Lucy said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Mrs Hawkins continued to insist Tommy was treated unfairly and made a scapegoat, even when he was arrested for fighting in the local public house. And when he was charged with hitting a policeman, and there were plenty of witnesses to the act, she claimed it was purely self-defence.”