Nemesis

by Agatha Christie

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple. “Sooner than let the girl go, you killed her. Because you loved her, you killed her.”

  “Do you think I could ever do a thing like that? Do you think I could strangle the girl I loved? Do you think I could bash her face in, crush her head to a pulp? Nothing but a vicious, depraved man would do a thing like that.”

  “No,” said Miss Marple, “you wouldn’t do that. You loved her and you would not be able to do that.”

  “Well then, you see, you are talking nonsense.”

  “You didn’t do that to her. The girl that happened to was not the girl you loved. Verity’s here still, isn’t she? She’s here in the garden. I don’t think you strangled her. I think you gave her a drink of coffee or of milk, you gave her a painless overdose of sleeping stuff. And then when she was dead, you took her out into the garden, you pulled aside the fallen bricks of the greenhouse, and you made a vault for her there, under the floor with the bricks, and covered it over. And then the polygonum was planted there and has flowered ever since, growing bigger and stronger every year. Verity has remained here with you. You never let her go.”

  “You fool! You crazy old fool! Do you think you are ever going to get away to tell this story?”

  “I think so,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not quite sure of it. You are a strong woman, a great deal stronger than I am.”

  “I’m glad you appreciate that.”

  “And you wouldn’t have any scruples,” said Miss Marple. “You know one doesn’t stop at one murder. I have noticed that in the course of my life and in what I have observed of crime. You killed two girls, didn’t you? You killed the girl you loved and you killed a different girl.”

  “I killed a silly little tramp, an adolescent tart. Nora Broad. How did you know about her?”

  “I wondered,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t think from what I saw of you that you could have borne to strangle and disfigure the girl you loved. But another girl disappeared also about that time, a girl whose body has never been found. But I thought the body had been found, only they hadn’t known that the body was Nora Broad’s. It was dressed in Verity’s clothes, it was identified as Verity by the person who would be the first applied to, the person who knew her better than anyone else. You had to go and say if the body found was the body of Verity. You recognized it. You said that that dead body was Verity’s.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “Because you wanted the boy who had taken Verity away from you, the boy whom Verity had loved and who had loved Verity, you wanted him tried for murder. And so you hid that second body in a place where it would not be too easily discovered. When that was discovered, it would be thought to be the wrong girl. You would make sure that it was identified in the way you wanted. You dressed it in Verity’s clothes, put her handbag there; a letter or two, a bangle, a little cross on a chain—you disfigured her face.

  “A week ago you committed a third murder, the murder of Elizabeth Temple. You killed her because she was coming to this part of the world, and you were afraid of what she might have known, from what Verity might have written to her or told her, and you thought that if Elizabeth Temple got together with Archdeacon Brabazon, they might with what they both knew come at some appraisal of the truth. Elizabeth Temple must not be allowed to meet the Archdeacon. You are a very powerful woman. You could have rolled that boulder down the hillside. It must have taken some doing, but you are a very strong woman.”

  “Strong enough to deal with you,” said Clotilde.

  “I don’t think,” said Miss Marple, “that you will be allowed to do that.”

  “What do you mean, you miserable, shrivelled up old woman?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I’m an elderly pussy and I have very little strength in my arms or my legs. Very little strength anywhere. But I am in my own way an emissary of justice.”

  Clotilde laughed, “And who’ll stop me from putting an end to you?”

  “I think,” said Miss Marple, “my guardian angel.”

  “Trusting to your guardian angel, are you?” said Clotilde, and laughed again.

  She advanced towards the bed.

  “Possibly two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple. “Mr. Rafiel always did things on a lavish scale.”

  Her hand slipped under the pillow and out again. In it was a whistle which she put to her lips. It was something of a sensation in whistles. It had the shrill fury which would attract a policeman from the end of a street. Two things happened almost simultaneously. The door of the room opened. Clotilde turned. Miss Barrow was standing in the doorway. At the same moment the large wardrobe hanging cupboard opened and Miss Cooke stepped out of it. There was a grim air of professionalism about them both which was very noticeable, in contrast to their pleasant social behaviour a little earlier in the evening.

  “Two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple happily. “Mr. Rafiel has done me very proud! as one used to say.”

  Twenty-two

  MISS MARPLE TELLS HER STORY

  “When did you find out,” asked Professor Wanstead, “that those two women were private agents accompanying you for your protection?”

  He leaned forward in his chair looking thoughtfully at the white-haired old lady who sat in an upright position in the chair opposite him. They were in an official Government building in London, and there were four other persons present.

  An official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir James Lloyd, the Governor of Manstone Prison, Sir Andrew McNeil. The fourth person was the Home Secretary.

  “Not until the last evening,” said Miss Marple. “I wasn’t actually sure until then. Miss Cooke had come to St. Mary Mead and I found out fairly quickly that she was not what she represented herself to be, which was a woman knowledgeable in gardening who had come there to help a friend with her garden. So I was left with the choice of deciding what her real object had been, once she had acquainted herself with my appearance, which was obviously the only thing she could have come for. When I recognized her again, on the coach, I had to make up my mind if she was accompanying the tour in the rôle of guardianship, or whether those two women were enemies enlisted by what I might call the other side.

  “I was only really sure that last evening when Miss Cooke prevented me, by very distinct words of warning, from drinking the cup of coffee that Clotilde Bradbury-Scott had just set down in front of me. She phrased it very cleverly, but the warning was clearly there. Later, when I was wishing those two good night, one of them took my hand in both of hers giving me a particularly friendly and affectionate handshake. And in doing so she passed something into my hand, which, when I examined it later, I found to be a high-powered whistle. I took it to bed with me, accepted the glass of milk which was urged upon me by my hostess, and wished her good night, being careful not to change my simple and friendly attitude.”

  “You didn’t drink the milk?”

  “Of course not,” said Miss Marple. “What do you take me for?”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Professor Wanstead. “It surprises me that you didn’t lock your door.”

  “That would have been quite the wrong thing to do,” said Miss Marple. “I wanted Clotilde Bradbury-Scott to come in. I wanted to see what she would say or do. I thought it was almost certain that she would come in when sufficient time had elapsed, to make sure that I had drunk the milk, and was in an unconscious sleep from which presumably I would not have woken up again.”

  “Did you help Miss Cooke to conceal herself in the wardrobe?”

  “No. It was a complete surprise when she came out of that suddenly. I suppose,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, thinking it over, “I suppose she slipped in there just when I had gone down the passage to the—er—to the bathroom.”

  “You knew the two women were in the house?”

  “I thought they would be at hand somewhere after they’d given me the whistle. I do not think it was a difficult house to which to
gain access, there were no shuttered windows or burglar alarms or anything of that kind. One of them came back on the pretext of having left a handbag and a scarf. Between them they probably managed to leave a window unfastened, and I should imagine they came back into the house almost as soon as they left it, while the inhabitants inside were going up to bed.”

  “You took a big risk, Miss Marple.”

  “I hoped for the best,” said Miss Marple. “One cannot go through life without attracting certain risks if they are necessary.”

  “Your tip about the parcel dispatched to that charity, by the way, was entirely successful. It contained a brand new brightly coloured man’s polo-necked jumper in scarlet and black checks. Most noticeable. What made you think of that?”

  “Well,” said Miss Marple, “that was really very simple. The description that Emlyn and Joanna gave of the figure they had seen made it seem almost certain that these very bright coloured and noticeable clothes were meant to be noticed, and that therefore it would be very important that they should not be hidden locally or kept among the person’s own belongings. They must be got out of the way as soon as could be. And really there is only one way successfully of disposing of something. That is through the general post. Anything in the nature of clothes can be very easily dispatched to charities. Think how pleased the people who collect winter garments for Unemployed Mothers, or whatever the name of the charity, would be to find a nearly brand new woollen jumper. All I had to do was to find out the address where it had been sent.”

  “And you asked them that at the post office?” The Home Secretary looked slightly shocked.

  “Not directly, of course. I mean, I had to be a little flustered and explain how I’d put the wrong address on some clothes that I was sending to a charity and could they by any chance tell me if the parcel one of my kind hostesses had brought up there, had been sent off. And a very nice woman there did her best and remembered that it was not the address I was hoping it had been sent to, and she gave me the address that she had noted. She had no suspicion, I think, that I had any wish for the information apart from being—well, rather muddleheaded, elderly, and very worried about where my parcel of worn clothes had gone.”

  “Ah,” said Professor Wanstead, “I see you are an actress, Miss Marple, as well as an avenger.” Then he said, “When did you first begin to discover what had happened ten years ago?”

  “To begin with,” said Miss Marple, “I found things very difficult, almost impossible. In my mind I was blaming Mr. Rafiel for not having made things clear to me. But I see now that he’d been very wise not to do so. Really, you know, he was extraordinary clever. I can see why he was such a big financier and made so much money so easily. He laid his plans so well. He gave me just enough information in small packets each time. I was, as it were, directed. First my guardian angels were alerted to note what I looked like. Then I was directed on the tour and to the people on it.”

  “Did you suspect, if I may use that word, anyone on the tour at first?”

  “Only as possibilities.”

  “No feeling of evil?”

  “Ah, you have remembered that. No, I did not think there was any definite atmosphere of evil. I was not told who my contact was there, but she made herself known to me.”

  “Elizabeth Temple?”

  “Yes. It was like a searchlight,” said Miss Marple, “illuminating things on a dark night. So far, you see, I had been in the dark. There were certain things that must be, must logically be, I mean, because of what Mr. Rafiel had indicated. There must be somewhere a victim and somewhere a murderer. Yes, a killer was indicated because that was the only liaison that had existed between Mr. Rafiel and myself. There had been a murder in the West Indies. Both he and I had been involved in it and all he knew of me was my connection with that. So it could not be any other type of crime. And it could not, either, be a casual crime. It must be, and show itself definitely to be, the handiwork of someone who had accepted evil. Evil instead of good. There seemed to be two victims indicated. There must be someone who had been killed and there must be clearly a victim of injustice. A victim who had been accused of a crime he or she had not committed. So now, while I pondered these things, I had no light upon them until I talked to Miss Temple. She was very intense, very compelling. There came the first link which I had with Mr. Rafiel. She spoke of a girl she had known, a girl who had once been engaged to Mr. Rafiel’s son. Here then was my first ray of light. Presently she also told me that the girl had not married him. I asked why not and she said ‘because she died.’ I asked then how she died, what had killed her, and she said very strongly, very compellingly—I can hear her voice still, it was like the sound of a deep bell—she said Love. And she said after that ‘the most frightening word there can be is Love.’ I did not know then exactly what she meant. In fact the first idea that came to me was that the girl had committed suicide as a result of an unhappy love affair. It can happen often enough, and a very sad tragedy it is when it does happen. That was the most I knew then. That and the fact that the journey she herself was engaged upon was no mere pleasure tour. She was going, she told me, on a pilgrimage. She was going to some place or to some person. I did not learn then who the person was, that only came later.”

  “Archdeacon Brabazon?”

  “Yes. I had no idea then of his existence. But from then on I felt that the chief characters—the chief actors—in the drama, whichever way you like to put it, were not on the tour. They were not members of the coach party. I hesitated just for a short time, hesitated over some particular persons. I hesitated, considering Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price.”

  “Why fix on them?”

  “Because of their youth,” said Miss Marple. “Because youth is so often associated with suicide, with violence, with intense jealousy and tragic love. A man kills his girl—it happens. Yes, my mind went to them but it did not seem to me there was any association there. No shadow of evil, of despair, of misery. I used the idea of them later as a kind of false pointer when we were drinking sherry at The Old Manor House that last evening. I pointed out how they could be the most easy suspects in the death of Elizabeth Temple. When I see them again,” said Miss Marple, punctiliously, “I shall apologize to them for having used them as useful characters to distract attention from my real ideas.”

  “And the next thing was the death of Elizabeth Temple?”

  “No,” said Miss Marple. “Actually the next thing was my arrival at The Old Manor House. The kindness of my reception and taking up my stay there under their hospitable roof. That again had been arranged by Mr. Rafiel. So I knew that I must go there, but not for what reason I was to go there. It might be merely a place where more information would come to me to lead me onwards in my quest. I am sorry,” Miss Marple said, suddenly becoming her normal apologetic and slightly fussy self, “I am talking at much too great a length. I really must not inflict on you all that I thought and….”

  “Please go on,” said Professor Wanstead. “You may not know it but what you are telling me is particularly interesting to me. It ties up with so much I have known and seen in the work I do. Go on giving me what you felt.”

  “Yes, go on,” said Sir Andrew McNeil.

  “It was feeling,” said Miss Marple. “It wasn’t really, you know, logical deduction. It was based on a kind of emotional reaction or susceptibility to—well, I can only call it atmosphere.”

  “Yes,” said Wanstead, “there is atmosphere. Atmosphere in houses, atmosphere in places, in the garden, in the forest, in a public house, in a cottage.”

  “The three sisters. That is what I thought and felt and said to myself when I went into The Old Manor House. I was so kindly received by Lavinia Glynne. There’s something about the phrase—the three sisters—that springs up in your mind as sinister. It combines with the three sisters in Russian literature, the three witches on Macbeth’s heath. It seemed to me that there was an atmosphere there of sorrow, of deep felt unhappiness, also an atmosphere of f
ear and a kind of struggling different atmosphere which I can only describe as an atmosphere of normality.”

  “Your last word interests me,” said Wanstead.

  “It was due, I think, to Mrs. Glynne. She was the one who came to meet me when the coach arrived and explained the invitation. She was an entirely normal and pleasant woman, a widow. She was not very happy, but when I say she was not very happy it was nothing to do with sorrow or deep unhappiness, it was just that she had the wrong atmosphere for her own character. She took me back with her and I met the other two sisters. The next morning I was to hear from an aged housemaid who brought my early morning tea, a story of past tragedy, of a girl who had been killed by her boyfriend. Of several other girls in the neighbourhood who’d fallen victims to violence, or sexual assault. I had to make my second appraisal. I had dismissed the people in the coach as not being personally concerned in my search. Somewhere still there was a killer. I had to ask myself if one of the killers could be here. Here in this house where I had been sent, Clotilde, Lavinia, Anthea. Three names of three weird sisters, three happy—unhappy—suffering—frightened—what were they? My attention was caught first by Clotilde. A tall, handsome woman. A personality. Just as Elizabeth Temple had been a personality. I felt that here where the field was limited, I must at least sum up what I could about the three sisters. Three Fates. Who could be a killer? What kind of a killer? What kind of a killing? I could feel then rising up rather slowly, rather slowly like a miasma does, an atmosphere. I don’t think there is any other word that expresses it except evil. Not necessarily that any of these three was evil, but they were certainly living in an atmosphere where evil had happened, had left its shadow or was still threatening them. Clotilde, the eldest, was the first one I considered. She was handsome, she was strong, she was, I thought, a woman of intense emotional feeling. I saw her, I will admit, as a possible Clytemnestra. I had recently,” Miss Marple dropped into her everyday tones, “been taken very kindly to a Greek play performed at a well-known boys’ public school not far from my home. I had been very, very impressed by the acting of the Agamemnon and particularly the performance of the boy who had played Clytemnestra. A very remarkable performance. It seemed to me that in Clotilde I could imagine a woman who could plan and carry out the killing of a husband in his bath.”