Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors

by Murder

  It was with a very faint shock that Miss Marple heard herself addressed as Aunt Jane. And yet that had been the convention of those times. Her Christmas presents to Carrie Louise's children were always labelled 'With love from Aunt Jane,' and as 'Aunt Jane' they thought of her, when they thought of her at all. Which was not, Miss Marple supposed, very often.

  She looked thoughtfully at the middle-aged woman sitting beside her. At the pursed tight mouth, the deep lines from the nose down, the hands tightly pressed together.

  She said gently:

  'You must have had - a difficult childhood.' Mildred Strete turned eager grateful eyes to her.

  'Oh I'm so glad that somebody appreciates that.

  People don't really know what children go through.

  Pippa, you see, was the pretty one. She was older than I was, too. It was always she who got all the attention. Both father and mother encouraged her to push herself forward - not that she needed any encouragement - to show off. I was always the quiet one. I was shy - Pippa didn't know what shyness was. A child can suffer a great deal, Aunt Jane.'

  'I know that,' said Miss Marple.

  '"Mildred's so stupid" - that's what Pippa used to say.

  But I was younger than she was. Naturally I couldn't be expected to keep up with her in lessons. And it's very unfair on a child when her sister is always put in front of her.

  '"What a lovely little girl," people used to say to Mamma. They never noticed me. And it was Pippa that Papa used to joke and play with. Someone ought to have seen how hard it was on me. All the notice and attention going to her. I wasn't old enough to realize that it's character that matters.' Her lips trembled, then hardened again.

  'And it was unfair - really unfair - I was their own child. Pippa was only adopted. I was the daughter of the house. She was - nobody.' 'Probably they were extra indulgent to her on that account,' said Miss Marple.

  'They liked her best,' said Mildred Strete. And added: 'A child whose own parents didn't want her - or more probably illegitimate.' She went on: 'It's come out in Gina. There's bad blood there. Blood will tell. Lewis can have what theories he likes about environment. Bad blood does tell. Look at Gina.' 'Gina is a very lovely girl,' said Miss Marple.

  'Hardly in behaviour,' said Mrs Strete. 'Everyone but mother notices how she is carrying on with Stephen Restarick. Quite disgusting, I call it. Admittedly she made a very unfortunate marriage, but marriage is marriage and one should be prepared to abide by it. After all, she chose to marry that dreadful young man.' 'Is he so dreadful?' 'Oh dear Aunt Jane! He really looks to me quite like a gangster. And so surly and rude. He hardly opens his mouth. And he always looks so raw and uncouth.' 'He is unhappy, I think,' said Miss Marple mildly.

  'I really don't know why he should be - apart from Gina's behaviour, I mean. Everything has been done for him here. Lewis has suggested several ways in which he could try to make himself useful - but he prefers to skulk about doing nothing.' She burst out: 'Oh this whole place is impossible quite impossible. Lewis thinks of nothing but these horrible young criminals. And mother thinks of nothing but him. Everything Lewis does is right. Look at the state of the garden - the weeds - the overgrowth. And the house - nothing properly done. Oh I know a domestic staff is difficult nowadays, but it can be got. It's not as though there were any shortage of money. It's just that nobody cares. If it were my house -' She stopped.

  'I'm afraid,' said Miss Marple, 'that we have all to face the fact that conditions are different. These large estab-lishments are a great problem. It must be sad for you, in a way, to come back here and find everything so different.

  Do you really prefer living here to - well - somewhere of your own?'

  Mildred Strete flushed.

  'After all, it's my home,' she said. 'It was my father's house. Nothing can alter that. I've a right to be here if I choose. And I do choose. If only mother were not so impossible! She won't even buy herself proper clothes. It worries Jolly a lot.'

  'I was going to ask you about Miss Believer.'

  'Such a comfort having her here. She adores mother.

  She's been with her a long time now - she came in John Restarick's time. And was wonderful, I believe, during the whole sad business. I expect you heard that he ran away with a dreadful Yugoslavian woman - a most abandoned creature. She'd had any amount of lovers, I believe. Mother was very fine and dignified about it all.

  Divorced him as quietly as possible. Even went so far as to have the Restarick boys for their holidays - quite unnecessary, really, other arrangements could have been made. It would have been unthinkable, of course, to have let them go to their father and that woman. Anyway, mother had them here... And Miss Bellever stood by all through things and was a tower of strength. I sometimes think she makes mother even more vague than she need be, by doing all the practical things herself. But I really don't know what mother would do without her.' She paused and then remarked in a tone of surprise: 'Here is Lewis. How odd. He seldom comes out in the garden.' Mr Serrocold came towards them in the same single-minded way that he did everything. He appeared not to notice Mildred, because it was only Miss Marple who was in his mind.

  'I'm so sorry,' he said. 'I wanted to take you round our institution and show you everything. Caroline asked me to. Unfortunately I have to go off to Liverpool. The case of that boy and the railway parcels office. But Maverick will take you. He'll be here in a few minutes. I shan't be back until the day after tomorrow. It will be splendid if we can get them not to prosecute.' Mildred Strete got up and walked away. Lewis Serrocold did not notice her go. His earnest eyes gazed at Miss Marple through thick glasses.

  'You see,' he said, 'the Magistrates nearly always take the wrong view. Sometimes they're too severe, but sometimes they're too lenient. If these boys get a sentence of a few months it's no deterrent - they get a kind of a kick out of it, even. Boast about it to their girl friends. But a severe sentence often sobers them. They realize that the game isn't worth it. Or else it's better not to serve a prison sentence at all. Corrective training - constructional training like we have here ' Miss Marple interrupted him.

  'Mr Serrocold,' she said. 'Are you quite satisfied about young Mr Lawson. Is he - is he quite normal?' A disturbed expression appeared on Lewis Serrocold's face.

  'I do hope he's not relapsing. What has he been saying?' 'He told me that he was Winston Churchill's son ' 'Of course - of course. The usual statements. He's illegitimate, as you've probably guessed, poor lad, and of very humble beginnings. He was a case recommended to me by a Society in London. He'd assaulted a man in the street who he said was spying on him. All very typical Dr Maverick will tell you. I went into his case history.

  Mother was of a poor class but a respectable family in Plymouth. Father a sailor - she didn't even know his name... Child brought up in difficult circumstances.

  Started romancing about his father and later about himself. Wore uniform and decorations he wasn't entitled to - all quite typical. But Maverick considers the prognosis hopeful. If we can give him confidence in himself. I've given him responsibility here, tried to make him appreciate that it's not a man's birth that matters but what he is. I've tried to give him confidence in his own ability. The improvement was marked. I was very happy about him. And now you say ' He shook his head.

  'Mightn't he be dangerous, Mr Serrocold?' 'Dangerous? I don't think he has shown any suicidal tendencies.' 'I wasn't thinking of suicide. He talked to me of enemies - of persecution. Isn't that, forgive me - a dangerous sign?' 'I don't really think it has reached such a pitch. But I'll speak to Maverick. So far, he has been hopeful - very hopeful.'

  He looked at his watch.

  'I must go. Ah, here is our dear Jolly. She will take charge of you.'

  Miss Believer, arriving briskly, said, 'The car is at the door, Mr Serrocold. Dr Maverick rang through from the Institute. I said I would bring Miss Marple over. He will meet us at the gates.'

  'Thank you. I must go. My brief case?'

  'In the
car, Mr Serrocold.'

  Lewis Serrocold hurried away. Looking after him, Miss Believer said:

  'Some day that man will drop dead in his tracks. It's against human nature never to relax or rest. He only sleeps four hours a night.'

  'He is very devoted to this cause,' said Miss Marple.

  'Never thinks of anything else,' said Miss Bellever grimly. 'Never dreams of looking after his wife or considering her in any way. She's a sweet creature, as you know, Miss Marple, and she ought to.have love and attention. But nothing's thought of or considered here except a lot of whining boys and young men who want to live easily and dishonestly and don't care about the idea of doing a little hard work. What about the decent boys from decent homes? Why isn't something done for them?

  Honesty just isn't interesting to cranks like Mr Serrocold and Dr Maverick and all the bunch of half-baked sentimentalists we've got here. I and my brothers were brought up the hard way, Miss Marple, and we weren't encouraged to whine. Soft, that's what the world is nowadays?

  They had crossed the garden and passed through a palisaded gate and had come to the arched gate which Eric Gulbrandsen had erected as an entrance to his College, a sturdily built, hideous, red brick building.

  Dr Maverick, looking, Miss Marple decided, distinctly abnormal himself, came out to meet them.

  'Thank you, Miss Believer,' he said. 'Now, Miss - er oh yes, Miss Marple - I'm sure you're going to be interested in what we're doing here. In our splendid approach to this great problem. Mr Serrocold is a man of great insight - great vision. And we've got Sir John Stillwell behind us - my old chief. He was at the Home Office until he retired and his influence turned the scales in getting this started. It's a medical problem - that's what we've got to get the legal authorities to understand.

  Psychiatry came into its own in the war. The one positive good that did come out of it - Now first of all I want you to see our initial approach to the problem. Look up ' Miss Marple looked up at the words carved over the large arched doorway:

  RECOVER HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

  'Isn't that splendid! Isn't that just the right note to strike. You don't want to scold these lads - or punish them. That's what they're hankering after half the time, punishment. We want to make them feel what fine fellows they are.' 'Like Edgar Lawson?' said Miss Marple.

  'Interesting case, that. Have you been talking to him?' 'He has been talking to me,' said Miss Marple. She added apologetically, 'I wondered if, perhaps, he isn't a little mad?.' Dr Maverick laughed cheerfully.

  'We're all mad, dear lady,' he said as he ushered her in through the door. 'That's the secret of existence. We're all a little mad.'

  CHAPTER 6

  On the whole it was rather an exhausting day.

  Enthusiasm in itself can be extremely wearing, Miss Marple thought. She felt vaguely dissatisfied with herself and her own reactions. There was a pattern here perhaps several patterns, and yet she herself could obtain no clear glimpse of it or them. Any vague disquietude she felt centred round the pathetic but inconspicuous personality of Edgar Lawson. If she could only find in her memory the right parallel.

  Painstakingly she rejected the curious behaviour of Mr Selkirk's delivery van - the absent-minded postman - the gardener who worked on Whit Monday - and that very curious affair of the summer weight combinations.

  Something that she could not quite put her finger on was wrong about Edgar Lawson - something that went beyond the observed and admitted facts. But for the life of her, Miss Marple did not see how that wrongness, whatever it was, affected her friend Carrie Louise. In the confused patterns of life at Stonygates people's troubles and desires impinged on each other. But none of them (again as far as she could see) impinged on Carrie Louise.

  Carrie Louise... Suddenly Miss Marple realized that it was she alone, except for the absent Ruth, who used that name. To her husband, she was Caroline. To Miss Believer, Cara. Stephen Restarick usually addressed her as Madonna. To Wally she was formally Mrs Serrocold, and Gina elected to address her as Grandam - a mixture, she had explained, of Grande Dame and Grandmamma.

  Was there some significance, perhaps, in the various names that were found for Caroline Louise Serrocold?

  Was she to all of them a symbol and not quite a real person?

  When on the following morning Carrie Louise, drag-ging her feet a little as she walked, came and sat down on the garden seat beside her friend and asked her what she was thinking about, Miss Marple replied promptly: 'You, Carrie Louise.' 'What about me?'

  'Tell me honestly - is there anything here that worries you?'

  'Worries me?' The woman raised wondering clear blue eyes. 'But Jane, what should worry me?'

  'Well, most of us have worries.' Miss Marple's eyes twinkled a little. 'I have. Slugs, you know - and the difficulty of getting linen properly darned - and not being able to get sugar candy for making my damson gin. Oh, lots of little things - it seems unnatural that you shouldn't have any worries at all.'

  'I. suppose I must have really,' said Mrs Serrocold vaguely. 'Lewis works too hard, and Stephen forgets his meals slaving at the theatre, and Gina is very jumpy - but I've never been able to alter people - I don't see how you can. So it wouldn't be any good worrying, would it?' 'Mildred's not very happy, either, is she?'

  'Oh no,' said Carrie Louise. 'Mildred never is happy.

  She wasn't as a child. Quite unlike Pippa, who was always radiant.'

  'Perhaps,' suggested Miss Marple, 'Mildred had cause not to be happy?' Carrie Louise said quietly: 'Because of being jealous? Yes, I daresay. But people don't really need a cause for feeling what they do feel.

  They're just made that way. Don't you think so, Jane?' Miss Marple thought briefly of Miss Moncrieff, a slave to a tyrannical invalid mother. Poor Miss Moncrieff who longed for travel and to see the world. And of how St Mary Mead in a decorous way had rejoiced when Mrs Moncrieff was laid in the churchyard and Miss Moncrieff, with a nice little income, was free at last. And of how Miss Moncrieff, starting on her travels, had got no farther than Hyres where, calling to see one of'mother's oldest friends,' she had been so moved by the plight of an elderly hypochondriac that she had cancelled her travel reservations and taken up her abode in the villa to be bullied, over-worked, and to long wistfully, once more, for the joys of a wider horizon.

  Miss Marple said: 'I expect you're right, Carrie Louise.' 'Of course my being so free from cares is partly due to Jolly. Dear Jolly. She came to me when Johnnie and I were just married and was wonderful from the first. She takes care of me as though I were a baby and quite helpless. She'd do anything for me. I feel quite ashamed sometimes. I really believe Jolly would murder someone for me, Jane. Isn't that an awful thing to say?' 'She's certainly very devoted,' agreed Miss Marple.

  'She gets so indignant.' Mrs Serrocold's silvery laugh rang out. 'She'd like me to be always ordering wonderful clothes, and surrounding myself with luxuries, and she thinks everybody ought to put me first and to dance attendance on me. She's the one person who's absolutely unimpressed by Lewis's enthusiasm. All our poor boys are in her view pampered young criminals and not worth taking trouble over. She thinks this place is damp and bad for my rheumatism, and that I ought to go to Egypt or somewhere warm and dry.'

  'Do you suffer much from rheumatism?'

  'It's got much worse lately. I find it difficult to walk.

  Horrid cramps in my legs. Oh well -' gain there came that bewitching elfin smile, 'age must tell.'

  Miss Believer came out of the french windows and hurried across to them.

  'A telegram, Cara, just come over the telephone.

  Arriving this afternoon, Christian Gulbrandsen.'

  'hristian?' Carrie Louise looked very surprised. 'I'd no i!ea he was in England.'

  'The oak suite, I suppose?'

  'Yes,%p!ase, Jolly. Then there will be no stairs.' Miss Believer nodded and turned back to the house.

  'Christian Gulbrandsen is my stepson,' said Carrie Louise. 'Eric's eldest son. Actual
ly he's two years older than I am. FIe's one of the trustees of the Institute - the principal trustee. How very annoying that Lewis is away.

  Christian hardly ever stays longer than ode night. He's an immensely busy man. And there are sure to be so many things they would want to discuss.'

  Christian Gulbrandsen arrived that afternoon in time for tea. He was a big heavy-featured ma, with a slow methodical way of talking. He greeted Crrie Louise with every sign of affection.

  'And how is our little Carrie Louise? You do not look a day older. Not a day.'

  His hands on her shoulders - he stood smiling down at her. A hand tugged his sleeve.

  'Christian!' 'Ah,' he turned - 'it is Mildred? How are you, Mildred?'

  'I've not really been at all well lately.'

  'That is bad. That is bad.'

  There was a strong resemblance between Christian Gulbrandsen and his half-sister Mildred. There was nearly thirty years' difference in age and they might easily have been taken for father and daughter. Mildred herself seemed particularly pleased by his arrival. She was flushed and talkative, and had talked repeatedly during the day of 'my brother,' 'my brother Christian,' 'my brother Mr Gulbrandsen.'