“So I suppose you know the Hillingdons and the Dysons well?”
“Yes, fairly well.”
Miss Marple coughed and lowered her voice slightly.
“Major Palgrave told me such an interesting story,” she said.
“He had a great repertoire of stories, hadn’t he? Of course he had travelled very widely. Africa, India, even China I believe.”
“Yes indeed,” said Miss Marple. “But I didn’t mean one of those stories. This was a story concerned with—well, with one of the people I have just mentioned.”
“Oh!” said Miss Prescott. Her voice held meaning.
“Yes. Now I wonder—” Miss Marple allowed her eyes to travel gently round the beach to where Lucky lay sunning her back. “Very beautifully tanned, isn’t she,” remarked Miss Marple. “And her hair. Most attractive. Practically the same colour as Molly Kendal’s, isn’t it?”
“The only difference,” said Miss Prescott, “is that Molly’s is natural and Lucky’s comes out of a bottle!”
“Really, Joan,” the Canon protested, unexpectedly awake again. “Don’t you think that is rather an uncharitable thing to say?”
“It’s not uncharitable,” said Miss Prescott, acidly. “Merely a fact.”
“It looks very nice to me,” said the Canon.
“Of course. That’s why she does it. But I assure you, my dear Jeremy, it wouldn’t deceive any woman for a moment. Would it?” She appealed to Miss Marple.
“Well, I’m afraid—” said Miss Marple, “of course I haven’t the experience that you have—but I’m afraid—yes I should say definitely not natural. The appearance at the roots every fifth or sixth day—” She looked at Miss Prescott and they both nodded with quiet female assurance.
The Canon appeared to be dropping off again.
“Major Palgrave told me a really extraordinary story,” murmured Miss Marple, “about—well I couldn’t quite make out. I am a little deaf sometimes. He appeared to be saying or hinting—” she paused.
“I know what you mean. There was a great deal of talk at the time—”
“You mean at the time that—”
“When the first Mrs. Dyson died. Her death was quite unexpected. In fact, everybody thought she was a malade imaginaire—a hypochondriac. So when she had the attack and died so unexpectedly, well, of course, people did talk.”
“There wasn’t—any—trouble at the time?”
“The doctor was puzzled. He was quite a young man and he hadn’t had much experience. He was what I call one of those antibiotics-for-all men. You know, the kind that doesn’t bother to look at the patient much, or worry what’s the matter with him. They just give them some kind of pill out of a bottle and if they don’t get better, then they try a different pill. Yes, I believe he was puzzled, but it seemed she had had gastric trouble before. At least her husband said so, and there seemed no reason for believing anything was wrong.”
“But you yourself think—”
“Well, I always try to keep an open mind, but one does wonder, you know. And what with various things people said—”
“Joan!” The Canon sat up. He looked belligerent. “I don’t like—I really don’t like to hear this kind of ill-natured gossip being repeated. We’ve always set our faces against that kind of thing. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil—and what is more, think no evil! That should be the motto of every Christian man and woman.”
The two women sat in silence. They were rebuked, and in deference to their training they deferred to the criticism of a man. But inwardly they were frustrated, irritated and quite unrepentant. Miss Prescott threw a frank glance of irritation towards her brother. Miss Marple took out her knitting and looked at it. Fortunately for them Chance was on their side.
“Mon père,” said a small shrill voice. It was one of the French children who had been playing at the water’s edge. She had come up unnoticed, and was standing by Canon Prescott’s chair.
“Mon père,” she fluted.
“Eh? Yes, my dear? Oui, qu’est-ce qu’il y a, ma petite?”
The child explained. There had been a dispute about who should have the water-wings next and also other matters of seaside etiquette. Canon Prescott was extremely fond of children, especially small girls. He was always delighted to be summoned to act as arbiter in their disputes. He rose willingly now and accompanied the child to the water’s edge. Miss Marple and Miss Prescott breathed deep sighs and turned avidly towards each other.
II
“Jeremy, of course rightly, is very against ill-natured gossip,” said Miss Prescott, “but one cannot really ignore what people are saying. And there was, as I say, a great deal of talk at the time.”
“Yes?” Miss Marple’s tone urged her forward.
“This young woman, you see, Miss Greatorex I think her name was then, I can’t remember now, was a kind of cousin and she looked after Mrs. Dyson. Gave her all her medicines and things like that.” There was a short, meaningless pause. “And of course there had, I understand”—Miss Prescott’s voice was lowered—“been goings-on between Mr. Dyson and Miss Greatorex. A lot of people had noticed them. I mean things like that are quickly observed in a place like this. Then there was some curious story about some stuff that Edward Hillingdon got for her at a chemist.”
“Oh, Edward Hillingdon came into it?”
“Oh yes, he was very much attracted. People noticed it. And Lucky—Miss Greatorex—played them off against each other. Gregory Dyson and Edward Hillingdon. One has to face it, she has always been an attractive woman.”
“Though not as young as she was,” Miss Marple replied.
“Exactly. But she was always very well turned out and made up. Of course not so flamboyant when she was just the poor relation. She always seemed very devoted to the invalid. But, well, you see how it was.”
“What was this story about the chemist—how did that get known?”
“Well, it wasn’t in Jamestown, I think it was when they were in Martinique. The French, I believe, are more lax than we are in the matter of drugs—This chemist talked to someone, and the story got around—Well, you know how these things happen.”
Miss Marple did. None better.
“He said something about Colonel Hillingdon asking for something and not seeming to know what it was he was asking for. Consulting a piece of paper, you know, on which it was written down. Anyway, as I say, there was talk.”
“But I don’t see quite why Colonel Hillingdon—” Miss Marple frowned in perplexity.
“I suppose he was just being used as a cat’s-paw. Anyway, Gregory Dyson married again in an almost indecently short time. Barely a month later, I understand.”
They looked at each other.
“But there was no real suspicion?” Miss Marple asked.
“Oh no, it was just—well, talk. Of course there may have been absolutely nothing in it.”
“Major Palgrave thought there was.”
“Did he say so to you?”
“I wasn’t really listening very closely,” confessed Miss Marple. “I just wondered if—er—well, if he’d said the same thing to you?”
“He did point her out to me one day,” said Miss Prescott.
“Really? He actually pointed her out?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I thought at first it was Mrs. Hillingdon he was pointing out. He wheezed and chuckled a bit and said, ‘Look at that woman over there. In my opinion that’s a woman who’s done murder and got away with it.’ I was very shocked, of course. I said, ‘Surely you’re joking, Major Palgrave,’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes, dear lady, let’s call it joking.’ The Dysons and the Hillingdons were sitting at a table quite near to us, and I was afraid they’d overhear. He chuckled and said ‘Wouldn’t care to go to a drinks party and have a certain person mix me a cocktail. Too much like supper with the Borgias.’”
“How very interesting,” said Miss Marple. “Did he mention—a—a photograph?”
“I don’t remember … Was
it some newspaper cutting?”
Miss Marple, about to speak, shut her lips. The sun was momentarily obscured by a shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon paused beside them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I was wondering where you were,” said Miss Prescott, looking up brightly.
“I’ve been to Jamestown, shopping.”
“Oh, I see.”
Miss Prescott looked round vaguely and Evelyn Hillingdon said:
“Oh, I didn’t take Edward with me. Men hate shopping.”
“Did you find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t that sort of shopping. I just had to go to the chemist.”
With a smile and a slight nod she went on down the beach.
“Such nice people, the Hillingdons,” said Miss Prescott, “though she’s not really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she’s always very pleasant and all that, but one never seems to get to know her any better.”
Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.
“One never knows what she is thinking,” said Miss Prescott.
“Perhaps that is just as well,” said Miss Marple.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh nothing really, only that I’ve always had the feeling that perhaps her thoughts might be rather disconcerting.”
“Oh,” said Miss Prescott, looking puzzled. “I see what you mean.” She went on with a slight change of subject. “I believe they have a very charming place in Hampshire, and a boy—or is it two boys—who have just gone—or one of them—to Winchester.”
“Do you know Hampshire well?”
“No. Hardly at all. I believe their house is somewhere near Alton.”
“I see.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “And where do the Dysons live?”
“California,” said Miss Prescott. “When they are at home, that is. They are great travellers.”
“One really knows so little about the people one meets when one is travelling,” said Miss Marple. “I mean—how shall I put it—one only knows, doesn’t one, what they choose to tell you about themselves. For instance, you don’t really know that the Dysons live in California.”
Miss Prescott looked startled.
“I’m sure Mr. Dyson mentioned it.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what I mean. And the same thing perhaps with the Hillingdons. I mean when you say that they live in Hampshire, you’re really repeating what they told you, aren’t you?”
Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live in Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I was only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know about people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead, which is a place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t, if I may say so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less where Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the South of England and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,” she agreed hastily, “and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that,” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did she really know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott were really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott? They said so. There was no evidence to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not, to put on a dog-collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appropriate conversation. If there was a motive….
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of the world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She had no doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same thing—one believed what people said to one.
Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps … She shook her head thoughtfully.
Nineteen
USES OF A SHOE
Canon Prescott came back from the water’s edge slightly short of breath (playing with children is always exhausting).
Presently he and his sister went back to the hotel, finding the beach a little too hot.
“But,” said Señora de Caspearo scornfully as they walked away—“how can a beach be too hot? It is nonsense that—And look what she wears—her arms and her neck are all covered up. Perhaps it is as well, that. Her skin it is hideous, like a plucked chicken!”
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. Now or never was the time for conversation with Señora de Caspearo. Unfortunately she did not know what to say. There seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet.
“You have children, Señora?” she inquired.
“I have three angels,” said Señora de Caspearo, kissing her fingertips.
Miss Marple was rather uncertain as to whether this meant that Señora de Caspearo’s offspring were in Heaven or whether it merely referred to their characters.
One of the gentlemen in attendance made a remark in Spanish and Señora de Caspearo flung back her head appreciatively and laughed loudly and melodiously.
“You understand what he said?” she inquired of Miss Marple.
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple apologetically.
“It is just as well. He is a wicked man.”
A rapid and spirited interchange of Spanish badinage followed.
“It is infamous—infamous,” said Señora de Caspearo, reverting to English with sudden gravity, “that the police do not let us go from this island. I storm, I scream, I stamp my foot—but all they say is No—No. You know how it will end—we shall all be killed.”
Her bodyguard attempted to reassure her.
“But yes—I tell you it is unlucky here. I knew it from the first—That old Major, the ugly one—he had the Evil Eye—you remember? His eyes they crossed—It is bad, that! I make the Sign of the Horns every time when he looks my way.” She made it in illustration. “Though since he is cross-eyed I am not always sure when he does look my way—”
“He had a glass eye,” said Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. “An accident, I understand, when he was quite young. It was not his fault.”
“I tell you he brought bad luck—I say it is the Evil Eye he had.”
Her hand shot out again in the well-known Latin gesture—the first finger and the little finger sticking out, the two middle ones doubled in. “Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “he is dead—I do not have to look at him any more. I do not like to look at things that are ugly.”
It was, Miss Marple thought, a somewhat cruel epitaph on Major Palgrave.
Farther down the beach Gregory Dyson had come out of the sea. Lucky had turned herself over on the sand. Evelyn Hillingdon was looking at Lucky, and her expression, for some reason, made Miss Marple shiver.
“Surely I can’t be cold—in this hot sun,” she thought.
What was the old phrase—“A goose walking over your grave—”
She got up and went slowly back to her bungalow.
On the way she passed Mr. Rafiel and Esther Walters coming down the beach. Mr. Rafiel winked at her. Miss Marple did not wink back. She looked disapproving.
She went into her bungalow and lay down on her bed. She felt old and tired and worried.
She was quite certain that there was no time to be lost—no time—to—be lost … It was getting late … The sun was going to set—the sun—one must always look at the sun through smoked glass—Where was that piece of smoked glass that someone had given her?…
No, she wouldn’t need it after all. A shadow had come over the sun blotting it out. A shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon’s shadow—No, not Evelyn Hillingdon—The Shadow (what were the words?) the Shadow of the Valley of Death. That was it. She must—what was it? Make the Sign of the Horns—to avert the Evil Eye—Major Palgrave’s Evil Eye.
Her eyelids flickered open—she had been asleep. But there was a sh
adow—someone peering in at her window.
The shadow moved away—and Miss Marple saw who it was—It was Jackson.
“Impertinence—peering in like that,” she thought—and added parenthetically, “Just like Jonas Parry.”
The comparison reflected no credit on Jackson.
Then she wondered why Jackson had been peering into her bedroom. To see if she was there? Or to note that she was there, but was asleep.
She got up, went into the bathroom and peered cautiously through the window.
Arthur Jackson was standing by the door of the bungalow next door. Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. She saw him give a rapid glance round and then slip quickly inside. Interesting, thought Miss Marple. Why did he have to look round in that furtive manner? Nothing in the world could have been more natural than his going into Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow since he himself had a room at the back of it. He was always going in and out of it on some errand or other. So why that quick, guilty glance round? “Only one reason,” said Miss Marple answering her own question, “he wanted to be sure that nobody was observing him enter at this particular moment because of something he was going to do in there.”
Everybody, of course, was on the beach at this moment except those who had gone for expeditions. In about twenty minutes or so, Jackson himself would arrive on the beach in the course of his duties to aid Mr. Rafiel to take his sea dip. If he wanted to do anything in the bungalow unobserved, now was a very good time. He had satisfied himself that Miss Marple was asleep on her bed, he had satisfied himself that there was nobody near at hand to observe his movements. Well, she must do her best to do exactly that.
Sitting down on her bed, Miss Marple removed her neat sandal shoes and replaced them with a pair of plimsolls. Then she shook her head, removed the plimsolls, burrowed in her suitcase and took out a pair of shoes the heel of one of which she had recently caught on a hook by the door. It was now in a slightly precarious state and Miss Marple adroitly rendered it even more precarious by attention with a nail file. Then she emerged with due precaution from her door walking in stockinged feet. With all the care of a Big Game Hunter approaching up-wind of a herd of antelope, Miss Marple gently circumnavigated Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. Cautiously she manoeuvred her way around the corner of the house. She put on one of the shoes she was carrying, gave a final wrench to the heel of the other, sank gently to her knees and lay prone under the window. If Jackson heard anything, if he came to the window to look out, an old lady would have had a fall owing to the heel coming off her shoe. But evidently Jackson had heard nothing.
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 175