Clotilde, Miss Marple thought, was certainly no Ophelia, but she would have made a magnificent Clytemnestra—she could have stabbed a husband in his bath with exultation. But since she had never had a husband, that solution wouldn’t do. Miss Marple could not see her murdering anyone else but a husband—and there had been no Agamemnon in this house.
Clotilde Bradbury-Scott, Anthea Bradbury-Scott, Lavinia Glynne. Clotilde was handsome, Lavinia was plain but pleasant-looking, Anthea had one eyelid which twitched from time to time. Her eyes were large and grey and she had an odd way of glancing round to right and then to left, and then suddenly, in a rather strange manner, behind her over her shoulder. It was as though she felt someone was watching her all the time. Odd, thought Miss Marple. She wondered a little about Anthea.
They sat down and conversation ensued. Mrs. Glynne left the room, apparently for the kitchen. She was, it seemed, the active domestic one of the three. The conversation took a usual course. Clotilde Bradbury-Scott explained that the house was a family one. It had belonged to her great-uncle and then to her uncle and when he had died it was left to her and her two sisters who had joined her there.
“He only had one son, you see,” explained Miss Bradbury-Scott, “and he was killed in the war. We are really the last of the family, except for some very distant cousins.”
“A beautifully proportioned house,” said Miss Marple. “Your sister tells me it was built about 1780.”
“Yes, I believe so. One could wish, you know, it was not quite so large and rambling.”
“Repairs too,” said Miss Marple, “come very heavy nowadays.”
“Oh yes, indeed,” Clotilde sighed. “And in many ways we have to let a lot of it just fall down. Sad, but there it is. A lot of the outhouses, for instance, and a greenhouse. We had a very beautiful big greenhouse.”
“Lovely muscat grapevine in it,” said Anthea. “And Cherry Pie used to grow all along the walls inside. Yes, I really regret that very much. Of course, during the war one could not get any gardeners. We had a very young gardener and then he was called up. One does not of course grudge that, but all the same it was impossible to get things repaired and so the whole greenhouse fell down.”
“So did the little conservatory near the house.”
Both sisters sighed, with the sighing of those who have noted time passing, and times changing—but not for the better.
There was a melancholy here in this house, thought Miss Marple. It was impregnated somehow with sorrow—a sorrow that could not be dispersed or removed since it had penetrated too deep. It had sunk in … She shivered suddenly.
Nine
POLYGONUM BALDSCHUANICUM
The meal was conventional. A small joint of mutton, roast potatoes, followed by a plum tart with a small jug of cream and rather indifferent pastry. There were a few pictures round the dining room wall, family pictures, Miss Marple presumed, Victorian portraits without any particular merit, the sideboard was large and heavy, a handsome piece of plum-coloured mahogany. The curtains were of dark crimson damask and at the big mahogany table ten people could easily have been seated.
Miss Marple chatted about the incidents of the tour in so far as she had been on it. As this, however, had only been three days, there was not very much to say.
“Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, was an old friend of yours?” said the eldest Miss Bradbury-Scott.
“Not really,” said Miss Marple. “I met him first when I was on a cruise to the West Indies. He was out there for his health, I imagine.”
“Yes, he had been very crippled for some years,” said Anthea.
“Very sad,” said Miss Marple. “Very sad indeed. I really admired his fortitude. He seemed to manage to do so much work. Every day, you know, he dictated to his secretary and was continually sending off cables. He did not seem to give in at all kindly to being an invalid.”
“Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Anthea.
“We have not seen much of him of late years,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He was a busy man, of course. He always remembered us at Christmas very kindly.”
“Do you live in London, Miss Marple?” asked Anthea.
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “I live in the country. A very small place halfway between Loomouth and Market Basing. About twenty-five miles from London. It used to be a very pretty old-world village but of course like everything else, it is becoming what they call developed nowadays.” She added, “Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, lived in London? At least I noticed that in the St. Honoré hotel register his address was somewhere in Eaton Square, I think, or was it Belgrave Square?”
“He had a country house in Kent,” said Clotilde. “He used to entertain there, I think, sometimes. Business friends, mostly you know, or people from abroad. I don’t think any of us ever visited him there. He nearly always entertained us in London on the rare occasions when we happened to meet.”
“It was very kind of him,” said Miss Marple, “to suggest to you that you should invite me here during the course of this tour. Very thoughtful. One wouldn’t really have expected a busy man such as he must have been to have had such kindly thoughts.”
“We have invited before friends of his who have been on these tours. On the whole they are very considerate the way they arrange these things. It is impossible, of course, to suit everybody’s taste. The young ones naturally wish to walk, to make long excursions, to ascend hills for a view, and all that sort of thing. And the older ones who are not up to it, remain in the hotels, but hotels round here are not really at all luxurious. I am sure you would have found today’s trip and the one to St. Bonaventure tomorrow also, very fatiguing. Tomorrow I believe there is a visit to an island, you know, in a boat and sometimes it can be very rough.”
“Even going round houses can be very tiring,” said Mrs. Glynne.
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple. “So much walking and standing about. One’s feet get very tired. I suppose really I ought not to take these expeditions, but it is such a temptation to see beautiful buildings and fine rooms and furniture. All these things. And of course some splendid pictures.”
“And the gardens,” said Anthea. “You like gardens, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “specially the gardens. From the description in the prospectus I am really looking forward very much to seeing some of the really finely kept gardens of the historic houses we have still to visit.” She beamed round the table.
It was all very pleasant, very natural, and yet she wondered why for some reason she had a feeling of strain. A feeling that there was something unnatural here. But what did she mean by unnatural? The conversation was ordinary enough, consisting mainly of platitudes. She herself was making conventional remarks and so were the three sisters.
The Three Sisters, thought Miss Marple once again considering that phrase. Why did anything thought of in threes somehow seem to suggest a sinister atmosphere? The Three Sisters. The Three Witches of Macbeth. Well, one could hardly compare these three sisters to the three witches. Although Miss Marple had always thought at the back of her mind that the theatrical producers made a mistake in the way in which they produced the three witches. One production which she had seen, indeed, seemed to her quite absurd. The witches had looked more like pantomime creatures with flapping wings and ridiculously spectacular steeple hats. They had danced and slithered about. Miss Marple remembered saying to her nephew, who was standing her this Shakespearean treat, “You know, Raymond, my dear, if I were ever producing this splendid play I would make the three witches quite different. I would have them three ordinary, normal old women. Old Scottish women. They wouldn’t dance or caper. They would look at each other rather slyly and you would feel a sort of menace just behind the ordinariness of them.”
Miss Marple helped herself to the last mouthful of plum tart and looked across the table at Anthea. Ordinary, untidy, very vague-looking, a bit scatty. Why should she feel that Anthea was sinister?
“I am imagining things,” said Miss Marple t
o herself. “I mustn’t do that.”
After luncheon she was taken on a tour of the garden. It was Anthea who was deputed to accompany her. It was, Miss Marple thought, rather a sad progress. Here, there had once been a well kept, though certainly not in any way an outstanding or remarkable, garden. It had had the elements of an ordinary Victorian garden. A shrubbery, a drive of speckled laurels, no doubt there had once been a well kept lawn and paths, a kitchen garden of about an acre and a half, too big evidently for the three sisters who lived here now. Part of it was unplanted and had gone largely to weeds. Ground elder had taken over most of the flower beds and Miss Marple’s hands could hardly restrain themselves from pulling up the vagrant bindweed asserting its superiority.
Miss Anthea’s long hair flapped in the wind, shedding from time to time a vague hairpin on the path or the grass. She talked rather jerkily.
“You have a very nice garden, I expect,” she said.
“Oh, it’s a very small one,” said Miss Marple.
They had come along a grass path and were pausing in front of a kind of hillock that rested against the wall at the end of it.
“Our greenhouse,” said Miss Anthea, mournfully.
“Oh yes, where you had such a delightful grapevine.”
“Three vines,” said Anthea. “A Black Hamburg and one of those small white grapes, very sweet, you know. And a third one of beautiful muscats.”
“And a heliotrope, you said.”
“Cherry Pie,” said Anthea.
“Ah yes, Cherry Pie. Such a lovely smell. Was there any bomb trouble round here? Did that—er—knock the greenhouse down?”
“Oh no, we never suffered from anything of that kind. This neighbourhood was quite free of bombs. No, I’m afraid it just fell down from decay. We hadn’t been here so very long and we had no money to repair it, or to build it up again. And in fact, it wouldn’t have been worth it really because we couldn’t have kept it up even if we did. I’m afraid we just let it fall down. There was nothing else we could do. And now you see, it’s all grown over.”
“Ah that, completely covered by—what is that flowering creeper just coming into bloom?”
“Oh yes. It’s quite a common one,” said Anthea. “It begins with a P. Now what is the name of it?” she said doubtfully. “Poly something, something like that.”
“Oh yes. I think I do know the name. Polygonum Baldschuanicum. Very quick growing, I think, isn’t it? Very useful really if one wants to hide any tumbledown building or anything ugly of that kind.”
The mound in front of her was certainly thickly covered with the all-enveloping green and white flowering plant. It was, as Miss Marple well knew, a kind of menace to anything else that wanted to grow. Polygonum covered everything, and covered it in a remarkably short time.
“The greenhouse must have been quite a big one,” she said.
“Oh yes—we had peaches in it, too—and nectarines.” Anthea looked miserable.
“It looks really very pretty now,” said Miss Marple in a consoling tone. “Very pretty little white flowers, aren’t they?”
“We have a very nice magnolia tree down this path to the left,” said Anthea. “Once I believe there used to be a very fine border here—a herbaceous border. But that again one cannot keep up. It is too difficult. Everything is too difficult. Nothing is like it used to be—it’s all spoilt—everywhere.”
She led the way quickly down a path at right angles which ran along a side wall. Her pace had increased. Miss Marple could hardly keep up with her. It was, thought Miss Marple, as though she were deliberately being steered away from the Polygonum mound by her hostess. Steered away as from some ugly or displeasing spot. Was she ashamed perhaps that the past glories no longer remained? The Polygonum certainly was growing with extraordinary abandonment. It was not even being clipped or kept to reasonable proportions. It made a kind of flowery wilderness of that bit of the garden.
She almost looks as though she was running away from it, thought Miss Marple, as she followed her hostess. Presently her attention was diverted to a broken down pigsty which had a few rose tendrils round it.
“My great-uncle used to keep a few pigs,” explained Anthea, “but of course one would never dream of doing anything of that kind nowadays, would one? Rather too noisome, I am afraid. We have a few floribunda roses near the house. I really think floribundas are such a great answer to difficulties.”
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple.
She mentioned the names of a few recent productions in the rose line. All the names, she thought, were entirely strange to Miss Anthea.
“Do you often come on these tours?”
The question came suddenly.
“You mean the tours of houses and of gardens?”
“Yes. Some people do it every year.”
“Oh I couldn’t hope to do that. They’re rather expensive, you see. A friend very kindly gave me a present of this to celebrate my next birthday. So kind.”
“Oh. I wondered. I wondered why you came. I mean—it’s bound to be rather tiring, isn’t it? Still, if you usually go to the West Indies, and places like that….”
“Oh, the West Indies was the result of kindness, too. On the part of a nephew, that time. A dear boy. So very thoughtful for his old aunt.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I see.”
“I don’t know what one would do without the younger generation,” said Miss Marple. “They are so kind, are they not?”
“I—I suppose so. I don’t really know. I—we haven’t—any young relations.”
“Does your sister, Mrs. Glynne, have any children? She did not mention any. One never likes to ask.”
“No. She and her husband never had any children. It’s as well perhaps.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Miss Marple wondered as they returned to the house.
Ten
“OH! FOND, OH! FAIR, THE DAYS THAT WERE”
I
At half past eight the next morning there was a smart tap on the door, and in answer to Miss Marple’s “Come in” the door was opened and an elderly woman entered, bearing a tray with a teapot, a cup and a milk jug and a small plate of bread and butter.
“Early morning tea, ma’am,” she said cheerfully. “It’s a nice day, it is. I see you’ve got your curtains drawn back already. You’ve slept well then?”
“Very well indeed,” said Miss Marple, laying aside a small devotional book which she had been reading.
“Well, it’s a lovely day, it is. They’ll have it nice for going to the Bonaventure Rocks. It’s just as well you’re not doing it. It’s cruel hard on the legs, it is.”
“I’m really very happy to be here,” said Miss Marple. “So kind of Miss Bradbury-Scott and Mrs. Glynne to issue this invitation.”
“Ah well, it’s nice for them too. It cheers them up to have a bit of company come to the house. Ah, it’s a sad place nowadays, so it is.”
She pulled the curtains at the window rather more fully, pushed back a chair and deposited a can of hot water in the china basin.
“There’s a bathroom on the next floor,” she said, “but we think it’s better always for someone elderly to have their hot water here, so they don’t have to climb the stairs.”
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure—you know this house well?”
“I was here as a girl—I was the housemaid then. Three servants they had—a cook, a housemaid—a parlourmaid—kitchen maid too at one time. That was in the old Colonel’s time. Horses he kept too, and a groom. Ah, those were the days. Sad it is when things happen the way they do. He lost his wife young, the Colonel did. His son was killed in the war and his only daughter went away to live on the other side of the world. Married a New Zealander she did. Died having a baby and the baby died too. He was a sad man living alone here, and he let the house go—it wasn’t kept up as it should have been. When he died he left the place to his niece Miss Clotilde and her two sisters, and she and Miss Anthea came here to live—and lat
er Miss Lavinia lost her husband and came to join them—” she sighed and shook her head. “They never did much to the house—couldn’t afford it—and they let the garden go as well—”
“It all seems a great pity,” said Miss Marple.
“And such nice ladies as they all are, too—Miss Anthea is the scatty one, but Miss Clotilde went to university and is very brainy—she talks three languages—and Mrs. Glynne, she’s a very nice lady indeed. I thought when she came to join them as things might go better. But you never know, do you, what the future holds? I feel sometimes, as though there was a doom on this house.”
Miss Marple looked enquiring.
“First one thing and then another. The dreadful plane accident—in Spain it was—and everybody killed. Nasty things, aeroplanes—I’d never go in one of them. Miss Clotilde’s friends were both killed, they were husband and wife—the daughter was still at school, luckily, and escaped, but Miss Clotilde brought her here to live and did everything for her. Took her abroad for trips—to Italy and France, treated her like a daughter. She was such a happy girl—and a very sweet nature. You’d never dream that such an awful thing could happen.”
“An awful thing. What was it? Did it happen here?”
“No, not here, thank God. Though in a way you might say it did happen here. It was here that she met him. He was in the neighbourhood—and the ladies knew his father, who was a very rich man, so he came here to visit—that was the beginning—”
“They fell in love?”
“Yes, she fell in love with him right away. He was an attractive-looking boy, with a nice way of talking and passing the time of day. You’d never think—you’d never think for one moment—” she broke off.
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 208