The Complete Miss Marple Collection

by Agatha Christie

  “There was a love affair? And it went wrong? And the girl committed suicide?”

  “Suicide?” The old woman stared at Miss Marple with startled eyes.

  “Whoever now told you that? Murder it was, barefaced murder. Strangled and her head beaten to pulp. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify her—she’s never been quite the same since. They found her body a good thirty miles from here—in the scrub of a disused quarry. And it’s believed that it wasn’t the first murder he’d done. There had been other girls. Six months she’d been missing. And the police searching far and wide. Oh! A wicked devil he was—a bad lot from the day he was born or so it seems. They say nowadays as there are those as can’t help what they do—not right in the head, and they can’t be held responsible. I don’t believe a word of it! Killers are killers. And they won’t even hang them nowadays. I know as there’s often madness as runs in old families—there was the Derwents over at Brassington—every second generation one or other of them died in the loony bin—and there was old Mrs. Paulett; walked about the lanes in her diamond tiara saying she was Marie Antoinette until they shut her up. But there wasn’t anything really wrong with her—just silly like. But this boy. Yes, he was a devil right enough.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  “They’d abolished hanging by then—or else he was too young. I can’t remember it all now. They found him guilty. It may have been Bostol or Broadsand—one of those places beginning with ‘B’ as they sent him to.”

  “What was the name of the boy?”

  “Michael—can’t remember his last name. It’s ten years ago that it happened—one forgets. Italian sort of name—like a picture. Someone who paints pictures—Raffle, that’s it—”

  “Michael Rafiel?”

  “That’s right! There was a rumour as went about that his father being so rich got him wangled out of prison. An escape like the Bank Robbers. But I think as that was just talk—”

  So it had not been suicide. It had been murder. “Love!” Elizabeth Temple had named as the cause of a girl’s death. In a way she was right. A young girl had fallen in love with a killer—and for love of him had gone unsuspecting to an ugly death.

  Miss Marple gave a little shudder. On her way along the village street yesterday she had passed a newspaper placard:

  EPSOM DOWNS MURDER, SECOND GIRL’S BODY DISCOVERED, YOUTH ASKED TO ASSIST POLICE.

  So history repeated itself. An old pattern—an ugly pattern. Some lines of forgotten verse came haltingly into her brain:

  Rose white youth, passionate, pale,

  A singing stream in a silent vale,

  A fairy prince in a prosy tale,

  Oh there’s nothing in life so finely frail

  As Rose White Youth.

  Who was there to guard Youth from Pain and Death? Youth who could not, who had never been able to, guard itself. Did they know too little? Or was it that they knew too much? And therefore thought they knew it all.

  II

  Miss Marple, coming down the stairs that morning, probably rather earlier than she had been expected, found no immediate sign of her hostesses. She let herself out at the front door and wandered once round the garden. It was not because she’d really enjoyed this particular garden. It was some vague feeling that there was something here that she ought to notice, something that would give her some idea, or that had given her some idea only she had not—well, frankly, she had not been bright enough to realize just what the bright idea had been. Something she ought to take note of, something that had a bearing.

  She was not at the moment anxious to see any of the three sisters. She wanted to turn a few things over in her mind. The new facts that had come to her through Janet’s early tea chat.

  A side gate stood open and she went through it to the village street and along a line of small shops to where a steeple poked up announcing the site of the church and its churchyard. She pushed open the lych-gate and wandered about among the graves, some dating from quite a while back, some by the far wall later ones, and one or two beyond the wall in what was obviously a new enclosure. There was nothing of great interest among the older tombs. Certain names recurred as they do in villages. A good many Princes of village origin had been buried. Jasper Prince, deeply regretted. Margery Prince, Edgar and Walter Prince, Melanie Prince, 4 years old. A family record. Hiram Broad—Ellen Jane Broad, Eliza Broad, 91 years.

  She was turning away from the latter when she observed an elderly man moving in slow motion among the graves, tidying up as he walked. He gave her a salute and a “good morning.”

  “Good morning,” said Miss Marple. “A very pleasant day.”

  “It’ll turn to rain later,” said the old man.

  He spoke with the utmost certainty.

  “There seem to be a lot of Princes and Broads buried here,” said Miss Marple.

  “Ah yes, there’ve always been Princes here. Used to own quite a bit of land once. There have been Broads a good many years, too.”

  “I see a child is buried here. Very sad when one sees a child’s grave.”

  “Ah, that’ll be little Melanie that was. Mellie, we called her. Yes, it was a sad death. Run over, she was. Ran out into the street, went to get sweets at the sweet shop. Happens a lot nowadays with cars going through at the pace they do.”

  “It is sad to think,” said Miss Marple, “that there are so many deaths all the time. And one doesn’t really notice it until one looks at the inscriptions in the churchyard. Sickness, old age, children run over, sometimes even more dreadful things. Young girls killed. Crimes, I mean.”

  “Ah, yes, there’s a lot of that about. Silly girls, I call most of ’em. And their mums haven’t got time to look after them properly nowadays—what with going out to work so much.”

  Miss Marple rather agreed with his criticism, but had no wish to waste time in agreement on the trend of the day.

  “Staying at The Old Manor House, aren’t you?” the old man asked. “Come here on the coach tour I saw. But it got too much for you, I suppose. Some of those that are gettin’ on can’t always take it.”

  “I did find it a little exhausting,” confessed Miss Marple, “and a very kind friend of mine, a Mr. Rafiel, wrote to some friends of his here and they invited me to stay for a couple of nights.”

  The name, Rafiel, clearly meant nothing to the elderly gardener.

  “Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters have been very kind,” said Miss Marple. “I suppose they’ve lived here a long time?”

  “Not so long as that. Twenty years maybe. Belonged to old Colonel Bradbury-Scott. The Old Manor House did. Close on seventy he was when he died.”

  “Did he have any children?”

  “A son what was killed in the war. That’s why he left the place to his nieces. Nobody else to leave it to.”

  He went back to his work amongst the graves.

  Miss Marple went into the church. It had felt the hand of a Victorian restorer, and had bright Victorian glass in the windows. One or two brasses and some tablets on the walls were all that was left of the past.

  Miss Marple sat down in an uncomfortable pew and wondered about things.

  Was she on the right track now? Things were connecting up—but the connections were far from clear.

  A girl had been murdered—(actually several girls had been murdered)—suspected young men (or “youths” as they were usually called nowadays) had been rounded up by the police, to “assist them in their enquiries.” A common pattern, but this was all old history, dating back ten or twelve years. There was nothing to find out—now, no problems to solve. A tragedy labelled Finis.

  What could be done by her? What could Mr. Rafiel possibly want her to do?

  Elizabeth Temple … She must get Elizabeth Temple to tell her more. Elizabeth had spoken of a girl who had been engaged to be married to Michael Rafiel. But was that really so? That did not seem to be known to those in The Old Manor House.

  A more familiar version came into Miss Marple’
s mind—the kind of story that had been reasonably frequent in her own village. Starting as always, “Boy meets girl.” Developing in the usual way—

  “And then the girl finds she is pregnant,” said Miss Marple to herself, “and she tells the boy and she wants him to marry her. But he, perhaps, doesn’t want to marry her—he has never had any idea of marrying her. But things may be made difficult for him in this case. His father, perhaps, won’t hear of such a thing. Her relations will insist that he ‘does the right thing.’ And by now he is tired of the girl—he’s got another girl perhaps. And so he takes a quick brutal way out—strangles her, beats her head to a pulp to avoid identification. It fits with his record—a brutal sordid crime—but forgotten and done with.”

  She looked round the church in which she was sitting. It looked so peaceful. The reality of Evil was hard to believe in. A flair for Evil—that was what Mr. Rafiel had attributed to her. She rose and walked out of the church and stood looking round the churchyard again. Here, amongst the gravestones and their worn inscriptions, no sense of Evil moved in her.

  Was it Evil she had sensed yesterday at The Old Manor House? That deep depression of despair, that dark desperate grief. Anthea Bradbury-Scott, her eyes gazing fearfully back over one shoulder, as though fearing some presence that stood there—always stood there—behind her.

  They knew something, those Three Sisters, but what was it that they knew?

  Elizabeth Temple, she thought again. She pictured Elizabeth Temple with the rest of the coach party, striding across the downs at this moment, climbing up a steep path and gazing over the cliffs out to sea.

  Tomorrow, when she rejoined the tour, she would get Elizabeth Temple to tell her more.

  III

  Miss Marple retraced her steps to The Old Manor House, walking rather slowly because she was by now tired. She could not really feel that her morning had been productive in any way. So far The Old Manor House had given her no distinctive ideas of any kind, a tale of a past tragedy told by Janet, but there were always past tragedies treasured in the memories of domestic workers and which were remembered quite as clearly as all the happy events such as spectacular weddings, big entertainments and successful operations or accidents from which people had recovered in a miraculous manner.

  As she drew near the gate she saw two female figures standing there. One of them detached itself and came to meet her. It was Mrs. Glynne.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said. “We wondered, you know. I thought you must have gone out for a walk somewhere and I did so hope you wouldn’t overtire yourself. If I had known you had come downstairs and gone out, I would have come with you to show anything there is to show. Not that there is very much.”

  “Oh, I just wandered around,” said Miss Marple. “The churchyard, you know, and the church. I’m always very interested in churches. Sometimes there are very curious epitaphs. Things like that. I make quite a collection of them. I suppose the church here was restored in Victorian times?”

  “Yes, they did put in some rather ugly pews, I think. You know, good quality wood, and strong and all that, but not very artistic.”

  “I hope they didn’t take away anything of particular interest.”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s not really a very old church.”

  “There did not seem to be many tablets or brasses or anything of that kind,” agreed Miss Marple.

  “You are quite interested in ecclesiastical architecture?”

  “Oh, I don’t make a study of it or anything like that, but of course in my own village, St. Mary Mead, things do rather revolve round the church. I mean, they always have. In my young days, that was so. Nowadays of course it’s rather different. Were you brought up in this neighbourhood?”

  “Oh, not really. We lived not very far away, about thirty miles or so. At Little Herdsley. My father was a retired serviceman—a Major in the Artillery. We came over here occasionally to see my uncle—indeed to see my great-uncle before him. No. I’ve not even been here very much of late years. My other two sisters moved in after my uncle’s death, but at that time I was still abroad with my husband. He only died about four or five years ago.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “They were anxious I should come and join them here and really, it seemed the best thing to do. We had lived in India for some years. My husband was still stationed there at the time of his death. It is very difficult nowadays to know where one would wish to—should I say, put one’s roots down.”

  “Yes, indeed. I can quite see that. And you felt, of course, that you had roots here since your family had been here for a long time.”

  “Yes. Yes, one did feel that. Of course, I’d always kept up with my sisters, had been to visit them. But things are always very different from what one thinks they will be. I have bought a small cottage near London, near Hampton Court, where I spend a good deal of my time, and I do a little occasional work for one or two charities in London.”

  “So your time is fully occupied. How wise of you.”

  “I have felt of late that I should spend more time here, perhaps. I’ve been a little worried about my sisters.”

  “Their health?” suggested Miss Marple. “One is rather worried nowadays, especially as there is not really anyone competent whom one can employ to look after people as they become rather feebler or have certain ailments. So much rheumatism and arthritis about. One is always so afraid of people falling down in the bath or an accident coming down stairs. Something of that kind.”

  “Clotilde has always been very strong,” said Mrs. Glynne. “Tough, I should describe her. But I am rather worried sometimes about Anthea. She is vague, you know, very vague indeed. And she wanders off sometimes—and doesn’t seem to know where she is.”

  “Yes, it is sad when people worry. There is so much to worry one.”

  “I don’t really think there is much to worry Anthea.”

  “She worries about income tax, perhaps, money affairs,” suggested Miss Marple.

  “No, no, not that so much but—oh, she worries so much about the garden. She remembers the garden as it used to be, and she’s very anxious, you know, to—well, to spend money in putting things right again. Clotilde has had to tell her that really one can’t afford that nowadays. But she keeps talking of the hothouses, the peaches that used to be there. The grapes—and all that.”

  “And the Cherry Pie on the walls?” suggested Miss Marple, remembering a remark.

  “Fancy your remembering that. Yes. Yes, it’s one of the things one does remember. Such a charming smell, heliotrope. And such a nice name for it, Cherry Pie. One always remembers that. And the grapevine. The little, small, early sweet grapes. Ah well, one must not remember the past too much.”

  “And the flower borders too, I suppose,” said Miss Marple.

  “Yes. Yes, Anthea would like to have a big well kept herbaceous border again. Really not feasible now. It is as much as one can do to get local people who will come and mow the lawns every fortnight. Every year one seems to employ a different firm. And Anthea would like pampas grass planted again. And the Mrs. Simpkin pinks. White, you know. All along the stone edge border. And a fig tree that grew just outside the greenhouse. She remembers all these and talks about them.”

  “It must be difficult for you.”

  “Well, yes. Arguments, you see, hardly appeal in any way. Clotilde, of course, is very downright about things. She just refuses point-blank and says she doesn’t want to hear another word about it.”

  “It is difficult,” said Miss Marple, “to know how to take things. Whether one should be firm. Rather authoritative. Perhaps, even, well, just a little—a little fierce, you know, or whether one should be sympathetic. Listen to things and perhaps hold out hopes which one knows are not justified. Yes, it’s difficult.”

  “But it’s easier for me because you see I go away again, and then come back now and then to stay. So it’s easy for me to pretend things may be easier soon and that something may be done. Bu
t really, the other day when I came home and I found that Anthea had tried to engage a most expensive firm of landscape gardeners to renovate the garden, to build up the greenhouse again—which is quite absurd because even if you put vines in they would not bear for another two or three years. Clotilde knew nothing about it and she was extremely angry when she discovered the estimate for this work on Anthea’s desk. She was really quite unkind.”

  “So many things are difficult,” said Miss Marple.

  It was a useful phrase which she used often.

  “I shall have to go rather early tomorrow morning. I think,” said Miss Marple. “I was making enquiries at the Golden Boar where I understand the coach party assembles tomorrow morning. They are making quite an early start. Nine o’clock, I understand.”

  “Oh dear. I hope you will not find it too fatiguing.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I gather we are going to a place called—now wait a minute, what was it called?—Stirling St. Mary. Something like that. And it does not seem to be very far away. There’s an interesting church to see on the way and a castle. In the afternoon there is a quite pleasant garden, not too many acres; but some special flowers. I feel sure that after this very nice rest that I have had here, I shall be quite all right. I understand now that I would have been very tired if I had had these days of climbing up cliffsides and all the rest of it.”

  “Well, you must rest this afternoon, so as to be fresh for tomorrow,” said Mrs. Glynne, as they went into the house. “Miss Marple has been to visit the church,” said Mrs. Glynne to Clotilde.

  “I’m afraid there is not very much to see,” said Clotilde. “Victorian glass of a most hideous kind, I think myself. No expense spared. I’m afraid my uncle was partly to blame. He was very pleased with those rather crude reds and blues.”

  “Very crude. Very vulgar, I always think,” said Lavinia Glynne.

  Miss Marple settled down after lunch to have a nap, and she did not join her hostesses until nearly dinnertime. After dinner a good deal of chat went on until it was bedtime. Miss Marple set the tone in remembrances … Remembrances of her own youth, her early days, places she had visited, travels or tours she had made, occasional people she had known.