“I was to choose my own time and moment to make myself known to you if I thought that that would be the better way. You have already asked me if I or my friend, the Governor, had any reason to suspect or know of any other person who might have been guilty of the murder. My friend the Governor certainly suggested nothing of the kind, and he had already taken up the matter with the police officer who had been in charge of the case. A most reliable detective-superintendent with very good experience in these matters.”
“No other man was suggested? No other friend of the girl’s? No other former friend who might have been supplanted?”
“There was nothing of that kind to find. I asked him to tell me a little about you. He did not however consent to do so. He told me you were elderly. He told me that you were a person who knew about people. He told me one other thing.” He paused.
“What’s the other thing?” said Miss Marple. “I have some natural curiosity, you know. I really can’t think of any other advantage I conceivably could have. I am slightly deaf. My eyesight is not quite as good as it used to be. I cannot really think that I have any advantages beyond the fact that I may, I suppose, seem rather foolish and simple, and am in fact, what used to be called in rather earlier days an ‘old pussy.’ I am an old pussy. Is that the sort of thing he said?”
“No,” said Professor Wanstead. “What he said was he thought you had a very fine sense of evil.”
“Oh,” said Miss Marple. She was taken aback.
Professor Wanstead was watching her.
“Would you say that was true?” he said.
Miss Marple was quiet for quite a long time. At last she said,
“Perhaps it is. Yes, perhaps. I have at several different times in my life been apprehensive, have recognized that there was evil in the neighbourhood, the surroundings, that the environment of someone who was evil was near me, connected with what was happening.”
She looked at him suddenly and smiled.
“It’s rather, you know,” she said, “like being born with a very keen sense of smell. You can smell a leak of gas when other people can’t do so. You can distinguish one perfume from another very easily. I had an aunt once,” continued Miss Marple thoughtfully, “who said she could smell when people told a lie. She said there was quite a distinctive odour came to her. Their noses twitched, she said, and then the smell came. I don’t know if it was true or not, but—well, on several occasions she was quite remarkable. She said to my uncle once, ‘Don’t, Jack, engage that young man you were talking to this morning. He was telling you lies the whole time he was talking.’ That turned out to be quite true.”
“A sense of evil,” said Professor Wanstead. “Well, if you do sense evil, tell me. I shall be glad to know. I don’t think I have a particular sense of evil myself. Ill health, yes, but not—not evil up here.” He tapped his forehead.
“I’d better tell you briefly how I came into things now,” said Miss Marple. “Mr. Rafiel, as you know, died. His lawyers asked me to come and see them, apprised me of his proposition. I received a letter from him which explained nothing. After that I heard nothing more for some little time. Then I got a letter from the company who run these tours saying that Mr. Rafiel before his death had made a reservation for me knowing that I should enjoy a trip very much, and wanting to give it me as a surprise present. I was very astonished but took it as an indication of the first step that I was to undertake. I was to go on this tour and presumably in the course of the tour some other indication or hint or clue or direction would come to me. I think it did. Yesterday, no, the day before, I was received on my arrival here by three ladies who live at an old manor house here and who very kindly extended an invitation to me. They had heard from Mr. Rafiel, they said, who had written some time before his death, saying that a very old friend of his would be coming on this tour and would they be kind enough to put her up for two or three days as he thought she was not fit to attempt the particular ascent of this rather difficult climb up the headland to where there was a memorial tower which was the principal event of yesterday’s tour.”
“And you took that also as an indication of what you were to do?”
“Of course,” said Miss Marple. “There can be no other reason for it. He was not a man to shower benefits for nothing, out of compassion for an old lady who wasn’t good at walking up hills. No. He wanted me to go there.”
“And you went there? And what then?”
“Nothing,” said Miss Marple. “Three sisters.”
“Three weird sisters?”
“They ought to have been,” said Miss Marple, “but I don’t think they were. They didn’t seem to be anyway. I don’t know yet. I suppose they may have been—they may be, I mean. They seem ordinary enough. They didn’t belong to this house. It had belonged to an uncle of theirs and they’d come here to live some years ago. They are in rather poor circumstances, they are amiable, not particularly interesting. All slightly different in type. They do not appear to have been well acquainted with Mr. Rafiel. Any conversation I have had with them appears to yield nothing.”
“So you learnt nothing during your stay?”
“I learnt the facts of the case you’ve just told me. Not from them. From an elderly servant, who started her reminiscences dating back to the time of the uncle. She knew of Mr. Rafiel only as a name. But she was eloquent on the theme of the murder: it had all started with the visit here of a son of Mr. Rafiel’s who was a bad lot, of how the girl had fallen in love with him and that he’d strangled the girl, and how sad and tragic and terrible it all was. ‘With bells on,’ as you might say,” said Miss Marple, using a phrase of her youth. “Plenty of exaggeration, but it was a nasty story, and she seemed to believe that the police view was that this hadn’t been his only murder—”
“It didn’t seem to you to connect up with the three weird sisters?”
“No, only that they’d been the guardians of the girl—and had loved her dearly. No more than that.”
“They might know something—something about another man?”
“Yes—that’s what we want, isn’t it? The other man—a man of brutality, who wouldn’t hesitate to bash in a girl’s head after he’d killed her. The kind of man who could be driven frantic with jealousy. There are men like that.”
“No other curious things happened at The Old Manor?”
“Not really. One of the sisters, the youngest I think, kept talking about the garden. She sounded as though she was a very keen gardener, but she couldn’t be because she didn’t know the names of half the things. I laid a trap or two for her, mentioning special rare shrubs and saying did she know it? and yes, she said, wasn’t it a wonderful plant? I said it was not very hardy and she agreed. But she didn’t know anything about plants. That reminds me—”
“Reminds you of what?”
“Well, you’ll think I’m just silly about gardens and plants, but I mean one does know things about them. I mean, I know a few things about birds and I know some things about gardens.”
“And I gather that it’s not birds but gardens that are troubling you.”
“Yes. Have you noticed two middle-aged women on this tour? Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed them. Pair of middle-aged spinsters travelling together.”
“That’s right. Well, I’ve found out something odd about Miss Cooke. That is her name, isn’t it? I mean it’s her name on the tour.”
“Why—has she got another name?”
“I think so. She’s the same person who visited me—I won’t say visited me exactly, but she was outside my garden fence in St. Mary Mead, the village where I live. She expressed pleasure at my garden and talked about gardening with me. Told me she was living in the village and working in somebody’s garden, who’d moved into a new house there. I rather think,” said Miss Marple, “yes, I rather think that the whole thing was lies. There again, she knew nothing about gardening. She pretended to but it wasn’t true.”
“Why do yo
u think she came there?”
“I’d no idea at the time. She said her name was Bartlett—and the name of the woman she said she was living with began with ‘H,’ though I can’t remember it for the moment. Her hair was not only differently done but it was a different colour and her clothes were of a different style. I didn’t recognize her at first on this trip. Just wondered why her face was vaguely familiar. And then suddenly it came to me. Because of the dyed hair. I said where I had seen her before. She admitted that she’d been there—but pretended that she, too, hadn’t recognized me. All lies.”
“And what’s your opinion about all that?”
“Well, one thing certainly—Miss Cooke (to give her her present name) came to St. Mary Mead just to have a look at me—so that she’d be quite sure to be able to recognize me when we met again—”
“And why was that felt to be necessary?”
“I don’t know. There are two possibilities. I’m not sure that I like one of them very much.”
“I don’t know,” said Professor Wanstead, “that I like it very much either.”
They were both silent for a minute or two, and then Professor Wanstead said—
“I don’t like what happened to Elizabeth Temple. You’ve talked to her during this trip?”
“Yes, I have. When she’s better I’d like to talk to her again—she could tell me—us—things about the girl who was murdered. She spoke to me of this girl—who had been at her school, who had been going to marry Mr. Rafiel’s son—but didn’t marry him. Instead she died. I asked how or why she died—and she answered with the word ‘Love.’ I took it as meaning a suicide—but it was murder. Murder through jealousy would fit. Another man. Some other man we’ve got to find. Miss Temple may be able to tell us who he was.”
“No other sinister possibilities?”
“I think, really, it is casual information we need. I see no reason to believe that there is any sinister suggestion in any of the coach passengers—or any sinister suggestion about the people living in The Old Manor House. But one of those three sisters may have known or remembered something that the girl or Michael once said. Clotilde used to take the girl abroad. Therefore, she may know of something that occurred on some foreign trip perhaps. Something that the girl said or mentioned or did on some trip. Some man that the girl met. Something which has nothing to do with The Old Manor House here. It is difficult because only by talking, by casual information, can you get any clue. The second sister, Mrs. Glynne, married fairly early, has spent time, I gather, in India and in Africa. She may have heard of something through her husband, or through her husband’s relations, through various things that are unconnected with The Old Manor House here although she has visited it from time to time. She knew the murdered girl presumably, but I should think she knew her much less well than the other two. But that does not mean that she may not know some significant facts about the girl. The third sister is more scatty, more localized, does not seem to have known the girl as well. But still, she too may have information about possible lovers—or boyfriends—seen the girl with an unknown man. That’s her, by the way, passing the hotel now.”
Miss Marple, however occupied by her tête-à-tête, had not relinquished the habits of a lifetime. A public thoroughfare was always to her an observation post. All the passersby, either loitering or hurrying, had been noticed automatically.
“Anthea Bradbury-Scott—the one with the big parcel. She’s going to the post office, I suppose. It’s just round the corner, isn’t it?”
“Looks a bit daft to me,” said Professor Wanstead, “all that floating hair—grey hair too—a kind of Ophelia of fifty.”
“I thought of Ophelia too, when I first saw her. Oh dear, I wish I knew what I ought to do next. Stay here at the Golden Boar for a day or two, or go on with the coach tour. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you stick your fingers in it long enough, you ought to come up with something—even if one does get pricked in the process.”
Thirteen
BLACK AND RED CHECK
I
Mrs. Sandbourne returned just as the party was sitting down to lunch. Her news was not good. Miss Temple was still unconscious. She certainly could not be moved for several days.
Having given the bulletin, Mrs. Sandbourne turned the conversation to practical matters. She produced suitable timetables of trains for those who wished to return to London and proposed suitable plans for the resumption of the tour on the morrow or the next day. She had a list of suitable short expeditions in the near neighbourhood for this afternoon—small groups in hired cars.
Professor Wanstead drew Miss Marple aside as they went out of the dining room—
“You may want to rest this afternoon. If not, I will call for you here in an hour’s time. There is an interesting church you might care to see—?”
“That would be very nice,” said Miss Marple.
II
Miss Marple sat quite still in the car that had come to fetch her. Professor Wanstead had called for her at the time he had said.
“I thought you might enjoy seeing this particular church. And a very pretty village, too,” he explained. “There’s no reason really why one should not enjoy the local sights when one can.”
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” Miss Marple had said.
She had looked at him with that slightly fluttery gaze of hers.
“Very kind,” she said. “It just seems—well, I don’t want to say it seems heartless, but well, you know what I mean.”
“My dear lady, Miss Temple is not an old friend of yours or anything like that. Sad as this accident has been.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple again, “this is very kind of you.”
Professor Wanstead had opened the door of the car and Miss Marple got into it. It was, she presumed, a hired car. A kindly thought to take an elderly lady to see one of the sights of the neighbourhood. He might have taken somebody younger, more interesting and certainly better looking. Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully once or twice as they drove through the village. He was not looking at her. He was gazing out of his own window.
When they had left the village behind and were on a second class country road twisting round the hillside, he turned his head and said to her,
“We are not going to a church, I am afraid.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I thought perhaps we weren’t.”
“Yes, the idea would have come to you.”
“Where are we going, may I ask?”
“We are going to a hospital, in Carristown.”
“Ah yes, that was where Miss Temple was taken?”
It was a question, though it hardly needed to be one.
“Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Sandbourne saw her and brought me back a letter from the Hospital Authorities. I have just finished talking to them on the telephone.”
“Is she going on well?”
“No. Not going on very well.”
“I see. At least—I hope I don’t see,” said Miss Marple.
“Her recovery is very problematical but there is nothing that can be done. She may not recover consciousness again. On the other hand she may have a few lucid intervals.”
“And you are taking me there? Why? I am not a friend of hers, you know. I only just met her for the first time on this trip.”
“Yes, I realize that. I’m taking you there because in one of the lucid intervals she has had, she asked for you.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple. “I wonder why she should ask for me, why she should have thought that I—that I could be useful in any way to her, or do anything. She is a woman of perception. In her way, you know, a great woman. As Headmistress of Fallowfield she occupied a prominent position in the educational world.”
“The best girls’ school there is, I suppose?”
“Yes. She was a great personality. She was herself a woman of considerable scholarship. Mathematics were her speciality, but she was an ‘all round’—what I should call
an educator. Was interested in education, what girls were fitted for, how to encourage them. Oh, many other things. It is sad and very cruel if she dies,” said Miss Marple. “It will seem such a waste of a life. Although she had retired from her Headmistresship she still exercised a lot of power. This accident—” She stopped. “Perhaps you do not want us to discuss the accident?”
“I think it is better that we should do so. A big boulder crashed down the hillside. It has been known to happen before though only at very long divided intervals of time. However, somebody came and spoke to me about it,” said Professor Wanstead.
“Came and spoke to you about the accident? Who was it?”
“The two young people. Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price.”
“What did they say?”
“Joanna told me that she had the impression there was someone on the hillside. Rather high up. She and Emlyn were climbing up from the lower main path, following a rough track that wound round the curve of the hill. As they turned a corner she definitely saw, outlined against the skyline, a man or a woman who was trying to roll a big boulder forward along the ground. The boulder was rocking—and finally it started to roll, at first slowly and then gathering speed down the hillside. Miss Temple was walking along the main path below, and had come to a point just underneath it when the boulder hit her. If it was done deliberately it might not, of course, have succeeded; it might have missed her—but it did succeed. If what was being attempted was a deliberate attack on the woman walking below it succeeded only too well.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 212