“It certainly seems likely,” said Miss Marple. “Was she a girl who did well at school and all that?”
“Ah no, she wasn’t. She was idle and she wasn’t too clever at her books either. No. She was all for the boys from the time she was twelve-years-old onwards. I think in the end she must have gone off with someone or other for good. But she never let anyone know. She never sent as much as a postcard. Went off, I think, with someone as promised her things. You know. Another girl I knew—but that was when I was young—went off with one of them Africans. He told her as his father was a Shake. Funny sort of word, but a shake I think it was. Anyway it was somewhere in Africa or in Algiers. Yes, in Algiers it was. Somewhere there. And she was going to have all sorts of wonderful things. He had six camels, the boy’s father, she said and a whole troop of horses and she was going to live in a wonderful house, she was, with carpets hanging up all over the walls, which seems a funny place to put carpets. And off she went. She come back again three years later. Yes. Terrible time, she’d had. Terrible. They lived in a nasty little house made of earth. Yes, it was. And nothing much to eat except what they call cos-cos which I always thought was lettuce, but it seems it isn’t. Something more like semolina pudding. Oh terrible it was. And in the end he said she was no good to him and he’d divorce her. He said he’d only got to say ‘I divorce you’ three times, and he did and walked out and somehow or other, some kind of Society out there took charge of her and paid her fare home to England. And there she was. Ah, but that was about thirty to forty years ago, that was. Now Nora, that was only about seven or eight years ago. But I expect she’ll be back one of these days, having learnt her lesson and finding out that all these fine promises didn’t come to much.”
“Had she anyone to go to here except her—her mother—your cousin, I mean? Anyone who—”
“Well, there’s many as was kind to her. There was the people at The Old Manor House, you know. Mrs. Glynne wasn’t there then, but Miss Clotilde, she was always one to be good to the girls from school. Yes, many a nice present she’s given Nora. She gave her a very nice scarf and a pretty dress once. Very nice, it was. A summer frock, a sort of foulard silk. Ah, she was very kind, Miss Clotilde was. Tried to make Nora take more interest in her schooling. Lots of things like that. Advised her against the way she was going on because, you see—well, I wouldn’t like to say it, not when she’s my cousin’s child though, mark you, my cousin is only one who married my boy cousin, that is to say—but I mean it was something terrible the way she went on with all the boys. Anyone could pick her up. Real sad it is. I’d say she’ll go on the streets in the end. I don’t believe she has any future but that. I don’t like to say these things, but there it is. Anyway, perhaps it’s better than getting herself murdered like Miss Hunt did, what lived at The Old Manor House. Cruel, that was. They thought she’d gone off with someone and the police, they was busy. Always asking questions and having the young men who’d been with the girl up to help them with their enquiries and all that. Geoffrey Grant there was, Billy Thompson, and the Landfords’ Harry. All unemployed—with plenty of jobs going if they’d wanted to take them. Things usedn’t to be like that when I was young. Girls behaved proper. And the boys knew they’d got to work if they wanted to get anywhere.”
Miss Marple talked a little more, said that she was now quite restored, thanked Mrs. Blackett, and went out.
Her next visit was to a girl who was planting out lettuces.
“Nora Broad? Oh, she hasn’t been in the village for years. Went off with someone, she did. She was a great one for boys. I always wondered where she’d end up. Did you want to see her for any particular reason?”
“I had a letter from a friend abroad,” said Miss Marple, untruthfully. “A very nice family and they were thinking of engaging a Miss Nora Broad. She’d been in some trouble, I think. Married someone who was rather a bad lot and had left her and gone off with another woman, and she wanted to get a job looking after children. My friend knew nothing about her, but I gathered she came from this village. So I wondered if there was anyone here who could—well, tell me something about her. You went to school with her, I understand?”
“Oh yes, we were in the same class, we were. Mind you, I didn’t approve of all Nora’s goings-on. She was boy mad, she was. Well, I had a nice boyfriend myself that I was going steady with at the time, and I told her she’d do herself no good going off with every Tom, Dick and Harry that offered her a lift in a car or took her along to a pub where she told lies about her age, as likely as not. She was a good mature girl as looked a lot older than she was.”
“Dark or fair?”
“Oh, she had dark hair. Pretty hair it was. Always loose like, you know, as girls do.”
“Were the police worried about her when she disappeared?”
“Yes. You see, she didn’t leave no word behind. She just went out one night and didn’t come back. She was seen getting into a car and nobody saw the car again and nobody saw her. Just at that time there’d been a good many murders, you know. Not specially round here, but all over the country. The police, they were rounding up a lot of young men and boys. Thought as Nora might be a body at the time we did. But not she. She was all right. I’d say as likely as not she’s making a bit of money still in London or one of these big towns doing a striptease, something of that kind. That’s the kind she was.”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple, “that if it’s the same person, that she’d be very suitable for my friend.”
“She’d have to change a bit if she was to be suitable,” said the girl.
Eighteen
ARCHDEACON BRABAZON
When Miss Marple, slightly out of breath and rather tired, got back to the Golden Boar, the receptionist came out from her pen and across to greet her.
“Oh, Miss Marple, there is someone here who wants to speak to you. Archdeacon Brabazon.”
“Archdeacon Brabazon?” Miss Marple looked puzzled.
“Yes. He’s been trying to find you. He had heard you were with this tour and he wanted to talk to you before you might have left or gone to London. I told him that some of them were going back to London by the later train this afternoon, but he is very, very anxious to speak to you before you go. I have put him in the television lounge. It is quieter there. The other is very noisy just at this moment.”
Slightly surprised, Miss Marple went to the room indicated. Archdeacon Brabazon turned out to be the elderly cleric whom she had noticed at the memorial service. He rose and came towards her.
“Miss Marple. Miss Jane Marple?”
“Yes, that is my name. You wanted—”
“I am Archdeacon Brabazon. I came here this morning to attend the service for a very old friend of mine, Miss Elizabeth Temple.”
“Oh yes?” said Miss Marple. “Do sit down.”
“Thank you, I will, I am not quite as strong as I was.” He lowered himself carefully into a chair.
“And you—”
Miss Marple sat down beside him.
“Yes,” she said, “you wanted to see me?”
“Well, I must explain how that comes about. I’m quite aware that I am a complete stranger to you. As a matter of fact I made a short visit to the hospital at Carristown, talking to the matron before going on to the church here. It was she who told me that before she died Elizabeth had asked to see a fellow member of the tour. Miss Jane Marple. And that Miss Jane Marple had visited her and sat with her just a very, very short time before Elizabeth died.”
He looked at her anxiously.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “that is so. It surprised me to be sent for.”
“You are an old friend of hers?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “I only met her on this tour. That’s why I was surprised. We had expressed ideas to each other, occasionally sat next to each other in the coach, and had struck up quite an acquaintanceship. But I was surprised that she should have expressed a wish to see me when she was so ill.”
“Yes. Yes, I can quite imagine that. She was, as I have said, a very old friend of mine. In fact, she was coming to see me, to visit me. I live in Fillminster, which is where your coach tour will be stopping the day after tomorrow. And by arrangement she was coming to visit me there, she wanted to talk to me about various matters about which she thought I could help her.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple. “May I ask you a question? I hope it is not too intimate a question.”
“Of course, Miss Marple. Ask me anything you like.”
“One of the things Miss Temple said to me was that her presence on the tour was not merely because she wished to visit historic homes and gardens. She described it by a rather unusual word to use, as a pilgrimage.”
“Did she,” said Archdeacon Brabazon. “Did she indeed now? Yes, that’s interesting. Interesting and perhaps significant.”
“So what I am asking you is, do you think that the pilgrimage she spoke of was her visit to you?”
“I think it must have been,” said the Archdeacon. “Yes, I think so.”
“We had been talking,” said Miss Marple, “about a young girl. A girl called Verity.”
“Ah yes. Verity Hunt.”
“I did not know her surname. Miss Temple, I think, mentioned her only as Verity.”
“Verity Hunt is dead,” said the Archdeacon. “She died quite a number of years ago. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I knew it. Miss Temple and I were talking about her. Miss Temple told me something that I did not know. She said she had been engaged to be married to the son of a Mr. Rafiel. Mr. Rafiel is, or again I must say was, a friend of mine. Mr. Rafiel has paid the expenses of this tour out of his kindness. I think, though, that possibly he wanted—indeed, intended—me to meet Miss Temple on this tour. I think he thought she could give me certain information.”
“Certain information about Verity?”
“Yes.”
“That is why she was coming to me. She wanted to know certain facts.”
“She wanted to know,” said Miss Marple, “why Verity broke off her engagement to marry Mr. Rafiel’s son.”
“Verity,” said Archdeacon Brabazon, “did not break off her engagement. I am certain of that. As certain as one can be of anything.”
“Miss Temple did not know that, did she?”
“No. I think she was puzzled and unhappy about what happened and was coming to me to ask me why the marriage did not take place.”
“And why did it not take place?” asked Miss Marple. “Please do not think that I am unduly curious. It’s not idle curiosity that is driving me. I too am on—not a pilgrimage—but what I should call a mission. I too want to know why Michael Rafiel and Verity Hunt did not marry.”
The Archdeacon studied her for a moment or two.
“You are involved in some way,” he said. “I see that.”
“I am involved,” said Miss Marple, “by the dying wishes of Michael Rafiel’s father. He asked me to do this for him.”
“I have no reason not to tell you all I know,” said the Archdeacon slowly. “You are asking me what Elizabeth Temple would have been asking me, you are asking me something I do not know myself. Those two young people, Miss Marple, intended to marry. They had made arrangements to marry. I was going to marry them. It was a marriage, I gather, which was being kept a secret. I knew both these young people, I knew that dear child Verity from a long way back. I prepared her for confirmation, I used to hold services in Lent, for Easter, on other occasions, in Elizabeth Temple’s school. A very fine school it was, too. A very fine woman she was. A wonderful teacher with a great sense of each girl’s capabilities—for what she was best fitted for in studies. She urged careers on girls she thought would relish careers, and did not force girls that she felt were not really suited to them. She was a great woman and a very dear friend. Verity was one of the most beautiful children—girls, rather—that I have come across. Beautiful in mind, in heart, as well as in appearance. She had the great misfortune to lose her parents before she was truly adult. They were both killed in a charter plane going on a holiday to Italy. Verity went to live when she left school with a Miss Clotilde Bradbury-Scott whom you know, probably, as living here. She had been a close friend of Verity’s mother. There are three sisters, though the second one was married and living abroad, so there were only two of them living here. Clotilde, the eldest one, became extremely attached to Verity. She did everything possible to give her a happy life. She took her abroad once or twice, gave her art lessons in Italy and loved and cared for her dearly in every way. Verity, too, came to love her probably as much as she could have loved her own mother. She depended on Clotilde. Clotilde herself was an intellectual and well educated woman. She did not urge a university career on Verity, but this I gather was really because Verity did not really yearn after one. She preferred to study art and music and such subjects. She lived here at The Old Manor House and had, I think, a very happy life. She always seemed to be happy. Naturally, I did not see her after she came here since Fillminster, where I was in the cathedral, is nearly sixty miles from here. I wrote to her at Christmas and other festivals, and she remembered me always with a Christmas card. But I saw nothing of her until the day came when she suddenly turned up, a very beautiful and fully grown young woman by then, with an attractive young man whom I also happened to know slightly, Mr. Rafiel’s son, Michael. They came to me because they were in love with each other and wanted to get married.”
“And you agreed to marry them?”
“Yes, I did. Perhaps, Miss Marple, you may think that I should not have done so. They had come to me in secret, it was obvious. Clotilde Bradbury-Scott, I should imagine, had tried to discourage the romance between them. She was well within her rights in doing so. Michael Rafiel, I will tell you frankly, was not the kind of husband you would want for any daughter or relation of yours. She was too young really, to make up her mind, and Michael had been a source of trouble ever since his very young days. He had been had up before junior courts, he had had unsuitable friends, he had been drawn into various gangster activities, he’d sabotaged buildings and telephone boxes. He had been on intimate terms with various girls, had maintenance claims which he had had to meet. Yes, he was a bad lot with the girls as well as in other ways, yet he was extremely attractive and they fell for him and behaved in an extremely silly fashion. He had served two short jail sentences. Frankly, he had a criminal record. I was acquainted with his father, though I did not know him well, and I think that his father did all that he could—all that a man of his character could—to help his son. He came to his rescue, he got him jobs in which he might have succeeded. He paid up his debts, paid out damages. He did all this. I don’t know—”
“But he could have done more, you think?”
“No,” said the Archdeacon, “I’ve come to an age now when I know that one must accept one’s fellow human beings as being the kind of people and having the kind of, shall we say in modern terms, genetic makeup which gives them the characters they have. I don’t think that Mr. Rafiel had affection for his son, a great affection at any time. To say he was reasonably fond of him would be the most you could say. He gave him no love. Whether it would have been better for Michael if he had had love from his father, I do not know. Perhaps it would have made no difference. As it was, it was sad. The boy was not stupid. He had a certain amount of intellect and talent. He could have done well if he had wished to do well, and had taken the trouble. But he was by nature—let us admit it frankly—a delinquent. He had certain qualities one appreciated. He had a sense of humour, he was in various ways generous and kindly. He would stand by a friend, help a friend out of a scrape. He treated his girlfriends badly, got them into trouble as the local saying is, and then more or less abandoned them and took up with somebody else. So there I was faced with those two and—yes—I agreed to marry them. I told Verity, I told her quite frankly, the kind of boy she wanted to marry. I found that he had not tried to dece
ive her in any way. He’d told her that he’d always been in trouble both with the police, and in every other way. He told her that he was going, when he married her, to turn over a new leaf. Everything would be changed. I warned her that that would not happen, he would not change. People do not change. He might mean to change. Verity, I think, knew that almost as well as I did. She admitted that she knew it. She said, ‘I know what Mike is like. I know he’ll probably always be like it, but I love him. I may be able to help him and I may not. But I’ll take that risk.’ And I will tell you this, Miss Marple. I know—none better, I have done a lot with young people, I have married a lot of young people and I have seen them come to grief, I have seen them unexpectedly turn out well—but I know this and recognize it. I know when a couple are really in love with each other. And by that I do not mean just sexually attracted. There is too much talk about sex, too much attention is paid to it. I do not mean that anything about sex is wrong. That is nonsense. But sex cannot take the place of love, it goes with love but it cannot succeed by itself. To love means the words of the marriage service. For better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. That is what you take on if you love and wish to marry. Those two loved each other. To love and to cherish until death do us part. And that,” said the Archdeacon, “is where my story ends. I cannot go on because I do not know what happened. I only know that I agreed to do as they asked, that I made the necessary arrangements; we settled a day, an hour, a time, a place. I think perhaps that I was to blame for agreeing to the secrecy.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 217