The Complete Miss Marple Collection

by Agatha Christie

  “You mean—?”

  “She wasn’t there,” said Clotilde. “She was here in our garden.”

  “Oh, of course. I forgot.”

  “A very nice, peaceful day it was,” said Miss Marple. “I enjoyed it very much. Tomorrow morning I would like to go out and look again at that mass of white flowers coming into bloom at the end of the garden near that raised up mound. It was just beginning to come out the other day. It must be a mass of bloom now. I shall always remember that as part of my visit here, you know.”

  “I hate it,” said Anthea. “I want it taken away. I want to build up a greenhouse again there. Surely if we save enough money we can do that, Clotilde?”

  “We’ll leave that alone,” said Clotilde. “I don’t want that touched. What use is a greenhouse to us now? It would be years before grapes would bear fruit again.”

  “Come,” said Mrs. Glynne, “we can’t go on arguing over that. Let us go into the drawing room. Our guests will be coming shortly for coffee.”

  It was then that the guests had arrived. Clotilde brought in the tray of coffee. She poured out the cups and distributed them. She placed one before each guest and then brought one to Miss Marple. Miss Cooke leaned forward.

  “Oh, do forgive me, Miss Marple, but really, do you know, I shouldn’t drink that if I were you. Coffee, I mean, at this time of night. You won’t sleep properly.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” said Miss Marple. “I am quite used to coffee in the evening.”

  “Yes, but this is very strong, good coffee. I should advise you not to drink it.”

  Miss Marple looked at Miss Cooke. Miss Cooke’s face was very earnest, her fair, unnatural-looking hair flopped over one eye. The other eye blinked slightly.

  “I see what you mean,” said Miss Marple. “Perhaps you are right. You know something, I gather, about diet.”

  “Oh yes, I make quite a study of it. I had some training in nursing, you know, and one thing and another.”

  “Indeed.” Miss Marple pushed the cup away slightly. “I suppose there is no photograph of this girl?” she asked. “Verity Hunt, or whatever her name was? The Archdeacon was talking about her. He seemed to have been very fond of her.”

  “I think he was. He was fond of all young people,” said Clotilde.

  She got up, went across the room and lifted the lid of a desk. From that she brought a photograph and brought it over for Miss Marple to see.

  “That was Verity,” she said.

  “A beautiful face,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, a very beautiful and unusual face. Poor child.”

  “It’s dreadful nowadays,” said Anthea, “these things seem to be happening the whole time. Girls going out with every kind of young man. Nobody taking any trouble to look after them.”

  “They have to look after themselves nowadays,” said Clotilde, “and they’ve no idea of how to do it, heaven help them!”

  She stretched out a hand to take back the photograph from Miss Marple. As she did so her sleeve caught the coffee cup and knocked it to the floor.

  “Oh dear!” said Miss Marple. “Was that my fault? Did I jog your arm?”

  “No,” said Clotilde, “it was my sleeve. It’s rather a floating sleeve. Perhaps you would like some hot milk, if you are afraid to take coffee?”

  “That would be very kind,” said Miss Marple. “A glass of hot milk when I go to bed would be very soothing indeed, and always gives one a good night.”

  After a little more desultory conversation, Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow took their departure. A rather fussy departure in which first one and then the other came back to collect some article they’d left behind. A scarf, a handbag and a pocket handkerchief.

  “Fuss, fuss, fuss,” said Anthea, when they had departed.

  “Somehow,” said Mrs. Glynne, “I agree with Clotilde that those two don’t seem real, if you know what I mean,” she said to Miss Marple.

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I do rather agree with you. They don’t seem very real. I have wondered about them a good deal. Wondered, I mean, why they came on this tour and if they were really enjoying it. And what was their reason for coming.”

  “And have you discovered the answers to all those things?” asked Clotilde.

  “I think so,” said Miss Marple. She sighed. “I’ve discovered the answers to a lot of things,” she said.

  “Up to now I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself,” said Clotilde.

  “I am glad to have left the tour now,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think I should have enjoyed much more of it.”

  “No. I can quite understand that.”

  Clotilde fetched a glass of hot milk from the kitchen and accompanied Miss Marple up to her room.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked. “Anything at all?”

  “No, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “I have everything I want. I have my little night bag here, you see, so I need not do anymore unpacking. Thank you,” she said, “it is very kind of you and your sisters to put me up again tonight.”

  “Well, we couldn’t do much less, having had Mr. Rafiel’s letter. He was a very thoughtful man.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple, “the kind of man who—well, thinks of everything. A good brain, I should think.”

  “I believe he was a very noted financier.”

  “Financially and otherwise, he thought of a lot of things,” said Miss Marple. “Oh well, I shall be glad to get to bed. Good night, Miss Bradbury-Scott.”

  “Shall I send you breakfast up in the morning, you’d like to have it in bed?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t put you out for the world. No, no, I would rather come down. A cup of tea, perhaps, would be very nice, but I want to go out in the garden. I particularly want to see that mound all covered with white flowers, so beautiful and so triumphant—”

  “Good night,” said Clotilde, “sleep well.”

  II

  In the hall of The Old Manor House the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs struck two o’clock. The clocks in the house did not all strike in unison and some of them, indeed, did not strike at all. To keep a house full of antique clocks in working order was not easy. At three o’clock the clock on the first floor landing struck a soft-chimed three o’clock. A faint chink of light showed through the hinge of the door.

  Miss Marple sat up in bed and put her fingers on the switch of the electric lamp by her bed. The door opened very softly. There was no light outside now but the soft footstep came through the door into the room. Miss Marple switched the light on.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s you, Miss Bradbury-Scott. Is there anything special?”

  “I just came to see if you wanted anything,” said Miss Bradbury-Scott.

  Miss Marple looked at her. Clotilde had on a long purple robe. What a handsome woman she was, thought Miss Marple. Her hair framing her forehead, a tragic figure, a figure of drama. Again Miss Marple thought of Greek plays. Clytemnestra again.

  “You’re sure there is nothing I can bring you?”

  “No, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid,” she said apologetically, “that I have not drunk my milk.”

  “Oh dear, why not?”

  “I did not think it would be very good for me,” said Miss Marple.

  Clotilde stood there, at the foot of the bed, looking at her.

  “Not wholesome, you know,” said Miss Marple.

  “Just what do you mean by that?” Clotilde’s voice was harsh now.

  “I think you know what I mean,” said Miss Marple. “I think you’ve known all the evening. Perhaps before that.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “No?” There was a faint satirical note to the questioning monosyllable.

  “I am afraid the milk is cold now. I will take it away and get you some hot.”

  Clotilde stretched out a hand and took the glass of milk from the bedside.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” said Miss Marple. “Even if you
brought it me, I should not drink it.”

  “I really cannot understand the point of what you’re saying. Really,” said Clotilde, looking at her. “What a very extraordinary person you are. What sort of a woman are you? Why are you talking like this? Who are you?”

  Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind that she had once worn in the West Indies.

  “One of my names,” she said, “is Nemesis.”

  “Nemesis? And what does that mean?”

  “I think you know,” said Miss Marple. “You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About a very beautiful girl whom you killed,” said Miss Marple.

  “Whom I killed? What do you mean?”

  “I mean the girl Verity.”

  “And why should I kill her?”

  “Because you loved her,” said Miss Marple.

  “Of course I loved her. I was devoted to her. And she loved me.”

  “Somebody said to me not very long ago that love was a very frightening word. It is a frightening word. You loved Verity too much. She meant everything in the world to you. She was devoted to you until something else came into her life. A different kind of love came into her life. She fell in love with a boy, a young man. Not a very suitable one, not a very good specimen, not anyone with a good record, but she loved him and he loved her and she wanted to escape. To escape from the burden of the bondage of love she was living in with you. She wanted a normal woman’s life. To live with the man of her choice, to have children by him. She wanted marriage and the happiness of normality.”

  Clotilde moved. She came to a chair and sat down in it, staring at Miss Marple.

  “So,” she said, “you seem to understand very well.”

  “Yes, I do understand.”

  “What you say is quite true. I shan’t deny it. It doesn’t matter if I do or do not deny it.”

  “No,” said Miss Marple, “you are quite right there. It will not matter.”

  “Do you know at all—can you imagine—how I have suffered?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I can imagine it. I’ve always been able to imagine things.”

  “Did you imagine the agony, the agony of thinking, of knowing you are going to lose the thing you love best in the world. And I was losing it to a miserable, depraved delinquent. A man unworthy of my beautiful, splendid girl. I had to stop it. I had to—I had to.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple. “Sooner than let the girl go, you killed her. Because you loved her, you killed her.”

  “Do you think I could ever do a thing like that? Do you think I could strangle the girl I loved? Do you think I could bash her face in, crush her head to a pulp? Nothing but a vicious, depraved man would do a thing like that.”

  “No,” said Miss Marple, “you wouldn’t do that. You loved her and you would not be able to do that.”

  “Well then, you see, you are talking nonsense.”

  “You didn’t do that to her. The girl that happened to was not the girl you loved. Verity’s here still, isn’t she? She’s here in the garden. I don’t think you strangled her. I think you gave her a drink of coffee or of milk, you gave her a painless overdose of sleeping stuff. And then when she was dead, you took her out into the garden, you pulled aside the fallen bricks of the greenhouse, and you made a vault for her there, under the floor with the bricks, and covered it over. And then the polygonum was planted there and has flowered ever since, growing bigger and stronger every year. Verity has remained here with you. You never let her go.”

  “You fool! You crazy old fool! Do you think you are ever going to get away to tell this story?”

  “I think so,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not quite sure of it. You are a strong woman, a great deal stronger than I am.”

  “I’m glad you appreciate that.”

  “And you wouldn’t have any scruples,” said Miss Marple. “You know one doesn’t stop at one murder. I have noticed that in the course of my life and in what I have observed of crime. You killed two girls, didn’t you? You killed the girl you loved and you killed a different girl.”

  “I killed a silly little tramp, an adolescent tart. Nora Broad. How did you know about her?”

  “I wondered,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t think from what I saw of you that you could have borne to strangle and disfigure the girl you loved. But another girl disappeared also about that time, a girl whose body has never been found. But I thought the body had been found, only they hadn’t known that the body was Nora Broad’s. It was dressed in Verity’s clothes, it was identified as Verity by the person who would be the first applied to, the person who knew her better than anyone else. You had to go and say if the body found was the body of Verity. You recognized it. You said that that dead body was Verity’s.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “Because you wanted the boy who had taken Verity away from you, the boy whom Verity had loved and who had loved Verity, you wanted him tried for murder. And so you hid that second body in a place where it would not be too easily discovered. When that was discovered, it would be thought to be the wrong girl. You would make sure that it was identified in the way you wanted. You dressed it in Verity’s clothes, put her handbag there; a letter or two, a bangle, a little cross on a chain—you disfigured her face.

  “A week ago you committed a third murder, the murder of Elizabeth Temple. You killed her because she was coming to this part of the world, and you were afraid of what she might have known, from what Verity might have written to her or told her, and you thought that if Elizabeth Temple got together with Archdeacon Brabazon, they might with what they both knew come at some appraisal of the truth. Elizabeth Temple must not be allowed to meet the Archdeacon. You are a very powerful woman. You could have rolled that boulder down the hillside. It must have taken some doing, but you are a very strong woman.”

  “Strong enough to deal with you,” said Clotilde.

  “I don’t think,” said Miss Marple, “that you will be allowed to do that.”

  “What do you mean, you miserable, shrivelled up old woman?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I’m an elderly pussy and I have very little strength in my arms or my legs. Very little strength anywhere. But I am in my own way an emissary of justice.”

  Clotilde laughed, “And who’ll stop me from putting an end to you?”

  “I think,” said Miss Marple, “my guardian angel.”

  “Trusting to your guardian angel, are you?” said Clotilde, and laughed again.

  She advanced towards the bed.

  “Possibly two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple. “Mr. Rafiel always did things on a lavish scale.”

  Her hand slipped under the pillow and out again. In it was a whistle which she put to her lips. It was something of a sensation in whistles. It had the shrill fury which would attract a policeman from the end of a street. Two things happened almost simultaneously. The door of the room opened. Clotilde turned. Miss Barrow was standing in the doorway. At the same moment the large wardrobe hanging cupboard opened and Miss Cooke stepped out of it. There was a grim air of professionalism about them both which was very noticeable, in contrast to their pleasant social behaviour a little earlier in the evening.

  “Two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple happily. “Mr. Rafiel has done me very proud! as one used to say.”

  Twenty-two

  MISS MARPLE TELLS HER STORY

  “When did you find out,” asked Professor Wanstead, “that those two women were private agents accompanying you for your protection?”

  He leaned forward in his chair looking thoughtfully at the white-haired old lady who sat in an upright position in the chair opposite him. They were in an official Government building in London, and there were four other persons present.

  An official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Assista
nt Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir James Lloyd, the Governor of Manstone Prison, Sir Andrew McNeil. The fourth person was the Home Secretary.

  “Not until the last evening,” said Miss Marple. “I wasn’t actually sure until then. Miss Cooke had come to St. Mary Mead and I found out fairly quickly that she was not what she represented herself to be, which was a woman knowledgeable in gardening who had come there to help a friend with her garden. So I was left with the choice of deciding what her real object had been, once she had acquainted herself with my appearance, which was obviously the only thing she could have come for. When I recognized her again, on the coach, I had to make up my mind if she was accompanying the tour in the rôle of guardianship, or whether those two women were enemies enlisted by what I might call the other side.

  “I was only really sure that last evening when Miss Cooke prevented me, by very distinct words of warning, from drinking the cup of coffee that Clotilde Bradbury-Scott had just set down in front of me. She phrased it very cleverly, but the warning was clearly there. Later, when I was wishing those two good night, one of them took my hand in both of hers giving me a particularly friendly and affectionate handshake. And in doing so she passed something into my hand, which, when I examined it later, I found to be a high-powered whistle. I took it to bed with me, accepted the glass of milk which was urged upon me by my hostess, and wished her good night, being careful not to change my simple and friendly attitude.”

  “You didn’t drink the milk?”

  “Of course not,” said Miss Marple. “What do you take me for?”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Professor Wanstead. “It surprises me that you didn’t lock your door.”

  “That would have been quite the wrong thing to do,” said Miss Marple. “I wanted Clotilde Bradbury-Scott to come in. I wanted to see what she would say or do. I thought it was almost certain that she would come in when sufficient time had elapsed, to make sure that I had drunk the milk, and was in an unconscious sleep from which presumably I would not have woken up again.”

  “Did you help Miss Cooke to conceal herself in the wardrobe?”