The Complete Miss Marple Collection

by Agatha Christie

  “No. It was a complete surprise when she came out of that suddenly. I suppose,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, thinking it over, “I suppose she slipped in there just when I had gone down the passage to the—er—to the bathroom.”

  “You knew the two women were in the house?”

  “I thought they would be at hand somewhere after they’d given me the whistle. I do not think it was a difficult house to which to gain access, there were no shuttered windows or burglar alarms or anything of that kind. One of them came back on the pretext of having left a handbag and a scarf. Between them they probably managed to leave a window unfastened, and I should imagine they came back into the house almost as soon as they left it, while the inhabitants inside were going up to bed.”

  “You took a big risk, Miss Marple.”

  “I hoped for the best,” said Miss Marple. “One cannot go through life without attracting certain risks if they are necessary.”

  “Your tip about the parcel dispatched to that charity, by the way, was entirely successful. It contained a brand new brightly coloured man’s polo-necked jumper in scarlet and black checks. Most noticeable. What made you think of that?”

  “Well,” said Miss Marple, “that was really very simple. The description that Emlyn and Joanna gave of the figure they had seen made it seem almost certain that these very bright coloured and noticeable clothes were meant to be noticed, and that therefore it would be very important that they should not be hidden locally or kept among the person’s own belongings. They must be got out of the way as soon as could be. And really there is only one way successfully of disposing of something. That is through the general post. Anything in the nature of clothes can be very easily dispatched to charities. Think how pleased the people who collect winter garments for Unemployed Mothers, or whatever the name of the charity, would be to find a nearly brand new woollen jumper. All I had to do was to find out the address where it had been sent.”

  “And you asked them that at the post office?” The Home Secretary looked slightly shocked.

  “Not directly, of course. I mean, I had to be a little flustered and explain how I’d put the wrong address on some clothes that I was sending to a charity and could they by any chance tell me if the parcel one of my kind hostesses had brought up there, had been sent off. And a very nice woman there did her best and remembered that it was not the address I was hoping it had been sent to, and she gave me the address that she had noted. She had no suspicion, I think, that I had any wish for the information apart from being—well, rather muddleheaded, elderly, and very worried about where my parcel of worn clothes had gone.”

  “Ah,” said Professor Wanstead, “I see you are an actress, Miss Marple, as well as an avenger.” Then he said, “When did you first begin to discover what had happened ten years ago?”

  “To begin with,” said Miss Marple, “I found things very difficult, almost impossible. In my mind I was blaming Mr. Rafiel for not having made things clear to me. But I see now that he’d been very wise not to do so. Really, you know, he was extraordinary clever. I can see why he was such a big financier and made so much money so easily. He laid his plans so well. He gave me just enough information in small packets each time. I was, as it were, directed. First my guardian angels were alerted to note what I looked like. Then I was directed on the tour and to the people on it.”

  “Did you suspect, if I may use that word, anyone on the tour at first?”

  “Only as possibilities.”

  “No feeling of evil?”

  “Ah, you have remembered that. No, I did not think there was any definite atmosphere of evil. I was not told who my contact was there, but she made herself known to me.”

  “Elizabeth Temple?”

  “Yes. It was like a searchlight,” said Miss Marple, “illuminating things on a dark night. So far, you see, I had been in the dark. There were certain things that must be, must logically be, I mean, because of what Mr. Rafiel had indicated. There must be somewhere a victim and somewhere a murderer. Yes, a killer was indicated because that was the only liaison that had existed between Mr. Rafiel and myself. There had been a murder in the West Indies. Both he and I had been involved in it and all he knew of me was my connection with that. So it could not be any other type of crime. And it could not, either, be a casual crime. It must be, and show itself definitely to be, the handiwork of someone who had accepted evil. Evil instead of good. There seemed to be two victims indicated. There must be someone who had been killed and there must be clearly a victim of injustice. A victim who had been accused of a crime he or she had not committed. So now, while I pondered these things, I had no light upon them until I talked to Miss Temple. She was very intense, very compelling. There came the first link which I had with Mr. Rafiel. She spoke of a girl she had known, a girl who had once been engaged to Mr. Rafiel’s son. Here then was my first ray of light. Presently she also told me that the girl had not married him. I asked why not and she said ‘because she died.’ I asked then how she died, what had killed her, and she said very strongly, very compellingly—I can hear her voice still, it was like the sound of a deep bell—she said Love. And she said after that ‘the most frightening word there can be is Love.’ I did not know then exactly what she meant. In fact the first idea that came to me was that the girl had committed suicide as a result of an unhappy love affair. It can happen often enough, and a very sad tragedy it is when it does happen. That was the most I knew then. That and the fact that the journey she herself was engaged upon was no mere pleasure tour. She was going, she told me, on a pilgrimage. She was going to some place or to some person. I did not learn then who the person was, that only came later.”

  “Archdeacon Brabazon?”

  “Yes. I had no idea then of his existence. But from then on I felt that the chief characters—the chief actors—in the drama, whichever way you like to put it, were not on the tour. They were not members of the coach party. I hesitated just for a short time, hesitated over some particular persons. I hesitated, considering Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price.”

  “Why fix on them?”

  “Because of their youth,” said Miss Marple. “Because youth is so often associated with suicide, with violence, with intense jealousy and tragic love. A man kills his girl—it happens. Yes, my mind went to them but it did not seem to me there was any association there. No shadow of evil, of despair, of misery. I used the idea of them later as a kind of false pointer when we were drinking sherry at The Old Manor House that last evening. I pointed out how they could be the most easy suspects in the death of Elizabeth Temple. When I see them again,” said Miss Marple, punctiliously, “I shall apologize to them for having used them as useful characters to distract attention from my real ideas.”

  “And the next thing was the death of Elizabeth Temple?”

  “No,” said Miss Marple. “Actually the next thing was my arrival at The Old Manor House. The kindness of my reception and taking up my stay there under their hospitable roof. That again had been arranged by Mr. Rafiel. So I knew that I must go there, but not for what reason I was to go there. It might be merely a place where more information would come to me to lead me onwards in my quest. I am sorry,” Miss Marple said, suddenly becoming her normal apologetic and slightly fussy self, “I am talking at much too great a length. I really must not inflict on you all that I thought and….”

  “Please go on,” said Professor Wanstead. “You may not know it but what you are telling me is particularly interesting to me. It ties up with so much I have known and seen in the work I do. Go on giving me what you felt.”

  “Yes, go on,” said Sir Andrew McNeil.

  “It was feeling,” said Miss Marple. “It wasn’t really, you know, logical deduction. It was based on a kind of emotional reaction or susceptibility to—well, I can only call it atmosphere.”

  “Yes,” said Wanstead, “there is atmosphere. Atmosphere in houses, atmosphere in places, in the garden, in the forest, in a public house, in a cottage.”
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br />   “The three sisters. That is what I thought and felt and said to myself when I went into The Old Manor House. I was so kindly received by Lavinia Glynne. There’s something about the phrase—the three sisters—that springs up in your mind as sinister. It combines with the three sisters in Russian literature, the three witches on Macbeth’s heath. It seemed to me that there was an atmosphere there of sorrow, of deep felt unhappiness, also an atmosphere of fear and a kind of struggling different atmosphere which I can only describe as an atmosphere of normality.”

  “Your last word interests me,” said Wanstead.

  “It was due, I think, to Mrs. Glynne. She was the one who came to meet me when the coach arrived and explained the invitation. She was an entirely normal and pleasant woman, a widow. She was not very happy, but when I say she was not very happy it was nothing to do with sorrow or deep unhappiness, it was just that she had the wrong atmosphere for her own character. She took me back with her and I met the other two sisters. The next morning I was to hear from an aged housemaid who brought my early morning tea, a story of past tragedy, of a girl who had been killed by her boyfriend. Of several other girls in the neighbourhood who’d fallen victims to violence, or sexual assault. I had to make my second appraisal. I had dismissed the people in the coach as not being personally concerned in my search. Somewhere still there was a killer. I had to ask myself if one of the killers could be here. Here in this house where I had been sent, Clotilde, Lavinia, Anthea. Three names of three weird sisters, three happy—unhappy—suffering—frightened—what were they? My attention was caught first by Clotilde. A tall, handsome woman. A personality. Just as Elizabeth Temple had been a personality. I felt that here where the field was limited, I must at least sum up what I could about the three sisters. Three Fates. Who could be a killer? What kind of a killer? What kind of a killing? I could feel then rising up rather slowly, rather slowly like a miasma does, an atmosphere. I don’t think there is any other word that expresses it except evil. Not necessarily that any of these three was evil, but they were certainly living in an atmosphere where evil had happened, had left its shadow or was still threatening them. Clotilde, the eldest, was the first one I considered. She was handsome, she was strong, she was, I thought, a woman of intense emotional feeling. I saw her, I will admit, as a possible Clytemnestra. I had recently,” Miss Marple dropped into her everyday tones, “been taken very kindly to a Greek play performed at a well-known boys’ public school not far from my home. I had been very, very impressed by the acting of the Agamemnon and particularly the performance of the boy who had played Clytemnestra. A very remarkable performance. It seemed to me that in Clotilde I could imagine a woman who could plan and carry out the killing of a husband in his bath.”

  For a moment Professor Wanstead had all he could do to repress a laugh. It was the seriousness of Miss Marple’s tone. She gave him a slight twinkle from her eyes.

  “Yes, it sounds rather silly, does it not, said like that? But I could see her that way, playing that part, that is to say. Very unfortunately, she had no husband. She had never had a husband, and therefore did not kill a husband. Then I considered my guide to the house. Lavinia Glynne. She seemed an extremely nice, wholesome and pleasant woman. But alas, certain people who have killed have produced much that effect on the world round them. They have been charming people. Many murderers have been delightful and pleasant men and people have been astonished. They are what I call the respectable killers. The ones who would commit murder from entirely utilitarian motives. Without emotion, but to gain a required end. I didn’t think it was very likely and I should be highly surprised if it was so, but I could not leave out Mrs. Glynne. She had had a husband. She was a widow and had been a widow for some years. It could be. I left it at that. And then I came to the third sister. Anthea. She was a disquieting personality. Badly coordinated, it seemed to me, scatterbrained, and in a condition of some emotion which I thought on the whole was fear. She was frightened of something. Intensely frightened of something. Well, that could fit in too. If she had committed a crime of some kind, a crime which she had thought was finished with and past, there might have been some recrudescence, some raising up of old problems, something perhaps connected with the Elizabeth Temple enquiries; she might have felt fear that an old crime would be revived or discovered. She had a curious way of looking at you, and then looking sharply from side to side over one shoulder as though she saw something standing behind her. Something that made her afraid. So she too was a possible answer. A possibly slightly mentally unhinged killer who could have killed because she considered herself persecuted. Because she was afraid. These were only ideas. They were only a rather more pronounced assessment of possibilities that I had already gone through on the coach. But the atmosphere of the house was on me more than ever. The next day I walked in the garden with Anthea. At the end of the principal grass path was a mound. A mound created by the falling down of a former greenhouse. Owing to a lack of repairs and of gardeners at the end of the war it had fallen into disuse, come to pieces, bricks had been piled up surmounted with earth and turf, and had been planted with a certain creeper. A creeper well known when you want to hide or cover some rather ugly pieces of building in your garden. Polygonum it is called. One of the quickest flowering shrubs which swallows and kills and dries up and gets rid of everything it grows over. It grows over everything. It is in a way a rather frightening plant. It has beautiful white flowers, it can look very lovely. It was not yet in bloom but it was going to be. I stood there with Anthea, and she seemed to be desperately unhappy over the loss of the greenhouse. She said it had had such lovely grapes, it seemed to be the thing she remembered most about the garden when she had been a child there. And she wanted, she wanted desperately to have enough money so as to dig up the mound, level the ground and rebuild the greenhouse and stock it with muscat grapes and peaches as the old greenhouse had been. It was a terrible nostalgia for the past she was feeling. It was more than that. Again, very clearly, I felt an atmosphere of fear. Something about the mound made her frightened. I couldn’t then think what it was. You know the next thing that happened. It was Elizabeth Temple’s death and there was no doubt from the story told by Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford that there could be only one conclusion. It was not accident. It was deliberate murder.

  “I think it was from then on,” said Miss Marple, “that I knew. I came to the conclusion there had been three killings. I heard the full story of Mr. Rafiel’s son, the delinquent boy, the exjailbird and I thought that he was all those things, but none of them showed him as being a killer or likely to be a killer. All the evidence was against him. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had killed the girl whose name I had now learned as being Verity Hunt. But Archdeacon Brabazon put the final crown on the business, as it were. He had known those two young people. They had come to him with their story of wanting to get married and he had taken it upon himself to decide that they should get married. He thought that it was not perhaps a wise marriage, but it was a marriage that was justified by the fact that they both loved each other. The girl loved the boy with what he called a true love. A love as true as her name. And he thought that the boy, for all his bad sexual reputation, had truly loved the girl and had every intention of being faithful to her and trying to reform some of his evil tendencies. The Archdeacon was not optimistic. He did not, I think, believe it would be a thoroughly happy marriage, but it was to his mind what he called a necessary marriage. Necessary because if you love enough you will pay the price, even if the price is disappointment and a certain amount of unhappiness. But one thing I was quite sure of. That disfigured face, that battered-in head could not have been the action of a boy who really loved the girl. This was not a story of sexual assault. I was ready to take the Archdeacon’s word for that. But I knew, too, that I’d got the right clue, the clue that was given me by Elizabeth Temple. She had said that the cause of Verity’s death was Love—one of the most frightening words there is.

  “I
t was quite clear then,” said Miss Marple. “I think I’d known for some time really. It was just the small things that hadn’t fitted in, but now they did. They fitted in with what Elizabeth Temple had said. The cause of Verity’s death. She had said first the one word ‘Love’ and then that ‘Love could be the most frightening word there was.’ It was all mapped out so plainly then. The overwhelming love that Clotilde had had for this girl. The girl’s hero worship of her, dependency on her, and then as she grew a little older, her normal instincts came into play. She wanted Love. She wanted to be free to love, to marry, to have children. And along came the boy that she could love. She knew that he was unreliable, she knew he was what was technically called a bad lot, but that,” said Miss Marple, in a more ordinary tone of voice, “is not what puts any girl off a boy. No. Young women like bad lots. They always have. They fall in love with bad lots. They are quite sure they can change them. And the nice, kind, steady, reliable husbands got the answer, in my young days, that one would be ‘a sister to them,’ which never satisfied them at all. Verity fell in love with Michael Rafiel, and Michael Rafiel was prepared to turn over a new leaf and marry this girl and was sure he would never wish to look at another girl again. I don’t say this would have been a happy-ever-after thing, but it was, as the Archdeacon said quite surely, it was real love. And so they planned to get married. And I think Verity wrote to Elizabeth and told her that she was going to marry Michael Rafiel. It was arranged in secret because I think Verity did realize that what she was doing was essentially an escape. She was escaping from a life that she didn’t want to live any longer, from someone whom she loved very much but not in the way she loved Michael. And she would not be allowed to do so. Permission would not be willingly given, every obstacle would be put in their way. So, like other young people, they were going to elope. There was no need for them to fly off to Gretna Green, they were of sufficiently mature age to marry. So she appealed to Archdeacon Brabazon, her old friend who had confirmed her—who was a real friend. And the wedding was arranged, the day, the time, probably even she bought secretly some garment in which to be married. They were to meet somewhere, no doubt. They were to come to the rendezvous separately. I think he came there, but she did not come. He waited perhaps. Waited and then tried to find out, perhaps, why she didn’t come. I think then a message may have been given him, even a letter sent him, possibly in her forged handwriting, saying she had changed her mind. It was all over and she was going away for a time to get over it. I don’t know. But I don’t think he ever dreamt of the real reason of why she hadn’t come, of why she had sent no word. He hadn’t thought for one moment that she had been deliberately, cruelly, almost madly perhaps, destroyed. Clotilde was not going to lose the person she loved. She was not going to let her escape, she was not going to let her go to the young man whom she herself hated and loathed. She would keep Verity, keep her in her own way. But what I could not believe was—I did not believe that she’d strangled the girl and had then disfigured her face. I don’t think she could have borne to do that. I think that she had rearranged the bricks of the fallen greenhouse and piled up earth and turf over most of it. The girl had already been given a drink, an overdose of sleeping draught probably. Grecian, as it were, in tradition. One cup of hemlock—even if it wasn’t hemlock. And she buried the girl there in the garden, piled the bricks over her and the earth and the turf—”