Nemesis mm-11

by Agatha Christie

  "I'm sorry," said Miss Marple. "I'm really very, very sorry. Please tell your sister that I didn't know. I had no idea."

  Chapter 16

  THE INQUEST

  Miss Marple walked slowly along the village street on her way towards the market place where the inquest was to take place in the old-fashioned Georgian building which had been known for a hundred years as the Curfew Arms. She glanced at her watch. There was still a good twenty minutes before she need be there. She looked into the shops. She paused before the shop that sold wool and babies' jackets, and peered inside for a few moments. A girl in the shop was serving. Small woolly coats were being tried on two children. Further along the counter there was an elderly woman.

  Miss Marple went into the shop, went along the counter to a seat opposite the elderly woman, and produced a sample of pink wool. She had run out, she explained, of this particular brand of wool and had a little jacket she needed to finish.

  The match was soon made, some more samples of wool that Miss Marple had admired, were brought out for her to look at, and soon she was in conversation. Starting with the sadness of the accident which had just taken place. Mrs Merrypit, if her name was identical with that which was written up outside the shop, was full of the importance of the accident, and the general difficulties of getting local governments to do anything about the dangers of footpaths and public rights of way.

  "After the rain, you see, you get all the soil washed off and then the boulders get loose and then down they comes. I remember one year they had three falls – three accidents there was. One boy nearly killed, he was, and then later that year, oh six months later, I think, there was a man got his arm broken, and the third time it was poor old Mrs Walker. Blind she was and pretty well deaf too. She never heard nothing or she could have got out of the way, they say. Somebody saw it and they called out to her, but they was too far away to reach her or to run to get her. And so she was killed."

  "Oh how sad," said Miss Marple, "how tragic. The sort of thing that's not easily forgotten, is it."

  "No indeed. I expect the Coroner'll mention it today."

  "I expect he will," said Miss Marple. "In a terrible way it seems quite a natural thing to happen, doesn't it, though of course there are accidents sometimes by pushing things about, you know. Just pushing, making stones rock. That sort of thing."

  "Ah well, there's boys as be up to anything. But I don't think I've ever seen them up that way, fooling about."

  Miss Marple went on to the subject of pullovers. Bright coloured pullovers.

  "It's not for myself," she said, "it's for one of my great-nephews. You know, he wants a polo-necked pullover and very bright colours he'd like."

  "Yes, they do like bright colours nowadays, don't they?" agreed Mrs Merrypit. "Not in jeans. Black jeans they like. Black or dark blue. But they like a bit of brightness up above."

  Miss Marple described a pullover of check design in bright colours. There appeared to be quite a good stock of pullovers and jerseys, but anything in red and black did not seem to be on display, not even was anything like it mentioned as having been lately in stock. After looking at a few samples Miss Marple prepared to take her departure, chatting first about the former murders she had heard about which had happened in this part of the world.

  "They got the fellow in the end," said Mrs Merrypit. "Nice-looking boy, hardly have thought it of him. He'd been well brought up, you know. Been to university and all that. Father was very rich, they say. Touched in the head, I suppose. Not that they sent him to Broadway, or whatever the place is. No, they didn't do that, but I think myself he must have been a mental case there was five or six other girls, so they said. The police had one after another of the young men round hereabouts to help them. Geoffrey Grant they had up. They were pretty sure it was him to begin with. He was always a bit queer, ever since he was a boy. Interfered with little girls going to school, you know. He used to offer them sweets and get them to come down the lanes with him and see the primroses, or something like that. Yes, they had very strong suspicions about him. But it wasn't him. And then there was another one, Bert Williams, but he'd been far away on two occasions, at least what they call an alibi, so it couldn't be him. And then at last it came to this what's-his-name, I can't remember him now. Luke I think his name was – no Mike something. Very nice-looking, as I say, but he had a bad record. Yes, stealing, forging cheques, all sorts of things like that. And two what-you-call 'em paternity cases, no, I don't mean that, but you know what I mean. When a girl's going to have a baby. You know and they make an order and make the fellow pay. He'd got two girls in the family way before this."

  "Was this girl in the family way?"

  "Oh yes, she was. At first we thought when the body was found it might have been Nora Broad. That was Mrs Broad's niece, down at the mill shop. Great one for going with the boys, she was. She'd gone away missing from home in the same way. Nobody knew where she was. So when this body turned up six months later they thought at first it was her."

  "But it wasn't?"

  "No someone quite different."

  "Did her body ever turn up?"

  "No. I suppose it might some day, but they think on the whole it was pushed into the river. Ah well, you never know, do you? You never know what you may dig up off a ploughed field or something like that. I was taken once to see all that treasure. Luton Loo was it – some name like that? Somewhere in the East Counties. Under a ploughed field it was. Beautiful. Gold ships and Viking ships and gold plate, enormous great platters. Well, you never know. Any day you may turn up a dead body or you may turn up a gold platter. And it may be hundreds of years old like that gold plate was, or it may be a three- or four-years old body, like Mary Lucas who'd been missing for four years, they say. Somewhere near Reigate she was found. Ah well, all these things! It's a sad life. Yes, it's a very sad life. You never know what's coming."

  "There was another girl who'd lived here, wasn't there?" said Miss Marple, "who was killed."

  "You mean the body they thought was Nora Broad's but it wasn't? Yes. I've forgotten her name now. Hope, it was, I think. Hope or Charity. One of those sort of names, if you know what I mean. Used to be used a lot in Victorian times but you don't hear them so much nowadays. Lived at the Manor House, she did. She'd been there for some time after her parents were killed."

  "Her parents died in an accident, didn't they?"

  "That's right. In a plane going to Spain or Italy, one of those places."

  "And you say she came to live here? Were they relations of hers?"

  "I don't know if they were relations, but Mrs Glynne as she is now, was I think a great friend of her mother's or something that way. Mrs Glynne, of course, was married and gone abroad but Miss Clotilde that's the eldest one, the dark one – she was very fond of the girl. She took her abroad, to Italy and France and all sorts of places, and she had her trained, a bit of typewriting and shorthand and that sort of thing, and art classes too. She's very arty, Miss Clotilde is. Oh, she was mighty fond of the girl. Brokenhearted she was when she disappeared. Quite different to Miss Anthea -"

  "Miss Anthea is the youngest one, isn't she?"

  "Yes. Not quite all there, some people say. Scatty like, you know, in her mind. Sometimes you see her walking along, talking to herself, you know, and tossing her head in a very queer way. Children get frightened of her sometimes. They say she's a bit queer about things. I don't know. You hear everything in a village, don't you? The great-uncle who lived here before, he was a bit peculiar too. Used to practise revolver shooting in the garden. For no reason at all so far as anyone could see. Proud of his marksmanship, he said he was, whatever marksmanship is."

  "But Miss Clotilde is not peculiar?"

  "Oh no, she's clever, she is. Knows Latin and Greek, I believe. Would have liked to go to university but she had to look after her mother who was an invalid for a long time. But she was very fond of Miss – now, what was her name? Faith perhaps. She was very fond of her and treated her li
ke a daughter. And then along comes this young what's-his-name, Michael I think it was and then one day the girl just goes off without saying a word to anyone. I don't know if Miss Clotilde knew as she was in the family way.

  "But you knew," said Miss Marple.

  "Ah well, I've got a lot of experience. I usually know when a girl's that way. It's plain enough to the eye. It's not only the shape, as you might say, you can tell by the look in their eyes and the way they walk and sit, and the sort of giddy fits they get and sick turns now and again. Oh yes, I thought to myself, here's another one of them. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify the body. Nearly broke her up, it did. She was like a different woman for weeks afterwards. Fairly loved that girl, she did."

  "And the other one – Miss Anthea?"

  "Funnily enough, you know, I thought she had a kind of pleased look as though she was – yes, just pleased. Not nice, eh? Farmer Plummer's daughter used to look like that. Always used to go and see pigs killed. Enjoyed it. Funny things goes on in families."

  Miss Marple said good-bye, saw she had another ten minutes to go and passed on to the post office. The post office and general store of Jocelyn St Mary was just off the Market Square.

  Miss Marple went into the post office, bought some stamps, looked at some of the postcards and then turned her attention to various paper back books. A middle-aged woman with rather a vinegary face presided behind the postal counter. She assisted Miss Marple to free a book from the wire support in which the books were.

  "Stick a bit sometimes, they do. People don't put them back straight, you see."

  There was by now no one else in the shop. Miss Marple looked with distaste at the jacket of the book, a naked girl with blood-stained markings on her face and a sinister-looking killer bending over her with a blood-stained knife in his hand.

  "Really," she said, "I don't like these horrors nowadays."

  "Gone a bit too far with some of their jackets, haven't they," said Mrs Vinegar. "Not everyone as likes them. Too fond of violence in every way, I'd say nowadays."

  Miss Marple detached a second book. "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," she read. "Oh dear, it's a sad world one lives in."

  "Oh yes, I know. Saw in yesterday's paper, I did, some woman left her baby outside a supermarket and then someone else comes along and wheels it away. And all for no reason as far as one can see. The police found her all right. They all seem to say the same things, whether they steal from a supermarket or take away a baby. Don't know what came over them, they say."

  "Perhaps they really don't," suggested Miss Marple.

  Mrs Vinegar looked even more like vinegar.

  "Take me a lot to believe that, it would." Miss Marple looked round the post office was still empty. She advanced to the window.

  "If you are not too busy, I wonder if you could answer a question of mine," said Miss Marple. "I have done something extremely stupid. Of late years I make so many mistakes. This was a parcel addressed to a charity. I send them, clothes, pullovers and children's woollies, and I did it up and addressed it and it was sent off, and only this morning it came to me suddenly that I'd made a mistake and written the wrong address. I don't suppose any list is kept of the addresses of parcels but I thought someone might have just happened to remember it. The address I meant to put was The Dockyard and Thames Side Welfare Association."

  Mrs Vinegar was looking quite kindly now, touched by Miss Marple's patent incapacity and general state of senility and dither.

  "Did you bring it yourself?"

  "No, I didn't – I'm staying at The Old Manor House and one of them, Mrs Glynne, I think said she or her sister would post it. Very kind of her -"

  "Let me see now. It would have been on Tuesday, would it? It wasn't Mrs Glynne who brought it in, it was the youngest one, Miss Anthea."

  "Yes, yes, I think that was the day -"

  "I remember it quite well. In a good sized dress box and moderately heavy. I think. But not what you said, Dockyard Association I can't recall anything like that. It was the Reverend Matthews, The East Ham Women and Children's Woollen Clothing Appeal."

  "Oh yes." Miss Marple clasped her hands in an ecstasy of relief. "How clever of you. I see now how I came to do it. At Christmas I did send things to the East Ham Society in answer to a special appeal for knitted things, so I must have copied down the wrong address. Can you just repeat it?" She entered it carefully in a small notebook.

  "I'm afraid the parcel's gone off, though -"

  "Oh yes, but I can write, explaining the mistake and ask them to forward the parcel to the Dockyard Association instead. Thank you so much."

  Miss Marple trotted out.

  Mrs Vinegar produced stamps for her next customer, remarking in an aside to a colleague "Scatty as they make them, poor old creature. Expect she's always doing that sort of thing."

  Miss Marple went out of the post office and ran into Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford.

  Joanna, she noticed, was very pale and looked upset.

  "I've got to give evidence," she said. "I don't know what will they ask me? I'm so afraid. I – I don't like it. I told the police sergeant, I told him what I thought we saw."

  "Don't you worry, Joanna," said Emlyn Price. "This is just a coroner's inquest, you know. He's a nice man, a doctor, I believe. He'll just ask you a few questions and you'll say what you saw."

  "You saw it too," said Joanna.

  "Yes, I did," said Emlyn. "At least I saw there was someone up there. Near the boulders and things. Now come on, Joanna."

  "They came and searched our rooms in the hotel," said Joanna. "They asked our permission but they had a search warrant. They looked in our rooms and among the things in our luggage."

  "I think they wanted to find that check pullover you described. Anyway, there's nothing for you to worry about. If you'd had a black and scarlet pullover yourself you wouldn't have talked about it, would you. It was black and scarlet, wasn't it?"

  "I don't know," said Emlyn Price. "I don't really know the colours of things very well. I think it was a sort of bright colour. That's all I know."

  "They didn't find one," said Joanna. "After all, none of us have very many things with us. You don't when you go on a coach travel. There wasn't anything like that among anybody's things. I've never seen anyone – of our lot, I mean, wearing anything like that. Not so far. Have you?"

  "No, I haven't, but I suppose I don't know that I should know if I had seen it," said Emlyn Price. "I don't always know red from green."

  "No, you're a bit colour blind, aren't you," said Joanna. "I noticed that the other day."

  "What do you mean, you noticed it."

  "My red scarf. I asked if you'd seen it. You said you'd seen a green one somewhere and you brought me the red one. I'd left it in the dining room. But you didn't really know it was red."

  "Well, don't go about saying I'm colour blind. I don't like it. Puts people off in some way."

  "Men are more often colour blind than women," said Joanna. "It's one of those sex-link things," she added, with an air of erudition. "You know, it passes through the female and comes out in the male."

  "You make it sound as though it was measles," said Emlyn Price. "Well, here we are."

  "You don't seem to mind," said Joanna, as they walked up the steps.

  "Well, I don't really. I've never been to an inquest. Things are rather interesting when you do them for the first time."

  Dr Stokes was a middle-aged man with greying hair and spectacles. Police evidence was given first, then the medical evidence with technical details of the concussion injuries which had caused death. Mrs Sandbourne gave particulars of the coach tour, the expedition as arranged for that particular afternoon, and particulars of how the fatality had occurred. Miss Temple, she said, although not young, was a very brisk walker. The party were going along a well known footpath which led round the curve of a hill which slowly mounted to the old Moorland Church originally built in Elizabethan times, though repaired and added to later. On a
n adjoining crest was what was called the Bonaventure Memorial. It was a fairly steep ascent and people usually climbed it at a different pace from each other. The younger ones very often ran or walked ahead and reached their destination much earlier than the others. The elderly ones took it slowly. She herself usually kept at the rear of the party so that she could, if necessary, suggest to people who were tired that they could, if they liked, go back. Miss Temple, she said, had been talking to a Mr and Mrs Butler. Miss Temple, though she was over sixty, had been slightly impatient at their slow pace and had out-distanced them, had turned a corner and gone on ahead rather rapidly, which she had done often before. She was inclined to get impatient of waiting for people to catch up for too long, and preferred to make her own pace. They had heard a cry ahead, and she and the others had run on, turned a curve of the pathway and had found Miss Temple lying on the ground. A large boulder detached from the hillside above where there were several others of the same kind, must, they had thought, have rolled down the hillside and struck Miss Temple as she was going along the path below. A most unfortunate and tragic accident.