Nemesis mm-11

by Agatha Christie

  "No. Verity did not want anyone to know, and I should say most certainly Mike did not want anyone to know. They were afraid of being stopped. To Verity, I think, besides love, there was also a feeling of escape. Natural, I think, owing to the circumstances of her life. She had lost her real guardians, her parents, she had entered on her new life after their death, at an age when a schoolgirl arrives at having a 'crush' on someone. An attractive mistress. Anything from the games mistress to the mathematics mistress, or a prefect or an older girl. A state that does not last for very long, is merely a natural part of life. Then from that you go on to the next stage when you realise that what you want in your life is what complements yourself. A relationship between a man and a woman. You start then to look about you for a mate. The mate you want in life. And if you are wise, you take your time, you have friends, but you are looking, as the old nurses used to say to children, for Mr Right to come along. Clotilde Bradbury-Scott was exceptionally good to Verity, and Verity, I think, gave her what I should call hero-worship. She was a personality as a woman. Handsome, accomplished, interesting. I think Verity adored her in an almost romantic way and I think Clotilde came to love Verity as though she were her own daughter. And so Verity grew to maturity in an atmosphere of adoration, lived an interesting life with interesting subjects to stimulate her intellect. It was a happy life, but I think little by little she was conscious – conscious without knowing she was conscious, shall we say, of a wish to escape. Escape from being loved. To escape, she didn't know into what or where. But she did know after she met Michael. She wanted to escape to a life where male and female come together to create the next stage of living in this world. But she knew that it was impossible to make Clotilde understand how she felt. She knew that Clotilde would be bitterly opposed to her taking her love for Michael seriously. And Clotilde, I fear, was right in her belief… I know that now. He was not a husband that Verity ought to have taken or had. The road that she started out on led not to life, not to increased living and happiness. It led to shock, pain, death. You see, Miss Marple, that I have a grave feeling of guilt. My motives were good, but I didn't know what I ought to have known. I knew Verity, but I didn't know Michael. I understood Verity's wish for secrecy because I knew what a strong personality Clotilde Bradbury-Scott had. She might have had a strong enough influence over Verity to persuade her to give up the marriage."

  "You think then that that was what she did do? You think Clotilde told her enough about Michael to persuade her to give up the idea of marrying him?"

  "No, I do not believe that. I still do not. Verity would have told me if so. She would have got word to me."

  "What did actually happen on that day?"

  "I haven't told you that yet. The day was fixed. The time, the hour and the place, and I waited. Waited for a bride and bridegroom who didn't come, who sent no word, no excuse, nothing. I didn't know why! I never have known why. It still seems to me unbelievable. Unbelievable, I mean, not that they did not come, that could be explicable easily enough, but that they sent no word. Some scrawled line of writing. And that is why I wondered and hoped that Elizabeth Temple, before she died, might have told you something. Given you some message perhaps for me. If she knew or had any idea that she was dying, she might have wanted to get a message to me."

  "She wanted information from you," said Miss Marple. "That, I am sure, was the reason she was coming to you."

  "Yes. Yes, that is probably true. It seemed to me, you see, that Verity would have said nothing to the people who could have stopped her, Clotilde and Anthea Bradbury-Scott, but because she had always been very devoted to Elizabeth Temple – and Elizabeth Temple had had great influence over her – it seems to me that she would have written and given her information of some kind."

  "I think she did," said Miss Marple.

  "Information, you think?"

  "The information she gave to Elizabeth Temple," said Miss Marple, "was this. That she was going to marry Michael Rafiel. Miss Temple knew that. It was one of the things she said to me. She said: 'I knew a girl called Verity who was going to marry Michael Rafiel' and the only person who could have told her that was Verity herself. Verity must have written to her or sent some word to her. And then when I said 'Why didn't she marry him?' she said: 'She died.'"

  "Then we come to a full stop," said Archdeacon Brabazon. He sighed. "Elizabeth and I know no more than those two facts. Elizabeth, that Verity was going to marry Michael. And I that those two were going to marry, that they had arranged it and that they were coming on a settled day and time. And I waited for them, but there was no marriage. No bride, no bride-groom, no word."

  "And you have no idea what happened?" said Miss Marple.

  "I do not for one minute believe that Verity or Michael definitely parted, broke off."

  "But something must have happened between them? Something that opened Verity's eyes perhaps, to certain aspects of Michael's character and personality, that she had not realised or known before."

  "That is not a satisfying answer because still she would have let me know. She would not have left me waiting to join them together in holy matrimony. To put the most ridiculous side of it, she was a girl with beautiful manners, well brought up. She would have sent word. No. I'm afraid that only one thing could have happened."

  "Death?" said Miss Marple. She was remembering that one word that Elizabeth Temple had said which had sounded like the deep tone of a bell.

  "Yes." Archdeacon Brabazon sighed. "Death."

  "Love," said Miss Marple thoughtfully.

  "By that you mean -" he hesitated.

  "It's what Miss Temple said to me. I said 'What killed her?' and she said 'Love' and that love was the most frightening word in the world. The most frightening word."

  "I see," said the Archdeacon. "I see or I think I see."

  "What is your solution?"

  "Split personality," he sighed. "Something that is not apparent to other people unless they are technically qualified to observe it. Jekyll and Hyde are real, you know. They were not Stevenson's invention as such. Michael Rafiel was – must have been – schizophrenic. He had a dual personality. I have no medical knowledge, no psychoanalytic experience. But there must have been in him the two parts of two identities. One, a well-meaning, almost lovable boy, a boy perhaps whose principal attraction was his wish for happiness. But there was also a second personality, someone who was forced by some mental deformation perhaps, something we as yet are not sure of – to kill – not an enemy, but the person he loved, and so he killed Verity. Not knowing perhaps why he had to or what it meant. There are very frightening things in this world of ours, mental quirks, mental disease or deformity of a brain. One of my parishioners was a very sad case in point. Two elderly women living together, pensioned. They had been friends in service together somewhere. They appeared to be a happy couple. And yet one day one of them killed the other. She sent for an old friend of hers, the vicar of her parish, and said: 'I have killed Louisa. It is very sad,' she said, 'but I saw the devil looking out of her eyes and I knew I was being commanded to kill her.' Things like that make one sometimes despair of living. One says why? and how? and yet one day knowledge will come. Doctors will find out or learn just some small deformity of a chromosome or gene. Some gland that overworks or leaves off working."

  "So you think that's what happened?" said Miss Marple.

  "It did happen. The body was not found, I know, for some time afterwards. Verity just disappeared. She went away from home and was not seen again…"

  "But it must have happened then, that very day -"

  "But surely at the trial -"

  "You mean after the body was found, when the police finally arrested Michael?"

  "He had been one of the first, you know, to be asked to come and give assistance to the police. He had been seen about with the girl, she had been noticed in his car. They were sure all along that he was the man they wanted. He was their first suspect, and they never stopped suspecting him. The o
ther young men who had known Verity were questioned, and one and all had alibis or lack of evidence. They continued to suspect Michael, and finally the body was found. Strangled and the head and face disfigured with heavy blows. A mad frenzied attack. He wasn't sane when he struck those blows. Mr Hyde, let us say, had taken over."

  Miss Marple shivered.

  The Archdeacon went on, his voice low and sad. "And yet, even now sometimes, I hope and feel that it was some other young man who killed her. Someone who was definitely mentally deranged, though no one had any idea of it. Some stranger, perhaps, whom she had met in the neighbourhood. Someone whom she had met by chance, who had given her a lift in a car, and then -" He shook his head.

  "I suppose that could have been true," said Miss Marple.

  "Mike made a bad impression in court," said the Archdeacon. "Told foolish and senseless lies. Lied as to where his car had been. Got his friends to give him impossible alibis. He was frightened. He said nothing of his plan to marry. I believe his Counsel was of the opinion that that would tell against him that she might have been forcing him to marry her and that he didn't want to. It's so long ago now, I remember no details. But the evidence was dead against him. He was guilty and he looked guilty.

  "So you see, do you not, Miss Marple, that I'm a very sad and unhappy man. I made the wrong judgement, I encouraged a very sweet and lovely girl to go to her death, because I did not know enough of human nature. I was ignorant of the danger she was running. I believed that if she had had any fear of him, any sudden knowledge of something evil in him, she would have broken her pledge to marry him and have come to me and told me of her fear, of her new knowledge of him. But nothing of that ever happened. Why did he kill her? Did he kill her because perhaps he knew she was going to have a child? Because by now he had formed a tie with some other girl and did not want to be forced to marry Verity? I can't believe it. Or was it some entirely different reason. Because she had suddenly felt a fear of him, a knowledge of danger from him, and had broken off her association with him? Did that rouse his anger, his fury, and did that lead him to violence and to killing her? One does not know."

  "You do not know?" said Miss Marple, "but you do still know and believe one thing, don't you?"

  "What do you mean exactly by 'believe'? Are you talking from the religious point of view?"

  "Oh no," said Miss Marple, "I didn't mean that. I mean, there seems to be in you, or so I feel it, a very strong belief that those two loved each other, that they meant to marry, but that something happened that prevented it. Something that ended in her death, but you still really believe that they were coming to you to get married that day?"

  "You are quite right, my dear. Yes, I cannot help still believing in two lovers who wished to get married, who were ready to take each other on for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. She loved him and she would have taken him for better or for worse. As far as she had gone, she took him for worse. It brought about her death."

  "You must go on believing as you do," said Miss Marple. "I think, you know, that I believe it too."

  "But then what?"

  "I don't know yet," said Miss Marple. "I'm not sure, but I think Elizabeth Temple did know or was beginning to know what happened. A frightening word, she said. Love. I thought when she spoke that what she meant was that because of a love affair Verity committed suicide. Because she found out something about Michael, or because something about Michael suddenly upset her and revolted her. But it couldn't have been suicide."

  "No," said the Archdeacon, "that couldn't be so. The injuries were described very fully at the trial. You don't commit suicide by beating in your own head."

  "Horrible!" said Miss Marple. "Horrible! And you couldn't do that to anyone you loved even if you had to kill 'for love', could you? If he'd killed her, he couldn't have done it that way. Strangling perhaps, but you wouldn't beat in the face and the head that you loved." She murmured, "Love, love a frightening word."

  Chapter 19

  GOOD-BYES ARE SAID

  The coach was drawn up in front of the Golden Boar on the following morning. Miss Marple had come down and was saying good-bye to various friends. She found Mrs Riseley-Porter in a state of high indignation.

  "Really, girls nowadays," she said. "No vigour. No stamina."

  Miss Marple looked at her enquiringly.

  "Joanna, I mean. My niece."

  "Oh dear. Is she not well?"

  "Well, she says not. I can't see anything much the matter with her. She says she's got a sore throat, she feels she might have a temperature coming on. All nonsense, I think."

  "Oh, I'm very sorry," said Miss Marple. "Is there anything I can do? Look after her?"

  "I should leave her alone, if I were you," said Mrs Riseley-Porter. "If you ask me, it's all an excuse."

  Miss Marple looked enquiringly at her once more.

  "Girls are so silly. Always falling in love."

  "Emlyn Price?" said Miss Marple.

  "Oh, so you've noticed it too. Yes, they're really getting to a stage of spooning about together. I don't much care for him anyway. One of these long-haired students, you know. Always going on demos or something like that. Why can't they say demonstration properly? I hate abbreviations. And how am I going to get along. Nobody to look after me, collect my luggage, take it in, take it out. Really. I'm paying, for this complete trip and everything."

  "I thought she seemed so attentive to you," said Miss Marple.

  "Well, not the last day or two. Girls don't understand that people have to have a little assistance when they get to middle age. They seem to have some absurd idea, she and the Price boy, of going to visit some mountain or some landmark. About a seven or eight mile walk there and back."

  "But surely if she has a sore throat and a temperature…"

  "You'll see, as soon as the coach is gone the sore throat will get better and the temperature will go down," said Mrs Riseley-Porter. "Oh dear, we've got to get on board now. Oh, good-bye, Miss Marple, it's nice to have met you. I'm sorry you're not coming with us."

  "I'm very sorry myself," said Miss Marple, "but really you know, I'm not so young and vigorous as you are, Mrs Riseley-Porter, and I really feel after all the – well, shock and everything else the last few days, I really must have a complete twenty-four hours' rest."

  "Well, hope to see you somewhere in the future."

  They shook hands. Mrs Riseley-Porter climbed into the coach.

  A voice behind Miss Marple's shoulder said:

  "Bon Voyage and Good Riddance."

  She turned to see Emlyn Price. He was grinning.

  "Was that addressed to Mrs Riseley-Porter?"

  "Yes. Who else."

  "I'm sorry to hear that Joanna is under the weather this morning."

  Emlyn Price grinned at Miss Marple again.

  "She'll be all right," he said, "as soon as that coach is gone."

  "Oh really!" said Miss Marple, "do you mean?"

  "Yes, I do mean," said Emlyn Price. "Joanna's had enough of that aunt of hers, bossing her around all the time."

  "Then you are not going in the coach either?"

  "No. I'm staying on here for a couple of days. I'm going to get around a bit and do a few excursions. Don't look so disapproving, Miss Marple. You're not really as disapproving as all that, are you?"

  "Well," said Miss Marple, "I have known such things happen in my own youth. The excuses may have been different, and I think we had less chance of getting away with things than you do now."

  Colonel and Mrs Walker came up and shook Miss Marple warmly by the hand.

  "So nice to have known you and had all those delightful horticultural talks," said the Colonel. "I believe the day after tomorrow we're going to have a real treat, if nothing else happens. Really it's too sad, this very unfortunate accident. I must say I think myself it is an accident. I really think the Coroner was going beyond everything in his feelings about this."

  "It seems very odd," sai
d Miss Marple, "that nobody has come forward, if they were up on top there, pushing about rocks and boulders and things, that they haven't come forward to say so."

  "Think they'll be blamed, of course," said Colonel Walker. "They're going to keep jolly quiet, that's what they're going to do. Well, good-bye. I'll send you a cutting of that Magnolia highdownensis and one of the Mahonia japonica too. Though I'm not quite sure if it would do as well where you live."

  They in turn got into the coach. Miss Marple turned away. She turned to see Professor Wanstead waving to the departing coach. Mrs Sandbourne came out, said good-bye to Miss Marple and got in the coach and Miss Marple took Professor Wanstead by the arm.

  "I want you," she said. "Can we go somewhere where we can talk?"

  "Yes. What about the place where we sat the other day?"

  "Round here there's a very nice verandah place, I think."

  They walked round the corner of the hotel. There was some gay horn-blowing, and the coach departed.

  "I wish, in a way, you know," said Professor Wanstead, "that you weren't staying behind. I'd rather have seen you safely on your way in the coach." He looked at her sharply. "Why are you staying here? Nervous exhaustion or something else?"

  "Something else," said Miss Marple. "I'm not particularly exhausted, though it makes a perfectly natural excuse for somebody of my age."

  "I feel really I ought to stay here and keep an eye on you."

  "No," said Miss Marple, "there's no need to do that. There are other things you ought to be doing."

  "What things?" He looked at her.

  "Have you got ideas or knowledge?"

  "I think I have knowledge, but I'll have to verify it. There are certain things that I can't do myself. I think you will help to do them because you're in touch with what I refer to as the authorities."

  "Meaning Scotland Yard, Chief Constables and the Governors of Her Majesty's Prisons?"

  "Yes. One or other or all of them. You might have the Home Secretary in your pocket, too."

  "You certainly do have ideas! Well, what do you want me to do?"