Nemesis

by Agatha Christie

  “And I want to match some wools,” said Miss Cooke. “And also it seemed to me there was rather an interesting building on the other side of the Market Square.”

  “I think it would do us all good to get out,” said Miss Barrow.

  Colonel and Mrs. Walker also rose, and suggested to Mr. and Mrs. Butler that they too might go out and see what there was to see. Mrs. Butler expressed hopes of an antique shop.

  “Only I don’t really mean a real antique shop. More what you would call a junk shop. Sometimes you can pick up some really interesting things there.”

  They all trooped out. Emlyn Price had already sidled to the door and disappeared in pursuit of Joanna without troubling to use conversation to explain his departure. Mrs. Riseley-Porter, having made a belated attempt to call her niece back, said she thought that at least the lounge would be rather more pleasant to sit in. Miss Lumley agreed—Mr. Caspar escorted the ladies with the air of a foreign equerry.

  Professor Wanstead and Miss Marple remained.

  “I think myself,” said Professor Wanstead, addressing Miss Marple, “that it would be pleasant to sit outside the hotel. There is a small terrace giving on the street. If I might persuade you?”

  Miss Marple thanked him and rose to her feet. She had hardly exchanged a word so far with Professor Wanstead. He had several learned looking books with him, one of which he was usually perusing. Even in the coach he continued to try and read.

  “But perhaps you too want to shop,” he said. “For myself, I would prefer to wait somewhere peacefully for the return of Mrs. Sandbourne. It is important, I think, that we should know exactly what we are in for.”

  “I quite agree with you, as to that,” said Miss Marple. “I did a certain amount of walking round the town yesterday and I don’t feel any necessity to do so again today. I’d rather wait here in case there is anything I can do to help. Not that I suppose there is, but one never knows.”

  They moved together through the hotel door and round the corner to where there was a little square of garden with a raised stone walk close to the wall of the hotel and on which there were various forms of basket chairs. There was no one there at the moment so they sat down. Miss Marple looked thoughtfully at her vis-à-vis. At his corrugated and wrinkled face, his bushy brows, his luxuriant head of grey hair. He walked with a slight stoop. He had an interesting face, Miss Marple decided. His voice was dry and caustic, a professional man of some kind, she thought.

  “I am not wrong, am I,” said Professor Wanstead. “You are Miss Jane Marple?”

  “Yes, I am Jane Marple.”

  She was slightly surprised, though for no particular reason. They had not been long enough together for people to be identified by the other travellers. The last two nights she had not been with the rest of the party. It was quite natural.

  “I thought so,” said Professor Wanstead, “from a description I have had of you.”

  “A description of me?” Miss Marple was again slightly surprised.

  “Yes, I had a description of you—” he paused for a moment. His voice was not exactly lowered, but it lost volume, although she could still hear it quite easily “—from Mr. Rafiel.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Marple, startled. “From Mr. Rafiel.”

  “You are surprised?”

  “Well, yes, I am rather.”

  “I don’t know that you should be.”

  “I didn’t expect—” began Miss Marple and then stopped.

  Professor Wanstead did not speak. He was merely sitting, looking at her intently. In a minute or two, thought Miss Marple to herself, he will say to me, “What symptoms exactly, dear lady? Any discomfort in swallowing? Any lack of sleep? Digestion in good order?” She was almost sure now that he was a doctor.

  “When did he describe me to you? That must have been—”

  “You were going to say some time ago—some weeks ago. Before his death—that is so. He told me that you would be on this tour.”

  “And he knew that you would be on it too—that you were going on it.”

  “You can put it that way,” said Professor Wanstead. “He said,” he continued, “that you would be travelling on this tour, that he had in fact arranged for you to be travelling on this tour.”

  “It was very kind of him,” said Miss Marple. “Very kind indeed. I was most surprised when I found he’d booked me. Such a treat. Which I could not have afforded for myself.”

  “Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. “Very well put.” He nodded his head as one who applauds a good performance by a pupil.

  “It is sad that it has been interrupted in this fashion,” said Miss Marple. “Very sad indeed. When I am sure we were all enjoying ourselves so much.”

  “Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. “Yes, very sad. And unexpected, do you think, or not unexpected?”

  “Now what do you mean by that, Professor Wanstead?”

  His lips curled in a slight smile as he met her challenging look.

  “Mr. Rafiel,” he said, “spoke to me about you at some length, Miss Marple. He suggested that I should be on this tour with you. I should in due course almost certainly make your acquaintance, since members in a tour inevitably do make each other’s acquaintance, though it usually takes a day or two for them to split up, as it were, into possible groupings led by similar tastes or interests. And he further suggested to me that I should, shall we say, keep an eye on you.”

  “Keep an eye on me?” said Miss Marple, showing some slight displeasure. “And for what reason?”

  “I think reasons of protection. He wanted to be quite sure that nothing should happen to you.”

  “Happen to me? What should happen to me, I should like to know?”

  “Possibly what happened to Miss Elizabeth Temple,” said Professor Wanstead.

  Joanna Crawford came round the corner of the hotel. She was carrying a shopping basket. She passed them, nodding a little, she looked towards them with slight curiosity and went on down the street. Professor Wanstead did not speak until she had gone out of sight.

  “A nice girl,” he said, “at least I think so. Content at present to be a beast of burden to an autocratic aunt, but I have no doubt will reach the age of rebellion fairly soon.”

  “What did you mean by what you said just now?” said Miss Marple, uninterested for the moment in Joanna’s possible rebellion.

  “That is a question which, perhaps, owing to what has happened, we shall have to discuss.”

  “You mean because of the accident?”

  “Yes. If it was an accident.”

  “Do you think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Well, I think it’s just possible. That’s all.”

  “I don’t of course know anything about it,” said Miss Marple, hesitating.

  “No. You were absent from the scene. You were—shall I put it this way—were you just possibly on duty elsewhere?”

  Miss Marple was silent for a moment. She looked at Professor Wanstead once or twice and then she said:

  “I don’t think I know exactly what you mean.”

  “You are being careful. You are quite right to be careful.”

  “I have made it a habit,” said Miss Marple.

  “To be careful?”

  “I should not put it exactly like that, but I have made a point of being always ready to disbelieve as well as believe anything that is told to me.”

  “Yes, and you are quite right too. You don’t know anything about me. You know my name from the passenger list of a very agreeable tour visiting castles and historic houses and splendid gardens. Possibly the gardens are what will interest you most.”

  “Possibly.”

  “There are other people here too who are interested in gardens.”

  “Or profess to be interested in gardens.”

  “Ah,” said Professor Wanstead. “You have noticed that.”

  He went on. “Well, it was my part, or at any rate to begin with, to observe you, to watch what you were doing, to be n
ear at hand in case there was any possibility of—well, we might call it roughly—dirty work of any kind. But things are slightly altered now. You must make up your mind if I am your enemy or your ally.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” said Miss Marple. “You put it very clearly but you have not given me any information about yourself yet on which to judge. You were a friend, I presume, of the late Mr. Rafiel?”

  “No,” said Professor Wanstead, “I was not a friend of Mr. Rafiel. I had met him once or twice. Once on a committee of a hospital, once at some other public event. I knew about him. He, I gather, also knew about me. If I say to you, Miss Marple, that I am a man of some eminence in my own profession, you may think me a man of bounding conceit.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Miss Marple. “I should say, if you say that about yourself, that you are probably speaking the truth. You are, perhaps, a medical man.”

  “Ah. You are perceptive, Miss Marple. Yes, you are quite perceptive. I have a medical degree, but I have a speciality too. I am a pathologist and psychologist. I don’t carry credentials about with me. You will probably have to take my word up to a certain point, though I can show you letters addressed to me, and possibly official documents that might convince you. I undertake mainly specialist work in connection with medical jurisprudence. To put it in perfectly plain everyday language, I am interested in the different types of criminal brain. That has been a study of mine for many years. I have written books on the subject, some of them violently disputed, some of them which have attracted adherence to my ideas. I do not do very arduous work nowadays, I spend my time mainly writing up my subject, stressing certain points that have appealed to me. From time to time I come across things that strike me as interesting. Things that I want to study more closely. This I am afraid must seem rather tedious to you.”

  “Not at all,” said Miss Marple. “I am hoping perhaps, from what you are saying now, that you will be able to explain to me certain things which Mr. Rafiel did not see fit to explain to me. He asked me to embark upon a certain project but he gave me no useful information on which to work. He left me to accept it and proceed, as it were, completely in the dark. It seemed to me extremely foolish of him to treat the matter in that way.”

  “But you accepted it?”

  “I accepted it. I will be quite honest with you. I had a financial incentive.”

  “Did that weigh with you?”

  Miss Marple was silent for a moment and then she said slowly,

  “You may not believe it, but my answer to that is, ‘Not really.’”

  “I am not surprised. But your interest was aroused. That is what you are trying to tell me.”

  “Yes. My interest was aroused. I had known Mr. Rafiel not well, casually, but for a certain period of time—some weeks in fact—in the West Indies. I see you know about it, more or less.”

  “I know that that was where Mr. Rafiel met you and where—shall I say—you two collaborated.”

  Miss Marple looked at him rather doubtfully. “Oh,” she said, “he said that, did he?” She shook her head.

  “Yes, he did,” said Professor Wanstead. “He said you had a remarkable flair for criminal matters.”

  Miss Marple raised her eyebrows as she looked at him.

  “And I suppose that seems to you most unlikely,” she said. “It surprises you.”

  “I seldom allow myself to be surprised at what happens,” said Professor Wanstead. “Mr. Rafiel was a very shrewd and astute man, a good judge of people. He thought that you, too, were a good judge of people.”

  “I would not set myself up as a good judge of people,” said Miss Marple. “I would only say that certain people remind me of certain other people that I have known, and that therefore I can presuppose a certain likeness between the way they would act. If you think I know all about what I am supposed to be doing here, you are wrong.”

  “By accident more than design,” said Professor Wanstead, “we seem to have settled here in a particularly suitable spot for discussion of certain matters. We do not appear to be overlooked, we cannot easily be overheard, we are not near a window or a door and there is no balcony or window overhead. In fact, we can talk.”

  “I should appreciate that,” said Miss Marple. “I am stressing the fact that I am myself completely in the dark as to what I am doing or supposed to be doing. I don’t know why Mr. Rafiel wanted it that way.”

  “I think I can guess that. He wanted you to approach a certain set of facts, of happenings, unbiased by what anyone would tell you first.”

  “So you are not going to tell me anything either?” Miss Marple sounded irritated. “Really!” she said, “there are limits.”

  “Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. He smiled suddenly. “I agree with you. We must do away with some of these limits. I am going to tell you certain facts that will make certain things fairly clear to you. You in turn may be able to tell me certain facts.”

  “I rather doubt it,” said Miss Marple. “One or two rather peculiar indications perhaps, but indications are not facts.”

  “Therefore—” said Professor Wanstead, and paused.

  “For goodness’ sake, tell me something,” said Miss Marple.

  Twelve

  A CONSULTATION

  “I’m not going to make a long story of things. I’ll explain quite simply how I came into this matter. I act as confidential adviser from time to time for the Home Office. I am also in touch with certain institutions. There are certain establishments which, in the event of crime, provide board and lodging for certain types of criminal who have been found guilty of certain acts. They remain there at what is termed Her Majesty’s pleasure, sometimes for a definite length of time and in direct association with their age. If they are below a certain age they have to be received in some place of detention specially indicated. You understand that, no doubt.”

  “Yes, I understand quite well what you mean.”

  “Usually I am consulted fairly soon after whatever the—shall we call it—crime has happened, to judge such matters as treatment, possibilities in the case, prognosis favourable or unfavourable, all the various words. They do not mean much and I will not go into them. But occasionally also I am consulted by a responsible Head of such an institution for a particular reason. In this matter I received a communication from a certain Department which was passed to me through the Home Office. I went to visit the Head of this institution. In fact, the Governor responsible for the prisoners or patients or whatever you like to call them. He was by way of being a friend of mine. A friend of fairly long standing though not one with whom I was on terms of great intimacy. I went down to the institution in question and the Governor laid his troubles before me. They referred to one particular inmate. He was not satisfied about this inmate. He had certain doubts. This was the case of a young man or one who had been a young man, in fact little more than a boy, when he came there. That was now several years ago. As time went on, and after the present Governor had taken up his own residence there (he had not been there at the original arrival of this prisoner), he became worried. Not because he himself was a professional man, but because he was a man of experience of criminal patients and prisoners. To put it quite simply, this had been a boy who from his early youth had been completely unsatisfactory. You can call it by what term you like. A young delinquent, a young thug, a bad lot, a person of diminished responsibility. There are many terms. Some of them fit, some of them don’t fit, some of them are merely puzzling. He was a criminal type. That was certain. He had joined gangs, he had beaten up people, he was a thief, he had stolen, he had embezzled, he had taken part in swindles, he had initiated certain frauds. In fact, he was a son who would be any father’s despair.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Miss Marple.

  “And what do you see, Miss Marple?”

  “Well, what I think I see is that you are talking of Mr. Rafiel’s son.”

  “You are quite right. I am talking of Mr. Rafiel’s son. What do you know about hi
m?”

  “Nothing,” said Miss Marple. “I only heard—and that was yesterday—that Mr. Rafiel had a delinquent, or unsatisfactory, if we like to put it mildly, son. A son with a criminal record. I know very little about him. Was he Mr. Rafiel’s only son?”

  “Yes, he was Mr. Rafiel’s only son. But Mr. Rafiel also had two daughters. One of them died when she was fourteen, the elder daughter married quite happily but had no children.”

  “Very sad for him.”

  “Possibly,” said Professor Wanstead. “One never knows. His wife died young and I think it possible that her death saddened him very much, though he was never willing to show it. How much he cared for his son and daughters I don’t know. He provided for them. He did his best for them. He did his best for his son, but what his feelings were one cannot say. He was not an easy man to read that way. I think his whole life and interest lay in his profession of making money. It was the making of it, like all great financiers, that interested him. Not the actual money which he secured by it. That, as you might say, was sent out like a good servant to earn more money in more interesting and unexpected ways. He enjoyed finance. He loved finance. He thought of very little else.

  “I think he did all that was possible for his son. He got him out of scrapes at school, he employed good lawyers to get him released from Court proceedings whenever possible, but the final blow came, perhaps presaged by some early happenings. The boy was taken to Court on a charge of assault against a young girl. It was said to be assault and rape and he suffered a term of imprisonment for it, with some leniency shown because of his youth. But later, a second and really serious charge was brought against him.”

  “He killed a girl,” said Miss Marple. “Is that right? That’s what I heard.”

  “He lured a girl away from her home. It was some time before her body was found. She had been strangled. And afterwards her face and head had been disfigured by some heavy stones or rocks, presumably to prevent her identity being made known.”