Mr. Schuster looked faintly puzzled.
“Headmistress of Fallowfield. You’ve heard of Fallowfield, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” said Schuster. “Girls’ school. Been going for fifty years or so. First class, fantastically expensive. So she was the Headmistress of it, was she? I thought the Headmistress had resigned some time ago. Six months at least. I’m sure I read about it in the paper. That is to say there was a bit about the new Headmistress. Married woman. Youngish. Thirty-five to forty. Modern ideas. Give the girls lessons in cosmetics, let ’em wear trouser suits. Something of that kind.”
“Hum,” said Mr. Broadribb, making the noise that solicitors of his age are likely to make when they hear something which elicits criticism based on long experience. “Don’t think she’ll ever make the name that Elizabeth Temple did. Quite someone, she was. Been there a long time, too.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Schuster, somewhat uninterested. He wondered why Broadribb was so interested in defunct schoolmistresses.
Schools were not really of particular interest to either of the two gentlemen. Their own offspring were now more or less disposed of. Mr. Broadribb’s two sons were respectively in the Civil Service and in an oil firm, and Mr. Schuster’s rather younger progeny were at different universities where both of them respectively were making as much trouble for those in authority as they possibly could do. He said,
“What about her?”
“She was on a coach tour,” said Mr. Broadribb.
“Those coaches,” said Mr. Schuster. “I wouldn’t let any of my relations go on one of those. One went off a precipice in Switzerland last week and two months ago one had a crash and twenty were killed. Don’t know who drives these things nowadays.”
“It was one of those Country Houses and Gardens and Objects of Interest in Britain—or whatever they call it—tours,” said Mr. Broadribb. “That’s not quite the right name, but you know what I mean.”
“Oh yes, I know. Oh the—er—yes, that’s the one we sent Miss What’s-a-name on. The one old Rafiel booked.”
“Miss Jane Marple was on it.”
“She didn’t get killed too, did she?” asked Mr. Schuster.
“Not so far as I know,” said Mr. Broadribb. “I just wondered a bit, though.”
“Was it a road accident?”
“No. It was at one of the beauty spot places. They were walking on a path up a hill. It was a stiff walk. Up a rather steep hill with boulders and things on it. Some of the boulders got loose and came rushing down the mountainside. Miss Temple was knocked out and taken to hospital with concussion and died—”
“Bad luck,” said Mr. Schuster, and waited for more.
“I only wondered,” said Mr. Broadribb, “because I happened to remember that—well, that Fallowfield was the school where the girl was at.”
“What girl? I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Broadribb.”
“The girl who was done in by young Michael Rafiel. I was just recalling a few things which might seem to have some slight connection with this curious Jane Marple business that old Rafiel was so keen on. Wish he’d told us more.”
“What’s the connection?” said Mr. Schuster.
He looked more interested now. His legal wits were in process of being sharpened, to give a sound opinion on whatever it was that Mr. Broadribb was about to confide to him.
“That girl. Can’t remember her last name now. Christian name was Hope or Faith or something like that. Verity, that was her name. Verity Hunter, I think it was. She was one of that series of murdered girls. Found her body in a ditch about thirty miles away from where she’d gone missing. Been dead six months. Strangled apparently, and her head and face had been bashed in—to delay recognition, they thought, but she was recognized all right. Clothes, handbag, jewellery nearby—some mole or scar. Oh yes, she was identified quite easily—”
“Actually, she was the one the trial was all about, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. Suspected of having done away with perhaps three other girls during the past year, Michael was. But evidence wasn’t so good in the other deaths—so the police went all out on this one—plenty of evidence—bad record. Earlier cases of assault and rape. Well, we all know what rape is nowadays. Mum tells the girl she’s got to accuse the young man of rape even if the young man hasn’t had much chance, with the girl at him all the time to come to the house while mum’s away at work or dad’s gone on holiday. Doesn’t stop badgering him until she’s forced him to sleep with her. Then, as I say, mum tells the girl to call it rape. However, that’s not the point,” said Mr. Broadribb. “I wondered if things mightn’t tie up a bit, you know. I thought this Jane Marple business with Rafiel might have something to do with Michael.”
“Found guilty, wasn’t he? And given a life sentence?”
“I can’t remember now—it’s so long ago. Or did they get away with a verdict of diminished responsibility?”
“And Verity Hunter or Hunt was educated at that school. Miss Temple’s school? She wasn’t still a schoolgirl though, was she, when she was killed? Not that I can remember.”
“Oh no. She was eighteen or nineteen, living with relations or friends of her parents, or something like that. Nice house, nice people, nice girl by all accounts. The sort of girl whose relations always say ‘she was a very quiet girl, rather shy, didn’t go about with strange people and had no boyfriends.’ Relations never know what boyfriends a girl has. The girls take mighty good care of that. And young Rafiel was said to be very attractive to girls.”
“Never been any doubt that he did it?” asked Mr. Schuster.
“Not a scrap. Told a lot of lies in the witness box, anyway. His Counsel would have done better not to have let him give evidence. A lot of his friends gave him an alibi that didn’t stand up, if you know what I mean. All his friends seemed to be fluent liars.”
“What’s your feeling about it, Broadribb?”
“Oh, I haven’t got any feelings,” said Mr. Broadribb, “I was just wondering if this woman’s death might tie up.”
“In what way?”
“Well, you know—about these boulders that fall down cliff sides and drop on top of someone. It’s not always in the course of nature. Boulders usually stay where they are, in my experience.”
Fifteen
VERITY
I
“Verity,” said Miss Marple.
Elizabeth Margaret Temple had died the evening before. It had been a peaceful death. Miss Marple, sitting once more amidst the faded chintz of the drawing room in The Old Manor House, had laid aside the baby’s pink coat which she had previously been engaged in knitting and had substituted a crocheted purple scarf. This half-mourning touch went with Miss Marple’s early Victorian ideas of tactfulness in face of tragedy.
An inquest was to be held on the following day. The vicar had been approached and had agreed to hold a brief memorial service in the church as soon as arrangements could be made. Undertakers suitably attired, with proper mourning faces, took general charge of things in liaison with the police. The inquest was to take place on the following morning at 11 o’clock. Members of the coach tour had agreed to attend the inquest. And several of them had chosen to remain on so as to attend the church service also.
Mrs. Glynne had come to the Golden Boar and urged Miss Marple to return to The Old Manor House until she finally returned to the tour.
“You will get away from all the reporters.”
Miss Marple had thanked all three sisters warmly and had accepted.
The coach tour would be resumed after the memorial service, driving first to South Bedestone, thirty-five miles away, where there was a good class hotel which had been originally chosen for a stopping place. After that the tour would go on as usual.
There were, however, as Miss Marple had considered likely, certain persons who were disengaging themselves and returning home, or were going in other directions and not continuing on the tour. There was something to be said in
favour of either decision. To leave what would become a journey of painful memories, or to continue with the sightseeing that had already been paid for and which had been interrupted only by one of those painful accidents that may happen on any sightseeing expedition. A lot would depend, Miss Marple thought, on the outcome of the inquest.
Miss Marple, after exchanging various conventional remarks proper to the occasion with her three hostesses, had devoted herself to her purple wool and had sat considering her next line of investigation. And so it was that with her fingers still busy, she had uttered the one word, “Verity.” Throwing it as one throws a pebble into a stream, solely to observe what the result—if any—would be. Would it mean something to her hostesses? It might or it might not. Otherwise, when she joined the members of the tour at their hotel meal this evening, which had been arranged, she would try the effect of it there. It had been, she thought to herself, the last word or almost the last word that Elizabeth Temple had spoken. So therefore, thought Miss Marple (her fingers still busy because she did not need to look at her crocheting, she could read a book or conduct a conversation while her fingers, though slightly crippled with rheumatism, would proceed correctly through their appointed movements). So therefore, “Verity.”
Like a stone into a pool, causing ripples, a splash, something? Or nothing. Surely there would be a reaction of one sort or another. Yes, she had not been mistaken. Although her face registered nothing, the keen eyes behind her glasses had watched three people in a simultaneous manner as she had trained herself to do for many years now, when wishing to observe her neighbours either in church, mothers’ meetings, or at other public functions in St. Mary Mead when she had been on the track of some interesting piece of news or gossip.
Mrs. Glynne had dropped the book she was holding and had looked across towards Miss Marple with slight surprise. Surprise, it seemed, at the particular word coming from Miss Marple, but not surprised really to hear it.
Clotilde reacted differently. Her head shot up, she leant forward a little, then she looked not at Miss Marple but across the room in the direction of the window. Her hands clenched themselves, she kept very still. Miss Marple, although dropping her head slightly as though she was not looking any more, noted that her eyes were filling with tears. Clotilde sat quite still and let the tears roll down her cheeks. She made no attempt to take out a handkerchief, she uttered no word. Miss Marple was impressed by the aura of grief that came from her.
Anthea’s reaction was different. It was quick, excited, almost pleasurable.
“Verity? Verity, did you say? Did you know her? I’d no idea. It is Verity Hunt you mean?”
Lavinia Glynne said, “It’s a Christian name?”
“I never knew anyone of that name,” said Miss Marple, “but I did mean a Christian name. Yes. It is rather unusual, I think. Verity.” She repeated it thoughtfully.
She let her purple wool ball fall and looked round with the slightly apologetic and embarrassed look of one who realizes she has made a serious faux pas, but not sure why.
“I—I am so sorry. Have I said something I shouldn’t? It was only because….”
“No, of course not,” said Mrs. Glynne. “It was just that it is—it is a name we know, a name with which we have—associations.”
“It just came into my mind,” said Miss Marple, still apologetic, “because, you know, it was poor Miss Temple who said it. I went to see her, you know, yesterday afternoon. Professor Wanstead took me. He seemed to think that I might be able to—to—I don’t know if it’s the proper word—to rouse her, in some way. She was in a coma and they thought—not that I was a friend of hers at any time, but we had chatted together on the tour and we often sat beside each other, as you know, on some of the days and we had talked. And he thought perhaps I might be of some use. I’m afraid I wasn’t though. Not at all. I just sat there and waited and then she did say one or two words, but they didn’t seem to mean anything. But finally, just when it was time for me to go, she did open her eyes and looked at me—I don’t know if she was mistaking me for someone—but she did say that word. Verity! And, well of course it stuck in my mind, especially with her passing away yesterday evening. It must have been someone or something that she had in her mind. But of course it might just mean—well, of course it might just mean Truth. That’s what verity means, doesn’t it?”
She looked from Clotilde to Lavinia to Anthea.
“It was the Christian name of a girl we knew,” said Lavinia Glynne. “That is why it startled us.”
“Especially because of the awful way she died,” said Anthea.
Clotilde said in her deep voice, “Anthea! there’s no need to go into these details.”
“But after all, everyone knows quite well about her,” said Anthea. She looked towards Miss Marple. “I thought perhaps you might have known about her because you knew Mr. Rafiel, didn’t you? Well, I mean, he wrote to us about you so you must have known him. And I thought perhaps—well, he’d mentioned the whole thing to you.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Miss Marple, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”
“They found her body in a ditch,” said Anthea.
There was never any holding Anthea, Miss Marple thought, not once she got going. But she thought that Anthea’s vociferous talk was putting additional strain on Clotilde. She had taken out a handkerchief now in a quiet, noncommittal way. She brushed tears from her eyes and then sat upright, her back very straight, her eyes deep and tragic.
“Verity,” she said, “was a girl we cared for very much. She lived here for a while. I was very fond of her—”
“And she was very fond of you,” said Lavinia.
“Her parents were friends of mine,” said Clotilde. “They were killed in a plane accident.”
“She was at school at Fallowfield,” explained Lavinia. “I suppose that was how Miss Temple came to remember her.”
“Oh I see,” said Miss Marple. “Where Miss Temple was Headmistress, is that it? I have heard of Fallowfield often, of course. It’s a very fine school, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Clotilde. “Verity was a pupil there. After her parents died she came to stay with us for a time while she could decide what she wanted to do with her future. She was eighteen or nineteen. A very sweet girl and a very affectionate and loving one. She thought perhaps of training for nursing, but she had very good brains and Miss Temple was very insistent that she ought to go to university. So she was studying and having coaching for that when—when this terrible thing happened.”
She turned her face away.
“I—do you mind if we don’t talk about it any more just now?”
“Oh, of course not,” said Miss Marple. “I’m so sorry to have impinged on some tragedy. I didn’t know. I—I haven’t heard … I thought—well I mean …” She became more and more incoherent.
II
That evening she heard a little more. Mrs. Glynne came to her bedroom when she was changing her dress to go out and join the others at the hotel.
“I thought I ought to come and explain a little to you,” said Mrs. Glynne, “about—about the girl Verity Hunt. Of course you couldn’t know that our sister Clotilde was particularly fond of her and that her really horrible death was a terrible shock. We never mention her if we can help it, but—I think it would be easier if I told you the facts completely and you will understand. Apparently Verity had, without our knowledge, made friends with an undesirable—a more than undesirable—it turned out to be a dangerous—young man who already had a criminal record. He came here to visit us when he was passing through once. We knew his father very well.” She paused. “I think I’d better tell you the whole truth if you don’t know, and you don’t seem to. He was actually Mr. Rafiel’s son, Michael—”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple, “not—not—I can’t remember his name but I do remember hearing that there was a son—and, that he hadn’t been very satisfactory.”
“A little m
ore than that,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He’d always given trouble. He’d been had up in court once or twice for various things. Once assaulting a teenager—other things of that type. Of course I consider myself that the magistrates are too lenient with that kind of thing. They don’t want to upset a young man’s university career. And so they let them off with a—I forget what they call it—a suspended sentence, something of that kind. If these boys were sent to gaol at once it would perhaps warn them off that type of life. He was a thief, too. He had forged cheques, he pinched things. He was a thoroughly bad lot. We were friends of his mother’s. It was lucky for her, I think, that she died young before she had time to be upset by the way her son was turning out. Mr. Rafiel did all he could, I think. Tried to find suitable jobs for the boy, paid fines for him and things like that. But I think it was a great blow to him, though he pretended to be more or less indifferent and to write it off as one of those things that happen. We had, as probably people here in the village will tell you, we had a bad outbreak of murders and violence in this district. Not only here. They were in different parts of the country, twenty miles away, sometimes fifty miles away. One or two, it’s suspected by the police, were nearly a hundred miles away. But they seemed to centre more or less on this part of the world. Anyway, Verity one day went out to visit a friend and—well, she didn’t come back. We went to the police about it, the police sought for her, searched the whole countryside but they couldn’t find any trace of her. We advertised, they advertised, and they suggested that she’d gone off with a boyfriend. Then word began to get round that she had been seen with Michael Rafiel. By now the police had their eye on Michael as a possibility for certain crimes that had occurred, although they couldn’t find any direct evidence. Verity was said to have been seen, described by her clothing and other things, with a young man of Michael’s appearance and in a car that corresponded to a description of his car. But there was no further evidence until her body was discovered six months later, thirty miles from here in a rather wild part of wooded country, in a ditch covered with stones and piled earth. Clotilde had to go to identify it—it was Verity all right. She’d been strangled and her head beaten in. Clotilde has never quite got over the shock. There were certain marks, a mole and an old scar and of course her clothes and the contents of her handbag. Miss Temple was very fond of Verity. She must have thought of her just before she died.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 214
