The Complete Miss Marple Collection

by Agatha Christie

  Miss Marple adopted an attitude of not listening or hearing. She picked up a small enamel box and looked at it with admiring eyes.

  “She’ll probably break a vase now,” said Lavinia.

  She went out of the room. Miss Marple said,

  “You are worried about your sister, about Anthea?”

  “Well yes, she’s always been rather unbalanced. She’s the youngest and she was rather delicate as a girl. But lately, I think, she’s got definitely worse. She hasn’t got any idea, I think, of the gravity of things. She has these silly fits of hysteria. Hysterical laughter at things one ought to be serious about. We don’t want to—well, to send her anywhere or—you know. She ought to have treatment, I think, but I don’t think she would like to go away from home. This is her home, after all. Though sometimes it’s—it’s very difficult.”

  “All life is difficult sometimes,” said Miss Marple.

  “Lavinia talks of going away,” said Clotilde. “She talks of going to live abroad again. At Taormina, I think. She was there with her husband a lot and they were very happy. She’s been at home with us now for many years, but she seems to have this longing to get away and to travel. Sometimes I think—sometimes I think she doesn’t like being in the same house as Anthea.”

  “Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, I have heard of cases like that where these difficulties do arise.”

  “She’s afraid of Anthea,” said Clotilde. “Definitely afraid of her. And really, I keep telling her there’s nothing to be afraid of. Anthea’s just rather silly at times. You know, has queer ideas and says queer things. But I don’t think there’s any danger of her—well, I mean of—oh, I don’t know what I mean. Doing anything dangerous or strange or queer.”

  “There’s never been any trouble of that kind?” enquired Miss Marple.

  “Oh no. There’s never been anything. She gets nervous fits of temper sometimes and she takes rather sudden dislikes to people. She’s very jealous, you know, over things. Very jealous of a lot of—well, fuss being made over different people. I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’d better sell this house and leave it altogether.”

  “It is sad for you, isn’t it,” said Miss Marple. “I think I can understand that it must be very sad for you living here with the memory of the past.”

  “You understand that, do you? Yes, I can see that you do. One cannot help it. One’s mind goes back to that dear, lovable child. She was like a daughter to me. She was the daughter, anyway, of one of my best friends. She was very intelligent too. She was a clever girl. She was a good artist. She was doing very well with her art training and designing. She was taking up a good deal of designing. I was very proud of her. And then—this wretched attachment, this terrible mentally afflicted boy.”

  “You mean Mr. Rafiel’s son, Michael Rafiel?”

  “Yes. If only he’d never come here. It just happened that he was staying in this part of the world and his father suggested he might look us up and he came and had a meal with us. He could be very charming, you know. But he always had been a sad delinquent, a bad record. He’d been in prison twice, and a very bad history with girls. But I never thought that Verity … just a case of infatuation. I suppose it happens to girls of that age. She was infatuated with him. Insisted that everything that had happened to him had not been his fault. You know the things girls say. ‘Everyone is against him,’ that’s what they always say. Everyone’s against him. Nobody made allowances for him. Oh, one gets tired of hearing these things said. Can’t one put a little sense into girls?”

  “They have not usually very much sense, I agree,” said Miss Marple.

  “She wouldn’t listen. I—I tried to keep him away from the house. I told him he was not to come here any more. That of course was stupid. I realized that afterwards. It only meant that she went and met him outside the house. I don’t know where. They had various meeting places. He used to call for her in his car at an agreed spot and bring her home late at night. Once or twice he didn’t bring her home until the next day. I tried to tell them it must stop, that it must all cease, but they wouldn’t listen. Verity wouldn’t listen. I didn’t expect him to, of course.”

  “She intended to marry him?” asked Miss Marple.

  “Well, I don’t think it ever got as far as that. I don’t think he ever wanted to marry her or thought of such a thing.”

  “I am very sorry for you,” said Miss Marple. “You must have suffered a lot.”

  “Yes. The worst was having to go and identify the body. That was some time after—after she’d disappeared from here. We thought of course that she’d run away with him and we thought that we’d get news of them some time. I knew the police seemed to be taking it rather seriously. They asked Michael to go to the police station and help them with enquiries and his account of himself didn’t seem to agree with what local people were saying.

  “Then they found her. A long way from here. About thirty miles away. In a kind of ditchy hedgy spot down an unfrequented lane where anyone hardly ever went. Yes, I had to go and view the body in the mortuary. A terrible sight. The cruelty, the force that had been used. What did he want to do that to her for? Wasn’t it enough that he strangled her? He strangled her with her own scarf. I can’t—I can’t talk about it any more. I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it.”

  Tears rained suddenly down her face.

  “I’m sorry for you,” said Miss Marple. “I’m very, very sorry.”

  “I believe you are.” Clotilde looked at her suddenly. “And even you don’t know the worst of it.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know about Anthea.”

  “What do you mean about Anthea?”

  “She was so queer at that time. She was—she was very jealous. She suddenly seemed to turn against Verity. To look at her as though she hated her. Sometimes I thought—I thought perhaps—oh no, it’s an awful thing to think, you can’t think that about your own sister—she did once attack someone. You know, she used to get these storms of rage. I wondered if it could have been—oh, I mustn’t say such things. There’s no question of any such thing. Please forget what I’ve said. There’s nothing in it, nothing at all. But—but—well, she’s not quite normal. I’ve got to face that. When she was quite young queer things happened once or twice—with animals. We had a parrot. A parrot that said things, silly things like parrots do say and she wrung its neck and I’ve never felt the same since. I’ve never felt that I could trust her. I’ve never felt sure. I’ve never felt—oh, goodness, I’m getting hysterical, too.”

  “Come, come,” said Miss Marple, “don’t think of these things.”

  “No. It’s bad enough to know—to know that Verity died. Died in that horrible way. At any rate, other girls are safe from that boy. Life sentence he got. He’s still in prison. They won’t let him out to do anything to anyone else. Though why they couldn’t bring it in as some mental trouble—diminished responsibility—one of these things they use nowadays. He ought to have gone to Broadmoor. I’m sure he wasn’t responsible for anything that he did.”

  She got up and went out of the room. Mrs. Glynne had come back and passed her sister in the doorway.

  “You mustn’t pay any attention to Clotilde,” she said. “She’s never quite recovered from that ghastly business years ago. She loved Verity very much.”

  “She seems to be worried about your other sister.”

  “About Anthea? Anthea’s all right. She’s—er—well, she’s scatty, you know. She’s a bit—hysterical. Apt to get worked up about things, and she has queer fancies, imagination sometimes. But I don’t think there’s any need for Clotilde to worry so much. Dear me, who’s that passing the window?”

  Two apologetic figures suddenly showed themselves in the french window.

  “Oh do excuse us,” said Miss Barrow, “we were just walking round the house to see if we could find Miss Marple. We had heard she’d come here with you and I wonder—oh, there you are, my dear Miss Mar
ple. I wanted to tell you that we didn’t get to that church after all this afternoon. Apparently it’s closed for cleaning, so I think we shall have to give up any other expedition today and go on one tomorrow. I do hope you don’t mind us coming in this way. I did ring at the front doorbell but it didn’t seem to be ringing.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t sometimes,” said Mrs. Glynne. “You know, it’s rather temperamental. Sometimes it rings and sometimes it doesn’t. But do sit down and talk to us a little. I’d no idea that you hadn’t gone with the coach.”

  “No, we thought we would do a little sightseeing round here, as we had got so far, and going with the coach would really be rather—well, rather painful after what has happened just a day or two ago.”

  “You must have some sherry,” said Mrs. Glynne.

  She went out of the room and presently returned. Anthea was with her, quite calm now, bringing glasses and a decanter of sherry, and they sat down together.

  “I can’t help wanting to know,” said Mrs. Glynne, “what really is going to happen in this business. I mean of poor Miss Temple. I mean, it seems so very impossible to know what the police think. They still seem to be in charge, and I mean the inquest being adjourned, so obviously they are not satisfied. I don’t know if there’s anything in the nature of the wound.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Miss Barrow. “I mean a blow on the head, bad concussion—well, I mean that came from the boulder. The only point is, Miss Marple, if the boulder rolled itself down or somebody rolled it.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Cooke, “but surely you can’t think that—who on earth would want to roll a boulder down, do that sort of thing? I suppose there are always hooligans about. You know, some young foreigners or students. I really wonder, you know, whether—well—”

  “You mean,” said Miss Marple, “you wondered if that someone was one of our fellow travellers.”

  “Well, I—I didn’t say that,” said Miss Cooke.

  “But surely,” said Miss Marple, “we can’t help—well, thinking about that sort of thing. I mean, there must be some explanation. If the police seem sure it wasn’t an accident, well then it must have been done by somebody and—well, I mean, Miss Temple was a stranger to this place here. It doesn’t seem as if anyone could have done it—anyone local I mean. So it really comes back to—well, I mean, to all of us who were in the coach, doesn’t it?”

  She gave a faint, rather whinnying old lady’s laugh.

  “Oh surely!”

  “No, I suppose I ought not to say such things. But you know, really crimes are very interesting. Sometimes the most extraordinary things have happened.”

  “Have you any definite feeling yourself, Miss Marple? I should be interested to hear,” said Clotilde.

  “Well, one does think of possibilities.”

  “Mr. Caspar,” said Miss Cooke. “You know, I didn’t like the look of that man from the first. He looked to me—well, I thought he might have something to do with espionage or something. You know, perhaps come to this country to look for atomic secrets or something.”

  “I don’t think we’ve got any atomic secrets round here,” said Mrs. Glynne.

  “Of course we haven’t,” said Anthea. “Perhaps it was someone who was following her. Perhaps it was someone who was tracking her because she was a criminal of some kind.”

  “Nonsense,” said Clotilde. “She was the Headmistress, retired, of a very well-known school, she was a very fine scholar. Why should anyone be trying to track her down?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She might have gone peculiar or something.”

  “I’m sure,” said Mrs. Glynne, “that Miss Marple has some ideas.”

  “Well, I have some ideas,” said Miss Marple. “It seems to me that—well, the only people that could be … Oh dear, this is so difficult to say. But I mean there are two people who just spring into one’s mind as possibilities logically. I mean, I don’t think that it’s really so at all because I’m sure they’re both very nice people, but I mean there’s nobody else really logically who could be suspected, should I say.”

  “Who do you mean? This is very interesting.”

  “Well, I don’t think I ought to say such things. It’s only a—sort of wild conjecture.”

  “Who do you think might have rolled the boulder down? Who do you think could have been the person that Joanna and Emlyn Price saw?”

  “Well, what I did think was that—that perhaps they hadn’t seen anybody.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” said Anthea, “they hadn’t seen anybody?”

  “Well, perhaps they might have made it all up.”

  “What—about seeing someone?”

  “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it.”

  “Do you mean as a sort of joke or a sort of unkind idea? What do you mean?”

  “Well, I suppose—one does hear of young people doing very extraordinary things nowadays,” said Miss Marple. “You know, putting things in horses’ eyes, smashing Legation windows and attacking people. Throwing stones, at people, and it’s usually being done by somebody young, isn’t it? And they were the only young people, weren’t they?”

  “You mean Emlyn Price and Joanna might have rolled over that boulder?”

  “Well, they’re the only sort of obvious people, aren’t they?” said Miss Marple.

  “Fancy!” said Clotilde. “Oh, I should never have thought of that. But I see—yes, I just see that there could be something in what you say. Of course, I don’t know what those two were like. I haven’t been travelling with them.”

  “Oh, they were very nice,” said Miss Marple. “Joanna seemed to me a particularly—you know, capable girl.”

  “Capable of doing anything?” asked Anthea.

  “Anthea,” said Clotilde, “do be quiet.”

  “Yes. Quite capable,” said Miss Marple. “After all, if you’re going to do what may result in murder, you’d have to be rather capable so as to manage not to be seen or anything.”

  “They must have been in it together, though,” suggested Miss Barrow.

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Marple. “They were in it together and they told roughly the same story. They are the—well, they are the obvious suspects, that’s all I can say. They were out of sight of the others. All the other people were on the lower path. They could have gone up to the top of the hill, they could have rocked the boulder. Perhaps they didn’t mean to kill Miss Temple specially. They may have meant it just as a—well, just as a piece of anarchy or smashing something or someone—anyone in fact. They rolled it over. And then of course they told the story of seeing someone there. Some rather peculiar costume or other which also sounds very unlikely and—well, I oughtn’t to say these things but I have been thinking about it.”

  “It seems to me a very interesting thought,” said Mrs. Glynne. “What do you think, Clotilde?”

  “I think it’s a possibility. I shouldn’t have thought of it myself.”

  “Well,” said Miss Cooke, rising to her feet, “we must be going back to the Golden Boar now. Are you coming with us, Miss Marple?”

  “Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “I suppose you don’t know. I’ve forgotten to tell you. Miss Bradbury-Scott very kindly asked me to come back and stay another night—or two nights—here.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I’m sure that’ll be very nice for you. Much more comfortable. They seem rather a noisy lot that have arrived at the Golden Boar this evening.”

  “Won’t you come round and have some coffee with us after dinner?” suggested Clotilde. “It’s quite a warm evening. We can’t offer you dinner because I’m afraid we haven’t got enough in the house, but if you’ll come in and have some coffee with us….”

  “That would be very nice,” said Miss Cooke. “Yes, we will certainly avail ourselves of your hospitality.”

  Twenty-one

  THE CLOCK STRIKES THREE

  I

  Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow arrived very promptly at 8:45. One wore beige lace an
d the other one a shade of olive green. During dinner Anthea had asked Miss Marple about these two ladies.

  “It seems very funny of them,” she said, “to want to stay behind.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Miss Marple. “I think it is really quite natural. They have a rather exact plan, I imagine.”

  “What do you mean by a plan?” asked Mrs. Glynne.

  “Well, I should think they are always prepared for various eventualities and have a plan for dealing with them.”

  “Do you mean,” said Anthea, with some interest, “do you mean that they had a plan for dealing with murder?”

  “I wish,” said Mrs. Glynne, “that you wouldn’t talk of poor Miss Temple’s death as murder.”

  “But of course it’s murder,” said Anthea. “All I wonder is who wanted to murder her? I should think probably some pupil of hers at the school who always hated her and had it in for her.”

  “Do you think hate can last as long as that?” asked Miss Marple.

  “Oh, I should think so. I should think you could hate anyone for years.”

  “No,” said Miss Marple, “I think hate would die out. You could try and keep it up artificially, but I think you would fail. It’s not as strong a force as love,” she added.

  “Don’t you think that Miss Cooke or Miss Barrow or both of them might have done the murder?”

  “Why should they?” said Mrs. Glynne. “Really, Anthea! They seemed very nice women to me.”

  “I think there’s something rather mysterious about them,” said Anthea. “Don’t you, Clotilde?”

  “I think perhaps you’re right,” said Clotilde. “They seemed to me to be slightly artificial, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think there’s something very sinister about them,” said Anthea.

  “You’ve got such an imagination always,” said Mrs. Glynne. “Anyway, they were walking along the bottom path, weren’t they? You saw them there, didn’t you?” she said to Miss Marple.

  “I can’t say that I noticed them particularly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact, I had no opportunity of doing so.”