“Did neither of the other sisters suspect it?”
“Mrs. Glynne was not there then. Her husband had not died and she was still abroad. But Anthea was there. I think Anthea did know something of what went on. I don’t know that she suspected death at first, but she knew that Clotilde had been occupying herself with the raising up of a mound at the end of the garden to be covered with flowering shrubs, to be a place of beauty. I think perhaps the truth came to her little by little. And then Clotilde, having accepted evil, done evil, surrendered to evil, had no qualms about what she would do next. I think she enjoyed planning it. She had a certain amount of influence over a sly, sexy little village girl who came to her cadging for benefits now and then. I think it was easy for her to arrange one day to take the girl on a picnic or an expedition a good long way away. Thirty or forty miles. She’d chosen the place beforehand, I think. She strangled the girl, disfigured her, hid her under turned earth, leaves and branches. Why should anyone ever suspect her of doing any such thing? She put Verity’s handbag there and a little chain Verity used to wear round her neck and possibly dressed her in clothes belonging to Verity. She hoped the crime would not be found out for some time but in the meantime she spread abroad rumours of Nora Broad having been seen about in Michael’s car, going about with Michael. Possibly she spread a story that Verity had broken off the engagement to be married because of his infidelity with this girl. She may have said anything and I think everything she said she enjoyed, poor lost soul.”
“Why do you say ‘poor lost soul,’ Miss Marple?”
“Because,” said Miss Marple, “I don’t suppose there can be any agony so great as what Clotilde has suffered all this time—ten years now—living in eternal sorrow. Living, you see, with the thing she had to live with. She had kept Verity, kept her there at The Old Manor House, in the garden, kept her there for ever. She didn’t realize at first what that meant. Her passionate longing for the girl to be alive again. I don’t think she ever suffered from remorse. I don’t think she had even that consolation. She just suffered—went on suffering year after year. And I know now what Elizabeth Temple meant. Better perhaps than she herself did. Love is a very terrible thing. It is alive to evil, it can be one of the most evil things there can be. And she had to live with that day after day, year after year. I think, you know, that Anthea was frightened of that. I think she knew more clearly the whole time what Clotilde had done and she thought that Clotilde knew that she knew. And she was afraid of what Clotilde might do. Clotilde gave that parcel to Anthea to post, the one with the pullover. She said things to me about Anthea, that she was mentally disturbed, that if she suffered from persecution or jealousy Anthea might do anything. I think—yes—that in the not so distant future—something might have happened to Anthea—an arranged suicide because of a guilty conscience—”
“And yet you are sorry for that woman?” asked Sir Andrew. “Malignant evil is like cancer—a malignant tumour. It brings suffering.”
“Of course,” said Miss Marple.
“I suppose you have been told what happened that night,” said Professor Wanstead, “after your guardian angels had removed you?”
“You mean Clotilde? She had picked up my glass of milk, I remember. She was still holding it when Miss Cooke took me out of the room. I suppose she—drank it, did she?”
“Yes. Did you know that might happen?”
“I didn’t think of it, no, not at the moment. I suppose I could have known it if I’d thought about it.”
“Nobody could have stopped her. She was so quick about it, and nobody quite realized there was anything wrong in the milk.”
“So she drank it.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No, it would have seemed to her the natural thing to do, one can’t really wonder. It had come by this time that she wanted to escape—from all the things she was having to live with. Just as Verity had wanted to escape from the life that she was living there. Very odd, isn’t it, that the retribution one brings on oneself fits so closely with what has caused it.”
“You sound sorrier for her than you were for the girl who died.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “it’s a different kind of being sorry. I’m sorry for Verity because of all that she missed, all that she was so near to obtaining. A life of love and devotion and service to the man she had chosen, and whom she truly loved. Truly and in all verity. She missed all that and nothing can give that back to her. I’m sorry for her because of what she didn’t have. But she escaped what Clotilde had to suffer. Sorrow, misery, fear and a growing cultivation and imbibing of evil. Clotilde had to live with all those. Sorrow, frustrated love which she could never get back, she had to live with the two sisters who suspected, who were afraid of her, and she had to live with the girl she had kept there.”
“You mean Verity?”
“Yes. Buried in the garden, buried in the tomb that Clotilde had prepared. She was there in The Old Manor House and I think Clotilde knew she was there. It might be that she even saw her or thought she saw her, sometimes when she went to pick a spray of polygonum blossom. She must have felt very close to Verity then. Nothing worse could happen to her, could it, than that? Nothing worse….”
Twenty-three
END PIECES
I
“That old lady gives me the creeps,” said Sir Andrew McNeil, when he had said good-bye and thanks to Miss Marple.
“So gentle—and so ruthless,” said the Assistant Commissioner.
Professor Wanstead took Miss Marple down to his car which was waiting, and then returned for a few final words.
“What do you think of her, Edmund?”
“The most frightening woman I ever met,” said the Home Secretary.
“Ruthless?” asked Professor Wanstead.
“No, no, I don’t mean that but—well, a very frightening woman.”
“Nemesis,” said Professor Wanstead thoughtfully.
“Those two women,” said the P.P.D. man, “you know, the security agents who were looking after her, they gave a most extraordinary description of her that night. They got into the house quite easily, hid themselves in a small downstairs room until everyone went upstairs, then one went into the bedroom and into the wardrobe and the other stayed outside the room to watch. The one in the bedroom said that when she threw open the door of the wardrobe and came out, there was the old lady sitting up in bed with a pink fluffy shawl round her neck and a perfectly placid face, twittering away and talking like an elderly school marm. They said she gave them quite a turn.”
“A pink fluffy shawl,” said Professor Wanstead. “Yes, yes, I do remember—.”
“What do you remember?”
“Old Rafiel. He told me about her, you know, and then he laughed. He said one thing he’d never forget in all his life. He said it was when one of the funniest scatterbrained old pussies he’d ever met came marching into his bedroom out in the West Indies, with a fluffy pink scarf round her neck, telling him he was to get up and do something to prevent a murder. And he said, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ And she said she was Nemesis. Nemesis! He could not imagine anything less like it, he said. I like the touch of the pink woolly scarf,” said Professor Wanstead, thoughtfully, “I like that, very much.”
II
“Michael,” said Professor Wanstead, “I want to introduce you to Miss Jane Marple, who’s been very active on your behalf.”
The young man of thirty-two looked at the white-haired, rather dicky old lady with a slightly doubtful expression.
“Oh—er—” he said, “well, I guess I have heard about it. Thanks very much.”
He looked at Wanstead.
“It’s true, is it, they’re going to give me a free pardon or something silly like that?”
“Yes. A release will be put through quite soon. You’ll be a free man in a very short time.”
“Oh.” Michael sounded slightly doubtful.
“It will take a little getting
used to, I expect,” said Miss Marple kindly.
She looked at him thoughtfully. Seeing him in retrospect as he might have been ten years or so ago. Still quite attractive—though he showed all the signs of strain. Attractive, yes. Very attractive, she thought he would have been once. A gaiety about him then, there would have been, and a charm. He’d lost that now, but it would come back perhaps. A weak mouth and attractively shaped eyes that could look you straight in the face, and probably had been always extremely useful for telling lies that you really wanted to believe. Very like—who was it?—she dived into past memories—Jonathan Birkin, of course. He had sung in the choir. A really delightful baritone voice. And how fond the girls had been of him! Quite a good job he’d had as a clerk in Messrs. Gabriel’s firm. A pity there had been that little matter of the cheques.
“Oh,” said Michael. He said, with even more embarrassment, “It’s been very kind of you, I’m sure, to take so much trouble.”
“I’ve enjoyed it,” said Miss Marple. “Well, I’m glad to have met you. Good-bye. I hope you’ve got a very good time coming to you. Our country is in rather a bad way just now, but you’ll probably find some job or other that you might quite enjoy doing.”
“Oh yes. Thanks, thanks very much. I—I really am very grateful, you know.”
His tone sounded still extremely unsure about it.
“It’s not me you ought to be grateful to,” said Miss Marple, “you ought to be grateful to your father.”
“Dad? Dad never thought much of me.”
“Your father, when he was a dying man, was determined to see that you got justice.”
“Justice.” Michael Rafiel considered it.
“Yes, your father thought Justice was important. He was, I think, a very just man himself. In the letter he wrote me asking me to undertake this proposition, he directed me to a quotation:
‘Let Justice roll down like waters
And Righteousness like an everlasting stream.’”
“Oh! What’s it mean? Shakespeare?”
“No, the Bible—one has to think about it—I had to.”
Miss Marple unwrapped a parcel she had been carrying.
“They gave me this,” she said. “They thought I might like to have it—because I had helped to find out the truth of what had really happened. I think, though, that you are the person who should have first claim on it—that is if you really want it. But maybe you do not want it—”
She handed him the photograph of Verity Hunt that Clotilde Bradbury-Scott had shown her once in the drawing room of The Old Manor House.
He took it—and stood with it, staring down on it … His face changed, the lines of it softened, then hardened. Miss Marple watched him without speaking. The silence went on for some little time. Professor Wanstead also watched—he watched them both, the old lady and the boy.
It came to him that this was in some way a crisis—a moment that might affect a whole new way of life.
Michael Rafiel sighed—he stretched out and gave the photograph back to Miss Marple.
“No, you are right, I do not want it. All that life is gone—she’s gone—I can’t keep her with me. Anything I do now has got to be new—going forward. You—” he hesitated, looking at her—“You understand?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple—“I understand—I think you are right. I wish you good luck in the life you are now going to begin.”
He said good-bye and went out.
“Well,” said Professor Wanstead, “not an enthusiastic young man. He could have thanked you a bit more enthusiastically for what you did for him.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t expect him to do so. It would have embarrassed him even more. It is, you know,” she added, “very embarrassing when one has to thank people and start life again and see everything from a different angle and all that. I think he might do well. He’s not bitter. That’s the great thing. I understand quite well why that girl loved him—”
“Well, perhaps he’ll go straight this time.”
“One rather doubts that,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t know that he’d be able to help himself unless—of course,” she said, “the great thing to hope for is that he’ll meet a really nice girl.”
“What I like about you,” said Professor Wanstead, “is your delightfully practical mind.”
III
“She’ll be here presently,” said Mr. Broadribb to Mr. Schuster.
“Yes. The whole thing’s pretty extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” said Broadribb. “You know, when poor old Rafiel was dying, I thought this whole thing was—well, senility or something. Not that he was old enough for that.”
The buzzer went. Mr. Schuster picked up the phone.
“Oh, she’s here, is she? Bring her up,” he said. “She’s come,” he said. “I wonder now. You know, it’s the oddest thing I ever heard in my life. Getting an old lady to go racketing round the countryside looking for she doesn’t know what. The police think, you know, that that woman committed not just one murder but three. Three! I ask you! Verity Hunt’s body was under the mound in the garden, just as the old lady said it was. She hadn’t been strangled and the face was not disfigured.”
“I wonder the old lady herself didn’t get done in,” said Mr. Broadribb. “Far too old to be able to take care of herself.”
“She had a couple of detectives, apparently, looking after her.”
“What, two of them?”
“Yes, I didn’t know that.”
Miss Marple was ushered into their room.
“Congratulations, Miss Marple,” said Mr. Broadribb, rising to greet her.
“Very best wishes. Splendid job,” said Mr. Schuster, shaking hands.
Miss Marple sat down composedly on the other side of the desk.
“As I told you in my letter,” she said, “I think I have fulfilled the terms of the proposition that was made to me. I have succeeded in what I was asked to do.”
“Oh I know. Yes, we’ve heard already. We’ve heard from Professor Wanstead and from the legal department and from the police authorities. Yes, it’s been a splendid job, Miss Marple. We congratulate you.”
“I was afraid,” said Miss Marple, “that I would not be able to do what was required of me. It seemed so very difficult, almost impossible at first.”
“Yes indeed. It seems quite impossible to me. I don’t know how you did it, Miss Marple.”
“Oh well,” said Miss Marple, “it’s just perseverance, isn’t it, that leads to things.”
“Now about the sum of money we are holding. It’s at your disposal at any time now. I don’t know whether you would like us to pay it into your bank or whether you would like to consult us possibly as to the investment of it? It’s quite a large sum.”
“Twenty thousand pounds,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, it is a very large sum by my way of thinking. Quite extraordinary,” she added.
“If you would like an introduction to our brokers, they could give you possibly some ideas about investing.”
“Oh, I don’t want to invest any of it.”
“But surely it would be—”
“There’s no point in saving at my age,” said Miss Marple. “I mean the point of this money—I’m sure Mr. Rafiel meant it that way—is to enjoy a few things that one thought one never would have the money to enjoy.”
“Well, I see your point of view,” said Mr. Broadribb. “Then your instructions would be that we pay this sum of money into your bank?”
“Middleton’s Bank, 132 High Street, St. Mary Mead,” said Miss Marple.
“You have a deposit account, I expect. We will place it to your deposit account?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple. “Put it into my current account.”
“You don’t think—”
“I do think,” said Miss Marple. “I want it in my current account.”
She got up and shook hands.
; “You could ask your bank manager’s advice, you know, Miss Marple. It really is—one never knows when one wants something for a rainy day.”
“The only thing I shall want for a rainy day will be my umbrella,” said Miss Marple.
She shook hands with them both again.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Broadribb. And you too, Mr. Schuster. You’ve been so kind to me, giving me all the information I needed.”
“You really want that money put into your current account?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’m going to spend it, you know. I’m going to have some fun with it.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 223
