“You seem to know a lot about her,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, naturally,” said Mrs. Bantry. “When she bought Gossington I was interested. She married the present man about two years ago, and they say she’s quite all right again now. He’s a producer—or do I mean a director? I always get mixed. He was in love with her when they were quite young, but he didn’t amount to very much in those days. But now, I believe, he’s got quite famous. What’s his name now? Jason—Jason something—Jason Hudd, no Rudd, that’s it. They’ve bought Gossington because it’s handy for”—she hesitated—“Elstree?” she hazarded.
Miss Marple shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Elstree’s in North London.”
“It’s the fairly new studios. Hellingforth—that’s it. Sounds so Finnish, I always think. About six miles from Market Basing. She’s going to do a film on Elizabeth of Austria, I believe.”
“What a lot you know,” said Miss Marple. “About the private lives of film stars. Did you learn it all in California?”
“Not really,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Actually I get it from the extraordinary magazines I read at my hairdresser’s. Most of the stars I don’t even know by name, but as I said because Marina Gregg and her husband have bought Gossington, I was interested. Really the things those magazines say! I don’t suppose half of it is true—probably not a quarter. I don’t believe Marina Gregg is a nymphomaniac, I don’t think she drinks, pobably she doesn’t even take drugs, and quite likely she just went away to have a nice rest and didn’t have a nervous breakdown at all!—but it’s true that she is coming here to live.”
“Next week, I heard,” said Miss Marple.
“As soon as that? I know she’s lending Gossington for a big fête on the twenty-third in aid of the St. John Ambulance Corps. I suppose they’ve done a lot to the house?”
“Practically everything,” said Miss Marple. “Really it would have been much simpler, and probably cheaper, to have pulled it down and built a new house.”
“Bathrooms, I suppose?”
“Six new ones, I hear. And a palm court. And a pool. And what I believe they call picture windows, and they’ve knocked your husband’s study and the library into one to make a music room.”
“Arthur will turn in his grave. You know how he hated music. Tone deaf, poor dear. His face, when some kind friend took us to the opera! He’ll probably come back and haunt them.” She stopped and then said abruptly, “Does anyone ever hint that Gossington might be haunted?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“It isn’t,” she said with certainty.
“That wouldn’t prevent people saying it was,” Mrs. Bantry pointed out.
“Nobody ever has said so.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “People aren’t really foolish, you know. Not in villages.”
Mrs. Bantry shot her a quick look. “You’ve always stuck to that, Jane. And I won’t say that you’re not right.”
She suddenly smiled.
“Marina Gregg asked me, very sweetly and delicately, if I wouldn’t find it very painful to see my old home occupied by strangers. I assured her that it wouldn’t hurt me at all. I don’t think she quite believed me. But after all, as you know, Jane, Gossington wasn’t our home. We weren’t brought up there as children—that’s what really counts. It was just a house with a nice bit of shooting and fishing attached, that we bought when Arthur retired. We thought of it, I remember, as a house that would be nice and easy to run! How we can ever have thought that, I can’t imagine! All those staircases and passages. Only four servants! Only! Those were the days, ha ha!” She added suddenly: “What’s all this about your falling down? That Knight woman ought not to let you go out by yourself.”
“It wasn’t poor Miss Knight’s fault. I gave her a lot of shopping to do and then I—”
“Deliberately gave her the slip? I see. Well, you shouldn’t do it, Jane. Not at your age.”
“How did you hear about it?”
Mrs. Bantry grinned.
“You can’t keep any secrets in St. Mary Mead. You’ve often told me so. Mrs. Meavy told me.”
“Mrs. Meavy?” Miss Marple looked at sea.
“She comes in daily. She’s from the Development.”
“Oh, the Development.” The usual pause happened.
“What were you doing in the Development?” asked Mrs. Bantry, curiously.
“I just wanted to see it. To see what the people were like.”
“And what did you think they were like?”
“Just the same as everyone else. I don’t quite know if that was disappointing or reassuring.”
“Disappointing, I should think.”
“No. I think it’s reassuring. It makes you—well—recognize certain types—so that when anything occurs—one will understand quite well why and for what reason.”
“Murder, do you mean?”
Miss Marple looked shocked.
“I don’t know why you should assume that I think of murder all the time.”
“Nonsense, Jane. Why don’t you come out boldly and call yourself a criminologist and have done with it?”
“Because I am nothing of the sort,” said Miss Marple with spirit. “It is simply that I have a certain knowledge of human nature—that is only natural after having lived in a small village all my life.”
“You probably have something there,” said Mrs. Bantry thoughtfully, “though most people wouldn’t agree, of course. Your nephew Raymond always used to say this place was a complete backwater.”
“Dear Raymond,” said Miss Marple indulgently. She added: “He’s always been so kind. He’s paying for Miss Knight, you know.”
The thought of Miss Knight induced a new train of thought and she arose and said: “I’d better be going back now, I suppose.”
“You didn’t walk all the way here, did you?”
“Of course not. I came in Inch.”
This somewhat enigmatic pronouncement was received with complete understanding. In days very long past, Mr. Inch had been the proprietor of two cabs, which met trains at the local station and which were also hired by the local ladies to take them “calling,” out to tea parties, and occasionally, with their daughters, to such frivolous entertainments as dances. In the fulness of time Inch, a cheery red-faced man of seventy odd, gave place to his son—known as “young Inch” (he was then aged forty-five) though old Inch still continued to drive such elderly ladies as considered his son too young and irresponsible. To keep up with the times, young Inch abandoned horse vehicles for motor cars. He was not very good with machinery and in due course a certain Mr. Bardwell took over from him. The name Inch persisted. Mr. Bardwell in due course sold out to Mr. Roberts, but in the telephone book Inch’s Taxi Service was still the official name, and the older ladies of the community continued to refer to their journeys as going somewhere “in Inch,” as though they were Jonah and Inch was a whale.
II
“Dr. Haydock called,” said Miss Knight reproachfully. “I told him you’d gone to tea with Mrs. Bantry. He said he’d call in again tomorrow.”
She helped Miss Marple off with her wraps.
“And now, I expect, we’re tired out,” she said accusingly.
“You may be,” said Miss Marple. “I am not.”
“You come and sit cosy by the fire,” said Miss Knight, as usual paying no attention. (“You don’t need to take much notice of what the old dears say. I just humour them.”) “And how would we fancy a nice cup of Ovaltine? Or Horlicks for a change?”
Miss Marple thanked her and said she would like a small glass of dry sherry. Miss Knight looked disapproving.
“I don’t know what the doctor would say to that, I’m sure,” she said, when she returned with the glass.
“We will make a point of asking him tomorrow morning,” said Miss Marple.
On the following morning Miss Knight met Dr. Haydock in the hall, and did some agitated whispering.
The elderl
y doctor came into the room rubbing his hands, for it was a chilly morning.
“Here’s our doctor to see us,” said Miss Knight gaily. “Can I take your gloves, Doctor?”
“They’ll be all right here,” said Haydock, casting them carelessly on a table. “Quite a nippy morning.”
“A little glass of sherry perhaps?” suggested Miss Marple.
“I heard you were taking to drink. Well, you should never drink alone.”
The decanter and the glasses were already on a small table by Miss Marple. Miss Knight left the room.
Dr. Haydock was a very old friend. He had semiretired, but came to attend certain of his old patients.
“I hear you’ve been falling about,” he said as he finished his glass. “It won’t do, you know, not at your age. I’m warning you. And I hear you didn’t want to send for Sandford.”
Sandford was Haydock’s partner.
“That Miss Knight of yours sent for him anyway—and she was quite right.”
“I was only bruised and shaken a little. Dr. Sandford said so. I could have waited quite well until you were back.”
“Now look here, my dear. I can’t go on forever. And Sandford, let me tell you, has better qualifications than I have. He’s a first class man.”
“The young doctors are all the same,” said Miss Marple. “They take your blood pressure, and whatever’s the matter with you, you get some kind of mass produced variety of new pills. Pink ones, yellow ones, brown ones. Medicine nowadays is just like a supermarket—all packaged up.”
“Serve you right if I prescribed leeches, and black draught, and rubbed your chest with camphorated oil.”
“I do that myself when I’ve got a cough,” said Miss Marple with spirit, “and very comforting it is.”
“We don’t like getting old, that’s what it is,” said Haydock gently. “I hate it.”
“You’re quite a young man compared to me,” said Miss Marple. “And I don’t really mind getting old—not that in itself. It’s the lesser indignities.”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“Never being alone! The difficulty of geting out for a few minutes by oneself. And even my knitting—such a comfort that has always been, and I really am a good knitter. Now I drop stitches all the time—and quite often I don’t even know I’ve dropped them.”
Haydock looked at her thoughtfully.
Then his eyes twinkled.
“There’s always the opposite.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“If you can’t knit, what about unravelling for a change? Penelope did.”
“I’m hardly in her position.”
“But unravelling’s rather in your line, isn’t it?”
He rose to his feet.
“I must be getting along. What I’d prescribe for you is a nice juicy murder.”
“That’s an outrageous thing to say!”
“Isn’t it? However, you can always make do with the depth the parsley sank into the butter on a summer’s day. I always wondered about that. Good old Holmes. A period piece, nowadays, I suppose. But he’ll never be forgotten.”
Miss Knight bustled in after the doctor had gone.
“There,” she said, “we look much more cheerful. Did the doctor recommend a tonic?”
“He recommended me to take an interest in murder.”
“A nice detective story?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “Real life.”
“Goodness,” exclaimed Miss Knight. “But there’s not likely to be a murder in this quiet spot.”
“Murders,” said Miss Marple, “can happen anywhere. And do.”
“At the Development, perhaps?” mused Miss Knight. “A lot of those Teddy-looking boys carry knives.”
But the murder, when it came, was not at the Development.
Four
Mrs. Bantry stepped back a foot or two, surveyed herself in the glass, made a slight adjustment to her hat (she was not used to wearing hats), drew on a pair of good quality leather gloves and left the lodge, closing the door carefully behind her. She had the most pleasurable anticipations of what lay in front of her. Some three weeks had passed since her talk with Miss Marple. Marina Gregg and her husband had arrived at Gossington Hall and were now more or less installed there.
There was to be a meeting there this afternoon of the main persons involved in the arrangements for the fête in aid of the St. John Ambulance. Mrs. Bantry was not among those on the committee, but she had received a note from Marina Gregg asking her to come and have tea beforehand. It had recalled their meeting in California and had been signed, “Cordially, Marina Gregg.” It had been handwritten, not typewritten. There is no denying that Mrs. Bantry was both pleased and flattered. After all, a celebrated film star is a celebrated film star and elderly ladies, though they may be of local importance, are aware of their complete unimportance in the world of celebrities. So Mrs. Bantry had the pleased feeling of a child for whom a special treat had been arranged.
As she walked up the drive Mrs. Bantry’s keen eyes went from side to side registering her impressions. The place had been smartened up since the days when it had passed from hand to hand. “No expense spared,” said Mrs. Bantry to herself, nodding in satisfaction. The drive afforded no view of the flower garden and for that Mrs. Bantry was just as pleased. The flower garden and its special herbaceous border had been her own particular delight in the far-off days when she had lived at Gossington Hall. She permitted regretful and nostalgic memories of her irises. The best iris garden of any in the country, she told herself with a fierce pride.
Faced by a new front door in a blaze of new paint she pressed the bell. The door was opened with gratifying promptness by what was undeniably an Italian butler. She was ushered by him straight to the room which had been Colonel Bantry’s library. This, as she had already heard, had been thrown into one with the study. The result was impressive. The walls were panelled, the floor was parquet. At one end was a grand piano and halfway along the wall was a superb record player. At the other end of the room was a small island, as it were, which comprised Persian rugs, a tea table and some chairs. By the tea table sat Marina Gregg, and leaning against the mantelpiece was what Mrs. Bantry at first thought to be the ugliest man she had ever seen.
Just a few moments previously when Mrs. Bantry’s hand had been advanced to press the bell, Marina Gregg had been saying in a soft, enthusiastic voice, to her husband:
“This place is right for me, Jinks, just right. It’s what I’ve always wanted. Quiet. English quiet and the English countryside. I can see myself living here, living here all my life if need be. And we’ll adopt the English way of life. We’ll have afternoon tea every afternoon with China tea and my lovely Georgian tea service. And we’ll look out of the window on those lawns and that English herbaceous border. I’ve come home at last, that’s what I feel. I feel that I can settle down here, that I can be quiet and happy. It’s going to be home, this place. That’s what I feel. Home.”
And Jason Rudd (known to his wife as Jinks) had smiled at her. It was an acquiescent smile, indulgent, but it held its reserve because, after all, he had heard it very often before. Perhaps this time it would be true. Perhaps this was the place that Marina Gregg might feel at home. But he knew her early enthusiasms so well. She was always so sure that at last she had found exactly what she wanted. He said in his deep voice:
“That’s grand, honey. That’s just grand. I’m glad you like it.”
“Like it? I adore it. Don’t you adore it too?”
“Sure,” said Jason Rudd. “Sure.”
It wasn’t too bad, he reflected to himself. Good, solidly built, rather ugly Victorian. It had, he admitted, a feeling of solidity and security. Now that the worst of its fantastic inconveniences had been ironed out, it would be quite reasonably comfortable to live in. Not a bad place to come back to from time to time. With luck, he thought, Marina wouldn’t start taking a dislike to it for perhaps two years to two year
s and a half. It all depended.
Marina said, sighing softly:
“It’s so wonderful to feel well again. Well and strong. Able to cope with things.”
And he said again: “Sure, honey, sure.”
And it was at that moment that the door opened and the Italian butler had ushered in Mrs. Bantry.
Marina Gregg’s welcome was all that was charming. She came forward, hands outstretched, saying how delightful it was to meet Mrs. Bantry again. And what a coincidence that they should have met that time in San Fransisco and that two years later she and Jinks should actually buy the house that had once belonged to Mrs. Bantry. And she did hope, she really did hope that Mrs. Bantry wouldn’t mind terribly the way they’d pulled the house about and done things to it and she hoped she wouldn’t feel that they were terrible intruders living here.
“Your coming to live here is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to this place,” said Mrs. Bantry cheerfully and she looked towards the mantelpiece. Whereupon, almost as an afterthought, Marina Gregg said:
“You don’t know my husband, do you? Jason, this is Mrs. Bantry.”
Mrs. Bantry looked at Jason Rudd with some interest. Her first impression that this was one of the ugliest men she had ever seen became qualified. He had interesting eyes. They were, she thought, more deeply sunk in his head than any eyes she had seen. Deep quiet pools, said Mrs. Bantry to herself, and felt like a romantic lady novelist. The rest of his face was distinctly craggy, almost ludicrously out of proportion. His nose jutted upwards and a little red paint would have transformed it into the nose of a clown very easily. He had, too, a clown’s big sad mouth. Whether he was at this moment in a furious temper or whether he always looked as though he were in a furious temper she did not quite know. His voice when he spoke was unexpectedly pleasant. Deep and slow.
“A husband,” he said, “is always an afterthought. But let me say with my wife that we’re very glad to welcome you here. I hope you don’t feel that it ought to be the other way about.”
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