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“People come here, you see, to enjoy themselves, don’t they?” said Esther. “To forget about illnesses and deaths and income tax and frozen pipes and all the rest of it. They don’t like—” she went on, with a sudden flash of an entirely different manner—“any reminders of mortality.”
Miss Marple laid down her knitting. “Now that is very well put, my dear,” she said, “very well put indeed. Yes, it is as you say.”
“And you see they’re quite a young couple,” went on Esther Walters. “They only just took over from the Sandersons six months ago and they’re terribly worried about whether they’re going to succeed or not, because they haven’t had much experience.”
“And you think this might be really disadvantageous to them?”
“Well, no, I don’t, frankly,” said Esther Walters. “I don’t think people remember anything for more than a day or two, not in this atmosphere of ‘we’ve-all-come-out-here-to-enjoy-ourselves-let’s-get-on-with-it.’ I think a death just gives them a jolt for about twenty-four hours or so and then they don’t think of it again once the funeral is over. Not unless they’re reminded of it, that is. I’ve told Molly so, but of course she is a worrier.”
“Mrs. Kendal is a worrier? She always seems so carefree.”
“I think a lot of that is put on,” said Esther slowly. “Actually, I think she’s one of those anxious sort of people who can’t help worrying all the time that things may go wrong.”
“I should have thought he worried more than she did.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think she’s the worrier and he worries because she worries if you know what I mean.”
“That is interesting,” said Miss Marple.
“I think Molly wants desperately to try and appear very gay and to be enjoying herself. She works at it very hard but the effort exhausts her. Then she has these odd fits of depression. She’s not—well, not really well-balanced.”
“Poor child,” said Miss Marple. “There certainly are people like that, and very often outsiders don’t suspect it.”
“No, they put on such a good show, don’t they? However,” Esther added, “I don’t think Molly has really anything to worry about in this case. I mean, people are dying of coronary thrombosis or cerebral hæmorrhage or things of that kind all the time nowadays. Far more than they used to, as far as I can see. It’s only food poisoning or typhoid or something like that, that makes people get het up.”
“Major Palgrave never mentioned to me that he had high blood pressure,” said Miss Marple. “Did he to you?”
“He said so to somebody—I don’t know who—it may have been to Mr. Rafiel. I know Mr. Rafiel says just the opposite—but then he’s like that! Certainly Jackson mentioned it to me once. He said the Major ought to be more careful over the alcohol he took.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. She went on: “I expect you found him rather a boring old man? He told a lot of stories and I expect repeated himself a good deal.”
“That’s the worst of it,” said Esther. “You do hear the same story again and again unless you can manage to be quick enough to fend it off.”
“Of course I didn’t mind so much,” said Miss Marple, “because I’m used to that sort of thing. If I get stories told to me rather often, I don’t really mind hearing them again because I’ve usually forgotten them.”
“There is that,” said Esther and laughed cheerfully.
“There was one story he was very fond of telling,” said Miss Marple, “about a murder. I expect he told you that, didn’t he?”
Esther Walters opened her handbag and started searching through it. She drew out her lipstick saying, “I thought I’d lost it.” Then she asked, “I beg your pardon, what did you say?”
“I asked if Major Palgrave told you his favourite murder story?”
“I believe he did, now I come to think of it. Something about someone who gassed themselves, wasn’t it? Only really it was the wife who gassed him. I mean she’d given him a sedative of some kind and then stuck his head in the gas oven. Was that it?”
“I don’t think that was exactly it,” said Miss Marple. She looked at Esther Walters thoughtfully.
“He told such a lot of stories,” said Esther Walters, apologetically, “and as I said, one didn’t always listen.”
“He had a snapshot,” said Miss Marple, “that he used to show people.”
“I believe he did … I can’t remember what it was now. Did he show it to you?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “He didn’t show it to me. We were interrupted—”
Nine
MISS PRESCOTT AND OTHERS
“The story I heard,” began Miss Prescott, lowering her voice, and looking carefully around.
Miss Marple drew her chair a little closer. It had been some time before she had been able to get together with Miss Prescott for a heart-to-heart chat. This was owing to the fact that clergymen are very strong family men so that Miss Prescott was nearly always accompanied by her brother, and there was no doubt that Miss Marple and Miss Prescott found it less easy to take their back hair down in a good gossip when the jovial Canon was of their company.
“It seems,” said Miss Prescott, “though of course I don’t want to talk any scandal and I really know nothing about it—”
“Oh, I quite understand,” said Miss Marple.
“It seems there was some scandal when his first wife was still alive! Apparently this woman, Lucky—such a name!—who I think was a cousin of his first wife, came out here and joined them and I think did some work with him on flowers or butterflies or whatever it was. And people talked a lot because they got on so well together—if you know what I mean.”
“People do notice things so much, don’t they?” said Miss Marple.
“And then of course, when his wife died rather suddenly—”
“She died here, on this island?”
“No. No, I think they were in Martinique or Tobago at the time.”
“I see.”
“But I gathered from some other people who were there at the time, and who came on here and talked about things, that the doctor wasn’t very satisfied.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Marple, with interest.
“It was only gossip,” of course, “but—well, Mr. Dyson certainly married again very quickly.” She lowered her voice again. “Only a month I believe.”
“Only a month,” said Miss Marple.
The two women looked at each other. “It seemed—unfeeling,” said Miss Prescott.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “It certainly did.” She added delicately, “Was there—any money?”
“I don’t really know. He makes his little joke—perhaps you’ve heard him—about his wife being his ‘lucky piece’—”
“Yes, I’ve heard him,” said Miss Marple.
“And some people think that means that he was lucky to marry a rich wife. Though, of course,” said Miss Prescott with the air of one being entirely fair, “she’s very good-looking too, if you care for that type. And I think myself that it was the first wife who had the money.”
“Are the Hillingdons well off?”
“Well, I think they’re well off. I don’t mean fabulously rich, I just mean well off. They have two boys at public school and a very nice place in England, I believe, and they travel most of the winter.”
The Canon appearing at this moment to suggest a brisk walk, Miss Prescott rose to join her brother. Miss Marple remained sitting there.
A few minutes later Gregory Dyson passed her striding along towards the hotel. He waved a cheerful hand as he passed.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he called out.
Miss Marple smiled gently, wondering how he would have reacted if she had replied:
“I was wondering if you were a murderer.”
It really seemed most probable that he was. It all fitted in so nicely—This story about the death of the first Mrs. Dyson—Major Palgrave had certainly been talking about a wif
e killer—with special reference to the “Brides in the Bath Case.”
Yes—it fitted—the only objection was that it fitted almost too well. But Miss Marple reproved herself for this thought—who was she to demand Murders Made to Measure?
A voice made her jump—a somewhat raucous one.
“Seen Greg any place, Miss—er—”
Lucky, Miss Marple thought, was not in a good temper.
“He passed by just now—going towards the hotel.”
“I’ll bet!” Lucky uttered an irritated ejaculation and hurried on.
“Forty, if she’s a day, and looks it this morning,” thought Miss Marple.
Pity invaded her—pity for the Luckys of the world—who were so vulnerable to Time—
At the sound of a noise behind her, she turned her chair round—
Mr. Rafiel, supported by Jackson, was making his morning appearance and coming out of his bungalow—
Jackson settled his employer in his wheelchair and fussed round him. Mr. Rafiel waved his attendant away impatiently and Jackson went off in the direction of the hotel.
Miss Marple lost no time—Mr. Rafiel was never left alone for long—Probably Esther Walters would come and join him. Miss Marple wanted a word alone with Mr. Rafiel and now, she thought, was her chance. She would have to be quick about what she wanted to say. There could be no leading up to things. Mr. Rafiel was not a man who cared for the idle twittering conversation of old ladies. He would probably retreat again into his bungalow, definitely regarding himself the victim of persecution. Miss Marple decided to plump for downrightness.
She made her way to where he was sitting, drew up a chair, sat down, and said:
“I want to ask you something, Mr. Rafiel.”
“All right, all right,” said Mr. Rafiel, “let’s have it. What do you want—a subscription, I suppose? Missions in Africa or repairing a church, something of that kind?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I am interested in several objects of that nature, and I shall be delighted if you will give me a subscription for them. But that wasn’t actually what I was going to ask you. What I was going to ask you was if Major Palgrave ever told you a story about a murder.”
