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“I thought so—yes. It never occurred to me that it mightn’t have been. But now—how can I be sure?”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her very thoughtfully….
“The trouble with you is,” he said, “that you’re too conscientious. Great mistake—Make up your mind and don’t shilly shally. You didn’t shilly shally to begin with. If you ask me, in all this chit-chat you’ve been having with the parson’s sister and the rest of them, you’ve got hold of something that’s unsettled you.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Well, cut it out for the moment. Let’s go ahead with what you had to begin with. Because, nine times out of ten, one’s original judgments are right—or so I’ve found. We’ve got three suspects. Let’s take ’em out and have a good look at them. Any preference?”
“I really haven’t,” said Miss Marple, “all three of them seem so very unlikely.”
“We’ll take Greg first,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Can’t stand the fellow. Doesn’t make him a murderer, though. Still, there are one or two points against him. Those blood pressure tablets belonged to him. Nice and handy to make use of.”
“That would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it?” Miss Marple objected.
“I don’t know that it would,” said Mr. Rafiel. “After all, the main thing was to do something quickly, and he’d got the tablets. Hadn’t much time to go looking round for tablets that somebody else might have. Let’s say it’s Greg. All right. If he wanted to put his dear wife Lucky out of the way—(Good job, too, I’d say. In fact I’m in sympathy with him.) I can’t actually see his motive. From all accounts he’s rich. Inherited money from his first wife who had pots of it. He qualifies on that as a possible wife murderer all right. But that’s over and done with. He got away with it. But Lucky was his first wife’s poor relation. No money there, so if he wants to put her out of the way it must be in order to marry somebody else. Any gossip going around about that?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Not that I have heard. He—er—has a very gallant manner with all the ladies.”
“Well, that’s a nice, old-fashioned way of putting it,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All right, he’s a stoat. He makes passes. Not enough! We want more than that. Let’s go on to Edward Hillingdon. Now there’s a dark horse, if ever there was one.”
“He is not, I think, a happy man,” offered Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel looked at her thoughtfully.
“Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?”
Miss Marple coughed.
“Well, they usually have been in my experience.”
“I don’t suppose your experience has gone very far,” said Mr. Rafiel.
In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put right in their facts.
“I rather fancy Hillingdon myself,” said Mr. Rafiel. “I’ve an idea that there is something a bit odd going on between him and his wife. You noticed it at all?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I have noticed it. Their behaviour is perfect in public, of course, but that one would expect.”
“You probably know more about those sort of people than I would,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Very well, then, everything is in perfectly good taste but it’s a probability that, in a gentlemanly way, Edward Hillingdon is contemplating doing away with Evelyn Hillingdon. Do you agree?”
“If so,” said Miss Marple, “there must be another woman.”
Miss Marple shook her head in a dissatisfied manner.
“I can’t help feeling—I really can’t—that it’s not all quite as simple as that.”
“Well, who shall we consider next—Jackson? We leave me out of it.”
Miss Marple smiled for the first time.
“And why do we leave you out of it, Mr. Rafiel?”
“Because if you want to discuss the possibilities of my being a murderer you’d have to do it with somebody else. Waste of time talking about it to me. And anyway, I ask you, am I cut out for the part? Helpless, hauled out of bed like a dummy, dressed, wheeled about in a chair, shuffled along for a walk. What earthly chance have I of going and murdering anyone?”
“Probably as good a chance as anyone else,” said Miss Marple vigorously.
“And how do you make that out?”
“Well, you would agree yourself, I think, that you have brains?”
“Of course I’ve got brains,” declared Mr. Rafiel. “A good deal more than anybody else in this community, I’d say.”
“And having brains,” went on Miss Marple, “would enable you to overcome the physical difficulties of being a murderer.”
“It would take some doing!”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “it would take some doing. But then, I think, Mr. Rafiel, you would enjoy that.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her for a long time and then he suddenly laughed.
“You’ve got a nerve!” he said. “Not quite the gentle fluffy old lady you look, are you? So you really think I’m a murderer?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I do not.”
“And why?”
“Well, really, I think just because you have got brains. Having brains, you can get most things you want without having recourse to murder. Murder is stupid.”
“And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?”
“That would be a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple. “I have not yet had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a theory as to that.”
Mr. Rafiel’s smile broadened.
“Conversations with you might be dangerous,” he said.
“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide,” said Miss Marple.
“You may be right. Let’s get on to Jackson. What do you think of Jackson?”
“It is difficult for me to say. I have not had the opportunity really of any conversation with him.?
??
“So you’ve no views on the subject?”
“He reminds me a little,” said Miss Marple reflectively, “of a young man in the Town Clerk’s office near where I live, Jonas Parry.”
“And?” Mr. Rafiel asked and paused.
“He was not,” said Miss Marple, “very satisfactory.”
“Jackson’s not wholly satisfactory either. He suits me all right. He’s first class at his job, and he doesn’t mind being sworn at. He knows he’s damn’ well paid and so he puts up with things. I wouldn’t employ him in a position of trust, but I don’t have to trust him. Maybe his past is blameless, maybe it isn’t. His references were all right but I discern—shall I say—a note of reserve. Fortunately, I’m not a man who has any guilty secrets, so I’m not a subject for blackmail.”
“No secrets?” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “Surely, Mr. Rafiel, you have business secrets?”
“Not where Jackson can get at them. No. Jackson is a smooth article, one might say, but I really don’t see him as a murderer. I’d say that wasn’t his line at all.”
He paused a minute and then said suddenly, “Do you know, if one stands back and takes a good look at all this fantastic business, Major Palgrave and his ridiculous stories and all the rest of it, the emphasis is entirely wrong. I’m the person who ought to be murdered.”
Miss Marple looked at him in some surprise.
“Proper type casting,” explained Mr. Rafiel. “Who’s the victim in murder stories? Elderly men with lots of money.”
“And lots of people with a good reason for wishing him out of the way, so as to get that money,” said Miss Marple. “Is that true also?”
“Well—” Mr. Rafiel considered. “I can count up to five or six men in London who wouldn’t burst into tears if they read my obituary in The Times. But they wouldn’t go so far as to do anything to bring about my demise. After all, why should they? I’m expected to die any day. In fact the bug—blighters are astonished that I’ve lasted so long. The doctors are surprised too.”
“You have, of course, a great will to live,” said Miss Marple.
“You think that’s odd, I suppose,” said Mr. Rafiel.
