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Miss Prescott looked round vaguely and Evelyn Hillingdon said:
“Oh, I didn’t take Edward with me. Men hate shopping.”
“Did you find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t that sort of shopping. I just had to go to the chemist.”
With a smile and a slight nod she went on down the beach.
“Such nice people, the Hillingdons,” said Miss Prescott, “though she’s not really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she’s always very pleasant and all that, but one never seems to get to know her any better.”
Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.
“One never knows what she is thinking,” said Miss Prescott.
“Perhaps that is just as well,” said Miss Marple.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh nothing really, only that I’ve always had the feeling that perhaps her thoughts might be rather disconcerting.”
“Oh,” said Miss Prescott, looking puzzled. “I see what you mean.” She went on with a slight change of subject. “I believe they have a very charming place in Hampshire, and a boy—or is it two boys—who have just gone—or one of them—to Winchester.”
“Do you know Hampshire well?”
“No. Hardly at all. I believe their house is somewhere near Alton.”
“I see.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “And where do the Dysons live?”
“California,” said Miss Prescott. “When they are at home, that is. They are great travellers.”
“One really knows so little about the people one meets when one is travelling,” said Miss Marple. “I mean—how shall I put it—one only knows, doesn’t one, what they choose to tell you about themselves. For instance, you don’t really know that the Dysons live in California.”
Miss Prescott looked startled.
“I’m sure Mr. Dyson mentioned it.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what I mean. And the same thing perhaps with the Hillingdons. I mean when you say that they live in Hampshire, you’re really repeating what they told you, aren’t you?”
Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live in Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I was only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know about people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead, which is a place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t, if I may say so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less where Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the South of England and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,” she agreed hastily, “and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that,” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did she really know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott were really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott? They said so. There was no evidence to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not, to put on a dog-collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appropriate conversation. If there was a motive….
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of the world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She had no doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same thing—one believed what people said to one.
Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps … She shook her head thoughtfully.
Nineteen
USES OF A SHOE
Canon Prescott came back from the water’s edge slightly short of breath (playing with children is always exhausting).
Presently he and his sister went back to the hotel, finding the beach a little too hot.
“But,” said Señora de Caspearo scornfully as they walked away—“how can a beach be too hot? It is nonsense that—And look what she wears—her arms and her neck are all covered up. Perhaps it is as well, that. Her skin it is hideous, like a plucked chicken!”
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. Now or never was the time for conversation with Señora de Caspearo. Unfortunately she did not know what to say. There seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet.
“You have children, Señora?” she inquired.
“I have three angels,” said Señora de Caspearo, kissing her fingertips.
Miss Marple was rather uncertain as to whether this meant that Señora de Caspearo’s offspring were in Heaven or whether it merely referred to their characters.
One of the gentlemen in attendance made a remark in Spanish and Señora de Caspearo flung back her head appreciatively and laughed loudly and melodiously.
“You understand what he said?” she inquired of Miss Marple.
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple apologetically.
“It is just as well. He is a wicked man.”
A rapid and spirited interchange of Spanish badinage followed.
“It is infamous—infamous,” said Señora de Caspearo, reverting to English with sudden gravity, “that the police do not let us go from this island. I storm, I scream, I stamp my foot—but all they say is No—No. You know how it will end—we shall all be killed.”
Her bodyguard attempted to reassure her.
“But yes—I tell you it is unlucky here. I knew it from the first—That old Major, the ugly one—he had the Evil Eye—you remember? His eyes they crossed—It is bad, that! I make the Sign of the Horns every time when he looks my way.” She made it in illustration. “Though since he is cross-eyed I am not always sure when he does look my way—”
“He had a glass eye,” said Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. “An accident, I understand, when he was quite young. It was not his fault.”
“I tell you he brought bad luck—I say it is the Evil Eye he had.”
Her hand shot out again in the well-known Latin gesture—the first finger and the little finger sticking out, the two middle ones doubled in. “Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “he is dead—I do not have to look at him any more. I do not like to look at things that are ugly.”
It was, Miss Marple thought, a somewhat cruel epitaph on Major Palgrave.
Farther down the beach Gregory Dyson had come out of the sea. Lucky had turned herself over on the sand. Evelyn Hillingdon was looking at Lucky, and her expression, for some reason, made Miss Marple shiver.
“Surely I can’t be cold—in this hot sun,” she thought.
What was the old phrase—“A goose walking over your grave—”
She g
ot up and went slowly back to her bungalow.
On the way she passed Mr. Rafiel and Esther Walters coming down the beach. Mr. Rafiel winked at her. Miss Marple did not wink back. She looked disapproving.
She went into her bungalow and lay down on her bed. She felt old and tired and worried.
She was quite certain that there was no time to be lost—no time—to—be lost … It was getting late … The sun was going to set—the sun—one must always look at the sun through smoked glass—Where was that piece of smoked glass that someone had given her?…
No, she wouldn’t need it after all. A shadow had come over the sun blotting it out. A shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon’s shadow—No, not Evelyn Hillingdon—The Shadow (what were the words?) the Shadow of the Valley of Death. That was it. She must—what was it? Make the Sign of the Horns—to avert the Evil Eye—Major Palgrave’s Evil Eye.
Her eyelids flickered open—she had been asleep. But there was a shadow—someone peering in at her window.
The shadow moved away—and Miss Marple saw who it was—It was Jackson.
“Impertinence—peering in like that,” she thought—and added parenthetically, “Just like Jonas Parry.”
The comparison reflected no credit on Jackson.
Then she wondered why Jackson had been peering into her bedroom. To see if she was there? Or to note that she was there, but was asleep.
She got up, went into the bathroom and peered cautiously through the window.
Arthur Jackson was standing by the door of the bungalow next door. Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. She saw him give a rapid glance round and then slip quickly inside. Interesting, thought Miss Marple. Why did he have to look round in that furtive manner? Nothing in the world could have been more natural than his going into Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow since he himself had a room at the back of it. He was always going in and out of it on some errand or other. So why that quick, guilty glance round? “Only one reason,” said Miss Marple answering her own question, “he wanted to be sure that nobody was observing him enter at this particular moment because of something he was going to do in there.”
Everybody, of course, was on the beach at this moment except those who had gone for expeditions. In about twenty minutes or so, Jackson himself would arrive on the beach in the course of his duties to aid Mr. Rafiel to take his sea dip. If he wanted to do anything in the bungalow unobserved, now was a very good time. He had satisfied himself that Miss Marple was asleep on her bed, he had satisfied himself that there was nobody near at hand to observe his movements. Well, she must do her best to do exactly that.
