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Anthea’s reaction was different. It was quick, excited, almost pleasurable.
“Verity? Verity, did you say? Did you know her? I’d no idea. It is Verity Hunt you mean?”
Lavinia Glynne said, “It’s a Christian name?”
“I never knew anyone of that name,” said Miss Marple, “but I did mean a Christian name. Yes. It is rather unusual, I think. Verity.” She repeated it thoughtfully.
She let her purple wool ball fall and looked round with the slightly apologetic and embarrassed look of one who realizes she has made a serious faux pas, but not sure why.
“I—I am so sorry. Have I said something I shouldn’t? It was only because….”
“No, of course not,” said Mrs. Glynne. “It was just that it is—it is a name we know, a name with which we have—associations.”
“It just came into my mind,” said Miss Marple, still apologetic, “because, you know, it was poor Miss Temple who said it. I went to see her, you know, yesterday afternoon. Professor Wanstead took me. He seemed to think that I might be able to—to—I don’t know if it’s the proper word—to rouse her, in some way. She was in a coma and they thought—not that I was a friend of hers at any time, but we had chatted together on the tour and we often sat beside each other, as you know, on some of the days and we had talked. And he thought perhaps I might be of some use. I’m afraid I wasn’t though. Not at all. I just sat there and waited and then she did say one or two words, but they didn’t seem to mean anything. But finally, just when it was time for me to go, she did open her eyes and looked at me—I don’t know if she was mistaking me for someone—but she did say that word. Verity! And, well of course it stuck in my mind, especially with her passing away yesterday evening. It must have been someone or something that she had in her mind. But of course it might just mean—well, of course it might just mean Truth. That’s what verity means, doesn’t it?”
She looked from Clotilde to Lavinia to Anthea.
“It was the Christian name of a girl we knew,” said Lavinia Glynne. “That is why it startled us.”
“Especially because of the awful way she died,” said Anthea.
Clotilde said in her deep voice, “Anthea! there’s no need to go into these details.”
“But after all, everyone knows quite well about her,” said Anthea. She looked towards Miss Marple. “I thought perhaps you might have known about her because you knew Mr. Rafiel, didn’t you? Well, I mean, he wrote to us about you so you must have known him. And I thought perhaps—well, he’d mentioned the whole thing to you.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Miss Marple, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”
“They found her body in a ditch,” said Anthea.
There was never any holding Anthea, Miss Marple thought, not once she got going. But she thought that Anthea’s vociferous talk was putting additional strain on Clotilde. She had taken out a handkerchief now in a quiet, noncommittal way. She brushed tears from her eyes and then sat upright, her back very straight, her eyes deep and tragic.
“Verity,” she said, “was a girl we cared for very much. She lived here for a while. I was very fond of her—”
“And she was very fond of you,” said Lavinia.
“Her parents were friends of mine,” said Clotilde. “They were killed in a plane accident.”
“She was at school at Fallowfield,” explained Lavinia. “I suppose that was how Miss Temple came to remember her.”
“Oh I see,” said Miss Marple. “Where Miss Temple was Headmistress, is that it? I have heard of Fallowfield often, of course. It’s a very fine school, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Clotilde. “Verity was a pupil there. After her parents died she came to stay with us for a time while she could decide what she wanted to do with her future. She was eighteen or nineteen. A very sweet girl and a very affectionate and loving one. She thought perhaps of training for nursing, but she had very good brains and Miss Temple was very insistent that she ought to go to university. So she was studying and having coaching for that when—when this terrible thing happened.”
She turned her face away.
“I—do you mind if we don’t talk about it any more just now?”
“Oh, of course not,” said Miss Marple. “I’m so sorry to have impinged on some tragedy. I didn’t know. I—I haven’t heard … I thought—well I mean …” She became more and more incoherent.
II
That evening she heard a little more. Mrs. Glynne came to her bedroom when she was changing her dress to go out and join the others at the hotel.
“I thought I ought to come and explain a little to you,” said Mrs. Glynne, “about—about the girl Verity Hunt. Of course you couldn’t know that our sister Clotilde was particularly fond of her and that her really horrible death was a terrible shock. We never mention her if we can help it, but—I think it would be easier if I told you the facts completely and you will understand. Apparently Verity had, without our knowledge, made friends with an undesirable—a more than undesirable—it turned out to be a dangerous—young man who already had a criminal record. He came here to visit us when he was passing through once. We knew his father very well.” She paused. “I think I’d better tell you the whole truth if you don’t know, and you don’t seem to. He was actually Mr. Rafiel’s son, Michael—”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple, “not—not—I can’t remember his name but I do remember hearing that there was a son—and, that he hadn’t been very satisfactory.”
“A little more than that,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He’d always given trouble. He’d been had up in court once or twice for various things. Once assaulting a teenager—other things of that type. Of course I consider myself that the magistrates are too lenient with that kind of thing. They don’t want to upset a young man’s university career. And so they let them off with a—I forget what they call it—a suspended sentence, something of that kind. If these boys were sent to gaol at once it would perhaps warn them off that type of life. He was a thief, too. He had forged cheques, he pinched things. He was a thoroughly bad lot. We were friends of his mother’s. It was lucky for her, I think, that she died young before she had time to be upset by the way her son was turning out. Mr. Rafiel did all he could, I think. Tried to find suitable jobs for the boy, paid fines for him and things like that. But I think it was a great blow to him, though he pretended to be more or less indifferent and to write it off as one of those things that happen. We had, as probably people here in the village will tell you, we had a bad outbreak of murders and violence in this district. Not only here. They were in different parts of the country, twenty miles away, sometimes fifty miles away. One or two, it’s suspected by the police, were nearly a hundred miles away. But they seemed to centre more or less on this part of the world. Anyway, Verity one day went out to visit a friend and—well, she didn’t come back. We went to the police about it, the police sought for her, searched the whole countryside but they couldn’t find any trace of her. We advertised, they advertised, and they suggested that she’d gone off with a boyfriend. Then word began to get round that she had been seen with Michael Rafiel. By now the police had their eye on Michael as a possibility for certain crimes that had occurred, although they couldn’t find any direct evidence. Verity was said to have been seen, described by her clothing and other things, with a young man of Michael’s appearance and in a car that corresponded to a description of his car. But there was no further evidence until her body was discovered six months later, thirty miles from here in a rather wild part of wooded country, in a ditch covered with stones and piled earth. Clotilde had to go to identify it—it was Verity all right. She’d been strangled and her head beaten in. Clotilde has never quite got over the shock. There were certain marks, a mole and an old scar and of course her clothes and the contents of her handbag. Miss Temple was very fond of Verity. She must have thought of her just before she died.”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Marple. “I’m real
ly very, very sorry. Please tell your sister that I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
Sixteen
THE INQUEST
I
Miss Marple walked slowly along the village street on her way towards the market place where the inquest was to take place in the old-fashioned Georgian building which had been known for a hundred years as the Curfew Arms. She glanced at her watch. There was still a good twenty minutes before she need be there. She looked into the shops. She paused before the shop that sold wool and babies’ jackets, and peered inside for a few moments. A girl in the shop was serving. Small woolly coats were being tried on two children. Further along the counter there was an elderly woman.
