“You do not know?” said Miss Marple, “but you do still know and believe one thing, don’t you?”
“What do you mean exactly by ‘believe?’ Are you talking from the religious point of view?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple, “I didn’t mean that. I mean, there seems to be in you, or so I feel it, a very strong belief that those two loved each other, that they meant to marry, but that something happened that prevented it. Something that ended in her death, but you still really believe that they were coming to you to get married that day?”
“You are quite right, my dear. Yes, I cannot help still believing in two lovers who wished to get married, who were ready to take each other on for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. She loved him and she would have taken him for better or for worse. As far as she had gone, she took him for worse. It brought about her death.”
“You must go on believing as you do,” said Miss Marple. “I think, you know, that I believe it too.”
“But then what?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not sure, but I think Elizabeth Temple did know or was beginning to know what happened. A frightening word, she said. Love. I thought when she spoke that what she meant was that because of a love affair Verity committed suicide. Because she found out something about Michael, or because something about Michael suddenly upset her and revolted her. But it couldn’t have been suicide.”
“No,” said the Archdeacon, “that couldn’t be so. The injuries were described very fully at the trial. You don’t commit suicide by beating in your own head.”
“Horrible!” said Miss Marple. “Horrible! And you couldn’t do that to anyone you loved even if you had to kill ‘for love,’ could you? If he’d killed her, he couldn’t have done it that way. Strangling—perhaps, but you wouldn’t beat in the face and the head that you loved.” She murmured, “Love, love—a frightening word.”
Nineteen
GOOD-BYES ARE SAID
The coach was drawn up in front of the Golden Boar on the following morning. Miss Marple had come down and was saying good-bye to various friends. She found Mrs. Riseley-Porter in a state of high indignation.
“Really, girls nowadays,” she said. “No vigour. No stamina.”
Miss Marple looked at her enquiringly.
“Joanna, I mean. My niece.”
“Oh dear. Is she not well?”
“Well, she says not. I can’t see anything much the matter with her. She says she’s got a sore throat, she feels she might have a temperature coming on. All nonsense, I think.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” said Miss Marple. “Is there anything I can do? Look after her?”
“I should leave her alone, if I were you,” said Mrs. Riseley-Porter. “If you ask me, it’s all an excuse.”
Miss Marple looked enquiringly at her once more.
“Girls are so silly. Always falling in love.”
“Emlyn Price?” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, so you’ve noticed it too. Yes, they’re really getting to a stage of spooning about together. I don’t much care for him anyway. One of these long-haired students, you know. Always going on demos or something like that. Why can’t they say demonstration properly? I hate abbreviations. And how am I going to get along? Nobody to look after me, collect my luggage, take it in, take it out. Really. I’m paying for this complete trip and everything.”
“I thought she seemed so attentive to you,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, not the last day or two. Girls don’t understand that people have to have a little assistance when they get to middle age. They seem to have some absurd idea—she and the Price boy—of going to visit some mountain or some landmark. About a seven or eight mile walk there and back.”
“But surely if she has a sore throat and a temperature….”
“You’ll see, as soon as the coach is gone the sore throat will get better and the temperature will go down,” said Mrs. Riseley-Porter. “Oh dear, we’ve got to get on board now. Oh, good-bye, Miss Marple, it’s nice to have met you. I’m sorry you’re not coming with us.”
“I’m very sorry myself,” said Miss Marple, “but really you know, I’m not so young and vigorous as you are, Mrs. Riseley-Porter, and I really feel after all the—well, shock and everything else the last few days, I really must have a complete twenty-four hours’ rest.”
“Well, hope to see you somewhere in the future.”
They shook hands. Mrs. Riseley-Porter climbed into the coach.
A voice behind Miss Marple’s shoulder said:
“Bon Voyage and Good Riddance.”
She turned to see Emlyn Price. He was grinning.
“Was that addressed to Mrs. Riseley-Porter?”
“Yes. Who else.”
“I’m sorry to hear that Joanna is under the weather this morning.”
Emlyn Price grinned at Miss Marple again.
“She’ll be all right,” he said, “as soon as that coach is gone.”
“Oh really!” said Miss Marple, “do you mean—?”
“Yes, I do mean,” said Emlyn Price. “Joanna’s had enough of that aunt of hers, bossing her around all the time.”
“Then you are not going in the coach either?”
“No. I’m staying on here for a couple of days. I’m going to get around a bit and do a few excursions. Don’t look so disapproving, Miss Marple. You’re not really as disapproving as all that, are you?”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I have known such things happen in my own youth. The excuses may have been different, and I think we had less chance of getting away with things than you do now.”
Colonel and Mrs. Walker came up and shook Miss Marple warmly by the hand.
“So nice to have known you and had all those delightful horticultural talks,” said the Colonel. “I believe the day after tomorrow we’re going to have a real treat, if nothing else happens. Really it’s too sad, this very unfortunate accident. I must say I think myself it is an accident. I really think the Coroner was going beyond everything in his feelings about this.”
“It seems very odd,” said Miss Marple, “that nobody has come forward, if they were up on top there, pushing about rocks and boulders and things, that they haven’t come forward to say so.”
“Think they’ll be blamed, of course,” said Colonel Walker. “They’re going to keep jolly quiet, that’s what they’re going to do. Well, good-bye. I’ll send you a cutting of that magnolia highdownensis and one of the mahonia japonica too. Though I’m not quite sure if it would do as well where you live.”
They in turn got into the coach. Miss Marple turned away. She turned to see Professor Wanstead waving to the departing coach. Mrs. Sandbourne came out, said good-bye to Miss Marple and got in the coach and Miss Marple took Professor Wanstead by the arm.
“I want you,” she said. “Can we go somewhere where we can talk?”
“Yes. What about the place where we sat the other day?”
“Round here there’s a very nice verandah place, I think.”
They walked round the corner of the hotel. There was some gay horn blowing, and the coach departed.
“I wish, in a way, you know,” said Professor Wanstead, “that you weren’t staying behind. I’d rather have seen you safely on your way in the coach.” He looked at her sharply. “Why are you staying here? Nervous exhaustion or something else?”
“Something else,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not particularly exhausted, though it makes a perfectly natural excuse for somebody of my age.”
“I feel really I ought to stay here and keep an eye on you.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “there’s no need to do that. There are other things you ought to be doing.”
“What things?” He looked at her. “Have you got ideas or knowledge?”
“I think I have knowledge, but I’ll have to verify it. There are certain things that I can’t do myself. I think you will help to do them because you’re
in touch with what I refer to as the authorities.”
“Meaning Scotland Yard, Chief Constables and the Governors of Her Majesty’s Prisons?”
“Yes. One or other or all of them. You might have the Home Secretary in your pocket, too.”
“You certainly do have ideas! Well, what do you want me to do?”
“First of all I want to give you this address.”
She took out a notebook and tore out one page and handed it to him.
“What’s this? Oh yes, well-known charity, isn’t it?”
“One of the better ones, I believe. They do a lot of good. You send them clothes,” said Miss Marple, “children’s clothes and women’s clothes. Coats. Pullovers, all those sort of things.”
“Well, do you want me to contribute to this?”
“No, it’s an appeal for charity, it’s a bit of what belongs to what we’re doing. What you and I are doing.”
“In what way?”
“I want you to make enquiries there about a parcel which was sent from here two days ago, posted from this post office.”
“Who posted it—did you?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “No. But I assumed responsibility for it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Miss Marple, smiling slightly, “that I went into the post office here and I explained rather scattily and—well, like the old pussy I am—that I had very foolishly asked someone to take a parcel for me and post it, and I had put the wrong address on it. I was very upset by this. The postmistress very kindly said she remembered the parcel, but the address on it was not the one I was mentioning. It was this one, the one I have just given to you. I explained that I had been very foolish and written the wrong address on it, confusing it with another one I sometimes send things to. She told me it was too late to do anything about it now because the parcel, naturally, had gone off. I said it was quite all right, that I would send a letter to the particular charity to which the parcel had been sent, and explain that it had been addressed to them by mistake. Would they very kindly forward it on to the charity that I had meant to receive it.”
“It seems rather a roundabout way.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “one has to say something. I’m not going to do that at all. You are going to deal with the matter. We’ve got to know what’s inside that parcel! I have no doubt you can get means.”
“Will there be anything inside the parcel to say who actually sent it?”
“I rather think not. It may have a slip of paper saying ‘from friends’ or it may have a fictitious name and address—something like Mrs. Pippin, 14 Westbourne Grove—and if anyone made enquiries there, there’d be no person of such a name living there.”
“Oh. Any other alternatives?”
“It might possibly, most unlikely but possible, have a slip saying ‘From Miss Anthea Bradbury-Scott’—”
“Did she—?”
“She took it to the post,” said Miss Marple.
“And you had asked her to take it there?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “I hadn’t asked anyone to post anything. The first I saw of the parcel was when Anthea passed the garden of the Golden Boar where you and I were sitting talking, carrying it.”
“But you went to the post office and represented that the parcel was yours.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “which was quite untrue. But post offices are careful. And, you see, I wanted to find out where it had been sent.”
“You wanted to find out if such a parcel had been sent, and if it had been sent by one of the Bradbury-Scotts—or especially Miss Anthea?”
“I knew it would be Anthea,” said Miss Marple, “because we’d seen her.”
“Well?” He took the paper from her hand. “Yes, I can set this in motion. You think this parcel will be interesting?”
“I think the contents of it might be quite important.”
“You like keeping your secrets, don’t you?” said Professor Wanstead.
“Not exactly secrets,” said Miss Marple, “they are only probabilities that I am exploring. One does not like to make definite assertions unless one has a little more definite knowledge.”
“Anything else?”
“I think—I think that whoever’s in charge of these things, ought to be warned that there might be a second body to be found.”
“Do you mean a second body connected with the particular crime that we have been considering? A crime that took place ten years ago?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’m quite sure of it, as a matter of fact.”
“Another body. Whose body?”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “it’s only my idea so far.”
“Any idea where this body is?”
“Oh! Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I’m quite sure I know where it is, but I have to have a little more time before I can tell you that.”
“What kind of a body? Man’s? Woman’s? Child’s? Girl’s?”
“There’s another girl who is missing,” said Miss Marple. “A girl called Nora Broad. She disappeared from here and she’s never been heard anymore of. I think her body might be in a particular place.”
Professor Wanstead looked at her.
“You know, the more you say, the less I like leaving you here,” he said. “Having all these ideas—and possibly doing something foolish—either—” He stopped.
“Either it’s all nonsense?—” said Miss Marple.
“No, no, I didn’t mean that. But either you know too much—which might be dangerous … I think I am going to stay here to keep an eye on you.”
“No, you’re not,” said Miss Marple. “You’ve got to go to London and set certain things moving.”
“You spoke as though you knew a good deal now, Miss Marple.”
“I think I do know a good deal now. But I have got to be sure.”
“Yes, but if you make sure, that may be the last thing you do make sure of! We don’t want a third body. Yours.”
“Oh, I’m not expecting anything like that,” said Miss Marple.
“There might be danger, you know, if any of your ideas are right. Have you suspicions of any one particular person?”
“I think I have certain knowledge as to one person. I have got to find out—I have got to stay here. You asked me once if I felt an atmosphere of evil. Well, that atmosphere is here all right, an atmosphere of evil, of danger if you like—of great unhappiness, of fear … I’ve got to do something about that. The best I can do. But an old woman like me can’t do very much.”
Professor Wanstead counted under his breath. “One—two—three—four—”
“What are you counting?” asked Miss Marple.
“The people who left in the coach. Presumably you’re not interested in them, since you’ve let them go off and you’re staying here.”
“Why should I be interested in them?”
“Because you said Mr. Rafiel had sent you in the coach for a particular reason and sent you on this tour for a particular reason and sent you to The Old Manor House for a particular reason. Very well then. The death of Elizabeth Temple ties up with someone in the coach. Your remaining here ties up with The Old Manor House.”
“You’re not quite right,” said Miss Marple. “There are connections between the two. I want someone to tell me things.”
“Do you think you can make anyone tell you things?”
“I think I might. You’ll miss your train if you don’t go soon.”
“Take care of yourself,” said Professor Wanstead.
“I mean to take care of myself.”
The door into the lounge opened and two people came out. Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow.
“Hullo,” said Professor Wanstead, “I thought you’d gone off with the coach.”
“Well, we changed our minds at the last moment,” said Miss Cooke cheerfully. “You know we’ve just discovered that there are some very agreeable walks near here and there are one or two places I’m ve
ry anxious to see. A church with a very unusual Saxon font. Only four or five miles away and quite easily reached by the local bus, I think. You see, it’s not only houses and gardens. I’m very interested in church architecture.”
“So am I,” said Miss Barrow. “There’s also Finley Park which is a very fine piece of horticultural planting not far from here. We really thought that it would be much pleasanter to stay here for a day or two.”
“You’re staying here at the Golden Boar?”
“Yes. We were fortunate enough to be able to get a very nice double room. Really a better one than the one we have had for the last two days.”
“You will miss your train,” said Miss Marple again.
“I wish,” said Professor Wanstead, “that you—”
“I shall be quite all right,” said Miss Marple urgently. “Such a kind man,” she said, as he disappeared round the side of the house, “who really takes so much care of me—I might be a great-aunt of his or something like that.”
“It’s all been a great shock, hasn’t it,” said Miss Cooke. “Perhaps you may like to come with us when we go to visit St. Martins in the Grove.”
“You’re very kind,” said Miss Marple, “but I don’t think today I feel quite strong enough for expeditions. Perhaps tomorrow if there is anything interesting to see.”
“Well, we must leave you then.”
Miss Marple smiled at them both and went into the hotel.
Twenty
MISS MARPLE HAS IDEAS
Having had lunch in the dining room, Miss Marple went out on the terrace to drink her coffee. She was just sipping her second cup when a tall, thin figure came striding up the steps, and approached her, speaking rather breathlessly. She saw that it was Anthea Bradbury-Scott.
“Oh, Miss Marple, we’ve only just heard, you know, that you didn’t go with the coach, after all. We thought you were going on with the tour. We had no idea you were staying on here. Both Clotilde and Lavinia sent me here to say we do so hope you will come back to The Old Manor House and stay with us. I’m sure it will be nicer for you to be there. There are so many people coming and going here always, especially over a weekend and things like that. So we’d be very, very glad—we really would—if you would come back to us.”