But all the same, Miss Marple thought to herself, she would need some luck as well as hard work, she would require a lot of thought and pondering and possibly what she was doing might involve a certain amount of danger. But she’d got to find out herself what it was all about, he wasn’t going to tell her, partly perhaps because he did not want to influence her? It is hard to tell anyone about something without letting slip your own point of view about it. It could be that Mr. Rafiel had thought that his own point of view might be wrong. It was not very like him to think such a thing, but it could be possible. He might suspect that his judgment, impaired by illness, was not quite as good as it used to be. So she, Miss Marple, his agent, his employee, was to make her own guesses, come to her own conclusions. Well, it was time she came to a few conclusions now. In other words, back to the old question, what was all this about?
She had been directed. Let her take that first. She had been directed by a man who was now dead. She had been directed away from St. Mary Mead. Therefore, the task, whatever it must be, could not be attacked from there. It was not a neighbourhood problem, it was not a problem that you could solve just by looking through newspaper cuttings or making enquiries, not, that is, until you found what you had to make enquiries about. She had been directed, first to the lawyer’s office, then to read a letter—two letters—in her home, then to be sent on a pleasant and well run tour round some of the Famous Houses and Gardens of Great Britain. From that she had come to the next stepping stone. The house she was in at this moment. The Old Manor House, Jocelyn St. Mary, where lived Miss Clotilde Bradbury-Scott, Mrs. Glynne and Miss Anthea Bradbury-Scott. Mr. Rafiel had arranged that, arranged it beforehand. Some weeks before he died. Probably it was the next thing he had done after instructing his lawyers and after booking a seat on the tour in her name. Therefore, she was in this house for a purpose. It might be for only two nights, it might be for longer. There might be certain things arranged which would lead her to stay longer or she would be asked to stay longer. That brought her back to where she stood now.
Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters. They must be concerned, implicated in whatever this was. She would have to find out what it was. The time was short. That was the only trouble. Miss Marple had no doubt for one moment that she had the capacity to find out things. She was one of those chatty, fluffy old ladies whom other people expect to talk, to ask questions that were, on the face of it, merely gossipy questions. She would talk about her childhood and that would lead to one of the sisters talking about theirs. She’d talk about food she had eaten, servants she had had, daughters and cousins and relations, travel, marriages, births and—yes—deaths. There must be no show of special interest in her eyes when she heard about a death. Not at all. Almost automatically she was sure she could come up with the right response such as, “Oh dear me, how very sad!” She would have to find out relationships, incidents, life stories, see if any suggestive incidents would pop up, so to speak. It might be some incidents in the neighbourhood, not directly concerned with these three people. Something they could know about, talk about, or were pretty sure to talk about. Anyway, there would be something here, some clue, some pointer. The second day from now she would rejoin the tour unless she had by that time some indication that she was not to rejoin the tour. Her mind swept from the house to the coach and the people who had sat in it. It might be that what she was seeking had been there in the coach, and would be there again when she rejoined it. One person, several people, some innocent (some not so innocent), some long past story. She frowned a little, trying to remember something. Something that had flashed in her mind that she had thought: Really I am sure—of what had she been sure?
Her mind went back to the three sisters. She must not be too long up here. She must unpack a few modest needs for two nights, something to change into this evening, night clothes, sponge bag, and then go down and rejoin her hostesses and make pleasant talk. A main point had to be decided. Were the three sisters to be her allies or were the three sisters enemies? They might fall into either category. She must think about that carefully.
There was a tap on the door and Mrs. Glynne entered.
“I do hope you will be quite comfortable here. Can I help you to unpack? We have a very nice woman who comes in but she is only here in the morning. But she’ll help you with anything.”
“Oh no, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “I only took out just a few necessities.”
“I thought I’d show you the way downstairs again. It’s rather a rambling house, you know. There are two staircases and it does make it a little difficult. Sometimes people lose their way.”
“Oh, it’s very kind of you,” said Miss Marple.
“I hope then you will come downstairs and we will have a glass of sherry before lunch.”
Miss Marple accepted gratefully and followed her guide down the stairs. Mrs. Glynne, she judged, was a good many years younger than she herself was. Fifty, perhaps. Not much more. Miss Marple negotiated the stairs carefully, her left knee was always a little uncertain. There was, however, a banister at one side of the stairs. Very beautiful stairs they were, and she remarked on them.
“It is really a very lovely house,” she said. “Built I suppose in the 1700s. Am I right?”
“1780,” said Mrs. Glynne.
She seemed pleased with Miss Marple’s appreciation. She took Miss Marple into the drawing room. A large graceful room. There were one or two rather beautiful pieces of furniture. A Queen Anne desk and a William and Mary oystershell bureau. There were also some rather cumbrous Victorian settees and cabinets. The curtains were of chintz, faded and somewhat worn, the carpet was, Miss Marple thought, Irish. Possibly a Limerick Aubusson type. The sofa was ponderous and the velvet of it much worn. The other two sisters were already sitting there. They rose as Miss Marple came in and approached her, one with a glass of sherry, the other directing her to a chair.
“I don’t know whether you like sitting rather high? So many people do.”
“I do,” said Miss Marple. “It’s so much easier. One’s back, you know.”
The sisters appeared to know about the difficulties of backs. The eldest of the sisters was a tall handsome woman, dark with a black coil of hair. The other one might have been a good deal younger. She was thin with grey hair that had once been fair hanging untidily on her shoulders and a faintly wraithlike appearance. She could be cast successfully as a mature Ophelia, Miss Marple thought.
Clotilde, Miss Marple thought, was certainly no Ophelia, but she would have made a magnificent Clytemnestra—she could have stabbed a husband in his bath with exultation. But since she had never had a husband, that solution wouldn’t do. Miss Marple could not see her murdering anyone else but a husband—and there had been no Agamemnon in this house.
Clotilde Bradbury-Scott, Anthea Bradbury-Scott, Lavinia Glynne. Clotilde was handsome, Lavinia was plain but pleasant-looking, Anthea had one eyelid which twitched from time to time. Her eyes were large and grey and she had an odd way of glancing round to right and then to left, and then suddenly, in a rather strange manner, behind her over her shoulder. It was as though she felt someone was watching her all the time. Odd, thought Miss Marple. She wondered a little about Anthea.
They sat down and conversation ensued. Mrs. Glynne left the room, apparently for the kitchen. She was, it seemed, the active domestic one of the three. The conversation took a usual course. Clotilde Bradbury-Scott explained that the house was a family one. It had belonged to her great-uncle and then to her uncle and when he had died it was left to her and her two sisters who had joined her there.
“He only had one son, you see,” explained Miss Bradbury-Scott, “and he was killed in the war. We are really the last of the family, except for some very distant cousins.”
“A beautifully proportioned house,” said Miss Marple. “Your sister tells me it was built about 1780.”
“Yes, I believe so. One could wish, you know, it was not quite so large and rambling.”
&nbs
p; “Repairs too,” said Miss Marple, “come very heavy nowadays.”
“Oh yes, indeed,” Clotilde sighed. “And in many ways we have to let a lot of it just fall down. Sad, but there it is. A lot of the outhouses, for instance, and a greenhouse. We had a very beautiful big greenhouse.”
“Lovely muscat grapevine in it,” said Anthea. “And Cherry Pie used to grow all along the walls inside. Yes, I really regret that very much. Of course, during the war one could not get any gardeners. We had a very young gardener and then he was called up. One does not of course grudge that, but all the same it was impossible to get things repaired and so the whole greenhouse fell down.”
“So did the little conservatory near the house.”
Both sisters sighed, with the sighing of those who have noted time passing, and times changing—but not for the better.
There was a melancholy here in this house, thought Miss Marple. It was impregnated somehow with sorrow—a sorrow that could not be dispersed or removed since it had penetrated too deep. It had sunk in … She shivered suddenly.
Nine
POLYGONUM BALDSCHUANICUM
The meal was conventional. A small joint of mutton, roast potatoes, followed by a plum tart with a small jug of cream and rather indifferent pastry. There were a few pictures round the dining room wall, family pictures, Miss Marple presumed, Victorian portraits without any particular merit, the sideboard was large and heavy, a handsome piece of plum-coloured mahogany. The curtains were of dark crimson damask and at the big mahogany table ten people could easily have been seated.
Miss Marple chatted about the incidents of the tour in so far as she had been on it. As this, however, had only been three days, there was not very much to say.
“Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, was an old friend of yours?” said the eldest Miss Bradbury-Scott.
“Not really,” said Miss Marple. “I met him first when I was on a cruise to the West Indies. He was out there for his health, I imagine.”
“Yes, he had been very crippled for some years,” said Anthea.
“Very sad,” said Miss Marple. “Very sad indeed. I really admired his fortitude. He seemed to manage to do so much work. Every day, you know, he dictated to his secretary and was continually sending off cables. He did not seem to give in at all kindly to being an invalid.”
“Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Anthea.
“We have not seen much of him of late years,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He was a busy man, of course. He always remembered us at Christmas very kindly.”
“Do you live in London, Miss Marple?” asked Anthea.
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “I live in the country. A very small place halfway between Loomouth and Market Basing. About twenty-five miles from London. It used to be a very pretty old-world village but of course like everything else, it is becoming what they call developed nowadays.” She added, “Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, lived in London? At least I noticed that in the St. Honoré hotel register his address was somewhere in Eaton Square, I think, or was it Belgrave Square?”
“He had a country house in Kent,” said Clotilde. “He used to entertain there, I think, sometimes. Business friends, mostly you know, or people from abroad. I don’t think any of us ever visited him there. He nearly always entertained us in London on the rare occasions when we happened to meet.”
“It was very kind of him,” said Miss Marple, “to suggest to you that you should invite me here during the course of this tour. Very thoughtful. One wouldn’t really have expected a busy man such as he must have been to have had such kindly thoughts.”
“We have invited before friends of his who have been on these tours. On the whole they are very considerate the way they arrange these things. It is impossible, of course, to suit everybody’s taste. The young ones naturally wish to walk, to make long excursions, to ascend hills for a view, and all that sort of thing. And the older ones who are not up to it, remain in the hotels, but hotels round here are not really at all luxurious. I am sure you would have found today’s trip and the one to St. Bonaventure tomorrow also, very fatiguing. Tomorrow I believe there is a visit to an island, you know, in a boat and sometimes it can be very rough.”
“Even going round houses can be very tiring,” said Mrs. Glynne.
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple. “So much walking and standing about. One’s feet get very tired. I suppose really I ought not to take these expeditions, but it is such a temptation to see beautiful buildings and fine rooms and furniture. All these things. And of course some splendid pictures.”
“And the gardens,” said Anthea. “You like gardens, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “specially the gardens. From the description in the prospectus I am really looking forward very much to seeing some of the really finely kept gardens of the historic houses we have still to visit.” She beamed round the table.
It was all very pleasant, very natural, and yet she wondered why for some reason she had a feeling of strain. A feeling that there was something unnatural here. But what did she mean by unnatural? The conversation was ordinary enough, consisting mainly of platitudes. She herself was making conventional remarks and so were the three sisters.
The Three Sisters, thought Miss Marple once again considering that phrase. Why did anything thought of in threes somehow seem to suggest a sinister atmosphere? The Three Sisters. The Three Witches of Macbeth. Well, one could hardly compare these three sisters to the three witches. Although Miss Marple had always thought at the back of her mind that the theatrical producers made a mistake in the way in which they produced the three witches. One production which she had seen, indeed, seemed to her quite absurd. The witches had looked more like pantomime creatures with flapping wings and ridiculously spectacular steeple hats. They had danced and slithered about. Miss Marple remembered saying to her nephew, who was standing her this Shakespearean treat, “You know, Raymond, my dear, if I were ever producing this splendid play I would make the three witches quite different. I would have them three ordinary, normal old women. Old Scottish women. They wouldn’t dance or caper. They would look at each other rather slyly and you would feel a sort of menace just behind the ordinariness of them.”
Miss Marple helped herself to the last mouthful of plum tart and looked across the table at Anthea. Ordinary, untidy, very vague-looking, a bit scatty. Why should she feel that Anthea was sinister?
“I am imagining things,” said Miss Marple to herself. “I mustn’t do that.”
After luncheon she was taken on a tour of the garden. It was Anthea who was deputed to accompany her. It was, Miss Marple thought, rather a sad progress. Here, there had once been a well kept, though certainly not in any way an outstanding or remarkable, garden. It had had the elements of an ordinary Victorian garden. A shrubbery, a drive of speckled laurels, no doubt there had once been a well kept lawn and paths, a kitchen garden of about an acre and a half, too big evidently for the three sisters who lived here now. Part of it was unplanted and had gone largely to weeds. Ground elder had taken over most of the flower beds and Miss Marple’s hands could hardly restrain themselves from pulling up the vagrant bindweed asserting its superiority.
Miss Anthea’s long hair flapped in the wind, shedding from time to time a vague hairpin on the path or the grass. She talked rather jerkily.
“You have a very nice garden, I expect,” she said.
“Oh, it’s a very small one,” said Miss Marple.
They had come along a grass path and were pausing in front of a kind of hillock that rested against the wall at the end of it.
“Our greenhouse,” said Miss Anthea, mournfully.
“Oh yes, where you had such a delightful grapevine.”
“Three vines,” said Anthea. “A Black Hamburg and one of those small white grapes, very sweet, you know. And a third one of beautiful muscats.”
“And a heliotrope, you said.”
“Cherry Pie,” said Anthea.
“Ah yes, Cherry Pie. Such a lovely smell.
Was there any bomb trouble round here? Did that—er—knock the greenhouse down?”
“Oh no, we never suffered from anything of that kind. This neighbourhood was quite free of bombs. No, I’m afraid it just fell down from decay. We hadn’t been here so very long and we had no money to repair it, or to build it up again. And in fact, it wouldn’t have been worth it really because we couldn’t have kept it up even if we did. I’m afraid we just let it fall down. There was nothing else we could do. And now you see, it’s all grown over.”