“Ah that, completely covered by—what is that flowering creeper just coming into bloom?”
“Oh yes. It’s quite a common one,” said Anthea. “It begins with a P. Now what is the name of it?” she said doubtfully. “Poly something, something like that.”
“Oh yes. I think I do know the name. Polygonum Baldschuanicum. Very quick growing, I think, isn’t it? Very useful really if one wants to hide any tumbledown building or anything ugly of that kind.”
The mound in front of her was certainly thickly covered with the all-enveloping green and white flowering plant. It was, as Miss Marple well knew, a kind of menace to anything else that wanted to grow. Polygonum covered everything, and covered it in a remarkably short time.
“The greenhouse must have been quite a big one,” she said.
“Oh yes—we had peaches in it, too—and nectarines.” Anthea looked miserable.
“It looks really very pretty now,” said Miss Marple in a consoling tone. “Very pretty little white flowers, aren’t they?”
“We have a very nice magnolia tree down this path to the left,” said Anthea. “Once I believe there used to be a very fine border here—a herbaceous border. But that again one cannot keep up. It is too difficult. Everything is too difficult. Nothing is like it used to be—it’s all spoilt—everywhere.”
She led the way quickly down a path at right angles which ran along a side wall. Her pace had increased. Miss Marple could hardly keep up with her. It was, thought Miss Marple, as though she were deliberately being steered away from the Polygonum mound by her hostess. Steered away as from some ugly or displeasing spot. Was she ashamed perhaps that the past glories no longer remained? The Polygonum certainly was growing with extraordinary abandonment. It was not even being clipped or kept to reasonable proportions. It made a kind of flowery wilderness of that bit of the garden.
She almost looks as though she was running away from it, thought Miss Marple, as she followed her hostess. Presently her attention was diverted to a broken down pigsty which had a few rose tendrils round it.
“My great-uncle used to keep a few pigs,” explained Anthea, “but of course one would never dream of doing anything of that kind nowadays, would one? Rather too noisome, I am afraid. We have a few floribunda roses near the house. I really think floribundas are such a great answer to difficulties.”
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple.
She mentioned the names of a few recent productions in the rose line. All the names, she thought, were entirely strange to Miss Anthea.
“Do you often come on these tours?”
The question came suddenly.
“You mean the tours of houses and of gardens?”
“Yes. Some people do it every year.”
“Oh I couldn’t hope to do that. They’re rather expensive, you see. A friend very kindly gave me a present of this to celebrate my next birthday. So kind.”
“Oh. I wondered. I wondered why you came. I mean—it’s bound to be rather tiring, isn’t it? Still, if you usually go to the West Indies, and places like that….”
“Oh, the West Indies was the result of kindness, too. On the part of a nephew, that time. A dear boy. So very thoughtful for his old aunt.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I see.”
“I don’t know what one would do without the younger generation,” said Miss Marple. “They are so kind, are they not?”
“I—I suppose so. I don’t really know. I—we haven’t—any young relations.”
“Does your sister, Mrs. Glynne, have any children? She did not mention any. One never likes to ask.”
“No. She and her husband never had any children. It’s as well perhaps.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Miss Marple wondered as they returned to the house.
Ten
“OH! FOND, OH! FAIR, THE DAYS THAT WERE”
I
At half past eight the next morning there was a smart tap on the door, and in answer to Miss Marple’s “Come in” the door was opened and an elderly woman entered, bearing a tray with a teapot, a cup and a milk jug and a small plate of bread and butter.
“Early morning tea, ma’am,” she said cheerfully. “It’s a nice day, it is. I see you’ve got your curtains drawn back already. You’ve slept well then?”
“Very well indeed,” said Miss Marple, laying aside a small devotional book which she had been reading.
“Well, it’s a lovely day, it is. They’ll have it nice for going to the Bonaventure Rocks. It’s just as well you’re not doing it. It’s cruel hard on the legs, it is.”
“I’m really very happy to be here,” said Miss Marple. “So kind of Miss Bradbury-Scott and Mrs. Glynne to issue this invitation.”
“Ah well, it’s nice for them too. It cheers them up to have a bit of company come to the house. Ah, it’s a sad place nowadays, so it is.”
She pulled the curtains at the window rather more fully, pushed back a chair and deposited a can of hot water in the china basin.
“There’s a bathroom on the next floor,” she said, “but we think it’s better always for someone elderly to have their hot water here, so they don’t have to climb the stairs.”
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure—you know this house well?”
“I was here as a girl—I was the housemaid then. Three servants they had—a cook, a housemaid—a parlourmaid—kitchen maid too at one time. That was in the old Colonel’s time. Horses he kept too, and a groom. Ah, those were the days. Sad it is when things happen the way they do. He lost his wife young, the Colonel did. His son was killed in the war and his only daughter went away to live on the other side of the world. Married a New Zealander she did. Died having a baby and the baby died too. He was a sad man living alone here, and he let the house go—it wasn’t kept up as it should have been. When he died he left the place to his niece Miss Clotilde and her two sisters, and she and Miss Anthea came here to live—and later Miss Lavinia lost her husband and came to join them—” she sighed and shook her head. “They never did much to the house—couldn’t afford it—and they let the garden go as well—”
“It all seems a great pity,” said Miss Marple.
“And such nice ladies as they all are, too—Miss Anthea is the scatty one, but Miss Clotilde went to university and is very brainy—she talks three languages—and Mrs. Glynne, she’s a very nice lady indeed. I thought when she came to join them as things might go better. But you never know, do you, what the future holds? I feel sometimes, as though there was a doom on this house.”
Miss Marple looked enquiring.
“First one thing and then another. The dreadful plane accident—in Spain it was—and everybody killed. Nasty things, aeroplanes—I’d never go in one of them. Miss Clotilde’s friends were both killed, they were husband and wife—the daughter was still at school, luckily, and escaped, but Miss Clotilde brought her here to live and did everything for her. Took her abroad for trips—to Italy and France, treated her like a daughter. She was such a happy girl—and a very sweet nature. You’d never dream that such an awful thing could happen.”
“An awful thing. What was it? Did it happen here?”
“No, not here, thank God. Though in a way you might say it did happen here. It was here that she met him. He was in the neighbourhood—and the ladies knew his father, who was a very rich man, so he came here to visit—that was the beginning—”
“They fell in love?”
“Yes, she fell in love with him right away. He was an attractive-looking boy, with a nice way of talking and passing the time of day. You’d never think—you’d never think for one moment—” she broke off.
“There was a love affair? And it went wrong? And the girl committed suicide?”
“Suicide?” The old woman stared at Miss Marple with startled eyes.
“Whoever now told you that? Murder it was, barefaced murder. Strangled and her head beaten to pulp. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify her—she’s never been quite the same since. T
hey found her body a good thirty miles from here—in the scrub of a disused quarry. And it’s believed that it wasn’t the first murder he’d done. There had been other girls. Six months she’d been missing. And the police searching far and wide. Oh! A wicked devil he was—a bad lot from the day he was born or so it seems. They say nowadays as there are those as can’t help what they do—not right in the head, and they can’t be held responsible. I don’t believe a word of it! Killers are killers. And they won’t even hang them nowadays. I know as there’s often madness as runs in old families—there was the Derwents over at Brassington—every second generation one or other of them died in the loony bin—and there was old Mrs. Paulett; walked about the lanes in her diamond tiara saying she was Marie Antoinette until they shut her up. But there wasn’t anything really wrong with her—just silly like. But this boy. Yes, he was a devil right enough.”
“What did they do to him?”
“They’d abolished hanging by then—or else he was too young. I can’t remember it all now. They found him guilty. It may have been Bostol or Broadsand—one of those places beginning with ‘B’ as they sent him to.”
“What was the name of the boy?”
“Michael—can’t remember his last name. It’s ten years ago that it happened—one forgets. Italian sort of name—like a picture. Someone who paints pictures—Raffle, that’s it—”
“Michael Rafiel?”
“That’s right! There was a rumour as went about that his father being so rich got him wangled out of prison. An escape like the Bank Robbers. But I think as that was just talk—”
So it had not been suicide. It had been murder. “Love!” Elizabeth Temple had named as the cause of a girl’s death. In a way she was right. A young girl had fallen in love with a killer—and for love of him had gone unsuspecting to an ugly death.
Miss Marple gave a little shudder. On her way along the village street yesterday she had passed a newspaper placard:
EPSOM DOWNS MURDER, SECOND GIRL’S BODY DISCOVERED, YOUTH ASKED TO ASSIST POLICE.
So history repeated itself. An old pattern—an ugly pattern. Some lines of forgotten verse came haltingly into her brain:
Rose white youth, passionate, pale,
A singing stream in a silent vale,
A fairy prince in a prosy tale,
Oh there’s nothing in life so finely frail
As Rose White Youth.
Who was there to guard Youth from Pain and Death? Youth who could not, who had never been able to, guard itself. Did they know too little? Or was it that they knew too much? And therefore thought they knew it all.
II
Miss Marple, coming down the stairs that morning, probably rather earlier than she had been expected, found no immediate sign of her hostesses. She let herself out at the front door and wandered once round the garden. It was not because she’d really enjoyed this particular garden. It was some vague feeling that there was something here that she ought to notice, something that would give her some idea, or that had given her some idea only she had not—well, frankly, she had not been bright enough to realize just what the bright idea had been. Something she ought to take note of, something that had a bearing.
She was not at the moment anxious to see any of the three sisters. She wanted to turn a few things over in her mind. The new facts that had come to her through Janet’s early tea chat.
A side gate stood open and she went through it to the village street and along a line of small shops to where a steeple poked up announcing the site of the church and its churchyard. She pushed open the lych-gate and wandered about among the graves, some dating from quite a while back, some by the far wall later ones, and one or two beyond the wall in what was obviously a new enclosure. There was nothing of great interest among the older tombs. Certain names recurred as they do in villages. A good many Princes of village origin had been buried. Jasper Prince, deeply regretted. Margery Prince, Edgar and Walter Prince, Melanie Prince, 4 years old. A family record. Hiram Broad—Ellen Jane Broad, Eliza Broad, 91 years.
She was turning away from the latter when she observed an elderly man moving in slow motion among the graves, tidying up as he walked. He gave her a salute and a “good morning.”
“Good morning,” said Miss Marple. “A very pleasant day.”
“It’ll turn to rain later,” said the old man.
He spoke with the utmost certainty.
“There seem to be a lot of Princes and Broads buried here,” said Miss Marple.
“Ah yes, there’ve always been Princes here. Used to own quite a bit of land once. There have been Broads a good many years, too.”
“I see a child is buried here. Very sad when one sees a child’s grave.”
“Ah, that’ll be little Melanie that was. Mellie, we called her. Yes, it was a sad death. Run over, she was. Ran out into the street, went to get sweets at the sweet shop. Happens a lot nowadays with cars going through at the pace they do.”
“It is sad to think,” said Miss Marple, “that there are so many deaths all the time. And one doesn’t really notice it until one looks at the inscriptions in the churchyard. Sickness, old age, children run over, sometimes even more dreadful things. Young girls killed. Crimes, I mean.”
“Ah, yes, there’s a lot of that about. Silly girls, I call most of ’em. And their mums haven’t got time to look after them properly nowadays—what with going out to work so much.”
Miss Marple rather agreed with his criticism, but had no wish to waste time in agreement on the trend of the day.
“Staying at The Old Manor House, aren’t you?” the old man asked. “Come here on the coach tour I saw. But it got too much for you, I suppose. Some of those that are gettin’ on can’t always take it.”
“I did find it a little exhausting,” confessed Miss Marple, “and a very kind friend of mine, a Mr. Rafiel, wrote to some friends of his here and they invited me to stay for a couple of nights.”
The name, Rafiel, clearly meant nothing to the elderly gardener.
“Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters have been very kind,” said Miss Marple. “I suppose they’ve lived here a long time?”
“Not so long as that. Twenty years maybe. Belonged to old Colonel Bradbury-Scott. The Old Manor House did. Close on seventy he was when he died.”
“Did he have any children?”
“A son what was killed in the war. That’s why he left the place to his nieces. Nobody else to leave it to.”
He went back to his work amongst the graves.
Miss Marple went into the church. It had felt the hand of a Victorian restorer, and had bright Victorian glass in the windows. One or two brasses and some tablets on the walls were all that was left of the past.
Miss Marple sat down in an uncomfortable pew and wondered about things.
Was she on the right track now? Things were connecting up—but the connections were far from clear.
A girl had been murdered—(actually several girls had been murdered)—suspected young men (or “youths” as they were usually called nowadays) had been rounded up by the police, to “assist them in their enquiries.” A common pattern, but this was all old history, dating back ten or twelve years. There was nothing to find out—now, no problems to solve. A tragedy labelled Finis.
What could be done by her? What could Mr. Rafiel possibly want her to do?
Elizabeth Temple … She must get Elizabeth Temple to tell her more. Elizabeth had spoken of a girl who had been engaged to be married to Michael Rafiel. But was that really so? That did not seem to be known to those in The Old Manor House.
A more familiar version came into Miss Marple’s mind—the kind of story that had been reasonably frequent in her own village. Starting as always, “Boy meets girl.” Developing in the usual way—
“And then the girl finds she is pregnant,” said Miss Marple to herself, “and she tells the boy and she wants him to marry her. But he, perhaps, doesn’t want to marry her—he has never had any idea of marrying her. Bu
t things may be made difficult for him in this case. His father, perhaps, won’t hear of such a thing. Her relations will insist that he ‘does the right thing.’ And by now he is tired of the girl—he’s got another girl perhaps. And so he takes a quick brutal way out—strangles her, beats her head to a pulp to avoid identification. It fits with his record—a brutal sordid crime—but forgotten and done with.”
She looked round the church in which she was sitting. It looked so peaceful. The reality of Evil was hard to believe in. A flair for Evil—that was what Mr. Rafiel had attributed to her. She rose and walked out of the church and stood looking round the churchyard again. Here, amongst the gravestones and their worn inscriptions, no sense of Evil moved in her.
Was it Evil she had sensed yesterday at The Old Manor House? That deep depression of despair, that dark desperate grief. Anthea Bradbury-Scott, her eyes gazing fearfully back over one shoulder, as though fearing some presence that stood there—always stood there—behind her.
They knew something, those Three Sisters, but what was it that they knew?
Elizabeth Temple, she thought again. She pictured Elizabeth Temple with the rest of the coach party, striding across the downs at this moment, climbing up a steep path and gazing over the cliffs out to sea.
Tomorrow, when she rejoined the tour, she would get Elizabeth Temple to tell her more.
III
Miss Marple retraced her steps to The Old Manor House, walking rather slowly because she was by now tired. She could not really feel that her morning had been productive in any way. So far The Old Manor House had given her no distinctive ideas of any kind, a tale of a past tragedy told by Janet, but there were always past tragedies treasured in the memories of domestic workers and which were remembered quite as clearly as all the happy events such as spectacular weddings, big entertainments and successful operations or accidents from which people had recovered in a miraculous manner.
As she drew near the gate she saw two female figures standing there. One of them detached itself and came to meet her. It was Mrs. Glynne.