скачать книгу бесплатно
Yours sincerely,
Jane Marple.’
Miss Marple felt better when she had despatched this missive.
‘At least,’ she said, ‘I’ve started doing something. Not that I hope much from this, but still it might help.’
Miss Prescott answered the letter almost by return of post. She was a most efficient woman. She wrote a pleasant letter and enclosed the address in question.
‘I have not heard anything directly about Esther Walters,’ she said, ‘but like you I heard from a friend that they had seen a notice of her re-marriage. Her name now is, I believe, Mrs Alderson or Anderson. Her address is Winslow Lodge, near Alton, Hants. My brother sends his best wishes to you. It is sad that we live so far apart. We in the north of England and you south of London. I hope that we may meet on some occasion in the future.
Yours sincerely,
Joan Prescott.’
‘Winslow Lodge, Alton,’ said Miss Marple, writing it down. ‘Not so far away from here, really. No. Not so far away. I could—I don’t know what would be the best method—possibly one of Inch’s taxis. Slightly extravagant, but if anything results from it, it could be charged as expenses quite legitimately. Now do I write to her beforehand or do I leave it to chance? I think it would be better really, to leave it to chance. Poor Esther. She could hardly remember me with any affection or kindliness.’
Miss Marple lost herself in a train of thought that arose from her thoughts. It was quite possible that her actions in the Caribbean had saved Esther Walters from being murdered in the not far distant future. At any rate, that was Miss Marple’s belief, but probably Esther Walters had not believed any such thing. ‘A nice woman,’ said Miss Marple, uttering the words in a soft tone aloud, ‘a very nice woman. The kind that would so easily marry a bad lot. In fact, the sort of woman that would marry a murderer if she were ever given half a chance. I still consider,’ continued Miss Marple thoughtfully, sinking her voice still lower, ‘that I probably saved her life. In fact, I am almost sure of it, but I don’t think she would agree with that point of view. She probably dislikes me very much. Which makes it more difficult to use her as a source of information. Still, one can but try. It’s better than sitting here, waiting, waiting, waiting.’
Was Mr Rafiel perhaps making fun of her when he had written that letter? He was not always a particularly kindly man—he could be very careless of people’s feelings.
‘Anyway,’ said Miss Marple, glancing at the clock and deciding that she would have an early night in bed, ‘when one thinks of things just before going to sleep, quite often ideas come. It may work out that way.’
‘Sleep well?’ asked Cherry, as she put down an early morning tea tray on the table at Miss Marple’s elbow.
‘I had a curious dream,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Nightmare?’
‘No, no, nothing of that kind. I was talking to someone, not anyone I knew very well. Just talking. Then when I looked, I saw it wasn’t that person at all I was talking to. It was somebody else. Very odd.’
‘Bit of a mix up,’ said Cherry, helpfully.
‘It just reminded me of something,’ said Miss Marple, ‘or rather of someone I once knew. Order Inch for me, will you? To come here about half past eleven.’
Inch was part of Miss Marple’s past. Originally the proprietor of a cab, Mr Inch had died, been succeeded by his son ‘Young Inch,’ then aged forty-four, who had turned the family business into a garage and acquired two aged cars. On his decease the garage acquired a new owner. There had been since then Pip’s Cars, James’s Taxis and Arthur’s Car Hire—old inhabitants still spoke of Inch.
‘Not going to London, are you?’
‘No, I’m not going to London. I shall have lunch perhaps in Haslemere.’
‘Now what are you up to now?’ said Cherry, looking at her suspiciously.
‘Endeavouring to meet someone by accident and make it seem purely natural,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Not really very easy, but I hope that I can manage it.’
At half past eleven the taxi waited. Miss Marple instructed Cherry.
‘Ring up this number, will you, Cherry? Ask if Mrs Anderson is at home. If Mrs Anderson answers or if she is going to come to the telephone, say a Mr Broadribb wants to speak to her. You,’ said Miss Marple, ‘are Mr Broadribb’s secretary. If she’s out, find out what time she will be in.’
‘And if she is in and I get her?’
‘Ask what day she could arrange to meet Mr Broadribb at his office in London next week. When she tells you, make a note of it and ring off.’
‘The things you think of! Why all this? Why do you want me to do it?’
‘Memory is a curious thing,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Sometimes one remembers a voice even if one hasn’t heard it for over a year.’
‘Well, Mrs What’s-a-name won’t have heard mine at any time, will she?’
‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘That is why you are making the call.’
Cherry fulfilled her instruction. Mrs Anderson was out shopping, she learned, but would be in for lunch and all the afternoon.
‘Well, that makes things easier,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Is Inch here? Ah yes. Good morning, Edward,’ she said, to the present driver of Arthur’s taxis whose actual name was George. ‘Now this is where I want you to go. It ought not to take, I think, more than an hour and a half.’
The expedition set off.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_eb773573-1d68-59cd-920b-f14d662f10d9)
Esther Walters (#ulink_eb773573-1d68-59cd-920b-f14d662f10d9)
Esther Anderson came out of the supermarket and went towards where she had parked her car. Parking grew more difficult every day, she thought. She collided with somebody, an elderly woman limping a little who was walking towards her. She apologized, and the other woman made an exclamation.
‘Why, indeed, it’s—surely—it’s Mrs Walters, isn’t it? Esther Walters? You don’t remember me, I expect. Jane Marple. We met in the hotel in St Honoré, oh—quite a long time ago. A year and a half.’
‘Miss Marple? So it is, of course. Fancy seeing you!’
‘How very nice to see you. I am lunching with some friends near here but I have to pass back through Alton later. Will you be at home this afternoon? I should so like to have a nice chat with you. It’s so nice to see an old friend.’
‘Yes, of course. Any time after 3 o’clock.’
The arrangement was ratified.
‘Old Jane Marple,’ said Esther Anderson, smiling to herself. ‘Fancy her turning up. I thought she’d died a long time ago.’
Miss Marple rang the bell of Winslow Lodge at 3.30 precisely. Esther opened the door to her and brought her in.
Miss Marple sat down in the chair indicated to her, fluttering a little in the restless manner that she adopted when slightly flustered. Or at any rate, when she was seeming to be slightly flustered. In this case it was misleading, since things had happened exactly as she had hoped they would happen.
‘It’s so nice to see you,’ she said to Esther. ‘So very nice to see you again. You know, I do think things are so very odd in this world. You hope you’ll meet people again and you’re quite sure you will. And then time passes and suddenly it’s all such a surprise.’
‘And then,’ said Esther, ‘one says it’s a small world, doesn’t one?’
‘Yes, indeed, and I think there is something in that. I mean it does seem a very large world and the West Indies are such a very long way away from England. Well, I mean, of course I might have met you anywhere. In London or at Harrods. On a railway station or in a bus. There are so many possibilities.’
‘Yes, there are a lot of possibilities,’ said Esther. ‘I certainly shouldn’t have expected to meet you just here because this isn’t really quite your part of the world, is it?’
‘No. No, it isn’t. Not that you’re really so very far from St Mary Mead where I live. Actually, I think it’s only about twenty-five miles. But twenty-five miles in the country, when one hasn’t got a car—and of course I couldn’t afford a car, and anyway, I mean, I can’t drive a car—so it wouldn’t be much to the point, so one really only does see one’s neighbours on the bus route, or else go by a taxi from the village.’
‘You’re looking wonderfully well,’ said Esther.
‘I was just going to say you were looking wonderfully well, my dear. I had no idea you lived in this part of the world.’
‘I have only done so for a short time. Since my marriage, actually.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know. How interesting. I suppose I must have missed it. I always do look down the marriages.’
‘I’ve been married four or five months,’ said Esther. ‘My name is Anderson now.’
‘Mrs Anderson,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Yes. I must try and remember that. And your husband?’
It would be unnatural, she thought, if she did not ask about the husband. Old maids were notoriously inquisitive.
‘He is an engineer,’ said Esther. ‘He runs the Time and Motion Branch. He is,’ she hesitated—‘a little younger than I am.’
‘Much better,’ said Miss Marple immediately. ‘Oh, much better, my dear. In these days men age so much quicker than women. I know it used not to be said so, but actually it’s true. I mean, they get more things the matter with them. I think, perhaps, they worry and work too much. And then they get high blood pressure or low blood pressure or sometimes a little heart trouble. They’re rather prone to gastric ulcers, too. I don’t think we worry so much, you know. I think we’re a tougher sex.’
‘Perhaps we are,’ said Esther.
She smiled now at Miss Marple, and Miss Marple felt reassured. The last time she had seen Esther, Esther had looked as though she hated her and probably she had hated her at that moment. But now, well now, perhaps, she might even feel slightly grateful. She might have realized that she, herself, might even have been under a stone slab in a respectable churchyard, instead of living a presumably happy life with Mr Anderson.
‘You look very well,’ she said, ‘and very gay.’
‘So do you, Miss Marple.’
‘Well, of course, I am rather older now. And one has so many ailments. I mean, not desperate ones, nothing of that kind, but I mean one has always some kind of rheumatism or some kind of ache and pain somewhere. One’s feet are not what one would like feet to be. And there’s usually one’s back or a shoulder or painful hands. Oh, dear, one shouldn’t talk about these things. What a very nice house you have.’
‘Yes, we haven’t been in it very long. We moved in about four months ago.’
Miss Marple looked round. She had rather thought that that was the case. She thought, too, that when they had moved in they had moved in on quite a handsome scale. The furniture was expensive, it was comfortable, comfortable and just this side of luxury. Good curtains, good covers, no particular artistic taste displayed, but then she would not have expected that. She thought she knew the reason for this appearance of prosperity. She thought it had come about on the strength of the late Mr Rafiel’s handsome legacy to Esther. She was glad to think that Mr Rafiel had not changed his mind.
‘I expect you saw the notice of Mr Rafiel’s death,’ said Esther, speaking almost as if she knew what was in Miss Marple’s mind.
‘Yes. Yes, indeed I did. It was about a month ago now, wasn’t it? I was so sorry. Very distressed really, although, well, I suppose one knew—he almost admitted it himself, didn’t he? He hinted several times that it wouldn’t be very long. I think he was quite a brave man about it all, don’t you?’
‘Yes, he was a very brave man, and a very kind one really,’ said Esther. ‘He told me, you know, when I first worked for him, that he was going to give me a very good salary but that I would have to save out of it because I needn’t expect to have anything more from him. Well, I certainly didn’t expect to have anything more from him. He was very much a man of his word, wasn’t he? But apparently he changed his mind.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Yes. I am very glad of that. I thought perhaps—not that he, of course, said anything—but I wondered.’
‘He left me a very big legacy,’ said Esther. ‘A surprisingly large sum of money. It came as a very great surprise. I could hardly believe it at first.’
‘I think he wanted it to be a surprise to you. I think he was perhaps that kind of man,’ said Miss Marple. She added: ‘Did he leave anything to—oh, what was his name?—the man attendant, the nurse-attendant?’
‘Oh, you mean Jackson? No, he didn’t leave anything to Jackson, but I believe he made him some handsome presents in the last year.’
‘Have you ever seen anything more of Jackson?’
‘No. No, I don’t think I’ve met him once since the time out in the islands. He didn’t stay with Mr Rafiel after they got back to England. I think he went to Lord somebody who lives in Jersey or Guernsey.’
‘I would like to have seen Mr Rafiel again,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It seems odd after we’d all been mixed up so. He and you and I and some others. And then, later, when I’d come home, when six months had passed—it occurred to me one day how closely associated we had been in our time of stress, and yet how little I really knew about Mr Rafiel. I was thinking it only the other day, after I’d seen the notice of his death. I wished I could know a little more. Where he was born, you know, and his parents. What they were like. Whether he had any children, or nephews or cousins or any family. I would so like to know.’
Esther Anderson smiled slightly. She looked at Miss Marple and her expression seemed to say, ‘Yes, I’m sure you always want to know everything of that kind about everyone you meet’. But she merely said:
‘No, there was really only one thing that everyone did know about him.’
‘That he was very rich,’ said Miss Marple immediately. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? When you know that someone is very rich, somehow, well, you don’t ask any more. I mean you don’t ask to know any more. You say “He is very rich” or you say “He is enormously rich,” and your voice just goes down a little because it’s so impressive, isn’t it, when you meet someone who is immensely rich.’
Esther laughed slightly.
‘He wasn’t married, was he?’ asked Miss Marple. ‘He never mentioned a wife.’
‘He lost his wife many years ago. Quite soon after they were married, I believe. I believe she was much younger than he was—I think she died of cancer. Very sad.’
‘Had he children?’
‘Oh yes, two daughters, and a son. One daughter is married and lives in America. The other daughter died young, I believe. I met the American one once. She wasn’t at all like her father. Rather a quiet, depressed looking young woman.’ She added, ‘Mr Rafiel never spoke about the son. I rather think that there had been trouble there. A scandal or something of that kind. I believe he died some years ago. Anyway—his father never mentioned him.’
‘Oh dear. That was very sad.’
‘I think it happened quite a long time ago. I believe he took off for somewhere or other abroad and never came back—died out there, wherever it was.’
‘Was Mr Rafiel very upset about it?’
‘One wouldn’t know with him,’ said Esther. ‘He was the kind of man who would always decide to cut his losses. If his son turned out to be unsatisfactory, a burden instead of a blessing, I think he would just shrug the whole thing off. Do what was necessary perhaps in the way of sending him money for support, but never thinking of him again.’
‘One wonders,’ said Miss Marple. ‘He never spoke of him or said anything?’
‘If you remember, he was a man who never said anything much about personal feelings or his own life.’
‘No. No, of course not. But I thought perhaps, you having been—well, his secretary for so many years, that he might have confided any troubles to you.’
‘He was not a man for confiding troubles,’ said Esther. ‘If he had any, which I rather doubt. He was wedded to his business, one might say. He was father to his business and his business was the only kind of son or daughter that he had that mattered, I think. He enjoyed it all, investment, making money. Business coups—’
‘Call no man happy until he is dead—’ murmured Miss Marple, repeating the words in the manner of one pronouncing them as a kind of slogan, which indeed they appeared to be in these days, or so she would have said.
‘So there was nothing especially worrying him, was there, before his death?’
‘No. Why should you think so?’ Esther sounded surprised.
‘Well, I didn’t actually think so,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I just wondered because things do worry people more when they are—I won’t say getting old—because he really wasn’t old, but I mean things worry you more when you are laid up and can’t do as much as you did and have to take things easy. Then worries just come into your mind and make themselves felt.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ said Esther. ‘But I don’t think Mr Rafiel was like that. Anyway,’ she added, ‘I ceased being his secretary some time ago. Two or three months after I met Edmund.’
‘Ah yes. Your husband. Mr Rafiel must have been very upset at losing you.’
‘Oh I don’t think so,’ said Esther lightly. ‘He was not one who would be upset over that sort of thing. He’d immediately get another secretary—which he did. And then if she didn’t suit him he’d just get rid of her with a kindly golden handshake and get somebody else, till he found somebody who suited him. He was an intensely sensible man always.’
‘Yes. Yes, I can see that. Though he could lose his temper very easily.’
