Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple 10)

“He didn’t actually show you a snapshot?”

“A snapshot? No.” She shook her head. “I’m quite sure of that. He did say that she was a good-looking woman, and you’d never think she was a murderer to look at her.”

“She?”

“There you are,” exclaimed Miss Marple. “It makes it all so confusing.”

“He was talking about a woman?” Mr. Rafiel asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“The snapshot was a snapshot of a woman?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t have been!”

“But it was,” Esther persisted. “He said ‘She’s here in this island. I’ll point her out to you, and then I’ll tell you the whole story.’”

Mr. Rafiel swore. In saying what he thought of the late Major Palgrave he did not mince his words.

“The probabilities are,” he finished, “that not a word of anything he said was true!”

“One does begin to wonder,” Miss Marple murmured.

“So there we are,” said Mr. Rafiel. “The old booby started telling you hunting tales. Pig sticking, tiger shooting, elephant hunting, narrow escapes from lions. One or two of them might have been fact. Several of them were fiction, and others had happened to somebody else! Then he gets on to the subject of murder and he tells one murder story to cap another murder story. And what’s more he tells them all as if they’d happened to him. Ten to one most of them were a hash-up of what he’d read in the paper, or seen on TV.”

He turned accusingly on Esther. “You admit that you weren’t listening closely. Perhaps you misunderstood what he was saying.”

“I’m certain he was talking about a woman,” said Esther obstinately, “because of course I wondered who it was.”

“Who do you think it was?” asked Miss Marple.

Esther flushed and looked slightly embarrassed.

“Oh, I didn’t really—I mean, I wouldn’t like to—”

Miss Marple did not insist. The presence of Mr. Rafiel, she thought, was inimical to her finding out exactly what suppositions Esther Walters had made. That could only be cosily brought out in a tête-à-tête between two women. And there was, of course, the possibility that Esther Walters was lying. Naturally, Miss Marple did not suggest this aloud. She registered it as a possibility but she was not inclined to believe in it. For one thing she did not think that Esther Walters was a liar (though one never knew) and for another, she could see no point in such a lie.

“But you say,” Mr. Rafiel was now turning upon Miss Marple, “you say that he told you this yarn about a murderer and that he then said he had a picture of him which he was going to show you.”

“I thought so, yes.”

“You thought so? You were sure enough to begin with!”

Miss Marple retorted with spirit.

“It is never easy to repeat a conversation and be entirely accurate in what the other party to it has said. One is always inclined to jump at what you think they meant. Then, afterwards, you put actual words into their mouths. Major Palgrave told me this story, yes. He told me that the man who told it to him, this doctor, had shown him a snapshot of the murderer; but if I am to be quite honest I must admit that what he actually said to me was ‘Would you like to see a snapshot of a murderer?’ and naturally I assumed that it was the same snapshot he had been talking about. That it was the snapshot of that particular murderer. But I have to admit that it is possible—only remotely possible, but still possible—that by an association of ideas in his mind he leaped from the snapshot he had been shown in the past, to a snapshot he had taken recently of someone here who he was convinced was a murderer.”

“Women!” snorted Mr. Rafiel in exasperation. “You’re all the same, the whole blinking lot of you! Can’t be accurate. You’re never exactly sure of what a thing was. And now,” he added irritably, “where does that leave us?” He snorted. “Evelyn Hillingdon, or Greg’s wife, Lucky? The whole thing is a mess.”

There was a slight apologetic cough. Arthur Jackson was standing at Mr. Rafiel’s elbow. He had come so noiselessly that nobody had noticed him.

“Time for your massage, sir,” he said.

Mr. Rafiel displayed immediate temper.

“What do you mean by sneaking up on me in that way and making me jump? I never heard you.”

“Very sorry, sir.”

“I don’t think I’ll have any massage today. It never does me a damn’ bit of good.”

“Oh, come sir, you mustn’t say that.” Jackson was full of professional cheerfulness. “You’d soon notice if you left it off.”

He wheeled the chair deftly round.

Miss Marple rose to her feet, smiled at Esther and went down to the beach.

Eighteen

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

I

The beach was rather empty this morning. Greg was splashing in the water in his usual noisy style, Lucky was lying on her face on the beach with a sun-tanned back well oiled and her blonde hair splayed over her shoulders. The Hillingdons were not there. Señora de Caspearo, with an assorted bag of gentlemen in attendance, was lying face upwards and talking deep-throated, happy Spanish. Some French and Italian children were playing at the water’s edge and laughing. Canon and Miss Prescott were sitting in beach chairs observing the scene. The Canon had his hat tilted forward over his eyes and seemed half asleep. There was a convenient chair next to Miss Prescott and Miss Marple made for it and sat down.

“Oh dear,” she said with a deep sigh.

“I know,” said Miss Prescott.

It was their joint tribute to violent death.

“That poor girl,” said Miss Marple.

“Very sad,” said the Canon. “Most deplorable.”

“For a moment or two,” said Miss Prescott, “we really thought of leaving, Jeremy and I. But then we decided against it. It would not really be fair, I felt, on the Kendals. After all, it’s not their fault—It might have happened anywhere.”

“In the midst of life we are in death,” said the Canon solemnly.

“It’s very important, you know,” said Miss Prescott, “that they should make a go of this place. They have sunk all their capital in it.”

“A very sweet girl,” said Miss Marple, “but not looking at all well lately.?

??

“Very nervy,” agreed Miss Prescott. “Of course her family—” she shook her head.

“I really think, Joan,” said the Canon in mild reproof, “that there are some things—”

“Everybody knows about it,” said Miss Prescott. “Her family live in our part of the world. A great-aunt—most peculiar—and one of her uncles took off all his clothes in one of the tube stations. Green Park, I believe it was.”

“Joan, that is a thing that should not be repeated.”

“Very sad,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head, “though I believe not an uncommon form of madness. I know when we were working for the Armenian relief, a most respectable elderly clergyman was afflicted the same way. They telephoned his wife and she came along at once and took him home in a cab, wrapped in a blanket.”

“Of course, Molly’s immediate family’s all right,” said Miss Prescott. “She never got on very well with her mother, but then so few girls seem to get on with their mothers nowadays.”

“Such a pity,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head, “because really a young girl needs her mother’s knowledge of the world and experience.”

“Exactly,” said Miss Prescott with emphasis. “Molly, you know, took up with some man—quite unsuitable, I understand.”

“It so often happens,” said Miss Marple.

“Her family disapproved, naturally. She didn’t tell them about it. They heard about it from a complete outsider. Of course her mother said she must bring him along so that they met him properly. This, I understand, the girl refused to do. She said it was humiliating to him. Most insulting to be made to come and meet her family and be looked over. Just as though you were a horse, she said.”

Miss Marple sighed. “One does need so much tact when dealing with the young,” she murmured.

“Anyway, there it was! They forbade her to see him.”

“But you can’t do that nowadays,” said Miss Marple. “Girls have jobs and they meet people whether anyone forbids them or not.”

“But then, very fortunately,” went on Miss Prescott, “she met Tim Kendal, and the other man sort of faded out of the picture. I can’t tell you how relieved the family was.”