At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple 11)

“Canon Pennyfather hasn’t been in, I suppose?” he said in a light voice.

“Canon Pennyfather?”

“You know he’s turned up again?”

“No indeed. Nobody has told me. Where?”

“Some place in the country. Car accident it seems. Wasn’t reported to us. Some good Samaritan just picked him up and looked after him.”

“Oh! I am pleased. Yes, I really am very pleased. I was worried about him.”

“So were his friends,” said Father. “Actually I was looking to see if one of them might be staying here now. Archdeacon—Archdeacon—I can’t remember his name now, but I’d know it if I saw it.”

“Tomlinson?” said Miss Gorringe helpfully. “He is due next week. From Salisbury.”

“No, not Tomlinson. Well, it doesn’t matter.” He turned away.

It was quiet in the lounge tonight.

An ascetic-looking middle-aged man was reading through a badly typed thesis, occasionally writing a comment in the margin in such small crabbed handwriting as to be almost illegible. Every time he did this, he smiled in vinegary satisfaction.

There were one or two married couples of long-standing who had little need to talk to each other. Occasionally two or three people were gathered together in the name of the weather conditions, discussing anxiously how they or their families were going to get where they wanted to be.

“—I rang up and begged Susan not to come by car…it means the M1 and always so dangerous in fog—”

“They say it’s clearer in the Midlands….”

Chief-Inspector Davy noted them as he passed. Without haste, and with no seeming purpose, he arrived at his objective.

Miss Marple was sitting near the fire and observing his approach.

“So you’re still here, Miss Marple. I’m glad.”

“I go tomorrow,” said Miss Marple.

That fact had, somehow, been implicit in her attitude. She had sat, not relaxed, but upright, as one sits in an airport lounge, or a railway waiting room. Her luggage, he was sure, would be packed, only toilet things and night wear to be added.

“It is the end of my fortnight’s holiday,” she explained.

“You’ve enjoyed it, I hope?”

Miss Marple did not answer at once.

“In a way—yes….” She stopped.

“And in another way, no?”

“It’s difficult to explain what I mean—”

“Aren’t you, perhaps, a little too near the fire? Rather hot, here. Wouldn’t you like to move—into that corner perhaps?”

Miss Marple looked at the corner indicated, then she looked at Chief-Inspector Davy.

“I think you are quite right,” she said.

He gave her a hand up, carried her handbag and her book for her and established her in the quiet corner he had indicated.

“All right?”

“Quite all right.”

“You know why I suggested it?”

“You thought—very kindly—that it was too hot for me by the fire. Besides,” she added, “our conversation cannot be overheard here.”

“Have you got something you want to tell me, Miss Marple?”

“Now why should you think that?”

“You looked as though you had,” said Davy.

“I’m sorry I showed it so plainly,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, what about it?”

“I don’t know if I ought to do so. I would like you to believe, Inspector, that I am not really fond of interfering. I am against interference. Though often well-meant, it can cause a great deal of harm.”

“It’s like that, is it? I see. Yes, it’s quite a problem for you.”

“Sometimes one sees people doing things that seem to one unwise—even dangerous. But has one any right to interfere? Usually not, I think.”

“Is this Canon Pennyfather you’re talking about?”

“Canon Pennyfather?” Miss Marple sounded very surprised. “Oh no. Oh dear me no, nothing whatever to do with him. It concerns—a girl.”

“A girl, indeed? And you thought I could help?”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Marple. “I simply don’t know. But I’m worried, very worried.”

Father did not press her. He sat there looking large and comfortable and rather stupid. He let her take her time. She had been willing to do her best to help him, and he was quite prepared to do anything he could to help her. He was not, perhaps, particularly interested. On the other hand, one never knew.

“One reads in the papers,” said Miss Marple in a low clear voice, “accounts of proceedings in court; of young people, children or girls ‘in need of care and protection.’ It’s just a sort of legal phrase, I suppose, but it could mean something real.”

“This girl you mentioned, you feel she is in need of care and protection?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“Alone in the world?”

“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “Very much not so, if I may put it that way. She is to all outward appearances very heavily protected and very well cared for.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Father.

“She was staying in this hotel,” said Miss Marple, “with a Mrs. Carpenter, I think. I looked in the register to see the name. The girl’s name is Elvira Blake.”

Father looked up with a quick air of interest.

“She was a lovely girl. Very young, very much, as I say, sheltered and protected. Her guardian was a Colonel Luscombe, a very nice man. Quite charming. Elderly of course, and I am afraid terribly innocent.”

“The guardian or the girl?”

“I meant the guardian,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t know about the girl. But I do think she is in danger. I came across her quite by chance in Battersea Park. She was sitting at a refreshment place there with a young man.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Father. “Undesirable, I suppose. Beatnik—spiv—thug—”

“A very handsome man,” said Miss Marple. “Not so very young. Thirty-odd, the kind of man that I should say is very attractive to women, but his face is a bad face. Cruel, hawklike, predatory.”

“He mayn’t be as bad as he looks,” said Father soothingly.

“If anything he is worse than he looks,” said Miss Marple. “I am convinced of it. He drives a large racing car.”

Father looked up quickly.

“Racing car?”

“Yes. Once or twice I’ve seen it standing near this hotel.”

“You don’t remember the number, do you?”

“Yes, indeed I do. FAN 2266. I had a cousin who stuttered,” Miss Marple explained. “That’s how I remember it.”

Father looked puzzled.

“Do you know who he is?” demanded Miss Marple.

“As a matter of fact I do,” said Father slowly. “Half French, half Polish. Very well-known racing driver, he was world champion three years ago. His name is Ladislaus Malinowski. You’re quite right in some of your views about him. He has a bad reputation where women are concerned. That is to say, he is not a suitable friend for a young girl. But it’s not easy to do anything about that sort of thing. I suppose she is meeting him on the sly, is that it?”

“Almost certainly,” said Miss Marple.

“Did you approach her guardian?”

“I don’t know him,” said Miss Marple. “I’ve only just been introduced to him once by a mutual friend. I don’t like the idea of going to him in a tale-bearing way. I wondered if perhaps in some way you could do something about it.”

“I can try,” said Father. “By the way, I thought you might like to know that your friend, Canon Pennyfather, has turned up all right.”

“Indeed!” Miss Marple looked animated. “Where?”

“A place called Milton St. John.”

“How very odd. What was he doing there? Did he know?”

“Apparently—” Chief-Inspector Davy stressed the word—“he had had an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

“Knocked down by a car—concussed—or else, of course, he might have been conked on the head.”

“Oh! I see.” Miss Marple considered the point. “Doesn’t he know himself?”