“And now you have met me and know what I know, or practically all that I know, you have other enquiries to put in hand. I understand that. But before you leave here, I think there are one or two things—well, that might be helpful, might give a result.”
“I see. You have ideas.”
“I am remembering what you said.”
“You have perhaps pinned down the smell of evil?”
“It is difficult,” said Miss Marple, “to know exactly what something wrong in the atmosphere really means.”
“But you do feel that there is something wrong in the atmosphere?”
“Oh yes. Very clearly.”
“And especially since Miss Temple’s death which, of course, was not an accident, no matter what Mrs. Sandbourne hopes.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “it was not an accident. What I don’t think I have told you is that Miss Temple said to me once that she was on a pilgrimage.”
“Interesting,” said the Professor. “Yes, interesting. She didn’t tell you what the pilgrimage was, to where or to whom?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “if she’d lived just a little longer and not been so weak, she might have told me. But unfortunately, death came a little too soon.”
“So that you have not any further ideas on that subject.”
“No. Only a feeling of assurance that her pilgrimage was put an end to by malign design. Someone wanted to stop her going wherever she was going, or stop her going to whomever she was going to. One can only hope that chance or Providence may throw light on that.”
“That’s why you’re staying here?”
“Not only that,” said Miss Marple. “I want to find out something more about a girl called Nora Broad.”
“Nora Broad.” He looked faintly puzzled.
“The other girl who disappeared about the same time as Verity Hunt did. You remember you mentioned her to me. A girl who had boyfriends and was, I understand, very ready to have boyfriends. A foolish girl, but attractive apparently to the male sex. I think,” said Miss Marple, “that to learn a little more about her might help me in my enquiries.”
“Have it your own way, Detective-Inspector Marple,” said Professor Wanstead.
II
The service took place on the following morning. All the members of the tour were there. Miss Marple looked round the church. Several of the locals were there also. Mrs. Glynne was there and her sister Clotilde. The youngest one, Anthea, did not attend. There were one or two people from the village also, she thought. Probably not acquainted with Miss Temple but there out of a rather morbid curiosity in regard to what was now spoken of by the term “foul play.” There was, too, an elderly clergyman; in gaiters, well over seventy, Miss Marple thought, a broad-shouldered old man with a noble mane of white hair. He was slightly crippled and found it difficult both to kneel and to stand. It was a fine face, Miss Marple thought, and she wondered who he was. Some old friend of Elizabeth Temple, she presumed, who might perhaps have come from quite a long distance to attend the service?
As they came out of the church Miss Marple exchanged a few words with her fellow travellers. She knew now pretty well who was doing what. The Butlers were returning to London.
“I told Henry I just couldn’t go on with it,” said Mrs. Butler. “You know—I feel all the time that any minute just as we might be walking round a corner, someone, you know, might shoot us or throw a stone at us. Someone who has got a down on the Famous Houses of England.”
“Now then, Mamie, now then,” said Mr. Butler, “don’t you let your imagination go as far as that!”
“Well, you just don’t know nowadays. What with hijackers about and kidnapping and all the rest of it, I don’t feel really protected anywhere.”
Old Miss Lumley and Miss Bentham were continuing with the tour, their anxieties allayed.
“We’ve paid very highly for this tour and it seems a pity to miss anything just because this very sad accident has happened. We rang up a very good neighbour of ours last night, and they are going to see to the cats, so we don’t need to worry.”
It was going to remain an accident for Miss Lumley and Miss Bentham. They had decided it was more comfortable that way.
Mrs. Riseley-Porter was also continuing on the tour. Colonel and Mrs. Walker were resolved that nothing would make them miss seeing a particularly rare collection of fuchsias in the garden due to be visited the day after tomorrow. The architect, Jameson, was also guided by his wish to see various buildings of special interest for him. Mr. Caspar, however, was departing by rail, he said. Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow seemed undecided.
“Pretty good walks round here,” said Miss Cooke. “I think we’ll stay at the Golden Boar for a little. That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it, Miss Marple?”
“I really think so,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t feel quite equal to going on travelling and all that. I think a day or two’s rest would be helpful to me after what’s happened.”
As the little crowd dispersed, Miss Marple took an unostentatious route of her own. From her handbag she took out a leaf torn from her notebook on which she had entered two addresses. The first, a Mrs. Blackett, lived in a neat little house and garden just by the end of the road where it sloped down towards the valley. A small neat woman opened the door.
“Mrs. Blackett?”
“Yes, yes, ma’am, that’s my name.”
“I wonder if I might just come in and speak to you for a minute or two. I have just been to the service and I am feeling a little giddy. If I could just sit down for a minute or two?”
“Dear me, now, dear me. Oh, I’m sorry for that. Come right in, ma’am, come right in. That’s right. You sit down here. Now I’ll get you a glass of water—or maybe you’d like a pot of tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Miss Marple, “a glass of water would put me right.”
Mrs. Blackett returned with a glass of water and a pleasurable prospect of talking about ailments and giddiness and other things.
“You know, I’ve got a nephew like that. He oughtn’t to be at his age, he’s not much over fifty but now and then he’ll come over giddy all of a sudden and unless he sits down at once—why you don’t know, sometimes he’ll pass out right on the floor. Terrible, it is. Terrible. And doctors, they don’t seem able to do anything about it. Here’s your glass of water.”
“Ah,” said Miss Marple, sipping, “I feel much better.”
“Been to the service, have you, for the poor lady as got done in, as some say, or accident as others. I’d say it’s accident every time. But these inquests and coroners, they always want to make things look criminal, they do.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’ve been so sorry to hear of a lot of things like that in the past. I was hearing a great deal about a girl called Nora. Nora Broad, I think.”
“Ah, Nora, yes. Well, she was my cousin’s daughter. Yes. A long while ago, that was. Went off and never come back. These girls, there’s no holding them. I said often, I did, to Nancy Broad—that’s my cousin—I said to her, ‘You’re out working all day’ and I said ‘What’s Nora doing? You know she’s the kind that likes the boys. Well,’ I said, ‘there’ll be trouble. You see if there isn’t.’ And sure enough, I was quite right.”
“You mean—?”
“Ah, the usual trouble. Yes, in the family way. Mind you, I don’t think as my cousin Nancy knew about it yet. But of course, I’m sixty-five and I know what’s what and I know the way a girl looks and I think I know who it was, but I’m not sure. I might have been wrong because he went on living in the place and he was real cut up when Nora was missing.”
“She went off, did she?”
“Well, she accepted a lift from someone—a stranger. That’s the last time she was seen. I forget the make of the car now. Some funny name it had. An Audit or something like that. Anyway, she’d been seen once or twice in that car. And off she went in it. And it was said it was that same car that the poor girl what got herself murde
red used to go riding in. But I don’t think as that happened to Nora. If Nora’d been murdered, the body would have come to light by now. Don’t you think so?”
“It certainly seems likely,” said Miss Marple. “Was she a girl who did well at school and all that?”
“Ah no, she wasn’t. She was idle and she wasn’t too clever at her books either. No. She was all for the boys from the time she was twelve-years-old onwards. I think in the end she must have gone off with someone or other for good. But she never let anyone know. She never sent as much as a postcard. Went off, I think, with someone as promised her things. You know. Another girl I knew—but that was when I was young—went off with one of them Africans. He told her as his father was a Shake. Funny sort of word, but a shake I think it was. Anyway it was somewhere in Africa or in Algiers. Yes, in Algiers it was. Somewhere there. And she was going to have all sorts of wonderful things. He had six camels, the boy’s father, she said and a whole troop of horses and she was going to live in a wonderful house, she was, with carpets hanging up all over the walls, which seems a funny place to put carpets. And off she went. She come back again three years later. Yes. Terrible time, she’d had. Terrible. They lived in a nasty little house made of earth. Yes, it was. And nothing much to eat except what they call cos-cos which I always thought was lettuce, but it seems it isn’t. Something more like semolina pudding. Oh terrible it was. And in the end he said she was no good to him and he’d divorce her. He said he’d only got to say ‘I divorce you’ three times, and he did and walked out and somehow or other, some kind of Society out there took charge of her and paid her fare home to England. And there she was. Ah, but that was about thirty to forty years ago, that was. Now Nora, that was only about seven or eight years ago. But I expect she’ll be back one of these days, having learnt her lesson and finding out that all these fine promises didn’t come to much.”