Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple 13)

“Who was your sister afraid of, Dr. Kennedy?”

He turned back to her and stared.

“Afraid of? No one, as far as I know.”

“I only wondered … Pray excuse me if I am asking indiscreet questions—but there was a young man, wasn’t there?—I mean, some entanglement—when she was very young. Somebody called Afflick, I believe.”

“Oh, that. Silly business most girls go through. An undesirable young fellow, shifty—and of course not her class, not her class at all. He got into trouble here afterwards.”

“I just wondered if he could have been—revengeful.”

Dr. Kennedy smiled rather sceptically.

“Oh, I don’t think it went deep. Anyway, as I say, he got into trouble here, and left the place for good.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Oh, nothing criminal. Just indiscretions. Blabbed about his employer’s affairs.”

“And his employer was Mr. Walter Fane?”

Dr. Kennedy looked a little surprised.

“Yes—yes—now you say so, I remember, he did work in Fane and Watchman’s. Not articled. Just an ordinary clerk.”

Just an ordinary clerk? Miss Marple wondered, as she stooped again to the bindweed, after Dr. Kennedy had gone….

Nineteen

MR. KIMBLE SPEAKS

“I dunno, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Kimble.

Her husband, driven into speech by what was neither more nor less than an outrage, became vocal.

He shoved his cup forward.

“What you thinking of, Lily?” he demanded. “No sugar!”

Mrs. Kimble hastily remedied the outrage, and then proceeded to elaborate on her own theme.

“Thinking about this advert, I am,” she said. “Lily Abbott, it says, plain as plain. And “formerly house-parlourmaid at St. Catherine’s Dillmouth.” That’s me, all right.”

“Ar,” agreed Mr. Kimble.

“After all these years—you must agree it’s odd, Jim.”

“Ar,” said Mr. Kimble.

“Well, what am I going to do, Jim?”

“Leave it be.”

“Suppose there’s money in it?”

There was a gurgling sound as Mr. Kimble drained his teacup to fortify himself for the mental effort of embarking on a long speech. He pushed his cup along and prefaced his remarks with a laconic: “More.” Then he got under way.

“You went on a lot at one time about what ’appened at St. Catherine’s. I didn’t take much account of it—reckoned as it was mostly foolishness—women’s chatter. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe something did ’appen. If so it’s police business and you don’t want to be mixed up in it. All over and done with, ain’t it? You leave well alone, my girl.”

“All very well to say that. It may be money as has been left me in a will. Maybe Mrs. Halliday’s alive all the time and now she’s dead and left me something in ’er will.”

“Left you something in ’er will? What for? Ar!” said Mr. Kimble, reverting to his favourite monosyllable to express scorn.

“Even if it’s police … You know, Jim, there’s a big reward sometimes for anyone as can give information to catch a murderer.”

“And what could you give? All you know you made up yourself in your head!”

“That’s what you say. But I’ve been thinking—”

“Ar,” said Mr. Kimble disgustedly.

“Well, I have. Ever since I saw that first piece in the paper. Maybe I got things a bit wrong. That Layonee, she was a bit stupid like all foreigners, couldn’t understand proper what you said to her—and her English was something awful. If she didn’t mean what I thought she meant … I’ve been trying to remember the name of that man … Now if it was him she saw … Remember that picture I told you about? Secret Lover. Ever so exciting. They tracked him down in the end through his car. Fifty thousand dollars he paid the garage man to forget he filled up with petrol that night. Dunno what that is in pounds … And the other one was there, too, and the husband crazy with jealousy. All mad about her, they were. And in the end—”

Mr. Kimble pushed back his chair with a grating sound. He rose to his feet with slow and ponderous authority. Preparatory to leaving the kitchen, he delivered an ultimatum—the ultimatum of a man who, though usually inarticulate, had a certain shrewdness.

“You leave the whole thing alone, my girl,” he said. “Or else, likely as not, you’ll be sorry.”

He went into the scullery, put on his boots (Lily was particular about her kitchen floor) and went out.

Lily sat on at the table, her sharp foolish little brain working things out. Of course she couldn’t exactly go against what her husband said, but all the same … Jim was so hidebound, so stick-in-the-mud. She wished there was somebody else she could ask. Someone who would know all about rewards and the police and what it all meant. Pity to turn up a chance of good money.

That wireless set … the home perm … that cherry-coloured coat in Russell’s (ever so smart)… even, maybe, a whole Jacobean suite for the sitting room….

Eager, greedy, shortsighted, she went on dreaming … What exactly had Layonee said all those years ago?

Then an idea came to her. She got up and fetched the bottle of ink, the pen, and a pad of writing paper.

“Know what I’ll do,” she said to herself. “I’ll write to the doctor, Mrs. Halliday’s brother. He’ll tell me what I ought to do—if he’s alive still, that is. Anyway, it’s on my conscience I never told him about Layonee—or about that car.”

There was silence for some time apart from the laborious scratching of Lily’s pen. It was very seldom that she wrote a letter and she found the composition of it a considerable effort.

However it was done at last and she put it into an envelope and sealed it up.

But she felt less satisfied than she had expected. Ten to one the doctor was dead or had gone away from Dillmouth.

Was there anyone else?

What was the name, now, of that fellow?

If she could only remember that….

Twenty

THE GIRL HELEN

Giles and Gwenda had just finished breakfast on the morning after their return from Northumberland when Miss Marple was announced. She came rather apologetically.

“I’m afraid this is a very early call. Not a thing I am in the habit of doing. But there was something I wanted to explain.”

“We’re delighted to see you,” said Giles, pulling out a chair for her. “Do have a cup of coffee.”

“Oh no, no, thank you—nothing at all. I

have breakfasted most adequately. Now let me explain. I came in whilst you were away, as you kindly said I might, to do a little weeding—”

“Angelic of you,” said Gwenda.

“And it really did strike me that two days a week is not quite enough for this garden. In any case I think Foster is taking advantage of you. Too much tea and too much talk. I found out that he couldn’t manage another day himself, so I took it upon myself to engage another man just for one day a week—Wednesdays—today, in fact.”

Giles looked at her curiously. He was a little surprised. It might be kindly meant, but Miss Marple’s action savoured, very faintly, of interference. And interference was unlike her.

He said slowly: “Foster’s far too old, I know, for really hard work.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Reed, that Manning is even older. Seventy-five, he tells me. But you see, I thought employing him, just for a few odd days, might be quite an advantageous move, because he used, many years ago, to be employed at Dr. Kennedy’s. The name of the young man Helen got engaged to was Afflick, by the way.”

“Miss Marple,” said Giles, “I maligned you in thought. You are a genius. You know I’ve got those specimens of Helen’s handwriting from Kennedy?”

“I know. I was here when he brought them.”

“I’m posting them off today. I got the address of a good handwriting expert last week.”

“Let’s go into the garden and see Manning,” said Gwenda.

Manning was a bent, crabbed-looking old man with a rheumy and slightly cunning eye. The pace at which he was raking a path accelerated noticeably as his employers drew near.

“Morning, sir. Morning, m’am. The lady said as how you could do with a little extra help of a Wednesday. I’ll be pleased. Shameful neglected, this place looks.”

“I’m afraid the garden’s been allowed to run down for some years.”

“It has that. Remember it, I do, in Mrs. Findeyson’s time. A picture it were, then. Very fond of her garden she was, Mrs. Findeyson.”

Giles leaned easily against a roller. Gwenda snipped off some rose heads. Miss Marple, retreating a little up stage, bent to the bindweed. Old Manning leant on his rake. All was set for a leisurely morning discussion of old times and gardening in the good old days.