A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple 7)

She leant back studying Miss Marple’s face.

“But perhaps—that wouldn’t be wise?”

“No—I don’t think it would be very wise—the police could soon find you, you know.”

“Could they? Could they really? You think they’re clever enough for that?”

“It is very foolish to underestimate the police. Inspector Neele strikes me as a particularly intelligent man.”

“Oh! I thought he was rather stupid.”

Miss Marple shook her head.

“I can’t help feeling”—Jennifer Fortescue hesitated—“that it’s dangerous to stay here.”

“Dangerous for you, you mean?”

“Ye-es—well, yes—”

“Because of something you—know?”

Mrs. Percival seemed to take breath.

“Oh no—of course I don’t know anything. What should I know? It’s just—just that I’m nervous. That man Crump—”

But it was not, Miss Marple thought, of Crump that Mrs. Percival Fortescue was thinking—watching the clenching and unclenching of Jennifer’s hands. Miss Marple thought that for some reason Jennifer Fortescue was very badly frightened indeed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was growing dark. Miss Marple had taken her knitting over to the window in the library. Looking out of the glass pane she saw Pat Fortescue walking up and down the terrace outside. Miss Marple unlatched the window and called through it.

“Come in, my dear. Do come in. I’m sure it’s much too cold and damp for you to be out there without a coat on.”

Pat obeyed the summons. She came in and shut the window and turned on two of the lamps.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s not a very nice afternoon.” She sat down on the sofa by Miss Marple. “What are you knitting?”

“Oh, just a little matinée coat, dear. For a baby, you know. I always say young mothers can’t have too many matinée coats for their babies. It’s the second size. I always knit the second size. Babies so soon grow out of the first size.”

Pat stretched out long legs towards the fire.

“It’s nice in here today,” she said. “With the fire and the lamps and you knitting things for babies. It all seems cosy and homely and like England ought to be.”

“It’s like England is,” said Miss Marple. “There are not so many Yewtree Lodges, my dear.”

“I think that’s a good thing,” said Pat. “I don’t believe this was ever a happy house. I don’t believe anybody was ever happy in it, in spite of all the money they spent and the things they had.”

“No,” Miss Marple agreed. “I shouldn’t say it had been a happy house.”

“I suppose Adele may have been happy,” said Pat. “I never met her, of course, so I don’t know, but Jennifer is pretty miserable and Elaine’s been eating her heart out over a young man whom she probably knows in her heart of hearts doesn’t care for her. Oh, how I want to get away from here!” She looked at Miss Marple and smiled suddenly. “D’you know,” she said, “that Lance told me to stick as close to you as I could. He seemed to think I should be safe that way.”

“Your husband’s no fool,” said Miss Marple.

“No. Lance isn’t a fool. At least, he is in someways. But I wish he’d tell me exactly what he’s afraid of. One thing seems clear enough. Somebody in this house is mad, and madness is always frightening because you don’t know how mad people’s minds will work. You don’t know what they’ll do next.”

“My poor child,” said Miss Marple.

“Oh, I’m all right, really. I ought to be tough enough by now.”

Miss Marple said gently:

“You’ve had a good deal of unhappiness, haven’t you, my dear?”

“Oh, I’ve had some very good times, too. I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong. To begin with, I suppose, it was the war.”

“Your husband was a fighter pilot, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. We’d only been married about a month when Don was shot down.” She stared ahead of her into the fire. “I thought at first I wanted to die too. It seemed so unfair, so cruel. And yet—in the end—I almost began to see that it had been the best thing. Don was wonderful in the war. Brave and reckless and gay. He had all the qualities that are needed, wanted in a war. But I don’t believe, somehow, peace would have suited him. He had a kind of—oh, how shall I put it?—arrogant insubordination. He wouldn’t have fitted in or settled down. He’d have fought against things. He was—well, antisocial in a way. No, he wouldn’t have fitted in.”

“It’s wise of you to see that, my dear.” Miss Marple bent over her knitting, picked up a stitch, counted under her breath, “Three plain, two purl, slip one, knit two together,” and then said aloud: “And your second husband, my dear?”

“Freddy? Freddy shot himself.”

“Oh dear. How very sad. What a tragedy.”

“We were very happy together,” said Pat. “I began to realize, about two years after we were married, that Freddy wasn’t—well, wasn’t always straight. I began to find out the sort of things that were going on. But it didn’t

seem to matter, between us two, that is. Because, you see, Freddy loved me and I loved him. I tried not to know what was going on. That was cowardly of me, I suppose, but I couldn’t have changed him you know. You can’t change people.”

“No,” said Miss Marple, “you can’t change people.”

“I’d taken him and loved him and married him for what he was, and I sort of felt that I just had to—put up with it. Then things went wrong and he couldn’t face it, and he shot himself. After he died I went out to Kenya to stay with some friends there. I couldn’t stop on in England and go on meeting all—all the old crowd that knew about it all. And out in Kenya I met Lance.” Her face changed and softened. She went on looking into the fire, and Miss Marple looked at her. Presently Pat turned her head and said: “Tell me, Miss Marple, what do you really think of Percival?”

“Well, I’ve not seen very much of him. Just at breakfast usually. That’s all. I don’t think he very much likes my being here.”

Pat laughed suddenly.

“He’s mean, you know. Terribly mean about money. Lance says he always was. Jennifer complains of it, too. Goes over the housekeeping accounts with Miss Dove. Complaining of every item. But Miss Dove manages to hold her own. She’s really rather a wonderful person. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, indeed. She reminds me of Mrs. Latimer in my own village, St. Mary Mead. She ran the WVS, you know, and the Girl Guides, and indeed, she ran practically everything there. It wasn’t for quite five years that we discovered that—oh, but I mustn’t gossip. Nothing is more boring than people talking to you about places and people whom you’ve never seen and know nothing about. You must forgive me, my dear.”

“Is St. Mary Mead a very nice village?”

“Well, I don’t know what you would call a nice village, my dear. It’s quite a pretty village. There are some nice people living in it and some extremely unpleasant people as well. Very curious things go on there just as in any other village. Human nature is much the same everywhere, is it not?”

“You go up and see Miss Ramsbottom a good deal, don’t you?” said Pat. “Now she really frightens me.”