“Oh, there you are,” she said. “We wondered, you know. I thought you must have gone out for a walk somewhere and I did so hope you wouldn’t overtire yourself. If I had known you had come downstairs and gone out, I would have come with you to show anything there is to show. Not that there is very much.”
“Oh, I just wandered around,” said Miss Marple. “The churchyard, you know, and the church. I’m always very interested in churches. Sometimes there are very curious epitaphs. Things like that. I make quite a collection of them. I suppose the church here was restored in Victorian times?”
“Yes, they did put in some rather ugly pews, I think. You know, good quality wood, and strong and all that, but not very artistic.”
“I hope they didn’t take away anything of particular interest.”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s not really a very old church.”
“There did not seem to be many tablets or brasses or anything of that kind,” agreed Miss Marple.
“You are quite interested in ecclesiastical architecture?”
“Oh, I don’t make a study of it or anything like that, but of course in my own village, St. Mary Mead, things do rather revolve round the church. I mean, they always have. In my young days, that was so. Nowadays of course it’s rather different. Were you brought up in this neighbourhood?”
“Oh, not really. We lived not very far away, about thirty miles or so. At Little Herdsley. My father was a retired serviceman—a Major in the Artillery. We came over here occasionally to see my uncle—indeed to see my great-uncle before him. No. I’ve not even been here very much of late years. My other two sisters moved in after my uncle’s death, but at that time I was still abroad with my husband. He only died about four or five years ago.”
“Oh, I see.”
“They were anxious I should come and join them here and really, it seemed the best thing to do. We had lived in India for some years. My husband was still stationed there at the time of his death. It is very difficult nowadays to know where one would wish to—should I say, put one’s roots down.”
“Yes, indeed. I can quite see that. And you felt, of course, that you had roots here since your family had been here for a long time.”
“Yes. Yes, one did feel that. Of course, I’d always kept up with my sisters, had been to visit them. But things are always very different from what one thinks they will be. I have bought a small cottage near London, near Hampton Court, where I spend a good deal of my time, and I do a little occasional work for one or two charities in London.”
“So your time is fully occupied. How wise of you.”
“I have felt of late that I should spend more time here, perhaps. I’ve been a little worried about my sisters.”
“Their health?” suggested Miss Marple. “One is rather worried nowadays, especially as there is not really anyone competent whom one can employ to look after people as they become rather feebler or have certain ailments. So much rheumatism and arthritis about. One is always so afraid of people falling down in the bath or an accident coming down stairs. Something of that kind.”
“Clotilde has always been very strong,” said Mrs. Glynne. “Tough, I should describe her. But I am rather worried sometimes about Anthea. She is vague, you know, very vague indeed. And she wanders off sometimes—and doesn’t seem to know where she is.”
“Yes, it is sad when people worry. There is so much to worry one.”
“I don’t really think there is much to worry Anthea.”
“She worries about income tax, perhaps, money affairs,” suggested Miss Marple.
“No, no, not that so much but—oh, she worries so much about the garden. She remembers the garden as it used to be, and she’s very anxious, you know, to—well, to spend money in putting things right again. Clotilde has had to tell her that really one can’t afford that nowadays. But she keeps talking of the hothouses, the peaches that used to be there. The grapes—and all that.”
“And the Cherry Pie on the walls?” suggested Miss Marple, remembering a remark.
“Fancy your remembering that. Yes. Yes, it’s one of the things one does remember. Such a charming smell, heliotrope. And such a nice name for it, Cherry Pie. One always remembers that. And the grapevine. The little, small, early sweet grapes. Ah well, one must not remember the past too much.”
“And the flower borders too, I suppose,” said Miss Marple.
“Yes. Yes, Anthea would like to have a big well kept herbaceous border again. Really not feasible now. It is as much as one can do to get local people who will come and mow the lawns every fortnight. Every year one seems to employ a different firm. And Anthea would like pampas grass planted again. And the Mrs. Simpkin pinks. White, you know. All along the stone edge border. And a fig tree that grew just outside the greenhouse. She remembers all these and talks about them.”
“It must be difficult for you.”
“Well, yes. Arguments, you see, hardly appeal in any way. Clotilde, of course, is very downright about things. She just refuses point-blank and says she doesn’t want to hear another word about it.”
“It is difficult,” said Miss Marple, “to know how to take things. Whether one should be firm. Rather authoritative. Perhaps, even, well, just a little—a little fierce, you know, or whether one should be sympathetic. Listen to things and perhaps hold out hopes which one knows are not justified. Yes, it’s difficult.”
“But it’s easier for me because you see I go away again, and then come back now and then to stay. So it’s easy for me to pretend things may be easier soon and that something may be done. But really, the other day when I came home and I found that Anthea had tried to engage a most expensive firm of landscape gardeners to renovate the garden, to build up the greenhouse again—which is quite absurd because even if you put vines in they would not bear for another two or three years. Clotilde knew nothing about it and she was extremely angry when she discovered the estimate for this work on Anthea’s desk. She was really quite unkind.”
“So many things are difficult,” said Miss Marple.
It was a useful phrase which she used often.
“I shall have to go rather early tomorrow morning. I think,” said Miss Marple. “I was making enquiries at the Golden Boar where I understand the coach party assembles tomorrow morning. They are making quite an early start. Nine o’clock, I understand.”
“Oh dear. I hope you will not find it too fatiguing.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I gather we are going to a place called—now wait a minute, what was it called?—Stirling St. Mary. Something like that. And it does not seem to be very far away. There’s an interesting church to see on the way and a castle. In the afternoon there is a quite pleasant garden, not too many acres; but some special flowers. I feel sure that after this very nice rest that I have had here, I shall be quite all right. I understand now that I would have been very tired if I had had these days of climbing up cliffsides and all the rest of it.”
“Well, you must rest this afternoon, so as to be fresh for tomorrow,” said Mrs. Glynne, as they went into the house. “Miss Marple has been to visit the church,” said Mrs. Glynne to Clotilde.
“I’m afraid there is not very much to see,” said Clotilde. “Victorian glass of a most hideous kind, I think myself. No expense spared. I’m afraid my uncle was partly to blame. He was very pleased with those rather crude reds and blues.”
“Very crude. Very vulgar, I always think,” said Lavinia Glynne.
Miss Marple settled down after lunch to have a nap, and she did not join her hostesses until nearly dinnertime. After dinner a good deal of chat went on until it was bedtime. Miss Marple set the tone in remembrances … Remembrances of her own youth, her early days, places she had visited, travels or tours she had made, occasional people she had known.
She went to bed tired, with a sense of failure. She had learned nothing more, possibly because there was nothing more to learn. A fishing expedition where the fish did not rise—possibly because there were
no fish there. Or it could be that she did not know the right bait to use?
Eleven
ACCIDENT
I
Miss Marple’s tea was brought at seven thirty the following morning so as to allow her plenty of time to get up and pack her few belongings. She was just closing her small suitcase when there was a rather hurried tap on the door and Clotilde came in, looking upset.
“Oh dear, Miss Marple, there is a young man downstairs who has called to see you. Emlyn Price. He is on the tour with you and they sent him here.”
“Of course, I remember him. Yes. Quite young?”