“I suppose you know most of the gardens round here, said Giles encouragingly.
“Ar, I know this place moderate well, I do. And the fancies people went in for. Mrs. Yule, up at Niagra, she had a yew hedge used to be clipped like a squirrel. Silly, I thought it. Peacocks is one thing and squirrels is another. Then Colonel Lampard, he was a great man for begonias—lovely beds of begonias he used to have. Bedding out now, that’s going out of fashion. I wouldn’t like to tell you how often I’ve had to fill up beds in the front lawns and turf ’em over in the last six years. Seems people ain’t got no eye for geraniums and a nice bit of lobelia edging no more.”
“You worked at Dr. Kennedy’s, didn’t you?”
“Ar. Long time ago, that were. Must have been 1920 and on. He’s moved now—given up. Young Dr. Brent’s up at Crosby Lodge now. Funny ideas, he has—little white tablets and so on. Vittapins he calls ’em.”
“I suppose you remember Miss Helen Kennedy, the doctor’s sister.”
“Ar, I remember Miss Helen right enough. Prettymaid, she was, with her long yellow hair. The doctor set a lot of store by her. Come back and lived in this very house here, she did, after she was married. Army gentleman from India.”
“Yes,” said Gwenda. “We know.”
“Ar. I did ’ear—Saturday night it was—as you and your ’usband was some kind of relations. Pretty as a picter, Miss Helen was, when she first come back from school. Full of fun, too. Wanting to go everywhere—dances and tennis and all that. ’Ad to mark the tennis court, I ’ad—hadn’t been used for nigh twenty years, I’d say. And the shrubs overgrowing it cruel. ’Ad to cut ’em back, I did. And get a lot of whitewash and mark out the lines. Lot of work it made—and in the end hardly played on. Funny thing I always thought that was.”
“What was a funny thing?” asked Giles.
“Business with the tennis court. Someone come along one night—and cut it to ribbons. Just to ribbons it was. Spite, as you might say. That was what it was—nasty bit of spite.”
“But who would do a thing like that?”
“That’s what the doctor wanted to know. Proper put out about it he was—and I don’t blame him. Just paid for it, he had. But none of us could tell who’d done it. We never did know. And he said he wasn’t going to get another—quite right, too, for if it’s spite one time, it would be spite again. But Miss Helen, she was rare and put out. She didn’t have no luck, Miss Helen didn’t. First that net—and then her bad foot.”
“A bad foot?” asked Gwenda.
“Yes—fell over a scraper or somesuch and cut it. Not much more than a graze, it seemed, but it wouldn’t heal. Fair worried about it, the doctor was. He was dressing it and treating it, but it didn’t get well. I remember him saying ‘I can’t understand it—there must have been something spectic—or some word like that—on that scraper. And anyway,’ he says, ‘what was the scraper doing out in the middle of the drive?’ Because that’s where it was when Miss Helen fell over it, walking home on a dark night. The poor maid, there she was, missing going to dances and sitting about with her foot up. Seemed as though there was nothing but bad luck for her.”
The moment had come, Giles thought. He asked casually, “Do you remember somebody called Afflick?”
“Ar. You mean Jackie Afflick? As was in Fane and Watchman’s office?”
“Yes. Wasn’t he a friend of Miss Helen’s?”
“That were just a bit of nonsense. Doctor put a stop to it and quite right too. He wasn’t any class, Jackie Afflick. And he was the kind that’s too sharp by half. Cut themselves in the end, that kind do. But he weren’t here long. Got himself into hot water. Good riddance. Us don’t want the likes of he in Dillmouth. Go and be smart somewhere else, that’s what he were welcome to do.”
Gwenda said: “Was he here when that tennis net was cut up?”
“Ar. I see what you’re thinking. But he wouldn’t do a senseless thing like that. He were smart, Jackie Afflick were. Whoever did that it was just spite.”
“Was there anybody who had a down on Miss Helen? Who would be likely to feel spiteful?”
Old Manning chuckled softly.
“Some of the young ladies might have felt spiteful all right. Not a patch on Miss Helen to look at, most of ’em weren’t. No, I’d say that was done just in foolishness. Some tramp with a grudge.”
“Was Helen very upset about Jackie Afflick?” asked Gwenda.
“Don’t think as Miss Helen cared much about any of the young fellows. Just liked to enjoy herself, that’s all. Very devoted some of them were—young Mr. Walter Fane, for one. Used to follow her round like a dog.”
“But she didn’t care for him at all?”
“Not Miss Helen. Just laughed—that’s all she did. Went abroad to foreign parts, he did. But he come back later. Top one in the firm he is now. Never married. I don’t blame him. Women causes a lot of trouble in a man’s life.”
“Are you married?” asked Gwenda.
“Buried two, I have,” said old Manning. “Ar, well, I can’t complain. Smoke me pipe in peace where I likes now.”
In the ensuing silence, he picked up his rake again.
Giles and Gwenda walked back up the path towards the house and Miss Marple desisting from her attack on bindweed joined them.
“Miss Marple,” said Gwenda. “You don’t look well. Is there anything—”
“It’s nothing, my dear.” The old lady paused for a moment before saying with a strange kind of insistence, “You know, I don’t like that bit about the tennis net. Cutting it to ribbons. Even then—”
She stopped. Giles looked at her curiously.
“I don’t quite understand—” he began.
“Don’t you? It seems so horribly plain to me. But perhaps it’s better that you shouldn’t understand. And anyway—perhaps I am wrong. Now do tell me how you got on in Northumberland.”
They gave her an account of their activities, and Miss Marple listened attentively.
“It’s really all very sad,” said Gwenda. “Quite tragic, in fact.”
“Yes, indeed. Poor thing—poor thing.”
“That’s what I felt. How that man must suffer—”
“He? Oh yes. Yes, of course.”
“But you meant—”
“Well, yes—I was thinking of her—of the wife. Probably very deeply in love with him, and he married her because she was suitable, or because he was sorry for her, or for one of those quite kindly and sensible reasons that men often have, and which are actually so terribly unfair.”
“I know a hundred ways of love,
And each one makes the loved one rue,”
quoted Giles softly.
Miss Marple turned to him.
“Yes, that is so true. Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair of causes. It is much more—how shall I say?—fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one’s love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting … that the loved one will turn to someone else. Which, again, invariably happens. So this Mrs. Erskine has made life a hell for her husband, and he, without being able to help it, has made life a hell for her. But I think she has suffered most. And yet, you know, I dare say he is really quite fond of her.”
“He can’t be,” cried Gwenda.
“Oh, my dear, you are very young. He has never left his wife, and that means something, you know.”
“Because of the children. Because it was his duty.”
“The children, perhaps,” said Miss Marple. “But I must confess that gentlemen do not seem to me to have a great regard for duty in so far as their wives are concerned—public service is another matter.”
Giles laughed.
“What a wonderful cynic you are, Miss Marple.”
“Oh dear, Mr. Reed, I do hope not that. One always has hope for human nature.”
“I still don’t feel it can have been Walter Fane,” said Gwenda thoughtfully. “And I’m sure it wasn’t Major Erskine. In fact I know it wasn?
?t.”
“One’s feelings are not always reliable guides,” said Miss Marple. “The most unlikely people do things—quite a sensation there was in my own little village when the Treasurer of the Christmas Club was found to have put every penny of the funds on a horse. He disapproved of horse racing and indeed any kind of betting or gambling. His father had been a Turf Agent and had treated his mother very badly—so, intellectually speaking, he was quite sincere. But he chanced one day to be motoring near Newmarket and saw some horses training. And then it all came over him—blood does tell.”
“The antecedents of both Walter Fane and Richard Erskine seem above suspicion,” said Giles gravely but with a slight amused twist to his mouth. “But then murder is by way of being an amateur crime.”
“The important thing is,” said Miss Marple, “that they were there. On the spot. Walter Fane was here in Dillmouth. Major Erskine, by his own account, must actually have been with Helen Halliday very shortly before her death—and he did not return to his hotel for some time that night.”
“But he was quite frank about it. He—”
Gwenda broke off. Miss Marple was looking at her very hard.
“I only want to emphasize,” said Miss Marple, “the importance of being on the spot.” She looked from one to the other of them.
Then she said, “I think you will have no trouble in finding out J. J. Afflick’s address. As proprietor of the Daffodil Coaches, it should be easy enough.”
Giles nodded. “I’ll get on to it. Probably in the telephone directory.” He paused. “You think we should go and see him?”
Miss Marple waited for a moment or two, then she said: “If you do—you must be very careful. Remember what that old gardener just said—Jackie Afflick is smart. Please—please be careful….”
Twenty-one
J. J. AFFLICK