A Pocket Full of Rye

  “I can’t tell you. I don’t know anything. But I wish to God you’d go away from here.”

  “Darling,” said Pat. “I’m not going. I’m staying here. For better, for worse. That’s how I feel about it.” She added, with a sudden catch in her voice: “Only with me it’s always for worse.”

  “What on earth do you mean, Pat?”

  “I bring bad luck. That’s what I mean. I bring bad luck to anybody I come in contact with.”

  “My dear adorable nitwit, you haven’t brought bad luck to me. Look how after I married you the old man sent for me to come home and make friends with him.”

  “Yes, and what happened when you did come home? I tell you, I’m unlucky to people.”

  “Look here, my sweet, you’ve got a thing about all this. It’s superstition, pure and simple.”

  “I can’t help it. Some people do bring bad luck. I’m one of them.”

  Lance took her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “You’re my Pat and to be married to you is the greatest luck in the world. So get that into your silly head.” Then, calming down, he said in a more sober voice: “But, seriously, Pat, do be very careful. If there is someone unhinged round here, I don’t want you to be the one who stops the bullet or drinks the henbane.”

  “Or drinks the henbane as you say.”

  “When I’m not around, stick to that old lady. What’s-her-name Marple. Why do you think Aunt Effie asked her to stay here?”

  “Goodness knows why Aunt Effie does anything. Lance, how long are we going to stay here?”

  Lance shrugged his shoulders.

  “Difficult to say.”

  “I don’t think,” said Pat, “that we’re really awfully welcome.” She hesitated as she spoke the words. “The house belongs to your brother now, I suppose? He doesn’t really want us here, does he?”

  Lance chuckled suddenly.

  “Not he, but he’s got to stick us for the present at any rate.”

  “And afterwards? What are we going to do, Lance? Are we going back to East Africa or what?”

  “Is that what you’d like to do, Pat?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “That’s lucky,” said Lance, “because it’s what I’d like to do, too. I don’t take much to this country nowadays.”

  Pat’s face brightened.

  “How lovely. From what you said the other day, I was afraid you might want to stop here.”

  A devilish glint appeared in Lance’s eyes.

  “You’re to hold your tongue about our plans, Pat,” he said. “I have it in my mind to twist dear brother Percival’s tail a bit.”

  “Oh, Lance, do be careful.”

  “I’ll be careful, my sweet, but I don’t see why old Percy should get away with everything.”

  II

  With her head a little on one side looking like an amiable cockatoo, Miss Marple sat in the large drawing room listening to Mrs. Percival Fortescue. Miss Marple looked particularly incongruous in the drawing room. Her light spare figure was alien to the vast brocaded sofa in which she sat with its many-hued cushions strewn around her. Miss Marple sat very upright because she had been taught to use a backboard as a girl, and not to loll. In a large armchair beside her, dressed in elaborate black, was Mrs. Percival, talking away volubly at nineteen to the dozen. “Exactly,” thought Miss Marple, “like poor Mrs. Emmett, the bank manager’s wife.” She remembered how one day Mrs. Emmett had come to call and talk about the selling arrangements for Poppy Day, and how after the preliminary business had been settled, Mrs. Emmett had suddenly begun to talk and talk and talk. Mrs. Emmett occupied rather a difficult position in St. Mary Mead. She did not belong to the old guard of ladies in reduced circumstances who lived in neat houses around the church, and who knew intimately all the ramifications of the county families even though they might not be strictly county themselves. Mr. Emmett, the bank manager, had undeniably married beneath him and the result was that his wife was in a position of great loneliness since she could not, of course, associate with the wives of the trades people. Snobbery here raised its hideous head and marooned Mrs. Emmett on a permanent island of loneliness.

  The necessity to talk grew upon Mrs. Emmett, and on that particular day it had burst its bounds, and Miss Marple had received the full flood of the torrent. She had been sorry for Mrs. Emmett then, and today she was rather sorry for Mrs. Percival Fortescue.

  Mrs. Percival had had a lot of grievances to bear and the relief of airing them to a more or less total stranger was enormous.

  “Of course I never want to complain,” said Mrs. Percival. “I’ve never been of the complaining kind. What I always say is that one must put up with things. What can’t be cured must be endured and I’m sure I’ve never said a word to anyone. It’s really difficult to know who I could have spoken to. In someways one is very isolated here—very isolated. It’s very convenient, of course, and a great saving of expense to have our own set of rooms in this house. But of course it’s not at all like having a place of your own. I’m sure you agree.”

  Miss Marple said she agreed.

  “Fortunately our new house is almost ready to move into. It is a question really of getting the painters and decorators out. These men are so slow. My husband, of course, has been quite satisfied living here. But then it’s different for a man. Don’t you agree?”

  Miss Marple agreed that it was very different for a man. She could say this without a qualm as it was what she really believed. “The gentlemen” were, in Miss Marple’s mind, in a totally different category to her own sex. They required two eggs plus bacon for breakfast, three good nourishing meals a day and were never to be contradicted or argued with before dinner. Mrs. Percival went on.

  “My husband, you see, is away all day in the city. When he comes home he’s just tired and wants to sit down and read. But I, on the contrary, am alone here all day with no congenial company at all. I’ve been perfectly comfortable and all that. Excellent food. But what I do feel one needs is a really pleasant social circle. The people round here are really not my kind. Part of them are what I call a flashy, bridge-playing lot. Not nice bridge. I like a hand at bridge myself as well as anyone, but of course, they’re all very rich down here. They play for enormously high stakes, and there’s a great deal of drinking. In fact, the sort of life that I call really fast society. Then, of course, there’s a sprinkling of—well, you can only call them old pussies who love to potter round with a trowel and do gardening.”

  Miss Marple looked slightly guilty since she was herself an inveterate gardener.

  “I don’t want to say anything against the dead,” resumed Mrs. Percy rapidly, “but there’s no doubt about it, Mr. Fortescue, my father-in-law, I mean, made a very foolish second marriage. My—well I can’t call her my mother-in-law, she was the same age as I am. The real truth of it is she was man-mad. Absolutely man-mad. And the way she spent money! My father-in-law was an absolute fool about her. Didn’t care what bills she ran up. It vexed Percy very much, very much indeed. Percy is always so careful about money matters. He hates waste. And then what with Mr. Fortescue being so peculiar and so bad tempered, flashing out in these terrible rages, spending money like water backing wildcat schemes. Well—it wasn’t at all nice.”

  Miss Marple ventured upon making a remark.

  “That must have worried your husband, too?”

  “Oh, yes, it did. For the last year Percy’s been very worried indeed. It’s really made him quite different. His manner, you know, changed even towards me. Sometimes when I talked to him he used not to answer.” Mrs. Percy sighed, then went on: “Then Elaine, my sister-in-law, you know, she’s a very odd sort of girl. Very out of doors and all that. Not exactly unfriendly, but not sympathetic, you know. She never wanted to go to London and shop, or go to a matinée or anything of that kind. She wasn’t even interested in clothes.” Mrs. Percival sighed again and murmured: “But of course I don’t want to complain in any way.” A qualm of compunction came over her
. She said, hurriedly: “You must think it most odd, talking to you like this when you are a comparative stranger. But really, what with all the strain and shock—I think really it’s the shock that matters most. Delayed shock. I feel so nervous, you know, that I really—well, I really must speak to someone. You remind me so much of a dear old lady, Miss Trefusis James. She fractured her femur when she was seventy-five. It was a very long business nursing her and we became great friends. She gave me a fox fur cape when I left and I did think it was kind of her.”

  “I know just how you feel,” said Miss Marple.

  And this again was true. Mrs. Percival’s husband was obviously bored by her and paid very little attention to her, and the poor woman had managed to make no local friends. Running up to London and shopping, matinées and a luxurious house to live in did not make up for the lack of humanity in her relations with her husband’s family.

  “I hope it’s not rude of me to say so,” said Miss Marple in a gentle old lady’s voice, “but I really feel that the late Mr. Fortescue cannot have been a very nice man.”

  “He wasn’t,” said his daughter-in-law. “Quite frankly my dear, between you and me, he was a detestable old man. I don’t wonder—I really don’t—that someone put him out of the way.”

  “You’ve no idea at all who—” began Miss Marple and broke off. “Oh dear, perhaps this is a question I should not ask—not even an idea who—who—well, who it might have been?”

  “Oh, I think it was that horrible man Crump,” said Mrs. Percival. “I’ve always disliked him very much. He’s got a manner, not really rude, you know, but yet it is rude. Impertinent, that’s more it.”

  “Still, there would have to be a motive, I suppose.”

  “I really don’t know that that sort of person requires much motive. I dare say Mr. Fortescue ticked him off about something, and I rather suspect that sometimes he drinks too much. But what I really think is that he’s a bit unbalanced, you know. Like that footman, or butler, whoever it was, who went round the house shooting everybody. Of course, to be quite honest with you, I did suspect that it was Adele who poisoned Mr. Fortescue. But now, of course, one can’t suspect that since she’s been poisoned herself. She may have accused Crump, you know. And then he lost his head and perhaps managed to put something in the sandwiches and Gladys saw him do it and so he killed her too—I think it’s really dangerous having him in the house at all. Oh dear, I wish I could get away, but I suppose these horrible policemen won’t let one do anything of the kind.” She leant forward impulsively and put a plump hand on Miss Marple’s arm. “Sometimes I feel I must get away—that if it doesn’t all stop soon I shall—I shall actually run away.”

  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.”