“Thank you, Mrs. Hillingdon,” said Weston.
III
“We don’t want to worry you, Mrs. Kendal, but we have to have your account of just how you came to find this girl. Dr. Graham says you are sufficiently recovered to talk about it now.”
“Oh yes,” said Molly, “I’m really quite all right again.” She gave them a small nervous smile. “It was just the shock—It was rather awful, you know.”
“Yes, indeed it must have been—I understand you went for a walk after dinner.”
“Yes—I often do.”
Her eyes shifted, Daventry noticed, and the fingers of her hands twined and untwined about each other.
“What time would that have been, Mrs. Kendal?” asked Weston.
“Well, I don’t really know—we don’t go much by the time.”
“The steel band was still playing?”
“Yes—at least—I think so—I can’t really remember.”
“And you walked—which way?”
“Oh, along the beach path.”
“To the left or the right?”
“Oh! First one way—and then the other—I—I—really didn’t notice.”
“Why didn’t you notice, Mrs. Kendal?”
She frowned.
“I suppose I was—well—thinking of things.”
“Thinking of anything particular?”
“No—No—Nothing particular—Just things that had to be done—seen to—in the hotel.” Again that nervous twining and untwining of fingers. “And then—I noticed something white—in a clump of hibiscus bushes—and I wondered what it was. I stopped and—and pulled—” She swallowed convulsively—“And it was her—Victoria—all huddled up—and I tried to raise her head up and I got—blood—on my hands.”
She looked at them and repeated wonderingly as though recalling something impossible:
“Blood—on my hands.”
“Yes—Yes—A very dreadful experience. There is no need for you to tell us more about that part of it—How long had you been walking, do you think, when you found her—”
“I don’t know—I have no idea.”
“An hour? Half an hour? Or more than an hour—”
“I don’t know,” Molly repeated.
Daventry asked in a quiet everyday voice:
“Did you take a knife with you on your—walk?”
“A knife?” Molly sounded surprised. “Why should I take a knife?”
“I only ask because one of the kitchen staff mentioned that you had a knife in your hand when you went out of the kitchen into the garden.”
Molly frowned.
“But I didn’t go out of the kitchen—oh you mean earlier—before dinner—I—I don’t think so—”
“You had been rearranging the cutlery on the tables, perhaps.”
“I have to, sometimes. They lay things wrong—not enough knives—or too many. The wrong number of forks and spoons—that sort of thing.”
“So you may have gone out of the kitchen that evening carrying a knife in your hand?”
“I don’t think I did—I’m sure I didn’t—” She added—“Tim was there—he would know. Ask him.”
“Did you like this girl—Victoria—was she good at her work?” asked Weston.
“Yes—she was a very nice girl.”
“You had no dispute with her?”
“Dispute? No.”
“She had never threatened you—in any way?”
“Threatened me? What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter—You have no idea of who could have killed her? No idea at all?”
“None.” She spoke positively.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Kendal.” He smiled. “It wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all for now.”
Daventry got up, opened the door for her, and watched her go out.
“Tim would know,” he quoted as he returned to his chair. “And Tim says definitely that she didn’t have a knife.”
Weston said gravely:
“I think that that is what any husband would feel called upon to say.”
“A table knife seems a very poor type of knife to use for murder.”
“But it was a steak knife, Mr. Daventry. Steaks were on the menu that evening. Steak knives are kept sharp.”
“I really can’t bring myself to believe that that girl we’ve just been talking to is a red-handed murderess, Weston.”
“It is not necessary to believe it yet. It could be that Mrs. Kendal went out into the garden before dinner, clasping a knife she had taken off one of the tables because it was superfluous—she might not even have noticed she was holding it, and she could have put it down somewhere—or dropped it—It could have been found and used by someone else—I, too, think her an unlikely murderess.”
“All the same,” said Daventry thoughtfully, “I’m pretty sure she is not telling all she knows. Her vagueness over time is odd—where was she—what was she doing out there? Nobody, so far, seems to have noticed her in the dining room that evening.”
“The husband was about as usual—but not the wife—”
“You think she went to meet someone—Victoria Johnson?”
“Perhaps—or perhaps she saw whoever it was who did go to meet Victoria.”
“You’re thinking of Gregory Dyson?”
“We know he was talking to Victoria earlier—He may have arranged to meet her again later—everyone moved around freely on the terrace, remember—dancing, drinking—in and out of the bar.”
“No alibi like a steel band,” said Daventry wryly.
Sixteen
MISS MARPLE SEEKS ASSISTANCE
If anybody had been there to observe the gentle-looking elderly lady who stood meditatively on the loggia outside her bungalow, they would have thought she had nothing more on her mind than deliberation on how to arrange her time that day—An expedition, perhaps, to Castle Cliff—a visit to Jamestown—a nice drive and lunch at Pelican Point—or just a quiet morning on the beach—
But the gentle old lady was deliberating quite other matters—she was in militant mood.
“Something has got to be done,” said Miss Marple to herself.
Moreover, she was convinced that there was no time to be lost—There was urgency.
But who was there that she could convince of that fact? Given time, she thought she could find out the truth by herself.
She had found out a good deal. But not enough—not nearly enough. And time was short.
She realized, bitterly, that here on this Paradise of an island, she had none of her usual allies.
She thought regretfully of her friends in England—Sir Henry Clithering—always willing to listen indulgently—his godson Dermot, who in spite of his increased status at Scotland Yard was still ready to believe that when Miss Marple voiced an opinion there was usually something behind it.
But would that soft-voiced native police officer pay any attention to an old lady’s urgency? Dr. Graham? But Dr. Graham was not what she needed—too gentle and hesitant, certainly not a man of quick decisions and rapid actions.
Miss Marple, feeling rather like a humble deputy of the Almighty, almost cried aloud her need in Biblical phrasing.
Who will go for me?
Whom shall I send?
The sound that reached her ears a moment later was not instantly recognized by her as an answer to prayer—far from it—At the back of her mind it registered only as a man possibly calling his dog.
“Hi!”
Miss Marple, lost in perplexity, paid no attention.
“Hi!” The volume thus increased, Miss Marple looked vaguely round.
“HI!” called Mr. Rafiel impatiently. He added—“You there—”
Miss Marple had not at first realized that Mr. Rafiel’s “Hi You” was addressed to her. It was not a method that anyone had ever used before to summon her. It was certainly not a gentlemanly mode of address. Miss Marple did not resent i
t, because people seldom did resent Mr. Rafiel’s somewhat arbitrary method of doing things. He was a law unto himself and people accepted him as such. Miss Marple looked across the intervening space between her bungalow and his. Mr. Rafiel was sitting outside on his loggia and he beckoned her.
“You were calling me?” she asked.
“Of course I was calling you,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Who did you think I was calling—a cat? Come over here.”
Miss Marple looked round for her handbag, picked it up, and crossed the intervening space.
“I can’t come to you unless someone helps me,” explained Mr. Rafiel, “so you’ve got to come to me.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I quite understand that.”
Mr. Rafiel pointed to an adjacent chair. “Sit down,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Something damned odd is going on in this island.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Miss Marple, taking the chair as indicated. By sheer habit she drew her knitting out of her bag.
“Don’t start knitting again,” said Mr. Rafiel, “I can’t stand it. I hate women knitting. It irritates me.”
Miss Marple returned her knitting to her bag. She did this with no undue air of meekness, rather with the air of one who makes allowances for a fractious patient.
“There’s a lot of chit-chat going on,” said Mr. Rafiel, “and I bet you’re in the forefront of it. You and the parson and his sister.”
“It is, perhaps, only natural that there should be chit-chat,” said Miss Marple with spirit, “given the circumstances.”
“This Island girl gets herself knifed. Found in the bushes. Might be ordinary enough. That chap she was living with might have got jealous of another man—or he’d got himself another girl and she got jealous and they had a row. Sex in the tropics. That sort of stuff. What do you say?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, shaking her head.
“The authorities don’t think so, either.”
“They would say more to you,” pointed out Miss Marple, “than they would say to me.”
“All the same, I bet you know more about it than I do. You’ve listened to the tittle-tattle.”
“Certainly I have,” said Miss Marple.
“Nothing much else to do, have you, except listen to tittle-tattle?”
“It is often informative and useful.”
“D’you know,” said Mr. Rafiel, studying her attentively. “I made a mistake about you. I don’t often make mistakes about people. There’s a lot more to you than I thought there was. All these rumours about Major Palgrave and the stories he told. You think he was bumped off, don’t you?”
“I very much fear so,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, he was,” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. “That is definite, is it?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s definite enough. I had it from Daventry. I’m not breaking a confidence because the facts of the autopsy will have to come out. You told Graham something, he went to Daventry, Daventry went to the Administrator, the CID were informed, and between them they agreed that things looked fishy, so they dug up old Palgrave and had a look.”
“And they found?” Miss Marple paused interrogatively.
“They found he’d had a lethal dose of something that only a doctor could pronounce properly. As far as I remember it sounds vaguely like di-flor, hexagonal-ethylcarbenzol. That’s not the right name. But that’s roughly what it sounds like. The police doctor put it that way so that nobody should know, I suppose, what it really was. The stuff’s probably got some quite simple nice easy name like Evipan or Veronal or Easton’s Syrup or something of that kind. This is its official name to baffle laymen with. Anyway, a sizeable dose of it, I gather, would produce death, and the signs would be much the same as those of high blood pressure aggravated by over-indulgence in alcohol on a gay evening. In fact, it all looked perfectly natural and nobody questioned it for a moment. Just said ‘poor old chap’ and buried him quick. Now they wonder if he ever had high blood pressure at all. Did he ever say he had to you?”
“No.”
“Exactly! And yet everyone seems to have taken it as a fact.”
“Apparently he told people he had.”
“It’s like seeing ghosts,” said Mr. Rafiel. “You never meet the chap who’s seen the ghost himself. It’s always the second cousin of his aunt, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. But leave that for a moment. They thought he had blood pressure, because there was a bottle of tablets controlling blood pressure found in his room but—and now we’re coming to the point—I gather that this girl who was killed went about saying that that bottle was put there by somebody else, and that actually it belonged to that fellow Greg.”
“Mr. Dyson has got blood pressure. His wife mentioned it,” said Miss Marple.
“So it was put in Palgrave’s room to suggest that he suffered from blood pressure and to make his death seem natural.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. “And the story was put about, very cleverly, that he had frequently mentioned to people that he had high blood pressure. But you know, it’s very easy to put about a story. Very easy. I’ve seen a lot of it in my time.”
“I bet you have,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“It only needs a murmur here and there,” said Miss Marple. “You don’t say it of your own knowledge, you just say that Mrs. B. told you that Colonel C. told her. It’s always at second hand or third hand or fourth hand and it’s very difficult to find out who was the original whisperer. Oh yes, it can be done. And the people you say it to go on and repeat it to others as if they know it of their own knowledge.”
“Somebody’s been clever,” said Mr. Rafiel thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I think somebody’s been quite clever.”
“This girl saw something, or knew something and tried blackmail, I suppose,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“She mayn’t have thought of it as blackmail,” said Miss Marple. “In these large hotels, there are often things the maids know that some people would rather not have repeated. And so they hand out a larger tip or a little present of money. The girl possibly didn’t realize at first the importance of what she knew.”
“Still, she got a knife in her back all right,” said Mr. Rafiel brutally.
“Yes. Evidently someone couldn’t afford to let her talk.”
“Well? Let’s hear what you think about it all.”
Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully.
“Why should you think I know any more than you do, Mr. Rafiel?”
“Probably you don’t,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but I’m interested to hear your ideas about what you do know.”
“But why?”
“There’s not very much to do out here,” said Mr. Rafiel, “except make money.”
Miss Marple looked slightly surprised.
“Make money? Out here?”
“You can send out half a dozen cables in code every day if you like,” said Mr. Rafiel. “That’s how I amuse myself.”
“Take-over bids?” Miss Marple asked doubtfully, in the tone of one who speaks a foreign language.
“That kind of thing,” agreed Mr. Rafiel. “Pitting your wits against other people’s wits. The trouble is it doesn’t occupy enough time, so I’ve got interested in this business. It’s aroused my curiosity. Palgrave spent a good deal of his time talking to you. Nobody else would be bothered with him, I expect. What did he say?”
“He told me a good many stories,” said Miss Marple.
“I know he did. Damn’ boring, most of them. And you hadn’t only got to hear them once. If you got anywhere within range you heard them three or four times over.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid that does happen when gentlemen get older.”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her very sharply.
“I don’t tell stories,” he said. “Go on. It started with one of Palgrave’s stories, did it?”
“He said he knew a murderer,” said Miss Ma
rple. “There’s nothing really special about that,” she added in her gentle voice, “because I suppose it happens to nearly everybody.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“I don’t mean specifically,” said Miss Marple, “but surely, Mr. Rafiel, if you cast over in your mind your recollections of various events in your life, hasn’t there nearly always been an occasion when somebody has made some careless reference such as ‘Oh yes I knew the So-and-So’s quite well—he died very suddenly and they always say his wife did him in, but I dare say that’s just gossip.’ You’ve heard people say something like that, haven’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so—yes, something of the kind. But not—well, not seriously.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple, “but Major Palgrave was a very serious man. I think he enjoyed telling this story. He said he had a snapshot of the murderer. He was going to show it to me but—actually—he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he saw something,” said Miss Marple. “Saw someone, I suspect. His face got very red and he shoved back the snapshot into his wallet and began talking on another subject.”
“Who did he see?”
“I’ve thought about that a good deal,” said Miss Marple. “I was sitting outside my bungalow, and he was sitting nearly opposite me and—whatever he saw, he saw over my right shoulder.”
“Someone coming along the path then from behind you on the right, the path from the creek and the car park—”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone coming along the path?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dyson and Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I can find out. Of course, your bungalow would also be in his line of vision….”
“Ah. Then we include—shall we say—Esther Walters and my chap, Jackson. Is that right? Either of them, I suppose, might have come out of the bungalow and gone back inside again without your seeing them.”
“They might have,” said Miss Marple, “I didn’t turn my head at once.”
“The Dysons, the Hillingdons, Esther, Jackson. One of them’s a murderer. Or, of course, myself,” he added; obviously as an afterthought.
Miss Marple smiled faintly.