A n elderly lady travelling by train had bought three morning papers, and each of them as she finished it, folded it andlaid it aside, showed the same headline. It was no longer a question now of a small paragraph hidden away in thecorner of the papers. There were headlines with flaring1 announcements of Triple Tragedy at Yewtree Lodge4.
The old lady sat very upright, looking out of the window of the train, her lips pursed together, an expression ofdistress and disapproval5 on her pink and white wrinkled face. Miss Marple had left St. Mary Mead6 by the early train,changing at the junction7 and going on to London, where she took a Circle train to another London terminus and thenceon to Baydon Heath.
At the station she signalled a taxi and asked to be taken to Yewtree Lodge. So charming, so innocent, such a fluffyand pink and white old lady was Miss Marple that she gained admittance to what was now practically a fortress8 in astate of siege far more easily than could have been believed possible. Though an army of reporters and photographerswere being kept at bay by the police, Miss Marple was allowed to drive in without question, so impossible would ithave been to believe that she was anyone but an elderly relative of the family.
Miss Marple paid off the taxi in a careful assortment9 of small change, and rang the front doorbell. Crump opened itand Miss Marple summed him up with an experienced glance. “A shifty eye,” she said to herself. “Scared to death,too.”
Crump saw a tall, elderly lady wearing an old-fashioned tweed coat and skirt, a couple of scarves and a small felthat with a bird’s wing. The old lady carried a capacious handbag and an aged2 but good-quality suitcase reposed10 by herfeet. Crump recognized a lady when he saw one and said:
“Yes, madam?” in his best and most respectful voice.
“Could I see the mistress of the house, please?” said Miss Marple.
Crump drew back to let her in. He picked up the suitcase and put it carefully down in the hall.
“Well, madam,” he said rather dubiously11, “I don’t know who exactly—”
Miss Marple helped him out.
“I have come,” she said, “to speak about the poor girl who was killed. Gladys Martin.”
“Oh, I see, madam. Well in that case—” he broke off, and looked towards the library door from which a tall youngwoman had just emerged. “This is Mrs. Lance Fortescue, madam,” he said.
Pat came forward and she and Miss Marple looked at each other. Miss Marple was aware of a faint feeling ofsurprise. She had not expected to see someone like Patricia Fortescue in this particular house. Its interior was much asshe had pictured it, but Pat did not somehow match with that interior.
“It’s about Gladys, madam,” said Crump helpfully.
Pat said rather hesitatingly:
“Will you come in here? We shall be quite alone.”
She led the way into the library and Miss Marple followed her.
“There wasn’t anyone specially12 you wanted to see, was there?” said Pat, “because perhaps I shan’t be much good.
You see my husband and I only came back from Africa a few days ago. We don’t really know anything much aboutthe household. But I can fetch my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law’s wife.”
Miss Marple looked at the girl and liked her. She liked her gravity and her simplicity13. For some strange reason shefelt sorry for her. A background of shabby chintz and horses and dogs, Miss Marple felt vaguely14, would have beenmuch more suitable than this richly furnished interior décor. At the pony15 show and gymkhanas held locally round St.
Mary Mead, Miss Marple had met many Pats and knew them well. She felt at home with this rather unhappy-lookinggirl.
“It’s very simple, really,” said Miss Marple, taking off her gloves carefully and smoothing out the fingers of them.
“I read in the paper, you see, about Gladys Martin having been killed. And of course I know all about her. She comesfrom my part of the country. I trained her, in fact, for domestic service. And since this terrible thing has happened toher, I felt—well, I felt that I ought to come and see if there was anything I could do about it.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “Of course. I see.”
And she did see. Miss Marple’s action appeared to her natural and inevitable16.
“I think it’s a very good thing you have come,” said Pat. “Nobody seems to know very much about her. I meanrelations and all that.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “of course not. She hadn’t got any relations. She came to me from the orphanage17. St.
Faith’s. A very well-run place though sadly short of funds. We do our best for the girls there, try to give them a goodtraining and all that. Gladys came to me when she was seventeen and I taught her how to wait at table and keep thesilver and everything like that. Of course she didn’t stay long. They never do. As soon as she got a little experience,she went and took a job in a café. The girls nearly always want to do that. They think it’s freer, you know, and a gayerlife. Perhaps it may be. I really don’t know.”
“I never even saw her,” said Pat. “Was she a pretty girl?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple, “not at all. Adenoids, and a good many spots. She was rather pathetically stupid, too. Idon’t suppose,” went on Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that she ever made many friends anywhere. She was very keen onmen, poor girl. But men didn’t take much notice of her and other girls rather made use of her.”
“It sounds rather cruel,” said Pat.
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “life is cruel, I’m afraid. One doesn’t really know what to do with the Gladyses.
They enjoy going to the pictures and all that, but they’re always thinking of impossible things that can’t possiblyhappen to them. Perhaps that’s happiness of a kind. But they get disappointed. I think Gladys was disappointed in caféand restaurant life. Nothing very glamorous18 or interesting happened to her and it was just hard on the feet. Probablythat’s why she came back into private service. Do you know how long she’d been here?”
Pat shook her head.
“Not very long, I should think. Only a month or two.” Pat paused and then went on, “It seems so horrible and futilethat she should have been caught up in this thing. I suppose she’d seen something or noticed something.”
“It was the clothes-peg that really worried me,” said Miss Marple in her gentle voice.
“The clothes-peg?”
“Yes. I read about it in the papers. I suppose it is true? That when she was found there was a clothes-peg clippedonto her nose.”
Pat nodded. The colour rose to Miss Marple’s pink cheeks.
“That’s what made me so very angry, if you can understand, my dear. It was such a cruel, contemptuous gesture. Itgave me a kind of picture of the murderer. To do a thing like that! It’s very wicked, you know, to affront19 humandignity. Particularly if you’ve already killed.”
Pat said slowly:
“I think I see what you mean.” She got up. “I think you’d better come and see Inspector20 Neele. He’s in charge ofthe case and he’s here now. You’ll like him, I think. He’s a very human person.” She gave a sudden, quick shiver.
“The whole thing is such a horrible nightmare. Pointless. Mad. Without rhyme or reason in it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, you know,” said Miss Marple. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
Inspector Neele was looking tired and haggard. Three deaths and the press of the whole country whooping21 downthe trail. A case that seemed to be shaping in well-known fashion had gone suddenly haywire. Adele Fortescue, thatappropriate suspect, was now the second victim of an incomprehensible murder case. At the close of that fatal day theassistant commissioner22 had sent for Neele and the two men had talked far into the night.
In spite of his dismay, or rather behind it, Inspector Neele had felt a faint inward satisfaction. That pattern of thewife and the lover. It had been too slick, too easy. He had always mistrusted it. And now that mistrust of his wasjustified.
“The whole thing takes on an entirely23 different aspect,” the AC had said, striding up and down his room andfrowning. “It looks to me, Neele, as though we’ve got someone mentally unhinged to deal with. First the husband,then the wife. But the very circumstances of the case seem to show that it’s an inside job. It’s all there, in the family.
Someone who sat down to breakfast with Fortescue put taxine in his coffee or on his food, someone who had tea withthe family that day put potassium cyanide in Adele Fortescue’s cup of tea. Someone trusted, unnoticed, one of thefamily. Which of ’em, Neele?”
Neele said dryly:
“Percival wasn’t there, so that lets him out again. That lets him out again,” Inspector Neele repeated.
The AC looked at him sharply. Something in the repetition had attracted his attention.
“What’s the idea, Neele? Out with it, man.”
Inspector Neele looked stolid24.
“Nothing, sir. Not so much as an idea. All I say is it was very convenient for him.”
“A bit too convenient, eh?” The AC reflected and shook his head. “You think he might have managed it somehow?
Can’t see how, Neele. No, I can’t see how.”
He added: “And he’s a cautious type, too.”
“But quite intelligent, sir.”
“You don’t fancy the women. Is that it? Yet the women are indicated. Elaine Fortescue and Percival’s wife. Theywere at breakfast and they were at tea that day. Either of them could have done it. No signs of anything abnormalabout them? Well, it doesn’t always show. There might be something in their past medical record.”
Inspector Neele did not answer. He was thinking of Mary Dove. He had no definite reason for suspecting her, butthat was the way his thoughts lay. There was something unexplained about her, unsatisfactory. A faint, amusedantagonism. That had been her attitude after the death of Rex Fortescue. What was her attitude now? Her behaviourand manner were, as always, exemplary. There was no longer, he thought, amusement. Perhaps not even antagonism,but he wondered whether, once or twice, he had not seen a trace of fear. He had been to blame, culpably25 to blame, inthe matter of Gladys Martin. That guilty confusion of hers he had put down to no more than a natural nervousness ofthe police. He had come across that guilty nervousness so often. In this case it had been something more. Gladys hadseen or heard something which had aroused her suspicions. It was probably, he thought, some quite small thing,something so vague and indefinite that she had hardly liked to speak about it. And now, poor little rabbit, she wouldnever speak.
Inspector Neele looked with some interest at the mild, earnest face of the old lady who confronted him now atYewtree Lodge. He had been in two minds at first how to treat her, but he quickly made-up his mind. Miss Marplewould be useful to him. She was upright, of unimpeachable26 rectitude and she had, like most old ladies, time on herhands and an old maid’s nose for scenting27 bits of gossip. She’d get things out of servants, and out of the women of theFortescue family perhaps, that he and his policemen would never get. Talk, conjecture28, reminiscences, repetitions ofthings said and done, out of it all she would pick the salient facts. So Inspector Neele was gracious.
“It’s uncommonly29 good of you to have come here, Miss Marple,” he said.
“It was my duty, Inspector Neele. The girl had lived in my house. I feel, in a sense, responsible for her. She was avery silly girl, you know.”
Inspector Neele looked at her appreciatively.
“Yes,” he said, “just so.”
She had gone, he felt, to the heart of the matter.
“She wouldn’t know,” said Miss Marple, “what she ought to do. If, I mean, something came up. Oh, dear, I’mexpressing myself very badly.”
Inspector Neele said that he understood.
“She hadn’t got good judgement as to what was important or not, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, exactly, Inspector.”
“When you say that she was silly—” Inspector Neele broke off.
Miss Marple took up the theme.
“She was the credulous30 type. She was the sort of girl who would have given her savings31 to a swindler, if she’d hadany savings. Of course, she never did have any savings because she always spent her money on most unsuitableclothes.”
“What about men?” asked the inspector.
“She wanted a young man badly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact that’s really, I think, why she left St. Mary Mead. Thecompetition there is very keen. So few men. She did have hopes of the young man who delivered the fish. Young Fredhad a pleasant word for all the girls, but of course he didn’t mean anything by it. That upset poor Gladys quite a lot.
Still, I gather she did get herself a young man in the end?”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“It seems so. Albert Evans, I gather, his name was. She seems to have met him at some holiday camp. He didn’tgive her a ring or anything so maybe she made it all up. He was a mining engineer, so she told the cook.”
“That seems most unlikely,” said Miss Marple, “but I dare say it’s what he told her. As I say, she’d believeanything. You don’t connect him with this business at all?”
Inspector Neele shook his head.
“No. I don’t think there are any complications of that kind. He never seems to have visited her. He sent her apostcard from time to time, usually from a seaport—probably 4th Engineer on a boat on the Baltic run.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I’m glad she had her little romance. Since her life has been cut short in this way—” Shetightened her lips. “You know, Inspector, it makes me very, very angry.” And she added, as she had said to PatFortescue, “Especially the clothes-peg. That, Inspector, was really wicked.”
Inspector Neele looked at her with interest.
“I know just what you mean, Miss Marple,” he said.
Miss Marple coughed apologetically.
“I wonder—I suppose it would be great presumption32 on my part—if only I could assist you in my very humble33 and,I’m afraid, very feminine way. This is a wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go unpunished.”
“That’s an unfashionable belief nowadays, Miss Marple,” Inspector Neele said rather grimly. “Not that I don’tagree with you.”
“There is an hotel near the station, or there’s the Golf Hotel,” said Miss Marple tentatively, “and I believe there’s aMiss Ramsbottom in this house who is interested in foreign missions.”
Inspector Neele looked at Miss Marple appraisingly34.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve got something there, maybe. I can’t say that I’ve had great success with the lady.”
“It’s really very kind of you, Inspector Neele,” said Miss Marple. “I’m so glad you don’t think I’m just a sensationhunter.”
Inspector Neele gave a sudden, rather unexpected smile. He was thinking to himself that Miss Marple was veryunlike the popular idea of an avenging35 fury. And yet, he thought that was perhaps exactly what she was.
“Newspapers,” said Miss Marple, “are often so sensational36 in their accounts. But hardly, I fear, as accurate as onemight wish.” She looked inquiringly at Inspector Neele. “If one could be sure of having just the sober facts.”
“They’re not particularly sober,” said Neele. “Shorn of undue37 sensation, they’re as follows. Mr. Fortescue died inhis office as a result of taxine poisoning. Taxine is obtained from the berries and leaves of yew3 trees.”
“Very convenient,” Miss Marple said.
“Possibly,” said Inspector Neele, “but we’ve no evidence as to that. As yet, that is.” He stressed the point because itwas here that he thought Miss Marple might be useful. If any brew38 or concoction39 of yewberries had been made in thehouse, Miss Marple was quite likely to come upon traces of it. She was the sort of old pussy40 who would makehomemade liqueurs, cordials and herb teas herself. She would know methods of making and methods of disposal.
“And Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Mrs. Fortescue had tea with the family in the library. The last person to leave the room and the tea table was MissElaine Fortescue, her stepdaughter. She states that as she left the room Mrs. Fortescue was pouring herself out anothercup of tea. Some twenty minutes or half hour later Miss Dove, who acts as housekeeper41, went in to remove the teatray. Mrs. Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa, dead. Beside her was a tea cup a quarter full and in the dregs of it waspotassium cyanide.”
“Which is almost immediate42 in its action, I believe,” said Miss Marple.
“Exactly.”
“Such dangerous stuff,” murmured Miss Marple. “One has it to take wasps’ nests but I’m always very, verycareful.”
“You’re quite right,” said Inspector Neele. “There was a packet of it in the gardener’s shed here.”
“Again very convenient,” said Miss Marple. She added, “Was Mrs. Fortescue eating anything?”
“Oh, yes. They’d had quite a sumptuous43 tea.”
“Cake, I suppose? Bread and butter? Scones44, perhaps? Jam? Honey?”
“Yes, there was honey and scones, chocolate cake and swiss roll and various other plates of things.” He looked ather curiously45. “The potassium cyanide was in the tea, Miss Marple.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I quite understand that. I was just getting the whole picture, so to speak. Rather significant, don’t youthink?”
He looked at her in a slightly puzzled fashion. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright.
“And the third death, Inspector Neele?”
“Well, the facts there seem clear enough, too. The girl, Gladys, took in the tea tray, then she brought the next trayinto the hall, but left it there. She’d been rather absentminded all the day, apparently46. After that no one saw her. Thecook, Mrs. Crump, jumped to the conclusion that the girl had gone out for the evening without telling anybody. Shebased her belief, I think, on the fact that the girl was wearing a good pair of nylon stockings and her best shoes. There,however, she was proved quite wrong. The girl had obviously remembered suddenly that she had not taken in someclothes that were drying outside on the clothesline. She ran out to fetch them in, had taken down half of themapparently, when somebody took her unawares by slipping a stocking round her neck and—well, that was that.”
“Someone from outside?” said Miss Marple.
“Perhaps,” said Inspector Neele. “But perhaps someone from inside. Someone who’d been waiting his or heropportunity to get the girl alone. The girl was upset, nervous, when we first questioned her, but I’m afraid we didn’tquite appreciate the importance of that.”
“Oh, but how could you,” cried Miss Marple, “because people so often do look guilty and embarrassed when theyare questioned by the police.”
“That’s just it. But this time, Miss Marple, it was rather more than that. I think the girl Gladys had seen someoneperforming some action that seemed to her needed explanation. It can’t, I think, have been anything very definite.
Otherwise she would have spoken out. But I think she did betray the fact to the person in question. That personrealized that Gladys was a danger.”
“And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes-peg clipped on her nose,” murmured Miss Marple to herself.
“Yes, that’s a nasty touch. A nasty, sneering47 sort of touch. Just a nasty bit of unnecessary bravado48.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Hardly unnecessary. It does all make a pattern, doesn’t it?”
Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.
“I don’t quite follow you, Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?”
Miss Marple immediately became flustered49.
“Well, I mean it does seem—I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you understand—well, one can’t get away fromfacts, can one?”
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
“Well, I mean—first we have Mr. Fortescue. Rex Fortescue. Killed in his office in the city. And then we have Mrs.
Fortescue, sitting here in the library and having tea. There were scones and honey. And then poor Gladys with theclothes-peg on her nose. Just to point the whole thing. That very charming Mrs. Lance Fortescue said to me that theredidn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in it, but I couldn’t agree with her, because it’s the rhyme that strikes one, isn’tit?”
Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don’t think—”
Miss Marple went on quickly:
“I expect you’re about thirty-five or thirty-six, aren’t you, Inspector Neele? I think there was rather a reaction justthen, when you were a little boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on Mother Goose—Imean it is really highly significant, isn’t it? What I wondered was,” Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take hercourage in her hands went on bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know, on my part, saying this sort of thingto you.”
“Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am veryold and rather muddleheaded, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have you gone intothe question of blackbirds?”
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flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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yew
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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disapproval
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mead
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junction
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fortress
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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reposed
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dubiously
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specially
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simplicity
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vaguely
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pony
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inevitable
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orphanage
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glamorous
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affront
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inspector
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whooping
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commissioner
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entirely
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stolid
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culpably
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unimpeachable
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scenting
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conjecture
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uncommonly
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credulous
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savings
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presumption
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humble
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appraisingly
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avenging
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sensational
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undue
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brew
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concoction
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pussy
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housekeeper
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immediate
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sumptuous
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scones
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| n.烤饼，烤小圆面包( scone的名词复数 ) | |
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curiously
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apparently
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sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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bravado
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| n.虚张声势，故作勇敢，逞能 | |
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flustered
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| adj.慌张的；激动不安的v.使慌乱，使不安( fluster的过去式和过去分词) | |
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