Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two
I t was growing dark. Miss Marple had taken her knitting over to the window in the library. Looking out of the glasspane she saw Pat Fortescue walking up and down the terrace outside. Miss Marple unlatched the window and calledthrough 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 youknitting?”
“Oh, just a little matinée coat, dear. For a baby, you know. I always say young mothers can’t have too manymatinée coats for their babies. It’s the second size. I always knit the second size. Babies so soon grow out of the firstsize.”
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 cosyand homely¹ and like England ought to be.”
“It’s like England is,” said Miss Marple. “There are not so many Yewtree Lodges², 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 wasever 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 ispretty miserable³ and Elaine’s been eating her heart out over a young man whom she probably knows in her heart ofhearts 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 safethat 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 thingseems clear enough. Somebody in this house is mad, and madness is always frightening because you don’t know howmad 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, itwas 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. “Ithought at first I wanted to die too. It seemed so unfair, so cruel. And yet—in the end—I almost began to see that ithad been the best thing. Don was wonderful in the war. Brave and reckless and gay. He had all the qualities that areneeded, wanted in a war. But I don’t believe, somehow, peace would have suited him. He had a kind of—oh, howshall 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 bent⁴ over her knitting, picked up a stitch, counted under herbreath, “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 Freddywasn’t—well, wasn’t always straight. I began to find out the sort of things that were going on. But it didn’t seem tomatter, between us two, that is. Because, you see, Freddy loved me and I loved him. I tried not to know what wasgoing 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 withsome friends there. I couldn’t stop on in England and go on meeting all—all the old crowd that knew about it all. Andout in Kenya I met Lance.” Her face changed and softened⁵. She went on looking into the fire, and Miss Marple lookedat 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 mybeing here.”
Pat laughed suddenly.
“He’s mean, you know. Terribly mean about money. Lance says he always was. Jennifer complains of it, too. Goesover the housekeeping accounts with Miss Dove. Complaining of every item. But Miss Dove manages to hold herown. 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 Mead⁶. 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 discoveredthat—oh, but I mustn’t gossip. Nothing is more boring than people talking to you about places and people whomyou’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 nicepeople living in it and some extremely unpleasant people as well. Very curious things go on there just as in any othervillage. 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.”
“Frightens you? Why?”
“Because I think she’s crazy. I think she’s got religious mania⁷. You don’t think she could be—really—mad, doyou?”
“In what way, mad?”
“Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Marple, well enough. She sits up there and never goes out, and broods about sin.
Well, she might have felt in the end that it was her mission in life to execute judgment⁸.”
“Is that what your husband thinks?”
“I don’t know what Lance thinks. He won’t tell me. But I’m quite sure of one thing—that he believes that it’ssomeone who’s mad, and it’s someone in the family. Well, Percival’s sane⁹ enough, I should say. Jennifer’s just stupidand rather pathetic. She’s a bit nervy but that’s all, and Elaine is one of those queer, tempestuous¹⁰, tense girls. She’sdesperately in love with this young man of hers and she’ll never admit to herself for a moment that he’s marrying herfor money?”
“You think he is marrying her for money?”
“Yes, I do. Don’t you think so?”
“I should say quite certainly,” said Miss Marple. “Like young Ellis who married Marion Bates, the richironmonger’s daughter. She was a very plain girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite well.
People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really disagreeable when they’ve married a poor girl for love.
They are so annoyed with themselves for doing it that they take it out on the girl. But if they marry a rich girl theycontinue to respect her.”
“I don’t see,” went on Pat, frowning, “how it can be anybody from outside. And so—and so that accounts for theatmosphere that is here. Everyone watching everybody else. Only something’s got to happen soon—”
“There won’t be anymore deaths,” said Miss Marple. “At least, I shouldn’t think so.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am fairly sure. The murderer’s accomplished¹¹ his purpose, you see.”
“His?”
“Well, his or her. One says his for convenience.”
“You say his or her purpose. What sort of purpose?”
Miss Marple shook her head—she was not yet quite sure herself.

1 homely   

adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的

参考例句：

• We had a homely meal of bread and cheese.我们吃了一顿面包加乳酪的家常便餐。
• Come and have a homely meal with us,will you?来和我们一起吃顿家常便饭，好吗？

2 lodges   

v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属

参考例句：

• But I forget, if I ever heard, where he lodges in Liverpool. 可是我记不得有没有听他说过他在利物浦的住址。 来自辞典例句
• My friend lodges in my uncle's house. 我朋友寄居在我叔叔家。 来自辞典例句

3 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

4 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

5 softened   

（使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰

参考例句：

• His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
• The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。

6 mead   

n.蜂蜜酒

参考例句：

• He gave me a cup of mead.他给我倒了杯蜂蜜酒。
• He drank some mead at supper.晚饭时他喝了一些蜂蜜酒。

7 mania   

n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好

参考例句：

• Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
• Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。

8 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

9 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。

10 tempestuous   

adj.狂暴的

参考例句：

• She burst into a tempestuous fit of anger.她勃然大怒。
• Dark and tempestuous was night.夜色深沉，狂风肆虐，暴雨倾盆。

11 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。