I“S t. Mary Mead1, you say?” Chief-Inspector Craddock looked up sharply.
The assistant commissioner2 was a little surprised.
“Yes,” he said, “St. Mary Mead. Why? Does it—”
“Nothing really,” said Dermot Craddock.
“It’s quite a small place, I understand,” went on the other. “Though of course there’s a great deal of buildingdevelopment going on there now. Practically all the way from St. Mary Mead to Much Benham, I understand.
Hellingforth Studios,” he added, “are on the other side of St. Mary Mead, towards Market Basing.” He was stilllooking slightly inquiring. Dermot Craddock felt that he should perhaps explain.
“I know someone living there,” he said. “At St. Mary Mead. An old lady. A very old lady by now. Perhaps she’sdead, I don’t know. But if not—”
The assistant commissioner took his subordinate’s point, or at any rate he thought he did.
“Yes,” he said, “it would give you an ‘in’ in a way. One needs a bit of local gossip. The whole thing is a curiousbusiness.”
“The County have called us in?” Dermot asked.
“Yes. I’ve got the chief constable’s letter here. They don’t seem to feel that it’s necessarily a local affair. Thelargest house in the neighbourhood, Gossington Hall, was recently sold as a residence for Marina Gregg, the film star,and her husband. They’re shooting a film at their new studios, at Hellingforth, in which she is starring. A fête was heldin the grounds in aid of the St. John Ambulance. The dead woman—her name is Mrs. Heather Badcock—was the localsecretary of this and had done most of the administrative3 work for the fête. She seems to have been a competent,sensible person, well liked locally.”
“One of those bossy4 women?” suggested Craddock.
“Very possibly,” said the assistant commissioner. “Still in my experience, bossy women seldom get themselvesmurdered. I can’t think why not. When you come to think of it, it’s rather a pity. There was a record attendance at thefête, it seems, good weather, everything running to plan. Marina Gregg and her husband held a kind of small privatereception in Gossington Hall. About thirty or forty people attended this. The local notables, various people connectedwith the St. John Ambulance Association, several friends of Marina Gregg herself, and a few people connected withthe studios. All very peaceful, nice and happy. But, fantastically and improbably, Heather Badcock was poisonedthere.”
Dermot Craddock said thoughtfully, “An odd place to choose.”
“That’s the chief constable’s point of view. If anyone wanted to poison Heather Badcock, why choose thatparticular afternoon and circumstances? Hundreds of much simpler ways of doing it. A risky5 business anyway, youknow, to slip a dose of deadly poison into a cocktail6 in the middle of twenty or thirty people milling about. Somebodyought to have seen something.”
“It definitely was in the drink?”
“Yes, it was definitely in the drink. We have the particulars here. One of those inexplicable7 names that doctorsdelight in, but actually a fairly common prescription8 in America.”
“In America. I see.”
“Oh, this country too. But these things are handed out much more freely on the other side of the Atlantic. Taken insmall doses, beneficial.”
“Supplied on prescription or can it be bought freely?”
“No. You have to have a prescription.”
“Yes, it’s odd,” said Dermot. “Heather Badcock have any connection with these film people?”
“None whatever.”
“Any member of her own family at this do?”
“Her husband.”
“Her husband,” said Dermot thoughtfully.
“Yes, one always thinks that way,” agreed his superior officer, “but the local man—Cornish, I think his name is—doesn’t seem to think there’s anything in that, although he does report that Badcock seemed ill at ease and nervous,but he agrees that respectable people often are like that when interviewed by the police. They appear to have beenquite a devoted9 couple.”
“In other words, the police there don’t think it’s their pigeon. Well, it ought to be interesting. I take it I’m goingdown there, sir?”
“Yes. Better get there as soon as possible, Dermot. Who do you want with you?”
Dermot considered for a moment or two.
“Tiddler, I think,” he said thoughtfully. “He’s a good man and, what’s more, he’s a film star. That might come inuseful.”
The assistant commissioner nodded. “Good luck to you,” he said.
II
“Well!” exclaimed Miss Marple, going pink with pleasure and surprise. “This is a surprise. How are you, my dear boy—though you’re hardly a boy now. What are you—a Chief-Inspector or this new thing they call a Commander?”
Dermot explained his present rank.
“I suppose I need hardly ask what you are doing down here,” said Miss Marple. “Our local murder is consideredworthy of the attention of Scotland Yard.”
“They handed it over to us,” said Dermot, “and so, naturally, as soon as I got down here I came to headquarters.”
“Do you mean—” Miss Marple fluttered a little.
“Yes, Aunty,” said Dermot disrespectfully. “I mean you.”
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Marple regretfully, “I’m very much out of things nowadays. I don’t get out much.”
“You get out enough to fall down and be picked up by a woman who’s going to be murdered ten days later,” saidDermot Craddock.
Miss Marple made the kind of noise that would once have been written down as “tut-tut.”
“I don’t know where you hear these things,” she said.
“You should know,” said Dermot Craddock. “You told me yourself that in a village everybody knows everything.
“And just off the record,” he added, “did you think she was going to be murdered as soon as you looked at her?”
“Of course not, of course not,” exclaimed Miss Marple. “What an idea!”
“You didn’t see that look in her husband’s eye that reminded you of Harry10 Simpson or David Jones or somebodyyou’ve known years ago, and subsequently pushed his wife off a precipice11.”
“No, I did not!” said Miss Marple. “I’m sure Mr. Badcock would never do a wicked thing of that kind. At least,”
she added thoughtfully, “I’m nearly sure.”
“But human nature being what it is—” murmured Craddock, wickedly.
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple. She added, “I daresay, after the first natural grief, he won’t miss her very much….”
“Why? Did she bully12 him?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple, “but I don’t think that she — well, she wasn’t a considerate woman. Kind, yes.
Considerate—no. She would be fond of him and look after him when he was ill and see to his meals and be a goodhousekeeper, but I don’t think she would ever—well, that she would ever even know what he might be feeling orthinking. That makes rather a lonely life for a man.”
“Ah,” said Dermot, “and is his life less likely to be lonely in future?”
“I expect he’ll marry again,” said Miss Marple. “Perhaps quite soon. And probably, which is such a pity, a womanof much the same type. I mean he’ll marry someone with a stronger personality than his own.”
“Anyone in view?” asked Dermot.
“Not that I know of,” said Miss Marple. She added regretfully, “But I know so little.”
“Well, what do you think?” urged Dermot Craddock. “You’ve never been backward in thinking things.”
“I think,” said Miss Marple, unexpectedly, “that you ought to go and see Mrs. Bantry.”
“Mrs. Bantry? Who is she? One of the film lot?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “she lives in the East Lodge13 at Gossington. She was at the party that day. She used to ownGossington at one time. She and her husband, Colonel Bantry.”
“She was at the party. And she saw something?”
“I think she must tell you herself what it was she saw. You mayn’t think it has any bearing on the matter, but Ithink it might be—just might be—suggestive. Tell her I sent you to her and—ah yes, perhaps you’d better justmention the Lady of Shalott.”
Dermot Craddock looked at her with his head just slightly on one side.
“The Lady of Shalott,” he said. “Those are the code words, are they?”
“I don’t know that I should put it that way,” said Miss Marple, “but it will remind her of what I mean.”
Dermot Craddock got up. “I shall be back,” he warned her.
“That is very nice of you,” said Miss Marple. “Perhaps if you have time, you would come and have tea with meone day. If you still drink tea,” she added rather wistfully. “I know that so many young people nowadays only go outto drinks and things. They think that afternoon tea is a very outmoded affair.”
“I’m not as young as all that,” said Dermot Craddock. “Yes, I’ll come and have tea with you one day. We’ll havetea and gossip and talk about the village. Do you know any of the film stars, by the way, or any of the studio lot?”
“Not a thing,” said Miss Marple, “except what I hear,” she added.
“Well, you usually hear a good deal,” said Dermot Craddock. “Goodbye. It’s been very nice to see you.”
III
“Oh, how do you do?” said Mrs. Bantry, looking slightly taken aback when Dermot Craddock had introduced himselfand explained who he was. “How very exciting to see you. Don’t you always have sergeants14 with you?”
“I’ve got a sergeant15 down here, yes,” said Craddock. “But he’s busy.”
“On routine inquiries16?” asked Mrs. Bantry, hopefully.
“Something of the kind,” said Dermot gravely.
“And Jane Marple sent you to me,” said Mrs. Bantry, as she ushered17 him into her small sitting room. “I was justarranging some flowers,” she explained. “It’s one of those days when flowers won’t do anything you want them to.
They fall out, or stick up where they shouldn’t stick up or won’t lie down where you want them to lie down. So I’mthankful to have a distraction18, and especially such an exciting one. So it really was murder, was it?”
“Did you think it was murder?”
“Well, it could have been an accident, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Nobody’s said anything definite, officially,that is. Just that rather silly piece about no evidence to show by whom or in what way the poison was administered.
But, of course, we all talk about it as murder.”
“And about who did it?”
“That’s the odd part of it,” said Mrs. Bantry. “We don’t. Because I really don’t see who can have done it.”
“You mean as a matter of definite physical fact you don’t see who could have done it?”
“Well, no, not that. I suppose it would have been difficult but not impossible. No, I mean, I don’t see who couldhave wanted to do it.”
“Nobody, you think, could have wanted to kill Heather Badcock?”
“Well, frankly,” said Mrs. Bantry, “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to kill Heather Badcock. I’ve seen her quite afew times, on local things, you know. Girl guides and the St. John Ambulance, and various parish things. I found her arather trying sort of woman. Very enthusiastic about everything and a bit given to over-statement, and just a little bitof a gusher19. But you don’t want to murder people for that. She was the kind of woman who in the old days if you’dseen her approaching the front door, you’d have hurried out to say to your parlourmaid—which was an institution wehad in those days, and very useful too—and told her to say ‘not at home’ or ‘not at home to visitors,’ if she hadconscientious scruples21 about the truth.”
“You mean that one might take pains to avoid Mrs. Badcock, but one would have no urge to remove herpermanently.”
“Very well put,” said Mrs. Bantry, nodding approval.
“She had no money to speak of,” mused22 Dermot, “so nobody stood to gain by her death. Nobody seems to havedisliked her to the point of hatred23. I don’t suppose she was blackmailing24 anybody?”
“She wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Bantry. “She was the conscientious20 andhigh-principled kind.”
“And her husband wasn’t having an affair with someone else?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Mrs. Bantry. “I only saw him at the party. He looked like a bit of chewed string. Nicebut wet.”
“Doesn’t leave much, does it?” said Dermot Craddock. “One falls back on the assumption she knew something.”
“Knew something?”
“To the detriment25 of somebody else.”
Mrs. Bantry shook her head again. “I doubt it,” she said. “I doubt it very much. She struck me as the kind ofwoman who if she had known anything about anyone, couldn’t have helped talking about it.”
“Well, that washes that out,” said Dermot Craddock, “so we’ll come, if we may, to my reasons for coming to seeyou. Miss Marple, for whom I have the greatest admiration26 and respect, told me that I was to say to you the Lady ofShalott.”
“Oh, that!” said Mrs. Bantry.
“Yes,” said Craddock. “That! Whatever it is.”
“People don’t read much Tennyson nowadays,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“A few echoes come back to me,” said Dermot Craddock. “She looked out to Camelot, didn’t she?
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The Mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
“Exactly. She did,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“I beg your pardon. Who did? Did what?”
“Looked like that,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“Who looked like what?”
“Marina Gregg.”
“Ah, Marina Gregg. When was this?”
“Didn’t Jane Marple tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything. She sent me to you.”
“That’s tiresome27 of her,” said Mrs. Bantry, “because she can always tell things better than I can. My husbandalways used to say that I was so abrupt28 that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Anyway, it may have been onlymy fancy. But when you see anyone looking like that you can’t help remembering it.”
“Please tell me,” said Dermot Craddock.
“Well, it was at the party. I call it a party because what can one call things? But it was just a sort of reception up atthe top of the stairs where they’ve made a kind of recess29. Marina Gregg was there and her husband. They fetchedsome of us in. They fetched me, I suppose, because I once owned the house, and they fetched Heather Badcock andher husband because she’d done all the running of the fête, and the arrangements. And we happened to go up the stairsat about the same time, so I was standing30 there, you see, when I noticed it.”
“Quite. When you noticed what?”
“Well, Mrs. Badcock went into a long spiel as people do when they meet celebrities31. You know, how wonderful itwas, and what a thrill and they’d always hoped to see them. And she went into a long story of how she’d once met heryears ago and how exciting it had been. And I thought, in my own mind, you know, what a bore it must be for thesepoor celebrities to have to say all the right things. And then I noticed that Marina Gregg wasn’t saying the right things.
She was just staring.”
“Staring—at Mrs. Badcock?”
“No—no, it looked as though she’d forgotten Mrs. Badcock altogether. I mean, I don’t believe she’d even heardwhat Mrs. Badcock was saying. She was just staring with what I call this Lady of Shalott look, as though she’d seensomething awful. Something frightening, something that she could hardly believe she saw and couldn’t bear to see.”
“The curse has come upon me?” suggested Dermot Craddock.
“Yes, just that. That’s why I call it the Lady of Shalott look.”
“But what was she looking at, Mrs. Bantry?”
“Well, I wish I knew,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“She was at the top of the stairs, you say?”
“She was looking over Mrs. Badcock’s head—no, more over one shoulder, I think.”
“Straight at the middle of the staircase?”
“It might have been a little to one side.”
“And there were people coming up the staircase?”
“Oh yes, I should think about five or six people.”
“Was she looking at one of these people in particular?”
“I can’t possibly tell,” said Mrs. Bantry. “You see, I wasn’t facing that way. I was looking at her. My back was tothe stairs. I thought perhaps she was looking at one of the pictures.”
“But she must know the pictures quite well if she’s living in the house.”
“Yes, yes, of course. No, I suppose she must have been looking at one of the people. I wonder which.”
“We have to try and find out,” said Dermot Craddock. “Can you remember at all who the people were?”
“Well, I know the mayor was one of them with his wife. There was someone who I think was a reporter, with redhair, because I was introduced to him later, but I can’t remember his name. I never hear names. Galbraith—somethinglike that. Then there was a big black man. I don’t mean a negro—I just mean very dark, forceful looking. And anactress with him. A bit over-blonde and the minky kind. And old General Barnstaple from Much Benham. He’spractically ga-ga now, poor old boy. I don’t think he could have been anybody’s doom32. Oh! and the Grices from thefarm.”
“Those are all the people you can remember?”
“Well, there may have been others. But you see I wasn’t—well, I mean I wasn’t noticing particularly. I know thatthe mayor and General Barnstaple and the Americans did arrive about that time. And there were people takingphotographs. One I think was a local man, and there was a girl from London, an arty-looking girl with long hair and arather large camera.”
“And you think it was one of those people who brought that look to Marina Gregg’s face?”
“I didn’t really think anything,” said Mrs. Bantry with complete frankness. “I just wondered what on earth madeher look like that and then I didn’t think of it anymore. But afterwards one remembers about these things. But ofcourse,” added Mrs. Bantry with honesty, “I may have imagined it. After all, she may have had a sudden toothache ora safety pin run into her or a sudden violent colic. The sort of thing where you try to go on as usual and not to showanything, but your face can’t help looking awful.”
Dermot Craddock laughed. “I’m glad to see you’re a realist, Mrs. Bantry,” he said. “As you say, it may have beensomething of that kind. But it’s certainly just one interesting little fact that might be a pointer.”
He shook his head and departed to present his official credentials33 in Much Benham.
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1
mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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bossy
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| adj.爱发号施令的，作威作福的 | |
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risky
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| adj.有风险的，冒险的 | |
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cocktail
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| n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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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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14
sergeants
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| 警官( sergeant的名词复数 )； （美国警察）警佐； （英国警察）巡佐； 陆军（或空军）中士 | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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gusher
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| n.喷油井 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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blackmailing
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| 胁迫，尤指以透露他人不体面行为相威胁以勒索钱财( blackmail的现在分词 ) | |
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detriment
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| n.损害；损害物，造成损害的根源 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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credentials
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| n.证明，资格，证明书，证件 | |
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